He could only think of Brian, which was starting to annoy him. He lay on his bed at his house in San Francisco, tossing and turning until three in the morning as his mind just couldn't settle. There was urgency in his thoughts and feelings, but for what reason he couldn't pin down. Maybe it was just that his oldest friend getting taken down for highway robbery - probably a million other charges, too - and himself being shoved out of LA and wiped of anything to do with the case was infuriating him. Maybe it was something more.
Felt like something more.
Rome learned of Brian's involvement after the trap the Feds made resulted in a police chase broadcast on a closed channel, listened to at the safe house that had become his over-furnished prison. Two deaths and one arrest. It was Agent Luke Hobbs who called it over the scanner:
"It's O'Conner! O'Conner is in the Civic!"
It's a funny feeling when your hand goes numb and drops what you're holding. Takes your breath away, too. Rome was just glad he was alone in the living room; the other agents left over at the safe house all in the dining/communication room.
"Fuck it, Brian…" Rome muttered, rolling over and throwing the blankets off.
He bore down into his pillow, willing himself to forget how messed up it all felt. His head swam with thoughts and feelings…the darkness consuming his thoughts. There was something at the corner of it all, though. Rome lay in bed and slowly gave into that extra thought in his head.
A vision came to him then; a sudden dream-like state that was all so horribly, very vivid.
Rome was in the desert and it was dark, stars above, work lights eerily illuminating cacti. He felt like he'd just gotten off a plane, been escorted by armed men to this place, left with a woman to hear the strangest story on the planet…
He wasn't alone now. Men and women in black suits were rushing around, toting equipment with many wires dragging behind them, hooked up to generators transported to the location in black unmarked vans. His skin felt hot. He looked down at his Chucks and jeans and stupid t-shirt and knew it wasn't him.
That woman he somehow knew the name of even though she hadn't told him, stood in front of him with pale skin and blazing red hair. Her eyes were focused intently, making Rome feel exposed. Behind her, others were setting up lights and equipment, angling them towards a dark space between two large boulders that looked…warped. A familiar bald man directed them with loud commanding words. Rome saw the two large rocks ahead and all the attention they were getting, and felt trepidation.
He stood on the dirt ground, but he also felt his back against his soft bed back home in San Francisco. Somehow, Rome felt like he was in two places at once and knew the cause…knew it had something to do with those rocks.
They loomed. They radiated Brian's mind toward him. He just knew it.
"What I'm offering is your slate cleared. You just have to do this job for me," the woman said.
"Put my life on the line for you, you mean," and that was Brian's voice, but Rome could literally feel his throat working the words out.
"Your life is already on the line. You'll be going to prison for what you've done. I'm giving you a chance to prove yourself and reduce your sentence. Find my partner. Drive in there and bring him back and there are things my department can do to help you."
Was Rome hearing this right? Was Brian being offered a way out?
Brian looked a new direction now. Rome wasn't surprised to see he was standing right next to a race car, painted red and yellow. He hadn't seen it yet, but its presence felt known…even like Brian had been looking at it for well on ten minutes already. The door was open and a tech was sitting in the passenger seat setting up equipment. An actual satellite was already in the back seat. Rome's eyes took it all in slowly and thoroughly. He heard Brian's voice really close again.
"He's just on the other side?"
"Yes."
"How do you know this will work?"
"I don't. My partner believed it, though. The men with him when he was lured in said that of the two of them, the dominant personality was less affected. He pulled back his friend, but my partner was too far ahead. I believe this is his only chance."
He had no control over Brian sitting down in the driver seat and his hand reached for the keys. The tech reached over and Rome felt the tech's warm hand.
"Not yet. The engine will cause interference with my settings." The tech typed on a keyboard some more, then pulled a wire connected to the dashboard. "Go for it now. Agent! We're ready."
The tech got out and left, closing the passenger door. The red-haired FBI agent leaned down close to Brian. Her eyes were vibrant.
"Do this for me, O'Conner, and I'll have your sentence reduced. Agent Hobbs will back me up."
"Will I?" Said a deep sarcastic voice.
Brian craned his neck. The lower half of Agent Hobbs was now in view, standing by the taillights of the car.
"And the Deputy Director of the FBI will help, too," she added. "We'll forgive the truck hijackings in full. You won't get out of this scot-free, but you won't see the inside of a prison."
Rome felt hope in that moment. He wanted to tell Brian to go for it. That his stupid white boy ass was being given a Get Out Of Jail Free card and he better take it.
It took another round of hesitation, on Brian's part. He was thinking about Dominic Toretto; Rome knew this. If Brian agreed it still wouldn't change the fact that Dom had really been the ones hijacking the trucks. It might even make his sacrifice less effective…
Do it, Brian! Rome thought urgently.
Brian twitched, blinked hard.
"I'll do it," he said to the woman once his mind was made up. "I'll go in. Not for the reduced sentence, but for your partner."
Fuck you, Brian! Rome thought bitterly. Can't you do anything good for just yourself?
She didn't reply, but she looked immensely relieved. Still tense…her partner was still missing.
It was hardly minutes later that Rome looked around and felt like they were getting ready for a race. He was lined up right ahead of the rocks, a normal view of the desert from between them, lit in the night by the portable work lights. In the past minutes, he noticed a few more things about those rocks. People were to either side but standing far back with a white line spray painted onto the desert dirt around it. A no-man's land barrier to warn regular people to stay back, because if they didn't they would start to wander closer to the rocks. The techs closest had bands around their stomachs, tethered to the vehicles. It was a jury-rigged method to assist in staying back.
Rome hadn't seen it, but Brian had already walked past that barrier with one of those jury-rigged bands around his stomach. He walked right up and touched one of the rocks, feeling his mind wonder a bit but not to the extent the others mentioned.
Hallucinations. Memories.
The techs described being consumed with old thoughts and worries. They lost focus and would need several minutes to return to normal.
As for the race Rome and Brian were about to go on, there were no hot girls or routy music, systems were already booted up, too. But the stakes were high.
Deep breath.
Cool off.
"'We're ready whenever you are,'" said the woman's voice over the radio.
Brian held down the other side of the comm.
"Here I go."
His hand went to the gearshift and his foot stayed on the brake pedal. He gave a few revs of the engine before he released. On he went, disappearing from view and sending the techs sensors raging.
Through the two rocks, the whole world around them swayed into a lusterless landscape void of all form. The ground was a tacky substance that ate up the usual sound the tires made. The engine could be heard, revving louder as he went upward of forty - fifty - sixty miles per hour, but even the wind wasn't there to batter its body. It wasn't like driving along the roads where things went past; the only indication he was going anywhere was the two boulders moving around and his speedometer. Adrenaline and fear had some making in this eerie place.
Overall, Rome the connection to Brian was bizarre beyond measure. Once through the portal, that connection felt strained. It wasn't elastic like stretching bubblegum; it was more like pulling on a rubber band between two fingers: he felt like he needed to snap closer.
Their eyes roved for signs of a person lost in here. Speeding in a wide initial circle around the rocks, focused only on this task, it wasn't hard to spot a small dot lingering on the edge of the horizon. They felt signs of relief. A deep sign escaped.
Yeah, Rome wanted to stand up off his bed in San Francisco and walk toward Brian. He could feel the bedding below him, yet the map was right there in Brian's mind for him to follow. And he wanted to. He desperately felt a need to go there.
The radio buzzed to life.
"'Can you hear me?'"
Brian was almost surprised by the radio. It occurred to him he was distracted by…something…odd…
He pressed the button.
"Yes," there was a lot of static now, but he could hear her. He shook off his distractions and described the world around him, "There's nothing here. Open space. No wind resistance. Friction but no sound. The rocks are behind me and there's something in the distance, but that's all I see."
"'Is that my partner in the distance? Can you tell?'"
"Maybe. It's far away. I'm already headed there."
Hobbs' voice over the radio.
"'Stay in frequent contact. The signal has interference.'"
"'How are you feeling? Any side effects?'" The woman again.
He could breathe, but it was just so eerie. He didn't know really how to reply and Rome knew that. Knew how confining this place felt. No threat but no security, either.
"Brother, you are in some deep shit," Rome said miserably in his room in SF.
Brian's hands on the wheel gripped tightly and he jumped at the sound of Rome's voice. Frightened, he looked all around the car.
"Rome?!"
And wasn't that something.
Rome could feel Brian's surprise. It was in his tight muscles, his whipping vision. In his bed at home, Rome's body jerked here and there and his leg fell over the side as his body imitated Brian's movements. He had a sudden break away from the car and his vision flashed into the darker bedroom around his real person, but he resisted the pull into reality. He took some deep breaths and the car came back into focus. The twilight world returned. Everything washed back into seeing Brian's hands back on the wheel.
"Brian!" Rome shouted.
"Rome! You are here! I felt…felt like you were. Where are you?"
"Home," Rome said at once. "I don't know what's going on, but it's like I'm there with you. Is this real? It doesn't seem like a dream at all."
"It's real. Real bad, too."
Brian's thoughts were suddenly filled with the X-file he had read through on the plane, and it was as if Rome was seeing all of that as well. Images of words shown overlaid on the view screen of Brian's vision, their minds tumbling together. Memory worked differently here, the two discovered. It was fluid; one moment was almost the same as the next. One person…almost the same as the next.
X-771563256. Centralized earthquake. Drastically altered minds. Causalities. Mental connection. …the ongoing evaluation of Brian O'Conner and Roman Pierce…
And then some new words. Domestic violence…one arrest with conviction of…
Brian's personal record.
They were subject to the moment and it played out without regard for their current activity of driving through the hellscape within the portal. They were pushed into Brian's life, controlled by his mind. The landscape around him was overlaid with a window into his past, morphing reality to show a group of adults sitting around an outdated living room set in a shabby room, smoke rising from burning cigarettes, coke lines on the coffee table. Brian's mother was hardly conscious and one of the men in the room was looking at him. That man brought a sense of terror. He stood from his seat and came forward. Brian felt small. Just a child. A black shiny gun was in the man's hand and rose to point at him. Harrowing fear as the man's slurred words couldn't be made out, the gun pressed against his face, a feeling of having done something wrong, and then his body being grasped and handled without care…
"'O'Conner! O'Conner! Do you copy? Respond! Why are you driving so fast?!'"
The woman's voice was on the radio sounded maddened, coming in foggy to his addled mind. Her urgent words broke though the vision and Brian came back to himself, he heard the roar of the engine as the car broke the hundred-ten mile an hour limit. On the other side, the agents monitoring his vehicle through the satellite feed had been just as confused as him as to how it got to be that fast.
"Shit! Shit!" he exclaimed, loosening up on the pedal.
In SF, Rome sat up in bed and shook his head, rubbing his face. He lost a bit of focus, trapped in Brian's mind with that terrifying man from in Brian's memory.
"What the fuck…? What the fu - ?" Rome took deep breaths.
That tug was growing. That pull to get to Brian. This far out of his head, Rome could feel it so strongly. Brian was still there on the edge of his mind. He refocused and the world grew hazier again. His bedroom faded once more and he returned to Brian's mind behind the wheel of that car.
Sweat caked their brows. Hearts thundered in chests with matching beats.
"What the hell?!"
"I don't know what's going on. What is this? Was that real?"
Brian's feelings said it was.
Serve and protect. Those words now stood out from the forms in Brian's mind. The police academy. The job. And then the current job with Dominic Toretto filled Brian's heart. Try as he might to focus on that dot in the distance, pushing away the other thoughts in his head was impossible. Rome got to feel Brian's relationship with Dom. Got a taste of that tumultuous love and desire to protect that man.
And that's when Rome knew that Brian had staged the hijacking. Knew finally that it was his plan to get caught and confess to the crime. He saw it in Brian's mind.
"For him?" Rome said now in an anguished voice. "Brian! You did that for him? You were going to prison! You were throwing your life away!"
"What life? What life are you talking about?!" Brian said angrily.
On the radio, the voices came and went. They called out Brian's name. Called out for his reply, but Brian's and Rome's connection was stronger than that radio signal. The discomfort and confusion of it all was getting to Brian, but the dot was a little larger.
Brian looked at the rearview mirror. He couldn't see Rome, but he could sense him looking back at him.
"It was worth it, Rome," Brian said to his friend in his head. "Dom is about the best thing I had."
"And throwing your life away is what having him means?" Rome said harshly.
"It's more complicated than that. Don't you get it?"
And Brian didn't have to try hard to explain why. His mind, body, and heart were connected to Rome now. Rome felt Dom's lips, could see the love that was returned to a lonely man without a real connection to the world besides the job. Rome was convinced Brian knew what he was doing and wasn't afraid of the consequences…that the act of protecting Dom wasn't a desperate act but a deal made by his soul.
"You're not really that alone, Bri," Rome said to him.
Brian's chest filled with doubt. "You sure about that?"
"I can be there for you. I want to be there for you! It will take me a few hours."
"You're only talking about getting me out of here. You're not talking about…"
Even Rome knew he wasn't talking about that. True.
Brian felt something else too, though. It wasn't just that Rome wanted to be there, it was more along the lines of he needed to be there. They were stretched too far away from each other. The pull to come together was immensely strong. Brian wanted to not feel alone, but truth be told it wasn't Rome that could do that for him. Their pull to be together wasn't what was going to make Brian feel whole again. Rome felt inside Brian that the empty space could only be filled by one person.
"I can bring him, too, Brian," Rome confessed.
Brian wanted that more than anything else.
"Come then! Tell me I'm not crazy! Come here, Rome," Brian begged.
He was losing focus again, eyes hardly seeing that object that he was coming to get a closer look to see if it was the missing man. Rome's own mind was starting to tug away too. He felt the danger of it…of getting stuck in this place with Brian.
He felt he had to leave. He would come back. He would find Brian again.
"I won't let you down," Rome promised. "Go find that guy. Keep yourself out of prison."
With fierce strength of will, Rome broke the grip Brian's mind had on him and surged from his bed. He fell onto the floor in his dark bedroom, gasping. His vision was clear, but he could still feel Brian just there on the edge. He was tense, feeling even more alone. Rome heard the echo of his voice as he shouted out in the car in that deserted landscape, calling for Rome to verify that he was really gone or not.
"I won't let you down," Rome said aloud again.
He could feel Brian ease up now.
Rome gripped the bedside table as he leveraged himself up, hauling ass to his closet and finding clothes. He whipped out of there and was in a panic as he formed a plan that would get him to Tucson the fastest. He was going to bring Dom along, though. They'd fly out of LA. If being in Brian's head taught him anything, it was how consumed with that man he was, and he wasn't going to break what might be the very last promise he made to his friend.
It was late or early, depending on who was asking. He pulled up in front of Dominic Toretto's house and saw all the cars parked in the drive. Most notably was the Supra, which Brian had left behind in the overflow parking lot next to where he'd picked up the Civic he used to entice Johnny Tran to follow him out onto the highway. Rome knew this now like he'd lived the whole event.
Rome parked and trotted up the drive with little plan else but to get Dom in his vehicle and on the road. They'd hit up the airport. It was close to five a.m. so he knew there would be a flight. He had to make this fast.
His closed fist hit the front door like he was beating it to death.
"Wake up! Get up! Answer the door!" he yelled.
He tried the handle. Locked.
He pounded again.
"Toretto! Get the door!"
A light came on in the house.
Dom's voice called out, "Who is it?!"
"What's that really matter, man?! What's that matter when top FBI agents were fighting over which shitty prison my friend would spend the rest of his life in?! I'll give you a hint about who won: it wasn't maximum security and it wasn't low security; it was some other fuckers who got him! Do we really got to be having this conversation through a door, asshole?!"
Rome waited with bated breath.
The door lock sounded and it opened to Dom standing there in a wife beater and sweats. At the sight of Rome, his face took on a look of rage.
"You were a cop!" He accused.
"I am a cop!" Rome corrected, slapping his hands against the door jam and leaning in to give Dom a very accusatory assessment. He made sure to show his distaste as he looked Toretto up and down. "Brian chose you? I mean, I get it that you're his type, but really? What'd you do in just a month to convince him to go down for you? He turned himself into a dirty cop for you - gave it all up and then some - and you have the nerve to get a good night's sleep?"
He snarled in dissatisfaction.
That got Dom moving. He hauled Rome into the house and pressed him forcefully against the wall behind him. There was a small table with a lamp in the way, both going down with a crash. Dom held Rome by the scruff of his shirt. And it pissed Rome to hell and below getting thrown around like this.
"I don't know why he did it! Explain it to me - please! Go on! Why did he do it?!" Dom roared, confusion and pain and anger beating upon Rome and - yeah - upon Dom, too. The internal struggle of the man was horrendous.
"Dom!" Shouted Mia, halfway down the stairs, trying to get her brother to reign it in.
Rome got a look at others there, too. At Brian's friends. At people he felt he knew, too. Vince, Leon and Jesse stood at the hall entry. Mia was on the stairs. Letty was sitting up on the couch, covered in bruises and groggy, probably from some pain medicine that Brian's thoughts qualified him to know she was taking. And then there was the mountain standing right before him.
"Because he loves you! Why am I the one to explain this to you?! He did it for you! He wanted you to be safe! He figured it out that it was you and got the one person who would let him pay the price for your safety - who didn't want you behind bars for twenty-five years either - to help him pull it off!"
Mia had been crying before. Those tears started again.
"I'm sorry! I know! I know!" She bayed, burring her face in her hands.
Rome had words for that. "You were so willing to sacrifice his sorry ass! He makes some good collateral damage, doesn't he? His plans are always for shit; never listen to him! You would not begin to comprehend how stupid that white boy has been over the years! Never realizes people actually care about what happens to him because he's used to the ones he loves hurting him. You should have met his mother and her boyfriend...all epic shits who couldn't do anything right by him. At least you feel sorry for hurting him," he told Mia, "that counts for something."
Dom had sorrowful eyes mixed with agony now. Rome took this chance to push Dom off and right himself on his feet. He pointed a finger at Dom. Dom saw the shadow loom in Rome's face.
"Listen up, Toretto. I didn't bring my gun because I'm not acting like a cop right now. I'm acting like Brian's friend. I told you there were people fighting over him. It's not those who want to see him behind bars that we have to be worried about. It's a third party. They've already taken him away into the desert and have him running a job for them there. Totally off the books. Totally asking him to risk his life for a better sentence than San Quinton if he can pull it off…"
How best else to describe it, Rome didn't know. He didn't want to complicate this pickup. He only needed Dom to get in his car.
"Do you plan on finding him and crossing the border or something? Hide him from the Feds? Because I'm in if that's your plan."
He sort of expected Dom to know something about Luke Hobbs, but just by saying that clearly he didn't.
"There's no place on Earth to hide him from the people who have him right now…"
Rome rubbed at his head, at that side of his mind that was reading into Brian right now. He was still driving for that object on the horizon, getting lost and confused, too. The radio called out to him and he sometimes answered back…mostly he was just looking around, watching his gas tank fall…
"Who are you?" Dom asked at long last.
"Roman Pierce. San Francisco Police Department. Brian and I go all the way back to days in juvie. Cell mates for life. We joined the police force together," Rome dropped his hands from his face. "I guess he sort of was in love with me, too. For just a decade there, anyway. I'm not into guys, so that's that. But now he loves you and if you love him too then you should come with me. He…needs something to come back for…"
Dom's eyes flashed, and Rome felt bad for saying it so harshly. But that rubber band that tethered Roman to Brian was starting to reach that perfect tension point. Rome had to start making his move toward him soon.
Dom glanced away for the first time. He looked to his friends as if asking them what he should do.
"Don't do it. He's a cop. He's going to take you in," Vince was wickedly suspicious this may be true.
"I'm not here for his confession, scruff-king," Rome spat at Vince. "I know you were the ones doing it without a doubt. And I would have helped cover for you if Brian had let me into his plan, because Brian's my brother through and through. Maybe I give him crap - a lot of crap - but I love him like family. If sending you into the slammer was the last thing Brian wanted, then it's the last thing I want, too," Rome said with confidence. He lowered his voice, "I know where they took him. I know he wants you there. I need to be there, too."
It didn't take Dominic long to settle on the conclusion that he was Brian's family, too, and he had to be there same as Rome. A new sort of conviction crossed his face and he at last had purpose and strength return to him.
"Where are we going?"