City A, Country X, 02:30;

Cautiously, the Hybrid sneaked into the Hotel's private suite, clothed in the attire of a waiter. He had to confirm the authenticity of their informer's lead before making a move. Hybrids, of all the soldiers, couldn't afford to shoot in the dark and endanger a civilian's life, based on nothing but a hunch. Recklessness, in their field of work, had the ability to put the entire nation in a state of uproar. And the one thing that the nation's Army carried around oh-so-proudly as a badge, was the trust their country citizens held for them. Hence, in no way could the Hybrids allow the public to feel insecure by their bare presence.

As he walked into the huge yet dim-lit room, instinctively, the first thing he did was to figure out the number of people in there. Around twenty. Easy, he scoffed to himself. Then, his gaze landed upon the man sitting on the bed, the twenty men facing him. Neil.

David Florence never forgot a face. None of the Hybrids did.

Clearly, they'd been indulged in some sort of classified conversation before he had entered. The agitation with which they were all staring at him proved so. Only after the man had placed the bucket of chilled beer bottles at the corner table of the room, about five meters away from Neil did they relax a bit.

"Your order, Sir.", David said to Neil, his tone giving away nothing but casual hospitality. Earning a slight nod from the guy, the Hybrid then turned around to leave the room. But he didn't leave really. He simply took a cover behind one of the four floor-to-ceiling broad pillars inside the room after he was sure that they were no longer observing him. Calmly, he listened to them for a few minutes then.

"She might've sinisterly executed our brothers, but we'll make her pay for it!", Neil 'preached' to the other men, "Her end will be our beginning. Her blood is what our swords desire the most. Now more than ever."

David Florence, obviously, wasn't unaware of the identity of this 'her'. And by the looks of it, it seemed like these twenty men were to be trained to replace the Sleeper Cells that'd been terminated by Rong Xinghe not too long ago. 'Jeez! Where does this sickness end?!', the man groaned internally. It was as if the more they killed, the more they became stronger.

Clenching his fists, Florence waited for his opportunity. As much as he liked the idea of wiping off all of them from the face of this earth, he was on a mission. He needed to get Neil alive. And the only way to do so was a thunderbolt ambush.

Hence, it wasn't until the leader of the cult disappeared to the rear of the washroom doors that the man finally sauntered his way to one of the men in the back.

"Urgh!", as the sound of someone's neck-snapping resounded through the quiet room, the group of people turned to follow the source of it. Down on the cold white floor lied their companion, his body unmoving. The perp was nowhere to be seen but.

"Hullo idiots!", suddenly, a voice came from the other end of the room, hushing down the panic-stricken murmurs.

Neil walked out of the washroom about three minutes later, only to find his newfound guinea pigs slaughtered throughout the huge place. "F*ck!", he yelled through his clenched teeth, his right hand reaching behind his back to pull out the revolver tucked in.

"Too late for that, baby boy.", David Florence said, gulping down one of the beer bottles Neil had ordered, leaning back against the Black leather armchair lazily, "Budweiser or Carlsberg?"

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Earlston, Scotland, 23:05;

Xi Yuan knocked against the changing room door, waiting for the girl to respond. "Everything okay in there, Love?", he questioned, his tone tender. Couldn't she just sleep in the gown she'd been wearing all day, he wondered? It seemed comfortable and light. Then why did she have to wake up all of a sudden and plan on getting her clothes changed?

"Do n-- not cross the boudariesss, you Duke of Pump... Pumpkinbroke!", the woman said through the other side of the door, her voice defensive.

"Pembroke, you mean.", Xi Yuan laughed out, helpless, hounded by the girl's adorability. Whiskey. And period romance novels. Quite the interesting blend, he had to admit. The girl'd been imagining a world of her own, wherein he was, apparently some Duke, tonight. But that was fine. She would sober up until the next morning eventually anyway. He could survive the craziness till then, of that he was sure.

A minute later, the girl finally stepped out of the fancy little room, her eyes fixed to the ground. She had put on a floral-print Navy Blue dress, her wavy jet black hair bouncing against her shoulders gracefully. "I need to rest.", the girl said then, her tone that of a princess, "You shall le... leave."

"I should?", the man raised his brows, his gaze fixed at the spellbinding woman in front of him.

"I be... believe so.", Rong Xinghe nodded. In reply, however, Xi Yuan bent down a bit and swept the woman's feet off of the ground. "But the Duke wishes to spend the night with the Lady. Allow me?", he smirked at her, carrying her to the center of their bedroom.

"Th... this is inappro... riate!", the girl glared at the man, her eyes wide open. But without uttering another word, the man gently lowered her to the bed.

Closing in on her then, he eliminated the distance parting his lips from hers. It was a long, passionate kiss, that lasted for about a minute. "How about this? Is this inappropriate as well?", he asked her, enjoying the shock in her eyes. The girl did not say anything, for she was out of breath by the simple activity.

Next, he planted a sweet kiss on her neck, "Now?", he added to the question. Then, he nibbled the mole behind her right earlobe, "Still not appropriate?", he grinned as a moan escaped the girl's mouth.

And just like that, he kept teasing her for the next few minutes until she dozed off in his arms, exhausted by the vain attempts to resist the effects of his touch upon her. Such a shameless man, she mumbled to herself before giving in to his warmth in the end.

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City A, Country X, 05:00;

David Florence had skillfully knocked down Neil unconscious, for the sake of ease after a two-hour-long strict interrogation concerning Maksoor Khan. The guy was a tough nut to crack, definitely, provided he hadn't confessed to anything but his association to Ahmed Ali Fadhil's organization up till now. Lashkar ul-Mujahidin, to be exact. But it wasn't an impossible task to break him, the man had concluded by now.

As the four trainee officers sneaked the passed-out man away from the hotel on a stretcher, David strolled through the long high-ceilinged corridor, getting rid of the bloodstains on his hands with the help of some wet hand towels. All of a sudden, he sensed someone staring at him from a distance. Warily yet quickly, he turned to glance at the intruder but the person had walked away expeditiously by then.

Even so, being one of the intellectually blessed Hybrids, the man could figure out the person's identity in an instant.

"What's up, Florence?", Huang Ling questioned the man, as he glanced at the corridor's CCTV footage from the MCO.

"What was Biu doing here at such unexpected hours, Ling?", David answered with a question instead.