VII. Shifting Sands Of Secrecy

Note: You can find the first part of the story here, the second part here, the third part here, the fourth part here, the fifth part here, and the sixth part here.

“…I can’t lie here forever, I need to find out. Now.”

“I never questioned what happened at the pyramids, I trusted what I was told, we were always trained to only question what was necessary. I had no reason to not trust Brennan. But now, now I wonder if that trust was misplaced. I know that going to the pyramids to investigate what was going was right. I did the intelligence briefing. I researched it all. I -know- that was the place we had to go. Splitting up was never my part of the plan, but in the moment we entered, it did seem to be the best way to cover the ground we had to cover in what little time we had. The target could be lost if we were off by the slightest margin.”

Abel sat and wondered to himself where things could have gotten thrown off. When they entered the pyramid they were all confident that the target was present. All of the intel pointed to her being there, so much so that even Dom himself offered proof on his own. Was it a coincidence that he knew? Did he know before we knew? What happened in there and where did he go? “I want to believe it wasn’t Brennan who did this, we’re close, brothers in arms, he couldn’t have.” Dominic though he knew less of, sure they had been involved in the same unit for years and you do have trust each other because anything can change in a millisecond. “I never could feel like I was close to him, known him I suppose, but there was always a stand-offish nature to him. Fuck maybe I’m just second-guessing myself.”

Was something missed at the pyramids though? It’s always a possibility but you wouldn’t think so with three very highly trained agents going in to retrieve one target. Impossible right? Right? He thought to himself, “how could all of us have missed on finding them there, it would be near impossible to get past all of us.” Somehow though they had vanished. After seeing the man with the scar in the jungle, they realized he was nothing more than a pawn. “A useless piece put in play just to draw our attention. Shit happens, just glad we get out of there when we did,” he thought to himself. We ended up backing out of there and heading home to sort through whatever missteps we had made to lead us there. Somehow the intelligence was wrong. It’d be easy to blame the desk jockies for it, but Abel knew he himself had done a majority of the research. It all was accurate based on every piece he could find. The pawn in the jungle was a non-factor. “Don’t care what his purpose was, all he did was waste my time.”

But then at the bunker, the ambush, more questions. Only a select few -knew- that location. If it was someone who wasn’t suppose to know why didn’t they take anything, at least nothing visible. “Always more questions and harder to find answers with Dom gone, then do I trust Brennan, he is one person who knows this spot,” he thought to himself. Bren could have done it but for what? There was nothing missing. Abel dragged himself up to the remote computer terminal. “Hmm no signs of tampering that I can tell, all the data still seems to be intact as well. Could have cloned it though. Damn it.”

The only way to find that out was to go back to headquarters and have it looked over. But first he had to clean up and change. Gone was that dark hair and trimmed beard everyone was used to, it was in fact dyed that color. Abel was not all bothered to not have to do upkeep on that any longer. The target, to his knowledge only knew what was out there in regards to his person. Dark hair, medium skin tone, height, weight, approximate age. The basics. Could they know more, sure, always a possibility, but unlikely. The agency did a good job of keeping things well protected in all aspects. Nothing would be worse than all of their data falling into the wrong hands. Especially the target’s hands.

They were already known to be extremely intelligent, as well as exceptionally evasive. “If they have the information we’re screwed. No question.” He wondered though, “if it’s not them, could it be Brennan or even Dominic? I can’t tell Bren yet, I’m not sure enough that he wasn’t involved in this. Not yet.” It was time to return to the pyramid, to retrace everyone’s steps alone. It came with a major risk, but at this point, someone was on his trail anyway, so why not attempt to kill two birds with one stone. “If they happen to follow me back to Egypt, I might just get the jump on them in that pyramid. All those rooms and twisting corridors, very easy to lose track of where you are at any given time. It’s a risk, but it’s a risk I have to take.”

“If she follows me there though, she knows the layout as well or better than I do. Always be vigilant, one mistake and everything crashes down. This is the only way. Then again what if she’s a step ahead of me…”

To Be Continued…

Credits:

Head: LeLUTKA.Head.NOA.3.1 ~ Jaden Nova
Head Applier: STRAY DOG – GREG – LELUTKA – TONE 04 ~ Gac Akina
Hair: [MAGNIFICENT] THOR Bun – Grooming Hair – LeBarbier Alpha
Hairbase: LeLUTKA.EvoX.Hairbase.044 (BOM) ~ Jaden Nova (Comes with the LeLUTKA NOA Head)
Eyes: Avi-Glam. Glory Eyes – 703 ~ Eye Daddy
Ears: ^^Swallow^^ Gauged S Ears ~ Luciayes Magic
Ear Tattoo: HANZ – Snake Ear Tattoo [Fresh] Gauged S Ears ~ Victor Voxel
Beard: [MAGNIFICENT] DUCKY SKUNK – Beard – LeBarbier Alpha
Beard Layer: Volkstone Rey Facial Hair // 004 TINTABLE (BOM) ~ Daves Hexem
Body: [LEGACY] Athletic Edition (1.1) ~ MeshBody Resident
Skin: STRAY DOG – Legacy Skin – TONE 04 (BOM) ~ Gac Akina
Hand BOM:K.O.K.O.S SHOP – SEXI MAN HANDS-BOM ALL BODY. ~ Aleric Dallas
Tattoo Top: DAPPA – Reckoning Tattoo. [FADED] Lelutka EvoX. ~ Devil Fae
Earrings: = DAE = SXD1 ~ Naomi Darkheart

Hat: [WAZ] Operator Hat ~ Waterfall Farshore
Backpack: [WAZ] Coyote Backpack ~ Waterfall Farshore
Vest: [WAZ] IPC Deluxe ~ Waterfall Farshore
Top: [WAZ] Integrated Tactical Shirt ~ Waterfall Farshore
Gloves: [WAZ] Tactical Range Gloves ~ Waterfall Farshore
Belt 1: [WAZ] Tactical Range Belt ITG ~ Waterfall Farshore
Belt 2: [WAZ] IBB “Deluxe” ~ Waterfall Farshore
Pants: [WAZ] Integrated Tactical Pants ~ Waterfall Farshore
Kneepads: [WAZ] Ballistic Knee Pads ~ Waterfall Farshore
Boots: [WAZ] WDB Duty Boots v2 ~ Waterfall Farshore
Gun: SAC M18 Pistol v1.11(R) ~ Eripom Moonwall
Paper: origami~* Crumpled Paper 181111 ~ Gumi Yao

~Scene~

Scene: Pavlonia – Pyramid Of Pharaoh ~ Silvermist Darkheart
Pose: Ana Poses – Bishkek 5 ~ Fanny Finney