Chapter Text
Jacques Morneau flicked ash from the lit end of his cigarette and eyed the body on the floor distastefully.
Garish. That’s what it was. Dark blood splattered the wall and floor in long-dried rivulets, signs of a struggle painted in the torn floral wallpaper and jagged bruising around the victim’s cleanly-cut throat. The man had obviously put up a fight, but the kill itself had been executed with almost uncanny, mechanical precision. Not the workings of a madman, then. Certainly not like his own murder scene. And, by the color of the blood and the state of the body – this had happened no more than four hours ago.
Jacques sneered to himself. Once a detective, always a detective. For all the damn good it did him these days.
The body wasn’t the first, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. Every town they stopped through, every backwater bolthole they shut themselves in for the night. Weeks, days later, it’d pop up on the news. Blood and fear, threats and black tape. What remained of Reliable Excavation and Builders’ League were like starving jackals in the New Mexico desert, snapping at Jacques and Doe’s heels as they blazed through the empty shells of war bases with whatever hellfire they could get their hands on. Doe knew a surprising amount about explosives, it turned out. He said he had learned it from an old friend, and didn’t say anything else. If they were in any other situation, Jacques might have pressed him for more – he had yet to forget the ghosts of the Hydro-Electric complex.
But, he digressed. The body was the far more pressing matter. He recognized the man as the owner of the general store they’d stopped in last night – barely ten hours between their transaction and the estimated time of death. It was too close. It was far, far too close.
They were running out of places to hide.
Doe chose that moment to barge back into the room, unceremonious and out-of-breath. “Perimeter’s clear,” he said. “No other bodies. Just this poor bastard.”
“Delightful,” sighed Jacques. “I suppose he won’t be missing his goods in this condition. We ought to make another stop at his store before we leave town. God knows we deserve the discount.”
Doe almost looked like he wanted to argue, but Jacques could see the logic winning over his imbecilic, valorant vices. Good. They had enough to worry about already. The number of Respawn Machines left was steadily dwindling, which meant, first, it was far easier for their adversaries to predict where they’d be going next; and, second, if they died, in Doe’s words, they were fucked even harder than before.
He slipped out the door, careful of the mess on the floorboards, and Doe followed after, running an absent, perturbed hand over his scalp. He had set his helmet aside at Jacques’ request – the search for them was still publicized, and the lack of his signature headwear made him far less recognizable at a distance. It did not, however, make him any less jarring for the Detective to look at.
Doe’s eyes ruined what would have otherwise been a perfectly stoic appearance. They were wide and wild, expressive almost to the point of uncanniness. His hair, an unplaceable gray-blonde, was kept in a short military shave, though it had recently grown into something vaguely resembling a crew cut. It was strange to see all of him at once, so long had Jacques known him with the flat steel barrier of his helmet obscuring that part of his face.
It was more than Jacques liked to see of him. Oftentimes he found himself staring for too long or slipping his gaze away too fast, in ways that he couldn’t fully control, and which deeply irritated him.
He took solace, at any rate, in that for all that Doe had lost his own mask, Jacques himself had gained one back. He had procured a new balaclava not long into their travels, and relished the familiar protection it provided. It was an unobtrusive dark gray — Blutarch’s navy was a thing of the past now.
Jacques was a proud man, but he was not too proud to admit that the loss of the company stung deeply. All those years of work he had put in. All those dozens of men he had shot in the dead of night or poisoned in broad daylight. And for what? For nothing. He drove a rickety, ugly sedan and showered cold under rusty motel water, running for his life with no-one but an incompetent, bull-headed transvestite for company. (Not that the latter half of Doe’s nature was of any particular concern to Jacques — it would make him something of a hypocrite if it had been, given his own tendencies. But that was neither here nor there.)
Even his health had escaped him. A high fever had followed him out of his own grave, clinging like mold to his flaking, discolored skin. He burnt to the touch, or so Doe had told him, but all his vitals measured pristine, and there were no other symptoms – it seemed to be a purely psychological phenomenon, or otherwise a strange precursor to something worse. There was nothing he could do about it either way, beyond shivering and sweating himself to sleep on alternating nights. He grit his teeth and bore it. There were far more pressing matters.
And the sedan – a dishwater-grey ‘59 Studebaker Lark, which had been the least vile car Jacques had been able to acquire in the midst of his priorly extenuating circumstances – for its part, was as low-key of a vehicle as they could have hoped for, not least for the number of times the plates had been pried off and reapplied, or the accumulated dirt and dour chipped paint. Jacques slid into the diver’s side, fighting with the ever-sputtering engine while Doe took his seat opposite.
The Lark finally came to life with a low rumble and a belching puff of exhaust. Jacques set it into drive, pulling out of the lot and into the cracked road. They were somewhere up north, almost verging on Colorado, chasing BLU and RED’s paper trails to every straggling outpost they could find. The dead-end town was the last in a line of many, and Jacques could hardly be bothered to keep track of them.
“We’re going to have to lie low for a while,” he said after a few blocks of silence. “This isn’t sustainable. They’re getting too close to us.”
“That’s what you said two weeks ago, right before we blew Coldfront to hell,” shot back Doe.
Jacques gripped the steering wheel tighter. “Things were different then, Soldier. Don’t forget which one of us is the professional here.”
“Right, right,” said Doe, “Forgot you used to be Archibald’s personal spook for a second there.”
Jacques snarled. “And I suppose you have a bright idea of how to get us out of this mess, then?”
“Actually,” started Doe, and then a bullet hit the back windshield.
Jacques nearly swerved off the road. “Merde,” he spat, flooring the gas and ignoring the pathetic complaints of the engine. God, what he would give for his old car back.
Doe had pulled the revolver from the glovebox, cocked it, and was halfway through cranking his window down by the time Jacques collected himself enough to realize what he was trying to do. More bullets sparked off the rear fender as the Lark swerved erratically. The pursuing vehicle was a mirage in the rear-view mirror.
“What the hell are you thinking?” Jacques yelled, while Doe jammed his helmet on as a last consideration and promptly stuck his head and shoulders out the window like a dog.
“Watch and learn, Frenchie!” He crowed, and took aim at the car behind them. The revolver popped once, twice – and then Jacques spat a curse, trying to keep his eyes on the road as the pursuing vehicle swerved abruptly out of sight of his mirrors. There was a cascading, metallic crash back and to the left of them, and then a blast of light and heat as the car’s engine collapsed on itself on impact. Jacques slammed down on the Lark’s breaks, and Doe’s graciously-helmeted head cracked against the far side of his window frame as he came back in.
“Told you,” said Doe, grinning.
Jacques ignored him. “Give me the gun,” he hissed, and snatched it from Doe’s hand before he could respond.
The pursuing car had run head-on into the side of a brick building. Jacques cocked the revolver as he stepped out of the Lark, stalking towards the burning wreckage. He doubted the driver was alive, but he kept the barrel up as he crept around the side of the pillaring smoke, bringing his sleeve up over his mouth and nose, his eyes watering.
As the black smoke shifted and undulated, it became apparent that the driver, or what remained of the driver, had already burnt and charred into an indistinguishable husk – nothing useful at all about the figure could be made out, not even if the car had been sent by BLU or RED. Any color that was once there had been swallowed up by clinging ashen gray.
IInvoluntary bitter nausea spiked in Jacques’ gut at the sight of the corpse. The smoke swelled in his throat. He turned away to gag, which quickly turned into a heavy, hacking cough, and he stumbled back to the Lark before it could get any worse.
“Driver’s dead,” he rasped, sliding in and kicking the engine into gear. “It’s all burnt. We have to get out of here.”
“You’re sure he’s – “
“He’s dead,” snapped Jacques. “Nobody could have survived that kind of burn.” If he put slightly too much force into reeling the stick back, Doe said nothing about it.
He shook off the remnants of the cough as they drove on. The splintering bullet-holes in the back window brought with them an insufferable, dissonant whistling noise that made Jacques’ teeth hurt.
“We’ll stock up on supplies and go west,” he said tersely. “There’s a route there that will take us around to the Badlands.”
“What happened to lying low?”
Jacques shot Doe a glance, conflicted. “Do you really think there’s anywhere left they won’t find us?”
“There might be,” said Doe. “Think about it, Frenchie. Where have we been running? Small towns, motels, backwaters. Exactly where they want us to go. Where nobody will look twice at us.”
The Detective scoffed. “What, you’re telling me you think we should hole ourselves up in high society?”
“Different kind of society,” said Doe. “Somewhere nobody wants to be caught.”
Jacques looked at him dubiously. “If you say whorehouse, you can find your way to the Badlands yourself.”
That got a laugh out of Doe. “We aren’t gonna be whores, Detective,” he said confidently. “We’re gonna be queers!”
“I – Excuse me?” Spat Jacques, shocked into a state of sheer bewildered fluster.
“I know somebody who runs a fag bar down South,” said Doe. “We could hide there until they think we’ve fallen off the map.”
Jacques made a valiant but fruitless attempt to process Doe’s line of reasoning. “And you think this is a good idea… why?”
“Who the hell’s gonna think to look for us there?” Doe challenged. “Also, do you have a better idea?”
Jacques did not. He grit his teeth until it felt like his jaw was cracking. “Fine. Fine. We’ll change the plates again on the way.” He leaned back in his seat slightly, wondering what the hell he was getting himself into. “I hope this bar of yours serves decent gin,” he said icily.
“I have no idea!” said Doe brightly.
“Wonderful,” sighed Jacques, and switched the turn-signal on.
—
They were on the road south, and Doe was making a valiant attempt to turn the radio on. It had been broken since Jacques had stolen the car in the first place, and was only capable of blaring painful static and incomprehensible snatches of local news reports.
“ – Teufort, with the weather up in – “ came through briefly, before it dissolved back into a gray-white whine. “ – Cross necklace, and – “
Jacques looked up at the radio sharply, frowning. “What was that?”
“Hold on,” said Doe, still fiddling with the dials, deep in concentration.
“ – Stolen. In other – “ crackled the radio, “This will be – for more – may have a handgun. Witnesses say he was wearing a suit vest and a white shirt. If you see – “ but it lost itself in static again, and faded back in to “ – a holly, jolly Smissmas! With you – “
“It’s February,” observed Jacques flatly around the cigarette in his mouth.
“Smissmas is year-round,” said Doe. “Well, as long as nobody kills Santa.”
“Soldier, did you hear that?” Jacques asked, ignoring him. “You don’t think – “
“I heard it. They never did find his body,” said Doe, switching gears in an instant. “He could be anywhere.”
“I’ll put a bullet in that madman’s head if I see him again,” growled Jacques. “God knows what he’s doing out there, but it can’t be anything good.”
Doe didn’t respond.
The topic of the good Doctor had always been a bit of a sore subject between them. Doe seemed stoutly convinced that he had been trapped in his own web of misfortune, but Jacques had far less faith in the man than that – As far as he was concerned, the Doctor had dug his own grave, and if Jacques had it his way, he’d stay there. The Detective wasn’t a forgiving man at the best of times, and it took a lot more than misfortune to account for a pair of bullets to the forehead. He hadn’t even known he’d been shot a second time until he’d read a stained newspaper clipping a week later, drinking cold black coffee in the back of a cheap bus headed towards Blu’s corporate headquarters. He reveled in the petty knowledge that the bastard had wasted another bullet on him.
Jacques remembered his death very clearly. He’d had a split second to see the Doctor sit up in the coffin, and a split second after that to wonder why the pain had stopped. And then he’d seen absolutely nothing at all until he was clawing his way out of a flat black ocean, tar in his lungs and a fever behind his eyes, and he shuddered awake and vomited up gore on the holy floor of a flat metal Respawn chamber, half-buried in the red desert.
There was no doubt in Jacques’ mind, throughout his entire life before that point, that when he was killed he was going to meet hellfire. He would have been truthfully bewildered had his afterlife been anything close to pleasant. But there was something about it – about the void of sensation, the depth under his feet, the dislocated gap in his memory like a drop from a cliff-face – there was something about it that unsettled him very, very deeply. He spent as much time trying to forget as he spent trying to remember.
The sickness of the slaughterhouse clung to him like it was draining his blood. It writhed under his skin and sang to him softly of shattered red consoles, hacksaws and fire axes and oil, dripping with sickly-sweet reckoning. He often woke in the night, covered in icy sweat, names cresting on his parched lips that he’d never heard before.
The ride south passed quietly. Doe gave him fragmented directions as they went, squinting at creased statewide roadmaps. He had taken his jacket off at some point, sweating the heat out in a thin white undershirt while the Detective tried not to look at the way the perspiration collected on his skin, shivering in his own trench coat all the while. They paused only once to fill up the Lark’s tank, and didn’t stop again until long after the sun had gone down.
A motel room, to Jacques’ resentful agreement, was too obvious of a trail. He parked the car offroad in the middle of the flatlands, half-hidden behind a lone line of jagged ridges. Doe tried to challenge rock-paper-scissors for the back seat and Jacques waved him off disparagingly.
“Someone needs to keep watch,” he said, blowing smoke into the air. “I’ll wake you in a few hours.”
Doe shrugged. “Give me a light?”
Jacques put his hand in his pocket for his lighter, and abruptly went stock-still when he felt Doe leaning into him. A knuckle brushed his jaw to turn his head as Doe lit his cigarette straight off the end of the Detective’s, unbothered, eyes downcast in concentration. He leaned back and puffed smoke like nothing had happened at all, spitting into the dirt.
Prickling heat bloomed in Jacques’ face. He swallowed and blamed it on the fever. He blamed the ghost of Doe’s hand on his chin on the fever too, and was deeply relieved when the man went inside to lie down.
Christ, he thought, dragging a hand down his face. He didn’t have time for this.
He certainly wasn’t a stranger to his own desires, nor was he averse to them by any means – he took interest in men and women the same, and always had, though he was hardly the type to pursue any of them in earnest. His history in that regard consisted mainly of chance encounters, nights and mornings dripping with dark bitter honey, lost on a bender with strangers whose names he hardly knew and who certainly didn’t know his. There were few exceptions to that rule, and he didn’t care to think of them.
And Doe. Doe. The man was a thorn in his side at best and a dangerous liability at worst. Jacques would sell him out like he had sold out all the others, come the time, come the need. He owed Doe very little and got even less back. It wasn’t worth it – and even if it had been, there was no guarantee the soldier shared any semblance of the twisting want that plagued him.
Jacques refused to continue the thought any longer. He breathed out a thin stream of smoke and watched it curl up into the cold desert night, wishing in vain that his troubles would go with it.
The morning would come eventually, and he was beginning to think the sun might rise red.
—
By eight AM they were on the road again, rolling towards Doe’s mysterious bar with both the windows down on the cracked highways of the outwaters. By nine the exit that would have lead them through the Badlands passed them by, and Jacques looked after it with a sense of fickle pessimism. Their usual routine – run, hide, remove a target, run, et cetera – was being disrupted by the unknowns of where he was allowing Doe to lead him.
In shorter terms, he felt he was putting too much faith in a man who had spent the last two and a half hours attempting to solve a somewhat-battered crossword puzzle and failing so spectacularly that Jacques almost came back around to being impressed by his sheer gumption.
But he still drove south, past the exit, without hesitation. What exactly that made of him, he had no idea.
Time slipped away easily on the featureless mesa highways. Jacques blinked and, though it had been early afternoon a moment ago, he was looking at the sundown, plumes of bright paradise colors billowing up into flat dusty blue. His shivers, paradoxically, eased with the cooling air.
“Turn there,” said Doe, when buildings started to crop up again, and “Left here,” “Four blocks,” until they were winding into the seediest part of a nameless town comprised entirely of seedy parts, and Jacques squinted at the tattered, graffitied storefronts with deep distaste.
“You better know where you’re going,” he grumbled.
Doe just grinned, and told him to take another turn. “That one.”
“That one?” asked Jacques. The building looked better than he’d expected. Halfway to being a respectable establishment, actually. Maybe he hadn’t given Doe enough credit.
“No, that one,” said Doe, pointing past where Jacques had been looking to a mostly-brick building splattered with the least palatable array of colors he had ever seen in his life. The neon sign over the door glowed an eye-searing mix of purples, and it spelled out the word DALOKOHS, though some of the letters were busted, making it look more like DALKS. Next to it sat a simply-lined depiction of an overflowing beer pint.
“Wonderful,” said Jacques icily.
“Take the gun with you,” said Doe offhandedly, as they pulled to a stop and he opened the passenger-side door.
Jacques glanced at him. “I thought you knew the owner.”
“I do.”
“Hm,” said the Detective. He put the gun in his waistband. There were four shots left in it. He didn’t bother getting more ammo from the trunk.
“Let me do the talking. And you better take that gimp mask off before we go in,” Doe said as they approached the door. “Unless you really are looking for a good time.”
Jacques’ mouth twisted into a thin line. Reluctantly, he peeled off his balaclava, raking his sweaty hair back with his other hand. He hardly felt like attracting that kind of attention, but the absence of the mask was almost more bothersome than the potential of unwanted advances. He felt raw without it, like a layer of too-fresh skin had been peeled off. The feverish chill that had accompanied him since the slaughterhouse was starting to redouble. The mark on his forehead where he’d been shot ached like an old bruise.
Doe pulled the door open, and the heavy scent of cheap alcohol and stale nicotine made Jacques’ mouth twitch. It was a slow night – the handful of patrons sitting around the place gave them an assortment of suspicious (or maybe lustful, on occasion) once-overs as Doe walked straight up to the bar. Jacques followed in his footsteps, meeting the looks he was thrown with cool distaste.
“What do you – “ started the bartender, a broad, muscular woman with a dark braid and a strong Russian accent, and then she abruptly stopped and stared at Doe. Her face broke into a wide, toothy grin. “Jane?”
Jacques blinked at the use of Doe’s first name, and blinked harder as the woman leaned across the counter, pulling Doe in by the collar to kiss him square on the mouth.
“Hello, Zhanna!” said Doe happily when she pulled back, a bright flush on his cheeks. Jacques watched him straighten his battered helmet and felt very strongly like someone was playing some kind of tasteless prank on him.
“Where have you been, Jane?” asked Zhanna, her smile swapping for mock anger. “Has been too long! You promised to visit! And who is this skinny boyfriend of yours?”
“I was going to visit! But I got a job in Mortem,” said Doe. “And then I got shot. Several times. I’m fine now. And he isn’t a boyfriend. He’s French.”
“I am not this idiot’s paramour,” snapped Jacques, feeling regret begin to sink in. “I don’t suppose you’d sell me a drink. God knows I need one.”
“You are very funny,” said Zhanna, reaching over to clap him slightly too hard on the shoulder. “For a friend of Jane’s it is on the house.”
They sat at the bar, and though his hackles were still raised, Jacques drank. Doe had beer, and for his own part he only told Zhanna to serve him something respectable, to which she produced a complicated, fruity little cocktail that made Jacques feel both starkly patronized and deeply understood.
“So,” said Zhanna finally, “Tell me why you are here, Jane. I do not think you came here all the way from Mortem just to say hello to your poor old friend Zhanna.”
“Well,” started Doe, and looked around conspicuously, sobering a bit. “We’re keeping our heads low,” he said in a hush. “We’ve got some no-good sons of bitches riding our asses, if you know what I mean.”
“You are having an orgy?”
“It’s a metaphor,” said Jacques tiredly. “He means we are running from the law. He led us here saying you could give us refuge for a while.”
“I see,” Zhanna said. “Well, I… suppose I do owe Jane that favor.”
“You do?” said Doe. “I mean, you do! Yes! And I intend to cash in on it!”
“You are going to help in the back,” said Zhanna flatly. Doe saluted dutifully, then gave a sharp look to Jacques, who sighed, resigning himself to his fate.
“Very well,” he said. “Your generosity is appreciated.”
“We will see,” said Zhanna. “We will see,” and walked off down the bar to tend to her other customers.
“I told you she’d help us,” said Doe to Jacques in a whisper, or as close as he ever got to a whisper, anyway. “We can lie low here.”
“Are all of your friends as insane as you are?" whispered Jacques back.
“What do you mean?” asked Doe sincerely.
The TV behind the bar crackled with the melodic droning of local news. After a moment, Jacques realized that it was a later part of the same news broadcast they’d heard over the radio that morning. “ — Are currently unknown,” the newscaster was saying. “Keep an eye out, dial the police or 911 if you see anything alarming, and stay safe. Have a good night, New Mexico.”
Jacques sighed again. He had a feeling it was going to be a long, long couple of days.