The formerly masked figure stood with her hand outstretched towards Hayden in an apparent gesture of respect and trust. What struck him first was how young she looked. If he had to guess, the woman was somewhere in her early twenties yet she had the look in her hazel eyes and her expression of a far older and more mature woman. Her hair was a dark but mousy brown and pulled back into a messy bun, revealed at the same time as her face as her hood had dropped when she removed her mask.
Hayden stood and shook her hand, returning the gesture of trust, and she smiled slightly.
"Thank you once again for sharing that information with us Hayden, I could see it was a painful memory," she told him.
Her voice was refined but with a hint of rawness behind it, as if she had spent many years cultivating her voice in a specific way to try and hide her origins.
"My name is Sera. For future reference though you may only refer to me by that name within these walls. Outside of them, you'll use whichever is the agreed call sign for that day when referring to or talking to me. You'll get your own too. It's a basic but necessary security measure."
Hayden nodded, briefly wondering what his call sign might be among the fog of confusion he was still inhabiting.
"So what happens now?" Hayden asked.
"First things first I'll introduce you to our team. From there we'll discuss our plan for getting Lucy out."
"O-ok," Hayden replied, suddenly feeling a little short of breath.
"If you need a moment before we continue, please take it," Sera said, noticing Hayden's sudden change in demeanour, "you're going to be bombarded with information and unfortunately we don't have time to wait for everything to sink in."
"N-no I'm fine," he tried to reassure her.
"Follow me."
Hayden did as he was asked and followed Sera back out of the office into the area he'd been in before and was slightly surprised to see that all of the masked figures he'd seen working their desks were now gathered a little closer and had, just as Sera had done, removed their masks and hoods.
"Firstly I'll introduce Marvin," Sera told Hayden, indicating the man stood just beside the doorway and the one who had brought Hayden here.
Now unmasked Hayden could see he was a neat but cold looking man, the kind of person who seemed to be staring into your soul as you looked at them. He silently nodded in recognition towards Hayden who nodded back on autopilot.
"Marvin is ex-special forces and realistically the only one among us with real experience in covert operations. He's the one we send out to do most of our ground work."
'Such as kidnapping people?' Hayden thought but dared not say else he incurred Marvin's wrath.
"This is Nina, our Head of Acquisitions," Sera said, indicating a woman stood to the right of the assembled group around the same age as her but with much sharper features and a wicked glint in her eye.
"That's just a nice way of saying 'I'm in charge of stealing stuff we need'," Nina added with a grin.
"This is Joel and Luke," Sera said, quickly moving on and pointing to two men standing beside one another. "As you can likely tell they are brothers. Joe heads up our Intelligence Division and Luke is in charge of Transport."
"I drive, he does computer stuff, simple enough yeah?" Luke gruffly elaborated.
The two shared facial similarities but otherwise looked quite different from one another, Luke clearly being taller and a little wider than Joel, accentuated even more so by Joel's slightly slumped stance.
"Finally there's Yvette, our Head of Technology."
Hayden's view was motioned towards a small and bubbly looking girl who couldn't have been far out of her teens who was smiling ear to ear towards him.
"I designed the serum we used to knock you out. Oh, and it's antiserum of course. And the voice changers and the..."
"That's enough Yvette," Sera said, firmly but not harshly like this was something that happened a lot. Yvette stopped talking and stepped back.
"The rest of our team are out in the open world. To tell the truth, most of them don't know they're part of the team but we always see them that way."
"So it's basically the six of you in this place..." Hayden began to ask.
"Our operation is small, granted, but don't be fooled by our seeming lack of numbers here. Marvin has contacts in multiple different security firms and with suppliers of military hardware. Nina is the head of a large network of the homeless and abandoned of this city who she sees fed and clothed in exchange for information. Luke knows just about every cab driver in this city and is on good terms with most of the used car lots too. Joel got us the video footage and photos I showed you before and that's just a small indication of how good he is without considering the friends he has that have the technical knowhow to bring down a fighter jet if they felt compelled to. And as Yvette elaborated just now, she might be one of the most gifted scientific and engineering minds this city has to offer, the kind of gifted that means very few people ask questions if she requests access to specific tools and materials. So, there might 'just' be the six of us here, but we are way more than just the sum of our parts..."
Hayden was feeling a little like he'd just been told off in the same way Yvette had been. Sera seemed to be pretty good at that. But another question did come to mind.
"So what part do you play, Sera? What do you bring to the group?" he asked.
Nina grinned as if she had been waiting for someone to ask this question.
"Ok that's a fair question," Sera replied, maintaining her composure. "I'm the leader of the group, it was my original vision that brought us all together. All major decisions go through me, such as the decision to reach out to you for instance."
Hayden felt like there was more to ask, but got the feeling he might get shut down pretty quickly if he tried so remained silent.
"Anyway, as I explained earlier we are short of time so for now we will move onto our plan to get Lucy out."
* * * * *
Hayden Blake stood outside the club, only a few people ahead of him in the queue now, and adjusted his hat and his mask. The whole line of people were similarly dressed, nothing given away about their true identities lest there be some sort of scandal or outrage at their involvement in such a controversial practice. The last time he'd stood in this line, he'd thought about how he was no one special and about why he'd need to hide his identity. This time however, him being 'no one special' was exactly the reason he was there.
It had been less than a week since he'd been whisked away in a taxi on a rainy night in the city and taken to the headquarters of The Conductors. It was their plan he was now following and their plan they assured him would get Lucy out safe.
