New chapter, enjoy and massive thanks to the people who left comments that were useful.
Rokkie08B, I did say it was a modern AU at the end of the summery (please don't stop reading or leaving comments).
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Chapter 6
Astrid opened her eyes and blinked the black dotes out of her eyes. 'Why is everything so foggy?' she thought with a groan. Her vision sharpened slowly to reveal her current location.
"Fuck," she muttered, her voice cracking and her throat feeling like the Sahara itself. With her vision clearing up she realized she was sitting against a wall and also how bright it was in the room she was in. She tried to getter her mind, but it was hard. Her mind was all foggy and the memories weren't being forthright in coming to her. 'How did I get here?' she thought to herself softly shaking her head trying to get the fogginess out her mind. It was to no avail, hell it only seemed to make things worse so Astrid just stuck to not moving and thinking, 'hell I don't even know where here is.'
Hearing grunting next to her Astrid looked to her left. Daisy was there laying with her head in a corner of what seemed to be a basement. 'How in world did we get in a basement?' Astrid asked herself, a feeling of alarm slowly creeping in.
"Fucking hell!" Astrid cursed loudly with a rasping voice as she suddenly felt an odd shape that was digging to her side rather painfully. She immediately regretted doing that, her shout echoing through her head. "Shit," she mumbled softly still feeling the sharp object was poking into her side and had made her curse so loudly in the first place. She swatted at the sharp thing trying to get it out of its painful position. Even that small amount off movement hurt her head. She hit it a few times before it fully registered that it was her phone that she had in her pocket of her jacket. Making sure she moved as slowly and as little possible to prevent another headache.
She opened her pocket and took out her phone. Fumbling to find the turn on button, when she did the brightness blinded her and made the headache worse again. She immediately threw away her phone, hitting Daisy in the head with it. Daisy stirred in her sleep and groaned something incoherently. Groaning loudly Astrid stoop up and walked, well more falling than walking, across the room to her friend when she crashed into something. She bend over a bit in pain. "Fuck," she muttered for the umpteenth time that morning when being bend forward made her head throb. Collapsing on the floor next to the things she crashed into, she looked at what it were.
'They look familiar,' Astrid thought and just before her foggy mind could figure it out she heard groaning and movement coming from Daisy's direction. Astrid turned her attention to her friend, who was sitting up and holding her head in her hands.
"Hey Daisy, are you okay?" Astrid's voice was raspy and slurred by her foggy mind.
"Yeah, well no, but I will be okay," Daisy said softly as she was making her way to Astrid, "and you Astrid how is your hangover going?"
Astrid looked at her best friend questioningly. "Hangover?" She asked surprised.
"Yeah, a hangover. You know when you drink way to much booze?" Daisy snarked, as small grin trying, yet not quite succeeding to make its way on her face.
"But I have never drank a drop of booze in my entire live," Astrid argued. It was true after all. She had been as sober as the day she was born since, well, the day she was born!
"You did yesterday," seeing that Astrid wasn't following, "You know the party we went to and you got absolutely plastered?"
Astrid just stared at her friend dumbstruck.
Seeing that her friend just couldn't wrap her mind around it or remember what happened. She just asked her one simple question, "What do you do remember?"
"I remember you blabbing on about some party and getting changed" scrounging her face trying to remember more, "And that's about it."
Chuckling Daisy walked to the stairs, "I'll fill in the missing few hours over some breakfast, okay?"
Again Astrid's face had a question look on it "Breakfast?" she asked like she wasn't sure she heard correctly.
"Yeah you know food you eat in the morning. Preferably some bacon and eggs with a shit load of coffee," Daisy mocked her best friend sarcastically. It was quite funny seeing Astrid, the girl that could take down men three times her size and was so straight laced Daisy was almost certain she had never told a lie in her life, in a state of complete hangover-ness.
Angrily Astrid stood up and groaned when her head started to throb again. "Daisy, I am not sure if you noticed. But I have no idea where we are, only that we are in a basement," she spewed, being highly irritated at her friend and the noise she was making.
The amused look on Daisy's face wasn't reassuring at all, but her words were even less so. "Yes we are in a basement." Proudly Astrid was about to sit back down but Daisy's next words shocked Astrid. "The basement of your own house." For the second time that morning Astrid was dumbstruck.
Daisy dragged the dumbstruck blond up the stairs of her own house and sat her down at the dining table in the kitchen.
"So, let me get this straight. You're telling me that I was drinking and that it had been my idea?" Astrid ask softly nursing a big steaming cup of coffee between her hands. On the other side of the table Daisy nodded setting her cup of coffee to her lips letting out a content sigh. Setting it back down she was about to get up but Astrid was first. "I'll cook breakfast and you start telling everything you know I did." She had stood up a bit too fast and gripped the edge of the table tightly turning her knuckles white trying not to throw u the little bit of fluids she had in her. Daisy nodded, happily sinking back in her chair. Neither of the two girls had seen the woman leaning against the doorpost.
"Both of you sit down and relax, I will cook up some breakfast while you two talk," Mrs. Hofferson rang out from her post at the door. She had a small smile on her face and it was a smile of "this going to be used at family reunions for years." This smile secretly made Astrid the tiniest bit edgy.
"Thanks mom," Astrid sat back down and looked at Daisy expectantly, "you going to talk or do I need to force it out of you?"
Daisy shot up like she was stung by a bee. "Sorry I dozed off."
"I am not surprised," both girls at the table looked at Astrid's mother, "you two were both so wasted it was a wonder that you made it home at all."
The girls looked at each other shocked. "You noticed!?" Daisy asked with widening eyes.
Astrid was on the other hand was thinking something entirely different. 'I remember something about Harrison.'
Astrid's mother was smirking as she was taking a few eggs and bacon out of the fridge. "It is kind of hard not to notice two drunk teenagers who are trying to be stealthy tumbling into your basement." Both girls were looking at each other again.
"So that's why my shoulder hurts," Daisy muttered.
"Also, dears," she spook to both but was looking mainly at Astrid, "who is Harrison?" Astrid turned crimson.
"Ohm, he is…ah…just a friend," Astrid awkwardly said in an effort to down play Harrison.
"You were hell-bent on calling him and Daisy needed to take your phone from you so you wouldn't call him," Astrid's mother's voice was nonchalant like she didn't care at all.
Daisy's face split open "oh yeah, I remember that, you actually called him but didn't make any sense and then with your drunk babbling over the phone. I decided after that that we had had enough, well no, you that had had enough to drink and that we were going home," she said with a huge smirk on her face.
Astrid's interest was prickled, "Hold up, back to the second part, why did I decide that I should get utterly wasted?"
"Well, we arrived at the party and you planned on staying sober. Then we walked into the wonder twins and they started annoying the shit out of you. You grabbed what you thought was a glass of water and downed it in one go," Daisy stopped for second letting out a snort and smiled crookedly, "it was vodka, an entire glass of vodka," Daisy started laughing but stopped, then grabbed her head with a groaned.
Astrid's mother looked at her sympathetically, "Still got a headache?"
As Daisy nodded, Astrid's mother took two plates from a cupboard and put some eggs and bacon on both, filled two glasses with milk and put both the glasses and plates on the table. "Eat up, it should help you two feel better," she walked out of the kitchen a few seconds later as Astrid and Daisy had loaded a fork with eggs and Bacon she stepped back in with her coat on, "I am of to work."
Astrid looked at her mother curiously, "You usually don't work in the morning in the weekend."
Astrid's mother smiled softly, "Dear, it is past noon already" she said while she pointed at the clock above the fridge.
Both girls looked at the clock then at each other. "Shit, Francis!" they said in unison. Shaking her slightly still with a soft smile on her face Astrid's mother left the kitchen and was off to work. Both girls in the kitchen were stuffing their faces with the eggs and bacon on their plates and washing it away with milk. Astrid was the first one to be done, as she was dumping her plate in the sink she ushered Daisy to hurry "Come on, hurry up. We're already late!"
"Geez, calm down Astrid," Daisy respond, rolling her eyes at her friend's impatient nature, especially at this certain topic.
"No time, now hurry up," Astrid snapped. She felt a bit annoyed that she had gotten drunk last night, but underneath that, she was anxious to see Just who Harrison Haddock was. She all but push Daisy out the door and into her car, then got in herself and shot off down the road like a bat out of hell.
On their way to Francis' Astrid was think about the party. 'Why can't I remember anything if I only drank one glass of alcohol, even though it was vodka?' Astrid looked at the other girl in the car, "Daisy, you told me I drank a glass of vodka, but I can't remember anything from last night. Why is that?"
Daisy giggled, "Maybe because after you drank the glass you seemed to have liked its taste and the buzz it caused and you started to down an entire bottle."
Astrid looked at her friend shocked, "I drank an entire bottle of vodka?!"
"More like two," Daisy laughed out, she was seriously getting a kick out of Astrid's facial features as they twisted to her thoughts.
Astrid stopped the car, right in the middle of the road, with a look of complete horror on her face, "Damn, okay, that explains why I can't remember anything," she looked to Daisy, "what else did I do?" Astrid pushed on the gas of her car again.
"Hmmmm, let me think," Daisy acted like she needed to think deeply a hand stroking her chin, "right!" she held up one hand with one finger point to the sky like she just had a genius epiphany. "You called Harrison like three times in one minute every time hanging up when he answered. This was after one bottle, then when you downed the second he called back to see if you were okay you started telling him you were fine, then you called him again crying, but you again hung up when he answered and asked me if you were too drunk," Daisy's eyes started shine with mischief, "I better show you the rest."
Astrid's face went pale "Please don't tell me you have a video of last night because hearing it from you is bad enough already."
"No I don't have one video," Daisy assured Astrid. Astrid who hadn't noticed the way Daisy had said one was just about to breathe easy when Daisy spoke again, "No, I have multiple." Astrid groaned when she heard that.
"Fuck," Astrid mumbled, she spoke up, "can it wait till we're done with Francis?"
"Sure," Daisy replied with a smirk. She might be considering showing the videos to Francis too.
After a few minutes they reached the door they were heading for, even before they pressed the doorbell, the door opened. On the other side was no one, they just walked in and the door closed soundlessly behind them Astrid looked at her friend and mouthed "okaaayy." Daisy just shrugged.
Both of the girls their heads shot up when they heard a soft humming sound above them, above them in the poorly lit hall a drone was hovering. The two girls looked at each other again "okaaayy," this time it as Daisy who said it.
"If you would be so kind to follow me" a clear feminine voice asked, seemingly coming out of nowhere.
"Fuck!" Daisy jumped, "Huh, Francis has stepped up his game since the last time I saw him," Daisy said to Astrid.
"So it seems," was her only reaction. She was still looking at the drone that had moved out of the hall and was waiting near a stairwell.
"If you would be so kind to follow me," the voice asked again.
Astrid looked from the drone to Daisy and said, "why the hell not," and followed the drone to the stairwell with Daisy right behind her.
At the top of the stairs the drone went to the right, they just followed it to a door. The drone landed on a tray next the door, when it had landed it said one more thing as they heard a metallic click coming from the door. "Please enter, he has been awaiting your arrival."
For the umpteenth time that day both girls looked at each other and shrugged. Astrid opened the door behind it a large guy was waiting. When he saw them, he let out a girl like squeal and ran to them to give both a hug. When he released Astrid from his bearlike hug she took a step back and watched amused as the big guy hugged her best friend tightly. "It's good to see you too Francis"
"Yes it is good to see both of you again. What's it been, few months?" Francis smiled. It had been several months since Astrid had gotten into contact with him. He had counted her as a friend for a while, and had been both sad and happy that she decided to go to the police academy.
"At most, and it isn't like you weren't up to date on what we're doing. You were hovering over us monitoring everything like an overbearing mother," Daisy said with a smile on her lips.
Francis sounded a bit defeated, "I know I can be a bit overbearing but you two know that I mean well."
Astrid softly put a hand on the big guys' shoulder, "we do Francis," she clasped his shoulder in her hands. "Now let's talk about why we're here."
Francis' face lit up like a Christmas tree, "right!" He turned around to his work table.
On it were three big screens and on the side of the table against the wall was a very large and complicated computer. But that wasn't new for the girls. No, what was new for them was the tower on the other side of the table that was rhythmically turning on and off. Both Astrid and Daisy hadn't seen it before, Daisy was the first to ask Francis who hadn't been paying attention to them and was feverishly typing on his keyboard pulling up files. "Hey Francis, what is that" she asked, pointing to the tower.
Francis turned around in his chair, "Oh, that is just a sever I made so I'd have some extra processing power," he turned back to the screen, "it was quite useful with your little project." As he finished his sentence, the screen popped up a file going by the name Project A.
When Astrid looked at the screen and saw the file size, she was taken aback by the mere amount of data within the file. 'Shit 26.67GB of data is a lot,' her head was racing alongside her heart beat. 'What if this is a stupid move and I find out more than I want to know about him?' she asked herself. But before she could question herself even more Francis had started to talk, he had opened the file and pulled up the picture Astrid had taken when Harrison had been picked up at the Starbucks.
"It was not much to work with, a name and a picture but when I started it was way more than I ever could have anticipated. I will start with the security detail that was there, it is nothing like I have ever seen before. When you look at a distance it is nothing abnormal but when you look closely and start digging you realize that something doesn't add up," he clicked enter on his keyboard and eight pictures with names under it appeared.
All the men in the pictures had military style uniforms, four of them had black berets on, two were wearing a green berets and the last two had a blue one. 'Duh and hello, they're all military personnel' but Astrid didn't speak her mind because Francis had already carried on.
"You've probably ready to say 'duh, they are all soldiers and what is weird about that? Security companies prefer to hire former soldiers'. But the weird thing is that all the men are not just soldiers, some of them are former Special Forces, four of them," he pressed enter again and the four men not wearing military dress popped on the screen, "are former navy seals," He hit enter again and the two men wearing blue camos appeared, "two of them are former spetsnaz, Russian special forces, and the last two," he pressed enter again and the men with green Barres made their appearance, "are former Dutch commandos." Francis hit enter again and the all the eight men were shown on the screen. "This is something I have never encountered before. Even though it is weird, it isn't the weirdest part. No, the weirdest is that they all aren't working for any security company."
"That is all cute and all," Daisy interjected, "but what I am wondering about is how they are walking on the streets in brought daylight with automatic weapons."
The glimmer of joy stayed in Francis' eyes. "I wondered the same thing so I started to look into the weapons." With three clicks, all the weapons that were visible in the picture were displayed on the screen with its specifications. It weren't the vaguely visible weapons on the picture. No, Francis had made quite the project of it and figured out what the make and model of each gun was now had them all displayed on his main screen.
"These guns are all state of the art, newest of the newest technology and designs and a few are designs that I have never seen before. Beside that all are coming from one of two companies Heckler & Koch and Walther. The only thing these two companies have in common is a small shop here in San Diego. HHH tech is a small company that has started roughly a year ago, even though it doesn't have many locations or a famous name both Heckler & Koch and Walther, who are serious business competitors, do business with HHH tech. HHH tech is company started by one Harrison Haddock," Francis clicked the pictures away and a photo of Harrison.
Astrid mentally braced herself now there was no way back. "Now Harrison is a bit of a mystery," Francis continued, "I could find only a little on Harrison. There is a Facebook page from five years ago, a birth certificate, on which is only a father listed, no mother, and one or two other mentions of him online but there isn't much I could find on him so I will tell you what I do know." Enter was hit once more and a Facebook page was on the screen with a picture of a young Harrison standing between two guys smiling at the camera above it the text bróðir. "These two guys are prominent on his Facebook page for the period it has been used." Astrid wanted to ask what that word above the picture meant but Francis was faster and ranted on, "the word above the picture, which I am not even going to try to pronounce, means brothers. It was also used to define a group of warriors who have been fighting tighter, similar to blood brothers."
He hit enter again and the two guys that had been standing next to Harrison their mug shots were pulled forward. "These two have both arrested by the police when they were fifteen for destruction of property, but no charges were pressed surprisingly. What is even more surprising is that these two are even more invisible than Harrison. I only know their first names no last names. I know that Thuggory went to the same private school as Harrison and Daniel, the other guy in the picture, and that he has joined the army when he was done with high school, but he has no Facebook or any other form of social media and I can't find him in any database that is accessible. Then there is Daniel," enter again and the other mugshot of the last one, he had a psychotic grin on his face like he enjoyed the whole arrest. "I know nothing about him except what has been posted on Harrison's Facebook," Francis pulled up a video and started it. Daniel was wresting with Harrison who was rather scrawny in comparison to the well build guy that had him pinned to the floor and demanded his surrender.
"Never," Harrison's defiance was cute but useless, he was powerless beneath the taller and stronger guy above him.
"You will, you always do," grunted Daniel.
"Yeah, but not this time," now Daniel started laughing.
"Okay then we stop," he got up and helped Harrison up.
From behind the camera a voice that was probably Thuggory spoke. "Hey Daniel, that laugh makes you sound deranged," both Harrison and Daniel broke out in a laughter.
When Harrison had gathered himself he answered. "Using words like deranged makes you sound pretentious Thuggory."
The video stopped there and Francis continued, "That is all I have on Harrison himself," he now switched to a website. "HHH tech is one of the most innovative companies I have seen in a while on the technology field and it is a one man company." On the site it advertised: whatever you need from modification, from your car to custom made guns to fine machinery, I can make it for you.
"His company is skyrocketing in popularity by big business who need small technological things or precise machinery. His more notable clients are Heckler & Koch and Walther. I am still surprised that both companies are using the same outsider and haven't attempted to buy him out," Francis switched back to the original picture. "Now there are two guys I left that I haven't told you anything about." He clicked with the mouse in the two oafs standing next to Harrison. Their files filled the screen "These are Samuel Jorgenson and Eret Eretson. I will start Samuel. He has as well joined the army and as far as I know he is doing the officers academy, he went to the same private high school as Harrison, Thuggory and Daniel. He is more prominent on social media." Francis showed several social media sites Instagram, Facebook twitter and some more, "but there is nothing meaningful on it only some stuff about parties and what not," at the word parties Daisy was giggling a bit what got her a scowling look from Astrid. Francis oblivious to the small interaction between the two continued, "The last but not least is Eret, it is a bit of a weird name but who am I to judge. He is former S.A.S," Astrid whistled impressed, Daisy looked at her friend, "apparently that is impressive"
Astrid nodded, "Well yeah, the S.A.S, the Special Air Service, is considered as one of the best trained Special Forces on the planet."
"Damn."
"And the fact he's working with Russians is somewhat weird to me," Francis added Astrid nodded in agreement.
All were silent for a few second all that Astrid could hear was the soft humming of the computer on the worktable while she thought. 'This is a lot of info, but where did he get all of that since some of it looked like government files.' She looked to Francis who was reading some file on Eret. "Hey Francis, it is impressive with all the info you've gathered, but how many laws did you break to get this?"
Francis turned around with a serious face and the tone in his voice mirrored that. "Don't ask," was all he said.
Hey, this is his beta. Sorry for taking so long, but trust me, it was well worth the effort.
