"Where, do you think?"

Hunter Vernon cocked his head to one side, cheeks puffed out. "Not here. East. New Mexico, Arizona...California's the wrong place."

"Fucking DeLuca." Hunter Warren had recently picked up the human habit of swearing, and he found that he quite enjoyed it. "He's been leading us around for too many years now, Vernon. We've finally got permission from Council to use force. I say we move in for the kill and screw the stake-out song-and-dance."

"But what about the hybrid?" Vernon wiped his thick-framed glasses with a hankerchief and squinted. "How will we know who he his, or even if he's with DeLuca?"

"Did you just hear what I heard?" Vernon could be so goddamned annoying sometimes. It rankled Warren to no end that the younger man was in reality the ranking officer. "That was the sound of a hybrid coming into its own. Pretty soon it'll meltdown and start ripping out people's throats without even touching them, just like the one in Des Moines. You wanna risk that?"

"To be perfectly honest with you, Warren, I don't give a shit about these Earthbound. I couldn't care less how many the fucking hybrid takes out, I just wan to go back to Amsar and rejoin the All. I don't like being shut up in this body, cut off from the others. So I say we play this one carefully, make sure we get the right mutant. Then we collar the three crash kids, haul 'em all off the the Roswell Station, and kiss this bumpkin mudball planet goodbye." Vernon replaced his glasses, his eyes shrinking down to the size of dimes through the fat slices of glass. "We give the Council exactly what they want, we go home."

Warren smirked. "You don't really think that do you? Vernon, I've been on Terra three years longer than you, and I can tell you that a Hunting assignment here means that the Council wants you out of the way and is prepared to bury you in a pile of shit so deep you'll never get out of it."

The younger Fold glared at him, his human body rediculous in the red sweater and argyle socks. Like Mr. Fucking Robinson's Anal-Retentive Neighbor Alien, Warren fumed. Warren hadn't known Vernon back on Amsar, but he was willing to bet the guy had been a total dick back home as well as Earthside. And they'd been working together on this DeLuca thing since 1984. It was getting to be too much for Warren, and as much as he understood the need to do things the right way, the Council way, he wanted nothing more than to beat the living hell out of DeLuca for forcing him to put up with this putz for so long. Then he'd take a nice vacation to Fiji and start tailing other mutant leads with less irritating Hunters, maybe in Asia this time.

"I don't care what your experience in the past may have led you to believe. We will be bringing in DeLuca and his hybrid by Christmas, and I will be going home, or else I will personally see to it that Council knows about your lady friend in Saratoga Springs."

Warren's stomach growled angrily. How the hell did Vernon know about Katey? "Doesn't matter," he bluffed, "there's no issue, and no rule says you can't, you know...mingle with the Terrans."

"Mingle? Is that what you're calling it these days?" Vernon's face, for all that it wasn't really his, looked like a grizzled badger's. Warren decided to give up before the hard words escalated into full-scale violence, as it had in Dallas eight years ago. He'd informed the Council of the apparent lack of communication between Vernon and humanity as a whole, not to mention between the two of them, but he'd pissed off a few well-placed Council members in his day and he had a feeling that they were thouroughly enjoying his suffering.

"Fine." Warren started up the Land Rover and pulled back onto the interstate heading east. "I'll drive, you keep yourself alert for more homing signals from the mutant."

"By Christmas, Hunter Warren."