Disclaimer: I don't own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.
Alan was holding the professor by his belt. Guerrero would have probably pointed out how amateurish he was doing it, his balance was off, he'd soon tire, his fingers were going to swell from the unnatural angle and, untrained as he was, effort… There was a huge chance he wouldn't be able to withdraw them in time and thus fall down with his victim. Or at least lose a couple of fingers.
So Chance had to find a solution quickly.
He could simply charge at Alan – distract him with a sudden movement to the right, then jump at him and put the combat knife to his throat that he was always keeping attached to his ankle. He could also try the more risky version of knocking Alan out with a well-placed punch and grabbing the professor quickly, but there was the possibility that he missed the belt, only caught his shirt… judging from its looks, cheap Chinese fabric…
The safest option for now was trying to talk Alan out of whatever exactly it was that he was planning. Hostage negotiation 101. Chance figured he could try to lure him into a false feeling of companionship once he had an idea of what Alan was holding against the professor. Problem was, getting to that point was usually a long, winding process, a dance back and forth, back and forth… if Alan tired in the process…
"You killed Samuel!" Alan at this very moment shouted at the professor.
Okay, not so long and winding this time around then. Chance checked his watch. He estimated that Alan would be able to keep up his position for another five minutes or so. The key to the whole issue now was to find out as quickly as possible who that Samuel was…
"He was my best friend! We were close like brothers!"
This was going really well. What Chance needed now was some kind of surprising twist, something that threw Alan and would momentarily make him forget his anger and thirst for revenge…
"Kill him? What do you mean, kill him? We are trying to save him!", Professor Simpson yelled from his upside down position.
There you go… Chance was baffled. What was this, the customized-for-a-death-retardant-specialist version of a lucky day?
Alan froze, stared at the professor, opened his mouth… and pulled him up. "But he is dead! I found him in his room at the university, after he had taken all those pills… his alarm clock wouldn't stop, the walls are so paper thin there... I called the ambulance, but it was too late…"
All the wrath that had given him the strength to hold a grown man by his belt over the ledge of a tower suddenly seemed to have been drained away by the memory of that horrible morning.
"Sam was a brilliant art historian! His thesis would have been groundbreaking. But you and Percy, that bastard, discouraged him at every opportunity, till he questioned himself so much that he lost all will to live. Without a doctor's degree you're nothing in the field of art history… he felt it was all over… YOU made him feel it was all over!"
Alan charged at the professor again, but Chance hadn't let his guard down. One quick tackle and the young man was pinned to the floor.
Professor Simpson, now definitely out of danger, let out a deep breath of relief. Then he kneeled down by Alan's side. "You've got it all wrong, son. We weren't discouraging him, we were encouraging him. You're right, he was truly brilliant and his ideas were amazing. He would have revolutionized the field of art history. But Sam was also deeply troubled… as his friend I'm sure you know about his difficult childhood… the abuse he suffered at home…"
Pain darkened Alan's face and Chance cautiously loosened his grip on him. He would be able to get him back under full control within seconds, should he decide to attack again, but for now grief was holding him down much more thoroughly than Chance ever could.
"He had managed to get away from his violent father, but the damage had been done", Professor Percy added, standing on the threshold of the entrance to the rooftop. "Samuel was suffering from a pathologically low self-esteem. The more we told him how great he was doing, the more he doubted himself. He was putting himself under enormous pressure and in the end, when his thesis was finally finished, he apparently felt he couldn't face our verdict, convinced that he was going to fail. He killed himself the night before the day he was supposed to hand it in."
Chance could feel Alan's muscles slacken from sadness. They were telling the truth and the young man knew it. Probably had known it from the very beginning. But when you lose someone who is close to you… in a way Chance was grateful that he knew Baptiste was Katherine's killer. At least this way he knew whom to hate.
"You said you were trying to save him…", Chance prompted Professor Simpson.
The professor sighed. "I was taking a bit of artistic liberty with that sentence", he explained, the look on his face just as sad as Alan's. "We are trying to save Samuel's memory. I need to show you something…"
He reached into his jacket and produced a worn, slightly crumpled photo. It showed a sparsely furnished room, typical student hall of residence style – old, signs of decades of usage and no one really caring: A loose cable was coming out of the wall, stains everywhere… Samuel's room.
"The only personal item in this room is the laptop", Professor Percy, who had joined his colleague, explained. "This is where Samuel kept his thesis – the only version of his thesis. No backup copies on an external hard drive, nothing. Before he died he installed a malicious computer program that will destroy all data on it if the wrong password gets entered. In his last e-mail to us he wrote: "You want my thesis? Take a look at my last tour!"
"Explains the odd route we've taken", Guerrero, who had arrived with the second professor but kept himself in the shadows, in case Chance needed backup after all, chimed in. "He made you follow his tracks and you used this excursion so the university would pay the expenses… Like that."
Both professors made gestures of embarrassed apology. They were only human after all.
"He probably felt so inferior, by forcing you to try and find the password he was exerting power over you, from the grave. Pretty messed up dude… You've got that laptop here?"
... ... ...
An hour later they were sitting in Professor Percy's room, watching Guerrero hacking Sam's laptop.
"Not exactly state of the art…."
"Police refused to hack the laptop. They said there was no need to waste tax payer's money since it was a clear case of suicide…", Professor Simpson explained.
"Dude hadn't hidden the password anywhere… it consists of the first letter of every site he had visited. Y for York, C for Castle Howard…" Guerrero accessed a file and opened a document. "Here's the thesis."
Chance and Guerrero left the two professors and Alan. All three were already so deeply immersed in Samuel's last work that they didn't even say good-bye.
"Alan went through great lengths to somehow avenge his friend", Chance mumbled as they descended the stairs, on their way to finally relieve Winston from looking after Abby.
"Would do the same, bro."
Chance knew that sometime soon he would have to ask Guerrero why he had wanted them to go on this trip, why he had been so insistent… what his dealings with Ax were… but not now.
Chance slowly nodded and Guerrero knew this was his way of saying "me, too".