Aaaand we're almost done!! This part is short and (I hope) sweet, so I really don't have much to say about it except that it contains one of my favorite paragraphs I've ever written for this fandom (the "obedience" paranthetical). Also: have I mentioned how much I love Catherine Foster <3
[The part in which 22 is still out cold and Kit is overwhelmingly Kit about it]
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10.
06 faces down this unique predicament the same way she always does. One arm akimbo, head tilted, worrying the nails of her dominant hand through her glove with her teeth.
She’d expected 22 to be in bad shape, but this—this is new. She can count on two hands the number of times she’s seen him pass out in the years they’ve been paired, and most of them have involved head trauma from training incidents, or else been on the operating table so they don’t even really count.
She crouches by his head, checks his pulse. Heat roils off his skin, soaking through her glove while she counts. A minute passes and she pulls her hand away, chewing her lip—forty-six beats, much too low. She brings up a chat box, hesitates, closes it. Finds his arm, heals the broken finger and the torn skin beneath his glove, fully expecting the pain to jolt him awake.
He does not stir.
He looks strange like this, expression wiped smooth, no trace of his usual scowl. He looks young, vulnerable, as close to fragile as she’s ever seen him. Without consciousness to keep it at bay, the illness is free to taint his features, circling his eyes in charcoal and turning the rest of his skin ashy pale. Only his sharp cheekbones burn, high color painted over them from the fever. His lips, oddly parted, are chapped.
She hates it.
Another minute sees her scooping him up, all one-hundred-eighty-something pounds of him like nothing in her arms. One around his shoulders, the other tucked under his knees, her exactitude of force never more precisely calculated than this moment.
His head lolls, and she shifts him so that it rests against her shoulder, his hot slow breath on her collarbone.
A memory washes over her as she takes a step, and for a moment it stalls her, locking her muscles in place as the images bleed through her vision unbidden.
A surveillance video, coercively shown her by the Director, of a scene she has no memory of herself: 22, age twelve, marching down the street with her in his arms like he is in hers now, bleak determination in every line of his posture. The Director trailing beside him in her personal car, snail’s pace.
He’d been sick then, too—only much, much worse, all of his organs in perfectly cascading failure as they rejected four years of treatment in a matter of hours, systemically, cell by cell; and though she’d had no way of knowing this at the time, she’d nonetheless been absolutely useless, falling for the Director’s trap like a fucking idiot.
She sets her jaw, shakes the memory out of her head. Dispels the Director’s commentary—You see, Catherine? 22 exhibits model obedience no matter the circumstances, you’d do well to follow his lead—and grits her teeth, fighting the sting of shame echoing out of that memory. Nothing about that poor sick 22 from the video says obedience to 06; no, she understands him far better than that. Desperation, sure. Necessity, probably. Loyalty, absolutely. He brought her back that day to save them both, nothing more.
Today, she will do the same.
(Obedience, the Director will say, a grudging acknowledgment in passing that would once have earned her a cookie and now simply falls hollow on uncaring ears. But 06 will think of that video shown in secret, of small 22 clinging to his dignity then and the 22 she carries unconscious through the black glass doors who fought her for the same, and she will look that bitch in her cold, soulless eyes and say, loyalty.)
It starts to snow as she starts to walk again, fat icy flakes brushing her face and melting where they kiss her skin, and she throws her head back and grins, determination flowing back into her with every careful step.
HI NKSVERSE FANDOM HOW ARE WE FEELING !!
LMAO I was diligently editing this project regularly and then Real Life happened and now it's been a whole year whoops
Anyways!! In honor of the Flight & Anchor release next month, I'm finally resurrecting this! For any of y'all still reading/interested in this fic, thank you I love you <333 (also: everyone go preorder the novella it's my personal enduring favorite of Nicole's work bc it got me fully hyperfixated on the 'verse etc. etc.) For any newcomers, this particular project of mine is a love letter to this novella specifically, a sort of mirror fic that pays homage to that event in their lives (and to Them generally. It's been over two years and I still adore them so much omg they're probably my favorite Bestie Duo I've ever encountered).
This part is another one of my favorites ngl. It is the one in which 22 is so feverish and overstimulated he picks a fight with 06 because he doesn't know how else to process emotion for absolutely no reason. (I wanna know what if any resources were devoted to these kids' mental health. Diana Reyes I just wanna talk-)
TW: the operatives' toxic trait of not being careful with their bodies; choking (briefly/canon parallel, end of their "fight")
Enjoy!!(?)
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9.
His fingers are numb beneath the smart fabric of his gloves. His toes, ears, his whole face is numb, but his eyes and nose sting like hell, his throat burning all the way down to his lungs and he is tired. So, so tired—a level of exhaustion he’s unfamiliar with, that aches all the way to his bones. His muscles are on fire, his lungs keep spasming, and his head is throbbing violently enough that his vision blackens at the edges.
Yet only two words loop on repeat in his muddled brain, hammering down with every lurching beat of his heart.
Worth it.
As he flings the hundredth scrap of twisted metal into a pile the size of a small house, ready for the incinerator cart.
Worth it.
As he heaves a broken slab of concrete up off a mangled car, then tosses the car and the slab into the pile.
Worth it.
When he pauses to cough, fighting desperately to control his breathing before he damages any internal organs, biting down hard on his tongue to quell the paroxysms, spitting the blood he draws onto the crumbled pavement at his feet.
Worth—
“Hey, dumbass!”
He barely hears her over the ringing in his ears, but she’s upon him in seconds anyway, hand clamped to his shoulder. He tries to say something—fuck off, probably, or what are you doing here or go back to HQ you idiot but all that comes out is a strained sound that may or may not be “Kit—”.
She ignores it, gripping his shoulder bracingly with one hand while she claps the other to his forehead.
“She sent you out with this fever?” she says, voice low, careful.
His silence is all the answer she needs.
“I’ll fucking kill her.” Her voice is the calm before a storm neither of them can afford, not now, not this time, not anymore.
“Leave me alone,” he rasps, wincing at the nothing state of his voice. Pushes her, harder than he means to. She stumbles back several yards, arms flailing for balance, too stunned to reply for a moment before the anger comes.
“Like hell I will.” She plants herself solidly between him and the rubble pile, eyes squinted against the wind that lashes around the corners of the buildings to buffet against them. “What the fuck do you think this is, some misguided half-assed attempt at—”
“This is.” he interrupts, hooking his shoulder into hers and tilting forward, “Me covering.” he pushes, just the barest fraction of his strength, and she staggers, nearly tripping over her feet, “For you.” He bends down, picks up a four-foot chunk of broken concrete, hoists it on his shoulder as he locks eyes with her. “Yesterday was a mistake. I told you she’d know. And she always needs a scapegoat.” He pitches the debris over his shoulder, an involuntary shudder passing through him at the way the clatter grates against his oversensitive ears. “I was the one available. Better to lose one than risk two.” His voice cracks at the end, whittled to nothing by the virus waging war in his throat, but the jab hits home.
“That's bullshit and you know it,” she mutters, kicking a meter-length of metal pipe toward the pile, but he doesn’t miss the flash of hurt in her eyes before she drops them.
“Is it.” He scans the ground, frowns as it blurs before his eyes. He stoops, picks up a dormant resonance grenade—gingerly, thumb and forefinger—crushes it down to a marble-sized lump of inert junk metal, winds up, and sends it flying straight through the chassis of a Greenleaf surveillance drone several hundred feet above their heads.
“Whoa, watch it!” 06 yelps, peering up into the clouds with a hand shading her eyes. She tilts her head, tracking the trajectory of the falling drone by the sound, then springs into motion. In just seconds, she sprints across the street and leaps into the air, snatching the smoking hulk of machinery before it can slam sideways into a Stellaxis info board. She folds it in half, then half again, chucking it onto the rubble pile and dusting her hands off with a bemused twist of her lips. “What’s gotten into you?”
“Move.” He brushes past her hard enough for her to grunt in pain, stalks up the side of the pile, and shoves his hand through the crumpled layers of metal into the drone’s transmitter module, extracting a small plastic chip and crushing it into powder. “Don’t be sloppy.”
“Come back with me, idiot.”
“I have one more street to go.” A wave of dizziness washes over him as he starts to descend the pile, and he pauses, half-closing his eyes. “My orders are to do this alone, you shouldn’t be here. Go back.”
“I won’t.”
Frustration bubbles up despite his every effort to keep it down, and he’s beside her in a single roughly calculated leap. “06,” he starts warningly, but she only rolls her eyes.
“‘22’.” Light, mocking. Then, after a breath, his name. No trace of the kickback in her eyes. “You’re being a stubborn ass and you know it.”
This doesn’t dignify a response. They stare at each other, at a standoff.
She looks like she’s cooking up some juicier insult, or worse, maybe something compassionate.
“Hey—”
Before she can get any actual words out, he sneezes, which feels approximately like getting all of his ribs kicked in at once (a sensation with which he is, in fact, intimately familiar). His expression after must be a sight, because when he looks up she is staring harder, that deep furrow creasing her brow that he hates.
“What,” he tries to say, but he sneezes again—this time bottling it up with every last inch of his willpower, ignoring the detonation of pain behind his eyes—and this expression must be even worse, because now she is glaring at him.
“What the fuck is wrong with you,” she says, face undergoing a series of contortions—concerned to alarmed to sympathetic to incredulous—that would have been funny if he wasn’t so strung-out-pissed.
“Shut up,” he grinds out, meant as a snap but lacking about eighty percent of the energy required for that.
She sighs, raking both hands up through her cropped hair. “Fine,” she mutters. “At least let me help you.” She picks up a piece of metal, which he snatches out of her hands faster than she can gear up to toss it.
“No.” He’s tired—so fucking tired—and he’s not sure if he’s angry at her or just himself.
He chucks the piece of metal toward the pile, skews wide by several feet, and watches it careen off course and smash through a third story window, greeted by a smattering of screams. Every molecule of him cringes away from the thought of the message the Director will absolutely be sending him about this, fear and subsequent fury at the fear pooling like poison in his stomach.
He fists his hands so tightly, a bone in his left index finger snaps.
06 flinches, shooting him a look that he steadily ignores. When the moment wears thin, silence stretching taut between them, 06 tsks, catching up his wrist with a rough little tug.
“Idiot,” she says softly, digging in a pocket. “Don’t just leave it like that.”
Her warm fingers brush against his frigid skin through the barest gap between glove and sleeve, featherlight, and it is too much.
His sword is out before his thoughts catch up with his absolutely misdirected blind rage, the point grazing her throat. A glance down reveals hers at his heart, a hairline tear in the fabric of his jacket as she leans casually into the onehanded counterstrike. Her stance is open, healing device tucked behind the thumb on her free hand where he can see it. Her face is a question, a new glimmer of hurt kept guarded just beneath the surface.
“Touch me again,” he breathes, drawing a tiny bead of blood from her skin, "and I will kill you."
Incredulity and amusement tick her eyebrows up, but her eyes themselves are very, very serious. “I’d like to see you try.”
Six minutes later, he’s still not sure why they’re fighting but he is sure that he has to keep moving, has to keep striking, has to keep control at all costs. 06 is going easy on him, he knows that she is, yet somehow this has no power to dissuade him from the nonsensical match he’s thrown himself into. They’re a tangle of swords and limbs, boots and fists, and it’s both so much better and so very much worse than his previous ill-fated match with 08.
Sparring with 06 is like fighting an extension of himself. They are a single fluidity, a collective force, two jagged halves of a whole. Their pivots and lunges, strikes and blocks weave together in a seamless flow, easy as breathing, every potential move the other could make etched irrevocably into the folds of their brains. He could do this in his sleep.
Several more minutes pass, indeterminate. The incandescent edges of his anger abruptly cool, releasing his mind and dropping him unceremoniously back into his body just in time for him to realize that he is fading. Rapidly. With 08, he’d still had the greater part of his faculties; now, he’s running on autopilot, the fever like a fire raging in his veins. Black spots shimmer across his field of vision in time with his pulse, which thunders in his ears. His awareness of his body is reduced to points of pain—head, throat, finger, chest—and all of it is screaming at him to sit the fuck down.
He needs to finish this, and quickly.
With the last dregs of his strength, he surges forward, sheathing his sword. As he strides into range, he catches her sword at the base, gripping it in one gloved hand and ignoring the bite of the blade through his fingers as he yanks it from her grasp and casts it aside. In one swift, lethal motion he corrals her by the throat, one handed, and pins her up against the nearest wall.
He’s prepared for the way her hands circle his wrist, a vice-grip that she will tighten further and further until his arm breaks or he lets go. He’s unprepared for the way all of his muscles start trembling, shuddering with the effort of holding her up that’s normally no effort at all.
“Match.” The word falls from his parched throat, unrecognizably blunted in his own ears. He’s shaking all over now, and he has to let her down a moment before she properly concedes, teeth chattering in his head as the heat generated from the exertion dissipates and he’s wracked with full-body chills.
He thinks 06 replies, but he isn’t sure. Suddenly, everything is fuzzy and wrong, his vision splintering into fractals of white and black as a wave of dizziness swallows him whole. The street spins out from beneath him, 06’s face a blur against the sickly too-bright-ness, and then there is nothing, and he is falling, and it stops.
At long last I’m back with part 8!! Feat. the Director feeling proud of herself for #winning with him until she realizes, entirely too late, that she super lost
TW: emotional manipulation/abuse, medical stuff (see part 7 tw)
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8.
When the Director enters Medical Bay One, 22 is sitting upright in the bed, posture ridiculously flawless, expression a perfect blank.
This does not surprise her.
She stands aside to let the medbot pass, looks on as it runs through diagnosis protocol, administers the first round of bespoke antivirals, disconnects his IV and pronounces him fit for release and monitoring.
There was a time when she would have had to bring in a team of six. One for the treatment, the other five requisitioned for restraint purposes. Medbots only, of course—broken medbots quantifiably less expensive to repair or replace than broken employees.
Now, in year twelve of the program, 22 does not so much as twitch at any point of the procedure, his stone-faced stillness perfectly evocative of the bioengineered lab-grown AI superweapon all of New Liberty City believes him to be. If he is relieved when it is done, or apprehensive at her presence, it does not show on his face.
This does not surprise her either.
Indeed, the only thing about the operative in front of her that gives her pause is the fact that he, despite a fever of nearly 102 and a vitals display feed that is threatening to give her a migraine, does not look ill in the slightest.
Then again, she amends, he doesn’t exactly look well either. The longer she studies him, the better she can see it: something about him is distinctly and unmistakably off, like if you took everything in a room and shifted it over two inches to the left.
The medbot leaves, but it might as well be invisible for all the attention 22 has paid it. His eyes have been on her from the moment she set foot through the door, and as she comes nearer that gaze sharpens—into the trademark unblinking uncanny fixed stare that all of the operatives have, the one that is just shy of predatory and that to this day still sets all her hair on end.
She bypasses this inconvenient primal reflex with practiced ease, fixing him with a measured stare of her own.
“When I received the operative health crisis notification,” she says mildly, in lieu of a greeting, “you were the last one I expected it to be.”
Predictably, this garners no discernible reaction. He sits there, watching, looking for all the world like a bot awaiting a directive.
“Nor, I must confess, was said health crisis anywhere within the ballpark of my expectations,” she continues, seeding the words with just the slightest measure of reproach. “Sudden-onset acute upper respiratory infection?” Reproach up a fifth of a degree. “A broken nose?”
This last finally seems to get through, if infinitesimally. A sea change stirs in his unnaturally pale eyes—the barest glimmer of…something. Not shame, not embarrassment or alarm or unease. Annoyance.
“A miscalculation,” he says, and the ever-present behavioral-scientist-backbrain part of her points out that he does not specify to which affliction he is referring. “It will not happen again.”
The lethal certainty baked into this statement sends a chill through the whole of her, scalp to soles. She muscles the fight-or-flight response down and smothers it. Lifts a brow, lips pressed in a thin smile of quiet regard, and inclines her head.
“Walk with me.”
She leaves the room without a backward glance, his presence behind her like a weight at the top of her spine. The staccato click of her heels drowns out the faint swish of his socks on the tile of the hall, and when she clears the personnel from the nearest diagnostics room he’s there beside her, silent as death.
“Have a seat,” she says, gesturing to the row of recently-vacated chairs facing the bank of assorted lab equipment.
He does not. He stays put by the smartwall just inside the door, standing: spine perfectly straight, shoulders square. If he’s tired or symptomatic it isn’t presenting in either facial expression or body language.
A lab tech pushes a bundle of clothing into her arms with a jumbled apology as they scurry out the door. The Director takes a look at it, huffs a laugh through her nose, and sets it on a table.
“I see they’ve managed to get the blood out of your jacket,” she says, taking it from the pile and handing it over to him.
He doesn’t even glance at it. Just accepts it wordlessly and slides it on over the thin black smart fabric undershirt he’s still wearing, his stay in Medical too brief to warrant an in-patient tunic. She frowns, just slightly, and hands him his boots and utility belt, which are received in identical fashion.
He reaches out for the gloves as she holds them out next, the extensive knotted trails of scar tissue beneath his skin visible under the harsh fluorescents. She pulls her gaze away, up to his face.
“It’s unlike you.” She speaks softly, almost gently. She wants to say she can see him brace for whatever is coming, but if she’s honest with herself any read she has on his expressions is guesswork at best, twelve years and multiple facial analysis lens apps be damned. “To lose to Nicholas, of all people.”
To this, though, he again telegraphs annoyance to a degree she can pick up with reasonable confidence.
“I was still assessing his condition.” His voice, quietly brittle, is even harder to pick up than usual. “It was a mis…” He pauses, swallows. Immediately her interest is piqued—22 is not given to speaking without premeditation.
“Miscalculation,” she supplies.
The briefest of hesitations, then a nod.
“Yes, so you said.” She narrows her eyes. There is significant overlap between his current expression and the one he makes when he violates censorship parameters—only, this can’t possibly be that. Even if he is thinking about the undoubtedly forbidden behaviors that landed him in this situation, the array filter does not censor thoughts. Not that any of the operatives were explicitly told this, of course.
In any case, hesitation in 22 historically amounts to weak spot in defenses, and the Director is by no means above using this to her advantage.
“Speaking of miscalculations.” She casts his vitals monitor up on the smartwall behind him, alongside data from the medbot’s report. “Can you tell me what this is?” She gestures to the image on the right, a cluster of vaguely hexagonal blobs stained bluish against a pale backdrop.
He looks at it a moment, then shakes his head, watching her sidelong. He’s starting to look just the slightest bit bleary—which, given his readings, would hardly be surprising if not for what and, more importantly, who he is.
“Human adenovirus,” she interjects into his telling silence. “HAdV-B14, to be exact. Known to cause acute upper respiratory infections ranging from mild to severe, occasionally fatal, especially in the young, elderly, or immunocompromised. Present specimen imaged twenty minutes ago from a throat swab of yours.” She folds her hands, watching his face.
“I’m not critical.” This is not a question; and the way he holds her gaze as he speaks is more than a little unsettling, as is the subtle note of satisfaction in the husk of his tone.
“....No.” She regrets the admission immediately and hastens to regain her ground. “However, there is still plenty of time and opportunity for you to become so, given the tenuous state of your health, as you are well aware.” She pauses, meeting his blank gaze unflinchingly. Recalibrates, casting new data to the smartwall with a flick of her wrist. This time it’s a building schematic, overlaid with a scrolling list of names.
“I’m sure I don’t need to remind you,” she continues, selecting an entry on the list, “of the extensive measures we have to take to ensure your safety and wellbeing.” The name she selects is random, one she only vaguely recognizes as one of the researchers: a time punch with a small box beside it that reads health check complete. “We screen everyone who enters the building,” she adds, when he doesn’t respond. “The air filtration system is top of the line, especially—” she sidesteps the words down here, carefully—“for sublevels A through D.”
If any of this means anything to him, he gives no indication. He simply watches her, and the screen, and waits.
She pulls up a portion of his file to overlay the schematic. Name, number, age, birthday. Date of initial autoimmune disorder incidence. Dates of subsequential flare-ups. Number, type, and dates of corrective therapies and procedures. List of current medications. He barely glances at it.
“You’re more than old enough to understand the delicate balance your immune system is suspended in. The immunosuppressants you’re on alone would make you more susceptible to infection, never mind your lack of acquired natural immunities—and I’m sure you’re well aware of the fact that the former cannot be discontinued under any circumstances. Unless, of course, you would like another liver transplant.” She waits for him to flinch. He doesn’t.
Her jaw tightens. Waving away the display, she closes the distance between them, picking up a package of antibacterial wipes along her way.
“Given everything I have just shown you,” she says, tipping his chin down, bracing a hand—a gentling hand, a warning hand—against his jawbone as she begins wiping away dried blood leftover on his upper lip, “the only logical conclusion is that at some point in the last seventy-two hours, you or one of your fellow operatives spent a significant period of time outside of this building.”
He stays still—stiller than should be possible—as she works at the staining on his skin. He doesn’t move, doesn’t blink. She’s not sure he’s even breathing, come to think of it. If it wasn’t for the warmth radiating off him, for the pulse in his neck, even she might be inclined to think him more machine than human.
“Of course,” she continues, “none of you were under directive to do so, meaning this excursion was unauthorized.” She gives him a meaningful look. A don’t worry, you aren’t in trouble as long as you confide in me look. “I already have the security feeds to confirm this, by the way,” she concludes, conversationally, pulling back to admire her handiwork. “I’m simply giving you the opportunity to tell me the truth before any more…” she pauses, delicately— “...final decisions are made.”
He says nothing.
She presses her lips into a flat line, patience beginning to wear thin. “I don’t think you understand,” she begins, waving a grainy blow-up of a lens-captured photo from some customer-citizen’s social that depicts 06 and 22 huddled together in the middle of Greenleaf Square over to the blank smartwall, “how much is at stake here. Not just for you, but for her, and for Nicholas as well. So if you have any information for me, it is in your best interest and theirs to share it now.”
Minutes pass, silence and eye contact unbroken.
Irrational anger seizes her, product of the history between them—of the incomprehensible long game she suspects he’s playing but can’t even approximate the shape of; of the way he’s the perfectly obedient foil to 06’s rebellious streak, yet something in his eyes is anything but; of too many unfruitful conversations just like this one.
“I didn’t want to do this, but—” she stops short, distracted by a sharp movement from 22. More of a twitch than anything else, but the sheer uncharacteristicness of it puts her immediately on high alert. His pulse simultaneously spikes, incongruous with the absence of any detectable motion from him.
She glances sharply at him when he does it again, some kind of spasm that has his vitals feed going momentarily haywire with each one.
“Something the matter?” she says, eyes narrowing—and when it happens a third time, his expression contorting in an obvious flinch before he forcibly schools it back, it suddenly makes sense.
“Gesundheit,” she says, arching an eyebrow. “I’d advise you not to keep trying to stop them like that, by the way. If you give yourself an aneurysm, I can’t help you.”
The contempt in the look he brings to bear on her then is enough to curdle her blood, though in a moment it, too, is wiped from his face with a hard blink and the faintest hint of a sniff.
She feels a headache coming on.
“Or Kit, for that matter,” she adds, in a sudden fit of inspiration, probing for sore spots that exist if one knows where to look. “Is she faring similarly after your little excursion, I wonder?”
“I don’t know.” His response is as instant as it is flat.
“I believe you,” she concedes finally, after another long moment of not quailing beneath his stare, “but only because if she were severely ill you would have brought her to me.” She pauses. He doesn’t quite blink under her sudden scrutiny, but he doesn’t quite not, either. “Unless, perhaps, you’ve got her sequestered away somewhere on sublevel D.”
This, finally, visibly strikes a nerve. As well it should—he came out of the incident she’s referencing with a double concussion, a punctured lung, fourteen broken bones, twenty-eight mishealed ones and a stress-triggered flare up. He was in the ICU for almost a month.
…But then, of course, she doubts that’s the nerve that was struck. She remembers all too well how Kit flatlined no less than eight times during her liver transplant, and she’s certain he remembers it too. The only times he had surfaced from delirium during his own harrowing recovery were to ask if she was alive—and with such uncharacteristic distress that multiple personnel broke protocol to answer him truthfully, in case it would improve his chances of pulling through.
She had, regrettably, been one of said personnel.
In the end, obviously, both operatives had survived, and if it was by virtue of the tenacity of their fucking bonds she did not care to know it.
When she glances at him again, his face is blank, any trace of a reaction wiped clean from it.
A spike of frustration nearly claims her before she tamps it down.
“If neither of you are in critical condition,” she says evenly, “and if Catherine does not choose to join you in the next, let’s say, five minutes—” she makes a show of checking the time on her lenses— “then I’m afraid you’re going to have to take full responsibility for the consequences of your actions, with or without her participation.”
He remains silent. If she didn’t know him better, she’d almost think he was exhibiting the faintest air of impatience.
She sighs. “We both know whose idea it was to leave the grounds,” she says, softening a degree or two. An olive branch. A final offering before she drops the other shoe. “Why didn’t you stop her?”
“Risk assessment,” he says crisply—and oh, there’s the infection. Raised just a little louder now, she notes that his voice is nothing like itself, thick and raw like he’s been gargling knife blades. Interesting. “She would have left regardless. I followed her according to the buddy system protocol.”
Listening to him makes her want to clear her own throat. She fights the instinct, instead pressing her lips together in the approximation of maternal concern she’s honed to perfection.
“If you tell me where she is now,” she says carefully, eyes fixed to his, “I will leave you both in the green. Just this once.”
It’s a bluff, all of it. Whether he knows this or not, whether his obstinate lack of cooperation is inspired by this, or his loyalty to Kit, or his compromised state, she couldn’t be fucked to guess; but whatever the case, he does not budge an inch. They stay locked in this stalemate of a stare before finally, hating herself, she blinks first.
“Time’s up,” she says calmly, though her mind is anything but. “Unless you can somehow summon her in the next ten seconds, I’ll be sending you out to do street cleanup.” She pulls up the appropriate communication channels and information packets on her lenses. “When Catherine is found, she will be assigned to SCQ for the remainder of the month.”
SCQ—what the operatives dubbed “the box” when they were children, despite all her efforts to shut the pejorative down—is Catherine’s least favorite punishment, and she knows as well as 22 does that expecting her to spend a full thirty days in it is absurd, even dangerous.
“I’ll go,” he says without batting an eye, in what appears to be utter disregard of both his own failing health and the guaranteed wrath of his partner. As if in some involuntary acknowledgement of the first, however, he sneezes again, stifled to silence against the flat of his fist.
“Be careful.” Her tone is part admonishment, part threat, his name threaded onto the end of the phrase to seal the warning. As it leaves her lips his eyes snap to hers again, unnaturally quick, and something that looks disturbingly close to dangerous flashes in the depths of them, there and gone.
She musters every ounce of her will not to flinch or look away and the moment passes almost before she can register it, leaving him looking distinctly more tired than before.
“Let me be clear: I’m assigning you to clear 13th through 17th Street, alone, before curfew,” she says tightly, unsettled in a way she can’t quite parse. “No assistance, no excuses. If you fail to comply, I’m sending you to the community services department in the morning. Do you understand the directive?”
“I understand.” His tone, beneath the layers of fatigue and congestion, is ice and steel. Worse, though his expression does not change, somehow she gets the distinctly uncomfortable impression that he is, against all sensible logic, pleased. “Will that be all?”
It feels entirely too much like letting him have the last word. She grasps at the straws of the resolve she’d thought was airtight, coming up with little more than a ghost of a threat, the last cast of a baitless hook. “Not quite.” She folds her arms. Realizes the defensive nature of the posture and almost unfolds them, forces herself to remain in the position for consistency, taps her fingers against her arm. “I’m sure you’re as concerned about Catherine as I am. Would you like me to notify you when she is found?”
His eyes when they lock on hers are baleful, a coldly burning gray that pins her like a butterfly to velvet. “That,” he says quietly, “will not be necessary.”
She takes a breath, but by the time the words come he is gone.
Over halfway through posting this thing now!! Here’s part 7, in which 22′s troubles multiply exponentially and 06 is relentlessly herself lmao
(tw: mentions of medical stuff like IVs and the occupational hazard™ etc.)
____________
7.
The doctors and med techs speak quietly, private conferences behind closed doors like he can’t hear every word.
Or maybe they don’t care if he hears. Maybe some of them still think he’s biotech, not human, not a person. Dimly, he wonders why they even bother speaking aloud at all when they could easily just converse over implant, unless they actively want him to overhear it.
Whatever the case, he listens from the examination table as they argue over his test results—what they are, what they mean, how they compare to his baseline data. Everybody seems to have an opinion, but so far none of them seem to have called the Director up to the bay, so that’s something.
He’s finding it hard to concentrate, anyway. Between the shit he’s been dealing with all day and whatever drugs they’ve got pumping into his system, he only catches every few words or so, none of them really sticking well.
“... flare-up? No, he—”
“—subject’s temperature is 101.5, right at the lowest range of measure for—”
“ —infection? Take a look at his lungs, they don’t—”
“....liver function is normal, blood oxygen saturation normal, no signs of autolysis or—”
“No hemorrhaging present, apart from the frontal and ethmoid sinuses, which have already—”
“....signs of respiratory distress, inflamed trachea and upper bronchi but—”
“....markers of an acute URI. But where would he have….”
“.....notify Director Reyes.”
There it is.
22 opens his eyes, blinking against the bright lights trained upon him. His vision swims as he glances around, careful not to move anything but his eyes. He’s hooked up to several machines casting holo-readouts of his vitals. A single IV line snakes down from somewhere just out of his field of vision, pinching at the inside of his elbow. The pain in his head has dialed way down, but he feels sluggish, almost sleepy, thoughts slipping through his brain like sand through fingers.
The room is empty, the doctors and medbots all scattered through the labs and diagnostic facilities several rooms over. He is, as far as he can tell, completely alone.
He sits up slowly, bracing for the shrill wail of the alarm; but the room stays silent, apart from the whirring of the machines and the drip of the IV. So: he’s not considered a flight risk, then.
His lips twitch, the ghost of a smile gone before it fully forms. The degree of trust they have—no, she has—in him is astounding.
Well-earned, he allows himself to think, and sneezes.
This surprises him a little. Though what's more surprising, and more unwelcome, is how much it hurts.
His brain, however exhausted, however drugged-up, is a blisteringly efficient machine, and all the fragments of doctors’ whispers slot neatly up against the events of the past twenty-four hours like macabre puzzle pieces.
He’s sick.
Really, he should have figured this out by now, but the lack of sleep combined with whatever strange infection he’s picked up from some civilian somewhere yesterday has pared down his processing power to the minimum essentials, namely: keeping [] out of trouble for as long as possible.
He blinks. The mental censorship is as automatic to him as breathing, but that time was almost—
He sneezes again. Grits his teeth, lifts a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose.
He’s sick, because of fucking course he is. Briefly, a hit of undiluted rage steals his breath away. Not at 06—responsible for their little adventure though she may be (and always is), it isn’t her body committing this ultimate betrayal now.
He and the others have heard the spiel 529,117 times:
-your bodies are delicately calibrated
-property of Stellaxis Innovations
-immune systems severely compromised
-do not leave the sublevels without clearance
-under any circumstances
-[this means you, Catherine]
-The air filtration system here at Stellaxis Innovations has been designed bespoke for your protection, the company cannot guarantee your safety should you choose to leave the building without following precautionary protocol
-if exposed to the outside environment, standard 1.5 hours of de—
Another sneeze kicks over the memory like a glitched out recording, this one accompanied by an ominous twinge from his ribs that drags his attention forcibly and reluctantly back into his body. He goes still, eyes flicking to the holoscreens, bracing for some kind of alert.
They stay silent.
He exhales, slowly.
What was that?
06’s voice in his head.
I sneezed, he thinks at her, reflexively, annoyed; then simultaneously realizes:
-his lenses are gone
-she just spoke aloud.
He frowns.
“Where are you,” he says cautiously. The words rasp over his vocal cords, rendering him appallingly hoarse. 06’s shouts of laughter—turned to breathy echoes through seventy-five levels of concrete and glass and steel alloy—are the only answer he needs.
He opens his mouth, ostensibly to say something that would shut her up, but what comes out instead is a string of ragged coughs that scrape his lungs and throat all the way up.
You okay? With 06, there’s a razor-thin line between amusement at someone’s expense and concern, and he knows better than anyone the parameters of that line.
“Fine,” he grits, hands curling into fists tight enough to bruise his palms. Steadfastly ignoring the involuntary spike of panic that cough induces as well as the machines beeping at him because of it, heartrate elevated to 126 BPM, blood pressure to 140/90, blood oxygen—
I’m coming down there to get you out, she says, blandly, but he interrupts her.
“No,” he says, voice raised just enough for her to know he means it—because he can hear the Director in the hall outside the doors, and he’s running out of time.
She hears everything he doesn’t say—stay up there, I’ll handle it, stay out of it like you’ve fucking been anyway—in that single word, and does not speak again.
He takes a measured, steadying breath; and by the time the door slides open, every machine is as silent as he is.
Part 6: Feat. Ayres!! My personal sleeper-favorite side character in nks’s books LOL. This scene was born from my desire to see him and 22 interacting 😂
tw: blood (sorry 22)
6.
Seven minutes into their scheduled training hall time, and 06 is still nowhere to be seen.
22 resists the urge to pace, restless energy crackling up and down his spine. He considers messaging her, but this would put her under the eye of the Director, so he does not.
He considers going to find her, but the same issue applies.
Part of him just wants to leave. The cavernous training hall is oppressive in its emptiness, the rows of unused wooden swords reeking of the ghosts who once wielded them—he’s never liked this room, but being alone in it with just his memories is unsettling. He draws his own sword to sidestep that particular mental rabbit hole. Tugs the whetting cloth from its pouch on his belt, focuses hard on clearing the tiny nicks and scratches from the blade and waits.
In the quiet, his body raises complaints he point-blank refuses to acknowledge. He’s been carefully ignoring the symptoms from this morning, but even as he pushes those down, new ones rise up in their place. His throat aches, now, way back where water can’t touch. His eyes burn, gritty and dry. And, perhaps worst of all, a sluggish sort of haze permeates his whole body, dulling his normally hyperactive senses and weighing his limbs down. If he wanted to be completely honest with himself (he doesn't), it’s probably for the best that 06 isn’t here—for the first time in his adult life, he’s only about sixty-eight percent sure he’s physically equipped to spar with her without danger of severe injury to his person—and any such hypothetical severe injury would be guaranteed to put the both of them under scrutiny.
Scrutiny, of course, being the one thing they absolutely cannot afford. Especially 06.
He sighs, a short half-aborted breath that snags in his throat.
Another two minutes pass. Footsteps approach—for a moment his pulse kicks up, and his eyes dart to the door, expectant; but the person who enters is not 06, and he knows this before they get within ten meters of the entrance.
The hermetically sealed door releases and slides open, and in walks 08.
“Hey, 22,” he says with a feeble little wave, voice cracking from the effort of amiability.
22 raises an eyebrow fractionally, an unasked question hanging in the air as the other operative makes his way over to him. The last time he saw 08, he was curled up on the lounge floor, wracked with coughs and shaking with fever, blood trickling from his mouth and ears and nose.
He’s upright now: thin and hollow-cheeked, still, but the fevered flush is gone and his eyes look alert, his mouth twisted in a familiar little grin.
“Yeah, still kicking, unfortunately,” he says when 22 stays silent, raking a hand up through his hair. 22 doesn’t miss the fine tremor in his arm, or the smart bandages wrapped around his fingers to protect his nail beds, peppered all over his skin where catheters and IV drips have been. “They didn’t expect the new lung tissue to take as well as it did, but.” He spreads his arms out. “Here I am! Ready to get my ass handed to me.”
22 considers him.
Unsaid words stick in his throat, all of them necessary but none of them appropriate: Good to see you, 08. How are you feeling? How are you really feeling. Glad you’re not dead yet.
08 notes the stare, just a few seconds too long, and pulls a face. "C'mon, 22. I got this. Let's go." He coughs, thick and dragging, into his sleeve.
22 sheaths his sword in a single deliberate motion, picks up two training swords, and tosses him one. 08 rolls his eyes but does not toss it back.
“Where’s F—” 08 chokes on the name, censorship array shutting him down. Shakes his head with a self-deprecating smile, tries again as if nothing happened. “Where’s 06?”
22 hesitates, jaw working as he casts about for an acceptable answer. One that A) keeps 06 out of trouble a little longer and B) won’t light up his own censorship array, his head hurts enough as it is. “She’s still…” He pauses. Course corrects. “She’s otherwise engaged,” he grits out finally, grip tightening on the battered wooden sword.
08 seems to accept this, shrugging it off with a weary not-quite-chuckle. “Probably for the best,” he admits, running his fingers along the blunt edge of the training sword. “Kinda rather face just one of you today, I’m feeling better but not that much better.” Something in his eyes belies his words, however—a sea change, a dangerous spark that has 22 pivoting with his sword arm cast up a split second before 08 moves.
08 may be sick, but he is fast.
Not quite as fast as 22, but faster than 06, and that fact alone requires 22 to recalibrate his approach. 08 is on him in a blink, sword crashing down repeatedly and without reservation like 22 is a conduit through which to channel his repressed rage. The Director must be proud, 22 thinks fleetingly, a bitter twist to his lips as he parries and evades with the grace and skill he was designed to possess. 08’s movements are far less elegant, but the power behind his strikes is tremendous, and between that and his speed, 22 can’t afford to drop concentration for so much as a nanosecond.
They carry on like this for several minutes, a frenzied, violent dance that would be nothing but an indistinct blur of swords and limbs to the unaided human eye. 08 fights like he’s in it for the kill, brute strength over strategy—a natural tendency exacerbated by the clearly tenuous state of his health. Still, to his credit, he does not slow down, even when his movements get choppy and pain twists his face, sweat dripping into his eyes.
22 expects this of 08. He does not, in a million years, expect this of himself.
And yet.
Eleven point six minutes into the match, his energy starts to flag, sweat soaking his uniform jacket almost faster than the smart fabric can wick it away. His head swims, full of a sick pressure-pain that concentrates right between his eyes, fucking up his vision. His joints ache, his pulse ratchets higher with every maneuver, and for the first time in as long as he can remember, he is actually out of breath. The sharp stitch in his side is the culprit, as far as he can figure—it snags painfully every time his lungs inflate, keeping him from achieving maximum air flow and cramping violently every time he moves his left arm. He fights through it, ruthlessly tamping the sensation down to a dull ache, to a mild nuisance, to nothing at all; but as the minutes tick away, he begins to feel dizzy.
And then dizzier. Nauseous, on the razor's edge of vertigo and migraine aura. And finally—to his horror—lightheaded.
If he doesn't take the match right now, he's going to pass out.
This latest development throws him so badly that he begins to lose track of 08’s beats, all reflexive predictive calculations evaporating from his overtaxed brain. Suddenly, incredibly, he’s on the defensive—abandoning his strikes, fumbling his blocks, losing ground until finally, when 08 throws all of his weight into a roundhouse kick aimed at 22’s face, 22 takes a fraction of a fraction of a second too long to lift his sword.
08’s boot connects directly between 22’s eyes, and the world explodes in a billion fragments of blinding light, senses swallowed up in the roaring oblivion of pain.
Pain.
His body is electric with it, the ice-fire of it blazing along every nerve.
He’s kneeling on the floor, hands pressed to his face, blood streaming through his fingers. He’s not sure how he got there—he doesn’t even remember dropping the training sword, but it’s there in front of him, until 08 kicks it away.
As his hearing cuts back in, 08 is yelling something, his name probably. Ignoring the kickback from the censorship array, pleading with him to say something, are you okay, I’m so sorry.
22 lowers his hands—to tell him to shut up, it’s fine, I’m fine—and the release of pressure hurts so much that he actually gasps, a pathetic little catch of breath in the back of his throat as he doubles over without meaning to, fingertips digging into the edges of his eye sockets. His implant connection is blowing up his lenses with messages and alerts and stats he can’t fucking see, much less read.
He’s dizzy, so dizzy.
It’s as if the kick ruptured his sinuses, the pain stabbing all the way through to the back of his skull, forehead and temples and cheekbones all on fire. If he were anyone else, he would probably be sobbing, wrenching breaths involuntary from the pain. Even he comes uncomfortably close, air hissing through his teeth as he forces himself to breathe, just breathe.
He’s choking on all the fucking blood, wiping it on his uniform sleeve, trying to get up even though his legs refuse to obey him, the room tilting and spinning as he lifts his head up.
A steadying hand on his shoulder—Kit, his brain supplies fuzzily, which is ridiculous, an irritating kneejerk thought wedging its way in while his faculties are otherwise occupied—and then 08 is brushing his hands away, placing his fingers on 22’s cheeks. The pain radiating outward from the middle of his face is so great, 22 barely feels the touch.
“I’m sorry,” 08 blurts, and wrenches 22’s nose back into alignment with agonizing, clumsy precision.
The resulting fresh wave of pain drives all other thoughts from his mind, the whole of his consciousness drilled to this single fixed point. Black sparks blight the edges of his vision. If he clenches his jaw even a fraction of a degree harder he will crack it in half, though at this point he'd barely notice.
He’s still reeling when he registers something cold and metal being pressed against his skin, followed by a dreadfully familiar whining buzz as the device spins up. Each pulse it emits bores straight into his skull, wave after wave of grueling agony as his cells and tissues knit back together; but this is a productive kind of pain. A well-known one. Almost satisfying in a way, and he uses it to anchor himself to the present and drag himself back to consciousness hand over hand.
When it tapers off, he can finally breathe again. Or could have, if he wasn't still half-drowning in his own blood.
“Here.” 08 hands him a cloth for his face—one of the smart towels from the cool down rack—and moves back, giving him space as he scrapes together the dregs of his dignity.
22 cleans himself up as best he can, grimacing a little at the sensation of leftover blood pooling somewhere in his battered sinuses. The pain has subsided to a dull throb, but everything in his head feels swollen and thick, like he got a whole wad of synthcotton gauze shoved directly up his nose. The unpleasant feeling oscillates between discomfort and itch, making his eyes water, and for one horrifying moment he’s afraid he will sneeze; but he’s able to suppress the urge, barely, holding his breath until it subsides.
As he slowly dials back in, the barrage of notifications from earlier assaults his visual feed. A message flashes into view that overlays all the others, accompanied by an identical droning intercom announcement before he can properly read it:
STELLAXIS STELTECH SECOPS OPERATIVE 2122-22-C, PLEASE REPORT TO MEDICAL BAY ONE, PRIORITY CODE LK+000
A hand appears in front of his face, and he blinks the message away.
08 helps him up wordlessly, features twisted in a weird mix of sympathy and guilt and suppressed gratification that makes 22 want to punch a wall.
“Guess I won?” he says with a wincing smile, a feeble attempt at a joke.
22 gives him a withering look, turns on his heel, and stalks out to make his way to Medical.
Part 5, in which the fic title begins to become relevant (sorry 22) 😂 and 06 is, predictably, no help at all
(No I’m not following any sort of sensible release timeline for this thing, it’s literally just whenever I have a minute to post them ahah)
__________
5.
The Stellaxis StelTech SecOps operatives’ day starts at 0530 hours, without exception.
22 drags himself up out of the murk of restless unconsciousness to the pulsing alert from his implant, insistent and bright behind his eyelids, impossible to sleep through.
(Any attempts made therein will be met with audiovisual cues of increased frequency and duration, an influx of chat messages, and lastly, direct intraneural stimulation.)
He blinks away the alarm and sits up, the room tilting and righting again. An automated prompt from the vitals monitor in his implant chirps at him in the corner of his eye, warning him that he’s only had 1.46 hours of sleep and does he want to request a sleep aid.
He blinks that away too, swinging his legs over the side of the narrow bed.
Designed as he is to function despite any manner of duress imaginable, it is far from a pleasant experience. His body feels like a machine wrongly calibrated, a raucous mass of mixed signals from his joints and muscles and nerves as the fatigue and the junk food and the not-quite-burned-off alcohol sit heavy in his system. He feels, to put it bluntly, like reheated shit.
He does his best to put this out of his mind, knowing full well that the Director is back in her office today, and instead puts himself through the paces of his morning routine.
Shower. Dress. Comb hair and pull it back. Meditate, stretch, do daily exercises. Brush teeth, take meds, answer the wellness questionnaire that shimmers at him in the mirror.
It’s evolved over the years, slotting in as many potential signs and symptoms and mood markers and psychological red flags as the researchers can reasonably expect them to answer in the span of five minutes. 22 blinks through them all on autopilot, breathing through an ache between his shoulder blades that continues to expand even after the stretches.
Are you currently experiencing any of the following:
Fever
Hallucinations
Insomnia
Somnic disturbance(s)
Hemorrhaging (purpura/pulmonary/other)
Headache
Chills
Fatigue
Hair and/or nail loss
Skin lesions/abnormalities
Cough/upper respiratory distress
Paranoia/Irrational thought patterns
Tachycardia/arrhythmia
Loss of appetite
...
He pauses minutely at headache, again at fatigue and loss of appetite.
He could answer honestly. Should answer honestly, as his rigorous mental conditioning demands. But the thought of the Director reading his data—of the Director tracing his current less-than-optimal condition back to the events of yesterday and correctly implicating 06—is a stronger motivator even than twelve years of strategic brainwashing, and 22 is no fool to how such a scenario is guaranteed to play out.
He blinks no to all, clears the evaluation, and makes his way to the dining facility.
Predictably, 06 is nowhere to be found. Whether she found a way to go back to sleep (likely) or is otherwise avoiding her daily itinerary (equally likely) he doesn’t know; but whatever the case, the dining room is populated solely with serving bots, a handful of lab techs, and himself.
A surge of something like resentment fizzes in his chest as he waits for his food, before he tamps it down into annoyance, into nothing. He’s not mad at 06—not exactly, anyway. It’s more the idea of it all that rankles: that she bends and evades little rules like this every day and gets away with it. That he doesn’t even try.
He shakes his head imperceptibly, squaring his shoulders as he approaches the next available bot. 06 is 06, 22 is 22, and all that matters right now is fueling his superenhanced body properly before he starts metabolizing his internal organs.
This determination lasts him up until he takes a seat, picks up a fork, and sections off a bite of the fortified omelet he eats every morning at 0600 hours. His body is screaming at him to eat, digestive system ravenous, but his mouth is not that eager. The lab-grown egg protein is like sand on his tongue, heavy and wrong, and it’s all he can do to choke it down. A sip of his nutrient-rich shake is worse, instantly turning his stomach, and he sets it down again, measuring the sick pounding in his head against the metabolically necessary whole of his breakfast. A very loud part of his brain is insisting that undesirable things will happen if he continues to eat it.
So don’t eat it, whispers a different voice in his head, one that sounds suspiciously like 06’s.
If he doesn’t eat, the Director will be notified. While he’s certain he can make up a plausible excuse for this one symptom alone, the thought of deliberately defying protocol gives him pause. In the eyes of the Director, 22 is nothing if not obedient—and for reasons too numerous to quantify, it's in everyone's best interest that he stays that way.
But 22 is also tired, and out of sorts, and the trajectory from not hungry to actively nauseous is one he'd rather not follow today, if only to keep himself out of Medical and therefore off the Director's radar.
He takes a few sips of water, picks up his tray, and leaves the room, sliding his meal off the plate into the incinerator on his way out.
Part 4, in which 06 and 22 stargaze and attempt (unsuccessfully) to get tipsy. also feat. at least one oblique reference to AW ✨
__________
4.
It’s 0300 hours when they make it back, fifteen times longer than it would’ve taken them on foot but the train is half the fun of it all. 06 notes that 22 doesn’t seem to share this opinion, but they make it back without being sighted, and that’s all that really matters in the end.
This side of the city is quiet, still, most of the buildings blanketed in the tranquil dark of power curfew. Stellaxis HQ is the bright beacon of exception, of course; but she and 22 are eleven city blocks away from it, plowing through a thicket of weeds until they reach a large metal hatch half-obscured by scraggly foliage in the corner of an abandoned compost lot. The stale garbage smell slams into them as they get nearer, and she watches with no little amusement out of the corner of her eye as 22 squares with it bodily, hesitating a half-step before blinking and shouldering forward with a quick shake of his head.
(Over the years, they’ve gotten better at escaping the compound without detection. This is mostly due to 06’s brilliant discovery of this miraculously sensorless emergency hatch in the bowels of the facility, and maybe partly due to 22’s decision to carefully track the Director’s schedule.)
“Stinks, huh?” 06 observes fondly, kicking old snow away from the base of the hatch and perching on the edge of it instead of opening it, hands buried somewhere in her coat as she tips her head back to look at the stars. It’s unusually clear tonight, only the barest wisps of smog and cloud drifting high above them. 06 exhales a long breath, admiring the fog it makes billowing out from her.
22 sits and looks with her, expression unreadable.
It’s late, and they should be getting back before their luck runs out. But the stars are out, the Director is off somewhere enjoying the holiday, and as much as she knows better, 06 isn’t quite ready to let the magic of tonight go yet.
22 straightens, definitely on the same trajectory of thought, but she motions for him to wait.
“Here.” She hands him a bottle of champagne with a flourish, face splitting into a mischievous grin. He takes it with an arched brow as she produces a second one from inside her delightfully roomy coat and pops the cork.
“First one to break metabolic threshold wins,” she declares, and begins to drink.
22 finishes his first, but 06 feels the substance take hold of her several seconds before that. When their bottles are empty they both sink to the ground, legs outstretched, backs pressed into the cold metal rim of the hatch as they look up at the stars. 22 shifts one knee upright and clasps his hands atop it.
“They’re so fucking bright,” 06 mutters.
22 hums his acquiescence, and they both tip their heads into one another’s as they gaze up at the pinpricks of light in the dark, uncomfortably full and very slightly buzzed.
“Imagine if we just…stayed here,” 06 murmurs after a while when the silence starts to become unbearable. “You and me, the stars and the trash.” She gives a little laugh, turning her head to meet his gaze. He stares back, gray eyes unfathomable behind the stupid vintage sunglasses, the slightest quirk of his lips the only sign he’d heard her. It flits over his features like a ghost, here and then gone.
She snorts, breaking eye contact to trace a thinly-gloved finger through the dirty snow. “We could live here,” she goes on, thoughtfully. “Find somewhere to hide away. Live off the land.” She smiles, nudging his side. “Like that time when we were kids, remember?”
Something shutters behind his eyes, a swift and ruthless tamping down she recognizes but can’t fathom the cause of. He stands abruptly before she can ask, dusting off his pants with brutally efficient movements and pivoting to face the hatch.
“Someone’s coming,” he says—though she can’t hear a soul, aboveground or under—and twists the wheel.
Operating the bolt mechanism is effortless for 22 the way that everything they do with their physical bodies is effortless—a thousand pounds of force exerted in a blink, executing a task that would otherwise take at least two people or a maintenance bot to complete. The question hangs as she hesitates, grasping for words to articulate it; and then the hatch opens with a great creaking groan and her opportunity disappears along with 22, swallowed up by the darkness below.
Part 3!! Feat. the New Liberty City equivalent to the Times Square NYE ball drop 😂 Beware the potential feels punch at the end of this one lmao
__________
3.
“It’s almost time!” 06 blurts, a ridiculous stage whisper for 22’s ears only, bouncing on the heels of her boots. She has her hands shoved deep in the pockets of the big puffy coat she’d chosen for her own disguise, as much to contain her excited fidgeting as to ward off the cold. 22 thinks, fleetingly, that the contrast in practicality between their wardrobes of her choice is a little bit unfair.
“I know,” he returns, glancing reflexively at the time on his lens display. 2356 hours, fast approaching midnight. They’ve been standing here for over four hours now, undetected and unbothered, shoulder to shoulder in the early winter chill. Apart from the wandering vendor who harassed them to buy their goods (eagerly obliged by 06, to 22’s horror—one light-up necklace for each of them and a ridiculous pair of year-themed glasses for 06, purchased with the leftover pocket change from dinner), no one has so much as glanced their way, 06’s grand scheme somehow so far a raging success—though 22 remains vigilant, braced for a punitive implant transmission from the Director or a fleet of drones to approach them at any moment.
“Hey, can you maybe relax for just one damn second?” 06’s voice is suddenly low, about sixty percent calmer, bordering dangerously on fond. “Nobody’s coming. We’re in the clear, and it’s gonna drop in a minute.”
He opens his mouth, ostensibly to offer a response though he doesn’t have one strictly prepared, when a collective gasp rises from their surroundings and the moment is lost. Across the square, the weirdly misshapen object at the top of the tower whirs to life in a glittering cloud of light and motion, transforming into a ring of stars, then an arrow, then a leaf, then a water drop, then back again. It floats there, ethereal and mesmerizing, between the vast upward stretches of the downtown buildings, and even from across the span of the plaza the view is breathtaking to their sharp eyes. Something about the way it moves feels vaguely familiar, an unsettling itch in a corner of 22’s brain he can’t quite parse. He watches it, as uneasy as he is fascinated, feeling the buzz of the object’s intricate mechanics in the back of his mouth even from two hundred yards away, humming in his teeth.
Beside him, 06 holds her breath as the energy of the crowd swells, excited chatter building amongst the attendees, every eye trained on the spectacle before them. 22 absently tracks the time ticking down on his lenses until a giant display of it shimmers up beneath the tower that the ball is perched upon and he watches that instead.
At ten seconds out, the multitude screams along with the countdown, individual voices melding into one voluminous roar. 06 adds hers to the mix—risky, but he doesn’t have the will to stop her—and the many-colored shifting sphere blazes brighter, beginning its descent down the tower to the tune of three million voices cheering it on.
Five...four...three...two….
At “one”, the ball reaches the base of the tower and fragments into dozens of sparkling bits of light, swirling in silver and red and blue and green and reforming into the number of the new year. Chaotic activity surges through the crowd as a song blares from unseen speakers, felt more than heard—people embracing, shouting, drinking, kissing, engaging in egregious PDA that makes 22’s skin crawl. 06 takes his hand and squeezes it, briefly, hard enough that his knuckles crack.
“Happy 2134,” she breathes, eyes sparkling in the glittery light as fireworks split the sky. The surrounding noise is overwhelming, but he hears every syllable.
He hmms a response, non-committal, and he knows she knows what he’s thinking.
Of 08, asleep in Medical with tubes and wires attached to every inch of his body. Of the others who are long gone. Of the Director, ready with her arsenal of questions. And how are you feeling today?
He feels the words between them before they leave her lips—quieter even than a moment ago, but with a fierceness in her eyes. “Not you.”
He swallows. “Not you.”
“Not me.”
“Not me.”
"Not ever." She lifts her chin, mouth twisting in a crooked smile. “Wanna go back?” she says brightly, and just like that, the weight of the moment disperses.
