Dawn College

Raine listened intently.

Vanessa snuggled into his arms before sprawling out over her bed, stretching lazily and relaxing again, dozing off.

---

"At the moment she's only a little hurt, Jace. They sent us pictures with a paper of today's date. Pretty bad bruising on her face and neck was all I saw. They took Davis with them, but they sent a video of, well..."

"Sorry you got pulled into this because of me." Jace moved to rub the back of his head, sighing against Raine's shoulder. "If you need to get out and away, I can wire money out and you can run if you want, so..."

"I knew what I was signing up for Jace. Just hope its a quick one, bullet between the eyes or something, broken neck. Don't want to be made a mess of either, don't know if you realised that Jackie got mopped off of her apartment's floor..."

"That bad, huh?"

Raine frowned at the conversation, rubbing a hand up and down Jace's back in comfort.

"We all kinda knew what we were signing up for."

"You're International Relations Rogan, you didn't sign up to have your life threatened."

"Kinda obvious it was going to happen in a company such as this one, Jace. Easy to tell at least half of 'em aren't human. I'm gonna have to let you go. Don't want to get traced, hmm? Stay safe for me. Hopefully I'll catch you around, huh? Keep you updated."

"Yeah, sure." Jace let his arm drop after he'd thrown the phone back onto his pillow, lifting his head from Raine's shoulder to press the heel of his palm against one of his eyes, as if he had a migraine or headache.

"Things aren't looking too good, huh?"

"They could be going better," Jace agreed quietly. "I suppose it was hard for you to miss the conversation considering how close I was, huh?"

"I heard most of it," Raine nodded.

Jace just gave a groan, dropping his hand to his side and pressing his forehead to her shoulder again. "More alive than I was expecting, at least, I suppose."

"That's a good thing then, hmm?" She continued to rub his back.

"About twenty six dead. I was expecting almost a hundred by now. Least I know they can look after themselves."

"That's still a lot of people." Raine frowned, "What's going on exactly?"

Darius kissed her forehead, before he walked back to Sage and he gently shook her. "Sage, come on, come to bed."

"Company disputes." Jace shrugged weakly, kissing the top of her shoulder with a sigh.

---

Sage slapped at his hand with a grumble, rolling over so her back was to him and she was facing the sofa.

"Be a little more specific?"

"See, when your company is big, you have disagreements with other companies because of one thing or another." Jace absently moved to hold onto her waist. "And apparently my mom pissed of the company Syntax - dunno if you've heard of them - so now they're picking off main members of the company to try and break it down."

"And how exactly did she piss them off?"

"If I'd have figured that out, I would have apologised to the company and made reimbursements for them already. They won't tell me what to do to make it up to them and mother won't tell me what she did wrong."

"You actually spoke to your mom? I thought that was the last thing you wanted?"

"Now she's ignoring me because she knows she's done. I can't find her, even with the help of a seer and Syntax refuse to talk to me. I'm pretty sure I've been shot in the head today already before I managed to shut the window because I had blood in my hair."

"I could try looking for her if you wanted. I know basic tracking crap."

"No, its fine. We're dealing at the moment. Hopefully they'll agree for correspondence in the next couple of weeks. If they're showing Liara still alive, they obviously want something."

"Do you have any idea where she is?"

"Liara or my mother? Because I don't know where anyone is."

"I was gonna say Liara. If you knew where she was, maybe you could help."

"I just know that somehow they recognised my relation with her and they took her because of that."