Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair.

She’s his daughter too. She’s his daughter too. She’s his daughter too.

Kate’s a bitch. Kate’s a bitch. Kate’s a bitch.

He needs to see her. He needs to see her. He needs to see her.

That is all that runs through Doug Eiffel’s head for two months. It’s a blur of anger and angst and bars and back alleys. He lost everything that mattered to him. He lost Anne. How can he go on without her? She is his whole world. She is everything. She is all that matters.

Fuck Kate! How could she do this to him?!

Two months without her and Doug thinks he is dying. He has no job. He is very quickly running out of money. And his daughter has been taken away. He wasn’t even drunk when Kate did it. He’d just lost his job as a Technical Sergeant in the Air Force. His record of DUIs and Drunk and Disorderlies and Disorderly Conducts has finally caught up with him. He was discharged. After a day like that he thought he deserved one drink. He could handle it. Just a single drink. One whiskey to take the edge off so he could calm down and get a grip on his life again. Start over. And so he did. It was only one drink. A single glass. He was three years sober when they fired him. Three years. He was actually proud of himself. But Kate had smelled the bourbon on him when he went to pick up Anne. She slammed the door in his face. And he wasn’t allowed to see Anne again.

Two months. 61 days. 1,464 hours. 87,840 minutes. He felt every single one of them. He spent most of them in bars, going from one to another as they closed or threw him out, until he crawled back to his couch and drank himself unconscious as the sun came up. He can’t keep going like this. He can’t keep going.

He needs her back.

He doesn’t come up with a plan. Not really. He just comes up with a fantasy. But sitting there in another nameless dive bar, teetering on a barstool, he decides to do it. Anne is his daughter too. Kate has no right to take her away from him. Kate doesn’t deserve her. He will take Anne back. After that...after that he isn’t really sure what he will do. They will go somewhere. Run away. And everything will be better.

He doesn’t remember when it goes from plan to action.

The next half hour is a series of flashes. He doesn’t remember leaving the bar. He doesn’t remember getting in the car. He doesn’t remember pulling up to Kate’s house. He does remember standing in front of her backdoor. He remembers smashing the lock. He remembers creeping through the house to Anne’s room. He doesn’t know how he was able to stay quiet and not stumble considering how much he had to drink. He is so drunk. So fucking wasted. But he tries so hard.

When he looks back on it he will wish he could just blame the drink. But he can’t. He knows what he is doing. He knows. He knows how drunk he is. He knows how stupid this is. He knows how wrong it is. But he doesn’t care. It doesn’t stop him. He just wants her back and he doesn’t want Kate to have her anymore. Let Kate suffer like he had.

Anne is sound asleep in her bed. She looks so beautiful. So peaceful. He starts silently crying at the sight of her, like a man before an angel. Carefully he scoops her up. She wakes up and blinks at him groggily.

“Daddy?” She asks.

“It’s me, Anne, it’s me. I’m back,” he says and his voice is slurred. He will hear it in his memory and it will make him want to throw up. She looks confused, maybe a little afraid. But he smiles at her and she smiles back.

“I missed you,” She wraps her arms around his neck. She trusts him.

“I missed you too, Supergirl.”

“Where are we going?” She asks.

“Don’t worry,” he assures her, creeping out of the silent house, “we’re just going for a ride.”

His Honda still has her carseat in it. He straps her in, makes sure she is safe. She falls asleep again almost before he starts the engine. He checks the rear view mirror and smiles.

Everything is going to be alright. Everything is going to be alright now that she’s back. They’re together and nothing will separate them again.

He starts the car and that’s his last clear thought.

Everything else is a blur of color. He keeps losing track of where he is.

And suddenly there are headlights in front of him. A horn blares. They’re right on top of him. And then…

“No!” Eiffel screamed and he sat bolt upright. The entire van jolted at the sound of his voice.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Eiffel,” groaned Maxwell. She rubbed her eye tiredly. Jacobi, who had been sleeping with his head on her shoulder, sat up and blinked around in surprise.

“Everything alright?” asked Lovelace from the front seat.

“Fine,” Eiffel answered, dry-mouthed and embarrassed.

Kepler didn’t flinch. “Just a bad dream,” was Kepler’s muttered reassurance.

“Yeah,” Eiffel agreed. “A bad dream.” Except it wasn’t just a dream. It was exactly what he did seven years ago. Eiffel tried to catch his breath. He was shaking violently. He reached into the cup holder where he put his pack of Camels. With shaking fingers he pulled a cigarette out and mouthed it. He struggled with his lighter. It clicked about a half dozen times before Maxwell turned in her seat and snatched it from his hands. She lit it for him. He leaned forward until the tip of his cigarette was in the flames. He inhaled deeply and let the toxic gray smoke fill him up, so he felt a little less empty.

“Thanks,” he muttered.

She didn’t say anything, just passed the lighter back to him. When she turned around again Jacobi lay his head back on her shoulder and was asleep in moments. Eventually Maxwell fell asleep too after a rather successful game of snake on her brand shitty new drug dealer flip phone (Kepler had tossed their smartphones in a swamp when they went AWOL). Lovelace pushed her seat back and put on her sleep mask. Soon it was just Kepler and Eiffel driving in silence. Eiffel watched the cigarette smoke drift from his mouth under the light/dark/light/dark of the passing streetlights.

He didn’t sleep again and instead watched the sun slowly rise up over the Sabine River. They were crossing into Texas now. His stomach was writhing, roiling; he felt like he might vomit. He hadn’t been in the state of Texas since...well since. This feeling was only going to get worse the closer they got to Houston. It was only about two hours away now.

He never thought he would be back here. He swore he would never go this close to Anne and Kate. They didn’t deserve to be subjected to being even in the same state as the man who did that to them. Really, if they got what was owed them, he wouldn’t even be on the same planet. The quiet in the van remained. He couldn’t hear anything but the steady whir of the van on the road and Jacobi’s characteristic snoring. Kepler kept driving without a word, Eiffel was thankful for that. About a half hour later the General stopped to refuel the van and buy some coffee. The only time he spoke to Eiffel was to ask him if he wanted anything. Eiffel shrugged unhelpfully, opting instead to get up himself. Stretch his legs. Splash some water on his face in yet another dirty gas station bathroom.

He stared at his reflection for longer than usual, taking in the worn, ashy face, the eyes sunken from fatigue. They had only left Cape Canaveral a week ago but it felt like a lifetime. It wasn’t just that their first target was a lab outside of Houston, it was that they had a target at all. Seven days ago Eiffel was one of Cutter’s most loyal men. He was his soulless soldier, just as he had been for seven years, just as he expected to be until he died. He didn’t like it, but he didn’t really care anymore. He found enjoyment where he could and forced himself to ignore everything else. Now Kepler – if anything even more dedicated to Cutter’s cause than Eiffel ever was – had kidnapped his team and drafted them into being his Planeteers and saving the world they’d been helping to destroy only hours before by declawing Cutter. Hydra’s heads turning against itself. Suddenly there was a line in the sand where there hadn’t been before, the first mark of its kind Eiffel had seen in years.

Cutter and Pryce were going Old Testament and planned on releasing a killer plague. Many people wouldn’t make it. Some would and they would be equipped to be genetically modified by Goddard Futuristics. Cutter and Pryce would “improve” the human race and take it over in two terrible steps.

In the last week the SI-5 had been in and out of derelict apartments, supposedly abandoned warehouses, and an elegant plantation house that practically reeked of Scarlet O’Hara and Jim Crow. They’d bought weapons and supplies off of some of the most colorful private dealers Eiffel had ever seen. And now they were here.

Eiffel bought another carton of Camels in the gas station while Kepler filled the tank. He had the feeling he was going to need them. When Eiffel returned to the van Kepler was waiting for him, drinking coffee from a plain styrofoam cup. He had another in hand and passed it to Eiffel, who accepted it with a nod. Then they both climbed back into the car and pulled onto the anonymous backroad, paralleling I-10 while not risking being caught on the open highway.

Eiffel had smoked through an entire pack of cigarettes when the others started to stir. They were about 40 minutes outside of Houston and things were starting to look sickeningly familiar.

Maxwell woke up first and stretched, nearly dislodging Jacobi, who groaned in complaint. When Lovelace woke up she pulled off her sleep mask and tossed it onto the dashboard. She looked around and asked where they were.

“We’re passing through Highlands,” Kepler said. “We’ll be stopping for breakfast here. Everybody hungry?”

Maxwell muttered something that might have been an affirmative.

“Did you sleep at all, Doug?” Lovelace asked gently.

Oh shit, she was using his first name. She must have been really worried. “Wha—? Yeah…” he lied. “Yeah, I fell asleep pretty quickly after you guys.”

Lovelace absolutely did not believe him and that was clear from the look on her face. But he just flashed her those Doug Eiffel pearly whites and hoped that she would drop it. She sighed and straightened her seat without a word.

Maxwell woke Jacobi as they turned into the parking lot of a small diner Doug remembered passing back before he ruined everything. She shouldered Jacobi in the cheek.

“Mmph,” Jacobi moaned, rubbing his eyes under his glasses. “What’s going on?”

“Good morning, Mr. Jacobi,” said Kepler as they pulled into a parking spot. “Welcome back to the real world. Ready for some breakfast?”

“Yeah,” he said, stretching as best he could in the cramped quarters of the van. Maxwell hopped out, blinking in the sunlight. Jacobi cracked his neck noisily and picked up his prosthetic arm where it had been charging in the cigarette lighter between the two front seats. He snapped it in place, stretched his artificial fingers, and followed Maxwell out.

The diner was busy enough that no one paid them much attention, but not so busy they had to wait. A peppy young waitress showed them to a booth. Lovelace and Kepler took one side, Eiffel wedged himself beside Jacobi and Maxwell on the other. They each took turns disappearing into the bathroom to brush their teeth and straighten themselves up. Jacobi shaved, Eiffel hoped he’d done so over the trash rather than the sink. It seemed Kepler was going for a beard, perhaps the Steve Rogers in Infinity War look.

The same waitress returned. Her name tag said her name was “Maggie” and she had a classic Texas accent. “What can I get for y’all?”

They went around the table giving their orders. When Maggie got to Eiffel he was startled back to reality. He had been lost for the last few minutes, overwhelmed by, well, everything. He glanced around and realized it was his turn. “Uh...chicken and waffles,” he muttered, saying the first thing he saw when he glanced down at the menu in front of him.

“You feeling okay?” asked Jacobi, leaning around Maxwell to look at him.

“Yeah,” Eiffel said as the waitress left, “right as rain. Cool as a cucumber. A-okay.”

“Uh-huh…” said Jacobi. “Real convincing.”

Eiffel shrugged. He didn’t feel like sharing and he knew Jacobi didn’t actually feel like listening.

Kepler watched Maggie leave, his keen blue eyes locked on her progress. Then he leaned in conspiratorially across the table. “Let’s go over it again.”

Maxwell groaned. Kepler raised his fork as if he would throw it at her, Maxwell put up her hands to block her face, but Kepler seemed to think better of the attack and put the cutlery down. The desire not to draw attention to themselves would probably put a damper on Kepler’s usual joie de violence. That would make for a nice change.

They had been over the plan what felt like a thousand times. It had changed, evolved, since they left Canaveral, but Kepler’s final version had been hammered into their heads last night in the shady motel in Louisiana, the sort of place Eiffel would have found himself at his lowest points. Eiffel knew they were still flying blinder than Kepler liked. Eiffel thought this was why Kepler kept obsessing, there were no guarantees here. No promises. No safety net. As dangerous as Strategic Intelligence missions were, there was always the promise of Goddard Futuristics’ power behind them. Now? They had some black market weapons, some of Jacobi’s home made explosives, a van, Kepler’s stash of money, three ancient laptops, five flip phones, and their own skills up against quite possibly the single most powerful organization on Earth. They were kids flicking pebbles at a kaiju. Kepler was nothing if not confident, but even he was clearly feeling the stress. No one else complained about Kepler’s request.

“Go ahead, Jake,” said Lovelace. It was always weird to hear one of the team call Kepler by anything other than his rank, but they were obviously in their new civilian identities. They called each other by fake names before on other missions, but this was different. Kepler technically wasn’t in charge anymore. It was jarring. He was no longer their CO. He wasn’t even a general, not in any sense. But Eiffel, at the very least, couldn’t think of him as anything else. He would always be their commanding officer. And, if Eiffel was honest, he didn’t want to think of him as anything else.

Kepler was a monster. He was vicious and cruel. But he was also the man who pulled Eiffel out of the gutter. Kepler had given him purpose again. And, on top of being one of the worst people Eiffel had ever met in his life, he was also, paradoxically, one of the most inspiring, reassuring, and charismatic. Warren Kepler drew you in and he kept you there. He knew how to raise your spirits and spur you to action even when you could barely summon the enthusiasm to keep breathing. He shaped you into something you hadn’t been before. In many ways this new you was anyone’s worst nightmare, something you never thought they would sink to, but in some ways that thing might have been better than what you had once been. He cleaned up the mess you once were, made you something horrible but awesome in the trust sense of the word. His techniques weren’t kind, but they were effective. Eiffel knew all of this from first hand experience.

Maybe it just went to show how far Eiffel had fallen, but he was almost proud to serve under Kepler. Hell, he hadn’t even thought of running when Kepler revealed this master plan to his team. None of them had. Then again, maybe Kepler wasn’t as bad as he pretended to be. After all, they were saving the world and it was Kepler’s idea. But then again there was everything else he had done in his life. He was a hard puzzle to put together and Eiffel had spent the better part of the last decade trying.

Kepler began turning the table’s accutroments into a crude battle map. He removed several Sweet ‘n’ Low packets from their porcelain container and arranged them on the Formica tabletop. “This is the Olga Volodin Memorial Laboratory, located just outside of Houston on US 90. It’s made up of six buildings, but we are only concerned with building C and D.” He put the salt and pepper shakers on the designated packets. “Those are the ones housing Decima. The other buildings are actually working on cancer treatments. The labs close at 1900 sharp, all personnel besides the security guards will be off the property by 1930. Obviously C and D have the most advanced security in the complex, but due to the nature of the project there are not any human security personnel allowed inside. There are guards who patrol the complex, but they do not have access to C or D.”

“No one without Black Archive clearance can get in,” said Maxwell.

“Correct,” Kepler said.

“You’ve told us nine-million times,” Maxwell told him.

Kepler continued without acknowledging that remark. “The problem is, of course, the lab’s AI, an MX 650 Class Adjutant Program, Sensus Series, designation Caerus. As Julia has previously indicated she was one of Caerus’s developers.”

Maxwell nodded. Maxwell’s involvement in Caerus’s creation might have massively complicated things. But Eiffel wasn’t concerned, he knew it wouldn’t. He, like the others, knew that Maxwell was ruthless. She would do what she had to do. A few years ago she may have raised a complaint, but now she probably wouldn’t even do that.

“Caerus handles all automated functions as well as providing life support for the hosts.”

Eiffel still had no idea what “hosts” meant. He had been too afraid to ask the first time around. Lovelace hadn’t been. When they were first going over the plan on a bumpy dirt road in Alabama Lovelace had stopped him there, “I’m sorry, ‘hosts’?!”

“Decima needs to be incubated to survive for long periods of time. It needs a host. Mr. Cutter and Dr. Pryce have been more than happy to provide them,” Kepler said cryptically.

“Human hosts?!” asked Lovelace.

“No,” said Kepler. “Not anymore.” Eiffel didn’t know if he meant they no longer used human incubators or if the incubators were no longer human. Either was equally possible. He didn’t ask the question at the time and neither did anyone else.

Now in Texas with their query almost literally in sight, Lovelace seemed like she might be about to raise the subject again, but Kepler continued before she could.

“Remember, we cannot simply kill the hosts,” Kepler said. “The corpses will remain a vector for too long. They will be able to harvest the virus when they return in the morning. All Decima samples must be completely eliminated before we can leave the premises. The strike team will consist of Julia, Nathan, and myself.” He pushed Sweet ‘n’ Low packets toward Maxwell and Jacobi and pulled one in his direction, pushing the rest to the side. He began to build a multilayered map out of Sugar in the Raw packets, dotted it with white Domino sugar packets. He lay his knife and fork below the third level of brown packages. “The first level of building D is a front. There are dummy labs supposedly working on the same cancer treatments as the rest of the complex. It’s all fake and we can ignore it.” He covered the top row of packets with his hand. “The first floor of building C, however, holds Caerus’s CPU.” He removed his hand. “Julia will be here.” He took Maxwell’s Sweet ‘N’ Low packet from her so it sat between the top layer of packets, standing vertically so the logo was on its side. “She will blind and mute Caerus however she sees fit without sounding the alarm. I have been assured that you have a solution, correct?” He asked.

“Yes,” Maxwell answered.

“Outstanding,” Kepler said. “She will then erase all information pertaining to the Decima research, a selective memory wipe of Caerus’s system. Again, I have been assured the good doctor has a solution.”

“Yes,” Maxwell repeated. “It might be a little...inelegant but it’ll be as painless as possible.”

“Painless is not my concern,” said Kepler, sounding like a SMERSH agent, “I need it to be efficient, fast, and absolute.”

“Of course, sir,” said Maxwell through her teeth.

“Not even Miranda Pryce can be able to recover this information, because that is exactly who will be trying to do it,” he reminded her.

“I know,” Maxwell said.

“Good. I’m glad we understand each other,” Kepler said. Then he turned his eyes back to his map. “Meanwhile Nathan and I will be in the sub basement.” He placed their Sweet ‘N’ Low packets there. “The first step is to neutralize the hosts and the Decima samples they are incubating. Over the past few days I believe we have gathered enough of the virucide to take care of that.” Eiffel’s eyes went unconsciously to the bandaid at the crook of Kepler’s elbow. The only ones they could find had the Minions on them, which Eiffel still thought was pretty funny, even if the act of gathering “the virucide” was not.

Over a year ago Pryce and Cutter had ensured their favorites were immune to Decima. There wasn’t a vaccine or cure and they wanted to be sure that their inner circle would be protected from any strain of Decima they could devise. So the likes of Kepler, Rachel Young, and a handful of others got a Children of Crake treatment and underwent a Dr. Pryce Special that granted them immunity. Luckily Pryce hadn’t gotten all Spore creature creator on Kepler’s DNA and the procedure did what it was supposed to (although Kepler hadn’t gone into detail about how he knew Eiffel assumed he must have been injected with the T-Virus or maybe even done it to himself). But it has a weird side effect, Kepler’s blood was now a cure for Decima. With a fun Goddard Futuristics twist of course, it killed the infected host along with the infecting virus. Because of course nothing pleasant or easy could come from Pryce and Cutter. Kepler had threatened a scientist into spilling the whole can of beans about his new condition and had decided to use his new magic Kos blood to its full advantage. So since running from Canaveral they had taken turns playing Dr. Acula and helping Kepler drain his veins into some blood bags now stored in a cooler in the back of the van.

“Before we hit the lab we will put the samples into syringes so the virucide can be easily exploited. While I am neutralizing the hosts Nathan will be finding the most vulnerable parts of the buildings and setting explosives. After we leave the building they will be detonated, obliterating the sub basements while leaving the structure intact.” He moved the Sweet ‘N’ Low packets out of his map then scrubbed away the lower levels. “We will leave the same way we came in through a security blindspot, an underground pipe that runs below all six buildings” He pointed to the fork. “Nathan will get us in and out. And that’s where you two come in.” He pushed two Sweet ‘N’ Lows to Lovelace and Eiffel. “Karina, Tristan, You will be waiting outside of the gates where the tree line begins at the side of the highway. Then we take off and will be out of Texas in about 12 hours. You will arrive at the treeline at 2200, you will wait until 0100. If we don’t emerge by then you are to initiate Rescue Plan Alpha. Any questions?”

Everyone looked at Eiffel. Shockingly he had been paying attention. “No,” he said.

“One further point,” said Kepler, his eyes locked on Eiffel’s, “I know you have a history here.”

“Yeah,” Eiffel said. “This is where I was jailhouse rockin’. It’s not a secret.” Anymore. Shame had kept his lips sealed for a while. But seven years is a long time to be a team, a family, and truths always bubbled to the surface.

“You may not under any circumstances meet with anyone from your life here,” Kepler said every word slowly, carefully, unmistakably.

“Okay,” said Eiffel. He didn’t think it would really be a problem. The only person he wanted to see was Anne and she shouldn’t be subjected to his presence. It wasn’t a problem.

It wasn’t a problem, at least at first.

The team spent the day putting the finishing touches on their plan. Locked up in the darkened van, constantly moving so they didn’t attract attention, Eiffel and Lovelace filled syringes with the ex-general’s blood and Jacobi made the final adjustments on his explosives whenever they stopped at red lights. He sat with his arm plugged in so it would be at full power when it was go-time. Maxwell didn’t look up from her computer screen for hours.

With every passing hour dread rose in Eiffel’s gut. When they took their lunch break, eating sandwiches from a Subway, a horrible thought crossed Eiffel’s mind and try as he might he could not rid himself of it: Kate and Anne were in danger, as soon as the dream team made a definitive move against Goddard everyone they ever cared about would be put on Cutter’s shit list. That was the last place in the world anyone wanted to be. You were never on it for long, but the only reason your name came off was that you got a very special visit from the SI-5. The last visit you would ever have. And that realization clutched his insides, froze them. GF had a new SI-5 who could and would pull the trigger. He couldn’t finish his sandwich. Like hyenas Maxwell and Jacobi took care of it.

Eventually showtime came. The van pulled into the wooded area and Kepler, Jacobi, and Maxwell suited up. They prepared in the shadows, readying themselves for this first strike. Over the last seven years Eiffel had seen this routine a lot. It still looked cool. The whole of the SI-5 were super spies, himself somehow included. He had done things that would make James Bond blush. But Jacobi, Maxwell, and Kepler always seemed the best suited for it: the coolest, the most willing, the toughest. They operated in an almost creepy Stepford Cuckoos harmony. The whole of the SI-5 was a team, but the Terrible Trio somehow went beyond that. Somehow redefined it. On missions like this they became different appendages of one entity, Maxwell and Jacobi becoming Kepler’s hands.

Jacobi loaded his explosives into his pack, strapped it to his back. Maxwell slid a tablet into the special pouch on her belt. Kepler put what was probably his eighth or ninth knife in another hidden scabbard. Kepler wordlessly glanced at his operatives. Jacobi and Maxwell each nodded. Kepler made a hand signal and they followed, disappearing into the trees, black shapes in blackness. Eiffel and Lovelace waited for five minutes, then they carefully pulled away and back down onto the highway.

Chapter Text

The one good thing was that the pipe hadn’t been, as Jacobi was afraid it would be, a sewage pipe. That had happened before, more than once. This was an aqueduct so they got wet but it was most likely clean water. Or at the very least it wasn’t literal crap. It also meant getting in was easy, they had an access point, Jacobi just had to blow the lock off the hatch, which he did with less than a thimbleful of C4. One by one they climbed down into the tunnel. Kepler came last, pulling closed the hatch and throwing them into pitch blackness. He clicked on his Maglight. A bright white orb was thrown into the wall then flashed down the tunnel. The water was around knee-high and deep black in the gloom. It was ice cold especially when compared to the hot Texas air above them. Kepler sloshed his way to the head of the group then gestured for them to follow, Glock in one hand, flashlight in the other. Jacobi drew his weapon as well. Maxwell began working on her tablet. Like this Jacobi could almost imagine this was any other mission. Almost.

If only it wasn’t so palpably different. The attitude going into it was alien. There was an anxiety that Jacobi hadn’t felt since his first few missions. The only one who seemed unphased was Kepler. He was as confident now as he was back then. Jacobi didn’t think anything could scare Kepler, not even this. He knew Maxwell was as scared as he was. She did not wear fear well. When she got scared she got angry. She got emotional. She got pissed. She hated being afraid. She had shown it all day, snapping at them, growling when interrupted, picking fights with the general himself and becoming even more enraged when Kepler wouldn’t engage. Now she was beyond that point. All of her energy was pushed into this mission. That dedication, that ability to utterly immerse herself in orders, that was part of what made Maxwell such an amazing agent. She had more raw knowledge and potential than anyone Jacobi had ever met, plus she could just turn her humanity off for the job.

Jacobi glanced over at Maxwell in the dark. She met his gaze and smiled at him. She took his free hand for a second and gave him a reassuring squeeze. They continued to walk in silence only the sound of rushing water and their sloshing footsteps. The pipe was concrete and largely featureless besides valves used to release pressure.

“Here’s our stop, kids. We’re right under building C,” Kepler said, stopping short and pointing upward. There was no hatch, but Jacobi knew there wouldn’t be. “Dr. Maxwell?”

She looked up from her tablet, “give me three more minutes.”

“Mr. Jacobi?”

“I’ll be ready in two.”

“Dr. Maxwell you have two minutes. Mr. Jacobi, get to work,” said Kepler, shining his light ceilingward. He passed Jacobi his grappling hook, which he shot into the valve hanging from the ceiling. Its little fingers wrapped tightly around the metal. Jacobi clambered up the rope and swung his bag around his shoulder. He dug around in the depths until his fingers found the specific bomb he was looking for. He carefully attached it to the ceiling and armed it. He set the detonator hanging from his waist. Then he slid down the rope and retracted it. He tossed the gun to Kepler who put it back on his belt.

“Whenever you’re ready, Maxwell,” said Jacobi.

“The program initiates in five seconds,” Maxwell told him. “Four, Three, two, one…”

Boom!

Just as Caerus went blind Jacobi hit the detonator. All three took cover as the pipe and floor exploded above them. Kepler shot the grappling hook into the room above. “Everybody up.”

No alarms sounded either with the explosion or as they entered the building. They were in a sterile white hallway with shiny white tile floors and four doors spread out.

“Doctor, that elevator should take you up to the first floor,” Kepler gestured toward the double doors directly in front of them. “Keep your phone on you and if there is even the slightest hint of a problem tell us and get back down here.”

“Yes, sir,” said Maxwell with a firm nod. She pulled her hair back into a tight high ponytail. Jacobi suddenly had a terrible thought. What if they never met up again? What if they were caught and killed here? What if this was the end of the line? This was easily the most dangerous mission they had ever been on, up against Goddard itself.

“Maxwell,” he said and she turned back to face him. There were a million things he wanted to tell her. They could die here. They could die here super easy. She meant so much to him and he might never see her again. She meant more to him than he meant to himself and wasn’t that a hilarious thought? More than anyone else ever could, a fact that had cost Jacobi a boyfriend or two. But he didn’t know how to tell her that. He opened his mouth, searching for the right words. Then he gave up. Instead he said, “good luck.” He hoped she knew what he meant. He thought she did.

“You too,” Maxwell said with a warm smile. Then she disappeared into the elevator.

“Shall we?” Kepler asked Jacobi.

“Let’s,” returned Jacobi.

“This should be the first stable,” said Kepler.

“Stable?” asked Jacobi, confused.

“Masks?” Kepler asked.

Jacobi went into the pack again and pulled out matching surgical masks. They wrapped them around their faces, exchanged a look and a nod, and opened the door. Kepler knew the code and the door hissed open.

Behind the mask Jacobi’s jaw dropped. He didn’t know what he expected when Kepler said “hosts.” He thought he had properly desensitized himself for any possible option.

He had not.

The room was huge and filled with not so much cells as stalls for lack of a better word. Stalls like in a stable or barn. They were narrow and barred and inside of each of them was...Jacobi wasn’t sure what to call them, but looking at them made him feel vaguely sick.

They were enormous, larger than a cow, and quadrupedal. They were covered in fleshy slightly translucent skin in varying human shades, pinkish, brownish, golden, almost black. Their limbs ended in malformed hands. Their heads were big and cowlike, their features were small and almost vestigial. Their eyes were far set, tiny, jet black, bulging. Their noses were just two nostrils, and they had lipless mouths full of blunt human teeth. They had dozens of wires and tubes protruding from them. Some leading to a huge machine dangling from the ceiling. One of these, the widest one, was filled with some thick yellowish sludge. Others hung downward from them, ending in spigots or IV ducts. They had huge openings in their sides, rimmed in plastic or some kind of carbon fiber, exposing sleek red insides. Some of them had more metal to them than others, prosthetic limbs, robotic eyes, segments of their body just were not there, replaced with artificial material. It was as if most of them were simply incomplete and had been finished afterward.

Jacobi stopped dead in his tracks. His stomach churned. He didn’t think anything could surprise him. He didn't think anything could disgust him. How wrong he was.

“Jacobi?” Kepler asked, “are you alright?”

“Yeah,” he said through his tight dry throat. “Just give me a second.” He wiped his forehead of anxious sweat and took a deep breath. Time to compartmentalize. Push the monsters out of your head. Don’t be a child. He straightened and set himself to the task at hand. Find the weak points. Blow this place apart.

“We don’t have much time,” said Kepler without sympathy. Jacobi was glad for that. “I need you on point.”

“Yes, sir,” said Jacobi. “I’ve got this.”

“I know,” said Kepler. “Give me the virucide.”

Jacobi passed him the plastic box of syringes. Kepler took them then crossed to the control panel at the far side of the room. He walked calmly through the rows of stalls. His footsteps were decisive, practiced, and quiet. Jacobi tore himself away from watching his commanding officer. Time to figure out the best way to bring this place down.

Jacobi had blown up enough buildings that finding their weak points was second nature. He almost automatically deduced the best way to take down any building he walked into. Destruction had taught him a lot about architecture. Using smaller explosives he weakened the structure and blew away the walls to expose the steel supports underneath. To these he strapped RDX bombs and attached lead lines back to the floor. He set his electronic detonator to the primer charge. He made some bore holes in the load bearing structures to weaken them just to the point of danger. The RDX blasts, that would cut through the steel beams like butter, would also vibrate the compromised walls enough to collapse them, even if they somehow survived the RDX explosion expanding at 27,000 feet per second. He used Kepler’s grappling hook to set explosives at several levels of the walls, it had to go from the top down and fall in on itself, down its own footprint, then the weakened outer walls would no longer stand the pressure pushing in from the earth outside. The structure would explode and crumble at the touch of a button.

Out of the corner of his eye Jacobi watched Kepler open a hatch in the control panel. He emptied several syringes into it. After a few moments the yellow goo ran reddish. Jacobi climbed down to join Kepler.

“How long does it take?” Asked Jacobi.

“No idea,” said Kepler. “I don’t know the dose either. I wasn’t given a manual.” He sounded slightly frustrated. There was a long pause that seemed to stretch into infinity. Then miraculously hosts fell, almost in unison they all collapsed, with the sound of snapping tubing and the heavy fatty slam of flesh on tile. Kepler’s posture didn’t change but he let out a breath behind his surgical mask. “There are two more of these,” said Kepler walking down the middle corridor.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, sir!” said Jacobi, following after him and pointedly not looking into the stalls.

“Is there a problem, Mr. Jacobi?! because we are on a very tight schedule here...”

“I know now isn’t the time for questions—“

“And yet you are about to ask one.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but what the fucking hell were those things?!” Jacobi was in step with him now. He gestured to one of the collapsed creatures.

“Hosts,” said Kepler.

“That’s not an answer!”

“That’s all they are! They were specifically created by Goddard Futuristics for the Decima project. They are mostly human, some cow, and a little starfish. They were designed in part by Dr. Pryce, which means she may have left an opening for reanimation, but if we crush them under several tons of steel and concrete she won’t have much to reinfect. It is essential we render this place completely unusable.” He looked at Jacobi when he said this last, making it clear this was his obligation as much as it was Kepler’s.

“It will be,” Jacobi assured him.

Something twitched under Kepler’s mask, the slightest hint of a smile. “I know.”

The second room was very much the same. Big and filled with rows upon rows of hosts. Jacobi set the explosives, Kepler poisoned their feeding tubes (it thankfully didn’t take too much to do the job, Jacobi thought Kepler was already expending a dangerous amount of blood as it stood). They messaged Maxwell to inform her they were done in building C and would be moving on to D via the aqueduct. They would contact her again when they finished and all three would rendezvous, putting a timer on her job as well. She sent back two letters “ok”. Maxwell would come through. Jacobi had the utmost faith in that. Whether or not it worked out was another question entirely. They weren't dead yet, which was a pretty good track record.

Jacobi and Kepler hopped back down into the aqueduct, traveled a bit further down the tunnel, and exploded their way into building D. Again no alarm sounded. Once they were confident they were safe Kepler opened the first door. Same procedure. Again for the second. But he paused before the third, scowled.

“Something wrong, sir?” asked Jacobi.

“There is a light on in there,” said Kepler slowly.

“Yeah? Isn’t it the third...uh…stable?” asked Jacobi.

“No,” replied Kepler. “There should only be two in this building. This room was empty. So why…is there a light on?”

“I don’t know, sir,” said Jacobi.

“Well,” said his CO, “only one way to find out.”

He stepped forward into the room, Jacobi followed. It wasn’t a third stable. It wasn’t empty either. Jacobi should have been used to horrible surprises at this point.

Chapter Text

Eiffel was anxious. Fidgety. He smoked cigarette after cigarette, lighting the new one with the glowing butt of the old. He kept thinking about what Kepler had said at breakfast. He wasn’t supposed to see anyone. He had been expressly forbidden from it. Kepler usually had good reason behind his orders. Well, “reason” at least. “Good” was arguable. Rarely was a reason in the SI-5 any better than “morally gray and/or a tiny bit unselfish.”

But Anne and Kate were in danger. Not only could Goddard Futuristics swing in at any time and take them away (or worse!) but even if they were left alone they were about to lose everything. Without the sizable portion of Eiffel’s unreasonably enormous Goddard paycheck they got every month they wouldn’t be able to keep their house or their lifestyle. However he looked at it Kate and Anne were teetering on the edge of a precipice and they couldn’t even see it. They were going to fall no matter what, but Eiffel wanted to make sure they survived the landing.

He had been supporting them from behind the scenes for years. It was the only reason Eiffel had sold his soul to Goddard Futuristics and Warren Kepler in the first place, the promise that Anne would be well cared for.

Goddard paid for her initial surgeries, they even sent her to the most renowned ear, nose, and throat center at Johns Hopkins. They paid for her and Kate to be flown from Texas to Maryland. They got Kate out of the medical debt from the life-saving emergency care Anne received in the immediate wake of the crash. And after that they sent Anne to the best school for the deaf in Harris County. They got her speech therapists and ASL tutors. They gave her every hope and every opportunity Eiffel could find or ask for.

On top of that Eiffel had sent the larger portion of his, again, absurdly immense paycheck to Kate, hand-delivered by Warren Kepler every month. Eiffel realized very early on that this act was not out of the goodness of Kepler’s heart, Kepler did not operate that way. Kepler visited Anne so he had a reward for Eiffel. He had something Eiffel wanted, a personal connection to his daughter. He could tell Eiffel how she was doing in school, who her friends were, what she liked to do. He could deliver the gifts Eiffel bought her and record her reactions to them. He could give Eiffel these updates, personal and real, and Eiffel would do almost anything for them. He was a dog trained for treats. Pavlov would have been proud of Kepler.

Kate didn’t know the truth about where the money came from. She was told that Eiffel had been part of a classified Goddard Futuristics program before his faked death years ago and the continued payments were compensation. Odds were Kate didn’t like how familiar Kepler was with Anne, but Eiffel was eternally appreciative, even though he knew his CO only did it to pull his strings.

Eiffel never intended to talk to Kate or Anne again. He would watch Anne grow up through pictures and 30 second videos. He would know her second hand. That was far more than he deserved. He never planned on subjecting Anne and Kate to seeing him again. He hoped to become just an unpleasant memory.

There were times he had considered it. Times he hoped to see Anne again, to tell her how much he loved her. But ultimately he always decided Goddard’s money was worth far more than meeting the dad who disabled her. But now he needed Kate to know that she and Anne were in danger. He didn’t want them to be completely helpless and unaware of Goddard’s machinations. Maybe he could even convince them to go off the grid, he wouldn’t put it past Cutter and Pryce to hold them hostage to get him to turn the others over. And, honestly, it would work. No matter how much he cared about the rest of the SI-5 if it meant that Anne was safe he would kill them all himself.

Eiffel realized that Kepler knew what was going through his head even before he did. That was why he explicitly said Eiffel wasn’t to see or talk to any old friends. He knew this was coming. But now the longer Eiffel sat listening to hits from the ’70s the more sure he became. He had to do it. He met Lovelace’s eyes in the rear view mirror.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Yep, sure, yeah, toooootally fine, why wouldn’t I be fine?” he asked a little frantically. He went to take another cigarette from the pack and found it empty. The dam burst. “I need to go to them! I can’t just leave Anne and Kate out in the open! What if Cutter and Pryce go after them?!”

Lovelace looked away. The music shifted to Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely?” a song she knew made Eiffel think of Anne. After a few awkward seconds of Eiffel in a borderline panic attack and music far too on the nose, Lovelace jabbed at the radio, turning it off.

“They haven’t yet,” said Lovelace.

“We don’t even know that!” Eiffel miserably pointed out. “And I don’t want my daughter just waiting around for that psychopathic, Joker grinning loony toon to grab her and mail me her finger in a box!”

Lovelace didn’t have an answer to that. But her silence wasn’t enough. Eiffel felt increasingly hysterical. Couldn’t she understand?! This was his child’s life! He couldn’t just leave this up to fate!

“I ruined her life once already,” Eiffel muttered, voice falling, flatly refusing to meet Lovelace’s eyes. He had kept the accident (and even Anne’s existence) a dark secret for many years. Kepler knew from the start, obviously, Kepler was the man who got him out of prison and besides knew everything anyway, but Eiffel was too ashamed and horrified at himself to share his secret with his coworkers. Eventually it all came out and it was a testament to their friendship (or to how horrible the SI-5 was) that no one treated him any differently afterward. Or maybe he had left too many clues around his apartment, framed photos of a little girl, the cactus in the crudely painted pot, the child’s drawing on the fridge. But he couldn’t help it. There were days, especially in the beginning of his Strategic Intelligence career, when Anne was the only thing that kept him going. “There is no way I could live with myself if anything else happened to her. Please.”

“Eiffel…” Lovelace said and he looked up at her. She was clearly agonizing over her decision, her lips pressed into a tight line, eyebrows furrowed. She must have been weighing her options, considering the importance of the mission on one hand and Anne on the other. For Eiffel there was no contest, not even close. Kepler would say that two people were not worth possibly the entire world and Lovelace was reading that same page. But she might not have had Kepler’s resolve in practice. Eiffel hoped not. That was what he was banking on.

“Anne means more to me than anything else in the world! She is my world! I can’t just wait for Mr. Hyde and Dr. Frankenstein to launch their Saw style wet dream on my family!” Eiffel realized he had clasped his hands in front of him, begging Lovelace for mercy. If it had been Kepler he would have reminded Eiffel of his earlier promise to anyone who tried to run that he was one of the best sharpshooters in the entirety of Goddard Futuristics. But Isabel Lovelace was far more human than Warren Kepler ever had been. Lovelace was sympathetic, caring, even at her hardest. It was actually part of what made her so scary, she maintained her humanity despite herself. But Lovelace was a paradox, and sometimes it was hard to tell what side of the line she would fall on. Eiffel’s heart was pounding, waiting to see where Lovelace fell this time. If she didn’t let him go he thought he might run for it and hope Lovelace didn’t shoot him in the back.

He didn’t have to dangle for long. After that second plea Lovelace let out a breath, “here’s what we’re going to do,” she said and Eiffel’s heart skipped a beat. “We still have a while before we need to pick up dad and the brats...Kate can’t live that far away...we can spend a half-hour there. That should be enough time for you to get the point across.”

Eiffel was practically crying with relief. “Thank you,” he managed over the knot in his throat, “Thank you so much.”

“I’m not done.”

“Yes, sir?” Eiffel asked.

“We never ever tell Kepler, okay? We take this to the grave,” she said.

“Pinky promise,” said Eiffel, offering his finger.

Lovelace linked it in hers and they shook once. She started the engine and pulled out of their spot. Eiffel awkwardly Spider-Manned into the front seat.

“Do you know the address?” Asked Lovelace.

“Yeah,” said Eiffel, who had memorized it. He gave it to her.

Lovelace looked at the Harris County map Kepler had purchased earlier (no GPS allowed) and discussed the route with Eiffel. They quickly agreed on it and set off.

“What are you going to say?” Lovelace asked, glancing over at Eiffel. He was as antsy as a dog going to the park.

“I don’t really know…” Eiffel answered, deflating a little. “Not exactly.”

He had a small speech he had once imagined himself delivering to Anne. It was something that he wrote in those times he thought maybe he should see her again. Wrote, rewrote, and silently recited to himself in the dark when he couldn’t sleep. But that was years ago now and he had mostly forgotten it.

He learned sign language when the classes were offered at Goddard. Mostly for Anne, even when he didn’t think he would ever see her again it made him feel closer to her. He had used it a few times over the years, but never regularly. It was time to brush it off, it seemed.

“You might want to think about it,” Lovelace said. “You’re going to have a lot of explaining to do.”

“Yeah,” Eiffel agreed and he laughed at the insanity of this. His life was constantly improbable, a series of both unfathomable and unfortunate events, but this was beyond his wildest dreams. “Oh my God, what am I going to say?!” He laughed harder, more madly.

“Easy, Tiger,” Lovelace said. “Step one, you explain that you aren’t dead and where you’ve been for the last seven years. And you should probably be honest.”

“Yeah,” Eiffel let out a low breath. He unconsciously patted himself down for a pack of cigarettes and found only the empty pack from before. He tossed it over his shoulder into the backseat. “Yeah, I should.”

“Step two, you deal with the drama from that,” Lovelace said, “‘cause hoo boy is there going to be a lot of that.”

“Yep,” said Eiffel, “this might as well be a Wagner opera.” He stared at the road, the chaos playing out in his head.

“Step three, you tell them they’re in trouble.”

“When do I get to say I’m sorry and that I love Anne?” Eiffel asked. He knew obviously the warning was more important and that he had to explain his comic booky resurrection but she needed to know. Or at least he needed to tell her.

“Step four. Then step five we get the hell out of there.”

“Okay,” Eiffel said, letting out a breath. “Okay, I can do that.”

“Can you really?” Lovelace asked.

“Probably not,” Eiffel answered with a desperate smile and another unhinged laugh. “Oh my God, I am going cookoo for Cocoa Puffs!”

“Eiffel!” snapped Lovelace, “deep breath! You’ve got this! You are so much smarter and more capable than you think you are. And you know how important this is! You can do this! Just tell yourself that!”

“I can do this,” Eiffel repeated quietly, his lanky knees drawn up to his chest.

“Despite all evidence to the contrary,” muttered Lovelace. “What’s your opening line?”

“I have no idea,” Said Eiffel, chin on his knees.

“Then think of one!” Lovelace snapped

“Uhhh ‘hi, Kate, I have to tell you something’?” Eiffel said, glancing sidelong at the Major.

“Wrong-o,” Lovelace said. “First you have to get into the house and explain the whole being alive issue.”

“‘Hi, Kate, I’m not dead’?”

Lovelace took one hand off the steering wheel, held it out flat palmed, and tipped it side to side. “Eh.”

“How about… ‘hi honey, I’m home’?”

“Only if you want her to immediately slam the door in your face.”

They debated his speech the rest of the way to their house. Kate lived just outside of Houston in a very ritzy suburb. Her new neighborhood was far nicer than the decaying infill that she lived in seven years ago. Eiffel had never spent much time in West University Place when he lived in Houston. He didn’t have the money, the skin tone, or the personality. Broke drunks of color were almost certainly arrested on sight around here. Or shot. It was as nice as people said it was. It looked safe. It looked friendly, clean, expensive.

He wondered what Kate looked like now. He had seen photographs of Anne. Many of them were saved to his phone. He knew exactly what she looked like and how she had aged from toddler to child. But he hadn’t seen Kate since the day he pleaded guilty. She had been sitting there in the gallery, dressed more conservatively than he had ever seen, her tattoos covered, her brown eyes were locked on Eiffel the entire time. He could still feel her gaze burning into him. When he looked at her she flipped him off. He didn’t blame her.

Maybe this was a bad idea.

No, he had to warn them. It didn’t matter if it made everyone temporarily uncomfortable. This wasn’t for him. This was for Kate and more importantly this was for Anne. He wouldn’t be there long and then he could disappear from their lives again almost as soon as they wanted him to.

Lovelace pulled up to the house, it was small, but beautiful. It had a big yard and a garden, Kate had always wanted a garden. She loved plants, especially unusual flowers, but she had only ever had room for pots and planters before. Now her garden was filled with them. The high bushes covered the windows on either side of the blue door for their privacy, which was a very Kate move. The house was a one and a half storey bungalow with two windows peeking out just below the triangular roof. The lights were on downstairs. The night was hot and filled with crickets. It was idyllic, so distant from the kinds of places Doug and Kate found themselves in 10 years ago.

Eiffel climbed out of the car.

“Remember, a half hour,” Lovelace reminded him.

“A half hour,” Eiffel repeated, glancing at his watch.

“I’ll come back then. If you need to leave sooner, text me,” Lovelace said.

“I’ll see you then. Thanks, Major,” he flashed her a slightly queasy half smile.

“Good luck,” Lovelace said.

“I’m gonna need it,” Eiffel replied. He turned to the house as Lovelace pulled away.

He let out a breath and walked down the brick front path to the door. He climbed the stoop and stopped, hand raised over the knocker. He realized his hands were shaking and his heart was pounding. He should have brought another pack of cigarettes with him. He was about to change their lives again for better or for worse. He didn’t consider himself a brave man by any means and this might have been the most terrifying thing he had ever done.

Deep breath.

He took the knocker and brought it down.

Chapter Text

“Wh-what the Hell are they?” asked Jacobi, breaking the silence that had engulfed the two of them. There weren’t stalls in this room, but it was no less disturbing. It was filled with tanks. Rows and rows and rows of goo-filled tanks. And floating in each of them like a sci-fi cliche was a naked man. The men were in varying forms of development -- not that some were fetal or children, but that some were simply unfinished, indistinct, unformed; the Playdough approximations of men. They fully-formed men were all built broadly, bodies of rippling muscle and flawless skin, but also strangely uncanny. At first Jacobi would have called them attractive, but the longer he looked at them the more frankly wrong they became. Their faces each matched all the others of their respective races, as if there was a limited number of molds. Their bodies were utterly hairless. They had no nipples, bellybuttons, or toenails. They were hooked up to wires and tubes much like the hosts.

Kepler seemed to break himself out of his shock. “I...don’t know,” he said and Jacobi knew how much Kepler hated saying that phrase. He was rarely left out of Cutter’s loops, but apparently something big had been going on right under his nose. “But I am going to find out.” He quickly crossed to the control panel on the far side of the room as Jacobi lagged behind. Two words appeared on the largest screen, big enough for Jacobi to read half-way across the room: Project: Arngrim.

Kepler attempted to access the program. It seemed to require his password and voice sample and he gave them. There was a loud beep and the screen flashed red. Kepler’s access was denied. He tried again. Denied. He let out a low growl and hit the console hard enough to make it spark. He turned away from it for a moment, squeezed his eyes shut, and worked his jaw. His dangerous temper was bubbling just below the surface and Jacobi knew better than to say anything when his CO was in this state. The ballistics expert took a step back, carefully and slowly so Kepler didn’t notice and potentially become angrier. After a few moments Kepler regained enough composure to pull out his phone. He hastily typed something -- Jacobi assumed it was to Maxwell -- and waited. A few seconds passed and then the screen hammered out an encoded password without Kepler needing to touch the keypad. A recording of a familiar voice said its owner’s name over the speakers, “Rachel A. Young.” The screen changed into an options menu. “Welcome back Ms. Young,” said the computer. Maxwell had gotten Kepler in. Jacobi smiled at his friend’s genius. In counterpoint to Jacobi’s fond smile, Kepler’s face twisted in disgust at the sound of his rival’s voice.

With that crisis resolved Jacobi started wandering through the maze of tanks. He quickly felt lost in this single room; the tanks and the men inside them were so identical it was disorienting. Now that Jacobi noticed how wrong they were he couldn’t unsee it. The hairs on his arms stood on end. They were a weird regiment and it took Jacobi a second to realize what they reminded him of. Barbie dolls. Like Barbie they were superficially perfect but inhumanly wrong. Specifically Jacobi thought they were very much reminiscent of blondie Barbie’s various beaus, Ken and the like. Jacobi didn’t know their names, he’d never been a fan, not even back when he’d been named Leah and his relatives bought them for him like they would any other burgeoning seemingly-female capitalist. They had no idea that even before Jacobi realized he was a boy he had always preferred fire to dolls, a shameful secret his parents kept behind sealed lips. The men in the tanks all had very short neat hair that might as well have been plastic for how little it moved in the viscous goo they were contained in. They matched template molds of template races, not the tie-dye swirl of human DNA that existed in reality but entirely distinct from one another, separated like oil and water, and defined by skin color and features. White Ken, his Black friend, and the East Asian guy. That was the entire selection, like a fucking mid-90s cartoon show. They were the Western blueprint of handsome, down to being -- and Jacobi definitely checked this almost immediately -- “biologically male” and well-endowed in such a way that Jacobi was sure a lot of cishet men were involved in the project. Guys who had always been tab A rather than slot B.

Jacobi caught his own reflection in the glass of one of the tanks. There wouldn’t be an Arngrim like him: a world-mutt of equal parts East Asian and Eastern European Jewish. There weren’t any who would be "designated female" by doctors when they were yanked out of their tanks or have to deal with that biological and social dysmorphia that had plagued Jacobi’s early life. How wonderfully simple and unreal. The artificiality of their races and sex just added to the queasy feeling in the pit of Jacobi’s stomach.

A high voice with a heavy Caribbean accent played over the speakers and broke Jacobi from his thoughts and his spelunking in the Uncanny Valley. His head snapped from the tank to the source of the noise.

“This is the personal log of Dr. Justine Le Mar, Project: Arngrim, day one,” the voice said. Looking over to Kepler Jacobi saw the General scowling thoughtfully, tensing his jaw. On the screen was a recording of a rather pretty middle-aged woman with dreadlocks. She stood in this very room, about where Kepler was now hunched over the console. However, there were far fewer tanks behind her and the ones that were there were entirely empty. “I have been chosen by Director Young to head her new initiative, top secret code named ‘Arngrim.’ The goal of Arngrim is to...no, no hypotheticals here and now...Project Arngrim will create a superhuman being capable of survival in extreme environments, enduring massive amounts of stress, strain, and injury, physically out-perform even an Olympic athlete, and possessing superior senses. The purpose of Arngrim’s...Ms. Young wants to refer to the results as ‘soldiers’...the purpose of the Soldiers is to take over menial and difficult tasks that are too physical for AIs.

“It is important to stress that these proposed Soldiers are not human, simply humanoid. Intellectually they will be comparable to normal adult development, but...different. They will have problem-solving and reasoning abilities, but without individual consciousness or self-awareness. No sense of self-preservation. They will possess no need or capacity for creativity or self-expression. They don’t have much individual thought and none of it should pertain to identity.

“They are linked. That is to say small units, three members each, of Arngrim soldiers will share a hive-like consciousness with Goddard Futuristics, or, one assumes, whoever receives them as workers, serving as the queen. On a certain level, each of these units will share one mind. They know where the others are. They can be commanded as a single entity. Every Soldier knows the thoughts of every other member of his unit.

“Along with this hive-mind their thoughts can be directly influenced by a commander. They have a receiver in the back of their necks that can allow for reprogramming should it be necessary. They effectively live and breathe for their commander and…and it sounds pretty bad, I have to admit. But I have faith in Goddard. Arngrim will be successful and any inhumanity will be ironed out.”

What an idiot, thought Jacobi.

“End of entry dated 17 March 2011,” the recording of Le Mar said.

“Twen...ty...eleven,” Kepler almost whispered, shock rather than anger in every syllable. He was, for once, too surprised to be angry. Understandably, that was before Maxwell or Eiffel even joined GF, it was a long time for one of Cutter's supposed favorites to be kept in the dark, especially on something this big. Kepler turned off the audio log as a new entry started. He got the information he was after.

Jacobi had returned to his CO, watching as Kepler began scrolling through documents filled with long GATTACA sequences, CT scans, MRIs, growth charts, test results and the like. Facts and figures zipped by his vision: 2,000 lbs max lifting weight. 55 mph top speed. Able to hear sounds in excess of 75,000Hz.

“You think Le Marr got a rude awakening or…?” Jacobi let the question hang in the air as Kepler read.

“No, Mr. Jacobi, I assume Miss Young shot her well before then,” Kepler muttered offhandedly. Jacobi couldn’t help but agree. There was a pause while Kepler scrolled through more notes. Years of information, years of a project he clearly knew nothing about. His jaw went harder, faster, his face got redder, until... “Dammit!” Kepler snapped. Jacobi had kept a safe distance this time and he was glad for it as Kepler struck out, kicked the console. Hit it. He growled something feral and unintelligible and pulled a gun from his holster. He shot the treacherous screen showing him all the secrets he never knew. Kepler took a step back and drew a deep breath. He ran a hand down his face, clearing the snarl, but was still breathing heavily when he said through his teeth, “Jacobi, I want nothing left of this place.”

“Yes, sir,” said Jacobi.

“Nothing,” stressed Kepler.

“Nothing,” Jacobi repeated.

“Not a single solitary molecule. Not an atom. Not even a lonesome electron, got it?”

“I got it, sir,” answered Jacobi, already scrambling to get to work. Kepler’s tone alone would be enough to send Jacobi off running, but that coupled with what they had just learned? That put something greater than the fear of God into Jacobi: the fear of Kepler.

As Jacobi set the bombs Kepler contacted Maxwell. “Destroy Project Arngrim too,” he said into his phone.

A pause as Maxwell replied.

“Then make time for it!” shouted Kepler. “Destroy everything you can! Wipe Caerus clean if you have to!” Another pause. He spoke slowly through a tight grimace, if Maxwell was here she would be preparing for a fight, “I...understand...the...time constraints.” Another pause. “Goddammit! Fine! Then do this: cut all life support to Project Arngrim! Are...you..even...capable of...doing that? Or should I be putting up a ‘help wanted’ ad for a new hacker? One who can actually do the bare minimum of her job when the world is at stake without a dramatic monolog of excuses?!” Jacobi winced as he placed the explosives. “Good! Plant a virus or something that will delete the files!” Kepler exhaled and spoke with less malice, “we will see you in five minutes.”

They waited. There was a moment of tense silence, Kepler took his phone from his pocket again, but before he could angrily redial Maxwell there was a low bellow that came from all around them, the sound of the tremendous suction as the tanks forcibly drained. The bodies in them fell forward. After a moment of exposure to the air the Soldiers seized; quivered, rolled, and shook. Then they went slack. Every tank was beeping furiously, red lights flashing, the vital signs that had been plummeting since the suction sound began now showed every one of the Soldiers was dead.

Kepler smiled darkly. “Well then,” he said, turning to Jacobi, “shall we go?”

“Yes, sir,” said Jacobi. He cast one last look back at the tanks. He took in those still, unmarred bodies and shivered before following Kepler out.

Chapter Text

It had been an exceedingly normal day. It was Saturday so Kate slept until 8, then put the coffee on, made breakfast, and watched TV until Anne stumbled down the stairs still half-asleep. They ate breakfast together and Kate thought about how lucky she was to have Anne. Anne did so well in school, something neither of her parents had ever achieved. She was curious about everything in the world. She wanted to know everything. Sometimes it made things difficult, it was very hard to keep secrets from her. She loved science, math, and history. She loved stories. She was an amazing artist. Kate had pages and pages of Anne’s creations. Kate was so proud of her. She loved who Anne was and who she was becoming.

After breakfast Anne’s friend from camp came over. In the afternoon Kate and the girls went to the community pool. They finished the day with mozzarella sticks and Firecracker Popsicles at the concessions stand. Kate dropped Anne’s friend off at home and then she and Anne made dinner together, pepperoni pizza. Doug would have been happy to know pizza was also Anne’s favorite food. Although, she supposed, it was most people’s.

Still, Kate couldn’t help thinking about Doug sometimes. When she looked at Anne there were times she saw him. She had his eyes, extremely green in her dark-skinned face. The coiled texture of her hair came from Doug’s DNA, when Anne was a little girl he said her hair was like his mother’s and sister’s. Sometimes Kate could swear she had seen a facial expression of Doug’s on Anne’s face. Anne continued to love pop culture and media, a passion Doug had instilled in her very early on. Kate loved them too, but Anne’s devotion to Harry Potter (though not its transphobic author) and Star Wars rested squarely on Doug’s shoulders, Kate had always been a more Lord of the Rings and Star Trek gal. But she, Anne, and Doug all agreed on the quality of Neil Gaiman’s oeuvre and Kate was excited to show Anne his more mature work as she got older. Doug would have loved to do that. He loved showing Anne new things, sharing what he enjoyed, even when she was too young to remember.

Doug Eiffel. God, Kate hated him. She hated him with every ounce of herself. But as much as she hated him she cared about him once. She even missed him sometimes. Years had caused the intensity of her feelings to fade, but still it didn’t take much to summon him to her mind. He was too deeply bound up in her life to be far from her consciousness. Like an earworm off the top 10 list, he was always somewhere in the background of her mind ready to jump obnoxiously to her forebrain in an instant. And like a pop song, once summoned it was sometimes very difficult to banish him.

Once upon a time Kate Garcia had loved Doug Eiffel. Really, she had, as much as she came to hate him she once loved him and had done so with as much passion. And he had loved her just as much, just as intensely. It was a romance as hot and as destructive as a wildfire. They had been addicts together and together they gave up booze. When they realized how bad they were for each other, when they finally broke it off for good, they remained close friends. He had been her best friend. He was the best friend she had ever had, if she was honest. And he stayed her best friend right up until...well, until.

The day he was fired he showed up at her doorstep with whiskey on his breath, she did what she had to do. She turned him away. She cut him out of her life and Anne’s. But she hadn’t hated him then. What she did had been necessary, a matter of survival. Doug and Kate had always had a negative influence on another and she couldn’t risk both of them relapsing. She hoped Doug would get his shit together and come back, spurred on by her anger and his love for Anne. As the days between that and the Crash (calling it an accident removed the guilt Doug Eiffel deserved to have dropped squarely on his shoulders) dragged on, Kate had even felt guilty about turning him away so harshly.

How stupid it was, in retrospect, to feel guilty.

Then Doug did what he did and any friendly feelings she still had for him evaporated. She hated him more than she thought she could have hated anyone. Kate Garcia had never claimed nor been accused of being a lenient or forgiving person. She had hated a lot of people before and after Doug Eiffel, but none with as much nauseous loathing.

She resented him even more when it became clear that Anne didn’t blame him for what happened, when Anne granted him the forgiveness he did not deserve, when she wanted to see him (in the days before Doug died). Kate did not allow Anne to visit her father in the Harris County prison, lying and telling her it was against the rules to see him yet. Kate felt guilty about that now, but back then she could not have stomached seeing him and Anne was already so fragile and worn out.

The first time General Warren J. Kepler (then Major Warren J. Kepler) came to her door with a briefcase full of money like a movie kidnapper, he explained that Doug had been specially selected by Goddard Futuristics for a top secret project.

Kate had made her feelings on the matter extremely clear: “I don’t care what you do with him. Just make sure it hurts.”

It must have been, because less than a year later Doug was dead. The prison said it was due to an aneurysm, but Kate always thought it was suspect that he should die so quickly after being recruited. Odds were whatever Goddard Futuristics did to him caused his premature death. But they continued to pay her and she let it go. It had been a difficult decision to make, but she needed the money for Anne and it wasn’t as if fighting them would do any good. At the time without Goddard she wouldn’t have even been able to get a good lawyer, certainly not someone who could stand up to the behemoth of Goddard Futuristics, the largest tech giant on earth. There was nothing to gain in pursuing justice. So she didn’t.

Doug’s death…

It had hit her hard. Harder than she thought it would...than she thought it could. As much as she hated him, she still cried, her heart still ached. He was the father of her child. He had been her best friend. She had loved him once with all of her heart. Doug wasn’t an evil man. He never had been. Selfish, reckless, unthinking, stupid, very very stupid, but not evil.

There were so many things she loved about him once. So many fond memories.

She had been sober for four years when Doug died and for the first time in those four years she went to a liquor store. She walked inside like a woman in a dream. She kept thinking of his face, of his voice, of him. She thought of him as he once was. Him as he became. She thought of the club where they first met each other, dancing and singing to a remix of Britney Spears’s “Toxic.” She thought of waking up in his bed to him making lopsided vaguely-Pikachu-shaped pancakes. She thought of the day she found out she was pregnant, how Doug had promised to stick by her. She thought of crying together through the withdrawal and laughing as they planned their baby’s future. She thought of Anne’s birth and the soft joy on his face as he held his daughter for the first time as he swore that he would protect her from the world. She thought of him teaching Anne the Jaws theme on her kiddy xylophone. She thought of him dancing with Anne around the room. Of him in a Santa suit on Christmas. Of the intricate Halloween costumes he constructed for Anne and himself and the others he had planned but never got the chance to make. He had a list on his phone that would have lasted into Anne’s thirties.

And she thought of him the day of the accident. She thought of him sitting in the police car, wide eyed and haunted, a small square of gauze taped in the corner of his forehead. Rage overtook Kate. Anne might have been dying! Anne was in a coma and he just had a little scratch!

Kate had hit Doug as hard as she could. The police grabbed her by the wrist and shoulder and pulled her off him. “He kidnapped my daughter!” she shrieked. “He hurt her! He hurt her!” The cops were more understanding after that. She had never trusted the police, she still didn’t, but she appreciated it when they let her go to punch Doug a couple more times, turned away so their body cameras conveniently wouldn’t see. Doug hadn’t said anything. He looked at her with hollow green eyes, horror clear even through the drunken haze that hung over him like a shroud.

That horror faded into something dead by the time he went to trial. Or waived his right to a jury trial and plead guilty. She swore his eyes just weren’t as bright as they were before. But maybe she had just wanted to see that.

That was the last time she saw him. And then he died.

She had walked into the rum aisle and found the Sailor Jerry. She and Doug drank it together so many times. She just wanted to chase him out of her head. She just wanted to stop feeling. She just wanted it all to go away. She bought it as if it was rope she would use to hang herself. She didn’t say a word to the cashier. She had opened the bottle right there in the parking lot, wanting to escape the battling feelings ripping her apart.

But then she thought of Anne. Anne didn’t deserve a drunkard for a mother. Anne needed her then perhaps more than she ever had before, or more than she had since the Crash. Anne deserved the world and while Kate would never be able to give her that the least she could do was give her her best self. She caught her own sobbing reflection in the bottle and rage and self-disgust surged through her. She threw the bottle onto the pavement where it shattered. Kate spent the next hour crying and cursing against her car’s steering wheel. She hadn’t so much held a bottle of alcohol since then.

Life moved forward and she recovered from the shock and angst caused by Doug,’s demise. It faded into an old scar, always there but easier to ignore than the open wound it once was. She was happy. Happier than she ever thought she could be. She had always thought contentment was a lie. She didn’t know you could live without constant dread and anxiety, that you could push those to the back of your mind and truly enjoy every moment. Anne made her happy. There was nothing in the world she would trade her life for now; nothing she would change. If all the horrors she endured before were necessary to come to this moment then they were all worth it.

Kate and Anne were cleaning up the kitchen after dinner when the knock came. Anne obviously didn’t react, but she looked up from the pot she was scrubbing when Kate lightly touched her shoulder.

Someone is at the door, Kate signed. I’ll be right back.

Anne nodded and went back to scrubbing. Anne could speak and her accent was far less detectable than most deaf people’s, thanks to her speech therapists and the fact that she had already learned to talk when Doug crashed the car. However, speech was not her favorite way of communicating. She much preferred to sign and did so whenever she was around people who knew ASL. She could lip read, but it was an inexact science, Kate had learned, it was easier and neater to just sign.

A mother in the neighborhood, an idiot ableist cow that Kate hated since the day she said this, once asked Kate if it was painful to have a child who didn’t want to speak to her. And Kate explained through her teeth that Anne did speak to her, just in the way that was easiest for her and made her the most comfortable. Ignoring this the woman had shaken her head and said, “Such a shame.” Then Kate called her a bitch.

Kate was not popular among neighborhood moms. She just didn't fit in with these stuck-up, self-centered, hypocritical white people. But she stayed here for Anne.

Kate walked to the door and went up on tiptoe to look through the peephole. She had lived in too many bad neighborhoods to just open the door. There was a man on the stoop. Tall, dark skinned, with wavy, almost curly, black hair and a 5 o’clock shadow with a smattering of gray.

He looked startlingly like an older...well obviously it wasn’t him. She had just been thinking about Doug, that was all, that was why she saw his face on this stranger. Well, whoever he was, he didn’t look threatening. Still, she reached into the pocket of the hoodie on the rack by the door and produced a folding knife disguised as a key. She put it in the pocket of her shorts, then she opened the door.

“Hi, Kate,” he said in Doug’s voice, “I’m sorry.”

Doug’s face. Doug’s voice.

“Doug?!” Kate whispered. She almost collapsed. She was losing her mind. She was just imagining things. She was dreaming. This poor man probably had no idea what she was talking about.

But then he said, “yeah. Yeah, it’s me,” he ran a hand through his hair and sighed, “dammit...I had a whole plan for how I was gonna do this and I totally forgot it all, because of course I did—”

Kate tried to slam the door on the ghost.

“Whoa! Hey! Just a second!” Doug said, throwing out a hand into the doorway.

She paused and said in a low voice, “you are dead. You’ve been dead for seven goddamn years. How the fuck are you at my door?!”

“I know this is really crazy! But don’t go for Venkman yet! It’s more a Bourne Legacy thing and less a Patrick Swayze thing!” he said.

It was him, because no one else talked like that.

“You had better start talking, Douglas Fernand Eiffel,” she said in a quiet shaking voice.

“...Can I come in?” the not-ghost asked almost sheepishly.

She gave him a hard-eyed look.

“I’ll explain everything, I promise, but I don’t have a lot of time!” Doug said, desperately. “Please, Kate!”

What else could she do? Kate stepped aside and he came in.

“Start. Talking,” she said, jabbing him in the chest. That convinced her he wasn’t some kind of hallucination, at least. His pecs were a lot harder at 37 than they had been at 29 and his hair was different, no longer the military crew cut she was used to seeing him with in the good times but hanging almost to his shoulders. But it was much better cared for and neater than it had been when she saw him for the last time in that courtroom.. He had lost the beard too, settling back into the scruff he seemed to have even moments after shaving. He didn’t look drunk. He looked downright healthy, if utterly melancholy. His green eyes were even more striking than she remembered, but still shuttered and mournful.

“Okay,” he said holding up his hands, “believe me I want to…” but he stalled, searching her face. “You...look good,” he said dumbly.

“No,” she snapped. “No, we are not playing catch-up as if I haven’t spent the majority of the last decade thinking that you were worm food! You do not get to act like it’s just your week with Anne! Why the Hell did they tell me you died?! I got a fucking death certificate, Doug! We had a funeral!”

“You had a funeral?” he said, almost sounding touched, as if he just expected her to leave him in some prison cemetery. Which she would admit she definitely considered.

But Kate did not want to discuss that now, not when Doug was apparently alive and well. “Yeah, we had a fucking funeral! Everything was legit and official! So how the fuck are you in my living room?!”

“Yeah, uh, that’s a good question,” Doug said, rubbing the back of his head. “You know General Kepler?”

“Yes, of course I know him. He’s been bringing what I assumed was Goddard Futuristics’ hush money since before you died.” Kate realized how insane that sounded. “Supposedly died. Is he in on this too?”

“He’s my boss,” Doug said.

“Does Goddard Futuristics even know you two exist or have you just been using their name?” she demanded. Who was actually paying her?

Eiffel chuckled mirthlessly. “Oh no, they know. Believe me,” there was something incredibly sinister in his voice as he said that. “We both work for…worked for...Goddard.”

“I don’t know what a multinational mega-corporation that employs some of the most brilliant minds on Earth would want with you, unless they ran out of guinea pigs,” Kate said.

“You know,” said Doug, “I’m still not sure why they picked me either. I was in prison. I was a drunk. I was…”

“The literal worst?”

“Whatever’s below that,” he replied without the barest hint of disagreement. “But in the end the why doesn’t really matter, because they did choose me. Or at least Kepler did.”

“That doesn’t explain why they said you were dead,” she pointed out.

“For anonymity.”

“Why do you need to be anonymous?” she asked.

“I’ve done some…not so great things,” he answered.

“I know that better than almost anyone,” Kate reminded him, dryly.

“Some other not so great things,” he said. He winced like he was pulling a bandaid off. “Kepler is the head of Goddard’s Strategic Intelligence division, it’s their paramilitary and intelligence gathering department.”

“I’m sorry, their what?!”

“Strategic Intellig—you know what? Let’s just say Goddard isn’t as Snuggle Bear warm ‘n’ fuzzy as they want you to believe,” Doug said grimly. “Kepler took me on to be part of Warren’s Angels.”

Kate started to laugh, “so you want me to believe that you’re some kind of super spy for the people who made the AI at Anne’s school?”

At that declaration Doug suddenly looked actually frightened. “Goddard has an AI at Anne’s school?”

“Yes, why?”

“Remember I said I worked for Goddard? Yeah, past tense. They went Nutter Butter-y-er than their usual Lex Luthor level and are up somewhere in genocidal fuck-head territory and now we’re on the run—”

“Stop! Just stop! All of this is insane! You know that, right? You’re trying to tell me you’re a super corporate spy?!”

“Kinda?” said Doug. “I’m a corporate Swiss Army Knife of really horrific things.”

“For Goddard Futuristics?”

“There’s more to them than you think. They’re an evil goddamn iceberg.”

She stared at him and shook her head in disbelief. None of this made any sense.

“I know this sounds completely Hollaback Girl bananas, but it’s true and you and Anne are in serious trouble.”

That snapped her out of her shock. “What do you mean we’re ‘in trouble’?!”

Doug opened his mouth to answer but before he could Kate heard pottery smash behind her. She turned and saw Anne standing in the doorway of the dining room with the remains of a bowl of strawberries at her feet, shock written on all her features.

Anne hadn’t seen her father in seven years, not since she was three years old. She kept a framed photo of him on her desk. It was the only picture of Doug still in the house. It showed a three-year-old Anne being carried on her father’s shoulders at a July Fourth parade. They were both so happy. Kate thought that that must have been the Doug Eiffel that Anne remembered. She never knew the drunken monster for more than one night. That would have been more than enough for most people to lose faith in someone, but Anne was remarkable and still loved him. She still missed him. She wanted to know everything about him, and Kate did her best, even though it sometimes hurt to tell her. Anne didn’t know much about her parents’ history as alcoholics beyond the essentials that came with the obvious questions surrounding what Doug did that night. Kate’s stories were always far more child-friendly than the events they were based on had been, many unsavory details scrubbed away for the final presentation. All Anne had were stories and Kate knew how badly she wanted the real thing, her dad back.

“Daddy?!” Anne asked aloud.

Kate looked back at Doug. He was silent, but, she realized, there were tears in his eyes threatening to leak down his cheeks. He bent down to Anne’s level. Kate was about to remind him she couldn’t hear and that it was his fault when Doug brought up his hands and began to sign.

Hi, Anne. I missed you.

Anne ran full pelt at Doug and engulfed him in a huge hug. Doug wrapped his arms around her and held her close. He squeezed his eyes shut and softly sobbed like he had been holding back the flood for years and finally the dam burst. For a short time Kate just watched, her heart aching with more feelings than she could articulate.

Then she remembered what Doug said before Anne appeared: they were “in trouble.” Kate gently touched them both on the shoulder and they glanced up.

I’m sorry, she signed with an ease and familiarity Doug lacked, but Dad has something really important he needs to tell me. Right now.

Anne looked at Doug as if for clarification. He nodded.

Did you know he was alive? Anne signed to Kate.

No, Kate answered. He just showed up. “Start talking,” she said aloud to Doug.

“General Kepler, me, and the rest of his ragtag team of misfits are kinda sorta on the lam.”

“General Kepler?” asked Anne, she clearly picked up that lip movement. Anne had always been fascinated by Warren Kepler, somewhere between curious and charmed. “Are you talking about General Kepler?”

He’s my boss, Doug signed.

“Dad can explain later. He needs to tell me something important,” Kate said it out loud as she signed it, demanding Doug’s attention, “why are you running and what the hell does that have to do with us?”

“You’re not going to believe me but I swear to God I am being completely honest,” he said. “Goddard is going Magneto and is trying to wipe out most of the human race with a giant plague. Then they’re going to basically enslave what's left!”

“What?!” Kate and Anne said at once. Kate looked disbelieving, Anne looked scared. Kate didn’t know how much of that Anne had picked up, but clearly enough.

“They’ve got a killer eugenics virus they’re ready to sic on everyone. We’re trying to stop that from happening!” Doug said, “But Goddard knows where you live and they might come after you.”

Anne looked at her mother in confusion. Kate scowled and crossed her arms. “I think you should leave, Doug.”

“No!” Doug insisted, “no, no, you have to believe me! It’s true! I wouldn’t be darkening your doorstep if it wasn’t!”

It was weird that after seven years dead he decided to show back up now. There had to be a reason for it. And the fact that he was pleading with her without the hint of a reference was striking, but this story? This tale of spies and evil mega corporations and plagues? This was right out of a video game. It was bullshit. It had to be.

“Oh come on!” snapped Kate. “You honestly expect to believe any of this?!”

“Well...I kinda hoped,” Doug said, weakly, pathetically.

“T.S.,” Kate said.

Doug was about to say something else when his phone began violently shaking in his pocket. He pulled out an ancient flip phone. The kind a drug dealer would have, not the kind a super spy would. Doug Eiffel was not the drug dealing type, but he also wasn’t the Fake His Own Death type, and once upon a time she would have said he wasn’t the kidnapping type. Time makes fools of us all.

“Eiffel, get out of there now!” said a woman’s sharp voice over the phone.

Doug glanced at his watch. “I still have time!” he said defiantly.

“It’s not that, you dingus!” The woman shouted, “you’ve got company!”

“What?!” Doug asked, horrified.

“We’ve been found! I’m already trying to lose them but they’re on my tail and you’ve got a handful of SI-4 agents—”

“Is that all?” he let of a puff of air, “ I think I can handle a couple of koopa troopas—”

“Let me rephrase, at least four SI-4 agents and Rachel fucking Young is with them!”

The color drained from Doug’s face at the sound of that name being shouted at him. He swallowed. “How much time do I have?” The doorbell rang. “Never mind…”

“I can’t pick you up! I’m being chased!” said the woman on the phone. “Good luck!” Doug snapped the phone shut.

“Friends of yours?” Kate asked sarcastically.

“Kate...whatever you do...do not open that door,” said Doug slowly, carefully. “Please.”

The doorbell sounded again. There was a big red light above the door to tell Anne when the doorbell went off. It barely had time to cool before it lit up again as the person on the other side leaned on it. Anne looked from the light to her mother.

“Why? Is it the police?” Kate asked. “Are they after you?” She took a step toward the door.

Doug grabbed her wrist. He was stronger than she remembered him being. “Kate—”

“Let! Me! Go!” Kate angrily enunciated every word, she pulled against him and he released her. She realized she never would have broken his grip, and that terrified her.

“Why can’t you believe me?!” he asked.

“You must be joking,” Kate scoffed. She was about to open the door when she heard Anne gasp. Kate quickly spun around and saw that Doug had scooped Anne up (and held her one-armed despite the fact that Anne was 10, he had gotten much stronger). In his free hand he held a pistol.

“What are you doing?” asked Anne, confused and afraid, eyes locked on the gun. She had never seen one up close before, Kate had made sure of that.

Kate’s heart caught in her chest. “Doug, what the fuck are you doing?” said Kate in a terrified whisper.

She hated guns. She had always hated guns. Her father, just as much of a boozehound as she once was, had a pistol he liked to swing around when she was a little girl. He would threaten to horribly murder the entire family with it. As an adult Kate had lived in some not-so-great neighborhoods where gunshots rang out at random, gang members stood armed on the streets, and the cops shot people like it was open season. And then there was the thing she had done. Guns were a mark of her past and the horrors of it. Even when Doug had been in the Air Force he kept his service weapon far from her and locked it up in a drawer when he wasn’t at work. Now he had one in his hand.

“I’m running away,” Doug said. And just like that he did.

He bolted from the living room, through the dining room, and toward the back of the house. Kate stood there dumbstruck. Terrified. Frozen. She didn’t think there was anything a cornered Doug Eiffel wasn’t capable of. The doorbell sounded again. Kate didn’t trust the cops, she never had, but if it was the police or really anyone after Doug they could help her catch him. They could save Anne.

She tore open the door. There was an extremely pretty and equally well-dressed woman standing on the stoop. She was on the smaller side but she wore very high heels. Her hair was long and was jet black. Her skin was olive, lighter than Doug’s and less red than Kate’s. She had heavily lidded and very cold brown eyes. She was flanked by two people in military-style uniforms although Kate didn’t recognize the branch, fanned out behind them were two others.

“He’s here! He has my daughter! He went out the back! Get me my daughter back!” Kate shouted immediately.

The woman looked surprised, then smiled wolfishly, “thank you for your assistance.” Kate was about to tell them to get going when the woman turned to one of the soldiers. “Take her.” To the others she added, “spread out! Find him! Cut him off!”

“Take—?” Kate never finished that thought.

She only just saw the shape of the thing, like a small railroad spike with a large head and dial at the top, before it was plunged into the flesh at the back of her neck. An intense pain rushed through her. The stabbing feeling was followed by a chill that surged down her spine and up into her head. She let out a single yelp, but then she had no idea why she would have done that. The chill subsided into a gentle warmth. She had been so worked up a minute ago and now that seemed like the most ridiculous thing in the world. Why would she ever be so upset? Oh, thank God for that spike, it must be the thing that made her feel this good, this calm. It must have been what let her know everything was going to be okay.

“Come this way, Ms. Garcia,” said the soldier.

“Right away,” she said, closing the door to her house for the last time.

Chapter Text

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuuuuuuuck!” Eiffel thought as he ran through manicured suburban backyards. Anne was clinging desperately to him and Young’s goons were not far behind. The SI-4 agents had opened fire on him and he kept running, what else could he do? He just held Anne close to him so that a bullet would have to travel through him before it could touch her. Anne had her face buried in the collar of his shirt and Eiffel was struck by a distant momentary thankfulness that he had put on a clean shirt before showing up at Kate’s home. He wished Kate had listened to him. He wished he didn’t have to leave her behind. But above all he would protect Anne. He hurt her once, he would never let anyone else do that again.

The operatives charged after him. He tested and shot one of them in the leg. The Team Rocket Grunt fell back with a groan, before collapsing probably from the pain in the too green grass. Eiffel felt a wave of relief before running straight through the trail of a sprinkler system.

Lights burst to life on every porch and deck they passed. As Eiffel narrowly avoided tripping on a Skipit he hoped there weren’t any bonafide NRA members in the neighborhood. Anne was crying softly. Eiffel didn’t have the breath to comfort her, nor would she be able to hear him if he did. Nothing else he could do now. He couldn’t slow down.

A fence forced him to change direction. Another SI-4 agent, someone Eiffel recognized, was waiting for him at the top of the driveway. His name was Trevor Weaver and he was 22 freshly graduated from Caltech, a miracle worker when it came to Pulse Beacon Relays. Weaver and Eiffel had just come back from a deep space Relay repair mission to the Hephaestus station before Kepler decided to give into the Light Side. He and Weaver had a good time together, talkin’ deep space comms equipment and cult movies.

Eiffel could hear Kepler in his head commanding him to shoot Weaver. But Weaver hadn’t taken a shot yet. He didn’t even have his gun drawn, Eiffel didn’t know what kept Weaver from shooting; affection for Eiffel, stupidity, or because they were being watched by the civilians in the houses on either side. Whatever the reason the situation was the same: Eiffel had his gun out and Weaver did not.

Eiffel had less than a second to decide what to do. Kepler would have pulled the trigger without thinking. Maxwell would have paused for maybe a half second before killing him, Jacobi a half second longer than Maxwell, and Lovelace...Eiffel had seen Lovelace kill ruthlessly just as often as he’d seen her act mercifully with little thought of self-interest. Lovelace was and always had been a wild card. She could move in any direction like the queen of the SI’s chess set.

Eiffel never liked killing and did his best to avoid it. Especially if he knew the person, because he was a coward it was always easier to kill a stranger who he could pretend was just an extra in somebody else’s story rather than the protagonist of their own. Besides, he wouldn’t subject Anne to seeing the horror of a close up kill.

Instead, Eiffel body-checked Weaver. He wasn’t the strongest person in the world but between his force, speed, and catching Weaver off-guard the younger man went down with an undignified yelp. “Better luck next time,” Eiffel panted as he hoisted Anne a little higher, and kept going.

Weaver shouted for him to stop or he would shoot. Eiffel took the chance. It paid off. He had outrun or confused his attackers, the gunfire seemed to have stopped for now.

His phone buzzed in his pocket barely audible over the scream of police sirens, his own feet pounding the sidewalk, and the commotion of civilians. He ignored it. People were cautiously coming out onto their stoops to see just what was going on. Eiffel heard what some of them were saying as he ran past.

“Is that the Garcia girl?”

“Who is that man?”

“He’s armed! I think he’s armed!”

“Get back in the house!”

“Where are the goddamn cops?!”

“Hey, you, slow down!”

He was thankful for the attention they were giving him, at least for the moment. Were Kepler still the head of the Strategic Intelligence division it wouldn’t have mattered who was there. Kepler would have given orders to execute them no matter what, but Reyes, the man who would have taken over the SI in the absence of both Kepler and Lovelace, not to mention the entirety of the SI-5, would be playing it safer. Odds were Reyes wouldn’t want a public execution in the suburbs, Revolutionary France style.

Eiffel was running out of steam. He didn’t know how much longer he could keep this up. He wasn’t young anymore and hadn’t been for a long time.

He was coming to the edge of the street, he was going to have to make a call and pick a direction that could mean life or death for his daughter. Just as he was considering his options a very familiar white van pulled up to the curb. Before he could even properly register what he was seeing Lovelace threw open the passenger side door and shouted at him, “Get in! Get in!”

Eiffel took a leap and landed in the seat, he dumped Anne into the back and used one long leg to yank the door closed behind him. Lovelace slammed on the gas even as he was pulling the door closed and they were projected down the street with several gs worth of force.

Trying to catch his breath Eiffel looked back at Anne. She was silently crying. His heart broke. He reached out, then paused, then finally dared to squeeze her hand. She looked up at him. He couldn’t believe she was really here, that this was really happening. He was nauseous with emotion. He didn’t know if he could talk without throwing up.

“It’s okay,” he said as soon as he had enough breath to speak. Then he signed it too. “We’re okay.”

Where’s my mom? Who were those people? Who’s this person? What’s going on? Anne signed in succession so rapidly it took all of Eiffel’s concentration to keep up.

Your mom is going to be okay, I promise, Eiffel signed back.

Where is she?

Eiffel considered his answer for a moment, fingers stumbling. But Anne was looking at him with so much fear and desperate hope. Some people took her, but I promise you, we will get her back.

Who? Who took her? Anne asked with shaky hands.

Eiffel didn’t know how to answer. Goddard Futuristics had done so much for Anne — for a lot of the world, but especially for Anne in particular. Eiffel had made sure that was the case. He looked to Lovelace for support but Lovelace had her eyes locked on the road, besides, she didn’t know sign language and Eiffel hadn’t said a word in the past few minutes.

When Doug didn’t answer Anne shouted “Who took my mom?!” Her voice hoarse from tears.

Eiffel’s eyes found Anne’s again. He could see a lot of Kate in her, a lot of Kate, a bit of Kate’s sister, a bit of his own mother, and a lot, he realized with a sting, of himself. There were certain things photos and videos couldn’t capture, but only flesh and blood could convey. Her lip trembled and broke Eiffel from his thoughts. Eiffel replied, There are some bad people who want to stop General Kepler, he spelled out the entire name, he assumed Anne must have a name sign for him but Eiffel didn’t know it; me, Major Lovelace, he pointed to her along with signing her name, and our friends from trying to stop them from doing something really bad. So they want to stop us from stopping them.. Eiffel winced at his own purposeful and obvious crypticness.

Anne stared at him in confusion. He tried to explain himself. After several false starts Anne stopped him. Are you a superhero? she asked.

Eiffel blinked, then he laughed. He laughed hard and maybe a little too manically. A superhero? That was probably the thing he was furthest from.

“What’s so funny?” asked Lovelace.

“She thinks we’re superheroes,” said Eiffel, barely catching his breath.

Anne made a wordless, indignant sound. You disappeared, you have a secret life, you’re still keeping lots of things secret, you are trying to do good things, and you have bad guys after you. It sounds like you are a superhero.

Eiffel’s heart wrenched a little for her. If only. I’m sorry, Supergirl, said Doug, using the nickname he hadn’t used in years, again spellings it out. He hadn’t even read a Supergirl comic since he last saw Anne. We’re not superheroes.

But you’re going to save my mom? she asked.

Of course, Doug said.

And you’ll keep doing good things?

Doug was slightly more reluctant to answer that. Keep doing good things? That would be impossible. Start doing good things? That was for damned sure. Yes, he said, moved by her inquisitive and hopeful gaze.

Superheroes, she signed back at him. She wore a weak satisfied smile. Probably trying to convey a confidence she didn’t feel, Doug worried that like her parents she was already trying to hide from things that hurt.

He reached out and ruffled her hair before signing, We’re pretty bad superheroes, but thanks.

“You’re Major Lovelace?” asked Anne. She said “Lovelace” phonetically Love-lace instead of -less, as pretty much anyone would with only the spelling.

“Yes,” said Lovelace.

“She can’t hear you,” Eiffel reminded her.

“Yeah, I figured you’d translate,” Lovelace said.

“Oh, shit!” Doug said.

“Are you going to swear around your daughter?” Lovelace asked in surprise.

“Yeah,” Doug said. “Kate and I were never going to not swear, so we just figured,” he shrugged, “why not? Seems to work for the McElroy brothers...anyway, let me translate.” Doug signed Lovelace’s affirmative.

“You’re friends with my dad?” Anne asked once the situation and answer were made clear.

Lovelace glanced over at Eiffel for a half second then smiled affectionately. “Yeah, I am.” Eiffel repeated it.

“You think we’ll get my mom back, right?”

“Of course we will,” said Lovelace. Eiffel translated loyally.

Anne sniffled and nodded, wiping her nose with the back of her hand, “okay.”

“Did you see what happened?” Eiffel asked Lovelace, sparing a look at her.

“Enough,” Lovelace said. “Rachel Young got her, probably with a restraining bolt, they came after me right then. I’m sorry, Doug, there wasn’t anything I could do.”

Eiffel leaned back in his seat. He buried his face in his hands. “I tried to get her to believe me,” he said into his palms. “Of course she didn’t. Why should she have? I’m not exactly Honest Abe! And now the devil in Prada and her flying monkeys’ve got her!”

“You’re right, they have her,” Lovelace said. “She’s at the mercy of some of the most sadistic and psychotic people in the world—”

“Not helping!” Eiffel snapped, voice muffled from his hands.

“But she’s not dead yet,” Lovelace said.

“How do we even know that?!” Eiffel asked.

“Because they took her for a reason. They’re probably trying to lure you out. She’s no good for that dead,” Lovelace pointed out. “If Rachel wanted to kill her she wouldn’t have bothered with the restraining bolt.”

Eiffel raised his head from his hands. She was right. There was still hope. And so long as there was a sliver of hope Eiffel would cling to it.

“We will save her,” Lovelace promised Eiffel this time.

Eiffel swallowed. There was a pause before Eiffel said, “I can’t believe your ex kidnapped my ex.” He gave Lovelace a mirthless smile.

“It’s not that surprising,” said Lovelace. “We are talking about Rachel after all.”

Lovelace’s phone violently vibrated where it sat in the ashtray. She was getting a text. Lovelace nodded at the phone, “Would you get that? It’s been buzzing for like a half-hour and I haven’t been able to deal with it.”

Eiffel grabbed it and got a look at the clock. “Oh shit,” he whispered. They were late for pick up.

It would have to be General Kepler. They were not at the rendezvous point. Hopefully the other three were still safe, but they certainly weren’t sound. They had no means of escape. Eiffel realized that he had potentially doomed them by doing this. And as awful as that gut-punch felt, he would probably do the same thing again. He glanced back at Anne, she was staring out the window, looking vaguely shell-shocked but calmer than she had been. He would. Then he flipped open Lovelace’s phone.

Why aren’t you at the rendezvous point? - Gen. Kepler

Where the holy hell are you?! - Gen Kepler

This is not a game! We need extraction! - Gen Kepler

WE NEED PICK UP NOW! WE JUST SAW THE WICKED WITCH HERSELF, RACHEL GODDAMN YOUNG HEADED TO THE COMPOUND!!! SHE WAS CLOSE ENOUGH THAT I COULD SMELL THE PERFUME SHE USES TO HIDE HER NATURAL ODOR OF ROTTING MEAT!!! - K

You had better be in very real danger or I swear to the myriad of gods and demons ever conceived by man that I will acquaint myself with every single one of the internal organs in your incompetent, useless, worthless bodies and I will use a melon baller as means of introduction! - K

You would be better off dead

By the last message Kepler had stopped signing his texts and dropped his usually exacting punctuation marks. That was a bad sign. As that thought registered the phone rang again, displaying Kepler’s burner number. Eiffel swallowed and answered it. “Hello?” he said in a voice that only cracked a little.

“Where. Are. You?” demanded Kepler every word icy with malice.

“That’s uh…a really funny story,” Eiffel said looking pitifully over at Lovelace. She cringed sympathetically. “Remember when you told me not to talk to anyone I knew? I kinda sorta maybe remixed that a little and did the exact opposite. For funsies? Haha?”

Kepler growled like a tiger.

“I guess you had to be there,” said Eiffel pathetically, his mouth dry.

“Where. Are. They?” Kepler asked in that same slow threatening tone, the rumble of a tsunami before it hit the shore.

“Anne’s in the backseat and Kate…” he took a shaking breath. “Young took Kate.”

A pause. “Meet us at the Galleria in Houston. We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“What?!” Eiffel asked. He hadn’t exactly expected Kepler to jump to rescue Kate, but he at least expected him to be a little sensitive. Maybe apologize. “Sir, Young took Kate!”

“That’s entirely your fault,” Kepler said coldly.

“My fault?” Eiffel repeated.

“They were obviously under surveillance! How many security firms did you work for before Goddard? Four? You’re the security expert! You should have put that together without my having to spell it out!”

Eiffel said nothing. He realized Kepler was right. He felt empty suddenly. He sat back in his chair and stared out the windshield, barely seeing the scenery as it blurred past them.

“Meet us at the Neiman Marcus entrance of the Galleria. The sooner we can put this behind us the better.” Kepler hung up the phone.

Slowly Eiffel closed Lovelace’s phone and put it back in the ashtray. He took a cigarette packet out from the glove compartment, stashed there when he had played navigator yesterday. He slapped it against his palm with more force than usual. Kepler was right. Eiffel did this. Well, that was all the more reason to get her back. He would save Kate with or without Kepler’s help and approval.

“What did he say?” asked Lovelace.

“He wants us to meet him in Houston,” said Eiffel, “at the Galleria.” He tore off the plastic packaging off the pack with his teeth.

“I can hear the ‘but’ in your voice,” Lovelace said.

“But in his text he said Maleficent was going to Castle Frankenstein, which means that’s probably where Kate is.”

“The lab?” Lovelace clarified.

“Yeah.”

“Then I know where we’re going,” said Lovelace with a reassuring smile.

“Yeah?” Eiffel asked.

“Yeah,” Lovelace said as he lit it.

Eiffel smiled. He had been hoping she wouldn’t need much convincing, but the fact that she needed none was a relief. He put a cigarette in his mouth.

Lovelace continued, “We can’t let Kepler and the kids have all the fun. Besides, it’s been a while. I should really check in on Rachel…”

Chapter Text

Once they were all back in the aqueduct Kepler nodded to Jacobi, who in turn hit the detonator hanging from his belt. There was a muffled blast overhead and the entire tunnel shook. The holes Jacobi had blown into the aqueduct earlier immediately filled with debris: dirt, steel, and cement as the sub basements came crumbling down. The buildings themselves would remain intact, maybe a little more fragile than before at most, but everything below ground and behind the curtain had been collapsed and buried. They set off back down the tunnel toward the road.

Usually this would be when they started to debrief. Or at the very least they’d be joking and talking. The hard part was over. But Kepler was silent. Maxwell glanced at Jacobi for an answer, a reason for Kepler’s dark mood despite their success. Jacobi made a face to stress that now was not the time. He would tell her everything, of course, they always told each other everything, but not now. He would tell her the next time Kepler wasn’t there. Maxwell had no idea what had happened. As far as she was concerned the mission was successful, well, aside from that hiccup at the end when Kepler demanded she erase Algorithm. Arm-grin. Grim. Arngrim. Whatever.

She had only glanced at the files before she secured them behind an immense mental block. Something about soldiers. She had no idea whose or what or why. She was curious, especially considering how insistent Kepler was that she destroy the information, but she would wait. Jacobi no longer seemed as anxious as he had been before, probably thanks to the adrenaline and the fact that they were walking away from immediate danger. But he seemed almost shaken, a little pale, a little sweaty. What could have happened in there that rattled both men so badly? One of them being put on edge was rare, both of them at once? This must have been something.

Maxwell didn’t get to read the Decima files either. There were just too many of them and not enough time. She didn’t know what the boys had destroyed. She was looking forward to Jacobi’s explanation.

They climbed out of the pipe to the deafening roar of crickets. The lights from the complex were out. The explosion must have taken out some underground wiring. They were in near blackness, lit only by the distant city lights and the scattered lampposts on the highway ahead of them. Maxwell closed the hatch.

“Well,” Kepler said, finally breaking the uneasy silence, “that’s done.”

“I think it went well, sir,” said Jacobi weakly.

“We were successful,” Kepler conceded. “But that does not mean it went well. Maxwell, were you able to delete Arngrim?”

“About that,” said Maxwell apprehensively. “I was able to implant a block. But it’s not a permanent solution. It might take some time, but Pryce will be able to get around it.”

Kepler’s face screwed up in rage, Maxwell tensed, ready for him to explode, ready to defend herself should it come to that. But he turned away from her, fists at his side, and shook his head. “We’ll deal with it,” he muttered, “one step at a time.”

Maxwell let out a breath. She and Jacobi exchanged relieved glances. Maxwell urged Jacobi toward Kepler with a gesture of her head. He winced. She insisted and when he raised his hand, fist in his palm like a cup in a saucer to indicate they should rock-paper-scissors for the responsibility Maxwell bodily shoved him forward. Neither of them was in danger of being called strong, but Jacobi got the hint that he was the one better suited to calm the temper tantrum brewing in Kepler’s silence.

“Forget about it for now!” said Jacobi to Kepler, “we took care of the Decima and you put a dent in Arngrim!”

“One...step...at a...time,” Kepler repeated more slowly, ignoring Jacobi.

Maxwell looked around, through the trees. She had wondered why Lovelace and Eiffel had been so quiet and now realized the reason, because they weren’t there. Neither was the van. “Uh, boys…” said Maxwell, “where’s our ride?”

Both men spun around. Kepler ran to the road and looked down it in both directions. Then he let out a growl of frustration. “Oh goddammit!” roared Kepler. He gritted his teeth, took several deep breaths through his nose, then, slightly calmer, he pulled his phone from his pocket. He dialed and put it to his ear. They waited in anxious silence.

“She’s not answering her phone!” Kepler threw his phone to the ground. Jacobi swiftly picked it up, Kepler held out his hand for it, flexing his fingers and not looking at Jacobi. Jacobi sighed and reluctantly gave it back to him. Kepler gestured for them to follow and they set off along the deserted highway.

“Do you think they’re in trouble?” Jacobi asked cautiously.

“If they aren’t, they will be very soon!” Kepler replied. He began hammering out a text message. They waited. No reply. After a few minutes he sent another. Nothing.

They walked in silence for a long time, Kepler practically shaking with rage. Neither Jacobi nor Maxwell dared to say a word. Eventually a car appeared on the horizon, coming from the direction of the city. The headlights stained the pavement. It was coming at them with exceptional speed, quickly taking shape as it zoomed closer.

Kepler scowled against the headlights, one hand shielding his eyes. Then his eyes went wide. He grabbed Jacobi and Maxwell by their respective arms and dove with them both into the roadside ditch. “Lie flat!” He hissed. Maxwell did as she was told but peered up as the car passed. She saw why Kepler was concerned. The face of Rachel Young flashed by.

After the car passed they remained quiet and still until it was well out of sight. Then Kepler slowly rose, a hulking shape under the dim city lights. He was broad, all muscle, and over six feet tall. And right now every inch of him visibly shook with anger. “I wanted to be gone before Goddard could get the word out! I am going to flay Eiffel and Lovelace alive!”

Jacobi dusted himself off as he got to his feet. “We have to find them first,” he said, picking up his pack. “So what’s the plan?”

“We get out of here,” said Kepler. “One way or the other.”

“What’s ‘the other’?” Maxwell asked.

“Hoofing it,” he pointed down the road. “Get going,” he said, shoving Jacobi and Maxwell in that direction so hard they both stumbled. Then he resumed his silence.

They kept to the highway. Kepler was quiet and Maxwell became increasingly worried. She glanced at Jacobi who met her gaze and shrugged, expression tense. They walked for at least a mile, the rare car passing by them and occasionally honking to show their concern, the occupants watching them with curiosity.

“I’m going to get us a Lyft,” said Maxwell, having had enough. She pulled her tablet from its pouch.

“Are you serious?!” Kepler demanded, breaking his vow of silence.

“We can’t walk all the way back to town! We don’t know how many other operatives are out here! Do you want to get caught by Young?!” Maxwell replied. Jacobi nervously looked from Maxwell to Kepler. Kepler worked his jaw, staring Maxwell down. And she held his gaze, not unafraid, but unwilling to show fear. Maxwell could not be bullied.

“Call the Lyft,” Kepler finally conceded.

“Where do we want them to take us?” asked Maxwell. They had no rendezvous point besides the one they had just abandoned.

Kepler let out a breath and stared skyward, looking thoughtful for a moment. “The Galleria,” he said. They had passed it earlier.

“Sure,” said Maxwell, “Does the Neiman Marcus entrance work?”

“I don’t know any of the entrances so pick whatever strikes your fancy, Dr. Maxwell.”

“Neiman Marcus is fine, then,” Maxwell said as she placed the order.

They waited on the roadside trying to arrange themselves in a way that looked as innocent as possible. Maxwell thought this was a very tall order. They were all dressed in heavy black clothes despite the sweltering Texas heat. Jacobi had a pair of black-and-red metal goggles with black tinted lenses pressed up onto his forehead and a huge black backpack. Maxwell had a bandana hanging loosely around her neck and a belt with far too many tiny pouches. Kepler, for once, looked the least suspect, but he still looked like an extra from a spy movie, “Ethan Hunt Chic” as Eiffel called it. They were all three dirty, wet, sweaty, and disheveled. All of their weapons were well hidden (they made sure of that as they waited to be picked up) and nothing incriminating was visible in the bag, but that only meant they wouldn’t be immediately arrested. It didn’t mean they wouldn’t raise suspicion.

Once they were as inconspicuous as possible Jacobi and Maxwell sat down in the grass. Kepler paced, occasionally checking his phone or pecking out another text message. He looked bloodless and livid in the white light of his phone screen. There was a fire in those blue eyes that you never wanted directed at you. A fire that promised to consume you and leave nothing behind but maybe a fine layer of ash. Jacobi lay back, hands behind his head, staring up at the starless sky. Maxwell turned her attention to her tablet to watch the driver’s progress. She knew, or at least believed, all three of them were privately terrified that at any moment Goddard would be on them. They were only about a mile or so from the complex. If anyone recognized them and Kepler couldn’t charm his way out of the situation they would very probably be executed extremely quickly. Possibly right there. It wouldn’t be hard to connect them to the attack. But none of that fear could show on the surface. They had been afraid before, eventually you had to get used to it. As much as Maxwell hated it, it never went away.

“He’s here,” Maxwell said looking up.

Esteban the Lyft driver (5 stars) pulled up in his black Toyota Corolla.

“Julia?” asked Esteban when Maxwell opened the door.

“Yep,” Maxwell said. She discreetly handed the tablet to Jacobi and he smashed it under his heavy black boot. It could no longer be used to trace them, the IP was masked and the GPS was disabled, but it was always better to be safe than sorry. Kepler climbed in first, then Maxwell, then Jacobi. The driver watched them all squeeze into the backseat. He smiled at each of them, Maxwell was the only one who returned it. She realized how ridiculous they must have looked. As they pulled away from the curb Kepler sent another text message to Lovelace, Maxwell noted that this one didn’t end in a punctuation mark nor did it even bear so much as his initial. He was pissed.

“You guys headed...” Esteban trailed off taking them in via the rearview mirror and clearly trying to figure out what could have left them looking like they did, “...back from a party?” He was as friendly as possible.

“Yep,” said Maxwell again. Kepler was scowling out the window. Jacobi had his bag on his lap, arms wrapped protectively around it.

“I can take that up front if you want?” he said to Jacobi.

“No,” Jacobi said.

“Sure, okay,” said Esteban, opening one hand on the steering wheel to show his surrender.

They sat in uncomfortable silence. Kepler pulled out his phone again, this time dialing Lovelace’s number. And, miraculously, he got a response.

Maxwell only heard half the conversation and even only part of that because Kepler spoke in such a low growl. From what she could gather something had happened to someone who had been under Goddard surveillance. She glanced over at Jacobi who was also listening intently, leaning in.

“Meet us at the Neiman Marcus entrance of the Galleria. The sooner we can put this behind us the better.” Kepler snapped the phone closed and pinched the bridge of his nose, taking deep breaths.

“Everything okay?” Asked Esteban.

Kepler’s entire demeanor changed. His posture slackened, he smiled brightly, the death grip on his phone loosened. His voice was at its most folksy when he said, “just work things, you know how it can get.”

“Oh yeah, yeah, definitely,” he said reassuringly.

Kepler’s expression tightened as soon as the driver’s eyes were off him. He scowled darkly, sitting in quiet contemplation for a little while. Then he seemed to come to some conclusion. He leaned toward the driver, and spoke in that same cheerful tone, “you know what? I just remembered something, it’s the damnedest thing but we’re going to have to change our destination!”

“Uh...o-okay, you need to open the app and—”

“I will pay you $100 in cash if you break the speed limit and never mention this ride again,” Kepler said, dropping the façade.

“Yeah! Sure!” said Esteban.

“I need you to take us to the Olga Volodin Memorial Laboratory. You can just drop us outside the gates,” Kepler said. Jacobi and Maxwell found each other’s eyes, they both wore matching looks of confusion and shock. Why were they going back into the lion’s den? Why were they walking into Rachel Young’s hands? Jacobi rapped out a text to Kepler as the car took a tight u-turn.

Kepler opened his phone and read Jacobi’s text. He sent his reply to both of his partners.

He went to his ex’s place. Only just avoided capture. His ex has been taken by Young. I had sent a text earlier indicating Young’s location. There’s no way he’s going to listen to reason. So we’re going after them. I will make sure you two are out of the splash zone before I murder them both.

Esteban glanced back at them occasionally on the drive, but he said nothing and readily accepted Kepler’s money. He left them at the outer gates, just in front of the wooded area they had been left off at earlier. They walked back to the lab through the aqueduct. They came upon an opened hatch and Kepler gestured for them to climb up. They were just outside the complex proper, separated from it by a chain link fence. The complex was still dark. The three of them crept silently through the darkness to the shapes of Isabel Lovelace and Doug Eiffel.

“How do we get in?” whispered Lovelace as they approached.

“Without the Demoman? I have no idea,” Eiffel muttered a little too loudly.

Kepler reached around and clapped his hands over their mouths to keep them from screaming too loudly. “You two. Are. The. Deadest. Of meat,” he growled, leaning between them. “We. Are. Leaving.” He steered them around.

“But General—!” said Eiffel.

“Shhh!” hissed Kepler. “Not. A. Single. Goddamn. Word.”

Eiffel remained uncharacteristically defiant, pulling away from Kepler, “I’m not going to abandon her in Isengard! It’s my fault she’s in there!”

“Yes,” said Kepler. “It is. It is entirely your fault, and you’re going to have to live with that. I am not going to risk this entire operation for one woman who is not and should not even be a part of it!”

Eiffel’s face twisted in rage, a look as comical as it was rare. Maxwell couldn’t help but smirk despite the circumstances. “Then don’t,” said Eiffel, “but I’m not leaving the mother of my child at the mercy of those freaking hyenas!”

“Don’t be an idiot!” snapped Kepler.

“General—” Lovelace said.

Kepler held up his hand to stop her. Then he turned to face her, “Major, I am going to pretend that you somehow took a wrong turn and ended up here by mistake rather than betraying your mission. Do not remind me that this was your conscious decision.”

“This isn’t about you!” Lovelace snapped.

“We will discuss this later.”

“We will discuss this now!” she barked back.

“Uh...guys?” Jacobi said.

“We. Will. Not. Talk about this in the open,” Kepler said.

Lovelace stepped up, “you aren’t the last word anymore, General!”

“I’m the only one who knows what Goddard has in the wings!”

“Maybe you should tell the rest of us!” Lovelace shot back.

“Guys!” Jacobi said with more force.

And Maxwell realized why Jacobi was so insistent. She had been so focused on Lovelace and Kepler’s fight that she hadn’t noticed it until now. Eiffel had taken their argument as an opportunity to break off from the group. Maxwell’s eyes widened, he was trying to scale the fence.

“General!” Maxwell cut in.

“I do not need to hear another word out of—!”

An alarm sounded. Eiffel looked horrified, straddling the top of the fence. Then came the bullets.

“Gah!” Eiffel fell back landing hard on his ass on the pavement. “Oow!”

“We are leaving now!” Kepler roared.

They didn’t bother with the aqueduct. Down there they were fish in a barrel. They just ran, scrambled. Somehow they nearly got to the outer gates.

“We’re gonna make it!” Eiffel cheered.

“No,” said a very familiar, very smug voice, “I don’t think that you are.” Rachel Young.

They froze. As soon as the alarm sounded they had all gone for their guns, with the exception of Eiffel. Almost as one, they pointed them out into the darkness now, watching for any movement to give away Young’s position or those of any troops she might have with her. Years of training and teamwork in their matching motions.

“Miss Young, it seems that we’ve—” said Kepler with a forced smile. He lowered his weapon, speaking in a stiff, but not unfriendly tone. Maxwell thought that that was probably his first mistake.

“Whatever terrible excuse you’re about to make, stow it. You’ve been found out,” she said.

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” lied Kepler.

“Mr. Cutter was concerned when you stopped showing up for work. He took it upon himself to pay you a little visit. We found your home blood bank. And now you’re here an hour after this lab was sabotaged? You’re done, Kepler. You are finally dead as the dodo and out of my hair. And I happened to be the one lucky enough to catch you.”

Kepler’s face contorted, his eyes flashed. Then he straightened. “Yes, it seems that you are.” Slowly, subtly, he raised his weapon, ready to shoot from the hip.

“Don’t be an idiot, Kepler. Drop your weapons,” she said.

“Not on your life, Young” said Kepler, his eyes rapidly scanning the dark.

“I thought you might say something like that,” she said. “Let me give you some incentive, one even you will understand.”

More than a dozen laser sights lit up from the darkened trees. Maxwell squinted against one as it found her forehead. Another found her heart. Looking around she saw that all five of them were peppered in these bright red spots. The shooters emerged, surrounding them on all sides. There was a long second in which Kepler did not move.

“Not on my life,” said Young. “But what about his?” she nodded to Jacobi.

Jacobi had a second to look confused before a gun cracked and Jacobi let out a grunt of pain.

“Daniel!” Maxwell heard Kepler say Jacobi’s name in unison with her. They both swung around to look where Jacobi stood between them. He had been pushed back from the force of the shot and there was blood in his face, but he didn’t fall.

“I’m okay!” he said and Maxwell saw that the shot had only grazed his cheek. He took one hand off his gun to wipe the back of his wrist over the bloody gash on his face. “I’m okay!” his voice shook slightly.

“But next time he won’t be,” said Young. “So unless you want your favorite boot-licker to be reduced to a fine red mist, I recommend you throw down your weapons in the next three seconds.”

“Young—”

“Two. One.”

“You win,” Kepler tossed his gun to the ground and put up his hands. “Drop your weapons,” he said through his teeth to the rest of the SI-5.

“General—!” Jacobi started.

“I said. drop. them!” Kepler cut him off with a snarl.

Maxwell let go of her gun. Her weapon thudded to the ground in front of her. She heard the others’ do the same.

“I’m glad we’ve come to this understanding. Hands behind your head, General,” said Young.

Kepler obeyed. His expression was proud, angry, and defiant. There was a bang! as spotlights burst to life from the guard towers flanking the main gates. They must have been on a separate circuit from the rest of the complex, which had still been pitch black beyond the gates. In the bright yellow glow Maxwell could now clearly see Young and her troops, SI agents in full assault gear, now she even recognized some of them. Young was wearing a pencil skirt, a silk shirt, a jacket, her usual tall heels, and the widest smile Maxwell had ever seen.

She walked up to Kepler. “It’s so nice to see you again. The beard really isn’t working for you,” Young grinned. “Welcome back.”

Chapter Text

The guns stayed on them. Young nodded and a few of the operatives broke off from the group, cautiously approaching the SI-5. They were clearly terrified, none of them wanted to be the one to handcuff the legendary team lead by their former boss. Young had to order them twice. They kept their guns on the SI-5 until they were close enough to touch the captives. Even then they were reluctant to do so without a firearm even with their comrades ready to shoot at the slightest hint of disobedience.

Kepler considered headbutting the man who came for him, but he was wearing a helmet and any move Kepler made would immediately be met with a hurricane of bullets. If he was going to do something he had to make sure it would count. He didn’t want to die. He wouldn’t die. Not here. Not now. If and when that time came it would be on his terms and it sure as Hell would not be at the hands of Rachel Young.

The man sent to disarm him, Kepler wasn’t really concerned with remembering his name at the moment, patted him down with shaking hands. He was an SI-3 agent who was clearly anxious about searching and capturing his former commanding officer. His boss. The head of his entire department and the most dangerous man he had ever personally encountered. He was likely and very rightfully terrified of Kepler. He found the half dozen weapons Kepler had strapped to his person and threw them to the ground, kicking them out of reach. Kepler glanced at the others and saw they were facing similar treatment. Jacobi caught his eye, a pleading expression on his face. He looked like a frightened dog looking to its master for guidance as they took the grenades from his belt. Blood was smeared and dripped down his cheek as he waited for some order, some indication of Kepler’s plan.

Kepler had none. Not yet. He was working on it. Right now they had to stay alive. He looked away. His arms were wrenched downward and heavy metal handcuffs were secured tightly over his wrists.

“Hey! Easy there, Boss Godfrey! This isn’t an invitation to get to second base!” Eiffel said behind him.

Goddamn Eiffel!

Why did Kepler ever bother saving his sorry hide? Why did he want him on his team? He should have let him rot! Eiffel couldn’t follow a simple order! He couldn’t use his head even once in his pathetic waste of a life! If he had thought things through he would have realized the risks! Kepler shouldn’t have had to spell it out for him like an overworked public school teacher! And now here they were, five minutes from execution because Eiffel couldn’t control his damn emotions!

“We would have negotiated with him,” Young said and Kepler turned and looked down at her again, keeping his expression flat. “But this way is much easier. It’s a good thing your favorites are all such idiots.”

“Laugh while you can, Miss Young,” said Kepler.

“I plan on it,” she leaned up, very close to him and then laughed literally in his face. When she was satisfied she shouted to her troops, formally his troops, “take the prisoners inside! March!”

Kepler allowed himself to be pushed forward and marched back to the complex, a gun’s muzzle digging into the center of his back. Maxwell was suffering more manhandling, Kepler suspected due to resentment. The SI-5 were feared and revered, but some of them, namely Jacobi and Maxwell, used their reputation to their advantage in increasingly creative ways over the years. Besides that, Kepler knew, the other sections disliked the favoritism he showed toward his best troops. It inspired healthy competition when things were working as they should be, but this was far from as they should be. The fact that Maxwell and Jacobi constantly referred to the lower sections of the SI as “shark chum” and “cannon fodder” to their faces didn’t help their reputations.

Maxwell was putting up a fight. “Let go of me! I trained you!” She stomped on one of her captor’s feet and he grunted in pain. Her attempt was rewarded by a rifle butt to the face from the woman beside her. Maxwell would have fallen from the strike, but the first operative caught her. Maxwell’s lip was already swelling and there was blood gushing from her nose, although it seemed unbroken. Maxwell growled and Kepler saw blood in her teeth, she’d probably bitten her tongue badly. She spat blood at the operative who hit her. It trailed down the plastic face cover of her helmet. The man behind her shoved her nearly to the ground then dragged up by the collar. She came up swinging her cuffed hands, writhing like a cat.

“Doctor,” Kepler said as calmly as possible as he was pushed past her, “at ease.”

“Fuck that!” she shouted as she was all but carried back to the complex.

“Ooh, even they don’t listen to you anymore,” Young said. “Maybe they’re finally starting to see what you really are…”

“And what might that be, Miss Young?” Kepler asked, his eyes sliding over their surroundings, taking in his options. Young had 15 men on them, all armed, all SI-3 and -4. Mostly SI-4. He recognized some of the section’s best among their ranks. The SI-5 were being led to building A. The two visible guard towers at the inner gate had unmanned turrets, but someone had to control them, without the AI behind them the automated gunfire was dangerous to say the least. There were two more just in front of the buildings. There was no way to break away, not with three guns on each of them.

The inner gates locked behind them. He knew that those only opened using voice codes. He didn’t know if his would work.

“An arrogant blowhard with more bravado than brains who tries to solve all his problems with a big gun,” she said. “An impatient entitled brat who probably got everything handed to him and has a temper tantrum when things don’t go his way.” They entered the heavy double doors of building A. It was lit by bright red emergency lights set in the ceiling and along the floor at the base of the walls, interrupted by the doors.

“And the man who trained the only army you have,” he pointed out. She was wrong too about nearly all of it. He was arrogant, yes, but he earned that. It was hard not to fight her in the face of the attack on his character. He knew it was bait, but he still had to swallow the urge to defend himself.

“Not the only one,” she said, “I saw what you did to Project Arngrim. Or...what you tried to do.”

Kepler’s blood ran cold. Damn it all, she had more of them. He remained stoic.

“Bravo, Warren. You killed some guys in comas. You must feel very big and strong. You did take out 22 units,” she sounded mildly annoyed at that and Kepler took some pride there, “but that was just one incubation chamber. There are more right beneath our feet.” She looked down for effect and Kepler found her own eyes going to the tile. “But you know all about Arngrim...oh, no, wait, you don’t, huh? You don’t know anything about it.”

Kepler worked his jaw, thinking hard and fast, trying to ignore Young and thus far failing. He had to center himself, take note of his surroundings, get them the Hell out of this. The hallway was lit by small emergency lights and too narrow to fight without getting perforated. His hands were cuffed behind his back, as were Jacobi’s, but the other three had their hands in front of them. Kepler studied the halls memorizing every turn they took. Without the map he would have to trust his memory when they escaped.

“When Arngrim goes live we won’t even need the SI anymore,” she said, “my soldiers can do what yours do and so much more.”

Kepler snorted, “I read the notes, Young, your soldiers might be able to survive in the Arctic without special gear, but they can’t think.”

“It’s not like thinking was ever the SI’s strong suit,” Young said, “I don’t know why you’re defending it. SI isn’t even your department anymore. Reyes is in charge now. You have nothing.”

“It does seem that way, doesn’t it?” Kepler answered, hoping he came off off-handed and unbothered. If one of his team got ahold of a weapon they might have a chance. They could shoot out that pipe coming out of the laboratory, fill the room with exhaust and use the smokescreen to get out. But someone needed to get a rifle off one of their captors and make the shot before they got a bullet to the heart. Maxwell could do it easily. Lovelace probably could manage it. So could he. He wouldn’t trust the other two. But they would need to get a rifle. No one was close enough to make that grab. Not yet.

Young continued to bait him, slightly annoyed that he wasn’t fighting her with the fervor he usually would. This lacked the flair and enthusiasm of their usual verbal fencing. “I’ve been waiting for this for a long time, Gen—no, you’re not even a general anymore, just Warren.”

“Just Warren,” he repeated. SI-3 operative Quentin Mayer was almost close enough to Maxwell. Almost. Kepler had to think of a way to bring it to Maxwell’s attention without alerting Mayer, Young, or anyone else.

“As soon as Mr. Cutter figured out what you were trying to do he said you were fair game. The only criteria is that the executioner plays his message for you, it’s just as dramatic as you think, that’s the only reason you aren’t already just a red stain. And of course he wants some evidence. Physical evidence. You know how Mr. Cutter is. I think he’d appreciate it if I gave him your head,” said Young.

“Classic,” Kepler said. The exhaust pipe was still running along the hall and there was a sprinkler system in this part of the building. Had they taken Eiffel’s lighter? Had they found all of Jacobi’s? The ceiling was low enough that Kepler or Lovelace could reach up and trigger the alarms.

Young led them into a huge elevator. “Sub-basement two,” said the operative closest to the button. Young nodded and the button was pressed. The AI was still offline at least. They quickly descended. Kepler kept track of how far down they were going. Could they climb a staircase this distance?

“I’m not going to just shoot you,” Young continued, “That would be letting you off too easy. Too quick and clean. Do you know what I’m going to do to you?”

“Talk me to death?” he asked, still not looking at her, but staring straight ahead at the doors. The elevator door opened onto a three way junction. What was down that hall? Was there a faster way out and was it worth the risk? “And people say I speechify, good Lord, Miss Young.”

“You do. We all know it’s because you love the sound of your own voice. But no, I have something far worse in mind…”

What followed was a description so graphic that it seemed to make a few of the listening agents uneasy or even queasy. It involved lots of torture, some dismemberment, the senseless destruction of expensive scotch, then the total obliteration of his body.

She was good at weaving this tapestry of horror, it was almost admirable, or it would have been if she wasn’t Rachel Young. She certainly gave Kepler a lot to think about, some nightmarish imagery to play in his head when he tried to sleep. But he didn’t show any reaction in his face. He wasn’t giving her that satisfaction. He had never been the most naturally expressive person and now he was even better at wiping his features clean, just as he was at painting on the most fitting expressions.

He wasn’t afraid. He hadn’t been afraid in a very long time. He’d never been afraid well, often he just felt excitement where there should have been fear, even in childhood, or it just washed over him, knocking back his cohorts and leaving him bone-dry and standing. He knew fear could kill you, and he didn’t think he was missing much. Besides, he reminded himself, all she had were words now. A colorful threat was well and good but it couldn’t harm you, even if people often forgot that fact.

“You’ve put a lot of thought into this,” he said when she was done. With the exhaust pipe gone he needed to find another means of escape. “If it wasn’t so, if I may be frank, pathetic I’d be flattered.”

“There is nothing pathetic about this!” she spat, clearly disappointed at his lack of fear. “You’re just trying to convince yourself.”

“Really? Because it seems to me you’ve been spending an awful lot of your free time thinking about me,” Kepler finally looked down at her and smirked. “I’m sorry to say I’m not interested.”

“Even if I was into men, you would be the last person I would ever go for,” she said calmly. “Not everyone wants to suck your dick, just Jacobi.”

“Then why have you thought so hard about what makes me tick? Don’t you have better things to do in Special Projects? I would have thought with me gone you’d be Cutter’s new favorite.”

“It’s not ‘new,’ Warren, you haven’t been his favorite in a long time, don’t flatter yourself.”

“Or maybe you’re thinking just a bit too highly of yourself...again.”

Young shook her head and laughed, “I’m not concerned about the deluded opinions of a dead man walking.”

“Then why are we still having this conversation?” he asked. She glared up at him and he grinned at her. He opened his mouth for another jab but she stomped down on his foot. There was a surge of pain from the dagger of her stiletto, but he bit his tongue and kept his face impassive. It did, however, get her a moment of silence, during which Young crossed to the head of the group. They came to a halt in front of a door. She punched in a code and it hissed opened.

The door led to an observation deck. It was a wide room, filled with monitors and control panels, screens all black now. It was lit by the same red emergency lights, casting an eerie Hellish glow over the room. There was only the one door. Along one wall was a huge window overlooking a narrow walkway and a large empty room, although Kepler couldn’t see it in the dark he knew the floor was about 50 feet below and marked off into sections. It was a testing chamber. Kepler had seen the sorts of experiments conducted in that room while Cutter and Pryce were perfecting Decima. Human subjects in different stages of infection, some relatively healthy, some so sick they couldn’t even breathe on their own. He’d seen men die in there, choking on their own blood and chunks of bronchial tissue. They all thought they were being treated. None of them ever knew the truth to their dying breaths, that they had been infected and by becoming ill instead of getting their DNA blank-slated they were doomed to die. Now the room below them was as dark as the depths of the ocean. He couldn’t see the floor, but he could see the rows of tanks, glowing with a gentle blue light. Each one showing a human or vaguely human form silhouetted like a flashlight shining through a chicken egg.

Kepler thought Cutter and Pryce had locked down A’s sub-basement after the human trials ended. But apparently they had just changed uses. That was why he hadn’t committed the building’s codes to memory, something he regretted. The joke was on him, now it seemed it housed Arngrim.

The SI operatives fanned out, guns at the ready, obnoxiously just out of arm’s reach. The large room was cramped with guns and operatives. They were the only occupants besides someone sitting in a chair at one of the consoles, turned to face them. She looked gray under the harsh light and stared blankly ahead of her. It was--

“Kate!” Eiffel tried to break away from the group presumably to run to her side. An SI-4 agent grabbed him and threw him bodily back. It sent him stumbling. “Hey! Screw you, Madame Hydra!” he spat.

Garcia turned glassy eyes to him and waved as if spotting a friend across a busy shop.

Eiffel called out to her, “I know you can hear me! We’re gonna get you out of this!”

“Why would I ever want that?” asked Garcia with that ugly grin. “I’m happy like this! I’ve never been happy like this before! I don’t even need to think or feel! It’s such a relief! It’s so nice and calming, Doug, you should get one of these too!” She pointed with both thumbs to the knob Kepler knew was sticking out of her spine.

“You don’t mean that, Kate. We’ll save you,” Eiffel said, his tone low and gentle. “I promise.”

“That’s so sweet,” said Young sarcastically. “But it won’t be happening. You’ll both be dead before sunrise. Right, Ms. Garcia?”

Garcia smiled blandly, her unfocused eyes left Eiffel and drifted over to Young. “Sure thing, Ms. Young!” she said with as much enthusiasm as before, the subject of her murder having the same effect on her as the prospect of being saved.

Young stepped in front of the line of prisoners, her back to Garcia. She looked up and down the row, grinning like a proud cat. “So, shall we get started?” asked Young, rubbing her hands together. “I thiiiiink we should start with Eiffel. He always annoyed me.”

Eiffel stiffened. His expression hardened. Kepler could say one thing, Eiffel was facing down death with dignity. Kepler always knew he would if it came down to it, he’d shaped Eiffel well from that mound of failure and potential he busted out of prison. But only a tiny portion of Kepler’s brain registered what Eiffel was doing. He was too busy trying to get out of this. Time was running out. He had seconds left. Without power he couldn’t get Maxwell to program in a more pressing disaster, besides Maxwell couldn’t get to the panel without being shot. He was searching the faces in the room, there were many he would count as loyal troops, but just how loyal? Could he twist them back to his side when it could mean certain death? Even then loyalty to him did not mean loyalty to the SI-5. He was no good without at least a few of the others, practically speaking. He couldn’t do this alone. And...sentimentally speaking...he would not allow Maxwell or especially Jacobi to die so long as he could stop it.

“Ready?” asked Young. An SI-4 operative raised his rifle, held it level with Eiffel’s head. Eiffel stared down the barrel. There had to be some way to throw off his aim. Or did Kepler sacrifice Eiffel and focus on saving the others? “Aim!” If Quentin Mayer took two steps closer to Maxwell then they might have a chance. A hush both horrified and resigned settled over them.

Then a voice interrupted the pregnant silence. It broke through Kepler’s thoughts. It made Young pause. It caused the SI-4 agent to falter. It was Lovelace. “Plan Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo Uniform is a go, General,” she said, finding Kepler’s eyes and speaking in a loud whisper.

Young’s eyes snapped to her. Her sharp smile vanished in an instant. Her mouth creased downward, a frown drew across her flawless forehead, a storm was brewing in her brown eyes.

There had been bad blood between Young and Lovelace for almost a decade now. They had once had a brief ill-advised love affair when Lovelace first joined GF. It had been infuriating for Kepler because it meant he saw even more of Young than usual. They dated for a few months before Lovelace broke it off.

In Kepler’s opinion, romantic and prolonged sexual relationships were never worth the sacrifices they required, which was why he tended to stick to near anonymous one night stands. But sacrifice wasn’t what broke up Young and Lovelace. Kepler never got all the details, but he knew that Lovelace eventually got a glimpse of the real Rachel Young and didn’t like what she saw. This was also back when Lovelace still had certain qualms and morals, principles. Things even more worthless than romance. Kepler thought if it were to happen again now Lovelace might have been more inclined to forgive what she saw. Although he also couldn’t imagine anyone spending that much time with Young and remaining sane and non-murderous, let alone still enjoying her company. Whatever it was that broke them up, Lovelace stuck to her decision.

When Lovelace rejected Young, Young started loathing Lovelace. Nothing would bring them back together again. After ten years the dicey waters had settled substantially, they could talk without any of that bad blood being spilled, they could work together, they could politely laugh at each other’s jokes. But in general their interactions were brief and cold. Kepler was always one for I-Told-You-Sos and Lovelace got a lot of them.

“What?” Young asked coldly.

Lovelace looked over at her, “Nothing.”

“No,” Young said, “you said something. What did you say?!”

Lovelace smirked and chuckled darkly. “You’ll find out.”

“What are you planning?” Young demanded.

“Did you really think we would come here without a plan B? How stupid do you think we are?” Lovelace said, grinning broadly. Seemingly unafraid. Kepler thought she might have actually been unafraid. There was only a very fine line between gifted and psychopath in many ways, but one of the most notable was when it came to danger. Neither the gifted person nor the psychopath experienced it normally. They weren’t afraid enough. Kepler was (and knew he was) both, Lovelace had started on one side but sometimes Kepler thought she was now walking the knife edge between them. He had often wondered how exactly to push her.

The SI-4 agent lowered his gun as Young stormed past him. “What did you just do?!” she asked.

“Why should I tell you, you twisted bitch?!” Lovelace answered.

“Major! Ixnay on the itchbay!” said Eiffel through his teeth.

“Don’t be more of an idiot than you already are, Isabel,” Young said, unmoved by the insult. “You’re only making this worse. Tell me what you activated.”

“How can I make it worse?! You’re already going to kill us!” Lovelace laughed. “At least this way it’s on my terms and I take you out with me.”

Young laughed, “why should I even believe you?”

“Lovelace,” Kepler said, helping her fiction, “you don’t need to answer her anymore.”

“Was this your idea?” Young asked, shoes clicking over to him, closer to them both.

Kepler grinned down at her. “I always come prepared. I might not be in Times Square in a Goddard Futuristics t-shirt, but it’ll still make quite the show and you’ll have front row seats...Hell, you’ll be on stage!”

“You’re just going along with this?!” Young asked, turning back toward Lovelace. “You do realize he’s going to let you die, right?”

“Then I guess this is where we say goodbye,” said Lovelace.

“You’re going to throw your life away with him?!” Young said the last word with such disgust it practically dripped.

“Yeah, you know why?” Lovelace asked.

“I’m sure you’re going to tell me,” muttered Young, rubbing her forehead.

“Because I realized there are more important things than me. I remembered what it meant to be human. Kepler still has a shred of humanity, which is more than I can say for the likes of you!”

Kepler was a little surprised by that. He didn’t think he had much humanity left, if any at all. Maybe a drop of it buried away somewhere. He was simply unwilling to let the most evil people in existence take over the world. He didn’t know why, he just wasn’t. But leave it to Lovelace to see the good in someone or something, even if she imagined it.

“You’re right about that last part at least,” Young agreed. “But it’s not like that ever helped anyone. Deactivate whatever this is and we’ll talk.”

“No.”

There was a moment of silence.

Eiffel broke it, speaking quickly, “So that was fun, I think we all learned—”

“Shut up!” Young and Lovelace snapped in unison. Eiffel fell silent.

“Where is it?” Young asked.

“Do you really think I would tell you that?” Lovelace scoffed.

“Where is it? They patted you down. Whatever it is you don’t even have it on you…”

Someone coughed in the crowd.

Young swung around, “you patted her down, didn’t you?!”

“I...took her weapons…” said the agent. “I didn’t do a full…sorry…”

“Shoot him,” she instructed the operative next to that one. He did, through the crack in his armor at his neck. The operative fell back, choking, blood arcing from his wound.

Young turned back around, her heels clicking as she closed the gap between herself and Lovelace. She grabbed Lovelace by the lapels and tore her shirt open. Shock went through the crowd like a shiver. There was nothing there, of course, just an undershirt below the flannel.

A small smile twitched the corners of Kepler’s lips. Lovelace’s gambit paid off. Her bound hands were right beside the gun holster below Young’s jacket. Her fingers closed around the weapon. Young’s eyes snapped down as she felt the weight of the pistol disappear, but it was too late. Lovelace grinned, she had the gun in hand and in less than a second it was pressed against Young’s temple. For the moment Kepler forgot how angry he was with his second-in-command for his pride in her.

The room exploded into gasps and exclamations.

“Fuck yes!” shouted Maxwell.

“Rick ‘em, rack ‘em, rock ‘em, rake! Stick that gun into that snake!” Eiffel cheered loud enough to be heard distinctly over all the other sounds.

Every gun in the room turned on Lovelace, all cocking almost in unison. She carefully backed against the wall. Like this Young’s body covered hers and no one could get behind her. Lovelace was bigger than Young but she was able to arrange herself so that if one of the operatives wanted to make a fatal shot it would have to go through their commander first, and anything but a one-shot would clearly end with a bullet in Young’s head.

“Well, well, well,” said Lovelace to the room, her tone jolly but dangerous, just like her smile. This might have been Kepler’s favorite side of Lovelace. “It seems to me that the tables have turned. What do you think, Rachel?”

Young’s face was red with fury. Both of her hands were locked around Lovelace’s wrist where it rested across her neck but the Strategic Intelligence Major was far stronger than the bureaucratic head of Special Projects. Even as Young strained so hard against her that her hands shook she couldn’t make Lovelace budge. Lovelace shifted their weight slightly so Young was off balance in those high heels.

“I can’t believe I fell for that!” Young growled.

“Me neither, honestly,” laughed Lovelace.

“When I get out of this I am going to rip that smirk right off your face!”

“I’m sure you will, sweetheart,” Lovelace said. Then she resumed shouting to the room at large. “Now, I know how much everybody here loves Rachel…” she trailed off and chuckled at the absurdity of that statement, “or at least we all know how much Mr. Cutter loves Rachel...and it would be a shame if something were to happen to her. We can all agree on that. But it’s okay!” she added cheerily, “Nothing has to happen! Here’s what you’re going to do to keep Miss Young’s head on her shoulders. You’re going to uncuff us, all of us, and you’re going to give each of us a gun, and you’re going to let us leave. Once we’re safe, I will let her go. Got it?”

No one moved for a few seconds, Lovelace’s finger twitched. “Too bad—”

“Stop! Okay!” shouted SI-4 Agent Melissa Rossi, throwing her hand forward. “Don’t shoot!” She was a good operative in terms of skills, but far too easily shaken. She should never have been the one to make decisions like this. She should have never been put in any position where she was in charge of anything important. She should have only ever acted as support. She was good at following orders, she knew her way in combat, but she cracked far too easily. Clearly Reyes didn’t know his troops as well as he should have. Which was an extremely lucky break, so far as Kepler was concerned. Rossi held up the keys to show Lovelace.

“Then do your job, little girl,” said Lovelace.

“Yes, sir,” said Rossi, crossing to Kepler.

He smiled as she went to undo his cuffs. She didn’t say a word, she seemed almost embarrassed. Before the handcuffs even hit the floor Kepler grabbed Rossi’s pistol, a well cared for IWI Jericho, from its holster. She went for the rifle strapped on her back. “Uh-uh, Miss Rossi, I wouldn’t want anything to happen to dear Miss Young.” Kepler tipped his head toward Young and Lovelace. When she turned to look he put the pistol to her neck in the break in her armor. “Keep going,” he urged her.

“Yes, General,” Rossi muttered. She moved on to Jacobi. The cuffs fell and the ballistics expert rubbed his wrists irritably before running a hand over the drying blood on his face.

“Arm him,” growled Kepler. He was given a Remington ACR in seconds.

Maxwell looked like she might punch Rossi when her handcuffs came off, but she settled for snatching the rifle from the nearer guard and cocking it dramatically.

As soon as Eiffel was freed he shoved passed the other SI operatives to run to Garcia’s side. He reached out to her but stopped short. He bit his lip, eyes locked on the ugly black bolt erupting from the inflamed flesh at the back of her neck. He knew better than to pull it out. Pryce had gotten very into her restraining bolts over the past few years, at this point even someone as low on the totem pole as Eiffel had seen them in action. He knew that unless it was properly removed the bolt would essentially lobotomize her. Garcia looked up at him with unnaturally blank eyes. Eiffel let out a defeated sigh and his hand dropped to his side. Jacobi, who had crossed the room after him, jabbed Eiffel in the shoulder. When Eiffel looked over at him Jacobi offered a pistol.

“Thanks,” he muttered, taking it and tucking it into his holster.

“One thing at a time,” Jacobi said gently. He patted Eiffel warmly on the shoulder. “We’ll get her through this.”

“Thanks,” Eiffel repeated, sounding more genuine this time.

Lovelace had Young unlock her handcuffs. Young pulled them off, she was about to drop them but Lovelace stopped her. “Hey, Maxwell, do you want to help Rachel put her new bracelets on?”

“My pleasure!” Maxwell said brightly, coming over. Her bandana was no longer around her neck, but shoved gracelessly into her nose, presumably to finally stop the flow from the earlier strike, which had slowed but, as the very dark and very wet stain on the chest of her uniform indicated, hadn’t stopped entirely.

“You’re just prolonging the inevitable!” Young spat.

“I think I’d like to keep prolonging it for a couple more years,” said Jacobi. “What do you think, Maxwell?”

“Oh, at least,” Maxwell replied, tightening the cuffs on Young’s wrists.

“I like the bandana,” said Jacobi.

“It’s not a fashion choice, I promise,” Maxwell told him.

“As nice as this reunion has been, it’s about time we hit that ol’ dusty trail,” said Kepler to the SI operatives. They all stood frozen with guns aimed at the group but none daring to pull the trigger. “I promise none of you are going to like what I have to say in your performance reviews.” Then he turned to his team, “Eiffel, take Garcia. Lovelace, you’ve got Young. Jacobi, you first, Maxwell, you take the rear. Let’s move!”

Eiffel looked extremely relieved. “Kate, we’re leaving.”

“I don’t know…” she said nervously.

“Oh for fuck’s sake, come on!” groaned Young as Lovelace dragged her to the door.

“Well, in that case, lead the way, Doug!” said Garcia brightly. She let him help her to her feet, which she never would have done under normal circumstances. The artificial cheer and complacency the restraining bolt provided was always a bit creepy, Kepler honestly hated it. He absolutely understood the appeal of having someone who couldn’t say no to you, but they didn’t have to be so damn happy about it. Besides, eliminating someone’s will with a restraining bolt took all the satisfaction out of winning someone to your side through manipulation and your own merits, having them follow you not because they had to but because they wanted to. It was better when someone made the conscious choice to throw themselves into a fire for you without you having to so much as say “jump.” When they were so loyal the action was an automatic response. People like the SI-5.

There was an added layer of skin-crawling discomfort when the bolt’s victim was someone like Kate Garcia. She was opinionated, suspicious, she stood up for herself even when the attack was only perceived. Kepler had known her seven years, seen her more often than he did many of his employees, and he had yet to successfully charm her. It was extremely rare for Kepler to face that kind of resistance once he turned on his charisma and he had been trying his damnedest to win Garcia over for years. She didn’t follow directions and watching her being so complacent was surreal.

Eiffel wrapped his hands around Garcia’s shoulders protectively and ushered her out of the room. Their expressions could not be more different, Eiffel looked hopeless, sad, ragged, a horror story behind his eyes and Garcia was bright, happier than Kepler had ever seen her, clean, and her eyes were as blank and opaque as if they had been painted on.

Jacobi breached the hall and gestured for them to follow after he was sure it was safe. Eiffel and Garcia went next. Then came Lovelace and Young, the former keeping the latter between herself and the other SI ops. Kepler came next and finally Maxwell, walking backward, who flashed her middle finger and the muzzle of her gun around the room before leaving.

They travelled as quickly as they could safely. Young was practically dragged along to keep up with Lovelace’s enormous gait. She let out an endless string of curses and complaints.

“Is that strictly necessary?” sighed Kepler.

“Fuck you!” replied Young with all the venom of a spitting cobra. As gleeful she had been in her victory she was equally, if not more, spiteful in defeat.

Eventually Maxwell yanked her handkerchief out, sniffed experimentally, then held it out to Kepler.

“What’s this for?” Kepler asked, vaguely disgusted.

“In case you wanted to gag her,” said Maxwell with a shrug.

Kepler couldn’t help it, he threw his head back and laughed. It was almost manic, but there had been very little to laugh about tonight. He snatched up the bandana by the clean part.

“Don’t you dare!” Young growled through her teeth. She looked as if she might bite him if he came close.

“Consider it a threat, Miss Young,” he said, brandishing the bandana before pocketing it.

“I’m going to make your death last even longer!” she promised.

“You’ll need to get out of those handcuffs first,” Kepler grinned back at her as they continued through the dark corridors.

“Just wait until I tell you what I did to your scotch!”

That threat sent a cold sting down his spine. That he desperately wanted to know and never wanted to hear. His Balvenie was part of his personality, a key component to his costume, part of his manufactured je ne sais quoi. He had spent thousands on the stuff over the years. There was very little he valued besides himself, good whiskey made that short list. Young knew that, of course, and he was afraid to learn what Young had sunk to. But he didn’t rise to her bait. He didn’t ask. He didn’t look at her but instead shouted orders as they came to a cross hall. Kepler was giving directions based on memory. He knew better than to even attempt to ask Young.

For a long time they weren’t bothered by anyone. The remainder of the SI was probably too afraid to go after the fabled SI-5 without the threat of Rachel Young to spur them on.

They were forced to stop when Young lost one of her absurd heels. They paused as she bent down to remove the other shoe. Kepler realized his mistake too late.

“Rachel what are you—?” Lovelace was cut off by a series of loud beeps.

“Oh, I would hate to ruin the surprise,” said Young smugly.

“What did she just do?” asked Kepler, swinging around to face them.

Lovelace has hauled Young up straight again.

“I don’t know!” Lovelace said pathetically. A light flashed at Young’s ankle. Kepler glanced down and saw she was wearing a slim electronic anklet that had blended in with the strap of her shoe. It had a small pad with four buttons on it. Two were depressed.

Young grinned up at him. “Oh, Warren,” she said, patronizingly, “you really thought you could win this.”

“What. Did. You. Do?” He demanded, grabbing her by the lapels, and pulling her away from Lovelace. She spat in his face, the warm glob hit him on the cheek. He scrubbed the back of his hand over his face and wiped it away, grimacing.

“I just initiated Project Arngrim,” Young said. “They have no instructions. They will kill anything that isn’t me or wearing Goddard uniform. You have ten minutes.”

Kepler fumed. He worked his jaw, placing this new factor into the equation. Young’s super soldiers. He’d only destroyed the larvae, the adults were ready to fight, and in 10 minutes the place would be swarming with them.

“Project Algrim?” asked Eiffel, looking around for someone to answer. “Like the elf from Thor?”

“Arngrim. It—” Kepler began, but Young cut him off.

“Oh, I almost forgot to mention! I also engaged emergency lockdown procedure. Every door in the complex is now shut and passcode protected. You’re locked in.” Young grinned. “And this isn’t a stupid ploy. But you’re free to wait ten minutes to find out how serious I am.”

Kepler glared and flashed his teeth. Her Cheshire Cat smile did not fade. For a moment he considered striking her, even raised his fist, (“General!” Lovelace said warningly) but he dropped his hand to his side. Hitting her would accomplish nothing but waste valuable seconds they didn’t have, no matter how satisfying it would be. Instead he dropped Young and thrust her back to Lovelace.

“You heard the woman!” Kepler said looking around at the terrified and resolute faces of the group, “we have 10 minutes! Let’s move!”

***

With the whole place on lockdown and time running out before Young’s creations were deployed, Kepler was beginning to worry. On the journey Kepler and Jacobi described Arngrim to the others with some obnoxious commentary added by Young; none of her additions were very useful. After that she continually shot him smug looks and even smugger remarks: “What’s the matter, Warren? Scared of a mid-level bureaucrat and soldiers that can’t even think?” “I thought the big bad General Kepler could handle anything. Looks like your out of ideas.” “Five minutes until you meet Arngrim, I, for one, cannot wait!” “If Jacobi manages to pull a grenade out of his ass they’ll shove it right back down his throat.” “When they get to you there won’t be anything you can do about it. You’ll try. Of course you’ll try, but they’re just...better than you in every single way.”

When she threatened to reveal what happened to his scotch, Kepler forced himself to stop listening to her. Eiffel kept listening to her. He kept making small noises deep in his throat at Young’s different colorful threats and imagined bloody scenarios. It was one of Eiffel’s most obnoxious traits, he couldn’t turn off his emotions as effectively as the others. Luckily, Young had no interest in Eiffel or she would have been torturing him. It was all about Kepler, understandably, Eiffel was just caught in the blast radius. Eiffel would have been a more efficient target, because now that the initial shock wore off Kepler was in tactical mode. He could barely hear Young over his own thoughts.

Considering their history together she should have known this was when Kepler operated best: at the razor’s edge, one foot in the grave, fighting for his life against the impossible. Stress was crushing in on all sides. Their chances were slim and getting slimmer with every passing second. And that just spurred him on. He was full of nervous energy and he was channeling it. He had enough of it that he felt as if he could claw through the walls himself. Kepler was an adrenaline junkie, and this was just another source of his drug of choice.

They were on the main level now, but it was slow going. The elevators didn’t work under lockdown so they had to run up several flights of stairs, Eiffel had Garcia slung over his back, piggy back. She was perfectly content. Lovelace was still practically dragging Young.

Jacobi had been stripped of even his emergency explosives so they couldn’t blast their way out of the building. Maxwell no longer had her tablet so she couldn’t use a decoding program to figure out the door’s codes. She had to manually open every single door. So far they’d been lucky, she had been able to hotwire the last few doors without attempting to guess the codes via easily pried or shot off access panels. She wasn’t so lucky this time. No way in, just solid wall below the keypad. She was now manually punching in numbers.

“This is hilarious! I wish I had some popcorn!” said Young. She was becoming more excited by the minute as it got closer and closer to Arngrim’s launch. She laughed. “Maxwell, you do remember you’re a human being, don’t you? You aren’t fast enough to get through this door and the others in…” she glanced at her watch, a narrow, elegant, gold and leather thing, “three minutes.”

“Shut her up!” yelled Maxwell.

Kepler took out the handkerchief and Young went grudgingly quiet before he put it to use. But she kept grinning.

“C’mon! C’mon! What’s taking so long?!” asked Jacobi anxiously, pacing right behind Maxwell.

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe the fact that there are 14,641 possible codes and, like Young so helpfully pointed out, I’m not a computer!” Maxwell snapped at him without looking up from the keypad.

“Then why do you act like one all the time?” Jacobi asked.

Before Maxwell answered, the door let out a descending tone that they had already heard a dozen or so times. Wrong code again. Maxwell growled and pounded her fist against the wall. “Dammit!”

Kepler watched, figuring out what to do when the door opened. Where did they go next? If memory served it was a straight shot out of the complex, but there were at least two more checkpoints with locked doors they had to code break before they were free and clear.

Should they lock the doors behind them as they left? The smartest move would be to keep as many obstacles between them and the Arngrim soldiers as was possible, but Kepler didn’t know how many places Arngrim soldiers could utilize. If they were going to pop out of the vents, circumventing the doors, locking them would just cut off a route of escape for the SI-5.

Then he heard footsteps in the hall behind them. His heart caught. He looked at his watch. No, no, Young was right. They still had three minutes. This was something else….someone else. If they got lucky, it would be someone they could use.

“Freeze!” Kepler called out, pointing his gun down the hall.

The SI-4 agent did, his gun halfway raised, his expression was unconfident but resolute. Resigned. Clearly he’d been hoping to sneak up on them and take at least one of them out from behind. He was either very brave or very stupid. Or both.

Kepler didn’t recognize him. Just another operative, as the SI’s director Kepler had had thousands of soldiers around the world at his disposal. He couldn’t keep track of all of them, especially the simple foot soldiers without rank to speak of. But odds were this one would be useful. If he was negotiating the complex he had to know the door codes. He was lucky, he got to live a few minutes longer than he otherwise would have.

“Well now! Lookie what we have here!” said Kepler boisterously, happily. “Hurry, hurry, hurry! Step right up! Guess the door code and win a prize!” He gestured toward the door with one hand, using the other to keep his gun trained on the op. “The grand prize is you get to live to see sunrise!” He wouldn’t, but he would live long enough to give the code at least.

“I don’t have to listen to you!” said the operative defiantly.

“You seem to forget you are grotesquely and absurdly outgunned,” Kepler gestured around him at the SI-5.

“I don’t care, general,” the operative said. “You’re a traitor. You’ll have to kill me.”

“Idiot,” Young sighed.

“Why did you think that would be a problem?” scoffed Kepler, cocking his gun.

The SI-4 agent froze, fear in his eyes and on every inch of his face.

“Wait!” Eiffel shouted just before Kepler could squeeze the trigger. Eiffel always one to avoid murder when he could help it. It was an obnoxious trait to say the least.

Kepler sighed and glanced in Eiffel’s direction, “what, pray tell, am I waiting for?”

“Mr. Eiffel?” the operative asked.

“Weaver, please! We don’t want to hurt you!” Eiffel said.

So Eiffel knew him. Weaver. The name was familiar. He worked under Eiffel, didn’t he?

“I really don’t care one way or the other,” Kepler assured the SI-4 agent.

“We just want to get out of here,” Eiffel said.

“Why didn’t you kill me before?” Weaver asked Eiffel, infuriatingly ignoring Kepler. Wait…before? They must have had a run-in. Probably at Garcia’s place. Of course Eiffel had spared him. The soft-hearted idiot. But then maybe this time idiotic soft-heartedness would pay off.

“You seem a decent fellow, I’d hate to kill you,” Eiffel said.

“You seem a decent fellow, I’d hate to die,” Weaver replied.

“I don’t want to kill anybody if I can help it, especially someone with such good taste in movies,” said Eiffel, “so let’s skip the Sharks and the Jets dance number! Just pull a Roadrunner and meep meep out of here.”

“What the Hell are you even say—?” Kepler said.

“Do you promise that you’ll leave? You’re not going to ruin anything else?” Weaver asked, over Kepler.

“We’re just trying to Escape from LA or Houston, in this case,” Eiffel said. He held up one hand in a Scout’s honor gesture, removing it from where it had been holding Garcia’s shin. Her back was curved into a tight “c”-shape over Eiffel, her forearms crossed on his head and her chin resting on top of them, casual and at ease in a way Garcia never was.

“This code is 3454,” said Weaver, nodding toward the door. “The next one is 3453. And the front door is 6292.”

“Thanks, man!” Eiffel shot him a thumbs up. “And hey! You get to be the guy who rescued Axe Murderer Barbie!” He gave Lovelace a pleading look, then a grimace when she didn’t immediately respond.

“Fine,” Lovelace sighed, shoving Young toward Weaver. “She’s your problem now.”

Young stumbled on her single heel then turned to glare at them. “Two minutes! I don’t care if you have the codes, you’re not going to make it out!”

“The gate!” Weaver added quickly, “you need a retinal scan or voice sample!”

“We’ve got it,” Kepler assured him. Even if Cutter and Pryce had stripped Kepler of his access he was hopeful they could use the aqueduct to escape.

“This isn’t over!” Young yelled.

But Maxwell had punched in the code, they all rushed through, and the door slammed behind them before Young even finished her sentence.

After that, they were out of the compound in less than a minute.

It seemed Cutter and Pryce hadn’t gotten around to updating the Houston plant yet; saying “Warren J. Kepler,” still opened the gate. It was an oversight he couldn’t count on again. Kepler set the pace at a full run.

“Where’s the van?” Kepler asked.

“We stashed it up this way,” said Lovelace, leading the way.

They all piled into the van, Jacobi and Kepler in the front, Maxwell, Eiffel, and Garcia in the middle row, and Lovelace in the back. Kepler engaged the engine as soon as he could get the key in its slot and they tore off. Even before Kepler put his foot on the gas Eiffel was talking, “Maxwell you have to get this thing off her!” Kepler knew what he was talking about without looking in the rearview mirror or asking for clarification: Garcia’s restraining bolt.

“Sure,” said Maxwell. “No problem!”

“Really? You know how to do it?” Eiffel asked hopefully.

“Dur! Who do you think you’re talking to?” Maxwell scoffed incredulously.

“How can I help?” asked Eiffel. “What do we have to do?”

“You can help by sitting there and not touching anything,” Maxwell told him, leaving no room for argument. “And there are a couple of ways to turn it off. When it’s put into a person’s neck the base of it opens up and a bunch of little metal needle legs jimmy in-between the neck vertebrae and plug into the spinal column. So I need to deal with those. To shut the bolt off properly you slowly disengage the controls one system at a time, each of its little legs detaches and retracts. Then you manually turn off the power source on the bolt and just slide it out. This version even has a coagulant to help with excess bleeding on removal, I think.”

“That’s not so bad,” said Eiffel.

“No, it’s not. Too bad we can’t do that right now,” said Maxwell. “We don’t have the program and I don’t have the kind of time to replicate it.”

“You said there were a couple ways,” said Eiffel, refusing to give up hope. “What’s the other way?”

“Jacobi, is that frayed charging cable still in the glove compartment?” asked Maxwell.

Beside Kepler, Jacobi opened the glove compartment and peered in. “Yeah,” he said, pulling out the snaking cord, formally the charger for his prosthesis. It was duct-taped in several places but what had damned it to the glovebox was that the actual USB connector had come off entirely, where it should have been were several sharp exposed wires.

“Good, that should be enough electricity. Plug it in,” she instructed him. Jacobi obeyed, shoving it into the car’s port.

“Hey, Galvani, what’s the other way?!” Eiffel repeated more anxiously.

“The other way is to shock the hell out of the bolt to disrupt its signal and fry its systems and hope for the best,” Maxwell said.

“And what if it doesn’t work?!” Eiffel asked, his voice croaky from worry.

“Um…” Maxwell gave it a moment of consideration, “I short circuit her brain?” she shrugged and accepted the charging cable from Jacobi.

“What?!” Eiffel shouted.

“I mean probably?”

“Probably?!”

“Well, maybe it’ll just paralyze her.”

“You don’t even know?!” Eiffel demanded.

“No, I don’t know, Eiffel! I’m not a neurologist!” Maxwell said, exasperatedly.

“I think you should leave it in my neck,” Garcia added helpfully.

“No way, Pollyanna,” said Eiffel.

“Not happening,” said Maxwell, “you are way too creepy like this!”

Kepler glanced at them in the rearview mirror. Maxwell was very careful not to touch the frayed wires crackling with electricity. With her free hand she pushed Garcia’s head forward.

“Your hands are cold!” Garcia said gleefully as Kepler looked back at the road.

“Doc, there’s gotta be another—!” Eiffel began to say.

“Nope!” Maxwell cut him off. “Here we go!”

“Wai—!” Eiffel shouted but it was too late.

There was a crack and a sizzle and a near blinding flash of light, which he would have complained more about if the road wasn’t empty. Foul smelling smoke erupted from the backseat.

“Ugh,” complained Jacobi, trying to waft the smoke away with his hand.

Kepler lowered the windows to get some fresh air in and ran the fan to make the smoke dissipate so he could see out the windshield again. There was a lot of coughing from the backseat.

“You kids okay over there?” Lovelace asked from somewhere in the smoke. Her voice was slightly choked.

“I think so,” coughed Maxwell.

“Did it work?” asked Eiffel cautiously, as if he was afraid of the answer.

“What. The flying fuck. Was all of that?!” screamed Garcia. “Where is my daughter, you bastard?!”

“Oh thank God!” sighed Eiffel.

“Don’t you dare touch me!” Garcia snapped and Kepler heard the sound of skin slapping skin. He assumed Garcia had struck one of them.

“You don’t have to hit me!” said a frustrated Maxwell, “I did just save your brain.”

“You didn’t even know if it was going to work!” Garcia snapped. “And you already did it. You don’t have to touch me again!”

“I was going to pull the bolt out of your neck,” Maxwell snapped. “But if you want to keep it in there that’s not my problem.”

“Take it out,” Garcia muttered with a hint of fear. The smoke was dissipating and looking into the mirror again Kepler could see the desperation on her face through the gray haze.

“Lovelace, can you give me a bandage?” Maxwell said. “There’s going to be a lot of blood.”

“What’s the magic word?” Lovelace asked, somewhere between annoyance and amused condescension.

“Are you kidding?” asked Garcia.

“I’m not,” said Lovelace.

“Ugh! Can you please give me a bandage, Major Lovelace?” muttered Maxwell.

“Here,” said Lovelace. She must have used the time between the request and the “please” to pull the first aid kit from the trunk.

“Where is Annnnnnn—!” Garcia’s saying her daughter’s name became a groan of pain. From that and the wet squelch Kepler assumed Maxwell pulled the bolt free.

“She’s okay, I promise she’s okay. She’s safe,” said Eiffel, reassuringly. Kepler knew that those words out of that mouth would never be reassuring to Garcia. “She’s at Marino’s,” he clarified.

Kepler knew Marino’s was the restaurant where Garcia used to work as a waitress. It was where she worked from before Anne’s birth up until she went back to college six years ago. The Garcias were and had remained friendly with much of the staff there, according to Kepler’s intel. It was a smart place to put Anne, really. The girl knew the owners and many of the employees and they had known her as long as she’d been alive. They would protect her or rather, they would make it difficult for someone to make Anne disappear. There would be witnesses and Reyes hated clean ups.

“She’s safe. We’re going to get her right now.” Eiffel looked pleadingly at Kepler. Kepler caught his eye in the mirror and nodded once. He had already adjusted his route.

“Don’t worry,” Kepler said, “we’ll get her.” He wasn’t going to leave her behind to get picked up by Goddard and used against them. In terms of Eiffel’s reactions it would be worse than Garcia getting taken. When Eiffel got desperate he got stupid, he got impulsive, and he acted immediately on his gut instinct. A desperate Eiffel would do just about anything, and nothing would make him more desperate than Anne being in danger. Today Kepler overestimated Eiffel’s impulse control. He wasn’t going to do that twice.

Kepler realized, with a mounting headache, that this meant Garcia and Anne were going to be stuck with them now. They couldn’t go home and Eiffel would never let him just leave them behind somewhere, safe or otherwise. Eiffel would do something rash if Kepler even tried to do that. So now he had two civilian weights tied around his neck. And that was only the beginning of their problems.

The situation was far worse than he could have possibly imagined. It wasn’t just Decima anymore. Now Young had super soldiers and they were activated. God knew how many of them there were. Now Kepler had a civilian and a goddamn child to worry about. They had bought themselves time, but it wouldn’t be long before the SI and Arngrim were after them. And once they were on their tail, would Arngrim ever be off it?

Kepler wanted to scream. He wanted to break something. He wanted to crash this damn van. He wanted to murder Eiffel. The only thing that kept Kepler from completely losing his mind was that they were able to shut down the plant, kill off hundreds of hosts, and destroy its Decima supply. That was the only consolation, the night hadn’t been a complete bust.

They parked in front of the restaurant and Garcia got out. The bandage wrapped around her neck was already deep red at the back. That was going to raise questions as was the fact that she’d abandoned her 10-year-old daughter for hours only to pick her up at midnight. Questions were the very last thing Kepler needed. He took a deep breath and let it out through his nose, gripping the steering wheel too tightly, his jaw clenched.

“Do you...need anything, sir?” asked Jacobi.

“A scotch,” Kepler answered, leaning back in his seat, letting his head thud heavily against the rest.

“Can I give you a bloody and burned restraining bolt instead?” asked Maxwell.

Kepler heaved a sigh and held out his hand for it. Maxwell deposited it in his palm. It was sticky and still warm. He dropped it in the ashtray and wiped the blood off his palm onto the steering wheel.

Jacobi pulled down the sun visor and examined his wounded cheek in the mirror on the underside. It had stopped bleeding on its own, but it was hard to survey the extent of the damage with drying and caked blood on his face. “Can I get the first aid kit?” he asked.

“I’ve been waiting for you to ask,” said Lovelace. It was passed from Lovelace to Maxwell to Jacobi. He pulled out some alcohol swabs, tore open the packaging, tossing the wrappers to the floor at his feet, and scrubbed his cheek clean, wincing slightly at the alcohol’s contact with torn skin. When the skin was red but clean Jacobi examined the wound. Kepler had been watching intently through the process. Now that Jacobi paused, Kepler reached over and took his chin in hand, more gently than he normally manhandled him. He turned his subordinate’s face so he could examine the gash. He eyed it without touching it with his dirty hands, maneuvering Jacobi’s face by the chin to get different angles. Something stung somewhere in Kepler’s gut. He remembered the split second he thought Jacobi had been killed, the pounding of his heart, the dryness in his mouth and throat, the ice cold jolt of dread that rushed through him, head to toes. He didn’t get afraid, but maybe he had gotten close at the prospect of losing the man beside him.

“How’s it look?” Jacobi asked, snapping Kepler out of his own head.

“Not bad,” Kepler muttered, “it might scar. It might not. Take care of it and your chances will be better.”

“Don’t think I could pull off a roguish scar?” Jacobi asked with a grin. “Or do you not want me mooching on your turf?” Kepler had two notable scars on his face among the...oh...dozens on his body from various places. Missions gone wrong, missions gone right, mistakes, and side-effects of successes.

“Your face is fine the way it is and you pos-o-tively do not have the charm to pull off a scar,” said Kepler, matching the cheek of Jacobi’s grin with a wink.

“I bet I could pull it off,” Jacobi replied, “bet you’d love it.”

“Trying to test whether or not I hired you for your pretty face?” asked Kepler.

“Boo! Stop flirting!” Maxwell said from the back.

Kepler laughed and Jacobi flipped her off. Kepler released his chin and patted Jacobi companionably on his uninjured cheek. Jacobi removed the antibacterial cream from the kit. He squeezed some into the gash and rubbed it in with a cotton pad muttering, “ow, ow, ow,” as he did so. Then he attached a strip of gauze over the wound with an ‘x’ of medical tape.

“Hand me the kit when you’re done,” said Maxwell.

“Here,” Jacobi replied, turning in his seat to pass it over, “there’s still one of those cold packs, the ones you crack, for your lip.”

“Thanks,” said Maxwell. There was a moment of quiet then the telltale crack that Maxwell had, in fact, found her quarry.

“Do you think they’re okay in there?” Eiffel asked quietly after another pause.

“I think Ms. Garcia is performing some very advanced verbal gymnastics to extricate herself from this situation,” Kepler said tone colder than the chemical compound in Maxwell’s ice pack.

“But she’s been in there—”

“Mr. Eiffel,” said Kepler, cutting him off, “every word you say is bringing you closer to unimaginably horrific, positively inhumanly savage destruction at my hands, a destruction so complete that no one will find so much as an eyelash when I am done with you. So if I were you I would make sure every one of them you say is utterly necessary and not used to just point out what time it is, something I can see on my phone, this car, and my very expensive watch.”

“Yes, sir,” squeaked Eiffel.

“This isn’t all his fault, Gener—!” Lovelace growled.

“Oh,” said Kepler with a furious chuckle, “I am extremely well aware of that fact, Major! You are also on veeeeeery,” he said the word achingly slowly, dragging the “very” long enough to annoy even Jacobi, “thin ice. I would say it is, in fact, merely ambitious water. So if you, too, want to avoid the blind berserker-esque fury I have juuust below boiling over, I recommend you observe the same silence as your accomplice.”

“General!” snapped Lovelace.

“Upp, upp, upp,” Kepler cut her off again, one hand coming off the steering wheel so he could raise his finger. “I am now pretending neither of you exist and my blood pressure has started to descend back to a healthy level. Don’t shatter the illusion or I will be forced to take action against you. Maybe I’ll just leave you tied up somewhere for Young to find. I doubt she’ll fall for the same trick twice no matter how angry your very presence understandably makes her.”

Lovelace let out an exasperated noise and in the rearview mirror Kepler saw her cross her arms and roll her eyes. She put her feet up on the seat beside her and looked out the back window.

The next few minutes passed in blessed silence, Jacobi and Maxwell were smart enough to keep their mouths shut.

“Maybe someone should go in there?” Eiffel eventually whispered cautiously. Kepler was beginning to agree with him, but the restaurant door opened. Garcia ushered Anne out in front of her, Anne kept looking fearfully back at her mother. Maxwell leaned over the seat as Garcia rolled open the side door. She smacked Lovelace’s long legs to urge her to move them, then climbed over to sit beside the Major and allow Anne to sit with her parents.

Anne looked around the crowded car in surprise. She clearly hadn’t expected it to be so full. Her eyes were red and swollen, but she seemed beyond crying now. Thank God, thought Kepler. He was barely sure he could handle the presence of a child without losing his mind, he absolutely would kill everyone in the car including himself if she was also crying. Then Anne’s eyes settled on Kepler’s in the mirror. He turned in his seat and gave her a wave and what he hoped was a reassuring smile. He did not need a panicking child in here either. He did not need a child in here at all, but that ship had sailed.

He signed, hello again, Anne. How are you?

Anne looked very much like both her parents, the perfect mix of the two. In color her skin was somewhere between Eiffel’s rich brown and Garcia’s terra cotta. She had Eiffel’s big green eyes and Garcia’s small nose. Her mouth was Eiffel’s in Garcia’s round face. Her hair belonged to neither of her parents, thicker and more coily, indicative of the African part of Eiffel’s ancestry. She was average height, between Garcia’s short stature and Eiffel’s tall lanky form.

As far as kids went Kepler liked Anne well enough. That didn’t mean he liked her. He didn’t like many people. Most of them were in this van: the other members of the SI-5, although Eiffel and Lovelace were pushing it right now. He didn’t so much like her as appreciate what she was.

Kepler liked intelligence, perseverance, and potential. Anne had all three. She hadn’t been given an easy road to begin with as the child of two recovering alcoholics in what had been poor economic straits. Then Eiffel had dealt her a new hand when he deafened her, there were far worse fates, obviously, but it was an obstacle to constantly overcome throughout her life. Society was not built for her and she had to negotiate that every single day, every single waking moment spent outside of her own company. And Anne didn’t only survive, she excelled.

Anne had every reason to be bitter and many people in her position might have simply lay down and given up. That had never been Anne’s nature, not even when Kepler first met her. She fought. She fought hard.

Confused, General Kepler, said Anne, using her name sign for him. The ASL “K” — something like a peace sign with the thumb between the two fingers — while tracing the thumb along the path of the scar that split his eyebrow. Anne had come up with it years ago and was now actually slightly embarrassed by her childish lack of tact. She once apologized to him for it, but Kepler didn’t care. He had scars, he wasn’t offended by someone pointing them out. It gave him an opening to tell the stories of how he earned them. After seeing Eiffel and Kepler, Anne seemed more reassured and she climbed into the van. She sat next to her father without complaint, Kepler noted. Who are all these people? she signed, then added aloud, “who are y’all?” as the van pulled out.

On the subject of tactlessness, Jacobi, Lovelace, and Maxwell exchanged a look, probably trying to figure out how to best communicate with a small deaf child. Lovelace liked kids, Jacobi and Maxwell avoided them at almost all costs. Last year Maxwell had drawn the short straw and was forced to give the AI presentation to a group of several hundred school children visiting GF on a field trip. She had to be replaced halfway through the Q&A when things got out of hand.

“These are my friends,” said Eiffel, verbally translating as he signed. “I told you about them, remember? The superheroes?”

“Superheroes?!” repeated Maxwell with a chuckle of bemused befuddlement. “We’re not—”

“Just go with it,” muttered Eiffel. But Anne hadn’t seen Maxwell’s lips move and was completely unaware of Maxwell’s outburst at all.

Kepler drove away from Marino’s and down the street as soon as Garcia and Anne buckled up. Eiffel continued introductions. “The guy next to General Kepler is Mr. Jacobi.”

Jacobi raised his hand without turning around and sort of waved. “Hi,” he said without thinking then blushed slightly with embarrassment as he realized his mistake. Kepler chuckled.

“You remember Major Lovelace from earlier.” Eiffel gestured to her so Anne looked in her direction. In the rearview mirror Lovelace leaned forward and held up her hand for a high-five. Anne nervously gave it. “And that is Dr. Maxwell.” Maxwell did not respond, she was looking out the back window.

Kepler understood why. There was some kind of commotion close by, but out of sight. He too heard tires squealing, a distant engine growling.

“You could say ‘hello,’” Garcia said irritably.

“Yeah, I could,” Maxwell answered distractedly, still looking out the back.

Kepler frowned. The growl was getting closer. It was definitely coming this way. “Maxwell…” he began but then he saw the black Lincoln take the corner and race toward them. At that speed the driver’s face quickly became clear.

“General!” Maxwell shouted, but there was no need. He saw who it was.

Rachel Young.

“Oh for the love of—!” Kepler slammed on the gas.

Chapter Text

The car was fairly ubiquitous, an ordinary Lincoln Continental, maybe a little too clean and too sleek and too new but otherwise unremarkable. Or it would have been if it didn’t round the corner of Congress Avenue at full speed. The SI-5’s van had been stopped at the light at the corner of Smith and Preston. As the Continental sped toward them the driver’s face became clearer, until it was undeniably Rachel Young.

“General!” Maxwell shouted without looking away from the rapidly approaching car.

“Oh for the love of—!” As the words left Kepler’s mouth he slammed on the gas, throwing the van through the red light.

“What the fuck are you doing?!” demanded Garcia shrilly.

The Lincoln sped up too. Maxwell watched as its passenger-side window unrolled and a broad shoulder passed through it. Its owner contorted and slipped out, sitting on the window ledge. He appeared male; white and bald, with an inoffensively handsome face, or if would have been without the disturbingly stoic expression. One hand clung to the roof while the other clutched a machine gun. She would have been confused if it wasn’t for that enormous gun. Maxwell’s eyes snapped to it. Were they out of range? Not worth risking it.

“Incoming!” she shouted to the rest of the van.

Just then gunfire cracked outside the window. Kepler swerved at Maxwell’s shout and it missed, but only just, at least one round ricocheting off the frame. Garcia screamed shrilly.

“Does that answer your question?!” Kepler shouted at Garcia.

“Car!” Anne screamed. Maxwell looked out the windshield in time to see the Ford pickup rounding Louisiana Street. The driver leaned on the horn adding to the growing cacophony around them. Kepler cursed and jerked the wheel, sending the left side of the van onto the sidewalk. The branches of the roadside trees scraped and splintered up against the side of the van.

More gunfire. This time it blew out the windows of the building just behind them and severed yet more branches. Eiffel pushed Anne’s head down so she was well below the windows. Garcia put her body over Anne’s and Eiffel did so for Garcia, shielding them both. Maxwell watched as a second figure emerged from the backseat of Young’s car, behind her, mirroring the other man. He looked almost exactly like his predecessor, except he was Black and his features reflected that. Carefully he produced an enormous rifle and took aim. The bullet missed the back window by millimeters, pinging off the frame, as Kepler abruptly steered into the park they were passing. He entered through the gap between a lightpost and a stoplight, just wide enough for the van to fit. He had to zag hard to avoid trees and a huge pineapple-like statue before popping out the otherside moments later. The Continental had taken the long way around, but they were still in pursuit.

A rifle bullet took out Kepler’s side-view mirror. “Dr. Maxwell, Major Lovelace, if you’re finished wasting time, would you kindly pick up your guns and return fire!” Kepler shouted over his shoulder.

“On it!” Lovelace said putting the mode selector of a QCW-05 into the automatic position. Maxwell grabbed the Remington rifle and called out to Jacobi. When he turned she tossed a modified AR-57 to him. He fumbled but caught it. From the front seat Kepler unrolled the two back windows that could be open, those in the way-back, bracketing Maxwell and Lovelace. At a clocktower he swerved hard onto Congress Avenue. Maxwell tied her wild mane of hair back with a rubber band, it would hurt to remove later but Kepler still had her ruined bandana. Dodging another spray of gunfire, Kepler brought their right tires up onto the curb. The van tipped onto two wheels and they skied like this for several unnerving feet before righting, the four tires thudding hard against the pavement as they passed onto the far side of Main. As soon as they were right again Maxwell leaned out the open window to crack off a few shots, the wind ripping passed her as they whizzed down the street along what appeared to be a rail or trolley line. Young was a nimble enough driver that she was able to avoid Maxwell’s fire as she followed them. Lovelace’s spray and pray approach was harder to evade. But her bursts were short because she had to keep ducking inside to avoid the return fire. Jacobi and Maxwell alternated, since they were on the same side of the van and neither wanted Maxwell to get shot. She had been there, done that and had no plans on reliving the experience.

The white soldier with the machine gun took a burst of fire from Lovelace. His body jerked back, spasming from the force. Maxwell expected him to fall onto the street, but instead he slumped back into the town car. Lovelace ducked back inside the car looking smug. She dramatically blew smoke off her gun’s muzzle.

Almost as if they were on a crankshaft, another soldier, this one appearing East Asian, again almost identical to the other two, appeared out the remaining back window, clutching a submachine gun.

“Ah, shit,” said Lovelace as she snapped in more ammunition. “How big is this Pretty Boy Parade?”

But the third soldier confirmed Maxwell’s hypothesis. They were getting a front row seat to the debut of Young’s Project Arngrim. Maxwell might not have read much, but she knew they were super soldiers. That was a fact that didn’t bode well for the SI-5 who were barely soldiers in the first place, whatever Kepler wanted to believe. She told the car as much.

Jacobi slid back into the car part way through her explanation. “I saw some of ’em in tanks back at the lab,” said Jacobi, “definitely the same guys. Not that we’re getting too good ‘a’ look at the stupidly handsome goon squad back there.”

“Of course Goddard has a Grow-Your-Own Chris line of products,” said Eiffel, “I hate this.”

“The rest of us aren’t crazy about it either,” Lovelace assured him.

Maxwell, Jacobi, and Lovelace peppered the Lincoln with gunfire, but its occupants responded likewise, four of them at a time playing a twisted version of whack-a-mole. Maxwell leaned in close to the van’s roof as a rifle bullet nearly perforated her head. She noted that the van’s frame was looking pockmarked and dented. It was only a matter of time before Kepler failed to get them out of the way and rounds designed to take out armored vehicles ripped through the civilian van as if it was made of butter.

Young personally shot out their back windshield with an enormous handgun when she got too close. Maxwell and Lovelace covered their heads and faces with their arms. Eiffel squeaked. Jacobi cursed.

“Jacobi, do you have any supplies left?” asked Kepler.

“Uh,” Jacobi put the safety on his gun and placed it between himself and Kepler. He leaned forward and hauled his bomb kit up from under the seat. Maxwell heard him thumb open the twin latches and begin probing its contents.

“‘Uh’ is not an acceptable answer!” Kepler snapped.

“I can put something together!” Jacobi said. “Just give me time!”

“Metro!” shouted Eiffel, seemingly nonsensically. Then Maxwell saw the light of the sleek silver train gliding toward them. The van was racing to meet it. Maxwell’s eyes widened.

“We don’t have time to give!” Kepler growled at Jacobi.

“Just a second!” Jacobi snapped, “Just give me a goddamn second!”

“General! The MetroRail!” Eiffel repeated.

“I see it!” Kepler said through his teeth.

Maxwell’s heart was pounding in her chest, but she had faith that Kepler wouldn’t let them die. He had a plan. He always had a plan. There were very few constants in the world, one of them was that she could always count on Kepler to see them through whatever mess they ended up in. But he was cutting it dangerously close. They were all bathed in the train’s lights, like spotlights on a stage. Their faces turned an identical stark pale shade, except for Lovelace who was sitting on the frame of the window. The train had a sort of dull expression, Maxwell mused somewhat madly, narrow headlight eyes and a flat line mouth with an overbite. She could make out the outline of the driver behind the lights.

To add to their seemingly impossible dilemma, really just insult to injury at this point, they were very quickly running out of road. The street ended in a straight line of metallic waist-high columns. Even if the van somehow got over them the street beyond was replaced with what appeared to be a shallow pool of water. The rail tracks continued on two narrow parallel concrete strips, but there was no road. If the tram and Young didn’t kill them at this speed the road barriers definitely would.

Maxwell yanked Lovelace back inside with some effort as Kepler engaged the handbrake and rotated the wheel, hand over hand. The tires gnawed the road, kicking up smoke into Young’s windshield and Lovelace and Maxwell’s faces now that there was no back window. Kepler released the wheel and dropped the handbrake. They started to skid. The van quickly veered onto the other side of Main in a dangerously tight 180, tipping threateningly. Maxwell turned back to watch as the Lincoln faced off with the tram. Young pivoted hard, but it wasn’t quite enough. With a deafening crunch of metal and crack of glass the back quarter of the Lincoln folded under the force of the MetroRail. The East Asian soldier was pulled out of the car, splattered and crumpled beneath the train. The sight was horrific enough to make even the hardened field op Alana Maxwell wince and her stomach churn. But the important thing was Young had been thrown off course, spinning out from the force of the strike. The van was long gone before Maxwell could see the full fallout of the collision.

“When’s the next one?” Kepler asked.

“Huh?” Eiffel asked, “Oh, uh, this time of night? Sooooouth? Bound?” Eiffel clearly was searching the depths of his mind. “Uh...I think 30 minutes?”

“18,” said Garcia without getting up.

“18,” repeated Eiffel. “It’s been a while since I took it.”

“She’ll limp away before that,” said Kepler.

With the roar of the Lincoln and the constant downpour of bullets gone, the whining of the police sirens they had overpowered took the forefront. The sound grew louder still and the flashing lights of squad cars caught Maxwell’s attention. She turned to see that several cars had formed a wall two blocks ahead. Behind them a pair of squad cars rounded McKinney, trying to corner them. But there was a street the van was just about to pass. Without saying a word Kepler shifted into second gear. He accelerated and then pulled hard on the handbrake. The car drifted again and they sped easily down Rusk.

They were going the wrong way down the street, Maxwell was sure of that as Kepler nearly drove a banana yellow Volkswagen Beetle off the road.

“Sorry!” Eiffel yelled out the window at the car. The Beetle had swerved and stopped, putting a road block between the SI-5 and one of the police cars that had broken away to follow them. Maxwell thought that had been Kepler’s goal. Unfortunately, the VW just wasn’t big enough and the other pursuing cop swerved around it. The car kept in close pursuit. Ahead of the van, coming down Louisiana Street on both sides, were two more police cars, trying to box them in.

“Watch yourselves,” was Kepler’s only warning before he reduced the van’s speed and they dropped back. Maxwell and Lovelace had to scramble forward as the back of the van collided with the hood of the squad car behind them. Lovelace caught Maxwell by the shoulder and yanked her along faster so she wasn’t pinned in the collision as the van’s back door crumpled inward.

The two officers inside the squad cat were caught completely off guard. It took them a second too long to react and they didn’t have Lovelace to save them. Their airbags deployed, they lost their shot, and their engine was wounded enough by the crash to make them sputter and stop. Meanwhile the new police cars ahead of them smashed into each other in a triumphant crunch of metal. Then Kepler steered hard down Louisiana, driving on the sidewalk on the corner to get around the crash.

Maxwell let out a sigh of relief. They could keep out maneuvering cop cars all night. Most of them had only ever dreamed of a car chase and Kepler had probably been in over a dozen in his long career. But just as they successfully sideswiped a squad car into a streetlamp Maxwell caught sight of a pale shape behind them. Small but speeding up as she watched. Maxwell realized what it was with an uncomfortable jump of her heart: a human being. It was the white Arngrim soldier from Young’s car. Rounding the corner behind him was the battered, limping Lincoln.

“Uh...General?” said Lovelace, her eyes locked on the shape. “Somebody doesn’t know when to quit.”

Kepler did not reply, he just flattened the gas pedal. Maxwell and Lovelace, leaning over Eiffel and Garcia, fired at the soldier, but he absorbed the bullets without even wincing, it seemed pointless to keep wasting ammo on him. Then another shape burst out of Congress Avenue. .

“LookoutforQuicksilver!” shouted Eiffel, too late. The Black soldier collided with the side of the van, the metal whined as bare fingers dug into it. Lovelace, acting on instinct, shot our their side window, leaned out, and shot the soldier in the chest, gut, and arms. It was enough to cause him to lose his grip and fall back, but that was all.

The other, the white soldier, took a different route. Maxwell had been distracted by Lovelace’s attack and didn’t see when the soldier jumped. She only just saw the blurred shape the moment before he disappeared from sight and landed on the van’s roof. Each footstep was a heavy crunch overhead. Lovelace swore and pulled herself up so that she was more out of the car than in. Eiffel leaned across the seats and grabbed hold of her legs to keep her from being dislodged into the street when Kepler swerved frantically trying to throw off the soldier.

Kepler’s ploy didn’t work. The Arngrim soldier landed feet first on the hood leaving two deep pits where the metal crumbled like fresh snow under him. He slowly raised his gun, awkwardly teetering, trying to compensate for Kepler’s erratic driving. It gave Lovelace a lucky second to shoot him before he could take out Kepler, sending the Arngrim soldier tumbling onto the pavement.

The van lurched suddenly. Kepler looked out of Jacobi’s side-view mirror. “Maxwell!” Kepler shouted, “we’ve got a hitchhiker!”

The dislodged Arngrim soldier had made a mad grab and caught the van’s dented and loose back bumper before they could leave him behind. He easily hauled himself up. Maxwell leaned over the crumbled way-back seats and out the hole where the rear window had been and shot him in the head as he peered up at her. Directly in the eye, she realized. She was shocked when this blew his head apart like a normal human’s. The Arngrim soldier fell into the road dead, body collapsing like a rag doll on the pavement then disappearing under the wheels of the Lincoln. The other soldier had completely vanished. Maxwell and Lovelace exchanged excited expressions from their cramped positions nearly on top of Eiffel and Garcia, but relief was short-lived. They still had to deal with Young.

While they’d been struggling with her soldiers, Young managed to get close to them. A .45 caliber bullet missed Maxwell’s head by centimeters, severing a few of her curls. A second shot flew over Anne’s bowed form and further cracked the badly damaged windshield.

“Jacobi, your second is up!” Kepler shouted. He was unrolling his window so he could see beyond the shattered windshield, held together mostly by stubbornness at this point.

“Okay!” Jacobi said. The thing he’d been working on was complete. When Maxwell looked at it, it was crude especially for Jacobi’s standards, but certainly recognizable as an explosive.

“Then do it!” Kepler roared.

“Cover me, Maxwell!” Jacobi shouted, unrolling his window. He was already leaning out of it before she answered. He knew better than anyone that Maxwell would always help him. Always. That was the other absolute in life: Kepler would always have some bullshit plan and no matter what Maxwell had Jacobi’s back and vice-versa.

“Of course,” said Maxwell as she followed him outside, leaning out the back again. She distracted Young from Jacobi, drawing and returning her fire. Jacobi hurled his homemade grenade. It exploded on impact in a flash of light, an eruption of blacktop, and a crack louder than thunder. It shattered the road behind them. Maxwell quickly ducked back inside to avoid a chunk of blacktop sailing straight for her head. Young had to swerve to avoid the huge hunks of debris thrown in all directions and stop short to avoid the new cavern blown in the street.

“You missed,” said Lovelace.

“Shut up,” grumbled Jacobi.

For now they were alone. A sigh of relief went through everyone but Kepler, who remained stiff and unyielding. The only thing that changed was the angle of his neck, he allowed himself to stretch a little farther out of the driver’s seat to see the road ahead.

The van turned down another road as Kepler muttered, “don’t get too comfy yet.” But no one seemed to be heeding that warning.

Slowly Garcia sat up, all shaking limbs. Eiffel bent down and touched Anne’s back. She was shivering and crying. Garcia was trying to hide it, but there were tears streaming down her cheeks too. She kept wiping her eyes on the heel of her hand, sniffling. She tried to give Anne a brave face when the girl finally unfolded. She reached out and rubbed her shoulders.

“I never wanted to be this close to a gun again,” Garcia whispered presumably to Eiffel.

“In Texas?” said Jacobi incredulously from the front seat, “good luck with that.”

“Shut up, Jacobi,” said Eiffel as Lovelace leaned over to flick his injured cheek.

“Ow!” said Jacobi just as Eiffel replied to the shivering Kate.

“I know, Kate,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry isn’t enough, Doug!” she snapped, a new wave of tears flooding her eyes. She looked away, breathing raggedly.

Anne leaned into her mother and Garcia put a hand protectively around her, trying to calm them both. Eiffel took a deep breath, said “I—” stopped, and gave up, going slack like a dropped puppet. He went quiet and took a cigarette from the pack stuffed somewhere in the seat. He lit it and smoked with his head out Lovelace’s broken window, leaning around her to do so. He’d never done them that kindness but Maxwell assumed it was for the sake of Anne’s lungs.

Outside, the van passed a tall tan building, the words on the arch over the door proclaimed it to be the Harris County Criminal Justice Center. Eiffel and Garcia both looked out at the building with very different expressions, Eiffel looked crushed and defeated, Garcia was angry, she held Anne tightly enough that the girl tried to free herself.

They remained silent as Kepler kept going, driving more slowly and in the right direction. They reloaded the weapons they could, assessed any nicks and scrapes they may have gotten. “We need to get rid of this car…” muttered Kepler.

Minute Maid Stadium loomed high over them a block away. Kepler’s head turned toward the massive parking lot across the street. After a second he let out an “ah ha!” and pointed to a teal soccer mom minivan in the lot. It even had a “Proud Parent of an Honor Student” bumper sticker, “Thin Blue Line” decal, and those white crime scene-esque outlines showing mom, dad, and their three little spawn.

Kepler pulled up beside it and parked. They all stumbled out of the car, working quickly to get into their newly chosen vehicle. Maxwell used a screwdriver to break the driver’s side window open, pressing the head against the side of the glass, grunting with the effort, until the window finally shattered. Maxwell pushed away the glass, unlocked the car, tugged the door open, and climbed inside. She worked quickly to hotwire it as the others milled around behind her.

She was lying ass over the seat, one foot off the ground, and head below the dash, when Jacobi swore loudly. Before Maxwell could look up to see what happened he shouted, “hit the deck!”

Gunfire blew up the pavement and peppered the cars as her partners disappeared below the windows. After the first incoming hail of bullets Maxwell peered up through the passenger window and saw the Lincoln. Their original van was closer to Young, and bore the brunt of the damage; it was now hemorrhaging fuel onto the blacktop. While the minivan was not unharmed, it was in far better shape than their old ride. Lovelace and Kepler were returning fire over the hood of the van. Eiffel was clinging to his daughter, shielding her with his body.

“Fantastic,” muttered Kepler, ducking gunfire. He turned his head slightly to snap, “Maxwell?!”

“Just one more second!” Maxwell said frantically, ducking back down.

“You get one literal second! Time’s up!” shouted Kepler over the gunfire. But just as he did Maxwell pressed the ignition wire to the battery wire. The engine kicked on.

“Done!” Maxwell shouted.

“Everybody get in!” called Kepler.

“You’re...taking this well, sir,” said Eiffel as he ushered Anne into the car.

Kepler took a deep breath, “Eiffel,” he said, putting a hand on his shoulder and squeezing hard. “I’m conserving ammo and that is absolutely the only reason I haven’t shot you in the head and left you for grackles to eat.”

“Gotcha,” said Eiffel gloomily as Jacobi shoved him into the car. Now Eiffel and the Garcias were in the way-back with Maxwell and Lovelace in the middle bucket seats. Again Eiffel instructed Anne to stay low.

“How the Hell do they keep finding us?!” demanded Jacobi as he tossed a lit match into the growing pool of fuel below their old van. It burst satisfyingly into flames as they sped off. Jacobi was arching his neck to see the fire and figure out how close Young was. The answer was “far too.”

Maxwell had no idea how Young found them again and so quickly. She was running through possible options when her eyes fell on the burned out restraining bolt, someone had taken it from the van, probably to keep it from potentially being discovered covered in Garcia’s DNA. Maxwell had fried it, but what if…

“The bolt!” Maxwell and Eiffel shouted in unison. Clearly this was one of his rare moments of genius.

“What?!” Jacobi asked, jolting from the ferocity and suddenness of their revelation.

“It’s the bolt!” Eiffel said, frantically.

“There’s a tracker in the restraining bolt!” Maxwell quickly clarified, pointing.

Jacobi grabbed it and hurled it out the window, narrowly missing a spray or gunfire. Meanwhile his side-view mirror exploded in a cascade of bullets, glass, and metal.

Police cars joined the chase at Chenevert.

“Really?!” Jacobi demanded of the universe just before the police opened fire.

“I’m surprised it took them this long,” said Lovelace.

Eiffel grabbed Jacobi’s rifle and shot the window on his side, the glass cracked into a spiderweb around the bullet hole, ironically made of stronger stuff than the van. He sighed and forced his way out. He took aim and blew out a squad car’s tire, the disabled car went careening into another, both crumpled against a third, and the three successfully blocked the road.

“Nice shot!” Lovelace said.

Kepler tore down Hamilton, they were going the wrong way again, Maxwell knew this for certain because there were several cars on the road despite the hour. Kepler swerved in and out of the lanes, weaving between cars, no small feat in the bulky minivan. Horns were shrieking in a constant choir. The remaining Arngrim soldier separated from Young again. Maxwell could see his dark shape as he darted in and out of headlights like a cryptid. Cars dodged him, people shouted, but, unsurprisingly, he paid them no mind.

Kepler was at the highway entrance ramp, but the Arngrim soldier jumped into their path, trying to hold them back. Kepler growled in anger and pressed pedal to metal. No good. The soldier held tight, skidding backward, but not letting go. Eiffel swore loudly in shock, anger, and maybe fear. Smoke poured up from the tires as they impotently spun, wearing raw against the pavement. Kepler bitterly took his foot off the pedal. Now the Arngrim soldier began ripping the car apart, tearing away chunks of metal like it was wrapping paper. Jacobi leaned out the window and shot at him with his hand gun but the soldier seemed entirely unphased even as the bullets ripped holes in his body.

Jacobi was doing it wrong, Maxwell realized. She knew what he had to do.

Maxwell pushed to the front of the car, she climbed onto Jacobi’s lap, yanked him back in the van, and took his place in the window. With her rifle she shot the soldier in the head, straight through the eye like she had done to her previous Arngrim opponent. Her theory proved correct. The soldier collapsed against the hood, head burst like a balloon filled with meat and blood and bone. The gore splattered the windshield and Kepler calmly engaged the wipers. “You have to hit them in the squishy parts!” Maxwell said, returning to the car.

“That your scientific diagnosis?” Jacobi asked, taking an accidental elbow to the face.

“Sorry,” Maxwell said for both the elbow and unsatisfying response, “it’s all I’ve got.”

The Arngrim soldier had managed to tear a hole in the hood, but from what Maxwell could tell the engine was largely intact, if smoking slightly. She couldn’t properly assess the damage from here. He had also bought time for Young and she used it to catch up to them. Now that the soldier was no longer keeping them at bay Kepler stomped on the gas pedal again and the resulting burst of speed pressed both Maxwell and Jacobi back in the seat. Jacobi had a tight grip on her arm, like he was afraid of letting her go.

They took the ramp up to route 59, followed closely by Young. Kepler’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel. His blue eyes were locked on the road ahead of them. It was thankfully largely empty of traffic, but that was because it was clearly being worked on. On the road, in their path, construction vehicles sat presently abandoned. The road was lit by huge police flood lights. Behind and rendered dull by the power of the floodlights were the red and blue lights of a wall of police cars. Black-and-whites lined mirror-to-mirror and bumper-to-bumper. The police threw down a spike strip that was hardly necessary with the blockade they formed. Maxwell climbed into the back seat to see if she could help keep Young back at least. But Lovelace and Eiffel were keeping her at bay with potshots she had to continually dodge. They had somehow managed to finally stall Young, the Lincoln’s engine sputtering, choking, and dying. Maxwell swore she could hear Young’s furious growl over the police sirens as several squad cars overtook her.

Dead ahead was the barricade. Behind them were more squad cars and Rachel Young. Their Karen-Mobile was on its last legs thanks to gunfire and the Arngrim soldier. Maxwell doubted it could withstand the spike strips on a good day and there was no way they could overtake the barricade or out maneuver the surge of police behind them. Her heart fell through her stomach, they were stuck.

Kepler didn’t seem to agree. He did not slow down, he just changed gears. “Buckle up and hold onto something,” he said cryptically.

“What the fuck are you going to do?” shouted Garcia hoarsely.

“You’ll see,” Kepler muttered, then he turned hard. He lined them up with a semi-end dump-truck in the construction area, its bed was raised and only about as wide as the minivan itself. Maxwell had no idea what his plan was, because the only option she could think of was completely insane even for Kepler.

Then Kepler did it. He sped up into the truck bed. Before Maxwell’s shock could turn to fear the minivan was flying over the opposite end.

They cleared the guardrail easily. Then they were free-falling toward the highway below. Maxwell’s breath caught, an electric sting of fear going through her and a dull ache in her stomach like horror had punched her in the gut. It was like a nightmare; one she knew she would not wake up from.

Jacobi, Lovelace, Anne, Garcia, and Eiffel were all screaming. Eiffel’s scream was loudest and the most shrill; childlike and ear-piercing above the rest. Anne was sobbing, her shriek was a cracked, devastating sound. Garcia and Eiffel clung tightly to her as if they could somehow protect her from the crash with their bodies. Stupid, thought Maxwell vaguely, we are all going to die.

Kepler didn’t seem to notice any of it. He was hyper-focused and grinning.

The fall took far longer than it really must have. To Maxwell it seemed to take eons. The few cars on the highway below swerved, sped off, or pulled over to watch.

Maxwell lost her nerve at the last moment. She squeezed her eyes shut just before they hit the pavement. But they didn’t crash. Rather, they did, but somehow Kepler maneuvered them so all four wheels hit the road, two then two. Maxwell nervously opened her eyes again, prying open one then the other.

They were alive! They skidded sideways across the lanes, clearing the road. Kepler turned so that as they came out of the skid they were pointed the right way. He didn’t even stop, just drove off down the highway, past the gawkers, as if they hadn’t just plummeted off an overpass. The car coughed in complaint, but kept going.

A stunned silence settled over the majority of them as Kepler sped down route 69. Everyone but Kepler looked at each other, all trying to figure out if this was really happening and how they’d somehow survived.

“Sir…” whispered Jacobi in breathless awe, “that was amazing!”

“Of course it was,” Kepler said, somehow both smug and annoyed. Then he did a double take at the stunned faces around the car. “Did y’all honestly think I was going to kill us back there?!” he asked incredulously.

“Yes!” said Eiffel, his voice breaking.

“People don’t usually survive what you just did, you maniac!” shouted Lovelace.

“‘O, where is faith? O, where is loyalty?’” Quoted Kepler. Maxwell didn’t know the quote’s origin and while she couldn’t peg the play, she’d put money on it being Shakespeare. This was Kepler, after all. “I pulled that trick off a bridge at least three, no, four times that height in Dubai and lived to tell about it.”

“Did everyone else die?” asked Maxwell, her voice hoarse from her fear-dried throat.

“No, smartass,” Kepler replied.

Another silence settled over the car, less stunned, more exhausted as all anxious tension left them. After a few quiet moments Garcia asked, “Where are we going?”

“Yeah, I’m wondering the same thing, General,” said Lovelace.

Kepler looked thoughtful, Maxwell could see his scowl in the rearview mirror, the muscles of his jaw working.

“Away,” was his only answer.

Chapter Text

Eventually Eiffel fell asleep, although not immediately their extremely dramatic reenactment of The Fast and the Furious. First he and Kate comforted the understandably traumatized Anne then, when her waves of tears finally subsided, there was a long time in which Eiffel fielded questions from his ex and daughter. The rest of the SI-5 constantly butted in, sometimes to help, sometimes to do exactly the opposite, and generally acting like an extremely vocal studio audience. It was a laugh track he did not need, but when distress ever stopped the likes of the Wonder Twins or Slim Pickens?

Often Anne looked to Kepler for support or verification. When the General caught her gaze, he would offer a nod, a shake of the head, a shrug, some small gesture. It didn’t surprise Eiffel that she looked to Kepler over her father, the former had been there far more often and more recently than Eiffel himself had. He wasn’t surprised that she looked at Eiffel with curious, somewhat cautious interest, as if he was an unexpected find, like a brightly colored lizard under a rock. What did surprise him was that Anne held his, Eiffel’s, hand. She held his hand and she wanted to talk to him. She asked questions about him. She asked where he had been and was clearly dissatisfied with his stuttered response. Eiffel’s coworkers had all exchanged looks when that particular question came up, clearly curious and concerned about Eiffel’s answer. But contrary to popular belief Eiffel wasn’t a complete idiot and wasn’t going to expose his daughter to the grisly realities of his unchosen profession.

Besides, he had something that, at the very least, the Terrible Trio lacked: shame.

Anne wanted to be close to him. She wanted to talk to him. She didn’t hate him for what he did to her years ago and in the past few hours. She wanted him to know about her. She wanted to tell him everything. How could she be so forgiving? It made Eiffel feel like crying, he didn’t know whether it was from relief, self-disgust, or joy.

Eventually Anne was too exhausted from the horrors of the day to do anything and try as she might to fight it, she fell asleep against his shoulder. Eiffel kissed the top of her head for the first time in seven long years.

Seven years, so very long ago. It felt like a lifetime had passed since then. He’d dreamt of this moment, but he never actually thought it would really come. Somehow this was real. This was happening. Anne was here beside him. Despite it all, Eiffel couldn’t help but smile as he dozed off.

The next thing he knew the car was stuttering under them. Eiffel was jarred awake as it bucked. He glanced at the clock. He’d been out for 10 minutes.

“What’s happening?!” Anne asked, tears swelling in her eyes again like ocean waves. She was clearly terrified of what was going to befall them next.

It’s okay, we’re okay, Eiffel signed. “Hey, General, why’s the Mystery Machine going Christine on us?”

“Couldn’t tell you,” was Kepler’s exasperated response. He got them onto the shoulder before the engine died entirely. Kepler growled and pounded the accelerator. The engine cranked, complained, and failed to turn over twice, on the third try it didn’t even do that much, it just let out a sound like a cough, and gave up entirely. Kepler cursed and thumped the steering wheel with both hands. Then he turned around to face the passengers, “Maxwell? Your hypothesis?”

“Oh, I can tell you exactly what the problem is from here,” she said, folding her arms.

“And that is?”

“Um...the engine has been shot to Hell? A humanoid tank tore it apart? All that plus your little Evel Knievel stunt show spectacular off the overpass? The fact that it survived this long is a miracle!” Maxwell said.

Kepler nodded along with her answer, he sat back in his seat, seemingly considering her response in a moment of quiet. His expression was deceptively calm. But it was the kind of calm his employees knew to fear. They were experiencing the eye of the storm. It would pass and the worst of the hurricane would follow.

“Doc...tor,” said Kepler, breaking the word into syllables. Never a good sign. It made Eiffel shiver. Maxwell knew even better than Eiffel not to question Kepler when he used that voice. “I...have had...an…extremely...trying day,” he spoke achingly slowly so that every word was crisp and distinct and terrifying. “And...I…strongly…Herculean strong-ly...vigorously recommend...you and I...get out of this…rust bucket” a snarl that made Maxwell, Eiffel, and Jacobi flinch, “and check the engine...because the alternative is far too horrifically, viscerally brutal for even the most lurid of dimestore paperbacks.”

“That is an excellent point,” Maxwell said quickly. She clambered out past Eiffel into the dark beyond the 1990s Soccer Mom Dream Car. There were no streetlights along this stretch of road and no sounds but crickets, katydids, the occasional dull hoo of an owl, and sometimes the ominous shuffling of something much larger and unseen in the opaque night. The stars were bright here, or at least far brighter than they were in the city. Eiffel had seen more impressive skies than this in the last seven years, the sky a deeper black, the long graceful curve of the Milky Way, thousands of stars strewn across the sky. He’d even been among those stars. The last time he saw Anne he had barely even seen the stars outside of the likes of a National Geographic. Another life, with all that meant, now long lost.

Kepler kicked open the driver’s side door. Before following Maxwell into the near pitch dark he turned in his seat and smiled at Anne. He signed, everything is going to be fine.

She obviously hadn’t heard his earlier threat and from where she was sitting she couldn’t have even read his lips. For Kate it was a terrifying 180. She sat up a little straighter and put her hand on Anne’s.

Hang in there, Kepler added.

Anne nodded tearily.

He patted her arm gently, “you’re being very brave,” he said aloud. Then he sat back, and leaned over Jacobi to remove the flashlight from Jacobi’s bag. He switched it on and followed Maxwell into the gloom.

Maxwell’s analysis of the engine didn’t take long. “Surprising no one, I was right,” she said leaning through Kepler’s open door.

“Everyone. Out. Now,” said Kepler, his voice strained like he was holding up a dam against a raging torrent as he attempted to control his anger.

None of the SI-5 needed to be told twice. Eiffel made sure Anne came with him and Kate wouldn’t allow her out of arm’s reach.

As they exited the car Kepler grabbed Jacobi by the shoulders and steered him around to face him. In the same tone as before Kepler said, “Blow. It. Up.”

“If I do it’ll be the last of my incindaries,” Jacobi told him, hauling his bomb kit a little higher on his shoulder.

“Blow...it...up…” Kepler repeated in a voice that was so much more frightening than any threat; a voice that burned and promised to do the same to you, an inferno that neither of you would escape from alive. It indicated that if Jacobi didn’t use the last of the incindieries on the car Kepler would find another immediate but more bodily use for them.

“Right away, sir,” gulped Jacobi, newly persuaded. He unscrewed the car’s plates, tossed them into the backseat, prepared it, and in a matter of moments the deserted forest road was bright from the red and yellow flames, dancing through the burning minivan. It was the only light besides stars and it cast their long distorted shadows over the tree line.

“Are you insane?!” Kate had shouted when Jacobi struck his match.

“Oh yeah,” said Jacobi, grinning broadly, like an extremely disturbed child on Christmas. Or Hanukkah in Jacobi’s case.

“You’re going to burn down the whole fucking forest!” she yelled, clinging to Anne but rounding on Jacobi.

“He won’t,” Maxwell said flatly.

“It’s okay,” Eiffel said. Maxwell was right. He wouldn’t. Jacobi came as close to controlling the chaos of demolitions as anyone could.

“Unless something goes wrong. You can’t really control a fire,” said Jacobi with something like awe in his voice.

“Cool, thanks,” said Eiffel sarcastically as Kate yelled at him again.

But nothing went wrong. It reached a startlingly bright and hot climax and then burned out entirely, but it was fading from sight behind them by then. The blackened shell of the minivan disappeared entirely into the darkened distance. With the light gone Kepler and Maxwell’s flashlights provided their brightest light. The loudest voice was Jacobi’s as he complained about having to carry more than the others. Lovelace playfully chided him, then mock shouted like a drill sergeant. Eiffel scooped up the exhausted Anne and carried her most of the trek. She lay her head on his shoulder and fell asleep. Kate walked beside him but didn’t say a word. Eiffel didn’t know what to say to break the silence between them. He glanced over at her a few times, hoping to find the words there, but she pointedly refused to even meet his gaze. Eiffel gave up.

Eventually they came upon an opening in the treeline and a turnoff on the road. It was marked with a sign warmly welcoming them to Sam Houston National Park. The sign was illuminated from below with two small orange lights trained on it. Kepler paused in front of it.

“Mr. Jacobi,” he said finally, more brightly, looking for him.

“Yes, sir?” Jacobi asked, pushing past Eiffel and Kate to join Kepler at the head of their little group rather than pointedly sulking at the back of it. He shoved Kate a little too hard in his enthusiasm and she sidestepped into Eiffel, jarring Anne awake. Kate apologized and signed for her daughter to go back to sleep using the light from the sign. But Anne shook her head and rubbed her eye.

“How do you feel about camping?” Kepler asked Jacobi when his right hand came obediently to a stop beside him. He knew very well what Jacobi thought about camping. He hated it, though not as much as Maxwell did. It wasn’t as if the Wonder Twins made that a secret. Eiffel’s feelings were more mixed. He was a city guy at heart, and a naturally inactive one, but there was sometimes something nice about being surrounded by his close friends under the open sky. Camping by himself would be Hell, but with other people? Especially people he liked? There were far worse fates, even worse ways to choose to spend a Saturday night. He hated the bugs and the bad weather but campfires and stories were great. They had been camping together...or the SI-5 equivalent, which was being stationed out in the woods...during which Kepler had heard and participated in many debates about the merits and failings of camping. But Kepler wasn’t really looking for the answer this time; this was part of the show he just had to put on.

“I like it okay,” Jacobi shrugged in pantomime, effortlessly joining Kepler’s performance.

“I’ve always liked it,” said Kepler thoughtfully, almost dreamily. Eiffel couldn’t help but wonder if this was for Kate. Kepler only rarely gave this kind of performance when it was just the SI-5. Not anymore. They knew him too well after all this time. Eiffel wondered what it meant that Kepler performed less. Or maybe he had just changed the show, turned their attention to another ring in his crazy-ass Ringling Brothers brain. “I like being out there under the sky, in nature, nothing but man and the elements...And a good gun, of course.” He gave Jacobi his lopsided grin.

“Of course,” Jacobi agreed with a nod.

“What do you say we give it a go tonight?” Kepler asked. “They may even have some cabins.”

“It’s worth a try,” said Jacobi with uncharacteristic enthusiasm.

Lovelace clapped sarcastically at their display and Kepler gave her a dirty look, one she matched and fired back at him.

They followed the road into the forest. It led to a parking lot lit by several dim humming streetlights. From there they followed carved wooden signs for cabin rentals, which led them down a well worn trail. Anne was walking on her own now, but she seemed almost in a daze, overwhelmed. Eiffel held her hand tightly. He never wanted to let her go, almost afraid that if he did she would disappear. Kate held her other hand as if she too was afraid, but in her case afraid of what Eiffel would do. Probably because she was afraid of what Eiffel might do, and he deserved it.

Soon they came upon a cabin lit by an old-fashioned lamppost and marked with a green and yellow sign designating it as office. Spread around it were other cabins, and trampled dirt trails leading out into the woods to even more, Eiffel assumed. He was guessing, it wasn’t as if he had ever been there before. He hadn’t done anything remotely Bear Grylls-y until the SI-5. The closest he’d come was military reform school as a teenager he pointedly refused to absorb any of that.

There was still a light on in the office. “Hey, we’re in luck! It looks like Duck Newton’s still at work!” said Eiffel with an excitement he didn’t feel, pointing.

“Mr. Eiffel, remember my earlier threat pertaining to the grackles?” Kepler asked.

“Y-yeah?” Eiffel answered.

“It still stands,” Kepler said with finality. Eiffel mimed zipping his lip. “Stay here,” Kepler gestured to his team and the two new, well, near-hostages. He climbed the wooden office stairs, knocked twice, then pulled the door open. As he did they were immediately doused in the bright yellow light and warmth emanating from inside. “Hi!” said Kepler kindly to the unseen ranger, his tone changed entirely; his voice was friendly, warm, not that of a man who had been literally shaking with rage not long before. Kepler could have been a Broadway actor. He could have been in Hamilton, swapping costumes and going from one character to another completely different one night after night. Or maybe Eiffel was being too kind to Kepler after the years of familiarity. Maybe this wasn’t a costume change, maybe Kepler was more like a snake wriggling out of his skin.

The door closed behind Kepler and the rest of them were thrown back into the dim.

Jacobi yawned loudly, stretched dramatically, and leaned his shoulder up against the office. He closed his eyes, crossed his arms over his chest and his feet at the ankles, his bomb kit resting at his feet. Maxwell clicked her flashlight on and off idly, boredly, casting the light into the thickly gathered trees on the nearer side of the clearing. Lovelace picked up a stick and leaned on it like Gandalf, because of her height and that of the available sticks she had to lean waaaay down when she decided to rest her chin on it. Anne looked up at her mother. Kate petted her hair and Anne leaned against her mother. Her hand slipped from Eiffel’s and he resisted the urge to follow her and take it again as Kate shifted their daughter away from him.

A wave of misery overtook Eiffel. God, what did he do? “I’m sorry,” he muttered in the dark.

Kate picked up her head and looked at him. The rage in her expression could rival Kepler’s. “Why did you have to be alive?”

“That’s fair,” Eiffel conceded. They shouldn’t have to see him again. He’d deafened Anne as a toddler, now he had probably traumatized her. He let out a breath. “You’re...probably stuck with us for the long haul. We can’t let them find you.”

“Just...don’t talk to me, Doug,” Kate said after a long moment.

He nodded and turned away from them, toward Jacobi, he was about to walk over to him when he heard, “dad?”

He turned back and Anne was looking up at him, one eye still pressed into her mother’s chest, one on him.

What’s wrong? he signed.

She shook her head. Where are you going? Don’t go, she signed, releasing her mother’s hand to do so. So he didn’t. She offered her hand to him again. Eiffel paused looking down at her for a couple of heartbeats, then he smiled and took it. They waited there without saying another word.

Eventually the office door swung open again and Kepler stepped out, laughing along with the ranger.

“Have a good night, Mr. Sherman,” said the uniformed ranger. He gave Kepler a toothy broad smile as the latter descended the steps.

“Please, call me Jake,” Kepler replied, half turning to face him, “and thank you again, Ranger Rodriguez.”

“No problem at all! Have a good night folks,” he cast a little wave around at them. “Sorry about your tents,” he added as he closed the door.

Jacobi looked confusedly at Kepler, eyebrows raised, as he picked up his kit.

“I told him we were on the campground and our tents got ruined by a falling branch. That’s why we’re here at 2:15 in the morning, it just came down on us,” Kepler explained. He led the way to their row of tiny cabins. It was three lots over from the office, along the dirt trail, past other identical cabins. They were arranged in groups of five set in clearings separated by trees. Each group of cabins were in rows of two. The last of the cabins was beside a slightly different wooden building marked clearly as a communal shower and bathroom. “There are two beds to a cabin,” explained Kepler. “Jacobi, Maxwell, you’re in cabin 18.” He tossed the key over to Jacobi who caught it with a nod. “Ms. Garcia, you and Anne will be spending the night with Major Lovelace. Cabin 19.” He handed the key over to his Major.

“Don’t worry,” Lovelace said to Kate with her friendliest smile. “I promise I’m not so bad.” Eiffel almost expected her to make a joke, but she knew how anxious Kate was already and unlike Jacobi and Maxwell she didn’t relish being a complete asshole. He was very thankful for that.

“Eiffel,” said Kepler. “You’re with me. 20.” Eiffel swallowed and nodded, resolute as a man climbing the gallows. As inseparable as Jacobi and Maxwell were when they were awake, often when they had to be split up at night Maxwell opted to share a room with people who didn’t snore. It wasn’t as if Kepcobi resented getting to spend time alone in their aggressive sexual tension. The other option was for Kepler to ignore Maxwell’s request for rest and take a room for himself. The present arrangement of Kepler with Eiffel, was unexplored. If Kepler wanted to room with Eiffel there was a reason. A good one, or rather, a very bad one from Eiffel’s perspective.

They all went their separate ways. Anne looked over her shoulder at Eiffel. He gave her a little smile and wave, hoping he seemed more confident and less shaken than he felt. She returned it, but with exhausted anxiety, as if fear was the only thing keeping her awake. Eiffel sighed miserably in the dark, he hoped it was masked by the sounds of insects. He would light a cigarette, but in this mood Kepler was just looking, waiting, for the straw to break the camel’s back.

“I’m not going to kill you,” said Kepler as he unlocked their door. He pushed it open with a loud high creak, “probably.”

“That’s probably good,” Eiffel said.

Kepler gestured grandly with a sweep of his hand for Eiffel to enter the cabin. He did so, flipping on the light switch beside the door. Kepler followed, closing the door behind him. The overhead light blinked twice, surged, then, humming, remained lit but unimpressively dim. A moth began futilely charging into it.

The cabin was tiny: a single room with two beds, with an end and lamp between them. On the wall opposite the beds was a counter with a coffee maker, hot plate, and tiny refrigerator. The beds were bare but Eiffel found sheets and pillowcases in a small cupboard along with towels. Eiffel made up his bed while Kepler did his customary search of the apartment. Looking for bombs, listening devices, and other signs of enemy action. Odds were extremely slim that their enemies, Goddard or otherwise, would know they were here. They hadn’t known themselves even a half hour ago. But Eiffel thought it was instinct for Kepler after all these years and his paranoia meant he did not fight the impulse. They turned on their bedside lamp and off the one overhead. The moth decided to make its suicide runs at that light bulb instead. Eiffel and Kepler changed into their pajamas. For Kepler this meant a tank top and checkered pajama bottoms, Eiffel stripped down to his Batman boxers. Finally just after Eiffel shoved his unfolded t-shirt in his bag he took a deep breath and said, “General…” He turned to see his CO making the bed.

“Choose what you say very, very, exceptionally, extraordinarily, painstakingly carefully,” Kepler said slowly, not turning to look at Eiffel as he shook his pillow into its case.

“Okay—”

“No, no,” interrupted Kepler, still not facing him, and instead carefully playing the pillow in the center of the single mattress, “I want to make sure you understand exactly what I mean. If I hear a single pop culture reference or you ramble about unnecessary bullshit I will use your skin as a blanket. It will probably be warmer than this thing.” He added toing the green and brown fuzzy blanket waiting at his feet. Kepler looked like a Bruce Timm character, cartoonishly tall and buff, beside it. He only a couple of inches taller than Eiffel, even if he was substancially more muscular, and Eiffel also wasn’t looking forward to cramming into the short bed.

Eiffel swallowed dryly, “I’m…” he trailed off, shook his head, looked away, then he began again, “You know what? I was going to apologize, grovel, the whole nine yards, but I don’t think I am actually sorry.” He chuckled humorlessly, “I’ve been thinking about what I did for hours now and I keep changing my mind about it. Sometimes I think I’ve fucked up and I screwed everything up for them, that they’d be better off never knowing what really happened to me. Maybe Goddard would have left them alone…but then I think what the Hell are the odds of that? Especially not now after we’ve made that…” he stopped himself from making a Death Star reference, “that very unlikely shot and took down that lab. Cutter would be all over them like a shark on chum. Anything could have happened. You know better than anybody what that…that homicidal Nutter Butter is capable of. And if there’s even a teeny-tiny chance that what I did saved them...then I’m not sorry I did it.”

“Are you finished?” Kepler asked, pausing in shaking out his blanket.

“Yes, sir,” Eiffel braced himself for whatever came next.

Kepler finally looked at him, catching Eiffel’s green eyes with his ice-blue ones. “I cannot promise you that Mr. Cutter and Dr. Pryce would not have taken, imprisoned, tortured, or killed the Garcias sooner or later. But I can promise you they would not have made a move if they did not either know where you were, that the Garcias knew where you were, or that you were watching the Garcias. There would be no point in taking them if they didn’t have information or you weren’t aware of it. It’s not as if Cutter and Pryce have our address to write you a postcard and Anne’s organs. Anne and Ms. Garcia only matter to them because they matter to you. The Garcias would be safe until Cutter and Pryce knew for sure that either the Garcias could find you or their capture would impact you. There’s no reason to play that hand otherwise. Definitely no reason to discard it by prematurely dispatching them. But you went to the Garcias’ home. You let Cutter and Pryce know it was open season. You going to that house put your family on Goddard’s Hit List. And now they’re stuck with us. You realize what that means, don’t you?”

“Yes,” muttered Eiffel, his gut sinking lower.

“I don’t know that you do,” Kepler continued to work as he spoke, “for one thing, they will see you at your worst. They will know everything that you are. You’ve become an excellent operative, Mr. Eiffel, but you know a good operative is never a good man. Just as you are well aware that you are no exception to that rule. Sooner or later Anne is going to see Dear Ol’ Dad do what we do best. You got lucky tonight. It won’t last.

“For another, if you hadn’t gone to them the worst that would have happened to them right now is that your paycheck would stop coming. The Garcias might have to move back into a slightly less idyllic neighborhood, Anne might have to attend public school, Ms. Garcia might have to fire the babysitter, if things got really tough she would take a second job. Or maybe none of that would have happened as Ms. Garcia has a lot of money saved up and she makes enough money these days to support herself and Anne. They have no debt. Now, because of you, and your profoundly idiotic impulses, they’re stuck traveling, Anne won’t be going to school at all, Ms. Garcia will lose her job. And that’s the best case scenario.

“The reality of the situation is that they are civilians without combat or weapons training. The best they can do is hide and pray. They now have targets on their backs and you painted them on there yourself. There’s the very real possibility they won’t live through this. They’ll certainly be the easiest of my Merry Men to pick off.

“Ms. Garcia has already suffered at Goddard’s hand, but if they find her again, she will beg for a restraining bolt. And you don’t even want to think about what will happen to Anne if GF sinks their claws into her. Do you know how badly Dr. Pryce wants children as test subjects? She’ll take Anne apart piece by piece and put her back together again however she wants. She will crack your daughter’s head open and joyfully scramble what she finds inside. If you’re lucky, you won’t have to watch Pryce do it.”

Eiffel was silent for a long time, turned away, his heart pounding, clutching the flat feather pillow close to his chest, hugging it as if it were his child.

After a suitably dramatic pause during which every one of his words sunk in like a dagger Kepler added, “I could make creative threats all day to show you just how mad I am. I could yell myself hoarse pointing out all the ways you’ve sabotaged us by throwing two new monkey wrenches into my plans. I could beat you to a bloody slurry. I could break you into tiny pieces. I could scream myself blue and you deaf as Anne trying to get the fact that you may have just damned humanity to plague and slavery through your incredibly dense cinder block of a skull. But nothing I say is going to make your mistake as clear to you as what has already happened to Ms. Garcia and what could happen in the future.”

Kepler straightened, having tucked the edges of the blanket under the corners of his mattress and smoothed out the wrinkles when he spoke. Eiffel saw his reflection in the glass of the curtainless window. His expression was stern and joyless. This wasn’t one of Kepler’s manic threats. This was the simple truth. That was the worst part of it.

Eiffel’s eyes focused on the image of his own haggard and horrified face. He had been so sure he had done something right and Kepler blew it up in his face. Or, rather, Kepler had pointed out it was explosive and that its timer was already ticking down. Kepler got into his perfectly made if ludicrously undersized bed as Eiffel stood there frozen.

“Good night, Mr. Eiffel,” said Kepler, clicking off the desk light. Without another word Kepler rolled over to face the far wall.

Eiffel didn’t answer. He couldn’t answer. Slowly, as if recovering from a physical strike, Eiffel lowered himself into bed. He lay awake in the deafening silence.

Chapter Text

Lovelace woke up later than she usually did. She needed more than three hours of sleep that waking up at 05:30 would have given her so instead she slept until 7. Still not a lot of sleep, not enough sleep by a longshot, but it would do for now. There was no word from Kepler with the foundations of a new plan to flesh out, so either he hadn’t come up with anything yet or his panties were in such a twist over her helping Eiffel that he wasn’t sharing. Either was possible, the latter was probably more likely, considering what a petty jackass Warren Kepler was.

Kate and Anne Garcia were still asleep on their cot, mother and child cuddled close together out of necessity and fear under the borrowed blanket. Kate’s arms were wrapped protectively around her daughter. It was so tender and loving it made Lovelace’s heart ache. Lovelace made sure to keep quiet to not disturb Kate. At one point she shifted, but she only held her daughter closer. Anne made a small grumbling noise at the motion but neither woke.

Lovelace hadn’t really known what to expect from Kate. Eiffel never really talked about her much, but she was in one or two of his pictures of Anne. Inquiry had gotten Lovelace a few details about Anne’s mother, but she mostly knew her by her appearance. Kate of seven years ago had a much more severe look: more blacks and blood reds, winged eyeliner, crop tops with band logos. She looked much more...suburban now. Calmer. Her makeup matched her skin, her nails were flatter and shorter, her clothes more conservative. Her tattoos were the same: a galaxy of stars and planets and constellations down her right arm, the Starfleet insignia on the shoulder of the other, her daughter’s name on that wrist. Those were all the visible ones, but there may have been more. She still had several earrings though not as many as in the photos and she had substituted her hooped nose ring for a tamer aquamarine stud.

Lovelace took her small bathroom pouch from her larger bag, grabbed a towel from the closet, slid into her boots, and left the cabin for the communal bathrooms. She thought about Anne and Kate as she rubbed coconut oil into her hair before sectioning it into short plaits. It was amazing to think that she was meeting Doug Eiffel’s child. She had thought about Anne from time to time over the years, and tried to imagine what she must be like. Eiffel adored her. Every year he bought her a birthday and Christmas present for Kepler to give to her, pretending it was from Goddard Futuristics. Whenever Eiffel talked about her it was always with extreme fondness and a soft warm look in his eyes Lovelace never saw at any other time.

Eiffel never talked about seeing Anne again, so Lovelace never thought she would meet her. But then again Lovelace never thought she would be saving the world either, or at least she hadn’t in roughly 10 years.

She wished they had met under other circumstances. Kate and Anne were now essentially hostages in this little heroic expedition. They were coming whether they liked it or not. They were being taken away from their friends, their lives, their home. They risked losing everything they had ever had.

Hell, they risked losing their lives.

The Garcias found themselves forced up against real, true evil, and that evil was far better funded than the ragtag rebels they were slated with. They had been thrown head first into this with only the barest understanding of what was being fought against or fought for, only the vaguest of inklings as to what was going on.

And they got absolutely no say in it. If they wanted even a chance at staying alive they had to stick with the SI-5. That was the worst part. Isabel Lovelace had always been a big believer in choice and freedom. The latter was why she stuck with the armed forces even in the wake of all the terrible things they did. The former was why she was still here fighting with Kepler until the end of the world. In this case, Kate and Anne Garcia got neither, nor even enough information to make a decision should they have been able to.

After she prepared her hair and brushed her teeth she showered. She ran through everything that happened the night before. If she could go back would she do things differently? Probably. It would have been better if they could have gotten Anne and Kate off the grid and hidden safely rather than dragging them into this. But Lovelace also wasn’t sure how they would have done that without attracting Goddard’s attention. She knew how dirty they played.

When she emerged from the showers Lovelace nearly walked directly into Kepler. He stood in his pajamas, crossing the men’s room with a white bar of soap and a bottle of generic shampoo. His clothes and towel hung over one broad shoulder. His exposed skin was crisscrossed with scars of varying shades, depths, and origins. Lovelace wasn’t sure how long he had been with Goddard before this final rebellion, but it was longer than Lovelace had, and it had taken a clear physical toll on him.

Sometimes she wondered who Kepler used to be. It was a funny thought. Kepler was a manipulator, she had never seen it the other way around. Kepler took each of them, every member of the SI-5, and twisted them, molded them, made them the way he wanted them. Once she would have denied it, she pretended that Kepler didn’t have that kind of influence over and on her, that kind of power, but at this point it couldn’t be denied. He lured her in. At some point Lovelace had taken that power back from Kepler. That was when she could start genuinely liking him. And she did like him. Somehow.

She had made herself, she was her own abomination. Isabel Lovelace 10 years ago had been a completely different entity. She would have been horrified by what her future held, what she would become. She would think that she would die rather than be something so dark and terrible. Not only had she become it, she was fine with it.

And she knew without Kepler that never would have happened. Someone had taken in Kepler much the same way, maybe it was Cutter himself. Kepler had, like Lovelace, taken the wheel from his recruiter, but, as with Lovelace, somebody had to have been there to steer him off his old course and onto this new one.

Kepler must have once been something else, someone else, too. He must have been shaped if not by a person (like Lovelace suspected) at least by the job. Once upon a time Warren Kepler wasn’t the head of the Strategic Intelligence Division. Hell, once upon a time he wasn’t a Goddard special agent. There was a time before.

Had he always been as cruel as he was now? Was he a natural leader or had he grown into that role? Was he always a pile of secrets under a handsome smile and a military uniform? She knew so little about his life before Goddard. She wasn’t even sure where exactly he was from, although he had reassured her many years ago that his childhood hadn’t been spent worshipping the Confederate battle flag and his ancestors had never owned a cotton plantation or the lives of people like Lovelace and Eiffel’s. She didn’t know what his ancestors had or who his childhood heroes had been.

It was still strange to think that Warren Kepler was once a child.

“Major,” he said coldly, passing her.

“General,” she replied. “Are we still angry at each other?”

Kepler didn’t respond, disappearing around the corner of the building toward the men’s room.

“I guess we are,” she sighed.

“Be ready for a run in five minutes,” called Kepler without doubling back.

She didn’t bother answering. They both knew she would be there. She would work out anyway, it had long been her routine, but it was much better to have someone else there. She liked people.

Back home she and Jacobi went swimming nearly every morning in one of Goddard Futuristics Olympic sized pools. Sometimes on weekends Lovelace and Kepler would on-purpose-accidentally cross paths during their respective morning runs. Sometimes they even officially planned on it.

Kepler was not your average work out partner. With Jacobi, for example, there was a level of camaraderie, the competition was constant, but it was friendly. During warm up and cool down they talked like normal people about normal things in their lives, the few there were. They gossiped about coworkers, argued about politics, discussed their relationships (romantic or platonic), movies they wanted to see, future plans, aches and pains they’d earned on various missions or by the simple process of aging. With Kepler there was none of that. A pointless race against Kepler might as well have been an Olympic event. If they spoke at all it was either very briskly or else it was the usual Kepler BS. Camaraderie without the comrade. The Warren Kepler warm-fuzzies faded as soon as his mood changed. He was still at work. He still wore that same mask.

Lovelace wondered if it ever came off. Every member of the SI-5 had taken theirs off eventually. They had each broken down at one point or another. They had bared the rawest parts of their souls. Every member, that was, except Kepler. The closest Lovelace had ever seen was unbridled rage. There was the possibility that Kepler had opened up to Maxwell or even more likely to Jacobi, (she wouldn’t pretend Kepler didn’t have favorites), but Lovelace had never gotten more than a glimpse.

Maybe that was why it was so hard to imagine Kepler before Goddard. Most of what she knew about Kepler was Goddard. And that was why this whole mission had completely altered her image of him. She was still trying to figure out who this new/old Kepler was, still trying to piece the picture together.

When she went back to the cabin Kate was awake. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, hunched over. In her hands she held the bloodied bandage that had been tied around her neck. She wasn’t crying but she looked like that was only because she was too tired to even do that. Lovelace closed the door a little more loudly than she normally would have to let her roommate know she had returned.

Kate looked up in shock, her hands balled up into fists. She was ready to fight with whatever she had. Lovelace didn’t know much about Kate’s history, but she was willing to bet it wasn’t pretty.

“It’s just me,” Lovelace said, holding up her hands, shower bag hanging from one wrist. “Same old roommate from last night.”

“Yeah,” Kate replied.

“Do you want me to bandage your neck?” Lovelace asked. “Put some polysporin on it?”

Kate eyed her suspiciously, brown eyes tracing her face as if trying to extract some ulterior motive.

“You shouldn’t leave it open yet,” Lovelace explained. “You don’t want it to get infected, right?”

“Fine,” she said, but her posture had completely stiffened up again.

“Have you gotten a Tetanus shot recently?” asked Lovelace.

“Last year,” Kate answered.

“Good enough.”

Lovelace got the dwindling first aid kit from her pack. Kate moved to the foot of the bed. Her hair was cut in a tasteful bob, short enough at the back that it didn’t need to be pulled away. The puncture was an almost perfectly round hole, red and slightly swollen. Just below it was a tattoo, a blood red heart with large uncolored feathery wings protruding from either side. Silently Lovelace applied polysporin to a cotton pad. “Did you sleep okay?” Lovelace asked, trying to make smalltalk. “I thought the bed was a little small but—”

“What do you guys really do?” Kate asked flatly.

Well. That was blunt. And unwelcome. The answer was not something a civilian would want to hear. Especially not when said civilian was now trapped with them. Lovelace tried to buy herself time while applying the medicine to the wound. But she knew how impatient she would have been for an answer. “That’s...something you should talk about with Eiffel,” Lovelace said, because after she told Kate the truth she might never want to talk to Eiffel again.

“He called himself ‘a Swiss Army Knife of really horrific things,’” Kate said.

“Honestly, that’s pretty accurate,” Lovelace muttered, producing a roll of gauze from the kit.

“Tell me what that means!” Kate demanded, emotion rising in her voice. Lovelace was torn between protecting Eiffel and telling Kate the information she deserved to know.

Lovelace let out a breath, deciding she had to give her something. “Look, Eiffel’s a good guy. Whatever I tell you, he’s not a bad person, not really. He’s a little stupid and a little gross but he’s a good friend. And he loves Anne with all of his heart. That money you’ve been getting? That’s from his paycheck. And those presents Kepler brings Anne? Those are all from Doug. He picked them out and bought them and asked Kepler to give them to Anne. What I say is going to make him seem...well…not great…”

“Just tell me!” Kate shouted, anger and desperation ringing in every word. “I don’t want to hear another fucking word about how much of a saint Doug Eiffel is! I know who he is! I know him better than you!”

Lovelace was about to voice her disbelief in the validity of that fact. Kate knew him seven years ago. She knew him in another life. But that reminder wouldn’t help the situation. Instead she began to wrap Kate’s throat and spoke quietly. “Goddard Futuristics didn’t get where it is by writing big novelty checks and digging wells in refugee camps. It got there by stealing from compedaters, killing off whistleblowers, negotiating with terrorists and hostile nations, funding their interests at the cost of lives, fighting against anyone who tries to rise up, and wiping out anyone who gets far enough to be a threat. They need people to do all that, aaaall the ugly things no one is supposed to know about, all the extortion, all the espionage, all the illegal deals, all the beatings, all the murder, all the cover ups, and that’s the Strategic Intelligence Division. And us five? We’re the best there ever was.” Kate was silent as Lovelace tied off the bandages. “Too tight?” she asked.

“No,” Kate muttered quietly.

There was a knock on the door. Kate jumped. “It’s okay,” Lovelace said gently, “it’s just Kepler. We’re going for a run.” Kate didn’t say anything. Lovelace rose from where she had been kneeling on the bed. She picked up her canteen and crossed to the door. She had the knob in hand when Kate spoke.

“Don’t.”

Lovelace froze and looked back at her.

“Don’t tell Anne any of this. Don’t let Anne know about Doug,” Kate muttered hopelessly, twisting her hands in her lap.

“I won’t,” Lovelace promised before opening the door.

Chapter Text

Eiffel had been left to his own devices and said devices were lying in bed in his boxers and staring at the ceiling, trying to reconcile what his life was now. He had long ago accepted that things were rarely in his control. There were things he had to do even though they were wrong and he didn’t want to. There were situations, so many situations, that he could not fix. There were a lot of worses coming to worsts. He wasn’t so much living his life as he was riding a track. He could only react. He had gotten used to it.

If he was honest, there were times — many times — he even liked having choice taken from him because when he had been in control of his life he hadn’t done much with it anyway; not much positive at least. All he did was make mistakes. Awful ones. So it was nice to give up control to someone else and just...just go with it. Just do what he was told. He had been going with it for years. Then last night he had taken things into his own hands for the first time in a long time. He had defied direct orders.

And look where it got him. Look where it got Kate. Look where it got Anne. Good fucking work, Dougie boy. You screwed the pooch again. He thought. Then he pressed his hands against his face and yelled into his palms.

There was a knock on the cabin door. Eiffel stopped screaming, he lowered his hands and sat upright. He crossed to the door, expecting it to be Jacobi or Maxwell looking for breakfast or at least company while they went Into the Woods to find a Denny’s. Maybe it would be Lovelace. He wasn’t expecting Kate.

He wished he’d taken a second to put on pants over his boxers. Yeah, she’d seen him naked, but that hadn’t been a thing in about 10 years. And back then she was voluntarily subjecting herself to the sight of his body. She blinked and stared at him for a moment, anger replaced by surprise.

“Sorry,” he muttered, “I wasn’t expecting you or else I would’ve Mary Poppins-ed up the place and put on my Giorgio Armani.”

“Where did you get that scar?” Kate asked.

“Huh?” Eiffel asked, looking down. She pointed at the slash across his chest. He had almost forgotten about it. It was part of his body’s geography now. Back when Eiffel first joined the SI-5, after he’d started being FW occasional B with Jacobi but before his own body really took a real beating, Jacobi had said it would be like that. Jacobi had been talking about his own burn scar, which covered a portion of the right side of his chest. Although it could have been for any of the atlas of scars on nearly every part of Jacobi’s body. Sooner or later, he said, you stopped seeing it. Or, maybe you just forgot you ever existed without it. In some ways the SI-5 was like that. You were changed, distinctly and forever, but it became you.

“That? It was on a mission like four years ago,” Eiffel said with a shrug. Eiffel had gotten the scar scaling a mountain ledge. His rope had been shot and he fell. He caught himself with his grappling hook, but his body slammed hard against the rocks, the jagged edges cut through his uniform. He had clung there, desperately, his body dragging back and forth against the stone until Jacobi and Maxwell were able to repel down and save his sorry ass.

He knew he looked different from the man Kate knew; once loved and now hated. She’d seen him in various shapes, the leaner more sinewy form he had during his time in the Air Force and the doughier Homer Simpson bod he earned during his longer drunken stints. Seven years with the SI-5 and he was...harder, stronger. He wasn’t anything close to Kepler, but he was miles away from the old Doug, both in structure and scars. This job marked you and did it in more ways than one.

“Did you kill the guy who gave it to you?” Kate asked in a growl.

“Uh…”

“That’s what you do now, right? You kill people? Was he some starving miner? Or a poor farmer? A labor rights activist?” Kate asked, anger spiking in her voice.

“Kate...what are you…?” How did she know so much? And how could he explain himself now? Oh God...how much did Anne know? That thought came like a punch to the gut.

“Lovelace told me,” Kate said. “Were you ever going to explain yourself, Doug?!”

“Come...come in,” he muttered, looking away from her intense and accusing brown eyes. She pushed past him, glared up at him. It was such a familiar expression, she’d been mad at him so many times before, but the circumstances were wildly different. He looked down at her sneakers, unable to hold her gaze. Sensible, worn running shoes. “Mom shoes” as Kate would have called them once.

“Start talking,” said Kate.

“Where’s Anne?” he asked.

“I left her with Jacobi and Maxwell,” Kate answered.

“What?!” Eiffel looked up now in shock. That was not safe. Jacobi and Maxwell could barely take care of themselves without exploding or forgetting to eat. “That...they can’t watch Anne!”

“Why not?” asked Kate, “because they’re as bad as you?”

“No!” he shouted, then his voice became quieter, “Well, yeah, they are. But that’s not the point! They’re like...they’re truly terrible at adulting…” he ended in a mutter.

“Will they hurt her?” asked Kate very seriously, uncrossing her arms, the anger on her face softened into a look of fear.

“No, of course not!” Eiffel replied. Not on purpose at least, but he didn’t voice that part out loud. Odds were if anything Anne might have to take care of them for a little while.

“Then we can talk,” said Kate, visibly slackening with relief. “We have to talk.”

Eiffel let out a breath. “Okay,” he said, “yeah, you deserve that.”

“I deserve a lot more than that,” Kate snapped. “What did you call yourself? ‘A Swiss Army Knife of really horrific things?’ ‘A spy?’ Were you going to keep dancing around the fact that you were a super villain’s goon or were you just not going to share that secret to the rest of the class?”

“I was going to tell you,” he said pathetically. “I just don’t want Anne to know. Anne can’t know.” He was practically pleading with Kate. “I don’t want to scare her...any more than I already have…” he added with a sinking feeling in his gut.

“At least we agree on that,” said Kate. “She doesn’t know and I’m not telling her. What happened to you?!” she demanded, her voice shaking, “the Doug Eiffel I used to know was stupid and reckless but he wasn’t...wasn’t...evil!”

“No,” Eiffel agreed with a puff of breath, “he wasn’t.”

“So what the fuck happened?!”

“A lot,” he said, turning away from her.

“Oooooh no!” Kate grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked hard, she couldn’t make him move like she once could have, “You don’t get to hide from this! You don’t get to go all Marcel Marceau this time!”

It was funny, they had both changed, she used to let him hide. He looked over at her. There was gray in her black hair now. They’d both gotten old. How had they both changed so much? Were they even the same people they used to be? Eiffel didn’t think so. Piece by piece Doug had fallen away, replaced by Eiffel. The good in him rotted, the bad in him thrived. He started accepting being this way. His objections stopped coming. He did his job, no matter what the request, no matter what the cost. He did what he was told every single time.

Just following orders.

The Nuremberg Defense from his own lips.

And it took him so long to realize how often he said it. He felt nauseous. He needed to smoke.

“I don’t know,” he muttered.

“You don’t know?!” Kate repeated.

“I don’t...know!” he realized he broke his words up like Kepler and felt a new surge of sickness. He looked around anxiously for a cigarette. He crossed to the end table and pulled one out of the mostly consumed packet, lighting it with fingers shaking so badly they could barely work the lighter. Kate was still watching him. Waiting.

“You were in the Air Force, but you weren’t...you weren’t like most of them. You weren’t violent. You weren’t just looking for an excuse. How did you…?” she trailed off.

“It just happened,” he whispered without looking at her. He took a deep breath and kept going, voice shaking. “It wasn’t fast. It wasn’t a choice. It wasn’t like I woke up one day and said ‘hey, you know who’s cool? Jack the Ripper, I’ll get going on my From Hell letter!’ I wasn’t trying to be Skeletor. One day I just...had to pull the trigger. It came down to saving someone by killing someone else or letting her die and I made my choice and after that it just got...easier. It happened again. And again. And eventually I didn’t even need a reason. They just pointed me at a target and it just was part of it. Some of them even deserved it. The bad things just got easier. We got sent out on different missions and I had to the things I had to do—”

“You’ve stolen and killed and lied and...and…” Kate’s voice was small and scared. Eventually she was at a loss for words, something Eiffel never thought would happen to Kate Garcia. “God, I don’t even know…”

Eiffel looked away again, “and armed dangerous regimes and stopped people from getting help and beat down the little guy and helped all kinds of super villains win. And just about every other awful thing in the world. I’ve got...a few lines in the sand.”

“Well bully for you,” said Kate with an audible scoff. “Where’s it end, Doug?”

“I’d never rape anybody, none of us would, we’re not that kind of evil. I’d never hurt a kid. I don’t torture people. But there aren’t a lot of them besides that.”

He felt guilty. It had been a long time since he had genuinely felt guilty. It had all become so routine. It was all just work stuff. Mundane petty complaints like any other job. It rolled off him. You know, it’s a living.

Sometimes when it was particularly bad Eiffel felt the approximation of guilt. A faded sting deep down in his guts. Sometimes, at the very worst of it, guilt and shame still rose in his gullet like bile and he would have to go to bed or smoke through several packs of cigarettes before he could even stand to think again. Those were the times he missed drinking the most. But it took too much to even bring him to that. Besides, it’s not like that stopped him. He had always been too stupid to listen to his own body and conscience.

And the smaller tasks? He barely even noticed them. He even enjoyed some of them, especially spying. Theft? He barely remembered that it was illegal most of the time. Sabotage? All’s fair in love and war and business. Espionage? Keeping up with the Joneses. Also extremely badass and fun. His sliding scale was broken and it wouldn’t go back again.

But Kate and Anne being here reminded him of the him before all of this. A him before the SI-5. A him who had morals and a heart. A him who may have been a fuck-up but at least he tried to be a good person and cared about other people. That him had thought he was terrible. Oh sweet summer child, Eiffel thought, you have no idea how much further you are going to fall.

“And what?! That’s just business as usual for you?!” Kate shouted.

“Yes,” he barely mouthed the word.

“How could you?! How could you?!” Kate no longer looked angry. She looked horrified. She looked disgusted. She looked sad. Somehow that hurt even more.

“I don’t know! I told you! It just happened,” he answered. He was lying. It hadn’t just happened. It had been a slow, horrible, but constant and unyielding descent. “It just happened.”

“How did it start?” she asked.

“Kepler...Kepler made me a deal when I was in jail,” he said. “So I had to. That was the deal. The reverse Oath of the Gatewatch.”

“And then you sent your goddamn blood money to me!”

He looked at her in surprise. How did she know that?

“Lovelace told me that too,” she answered his unasked question.

He swallowed over the knot in his throat. His voice was hoarse and cracked and quiet. “I just wanted…”

“You wanted what?!”

He did not answer and shrank back in on himself.

“You wanted what?!” Kate shouted.

“I just wanted to make things right!” Eiffel shouted back. He didn’t mean to yell, it just came bursting out of him. “I wanted to fix what I did! I wanted Anne to be happy!” He took a deep breath and his pitch dropped again. “That’s why I agreed to work with Kepler in the first place, because he promised me you both would be taken care of. That’s why I left prison. That’s what he gave me. That’s how I ended up here.”

Kate looked shocked. Then the anger was back. “Fuck you,” she muttered.

“Kate—” Eiffel took a step closer to her.

“No! You do not get to pretend this is something noble and good! You do not get to act like some big fucking hero! This wasn’t some selfless sacrifice! Anne wouldn’t have even needed help if it wasn’t for you!” She shook her head and trembled with emotion. She raged onward, “I never asked for your fucking charity! This is not our fault!”

“That isn’t what I meant!” he said. “I was just tryin—”

“Stop!” she croaked, her voice choked with tears. She pushed him away. “Just stop! I don’t care what you were trying to do!”

“What’s wrong?” he asked stupidly.

“What’s wrong?!” she stared at him in disbelief. “What’s wrong?! Are you fucking kidding me, Doug?! Do you not realize what you’ve done to me?!” Her voice became increasingly shrill.

“I...to-to you?” he asked, what had he done to her? He had given her money. It couldn’t make up for what he did, but how could it have made things worse?

“With your fucking money! With your fucking gifts!”

“I...wanted to help…”

“Stop saying that! Stop it! You ‘wanted to help.’ You wanted to help with money that you earned by killing and lying and ruining lives and countries and the entire fucking planet! And working for people who want to...what did you say? Unleash a giant plague and kill half the world? That have those fucking slave spikes they used on me! You mean that money?!”

“Yes,” Eiffel’s gut clenched.

“But you know what that money did?” Her voice sank and quivered. “It bought me a house in a nice suburb. It got me out of that Hell I used to live in. It got me out of debt. It let me keep on Anne’s tutors. It let me get a babysitter who I trust. It let me get someone to help around the house once a week. It let me go back to school. It let me get a real salaried job. It let me get Anne all the things that I…that we, you and me...could never have as kids. It let me give her what she deserves. It made our lives so, so much better, Doug…” She trailed off and looked away, putting a hand over her mouth.

And then his heart jumped. He had helped. He had done some good. All those horrible things had had some positive outcome. Anne’s life was better because of them. Tears streamed down his face. But he realized Kate’s shoulders were shaking. Her head was bowed.

“Kate?”

She looked up, she was crying. Eiffel’s heart ached for her.

“I hate that you did this to me!” she sobbed. “I hate that I have to weigh my child’s happiness against someone else’s...maybe even a whole country’s...life.”

Eiffel reached out. Then he dropped his hand to his side. A hug would only make things worse. He was the problem, after all. “I’m sorry,” he said.

She shook her head and glared at him, “fuck you and shove your ‘sorry’ right up your ass.”

Eiffel nodded and turned away.

Then she hugged him. She crossed to him and wrapped her arms around him. He staggered back in surprise. She cried for a long time before she spoke again.

“Kate—”

“Don’t say anything,” she croaked. So he remained standing there awkwardly, silently, unsure of whether or not he should hug her back or just wait there. “And before all this I actually missed you,” she sobbed. “I hate you so much but I fucking missed you! Even after everything you did! I didn’t want you to be dead and now I’m so afraid that you really are. That you’re not you...not him...anymore.”

Eiffel didn’t answer, because he wasn’t sure of the answer himself. He wasn’t who he used to be, but he didn’t think he was entirely someone else. He didn’t know if she still knew him.

“Even after what you did there were times I wished you were there. I wanted you to teach her how to ride a bike. I wanted you to be there for Christmas. I wanted you to be there for her first day of school. Not for me, not for you, but for Anne. Even after everything you did she still missed you so much. She has a picture of you in her room, Doug. She wanted her dad back so badly...she made me remember there was once good in you…”

Eiffel wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. He wanted nothing more than to be in Anne’s life. He didn’t deserve it, but it was the thing he wanted most in the world. If he hadn’t made that horrible mistake seven years ago everything would have been different. None of this would have had to happen. But then he never would have met the others. Was that worth it? Oh God, how could he even think that? Even for a fraction of a second?

“I fucking hate you, Doug Eiffel,” she sobbed.

“Me too,” Eiffel answered.

Chapter Text

For the first ten or so minutes of his run with Lovelace, Kepler didn’t say anything at all. He was still figuring out exactly what he wanted to say. And what he wanted to do. Lovelace looked over at him as she kept pace, waiting for the storm. He knew that was what she was doing, he could see it in her face. There was a certain look most of his subordinates got when they knew he was upset but before he had unleashed his fury on them. But Lovelace had a particular expression, different from the rest of them. Lovelace’s wasn’t one of fright. More curious apprehension, less wide-eyed abject terror. Sometimes, infuriatingly, she looked at him with unimpressed boredom as if she was a patient parent waiting for their child to give up on their temper tantrum. This time it was closer to the former.

Kepler’s relationship with Lovelace had been a constantly changing journey. More so than he ever expected. She was far closer to an equal than Kepler anticipated. She frustrated him often in the early days, but had mostly gotten over their differences in the decade they knew each other. They complimented each other well, matched one another, they found a balance between them, both getting from the other what they lacked in themselves. That had been what Kepler had hoped for when he brought her on. Well, not right when he brought her on. He only picked her up because Rachel Young wanted her and he wanted to take something from Young. But once he saw Lovelace’s potential it was what he had hoped for and why he eventually brought her into his SI-5. No, that was a lie too. He had hoped to temper her, mold her like a blacksmith did steal to create a weapon. But that was not possible with Lovelace. And when he realized that she became his second in command. Somebody to keep him both on track and on his toes. She still made him furious sometimes, but not usually this furious.

Today he was so angry with her he was almost beyond words and he felt a deep desire to just trip her. It would be so relieving to watch her fall, like a massage over tense muscle. The scrape of skin. Blood. Maybe she’d even chip a tooth. But no, that would mean a journey to the dentist to make sure it didn’t require a root canal and they needed to avoid doctors at all costs, especially when they were only three counties away from a Goddard facility. There would be doctors on the payroll. Besides she would complain, even revolt, and he liked having her on his side. He needed her on his side and wasn’t that frightening? They all had to be playing on the same team now. He couldn’t afford in-fighting.

But, at the same time, yesterday would take a long time to forgive. They had come very close to losing before the game even properly started. Because of Lovelace and Eiffel they’d almost been killed with only one Decima plant destroyed.

But then if it hadn’t been for Lovelace and Eiffel they probably wouldn’t be here right now. Their bodies would be in an unmarked grave somewhere and Kepler’s head would be on Marcus Cutter’s desk. And that (and his need for manpower) were the only reasons he hadn’t just left them both in a ditch somewhere for Rachel Young to pick clean.

They ran along the trail in near silence until Lovelace snapped. “Quit it with the silent treatment and be a grown up!”

“Do you really want to start this, Major?” he asked.

“Bring it!” she shouted, stopping short directly in front of him. He stopped, squared up against her and resisted the urge to shove her down. She looked as if she would fight back if he even tried. She was only a few inches shorter than him, nearly as strong, and equally as smart.

Kepler took a deep breath. “You directly disobeyed me,” he said as calmly as he could, but still his voice quaked with fury, the rumblings of a volcano before eruption.

“Yeah, I did,” Lovelace crossed her arms, voice steady, unafraid.

“You went against orders,” he said through his teeth, the rumbling closer to the surface.

“Yeah, I did!” she said more firmly, her resolve only strengthening as his mood darkened. “Is that all you care about?! That I didn’t listen to you?! Is your ego that damn fragile?!”

“I am your commanding officer!”

“I hate to break this to you, Warren, but no, you’re not,” she told him flatly.

It was not often that Kepler felt fear. Part of it was because he had what some might call a personality disorder, it blessed him with natural lack of empathy and had short circuited his emotions in general, the rest came from his parents who taught him early in life that fear was weakness. Having Goddard Futuristics as his enemy had summoned some semblance of fear at an increasing rate. And embarrassingly fear gripped him now at the prospect of losing Lovelace. Of course he knew he no longer actually held any power over the SI-5. They weren’t even the SI-5 anymore, technically that was the highest ranking team of Goddard Futuristics’s Strategic Intelligence Division, something none of them were part of anymore. The only thing keeping the rest of the team there was years of loyalty and the threat of violence. It was a tenuous perhaps untenable tether and as soon as one of them realized that they could just leave, the others might too. His operation would collapse. He would lose them.

“Excuse me?” he asked slowly. He was very good at hiding his emotions, another lesson from his parents, and nothing of his fear crossed his face, just safe fury.

“You were my commanding officer when we worked for Goddard Futuristics, we don’t work for them anymore, so I don’t work for you.”

“But—”

“There’s nothing you can say to deny it, we’re civilians!” she said, “no ranks, no titles, we’re equals! Your orders don’t mean anything anymore!”

The fact that Lovelace would question him like this felt as if one of his loyal dogs had turned its teeth on him. It hurt, it made him question his abilities as a leader, it made him worry it would happen again, and as with all things that tried to get in his way it made his blood boil. One hand balled into a fist. He never hit Lovelace. She wouldn’t stand for it. If he hit Lovelace the best he could hope for was losing her forever. He could not raise a hand against her, if he was losing her already a strike would only seal it. He forced his hand flat. She did not seem to even notice.

“What point are you hoping to prove, Isabel?” he asked through his teeth.

“That I’m still here!” she said, her voice was suddenly kind, warm. He had expected a fight. He had expected her to run. He hadn’t expected that.

Kepler was again stunned into utter silence. He opened his mouth, stared at her, closed his mouth and tried again. He worked his jaw. His mind was still reeling from the 180 Lovelace had just pulled. Was this what that felt like? He was so rarely on the other side of it. He was used to being the one who kept everyone else on their toes. He had always been that man.

But then wasn’t that why kept Lovelace around? Because she was so very much like him while remaining so very different?

“I’m still following you!” she pointed out in the quiet.

“So...you...are,” he said slowly, for once it wasn’t for effect and merely to buy him time while he caught up with the turn of events.

“I meant what I said to Rachel. I’m going down with this ship. If you go, I’m coming with you.” she said. “You know why?”

“Why?” he asked as she wanted him too. He realized this was exactly what it felt like to be on the other side of one of his speeches.

“Because I trust you,” she said and she smiled at him with genuine fondness.

Kepler chuckled, “now you’re just sucking up.”

“You wish. I don’t care about your opinion that much. I like working with you. You’re a good leader,” she said. Then she quickly added, “But you have to get your head out of your ass!”

“I was wondering where you were going with that,” he said. “Whatever do you mean, Major?”

“This isn’t your show!” Lovelace said as they continued down the trail. “This isn’t about your ego! This is about saving the world! It’s about other people for once and we need to do everything we can for them. The game’s changed, coach.”

“Has it?”

“You know it has!”

“I do,” he admitted.

“If we’re going to pull this off we need to work together. It can’t just be you giving orders and the rest of us following them.”

He didn’t answer. There was no way in Hell Kepler would yield any more power than he already did...but Lovelace was right. The game had changed. And on top of the new rules, Young had added another player. His own new additions of Garcia and Anne changed their team lineup and function. Lovelace’s direct disobedience and demand for recognition meant he had to handle her differently. He worked his jaw, thinking. They were silent for a little while longer.

“You still in there?” she asked, glancing over at him.

“Just thinking,” he said. He sighed. “You know, You’re right.”

“And?” Lovelace asked.

“And I’m going to let you in on my plans more.” As much as it pained him.

“Really?!” Lovelace’s face went from surprise to a broad grin. “You’re not just going to ask for my opinion and ignore it? You’re actually going to let me help you?!”

“Yes,” he said.

“Are you feeling okay?” she asked.

“It was your idea!” he pointed out.

“That didn’t mean I actually thought you would do it so easily!” Lovelace said. “I thought this would take a lot longer!”

“Well I did and it didn’t,” he said with finality. Then he added, “Maybe not just you, Maxwell will probably be helpful keeping us ahead of Pryce.” He said this as if he’d just thought of it, but Maxwell’s eventual inclusion had been part of the plan from the very beginning. Once the plan was in motion Goddard would scramble to make everything that Kepler knew irrelevant. It had probably already started. He would need a hacker in there to gather new intel and he just so happened to have the best there was on his side.

Lovelace’s grin grew. Then she cleared her throat and said seriously, “thank you.”

“I’m still angry with you,” he reminded her.

“I know. And I deserve it.”

Now he looked surprised. “Do you?”

“Of course! I know I screwed up, I’m not an idiot!” she said with exasperation.

“Could have fooled—”

“Don’t you dare finish that sentence! I put all of our lives in jeopardy and got two innocent people tangled up in all this! And one of them is a kid!” Then her tone dropped. “If you wanted to make me feel guilty that’s what you should have pointed out.”

Kepler sometimes forgot about that sort of thing.

“And you’ve stranded us,” Kepler added.

“I guess, tangentially,” she said.

“We are stranded.”

“That’s true,” Lovelace agreed.

They had reached an RV park now and were speaking more quietly. People were beginning to stir, rising to meet the day. They passed a pudgy middle-aged man in pajamas and a bathrobe who was taking in the morning. He waved and smiled at them. “Looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day!” he said cheerfully.

“Looks like it,” Lovelace agreed with a matching polite smile. Kepler nodded.

Two white women with matching brown ponytails and big green backpacks set off into the woods. An older Black couple were sat eating their breakfasts sitting out on rickety lawn chairs that were probably two decades past their prime themselves.

“Any ideas, Major?” Kepler asked.

“About?”

“About getting us out of here,” Kepler said.

She sighed and made a face. She didn’t respond at first. She scanned the park as if looking for answers. Her gaze settled somewhere over Kepler’s left shoulder and she stopped. Her eyes lit up and she smiled, “I may have one.”

He raised his scarred eyebrow, “and what’s that?”

Lovelace pointed. Kepler turned.

It was an enormous tan and white RV. It looked like the cab of a pickup truck fused to a giant beige rectangle. Without even seeing it he could smell the mildewy age of the interior.

It was hideous. It would be impossible to negotiate traffic in. It was the last thing Kepler ever wanted to drive. It had a big red “For Sale” sign in the front window.

Of course. Of course it was something like this. Of course this is what he would save the world in. He heaved a sigh. “Alright,” he said. “Let’s get negotiating.”

Chapter Text

Knock, knock.

“Mmph,” said Jacobi, folding his pillow over his ears.

Knock, knock, knock.

“No!” Maxwell groaned groggily as if deeply and personally wronged by the sound. But she didn’t move. Neither of them got out of bed. It was a competition now, who could ignore the noise the longest.

Knock, knock, knock, knockknockknockknock!

Jacobi lost this particular game of chicken. He grumbled a series of colorful words and rolled out of bed. He dragged himself to the door and opened it. He was shocked to find Kate and Anne Garcia standing there. “Uh...Eiffel’s not here,” he said.

“I know,” Garcia said. “I need you two to do me a favor.”

“What? Why? What is it? Why? What?” Jacobi asked skeptically, narrowing his eyes. He was leaning on the doorframe, shoulder against the wood. In the bright morning sun he rubbed his eyes with his one hand, the prosthetic one was charging in the kitchen area.

To Garcia’s credit she didn’t stare at the titanium peg poking out from his bicep or the dozen plus visible scars he had across his body. Jacobi wondered if it was because she had a daughter who was, well, weird too. Sure, there was nothing to stare at on Anne but people probably pitied her, avoided her or her disability, and otherwise treated her differently. As someone with one arm, a lot of scars, and a lot of baggage attached to them Jacobi could appreciate someone not asking questions.

“I need to do talk to Doug in private and I don’t want to leave Anne alone,” she answered

“Hang on, you want me to babysit?” he asked in disbelief.

“You and Dr. Maxwell,” Garcia specified, “is that a problem?”

“Uh, yeah? I’m a ballistics expert! What part of that makes you think I’m good with kids?”

“What part of that means you’re bad with kids?” asked Garcia.

“You know!” said Jacobi angrily when he realized he didn’t have an answer.

“What can I do to get you to do this?” Garcia sighed. She pinched the bridge of her nose in annoyance.

Jacobi thought for a moment. “20 bucks,” he decided.

“You want me to pay you 20 dollars?” she asked incredulously.

“25,” Jacobi said. “It’s supply and demand. You know how the economy is.” Two weeks ago Jacobi would have scoffed at the very idea of $25. Goddard’s paychecks, especially at his level, were monumental, as in they could easily pay for a monument. But now he was not allowed to access his bank account for fear it would alert their old bosses. Kepler had been acting as sugar daddy (since he’d never had his money in a bank in the first place) but Jacobi wanted at least a little cash all his own.

Garcia stared at him in disbelief. He opened his mouth to drive up the price again but she seemed to guess his plan and cut him off. “Fine! $25!”

Jacobi raised his heavy eyebrows, a little surprised that it had worked. “Each?” he clarified.

“Fine,” Garcia sounded more resigned this time.

Jacobi jerked his head toward the room behind him. “Come on in, Anne.”

Anne hadn’t been staring at his missing arm either. The girl’s eyes were intensely focused on his lips. She took a few seconds to process what he said then agreed, leaving her mother’s side.

“Don’t you dare let anything happen to her,” Kate pleaded.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Jacobi, closing the door on her. He opened it again to shoot out, “Good luck!”

When Jacobi turned around Maxwell was sitting up in bed, blinking in confusion at Anne. “Jacobi?” she asked.

“What’s up?” He crossed to the counter where his synthetic arm was charging.

“Why is there a small child in here?”

“We’re babysitting,” said Jacobi, snapping his arm on.

“What?!”

“My mom wants you to watch me,” said Anne, she slightly over-enunciated when she spoke, Jacobi noticed, but her deaf accent was not heavy. She wasn’t terribly difficult to understand. She also didn’t look Maxwell in the eyes, just at her lips. Anne didn’t realize it, but her utilitarian avoidance of eye contact would actually help put Maxwell at ease. “I think she’s giving you 25 dollars.”

“What she said,” Jacobi nodded, unheard, behind Anne.

Maxwell sighed and scrubbed her hands through her hair, sending the already messy curls in all directions. “You should have asked for at least 35,” she muttered, head bowed. “At least.”

“Can you pick up your head when you talk?” asked Anne. “I can’t read your lips like that. And it’s hard enough anyway.”

Maxwell looked over at Jacobi desperately. “What do we do?” she asked without acknowledging Anne.

“You could ask me,” said Anne in the pause that followed.

“I don’t know any-damn-thing about kids,” Jacobi said, looking leadingly at Maxwell out of the corner of his eyes.

“You think I do?!” Maxwell scoffed.

“You could ask me,” Anne repeated.

“You had siblings!” Jacobi pointed out. “Four of them were younger than you!”

“Oh sure! Those were normal healthy relationships! On my 15th birthday one of my little brothers told me he wanted God to kill me! And my middle brother once walked up to me and poured water directly into my computer! And my little sister put dye in my toothpaste! And—”

“Okay, okay, I know! Your family were literal devils!” Jacobi said, holding up his hands.

“You had cousins,” Maxwell said.

“Yeah, but none of them lived that close. And besides I was the youngest on my dad’s side,” his credentials were lacking too. “Did you ever babysit?”

“Only my siblings, you?”

“Only a couple times...I had a reputation.”

“Hey!” shouted Anne stomping her foot, “you could ask me!”

Both Jacobi and Maxwell looked down at her. Jacobi blinked.

“Oh, um, what do you want to do, Anne?” asked Maxwell, careful to enunciate.

“I’m really hungry,” she said.

“Makes sense,” shrugged Jacobi.

“Do we have anything?” Maxwell asked, looking at Jacobi over Anne’s shoulder.

They were presumably all hungry, they hadn’t eaten since yesterday evening at the latest. Jacobi and Maxwell had split a peanut butter power bar while they were waiting for their Lyft, but he hadn’t had a meal since yesterday afternoon. He assumed Anne must have had dinner, but kids were supposed to eat more often than adults, weren’t they? Because they were growing? That sounded about right.

“Uh…maybe?” Jacobi opened his bag and dug around. Near the bottom he found a mostly empty box of Chips Ahoy he bought at a gas station in Louisiana. He triumphantly produced it. Jacobi grabbed Anne by the shoulder and she jumped in surprise, swinging around to face him, wide-eyed. Jacobi wasn’t sure how he was supposed to actually get her attention but clearly that wasn’t it. He pointed at the cookies to show he meant no harm. She reached up for them and he silently handed them over. Anne took the box and sat down cross legged on Jacobi’s bed, a cookie in each hand, munching away.

Jacobi sat beside Maxwell. “What do we do now?” Jacobi whispered.

“We don’t have to whisper,” Maxwell whispered back, “she can’t hear us.”

“Then why are you whispering?” asked Jacobi without raising his voice.

“I don’t know,” Maxwell said. Neither one had changed their volume.

“There aren’t a lot of cookies in there. We need to think of something fast. How old is she again?” Jacobi asked.

“10,” Maxwell answered.

“What did you do when you were 10?”

“Built a computer. You?”

“Made Drano bombs.”

Maxwell hummed in consideration. “I don’t know if either of those are normal,” she decided.

“Crap, she’s running out of cookies!” Jacobi said anxiously.

Maxwell was probing her backpack.

“What are you doing?”

“Something that will probably make Kepler have a stroke,” she said, producing a tablet. “Garcia says Anne’s more comfortable signing so I thought I would be nice.” She turned it on, engaging it for the first time since she wiped its Goddard operating system and installed her homemade replacement. Like all the electronics Kepler had hoarded for this adventure its GPS was disabled and its Internet ran on a different proxy IP with every use and was purchased from a different provider under a different name from the other electronics. Still Kepler wanted them to be extremely careful about using it. Maxwell was good, but Cutter had thousands of hackers at his disposal and he could easily purchase thousands more. Maxwell was characteristically confident she could stay ahead of Cutter’s army, but Kepler didn’t want to risk her hubris. Kepler didn’t always play so conservatively, he rarely played it conservatively at all, but they had to be careful.

She accessed the internet and punched “ASL dictionary” into Gigablast.

“You just want to learn a new language,” Jacobi said. He knew Maxwell was always looking to do just that. Additionally she had always had an interest in ASL and the concept of an entirely unspoken language. She already knew the very basics of it although she was entirely self-taught.

“That too,” said Maxwell, accessing the first site.

“Do you want to do something?” Anne asked, looking up at them.

Jacobi gave her a thumbs up. Neither he nor Maxwell moved besides Maxwell’s fingers on her tablet

“What do you want to do?” asked Anne when it became clear they wouldn’t make the first move.

“Uh…” Jacobi looked hopelessly over at Maxwell. She didn’t look up from her tablet.

Anne waited for a few more seconds then with a sigh of annoyance asked, “Do you have any games?”

“I don’t—” then Jacobi snapped his fingers, remembering something. “I’ve got cards!” He got up and fetched them from his bedside table drawer where he’d found them the night before when he’d been looking for a light bulb. He held them up so Anne could see them in case she hadn’t understood.

Finally Maxwell began to sign something, her eyes still locked on the screen of her tablet, which she rested on the bed beside her.

Anne laughed. “That was pretty close,” she said. She crossed the room and stopped in front of Maxwell. “You were trying to ask if I wanted to play cards, right?”

“Um...Yes,” Maxwell nodded.

Anne surprised them both by taking Maxwell’s hands in hers. “The order is different,” she said. “And you have to flick your wrist more when you sign ‘cards.’” She moved Maxwell’s hands gently.

Once Maxwell got over her initial surprise she said, “okay...thanks.”

Anne nodded, “You’re welcome. Do you want to play Go Fish?”

And they did. Jacobi started holding up fingers to indicate the numbers he wanted along with saying the words aloud. Maxwell looked up the signs for “ace,” “king,” “queen,” and “Jack” and perfected them within the first three tries. Anne seemed to really appreciate Maxwell’s effort. Jacobi gave them a try too, just for the hell of it and Anne beamed at him. He was actually better at it than Maxwell, probably because in ballistics they were constantly using hand signs when wearing ear protection.

“Babysitting isn’t so bad,” said Jacobi to Maxwell.

“Can I ask you a question?” Anne asked him very frankly.

“You just had to go and jinx it, didn’t you?!” Maxwell snapped, glaring at him.

“Uh...sure, Anne,” Jacobi answered, not acknowledging Maxwell.

“How long have you known my dad?” she asked.

Jacobi let out a sigh of relief, he could answer that without venturing into dangerous territory. The last thing he needed was to have a crying or terrified child on his hands. He wouldn’t know how to even begin to deal with that and he had the feeling Maxwell, never one for emotions, would be even worse. “Seven years,” he said, putting down his cards to hold up seven fingers.

She nodded then her expression fell. Jacobi felt a bolt of fear course through him and he looked at Maxwell for some support. She looked back at him in horror. “What did you do?!” she demanded.

“I don’t know!” Then he looked to Anne, “Are you okay?” he asked. No response.

“She’s deaf, you idiot,” Maxwell reminded him.

Jacobi tapped her on the shoulder, when she looked at him he repeated the question.

“You’ve known my dad longer than me,” Anne said. “What’s he like?”

Jacobi laughed bitterly and looked over at Maxwell. What was Doug Eiffel like? That was a question with a lot of layers, far more than Jacobi would have liked. When his eyes returned to Anne she was watching him intently, anxiously.

“Eiffel’s...uh...he’s a good friend,” said Jacobi.

“Why do you all do that?” she asked.

“Do what?” Jacobi asked.

“Call each other by your last names. It’s weird.”

“You’re weird,” said Jacobi on instinct. Then his eyes widened and he looked at Maxwell whose expression was equally shocked. Jacobi thundered forward, “Doug’s funny. He’s seen every movie in existence and read every book. He collects toys.”

“I remember that!” Anne said brightly.

“Yeah, well, he hasn’t stopped. Sometimes he’s dumb.”

“A lot of the time,” clarified Maxwell. “And really dumb.”

“Yeah, extremely super dumb. But he comes through when it counts,” said Jacobi. “He’s a good cook.”

“I think I remember that too!” Anne said. “He makes pancakes in shapes, right? I didn’t imagine that?”

“He does make pancakes in shapes, even when you don’t ask him to.”

“Did he...ever talk about me?” Anne asked, then she winced as if she was afraid of the answer.

Jacobi felt his little black heart break for her, it was embarrassing. He knew all about Daddy Issues and seeing another kid worrying about what her stupid shitty dad thought made something twinge deep in his soul. “Yeah, he did,” Jacobi told her.

For the first few years Eiffel kept Anne and the accident a secret along with his history of alcoholism. But after the truth came out Anne came up more often in conversation, especially after Kepler visited them. Eiffel would grin like an idiot and if Jacobi asked him what was up he told you about Anne. Even when he begged him to stop.

Anne brightened. “What kind of stuff did he say?”

Jacobi sighed. He wished he’d paid better attention. He usually ended up going back to work when Eiffel began talking about his kid. It was rare that Eiffel said anything personal or complicated. He was much happier talking about movies or TV and that suited Jacobi fine. “He said you were really smart and he said he was really proud of you.”

Anne hung on his every word and looked disappointed when he was done. “That’s all?”

“He loves you,” Maxwell said and awkwardly attempted to sign. “He loves you so much.”

“That’s true,” Jacobi nodded.

“He was the one who gave you those birthday presents!” Maxwell said. “The ones Kepler gave you.”

“Really?” Anne asked.

“Really,” Maxwell said.

“Why couldn’t he bring them himself?” Anne asked.

“Uh…” Jacobi looked at Maxwell again. He got no more support this time. She seemed to be searching for an answer as desperately as he was.

“He wasn’t allowed,” Maxwell finally said.

“Why not?” asked Anne. “He’s a grown up, he can do whatever he wants! Isn’t that part of being a grown up?!”

“Besides!” said Jacobi, trying to change the subject, “he didn’t think you would want to see him since...you know…” he gestured lamely. She continued to stare at him. Jacobi tried to think of how to phrase this delicately. Usually, he was only ever delicate with bombs. But he wanted $25 and he didn’t want Anne to cry. “Because he was the one who…” he hoped she didn’t make him keep talking.

“Crashed the car,” Anne said for him.

Jacobi hadn’t been expecting her to be so blunt. After he recovered from surprise it was actually refreshing. “Yeah, exactly.”

“I’m not mad at him for the accident,” she said.

This was not the first time Jacobi had been taken aback by how relaxed Anne was around Eiffel. Jacobi would have been pissed. He would have held the grudge to the ends of the earth. He would have constantly reminded Eiffel about what he did and would have relished it when he cried. But Anne not only didn’t do that, she wanted to talk to him, she wanted him near her. She wanted to reconnect.

“Why not?” asked Maxwell, who probably would have been even worse than Jacobi in Anne’s shoes.

Anne shrugged. “It was a long time ago. I don’t even really remember it. I remember bright lights and then I remember waking up in the hospital.”

“Don’t you miss being able to, you know, hear?” asked Jacobi.

She shrugged again. “Do you miss your arm?”

“What kind of stupid question is that?! Hell yeah I do!” He said forgetting to censor himself.

“Oh,” she scrunched up her face in thought, “I guess it’s different. I don’t really miss it.”

“Maybe because you were a kid?” ventured Maxwell. “Jacobi was arguably a grown up when he lost his arm.”

“The Hell do you mean ‘arguably’?!” Jacobi asked her.

“Maybe, but I haven’t had a dad since I was a little kid and I miss that. I missed him,” Anne said.

That was a sentiment neither Jacobi nor Maxwell could really understand. Neither one of them particularly liked their fathers. They both bore (at the very least) deep psychological scars because of them. Maxwell had voiced that she wished her father was dead. Jacobi wanted to prove to his that he was a real man worthy of respect, not the weak-willed daughter he had always thought he was. Anne suffered perhaps the most out of the three of them, enduring countless surgeries and procedures and being left deaf for life all because her selfish alcoholic father attempted to kidnap her. But she didn’t feel that way. Jacobi obviously liked Eiffel. He liked him very much in fact, more than he would comfortably admit. But he hadn’t been in the car that night. He couldn’t imagine his point of view would be unchanged if he had.

“Do you remember him much?” Maxwell asked.

“Yeah! Well, kinda? Mostly flashes of things. Like him reading to me. Riding on his shoulders at the zoo. The way he sounded. The way he smelled. Stuff like that.”

The way he sounded.

That struck Jacobi. Anne knew so few sounds. And she hadn’t heard anything at all since the last time she heard Eiffel’s voice.

He was a little jealous that her earliest memories of her father were so pleasant. Most of his were getting yelled at. He looked over at Maxwell. The expression on her face was hard to read. He assumed she was probably thinking something very similar to him.

“Do you think he missed me?” she asked.

“I know he did,” said Maxwell gently.

“Really?” Anne asked.

“Really,” Maxwell smiled.

Jacobi’s phone vibrated on the bedside table. He got up and flipped it open.

Come down to the parking lot. Bring your things. - WK

“Who was that?” asked Maxwell. There was obviously only a limited pool it could be from.

“General Kepler. We’re supposed to go down to the road with our stuff,” he said, pocketing his phone.

“Huh, do you think he has a plan?” asked Maxwell.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a plan this whole time,” Jacobi said.

“What’s going on?” Anne asked as Jacobi and Maxwell started throwing their scarce belongings into their packs.

“I think it’s time to go,” said Maxwell.

“Go where? Home?” Anne asked.

Jacobi looked over at Maxwell. Anne probably wouldn’t be going home for a long time.

“Well…” said Maxwell. “Probably not yet.”

“But I’ll stay with dad?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Maxwell said.

“Then that’s okay.”

Jacobi could not believe this child.

When he opened the door to their cabin Eiffel was doing the same to his. He had both his and Kepler’s packs thrown over his shoulders. Garcia was with him and Anne ran over to her parents. She gave Jacobi and Maxwell a little wave, which they both found themselves returning.

Eiffel hugged her and signed something. She signed back and he looked surprised. Eiffel looked at them. Jacobi looked at Maxwell instead. He hoped they weren’t in trouble.

As a group descended to the road side and Jacobi saw an enormous truck...no, an RV waiting for them in the parking lot. Kepler was leaning against the side, doing his closest approximation of nonchalance.

“What the Hell is this?!” Maxwell asked.

“Where’s Lovelace?” Eiffel asked.

The second question was answered first when the horn honked and Lovelace leaned out the window. “Get in losers we’re going world-saving!”

“And this,” said Kepler detaching from the RV to open the door, “is our new home.”

“Really?!” asked Jacobi, making a face.

Kepler glared at him.

“I mean really great!” said Jacobi with a too wide smile and a thumbs up.

“Ms. Garcia,” Kepler gestured toward the doorway in a half bow, “ladies first.”

Garcia tsked her tongue, then entered, holding Anne’s hand. Eiffel followed his daughter. Then Maxwell and Jacobi close behind her. Kepler took the rear, closing and locking the door behind them. The RV would have been spacious if there hadn’t been seven of them crammed in there. Immediately beside the door on Jacobi’s left was a narrow fridge. To the right was a dinette with two-seater gray fuzzy benches on either side of a plastic table that looked like it could fold up. There was a TV built into the wall above it, beside a long window. Across the faux-wood aisle was a faux-leather sofa with a window above it. There was another narrow strip of free space then a counter with sink and stove in an “L” shape. Above it were cabinets. Beyond that, on the other side of the wall, was the bathroom with a small shower, toilet, and sink. Across from its door were two bunk beds folded into the wall. Then there was a drawn curtain, white with roses printed on it. On the opposite end of the RV, above the cab, was another bunk, with a shelf at its foot.

Maxwell sat down at the dinette. Jacobi remained standing beside it. Kepler walked through the RV, pointing out the amenities, folding and unfolding various tables and counters, indicating where the storage spots were. He explained that both sides of the main living area expanded, giving them a little more space when they needed it.

“Mr. Eiffel, you’ll be taking the bunk there,” he pointed to the bunk above the cab. “Major Lovelace will sleep on the couch.” Lovelace put up her thumb to show she agreed. “Ms. Garcia, Anne, you two can take the bunk beds. I will let you decide who gets the top.” He walked past them and pulled back the curtain revealing the bedroom beyond. The room was made up almost entirely by a queen-sized bed with folding end tables. “Mr. Jacobi, Dr. Maxwell, and I will sleep here.”

“Together?” asked Garcia.

“Yes,” said Kepler as if this was the most natural thing in the world. And, to Jacobi, it was. They’d all slept snuggled together in every combination imaginable, especially the three of them. It was comfortable, sometimes even preferable. He would deny it, but he liked to cuddle.

“There’s only one bed,” Garcia pointed out.

Kepler raised his eyebrows. “Your powers of observation and mathematical skills are truly astounding,” he said flatly.

“Fuck you, smartass. You don’t mind sleeping together?” she asked.

“No,” Kepler answered.

“What about you two? Dr. Maxwell?” she turned to face them.

“I don’t see the problem,” said Jacobi, he knew what she was getting at, but he also wasn’t giving it to her. He had almost forgotten that their relationship probably looked weird from the outside and he wasn’t thankful for Garcia’s reminder.

“Me neither,” shrugged Maxwell. Garcia still looked surprised, slightly concerned.

“Isn’t he your boss?” she asked.

“Yeah,” said Jacobi.

“If you’re done stating the obvious…” Kepler called as he pulled open the closet in the bedroom, “I urge everyone to put their bags in here.” They all did, passing their bags to Kepler. It freed up some space certainly. Then he crossed to the front of the RV and dropped down into the passenger seat beside Lovelace. “Now take your seats,” he said, buckling up. “We’ve wasted enough time already.”

They all found somewhere to sit. Eiffel made sure Anne sat on the couch where there were actual seatbelts. Jacobi sat across from Maxwell at the dinette, ignoring the seatbelts there.

“Where did you find this thing?” asked Maxwell as they pulled out of the lot.

Kepler unfolded his enormous Texas map. “Major Lovelace found it,” he said, putting on his reading glasses and a pencil.

“It was being sold by a couple of nuns,” Lovelace said. “They didn’t even want much for it.” She cursed as they turned out of the park. “You were right, turns are a pain in the ass.”

“I know,” Kepler said without looking up.

“I’m sorry nuns?!” asked Maxwell.

“Yeah, I’m a little confused about that too,” said Eiffel. “Like the penguin-cosplayer Sister Act kind? Or like Kung-Fu movies and anime?”

“What’s so confusing? The sisters like to camp,” said Lovelace. “That’s why we’ve got the air freshener and the bumper sticker.”

“The what and what?” Maxwell asked.

Lovelace pointed to the rear view mirror and everyone leaned over and forward to see what she was talking about. Maxwell had to turn in her seat to see it. The air freshener hanging from the mirror was blue, decorated with clouds and a haloed woman in blue and white holding an equally haloed baby. There were bold yellow letters across the bottom just below her bare feet.

“What’s that say?” Eiffel asked.

“Ave Maria,” Lovelace supplied.

“So the Sister Act kind.”

“Yeah, the Sister Act kind,” Lovelace said.

“Now that we’ve got that covered,” said Eiffel, “Are they on the Jesus loves you train or sailing U.S.S. are gonna burn in Hell?”

“Aren’t they all both?” asked Kepler.

“Yes,” said Maxwell, “Jesus loves you so much he’s going to send you to Hell to burn for all eternity.”

“So…what’s our new bumper sticker say?” Eiffel asked nervously.

“Don’t worry Kepler and I already pulled off the homophobic one,” Lovelace said.

“Wildly homophobic,” Kepler added. “The other one wasn’t budging.”

Jacobi didn’t know about Garcia and Anne but every member of the SI-5 was some flavor of queer. Together they covered the whole of the first four letters including a spare B and Maxwell added a double A from the other side of the Q.

“What does the other one say?” Maxwell pressed.

“It says ‘a dusty bible leads to a dirty life,’” answered Kepler without looking up from the map, carefully tracing roads with a pencil.

“Ugh,” Maxwell made a disgusted noise deep in her throat.

“We’re all basically proof of that,” said Jacobi. The others (except Kepler and Lovelace) looked over at him for clarification or in confusion. “I mean we’re the worst people like basically ever and when’s the last time any of us opened a bible? ‘Cause my answer is literally never.”

Garcia scoffed.

“So, uh, where’re we headed anyway, Rubber Duck?” Eiffel asked.

“Industry,” said Kepler. “It’s a town in California, near LA. And we are not stopping again until we are out of this nightmare state.”

Chapter Text

They did stop before leaving Texas at a Target outside Abilene. They bought a few supplies and a couple of outfits for Anne and Garcia. While they drove Jacobi and Maxwell explored the various cabinets, nooks, and crannies of their new home. In the cabinet above the stove where they decided to put their new plastic plates and bowls Jacobi discovered a weathered cardboard box with a Magnolia, Texas address printed on the top, 1000 total was written in Sharpie just below it. After he pulled the box down he blew the dust off the lid and opened it. It was filled with religious pamphlets. Five tall stacks of them. He gasped and called Maxwell over. “Look what I found!”

“Wha—?” She looked in the box and practically squealed with delight. “Oh my God! Oh my God!”

One had a picture of that hovering woman in blue and white (“the Virgin Mary,” Maxwell provided) on a pale blue background, rays of light shining off her the words Our Lady: Undoer of Knots was written in curly script at the top.

“Does she undo knots?” Asked Jacobi.

“I guess?” Shrugged Maxwell. “At least according to the Catholics, apparently.”

“These guys are Catholics?” Jacobi asked.

“Yes,” said Maxwell.

“How do you know?”

“Because they’re nuns.”

“You don’t have nuns,” Jacobi clarified.

“I don’t have anything, but protestants don’t have nuns.”

“Fascinating,” said Jacobi sarcastically.

“You asked!” Maxwell pointed out.

The next pamphlet had a mock-up webpage that almost looked like Facebook. The profile picture was a painting of Jesus complete with glowing thorny heary, You Can’t Friend Jesus: The Treacherous World of Technology, it said in Courier.

“But according to this you can friend Jesus,” said Maxwell. She pointed to the profile picture. “Look, he has a Facebook!”

“Typical,” said Jacobi. “He probably posts Boomer Mom memes about wine.”

“Probably,” said Maxwell. “‘There are days you need a second glass of my blood. Then there are days you need a second bottle of my blood!’” Maxwell added in a mocking voice.

“Gross,” said Jacobi. “Christians are fucking gross.”

“Just wait until you hear about the transubstantiation of the Eucharist,” said Eiffel from his spot on the couch.

“Good thing I don’t care!” said Jacobi cheerfully.

The third pamphlet option had two teenagers, a girl and a boy, stood back-to-back, both looking extremely ragged and depressed, titled Tainted Love: Premarital Relations and Its Dangers

“It’d work way better if you faced each other,” Jacobi said, “at least get your dick pointed the right way, kid.” Maxwell laughed.

Next was one’s cover largely consisted of a rather graphic mockup of a fetus in Utero. It had been a long time since middle school health class where Jacobi remembered being wrangled into a darkened classroom with the other uterus-havers to learn about periods and pregnancy, but in his memory fetuses didn't look quite so human and a lot more like lumpy space aliens.

Abortion is Murder! the pamphlet shouted at the reader in bold white type. Below the fetus it said in quotation marks “Mommy, please let me live!” as if the artificial baby was declaring it.

“Blech,” was Maxwell’s only response.

“If I hadn’t already gotten a hysterectomy I’d get another one just to spite this plastic baby,” Jacobi said.

The last pamphlet was Jacobi’s favorite. It had drawings of a flamboyant man, a butch woman, and a drag queen all surrounding a frightened white child. The title proclaimed it to be The Unfortunate Truth About the LGBT.

Jacobi gasped with delight, “Look Maxwell!” He held it up so she could read it, grinning hugely. “We’re going to Hell!”

“We already knew that,” said Maxwell. Reviewing their options she snatched up the Treacherous World of Technology. She excitedly tore open the front page.

“Obviously I’ve got to learn the unfortunate truth about us,” said Jacobi.

“Oh, this is amazing!” said Maxwell, grinning, “there’s a picture of a computer from like 1998 all in shadow like it’s a movie villain.” She turned the pamphlet to Jacobi and pointed at the image.

“Maxwell, this pamphlet explicitly mentions asexuals!” said Jacobi. He pointed out the line to her. “They didn’t forget you! And you’re a selfish monster for not wanting to have kids!”

“Nuns don’t have kids either!” Maxwell pointed out. “And as much as I love recognition, I really don’t need it from the Catholic church.”

“Nobody does, not even Catholics,” said Jacobi. Then he got excited, “hey! I got the biggest section! I must be the worst!”

“For being…what? Gay?”

“Nah, a terrifying God-defiling ‘transexual’! But being gay and probably also Jewish and athiest wouldn’t help my case.”

“No, you’re an all around dirty heathen,” said Maxwell cheerfully.

“Why are you so excited about those?” asked Garcia, she picked up one of the abortion ones, made a face, and tossed it back on top of the pile. “They’re awful.”

“I know right?!” said Maxwell with glee.

“I don’t get you at all,” said Garcia.

“Your loss,” shrugged Jacobi.

Garcia stepped away and stopped by the bottom bunk bed she would sleep in later. She took her toothbrush out of the plastic Target bag and broke it out of its packaging. Jacobi called after her. “Aren’t you forgetting something?” He asked, leaning across the box of pamphlets.

“No?” she answered, entering the bathroom.

“Yeah, you definitely are,” said Jacobi. “You have to pay us.”

“Pay you?” Garcia repeated, then she started to laugh. “Oh right! My wallet is in my bag back in West U. I don’t have anything to pay you with.”

“You lied to us?” Jacobi asked, offended.

“Yeah, I guess I did,” said Garcia, running her toothbrush under water before squirting toothpaste onto it. Kepler and Lovelace laughed from the cab.

Maxwell smacked Jacobi upside the head with the pamphlet she was reading, “you should have asked for cash up front!”