A/N: Major credit given to my amazing beta, SyncreticVenture!
Warnings: Adult language and adult situations. Copious mentions of terrorism and current events.
Rating: M
Pairings: Kirk/Spock, Sulu/Chekov, Scotty/Uhura, Mitchell/Dehner
Chapter 001
Being marched to the Head of Counter-Intelligence himself instead of the usual duty officer was never a good sign. The summoning on the cafeteria intercom had called for Jim Kirk and three of his fellow agents to report to Director Christopher Pike, which either meant that Pike wanted to either discuss with CIA's brightest for an important mission, or chew them out. It also depended on whose ass was in the fire: theirs or the target's.
"You ready for another round, gentleman?" Kirk fixed his patented boyish grin on his face and slipped into a jaunty gait. This might be an interesting conversation.
His inquiry was met with different levels of rallying by his teammates, a murmur of assent and anticipation. It had been a while since they began a mission as a cohesive team. Excitement was palpable to buzzing around the agents' heads, for Pike called on the Dream Team to work together this time. Though, the title on their group dossiers was Sector Zeitgeist, and their synergy had always been off the scale. With their history, youth, and complementary strengths, they reined in a higher ratio of assignment completions; which, in government-speak, meant they left a huge dent in foreign intelligence if you threw them hard enough.
The Director's office was bullet, sound, and bullshit-proof. When they stepped in, the light joking around they shared during lunch and down the hallway dissipated. All four agents sobered once they continued into the harsh gray decor of their superior.
Pike stood near his desk, his back ramrod straight, but he acknowledged them with a gesture to come inside the room. He may have been strict, but working under his patient charisma inspired a very strong loyalty in his division, even to green upstarts like Agent Kirk.
It was impossible to describe the Director by those who knew him without glowing approval and honor painting every word. Pike was much older than those who served him, with weathered lines beaten into his skin. He radiated self-awareness and clarity that set him apart as early as his service in Desert Storm. With a confidence few men his age had, Pike delighted in his graying hairline, which in his case symbolized his wisdom and maturity. He was the living biography of a soldier who had seen everything and survived. His tactical prowess it had taken him to get where he ended up today found in the sharpness of his stare; that infamous gaze was both compassionate and stern, and could have belonged to any of the great generals in U.S. history.
But when those hard gray eyes zeroed in on Kirk, he knew he was on thin ice. The others saw him nothing more than their boss, the big guy who gave them the exciting missions. For Jim, there was something personal, because Pike and George Kirk were brothers-in-arms during their tour of duty in the Navy. His earliest memory of Pike had been when he handed over the folded flag to Winona at his father's funeral and then hoisted Jim onto his shoulders; Jim had simply been too young to understand his father died and just wanted to get a close look at a rocket shooting out of orbit into the clear blue sky. After that he continued to be a constant in Jim's life afterwards, more so than his own mother ever did.
He was the one whose place Kirk escaped to during his rebellious teen years. And, in Kirk's prime as a veteran, even pulled strings to send him to the National Intelligence University after completing his tour as a fellow Navy officer.
Somewhere along Kirk's self-destructive stumble through life, Pike had been the absolute trusted higher power he obeyed; God Himself couldn't hold a candle of influence. Maybe he replaced the father Kirk never had the chance to have, who knows. For anyone aware of their relationship, Kirk was Pike's unofficial son and pushed him the hardest out of all the other men. Pike knew Kirk could be capable of greatness like his father. If he reigned in the recklessness that came with his youth and applied himself, perhaps Kirk would be even greater than his predecessor.
Good luck.
Pike gestured to the seats in front of his desk, upon which lay four black covered folders. Just the sight of them made Kirk salivate and eager to learn their contents. Once they sat, the formalities began.
"Agent Kirk," Pike greeted him first and handed him a folder. Kirk wasted no time leafing through it while Agents Sulu, Scott, and Mitchell waited for theirs. "All four of you know why you're here."
Sulu let out a cautious sigh and shifted with discomfort in his seat. "Yes sir."
"Tae be fair," Scotty twisted his lips into a half-apologetic smile, his Scottish accent in full force. "Tha' tank wouldnae hae lasted as long as it did anyway."
Kirk looked up from the folder, smiled, cocked his fingers at Sulu, and pulled the trigger. "But that angle you sniped into? Bam! Couldn't have done it better. And what's the big deal? We didn't botch the mission! We got in, assassinated a terrorist, and rode out into the sunset!"
"You escaped in a tank, Kirk. Tell me, boys: what's the first rule of the CIA?" Pike folded his arms and leaned against the large desk, expecting a stupid answer. He got a stupid question instead.
"Officially or unofficially?" Mitchell piped up, unable to help himself. Kirk flashed an amused grin his way.
"Don't encourage him, Mitchell," Pike warned.
The young men looked at each other, sighed, and answered together in a bored drawl: "We are not held accountable for any incident that may or may not have occurred."
"It was the other guy. No, that guy," Kirk added with unnecessary aplomb, which earned him a three amused grins and a glare.
"The point of being in the CIA is that we don't take responsibility for any covert operations that could affect the stability of other nations," Pike reminded them with a severe frown. "How many Afghanistan news outlets did you see pointing a camera at you during your little hoedown?"
Kirk tried to flash Pike his best charming grin to abate the vein growing along his temple. It never worked, but he didn't believe in no-win scenarios. "Now wait a second…" Kirk sighed and closed the file without reading it. "The official word is that the SEALS went on a heroic suicide mission to usurp the terrorist cell in that village. The Navy should send us gift baskets for the easy glory."
Pike's frown took on the consistency of steel, cutting through Kirk's bullshit. "Listen, you four: I swear to God that your asses will be on the burner if you keep up with this cowboy swashbuckling garbage. This isn't a Tom Clancy film, and it sure as hell isn't a space opera. Get yourselves together or end up behind a desk for the rest of your careers. Am I clear?"
"Yes sir," Sulu and Scotty confirmed, reasonably chastised and meaning it. Mitchell said nothing, deciding silence might be the better alternative to save his ego, but he quickly nodded when Pike flashed a look of warning at him.
"Am I clear?" he repeated, louder than before, and this time his gaze now on Kirk.
In the middle of Pike's lecture, Kirk reopened the file and decided reading the dossier was a better use of his time than paying attention. He'd heard the same shit for five years. This wasn't his first rodeo. "What is this?" Kirk demanded instead, stabbing a finger at the paperwork on his lap. "You've got us on SWAT detail? This is entry-level shit!"
"You're lucky you got anything, Kirk," Pike said, shoulders and face rigid by Kirk's lack of humility about the situation. "Rand was reluctant to give you any more field work. I convinced her that this was your last chance. Call this Operation Don't-Screw-Up."
"I can't believe this," Kirk grumbled. Scotty finished strapping Kirk into a bulletproof vest and seemed too happy not being on the field. Hiding in the van, working the instruments, and not getting shot at was Scotty's job typically. He was sure to be a lucky bastard this time since he could kick back and eat a hero sandwich while Kirk did all the dirty work.
"At least you'll have Scotty with you," Sulu offered with an apologetic grin as he secured his helmet. "He can serenade you with Scottish folk songs while I'm stuck listening to Agent Riley's panicked Irish."
Holding a finger up for quiet, Scotty busied himself instead by checking every weapon, clearing any potential jams and barking at the driver to check the oil.
Montgomery Scott was a mad genius, a man who would rather have the cold touch of a droid's flight paneling than the warm caress of a woman. He was an average-looking gent with an amused twinkle in his eyes that got him more attention than he deserved. It no doubt had to do with his wit and its crass European flavor that was always a hit in office parties. American women seemed to enjoy his rough-and-tumble Scotsman humor more than Kirk liked to admit.
Sulu and Mitchell had the same mission as Kirk, but he and Scotty were going to putz around in Springfield, Pennsylvania hunting for terrorist hackers while the other two would be halfway across the country razing a data center in Southern California.
Kirk had to read the dossier twice to make sure he got the location right. There were enough Springfields along the East Coast to form their own state, and he was disappointed to find they were taking the two-hour-long commute to Pennsylvania. Virginia's Springfield, in comparison, was just a bus ride away.
In his opinion, the sweetest deal belonged to the great James Tiberius Kirk. While he and Scotty had a higher risk of getting shot at, all Sulu's team had to do was flip a switch. It wasn't very much glamorous for a CIA agent.
One of the newer operatives, a lithe redheaded woman that was already turning heads, handed Sulu his radio gear and wished him good luck with a coquettish wink.
"Why, thank you," Sulu said in his most charming tone, and then laughed when Kirk rolled his eyes.
Hikaru Sulu was a notorious gentleman, one who used humility to his advantage. His Korean-Japanese ancestry made him both deadly on the field and in the first-world social jungle. He was a Princeton man, a literal prince always dressed to the nines, who preferred melee combat when able and always kept an uchigatana blade under his pillow for comfort instead of a sidearm.
At first glance, most people underestimated Sulu's efficiency as an agent. Nice guys finished last, they would say, and then end up bruised and beaten on the mat by one brutal motion of Sulu's arms, unaware that Sulu spent five years touring the front lines of Afghanistan. The man wasn't blind to surviving on his bare hands alone.
Sulu had already walked off when Scotty answered the quip, his typical slow response to jokes. He was always fashionably late to banter, even when he was early to the party.
"Aye, an' I feel sorry for yeh," Scotty responded to Sulu with a somber shake of his head. He turned away and helped Kirk and another agent load up the rest of the gear in the van. "Nothin' more vomit-inducin' than an Irishman's ballad!" Sulu laughed and slapped him on the back in farewell.
In the middle of heaving a giant duffel bag full of weapons, Kirk caught a glimpse of familiar dark hair and shouted, "Hey!"
There were slivers of gray creeping into the newcomer's once pitch-black sideburns, a product of genetics more than age, but the overall effect a distinguished grace. Gary Mitchell was Sulu's partner today, but he had been James Kirk's brother-in-arms back in the Navy, and had taken countless bullets for Kirk without ever keeping score.
Mitchell turned on instinct, already grinning and expecting this moment. They never separated without a proper goodbye; it wasn't good luck for a sailor to leave the high seas on an open note. Navy gentlemen fought together, stuck together, survived together. He was the older brother Sam had never been to Kirk though they could never be mistaken for siblings.
While Kirk had dusty blond hair and clear blue eyes that earned him many compliments, Mitchell was the opposite: the classic tall, dark, and handsome flavor. A popular tease Kirk enjoyed repeating was that if Mitchell hadn't been so straight, they probably would have been hitched right out of service by now. Elizabeth Dehner, the female doctor Mitchell was currently dating, had the same physical colorings as Kirk and if that wasn't Freudian, he didn't know what was.
Mitchell thumped the side of his and Sulu's black van, and implied that they were ready to go, when Kirk jumped from the back of his own to clap him on the shoulder. "Don't get killed out there, Gary! You too, Hikaru. Zeitgeist represent!"
"Zeitgeist, hooah!" Sulu shot back over his shoulder and climbed into the van.
With a grin that promised they'll return, Mitchell grabbed the back of Kirk's neck and gripped it firm and reassuring like he always did before a mission. "You too, Jim. And you, Scotty! Zeitgeist, hooyah!"
Scotty poked his head out of the passenger's side window long enough to give them a thumbs-up. "Aye, I'll make sure tae instruments dunnae eat me! It's Jim oo's gunna git shot in the arse! Zeitgeist, booyah!"
"Or blown up," Kirk mumbled under his breath. Even though he didn't consider himself to be superstitious, he still glanced around the bulletproofed steel van for some wood to knock on. Deciding such a lazy mission couldn't possibly need good luck with their aptitude, Kirk shook his head and forced himself to relax for the rest of the ride.
Pike had sworn he was getting the better mission out of the four, or maybe Kirk liked to believe he said that. Kirk called bullshit the moment he met the local Springfield SWAT team. They looked as competent as seasoned mall cops.
Yup, Pennsylvania had its lovely charms.
The mission seemed suspicious in its simplicity. They had to go in, apprehend possible terrorist hackers, and get pizza afterwards. These guys, however, weren't the usual bored teenage script-kiddies. CIA analytics reported that they were very sophisticated in their attacks and had even shut down North Korea's internet access for a week as a show of power. The attack wasn't that big of a deal in Kirk's opinion. Pyongyang had four known servers to rely on as opposed to the hundreds of thousands in the United States alone. No doubt them's the perks of being a closeted dictatorship stuck in the fifties.
On file, the big deal was they had DDoSed American government websites before, enough to creep into the FBI's secure databases and leak confidential information. It became a bigger deal when a good number of personal information ended up on the deep web for drooling conspiracy nerds and terrorist enthusiasts. The only reason the CIA got involved this time was evidence compiled from the trafficking: thousands of dollars in coin transactions were used for passports and private flights. Even worse, they were bouncing contraband between the US and Syria where the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant conflict was in full force.
Pike's notes on the matter were worrisome. The FBI may have stumbled onto a possible ISIL checkpoint cell on American soil with the intention of sending American sympathizers to bolster ranks in Syria. By the dossier alone, this was now CIA jurisdiction.
The problem was the current mission. Preliminary shutdowns were reserved for the new guys, the recruits, the ones who had less of a chance to die on the field from a screw up. Agents hardly died in their own country after all. Pike sent his best and brightest anyways out of some punishment for the Afghanistan incident, Kirk was sure.
They traced a possible breadcrumb trail to five different locations in the States, one of which Sulu was raiding while Kirk ended up stuck with the team of hicks. Analysts were sure the other three positions were decoys to confuse them, but the Springfield one in Pennsylvania had the most transactions filtering on through before dissipating into the data center. If it really was the kingpin of the entire cell, Kirk had to enjoy being trapped in a van for a round-trip of almost five hours while contemplating his next strategy.
Halfway into Pennsylvania, Kirk joined the SWAT team as their obligatory CIA overseer and had promised Director Pike that this time there were to be no cowboy games like last mission. Except these 'seasoned' SWAT veterans were looking at him like a tick on a tit. That was when he realized this would not be a walk in the park, by-the-book mission accomplished bullshit.
"Got a problem taking orders from a government agent?" Kirk sneered through the relentless bouncing of the van. "Or are these just your welcoming faces?"
A noncommittal shrug here and there was his response. Kirk knew they would not be cooperative. He should write them up in his report, but he was a sucker for non-conformity, and refused to seem like a crabby ass over nothing like most bureaucrats.
He kind of wished he was a crabby ass. Almost.
They arrived at an apartment complex in the middle of the night. The local police department had already secured a perimeter by the time Kirk jumped out of the SWAT van and waited for Scotty and Seer's vehicle just moments behind. He slapped the side of it two times and Scotty poked his head out of the back, pointed at his headset, and gave him a thumbs up before shutting the door again.
Kirk might not trust the local cops, but he had Scotty as his eyes and ears. There was no one he preferred more behind the scenes than Zeitgeist's faithful Scotsman.
He followed the rest of the SWAT into the perimeter, flashed his badge at a bored looking officer, and shook hands with the awaiting sergeant. She was a tall, dark beauty with an ugly scar across her right brow that made her look more striking than unattractive. Kirk couldn't help but admire the way she sharply ordered her men over her shoulder and then glared warily at him.
As expected, Scotty's voice trickled into the earpiece wired to the side camera strapped to his forehead. [Oooh, ain't she a lovely lass,] Scotty trilled. [Give 'er a smile for me, will yah?]
"Sergeant Calhoun, Springfield PD," she greeted with a curt expression.
Kirk ignored Scotty's commentary, but smiled on cue. "Agent Kirk, CIA." He jumped when one of his SWAT guys dropped his weapon with a loud clatter and rolled his eyes. Amateurs.
"Fancy," Calhoun noted, checking her clipboard first. "CIA? I thought the FBI would oversee this kind of operation."
"Yes, well… after the FBI failed to apprehend these hackers twice, the President decided a co-op would be the third time's charm," Kirk lied with a charming smile. As a friendly gesture, he accepted the clipboard from Calhoun while they made their preliminary rounds. There were officers still weaving around them with their radios up and yellow tape zigzagging the blocks. The scene looked more like a bomb threat perimeter than a fugitive one.
[Gettin' video feed on tae police cameras. Keep the lady busy fer a few seconds, Kirk. I'mma gonna dip into their police scanners.]
Calhoun suddenly frowned. "Let's make this clear then. My men are already burned out from the FBI sticking their noses into our businesses the last couple of weeks. Try to do the same now and you may get more than you bargained for."
"That almost sounded like a threat," Kirk quipped, but he'd known about the hostility his 'team' felt from the moment he'd arrived. He seriously wished Pike had given SWAT duty to Agent Finney or someone more bureaucratic for this snooze-fest.
"Not a threat, Agent Kirk. Just friendly advice. Non-negotiable."
Kirk snorted and mentally filed the threat under 'Don't Care'. "Tell me, what's the situation so far?"
He didn't need a recap, but Scotty needed time and following by-the-book as Kirk knew she would, Calhoun explained the plan. Lack of love for protocol not withstanding, Kirk knew how to get the job done. His running mouth was what typically caused a lot of problems. This mission shouldn't be hard: grab the SWAT team, secure the perimeter around apartment #J5, arrest the potential terrorist, and seize the computer for evidence. Kirk could practically memorize it in his sleep.
How the FBI had fucked it up twice was beyond even Kirk's understanding.
[Go' established video and audio feed on all fronts, Kirk. I can even update yeh on what's pissin' in the alley two blocks down. Nothin's goin' in or out without us knowin'.]
"Acknowledged. I'm going in." Witching hour was near so Kirk pulled his men into position. He took a moment to establish secondary radio contact with Calhoun a block over to make sure all squads were in position. They broke up into halves to surround the apartment door and really, Kirk was amazed they did it quietly enough. It didn't seem the neighbors heard so much as a peep during their climb up the stairs and into the hallway.
"On my mark," Kirk ordered as a few stragglers were climbing up the stairs, but it fell on deaf ears.
One SWAT officer suddenly broke down the door with a heavy boot, which startled Kirk and definitely the neighbors. Their panicked shouts did nothing more than exacerbate how pissed off Kirk became. All officers except for Kirk charged in with weapons and shouts. Swearing, Kirk banged the back of his helmeted head against the stucco wall and mouthed, 'Fuck me.'
"SWAT went in too hot, Scotty," he called it in first. "I'm going in!" Kirk removed himself from his perch against the wall and followed after with haste, his own gun raised and flashlight flickering in the darkened room.
"PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR! DON'T MOVE!"
The living room was immaculate and ordered, with trinkets that delineated an Iraqi or Syrian resident. Was their hacker truly working for ISIL, Kirk wondered, and quickly decided that he didn't need to add racial profiling to his next psychological evaluation.
Bathroom cleared. Kitchen cleared. Bedroom cleared. Everything was so clean and ordered, it seemed more like a museum than a place that someone was living in.
[Status, Kirk? You're soundin' fuzzy an' it's too dark in there ter get a proper vid feed.]
"Looks like an all clear," Kirk informed, shaking his head while the SWAT secured the rest of the apartment. There were muffled shouts coming through one wall from horrified neighbors but he ignored it. Their cover was blown already. "I'll find the computer, but it looks like our hacker's Middle Eastern."
[Heh, Director Pike's gunna love hearin' that. Like we dunnae 'ave enough people in tha' department.]
"Yeah, I'm sure the division's gonna enjoy more paperwork," Kirk frowned at a made prayer corner. He made a mental note about it and then grabbed his radio shoulder mic to contact Calhoun while examining the electronics left plugged in the hacker's bedroom. The computer located at the farthest corner didn't seem tampered, but Kirk was careful and pressed a few keys hoping to get it going out of sleep mode. The monitor seemed unresponsive even though the monitor light button was on.
"Found the computer," Kirk told Scotty through the mic. "It's a black screen."
Scotty sounded puzzled. [Yer sayin' it's off?]
Kirk squinted his eyes at the glowing blue button and double-checked the computer case. "No, it isn't." Before he could check further, the screen flickered without warning and plunged itself into a mess of machine code. The moment Kirk recognized it, he realized it was deleting files.
"Shit!" Kirk shouted and pounded on the escape key. When that didn't work, he tried swishing the mouse around to prevent the purging of the computer, only to fail that as well. "Fuck! Someone get a tech in here!" he snapped over his shoulder.
[What's happenin'?!]
"It's deleting something, Scotty!" Kirk's computer skills were above average, but the functions running down the screen were in a language similar to Assembly. It was so incomprehensible to him, it might as well have been a second language. The screen flashed blank again and then ran more code, this one seemingly like it was trying to recover data, but Kirk didn't want to take any chances. For all he knew, the machine was uploading plans for World War Three to ISIL or Al Qaeda.
He went caveman on it in desperation and yanked the power cord out of the wall, ripping the loose outlet box out with it. With another flash, everything died.
"I want this computer taken for examination," Kirk ordered one of the officers before clicking his personal mic on. "I turned the computer off, Scotty, but I don't know if I stopped it in time. Fuck!"
[Better than lettin' it finish its compilin',] Scotty answered, his sigh sober. [Establishin' radio contact with Sergeant Calhoun. I'm gunna see if I can find anyone suspicious on camera.]
Kirk sighed and patted the monitor once for good luck before preparing for his favorite part of the whole gig: snooping. He slapped on some surgical gloves and went to town rifling through the bad guy's things for information as to his whereabouts, his identity, even his motives. Kirk checked for an address book, forgotten phones and tablets, or any notes and papers that could help with the investigation.
He could hear one of the SWAT guys yell at neighbors outside to return to their homes and shook his head. They were unprofessional morons without an ounce of discipline.
This must be how Pike feels all the time, Kirk thought with a self-deprecating grin. Then again, cops weren't typically hired for their brains. Under-qualification was even encouraged in resumes. Kirk could at least boast that he had a legit criminal justice degree and that was the bare minimum of what other degrees he had that made him good at what he did now.
The desk holding up the computer was wooden and free of dust, which was surprising. When his gloved fingers checked and tapped around the surface for any hidden drawers, he found a peculiar roughness where it should be polished. With a curious frown, he picked up his flashlight and pointed the light at it.
Someone had been scratching at the desk, almost scribbling until it was deep enough to be legible. Thousands of dollars of tuition spent on foreign lingual aptitude allowed him to recognize that it was Arabic. At least he thought so.
Kirk pulled out his phone and took a few pictures of the carvings. He'll have to remind himself to check with the Linguistics department about this. It could be vital message like a gang motto or coordinates.
Panicked shouting came from the kitchen after he took a few more pictures. Kirk pocketed his cell and ran into the living room to find one of the SWAT members pointing his gun out to the emergency fire escape.
Shoving the useless cop aside, Kirk stuck his head out the window and found the source of what they were pointing at: a desperate dark-haired man had been trying to hide himself against the brick wall while scaling the ladders halfway down.
"Shit!" Kirk holstered his flashlight and ordered them to scramble and cover the alleyways while he slipped through the window to pursue the hacker. Why the SWAT didn't chase after the suspect and just sat on their thumbs waiting for him was a mystery. He chalked it up to further incompetence. "Stop! Police!"
It was a reflex for Kirk to say ridiculous shit like that and shook his head. No one would be stupid enough to follow a cop's orders while running. Kirk bridged the distance faster by forgoing the ladder and jumping from platform to platform. The shuddering, rusty mess of the fifty-year-old fire escape reminded him of its fragility with every move he made.
"Scotty! Caught sight of a suspect in pursuit: male, at least six feet, dark hair, looks Middle Eastern. Putting it on visual!"
The hacker looked up for a moment as the fire escape swayed, almost knocking him over when the stairs started to warp. Kirk had trouble ID-ing him, as he was too busy trying not to break his neck, but he was positive the guy was suspicious enough to warrant an arrest. It helped that he was running away at least.
Scotty's voice was shaky from the connection, but he confirmed. [Got yer visual, Kirk. Also contacted Calhoun to yer location. If ye can politely ask 'im to sit still so I can get a positive ID, I would very much appreciate it.]
Wiseass.
Just as the hacker hopped onto the first story's platform, Kirk's over-zealousness to catch up caused part of the shaky infrastructure to snap. With a shout, he almost toppled off the halfway point.
[Kirk?! I 'eard shoutin'! Status?!]
Kirk ignored him and grabbed a hold of the railing, but just by the tip of his fingers. He swore loud enough for the rest of the apartment to hear and tried to heave himself up, not exactly amused that he was swinging around like he was on the goddamn monkey bars. His thoughts were focused on losing more time before he lost the terrorist for good.
The bar tight in his palms whined under his weight and snapped. Kirk closed his eyes and felt his breath leave him when landed on a platform with his back until that too caved. At this rate, he expected himself to shatter his spine on the fall down or who knows what the hell else while the hacker dashed away into the sunset.
If the fall didn't kill him, Bones was going to.
He let out a scream when whole thing came down with him. The large crash shook the asphalt beneath him and the rest of the alleyway became obscured by dust and debris. He could hear shouts of alarm from far away alongside the ringing in his ears. Ringing was good. It was the sweet, sweet sound of life.
The blackness buzzed and spun, until it proved too much for Kirk, and he passed out.
When he came to, he found himself underneath a few stairs and metal bars, covered in enough dirt it made his black uniform look naturally gray. He had been one lucky son of a bitch. By some miracle, most of the structure had missed toppling on him and instead crashed onto the adjacent building. Scotty's voice flickered through the haze Kirk was feeling.
[Ye hear that explosion, Ken? Git on a bus! Kirk?! Shit, status report, Kirk!]
Coughing out dust and with adrenaline coursing like sweet nectar through his veins, Kirk pulled the debris off of him and flipped onto his back. He howled as pain raced up his arm and he dared himself not to look at the damage. Moving was good. It meant he wasn't paralyzed. Pain was good too. It meant that he was truly alive.
"S-Scotty…" Kirk rasped out before wheezing out more dust. "Fire escape collapsed… call a bus…"
[Bus on the way, Kirk. Remain in position.]
His right arm seemed mangled and fucked up on closer examination, but he couldn't really tell except for the angle. The angle was unnatural enough he was ready to vomit right there.
Focusing on something else other than his arm, he found another body trapped in the debris. Kirk ignored Scotty's orders and wasted no time shuffling over to flip his unresponsive target onto his back and read him his rights. "You're… under arrest for first and second degree cyber… cyberatta…" The man didn't move. Didn't breathe.
"…shiiiit." Kirk checked for a pulse with his uninjured hand and found none. That was when he noticed blood seeping from the stomach where what looked like a pipe the guy impaled on. "Fuck!" he yelled, his voice hoarse and raspy for someone, anyone to hear him. "Get me a bus!"
He couldn't feel anything with his broken arm now, which was a probability from the adrenaline. Any chest compressions to resuscitate the suspect would be impossible in his current state. Resigned, he fell back from where he knelt and took a shuddering breath. The sky above was still foggy from the dust.
What he got in return for his shouts were sirens.
Bones ended up in a shouting match with the intercom when Pike summoned Kirk to his office just minutes after slinging his arm. After almost five minutes of word jousting he had to cave and let Kirk go with a grumble and a bucket of painkillers complete with a doggy bag. He couldn't refuse Pike's order when it wasn't a life-threatening injury after all. Kirk kind of wished he could though. How could he have fucked up such an easy mission?
Komack was predictably waiting in Pike's office this time to put Kirk in his place.
"Great job, Agent Kirk. Not only did you kill our only link to Operation Gemini, but you left the computer in the hands of the Springfield PD! They won't hand it over until they cleared it themselves!"
Now according to Pike, Director James Komack had a drastic case of premature balding because of Kirk's shenanigans. Kirk remembered giving Pike an indulgent smirk about it, after all, it was status quo for at least one good-looking James in an intelligence agency. The poor guy even looked like he was eating his way through the stress this career caused him.
Komack was a bureaucrat, plain and simple, whose tour of duty comprised of dragging unwilling young men to the Army during the Vietnam War drafts. He saw more violence from protesting American people than Vietnamese soldiers.
Agents who didn't follow protocol like Kirk tend to make Komack infamously prance about like a goddamn loon on steroids. He had a perverse hangup yelling at fuck-ups apparently, although Kirk had enough drugs pumped into his system to find it more amusing than irritating at the moment.
He opened his mouth, ready to give Komack a drugged-up retort, before Director Pike wisely intervened.
"Agent Kirk was not responsible for Arman Faziz's death. According to Agent Scott's report, Kirk followed protocol and called in throughout the raid. He even tried to salvage the data until the rest of his team caught wind of the suspect. He made a judgment call." Pike had a remarkable way of sounding both professional and downright paternal, settling both nerves of the other two men during the debriefing. He approached Kirk's chair and rested a strong weathered hand on the back of it, giving Kirk the solidarity he needed to stay calm. "Also, the drive isn't destroyed. You said so yourself that one of your techs secured a line to the computer during the purge and managed to reverse most of the deletion."
"Most," Komack spat out like acid and turned once more to Kirk, his face red and ready to explode. "Then someone cut the connection by turning the power off!"
"I tried to salvage the data!" Kirk hissed, uncaring about bullshit professionalism when his career was on the line. "How the hell was it possible for me to know it was one of your nerds hacking the computer? Director…" he turned to Pike, angry and desperate. "I didn't botch it up!"
Pike regarded him with a resigned exhale out his nose and then turned to Komack. "Maybe we can work out a compromise. Compared to the last operation, Kirk was practically a Boy Scout this time."
Komack stiffened. "I know that ridiculous look. You're not even considering pulling Kirk out of the—"
"—can't punish him if he genuinely didn't know," Pike reasoned. "Should we blame all of our agents due to acts of God?"
Kirk's nose wrinkled at the mention of God, but to his bewilderment, Pike's words hit gold and Komack's shoulders slumped in defeat.
"Very well. But I'm handing over one of my own agents to oversee Kirk. My request." Without so much as a response from Pike, Komack waltzed out of the office. Or it looked like it. The drugs were doing weird things to Kirk's brain at the moment. Even the gray walls seemed to be turning a healthy shade of pink.
Kirk shook his head, glared at the door and then turned to Pike, his frown curious. "Religious much, Pike?"
"I'm not," Pike gave him a grim smirk. "Plausible deniability. I'm doing my job and putting the blame on someone else."
Whoever said Pike didn't have an ounce of humor in his body needed to reevaluate that opinion. "You're gonna get a lot of Hail Marys for that, sir," Kirk slurred with a toothy grin.
Kirk had expected that Komack would follow through with assigning him one of his men to collaborate with. What he didn't expect was being stuck behind a desk and work from the sidelines. He ended up fuming at the news, spitting out expletives that should be deemed unprofessional, as he was walking side-by-side with Pike. The older man let him air out his frustrations with patience befitting his character; any other senior agent would have written him up for the language.
But Pike wasn't just any kind of superior. He usually had a first class seat to Kirk's true emotions, hell, even welcomed them. Except this wasn't a private room to air grievances, so Pike had to play the director card in their public walk to the cafeteria.
"It's out of my hands, Kirk," Pike said, his words quiet to avoid the growing traffic of agents walking around. "The hacker's death wasn't the absolute reason. That was simply the icing on the crap cake you've made so far of your career."
Kirk scoffed, wondering whose side Pike was on. "Don't tell me he's still hung up on Operation Baja…"
"Not just Baja, but White Space, and that drunken brawl you had a month ago with two FBI agents…"
"To be fair, the other guy pretended he was an FBI agent," Kirk interrupted with a wolfish grin. "He was an intern for the NSA."
Pike shook his head before nodding in greeting to a few agents that walked past them. "And whose fault was that, James? Shoot first, ask questions later. You disrupted an entire apartment complex AND caused collateral damage to a fire escape…"
"Why don't you blame the SWAT team for that? They charged in before I gave them the go-ahead," Kirk countered. "And it wasn't like I shot the damn thing! It collapsed when I was trying to apprehend the terrorist!"
Pike whirled in on him once the traffic died down, his words soft as he opted to take the paternal route to soothe Kirk's frazzled nerves. "I understand. However, my hands are tied on this. Komack's been looking to blow smoke up my ass about you since Operation Baja and this was a good reason to do it. Lick your wounds and call it a day, Kirk. It's not permanent."
Kirk stiffened in anger, but the warning in Pike's eyes forced him to swallow his pride and consider his next words. "So… I guess this means I'll have to apologize to the nerd? He must've been pissed when I went Tarzan on the computer."
"That better be all you do," Pike snorted and escorted him to the cafeteria. "And I'm begging you to be on your best behavior tomorrow. Remember that your new partner is one of Komack's men. He'll be using him to watch your ass for sure—maybe get you fired for shooting rubber bands at him."
"Must be a field day for Internal Affairs if we can't trust each other because of shitty bureaucracy," Kirk gave as a parting shot before heading to his boys. They were already eating at their regular table and gossiping before they caught Kirk heading over.
Scotty and Mitchell cheered with exuberance when he approached them, waving their water bottles around. Kirk smiled and accepted the claps on his shoulders though he had to shove Mitchell once or twice for messing with his injured arm. Bones putting it on a heavy sling to heal made things dumb and awkward to move in, so it took Kirk a good couple of seconds to maneuver his way into a chair.
Sulu frowned at him with thin pity once he was seated. "Word is you got reassigned, Jim—"
"—temporarily reassigned," Kirk corrected, his smile already faltering. Sulu didn't need to repeat it, but he did, and now the consequences of Kirk's actions tonight was finally taking root. "I'll be back on the field or I'll kill myself first."
"Let none of the docs hear that," Mitchell grinned, sliding into banter. "Especially Liz. She loves basket cases. Gets off seeing how they tick."
"That why she's dating you, Gary?" Kirk teased back, which successfully got his mind off of desk work. For his schtick, he earned two yowls from the burn and a dinner roll thrown at him, which was pretty tame in comparison. He dodged it easily but then watched over his shoulder in horror as the biscuit tumbled onto the floor and rolled into Pike's shoe across the cafeteria.
Confused, their director picked up the biscuit, realized dinner roll plus idiocy equaled Zeitgeist, and glared at them before tossing it into the trash. The man he was talking to paused from the interruption and glanced at all of them until he locked eyes with Kirk last.
The man's eyes were dark from afar, almost cold and searching. Kirk was on edge the moment the agent focused on him, as if he was caught in an alarm system and had to submit his brain for a frisking. He hoped it was just the drugs messing with him.
"Is that…?" Kirk inquired, alarmed when the young man broke eye contact and turned back to Pike acting like the roll thing didn't happen at all.
Scotty squinted hard at the dark agent and then took another swig of his drink just to make sure his own eyes weren't messing with him. "Aye, isn't he the Syrian Ambassador's son opposing ISIL?"
"Daesh is more fitting for those fuckers. They hate that name more," Sulu snorted. "That's Analyst Spock Grayson. He's the new analyst prodigy the Kurds gifted to us in exchange for weapons and gear. You don't see him much though. He belongs to the Information Operations Center Analysis Group. All hush, hush, deep web hacker stuff."
"Wonder what Pike's talking to him for," Kirk murmured. It was arresting to see how Spock did or didn't move. It was deliberate, but not.
Unlike Kirk, who enjoyed talking while re-enacting events using his hands with an enthusiasm that had earned many praise from people, Spock let the stiffness of his shoulders do the talking. He gave away very little while still being animated in his words. Maybe it was just a Kurdish thing, but Kirk wasn't alone in his fascination.
Many people had stopped their conversations and dining to just stare at Spock like he was some kind of exotic animal.
"Pike sure is laying on the praise all over the desert scuttler, isn't he?" Mitchell jeered, thumping on Kirk's own stiffening back. They continued to watch their director and Spock engage where they left off in conversation. "I heard he's the one who saved your ass by hacking into that terrorist's computer and recovering the information before it got deleted."
Kirk was far too busy noting that Pike was giving Spock his utmost attention, treating him like a respectable agent. In the meantime, he treated Kirk as if he was a teenager that just wrecked the company car. Through the haze of the drugs, a sharp pang of jealousy hit him.
He could do nothing but stare, unsure whether he should be affected by how exotic and handsome Analyst Grayson was. Or maybe he should despise him for commanding Pike's attention in a way Kirk had never done.
The throbbing of his shoulder and arm, broken in four places in the name of America, decided on it being more of the latter. Kirk risked his ass on the line day-by-day to protect the US. Yet one little hacking spree on one shitty terrorist computer causes the entire universe to jump up and praise the guy?
How fucked up was that?
Sulu caught Kirk's jaw tightening at the scene and nudged Mitchell away. "Uh-oh, daddy-problems again, Gary. Best not get in the way this time."
"I don't have daddy issues," Kirk snapped.
"See that? Classical neglected response," Mitchell joined the tease. "You know what the manly cure is, Jim? A beer, so you can forget about that shit. Let's have a celebratory shakedown, my treat."
Scotty hooted and pounded his water bottle onto the steel table in agreement. "Aye! They got this new Scottish pub in downtown McLean… said the beer's imported all the way from the motherland! I'll get Ken ter DD!"
Kirk wasn't even sure if Ken could reach the brake pedals of the company SUV seeing the man was five feet on his own without standing on his tiptoes. Then again, he'd be too drunk to care that Ken would need a stack of phone books to sit on as their honorary designated driver.
Beaming with approval, Sulu smacked Kirk on the shoulder to get him to follow, this time successful in dislodging Kirk's stare at Spock. "Now that's a plan, Jim. C'mon, Pike's got the short end of the stick here. He's stuck talking semantics to the living computer and we get to enjoy some actual human contact, Zeitgeist-styled."
He had a fucking good point. Kirk snorted at Spock and Pike and let his friends pull him along the opposite direction, missing the curious glance Spock gave his back before they left the compound for the civilian world.