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'Move over, stop hogging the booth,' Adam commanded, bumping his hip into Duncan's shoulder. Duncan obeyed, taking the new pitcher of Stella for placement on the table in the process. Adam sprawled onto the bench beside him, taking up more than his half, naturally. 'Pour me one,' Adam prompted him like a slow student, and Duncan complied with an eye-roll. Adam at least toasted him in thanks before gulping down half the pint.
'Slow down, soldier,' Joe commented. 'They're not gonna run out.'
'Dry as a bone.' Adam wiped his mouth on his sleeve, slumping back. His elbow jabbed into Duncan's side, and Duncan considered accepting the challenge, before opting to just plant his own elbows on the table. Adam pouted in the corner of his gaze. Duncan primly avoided that fight, too, pouring a round for Joe and himself. 'I ordered nachos and wings. Hope everyone likes buffalo. And the sliders.'
'You didn't put it on my tab, did you?' Duncan demanded, suspicious of this unusual generosity and forethought.
Adam was too busy finishing his beer to reply. Duncan scowled, now. Point to Adam. Cheater.
'Question,' Joe said, raising a finger. 'Is that a tattoo I spy on your wrist?'
'Moi?' Adam tugged his sleeve down, too late to avoid the conversation.
'You didn't,' Joe accused, disbelief etched in his lined face. 'Are you fucking kidding me? Again?'
'All roads lead to Rome, et cetera.' Adam wrested his arm free when Duncan grabbed it, but not before Duncan confirmed it was indeed what it appeared to be. A freshly inked Watcher tattoo. Adam sighed. 'I was going to tell you, eventually.'
'You're mad,' Duncan marvelled. 'Certifiable. How many times are you going to do this expecting a different result? What could they possibly have to offer that makes it worthwhile?'
'Don't get all high and mighty with me, Mac, I always thought it was worthwhile, I just quibbled with the execution.' Joe winced at the word execution, and Adam grimaced an apology in his direction. 'No offence.'
'Some taken,' Joe retorted. 'They did try to blow my brains out.'
'And you worked for them another fifteen years after because the mission outweighs the little inconveniences.'
'Definite offence taken, asshole!'
Adam grabbed for the pitcher, pouring himself another pint. 'They made a compelling proposal. And I didn't really have any viable alternatives. And I know you're not going to agree with me, Mac, but you should consider their terms, too. At least admit it's a real problem without a solution.'
'What are you talking about?' Duncan asked, frowning at his friend. 'Solution to what problem?'
Adam took a swallow of Stella, and stuck his finger under Mac's chin. He lifted and pushed, turning Mac's head up and to the right. To the CCTV station above the bar. 'Cameras,' he said.
Duncan smacked his hand away. 'So?'
'What about this don't you get, Mac? The world's gone small. Pocket-sized, even.' Adam pulled an iPhone from his back pocket and dumped it on the table with a rattle. 'Siri is listening in on all our conversations, the average person is caught on camera seventy-five times a day-- in America. In London, it's closer to three hundred. Dashcams and toll readers track our license plates. Retail security clocks your store purchases and you can't shop Amazon on the dark web. Your entire neighbourhood has Ring doorbells, everyone under thirty is photographing you in the background of their selfies and TikTok dances, and there's at least three twats in this bar right now wearing smart glasses.'
Duncan sighed. 'You're on one of your paranoid spirals, old man. You need to stop doom scrolling at bedtime.'
'You need to start,' Adam warned him. 'It's 2026, Mac. There are literally millions of data points about you already, and the number is only going to climb. Cookies and cross-app telemetry. Background location pings off dozens of cell towers on your average commute. Every time you touch a computer, you're being tracked-- every click, every scroll, every search query, how long your screen lingers on a specific post. That FitBit you're wearing? Constant feed of your heart rate, your sleep cycle, your steps, your blood oxygen. Your car is a computer logging variables like your vehicle speed, your climate controls, even how many seats are pressure-activated. And none of this stays isolated. It's all feeding into a massive commercialised pipeline, aggregated with offline public documents like property deeds, voting registration, driver's license, purchase history. You're generating two megabytes of data per second, and real-time bidding exposes your data seven hundred times a day to automated buyers. Data brokers are hoovering all of it up just to sell you things, and that's the most innocent thing happening with your data. Warrantless phone tracking. Profiling Black Lives Matter protestors. Outing gay priests who download Grindr. Predicting survivors of sexual abuse. Remember that film Minority Report? We're there. We just didn't need psychic orphans mildewing in pools. Computers are doing it all for us.'
The passing years had given Duncan something closer to immunity to the long-winded, grandiloquently delivered Methos Speech. When the Ancient One got going, it was ultimately easier, and quicker, to just let him spin himself out, and put a pin in whatever topic he was mooting for a later time you hoped would never come. This had all the usual signposts: a fixation clearly derived from sleepless nights overthinking, Wiki-Walks down darker and darker mental alleyways, and a tendency towards apocalyptic thinking. Surviving a few apocalypses warranted the occasional overreaction, just in case-- Duncan would never know for sure just how close Kronos had come to actually designing a virus capable of wiping out a continent, and he preferred not to know, really, but Methos had believed it enough to put his own life on the line to avert it. But this just didn't seem to be the same calibre of threat. Of course he didn't agree with profiling, but it was quite a leap from personalised internet ads to Tom Cruise showing up to pre-emtively arrest people for future crimes.
Fortunately, the arrival of their food provided a timely interruption, and Adam was a lot less to deal with when he wasn't hangry on top of irrational. Joe seemed to agree, shoving the nachos entirely in front of Adam, and asking the waitress to bring waters for everyone. Duncan quietly distributed the small plates and napkin-rolled cutlery as Adam doused his appetizer in jalapenos and Cholula. Joe rubbed at his sternum like he was already feeling the heartburn a mortal would suffer after inhaling that much hot sauce, and confined himself to a couple of undressed wings and the sliders.
By the time they'd all got some grub in them, Adam seemed to have calmed himself down, flirting lightly with the cute waitress when she brought the waters, stealing a pickle from Duncan's plate. 'Anyway,' he said, as if there hadn't been five minutes of silence, 'how's the grandkids, Joe? Joe Jr crawling yet?'
Joe, of course, whipped out his own phone, videos cued up and ready. Duncan provided a few timely 'aww's as Joe flipped through several dozen pictures of his youngest grandson splashing in a kiddie pool in the backyard of the large ranch his daughter had settled in with her husband in Oregon. Adam acted completely absorbed in each of the largely identical images, probing the details of tummy time and teething and a battle with whooping cough with the finely honed instincts of a journalist chasing the story of the century, long past the point when Duncan's tolerance for baby talk reached its limit--
'You little shit,' he said, interrupting Joe on a long-winded speech of his own about a graphic diaper-related incident with the baby and the new puppy. 'You did that on purpose,' he accused Adam, who blinked innocently at him.
'Did what?' Adam asked mildly, munching a chip sagging under the weight of guacamole and refried beans.
'What's any of that crap you just said have to do with the Watchers?'
Joe looked outraged. 'You used my grandkids against me? You suck, man.'
'You'll get over it.'
'Out with it,' Duncan prompted him. He snagged Adam's beer out of reach, the pitcher too. 'Cooperate, and you can have them back,' he warned, evading Adam's grab. 'And will you stop squishing me? Keep on your side of the bench.'
'I'm not the one man-spreading in skinny jeans, it's practically pornographic. Baggy's back in, you know.'
'Answer the question!'
Adam released a put-upon sigh, and fussily wiped grease from his fingers. 'How much do you know about the new director, Joe?'
'Not much,' Joe admitted, narrow-eyed as he stared Adam down. 'Joined after I retired. Climbed the ranks awfully fast. Regional Coordinator to South American Representative on the Tribune in two years, Palmer's hand-picked successor. He's young. Cleaned house, brought in a bunch of Gen Z newbs to go Doge-style on the Motherhouses. Left a lot of long-running departments in the dustbin. Census, Acquisition and Digitisation, Genealogy. Heard he's stood up new offices. Cybercrime and finance. Law Enforcement cooperation. Interpol liaisons.'
'And a number of technology modernization projects. AI integration, data infrastructure. Mobile apps.'
'Come a long way from loading a CD-ROM.'
'That we have.' Adam traced the tattoo on the inside of his wrist. 'He came recruiting. And he had an excellent pitch.'
'Recruiting Adam Pierson?' Joe said, disbelieving. 'That database of yours might have been the height of sophistication in 1994, but it was old news by the time we had Ask Jeeves.'
'And by the time we had Ask Jeeves, Adam Pierson was a known alias for a certain ancient Immortal who had-- successfully-- infiltrated the Watchers for the purpose of invaluable contributions to the Chronicles.'
Joe scoffed. '"Invaluable"?'
'From the lips of Director Pérez himself.' Adam put out a patient hand, and Duncan reluctantly surrendered the beer. Adam was, he supposed, cooperating, in that typically circuitous way of his. Adam took a pointedly small sip. 'Ahh. Refreshing. Pérez's humility, that is. One so rarely gets the appreciation one deserves.'
'I'm taking that back,' Duncan deciding, making a grab for the glass. Adam had already switched hands and thrust the glass beyond their table out of Duncan's range, nearly drenching a woman passing by their booth. 'Sorry,' Duncan called after her. 'Behave, Adam.'
'You behave, I'm doing just fine.'
'So, what, Pérez flattered your ego and just like that you decided to come back?' Joe wanted to know.
Adam leant away to finish his beer, just in case Duncan tried for it again, but resettled once the pint was empty. 'Rather the opposite, actually,' he admitted with a sigh. 'Pérez showed up with a dossier of all those data points I mentioned before. A very tidy demonstration of how readily the Watchers can locate any Immortal these days simply by identifying a few patterns of common behaviour. Beheaded corpses are just the most obvious clue. Records follow even forged identities. The days of just moving to a new city and setting up shop with a new name are over. And it's not just current Immortals. They're identifying pre-Immortals by Watching who we're watching. The truth isn't just out there, it's everywhere. Immortality isn't going to be a secret for much longer.'
'Oh, come on, you don't actually believe that--'
'I do,' Adam said. 'The pieces are there for anyone to put together. Financial transactions, suspicious inheritances. Drone footage of Quickenings combined with travel of anyone in the area-- you hardly need field Watchers any more, you can code an algorithm to do it for you. We're well past the point of photographic evidence. They have blood samples. DNA. Hiding isn't an option any more.'
Despite his scepticism, Duncan felt a twinge of discomfort at the thought. He'd had a long time to get used to the idea of being Watched, but this was a level of surveillance he'd never imagined. Joe, too, seemed disturbed, his wiry white brows pulled tight over concerned eyes. 'If they can do all of that already, what's Pérez want with you?' Joe asked, drumming the tabletop fitfully.
Adam shrugged. 'They're still Watchers. Watch, record. At the end of the day, I'm walking history.' He shrugged again, toying with his empty glass, rolling the base back and forth on its curve. 'Nice to be valued.'
Joe was chewing that over. Duncan didn't even know where to begin. 'And you believe that?' he asked.
Adam shrugged once again. Duncan didn't like it. Methos was many things, but clueless he wasn't. Accepting of that, even less possible. 'Maybe we've met our time,' Adam said. 'Maybe that's the Gathering. When the ecosystem can no longer support us, when there's no more room to live as we did before. We've been out-competed like the Neanderthals. Beaten by mortals and their superior technology. We'll fight to the death over the scraps, and whoever's left standing at the end-- well. At least they won't have to scramble to cover up kills in a surveillance state.'
'Jesus, Adam.'
'You don't think Pérez is putting a thumb on the scale, do you?' Joe wanted to know. 'Selecting an Immortal to shelter for the Gathering?'
'Would you pick me, if you had the power to identify every Immortal on the planet? I doubt it.'
Maybe. There were worse picks. A man who'd been present at the dawn of human civilisation, willing, even eager to step away from the fighting whilst the mortals turned the world into ones and zeroes, not just the One. Maybe this Pérez was a philosopher, not just a Watcher. Whatever power the Gathering would bestow on its sole survivor, the best way of neutralising that threat would be to throw the Game for the one Immortal who had no designs on using it, for evil or for good. If nothing else, Pérez was a canny judge of character.
Duncan unlatched his FitBit and laid it on the table. And followed it with his phone. 'Maybe you could show me how to fix my privacy settings,' he said. 'Meant to get around to that, just never... you know. Busy.'
The look Adam shot him was surprisingly vulnerable. The smile small and real. 'Happy to,' he said, and gave up the empty beer glass to start fiddling with screens instead. His shoulders tightened when Duncan removed the pint glass away, and traded it with his untouched water instead. But he didn't protest. Duncan bumped their knees gently, and with a little eye roll Adam bumped him back.
Joe picked up on the exchange, and didn't press any further, watching them thoughtfully across the table. 'Well, you just let us know,' he said finally. 'If you ever need a posse to the rescue. We've done it before. Don't know about you, but I'd pay to watch Mac break into Watcher HQ again.'
'Without Amanda? As if.'
'Hey,' Duncan objected. 'May I point out that I never got caught there, and Amanda did.'
'You did so get caught! Or did I hallucinate the double trial in the gloomy basement? And I never did get that Chronicle back after testifying on your behalf, for that matter--'
'Yeah, yeah,' Joe cut him off, and grinned at Adam's indignation. But it was Duncan he nodded to, just a little tip of the head in a silent agreement. Someone had to watch the Watchers. Duncan nodded back, sealing the pact. If Adam ever needed them, they'd be there. 'All right, these sliders are stupid. I want a real burger. Anyone up for an actual restaurant?'
'Mac'll settle the bill,' Adam agreed, and was out of the booth too fast for Duncan to snatch him back.