Quick note; When I was still planning to have this story in 'parts' a new one would have started here, but since I took those out, I'm sorry if the chapter seems slightly off in any way...ok continue :)

ALEC

He had intended to search until he found them. They all split up, though he had been against the idea entirely—the last thing he wanted was to lose another member, but before he could argue Maize had already taken off with the canine, leaving him with Ryker, since only the dog and his owner knew their way around theses forests.

Under normal circumstances, he would have expressed annoyance at being paired with the steel-eyed rifle carrier, but not now. Not when he felt this pressuring ache in his chest of apprehension. Not when his logical mind was telling him that their search would lead nowhere, that both agents were gone. Not when he pushed on anyway, ignoring the voice, ignoring the physical exertion, ignoring the calling voice of the canine owner behind trying to reach him. Everything was blocked, shut out.

"Detective!"

He didn't hear it.

"Detective!"

He was barely listening.

"Hey, asshole!" He reacted when a rough hand grabbed a hold of his shoulder and forced him to turn around and meet the steel eyes glare focused on him. "You need to calm down," Ryder stated sternly, the pressure of his hold not letting up to show its purpose.

"I'll calm down when we get Kishan back from Hill—seeing how you brought it to all our attention that she fucking duped us this whole time!" he snapped back irritably, throwing Ryder's arm off him in an instant, causing the other man to stumble back a step, but never fall. Nor did he let up his steely glare.

"Don't say it like it's my fault—I'm not the one responsible and you know it. Direct your temper elsewhere because I don't have time to deal with your dumb-ass not listening to fucking reason," Ryder retaliated bitingly, trying to stare him down. "Face it, we've been searching and running up and down these tunnels for long enough already. If your friends were here, we would have found something by now."

"Didn't you say these tunnels lead all over the woods? What about the way that leads into the nearest town?" Alec questioned pointedly, not willing to relinquish or admit to the truth behind Ryder's words.

"That's my point," Ryder growled, biting back frustration. "If they made it to town, then we're already too late to catch up."

"No we're not."

"They're gone, West!" Ryder yelled at him. His voice carried like an echo within the enclosed cave walls, but neither cared to notice. They faced one another in a vicious glaring battle. "I'm sorry but it's too late, you have no hope of catching up to them now. They're gone, who knows where. You can't find them, you have to see that—"

Fucking hell.

"Dammit, I know alright!" Alec cut him off, raging internally, a complete blockade of ice on the outside. But how long before he truly began to melt? His clenched hands were shaking at his sides with barely contained emotion.

Ryder stared at him through furrowed eyes and the two took a step back away from one another, each one backing up and leaning on opposite sides of the tunnel walls a few feet in separation, one with his hands in his pockets and the other with his arms crossed over his chest.

Alec repeated himself, more quietly this time. "I fucking know."

His eyes were glued down to the floor a few steps in front of him, not on Ryder as he spoke.

"I didn't think that after we found out who she was...that she would be working for the other side," he said at a low mutter.

He could feel the steel gaze on him, watching intently, before they averted as Ryder turned his head to the side. "Well, to be fair, I didn't see this coming either. I know I have only known you people for a little while, but compared to the rest of you, that agent seemed like the most likeable. Go figure..."

Alec gritted his teeth. "Hill was an undercover agent for the FBI, they both were," he said. "This was their whole job..." His voice faded in and out of a muttered tone. He struggled to get his thoughts together.

Alec gritted his teeth.

The fact of the matter was simple; Kishan was gone. There had been evidence of a struggle or an attack left at the scene of a crime. Their only communication device had been destroyed, by no accident, as was clear from the damage it had sustained. Alec wished he could have said that the two had been caught or surprised by the gang members, and were forced to run or leave on that account—any other reason to explain the broken radio, the blood. But Ryder's shepherd had all but confirmed it; no one else had been present. The only ones there at the time had been the two agents. One of which just so happened to have still been in league with the gang while Alec and Maize had been assigned their job back in the city.

She had found them. Not the other way around.

Damn Ryder was right about everything—and to hell if Alec would admit it to his face, but still. Alec had foolishly let his guard down around Hill.

And look what happened.

He didn't stop to think about any kinks in her story after that. He let the title of the job blind him to what was right in front of him the whole time, the answer to his questions. It had been eating him as to how the gang always seemed to catch up to them, almost always quicker than the last as they had moved from place to place. The answer had been because they had someone on the inside.

She must have had a contact device on her, or a tracker. It had never even crossed his mind to search, let alone think to.

He should have thought better, been more cautious. This was all his fault. Maybe if he had been at the house he could have prevented this—

"Hey." Ryder was snapping his fingers to get Alec's attention. Alec blinked and looked at him.

"What?"

"We should regroup with Maize," Ryder said. "Tell her what happened...and get my dog back." He muttered that last part pointedly.

The only thing going through his mind was; you let them down.

Kishan, the captain, Maize. He had failed every one of them by allowing them all to have been tricked from right beneath them.

He had believed in Maria Hill's story. Kishan had too, most likely up until the end.

The woman had fooled them all.

"Are you going to come or not? I'm not going to wait." Ryder cut his thoughts short with his pointed growl.

Alec glared, silently reprimanding the guy for being such a pain in the ass. But it was a brief relief to direct his frustration elsewhere, even if just for a few seconds. His mind felt on the verge of compulsion.

They found Maize and the black shepherd waiting at the rendezvous point back at the first cave they had entered the tunnels through.

They came up to meet her and Alec turned off his light as the natural light from the split opening they had first climbed through lit the space enough to see clearly enough. Through the dimness, one meaningful glance from Maize and a sign of no disappointment that they had returned with nothing was enough to tell him that as he thought, she already knew, she hadn't expected them to find anything.

"You didn't kill each other," she commented to the two of them as they returned, easing through the silence. But in all truth, it was a weak effort, to them and for her, clear from the not even half-hearted attempt in her voice.

"Give it more time, you might change your answer," Ryder muttered in response.

Maize twitched the corner of her lip upwards, but there was no humour in her eyes, not even a hint. She didn't seem cold, that wasn't it. She looked distant. Her eyes when they gazed at him looked far away, as if she was looking through him and seeing something else instead.

He looked away.

The silence was eating, uncomfortable. He wished it would go away, he wanted desperately to break it, but he didn't know what he could say.

So, don't we look like a bunch of idiots right about now? We were tricked by someone right under our noses. Sorry guys, I didn't see this one coming...

He wasn't sure if those were the kind of words any of them needed to hear at the present moment.

Was Kishan even still alive?

The question hit him like a ton of cold ice. He hadn't allowed himself to ask that question, though it hovered like a cloud on the edge of his consciousness, but now, to think it was something different—held a different weight to it.

No. Alec had to stop thinking that way. Kishan was still alive, he had to be. And that wasn't just a gut feeling he had trying to be hopeful, it was the thinking in the perspective of rationality and logic that made him determine this.

He needed to stop clouding his judgement of the situation from his failure and own mental dilemma and look at it from the detective part of him point of view. He had to think.

Kishan couldn't be dead...The more he stopped to think about it the more he was sure he was right and not just being hopeful.

If the main objective of Hill when she integrated with them had been because she turned and was working with the gang to silence him, to kill him, she had several chances and opportunities she could have pulled that off. To take both him out as well as he and Maize for good measure, but she hadn't. She had waited, she had dragged out the act for seemingly as long as she could. Or up until this point. That had to mean something.

What if her goal had never been to kill, just capture?

But then why leave them alive? He didn't know yet.

It, logically, would have been easier just to kill them. Unless she didn't think she could have pulled it all off on her own—which he wouldn't count out as a possibility with Maize around. That could be why she didn't try.

But then why now? Had this sudden attack been orchestrated through her? Had she been filling the gang members in on information from the beginning? If so what made her so sure now was the time to strike? Had it been a matter of getting enough forces together? That could be the case. Or it could not.

His brain felt like it was working in hyperdrive with all the questions running through his head like a circuit about to overload.

And the assassins...

Alec had no way of confirming for sure, but he had an instinctual feeling that told him they tied into this somehow.

They had to have known—when they attacked, there was no way they hadn't with how smug they were acting. Perhaps that was one more reason why he and Maize hadn't been killed and Maize had been right—they hadn't been meant to.

But then; why the attack in the first place? Alec's thoughts caused him to frown to himself and stare pointedly at the floor in thought. Was it merely to keep them on edge? That could have been a theory, for the more on edge they were about being attacked from the outside, the less and less they focused on something sneaking up on them from within. And it had forced them into hiding hadn't it? Somewhere remote, closed off, easy to attack without the risk of external enforcement interfering. If all this was some twisted plot, had this been their end goal all along? A deception game? That seemed rather over complicated—and unnecessary.

Unless...the goal isn't exactly what we think.

But at the same time, who? Who hired them? Who did Hill report to? Who was the master behind all this? Alec's mind was reeling. Too many questions to ask all at once, one only leading to another, and he had not an answer to any of them. He was getting nowhere.

"We'll find him, Alec." Maize was looking at him, staring straight with a gaze that held more confidence than he himself felt, but nonetheless, he nodded anyway.

"She'll probably be bringing him straight to the gang," Ryder input.

Maize had a hard look in her eyes. "So, we need to find them down before that happens."

"Question is...how?" Alec began after a few passing moments, thinking now. Maybe her assuring voice did help restore a flicker of hope in his mind after all, but still, issues and differentiating factors came into play here. "We don't have the same resources to track people here as back in Brooklyn...especially if they're going to try everything they can not to make it easy to find them..." he murmured with concern, frowning to himself. This could prove difficult.

"I'm offended, West." Maize stated slowly, snapping his attention back to her in an instant. He looked up to find her eyes glinting with something—something familiar. "You seem to forget; hunting people who make it difficult to find them is literally my specialty," she said.

Ryder suddenly looked amused from where he sat beside his dog. "Now there's the crazy hunter I recognize." He shot her a half annoyed look. "About time you came-to."

Alec, ignoring his comment, gave Maize a studying look. "Maize...this won't be the same as in the city," he began.

She regarded him steadily without a hint of hesitance. "That won't be a problem. Besides, we've also got a tracker on our side."

"Oh you have no idea..." Ryder added, giving off the odd impression that he knew something Alec didn't, and was silently laughing at it though his expression gave nothing particular away. "Lucky for you, tracking people down is kind of my specialty."

Maize was smirking fully now, regarding facing him with a look he felt should have made him more nervous than it did optimistic. She looked not only certain, but there was a dangerously glint of a hunter shining within her eyes. "It's about time I got back to my profession," she said wickedly. "Better get yourselves ready...We're officially on a man-hunt."