((Holy smokes, ! Almost 1000 hits in... what, a month? That's crazy! Thank you for all your nice DMs and reviews, as well as the follows! I appreciate you all! We're getting to the end, so please enjoy the rest of the bullet ride while it lasts. lmao ))
2:34pm
Washington D.C.
Rodrigo sat in the driver's seat of his car, ate his sandwich, and happily watched the brewing storm.
Storms were good. Snow was the best if you had the tires for it, but hurricanes and heavy rain were second. Storms made for bad driving but good wages, because people didn't want to drive their own cars and left the work to cabbies like Rodrigo. Today would pay his rent on the flat he'd lived in for the last twelve years since winning the Visa lottery and settling in D.C. Maybe he would make a little pocket change on top of it if the weather got really bad. He could send some back home to Honduras.
Today would be good.
He glanced away from the swelling sky and watched the people. He had parked alongside the sandwich shop, in the back, where people rarely parked and where people even more rarely milled about. But whenever there was something big going on, that meant more people, that meant more traffic, but more fares.
He had to drive to find some privacy for his breaks. But he wasn't thinking about privacy-he was thinking about money, and good fortune, and money for his mother back in Honduras. Rodrigo had been lucky enough to land Someone Important. He wasn't sure who she was, nor did his sunny, intentionally absentminded disposition necessarily care to know. But her man treated her like she was, like he was careful not to disturb her too much from what she thought about.
A knock beside him. Rodrigo turned to the sound against the glass. A white man, skinny and greasy with straggling facial hair the color of dirty water and hair to match, knocked on the window with the barrel of a pistol.
"Roll it down." He said, muffled through the glass. Rodrigo did and had to intentionally stop himself from pissing all over the seat. May have anyway if he had any left in the tank after stopping at the gas station just a few minutes prior. The man's hands were gnarled and scarred with new pink flesh, his fingers bent and turned inwards on themselves like someone had attacked his palms with an apple corer. Or maybe a gun of their own.
Rodrigo had never been carjacked; people were usually smart enough to not jack cars that had taxi lights on the top, glowing like some sort of mutant shark's fin, but this man, with his thin almost nonexistant eyebrows, didn't seem to care. There was another man behind him, a black man, who didn't seem angry but just seemed bored at the proceedings.
He scared Rodrigo more.
"You want money?" Rodrigo asked. "I have my wallet. Okay?"
"Get out of the car," the white man said. "Don't do anything stupid or they'll be picking bits of your skull out of the upholstery."
"Yes, sir. Okay. Okay. I'll get out. Okay?"
Rodrigo did. The white man shoved him away from the driver's seat, and the black guy took his spot, buckled himself in. The white man crowded into the back.
"I'm feeling generous today," the white man said. "So make up a story. You didn't fucking see us. And if it isn't a good one, I'll know. Now get lost."
"Here," the black man tossed a fistful of bills in Rodrigo's direction. They fluttered and danced to the ground at his feet. "For the car."
They two men didn't wait for a reaction. The car peeled off, rounded a corner, and was gone.
Rodrigo stood shaking, quivering so hard his knees threatened to buckle and send him to the blacktop. He bent and scooped the bills up. A little over seven hundred dollars. It was enough for rent and enough for his mother.
He decided he'd seen nothing. He stumbled away, in a daze.
5:12pm
Congressional Building
Washington D.C.
Kevin pretended he wasn't watching her. Like all bad liars, his eyes gave him away.
People were packed in here like sardines, in clusters of four or five, some of them looking at television cameras in wide-eyed seriousness while they spoke in projected, grave tones. Some were engaged in conversation. Some pushed past, heads down in polite deference and burnished leather briefcases in hand, pressing towards an office or an exit.
Alyssa was bright against the dim shapes and the faceless crowd. Her blonde hair, the color of cornsilk; the crimson red of her business suit. Even when she mingled into the pockets of grazing reporters and passersby, Kevin could spot her a mile away, like a species of bird prized for its plumage and its strut. She looked happy. Excited, even, smiling and jogging toward her target in her tall shoes. They made her taller than most of the women here and some of the men.
It always happened this way. When you were trying to get over someone, they seemed to pop up like a bad penny. Alyssa was more like a bad hundred-dollar bill that was always in circulation, returning to him with a new message scrawled on its touch-worn paper like, Ha ha, fuck you! Or Check this out, isn't this nice? Too bad you won't get to keep it. Whenever that bill made its way back into Kevin's pocket, he had to give it away, had to trade it for something someone else needed, always away from him and into the great beyond. But always staying just long enough that he imagined how nice it would be to spend it, just once, on himself.
Kevin accidentally bumped against a man in a pair of blue-gray denim coveralls. The water in the man's bucket, gray and edged with a scrim of thin soap suds, sloshed from side to side. A little spilled onto the white-and-tan marble floor. The man set upon the puddle with the thick gray yarn threads at the end of his mop.
"Shit man, sorry," Kevin said. "Here, let me get that for you."
The man looked Kevin up and down. Kevin didn't have a mop. Didn't have paper towels. But Midwestern manners were hard to shake, and the man looked surprised and partly suspicious at the offer of someone else cleaning up a mess they had caused.
"I got it." He said, in a mumble. "Thanks."
Kevin patted him on the shoulder, apologized again. The man didn't look at him, already intent on mopping the water off the floor.
As if he could hear Kevin's voice above the din of the lobby, a familiar face turned. Upon seeing Kevin and his new custodial friend, that face brightened. George waved him over, with a wide, excited smile of disbelief.
The jig was officially up.
Kevin took a deep breath, straightened his back, then tromped toward the small group that had collected behind the Good Doctor Hamilton.
As Kevin approached, five faces of varying ethnicities, genders, and ages turned to him in passive interest that sharpened into surprise, shock, and a few expressions of happiness.
"Holy fuck," boomed the man in the back, so deep it sounded like one of those modulators they used on true-crime shows to disguise someone's actual voice. "It is you! Damn!"
"Who else would it be?" Kevin said, and put on his best smile. George approached him and Kevin spread his hands wide. "You know you wanna. Bring it in, big guy."
Kevin had barely gotten his arms up when George rushed him, slammed the deceptive solidity under his thousand-dollar suit into the wall of Kevin's chest. Kevin clapped his arms around George's shoulders and squeezed. He was surrounded by a subtle fog of woodsy cologne that smelled like pepper and pine trees. It also smelled like it cost Kevin's monthly food budget.
"Good God, look at you," George said, his handsome, tired face crinkled into a paternal smile. He put his hands against the sharp pepper of Kevin's stubble and shook his face with gentle, effusive emphasis. "It's so good to see you, Kevin. Come on. Come over here."
George half-led, half-pulled Kevin into the waiting group.
"Look who George found," Alyssa said, and Kevin thought the distinctive brassiness of her voice was softer than normal. "Dragged in a whole litter of lost kittens."
Kevin would recognize them anywhere. Some had lost weight, like Yoko, her face gaunt and troubled. Some bore injuries that weren't there the last time they'd parted-the huge man in the back, Mark, wore a glass eye in one of his sockets, only conspicuous through a slight color and movement mismatch against its twin. Some had less hair, like David, missing his long blue-black ponytail, now clipped short around his high cheekbones, the wide column of his neck.
"Hey," Mark extended one of his massive hands, more like a bear's paw than a human appendage. "Thanks, man."
"For what?" Kevin laughed.
Mark didn't say what it was for. He didn't have to. Kevin knew what it was for. It was for Back There.
Kevin was a man who did the best he could, whenever he could, but he wasn't a hero and didn't style himself as one. The attention was nice, and the respect when it was given, but Kevin had the insight to realize he was wholly unprepared to lead. He really shone as a follower, as a buoyant support girder for the bolder among him. That was fine with him—Raccoon City had taught him that being a leader wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Sullen eyes looking to him for answers he didn't have simply because of his badge, hungry mouths mumbling questions about every fucking step he took, always a shuffle away from a mutiny. That was the thing about command—every two-bit shithead thought they could do it better.
Alyssa was the only one who had taken up for him. The only one who didn't openly question his direction. The direction that had ultimately led them to the safety of these halls.
They'd stopped arguing with Kevin after he'd had to kill Cindy. Maybe that was incorrect; Cindy was already dead, the meat being pulled off her slender legs in bloody ragged mouthfuls by a pack of ravenous monsters that were yanking her into their thick. Kevin had just put her out of her misery before it could get any worse. But to the group's sleep-deprived minds, it certainly looked like a murder. Whether their sudden compliance was out of sympathy or fear, Kevin didn't care. He was only thankful his mother, the only parent he'd ever known, two years in her grave after a heart attack from COPD, had died before it all went down. Thank fuck for small blessings, he supposed.
He and Mark hadn't parted as friends. Hadn't really parted as anything, no words exchanged when the main group fractured into two. Glad to be out of each other's hair. Now he stood extending a hand like they were friends. Maybe Mark had gotten the group he wanted so fucking bad and knew he was being an asshole.
Kevin felt the crawl of eyes on him. He glanced aside. A woman was searching her purse, shoving objects around like she was looking for something that evaded the edges of her vision. Kevin shrugged the feeling off and took Mark's hand, warm and ever-so-slightly damp, shook it. David extended his fist. Kevin touched his knuckles against it. Yoko waited until the touching was finished and then moved to Kevin, tucked her small frame against him, under his arms in a hug. Kevin was shocked; Yoko seemed like the type that was repelled by human contact.
"I'm glad you're okay," she said, and hung on. She trembled against his body.
"Don't mention it," Kevin answered himself when Mark did not and gave Yoko an affectionate squeeze. The tiny birdlike bones in her shoulders creaked. "Just glad you guys are here."
"You guys been doing well for yourself. Saw you on the TV, Lyss. Regular Anderson Cooper, you." Mark's bayou accent rounded the consonants at the ends of words; doin and yoself and Coopa.
"Trying," Alyssa said, full of her characteristic straight-backed pride that often tipped into the egotistical. "You know me. I'm not having fun unless I'm getting into some trouble."
Mark laughed, a booming sound full of warmth. "Ain't that the truth. Glad to see you're still you."
"Kevin," George said, "Alyssa tells me you've been selected to some sort of military unit?"
"Oh-uh. Yeah. The Feds, actually." Kevin resisted the urge to rub his neck. "We uh, go around cleaning up stray bioweapons. Sometimes. It's mostly paperwork."
David looked impressed, but said nothing.
"That sounds dangerous," Yoko said in a tiny, fearful voice.
Kevin shrugged. Really made a show of being unbothered; of it being no big deal. Yoko seemed to relax. Kevin still had the knack of making something intimidating not seem so scary by way of illustration.
"I gotta do something. I don't have the brains or the muscles the rest of you guys do. Just glad I get to help out, you know? What about you, David, what've you been up to, man?"
"Just back on the Rez. Helping out."
They made small talk and joked and laughed about everything but what joined them together. Everything except Indiana. Everything except Cindy and Jim, everything except the terror and the blood and the year's worth of sleepless nights. The feeling of getting to know someone backwards was strange, but Kevin immersed himself with a thankful talk-drunkenness in the peace, the social, the being allowed to just exist with no underlying agony or pain.
That was, until Heavy passed him, on his way out the door.
"That's my cue for a coffin nail," Kevin said, and jabbed a thumb towards the exit. "You guys gonna stick around for a while?"
"We'll be here," Mark offered, "do what you gotta."
Kevin felt that undulating skim of glances again, of something brushing against his skin, pimpling it into gooseflesh. The hair stood up on the back of his neck and he looked around. The janitor was still mopping, the woman was still looking in her purse. Kevin shook off the feeling again and followed Heavy toward the rain that drummed against the white stone steps outside.
"Kevin," Mark's voice followed him, "gotta talk at you for a second. Come here?"
Kevin paused, gave Heavy's retreating form one last glance, then followed Mark away, to a quiet corner. "Yeah, man, what's up?"
"Hey, uh." Mark said. "Look, I uh. We, uh..."
Kevin watched him. He scratched his forehead, waiting.
"Look, you did good. Back there." Back the'ya. "It wasn't a good time for none of us, but, I uh..."
Kevin clapped him on one of his massive, meaty shoulders. "Man, shut the fuck up. It's fine. We were all pissed off and scared. I'm sorry too." Kevin wasn't, not really. Didn't have anything to be sorry for, to his mind. He'd done his best to be good to Mark, but didn't get any in return-but pointing that out wouldn't make it any easier. He was trying to apologize. That was enough. "You're good. Don't carry that shit around on top of all this other shit. We're straight."
Mark sighed, audible relief. "Thanks, Kevin. Glad we could start over."
"Always. Listen, I gotta go bug my boss for a second, I'll catch you in a little bit, alright?"
"Sure. Be good."
Pfft. "Me? Always."
Mark actually smiled at him. "Uh huh." He turned, lumbered on his huge legs back towards where the group stood, chatting and laughing and smiling.
Kevin thought he saw Alyssa watching them. It was probably just a figment of his imagination, though.
"Heavy!" Kevin called, over the sound of the rain. "Hey! Fabio! I know you hear me!"
Heavy actually turned at this last, then sighed, not through his lungs but through his face, an expression of god damnit when he realized what he'd responded to rather than his actual name. Kevin laughed, mean-spirited and jeering, but left it alone. For now.
Kevin ducked into the bus shelter beside him, leaned against the plexiglass wall that bowed under his weight.
"What're you doin' in here? Waiting for the 55?"
"Close," Heavy said, "our cab's not here yet. He's usually here by five. Must be the rain. Were those your people?"
"Oh... uh, yeah. My uh, group, I guess. From Back There." Calling himself anyone's leader still made Kevin nervous. He left that part out. "It's good to see 'em all milling about in one piece. Mostly."
Heavy nodded, sage. He rubbed the scrub of his beard. Kevin knew it was coming, but the knowing didn't make it any less annoying when it arrived. "Alyssa looked awful sharp today. Dressed up like she was tryin' to catch someone's attention, almost."
"Don't start. It's not like that."
"What's it like, then?"
"This kinda shit's like one big job interview for her. Plus she's... you know, got that whole California thing. It's not like that."
Heavy crossed his arms and nodded like he was humoring him. Uh huh. Sure. "How old are you, again?"
"Old enough that I don't need dating advice."
"Who's talkin' about dating?"
Kevin gave Heavy a shocked, scandalized sort of look-he could feel his eyebrows knitting down in consternation. "Huh?"
"I said," Heavy repeated, "Who's talking about dating? Maybe you guys could just... you know. When she's in town. If you can't do it right, maybe you could still..." he shrugged, "do somethin', at least."
Kevin blinked. The idea was halfway tantalizing. He would absolutely one-hundred-percent slap himself for saying no. Wasn't sure he could say no if the proposition was given. He wasn't the smartest guy, sure, but he wasn't a full blown fucking idiot. Of course he wouldn't say no.
The idea was also lonely. Kevin had had his share of no-strings-attached situations in his life. Preferred them most of the time. But there was already a string here, wound through a vital part of him so deep that his vessels and flesh had started to grow over it like a tree grows rings over an object that gets too close for too long. That made the idea a surefire setup for heartbreak, more heartbreak than had already presented itself. And though he didn't say as much, he was getting old. Thirty-two next month. All the running around, all the skirt-chasing, all the rambling that once had felt like freedom was starting to feel like work.
A car pulled up alongside, gray and long with the neon shark's fin of a cab sign on top.
"There's my ride. I'm just saying," Heavy said with a flourishing shrug as he walked backwards into the rain. Somehow he managed to look charming and suave even with his slanted eyes squinted, his kinky black curls collecting sparkling drops of water. Kevin supposed some dudes just had gifts they hadn't earned. Heavy's was somehow looking like a GQ model no matter what fucked up situation you put him in. Asshole.
Kevin fished a crumpled pack of smokes, still in their crinkling cellophane wrapper, out of his hip pocket. He pounded the pack against his hand, pulled one out, and perched it between his lips.
Who the fuck was Heavy to give him dating advice? Well... the more he thought about it, the more that line of logic didn't hold up. Heavy was the guy who'd managed to snag Jill Fucking Valentine, the mythical blue she-beast of Yon RPD, She Who Was Out of Everyone's League. One of the few of them that seemed to be in a happy, functional relationship with a woman who clearly loved him. A relationship free of pining and whatever the fuck it was that passed for romantic intrigue that seemed to plague the lot of them, compacted by a whole lot of trauma and not a lot of therapy. Maybe he'd look up a head shrinker or something like that when he got home. Maybe that could be good.
Or maybe he could just talk to Alyssa and tell her what was up and stop being such a bitch about it. That might be a good place to start, too. Ugh.
Kevin hit the flint wheel on his Zippo. It clinked its obedient tinkling song at him, but did not light; three lonely sparks, like the world's tiniest Fourth of July firework, spat into the air and then died. Kevin furrowed his brow and then hit it again. No sparks, this time. Dead.
He thought about who would have a lighter. Heavy didn't smoke. Neither did Kennedy. Redfield would definitely have one, but he was as likely to give Kevin a knuckle sandwich as a light, these days.
That left Alyssa.
He shoved the smoke back into its packet to protect it. Well-smoke 'em if you got 'em, he supposed. No time like the present. He bowed his head and trudged into the rain again.
On his way back, Kevin considered yelling something surly in Heavy's direction to embarrass him, maybe slapping him on his Girl Butt as he passed (a term Kennedy had coined once while drunk, and had stuck, much to Heavy's chagrin.) But Kevin saw something strange enough, something off enough that he didn't yell, didn't smack him on his ass. Didn't even draw close, held at a distance. Even through the milky white haze of the fog, his sharp squint located something off, something that made his Spidey Sense tingle in a way that had very rarely led him astray.
Heavy had leaned in through the passenger side window, then leaned back, slow, cautious. His hands went up, as if in surrender, then back down. As if someone had told him to lower them. He nodded, then opened the car door, got inside. The car peeled out, almost hit someone who laid on their horn at the indiscretion, and was gone into the mist.
There were two people in the car. One of them must have been Jill. That made more sense, but...
Kevin thought of reasons for this as he stood in the driving rain, his cigarette forgotten. Maybe Jill had gotten in at another stop. Maybe Heavy was reacting the way he did because she was pissed? Maybe...
Surely that must have been it. It would explain the gestures.
When Kevin mounted the steps, jogged back inside and saw Jill standing at the metal detector, idly rubbing one of her arms and glancing around like she was waiting for someone, one word flickered through Kevin's mind:
Fuck.
A movement of black in the corner of his eye. A man in a suit was looking at them, his hand on an earpiece. The lady who had been rooting through her purse had found her cell phone, which she spoke on in a rapid clip, staring directly at Jill. When she saw Kevin's eyes in her direction, she turned away.
For a reason he couldn't place, Kevin turned to glance at the janitor. He was still mopping the floor in the same spot, over and over again.
Okay, okay. Calm down. What would Heavy do?
Okay. First things first. He strode to Jill, grabbed her by one of her biceps. She jerked back—she was strong, but not strong enough to break his grip—and the shock in her eyes, pale and delicate ice-blue, settled into understanding. She relaxed.
"Kevin," she breathed, "you scared me. What are you—?"
"Come with me," Kevin leaned in; he kept his voice quiet, low. "No time to explain. C'mon."
Sometime Later
Undisclosed Location
When Carlos' vision filtered back from black, the first thing he felt was the pins-and-needles sensation of a sleeping limb. His forehead was pressed against something cold, something that banged and rattled, a pinching pain in the meat of his wrists.
He moved back and was stopped at those wrists. He looked down. A pair of handcuffs fastened him to the side-pipe of a large radiator. One of his arms was covered with dried trickles of blood, a purple junkie-bruise starting to bloom solid on the inside of his elbow.
The floor was dirty, unswept tile. Mildew and rotten moisture spots spread from the juncture of the wall and the floor, peppered with crumbled cement and plaster. It was dark, dark and humid, no windows and a single doorless exit straight across. It smelled like bacteria: old dishes left to molder in a sink in dirty water, unwashed.
A light filtered from somewhere far to Carlos' left. He could hear a television playing in the distance. A game show, maybe. People were applauding.
"What the fuck..." He mumbled, and tried to pull again. The metal bit against the skin of his wrists.
At the sound, footsteps approached.
"Well, look who it is," said a man with a reedy Southern accent. He crouched on his haunches and smiled. Carlos fought against the tendrils of unconsciousness that lingered around the edges of his brain. It didn't feel like organic unconsciousness, like sleep. It felt like drugs, like being sedated. He struggled to place the man's face among the sea of people in the Rolodex of his mind. "You remember me?"
"Can't say I do," Carlos groaned. "This mean we ain't friends?"
The man clapped him hard across the face. His palm was moist, clammy. That woke him up.
"That's for my hands, you stupid son of a bitch." Carlos shook his head. The man struck him again. "And that's for being so fucking hard to find."
"Your hands?" Carlos thought about it. The man waited, and as the seconds ticked by, his face twisted into an expression of offense.
"These," the man spat, and shoved one of his palms in Carlos' face, pushed his head against the wall. "Your stupid slut just about shot my fucking hands off."
The details filtered back into place with a stubborn, dancing reluctance. He remembered snow, for some reason. Snow, ice-cold concrete. Blood.
And a black van.
"Ahh-haa. I remember." Carlos pitched his voice into an insulting imitation of a Southern drawl. "They're gonna kill me! They're gonna kill meeeee!"
The man's expression of offense turned to rage.
"And I remember you emptied a full clip and missed the good parts with every single one. And she only needed two to wreck your entire day. Pretty emasculating. I'd be pissed too."
"You wanna talk about wrecking someone's day?" The man smiled, his voice a whisper, and leaned close. "We'll see what I do to her when she shows up. And you've got a front row seat."
The room fell away, fluttered into silence and stillness. Carlos traced the man's face, his nose, his thin, bracketed mouth, the moles that peppered his waxen skin like rot marks on a piece of fruit gone bad.
"What?" He asked, satisfied with himself. "No jokey bullshit? No stupid voice this time?"
"I'm already gonna fuckin' kill you. You better watch your mouth before you add more service fees onto the bill, asshole."
The man laughed. "That's real funny," he said. Then he lunged.
It was a scuffle Carlos would have easily won in any other situation. But with his hands cuffed in rings of biting steel, it was like having a much smaller man try to box you while two larger people held your hands behind your back. By attrition, Carlos lost; the man punched him, five, six, seven times, straight in the face. He wasn't a good boxer, wasn't even very strong, but the strikes smacked Carlos' head back against the concrete wall behind him, and by number seven, his bell had been rung enough to see stars.
"Huh," Carlos said, bright and dazed. "C for effort, I guess. She really did fuck your little Raccoon hands up, didn't she? They're still so... dainty."
The man growled low in his throat, cocked his fist back again.
"Leave him!" A voice called from across the room. "The sample's done processing. Come look."
The man stood, shook his hand. "Lemme see. What's it say?" His footsteps trailed away and Carlos leaned to watch him.
On the far end of the room, a man dressed like a surgeon, masked and gowned, stood at a metalshop table full of scientific equipment. Microscopes, empty tubes with different colored plugs on the ends, a plastic device that looked like the lovechild of a safe and a rice-cooker. The light-the only source of light in the room-was coming from there, from the scientist-doctor-man's workbench.
"It's gone," Mr. Scrubs said, with a hopeless gesture. "There's… I mean, there's traces, but it's like his system..." a pause, "digested it, or disposed of it, or... So there might be some side effects, but I don't see how we can-"
"You're shitting me. Move, let me see."
"Be my guest." Silence for a long moment. "See? Nothing."
"Jesus fucking Christ. That shit's worth five-hundred-k. Five hundred k minimum. It can't just be... be gone. Harris swore up and fucking down he gave it to him."
"I mean-okay? What do you want me to do about it? I can't just conjure a fucking bioweapon out of midair. Sometimes the human body just gets over it. Especially if they've been exposed to it before. Like a vaccination."
A bioweapon? Carlos thought. What...?
He looked at his leg, stretched out before him. He had taken multiple rounds straight through the bone and the meat, enough he couldn't walk on it, afraid he would lose the thing to surgery in some South American hellhole of a hospital. Then weeks later... it was fine. So fine a doctor didn't even believe it had been broken recently. Fine enough she doubted his state of mind for alleging anything else had transpired.
Then he remembered the bioweapons in Raccoon City taking hails of automatic gunfire like sponges filled with blood and ichor. He looked at his limb, imagined it sprouting its own set of spindly legs and crawling away like a massive centipede. A violent shudder shook his body.
"So what, we put a bullet in him?"
"That's not our call to make. You have to ask Harris."
Harris. Of course that fucking dickweasel was behind all of this shit. On their own, Carlos' arms jerked against his restraints again.
"Knock it off!" The man with the moustache, Mister Babyhands, screamed in Carlos' direction. He turned back to Mr. Scrubs. "Harris is just gonna tell us to knock him off. Let's just do it."
"If you wanna do it then tell Harris you made the call, that's up to you, but I want to live long enough to spend what they're paying me. You tell him."
"Let's at least flip a coin."
"No, idiot. We're not going to fucking kill him. He still has traces of the virus, it's just… encapsulated. Like TB."
"Like...?"
A sigh, long-suffering and condescending. "Nevermind. I'll get another sample, you go tell Harris."
"Fine. I'll go talk to him. If he moves, shoot him."
"...with what, Rambo? My stethoscope?"
The guns and the needles, the threatening words and the slaps. It all melted away into a blistering anger that bubbled and spat, licked at the edges of Carlos' mind with a loss of control he hadn't known in nigh on decades, now. Gave him? Gave him what?
He felt... not just angry. He felt violated, physically violated in a way he had never felt, and very strong men normally didn't anticipate.
Until it happened to them.
This wasn't the kind of anger that could make a man take a life—that was easy. Happened all the time. This was the kind of anger that could make a man kill and be satisfied he did it. Happy. Yeah I killed him, and I'd fucking do it again kind of anger. The real dangerous kind.
The thud of bootfalls echoed down the hallway, heavy and authoritative. Carlos paused and waited for them to pass the open doorway. Through the gap passed a figure, clad in black and trimmings of red and gunmetal. The banded armor was different; it was replaced with simple black fatigues and pockets. The armor wasn't needed. It had never been.
The figure turned and looked at Carlos and that adrenaline dump of rage mingled with a fear, bone-deep, as deep as spirit itself. It washed and pricked over his skin. The figure stopped and turned to him as if summoned. Looking into the red eye-pieces of the helmet was like looking into the face of death; the Grim Reaper itself brushing past the door in its tattered cloak, turning to you with its face of polished white bone, blackened holes where its eyes should be.
Carlos didn't blink, his breath caught in his chest. After a moment that felt like an eternity, marked only by the hammering of his heart, the figure turned and moved on. Everything in Carlos' body fell limp and weak, his breath a pant.
If HUNK was involved, death was imminent. Whose death was the only factor left to be determined. He had to act, and act now, or that factor-that decision-would be made for him.
Jill wasn't gone. Nobody had taken her. This time, they had taken him from his rightful place. From where The Thing He Must Do was. With an animal need in the deepest whorl of his brain, unquestioned, he understood he had to get out. He had to get back to do that thing... whatever it was.
Carlos looked at the nurse. Looked for body armor, for plating, for concealed weapons. The lines of his body were hidden under the boxy drape of teal-green scrubs, his short, dark hair covered by a square cap with a white tie. His back was turned.
"You sit there and shut the fuck up," Mr. Babyhands pointed at him. "Don't make me belt you again."
The decision was about to be made. Not for Carlos-for her. For them.
Carlos decided if anyone was going to make the decision, it was going to be him.
Carlos waited until the man left the room, until his footsteps trailed down the hallway. He wound the chain between his cuffs tight around the large nut securing the piping to the radiator, and started to twist it free.