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Carmen let a sigh escape her as she sat gently on the bench, allowing the tense mask she wore around Chief to slip away. She’d done it. She’d used her last resort. The locket in her jacket’s pocket was in her hands before she could even think, and she found herself staring at the picture in it.
Her and her father, the color faded and the paper aging after twenty years. A picture taken before VILE ripped her family apart. She glanced up at the Space Needle, perfectly viewed in front of her, and back down at the little locket. Her mother was out there somewhere, out of view, just like she had been when taking the picture. Maybe, with ACME's help, she could find her.
“Seems I have a knack for solving ancient mysteries” she said quietly. “Just not my own.” It didn’t seem like it had been just a short time ago that she was in Egypt, trying to save Jules, nearly failing because she allowed her emotions to get the best of her. How many times had she cursed Devineaux, only for him to save her, Jules, and the stolen treasures single handedly..
She let her fingers stroke gently down the glass separating her from her captured history as Player spoke in her ear: “Good call getting Chief to do her part.”
The thief let a smile slip onto her face. “It helps that she may finally be on my side.”
The head of ACME was a bad enemy to have; Carmen had the scars from Sweden to prove that.
She stared into the smiling face of her young self- how little she smiled anymore- and the wind blew behind her, perhaps a little louder than it had before. She paid no mind; her hoodie would protect her from the chill. It had before.
“How could she not be, after Egypt?” Player’s tone was light, she imagined him leaning closer to his mic, teasing.
Her response did not escape her lips. It never would. Electricity coursed through every fiber of her body like it had time and time again; every one of the few seconds was agony and black slammed into her vision like a train. With a cry, her consciousness was torn from her and the locket slipped from her hand.
Carmen awoke in a van.
As usual, it took her limbs a few seconds to obey her and her thoughts a few seconds to catch up.
Getting electrocuted really shouldn’t be a regular thing, Carmen decided.
And then her body and her mind synched.
She lurched up with a jolt, gasping like she’d been underwater, ignoring the pain in her back where the crackle rod had struck her.
Her hands were shackled to the van walls, stretched out artificially as if asking some divine figure for aid. For the time she’d been unconscious, she had clearly been slumped awkwardly; her legs were curled painfully below her and her neck ached. A heavy cloth gag made her choke on her breath.
Fear clenched her heart like a fist as she glanced to her left and met the eyes of Boris in the passenger seat. His eyes had the same cold, dead look as always.
“She’s awake.” He rasped to Vlad, driving. Carmen fired what would have been a snappy curse, if she could speak clearly, and looked away coldly and nudged her shoulder up to her ear surreptitiously, brushing it like she had an itch.
No earrings. That meant no tracking. No Player.
“We crushed them.” Boris said, still watching her., seeing right through her feeble attempt to disguise her motive. “You belong entirely to VILE.”
Hostile emotion flooded through her and she jerked at the cuffs on her wrists. Not bothering to undignify herself with a gagged reply, she focused on staying calm. Look for a way out. She stretched her foot across the van, reaching for the door, but fell short by a few feet. She took a deep breath. Straightening out facts had calmed her down before.
VILE has me in a van. Okay. They electrocuted me to get here. I’m bound to the wall. I’m gagged. I don’t know how long it's been, where I am, or have any idea of how to get out.
She blinked furiously for a second. Just like Mexico. It’ll be fine. I always get out of scrapes like this.
In Mexico, though, Sonia was there, her brain whispered. Your team knew where you were. None of that is happening now.
Her head lurched up as the van slowed to a stop. The Cleaners exchanged a nod and Boris exited. Carmen did not have long to wonder where he was going as the back door of the van opened and he stood before her, holding a crackle rod. The thief’s eyes widened and she curled into a ball in a futile attempt to protect herself from the shockingly painful jolt of electricity that inevitably came next.
Several times during the next twelve hellish hours this happened. She registered once that they were flying, but every time she regained consciousness it was zapped away.
Her next full waking moment had her on shudderingly cold flagstones. From the way she was feeling, she had been electrocuted over and over for hours, though she didn’t remember most of it. She rolled to her side and retched into the gag, shaking, but nothing came up. Hunger and thirst attacked her with the freezing cold so that when she gained the strength to open her eyes, she was reluctant to do so.
A cold gray cell swam into her vision, dim light filtering greenly through the bars. She coughed, wincing, a vulnerable feeling grasping her in the absence of her trench coat and fedora, unable to move her stiff cuffed hands. She breathed heavily for a second through the gag still on her mouth, registering where she probably was.
VILE’s new base. In a cell. Awaiting whatever hellish alteration or torture they had in mind.
She staggered to her feet, ramming into the cell’s door. That could not happen. She would not let it. She couldn’t. She clenched her teeth as pain lanced through her shoulder again and again. If she kept moving, kept chipping away at the wall maybe she could get out in time, maybe she could avoid this nightmare and get away. Giving up would mean defeat, would mean allowing herself to accept that she’d already been defeated.
The footsteps echoing down the hallway shot a bolt of terror she’d only warded off until now with false hope. She knew the huge shadowed silhouette all too well.
Brunt smiled when she saw the thief lunge at the bars, hurling smothered curses- the only ammunition she had left.
“Now, now, Lambkins. Did I raise you to talk like that?”
Carmen tried not to let the overwhelming terror she felt grasp hold of her when she saw Coach. What the hell did she have left now, if not her spirit?
Brunt easily opened the cell, catching Carmen’s feeble attempt to escape with a massive, effortlessly strong hand. She tsked. “Doctor wants to see you, Lambkins. You got an appointment.”
The coach was having a good time watching Carmen’s eyes contract in fear as she dragged her closer to the lab. Carmen didn’t have a chance against her former mother figure when she was at full strength, nevermind tased half to death and starving. She chuckled cruelly. “You always did get those little lines ‘round your eyes when you were scared," she said, almost comfortingly. "Don’t you worry. You be afraid for much longer.”
Carmen made a heroic attempt at a kick to Coach’s legs, but the criminal easily sidestepped with a hard look. The echoing stone halls were cold as death and empty as a graveyard, a stark contrast to the bustling halls in the old island base. Carmen closed her eyes, trying and failing to steady herself.
She snapped them open when Brunt stopped and she heard the silky tone of Maelstrom. Bellum stood beside him with a smile.
“Ah, excellent. Thank you, Coach, dearest.. Would you mind assisting us for another moment?”
Carmen panted against the gag; being this helpless in a room with three of the four faculty was overriding her usual snappy confidence and sending her into a panic. The table in the center of the room had all sorts of straps and things on it and the thief was further horrified when Brunt dragged her onto it, pinning her and undoing her handcuffs, keeping one muscular hand on her collarbone that prevented her from even looking at the exit. She stretched one of Carmen's flailing arms towards the strap on the table-
“Wait.” Bellum said casually. “Take off the jacket, it will interfere.”
Carmen let out a cry as Brunt stripped the red hoodie off her; without the red in the glowing green room, she felt as exposed as an unlocked vault. Maelstrom took it and hung it on the back of a chair with such care it was almost comical.
Brunt's immense strength was no match for Carmen as she strapped the young thief down on the table. Her head, wrists, and ankles were shackled and she was easily rendered immobile. The position was vulnerable and humiliating; she immediately began straining on the shackles with every ounce of the little strength she had left. She didn’t notice when Brunt left.
Bellum, she realized as she glanced around, teeth clenched, was uncomfortably near her. The scientist began hooking up heart monitors and things, like Carmen had had when she was in the hospital in Stockholm. Bile rose in her throat. Would she end up as one of Bellum or Maelstrom's sick experiments, never to be seen again?
Bellum moved away to where she could not see her and her voice rang out with a twist of excitement, like a cat playing with a mouse before it kills it. “What shall we call her once I’ve completed my modifications? Black Sheep?”
The first thoughts that entered her mind were ones of torture, unknown and painful surgeries that she, strapped down like a starfish on the table, would be helpless to stop. Then she thought fleetingly of Gray, how Bellum had wiped his memory. She realized fully that her thoughts were about to get sucked out of her brain by whatever leeching device Bellum had created. She wouldn’t know her own friends, would steal for VILE. And there was nothing she could do to stop it.
Just like they'd always wanted.
Her eyes followed Maelstrom, walking up the side of the table she was strapped to. He smiled down at her as she lunged at the restraints in another weak attempt.
“We shall call her Carmen Sandiego...”
Carmen squeezed her eyes shut as he grinned down at her, struggling in a last futile attempt to get away. She felt his fingers press down on her forehead like a demented caress and her exhausted neck gave out under the touch, the various burns from the crackle rods aching dully.
He continued. “...for what better way to sully her good name as she begins a new chapter doing our bidding?”
Carmen shuddered as he stroked her hair in an almost fatherly way. She was disgusted at her name in his mouth, terrified of what was happening, so scared, so fucking scared.
Then Bellum’s face was smiling above her, her gloved fingers holding a contraption. “Relax, my dear." The deceptively gentle tone was laced like a poisoned drink. "This won't hurt a bit."
The lady no longer in red was helpless as the fight was drained out of her, the mind machine fitted tightly over her eyes.
She was helpless to stop the green light as it began draining away her very soul.