Reborn Heart of Steel

The weight of words spoken by The Raven settled upon Chase and me and so, parked on a dim-lit, abandoned street, we both sat still. The evil words of the anonymous threat lingered on my mobile, like poison, and my fingers shook as I gripped the phone. We were offered no choice Agent Harris or Alessandro. Both these human beings, which had so much to live for, were now reduced to their lives being in the hands of a person with the mind of a psychopath.

“We can’t… we can’t possibly choose,” as tears started freely flowing down my cheeks. Chase was gripping the wheel tightly, his hands whitening around it and his face was tense,(frames).

“We won’t,” he replied more defensively, despite the tremor I heard in his voice. “It’s for that reason that we’re going to be able to find a way of saving them both. ”

But how? That question was always a huge dilemma that seemed impossible to overcome. As we knew we were up against The Raven, we had only less than an hour to devise a plot, to counter-play in his own perverse place. The implication of it all hit me hard this was our doing. If only we had heeded the advice of Agents Harris’ psychologist; if only we had avoided the theater…

At last, even Chase realized that enough was enough and interrupted my guilt-ridden spiraling: “We need to think. ” “The Raven wants us to panic so that we make a wrong decision. We cannot let him win”.

I could not afford to lose concentration, so I inhaled deeply, then counted to ten mentally. “You’re right dear. So let me ask you what we know so far?”

We then spent the next few minutes jotting down everything that we had gathered about the operations of The Raven. The warehouse district, the enigmatic fires, the few fragments of dialogue that we had caught. I have to be honest, it wasn’t much, but people thought it would be and so it was the beginning.

“We can’t go back there ourselves,” I said, my mind going to the shooting that had occurred when we were forced to run out. “So you don’t have to say the statement ‘a candidate should have good interpersonal relationships . . ‘ But maybe there’s an alternative way of collecting the data . ”

Chase merely nodded his head. He looked determined now. “Let’s do this intelligently. We keep out of The Raven’s sight and do not engage him or anyone else to endanger them. ”

With that in our minds, we proceeded to go about our work. We begin by going to some of our friends from school and some of them are more knowledgeable at computers than others. We did not disclose the seriousness of any danger, as much as we said that there were some sketches in the warehouse area and that we required assistance in tracking them. A few of them were able to get traffic camera feed and surveillance videos from the vicinity of stores or establishments.

As they did that, Chase and I searched through public records and news articles. In order to avoid jumping to conclusions, we decided to arrange all the information on the timeline of The Raven’s actions and then try to find a link we might have overlooked earlier. At least every few minutes, I was almost nervously looking at the clock because I was fully aware of that deadline that we had.

And it started out with information that was scarce at first, but hinted at a larger picture. Crunch’s description of the Raven’s operation was revealing because it was scalable and sophisticated and that it had extended its reach to various legitimate ventures. We found some shell companies and offshore bank accounts along with a number of disparate warehouses and storages across the city appeared to be interlinked.

Now one company that emerged in our search frequently was Blackwood Logistics. To all intents and purposes, it seemed just like any other small-scale shipping firm. But going further, we discovered discrepancies in their accounting and consignment papers.Belonging to NôvelDrama.Org.

“This has to be a front for The Raven,” Chase said, keeping his elation in check because of the seriousness of our circumstances. What i saw about the shipments? They have no logic to exist in this kind of company on this small scale.

I simply nodded as different thoughts went through my head. “And the addresses… some of those match locations that we have been looking into. ”

I knew we were onto something big; that the family was about to take a new and terrific turn which would some day bring us fame and fortune. But the point at issue was still to be settled, and it could not be long ere the question was to be decided. I had fifteen minutes fifty-five seconds left to do my work before having to submit my work to The Raven.

“We have to pass this info’ to someone who is capable of using the details,” I repeated with some anger and hopelessness back in my voice.

Chase took some time and took his phone out of his pocket. That’s when I had a plan that was dangerous but perhaps the only thing we can do right now.

He picked another number and I waited for the phone to ring. Much to my amazement, a rough, but somehow, rather familiar voice replied.

“This had better be good kid. I’m in the middle of something. ”

Yeah, it was Reeves the cynical detective who had always been staring blankly at our endeavors from day one. I took it out on Chase, and so he got round to informing the boss of the incident in a nutshell, though he spared us on this account.

“Sorry, I can’t tell you the entire story at this time,” answered Chase, even though he knew what such a situation looks like. “But we have concrete proofs that show the places where The Raven operates from, phantom companies, the works, and…” he took a deep breath. “And we have reason to believe some agent is in immediate danger that is, Agent Harris. ”

One could actually hear the sweat dripping off the phone from the other end of the line, as they say; the silence being heightened and drawn out for a long time. Again, I had the feeling that the detective was trying hard to decide whether to believe Klaas and me, two teenagers who had not only been a nuisance to his investigation, but even one step worse.

Finally, he spoke. “I want all the documents that have been written on and discussed, immediately, and I will assemble a staff. “