Author's Note: WELCOME BACK! I've been trying to update every week on Wednesday or Thursday, and I think this is my third week meeting the deadline. Hurrah! Anyway, so glad to have readers here for the penultimate chapter of SoHSoC Part I. The story will be a three-parter, but all three parts will be collected in this story. I'm very excited. Today we have more Sam and Charlie as they work together to try and find Cas and Dean. Well, Charlie works, Sam supplies coffee. Personally, I just love having Charlie in the mix because she brings tech and science into the Supernatural world. I had so much fun with this chapter. I hope you enjoy. Leave a review if you have time - they light up my day.
Servant of Heaven, Son of Cain
Chapter Fourteen
Charlie was all legs and wires as she lay half in, half out of the computer deck, her slim hands zip-tying together cables of matching colors to keep them organized. When she spoke, her voice sounded tinny from bouncing around inside the system's metal housing.
"So let me get this straight," she said, plugging another cord into its port, "All told, your brother's gone mad with a power that predates the Old Testament, your resident angel is in the outfield, and your only back-up is a pint-sized hacker with a rundown VW and an unhealthy Tolkien obsession?"
Sam walked over with a steaming pot of coffee in hand, refilling Charlie's mug. He sighed.
"I guess that's the long and short of it, yeah."
The hacker let out a humorless snort.
"Must be Thursday," she quipped. She held out a hand, "Bring me that soldering iron, would ya?"
Sam brought her the soldering iron. After she took it, he leaned against the table, refilled his own coffee, and added a shot of whiskey for good measure. He drank slowly as he watched Charlie work, smelling the scent of hot metal. He didn't bother asking her what she was doing. He knew he wouldn't understand even if she told him.
Suddenly, there was a snap and a spark. Charlie squawked and snatched her hand away from a block of hardware, shaking out her fingers before sticking them in her mouth.
"Ow," she said.
Sam leaned down.
"You okay?"
"Oh, yeah. You know, just the consequences of a rush job—you're gonna get zapped, and you're gonna get burned. But its fine, I'm done with this part anyway. On to step five!"
"You said this was step five."
"Fine, step six, then. Whatever, it doesn't matter. Wait till you see this."
Shimmying out of the console, Charlie pulled herself upright with the help of a table leg and dove back into her duffle bag, digging out fistfuls of electrical components and wadded cords until she found what she was looking for.
"Yeh-heah," she laughed, grinning around the several zip-ties she still held between her teeth. Sam looked over her shoulder as she brought out a black, reinforced tactical case, the kind used to store and transport firearms. Sam raised his eyebrows.
"Um, Charlie? What is that?"
The hacker didn't answer. Instead, she did a little dance, singing, "What's in the box?" while seeming to produce a key from thin air. Still humming and bouncing on her knees, she leaned down and unfastened the two padlocks that held the case shut.
"Ta-daaa," she announced, opening the box and stepping to the left so Sam could see what was inside. When the hunter's mouth dropped open, Charlie waggled her eyebrows suggestively.
"Ain't she purdy?" she said, still speaking around the zip-ties in her mouth. She began to chew them as Sam fawned over the case's contents.
"Is…is that a quadcopter?!" he gaped.
Charlie's grin stretched wider.
"It's called the Yuneec Q500 4K," she beamed, pleased with Sam's enthusiasm, "It's one of the best drones currently on the market."
Sam was leaning over the tiny aircraft with his hands held awkwardly in front of him. He looked at Charlie with an expression of desperation.
"May I?" he asked, pointing.
The hacker laughed.
"Yeah, of course," she said, "Pick 'er up and have a look."
Sam swallowed and did so, eagerly. Lifting the quadcopter gingerly from its foam bedding, the hunter tilted it this way and that, then raised it up so he could study the aircraft's undercarriage. The drone itself was only about the size of a dinner plate, but with its sensors and rotors and gleaming black paint job, it looked a bit mean. Its appearance, along with the firm feel of its construction, made it obvious the rig was no plaything. Sam was impressed.
"Very Skynet," he said, handing the drone to Charlie. Her eyes shone above her smile.
"Thanks," she said, then began equipping the quadcopter with a power supply, a camera, and a few other aftermarket components Sam didn't recognize, "Hand me that tiny little phillip's-head, will you?"
Sam handed her the tiny little phillip's-head.
A thought occurred to him.
"Hey. Charlie?" he asked, watching the hacker unscrew a panel from the back of the quadcopter's remote, "Don't get me wrong, that thing is awesome, and I'm grateful—no, more than grateful for you help, but how is a drone gonna help us find Dean an Cas?"
Charlie set four minuscule screws on the tabletop, turning them up on their heads so they wouldn't roll. Her pale face had gone tight at his question, as if she'd been expecting it. She wouldn't look him in the eye.
"It's not," she replied, quietly. Before Sam could interject, she continued, "It's not going to help us find Castiel, anyway. He's gone."
"What? Gone where? How do you—"
The hacker cut him off by fingering a few keys on her laptop, turning the screen to face him. On the screen was a map with a single blue blip in its center.
"Zoom in," Charlie told him. Her face was grim.
Sam toggled the arrow keys, rending a closer shot of the map. Charlie explained as the terrain loaded in slow squares:
"I checked right after you called—I have Cas' number, for emergencies. You mentioned you couldn't get him on the phone, but you didn't say anything about tracking his GPS. So I did. What you have there is his last location, before he went dark."
The image finally snapped into focus. There were two yellow lines in view: one marked Bakers St, the other Old Sawmill Rd. Sam couldn't see where the two roads intersected. That point on the map was covered over by the pale blue blip.
The hunter stared at the screen, throat working as he swallowed hard.
"Crossroads," he said.
It was all he could force out.
Charlie nodded, turning the computer back around. She didn't say anything. She didn't have to. They both understood the implications.
Sam sank back into a chair, heavily, pulling his hands down the sides of his face.
"Aw, Cas," he muttered, mostly to himself. He closed his eyes and pressed his thumb and forefinger into their corners, "Aw, Cas."
Charlie hung her head, picking at a tangled clump of wires.
"I'm sorry," she said, "I know that's not what you wanted to hear, but if it makes you feel better, I gave you the bad news first."
Sam looked up from under his hand.
"What's the good news?" he asked.
"The good news," Charlie said, using a cable to connect the drone remote to the computer deck, "is that your token redhead computer genius has a super-smart over-clocked flying robo-friend that can help us find your brother."
She flipped a switch and toggled some levers and the quadcopter whirred to life.
Sam watched the rig calibrate.
"How?" he asked, "I've looked into drones. They have short ranges and ever shorter battery lives. The only way we could even begin to use this thing to find Dean would be if he were still in the immediate area."
Charlie stopped typing and looked up, offended.
"First of all, how dare you," she said, "Did you really think I would settle for a thirty-minute battery life and a three-hundred-foot flight radius? Psh. Nuh-uh. The first thing I did when I bought this puppy was double her power supply and installed a long-range receiver. This thing can go for miles.
"Second of all, none of that matters anyway because Dean is still in town."
"What?"
Sam gripped the table's edge.
Charlie grinned.
"You heard me," she said.
"Yeah. I heard you. How do you know that?"
She shrugged.
"The police told me."
Sam opened his mouth, but the hacker cut him off, correcting herself.
"Well, okay," she admitted, "the police didn't tell me, exactly, but—here."
She pulled what looked to be a high-tech kernel of corn out of her right ear. A circle of blue light glowed around its domed end.
"It's a wireless Bluetooth ear-bud," she explained, handing it to him, "Put it in. Listen."
Sam did as he was told. He frowned when he heard familiar-sounding chatter, then half-smiled, impressed.
"Is that—?"
"Police radio," Charlie grinned, "I synced the ear-bubs to a wide-band scanner. I've been listening in since I was a few miles outside town. Heard something interesting on my way in."
"Like what?"
Charlie was typing on second laptop now, explaining as she worked.
"Some guy's wife called the police station. She insisted that her husband had been 'robbed at gunpoint' by a 'bloody madman.' That piqued my interest, so I pulled over the VW to listen. I heard the dispatcher relay an address to a patrolman, so I wrote it down and used a reverse look-up tool to find the home and phone number. This is the place, by the way."
She showed him a street-view image of the white, one-story home.
"I called," she went on quickly, "claiming to be a detective. My first time impersonating an officer of the law—you guys are a bad influence. Anyway, the husband refused to talk to me, but his wife had plenty to say. Apparently, her 'hubby' Jerry Nealen, father of two, closed up his liquor store early tonight and then stumbled through the door of their family home looking sheet-white and scared out of his mind. At first, he wouldn't tell his ol' lady anything about what happened, but in Shirley's—the wife's—own words, 'You're no good as a wife or mother unless you know how to get to the truth,' so she got him to spill. He told her some guy came in his shop packing heat and covered in blood, looking for booze. He said the guy claimed the blood wasn't his, and that he'd kill Jerry if he called the police. Then he paid for his booze and left. So it wasn't quite robbery, and it wasn't exactly at gunpoint, but I get why Jerry was scared."
"How do you know it was Dean?"
"Because I know what Dean looks like," Charlie snorted, "and because Jerry Nealen is a man of the future. He has a smartphone app that he uses to monitor his store's security cameras from home. His wife was able to email me some screenshots from the recording of tonight's feed. They have joint access to the account."
She clicked on an email, opening the attached .jpeg file. She turned the screen.
"Look."
Sam looked.
For a security camera, the picture was surprisingly clear. The bloodied figure standing in middle of Nealen Liquor was unmistakably Dean, but Sam didn't know whether to feel happy for having found him or horrified at how he looked. His brother was coated in blow-back and blood spatter, and his skin was bone-pale around his eyes. Dean was smiling in the picture, condescendingly, like a killer who claimed there were more bodies but refused to say where. Sam had to wonder how close that was to the truth.
He looked at the time stamp.
"Okay," he admitted, "This wasn't that long ago, but how do you know he didn't leave town after this? He could be miles away by now."
"Not unless he can fly."
Charlie pulled up another picture. This one was an exterior shot of Nealen Liquor's parking lot. It was empty.
"No cars," the hacker pointed out, "So that means he left on foot. Plus, you have the Impala, and there have been no reported hijackings or stolen cars in Lebanon for the past twenty-four hours. Unless he got a ride from someone—doubtful with his whole American Psycho vibe—that means he can't have gotten far. So," she swung around and pointed both index fingers at the quadcopter, "Drone."
She picked up the tiny aircraft and gave it to Sam.
"I need you to take this outside," she said. She picked up a pamphlet and stuck it between his teeth, "These are instructions. You do Steps One through Three. They aren't hard."
She stuck a walkie-talkie in his back pocket.
"Radio me when it's done. I have to launch it from here."
Sam shifted the drone carefully one hand and took the pamphlet out of his mouth, moving it to his shirt pocket.
"Charlie—" he began.
"Ah-ah!" the hacker cut him off, waving her hands emphatically, "Look. Samwise. I know you have more questions, but we're on the clock, here. I'll explain how the rest works as in-flight entertainment. Now go. Shoo."
Sam sighed and turned to leave.
"Oh, wait!"
Sam sighed and turned back.
"Yeah?"
Charlie was smiling awkwardly. She hesitated.
"If, by any chance," she said slowly, "anyone in a suit with a badge ever shows up and asks you about what we're doing here right now, just tell them I asked you to help me test my new toy quadcopter, okay?"
Sam narrowed his eyes suspiciously.
"Why?"
The hacker looked sheepish.
"I, uh, I may have done some things that voided the drone's factory warrantee," she admitted, "Strictly speaking, my modifications aren't exactly within the limits of the law. Probably better for you if you pretend not to know about them."
"Huh," Sam cleared his throat. He looked down at the rig in his hands, seeing it in a new, less rosy light.
He asked her:
"Are we talking a, uh, 'I-ripped-a-tag-off-my-mattress' slap-on-the-wrist type thing, or a 'Sir-I'm-gonna-need-you-to-answer-a-few-questions-down-at-headquarters-it's-a-matter-of-National-Security' Class-A Felony type thing?"
Charlie thought for a moment.
"What do you think happens if you get caught violating Federal Aviation laws?" she asked.
Sam groaned.
"So glad I asked," he grumbled. He began to make his way reluctantly up the stairs.
"Remember to radio me!" Charlie called after him.
The hunter let the door slam on his way out.
Reviews are loved.
Critiques are encourgaed.
Always feel free to ask questions.
~DWC