The X-Project

David, Marie-Ange, Morgan, and Emma arrive in Romania to try and find Natasha, while avoiding whoever's been sent after her.



It was an unassuming sort of place, a series of cardboard and metal boxes littered the room, and stacked up against the sides, giving voice to its current lifestyle choice, that of a 'storage space' for the Tobacconist that worked below. Only one main entrance could be seen, a narrow and somewhat claustrophobic staircase that headed up from the back room of the shop below. Several exits could be seen however once you entered the room, albeit the windows were now covered with dust from long neglect.

The walls may once have been white, but were now more a shade of dull grey, a slightly orangish stain spreading from the little metal hook that was the only sign of a Murphy bed concealed behind a wall in the far corner. There was a fine layer of dust on everything within the room, no one had been here for quite some time.

North looked down at the handheld scanner, cleverly concealed inside the shell of a rather unflashy Blackberry. Once it blinked green to announce that there were no bugs or listening devices in the room, he nodded over his shoulder and walked inside.

"I'm actually somewhat surprised that the shell account paying for this safehouse hasn't run dry yet," he remarked, making his way past a pile of boxes to pull at the hook and lower the bed down from the wall. "God bless the shitty Eastern European exchange rate, I suppose."

Making his way over to an old-fashioned stereo cabinet set into the wall, he depressed a series of buttons, smiling at the clicks and hums of old 1980s-era speakers coming to life and the static as the receiver searched for a radio station before blaring chirpy Romanian pop music.

//Si te rog, iubirea mea primeste fericirea... allo, allo...//

Grimacing, David spun the dial to the left, watching the station indicator as it crept along the numbered scale, then back to the right, then left again like a combination lock. Another hum and click came from the speaker, and the annoyingly cheerful boy-band music faded to a barely audible level as the front of the speaker swung open to reveal a cabinet of automatic weapons, ammunition, and lightweight body armor.

"And God bless Colonel Stryker's everpresent paranoia about always being prepared. Come on, get yourself some rest before we get moving."

"Charming little place we've got here." Morgan was in the borrowed body of a forty-year-old Romanian woman she'd mimicked in the airport. She'd been boarding a flight to the UK and Morgan had brushed a hand across the woman's, slipping into the crowd as her form shifted. She needed to get new clothes, nothing fancy just stuff from a second hand shop. The woman was only five-foot-six, though she had the body of a runner. Still, Morgan's clothes were too narrow in the waist and too long in the arms and legs. Her shoes were also too big, which was more than a little annoying.

She was poking about the place, familiarizing herself with nooks, crannies, places to hide and stash things and, most importantly, all the exists. Morgan had been good about mostly shutting up and following along behind David, trailing along as if he held her leash. It was his safehouse, after all, no reason to try to take up the lead from him. Former safehouse, she corrected herself.

Flopping down onto a corner of the murphy bed, the borrowed nose wrinkled. "Ow. Do you know any Romanian names?" Her accent was slowly improving. "Been years since I've been here and I've always been men. I couldn't pull off being a Radu like this." Her eyes turned to the other two woman who looked much less at home in the dirty, dusty storage room. "Either of you have any ideas?"

"Yes. My idea is that I am going to find a hotel. Somewhere with running water, preferably hot, and no vermin or insects." Marie-Ange shook back the hood of the sweatshirt she'd thrown on over her top and looked around the safehouse with disdain. "I am too red-haired to not stand out like a sore thumb, and standing out as much as I do in a place like this would only look even stranger." And she was not dying her hair. Besides, that wouldn't help, she still wouldn't look like a native.

She wrinkled her nose at the dust in the room and held back a sneeze -barely. "I have a ... contact of sorts in the police department." Of sorts was a stretch. Mark knew the DJ at the Queen's Club, and through that DJ, got the name of the bouncers, two of whom were also on the police force. "Natasha Romanova is not stupid, I do not think she would have gotten herself arrested, but if she is injured, there may have been a report."

Emma didn't bother to conceal her disdain at her surroundings. "Marta, Nadia, Ecaterina, Alina," she replied to Morgan's question. "There is a rather pleasant Russian weapons oligarch with a dacha near here that he uses when he takes time off from oppressing the peasants in his own land. If I take the opportunity to exchange pleasantries with him and his quite exquisitely limber wife, I can find out if the glove's been offered on the market and who might be offering it. Dmitri is know for his acquisitive streak and deep pockets, so he's likely to know something if it has."

"I've got a vague line on the people after her in a lethal way. I get the feeling there's more than one and I don't mean just more than one person but more than one separately hired persons. Covering bases pretty thoroughly. I'm not sure if there is any cooperation between them, but I'd doubt it." The borrowed face frowned in thought. She was sure she knew one of the hired hands by reputation if not from a job once but she had to track down a few folk to be sure. "I can probably find out who, exactly, has taken the job to take her out. We may not be able to track them down within the city, but we'll end up with a better idea of who we need to thwart and some of their reputations might give us some clues how they work. Figure between North and I some of their names might ring some vivid bells as to their names and general working methods?" She gave him an inquisitive look as if for confirmation of her assumption. "Getting inside their heads might help us tail them in case any of them are on track to finding her."

"Your experience is a lot more recent than mine, but we can kick some rocks and see what crawls out from under them?" David replied, sorting weapons on the small fold-out Murphy bed. Folding both the armored vests and laying them aside, he picked up a compact submachine gun and a small pistol, turning and offering the latter handle-first to Morgan. "Here, take this."

Any and all response she had for him died in Morgan's throat as she stared at the pistol being offered to her. Deep, brown eyes looked at it with something akin to offended disgust before they flicked up to David's face, then back down to the pistol and back up to David. "Excuse me?" Her arms folded indignantly. "Why do I have to get the little girl gun?"

"What?" North paused, looking from the pistol to Morgan and back again. "It's a... it's... what are you, twelve? Are we arguing about this?" At the continued glare from the shapeshifter, he sighed and tucked the pistol into a holster and hooked it to the back of his belt and handed her the automatic weapon instead. "Are we happy? Yes? All right then."

"If we've finished deciding who needs weaponry to compensate for their shortcomings," said Emma in a bored tone, "some of us have people to do." She addressed her next statement to North, "I'll be available if you need me to read anyone."

Marie-Ange had watched the exchange with no small amount of amusement, not bothering to hide her expression, or that she had her phone out and was texting. "Emma, could I get a lift into downtown so that I can get a hotel room? I really do not want to risk someone wondering why a nice girl like me is in such a poor part of town. If I am going to try to see if Natasha has interacted with the local police, I would prefer not to do it from the wrong side of a prostitution charge." Besides, getting arrested was so tacky.