Author's note: Been a while since last update. Had the most unforgiving semester (as well as a terrible art/writing funk). I'm happy to add however, that this story will be updated a lot more frequently, about every Friday or every other Friday. Enjoy!
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Chapter 4: Just ad nauseam-
"The world does not make promises to anybody."
Tailing Six was a difficult feat even when he deliberately slowed his gait for them to keep pace. Neither she, nor Callan, or Cesar possessed the easy, fluid balance necessary for his long stride, the least of all being her. In the center of their loose formation, Holiday found herself lagging behind, feeling the burn in her calves and hitch in her side as she pushed her body to compete with theirs.
Ten strides-a feat for her compared to earlier- and they were there, approaching the shop front with trepidation different than when she first did. No longer were they entering the lab, breaking international law and her own personal code. The mission succeeded now at the expense of human life.
Her overwhelming unease returned and produced a daunting chill. If the setbacks of earlier, the guard and beacon, hadn't occurred, delaying her by mere seconds, she'd be lying on the floor of Sgambelluri's lab as well. The realization quelled any remaining anger she had for Six, and she wanted him at her side more than ever tonight because he was the only person who could handle the situation.
Already he was coordinating the extraction, positioning agents, reestablishing the control he always possessed. He entered the dim shop front first, blades leading, as he carefully treaded around Amadeo's body in the doorframe. His camouflage faltered when he stepped into the light of the laboratory before he returned and deactivated it in the shadows.
"Get what you need. Or anything you think you'd need. We won't be coming back here."
Even in the darkness, Holiday could see his lips, thinned in a press that threatened to twist into an emotion she'd never seen displayed on his face.
"Four minutes," he announced and motioned for the two scientists to enter.
Cesar brushed past her, unphased by any external stimulus. It made her envious for once of his consuming, tunneling fixation on a present subject.
She wanted, like him, to ignore Amadeo on the floor, but she couldn't. She was riveted to the scene in the doorway, assessing every angle, eyes running over the body again and again for a new and different conjecture. Distantly, it occurred to her that maybe she was like Cesar, but the diagnosis was pushed aside for the urgency of understanding what was presently going on.
What happened?
There were only two explanations-or twenty. When she entertained each one, the truth only made itself more and more apparent, even when she wanted to believe that it was a freak accident like it usually was; a violent mutation, human error, miscalculation. The wounds here were too deliberate. She'd seen enough under a scalpel, seen enough of Six's prowess, to know what a blade in skilled hands could do to flesh.
With that conclusion, her mind went further, settling for the answer of something between monster and mercenary, because whoever had been here tonight eviscerated Amadeo Goretti. Lacerations were everywhere. At the throat; common carotid, jugular. At the wrists; radial artery. The fatal precision was unmistakable, but last to be delivered. Underneath the exsanguinating slashes were more telling incisions. Achilles tendon, palms, forearms; he put up a fight and suffered for it.
Disgust rose within her, pulling her mouth into a thin frown. She didn't know the man, but he didn't deserve this. In life, he had been a genial elderly man, standing in the shadow of his nephew, providing support. On the laboratory tile, he resembled a culled bird, strewn and discarded because someone had deemed him dispensable.
And who had made the decision? She didn't feel it was Simon. He was slick and ostentatious, but he wasn't heartless—
Her immediate assumption of the man made her pause because she was reminded of Moses' sneering jest. She trusted too easily, he'd said, dangerously relying on her assumption that everyone was working to find a cure like she was. Her judgment was impaired. What did she know of Sgambelluri in the few minutes she'd met and conspired against him? Nothing. Moses was right, and damn him for discerning it so easily. Damn him.
"Doctor."
Six slid between her and the doorframe, disconnecting her from Amadeo's body and from her thoughts. His sudden presence was jilting as was his concerned expression.
"The code," he reminded.
"Forget it," Cesar murmured. "It's not here."
"What?"
Both she and Six faced him as he tossed fragmented shards of transponders and processors back onto countertops, and she realized just how much she had let herself become distracted with Amadeo. Every piece of equipment in the lab was destroyed. Monitors, keyboards, processors, samples, all of it was irreparably damaged or contaminated, and Cesar was standing in the middle of it, fingers irritably tracing his jawline.
"It's gone," he repeated, shoving the remnants of a tablet out of his path with his boot.
Holiday took a step further into the laboratory, glass and metal crunching under her own boots. The disorder was instantly draining and a wave of fatigue and disappointment washed over her. All that work gone, and not just what they'd done in preparation for tonight. Whatever Sgambelluri and Haven were working on, it was literally lying in a million pieces on the floor. Every scientist's nightmare. A nightmare that was quickly becoming hers. She needed that code strand, could've used it to do more than what she could have done with Moses' device.
"Alright." A tired sigh escaped her as she shook her head and tried to orient herself in the lab. "Let's see if we can salvage anything."
The difficulty of the task was distinguishing what would have been main servers and operating stations, the most likely to contain valuable data. Everything was scattered enough to make any semblance of order gone. Holiday glanced back at Amadeo. Even in death, he could be useful in determining main locations. The position of his body might be indicative. Assuming he was caught unaware and attacked at the station he was working at, she could follow the bloody streaks and handprints on the tile.
She grimaced. They were more grisly than looking at his body; a visual record of his excruciating struggle to stay alive. He had crawled and dragged himself across the lab, first away from his attacker and then to escape for help. Revolting.
She followed the trail around a counter until it stopped-or started, rather-at the remains of a computer. The now two halves of the monitor slanted towards each other, and the keyboard was smeared with blood on specific keys. Jackpot. Holiday bent to the cabinets underneath in search of the processor and was blasted with foul smoke when she opened them. Tucking her nose into the crook of her arm, she fanned to clear the burning metallic stench, and pulled it out to access the damage. It was extensive. Much of the internal components had been reduced to slag.
"Damn." This was a thorough job. Probably a volatile system directive that flash heated the hard drive until it melted itself-one of the worse kinds of memory wiping; or best, depending on who intended to have the data. Attempts at data recovery yielded few results, if ever. She'd have to work with whatever she was able to scrounge here.
Resignedly, she made quick work of the processor remains, prying open the case and wrenching the distorted hard drive from everything it had soldered to. After a few seconds of bending and warping, it snapped free. The box was still hot, heat seeping through her gloves, but she dumped it into her backpack.
Holiday stood up and started a mental triage of the items on the countertop. There were a few papers scattered on the desk, but no time to sit and decipher the charts and Italian. She appropriated those too. They could be useful, or they could have just been printouts of data she didn't care about; fiscal reports, software performance... The cover of something rolled off the papers as she grabbed them and a rush of excitement refilled her as she recognized it immediately.
A datarod. The code might still be here!
"Look for a datarod," she announced. "Probably gray." She searched the floor, scrutinizing the debris more carefully than before. She retraced Amadeo's steps, forward this time, until she reached his body again. Cesar reached it the same time she did and started rifling through the pockets of his jacket.
"What are you doing?"
He didn't look up and continued searching. "I'm checking if it's on him," he said. He searched up a sleeve, and when he found nothing, moved to the next one.
She cringed when Amadeo's hand dropped to the floor with a heavy slap.
"Do you have to do it like that?" she snapped.
Cesar paused. "Would you like me to ask him politely?"
Holiday glared at him, but he brushed it off, like everything else.
"I know this perturbs you, Doctor," he said, resuming the pillage, "But you don't know what it's like to have your work tampered with by some fool who thinks he's the next superstar scientist." His speech slowed, words sharpened. "They don't understand the foundations of it, nor even consider what was trying to be achieved. It's just a game, a competition."
Her anger returned, a powerful coursing rush that intensified the longer she looked at him. It wasn't that he was brusquely indifferent to the dead anymore, but that he presumed, in that racing mind of his, that he understood things he did not. She ignored that his speech reduced to muttering in Spanish under his breath or that Amadeo's body yielded nothing useful, because she needed to correct him. Get it through his thick skull that the world's been suffering for five years, not the fifteen minutes he believes it to be. That she's spent that time trying to clean up whatever the hell went wrong, including this tonight, at the expense of countless people. Amadeo, Beverly, Rex. If they didn't mean anything to him, at least his own brother should, and she was going to start with that-
Six's fingers wrapped around the crook of her elbow and he pulled her close to him as he stepped to block her from Cesar.
"Not now," he advised.
For a moment, Holiday considered unleashing her ire on him, her anger at him reigniting for interrupting her, and she saw his lips thin in the hopes that she wouldn't.
She looked at his hand, letting herself calm before meeting his gaze.
"Okay," she sighed.
"Come here."
Again she was hit with fatigue, and she allowed Six to nudge her gently out of the laboratory and back into the dim front shop. He let her lean on a glass display case and the door knobs inside it rattled slightly when she did.
"Was there an elderly Spanish man at the gala?" he asked quietly.
"What?" She squinted at him, not expecting the question at all. He didn't repeat himself and simply waited for her answer.
"I'm not sure," Holiday answered. "Why? There were…several." Her focus had been on Sgambelluri earlier, not other guests. There were quite a few men she determined as European, but Spaniard? Difficult to determine without talking to them. "Four at least," she said. That was all she knew for certain. Why was this important?
Holiday glanced back to the door, eager to get back even as the sight of Cesar beyond it bristled her anew. Her view was obstructed again as Six angled himself to do so and he gripped her arm tighter.
"Please remember," he said. "Carrying a golden cane."
Now his fingers were beginning to feel like a vice and she looked pointedly at it, irritation rising.
"Why?" she challenged.
Six clenched his jaw and released her arm. She glared up at him, eyebrow arching, but whether he was going to answer or not, his phone buzzed in his pocket. It was Rex. She knew from the impatient sigh Six gave at the number when he recognized it.
He took a step away from her to answer it, making the wise decision of including her in the call.
"Yes?"
"Hey, Six," she heard Rex start through her earpiece. "So... how's Italy? Since, ya'know, everyone is there except me. Can I go to a rock concert with Noah and Bobo? I promise I won't injure anybody in the mosh pit this time."
Holiday smiled faintly. At least he was learning to ask permission now, though always at the worst possible time.
"Also, can I take Bev?" he tacked on after his question.
Oh. Now she knew why he had called. If he wasn't planning on taking her sister, he wouldn't be calling.
Six glanced at her and she raised her eyebrows in consent. She'll call them later to give her conditions.
"Yes," Six told him.
"Yes I can go? Or 'Yes I can go and bring Bev?'"
"Both."
Rex squealed his delight, and she could imagine him punching the sky. "Awesome! You guys are the best. I love you so much."
There was a click as he hung up, returning her and Six back to the tension of the situation. He turned to face her fully, a tentative expression on his face. When his lips parted to speak, she didn't hear because it was drowned out by the first of the explosions.
A/N: Terrible way to end a chapter, I know! Thanks as always for reading special thanks for all the reviews, and special special thanks to MacGaulyver for pushing me to write. Don't forget to review, ask, or answer!
Ponderings for this chapter:
1. Cesar's been pretty focused last chapter and this. What do you think has him acting differently?
2. The code strand's not here? Who do you think has it?
3. Explosions?