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Chapter Text

Carmen shivers as the cold air rushes over her bare arms in their brief interchange between warm coat of many uses, to casual and all too thin hoodie. She hadn’t had the chance to fully dress the part before Zach spotted the deep navy suits lurking in the almost hidden corners and alleyways. Things were going so well up to that point, the intel Player had dug up was leading them to a pair of woefully inexperienced VILE operatives that had been the kingpin in the latest scheme. It was already a delicate operation with the threat of stolen launch codes resting in the not-so-stealthy operative’s hands. To the average person the thieves would seem intelligent if a little clumsy, but to Carmen and VILE they were downright sloppy. They openly walked the empty streets of Stockholm talking louder than anyone would deem acceptable in the almost cathedral like silence. And more than one occasion Player had picked up their conversation through Carmen’s earpiece without much barrier in deciphering what they were saying. 

Despite all that, the chatter they’d picked up suggested the thieves were sent on a high stakes mission to sell stolen launch codes to a loaded representative of some large entity. It didn’t take much thought to hazard a guess at what exactly the entity could be, the list being very short. It was frustrating when she’d seen a glimpse of the shadows of someone hiding around a corner when she looked but she rather optimistically hoped it was just a coincidence or even a sign of her sleep deprived week catching up to her. However, when Zach’s voice came loud and clear over the comms her hopes were dashed. They had to amend their plans quickly in order to throw ACME off the scent and onto a false trail, that included her swapping a coat for a hoodie amidst the Swedish winter. 

Goosebumps painfully raised across her arms in the brief exchange of outerwear and did little to abate when her hoodie sat loosely over her torso. The change had been the easiest bait and switch she’d pulled off in a while; a simple turn around a corner that offered a large enough shop door entrance where Carmen and Ivy could switch coats. In seconds Carmen had her hair tied up in it’s tight bun and Ivy nestled into the coat of plenty before she leapt out onto the street just as ACME found their visual of her again. Carmen backed herself as far into the shadow of the old doorway as she could reigning her breathes to short, soundless ones; a feat made more difficult with the bitter cold surrounding her and radiating from the brickwork at her back. It feels like hours waiting for ACME to pass as everyone holds their breath. She takes a mental count of the agents as they flicker between shadowed, open-air corridors and bounced between rooftops. 

7 heads, all with eyes for the red clad Ivy. No, that couldn’t be right, every sighting of ACME came in pairs (usually Jules and Devineaux). Carmen jumps back into the shadows as a familiar blur of silver hair rushes past her. The signature bun that held tighter than her jumpsuit no matter how much she ran made the Agent Zari unmistakable. Which meant Jules would be nearby—maybe she could work with that. 

“There’s so many of them!” Zach gasps over the comms. “How are we gonna shake ‘em?” 

Carmen presses two fingers to her earring, opening the channel to the crew. “Jules should be here, maybe I can work a deal.” She only has enough time for the few words before the woman herself turns the corner, following the others though she doesn’t seem to be sneaking around like her cohorts. Her shoulders are squared, even beginning to encroach on her head as she whispers to herself. She lets out a nervous breath, visible in the frigid air. 

“Okay, Julia, you went and put yourself on the line. You can’t let Chief or Carmen down.” 

Carmen smiles as she reaches out a hand to grasp Julia’s shoulder, startling her. As the agent turns around Carmen takes a moment to admire her new found ally, she still would have a lot to do to totally build her trust but she had already made a good start. When Julia full faces her she returns to business, lowering her voice and tone in her demand for a private talk. 

Carmen leads the way as she casually mentions her own agent playing the part of decoy. Ivy had been somewhat hesitant to take the coat. They’d had a couple of hats and coats made in both Zach and Ivy’s sizes for the heist in Paris, but they hadn’t the baggage to bring them this trip. Carmen knew it would be a tighter around Ivy in some spots but overall would be a good fit. She allows a low chuckle to herself listening to the siblings take their role change seriously. Zach asks how it feels to wear the true Carmen coat, mentioning her previous acts of decoy. 

“A little tight in the shoulders, but powerful.” 

More often than not, the siblings shared a phone to relay as ground crew. This time however they needed privacy and discretion that speakerphone wouldn’t allow, especially with the decoy in play. The thought of getting Zach and Ivy a pair of their own radio earbuds hadn’t arisen until that afternoon when plans were changed. Player promised to begin work on it as soon as they had a chance which meant it would take some time before work could begin on the devices. Thankfully they each had gotten a pair of headphones to plug in to their various devices and between Ivy’s hair and the collar, no one would be the wiser. 

“If you’re Carm, that makes me Player, right?” Zach giddily suggests. “Stockholm, city in Sweden, famous for uh, Stocks! Homes! Oh, and uh oo, Those little meatballs!” 

There’s a subtle squeak of an office chair Carmen recognizes as Player sitting back in defeat to the unrealistic mimicry. Zach had tried to learn a little about what exactly Player does but he’d fallen asleep only minutes into the short presentation. Sure they’d just returned from an exhausting caper but it hadn’t done much for Player’s ego. He lets the zealous imitation to continue for a moment before butting in and giving a proper rundown on the local history. Carmen reaches a hand up to her earring and gives it a small turn. To Jules it seems she is nervously adjusting her earring but in truth she had turned down the volume on the history lesson. As much as she loves learning about the places they visit—even more so when Player and her crew jump in to add their share—she needs to focus on the matter at hand. Across the street the bell tower beckons her in. Player had done a quick look through the local buildings in search for a good place for them to talk where they wouldn’t have the chance of being interrupted, stumbling on the closed bell tower. A shiver runs through Carmen as she grasps the freezing metal to begin picking the lock. She wishes she could be huddled near the Valborg bonfire Player mentions rather than breaking into an unheated building to beg for privacy. When the lock clicks she happily opens the door and encourages Julia to slip by. She is quick to step inside but not quick enough to evade the lifting nimble fingers that pockets the heavy blue pen before stepping further into the building. It’s not much warmer than the outside but it offers protection from the wind that had been nipping at her unzipped jacket. 

“You’re not exactly dressed for a Swedish winter.” Julia mentions, a chuckle punctuating her observation. It’s not a very difficult observation but one she wishes didn’t have to be made. Being raised on a tropical island meant the cold had never been welcomed by Carmen. 

“Had to loan my coat once I spotted your reinforcements.” She shivers, rubbing her arms in hopes of soothing the goosebumps and frigid skin. She could have been a bit warmer had she been able to zip up her hoodie, but the zipper had broken off somewhere in Greece and she hadn’t had the chance to fix it, leaving her more exposed than she prefers. She can feel the bump of her pocket as her hand brushes past to nestle insider the pockets. She clamps her hand around the pen and wonders for their privacy from the hologram. “So, is the lady listening in?” Julia looks at her incredulously, her eyebrows lifting in confusion. 

“The lady who lives in the pen.” Carmen produces the pen, holding it out for Julia to see. She takes some pride when the dawning horror mixes with a frantic pat down to check if she’d really stolen her pen. She explains that Chief can’t access them when the communicator is offline and begins to make a move to take back the pen until Carmen returns it to her pocket. She would make sure the hologram would stay hidden, a suit is a suit even if it is Jules. 

The bell tower is a stunning sight as they walk deeper into the ancient building. The tall ceiling sports rows of wooden beams that span the width of the hall that aid in dampening the echo of their shoes across the marble floor. Tall decorative arches line the cathedral like room, each with a dazzling chandelier hanging from its centre point which would illuminate the mosaics that line the gilded walls. 

Julia takes it all in, spinning around and looking up to admire the craftsmanship as she rattles off a potential list of items of value to be stolen nearby. It’s only a small list in comparison to the treasure trove of historical items that inhabit the centuries old city, though the list that VILE might want to steal whittles it down to only a few options. It had been a joy researching the wealth of valuable items across the city and creating a list of potential targets on the plane ride. Agent Zari hadn’t seemed to have much of an opinion on the event. Devineaux would certainly have mocked her for sharing the exciting project but Zari hadn’t ever seemed to have a strong preference for or against the task. She listened as Julia had excitedly pointed out some fascinating exhibits in a museum that consistently switches out its main attraction. She added her own options to the growing list but as per usual no hint of excitement or lamentation came through clear enough for Julia to decipher. From what she can gather, Zari is one of the longest retaining agents to ACME other than Chief herself. One of the few things she can see a passion for in Zari is the race to vanquish VILE and even a bit of a thrill for the hunt. If she knew what Julia could see in Carmen’s own work the two might get along quite well, two passionate woman sharing a common enemy. 

Carmen keeps her eyes on the oversized painting at the end of the hall depicting an angelic woman holding a golden crown and scepter in each hand, with three trumpets peaking out from under the clouds at either side of her head. The woman elegantly hovers under the sun’s rays which fall onto the buildings and tiny humans in the foreground looking up at her. 

As Julia stabs a guess at her usual routine Carmen’s mind flicks to the mental image she had created of thousands of scared faces as bombs whistle through the air before lodging into buildings and reducing them to shreds. It’s not a pretty sight. It sobers her as she turns to address the reason she’d sent out a decoy. 

She’d been so close to intercepting the VILE operatives as she danced across the rooftops. They’d been a bit too easy to follow but they also kept her on her toes as they lazily shifted direction without warning. A whiff of the suits lurking around and the operatives could be lost to the winds with access to devastation out of her reach. The thought chills her more than the howling wind outside had; nothing can go wrong. 

Jules gives her word that she’d requested space for the thief and that not a single agent would be seen. For a split second Carmen believes it. Jules’ kind eyes and sharp mind had lended to her trust in the past and she was ready to open a smidgen more, until it all came crashing down. Not even a second after her promise an agent steps into the doorway behind her, ordering her to freeze. Then two more agents step out from behind one of the arch’s pillars. Carmen’s walls and fists fly up faster than they can make their move as she widens her stance, ready to run. She’d wanted to trust Jules, to have an ally outside her small circle, someone she could rely on with authority to take down VILE for good. 

A suit’s a suit Zach’s voice, dripping with bitterness, rings through her head as a reminder of their conversation on the topic. It had been after their trip to Milan when they’d saved the Medici gowns. She expressed her growing trust in Jules despite her allegiance and Agent Zari’s actions. Zach was right and she knew he was right, but it hurt. Jules had seemed to be more aware of the truth beyond the myth and had pursued it even when her mentor and partner often dismissed it. She’d made her begin to believe that maybe not everyone in the world is out to hurt another or her. 

“Red, what’s wrong?” Player’s voice plays through her earring. The child in her wants to say ‘Jules lied’ in a whiny voice like someone had pulled a prank on her. But this was serious, and from the look on her face, maybe she hadn’t known what was going to happen. 

“ACME tried to pull the wool over my eyes.” She replies as she runs out of the main hall and into a second one. As she enters more agents appear from behind the pillars. Great. 

If these people knew how much hung in the balance they wouldn’t be chasing her with such ferocity. Or maybe they wouldn’t stop harassing her—all they seemed to care about is catching her and making her life harder. When worse came to worse and she had to fight her way out from ACME’s traps she felt bad for the bruises she left, knowing they were just following orders from someone who doesn’t understand, but this little act had been the final straw for her and she doesn’t feel bad leaving a wake of unconscious bodies in the hall. 

The first unfortunate soul to step into her range she grabs their trigger hand and pulls it away from her, pinning their other arm behind their back. Another agent follows behind and she uses the first’s body to her advantage, pulling the trigger on the new foe. She slowly backs away, daring any others to follow her until more pour in behind her. She lays out a cloud of gas knocking out two more before turning the man’s gun on himself. She runs out of the room bursting past the next group that accidentally catch their own agents in a gas cloud and up the stairs, the coughing slowly fading out. She takes the stairs three at a time, flying up the tower. No heels click behind her which strikes her as odd, she thought she’d seen two others outside of the cloud’s reach. She chances a look back behind her before realizing why she hadn’t been followed. The tall figure of Agent Zari stands at the top of the first landing, spraying a heavy cloud of gas over her. She’d expected the gas to be semi odorless but the cloud doesn’t smell at all. The effect however is immediate. She pushes through the cloud, momentum doing most of the work until her muscles take over. She turns the corner and heads up the stairs two at a time but not before jostling up against the wall, and Agent Zari. She pushes off the agent and continues sprinting, no floating up the stairs. 

Her head begins to fog over, her eyes growing heavier with each step. One blink and she’s halfway up the final flight, another and she’s on top of the tower, another and she reaches the protective stone railing. She slows down, grabbing onto the freezing stone as momentum threatens to push her over the edge. Control over her muscles begins to weaken as she pants over the city. The fog clouds deeper over her mind as she tries to plan an exit. The fear of not having an exit plan gives her enough control back to step up on the railing, flight would be her only way out. 

She vaguely hears a voice from behind her as the world spins in front of her, the height of the tower seemingly growing as she blinks. It all becomes too much and her muscles launch her off the railing before weakening again. 

She feels like she’s floating again, imagining the floating woman in the painting settling in time next to her. You’re falling the woman says her hair forming a golden halo around her head. Carmen blinks again and realizes how far she’d fallen and pulls her glider open. 

Player’s computer dings as the glider unfolds into position, alerting him to her change in plans. Her symbol zips across the map further than he’d expected her to go. She flies over the nearby river and further without any sign of turning. He watches for a moment waiting for her to turn and the sound of her glider folding in on itself as she lands safely on the pavement but he can only hear the rushing of wind that keeps her aloft. 

He calls for her, hoping to be filled in on her plan. “You do realize you’re leaving city limits?” He warns. Only the wind answers him, steadily blowing past the microphone. He calls out to her again, why isn’t she answering? He pulls up a test of the earpiece’s signal strength and seeing it strong he worries. Why wouldn’t she answer? He had heard the hiss of the gas guns as she made her getaway, had they gotten her? He tries again and again, panic building as he begs her to answer when he can hear the scraping and breaking of branches. The branches become larger and louder as he checks her altitude monitor. The numbers rapidly drop until a long heart pounding string of cashes through snow and trees sound from his computer’s speakers. Fear grips his chest as he hears the sounds of her rough descent, then static. 

He quickly calls to the siblings informing them of Carmen’s crash and blaming ACME. They’d all been wary of ACME but this took the cake, they hadn’t brought harm to Carmen until now and they’d used Jules to bait her. 

Ivy wonders at how they’d given up their chase after her, declaring she is Carmen Sandiego. An almost comically unfortunate phrase as a booming voice sounds from behind her greeting “Carmen”. The sudden greeting catches Ivy off guard and she stumbles through her part. She tries to bargain with the voice before the loud crackle of electricity sounds shaking her until she fades out. Zach calls to her demanding an update then her phone turns to static as well. 

“Ivy!” Zach calls, panic flooding his voice. He tries again and again, calling her name louder and louder but each time there’s only silence in response. It’s not until he alerts Player that he realizes the call had dropped. Any other person might have just brushed it off and called again but with a job as dangerous as their and ominous voice that had proceeded the call failure, he can’t let it go. “Player, Ivy’s not answering her com.” A list of things that could be happening and by who flies through Zach’s mind. Carmen’s grounded and who knows where, Ivy is MIA and being taken who knows where by who knows who, VILE has a drive full of dangerous codes that could bring cities to their knees and ACME had to show their face at a crucial moment; what would they do? 

How Player always manages to stay calm in dire situations is beyond Zach and even sometimes Player himself. He can see everything almost falling into place then unravelling right before his eyes. Shadowsan is still on the Malaysia mission leaving Zach as the only remaining ground crew. The next decision is one he wishes he doesn’t have to make and puts it off for as long as he can. It isn’t long however, until Zach defers authority to him and asks who to support. The weight of the questions sits on his shoulders and he swears it take off 10 years of his life. Who would be better equipped than Carmen to get herself out of whatever jam she’d gotten in, but how much damage had that crash done to her? He wishes he could take longer to make the decision, maybe reroute Shadowsan to be there in an instant like he had been so often in the past few months. Even if Shadowsan could leave at that very moment, he wouldn’t arrive until hour later, and possibly hours too late…

“Go get your sister,” Player cares just as much about Ivy and she isn’t as skilled as Carmen is yet, “Carmen knows how to take care of herself in a pickle.” He tries to keep optimistic and light but nothing about the situatuion is light. He mutes his speaker for a moment putting his head in his hands letting out a whimper. I’m so sorry Red, Please be okay.

As soon as Player gives the word to go after Ivy, Zach throws the van into gear and flies down the road; a herd of police cars couldn’t stop him if they dared to try.

“I’m coming for you Ivy.” Zach’s voice is all business though a shiver of guilt follows him down the road. He knows Carm is more the capable to handle anything, but he also knows she’s not invincible. Time and time again he’s seen her, Ivy, and now Shadowsan working together to patch scrapes, wrap bruised ribs, set rolled ankles—Paris being a horrifically humbling experience—he knows all too well that Carm is just as human as the rest of them; even if she tries to prove otherwise. He shakes away any creeping thoughts of how badly she’d been grounded and focuses on Ivy; one thing at a time.

Neither talk very much as he makes his way to Ivy. Judging by how fast the geometric triangle whizzes across the virtual map, Player figures they had taken Ivy and tossed her in a van. He tries to figure out where they would be headed and had he known the area a bit more he might be able to figure it out but they seem to go in circles, quite possibly just as lost as he is. 

Zach notices the round about way Player is directing him as well as the occasional glance at the live map Player had cast to his phone. He might have joked about them being bad drivers but with the situation at hand it only makes him angry. As any good getaway driver knows, tailing is best when the target doesn’t know you’re tailing them; something Devineaux could stand to learn. Following that rule grows harder with each dizzying detour Ivy’s tracker makes. He fights the urge slam the pedal to the floor and make sure his van cripples their getaway. He reminds himself that staying out of sight gives Ivy a better chance… and he doesn’t want to imagine what fate he could be saving her from.  

Chapter Text

It’s a blurry and white world to come back to when Carmen regains consciousness. She can feel her sleeves and pants are cold and wet making her wonder what happened for a split second before it hazily returns. The gas had definitely done its duty, making the memory so far distant that she could have been lying, in what she now realizes is snow, for a week. She blinks away the blur in her vision until she can fully see her surroundings. Tall, sturdy pine trees with heavy blankets of snow stand sentry around her, the snow circling around the base of the trees and gently falling around her. One arm at a time she pushes herself up until pain crashes back into her body making her recoil. Letting out a whimper of pain she takes stock of where it comes from. Truly her whole body hurts but she’d learned to recognize what exactly is in pain after getting knocked so many times, it makes the healing process a bit easier when you know what to treat. A frigid wind makes its way through the valley and she can feel open air where there hadn’t been before.

Part of her mental list, which isn’t very well done with how foggy she still is, is a pointy object pressing against her stomach. It worries her for a moment, wondering if a branch or piece of her gear had impaled her. She gently leans away from the area its at and realizes its in her pocket when it slips down further and a gentle beeping sound begins. Carefully she reaches in and takes hold of a cool metal object before pulling it out realizing it hadn’t even penetrated her jacket. As it comes out into the open a low beep harmonizes with buzz as a blue light bounces in time at the top of the pen. She remembers the pen she’d snagged from Jules back in the bell tower with a wave of disappointment and anger that she’s too hurt to act on. She had actually believed Julia had begun to see her side of the story and that she could trust her. Not to mention how many kinks ACME had thrown in their plan—and how costly the results could be. 

She holds the pen up to her view, watching the blinking light. “So you can triangulate my position and arrest me?” She takes a breath which hitches in her chest as her abdomen burns in pain forcing her to keep it short, “Yeah right.” 

Standing up is worse than she thought as every bruise and every muscles screams in protest. One good thing however is as she lifts away from the ground and relieves her ribs from being pressed into the snow, breathing becomes less painful. Good, I can work with bruised. She wraps an arm around her waist, hoping to help protect the bruised ribs and turns back to locate her glider. With how much damage she’d taken, the glider had no doubt taken worse. Sure enough, on the steep slope behind her she can see the mangled remnants of her glider sticking out from the snow. 

Getting the specialized glider made and delivered was a long and arduous task the first time. When she’d broken the first one they made sure to order a couple more so she could stock pile but hoping she wouldn’t go through them too quickly; that was a year and a half ago. This glider had been the second to last one, the other being tucked away in San Diego amidst the renovation. Not that it would help her now. 

Looking down the slope leading to her she sees a long and narrow trail in the snow, littered with branches and parts of the shredded glider. She follows the trail to the base of the slope and heads towards it, looking up the skid trail. It’s painful enough to be walking up the base’s gentle slope, the steep incline would be far more harrowing. 

The fog begins to clear and she realizes she hadn’t heard her best friend’s voice checking in. She presses her finger to the disguised button jewel and calls his name which scratches in her throat. When she touches the earring she barely has time to catch it before it falls to bits in her hand. Using the snow in front of to keep her balance, she reaches for the other earring to call to Player, the only answer is the other shattered earring. Despite being so small, they’d held up against many foes just as heartily as she did, even a glider crash only a few weeks prior when Grey and her escaped Bellum’s New Zeland lab. 

“Okay.” She groans, beginning to realize her only lifeline had been destroyed, leaving her without a helping hand. Looking up the slope she further analyzes how damaged her glider had become; it sticks out of the snow giving the slope jagged wings. The perfectly angled front of the glider had been torn to pieces near her feet, leaving the back half crumpled meters above her. 

The full body pain gives her pause as she weighs her options, the beeping pen—however unhelpful it is—pushes her onwards. As if to apologize for the crash landing, the wind pushes her forwards though emphasizing the tears in her already light clothing. Pulling her hood up it doesn’t do much to keep her warm, but it keeps the snow out of her face and helps to keep her eyes on the prize as she begins to climb. Had it been in the summer the climb would have been nearly impossible as it drops straight off the road 10 meters up, but one good trade off for the snow is it makes finding a foothold a little easier.

She sets a goal as she leaves the pen in the snow, climbing up to the first broken piece of the glider. For a couple of feet she can walk as the snow creates a gentle incline, then it become harder as the climb becomes steeper. The snow, she finds, does little to help her; slipping out from under her as she pushes herself up. It’s frightening and painful as she’s momentarily left hanging by only her right side until she can lift her foot and force it into the snow once more. She does her best to ignore the pain, breathing as best she can through it and visualizing the next step. 

The snow is unsteady but it gets her up to the first bit of the glider 1/2 of the way up the slope where her lungs, calves, and arms begin to burn making the pain from the crash a bit less noticeable. She’d found a rhythm with her breathing and climbing; count three of her pounding heartbeats, take a breath, let it out as she forces her foot into the snow for the next foothold. It had worked and when she finally reaches the first bit of the glider she wishes she could flop down next to it and rest but she knows stopping for too long will be the worst in the long run. She counts 10 of her heartbeats then pushes herself to continue up. Each push burns and it hurts, but it also offers hope. Each new foothold brings her closer to the slopes’s top. Whether it is a road or just a plateau or even just a gentle curve before the rest of the climb, it’s somewhere better than the frozen valley. The sound of the beeping had long faded from her ears but she can still remember it’s intervals which surprisingly matches the rhythm she’d found, and that’s the only help it will ever offer. Another step, three counts, a breath, a push, and hold. Step, three counts, breathe, push, hold. Step, count, breathe, push, hold. Step, count, breathe, don’t stop now, push, hold…

The jagged piece of ice was too good to be true. As soon as she’d put a smidgen of weight on it she felt it being to break free but it was too late, it breaks free and sends her falling from over 3/4’s of the way up. As the horror is realized she slides bumping her ribs a bit then as the terrain curves she is rolling down the slope at a dizzying speed and blurring the world once more. Muscle memory keeps her arms close to her sides and soon in a cruel reminder of her predicament, she is wrapped in the broken bits of the glider as she rolls faster down the slope and back into the valley of doom in more pain that even she can handle and no less cold if not more so. Reaching the bottom, fire could just as easily be rushing through her body as her blood, shooting pain throughout every extremity and core. The hope she’d once held burning brighter now flickers in a dying light as she lays in the snow waiting for the pain to subside. It’s so overwhelming that she starts to wonder if she’ll pass out again, the shadows in the corners of her vision certainly entertaining the idea. The sun continues to go down from the brief grey moment after sunset and had begun a slow descent into blue hour, bringing with it more cold that almost freezes her tears. 

She’d had everything in place, she had the perfect plan, there are still innocent lives at stake and some stupid suits who can’t seem to see what she’s trying to do had gotten in the way. They could put their seemingly endless budget to better use taking down VILE instead of chasing her, but they had to stick their nose in and ruin everything. Who would fight VILE now with her dying in a ravine? Who would make sure Ivy and Zach were okay? They could possibly assimilate back into society, they could go back to Mr. Sterling and ask to take up the offer. Hopefully he wouldn’t refuse, he had left the offer pretty open ended when they’d turned him down. Player would have the least trouble, when he’d mourned her he could truly focus on school. He could get a tech job for a security firm, he could keep doing good and keeping people safe. Would Shadowsan be okay? He certainly couldn’t go back to VILE, not that he would. Maybe he could make amends with Hideosan, at the very least he could go back to Japan. Maybe he’d continue her work. 

Another gust of wind brings that obnoxious beep back to her ears shaking her back to her reality. 

When had she given up so quickly? 

Player would have her last known transmission, he’d send Zach and Ivy out to search for her and Shadowsan as soon as he got back. They would find her, she might be a popsicle before then but they would find her.

They will find me.  

The flame of hope flickers a little brighter as she works her way to a nearby tree and settling at its trunk. She looks at the pen still stuck in the snow and beeping dutifully. Even with the wind swirling around she could still hear it from her spot under the tree. “Chief huh? You left me with some really fun choices.” The shivers begin to become out of her control, shaking her voice as she talks to the wind. “Ping you on your pen so you can send your suits in to haul me in, or stay stuck in this hole.” The miserable thought that follows is more harrowing than the failed climb. 

“Either way? VILE wins.” 

A lesson of Shadowsan’s rings through her ears as she pulls the little bit of glider closer to herself. When in doubt, blend in until you receive instructions. It had been meant for occasions if your caper or handoff goes wrong and you’re on the run without secure contact. A secure phone line had been set up that later accompanied the lesson when she was around 5 years old. The faculty made sure she had the number memorized as soon as it was set up in case of emergencies. Whether they would ever let her off the island before she’d enrolled she would never know, but they ensured she would be safe if such event ever happened. When she was about 13 she’d dialed the number just to see what would happen and had gotten in trouble for it, one of the first times she’d actually gotten punished for something. She told Player about it later after she’d been forced to sleep in Coach Brunt’s room for a week. She remembers dialing the number on one of the few phones on the island, and the only one with real buttons, Shadowsan’s phone. Coach Brunt was the reason she hadn’t been forced to spend a month grounded, her rivalry with the quiet man making it hard for her not to laugh when it had been brought to her attention. 

A shiver so deep makes forces her to open her eyes this time to a darker world. Crap. She’d fallen asleep without realizing, and from what she can tell it hadn’t been too long—but long enough to be worrisome. 

Chapter Text

Ivy doesn’t remember closing her eyes any longer than blinking but suddenly opening her eyes with a peculiar ache in the centre of her back begins to make her question. Looking around more questions grow her list, everything seems to be.. ice? Sure that would be common in Sweden but this much ice? In front of her seems to be a dining table and when she looks to her left a full bed appears across the room that intrigues her but something stops her from leaving her seat, something around her wrists. She turns to look and the odd itchy feeling begins to make sense; two brown ropes tie her hands to the back of the chair, the ice chair. She struggles to get free as she remembers what had happened. She’d only seen the large man with sandy hair in front of her as he towered over her and greeted her by the wrong name. Instinctively she’d taken a step back as she tried to gather herself enough to attempt a good impression of Carmen but oh how wrong that move had been. As she leaned back into her step preparing to take another one if he continued to close in she’d bumped into someone else and was greeted once again, not by a name but by a disarming electric shock. It was more of a painful feeling that what she’d expected it to be and with every movement she can feel where the nodes had been pressed into her back, even with the coat and her shirt guarding her.

She takes another chance at pulling the ropes when the sound of someone walking on the ice catches her attention. She doesn’t recognize the figure at first but when she sees the hat and coattails, hope fills her chest. Carmen had come for her.

“Carmen?!” She calls only to be disappointed when the figure steps out from behind the icy wall. The wall had been nearly see through, how would anyone get any privacy here? A slender figure fleshed out by a brown coat lined with fur steps into the room toting Carmen’s coat over his shoulder and holding the hat at almost the same angle she’d seen Carmen do so many times. It feels so wrong that the slimy voice that agrees he knows who she is wears Carmen’s hat. What’s worse is the figure that follows closely behind him, the huge figure that had sent her reeling back into most likely the first man. He grins creepily as his pasty pal declares her to be VILE’s most wanted.

Oh no.

“VILE? No, guys, I’m not Carmen Sandiego.” She nervously chuckles. VILE operatives had taken her, taken her to who knows where thinking she’s Carmen while ACME had gotten to the real Carmen and she’d been grounded, whatever that meant. Player hadn’t had a chance to explain before she’d been taken. The taller figure with the almost neck-pillow-like fur lined hood looks at her with genuine confusion, a stunning contrast from the menacing grin he’d used before. He states his confusion, seemingly believing her until the other man back hands him and angrily insisting that would be something the real Carmen would say to get out of a scrape like that. Maybe she could get out of here without needing Carmen to find her, that big one probably had too many hits to the head based on his clearly rehearsed reminder he answers with.

“My apologies Otter Man.” He finishes. Otter man? Oh this just gets better!

“Do you ever get tired of people resting their feet on you?” She snorts. Otter Man just stares at her, unamused though as she explains it the other one seems to understand. “Ottoman, get it?”

“I am Moose Boy.” The intimidating one chuckles and proudly introduces himself. Now this is a Golden Team .

Once again Otter Man backhands his companion and reminds him to keep their identification secret. The way Moose Boy responds is childish enough she wonders where that menacing figure had come from, he seems so… naïve which doesn’t fit with his towering stature at all. Otter Man grumbles and leads them further into the room towards a carved coat rack where he begins to hang Carmen’s outerwear. Ivy demands the location, not that it would do her much difference without her phone. Where had her phone gone? Did they tuck it away in the coat or did they pocket it? Could Player still hear their conversation and track her down? Carmen would have to take priority, Player sounded dead scared when he’d told them Carmen had been grounded. And knowing ACME, well she doesn’t know much about ACME but she wouldn’t put it past them to really do some damage to the team—they’d certainly brought enough people.

Otter Man explains they’d taken her to an ice lodge, which apparently is popular around here—where ever that is. She half expects Player’s voice to sound in her ear and begin to explain how an Ice Lodge is built or where they’d originated from. Her and Zach didn’t always have comms in their ears, not having found a place to manufacture them after the original manufacturer had gone out of business, but even when they had their phones on speaker they could constantly hear the commentary from Player. Only once had Zach gone undercover and wore a comm but it had been set to work as only a one way transmission for his safety amongst the VILE operatives. Now she’d for all intents and purposes been sent into the field undercover as Carmen to people who had clearly never seen her before and she doesn’t have a single lifeline back to safety. She scoffs at the idea of an ice lodge in such a cold place making a pretty obvious pun about the idea to hide how nervous she feels. Humor has a way of calming her nerves to the point she could seem as crazy as the operatives they often ran across. It is satisfying how ever to hear Moose Boy laugh heartily to her joke until he remembers to keep quiet. A shiver runs down her spine as she hazards a look at the coat. Sweden is already cold but add being under thick layers of ice she can’t imagine how anyone would actually want to stay in a place like that. Looking from the coat to Moose Boy she wonders if maybe she could get away with getting warm and getting out of there. With Otter Man busy checking over the icy bed and his back turned to them he might not have time to react before she hold the coat of tools in her hands.

Unfortunately for her goosebumps, Otter Man is quick on his feet and swats his partners hand away and opens the coat to reveal the pockets lined with various tools of infiltration, defense, and escape. Dang it! She didn’t have an exit plan like Carmen had always mentioned in their briefs before capers. A fact they’d drilled into her head at VILE and one she continued to remind them of. Wouldn’t this count as an exception? She’d been knocked out and forcefully brought to this fridge of a hotel leaving her without an option to formulate an exit plan. What would VILE teach then?

Clearly she would have to wait for another window. Why had they even brought her here anyways? Were they going to hide her here until whatever they were swapping hands was done? One question is answered when Otter Man opens the closet (without a hinge in sight) and pulls on the only thing not frozen in there. It doesn’t seem heavy but enough to warrant dragging it on a wooden sled. A tomte wasn’t it? What is it with Swedes and their tomtes? Otter Man checks his watch, seemingly annoyed when she voices her observation. Moose kiddo however sounds surprised. She turns to see him laying on his side across the bed, one hand propping up his head as the other draws patterns in the bed spread, one of the other only non iced item in the room. It’s a bewildering sight, just moments ago he’d lived up to his codename of ‘Moose Boy’, but suddenly he seemed more sinister in his answer despite the genuine shock. That would be a sight she would have to describe to Zach later, he’d get a kick out it. She would have too if it weren’t for the sudden reminder he would probably crush her without a second thought, not that there were thoughts behind those eyes. Oh what had Player said about the Tomtes riding goats on Christmas? Were they delivering meatballs or gifts?

“Ja, gifts. But this tomte will be delivering a data crystal today.” Once again Moose kiddo grows up before her eyes as he stands and begins to walk towards her, every step more menacing than the last before he bends down to look at the frozen sculpture. Suddenly the reason they’d been tracking VILE operatives in Sweden comes back to her when she catches a glimpse of the data crystal. They didn’t know much but Player had informed them a large amount of data had been stolen from a military base in Russia. The kind of data stolen hadn’t been publicized but Player figured out not even the military leaders knew what exactly had been stolen. Carmen had chosen to take the safe bet and assume it would be something dangerous and on their flight to Sweden, Player found it came from the weapons and tracking sector of the base making the mission all the more grave.

Ivy puts on an indifferent façade and encourages them to take care of business hoping to send them both out of the room. She can’t do anything without the coat, and in order to get it she’d have to be alone. It’s not the most well thought out plan but it’s the best she can come up with, and it all falls down around her as Otter Man promises to deliver her to VILE afterwords and forces Moose Boy to stay behind with her.

“And Moose, keep your mouth shut.” He chides. This time Moose Boy literally zips his mouth and nose under his coat leaving only his eyes and forehead sticking above the fur. For being the smaller of the two Otter Man sure runs a tight ship, having the ability to shut down the brunt of a man with a few words and reducing him to act like a child once more. As the slender man walks out of the room (again not a hinge in sight!) Ivy treats the past few coat acquiring attempts as a warm up, this would be the moment she would have to make her move. With Otter Man away and unable to reign in the wandering childlike operative she has a fighting chance of getting the right things from him to make her getaway. She has no idea if Player can hear her but if she can try and worm out what exactly is on the data crystal, maybe someone can do something with the information even if it’s just her. Staring at the icy table in front of her she begins to build her plan starting with getting information from Moose Boy on the data crystal and their intentions with it. That’s the easy enough part, getting the coat back would be a different story, and that story would have to come later. Another chill runs through her body reminding her that she also sits on an ice chair. Not a wooden chair, an ice chair… as a last resort maybe she could break it and slip her hands out of her cuffs. It’s the best she’s got and she doesn’t want to take more time to find out what Moose Boy will do.

Moose Boy is pretty easy to get information from, just as easily distracted from the matter at hand as Zach is when she brings up the Rogue Vendetta series. The tomte seems a bit overkill with the data crystal being so well blended in to the crystalline icy surroundings, simply keeping it in a pocket or even serving it in a ice cup would be less suspicious than carrying around an ice-tomte amidst a hotel. She can just imagine how odd Otter Man will look as he pulls the sled through the hallways like a kid taking their favourite toy out on a sled ride. Maybe that could be enough to get Moose Boy to answer some questions, if he’s anything like Zach he’ll jump at the chance to defend the brilliance of it all. She baits the hook and begins with complimenting it, hoping the softer blow at his unknown level of ego would keep her from learning how much damage his muscles can do.

“… can you say overkill?” She scoffs.

“No, also pretty…” he pauses realizing being trapped under his coat isn’t helping the conversation any and unzips the coat and bringing his head back into the cold air. “No. Also pretty smart.” His smirk adds years, and she can swear it adds height despite being hunched i lover his knees, back to him as he leans forward holding his hand in front of his face, his finger depicting the size of the data crystal. “Every precaution must be taken when selling stolen launch codes.”

Launch codes? Nucular launch codes? That’s what’s on the data crystal? Ivy had gathered things would be pretty bad if that data crystal transfers hands but nuclear launch codes? If school had taught her anything, and it did very little for her, Russia still has far more nuclear weapons than the United States and had once threatened to loose them on the US. The only thing keeping them from launching was the fact the the US had obtained weapons of their own and flexed their capabilities in turn. Thankfully the scar of nuclear bombs hadn’t physically affected them but the emotional scar was left after their use on Japan and remains in the walls of her school built in that time to be more of an above ground bunker should Russia make good on their threats. Such weapons destroy hundreds of miles worth in its shockwave, but the nuclear fallout is far more devastating. Shadowsan had briefly mentioned the impacts that remain on some Japanese people, including some he knew, from the nuclear bombs when Player had revealed the sector the data had been stolen from. He’d suggested that may be what they would be dealing with and Carmen had agreed. It was chilling hearing the physical and genetic deformities that still remains, generations removed from the bombs. What could VILE gain from having the launch codes, and if they are selling them; what would the buyer do with them.

Her captor begins to say where they’d stolen them from before making the realization that she’d made him ‘unzippy my lippy’ as he put it. It might have been funny had he not just admitted to stealing and selling nuclear launch codes and she has no way of getting to them. Fear strikes through her along with a shiver as he stands up and punches his fist into his palm promising to make sure she doesn’t tell his partner about his folly. Being captured by VILE was bad enough, not to mention the mountain of a man who had been placed to guard her, but now having to deal with people who willingly steal nuclear launch codes that could reign far worse destruction than anything else VILE had tried; she begins to wonder how she’ll ever get out of there let alone with the data crystal. That line of questions are shoved away as he runs full speed towards her, yelling with force. In a moment of quick thinking she pulls both feet up and with all her might shoves her chair away from the table in front of her. It does the trick, making space for him to barge right past her and breaking her chair so she can once more be free. When he runs right into the wall at the end of the room it all starts to become comedic again. If he is one to mindlessly attack maybe she can take a page out of his book. She picks up the chair she’d once been tied to and throws it at him with every bit of strength she can. Once again her plan breaks apart like the chair against his chest which doesn’t seem to faze him at all.

Crap crap crap crap

She realizes there’s no fighting him and runs away. She doesn’t get far before the icy floor makes her slip and leaves her fumbling for her balance before falling to the ground. She doesn’t make as much of a dent as he did but as he comes running at her again she finds him painfully tripping over her shoulder and launching face first into a nearby column. It’s almost as painful as her shoulder to watch as his tongue makes its way out of his mouth and collides first with the column before the rest of his body.

“Your pasty pal was right, shoulda kept your mouth shut!” She smirks, standing up and investigating the damage. He mumbles something about getting her but he is out of range as she runs out the door, nearly forgetting the hat and coat. She turns to grab them and steps out into the hall. The idea of nuclear launch codes currently being in the fate of Otter Man comes crashing back to her along with the embarrassment of having almost left Carmen’s outerwear. Carmen wouldn’t have fumbled like that and she wouldn’t leave without getting back the launch codes. It’s a harrowing thought having to really play the part of Carmen Sandiego with so much at stake and no backup, but that’s what encourages her to slip on the hat and coat; she is the only one who can step in for her best friend and save many lives. With a flick of her wrist she throws the coat around her shoulder and the hat at her signature tilt feeling the confidence of Carmen’s own, that is until she slips running down the hall.

Chapter Text

The hopeful grey had melted into the blue and now black night. Carmen had hoped the moon would show even some of its face to provide her some form of shadows to watch for but it remains an ineffectual crescent. One silver, or green lining came with a beautiful show of the Aurora Borealis dancing above her head. Even amidst the painful shivers and the crick in her neck looking up at the magnetic performance makes the world right for a brief moment. The phenomenon doesn’t last for long and soon she’s brought back her present situation. Much of her time huddled into the broken bits of her glider had been spent eyeing the pen that still blinks urgently in the snow. The snowfall had picked up some making the pen’s nest bigger and adding a dusting of snow over her legs. It would only be getting darker and so far no one had shown up looking for her.

She’d told herself they might have the wrong coordinates but anger continued to creep up on her saying they should have appeared instantaneously. That anger continues to burn as the hours pass, they wouldn’t be coming for her. Who knows when her earrings had broke and if Player had picked up on her last coordinates, but he should have. Zach and Ivy are her ground crew, they should be searching for her and should have found her—she hadn’t exactly left a stealthy trail down the slope. And Chief… oh the things she could say about Chief. Her suits had been the reason she had been left without her coat, the reason she had to run away, the reason she hadn’t been aware enough to save herself, the reason she is freezing to death in this hole. And the reason thousands of lives could be affected if not terminated at will. In her overzealous pursuit for Carmen she’d hurt her chances of stopping VILE. Did she really run a whole law enforcement branch just to capture her ? Sure, Devineaux and Jules had been following after Mime Bomb in San Fransisco and had almost caught up with Tigress, but neither made any indication they knew they were tailing VILE operatives, do they actually know VILE exists?

She’d seen the pen used only once as Devineaux made a last ditch attempt to catch her before passing out and Carmen had stomped the pen out of commission, but enough to remember how their communication works. A simple click of the pen then toss it on the ground; at first the pen would seem lifeless until Chief picks up the call then pen stands up on it’s own before beaming her blue-lined-holographic figure. She can take a guess what would happen if she answered the call to see Carmen Sandiego standing in front of her. She’d track her down while trying to keep her talking long enough to get her position, basic stuff. But it might also be her only chance to survive.

She finally makes her decision, her body almost creaking in the cold. She actually has to break some frost off her glider as she stands up. It’s more of a shuffle than a walk as she crosses the distance to the pen and it hurts. Reaching her hand out of her cocoon allows a freezing draft into her wrap sending a painful shiver through her. The cold pen stings her fingers which is more feeling than she’d had in a few minutes when her hands jerked too much between the shivers and trying to move them for warmth that she simply held them between her legs hoping for something to stay warm.

Like she’d seen before the light at the top of the pen turns stable and the pen simply lies in the snow until the call is picked up then it suddenly flings upright before beaming Chief’s image.

She never had much intel of Chief before, let alone a decent visual. She’s a little taller than Carmen herself but only by a couple of inches, she wears a crisp pant suit with pointed flats. Her hair is cropped close to her head, the top a lighter colour that begins to fade into a darker colour around her ears. She had been beamed with her side facing Carmen, she looks around at the white landscape with confusion before looking over her shoulder. Her severe eyes narrow as she takes in Carmen’s frozen figure before turning to face her with a more welcoming mask.

“Carmen Sandiego, I presume.” her voice is as cool as the growing blizzard around her.

“You must be ‘Chief’.” Carmen tries to front her usual in charge self but with how badly the snow and wind had picked up, she can’t contain the shivers that had made their way to her vocal cords. She ends any greeting there taking a moment to take in the imposing hologram before her. She envies the colour still in Chief’s cheeks being in a comfortable office somewhere, though she could do without the job title.

“Ah good, receptions a bit… snowy.” She doesn’t take her eyes off Carmen as she proceeds quickly into her next bit. “I want to apologize for earlier today, ACME may have been a tad overeager.” Though she tries to appear genuine the clearly business only mindset is evident in her voice, she is only trying to patch over a mess and stall for time.

“Understatement.” It had meant to remain under Carmen’s breath but with how badly she’d been screwed, it came out with force.

Chief tries calling her only by her first name, having the practiced decency of asking for her permission before plowing on without regard for an actual answer. Not that Carmen had intended on making an answer, those who had her name used it and those she trusts use a variation on it more often than the full name.

“I don’t know your story, but I do know we share a common enemy.” As she speaks she walks closer to Carmen, hands clasped behind her back, having no issue with the thick snow. It’s infuriating. Here she stands, telling her they have a common enemy when all her suits have done is chase her with Chief calling the shots. “Bringing them down does not need to be your burden alone.” She says. Carmen could list a multitude of reasons why what Chief’s offering is something she won’t be accepting. It takes a good amount of willpower to stop her from yelling, screaming, about every time Chief and ACME has hurt her, her team, or just got in their way of stopping VILE potentially hurting far more innocent lives—tonight being the worst of all her sins. Chief offers ACME’s resources which she had admittedly been jealous of, but swapping it for intel on VILE? She would never trust Chief as far as wherever ACME’s headquarters stands, it’s almost laughable that she even tried to begin with. Had it been any other night—any other night— maybe she would have listened if Jules had been there advocating—maybe.

“Track my location yet?” The only words Carmen can say to keep herself from breaking into hysterics. In her hours of hoping to survive she’d relied on her anger and spite to keep her going and having to deal with Chief talking as if they’re already allies doesn’t help. Chief is the reason she found herself in this frozen hole and she should be working to get her out without asking for anything in return. Or at least that’s what she wishes for. Nothing in this world of people willing to stop at nothing to get ahead comes without a price, but hadn’t she paid her price? Discounting the years of growing up on an island of thieves after being abandoned as a baby, she’d gone against who she thought was her family with only a voice on the other side of a phone line as her guide. She dedicated her every waking hour to stopping those she once considered friends and this is where it got her.

“Trying. Like I said, signal’s weak. Where in the world are you?” The last few words actually sound genuine, a complete turn from the cold businesslike tone she’d used before. Maybe Carmen could have appreciated it more if she didn’t feel like she was going to pass out at any moment. After everything feeling numb for so long she suddenly can feel something though unpleasant. Suddenly her body feels light then her head starts to spin like a top. The driving snow blurs faster and shivers release the fierce hold she had on her tone.

For Chief it’s almost like watching the Scarlet Super Thief lose 10 years of age, her hold on the makeshift blanket slacking, and as she takes a small step forward she could swear she looks like her niece when she begs her to read her a bedtime story. Then it all begins to happen so quickly, as soon as she is able to shudder out her words she folds in on herself and falls onto the snowpack. Chief calls her name then kneels alongside her, begging her limp body to keep fighting. She barks an order for her right hand agent to send a helicopter to her position and to prepare it for medical transport. He’s already working furiously before she calls the order, having seen everything on the large screen in front of them. Guilt surges through her as she paces the room making sure the flight and her agents find Carmen. She’d wanted to find Carmen, to pin her down, but not like this. She hadn’t fully made up her mind on what to make of the red vigilante, her own agent’s interactions making her question more and more. On one hand Argent had seemed to believe Carmen could be trusted to help take down VILE, to at least share information on them. She had recruited Argent in an odd way of saving the Medici gowns in Milan, shocking everyone. Maybe that had been done in kind to Argent’s continual skepticism of Carmen’s association with VILE to begin with. Devineaux had been completely against the idea that Carmen could possibly be a player for their side but the opposition also gave Chief the opportunity to watch silently Argent’s passionate arguments otherwise. She’d admitted herself during the brief with Zari and Argent that It was hard to reconcile Carmen’s actions. She was willing to give it a shot when Argent pushed for recruitment. Having the Scarlet Super Theif on their side could be the key to taking down VILE, and maybe she’d begun to see Argent’s side of the coin. Zari however seemed staunchly against the idea though remained mostly civil about the conflicting opinion in the presence of Argent. Now as the order comes to make way to the coordinates, even Zari seems to be a bit sympathetic towards Carmen. After reviewing the events leading to Carmen’s crash Zari admitted she’d gotten half of a hit with the gas gun as Carmen ran up the bell tower stairs. Argent is a smart woman and a master of her emotions, but the quick look of anger wasn’t missed by Chief when the news was brought to light.

It’s not an hour gone when the helicopter arrives overhead and lowers the plastic cradle. Agents with the training to aid safely in a search and rescue mission carefully peel the glider’s canvas away before quickly pulling the warm blanket around her and lifting her into the cradle. Its heart shattering as the reminder of her niece’s similarities are brought back to the forefront of her mind. The search and rescue team brief them on Carmen’s condition and Argent gasps, the first move or noise she’d made since they’d arrived at Carmen’s location. Later, Chief will look back and see that day as the day she’d lost one of her best agents.

Zari on the other hand seems to be relatively unaffected by the news, even commenting on how less impressive Carmen appears. It seems a bit of a childish answer but Chief had known Zari since the start of ACME and can see a hint of regret in her observation as she flicks a glance back at Argent. Carmen had woken up as the agents had been looking her over much to their relief, though she makes little signs of movement. Her right hand agent stands up and faces her, holding a tablet and waiting patiently for her attention after politely clearing his voice. She pauses her projection and turns her attention to him as he holds out the tablet for her to see.

“There’s a van stopping on the road, it looks like Carmen’s associates.” He pauses the camera feed from the Helicopter’s rear camera and zooms in on the blind curve in the cliffside road. There a van screeches around the corner and stops just enough off the road before two figure step out. Two red heads, one in a baseball shirt layered with a long sleeves underneath. The other, a red head as well though hardly noticeable under the red fedora and coat they’d been falsely chasing through the city. But the faces are no strangers to ACME’s screens. Everywhere Carmen goes, so do her agents. By now they have a file full of their various disguises, including an arrest record in Dubai where they’d taken a new supercar for a joyride before saving it from VILE’s clutches. They’d only gotten the information second hand when the red haired siblings’ names had been flagged after their arrest. The only figure they don’t see is the tall, stoic, man who had been ID’d as one of Devineaux’s captors in Paris. One of the pieces to Carmen’s story she can’t ever place.

Seeing the worried looks on the pair’s faces she begins to feel more sympathy to their group than she had before, looking back to Carmen she knows the vigilante won’t want to be admitted to a hospital—let alone from a search and rescue flight. If she is working against VILE like Argent says, just being admitted to such a place without precaution and trusted protection could mean capture by their operatives.

Trust, something Argent had emphasized hangs  so delicately in the balance for them with Carmen. If they want to try again to recruit her when she’s better she needs to have a reason to trust them again.

Trust, something Chief herself so deeply knows is extremely delicate and can be destroyed in a mere matter of words or actions. She’d certainly displayed how not to earn Carmen’s trust tonight but maybe not all is completely lost.

ACME holds a certain advantage over the situation, quite literally the balance of life and death if she waits too long. Holding all the cards it can be easy to want to take control with both hands  A quick look between Carmen and her associates she understands what must be done. It’s a gamble with Carmen’s health but if she doesn’t relinquish some control she may never have the chance to wrangle in Carmen as a resource to stopping their shared enemy. Chief takes a deep breath and returning her projection to Sweden, she presses forward ready to release an ace.

Chapter Text

The stupid ice lodge is a maze of semi-transparent walls and few shadows to show Ivy the way. She passes by rooms where she can see figures moving around inside, seriously how’s anyone supposed to get any privacy here? Finally she finds a stair case and carefully heads down as fast as she dares. Falling down icy stairs would definitely not be a good look for the invincible Carmen Sandiego, and she isn’t about to bruise her butt anymore than she already has. For a brief second she wonders why she thinks Otter Man is on the first floor but instinct keeps her marching down the stairs. When she reaches the bottom of the stairs she realizes the lodge is only two floors, a surprising enough feat with the entire building formed from ice. She slips and slides through the hallway that she hopes will lead her to where Otter Man had gone. The lobby made sense to her, a feat of villainy in plain site is ViILE’s MO, so she tries to find the way there. At the end of the hallways she sees a bar with shelves of bottles ranging in brands, flavors, and price with a man bundled in coats standing behind the counter wiping a glass clean with a rag. She’d expected to see cups made of ice but maybe some people preferred not to have their lips frozen like her once captor. She walks somewhat normally for a moment before slipping once, twice, then throwing her whole body at the bar to get a grip and barely catching on to the end of it. The bartender had seen her coming from a mile away and never takes a confused eye off of her while she struggles to stand up. There in the lobby she sees her target, the tomte sitting atop the wooden sled which rests next to a carved ice bench. Otter Man looks to his side then stands up to meet another figure in the walkway. Despite the no doubt below freezing temperatures, the man only wears a blazer for outerwear. The picture of a business man, he carries himself with pride as he confidently meets the VILE operative with a briefcase in hand. 

“Something tells me you’re not at this five-star fridge for a relaxin’ vacay.” Ivy mutters, making the the bartender roll his eyes though she doesn’t notice. It’s all too easy to narrate the handoff as the two meet and begin to talk. She can only see one other person in the room but she doesn’t seem to pay the men any mind despite having nothing in her hands to keep her eyes away from the scene before her. The bartender raises an eyebrow as if some kind of nuclear launch deal happens under his nose every day and she’s the only one to care. She pushes off from the bar aiming for something to hang on to which unfortunately is one of the carved couches where the other woman in the room sits. Walking on ice in canvas shoes is hard enough, trying to get a stable grip on anything else in the icy room is nearly impossible. Every inch of muscle she can engage clenches and tightens in her attempts to stay upright. The woman scoots away from Ivy as she gropes the couch to keep upright. C’mon Ivy, what would Carmen do? 

She looks at her hands hoping for something to give her a clue of what to do. When she shifts her hand for a better grip she can feel cool metal pressing against her wrist, giving her an idea. “She would reel in a gnome.” Ivy stretches her arm out and opens her palm for the grappling gun to extend into place. It follows her silent command and with a whirr of electronics the gun is tucked into her open palm. She starts aiming between the men then moves to aim for the figurine. Closing one eye to get a good shot, she lines it up and pulls the trigger. To her dismay it flies right between the men and lodges in the wall just next to the door. She groans realizing her mistake as the men turn their attention to her. 

“You missed the tomte!” Otter Man taunts, squaring his shoulders. The sleazy business man stares at her in fear, looking between the tomte, his trading partner, and her. Well, it wasn’t the ideal spot, but she can make it work. 

“Oh, you sure?” She scoffs, “I’ll be right over for a closer look.” Maybe all the slipping and sliding will pay off for once. One more click of the trigger and the line begins to reel back into the gun, pulling her along with it. Balancing isn’t as easy as she expects it to be as she’s pulled across the frozen floor, switching from the balls of her feet to her heels in attempts to stabilize herself. The grappling gun is no help as she tries to keep her balance and soon she’s colliding with Otter Man, knocking the tomte over as she flies past. For how sturdy the sculpture seemed to be, it shatters easily as it tips off the sled. Looking up from her landing spot she sees the fragments falling down into a pile, making the data crystal indiscernible from anything else. They both launch up to the pile of broken ice, searching through every crystal desperately trying to be the first one to find the data crystal. The first few pieces all look like they could have some kind of something buried inside but when she scans the pile she spots the real data crystal, poking out of the edge near her. She grabs it noting it’s different look then running away from Otter Man before he can snatch it away from her. A few steps away from him she is pulled by her wrist back to the floor and for a split second she wonders if Moose Boy had shown up to capture her again. As she flips to her knees she realizes she’d still been attached to the grappling hook which pulled her when it had no line left to give. That’s not what Carmen would do. She pulls the end of the line to the inset serrated edge that opens up after being tugged at and cuts the cable. With the cable cut she holds her wrist straight, signaling the gun to return back to it’s hiding spot under the coat. 

Otter Man shifts to stand directly in line of her in front of a door which she hopes is the front door. Going around him would mean fighting which she knows is something she won’t be able to do. Desperately she looks around the room for an aid as he calls for Moose Boy. If Moose Boy shows it will definitely be game over. To her left she sees the sled, now free of a data-crystal-hiding-tomte giving her a half cocked idea. It would take a lot of force to bust open the doors and and even more luck but her body moves before her mind can analyze anything further. She yells to keep herself from thinking about the hard knock she’ll encounter as she runs to leap on the sled and barrels past Otter Man and out the front door. 

“This is not what Carmen would do!” She exclaims as the sled sends her hurtling down the hill outside the lodge. She doesn’t have enough time to stop as the road appears into her view and the sled bumps her over it and into the snow just missing the hood of the vehicle she catches a glimpse of hurtling towards her. It’s embarrassing and terrifying as she pushes herself out of the snow bank, wondering who had almost hit her and how much they’d seen. 

“Ivy?!” A familiar voice calls from the other side of the headlights. She looks up and there stepping around the vehicle stands Zach, surprised and elated. 

“Bro?!” She pushes herself to her feet, ignoring the blooming headache and pulling her brother in for a rare hug. She’d been scared she’d never see him or any of the team again but seeing her baby brother she realizes she’d made it out in one piece. Her hand still tightly grips the data crystal as Otter Man comes running up to the icy doors far too late to do anything. She lets go of Zach and slips into the passenger seat. The van is warm and it feels fantastic after being in the stupid ice lodge for who knows how long. Zach isn’t far behind her, stepping into the driver seat and pulling on his seat belt. 

“Are you okay Ivy?” Player asks almost breathlessly. Zach closes the door then turns to his sister awaiting her answer. His and Player’s eyes are full of worry and she sighs relieved. 

“I’m fine.” She pulls on her seatbelt and looks back at her former prison, it doesn’t seem so imposing anymore. Her heart races still, the adrenaline of her high speed getaway still fresh in her muscle memory, but as relief and the van’s warmth begin to wash over her she can honestly say she’s okay. Zach stomps on the gas and flips the car around in a dizzying 180.

“Now where do we find Carm?” He demands and heads off down the road. His demeanor changes as fast as his U-Turn and it surprises her, almost as much as his demand. He’d gotten to her before word from Carmen? That’s bad. 

“Head south, I’ll upload coordinates.” Player comments from Zach’s phone sitting in the cup holder, his voice not having shifted from his worry over her. His fingers fly across his keys and she picks up the phone, ready to take the charge of navigator. She looks between Zach and the road, hoping for answers in between the moments that Player’s data is transferred to them thousands of miles away. The phone dings and Player informs them he’d sent the coordinates. Ivy pulls up the map still left with unasked questions yet to be answered. It’s the first time she’s had any sense of where she’d been taken though she can’t make much of heads or tails of it. On one of the many islands that makes up Stockholm sits the red triangles indicating her and Zach’s position. As she moves the map south she can see the solid grey triangle with Carmen’s signature fedora indicating her coordinates. The map pulls up the fastest route to her location and Ivy begins to navigate Zach to her location. 

“Is Carm okay?” Ivy asks though Player gets the hint she knows the answer. Guilt grips at his chest wondering how badly he’d doomed her. He’d hoped the Ivy rescue mission wouldn’t take so long once her icon stopped moving at the resort but no less than 4 roads had been closed due to heavy snow or nighttime construction making their route much lengthier than before. Both he and Zach were growing irritated at each roadblock, he had to mute himself a couple of times to keep from adding to Zach’s building frustration, and he’d had to mute Zach to keep his parents from hearing him. 7:00 pm in Sweden means 1:00 pm in Ontario and his parents would be more likely to hear than if It had been 1 in the morning. HIs mom had stopped in to give him lunch just after Zach had reached the 3rd blocked road and he was so lucky he didn’t snap at her. She had noticed he was upset and asked about it but as he quickly pressed the key command to shift his screen to be something less suspicious, he’d just grumbled at the essay he’d forgotten to do. He had no room for it after Carmen had crashed and Ivy had been kidnapped. He had to keep tabs on his friends and that took precedence over some stupid essay. It was hard to get her out of his room but soon she moved on and promised to check on him later, not before reminding him to get the essay done before games. Oh if only he’d been playing a game. If it was a game he could just reset and start over from the beginning. He could warn Carmen to avoid the stairs and leave the building. He could save her the trouble of going in the ACME infested building in the first place. He could send Zach to Ivy and make sure she hadn’t been tazed and abducted. He could have saved his friends so many times over if only it were a simulation. They were racing against the clock, trying to beat VILE to whatever buyer they wanted to meet up with and make sure the launch codes were safely returned to the Russian government, or destroyed if they don’t trust the current leader’s intentions with them. Rumours had always floated around with the country’s leaders and the potential for another Cold War, especially the current one. 

When they’d first started their preparations for the caper he’d been learning about the last nuclear bombs that had been set off and their ramifications that still last to this day. Shadowsan had added his sentiments citing a friend who’s mother was a child during the time and could remember when the bomb was dropped. She hadn’t been in the radius of destruction at the time but her home and her sister and parents had been leaving them all with mental, physical and genetic scars. His friend’s cousins also had remnants of the time, a deformity caused by their mother’s exposure so many years ago. And that was a few hundred meters away from the drop site. Player’s history class had shown some images from the time and current day photos depicting the lasting remains of the bomb, it was difficult to see. That was one part of the mission he hadn’t needed to do much research on, the images and morning’s lesson still fresh in his memory. His essay even is about the war and its devastation, past and potential. He’d definitely have more experience than most of his classmates to add to his essay when all is said and done. 

He watches the triangles indicating the siblings move across the map getting tantalizingly close to Carmen with every second but not close enough fast enough. He’d gotten a whiff that ACME might be on Carmen’s trail as well as a building blizzard which he relays to Zach with a warning to be careful. He’d already been a helpless witness to Carmen crashing into the snowy ravine, he isn’t about to be witness to another crash if he can prevent it. Zach’s a good driver, but not even the best of drivers can beat physics against black ice and high speeds. Zach promises to be safe and its evidence in his speed slowing around corners and the odd silence punctuated by angered grumbles. Ivy begs for details about Carmen’s crash which makes Player’s stomach twist in knots. Reliving the sounds of the trees scraping and breaking against Carmen’s glider, the rips and tears at the fabric, then the loud bone-crunching cracks of the trees as she went down in latitude. Agonizing seconds felt like minutes then all too quickly her com went to static then the notice of no connection filled on his screen. He’d desperately called for the ground crew in hopes they could go after her but VILE had gotten to Ivy first. He doesn’t regret Zach going after Ivy first but he full heartedly regrets having to make the decision to abandon his best friend. 

The screeching of tires and the clicking of seatbelts being undone indicate the siblings had arrived at Carmen’s location. The sound of a distant helicopter worries him. “What’s going on?” He demands, his throat tightening. 

“ACME got to her first.” Ivy replies solemnly as she and Zach stand at the guardrail watching the scene. It’s a sight to behold, a clear path where the Glider had crashed as Carmen rolled down the slope and into the ravine leads to where she is swaddled and laid in an emergency stretcher attached to the hovering helicopter. Agents are scattered around the ravine nearby along with the electric blue outline of who they assume to be the head of ACME. It’s easy to spot the head and Zari, their colours more obvious than the others but Zach soon spots Jules standing a few paces away from Carmen. Ivy reaches into the van for Red Drone but Player begs for information on the scene.  In their haste neither had remembered to grab the phone and left Player just out of reach of Carmen once more. Ivy instead reaches for the phone and holds it up for him to see. 

His heart drops to the floor seeing the scattered agents and the helicopter spotlighting Carmen. It’s hard to see but after taking a quick screen recording and zooming in he can see she’s already in ACME’s clutches. Strapped in three different places and wrapped in an ironically fitting, red blanket. The phone camera isn’t a decent enough quality to see Carmen any clearer than the vague, blurry image but he doubts she’s doing very well if she’s strapped up and ready for transport. She would have fought her way out of any capture had they cornered her—no matter how injured she may be—but not this time, she’s strapped to be ready for life saving transport. It’s conflicting knowing who is providing the transport. He doesn’t know what condition she’s in but it had been hours since she’d crashed, things can’t be good for her. 

Guilt grips at his chest again and his throat closes faster than his heartbeat as he begins to fight tears from spilling. 

In the little corner of the screen Ivy catches a glimpse of Player, unusually still as stone. She only knows the signal isn’t lost when he blinks then helplessly gulps. 

Things don’t bode well for Carm. 

Chapter Text

Carmen had hoped that maybe she could find a silver lining in being bundled up, but the shivers still course through her body despite the actually warm blanket. For the most part ignoring the prying eyes of the scattered agents isn’t much of a problem, in all honesty she barely registers their presence, but something in her can hear the buzz of the pen beaming Chief’s hologram moving towards her making her open her eyes. The angle isn’t something she’s comfortable with, being far too low to be able to defend herself, even if Chief is only a hologram and she’s strapped into the emergency cradle. She wants to shut her eyes and forget anyone is around her but a laundry list of things keep her focused on her surroundings even if she isn’t at her most aware. Chief’s figure pauses near her feet as the agents finish connecting the cradle to the cables walk away. Another shiver bounces through Carmen’s body as she formulates something to say. 

“You win. Happy?” She scoffs. Her mind is far too clouded with pain and shivers to remember exactly why she’s mad at Chief but she can understand the feeling is almost overwhelming over everything else. 

“No.” Not the response Carmen had expected but she doesn’t know what she did expect. “Listen Sandiego, you’re in need of serious medical attention. We can take you to a hospital,” Chief looks off to her right though seemingly looking somewhere behind her. “Or you can ride with your friends.” 

Hope swells in her chest, one of the few positive things she’d felt in quite a few hours. It takes her a full few seconds to compute that her friends are waiting at the top of the slope she’d been trying to climb earlier. It’s hard to make out from her angle and over the blankets wrapped around her, but she can see the top of a white van and if she cranes her neck; two figures. The one on the left wears the red she’s so used to seeing in her closet that it doesn’t make sense for a moment before she pays attention to the figure on the right. Zach and Ivy stand at the top of the hill where she can now see a guard rail. How close had she been to some path to civilization, to finding a way out? The answer to Chief’s offer doesn’t take any moment of consideration. Her friends, always her friends. They would take her to the VILE operatives and help her stop them, they would take care of her, they came for her. But why would Chief give her the option? The confusion must be obvious on her face as Chief answers the silent question.

“Consider it a gesture of goodwill, from a valuable ally.” She emphasizes ‘ally’ even ending with a smirk. Carmen might have been able to better process what had happened at another time but for the moment her only focus is returning to her friends and leaving without strings, and that would fail if she left with the pen or let them take her to the hospital. 

“Friends.” Carmen holds up the pen, waiting for one of the agents—or maybe even Chief herself—to take hold of the pen. It would be far too risky to keep a hold of the one line of communication to an untrustworthy source. But no one makes a move to reclaim it, Chief simply encouraging her to keep it. Her heart sinks and another shiver pangs her body, this mess will never stop. She’s reminded of just how much things had changed within a few hours as she turns to see Jules’ figure, watching her from a metre away. She’d betrayed her trust, and that wasn’t easily won to begin with. She was hopeful something would come of it. 

Chief barks out commands that she can’t totally make out over the distant yet loud sound of the helicopter blades beating through the cold air. Agents scurry around in action and in a moment of heart stopping fear she is suddenly being lifted up. No, she’d wanted to be with her friends—a hospital means VILE wins; that she does actually have a limit. Movement, she knows is limited between her stiff body and the nearly suffocating straps, leaves her to fly through all 5 stages of grief in the blink of an eye. Just as quickly the movement beings to slow and it feels like she’s being lowered. Two voices call out to her on her right somewhere and soon she’s lightly rocking against the pavement. Two pairs of hands rips the buckles off of her and carry her around the van. Ivy throws open the door as best she can one handed and leads Carmen head first into the back of the van. As soon as they’re both settled onto the floor Zach slams the doors and reappears in the drivers seat. The van still runs and in seconds Zach peels off down the road. Player calls out to Ivy begging for details, Carmen had heard Player’s fearful tone in her times of peril but this seems like a whole new level. Ivy pulls the phone out of her pocket and holds it over Carmen’s face. 

“I’m so sorry Red.” He whimpers. 

“For what?” She asks. He bites his cheek, looking down at his fingers that hover over his keyboard. 

“Player, where’s the nearest hospital?” Zach calls from the front seat. Ivy stretches to rest the phone on the centre console gently shifting Carmen’s head further down her lap. A bit of cold air still hangs in the van after the doors had been open which unfortunately reaches to Carmen. Ivy notices and works on peeling off the coat and laying it over her. 

“Uploading coordinates now.” Player’s voice moves as Carmen figures Zach replaces the phone in its holder. Ivy’s face hangs at an odd and confusing angle over her making little of anything else in her view. 

“Sweden has cracking’ health care Carm, we’ll get you fixed up in no time.” Zach says determinedly before lowering his voice asking if she’ll make it. ACME had sent a note with her indicating their agent’s preliminary check of her. It wasn’t too good based on Ivy and Zach’s look of horror after reading it. She didn’t need to see the note to know how bad she feels. 

Ivy reassures Zach she’ll be fine but doesn’t sound so sure. 

“N-no hospital. The mission… VILE operatives…” she demands. Her safety would have to wait for the mission to be completed, her life means little in comparison to the thousands of other lives in danger. Ivy assures her it had been taken care of, producing a chip of ice that seems too perfect to be actual ice. 

“What? By who?” If Ivy and Zach had been out looking for her and Shadowsan is still in Malaysia, who had been facing the VILE operatives? Ivy’s answer if wholly unhelpful, claiming it had been Carmen herself who had taken care of it. She’d begun to doubt how much of her reality is actually reality but Ivy’s words convinces her she’d finally begun to hallucinate. There’s no way she’d been able to take care of the mission and steal back the data, she’d been freezing to death in an ice hole. 

The ride to the hospital is a blur for Carmen, a battle against her body and mind as she tries to submit to the pull of her subconscious against Ivy, Zach, and Player who beg her to remain awake. It’s not much more of an enjoyable ride for the others as they barrage Carmen with questions to keep her present. Player had made a quick online search of what to do for her and in big bold letters it had warned them not to let the patient fall asleep until they’d been put in the care of medical professionals. Fear once again strikes his core and pulls tighter around him as the seconds flip on his computer’s clock seemingly slower each time he chances a look. 

He turns back to look at the trackers, finally all three of them are back together and are speeding down the road. He’d found a hospital only a few kilometres from their location and put Zach on the fast track to get there. A corner of one of his screens begin to ring and a call window from Shadowsan appears. He’d messaged Shadowsan with updates and booked him a flight back to Sweden as soon as he’d reported mission complete only briefly explaining Carmen’s situation. Player mutes his call with Zach and answers Shadowsan’s. 

“Player, I have just boarded the plane.” His eyebrows knit and his eyes soften as he asks after Carmen. The guilt and fear hadn’t yet loosened its hold on his chest and seeing Shadowsan’s concern it once again twists tighter. He still doesn’t fully trust the ninja but he had snuck his way closer to that threshold, and with Carmen so vulnerable, he won’t say no to the added protection. He explains further the events of the night and watches as the lines deepen in the old man’s face. 

“You made a hard decision, but the right one.” Player won’t ever admit it to anyone but hearing those words from the former VILE mastermind lifts some of the weight off of his shoulders. 

As soon as Shadowsan ends the call Player unmutes his call with Zach and quietly checks their progress. They’d made it back into city limits and the hospital is only a few blocks away. He didn’t think about tapping into the city’s traffic lights until that moment but when all three lights are green and traffic is almost non existent, he sighs knowing it wasn’t necessary. Zach pulls them into the Emergency Parking Lot and races inside to raise the alarm. Seconds after Ivy steps out of the van, leaving the side door wide open a team of nurses and CNA’s rush out with a rolling bed and begin to gently yet urgently load Carmen onto the bed. Once they’re inside and the language barrier is quickly sorted in a shift of personnel they check vitals and begin to rush Carmen down a hall urging Zach and Ivy to rush with them and explain what had happened. Nurses and visitors leaving for the night leap out of the way as the group barrel through. In between calling out different checks they explain where they’re headed and what treatment they’ll be doing for Carmen to Zach, Ivy, and unknowingly to Player. It’s not until the staff order Zach and Ivy to remain in an interior waiting room that Player is struck with the idea of recording the conversation for later when they would need to take care of her back at HQ. Publicly governmental places such as hospitals already are areas Carmen is hesitant to go. Having a resident doctor on VILE island, a resident medical doctor, any injuries or check ups were routed through her. Not to mention any and all interactions with even the smallest form of government would interfere with the academy’s intentions so it took Carmen some time before going anywhere near even the least harmless of government controlled sites. After Paris, Player had to convince her to even consider going to a hospital, and it was not easy. 

She’d convinced herself she could simply push through, and maybe that could be possible but he hadn’t wanted to risk any unknowns. It wasn’t until she’d settled in for a bath and Ivy had heard her cry in pain that she submitted. It was hard for her to move without her breath catching in her lungs. She hadn’t agreed to a full hospital visit but they’d found a nearby 24 hr Clinic to which she agreed to. Now with a life threatening situation on their hands and Carmen in little shape to argue, she hadn’t put up much of a fuss though later she would want to ensure their quick getaway. Even if Player would argue for a longer stay he knows it would be best for the secrecy of her existence, and for all of them, to leave before the hospital’s staff could begin to ask too many unanswerable questions. 

The past hours have been nearly physically painful for Player to not have constant contact with Carmen, he always could reach her in an instant if need be. In the few times continual contact hadn’t been an option he feared for her with every passing second this instant being the worst of all those occasions combined. Things would usually work out well and her voice would soon return to his speakers full of confidence, but this is something they never had to deal with before. She had often been close to the peril of losing her life but nothing quite so immediately threatening. He reaches for his fidget spinner breathing again with its familiar clicking. He’d worn out and replaced the bearing in it so many times but the most recent time when the new bearing had been put in and the click went away, it just didn’t feel right, so he returned the old bearing and tonight he is appreciative of the decision. Ivy and Zach pull out his phone and hold the camera up to capture both of them. 

“I guess all we can do is wait.” Zach sighs. He looks between Player and Ivy’s reactions on the screen and looks back to the door they’d just been stopped at and Carmen had been whisked through. He has an idea of what they would be doing to help her thanks to the nurse’s explanation but it still worries him without Player having a direct link to her to warn them if she needs help. 

Zach can see goosebumps all down his sister’s arms and remembers all she’d told him about her venture in the ice lodge. What would have happened if she hadn’t been able to escape? That extension of VILE had thought she was Carmen Sandiego and were fully prepared to take her back to VILE island after they’d finished their deal. She was never a VILE operative but they sure wouldn’t have wanted a stranger to leave the island after learning about their hideout. She… 

“Zach!” Ivy cries, shaking his shoulder. “Bro, are you okay?”

She’s there next to him, she’s safe in the waiting room of a hospital, he doesn’t have to worry about her. 

“Yeah, just worried about Carm.” 

Chapter Text

For hours a plethora of various people filter in and out of the room. At least three different lines stick out of her arm at all times and mix into the background with the electrical lines of the various warming pads spread out across the bed. The hospital staff are deliberate in keeping her awake for most of the night, continually urging her to take sips from her cup. It doesn’t exactly taste like normal water but it’s warm and nothing warm ever tastes like water. Slowly she begins to actually feel warmer as her eyes grow heavier before they finally encourage her to sleep. It’s not as comfortable as she was hoping for when they finally let her sleep; every hour someone comes in to poke and prod her then scribble on their paper or tablet before walking out of the room. To most people the noise would be minimal enough so as not wake them and the quiet room would make it easy to return to sleep if they had woken, but for Carmen it’s a harsh reminder that she’s not alone and with people she doesn’t trust in a building that is far too government controlled for her taste. Had they left her alone for the most part she might be able to shut her instinctual guard down long enough to sleep but with every entrance, they move something around and she doesn’t sleep properly until the sun rises and they let Zach and Ivy in to be with her. Every face and presence had been someone she had never seen before and her gut twists and mind reels every time the next person enters the room. She’d spent most of the first few hours before she could sleep working on as many escape plans as possible if needed. 

The first order of business would be to shed all the wires and tubes wrapping around her bed which effectually make a cocoon of monitors. She continually has to think about the scolding she would get from her friends should she disconnect herself from everything keeping her alive but oh how tempting it is. She could figure at least one of the lines would cause an alarm and panic should she disconnect from it, the one on her finger the most likely target if not the two connected to her chest. They had applied some circular sticker with a wire creeping out and as soon as it made contact she knew it would be painful to take off. 

She’d searched the monitors that hover around her head to see if there could be a way to turn them off or at the very least silence them before disconnecting. With how heavy her body feels it would be hard to move very quickly so it wouldn’t be possible to flat out escape. They hadn’t allowed anything to be brought to her so she would have to leave without the help of her tools. The tubes that sit outside her body wouldn’t be much help should she need to support her body weight outside the building but she remembers learning the strength of surgery tubes and she could decently rely on their strength—if she could get access to them. 

If all else fails she could take one of the many scissors of reflex hammers that lay around for some kind of defense and maybe pickup a spare lab coat or scrubs to bluff her way out of the hospital. 

Ivy and Zach would be her next target though she can vaguely remember them being left in one of the waiting rooms but where that was is beyond her, she could barely keep her eyes open to get a sense for where they were taking her. A directory could help and maybe she could find something of the sort when getting a disguise. 

As a general rule with civilians not a mark is to be left; unless they intentionally get in her way. As much as she distrusts the strangers in the sterile halls, she respects their chosen profession and promises that not even bruises will be left. It’s a hard decision to reach and after 5 irritating hours of caretakers, she reconsiders more than a few times. That is until she catches a glimpse of the deep and dark circles under their eyes that almost reflect her own. She only had a brief look in the mirror when they’d helped her to the bathroom a few hours ago (one of the most humiliating experiences of her life) and she barely recognized herself. 

She’d gathered snippets of conversations from the nurse’s station just outside her door when they’d assumed her to be asleep, it wasn’t pretty, sometimes furthering her resolve to keep her vow which meant bluffing and sneaking would be the only option—if escape were possible at all. The window, where she has no idea if she’s still on the ground floor or not, would be the very last resort. Lights were put out in her room but very clearly aren’t ever going to turn off in the hallways, making escape more difficult. After a few restless hours however she’d begun to get an idea of their routines. Every hour at the top of the hour they would do room checks, starting with her room then moving on. They seemed to check on the rooms furthest away to begin with then make their way back to the nurses station once they’d finished with her. Based on the length of time they would remain in her room she would have about 10-15 minutes to leave and find a disguise before they would switch rooms. After slipping undercover she would find Zach and Ivy, without Player’s aid. 

How confounding it is without Player in easy reach.

Between capers, and in the few hours either of them slept, the lines would be silent but nine times out of ten he could be counted on to answer the phone pretty quickly if she calls, a habit he can count on her for as well. It had been years since either had gotten what would be considered a healthy amount of sleep. He’d had insomnia since she’d met him, making their time zone difference and late night calls not too big of a deal. After she’d escaped VILE island and put him in more than one helpless situation where he could only listen to her fight off whatever operative had her cornered at the time, he would have the occasional nightmare for a night or two after and would call her to make sure she is safe at odd hours. 

During capers neither slept very much so when it got painfully quiet they would often talk until morning or whenever the next task arises. When the caper finishes, and her body forces her to sleep longer than a few hours, sometimes her subconscious draws on old horrors and displays a strange mix of nightmares. The most common one of them all once, was an extremely vivid memory of her final exam with Shadowsan, her final failed exam. In more dire times it might morph into her former classmates attacking her while she searches his coat for her lifeline, the phone she’d pilfered from Ms. Booker’s bodyguard. There were times it became a doorway into another room of horrors, other times it played the voices of her friends calling to her in tortured cries. Once Shadowsan had joined Team Red those dreams became less frequent, her subconscious settled by the admission that the coat was empty and about how he had been the one to find her all those years ago and had ‘raised’ her to her true self. 

Though, her subconscious did not leave her with respite from the wicked nightmares with his addition to the team. Instead his lifeless body joined the now growing list of people she cares for. It’s something straight out of a book she’d read about a magical world and a war against itself. The mother figure’s biggest fear was seeing her family, including the main character adoptee, in a cold and unresponsive line of irreversible pain represented by a magical creature shape shifting into each of her family’s bodies with every new attempt to rid the creature. Sometimes rereading that chapter of the book, replacing the characters that come to her aid with her crew, helped her sleep better after those nightmares. But as she glimpses bits of those nightmares in the moments during the night when her eyes shut for longer than a blink should warrant, she doesn’t have the comfort of the book to connect with the only mother figure she can reach, and pinches herself awake to avoid the nightmares. 

 It had been a long time since she last wished she had been back on VILE island where things are familiar but in the agonizing hours of inability to sleep, edging on nightmares, and sitting in a freezing hole, she had found her inner child begging for her old bedroom and the cotton candy scent of the Dr. Morenza’s office rather than the unfamiliar and sterile hospital in a country where she can only understand roughly half of the hallway conversations. Growing up Maelstrom had peppered in language lessons of his own native tongue, even a decent few of the students and nannies spoke the same or similar languages, but it wasn’t a consistent enough effort for any of it to really stick making the restless night of eavesdropping and planning all the more miserable. 

When the sun rises bringing Zach and Ivy in, it takes a minute or two before she can really fall asleep, with them checking up on her and asking questions. She notes that Player isn’t a part of their questions but that’s really all her cognitive thinking can handle as she feels the weight of sleep trying to overtake her. It’s easier now with her family in the room with her, she can trust them to keep a protective eye on her. She can trust them with her life. 

Ivy notices the dark circles and eyelids drooping dangerously and puts a halt on Zach’s barrage of well-meaning questions.

“We’re here Carm.” She says, gently putting a hand on the side of the bed, Zach nods his head fervently now being nudged back into the true reality. “Get some sleep.” 

Carmen smiles appreciatively and soon her eyes close. Part of her inability to sleep had been thanks in part to the flashes of her worst nightmare, though instead of a cold and dark room with spotlights for each body, a background of thousands of other bodies had been added to the already horrific scene. With each attempt of keeping her eyes closed for more than a minute her body would often jerk her awake after such a terror. As she tries again and the dream begins, it soon unravels into nothing. 

A blissful show of nothing. 

***

Her family spends the rest of the day by her side while she sleeps. With her trusted eyes and ears she doesn’t jump at odd sounds and intervals of nurses. Ivy notices the difference too, both in Carmen and the relief that the nurses display. Around noon when the next one comes in he mentions how he noticed during the night she wasn’t sleeping like she should after such an arduous few hours. He informs the siblings of the reduction to check ups to every 3 hours rather than every hour after checking a few screens and scribbling their readings onto his tablet. Carmen isn’t awake for it but when she wakes up mid afternoon she begins to realize the change. She prays that its a good sign. With the daylight streaming in bright it’s hard to go back to sleep, the room is warmer than she’d like it to be and the siblings are talking with someone loud enough she can hear the whole conversation. 

“You have to keep it balanced, angle your hand a little more.” Player says. 

Player.  

She hadn’t heard from him in hours and even then it hadn’t been very a long conversation (if it could have even been called a conversation). Her whole body begins to ache when she realizes it’s him, she wants so desperately to talk to her oldest friend. He’s hard on himself at the best of times, but when it comes to Team Red and their work he puts far more pressure on himself to be perfect than he should. She won’t ignore the fact that being the virtual safety net for them no matter how far away requires a level of alertness and precision—something that’s saved them more times than she can count—but she also knows he’s not the machines he works with. He is human, an imperfect human that can’t be stretched so far thin like they often press him to be—this week especially. With Shadowsan halfway across the world completing a mission just after they’re done with their day, he’d barely gotten any rest in the past few days. In their downtimes she made sure to try and get him to sleep but he’d either been kept awake by checking in with Shadowsan or unable to turn his brain off. 

She hopes he won’t fret too much about her current situation but there’s a small voice that knows her wish will not be fulfilled. Her bruised ribs protest to sitting up without the aid of the bed but she needs her team to know she’s awake and she needs to see Player. Both Zach and Ivy turn to Carmen from the window’s bench when she sits up and in a flash Ivy is at the side of her bed lifting it up to keep up with Carmen. Zach picks up her laptop and sets it on her side table that hovers over her legs and sits with Ivy in one of the two chairs on either side of her bed. 

“How are you feeling Red?” Player asks as soon she’s settled into a sitting position. She takes a moment to look over her family. Both Ivy and Zach look tired but only because the light in their eyes is dimmed and the bags under their eyes are present. Player looks the worst off out of the three, he’d stopped spinning his fidget spinner and now grips it tightly in his hand that rests on his desk. His eyes unwaveringly watch her and his eyebrows are creased in worry. She knows he hasn’t slept much in the past week and that night had more than likely been without any sleep. He’d often begged her not to worry so much about his lack of sleep but she still feels guilty for being the reason he’s awake so much longer than he should be. Her stomach turns with guilt but she swallows it to save that conversation for later, she hadn’t slept much either so how could she ask him to do what she couldn’t do? 

“I’m not in an icy ravine anymore.” She weakly grins, trying to lighten the situation. The effect isn’t what she’d hoped for, all eyes watching her closer and with more pain. “I’m doing better, now that you’re here.” She finishes, hoping to fix her mistake. It’s true, she may still be every inch exhausted in all it’s forms but after the hours of restlessness she’d suffered through, she can finally relax with her team there with her. 

“Red, I…” Player grips his spinner tighter with one hand while the other fiddles with his hoodie zipper, looking away from the screen. “I’m so sorry.” He looks back to her with intensity. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t get to you before ACME, I’m sorry I didn’t get to you sooner.” His hand jumps from the zipper to the desk and begins to lightly tap off screen. “I’m so sorry.” 

She wishes she could reach through the screen to him, to pull him into a hug and assure him she’s alive and doing okay thanks to him. She even selfishly wishes he could be there in Sweden with her. 

“I’m safe because of you.” She would only ever admit to herself that a small bit of anger remains about having to sit for hours in the ravine but it’s really not directed at Player; she’d directed that to ACME so long ago. 

“If Shadowsan hadn’t been in Malaysia we could have gotten to you quicker,” Player begins but a nurse steps into the room, interrupting him. 

“Can I interrupt?” she asks, knocking on the open door. They nod though she had already begun to step in before they’d agreed. She steps up to the bed and checks the screens above Carmen’s head then makes a few physical checks with her stethoscope. The final check is with a thermometer, holding the probe up to her forehead the numbers display in seconds along with a beep. She takes note an her clipboard before returning her thermometer into her pocket and holding the clipboard close to her chest. 

“Temperature is close to normal. If all goes well you’ll be free to leave within the next few days.” She says, cheerfully looking between all their faces. They all nod, relived of the news, and Player begins to ask questions about aftercare. The nurse answers graciously as he makes note about the instructions. She soon is interrupted by the door opening and a tall figure entering the room. With everyone turning to see who it is Carmen can’t make out the figure, but Zach and Ivy seem to look at them in surprise. 

 On instinct, Carmen had decided to seem asleep, avoiding any strange conversations. She’d learned the art of seeming asleep while keeping a close eye on her surroundings, but not due to any official schooling from VILE, from her childhood pranks. Feigning sleep was the easiest way to get out of the line of suspicion when students’ were suddenly hit by a paper wad or something of the like, or three people had reported their wallets missing after leaving the library. She could keep her eyes closed far enough she looks like she’s sleeping but still open enough to keep an eye on her surroundings. She’d spent months ‘taking a nap’ in the same spot outside the library, lulling student’s into a false sense of security before practicing her pickpocketing. She’d made off with some decent pocket money which she spent ordering toys and decorations for her room. 

“It’s past visiting hours,” the Nurse kindly says, keeping her voice low.

“It’s okay, he’s uhh.” Zach starts confidently enough but turns away when lost for words. 

“Family.” Ivy finishes with surety. 

It’s hard to see around Ivy’s head but when Carmen hears the voice she doesn’t need a visual, the voice is one she now finds comfort in. 

“I came as soon as I could.” Shadowsan urgently says, rushing up to her bedside. She flutters her eyes open pulling herself from her pretense of sleep to greet the closest thing she has to a father. She smiles seeing him standing tall next to Ivy, even putting a hand on Ivy’s shoulder. He really had grown to become family, and not just to her. 

Chapter Text

An hour after sundown Carmen’s family is still in her room, though once agin they are huddled in the window seat talking together. After Shadowsan had arrived the nurse had taken her leave but not before insisting they don’t keep Carmen awake for long. Thankfully she’d closed the door behind her and headed off down the hall, giving them some privacy. When the door is closed, Carmen soaks up the warmth she feels in her chest for the people who surround her. She might have foolishly wished to return to what she had once thought was her home hours ago, but now she is once again reminded that they are her home. She can be anywhere in the world and as long as she has her family nearby, that is home. As it has been for years now. 

Zach is the first one to break the silence after the nurse leaves, “What happened out there Carm?” His question is quickly followed by Ivy’s punch and a cry of pain from him. “What?” 

“Give her some time Zach!” Ivy hisses. Carmen always appreciates Ivy’s maybe-not-so-gentle reminders for Zach to be more aware, but it’s also something about Zach that she adores. He has such a positive world view despite the horrors he has encountered lurking in the shadows. Often times his ‘insensitive’ questions are something she relies on, whether it be from explaining the answer or realizing how he says it, it helps her see things from a new angle and helps her to unravel the mystery. Zach being Zach helps more than any of them really know, but in that moment she’s glad Ivy is there to stop him. She’s still so fuzzy from not having slept for who know how long and admittedly still weak from the hours in the icy ravine. Her mid-day nap did do some good but it had only been a handful of hours. 

“We can debrief when Carmen is stronger.” Shadowsan agrees, looking at Carmen with concern for her safety and well being. A hospital is somewhere VILE can get to her, where ACME can get to her, where any law enforcement can get to her. The longer they spend there the closer they come to facing off against any number of enemies, but Carmen needs the hospital’s care. He had already made the decision to hold vigil for her, and as the hours pass he’s beginning to realize the others would as well. In the beginning, he’d been skeptical that such rambunctious children would actually be good for her safety, but as he’d worked with them through countless capers he’d seen just how loyal they are to her. They are loud and not at all at the skill level he’d come to expect from students at VILE but they work well as a team. Their entrance to her life had been happenstance but their faith in her and her faith in them isn’t misplaced.  

Shadowsan looks over Carmen, her eyes shadowed with fatigue and a bruise forming over one eyebrow. Her arms are buried beneath the blankets that cover her and the bushel of cords but as she reaches out for her cup he sees a few cuts and bruises discoloring her skin. He hides the frown and buries the dramatic urge to check each injury individually. He knows some of them are old marks but most of them are new from her crash, and they seem to be some of the worse ones. What hurts worse than seeing her injuries is watching how weak she is, just trying to reach for her cup on the table next her laptop, where Player helplessly watches, is a struggle for her and she can barely grip the cup without Ivy’s help. 

He can’t dwell on the what if’s—he’d learned that lesson a long time ago—but he can’t help but feel like he’d been at fault for her injuries by being thousands of miles away. Had he been closer, he could have searched for her while Zach had gone for Ivy, and Player wouldn’t have had to make such a hard decision. 

Of all of them he probably knows the least about what happened, Player having most of his focus on directing Zach to the women when briefing him, but he knows Ivy had been kidnapped not long after Carmen had crashed. When Player briefed him on their situation after gathering the missing women he could have flown the rest of the way to Sweden on his own will power, and for a brief moment he was sure he could pull it off. When he’d reigned in his imagination and payed attention to the boy on the screen he realized how painful the decision had been for him. He’d been able to experience Player’s abilities with previous missions and his bountiful knowledge of both the areas surrounding them and the computers that surround him. Like any young person does, he’d always ignored his fatigue by pushing through it for the sake of the team and at the eventual cost of his youthful health, but the lines on his face that made him seem years older were deeper that night. Player is one to ensure eye contact, or at least as much as can be attained through a camera; his attention is only on his subject lest he need to urgently turn to his computer for research, that night however, his focus found spots in every corner of the screen other than the camera. His normally confident voice had dulled to a morose montone. 

The realization hit Shadowsan harder than a sudden plane crash would have, these children had taken on the role of adults. A 16 year old hides in his room dodging firewalls just as much as he does questions from his parents. He spends hours researching and sniffing for details of capers before finishing an essay to turn to his mother over a dinner where he can’t talk about his day like any normal teen would, not that he had been around a ‘normal’ teen in years. What he does know about most teenagers is those years are a time for trial and error, mistakes and repentance. For Player however, his mistakes can cost much more than an underage hangover or failed test. Failure in their line of work could mean the difference between freedom and capture if not worse consquence; even with that hanging balance, the children in the field have more freedom than the teenager behind a screen in his own home. He’d told the boy he’d made a hard but correct decision, and it did seem to lift some weight, but it had only been a surface weight. 

As he’d learned it, Zach and Ivy had barely turned 18 and 19 respectively at the beginning of that year making much of their work with Carmen during their teenage years as well. Their birthdays had been lumped together that year because of time sensitive missions, this one being the biggest reason. They had a quick party before being called away on their next mission. Just days before they’d begun their current missions and parted ways on the tarmac, Shadowsan had wished Zach a happy birthday before turning to Player to ascertain details on his mission. Had they chosen a life of villainous crime, they would be the perfect age to enlist in VILE academy. 

Children are a liability, they are more protected than even their peers only just having crossed the threshold into adulthood. The faculty had made a few exceptions for verified orphans still under the universally agreed adult age, but their every communications and actions had been closely monitored. These children would have been allowed to enter VILE after they’d verified their lack of living relatives they have contact with, and for a while he wouldn’t have batted an eye. It had been the entrance of Black Sheep into their lives that he’d begun to questions much of his and his students’ roles. 

 At 8 years old she had pulled more pranks on the students than he’d been on capers but they never had a long term or detrimental effect to their victims. At 12 years old she already could out pickpocket every one of his students with her eyes closed, something she determinedly proved many times over, but never kept possession of the item for too long unless it was a forbidden object which she would turn in to the faculty or she’d snagged a wallet and bribed a finders fee upon returning it to it’s owner. At 16 she’d stated her claim to entering the school as a true student rather than a child roaming the halls, only hesitating at Shadowsan’s warning. With every criminal milestone he’d watched her achieve, the more he wondered if she would ever see her true lot in life. Each passing year her mischievous glint grew brighter and her abilities stronger. Coach Brunt nearly threw a party for each of those milestones, having taken on the role as mother figure for Black Sheep. Out of all of them, he wasn’t surprised she’d so quickly taken that role. Before he’d graduated, he broke into the files room and pulled the faculty’s files themselves. If he would be dedicating his life to them, he wanted to have something he could use against them should he need to. In his studies, he learned Coach Brunt had been a drill sergeant in America before disappearing for the better paying VILE Academy. Everyday she yelled at the soldiers to keep them in shape, but when she returned home, she returned to her loving spouse and two children. The files never listed names, something he would have to find out in the field, but he could piece together enough of her to understand how much she missed her children. Her role of ‘mother’ had more influence over Black Sheep than he did and he knew her time in his class would be his last chance to steer her away. 

It was hard to see her so despondent in her holdover year, that glint he’d seen grow had all but disappeared, but he knew it would be the best for her. The night she escaped he breathed a sigh of relief that she had made it—she had found her true path and had followed through. 

He hadn’t originally put too much thought into the idea that she would grow up on a remote island of thieves after he’d presented her to the faculty but as she grew he realized how much of an unnatural childhood she would have. He’d grown up as a ‘normal’ child with a sense of right and wrong and what the world had to offer, yet had later chose to become a thief: for her, thievery had been ingrained in her learning just as much as her ABC’s. She didn’t know the world outside of VILE island or what it could truly offer.

The night she left he’d been prepared to leave his role behind at VILE academy, he no longer wanted to be a part of leading countless young adults to steal for them by giving them the one thing they could never steal; a family. That sense of family had been strongly encouraged by Coach Brunt and it had made Shadowsan himself feel welcome for some time, but now he realizes it had been a lie; at a hint of trouble they would turn against their ‘family’. Capture meant wiping them of VILE’s existence along with any memories of their time and tossing them back into the world just as alone as they had been before. He’d watched far too many students be released back to the world, Carmen’s closest person to a brother included, and he wasn’t ready to watch Black Sheep join their numbers. It was a minuscule percentage but it was enough of a possibility he couldn’t bear it. Before she made her decision he needed her to know what life outside the island offered, and he knew she would not accept the true meaning of VILE once she learned it. 

As he watches his children in that hospital room he realizes once more that they had all the upbringing that could have pushed them to a life of crime and could have made them extra names in a list of thieves on VILE’s roster, but they all came together serendipitously and through the uniting force of Carmen herself, they decided to do what only their unique circumstances allowed them and fight the villainous organization. It’s hard not to be filled with a sense of pride for his children, even if they can be just as obnoxious as they are skilled. 

He looks at the time and sees it is long past sundown and notices Carmen had fallen asleep. Ivy and Zach notice too when Zach drops the fidget spinner, piercing the silent room. He and Ivy move to the window seat and Shadowsan moves his chair to sit with them while still facing Carmen and the door. Carmen’s laptop is sat between the siblings and angled upwards for them as well as in range of Carmen’s bed. 

“You shouldn’t be there for much longer.” Player sighs after a while, looking back at Carmen’s bed. 

“When will we know Carm’s ready?” Zach asks, looking at the monitor steadily beeping in time to her heartbeat. 

“The nurse said she could leave by tomorrow if all goes well.” Ivy reminds him. They all watch their sleeping friend for a moment, each wondering what the best action for her is. 

“I believe that is something we must include Carmen in.” Shadowsan suggests, and the others agree. “Why don’t you all get some rest, I will take the first watch.” He emphasizes they all get rest, knowing Player had taken the least amount of rest in the past few weeks. The darkness under his eyes may be over emphasized in the low light of his computer monitors, but he looks the weariest of them all. Zach and Ivy are not far behind him in needing rest, the weight of that need seeming to dawn on them when he makes the suggestion. All three take a look back to Carmen as if to ask her permission first. 

“I will wake you if anything happens.” He assures them. This seems to encourage Zach but Ivy and Player still seem unmoved. Shadowsan isn’t oblivious to Player’s lack of trust for him and Ivy still holds some hesitation as well, but he knows they’ve both grown to be more open as the months have gone by. 

Zach yawns and tugs at Ivy to find the keys to the van, which is enough to get her moving. Only Player remains with his eyes on Carmen. 

“I probably won’t get much sleep anyways.” He shrugs, though his shoulder droop further than before and his body seems to weigh heavier on him. Shadowsan recognizes the same hesitation in himself, fueling him to stay on watch. Had Player been any less exhausted than that moment he might have agreed to let him stay on watch, but he knows just how much he is pushing himself and how much of a cost it can be. Without a word he moves the laptop back onto the table and angles it so he can see Carmen. 

“Try to rest.” Shadowsan says, and moves to dim the lights. 

Chapter Text

The nurses wouldn’t let all three of them spend the night in the room; they had been asked when one had come in at shift change to check on Carmen. Hospital Policy would only allow one overnight guest per room in case of fire or emergency related to the patient. Part of the teams discussions in the proceeding hour had been deciding what they would do since Zach and Ivy had already checked out of the hotel and brought back their belongings, the other part became how long their shifts would be. The decision had been reached that Zach and Ivy would sleep in the van until visiting hours restarted then Shadowsan would rest while they return to be with Carmen. Zach and Ivy had to make a trip to a nearby late night store to pick up sleeping bags and a few other items but when they returned they began to make preparations to sleep.

Sleep isn’t something that easily comes to the team that night. Carmen is finally able to sleep but whispers of nightmares wake her up every so often. Player had transferred the call to his phone so he could set it up next to his bed and keep tabs on her while trying to sleep. He had been grateful Shadowsan had placed the laptop so near Carmen and he still hadn’t figured out how he felt about the almost parental urging for him to rest but as he tries to sleep his body is grateful for laying in bed rather than sitting in his chair. Zach and Ivy both lie awake for some time worrying about Carmen but neither speak a word after saying goodnight. Shadowsan keeps an eye on Carmen and Player as he keeps watch over the room. Player seems restless but does seem to actually fall asleep a few times before being fitfully awoken by one fear or another. It isn’t until early in the morning that Player actually seems to sleep deeply. 

The night is relatively uneventful, only a few check ins from the nurses on both Carmen and Shadowsan. After the first check in he’d begun to feign sleep to keep the staff from asking too many questions. Having flown in from another country ‘on business’ would be an easy enough cover story should someone ask, and he could just as easily adopt a believable cover story to go with it, however he didn’t have a chance to chose his cover story. A concerned adoptive father (a cover story Ivy and Zach had come up with when a CNA had started some small talk while checking on a sleeping Carmen) is a much easier story to bluff through anyways, especially when a nurse walks in to see an older gentleman asleep in a chair. 

Feigning sleep for surveillance is a skill he’d been taught by Carmen’s own father and later went on to teach many students, including Carmen herself, is one he relies on when a new figure enters the room. 

Falling fully into the lull of sleep is dangerous amongst strangers, but assuming a believable enough position with eyelids mostly closed gives a person an unusual advantage. People often say or do things without the public mask when they believe someone to be asleep, or unconscious. Shadowsan had learned the art very quickly and in his early years in the yakuza had used it quite often to gain information he wouldn’t otherwise have access to. When he became an instructor he made it one of the first few lessons in stealth 101. Carmen had mastered the skill without much coaching from him and used it to her advantage to ‘earn’ some extra pocket money. He was the one who caught her in the act—caught her and let her continue—never saying a word more about it. He felt proud of her excellently honed skill, so much so that he didn’t feel the need to put a stop to it. She would lie outside the library in the cross beam, dedicated to keep the large ceiling aloft, that sat within arms length of the library door. He hadn’t cottoned on to the scheme until after she’d begun to pick pockets but every day like clock work she would bring a pillow to the beams and settle in with a book before soon falling asleep. That is, at least, what she portrayed. Waiting long enough one could spot her hand reach out and snag a wallet or phone along with other various odds and ends from passers pockets. She would then pull her treasure back to her and hide it away until later where she would slip into the library and hand back their items, but not without some cash in hand and/or a devilish smirk on her face. 

A family trait an errant thought tells him. 

Stray thoughts such as this had been brought to the forefront of his mind far more often in recent months than had been previously. It had been his introduction to Carmen’s fold that he began to notice more of a sense of family with her than he’d previously allowed. His most recent defection from VILE is not the first time in his career he had betrayed a ‘family’ for something better and had suffered the loss of years worth of excellent lies but never had he been able to so quickly and so easily move on to the next ‘family’. Carmen had been so willing to let him in despite having only been a week since he helped her piece together some of the truth. Years had been spent previously healing from the loss of a family and trying to close himself off from the idea, only to be shattered with the welcome of Carmen. More than that, he’d begun to see the rest of the team as his family. A dangerous thing he still grapples with, often at the most inopportune times. Carmen he could call family without much hesitation after years of watching her grow on VILE island, but the others… 

Player, Zach and Ivy do not possess the same bond he shares with Carmen, this particular mission however had brought them closer to him. 

He tries not to let his grapple with the concept of this new family punctuate so much of the night but as he notices the end of his shift is near he realizes how much of his time had been spent contemplating this ‘family’. He’d had a moment earlier in the night where he had so easily called them his children, despite never having any interactions with that of being a father or even an older sibling, something so instinctual led him to call them his children. It had not been spoken aloud, nor would he ever say it aloud but as Ivy relieves him of duty—he has something new to think about. 

***

Ivy watches as Shadowsan wearily begins to leave the room. His presence is always so serene but something about him that morning seems to have caused a ripple to his serenity. She can’t blame him as he turns back to the room just before opening the door. 

“Did you sleep well?” He asks, almost seeming to test how he likes the question more than actually looking for an honest answer. She looks at him oddly for a moment before shrugging and answering. 

“Eh, as good as it can be in the back of a van in the middle of a Swedish winter.” She looks at him curiously as he nods and closes the door behind him. She blames it on the generational and occupational difference. He’d grown up a thief and a stone face, such pleasantries probably weren’t in the code book. 

Odd thoughts strike Ivy ever so often in her sleep deprived hours but the idea of Shadowsan actually trying to be normal is an ever present oddity. He hadn’t been raised a thief since birth but from what she can tell, he’d started his life of crime fairly early on. Crime requires a level of detachment that she would never achieve, as much as she wants to—as much as she’s tried—she just can’t beat down the part of her that wants connections. It had been hard enough when Grandma Jones had been sent to the retirement home, but when her father died and she only had Zach left, she latched onto the family she found in the mechanic’s garage. She had called the other girl her age a sister, she’d begun to call all the boys there ‘bro’ as a joke at first until it was real. The real slip up was when she called the head of the garage ‘Dad’. She hadn’t forgotten her own father but she had been so desperate to have him back that she gave someone new that title. When she and Zach moved on to racing and moved across town they lost contact and she tried to make sure she didn’t get so attached to the next team she fell into but even then, she found another mother. 

Now she looks at her newest attachment, every inch the older sister she never had, lying in a hospital bed. The sense of dread she expects to overtake her is miraculously replaced by sense of peace. Carmen is resilient and had already received a positive report from a few nurses. Shadowsan hadn’t rushed to wake her and Zach up for some emergency, everything would be okay. Her hope is brightened by the first glimpse of sunlight drifting through the gaps on the canvas shade. She chuckles seeing the laptop sitting on the rolling table, the charging cable stretched as far as it can possibly be. She takes a look at the screen and sees a lump of dark fabric which she begins to realize is a sleeping Player. She hadn’t expected Player to get much rest, let alone remain on call for that duration. He rarely would remain on call when any of them went to sleep, finding it an invasion of privacy. The view looks like he’d placed the camera on his nightstand so he could wake up and check on Carmen if needed. 

More than once since she’d joined Team Red she had woken to hear Carmen and Player talking at the breakfast table, seemingly having been awake for some time before her. Those two rarely slept for long let alone still be asleep when she’s awake, seeing them both asleep is new. She does her best to make sure her movements are quiet not wanting to disturb the rare moment, which fails in seconds when Zach comes bursting in an hour later. 

“Ivy! There you are!” He breathes, closing the door behind him and bending over as if out of breath. “Let me tell you, waking up next to Shadowsan was NOT what I had planned this morning.” 

Ivy looks between her noisy brother and her sleeping friends. Carmen doesn’t seem to make a move but the lump that is Player begins to move. 

“Shh!” She steps closer to Zach, whacking him in the arm with the back of her hand. “You’ll wake them up!” 

Zach looks to where Ivy gestures to see Carmen asleep facing away from the computer screen that shows Player sitting at the edge of his bed, rubbing his eyes. His hair sticks out at odd angles but settles into his typical messy-yet-seemingly-styled layout with a shake of his head. Player yawns, his eyebrows lifting then creasing as he releases his hands from the air and takes a look at Carmen. 

“How’d you sleep?” Zach asks, settling into the chair next to the bed and angles himself to look between his friends. 

“Eh.” Player shrugs. Zach and Ivy wait for him to say something more but it’s clear nothing more on the topic will be said. “How ‘bout you?” 

He asks after another yawn. 

“Eh.” Ivy shrugs. She had seemingly woken up every other hour to turn over, and even then glimmers of fears began to creep in keeping her awake longer than she would have liked. “Worried about Carmen.” she adds. The boys nod in agreement. 

For the most part that had been her worries through the night, what she wouldn’t admit is the occasional fear that she’d be waking up in the clutches of VILE again. It hadn’t been as frequent as her worry for Carm so she doesn’t feel the need to say anything, even if it scares her half to death. 

An early morning quiet settles back over the room making everyone a little more tired than before. Player had scrambled back to his computer, remembering the essay he hadn’t completed yet and now sits writing at his desk, the soft sound of the keys clicking under his quick fingers mixed with the quiet beeps of the monitor tracking Carmen’s vitals and the sun still gently rising and muffled by the canvas curtain. Zach had resumed attempting to keep his fidget spinner balanced on his finger like Player had been teaching him. 

Zach had been getting nervously fidgety, not that Ivy was doing much better herself. It had been a relief from the quiet room while Carmen slept yesterday when Player had begun to give Zach something to do. He started Zach with using a coaster while Ivy went to the gift shop to see if they sold any fidget spinners. It was a miracle but she found one of the last spinners. There were only 2 left and considered buying one for herself but she remembered the Rubix cube she has in her bag and left it for someone else. 

Zach still hasn’t learned the balancing act but this morning he is better at it than yesterday. Once again she remembers the Rubix cube in her bag but unfortunately it’s in the van so she settles on practicing the pen spin she found on Youtube a few weeks ago. She’d progressed far enough she could do some without looking so as she settles into the chair next to Carmen she shifts focus between the pen, Carmen, and the door. 

The few hours that Shadowsan and Carmen sleep continue as such with the occasional check up from a nurse. Carmen wakes up a couple of hours after Zach and Ivy had returned and soon after a nurse enters to bring her breakfast. 

“There’s a cafeteria in the basement if you two want breakfast as well.” He says, turning to the siblings sitting in the window seat. 

“You go first Zach, I’ll wait here.” Ivy kindly urges though no one misses the jealousy in her eyes. Carmen urges Ivy to go as well, hoping she’ll take the chance. She had been monitored 24/7 for the past two days without a break and it’s beginning to get on her nerves. She may not have the ability to fight off any VILE operative should they decide to appear but she’s ready to take that risk if it means some peace. Ivy looks back at Carmen, ready to make a counter argument but she stops it. “I’ll be fine. I’ll call you if I need you.” She says, pointing to her phone that now sits next to her laptop. They’d brought it in sometime during the night and it had woken her up that morning when her alarm went off. Ivy had made more noise trying to turn it off than the actual alarm had. 

Ivy looks back between her and the door once more. “Player is here, I’ll be fine.” As much as she wishes she could be totally alone, she knows she won’t get that wish as long as she is in the hospital. The logical part of her brain that never truly shuts off reminds her its safer in a group but a selfish part of her begs for some breathing room. 

“Oh! We can bring our food up here and eat with you!” Zach suggests, excitedly. 

“Cafeteria food isn’t allowed outside the basement.” The nurse who is still taking vitals comments, not looking up from his tablet until the final number is entered. “Go have some breakfast, she’ll be here when you get back.” He sweetly suggests, closing his tablet and gently ushers them out of the room.  

Carmen sighs relieved, even if she does feel a bit guilty for it. Ivy had always been protective of her and in most cases it is welcome, but between the revolving door of nurses and constant watch by her team she feels trapped. 

“Thank you.” She sighs, sitting up to let the nurse fluff her pillow. He smiles and picks up his tablet. 

“Families can be over bearing, it means they care but it’s not always comfortable to have them constantly around.” He replies, knowingly. As he steps out of the room and finally gives Carmen her peace she takes a moment to imagine how many families he’d had to usher out of patient’s rooms to give them some space. She knows she would be difficult to remove from the room if any of her team had been in her place. 

It’s not complete privacy but it’s more than she’d had since the ravine. Player’s camera and mic turn off a few minutes later but he promises he’d have his sounds up enough he could be right there if she needed him when he dashes off to take a shower and have breakfast with his parents. She’d closed the laptop so the camera faces the keys when he’d left so she could have some kind of privacy but she is still keenly aware that it is on and Player could come back any second. It had been odd waking up momentarily to see it still open and awake, let alone with the camera facing a sleeping Player. She’d slept longer than the previous night but had woken up a few times during the night; Shadowsan had no doubt noticed at least once but thankfully he didn’t try to ask her questions and let her go back to sleep. 

She finishes her breakfast along with the odd-tasting-hot-water and stretches out. It’s not the most uncomfortable bed she’s slept on but she has certainly slept on better. She’d noticed some cords being taken away from her bed when the nurse had given her breakfast and counted that as good sign, less wires and cords means easier escape. She tests her sea legs by trying to stand but no sooner is she stopped by a cord wrapped around her arm. A small beeping sounds and in seconds the nurse bursts through the door. He smiles kindly and helps her to untangle. 

Carmen only gets a few more minutes of solitude before Zach and Ivy return with a snuck in eclair. A few minutes later both Player and Shadowsan return almost at the same time. She loves her family with everything she is, but it gives her a headache with all of them piled into the cramped room for hours on end. 

She’s not the only one however that struggles with the crowded room, the same nurse suggests Zach and Ivy check out the gift shop again and even Shadowsan escorts them out leaving her with Player once more. She’d put in an order with Zach and Ivy for a good book but wishes she has one with her now. Player doesn’t say anything for a while, jumping right back into writing his essay and scanning for any new activity. The keys clack and his spinner whirs softly in the background as Carmen picks up her phone. She can just imagine them sitting in an airport lounge years ago in their early years with the comfortable silence as she waits to board. 

That is until he drops his spinner groans. 

She looks over at the screen and Player has his head in his hands. 

“Player?” She asks, turning more to face the screen. He startles and tuns to her as if he’d forgotten she was still on their call. Some expression flashes across his face that she can’t quite decipher. He struggles to find words as his mouth hangs open, on the edge of saying something. He takes a quick breath and faces her head on. 

“I’m sorry, Red.” He doesn’t look into the camera like he normally does when speaking with her, instead looking at his hands clasped and resting on his desk. 

“For what?” She asks, tilting her head. Earlier he’d tried to apologize for something that she can only assume was an apology for the whole ordeal, but something also seemed to be skipped over that he wanted to say. He gulps and hazards a look at the screen then seemingly instantly regretting it. “Player, what’s wrong?” Player had been quiet, almost too quiet, in the past few hours. She knows there’s something bothering him when he doesn’t look at the camera and it scares her. 

“After you crashed, Ivy was kidnapped. I told Zach to go after Ivy, I… made you wait. I’m so sorry.” 

She had picked up that something else had happened while she was in the ravine, but she hadn’t imagined it had been something so big. It takes her back realizing he had to make such a hard decision, but not nearly as much as the selfish voice that angers a bit at his words. If she had been given the decision between her rescue and Ivy’s she would have made the same one, but it’s much easier gambling with your own life than gambling with someone else’s. Had this been what he had meant when he first apologized? She can even remember him apologizing in the van though it’s a vague memory. Had he been carrying that weight all this time? 

“Player, you don’t have to apologize, you made the right decision.” She urgently replies. She’s not a very physical person but there have certainly been a few times she wished she could be in Ontario to give him a hug—this is certainly one of those moments. He still doesn’t look at the camera and begins to rub his fingers together nervously. “I’m so sorry you had to make that decision.” She says, hurting for her friend. Along with her sympathy settles the weight of guilt. How many times had he been a bound witness to her and the others being pummeled and threatened? Even on their good days he no doubt felt the separation of their lives despite being so closely intertwined. But every way they looked at the equation, he is far safer in his ‘little cave’ than anywhere near the elusive Carmen Sandiego. 

“Just don’t make me choose like that agin, okay?” His voice is meek but he looks back up to the camera with enough pleading power for Carmen to feel it hundreds of miles away. She smiles and puts her hand to her heart.

“I promise.” 

Chapter Text

Chapter 11 

 “Are you sure you’re up for this?” Player asks, all eyes are on Carmen as the final decision comes down to her. Once everyone had reconvened after dinner Player had instantly steamrollered them into the discussion of taking her home. Equipped with instructions on continued nursing and their pilot preparing for take off; he made his claim. 

Carmen knows she’ll be able to do very little, and if she’s honest with herself, just walking down the hall seems like a daunting task. She could easily say she’s not up for it and they would let her stay another day or more, but she knows she’s overstayed in terms of safety. She’d been holding onto a number of escape plans for when the time came but even now she knows they were mostly with a fully-healthy-body frame of mind. She’d tried a few times to get up on her own and each time she wobbled and fell into the waiting nurse’s arms.

“I won’t be much help, but we need to get out of here.” the statement is a heavy one which weighs on everyone a little more as it is spoken, especially by her. 

“Don’t worry, you’ll have the easier part. Pretending to be asleep.” Player says confidently when he’s over the shock of her confession. “Zach and Ivy will pretend to return to the van for the night to find a better sleeping spot but instead they’ll take the advantage of the chaos during shift change to sneak into the locker room and snag a few extra scrubs and masks. Zach will move the van out of the parking lot while Ivy changes and brings the extra uniform for Shadowsan. Shadowsan will take his turn to leave the building then return to help Ivy move Carmen. I’ll hack into the their system to schedule Carmen for discharge to an aftercare facility while Zach moves an ambulance into place which I’ll also schedule to be transferred. From there Zach will drive to where he’d parked the rental van transferring Carmen and Shadowsan, along with the aftercare supplies, then continuing on with Ivy to the aftercare facility where they’ll leave the ambulance and meet back up with Shadowsan and Carmen. From there you’ll head straight to airport where your flight is waiting to head straight back to HQ.”

The plan is simple and direct but with enough layers to keep the hospital staff off their scent and hopefully any potential watchers. Carmen wishes she could do more to help, at the very least be able to walk so she could leave under cover rather than creating more and bigger moving parts, but she knows Player has put her in the best spot for her condition. It’s sometimes hard to realize he’s so far away from the production with how much he knows about their situation, even sometimes without relaying it to him. It amazes and terrifies her how much he can learn from thousands of miles away using the computers, software, and hardware he’d mostly built or modified himself. It’s also a sobering reminder of just how much VILE can do with their own tech. 

The siblings add in their two cents of confidence on the plan before they all turn to Carmen for the green light. The plan goes off without any hitches, Zach and Ivy use the crowded hallways of shift change to snag a few extra uniforms and head for the van. When they come back Shadowsan takes his turn and soon returns, ready for transport. Ivy had taken the laptop and Carmen’s other belongings back to the van, but left her phone under the pillow and plugged her headphones in so Carmen can remain in contact with Player. The wires seamlessly hide under the waves of her hair making for a less than ideal microphone situation but giving Carmen the comfort of having Player by her side again—and what a comfort it is. 

As the others disconnect her from the few wires and tubes she remains with she settles into her role, closing her eyes only enough to seem like she’s asleep. Hiding in plain sight had always been her preferred method of working though she prefers to be on her feet rather than on her back. She’d spent some time in her early stages of thievery utilizing the position and the advantages it brings which often outweighs the risks of being vulnerable with a limited vantage point. Though she can barely see to the sides of her, she can see where her team takes their places at her bed. Ivy takes the lead at her right with a hair cap and glasses while Shadowsan stands to Carmen’s left with a mask and cap concealing their identities. Players calls out finals checks on their positions, including Carmen’s, before giving them the go ahead.

Leaving the room is the first nerve wracking test; at the nurses’ station sits the nurse who they’d had most interactions with and had learned to recognize them uncomfortably quick. They keep their backs to her as they pass hoping the scrubs and Player’s bluff will keep her satisfied. Carmen somewhat expects Ivy to tighten her grip on the railing and look around the room for signs of trouble, nearly blowing their cover, but her face is clear and she forges on like she’d done this a million times. To be fair, she has. 

Shadowsan however is harder to read from her angle but she can see his hands steadily holding the railings and that’s all the comfort she needs. The well worn hands belonging to the closest thing she has to a father guiding her like he has for so much of her life across from the younger but sturdy hands of the first person she’d ever considered something of a sister and watchtower is something she never thought she would see after she’d successfully run away from VILE island.

As they pass the nurse they say nothing and thankfully neither does she, only momentarily looking up from her paperwork then returning her focus. Even Player sighs in relief as they pass and Ivy confirms when they’ve cleared her view. Other than the first nurses’ station, the others are clear of nurses allowing them a quick and quiet passage to the front of the building where Zach meets them with the ambulance and helps to load Carmen. It’s a bit of a rocky transfer as they hook everything into place but when they have the bed locked in, Ivy checks Carmen is comfortable and Shadowsan takes one last visual sweep of the parking lot before shutting the doors and taking his seat. When the door is closed, Zach pulls out of the loading zone and onto the street taking them closer to safety. Even with the lights and siren off, people make room for him to pass relieving some of the tension in his shoulders as he weaves through the limited nighttime traffic. 

Minutes later they pull up to where Zach had parked their van, leaving Carmen with just enough time to change into regular clothes and prepare to jump vehicles. Shadowsan offers to carry her the few steps to the van but she politely refuses, wanting to stretch her legs before the long flight back to California. The transfer is the second nerve wracking test, moving unconcealed medical supplies to a van with only one person in plain clothes—who even in the low glow of the moon and street lamps is still quite pale—make them a fairly easy target to spot if someone were to pay attention. Should a police car or a tad too vigilant pedestrian pass by the ambulance suspiciously parked next to a white unmarked van, let alone with four odd occupants, could make any one begin to ask too many questions. Every one of them is fully aware of their open position but they continue to follow through with the plan like it’s any everyday task for any normal human being.  It’s a grueling effort for Carmen just to walk a few steps and crawl into the passenger seat of the van but when she’s safely secured, Shadowsan jumps into the driver seat and follows Zach to the aftercare facility where he and Ivy drop the ambulance and jump back in with them. 

They are all quiet as Shadowsan speeds down the highway, mixed emotions as they whiz through the frozen landscape. Carmen keeps her eyes closed—fully closed— for most of the ride; she had seen enough of the Swedish wilderness and doesn’t care to watch it blur past her again. The one time she does catch a glimpse out the passenger window, it doesn’t look much different than what she can remember of her crash— she sure doesn’t feel much different. 

“Doing okay Carm?” Zach asks setting a cup next to her. She turns as far as she can to see him and the cup that looks suspiciously like the odd tasting water cups she’d had before and nods. 

“I’m okay.” She avoids taking the cup for a moment until he pushes it closer to her and watches expectantly. When she puts it to her lips she’s unfortunately right, it is the odd tasting water. Zach seems to be satisfied with a sip so she takes another one to satisfy him for a while longer and curls back into her seat for the rest of the ride. 

The transfer to the plane is the most daunting trip she’d come up against yet; standing (or leaning) against the van and looking up the ramp that leads into the pressurized cabin where much comfier seats and blankets await with the promise to be back in San Diego in the morning she desperately wants it to be over. Taking a breath and a step forward she almost instantly falls on her face…almost. Two strong arms hold her up and ask her in the oh-so-Bostonian accent, “Where d’you think you’re going?” Carmen looks up at Ivy confused who nods to her right where Zach appears behind a wheelchair. She gratefully take a seat and sighs, relived at not having to brave the incline on her own. Ivy gets her settled with a few blankets and a new hoodie in one of the seats while Zach pulls the door closed behind him and Shadowsan. 

The familiar quiet hum of the plane and tired silence of a post mission flight breathes a bit of life back into her when they’re in the air and the pilot announces their estimated time of arrival. Zach is already asleep on Shadowsan’s shoulder when she takes a look around, Shadowsan seemingly not far behind him. Ivy sits in the seat across from her, one earbud in, the other flopping around in her hand. She reminds Carmen she’s there if she needs hers her and pulls out her Rubix cube. Player is still in her own headphones and he urges Carmen to get some rest. 

“What would I do without you?” She asks with a yawn.

“Goodnight Red.” Player smiles, happy she is finally safely on her way back to HQ. 

“Goodnight Player.” 

He can hear the shuffle and rustle of Carmen’s blankets moving around as she sinks further into the seat. He doesn’t know if she falls asleep immediately but given the silence and slight snore the microphone picks up, he guesses she’s at least not the only one asleep. 

***

Ivy watches a video she’d downloaded on different ways to solve a Rubik’s cube and times herself against the video. During her second run through of the 4th form she gets a picture of Player covering her screen and pausing her video. He smiles in a seeming apologetic fashion for the sudden intrusion. 

“Still working on the Rubik’s cube?” He asks, noting the partially completed cube. 

“Trying to.” She sighs, the 4th form she’d begun to follow had been the hardest one yet and while she’d finally figured out how to do it, speed is not yet on her side. “Can’t seem to go as fast on this one.” 

“Which one is it?” Player asks. She’d sent him the video a few weeks back, challenging him to try and beat her times; so far he’d beat all of them. 

“4th form. Don’t tell me you’ve already perfected it!” Player gives a non committal shrug but the little smirk that he can’t hide tells Ivy everything. “Oh c’mon!”

“What? I didn’t say anything!” Player scoffs, trying to sound nonchalant. 

“You didn’t have to.” Ivy shakes her head. “Alright then, prove it!” She demands, crossing her arms. 

“I don’t want to make you feel bad.” Player says, as he snatches his Rubik’s cube out of thin air. 

“I wanna see you do it, there’s no way you’ve already gotten it figured out!” 

She pulls up a timer on her phone and counts him down. At her call to begin his fingers shift the squares, following the form with a dizzying speed. Ivy keeps up with most of the moves but towards the end she loses track and when she stops the timer she can’t believe his time. 

“Hah!” She grins, sharing the timer with him. 

“Oh, can you do better?” Player taunts.

“The Master can, they did it in 7 seconds!” She looks triumphantly at the 10 second time on her phone as if she’d beaten the time herself. 

“I’m not trying to beat The Master!” He mutters ‘yet’ under his breath and Ivy barely catches it. 

“3 more seconds buddy.” Had he been sitting next to her, she would have patted his head, making sure to mess with his hair in the process. 

“And how close are you?” He reflects the teasing back to her. She doesn’t say anything and neither does he, she knows he’s better and her squint is enough. The two compare the forms for a little bit as the rest of the crew sleeps on.

A quiet gasp interrupts their discussion and tears Ivy’s focus from her screen. The gasp hadn’t sounded like Carmen’s and she doubts it could be Shadowsan. Zach gasps again, shifting on the couch next to Shadowsan where he’d toppled away from the elder man in his sleep. He is quiet for another moment until he giggles, returning to sleep with a happy sigh. The noise had woken Shadowsan and he peaks at Zach through the corner of his eye. He hadn’t moved a muscle up until that point and in a quick movement, he grabs a blanket from the inset shelves next to him and lays it over Zach. Zach doesn’t make a move for a moment until he turns over so he faces the back of the couch and pulls the blanket closer to him. Seemingly satisfied with the reaction, Shadowsan takes a look back to Carmen before closing his eyes and returning to sleep. It’s a gentle moment that Ivy and Player both recognize the preciousness of as they look to each other knowingly. 

“Are you going to hit the hay?” Ivy asks after a moment with a concerned look. His eyes are rimmed darker than normal, even in the low light, and his eyelids droop almost as severely as his shoulders. The question should have shaken him to wipe the fatigue off his face but he lets it turn into a large yawn, stretching nearly every muscle in his face and his arms as they raise high over his head. He stares blankly at one of his screens for a moment before shaking himself back to Ivy. “You’re allowed to sleep ya’ know.” 

“Heh, I know. I just…” He looks to the corner of the screen like he’s trying to see Carmen, pressing his lips together. “I don’t know if I can.”
“Nightmares?” 

Player nods. 

“Hey, I’m here if you need me.” Ivy assures him, though she tries to hide a yawn as well. 

“I think we’re both due for some sleep.” Player chuckles. 

“I bet I can beat your time.” Ivy challenges him, raising a taunting eyebrow. Player stares at her, shocked for a moment, until he processes her challenge. “We’re all safe, we’ve still got hours until we make it to San Diego, and you look like you could beat a Vampire in a costume contest.” She leaves the challenge open ended, waiting and watching for his response. 

“I guess it’s worth a shot.” Players shrugs. He doesn’t end either call as he transfers them to his phone and moves to his bed, once again putting his phone on his nightstand. Ivy adjusts her phone so he gets a bit of everyone in the frame and looks around the cabin. She notices the blanket Shadowsan had lovingly put over Zach and the blankets wrapped around Carmen. Player curls under his covers and watches his phone screen as Ivy moves to the built-in shelves next to Shadowsan. She grabs the last two blankets, tossing one to her seat and laying the other one over Shadowsan. As she curls into her seat and under the blanket, she puts in one of her earbuds again. 

“I’m here if you need me Player.” She reminds him. 

“Thanks Ivy.” 

“Anytime.”