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It's late April in Detroit, a Saturday, and the first nice day of the year. Sunny and warm is a valuable enough combination on its own for Michigan in the spring—the last bitter holdouts of winter linger grey and rainy here long into May—and it's also one of the rare days when neither of them have something going on in the office. The security measures are holding well, Megan's lab work is ahead of schedule; it's a quiet little triumph just to wake up next to each other for once. Adam takes her out to breakfast, a little omelette place just a few blocks away, because he wants to see her smile and because he knows it might be months before they get a day like this again.
They eat together on the front sidewalk of the restaurant with napkins for plates and their legs tucked close against the curb. Megan even offers him a bite of her grapes-and-walnut abomination. Afterward, drunk on the promise of a day just waiting to be wasted, they take Kubrick to the dog park at Grand Circus.
The grass here is new-growth green and there's dogs enough to keep their little explorer occupied for weeks. Even so, it's not long before Kubrick flops down next to Adam with a soft whuff of contentment. His muzzle is streaked through with grey and he can't run quite so long as he used to, but in every other way he's still that same puppy they adopted so many years ago. Adam gives his ears a scratch, laughs as he rolls belly-up on the muddy ground with his tail wagging wildly.
"We should do this more often," Megan sighs, leaning back to stare up at the clouds.
"I'll remind you that you said that next time I find out you're still in the lab at four in the morning."
Megan just smiles and laughs, and Adam ought to smile right back, but—he stops. That should start a fight, shouldn't it? Megan shouldn't laugh at that. They'd fought over it so many times. Megan locked away deep in the heart of Sarif Industries, working on things she can't or won't explain to him; Adam sleeping in an empty bed. They'd never gotten to a point where they could laugh about that.
"Megan," he says, and his head hurts suddenly. "Megan, is... is something wrong?"
He rubs at his temples to try and chase the pain away, but the touch of his own hands startles him. They aren't... they shouldn't be...
"Megan," he says again.
She turns to him. Smiles. It doesn't reach her eyes. "You're worrying too much, Adam," she says. "I told you talking to Pritchard would make you paranoid."
She reaches out for him, fingertips brushing the curve of his cheek. He grabs her fingers, just to hold her back (something is wrong), but his hands are wrong too and he hears her sudden shriek of pain, feels the bones of her hand break in the moment before—
—the world dissolves to black.
-
He's fucked up his hand again. It's not the first time and it won't be the last, but this time it's bad enough that Koller is actually mad at him. Apparently the joints of the pinky are harder to work with than Adam would've guessed.
He's conscious this time, at least, which is a nice change. Going under in The Chair is disorienting as hell, and it doesn't help that Koller insists on calling it The Chair.
"And I know you're tough, Jensen, don't get me wrong here," Koller snarls, prying loose a bolt in Adam's hand with a look on his face like the bolt murdered his whole family, "but just because you can throw yourself off buildings whenever you feel like it"—the anger bleeds to quiet excitement for one quick second; Koller's love for the Icarus is stronger than even his annoyance with Adam, apparently—"doesn't mean you don't need to take care of your own goddamn body."
"Koller," Adam interrupts. "I'm sorry. I know I screwed up." That last mission was hell. Adam's tired, keyed up with leftover adrenaline, and his head hurts. Right now, though, he's just grateful. There's not many people who even notice when he's hurt anymore. Being lectured feels kind of nice.
That seems to stop Koller in his tracks. He looks at Adam, eyes wide (and how did Adam not realize just how close he was?) and says, quietly, "Jensen..." A moment later he corrects himself. "Adam. Okay. Yeah. Apology accepted. Just... if you're going to get yourself killed out there, well—I mean, don't, yeah? It'd be a total waste, and I don't just mean of the tech."
There's a red flush crawling up his cheeks now. His normal manic expression has gone soft around the edges.
He looks nice like this, Adam thinks.
"I'll do my best," Adam says, and somehow he's not surprised at all when Koller leans in and kisses him.
It feels good, it feels amazing, and it's all Adam can do to keep still when everything in him is urging him to move, to reach up and tangle his fingers in those wild bangs of his. He won't need to worry about the job killing him if he ruins Koller's work in progress.
Koller makes a desperate little noise in the back of his throat before he pulls back, gasping for air. "Fuck," he says. "Why haven't we done that before?"
Adam snorts. "I guess you never patched me up well enough before. Better hope I get more missions like these."
Koller laughs, but Adam's focus is elsewhere. He's can't stop the thoughts running circles through his head. How did he fuck his hand up so badly? Why can't he remember what mission he was on? And—
"Koller," Adam asks, "what day is it?"
"What kind of question is that?" Koller's laugh is shakier now.
He's right, of course. It is a stupid question, and Adam really just ought to drop it. It's no surprise he's confused, after all. That last mission took everything he had and more besides. A lot of good agents are dead; TF29's still counting the bodies, contacting families and scrambling to cover the fresh new holes ripped in their stretched-thin defenses. It's a wonder any of them it out alive.
That last mission. He's not remembering a location, or a task, or a team he worked with. There's Panchaea, and Dubai, and London, and then... this. The memory is nothing more than indistinct fuzz-grey static in his head, papered over with label reading that last mission.
Adam doesn't forget missions. He wishes he could, sometimes.
"Koller," he says. The ache in his head builds to a sharp crescendo. "What happened to me?" He curls his fingers slowly for emphasis. His left hand looks incomplete and strange laid open like this, a broken skeleton surrounded by springs and screws.
"Don't ask me, Adam, you'd know the stunts you get up to better than I do."
"You're right. I should. But I'm having a hard time remembering." Adam stares Koller straight in the eye. "Let me ask one more time, Koller. What's happening to me?"
Koller just frowns, happiness bled away from his face like blood from a gunshot wound, and he sighs and folds his arms over his chest and doesn't say a single word, doesn't react even as Adam tears the arms off The Chair and throws them to the floor and reaches for his throat—
—A burst of white, bright enough to blind, and then it all goes to black.
-
Sarif's office gives a good view of Detroit: 360 degrees, panopticon, because at some point he decided the old set of massive windows just wasn't enough.
Adam's not much one for glitz, but he can't deny Sarif his pride here. It's thanks to his company that so many new buildings have gone up lately, after all. Innovation, Cooperation, Reputation, SI's new slogan goes, and for all he and Pritchard privately roll their eyes at it he can't deny it works. The past decade has seen Detroit's skyline go from being pockmarked with empty and condemned buildings, massive and skeletal, to a brightly-gleaming spread of brand new industry that teems with people.
"Take a seat, son," Sarif says, and gestures towards a chair with one gleaming hand. There's already a glass waiting for him. Sarif pours the whiskey as he sits. "I'm glad to have you here."
"Well, patrols are holding their own for the most part these days." Adam takes a sip. It burns beautifully going down. Sarif has always had excellent taste for the finer things in life. "Wasn't expecting anything to come up, so I figured I could stop by."
Sarif laughs and shakes his head. "No, I mean"—a surprised glance towards Adam—"don't you know what day it is?"
"...Thursday?"
"Yes, thanks, Adam, I'd forgotten the day of the week." Sarif rolls his eyes. There's a certain childishness to him, a frat-boy sort of charm that he managed not to grow out of even as the years and the prestige piled up. A decade ago, it would've annoyed Adam. Now he just finds it endearing. "I'm talking about your anniversary!"
"My..." Adam counts back the years. "Oh. Huh. Has it really been ten years?"
"To the day." Sarif taps the side of his own whiskey glass with one finger, sending a little metallic clink echoing through the room. "You think I bring this stuff out for any old meeting?"
"Thought you might be trying out some employee appreciation, boss. Raise morale and all that."
"You know I always appreciate you, son. I've got no goddamn clue what I'd do without you at this point."
"I'm sure Belltower would be happy to have your contract," Adam says.
Sarif makes a face. "Yeah, and leave my company a smoking crater trying to protect it. Buncha goddamn trigger-happy meatheads." His voice softens, and he reaches out to run his fingers down the back of Adam's carbon-alloy hand. "Really, though. Megan... Megan did a lot of good work, and one of her best was bringing you here."
Adam can't help but feel a little bit fond at that. He taps his glass to Sarif's and takes another drink before wincing. (Malik says too much whiskey will give him migraines. Maybe he should listen to her more.)
He still wishes Megan were here, still wishes he had been able to save her, but the raw festering wound of guilt and shame has finally healed down to a dull ache. Not painless, but... livable. He can think about her now without wanting to break down and cry.
Adam does just that, really stops and thinks about her, and then he sets his glass down on the table and says, "But she didn't die."
Sarif gives him a look that's somewhere between pitying and concerned. "You saw the damage reports, Adam."
"Yeah, boss," Adam snaps, "and I also saw her."
He remembers now: Singapore, and then the Versalife bank vault. Megan, alive and well and no friend of his now.
Sarif sighs heavily. There's no more concern in his expression, but the pity still lingers there. "Come on, now. You're confused."
"I am," Adam agrees, and he twists his glass around in his hand once more before flinging it at Sarif's face hard enough to shatter bone.
Sarif makes a high, panicked, miserable noise, a one-note sob of betrayal, and Adam knows it isn't really him but he's still rushing to his boss's side when the room wavers and shatters and—
—dissolves to black.
-
Adam's sitting on the edge of a Hengsha high-rise rooftop, letting his legs dangle out into oblivion. Malik's on his right, smiling at the pollution tinged sunrise; on his left, Pritchard's snarling at his laptop while he slams his fingers against the keys hard enough to warp plastic.
It's been hard, since SI's collapse, Panchaea and the realization that there's no power on the globe that can be trusted, but if he has to go independent then he picked a pretty good team to do it with. They've got a new mission waiting for them today, and Pritchard is suspicious of their client but then Pritchard is always—
"No," Adam says, and he rests his hands for a moment against Pritchard and Malik's shoulders before he stands up and throws himself off the roof. The Icarus should activate, but it doesn't, and instead there is—
—black.
-
His mother stands next to the kitchen table of his childhood home, alive and healthy and smiling. She's setting plates down on the rough surface; it's old wood, stained with the moisture-rings of a thousand cups of coffee and bottles of beer, scuffed where a six-year-old Adam got hold of the lighter in the top cabinet and decided to be like the star of one of the handyman shows he watched on TV.
He never thought he'd see it again. He had to sell it after the funeral, along with the rest of the house.
His mother looks different. There's crow's feet at the corners of her eyes, smile lines on a woman who so rarely smiled, and streaks of grey at her temples that she hasn't bothered to dye over. The mother he knew was quiet and grim and terrified of growing old. This woman (wearing joy like it fits her, humming to herself as she sets the table) is a beautiful stranger.
She looks up at the sound of his breathing. It seems so loud in this little room. His heart is racing.
"Adam, honey," she says, "so glad you could make it. Dinner's almost ready."
Adam sighs. This isn't right. No matter what he might want or how much he might want it, none of this is right.
"Come on," he says to the empty air, to whoever might be listening, "this isn't even realistic."
He smashes a fist into the oak table, sends shards of splintered wood through the room. His mother falls, panicked, to the floor with the impact and the world goes black—
-
Eliza is there beside him in a worn down old amphitheater in the heart of Golem City, close enough to touch if she had the body for it, and she has just enough time to lean forward and say, "Adam, I lo—" before he tears through her hologram and sends his vision fuzzing black.
-
Alison Stanek sits across from him on the other side of a plexiglass screen. She's tired and small, dressed in prison orange, but still very much alive, and she says, "Thank you, Adam."
He shatters the plexiglass and the world shatters with it. Black.
-
Alex Vega kicks her feet up on his apartment couch, hands wrapped around a mug of what has to be more cream than actual coffee, and he lashes out and the world goes black.
-
He walks into a dingy Prague bar, the sort that still lets augs through its doors, to find the rest of TF29 has already managed to commandeer a table. At Mac's shoulder, Aria waves him over with a friendly "Adam!"
Adam fires his stun gun, sees the look of betrayal in his teammates' eyes as electricity crackles through the air, and again the world is black.
-
Black. Black. Black.
It's like a game, now, except he doesn't know the rules and he doesn't know the other player and the only prize for winning each round is feeling his sanity unravel that little bit further. He sees his father, shoots. Black. Hears a doctor's voice in his ear, "Adam, you're lucky to have survived," and rips IVs from the flesh-not-flesh at the crook of his elbow. Black.
He sees friends, family, lovers; people he could have saved and people he could have killed; a thousand wild futures desperately stitched together, trying to find the one that will make him stop and stay. It's getting desperate, whatever's on the other end of this hell. He almost pities it; he suspects the price for failure is high when you work for the sort of people capable of doing this.
Adam doesn't even bother trying to process what he's being shown anymore—the moment he can move he's reaching out to sow destruction until the world plunges black again, quick enough that his vision feels like a staticky, shorted-out TV screen. Doesn't matter. He doesn't need to see. He knows he's being lied to.
Has it been a hundred times now? A thousand? More? Instinct drives him on, laser-focused. He can't let himself stop and wonder. If he does, he might just... stop.
Adam strikes out and feels the world go black (don't hesitate, don't grieve, just focus) and then—
The world reforms again. Differently this time: piece by piece, shaking and wavering, overstimulating and chaotic. He's slumped sideways, legs too weak to hold himself up. There's cold concrete under his cheek and, through hazy, unfocused eyes (Wayfinder glitching and skipping, sending smears of red across his vision, retinal prosthesis screaming warning after warning), he sees glimmering glass shards and twisted metal haloed out around him. Sound cuts in and out.
"He's hurt, the chair—"
"What the fuck?"
"Get him out, he needs help!"
His head aches like it's being squeezed in a vice His ears are ringing, his throat feels thick and dry, and the spots where his augs join with flesh ache under the skin.
He feels like he's been torn apart and stitched back together. He's never been in pain for one of these before.
"Stand back," someone says. "Let him breathe."
Even through the cold and the confusion, he recognizes the voice.
Miller. Miller is here. And that means...
Adam pulls his legs underneath him, begs his body not to fail him as he stumbles, swaying, to his feet. He grits his teeth against the pain. He doesn't know why it's happening this way, what new strategy they might be trying this time around. (Normally it comes all at once, loading false memories into his mind to match the scenario; this empty confusion is so much worse.) His usual strength has abandoned him completely, system flashing low-energy errors over most of his augs.
Doesn't matter. It's not hard, what he needs to do.
Warm, flesh hands come up around him as he takes a shaking step forward. "Fuck, Jensen, come on. You shouldn't be walking right now." Miller again.
Adam lashes out wildly, catching Miller's shoulder with the corner of one hand and sending him staggering backwards until he hits something sharp. The sound of shattering glass echoes as the room explodes into chaos.
"Shit!" someone gasps, and another voice cuts in with, "He's gone crazy!"
Adam takes a steadying step and nearly drops to his knees. Just the effort of using his arms has already left him weak.
"That machine," Chang says, voice rough and tinny like it's coming from a thousand miles away, "I don't know what's it's done or what he's going to do. This is..." He takes a quick, panicked, staticky breath. "You need to neutralize him. Fast."
"Boss, fuck, get the hell away from him," Macready snarls from somewhere off to Adam's left.
Miller curses to himself and calls out, "Nonlethal!" Adam can hear the ragged pain in his voice, can just barely see blood welling up around shards of glass embedded in his forearm.
Not enough to kill him (good, Adam thinks, good, because even if they aren't real he still hates to watch them die) but more than enough to unbalance this false, fragile world.
It's okay. He's done enough.
Adam lets gravity and his own heavy limbs pull him down. He sinks to the cold concrete floor and waits for the world to go black.