Wells was waiting at the bottom of the fire escape when Crawler finally climbed down off her rooftop. He shook his head and put his cell phone back in his shirt pocket. "What took you so long?"
Crawler yawned and stretched out her back. Parts of her still hurt from the battle with the Terran in the alleyway, but the drugs would finish their knitting soon. If she could avoid any form of conflict for another hour, she would be back to full status.
"Ran into a few old friends," Crawler spoke with a smile. "We went out, had a few, then I figured I would come find you."
Working his jaw in a circle, Wells glared at Crawler. "Ever since you came back from Germany, you've been acting like some power hungry, hateful bitch."
Crawler shrugged. "And that's different from when?" she asked plainly.
"Forget I said anything." Wells looked across the Seine. "You find anything of use to us?
"Depends on what you've found out since last night from your contacts."
"It seems that the intelligence I was getting disappeared last night." He sat on a bench next to a wall and rested his hands on his hands. "So your guess is as good as mine."
"Perhaps being in Paris then is a moot point," Crawler stated, leaning against the wall.
Wells clenched his jaw. There was too much for him to do. He had his job, and then he had to find... he shook his head. His country came before anything else. "Any ideas?"
"Go back to Germany and follow Rouddim's slime trail?"
Wells chuckled. "Though you have such a curt way of putting it. However, it probably is a good place to start. You think you can get back to that warehouse?"
"...even if I was blindfolded."
"Then let's go." Wells stood and walked beck to the river line. "We can just get back to my place and I'll get my stuff, then we'll..." He looked over his shoulder. "Crawler?"
But the mercenary was not paying attention. Her gaze was locked on a ship that was only a few streets away. "Something wrong?" he asked, walking up behind her.
She shook her head slowly. "There's something about that ship."
"Well, we can take the long way back to my place."
Crawler let her eyes scan the area. There was just something wrong with this place. She had a good intuition. For most of her life she had ignored it, but now she paid attention to it. Sometimes people wondered if her intuition was more than a gift, but she knew it wasn't. She knew it was something inherited.
And right now she didn't know if today it was going to be a blessing or a curse.
She and Wells walked along the docks, but there was nothing really to be seen. A few crates, some duffle bags, but that was always common on a dock before a ship pushed off for sail.
Then there was a sound, a sound of fighting. It was faint, but definitely there. Curious, Crawler took a step up onto the ramp of the ship.
Wells grabbed her arm. "Where are you going?"
"I want to see what's on this ship," she told him.
He sighed, then pulled her down behind a barrel. Crawler went to protest, but he wrapped his hand around her mouth. Crawler glared at him, but Wells put a finger to his mouth and pointed at a stack of fallen crates. A man was standing, putting another man, obviously injured, around his shoulders.
Wells dropped his hand from her mouth. "I wonder what happened to him..."
Crawler didn't answer. She just closed her eyes for a moment, then jumped back up onto the ramp. "You coming?"
"What else do I have to do?" Wells jumped up beside her and they quickly ran up the ramp before the two on the ground could see them.
They stalked around towards the front of the ship quietly, following a sound that Crawler was only able to hear. Soon they came to a downed guard, and Wells knelt down to feel for a pulse. Finding one, he looked at the female mercenary beside him. "You sense anything?"
"It doesn't work like that-" she stated, then turned her head at a loud noise of wood breaking. Twisting around, she couldn't find the source of the noise. "I have a bad feeling about this."
"What..."
Before Wells could finish what he was saying, Crawler ran past him, grabbing his arm and pulling him along. Before he knew it, they ran to the bow of the ship and jumped.
A loud explosion sounded behind the two, and Wells felt the heat of fire at his back as they flew through the sky from the burst of wind from the explosion.
Then, a sharp pain filled his head as wreckage slammed into his body. The last thing he saw before blackness overcame him was the water of the Seine rapidly approaching him.
Crawler held her breath as she landed in the river. Pulling herself into a ball, she let herself sink while wreckage landed on the surface around her. Far enough from the surface, she was able to see the Varden, or what was left of her, start to sink. Boards floated up while anything heavier sank with the ship.
A cell phone floated past her vision. She reached out and grabbed it, then looked up to see Wells floating above her. Kicking her feet out from the ball, she wrapped her arms around his waist and kicked them both to the surface.
Once there, she laid his head on her shoulder and wrapped one arm under his armpit and across his neck, keeping his head above water. Staying still in the water, she examined the carnage around her. Flames were visible from the pieces of the ship that were still above water. Sirens could be heard in the distance.
"Oh great, this will be fun to explain." She started to paddle to shore, using her metal hand to pull herself along further. "Yeah, I was just checking out this ship and it decided to explode right underneath me."
Getting to the other side of the Seine, she pulled herself and Wells to a ledge under a bridge. She checked the unconscious man for life, and when satisfied, she watched as the fire brigade came and started to aim, ironically, water hoses at the flaming wood.
After a few minutes, Wells coughed and Crawler rolled him to his side so he wouldn't choke on the water in his mouth. He rolled back by himself and looked up at her from under watery bangs. "You ok?" she asked.
"Could be better." Wells replied. "Could be dry."
Crawler nodded. "It's too cold to go swimming. I wish it was August." Wells nodded and sat up. He stared at the wreckage for a moment, then worked to stand. "We had better get out of here. If someone sees us..."
"I know." Crawler stood and examined the wall. There was a set of climbing rungs next to the ledge. She walked to them and started climbing. "So, dry clothes and then move on to Germany?"
"Why not?" Wells said, climbing behind her. "After all, everywhere you seem to go, something happens. Maybe we'll get lucky."
"Yeah, maybe we won't get killed." Crawler looked down at him, winked, and kept climbing. Wells just sighed and followed.