The phone rang at seven the next morning.

Lazily, the phone’s owner walked into the living room from the kitchen where he had just finished his breakfast. His feet slapped loudly as they hit the tile floor. If it had not been his day off, he would have been dressed hours ago instead of stumbling around half-asleep in his boxer shorts.

The phone rang a second time with its little electronic ring, almost as if it were begging for someone to answer the call.

The man made a quick grab for the phone in hopes of getting to the call before the answering machine did.

"Marcus." The man yawned into the receiver.

"Adam," A female voice with a thick British accent said over the line. "You’ve got to get down here. We just picked up some surveillance footage that you’re just going to love."

"What are you talking about?" Marcus asked while scratching his jet black goatee. "What footage?"

"It looks like someone is taking on the Committee."

"What?! It’s not one of our people, is it?" If it had not been a secure line that he was talking on, Marcus would have been very careful with his words. The WMC liked to do random wiretaps to make sure everyone was following the status quo here in New York.

"There’s no way these guys are even close to our people." The woman on the other end replied.

"Any leads yet on who they are? Does it look like the work of another group like ours?"

"We’re not sure. By the way they worked last night, I’d say that they’re two vigilantes who decided they couldn’t deal with the system anymore and just went berserk."

"So what exactly happened, Karen?" Marcus continued to question his caller.

"Dallentine wants you down here, and frankly, I agree with him. It would probably be better if you saw for yourself."

"I’ll be down as soon as I can." Marcus hung up the phone and ran to his bedroom.

Once in the room, he threw on some clothes from the dresser before going to a nightstand in the corner by his unmade bed. Sitting on the stand sat his gun in its holster. It was a semi-automatic model with several clips of bullets lying beside it.

With the same speed that he had dressed, Marcus threw on the holster and held the clips in hand until he put on his coat. Then he deposited the clips into the coat’s inner pocket.

He left his apartment at a brisk pace and headed for the elevator.

As the polished, metal doors of the elevator slid shut after Marcus was in, the dark-haired man drummed the button for the garage repeatedly.

Bitterly, he swore at how long it was taking to make the ten-story journey down. If Karen had been ordered to call Marcus in on his day off, then it must have been urgent.

Maybe I should’ve taken the stairs. Sure as hell would have been faster.

The letter "G" finally lit up in orange, and the doors slid open.

Marcus walked through the poorly lit parking lot until he reached his late model sedan. It was a Ford Taurus that had only seen a year since coming off the assembly line. The newer makes were designed with sharper angles in their shapes, so the cars looked more like they would cut into the wind rather than for conventional aerodynamic purposes.

Once he was settled into the car, he keyed the ignition and drove out of the underground parking lot beneath his apartment complex. Marcus was on the street for no more than two minutes before he hit a congested field of traffic.

"Damn." He whispered as he pulled to a stop behind a taxi-cab.

The cab and all the cars ahead of it that Marcus could see were showing no sign of moving an inch.

In irritation, he drummed his fingers, cracked his knuckles, and vainly checked the radio station for anything worth listening to before he finally put the car in park.

Trying to make the best of a bad situation, Marcus decided to use this downtime to concentrate on what Karen had said on the phone. As he tried to think over the engine and horns, he ran his fingers over his neatly trimmed, black hair.

Somebody trying to go toe to toe with the WMC had to be very brave, cunning and/or stupid. And as far as Marcus knew, the Society was the only organization that possessed any of those characteristics. And even they knew better than to go directly against the Committee.

Karen was probably right when she said that these new players were most likely to be a bunch of people who had just gotten fed up with the way things were and decided to do something about it.

But if these guys really were on the level, then that created a whole new set of questions. Marcus left the topic of speculation and started to look at the facts.

First off, the WMC was deadly serious about keeping things nice and orderly, especially here in New York. With that in mind, the new boys must have had a pretty desperate cause to pull whatever it was that Karen had mentioned.

That alone, made Marcus return to assessing what this might all mean. Could it be possible that they knew of the Committee’s high level projects? The ones so secret that even the Society knew little more than of their existence? It was definitely a possibility that required some serious consideration.

Marcus found his concentration broken when the cab in front of him began to roll forward. For the next ten minutes, the traffic moved at a stop-and-go pace. After that, the cars began to move more fluidly along the streets.

It took another half-hour of driving through Brooklyn before Marcus finally pulled over.

He reached to open the door, but then though better of it as he watched the speeding string of cars coming uncomfortably close. Seeing no sense in risking the loss of his door by having it torn off by a passing motorist, he scooted into the passenger seat and got out on that side.

With the remote switch in his pocket, he set the power locks and primed the car’s alarm.

Satisfied that his car wasn’t likely to be driven off anywhere in the near future, Marcus began walking.

The man did his best to look inconspicuous. It was one of the many talents he had picked up in life.

It would have been a simple matter to just drive straight to his destination. But he knew better than that. For fifteen blocks, he walked with no set course as was his practice when heading to meet at the Society’s headquarters. Once he actually began to walk toward the headquarters, he still approached his destination indirectly. He took back alleys and less used streets. A few times, he even had his path go in a circle as was also his procedure.

The Society enjoyed its secrecy almost as much as the WMC enjoyed its security, and they meant to keep enjoying it for some time to come. So all its members were taught the fine art of approaching a place with such obscurity that it didn’t even appear as if they were headed there to begin with.

Marcus’s journey came to an end at an old office building with an appearance so ramshackle that it looked as if it might have been condemned along with many of the other nearby structures clustered into that region.

But first impressions were usually deceiving. While the brick exterior of the office building was crumbling from age and the elements, the building still stood straight and tall; unlike the others which each showed a certain degree of sagging or even leaning.

Marcus walked to one of the building’s sturdy side doors. Carefully, he slid out a loose brick next to the door’s frame. Beneath the brick was a plastic panel lit up with a green light.

Marcus looked around to see if anyone was watching. Satisfied that the only people around were a few squatters hunched by the abandoned buildings nearby, he wedged his hand into the space where the brick was to press his thumb against the green panel.

The scanner identified his thumbprint, letting whoever was monitoring local security know that a Society agent was standing outside.

The man named Marcus pulled his hand from the space and carefully replaced the brick where it originally rested. From there, he stepped back and faced the door to wait.

Shortly there after, a slit in the door opened and a pair of squinty, brown eyes gazed out at Marcus.

"What do ya’ want?" The voice belonging to those eyes demanded angrily.

"Jeff sent me to pick up that crack." Marcus replied.

The eyes vanished as the slit closed. A numerous series of clicks were then heard as all the door’s locks were unlatched. Once the door swung inward, Marcus stepped inside.

The man who let Marcus in was a rather short fellow who probably had to get up on the tips of his toes to be able to see through the door’s slit, judging by his height. The man slammed the heavy door closed and went about re-locking it.

"You really should be more polite with how you talk to people at the door, Crane." Marcus slapped the short man’s shoulder good-naturedly.

"The tough guy act keeps a lot of the hoodlums away." Crane smiled. "So don’t knock it."

"Of course not. Wouldn’t want to piss off a bruiser like yourself."
"Watch your mouth, smart guy. Or you’ll see what I can do when I’m pissed off."

"Gotcha." Marcus said. "So where’s Prinn right now? She’s the one who called me in."

Crane jerked his thumb down the hall.

"She’s in the back with Dallentine."

"Thanks, pal."

The hallway wasn’t all that long. So Marcus didn’t have to walk far before it ended with an antechamber which showed how much of the building interior contrasted with the exterior.

The inner walls had been well maintained and reinforced to support the decrepit outside while still leaving the building looking rundown enough to fool people passing by on the street.

As for the rest of the building, it had been a glorious structure in its heyday. The Society had always held a great respect for the past and many of its members had devoted a considerable time and effort to have the place restored as best as they could.

The overall style of the antechamber took a little bit out of everything form the Renaissance Period up to the end of the twentieth century. Scattered about on the walls in no specific pattern were tapestries, drawings, paintings, even old movie posters. An elegant chandelier hung in the center of the ceiling, which set off a touch of old-fashioned dignity. The chandelier’s grace had been somewhat offset, however. Some of the jokers around the place had decided to do some creative decorating of their own while the restoration had taken place. Not far from the chandelier was an old disco call fixed to the ceiling. No one had really objected to the ball’s placement, so it had stayed ever since. Marcus, on the other hand, had come to hate the sight of the damn thing and often fantasized of blowing it out of the air with a shotgun.

The spacious floor of the antechamber gave a place for a mismatched collection of desks and tables where fifty or so people went over various papers or monitor displays. The computers rigged to the monitors were top of the line units. Not the archaic pieces of shit sold on the open market. The Society always did have deep pockets.

The whole place was a far cry from what Marcus had grown accustomed to

back in his mercenary years. The experiences from those days were what had truly shaped him. Made him the man he was today. Not that that was the kind of man everybody liked.

That realization came to him as he approached the office. He and Dallentine had never really gotten along since an incident where Marcus told one of the Society’s head lieutenants to kiss his ass.

"Bound to deal with this sooner or later." He whispered once he was halfway across the floor.

A few people greeted Marcus as he went by. Marcus returned each greeting with a smile and a wave. He was saving his speaking voice just in case he was about to have another shouting match with Dallentine as soon as he entered the office in the back.

At the office door, Marcus took hold of the doorknob and was about to turn it when he stopped short of any further motion. He just then realized that he had been holding his breath in wait to enter the office with one of his usual derogatory remarks on Dallentine’s procedures.

"Don’t go in pissed." He reminded himself. "No point in getting Karen mad at me too. Don’t go in pissed. Just go in."

With his temperament resolved, Marcus opened the door and entered.

The inside of the office was much like the lobby. There was no specific style, but a combination of things picked out from a wide variety of themes. A fair number of stands and shelves lined the walls, which supported all kinds of small statuettes. Collecting such tiny sculptures was one of Dallentine’s hobbies.

Like any good office, this one was furnished with a sturdy desk and several comfortable chairs. A television was perched on the desk while two people watched the screen intently.

One was an attractive woman of average height with raven black hair and equally black eyes. The other was a tall, husky man of African descent who looked to be somewhere just over forty years old. A short beard stretched across his wide face. Marcus always liked to joke that Dallentine grew the beard to make up for all the hair he’d lost higher up on his head.

"I was told there are some new players in the game." Marcus announced as he closed the door behind him.

"There sure are." Dallentine said.

"What have we got, exactly?"
"Two men who took on five and raised bloody hell." The woman named Karen Prinn said with the accent that made it apparent she was from overseas.

"How’d we get the info?" Marcus asked.

"It came from one of our random sweeps of the Enforcer network records. A security camera at some store down in the Bronx picked it up when the place was being hit on a gang assignment. We’ve been watching this disc for some time trying to get an idea on who these boys might be. We called you in to find out what your take on it is."
"Let’s see what you’ve got then." Marcus said.

Karen went over to the television and hit the replay button on the disc unit built in just above the screen.

The screen showed a paused image from the camera’s view looking out through a barred window. The image then began to play the footage from the night before.

The whole picture was hard for Marcus to make out at first with the bars on the window, but he was soon able to distinguish five street youths approaching. Three of them lined up in front of the window and the two others stood in the background.

Marcus watched closely as the recorded events played themselves out. A brick was tossed into the window and the two with crowbars started to do their job on the store.

The recording was equipped with full audio, so the viewers could hear what was going on as well as see.

Dallentine spoke up suddenly as he pointed to the screen.

"Try to look past the guy at the bars." He instructed. "It might be a little hard to see with him blocking a good part of the view, but look just over his shoulder."

Marcus focused on the background where Dallentine had noted. He kept his gaze on the two men still standing behind the others.

Then out of the shadows came two figures dressed completely in black. The one sneaking up along the left side of the screen looked big enough to possibly take all five of the gangers on, while the other looked nondescript and almost scrawny next to his hulking companion.

At first, he wasn’t quite sure how the men in black were going to deal with the gang members. Two against five made for an uneven fight to begin with. Even if the two were going to make use of the weapons they had on their backs.

Then the two dark figures went to work, and Marcus couldn’t help but be impressed at what he saw. By the time they finished tying up the only conscious ganger, Marcus found himself looking to Karen and Dallentine.

"What do you think so far?" Dallentine asked as he hit the pause button on the disc unit.

"They knew what they were doing." Marcus answered. "But I’d need to see more footage of them in action to tell if they’re really pros."
"But give us a rough estimate of them from what you have seen." Dallentine insisted.

"Well, I’ve seen that choke the thinner guy used before. It’s a good para-military tactic, and he didn’t just pick it up either. Somewhere along the line, he did some serious training with the old Armed Forces or he had a damn good martial arts master teach him.

"The other one did pretty good too." The mercenary continued. "Though with that much mass behind him, I’d say he could take out a squad of Enforcers in a fist-fight.

"It’s the black jumpsuits and the act with the cord that makes me think they’re a few bricks short of a load. But then again, you could just write that off to a twisted sense of humor. They came off with the right image to scare the hell out of that boy they strung up. A little crude, but they got the information they were looking for.

"I doubt they have the kind of connections we do, since they were asking about how the Committee was doing business with the gangs. It’s old info for us at any rate."

"A good deduction." Dallentine nodded. "Karen, if you would fast forward to the next spot."

Karen sped the footage along past the release of the bound gang member. She set the unit back to normal speed once the two masked men returned to the scene.

"They’re back just like they said." Marcus noted. "Still the same two guys, though. You’d think they would have brought friends."

"If there are more of them." Dallentine said.

"Do you think they’re part of a resistance group like us?" Marcus questioned.

"If they are, they’re new to everybody." Dallentine commented. "I made some calls after the footage came in. Our people up in Quebec haven’t a clue on who they are. I even called overseas to a few of the chapters in Europe. I couldn’t come up with anything there."

"At first glance, I would’ve said they’re just local vigilantes." Marcus shrugged his shoulders. "New York’s full of them. But they obviously knew about the gangs being run by the Committee, so I guess we can’t write them off as a couple more of the city’s basket cases.

"What about fingerprints on the shelves or even the extension cords? Maybe there are record on who they might be."

"We already checked that lead." Karen said. "No criminal records and nothing in the old federal files."

"Anonymous folks, huh?" Marcus checked back to the screen. He felt a smile tug at his lips as one of the dark figures waved to the camera. Whoever they were, Marcus liked their style. "So what about the place where this all happened?"

"Intel says the Committee is declaring the place to be a crime scene. They’ve cut through the red tape and forced the local police off the case and made it an Enforcer matter."

"I’ll bet the cops just loved having another one pulled out from under them by the government kids."

So far, so good. Marcus thought. Another five minutes, and he and Dallentine would break their last record of staying civil while in the same room.

"If they’re against the Committee," Said Karen. "Then I’d say they’re on our side. For all the good it would do."

"I don’t want to ignore these people if they can be a possible asset." Dallentine debated. "They might not be as organized as we are, but if the two we’ve seen are part of an underground group like us, then this is a chance we just can’t pass up."

"You want to bring them into the fold then?" Asked Marcus.

"Not just yet. I want more information on them first."

"And how do you plan to get that information?"
"That’s another reason I had Prinn call you down here. I want you to keep an eye out for them where ever they turn up next."

"What?" Marcus shot back as if he’d just been insulted. "You want me to sit on my ass waiting? You know I’ve got talents better suited for other things than stakeouts."

"Well, we don’t need those talents at the moment." Dallentine frowned at the mercenary. "What we need is for you to sit out with your camera and take a few pictures. If they’re following the gangs little work schedule, then you just need to perch yourself out on the next site. You’ve got three whole days to get yourself together for that."

"But…!" Marcus began to argue.

"That is your assignment for now." Dallentine stated. "If you want to make an issue of it, then you should really consider your position with this group."

Marcus thought of going into his usual spat of having it out with the other man, but reminded himself that Karen was still there.

Gotta remember my promise.

"All right." The mercenary finally agreed. "But these guys had better be worth my time. Because some times I wonder if what you’re paying me is worth my effort."

It was a cheap insult, Marcus had to admit that. But Dallentine always pushed the wrong buttons.

Karen stood fuming at Marcus for the verbal jab. He knew that he was going to be in for another lecture on his behavior before the morning was through.

"Just go do your job." Dallentine ordered. "You’re dismissed."

There were no more words from Marcus at that point. He left the office while exerting just enough control not to slam the door behind him.

He kept walking through the main room with its bizarre decorating.

This practice of getting pissed with Dallentine had become so common that Marcus thought that he should be used to it by now. But every time they met, somehow they managed to get under each others’ skin.

"Adam!" Called a voice from the direction Marcus was walking away from.

Marcus turned to see Karen storming right up to him.

"Look," Marcus held his hands up defensively. "I know I broke my promise. I’m sorry."

"He’s not that hard to get along with." Karen said in the tone just between raising one’s voice and yelling. "You could have just said, ‘Fine, I’ll get on the job.’ Then, you could have just walked out of the room!"

"Oh, come on! You know he’s having me do this job just to piss me off. I don’t like to play waiting games."

"It’s not that!" Karen came back. "You were actually waiting for an excuse to get riled, and you took the first one that presented itself."

"It wasn’t that." Marcus began to notice that a number of the Society agents working at their desks were now starting to take note of the discussion in their midst. The staring was certainly discomforting since many of the agents knew of the friction between the mercenary and the man they called their leader.

"The hell it wasn’t! I’ve been seeing things simmer between you two. And sooner or later, one of you is going to just break down and start throwing punches."

"You’ve gotta admit he’s got an ego problem." Marcus argued. "Running the Society for so long has got him on a power trip."

"John gets arrogant at times," Karen said. The fire was starting to douse in her eyes. "But he’s still running this operation, and he’s running it well. So you don’t have cause strong enough to start an argument."

"Fine." Marcus turned from the raven-haired woman and resumed leaving.

"And where are you going now?"
"Home." The mercenary said over his shoulder. "I’ve got to go dig out my camera."

Marcus made his way to the door through which he had entered the old building. The rage form the meeting with Dallentine had left him after talking with Karen. Now he just felt drained from the whole mess. He was more pissed with himself then he was with how Dallentine had reamed him.

Fuck. Just another day at the office.

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