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There was an odd noise, a bit like humming, that forced John to stop as he made his way through the ventilation shaft. It took him a few seconds to realize that it was coming from behind him. There was a small voice in the back of his mind that erupted into curses that he could not yell, not if he valued his life. When the singing started he nearly lost it. Instead he counted to three. His mother had always told him to count to ten, but in such a situation ten seconds was impractical if not life-ending. John tried his best to turn his head and look behind him. "Stop it," he said, his voice never rising above a whisper.

The singing stopped and thankfully the humming did not pick up. "Why?" The question was not whispered, it rang out along the ventilation shaft as clear as a bell. John's eyes popped open wider than he thought they could pop open. Why had the department forced the idiot upon him?

"Because you are singing, Jack," answered John. Again his voice was as low as a whisper. He shook his head in amazement and, not expecting any sort of response, began to crawl down the shaft once more.

"And?" asked Jack, who said the word just as loudly as he had the last. John decided that there would be pain for the man later on. If he could have turned around there would have been pain then. A brief scene played out in John's mind. He smiled as he raised his silenced pistol and silenced Jack. If only he could make his dreams reality. A small voice at the back of his mind sighed since John could not.

"And?" repeated John in his severe whisper. "You are on a mission, you daft bastard! Our need for quiet is paramount, now is not the time to be whimsical. You will bring catastrophe down upon our heads." The inward voice sighed once more and John started once more on his way.

"Yeah, you know, I am fully aware that we are in a precarious position here what with the guards and such below us. I just don't feel that we should be so grim about it, you know? I mean, if we succeed then hurrah. If we die… well, I'd much rather go out with some sort of upbeat feeling going on." At the very least, Jack had taken to whispering. He just said too much while doing so.

John, who felt that missions were the perfect time to be as grim and serious as possible, was losing his patience much quicker than he thought possible. He had always had a bit of a temper, which is why his mom had always told him to count to ten, but never before had someone managed to get on his nerves so fast. The only feeling he had about Jack's little idea was that Jack was a damned idiot and should have been dragged out behind the shed and put out of the world's misery before the mission started.

"Listen," said John, "and listen closely." He tried his best to turn and look at Jack, but no luck there. Had he had the luck he may have shot him then and there and to hell with the consequences, but he had never had much luck throughout his life, no reason to start then. "You will shut up, because if you shut up we have a chance to get out of this alive. If you do not shut up, we will die. We will die horrible deaths and no one but the guards below us the dogs they feed us to will ever know of it. You will not go out knowing that you enjoyed yourself for the past however few minutes that you spent giving yourself away. You will go out screaming and in a lot of pain. Even worse, I will be right beside you. So shut… the… hell… up."

"Alright," replied Jack. The single word even added to John's ire. He wished he could glare at the man behind him, but he couldn't. Instead he glared at the far end of the shaft and began along.

The large grate slid off without much of a problem. Old buildings like the one they were in were rarely truly converted to the sort of place that criminals, even smart ones, could feel comfortable. There was always some stupid little opening to sneak through. In this case it was the ventilation system that started atop the roof and ran throughout the building. The vent led into the elevator shaft, which was exactly what they were hoping for. John hated cramped spaces and things did not get much more cramped than ventilation shafts.

He hated heights more. A sense of vertigo swept over him as he edged towards the elevator shaft and he stopped suddenly to back into the ventilation shaft once more. "Why did you stop?" asked Jack in a whisper.

"Just shut up," replied John. There was nothing fun about elevator shafts. Sure, they looked easy enough to work with. Clear space above and blew, plenty of room to rappel. People tended to forget about the elevators though, the falling and rising boxes of death that always sent you scurrying to find somewhere to settle into. And then there was the long drop down. John had stopped counting the amount of agents lost to elevator shafts because some goon cut their rope.

He subdued a shudder and got to work setting the ropes they would need to get down the shaft. He only hoped that there would be no one using the elevators and no goons poking about in odd places. It only took remembering that he had such little luck to remind him that hope was beyond him. If he was going to die, at least Jack was going to die with him. The thought made him slightly happier.

The problem with the sort of buildings that bad guys had the habit of occupying was that there were always basement offices and labs and without a doubt, that is where anything and everything actually was. The rest of the building would just be a front to earn some money. They saved a lot of money by using goons as security, believe it or not. The problem with everything being in the basements was that there was no starting in the basement.

There were a few ways to go about infiltrating a building. There was the sort that involved months, if not years, of deep undercover. There was the sort that involved lots of guns, which was the sort that John believed suited Jack. And there was the sort that involved breaking in through a vent on the roof or through a window and slowly heading down. John did not like the first way, he did not have the patience for it. There was no small amount of trouble with it either, contrary to popular belief. Agents turned up dead quite often after disappearing for months and not always by the bad guys. Mistaken identities and trigger happy police is never a good thing.

Guns blazing had the typical cons. High death rate for both sides and a lot of collateral damage. Cowboys did not last long and John was rather happy that was the case. Not that his way was any better. It had its major issues, what with the falling, guards, killer elevators, and the possibility of traps if the bad guys were the smart sort.

John and Jack had managed to get down to the bottom of the shaft or close enough to it, to get to the maintenance hatch. They had deftly avoided the elevator which when past them twice, though John found himself wishing he had pushed Jack into its path. The hatch was a simple thing, much like the grate, just another stupid little opening to sneak through. John had Jack check to make sure everything was clear just in case. Unfortunately he popped his head back in to give the all clear.

The little voice in the back of John's head cursed and sighed again. He went through the hatch and took the lead once more, gun drawn and held at the ready.

Basement bases were annoying. Not the most annoying of hidden lairs or bases of operation, but they were up there. Every one that John had been in had one common trait: shoddy lighting. It seemed as though it was a general rule to have flashing lights that barely work. John wondered if they were forced to do their own electrical work. It seemed to be a good reason for it and he doubted that there were many goons who used to be electricians.

The two of them snuck along, their backs to the walls as they traversed the flickering depths of the basement. The walls were bare concrete, just as they usually were. As if they had spent all their money on the offices upstairs to even apply a coat of pain. The place seemed deserted, no scientists and no goons wandering around with automatic weapons. John did not know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. He could not decide.

***

The offices and labs had come and gone. Each one had been devoid of any life, not even a lab rat. The computers were dead or off, but that hardly mattered. There was information that the agency could use, but there was not enough time. They continued on, sweeping each room before delving deeper.

John felt that there should be rules to just how large the basements of buildings could be. One floor below ground sounded about right. Unfortunately they tended to be much larger, as if the person who designed them sometime in the past got the idea that someone might want a warren of rooms under their building just in case they wanted to install an illegal base of operations. A surge of hate rose up within him and was worked out by the small voice through a creative mix of curses.

They were looking for one room in particular, which was to be found in the center of the mess. Obviously that meant the basement had to be a maze. John almost wished there was a Minotaur looking about. It would east the boredom and he could always throw Jack at it.

***

The room was rather large for being at the center of the maze that was the basement. There was only so much space a basement could have and it seemed to John that it had used up far too much of it to create anything as large as the room. Furthermore, he could not see the point of such a large room considering the only thing in it was a tiny laptop sitting on a pedestal in the center of the room.

"Jack," whispered John. "You first, go ahead." Traps were a pain in the ass. So were laser detection systems. He did not see any cameras, but they were probably there somewhere. Better to send Jack in first, just in case. Technically they should have sprayed a special chemical into the air to show whether or not there were any detection systems in place, but John skipped it. The stuff did not work half the time anyway. Besides, he had Jack.

And Jack managed to walk to the center of the room and close the laptop without so much as a poison dart or alarm going off. John followed him in and grunted. His back to the door as he pulled out a case and handed it to Jack. He thought it was all too easy.

"I hope you didn't think it would be that easy," said someone behind them. John and Jack both turned to see a finely dressed man standing in the doorway. He signaled and two groups of armed men filtered into the room on either side of him. "I believe that is mine," he said.

John sighed. It was too easy, too damned easy. He should have known. He had placed one of his hands behind his back when the man started to talk and it stayed there even as his other hand drew his pistol in the confusion of the moment. "Grenade, Jack," he whispered. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jack nod and pull out a grenade.

"Hands up," said the man. "You are going to die, but you can at least postpone it a bit." He grinned and even his eyes seemed to be smiling.

"No," said John. "We have your computer and he has a grenade. You shoot us, he removes his finger from the deadman button and up goes the computer."

"Is that so?" asked the man. His smile did not waver. "Well, it saddens me to inform you that the computer you have is just some piece of junk I picked up on my way to work this morning." He held up a case, "This, on the other hand, is what you are looking for."

"Oh," said John.

"Yes," said the man.

Jack began to sing. John formed a plan.

"Well, if that is the case…" he said, letting the words trail away. The pistol came up and he pulled the trigger. Jack's words cut off as he fell to the floor, the bullet resting somewhere in his brain.

The man's grin was gone and his mouth gaped in surprise. "That," he said, "was not expected." He took a moment to collect himself. "Alas, if you expected it to help you in some manner you are mistaken."

"Are you kidding?" replied John. "I have wanted to do that all night." Maybe Jack was right, perhaps it was better to go out happy. John had no intention of going out at all though.

The guards looked around at each other, not only in confusion, but also in suspicion. Would they turn on one another so easily? Odd how such things come to the forefront when given a proper example. John took their moment of confusion and used it to his advantage. He pulled his hand from behind his back and threw two objects at the feet of the guards. They looked down just in time for the two flash bangs to go off while John clinched his eyes shut and turned away.

He turned back towards the guards and unloaded his pistol in to them. One shot for each, all in the head. He was an excellent marksman. It was just about the only thing he was really good at. His clip ran out on the last guard, but by then he was already facing the man with the computer. The man rubbed his eyes, trying desperately to see again. He did not see the punch that cracked into his jaw or the kick that swept him off his feet and onto his back. He may have seen John's boot smashing down towards his throat, but it was too late to do anything about it.

***

John felt that the only thing worse than infiltrating a basement lair, base, or lab is getting back out. There was really only one way of doing it and that consisted of running as fast as you can, evading gunfire, and killing as many goons as possible. It was a decent if for exercise, but it was not decent if you had a desire to live. Thankfully there was one key difference between most missions and the one he was on. This mission had gone badly, the big bad had put in a visit and now he lay on the floor dead. He had the computer and that mattered, but now there was no reason to sneak out. Guns Blazing was the option of choice, being the standard escape plan, but there was one open to him.

He clicked the little button on his earpiece and requested, around big breaths of air, that a team be sent in to neutralize targets and make sure he got out alive and unharmed with the needed data. John found a room and hid in it, prepared to take down anyone who dared enter it. A boom vibrated the building as the front doors were taken off and gunfire echoed throughout the building. The Jacks had arrived in their usual manner and John could not help but smile. If he managed to survive the team's thorough attempt to kill anything that moved and destroy everything else then he would have made it through yet another mission.

John yawned and sat back. He wondered what was on the computer that was so important and just how important it would be once the agency found out the big bad was dead. It did not matter. He was not affected either way. Not enough Johns to go around, too expensive to train. They kept him busy and could not get rid of him even if they wanted to. He thought of the next mission he would be going on, another basement in another building halfway across the country, and sighed. The little voice at the back of his head joined in.

It simply could not be tolerated. There were few things that Kenra could not tolerate in this world and chief amongst them was thieves. She had been walking down the street, staring down at the sidewalks and counting the cracks as she was wont to do, when suddenly some man ran past. Only he did not get very far.

The man had made a grab at her purse and attempted his flight, but he did not expect her to be so stubborn or strong when it came to her grip on it. They grappled, the man pulling the purse towards him and Kenra holding firmly to the leather strap she had a tendency to wrap about her arm. One could never be too careful, after all.

He was much larger, she had to admit. It was the principle of the matter though. If she gave in and let the purse slip free of her arm and her grip then she would surely be allowing the criminal run free. The man, and not only the man, but every other criminal in the city and the world would score yet another win to add to the roster.

And that, she knew, was something that she could not allow. Though there was little doubt that such a stand could end rather badly for her. "Off, off you. This does not belong to you, get on and go," her words came out as a growl between deep breaths. There was a time when Kenra would have fought him off or screamed and that time had passed along with her youth. She was not so young anymore, but she still had her inner strength. A scream, a good loud one, would likely bring someone running to her aid, but she could hardly get enough breath to speak.

The man just grunted out something that was halfway between a laugh and a hmph. "Just let go, you damned hag," he replied. "Do it before I am forced to hurt you. Believe me. I am not afraid of doing so." He pulled at the purse, redoubling his efforts to take it from the old woman.

Kenra would have cackled if her breath had allowed it, but alas it would not. She was known for her cackle, that of an old witch. The little boys and girls in her neighborhood were convinced she was one and she gained no small amount of delight by attempting to prove their suspicions. Halloween was time of great laughter for her even if the children were less than enthusiastic.

There was a time when it was true. Her grandmother had been a witch and she taught Kenra what she knew-or tried to. Kenra had never been very good at it and the best she could do was sling a minor curse here or there. Her grandmother could forgive such things, she had to. With the passage of time magic began to fade from the world and so did the ability to touch the veil. There was a time when Kenra could have slung some painful curse at the face of the thief, but it had been a great many years since she could pierce reality and touch the veil.

"Look," she said, her eyes fixed in a steely glare that was known to put even the toughest people on edge. "I have had just about enough of this. I am too old, old enough to be your mommy or grammy. So let go of my damned purse before I put you over my knee and spank you just as they would." She clicked her tongue and shook her head. If she had a finger free she would have waggled it back and forth. It was worth a shot and it had always worked on her children and her late husband as well.

"Just leggo of the purse, old woman!" yelled the man. Frustration and annoyance cloyed at the edge of his voice. He had the stubborn will to match her own, a thing so rare that Kenra had never once come across it in her many years living. If it were a different circumstance she would have found it interesting or a challenge. "What is your problem?" he asked. "Just give it up!" His mind rebelled at the thought of an old woman giving him a fight and somehow managing to match his own strength. This confused him to no end.

"The problem?" replied the old woman, half out of disbelief and half out of outrage. "It is mine!" Kenra could not help but wonder what she had done to be placed in such a situation.

"Semantics!" yelled the man in return. For the briefest of moments his mind wandered off to think about the things he had done over the years of his life. There had to be something horrible. There was simply no explanation for the rotten luck that had come about. He was not entirely sure as to why he chose the woman in the first place, there were few people who would target an old lady for such a thing and he was not one of them. He tended to hate those sorts of people. Everyone tended to hate those sorts of people. He thought she looked younger as she passed the alley he was hidden in. Not to young perhaps, but surely younger than she claimed and younger than she looked up close.

"What am I doing?" he finally asked himself. His grip on the purse slacked, but did not drop away entirely. Thoughts reeled through his mind, the sort that does little good for anyone and usually ends up being drowned out with vast amounts of alcohol. There was little he could do as they pervaded his mind.

Kenra did not loosen her grip on the purse, even when it gave way just a little. It could be a trick and she would not fall for a trick. "Something very stupid," she growled. Her glare relaxed as they settled once more on the eyes of the thief. They were open wide and moved about here and there, looking around the street, down the alley he had come, and back at her. They appeared to see nothing, even as they focused. The thief was confused.

"What is your name?" she asked. Still she did not release her grip on the purse, but the hardness of her eyes had fled.

The man let go of the purse entirely. "Ken," he answered. His eyes flit anywhere and everywhere. There was no one on the streets, it had taken him a few moments to realize it, but that was the truth of it. How else could the two have fought over the purse for so long without someone running to help?

Kenra had not been expecting that. It was too close to her name to be a coincidence. "You know," she said, "you remind me of someone." The man's eyes flicked back to hers and settled there.

"Yeah, you remind me of someone as well, I just can't place it." She really did, but he could not place it.

Inexplicably, Kenra found herself thinking of her children. They had all grown and gone, escaped from the nest to form their own all across the country. She wanted them go one by one until none were left and now they rarely even visited. Certainly they did not bring their children along to spend time with their grandma. And how she wished to sit them down and tell them stories that her grandma had told her, stories about piercing the veil and other fantastic nonsense. A sudden question for the man seized her. "Have you heard of the veil?" she asked. Her voice had returned to normal, she breathed with ease in the lack of conflict.

The thief closed his eyes and tried to remember. He put great effort into, even going so far as to stroke an imaginary beard and scratch his head at times. "I believe," he began, "that my gramma, or perhaps great gramma, used to tell me stories about it when I was younger. Not much mind you, we lived far away from her, but enough to keep my interest back then."

Kenra had never had a real job and she never went to school after she finished those last four years of misery. She had meant to, to go to school or work, but for some odd reason the applications always went missing. At some point people just started showing up at her door with whatever they could spare. They did not give out of some charitable nature and Kenra would have never agreed to such a thing anyway. Instead they came with questions along with trinkets and Kenra would do her best to answer them. More and more people came with their questions and Kenra struggled to answer theirs as well. It had become a job of sorts, the kind of job that a bitter old woman in a tiny hut would have taken to had it been a hundred or so years previous.

She only then realized that she felt like a thief herself. Taking what the people gave her just foist her opinion on them, it seemed a scam. Granted, she never advertised herself as someone to turn to when you were on your wits end, people just started showing up. Kenra could hardly be blamed for such things.

Another thought, the single one that the whole thing was leading towards finally broke free and came to life. "Come," she told the man. "Follow me home and then we can go from there." Kenra began her slow walk back home, tired from the day's ordeal and more than a little shaken. "You have many stories to hear and even more things to learn. You're a thief boy, but that life is at an end."

Ken, for some reason that he could not ascertain, decided to follow the old woman. He was ashamed at what he tried to do, which fueled his movement more than the odd excitement he felt could manage. His mind wandered as he followed the slow old woman. It did not wander to the usual interests, but dredged up memories of the past. Bits and pieces of stories told by another old woman floated up and he strained to remember what they said.

The two walked down the street. Attacker and victim, master and apprentice, wise woman and wise man, a pair matched through serendipity or coincidence or perhaps something had reached beyond the veil to push them together. Something akin to fate.