Chapter Text
Prompt: Kneeling
Call the Shots by Vanessa S. Quest
To say the week had been a hectic one, in Dr. Quest’s assessment would be a bit of an understatement. Even in his busy lifestyle, he rarely bookended his research projects around a maniacal encounter, destroying a facility, and then coming home to a double-kidnapping, and yet here he was.
He looked at Race and then Hadji. His eldest had clearly been through the ringer, himself, and seemed to feel uneasy about having managed to escape to report of the kidnappings with at least some degree of certainty of where they were taken. Typically, he knew the kids would intentionally stay together. That Hadji had expressed that they’d been separated and that he was unclear as to where they were, though, it made them all stand on edge.
They hadn’t even left from their latest adventure in Washington when this happened! The idea that he’d manage to get a decent cup of coffee between budding emergencies seemed improbable to say the least. Luckily, though, Hadji was quite familiar with where he’d returned from as the boy had already been there once this week.
The series of buildings had been disguised as a true commercial operation, a legitimate business hiding an illegal enterprise.
Had the mysterious circumstances not drawn the Quests to it, it may even have stayed that way, but the toxic dumping that had affected the local wildlife in a strange phenomenon had soon revealed a madman’s attempts to wreak havoc. It went without saying he’d done his due diligence of destroying the man’s laboratory, his secret experiments on wild game destroyed along with the man’s purported research.
While they’d thought he had potentially perished in the ensuing fire, it appeared as if his demise was over-reported.
Just as the Quests had familiarized themselves with the Portkey Chemical Company, they too had been researched by the mastermind behind the scheme. Dr. Hunter Green had made it his mission to exact revenge for their interference, and currently had both Jonny and Jessie within his possession.
It didn’t take long for them to mount a challenge to reclaim their children, though at this point Dr. Quest was strongly considering upgrading from a communicator that did not have GPS to some kind of watch that could include the added benefit. His 12 year old had been abducted easily 12 times, easily, it was possible there were more times that his son just simply hadn’t bothered to relay to him.
He was certain he was making a lousy impression on Race in regards to the man’s 13 year old daughter. He assumed this was in fact tally one for her abduction count. His 14 year old was likely between the two, closer to 5 or 6 times, he suspected.
That Race had his own bag specifically designated for rescue missions around abductions really drove it home. After this, he’d get a cup of coffee, take the kids back home, and design a better communicator that discretely housed GPS, and possibly enroll the children in more martial arts lessons. He’d have to understand how this latest kidnapping occurred to really see if that would provide a benefit.
In all, it took 3 hours to get back to the burnt-out husk of a laboratory, the complex of buildings had been gated and closed, however, it was clear activities hadn’t fully ceased despite the destruction of the production tanks, and main facilities. It was already late in the day, the setting sun glaring through portions of the buildings that they’d destroyed. And yet, the hum of energy was still cloistered around the burnt building.
While the structure wasn’t completely leveled, they were definitive entry-points that could no longer be secured simply with a lock and key, yet the edges of the building remained, along with enough space to easily house several rooms.
Hadji had reported escaping from one such location, managing to squeeze his way out of a narrow crack in the infrastructure, one they likely hadn’t even realized was there with all the debris present. Inspecting the ruins, they had observed a similar ingress points in the concrete structures housing the remaining portions of the building. A strategy of divide and conquer was quickly implemented with Hadji and Dr. Quest together, and Race taking the second prong.
Dr. Quest hadn’t specifically expected to be greeted let alone so formally upon his arrival, though he suspected rapidly that there had been some additional changes since they’d last visited the Portkey Chemical Company.
For starters, there was certainly a change in layout.
An unarmed, and unguarded Dr. Green seemed to saunter through the wreckage to greet the pair.
“Ah, Dr. Quest! I see you received my invitation.” The man laughed boisterously, he gave a subtle nod to Hadji. His radio clicked signaling guards had spotted Agent Bannon.
Not long after, the sounds of gunshots seemed to echo across the landscape.
Minutes stretched in the stand-off of wills as the sounds of gunshots faded into nothingness. With nothing being reported in, they were in a vacuum between the three. Dr. Quest took an aggressive stance, keeping his son two steps behind him, “Where are my children—if you’ve harmed them you’ll come to regret it deeply.”
“If I’ve harmed them? No, Dr. Quest, you harmed me. For which, I demand my recompense!” The man growled dangerously. “I’ll make you pay the same price as what you stole from me, my laboratory—my life’s work!” Dripping with vitriol and malice, the man ranted on his vision for the world, and how it was stolen from him so unjustly by Dr. Quest himself.
Knowing he held the captives, and that Dr. Quest was at his mercy, he finally cracked a cruel smile, he drew his radio to his mouth and gave the command. Near instantly three armed guards came forward from two separate areas, two hefted prisoners with them, wrists zip-tied behind their backs, hoods over their heads before stopping ten meters away on either side of Dr. Green, and another five meters from Dr. Quest and Hadji.
That the children were being manhandled was clearly apparent. Dr. Quest’s blood boiled at the sight of the tight grip on his son’s shoulder, bunching the fabric of his shirt enough to reveal the tip of his hip bone on his right side. Jessie was in a similar state, a grip on green fabric was keeping her tight to the armed guard and dangerously close to the barrel of a gun.
“Jonny! Jessie! Are you kids hurt?!” He demanded.
Dr. Green held his hand up, “Why, how could you accuse my people of such a thing! They’d never act outside of my orders. Of course, that’s where we come to a bit of a quagmire, Dr. Quest. You see, you stole my life’s work and as I’ve stated, I demand recompense.” He took a steadying breath, his voice low and caustic, “I believe the life of one child would be equivalent.”
The redhead stared in utter disbelief, his eyes narrowed for a moment as he raked his eyes over the two armed guards near each child, and then the third guard in all too familiar Italian slip-on loafers behind the man holding his son.
“I’ll even be so kind as to let you choose the one I’ll let live.”
His mouth dropped, horrified and sickened by the madman’s game! “How do I know you’ll honor anything I say?!”
“You don’t. You have five seconds to say a name, and if you don’t my guards will shoot both of them. One—Two—”
“Jessie! Let the girl go.”
Jonny let out an audible gasp, he felt pressure on his shoulder as the man gripping him forced his weight to drop Jonny to his knees in a forced kneel. At the same moment, the second guard ripped the hood off the girl and shoved her forward.
“Jessie, come here! Quickly!” Dr. Quest demanded, she rushed forward, working to clear the 15 meters, getting so far as to pass Dr. Green as the man laughed giddily.
“You didn’t even choose your own son!” He let out a loud scoff, “You should take the bag off his head before you kill him.” The man rolled his hand in the air as he continued to bellow a sickening, sadistically joyous laugh.
Jonny felt the bag tear off his head, taking several strands of hair with it as he looked forward in disbelief. He heard the click of the gun behind him and swallowed down a gulp of air, terrified as his eyes connected to his father’s.
With the sound of a shot, Jonny slumped forward letting out a scream, hitting the ground with his chin in time to hear the second shot, glossy eyes cast upward in the distance watching the other guard drop to the ground, much like the one on top of him had.
Dr. Green turned at the sound of a second shot, surprised to see two of his guards down, the third leveling the pistol at him. “What’s the meaning of this!”
Race pulled the ski mask off his own face to glare down the man. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way, pal. I know there’s a few people who’d love to talk with you about what you’ve been doing down at HQ!”
“HOW?!” The man yelled.
Dr. Quest rushed forward, striking the man, he gripped his collar and boxed the man twice while he was distracted, furious at what he’d forced the father to say. “You son of a bitch!”
As Jessie reached Hadji, the older boy pulled out his blade to cut her hands free then quickly turning his attention to his brother.
Jonny let out a whimper of pain which made Dr. Quest’s blood go from boiling to ice cubes.
“Jonny?!” Race kicked the corpse of the first guard off the boy, he saw the slickness of blood on the boy’s back from where the guard had been on top of him, but as he approached, he also saw to his abject horror a hole in the boy’s shirt just below his shoulder into his underarm producing its own source of red. “Kiddo—kiddo talk to me!”
Landing two more strong punches, Dr. Quest released his grip on Dr. Green that had kept the man from making contact with the ground before abandoning the snake to rush to his son. “JONNY!”
Race gently turned the boy’s arm up to feel for a through-wound, he felt the slug of a .22 in the tile just below the boy. He glared at the dead body he’d just kicked off the boy and saw the through wound there as well.
“Doc, he’s shot—the bullet went clean through!” He admitted, devastated.
“Cut him free!” He ordered, rapidly approaching the blond, as Race did so he rolled him onto his back. Jonny shivered, a stunned silence over him as his father’s fingers dug into his throat to count a pulse as he directed, “Race, make sure that fiend doesn’t get away again, and have them send an ambulance too! Jonny—Jonny snap out of it!”
That he was flanked by Jessie and Hadji while his dad was putting his weight on his shoulder did little to comfort the boy as his mind traveled back to the crispness of his dad’s voice when calling out Jessie’s name instead of his own.
He hiccupped back his own rejection of the man’s overbearing weight on him, gasping as his uninjured left arm swiped at his father’s arms trying to get away.
Hadji had rushed out of the room, sprinting at his top speeds to get to their vehicle before driving it up as close as he could get it through the wreckage before honking the horn to signal where he’d moved the car to. He pulled at the emergency kit and rushed the much shorter distance back, gauze rapidly being pulled from the container and handed to Dr. Quest to use on his bleeding brother.
Jessie’s hands covered her mouth as she kept repeating in disbelief, “No—you have to be okay—you have to be!”
From his bound position face down on his stomach, hog-tied in zip-ties, Dr. Green laughed loudly, “You may have ruined my life, but you’ve also just ruined yours.” He continued to cackle madly.
“Doc—the ambulance is on its way, along with the police—they’re 5 minutes out. How is he?!”
Jonny made another attempt to swipe his dad’s hands off his injured shoulder, his eyes half-lidded as he spilled more and more red into the gauze pads. He couldn’t tell if he felt cold or if he felt numb as he shivered on the ground.
“Son—stay awake!” Dr. Quest ordered, “You have to—”
Upon registering his dad’s order, the blond opted to reject him the one way he physically could in revenge for how readily he’d given him up. He closed his eyes and let himself drift quickly into grayness.
-TBC-