6:52pm, Sunday September 8th, 2019
"Holy shit," Diego says, staring at the large panel in the basement which held the vast array of circuit breakers and fuses that supplied power to the whole of the mansion. When the electricity cut out he and Luther had come down here to try and get it started again. Luther was actually pretty good with stuff like that, his four year stint on the moon seconding as a crash course in electronic repair with the steep learning curve of 'fix it or die'.
Right now he's not sure how useful either of them are going to be. Someone had tripped the main circuit breaker and smashed in its panel for good measure; a clear act of sabotage.
"We've got to find the others," Luther says, voice tight as he runs his flashlight over the mess, surveying the damage. "This was intentional, someone's here."
No shit, Diego thinks acerbically, but out loud he says, "We need to get the backup generator working, salvage what we can. Whoever's here is prepared to work in the dark and we're all running around with flashlights. Easy targets."
"So this is the part of the movie where we split up?" Luther says without humor. "You're knives aren't going to do you any good if you can't see them coming."
"But you're better with this sort of thing than I am," Diego points out. They spend a few precious moments bickering about it before deciding with a flash of emotional maturity that would have made Grace proud that now probably isn't the best time to have a clash of personalities. Luther goes, Diego stays and neither of them are keen on the idea but there are too many things to do and not enough bodies to go around.
Diego gets to work and keeps his knives handy. Whoever's here must know someone would come to the basement for this exact purpose; it's the perfect setup for an ambush.
Fortunately things could have been a lot worse. He checks the generators and finds them undamaged, which means if he can get the transfer switch repaired and bypass the damaged circuits they'd be able to restore power to enough of the mansion to at least give themselves a fighting chance. He gets a couple battery lanterns working so he doesn't have to work one handed while trying to hold a flashlight and-
"Diego!"
He yelps and drops the multi tool, spinning around to give Klaus a piece of his mind- and stops, mouth hanging open. His stomach drops like an elevator in free fall and every single thought leaves his head, leaves it feeling hollowed out and caved in like a rotting jack-o'-lantern and his first instinct is to ask his brother what the hell kind of practical joke he's playing, and why he thought now would be a good time to do it.
Except it's not a joke. His brother's face tells him that much. "Klaus?" he asks, but it's not Klaus, it can't be Klaus because Klaus is flesh and blood, annoyingly real. This is something else, a projector-screen image, blue-tinged and flickering. Dead, a voice in the back of his head supplies but he shies away from it.
"Diego!" Klaus shouts again, brilliant blue light radiating from his clenched fists.
"Klaus- what the hell?" He knows what he's looking at but rejects it wholesale. This isn't real.
"It's Five!"
"Five?" he parrots dumbly, aware enough to know he's in some kind of shock, to know he needs to be thinking more clearly than he is.
"He's gone crazy," Klaus says, gaping wound at his neck pulsing grotesquely with each word and Jesus Christ...is this what Klaus sees when he looked at the dead? No wonder he's a junkie. Was, the voice reminds him. He was a junkie. Now he's dead.
"He killed Vanya, Allison-"
"And you?" Diego whispers, and Klaus nods. There are tear tracks spilling double lines down his face; an eternal weeping ghost.
Maybe it was all those years of combat training, or the plain insanity of their everyday lives but Diego finds himself pulling out of the shock and dealing with the horror faster than he suspects a more well-adjusted person might, frozen gears of his brain finally starting to turn.
"You will see many horrors in life," he hears Reginald's voice tell him, "and many dangers will present themselves without warning. You must learn to accept both horror and danger in a moment. To hesitate is to die."
"Five did this?" he clarifies, shaking hands going for his knives.
Klaus nods. And Diego had sent Luther into the danger alone...there was no way Luther stood a chance against Five. To be honest, he's not sure any of them really stand a chance against him. He's seen what his brother's capable of. Five was...ruthless, is the kindest word Diego can find for it. Utterly ruthless in a firefight. And if he's crazy too- "Shit," Diego swears. He looks at Klaus, who seems to be channeling all his energy into remaining corporeal. "Find Luther," Diego tells him, and doesn't think about his dead siblings.
Klaus nods and disappears.
Reginald's voice is in his head, telling him to stiffen his spine, to focus. There was a threat, and it didn't matter what form it took. Diego supposes it's been a long time coming, this psychotic break or whatever it is, Five's slow spiral into total madness. Diego backs into a corner so Five wouldn't be able to materialize behind him and grabs his knifes, spinning them nervously.
Then there's nothing to do but wait, even though his every instinct is telling him to go and find whatever's left of his family. But he couldn't fight Five out in the open; his brother had the keen advantage of spacial jumps, and that wasn't something you could plan for. If you were a target then by the time you saw Five it was already too late.
Waiting there in the dark with the adrenaline flooding through his body it does occur to him that maybe he's the crazy one, that Klaus wasn't real at all and he'd been having a conversation with a voice in his head but even viewed objectively that made no sense. After all, of the two of them he's not the one who slipped into dementia and holds one-sided conversations with a mannequin. Unfortunately, if Five really has snapped Diego isn't going to get the chance to verify. He's got one shot at this; Five's too damn fast for another.
He doesn't have long to wait. Only a few minutes later there's a flicker of light and the familiar soft whoosh of a portal opening.
"You must not hesitate to face danger." Diego doesn't. The first knife is leaving his hand almost before Five is finished stepping out of the portal. The lanterns don't send light quite far enough for him to see much at the far end of the basement but he trusts his aim; his talents and his powers. The second knife follows, curving slightly on it's deadly trajectory. He hears a grunt, and the sickening sound of a blade sinking into flesh. He sends a third knife spinning into the darkness and prays for forgiveness.
But there's no God here tonight. One of his own blood covered knives comes back at him.
He barely has time to register what he's seeing before he feels it tear through the muscle underneath his clavicle, knocking him back and he drops to his knees as Five materializes in front of him, dripping blood and it's like looking through a shattered mirror. Five is a fractured image of himself, a thousand slivers held together by the thinnest of glues, eyes like pits of tar and Diego can see the fires of hell burning at the bottom. There's no doubt any more that his brother is completely insane.
Diego's breath is ragged, labored and it takes him too long, much too long to pull his mind away from those fathomless black holes in his brother's face and when he does he's staring at an entirely different hole, this one belonging to the muzzle of a gun. The hammer cocks and Diego goes cold with the certainty of death. "Five-"
Diego never gets the chance to finish his sentence and Five never gets the chance to pull the trigger. Instead he's thrown off his feet and the gun goes flying as Luther crashes into him in a linebacker's tackle that sends them both sprawling.
"Luther!" Diego shouts, and even that hurts. He doesn't pull the knife out of his shoulder because if he did he'd probably bleed out, but Luther doesn't stand any more of a chance alone against Five than he does so he ignores the radio static in his head and the raw screaming of his nerves and tries getting to his feet. Even as he watches Five vanishes and reappears behind Luther, who turns just in time to keep from getting a knife in the back, deflecting the blow with one massive arm.
Luther glances over and sees Diego struggling to rise. "Stay behind me!" he yells, blocking another attack from Five, who has one of Diego's own knives clutched in his small hand.
"You can't beat him alone!" Diego tries to stand a second time, feeling the knife fetch up against bone as his body moves and the pain makes him dizzy, makes him sink uselessly down against the wall again and this was nothing like the movies where the hero was free to keep going so long as all the major organs were intact. For that matter, why the hell was Five able to keep going? Diego had hit him at least once; he knows he did but Five's acting like he hadn't even felt it.
Luther is desperate now, sweat on his brow as Five attacks again and again, weaving in and out of range like a mongoose. Luther lands a blow that would have pulverized a full grown man let alone a thirteen year old boy but Five barely seems to register the contact, a feral smile stretching his face into ghastly shapes, cruel and filled with happy malice and Diego has the sickening realization that he's toying with Luther; that it's all just a game to him. "Get out of here!" Diego yells, because at some point Five is going to get tired of playing and then Luther will die.
Luther doesn't listen, of course he doesn't listen the dumb, stubborn bastard. He's going to die a pointless martyr's death trying to protect Diego which is stupid as hell because Diego is just as dead as Klaus and Allison and Vanya are. As dead as Luther will be. Five's going to slaughter them all with a smile on his face.
They trade blows again and Five's fists are more powerful than they have any right to be, Luther slowly giving way under the barrage, fighting back with everything he has but often as not hitting empty air as Five dances and warps around him. Finally his fist connects with Five's jaw, splitting his lip open on his own teeth. That lunatic grin turns into a sneer and then Five is gone, whispering away and Luther doesn't even have time to recover before he reappears over by the far wall where the gun had fallen.
Diego had opened his mouth to scream out a warning but it turns to a scream of denial instead as the first bullet slams into Luther's chest, jerking him back like a puppet, pained shock on his face. He coughs, blood on his lips and staggers towards Five who fires again, and again and again, emptying the magazine into Luther's body until their titan of a brother falls like an oak, smashing onto the ground in a pool of his own blood.
Diego reaches up and pulls the knife free because it's his only weapon and if he's going to die anyway then by God he's going down fighting. He holds it in a shaking, blood slicked hand, vision spotting from pain but fortunately for him he doesn't actually need to see to hit what he's aiming at.
He doesn't get the chance to raise his arm before Five is on top of him, grabbing his wrist and twisting, driving Diego's own hand toward his chest and burying the knife in it. He feels the blood flood into his esophagus, rising like bile and he chokes, coughing up frothy crimson bubbles.
"Five-" he breathes, eyes wide and disbelieving.
His brother bends down, mouth next to Diego's ear. "My name's not Five." He twists the knife, pulls it free and wipes it clean on Diego's sleeve. Diego whimpers, shudders and goes still, a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth.
7:34pm, Sunday September 8th, 2019
There's the distinct sizzling crack of an energy charge and the young man steps forward out of the hissing oblivion of a wormhole, open briefcase in his hand. He sniffs the air and wrinkles his nose at the smell, the stink of teleportation and time travel, the metallic scorched-atom stench of a temporal anomaly searing it's way through reality. The fabric of time feels thin here, stretched like dough that's been rolled out and folded in on itself and pulled apart again; shenanigans of one sort or another have definitely occurred.
The lights don't work and that's never a good sign.
He finds the first body in the hallway. Slit throat, clean kill; efficient work at least. He spends longer than he should staring at it before continuing on his way. The second one is laying by the stairs, horribly mutilated. Whoever was behind this one had fun. (Looked a bit like Kosminski's work but he isn't sure. It's not like he's spent his time studying the MO's after all.)
It takes awhile to find the two brothers in the basement and it's clear they'd both gone down fighting; it's also clear it hadn't done a bit of good. He wonders which member of 'the family' would take credit for it and then decides not to think about it. He's here for a reason and it isn't morbid introspection. He frowns, touching the grey, lifeless bodies. Algor mortis hasn't set in; the flesh is cool, but not yet cold. Looks like he'd missed the fun by less than an hour. So much could happen in an hour...time was funny like that.
That left one more and it's over an hour later before he finds her stuffed into the crawl space in the kitchen, her neck snapped with brutal efficiency. She would have been the first otherwise she wouldn't have been hidden, wouldn't have died in such a quiet way.
At least it had been too fast for her to feel any pain. It'd get to him if he didn't know better. (If it is getting to him he doesn't let himself acknowledge it. Hazard of the job, that kind of thing.)
So no one had made it out alive; he can't say he's surprised. If he expected anything else he wouldn't be here.
He lowers her to the floor and closes the eyes that are staring at him like an accusation. "I'm sorry," he says softly, stroking a bit of her hair. "It's going to be okay." He stands up, brushes himself off, straightens his tie. Grabs the briefcase and set the coordinates. He looks at her once more with an infinitely sad smile. "I'll see you in an hour," he says and disappears as time starts m ov i ng sdrawkcab.