Author's Note: I'm getting the impression Aiden is a member of the 'hitting women is a special sort of crime' school. The game certainly hints at it. I'm flushing that part of his characterisation down the loo, because that's where it belongs, I don't care if it contradicts canon.


_Sucker's Game – Part 3


Mia was still alive. She was still alive when she left the ruin and got into her car with a haunted look on her face. She was still alive when she parked her car outside her apartment building and she was even alive by the time she finally got home and snapped the door closed behind her.

It didn't quite compute that way. She'd had herself convinced Pearce would kill her if he ever found out. The film of it had played in her head every time Cox oh so gently reminded her of why Mia wasn't going to backstab Cox. Pearce wouldn't forgive this kind of betrayal and moreover, he probably couldn't afford to.

Mia turned on the television in an attempt to drown out the thoughts screaming in her head. She couldn't make sense of them anyway, she didn't know what to do now. She could go on with her life, her boring job, her drained bank account and her wonky circle of friends, online and in the real world.

All that and she was glad he wasn't dead, even if it would solve most of her problems. She had never wanted him hurt. She liked him, his quick mind and parched sense of humour. Working for and with him was a roller-coaster ride and it had been too easy to get used to it, but she'd got it all backward. They'd started on the wrong foot and she'd never figured out how to reverse it.

The TV droned on, some reality show and commercial breaks that felt like they lasted half an hour, trying to sell her chocolate and cars and insurance.

After a while, Mia collected herself from the couch and found the phone she used to call Cox on. It was the second best thing, because Pearce had made it clear he didn't want her to contact him, but the silence from Cox was equally worrisome.

The call went to voicemail and Mia dropped the phone by her side, folded her feet under her and settled back on the couch, failing to get comfortable. No Cox, no Pearce,…

A news broadcast came on, but nothing that held her attention for more than a fleeting second, just colour and white noise, beating through her mind.

It had been the middle of the night when she'd come home, but it took hours until she started crashing. The tiredness slipped up on her as the adrenaline in her system ebbed out. She fell asleep, or at least dozed for a while and came to with a dry mouth and a throbbing headache, momentarily disoriented and even her body felt alien.

There had been a knock on her door, her mind informed her belatedly and just in time for the knock to come again.

Mia was awake instantly, she jumped to her feet, but nearly dropped back down in a sudden, nauseating bout of vertigo. Another knock and it was eerie how the rhythm hadn't changed.

As quietly as she could, Mia slipped to the door, leaned in to peer through the peephole.

Pearce.

Looking both calm and furious at the same time.

Mia wrapped her hands around the handle of the baseball bat leaned against the wall by the door and stepped back. Swung the bat once experimentally, then reached out with one hand to unlock the door very slowly in the hope the clicking didn't give her away.

She took several careful steps back, as far as she could go. If she had a gun and the guts, she could've shot him through the door, but she'd forgotten her gun in her car.

"It's open," she called, both hands on the bat.

Pearce didn't burst through the door, the way she had imagined. He simply opened it and stepped inside, barely paused when he saw the bat raised over her shoulder. He pulled the door closed behind him, locking them both in. And just like that, the rest of the world became unreachable for Mia, she'd have to go through him to get there.

Mia flexed her hands on the bat, checked her stance, but Pearce was careful to stay just out of easy range. He stepped to the side, paced in a half-circle in front of her and let the menace built on its own in the fake silence. The TV chattered on meaninglessly in the background.

"What?" he demanded, growl so deep she could feel it in her bones. "What did I miss?"

She shuffled her feet to keep facing him. "It's a long story," she said.

"Listening."

She hesitated, part of her hadn't expected him to give her a chance to defend herself and for a moment she felt ridiculous with her baseball bat. They'd sparred, she wasn't going to bash his head in with the thing, not even he somehow slipped on a piece of her trash and give her an opening.

"You know about the chicagovigilant site, right?"

"It's harmless."

"No… that is, it used to be, I guess," she shook her head.

"They're just groupies."

"It was bought by Uplink, about two years ago. And Uplink also backs the Grid," she said and stopped. Like he didn't know that. But he must have missed the rest if he didn't know about the change in focus of chicagovigilant. He was right, it had been a fairly shallow platform for fans of the vigilante, a community site only peripherally monitored by Blume and Bloodhound, on the off chance anything useful turned up there.

"They offer money for people who know anything about you. It's a community thing, like if you have good stuff you get awarded a bigger bonus. It's just a game. I mean, that's what everyone thinks."

Pearce paced back, kept his gaze fixed on her, traced it up the length of the bat with mild curiosity.

"You sold information on me," he stated.

"But never anything big! Never anything that could really hurt you!"

It sounded cheap and defensive, something anyone would say in that moment without meaning a word of it.

"Please," she tried. "I'm sorry."

It was entirely the wrong thing to say, she realised it the moment it left her mouth. Or perhaps he'd just waited for the right moment, when guilt made her gaze skitter away. Pearce sprang and her living room was nowhere near large enough to make it difficult. She managed to swing the bat barely an inch, never got enough power behind it, Pearce simply caught it with one hand, punched for her face with the other. Mia brought her elbow up awkwardly in an effort to deflect it. She lost her grip on the bat and Pearce snapped it from her hand and pulled it down. He stepped forward, too close, hooked a leg around hers and toppled her.

Mia tried to twist away, leap back up and out of reach, but found no good footing and Pearce wouldn't let up. He ripped the bat free and knocked it down, caught her chin and then her throat as she fell.

She hit the floor hard, desperately trying to catch a gulp of air while rolling away, up on her knees and she almost had it, but Pearce brought a knee down on the small of her back, caught her flailing hands in a bruising grip.

"Stop struggling," he snarled, leaning over her with his full weight. He didn't have to threaten, Mia did as she was told, she let herself go limp, dropped her forehead on the ground and lay still.

The moment Pearce sensed her capitulation, he let up, giving her a moment to breathe once his weight lifted off her. Then he yanked her back up and tossed her on the couch.

Mia made no attempted to get back up. Her spine stung, her throat felt too tight and the bones in her wrist already ached, glancing down, she saw blood rush back into the pale marks.

"Show me," he said, keeping her pinned with his gaze.

"What?"

"I want you to show me everything you gave them," he said slowly, like speaking to an idiot.

She sat up a little more, trying to ease the persistent pain in her back by nestling into the cushions.

"I've been using a tablet," she explained. She'd been careful with it. She'd never used it anywhere near Pearce and it was always off and stashed away.

She took a breath and looked across the room. "The drawer under the TV."

Pearce glanced at it, gauging the angles before he moved, made sure he kept her in his sight as he went over and pulled the tablet out. It booted in his hands, but he put it away and pulled his phone out instead, used it to access the tablet and browse her data.

His expression was still made of stone, impossible to read his intentions. She'd lost her chance to fight, but if she was honest, it had never been much of a chance to start with.

"I'm sorry," she said again, it came out in a croak and she coughed, trying to dislodge the lump in her throat.

This time, Pearce ignored her, focussed on the data.

Mia knew what it was she'd been selling, but it was harder to anticipate what Pearce would make of it. Which piece of information with his name attached was he okay being sold, even if it was just for some easy bucks and didn't endanger him? To a bunch of groupies, as he'd called them? Mia wouldn't be too confident about it, and it wasn't even what had happened. Fixers and bounty hunters from across the country had been invading the website for a while, gleaning what useful information they could and slowly reshaping the community. Unlike Bloodhound, they weren't hampered by any red tape. Bribery and extortion was just fine for these folks.

"Can I do something?" Mia asked. "To make up for it?"

Pearce gave her a long look, said nothing until she looked away, and he returned his attention to the phone.

Mia forced herself to be patient. She didn't feel too good, but decided it was probably better than annoying him more.

She watched the digits on the TV change, watched a commercial for shampoo and concentrated on the slow crawl of time until suddenly Pearce seemed to be done. He took the phone down and put it in his back-pocket.

He stalked towards the door.

"Come," he said.

He stopped by the door, looked back at her and she pushed herself to her feet immediately. She hadn't even taken her shoes off when she'd come home last night, but as she got up her gaze passed over the baseball bat. Pearce noticed it, too, but didn't deign to even comment on it.

He opened the door and she had no choice, walked ahead of him down the hallway, hit by the stifling heat that pushed a thin sheen of sweat on her skin the moment she left the comparative coolness of her failing A/C. She had no keys with her, no money, no phone. She considered asking if she could pick them up, but decided not to. It didn't seem all that important right then.

In the elevator, she kept herself pressed into the farthest corner, but she still stood uncomfortably close to him and the elevator was small and hot.

"I checked your accounts," Pearce said, taking her by surprise when he sounded close to normal.

"Fake identity 101," Mia said. "It's just an online payment account, no one checks them."

"I do."

"Well," Mia said sullenly. "You missed that one."

Any other time and the thought would have made her feel good, adding a strike to their imagined tally of one-upmanship, but it wasn't a victory she could cash in on.

Pearce let her to a white car, parked in the shadow of a building. He let her get into the passenger seat and locked the door with a tap on his phone the moment the door closed. Mia flinched at the sound, but took it lying down. She was slowly coming to terms with this thing he had going, since he seemed to be planning something other than just straight-up murder. She was unsure if she'd like it much, but it likely beat immediate death.

They drove in silence for a while, just the traffic flowing with them and around them, the glare of the rising sun in their faces. Pearce held a hand in front of his face when he got blinded, then fished a pair of sunglasses from his side.

Mia just kept holding her hand in front of her face and turned her head to the side, watched Chicago pass her by outside the window.

"Why?" Pearce asked.

Mia laughed, not because it was funny, but because the truth just seemed incredibly absurd now.

"I was scared of you," she answered. "I know that makes no sense."

"It doesn't."

Silence again, though slightly less suffocating than before. After a while, Mia said, "I didn't realise I was selling that stuff to bounty hunters. Not at first. I thought I could make some money and most of these guys are harmless. I wasn't… I never gave anything important away."

"You posted a picture of my rig."

Mia smirked before she realised what she was doing and wiped the expression from her face. She was still looking out the window, she hoped he hadn't seen it.

"Yeah, that was a good one. But I never took a pic of you, thought of it, never did it."

"But you took one of Abbott Island."

"Everyone knows about the Bunker anyway. They think it's your secret lair."

"It used to be," Pearce said and for a moment she almost thought he was smiling.

Mia blinked slowly in the sunlight, rolled her forehead against the glass, then cast a quick glance in his direction.

"People started figuring out I wasn't just some random chick who spotted you somewhere in Chicago. It was obvious I had real access and the fixers figured out they could use me to get to you. Or bounty hunters, or assassins, or… I have no fucking idea what they even were." She paused. "Bad people, anyway."

He was bad people, too, of course, but there seemed little point in belabouring that and hardly contradicted her original argument.

She continued, "By the time I figured out what was going on… I was in too deep. And there was this woman, she showed up one day at my door. I have no idea how she did it. I'm good at erasing my digital footprint, she shouldn't have been able to find me through chicagovigilant. But anyway, so… she knows I'm working with you and she also knows I sold all that stuff on you. She threatened to expose me. I mean, to you. She'd have told you."

"That's all?"

"She's pretty creepy, actually," Mia said. "It just never registered that I didn't have to do what she wanted. It felt like I had no choice. And you… well…"

This time, she really laughed and took her head away from the window, straightened in her seat. She looked at him again, it was easier now, not only because he was concentrating on the road.

"I just wasn't sure what you'd do if I told you."

His face was serious, but it wasn't quite the same unfeeling mask anymore.

"You knew," Mia said, trying and failing to not let it sound like an accusation.

"I suspected," Pearce corrected quietly. "Something was off."

"You set me up," Mia said and laughed a little to herself, dropped her head into the headrest. "I never had a chance, did I, between Cox and you. But… I didn't sent Cox after you. I send her to the hideout, you said you weren't there anymore. I thought maybe if Cox showed up there, it'd give you a chance to slip away. I didn't want to betray you. I just didn't know how to unfuck all of it."

Pearce made no answer and the conversation petered out again. It sounded so dumb, saying these things aloud. It should maybe make her feel better, a great weight off her chest and all that shit, but it wasn't. Things were beginning to feel like an ending.

They were leaving Chicago behind, too, the city fell away from the sides of the highway.

Mia said, "Where are we going?"

Pearce ignored her, but after another minute, he said, "You stupid kid, you could've told me."

She bristled a little at being called a kid and she didn't know what it meant, either.

"After I'd been ratting on you for months? Since practically the moment we met?" Mia asked. "I may be stupid, but I'm not suicidal."

"I can't trust you now," he added.

"Obviously."

She felt his gaze pass over her, almost tangible and it caused a ripple of tension. The silence crawled back, filled the car to bursting.

Mia eyed the radio, but even though all she had to do was reach out, she didn't. It'd chase away the silence, fill her thoughts with something more sensible, even if it was just some cheesy pop song.

She watched the landscape rush by outside the window, wondered what endgame he had in mind. She didn't repeat the question, though, if he'd meant to answer, he would've done it the first time. After about a two hour drive, he suddenly switched to the right lane, cutting too close and going too fast, taking the car off the highway and into a rest area.

A handful of cars were parked there, people wandering to and from the toilets, stretching out beside their cars. Pearce's driving pulled a little attention with them, Mia saw it as they went past, but she didn't think it'd any of them would come over to bitch. Someone might remember them, though, if something happened later.

Pearce parked the car beside a black sports car and killed the engine. Once even the humming of it was gone, Mia snapped her head around, too tired to keep playing that game.

"What do you want me to say?" she asked, then shrugged. "Or do. Or anything."

"The woman you know as Cox, she's a bounty hunter," Pearce explained, rather unexpectedly. "She had a band of six people working for her. She liked to play it clever, take on marks when they don't expect it, she raked in quite an income that way."

Mia remembered she'd been unable to reach Cox the night Pearce had… what? What had he even done? Set her up? Or Cox? Or the both of them, just because it was most convenient doing it this way? Either way, the trap had snapped closed flawlessly.

Mia studied his face.

"What happened to her anyway?"

Pearce's expression changed in slow motion, he had done nothing to hide his anger at her, but it was the calm she couldn't figure out. Now he bent her a small cruel smile and he didn't let it linger, either.

He opened the door and got out and having no idea what else to do, Mia followed. She watched him above the roof of the car as he strode along it and waited until she joined him, stepping to his side with the caution of someone walking on thin ice.

He cast only a quick glance around, barely enough to make sure no one was observing them, and the surveillance cameras weren't angled to catch the back of their car.

"Marianne Cochran, actually," Pearce said as he opened the trunk.

"Shit…" Mia whistled through her teeth, inappropriately.

For Mia, Cox had been an intimidating woman, imposing, charismatic and clearly ruthless, someone who knew how to keep secrets. She'd looked the way Mia imagined some secret government agent or corporate assassin to look. Bound at hands and feet, gagged and pale, she was nothing but someone's roadkill. Both her knees were thickly bandaged, but the blood had seeped through, crusted in ugly brown, leaving a puddle of it on the plastic sheet she was lying on. She reeked of death, covered in a sheen of sweat, face sickly pale and lax.

Mia was certain she was dead, but when Pearce placed two fingers to the side of her neck, a tremor ran the length of her body, though she didn't come to.

"Still alive," Pearce stated with mild surprise, he'd be commenting on the weather in much the same tone.

Mia felt watched, the weight of the people not far away pressing on her, the camera eyes constantly sweeping over them, making the back of her head burn. Pearce wouldn't stand there so calmly if there was any actual danger, but reality never had much bearing on paranoia.

"Jordi tried to kill me once," Pearce said and Mia's attention snapped back to him. He put his hand on top of the trunk, but was in no hurry to close it.

Mia blinked between him and Cox and back, thought of Jordi and his stories and his swagger and the casual death in his laughing eyes.

"How are you both still alive?" she asked and her curiosity was almost entirely real. She had no resources left to contemplate Cox. The woman had made her bed, one way or the other. She'd chosen violence and violence had finally caught up with her. Mia didn't know if she herself counted as much the same, she saw herself as an outsider, despite everything, but perhaps it was just a lie she told herself. She had no idea what that truth meant to Pearce, or what lies he had to tell himself to keep going.

Pearce said, "I can always trust Jordi to be Jordi."

He dropped the trunk lid.

Mia took a deep breath. "What's all of this?" she asked. "What's it supposed to mean? What are you gonna do to me?"

Pearce didn't answer immediately, but his expression was allowed to soften, just a little as he studied her.

"It's my mistake," he said. "I let you get too close."

Mia sighed, she hadn't realised just how exhausted she was before she did, letting her shoulders hang.

"Can't you just say it?" she asked, resigned to whatever retribution he had intended all along.

"You aren't going to return to Chicago," Pearce said, voice hard again, the softness all gone from his face. "And I suggest you pick a new career. You don't get in touch with me again. You don't come looking for me. You don't even google me. You see me on the news, you switch the channel. These are the terms. Are we clear?"

It'd be ridiculous if there wasn't a threat riding the undercurrent of what he was saying, if he wasn't entirely willing to live up to any gruesome fantasy she might be entertaining. He just needed the right provocation.

He placed the car keys on the trunk and Mia briefly glanced down, her attention glued to the trunk not because of the keys at all.

"And Cox?" she asked.

She sensed rather than saw him shrug, heard the traces of smugness.

"Your problem."

It didn't register what he was doing before Pearce turned and strode away, around the black car they'd parked behind and Mia heard the telltale clicking of its locks.

Mia broke through her trance, hurried after him and got him to stop at least.

"Wait, you can't just leave me here," she said. "I don't have a phone! I don't have any money! Or ID! I have nothing!"

She thought about that and added, "Well, nothing and a corpse that isn't quite dead, yet."

The look Pearce gave her was entirely devoid of sympathy, but he considered her for a moment, one hand already resting on the door of the car.

"It's punishment, Mia, you've got to feel it," he said. "You wouldn't like the alternative."

Mia looked back at the trunk, pictured herself stuffed in there alongside Cox, perhaps still alive, too, just long enough to realise the hopelessness of the situation. Cox needed a doctor and soon, but that'd raise so many questions, Mia didn't even know where to start. It'd be the smarter choice to just leave her behind, it wouldn't be long before the Cox problem solved itself and Mia was certain Pearce had erased all traces of linking Cox to him, there was a good chance there was nothing leading back to Mia, too, rescued by mere association.

Mia wasn't sure she could do it. Already she saw Cox every time she closed her eyes, how broken she was. No one deserved to die in the trunk of a car.

While Mia still contemplated her next move, Pearce had got into the car and Mia flinched when he backed up then stopped hard just before the car touched her legs. The brake lights flared up, then faded again, as he waited for her to get out of his way and no doubt his patience was running low.

Mia looked up, caught his gaze in the rear-view mirror but the cutout was just as unfeeling. Bracing herself, Mia opened her mouth. It could have been worse, Mia thought until she remembered Cox and all the problems he'd saddled her with. He'd ruined her life just as surely as if he'd shot her between the eyes.

In the end, Mia stepped aside after all, she didn't dare not to and Pearce's car slid smoothly from the parking spot, turned and accelerated back to the highway. She was sure Pearce hadn't even given her a last glance.

When the black car was finally out of sight, Mia looked around at the people around her on the parking lot, though none of them were paying attention at all.

She'd always been a drifter, but this was something else. She'd never been more alone, never felt so thoroughly lost as she did in that moment.


End of _Sucker's Game