Date of Expiration, Chapter 10/?
Title: Date of Expiration
Fandom/Pairing: Leverage/Global Frequency fusion, with eventual Eliot Spencer/Alec Hardison.
Rating: R (eventually)
A/N: Here's wikipedia's rundown Warren Ellis's Global Frequency. While knowledge of the story is helpful, and I heartily recommend the graphic novels, it isn't absolutely necessary.
Summary: The Global Frequency existed to save humanity from itself, and there was always another crisis coming. It was job security of a sort, if you managed to survive the bioenhanced supersoldiers, alien neuroprogramming, physicists who should know better, and the bureaucracy.
Previous chapters: AO3 // DW // LJ
Fri., April 11, 2014 02:32 CDT (GMT-5)
Lorraine, the nice elderly woman sitting next to him on the flight had assured him that flying was safer than driving, and Alec had nodded thankfully, though that hadn't been the reason for his viselike grip on the arm of his seat.
He'd been off the network for over an hour, now, and for someone more used to being on the grid- or being the grid- the flight had quickly become his own personal hell. The plane was new enough that the shielding in the cockpit was more than enough to withstand the signal from his cell phone, but he'd have to wake Lorraine to get to the bathroom, unless he wanted to cause a scene.
If things got really bad, Miranda would just contact him through the radio up in the cockpit. She'd done it before, and it almost hadn't been worth it. Sure, he'd managed to get word out to their dirty bomb specialists out in London, but the consternation of the pilots- not to mention everyone sitting in first class, who'd heard everything- had nearly resulted in a panic at 34,000 feet.
So he'd just deal with the lack of knowledge. It was fine. The text he'd received from Parker as he'd boarded the plane had confirmed that Spencer had turned himself in without any problems. They'd be waiting at the hotel by the time he'd met up with Dr. Laroque to pick up the rental car. They were probably already there.
All that meant, though, was that Parker and Quinn were sitting in a hotel room with a bioenhanced supersoldier that could flip at any minute. Not only that, he'd chosen them specifically for the task, and was incommunicado until he landed. If anything went wrong, if Spencer-
If anyone had a chance in hell of containing him, it was Parker and Quinn.
The fact that he felt like some sort of traitor for admitting there was cause for concern hadn't gone by unnoticed, either. Shit happened in the field all the time. Explosions, nerve agents, getting sucked into minor black holes- none of these were out of the question in the course of the average operation, but his own case of neuro-reprogramming aside- which he couldn't really count, since he hadn't been working for the GF when it had happened- he'd never seen anything like this happen to one of their agents. They'd never been targeted like this before.
Hopefully, it was just a one-off, an isolated incident, which was a shitty way to think, because it meant that Spencer had been targeted, and not the Frequency, which at least had resources, connections, and enough world leaders who'd listen to them when shit went south. And while the GF looked after their own, the only backup Spencer had on the outside was the doctor who'd been assigned as his case manager after the Kansas Big Wheel fiasco.
And it didn't matter how good she was, or how good Spencer was. If the GF needed him cut out, he'd get cut out, simple as that.
And if things went really horribly tonight, Alec wouldn't just be hearing about it over their comm lines, or watching it on a feed. He'd be in the room when it happened.
He hadn't even met Eliot Spencer yet.
---
Heading up the gangway towards the airport, Alec scrolled through his messages. His data mining systems had identified Switzerland and Serbia as requiring his attention within the next six hours. Quinn was reporting that things at the hotel were quiet. Miranda was bitching about the reporters who were still nosing around the scene, though at least she'd won over General Archer and had his people running interference. It was 39 degrees outside, with a twenty percent chance of rain, the rental car was waiting for him, and Dr. Laroque's flight had already landed.
There wasn't an alert system on his phone to tell him how exhausted he was already, but he wouldn't have needed it if he'd had it. The airports sickly florescent lights were casting a greenish hue over everything, but the gate area was mostly deserted. The televisions were on, though- they probably always were- and underneath the one to his left stood a weary looking woman with a carry-on suitcase by her feet and a pink and yellow tote bag over her shoulder.
"Dr. Laroque?" Alec asked, though he honestly didn't need to. Even as distracting as the horrible floral pattern on her bag was, she hadn't even changed her hairstyle since the last time her work ID picture had been taken three years ago. "Sorry to pull you away from your conference so suddenly."
"Ah... It's Aleph, right?" Her grin just managed to break past the wariness in her eyes as they shook hands. "It's good to finally meet you. And no need to apologize. The weather in Ohio was awful, and all I'm missing at this point are hotel bars full of the always-circling pharma reps."
Officially, Dr. Laroque headed up the rehabilitation clinic at the VA Hospital in Minneapolis. Her work with and on Eliot Spencer wasn't exactly unofficial, but it was handled quietly. The VA barely had any record of Spencer at all; much of what the GF had on hand had been pulled down directly from Laroque's reports to her contacts at the Department of Defense.
Her finally, though, was bringing him up a bit short. It was the usual paranoia, compounded by the realization that if she'd heard of him at all, she would've heard it from Spencer. Biting down on his tongue to stop himself asking what, exactly, she'd heard, he managed to exchange small talk as they made their way down to the car rental counters; her business trip being cut short, she was looking forward to going home a day or so early to hang out with her family. She might not have been a GF agent, but she was smart, saying nothing of consequence until they'd picked up the car and were heading out of the lot. The fact that she'd even helped sweep the car for bugs without raising a brow did more to set him at ease than anything they'd actually said had. Garish tote bag or no, she wasn't new to the top-secret game.
Now that they were on the highway, she pulled her laptop out of the bag and turned it on. "What can you tell me about the situation with Eliot?"
"I haven't heard much since we talked earlier, but our people have been reporting in. They're waiting at the Super 8 in Cottage Grove. It'll only take about thirty minutes to get there. Spencer hasn't resisted at all, and it looks like there haven't been any more, ah, issues."
"That's good," Laroque lost some of the tension in her shoulders; Alec hadn't even realized she'd been carrying any.
He let a quarter of a mile slide by before finally asking. "So. What's going to happen when we get there?"
As expected, her shoulders went rigid again. Her tone, though, was confident and clinical as she began to lay out the plan.
By the time they were pulling off the freeway, and looking for the hotel, Alec's shoulders were at least twice as tight as hers had ever been.
Fri., April 11, 2014 01:48 CDT (GMT-5)
Eliot made a point of not watching the roads as Quinn drove. Knowing where they were going, exactly, would be a strategic advantage, but- and this was the uncomfortable truth- if he were a position where he was looking for strategic advantages, it meant that part of him was cataloguing their weaknesses with an intent on using them. It meant that, in the long run, they'd probably need to shut him down for good.
It had always been a possibility, though Laroque hadn't mentioned it for years, not since the days immediately following Kansas. The fact that she'd let the matter drop, he knew, was more about her optimism that his basic survival instinct was the one thing Big Wheel hadn't altered than it was about anything else. Not talking about it, though, hadn't changed the possibility.
Finally, they were turning off another highway. Eliot, unable to help knowing that they'd already made five turns, stared at the joints on his left hand- they'd need to be oiled sometime soon- to avoid glancing up at the street signs, and he didn't look up again until the car had stopped. They were parked next to the rear door of a hotel, the name of which he couldn't see.
He kept his eyes on the carpeting, which was stained by the ice machine and worn down to grey at the foot of the stairs, which they passed, heading towards the first room on the right. That Parker had a key card- either picked up earlier from the desk, or programmed to open this particular door in this particular hotel without anyone being the wiser- surprised him not at all.
Quinn positioned himself by the window while Parker turned the lights on, and Eliot, not knowing what else to do, sat down on a corner of the nearest of the two beds.
"How long 'til they get here?"
"Not long," Parker said, taking the chair by the table and pointing the remote at the television, switching over to cartoons.
They were annoying and distracting. They weren't nearly distracting enough, and despite Parker's assertion, it was over an hour before Quinn suddenly moved from his post, flicking the curtain shut before crossing the room towards the door. As he made to open it, Eliot realized without trying to, he'd left himself open to attack. The odds that Parker would be there in time were-
- good actually. Her eyes were focused intently on him, enough that he wondered whether she'd been watching the television at all.
It was all hypothetical, anyway.
You want to be here, Eliot reminded himself, ignoring the numbers he imagined running through his head. It was easier, knowing the moves she preferred. He hated knowing that Parker's being there would've changed nothing but the number of bodies he could've left in his wake.
You need this.
---
"Hey, Eliot," Dr. Laroque was the first one into the room, looking worried and relieved all at once, and leaning down to give him a quick hug that he was horribly slow to return. Over her shoulder, he could see Aleph easing the door shut behind him, looking as out of place as it was possible to be. He was taller than he'd expected, and clearly terrified, barely making eye contact when he said hello. Eliot found himself shifting, turning his body away to hide his arm, even though Aleph plainly knew about it. Even if he hadn't caught the movement, he'd caught sight of it on camera before, Eliot knew, just like he knew that things tended to look much different in person.
Eliot didn't like the synthskin- despite what Laroque said, they'd never fooled anyone past the most casual glance- but he wished he'd had the chance to grab them before leaving earlier.
Right. As if that had even been an option.
After nodding to Quinn and Parker, Aleph mostly glared at the wall, which meant that he knew why he was here. Laroque had probably already filled him in on what was going to be happening, and it was clearly making him uneasy.
Laroque sat down on the bed across from him, pulling her pen light out of her pocket, but not trying to blind him with it yet. "Are you okay now?"
He shrugged, not wanting to admit that her presence- she was, when he thought about it, probably the closest thing he had to friends or family- probably had more to do with the relief he was feeling than anything. "I'll be a whole lot better when I know this won't be happening ever again." He sighed. It was strange, admitting this much in a room full of near strangers, but Laroque was here, she was listening. "Don't want to walk around wondering if I'm a bomb that's about to go off. Life like that ain't worth living."
One of the first things he'd liked about Dr. Laroque was that she never bullshitted him. The fact that she'd always made the effort to understand him might've been part of that, might've been something else altogether. A few hours ago, he'd been certain that he was about to kill or be killed, and couldn't have explained it to anyone. And here she was, listening. Like this was just another appointment.
After a few moments regarding him, she nodded to herself. "Okay." She brought up the pen light and Eliot tried not to blink at the glare; it was brighter than usual. He hadn't had a chance to put in his tinted contacts before he'd left. Thankfully, it only took a moment for the implants to do their job and reduce the input to a tolerable level as Laroque began to talk. "Aleph filled me in on the situation, but we're going to need to find out if we're looking at misfires, jostled wires, material failure, or a hack job. I'd like to start with the software, obviously, before we move onto the hardware, but if we don't find anything-"
"Just wake me when it's over, yeah?" The light finally switched to his right eye, and out of his left, he could see Aleph watching them more obviously now. "Do whatever you have to do."
"Hold your horses, cowboy," Laroque smiled, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. She was never an optimist, not really, but she'd probably been accustomed to forcing hope into her patients long before he'd become one of them. "We don't even know that we'll need to go that far. Now. I know you've probably been through this already, but is it okay with you if Aleph helps me out on this one?"
Eliot forced a nod. If he'd ever planned on having these two disparate parts of his life crashing together, this wouldn't have been what he'd pictured.
It's fine, I want this, he thought he should say.
"Let's get this over with," he said instead and lay back on the bed, glancing covertly at Aleph to find him tapping madly at his phone. It was obvious that he wanted to be elsewhere. Eliot didn't know whether to be disappointed or relieved. Over by the windows, Parker and Quinn were watching carefully. Both smiled when he caught them looking; on Quinn it was a reflex. Parker's was a little slower coming, a little more deliberate. It could've meant anything.
Laroque was pulling her laptop out of her tote bag. The bag had flowers painted on the side; she'd gotten it from her niece last year, and Eliot hated the sight of it. As familiar as it and Laroque were, neither were doing much to counteract the strangeness of doing this in front of an audience. But it was easier to stare at the hideous swirls of pink and yellow than it was to watch the external drive Laroque was pulling out of the side pocket, or the cable she was plugging into the computer.
It was the sleep key, and it only ever came out when there was a major operation underway and she needed him unconscious for the duration.
Every other time she'd used it, Eliot knew, he'd woken up a little bit better than he'd been before. More human, more normal.
Every other time she'd used the sleep key, though, she'd known exactly what she'd been looking for.
Chapter 11
Fandom/Pairing: Leverage/Global Frequency fusion, with eventual Eliot Spencer/Alec Hardison.
Rating: R (eventually)
A/N: Here's wikipedia's rundown Warren Ellis's Global Frequency. While knowledge of the story is helpful, and I heartily recommend the graphic novels, it isn't absolutely necessary.
Summary: The Global Frequency existed to save humanity from itself, and there was always another crisis coming. It was job security of a sort, if you managed to survive the bioenhanced supersoldiers, alien neuroprogramming, physicists who should know better, and the bureaucracy.
Previous chapters: AO3 // DW // LJ
Fri., April 11, 2014 02:32 CDT (GMT-5)
Lorraine, the nice elderly woman sitting next to him on the flight had assured him that flying was safer than driving, and Alec had nodded thankfully, though that hadn't been the reason for his viselike grip on the arm of his seat.
He'd been off the network for over an hour, now, and for someone more used to being on the grid- or being the grid- the flight had quickly become his own personal hell. The plane was new enough that the shielding in the cockpit was more than enough to withstand the signal from his cell phone, but he'd have to wake Lorraine to get to the bathroom, unless he wanted to cause a scene.
If things got really bad, Miranda would just contact him through the radio up in the cockpit. She'd done it before, and it almost hadn't been worth it. Sure, he'd managed to get word out to their dirty bomb specialists out in London, but the consternation of the pilots- not to mention everyone sitting in first class, who'd heard everything- had nearly resulted in a panic at 34,000 feet.
So he'd just deal with the lack of knowledge. It was fine. The text he'd received from Parker as he'd boarded the plane had confirmed that Spencer had turned himself in without any problems. They'd be waiting at the hotel by the time he'd met up with Dr. Laroque to pick up the rental car. They were probably already there.
All that meant, though, was that Parker and Quinn were sitting in a hotel room with a bioenhanced supersoldier that could flip at any minute. Not only that, he'd chosen them specifically for the task, and was incommunicado until he landed. If anything went wrong, if Spencer-
If anyone had a chance in hell of containing him, it was Parker and Quinn.
The fact that he felt like some sort of traitor for admitting there was cause for concern hadn't gone by unnoticed, either. Shit happened in the field all the time. Explosions, nerve agents, getting sucked into minor black holes- none of these were out of the question in the course of the average operation, but his own case of neuro-reprogramming aside- which he couldn't really count, since he hadn't been working for the GF when it had happened- he'd never seen anything like this happen to one of their agents. They'd never been targeted like this before.
Hopefully, it was just a one-off, an isolated incident, which was a shitty way to think, because it meant that Spencer had been targeted, and not the Frequency, which at least had resources, connections, and enough world leaders who'd listen to them when shit went south. And while the GF looked after their own, the only backup Spencer had on the outside was the doctor who'd been assigned as his case manager after the Kansas Big Wheel fiasco.
And it didn't matter how good she was, or how good Spencer was. If the GF needed him cut out, he'd get cut out, simple as that.
And if things went really horribly tonight, Alec wouldn't just be hearing about it over their comm lines, or watching it on a feed. He'd be in the room when it happened.
He hadn't even met Eliot Spencer yet.
---
Heading up the gangway towards the airport, Alec scrolled through his messages. His data mining systems had identified Switzerland and Serbia as requiring his attention within the next six hours. Quinn was reporting that things at the hotel were quiet. Miranda was bitching about the reporters who were still nosing around the scene, though at least she'd won over General Archer and had his people running interference. It was 39 degrees outside, with a twenty percent chance of rain, the rental car was waiting for him, and Dr. Laroque's flight had already landed.
There wasn't an alert system on his phone to tell him how exhausted he was already, but he wouldn't have needed it if he'd had it. The airports sickly florescent lights were casting a greenish hue over everything, but the gate area was mostly deserted. The televisions were on, though- they probably always were- and underneath the one to his left stood a weary looking woman with a carry-on suitcase by her feet and a pink and yellow tote bag over her shoulder.
"Dr. Laroque?" Alec asked, though he honestly didn't need to. Even as distracting as the horrible floral pattern on her bag was, she hadn't even changed her hairstyle since the last time her work ID picture had been taken three years ago. "Sorry to pull you away from your conference so suddenly."
"Ah... It's Aleph, right?" Her grin just managed to break past the wariness in her eyes as they shook hands. "It's good to finally meet you. And no need to apologize. The weather in Ohio was awful, and all I'm missing at this point are hotel bars full of the always-circling pharma reps."
Officially, Dr. Laroque headed up the rehabilitation clinic at the VA Hospital in Minneapolis. Her work with and on Eliot Spencer wasn't exactly unofficial, but it was handled quietly. The VA barely had any record of Spencer at all; much of what the GF had on hand had been pulled down directly from Laroque's reports to her contacts at the Department of Defense.
Her finally, though, was bringing him up a bit short. It was the usual paranoia, compounded by the realization that if she'd heard of him at all, she would've heard it from Spencer. Biting down on his tongue to stop himself asking what, exactly, she'd heard, he managed to exchange small talk as they made their way down to the car rental counters; her business trip being cut short, she was looking forward to going home a day or so early to hang out with her family. She might not have been a GF agent, but she was smart, saying nothing of consequence until they'd picked up the car and were heading out of the lot. The fact that she'd even helped sweep the car for bugs without raising a brow did more to set him at ease than anything they'd actually said had. Garish tote bag or no, she wasn't new to the top-secret game.
Now that they were on the highway, she pulled her laptop out of the bag and turned it on. "What can you tell me about the situation with Eliot?"
"I haven't heard much since we talked earlier, but our people have been reporting in. They're waiting at the Super 8 in Cottage Grove. It'll only take about thirty minutes to get there. Spencer hasn't resisted at all, and it looks like there haven't been any more, ah, issues."
"That's good," Laroque lost some of the tension in her shoulders; Alec hadn't even realized she'd been carrying any.
He let a quarter of a mile slide by before finally asking. "So. What's going to happen when we get there?"
As expected, her shoulders went rigid again. Her tone, though, was confident and clinical as she began to lay out the plan.
By the time they were pulling off the freeway, and looking for the hotel, Alec's shoulders were at least twice as tight as hers had ever been.
Fri., April 11, 2014 01:48 CDT (GMT-5)
Eliot made a point of not watching the roads as Quinn drove. Knowing where they were going, exactly, would be a strategic advantage, but- and this was the uncomfortable truth- if he were a position where he was looking for strategic advantages, it meant that part of him was cataloguing their weaknesses with an intent on using them. It meant that, in the long run, they'd probably need to shut him down for good.
It had always been a possibility, though Laroque hadn't mentioned it for years, not since the days immediately following Kansas. The fact that she'd let the matter drop, he knew, was more about her optimism that his basic survival instinct was the one thing Big Wheel hadn't altered than it was about anything else. Not talking about it, though, hadn't changed the possibility.
Finally, they were turning off another highway. Eliot, unable to help knowing that they'd already made five turns, stared at the joints on his left hand- they'd need to be oiled sometime soon- to avoid glancing up at the street signs, and he didn't look up again until the car had stopped. They were parked next to the rear door of a hotel, the name of which he couldn't see.
He kept his eyes on the carpeting, which was stained by the ice machine and worn down to grey at the foot of the stairs, which they passed, heading towards the first room on the right. That Parker had a key card- either picked up earlier from the desk, or programmed to open this particular door in this particular hotel without anyone being the wiser- surprised him not at all.
Quinn positioned himself by the window while Parker turned the lights on, and Eliot, not knowing what else to do, sat down on a corner of the nearest of the two beds.
"How long 'til they get here?"
"Not long," Parker said, taking the chair by the table and pointing the remote at the television, switching over to cartoons.
They were annoying and distracting. They weren't nearly distracting enough, and despite Parker's assertion, it was over an hour before Quinn suddenly moved from his post, flicking the curtain shut before crossing the room towards the door. As he made to open it, Eliot realized without trying to, he'd left himself open to attack. The odds that Parker would be there in time were-
- good actually. Her eyes were focused intently on him, enough that he wondered whether she'd been watching the television at all.
It was all hypothetical, anyway.
You want to be here, Eliot reminded himself, ignoring the numbers he imagined running through his head. It was easier, knowing the moves she preferred. He hated knowing that Parker's being there would've changed nothing but the number of bodies he could've left in his wake.
You need this.
---
"Hey, Eliot," Dr. Laroque was the first one into the room, looking worried and relieved all at once, and leaning down to give him a quick hug that he was horribly slow to return. Over her shoulder, he could see Aleph easing the door shut behind him, looking as out of place as it was possible to be. He was taller than he'd expected, and clearly terrified, barely making eye contact when he said hello. Eliot found himself shifting, turning his body away to hide his arm, even though Aleph plainly knew about it. Even if he hadn't caught the movement, he'd caught sight of it on camera before, Eliot knew, just like he knew that things tended to look much different in person.
Eliot didn't like the synthskin- despite what Laroque said, they'd never fooled anyone past the most casual glance- but he wished he'd had the chance to grab them before leaving earlier.
Right. As if that had even been an option.
After nodding to Quinn and Parker, Aleph mostly glared at the wall, which meant that he knew why he was here. Laroque had probably already filled him in on what was going to be happening, and it was clearly making him uneasy.
Laroque sat down on the bed across from him, pulling her pen light out of her pocket, but not trying to blind him with it yet. "Are you okay now?"
He shrugged, not wanting to admit that her presence- she was, when he thought about it, probably the closest thing he had to friends or family- probably had more to do with the relief he was feeling than anything. "I'll be a whole lot better when I know this won't be happening ever again." He sighed. It was strange, admitting this much in a room full of near strangers, but Laroque was here, she was listening. "Don't want to walk around wondering if I'm a bomb that's about to go off. Life like that ain't worth living."
One of the first things he'd liked about Dr. Laroque was that she never bullshitted him. The fact that she'd always made the effort to understand him might've been part of that, might've been something else altogether. A few hours ago, he'd been certain that he was about to kill or be killed, and couldn't have explained it to anyone. And here she was, listening. Like this was just another appointment.
After a few moments regarding him, she nodded to herself. "Okay." She brought up the pen light and Eliot tried not to blink at the glare; it was brighter than usual. He hadn't had a chance to put in his tinted contacts before he'd left. Thankfully, it only took a moment for the implants to do their job and reduce the input to a tolerable level as Laroque began to talk. "Aleph filled me in on the situation, but we're going to need to find out if we're looking at misfires, jostled wires, material failure, or a hack job. I'd like to start with the software, obviously, before we move onto the hardware, but if we don't find anything-"
"Just wake me when it's over, yeah?" The light finally switched to his right eye, and out of his left, he could see Aleph watching them more obviously now. "Do whatever you have to do."
"Hold your horses, cowboy," Laroque smiled, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. She was never an optimist, not really, but she'd probably been accustomed to forcing hope into her patients long before he'd become one of them. "We don't even know that we'll need to go that far. Now. I know you've probably been through this already, but is it okay with you if Aleph helps me out on this one?"
Eliot forced a nod. If he'd ever planned on having these two disparate parts of his life crashing together, this wouldn't have been what he'd pictured.
It's fine, I want this, he thought he should say.
"Let's get this over with," he said instead and lay back on the bed, glancing covertly at Aleph to find him tapping madly at his phone. It was obvious that he wanted to be elsewhere. Eliot didn't know whether to be disappointed or relieved. Over by the windows, Parker and Quinn were watching carefully. Both smiled when he caught them looking; on Quinn it was a reflex. Parker's was a little slower coming, a little more deliberate. It could've meant anything.
Laroque was pulling her laptop out of her tote bag. The bag had flowers painted on the side; she'd gotten it from her niece last year, and Eliot hated the sight of it. As familiar as it and Laroque were, neither were doing much to counteract the strangeness of doing this in front of an audience. But it was easier to stare at the hideous swirls of pink and yellow than it was to watch the external drive Laroque was pulling out of the side pocket, or the cable she was plugging into the computer.
It was the sleep key, and it only ever came out when there was a major operation underway and she needed him unconscious for the duration.
Every other time she'd used it, Eliot knew, he'd woken up a little bit better than he'd been before. More human, more normal.
Every other time she'd used the sleep key, though, she'd known exactly what she'd been looking for.
Chapter 11