Chapter Text
The odd blurp from the plumbing was Flores' first hint that help might actually be coming.
He'd hoped, of course. There was nothing else to do in the Tombs but to hope or to despair, and if Flores were prone to despair, he would have left San Lorenzo to its fate long ago. If anyone could bring his plight to the attention of someone with the power to help, it was Commander Spencer. But that was a faint hope. Spencer was a remarkably resourceful man, but time was short, the Tombs' walls were thick, and Ribera's claws were sunk deep into San Lorenzo.
Flores' insistence on not escaping without his cabinet made that hope even dimmer, he knew, even as he spoke, but on this, he could not compromise. You didn't openly oppose a president as corrupt as Ribera without knowing you might die for your cause, and Flores was prepared. Even if Spencer could get him out, and if the election went his way, he could not carry San Lorenzo forward into a new regime drenched in the blood of his most faithful supporters.
They waited. If Spencer had come, was in San Lorenzo working to help, then maybe… Maybe he'd find a way.
The secondphone call was more cryptic than the first, asking him to speak some lines addressed to President Ribera. The call was short and rushed. Spencer did not explain.
The next contact came in the form of a cloud of steam and a lithe blond shadow materializing out of it in front of his cell, smiling a slightly dangerous grin.
“Who are you?” Flores asked. Her face was vaguely familiar, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it, until…
“I’m supposed to tell you 'we’d be the cavalry.'” she said, her hands making quick work of the lock on his cell. “I'm here to zombify you!” she added, cheerfully, before he could respond.
The “zombification,” as Spencer's friend phrased it, of Flores and his cabinet consisted of marking their faces and any other exposed flesh with an odd pattern of white dots using a stick of greasepaint.
“This will let Hardison's algorithm doctor the security footage in real-time to make it look like you're all undead,” she explained. Several of the ministers looked uncertainly at Flores. He shrugged. He had no idea who “Hardison” was or why he wanted them to look “zombified,” but if Spencer sent them, there was surely a plan.
She was marking the face of the last minister—Tomàs—when the elevator door opened.
Four guards in riot gear rushed out. Spencer's friend did not look up from her work, catching Tomàs' chin to prevent him from turning. The batons of the rear two guards crashed down on the guards in front, sending them to the floor.
Spencer grinned as he pushed up the faceshield on his helmet. He looked terrible. Ashen pallor, an open gash splitting the skin of his right cheek, smaller cuts and lesions scattered over the remaining visible skin. Flores' eyebrows drew together, and he saw one of his ministers back away in alarm.
The young black man revealed behind the other faceshield took one look at them and smacked Spencer's arm. “Dude. You're a zombie, remember? Popping off that helmet ain't as reassuring as you think.”
Spencer scowled, visibly biting back his initial retort. “Well, get your little program running so we can get them out of here. Sooner we get this done, sooner we can all get rid of the damn zombie getup.” He hit a button on a small device, and distant sounds of fighting and shouting could be heard faintly from the elevator shaft.
The young man, who Flores' presumed to be Hardison, the purveyor of the “zombification” algorithm, was already tapping away rapidly at a tablet pulled out of seemingly nowhere. “Hey, you were the one who said it should be zombies.”
“Why is it zombies?” inquired Flores.
Hardison flashed him a small smile. “Apparently, Moreau is petrified of them and also under the impression that his goons shot Eliot last week, so we're working with that.”
“I said 'superstitious,' not 'petrified,'” said Spencer. He efficiently stripped the ballistics vests off the felled guards before zip-tying their wrists and ankles and slapping an adhesive patch on each of their necks. “But essentially, yes. It's a way to shake up Moreau and Ribera without running directly up against their security—they'd sound insane if they told anyone they were worried about zombies, and they can't afford to have their security second-guessing their mental stability.”
Hardison held his tablet up, pointed at Tomàs. "Smile and say 'braaaaaaaains'!"
Tomàs shot Flores an uncertain look. "Brains?" he said.
Hardison flipped the tablet around with a grin, replaying silent footage of Tomàs, now with a gray-green pallor, a bloody gash over one eye, and a smattering of small lesions dotting his skin. He looked disturbingly dead, although more “freshly” dead than Spencer. "And there you go! Beautiful thing about doing this with zombies is that the uncanny valley effect works for you instead of against you—if the face looks a little off or the movements aren't quite natural, it just helps sell the whole undead look."
"Hardison!" said Spencer. "Geek later."
"Right, right, right. We're good.” He hastily tapped a few controls and handed the tablet to the blonde. “Ready to go."
“We'll clear out the guards upstairs, and Parker will let you know when to come up,” said Spencer. “Bring the guards but keep 'em in the elevator until we divert the cameras.” He tossed the ballistics vests to Flores. “Put these on the first guys out of the elevator, just as a precaution.”
He and Hardison grabbed their batons and darted back into the elevator. Parker pulled some small bags of dark fluid out of her bag and splashed strategic splatters onto surfaces of the hallway, sweeping her foot through some of them, as if blood had spilled during a fight and then been tracked and smeared around.
“How are they going to clear out the guards?” someone asked, just as the shouting began to echo down the elevator shaft.
Spencer's voice bellowed, “You! Get reinforcements now!” A clamor of overlapping voices obscured most of Spencer's authoritative list of what reinforcements and supplies they needed. “Shut up and listen!” The other voices ebbed. Parker eyes were trained on the tablet showing the video feed from upstairs; she tapped a button on the screen. “Those cells were not secured! It is a madhouse down there! They already took down two guards, and if we do not get back down there, god knows what is going to happen to them.” The elevator doors slid open in front of Flores' group. Parker smiled. “We will hold this damn elevator, but if you don't come back with enough firepower to clean up down there, and fast, there is going to be hell to pay! Move!”
Parker spun sharply to face the group. “Everyone in! There's your window. Remember, you're zombies attacking on the way out! No talking like people until we tell you the camera's down!” She grabbed a fallen guard and towed him into the elevator, parking him in the back corner. Flores and the others followed, Flores hastily donned one ballistics vest and tossed the other to the minister with the most combat experience. They pulled their jackets on over the vests and took their positions at the front of the elevator, providing as much cover as they could for those behind them.
Flores' heart was in his throat for the whole ascent.
When the doors opened, there was no one in the room except two riot-gear-clad figures that Flores prayed were indeed Spencer and Hardison. He tamped down his reservations, tried to forget the ridiculous dots on his face, and lunged, with a roar, at the shorter “guard.” His cabinet poured out of the elevator behind him, shouting wordless war cries.
Hardison showed them the footage as they drove away from the Parliament Building, leaving behind a destroyed guard room and two unconscious guards—one “fallen” behind the desk; the other laid out in the hall as if he had tried to flee before being overtaken. (Spencer peeled the patches off their necks just before leaving the scene. “Sedative,” he clarified.) It was startlingly convincing. A horde of zombies—still clearly recognizable as Flores and his cabinet-members—lurching out of the elevator, ignoring the “shots” fired from the guards weapons, and simply swarming the guards before a stray swing of an improvised weapon sent the camera spinning, its lens crashing into the wall so it could show no more.
Tomàs hesitantly asked whether everywhere they were going was certain to have only video without in-person witnesses or whether they were all going to need full zombie makeup.
“Oh, no, no, no. You guys are done. Actually, where are the—?”
Parker shoved a bag into his hands from her spot behind the wheel. Hardison blinked. “Woman! Watch the road, please! Thank you, though.” He pulled out a package of makeup wipes and handed them around. “Y'all can wipe off those white dots now. They're not expecting the debate tonight to be a debate, but they did hold the spot for Ribera to give some kind of campaign talk, so that'll be an opportunity to reveal that Flores is back in the running. Ribera should have resigned by then.”
“What? Why would he resign?”
Hardison smirked. “Because we've got someone workin' on him as we speak, convincing him that the zombies are after him because of how he got the presidency. He's already primed to expect an update from the guards he sent to go down and check that you were still in the Tombs, so he's gonna receive this footage shortly to confirm his worst fears.” His smirk widened into a grin. “And then, just in case he's still on the fence, Eliot is gonna pay him a little visit. You know, add a little sense of urgency.”
…
“I applaud former President Ribera for recognizing the changing needs of San Lorenzo and making the selfless decision to voluntarily step down to aid this transition and allow San Lorenzo to continue to grow and thrive.”
“President Flores, do you have any comment on the rumors that former President Ribera has had mental breakdown? Do you know why he has not been seen in public since the election?” asked a reporter.
“I have no information about President Ribera's health, but I imagine that anyone who has so recently stepped down from leading a country would enjoy a break from public life.”
“Is it true that Damien Moreau was arrested because President Ribera believed him to be a zombie?”
Flores barely tamped down a smile. “Although it would certainly pose legal complications, I am unaware of any law in San Lorenzo that would criminalize being a zombie. I have seen the charges against Damien Moreau, and I can assure you that they are all standard charges for the same sort of crimes that have made him an international fugitive and are completely unrelated to him or anyone else being undead.”
There was no hint of death in the Tombs' recorded footage of Damien Moreau rattling the door to his cell, shouting, begging to be extradited. Hardison's doctored footage had been scrubbed from every San Lorenzo system it had ever touched. (Tomàs' request to keep a copy was turned down with great regret.) But Flores remembered, and Ribera remembered, and if Ribera ever forgot and seemed poised to become a threat again, Flores would have… Leverage.