Life: Days of Present's Past
Disclaimer: I don't own any parts of Life, Dark Angel, or Bones. NBC produced and aired Life. FOX produced and aired Dark Angel and Bones. I'm simply inspired to entertain.
Retcon: Damian Lewis, the actor who portrays Charlie, actually has green eyes. So for the sake of consistency, my main character also has green eyes.
Chapter 1: Like Father Not So Like Son
In the summer of 1989, my mother was brutally murdered. My grandparents and their home were burned to a crisp. So then, how did I survive? Why did I survive? I didn't survive, or I wasn't supposed to at least. I received a bullet to the chest. As to why I survived, it's simple really. My heart is located on the right side of my chest.
Since then, I was bounced around from foster home to foster home. Some of the earlier ones weren't so bad but the later ones…yeah. The last family I stayed with was way back in 1995. My foster father was a drunk and my foster mother was a slave to him, giving in to his every whim. As for me, I was less than a slave. A mere toy that he could punch around like a rag doll. I was only six years old then but I was forced to grow up quickly living in that kind of crappy system. Less than two weeks with them and I bounced. I just packed my stuff, what little of it there was, upped, and left.
Anyone else would have died but I was lucky to stumble upon this hobo…well I thought he was a hobo. An ex-soldier turned con artist, thief, and hit man-for-hire who had been hardened by battle. War had changed him. He no longer fit in with those around him. Except me and quite a few others he'd picked up from the streets, my "brothers" and "sisters".
Known as Sketchy to those of us who knew him well and Z-Prime in the respected world of crime and thievery, he provided us with a home, a family, and the kick-ass skills we needed to survive. Over the years, with each successful job, from the most insignificant thefts to the attention drawing assassinations, we slowly began to draw more and more attention, not only from the media and the police, but also from an obscure group known as the Collective. It couldn't have been because we were "stealing" their "business". That would've been totally stupid. I mean you can't really "steal" business if the business is stealing. Can you?
Well, anyways, they were out to get us and one of their attempts had been successful.
Sketchy "Prime", Brian "Alpha", and Mark "Double" among others died this very day four years ago. Those of us that survived disbanded. And as far as I know, I'm the only one who's continued in the business. Kind of hard to leave that kind of life behind, especially if you're me and especially if the world answers your questions only in the face of cold, hard cash.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
I've spent the last four years trying to find out who I am, who I REALLY am. But dealing with the cost of living and digging into the past is the equivalent of getting smacked in the face with a two ton hammer called reality. And to top it off, I've been grounded here in LA for the past six months. Why? Because every lead that I've managed to get a hold of has led me back to NYC and slowly back here.
And here I am, riding on my bike through the rush hour crowd on a typical LA business morning, delivering packages with a hell bent express streak as does every other messenger who works at Jam Pony Express just to get our boss to shut up and stay that way. Poor Jason… I thought as I imagined the new kid who'd joined our ranks just yesterday getting lost on his first run and returning to base without having delivered any packages. Ronald would give Jason an hour long boring and completely irrelevant speech followed by the infamous "Bip, bip, bip!" as he ticked three times at his wristwatch, his way of saying "Hurry up! Time is money!" and an annoying phrase with an uncanny ability to push the wrong buttons in even the most patient people.
Of course, having been raised in the kind of environment I was raised in, I'm particularly lacking in the you can't knock out everyone who pisses you off department. But I can't afford to lose this job. Not exactly my dream job and not exactly a gold mine either but it allows me to keep a low profile while granting me the freedom to travel anywhere in the city and sometimes even trespass on other people's property. This way I can scout for my next "real" paycheck.
And I gotta say, this house I'm standing in front of right now looks mighty fine.
I wonder who's the unlucky fellow that lives here. I thought as I chained my bike and walked up to the front gate. The majority of people who could afford a home like this one often were corrupt officials or whoever else that ran on dirty money the same way functional alcoholics run on booze. In those cases, I had no moral qualms about stealing from them even if that meant ruining them in the process. But in those few rare instances where the people I stole from were honest, hard working people, I tried my best to minimize collateral damage.
I rang the buzzer twice and waited. A couple of seconds later, the face of a gray-haired, middle aged man popped up on the security screen, just staring at me. I frowned. What? No 'hello'? I wondered. "Jam Pony delivery. I need a signature." I said.
The gate opened and I walked to the front door, all the while taking in information about the surrounding area. "Damn!" I silently mouthed to myself. The beauty and grandeur of the front yard alone was enough to stupefy me, which made me all the more curious about the back yard and, more importantly, the inside of the house and all the goodies up for grabs.
The door opened and there was the man, again just staring at me. Only later would I learn that he had no intentions of being rude and that he wasn't staring at me, my piercings, my tattoos, or what most classical business style dressers like him would have considered a total lack of fashion sense. More like…he was trying to figure me out. But me of the then and there didn't have those kind of brilliant thoughts.
"Staring is rude y'know." I said in a failed attempt to snap him back from his own personal lala land. Rather, somehow I'd pushed him further along into his little dream world. Oookay. I mentally sighed while loudly saying "I have a package here for a Charles Crews." in another, this time successful, attempt to bring him back to reality. But…as you can imagine, he hadn't heard a single thing I said.
"I'm sorry. Did you say something?" he said. "I have a package here for a Charles Crews." I said again, trying not to show any signs of irritation by slowly breathing in and out like my handy, dandy Zen book told me.
"I can take that for Charlie." I heard him say, causing me to snap "Ah, ah, ah! I don't think so!" as I quickly pulled the package out of his reach. I swung my bag around and pulled out a clipboard, and pointing at a name and flashing it at him, I said "See? It says here that this package is for Charles Crews and unless you're him, then you can't sign for this package and I can't give it to you."
"But…" he began before I cut him off. "Jam Pony Express is not the UPS, sir. While we, the workers at Jam Pony, take pride in our reputation for excellent customer service, we place first and foremost the safety of the packages we deliver and insure that they are only taken from the senders and only received by the intended recipients." I forced a smile as I mechanically repeated the words that Ronald had drilled into the brains of all Jam Pony messengers. And while an utterly ridiculous and overly formal string of words, they were surprisingly effective, as proven by the man's simple "All right. You'll have to come back later then."
"Thanks. I will. I definitely will." I said and left.
The next time I saw that house was exactly 11:53 P.M that very same day. I was crouching out of sight in a set of bushes a good distance away from the front gate, frowning and uselessly trying to hide my bike for all that was worth. It felt like trying to hide a boulder with an egg. "Breathe." I murmured, pondering whether or not it was a good idea to break in. I mean, anyone who could afford a house like that surely could afford protection to match, protection that perhaps would require the use tools and equipment that were no longer at my disposal.
After completing the day's runs, I'd gone straight back to my squat, a tiny, miserable room in an old, abandoned apartment building in the slums of LA. The place was run down, the walls half torn here and there, most of the floor tiles were cracked and chipped, the rough wood underneath clearly showing in some places, and the windows covered in disgusting muck and putty that made old, moldy honey suddenly seem new. Thank the stars I didn't actually live there. This was only cache for the tools of the trade.
I went to the corner of the room, the only place where the floor tiles were still intact. I slipped out a utility knife from my pocket, flipped it open, and dug the pointed end of the blade in between the lines separating the tiles. With some effort, I lifted them to reveal several narrow and rather loose floorboards underneath. I suddenly became focused, narrowing my eyes in concentration as I ran my fingers lightly over the boards and then lifted them up, carefully, one by one.
In case you were wondering why, in the hole underneath lay a reinforced, digitally locked steel box that held all my equipment and a fat, lump sum of cash that I'd saved up in case of an emergency. Call it paranoia if you want, but even thieves have to be wary of others in the trade. So I'd rigged the hole with a homemade explosive wired to a web of thin threads connected to the floorboards in a specific pattern. The damn things had to the removed in a specific order else, well, kaboom.
The box came out with a grunt on my part. The thing itself was of considerable weigh on its own. Add to that the weight of a horde of gadgets and well, you get the idea. I opened it and took out a clean pair of loose, black cargo pants with a matching plain t-shirt, and a hoodie and changed into them. Then I replaced all the junk in my messenger bag with the "essentials", grip gloves, wire clips, lock picks, a telescopic baton, and a night stick among a wide variety of other tools. All there was to do now was to wait. It was then that the doubt began to creep in. The words slowly formed and the questions materialized, settling into my mind like a thick, dense fog. That is never good. But I chose to ignore it as I swung my bag over my shoulders, jumped on my bike, and left.
It still isn't too late to turn back. I frowned as I stared at the front gate. In that single moment, that stupid black steel gate felt like a doorway to hell, which, as it turns out, would be. But I also kept in mind my desperate need for money to continue my investigations and to keep the Collective off my tail. Somehow, those bastards always managed to uncover some nick or loophole in my cover story, and that required quite a bit of cash to make right. But then again, I should have known that by now. You didn't get to be one of the most dangerous crime organizations in the nation by collecting bottle caps. And trust me, in the criminal underworld, you didn't get much higher than the Collective. To them, power and influence came in spades. So against my better judgment and in a move that would change my life, I proceeded to break into the house of Charlie Crews.
I half-turned my head to the right, then to the left, followed by a quick sweep of my eyes across my entire field of vision to make sure that the coast was clear. Nothing. Silence. And hoping that things would continue to go in my favor, I jumped from my hiding spot and broke into a sprint that would have made some of the best track stars envious, quickly closing the gap that separated me from the front gate, where I ducked and pressed myself tightly against the adjacent wall, outside the field of view of the security screen. Following a quick visual check of the front yard and the surrounding area to make sure no one was there, I kept myself close to the outer wall in a semi-crouched position and made my way to the back where another quick visual check revealed that there was no one outside.
I quickly examined the back gate for any alarm devices and motion-touch sensitive wiring. I cocked an eyebrow. This was strange. There hadn't been wiring on the front gate, and so I'd assumed the front had been booby trapped. Not that I would've gone through the front anyways. Honestly, the way people heavily arm the main entrances to their homes these days, leaving the rear ones in the dust more or less, you'd think that they assumed people like me would just want to kick down the doors and parade through the front. Well, back to the point. Back entrances aren't that heavily rigged, but they're still rigged more often than not, and when I didn't find any wiring, I began to wonder whether I was looking my touch or this was too easy and too good to be true.
"Focus." I breathed. I reached into my bag, pulled out my grip gloves, and slipped them on. I took firm hold of the metallic bars of the back gates and in two effortless jumps, I'd reached the top of the gate and flipped myself to the other side after which I made a run for the house and pressed my back against it.
Then I headed to the window nearest the back door. While the curtains were drawn, there was a slight opening that would give me a perfect view of inside within a limited radius with the use of some light and a mirror. I quickly pulled out a pocket flashlight and a small mirror the size of a microscope slide and took the next few minutes to properly adjust the lighting and angle of the mirror. And finally I spotted what I wanted to see, the alarm control panel.
"You've got to be joking." I mouthed, rolling my eyes, absolutely but pleasantly disgusted at what I saw. Just minutes ago, I was frozen by the idea that this house had been equipped with hell knows what, something akin to lasers, wires, stun mines, or whatnot, only to find a simple, lame, and altogether cheap alarm system.
It was definitely one of the simplest ones I'd encountered in all my years of thieving. A generic bypass-access code type system with user- and, in this case, thief-friendly wiring.
Now came the "tough" part. Once I entered the house, I would have approximately 45 seconds, 40 just to be on the safe side, to disarm the alarm. I readied my wire clips and screwdrivers, holding them in my left hand, and grabbed my lock pick using my right hand. I inserted the pick into the lock and took a few seconds to "feel" and "lift" the pins inside the lock. And with a slight twist of my wrist, the door was opened with a light clicking sound that acted as my cue to start counting down. 38. I began to mentally count.
I rushed inside and closed the door as quietly as possible. 32. I ran over to the control panel, bit down on the pick to hold it in place, and started to unscrew the panel cover with a screwdriver in each hand. 15. With that done, I put down the screwdrivers on the floor and proceeded to run my fingers through the wiring to figure out exactly which wires I needed to cut. 10. I gave a quiet sigh of relief as I found the right ones. Fortune pisses on me. were my exact thoughts as I simultaneously cut two wires, disconnecting this alarm from the main system.
A lighthearted smile flashed across my face. I was now free to wander in the house of one of the richest person I'd ever run across. Not to mention actually getting into the house had been as simple as taking candy from a baby.
But my feelings of joy were short-lived. As soon as I entered the foyer, I understood why Crews didn't need any heavy duty protection. There was nothing to steal. No furniture. No decorations. Nothing. The room was completely empty save for a small table with a bowl of fresh fruit on top, prompting thoughts along the lines of What the…? and Who the hell lives like this? And all the other rooms in the house dished out more of the same, boring white walls, red wood door and window frames, and curtains that smelled like that positively revolting smell of a new car's inside.
I eventually made my way back to the foyer again. And this is where things really got interesting because I found myself at gunpoint just moments later.
"Charlie?" a voice came from the kitchen. I immediately recognized that voice as the gray-haired man's I'd seen earlier, but before I could process any further coherent thoughts and an appropriate reaction, there he was. His voice was no longer distant, even seemingly closing in on me, going from a gently spoken syllable, "Char,"… to a glass-shattering scream, "LIE!"
Almost as if a I'd been pumped full of adrenaline, my body no longer ran on thoughts, causing something of a frightening shift from a calm human being to a programmed killing machine. In that one instant, I knew my body was running on pure instinct and muscle memory, my hands locked together in a baseball swing motion that connected with the man's head for an instant KO. Then…
The lights suddenly turned on and from behind me, the sound of a gun being cocked could be heard, resonating throughout the foyer, amplified by the vast emptiness of the room. And it was then that I heard it for the first time, Crew's voice, a soft and mellifluous yet perfectly clear and commanding voice much different that the rough voice I'd heard earlier in the day and again mere moments ago. A voice that ordered me to put my hands in the air.
I hesitated for a moment and then let out a deep breath as I regained my composure. I readily complied with his request. Hey, so sue me. I might have been the karate kid, but the man had a gun pointed at me, and last I checked, a bullet in my head would have done little to get me out of that situation. And all in all, had he wanted me dead, I wouldn't be here telling you about this now would I? But more importantly, doing so bought me some time, even if only a fleeting moment, to think things through, both what had gone wrong and what to do now.
Wait for it… I told myself when I heard Crews beginning to move towards me. I had a plan. I just didn't know if it was going to work. Sure, I'd been at gunpoint a load of times, and I'd gotten away just fine each time, but that didn't mean that I would this time. People react differently even if they're put in the same situation as someone else. And it's those little differences that people don't notice that could get me killed. I could feel a trickle of sweat forming on my left temple. Just wait for it… The sound of his footsteps was faint. His footwork was light and steady. This man was no civilian. And that realization made my skin tighten, tension coursing through my body. Just who is he?
Finally, after what seemed like forever, I felt the muzzle of the gun touch my back. "You must be Charles Crews. Right?" Silence followed. Of course I didn't expect to get an answer. That was a rhetorical question. "Well, let me tell you something about me, Mr. Crews."
Suddenly, I turned around and took hold of his arm holding the gun. Then I kicked, stretching out the length of my leg, pinning my foot on his ribs, and locking both of our positions. And with a brisk motion, I twisted his arm forward and pulled on it while pushing him back with my leg. Along with the signature cracking sound of his ribs breaking and the light bump of his shoulder being dislocated, I could hear a painful grunt, though I must admit, I was expecting more of a scream. Even when I flipped him backwards onto the ground, he didn't scream. Crews merely clung onto his dislocated shoulder and clenched his teeth as if to bite down the pain, making me even more curious about him.
With the gun now in my hands, I stood over him, and ejecting the mag, I told him "I'm not that easy and I don't do guns." And that night, Charlie Crews learned what a mean left hook I had.
I hoped you liked the first chapter. More coming up soon!