Just finished college, so that's part of the reason I haven't updated. That and I was feeling a little weird about sharing fanfic lately. I appreciate the constructive crit, but I write fanfic to relax so I don't agonize so much about some of the details. With that in mind, I appreciate my one reviewer for so kindly pointing out that if I want realistic whump David should be behaving differently with a head injury. However, I'd have to change so much of the fic that I don't care at this point. So I'm invoking the liberty of BS injuries for this one. Sorry David! This chapter's longer because I made you wait a month. (sorry)

David was sitting on Adam's bunk, head in his hand when the cell door was suddenly wrenched open. He looked up, expecting to see Adam. Instead Doctor Wen was standing in the small space, his jaw clenched in apparent fury.

"You were found with our subject. Why?" he demanded, his tone clipped and icy.

David knew he couldn't play his relationship with Adam off as "we just met and you kidnapped us" since they'd seen him tending to him. "I'm an augmentation engineer," he said, knowing that at least he could back up should they expect him to prove it. "Adam was my client, I was briefing him on some of his tech but he was in a hurry so I was walking with him."

The doctor's lips pressed together, but he didn't look convinced. After a moment he nodded, turning and gesturing out of the door. "Follow me."

David hesitated, wary of some kind of trap. "What no handcuffs?" he asked, his tone joking.

Wen didn't look amused. "You have one hand and I have plenty of backup. Please do not make this difficult."

He pressed his lips together, but he nodded, following the doctor out. The camera in the torture room was off, and David tried to take comfort in the suggestion that the kidnappers had made their point. His comfort was gone when he got a good look at Adam.

His security chief was strapped down, gold coolant slithering down the inclined table from the damage points on his prosthetics. There were electrical burn marks showing on his chest over the bruising that was still trying to heal. He was conscious judging by his breathing rate, but he had his eyes closed and though he must have been in pain he wasn't all tensed up. He seemed too exhausted for that. David had to stifle the urge to go to him, and instead he put his hand on his hip, glancing at the doctor.

"Okay, what now?"

"You are this man's personal engineer, are you not?"

"Kind of, yeah. I mean, he's had work done by several people—guy's an addict."

"There is something in his shielding that I cannot get around no matter what. This is severely impeding my purpose." He crossed his arms, nodding to Adam's prone form as the second man lowered the table to a flat position. "Fix it."

David couldn't help the way his expression changed, his eyebrows shooting up.

"You want me to what?"

"You know his hardware. You understand how his shielding works. We saw you working on him last night. Take down his shields, and we will let you go."

"And if I don't?" David demanded, unable to keep up the subservient ploy. He could feel his defensive side flaring.

There was a click and a gun was suddenly held to his head. The augmented cameraman had moved while the doctor was talking.

"I think you know what happens if you don't."

David shrugged, swallowing back his natural inclination to step away from the gun or give in to save himself. His self-preservation was shockingly low when it meant sacrificing Adam to do it. "Go ahead. You kill me and you'll still have his shields up."

The doctor's eyes narrowed. "What relationship do you have to the prisoner really?"

"I don't follow. I said I was his mechanic, for lack of a better term. That hasn't changed in the past five minutes."

"You, a 'mechanic', are willing to die for your client?" Wen scoffed. "That seems highly unlikely. Who is he really?" He looked David up and down critically, then glanced back over at Adam. He raised both eyebrows. "Your son?"

David felt an unexpected pang shoot through his heart and he clenched his fingers on his hip to keep from closing his fist. "You kidding? How old do I look? Look, I don't know what school you're from but I was brought up thinking you don't have to be related to a person to want to do the right thing."

The doctor took a step closer, as though daring David to back up. He didn't. "You aren't 'doing the right thing' here. You are going to die. Or you flip a few switches and I let you go. You won't be the one torturing him. You will not be responsible for his death."

The CEO grit his teeth. "You might be able to reason it like that, but I don't. I'm not helping you. Go ahead and pull the trigger. With all these anti-augmentation laws I'll be out of a job soon anyway, and when I am I'd rather be dead then stuck out on the streets of a scum pit like lower Hengsha."

The doctor's lips pulled in a sneer. "Have it your way." He lifted his hand to signal the shooter and David braced himself.

"Wait."

David looked up in surprise. It was Adam that had spoken, his head turned towards them. His one visible eye was staring hard at David, and he almost looked angry. "It's okay. Remove the shielding."

Sarif shook his head, fighting the tightness in his chest. "No, I'm not helping these people."

"You're not helping them. You're helping me, you're helping yourself. You're helping Malik. Please, Andrew. Just cooperate."

He swallowed, taken completely off guard by Adam's use of his middle name. He understood that it was to keep his identity a secret, but it was also a way for Adam to get his attention.

Only two people knew David's middle name. His sister Eva, and Adam.

Adam had noticed an anomaly on the ground floor of the plant, and with Megan's speech in Washington coming up David insisted that everything strange be brought to him. Instead of reporting when the doors slid open however, Adam stopped in his tracks, slowly taking in the mess of bottles and unsteady hand David had wrapped around a glass still half-full.

Come on, boss. That's enough for one night. Adam had said, kneeling next to Sarif's chair and gently turning his head so he could assess his eyes. David couldn't remember any more what Adam's expression had been, but he couldn't forget the waves of worry and concern coming off of his security chief.

He hadn't meant to drink that much, but his father had been dead for five years on that day and after all the pressure over Megan's discovery David overdid it. He had to be taken to a private hospital to avoid press, and Adam stayed with him most of the night, just talking. David had gotten a lot from his father. His aggressive personality, his passion for robotics, and his name. Andrew Mason Sarif hadn't lived to see David find the solution to the implant rejection that had killed him.

He blinked, still trying to process what Adam had said against the revulsion running through him. The augmented kidnapper jabbed his temple with the gun and he cried out, jerking away as the vibration jarred the fractured part of his eye socket. He cupped the damage with his hand, breathing heavily and hunching his shoulders.

"Or—" Wen said, taking the gun from the other man and tapping the trigger thoughtfully. David blinked away the involuntary tears caused by pain and forced himself to straighten up and face Wen. "We could just bypass this all. We know that Malik is coming—the bait needn't be alive," he said, leveling the gun at Adam's temple. "I see he has a patch in the forefront of his skull. This is only a guess, but he had a head injury before, didn't he? A bullet?" There was an ominous click as Wen toyed with the safety. "Think he can survive another?"

David's entire body went cold. He took his hand away from his face, his fingers smeared bloody from where a blood-filled swelling had broken open anew. "No—don't. I'll…I'll remove the shielding."

"I thought you might," Wen said, pulling the gun back and handing it off to his partner. "You try anything, and we're back to the offer where Mr. Jensen dies, only there will be no warning before we pull the trigger. Understand?"

He nodded.

"Good. I will return with all the supplies we have. You will make them work."

David only turned to look at Adam, utter defeat in his eyes as he clenched and unclenched his remaining hand.

Malik had combat training. There were basics that came with the pilot training since she'd gotten her license through a military training school, but the rest she'd gone out and gotten on her own. She'd begun when she was a young girl. Growing up in a harsh neighborhood did that—she knew how to street fight, but she didn't like it. It was too messy, too bloody. She hated how those fights dragged on. She wasn't in it for the aggression, she was only in it to protect herself, so she'd started studying martial arts. It was the quickest, cleanest way of ending a fight almost before it began. After the attack on Sarif, she'd gone back to lessons. She hadn't had to use them yet, but after what she'd just seen the unfamiliar urge to fight, to fight for the sake of the fight, came over her and she was glad she'd gone back for more training.

She shrugged a bullet-resistant tank top over her head and tapped at the biometric fibers, watching the flashing of acknowledging lights as the smart fibers recorded her settings. The silvery fabric tightened up, fitting to her size and hardening. It was still flexible enough that she could use her training, but hard enough that a graze wouldn't penetrate and a direct hit probably wouldn't kill. She pulled her T-shirt on over it, and then zipped up her flight suit, patting herself down to make sure she hadn't forgotten anything.

She had two disposable rebreathers, two gas grenades, a Cyberboost bar, and a stun gun with six charges. She'd wanted to take the pistol, but as much as she hated what those men were doing she knew a stun gun would do the work just as well and she refused to go down to their level.

Their level is torture. Death is too good for them, she thought, forcing herself away from the more deadly stock. She'd never killed and she wasn't about to start unless they left her absolutely no other option.

Malik would have taken more supplies if she thought she could conceal them, but the VTOL didn't stock a whole lot to begin with and all she had was her flight suit. Anything else would look suspicious. She powered the VTOL down, slapping her palm to the scanner so that no-one could open the hatch but her when she returned.

Everything set, she plunged into the golden night of lower Hengsha, flitting through the crowd with a practiced step.

Her goal was a dark spot in all the glow, a place abandoned years ago when a private contractor looking to start a business doing discreet mercenary air support contacted the wrong people for loans and paid dearly for it. It had become a no-man's land for the gangs of Hengsha, and she knew the Harvesters frequented it often looking for bodies. If a gang killed someone the decaying underground hanger was the perfect place to go dump the corpse. The cops tended to leave the area alone. The gangs individually were bad enough—but any cop who dared cross into shared territory was asking for the wrath of all the gangs at once. They never worked together normally—unless a cop threatened their spots.

As long as she avoided the men who actually had Adam and David and were looking for her, other people would leave her alone. Harvesters would be all over her for her augments should she die, but they rarely killed for their supply, especially for something as basic as flight enhancement software. If she met a Harvester face to face on the no-man's land, they'd ignore one another. Hopefully.

She stopped just outside of the rusting chain-link, looking for a way over or around it. To the right Hengsha's river flowed in an oily reflection of the shore's skyline, and she considered the weak points that might be near the river.

From what she'd seen in the video her target was near the North end of the compound in one of the old hangers. The idiots who were threatening her had rigged up old supply lights from a pillaged VTOL, design line number 459B. Probably made in 2020. The second she'd recognized the shape of the fixture the familiarity of the room clicked together. They were holed up in the repair bay of a smaller class VTOL hanger.

Pulling a small knife from her boot and tucking it into her palm, Malik got down on her stomach and began inching along the fence, trying to remember where she'd gotten in before. Back when she was beginning flight-school she and her roommate at the time had gotten a little drunk and dared each other to sneak into the abandoned lot. She'd discovered some kind of breach in the chain-link near the water on that night, but it was years ago and she wasn't sure it'd still be there.

She pressed insistently at the wire until she felt something give. A flare of triumph shot through her and she pushed the pieces apart with a scraping, degraded links falling to the pavement as she wriggled in.

David had never felt as sick to his stomach as he did working on Adam to take down his EMP defenses. When he'd seen what was left of Adam after the attack he'd felt sick. When they'd had the confrontation about Adam's augments, about David's role in limb replacement, he'd felt the rift between them and he'd finally understood things from Adam's perspective and he'd felt sick. But this was a different kind of sickness.

This was Adam laying there quietly while David stripped away his defenses so someone else could rip them all apart. He was helpless and tormenting all at once, two things he hated with everything he had. He was serious when he said he ran Sarif for the benefit, not the money. Torment was what he fought against. And helplessness—well that wasn't in his personality. He felt violated and controlled and the anger turned to bile in his chest.

"I'm going to need more light and a nutrient IV for the patient," David said, bent over Adam's back. He had a scalpel in his hand, the doctor standing by with gauze to clean up the meager blood seeping from the back of his neck. They'd sedated Adam again and turned him over, only a crude metal frame around his head to allow his neck to stay straight and still give him room to breathe. David had carefully slit two inches down his patient's spine right between the trapezius muscles, probing around in the wound for the tiny interface plugs where he could manually manipulate many of Adam's augments. The glistening white and silver of one of Adam's hybrid vertebra was exposed to the air, the blood welling around it weakly staining the tips of his fingers as he felt for the indicator notch.

"We can provide more light but there will be no IV," Wan said, snapping his glove off as he got up and moved to flick on a lamp, adjusting the head.

"There will be an IV if you want this to work and for Jensen to survive it," David said, setting the scalpel aside and picking up the hair-thin wire that he would use to re-program Adam's shielding.

Wen's raised one eyebrow. "You forget I am a LIMB technician. I know when a patient needs nutrients. Giving him an IV will give his batteries a chance to replenish. We wouldn't want that."

"You forget that you had to ask me to do this for you because you don't understand his systems," David snapped back. "He's laced with more technology than your degree knows how to cover, and most of it is experimental. There are some energy drain bugs—stuff that wouldn't be a problem in normal circumstances. Well here, it's a problem. Because when I turn off his shielding I have to bypass his energy sensors to do it. His body won't be able to tell when his augments are on the edge of killing him. It will keep letting them draw energy from him until he'll be too weak to recover, let alone survive another one of your sick stints of stopping his heart!"

Wen's eyes narrowed and his lips pressed together. "You're lying. He wouldn't have allowed a system that could drain him to death."

"Well it's not supposed to because we've got these sensors you're asking me to turn off," Sarif said, gesturing at the hairline scratches in the exposed bone that were filled with silver conducting metals. "And I told you. He's an addict. There's about as much risk in this tech as there is in skydiving, but adrenaline addicted morons jump out of planes anyway. It shouldn't kill you, but it can. The tech he's carrying as it is now is relatively safe. But I'm poking around in the brain of most of his gear. The only way this could get more dangerous is if we actually went into the work lacing the inside of his skull."

The doctor's eyes cast aside as he thought and for a moment David felt his heart shudder as he wondered if the medic was considering it. They didn't have the equipment to safely crack open Adam's skull and put it back together again and the kid had had enough stuff in his head already. In his soul he was begging Wen to give Adam some kind of break.

"Fine, I will set up the IV."

David tried to control the relieved breath that left him.

Wen caught it and his expression hardened again. "Keep working."

When Malik found the compound the only reason she knew she was in the right place is because she heard David shouting. Her brow furrowed and she froze, hitting the ground a moment later and scrambling to get to the grate the voice was coming from.

"-alone survive another one of your sick stints of stopping his heart!"

She covered her mouth, holding her breath even as her adrenaline surged and demanded more. She couldn't hear the doctor reply, but she could make out more from David as his voice lowered a little and he argued with his captor. She couldn't tell what exactly was going on, but she knew they were talking about Adam which meant he was still alive. He had to be. She smiled, almost crying with relief as she listened to David take Wen down a peg. Their boss was fighting for Adam, which meant they had a chance at winning. They could get out of this.

She shuffled around, crawling on her stomach near the vent, trying to picture the typical layout of an underground hanger. If she was right, there should be a ventilation shaft big enough for her to craw through that would have been a mandatory safety feature for a landing pad/hanger hybrid. If the vent wasn't there and a vehicle was left running without the bay doors open the toxic fumes would suffocate anyone trapped within. When she finally found the latch she chewed her lip, sizing up the grate. It was definitely big enough for her to crawl through, but it would be hard to maneuver.

She pulled out the two rebreathers, popping hers in her mouth and tucking David's carefully in her sleeve where it would be easy to get to. She moved the gas grenade to her breast pocket as she smoothed the rebreather against the back of her teeth, careful not to crack and activate the thin piece of tech prematurely. She closed her mouth gingerly, feeling the hard plastic between her teeth as it settled into place. Wrenching open the grate with a rusty groan, she headed in.

David wiped the last of the blood off his fingers as best he could without his metal hand to aid him. He swallowed back his anger as he listened to Wen inject Adam with a counteragent to wake him up. Evidently the doctor was getting impatient, and was sadistic enough to want to see Adam's conscious reaction to feeling the full force of whatever tortures he wished to inflict with the shielding gone.

He turned around, watching as Adam came awake. Wen gave a nasty smirk and adjusted the IV, moving to the camera man to speak with him in low Chinese. David didn't pay attention. He went to Adam's side and took his hand, pretending to inspect calibration. Instead, he pressed his thumb against the most sensitive part of Adam's palm and tapped out one word in Morse code.

Adam's brow furrowed and he turned his head weakly, his fingers twitching around David's as though trying to capture the message. David glanced up at the two captors who were still talking and tried again.

**C*-*-*U***

David watched a spark of recognition light in Adam's eyes and he knew Jensen had figured out what he was trying to do. He tapped out the word one more time, just to be sure.

ICARUS.

Adam blinked slowly, nodding his head only just enough to make the action look deliberate. David nodded back and slipped his hand from Adam's, letting his fingers linger on the four gunmetal ports that made up Adam's knuckles, hoping he got the second half of the message. Adam gave no indicator and he didn't have time to as Wen turned back around and the augmented cameraman turned back to his lens.

"Shall we return to work?" Wen asked, picking up a probe that hummed with electricity.

Adam didn't flinch from staring him back in the face through his flickering HUD. The EMP was working its way into his systems, scrambling the sensors giving him false information, but he felt stronger than he had before the surgery. Right before Wen jabbed the Taser into his collarbone Adam though he saw the fuzzy green of a full power cell flash in the notification corner of his HUD.

The vent system went to at least a dozen different hangers, and Malik had to move slowly to avoid being heard when she neared the correct one. Forcing herself to ease up was difficult, and only became more so as the sounds of crackling electricity and hushed Chinese reverberated ghostlike around her head and got stronger. Whatever they'd been arguing about must be over because David's voice no longer mingled in the conversation.

When she finally found the correct grate she stopped, peering through it at the back of one of the lamps they'd rigged in the camera room. She couldn't see anything else and she cursed quietly, trying to decide what to do. She had no idea how many were down there, what they had as far as weapons, or even what kind of shape Adam was in. Just because he was alive didn't mean he was in any condition to go anywhere. She buried her fingers in her hair and tried to think over the pained cries coming from the room between the electric popping. It was almost impossible to keep herself from bolting in.

She wracked herself with potential plans and dangers, straining herself against the side of the vent so she could see better. There were two men in the room besides Adam and David, but beyond that she just didn't know. IT must have taken more than two to capture Adam to begin with, right? Where were the rest of them? Against every fiber in her she backpedaled, working her way back into the vents and turning around, deciding her best course of action would be to drop out of a grate in the adjoining hanger and then hope they'd left the doors open between. At least then she wouldn't be dropping in full view of the augmented merc working the camera.

The next room over was empty, though one portion that used to be a storage bunker had been turned into a crude prison cell. She saw blood on the floor and knew that it had to be Adam's. Maybe David's. She turned towards the door with her heart pounding, her fury kicking into a heated overdrive as another cry came through the harsh metal. Just before her fingers gripped the handle the place fell silent. She froze with the noise, straining to hear a clue, terrified that they'd killed him again, terrified that they'd already damaged his brain beyond recovery.

A body hit the ground and muffled cursing in Chinese spat from incredulous teeth splattered against the door like gore. Just as she tensed to wrench the door open a golden blast slammed into it and knocked into her, throwing her to the ground.

One cell. Adam had one cell that David must have figured out how to give him and he intended to use it. He grit his teeth against the new pain as Wen took his time, dragging the sharp prongs of the Taser along Adam's collarbone, down his side, jabbing it into places still gaspingly tender from bruising. He fought the pain by concentrating on the broken humming of his Icarus augment, all of his will bent on threading together the pieces of barely functioning tech. The EMP had set most of his hardware to factory zero, but the experimental additions David had just installed had no factory zero. They had only their background default, and as long as there was enough energy in Adam's body to scrape together a charge, they would work.

He couldn't help his pained cry and he grit his teeth violently, clenching his fists as he tried not to torque his wrists and ankles beyond repair. Wen pulled the probe away for a moment, reaching for some kind of needle and poking through a tray of glass bottles a few feet away.

Adam panted, blinking to steady his vision as much as he could, trying to get his breath back. His sentinel was working, but only barely, the EMP chewing through its defenses so that the electricity from the Taser could cripple it.

Mustering everything he had left, he closed his eyes and pulled it all together until it was a white-hot point in the middle of his spine. He opened his eyes and glanced at David, the build of energy causing his retinas to glow. He nodded and David threw himself to the ground. Wen turned around just in time to see the golden arcs envelop Adam's body, brimming from his knuckles, his shoulders, his Typhoon ports until it overwhelmed itself and shot out in a white gold blast.