Title: Don't You (Forget About Me) - Simple Minds

3 – Rain Keeps Falling Down

'Holyshitholyshitholyshit – Newton, Code Red, we've got a problem! Code Red! Get your ass up here before he dies or something! – Vin, breathe, damn it!'

All Vin knew was that his lungs were on fire, his throat felt like it had been torn to shreds, and his head hurt like fuck. Zero blurred into existence in front of him, and he was semi-aware she was pulling him into a sitting position in an attempt to stop him from heaving.

That was when he realised he was drenched in blood and found cause to panic.

'Hneughhh -'

'Holy fuck you're alive, thank fucking God – Vin, I swear I'll never smoke again if youjust live, for fuck's sake -'

It felt as though his temples were being repeatedly hit with a mallet. Stars danced in front of his eyes, and for a split second everything went black. He threw up again, though this time it felt like he was emptying the contents of his stomach rather than every other internal organ.

Something hit his back with admirable strength – Zero, no doubt – and he heaved one last time before keeling forward and faceplanting into the table.

'. . . you're okay, you're okay, you'll be fine, goddamnit, you're okay . . .' Hands fluttered nervously around his face, his shoulders, his hair . . .

'Don't . . . you dare,' he choked, rather surprised his voice was willing to cooperate. Zero inhaled sharply with surprise and shifted him further down the table, moving him out of the pool of blood and vomit he was currently lying in. Headquarters swam into view around him as he shuffled awkwardly onto his side.

All was silent.

'You're fine,' Zero said again, though this time it seemed more like an order. Before, it had sounded as though she were reassuring herself, rather than him.

He coughed, wincing. His throat felt like it was made of sandpaper. Zero watched him apprehensively. There were dark shadows under her eyes, and her hair was in a messy braid, as though she hadn't slept in days. Or, for that matter, left the room. Somehow that thought left a heavy, sick feeling in Vin's stomach.

He'd get to that later, though. For now, there was only really one thing on his mind.

'You smoke?'

Zero's eyes widened in the way they only did whenever she was caught out by Macbeth (doing something wildly inappropriate, naturally). Then she grinned awkwardly. 'Did I say that? Well I lied.'

'You -' He cut off and coughed for a moment. 'You so said that, you little shit.'

'Well it worked, didn't it? It got your attention.' Despite the severity of the situation, Zero started to laugh, quite like she hadn't for a few weeks now. 'And why the fuck are you choosing to discuss this?'

'Because . . . I . . . can.' And, though every part of his body hurt like an absolute bitch, the corners of his lips curled up in a grin. 'And, might I just -' Cough. '- take this moment to say . . . fuck you.'

The laughter died, though her smile never faded. She just brushed his hair away from his sweaty forehead, and after a moment's consideration, punched him lightly on the shoulder. 'Fuck you, too.'

Naturally, this was the moment Newton chose to burst into the room, throwing up the lid from the emergency passageway hidden in the trunk in the corner of the room, and tumbling out onto the floor, looking about wildly.

'What do his vitals say?' he cried wildly, before realising that Vin was now sitting up, and remarkably, quite alive. 'Holy hell, you're still in one piece?'

'Thanks for believing in me,' Vin replied dryly, before launching into a violent coughing fit.

Newton made a small noise of distress and looked at Zero. 'So what happened?'

Vin saw her shrug before she moved out of his blurry field of vision, rummaging through the cupboard behind him. 'He just woke up and started hurling everywhere. I don't know what caused it. But I think it's all been purged from his system?'

Vin exhaled heavily and leaned back down on the table, letting his fuzzy, aching head rest on his forearm. 'It's fucking wonderful,' he rasped, glaring at Newton when he approached, clearly with the intention to poke him and see what would happen.

'I don't get it,' Newton said, frowning at his computer monitor. 'An hour ago you were showing no signs of waking up whatsoever. The poison in your bloodstream still hadn't been neutralised – hell, I was still trying to figure out a remedy.'

'And there was no way it could have possibly neutralised itself?'

Newton paused, looking at Zero with an expression of slight horror on his face. 'What did you say?'

She moved back beside Vin, now with a fresh towel, and pulled him upright again, much to the indignation of his aching muscles, before wiping the filth off him without so much as flinching. 'Well, can some poisons do that?'

'No,' Newton replied dubiously. 'But now you've made me think, and I've already got some really bad ideas.'

'You're welcome,' she replied listlessly, swatting Vin across the head when he tried to pry her iron grip from his shoulder. She then made a point of roughly cleaning off his face like he was a toddler.

He scowled at her, only getting a smirk in return. 'Where's Trix?'

'She's coming,' Newton replied, opening a Google tab. 'Macbeth was holding her up though; she might be a while.'

That's convenient, Vin thought dully, coughing up a little more of the red, slimy gunge. Zero pulled an unimpressed face and handed him a water bottle, which he took gladly.

'Well tell her that I'm going to destroy that damned experiment, no matter what she says,' she told him, opening the desk draw and pulling out a few small detonators, before pocketing them. She put her headphones on. 'Keep watch for me.'

Vin made an indignant noise. Newton simply looked at her like she was insane. At this, she gave them both a forceful glare.

'Do you have any better ideas?' she snapped, folding her arms. 'Because if so, I'd damn well like to hear them!'

A beat of silence passed.

Then two.

Vin and Newton exchanged a dubious look – he honestly thought it wasn't a bad idea, but since Trixie was so vehemently against it, he had no clue what to think. He didn't know Newton's opinion on the subject.

At their silence, Zero raised her hands as if to say I told you so. Without a further word, she jumped up into the ventilation shaft with the grace of a cat and disappeared.

'Trixie's gonna kill us,' Newton said dumbly.

'No shit,' Vin rasped, before taking a swig of water and wincing as it stung his mutilated throat. He set the bottle down. 'But we've got to do what we can to help.'

'You did WHAT?'

Trixie was livid. More than livid, actually. The comforting weight of her insides disappeared so quickly that she almost saw stars as she processed this information, pressing a hand to her temple.

'Technically we did nothing,' Newton said hesitantly, keeping a safe distance.

'You let her GO!'

'Hey, next time you stand between Zero and something she wants,' Vin interjected hotly, folding his arms and trying valiantly to stay upright without passing out.

'You can shut up. You've still got blood on your face,' she groused, before turning back to Newton. 'Did I not explain to her why we're avoiding conflict? Didn't I?'

'Well, I guess, but -'

'SEE? And now she just runs off for the hell of it!'

'Not for the hell of it -'

'I said shut up, Vin! And sit down; you're being silly.'

Vin scrunched his nose up in indignation, but sat back down as the blood steadily drained from his face. He made a noise of agonised relief, and reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose. Trixie sighed, closed her eyes, and counted to ten in an effort to calm down. She vaguely heard Newton muttering indignantly to himself, with a few particularly scathing things to say about her current attitude. She supposed it was somewhat justified, and exhaled slowly.

'Okay,' she started, before opening her eyes again. 'I'm sorry for yelling at you. It's not your fault.'

Vin made a little noise that clearly meant duh, and she shot him a pointed look, before turning back to Newton. 'Can you keep an eye on her? Just over the security system; I mean, hopefully we shouldn't have to intervene.'

He shrugged half-heartedly. 'Well, that's sort of what I thought. But if Macbeth's keeping a close eye on any movement we're making, she'd know we have some manpower on our side. There's a select number of kids she can narrow that down to, which means she would be expecting someone like Zero to come along and suss out the situation. You know what I mean?'

Trixie stifled the groan that threatened to escape, her mouth twisting in annoyance. 'Damn it,' she muttered. 'I told her . . .'

'I know, Trix,' Newton said pointedly. 'But she . . . she's too stubborn to really listen to reason, you know?'

She scrubbed a hand over her face. 'Jesus. Well . . . watch her, would you?'

From the outside, Trixie hardly seemed the sort of person who could be classified as a "problem child". Her grades were nearly flawless, she was well-mannered, and hardly stepped out of line (save for her involvement in INK). She possessed the air of a girl who was extraordinarily mature for her age, and knew she would study to become a lawyer if it weren't a job so lacking in action. So why was she at Pinkerton?

The answer was simple: Her parents couldn't handle her.

Trixie had hated being carted around the country for concerts and meetings and record debuts – she hated it so much that she would act out in retaliation, desperately craving just a little bit of love and attention that they never had the time to give her. She was sick of having to leave the few friends she managed to make, and starting afresh at a brand-new school every two months. She was sick of being followed by the paparazzi when she just wanted to go to the shops to buy the simplest of things. She was sick of being lonely.

So, she responded in ways that would make most parents hit their head against the wall in frustration. She refused to eat for days at a time, deliberately threw embarrassing tantrums in public places, scared off every single babysitter her parents hired to look after her, and one time went so far as to bust the wheels of the tour bus with a kitchen knife.

To put it simply, she was a ratbag.

Her parents had tolerated it for a while, but in time, just as everyone eventually does, they cracked. They dumped her in the first convenient school that dealt with "children like her", and left.

Trixie had no idea if she loved or hated them for that. They had given her what she wanted – she had stability, a decent education, and three best friends she wouldn't abandon for the world. But on the other hand, they hadn't hesitated to leave her. She was more of a burden than anything else, and not ideal in the world of fame. Children were exhausting. Children got in the way. Children could very easily destroy the perfect image a celebrity had spent years building for themselves.

Children were unnecessary.

Trixie knew they hadn't really wanted her – she was an accident, she knew that much. But sometimes she wished she had someone other than Vin or Zero or Newton to go running to when she got a perfect report card; someone else to be proud of her and love her unconditionally.

It hurt, though she tried not to think of it. It was something she could function reasonably well without, so she had never let it stop her.

She still hadn't.

Sadie Macbeth was not an individual who would consider herself an alcoholic. However, when her precious fly experiment had gone up in literal flames only hours before, she felt she could allow herself this luxury.

She loathed bars, in every shape and form that they came, despite the fact that they provided the only bottle of Ricadonna she could get her hands on this late at night. It was irrelevant.

This, she thought, was the worst malfunction to-date. The fly was perfectly programmed to incapacitate INK, not result in its own destruction! The purpose was simple: a remake of the Buzz-Buzz fly, it would inject the victim with a poison that corrodes flesh until it reaches the bloodstream, effectively rendering them unconscious for at least a few days, and weakening the body's resistance to outside interference. Effectively all of INK's members ought to have been affected, giving her plenty of time to source out and dispatch the entire organisation. The plan had been flawless.

Until now.

One of those stinking brats had blown up the entire operation, leaving nothing but smoke, and some singed hair on Sadie's part. Somehow, they had avoided the fly's bite and snuck around right under her nose, all while she had thought she was safe. But now she was no closer to uncovering their identities than she had been before, and all she had was the briefest glimpse of a silhouette to show for her efforts.

Yet again, she had been bested by teenagers.

She swirled her drink bitterly, watching the young, female bartender as she flirted with a middle-aged man a few stools down. She couldn't possibly have been more than eighteen, Sadie thought as she studied her scrutinisingly, yet she was working in a bar. The girl was standing rather close to him, with her caramel hair falling down her back in waves that must have been tantalising for the old scumbag. She let out a little girlish 'oh!' as she dropped her dishcloth on the ground just behind where he was standing, and leaned over to pick it up. This was clearly a practised move, as when the man's attention was shamelessly fixed on her behind, she carefully reached around and plucked his wallet from his back pocket. Hiding it in the cloth, she straightened up again, flashed him a sultry smile, and walked away.

Oh, she was good.

It wasn't a scene that particularly surprised Sadie, but there was something wrong about this whole situation. She frowned in thought as the girl came back to resume her position tending the bar, and pushed over her empty glass for a refill. She watched the girl's hands. There was a band of faint scarring around the fourth finger of her left hand, along with another faint mark that ran along the side of her right one. She barely looked at Sadie as she topped up the glass, almost as though she knew she was being assessed, and wanted to hide as much as possible.

Her eyes were far, far too intelligent for her to ordinarily be stuck in this kind of job. And yet, she seemingly had no kind of qualification.

Highschool dropout, Sadie concluded. Though for what reasons, she wasn't sure. But, all the same, a plan began to weave itself in the depths of her mind.

'I have a proposition for you, my dear.'

Sadie had followed the girl as she walked out into the parking lot just after her shift ended, nose buried in her phone. She turned around, looking somewhat incredulous. She looked around in confusion.

'You talkin' to me, lady?' Her accent was heavy - New Jersey, probably.

'Yes. What's your name?'

Pause. 'Caitlin.'

'Lovely. Now your real name, please.'

The girl frowned, taking a step back. 'Excuse me?'

'Your real name, darling. Or your manager may somehow find out that you're not really twenty four, but only sixteen and ten months, and a high school dropout to boot. I have friends in high places.' The information wasn't particularly hard to find. With a mobile and decent internet connection, one could learn anything.

'You threatening me?'

'So it would seem.'

The girl glared, looking everywhere but at Sadie. Finally, she caved. 'Elizabeth. Elizabeth Hawking.'

'Thought so. Just wanted to be sure. Now, Elizabeth, as I said, I have a proposition for you. I believe you may quite like it.'

'Oh?'

'I work at a local boarding school – Pinkerton, you may have heard of it – and have a very close relationship with the principal. I'm sure, with a little manipulation of paperwork, you may be able to, as it were, legally finish your education. That means college, as I'm sure you know. You certainly seem bright enough for something like that.'

Elizabeth's eyes narrowed, but her gaze was calculating. She was interested.

'Go on.'

'In return, all I ask is one small favour.'

10/12/2021