Seeing Omri face-to-face was chilling enough, making Cipher back up in his glass cage until he hit the wall. Barrier between them or not, Cipher knew he was in deep shit by the way Omri was smiling in at him like a bug under a microscope.
But seeing Rurik at the man’s side, expression as flat as ever, sent a pang through Cipher’s chest. It wasn’t trust that they had between them, sure, but it still hurt to be betrayed by someone you hung out with casually.
“Good morning, little fish,” Omri greeted him, raising a finger to poke at the glass like an aquarium.
“What, no sign that says not to tap the glass?” Cipher muttered, nerves amplifying his snark.
Omri chuckled. “No such luck,” he responded, turning away as Rurik handed him a phone. “Now, be sure to smile for the camera, Cooper.”
He didn’t like that Omri knew his name, not that he shouldn’t have expected it. Still, shivering at the sound of his name in the man’s mouth, Cipher tried to work out what he was doing here.
“Reuben~!” Omri’s voice cut through his inspections of the tank, eyes widening as his chin jerked down in time to see Blackburn’s face on the phone screen.
And immediately everything went out of focus, and he was cold, and the shock had him jolting and cringing downward, away from the onslaught, until he finally registered what had happened. Water had just been dumped down on him.
Stomach twisting up in knots, Cipher looked up at the top of the tank, saw the opening sliding shut once more. Muffled through the glass and his own panic, he could hear Blackburn shouting, and Omri’s laugh like wind chimes tinkling.
He was watching when the slot opened again, and he jerked his head down in time not to get a face full of water. Still he was coughing and spluttering afterward, as the deluge continued to rain down. Lurching out from under the stream, he caught himself against the glass and shoved his hair out of his face, turning and staring up-- then, with a lance of terrified realization, down, at the rising water already lapping at his ankles.
“Little fish,” Omri cooed, and Cipher turned his head numbly to see Omri smiling in at him, waving, phone held up to show an anguished Blackburn staring back.
“Black,” Cipher managed to say, voice strangely weak.
“Hang in there, kid,” Blackburn said, tone urgent. “I’ll g--”
Omri pulled the phone away and Cipher spun, flattening his hands on the glass as Blackburn’s voice was taken away.
“Let’s talk,” Omri was saying as he walked away, and Cipher shot another panicked look at the pouring water. It didn’t show any sign of stopping, and a look at Rurik confirmed that the hacker was at the controls on his own tablet.
“You’d let him kill me?” Cipher asked, hurt in his eyes. Rurik spared him a sidelong glance, hardly acknowledging his presence let alone validating their companionship, before following after Omri.
Five minutes in, the water was up to his knees, and Cipher was hugging himself as he stared down at the rising tide. That meant he had around thirty minutes before he drowned, yeah? Something like that. Until the current started gushing out faster, rushing in and filling the tank up to his waist before he could calculate what had happened.
“Hey-- Hey!” Alarmed, Cipher spun, hammering on the glass. “Let me out! It’s--” Stopping, he saw Blackburn shouting, Rurik tapping something and the water was flooding in all the faster.
Cipher couldn’t hear them over the roar of the water, but he saw Omri’s lips move: tick, tock. They were rushing Blackburn to make some decision or another. It must be pretty big, if it prompted them to take Cipher. Must be really important to Blackburn.
Cipher didn’t care. He didn’t want to die.
The water was past his chest now, and he was treading water to keep afloat. Until his head bumped the top of the tank, and he started hyperventilating as the water splashed against his chin, then his cheeks. “BLACK!” He shouted against the ceiling of the tank, kicking his arms and legs out to brace himself on the walls of the tank. “<i>BLACK!</i>” Oh god, what the fuck had he gotten himself into, what had he let Blackburn drag him into?! He’d said no mob bullshit, no dangerous shit, he didn’t want to die, he didn’t want to fucking die--
Something dragged him underwater and his shout came out as bubbles rushing past his head. One hand slapping over his mouth, the other scrabbling for the ceiling to pull himself back up to the air, he didn’t realize he was dropping until he-- and the water-- rushed out the bottom of the tank and into the open room. Hacking out the water he’d gasped in from panic, eyes wild and wide as he looked around, Cipher couldn’t gather his wits enough to try and escape before a set of hands were hauling him off the ground.
“Always a pleasure, Reuben,” Omri was saying, eyes crinkled in that mean smile as he snapped the phone shut on Blackburn’s final shout. Turning, offering a much softer expression-- albeit one without sincerity-- Omri crossed over to Cipher, cupped his chin. “It was nothing personal, of course. You were the best leverage I could manage, in such a short amount of time--”
Cipher bit his hand. Omri startled, sucked in a breath as he yanked it back, blood dripping to the ground. “Fuck you,” Cipher gasped, still breathing hard from fear and panic.
Clucking his tongue in disapproval, Omri took the offered kerchief from Rurik and wrapped his hand. Then, with a flash, he seized Cipher’s hair, startled a snarl out of him before wrenching his head back far enough to make him choke. “Don’t presume your worth,” Omri chided, like scolding a child. “You’re only as valuable to me as what I can get from Reuben in exchange.” Dropping Cipher’s head with a little shake, he wiped his hand of the dampness on Cipher’s cheek, left him burning with anger and humiliation. “See him home, Rhys. Monte, make sure our friend Reuben keeps up his end of the bargain. You two keep in touch~” Omri patted Cipher’s cheek one last time before turning to leave.
“And if the big guy tries to weasel outta it?” Cipher looked up at the man on his left, strangely colourful for the job description he presumably had.
Omri paused, then turned halfway with a pleasant smile. “A bathtub works just as well.”
Cipher’s stomach dropped. Rhys nodded. “You got it, cap’n~”
Blackburn is freak'n d e a d so how is he (and Cipher) operating in the Business AU?
Blackburn is ALIVE in the Business AU and is the CEO of some generic bank. Doing some shady business on the side of his main job, he happens to hire Cooper (aka Cipher) into doing some smaller robberies for him. Meanwhile, Cooper’s just a part-time cat burglar trying to put himself through college.
