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Adam awakes to pain.
There's a persistent drumming in his skull, a blinding light in his eyes. He makes a muffled noise; squeezes his eyes shut on reflex. The headache in itself isn't unusual, but he doesn't remember drinking last night. He hasn't drunk enough to justify a headache like this one in weeks, and he can't remember any reason why he'd have done it now.
He doesn't remember much of anything, actually. His mind slow and foggy, as if stuffed to the brim with cotton candy; too light and too heavy all at once. The lights too bright even through eyelids squeezed shut. What had happened?
He tried to rub at his eyes with the heels of his palms, but he can't get his hands even that far. The familiar sound of handcuffs clinking and clanking. That's when he registers the coldness at his wrists, the hardness of the chair under him, and goes still, spine snapping iron straight, the pieces falling together all at once - his eyes flick open, despite the blinding light (a spotlight, he sees now, shining at his face), to see -
A man, standing in front of him. A man whose face Adam knows, knows from the case he and Vincent have been chasing for two weeks now: the leader of the four-man gang they're now fairly certain are their murderers.
The memories come back, rushing in like a flood - the early morning, the drive to the warehouse with Vincent beside him, it was supposed to be a simple trip to look over the crime scene again, that's all - and then the men, four of them, standing in the rays of dusty sunlight, beneath the faded cracking beams of the roof. Adam remembers seeing one of the gang members knocked out, and Vincent standing among lit-up motes of dust, the shafts of sun like a spotlight, eyes wide, staring at him - and then - Adam had -
But that was then. What's done is done, he has the present to worry about now. He's left with this: the metal chair he's handcuffed to, the drumming pain in his head. The light.
And the man in front of him.
"Good morning, sunshine," says the gang leader, grinning, and unsheathes a knife.
Wiktor's sitting at his desk idly when his phone rings; he looks away from his computer, sees it's Vincent calling.
He doesn't even have time enough to say hello before Vincent is speaking. Before he says: "Wiktor, they have him - " and Wiktor doesn't need the words themselves to know that something has gone drastically, horribly wrong, because he has never heard that tone of voice from Vincent before. The straining, desperate calm of something on the edge of shattering.
"What," he says, grip on his phone clenching. Mind already rattling through the worst-case scenarios.
"Wiktor," says Vincent, his voice cracking on it, "they have Adam."
"Good morning," says Adam, after a pause. His eyes flicker around the room - small, concrete, lightless except for the single bright lamp shining in his face. The door must be behind him, because he can't see it from where he's sitting. Nothing but featureless useless wall in his field of vision. And the people: the gang leader, in front of him. Another of them to his left. A tingling on the back of his neck, the little hairs raising, that suggests a third might be behind him.
That leaves one missing, of the four they'd met in the warehouse; their prior investigations had left them fairly certain that those four are the only ones left of the gang. The only ones left, because they'd been killing off their own members - killing them, leaving them lifeless in the Oder.
There is no sign of Vincent in this little room, no way for them to be imprisoning him as well - unless they've underestimated him enough that they think they only need one person to guard him.
(Or incapacitated him severely enough, a little voice in Adam's head whispers. He ignores it.)
"Looking around our little place, are you?" says the man, smiling. "Trying to locate us? Don't worry, I won't try to stop you." He leans closer, whispers, "You won't be able to tell anyone, by the time we're done. Trust me."
The case. The case. Think of the case. Logic, Adam.
Three victims so far. All of them with their hands cut off, one with the tongue missing, one the eyes. Vincent had had some complicated psychological things to say about it, which had eventually boiled down to just about what Adam's theory was, too: it was revenge for what the gang members had thought of as a betrayal. The parts of the body which had done the betraying removed; the soul, which had allowed it, extinguished.
That tells him little about what the same people would do to one of the policemen who had been trying to capture them, make them face their sentences. Tells him nothing about how to get out of this.
More of a hint is the knife, still in the leader's hand; the silver glint of a sharp sharp blade. The feral smile.
And Adam can't get loose.
Maybe he could've - but no, there had been no other way. None that was acceptable, at least. This - this will be pain, pain for Adam only, and then it'll be over. Very finally over. All he has to do now is not tell his captors anything they can use against him, anything they can use against Vincent and Wiktor and the rest of Frankfurt and wait for it to be done.
He smiles at them; hopes the glimpse of teeth unnerves them at least a little. If he's going out, he won't go easy.
"They have - what," says Wiktor. His mind is whirling. "Vincent - are you safe? What happened?"
"I'm safe," Vincent confirms immediately, and that at least is a warm mellow relief; only one of them gone. He continues, his lack of stumbling over the words almost more conspicuous than if he'd stuttered his way through his sentences; Vincent is holding down his control of himself iron-tight, tighter than he normally does. He is always deliberate in his manner, well-spoken, but there's always a casual ease to that. This isn't that. This is everything locked down tight to stop something ugly erupting.
"Good," says Wiktor; a little curt, maybe. He has his phone pinned between ear and shoulder now, computer at the ready.
"We were - it was the warehouse. Down by the river. We went back to go over the rooms again, and they were there. Armed."
He pauses. "Adam knocked one of them out," he says. "I have him in the car now. And then - I don't know if they triggered something or what it was, but some of the ceiling beams came down."
Vincent inhales, steady. An odd little pause, like he's making a decision, then he says, "Adam was on the other side."
"Your partner," says the leader, the knife twirling through his fingers, "has taken one of ours captive."
So that's where the fourth one is. Good. Good. That means Vincent is safe, and has probably already taken up contact with Wiktor and the precinct. They'll have the man in custody, question him, figure out where the rest of the gang is before anyone else dies. Maybe they'll be fast enough for Adam, even. If not - at least they're safe.
"Good for him," says Adam.
"Good for him," the leader echoes, circling. Adam flexes his fingers; the steel cuts into his wrists. "But not for you."
He comes to a halt. Bends down and tips Adam's chin up with the tip of the knife; Adam can feel it pricking against his skin, just on the shallow edge of pain; he barely dares to breathe, close as it is. Pressure down and across and it'll be his throat slit.
"You see, Mister Raczek," the leader says, "we're going to need to make an example of you. A very clear example."
"They'll get you for this," says Adam. "Even if you kill me. My colleagues have one of yours, and evidence beside that. They're competent, they'll sniff you out. There's nowhere you'll be safe - not Germany, not Poland, not fucking America. Understand?"
"Are you trying to scare me?"
"I'm telling you the truth." Adam stares up at the leader and refuses to blink first. He doesn't think the man will waver from his chosen path, not really - the fellow's not stupid, he'd known what the consequences might be when he'd killed the first member of his gang. He decided to do it then, and he decided to do it again twice after that - he's not going to stop now.
But Adam'll be damned if he doesn't try. And it's true, besides - he trusts Vincent and Wiktor and the rest of them to finish this case off clean, even if it takes Adam's death to do it.
"Luckily for you, little man," says the leader, "we're not going to kill you. Not yet."
And the knife - the knife descends -
German-Polish police office, Świecko, half past noon, the sun bright in the sky and white clouds scudding. The interview room; Wiktor, standing outside, the one man they'd captured, now awake and with his head bandaged, sitting handcuffed at the table. Vincent, his clothes neat, pulls the chair opposite him out and sits down.
They'd spoken but briefly, after Vincent had arrived with his prisoner in tow and the dust of a ruined warehouse in his hair; their aim was clear, words were nothing but a waste of precious time. Now Wiktor watches this questioning from outside of the neat little room; he can't hear the words spoken but he can see every twitch of their faces, every movement of their mouths.
Vincent speaks. Vincent smiles, soft. Vincent shuffles papers and props his head on his hand and nods understandingly. Vincent's back is tight with tension beneath the plum-red dark silk shirt and his free hand is tapping on his thigh beneath the table. Tap-tap, tap-tap.
Adam is out there. Adam is out there somewhere, in the hands of murderers. Everything could hinge on this.
The prisoner leans back in his chair; watches Vincent with narrowed suspicious eyes. Shakes his head. Shakes his head, again. He doesn't speak.
Vincent is still smiling. He says something, taps his papers into neat alignment, and, after a further silence on the prisoner's part, gets up.
He slips out through the door and the smile drops. "He's not talking," he says, as soon as the door is closed behind them.
"Fear, maybe," Wiktor offers. "Of his boss. He saw what was done to the betrayers."
Vincent nods. "They haven't found anything yet?" he asks, and Wiktor knows he's referring to the officers they'd sent to the scene, this time with armed trained backup - the other officers combing through traffic footage to get any hint of where the three remaining gang members might have taken Adam.
"Nothing," Wiktor says.
Again, Vincent nods. His eyes, unidentifiably colored as they are, are flint now; storm-grey.
"I'm going back in," he says; not even sharply, but with a solid clearness that makes it clear that he won't be argued with; doesn't expect to be argued with. Wiktor glances at their prisoner through the glass; the man has his head buried in his hands, the handcuffs hanging heavy from his wrists.
(Adam, somewhere out there - and this man very likely knows where - )
"Okay," he says after a pause. Steps back to let Vincent go back through the door.
Adam awakes to pain.
He's fallen unconscious a few times now; they never let him sleep for long, but even awake he feels distant and unmoored from reality. It's more pleasant than awareness, so he allows it. Drifts instead back through his own past. The trees and fields of his childhood, the waters of the river, the faint memory of his mother's smile (before her face had gone disapproving and cold), and, fainter still, the memory of his father's big gentle hands, greasy with machine oil and sweat.
He flinches away from those memories, veers in the direction of the present. Thinks, floating lazily through the haze of his body's agony, of Lidia. Lidia, beautiful Lidia, once lover and friend and now a stranger. Lidia, who'd left, like his father had.
He thinks, as the knife cuts, that it might have been easier, if Lidia had left him because she'd loved someone else more than she loved him. But there hadn't been anyone else - there had just been him, and the woman he'd married, and she'd decided she'd rather have a life alone than a life with him. At the time he'd thought she didn't love him enough - that if she loved him like she was supposed to, she would have understood, understood why they had to live where they did, why he had to work late, why she couldn't -
Nowadays, when he’s drunk enough to be honest with himself, he thinks it was never her fault. It was Adam who didn’t love enough, who wasn't enough, and she just realized it sooner than he did.
Pain, again, and Adam drifts through sense-memory - the look of silent disappointment on Lidia's face. His mother bleeding from her throat. His children watching him and Lidia argue, silently.
The years alone. And Vincent, smiling at him - Vincent's throat warm and solid beneath Adam's hand. The flutter of his pulse.
Then Vincent in the warehouse, staring at him as the ceiling came down; the warmth of him, when Adam had pushed him to safety.
At least that was the last thing he did. One good thing.
Again, Vincent sits down opposite the table from the man who is one of their few chances to find where Adam is. Wiktor watches him closely. He knows Vincent is planning something - knows it's something Vincent might not do, if the circumstances were different. Something Wiktor might stop him from doing, if the circumstances were different. But the circumstances are Adam, in the hands of torturers and murderers.
(Adam, somewhere Wiktor can't get to him - )
Wiktor lets it play out. Doesn't interfere - at least, not yet.
Vincent is talking again, with that same slight, professional smile. The prisoner shakes his head, growls out something curt. Vincent tips his head to the side, and the smile slips - glitches, almost - replaced with something jagged and sharp for a moment before flickering back into normality.
The prisoner flinches.
Vincent speaks. The prisoner casts a nervous glance at him, at the door. Shakes his head.
Wiktor's heart drops like a stone. They need this. They need this man to give them at least an useful hint, because so far they have absolutely nothing, and by the time they've found something it might be too late. Wiktor thinks of the bodies they'd found, missing parts of themselves, staring up at the sky with empty eyes.
If they can't do this - if they aren't fast enough - if they find Adam as another one of those torn-apart corpses -
Vincent leans forwards, across the table. The smile drops - or not drops, not quite. The facial expression remaining could still be called a smile, in the same way as the yawning jaws of a bear trap. Something you'd cut your own leg off to escape.
Wiktor can't hear the words he's saying, but he can see Vincent's face; can see the way the prisoner's face goes pale.
But still, when Vincent pauses and waits, apparently another question, the prisoner glances around the room, nervous, then back to Vincent. Then shakes his head.
That's when Vincent snaps, completely, in a way Wiktor's never seen him snap.
He gets up from his seat at the table, in one quick motion, like a viper striking. Hands slam down on the table - the prisoner jerks back - fingers spread wide, and Vincent's face is clear and calm and cold as he spits words, words that Wiktor can't hear. Wiktor's heart jumps up, beating hummingbird-fast. Hairs rising on the back of his neck.
He's never been afraid of Vincent before. Has never had reason to; never considered the possibility of it, really. And even now he isn't scared, because he knows Vincent, and because he is safely outside of the target range of that gaze, merciless as a spotlight. If he were sitting at that table, looking up into Vincent's eyes -
The prisoner's shoulders are held tense and straight. His chin lifts, mutinous.
Wiktor snaps back to reality.
It's satisfying, of course it's satisfying, to see Vincent cut apart a man who would, if circumstances had fallen out a little differently, be one of the men holding Adam prisoner - torturing him, possibly. But it's not doing any of them any good. The prisoner is a man used to fear, and Vincent scaring him like this is only locking the secrets he holds up tighter, making his resolve stronger - and Vincent, right now, is too caught up in rage and terror to see it.
Wiktor reaches for the doorknob and says into the room, sharply, "Vincent. A moment."
Vincent looks around, away from the prisoner, and the man slumps a little in relief. Wiktor doesn't look at him. Wiktor looks at Vincent.
"What," snarls Vincent.
"A moment," says Wiktor tightly, and jerks his head in the direction of the hallway behind him. It's a long long moment before Vincent nods and follows him out.
Wiktor closes the door behind them firmly; breathes.
"This won't work," he says, measured and careful. The mental images flickering; Adam, a corpse in the woods, in a warehouse, in the water.
"What do you mean," says Vincent. He's tense, held in check again but hovering on the razor-sharp edge of snapping.
"We can't do this like that," Wiktor says. "You can't - scare him into talking."
Vincent rears, eyes wild, snarls, "I have to, we're running out of time! I'll get it out of him, I will - "
"Vincent," says Wiktor.
"- you're acting like you don't even want Adam back!"
Silence.
Vincent closes his eyes; tips his head back; when he meets Wiktor's eyes again the feral glare in his eyes is gone. "I'm sorry," he says, quietly. "I'm - sorry, Wiktor. That was out of line."
"It was," Wiktor acknowledges, softly. Adam was his friend first, even if he and Vincent have bonded in the weeks they've spent together, even if Wiktor and Adam have only ever been a casual thing, normal conversations at work and grill evenings together when neither of them have anything better to do. Adam and Vincent were intense, all-or-nothing - but just because that's not what Wiktor and Adam have together doesn't mean he doesn't care. That he doesn't want -
"I'm sorry," Vincent says. His eyes dark and soft.
"Apology accepted," Wiktor says. He dares, for a moment, to grip Vincent's shoulder, reassuring. "We'll get him."
"Detective Krol," says someone, rushing up to them, and they turn in synch, the quiet moment interrupted by the new arrival. "Detective Krol - " a quick nod in Vincent's direction - "Detective Ross."
She takes a breath. "We found something," she says.
Adam awakes to pain -
It's maybe fifteen minutes later that Wiktor and Vincent run down the steps into the basement of an old house, a few miles out from town, to find Adam.
They're not the first ones in. The SWAT team, people trained for this, had gone in first; they'd secured the exits, apprehended the gang members, and only then let Vincent and Wiktor through.
Adam is slumped in a chair in the middle of the otherwise empty basement room, his head drooping so that his chin touches his chest. There is blood, so much blood, and Wiktor's heartbeat kicks up a notch when he realizes he can't see him breathing.
"Adam!" says Vincent, panicked, and runs headlong to his side. Wiktor is beside him a moment later; Vincent looks across to him, says quietly, "Pulse is there."
Wiktor's heart still beating too fast in his chest. He nods, the words gone, consumed by the relief.
"Adam?" Vincent is stroking the side of Adam's face, gently. "Adam, come on. Do you hear me?"
Adam awakes -
"There you are," says Vincent in relief; he's still bowed over Adam's slumped form, but now Adam's eyes are flickering open.
"Vincent?" he slurs. There's blood on his mouth; did he bite his tongue, or is it something more sinister? Wiktor crouches down and starts briskly checking him for wounds, the bile rising in his mouth at every line on the grim tally but the relief rising with it, too, when he discovers nothing that is likely to have fatal consequences, not with the ambulance already on its way.
"What's wrong?" Adam is reaching for Vincent's face, clumsily. "Is someone hurt?"
"Is someone - " Vincent chokes on incredulity and a swallowed-down sob. "Yes, someone's hurt! You! Idiot."
"Oh." Adam blinks at Vincent for a few moments, dazed, drifting on the edge of unconsciousness. Vincent pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket and very carefully wipes a bit of the blood out of Adam's eyes, off his face. "Just me?"
"That's not a just," says Vincent, quietly but sharply. "Never."
He strokes strands of dark hair out of Adam's face and says, "You could have run. You could have run, but you pushed me out of the way instead - "
Adam's blood is red and slick on Wiktor's hands as he stands back up. The words jerk him to a halt - so that was what Vincent had been omitting, when he'd recounted the story to Wiktor. What had added that extra edge to his drive. It was no coincidence, that Adam had ended up alone on one side of the collapsed ceiling, with three uninjured gang members, and Vincent alone on the other, with the one unconscious.
"Shut it," Adam grumbles, lopsidedly. "Best thing I ever - ever did."
"No, it's not," Vincent snaps. There's blood on him now, too. Blood everywhere. "Not when it ends like this."
Adam drags his head upright to make eye contact with Vincent. "Why does it matter," he asks; the tone seems more genuinely bewildered than anything else. Like he honestly cannot fathom why it would matter to Vincent that this case ended with Adam tortured in a basement.
"Because I care about you, you asshole!"
There's an odd absurdity to the situation that makes Wiktor almost want to start laughing. Adam, bloody and in pain, staring up at Vincent in complete bafflement - like this, of all the things that have happened today, was the first thing to unnerve him.
"But," stutters Adam, "what I - what I did - "
"I forgave you for that," Vincent cuts through his sentence, quick and clean. "Weeks ago."
"Oh," says Adam, quiet. Stares at Vincent's face like there's nothing else in the world.
Wiktor could be annoyed that Adam is taking no notice of him; but he's never really been that sort of person, and there's a sweetness to this, Adam and Vincent, that he doesn't want to see ruined.
Even if he really wants to know what exactly the two of them are talking about. But he can ask Vincent later, or Adam. It doesn't have to be now.
"Adam, stay awake," Vincent says, panicky again, patting Adam's cheek - but Adam's eyes continue to slip closed, head tilting to the side - Wiktor reaches for him without thinking about it, panic rising in his own chest -
And then medical personnel are already coming down the stairs, heading for them.
Adam awakes to - not pain, but instead the blissful quiet absence of it that comes with the really good painkillers. There is white light, again, but it's the light of a white-walled hospital room now.
He glances down at himself, and finds - Vincent, asleep. Sprawled half on the bed and half sitting in a no doubt uncomfortable plastic chair, snoring gently. One of Wiktor's neat blue suit jackets is draped over his shoulders.
Adam smiles to himself through the exhaustion and rolls over, back into sleep.