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Tony waited between the truck and the faded old bus, then ducked under the gate that closed off the small courtyard behind the old, ramshackle mansion that was reminiscent of the better days of this small, faded and decrepit town like everything around it on the northern border of Guatemala. He hoped the bus hid him from prying eyes, not that he actually saw anyone paying attention to him.

"He's watching," Harry whispered this morning before falling into a feverish sleep. Tony didn't really believe this feverish whisper, although, on the other hand, everything Harry had told him before turned out to be true.

Tony was good at reading people.

On the one hand, this was a very useful skill in dealing with parents, and then with classmates at the military academy. On the other hand, one of the courses he had to take to qualify for his PE degree before he changed his major at Ohio State University was psychology. The course was short but quite informative. Later, at his own accord, Tony took a couple more psychology courses, which greatly helped him in his work, especially during his tenure at NCIS.

For the first time since childhood, Tony couldn't read his partner. It didn't seem threatening, just frustrating, especially since, given Harry's condition, Tony was supposed to protect him and keep him safe.

Somehow it didn't work out the way Tony had imagined.

Annoying.

He ducked through a side door hidden behind a small flowering tree and walked into a back room that overlooked the back wall of the local hospital. He chose this house deliberately - Tony understood that in order to receive more or less familiar medical supplies, he would have to go to the hospital and talk to people who could understand his more or less unprofessional explanations.

Tony quietly entered the room, placed his bag on the table and checked on his companion. Harry lay on the old, tarnished sofa, shivering slightly, under the duvet that Tony had unexpectedly found earlier in a wooden box hidden under the table. He didn't want to search the house, didn't want anyone to know that they were there.

Even though the house had been abandoned for some time, there were eyes around that might be interested in the people who were hiding in the abandoned house. Tony was already surprised that they hadn't been discovered yet. No matter how good his undercover skills were, he had a foreign country, a lack of support, and, most difficult of all, a sick man on his hands working against him.

Tony took food and water out of his bag. He was able to find fresh-looking vegetables and canned food from army rations, as was stated on side of the can. They had no means of cooking, so canned food was the best way to don't go hungry.

Tony looked at the fever medicine he had purchased from the hospital pharmacy. His Spanish, good enough not to raise questions about his nationality, and his whole appearance with tanned skin, simple worn clothes, a slight limp enough to make him look like a tired worker from somewhere nearby - let his words about a child with a cold ring out more or less plausible. Tony wasn't sure if Harry's sudden illness was just a cold, but it was the best he could offer him at the moment.

Tony had no means of contacting his superiors through the usual channels, and he didn't want to risk reaching out to Blair through the Spirit Plane without someone watching his back, so going with the flow was the best he could do.

Tony double checked how to take the medicine and poured water into the electric kettle - the only working kitchen tool he found in the pantry besides a useless sack of flour, several bags of rice, dried out carrots and containers of spices he couldn't identify by smell. They were lucky that the electricity in the house was not cut off.

He wiped their only mug, poured in the powder, and topped up the boiling water, all the while thoughtfully trying to understand from which side he felt that hidden surveillance that bothered him. Blair always said that Tony was the only person who associated his feelings with the cardinal points. This feature has seriously helped him out in troubles several times already. He had encountered a similar sense of danger among soldiers, especially those involved in covert operations, but he himself could pinpoint such feelings that were inaccessible to others.

Lately, Tony had even been training himself in the ability to “see” in his mind the person from whom the danger came. The truth is that in this particular case the person somehow kept escaping. Irritation from incomprehension, his constant state of late, made him grind his teeth.

Harry coughed and Tony shook his head, clearing away unnecessary thoughts. Now the main thing was to bring his colleague to such a state that he would move independently, so that they could leave this unfriendly place. He didn’t like it here, although he didn’t quite understand how they managed to get into this lost town. Or even how they managed to get this far, given the circumstances.

There was nothing here except an infirmary with the loud name Central Hospital, a sleepy market that worked from 6 a.m. to 11 a.m., and plantations of who knows what all around. At first Tony thought that hemp was being grown here, but then he discovered that most of the food, clothing and household items were made from corn and fell into complete confusion. He couldn't even imagine that it could work like that.

A Very Special Agent, although Tony had recently begun to call himself an Agent of Justice feeling a little bit silly, like it was a Superhero name, raised his companion's head, trying not to wake him up or cause another coughing fit, and slowly poured the infusion into him.

Harry's acute fever had already abated a little and Tony hoped that the powder would help.

Tony yawned. He felt as worn out as his clothes. It was the third week of the mission—not a long time for an undercover operation, but a bit too much time for a rescue mission—and he was already questioning his abilities, his outlook on life, and everything he had believed in before. He wanted to drop everything and hide somewhere just to think and analyze.

It was the first such strange mission he had led in three years, since leaving NCIS to join Thomas Morrow at the Department of Homeland Security.
Tony's action was completely unexpected for all his former colleagues. Even Gibbs was absolutely confident in the devotion of his “faithful St. Bernard.” After all the problems, mistakes, uncertainties and betrayals, everything finally became... smooth.

Even.

Funny word, most people would wait for the thought to continue.

Not Tony.

He called the atmosphere in the team “even” - not cold, not hot, not friendly, not hostile... Even.

And then one day he submitted his letter of resignation with the approval of the director and permission to count vacation days into two weeks of work.
Luckily, the team was between cases, so when Gibbs, unusually hesitantly, raised his head and looked at Tony, he raised an eyebrow, silently turned away and disappeared into the elevator.

Tony didn't personally say goodbye to anyone on the team. He sent them more or less standardized letters with best wishes and no offers to stay in touch. He returned his work phone and threw away the personal one as soon as he left the building. He was never interested in whether his departure was explained to anyone, not that he even explained it to the director.

That same evening, Tony closed his apartment and boarded a plane flying to Vancouver, Canada. Something was pulling him there. Tony did not follow his habit of taking his stylish and expensive wardrobe with him, throwing a pair of jeans, a simple suit, a couple of shirts and sweaters into a small suitcase. He did not take his laptop with him or any of the unread books that lay in a heap on the floor next to the bed.

Something, some strange feeling or condition, pulled him to the northwest, towards the large open water. Tony couldn't explain it to himself.

On the one hand, the former agent began to perceive the space around him more acutely - he always had heightened senses, but recently he began to read, to understand, so to say, the space around him even by the feeling of the wind on his skin. And he didn't like what it made him feel.

Danger.

Tony wanted to leave not only his apartment or the Navy Yard, but Washington and the entire coast.

On the other hand, Tony began to read people around him with a strange ease. He certainly couldn't say he read their thoughts, but he could read their emotions, intentions, their mood.

This bothered him. It made him feel... not exactly crazy... but strange, distance himself from people.

This didn't happen to Tony all of a sudden; both conditions had been creeping up on him for about a year. He felt his senses gradually adjusting. It was such an interesting feeling that Tony wasn't even disappointed or scared.

He looked at himself and within himself with cautious interest. And then, at one unspecified moment, Tony realized that, firstly, he needed to resign, and secondly, he definitely needed to go to the northwest, to the other coast. And not just California, but more northern places.
He did just that.

Tony didn't know what he was looking for. Something or someone.

He just hoped that his newfound senses would help him find his destination.

Tony landed in Vancouver. He walked out of the airport, breathed in the salty, watery wind, and caught a taxi to the beach. It was early spring. The sky was high, the wind was cool, the ocean did not know what to think of itself - the waves lazily licked the beach, but from time to time a sudden steep wave flew over the rocks and crashed onto the sand.

Tony was sitting by the window in one of the few open cafes near the beach. He slowly ate local fish and asparagus and let his senses wander. He did not consciously try to analyze his feelings.

Tony waited.

And then waited some more time.

After a second cup of cocoa and a hefty slice of warm apple pie with vanilla ice cream, Tony paid the bill, asked for directions to the nearest car rental agency, rented a sturdy Jeep, and drove south.

Tony wasn't sure how long it would take him to drive... where he actually needed to be...

It turned out to be a journey. Two days’ journey.

To be honest, he got lost by the evening of the first day - having already crossed the border in the opposite direction, Tony succumbed to an incomprehensible sense of urgency and turned inland from the ocean. Somewhere in the Tacoma area he was pulled towards Mount Rainier and turned east.

In almost complete darkness, when Tony thought that he would have to stop somewhere on the side of the road and sleep in the car, because he did not understand where he was, the lights of a gas station and a motel came on on the right around the bend. Tony felt he had to stop here.

There were three available rooms, but before Tony could choose, a waiter jumped out of the cafe door holding a kitten by the scruff of the neck. In the tradition of the team's best quarterback, Tony rushed across him and snatched the animal.

“Hey, man!”, the waiter stopped dead in his tracks and glared at Tony. “This little bastard has been trying to get in the kitchen all day!”

“I’ll take him,” strangely, there was not a single drop of doubt in the former NCIS agent’s heart that he needed this kitten. Quite strange, considering that he never had any pets, except for the fish his mother drank, and didn't even want to.

The girl at the reception frowned at the waiter, sighed at Tony and offered him a room on the first floor the farthest from the cafe. Magically, a box with an old T-shirt inside, a bowl of water and a bag of cat food materialized there.

The night was unexpectedly peaceful, and in the morning Tony found himself sleeping nose to nose with... two cats. Yesterday's foundling, reddish with white socks, a white ear and a tie under his chin, quite furry for being on the smallish side, twitched his paws in his sleep, apparently running away from the waiter again.

The second one, larger and older, completely black with strangely silvery eyes, looked at Tony carefully, then reached out, licked his nose with a rough tongue and slowly dissolved in a ray of sunlight.

Tony blinked and upon some thinking decided he was dreaming, apparently he was still sleeping.

A warm, heavy, furry paw with cool leather pads patted him on the cheek and Tony opened his eyes to the silver cat's eyes. The paw and eyes were quite tangible, the rest of the body swayed ghostly above the pillow.

“Mrryau,” the cat’s voice sounded almost reproachful.

"Yes, captain, yes, I'm not sleeping!" Tony opened his eyes wide, trying not to fall asleep again. "But I don't understand."

"Mrryau," the black cat meowed with some disapproval. Then he sighed and disappeared again.

After breakfast, Tony was again drawn to the ocean. The still unnamed kitten was sleeping in a donated box in the front seat, the wind was warmer, it smelled of some strange flowers, and Tony, completely overwhelmed by the calmness and absence of problems, almost missed the turn to Cascade. The urge to turn into the city was strangely overwhelming for no reason at all.

The place was busy, active, filled with cars and people. Tony instantly lost his sense of direction, obtained a headache, and was about to turn to leave the city when a furry paw with cool leather pads touched his right cheek and turned his head to the left.

“Ooo-kay,” Tony turned left at the nearest turn, then drove for a long time along the embankment, was directed by the ghostly cat around the park to bypass the port. Then Tony stopped counting turns as they drove through the university campus, past another park, and into a neighborhood of private homes with large lots.

“Mrryau,” the cat meowed in his ear so suddenly that Tony braked sharply, the box with the red kitten flew to the floor of the car and a powerful double dissatisfied meow forced Tony to cover his ears with his palms.

"Hey man, what are you doing here?"

Tony slowly opened his eyes, turned his head and looked into bright blue eyes.

"Mmm... Like... The captain brought me here?"

"Simon? But..."

"Simon? No, his name is Captain... Not sure though..."

"Who's name?"

"Cat's..."

Then the red-haired sufferer got tired of sitting on the floor of the car and hoarsely screamed “Murryaw”.

The blue-eyed stranger laughed with childish pleasure, walked around the car and pulled the red-haired out.

"Are you the Captain?"

“No,” Tony watched as the stranger and the little traveller walked around the car, “No. The Captain is the black one who disappeared into thin air.” The last remark made him feel stupid, but the man tilted his head and looked at him with interest.

"In the air?... It happens. I'm Blair." He extended his hand through the window and Tony suddenly calmed down and felt that he had arrived where he needed to be.

Six months later, Tony sat across from Tom Morrow with the red Bowie, twice as fluffy, although still small, in his arms - cat flatly refused to be left alone in the apartment and Tony knew that if he left him at home, Bowie would get out and somehow will find him, this has been verified experimentally. Blair laughed that Tony had found his familiar. Morrow only raised an eyebrow when he saw his former colleague's companion and said nothing.

Tony was petting Bowie now, trying to find the words to explain what he wanted to do without scaring the older man. Morrow looked at the young man strangely thoughtfully.

"...I'm not very sure in what capacity I can work for you... I just know that I trust you the most."

Morrow nodded, thoughtfully tapped his fingers on the table, and nodded again.

“No, you won’t fit into any of my teams. I've been thinking about this ever since Blair called me, saying that you have nowhere to go but work for me. And you really shouldn’t become a private detective.”

"But..."

Tony looked so funny in his amazement that the older man laughed loudly and, leaning across the table, patted the young man on the arm.

“It’s not a conspiracy,” Morrow snorted, “I think you’re so lucky that the right people are around at the right time.”

"Every now and then," Tony retorted melancholy.

“Can’t be lucky all the time,” Morrow agreed. “Though I am sure all will be much better from now on. Wait, why do I hear another cat purring somewhere near my chair all the time? Much quieter than your Bowie, but I hear it...”

Tony took a deep breath.

"Come here, Cap."

The air above the table shimmered a little and thickened into a rather large, well-fed black cat with silver eyes.

“He’s the one who doesn’t like it when people don’t pay attention to him. His name is Cap. My...” Tony paused, searching for the word, “Companion.”

"Yes, I know about spirit animals. But... then you must not be alone? Blair said that you have very well-developed senses, so you are a Sentinel? Where is your...?"

“No, no, not a Sentinel. I, how to put it more precisely, Blair has not yet understood who I am, actually. We experimented for some time and he said that teaching me would only spoil me, for some reason I control everything really well on my own.”

The elderly man listened to his interlocutor almost like a child with his mouth open.

"Even Blair doesn't know?"

Tony laughed. How good it was that he could tell someone everything and wouldn’t be ridiculed for making things up or sent to a psychologist. Especially if this someone was his potential employer.

“Even Blair hasn’t understood yet. He said that I'm a combination of the Sentinel and Guardian features. Cap and Bowie somehow help me too. And in general, Blair said that now I need to go out into the world to understand how to work with all this in practice. That’s it.”

"Yeah..." Morrow leaned back in his chair and looked at the cat lounging on the documents in the middle of the table. "Well, let's come up with a position for you."

Tony didn't like receiving undeserved privileges. Being the Homeland Security Director's personal investigator seemed like such an unearned privilege.
One week.

During this week, Tony reviewed several old cases that haunted the director, and in three of them he discovered new facts that made it possible to conduct a fair review of all of them. Two more revealed major fraud and poor agent performance.

He interviewed three witnesses and confirmed the truth in two cases and the lie in the third.

Tony was present at one of the interrogations of the suspect and helped uncover the fabrication of facts.

The most surprising thing was that none of the Homeland Security Agents objected to his presence and inspections.

"Come on man, everyone knows you have a nose for the weird. Even NCIS people admit it, although not everyone does." Special Agent Warwick, who had asked Tony to review the transcript of two statements that were strangely but unprovably contradictory, tapped him on the shoulder and left the office, grabbing the last slice of pizza from the box.

Tony shrugged, threw away the empty boxes and stopped by the Director's office on his way home.

"I want to work with people, not with paper."

Morrow looked at him thoughtfully over his glasses and nodded.

"Let's try."

Tony still couldn't figure out his position. He worked with people. He was not just an investigator, a researcher, or even a kind of “wizard” when he pulled a solution out of thin air. Thanks to his abilities, he was all this and then some. In some cases, he was the last resort, and not at all because the other agents knew or were less capable than him, everyone noted that he inexplicably sensed the right direction in the investigation. Even his famous shaggy cat Bowie, surprisingly graceful for such a large animal, has found unseen evidence on several occasions.

This one case was strangely different from the previous ones. No matter what cases he had been involved in before, to hear simple - “we need to get a British colleague out of… we actually don’t know where he is now… back to Britain” - it sounded strange. This was Morrow's personal request.

"I know it's not your specialty, but still I think only you can do it." Morrow looked at him very carefully. Tony felt like he wanted to say something to him, but changed his mind at the last moment. He looked at his boss searchingly, trying to "sense" the problem, but felt nothing but unsure irritation. There was no danger in this silence.

“Well, I can’t say anything until… I can try... Okay, I’ll go. Will there be a backup or are we on our own?”

“I’ll give you contacts, but I don’t know if they will help you.” Morrow tiredly rubbed his hands over his face. "I mean, will they be able to help..."

Tony nodded thoughtfully. Then it suddenly dawned on him, "Does he have...", he waved his hand thoughtfully around his head, "...this … like me?"

Morrow looked at him meaningfully.

Tony nodded and went to get ready.

The only thing he knew for sure was that the last place this Harry had made contact from was Buenos Aires.

So, Tony went to Buenos Aires.

He hadn't had this much fun for a long time. At least at first.

He couldn't contact Harry directly; the identifying mark for the meeting was dancing tango in a green and silver suit with a blonde in red in the clubs of the Puerto Madero barrio and the word “partner”.

Tony danced. And danced. And danced for almost two weeks. He always loved to dance and while his mother was alive, he even learned it from professionals. Therefore, now he remembered everything he could, went through all the clubs in barrios Puerto Madero and Palermo twice, and some of them three times, and danced until he dropped, picking up all the tricks from the professionals.

On the ninth day, someone tapped him on the shoulder during the last figure and said, “You chose the wrong partner.”

Standing in front of him was a black-haired man a little younger and shorter than Tony, dressed in a red and gold dance costume. His partner wore a green dress with silver braid.

Uncertainty and a momentary desire to disappear flashed in the stranger’s eyes for a moment.

Tony arched an eyebrow. His contact raised an eyebrow in response.

The uncertainty evaporated.

They simultaneously stamped the heels of their mirror-polished shoes, deftly swapped partners and danced across the hall.

They ended up in the apartments that Tony rented from a nice old lady in an old multi-storey building in the largest commune of Buenos Aires, Palermo, not far from the zoo. Tony ducked into the bathroom to change clothes and when he came out, he found his contact already in jeans and a faded T-shirt rummaging through a small suitcase that had come from nowhere.

"Harry." He nodded, without stopping rummaging, finally fished out a bottle with a half-torn label and quickly swallowed the contents. “Sorry, I think I caught something, my throat hurts, I’m trying to cope as quickly as possible.”

Tony nodded sympathetically, then caught himself, "Tony."

They shook hands. Harry's hand was indeed a little dry and hot, Tony caught a painful muscle tension.

The young man seemed quite competent at blending into his surroundings, his Spanish sounded natural enough - closer to the European version, but as ordinary that no one would ask questions.

Tony fell asleep halfway through his musings. He felt no unpleasant echoes of thoughts or feelings from his companion, and for the first time in all that time, he slept deeply and peacefully.

They mutually decided against going to the café for breakfast and Tony switched on an old gas stove.

“Why such a strange method of communication?” Tony had not made coffee on the stove for a long time and could not be distracted, but he was also exhausted by curiosity, so he asked the question while standing with his back to his new acquaintance.

He didn't see Harry shrug, but he felt a wave of tired indifference wash over him.

“It was a joke, a bet with... friends, I was a good fighter then, but I couldn’t dance to save my life...”

"I couldn't tell from you," Tony chuckled.

“I had to learn,” Harry chuckled in response, but somehow dryly, tiredly. "I lost a bet and had to learn. That's when I said..." Harry fell silent for a moment as if flipping through his memories. "...something like - if you lose me, you will find me on the dance floor. Looks like someone remembered."

"You're lucky I can dance."

"You're lucky that you can dance, and I know where to catch rumors."

"Still risky."

"He who doesn't take risks doesn't drink champagne."

"It is truth too." Tony froze with the coffee cup up to his mouth, "What was that with the color?"

"Inside joke, long to explain." For the first time ever, Tony detected any emotion from Harry other than fatigue, and it was mischief. “But it worked; I wouldn’t have paid attention to the rumors if it weren’t for the mention of color.”

Tony didn't have time to react to his colleague's words when a sharp sense of danger simply hit him on the head and he dived under the table, grabbing Harry's legs along the way and dragging him under the table too.

He still didn't really understand how it all worked. Blair gave him a bunch of different exercises for meditation and concentration. During his free time, Jim would come and start distracting him with conversations and sudden reactions that Blair would force him to analyze and try to work with or around. He was still blindsided when he felt other people's emotions so vividly and his body reacted to them faster than his mind.

The feeling of danger became even stronger. It seemed to hover over the table in uncertainty, and in turn, Harry pressed Tony to the floor, not allowing him to raise his head. Finally, everything seemed to dissolve, but for some time they pretended to be a rug.

The desire to leave was mutual and very strong. There was no need to even discuss it.

It took about ten minutes to pack their things and both agents moved to a small motel on the outskirts of the Nunez barrio in the Northern part of the city.
"I can't get out of the city, that's why they sent you to look for me." Harry was laying on one of the beds, staring at the ceiling. They had been in the room for about an hour in complete silence when he finally answered Tony's unasked question.

"Are you being followed?"

"Umm... I guess not, I just can't."

They fell silent again.

Tony took out food, which by some miracle he managed to take with them from the apartment. He made coffee in the common kitchen for the guests and the men finally had breakfast, although without appetite.

After some time, Harry spoke again.

“I don’t really understand how to explain it, it’s like I was cursed, that’s what it feels like.” He glanced quickly at Tony, but the other man just chuckled.
This land generally made you think about something supernatural, but if Tony accepted the theory about the superpowers of the brain and sensitivity training (in such moments he courageously tried not to think about the cat out of thin air and the Spirit Plane), then the thought about curses and, accordingly, about witches and any other scientifically unexplained things did not fit into his concept of the world.

Some time later, Harry sighed and briefly explained that he had a small assignment, mainly related to checking rumors about suspects in a case he had been working on for quite some time. In short, he immediately determined that one of the people was just a copycat, and the second was indeed a member of the gang, but was seriously ill and did not even live to see Harry in person.

Harry collected documents from the police to close the case, physical evidence that was found in the belongings of the former suspect and indirectly indicated involvement in the case, and was ready to go home. Not so! Literally the minute he left the station, everything went wrong.

First, he met a school friend, a good friend, who beat him up instead of an evening of memories in a hotel restaurant. As a result, Harry ended up in a hospital instead of his office in London. He missed his flight.

He was practically standing near the ticket office to buy a ticket for another flight when he was robbed. Simply robbed. Apparently the thief was very talented, because Harry, with all his ability to sense others (much more developed than Tony's, as he understood), not only did not notice, but did not even feel a hint of intention.

Now Harry could not fly away officially (he hesitated on the word “fly away” and Tony decided that his colleague had tried other ways of leaving, but nothing had worked).

Then Harry decided to take a roundabout route. However, his contact was gone; his trusted assistant, who had helped Harry and his colleagues more than once, had just moved. He just up and moved without approval. Moreover, he did not leave coordinates.

Harry lay low.

He was not limited in time, there was not a single open case that required urgent attendance, so Harry decided to treat this strange state for relaxation. He sent a message to his colleagues and walked around Buenos Aires for a week.

He didn’t immediately pay attention to the little things - the concierge at the house didn’t recognize him and refused to let him in; the barista in the neighboring cafe mistook him for a new visitor every time he approached the table; museum tickets got lost on the way from the ticket office to the door...

When all these oddities accumulated and began to escalate, and none of his colleagues responded to the messages to top all this, Harry methodically went through all the events and even got a little scared. There was a feeling that it was as if he had been "erased" from the memory of all the people with whom he had communicated over the last couple of weeks - there were situations, but he was not in these situations. Even the local colleagues with whom he worked did not recognize him. All this went beyond a simple joke.

Tony agreed with Harry.

He wasn't very keen on the idea of "erasing", but Tony himself had had situations when trusted people inexplicably stopped being trusted and "recognized", even without any "erasure".

“Did they try to get you out?”

“If you're here, it means they tried. My boss once said that he had a friend in the States; they met while working on the same case - that friend was not from our service, but was somehow involved. I guess he turned to him, since you're here." Harry shrugged, "Even a month without contact with me starts to make everyone nervous... I know how to get into trouble."

Tony shuddered. With all his undercover experience, he understood very well what it meant to be out of touch from both perspectives.
“Have you tried leaving Argentina? Maybe from somewhere like Uruguay it would be possible...”

"Ha!" Harry looked at the long unpainted ceiling of their new abode.

Over the past week, they had changed two motels and four apartments, each one in an increasingly poor area, but each and every time the feeling of danger made Tony break down and look for something new. With all the problems and Harry's progressive cold, they both began to look more and more like inhabitants of some Brazilian favela than like a tourist or a resident of a respectable commune in Buenos Aires.

In between searching for a new apartment, Tony informed the Director that he had found the lost agent and received nothing in response.

The Buenos Aires contact Morrow gave before leaving did not respond. Something went wrong. It seemed.

Tony chalked it up to temporary bad luck, although usually he was lucky in the strangest and even hopeless situations.

After the "sense" of danger left physical and quite deep claw marks on the doors of the storage room they were hiding in and caused them to flee apartment number five, Tony grabbed the backpack they had packed everything in, a coughing Harry, and rushed across the nearby border to Uruguay.

They did it, but literally on a wing and a prayer - they almost ended up caught in a police raid.

“Your "luck" is rubbing on me,” Tony exhaled sarcastically as they settled into a motel on the outskirts of Montevideo.

The local contact was taken to the police the day before.

The next day, Tony reached an agreement with a truck driver who spent the night at the same motel to take them to Brazil. Maybe they will find something there other than wild monkeys.

Here they were relatively lucky - the truck driver left them in Sao Paulo and Tony got through to one of Tom Morrow's secret contacts.

Relatively lucky.

Their faces were included in a list posted in all police stations in Brazil. And the contact ended up in the hospital right before their eyes.

Tony was really worried.

Homeland Security agent felt that they were slowly crawling out from under the oppressive cloud of danger that had covered them in Argentina, but it didn’t do them too much good. There was a feeling that this was connected both with the deterioration of Harry’s condition and somehow with Tony himself. Either he turned out to be an unaccounted card in the opponent’s layout, or his abilities evolved once again and he managed to avert enemy's eyes to some degree.

They decided that they could no longer rely on contacts given by other people and decided to move towards the States. Yes, it was a long road, but the less they “shine”, the calmer everyone will be. Moreover, Tony had his own contacts in Panama and Mexico.

They moved deep into Brazil towards the border with Colombia.

The decision was clearly the right one, because even Harry felt better and began to demand that Tony let him drive an ancient army jeep, which they stole from an abandoned car lot in the Manaus area. Hitchhiking in these regions was more dangerous than falling apart cars.

Harry was definitely a much more skilled driver than Tony thought, because in the night he was behind the wheel, they not only drove from Barcelos to the border, but somehow got almost to Bogota.

"How is that?" Tony thought he was still asleep.

“I’ve been to these places, I remember a shortcut,” Harry shrugged.

"Shortcut," snorted Tony .

They had to abandon the car behind Bogota, it would not have passed through the mountains, fortunately they were picked up by a local bus that was heading to the border with Panama.

Luck was quite relative - with them rode two dozen geese, three goats, a grandfather with a smelly basket, a dozen aunts with very shrill voices and two mothers with a litter of sobbing babies. By the time they stepped out into the fresh air, it seemed to both Tony and Harry that they had traded an awl for soap.

The “soap” turned out to be Panama. They didn’t understand how they managed to cross the border without noticing, but at least one silver lining over the past two weeks inspired very timid hope.

In Panama, Tony miraculously found his casual acquaintance, who helped in one of his NCIS cases. He was not sure that the man would really be able to help, but apparently he was no stranger to smuggling, because he arranged for him and Harry to board a fishing boat that was heading somewhere towards Nicaragua.

Harry shook his head indifferently when Tony wanted to consult with him, and began to cough.

It was quite cold in the ocean at night, Tony put all the clothes, which remained in the backpack and did not fall apart from the dirt, on Harry. He didn't have the strength to keep track of where they were going and for how long. A couple of times at dawn he fell into a short nap, although this aggravated his fatigue.
"Man, hey man!"

He was pulled out of yet another doze by a fish-smelling hand that shook Tony by the shoulder.

"You must go ashore here! Quickly!"

"What?" Tony couldn't shake his sleep. "Where?"

“This is Trujillo. We can’t go any further. Ask Jose Gasulla at the port, he can take you to Belize if he’s there.”

Tony didn't understand where exactly they were dropped off and wasn't sure he remembered the name correctly, but between Harry, who couldn't get out of his feverish sleep, the lack of local money and his own half-asleep state, he did the only thing he could - followed the advice.

Before looking for this Jose, Tony, mentally apologizing, reached into the bag with Harry's things in search of something to barter. He himself had no resources left.

The bag contained official protocols in Spanish, several photographs and about five strange shapeless fragments of a shimmering opal-type stone interspersed with gold. Apparently this was THE physical evidence.

Tony mentally apologized again, thinking that with documents without physical evidence, Harry would still close the case, put a couple of fragments in his pocket and went searching.

To unexpected luck, Jose was there and reluctantly agreed to take them at night towards Belize. Tony didn't understand how they survived the day at the port - almost without water, without food, hiding in Jose's barn under nets.

The cold night on the boat was even a welcome change. Tony didn’t think about anything beyond the next hour, he didn’t even try to scan the surrounding reality for danger - he didn’t have the strength at all.

"Hey man, you're lucky - I can drop you off in Livingston."

Tony nodded his head sleepily - now he almost didn’t care, just to be on land and sleep.

Next day Tony found himself in the situation of a thief who found a Kohinoor among stolen silver spoons and now cannot even throw it away and is scared to carry it with him. He tried to go to a hospital with Harry, who was still deeply feverish and sleepy, in this Livingston, but the feeling of danger at the sight of a police officer standing in the lobby scared him away once more.

Over the course of six months of training, Blair managed to ingrain attention to sensations into his subcortex. Tony would have been glad to cast aside his fears, but he couldn’t. Not worth it.

The feeling of danger subsided once again, but this did not increase their luck.

Strange concept of "luck". On the one hand, it rejects conscious influence on events; on the other hand, it can work in completely hopeless cases, regardless of the initial conditions.

Their initial conditions were not so hot.

All possible contacts were out of reach.

Tony even tried to contact Blair through the Spirit Plane but was never able to get into the right state. Not only was this not worth doing alone, but Tony suddenly realized, that since he landed in Argentina, he has never seen Cap, his spirit animal. Unlike many Sentinels and Guides, he had a very friendly relationship with his cats. Both the ghostly black spirit animal Cap, who usually hypnotized him with his silver eyes until Tony found a solution to the problem, and his physical sidekick Bowie - the red tornado who accompanied him while jogging, at the shooting range and even in meetings, hypnotizing everyone around him.

The Bowie usually lived with the Director when Tony was on missions. The director allowed the cat to be the main one in the tandem and tried to please the noble animal. Cap slipped past them like a shadow from time to time, but most of the time he hovered next to Tony.

Tony hasn't seen him for the past three weeks.

"Cap???"

No one answered.

"Cap???" Tony tried to mentally call him.

No one answered.

Tony swore under his breath, although he was unlikely to wake Harry, who was coughing feverishly in the back seat under his Peruvian poncho. He barter this car for another one of Harry’s “stones” near Puerto-Barrios, because it was impossible to move with Harry without one, and now they were heading towards Carmelita and the Mexican border.

Tony bartered the third “stone” for some food, aforementioned Peruvian poncho and a night in a shed near Poptun. These places were relatively less populated than the southern parts of the country and Tony felt strangely safer here.

He listened to his surroundings - they were alone for the next few miles, so he allowed himself to go into a light meditation mode and scan the Spirit Plane without entering it. In the south the feeling of danger still pulsated unpleasantly. West and East felt neutral, only the North emanated possibilities. It’s impossible to say that Tony was really drawn to it, but only in this direction did he feel a positive response.

And this was the only positive side of their existence at the moment.

Harry didn't come to his senses for the third day in a row. Tony felt completely lost because he had virtually no experience in nursing, especially not related to sports injuries.

The Spirit Plane still wouldn't let him in to reach Blair or Jim.

And on top of everything else, someone physically began to follow them - Tony felt absolutely no traces of danger around, but the constant feverish whisper of the patient, “He’s somewhere nearby,” began to drive him crazy. The only hope was that Harry was dreaming about it and that he would get better.

They finally had to stop in a very small town near Carmelita, because Tony just had to sleep and rest, so they would be able to cross Mexico later.

Tony snuck out of the house to get some water. Electric lighting in the city only worked on the main street, in front of the city hall, a so-called hotel and the hospital, but this made an imperceptible contribution to the general atmosphere of the night and Tony once again froze, looking up at the stars.

He didn’t hear a single sound around, so he was taken by utter surprise when a feverishly hot but firm hand pulled him from behind, a ghostly cold shadow jumped on his head with an inaudible meow, and a cascade of cold and nasty-smelling water poured on him, being partially blocked by a strange semi-transparent barrier.

"Are you stupid, Potter?"

The last thing Tony DiNozzo, the son of a noble Englishwoman, brought up on the elegant pronunciation of Grosvenor Square and Mayfair, expected to hear in such a place were these sounds.

"What are you doing, Malfoy?"

“I’m saving you, imbecile, from the curse that the no less of a fool Farnsworth placed on you. God, save me from idiots who are trying to plunder Indian abandoned cities without even bothering to look for magical security perimeters. My Godness!”

The still invisible interlocutor made a barely visible movement with his hand and the translucent barrier in front of Tony crumbled into ghostly fireworks. A heavy faceted vial flew out of the darkness and landed in Harry's still outstretched hand, with which he had pushed Tony away earlier.

"Have a drink, Potter."

In the pitch darkness, a light came on and illuminated a tall, pale-haired man of indeterminate age from twenty to forty in dark trousers, a black buttoned up shirt and a vest that glittered with silver embroidery. In his hand he held a chopstick slightly reminiscent of the ones they give in a Chinese restaurants.

“Drink, Potter! You are incredibly lucky not only in the fact that you are accompanied by a squib with a high level of Legilimency and Occlumency, as well as the ability to listen to space and the movement of energies, but even more so in the fact that I myself have undertaken to unravel cases of infiltration into the protected territories of the ancients pyramids in Argentina for the UNESCO Department for the Protection of Archaeological and Historical Monuments. I made the perfect antidote for your curse fever and “bad luck” that Farnsworth placed on you. It also didn't hurt that Agent DiNozzo thought to get rid of some of the stones. They usually work when they are close - the divided curse had almost lost its power and I was finally able to get closer."

Harry coughed and staggered. Tony picked him up and sat him down on the steps.

“Drink, I don’t sense any ill intentions from him.”

The pale Malfoy nodded approvingly and extended his hand to Tony, keeping one eye on Harry, who uncorked the bottle, winced, and poured the contents into his mouth.

"Draco Malfoy."

"Tony DiNozzo."

Malfoy held his hand in his and tilted his head thoughtfully.

"I know you. Homeland Security Special Agent, right? I worked with your guys from the cultural heritage department when there was a theft at one of the Smithsonian museums a couple of years ago. You work with Director Morrow, right?"

"Do we have such a department?"

Harry and the pale Malfoy looked at each other.

"Uh-uh, yeah..." Harry stood up from the step and looked at Cap, who was still sitting on Tony's head. "I thought you were sent to me because you are... well, almost a wizard."

“I know I’m magical at what I do, but why are we working with cultural heritage and what does “almost a wizard” mean?”

To their right, in the small abandoned garden by the house, there were several pop, pop, pop sounds and someone swearing in a distinctly American accent.
"Damn it, Potter."

"Wait, Tony."

"Much appreciated, Agent Malfoy, your superiors will be advised of your invaluable assistance in locating our missing colleagues."

Pale Malfoy raised an eyebrow, shook Tony's hand again, "I look forward to working together in the future, I liked your style," turned towards the newly appeared, "Director Morrow, was happy to help," and disappeared with the same strange "pop" sound.

“Damn it, Potter, you know how to get into situations, thank fate that luck helps you even in failure.”

A tall, heavyset man of Director Morrow's age and with a similar attitude turned to Tony and shook his hand gratefully, "Special Agent in Charge of the M7 International Relations Division Thorrow-Mouldray, sincerely grateful for your assistance."

"M7?" Tony whispered towards Morrow. The other man shook his head and started talking about something with his English colleague.

“Thank you, honestly, I couldn’t have made it out without you.”

Harry quietly came up behind Tony and extended his hand.

“Really, I wouldn’t have gotten out. I didn’t even feel the curse, but by the time we met it must have already taken hold of me. Interesting thing, I’ll try to figure out what the ancestors were up to.”

"What is a squib?"

Harry stared at Tony in amazement. “But... you have the skills of a Sentinel and a Guide, and at this level only squibs can do that.”

"But who are squibs? This is the first time I've heard this word."

"Wait, Tony, didn't Blair explain it to you?"

Tony, in his agitation, did not even hear the director approach.

"No!"

"A Squib is... well, a sub-wizard, sort of, a person whose magical power pathways are undeveloped, but he can still do things that ordinary people can't do."

Tony looked around everyone with a slightly crazy look, raised the gaze to the stars and screamed, “So I’m also a wizard, thank fuck? For what?”

“I’ll have to adapt to the world again,” he managed to think detachedly when Morrow took his hand and pulled him out of the tropical night with the same strange “pop” sound.

“I should also find that Potter guy again and have a drink. Really! Wizards! Could my life be more strange!" Tony muttered as he followed Morrow out of the garage where they had somehow landed fifteen minutes ago and he had thrown a minor tantrum, up the stairs to the directors' office. “And they have different justice with all these curses and... and... I don’t even know what they’re doing!”

He might have said it out loud because Director Morrow grinned and said over his shoulder, "I'll send you to Hogwarts for a three-month orientation, you'll love it."

“Hogwarts??? What the heck! Was it THE Harry Potter??? But how???"