Chapter Text
“Big news this morning, folks. The infamous brothers of crime Wilbur Soot and TommyInnit escaped from Pandora’s Vault during a prison riot late last night. Authorities are working hard to track down these criminals and bring them to justice. If you have any information on their whereabouts, leave the police a tip by calling—”
Phil clicks the radio off and takes the key out of the ignition. He drags his hands over his face. Takes a deep breath. Enjoys the last peaceful moment he’ll have for a while.
It’s going to be a long day.
The department is practically buzzing with rumors. Officers scramble to receive their assignments for the day, giving Phil hasty salutes. Their whispers and mumbles find their way to his ears as he passes.
“The captain’s not going to be happy about the fugitives.”
“I got a cousin in Pandora. He says they dressed up as wardens and snuck out during the riot.”
“I hear our department’s leading the case since Pandora’s in our district. The feds don’t want to send anyone if they don’t have to.”
“Mornin’ Phil.” Finally, a welcoming face. Techno is leaning against the wall next to Phil’s office, two steaming cups in his hands. He pushes one toward the captain. “Have you had any coffee yet?”
“You know I have,” Phil says, taking a sip. Techno pulls the office door shut behind them.
Phil’s shoulders sag when he reaches his desk. Sitting in between his neatly arranged picture frames is the fattest manila folder he’s ever seen, the words ‘For Captain Phil— Urgent’ scrawled on the cover in black ink. He can already feel a headache coming on.
“The feds are on our asses about the Pandora Break,” Techno says.
Phil groans and plops down into his chair. “Already? It hasn’t even been twelve hours yet. If they’re so impatient, maybe they should take care of it.”
“Our district, our problem I guess.” Techno shrugs. “Feel free to take it up with them, but I doubt you’ll get very far.”
The captain huffs and thumbs through the folder’s tabs. Criminal records, arrest warrants, grainy photographs. He flips it open to the first file.
He’s greeted with the mugshot of a young man in his twenties. Dark eyes against pale skin look up at him. He doesn’t give the photographer the satisfaction of a scowl, just stares into the camera with a blank expression. Below the photo is a string of numbers and a name: Wilbur Soot. Age twenty-five.
Techno reaches over and fishes out one of the records from the folder. “These guys have quite the resume,” he remarks. “Several counts of armed robbery, burglary, a few instances of impersonation of law enforcement, and one count of arson.”
Phil shakes his head. “Doesn’t surprise me much. These records go back nearly ten years. Of course they’re going to have a long list of charges.”
The next mugshot is Tommy’s, a skin-and-bones blonde teenager. He has a casual smile on his face, like he isn’t concerned at all by the fact that he’s been arrested. He probably knows the Vault isn’t going to hold them for long. Smug bastard.
Phil skips the rest of the wordy files and takes out a stack of photographs. Most of them are blurry images of the boys at banks and jewelry stores. One shows them wearing disguises in a thick crowd. But there’s one that sticks out to him.
They’re about ten years younger, standing on a sunny beach. Tommy, all of seven or eight years old, sits on Wilbur’s shoulders, an iron grip around his neck. The photographer captured him in the middle of a laugh, bubbling excitement seeping out of him and transcending time. Wilbur, maybe fifteen, hangs on tightly to his legs. He looks up at his little brother with a wide smile slapped across his face. So different from the stoic man in the other images.
They look so… normal. Phil glances between the photo and the mugshots. How is it that these two harmless kids are the same hardened criminals sentenced to Pandora’s Vault?
“What’s the plan?” Techno’s voice draws his attention back to the situation at hand. The brothers are young men, and they’re two of the most wanted criminals in the country. No time to wonder what their childhood was like.
“Right. The plan.” Phil skims through the files. He pulls out one labeled ‘Possible Contacts’ and tosses it to Techno. “We start with this list of people, see who they might have talked to last. Someone is bound to have information on them.”
“We should also keep an eye on the banks,” Techno points out. “They’ll need money if they’re going on the lam, and with their history of robbery, that’s probably what they’ll turn to first.”
Phil nods. “We’ll have to be careful about this,” he says. “These two are infamous for getting away with their heists. They’re some of the most crafty, intelligent, coordinated criminals this department has ever seen. I expect they’ll give us a good chase.”
“Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, you dumb bitch! I hope you die and vultures come to peck out your stupid eyes out of your rotting corpse and your last thought is ‘Wow, Tommy was right, he is so cool and swag and awesome and I am a piece of shit’.”
Wilbur raises his eyebrow, unimpressed. “Feel better now?”
It’s difficult to see in the dim and flickering lights of the railway tunnel, but he catches Tommy rolling his eyes so hard that it makes Wilbur’s head hurt. “No I do not ‘feel better’, Wilbur.” He spits out the name like it’s something poisonous. “I’m stuck in the fucking abandoned underground railway system in the middle of winter with the biggest prick in L’manberg, and he won’t let me sleep in the only comfy seat on this crusty old train!”
That’s a blatantly false statement. Wilbur never said that Tommy can’t have the seat, he just said that he wanted it. “It’s not that big of a deal. Pick a seat. I know it’s not the most glamorous hiding spot, but it’s only for tonight.”
“Well we wouldn’t have to hole up in the ground like a couple of rats if it weren’t for you,” Tommy grumbles. “At least we had beds in prison.”
They had cots in prison which definitely weren’t any more comfortable than the train seats, but that’s not the part Wilbur focuses on. “I’m sorry, are you blaming me for this? You’re the one who got us into this mess!”
Tommy laughs without humor. “Oh yeah, it’s my fault, isn’t it? It’s always my fault.”
“I’m not the one who set a politician’s house on fire.”
“It was an accident!” Here they go again, back and forth on the same argument they’ve been having since the moment the cell door slammed shut. Tommy throws his hands up in the air wildly. It looks like he’s trying to flag down an airplane. “We weren’t trying to burn it down, we were just trying to rob and humiliate the guy!”
Wilbur scoffs. “That’s another thing. You weren’t even supposed to be there! You had no orders, no plan, no backup—”
“Ranboo was with me,” Tommy interrupts.
“Ranboo is not backup, you forced him to go with you! Someone waiting outside with a getaway is backup. Someone distracting the police so you can escape is backup.” He gestures to himself pointedly. “Telling someone where you are and what you’re doing is backup.”
Tommy sneers. “Yeah, you were real helpful! Thanks for staying behind to shut off the alarm and stall the police. Thanks for risking your life to let Ranboo escape. Oh wait, you didn’t do any of that. I did! I had it all under control, but no, you had to bust in and be all ‘I’ll save you Tommy, I’m so brave, I’m your big brother, mimimimimimimi’. If you hadn’t gotten in the way trying to be all heroic and shit, we wouldn’t have gotten arrested!” He drops his arms with a pout. “You ruined our perfect streak!”
Okay, maybe he has a point. But he’s still wrong. Wilbur crosses his arms. “Well at least I got us out of prison. Not that it mattered much, since Niki cut us off from the Syndicate because you almost revealed we’re in cahoots with them.”
“And then you had to go make it worse by stealing from them when you knew that Niki hates me,” Tommy argues. “So now we have the Syndicate after us, the police after us, and nowhere to go!”
His voice echoes throughout the dark tunnels. Wilbur opens his mouth to deliver another scathing reply, but he can’t find anything to say. Tommy’s got him there. Knowingly stealing from the Syndicate is probably one of the stupidest things anyone could do. Mugging two of their members after the boss graciously allowed them to leave on a warning, though? They’re definitely on a hit list now. Maybe multiple.
But what was Wilbur supposed to do? Let them be escorted out with nothing more than the stolen warden uniforms on their backs? Of course knew that Niki had been growing increasingly frustrated with Tommy. She always thought the boy was reckless and more trouble than he was worth. Honestly, Wilbur’s surprised he hadn’t been kicked out years ago. That wasn’t going to stop him from taking one last bit of help from the Syndicate, whether they offered it or not.
“Well…” Wilbur says, quieter now. “Maybe if GeorgeNotFound wasn’t such a dumbass and practiced proper fire safety, then none of this would have happened.”
Tommy looks away. “Yeah,” he mumbles. “It’s all his fault. Fucking dumbass.”
They stand there in silence for a few moments between rows of empty seats. The one with cushions still intact waits patiently for them to come to a decision. Wilbur claims one facing the opposite direction. “Take it,” he sighs. “I’m too tired to argue over something this stupid.”
Tommy glances at him. He lays back across the row of cushions and folds his hands behind his head. “Night, Will.”
“Goodnight, Tommy.”
Wilbur closes his eyes and draws in a deep breath. The armrests dig sharply into his back. Water drips in a steady 4/4 beat from a pipe in the ceiling. If he concentrates hard enough, he can hear the distant wail of sirens carried on a breeze as police patrol the surface for them.
Tommy’s right. The prison cots were better than this.
“Wilbur,” Tommy says, interrupting his poor attempt at falling asleep. “It’s cold. I’m cold.”
“Okay, what do you want me to do about it?”
“I don’t know. Get me some gloves, or a blanket or something. A warm drink might be nice.”
Wilbur flops his head to one side and stares at his brother. “Tommy, we’re homeless. We don’t have any of that.”
Tommy sighs dramatically and sits up. “Fine, I guess I’ll handle it.” He searches through his ‘borrowed’ jacket and produces a small metal box. He flicks it open. A tiny yellow flame appears in the dark.
Wilbur reaches over and plucks the lighter from his hands. “No,” he says, distinguishing the flame. “Your fire privileges have been revoked. Let me do it.” He scrounges around for scraps of paper on the train floor and a few stray twigs that were blown in from the wind. It takes him a few tries, but the tinder lights. He’s made the world’s most pathetic campfire.
The flame is weak at best. They might be better off huddling around the lighter. “Is that better?”
“Not really,” Tommy mumbles.
Wilbur shrugs off his jacket and flings it at Tommy’s head. “There. Now shut up and go to sleep.”
He lays down again, taking up an awkward position to cradle his head. He knows the jacket will keep Tommy warm because he suddenly realizes just how cold he is without it. Even tucked away from the wind, inside a fairly good-condition train car with a wimpy campfire going, the winter chill still finds him. It soaks right through his skin and clings to his bones. If it was up to him, they’d be hiding out somewhere with a heating system, or insulated walls at the very least.
This will have to do for the night, though. He won’t complain. As long as Tommy’s comfortable and stops complaining—
“Wilbur?”
Goddammit.
“Yeah?”
“What happens now?”
Wilbur thinks. It’s a good question. He just has to figure out how the hell to answer it.
They’ve gotten into trouble before, of course. Usually through some fuck-up or other on their part. Nothing like this, though. There’s always someone with the right connections, a safe place to go, a network of people to trust. But those are all perks of having the Syndicate on their side, and they’ve managed to fuck that up, too.
“I’ll get us out of this,” Wilbur wants to lie. “We’ll be okay, I promise. There’s nothing to worry about. I’ll fix it.”
The words catch in his throat. He resigns to the truth. “I don’t know, Toms. Can’t you just let me sleep?”
Tommy is quiet. For a moment, Wilbur thinks he’s dozed off. Then he mutters, “Whatever. Wake me up if we get arrested again.” He rolls over and finally falls silent.
Wilbur’s not worried about the police finding them tonight. No, that would be too simple. And he has a feeling things are about to be anything but simple.
He closes his eyes and hopes that tomorrow comes slowly.