Spy and ?

The year was 1947. Spy was spending his vacation in a private island bungalow with two robot servants. A perk of working for the Australian Secret Service was their access to insane technology, and with it the ability to go without human contact for a few days. Spy could only relax when he was alone.

"The phone's for you."

"What."

The small, wheeled, tin can of a robot approached Spy's smoking chair, a strange glassy-looking box in one metal claw. "Phone call."

"What is that?"

"Phone." The robot set the small glass box on Spy's side table.

Normally when his employers wanted to reach him, they called his watch, which could also receive phone calls for some reason. But maybe this was important. Spy picked up the strange box, tilting it, looking for a speaker.

"Hello Jacques." The voice was female, American, familiar.

Spy threw the box across the room. "H-hang it up!"

"Don't be like that," the box said, the volume increasing so that Spy still had to hear it. "I'm calling about your work."

Spy glared at the box. "My work? How do you even know who I work for?"

"Risha Pauling."

"Of course." Spy rubbed his temples with one hand. "Of course."

"This isn't completely self-serving. I'm doing you a favor too."

"Thank you for asking first," Spy hissed. "I love it when you do favors for me unprompted."

"Wow, were you always this sarcastic and I just forgot?"

"Skip to the favor." Spy wondered if he should pick the "phone" back up, but it seemed fine where it was. He poured another shot of vodka.

"You're going to be given a premo assignment soon," the phone continued, crisp and professional. "There's a few high-ranking Nazis who were occult scientists that haven't been located yet. People think they're trying to find a respawn point that will bring back Adolf Hitler."

"Respawn point?" Spy tossed the shot back. He'd need it with this woman, work or not.

"You know, one of those cursed battle grounds where people come back to life if they die."

"Yes, but don't they have to die on top of it to come back? Which Hitler did not?"

"Don't ask me to justify anything Nazis do; the important thing is one task force will be sent to find them. You're not on that one. You'll be the one collecting leads on what rituals they'll be attempting, and... this is the part that's important to me." Her voice grew softer. Spy could almost see her face, her normal bright and cheery smile slipping into something smaller and sadder, her eyes growing larger like a sad puppy's.

The voice and the face of a liar and a user.

"You're going to find a lead that involves Jack," she said softly. "Not just Jack though... Jack's friend from college. He... this friend is a German immigrant, but he has nothing to do with any of this. He didn't send any information to the Nazis or intentionally help them in any way. Interrogating him won't go anywhere. I need you to make sure Jack's old friend isn't dragged into anything."

Spy silently sucked in cigarette smoke. Blew it out. Watched the wisps curl and disappear.

"Jacques, say you understand."

"You honestly expect me to believe a word you say?"

"When have I lied?" She sounded hurt. She sounded like she was going to cry.

Good.

"Sorry, am I not allowed to count the time you had me disguise as your dead husband, so you didn't have to explain his absence to your sons yet? Does that not count because I was in on the lie?"

Silence. Spy smirked. Backstabs of all sorts were a delight. But he could make it worse.

"And now you wish me to be in on another lie of yours, Jill Evans? You want me to lie to my employers and help a Nazi spy escape?"

"He is not a Nazi," Jill said.

Spy had pushed too far. There was no pain in Jill's voice. Only righteous indignation.

"I don't care if you never met Jack," Jill continued. "You have to know he would never befriend a Nazi, and you have to know I would never protect one. Dr. Ludwig isn't one of those monsters."

"Then why are you so insistent I direct attention away from this... doctor friend of yours?"

"Because it's a very painful memory for him and I don't want him to relive it just to satisfy some Australian intel collectors that he's innocent." Pause. "You believe me. Don't you?"

Spy was exhaling another puff of smoke while he thought. "This... German doctor friend... does he have a strong square jawline, tiny glasses?"

"Wait, you know him?"

"I thought you sent him."

"Sent him where? I don't understand."

Spy rolled the cigarette between his fingers, trying to stem his frustration. "We met at the airport the day I left America. He introduced himself as your doctor and tried to convince me you were really pregnant."

"You didn't think-Jacques!"

"Oh, it didn't matter, I would have left anyway," Spy said. "Either you were lying about being pregnant, or you were lying months before that when you told me you had a machine to prevent such things."

"I made a mistake." Jill was about to cry again. "I've always had triplets before; I didn't realize that would mess up the machine. Future technology is weird sometimes; you know that. I didn't mean it."

"You never mean anything. You didn't mean to start a romantic relationship with me; you didn't mean to skip over the twenty-year age difference when we were introducing ourselves; you didn't mean to introduce me to your kids before you finished telling them how their father died."

"And you think you can just keep pointing at me as an excuse?" Jill spat. "Nothing hurtful you do ever matters, because I hurt you by accident a few times? You can run away from everything you've done, and leave me to pick up the pieces, because I'm a little more to blame than you are?"

"I'm sure you can find another man to use in my place," Spy growled.

"I don't want another man."

"Then clearly you aren't in any real need of me." Spy ground his cigarette into his ashtray, savoring the moment of silence that followed.

"...This wasn't supposed to be like this," Jill said. "I told myself I would call you, make it professional, and we could part ways again. I... I'm sorry it turned out like this."

It was a middling apology. Not one of her best. Spy pulled a new cigarette from his case.

"Please, don't make Dr. Ludwig pay the price for my idiocy," Jill said. "Please just take my word for it. Please don't bother him."

"I am a professional, Jill," Spy said coolly. "I will do what I feel is best, leaving my emotions out of it."

"It's not too late to get you reassigned if you don't want to work on this," Jill said. "It's kind of an... intense incident."

Spy snorted. "Please. I'm not a child; you don't want to know the kind of things I have seen."

"This is... different." Jill was quiet for a moment; Spy was too busy lighting his cigarette to reply with anything snarky. "You know what... you're right. You'll probably be fine. Just don't look at any of the pictures of the victims or anything."

"Your concern is noted." Spy rolled his eyes. "Thank you for telling me how to do my job."

"You wouldn't be on this assignment without me, you know."

Spy resisted the urge to ask how a baker in Boston could possibly pull the strings in an Australian intelligence agency. It was Jill Evans. She had secrets for days. It was probably a long story he didn't care about.

Jill interrupted his thoughts. "His name is Jeremy by the way."

"Who's name?"

"Your son's."

Spy choked, spitting his cigarette onto the plush carpet. "Jeremy? Jeremy!?"

"What?"

"You imbecile!" Spy dashed to pick up the phone, the better to yell at her. "All his brothers have names that are fish puns! If you were going to be so careless, just name him Bastard, why don't you?"

"I never liked fish puns anyway! That was Jack's thing!" Jill shouted back. "Besides, I didn't hear you giving any suggestions!"

"How was that not common sense!?" Spy threw the phone against the wall again. "Are you truly stupid or just completely heartless?"

"I just wanted a kid with a normal name for once! It had nothing to do with you, you backstabbing, narcissistic, little-"

Spy stomped on the phone. The voice cut out.

Jeremy.

He had a son. Named Jeremy.

Spy put his face in his hands.

What a stupid name.

"Why haven't my well-paid independent contractors finished the pyramid yet?"

It turns out Spy's chapter is very hard to write because I made the stupid decision to convey his backstory and Medic's backstory simultaneously and achronologically and I think I need to redo most of it, so I decided to upload the first scene-the only one I think I don't need to edit-to prove I'm still trying.

Now a brief Q and A for all zero of you who recognized Jill Evans the baker, her husband Jack, and her friend Risha:

Q. You do realize Jill's firstborn children were boy/girl twins?

A. Back when I first saw Scout's mom and thought "Hey, that looks like Jill Evans! I should write a fanfic where Jill Evans is Scout's mom," I thought there was only the original trilogy, since the later games aren't available on Steam anymore. This is also why Jack's job is 'marine biologist.'

Q. Ok then, why did you make Risha and Jill evil though?

A. Partially I thought they needed to match the power and cruelty potential of the Mann brothers, the Administrator, Jill's own children, etc., but also... Jill in canon kind of isn't a great person. She'll roll up to a situation where people are enslaved into hard labor, or about to get executed, or are eating each other alive, and will just shrug and bake cakes for them to make everyone happy, at least for the time she's around. This reckless disregard for what's happening around her and her insistence on solving everything with cake is why I love her though.