The Castle and the Enclave 4/? (Pacific Rim crossover)

[persephone_kore]

Authors: khilari and persephone_kore
Summary: Fusion-type crossover with Pacific Rim, near-future setting. When Agatha turns eighteen, she joins the Jaeger program. Her family has been involved with it from the beginning, but she soon learns that's more complicated than she thought.



Agatha's first panicked thought is that he's a prisoner, that he disappeared because he came here and found out what they'd been doing and they'd locked him up to keep him from telling Commander Wulfenbach, that she and Zeetha are going to be trapped too and they're never going to let her leave.

Reason reasserts itself after several frantic heartbeats. Heart. Blood. Locks. The bloodlock on the inside of the door. Oh, theoretically they could have disabled it (and she'd love to know how they're doing a sufficiently detailed genetic analysis that fast), but once you account for their taste in generally alarming trappings this place says refuge more than prison. There's a door off to one side of the room, standing ajar just far enough to reveal a rather nice bathroom, and on the opposite wall is a refrigerator and a number of cooking appliances. There's no lock on the float tank.

This all raises a lot of questions of its own. Agatha goes over and puts her hand in the inner lock, which jabs the same finger (ow) and then rolls out an LED display with the irritable message "Error: Door Open." Agatha thinks about this for a moment and then shuts the door.

Uncle Barry climbs out of the tank with only a little coaxing, although he still looks miserable about it, and goes to shower off the salt. He returns in a few minutes in an elegant red and black robe -- Agatha suspects Faustus of picking it out -- and Zeetha puts a water bottle in his hand, already dripping condensation. After a moment he drinks.

Agatha remembers him haunted, but now he reminds her of a ghost. 'What happened?' she blurts.

'I don't understand what you're doing here,' he whispers, which is not an answer, and then winces and turns away, raising a hand as if to fend her off. 'Don't. No. Don't tell me anything.'

'How about the other way around, then?' says Agatha. She's not unsympathetic to whatever is wrong with him, but she's really confused.

'Been trying not to think,' Barry protests, then hesitates. 'What do you need to know?'

'Why you're here?' says Agatha. 'Why you don't want to think? This is...not what I was expecting.'

'They came and got me.' He shuts his eyes. 'I tried to warn them.'

Agatha looks at Zeetha, who shrugs, and then rubs a hand across her face. 'Faustus didn't exactly warn me of much,' she says. 'So maybe you could?'

'They can see me,' he says. 'All the time. They came -- I knew they were coming, they didn't listen --'

Antecedents. Please. '...Who can always see you?'

'The Kaiju.'

Agatha shudders. Her first thought is to look up, instinctively, as if Kaiju might be about to arrive. Her second is the IJPs -- but while Barry is pale he's certainly not blue, and if the Kaiju can see the IJPs they don't seem worried about it. 'Is this something to do with the --' she starts, anyway, and bites her lip when he holds up a hand. 'Sorry. No information.' Oh. Oh no. 'Can they hear you think?'

He nods, only a little, and looks away from her. 'I think so. I tried....' His voice breaks. 'I saw them come here.'

She wants to ask if he saw Queenie, to say that was her Jaeger, that she'd designed much of her as well as piloting her, to ask if he was proud.

'It's not your fault your relatives decided to let them through the wall,' says Zeetha.

Barry focuses on her, looking completely bewildered but more alert and present than he has yet. 'They did what?!'

'You didn't know?' says Agatha. 'Did you only see the Kaiju when they were already here? The defences were down, the Enclave Jaegers were trying to capture them instead of killing.'

'I don't think the Kaiju knew that,' Barry says. 'I suppose I can try to forget it, but it may not do them much good anyway. It's not news to me that the family genius consists largely of new and inventive ways to be a complete idiot.'

'Right now whether they did it on purpose or not --' Agatha stops herself. The defences are still down. Do the Kaiju know that? Is it a good idea to risk them finding out in order to ask Barry for help getting them back up?

Barry's eyes go unfocussed for a moment and then snap back to her. 'Agatha,' he says, 'they're on their way back.'

Agatha jumps. 'That's...we've got to call --'

'I'll do it,' Zeetha says. 'The Castle need to know now and so does Vanamonde.'

Agatha nods and opens the door for her, wincing as her finger is jabbed again. Zeetha claps her shoulder and races off up the stairs. Agatha closes her eyes for a moment and turns back to Barry. 'The defences are still down. I've got the codes for the traps and I can use the bloodlocks, but it will go faster with both of us. It's not going to matter what they know if they destroy everything.'

Barry takes a breath and stands up. 'You're right. We'd better go.'

A low buzz sounds, not an alarm, and his father turns sharply to bring up the call. Zeetha appears on one of the smaller viewscreens. 'Agatha's found Barry,' she says without preamble.

His father stares at her, incredulous but... lit up in a way Gil doesn't remember seeing often. 'What.'

'He says he's got some kind of connection to the Kaiju,' Zeetha continues, which is not less unbelievable. 'Two-way. He's expecting another attack here. He and Agatha are trying to get the defences back up.'

There's a silence. Gil's furiously calculating which Jaegers they have left to send to the Enclave, he guesses his father is doing the same.

Another crackle interrupts before they can speak. '...it's giving birth...holy...'

The camera views from the helicopters show shadows under the water, like giant tadpoles. Small compared to Kappa herself, the size of dolphins, maybe. Enough to turn the sea black, spreading out in a fan shape towards the shore. One breaks the surface and Gil can see the legs -- tiny, stunted, but enough to crawl up onto the beaches, towards people. Its mouth opens, a weird gash that seems to take up half its body with serrated teeth, and then it's gone below again swimming as fast as its siblings.

His father's knuckles whiten on the edge of the console. 'We have an ongoing multiple event,' he says. 'Tell them....' He looks back to meet Zeetha's eyes. 'I hope he's wrong.'

Zeetha nods, grim, and the image vanishes. She's gone to find Agatha, to help get the defences up, Gil guesses. His father is barking commands now, getting the remaining Jaegers out. Nets and electricity, these Kaiju are small enough it might work, and far too numerous to kill individually. He puts in a call to the army, to get tanks out on the coast. This is a different kind of threat, it might help. There's nothing and no one left to help the Enclave, which has always been able to help itself before. There's no one left to help Agatha.

Gil strides across the room, everyone too busy to pay attention, and grabs Tarvek's wrist. Tarvek's arm twitches as if he's thinking of pulling it away, and then he gives in, lets Gil tug him outside the control room and turn to him in the empty corridor.

'We have to get out there,' says Gil.

'We can't,' says Tarvek.

'We could,' says Gil. 'What I don't know is why you won't. Even with Agatha at stake?'

'What I don't know is why you think we trust each other that much,' Tarvek says deliberately, but he can't keep his eyes on Gil; he keeps looking back toward the door (toward the screens, toward the Jaegers nobody counts because they're in maintenance, incomplete or untested).

'I trust you.' It's hard to admit, if only because it's not reciprocated, but Gil does. Despite everything he doesn't really doubt Tarvek would have his back.

Tarvek's eyes come back to Gil's and go wide and shocked and vulnerable for just a second, and then he looks down and takes off his glasses to clean off spots that probably aren't really there. 'Your father would just send us in the opposite direction,' he mutters.

Gil shrugs. 'We'll talk him into it. We'll walk to the Enclave from wherever he puts us if we have to, but he'll see the benefit of getting us there quicker.' He can hear the excitement in his voice, no, come on, they won't catch us, this is the best plan, runs through his head and a younger Tarvek pretending to be skeptical only when he's already half convinced, fine with saying I don't want to as long as it's still true. They'd grown up on the base, and until Theo came it had just been them.

Tarvek's skepticism is real now but so is a dread that Gil feels echoed in his own bones. 'Nobody talks Commander Wulfenbach into anything. If he's already abandoning them.... We'd never get there in time.'

'He doesn't want to,' Gil snaps. 'It's going to take everything we've got to keep those things away from the coast. But another Jaeger, one he didn't expect to have anyway...he'll do it.'

Tarvek breaks, yields, and they run. Hero Duo was one of the first taken out of service and is just about ready to go even if the new systems should have gone through more testing. His father's hand falls heavy on Gil's shoulder and spins him around with his own momentum, and Tarvek skids and hovers just out of reach as if they're already tethered. 'Do you really think this is the time to experiment?' his father demands.

'Because the first time you went out with Bill was a great time?' Gil demands. 'Agatha's out there. And Zeetha and Barry. Someone's got to go.'

The hand falls and his father gives him a long look, then glances back at the screen. 'Get on with it,' he says. 'I can monitor the neural bridge for you until they catch up to the... Kaiju tadpoles.'

Gil's seen Hero Duo any number of times. One of the oldest Jaegers and the best known, as well as one sometimes piloted by his father, he'd crept into the hangar to look at her at every opportunity. She's old, bulky, but strong, the distinctive trilobite shaped vent on her chest marking her out. He's never seen her from inside before, standing in her head, connected up ready to Drift. Tarvek's breathing was fast at first, now it's too even, a forced calm. Gil's pretty sure this Drift's going to start out rough and is trying to stay calm himself. Excitement wouldn't necessarily be a problem, but the less either of them take into this the better right now.

'If it helps,' his father's voice says over the speakers, 'the emergency ones actually went fairly well. Engaging--'

The first memories -- the first memories are a relief. Scurrying around the base, the technicians that let them watch, the times when the patterns on the screens were just patterns they didn't yet understand. Times when they can't tell which memory is whose because it was both of them together, and they let it drift, let it go past them as they connect.

Then the storm. It whips up the surface of the sea, turning everything the murky colour of a bruise until lighting turns it blue white and blinding. Tarvek gasps, tries to let it go, pull away or pull it away, but it's Gil who's unable to let it go. He can feel the fear, the guilt (we shouldn't be doing this we shouldn't be doing this (Father says to, so we do)) and the female voice echoing through the memory startles him. Anevka.

Tarvek swallows, in the memory, looks up. 'I know.' They've told the Castle that the storm's too dangerous to move in, no visibility, the helicopters have had to shift back, the Kaiju's already dead they're safe to wait it out. Thunder rumbles. He keeps the pronged needles buried in the Kaiju's neck with his side's hand, both sedating it and blocking its signal, stopping the Castle realising it’s still alive. Kaiju primary brains rot before you can cut through the skull to them, but not if they're alive, they've got hours, he's seen the meteorology reports.

'Stop that, you're making it hard to aim.' Anevka's face is screwed up in concentration. She's always been good with a scalpel, but Storm Chaser, living up to her name tonight, was made for clumsier weapons. Even a scalpel the size of a harpoon isn't easily wielded by a Jaeger.

'What the Hell?’ says Gil, not sure if he's talking aloud.

The Kaiju erupts upwards in a whirl of spray and bubbles as if the storm was just personified in it, needles breaking off in its neck, it was faking, at least after a while, not enough sedative, Anevka, and then she's between its teeth and gone and the Castle are yelling that its not dead after all as if he didn't know and he scrambles for the escape pod mind still echoing with her death.

'What the Hell.' Gil repeats it more softly, blankly. 'Why did you even want...'

Aaronev standing, pacing, tanks with secondary brains around him. 'It won't work, it's not enough, I can't get deep enough in. I can't find her.'

Gil gasps, tries to get himself back on track. This has gone well beyond chasing the rabbit, but he's seen everything Tarvek was hiding now. This is why he wouldn't Drift with someone who wasn't as deep into his father's plots as he was. One of their chief technicians has been Drifting with Kaiju, passing on to them everything he knows.

'So much for Barry worrying,' Gil says, and that is aloud, his own voice harsh in his ears and stomach churning and how could they, how could anyone, but Tarvek never did quite believe there was anything worse than ratting out someone you loved.

And then the alarm goes off and the view on the screens splits again to show the biggest Kaiju he's ever seen surfacing. 'If you two are stable,' his father snaps, 'it's time to go.'

If they're stable? But remarkably they are. Gil doesn't know how, after that, with how furious he is with Tarvek, how their emotions can be in any kind of synch at all. He barely feels in synch with himself. But he can feel the bond between them and he tries to shove it all down (feels Tarvek shoving it all down) because Agatha needs them no matter how they feel about each other. Later. Now they fly.

Anything the Kaiju might learn about the Enclave's defence capabilities is secondary to getting them up again now. Agatha gives the codes and the directions to Barry and then they're both off and running.

The first thing to do is get the bloodlocks open and the security codes entered. Some of this security is sensible but did the Heterodynes want their town overrun by Kaiju if they weren't there? She ends up in the room with the mainframe that lets her access the wall and its schematics. The image unfolds across the screen and then into the air and of <>i>course they use holograms here. Agatha zooms, calling up equations and descriptions on another screen, eyes flicking back and forth as she cross-references. There's Pons equipment strung all through the wall, little rooms here and there like nodes on a web.

It's a Jaeger. Not a moving one, but it works the same way. The perfectly co-ordinated defence the Enclave has always managed, the way the wall has managed things that you wouldn't expect. This is the main thing the IJPs are for, because the sheer number of minds you'd need linked to control something big enough to enclose a town should make it impossible. It's remarkable and disturbing all at once.

She spends a few seconds wondering why nobody's in any of them before she realises the alarm hasn't actually been given yet. Not that it would have done much good without the activation codes. Nothing's headed for them yet, but she hits the big green button anyway.

She watches the nodes light up as the pilots reach their rooms. Drift is being initiated almost at random, they don't wait until they're all in just jump in as they arrive. It makes Agatha feel a bit sick -- she loves what she has with Zeetha, but as she watches the Drift swell to ten, twenty, fifty, she wonders how you could have that many people in your head and still have room for anything of yourself.

'Pons systems not fully connected. You have a break here, and here, and here. Quite a few.' It's Faustus's voice and it makes her jump as points on the trampled part of the wall light up. If he had to program the AI with his own voice, did he really need to make it sound gleeful at pointing out problems?

She pulls up schematics skimming through until she's got the gist -- a break won't stop the wall functioning, but it will split the Drift in two. The wall is currently equivalent to two separate Jaegers, one on each side of the break. It could be worse, but the wall is designed to be run by people with perfect co-ordination. If they can rig a Pons system across the gap...it would be horribly vulnerable, but as long as it lasted the wall would be almost at full strength aside from the break, and they can send someone out in Queenie to defend the gap. Agatha nods to herself decisively, shuts the display down, and runs to find Barry.

She has to guess where to start but it's not hard: she figures either he'll have fled back to the safe room or he's doing what she'd do, trying to fix something. She finds him wearing safety gear over the bathrobe, patching the five-armed Jaeger back together (with only three arms and improvised armor over two shoulder joints that are too mangled to even pretend they might function on short notice) and leans over a piece of shielding. 'Better idea,' she says. 'Pons link across the gap in the wall. Queenie can take point offshore.'

Barry frowns for a moment, evidently putting together how this could possibly make sense, then scrambles up to the head. 'Help me uninstall this one, then. We don't have a lot of time.'

'We might have time to assemble a new setup. There have to be spare parts. There's an event in progress but it's not--'

And there's the new alarm, as the Enclave's monitors light up with the second confirmed sighting. Agatha joins Barry in cannibalising the downed Jaegers. He looks like he wants to apologise for being right.

By the time they reach the wall with it they've acquired helpers, people in overalls and hard hats who see them carrying a Pons system towards the wall in the middle of an attack and follow. Agatha's happy enough to have them there and doesn't question whether this is their job. The wall's scaffolded on the inside, but that's down over the gap as well. They wind up climbing sharp rubble, stone and twisted metal and dangling wires. The wind howls through the gap, unable to make it off the sea elsewhere and determined to make up for it, leaving Agatha to yell instructions until she's hoarse.

She's found the right place to hook one end, and Barry's insisted on making the dangerous climb, when she sees the Kaiju. Most of it is still below water, but she can see a narrow, triangular head aimed at them like an arrow and a long, scaly crocodile back.

Helicopter rotors beat the air -- good, they found enough intact that Queenie doesn't have to wade out to meet it -- and the guns on either side of them where the wall still stands shift to take aim.

Barry stops climbing and presses his eyes hard against his forearm. Agatha moves over and grabs his shoulder, hoping they're both stable. 'I don't think it much matters what it sees now!' she shouts.

'It's not that.' His voice is strained, barely audible over the wind. 'I'd have done a better job of staying away, except... it started being hard to remember I was human.'

'You're human.' Agatha gripped his shoulder tighter. 'And we need to do this. Can you manage?'

He inhales a little unsteadily and picks his head up. 'I'd better.' This is not altogether encouraging, but it gets him moving again.

Queenie engages the Kaiju. Agatha tears her eyes away. She wants to be out there, fighting with Queenie's weapons and powerful limbs, not clinging to broken stone in the screaming wind. She can feel how her Jaeger would move, should move, for her and Zeetha; the IJPs aren't doing badly but they can't have the same feel for it and probably aren't used to the way the neural load feels with only two people.

She keeps an eye on Barry. He doesn't seem to take offence and she doesn't think the Kaiju's injuries are hurting him. They string the system across, building a safe corridor from it to keep the wind from tearing it apart against the rubble, and track down the connection on the other end. At which point the technical side becomes straightforward enough that their helpers ask them politely to get down.

Barry looks a little more glazed once they're on the ground and half sheltered and she nudges him. 'Why,' she asks, because maybe this isn't the time but this is really baffling her, 'were you ever Drifting with Kaiju in the first place?'

'To try to get your mother back.' She stares at him and he adds, 'It was research at first. We thought we could find out... anything. Their weaknesses. What they wanted. How to make them stop.'

'How many of you tried it?' By the time Barry disappeared it was no longer the small group the Jaeger program had started as. But she's thinking of the ones who started it -- Barry, Bill, Faustus, Vlad, Klaus, Aaronev, Lucrezia.

He rubs a hand over his eyes again. 'Lucrezia and Aaronev started it. It was before we realised the Drift didn't end cleanly. Everybody thought Bill and I should try it, that we'd try the hardest to understand. There's not much to understand really -- they're smart weapons. They like it.' A rather unnerving laugh. 'Lucrezia was fascinated, though. She said she liked the idea of a hive mind. She always sounded kind of impressed by them. We were worried she thought we were going to lose. And then one day she took one of the science subs out and went through the Rift.'

Agatha's heard about her mother's disappearance before. But not quite like that. 'Did they make her?' she asks, clasping her hands together.

'I don't know,' says Barry. 'She'd been in contact with them a lot, ever since we first got a live secondary brain. She kept asking for more of them. Faustus and Vlad complained she was using them all up. This... what's wrong with me is from once. Maybe after that many times they could make her do it. Maybe when she realised the connection was still there, she thought sacrificing herself would stop it. Maybe she had a plan and it didn't work.' He rakes a hand back through lank silver hair. 'Bill and I Drifted with one of the brains to try to find her. They found us. When I realised they still had me... I knew I had to leave the program. I took you to the Clays and left--' He stops and frowns at her suddenly. 'You're not just asking to keep me grounded. Didn't you know all this? Aaronev was supposed to tell Klaus.'

'What?! I don't think anyone knew anything, about any of this.' Agatha hasn't even met Aaronev yet, has no idea what he's like. But if there's corruption inside the program...what kind of corruption can there even be when they're fighting monsters that just destroy everything?

Barry looks disturbed. 'I knew my relatives were secretive,' he said, 'but I thought Aaronev--'

The crocodile Kaiju coughs ball lightning and Agatha moves as if she were inside Queenie, but of course she can't respond. She's hardened against lightning strikes but this is too much, too fast, and her movements stutter with the waves dragging at her limbs. The Kaiju rushes her and she goes down in the water.

The guns on the wall fire faster, because Queenie's no longer in the Kaiju's way or theirs, but it streaks toward the gap in the wall without seeming to notice.

'I don't suppose you can tell if we're hurting it?' Agatha mutters.

Barry shakes his head. 'Not much.'

The whir of helicopters has everyone looking up. Another Jaeger, help from the Castle at last. Agatha runs into the gap, scrambling onto the rubble for a better look. As the Jaeger is set down in the shallows she can see the shape of it, one of the older ones, and then it turns and the trilobite on its chest gleams in the sun. Hero Duo strides towards the fight.

'Oh.' Barry's voice is quiet under the wind, much closer than she was expecting and more alive. 'That takes me back. Who's piloting her now?'

'I thought you didn't want to be told anything,' Agatha says, and the tears in her eyes aren't just from the salt wind. She shakes her head. 'I don't know. She was down for refitting.'

Barry looks at her sharply. 'I hope they finished. He talks about being careful but it'd be just like Klaus to show up in an emergency regardless.'

'I don't think he has anyone who could partner with him,' Agatha says. Hero Duo catches up, slams her fist into the Kaiju's head, and grabs the jaws when it turns, holding them together. The Kaiju twists around to grip the ground with its claws, tries to push against the Jaeger, lean on her with its greater weight. The Jaeger moves aside with a startling grace, leaving the Kaiju to fall full length and then slams one foot down on its jaws. To the side Queenie is pulling herself to her feet, guns unfolding.

'But he--' Barry gives up on that puzzle while they watch the rest of the fight. The IJPs in the wall do a good job -- stinging the Kaiju whenever they can do it without hitting the Jaegers -- and Hero Duo winds up dragging it back off the beach. Barry grinds the heel of his hand against his eye socket when it finally dies, but he insists he's all right.

Queenie is picked back up by the helicopters and carried to the hangar. Hero Duo staggers back to shore, all grace suddenly gone, and Agatha catches her breath and tries to calculate what damage or malfunction she could have missed.

The cockpit opens and one pilot spills out and takes off at a sprint. Agatha recognises Gil, but the wind carries her shout the wrong way and he's running hard, head down. The other pilot doesn't emerge.

Agatha runs out there, climbs up to the cockpit. She's thinking injury, maybe Gil's running for help, too distracted to see them or think of the best direction to run. The cockpit's tilted, off kilter, and Tarvek's in the lowest corner, out of the Pons equipment but just sitting there with his head tilted back to rest against the wall. He looks exhausted and concern overrides Agatha's bewilderment. He's the last person she would have expected to find with Gil. 'Are you okay?' she asks.

Tarvek lifts his head, slowly, and blinks at her. 'Ever Drifted with someone who hates you?'

'I didn't think that was possible.' Agatha walks carefully across the sloping floor.

Tarvek huffs a sound that may have been a laugh. 'It's not pleasant. But you're all right so it was worth it.'

She kneels beside him, sliding against the wall, still confused, and takes his hand. He latches on as if he could fall otherwise. '...Thank you.'