Chapter Text
Graham didn’t know what he was doing. He was on a plane with someone he barely knew en route to a country he hadn’t visited before in his life. The few moments of clear thinking were muddled between sudden headaches and flashes, courtesy of those ACME guys. He would probably get heavy consequences once someone discovered he left his job behind just like that and never returned or explained, but there was no going back now.
Also, he has the nagging suspicion that someone was behind him, if Carmen’s constant glancing back was anything to go by. It would make him more anxious, but he knew he was safe from whatever it was with her. Maybe she refused to explain, but he trusted her.
Graham was sure that they met each other at some point before the opera. He couldn’t recall the specifics, but he simply knew it. The brain jolt was starting to work, even though it left it in a confused state and came with an annoying headache. It was a matter of time until his mind fully recovered.
At least, that was what he was trying to convince himself of. This was strange. Everything was strange. He had no idea how Carmen knew he was in a prison far from Australia or how she convinced him to leave the country with only the clothes he had on. He had no idea how he got here, taking into account he didn’t even know if his passport was in his pocket or if he left it with the rest of his belongings and that he lacked memories of going into any airport. He had no idea why so many people seemed to think something suspicious was up with him, but some of these things gave him a clue or two.
Now, if only he could understand what they meant…
“I know this must be hard for you, but believe me when I tell you that this is for your own good,” Carmen said, reading the worry on his face.
Graham sighed as the headache returned. He braced himself and inhaled sharply.
“I vote in favor too,” someone said, “this is for her own good. That makes this a unanimous choice.”
The witnesses pleaded that they would stay silent and forget this ever happened, but Crackle had to deal with the loose ends to complete his mission. He wanted to complete this mission, so he raised his rod.
“Welcome to Seoul, South Korea.”
Darkness.
“So, Mr. Calloway, you wish to join VILE.”
Colors. Many of them. Noises and smells combined. They filled every nerve of his body until it became unbearable.
“C’mon, Lambkins, this isn’t funny!”
He packed the set of nesting dolls carefully. It was important. The only thing he had of…
“Don’t let go!”
He received a negative answer, so he had to attack. Those were his orders. He couldn’t hold back this time. His objective was right here, and reasoning made no difference. He had to neutralize any potential menace. His objective was the greatest menace out there, and he had to ignore his conflicting feelings on the matter.
“Stop there, thief!”
He struggled against his bonds.
“... the true name of VILE…”
Regret. Many regrets.
When he came back to reality, he found Carmen half-kneeling in a seat while gripping his wrists tightly above his head and looking at him with a concerned expression. As if she were trying to stop him from leaving his place or something.
Graham struggled, the fog still not clearing completely. He had to destroy her, she was the enemy. He stopped. No, he didn’t, she was a nice secret agent who was helping him deal with whatever was going on and he probably couldn’t land a punch on her face if he tried.
He blinked and looked around. When did Carmen get here? Where was here? He was sure that his cell didn’t look like this.
Apparently, it was a plane. Economy class. Somehow, his seatbelt was half-ripped and the lady in front of him was trying to get a toddler to stop staring and sit properly. When did he get on a plane? Wasn’t he in prison for a crime he had no idea if he committed or not five seconds ago? “Gray?”
“It’s Graham,” he corrected, still trying to figure out where exactly he was headed to. A migraine was coming soon.
“Everything alright, Carm?” Carmen’s redhead guy friend hissed in a whisper. He and his sister were sitting behind them, Graham recalled. Zack and Ivy, if he wasn’t mistaken.
“Nothing to see here,” Ivy told the curious passengers.
“Nothing I can’t deal with, Zack,” Carmen said, letting go of him, “although I think we have to pay for…”
He didn’t hear the rest of the sentence. He suddenly remembered that he, the person in charge of checking the lights for the next show, was on a plane somewhere. Quickly, he looked at the window. Everything was dark. He had no idea if there was land or sea below him. If it was nighttime, then he completely missed the last rehearsals and his boss would fire him. Also, if he was out of prison but had no idea how, did that mean he broke out and ran away from the law or something? Maybe he had committed more crimes he had no idea of and Carmen was taking him to the authorities again. He would spend the rest of his life imprisoned and wouldn’t remember why.
“How’d I get here? We have to go back! I- I’m sure we can clear this out with the police, I need a chance to explain.”
“Ugh, not again,” Ivy groaned. Graham got the impression that this happened before.
Carmen gave her a look he didn’t understand and then turned to him. “What’s the last thing you remember, Graham?” she asked.
“I was in my cell,” he said after a few seconds of silence.
“Some things happened since then,” Carmen said calmly, “I bailed you out, you asked me several questions, we had to hurry to get to the airport, and we’ve spent a while here.”
He was no geography genius, but the soreness of his body and Carmen’s information told him he was far from Northern European land by now. His head throbbed, but he barely remembered some fragments of the journey, along with one or two memories about being in a high-speed chase in the snow with a heavy backpack, somehow. “Okay, I think I remember that.”
“That’s good,” she said, “why don’t you try to sleep for a while?”
He nodded and closed his eyes, even though he knew he shouldn’t. He felt a strange sense that he had to stay awake and ready to fight, but he ignored it.
“What are we gonna do with-”
“Zack,” he heard Carmen interrupt in a whisper, “pen.”
Whatever they were going to talk about, Carmen didn’t want him to know. That made some suspicions creep up his spine, but he guessed that it made more sense than everything else about this situation. He wouldn’t trust himself with anything important in his current state, either.
Graham was on a train. He was nervous and anxious, although he didn’t know why. Each wagon had something strange, from the weird flashy stick he often saw in his flashbacks to cups of coffee filled with saltwater to origami sheep running in circles. A matryoshka flew by, so he followed it. A sense of dread filled him as it stopped on the last wagon. The green door had a very familiar V. Bracing himself for a fight, he went in.
He woke up to Carmen shaking him lightly. “We have to hurry. The plane leaves soon. Can you walk by yourself? How do you feel?”
Graham rubbed his eyes sleepily. “Uh, yeah, but… a second plane? Where are we going, again?”
Carmen looked at him, concerned. That only made him concerned too. “I told you when… forget it. We’re headed to San Diego.”
She couldn’t be serious. “San Diego?”
“Let’s go, or else Zack and Ivy are gonna leave us here.” With that said, Graham stood up, stretched, and followed her.
A part of him urged him to go away as fast as he could and call a specific number on somebody’s stolen phone, but he paid no mind to it.
—-------------
“Do you want something to drink, Gray?”
“It’s Graham,” he corrected for the fifteenth time, “and I’m good, but thanks, mate.”
“Right, sorry,” Carmen said, slightly embarrassed by the slip. Maybe to her he would always be Gray, but she had to stop seeing the guy she met during orientation at VILE whenever she looked at him. That was only a part of the man sitting on the couch. And not the present one, for that matter.
To Carmen, Graham Calloway had been three people. The first one was her inseparable best friend Gray, always confident and glad to help her or go cause mischief together, the second one was Crackle, the ruthless VILE operative who would throw anything and anyone aside to complete his mission, and the third one was the very confused electrician trying to figure out what was going on. They were different, yet, they were the same. She saw flashes of his past self that were all too familiar. His trust in her and the look in his eyes when she found him, identical to the one he gave her so many times as VILE students, warmed her heart in a way she could never describe.
The matter of his current mental state was different. Since she broke him out of jail, he had been a little absent-minded and sometimes acted strange or more like Crackle, not to mention he was often disoriented. She worried about his short-term memory. Once or twice he had muttered things he wasn’t supposed to remember, but that was inevitable.
“How’s it going with Gray, Red?”
Carmen sighed and went to the kitchen. A little conversation with Player was exactly what she needed. “Not very… wait, weren’t you supposed to be asleep?” she asked as she served some water. She didn’t know why she bothered. By now, his sleeping times were as busted as hers, if not more. It wouldn’t surprise her if he woke up too early to go to school, either. Maybe he hadn’t even gone to sleep last night. “Or are you doing any homework, by chance?”
She heard him sigh heavily. For some reason, he sounded really troubled. Carmen decided she would get him something to cheer him up later. “They took my phone for using it in class and gave me detention yesterday, so it’s done for the week if I don’t get more. I spent the whole night looking at some interesting files we’re gonna need later, although I don’t know how much time I can balance school and this. In summary, I understand why everyone hates it so much now. Anyway, I bothered you enough with my stuff. About the mission…”
“Nothing big happened. I broke him out of jail, we were followed by a trash truck, we lost it near the airport, Shadowsan managed to find a flight, and we got to the base fifteen minutes ago. Although…”
“Although…”
She took a sip of water. “I saw Dr. Bellum’s robot heading for jail. I think it was there for Gray. We didn’t stay to find out, but-”
Gray groaned in pain. “No, please, not again.”
“I’ll call you later, Player,” Carmen said, rushing to see what happened.
She found Gray crouching on the floor, holding his head and panting heavily. Without thinking, she went to his side to see what was happening to him. “Did we… ever go to the beach?” he asked before another wave of pain hit him like a brick.
Hesitantly, Carmen put her hand on his shoulder. “A long time ago,” she said, recalling how they sneaked out one night because she wanted to show him her favorite spot for making sand castles as a kid. The pain seemed to lessen somewhat. “Do you want some water?”
He didn’t say anything for a moment, but nodded weakly. Carmen went for a second glass and brought it to him. Now he looked distant, enthralled by the laptop on the table. He took it and inspected it, as if he were checking for anything amiss. It reminded her of the exercises to find trackers and microphones back during their days in VILE. “Graham?”
He jumped and tried to point the laptop at her as if it were a weapon and then stared at it in disbelief. “This again? What’s happening to me?”
Carmen approached slowly, so as to not startle him. The glass of water was left forgotten on the table. “Does this happen often?” she asked.
“No,” he answered quickly, “well, yes, but only after I used the experimental memory gizmo.”
“Experimental what ?” She wasn’t sure if Gray caught the worried note in her tone, but he gestured for her to sit down.
He stayed silent for a minute and began. “I was at work when these people in suits came for me. They took me to a place to interrogate me. ACME or something like that. They were secret government officials, I think. At first I thought they were your friends, but apparently not. I… I couldn’t really remember anything of what they accused me of, I thought I was in coma at the hospital after the accident, but apparently I was going to Paris or… or something. It was confusing, I think I do remember some of that. They asked about you too. At the end, this holographic woman who’s the Chief offered to help me regain my memories and I don’t really know what came afterwards. It’s all fuzzy and strange. I somehow woke up in a phone booth, a house, and prison. The rest of the way is some kind of strange, twisted memory world, I have no idea what happened the rest of the time, believe me. I don’t know if what I remember is real or not.”
Carmen hummed, taking in that information. ACME was onto Gray too. How, she had no idea, but that wasn’t good news. “And what exactly do you remember?”
He held his head between his hands. “People and lessons and, I don’t know, sensations, I guess? A few moments here and there too.” He looked at her for a moment and his eyes widened. “You were in Paris, weren’t you? And in… that place. Who are you, really?”
This reminded her of the conversation they had, that night in the train. This time, Gray sounded genuinely curious. There was also a hint of suspicion that told her that he remembered a little more about her than he let on. “I’m not a spy, nor part of any law enforcement organization.”
“That’s not what I asked,” he said, more annoyed than anything, “please, Carmen. I have to know. This is… confusing. How do I know you?”
She sighed. He was already too deep into this. The least she could do was provide him with answers. If she didn’t, maybe he would seek them elsewhere, and that was a risk she couldn’t take now. Both ACME and VILE could be after him. “Fine, then let me tell you everything from the start.”
—-------------
Shadowsan didn’t trust Crackle. Or Gray, as Carmen called him. Or Graham, as he insisted to be called currently. Even though he knew there was a chance he might help them in the long run, he had a bad feeling about this.
Maybe it was his fear of old instincts resurfacing and what might happen if Graham turned against them. Maybe it was the trouble they would all have to go through to hide him from VILE. Maybe it was the fact that, if he ever dared to attack, he couldn’t defend himself properly in a wheelchair or crutches.
He loosely heard the unintelligible murmurs of Carmen talking to him over Zack’s rambling about Ninja lessons. Shadowsan sighed. Maybe it was the fact that he could damage her beyond repair. Her close relationship with Crackle was the reason why he had been assigned to track her down in the first place.
Shadowsan always knew Carmen had a soft spot for him. It was evident, even since she was Black Sheep, although he doubted she noticed the feeling then. He saw how they became inseparable over the course of a year. He always saw them leaving classrooms together. He saw how she always jumped at the idea of pairing with him for any exercise. He saw the tiny blush on her cheeks when he did something she thought was great. He saw how betrayed she looked when she returned to the island after Casablanca, and how she shunned him out when he tried to talk to her before leaving for next caper. He saw the pain of letting go of him, each time she called Player to see if Graham was well.
Shadowsan couldn’t bear the thought of seeing her hurt.
“And when can I learn how to knock someone out with a finger, Sensei?” Zack asked eagerly. He, once again, wondered how their conversation about what they were going to do with Graham turned into another of his petitions for training.
Shadowsan only answered with a grunt. He was not in the mood for this. “Come on, bro, he must be tired of dealing with the robot hand and you’ve bothered him enough for a day,” Ivy said, “why don’t we grab a drink and watch a movie?”
“Okay, but only if I pick it!”
Shadowsan nodded at Ivy gratefully as they went away. He grabbed his magazine and kept reading right where he left it off. It didn’t say anything interesting, but he needed a distraction to avoid worrying about Carmen and Graham.
They were still talking, he noticed. He couldn’t make out the words, but it sounded as if Carmen were explaining something. Graham interrupted sometimes, but stayed mostly quiet. Perhaps this was a normal conversation, but, then, the amount of normal things happening around here today could be counted with a hand. Chances were someone would get dragged into yet another fight for their life without any previous warning in the span of fifteen minutes.
There it was. The conversation died.
Something that sounded like glass broke.
Rushing footsteps.
Zack and Ivy’s voices reverberated through the air.
Then, silence.
He hoped everything was under control. One against three were bad odds and Carmen wouldn’t let Graham escape. His leg was still injured, so he would do no good there. It was fine. There was no need to go down.
Shadowsan dropped the magazine. His mind could only be at ease when he saw what was going on downstairs. He grabbed his crutches and tried to not be too noisy. Just in case.
He found Ivy knocked out, Zack nursing a bleeding nose, and Carmen pinning Graham to the floor. He was fighting to break free, but her knee on his back and her hand pressing his head to the floor were having none of it. It didn’t take much guessing to know what happened here.
“Everything is in order?” he asked.
Graham immediately looked at him and stopped struggling. He saw a flash of recognition in his eyes. “Who are you?”
Shadowsan raised an eyebrow. “Who do you think I am?”
Carmen let him go and went to check on Ivy. Graham stood up and inspected him closely. He frowned in that way he did when he was trying to remember a lesson. “Someone important. I know you, right? Have I seen you somewhere?”
“Something similar,” he replied, not knowing how to proceed, “I opened the door when you arrived.”
“That’s not what I was talking about,” Graham said, mildly annoyed and a little ashamed, “you know what? I think that was enough for today, I’ll better go find a place to stay until-”
“No, you won’t,” Carmen said, helping a half-conscious Ivy onto the couch, “the second room up there is yours and I won’t take no for an answer. Besides, the sun will be up in three hours. ” Shadowsan made no comment on who was currently sleeping there. That was irrelevant now.
He looked as if he wanted to say something, but decided against it. “Okay. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Goodnight, Gray,” Carmen said, “I mean, Graham, ” she added before he could correct her.
“Goodnight, everyone… and forgive me for… uh, you know.” He gave Ivy and Zack an apologetic look and went upstairs awkwardly. Carmen let her gaze linger on him for a moment before she excused herself to go for a broom and a mop.
Shadowsan sighed and glanced at the broken glass and the puddle of water at his feet. He definitely didn’t have a good feeling about this.