Steal the Sky 3/6
Title: Steal the Sky (3/6)
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Team, pre-Nate/Sophie
Verse: Steal the Sky
Fandoms: Leverage, Firefly, Supernatural, NCIS, White Collar
Summary: After Nathan Ford is hired to act as handler for three Alliance Operatives nothing in his 'verse will ever be quite the same.
Notes: This is likely going to develope into a verse of it's own. Many Many thanks and much praise to my betas Deanangst and lmx_v3point3
Part 1, Part 2
The Andromeda Tower
Olympus, sixth moon of Orion
Parker: Soon to be Officially Deceased
Parker only looked at the message once before a smile crossed her face. She didn’t smile for much, and most of what she did smile for involved explosions, rappelling, fire, theft, or otherwise dangerous activities.
This, conveniently, involved all of the above.
It was the work of only a few moments to take out her demolitions kit and begin placing charges around the room. It was cathartic, in a way. The charges would be going off in a few minutes, blowing up everything she hated about this place.
One on the door, just under the lock that she wasn’t allowed to pick. Let them lock her inside with a huge hole in it.
One on the right interior wall that had done nothing to deaden the noise of her neighbors. It was quiet now, always quiet now, but really that was what made her hate it.
One under each of the bunks along the other wall. No one had used them in years. No one but her had been left to use them for years. It was time they were ash too.
One on the ceiling light which turned off and on at their will, not her’s. She was a thief. Shadows were what she worked with. Now she’d steal some shadows for herself.
The charges placed, she grabbed her bag. She wasn’t taking much, just some non-descript tools, a little cash, The Other Needle, and her stuffed bunny. Nothing that would be missed. She was stealing, but only in the technical sense. All she was taking were the few things that should have always belonged to her.
Slipping on a harness and grabbing the Needle from her stash she gave one final look around before going to the exterior wall and planting one final weaker charge on the window, ducking for cover as it blew out the glass. With a timer already running down in her head she slid the needle into her arm and depressed the plunger, barely even feeling the chemical entering her blood stream and the real countdown begin.
60 seconds for it to work.
360 for the effects of the poison to become too strong for the acute bodily control needed to administer the antidote to herself.
No time like the present then.
She hooked up the line to her harness, crawled out the little window and swan dived, the heat of the explosion hitting her back as she dropped, laughing for the first time in what felt like forever.
She didn’t smile much, but she was blowing up her past and stealing her future. She could make an exception.
Hearts break hearts mend
Love still hurts
Visions clash blades crash
Still there’s talk of
Saving souls and the cold
Is closing in on us
Parker: Classification Delta,
All-Tech Infiltration with explosive specification
Parker did not play well with others.
There had been a lot said about her over the years. She’s (stolen copies of and) read every performance evaluation done on her since she was first taken in and she knows for a fact that her inability to connect with others has been a concern her entire life in Olympus.
She had tried (well pretended to try) when she was a kid, at least she did after she started to get over being sold to Olympus by her parents after the accident with her brother.
If she thought about it, maybe that was why she’d never really wanted to connect with her new clan.
But they’d taken care of her and taught her things and given her bunny and when she wasn’t paying attention they stole something from her, stole the solitude she’d forced herself into, and maybe, just maybe, she had really wanted to try for a little while there.
The review from when she was eight still talked about her not playing well with others but made note that there seemed to be improvement.
Then her clan-brother Kelly had killed their clan’s Father and her clan was stolen from her entirely.
And she never did get back the part of her they had stolen.
But she was eight years old, just months short of nine, the youngest age those in control of Olympus decreed could be executed, and so she lived. The last of the Parker clan. Nameless.
Students weren’t given names of their own until they turned nine.
And now she had no clan to give her a name.
She stayed in her clan room, stealing to survive without elders to look after her, stealing to improve her skills, and stealing because those words on performance reviews; “Does not connect, is not dedicated, will only submit and obey but will not love her father”, meant the few brief months she was a beta class were only a formality and she had to prove she was worth keeping alive.
Archie… Archie of the Leech clan probably saved her life. Taking her under his wing, teaching her to play along and survive under *their* rule as much as honing her natural abilities.
He was an operative, retired and now a teacher, but she would call him father in her head.
He couldn’t teach her how to steal back what she’d lost, but he gave her something to replace it with.
Still, no matter what he taught her, no matter how he tried to teach her to think like she was supposed to Parker didn’t play well with others.
Which, in retrospect, was probably why she had never worked with others, which was, of course, the reason why she was sort of enjoying working with Eliot and Hardison now. Working with others was a novel experience that would wear off sooner or later, but for the moment she’d enjoy it.
Though they did at least take her to some interesting places, that helped.
She’d never been to a Companion’s training house before.
She followed at the back of the strange little group traipsing through the halls of some high class Companion training house on Osiris. Nate led the way, the only one who looked like he belonged here, followed closely by Eliot who sort-of looked like he could blend in as Nate’s body guard. She and Hardison took up the rear.
Nate hadn’t really explained the plan other than come here and get Sophie (a who, not a what, though Parker was pretty sure she had heard of ships with girl names) and Parker was trying to focus on the job and getting through this mess.
But there was a lot of expensive stuff around and her fingers were itching to steal some of it and test her fiddlies on that old looking lock and next time her handler took her out for some extra curricular theft she would have to hit a companion training house, because there were shinies everywhere here.
They turned down yet another hallway and into a big room with a long table and fancily dressed girls sitting at a meal (and was it dinner time yet?) with a middle aged woman at the head of the table talking, though she sounded like she was talking in Latin, or pig-Latin (which wasn’t actually Latin spoken by pigs), or maybe whatever it was they spoke in that colony where everyone sounded like Badger.
Parker didn’t really care that much, but the silver on the table was shiny and she knew, like, eight fences here on Osiris that would give her a good price on it and it might be enough to get her Handler to take her out to jump off buildings for a night.
The woman looked up and distinctly said “Nathan…” before she turned back to the other women and looked like she was excusing herself.
“A companion?” Parker heard Eliot whisper to Nate. “I say no.”
Hardison seemed to share the opinion, though he wasn’t voicing it. Parker knew generally speaking agents tended to view companions with a certain amount of suspicion, not sure what to make of men and women taken and trained by the alliance at an early age, like those on Olympus, but at the same time so very different.
Not to mention, Parker wasn’t entirely sure what a person who Parker couldn’t understand would do for them.
But then the woman had come over to them and was leading them off and Parker let herself get distracted by mentally planning how she would steal things and get out, trying to balance maximum profit with the shortest escape, until they reached a small but ornately decorated sitting room.
The woman, Sophie Parker was guessing, was talking again and Parker stared at her, trying to work out what she was actually saying. Nate seemed to have made up his mind to work with her.
“I’m a citizen now, honest.” Okay, that wasn’t exactly what Sophie said but it was what Parker was pretty sure she *meant* to say. It wasn’t so hard to figure out. She just had to pay attention.
“I’m not.” Nate responded giving a weird look.
“You’re playing my side?" Sophie smiled. "I always knew you had it in you.”
Nate gave a new weird look (Nate had a lot of weird looks, nearly everyone did, but this was a weird look that was different than the others she’d seen him give). After a moment he asked. “Are you in?”
Nate gave a grin that made Parker feel oddly warm in her stomach, something she didn’t really know what it meant, and Sophie was responding. “I wouldn’t miss this.”
oOo
They’d left the training house and flown to some apartment complex Hardison had for them. He led them up to a flat (67 stories up, she’d need her number 3 rig to reach ground level from here. She wasn’t sure where she’d left that rig in the chaos of getting nearly dead, which made her sad because she really liked that rig).
The only conversation up to that point had been Eliot trying to confirm the security of their soon to be new HQ and Hardison reassuring him it was an HTO safe house he’d been using for the mission and would have to himself for the next week.
After they walked in and saw the space, the tech, the clean lines and good conditions, the pool table that Parker knew couldn’t possibly be there because Olympus put it there… Eliot muttered something about spoiled geeks.
They filtered into the apartment, Nate heading over to the wall with computer screens with that 'getting down to business' expression on his face and Parker’s stomach fell.
It had been nearly eighteen hours since she’d eaten what was left of her mission rations. She normally would have stolen some more food by now but she hadn’t had a chance yet. There was a refrigerator in the corner, but Nate had the 'down to business' face on and she knew from her Handlers that people with down to business faces never took kindly to being asked if they could break for dinner.
She’d just have to wait.
She sat on the couch trying to get psyched about the new job. She liked her work. She liked planning and stealing and jumping off buildings and sometimes blowing things up. It was fun. It was all she knew how to do, all she was good (the best) at, and life was easier when you enjoyed what you had to do.
But she was hungry.
Hardison sat next to her and she was almost certain it was his stomach making that rumbly sound. She’d learned how to keep that from happening from Archie (a rumbly stomach could get you caught and killed when stealth was needed).
Sophie had taken her seat next to Nate on the other couch (and somewhere in Parker’s head it registered as weirdly funny how she was here on this couch with Hardison on one side and Eliot half perched on the arm rest on her other side while Nate and Sophie sat on the other couch together) but Sophie was looking at them rather than the screen.
A moment later she leaned closer to Nate, whispering something to their handler and another look Parker couldn’t understand crossed his face and suddenly he wasn’t in get down to business mode but a sort of stumbly awkward mode. He glanced toward Sophie and she smiled wickedly and Parker wondered why Sophie was making sex jokes to Nate (because it was the only explanation that made sense in Parker's head, even if it didn’t really make sense).
Nate cleared his throat, Sophie had definitely just made a joke about sex. “You three um…” A joke about them? Wow. Sophie was into some kinky stuff. Then again she was a companion.
Parker let out a little bark of laughter and there was an awkward pause when everyone looked at her like she was crazy and Eliot and Hardison didn’t already know that.
Nate took another beat to shake it off. “I know…” he started. “You three have said…” Another pause before he seemed to just give up trying. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the transmitter and she felt Hardison stiffen next to her and Eliot stood up completely, suddenly tense, taking a half step forward, not quite putting himself between them and Nate but making himself the closest target. Parker forced herself to swallow the surge of fear at that thing being taken out, eyes locking onto it.
There was another beat of silence, Nate going still, surprised for some reason, before starting. “Hardison, I…”
Hardison tensed further, words spewing out of his lips, his form folding forward like he was already anticipating the shock. “I’m sorry, I’m ready to get to work, I-" He cut himself off, but not because of pain. Probably realizing he’d cut Nate off.
Parker forced her eyes to Nate’s face, wanting to see his eyes on Hardison, to know if he was only going to target Hardison or if she should be bracing herself.
She didn’t understand why his eyes were closed, and why his look of rage had something else and didn’t seem directed at Hardison.
She didn’t understand why he was squeezing the transmitter so tightly his knuckles were white and it looked like he was trying to crush it with his hand. Shocking wasn’t that hard. It was just targeting and the big red button.
Nate opened his eyes and dropped the transmitter like it had burned him, the device landing on the carpet and half bouncing toward the three of them.
He took a breath, his expression changing, going blank, and Parker wondered if maybe he was having a stroke because she was pretty sure loose limbs and lack of facial expressions were caused by strokes. Or was it herpes?
Nate took another breath and he looked between them and Parker felt something in her chest shift weirdly, like it had back in the warehouse when he told them what to do and got them all out safely and didn’t ask them to leave Eliot behind.
His eyes ended on Eliot and Nate spoke slowly, deliberately, each word fully formed and meaning something even if they were alien to her. “I was acting as your handler for the first job. That job is over. Now… I’m just the mastermind behind the con. You three can handle yourselves.”
She didn’t know what that meant.
A long moment passed before Eliot moved, slowly, like he was going into battle or something, crossing to where the transmitter sat on the floor and picking it up, straightening up and locking eyes with Nate.
The Hand- the mastermind nodded and Eliot slipped the transmitter into his jacket pocket. He turned back to her and Hardison and said. “Let’s see if Geek-boy has something edible in this place.”
Without another word Eliot headed toward the kitchen and Parker didn’t need more than a moment to process that it was now Eliot’s job to tell them when it was dinner time and he said it was dinner time so she could eat.
She vaulted over the back of the couch and headed after the LTO into the kitchen, Hardison only a step behind, complaining loudly that he had real food, thanking Eliot very much for some weird reason.
Nate and Sophie stayed on the couch.
Once Parker found a box of cereal she perched on the counter, happy that HTs were kept in the best environments of anyone at Olympus. She hadn’t had cereal in forever. Now she could eat her cereal and watch Hardison try to defend his food stocks while both he and Eliot tried to scrounge up something that Eliot could eat.
“So you’re our handler now Eliot?” She asked in Greek. Every agent on Olympus was fluent in it by the time they were eight but few trainers even ever learned more than the basics so she doubted Sophie or Nate would just *happen* to know it. “Can an agent be a handler? Does it mean you’re not an agent anymore?”
“There’s something wrong with you,” Eliot muttered, glaring at her over the can he’d pulled out of the shelves and was now studying. From their progress so far it looked like Eliot would just be taking dietary replacements. She made a face at the thought. She carried some herself, even agents who could eat more than the, like, nine things an LTO with Eliot’s level of genetic and internal modification could digest carried them. A small bottle of them could keep you going for a month without suffering from malnourishment.
But they tasted like moldy chalk dust and did nothing to stop you from actually being hungry.
He put the can down with a little more force than was probably necessary and Hardison closed the last cabinet, muttering an apology before taking his own dinner out of the heater, leaning against the counter as Eliot started putting the food back.
They were quiet for a moment before Eliot responded to her question finally. “I’m not your handler,” he said firmly. “We don’t have a handler right now.”
“But we’re not at Olympus,” Parker stated. “And we don’t have our Fathers so we need a Handler.” It was fact. They were agents. Agents had their Fathers at Olympus and Handlers when they left Olympus. Handlers and Fathers organized their housing and got them food and clothes and medical attention and Parker didn’t know how to do those things.
Maybe she could? She could just steal food and she didn’t need clothes, she was already wearing clothes though she’d probably want to change sometime in the next six days and she didn’t know what happened to her bag and… well she was staying here but she couldn’t sleep here. She couldn’t sleep with other people in the room. She could sleep in the air vents if they were the right type.
It was terrifying to not have a Handler.
She smiled a little, getting an adrenalin rush from just standing still was kind of awesome. She ate another handful of cereal as celebration, mentally congratulating herself on finding the food without a handler. Never mind that she’d done it in a pinch before, when she was desperate. This was different.
“It’s just a few days,” Hardison said.
Parker couldn’t tell if he was trying to reassure himself or stating something he wasn’t happy about.
Eliot put the last of the food back, got a glass of water, and downed the pills. A beat passed and she found herself just sitting there, wondering what came next, waiting for him to…
No. She didn’t have a handler now. She was a freelancer.
She jumped down from the counter and went back to the couch.
And she took her cereal with her.
A half hour later Hardison had gone through most of the copies he’d made of the files they’d stolen, Nate looking weirdly at the designs. Sophie had actually spoken to Eliot, who'd actually responded and they had had a conversation that sounded like they were flirting but felt like they had guns pointed at each other and were seeing who’s was bigger.
Companions made no sense but she’d never seen an LTO make so little sense. They were generally easy to understand. They hit people and growled angrily and then they died. They were straight people. Not twisty people like Companions.
She was thinking about that when Hardison let out a whooping noise and Parker turned to look only to see his fingers flying across the keyboard in his hand, images whipping across the screen. He was talking about something Parker didn’t really understand involving a hidden cipher, shadow memory vaults, and something about the age of the geek-baby.
What she did understand was that suddenly the screen wasn’t showing boring blueprints to a space ship but dozens of files, popping up with graphs and reports and tables.
Silence.
“We didn’t steal space craft designs,” Hardison muttered, clicking through the reports, speed reading them like only an HTO could. “This is from The Academy.” His voice went a little quieter, “I’ve heard about it, it’s another DID initiative, brand new, the program may end up rivaling Olympus if they ever manage to…” His voice trailed off as he clicked and brought up a picture and bio of a teenage girl with brown hair and scared eyes. “…have a success.”
“Like her?” Sophie asked.
Hardison nodded, reading still. “Sorta… she’s not quite deployable yet but apparently she’s already been shown to several high ranking officials personally, as an example of the project’s potential.”
“What’s left before she’s ready?” Nate asked.
Hardison let out a breath but Eliot answered first, eyes scanning over the reports on the screen. “They stripped her amygdala, messed with her brain god knows how many other ways, says they’re working on behavioral conditioning.” His voice was more gravely than usual as he finished, “My guess is she’s gone completely insane.”
There was a quiet moment and Parker realized everyone wasn’t sure how to respond, since Eliot knew because they’d done something like that to him and okay, kinda awkward.
“So Dubenich was hiring us to steal back space-craft plans that were actually information on a top secrete DID initiative?” Nate asked.
“I’m pretty sure he was just hiring us to steal them,” Hardison answered, looking over to Nate. “I mean, I was wondering why Dubenich cared so much about space craft designs before but, now it makes total sense man.”
Nate was looking at Hardison the way he normally looked at her and Parker wasn’t sure she liked Hardison confusing Nate. That was her job.
Though she did kind of like not being confused when Nate was.
“Dubenich is the head of one of the research divisions at Olympus.” Eliot explained. “His job at Barrington is a cover. It’s how he got three agents to do a job for him without questions asked.” Eliot was looking at the screen now, his eyes on the girl, his face set cold. “He probably had us steal the files to use them in his own work.”
“Alright…” Nate said after half a beat, standing up and walking up to the screen. “So this guy used his connections to get us to steal information to help his own experiments on unwilling subjects. I know just the thing.” He nodded, “Let's go steal a Brown coat.”
He turned and left the room before Parker could figure out if the segue meant anything or if he was just cold and liked the color brown. She turned to look at Sophie, who should know this kind of thing if she was making sex jokes to him.
Her response of a shrug and commenting that he hadn’t changed a bit was entirely unhelpful.
oOo
And that was how she found herself in the air vents in some building, listening with some surprise as Sophie lied and lied and lied and broke rules (and weren’t companions supposed to be really anal about not breaking rules? Like Alpha classes only sexy) and grifted her way into the offices for a secure building.
They were just getting some preliminary information. They had to be careful. Their real target was a lot harder to get to.
So she sat in the air vent as Sophie did things companions weren’t supposed to do, to get some guy out of his office (and really, how could Sophie flirt with a man while making him paranoid crazy about a subordinate who was stabbed in the neck with a pen?) and then Eliot came in and charmed the lady at the desk (and seriously, LTOs were not supposed to be able to do that) while Hardison talked and even joked with Nate (no agent was supposed to do that) and he was talking and joking right back (and no one ever did that with an agent).
And she did her thing and got what she needed and Hardison did his hacking thing and she got out and as she was crawling through the vents she realized she was playing pretty okay with them, and she wasn't supposed to do that either.
Parker just doesn’t play well with others.
But none of the others were doing what they’re supposed to so maybe, just this once, it’s alright.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Team, pre-Nate/Sophie
Verse: Steal the Sky
Fandoms: Leverage, Firefly, Supernatural, NCIS, White Collar
Summary: After Nathan Ford is hired to act as handler for three Alliance Operatives nothing in his 'verse will ever be quite the same.
Notes: This is likely going to develope into a verse of it's own. Many Many thanks and much praise to my betas Deanangst and lmx_v3point3
Part 1, Part 2
The Andromeda Tower
Olympus, sixth moon of Orion
Parker: Soon to be Officially Deceased
Parker only looked at the message once before a smile crossed her face. She didn’t smile for much, and most of what she did smile for involved explosions, rappelling, fire, theft, or otherwise dangerous activities.
This, conveniently, involved all of the above.
It was the work of only a few moments to take out her demolitions kit and begin placing charges around the room. It was cathartic, in a way. The charges would be going off in a few minutes, blowing up everything she hated about this place.
One on the door, just under the lock that she wasn’t allowed to pick. Let them lock her inside with a huge hole in it.
One on the right interior wall that had done nothing to deaden the noise of her neighbors. It was quiet now, always quiet now, but really that was what made her hate it.
One under each of the bunks along the other wall. No one had used them in years. No one but her had been left to use them for years. It was time they were ash too.
One on the ceiling light which turned off and on at their will, not her’s. She was a thief. Shadows were what she worked with. Now she’d steal some shadows for herself.
The charges placed, she grabbed her bag. She wasn’t taking much, just some non-descript tools, a little cash, The Other Needle, and her stuffed bunny. Nothing that would be missed. She was stealing, but only in the technical sense. All she was taking were the few things that should have always belonged to her.
Slipping on a harness and grabbing the Needle from her stash she gave one final look around before going to the exterior wall and planting one final weaker charge on the window, ducking for cover as it blew out the glass. With a timer already running down in her head she slid the needle into her arm and depressed the plunger, barely even feeling the chemical entering her blood stream and the real countdown begin.
60 seconds for it to work.
360 for the effects of the poison to become too strong for the acute bodily control needed to administer the antidote to herself.
No time like the present then.
She hooked up the line to her harness, crawled out the little window and swan dived, the heat of the explosion hitting her back as she dropped, laughing for the first time in what felt like forever.
She didn’t smile much, but she was blowing up her past and stealing her future. She could make an exception.
Hearts break hearts mend
Love still hurts
Visions clash blades crash
Still there’s talk of
Saving souls and the cold
Is closing in on us
Parker: Classification Delta,
All-Tech Infiltration with explosive specification
Parker did not play well with others.
There had been a lot said about her over the years. She’s (stolen copies of and) read every performance evaluation done on her since she was first taken in and she knows for a fact that her inability to connect with others has been a concern her entire life in Olympus.
She had tried (well pretended to try) when she was a kid, at least she did after she started to get over being sold to Olympus by her parents after the accident with her brother.
If she thought about it, maybe that was why she’d never really wanted to connect with her new clan.
But they’d taken care of her and taught her things and given her bunny and when she wasn’t paying attention they stole something from her, stole the solitude she’d forced herself into, and maybe, just maybe, she had really wanted to try for a little while there.
The review from when she was eight still talked about her not playing well with others but made note that there seemed to be improvement.
Then her clan-brother Kelly had killed their clan’s Father and her clan was stolen from her entirely.
And she never did get back the part of her they had stolen.
But she was eight years old, just months short of nine, the youngest age those in control of Olympus decreed could be executed, and so she lived. The last of the Parker clan. Nameless.
Students weren’t given names of their own until they turned nine.
And now she had no clan to give her a name.
She stayed in her clan room, stealing to survive without elders to look after her, stealing to improve her skills, and stealing because those words on performance reviews; “Does not connect, is not dedicated, will only submit and obey but will not love her father”, meant the few brief months she was a beta class were only a formality and she had to prove she was worth keeping alive.
Archie… Archie of the Leech clan probably saved her life. Taking her under his wing, teaching her to play along and survive under *their* rule as much as honing her natural abilities.
He was an operative, retired and now a teacher, but she would call him father in her head.
He couldn’t teach her how to steal back what she’d lost, but he gave her something to replace it with.
Still, no matter what he taught her, no matter how he tried to teach her to think like she was supposed to Parker didn’t play well with others.
Which, in retrospect, was probably why she had never worked with others, which was, of course, the reason why she was sort of enjoying working with Eliot and Hardison now. Working with others was a novel experience that would wear off sooner or later, but for the moment she’d enjoy it.
Though they did at least take her to some interesting places, that helped.
She’d never been to a Companion’s training house before.
She followed at the back of the strange little group traipsing through the halls of some high class Companion training house on Osiris. Nate led the way, the only one who looked like he belonged here, followed closely by Eliot who sort-of looked like he could blend in as Nate’s body guard. She and Hardison took up the rear.
Nate hadn’t really explained the plan other than come here and get Sophie (a who, not a what, though Parker was pretty sure she had heard of ships with girl names) and Parker was trying to focus on the job and getting through this mess.
But there was a lot of expensive stuff around and her fingers were itching to steal some of it and test her fiddlies on that old looking lock and next time her handler took her out for some extra curricular theft she would have to hit a companion training house, because there were shinies everywhere here.
They turned down yet another hallway and into a big room with a long table and fancily dressed girls sitting at a meal (and was it dinner time yet?) with a middle aged woman at the head of the table talking, though she sounded like she was talking in Latin, or pig-Latin (which wasn’t actually Latin spoken by pigs), or maybe whatever it was they spoke in that colony where everyone sounded like Badger.
Parker didn’t really care that much, but the silver on the table was shiny and she knew, like, eight fences here on Osiris that would give her a good price on it and it might be enough to get her Handler to take her out to jump off buildings for a night.
The woman looked up and distinctly said “Nathan…” before she turned back to the other women and looked like she was excusing herself.
“A companion?” Parker heard Eliot whisper to Nate. “I say no.”
Hardison seemed to share the opinion, though he wasn’t voicing it. Parker knew generally speaking agents tended to view companions with a certain amount of suspicion, not sure what to make of men and women taken and trained by the alliance at an early age, like those on Olympus, but at the same time so very different.
Not to mention, Parker wasn’t entirely sure what a person who Parker couldn’t understand would do for them.
But then the woman had come over to them and was leading them off and Parker let herself get distracted by mentally planning how she would steal things and get out, trying to balance maximum profit with the shortest escape, until they reached a small but ornately decorated sitting room.
The woman, Sophie Parker was guessing, was talking again and Parker stared at her, trying to work out what she was actually saying. Nate seemed to have made up his mind to work with her.
“I’m a citizen now, honest.” Okay, that wasn’t exactly what Sophie said but it was what Parker was pretty sure she *meant* to say. It wasn’t so hard to figure out. She just had to pay attention.
“I’m not.” Nate responded giving a weird look.
“You’re playing my side?" Sophie smiled. "I always knew you had it in you.”
Nate gave a new weird look (Nate had a lot of weird looks, nearly everyone did, but this was a weird look that was different than the others she’d seen him give). After a moment he asked. “Are you in?”
Nate gave a grin that made Parker feel oddly warm in her stomach, something she didn’t really know what it meant, and Sophie was responding. “I wouldn’t miss this.”
oOo
They’d left the training house and flown to some apartment complex Hardison had for them. He led them up to a flat (67 stories up, she’d need her number 3 rig to reach ground level from here. She wasn’t sure where she’d left that rig in the chaos of getting nearly dead, which made her sad because she really liked that rig).
The only conversation up to that point had been Eliot trying to confirm the security of their soon to be new HQ and Hardison reassuring him it was an HTO safe house he’d been using for the mission and would have to himself for the next week.
After they walked in and saw the space, the tech, the clean lines and good conditions, the pool table that Parker knew couldn’t possibly be there because Olympus put it there… Eliot muttered something about spoiled geeks.
They filtered into the apartment, Nate heading over to the wall with computer screens with that 'getting down to business' expression on his face and Parker’s stomach fell.
It had been nearly eighteen hours since she’d eaten what was left of her mission rations. She normally would have stolen some more food by now but she hadn’t had a chance yet. There was a refrigerator in the corner, but Nate had the 'down to business' face on and she knew from her Handlers that people with down to business faces never took kindly to being asked if they could break for dinner.
She’d just have to wait.
She sat on the couch trying to get psyched about the new job. She liked her work. She liked planning and stealing and jumping off buildings and sometimes blowing things up. It was fun. It was all she knew how to do, all she was good (the best) at, and life was easier when you enjoyed what you had to do.
But she was hungry.
Hardison sat next to her and she was almost certain it was his stomach making that rumbly sound. She’d learned how to keep that from happening from Archie (a rumbly stomach could get you caught and killed when stealth was needed).
Sophie had taken her seat next to Nate on the other couch (and somewhere in Parker’s head it registered as weirdly funny how she was here on this couch with Hardison on one side and Eliot half perched on the arm rest on her other side while Nate and Sophie sat on the other couch together) but Sophie was looking at them rather than the screen.
A moment later she leaned closer to Nate, whispering something to their handler and another look Parker couldn’t understand crossed his face and suddenly he wasn’t in get down to business mode but a sort of stumbly awkward mode. He glanced toward Sophie and she smiled wickedly and Parker wondered why Sophie was making sex jokes to Nate (because it was the only explanation that made sense in Parker's head, even if it didn’t really make sense).
Nate cleared his throat, Sophie had definitely just made a joke about sex. “You three um…” A joke about them? Wow. Sophie was into some kinky stuff. Then again she was a companion.
Parker let out a little bark of laughter and there was an awkward pause when everyone looked at her like she was crazy and Eliot and Hardison didn’t already know that.
Nate took another beat to shake it off. “I know…” he started. “You three have said…” Another pause before he seemed to just give up trying. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the transmitter and she felt Hardison stiffen next to her and Eliot stood up completely, suddenly tense, taking a half step forward, not quite putting himself between them and Nate but making himself the closest target. Parker forced herself to swallow the surge of fear at that thing being taken out, eyes locking onto it.
There was another beat of silence, Nate going still, surprised for some reason, before starting. “Hardison, I…”
Hardison tensed further, words spewing out of his lips, his form folding forward like he was already anticipating the shock. “I’m sorry, I’m ready to get to work, I-" He cut himself off, but not because of pain. Probably realizing he’d cut Nate off.
Parker forced her eyes to Nate’s face, wanting to see his eyes on Hardison, to know if he was only going to target Hardison or if she should be bracing herself.
She didn’t understand why his eyes were closed, and why his look of rage had something else and didn’t seem directed at Hardison.
She didn’t understand why he was squeezing the transmitter so tightly his knuckles were white and it looked like he was trying to crush it with his hand. Shocking wasn’t that hard. It was just targeting and the big red button.
Nate opened his eyes and dropped the transmitter like it had burned him, the device landing on the carpet and half bouncing toward the three of them.
He took a breath, his expression changing, going blank, and Parker wondered if maybe he was having a stroke because she was pretty sure loose limbs and lack of facial expressions were caused by strokes. Or was it herpes?
Nate took another breath and he looked between them and Parker felt something in her chest shift weirdly, like it had back in the warehouse when he told them what to do and got them all out safely and didn’t ask them to leave Eliot behind.
His eyes ended on Eliot and Nate spoke slowly, deliberately, each word fully formed and meaning something even if they were alien to her. “I was acting as your handler for the first job. That job is over. Now… I’m just the mastermind behind the con. You three can handle yourselves.”
She didn’t know what that meant.
A long moment passed before Eliot moved, slowly, like he was going into battle or something, crossing to where the transmitter sat on the floor and picking it up, straightening up and locking eyes with Nate.
The Hand- the mastermind nodded and Eliot slipped the transmitter into his jacket pocket. He turned back to her and Hardison and said. “Let’s see if Geek-boy has something edible in this place.”
Without another word Eliot headed toward the kitchen and Parker didn’t need more than a moment to process that it was now Eliot’s job to tell them when it was dinner time and he said it was dinner time so she could eat.
She vaulted over the back of the couch and headed after the LTO into the kitchen, Hardison only a step behind, complaining loudly that he had real food, thanking Eliot very much for some weird reason.
Nate and Sophie stayed on the couch.
Once Parker found a box of cereal she perched on the counter, happy that HTs were kept in the best environments of anyone at Olympus. She hadn’t had cereal in forever. Now she could eat her cereal and watch Hardison try to defend his food stocks while both he and Eliot tried to scrounge up something that Eliot could eat.
“So you’re our handler now Eliot?” She asked in Greek. Every agent on Olympus was fluent in it by the time they were eight but few trainers even ever learned more than the basics so she doubted Sophie or Nate would just *happen* to know it. “Can an agent be a handler? Does it mean you’re not an agent anymore?”
“There’s something wrong with you,” Eliot muttered, glaring at her over the can he’d pulled out of the shelves and was now studying. From their progress so far it looked like Eliot would just be taking dietary replacements. She made a face at the thought. She carried some herself, even agents who could eat more than the, like, nine things an LTO with Eliot’s level of genetic and internal modification could digest carried them. A small bottle of them could keep you going for a month without suffering from malnourishment.
But they tasted like moldy chalk dust and did nothing to stop you from actually being hungry.
He put the can down with a little more force than was probably necessary and Hardison closed the last cabinet, muttering an apology before taking his own dinner out of the heater, leaning against the counter as Eliot started putting the food back.
They were quiet for a moment before Eliot responded to her question finally. “I’m not your handler,” he said firmly. “We don’t have a handler right now.”
“But we’re not at Olympus,” Parker stated. “And we don’t have our Fathers so we need a Handler.” It was fact. They were agents. Agents had their Fathers at Olympus and Handlers when they left Olympus. Handlers and Fathers organized their housing and got them food and clothes and medical attention and Parker didn’t know how to do those things.
Maybe she could? She could just steal food and she didn’t need clothes, she was already wearing clothes though she’d probably want to change sometime in the next six days and she didn’t know what happened to her bag and… well she was staying here but she couldn’t sleep here. She couldn’t sleep with other people in the room. She could sleep in the air vents if they were the right type.
It was terrifying to not have a Handler.
She smiled a little, getting an adrenalin rush from just standing still was kind of awesome. She ate another handful of cereal as celebration, mentally congratulating herself on finding the food without a handler. Never mind that she’d done it in a pinch before, when she was desperate. This was different.
“It’s just a few days,” Hardison said.
Parker couldn’t tell if he was trying to reassure himself or stating something he wasn’t happy about.
Eliot put the last of the food back, got a glass of water, and downed the pills. A beat passed and she found herself just sitting there, wondering what came next, waiting for him to…
No. She didn’t have a handler now. She was a freelancer.
She jumped down from the counter and went back to the couch.
And she took her cereal with her.
A half hour later Hardison had gone through most of the copies he’d made of the files they’d stolen, Nate looking weirdly at the designs. Sophie had actually spoken to Eliot, who'd actually responded and they had had a conversation that sounded like they were flirting but felt like they had guns pointed at each other and were seeing who’s was bigger.
Companions made no sense but she’d never seen an LTO make so little sense. They were generally easy to understand. They hit people and growled angrily and then they died. They were straight people. Not twisty people like Companions.
She was thinking about that when Hardison let out a whooping noise and Parker turned to look only to see his fingers flying across the keyboard in his hand, images whipping across the screen. He was talking about something Parker didn’t really understand involving a hidden cipher, shadow memory vaults, and something about the age of the geek-baby.
What she did understand was that suddenly the screen wasn’t showing boring blueprints to a space ship but dozens of files, popping up with graphs and reports and tables.
Silence.
“We didn’t steal space craft designs,” Hardison muttered, clicking through the reports, speed reading them like only an HTO could. “This is from The Academy.” His voice went a little quieter, “I’ve heard about it, it’s another DID initiative, brand new, the program may end up rivaling Olympus if they ever manage to…” His voice trailed off as he clicked and brought up a picture and bio of a teenage girl with brown hair and scared eyes. “…have a success.”
“Like her?” Sophie asked.
Hardison nodded, reading still. “Sorta… she’s not quite deployable yet but apparently she’s already been shown to several high ranking officials personally, as an example of the project’s potential.”
“What’s left before she’s ready?” Nate asked.
Hardison let out a breath but Eliot answered first, eyes scanning over the reports on the screen. “They stripped her amygdala, messed with her brain god knows how many other ways, says they’re working on behavioral conditioning.” His voice was more gravely than usual as he finished, “My guess is she’s gone completely insane.”
There was a quiet moment and Parker realized everyone wasn’t sure how to respond, since Eliot knew because they’d done something like that to him and okay, kinda awkward.
“So Dubenich was hiring us to steal back space-craft plans that were actually information on a top secrete DID initiative?” Nate asked.
“I’m pretty sure he was just hiring us to steal them,” Hardison answered, looking over to Nate. “I mean, I was wondering why Dubenich cared so much about space craft designs before but, now it makes total sense man.”
Nate was looking at Hardison the way he normally looked at her and Parker wasn’t sure she liked Hardison confusing Nate. That was her job.
Though she did kind of like not being confused when Nate was.
“Dubenich is the head of one of the research divisions at Olympus.” Eliot explained. “His job at Barrington is a cover. It’s how he got three agents to do a job for him without questions asked.” Eliot was looking at the screen now, his eyes on the girl, his face set cold. “He probably had us steal the files to use them in his own work.”
“Alright…” Nate said after half a beat, standing up and walking up to the screen. “So this guy used his connections to get us to steal information to help his own experiments on unwilling subjects. I know just the thing.” He nodded, “Let's go steal a Brown coat.”
He turned and left the room before Parker could figure out if the segue meant anything or if he was just cold and liked the color brown. She turned to look at Sophie, who should know this kind of thing if she was making sex jokes to him.
Her response of a shrug and commenting that he hadn’t changed a bit was entirely unhelpful.
oOo
And that was how she found herself in the air vents in some building, listening with some surprise as Sophie lied and lied and lied and broke rules (and weren’t companions supposed to be really anal about not breaking rules? Like Alpha classes only sexy) and grifted her way into the offices for a secure building.
They were just getting some preliminary information. They had to be careful. Their real target was a lot harder to get to.
So she sat in the air vent as Sophie did things companions weren’t supposed to do, to get some guy out of his office (and really, how could Sophie flirt with a man while making him paranoid crazy about a subordinate who was stabbed in the neck with a pen?) and then Eliot came in and charmed the lady at the desk (and seriously, LTOs were not supposed to be able to do that) while Hardison talked and even joked with Nate (no agent was supposed to do that) and he was talking and joking right back (and no one ever did that with an agent).
And she did her thing and got what she needed and Hardison did his hacking thing and she got out and as she was crawling through the vents she realized she was playing pretty okay with them, and she wasn't supposed to do that either.
Parker just doesn’t play well with others.
But none of the others were doing what they’re supposed to so maybe, just this once, it’s alright.