I forget if today is ScarJo's birthday or Ming-Na Wen's… Either way, they're really close together so I guess I can get away with wishing two of my favorite S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents a happy birthday!
Saturday, October 5th, 2008
Merrifield, Virginia
Skye wasn't an idiot. She knew how to pull off slight of hand. She had been practicing the art since age eleven. The first things she ever stole were a pair of CDs from music store on the corner of 10th and 45th. (She took 98 Degrees and the Spice Girls. She could have made better choices.) What she was doing now, though, was a lot different than stealing CDs, because she wasn't stealing anything. Instead, she was hiding it.
As soon as she handed the phone over to Dean, she pocketed the other one still in her hand. Dean threw it straight into the casket and burned it up along with the dead guys remains. What he didn't know was that it was actually Skye's cellphone he burned alongside the body. She still had the other one. She didn't consider it a huge loss. After all, she never figured out how to change the ringtone from that stupid Soldier Boy song.
Skye played it cool the entire ride back to the motel. She didn't reach for the cellphone, nor did she make any nervous movements that might give her away. When they arrived, she changed into her pajamas and laid down on the harder-than-bricks loveseat. It seemed to take forever for Bobby, Sam, and Dean to go to sleep, but once the brothers' breathing evened out and Bobby started letting out light snores, Skye knew that the coast was clear for her to carry out her little self-assigned mission.
Sliding down to sit on the floor, Skye produced the cellphone from where she'd hidden it between the couch cushions. She hit the power button on the side, hoping it would cause the screen to light up for her, but had no such luck. Silently cursing herself, she got her laptop bag from under the table in front of her and did her best to set the device up as quietly as possible. The point was probably mute, though, considering the light from the screen would likely wake everyone up anyway.
Once her laptop powered on, she connected it to the cellphone using a USB cable, thinking that being connected to a stable power source would allow the phone to come back to life. It didn't work. She gave it a few more minutes in case it just needed to recover some charge. Still no dice. Frowning, she did her best to inspect the phone for damage in the limited light. Nothing obvious jumped out at her, much to her chagrin.
Hoping that it wasn't a software issue that was causing the problem, she turned to her laptop and pulled up a program she normally used to pull data off old and damaged motherboards. She had no idea if it would work with a cellphone's circuit board, but there was no harm in trying. Punching in the necessary codes, Skye was relieved to see that the circuit board was at least responding. However, it appeared that the options she had for retrieving information were limited.
Given that the phone was cheap and only had basic calling and texting features, all she could do was look at the phone's power log and all the keystrokes that had been recently pressed. Under the power log, she could see that the phone had last powered down on August 5th, 2007. That at least gave her a time frame as to when their ghost-friend might have passed away. Backing out of that, she went into the keystroke log and viewed what the last numbers that the dead guy pressed were. She doubted it would tell her anything, but it was worth checking out, right?
Upon seeing the log, Skye frowned.
"What the hell?"
The keystrokes were entered in as follows:
Enter. Right. Down. 99 666 22 0 8 444 7777 666 7 33 3 0 999 8 333 2 7777 0 3 33 44 8 33 555 0 8 666 66 0 7777 66 777 2 33 55 0 * 33 3 44 44 0 66 666 0 8 66 666 0 9 666 22 99 666 0 * 333 555 2 44 0 8 666 4 0 999 555 66 666 Enter. Down. Down. Down. Down. Down. Menu. Exit. Enter. 1 1 9 Enter. 1 1 9 Enter. 1 1 9 Enter. 1 1 9 Enter. 1 1 9 Enter. 1 1 9 Enter. 1 1 9 Enter. 1 1 9 Enter. 1 1 9 Enter. 1 1 9 Enter. 1 1 9 Enter. 1 1 9 Enter. 1 1 9 Enter. 1 1 9 Enter. 1 1 9 Enter. 1 1 9 Enter. 1 1 9 Enter. 1 1 9 Enter. 1 1 9 Enter 1 1 9. Enter. 1 1 9 Enter. 1 1 9…
Skye leaned back against the front of the loveseat and scrubbed her face. If she was right, then the dead guy – whoever he was – had died a verry terrifying death. He knew someone wanted to kill him and was trying to reach out for help when he met his end. That's what all the "911s" were about.
The rest, Skye wasn't sure what to make of. The fact that some of the keys were pressed several times and in rapid succession made her think he was trying to compose a text message. However, unless 911 had opened an emergency text line, she had no idea who he would be trying to contact.
Maybe last words to a loved one? The thought made her heart hurt. Honestly, Skye probably would have dwelled on it if her laptop's screen wasn't suddenly slammed shut.
Skye jumped as she pulled her hands away from her face. She felt it in her bones before the entity had even fully materialized in front of her. Salting and burning the body hadn't worked. The ghost was still active.
Right away, Skye reached her hand out. She tried to remember what she did with the Stutters. If she recalled correctly, all she had to do was match the vibrations the ghost's form was giving off. That couldn't be too hard, right?
Turns out it could. Apparently it was much harder to pull off when she wasn't being actively choked out by a ghost. Skye tried to force it, but all she did was give her arm muscles a good stretch. Realizing that wasn't going to work, she put her hand back down and looked around for anything that was made of iron.
When she couldn't spot anything, Skye started to panic. She started mentally preparing for her immediate death when the ghost reached out a gnarled, bloody hand towards her. Her stomach gave a jolt as she slammed her eyes shut. She didn't want to see what was about to happen to her.
A moment passed.
Then another.
Slowly, Skye started to crack open one of her eyes. She remained otherwise still as a statue, afraid that any sudden movements would set the spirit off. Though she quickly found the point to be mute, as the ghost wasn't attacking her. She wasn't sure what it was doing, but it certainly wasn't attacking her.
The ghost was reaching out to her as best he could with twisted fingers, but he wasn't quite touching her. In fact, he made no move to grab her or otherwise harm her. Instead, he slowly waved his hands in front of her like a beckoning cat.
She started to relax a bit but didn't let her guard down. She frowned in confusion, trying to make sense of the spirit's actions. Softly, she heard the ghostly man let out a groan. She raised an eyebrow.
"Are you trying to say something?" she asked. For a few moments, the only thing the ghost could do was groan and rasp, but eventually she got an answer to her question.
"Help," a broken, gravel-like voice choked out. "Help me…" Skye's frown deepened.
"Help you…?"
BANG! Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch! Jiggle, jiggle, jiggle!
Skye jumped as another jolt of adrenaline ran through her. The ghost didn't make that noise. It came from the front door, which was locked with a traditional lock and key; no electronics involved whatsoever. The ghost couldn't have possibly done that – especially when it was on the other side of the room – so Skye had to assume the next most likely scenario; someone was trying to break into the room from the outside.
The person on the other side of the door didn't even try to be subtle. They shook the door so loudly that it could've woken the dead. Bobby was up first, but he didn't even look in Skye's direction as he grabbed one of his guns out of his weapons bag and headed for the door.
Looking through the peephole, Bobby barked out the word "hey!" Whoever was on the other side must have realized that they made a horrible mistake and bolted, but Bobby was having none of that. He ripped open the door and took off in pursuit of the attempted intruder.
At the same time, Dean and Sam sat up in their bed. Unlike Bobby, though, their bed faced the sitting area where Skye was, so they had to look in her direction as they got up. Dean's eyes locked on the ghost first and went wide as scrambled to get himself to move.
"Shit!"
Although he might not have seen the ghost first, Sam reacted faster. He lunged out of bed and grabbed an iron rod out of their duffle in record time. A single swipe was all that was needed to dispel the spirit. Once it burst into a cloud of gray smoke, Skye let out a breath that she didn't know she'd been holding and slumped back against the loveseat.
While Sam was busy taking care of the ghost, Dean sprinted to follow Bobby out the door. After getting rid of the ghost, Sam looked around the room for his brother's backup, but found that he was going to get none. Realizing he was on his own, a panting Sam turned his shocked and slightly exhausted gaze on Skye.
"What the hell," was all he could say.
Skye could feel something shaking on the edges of her senses, but she pulled it all inwards and did her best to keep calm as she explained what happened.
Dean and Bobby didn't manage to catch the person who tried to break into their motel room. They managed to chase the burglar to an electrical switchyard up the street but gave up the pursuit when they jumped the barbed-wire fence and disappeared inside. Neither Dean nor Bobby wanted to end up more charred than burnt toast, so they were forced to intruder go. With any luck, the person would end up stepping on a live wire and do themselves in. Although, that might be a little too optimistic.
The first thing they did once they came back and had gotten the full story out of Skye was salt and burn the cellphone. Dean and Bobby gave her an earful about taking things off dead bodies, how spiritual attachment worked, and how it was important to salt and burn found with and relating to a spirit's remains. Because Skye seemed acceptive and agreeable to what they were saying, Sam didn't find it necessary to add to the grief. Though, he did take notice that she didn't express any remorse or offer an apology either.
While Skye was getting reprimanded by the other two hunters, Sam had taken it upon himself to look over the data she had pulled from the dead guy's cellphone. He got the number attached to the phone, so all they needed to do was find the network it was registered to, and they would have the guy's identity. That would be one mystery solved, but at the same time they had another tossed right into their laps which frankly had Sam intrigued.
Skye said that the dead guy had been using the cellphone before he died. She managed to retrieve and save a file containing all the keypresses the man had made in his final moments. Sam opened up the document and while the first half of the saved text baffled him just as much as it did Skye, the second half rung a bell in Sam's head so hard he could almost feel the reverb.
It's all backwards, he thought. "1 1 9" is 911. The phones, the thermostat, the entertainment center… Dana Shulps, Dana Shulps, Dana Shulps…
"Hold on a sec," Sam said, cutting into whatever Dean or Bobby was saying. "I don't think this is Skye's fault." He didn't even need to look at his brother to know that Dean was rolling his eyes.
"Sam," he said. "Did you miss the part where she took the dead guy's phone and brought it back with her?"
"Of course not," Sam said. "But I don't think that had anything to do with the ghost showing up here."
"It had to," Dean argued. "That's the way ghosts work."
"That's the way vengeful spirits work," Sam explained. "But this isn't a vengeful spirit. I think this is a death omen."
As soon as the words "death omen" came out of Sam's mouth, he could see the gears clicking and starting to turn behind Dean's eyes. Exasperated, Dean brought a hand to his forehead.
"Oh shit, you're right," he said.
Meanwhile, Skye's gaze darted between the three hunters.
"I don't understand," she said. "What's a death omen?"
"There isn't just one type of spirit," Bobby explained. "A vengeful spirit is the spirit of a person who died a violent death and is trapped on this mortal plane. Usually they're pissed that they died, and all the time spent stuck here causes them to lash out and seek revenge – any way they can get it. They're the most common type of ghost, but there are others."
"A death omen is usually the spirit of someone who's been killed and is seeking justice," Sam continued. "Often times they don't even hurt people. They're just trying to warn others about their killer." Dots started connecting for Skye as well.
"Wait," she said. "That ghost appeared a minute before whoever-that-was tried breaking down the door. You don't think…"
"That it was the killer?" Skye nodded. "More likely than not." At Bobby's confirmation, Skye blanched and shrunk in a bit on herself.
"Oh God…"
"What're they coming after us for?" Dean questioned. "I mean, we burned the body, and we have no idea who this guy is. It's not like we're gonna sick the cops on 'em."
"They don't know that," Sam pointed out. "They could have seen us with Burns at the site today and thought we were getting too close."
"Or we could have already stumbled over something without knowing it." Bobby shook his head. "I'm going to call Burns, make sure she's okay. The rest of ya head back to bed. Clearly something bigger's going on and we're gonna need the shut-eye if we're going to figure it out."
With a chorus of agreement accompanying his exit, Bobby stepped outside to make his call to Burns. Sam and Dean went back to the bed they were sharing while Skye stretched out on the loveseat. Wrapping an arm around his pillow, Sam laid down on his side facing away from Dean.
He waited twenty minutes, but sleep failed to overtake him. Frustrated, Sam tried rolling over on his other side, thinking a change of position would let him get some rest. As he turned, however, he saw that Dean was still sitting up in the bed, wide awake. Sam furrowed his brow.
"Dean?" All he got in response was a faint hum of acknowledgement. "What're you still doing up?"
"Watching," he said, gesturing with a nod of his head to the couch where Skye had fallen into a less-than-comfortable sleep. "Making sure she isn't hiding anything else or trying anything."
Sam threw his head back against the pillow and let out a groan.
"You know it's been weeks, right?" he said. "Don't you think if she was going to do something against us, she would have done it by now?" Dean remained silent and Sam threw a had against his face in frustration. "Seriously? What's it going to take for you to grant her even the barest level of trust?"
That, Dean was more willing to answer.
"Honestly," he said. "I don't know."
Sam gave his brother a wary stare for a long moment before shaking his head and burying his face in the pillow. He decided right then that if Dean and Skye got into another fight, he was not going to stop her from punching him.
Sam woke up hours later to the sounds of a harshly whispered argument. He didn't even need to fully open his eyes to know who it was. He couldn't understand what they were saying, but eventually he heard Skye huff, get up from the loveseat, and shut the bathroom door.
For a moment, Sam considered getting up and saying something to Dean again, but exhaustion won out. He only intended to put his head back down onto the pillow for just a moment but ended up falling back to sleep. When he awoke again, Dean and Skye were gone, and Bobby was in the little kitchenette brewing a pot of cheap coffee.
Joining Bobby for breakfast, it was explained to Sam that the older hunter had been able to get ahold of Dr. Burns. She had been on her way home when Bobby called and had been shocked to learn that the ghost was still active. She hadn't encountered it, nor had anything strange or threatening happened to her.
Bobby had advised her to keep one eye open and to watch her back. He tried to end the call there, but Burns kept him on the line for another twenty minutes, talking about things he couldn't remember and probably didn't even matter anyway. So, overall, it was a very productive conversation.
After getting some food in him, Sam started calling up all the wireless companies that serviced the area. It didn't take him long to find out that the number was registered to a Warren Sorrow of Centreville, Virginia. A Google search found that he was a Staff Sergeant in the United States Marine Corps., who went missing over a year prior after an event at the Bull Run Battlefield. His wife was the one to report him missing, but she wasn't taken seriously until he failed to report for duty the following Monday.
Bobby offered to go interview the widow while Sam stayed behind and tried to figure out what Sorrow had been trying to type before he died. To be honest, it wasn't too complicated of a process, just tedious. First he had to flip the message around so that way it read in the right direction, then he had to figure out which key presses corresponded to what characters. (0 = Space, 666 = O, 66 = N, 555 = L, etc.) It took him over two hours to get most of the message figured out, which was about the same time that Dean and Skye returned.
Skye was the one who marched through the door first. The frown on her face was hard to miss, as was the fact that she was covered head-to-toe in dirt. Dean followed not a moment later, his smirk making it clear that whatever happened, he was enjoying it way too much. Sam sighed. He didn't really want to know, but he had to ask.
"What happened?" Skye's scowl deepened as she crossed the room and started rifling through her backpack.
"He made me crawl through a truck full of dirt." Sam sent a sharp look to his brother, who put up his hands defensively.
"Hey, for all we knew the ghost could have been attached to something in there," he tried to defend, but Skye wasn't having that.
"There wasn't anything in there but dirt!" she snapped.
"Yes, and thanks to you we now know that." Skye grabbed the first thing she found in her bag and threw it at Dean. It ended up being a pair of balled-up socks that bounced harmlessly off his head. He stood there, unimpressed. "Really, that's the best you can do?"
Skye balled her hand up into a fist and for a moment it looked like she might hit Dean this time. Instead, she let it go, her hand shaking slightly in anger.
"You're lucky that's the best I can do."
Despite his earlier resolve to let Dean get hit, Sam had to cut in to get the conversation back into focus.
"What happened?" he found himself asking again. "Where did you two go?"
"We went to the construction site," Dean said. "Partially to see if Ulysses was still around but also to make sure that he wasn't attached to anything else."
"And?" Sam questioned.
"The unknown soldier's still kicking around his final resting place," Dean confirmed. "We saw him standing over where he was dug up when we got there. Didn't do anything to us but still struck him with iron to get rid of him. It's definitely a death omen, though. Searched the whole place for anything he could've been attached to. Found nada." Skye scoffed at that last remark.
"We found less than that," she said. "Now I have dirt in my undies for no reason."
"You're the one who wanted to help," Dean pointed out.
"No," Skye said. "I seem to remember you waking me up at the ass-crack of dawn and you telling me that helping you search was 'the least you could do after the stunt you pulled.'" The last bit was said in a mocking intonation of Dean's voice that no one found funny.
"Yeah, because taking the phone was a really stupid thing to do, " Dean said. "You don't know what a ghost could be attached to, so you need to burn everything. Otherwise, the ghost could come back and hurt you."
"And I know that now, thank you," Skye threw out bitterly. "Now would you just stop throwing it back in my face? Because I don't know what you think you're doing, but it's not helping."
"I'll say." Everyone turned to see Bobby stepping through the front door, pulling it shut behind him. "You know, I could hear you both shouting before I even got out of the car."
"Bobby, she…" Dean started to say, but Bobby's harsh words cut him off.
"I don't care," he said. "Either pull it together or shut the hell up. You two butting heads like rams ain't gonna help us solve anything."
Dean and Skye exchanged glares for a moment longer before Dean took the initiative in stepping away. He sat down on the corner of the mattress furthest from her, keeping his back to her. She, meanwhile, sat down on the loveseat with arms crossed and eyes directed toward the bathroom. This resulted in them looking more like six-year-olds who had been put in time-out rather than mature adults. All Sam and Bobby could do was exchange looks of embitterment.
"So, what did you find out from the dead guy's widow?" Sam said, trying to pull focus back to the job at hand. Dean looked at him with surprise.
"You figured out who he was?" he questioned. Sam nodded.
"All I had to do was find the company the phone was registered to, and they handed the information over," he explained. "The name's Warren Sorrow. His wife reported him missing a little over a year ago."
"I talked to her," Bobby confirmed. "She couldn't provide much, but what she did made sense. He was part of a Civil War reenactment group and on the day he disappeared he was supposed to be taking part in a reenactment of the first battle for Bull Run."
"Well, that explains the get-up," Dean said. "Doesn't explain how he ended up in that casket."
"About that," Bobby said. "On the way back I got to thinking… The inside of the casket was all scratched up, and Sorrow's fingers were all bent and bloody. It made me wonder whether it was really the gunshot wound that killed him."
Dean's eyebrows shot up to his hairline.
"You think he was buried alive?" he questioned. Bobby shrugged.
"It's possible," he said. "Gunshot wounds to the back of the head are tricky, especially when you don't know what you're doing. It's possible the person who shot 'em thought he was dead when he was really just knocked out or paralyzed and tried to cover it up by burying him."
"Shit." Dean dropped his head into his hands and scrubbed his face.
Not for the first time, Sam wondered what was going through his brother's mind. He knew when Dean was revived, he had to dig himself out of his own grave but didn't know much beyond that. In fact, he didn't know anything about Dean's resurrection or his time in Hell. Normally, Sam would expect his brother to be less-than-forthcoming with the details – that's just who he was. However, when that was combined with the way he was acting, it was enough to make Sam concerned.
He had to push that concern aside, though. As much as he wanted his brother to just talk about what happened, this wasn't the time or place. They needed to focus on the case.
"That'd also explain all the attempted calls to 911," Sam added to the conversation. "He tried to reach out for help, but he was already underground so the calls couldn't connect."
"And when that didn't work, the dude tried to claw his way out," Dean concluded. "Jesus Christ."
"What about the other numbers?" Skye asked. She still refused to look at Dean but did turn in their general direction. "He was trying to text someone, right? Who was it? Maybe they know something."
"I couldn't find that out," Sam said. "But I think I've mostly figured out what he was texting."
"Let's hear it," Bobby said. Sam nodded and picked up the pad he'd been working on.
"I'm still missing a few letters, and I think I might have a few jumbled up," he forewarned. "But I here's what I have so far. 'Only got half. Oxbow ont on hgp piaf. Kearns not lethem he safty deposit box.'"
A beat of silence passed.
"That's it?" Dean questioned. "Never mind how cryptic that is, he couldn't have typed in plain English?"
"The guy was suffocating to death, Dean," Sam tried to argue, but Dean gave a scoff that indicated he didn't think that was a valid excuse.
"Wait, 'Kearns?'" Bobby questioned. "That's what it says?"
"Yeah," Sam said. "It was about one of the only words I could make sense of. Why?"
"The wife said a friend of his came around asking about a safe deposit box a few months ago," Bobby explained. "A man by the name of Judd Kearns."
"How convenient," Dean remarked. "She say why he wanted it?"
"No," Bobby said. "She was surprised he even knew about it at all. Only was supposed to have copies of their important documents and she had no idea why he'd be looking for those. So, she played dumb. Acted like she didn't know what he was talking about and told the police as soon as she could."
"Sounds suspicious enough to me," Dean said.
"Did she say what bank the box is at?" Sam asked Bobby.
"First National in Centreville," Bobby said. "I would have handled it myself, but Burns called to let me know she was on her way over here."
Dean and Sam exchanged confused looks with each other.
"Why the hell is she coming here?" Dean was the one to ask.
"Because she feels like she should be 'a part of this.'" Bobby said with a weary sigh. "Ordinarily, I would've told her to step back and let the professionals handle it."
"So why didn't you?" Sam asked.
Bobby didn't answer. At least, not aloud. He looked down and to the side guiltily and that was enough for Dean to put the pieces together.
"You still can't remember who she is." Bobby shifted uncomfortably under the accusation but didn't deny it. "Come on, Bobby!"
"It just won't stop bothering me," Bobby explained. "I feel like there's something important about her that I just can't remember and it's driving me crazy."
"Maybe it's that she's crazy." If Sam were sitting closer to his brother, he would have hit him on the shoulder.
Bobby huffed.
"I'm not sure about that," he said. "But she is expecting to see me here when she arrives."
Feeling the frustration in Bobby's voice clearly, Sam nodded in understanding.
"I can head over there and check it out," he offered. "I just need to get changed first. Is it alright if I borrow your car?"
"Of course," Bobby said as he reached into his pocket to fish out the keys.
At the same time, Dean leaned back until he was lying back across the bed. He shut his eyes and stretched out, looking like he was going to fall asleep. Hence why everyone was surprised when he spoke.
"Take Skye with you."
"Excuse me?" While they were talking, Skye had gathered up her clothes and stepped into the bathroom. As soon as the words came out of Dean's mouth, she rushed to the doorway, fury in her eyes. All Dean did was tilt his head to look at her upside-down.
"You wanted to come on this hunt," he pointed out. "This is part of the hunt, and it could be important. You should help; watch and learn."
"I'm covered in dirt." She clearly wanted to add the words "because of you" onto that sentence, but somehow must have thought wiser of it. A pity, as it probably could have helped her argument.
"So? You're supposed to be FBI. Say you just came from a crime scene." Skye glared daggers at him.
"It's alright, Skye," Sam tried to reassure. "I can do it by myself just fine."
For whatever reason, the words seemed to have the opposite effect of what he intended. Instead, Skye threw her clothes down on the loveseat and marched towards the front door.
"Screw it," she said. "I'll be waiting in the car."
The door slammed shut behind her. Dean must have felt the weight of Sam and Bobby's stares on him because he sat up, propping his weight on his elbows.
"What?"
Sam couldn't take it. He went straight to the bathroom to change, stopping only to get his suit. He wasn't going to bother with it; just let Dean figure it out on his own.
Thank you to READINGREADER for the comment and to poppy_surfer for leaving kudos on AO3! You guys are awesome!
Sometimes when I'm reading my own writing back, I'm just amazed at some of the typos I make… Seriously, "star" instead of "stare?" Ugh. Just a quick request, if anyone ever notices a weird typo in any of my stories, please feel free to point it out to me, because that's just embarrassing.
The text message was taken directly from the NCIS episode, and I need to be honest, I'm not sure I got all of the keystrokes right. They're only on-screen for half a second before McGee puts it through the algorithm to translate what it says. Also, numbers aren't really a strong point of mine…
Also, the thing that inspired me to re-work this NCIS episode into something more Supernatural was that one bit with Tony making Ziva dig through a truck full of dirt for "evidence." I saw that and was like "yeah, Dean would totally do that to Skye," thus this story was born. Also, yes, that means something else is coming up soon, too.
Remember kids, 3 666 66 8 0 333 666 777 4 3 666 0 555 33 2 888 3 222 666 6 6 33 66 8 0 666 777 0 777 33 888 444 33 9!
Originally posted to FFN on 11/20/22.
