(Thank you to the people who reviewed! I really appreciate it)
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III
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Enough time in the same room will turn anywhere into a prison, Wolf has come to realise. He leaves Rider for an hour at noon, heading to the Sergeant's office to see if he's any more willing to relinquish information than Rider is.
"There's just not much I can tell you," the man says more times than Wolf can count. "The first time he was here, Six just told us he was an experiment, and nobody was allowed to ask any questions."
Hmm. Experimenting does sound suspiciously close to using.
"What, experimenting with younger agents?"
"I don't know, Wolf. Honestly, I thought they might have been lying about his age. That they'd found someone who was exceptionally young-looking and put him here to see if he'd pass as a teenager. The only thing I know is that they never sent another one his age."
Wolf hadn't even considered that. Why had Rider been chosen, out of all the teenagers in the world? He remembered how the kid had fared in training. How had they managed to find one that could actually survive a mission? Employing a teenage agent in itself sounded like a very quick way of getting into a lawsuit. The last thing he'd expect would be for the kid to not only survive, but swap in his spy badge to be an assassin.
He tries bribery again, when he returns to Cub's cell. The kid must be hungry by now, but he doesn't even look at the food that Wolf tries to sway him with.
One useful piece of information that came out of his conversation with the Sergeant: MI6 are expecting answers by tomorrow. And there's a feeling deep in his gut telling him that the good cop routine isn't going to work in time.
"Do you think this is gonna get easier?" Wolf demands, a thread of frustration creeping into his voice.
"I wish you'd hurry the fuck up and cut to the chase," Cub snaps suddenly. "If you're gonna torture me then just do it already."
"You don't mean that."
"The sooner we get this over with, the sooner MI6 can make me disappear."
It takes Wolf a second to process what he means.
"You don't want that to happen, Cub."
Don't I? says the look on the kid's face.
"You're seventeen," Wolf protests. God knows Wolf was a verifiable nightmare at that age, but not like this. This goes well beyond regular teen angst. He wasn't even able to comprehend death at seventeen, let along welcome it. Rider gives him a scathing look, but Wolf shakes his head. "Alright, I get it. You're mature. But you're still young, Cub. You don't know what you're doing. Trust me, you don't want to throw your life away like this."
"Yeah, 'cause I tied myself to this chair, didn't I?"
"You killed enough people to put yourself there."
This time, Cub looks away.
Something in Wolf sits up and pays attention.
"Shall we talk about them, Cub? Shall we talk about the people you murdered?"
Every second that Cub doesn't deny it, Wolf feels strangely lighter. Picturing the kid pulling a trigger on dozens of faceless strangers shouldn't be any kind of comfort, but it's taking the edge off his guilt about doing this, so Wolf ploughs on.
"Do you remember the first?"
Something flickers in Cub's face, no matter how hard he's trying to suppress it. Wolf's found his Achilles' heel.
"Was it a man? I'm guessing it was a man. Someone not too important, for your first hit. Personal feud? Business partner?"
Maybe he said something funny, because the ghost of a smile flits across Cub's face. Anger twists in Wolf's gut.
"Bringing back happy memories, am I?"
Any traces of amusement dissolve.
"You have no idea what you're talking about," Cub says coldly. "If you want to know about my mission history, you should start with your employers."
Wolf raises an eyebrow. "That's a pretty big claim, Cub."
"Well, MI6 have some pretty big skeletons in their closet."
"I don't work for MI6."
"Then why the fuck are you here?"
Wolf opens his mouth, then closes it. The kid has a point…
Doesn't he? Does he?
As confusion begins to creep in, Wolf stops himself. Jesus – he's supposed to the one doing the interrogating here. This is why I don't do assassins, he thinks. Is rising doing this on purpose? Is he messing with Wolf's head to distract him from the questions he needs answering?
"Why I'm here is none of your business," he snaps. "I'm not the guest of honour here, Cub. You are."
Rider doesn't say anything. But Wolf is done taking silence for an answer. He pictures Rider behind the barrel of a gun, pulling the trigger on some unsuspecting mark, his face remorseless like it is now. He pictures the body bag they zipped up yesterday. The man had two children.
Anger boils deep in Wolf's gut. Forget tiredness; he'll do this all fucking night if he has to.
He moves closer, giving Rider nowhere else to look, and throws the questions at Rider over and over again, with enough force that surely they must feel like punches by now. Who put out the hit. Who. Who. Who. Tell me. Tell me. Tell me.
He can see the effect it's having on Rider. His face is pallid, his eyes bloodshot. There's a fine sheet of sweat covering his skin, and his breathing is getting shallower and shallower.
"Why do they even want to know?" he snaps eventually. "They can't bring the guy back to life."
Wolf doesn't even think before he backhands Rider across the face, hard. The blow rings throughout the cell.
Something twists with satisfaction inside Wolf. It takes a second before the implications of that hit him.
Wolf swallows down the lump in his throat. He waits for Rider to snap out some sarcastic retort, to tell him how he hits like a girl. To ask if that's the best he's got. Hell, he expects Rider to spit in his face. Didn't he threaten to kill anyone who might try to torture him, only hours ago?
But Rider's eyes are unnervingly blank.
Suddenly the room is too small. Wolf needs to get out of here. He expects to hear Rider's voice over his shoulder, mocking him for running when he's just getting started, but it never comes. Wolf doesn't stop to talk to the guard; he doesn't even look at him. He walks straight out into the cold night air, relishing the way the sharpness pierce his lungs, trying to ignore the way the wind whispers all around him, coward coward coward.
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Wolf doesn't go back to the cell the next morning. Instead, he heads to the shooting range. It might be hard for others to believe, but it clears his head, the steady yet not quite mindless repetition of sending round after round into targets.
He doesn't expect anyone there to talk to him; it's not exactly a hub of conversation. But yet again, Wolf finds that his expectations aren't matching up with reality.
"Wolf, isn't it?"
The trainee can't be more than twenty-five. His accent is vaguely Liverpudlian, and instantly reminds Wolf of Fox, sending a pang through him.
"Does somebody want me?"
The trainee shakes his head. He looks… nervous? Uncertain? Wolf isn't sure how to feel about it. He hasn't spent much time with soldiers of lower rank since he finished his own training; he isn't used to being anybody's higher-up.
"No, nothing like that. I just wanted to ask you, man to man, you know, since it doesn't look like anyone's going to be telling us… Is it true? They've got a contract killer in Cabin 9?"
Wolf raises his eyebrows. He knows exactly what he should tell him: that his first lesson in the SAS, if he even gets past selection, will be to keep his mouth shut and keep his nose out of things that aren't his business. Then the recruit will scamper off to the others (who are very unsubtly waiting on the far side of the range) and Wolf will smirk at the look on his face for the rest of the day.
But when Wolf opens his mouth, that isn't what he finds himself saying.
"It better be true, or I've been questioning the wrong bastard for the past two days."
Surprise colours the trainee's face.
"Seriously?"
"Come on, kid. I don't want to make you sign the Official Secrets Act…"
"No," says the recruit hastily. "No, of course not. Sorry. I'll – thanks. Yeah. I'll leave you to it."
Wolf watches him go, grinning to himself. He shouldn't have done that. Still, what harm can it do? Everyone and their mother seems knows about Rider already.
Spending so much time around Rider is doing strange things to him.
He gets pulled aside again when he leaves the shooting range. Gunpowder residue stains Wolf's fingertips and his ears are ringing, but his head feels clearer than it has in days. This time, it's the Sergeant who wants to speak to him. Wolf doesn't miss the envelope in his hand.
"Corporal," he addresses him shortly. "I put in a request for more information about Rider. This is what they've given us. Don't get your hopes up."
Wolf hadn't hoped for anything. He thanks the Sergeant and takes it quickly, before the man can change his mind. His expression is sour, like he's swallowed something bad. Asking MI6 for favours can't be something he likes to make a habit of.
Wolf doesn't bother returning to his barracks. He leans against the wall of Rider's cabin, in the shade, away from prying eyes, and tears open the envelope.
The Sergeant was right: there isn't much. Wolf scans the entire document twice and disappointment is setting in when his eyes catch a line near the end, and widen. He reads it again, just to be sure that he's understood it correctly.
Fucking hell. Rider has some explaining to do.
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