Note: takes place just prior to the first Troika scene in 'Dead Things'.
Chapter seven
This was not The Plan. This was a plan, a backup plan, and not the first time he'd had to resort to one. The Plan had not included the Slayer. His backup plan had said nothing about the Slayer's friends stumbling on their lair. The next plan had not included any way of dealing with a total lack of trust from Jonathan and Andrew, and the current plan was originally devised as a means of bringing them both back into line.
Plans just had too many variables. Particularly human variables.
As it turned out, Andrew was painless enough to deal with. A few kisses and whispered promises here and there, and the kid was his lapdog. Throw the stick, and leave him to it. Which meant that Warren was left with plenty of time to think. It was vaguely amusing. He could set his body to automatic and let his mind focus on whatever part of the plan required his attention.
That was how he'd come up with contingency measure number four (or was it five now?). There'd been one lazy afternoon with not much else to do, and Andrew had been so engrossed in what they'd been doing that Warren had thought him hypnotised.
And there it was. One random thought had led to the genesis of the Cerebral Dampener. In Warren's mind, it had been basically an all-purpose mind-scrambling device, for use in getaways, dodgy deals, and for bringing untrusting colleagues back into line. He'd hoped he wouldn't have to resort to its use in the latter case, but clearly Jonathan was not so easily swayed as Andrew.
Frankly, he was beginning to doubt Jonathan's commitment to the cause. The shortcake was still hampered by his warped notions of right and wrong, and sometimes Warren couldn't figure out why Jonathan had ever fancied himself a villain in the first place. Still, he was on board and therefore in it for the duration, so Warren had to be certain Jonathan didn't lose focus of the goal.
The problem, or the latest in a long line of problems, was when Andrew and the munchkin had stumbled across some early diagrams for the Cerebral Dampener, and had innocently asked for explanations. There wasn't much point in lying at that stage, so Warren had described his plans for a device that would temporarily blank the mind of a chosen target, leaving them open to suggestion. Jonathan had been the one to suggest the possibility of winning over members of the opposite sex. Dimly worried that it would blow his cover with Andrew, Warren had not voiced his approval but Andrew, wildly overcompensating, had jumped on the idea, and of course he'd had to agree.
Scheming was hard sometimes, especially now he had Andrew as his very own living shadow. Although the 'guilty secret' the two of them shared helped keep Andrew quiet. He'd convinced the boy that Jonathan would not approve of them making out behind his back, and so Andrew had dutifully kept his mouth shut until Warren, feeling uncharacteristically generous one afternoon, had felt a need to let Andrew in on the next stage of the real plan. Nevertheless, it had taken some time to convince the boy that they'd be better off letting Jonathan take the rap for the next lot of robberies.
"So we're just going to ditch him?" Andrew had whined. He'd plonked himself down in Warren's lap and begun tracing circles across Warren's chest with the tip of one finger. In an attempt to look interested, Warren had responded to the touch by scratching the lines of the improved freeze-ray schematics over Andrew's back, making the boy shiver inside his T-shirt.
"Someone's gotta stay and distract the cops," he'd explained. Andrew was not convinced.
"But I don't wanna leave him behind. He's as much a part of this as we are."
"Don't get too attached." Warren had changed the trajectory of the finger that stroked across Andrew's back, running trails down to the boy's hip and thigh. Just enough to distract him and throw him off balance. "I'm not sure he's entirely with us on this one."
That had piqued Andrew's interest, but he had refused to explain. Just insisted that Jonathan would be a necessary loss.
"So Jonathan's a red shirt?" Andrew had asked, tentatively. Warren'd nodded, his face the picture of resigned regret. Andrew had appeared to think this over, eventually nodding back, reluctantly accepting what had to be because Warren had said it was so. "Even though the red shirt metaphor is kind of redundant now," he'd continued aimlessly, "you know, since they switched the significance of the red and gold shirts."
Warren had given this appropriate consideration, eventually conceding to Andrew's observation. Then Andrew had leaned in to kiss him, so he'd let Andrew take over while he set his mind to solving the problem of containing the Cerebral Dampener's field so that it did not zap the mind of its user.
~~~~~
tbc
Chapter seven
This was not The Plan. This was a plan, a backup plan, and not the first time he'd had to resort to one. The Plan had not included the Slayer. His backup plan had said nothing about the Slayer's friends stumbling on their lair. The next plan had not included any way of dealing with a total lack of trust from Jonathan and Andrew, and the current plan was originally devised as a means of bringing them both back into line.
Plans just had too many variables. Particularly human variables.
As it turned out, Andrew was painless enough to deal with. A few kisses and whispered promises here and there, and the kid was his lapdog. Throw the stick, and leave him to it. Which meant that Warren was left with plenty of time to think. It was vaguely amusing. He could set his body to automatic and let his mind focus on whatever part of the plan required his attention.
That was how he'd come up with contingency measure number four (or was it five now?). There'd been one lazy afternoon with not much else to do, and Andrew had been so engrossed in what they'd been doing that Warren had thought him hypnotised.
And there it was. One random thought had led to the genesis of the Cerebral Dampener. In Warren's mind, it had been basically an all-purpose mind-scrambling device, for use in getaways, dodgy deals, and for bringing untrusting colleagues back into line. He'd hoped he wouldn't have to resort to its use in the latter case, but clearly Jonathan was not so easily swayed as Andrew.
Frankly, he was beginning to doubt Jonathan's commitment to the cause. The shortcake was still hampered by his warped notions of right and wrong, and sometimes Warren couldn't figure out why Jonathan had ever fancied himself a villain in the first place. Still, he was on board and therefore in it for the duration, so Warren had to be certain Jonathan didn't lose focus of the goal.
The problem, or the latest in a long line of problems, was when Andrew and the munchkin had stumbled across some early diagrams for the Cerebral Dampener, and had innocently asked for explanations. There wasn't much point in lying at that stage, so Warren had described his plans for a device that would temporarily blank the mind of a chosen target, leaving them open to suggestion. Jonathan had been the one to suggest the possibility of winning over members of the opposite sex. Dimly worried that it would blow his cover with Andrew, Warren had not voiced his approval but Andrew, wildly overcompensating, had jumped on the idea, and of course he'd had to agree.
Scheming was hard sometimes, especially now he had Andrew as his very own living shadow. Although the 'guilty secret' the two of them shared helped keep Andrew quiet. He'd convinced the boy that Jonathan would not approve of them making out behind his back, and so Andrew had dutifully kept his mouth shut until Warren, feeling uncharacteristically generous one afternoon, had felt a need to let Andrew in on the next stage of the real plan. Nevertheless, it had taken some time to convince the boy that they'd be better off letting Jonathan take the rap for the next lot of robberies.
"So we're just going to ditch him?" Andrew had whined. He'd plonked himself down in Warren's lap and begun tracing circles across Warren's chest with the tip of one finger. In an attempt to look interested, Warren had responded to the touch by scratching the lines of the improved freeze-ray schematics over Andrew's back, making the boy shiver inside his T-shirt.
"Someone's gotta stay and distract the cops," he'd explained. Andrew was not convinced.
"But I don't wanna leave him behind. He's as much a part of this as we are."
"Don't get too attached." Warren had changed the trajectory of the finger that stroked across Andrew's back, running trails down to the boy's hip and thigh. Just enough to distract him and throw him off balance. "I'm not sure he's entirely with us on this one."
That had piqued Andrew's interest, but he had refused to explain. Just insisted that Jonathan would be a necessary loss.
"So Jonathan's a red shirt?" Andrew had asked, tentatively. Warren'd nodded, his face the picture of resigned regret. Andrew had appeared to think this over, eventually nodding back, reluctantly accepting what had to be because Warren had said it was so. "Even though the red shirt metaphor is kind of redundant now," he'd continued aimlessly, "you know, since they switched the significance of the red and gold shirts."
Warren had given this appropriate consideration, eventually conceding to Andrew's observation. Then Andrew had leaned in to kiss him, so he'd let Andrew take over while he set his mind to solving the problem of containing the Cerebral Dampener's field so that it did not zap the mind of its user.
~~~~~
tbc