Date of Expiration, Chapter 16/?
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
Sat., April 12, 2014 15:37 EDT (GMT-4)
"If you're sure," Miranda had said when Alec told her he was bringing Eliot along, but at least she hadn't argued. "Just keep an eye on him until I arrive, and don't go anywhere near the bar until I get there." She knew as well as Alec did how thin they were on the ground in Boston. There was a semi-retired linguist living out near Hough's Neck, and a cryptographer who headed up the boston University Security Group, but most of their heavy hitters lived closer to Cambridge.
MIT was full of enough geniuses cobbling various AI, bioengineering, or GIS projects together, the results were often slightly traumatic. Espionage, too- inside jobs currently were in the lead against actions by foreign interests, but not by much- was nearly an everyday concern, even if it had been quiet for the past few months.
Alec wasn't actually expecting an attack, as he was fairly certain that all he was going to find was a whole lot of nothing, though maybe Miranda could get something useful out of any possible witnesses.
The Frequency was her baby, though. She'd started it, years ago, and was protective as hell when it was threatened. Odds were, she was just as eager for a shot at Chaos as Alec himself was.
In the meantime, though, there was another hotel room and another few hours to kill. There were situation reports and emails and nothing happening anywhere in the world that was enough to distract him from Eliot, lounging in the chair by the window, paging tiredly through the novel he'd picked up at the airport. It was so mundane that Alec wondered if he had something backwards, here.
Getting hit with a neuroprogramming meme and waking up bisexual had been blindsiding enough, but the really weird part of it, Alec figured, wasn't the shift itself- that was just part of his wiring, now. Apart from the shock of recognition, and everything the realization had entailed, he figured he'd adapted pretty well.
But the part that he still thought about, sometimes- that he was thinking about now- was that even three years later, he still had no idea how much, really, he should be folding that aspect of himself into his personality. As convenient as the comparisons between brains and computers were, the brain was always changing- it reprogrammed itself all the time, accounting for new input and experiences. That's what it was for. But it caused this irritating little thread of worry running through the back of his mind whenever he examined it too closely. Because at some point, Alec might get new input- it wouldn't be anywhere near the scope of what had happened to Eliot, or be as dramatic as waking up on a rooftop much more open to guys than he'd been before, but one day, his brain might reprogram itself to ditch the code from the last upgrade. Revert to base programming.
One day, he might wake up straight again. And while it was really mostly a hypothetical concern- his longest relationship in four years had been three dates- it was problematic. Or might become problematic. At some point.
Though on the other hand, it might not be the worst thing if he were to suddenly stop having completely inappropriate thoughts about Eliot Spencer, who seemed to have a sixth sense for picking up on Alec's glances whenever they landed on him. There wasn't any point telling himself that it was just the challenge that kept him looking. For all Eliot's apparent psychic abilities, he wasn't showing signs of having any idea why Alec would bother looking.
Then again, he probably couldn't see himself from where he sat. Didn't notice the sunlight haloing the loose strands of hair that kept threatening to fall into his face as he read. From his perspective, the stretch of his legs, the way his feet were braced against the cross-joint of the table leg, was nothing more than the basic mechanics of sitting comfortably. The denim stretching along his thigh, or the shirt collar that was a little loose at his neck, enough that the skin just below his collarbone was just was tantalizingly visible, was likewise below his notice.
Alec's eyes kept getting drawn to the span of brown leather belting Eliot's hips. The buckle was brass; Alec could barely make out the edge of it from where he was sitting, but he could imagine- all too well- the leather sliding through, opening.
Eventually, he was going to get caught. And though Eliot was shorter than Alec, he could break him with terrifying ease. It was thankfully unlikely- Alec was more concerned about mortification than evisceration at this point, but he'd done his homework. He didn't really know who Eliot Spencer was, necessarily, but he knew who he'd been, what he'd been made of.
He'd seen dozens of pictures of Eliot, starting from when he'd been young and psychotic looking, fresh out of the compound, his buzz-cut almost as severe as the look in his blazing eyes or the metal winding into his flesh. Alec could've traced the passing of years by the length of his hair, or the gradual shedding of Big Wheel's Tech. His metal arm, apparently, had served him well during his stint in the army- the components that allowed for electrocution at near and close range were still intact, but the laser and plasma array that had been built up over his shoulder had been removed. He'd had the armor plates- and their retractable, razor-sharp spikes- removed from his shins even before he'd enlisted, primarily because they'd been one of the more superficial additions and more easily removed.
He'd had seen the pictures taken during their removal; he kept wondering what kinds of scars the bolt holes- all the way down to the base connectors drilled into the bone- had left.
Less obvious from the pictures had been the internal enhancements. Eliot'd had amplification implants in his inner ear, and the wire spool cartridge housing midway up his left arm had originally fed a line that wound down his arm, ending in electrical contacts on his right thumb and forefinger. Though the contacts had been removed at Spencer's request, the rechargeable power core on his arm had been left intact. Once he'd signed on with the GF, Miranda had procured a startlingly large supply of wire cartridges for him to use in the field, to allow midrange defensive capabilities.
Though it had since been replaced with an inert implant, Spencer's molar had contained a capsule that would break if he bit down hard on it, releasing a compound which, upon reacting with the saliva in his mouth, created a highly corrosive acid that would've killed him- and anyone he'd managed to spit upon- in seconds. Months after reading it in the reports, Alec still thought about it every time he accidentally bit his tongue.
There'd been a series of medical shots documenting every surgery they'd done to remove the hardware, and sometimes Alec hadn't even been able to recognize Eliot in any of them. He'd thought, at first, that they'd been mortuary pictures of the bodies left behind.
And there'd been a lot of bodies left in Big Wheel's wake, and though the GF had done a lot to seriously undermine their capabilities, they'd never been able to root them out completely. There was always another election to be won, and large, vaguely worded contracts tended to find their way into so many pockets of the military industrial complex every few months. There wasn't much by way of oversight; there was even less that the public could hold them accountable for. And for everything else, Alec supposed, there was the Frequency.
He'd would be feeling a lot better about it now if he didn't know that the GF had essentially driven Big Wheel so far to the fringe that, having no other recourse, they'd started breeding their own subjects. And while the GF made a dent, rescuing the children in Texas, they hadn't captured any key players. Big Wheel was still out there.
All he'd known when he'd first started looking into the GF's files, though, was that Spencer- it had been noted in his file that he'd not been named Eliot Spencer until after he'd left the Army; he'd still been going by the name Delta when he'd enlisted- had probably been taken in by Big Wheel when he was about seven or eight. Prior to that, there was no telling where he was from, or if he had any family at all, and Spencer had never indicated that he'd remembered otherwise.
He'd gone from Big Wheel to the military to a warehouse job in Bloomington, Minnesota before being recruited by Miranda Zero and joining the GF, and even if it hadn't been for the miles and miles of psych evaluations and doctor's reports, the auto-transcripts of his early conversations with Miranda had been enlightening.
"I just figure, I've got all this, like it or not- I'm stuck with it. I can sit around and be pissed about it, but that's not going to change anything."
"Are you looking for absolution?"
"I don't know. It's a nice thought, but I just don't see it in the cards. I can't go back and change what I've done. There's just all this, up in front of me. Life. I can ignore what I am, or I can use it to try and do some good."
"That being the case, why did you not re-up your enlistment when the time came?"
"Same commands, different targets, and nothing was ever changed when we were through. I didn't think the things I was doing for them were any better than what I was doing back in Kansas."
Alec had been on the verge already, but he'd fallen, hard, the moment he'd read that, though he still hadn't actually figured out why. But he'd read the follow up reports of the other operational subjects Big Wheel had created, and one thing had really stood out.
Most of the others, even the ones who'd followed Delta out of the compound in Kansas, had broken completely, either during the process of disarmament or shortly thereafter. More than one of the survivors had gone on to short, ugly careers in the military. Most of the ones who were still were doing so within the confines of varying degrees of psychiatric care. Probably would be until their tech broke down completely, until they finally stopped breathing.
Dr. Laroque had made notes, here and there, worrying about how resigned Eliot tended to be in the face of hearing about the fates of his siblings; she'd wondered if it was something left over from his time with Big Wheel. But hell, Alec figured, life could train people too. It could grind them down into dirt.
Sometimes, though, it didn't. Sometimes, a killing machine capable of wiping out entire villages at the simplest command chose instead to join the ranks of people like Dr. Marla Jacobson, Former Agent 731. Could sign on with the Frequency, and expect to die for the world instead.
"Don't get attached," Miranda had told him when she'd caught him reading the files, and it had probably already been too late, even back then.
And now, there wasn't even any use pretending otherwise. Not with Eliot sitting at the table, flipping through Tom Clancy with a half-bored, half-amused smirk on his face.
Alec tried not to glance more than twice, but eventually, he gave in. "What's so funny?"
"Nothing. Just this." Eliot shook his head, tossed the book on the table without bothering to mark the page, and pinned him with a steady gaze that Alec just hadn't been ready for. "You glued to your computer right now?"
"No. Why?"
"Wanna go get something to eat?" He frowned, suddenly. "Are you even allowed to go offline?"
"I could run World War Three from my cell phone." His boasting was undermined, probably, by his checking the battery for the tenth time in an hour. He had spares, sure, but the middle of a crisis wasn't the time to be worrying about changing them out.
Standing up and sliding his laptop into his bag, though, gave him something to focus on, which was important, because the surge of ridiculously eager hope he was feeling was coming on too damned fast to hide.
Eliot was bored. They needed to get something to eat, needed to get away from the hotel room's claustrophobic white walls.
This wasn't a date.
Sat., April 12, 2014 16:08 EDT (GMT-4)
There was a T.G.I. Friday's at the end of the strip mall down by the highway. Hardison drove, humming along with the radio. There wasn't much for Eliot to do besides stare out the window and pretend to ignore the laptop bag sitting on the back seat, wondering how Hardison did it. Not just the computer stuff, but being on, all the time, ready to get on the line and stop the world from ending just because it was a Tuesday, and he was the librarian whose shelves were filled with antitoxins and deployment strategies and locksmiths and mercenaries.
Eliot caught Hardison glancing back through the rearview at the laptop more than once, and whatever the answer to Eliot's unspoken question might've been, it probably wasn't as optimistic as he was hoping.
There was probably all sorts of insane shit on that computer, too. New data from one of the field ops Eliot had been pretending he hadn't heard, or an update from Dr. Laroque, some new bit of intel she'd gotten somewhere that indicated that the adjustments they'd made to his ODM weren't as solid as Hardison thought.
Eliot understood enough of what they'd done, he supposed, but mostly he'd been basing his reactions on theirs. Laroque hadn't been worried enough that she'd felt the need to stick around; she'd just handed him some synthskins and contacts, hugged him, and been on her way. He hadn't talked to Miranda, really, but it wasn't as if she'd have a hard time tracking him if she'd felt the need to. And Hardison seemed confident enough with the hacks he'd done that he didn't seem to mind his presence.
Mostly.
Because whenever Hardison looked at him, it was quick and fleeting, ever since he'd woken up that first day and caught him staring. Hardison had meet his gaze well enough, but he'd never held it for long. He always seemed nervous, despite his bravado.
It wasn't at all unusual, but the reaction hadn't irritated Eliot this much in years.
The hostess brought them to a booth near the front windows, and Eliot tried not to be annoyed when Hardison took the seat facing the door, slinging his laptop bag onto the seat next to him. Eliot ordered a beer and busied himself with the menu he'd been handed, resisting the urge to look over his shoulder while the waitress listed off the specials.
The menu was exactly the same, he guessed, as the menus back in the Twin Cities, or in any T.G.I Friday's in the country, though he'd never been fond enough of the chain to know for sure. He chose a burger off the list, Hardison did the same, and the waitress left. It was a very basic transaction. Nothing remarkable. But that wasn't the problem.
He had no idea at all what it was that he was doing here. Tagging along to Chicago had seemed like a good idea at the time; he'd been looking for answers and Hardison had seemed like the best way to get them. And then Hardison had booked them on a flight to Boston, and he'd boarded without question.
He wasn't here under orders. Soon, he'd have to call into work, explain things to Gatiss. It would probably help if he at least had some idea when he was going to be heading back before that conversation even began.
"Sorry, boss. Someone jacked my brain. Long story short, I'm in Boston, eating hamburgers with a guy who's staring at his phone like it's a lifeline," probably wouldn't cut it.
He nodded at Hardison's phone. "We miss anything on the drive over?"
Hardison shook his head and setting the phone on the table, screen down. "Nope. Twenty three minutes and the world's still turning."
"Is that some sort of record?"
"Eight days," Hardison shrugged, sipping what must've been his seventh orange soda of the day as he took a casual glance around to make sure the teenagers at the next table over weren't listening in. "Last spring. We went eight days without needing to save the world from itself."
Eliot snorted. "What did you do with yourself? Head down to Miami Beach or something?"
"Played video games and tried not to stare at my phone. Ran a lot of diagnostics to make sure we weren't missing anything. Jumped every time Miranda called to try and get me above ground for fresh air."
Eliot tried picturing that conversation and mostly failed. "Did it work?"
Another shrug. "I don't know if they ever talked, but Parker showed up eventually. Dragged my ass down to Navy Pier for a while. We broke onto an unattended yacht, then went on the ferris wheel. Well, I did." When Eliot didn't respond, Hardison continued, eyes widening comically. "She didn't climb on until it was already moving."
"That sounds about right. Ten pounds of crazy in a five pound bag, you know?"
"She's good, though," Hardison smothered a nervous laugh, as if crazy wasn't in the GF job description, leaving Eliot to wonder if it was actually a touchy subject. He didn't know Hardison well enough to have any insight, one way or the other. "Hell, you've seen her in the field."
"I'm not saying she ain't good. I'm saying she's the type of person who'd rather climb a ferris wheel than ride one. Would've been screwed down in Laredo without her, that's for damned sure. She was actually really good with those kids."
"That's half the reason I sent her down there."
"What was the other half?"
"We needed you. She doesn't get in your way."
Come to think of it, Eliot hadn't been tripped up by the presence of idiot teammates since he left the Army. The ones he'd had in Special Forces had been more skilled than most, but he'd often found himself using half his energy fighting around them. Apparently his confusion was showing on his face, because Hardison was smirking across the table at him.
"We ran diagnostics on every op your team ran back in the day, just like we do for our own ops. You work best when you've got room to move."
"You keep stats on that sort of thing?"
"Damned right we do. Our resources are not infinite, therefore they are best deployed in a manner commensurate with their strengths. Zero's words, not mine."
Their food arrived, and Hardison had already inhaled half of his burger before Eliot backtracked to the question he hadn't asked. The teenagers in the nearby booth were laughing, crowded around a blonde girl's cell phone. "So how are those kids, anyway- the ones from the Texas gig?"
Hardison finished chewing, then washed it down with more soda. "Gonna take a while, but they're getting help. It looks like it's going to be possible to keep them together, so that's a plus."
"Good deal," Eliot buried his relief. He hadn't even met them, not really. He'd just driven the truck. The similarities to their situation and his had been superficial at best.
Hardison was opening his mouth to say something more when his eyes caught something startling in the restaurant behind him. Before Eliot could turn to look, he heard a voice that was even smoother in real life than it was on the phone.
"Good afternoon, gentlemen. Mind if I join you?"
Miranda Zero was shaking her long dark hair over her shoulder and slipping her sunglasses into the pocket of her perfectly-tailored jacket before shrugging it down over her arms. The dress she wore underneath was plain and black, and looked expensive as hell. Hardison was sliding over in the booth, almost apologetically, as he straightened out his shirt.
She grinned at Eliot as she sat down, then turned to Hardison. "What?"
"Thought you were gonna call-"
"You're not the only one on the face of the planet who knows how to use GPS," she explained with a smirk, as the waitress came by to offer her a menu. "Just a coffee, please. Black." Once the waitress retreated, she continued. "I caught a bite to eat on the plane. Couldn't stomach the coffee. So." She turned again towards him. "It's good to see you; it's been what, a month now since I saw you last? How're you holding up?"
"I'm fine," Eliot shrugged. This was surprisingly awkward, and brevity seemed the route to take. "My head's still my own, you know?"
"I'm glad to hear it."
As if on cue- and Eliot wouldn't put it past him- Hardison's phone vibrated on the table. Miranda let him out of the booth, passing him his laptop bag as he went. For the time being, it was just the two of them. Obliquely checking her own phone, Miranda set it aside for the time being. "As I'm sure you know, Aleph's been keeping me apprised of the developments. Thank you for rolling with all of this, by the way," she leaned back as the waitress returned with her coffee, nodding her thanks. "I can only imagine that the past few days have been a little strange?"
"That's one way of putting it."
"Well. Hopefully this evening's entertainment will be worthwhile, and you'll be able to go back to your regularly scheduled-" she hesitated over the word programming, opting for "life," instead. "At least until the next crisis."
Eliot nodded, agreeing with her even if he found himself reluctant at the idea of going home. Sure, he hadn't been doing much, here- nothing at all, really- but for as jet-lagged and useless as he felt now, at least he was in the loop.
"Looks like that mess in Florida's managed to sort itself out," Hardison returned, not looking up from the phone in his hand. "817's staying behind a few days to coordinate logistics with the FDA. Serbia's been neutralized too, but Switzerland's about ready to pop, though. Our physicists are on it, but they've managed to ruffle some feathers."
"I'm already scheduled to fly out this evening." Miranda slung back the rest of her coffee and signaled for the waitress. As they waited for the check, Eliot tried to catch Hardison's eye, but the field ops he'd mentioned had nothing to do with him, and no explanation was forthcoming.
Miranda's presence, here, seemed equally unlikely. Running recon in hopes of finding just one hacker was a little below her pay grade. There had to be something more to it.
Chapter 17
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
Sat., April 12, 2014 15:37 EDT (GMT-4)
"If you're sure," Miranda had said when Alec told her he was bringing Eliot along, but at least she hadn't argued. "Just keep an eye on him until I arrive, and don't go anywhere near the bar until I get there." She knew as well as Alec did how thin they were on the ground in Boston. There was a semi-retired linguist living out near Hough's Neck, and a cryptographer who headed up the boston University Security Group, but most of their heavy hitters lived closer to Cambridge.
MIT was full of enough geniuses cobbling various AI, bioengineering, or GIS projects together, the results were often slightly traumatic. Espionage, too- inside jobs currently were in the lead against actions by foreign interests, but not by much- was nearly an everyday concern, even if it had been quiet for the past few months.
Alec wasn't actually expecting an attack, as he was fairly certain that all he was going to find was a whole lot of nothing, though maybe Miranda could get something useful out of any possible witnesses.
The Frequency was her baby, though. She'd started it, years ago, and was protective as hell when it was threatened. Odds were, she was just as eager for a shot at Chaos as Alec himself was.
In the meantime, though, there was another hotel room and another few hours to kill. There were situation reports and emails and nothing happening anywhere in the world that was enough to distract him from Eliot, lounging in the chair by the window, paging tiredly through the novel he'd picked up at the airport. It was so mundane that Alec wondered if he had something backwards, here.
Getting hit with a neuroprogramming meme and waking up bisexual had been blindsiding enough, but the really weird part of it, Alec figured, wasn't the shift itself- that was just part of his wiring, now. Apart from the shock of recognition, and everything the realization had entailed, he figured he'd adapted pretty well.
But the part that he still thought about, sometimes- that he was thinking about now- was that even three years later, he still had no idea how much, really, he should be folding that aspect of himself into his personality. As convenient as the comparisons between brains and computers were, the brain was always changing- it reprogrammed itself all the time, accounting for new input and experiences. That's what it was for. But it caused this irritating little thread of worry running through the back of his mind whenever he examined it too closely. Because at some point, Alec might get new input- it wouldn't be anywhere near the scope of what had happened to Eliot, or be as dramatic as waking up on a rooftop much more open to guys than he'd been before, but one day, his brain might reprogram itself to ditch the code from the last upgrade. Revert to base programming.
One day, he might wake up straight again. And while it was really mostly a hypothetical concern- his longest relationship in four years had been three dates- it was problematic. Or might become problematic. At some point.
Though on the other hand, it might not be the worst thing if he were to suddenly stop having completely inappropriate thoughts about Eliot Spencer, who seemed to have a sixth sense for picking up on Alec's glances whenever they landed on him. There wasn't any point telling himself that it was just the challenge that kept him looking. For all Eliot's apparent psychic abilities, he wasn't showing signs of having any idea why Alec would bother looking.
Then again, he probably couldn't see himself from where he sat. Didn't notice the sunlight haloing the loose strands of hair that kept threatening to fall into his face as he read. From his perspective, the stretch of his legs, the way his feet were braced against the cross-joint of the table leg, was nothing more than the basic mechanics of sitting comfortably. The denim stretching along his thigh, or the shirt collar that was a little loose at his neck, enough that the skin just below his collarbone was just was tantalizingly visible, was likewise below his notice.
Alec's eyes kept getting drawn to the span of brown leather belting Eliot's hips. The buckle was brass; Alec could barely make out the edge of it from where he was sitting, but he could imagine- all too well- the leather sliding through, opening.
Eventually, he was going to get caught. And though Eliot was shorter than Alec, he could break him with terrifying ease. It was thankfully unlikely- Alec was more concerned about mortification than evisceration at this point, but he'd done his homework. He didn't really know who Eliot Spencer was, necessarily, but he knew who he'd been, what he'd been made of.
He'd seen dozens of pictures of Eliot, starting from when he'd been young and psychotic looking, fresh out of the compound, his buzz-cut almost as severe as the look in his blazing eyes or the metal winding into his flesh. Alec could've traced the passing of years by the length of his hair, or the gradual shedding of Big Wheel's Tech. His metal arm, apparently, had served him well during his stint in the army- the components that allowed for electrocution at near and close range were still intact, but the laser and plasma array that had been built up over his shoulder had been removed. He'd had the armor plates- and their retractable, razor-sharp spikes- removed from his shins even before he'd enlisted, primarily because they'd been one of the more superficial additions and more easily removed.
He'd had seen the pictures taken during their removal; he kept wondering what kinds of scars the bolt holes- all the way down to the base connectors drilled into the bone- had left.
Less obvious from the pictures had been the internal enhancements. Eliot'd had amplification implants in his inner ear, and the wire spool cartridge housing midway up his left arm had originally fed a line that wound down his arm, ending in electrical contacts on his right thumb and forefinger. Though the contacts had been removed at Spencer's request, the rechargeable power core on his arm had been left intact. Once he'd signed on with the GF, Miranda had procured a startlingly large supply of wire cartridges for him to use in the field, to allow midrange defensive capabilities.
Though it had since been replaced with an inert implant, Spencer's molar had contained a capsule that would break if he bit down hard on it, releasing a compound which, upon reacting with the saliva in his mouth, created a highly corrosive acid that would've killed him- and anyone he'd managed to spit upon- in seconds. Months after reading it in the reports, Alec still thought about it every time he accidentally bit his tongue.
There'd been a series of medical shots documenting every surgery they'd done to remove the hardware, and sometimes Alec hadn't even been able to recognize Eliot in any of them. He'd thought, at first, that they'd been mortuary pictures of the bodies left behind.
And there'd been a lot of bodies left in Big Wheel's wake, and though the GF had done a lot to seriously undermine their capabilities, they'd never been able to root them out completely. There was always another election to be won, and large, vaguely worded contracts tended to find their way into so many pockets of the military industrial complex every few months. There wasn't much by way of oversight; there was even less that the public could hold them accountable for. And for everything else, Alec supposed, there was the Frequency.
He'd would be feeling a lot better about it now if he didn't know that the GF had essentially driven Big Wheel so far to the fringe that, having no other recourse, they'd started breeding their own subjects. And while the GF made a dent, rescuing the children in Texas, they hadn't captured any key players. Big Wheel was still out there.
All he'd known when he'd first started looking into the GF's files, though, was that Spencer- it had been noted in his file that he'd not been named Eliot Spencer until after he'd left the Army; he'd still been going by the name Delta when he'd enlisted- had probably been taken in by Big Wheel when he was about seven or eight. Prior to that, there was no telling where he was from, or if he had any family at all, and Spencer had never indicated that he'd remembered otherwise.
He'd gone from Big Wheel to the military to a warehouse job in Bloomington, Minnesota before being recruited by Miranda Zero and joining the GF, and even if it hadn't been for the miles and miles of psych evaluations and doctor's reports, the auto-transcripts of his early conversations with Miranda had been enlightening.
"I just figure, I've got all this, like it or not- I'm stuck with it. I can sit around and be pissed about it, but that's not going to change anything."
"Are you looking for absolution?"
"I don't know. It's a nice thought, but I just don't see it in the cards. I can't go back and change what I've done. There's just all this, up in front of me. Life. I can ignore what I am, or I can use it to try and do some good."
"That being the case, why did you not re-up your enlistment when the time came?"
"Same commands, different targets, and nothing was ever changed when we were through. I didn't think the things I was doing for them were any better than what I was doing back in Kansas."
Alec had been on the verge already, but he'd fallen, hard, the moment he'd read that, though he still hadn't actually figured out why. But he'd read the follow up reports of the other operational subjects Big Wheel had created, and one thing had really stood out.
Most of the others, even the ones who'd followed Delta out of the compound in Kansas, had broken completely, either during the process of disarmament or shortly thereafter. More than one of the survivors had gone on to short, ugly careers in the military. Most of the ones who were still were doing so within the confines of varying degrees of psychiatric care. Probably would be until their tech broke down completely, until they finally stopped breathing.
Dr. Laroque had made notes, here and there, worrying about how resigned Eliot tended to be in the face of hearing about the fates of his siblings; she'd wondered if it was something left over from his time with Big Wheel. But hell, Alec figured, life could train people too. It could grind them down into dirt.
Sometimes, though, it didn't. Sometimes, a killing machine capable of wiping out entire villages at the simplest command chose instead to join the ranks of people like Dr. Marla Jacobson, Former Agent 731. Could sign on with the Frequency, and expect to die for the world instead.
"Don't get attached," Miranda had told him when she'd caught him reading the files, and it had probably already been too late, even back then.
And now, there wasn't even any use pretending otherwise. Not with Eliot sitting at the table, flipping through Tom Clancy with a half-bored, half-amused smirk on his face.
Alec tried not to glance more than twice, but eventually, he gave in. "What's so funny?"
"Nothing. Just this." Eliot shook his head, tossed the book on the table without bothering to mark the page, and pinned him with a steady gaze that Alec just hadn't been ready for. "You glued to your computer right now?"
"No. Why?"
"Wanna go get something to eat?" He frowned, suddenly. "Are you even allowed to go offline?"
"I could run World War Three from my cell phone." His boasting was undermined, probably, by his checking the battery for the tenth time in an hour. He had spares, sure, but the middle of a crisis wasn't the time to be worrying about changing them out.
Standing up and sliding his laptop into his bag, though, gave him something to focus on, which was important, because the surge of ridiculously eager hope he was feeling was coming on too damned fast to hide.
Eliot was bored. They needed to get something to eat, needed to get away from the hotel room's claustrophobic white walls.
This wasn't a date.
Sat., April 12, 2014 16:08 EDT (GMT-4)
There was a T.G.I. Friday's at the end of the strip mall down by the highway. Hardison drove, humming along with the radio. There wasn't much for Eliot to do besides stare out the window and pretend to ignore the laptop bag sitting on the back seat, wondering how Hardison did it. Not just the computer stuff, but being on, all the time, ready to get on the line and stop the world from ending just because it was a Tuesday, and he was the librarian whose shelves were filled with antitoxins and deployment strategies and locksmiths and mercenaries.
Eliot caught Hardison glancing back through the rearview at the laptop more than once, and whatever the answer to Eliot's unspoken question might've been, it probably wasn't as optimistic as he was hoping.
There was probably all sorts of insane shit on that computer, too. New data from one of the field ops Eliot had been pretending he hadn't heard, or an update from Dr. Laroque, some new bit of intel she'd gotten somewhere that indicated that the adjustments they'd made to his ODM weren't as solid as Hardison thought.
Eliot understood enough of what they'd done, he supposed, but mostly he'd been basing his reactions on theirs. Laroque hadn't been worried enough that she'd felt the need to stick around; she'd just handed him some synthskins and contacts, hugged him, and been on her way. He hadn't talked to Miranda, really, but it wasn't as if she'd have a hard time tracking him if she'd felt the need to. And Hardison seemed confident enough with the hacks he'd done that he didn't seem to mind his presence.
Mostly.
Because whenever Hardison looked at him, it was quick and fleeting, ever since he'd woken up that first day and caught him staring. Hardison had meet his gaze well enough, but he'd never held it for long. He always seemed nervous, despite his bravado.
It wasn't at all unusual, but the reaction hadn't irritated Eliot this much in years.
The hostess brought them to a booth near the front windows, and Eliot tried not to be annoyed when Hardison took the seat facing the door, slinging his laptop bag onto the seat next to him. Eliot ordered a beer and busied himself with the menu he'd been handed, resisting the urge to look over his shoulder while the waitress listed off the specials.
The menu was exactly the same, he guessed, as the menus back in the Twin Cities, or in any T.G.I Friday's in the country, though he'd never been fond enough of the chain to know for sure. He chose a burger off the list, Hardison did the same, and the waitress left. It was a very basic transaction. Nothing remarkable. But that wasn't the problem.
He had no idea at all what it was that he was doing here. Tagging along to Chicago had seemed like a good idea at the time; he'd been looking for answers and Hardison had seemed like the best way to get them. And then Hardison had booked them on a flight to Boston, and he'd boarded without question.
He wasn't here under orders. Soon, he'd have to call into work, explain things to Gatiss. It would probably help if he at least had some idea when he was going to be heading back before that conversation even began.
"Sorry, boss. Someone jacked my brain. Long story short, I'm in Boston, eating hamburgers with a guy who's staring at his phone like it's a lifeline," probably wouldn't cut it.
He nodded at Hardison's phone. "We miss anything on the drive over?"
Hardison shook his head and setting the phone on the table, screen down. "Nope. Twenty three minutes and the world's still turning."
"Is that some sort of record?"
"Eight days," Hardison shrugged, sipping what must've been his seventh orange soda of the day as he took a casual glance around to make sure the teenagers at the next table over weren't listening in. "Last spring. We went eight days without needing to save the world from itself."
Eliot snorted. "What did you do with yourself? Head down to Miami Beach or something?"
"Played video games and tried not to stare at my phone. Ran a lot of diagnostics to make sure we weren't missing anything. Jumped every time Miranda called to try and get me above ground for fresh air."
Eliot tried picturing that conversation and mostly failed. "Did it work?"
Another shrug. "I don't know if they ever talked, but Parker showed up eventually. Dragged my ass down to Navy Pier for a while. We broke onto an unattended yacht, then went on the ferris wheel. Well, I did." When Eliot didn't respond, Hardison continued, eyes widening comically. "She didn't climb on until it was already moving."
"That sounds about right. Ten pounds of crazy in a five pound bag, you know?"
"She's good, though," Hardison smothered a nervous laugh, as if crazy wasn't in the GF job description, leaving Eliot to wonder if it was actually a touchy subject. He didn't know Hardison well enough to have any insight, one way or the other. "Hell, you've seen her in the field."
"I'm not saying she ain't good. I'm saying she's the type of person who'd rather climb a ferris wheel than ride one. Would've been screwed down in Laredo without her, that's for damned sure. She was actually really good with those kids."
"That's half the reason I sent her down there."
"What was the other half?"
"We needed you. She doesn't get in your way."
Come to think of it, Eliot hadn't been tripped up by the presence of idiot teammates since he left the Army. The ones he'd had in Special Forces had been more skilled than most, but he'd often found himself using half his energy fighting around them. Apparently his confusion was showing on his face, because Hardison was smirking across the table at him.
"We ran diagnostics on every op your team ran back in the day, just like we do for our own ops. You work best when you've got room to move."
"You keep stats on that sort of thing?"
"Damned right we do. Our resources are not infinite, therefore they are best deployed in a manner commensurate with their strengths. Zero's words, not mine."
Their food arrived, and Hardison had already inhaled half of his burger before Eliot backtracked to the question he hadn't asked. The teenagers in the nearby booth were laughing, crowded around a blonde girl's cell phone. "So how are those kids, anyway- the ones from the Texas gig?"
Hardison finished chewing, then washed it down with more soda. "Gonna take a while, but they're getting help. It looks like it's going to be possible to keep them together, so that's a plus."
"Good deal," Eliot buried his relief. He hadn't even met them, not really. He'd just driven the truck. The similarities to their situation and his had been superficial at best.
Hardison was opening his mouth to say something more when his eyes caught something startling in the restaurant behind him. Before Eliot could turn to look, he heard a voice that was even smoother in real life than it was on the phone.
"Good afternoon, gentlemen. Mind if I join you?"
Miranda Zero was shaking her long dark hair over her shoulder and slipping her sunglasses into the pocket of her perfectly-tailored jacket before shrugging it down over her arms. The dress she wore underneath was plain and black, and looked expensive as hell. Hardison was sliding over in the booth, almost apologetically, as he straightened out his shirt.
She grinned at Eliot as she sat down, then turned to Hardison. "What?"
"Thought you were gonna call-"
"You're not the only one on the face of the planet who knows how to use GPS," she explained with a smirk, as the waitress came by to offer her a menu. "Just a coffee, please. Black." Once the waitress retreated, she continued. "I caught a bite to eat on the plane. Couldn't stomach the coffee. So." She turned again towards him. "It's good to see you; it's been what, a month now since I saw you last? How're you holding up?"
"I'm fine," Eliot shrugged. This was surprisingly awkward, and brevity seemed the route to take. "My head's still my own, you know?"
"I'm glad to hear it."
As if on cue- and Eliot wouldn't put it past him- Hardison's phone vibrated on the table. Miranda let him out of the booth, passing him his laptop bag as he went. For the time being, it was just the two of them. Obliquely checking her own phone, Miranda set it aside for the time being. "As I'm sure you know, Aleph's been keeping me apprised of the developments. Thank you for rolling with all of this, by the way," she leaned back as the waitress returned with her coffee, nodding her thanks. "I can only imagine that the past few days have been a little strange?"
"That's one way of putting it."
"Well. Hopefully this evening's entertainment will be worthwhile, and you'll be able to go back to your regularly scheduled-" she hesitated over the word programming, opting for "life," instead. "At least until the next crisis."
Eliot nodded, agreeing with her even if he found himself reluctant at the idea of going home. Sure, he hadn't been doing much, here- nothing at all, really- but for as jet-lagged and useless as he felt now, at least he was in the loop.
"Looks like that mess in Florida's managed to sort itself out," Hardison returned, not looking up from the phone in his hand. "817's staying behind a few days to coordinate logistics with the FDA. Serbia's been neutralized too, but Switzerland's about ready to pop, though. Our physicists are on it, but they've managed to ruffle some feathers."
"I'm already scheduled to fly out this evening." Miranda slung back the rest of her coffee and signaled for the waitress. As they waited for the check, Eliot tried to catch Hardison's eye, but the field ops he'd mentioned had nothing to do with him, and no explanation was forthcoming.
Miranda's presence, here, seemed equally unlikely. Running recon in hopes of finding just one hacker was a little below her pay grade. There had to be something more to it.
Chapter 17