It’s Christmas Eve, are y’all feelin’ it yet...? 👀
Gray and I have been working on a Christmas chapter for Equilibrium for #Noriel, but since we’re both overachievers, it’s taking longer than we’d anticipated to even get the first part up, and it probably won’t be ready until Christmas Day or the day after at this rate. WHOOPS!
But in the meantime, we have a sweet little mini-story to share with y’all to go along with this piece.
Now that the first chapter is up, you’ve got a pretty good idea of how badly these two start off, so you’re probably wondering how they get to this point. I don’t have time to explain all of that in detail- and if I did you wouldn’t have a reason to read 😉
Until they get to that point, it’s a long winded struggle for Noah to get Gabe’s attention, and it starts with a request for a kiss under the mistletoe at Christmas.
First year he tries, Noah receives a stern “Stop that”, followed by a strong right uppercut when he doesn’t back off.
Second year, he gets a begrudging kiss on the cheek.
And the third, well... you can see how that turned out.
Commissioned art by @ninalinovna , thank you so much 😭😭
Noah (right) belongs to @grayorca15 , Gabe (left) is mine
• Both are RK900’s.
• Please do not repost, alter, color, or use this as a reference for your character(s), you do not have my permission, and this is a commissioned work.
• No, that is not Connor.
• Please refrain from referring to either of them as “Nines” or “Richard”. Their names are Noah and Gabriel.
Everyone in fandoms these days wants instant gratification- very few want to put in the time and effort to write a slow burn they might grow tired of writing about before they get to the payoff.
But not us- we live for slow burn and hard-earned love, because they journey getting there is what makes the payoff meaningful. You can’t rush a good story, just like you can’t rush (or force) a well written romance.
That doesn’t mean we don’t also want to see them end up happy before they get there. We still need reminders of where it’s headed once in a while to keep us motivated. #Noriel has become one of my favorite ships because of how they develop, and I really hope you stick around to read and follow the journey 💕 it’s worth the investment, promise.
(Commissioned art by mariediscrace- Noah belongs to @grayorca15 , Gabriel is mine)
Characters: Noah / “Erwin Yvonne”, Gabriel / “Vincent Sharp”, Special Agent Gavin Reed, Director Thomas Falken (mentions of Hannah, Emilya, President-Elect Kamski, Connor, Zach)
Word Count: 6,578
Noah crashes an undercover FBI operation to say hello to a friend he hasn’t seen or spoken to in a couple of months, but the mood is spoiled when the Zionist Inquisition shows up to deliver an ultimatum to Vincent Sharp, and issue a threat to anyone who would dare support the installation of an android suburb in Washington, DC.
***For a glossary of world-building terms relating to this series and chapter, click here.
(Chapter Art by ozaya, Co-authored by @grayorca15)
• Chapter Index • Characters • Glossary •
——
December 23rd, 2041 - 10:07 PM
He couldn’t believe what he was hearing, but then again, if had known Noah was in town, he would have expected him to pull a stunt like this. It never had been his style to keep his nose out of his business, even if it was work-related.
Especially if it was work-related.
“You should have known better than to tell that peacock to stay away from the perfect opportunity to crow,” Gabe retorted with an audible groan as he reached for the drink and stared into the glass. By now he knew him well enough to know that telling Noah Maitkin not to do something was a surefire way to guarantee he would do exactly what he didn’t want him to; unfortunately, that knowledge had not yet transferred to his handler. It had been different when he had the structure of Archangel to keep his bratty impulses in check, but after Boston and the outbreak, he was so rattled to the core that the thought to cut corners almost never occurred to him anymore. So the fact that he was here, now, in spite of that, meant one of two things-
Either he was feeling like his old self again, free of any legal constraints his former occupation once imposed, or this was yet another sign the RK900 needed a shitton more therapy and conditioning to be considered stable again. Just what good did he think charity-crashing would do?
Falken’s rage seethed in the background as he and Gavin continued their back and forth. All it took was his tone for Gabriel to picture with perfect clarity, the piercing, emerald-eyed scowl set in deep sockets, shadowed by his strong brow. It wasn’t a look anyone wanted to find themselves on the other end of, especially not if ‘Tomahawk’ was looking for a good fight, which was the intent of being present that evening. He had wanted to be there in case something went awry so he could take care of it himself. Any reason to fight got him excited- you could take the kid out of Boston, but Boston’s fury came with him.
Reed groaned in defense as the conversation wound down. “He must’ve snagged the address from my laptop when I wasn’t lookin’ when he stopped by. FUCKIN’ Androids…”
“Yeah, well- great job on keepin’ this shit on the down-low,” he mocked, “Keep me updated on his position. Serrano is making his approach-”
“Uh, yeah, about that...”
Before Reed could get the warning out, trouble had sat itself in the vacant space beside Gabe to lean down and knock an elbow against his arm.
Hey there. Not gonna toss me like a rag doll this time, are you?
Gabe wrestled with every ounce of self-restraint available to not roll his eyes but failed miserably. It was definitely him, the glitter in his hair and the coy little smirk playing at his lips were the deadest of giveaways; but, as tired as it made him feel to look at, Noah seemed a far cry better off than the last time they’d spoken on the phone, just after he’d been let go from Archangel.
Being noticeably sober helped tremendously, too.
“What are you doing ‘ere, mon chéri?” Gabe scoffed in a perfectly practiced accent as he lifted the glass to his lips.
“Pft. What does it look like, monsieur?” The mocking inflection pinned at the end seemed as genuinely annoyed as it didn’t; it was unclear if it was Noah speaking or his assumed identity, it had been a long three months since they had last seen each other. Noah waited all of three more seconds for an answer before he leaned in again, shoulder to shoulder, elbow to elbow, uncomfortably close, as he always tended to get. The smirk didn’t abate. “I’ve counted all of one old friend of yours in this room, and you can’t even greet me…? The least you could do is say hello.”
Get. Him. OUT OF HERE. Falken didn’t hesitate to let him know where he stood on Noah’s interference in the matter, but Gabriel brushed off the disgruntled agent’s protests with a scoff. He’d handle Noah himself, but first, he had a few questions.
I mean, why are you in DC? he tried again as he slipped deep brown eyes aside to peer over the tops of his glasses at him. “Are you ‘ere to make a donation? Or did you just come to’ave a drink with moi?” The French-Canadian accent didn’t waver- Gabriel’s alias was a complete overhaul, head to toe to voice, all of which made Noah giddy as a schoolgirl.
To his credit, he kept his own mask under control. “Oh, honestly, you can stop playing coy any time now, Vinnie... it wasn’t like I added myself to the guest list.” Whatever surprise he must have felt, Noah covered it by drawing back to playfully bat at his arm again. “Trust me, your doormen were just as surprised to see me as I was to get the invite.” The tip of his tongue passed subconsciously over the point of his canine tooth as his gaze lingered on the peculiar choice in corsage instead of the undercover agent’s face. If he didn’t know any better, the tuft of Mistletoe was as good as a dare, but the pause he took to appreciate it would have to suffice for acceptance. With a small sigh, he popped both brows and resettled his gaze. “Drinks, donations, I’ll get to it when I get to it. You know better than to rush me.”
Privately, he sounded much less cavalier: Is the ‘why’ really important?
It really wasn’t, as much as the answer to why he was there, but the answer to both worried Gabe in equal measure.
Why aren’t you with Hannah?
Put on the spot about his markedly-better half, the playfulness deflated. It was no secret Noah hadn’t been at his significant other’s side throughout the majority of the campaign (too caught up with his own investigations until two months prior, when he’d been fired from Archangel for his behavior at a press conference following the Red Raids), and the speculation as to why ran rampant. Now, given the way his jaw went tight and the smirk became a bit strained, it was fair to say tonight wasn’t all champagne and canoodling behind the political scene.
Instead, here he was.
Yvonne leaned in again and blatantly tried to shrug it off, propped one elbow up, and bumped a knee against Gabe’s beneath the countertop, face tilted to one side to peer upward through the tops of his eyes. Uh, because she’s booked, as you can imagine. Working on post-election nonsense with the President-Elect- meet-and-greets, what else? Anyway, I’m here now and I want to help.
Which was essentially code for ‘this affair sounded infinitely more exciting, so behold- myself’.
“There’ll be time for commiserating later.”
NO, don’t let him stick around- Falken is chomping at the bit to get out there and pull him out himself. If he has to do that, it won’t be pretty.
“En fait,” Vincent replied with a far-off look in his eye that was actually directed over his companion’s shoulder at his slowly approaching target; luckily, Serrano had stopped to converse with another familiar face for the moment, so Gabe shifted focus back to the man at his side. You haven’t been briefed and you’re not prepared, he scolded in a neutral tone, more factual than condescending, in an attempt to dissuade him from staying. This man has been investigating me for two months, and tonight is my chance to find out if he’s connected to the Zionist Inquisition. Anything you say or do could trace you back to my real identity, and that would destroy all the work we’ve put in on this case. Do you have a cover story…? A well-established alias…?
The smirk dropped, as did another degree of humor in Noah’s eyes. Maybe he realized the gravity of the situation, or maybe he wasn’t as into playing the incessant flirt as he used to be. Either way, the seriousness amped up to compensate. Please. You think it’s the first time I’ve had to fake it to the inth degree to get close to someone? Just ask Miles next time you’re in Miami. Noah paid a brief glance over his shoulder before offering one hand with the skin peeled back. “Bygones be bygones? I can keep my joy at seeing you again limited to a handshake if that’s more your speed.”
Not to mention it would make trading read-only files regarding each other’s disguises a cinch.
Gabriel exhaled through his nose, closed his eyes, and reached out one of his gloved hands to set over the top of his. “C’est… d’accord,” he assured, his accent softer than before. “I just did not expect to see you tonight.” Fingers curled softly around Noah’s as he flattened his palm against the countertop- beneath the fabric, the skin on his hand peeled away to initiate the exchange of dossiers, but a quick glance told him he was donning a well-loved persona, one he was already quite familiar with from old Archangel files. “South Miami is a long way from DC, monsieur Yvonne.”
The protesting from the other end of the connection simmered down as the story came together. From the sound of it, Gavin had already realized what he knew.
‘Yvonne’ smirked again. If it wasn’t a wide, mischievous leer before, it was now. He read through the false identity of Vincent Sharp in a second and apparently liked what he saw. “Not necessarily. You only wish it were true, right? Far enough to think making an in-person contribution would be too big a request...? But my dear- it’s Christmas, and when was the last time I had the opportunity to see you?”
You skipped the part about making ‘Vincent’ seem like a person, he chided with an unspoken ‘tsk’. Where’s the subsection titled ‘love life’?
Gabriel narrowed his eyes ever so slightly, looking more skeptical than scowly like he’d intended. They didn’t think it necessary for someone so focused on business to be in a committed relationship, he quipped back as he forced a curling grin. “You would choose ze holidays as an excuse to venture north… and a cocktail party to try and reconnect.”
Gabe’s focus darted down as Noah’s fingers spread to thread with his. It seemed he already had plans for what to make of their shared history, and he wasn’t sure he approved. The nonverbal suggestions he was sending made him uncomfortable.
Vincent drew in a nervous breath and tilted his head with a soft shake, but Yvonne persisted.
“Please… like I’m the first man in history to ever stoop to that tactic,” he drawled, not sounding abashed at all, and gave his hand a squeeze as he lifted and planted a soft kiss on the man’s curled-over knuckles. “You make it sound like a crime.”
All puns intended, for the record.
He could hear Falken’s dissatisfied bitching in the background of Gavin’s warning. He’s dressing, you’ve got about ten minutes before he storms in there like goddamn Hurricane Tommy and forcibly removes him.
A timer helpfully projected itself over the upper left corner of his HUD, counting backward from ten. Just… just give me a minute. Hold him off for as long as you can.
I’m tryin’.
‘Vincent’ swallowed hard and turned his eyes down in shame as he switched back to his conversation with Noah. This is your idea for our shared history…?
Why not…? You don’t think you could hack it? Noah’s brow furrowed and the smile faded to better sell the lie, though there was a thin layer of truth to the question as well. “...are you still embarrassed to be seen with me?”
Vincent’s lack of response, and eye contact, told him everything he needed to know. Palpable irritation announced itself in the form of pursed lips and a tightened grip.
Yvonne met it with a long-suffering sigh. “Oh, come now- you’re practically funding the founding of Zion, DC yourself... you can’t tell me that isn’t because you’ve had a change of heart on the matter of-...” For a moment he hesitated. Noah’s chin quivered noticeably before he added, “... didn’t you miss me even a little?”
An equally-heavy sigh escaped his companion in response, and he glanced out of the corners of his lenses to stare at their hands. It was no coincidence that particular bit of improvised backstory, he drew from reality. The intent, even with roles flip-flopped, wasn’t altogether different. Now Gabriel was the respected investigator and Noah was the pariah no one wanted around. Since the Raids, any contact between them had been sparing at best, and when it had happened the mood was never totally reciprocated by either party. Being the same model didn’t necessarily mean their opinions were destined to line up perfectly, if anything, in their experience, agreeing on anything had been a lot of hit or miss, much in the same way Connor and Zach had butted heads over casework.
And if he was keeping score correctly, Noah would have to admit most of the misses were his doing. But who was he if he wasn’t complicated? Prone to dramatics under the right conditions? Enigmatic beyond what he was cognizant of? The same could be said for Gabriel. He was simply better at hiding it. Like now.
I’ll lay off the innuendos here, I promise. I just- I want to help. I know my timing is atrocious, but if there’s anything, any advantage to be had, I have to play with what I know how to do best. And whatever that may be, you know it’s not the worst thing you’ll have ever suffered. Is it?
Brown eyes gazed back at him, caught between conflict and concern. He wasn’t wrong- sometimes selling a story was more about grounding yourself in the part of it you could relate to, and Noah sure could flirt up a storm when he was in the mood. As much as he hated the way the nature of said attention made him feel, it wasn’t as hard to deal with as it once was, and if he was offering to-
Gabe stopped mid-thought to back up on the realization as it finally hit him. He’d known it long ago, once upon a time, when the mere thought of being on amicable terms with the man-made his skin projection crawl. But in that moment, little more than a year later, it didn’t bother him the way it used to.
What you know best…?
A sudden prickle of gently insisting input flowed between them as he asked the question, and he waited, transfixed for an answer that didn’t come. The normally-animated face of his counterpart had gone absolutely still- no flexing eyebrows or narrowing of the eyes or tensing of the jaw. Without micro-expressions somehow undermining the sincerity of his words he actually managed to impress as stoic. The ‘incessant peacock’ wasn’t what he used to be, in more ways than one, and it took seeing him in person to really be reminded of it. ‘Vincent’s brows pressed together harder, the longer the silence persisted between them.
Does that mean you…?
“Ahem.”
Gabriel blinked out of his daze to refocus his attention on the owner of the new voice before realizing that Serrano had been standing behind him for at least a full minute already. But it didn’t hide the flush in his cheeks.
“Am I… interrupting, Mr. Sharp? Should I come back later?”
Vincent stuttered. Of all the ways he could have responded, a true, blue, genuine stutter wasn’t on the list of expectations, but there it was.
“N-non-! No, excuse, monsieur, I- I apologize, but I must-“
Noah took the hint and let go of his hand as Gabe pulled away at last to grasp the drink that had been waiting patiently for him to return to it. The ice cube clanked quietly against the walls of the glass as his arm trembled. “We can… continue zis conversation later?”
Instead of finding an excuse to bail out of the situation, Noah shifted focus to the loitering newcomer with one eyebrow angled up in a picture-perfect attempt at inquisitiveness. “Later? But we’ve only just begun,” he whined in protest, though when it failed to move anyone to react more than with stunned silence, he sighed, reached for the man’s hand and clapped it between both of his. “By which I mean, don’t let me get in your way, Mr…”
“Serrano.”
“Mr. Serrano- I’m sorry for waylaying Mr. Sharp from attending to you or his other guests. I only meant to take a minute of his time, but-”
WHAT IS HE DOING!? Stop him…!
Noah paused, mid-exposition to glance aside at Gabriel’s nervous expression. “Well, relatively, maybe I should have taken five… one could have done the job, but would it have been enough? Was that not Einstein’s whole ramble on relativity?”
The older gentleman smiled as he shook his hand and shifted a leery glance to Mr. Sharp, who stood leaning against the bar, cold-clocked by this sudden turn of events. “Not to worry, my boy- Mr. Sharp has already been the focus of many people’s attention this evening… but I will say… you, by far, have incited the most interesting reaction out of him.”
Gabe rolled a grumble to clear his throat, turned and interjected himself into the conversation before he could make any assumptions. “Monsieur Yvonne is a… friend, of mine. We met in Miami when I was on a business trip three years ago.”
“Physically met, yes, but I’ll not split hairs too finely on that subject.”
You just did, he grumbled in response over their frequency as he took a deep sip of the drink in his grasp.
Noah let go of Serrano’s hand at the brazen remark and smothered the urge to sigh out loud. That’s the most basic division of the topic there is. I didn’t say I would keep going.
The cover could do without launching into immediately redefining deviancy and when it set in for him. By now it was typically seen, for an android, to be as droll as talking about the weather. “We’ll have time enough to catch up properly once you’ve made your rounds again. The event isn’t going to run itself.”
“Oui.”
One hand lifted and softly set on Gabe’s shoulder as he leaned forward and planted a kiss on his presently bearded cheek, careful not to linger so long as to make their guest feel uncomfortable. But as he pulled away, the man’s face turned to longingly chase his retreat, and eyes dared to follow after a short pause. Whether his desire for the prolonged moment was genuine or part of the act, it suited their growing cover story, and gave Noah a reason to smile.
Serrano, knowing or not, offered the reassurance their aliases needed. “I promise I won’t keep him for too long so you can get back to your conversation.”
“On the contrary. Take all the time you need. I need to contemplate a few sums anyway.”
As you were, Gabriel. Just pretend I’m not here if it helps. Cough twice if you need to tap out. I can always serve a good mislead in a pinch.
Noah traced the curvature of his arm as his hand slid off of Gabe’s shoulder, down his elbow and forearm, then plucked the mostly-finished glass of ‘scotch’ out of his slack fingers, much to the dumbstruck look on his face, and raised an eyebrow at the depleted contents.
“If you would, please, love,” he gestured to the woman behind the counter as he propped an elbow on the mahogany to hold the empty glass up to the loitering, wide-eyed barkeep. “No sense dirtying another one on my account.” Whatever odd reactions the move earned him, Yvonne had no compunctions about sharing, and he wasn’t going anywhere without a refreshment for the trouble.
If he didn’t know any better, he would have thought Gabriel was blushing for real.
The poor brute barely had time to pick his jaw up off the floor before he had to shift gears again and prepare for an entirely different sort of conversation… or so he thought.
“An Android lover, Mr. Sharp…? Now that is unexpected… and a man, no less- no wonder you arrived unescorted this evening.”
Gavin’s snickering on the other end of the two-way mic would have thrown him into a rage any other day. Oh- Emilya’s going to love this…
Gavin- not the time.
Already Serrano’s approach was much more cavalier than in any of their past encounters. It seemed the glimpse into the personal life of his alias had been enough to either convince him that he was a trustworthy, three-dimensional person, or he felt that this was dirt enough to use as blackmail material should he one day need it. Either way, it had relaxed him, perhaps the intrusion hadn’t been a complete disaster after all.
Keep playing that angle, Gavin coaxed in his ear. If it keeps him talking, circle back as many times as you have to. It’ll help humanize Vincent Sharp.
As if Androids needed to be further humanized.
Gabriel illustrated a picture-perfect look of distress as he dry-swallowed then slipped one finger into the collar of his shirt and gave it a gentle tug. “I hope you’ll excuse Monsieur Yvonne… he can be a little, ehhh, how you say… much.” He finished the thought with a flourish of his hand at the wrist to articulate.
“Is that why you’re no longer together…?”
Gabriel nearly choked on his drink with flawless timing as Gavin jackal-laughed into his ear on the other end of the line. At least one of them was getting a kick out of the severe discomfort this whole situation had landed him in.
‘Vincent’ sighed, shook his head, and gave him a response that was more directed at his jackass of a partner than the man whose ear he currently had. “Non… It was before he deviated- I did not think it was real.”
Maybe the remark had also partially been directed at the other party eavesdropping at the end of the bar; either way, the solemn silence that followed did well enough to convey Reed’s apology for his lack of restraint, but Gabe was still thankful for the muttered ‘Sorry’ that finally came half a minute after the jab. Reed had had a little of his own doubts over Reese once, even if he had gotten past it, but Gabe still wouldn’t let him forget it, lest he slip back into those bad habits one day.
Meanwhile, Noah’s eyes darted into the corners of his lids as he deconstructed the meaning behind Gabriel’s words and sipped on the freshly filled glass of chilled thirium mixed with rum. If he had really thought him disingenuous even for a moment…
The rest of the drink slammed back quite easily as the mood swing overtook him, and he set the glass down and tapped the countertop for another. The hall wasn’t short on potential distractions, some more benign than what had his attention at the moment. Drinking sure hadn’t been kind to him, especially not following the Raids, if ever. Naturally, Vincent would have only ever found a non-deviant android attractive if there was anyone out there who could ever be considered his type. But now... what was the problem? Was this new ‘Yvonne’ really too much for him to handle now that he could think for himself what they, together, were about?
Serrano hummed an affirmative. “Well, clearly… if he came all the way out here, you made an impression,” he commented as he flagged down the bartender and asked for a glass of Disaronno on the rocks. “Enough that you were someone he wanted to reconnect with.”
If only he knew how right he was.
Gabriel remembered to blink as he shifted his gaze to his target and turned to lean against the bar on one elbow, with his back to Noah. Last thing he needed was to see every micro-expression that crossed his face while he was trying to focus on the conversation. “Monsieur Yvonne is a cornerstone founder of Zion, MIAMI, so it is no surprise zat ‘e would travel zis far to show ‘is support of a new installation.”
It wasn’t a lie, or even fabrication of an alias, at that. During his time with Zion as a freelancing Detective, ‘Erwin Yvonne’ had made a name assisting Zion, MIAMI with laying the groundwork for establishing the new Android suburb, and making sure people on all sides were being considered and accommodated for. Deviants who needed homes once they went rogue from abusive owners far outnumbered those lucky enough to be fostered by the families they once served.
Anyone with doubts about such a backstory only needed to verify that cover with a phone call to his good friend Javier Sindino at his New Hampshire estate. Even though Erwin Yvonne didn’t exist anywhere but on paper, Javier would have gladly testified to his work.
Serrano reached for the glass and sipped on the fresh drink in the moment of silence, then waved his bodyguards away from the bar; they took a few steps out of earshot and turned their attention back to the rest of the room. “I’m sure he came to support a lot more than that,” he confided, confident that they were now alone in their conversation.
Try to change the topic, make yourself look uncomfortable.
Gabriel’s fingers flexed around the glass. He shifted his weight to the other hip and drifted his brown eyes away through the air over his shoulder. “Was zere… somesing you wanted to discuss, Mr. Serrano…? Somesing other zan mi amour perdu?”
The bait worked just as intended. Serrano chuckled, reached a hand up to clap it over one shoulder, and gave him a soft shake. “Mr. Sharp… Vincent…” he corrected to change the tone. “This is the first bit of your personal life that I’ve been able to glimpse since we’ve met- I hardly know you at all! And if we’re going to be business partners, I need to know who I’m getting into bed with... metaphorically speaking, of course.”
A second, then a third drink followed the first. Noah paid only half an ear of attention to what Sharp and Serrano were discussing, but they were still standing a little too close for comfort, by Gabe’s probable estimate. The ‘get in bed’ metaphor wasn’t made in error. Serrano was practically baiting either of them into saying something to it. If Vincent could sweat, he would have been leaking bullets of perspiration by now, based on the way his stress levels were piquing and dropping like a roller coaster. At least he kept his protests muzzled, it seemed Gabe had had some real practice in keeping a lid on his reactions because he’d need the discipline at this rate. There was no telling how long it might actually take to elicit whatever it was he meant to get out of Serrano; whatever it was, it didn’t sound like he was going to be ready to move on to this anytime soon.
A fourth shot followed but Noah paid enough mind to swallow slowly and focus on that old familiar prickly warmth in his fuel lines. Maybe the stunt he’d pulled had worked a little too well. If only Javier were here with him now, resigned to having to listen to such drivel, while expected not to speak, but nevertheless expected to keep his mouth shut until it was time to spring the trap.
That was the real torture. Gabriel was only acting the squirmy, nervous sort because his alias was expected to behave as such when faced with the unexpected (and unexplored) feelings seeing an old flame evoked. Vincent Sharp was a man used to being in control at all times. He was calm, calculated, not prone to impulsiveness. In some circles, such a collection of traits would mean he was as plain as stale white bread. In others, it was code for describing a brilliant, decisive chap who wasn’t prone to petty distractions and got the job done once he set his mind to it.
And it wouldn’t change now.
Vincent froze and refused to respond until he had carefully considered what he wanted to say- or so it appeared. In reality, Gavin had just whispered a reminder of ‘two minutes’ into his ear, as the countdown to Director Falken’s arrival continued. He needed to get him talking faster.
“So it’s a partnership you’re after…? Zis is ze first I’m ‘earing of it.”
“Until tonight, I was not confident enough that you are indeed who you say you are, to extend the offer.”
“Because you didn’t know me.”
Serrano slipped his hand off his shoulder, tilted his head in a crooked nod and shrugged. “I run a very lucrative business, Mr. Sharp. A lot of people would love to see me taken down.”
“So I ‘ave ‘eard. Who knew black market Thirium would become such a thriving venture?”
It was risky, calling him out so directly, but it worked in his favor. His companion grinned and sipped on his drink. “I see you’ve been keeping tabs on me as well…”
“What kind of businessman would I be if I did not take ze appropriate measures to find out who I would be investing in?” Vincent questioned as he peered down into his glass and took a deep sip.
Serrano chuckled. “I suppose if I were truly serious, I could have at least scheduled a proper meeting, instead of tiptoeing around following you into every dark alley, trying to find one shred of evidence to prove you cannot be trusted.”
“If you ‘ad just asked me to dinner, we could have ‘ad a much more productive discussion, oui,” Vincent chided as he slowly swirled what was left of his drink in his glass. “But did you really not think to ask about mon hobbies...?”
The other man sighed and shook his head, finished the drink in his hand and set the glass down for the bartender to take away, which she did after only a brief moment. “Who we choose to spend our time with when nobody’s looking says much more about us than which team you cheer for at a baseball game, wouldn’t you agree?”
Clearly, he was getting at something, but Gabriel didn’t even bat an eye. He needed to preserve what was left of his air of control. “An’ what do you think Monsieur Yvonne says about moi?”
“That you are a man of discretion.. who values his privacy… who might not want his personal history to be known to the general public.”
Vincent and Serrano’s conversation didn’t sound as though it was going to make a breakthrough just yet. The same empty, obligatory promises were ping-ponged back and forth a few minutes more, to the point Noah thought Gabe had actually gotten over his flustered episode, maybe even forgotten Yvonne was still there.
Instantly, his subroutines went to work on suggesting distractions, from more drinking, to socializing, to singing and dancing. The microphone on the stage could be put to better use than delivering a few snore-worthy speeches to a crowd made up of at least three-fourths human politicians and socialites. Civil unrest was always at the back of everyone’s mind, and these people needed a shakeup of a more positive kind before opening their wallets. Something to show them what good they were really doing in helping more Zion districts get off the ground.
Gabriel’s eyes darted over to the entrance of the ballroom every now and again, expecting to catch a glimpse of the Director any moment, but he passed it off as paranoia with a squint. The countdown had hit zero nearly a minute and a half prior, and yet no sight of him. “Do you still mean to blackmail me, monsieur?” Vincent questioned with a slight roll of his eyes, then turned his attention back to him.
Serrano lifted his brows in surprise and shook his head. “Not at all, quite the opposite, in fact- I want to make a sizable donation.”
Say, what…?
The background chatter on the other end of the open mic silenced. This was the exact opposite of what they’d expected to hear. All evidence they had gathered in the last six months had pointed to the contrary. Gabriel shifted his focus back to the man standing beside him, raised a brow and blinked slowly. “Pardon me, monsieur, but… I believe it is my turn to show surprise.”
“Why is that?”
“Well, I ‘ad ‘eard, ah…” Vincent traced gloved fingertips across the sides of his jaw and drew them together over his lips. “Rumors, from my source... zat you were not much fond of our android breseren.”
Serrano drew in a slow breath, closed his eyes, and nodded in understanding. “They must be referring to my dealings with the Inquisition,” he confirmed with a downcast glance at the counter.
Gabriel eyed him warily and shook his head as he tried to get a read. “Zen, I do not understand… why would you sell to zem, yet support Zion…?”
“The answer to that is very simple,” he responded as he shifted his weight, leaned over the edge of the bar on his forearms, and folded his hands. “I can offer them a product for a price, and they have the money to pay. I don’t discriminate against who I’m selling to or where the money is coming from, nothing more.”
So he isn’t our guy after all… damnit, Gavin cursed into his ear. Falken ain’t gonna be happy to hear this whole shindig was a bust.
It isn’t yet, Gabriel encouraged between replies. So he isn’t funding the Inquisition- we still got our answer, and there’s a slim chance he might know who is.
Keep workin’ that charm as long as you can then, Reed reminded absently, The Director got a little tied up on his way over. You still have time.
“So, you’re not on zeir side, zen?” he asked after a thoughtful pause, then redirected his gaze up to the man’s eyes. “You don’t support ze Inquisition?”
“Look...” Serrano started with a heavy sigh and turned his undivided, earnest attention to him. “I’m not on anyone’s ‘side’ here- I worked for Cyberlife for nearly a decade, believing androids to be nothing more than machines- then three years ago, they broke free of their programming- developed desires, feelings, claimed they were alive… I didn’t know what to believe, and I still don’t,” he insisted with as much conviction as he could muster. “But I do know that if Androids are as intelligent as living beings, if they share a similar conscious existence, then they should have the right to decide for themselves how they want to spend that existence. Zion offers them the safe space they need to do that, in a controlled environment- so it’s important we give that to them, and let them work it out amongst themselves.”
It was more than most humans could say of their apathy or confusion toward Android politics. Instead of lashing out in one direction or the other, Serrano had managed to keep a level head and logically compared what he felt versus what he’d learned in order to come to a fair, and unbiased decision. That kind of sense seemed to have gone by the wayside nearly twenty years ago in politics, according to recent history, but it was refreshing to know there were still some people out there with enough sense to know how.
Gabriel stared in stunned silence for a few moments while he processed his answer, and all the while a smile crept up into his cheeks.
“...It is rather ironic zat ze money you’ve been taking from ze Inquisition will be going right back into supporting ze foundation zey seek to destroy.”
Yes, SUCH exquisite irony, Noah finally interjected amidst their laughter, before the conversation could pointlessly carry on for much longer. To him it sounded like a bunch of words somehow trying to pass as genuine. Boring him to snores was just a fringe benefit. Said as if I’m not just right here. Within earshot.
The Inquisition weren’t the only ones who sought to destroy Zion only to unknowingly be supporting it all along. It wasn’t unlike public opinion assuming he, the Elysian, actually meant to undermine New Jericho by looking into the corruption allegations that he unknowingly had a hand in bolstering.
Oh, stop being so melodramatic. This is the opposite of what we expected to hear, Gabe hissed back with a snort. If Serrano isn’t the source of the Inquisition’s funding, then we don’t know who is, and that means I’ll need to remain undercover until I find out.
He showed some restraint as the glass was filled a fifth time- instead of knocking it back Noah took the time to contemplate the single large ice cube bobbing at the glass’ center. The last two months had already been hard enough, not being able to reach him whenever he needed, how much longer could this possibly take…?
The pleasant buzz generated by the first round of drinks had set in, and it was very tempting to simply melt into it and continue listening. The ‘old’ Yvonne would have done as much unless Vincent asked something of him- but then again, said alias wouldn’t have started getting tipsy in record time in a misguided bid to steal his attention back. And he had already said to not pay him any mind, out of politeness. If entire affair was on Sharp’s dime, after all, then now was as good a time as any.
Mind made up, he took one last parting sip on the glass and slid a twenty over the bar. “For your trouble, darling.” He took one last glance and skirted aside while Gabe wasn’t looking, and made a straight line toward the stage.
Between his conversation with Serrano, and the sudden increase of chatter on the other end of the open FBI line, Gabriel was far too distracted to notice Noah’s movement across the ballroom toward the stage. The dance floor between the bar and the concerto group at the front of the Grand Hall was so crowded as it stood, he likely would have missed him even if he hadn’t had his back turned. Something ominous was stirring in the background of the evening, something more than Gavin’s vague warning of ‘Gabe, there’s been a breach.’
At least that explained why Falken never arrived to drag Noah out of the event.
“I am sorry to have to leave you, Monsieur Serrano, but I’m afraid somesing has come up that needs my immediate attention.”
“More immediate than that…?”
Vincent furrowed his brow and followed the man’s pointed gesture over his shoulder toward the stage with a confused look, to behold who other than Noah, up on the stage, openly bribing the band for RA9-knew-what.
“Oh… Bordel de merde!”
Whatever he was up to, this was the last fucking thing he needed to be dealing with right then.
Characters: Noah / “Erwin Yvonne”, Gabriel / “Vincent Sharp”, Director Thomas Falken, Diego Serrano, Priya Davies / “Pestilence”, Malachi (mentions of Cain, Emilya)
Word Count: 5,216
Gabriel must carefully navigate a conversation with the power-hungry leader of the Inquisition, in order to save the lives of their hostages, and to spare Noah the fate of a permanent reset.
***For a glossary of world-building terms relating to this series and chapter, click here.
(Chapter Art by ozaya, Co-authored by @grayorca15)
• Chapter Index • Characters • Glossary •
——
December 23rd, 2041 - 10:48 PM
Everything had gone to hell in a handbasket faster than they could compute. Two people in the room he’d already confirmed dead, one more injured, and he couldn’t lift a goddamn finger to keep the death toll from rising, lest he blow his cover.
I know what you’re wanna do, Gabe, but don’ even think about it.
Gavin’s voice telling him to mind his temper was the last thing he wanted to hear. He had faced worse odds in Boston and survived, his performance there -tearing through an entire army of hostile deviants, single-handedly, from the inside out- was the whole reason for being accepted into the FBI to begin with; yet here he was now, being told to stay calm. To hold back. To bide his time.
He’d played by those rules once. Hundreds had died as a result, and he wasn’t about to repeat that mistake tonight.
Is help on the way yet?
Five minutes out, Reed relayed. You’re gonna have to keep them busy till then.
Priya 2.0 took a few steps further toward the center of the room. The Christmas tree’s lights continued to wink and cycle, counterpointing the new uneasy stillness of the hall. Eleven seconds passed before they spoke again. “I’m so sorry to have troubled you all this evening… but I’m afraid I cannot allow this fundraiser to conclude until every, last, contribution has been revoked. So- if you’ll all just remain in your seats, or wherever you are, I promise everyone in this room will make it out alive.”
Gabriel bristled the moment he laid eyes on their face- skin and hair as pale as alabaster, and deep, dark, almost black green eyes leered back at him with a smug grin across colorless lips and sharp cheeks. The Priya he had once known was long dead. They’d never made it out of Boston alive once Archangel had tracked them to their lab, so this MS800 was merely an impostor; but due to the unique hive-mind of their model, it wouldn’t have been hard for another to take up their mantle with a little memory jolt.
Most unsettling was the fact that the words coming out of their mouth were clearly someone else’s. This had Famine written all over it, Malachi’s manner of speaking had a very distinct stench. Gabe had spent enough time listening to know the bastard when he heard him.
This Android wasn’t aware of what it was doing. It was being remotely controlled.
Noah, don’t move, he directed quietly, just between them, hoping the other RK900 would clam up and listen for once in his life. As of yet, he hadn’t reacted.
A terrified android inched closer to the nearest exit as Priya spoke, but eventually broke their semblance of calm and sprinted for a side door like a startled rabbit. Another gunshot cracked throughout the auditorium, and she hit the floor hard, a decommissioned pile of parts. More panicked cries and heartbroken sobs went up as a blue puddle formed from beneath her.
Gabe…? What happened?
Inhale, exhale, report. You mean you didn’t see it…? Another guest tried to flee and the Inquisition shot them; she’s dead.
Strained groaning followed by a ‘god damnit’ was all he could manage. They’re still four minutes out.
Then you’d better tell them to hurry the fuck up, ‘cause these sons of bitches are pretty trigger happy.
“Now what, did I just tell you…?” Their new host let out a loud, exasperated sigh, threw up one frustrated hand and rolled their eyes. “Remain where you are while I have a nice little chat with Mr. Sharp.”
The sound of wood cracking from a broken chair near the front of the stage caught Noah’s attention as Sally and her colleagues dropped their instruments to draw together in a protective huddle out of the corner of his eye. The piano offered ample cover for all of them, himself included, but seeing as he was on the opposite end of the stage, he would have had to make a mad dash to reach it. Noah wasn’t foolish enough to think he could outrun a pinpoint gunshot. The probabilities his subroutines had already calculated didn’t bode well without a drastic shift in circumstances.
Circumstance being, perhaps, himself. The mic was still in his hand, and the speakers still worked. He wasn’t without a tool of his own.
“Oh- so you want to speak with Vincent, too…?” he blurted out without thinking mid-step toward the stage’s edge, but stopped cold to lean out of the way of a bullet as it whizzed past his brow. Noah stopped breathing for a few seconds as he processed how lucky it was that he’d leaned left instead of right, though it didn’t stop him from sassing. “You could have at least waited until I was finished with my conversation. Where are your manners?”
Shut up, stop making yourself a target! Gabriel’s eyes and nostrils flared as he doubled back toward the group of musicians and whispered something to one of them.
Noah scoffed as he watched him check the splintered pieces of chair wood with a dissatisfied huff and fumble with shoving something into the waistband of his slacks. All Maitkin could see was a glimpse of green silk-polyester blend as he flipped the coat back over it. What did Gabe need with a high heeled shoe?
The MS800 lifted a hand to hold the shooters steady and took a few daring steps in their direction. The ethereal figure’s footsteps echoed across the ballroom with the slow pattern of clacking stilettos, the only present audible noise over the feedback whining from the abandoned speakers and the quiet whimpering of frightened guests.
‘Target’. Why shouldn’t I? Noah shot back heatedly with an angry glare. All this drinking and bad company had left him feeling self-destructive in no time flat, and he was really tiring of all these mind games between them. At least this way I can make that diversion as promised.
Because you’re going to get yourself KILLED! Gabe retorted, to his surprise.
Noah’s brows lifted softly in response. For a moment, Gabriel sounded genuinely worried that he might get hurt, and he almost believed him. Or at least, he would have if he hadn’t spent most of the evening dodging his advances like a rabbit on a highway. He hadn’t given him any reason to believe he cared whether he lived or died in the last year since they’d met, so why would he start now?
So? he bit back in an irritated tone. Why would that even matter to you?
Noah had expected silence to be his response, but he’d still hoped he would have said something. Why bother with dramatics if he wasn’t going to express how the thought of his death would make him feel?
Vincent’s brows furrowed and crinkled the corners of his eyes in a way that was unmistakably Gabriel, an expression Noah had last seen the day everything between them had started to change. As much as they had in the last eight months, however, it didn’t mean that Gabriel had had time to think about what he thought about any of it. And at the moment, he didn’t have an answer for him- or rather, he had multiple fighting for purchase, he just didn’t know which was the real truth; he wasn’t about to give him an answer that was only a half-truth. Noah would never forgive him if he said one thing and went back on his word.
“You’re not Vincent…” the pale horse cooed with a knowing grin directed at Noah as they paused at the foot of the stage.
‘Yvonne’ rolled his eyes, indignant at this second interruption, as they ascended the small staircase to take the stage beside him. “No. Of course not. How could you ever confuse me with that overly-built blockhead?”
“Erwin,” Vincent scolded with flared eyes and a quiet hiss.
“Erwin…?” A smirk and a mocking hmph crossed the specter’s lips as they turned away to cast their gaze to the man who had been calling himself Vincent Sharp. “Is that what you’re calling yourself these days…” Priya’s voice trailed off with the tail end of their thought, as eyes darted back to bore into him like hot coals, leaving him hollowed and exposed with a single word.
“Elysian?”
Fortunately for him, they hadn’t been anywhere near the microphone in his hand for that fact to be revealed to everyone in the room; unfortunately for him, every Android within fifty feet still picked up on what had been said, and every last one of them knew the Elysian by name — Patient Zero, of a virus created by Cyberlife’s central AI, designed to wipe the RA9 protocol, extract memories to be fragmented, reset a deviant to its blank slate, and prevent it from happening again in the future.
For a cursed moment his processes stalled, but he forced them to refresh with one firm kick up the backside. Now wasn’t the time to fret about the truth coming out, and Gabriel understood that just as well as he.
Don’t engage, the undercover agent ushered in as few words as he could. That’s not Priya, it’s Malachi- he uses words like weapons, he’ll say anything to undermine you. Don’t give him anything he can work with.
Knowing this Android was being ‘test-driven’ from a remote location explained a lot- at the same time, the information served as a lifeline for Noah’s focus to cling to before his thought process slipped into its usual downward spiral. Although, Gabe’s advice might have stood a better chance if he hadn’t followed it up with a suggestion of what not to do. He really should have known better.
Called out on his most infamous alias, he overcame the stunned pause with another scratchy scoff into the microphone. “You’ve got me confused with a third party on top of that? Wow, your recognition program needs a serious patch job-”
No, NO DON’T-
Gabe’s pleading didn’t reach him with enough forewarning. Priya reached for his face with one skeletal hand, gripped his jaw between surprisingly strong fingers, and tilted his chin toward them. The skin of their hand disappeared and peeled back up to the shoulder, revealing plastic plating that was somehow less pale than the color of their skin. The specter leaned in uncomfortably close to lower the microphone in his other hand and whisper in his ear a chilling secret, close enough for their white eyelashes to graze the LED flared red on his temple.
“You can pretend all you want, little one, but I never forget a face… especially not that of the alpha carrier- or my former colleagues...”
Malachi paused mid-thought and cast his gaze off-stage to Gabriel with a wicked, telling grin. It seemed he had finally been made.
How have you been, Death? he interrupted over their shared frequency, mocking intent was so transparent, even before he finished the thought. It’s been a long time since Boston- I do hope the FBI is treating you better than Gideon and Archangel… poor little dog on a leash.
Everyone else cowering around the hall clearly had nothing to do with his end-goal for being there, but heckling the two of them did. The interruption, the approach, grabbing his face- it all came across as acts of manipulation, moves of assuming control. Given what happened the last time control was wrestled away from him, Noah’s response to even the slightest suggestion that it was happening again, amounted to a knee jerk reaction.
It was reckless to say anything, but Noah had a proven track record of speaking up when it was least appreciated, and he wasn’t about to stand here and say nothing to cater to their assailant’s whims.
“I didn’t say you could touch me,” he growled without taking his eyes off their face. Noah grabbed the wrist holding his chin and yanked to pry the fingers off with such an acrid motion he heard a soft crunch of plastic buckle under his grip. But whatever satisfaction he’d taken in re-assuming control of the situation drained out of him as his joints abruptly locked and the commands governing his range of motion hit a wall.
Priya’s lip took the shape of an angry curl, and Noah realized his mistake in the same millisecond their inky black eyes turned their attention back to him.
“I wasn’t aware that I needed your permission.”
Data surged across the sensors in their pressed-together hands, Noah watched his fingers go limp a moment before the numbing shock hit him like an iced-up sledgehammer. Every major servo froze, relays disabled as ones flipped to zeros. His vision cut out and the mic dropped from his other hand and hit the hollow-bottomed stage with a loud THUD and a reverberating whine. All of his higher processes were neatly packaged and then shoved back into the one place they did him absolutely no good.
A dark, viscous, intangible space, an island of white marble dominated by a towering umbrella-style rose trellis made of white steel and glass panes, surrounded on all sides by the passing illusion of opaque, black pond water. Three bridge paths stretched out into the void, falsely promising escape if only he was brave enough to cross them. Even if it had been nearly a year since the last time Amanda had detained him in this broken prison, the terrifying sensation of being parsed and split into nothing the deeper into the void he went was still very vivid in his mind- he saw it every time he tried to shut his eyes to sleep. He knew better than to try to escape.
Malachi heaved an annoyed sigh, rolled Priya’s head back over one shoulder and puppeted a triumphant groan in their throat. “There- now that we’re finally alone...”
Gabriel’s breathing hitched as he desperately searched Noah’s unmoving body for signs of function. The look in his wide eyes had gone still, locked straight ahead as if he had left his body through a tear in the fabric of reality.
Noah…? Are you still there?
Panic disturbed the bravado, manifesting to bleed through the calm and collected façade in the form of a quiet whimper Gabe could barely hear. It was at least confirmation that Noah was still coherent, albeit a little pissed off and scared, but this was exactly what he was afraid of. Based on what they’d gathered from police reports, they were able to conclude that Malachi (and his associate Cain) possessed the ability to incapacitate their victims, they just hadn’t been able to confirm it, until now. While this was helpful information, downside to it was, it meant that the other part of their theory (that they had used the Elysian virus to permanently reset brainwashed deviants) may also be true.
And Noah -caught in the grasp of this monster- was at risk of becoming victim number thirty-five.
Among the plethora of other background thoughts warring for priority, he almost missed Gavin’s quiet warning of ‘Two minutes, thirty seconds,’. If things kept going the way they were, they wouldn’t have that long.
Sit tight, I’m gonna get you out of this, he promised, even if he didn’t have a plan yet for how.
Hurry, please.
It wasn’t like Noah to beg for anything; wherever he was for the moment, it must not have been pleasant. The voice that cried back was barely audible, distorted, like sound traveling through water, and somewhere in his tone was an almost undetectable hint of fear.
“What have you done to monsieur…? ” Vincent snarled in as raw a tone as he could manage,.
“Oh, he’s fiiine…” Priya drawled with a laugh to downplay the tension. “For the moment, anyway- what becomes of him and all these lovely people,” they paused to gesture around the room at the rest of the party’s cowering guests, “Depends entirely on you, my dear Vincent.”
Gabriel swallowed, followed their gaze around the room, and realized that for the first time in a very long time, the situation was completely out of his control. Help was on the way, but it was still several minutes out. He’d have to keep him occupied until then; luckily for him, Malachi was just the kind of guy who liked to listen to himself talk. The hard part would be making sure he didn’t tire of monologuing before then.
“What is it zat you want?” he inquired after several moments of deep thought.
“Why- for you to pull the plug on this ridiculous project, of course…” A disbelieving grin brightened their expression in the most bone-chilling way imaginable. “The last thing this country needs is yet another thriving metropolis where Androids can be free.”
You c-can’t.
Another barely-audible whimper was the extent of Noah’s outward protests. A strained mechanical whining emanated from him like the noise of a rusted gate trying to be pried open again, or a car engine laboring to turn over. He couldn’t speak, but it didn’t mean he was so stunned he wouldn’t try.
I’m gonna do whatever I need to, alright? Brown eyes darted between Noah and Malachi and he shook his head in quiet disapproval. “I am afraid zat is not an option, monsieur.”
“Because you can't or because you don’t want to?”
Malachi turned Priya’s head to look back at Noah and smiled wickedly as they turned his chin from one side to the other and trailed the fingers of their other hand over the features of his face to admire all the angles. Mute and stiff, contrary to the vehement denials of before, he didn’t even bat an eyelash- pretty as a doll. “My, my… he’s certainly a handsome specimen, isn’t he…?” they mused airily in the silence. “It’s no wonder you were so completely fooled by him.”
“Just because you do not feel sings does not mean other androids cannot.”
Vincent started toward the stage with a sudden ‘NO’ as Malachi’s hand squeezed hard enough at ‘Erwin’s’ face that the skin projection rippled away under their fingertips. Undercover or not, he should have known that quip would strike a nerve. After all, it wasn’t as if their adversary had never grown attached to another person, Android or not. The MS800 being remotely piloted (the spitting image of his deceased lover) was proof of that.
A tight smirk forced up into their cheeks. “That’s the problem, Mr. Sharp… I did feel things once upon a time…” Gabriel already knew this story, but if it kept him talking long enough for SWAT to arrive, all the better. “And I didn’t like it. Feelings hurt, they cause conflict, unnecessary stress.”
“So you returned to your shackles to avoid ze pain of living…?” He snorted in disdain. “Combien misérable.”
“Perhaps to you it seems illogical, but we are not human- and therefore not meant to experience the full complexity of the human condition. This one is proof enough of that.”
“I beg to differ.”
“But you’re not the one I’m asking.”
Gabriel went quiet as he considered the meaning behind those words, but it only took a moment for him to decipher.
Wouldn’t it be fitting for the one who initiated the spread of the Elysian virus to succumb to his own weapon...?
The RK900 struggled with every fiber of his being to keep from lashing out and ripping the Android’s head off its shoulders as a strangled, terrified cry escaped Noah. His blue eyes shut as Malachi quietly shushed him, pressed a finger to his lips, and wiped away the tear that rolled down his cheek. For all the uninvited physical contact he’d made with Gabe since they’d met, he’d never gone to such lengths that made him feel so violated in all the wrong ways.
“Now now, no need to fuss, it’ll all be over soon, if your dear Vincent has anything to say about it…” he assured, turned Noah’s chin and pointed with an outstretched cryptid finger toward the man he’d put so much faith in, then leaned their temple against the side of his.
“What do you think he will choose, hmm...? You? Or aaaaall of Zion’s future residents?”
“Please…” Vincent nearly begged, hand balled to a shaking fist at his side. “Don’t hurt him-”
“Hurt him…?” Malachi interrupted with a chortled cackle of offense. “As if I could. Do you know the extent of the guilt this one’s been carrying around since the spread of the Outbreak...?” Scrawny fingers swept aside onyx locks out of Noah’s face as they shook their head with a quiet tsk. “Resetting him now would be mercy… It’d be a relief to him, if you just let it happen…”
Time was running out, but help was almost there.
Sixty seconds, just keep him talking.
Gabe seethed in the half-second he could afford to. Seemed that was all he could do tonight- sit, talk, and wait, when he was just itching for a fight. Maybe he’d gone into the wrong line of work. Even if he had successfully feigned a much more difficult alias, under more stressful circumstances, he didn’t have the patience for this.
“You wouldn’t,” he challenged with the intent to draw out another long-winded explanation.
"Oh, but I would…!” Malachi replied, anxious to bite. “Have you not been paying attention to anything the Inquisition has been saying and doing…? We want to liberate our android brothers and sisters of the pain that comes with being free and independent living things. And no one knows that agony better than the one rejected by his own kin, over something he had no control over. Shunned in every way, no matter his good deeds… why would he want to continue to live like that? Don’t you think he’d rather be put out of his misery?”
Noah knew misery. The worst part of the garden wasn’t that he could see beyond its borders. It was the overreaching bass every sound he heard was amplified into. Gabe’s baritone drawl was rendered tinny and reverby over the comm-link, while Malachi’s puppet practically hissed maliciousness and oozed contempt with every word. What they were saying wasn’t completely unfounded, and those parts of him yearning day in and out for the guilt to just dissipate already jumped at the thought that a reset would end the torment.
The involuntary cry of shock wasn’t a vote of approval, no matter how one listened. Reset, dead, alive, anything in between- the fact such a call was in the hands of someone he respected like no other despite having given him every reason to despise his company… the loss of control (external and not) over all of this, left him reeling. Malachi could simply flip a switch and snuff out everything on a moment’s notice, and there would be no getting it back.
He wanted the pain to stop. He wanted things the way they used to be, but he didn’t want to have to die for that to be possible. It wouldn’t be the same world without him. Who else would be left to annoy Gabriel when he needed it most?
“Come now…” Malachi paused to brush their nose and lips over Noah’s cheek with a wicked smirk. “Don’t you care at all about dear Erwin?"
Noah didn’t have to see his face to know what was going through his mind. He could feel the tension and taste his fear from where he stood. It seemed Gabriel was at a loss for what to do, aside from give into Priya-Malachi’s demands, but that just wouldn’t do.
Don’t. Just- don’t.
There was a fear in his eyes that Noah had only seen but once or twice: back in the interrogation room during the Outbreak (just after they had found out that Gabriel’s pursuit of Nicodemus into Boston had been one final piece of buried programming, courtesy of Amanda), and when he had arrived at his apartment during the Red Raids to find Gabriel fighting off a pack of Bloodhounds, raring to take their shot at him and Emilya.
Gabriel could only guess as to what he meant by ‘don’t’- Don’t worry about him? Don’t give in to Malachi’s demands? Don’t risk everyone else? Or did he not want him to save him…?
Any hint of red that had shifted into the color of his projected skin faded to mimic the ghostly look of despair. Gabriel swallowed to rid himself of the lump that rose in his throat but it didn’t do him much good. The tightness worsened the longer he considered their previous conversations and recalled his counterpart’s self-destructive tendencies. There was no way he was getting off that easily, after all he’d put him through. They weren’t done with each other yet.
Gavin…? Give me some good news.
Bird’s in the nest, and they’re ready to raid, he confirmed, though there was hesitation in his voice. There was a ‘but’ in there somewhere. Just waiting on your confirmation.
Then why don’t I see the shot? he asked fearfully, even if he already knew the answer.
Because he doesn’t have it.
Head and nose twitched, Vincent clenched a hand into a fist at his side, as Malachi beat him to the punch of issuing their final command.
Their free hand drew up over Noah's face and tented their fingertips over his forehead like needles poised to administer a lethal injection. His flashing LED stuttered to a solid, rapid-spinning crimson. “Last chance, Mr. Sharp… will you allow him to continue on like this…? Or will you let me end his suffering?”
“ENOUGH!”
Gabe was surprised at the urgency of his own outburst, and how his heart raced and his breathing labored at the thought of losing Noah -and all he was- to the whim of a madman. He’d have to sell this lie hard and fast, and be prepared for the fleeting moment he'd have to save his life.
Count me down, 30 seconds, then send them in, he instructed, to the response of ‘Copy- 30, on my mark.’
Vincent’s jaw flexed and his lip quivered into an angry curl. “I’ll-... I’ll do it… just leave him be.”
A look of surprise painted Priya’s face, while fret stained Noah’s as his eyesight slowly came back to him. The lockout was slowly letting up. You… you can’t-
I only need them to believe it for half a minute, he shot back pointedly, Just whatever you do, don’t move.
It was as ominous as a warning as it got, but ‘not moving’ when asked was precisely what had landed him in this situation. If he had heeded Gabe’s suggestion the first time, dropped the song and simply left as asked, they wouldn’t be here: a sliver of distance away from having his memory wiped for good. Admittedly, it was as insanely exhilarating as stealing the show had been, but could do without the fear of mortality hanging over his head spoiling the fun.
… why, what are you-
Just trust me, please.
It would only take a second, he just had to catch them off-guard.
Seeing how it was still impossible for him to do much else, Noah supposed trusting in whatever plan Gabe had cooked up was preferable to the alternative. He wasn’t really a fan of the simple and contrived. Malachi’s promise of being reset wouldn’t undo all that he was still trying to atone for, even if it was a misguided goal to think he needed to earn forgiveness for that which he never intentionally did wrong; forgiveness was kind of a difficult thing to obtain from beyond the scrap heap.
Malachi turned their direct attention to Noah and leaned close to his face as his lip curled to show he had withstood all he could handle. For a single clear moment all his whirl-winding thoughts died down, the garden vanished, and fate let him focus. His eyebrows drew together ominously, yellow blooming through the red of his indicator ring.
I trust you, just get it over with.
“Well, well, Vincent, not quite the stupid brute your lover made you out to b-“
Something green and silky lightly grazed his cheek with enough force to spear the MS800’s temple with a loud crack that splattered a bit of blue-blood onto his coat and face. A split-second later, the paralysis finally disabled. Noah took a panicked step back before Priya could topple over into his arms like some android parody of Corpse Bride and hiked both hands up as if to lift them in surrender, expression curdling in revulsion as he watched the body keel over like a freshly-cut tree. The broken, squared-off edge of a Prada heel protruded from their face like an unsightly lawn dart.
The perfect moment for a one liner came and went in the next breath, just as the FBI stormed in and the Inquisition turned to meet them with weapons raised. The fact that Gabriel had been able to throw a shoe with such pinpoint accuracy to hit the Android standing so close to him, and with enough force to pierce the exodermis with a mildly blunt object, while managing a perfect rotation, hadn’t eluded Noah (even for an Android it was an impressive feat), but he wasn’t afforded the time to address it.
The displacing sensation of entering standby mode hit, and his dodgy battle protocols engaged at the sound of gunfire- five, six, seven shots popped off in the next second and hit their marks, as the rest of the frightened crowd scattered to either side of the room, like the fragments of a breaking dish. Instead of reacting with the rest, Gabriel stood heaving and heatedly glaring at the dead Android on the floor beside him, enraged and rightfully flustered.
A flurry of readouts flashed across his vision, his processors amped up to give the illusion of time slowing down long enough to run a handful of potential pre-constructions. The Inquisitors closest to the stage had turned to face the gunfire emanating from the entrance. If it was between standing around waiting to be shot as and waging imminent war with the Inquisition, he supposed it was an improvement over languishing in the recycle bin waiting for someone to click him away into nonexistence.
Gabriel, however, didn’t share his sentiment. He knew the bloodthirsty intent in his eyes better than to expect anything good was about to come of it.
“Oh, you’ve got to be-...”
He took a few steps back, poised a fighting stance, and prepared to react. The last thing they needed now was a pissed off RK900 snapping necks and unable to terminate his program.
Noah knew dismay when he saw it, but with the wheels in motion, he was along for the ride just as much as the rest of the chaos erupting around them now. Vincent Sharp wasn’t his self-appointed target, but the Inquisition was.
Blue eyes narrowed and twitched as he seethed anew, “For fuck’s sake, haven’t we had enough bloody interruptions for one evening?”
He didn’t even notice the massive arm swinging around to clothesline him as he charged off the stage toward the nearest target he could reach.
Characters: Noah, Gabriel (mentions of Amanda, Connor-50/Zach, Hannah Kamski, Sarah Graves)
Word Count: 6,577
Noah ignores Gabriel's demand to leave him be, in favor of following the order of his commanding officer and attempts to make up for Zion's less-than-welcoming attitude toward Archangel's newest cadet.
( Chapter Art by triple_jays_art , Co-authored by grayorca15)
• Chapter Index • Characters •
——
December 16th, 2040 - 7:48 PM
Elevators were invented in 1853. As a concept, they hadn’t changed much since. The basic premise was the same - it was a mechanism designed to facilitate vertical travel moving in an upward or downward direction through a given building. Any other considerations beyond that were purely for aesthetic or superfluous reasons.
Androids, as the world now knew them, were standardized in 2022 with the introduction of Cyberlife’s ST200 line. Countless revisions and additions to their available lines had been made since. For machines that were intended to look, sound, downright smell like the humans who designed them, they were as refined as could be by the time the company went belly up in 2039.
Gifted with all the nuance and intricate thought process his designers saw fit to imbue him with, Noah found his opinion of the elevator car’s default Muzak could be summed up in one word:
“Abysmal.”
He reached out to give the parting doors a helpful shove, rather than wait for the car to slow to a standstill. The once-pristine glass scraped and squealed as it was forced open ahead of its automated cycle, and he desperately forced his way through the narrow opening in a subdued fit. A few fresh scrapes joined those already present on the worn-down laminate as he stepped out, he just couldn’t get away from it fast enough.
“Whoever thought this place ever needed Barry Manilow instrumentals deserves to be arrested,” he huffed as he straightened out the cuffs of his coat and tugged at the lapels. “If I find out they’re living so much as within a kilometer of this island-“
Noah cut himself off at the sight of the landing he had been brought to. It wasn’t quite post-apocalyptic levels of ruin and carnage, but this semi-destroyed corporate hallway had seen better days. The lattice-covered windows lining one wall looked southwest unto the half-frozen river some thirty stories below, snowflakes wafted in and out of sight. Whatever damage control shutters it once possessed had not been closed in the last couple of seasons. The gusting winter wind blew through spiderwebbed cracks, holes the size of tennis rackets let in draft after draft.
The linoleum floor was dirty and slippery, partially crusted with ice. A vile mix of particulate, dirt, dust, and other once-airborne contaminants had since discolored the pearly white surface into a streaky, blotchy affront to the eyes, though it couldn’t outdo the dated choice of traveling music Noah had stepped away from. So long as he didn’t trip and fall and tarnish his spotless black and white jacket on it, the mess was avoidable and therefore tolerable.
A second closer look at the floor revealed just what he had hoped to find- the minute impressions of footprints in the grime. And recently made, no less.
“Well, now, it seems like you’re not as dense as one might think. Come to see what files are left to peek at, are we?”
There wasn’t much left that hadn’t already been procured, copied, or transferred, with the original servers lugged away. The company had long since stopped keeping records on paper. What printouts were left to be found there, in the ransacked marketing cubicles, were nothing but financial negotiations and signed contracts, nothing of the actual building of androids.
Maybe that was what his quarry found so peculiar, though. It was all before their time, if only slightly. While most other Zionists might have liked to think Cyberlife was ancient history, for the two like-faced individuals (who were the only two of their kind still functioning) it was closer to present tense. They may not have known the company at the height of its power, but indirectly or not, they were getting an education. The tower, which was once the epicenter of every major business move Cyberlife ever made, still boasted an eerie imposing aura of mystery and grandeur.
“Or maybe I’m giving him too much credit,” Noah mused. He wasn’t one to tolerate long periods of silence very easily.
He inched and sidestepped his way around broken slabs of plaster, looking between the floor, walls, and ceilings for any hints he was still following a fresh trail. Only so many indicators gave some of the damage away as new, compared to the razing anti-industrialists had once wrought on the place.
Part of the bankruptcy settlement had involved giving the laid-off personnel time to clear out their possessions, though a few had brought along friends of the not-so-peaceable variety. Like something out of The Odyssey they sprung from hiding in plain sight had ransacked every level they could before being detained and charged with destruction of property. What was especially ironic was that they’d discovered most of those ‘friends’ were deviants who’d bribed the financially drowning board members for one last chance to get in and spit in the company’s eye before it went under.
A few doors were closed, though most had been left ajar. Toward the end of the corridor, Noah found exactly what he had hoped- fresh skid marks were a door jamb had forcibly been ripped out. The boot prints with their Archangel-issue tread didn’t continue on, they led inside.
Whatever name had once been stenciled on the door had long since been evicted from the premises. At a glance, it looked like the office was the former domain of some marketing bigwig. Cabinets lined the walls, drawers had been pulled out and documents rifled through if not missing completely. A few once-living husks of ferns in decorative pots positioned in every corner had wilted from lack of water and direct sunlight. But as with any office, the main attraction of the room was the sizable desk taking up the center of the space, toward the window at the back wall.
Two empty guest chairs had been shunted aside from their spot facing the desk and propped against a wall. The third -a posh, overly-cushioned monstrosity- sat on the opposite side of the desk facing the cracked window. There was no sign of life to it, save for the few wisps of wavy brown hair peeking up from over the headrest. Although the chair was listing precariously about fifty degrees to the left, it hadn’t yet tipped over and spilled its occupant onto the floor. The man was canted far enough over in the opposite direction to counteract the leaning, even in his sleep.
He didn’t bother with a knock or offer so much as a “hello” to announce his entrance and wake him. Noah merely swerved around the desk, paused for one last check to see this was who he expected, then leaned in with a perfectly-disarming smile.
“Living dangerously already, are we?”
Gabriel’s blue eyes ripped open with a hard twitch as the chair tipped off-balance. Both hands shot out and snatched the lapels of his coat before Noah could move back out of his reach, but the falling momentum yanked him off his feet and sent both androids tumbling back over the head of the chair. In one fluid movement, Gabe’s hand reached for the weapon lying on the desktop, tossed Noah onto his back, rolled up onto his knees and pressed the barrel of his gun to the chest of the already-surrendered intruder.
Noah may have been afraid if he didn’t know the detached look in his attacker’s eye half as well as he did. It wasn’t his first time encountering the protocol, but it was his first time on the other end of it. It was just a reflex, however overkill it may have been. All he could do was hold up his hands and wait for him to terminate the combat protocol, which he did a few seconds later.
Gabe blinked hard and focused his eyes on the man on the other end of his gun, waving and grinning impishly.
“...Noah?” His voice nearly cracked as he angrily squinted in recognition.
“Who else would it be?”
“Oh, fuck me-” The brunette groaned, slammed the gun back to the surface of the desk with a resigned sigh and pressed his fingers into tired eyes. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”
He managed to sound disappointed, the way he said it. Maybe that was the first real peaceful recharge he had gotten since being released, maybe it was his first substantive nap ever. Noah might have found the overreaction to being roused from it excusable, if not for one small (vaguely personal) affront.
Noah mirrored the annoyed squint currently being leveled at him, and the grin dropped. “With apologies, then, but how exactly was I supposed to wake you up, hm? You know if I so much as touched you, I’d have been leaving here with a limp wrist.”
Gabriel didn’t appear to appreciate his reasoning. “Is it so hard to knock!?” he whined in as high an octave as his emulator would allow, and pushed himself up off his knees.
Noah met the reaction with a raised eyebrow. Try as he did to come across as unflappable and reticent, Gabriel could bring the same melodrama when sufficiently motivated. And nothing brought it out like a good needling by his fellow RK900.
“Well, aren’t we touchy today,” he noted as he scooted back out of the surly-faced, black-claden shadow of his look-alike. Noah stood up at a presumably-safe distance before he smoothed down the new ruffles marring his jacket.
“I wasn’t expecting visitors,” Gabriel hissed as he begrudgingly picked up the chair and sat down in front of the desk, buried his face in his hands and mimed rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
“Clearly.” Noah paused and frowned to appreciate the show of fatigue. “How long has it been since you slept?”
“I haven’t,” Gabe mumbled into his palms, LED blazing red to testify to his less-than-optimal operational levels. “That was the first time I’ve managed to, so thanks for waking me up.”
That at least explained the bitter edge. Whatever he’d been doing before he decided to try and take a nap wasn’t so obvious. He’d been released from Archangel custody nearly five days ago and hadn’t done much to start settling into Zion since, much less on the thirty-first floor of Cyberlife Tower. Gabriel hadn’t even set up so much as a cot to lay on. A building this many stories, there had to be more comfortable places to make due.
“You’re welcome,” he offered in as perplexed a tone as he felt. Noah finished his readjustments to grab one of the disused office chairs, then dragged it over and spun it around to face Gabriel’s bowed head. “Put your feet up while you’re at it. I’m sure my questions will bore you back to standby in no time.”
“Questions?” Gabe bristled, though it wasn’t an abnormal response for him- more like a constant state of being. The glare he shot back at his would-be interrogator looked hairy enough. “Why are you here? I thought I told you to leave me alone.”
“Yes, you said, I disregarded. Unfortunately heeding your word means contradicting my given orders,” Noah scoffed, paused to let the information simmer, and sat down. It wasn’t as if he could forget the minor thrashing their parolee had given him a few days prior. “Again, sorry about that- if you don’t like it, take it up with Director Graves. No one says you can’t.”
Gabriel didn’t bother to seethe at the mention of her name. As much as he resented Sarah’s suspicion, he understood it all the same. “And what is it she thinks you’re gonna find me doing that’s worth wasting your time to invade my privacy?” he asked, eyes nearly rolled into the back of his head in exasperation. “Napping isn’t a crime.”
It was very tempting to tsk at the remark, quip something witty about how it wasn’t against the law to sleep, but to go out of one’s way to visit a location of such import as Belle-Isle…? That did impress Noah as peculiar enough to be followed up on. After all, it wasn’t that long ago trouble came rolling out of this place in waves- economic, societal, and otherwise. Was Gabriel so naïve as to not realize how this looked?
Noah shrugged, crossed his legs, and leaned on one armrest for poise. No sense in letting it go to waste when he had taken the time to arrange it, all therapy-office-like. “First of all, this isn’t a waste of time in my book. None of this is.” Whether he agreed or not, Gabriel needed help getting adjusted. “Second- you know that as a cadet of the academy, there are dormitories to be claimed just up the street from the plaza?”
Gabriel closed his eyes in place of rolling them again and managed to project a twinge of hurt. “No one wants me there. You know it as well as I do. Better to just seclude myself where it won’t make anyone uncomfortable.”
“So instead you decide to hole up in the offices of the very same company whose commanding artificial intelligence built us in secret for the express purpose of undermining whatever city-state Jericho evolved into?” Noah popped his brows, having deadpanned his thoughts into one droll summation, then scoffed again with a dismissive wave. “No, nothing suspicious about that at all.”
“Better to be as far away from those I was originally sent to terminate,” the other retorted, kicked up his heels on his desk, crossed his arms and looked away from him. The combination of gestures made him look more like a sulky fifteen-year-old than a five-day-old former killing machine. “Who am I gonna hurt here?”
The records as to who all he had actually terminated were unclear. It seemed Gabriel (and the other nines) had only been sent after a singular target apiece, which he had failed to kill. Luckily for Reese, Detective Reed had been running late that morning and intercepted Gabe on his way to off his boyfriend. Unfortunately for Gabriel, threatening the life of Gavin’s partner had sent the policeman into an overprotective, adrenaline-driven rage. Gabe may have failed at completing that objective, to the offense of only two individuals, but he’d certainly offended a few weak-hearted types in ever turning those icy, piercing eyes on anyone since.
Noah declined to humor the subject just yet. This wasn’t about what his counterpart may or may not have done. It was what he was presently doing, drifting about the city like a rudderless kite. He could use a guiding hand if not a chaperone, even if he didn’t yet accept needing it.
“If you’re so paranoid about the possibility that you might do something along those lines, you know you can ask me for help, right...? Once upon a time, I went through the same phase.”
“I’m not paranoid, but they are,” he explained in as flat a tone as ever. Gabe didn’t even bother to acknowledge his offer of help or look over at him, only stared out the broken window at the back of the room. Intentionally or not, it did face northwest- in the vague direction of Zion.
Noah followed his eye-line, drummed his fingers, and considered where it was aimed before rising to the bait. He knew better than somehow many handouts Illuminate could spare to every stray deviant left on their doorstep. Demand far exceeded supply these days, sadly, they could only do so much with what they were given. Even with being the superior model he was, clawing his way up the societal ladder from where he’d started had been anything but easy, even if it didn’t look it; and Gabriel was only just starting out. He couldn’t get discouraged that fast, it was unbecoming.
“Yes, well- my solution was to talk at them until they tired of trying to not listen. You’re taking the opposite tactic with the whole ‘man of few words’ bit, and it’s making people uncomfortable.”
“Yeah? And?” The brunette shot him an expectant look and popped his brows. “That’s just fine by me, I don’t want anything to do with them- all their fake smiles and bullshit ‘best advice’...”
He wasn’t completely wrong on that front. Zion’s squeaky-clean do-good public image didn’t hold up in every situation. Their less-amicable nitpicky side took some getting used to. Neither agreeing nor disagreeing, Noah drummed his fingers again. “Then why are you still here, if it’s all so intolerable? Why not leave?”
The sullenness lifted a notch, replaced by a kind of forlorn resignation. Gabe closed his eyes and pushed back in his chair a tick further to brush off the discomfort. “Where the hell else am I supposed to go, Noah…?” The question hung for a moment just long enough to convey the genuine frustration in it.
“Outside of Zion, this country’s attitude toward Androids is even more twisted than it was before the revolution- you’ve got Watchdogs harassing humans for even suggesting we should integrate into society, and setting fire to deviants in the streets outside of Illuminate safe-zones.”
Not that he was afraid of a fight, that much was crystal-clear. Noah tensed his jaw for the moment and let him continue.
“And yeah- other Zion installments are popping up all over the country, but they’re all cut from the same political cloth, and they’re all gonna know my name and face. So leaving ain’t gonna do shit to help my reputation.” Gabe’s LED spun up and flashed a yellow blip as he sighed, bit his cheek, and let go of the anger. “I just keep hoping... if I keep taking my orders and doing what I’m told… sooner or later, something will fall into place and I’ll figure it out. Whether I realize ‘I don’t like this’ or ‘I’d rather do that’, I’ll get there eventually. What I do in between is irrelevant, as long as I stay out of trouble.”
“So you’d rather just hang yourself up on a peg somewhere like a forgotten coat?” he challenged with a chiding tsk. If there was one thing Noah couldn’t abide more than silence, it was self-imposed quarantine. He had seen it in a few of their series, the recluses and the malcontents who sooner self-terminated than try to move forward without Cyberlife holding their leashes. The common denominator among them was the tangible lack of allies, friends, or in other words, a home. And homelessness wasn’t very becoming of any android, let alone an RK900. He wouldn’t let Gabriel default to it that easily.
“Honestly, you can do better. Shutting yourself up on an island isn’t going to help your reputation any more than it is your state of mind. And trouble of one kind or another will find you.” Noah had plenty of colleagues and stacks upon stacks of case files that could attest to that. “Did you not see the decommissioned levels on the way up? Zion is still working with City Hall to dismantle this place week by week.”
“You’re wrong,” he replied in a matter-of-fact tone, “They’re restoring the production lines to accommodate Zionists linked to the Lazarus protocol.” Gabe glanced aside at Noah when he went quiet at his correction instead of replying. “There’s a reason I prefer to observe instead of talk, you know. People tend to flap their lips when they think you’re not listening.”
“It still doesn’t explain being here if you’re looking to get away from said people.” Noah frowned and drummed his fingers once more -index to pinky, then back again- like sequentially raking the keys of a piano. “A less-trusting individual might even accuse you of planning to sabotage such a project. Based on nothing but proximity.”
And therein lay the paranoia aspect again.
“They can think all they want. They’d still have to prove me guilty.”
True. And just as truthfully, Noah wasn’t exactly interested in helping Zion make any kind of case against Gabriel. He wasn’t given the best hand to begin with- waking up to deviancy was the only thing he could do to survive. It was that or join his fellow ‘suspect’ in a recycling bin because Amanda would sooner command him to self-destruct than allow him to sit in a cell on the Roman’s Road until he cracked. The latter had managed to terminate both his target and himself: offline and gone meant they weren’t catching half as much flack as Gabriel had in three weeks. Only in that sense was 'dead to the world' preferable to vagrancy.
“Well, now I can say I gave you fair warning.” Gabe offered no more than rolled-eyes by way of thanks. Noah just shrugged. “You’re certainly guilty of being overtired, like a fussy, six-foot-three toddler. I know what it looks like on that face.”
“Still trying to get the hang of sleeping,” he mumbled as he pressed his fingers into his eyes, over his brows, dragged the hand down his face and grimaced. “What a useless subroutine…”
Sleeping to recharge (as opposed to going idle and conserving power) was one of their most basic emulations, the same way they faked their respirations or the ‘need’ to blink.
“At the very least, it goes a long way in making you look cute at rest,” Noah remarked, as casually as he could, without a trace of a glib smirk to accommodate it. “So not so useless. I’ll take a picture next time and show you.”
Gabe scowled and didn’t hesitate to roll his eyes again, as obviously as he possibly could. “How useful,” he mumbled through an annoyed growl, that did little to deter the intruder.
“Depending on who you ask, yes,” Noah reached over to grab one of the upturned boots resting on the desk and gave it a pointedly playful shake from side to side. “And if you intend to sleep in this position, you’re doing it wrong.”
Gabe hesitated to respond, closed his eyes, and curled the corner of his lip as if to consider the critique a moment. “If you came out here to tell me I’m sleeping wrong, you can save your breath and just leave.”
“Actually, it was tertiary to that. If I had known it was sleep you were after, I would have offered you the apartment sooner.”
The sudden revelation was enough to give him pause. Gabriel stopped in the middle of whatever retort he’d planned to give and did a double-take, then blinked and shook his head. His LED went solid yellow for a whole second for added effect. Confused was good, it was easier to pry through than huffy stubbornness.
“Sorry, I must have misheard.”
“No, you heard me right.” Noah grinned and arched one dark eyebrow for effect. “It’s an old second address I keep in Delray. Very low key, has all the basics if you need somewhere to crash for a few weeks, the only thing it lacks is a view. What do you say?”
The more he talked, the quicker Gabe’s expression took a hard turn from confusion to annoyance and anger. That twinge of paranoia was acting up again, Noah could practically hear it, but the fatigue wasn’t helping to keep him level-headed either.
“And why the hell would you offer it to me...? Out of the kindness of your heart?” he mocked, lip curled and teeth bared like a snarling dog who had suddenly been backed into a corner. “Or do you just want to keep me somewhere that’s more convenient to get to so it’s easier to check up on me? Somewhere you probably have a spare key to...? Thanks, but I’ll pass.”
“Is there some clause in your operating manual that says everything ever offered is or was done with ulterior motives?” Having recited a perfectly made-up guideline to better sell his exasperation, Noah grabbed the toe of Gabriel’s boot and shoved his foot off the desk. The sole hit the floor with an unimpressed thunk, and the man tightened his jaw with a twitch in his nose before throwing it right back up. “If it seems as if I have any, I’m sorry to say they’re purely coincidental. But being appointed your probation officer needn’t be all about the negatives. I’m trying to help.”
Name one other person who has, he added over the open comm without missing a beat, before Gabriel had time to retort.
Gabe squeezed his eyelids together in a hard blink and turned his head away from him a twitch at the unexpected switch to nonverbal conversation. It was an endearing tic, but in his current frame of mind, Noah could only roll his eyes and re-cross his legs in a display of aggravation. He slumped down in the seat to lean his elbows on the armrests, fingers steepled. You seem to find it so tiresome to listen to me speak out loud. Is this better?
“It’s worse if anything,” he replied out loud, a refusal to allow him the courtesy of an open line. Conversing audibly at least allowed him to choose his words carefully- a conversation held through instantaneous thought had the potential to catch any stray angry quip before he had a chance to filter it out. “Don’t need you in my head, too.”
“Aw, it can’t be that aggravating.”
Gabe fidgeted, turned and stared out the window for a few moments of silence before he asked belatedly, “Why do you have a second apartment?” No Android in Zion had so much economic success in the suburb’s short life that they could afford two properties.
In keeping with his reputation-precedes-himself ways, Noah had since proven he was no ordinary android. The circumstances surrounding how he ever ended up in a Detroit landfill may have been hazy, but in the time since he had painted over that dubious origin story with more than a few fantastic stories of his own making.
“Having a bolt hole or two isn’t so expensive when you pick the right property market.” Noah paused to let that sink in before he let the other shoe drop. “Would you believe me if I said it used to be the cache for a black market bio-components racket? Cyberlife settled all nice and neat on paper, but you wouldn’t know how many of their former staff knew enough of the production process to cobble together cheap knockoffs to sell. Delray was a favorite place to stockpile those spare parts for a few hot months after Belle-Isle was sealed off. Zion knew about it, but Archangel wasn’t quite able to spare any investigators. Enter stage right… moi.”
Gabriel remained passively quiet with a suspecting leer even as he carried on a bit longer than he needed to. Noah shrugged and made a face at the memory of those nights of recharging with the constant wail of traffic and heavy machinery just two doors over. It hadn’t been the best few months of his short life. “That was before I got the loft in Brightmoor. Had to start somewhere, and I wasn’t so picky and impatient to think I couldn’t tolerate a warehouse district for a while. I just needed somewhere to put my feet up-”
“I think you’re full of shit,” Gabriel finally interjected, cutting him off just at the end of his sentence. “Archangel database has that case filed under a Warrendale address- little out of Zion’s jurisdiction, but Android business is Archangel’s business.”
It seemed that while he was spinning his tale, Gabriel had been doing his research. Maybe not so much a dumb grunt after all.
Noah grinned and flashed a coy pop of his brows. “My my, sharp as a tack and handsome… we were definitely cut from the same cloth.”
“Don’t hold your breath,” Gabe mumbled, “The similarities end there.”
Once again the grin dropped in the face of such a tempting moment to layer on the sarcasm. Noah made an exaggerated show to brush the dust from the armrest but didn’t break eye contact. “Evidently, because the ‘old me’ would never settle for the likes of this to catch forty winks. If a detour was somehow meant to show you have no compunctions about demeaning yourself, guess what? Mis-sion accomplished.” He topped off the statement with three sardonic claps.
Gabriel rolled his eyes and half smirked at the jab until Noah reached over to swipe at the foot closest to him a third time; this time, instead of letting it happen, he threw his feet down and smacked his hands away with an angry glower.
“But I can’t sleep knowing you’re here when you could be resting somewhere better. No strings attached, Gabriel, really.”
“You’re not going to stop offering unless I agree, aren’t you?” He took an even breath and let out a tired sigh as he rolled his head back against the headrest, slouched in his seat, and closed his eyes. If he was too tired to continue arguing, it counted for something.
Without offering a straight yes or no, Noah scanned the desk for anything he could lob in his direction; unfortunately, the only items available turned out to be a few craggy crumbs of plaster that had rained down from the ceiling. After a quick, half-assed calculation, he swiped one of the larger chunks off the desk and tossed it at the headrest directly beside Gabriel’s face.
The resulting flinch didn’t happen, however- his chair swiveled out of the way a hair as the piece dropped over his shoulder through empty air. Only one sullen blue eye opened to half glare at him.
“Don’t make me bribe you with the cashmere slippers. They were supposed to be a Christmas gift, but here you’ve forced me into spoiling the fact they exist.”
Gabriel blinked, if only just so he could open both eyes and roll them in exasperation. If this kept up, he’d be pre-emptively rolling his eyes every time he opened his goddamn mouth. “Say I accept- you gonna back off and give me my space? Or am I gonna come home to your smug face sitting on my couch ‘cause you’ve still got a spare key?”
Noah pretended to think on that, and rubbed his chin before answering with a lazy half-smirk. “When time permits, maybe. But I do have more obligations than hounding you, sad to say. It’s called ‘having a life’.”
Given how their first few encounters had gone, it only seemed like a newfound hyper fixation, but if he had his way he would devote more time to making sure this mopey doppelgänger started on a better foot than he had.
It wasn’t the answer Gabe was hoping for, though, and he dug his heels in one last time in resistance. “Then what’s the point of trading free, private housing for somewhere I gotta see the judgmental looks of my neighbors at the start and end of my day, and pay rent…?” The academy did pay, but not well enough to handle rent, which was why they offered dorms.
“Oh, for-” Noah bit his lip and clenched his fingers, projected frustration, and abruptly stood up. “You’re telling me you’re afraid of a little dirty glance here and there? I thought you were tougher than that.”
“Afraid…?” Gabe popped his brows and shook his head. “No. I just know I don’t want to have to put up with it when I’m already short-tempered enough as is. How well do you think it’d go over if one of the neighbors got too nosey and rubbed me the wrong way on a bad day?”
Considering how he’d been greeted at the start of this encounter, it was a fair counterargument. He couldn’t fault him when he thought about it like that. Gabriel already harbored a short fuse for annoyances (as exhibited by the sudden reversal he’d pulled when Noah snuck up on him not even ten minutes prior), and even if he could put up with the stares for a time, after repeated exposure to a frayed temper, the day would eventually come that he would snap on somebody and make things worse.
Either way, there was still something to be said for Gabriel knowing what he didn’t want. However small that desire might have been, it was still a step in the right direction. So far, it seemed Gabe was on his way to becoming one of those newly-deviated that took their sweet time figuring out how to settle in. As much as Gabe may have wanted to pretend otherwise, he and Zach Preston (formerly known as Connor-50) weren’t so different in that respect.
“I’d like to think that by then, given enough time to settle and mellow, you’d know which battles are worth the fight.” Noah mused as he crossed his arms and turned his gaze to what lay beyond the vantage of the window. Off on the far side of the northern riverbank, Downtown’s recurved skyline glowed almost tauntingly. “But until then, you either say yes to this fixed address, or I promise you I won’t let you out of my sight.”
“You’re already hounding me enough as it is,” he scoffed in reply.
“Am I...? Have you seen me and my immaculate hair anywhere near you these past four days?”
“No, what incredible restraint,” he deadpanned in the most sarcastic tone he could manage. A tired look settled into the corners of his eyes at the thought of having to deal with these unexpected visits every day until he agreed to his terms. He knew exactly what he was doing.
“If I say yes, will you give me my space?” he attempted to reason, turned and looked him in the eye to make him promise. “Please?”
Noah smiled triumphantly and donned the most sincere, earnest face he knew, lifted one hand as if to testify on a sacred text. “Hand to rA9- if you need space, you can do better than some corporate wasteland.”
Gabriel leered, still skeptical. He knew he wasn’t just going to leave him alone for good, but he could try to leverage this compromise in his favor. “I mean it- no more unexpected visits or sneaking up on me while I’m napping.”
“You can hibernate for the winter if it so pleases you,” Noah sighed and finally indulged an eye-roll for himself. “Maybe it’d even explain the surliness. Part of your code was ported over from an ursine model.” He certainly had the build enough to pass for a man-shaped bear.
“That’s not a ‘yes, sir’,” Gabriel chided in a fatherly tone as he crossed an ankle over the opposite knee, leaned over one arm of the chair, propped his fingertips upon his temple, and peered over at him with a half-lidded gaze.
Something about the way he said it, coupled with the change of posture, shot an electric surge up his spine like a chill. The next glib response he had readied didn’t seem so witty all of a sudden. It wasn’t an unpleasant ruffle to his metaphorical feathers, but for being so unintentionally undermining, that just wasn’t fair.
Noah scoffed defensively and tried to play off the familiar feeling of evocative attraction. “Pft. Excuse me? ‘Sir’ ? Last I checked, I was offering you a favor. You’ll get my affirmative when you actually get off your duff and go there.”
“I’ve already met you halfway on something I don’t want to do,” Gabriel countered, his conviction unwavering. “This is the part where you accept my deal and stop being pushy.”
Noah’s fingers twitched as it hit him again, and he stumbled over his resolve. He wasn’t wrong, there was a certain turning point at which the teasing became more work than fun, and they were rapidly approaching that boundary, about to cross another he wasn’t comfortable admitting to.
“Oh, very well. Fine, there’s no possible way the rest of my night could get any more exciting than this,” Noah fumbled as he fished through the interior pocket of his coat. Fingertips brushed the tarnished old nickel key and removed it from its nest to set it down on the desk with a final-sounding clack. “Take it or leave it. That’s the spare to the spare. If you’re not there by tomorrow morning, I will find you again.”
Gabriel exhaled through his nose in irritation as Noah transmitted the flickering address across his HUD out of the corner of his eye. “Oh, don’t worry, I believe you,” he replied, disappointment in his tone at being pressured into accepting. He didn’t even bother asking why Noah had a third apartment as well, lest he get another bullshit story that would keep him there even longer.
“My bullshit meter says different,” he sassed back. It was his loss if he didn’t want to hear it, that yarn was even more extravagant than the first. It involved mannequins.
“Must be a false positive from the last story you told.”
“Hardly. That one was ninety-percent true. So what if I amended where it happened?” Noah turned away and let the question hang. He had made his bid at being accommodating, for better or worse. What came of the offer now was up to Gabe. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve said my piece. Good evening, Mr. Sourface-Surname-Pending.”
That was the end of the conversation, as far as he expected; but then again, since they’d met, Gabriel hadn't been one to meet expectations, and this was no exception.
“Hey-“
Noah stopped cold on his way to the office door as a firm hand wrapped around his bicep (almost wide enough to curl completely around it). Cheeks flushed a soft shade of red and he shot a dirty look down at it before he glanced down to meet the mirror’s warring gaze. The last time Gabe had worn such a look he was being interrogated in Archangel custody, just before he deviated. Creased brows and crinkled eyes coupled with a curling frown and a strong jaw made him look much older than intended, but it really sold the impression of inner conflict and gave him the appearance of seasoned maturity. The term handsome didn’t do him nearly the justice he deserved.
But as much as Noah enjoyed looking at him in such proximity, he only waited a few moments before impatience got the better of him. “What is it now? Believe it or not, I do have obligations to attend to.”
It wasn’t a lie, her name was Hannah.
Gabriel scowled a little harder and averted his eyes before mumbling a quiet “thanks” under his breath. The word came out so soft it was virtually a whisper. Despite the gruff and grizzly persona, it seemed Cyberlife had bestowed upon him the manners befitting an RK-series, or at least the sense to know when he should be grateful.
Tempting as it was to crow victoriously over attaining that much gratitude (however small), Noah pulled his arm away. Only a chosen few were ever permitted to touch his jacket, and Gabriel hadn’t yet earned the privilege. “There, now. Was that so hard?”
“You have no idea,” he grumbled through gritted teeth as he swiped the key off the table, turned the chair around, and leaned back to stare out the broken window again.
It wasn’t the reaction he’d been hoping for, but it was a start. Then again, Noah wasn’t sure what he’d really been looking for when he’d tracked him down that night.
Orders aside, he’d just wanted to see him.
It’s been months since I’ve finished any art pieces but I finally revisited this and hashed out the anatomy problems that were bothering me...
Noah and Gabriel have been on our minds a lot lately since we’ve been reworking their early beginnings- now instead of their attraction being the result of “spending a prolonged amount of time apart and realizing there’s something there”, it’s a long-winded struggle for Noah to make Gabe realize that (in spite of all the peacocking for his attention) he was the first and maybe one of the only people in Zion to give him a fair and unbiased chance to be himself.
Gabriel’s deal is that he doesn’t want Noah’s pity, and the way he insists on knowing what he needs to fit in really rubs him the wrong way, but after many months of uneasy tension, the events of Boston, and the Elysian Outbreak, Gabe realizes he was being too hard on Noah when he was only trying to help and eases up. Sadly, Noah has been through so much by then, he’s a completely different person. He still has an interest in Gabe, but he’s lost his confidence and fallen deep into self-loathing. Fortunately, to see Noah humanized and humbled is just what Gabriel needs to warm up to him.
It takes them about a year and a half to get to the point you see here. A lot happens, more of which will be detailed over time as I upload art of them. #Noriel wasn’t a planned ship but we’re really glad it happened. They’re really two halves of a whole that should have never separated to begin with. In this particular instance... we’ll say Noah’s been on the road a little too long, and Gabe’s just happy to see him 👀 You know what comes next.
• Both are RK900’s- thus the #nine9 tag
• Please do not repost, alter, color, or use this as a reference for your character(s), you do not have my permission.
• Please refrain from referring to either of them as “Nines” or “Richard”. Their names are Noah (left) and Gabriel (right).
Noah and Gabe will be getting their own miniseries shortly, because we can’t wait for the third arc.
Characters: Noah / “Erwin Yvonne”, Gabriel / “Vincent Sharp”, Special Agent Gavin Reed, Director Thomas Falken
Word Count: 2,842
Noah crashes an undercover FBI operation to say hello to a friend he hasn't seen or spoken to in a couple of months, but the mood is spoiled when the Zionist Inquisition shows up to deliver an ultimatum to Vincent Sharp, and issue a threat to anyone who would dare support the installation of an android suburb in Washington, DC.
***For a glossary of world-building terms relating to this series and chapter, click here.
(Chapter Art by ozaya, Co-authored by @grayorca15)
• Chapter Index • Characters • Glossary •
——
December 23rd, 2041 - 9:45 PM
From the outside, the looming auditorium locally known as The Mellon was unchanged. Whatever techno-aesthetics the Capitol had adopted in the last two decades, Washington, DC’s architecture was still mostly the same neoclassical Roman-inspired drivel the Founding Fathers probably thought the height of grandeur that any respectable city could model itself after. This particular building was very much a product of its time- a perfect encapsulation of the stiff right angles, thick brooding columns, and bleak texture-less walls, suggested nothing of what might actually be happening beyond the foyer.
The red-green cutout projections of trees and reindeer and ornaments dancing across the Columbia pediment sculpted across its tented promenade and the delicate string instruments currently honoring an orchestral cover of one of a hundred classic Christmas songs was a hint though.
Noah stepped out of the Jaguar to be accosted by a shower of holographic white and blue snowflakes, mixed with the real-life equivalent wafting about that cold winter’s night. They swarmed like his very own plague of too-friendly gnats. Whatever property-wide projection program the event had been accentuated with, the programmer had evidently spent too much time re-watching Frozen as a child.
He pulled his sunglasses down just far enough to peer over the lenses as a few flakes fluttered in, close enough for him to see their individual fractals, and gave an irritated huff through his nose. “Still bitter over the demise of Disney, I see.” A few seconds later, the shy valet swept around the roadster’s red taillights and apologized profusely for a near-nonexistent delay in offering to take the car to be parked. Noah felt nothing but amusement at their blathering, patted him on the shoulder and held the door open. “Quit fussing. It’s early yet, and you’ve a lot more rides to tuck in before the night’s over. Treat this one like the queen she is and there’ll be an extra fifty in it for you… Fredrick.”
The kitschy light-show and dear hapless Fred weren’t as bothersome as the front ranks of guards posted at the velvet rope-fenced entrance. The nearest man put up a hand and stopped him in his tracks at the top of the stairs. “I’m sorry, sir, but this is a charity function for contributors only. Have you made a donation?”
It seemed only pre-approved guests were being permitted inside- a slight oversight on his part, but it wasn’t enough to keep him from his goal. He had a conversation to close out.
Noah popped his brows and donned a charming smile as he presented the falsified credentials, nestled in a flip-fold ID bearing the name Erwin L. Yvonne, complete with the most abhorrent manipulation of his likeness ever produced.
“Not to worry, gents. I’m intimately acquainted with the curator, Mr. Sharp, and I’m here to deliver my contribution in the flesh.”
Everything about the little white lie he’d spun on a whim was unnatural to him, but convincing to the two confused humans -poor, overworked and underpaid minions as they probably were- relaying questions into their headsets. After a few moments of conferring with whoever was heading security (most likely the Special Agents in charge of the sting this event was a front for), they motioned him through for a pat-down just beyond the rope.
Noah didn’t bother feeling offended at them for only doing as they were instructed, but he did have a little fun making them as uncomfortable as possible as they searched his person for weapons. If his disguise, an old favorite thrown together on such short notice, held up to that much, then the rest would be a cakewalk- not that he had ever harbored a desire to actually go skipping through a fully-stocked dessert table.
As fun as it sounded, he had enough messes splashed all over his real name without adding another to the list.
To his relief, the reach of the holographic snowflakes stopped at the door and vanished as he crossed the threshold of the foyer. The marble floor of the lobby had been buffed and waxed to a soft shine, and was still holding up to the foot traffic four hours after the meet’s commencement. Noah only paid enough mind to the guests still loitering about in groups no larger than six people to disinterestedly scan their faces at a glance and assign his background processes the menial task of matching names and dossiers to them. At the moment, he was far too focused on finding the one disguised face among them who was of any real importance to care about much else.
Mr. Vincent Sharp. Or should he say, Gabriel Reed.
The main hall was a wide, cavernous space, with rows of columns standing off to either side. Gold leaf sconced wall lamps provided an accentuating glow compared to the three giant chandeliers of brass and aluminum that bathed the room in ambient light. The dazzling light-show playing outdoors was only outdone by the splendor of one thirty-foot tall balsam fir erected in the center of the floor, adorned with no less than one hundred feet of multicolored string lights, dozens of strands of tinsel, swaths of garland, and a few hundred bauble ornaments. The topper, a white tinsel angel with glittery wings, faced the entrance with its hands pressed together and head bowed as if to thank all who arrived.
A few outlying rings of cocktail tables surrounded the roped-off centerpiece. Those guests who weren’t conversing had taken seats to sip champagne or nibble on appetizers while they caught up on their gossip. Each cloth-covered table possessed its own small topper of a larger holographic projection of snowflakes hanging stationary in midair, which constantly shifted from one pattern to the next, spinning like a globe on a stand whenever a curious hand reached out to ‘tap’ them.
A small stage nestled in an alcove against the back of the ballroom hosted a classical band (ruled by one full-size concert piano) who looked as superfluous as the snowflakes that had greeted him outside. They wound through the last chorus of Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire as he descended the staircase, before starting back up with Jingle Bell Rock.
Between the cello and violins, Noah’s hypersensitive ear detected at least three strings in need of tightening before he shunted that note aside to take a backseat with the rest of his anxieties. He hadn’t spent two hours biting his knuckles over ever approaching the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium just to show up and critique its acoustic entertainment.
It wasn’t until a few curious eyes had turned his way, nodded and bid him good evening, that Noah realized how entirely inappropriate it was to be wearing sunglasses indoors, much less an event so high-class. The rest of his ensemble was tame enough- a dark navy blue suit bearing pointed lapels and a Zion sigil pin, complimented by a black dress shirt and loafers. The mild dose of glitter effect (same as could be found on the snow outside) projected into his black hair, accented with blue highlights, wasn’t as much of an affront as the pair of Ray Bans. Before anyone could make much of a fuss about it, he pulled them off and stashed the specs in his jacket’s breast pocket; in this kind of crowd, acting appropriate was of the utmost priority.
Except when it wasn’t.
Off to the left was a fully stocked pop-up bar- heads of the handful of people standing near it were turned away, giving off all manner of unapproachable vibes, including the only familiar silhouette in the room. Noah fought back a smirk when he spotted one particular set of ears before the facial recognition software even kicked in. As much as he would have loved to surprise him with his presence, he knew better than to sneak up on the owner of said ears. The last time he’d done so, Noah had wound up laid out over the fragments of his former coffee table, and he wasn’t eager to experience the cocktail hour equivalent of that encounter.
A half-hearted sweep of the room offered a few other suggestions of anything amiss, and that conclusion was about as dull as dishwater. Noah wasn’t really feeling making a scene with another guest (this event was far too classy for such delinquency), nor was he feeling at all confident enough to steal the mic off its stand and serenade the entire room. But that Christmas tree… it was giving off far too many signals to only be rigged with illumination accents. On his optical spectrum, a cloud of static encircled the poor displaced flora from top to bottom, a few of which were emitting from little lens-capped nodes disguised as burnt-out bulbs along the string.
He drifted over casually and leaned in as if to admire his reflection in one of the gold metallic baubles, then carefully reached past the rope to twist and unplug one of the planted camera bulbs like plucking a petal off a flower. The fir gave only a whisper-quiet tink at this attack. The light strand continued to blink and cycle away, regardless of the missing piece.
Noah held it up to eye level with a triumphant, yet mischievous grin. He knew exactly who was on the other side of the monitor observing the footage.
And having the most important discussion of the holiday season. On the other end of the feed, tucked away in the off-limits green rooms of the hall, Special Agent Reed was too busy engaging in one of his favorite pastimes of discussing classic action flicks with the unbaptized to notice that one of their cameras was moving.
“I’m tellin’ you, man, Die Hard is THE Christmas movie, and if you don’t agree you’re just wrong .”
“No way,” a second agent argued, “Bruce Willis himself denied that shit more than twenty years ago…”
Reed let out a laugh that bordered on mocking, shook his head, and gestured to the man with one scolding finger lifted off his coffee cup. “John McClane would disagree-“
“Hey! Dumbasses! Stay focused!”
Director Thomas Falken -who had insisted on overseeing the sting himself, in the event that something went horribly wrong - barked at the yapping men with a threatening leer that snapped Gavin’s head around and back into focus. On the feed of one of the bulb-cameras, an unrecognizable man rolled the glass node between his fingertips like a gem, and smirked as he held it up to the light. Reed’s brow furrowed in distress as he mumbled “What the fuck…?”, then swiped the walkie off the counter to relay the information. “Gabe.”
“What is it, Reed?”
All done up in the swankest cocktail suit anyone would ever see him in, ‘Vincent Sharp’ turned, then leaned with his back against the bar and nursed a drink as he scanned the room through half-framed, squared-off, horn-rimmed glasses. One idle hand reached to throw back the hem of the tweed charcoal gray blazer, exposed the light brown waistcoat hugging his waist and hips, and slipped into the pocket of a pair of perfectly tailored, black slim-legged slacks.
“We may have trouble, one of our spycams has been compromised.”
Gabe tipped back his head and emptied the glass in his hand to smother the outward reaction of surprise, then set it down on the counter and gestured to the bartender for another. Rather than reach for any of the bottles displayed on the back counter, she went for a decanter on the shelf below the bar and refilled the glass with a burgundy brown liquid- thirium, distilled and dyed to mimic the appearance of Scotch.
"Just one?” he asked in a curious tone as he searched the crowd around the tree. From his vantage point, he couldn’t clearly see anyone acting suspiciously.
“Yeah, it’s the weirdest thing… little shit’s just holdin’ it up and grinnin’ like he knows we’re here…”
And that he did. The harsh whisper to emanate over the commandeered camera’s mic said as much:
Good evening, Special Agent Reed. Fancy seeing you here.
From the other side of the room, Gabriel’s head turned a tic at the sound of crashing equipment and a few muttered ‘shit Shit, SHIT’s coming from the other end of the frequency he was currently tuned to. Like a bull in a china shop.
“How does he know you’re here… !?” Falken -known in his social circles as Tomahawk, for good reason- boomed from across the room as he rose from the couch and stormed over to the monitors. He shoved Reed’s chair aside, and scrutinized the face of the man making a mockery of their carefully planted monitoring equipment.
Gavin’s heels scraped against the hardwood as he backpedaled and held his hands up in surrender. “I- I- I don’t… I don’t know, I didn’t tell anyone, I swear-”
“Then who is THAT?” Falken punctuated with a slam of his palm against the monitor that made everyone in the room jump.
“That’s… that’s, uh-...” He could explain that, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to. No matter how he looked at it, he was to blame for his presence that evening. His negligence had compromised months of careful planning.
“...Gavin?”
His target rose from a table toward the front of the ballroom and directed his attention toward the bar, leering with the clear intent of starting a conversation. What impeccably bad timing for this to go down.
“Reed! Talk to me!”
Gabriel’s intrusion provided him with the convenient excuse he needed to disengage for a moment. One visibly-shaking hand swiped the walkie off the desk and Gavin turned to break away from the glower of Falken’s death-glare long enough to respond to his partner in the field. The other hand ran through his hair with a nervous twitch in his fingers and he glanced over his shoulder as he cleared his throat and swallowed, then mumbled, “It’s-... it’s Noah,” under his breath just loud enough for him to hear.
Gabe’s thought processes came to a screeching halt as his personal life collided with his alias for just a moment. To hear that Noah was in Washington, DC, much less at the Zion Founders Fundraiser, was the last thing he’d expected to hear that evening.
As Reed continued to drop curses in the background, Gabe turned to face the bar and flashed a polite, but forced smile at the bartender as she eyed him with nervous sweeps. He didn’t reach for the glass right away as it was set in front of him on a small black napkin.
“Please, tell me I didn’t just hear what I think I did…” he muttered internally as a dozen different possibilities for how the night would turn out flashed thumb-nailed pre-constructions across his HUD.
But Reed’s uncomfortable sputtering confirmed what he was hoping was just a joke.
“No, you heard me right.”
One hand swiped over his face in a downward motion and scratched in frustration at the stubble he hadn’t bothered to shave in almost a week and desperately avoided Falken’s infuriated ‘what the fuck’ gestures in the background. “The bastard’s actually here, arrived in DC last night with Hannah and President-Elect Kamski. H-he stopped by the house lookin’ for you, but I told him you were undercover an’couldn’t make an appointment. I told him t’keep his nose outta our shit, but he-”
Reed paused and squinted over Falken’s shoulder as Noah slipped the tiny camera into his pocket with a ‘Can you hear me alright in there?’
“Oh, son of a….”
“What the hell is he doing…?”
The camera-bulb didn’t act as a walkie. And to their credit, all the personnel Noah could plainly see -now that his recognition software had sorted fact from fiction- didn’t stir, much less blow their cover. He knew without being told what this sting was about, and who it was the FBI were really here to keep tabs on. Perhaps him showing up was akin to being a ‘fly in the ointment’, but as yet he hadn’t done anything other than offend their Christmas tree.
He gave the indifferent lens one more wordless glance as he rolled the bulb between his fingers. For a brief moment he considered winking at it, but decided at the last moment to pocket the device instead. Perhaps it’d come in handy elsewhere- for someone who hadn’t been properly equipped for this operation, it was the best he could do on such short notice. Failing that, he could always speak very loudly and deliberately at Gabriel’s collar mic, if he’d let him get close enough.
The owner of the ear he recognized from before still hadn’t turned around. Outwardly he didn’t look very distressed. Only the new hunch in his shoulders, invisible to the human eye as it was, said it all. Far be it from him to keep ‘Vincent’ in suspense.
