Ted Roget was sitting in his living room with his dead grandfather.
The grandfather was quite dead. He was a rotting corpse sitting in Ted’s favorite armchair.
Ted’s grandfather turns to him and says, “You have to watch out! They’re coming for you.”
Then Ted woke up.
It was early morning, the clock said around two AM. Ted got out of bed a bit shaken. He flicked on his hallway light and got up to urinate. As he walked to the bathroom and passed the desk with his family photos, something caught his eye. Ted stopped and looked at a picture of his grandfather.
Stuck in its frame was a note that read, “Remember 13!”
A knock at the front door shook Ted out of it.
He walked to the early morning visitor, forgetting his full bladder.
Before Ted opened his oak door, he checked out the peephole. A trio of men in matching black suits and ties. Their faces were expressionless, and they all sported shades and earpieces despite the hour.
Ted unbolted the door, leaving the chain latch in place. He opened it a crack. The three men looked at him.
“Mr. Roget,” the lead man began, “We need to speak to you.”
“I’m listening,” Ted said neutrally, beginning to worry.
“About certain crimes you’ve committed,” another man in black said.
“I didn’t break any laws,” Roget said, thinking these men were federal agents or something.
“Oh,” said the third electronically, “but you did.”
Ted thought for a moment. These men couldn’t know about –
Ted’s eyes widen in terror as he slammed the door shut and but his back against the wall next to it.
As he took a calming breath, he heard a loud slam and a louder crack of wood splintering. He looked down and saw a fist coming through his oak door.
“Mr. Roget, you can’t escape,” he heard one of the men say as he ran deeper into his apartment.
Ted heard glass shatter and looked toward his kitchen. A dark figure somersaulted onto his floor, aiming an automatic at him. Ted ducked into his room. He looked desperately for an escape and remembered the chute that lead into his neighbor’s apartment.
Ted shoved a table out of his way and pulled away a metal grate from a small tunnel on the floor. Then he got on his knees and crawled through. He heard more glass shatter from behind him and heavy footsteps in his apartment.
Ted reached the next room and stood up. His neighbor was out of town, so he was able to run though the place without opposition.
Ted reached the door and unlocked it as more glass shattered in this flat. Roget fled out into the hallway.
Two of the men in black were still at his apartment entrance, blocking his path there. Ted turned around and ran toward the far stairs.
As he fled down the hall, windows shattered and body-armored soldiers rolled in, aiming their guns in every direction.
As Ted reached the flight of stairs to the lower levels, he heard the stomping of tactical boots tramping up the flights. He peered in and saw armed soldiers running up the stairs.
Roget backed up and looked behind him. Troops filled the hallway, and the two men in black were slowly walking in his direction.
Filled with the burning desire to escape, Ted looked to his left and saw the fire escape. He risked it and jumped through the window.
He landed on glass shards and cold metal. Roget ignored the pinpricks of pain and jogged down the stairs to the ladder. As he jumped on it and lowered it, he looked up.
Silent black helicopters were hovering far in the sky above him, and black-clad soldiers were streaming down the side of the building. None had yet noticed him.
Roget reached the bottom and ran for his life on the grassy plot that surrounded his building.
Roget reached the back gate, feeling relief. Then he noticed the dark, erect figure blocking his path.
“Going somewhere, Mr. Roget?” the third man in black asked cooly.
Roget fearfully dodged to his side and leaped over the picket fence, landing on the stone terrace of another apartment complex.
Ted, scraped and bleeding, felt his adrenaline being replaced by the fear of inevitability. He was going to be captured. He had nowhere to run.
Then he remembered the piece of paper in his grandfather’s picture frame. “Remember 13.”
It clicked.
A former team of federal agents. The Thirteenth Midwestern Division of the now-defunct Bureau of Enforcement: General.
Team 13.
Ted Roget knew them. They lived in a small apartment about a block away. He had to reach them.
Ted, already running, heard shouting and orders being barked behind him. He reached the city avenue and thanked the divinities for the comforting streetlights. He jogged past a few streetpeople that gave him strange glances and reached a side street. He just had to run though this street onto the next avenue and he’d be in sight of safety.
Then two black vans raced onto this road, disturbing traffic. The vans pursued Ted, almost running him over. He ducked onto a dead-end alley as several dark troops jumped out of the vans.
Heaving for breath and racing for dear life, Roget climbed over a short chain-link fence and reached another flat’s plaza. He jogged toward the avenue east of it and reached the street. He could see Team 13's apartment.
As Ted attempted the home run, a vintage black sedan drove slowly beside him. Its driver rolled down the window and spoke calmly. “You will never escape us, Mr. Roget.” Ted stole a glance and saw it was a man in black. As the expressionless man spoke, a black helicopter zoomed silently overhead. A rope dropped from it, followed by a unit of black-clad soldiers.
Ted jumped onto Team 13's lot and ran to the door. He banged on it, pleading to be let in as the cadre of strike troopers inched cautiously closer.
Finally, after what seemed like a millennium, the door opened.
Ted fell on the floor, straddling the legs of the man who answered As the man pulled him up, Ted looked over his shoulder with teary eyes.
The strike troopers had vanished. The antique sedan’s window was rolling up, but the man in black diving it was still staring blankly at Roget. Then it drove off.
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