<span style="font-size: 150%; line-height: 116%;">Metairie, Louisiana, USA</span><br/><br/>Dusk had fallen over the quiet streets of Metairie, casting the asphalt roads and fractured side-walks into heavy shadow. A fickle moon peeped from beyond a canopy of thick storm clouds, and a dense fog had settled flush to the earth. The air was brisk; the imposing chill promising a ruthless winter and a hefty layer of snow that had yet to fall, though the blades of grass already crusted with beads of ice. The smattering of lights left gleaming through frosted windowpanes were beginning to snuff one-by-one, the murmur and laughter of the residents within their homes fading into silence, and the rumble of vehicles become increasingly few and far between.<br/><br/>An abrupt flurry of motion disrupted the perpetual Metairie stillness, and the rhythmic thud and crunch of urgent footfalls striking concrete broke the silence. A lone figure came darting from amidst the milky smog; the buckles of his boots jingling faintly the moment a thick rubber sole battered the ground, and a leather duster fanned and rippled about in his wake as he ran. He seemed skittish; green eyes swivelled wildly in their sockets, and every few seconds he'd crane to peer anxiously over one burly shoulder, though the corridor lined of neatly pruned gardens and orderly houses abaft him appeared deserted.<br/><br/>The man's pace began to slow as cross section came into view – astonishingly breathing steady and without any relic of exhaustion - pausing in his dash to examine the street signs bolted to their alloy steel hoists. N Turnbull Dr stared back in black lettering against a jade placard, while a sign below indicated 33rd St was to his left. A seconds hesitation later he was off again, although his gait was now easy and quiet, and he moved forthwith through the fog-flooded streets with a feline-like covertness. Then - quite as if he'd simply evaporated into the mist - he was gone.<br/><br/>Or so it might have seemed.