The Family

Started on 26/1/2013 this is a story I never finished or likely ever will, probably because I'm not too good at thinking up modern-day baddies xD Basically I was thinking that the bad guys were going to turn out to be a family of criminals who were trying to create a family of perfectly-gened people, or something like that... On with the story!


A portly and slightly grubby man tried desperately to tie down his fruit stall's canvas roof as the brisk late morning New York wind tried just as hard to take it from him. He scowled and grumbled to himself as an FBI agent ran past him and accidentally loosened the canvas just as he tied it. They had blocked off the street where his stall was located and emptied it in a matter of minutes. They'd tried to clear him out too, he refused, they decided he wasn't worth it.
 "Late." He grunted to the driver of a blue transit van that had just pulled up in front of the stall.
 "Morning Gary, got much business today?" The young driver asked as he hopped out of the van and motioned to the empty street.
 "Don't smart mouth me kid. You got a delivery? Deliver it." Gary growled and the driver backed away with his hands raised.
 "Alright alright." The driver said and hammered his fist on the side of the van. "Jimmy you heard the man, get out and do as your daddy says."
 "Yes Frank." A spotty teenage boy mumbled and half fell out of the passenger seat.
Jimmy ambled forward to open the back of the van and started to unload the fruit crates, under Gary's supervision.
 "You're lucky they let us through actually, they've got the place surrounded." Said Frankie who was casually leaning against the van. "Looks like they might be onto something about those attacks, I've never seen so many feds." He continued and nodded to the swarming police over his shoulder, who had now surrounded a large glass high-rise apartment across the road.
Gary just grunted at the blaring lights of the police cars and picked up another crate from the van.
 "How'd you get past them then?" Gary asked suspiciously.
 "I know someone in the force." Frank said vaguely and smiled to himself.
 "You know too many people for your own good." Gary grumbled and frowned curiously at Jimmy who was sweating profusely and glancing nervously at the cops.
 "Hey, you should be grateful I'm doing this favour for you, I've got a pal down in the maf who'd pay-" Frank protested and staggered back as he was cut off by a cop barrelling past him.
 "What the-?" Gary exclaimed as he almost dropped his crate.
 "Agent Curtis is down. I repeat, Agent Curtis is down." The cop called urgently into his radio with a clear British accent.
 "Christ he's SIS," Frank exclaimed and brushed himself off. "What's the British secret service doing working with the FBI?" He wondered as they watched the agent run up the street, weaving between abandoned cars and FBI vehicles to the apartment.
 "Don't know and don't care." Gary grumbled. "They bring nothing but trouble, always do. Sooner they go, the better." He finished and eyed a troop of agents that ran past as he stacked a row of crates against the wall.
 "What is up with you today son?" He barked at Jimmy who had nearly dropped his crate while trying to hide his face in his hood as the agents went past.
 "You're unloading fruit not class A drugs." Frank chuckled and took out his iPhone to play on it. Jimmy just laughed weakly and wiped the sweat off his brow with a shaky hand.

 The SIS agent had reached the apartment by now and was making his way through the throng of agents to the glass doors where his superiors waited. They were Ian Bach, the head of the SIS division; Jack Smart, an aptly named  FBI technical advisor and Chris Brennan, head of the FBI division. All of them wore suits except for the latter who had a navy suit jacket thrown over a white t-shirt and a pair of stonewashed jeans. Judging by his panting he'd only arrived moments before the SIS agent, and at a full sprint.
 "Jenkins, what happened back there?" Bach greeted his agent.
 "Curtis is dead, bullet to the head. The others I don't know, it was pretty much every man for himself when they hit the bomb trigger. It was way more heavily guarded than we expected, they were hiding something definitely." Said Jenkins.
 "I knew Curtis from the start, she was a good agent." Bach said solemnly and turned to Chris Brennan. "How about your team, Brennan? Anything in that warehouse?"
 "Just about the same as Agent Jenkins here actually, 'cept we managed to apprehend them before they hit the big red button." Brennan replied. Jenkins had only met him a few times but his casual, outgoing manner and smooth voice caught him out everytime. His eyes however were hard as steel and his toned muscles made it clear he wasn't someone to be messed with. He wasn't out of his thirties and yet he ran an entire division, whereas Bach had only achieved that in recent years and was in his late fifties and balding.
 "We're still searching the place but so far nothing, no sign of anything they want to hide so badly they'd rather blow it up than let us get to it either." Brennan continued. "And Bach stop staring at my pants, it was supposed to be my day off and you didn't exactly give me time to change."
 "Sir-" Jenkins butted in, thinking it might be a good time to keep the two division leaders from bickering yet again. "I thought the street was supposed to be cleared." He said and looked at the men he'd run past before.
 "The fruit seller outside Wellers Bank?" Bach asked. "We tried but he refused, we have more pressing matters than the stubbornness of one man."
 "Yes speaking of, Bach, why have you got us all assembled outside one of the biggest apartments in New York like happy campers?" Brennan quipped.
 "That's a question for Smart here actually." Bach said and tapped Smart's shoulder as he'd been knelt down at a laptop and two other monitors set up against the wall the entire time.
 "Sir?" Smart stood up with a jolt and looked at Bach questioningly.
 "Don't pretend you didn't hear everything we just said Jack, just give me the lowdown." Brennan interrupted.
 "Ok fine." Jack replied and adjusted his designer glasses. "We believe, an' I'm sure of it," He emphasised and shot a look at Bach. "We've been hacked at HQ. It explains why they've always been ready for us an' know our movements, but I should be able to kick 'em out again, I just didn't have enough time today. An' it was due to em' not hearing us through HQ that we managed to do this today."
 "Oh great." Brennan sighed. "Wait, do what?"
 "We have her Brennan, The Tiger's up there with no means of communication or escape, there are agents outside every possible exit and Smart here has locked everything inside from his computer." Bach smiled.
Brennan frowned at this and raised an eyebrow at at Smart who shrugged. "So you're saying that The Tiger, the leader of the organization who we've been tracking for two years, who is so slippy we don't even know her name, is holed up in her apartment?" Brennan asked in disbelief.
 "Yup." Smart confirmed. "And I've also programmed it so that if anyone so much as opens a door in there, we'll know."
 "Ok." Brennan nodded. "But Bach, do anything on this scale, and on my turf, again without letting me know and I'll have your ass on the next flight back to England before you can blink." He warned. Bach ground his teeth but nodded.
 "Well seeing as you're so confident in your superiority in this matter, do you have anything to add?" He asked with his nose in the air.
Brennan ignored his colleague's cold hostility and instead examined the agents around them. He couldn't see the face he was looking for and turned back to Bach with a twinge of disappointment.
 "Does Rigby know about Curtis' death?" He asked suddenly.
 "No, this is the first even we've heard of it." Bach replied, thrown by the question. "Why?"
 "They were close, she may be our best agent but even she can get emotional, and we can't risk that in this situation. So where is sh-" He started to ask but stopped as Bach put a finger up to his earpiece.
 "Rigby has her secured." Bach smiled. "Time to close this up." He said and began to call over a few agents to form a recovery team but Brennan grabbed his arm and pulled him back.
 "She's up there, with the Tiger?" He asked.
 "She slipped in before we'd assessed the situation, obviously we couldn't break the lockdown to pull her out." Bach replied, yanked his arm out of Brennan's grasp and marched down into the throng.
 "Of course she did." Brennan sighed and, after a look up at the apartment, followed him.

The woman who's known only as the Tiger winced as the bindings around her wrist were sharply tightened. She was sitting in the middle of the cold, hard blue-grey marble floor of a large open-planned hotel room. It hadn't been fully furnished yet and all there was was a dark, modern double bed behind her, a white fireplace against the wall in front of her and a few side tables scattered around. The wall to her far right was made up of glass windows whereas to her left was just a door.
 The person responsible for her capture passed in front of it and she smiled tightly. An apparent FBI agent, she was dressed in black nylon pants and top with black flat boots and a bullet-proof vest. Her light brown hair had come loose from it's ponytail a while ago but she hadn't been bothered to tie it back, all her focus was set on her captive, and her boiling hatred of her.
 "I don't see what there is to smile about from your position." Agent Rigby said to the Tiger. "It's over now. This building is surrounded, locked, alarmed...there is no escape route we haven't covered. And without a leader - you're organization will fall."
The Tiger said nothing and instead turned her head to the windows. She was younger than Rigby had expected, but still around Brennan's age. The silence stretched on so Rigby opted for another approach.
 "You killed a good friend of mine today." She said coolly but the daggers were shooting through her eyes.
 "I was here?" The Tiger said innocently and Rigby laughed in a short bark.
 "By your hand or your men's, what's the difference?" She spat.
 "I'm so sorry." The Tiger responded dryly. "Maybe now your friend will understand not to stick her nose in where it's unwanted?" She smiled up at Rigby but her head snapped back as Rigby punched her across the jaw.
 "Her name was Martha Curtis." Rigby seethed. "And you will answer for her death and the death of countless families that your people are responsible for, the deaths she gave her life to put a stop to." 
The Tiger just laughed as spat out a glob of blood and looked out of the windows again. Rigby crouched down to examine her rival and wiped the blood off her knuckles on her pants. For two years they'd tracked her without a name, face or even a known gender and suddenly, thanks to an anonymous tip, here she was. She appeared to be of Asian descent with medium brown skin and dark brown, almost black, eyes shaped like a cats. A long scar on the left side of her long face decorated her wide cheekbones, and her hair was bleached blonde with two thick black streaks starting from the middle of her hairline.
 Again the silence stretched on and still the Tiger stared out of the windows. They were in a building more secure than a prison right now but still the feeling of no control scratched at Rigby's resolve. The retrieval team to take the Tiger still hadn't come and until they did, she couldn't do anything. She knew the Tiger was just playing the silence game with her, playing on her nerves so she'd crack, but still, this wasn't the attitude of someone who's bound and defeated.
 The image of seeing her best friend being shot down as she ran for her life from a bomb kept playing through her mind and then she couldn't help it, she had to break the silence. "There isn't going to be some miracle helicopter to blast through the windows and whisk you away you know." No reply. "What are you waiting for?" She tried again and still was met with silence. 
With a sigh Rigby stood and looked out of the windows. Out of all of them were other glass high-rise buildings, with a few still made out of bricks, and below the streets were lined with police cars. At the end of them she could just see the corner of Wellers Bank, only a few buildings behind that was the warehouse Martha had ran out of, and fallen before she could get out of the blast range. A tear welled up in Rigby's eye and she angrily wiped it away. She suddenly span around and grabbed the Tiger by the collar of her coat.
 "You see down there?" She spat as she dragged the Tiger over to the windows and slammed her face against them. She snarled and tried to pull back but Rigby just pushed against her neck harder. "Those are /my/ people." Rigby said as they looked down onto the cars and heads of the FBI. "We have this place emptied and surrounded for two blocks, even if you managed to get out you would be shot by a dozen bullets before you could even open the door. No one is coming for you." Rigby insisted and the Tiger just grinned at her.
Rigby blew out through flared nostrils and shoved her into the window one more time before turning away and whipping out her radio. "Paul where the hell is that retrieval team?" She snapped into it. "There's only two of us up here for Christs sake!" Only static came out and she moved up to the end of the windows in the hopes of getting a better signal.
 "Sorry Anna but we've had something of a situation, what with the "empty" warehouses blowing up." Came the sarcastic reply of FBI agent Paul Rosen. Anna sighed in relief but behind her the Tiger frowned at the radio.
 "They happened twenty minutes ago Paul, don't tell me you haven't got yourselves together by now. And so have I, this woman is driving me up the wall. Wasn't getting her in a padded cell the whole point of this?" She replied.
 "Yeah but she's with you." Paul reasoned.
 "Oh and you can tell Chris that I didn't need a damn radio to see Martha get her brain blown out, and then incinerated." She added venomously and glared down at the cars below. 
 "...I'll see what I can do." He replied after a long pause and without any traces of sarcasm.
 "Don't use the lifts- elevators, the cables are blown-" Anna added quickly but recoiled from the radio as it let out a burst of static and cut into silence. "Paul. Paul?" She called into it but it remained silent. The light remained on however so it couldn't be the batteries. "Looks like the signal is being-" She said and froze as the click of a gun came from behind her.
 "Blocked." The Tiger finished for her. "By /my/ people."
Anna frantically reached for her gun but sure enough it was gone, and being pointed at her. She slowly turned around to face it and the Tiger smiled.
 "You really are bad at tying knots you know." She said and motioned to the cut rope around her wrists. "/That's/ what I was waiting for, in case you hadn't realised." She said smugly and began circling around her like Anna had done to her. "And I doubt very much we'd fall without a leader, but we need his ideas so it's a good job he isn't going anywhere." She laughed and Anna frowned. Suddenly she moved within point blank range so the gun was only a foot from Anna's forehead. "Now if you don't mind I have a tightrope to catch." She said and pulled the trigger. Luckily Anna was ready for it and punched her arm away, making her shoot the ceiling above Anna's head with a spray of plaster. She shot again several times but in the dust the shots missed and hit the ceiling again, only making the dust thicker. Anna hit out at what she thought was the Tiger's head but the latter easily dodged it and in the sudden break in the dust she saw Anna stumbling from the momentum of her blow and knocked her back with a high kick to her head.
Anna's vision went white as the sharp heel connected with her temple and she fell to the floor with a loud thud. A splatter of blood fell on her cheek and she looked up to see the unfocused form of the Tiger standing over her. A large hole now gaped in the white ceiling behind her with the beams fully exposed and only just clinging on to the supports. 
 The Tiger smiled and wiped her hand across the bleeding cut on her jaw that Anna had caused before. "You will pay for this." She said and ran her finger over the cut that spread from her jaw to her lip. Anna just squinted in a daze and frantically searched for something near the windows with her hand.
 "Starting now." The Tiger smiled and jumped back as she shot the weakened beams with the last bullet. They began to crash down and she walked out of the room, leaving them to crush the fallen SIS agent.

 "Brennan!" Paul called to his boss as he wound his way through the police cars on the ground and up to the hotel.
 "Rosen." Brennan greeted him and quickly jogged over from the black truck Smart was using as a secondary computer set-up. "Find anything in the warehouse?"
 Paul shook his head. "Nothing. No secret files, hidden rooms, captives...even the cds in the back room were in alphabetical order." He said over the top of a police car and laughed at the absurdity of it.
 "Nothing they'd particularly want to blow up then." Brennan sighed and started walking back to Bach and Smart at the hotel entrance.
 "No, but I did catch Anna over the radio." Paul replied, walking around the side of the car and jogging up to him.
 "Oh?" Brennan said curiously.
 "She wants a retrieval team for the Tiger, said you're taking too long." He said. There was a long pause as they walked up and the corner of Brennan's mouth twitched.
 "And?" He asked.
 "And, sir?" Paul asked as they reached the truck and Brennan brought them to a halt before they got into the earshot of Bach.
 "Paul I've worked with you for six years. I can tell when you're holding something back and I think we both know Anna well enough to know that, on the rare occasions she does get agitated, she doesn't just calmly ask for us to hurry up. What else'd she say?"
 Paul sighed and stuck his hands in the pockets of his navy work pants. "She said to tell you that she didn't need a radio to see Curtis get shot." He said. Brennan groaned and put his hand over his face. "But more colourfully." Paul added.
 "How the hell did she find out about that?" Brennan asked just as Smart stuck his head around the corner of the truck.
 "The hotel has binoculars on every high level balcony," Smart said suddenly, making Brennan jump out of his skin. "It was some "see all of NY from your sofa" marketing scheme years back, she probably saw the whole thing outside of warehouse number one out one of them."
 "Jesus she could ruin the entire operation if she acts on this, I need a radio." Brennan said quickly and hopped up to the curb.
 "What's going on?" Demanded Bach as he marched over from talking to someone at the corner of the building.
 "Rigby knows about Curtis. Give me your radio, we can't risk her doing anything reckless." Brennan explained and held his hand out. 
 Bach frowned and put his hand over his belted radio. "She's not your agent, what makes you think you can talk her out of it?"
 Brennan sighed. "Just give it to me." He said bluntly and shook his proffered his hand. Bach wavered but gave in as he realised that Brennan would just get a radio from someone else anyway.
 "Well make it fast, we've got movement on one of the balconies. Probably just a sleeping resident we missed wondering what the hell's going on though." Said Bach. Brennan ignored him but the last the last part caught his attention and he paused.
 "Not possible sir, we did a full sweep of the building." Paul informed him.
 "Agent Rigby come in." Brennan said into the radio a few steps away. He repeated himself after a few moments of silence. "I swear if she's ignoring me..." He warned and sucked in his breath.
 "Uh oh." Smart muttered from his makeshift surveillance set-up in the back of the van.
 "What?" asked Brennan.
 "Well she isn't ignoring you," Smart replied. "She can't hear you. Our signal is being blocked, I've been getting looped old video for the past two minutes, I thought Rigby was circling around the Tiger a lot..."
 "Oh God." Bach groaned and Brennan looked up in despair at the sky.
 "So that means we've not seen..." Paul started but Smart cut him off.
 "Keep trying with Rigby, I might be able to break through." Said Smart. "Aha! Killed the feedback loop." He grinned as his screens filled with white noise. "Ok now I'll just..." He mumbled and started furiously attacking the keyboard when a young FBI agent sped around the corner of the hotel.
 "Sorry sir, the radios aren't working." He said hurriedly as they all spun around in shock.
 "Working on it." Smart called irritably over his shoulder and Brennan motioned quickly for the agent to continue.
 "The subject on the balcony has fired some kind of grapple missile into the opposite building, sir. There's a rope attached and she's climbing across it-"
 "She?" Brennan interjected.
 "We can tell from the photo Agent Rigby sent us it's the Tiger." The agent said. Their eyes widened and simultaneously Bach, Brennan and Paul ran around the corner of the hotel and into the street that was also filled with FBI and their vans.
 "What's in that building?" Brennan asked Paul quietly as they stared up at the building the 60ft-high rope had been fired into.
 "Well it's a bank-"
 "No I want to know exactly what's in it, who uses it, blueprints, everything. Smart you got anything?" Brennan asked and touched his earpiece.
 "No I'm kind of busy trying to get our eyes ad ears back." Smart replied. "Oh wait, yeah Wellers Bank, aims to bank the unbankable blah blah blah...established six years ago, got surprisingly widespread since then too...their biggest one is to your right... oh damn. Brennan you'll never guess who the owner is."
 "Perhaps a bloke named Wellers?" Bach interjected sarcastically, also being able to hear the conversation through his earpiece.
 "Aha ha ha." Smart laughed ingenuously and began muttering under his breath.
 The mutterings came through the earpieces clearly and Brennan asked "Who, Smart?" Loudly before he finished calling Bach something he'd regret.
 "Anton Kiev." Smart announced smugly.
 "That name again?" Brennan muttered.
 "Also it says here Wellers' is known for generous deposits of, well, not just money. Long-term safes specifically for scientific experiments, potions and brews et cetera...This is money that kills, they even have a weapons deposit." Smart added and they all went silent as Brennan thought it through. The name had come up several times during the two year-long investigation. They never got any matches on it and appeared to be fake but it was always there, lingering in the background. Especially when the scientific or business was involved.
 "That's it then." Said Brennan. "We've got the wrong fucking building." He realised and everyone burst into action around him as orders were relayed. 
 "She's gone into the bank, I want every exit of that building covered, you men with me!" Paul called to a group of agents nearest to him and ran over to the main entrance of the bank.
 "Jenkins, it looks like Rigby's down so now's your chance to get that bitch." Bach said into his earpiece and walked away from the jostling crowd.
 "Smart give up on the hotel, I want you to hack into Wellers." Brennan commanded through his earpiece.
 "Hang on I've just got through." Smart complained.  "Ok there's still a haze over the hotel but our radios should be clear." He said triumphantly. "Hacking Wellers now!" 
 "Good." Brennan replied and pulled out his radio. "Agent Rigby can you hear me?" He said into it. "Rigby come in. This is Brennan, Rigby come in."
 Smart's monitors suddenly displayed a moment of new footage before they switched to Wellers' cameras. "Oh no." He mumbled. It was the room Rigby and the Tiger were in, almost completely caved in.
 Then everyone flinched, ducked or covered their heads as the hotel floor the room was in exploded and the glass rained down on them. Before they had a chance to look up the bank floor the Tiger had entered exploded moments after.
 "Rigby for gods sake," Brennan snapped into his radio. "Anna," He called desperately. "Anna!"

 The beams of the hotel room ceiling were creaking and straining under the destruction of the Tiger's last bullet. The plaster rained down in blinding clouds and they suddenly gave in and collapsed just as a pale hand closed around the window pane it was reaching for.
 Anna pulled herself out of the way just in time. She curled up around the protruding pane and breathed a sigh of relief as the last beam fell down with a deafening crack, only just missing her ankle. She put her hand to her temple tentatively as she waited for the dust to settle and winced. She wiped the blood out of her eye and pulled herself up as she began to see clearly. As she clambered up the rubble to get out a beam gave way under her foot and she slipped down, falling right next to her radio. It still didn't work but she picked it up with a shrug; she could always use it to bash someones head in.
 Tracking down the Tiger wasn't hard, it was just a matter of following the trail of burst-open doors. Soon she came to a balcony on the other side of the hotel floor. A thick rope extended across to a smashed-in office window in Wellers Bank, and appeared to have been fired by a heavy black metal crossbow-like structure that just rose above the stone balcony wall.
 She frowned and stepped forward to it as she saw a flicker of movement in the opposite office room. It quickly disappeared but it was obvious who it was, and what she had to do. The thought of Jenkins or the many FBI agents actually capturing the Tiger just made her laugh. Exiting the hotel and entering the bank from below was out of the question, Smart would never get the hotel unlocked in time. No, the only option was pursuit.
 "After all, it's only crossing your arms and legs and clinging on for dear life while edging along a rope 60 feet above the ground." Anna thought to herself lightly as she climbed up and crouched on the stone wall. It occurred to her as she wrapped her limbs around the rope and leaned back from that wall that she'd done this before as a child, but with a safety belt on an adventure park. Her hands slipped slightly and she decided the safety belt definitely made a difference as she tightened her grip.
 She'd edged a third of the way across when a fierce surge of wind came from the hotel. She looked over her feet to see the back windows of the hotel blow out at the sides and only just wrapped her entire body around the rope by the time the explosion reached the balcony. The rope was still firmly attached to the crossbow but the explosion burst it through the wall and the momentum sent it, and Anna, flying towards a glass window ten floors below the one the other end of the rope was in. It was all Anna could do to hold on and she couldn't help slipping down towards the crossbow. If not for the air rushing into her mouth she would have screamed. The crossbow smashed into the window first but due to her slipped position she went through almost at the same time. Thankfully she'd managed to turn around so her back faced the window and curled up her legs so her bulletproof vest protected her body. However some of the glass hit her neck and whipped the sides of her face with sharp flashes of pain.
 As she burst through the rope slacked, it's attachment to the office room above destroyed and she briefly heard Brennan's voice calling her name through the radio on her hip. She landed on her side and rolled to a stop amongst the glass as she hit a desk. Lying there for a moment to get the air back in her lungs she turned her head to the left and laughed with relief as she saw just how close she'd been to fatally colliding with the crossbow. She got up and winced as she brushed various glass shards from her body and her cut-up pants. A few still remained but it didn't matter, adrenaline was rushing through her body and the Tiger was still in the building.
 A conversation between Paul and Brennan crackled through her radio and she threw it out of the window, not wanting the hindrance of direct orders. Hoping it hadn't fallen on an unfortunate agent's head she left the office and entered a hallway with an emergency stair exit and two lifts. Trying the lift doors she soon discovered the cables were cut so she threw open the doors to the stairs and looked over the handrails. They were typical winding rectangular stairs with a green double handrail. There were 16 floors to go and a fall would be fatal but just running down them would take too long. It was time to do something she'd perfected as a child growing up in a big house with many winding staircases. It was time to descend the stairs, Mary Poppins style. 

Five stacks of fruit crates had now been set up in front of the 9ft high solid stone wall at the base of Wellers Bank behind the fruit stall. Frank idly observed the floods of FBI agents that rushed into the street around the corner of the bank to get to the front entrance. He had since finished his mobile game and with no more explosions happening he was getting increasingly bored. He began tapping the theme tune to Friends on the side of the van and sighed as he heard the sounds of Jimmy almost dropping another crate.
 "Come on Gary, how long does it take to unload a couple of melons and bananas?" He complained and stuck his head around the back of the van.
 "If you'd helped instead of lazing around we'd be done by now." Gary huffed and pushed past Jimmy with a crate of bananas.
 "I've got an important job interview soon, I gotta make a good impression, and believe me smelling of fruit isn't one." Frank protested.
 "You, havin' a job interview?" Gary laughed and Frank marched back to the side of the van and lent against it with his arms firmly crossed. The flow of agents had completely stopped now, most were around the front of the bank and a few kept watch around the sides, none around the back.
 "Oh fine." Frank sighed as he looked down at his watch. He opened the driver's door to chuck his phone on the seat but paused as he saw two men striding down the street from the hotel. One as grey and balding with a designer suit and the other was the British agent with an Asian appearance who'd run past them before.
 "Woah hold on, there's a suit headed our way, must be the big boss." Frank grinned and jumped into the van with the door slightly ajar so he could hear the following conversation. Gary just harrumphed and continued unloading.
 Bach pulled Jenkins over to a closed wine store on the other side of the road and checked over his shoulder to make sure nobody had followed him.
 "You have to get this one Jenkins. Now Rigby's out of the scene you can finish her job, show the panel that *you* deserve this promotion, not her." He said and Jenkins nodded. "Rigby's a good agent but she has no discipline, no respect for authority. We don't need any wild guns here and I don't like how she's treating that American like her boss, not that she'd ever join the FBI." He scoffed and laughed. "You however could go far. All you need to do, is catch a woman. Simple. You ready?"
 Jenkins nodded and smiled. "You think she's alright up there?" He asked and glanced at the hotel.
 "Of course! She's a woman, she probably got caught up in one of their jacuzzis." Bach laughed and they headed back to the bank entrance.
 "They're still there." Jenkins shook his head as they passed the van and fruit stall.
 Bach looked back at the stall and sighed. "Idiots. If they get blown up it's their own fault. Speaking of which, the next person to set off another goddamn bomb gets my bullet embedded in their skull, I hope Brennan has fun with the press." He laughed and they disappeared around the corner.
 Frank blew out his cheeks. "So those SIS suits really are sexist? I thought it was just the movies." He grinned and jumped out of the van. "Sounds like someone's got a conspiracy against her."
 Bach and Jenkins were gone but still Jimmy's hands were shaking furiously after Bach's last statement, so much so that he dropped a crate of melons Gary had passed to him.
 "Oh, jesus!" Gary exclaimed and dived down to catch the melons before they rolled under the van. "What the hell are you doing kid?" He asked then frowned as he picked a melon up and examined a slit around it's middle.
 "Everything alright back there?" frank asked and walked around to the back of the van.
 "Frank what the hell are you trying to pull on me?" Gary asked furiously. "These have all been cut in ha- Oh." He broke off weakly as he pulled the two halves apart to reveal it had been hollowed out and filled with sticks of dynamite.
 "What have you done?" Frank asked a pale Jimmy with wide eyes.
 Jimmy sobbed and shook his head. "Th-they made me do it. They had guns, they hurt me-" He sobbed again.
 "Who, Jimmy?" Frank asked but Jimmy just shrugged and sniffed loudly. Gary was still in shock and pale as a sheet so Frank grabbed the two remaining crates in the van and threw their contents onto the ground. All were cut open like the melon. He stepped away from them and looked at the crates stacked up against the bank wall.
 "They filled them all, didn't they?" He asked. Jimmy nodded.

 Anna had given up on sliding down the rails on the 5th floor when the friction burns through the tears on her leggings got too much. She was running down the stairs of the 3rd floor when her phone rang.
 "Chris." She answered, recognising the number instantly.
 "So we can't even get a hold on your radio but your mobile works fine?" Brennan asked dubiously.
 Anna smiled. "Hey I get a good signal on this!" She protested innocently and passed the sign of the 2nd floor.
 "Sure you do." Brennan replied flatly. "Anna where the hell are you? The floor you were on blew-"
 "Second floor of Wellers Bank, coming to the first." Anna interrupted.
 "How? The floor the Tiger went in exploded too."
 "I found a way." She replied and Brennan sighed.
 "Look I know you're upset about Curtis but this is out of your hands now. We've got the place surrounded and Bach's sending in Jenkins-"
 "Jenkins?" Anna scoffed. "Don't make me laugh. He's gotten too used to you Americans and your guns, even if he got within fifteen feet of her he'd shoot and scare her off. Then when she disarms him he'd be helpless. I'm your best bet Chris and you know it."
 "Not a chance. Anna we thought you were dead, I'm not risking you again. How many injuries do you have anyway? Blood loss, shell-shock, concussion; you're not fit for this. Do you even have a gun?"
 "No, she took it and brought the ceiling down on me with it but it's empty, I counted the shots."
 "You're just adding to the reasons why you should get out of there Rigby-"
 "Wait I can see her!" Anna hissed and cut him off. She looked through the windows of the ground floor doors and pulled back as the Tiger looked over her shoulder before going down a fight of mahogany stairs. "She's going down to the vaults, any idea what's down there? I doubt she came all this way to make a withdrawal."
 "We're not sure but it isn't money, and whatever it is, it's dangerous."
 "If she planned ahead enough to blow up the floors behind her she'll have a getaway planned... Do you have a blueprint of the building?" She asked and jogged back up to the first floor to check the surroundings of the bank.
 "Not that you're going to be needing it but yeah we have one."
 "Any exits except the entrance?" Anna asked and entered a conference room to see a fruit stall and three men arguing over a spilt crate out of the far window.
 "Anna I'm serious, let us handle this one-" Brennan started but was cut off by a voice in the background.
 "There's three Rigby, but we've got them all covered." Smart called from behind Brennan.
 "Ok, how about sewer exits?" Anna asked as she noticed a manhole behind the fruit stall.
 "In a bank?" Smart asked dubiously. "No...Oh hold on, hmm they were sneaky with this one. There's one in a utility room in the vaults, these bankers must be paranoid."
 "She's already almost killed you once, save your revenge for another day Anna." Brennan reasoned.
 "And she won't do it again. I'm in here and you're out there - it's the perfect opportunity. But this time I'll be one step ahead." She smiled and stepped back into the stairway to grab a fire extinguisher, she wasn't keen on smashing herself through a window again.
 "No. The risks are too high-" Brennan said.
 "Cover the sewer exits for me." Anna said and, holding the phone to her ear with her shoulder, threw the fire extinguisher through the window with all the momentum she could gather and stepped back to the rear of the room for a running jump.
 "Anna get out of there. That's a direct orde-" Brennan commanded but was cut off by Anna turning her phone off. He would kill her for it later but this was their best chance to begin to put an end to this case.
 Anna reasoned that the Tiger would have foreseen them coming after her and wired the bank's sewer exit like she had with the hotel floor, so she planned to enter the sewers from the one directly outside. 
 "Coming back from the dead and avoiding her trap should catch her off guard." Anna said to herself unconvincingly. "Right?" She asked and with a shrug began running and leapt out of the window. Panicking for a moment if she'd misjudged the distance, she it the stall's canopy in a ball and rolled off, landing balanced on the balls of her feet in front of the shocked faces of Jimmy, Frank and Gary.
 She looked from Jimmy's wet, distraught face to Gary's pale shock and Frank's look of horror.
 "Sorry am I interrupting something?" She asked. "FBI, SIS, whichever you want." She explained and began to edge towards the manhole just as a look of determination crossed Frank's face. He suddenly wrapped his arms around her and threw them both into the back of the van just as the bombs exploded. The van's metal body protected them from the blast but the force of it sent it tumbling over and over to the other side of the street. Anna tried to grab something to brace herself against but a crate hit her head and she blacked out.
  The van settled on it's side half on the opposite pavement and not a sound came from inside. The dust around the bank wall cleared to reveal it dripping with fruit splatters and a hole gaped where the crates were. The Tiger stepped out with a smug smile and held a solid square metal box under her arm. She gracefully picked her way through the carnage of stone and wood and flipped her phone out.
 "They fell for it." She said into it. "They actually thought I'd go through the sewers." She laughed.
 "Fools. Was it clean?" An instinctive voice replied.
 "The two men you, ah, "hired", to set the bomb died in the blast." She grimaced disdainfully as she stepped over Jimmy's lifeless body and didn't even look at Gary's. "Saves you the trouble. Oh and the sister got in the way. I can't speak for the warehouses."
 "The agent? Pity. At least she won't get in the way now."
 "Exactly." The Tiger smiled. "Were the communications successful?"
 "They were. You don't need to worry about the warehouses, they won't find a thing." The voice replied and almost sounded pleased.
 "Oh and you can tell daddy I got his box. And send a car would you? I'm not walking all the way in these heels." She said and strode confidently into a side alley near the van. Frank pushed himself up in the van and squinted at her. A flicker of recognition sparked in his eyes and he wondered to himself just how many more old acquaintances he was going to bump into today as the FBI and police cars sped around the corner of the bank and took control of the scene. He looked at Anna's limp body and hazily laughed to himself at the circumstances of meeting her again and it occurred to him he should get help. The blue and red lights of the sirens filled his eyes and he fell out of the van unconscious just as they rushed over to it.

 The steady beep-beeps of a life support machine filled the ears of the woman attached to it and she opened her eyes to see an unfocused haze of white. Wincing at the sudden brightness she managed to focus on the cream rails at the end of her bed. She moved her gaze to the right where a blurred form of a tall man with brown hair stood with his back to her in front of a blank tv screen that was attached to the ceiling. He wore a tan leather coat with dark cargo pants and sleek black ankle boots.
 "Joseph?" Anna murmured and he turned around instantly.
 "You're awake." He said in relief and came over to her bed. He leant over and stroked her face for a moment and smiled sadly. Anna only just managed to focus on his green eyes before he pulled back and he hurried around the room throwing bandages, drugs or anything useful into a blue duffel bag. As her eyes focused she realised she was in a private hotel room.
 "What are you doing?" She asked.
 "Supplies. I need to get you out of here." Joseph replied and, seemingly satisfied with the amount of items he'd gathered, zipped up the bag and came over to her.
 "W-what?" Anna stammered, the drugs and concussion from the fruit crate weren't helping her think straight.
 "How badly are you hurt?" He asked.
 "Well I don't know, I'm full of morphine aren't I?" Anna rolled her eyes.
 "Come on Anna, you were the one who took a year in med school for kicks. If I yank these out are you going to spontaneously die on me?" He asked and indicated the drips in her arms.
 "Uh, well blood loss, multiple head blows and countless cuts but they'll have stitched me up so no, but you could incur a permanent- ow!" She cried as he pulled them out as soon as she said "no".  "Grudge against people who don't know the meaning of gentle." She scowled and rubbed her arm.
 "Sorry but we need to go." He said and threw the bag over his shoulder.
 "Aren't you going to tell me what's going on?" Anna asked and swung her legs over the side of the bed.
 Joseph shook his head. "Not here." He said and walked out of the door and into the hall. "This isn't going to work." He sighed as Anna slowly stumbled over to the door, not yet having the feeling back in her legs.
 "Do you trust me?" He asked.
 "Of course I do." Anna replied and looked straight up at the security camera outside of her door. "You're my brother."
 "Good." Joseph smiled slyly and she yelped as he sweapt her legs out from beneath her and carried her down the stairs at the end of the hall.
 "What was all that about announcing who I am to the security guards?" He asked as he kicked open a fire exit next to the stairs and entered the hospital's car park.
 "Well if you're going to insist on kidnapping me I had to let Brennan know he doesn't need to come after you with guns set to kill somehow. If he knows I trust you it should hold him back. For a while." She explained, only half joking.
 "Brennan?"
 "Head of the FBI department we're working with." Anna replied and smiled as they approached a dusky pale gold 4x4 Land Rover. "You kept my car?"
 "It was the only one I had at the house without a track on it." He replied and put her in the passenger seat before getting in himself.
 "Ok so how did we just get out of there without anyone noticing?" Anna asked as they pulled out of the car park.
 "I had a friend distract the security guards." He smiled to himself. "I was just lucky you were near the exit. There are clothes in the back by the way." He said and Anna scrambled into the back to change.
 The clothes were a light brown hoodie, worn blue jeans and white trainers with a silver cushioned tongue, all old clothes from when she was 17.
 "Jesus, what happened back there?" He asked as he caught a glimpse of the many stitches on her body in the rearview mirror.
 "Uh, two windows, two bombs, the Tiger with a gun, a ceiling and a fruit crate." She answered lightly and clambered back into the front seat.
 "I'm sorry, they shouldn't have got to you, but I thought we agreed on a desk job?" He asked without taking his eyes off the road.
 "Come on Joey that was five years ago when I first joined. I'm a big girl now." She said sarcastically. "And what are you talking about? You had nothing to do with it." He didn't reply and she sighed loudly.
 "You have no idea how dangerous this is Anna." He said finally and she leant her head against the window in exasperation.
 "She got away anyway, no ground made and we're back to square one with a blown up warehouse and 3 dead agents."
 "She?" Joseph echoed quickly.
 "Yeah the Tiger, asian genetics, bleached blonde hair, two black streaks..."
 "A scar going down the side of her face?" He finished.
 "How did you know that?" Anna asked and looked at him suspiciously.
 "You really have no idea about them do you?" He laughed despairingly.
 "Are you saying you know something about them?"
 "You can't go back there Anna. The Family aren't people you can just lock in a cell a the end of the day and expect everything to be A-ok."
 "I don't." She replied. "We've been working on this case for 2 years, the FBI and SIS combined, we're not just going to let it drop."
 "You've been SIS too long." He frowned in ridicule and and shook his head.
 "And you've been a mafia boss for too long." She retorted. Joseph smiled slightly but as he reached to turn the radio on she noticed his hand shook. He moved it back to the wheel quickly but it had given him away. He was scared.
 "Come one Joseph, my best friend is dead, I almost was twice and my brother has kidnapped me. I don't have the patience for this. What's going on?"
 "Martha?" He asked in surprise.
 "It was an accident. A bomb was set off in the warehouse she was searching and she was shot before she could get out of the blast range."
 "I'm sorry." He said and put his hand on her shoulder sympathetically as they pulled up to a set of red traffic lights. "Fine." He said, closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose with a sigh. "First of all the Tiger isn't female. The "Tiger" you met is his daughter, whoever told you that was setting you up, in fact I wouldn't be surprised if they told you themselves."
 "To set us up." Anna groaned and Joseph nodded. "So how do you know that?" She asked and Joseph looked at his hands and coughed. "Are you blushing?" She asked with wide eyes and then she realised. "Oh god Joey, you didn't-"
 "It was only for a brief period, before I knew who she was." Joseph insisted. "I was the one who gave her that scar." He explained as the lights turned green.
 "Ok, so my brother's ex tried to kill me." She said and covered her face with her hands. "What else?"
 "The Family are, literally, a family. There are, as far as I know, five main members at the heart of it - the Tiger, his brother and his three kids. Then you have their children, siblings, spouses, in-laws and so on. They take the family bond very seriously, almost religiously so. It's how they recruit, they arrange a marriage between someone they want to join them and one of their own, they have a child and they're tied to The Family until they break the bond, betray them..."
 "So they work like the Mafia, with the rankings going down in each level of the family?" Anna asked.
 "In a way. But they're ruthless, more single-minded than we are. The Mafia at heart are selfish. For all the terror and control all they care about is themselves. These people, they're set on something. I just don't know what." He said and frowned at the windshield.
 "What happens when they 'break the bond'?" Anna asked.
 "They kill you." He said simply.
 "Ah. Well they are like the Mafia in that sense then. And you know all of this, how?"
 "They came to us, the Mafia, a few years back. They wanted us to join them and I was one of the first to say no. After that some joined and some didn't, but they still got far too powerful." Joseph explained.
 "Wait, you know all the people connected to them, from the Mafia?"
 "Some of them." Joseph replied hesitantly.
 "So for all these years you've known I've been working on this case, all of us, trying to stop them, and all along you knew that this information would help us to do that, but instead I don't hear from you for two years and suddenly you hijack me out of hospital when I get hurt?" She asked bemusedly.
 "It wasn't like that Anna. I was trying..." He said desperately and cut himself off.
 "What?" She demanded.
 "Trying to save you." He admitted with a sigh. He reproached himself silently for saying too much and suddenly she groaned in pain. "What is it?" He asked quickly and looked over.
 "Morphine's wearing off." She winced. "Joseph stop. Stop the car." She said and grabbed his arm.
 "What?" He asked in alarm and pulled the car over on a deserted street corner.
 "What the hell is going on, really? This is all fascinating but it's you who defied them, not me. Nobody even knows I'm your sister anymore, to them I'm just another agent who got in the way and died. End of. So what's this all got to do with me?" She asked and he put his head in his hands. "Well?" She urged and he stared unfocused at the dashboard, his eyes filled with guilt as he tried to think of how to tell her.
 "It...had already been agreed that we -our family- would join them, before our father died. Not just as associates though, an official bond in marriage."
 "But our parents were already married-"
 Joseph shook his head. "The marriage wasn't for him, Anna." He said and looked at her sadly.
 "Are you saying that my, father, tried to sell me for a business opportunity?" She whispered appallingly and the colour drained from her face.
 "I couldn't allow it of course, after he died in the car crash and I inherited everything the agreement still stood. I inherited one of the biggest Mafia families in the world, with The Family they would have been an immense power. To break up something like that is asking for murder to them. That's why I sent you to England with Uncle Ewan, deleted all your records, if you didn't exist they couldn't target you so easily."
 "You told me it was to keep me from my inheritance. All this time I thought I was breaking free from all of it, he knew I hated it, and when he gave me his blessing to go to university he was selling me into it." She laughed harshly and ran her hands through her hair. "Why didn't you tell me?" She asked.
 "I know, and I'm sorry but I figured at least one of us had to be normal." He said and gave her a half-smile.
 "So you were trying to keep me from them because I was supposed to marry into them." She said and tried to make sense of it all.
 "They aren't the type of people to leave loose ends. They're still trying to kill me." He said and smirked. "Carla didn't recognise you did she?" He asked quickly.
 "The Tiger's daughter? No, I'm sure she would have mentioned it." She replied and Joseph sighed in relief.
 "There's no reason why she would anyway, you never met." He said and suddenly focused properly on the dashboard he'd been staring at aimlessly.
 "Damnit, I thought there was more in than this." He groaned as he tapped the fuel gauge. "We'll have to make a stop." He said and pulled the car away from the pavement.
 "You could still help us Joseph, we can bring these people down if we just knew who we were chasing." She said and he didn't respond but glanced at her quickly.
They pulled into a petrol station and he picked the pump furthest from the road.
 "Stay here." He said and raised his eyebrow at her as she rolled her eyes.
 "Think about what I said, Joey, someone has to stop them." Anna said as he went out of the car. He ignored her but she knew he'd heard her. He took five minutes to fill the car up and pay in the station but he was still too late. She smiled as the sirens and police cars flooded in behind her car and got out of the car. There were security cameras all over the station, she was surprised it had taken them this long.
 "Keep your hands in the air!" An FBI agent yelled with guns aimed behind her. She raised her hand in greeting to show she was ok and walked towards a familiar figure as two agents ran past her to apprehend Joseph.
 "Took you long enough." She grinned at Paul.
 "You're ok?" He asked and looked her over.
 "Perfectly." She replied and looked back at Joseph. He hadn't resisted and she wondered if he'd even planned this all along as they frogmarched him over to a van. "Don't treat him too roughly, he's got sensitive skin." She joked and Joseph rolled his eyes at her as he was slammed against a car roof.
 "You gave us one hell of a scare back there Anna, 's he really your brother?" Paul asked and Anna nodded. "The wonders never end with you." He grinned and shook his head in amazement. "We're gonna get you checked over, probably get you back in hospital overnight but Brennan wants to talk to you before Bach arrives. He's around the corner." He said and nodded to the street next to the petrol station. She nodded with a smile and headed over. "Good to see you again Rigby!" Paul called from behind her and laughed to himself, repeating "brother" in disbelief as he headed back to his car.
 ~The End.