Title: Danse Macabre
Author: Jack Velvet
Characters: Adam Monroe
Summary: How fragile their lives; how vain his existence!
Notes: (My take on the falling out between the Company and Adam.)
Spoilers: Adam's history (Season 2, Graphic Novel vol. 2)
Warnings: Violence and gore.
Rating: R / Mature
Words: ~1.1k
Prompt: One-shot challenge #21 at heroes_contest (LiveJournal) - The Art of War
NOTE: FFN keeps changing what symbols can be used as chapter breaks. There is also a preview bug that I've noticed - certain symbols are preserved in preview, but not when the chapter goes live. (Even as I'm fixing this, I exported the chapter, and the dashes I used are still there.) Thus, what can be seen on the LiveJournal version of my fics is not what is seen on the FFN version of the fics. That being said, I've fixed the chapter breaks to actually show up. If only preview was a true preview!
Danse Macabre
by Jack Velvet
One of the things that Adam despised about Maury Parkman was the man's predictability. The fat, ugly man never would have made it as anything other than a tormentor. If it wasn't reading a mind, it was a frightening hallucination. If it wasn't a frightening hallucination, it was a hallucination of a known person, meant to manipulate. The solution to the first was easy: think in any language other than English. The solution to the latter two was also easy, at least for him: find the flaw in Maury's logic and exploit it.
Maury didn't have the slightest clue about Adam, so when he dreamt up a new method of torture, the blond could see through it. Maury wasn't a terribly educated man; he'd never seen the beauty of Nihon with his own eyes, or the way the blood ran thicker than fallen cherry blossoms during the age of the samurai. He'd never seen Gettysburg, or felt the soft feeling of flesh beneath his feet as he chased an enemy soldier.
Maury's idea of a false-reality was laughable. When Adam's katana hacked through the buttery neck of another soldier, the illusion faded, replaced by the sunny, young grove Maury had found him in.
His suspicions were correct; the Company wanted him out.
...
It was Linderman that ordered the men to come after him.
Adam found it funny that Linderman hardly showed his face in these situations. He'd be a big help to his minions.
The warehouse was empty. The warehouses were always empty. Adam was running out of places to hide; he never could outrun that damn Petrelli's dreams.
Linderman never sent Company agents. His type of men were more brutal - more basic. Easy to control.
The immortal let his blade do the talking.
The first thug was heavy-set, carrying a sub-machine gun. Adam fileted him like an animal, spilling strings of sausage-like intestines and putrid bile on the concrete floor. Adam wiped his blade on the untarnished handkerchief tucked in the man's coat.
Adam liked killing in a suit. The way the blood popped out on the thick, starchy, white collars was like art. The sharp points of the jackets commanded power, instilled fear.
He stalked the second thug from the third tier of cargo shelves. Taunting his prey, he kicked wood shavings and stray, unfortunate mice down at the thug, startling the man into shooting frenetically. Adam had the dexterity of a dancer, and avoided as many unnecessary hits as he could. Other men surrounded the action, mocking the blond as they shot like gangsters depicting the Valentine's Day Massacre.
He figured that Linderman forgot to mention his immortality.
Adam came down on one hard, his blade splicing a skull into symmetrical segments. In fluid movements, he drew his blade down to the shoulders, and turned his hips to the right, torquing his blade to his left. Another man lost his head, showering the party in blood. Taking a hit in the shoulder, another thug thought Adam was weakened, but the force of the bullet's impact allowed Adam to strike lower, thrusting his sword through the spleen and spine of another unfortunate mobster.
Adam liked Japanese swords. Their unique construction of folded, flexible steel made them the perfect weapon.
The Martian dust-storm of smoke and blood swirled about, blinding the bullies as Adam continued his onslaught. More men fell, fingers flying in the frenzy, Adam's footwork dodging bullet after bullet after bullet. Close-range combat was not a fair fighting ground for gun-play.
This was apparent when Adam alone stood among the mess of gore on the floor.
...
Adam desperately wanted a cup of coffee. He usually preferred tea, but the calming scent sauntering out of the café was quite simply lascivious.
He sat away from the large-paned windows, where the hippies happily had their drinks and organic muffins. He scanned the scene, downing his bitter, black drink in careful, cautious sips. Women at the counter ogled him; they loved a man in a suit. Within tastes the women were gone, replaced by burly managers, and the hippies vacated, replaced by executives. Adam stirred some sugar into his coffee, watching the men that were watching him, the testosterone-tension in the room teeming with the need for battle.
Adam took initiative.
His coffee caressed the face of the first, and a chair pounded the gut of the second. The screams of women echoed from the back kitchen, where Adam considered absconding for an escape. One bullet hit his arm, and then another hit his liver, before both bullets bounced to the floor.
Adam learned how to expel them quickly: expand and contract the muscles rapidly, let a spot heal, and push it out. The first time he tested this theory, he worried that the bullets would get trapped beneath skin. In reality, his skin had more to contend with during the healing process than his innards did. It had to fight off infection, while Adam's interior was disease-free.
Without a weapon, Adam snatched the pistol of a predator pre-occupied with pain, and promptly shot him. Next, he walked forward, unloading bullets into the eyes and throats of men he was certain that Bishop had bribed with gold. Out of ammunition, he bludgeoned his next attacker, busting the man's nose, pushing bits of bone and cartilage brutally into his brain.
Men blocked the entrance, and men blocked the kitchen, meaning men blocked the back door. Grabbing another gun, he shot the windows, weakening the structure. Another mindless lout, eager to capture the misunderstood miscreant, advanced upon Adam in an attempt to stop him from escaping. Adam stepped in close, gripped the man by his hair, then turned, forcing him against the wall.
"Sorry, mate," Adam whispered.
He released hot metal into the man's temple. The shot muffled the sound of his cracking skull. Blood and brains mixed, oozing from the wound. Adam's hand and gun were covered in gray matter. Two more men went down, and two more bullets hit him before he threw a table through the unsturdy glass.
As he ran, Adam considered how long he'd be able to do this.
...
The corridor was long and cold.
"One of us, one of them," Adam muttered, hands cuffed behind him.
"Quiet," his guard barked.
Adam smirked. "You see, the key to proper capture is to know thine enemy."
"I said quiet!"
"To keep your friends close, and your enemies closer."
"I hear that's how they tricked you," his second guard said.
"Ah yes. The first woman you decided to throw away to my blade." Adam laughed. "She was tougher than the lot of you."
"What part of 'quiet' is difficult to understand?"
Adam walked in silence.
Surrender wasn't survival.
It was merely part of the wait.