Chapter Text
The phone starts buzzing in the nightstand at exactly 01:51 AM.
Sherry knows because the vibration makes the clock light up, which further awakes her. She groans. She could swear that she put the phone on silence mode the night before, so, why the hell is—
Oh. Her favourite contacts always ring through. And Leon’s calling. Sherry blinks owlishly at his name in the screen, feeling her brain doing a huge effort to boot itself.
She unlocks the phone and takes the call. Leon barely lets her say hello before he starts talking right away.
“Sherry. Hello.”
“Leon. Hi?” God, her voice is raspy. She clears her throat, but Leon doesn’t wait for her.
“Sorry to bother you. Do you mind if I go over there for a minute?”
The line falls silent for a moment. Sherry blinks.
“What— Like, right now?”
“Yeah, Sherry. Sorry. But yes, I do mean right now.”
“Leon, why? Who’s dying?”
Leon chuckles at the joke, but it’s a forced thing, quick, like a formality. That’s when Sherry gets scared.
“Leon. What—?”
“I’ll explain when I get there. Just, don’t fall back asleep and open the door for me. I’ll be there in seven minutes.”
And he drops the call. Sherry stares for a second, then buries the face in her pillow and sighs deeply. She gets up, looks for her slippers in the dark, then heads for the kitchen. She might as well get some coffee done before Leon arrives.
Five minutes after the call, Sherry is slowly sipping her own mug, then checks the news. Just in case. But nothing has happened, or rather, nothing that has happened has make it to the news yet. No alarming messages from her contacts in the DSO, or the BSAA, or Claire.
Or Jake. Her > Hey, don’t mock me for my tastes! At least I’m not going around pretending to be the toughest person in every room I walk into, a friendly banter, nothing unusual in their chat, from five days ago remains unanswered. It’s not unusual for Jake to stop answering her messages for some time, but never this long. But. Three months is not such a long time to draw such a conclusion, after all, their relationship is still new, still tentative. They’ve never even met after China, too busy with the aftermath and their respective careers not overlapping.
Better start thinking about her current visitor, though.
Okay, after being caged for so long, it’s still a thrilling novelty to have visitors free to come and go as she sees fit. She really likes that part. Even if some visitor is still noticeably absent from her guest list. Sherry gives herself a moment to mourn the fact that maybe Jake could have been the one visiting her home, if life had been different for the two of them. If only their parents had done what they should. Then she leaves the kitchen to put something other than pyjamas on.
Leon knocks softly downstairs as soon as she’s done putting on sweatpants, and when she opens the door, she finds him there, amazingly. In her doorstep. Smiling faintly at her.
“Hello, Sher— Oh”, he laughs when she hugs his neck and just squeezes him. “It’s good to see you too.”
“Yeah, it’s so good to see you. God.” They’ve met after China, but not often, and not for long, so it shows. Sherry laughs in embarrassment as she takes a step back to let him breathe. “Come in, I got coffee ready.”
It’s easy to forget the strangeness of the situation with Leon just right there, following her lead through the house with a faint smile. He tends to look at her like that, just all tender and happy to see her thriving. It has taken a lot of time for her to get there, after all.
Sherry gives him a mug of coffee, milk and sugar already to his taste. Leon chuckles when he notices and gives a grateful smile before sipping.
“I’m sorry to wake you up.” He murmurs. Then frowns. “You were sleeping, right?” And that warm, so warm smile that’s always drawn her to him, ever since she was so little and he was a mere rookie so overwhelmed by a situation that was about to kill both of them at any given moment. Sherry nods with a smile of her own. “That’s good. I’m glad to see you’re doing good.”
“Thanks, Leon. And I’m really glad to have you here. But…”
Leon’s calm look instantly turns sour.
“Yes. Sorry.” He puts the mug aside and approaches Sherry’s laptop, still in the coffee table in the dining room where she usually writes her reports. Or not. “I have something to show you.”
Sherry unlocks it for him without further questioning. Leon extracts a memory card from his PDA and puts it inside the laptop. Then opens a video file.
But he doesn’t play it. Leon hesitates for a few seconds before speaking, with his whole body still physically addressing the laptop instead of Sherry, who has sat down to his right.
“Hunnigan sent me this live feed two and a half hours ago. She has located the place, it’s a little town five hours from here. We’ve already decided on the team—”
It’s from a security street camera. The scene is quite inconspicuous: a street, a speed bump in the right lane, no traffic in sight in the night scene except for what seems to be the front wheel of a motorbike.
And that’s the detail that truly frightens Sherry, for the first time in the night.
“Leon.” She cuts his rambling short. “Play it.”
Now Leon does look at her for a moment, then obeys.
The image starts moving. It is a motorbike, any motorbike. Sherry was never interested in vehicles and, save the military kind, which she has learnt to appreciate given her current involvement in field work, can’t really say much about them.
But the hunch inside her doesn’t care about that. A part of her knows, right from that first second of video.
The speed bump turns out to not be a mere speed bump, because some sort of spikes come out of it. Of course, the motorbike rolls over it, giving the driver no time to react. The front wheel explodes, then the back one, the driver goes flying, crashes against the road. Hard. There is no sound, but Sherry flinches all he same while her eyes don’t leave the image, don’t even blink.
The driver, who is luckily wearing a helmet, rolls on the road for several meters before stopping. They lie there for a moment, unconscious, maybe, if not dead. Not a moment later, they try to push their own weight on his arms, but instantly fall, and Sherry is not so experienced in injuries, but she still can recognize a broken wrist when she sees one bending that way. And ribs, most likely, given the fall and the impact—
Before she can mentally catalogue any further injuries, the driver manages to get on one knee, only for another person to come out of the corner of the field of the camera and kick them in the ribs. The driver curls instinctively around themself, spasming, clearly in a lot of pain, and the few neurones not absorbed by the video in Sherry’s brain are endlessly grateful that the record doesn’t have any sound.
Leon squeezes her shoulder, but doesn’t otherwise interrupt.
This first stranger kicking the injured driver is not alone. Two more people appear out of the vision field of the camera and they don’t waste any time: one grabs the motorist by the neck, other aims for their arms. They’re holding them so they can’t escape. The driver tries to punch the last of them, the third assailant merely dodges and kicks the broken wrist, hard. Blinded by the pain, the driver spasms, still firmly held, and there’s no way they’ll be able to free themself now: the first assailant grabs their forearm, the other carries them by the neck, cutting the airflow while doing so, and the driver is dragged towards what appears to be a black van, no plates, just by the edge of the scene. And they still fight fiercely, it’s awful to witness how they obviously struggle to kick and headbutt and resist against the hands grabbing them to the best of their capability, despite obvious levels of pain. Ultimately, it’s to no avail. One of the assailants tears the helmet off them and elbows them, hard, and twice more until the victim is more or less limp. It’s too dark to make out their features, but something glistens in their face, and Sherry realizes it must be blood. The motorist is thrown inside the van with more force than necessary, two of the other people jump behind him and the third leaves the vision field of the camera. The van speeds off, the video stops.
The feed is like fifteen, eighteen seconds long. It’s over that fast. A person, a very clearly injured person, perhaps gravely, is violently abducted in fifteen to eighteen seconds with no chance of fighting back.
There’s no way. There’s no way her hunch is true and that is the reason that Leon is in her home at two AM showing her a night live feed, there’s no way—
Part of her knows. She knows those shoulders, that style, that way of carrying himself with confidence, that way of trying to fight back no matter the odds, fierce like a wolf and just as capable of endless loyalty, if he so wishes.
“Jake.” She hears her own voice whispering, horrified, and the spell breaks, the moment shutters, and she starts talking, frantic.
“That’s him, Leon. Jake is there, we have to go help him, he’s, he’s badly hurt, and they got him—”
Leon closes abruptly the laptop, then kneels down on the carpet and puts both of his hands around her knees, and squeezes.
“Okay, okay, Sherry, listen. Of course we’re gonna help. Now breathe for a moment, okay?”
“But, but why did Hunnigan contact you? I don’t understand—”
“She reached for me and I talked to Claire before telling you. Hunnigan got the alert from a trusted source, she hasn’t given me any further details. But she trusts the source, and that’s what matters. She also knows that you are friends with Jake, and, well, that many people are interested in him for all the wrong reasons, even if his involvement with the vaccine has been kept well hidden. Better reflexes, more strength, his immune system. There are a lot of reasons why anyone could be after Jake.”
“And? If the DSO knows about this then they can dispatch—” Leon’s gaze steels, still worried and sympathetic, and he grabs her shoulders firmly.
“Hear me out, listen. This can’t make it to any official channel, Sherry. We don’t want anyone to get a hold of him and claim that already Jake wasn’t there when they arrived, okay? Do you get it?” And he squeezes her hand, strong, like trying to drive it home.
She is about to ask do you really think they would be capable of that?, but then she remembers. Leon squeezes her hand like he did whenever he visited during her imprisonment, during so many years of being treated like a monster that could put humankind at risk just by breathing while still being damn too interesting to be simply disposed of.
She is the living proof that they may very well do just that.
“God”, she whispers. A stronger, almost painful squeeze makes her eyes raise back at Leon once more.
“Hey, we won’t let this come to that, alright? Hunnigan and I have everything ready. There’s already a team of trustworthy and very capable people—”
“I’m in.”
There’s silence for the split second between her words and she stands up, heading straight for her room. Sherry can hear Leon’s trained footsteps trailing behind her, she doesn’t pay any mind. She is going. That’s just how it is going to go.
“Sherry—”
“I’ve been trained, Leon, you know this.” Sherry opens the box under her bed, puts the first passcode, and keeps talking during the ten seconds that she has to wait before putting in the second password. She uses the time to change her clothes to the first thing she finds in the wardrobe. She wouldn’t bother, usually, but ten seconds are more than enough, so. “And no one has made it easier for me just because I could heal, precisely, and you know that better than anyone.” The heavy lid finally opens, Sherry takes out her gun, checks the charger and starts putting on the harness, all the while without stopping her talk. “I am a trustworthy and very capable person part of this team and don’t you dare try to say otherwise. I absolutely am.” Snapping the lid shut, she finally turns to Leon and glares at him. “You and I both that I am capable of defending myself. I just hadn’t gotten the chance to before. You know that”.
Leon looks right back at her, sighs quietly to himself, then nods.
“Alright. Come on, pack your things. Helena is waiting with the car ready right in front of the building.” Leon is already by the door when he notices that Sherry has stopped in her tracks. Turning, he smiles self–assuredly at what must be obvious surprise in her face. “What? Just because I worry doesn’t mean I don’t know that you’ll do what you want all the same.”
Wonder of wonders, Helena really is waiting for them in an inconspicuous black car. She nods at them, and Sherry gets in the back while Leon jumps into the front seat. For the second time tonight, Sherry really wonders if she’s dreaming. What? And she likes Helena, she likes her no–bullshit attitude and how brash she can be while Sherry still struggles with basic assertiveness and a wrong order on bad days.
It’s just. Weird.
Helena drives without hesitation. Leon and her discuss some things in a low voice, and Sherry, even if she understands in a logic level that they’re merely trying to give her some space, doesn’t do well with secrets around her for obvious reasons. So. Her brain can’t feel anxiety over Helena and Leon directly, but it sure has enough ammo to supply a panic attack by other means anyway.
“God, Leon, do you know if there are medics waiting by the site? And just how do we know where to go? Oh my god, he’s hurt, what if they—”
Helena says something that doesn’t reach Sherry’s ringing ears, and Leon twists in his seat to be able to look at her directly. He grabs her hand and doesn’t let it go; he reaches for the other and puts it on his chest, where he’s exaggerating his breathing rhythm until Sherry’s calms down.
“Easy. He’s alive, Sherry, otherwise they wouldn’t have bothered to abduct a person as stubborn and as a skilled fighter as him, okay? This was not an execution. We know where to go because Hunnigan has spent the last five hours tracking down that van using any satellite, security camera and whatever she could think of.”
“They, they have identified him, right? It’s him”. It’s a last flicker of hope, but it is, at least. Leon smiles sadly.
“Yes. They keep a tracker on his known mobile phone.” He grimaces when Sherry flinches. “Yeah, I know. The phone was found where the video was recorded, completely smashed. It was Jake’s.”
Okay. Alright. Sherry forces herself to take some more deep breathes. She’s not usually one so easy to rattle, but sleep deprivation combined with seeing a person you care about not only abducted, but beaten badly, can get to you. She nods to qualm Leon’s worried glance.
“What is the plan?”
“You sleep while we approach the place where we think he’s being held. Hunnigan already dispatched the team, they’re securing the surroundings and putting together a plan. Helena and I will give them a call half an hour before our arrival to coordinate, but the plan is to go inside the place full force under the premise that they don’t have any good reason to kill him rather than losing him.”
“Alright, sounds good”, Sherry says in an absolutely too–thin–to–be–good voice. Leon chuckles, then palms her hand still in his grasps awkwardly before letting it go.
“Get some sleep, okay?” Helena pointedly takes her in via the rear mirror before looking at the road again. “You’ll be much more useful if you’re rested.”
Sherry tries to argue, but the adrenaline is leaving her body; after all, her mind has been trained, and it’s true that she’ll need all her energy once they arrive. And god, how do her eyes itch, heavy with tears and anger. She clears them with a harsh hand, then rests her head against the window. Helena and Leon’s soft murmur starts lulling her to sleep.
But then she realizes—
“Leon, Jake is a mercenary. He can’t have a phone traced by our government. They could jack any confidential communication, there’s no way he has his phone under his real name. He’s smarter than that.”
“The DSO has been tracking him since you located him in Edonia. Mister Muller has spent three months straight without taking any suspicious contracts besides killing BOWs, as far as we are aware”, says Helena with clear amusement in her voice, God knows why. Leon gives her a complicated glance before adding:
“It’s very unlikely that the phone number we have located, which, by the way, has a very low profile, is the one he uses to secure his contracts.” Leon just ends it there, pointedly, and Sherry blinks in sleepy confusion. Helena takes pity on her:
“Jake uses that number just with non–professional contacts, that’s why it’s less secure and easier to track down. That’s Hunnigan hypothesis.”
That’s when it lands. Sherry’s eyes start itching again with renewed force.
“They’ve located him through our communications?” Leon’s smile fills with even more empathy, which is not helping her impending tears, thank you very much.
“It’s very likely that Jake was aware of that risk, Sherry.”
This is it: she’s lost her brain somewhere along the way. She mulls over this idea for a moment, but it just doesn’t make sense. There is no logical reason for Jake to accept that risk just to keep in contact with her.
“Why?” Leon merely shrugs, risking another glance at her.
“Insurance, maybe. Maybe he didn’t really care about being tracked.”
“In case this happened, maybe”, adds Helena, and that’s it, Sherry decides, she’s falling asleep before her sleep–deprived brain decides it’s a good idea to have any of these two have to stop the car to comfort what is very likely to be very ugly crying.