Episode One: "Genetics"

[Belle Hibiki]

Alexander Erikson
Brooklyn, New York

The dirty alley outside the apartment complex smelled vaguely of stale urine and was littered with the tatters of discarded human garbage. The cloudy sky overhead brooded a sullen gray, casting a faint pale light into the darker corners of the narrow space, giving definition to indecipherable shapes and forms that constantly shifted before Alex's eyes. He reached back and stroked the grip of the gun lodged in his belt.

"Nervous?"

Alex glanced towards the source of the deep baritone voice, a massive black man with a shaved head and little neck. "Not really," he answered, shrugging.

"That's the sixth time you've checked your gun."

Alex made a face. For being such a bit brutish looking guy, Martin kept surprising him with his attentiveness to details. Or maybe Martin, like Alex himself, was finding it difficult to relax.

Alex chose not to answer, trailing his cold blue eyes up the side of the building and its crumbling masonry. It was an old one, the remnants of the latest paint job - a vain attempt to dress up its hopelessly decrepit state - reduced to but a few remaining flakes of off-white. "You ready?"

Martin nodded.

~*~*~*~*~*~

There were three of them.

One stood by the window, the sill thrown open wide as he sucked in the cold air as greedily as a drowning man. His thin fingers continually twitched and twittered either by nature or nerves. Another man sat on the chair to the side of Alex and Martin, playing with a Billy club in his lap and looking supremely detached, though the occasional hard glare he gave the two of them said otherwise. The final man sat directly across from them on a yellow and orange flecked couch that had seen better days, although it looked chic and well-mended compared to the rest of the wall-cracked, paint-peeling apartment whose only functional appliance seemed to be a thin fan that squeaked as its tarnished blades turned round and round.