Work Text:
> …RECEIVING MESSAGE _
> MESSAGE RECEIVED _
> FUGITIVE NAME: CLAIRE ELIZABETH NOVAK _
> LEASED COMPONENTS: CUSTOM SYNTHETIC VENA CAVA, METALUMINIUM QUAD PLATE, METALUMINIUM FORE PLATE, ALUSTEN RIGHT ARM _
> DEBT: B 89.304.519 _
> SIGNAL LOST: 8 H 19 MIN 43 SEC AGO _
> COMPONENT REPOSSESSION ORDERED _
> MESSAGE END
The Sum of Our Parts
It was too easy.
An autocar had logged his target’s identification processor when it transported her and one other person (family, judging by the data) to the outskirts of town. They had exited the 'car half an hour ago outside a small motel that was well-known to hunters for taking bribes to skip the scanning process, probably to rest for the night before they attempted to enter the undercity. How they intended to do that he wasn’t sure; too many traps and tricks had kept the hunters at bay. The entrances had eluded everyone he knew, including his brother, and for Sam and Dean Winchester that was a feat. If they couldn’t find it, it couldn’t be found. Once a jabby got under, they were as good as gone.
Which meant either jabbies were stuck up here with them, or hunters were on one hell of a time crunch to catch them before they escaped. Sam suspected this was a case of the first, but by now he knew better than to assume.
The motel owner recognised him when he walked in. His face soured, head tilted back to meet Sam's significantly higher eyeline, probably already totalling the damages of the incoming fight. How he stayed in business no one could figure out, but it was his own fault for skipping identification scans and harbouring fugitives. Nonetheless he valued his health enough to tuck tail and dip out the back, leaving his guests to their fates.
It really was too easy. Sam glanced idly over the room logs for Claire, and he wasn’t disappointed because he hadn't bothered hoping. A room to room sweep it was.
If Fames Corp had expected the target to be very dangerous then Dean would have been sent with him, but still he was quiet and kept glancing over his shoulders, every sense on full alert. His processors ran at high speed, a rush of information displayed over his optic nerve that took note of everything from heartbeats to radio waves. The company only gave their investments the best, after all.
The first room was empty. The second was damaged and closed for repair and, on inspection, seemed to have had a squatter in the last few days. One by one he crept down the hallway, listening to the quiet but amplified thump of each footstep on the floor above him and the soft yellow warning that echoed in his mind. A nervous traveling salesman opened his door and watched wide-eyed as Sam inspected his bathroom and under his bed, breathing a sigh of relief behind Sam’s back that made him chuckle.
He never felt so alive as he did moving in on the last few moments of a hunt. Anything could go wrong, he could be attacked from any side by a jailbroken cyborg bent on ending his life as gruesomely as possible, and his blood rushed with a thrill he only felt with the scent of prey in his nose and his fingers curling around a capture he anticipated with every breath. He’d tried to explain it once, sitting at a bar counter with a pretty girl; her brows had creased and she’d gone quiet for several minutes before announcing that she needed to go to bed early because she had a morning shift. He was pretty sure her social media said she worked nights.
Other hunters, though, they didn’t even need to hear it, he could see it on their faces when they took down a jabby together. Funny how Sam had hated all the violence growing up in it, how he had spent so long worrying that he was sick for thriving on it when he finally joined the business. But John had succeeded in something: he had built them for this, for better or for worse.
A soft voice drew his attention, approaching around a corner near a looming flight of stairs. (Honest to god manual stairs. They were always bizarre to see.) A woman headed down towards him, arm around a child with a messy ponytail and tear streaks. “We’re going to get something to eat downstairs, okay? I know the bed is uncomfortable, but we’ll only be here tonight . . .”
She stopped, tightening her hold on the little girl’s shoulders. She blanched, went pale; for a moment he was confused, only to snap to alarm at the readout that screamed across his vision. The identification scan blinked red. CLAIRE NOVAK, it blared silently, CLAIRE NOVAK. And beside it, the same code as he’d noticed in the autocar: Amelia Novak, no cybernetics found. Claire had brought her daughter with her. He always hated it when a jabby had kids.
He stepped forward, lips a thin line. Weapons whirred to life inside his arm, skin separating into seamless panels; his rising hand slid apart, exposing gleaming metal and protected circuitry, software showing him five exact little dots on the woman's chest where his armour-piercing rounds would connect with their target. "Claire Novak, your repossession has been ordered. Surrender or I'll fire."
The woman (brunette, white, 168cm, 66kg, 35-40 years) shoved the child (blonde, white, 122cm, 22kg, 6-7 years) back up the stairs behind herself, facing him with fear in her eyes. “Claire, go! Run, baby!”
Sam stopped.
Wait. Claire?
Mute horror descended on him as the little girl began crying, renewing the barely dried tracks on her little cheeks. She clung to her mother’s shirt, begging to stay, to know who this man was, where her mother was going. He opened his mouth only to close it again, his throat suddenly scraped dry.
“She’s just a little girl,” the woman pleaded. “You’ve got to let us go. Please. She was in an accident when she was four, the cybernetics are the only things keeping her alive. My husband disappeared last year and I haven’t been able to feed us, let alone keep up with payments.” Her voice was wet, her eyes glassy, words all running together and piling on each other like syllables alone would build a protective wall between them, but she stared him down from six stairs up as if by holding her ground she could actually stand in his way. “I did it. I jailbroke her ‘netics. If they took her, if you take her, she’ll die. She’s all I’ve got, she’s a little girl.”
For an eternity they held each other’s gaze. He couldn’t let them go. If he let them go he’d be burned, there was no way the company wouldn’t find out. He’d be fucked. This was his life on the line as much as it was Claire’s.
His processors slowed. Biting hard into his bottom lip, he relaxed his armoured hand and showed the woman (Amelia, he knew now) the weapons protruding from his synthskin–and let her watch as they were all disarmed, retracting back into his limb until it looked as organic and unseamed as hers.
She stared at him as if she didn’t dare to hope.
“Go tonight,” he whispered. “Go now. Whatever’s in your room, forget it. No autocars. If you have a way to the undercity . . .”
Something like a sob escaped her throat. She grabbed her daughter’s arm where the little girl still stood frozen and started to go, only to pause a meter from him, searching for something to say.
“Go!” he hissed.
With a jolt she dashed out, taking Claire with her.
∞∞∞
“Come on, what’s up in that wetware of yours?”
“I’m okay, Jody.”
She didn’t look impressed. “How about this: next round’s on me if you tell me what’s bothering you.”
Despite himself Sam huffed a soft laugh, shaking his head. Hunter bars didn't exactly serve gourmet fare. “Nothing new, I’m serious.”
He was usually pretty good at lies, but Jody Mills had become a little too attuned to Winchester emotional issues over the years. She had a way of sussing out secrets with her shrewd looks and resistance to witticism (or, maybe, experience with their uncle) that even they couldn’t distract. At least she hadn’t shared her discoveries with anyone else. As much as he loved her, he couldn’t imagine being read like a book by Donna and her semi-creepy ‘netic eye. It was bad enough with the world-worn brunette under his skin.
“Yeah. Sure.” Jody looked at him sideways, sipping her beer like a disapproving mother–
wide, terrified eyes staring determined down at him, fingers talon-like on a child’s arm
–and clunked the synthglass bottle back onto the table. “Well, you know where I am if you decide to stop being so stubborn,” she clucked. “I heard you lost a hunt the other day. How’d that happen to the great Sam Winchester?”
Sam grimaced. He’d known that would be hot news in no time. Sure, maybe early on he’d lost a few, but by now he and Dean had a win streak that would get them kicked out of casinos. “Yeah. I guess they were warned that I was coming or something, because they’d cleared out by the time I got there. Must’ve known a way under.”
“Huh.” For a second he thought she didn’t believe him. Had he fucked up a tell somehow? But she shook her head, only bewildered. “If only we could find it, we’d finally get those jabby codes . . .”
He patted her on the arm, hoping he looked supportive even as nausea flip-flopped around his stomach. Amelia had known and he had let her go. Something they’d been looking for as long as he’d been a hunter, as long as his father had been a hunter.
The entire time since she'd joined, Jody had been trying to get her hands on whoever kept figuring out how to jailbreak new cybernetics and passing the knowledge around. The jabby who killed her family had unlocked his ‘netic arm with one of those hacks, giving him the ability to delete safety protocols and go on a spree. Why, they still didn’t know, because no matter how strong his arm was, his skull hadn’t held up to Jody’s crowbar. Sam had listened to her cry, guilty because she still hadn’t found out where he’d gotten those codes after all these years.
And he’d let it all go.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” he announced. She looked startled but nodded, waving to the barkeep for another drink. He slunk across the room and closed the door fast behind him, relieved for a moment to let his face go slack, to close his eyes and rub his forehead and take a deep, shaky breath. He’d had to do it.
Puffy face red from crying, mouth open and confused. “Mommy, where are you going? Don’t go!”
He couldn’t let that little girl die. Jody would understand.
Long bangs still wet where he’d splashed his face with cold water, Sam stepped out of the bathroom a few minutes later, put-together and significantly more sure of his poker face. Instead of being at the table Jody was standing at the bar, shoulders up and bristling like a cat. With a frown, he turned up his volume.
“. . . think you’re doing, Walker, but you’re out of your mind if you think–”
“Well, look who it is! Sam, the star of the evening.”
He knew that voice anywhere. Gordon Walker, all agrin, stepped out from around Jody and strode towards him with an aggressive arrogance that set his teeth on edge. “Uh . . . Hi, Gordon?” he muttered in return, brows knitting. They weren’t exactly friendly, so a happy Gordon meant a dangerous one.
And this one looked like the cat that got the canary. The hunter laid a strong hand on Sam’s shoulder, a spark in his eyes. . . and thrust him down onto a table, gripping a wrist with a savage eagerness for a struggle that would dislocate Sam’s arm. “You really thought you’d get away with it, didn’t you? How many other jabby motherfuckers have you let go, Winchester?”
Fuck. Sam groaned in pain as more weight was applied to his arm. He could turn off his pain receptors if he wanted, it would let him fight back, but one arm would still be wrenched out of its socket in the doing.
Jody stormed over, already yelling. “You’re insane! Let him go, you motherfucking–”
“I was there!”
His stomach sank. He was going to vomit. He’d been too cocky. How had he thought no one would know?
“I was upstairs on another hunt,” Gordon continued, rich voice victorious. Sam wanted to wipe that smirk off of his face. “I heard everything. That hacker begging like a whore, the way you just let her and her fucking jabby kid run. I have recordings of your voice, Sam.”
Jody hesitated. He couldn’t see her, but he felt her. Her voice was quiet, but it was steely. “Sam wouldn’t do that. You heard someone else. The jabby was gone when he got there.”
Walker laughed. He wrenched Sam’s arm, made him yelp. “I watched out the window as he left—got that on record, too, by the way. The company’s seen it all, folks. In fact, I’m here on an order. Sam Winchester, I’m here to inform you that your contract is void.”
No.
He’d known it was coming. Dizziness struck him hard, sending the room spinning. Walker must have sent a report that he’d been captured, because just then his display was overridden by a wide warning panel.
> …RECEIVING MESSAGE _
> MESSAGE RECEIVED _
> SAMUEL HENRY WINCHESTER, HUNTER ID 283Ñ4RNØ280RAÐ _
> UPON EVIDENCE OF CONTRACT VIOLATION, SAMUEL HENRY WINCHESTER’S POSITION IS TERMINATED. _
> PLEASE REVIEW TERMINATION PROTOCOLS. COMPONENT DEBT IS OWED WORTH B 493.284.284.063 UPON APPREHENSION. _
> APPREHENSION IS COMPLETE. _
> DEBT NOW DUE OR REPOSSESSION WILL BE ORDERED. _
> MESSAGE END
The world roared in his ears. Somewhere Jody was talking, and Gordon was growling, and someone else at the bar began to speak, but no words reached him, only the low, grating drone of arguing voices. He needed to escape. His life was on the line. If he was taken to Fames Corp they’d remove dozens of components, all the things that made a hunter formidable enough to take on jailbroken cyborgs–synthskin, metal bone, entire limbs, he would die from repo because he’d sold his life to the company just like his brother and just like their dad.
And Gordon had seen. Angry tears formed in his eyes. His heart thudded so hard that an alert pinged at the corner of his vision. He didn’t think he’d ever been so furious in his life. Gordon must have gotten that little girl and her mom. It was all for nothing.
He wasn’t going to give the asshole the satisfaction of taking him in.
Sam’s foot, armoured and weighted, shot out backwards and slammed into Gordon’s shin. It was enhanced, too, bone plated and strengthened, but one hunter knew just where to hit another. Walker yowled and reeled back, using both hands to try to yank Sam’s shoulder out of place as he went but failing as he let up weight and Sam spun around to follow up with a cold-cocked fist to the eye. His would-be captor slammed into the wall metres away and the room erupted into movement.
The place was full of friends who became, abruptly, enemies. Jody stared at him in horror as he turned and ran as fast as he could, engaging hydraulics that sent him shooting out the door. Everyone else had the same advantage; if he let up even a second he’d have half a dozen of them on him, all as strong as he was, all as impenetrable. He could hear shouts too close for comfort as he sped down avenues, looking desperately for a way to shake them. His experience in a chase was spent as the pursuer, not the target—he knew every hiding place here, and exactly how they would all be found.
Autocars zipped down the road at full speed. It would be suicide to jump across the zipway. No one could make it between the ‘cars, not without at least getting clipped.
But he was desperate. More desperate than the people behind him, that was for sure.
A thousand-kilo tanker was barreling down. It was long, and would take a whole second to pass. A second he needed dearly.
To the sound of alarmed yells around him, from hunters and passersby alike, he leaped into the path of the tanker. Felt it barrel down, heard his software silently screaming in his head impact imminent, vacate premises in all its crimson glory, could practically see the air sliced aside and pushed towards him by the humongous machine pressing inch by inch towards him . . .
And landed on the walkway, heard it howl past just behind him, crashed to the hard ground and rolled and sprang to his feet already running.
∞∞∞
It was stupid to send the message, but panic said nothing except Call Dean. He got out of sight in a squatter house that used to be a motel and shot it off before he thought it through.
“You know they’re tracking you right now. We don’t have time.” His brother’s face somehow managed to be red and pale at the same time. He looked like he’d run as hard as Sam had, probably set off at a sprint as soon as he’d gotten Sam’s message a couple of minutes ago with his coordinates and a SOS.
“I know. I—I don’t know what to do, Dean.”
Dean shifted, glaring nervously at the door. There was no telling how close Gordon was, or if he’d brought backup this time. Scratch that—Walker had definitely brought backup. They all probably expected Dean to be there for Sam and fully ready to fight them for it, hunter contract be damned.
“Yes or no, Sammy: Is it true?”
He set his jaw even as his heart jumped to his chest. Dean deserved to be looked in the eye while Sam wasturning their lives upside down. Well, his own. Dean had hunted without Sam before; he could go back to it again after Sam went on the run.
“Yes.”
His brother hissed and spun. The wall caved hard under his fist; the impact rocked the room. Someone yelled from another unit. “Dammit, Sam! What the fuck?”
“It was a little kid, Dean! She was like seven! You wouldn’t have done it either. Look, if they find you here you’re going to be in trouble, too. I just needed to tell you.” His voice was too harsh, too hoarse; his breath caught somewhere behind his tongue and hung there, just out of reach. He was going to lose it. Tears were already gathering too close to the surface. God, he didn’t want to lose Dean. Not all for nothing.
Dean sucked in a hard breath. He bared his teeth at the door as if the others were already there. “Don’t you dare—look, I know where to go. Come on.”
“What? What, no—no, you’re not getting dragged down with me, what the hell, Dean?”
“Come on, fuck!”
Dean’s fingers dug into his shoulder hard, desperate, demanding. Too much like Amelia. He whined but didn’t dig in his heels as Dean peered out, made sure the coast was clear, and dragged him out of the lot and to an autocar.
“You wait and keep a lookout,” he hissed while he waved it open and bent inside to fiddle with something in the front. The panels were all smooth and secure, impossible to pry open, responsive only to signal. One opened, making Sam hiss in a breath.
“What are you doing?! How did you do that?”
“What you don’t know won’t hurt you. I said keep an eye out!”
Bouncing on his toes, Sam continued to turn, watching every building with an apprehension that had gorge rising in the back of his throat. “Dean, are you almost—”
“Got it!” The panel slid closed again and he yanked Sam into the vehicle. “It won’t transmit anymore. It didn’t scan us and it isn’t sending its location.” The front window lit up with a map display and, in a flurry of fingers, Dean input a location and hit go.
As they pulled onto the zipway, another pulled off into the lot they just left. He caught a glimpse of Gordon Walker stepping out before they turned a corner and were out of sight. “That was too close for comfort,” Sam whispered. “Are you sure they don’t know about this ‘car?”
“Yeah, I'm sure,” his brother sighed. He looked as relieved as Sam felt, reclining back onto the seat as if he’d just taken down a jabby. “Fuck, I’m glad I let Bobby teach me how to hack one of these things.”
“Bobby taught you? No, wait—I’m not surprised.” Hysterical laughter bubbled up. Before long Dean joined, laying a hand on his shoulder. “Look, I . . . I appreciate this, Dean. But you know what’ll happen to you if they find out you’re helping me. What I did is on me.”
His brother was shaking his head before he even finished. The anger had returned all of a sudden, less explosive now but there, simmering hard under the surface. “No. Stop it. I don’t know what the fuck you were thinking, Sam, but I’m not leaving you to get repo’d. How the fuck could you even think about that? I’m in it.”
“But—”
“I said no!”
He felt himself wilt a little even while relief rushed through him so hard the world tilted. His fingertips tingled. All the same, guilt followed soon after. “Hunting has been your whole life. I’m so sorry, Dean. I fucked it up.” Something made his voice hoarse, gritting through his throat.
Dean shrugged, something violent in the way his shoulders jerked. Sam slouched further. “Later. We will talk about it later. Right now they can still track us through our ‘netics, so we need to hit the ground at a run. Bobby’s got a jamming device we can use.”
“Holy shit. That’s so illeg—” Dean shot him an impatient look. Right. “Okay. And then what? We just stay there till we’re old men?”
The air went heavy. Dean’s leg bounced anxiously and he stared out the window, looking like he was trying to get the words to form and failing. Sam’s nerves tip-tapped around in his chest in response. Dean never got like this, not unless someone had died.
The older hunter drew in a hard breath, squared his shoulders, and turned to look Sam in the eye. “Once they can’t track us, we’re jailbreaking.”
As if it hadn’t already, his life shattered before his eyes.
The ride was silent after that. An hour and a half of uncomfortable pressure, neither daring to move, staring at the passing world as if they might protect everything they knew and loved if they just kept enough of a lookout. A ping from the map announced that they were leaving city limits just as the buildings began to thin and devolved from the crowded grid streets into winding, complicated roadways that the autocar thumped across. It was a good thing they’d picked one with tires, because the zipways disappeared and a hover wouldn’t have been able to continue.
In the end it took almost two hours to get to Bobby’s hole in the ground. There were real fucking trees by the roadside, and for the last fifteen minutes Dean had to manoeuvre the ‘car manually because the navigation was missing records of the area.
“Do you know how much trouble Bobby will be in if they find out he helped us?” Sam couldn’t help but point out as they came to a stop in front of the familiar old house. “For the ‘car hack alone . . . ”
“Do you think he cares? Come on, out. The driveway is jammed all the way out to the main road so they lost us twenty minutes ago, but better safe than sorry.”
It was true. When he tried to bring up a signal it only errored out, which was . . . disconcerting, to say the least. Right now, however, it was a blessing. He took a deep breath and braced himself to ascend the porch stairs with Dean, looking up at the old world home with a rolling gut and the heaviness of the last few days pressing on his skull.
The door opened before they’d reached the first step. (Real steps, like in the motel, where Amelia and Claire had stood shortly before Gordon had gotten them, his mind supplied unhelpfully.) “The hell you boys doin’ out here?” Bobby gruffed. “Dean, the hell? You know you set off alarms when you stopped transmitting—”
Something stopped him. Bobby looked them over, more closely this time, top to bottom and up again, first Dean and then Sam, and nodded with a grimace before opening the door wide. Good old Bobby. He always did know when something was wrong. He was as good as Jody. Better, maybe.
He cleared his throat as they stepped in. The door clicked shut and locked behind them. “Alright,” Bobby said, sounding wary, “what’ve you boys got yourselves into?”
They shared a look. With a grimace, Dean nodded. He’d handle the explanation. “We need your help, Bobby.”
“Well, I figured that, ya idjit.” Rolling his eyes, the old man brushed past them, waving idly at a couch that looked like it was made of real cloth and wood. “I’ll get us some beers. Keep talking.”
∞∞∞
“No offense, but the Faraday cage nuclear bunker basement is a little kooky conspiracy theory, Bobby,” Sam drawled, taking a seat on a distinctly uncomfortable stool next to a tool-covered workbench. Once again, it was made of real wood. Just how old was all this stuff? A collector would spend billions on just what was in Bobby’s living room, if he included the paper books. “Why do you even have all this?”
He got a derisive snort in response and a glare that told him exactly where he could shove it. “Suddenly your life depends on it, smartass.”
Okay, that was fair. Kind of. He still wanted to know what Bobby originally had all of this for, but he wasn’t about to poke the bear that was going to save him. He gave an abashed smile, earning one of Bobby’s signature muttered insults, and looked curiously through the piles and piles of gadgets and junk (he didn’t see any organisation to differentiate the two) around them.
“Alright,” Bobby announced, lifting some kind of tool he didn’t recognise from a shelf on the opposite wall. “Sam first. Come on, kid—you’re gonna want to lay down for this. On the cot.”
He hadn’t even noticed the mattress among all the other junk. With a grimace Sam lowered himself onto a waist-height surface that had clearly seen better days. Dust rose around him, making him sneeze. Out of sight, Dean snickered. He raised his middle finger.
“I’ll be real with ya, boy. This is gonna suck.” He didn’t have time to ask for elaboration. Bobby pushed his head down into the mattress with a hand on his forehead and lifted the tool over his face. He lowered it, slowly, carefully, but all of a sudden it was too close to his eye for comfort, way too close. He gasped and started to squirm and a light flickered at the end of what was now looking like a very sharp implement and every muscle locked abruptly into place. “Sorry, Sam,” Bobby grimaced over his rising panic, “I just can’t have you moving and hurt yourself. Don’t worry, kid, this won’t take long.”
What won’t take long? he wanted desperately to ask. Why couldn’t he move? Had that little tool managed to override his systems? How the fuck did it do that? Was it the flickering, the pattern—no, there was no way, it could happen accidentally too easily, it must have had a signal, how could something just override all his systems and fucking paralyse him without warning, he wasn’t even getting a readout about it—
“Sam, it’s okay.” That was Dean, standing over him on his other side, looking upset with a hand on his arm. “That must suck. You can make fun of me when he does it to me, okay?”
. . . Okay. Dean was going to do it, too. Dean was going to let himself go through this, too. Dean was letting this happen in the first place. If he had been able to, he’d have relaxed. Nothing to worry about. They were jailbreaking him.
God. They were jailbreaking him.
He was going to be a jabby.
Bobby lowered a headset of some kind over Sam’s face, tucking it carefully beneath his bangs to be sure he could see the entire screen. “This is going to connect to your drives and download a patch, Sam. It’s using optic input. Okay? That’s why you can’t blink. And while that runs I’m going to connect something manually to your bicep panel. It might hurt but that’ll go away.”
Every word got more and more bizarre. He felt like he was dreaming, overcome with a sense of unreality almost as strong as the time he’d played a VR game and the synaptic output had glitched. How did Bobby even get the panel open? Only company diagnostics could do that.
The screen flickered to life. For a second it wavered, sputtering as if it would give out (was it not environmentally charging? did he need to plug it in?), but it settled into a rich black soon enough. He felt like he was seeing something, eyes straining at overwhelming visual noise, even as it stayed the same. On a hunch he raised his frame rate.
The world exploded into colour and shape, zipping across the screen and changing too fast to make sense of it, but the way his processors churned and struggled began to make sense. In the blur he hardly noticed the tickle of his ‘netic bicep’s panel sliding out into open air and Bobby plugging a chip into an open slot.
Just as he thought he was going to have a catastrophic systems failure the screen went black again and blinked out into true blankness. His panel slid back into its place with a soft whir and Bobby removed the headset. Another flicker of the first tool over his face and suddenly he sprang back to life, gasping, eyes watering at being forced open all that time. Dean held him so he didn’t fall off the side of the cot, arms tight around his shoulders like he was reassuring himself that Sam was still there.
“There you go, kid,” Bobby said. “You’re done.”
None of them seemed to miss the ominous sound of that.
Dean took a deep breath and lowered himself to the cot where Sam had just been.
He couldn’t do this.
He couldn’t let it happen. Everything seemed so fake, but this was real real real, Dean was about to lose everything, the world was bearing down on them and Dean was in danger, he couldn’t fucking do this. Sam lurched forward, grabbed him by the arm. “Wait. Wait, Dean, you don’t have to do this. I’m the one who’s got no choice. Don’t—”
Dean shoved him hard.
Sam fell back against a bench, too shocked to move forward again. Dean growled. “I already told you. Come on, Bobby, daylight’s a-wastin’.”
Something shifted while he stood there, watching his brother throw away everything he’d worked for their entire lives. Sam hovered numbly over the proceedings, tense and shaky with lines carved into his forehead. He had to get his feet back on the ground.
Bobby slid a gadget he hadn’t seen the first time over Dean’s arm to open the panel, and with a frown Sam watched him put it back down. “If it takes all these tools to jailbreak someone, how do people do it themselves?” he asked weakly.
Bobby only glanced up at him before turning back to the chipset he was configuring. “Different method. It hurts more.”
“Oh.”
How—why—did Bobby know all this? How had their father missed it? Bobby was fully organic, so what use did he even have for all the knowledge, all the tools, all the signal jammers and the secret workroom under his house?
He couldn’t muster up the energy to ask.
When Dean was done, they sat and stared at each other for what could only have been a minute but felt like years. Dean rolled his shoulders and flexed his hands. “I don’t feel different,” he finally said, staring down at his splayed fingers. “Shouldn’t I feel different?”
With the lopsided shrug of the vaguely uncomfortable, Bobby set to putting all the gear back where he’d gotten it. “Dunno. Don’t think so. You’re unlocked—you won’t know the difference till you try something and there aren’t any limiters.”
Sam gulped. Right. They didn’t even have those anymore.
Nothing held back the strength of their limbs. Nothing evaluated situations and froze muscles and alerted responders. Nothing kept them from hurting people, from killing people with hardware so powerful it could smash this house to mildewy splinters.
“Thanks, Bobby.” With more bravado than he could possibly be feeling, Dean patted the old man on the back. Bobby only huffed, looking embarrassed. “No, I . . . seriously.”
The air thickened for an awkward moment, no one happy to breach the silence, but Bobby nodded and headed to the stairs. “You two stay here. I have a call to make for ya.” He was up the stairs faster than should have been possible and the door swung shut heavily behind him, leaving two confused Winchesters to stare questioningly at each other.
“Do you know who he’s calling?"
“No idea. But he sure didn't seem to want us to have the chance to ask."
Unless Bobby knew a way to the undercity, there wasn’t much of anything he could do from here besides let them bunk down while they made a plan. They couldn’t stay here forever, that would endanger Bobby (even if he seemed plenty capable of handling himself), and they'd need to strategise about where to go next.
The thought sent them both reeling. After all this time hunting the under for an entirely different reason, would they even be allowed to set foot there if they found it? Would they be recognised as hunters? Would it matter if they were jabbies now? Surely it would. Someone would recognise them. They were some of the most well-known hunters, and even if that didn’t make them relevant to the general population, Sam was sure someone in the undercity would be keeping track.
“You know . . ." he hedged, fingers tap-tap-tapping a nervous rhythm on his knee. His brother watched him, waiting. “I really am sorry. I can’t tell you how sorry I am. There aren’t words.”
Dean didn’t respond immediately, just sat there staring at Sam like he was looking at nothing at all. Eventually his eyes refocused, but the faraway look didn’t leave his face. “What you said about it. I can’t say I’d have done any different, Sammy.” His shoulders rippled in something that might have resembled a shrug. “It sucks, but it’s done. I wasn’t going to leave you. That was never even an option, man. You know that.”
Ducking his head, he nodded. He did know that. Whether it helped or not, he wasn’t sure. “The way that Jody looked at me, Dean . . .”
“Hey. Quit it.” His voice was strong but he looked a little green. He had probably gotten a message from Jody around the time he got Sam’s SOS. “She’d understand. She wouldn’t slate a girl for death, either, no matter what, Sam. Remember, she’s a mom.”
Their mom. As close to a mom as they had. And the disappointment on her face . . .
They sat quietly for a long time, each ruminating alone. He recognised Dean’s mourning face. He’d put it there, taken everyone he loved. It had taken so long for Dean to let people in and accept anyone but Dad and Bobby, and here they were, torn away from him again, this time by his brother. They would never see those people again, not unless it was as enemies. Would their friends hunt them now?
There was a full bathroom in the basement and mugs in the liquor cabinet (of course), so when he got thirsty he brought them both water from the tap and collapsed back onto a seat. At some point he got so restless he went nosing through some of the piles Bobby had spread around, frowning at unfamiliar and familiar tools alike. Some of them had to be a hundred years old, maybe older, made of iron and with wood handles, and some of them seemed almost recognisable but a little to the left, sprouting wires and screws in places he didn’t think they should.
He must have gotten too absorbed in the task because when Dean made a frustrated noise, the clock read two hours later and his eyebrows shot up. “How long is Bobby going to keep us in the lurch, man?” Dean moaned. “I’m hungry, I’m tired, I want to know what the fuck our next move is but we can’t figure it out until we know what he’s doing!”
Now that he said it, Sam was feeling peckish. After everything, he hadn’t expected himself to ever have an appetite again. “I’m sure he’ll let us know soon,” he said, but even he could hear the anxiety laced in every word. He tried again. “It’s not like Bobby to leave us hanging.”
Before Dean could reply the door opened. “Finally,” he yelled, “dude, I’m going out of my mind down here!”
“Hold your fucking horses,” Bobby snapped back. “Come on. I need you boys to get up here.”
Emerging made Sam realise just how stifling it had been underground. He’d had no idea how claustrophobic he’d been until he could see a window with the afternoon light outside. Something relaxed in Dean beside him, too, making him suspect the feeling was mutual.
“Alright.” Bobby took a deep breath and stood in front of them, appraising them and finally breaking into a long, soft look. “You boys do your best, and you tell the truth, and you take care, alright?”
The pit in his stomach reopened, yawning wider than ever. “Bobby? What’s happening?”
But Bobby laid a hand on each of their shoulders and looked into their faces with something caught on the razor edge of ferocity and brokenness. “I love you boys. Now you need to go get in the car outside. Trust me. This is the only way.”
“Way for what?” Dean demanded, pale and stricken at the intensity on their uncle's face.
“The way under,” he hissed. “Now don’t keep ‘em waiting. Get. You better message me when you get there, let me know you made it okay.”
They shared a look, wrapped arms around Bobby one at a time, and let themselves be rushed out the door, only to stop short on the porch. On the gravel, beside the ‘car they’d hijacked, waited a shining machine that was straight out of history. The tires were obviously rubber, the windows tinted dark, a behemoth made of sharp black angles and smelling of alien fumes that could be nothing short of a real oil exhaust system. The thing must have actually run on gasoline. How old was it? How had it not caught on fire?
Dean was the one to try the door. The front passenger door didn’t give, only rattled a little uselessly under his hand. He glanced hesitantly at Sam and, after a second of consideration, Dean tried the back door.
It opened without resistance. There was a screen installed between the front and backseats that made the driver invisible, but a “get, ya idjit!” called from the porch encouraged him to slide in and make room for Sam, who got in behind him.
The bench seat was made of something he couldn’t even begin to identify, and there were real buckles to secure themselves in, which suggested that crashes were actually expected and was less than soothing. The car clunked and a growling noise started as it began to move, the ride rough on tires that didn’t seem to absorb a thing, and they sat there, jostled and jolted, in a cramped seat in a tiny row, unable to see out the windows.
If Sam had thought the basement was bad, he’d had no idea what he was in for. He shifted every minute or so, trying to ignore the rough ride and the way his legs cramped, and avoided the worry that wanted to overcome him. What had Bobby sent them into? How had he known the way to the undercity at all? And why couldn’t they fucking see where they were going?
His software clock ticked along. Every time he opened it, less time had passed since the last. He was frazzled, his nerves were strained, and a headache was building to life behind his eyes. His stomach even growled, but he’d lost his appetite and it had been replaced with the urge to vomit.
Dean’s knuckles were white where his fists sat on his thighs. He fidgeted off and on, looked like he was about to speak only to stare warily at the screen. No doubt they’d be heard. He flexed a finger, laid it on the seat in front of them–and Sam knew what he was thinking. They were unlocked. They had every ability to rip right through that bench and see what the hell was going on. Hell, they could take one of the doors off its hinges and tuck and roll out.
But this was their only chance. Sam gave him a tiny shake of his head and, jaw tight, Dean lowered his hand again and turned to watch out a window that he couldn’t see through.
The trip was three and a half hours. Where the hell they were, Sam had no clue. He hadn’t been able to get a location since Bobby’s; whether that was an unexpected effect of the jailbreaking or because of something in the car, he didn’t know. Maybe it was both.
The car stopped and shifted in such a way that they knew the front door had opened and someone had stepped out. The door shut. “Do you think we’re supposed to get out?” Sam whispered. “Or will someone get us?”
Dean shrugged his shoulders high, glancing around like he expected an ambush. “I think we should get out. I at least don’t want to be in this box any longer than I have to.”
Nodding a little too enthusiastically, Sam reached for the door handle. They opened theirs at the same time and stepped out smoothly, hesitant to move too much but unable to stay still and make easy targets. If they were going under, they were officially among jabbies.
Jabbies other than themselves. Sam still couldn’t quite wrap his mind around that.
Around them was the looming architecture of a warehouse, brittle cement rising around them on all sides and a rusted metal rolling door shut behind the car. Windows high above them showed dusk but otherwise no sign of their location. The place was ghostly silent and too empty, heavy with the scent of rust and rotted industrial fluids. Sam had to hold back a sneeze.
“Ahem.”
They both startled hard, swinging around to face a particularly deep shadow in the nearest corner. Now that he knew where to look, Sam could vaguely make out the silhouette of a person leaning back against the wall, arms crossed too casually, but no matter what sensor he booted and rebooted, he couldn’t get them to pick up a person right there, right in front of him—not the heat scan, not the sound scan, not the goddamn sonar. Somehow there was a whole human being in the room with them and he was a fucking ghost.
So this was how jabbies got under. This was how they’d never caught on. Whoever this guy was, as long as he stayed out of their immediate sight, hunters would never know he was there.
“You wouldn’t see me, either, if I didn’t want you to,” he snorted. Had Sam said that out loud? No. No, he definitely hadn’t, so could—no, people couldn’t read thoughts, that was impossible— “Chill out, Robocop. It’s written all over both of your faces.”
He had the grace to blush, but Dean only bared his teeth, coming round the old car to stand beside his brother as if together they could intimidate the stranger into giving them some sort of advantage. Somehow, Sam already knew that was a lost cause. Someone who could literally erase himself from their senses (that kind of biohacking was top of the line, fucking unthinkable military tech, only a rumour at this point) had them all sorts of over a barrel and there was nothing they could do to change that.
“Who the fuck is Robocop?” Dean muttered beside him. Asking the real questions, as usual.
Sam cleared his throat and rolled his shoulders uncomfortably. They felt weird, looser now that the limiter protocols were deleted. He was all too aware that he could put his fist through the cement wall by accident, and suddenly he had to wonder how much jabby damage had been unintentional before he’d rolled in to capture them. “Look, um—I’m sure you know who we are. I guess you know Bobby?”
The figure waved a dismissive hand, a gesture he could hardly make out, and tilted his head sharply to the right. Somehow Sam got the impression he was being mocked. “Yeah, I know him.” He had a nice voice, all smooth caramel, but now it went sharp and bitter. It sounded dangerous, the tone of a loose cannon. Unpredictable but measured all the same. “Just get this straight through those metaluminum skulls, kids: if it wasn’t for your uncle, you wouldn’t be here. I’d be more than happy to serve your pert little asses up on a platter to Fames and let them recycle your spines into shitters. Capeesh?”
Dean’s mouth was already opening and his anger was palpable. Sam elbowed him in the ribs and glared. They needed this guy on their side, even if every second it looked like that would be harder and harder to get. “We don’t have any other options,” he hissed low, waiting a second to be sure that his brother would keep his mouth shut, even if he still stood large with barely-restrained fury. After a long breath Sam turned back to the corner, vaguely wondering if their new acquaintance was ever going to step into the light, scant as it was. “You obviously know who we are,” he said, chuckling nervously. “I have no idea what to call you.”
He could feel the eyeroll from there. “Kinda the point, jackass.”
Beside him Dean was gearing up again, so he hurried to respond. “Oh. Um—I guess that’s fair, actually.” He cringed. On one side his brother was staring at him in disbelief, and on the other he could sense the disgust from the stranger. “Look, I assume we have to do something to prove ourselves to you. Do you want to talk? Is there something we need to do? We just don’t know what you want from us.”
The laugh that rang out was hard and ice cold. Something about it made his hackles rise, some sense of danger that hadn’t already been triggered. If he’d been alarmed before, now he was sweating. This guy had to be a jabby himself, and mad to boot. What had Bobby been thinking, sending them with him? What was the point if he didn’t want to bring them under to begin with?
“From you? The famous Winchester brothers, hunters extraordinaire? I can’t believe I even brought you two this far. Look at you, standing there like you’re the victims here. You two give Harvey Dent a run for his money.”
“Well, what the fuck do you think is going on, you fucking wise ass?” Dean growled, and despite a mad grab for his sleeve from Sam, he bowled past and grabbed the figure by the shirt, shoving him into the wall. “Why don’t you just do us a fucking favour and enlighten us, fucking jabby?”
The world crashed before his eyes (no way would he bring them under after this, no, they were done, there was only so far they could run), but only long enough for the shadow to grab Dean’s wrists and, in a flurry of movement that had Sam gasping, drive the ex-hunter back in one strong lunge till his back hit the car with a boom and his head slammed into the roof, leaving a dent the size of his face. The jabby slammed his head again, this time bending the metal far enough that a window shattered, and crowded him with thick fists in the collar of his shirt. “You fucking think you can waltz in here and make demands,” he hissed, “after all of the damage that you’ve done, and you can play fucking pretend that none of it ever happened?”
Out in the light, he was nothing like Sam expected. He was small, objectively, but the way he bent Dean back over the machine, the wild rage sparkling in his eyes, took up too much of the space, like he stretched out into it and pushed them away by sheer presence alone. His sensors remained uncooperative, eliminating any chance at an identification, but he hadn’t held out much hope to begin with.
Dean spat blood onto the roof of the car, turning a murderous glare onto his opponent, who only sneered and dropped him. He scrambled with an oof to catch himself on his feet and rose, moving back to Sam’s side with the lithe side-stepping of a cat ready to lunge. Cringing, Sam grabbed his arm and held it steady. Something was buzzing in the back of his head, a thought he couldn’t quite capture but neither could he ignore.
He had to stop the man and Dean from eyeing each other up like territorial tigers, so he spat it out in a rush. “I know we haven’t met before, so why are you so familiar?”
That made the stranger freeze. He spent a silent moment regarding Sam through narrowed eyes, and Sam couldn’t help but think that this expression looked wrong on him somehow, the scowl unnatural on a face with laugh lines and dimples. As unexpected as anything else, he raised his hands in a slow round of applause. “Lookit that, the big one reads his history. Loki ring a bell?”
While his brother looked at him in confusion, Sam worried his lower lip, wracking his brain. Loki. Loki . . . Yeah, that was familiar, in the way that general facts and interesting tidbits were. He’d said history, so Sam thought back on all those long-ago classes at school—and gasped, eyes going wide.
“There we go,” Loki smirked. “He got it.”
“A little help here?” Dean huffed. “Feeling a little left out.”
Sam shook his head, looking in disbelief at the man before them. Unlike a moment ago, he now stood relaxed, shoulders dropped and hands deep in his jacket pockets. That jacket looked like an antique, now that he thought about it. Real woven fabric, even. “He—it’s impossible. That was hundreds of years ago.”
Loki rolled his eyes, looking at the ceiling as if patience might deign to fall down to him. “Oh, please. Go ahead and tell me I look good for my age.”
“No, that’s . . . ” He shook himself and turned to stare at his brother, momentarily speechless. It couldn’t be true, could it? But those experiments they’d read about, back before laws were passed about extending lives . . . “Loki—back when they were still perfecting cybernetics, Loki was one of the first cyborgs. He was a success story. But he was only supposed to be pleasure-modified, not, not ageless. And they scrapped the ones they made immortal, they all went insane after a hundred years or so . . . ”
A loud snort interrupted him. “I keep forgetting that’s what they told you guys. And it gets more censored every time I hear it. It’s fucking MK-Ultra in here.”
At least now he had an idea of why this guy—Loki—kept making references he didn’t get. It wasn’t a code he wasn’t privy to, the man was literally from a different time. Sam couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to live centuries, to see the entire evolution of the cybernetic body, to have experienced it himself (because obviously he had stayed well updated with the black market, or else his strength wouldn’t have held a candle to a jailbroken Dean).
“Enough about me,” Loki drawled, gesticulating widely. “Time to talk about you shit-for-brains. Look at you, bet your daddy’d be real proud right about now.” His smile appeared suddenly, matching the lines at the corners of his eyes, but it was cruel and sharp. His teeth shone too bright. “Spend thirty years hunting jabbies, and now both his sons show up begging for mercy to go under. What do you think? Would he just kill you both early to put you out of his misery? Or would he kill himself?”
Roaring, Dean lunged forward again, only to be caught around the chest by Sam and dragged back. They both yelped at the unexpected outputs of strength as they fell back against the car, both of Sam’s long arms held tight around his brother to keep him back. “He’s just trying to get a rise out of us!” he whispered urgently. “He wants you to attack him!”
“Yeah, well, he’s doing a good job!” Dean growled, setting his feet with the familiar strategy of a man about to take another shot. Sam whipped him around and pushed him back, standing between them with his back to Loki now, hands up in an attempt at placation. “Get out of the way, Sam, I’m going to bust his face in.”
“You can’t do that!”
“Watch me!”
“We need him!” he yelled. His frustration was going to boil over at any moment. “We need to go under. He’s our only way, Dean. He’s just testing us. He wants any excuse to leave without taking us. You’ve got to calm down.”
His brother was snarling, but at least he stopped pacing and looking for an opportunity to get around Sam to rush the cyborg. Sam turned back to Loki, carefully putting on his best mediating expression. “I still don’t understand what you want from us.”
“What exactly did you chuckleheads expect?” he wondered. “You’ve spent your entire lives hunting the liberated, and now you think you’re going to just be invited into their only safe place, what, with open arms? Because the lion you fed them to turned around and bit your dicks off, too?”
The liberated? That was new. Sam filed it away for future reference.
He had a point, though. A salient one that made tightness squeeze Sam’s chest, stomach flip-flopping behind his ribs. Just how many jabbies—er, liberated—had been in Claire and Amelia’s position when he had hauled them in? Sure, some of them had been malicious, but how many of them had cracked under the pressure of keeping up payments at the threat of their lives or their livelihoods? He realised he was running his hand through his hair, a nervous twitch, and dropped his arm back to his side with a grimace. By some miracle Dean hadn’t spoken, but he was definitely steaming.
“It’s not that simple,” Sam tried. “Look, it’s—our dad, our entire lives—”
“Yeah, yeah, dead mother, crazy jabby, blah blah blah,” Loki mocked. “I bet everything you know about that is straight from your dad’s mouth, isn’t it? You haven’t looked into a single thing on your own.”
Dean this time, barely restrained. “It’s all classified, jackass—”
“Yeah, by Fames,” he shot back disdainfully. “Idiots. Why do you think that is?”
A pause this time. “Every jabby is classified after they're caught,” Dean murmured. “It’s how it works.”
Loki’s eyes were getting a work out. Sam kind of hoped they got sore from all the rolling. “Caught, huh? Pfft.”
“What the fuck—,” Dean yelled, just as Sam hissed, “What are you saying?”
The glare they received could have scorched organic flesh from bone. “This isn’t some information all-you-can-eat,” Loki hissed. “You’re lucky I’m giving you this much. I decide to bring you under, then I’ll give you more. Right now? We’re wasting my time, and that’s time I could be wasting on much sexier things. You’ve only gotten this much because a very pretty lady told me a story about you.” He crooked a finger at Sam. “And it wasn’t even all that impressive, but it’s why you’re in this mess to begin with, so I figure I’d give you the chance to convince me to take your asses under.”
A thrill ran through Sam. Dean looked questioningly at him but he didn’t bother to meet his gaze, instead staring wide-eyed at the cyborg before them. “Amelia? Is she okay? Did she and Claire get under?”
His smile earned a raised eyebrow from Loki, but thankfully he didn’t comment. "Yep. Her hubby left her my contact info in case Claire got a repo order.” His lips pursed. “Ol’ Jimmy got canned and couldn’t pay for his job’s ‘netics last year so I ferried him, no thanks to one of your hunter friends. Barely got to him in time.”
Something like shame was gathering in Sam’s throat. He was glad to hear that Amelia and Claire were okay, ecstatic even, but the more he heard the more he realised that so many of their targets had been just this—normal people down on their luck, usually pushed into corners alone or with their loved ones.
But it couldn’t be all that. There were the bad ones, like the one who’d killed their mom, who jailbroke their components just so they could break their limiters and hurt people. The malicious ones. They did this to save people from the ones like that.
(What did he mean, pfft? What didn’t they know about the one who’d killed Mary?)
“So let me get this straight,” Dean managed after a long silence that Sam had missed for all his thinking. He seemed desperate to fill the quiet. “You expect us to believe that most of these jabbies are just, what, victims of circumstance? Of the big, mean corporation? That we’re the real bad guys here? I’ll tell you what, you’ve got a good con going, but you must think we’re idiots.”
A disbelieving little sound worked its way out of Loki’s mouth, jaw dropped open with an astonishment that managed to look malicious. “Boy, you just don’t listen, do you? You are the villain here. You’re murderers, or at least the errand boys for them. You are the fists of the tyrant, you walk around with your fancy little tech and you ruin people’s lives, and that’s when you don’t end them altogether! You think Fames Corp doesn’t make more money from making a single part and leasing it over and over again to different people? You think they bat an eye at killing people for those extra bits? You think they care about you, or about anybody else?" His arms spread in an aggressive movement that made Sam flinch. "You’re braindead, you fucking bozos are out of your mind if you think that these people won’t tear you to shreds for a bit—and look! They have! They want every wire out of your sorry skulls because you cost them one little girl’s worth of scrap metal!”
Dean started to butt in, but Loki only continued, voice rising, stepping forward and gesticulating as if his waving hands could somehow make the point sink in. He drove a finger into Dean’s chest. “And you! You think they haven’t lied to you every moment of your life? You think they want you to save people and hunt maniacs? You really fucking think your daddy put a cap in that jabby who killed your mom and they killed each other? Christ on a cracker, you’re so fucking gullible! They could tell you they jizz sunshine and you’d assume the position!”
For the entirety of the rant Dean had stood there, glowering down at the angry cyborg, but at that he snapped and shoved him away. Loki stepped back, but made sure they knew it was of his own free will and not from any force behind the push. “Yeah? Then fucking tell us, because I’m sick of this cat and mouse shit! What do you think happened to our dad?”
He was seething, chest heaving under his breaths. Sam stepped up beside him and laid a grounding hand on his shoulder, but he watched Loki with just as much focus. Could the cyborg really know any of this? He’d known about their mom before they even mentioned her, obviously he’d done his checking up on them, and who knew what kind of channels he had access to, what kind of information was available to him. He was a phantom. He was turning their world on its head. Bobby being a hacker was nothing compared to every other sentence this man spat like it was yesterday's news.
Loki crossed his arms, toes tapping, looking searchingly between the two of them. Finally he turned to the car, running a hand over the ruined roof with a disappointed tut. Sam couldn’t imagine what it would take to repair it to the pristine state of the rest of the vehicle. “Long story short, Fames needed mommy dearest dead. It wasn’t even a jabby who killed her—or, well, not a fugitive.” Out of the corner of his eye he regarded them, looking oddly wry. “He was in their pockets. Dead now, that much is true.”
“Fames Corporation had our mother assassinated by a jabby?” Sam gasped before his brother had the chance.
Loki nodded, still not looking at them. “Now you starting to get the picture? These mad jabbies you think are out there murdering people? Hell, most of them are plants. Don’t want people to start to get the idea that jailbreaking their ‘netics ain’t half bad.” With a shrewd purse of his lips he turned towards them, eyebrows high, expectant. His finger created a rhythm against old-world steel.
Every tap sent a jolt of dread through Sam, and this time Dean seemed to be feeling it, too. He bristled, relaxed, and tensed again, then turned and started to pace along the trunk. Chevrolet, Sam noticed written on its back panel.
“You look like it’s starting to sink in,” Loki muttered. There was something both gleeful and oddly mournful in the words, and how he managed both at once was a mystery. “Give ‘em a prize, they realise how badly they’ve fucked up. Now, I’m going to pose you a question.”
“Another?” Dean snipped, sulking his way around half of the room. “Haven’t you rubbed our noses in it enough?”
That surprised a burst of laughter out of the cyborg. “You think this is enough? A little bit of chewing you out, a little bit of the red pill, and you think it’s enough to make up for all the people you’ve hurt? Oh, boy.” He wiped an imaginary tear from his eye. “No, no—you’re going to be paying for that for the rest of your lives, but how long those last remains to be seen. No, what I want to know is . . . you’ve spent your lives using that pig tech to hurt people. So if I brought you under, boys, what would you use it for then?”
Despite himself Sam blinked, brows furrowed in surprise. Somewhere along the line he’d kind of assumed that Loki had decided not to take them, that he was only raking them over the coals to make a point, making sure they felt suitably guilty when they were taken in and eviscerated. Hope surged, even as tempered as it was by the shame that sat heavy in his bones. “I . . . I hadn’t even thought of that,” he admitted. “But we don’t know what it’s like in the under. What we could do. What do people even do there?”
Before, somehow, he’d always had an image of a broken-down place filled with chaos and blood and constant fighting. Bloodthirsty jabbies and outlaws jostling for control, constantly in upheaval. A place he and Dean would have to fight for survival.
And now? He couldn’t even imagine a place completely off the grid, entirely disconnected from the data net, and . . . safe.
Loki rubbed the bridge of his nose as if he’d expected nothing else but was still somehow disappointed. “Do you really think no one has to protect the under? That I’m the only ferry? Not all of them are as good as I am. Some of them need bodyguards, support. Gates need guarding. That shit you used to hurt people, will you use it to protect ‘em?”
Something clicked.
He and Dean shared a startled look, both with wide eyes and open lips, and turned to nod enthusiastically. “Yes!” Sam exclaimed. They knew it, people had been actively keeping the under away from hunters and civilians, and somehow had been making contact with jabbies (liberated!) who needed a way down. They’d been disseminating hacks, maybe doing the hacking themselves.
And maybe Bobby was one of them, after all.
“Yes, we’ll help,” he gushed. “The things we did–we thought they were good, I—if we could help—”
Loki lifted a hand, stopping him mid sentence. “Yeah, yeah,” he huffed. “Don’t drool on me. Look. If you step one toe out of line, and I’m going to be watching very closely, and so is everyone else, you will be dead before you hit the floor. Both of you. There are people who you hunted in the under. There are people whose family and friends you killed or got taken apart. Do you understand me? Everyone. Hates. You. You’re Nurse Ratchet and we’re a flock of cuckoos.” His voice dropped to a hiss and he leaned in, amber eyes shining. “I’m the only one keeping you alive, and I don’t particularly want to do that. I’d love for you to give me the tiniest, itty bitty reason to let them kill you.”
“Okay,” Dean huffed. “We get it already. Behave, you don’t like us.”
“Oh, it’s more than that,” Loki replied, and now he was purring, sidling right in close and wrapping a hand in both of their shirt fronts. He yanked them down so they barely avoided knocking heads. “It’s not just them. Fuck what they’d do to you. Me, I’m going to take my time, and I’m going to make sure you experience every last bit of pain you’d feel if Fames took you apart instead. And I’m going to start at the toes.”
Dean snorted but Sam could tell false bravado when he saw it. Loki's lips twitched inches from Sam's face and somehow he managed to keep a straight face, but he couldn’t help but believe every word.
“Well, that’s that,” Loki chirped, releasing them with an upbeat smirk that left them reeling, “time to go!” He opened the car door and gestured for them to get back in. Sam barely held back a groan at the thought of being stuffed into its confines again.
Loki lowered the partition now that it was pointless, and it definitely helped to be able to see out the windshield. None of the land was recognisable, all stretches of neglected warehouses and degrading asphalt. How old did this place have to be, to have real asphalt? It smelled like salt and an odd layer of rot, scent engulfing the car through the broken window, and Sam had to duck his head beneath the caved-in roof. A little of Dean’s blood still clung to the door. At least his cheek had stopped bleeding.
It could all only distract him so much. Even staring out at a world he'd only seen in pictures, Sam's mind whirled with questions and implications and all of the pieces he couldn't put together. There was too much he didn't know, too much he didn't know whether to believe, but was it worth not trusting Loki? The man who sat a foot from him, right arm slung easily across the bench, whistling a tune Sam didn't recognise as he drove one-handed with a kind of steering system that hadn't been in wider use for at least two hundred years. Now that they could be seen out in the light, he even seemed to be wearing cloth fabrics; they rustled with a peculiar sound that wasn't quite like his and Dean's synthetic weaves.
His day to day life, the world he experienced, everything he knew, undermined their very existence. The foundations of their world were wrong. For all that he was beginning to believe, really couldn't bring himself to reject everything that the cyborg had said, he couldn't comprehend that it was all fake. Their mother's death, what sent John on a revenge quest that took his life and the dedication of both his sons', the closure they believed they had . . .
That wasn't even starting with their friends. Jody. If he was telling the truth, was it a Fames Corp plant who'd killed her family? Was she working for the people responsible for their deaths all this time?
Could they tell her?
The car ground to a halt on a particularly uneven patch of ground just as a gust of wind sent sand whipping through the window. Grimacing against it, Sam stepped out and noted the thick layer of it over the road, the way it seemed determined to grit its way into his teeth and hair and already under his clothes, and finally, off to the side where he hadn’t been able to see—
Water?
Dean inhaled sharply, barely remembering to close the door behind him as he took a shaky step onto the beach. The ocean. No one ever came out to the ocean. It was too polluted, too dangerous, too pointless when cities were inland and leaving was too much of a hassle. Where could they be? How far had they gone from the entire world they knew? Sam’s boot clattered against something in the sand, so he reached down to brush it off with careful fingers and lift it to the light. Small, round, translucent and green—could it be?
“Sea glass,” Loki hummed. “Must be hundreds of years old now, they haven’t made glass in ages.”
While he gawked at the ancient find in his hands, he missed whatever it was that the cyborg must have done, because before long a dot was appearing on the horizon and growing ever closer. Dean went tense, scanning all sides as if they might suddenly be surrounded. As if they were any safer against Loki. Somehow Sam had no doubt he could end the two of them there if he decided.
“Well,” Dean said nervously, “into the lion’s den, Sammy.”
The boat hit shore, guided by a broad man with messy black hair and a sceptical look in their direction. He murmured something to Loki that they couldn’t hear and got a nod in response, so he ushered them into seats and got out to push off of the land with an efficiency that spoke of experience.
The man was quiet as he began to row. It was a tiny boat, but it couldn’t have been all that easy, and Sam was tempted to offer to help but after a silent conversation with Dean decided it was best to stay quiet. They weren’t in friendly company, after all.
A hundred feet from the beach, the man turned to them. He had the face of someone who’d only recently learned how to be paranoid and was practicing regularly. “I don’t know which one of you is Sam. Thank you for allowing Amelia and Claire to leave.”
Confusion wrinkled Sam’s forehead, but he realised with a snap, “You’re Jimmy!”
Jimmy cringed and cast Loki an accusatory glare. “You told them my name? What if you didn’t decide to bring them?”
Loki raised an imperious eyebrow. “They were walking out with me or not at all. Win-win.”
It was all he could do to hide his shudder, but meanwhile Jimmy only nodded, apparently appeased. The brothers shared a worried look.
“Careful. The boat rocks when it comes up,” Jimmy warned, and as promised, the boat began to tilt. They both grabbed for a side, suddenly far more aware that they couldn’t swim and the heaviness of their ‘netics would sink them straight to the bottom were they to fall in.
“When what comes up?” Dean yelped.
No one had to answer. A vertical metal cylinder breached the surface a dozen metres away and continued rising, setting the water shuddering around them. Just as it rose to the height of a man something else began to come up beneath it, something like a long tube rounded at the top, a behemoth that would put to shame any cargo hauler from the city. The metal was speckled with rust and covered in a coat of twinkling grey spackle that Sam recognised as a scan dampener.
“Is that–?”
After waiting until their rowman had navigated them closer to the monster of a vessel, Loki hopped up onto a ladder on its side that frankly looked a little suspect. He ascended with practiced ease, all svelte movements and flare, and stood on top of the submarine with a grin.
“This can’t be the under,” Sam breathed.
Jimmy looked at him sideways and gestured for them to climb. “You will descend to the under in this.”
What? Astonished, they practically grappled to get up the ladder first and hurried to follow. A hatch opened atop the first stack, inviting them down below.
“Do you mean . . ?”
The cyborg grinned (and somehow Sam thought he could get used to that, the way his eyes lit up with mischief and his laugh lines crinkled). “Where did you think it was? We're going underwater."
He gaped, mirrored by Dean.
Arms out wide as if to take in everything—the submarine and all of its hidden depths, the open ocean that stretched in every direction and further down than they could imagine, the life they left behind and the new one they’d have to earn and all that they’d known and loved becoming gory illusion at once—Loki lifted his face against the wind and flashed his too-bright teeth. “Welcome to the party, pal.”
> …RECEIVING MESSAGE _
> MESSAGE RECEIVED _
> TO: ROBERT SINGER _
> SENDER: UNKNOWN _
> thanks bobby. i think we’re gonna be okay _
> MESSAGE END