Template:Featured Articles/34-2024
 Gabe made a vague noise of assent. He picked up the cards and, using his powers, he flipped through them, sorting them by some mental order he couldn't really begin to explain into two equal piles. "Here," he said after he slowed down, handing her a bunch of cards. He looked down at the card on top of his own stack and sighed. "Ugh. I guess it makes sense to start with SHIELD." Sarah shook her head. "Well my contact there was full of shit, and I ended up with a flight manifest that expected me to believe that 'Project Bork Bork' was a mission investigating dog anomalies in Sweden. You have anybody better?" "I dunno." He knew. Abigail Brand immediately flashed to mind; she certainly owed him a favor. Or forty. But he couldn't face her, not yet, and he was sure he could find other ways in. "Oh, yes, wait." He brightened, shuffling through the cards. "This guy's good." He pulled him out. "Sydney gave me a ton of contacts in and around the Med to start, and Javier's got eyes and ears all over Spain and Portugal. He speaks Spain Spanish and has the gall to make fun of my accent, but if it's some weird separatist shit, he'll probably know about it." Gabe reached for his phone, scrolling through his contacts. "Let me give him a call..." He hit a button and sighed, his posture changing. "Hola, Javier," he said, and then began chattering away in Spanish. Sarah flipped back through the cards while he talked, pulling two from the stack. These would likely need in person visits. Crime families she could do, though she suspected nobody was going to cause shit this close to Mama Bareste's birthday. Somebody was throwing a big party in Italy and everyone was invited. They loved a good party. She would ask Artie to do her a favor and see if anybody left the Morlocks with a chip on their shoulder recently. Maybe someone would recognize abilities or something. After Gabe hung up the phone, she held up another card. "Hell's Belles? You think they would let me join?" "Probably," Gabe said with a shrug, trading his phone for his stack of note cards. "You seem the type," he added as he flipped through, pulling a few cards out of the stack. "Which I mean as a compliment, obviously" He tossed the cards he'd withdrawn aside. "Javi knows nothing," he said by way of explanation. "Like, not a whisper, not a rumor. Which is concerning." He drummed his fingers on the table. "When you talked to SHIELD, they didn't — like..." He wasn't sure why he was hesitating, but the idea he'd had made him uneasy. "Did we rule out the Brotherhood?" Sarah was still getting a feel for the regular suspects, but this seemed different. "Aren't they usually a little more vocal than this? Someone would be manifesto-ing all over the place if it were Brotherhood, right?" "Yeah, but..." Gabriel wasn't sure what he wanted to say, exactly. "I guess. But we have to check all the leads, right?" Sarah shuffled back through the index cards. "Here's another contact for SHIELD. They don't know me, but surely my glowing personality will win them over." "I don't doubt it." Gabriel replied, not meaning to sound quite as dry as he did. He tried to soften his features a bit. "I'll make my way through the rest of my stack. Even though I hate operating on other people's conversational time. It takes forever." He sighed, then cracked his knuckles. "Okay. Let's get to it." |
