LOG: Maverick - Day One, Afternoon

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David North meets a mysterious figure from his past - and runs like a little girl.



David North watched the 101 Bus fade into the distance, leaving him at the corner of Troost and 43rd. As he began walking, he questioned why he'd chosen this stop, eleven blocks from his apartment.

One hundred and six minutes later, after a winding route through back alleys, low-rent strip malls, and two auto dealerships, North found himself at his apartment complex. Part of his conscious mind felt confident at the neatly-executed counter-surveillance route, and the rest was questioning exactly why he'd felt the need to try and throw off any observers, and how he knew the best methods to do it.

The key stuck in the lock, as it was designed to. Slight bit of pressure counter-clockwise, then a full turn clockwise, and the deadbolt snapped open. David found a smile creeping onto his face, remembering the tricky reconfiguring of the lock for added security, then just as suddenly the expression changed to confusion as he tried to recall when he'd done that.

Stepping into his apartment, his hand reached out to the side automatically, slapping a stack of newspapers as high as his chest. Pausing, he looked behind him to his doorstep where the day's paper still lay. David picked it up, then glanced around his apartment as if seeing it for the first time.

No furniture, save for a dusty table in his combination kitchen/dining room. Stacks of newspapers lining the walls, dating back to when he'd occupied the apartment back in 1994. Eleven years, and nothing to show for it.

Why did this all seem so familiar, and yet completely alien? This was not his life, and yet, it was.

Opening his refrigerator, he frowned. Neatly-organized rows of bread, pre-packaged lean turkey, and bottles of sports drink. Nutritional supplements filled his cupboards along with multi-vitamins. Everything the body needed to eat quickly and stay healthy in the most technical sense.

When did this all come about? Had he always lived this spartan existence? Clutching his head as if to claw the memories out, David slumped to the floor, leaning against a stack of dry newspapers, faded by the sun.

Then it hit him - this was a safehouse. He'd been living in a safehouse for eleven years. It was like a floodlight coming on, illuminating everything. Things had gone bad, there had to be a contingency, a cover plan. The cover must have been deep - ELEVEN YEARS!

"Who am I?" David North whispered, looking at his hands. A small noise from the vicinity of his bedroom gave him an answer, although he'd not yet asked the right question.

He was not alone.

The pale blonde sitting on the edge of his bed flicked another page of a book deliberately, staring through the open doorway as though he might burn a hole through the open door. Eyes boring through David's once contact was finally made, the man smiled slowly, an expression that could easily have been interpreted as a snarl were it not for the evident, malignant joy in his eyes as he watched David.

"Who am I?" A low laugh followed the words, repeated with a sneering edge to them. "Man, they sure fucked you up..." He let the book drop to the floor with a thump and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees, that same disturbing - and hungry - smile on his face.

The intruder's face was familiar in David's memory, but he couldn't place from where. Then, as sudden as a lightning strike, images and moments came rushing back in sharp relief. The blonde albino at the window, a shared glance, two weeks ago? About the time the headaches had started, and...

"Arkady..." North breathed the name, not knowing what it meant or how he knew who the strange man was. There was something else, a key, a trigger, something important...

David began unconsciously backing away, feeling an odd itch creep up his spine. The same mental image kept creeping into his vision. A symbol, curved... a horseshoe? Some mathematical unit? Cyrillic, no... Greek...

Omega.

"Omega Red." The words came to North's lips unbidden, along with a reflex so imperative it seized complete control of his body.

Run.

The hunger gleaming in the man's red eyes grew at that, reaching an almost all consuming state even as his shoulders started to shake. A rasping laugh soon filled the room, almost a wheeze more than anything else, a dark and feral sound.

Making no more to run after the fleeing man, smiling at the sound of the apartment's front door, still swinging from David's departure, Arkady Rossovich laughed.

"Oh, this will be fun."