1977
Brian and Marie Finnegan met under the light of a roaring inferno. One that Brian had started. Having just been tipped off that the police had tracked down their IRA cell's hideout to the crawl space above a tailor's shop, the tossed match hadn't even landed in the puddle of kerosene before the group was charging down the stairs. They'd thought the shop below was empty (the owner had fire insurance, don't worry), but Brian was the last one out and saw a light in the office open. Marie Sutherland had come in late to do the books and finish some last minute work. In the end, Brian and Marie escaped by Brian throwing a sewing machine through a window and carrying the smoke-sickened Marie out into the alley. Within three months, they were married, and Marie was pregnant with their first child, Shannon.
Brian was a tiny bit disappointed. A strong believer in traditional gender roles, the head of the Finnegan family wanted a son to pass on his tradecraft of demolitions and mayhem to. So it was with even more joy when a few years later, Marie gave birth this time to a son, Jason.
1984
Life was good for the family of outlaws, until one day when Jason was three years old. Marie dragged Shannon, 7, out to the car early one morning to make an emergency run to the craft store before Brian had to take it for work. One turn of the key, and the car and its two female occupants went up in flames.
Brian was crushed. Left a single father, he was plagued by guilt and the thoughts that if only he'd been more vigilant, if only he'd been more careful, if only he'd done a better job protecting his family… It was his profession that had killed his wife and child. That car bomb was meant for him, make no mistake. The Finnegan family's propensity for revenge reared its ugly head that day. Within a few months, his revenge was served. Hot, with an explosion of napalm in the back room of a laundromat.
As anyone out for revenge learns, after it's over and done with, an aimless emptiness sets in. Brian stayed at home, sitting on the couch and staring at the TV while his son played with blocks in the corner. Usually a vigilant man, Brian missed it when Jason wandered out into the backyard and into his shed. The eldest Finnegan's attention was finally jolted from Mary Tyler Moore by a loud BANG of igniting gun powder. He was up and bolting out the back door before the remote hit the floor, terrifying images of his son's face blown off running through his mind. But when he got to the shed, he found a dazed Jason sitting against the far wall, his face covered in dark soot from the explosion. The dazed toddler, upon seeing his father, busted out into peals of giggles and started clapping.
Brian took Jason under his wing from then on, again finding purpose in raising his son to take on his trade. All Jason's afterschool activities involved coming home and learning how to handle C4, how to make explosives out of styrofoam and household chemicals. He learned how to hotwire a car, how to wire it to blow, how to UNwire it to blow. He learned how to handle any gun Brian could get his hands on. By the time Jason was 8, he was the mascot of Brian's IRA group, running lookout while hanging from high windows like a spider monkey, or playing hopscotch on a street corner. When he was 13, Jason shot his first man. Brian bought him ice cream.
1997
Round about when Jason was 16 years of age, Brian had developed a close friendship with one Orion Kavanagh, a fencer and arms dealer who Brian went to a few years earlier after Brian's previous supplier had the audacity to get himself shot. They were also both single fathers, which gave their comraderie steel bonds. They'd frequently sit and chat, and Orion's remarks had been turning more and more to the troubles he was having with his beautiful red-headed temptress of a daughter, Anna. Or, more accurately, the trouble he was having with her suitors. She wasn't the type of girl to attract the upright, gentlemanly types, but rather the ones with scars and tattoos and more bravado and machismo than good manners and common sense. At least they knew fear, as all of them had been chased out by the point of Orion's shotgun, if not just the threat of it. But it was all getting to be a bit too much. Why, Orion kvetched, couldn't she meet a boy like…well, like Brian? His friend knew how to act around women, how to treat them well and protect them. This gave Brian an idea… So Jason and Anna were introduced by the two sly foxes. Immediately, as soon as the teenagers saw each other, there was a spark. A strong one, strong enough that Brian was immediately convinced that Anna would get Jason to dump his current shrew of a girlfriend and pursue Anna.
Brian had underestimated his son's stubbornness and youthful stupidity. After all, Jason's girlfriend was just one lonely weekend away from finally putting out, or so she claimed. Still, the friendship that Jason and Anna immediately formed was strong as steel, and though Anna didn't get the protective, chivalrous boyfriend that Orion wanted, she got the same in a new best friend. Even though it was obvious to him and Brian that Anna and Jason wanted so much more from the other. (How could Jason not immediately fall in love with this passionate, vibrant, /gorgeous/ red head who shared so many interests with him?) But Fate is a bitch sometimes, and the two kids always seemed to hook up with someone else. Jason came home one afternoon after dumping his girlfriend to run into Anna and her new boyfriend. Jason's girlfriend would later witness him beating the shit out of Anna's boyfriend, when he'd found out he was cheating on Anna. Back and forth, back and forth, the unrequited lovers shared their lives in friendship until something horrible happened… Orion was killed.
2003
It began with a lunch date that Anna was uncharacteristically late for. So Jason went back to her house…to find Orion's body on the floor, his head in a pool of blood. Searching out the house, Jason found Anna tucked away in a hidden crawlspace, crying and sobbing hysterically. There wasn't any doubt that the Finnegans would take her in then, and Jason vowed to help Anna find her dad's killers.
Brian had other thoughts, however. His searching of the Orion's house after his best friend's had turned up with some clues that Orion was involved in more than just fencing and illicit drug deals. It seemed that Orion had been pursuing Anna's mother? Wasn't she dead? And there was something strange about her past. Something involving Anna… Breanna was keeping an eye on Anna? This didn't make sense. Until Brian had more information, he'd just tell the kids that Orion was killed, but he wasn't sure by who. He'd keep looking into it, though, don't you worry. What he didn't expect was how stubbornly both of the kids insisted that they take part in finding Orion's killers, to which the surprised father agreed.
2006
This was easier said than done, however. Brian was no expert investigator, and even with the information he had from Orion's notes, all his trails ran cold. There were so many parts of the notes he didn't understand. Evolved? Suresh Linkage Complex? They were all gibberish to him… Until 2006, when the Bomb went off in New York city. And followed by the passing of the Linderman act and the sudden deluge of information about "mutants" or "Evolved humans", the pieces began to fall into place, and the trail towards Orion's killers was warm again.
As more of the situation surrounding Orion's death came to the surface, Brian began to truly regret the promise he'd made to his kids. Through newly made contacts, the information about what Orion had been pursuing and who exactly he was pursuing turned out to be more disturbing than Brian had expected. Not only is Anna's mother alive, but she's part of Vanguard? And Anna is…an artificial Evolved? He couldn't be sure about that last part, but he kept pursuing his leads.
As Brian got deeper and deeper, it became harder to keep Jason and Anna in the dark. He'd keep them busy with errands and with keeping Orion's business going, but the stress of what Brian found made it harder to cope. He'd start staring at Anna over dinner, forgetting his meal, which the girl and boy both noticed. But he was so close to the end, he couldn't stop.
April 2007
But he did stop, eventually. One night in April of 2007, Brian left the house to follow a "hot tip". And he didn't come back. A phone call by a close friend to the Finnegan house tipped off Jason and Anna. Brian's body was found floating in the bay, apparently drowned. Drowned? Brian wasn't going to go anywhere near the waterfront, and he was a strong swimmer. That didn't make sense.
Jason wasn't the young kid hanging off his father's coattails anymore. As soon as he heard of his father's death, Jason began doing his own searching into his father's personal effects. He discovered some of Brian's notes and tracked down some of the numbers he'd called. While he wasn't able to figure out exactly who these people were that Brian was pursuing, or why he went after them, that didn't matter to Jason. He just wanted revenge. Joined by Anna, they went out to the streets, bribing and beating information out of people, following a trail to the safehouse of people who had most certainly offed his dad.
However, in his anger, Jason hadn't done all his homework, so he didn't know who he was dealing with. The safehouse went up in flames, as planned and as easy as picking cherries. Jason and Anna scarpered off to a hiding spot, a cheap motel where they could pay in cash and spend a few nights in hiding to be sure they weren't followed. There, the two celebrated their victory and the bitter taste of revenge, washed down by bottles of whiskey. But things didn't go as well as they'd suspected.
One early morning, Jason got a text from one of their friends, an ally who pointed them to the safehouse. A message of "Come quick". Visiting his place came up with a corpse, strangled and tied to one of his own dinner chairs, a page from a book clutched in his hand, one Lexi recognized and decoded as a warning that they were being hunted. Spooked, the two fled the house and ran to their own home, a place to think and plan and try to stop the world from spinning. However, just as Anna was opening the front door, Jason spotted the tell-tale scuffmarks on the doorjam, and the barely perceptible shine of a fishing line tied to the door just inside. It was only his fast reflexes that let him tackle Lexi off the porch before the bomb went off, throwing them into the bushes. Ears ringing from the blast wave, minds reeling from the near-death experience, Jason and Anna fled their home town, thinking only about getting away from the people who have their names, faces, and a taste for revenge.
December 2007
They didn't stop fleeing for many, many long months. From Dublin to Liverpool to England to France, they focused only on getting away from Ireland as fast as possible. Once they hit the mainland, they started to relax a little. There'd been no hint of anyone tailing them, so maybe they were safe. Still, Anna suggested that they keep moving, at least on to Berlin where she had some old allies in the gun trade. They could help them get their feet under them again.
No such luck. After arriving in Berlin, they met with Lexi's old contact… Who immediately tried to kill them. The people hunting Jason and Anna had tracked down all their acquaintances, contacts and allies, and passed around an offer of a very hefty bounty for their heads. They discovered the name of the group finally: Vanguard. And they were in the enemy's nest, here in Berlin.
So, leaving the corpse of Anna's old contact behind, they ran again. Were they being followed? Was that car accident they barely avoided intentional? Was the gas leak at their motel truly just a case of old pipes? Maybe paranoia was getting the better of them. But as they jumped a train heading south out of Berlin, it became clear it wasn't just paranoia. The news reports later states that on a treacherous turn, the engine hit an unstable portion of the tracks, enough to knock it free and send the whole train down the steep cliff face. The police found no survivors. Going by the passenger list, it seemed that everyone had either been killed in the crash, or died of exposure shortly afterward. As they were cleaning up the bodies, two passengers who weren't on the passenger list were stumbling their way through the snow-frosted woods, nursing broken bones and looking for shelter.
Barely surviving their injuries, with the help of deep woods camper they stumbled across, Jason and Anna nursed their wounds enough to get on the road again. All they knew was that their enemies were willing to crash a train to get them, and they knew that Vanguard could find them. So they ran again, heading south through Austria and Italy, keeping ahead of the guns trained on their backs, aiming for Africa. Maybe among the semi-lawlessness there, Vanguard couldn't find them.
2008
Their first trek to Africa required stowing away on a boat. They were discovered, but the captain of the ship showed rare kindness, and offered to point them to a job. Distrustful, but starving and cold, Jason and Anna took the advice and found a job working as crew for a ship heading south along the West African coast. Paranoid at first, Jason came to relax after they were out at sea, and it seemed like no one knew who they were, nor gave a damn about the goings-on in Europe. Days of hard work, cleaning and maintaining the boat and handling supplies, distracted the two from their paranoia long enough to relax again. Maybe they'd outrun their pursuers?
Their good fortune didn't last, however. While the crew certainly tolerated the presence of two European helpers just fine, the dreariness and loneliness of the voyages began to take their toll on the others. Eventually, the first mate approached Anna to "introduce" her to the idea of a "ship's wife". And being that she was the only woman on board, of course, this would make her the wife for the whole ship. Unlucky for the first mate, Jason overheard the discussion. The first mate ended up missing an eye and most of his teeth, and Jason and Anna were thrown unceremoniously overboard, though mercifully near shore.
2009
Arriving on shore and trekking to the nearest town, the two discovered they'd gone from obscure African port towns to the middle of Butt-Fuck Nowhere. Using the few possessions they had to barter (and stealing a bit as well), the two sought out direction to the nearest place where they could settle and hide again. Looking for work brought them to a group that they didn't expect however: Cocaine smugglers.
With West Africa being the hub of cocaine coming in from South America to be sent up to Europe, the demand for competent smugglers was high. Although Anna wouldn't have anything to do with the racket, Jason convinced himself it was their best options. Despite her violent protests, he took up with them, acting as lookout and driver for the distribution chain. The promise to Anna was that, as soon as they got enough money, they would leave for some place less dangerous.
2010
When that day came about though, Jason's employers weren't happy to hear about his plans. One of their own, running off with his pay, sounded to them like he had information he was going to sell. They couldn't have that. For the umpteenth time in his life, Jason ran from people trying to kill him. He and Anna managed to get away, but not without Jason taking a few bullets to the gut. It wasn't just a flesh wound or a broken bone, this time. Jason needed medical attention, and Anna knew it. But as they hid in a nearby village, she knew the nearest hospital was miles away, and the drug cartel would be out for them. First aid and local medicine couldn't save Jason, who had already slipped into shock. She knew she had to do something to save him. Who knows why, but one name popped into her head then, as the man most likely to be able to get them out: Linderman. An old contact from her days as a fence. He was rich enough to not be swayed by Vanguard's bounty, or so she hoped. So, finding a satellite phone, she threw up a Hail Mary pass and gave him a call.
Wonder of wonders, he agreed to help her out, in return for a favor from her in the future. She took his offer immediately, and within an hour they were in the back of a truck, heading to the nearest airport, with Jason bandaged and unconscious on the seat beside Anna. The medic said he'd survive his wounds, but likely wouldn't wake up until they got to their new home: New York city.
Linderman had insisted on moving them, providing them with new names (Seamus and Lexi Lane, brother and sister), and helping Lexi get her feet under her. In fact, he knew of an antique shop that was looking for a new owner.
Present Day
Months of hiding away in a small antique shop in New York City has finally started to get to Seamus. Cabin fever is setting in, something he's managed to mitigate with exercise and keeping his hands busy. No time for big time crimes, no space to do really good work. So it's been with hidden relief that he's noticed the same restlessness in Lexi. And more of the old spirit in her that he'd loved… That he still loves, he's coming to realize. She's starting to exude that irresistable esprit de corps that has his heart racing… This woman who he's supposed to be pretending is his sister.
He really needs to get out of the house, and get some distractions.
Speaking of distractions… Far off in Ireland, stuck in the postal system and slowly wending its way to its proper owner, is a padded envelope marked:
From: Brian
To: Jason
Subject: Answers
DO NOT BEND
