Warning: Full frontal male nudity.


_Perfect Play - Part 2


It barely hurt, Pearce only realised he was in trouble when the blood soaked wet and warm into his shirt and his hand came away drenched. He'd been focussed on watching the bomb maker drop like a dead bird, tracing the direction of the shot to the roof. He couldn't see anyone against the glare of the sky and a moment later, it became irrelevant.

He was losing too much blood, he couldn't keep fighting like that, but a small part of his mind registered that the blood wasn't arterial and maybe he'd get to live if help came fast enough.

The prospect of death wasn't something that bothered Pearce overtly much even on a particularly bad day. It'd find him eventually, he'd go down fighting if he had the chance and if he didn't, it'd be quick and hopefully comparatively painless. In a way, he supposed, his death solved many problems. Once he was gone, Nicky and Jacks wouldn't be potential targets anymore for whoever was gunning for him at any one time. And he'd count that as a win.

He felt the hard bulk of his car behind him, keeping him upright, the bullets pattering the ground all around him and punching through the car. With fire from above like this, he might as well not have bothered with running for cover because it wouldn't matter much…

When he regained consciousness, the fight was still in his body, pulling his muscles tight and ready, trying to jerk upright against the sudden hard pressure of hands on his shoulders. He supposed the surgeon and the nurse holding him down were lucky, dazed and weak, he couldn't do much damage before his brain kicked into gear and he realised where he was.

"Just calm down," a female voice said, soothing but stern and he let himself be pushed back to the bed. "You're almost through it."

The hands vanished when he made no other attempt to move. He'd dislodged the oxygen mask, but the nurse pulled it away, now that he was conscious again.

The surgeon had apparently already closed the wound on his neck, Pearce felt the skin pulled too tight for comfort, ready to split open with every careless tension of muscles.

A woman crouched into his field of vision, giving him a quick, habitual smile.

"You're doing fine," she explained. "Just hold steady for a little while longer."

He didn't feel up to doing much else, anyway, at least not for a few more minutes.

He didn't have the greatest experience with hospitals anyway, generally preferring to avoid them in favour of some mob doctor or a veterinarian looking to earn something on the side. Hospitals asked too many questions. The first time he'd stayed in one for any length of time, it had been after he'd been beaten nearly to death and he'd gone from hospital straight to prison. Neither was something he'd want to repeat.

The second time when he'd woken up in a hospital had been infinitely worse.

He breathed through the drug-muffled pain while the surgeon cleaned the fresh stitches, applied some kind of salve, then carefully affixed a large patch over it. It glued uncomfortably under his jawline and up to his ear and he had a feeling it wouldn't stick too well against the stubble on his neck, but it'd do for now. He'd need to move soon.

The surgeon's shadow vanished and the nurse's hand was back at his shoulder, this time with a slight nudge to help him sit up. "Careful," she said.

His vision blurred a little when he sat up, but then cleared and he took the chance to look around again, he was alone with the surgeon and the nurse in the cubicle created by privacy screens. The nurse hung up a blood bag by his side, connected it to the IV in his arm.

The surgeon said, "I'd like to keep you here, but…" His hesitation was full of misgiving. "You're stable for a transfer. It's not bad injury, as these things go." He paused, tightening the corners of his mouth. "I'd say you should take it easy and I'd schedule a checkup, but… We'll see. There's also no need for you to be alarmed or do anything stupid."

"Like what?" Pearce croaked.

"Like breaking out and making a run for it. Mrs. Quinn is a very important benefactor of this hospital and she's vouching for you."

Pearce said nothing, just watched the surgeon's face for any sign he would put that misgiving into an anonymous call to the police anyway.

The nurse pushed one of the screens aside and stepped out, there were voices and a moment later, Heather walked to his bedside. She sought out the surgeon and nodded. He kept a thoughtful gaze on Pearce for a moment, but then withdrew without offering an argument.

Heather had changed clothes, if she'd been the one to pull him out, she'd have been drenched in his blood, but she looked as pristine as ever. She looked him over for a moment, then dug her gaze into his and said, "How did you not see that coming?"

"There were snipers on the roof," he said, looked away for a moment trying to reconstruct his reasoning. "I thought they were just your backup."

Surprise flitted across her face, immediately replaced by a grim mask of conviction. "The bomb maker's dead. So are seven of my best people."

She paused, then added, "Almost lost you, too. No need to thank me."

"I figure it makes us even."

She seemed amused for a second, glancing down over him, gaze lingering on the bandage on his neck. "Yes," she agreed lightly. "History repeats, doesn't it."

She crossed her arms over her chest. "Where are we at? Grisha has infiltrated my organisation. Few people knew about that meeting, most of them are dead and the others… I'm keeping an eye on them, but I don't know who to trust anymore. How is that possible? How is Grisha able to do all that so efficiently?"

Pearce bared his teeth a little, "Failure of leadership?"

"It's your fault," she said, subtle snarl in her voice.

Pearce snorted a tired laugh, let his head rest a little deeper into the small cushion under his neck. "My pleasure."

"You are going to help me fix it," Heather stated, the tone she used for giving orders to her people. She must know it'd make him bristle, so he just let it pass over him without reaction. Lethargy was seeping into his mind, making it rather appealing to just stay where he was for a day or two, watching her try to pull all the strings she had to keep the hospital staff from remembering their conscience. The smart thing would be to wait until the blood transfusion was done and get out of dodge as fast as he could, but he judged he still had a little time for that.

"You were willing to help before," Heather insisted. "Nothing changed."

"I was letting you have Lucille," Pearce pointed. "That's all."

Heather pulled a displeased face, "I don't know who I can trust anymore. The people on the roof were mine, the men in Merlaut were mine. I don't understand what is going on. I told few people about the meeting, but we both know someone could've listened in."

"You got your hacker, you got someone at Blume, you don't need me."

Heather eyed him sharply. "Nothing changed," she said again, but with a different inflection in her tone. "There's something you're not telling me about all of this. Something that's scaring you, perhaps? I know we're only talking because Bratva spooked you."

Pearce arched a brow at her, he waved limply with a tired arm, light-headed enough to be faintly amused by her attempt to play his male ego. He probably shouldn't antagonise her quite so badly, not until he was back on his own feet at least, but she was pushing too hard and too early for a commitment. She was asking him to lie to her face while he still needed her goodwill.

Unexpectedly, Heather dropped the argument, face still grim and eyes narrowed as she forced a stiff shrug, then turned around wordlessly and left.

Pearce allowed himself to drift, mind and body relaxed in the certainty that, for now, he was perfectly safe.

The nurse returned, did something on the cabinet with her back to him, then stepped to his side with an injection.

"What's that?" he asked as she put it to the IV.

"Don't worry," she said. He spotted Heather standing just outside the privacy screens, gaze fixed on him like a hungry wolf, setting off alarm bells in his head.

"It'll help you sleep," the nurse finished and the world washed out completely even before she finished speaking. History repeating itself indeed.


When he came to the second time, he kept his wits about him and eyes closed until his mind slipped into sharper focus and he could trust its observation. He was lying on something soft, too soft for a hospital, silk or satin under his skin and a thick pillow under his head. The only source of discomfort was his right arm, slowly getting cold in the caress of an A/C.

There was no sound other than the A/C, either, no distant cars or radio or neighbours, everything was quiet. He cracked his eyes open slowly, traced his gaze over the edge of the bed and its dark blue sheets over the high, white walls, some abstract painting filing the empty space.

His right arm was cuffed to the metal frame of the bed he was lying on. He pulled on the chain carefully, but it seemed solid. He didn't recognise the make of the cuffs, either, certainly not regular police cuffs, which he could've broken out of easily.

A metal cabinet on wheels stood near the bed, some medical equipment and a fresh pack of bandages on top of. It seemed out of place in what was a spacious hotel suite, kept in dark-blue and stark white. He had to be either fairly high up, along the shore or he was in the outskirts of Chicago, given that he only saw a patch of bright sky through a window.

On the bedside table, Pearce spotted his phone, snatched it up immediately. He'd been asleep — drugged up to his eyeballs — for twenty-four hours straight, though he didn't feel especially rested.

Checking the logs, the phone had registered several access attempts, so leaving him the phone hadn't been Heather's first idea.

There was a new message waiting for him.

You are in the Holy Well Health Clinic. You don't have to worry about cops and I've done everything possible so you don't have to worry about Bratva any more than I do. It stands to reason that Grisha cannot have gotten to everyone. I apologise for the handcuffs, they are merely to ensure we can talk before you leave. Call me when you're ready. -H

Well, he wasn't ready yet. But before he did anything else, he checked his phone again, in case it had been cracked without him noticing, but he found no indication it had been compromised. He scanned the area for ctOS access points and logged in to take a look around the clinic.

Holy Well was a private clinic for those with the money to pay for its high-class services and guaranteed privacy. It was run by an old friend of Lucky Quinn's, so Heather picking it for Pearce's recuperation wasn't surprising. The old guard, from Lucky's time, weren't quite as likely to fall for whatever Grisha was offering them, if indeed that was all Grisha was doing.

Pearce knew he had been too quick to dismiss the Club members on the roof of the warehouse, he shouldn't have just assumed they were Heather's people just because their background checks said they were Chicago South Club, not when he'd already known that Bratva was buying off people.

The men's Profiler information was saved on his phone, though, so at least he could track them. The bomb maker would've been a better and more useful lead back to Grisha, but the men on the roof must have some knowledge of what was going on, too. Enough for him to apply pressure until something gave, which he would be doing with gusto, because he took people shooting him personally.

Tracking them with just the phone wouldn't be possible, though, he needed access to ctOS' stored files and the CPD database to check their background, find out where they were now. He hoped Heather's people hadn't killed all of them by the time he caught up to them.

Even with his mistake still galling him and making him suspicious, he found no people in the clinic he felt deserved his special attention. Most of them were completely harmless, some local and national celebrities, an Arabic millionaire and his extended family, some foreign business people. Most of the clinic's staff didn't have records of their own, only the head people would know or suspect who was really running the show. Security was provided by Taurus and Pearce made a mental note to check out the company's files later.

Satisfied for the time being, Pearce put his phone aside and pulled his hand in front of him to examine the cuff closer. It wasn't the most secure setup he'd ever seen, but he'd need at least some wire or similar to break the lock. He was pretty sure the metal cabinet had what he needed, but there wasn't enough give in the chain to reach it. The bed proved far too solid, too. He'd probably get it loose eventually, but he decided it didn't warrant the effort when he had an easier way out of this.

He picked his phone up again and texted Heather: Now.

Only a few minutes later, he got a text back from Heather, or at least someone using her contact information or even her phone. One hour.

He snorted in irritation, but settled back and tried to relax, while he accessed the Clinic's free wifi and used to dig deeper into the place's network, rifling through patient files to pass the time. He found most of the rooms had discreet video and audio surveillance and it wasn't hard to guess what the gathered information would be used for.

A knock on the door made him glance up from the phone and a moment later, a young man walked in. He was dressed in a dark suit and with tightly controlled manners, Profiler identified him as an assistant of the clinic's director.

He stopped at the foot of the bed, tried very hard not to fidget, gaze darting over Pearce and the room behind him, as if he was looking for escape routes.

"I'm supposed to unlock you," he said, holding up the key in front of him.

Wordlessly, Pearce rattled the chain a little and lifted his arm. The young man blinked in nervous confusion, lowered the key and said, "Um, Mrs. Quinn asked me to, uh, please ask you to wait for her."

"One hour, yeah," Pearce said, deliberately looking down at the phone and not the young man, vaguely hoping he'd work up his nerve quickly so he could finally get rid of that ball and chain Heather thought was going to make him compliant.

When this wasn't enough to get the young man to make up his mind, Pearce looked up again, held out his chained hand and said, "Just give me the key."

The young man shook into motion, scurried forward just far enough he could put the key into Pearce's palm, then retreated again to the foot of the bed.

"Uh, we have room service, if you're hungry," he said. "And there are fresh clothes in the cupboard for you."

Pearce listened with one ear, unlocking the cuffs and flexing his arm when it was freed. He sat up and swung his legs over the side, but then had to hold on quickly to the bed when his vision unexpectedly blacked out.

Groaning, he blinked a few times until the vertigo receded.

"If you need medical assistance, you…"

"I'm fine," Pearce snapped and the young man flinched back several steps, but kept hovering, eyeing Pearce with an expression aggravatingly undecided between panic and pity.

"You can go," Pearce told him. "Tell Mrs. Quinn I'll be here."

"Of course," the young man nodded emphatically, took several subservient steps back before he turned around and hurried from the room.

He wasn't fine, trying to stand proved a bigger challenge than he had anticipated. He'd suffered blood-loss before, but never so much in such a short time. Heather dumping him into the nearest ER was the only reason he was still alive and the physical damage was, technically, minimal. He felt along the bandage again, moved his head a little to test it. No damage to his limbs, or bones or muscles, just a frustrating lack of strength and a wooly kind of lingering headache. He wondered if he could get another blood-bag from room service, maybe it'd put him back on his feet.

He pulled himself to his feet, anyway, stretched his arms out over his back to try and force some limberness back into them. The hospital gown irritated him, so he slipped it off and balled it up, tossed it away as he retrieved his phone to keep an eye on the clock while he explored the luxury suite.

In the living room he found his empty gun holster on the table, with the baton and his belt by its side. He couldn't remember where he'd lost his gun, somewhere in that warehouse probably, but he'd get another. He slipped the baton from its sheath and swung it in a sharp arc, making the segments spring free smoothly. It made him feel better already.


With carefully measured steps, Heather walked into the suite unannounced. A a quick check with the clinic's security had revealed that they had, unsurprisingly, lost control over the surveillance on the entire floor and any attempts to restore it had so far failed, leading to the security chief calling it off. Staff hadn't been told who was in the suite, but if this sort of order got handed down, it was just generally better to shut the fuck up and wait for further instructions.

Heather felt tired and jittery. Unlike Pearce and Iain, she'd barely got any sleep and she knew it was starting to show. The skin of her face felt dry, pulled too tightly over her bones, as if it was close to split open if she tried to make any expression other than a scowl.

Iain had had the decency to argue before he fell asleep and she'd let him be. Pearce, on the other hand, had apparently entertained himself with the Clinic's network and a generous helping off of the room service menu. He sprawled on the couch when she walked in, dressed in a Holy Well bathrobe, but looking angled and vicious as he scrutinised her.

The TV was showing a repeat of the press conference she'd given at the Rosette Hotel, where she'd relocated the clean-energy conference to. For a moment, she watched herself, the impeccable porcelain mask of her face and mourned a little the way it was starting to crack.

"We need to talk about that drugging me habit," Pearce greeted her. He sounded amused, but not in a reassuring way, more with the clear implication that the only reason he hadn't paid it back yet was because he was still working on the details.

"I saved your life," she said, the second time and felt that it shouldn't be necessary to expect some form of gratitude for it.

"You'll regret it," he shrugged.

Heather swallowed down the urge to shoot back and drag him into an argument. He was baiting her, she was sure of it, using it to distract her from what it was she really wanted from him.

"Can we at least talk?" she asked, the coils of her self-control wrapping tight around her throat, scratching her voice. "You shut me down too fast in the hospital. If you'd listened, I could've told you who's almost certainly behind it. And I need your help to find him."

Large mug in one hand, Pearce picked up the phone from his side, gave it a little toss so it landed in his hand. He slid his thumb across its screen.

"Yeah?"

"After Herrick died, a man named Jacob King became my security manager. King worked closely with Herrick, they were in the same unit in the army, but I don't know any details. King's… not the man Herrick was, but he's good. Very loud, but it impresses the masses. Hits first. Likes to call himself the King. I can't get a hold of him since the Merlaut."

She watched him, while his focus was on the phone. When he said nothing, she continued, "King was in a key position to get the bombs in place and to hide them during the sweep. The men who attacked us during the meet, they must have been his. If you checked them, they'd probably look like my people to you."

"I figured," he grumbled noncommittally. "Why can't ctOS find him?"

"You tell me," she said tartly. "I can't trust my people, but think there's nothing there. I pushed on everyone I could at Blume, but again: nothing. He's not shown his face since that night. Not to a ctOS camera."

"What about his friends?"

She took a breath. "It's… not ideal. Some are gone just like him, or they don't know anything or… at least pretend they don't know. I haven't been cracking down on them as hard as I normally would, I don't want to break anything right now."

She leaned forward, fixed him. "I'm getting paranoid here and it's not helping."

He finally lowered his phone to look back at her, eyes bright in his still-pale face. His amusement was beginning to irk her, the blatant disregard for nearly losing his life a mere day earlier. The fact that something had spooked him about the events, that change she'd noticed in the hospital, coming back to her now, because then, perhaps she'd have believed he was just rattled.

"What else is there?" she asked.

He shook his head. "I don't know."

"But you have an idea."

He shrugged, took a sip from the mug, then pushed his shoulders into the plush and took his attention away from her and back to the television screen, watching her recorded face thoughtfully.

"Pearce," she said sharply. "You came to me, remember. You wanted a deal. You wanted to work together."

A tiny shiver crossed his face, it looked a lot like disgust.

Unexpectedly, he leaned forward, set the mug down and fixed on her. "The men on the roof, where are they?"

"Two of them died, the others got away," she said.

He tapped on his phone without even looking down. A heartbeat later, her own phone announced with a low hum that she'd received a message.

"That's what I have on them. You go find them, you lean on them."

"With what men?" she asked, each word a precise emphasis, to get her point across.

He only shook his head, "The ones you still trust."

"I trusted King."

He hesitated, she could tell the calculations were running through his head. "I'm not telling you how to run the Club," he finally said. "I don't really care."

Frowning, she crossed her arms over her chest. "And what are you planning to do? Enjoying my hospitality some more?"

Again, he shook his head. "I just waited for you. I can't do anything here, I need more than a phone."

A tiny shard of relief splinted in her throat, but caution made her hesitate, the idea of an alliance with her repulsed him, if she pushed too hard for a confirmation, she'd simply drive him away.

"I'm sorry about drugging you," she said quietly.

His eyes narrowed slightly, suspicious of the change of tack and unsure what to make of it. She hadn't expected the hard set of his face to soften just slightly, a slow sag of his shoulders as if he'd suddenly remembered how weak he was.

"It's fine," he said, matching her tone. "You saved me. Thanks."

He sat up, flinched when the move tensed the tendons on his neck and agitated the fresh wound. His eyes fluttered closed for just a moment.

"Play it on the defensive," he suggested.

"Obviously," she agreed, smiling a little, hoping to connect with him in some way. "I'll keep you in the loop, if you do the same."

Wordlessly, he nodded.

She took a step forward and held out her hand. Pearce looked up at her hand for a moment, than up into her face, before he reached out and shook it. His hand was cold, brief, but unrelenting pressure on his bones. He tucked her a little closer and said, "You don't know who you can trust."

The sudden sharp intensity in his tone, repeating what she'd said all along, and the hard, cold grip of his hand froze her to the spot for just a moment. He was giving her a warning, something more tanglible than what it appeared to be. He'd been careful not to react every time she'd brought it up, but he was spooked by something and it wasn't just Bratva, because he'd already known about them going in.

When he released her, Heather stepped back and regarded him in silence, trying to figure out what bothered her so. Somehow, he'd just seemed a lot more formidable as an opponent. Now, as her ally, he looked much more like a tired, ageing man who had to have his life saved by his enemy.


Lagrange Point was built on a foundation of several blocks of Chicago School buildings, topped off by gleaming glass fronts, interspersed by cafés and eateries. It was home to some of the hottest IT startups in the city, from data security to social media, augmented reality and all manner of entertainment. Blume dominated the city, but under it's protective umbrella was enough room for smaller companies to strive and grow without direct supervision, allowing for some impressive leaps in creativity.

Pearce climbed out of the taxi in broad daylight, still a little shakier on his legs than he would've liked, but he doubted even Bratva was ready to start a firefight in such a public place. They weren't dug in deep enough to survive the backlash.

He crossed the street, glanced up along the front of the Uplink . building, the small group of hipster-looking people out front who ignored him as he passed. He followed a small alley along the outside of the building to the delivery gate where a local catering company was just unloading stacks of organic lemonade.

A bored looking man was watching them while he smoked a cigarette, eyes squinted to narrow slits in the rays of bright sunlight flooding down past the surrounding buildings. Pearce's phone automatically scanned the place, identified the man and woman doing the delivery and ran a quick background check on them. The smoking man returned as [Peter Marsh, 37, Server Support Specialist, recently diagnosed with lung cancer]. He also got flagged immediately with numerous unpaid speeding tickets and a court summons.

When Marsh spotted Pearce he listlessly pushed himself away from the facade he'd been leaning on and sauntered past the parked van towards where a few steps led downward to a metal door.

Pearce stepped in close behind him and waited while Marsh lifted his head towards the camera to let it scan him. A small beep of denial could be heard.

"Fucking junk," Marsh complained, he withdrew, then stepped back into the camera to restart the scan. He was denied again.

Pearce patience drained out of him second by second, it was running on the same depleting energy as the rest of him. Making a low, irritated noise, he stepped forward, snatched the cigarette from Marsh's mouth and snapped it away.

This time, the scan completed successfully and the door unlocked, swung smoothly inward. Marsh held out his middle finger at the camera as he passed inside, Pearce followed silently.

It had been years since Blume had taken back the Bunker and plugged every privileged access Pearce and T-Bone had had established using the old ctOS centre there. They had, however, had enough time to backup the servers and move out with every last byte of valuable data that'd existed at the time. Storing all of it, though, maintaining it without manpower, space and energy consumption that'd left a million possible exploits open hadn't been feasible.

Instead of even trying, they cloned the contents of the servers and moved them into the spacious server room of niche IT company Uplink, carefully hidden in their network and their files. It was a setup with an expiration date, even if Pearce found someone reliable to replace Marsh. Eventually someone would come down here and count the things.

Pearce stopped and plugged his laptop in, then stepped back and sat down on the floor, legs extended out across the aisle with the laptop on his lap.

Marsh hung around for a moment, watching him. "So, like, you got suckered by a vampire or something?" he asked and laughed at his own observation. Pearce glanced up at him and Marsh shrugged.

"I got work to do," he said unimpressed. "You know where to find me."

He wandered off and left Pearce alone with the data.

Although the servers here held the same data they had in the Bunker, Pearce could access ctOS only through Uplink's own ctOS gateway. He'd long since established these privileges and because Uplink was a little more than a computer security company and a social media platform for IT people, it allowed him to dig fairly deep into some of ctOS' less public features.

Roche had rattled him when she mentioned the Merlaut. She could've been angling for a reaction and if it was true, Bratva — or whoever had had her killed — had done him a favour, but it hadn't sounded like she had just been guessing.

He'd killed everyone who'd been in involved in these events, but the longer he thought about it, the more obvious it became that just killing people didn't mean anything went away. Someone could've sat down and painstakingly puzzled it all together from the fragments floating around online and in the darknet, stashed away somewhat in Blume's servers. He'd come here to test the theory, if it was possible to reconstruct the events of 2012 without any prior knowledge. And if it would lead back to him.

It wasn't the most comfortable thing he'd ever done. It wasn't so much facing bad memories, but trying to block out his own knowledge to avoid bias that presented the problem.

Bratva had made it relevant, by bothering to investigate him as thoroughly as that. It's what you did, if you planned to con someone, you learned all the details about them you could find, figured out what made them tick and flinch. The blackmail material was useless today, knowledge about his and Damien's incursion in the Merlaut served no other purpose today than to intimidate him. To show that he couldn't keep secrets, no matter how irrelevant. If Bratva had entertained the thought of recruiting him, willingly or not, such insight might have been useful. Roche's words implied the idea had been dropped, but he wasn't sure he'd been a target in that warehouse and not just unlucky.

However, it revealed something else which he doubted Roche, or Bratva, had wanted to let him know. Everyone looking to make deals outside the law had some way to handle ctOS' ever present surveillance, but if Bratva had been able to dig this deep and find Pearce there, from before Lena died, they had access on a level the Club almost certainly lacked.

He was distracted when his phone buzzed and he picked it up to check. He monitored the media for anything related or interesting to him, it was never a bad idea to stay in the loop about what was going on.

[Body found at Riverwalk] a WKZ article said as he skimmed through the piece, he arched his brows. The body had been found this morning, presumably having been dumped the night before. The cops were uncharacteristically tight-lipped about it, but rumour said the dead was Teddy Mahoney, a Club member, nightclub manager and pimp. He'd crossed Pearce's attention when he first tried to dismantle the Club a year ago.

He was about to put the phone away when another message cropped up, tripping similar filters. A fight at a bar had prompted a police raid, leading to the discovery of a brothel housed in the bar's basement. Just a quick search confirmed what Pearce had already suspected: Mahoney had been managing the place.

Someone's boots scratched over the floor and a moment later, Marsh appeared with a bottle in his hand. Bright red liquid with a neon green straw sticking out.

"Thought you needed some sugar," Marsh said as he stepped over Pearce on his way to the door.

Pearce took the bottle, the same organic lemonade he'd seen unload earlier. Marsh kept walking, pulling out his cigarettes on his way outside.

"Marsh," Pearce called and the man stopped, turned back. "Are you sure you should smoke?"

Marsh shrugged, but the gesture was tenser than he might have liked.

"What's gonna happen? I get cancer?" he asked caustically.

Pearce pulled out the straw and tossed it aside, took a careful sip off the sweet liquid.

"What about treatment?"

For a moment, Marsh didn't seem to know what to say then, then his expression darkened. He took a step towards Pearce, stopped, but said, "Hey, here's the thing. Let's make that deal we have? You know, where I don't give a shit about what you do? Let's make that go both ways, okay? Better for everyone."

"If you're worried about money, I'm sure I can do something about that."

The expression on Marsh's face darkened more and for a moment he looked like he'd lost his cool, he even twitched half a step forward before he forced himself to relax.

"Laundering the money is already more effort than it's worth," he said. "Just drop it."

With the clear intention of giving Pearce no chance to continue the argument, Marsh turned around and left.

A little while later, Pearce heard him return, but Marsh picked a different route back to whatever job he was busy with. By then, Pearce was already immersed again in putting his own disgraceful history together, trying to look at it from the perspective of some Bratva hacker looking at the same information.

Bratva hadn't come to Chicago unprepared, they had done their homework, he guessed they had done this very same thing for every relevant Club member. It'd allow them to bribe or turn a lot of them, but if Heather's instincts were correct, than her own people had been betraying her in troves.

Teddy Mahoney must have been among those who refused, so he'd become a tool to damage the Club in another way. He'd been looking through the backlog of news tripping his filters, the war was already in full swing.

Taking another gulp from the soda, Pearce pulled out his phone and called T-Bone.

"Whassup?"

"Hey, I need DedSec to look into something for me."

"Why do you only ever call if you want something?"

Pearce hesitated for a moment, vaguely glad T-Bone couldn't see his face.

He sighed, "Look, if I have to ask DedSec directly they'll just make me jump through hoops and I'll have to deal with their avatar. It's annoying."

On the other end of the line, T-Bone snorted a laugh. "It ain't that bad. They just want to play."

"Well, they got you to play with," Pearce said. "Bratva is going for a hostile takeover of the Club and it's looking… suspicious."

"Big shark trying to eat slightly less big shark, nothing suspicious about that," T-Bone remarked.

Pearce didn't answer immediately. "Not that part. But the Club has its ways, they shouldn't be going down at the rate they are."

"Right, so what are you thinking?"

"Is it possible Bellwether was used? To turn Club members?"

"Hmm," T-Bone made and Pearce could practically see him comb through his beard with his fingers while he was thinking. "Bellwether doesn't work very well on specific groups. It just throws a wide net and enough people get caught in it, that's what Bellwether was. Pretty good for rigging general elections."

"Rushmore was targeted," Pearce pointed out.

"A very public person, it's easy to feed him the right kind of information. Criminals, at least the moderately smart ones, they won't be out in the open like that. Bellwether can't work with insufficient data, someone would have to do the legwork first. But I could be wrong, that code's from hell if I've ever seen it."

"Can you look into it?"

"It'd be easier if I was actually there."

"There's a DedSec cell right here," Pearce smirked a little. "You think they're gonna say no if the great Raymond Kenney asks for their help?"

"There's no reason for that tone."

"What tone?"

"The mocking one," T-Bone growled a little.

"Oh, that one? I thought it was the other one."

"You're in a good mood. How's that?"

"Anaemia," Pearce deadpanned. He took a breath. "So, are you helping or not?"

"Oh I'm helping, but I make no promises, you hear me?"

"Loud and clear, despite the beard."

"That tone again… I'll get back to you. Or maybe I'll let you talk to an avatar."

"Too kind," Pearce chuckled despite himself and hung up.


What Pearce had had no intention of telling Heather was that he kept regular tabs on many prominent Club bosses and other prominent figures. Even with ctOS, it wasn't possible to keep them all in his sight at all times, but he did have an eye on them.

When he got home from Uplink, he sat down in front of his computers and began looking at what Jacob King had been up to the last few days. The man owned a rather roomy condo in Mad Mile, but he regularly cropped up all across town, often spending his days down at the Wards and Brandon Docks. It made sense, if, like Herrick, he was responsible to keep the gangs in line and handle all of the more hands-on dealing the Club engaged it. For the high-profile events, the Club tended to hire Taurus, so King wasn't around downtown too much.

Movement profiles alone wouldn't reveal much, at any of the locations King frequented Bratva could've approached him, but Pearce filed that away for later. He wanted to know where King was now and that turned out to be harder to find than he'd expected. Like Heather said, King seemed to have vanished, he wasn't being picked up by any of his rigged surveillance cameras, most notably not by the one outside his own apartment building and his favourite pub. He was having an on-off relationship with a neo-burlesque performer calling herself Noire, but Pearce filter hadn't logged King neither near her home nor the theatre she worked at.

Theoretically, it was possible King was hiding out in some basement somewhere, or Bratva had seen him as a loose end to tie up and he'd reappear floating down the river soon enough. But Pearce didn't think both options were likely. If King had joined Bratva he would be too useful to discard this early on. He could have tried playing Bratva for his or Heather's gain, but from what Pearce knew about the man he wasn't smart enough to even try.

On a hunch, Pearce pulled up old footage of King, a shot of him outside his home when he'd glanced directly at the camera. Pearce ran Profiler over it.

[NO DATA]

Just to be sure, he tried with several other shots, but the result remained the same. Even more interesting, the data he'd logged about the snipers on the roof in the warehouse revealed pretty much the same result.

Cheating Profiler was a basic skill these days, but most criminals preferred to use a false identity over simply deleting themselves from the database. A failed identification could be just as suspicious as being correctly identified. King's public life was fairly waterproof, he didn't need to hide his face. King's absence from the Profiler database had to be recent.

Pearce picked up his phone and called Marsh at Uplink. He didn't like to involve him directly, but he wasn't in the mood for another trip there. Marsh sounded moody on the phone, but at least he followed instructions. The Bunker servers held an old copy of the Profiler database, using it Pearce could feed King's biometric data back into his own search filters. It wouldn't work ctOS wide, he'd need direct access to Profiler's servers for that, but his own system could scan the feeds for King.

The upload would take at least an hour, though, so when he hung up on Marsh, Pearce dropped the phone and allowed himself a moment of rest. He rubbed a hand down his face, pressed the heel of his hand over an eye.

He didn't want to consider why Bratva had invested so much time in figuring out his involvement with the Merlaut, but he couldn't help thinking of what T-Bone had said. Bellwether wasn't working very well on targets unless it was fed with specific information beforehand. It was rather like a mark in a con or the target of a hit. You needed the details. If someone wanted to know what made Aiden Pearce, the vigilante of Chicago, tick, looking back at the Merlaut probably was very educational.

He pulled his hands away from his face and shoved his chair back, let it rotate away from the desk and he got up. Night had crept in while he'd been working, dipping the pitch-black surface of the lake into the same colour as the sky, muddied by a thin veil of clouds.

Without switching the lights on, he wandered into the kitchen and picked up a bottle of beer he took back with himself into the living room. Swiping his phone from his desk he took it back to the couch with him, but didn't immediately take his gaze away from the view outside the windows.

Had Bratva targeted him with Bellwether? And if they had, how would he even tell?

Sipping the beer, he let his head drop back against the whispering leather of the couch. Assuming Bratva had enough influence on Blume to make Bellwether work for them, they had used it to make Club members amendable to whatever offers Grisha made them. It'd explain why a man like King, with no reason for disloyalty had apparently changed sides from one moment to the next. Heather didn't know any of it, but her instincts were telling her her people were deserting her. She sensed things falling apart, he had no reason to distrust her about it.

So, he thought, if Bratva wanted to turn him against the Club, it hadn't worked. He felt no desire to turn against Heather, at least not yet and not for Bratva. He'd gone in fully intending to help her while Grisha's incursion lasted, so either Bellwether hadn't worked… or this was exactly the reaction he was supposed to have. Perhaps his presence was expected to further destabilise the Club, perhaps it was just to lure him out of hiding and take him out alongside the Club.

Emptying the beer, he put the bottle away, then swivelled on the couch and stretched his legs out along its length. He should be hunting the men who attacked him, the urge was there, but his mind told him he had a few hours more to rest. It wouldn't do to stumble into them only to be too wasted to stand up to them.

Using the remote function of his phone, he turned up the heating in the room a little and let himself be dragged into sleep by the warmth.


Several days later, Pearce sat at a small table, in the darkened back of the room of the Le Cabaret, a glass of whiskey in front of him. He didn't pay the show up on the stage too much attention, focussed on his phone, cycling through the theatre's surveillance and people's unprotected smart devices to get a better idea of the place.

Heather's people had ransacked King's apartment and his regular haunts, they had been to the theatre, too, roughing up Noire, but she hadn't known anything.

Pearce hadn't shared how close he was on King's tracks, but he couldn't trust any Club members while Bellwether was still a possibility, but neither T-Bone nor DedSec had contacted him about it yet.

He'd been able to track King's location using the old Profiler version, though it hadn't been as comfortable as if he'd been able to use ctOS. His system wasn't powerful enough to monitor all feeds simultaneously, the way the Bunker had been able to do, but King had eventually made the mistake to fall back on old habits. He sat in the front row now, watching his girl's performance, though the tense set of his shoulders revealed he wasn't as relaxed as he pretended to be.

The theatre employed just one bouncer, who hung around the back of the room and the entrance, but it wasn't a strip club, despite some passing similarities, patrons here seemed generally better behaved and Pearce spotted a few more women in the audience than strip-club's were used to have.

Most modern phones had low-level stand-by which continued to run even when they were turned off, but King had been smart enough to keep his phone powered down and even removed the battery, making it impossible for Pearce to access it.

Noire's phone was active, but it was in her dressing room and contained nothing useful. She'd tried the last few days to reach King and had failed, so she almost certainly wasn't in on things.

When the show ended and Noire slunk off the stage, King immediately left his seat and hurried to the narrow door leading backstage. The bouncer twitched in his direction to stop him, seemed to recognise him and drew back again.

Pearce accessed Noire's phone and used it as microphone. There was a camera in her dressing room, but the view was distorted by some sheer, black fabric hanging in front of it. Even so, it was obvious she wasn't too happy about King vanishing without a word only to reappear without warning in the middle of a performance.

King did his best to appease her, arguing to give him a little more time until Grisha's hostile takeover was done and King didn't have to hide anymore.

"Where's your phone?" King asked sharply. Pearce sighed inwardly and a moment later, the connection to Noire's phone went dead.

The bouncer still hovered ominously, gaze watchful over the place. He didn't look like he was about to move any time soon, so Pearce picked through his phone to discover he was keeping in regular contact with other staff members to coordinate during the night. It was easy to fake a text from the lobby, making the bouncer leave.

With him gone, Pearce got to his feet and slipped through the door leading backstage. It led to a narrow hallway between the back of the stage and several doors set on the opposite wall. The already narrow space was littered with stage props, dimly lit so as not to ruin the show outside. It smelled of dust and sweat.

Striding along the hallway, Pearce took another look at Noire's dressing room. The fabric was still in place, but it was good enough. King's jacket lay on the floor, his gun holster dangled messily off the table while he and Noire seemed to have made up, at least judging by the fact that he'd hoisted her to the make-up table, impatiently fingering past her stage outfit and shoving his trousers down so he could rut into her.

Originally, Pearce had intended to track King's movements and see if he went anywhere useful, but without ctOS is was a hassle and it barely paid off. King frequented a safe-house in the Wards where he and his men seemed to be based. Pearce had logged their information, but he hadn't picked up any phones or other smart devices from the place. No cameras, either, nothing he could hack and look inside. Which meant it was time to involve himself personally.

King and Noire were absorbed in what they were doing and didn't notice at first when Pearce stepped into the room. King's back was to him anyway and Noire had her face buried in his shoulder.

Pearce sauntered a little closer, picked up King's gun and tossed it behind him, out of reach. The disturbance was enough to jolt the two of them, rocking to an abrupt and doubtlessly uncomfortable stop. Noire had better reflexes than her man, giving an outraged cry, she snatched up a hairspray bottle from her side and hurled it at Pearce. It missed by a mile, while Pearce pulled out his own gun.

King was half shoved off by Noire, half tumbling backward with his trousers still around his ankles. He tried to simultaneously pull up his trousers, go for his gun and shield his dick, with the predictable result that he succeeded at neither. Pearce flicked the safety of his own gun and the small sound made King stop, awkwardly clutching the hem of his trousers upward, while he tried very ineffectively to stare Pearce down.

"What the fuck do you want?" he asked with a growl, trying to make up for his unremarkable performance of just a moment before. He moved slowly and when Pearce made no indication to shoot him, King finally pulled his trousers up, regaining most of his composure once he was covered again.

"Answers," Pearce said.

Behind King, Noire had dropped to her feet and was slowly but surely edging towards his right. There was a shelf there, where the camera was, lingerie items and other clutter.

"Well, you're not going to get them," King said. "You know, I didn't think you'd be taking Heather Quinn's orders."

Pearce shook his head. "You're all the same to me."

"Actions speak louder than words. You're bringing me to her, aren't you?"

"Eventually, maybe," Pearce said lightly. "But first you'll have to deal with me. All you've got to do is tell me everything."

"Go to hell, Pearce."

Pearce sighed. He dug into his pocket and pulled out a pair of flexicuffs, looked over at Noire.

"You," he said and held them out to her. "Put these on him."

He saw something spark in Noire's gaze, enough to give him a warning half a second before she moved. With one hand reaching out for the cuffs, feigning complacency, her other hand dove into the shelf and pulled something out. Pearce snatched his hand away, brought the gun around and smacked it into the side of her face, knocking her aside. The pepper spray slipped from her hand and Pearce lunged forward, caught it and snapped it around just in time to spay it into King's face, who'd used the moment to try and jump him.

King flinched and howled, but he was military trained, knew he needed to keep going. Rather than drop back, he simply maintained his direction, trying to grapple Pearce, but he lacked both the coordination and the strength to actually tear him down. Pearce gripped his neck, pushed him forward and slammed his knee upward into King's stomach. The man's grip scrambled for a hold on Pearce, but Pearce simply stepped away from it, let King drop to the floor.

Noire had pulled back from them, gaze flitting around the room, clearly looking for another weapon to use. Pearce stepped over King, gripped Noire and fitted the flexicuffs on her, kicked her feet away from under her and used a second pair on her feet while she was still disoriented.

Then he went and picked up King, dragged him to the back of the room and hung him over the sink there.

King growled insults, but didn't try to attack again and seemed rather glad for the opportunity to cool his burning eyes.

Pearce had caught a whiff of the pepper spray as well, making his eyes water a little. He wiped an arm over his face, braced himself and returned to Noire. He picked up the chair from the dressing table, set it down close to her and dropped himself into it.

"What are you going to do?" she sneer, struggling against her bonds.

"Neveah," he said, using her real name. "I can tell you don't know what it's about. Trust me when I say you don't wanna to know. So… how much do you want to keep quiet about it?"

She snorted and tossed her head back, fake, baroque curls flying out of her face.

"What about Jake?" she asked.

"Come on, you don't really care," Pearce glanced over at King, who was still watering his eyes, but giving a blurry glare in Pearce's direction at the mention of his name.

Pearce looked back at him plaintively when he said, "He likes you a lot more than you like him. The only reason you keep him around is because he's good for the money. He doesn't understand your art, doesn't explain what he's doing and the sex is bad. And sometimes maniacs break into your dressing room and tie you up. How much do you want?"

She still glared at him, but the anger was beginning to fade. He'd seen her bank statement, she was roughly breaking even each month, costumes and make-up eating up anything she earned, even with King's subsidy. It looked like King was keeping her on a short leash, making sure she didn't go anywhere without him.

"One million dollars," she said, trying hard not to show a triumphant grin.

Pearce started laughing before he could stop himself, then toned it down into a darkly amused chuckle.

"Yeah, no, I'm going to do you a favour," he said. Tapped on his phone for a moment, then turned it over for her to see. "I've set up a eRiches account for you and linked it to your bank account. I'll transfer two grand to it each month for a year. That way, you don't have to answer probing questions by the IRS and it's more than King was giving you."

"For a year? And then?"

He grunted, "I'm sure you'll find someone else."

He took the phone back and fixed her. "Or I can just snap your neck right here," he offered earnestly.

She wasn't quite sure he'd do it, but the frown in her pretty face deepened markedly. She tightened the corners of her mouth and then said, "Okay, no, don't. I'll take the money."

"I'm serious," Pearce said. "No one hears of this, or money will be the least of your problems."

Some small spark of defiance simmered in her gaze, but her behaviour had changed immediately when payment had been mentioned. She seemed smart enough to keep her mouth shut about it all.

Pearce returned to the back of the room, tied up King, then dragged him along out of the dressing room and to the car parked behind the theatre, where he stuffed him into the passenger seat.

"You're making a mistake," King said.

Pearce took his time before he replied, pretending to be concentrated on driving. Eventually, he said, "How so?"

King laughed and shifted in his seat, Pearce glanced at him and saw a smug smile spread across the other man's face, made even less pleasant by his red eyes and the inflamed skin around them.

"You'll find out," he said. "Oh yeah, you will."


End of _Perfect Play – Part 2


Reference:

Lagrange: from Lagrangian Point, here used as the name for a neighbourhood in the Loop. There's no in-game or real-life equivalent.

eRiches: like coin, but fictional

Uplink: originally a game by Ambrosia, used in Brilliancy as an IT company, it hosts the Grid


Author's Note: Obviously the warning is about King flashing his junk, but I've just realised Aiden's probably naked after he takes off the hospital gown and goes to play with his, uh, baton… I hope I squicked no one.