Act One, Scene One
The phone call at the magic store had been… enlightening to say the least. Danny had bartered the chip for their freedom, along with one or two other things, which had led him here.
Taipa Marketplace.
Midnight.
With a fake chip in his pocket.
It was a risky move, that much he knew. If Walter found out… well. That's why he insisted on coming alone. If everything went to plan, then he'd give the Eye the stick, the other three would be able to return home, and he'd… whatever. It didn't matter what happened to him, as long as the others were safe.
Now all he had to do was hand over the card, get the team's lives back, and tell Dylan-
"Atlas, hey".
Danny froze.
"Dylan".
What was he-
"I blew it, I'm sorry".
No no no, this couldn't be happening.
"What are you doing here?"
The man didn't smile, exactly, but he definitely looked relieved to have found him, and Danny forcefully shoved down his own smile at the thought. This definitely wasn't the right time, to begin with, and no matter how sinfully tight Rhodes' shirt was, he still had a role to play.
"I'm here to help now".
"Okay, we definitely don't need your help" he said, quickly looking around.
"I know I messed up, all right?"
"Yeah, you put everybody's lives in danger".
Rhodes at least looked suitably chastised.
"Where is everybody?"
"Where is everybody?" he repeated, "I can't be seen with you, actually, right now".
"I got it now, okay?" Dylan replied, "I appreciate you taking the time to take control for a little while, but I got it now, alright?"
He had to get him away from here.
"You do?"
If they got caught…
"Yeah".
He had to make him angry enough to leave.
"You look like you can get some rest, buddy".
Danny turned on his heel and walked away, hoping beyond hope that Dylan wouldn't follow.
"Who are you meeting here?"
No such luck.
"I'm not meeting anybody".
"They told me at Iong's you were meeting somebody".
"At Iong's?" he stopped, "Okay, yeah, no, I am, um... I'm meeting somebody from the Eye. Yeah, they agreed to meet me to exchange this computer chip for our lives back. So that's what it's come to, now. I hope you're happy with the situation you've put us in".
Just go already.
"You're talking to the Eye?"
"Yeah".
"Why are you talking to the Eye?"
Danny turned away from him again, but the older man still wouldn't let the matter drop.
"Atlas. Atlas! Give me the stick".
He didn't have time to explain to him that it was fake, didn't have time to explain how he didn't trust the Eye or that he wasn't sure who was actually behind it all or even how the very sight of the flight-rumbled man in front of him made him want to lie down on this filthy Shanghai street and never get up again.
"Dylan, you're not our leader anymore, okay?!" he snapped instead, "You're not our hero. You're not FBI. You're not a magician. You're not really anything. And we trusted you for a year. So, if you really wanna help us... If you really-"
He felt his eyes burn and quickly cleared his throat. Only one more hour and none of this would matter anymore anyway.
"If you really wanna help us, you would leave".
Rhodes scoffed but Danny held his ground.
The drop off was due at any moment.
"I get it. Cool. Bye".
He shook his head as he watched Rhodes leave, feeling miserable and bitter and sick to his stomach. He just had to hand over the chip and it would all be over. Hand over the chip and he could run after Dylan, fight his way through the crowd, and tell the man the truth.
Tell him what he'd found out about him.
A loud commotion drew his attention from the FBI agent's retreating figure, and Danny felt his blood freeze at the sight.
"Hello, hello!"
Walter.
"Yeah, that was me you called at the magic shop" he continued, even as Danny tried to stumble back, "So much fun though, knowing you'd be scurrying away from me at the lab just to bring it to me here. Did you actually think I'd let you go?"
"How did you do that?"
"Everyone has their button. You push it and they go blind. And yours, obviously, is ego".
And wasn't that just ironic?
"'Stay the course. Great changes are in store. Trust that your unique talents will not go unrecognized'".
The subway station.
"That was you".
"Yeah".
He could have cried from the irony of it all.
"Merritt downloaded all the files, but how do you think we were able to find him? Your phone" he explained, "What you actually put your phone on was a bi-wave siphon pad. Once again, science beats magic. So, the stick?"
He had betrayed them. Danny had betrayed his own team; caused their downfall without even realising it. Caused the same downfall that he had blamed Dylan for.
Well, if there was even just one last thing that he could do to protect them, then it was this.
"No".
Walter turned away from him and a thug took his place.
A split second later, Danny had a fist driven into his stomach before a steel-tipped boot slammed into the side of his knee.
He fell, hard, gasping for breath.
As a second man stepped forwards, he quickly held up both hands.
"I got it!" he gasped, "I got it. I got it!"
He had barely gotten his legs back underneath him before strong hands were gripping his shirt collar and shoving him back against a solid wall.
"Fuck, Dylan!"
From behind him, Walter held up a hand to stop his men from pulling them apart.
"You really think I'm gonna walk away from you?!"
Which, really, would have caused all sorts of feelings from deep inside him to emerge if Dylan hadn't immediately followed his statement with a punch to the face.
"Give me the stick!"
What the hell was he doing?!
"Give me it!" he snapped, before pulling the card from his grasp.
"Alright. Don't ever question me again. Beat it!"
Danny blinked, trying to slow down his reeling thoughts, but before he could, he felt nimble fingers slip something into his suit pocket and then he was abruptly shoved backwards through a one-way door.
He slammed on the wooden panels from the other side, but it was no good.
What. the actual. fuck.
Panting for breath, he checked his jacket and pulled out-
The stick.
Danny stared at it.
Dylan had… saved him?
There was panicked shouting from the other side of the door.
… He could leave.
In fact, he should leave, because that was exactly what Dylan intended him to do. Had even ordered him to do. But one of the questions he'd asked the Eye, or Walter Mabry, as it turned out, was about their team's leader.
It made sense now, of course, how the voice at the other end of the phone had been able to answer him. Walter dealt in information, after all, so of course he knew who Dylan Rhodes really was.
Or, rather, who Dylan Shrike really was.
So, with that thought in mind, Danny spun the card around in his fingers, and then started to run.
By the time he found a way around, Dylan had knocked out a handful of Walter's men and was in the process of confusing the rest.
The Chinese man slowly stepped forward, a meat cleaver held high above his head as something moved beneath the green blanket. The lump moved closer and closer to the edge of the silk sheet before suddenly-
A rabbit.
The onlookers laughed and then cheered as the man fell through a trapdoor.
Danny was too focused on the ruffled-up FBI agent climbing a stack of crates to be amused, and he knew that it was only a matter of time before Walter's men saw him too.
Just as one of the thugs made it to the top of the pavilion, he stepped out from the crowd.
"Hey!"
Everyone turned to face him, and Walter sighed, "Oh, what now?"
Dylan kicked the nearest man away from him.
"What are you doing?! I gave you the chance to run. Take it!"
"And let Mabry send you to the fishes? He knows what you did, Rhodes".
Dylan froze, chest rising and lowering as he gasped for breath, and one of his attackers used the brief distraction to hit him with a baton, sending the man spiralling to a stack of fruit crates below.
He came up swinging, but all attention was now on Danny.
"He knows what you did, he knows why you did it, and he knows who you are".
Dylan stared at him in shock, and he couldn't help but smirk.
"Yeah. I figured it out. Wasn't all that difficult once I thought about it, once I knew what questions to ask. And you always did say I was too smart for my own good… But do you really expect Mabry to show mercy to a dead magician's son?"
Apprehension flashed across his face, gone almost as soon as it arrived.
Walter, clearly annoyed with being ignored, finally stepped in between them.
"Okay, I'm not even going to pretend I know what's going on here 'cause I can only assume it's some sort of twisted love mentor-mentee type bullshit, but the fact is I can't accept your romantic gesture of self-sacrifice because you don't have the stick".
Dylan's eyes flashed in warning.
And, as usual, Danny ignored it.
He held up the black chip with two fingers.
"Wanna bet?"
Walter's face contorted in anger as he realised that he'd been tricked, and he leaped forwards as if to grab Danny with his own two hands.
"Get him!"
He quickly jumped back, grabbing a wooden ladle, and setting it on fire from the wok next to him. He swung it in an arch and Walter's men jumped back.
"Atlas!" Dylan called, but Danny ignored him, instead distracting the thugs with fire, and using the brief moment of chaos to deftly flick the card behind him.
"Get out of here, Rhodes!"
He barely managed to catch the stick before it hit the ground, and he looked back up only to see Danny seizing a bottle of alcohol from the same table. No one else had seen the throw.
"But-"
"The team needs you!" he snapped, downing half the bottle in one go, "You're their leader. So, go find them, and get out of here!"
Breathing fire was a new experience, and he distantly wondered if it impressed Dylan too, but he didn't have much time to check as he realised that his suit jacket was also on fire.
He was shoved backwards by one of the thugs, and they crashed through a restaurant. Glass smashed below them, and Danny felt sharp shards pierce through his flimsy jacket. He was yanked back to his feet and unceremoniously thrown down a flight of stairs.
Cursing, he painfully staggered back up, only to find Chase walking directly towards him with what looked like a paper umbrella in his hands.
"Danny, watch the pretty birdies fly… and sleep".
"Doesn't work on me".
"Not even as a distraction?"
Everyone has their button. You push it and they go blind. And yours, obviously, is ego.
Fuck.
Dylan swore as Danny was tackled by one of Mabry's men and they disappeared into the restaurant behind him.
That absolute moron!
He'd given him a way out, he'd seen Walter arrive, figured out who, exactly, in the Eye Danny had supposedly been talking to, and then-
Well.
He hadn't meant to punch the younger man quite that hard, because, let's face it, any injury to those cheekbones at all was an absolute sin, but the point was he had to get Atlas out of there.
And then the bloody idiot had returned and all but handed himself to Walter on a silver platter.
He knows who you are.
It certainly made more sense now that Danny had been trying to push him away. He knew that they didn't always see eye-to-eye about these things, but he genuinely did care for the younger man, and over the last few months they had become something he tentatively liked to call 'friends'. The fact that Atlas had been so adamant that he left earlier had upset him more than he cared to admit, but given what had happened after…
Danny was trying to protect Dylan just as much as he was trying to protect his team.
And if Walter was who Dylan thought he was…
Two of Mabry's men started running towards him as their boss made a sharp gesture with his hand, clearly interested in Dylan for reasons other than the stick.
It was decided then.
It physically pained him to turn his back on the boy, but the weight of the chip was heavy in his pocket, and he knew what he had to do.
You're their leader. So, go find them, and get out of here!
"Hey, guys!" Dylan called, "Guys! Hey! I just saw Atlas, uh, something happened".
The trio stopped in surprise.
"Dylan? You're here?!"
"What do you mean you just saw Danny?"
"What happened?!"
He kept walking as he heard a familiar sound up ahead.
"Rhodes?" Lula asked, but he held up a hand, "I don't know. I…"
At the end of the alleyway, he saw a group of familiar looking thugs loading crates onto a truck.
"What are they doing?" Jack asked.
"Those are Walter's men" he said, reaching into his pocket to pull out the stick, "This is what they want".
"What the hell?" Lula asked, "How do you have that? Where's Atlas? He said he was-"
Dylan felt his breath catch as a familiar looking metal box was lowered onto the truck.
"Whoa" Merritt said, clearly recognising it too, "That's Lionel Shrike's safe. What the hell do they want with that?"
Do you really expect Mabry to show mercy to a dead magician's son?
Danny had done more than get him out of a difficult situation.
He'd saved his life.
"Okay, we gotta follow that truck," he said.
The team needs you!
"They have Atlas. We don't have much time".
Panting heavily and feeling his breath catch with every movement, it took a long few minutes after Danny woke for him to formulate a coherent sentence.
"What do you want?"
Through the thin fabric of the bag tied over his head, he could just about make out Walter's smirking face.
"For you to understand something very important. Your leader and I are mirror images. You see, because like him, I share a very deep connection with my father. And like him, I'll stop at nothing to avenge any wrongs done to him. Even if it means taking that revenge out on the person he holds most dear".
A fist was driven into his stomach and he groaned as he fell forwards, the bag being ripped off his head in the process.
"You know the only difference between Rhodes' father and mine? Mine's still alive" Walter grinned cruelly, "Get him up".
Danny was pulled harshly to his feet, bloody and bruised, and it took a precious few seconds for his blurry vision to clear enough for him to make out the man walking towards him.
"So, you are the protégée of the man who spent a lifetime plotting against me. I wouldn't have known Rhodes' face if it had been on a billboard outside my bedroom window… But you, Daniel? Oh, I know your face very well".
Arthur Tressler.
He stared at the man in shock. All that talk about Walter being similar to Dylan, about Lionel Shrike's insurance claim being denied, about his son growing up and spending thirty years plotting that company's demise…
Arthur Tressler.
Dylan Shrike.
Walter… Tressler?
"You know, it's a shame that my men couldn't capture Rhodes as well as yourself, but I'm sure that he'll come calling soon. You are his favourite, after all".
Danny angrily fought down the butterflies in his stomach at the casual remark because as much as he longed for it to be true, he knew that Dylan wasn't going to save him.
"Walter told me about your little stunt in the Taipa Marketplace. How Rhodes gave himself up to save you, only for you to return and save him instead… It's not something I can claim to understand myself".
"Because nothing is personal to you and everyone and everything is just a number, isn't that so?" he spat out, but Tressler didn't get riled up.
"That is where you are wrong, Mr Atlas. Once Rhodes made himself known, it became very personal" he clapped Walter on the shoulder, "My son".
"Yeah, the sociopath".
They both ignored him.
"Funny thing is, I have seven so-called legitimate children. Snivelling, snobbish, stupid runts. I have one illegitimate child, who is a lot like me".
Oh, spare me.
"The point is, he wants something, and like any good parent, I will stop at nothing to get it for him. Your fellow Horsemen have it. You will turn it, Dylan Rhodes, and them over to us, now".
Well, that was an easy one.
"No".
Walter nodded, and thug number one drove another fist into his stomach, the second man delivering a swift punch across the jaw when he was down. They yanked him back by the shoulders so Walter could crouch down next to him.
"Danny, I would like you to really take this moment in, because this is the consequence
of your little leader's personal vendetta come to life and staring you in the face" he started, "I want you to know that when you're gone, we're not going to stop. We're gonna destroy everything you believe in, starting with Rhodes and the Horsemen, and ending with the Eye".
Danny tried to fight back but the two thugs held fast.
"Now then, I want you to imagine what Rhodes felt, standing by the banks of the river watching his father descend, disgraced and discredited" he continued, "The horrid psychic pain that he has relived for years… I felt that same thing two years ago as you drained not just my father's fortune, but his dignity! And yet you took pleasure from it".
Walter straightened up and turned to face his father.
"I was hoping to put Rhodes himself in that safe, as a form of… poetic justice, I guess. I'd quite like to hang onto it until he arrives".
Arthur made a vague gesture with one hand.
"Do with it as you wish. We can always dispose of Mr Atlas some other way, though I quite fancy something related to water. That will really insult Dylan Shrike".
"Perfect".
Walter smiled somewhat manically and turned back to face the ragtag crew.
"Has anyone got a concrete block?"