Fic - The Butterfly Effect 5/9
Jun. 19th, 2010 03:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cj2017Title: The Butterfly Effect (5/9)
Rating: Hard R: violence, sex, harsh language, you probably know the drill by now.
~ ~ ~
The Butterfly Effect 5/9
~ ~ ~
The motel owner had his standards. Having taken one breath of the stench that surrounded Sarah, he had shaken his head and declared that all his rooms were occupied. The vacancy sign, he claimed, had been faulty for some time.
Minutes later, she climbed into the truck and displayed a room key to Derek.
“How much?”
She shook her head. “You don’t want to know.” The owner’s standards hadn’t been quite so particular once she had named a price and offered to pay in cash. “He better not have been lying about the shower.”
Derek drove around to the allotted parking bay and they carried their duffel bags into the room before returning to lift Michael from the back seat. He hadn’t regained consciousness in the hour it had taken them to find a suitable motel, and Derek was being guarded about his prognosis. Taking him to a hospital had never been raised as an option. They both knew that was the first place Kaliba would look.
“Can you set an IV up?”
Sarah nodded, waiting until Derek had assembled all the items he would need before taking the first aid kit and searching through it for a giving set and a bag of saline. Despite the pink glow of the bedside lamp, Michael’s face was grey and clammy. Blood covered his shirt and had already soaked through the dressings Derek had applied in the truck. Rolling him onto his side, Derek cut away the bandages and then clamped a hand over the exit wound.
“Fuck. Pass me the suture kit.” Blood streamed across his fingers and he took the needle she held out and dug it deeply into the wound. “Fucking mess,” he muttered. The thread was slick with crimson as he pulled his sutures taut. “Put some pressure here.”
She did as he instructed, placing her hand where he pointed, moving the light for him when he changed his position slightly, and passing over the equipment he asked for. They worked quietly together for over an hour, both of them functioning solely on fading adrenaline, using techniques honed by too many years of practice.
“I think we’re good here.” He wearily displayed the palm of his hand, clean and dry despite having been pressed to the dressing across the back of Michael’s shoulder for several minutes. “Go grab a shower. I’ll keep an eye on him.”
She nodded, too tired and too filthy to offer any resistance. “Think he’ll be okay?” Michael’s color was slightly improved but he showed no sign of waking.
“Yeah.” Derek took hold of the soiled dressings she was collecting together and nodded towards the bathroom. “He’ll be okay. Go on.”
“Shout if you need me,” she said, her tank top already off and wadded into a ball in her hands.
He laughed quietly. “I always do, Connor.”
~ ~ ~
Derek stood in the bathroom doorway, a cloud of steam billowing behind him, and stared at Sarah. Her back towards him, she was twisting awkwardly as she attempted to reach over her shoulder. It only took her a couple of seconds to realize he was there and drop her hand.
“John’s fine. They’re gonna wait for rush hour and then set off back to the house,” she said. Even though John and Cameron had changed vehicles, they were unwilling to take anything for granted, and they were hoping that traveling when the traffic was at its peak would make them that much more difficult to track and intercept.
“Good idea. We can do the same.” He glanced at Michael. “Hopefully he’ll be a little more stable by then.”
She made a noise of assent and returned to her task. When he finally worked out why she was contorted in such a fashion, he made his way over to her and caught hold of her hand.
“You’re missing it. Here.” He took the piece of gauze from her fingers and pressed it against the laceration that was bleeding steadily on her upper arm. “Where else?”
“Nowhere. Well, just a few scratches. From the window.”
“Yeah.” He lifted the gauze and examined the small cut. “I think strips will hold this.”
Her eyes widened in mock-astonishment. “Seriously? No stitches?”
“No.” He smiled with her. “For once, Connor, you get away with a minor injury.”
“Hell, maybe later I’ll buy a lottery ticket.”
“Yeah, yeah. Hold still.”
It didn’t take him long to close and then dress the wound. By the time he had cleared the empty wrappers away and returned from the kitchenette with two mugs of coffee, she was sitting in the chair by the bed, her chin resting on her hands as she watched Michael sleep.
“Cameron ran his name and image through her files, or whatever data her memory holds,” she said, taking her mug and cradling it in both hands. “She didn’t find anything on him.” She sipped her coffee carefully. It scorched a path down to her stomach but she ignored the discomfort; she always drank it while it was red-hot.
Derek perched on the bed. The small sway of the mattress made Michael moan but he settled quickly and didn’t wake.
“He was on the forum,” Derek reminded her. “Thirty pages of conspiracy theory devoted to you. He probably recognized you from there.”
“Probably.” That was the most obvious explanation, but she knew in her gut that there was more to it than that. Fate often seemed to make her its bitch, but perhaps on this occasion it had actually worked to their advantage.
“Sleep or first watch?”
“Huh?” She pulled her gaze away from Michael and looked at Derek. “Oh, uh, you go ahead and sleep. I’m not tired.”
After tucking the shotgun into an easily accessible position, she turned her chair slightly and rested her Glock in her lap. The room grew quiet, apart from the soft, breathy sounds of its two sleepers. She hunched forward in the chair, resting her fingers over the pulse at Michael’s wrist, and tried to remember the last time they had used a motel room and not left it covered with blood.
~ ~ ~
The transmission was sent to them both simultaneously. It opened up a three-way connection and Kristina saw Dyson involuntarily flinch away from the image they were confronted with. As she watched him swallow queasily before quickly composing himself, she wondered, not for the first time, whether their AI project leader would actually have the stomach to see his project through to its conclusion. For her own part, she considered the bloodied face of the young man on the screen and sighed.
“That’s not Michael Trent.”
“No, ma’am.” The operative appeared justifiably nervous. “He was wounded but managed to escape.”
She forced the operative to squirm for another thirty seconds before she smiled broadly. “So nice to see that the course of true love does run smooth.”
“Uh,” the operative was the picture of bewilderment, “uh, yeah. I guess it is.”
She ignored him and turned her attention to his captive. “Zachary Trent. I had no idea you and Mike had been together for so long.”
On hearing his name, Zach lifted his head slightly, the eye that wasn’t swollen shut attempting to focus on Kristina’s image.
“Do I know you?” A split in his lip reopened and blood streaked down his chin as he spoke.
“No.” The laughter fell away from her voice. “No, not for a few years yet.” She looked at Dyson and then the operative. “I want him up here.”
“Kris…” Although it wasn’t his decision to make, Dyson was already shaking his head. “The Connors probably have your location by now. You need to get everything packed up and get the hell away from there.”
“Yes, yes.” She waved a dismissive hand. “The boys are already onto that. Forty-eight hours at the most. Which will give Zach and me plenty of time to get reacquainted. If the Connors have retrieved Michael, and I’m going to go out on a limb here and say they did,” her tone was drier than the desert that surrounded her, “then having Zach to worry about might prove to be an effective distraction for them when they finally get here.”
Dyson took a long moment to consider her logic. “Fine, it’ll be quicker if Cain sends the request.”
“Hmm.” She didn’t sound entirely happy with that scenario, but he knew that if she was already preparing to move she must be following orders that had come down from a level higher than his own, and would continue to do so. Her face suddenly brightened and she clapped her hands twice. “Okay, so that’s all sorted. Zach, hopefully I will see you very soon.”
The operative nodded and abruptly severed his connection. Dyson took a breath, intending to ask what the hell was going on, but Kristina was already busy at her computer. She held up a finger to silence him for a couple of seconds before looking up again and waiting for him to speak.
“You sent me another file.”
“Yes.”
“Same as before?”
“Pretty much, with a few variations. They were partners in every sense of the word.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah.” Her face dramatically downcast, she rested a hand over her heart. “Y’know, it’s almost enough to restore my faith in humanity.”
~ ~ ~
The truck they had stolen had a top speed of approximately 42 mph and that was only with a tail-wind and a favorably sloping road. A freeway collision and the ghoulish curiosity of rubber-neckers had snarled the traffic up, and Sarah and Derek finally arrived home three hours later than they had planned. Cameron met them halfway down the access road, armed to the teeth and scanning the area for possible pursuit. John was waiting on the porch steps, a shotgun slung across his knees, his face set with tension. Sarah studied him, her stomach knotting. He looked so much older than the son she had left the house with only a day ago.
“My bedroom’s set up,” he said as he opened the back door of the truck. “Jesus.”
Derek was gently pulling Michael into a sitting position, preparing to lift him from the back seat. “He actually looks a hell of a lot better than he did.”
John shook his head in disbelief and moved to help his uncle. “He been awake?”
“On and off. He’s been asking for Zach,” Sarah said softly.
A local news report had covered the suspected home invasion in a quiet suburb of Silver Lake. It hadn’t disclosed the names of the victims, but it had confirmed that two males were missing from the address and appealed for any witnesses to come forward. When John had phoned Sarah to pass on the information, Michael’s incoherent pleas had suddenly started to make sense. It was an additional complication that none of them had anticipated.
“Easy, easy. Pass me that pillow, John.” Once Derek was satisfied that his patient was as comfortable as was practicable, Sarah and John left him to reconnect the IV and administer whatever medications Michael was due. Twenty minutes later he joined Sarah at the kitchen table, but pushed away the sandwich that she slid towards him.
“Where’s Cameron? I need to speak to her.”
Sarah stopped chewing and swallowed very carefully. Today was just turning out to be full of surprises.
“She’s with John, mapping a route. Why?”
“Because Michael woke up a few minutes ago. And he told me Zach’s surname.” He watched her expression change as she quickly picked up on his train of thought. The only name Cameron had searched for in her files had been Michael Kenton.
“You think they might share a surname in the future?”
He nodded. “Hell, it’s worth a shot. If we get nothing then he’s a random kid with a thing for hero-worship.”
She barely heard him; she was already halfway to the door. He scooped up the remnants of their sandwiches and followed her out.
~ ~ ~
“Michael Trent: Tech Division, Special Ops. Zachary Trent: Med Division, Special Ops.” Cameron’s voice was a monotone as she read aloud from the data she had collated. When she looked up and her eyes focused, it was John that she sought out. “Everything else is classified.”
“Then unclassify it,” Derek snarled, slamming his fist against the door jamb and drowning out similar protests from Sarah and John. It took them a moment to realize that Cameron was trying to explain.
“I can’t access the information,” she repeated, once she was sure they were all listening. “Their files are locked.”
John pushed his chair away from his desk, swinging around to face Cameron properly. “Why send you back with only half the story? If we need to protect these people then we should know as much about them as possible. Hell, I bet Kaliba know more than that. Why leave so much to coincidence and chance and bloody scrawls on a wall?” He sounded exasperated, unable to figure out the logic behind what had undoubtedly been a decision taken by his future self.
Derek was staring at Cameron, and when he spoke it was so quietly they had to strain to hear him. “Sometimes they go bad.”
It wasn’t just a theory. They had all been on the receiving end of one of those times, and as an explanation it made a lot of sense.
“Yes.” Cameron was the first to agree. “Sometimes we go bad.”
“So, if these files are shut down,” Sarah was working it out as she went along, “and John, future John, seems to have trusted you with a hell of a lot of his secrets, can we assume the Trents have a pretty vital part to play, if he wouldn’t trust even you with this?”
“I think that’s a safe bet, mom.”
Cameron nodded in confirmation and Derek managed a wry smile.
“Okay, so they’re not just deluded fan-boys, Connor.”
She gave him a brief smile, but it couldn’t distract her from the fact that Michael lay critically injured in the next room and Zach was, in all likelihood, dead or a prisoner of Kaliba.
“Yeah.” She shook her head, daunted by the choices now facing them. “Fuck.”
~ ~ ~
Derek heard Sarah before he found her. The sound of her fists smacking against plastic grew louder as he approached the garage and it was punctuated by rough grunts of effort. When he opened the door, the heat in the small space was stifling and dust motes danced in the sunlight that filtered in through the filthy windows. He had no idea where she had found the decrepit punching bag, but her face was fixed with concentration as she pounded it rhythmically. He watched her for a couple of minutes, as loath to interrupt as she was to acknowledge his presence. Finally, after a fast flurry of hits, she grabbed the bag with her gloved hands and rested her forehead against it.
“John said no, didn’t he?”
She didn’t answer him. She was still panting, sweat soaking her face and clothing. He lowered himself to the floor, his back against the wall they had repaired.
“Safest thing would be for none of us to go, Sarah.”
“I know that.” She slammed a fist against the bag. “Do you think I don’t fucking know that? No, John won’t stay here and watch Michael, and yes, it would be safer if we all just stayed behind and did nothing, but I…” She shook her head, gulping for air. “Those coordinates are all we have, and…”
He finished her sentence for her. “And you think that’s where Zach is.”
“Yes,” she conceded. “It seems like something they would do. At the very least, the possibility forces us to be cautious. We can’t just blow whatever Kaliba have out there to shit, when there’s a risk he’ll be inside it.”
“They’ll have cleared the place out.” That was so obvious, he couldn’t understand why she couldn’t see it. “So you risk John, you risk yourself, for what?”
She was already shaking her head, the chain on the bag clanging softly in time with her dissent. “That’s why we need to move quickly.” Even as she said it, she sounded as if she was struggling to believe it, and all the fight seemed to leave her in a rush. She walked over to the wall and lowered herself down beside him. “That location is all we have,” she said again, but more desperately this time, as if willing him to support her. “If Zach is the only thing we come back with, then it’ll have been worth it. We dragged him and Michael into this.”
“We might come back with nothing. Meanwhile we leave Michael unprotected and go in there distracted by a hostage.” He turned his face towards her. “It makes us all vulnerable.”
She nodded. “You want to stay here, then?” She made it sound as if it was the most reasonable suggestion in the world. “You’re the one with the med experience.”
He didn’t rise to the bait. He took her gloved hand, dumped it in his lap and began to untie the laces for her. “I just want you to be realistic, Connor. To see the bigger picture.”
“They’re a part of the bigger picture. Both of them.” She pulled her hand away and leaned back to look at him properly. “Are you deliberately fucking goading me?”
“No, I’m playing devil’s advocate. Someone’s got to. John’s fixed us a map and Cameron’s already loading the truck.”
She didn’t want to be reminded of what they were going to do, or the tenuous logic behind their reasons for doing so. She had played all the arguments out with every punch she had landed, and she was well aware that gut instinct and a sense of duty were not solid enough foundations to build a mission on.
“Is this what I’m here to teach John?” she whispered, tears choking the words in her throat as all of her confidence crumbled away. “What if I’m wrong?”
He eased the glove from her hand, set it aside and interlaced her fingers with his own. “Then I guess he learns, one way or another.”
Her hand was warm and clammy where he gripped it and he could feel her body shuddering as she fought to regain her composure. They sat in silence until eventually she gave him her other glove to unfasten. The laces had just fallen loose when the door was flung open and John stepped inside, blinking in the dust and then squinting at them with momentary confusion when he saw where they were.
“Michael’s awake,” he said, slightly breathlessly. “He’s asking for you, mom.”
~ ~ ~
TBC…
~ ~ ~
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-19 09:43 pm (UTC)First! I had the tiniest inkling of hope that Zach might have survived, so I was all clappy about that! \o/ But then it was revealed that Kristina McSociopatherson and Kaliba had him, so I'm back to gnawing on my hands. D': (Seriously, Kristina. Please jump in some lava.)
This chapter was very "sudden infestation of major plot BEES OMG?!!," so I'm still reeling over the Trents and how they're in tech and med and are classified and HUH!
And as much as I enjoy sexytimes with Sarah and Derek, I was so very pleased to read that section where Derek walks into the bathroom while Sarah's still in the shower, and it's unspoken but clear that there are only two things hanging in the air: the immediacy of the mission and how far are Sarah and Derek willing to let themselves (especially Sarah) to go in order to safeguard an unknown future. Much love.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-20 09:33 am (UTC)Yeah, poor Zach, he's not in a happy place. And I might actually have to use that as Kris' surname because that's so much more awesome than Slater ;-)
This chapter was very "sudden infestation of major plot BEES OMG?!!," so I'm still reeling over the Trents and how they're in tech and med and are classified and HUH!
Heh. That's why I kept it kinda short. The next part is a big ol' chunk to compensate!
that there are only two things hanging in the air: the immediacy of the mission and how far are Sarah and Derek willing to let themselves (especially Sarah) to go in order to safeguard an unknown future. Much love.
Always John and the mission. Anything else besides that is a bonus grasped when time allows, and I love that they both get that and are at peace with it. Sarah and Derek: finding a work-life balance amidst the bullets, you've gotta love 'em :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-20 02:19 pm (UTC)Butterflies On the road...
Date: 2010-06-22 12:37 pm (UTC)I hope you are OK with me copying these to a portable device so that I can read them while riding "9mm".
CJ Fic? Check.
Let's see, routes and maps to GPS? Next.
Re: Butterflies On the road...
Date: 2010-06-22 02:29 pm (UTC)