Humble Pie [15/20]
Dean starts slowly, firstly because he’s not sure how the land lies with Victor Henricksen, and secondly because he’s currently got a gun pointed to his head.
“Hey, man, can we just talk about this?”
“No. Get in the car.”
He raises his hands in a placating gesture, trying to calm the other man down, ’cause he really doesn’t fancy getting shot twice in one day if he can help it. “Whoa, okay, just wave the gun around why don’t you?”
“In the car!”
And maybe it’s the stress of the situation finally getting to him, maybe it’s his anger and frustration at all this having blown up at the same fucking time, maybe it’s watching Castiel, a guy who he’s almost come to think of as a sort-of friend get dragged away right before his eyes, maybe it’s none of this, maybe it’s all of it, but Dean Winchester just can’t take it anymore and he just snaps.
“You know what? I haven’t got time for this fucking bullshit. I have to get back to the others, ’cause we’re doing something damn important - in fact we’re pretty much doing your fucking job for you - so the least you can do is stop wasting my fucking time.”
Henricksen laughs. “Wasting your time? You think you’re so cute, with your bluster and your jokes and your sarcasm, don’t you?”
“This isn’t about me, okay? Not anymore. This is way bigger than me, way bigger than you and your petty fucking grudge against me, and right now you’re either in or you’re out, and I’m not gonna hang around here waiting for you to make up your fucking mind. Either you can lock my ass up or you can help me take down the biggest fuckers ever who might just be doing something so illegal it’s actually unconstitutional.”
He’s shouting, he knows he should calm down, can feel his pulse hammering in his throat and his hairline damp with sweat, but all caution has been thrown to the winds right now and he no longer cares, he just wants to do something, he can’t just stand here and take it anymore, not when there is so much at stake. So when Henricksen doesn’t answer, Dean takes it as a signal to continue, a chance to press his advantage.
“We pretty much have proof that Divinity Inc. is kidnapping and enslaving people,” he says, more slowly, more calmly, more rationally. “Now, I don’t know what you’ve got on me, but even if I’ve done it - which, by the way, if this is about the Berrisfords again, then you should know that wasn’t my fault, not really - but even if I have done all the stuff you’re meant to be booking me for, even that can’t compare with actually innocent people being taken away from their homes and theirfamilies, being dragged off in chains and being sold for the entertainment and convenience of others, right? I mean, you’re a cop, I get it, but this is a chance to actually do some good, to make an actual difference, and I’d sure as hell take that chance above the opportunity to lock up some random criminal with a list of petty offenses.
He’s panting with exertion and frustration after his little speech, all the pent up anger bubbling up inside of him and spilling over with his words, each one punctuated with decisive gesticulations.
And, well. There goes nothing.
He stares at Henricksen, trying to gauge the other man’s reaction, trying to tell if he should start dodging bullets anytime soon, but the man’s face is a closed book and Dean hasn’t got the faintest clue whether he’s persuaded him or just made the biggest mistake of his career.
Scratch that, the biggest mistake of his life. And quite possibly the last one, too.
He may not have Gordon on his tail anymore, but he sure as hell ain’t out of the woods yet.
The drive back to Bobby’s house is uncomfortable to say the least. Because, let’s face it, not half an hour ago these two men were on completely opposite sides of the river, but now?
Dean glances over to Henricksen in the passenger seat. Now, he seems to have found an ally in the most unlikely of places.
He’ll never know what made Henricksen decide to help him, although I can tell you it’s the one thing that’s kept Henricksen motivated for as long as is important, and I’m sure you can guess her name by now. But the fact is, the moment Dean had a chance to explain himself - explain that he neither stole nor kidnapped Castiel, explain that he knows things about the slave companies that they’re willing to kill for, and explain that the memory stick they came to find might just have all the answers that they’re looking for - Henricksen turned from ‘enemy’ to ‘slightly cautious friend’.
They reach Bobby’s house half an hour after Jo did, and Dean’s only just parked the car when Sam appears in the doorway, worry etched into his face. It’s an all-too-common expression of his these days. Dean would change that in a heartbeat if he could.
“Dean!” Sam’s upon him in a moment, enveloping him in a bear hug, and Dean presses his face into his brother’s shoulder, savoring the togetherness. He and Sam rarely physically show their emotion for each other - they’re men, that’s not so much what they do - but that means that when they do, it’s all the more important. This shows better than anything else ever could the depth of Sam’s worry.
“Jo told us you were arrested; how-?” Sam stops the moment he sees Henricksen, who has been watching this whole display with a mixture of amusement and discomfort.
Sam’s brows knit together in confusion. “Uh ...”
“This is Henricksen,” Dean explains. “It’s okay, he’s, uh, a friend I guess.”
Sam shoots him a look, and Dean shrugs. “Gordon came after me, and Henricksen killed him. Saved my life, pretty much. Then I explained about Divnity and all that crap, and he went all Superman on me and said he’d give us a hand.”
“Dean …” Sam shakes his head, lowering his tone. “What do you think you’re doing? This guy’s a cop, the cop who’s been chasing us over two states. This is the guy who killed Ash, Dean.”
“You think I don’t know that? I get it. But right now we’re way out of our depth, and I figure we need all the help we can get. Besides, if I hadn’t explained all this shit to him, he’d have locked my ass up, and then we’d be even more fucked.”
Sam still doesn’t look convinced, but he sighs. “Well, I just hope you know what you’re doing. And I’ll leave you to break the news to Jo, ’cause I doubt she’s going to be very happy.”
Shit. He’ll be lucky to get away with his body even remotely intact. “Yeah, whatever.” He turns back to Henricksen, who is looking more and more bemused by the minute. “You got Sammy’s seal of approval, so you’re in no imminent danger of being attacked.” He grins. “So, what’s for dinner, Sammy boy?”
Sam shakes his head. “You’re unbelievable.”
“Nah, I’m adorable.”
They’ve barely made it five steps before Gabriel appears, and suddenly things get a hell of a lot more complicated.
“Look, Gabriel-” Dean begins, but the other man walks straight past him, eyes searching for a man that isn’t there before rounding on Dean, stepping right up and grabbing his shirt, fists bunching the material.
“Where is he? Where’s my brother? What the fuck have you done?”
At a look from Dean, Sam takes over. He’s always been better with the touchy-feely shit, and, added bonus, he doesn’t hate Gabriel as much as Dean does.
“I’m sorry, Gabriel. Cas got taken.”
Gabriel’s eyes never leave Dean’s face, so Dean can see how utterly these words break him. For a moment, he just stands there, as if in shock; and then he throws Dean away from him with more force than he would have expected.
“You bastard,” he says, far more quietly than Dean would be able to manage if the roles were reversed and it was Sam who’d just been taken away. “You absolute fucking bastard! That’s my brother! He trusted you!” His voice rises to a crescendo, fingernails digging into his palms as he clenches his fists, and Dean can only imagine what he must be going through. It’s almost funny, because he’s never felt able to relate to Gabriel before, never seen him as anything other than a monumental irritation, and now he’s finally able to ... to sympathize, almost, Gabriel hates him even more than he used to hate Gabriel.
That’s called irony, boys and girls, and after all this time, Dean’s practically on first name terms with it.
It will take Jo an hour to battle her way into Ash’s memory stick, find the password, and hack into the satellite storage facility, although it won’t be until two hours after Dean and Henricksen arrived that anyone actually sees anything, because right now she’s broken off for an extended shouting match with the universe.
“I can’t believe you brought him here!” she screeches for the fifth time. “I can’t believe you’re trusting him!”
“Right now, I don’t think we have a choice,” Dean explains, his patience wearing thin, because between them Gabriel and Jo are going to send him to an early grave. “We need all the help we can get.”
“Dean, he killed Ash.”
“I know and I’m sorry, but there’s nothing anyone can do that will change that now. What I’m more concerned about is not getting killed myself.”
Jo looks like she would continue arguing given half a chance, but Henricksen begins to speak before can.
“Look, I don’t like this any more than you do, and I sure as hell don’t trust any of you, but it looks to me like we’ve got a common goal, so why don’t we all quit whining and start deciding what we’re gonna do. You guys do have a plan, right? Or did you drag my ass all the way out here just so you could yell at each other?”
Dean at least has the decency to look slightly sheepish, but Ellen just raises an eyebrow skeptically. “Why’re you helping us, anyway?”
Henricksen shrugs. “I think there’s something going on with the slavers, only I don’t know what because every time I get close to finding anything I get reassigned.”
“Okay, now what’s the real reason? Come on, detective, we all know there’s no way you’d put your job on the line like this by helping us unless there was some personal reason.”
He has to give her points for bullishness, that’s for sure. Her hard-headed, no-nonsense attitude reminds him of himself somewhat. That doesn’t mean he has to like it. “I think they took my niece, Nancy.”
Ellen scrutinizes him for a moment before nodding. “He can stay.”
“Great,” Dean says, breaking into the conversation. “Now, there’s no way to say this nicely, but they got Cas, and we need to get him back.”
“No, we don’t.”
All eyes turn to Bobby.
“Look, I’m sorry, boy, but we just can’t spare the time or the effort to go on a wild goose chase to get some kid back.”
“What the hell?” Dean feels like punching something. They need Castiel, they need his help, and anyway, he wouldn’t even have been caught if it wasn’t for Dean, so it’s sort of his responsibility to get him back. He can’t just leave him there. “Are you serious?”
“He’s right, Dean,” Sam says with a sigh. “I’m just as worried about Cas as you are, but running in there and getting ourselves arrested or killed is not going to help anyone. The best we can do is go with the original plan, and try and get Cas out when we get all the others. He’ll just have to hang in there for a couple of days, that’s all.”
“He won’t last that long,” Gabriel murmurs, after a pause. “Zachariah isn’t known for being forgiving.”
It’s a weird echo of something Castiel said not too long ago, and something about the fact that Castiel himself isn’t here to say it makes Dean feel very empty inside.
When Jo finally breaks into Ash’s hard drive, she finds far more than anyone ever expected. Everyone crowds around her to see, much like they did that first time, although now it’s half a day later and pushing midnight.
There is just one folder on the hard drive, and it’s clearly labeled, in very un-Ash-like style, ‘The Roman Project’. Jo glances up at everyone before double clicking on it, and a video window appears, frozen on Ash’s lively face for a moment as it buffers, before finally beginning.
“Howdy folks. If you’re looking at this and I’m not standing over your shoulder, then I’m dead. Good to know. I kind of expected something like this to happen eventually.”
“He knew?” breathes Jo, her face stricken. “The bastard.”
“But that’s not what’s important right now. The point is, I’ve been looking into Divinity and their stuff for a while now, and I’ve traced it all the way back to this guy Richard Roman, and his company Roman Enterprises. He’s pulling all the ropes, and it’s since he got on board that stuff started happening. But that’s not what’s important, because the important part is that they’re lying. When they say that all their slaves are born into slavery, they’re lying. Possibly as much as 30% of slaves are actually freeborn and are sold or kidnapped into slavery later.
“I didn’t realize this until you asked me to look into it. I’ve been concentrating on the Roman Enterprises part of stuff, because this company has its fingers in all sorts of pies and has all sorts of fishy things going on if you ask me, but this ... This is big. This is bigger than I think any of us thought it would be, and if I’m dead now then you guys need to sort this out yourselves. You’ll find everything I’ve discovered in this file, numbers, figures, stuff I’ve hacked from their records ... It’s not enough to take them down, or I would’ve done it already, because their men are everywhere, even in the police and FBI, so you guys need to be careful.
“Right. That’s about all from me. Watch your backs. These guys are powerful and they’re mean, and obviously they’ve already killed me just to shut me up, so they’ll happily do the same to you guys.” He grins brightly at the morbid news, totally out of key and yet totally Ash at the same time, and even Dean, who never knew him that well, feels his heart contract.
“Oh, one more thing before you go …” Ash’s face turns serious, and for a moment it looks like he’s battling with himself, trying to find the right words to say, brow furrowed, fingers drumming on the keyboard. “Tell Jo ... ”
The screen cuts to black, white words blinking ‘MEMORY FULL’ at them, and they all sit in silence for a moment.
Jo pretends not to cry, and everyone pretends not to notice.
Sometimes it’s better to look elsewhere.
Ash’s folder is comprehensive. It contains everything he said it would and more, all with timestamps and comments from Ash written in red. It’s all far more organized than anything else Ash-related Dean’s ever seen, and the precision of his labeling and filing, right down to copies of emails sent and snippets of videos and links to audio feeds, leads Dean to realize that, actually, he never really knew Ash at all.
He lets out a low whistle. “Well, if Ash ever wanted to go into international espionage, he would’ve wiped the floor with Bond.”
The first document Jo opens up is just a long list of numbers, cross-referenced with other numbers and something that could be codes because they’re a mixture of letters and numbers, all jumbled up together. The next two documents are pretty much the same, a whole load of numbers that mean absolutely jack to anyone looking at them, although Ash seems to have gotten the idea because his little red comments appear periodically, saying equally unhelpful things like ‘CF doc6 p89; could this be L7984?’.
Jo skips the next ten documents and opens one labelled ‘Convention’. It’s a blueprint of the area where the convention is going to be held, complete with handwritten notes about where security guards will be posted. They stare at it for a moment, because it’s almost like Ash has read their minds from beyond the grave.
“How ... How did he know we’d need this?” Sam asks, almost in awe.
“Guess he must’ve just been a genius. Or psychic.” It’s meant as a joke, something Dean does to alleviate the tension, but it’s in poor taste. He changes the subject: “Hey, Jo, try that one down there.” He points to a document with a timestamp for the day Ash died.
She looks at it for a long time, almost as if she’s trying to memorize the numbers that say ‘Ash opened this, Ash clicked on this, Ash was the last person to look at this, this may have been the last thing Ash looked at’. Then, finally, she opens it.
They’re greeted with a picture of someone’s face, a young teenage girl, and it doesn’t take them long to work out that it’s a file on the girl. Her name is here, her age, a doctor’s assessment, physical description, notes on her mental state and characteristics, a long identification code ...
“My God,” Ellen breathes. “This is one of the ones they captured and sold.”
Jo scrolls down to the next page; another face, another name. The next page, another person stares out from the computer screen. Another and another and another. A person a page.
The document is over ten thousand pages long.
“Hey, man, can we just talk about this?”
“No. Get in the car.”
He raises his hands in a placating gesture, trying to calm the other man down, ’cause he really doesn’t fancy getting shot twice in one day if he can help it. “Whoa, okay, just wave the gun around why don’t you?”
“In the car!”
And maybe it’s the stress of the situation finally getting to him, maybe it’s his anger and frustration at all this having blown up at the same fucking time, maybe it’s watching Castiel, a guy who he’s almost come to think of as a sort-of friend get dragged away right before his eyes, maybe it’s none of this, maybe it’s all of it, but Dean Winchester just can’t take it anymore and he just snaps.
“You know what? I haven’t got time for this fucking bullshit. I have to get back to the others, ’cause we’re doing something damn important - in fact we’re pretty much doing your fucking job for you - so the least you can do is stop wasting my fucking time.”
Henricksen laughs. “Wasting your time? You think you’re so cute, with your bluster and your jokes and your sarcasm, don’t you?”
“This isn’t about me, okay? Not anymore. This is way bigger than me, way bigger than you and your petty fucking grudge against me, and right now you’re either in or you’re out, and I’m not gonna hang around here waiting for you to make up your fucking mind. Either you can lock my ass up or you can help me take down the biggest fuckers ever who might just be doing something so illegal it’s actually unconstitutional.”
He’s shouting, he knows he should calm down, can feel his pulse hammering in his throat and his hairline damp with sweat, but all caution has been thrown to the winds right now and he no longer cares, he just wants to do something, he can’t just stand here and take it anymore, not when there is so much at stake. So when Henricksen doesn’t answer, Dean takes it as a signal to continue, a chance to press his advantage.
“We pretty much have proof that Divinity Inc. is kidnapping and enslaving people,” he says, more slowly, more calmly, more rationally. “Now, I don’t know what you’ve got on me, but even if I’ve done it - which, by the way, if this is about the Berrisfords again, then you should know that wasn’t my fault, not really - but even if I have done all the stuff you’re meant to be booking me for, even that can’t compare with actually innocent people being taken away from their homes and theirfamilies, being dragged off in chains and being sold for the entertainment and convenience of others, right? I mean, you’re a cop, I get it, but this is a chance to actually do some good, to make an actual difference, and I’d sure as hell take that chance above the opportunity to lock up some random criminal with a list of petty offenses.
He’s panting with exertion and frustration after his little speech, all the pent up anger bubbling up inside of him and spilling over with his words, each one punctuated with decisive gesticulations.
And, well. There goes nothing.
He stares at Henricksen, trying to gauge the other man’s reaction, trying to tell if he should start dodging bullets anytime soon, but the man’s face is a closed book and Dean hasn’t got the faintest clue whether he’s persuaded him or just made the biggest mistake of his career.
Scratch that, the biggest mistake of his life. And quite possibly the last one, too.
He may not have Gordon on his tail anymore, but he sure as hell ain’t out of the woods yet.
The drive back to Bobby’s house is uncomfortable to say the least. Because, let’s face it, not half an hour ago these two men were on completely opposite sides of the river, but now?
Dean glances over to Henricksen in the passenger seat. Now, he seems to have found an ally in the most unlikely of places.
He’ll never know what made Henricksen decide to help him, although I can tell you it’s the one thing that’s kept Henricksen motivated for as long as is important, and I’m sure you can guess her name by now. But the fact is, the moment Dean had a chance to explain himself - explain that he neither stole nor kidnapped Castiel, explain that he knows things about the slave companies that they’re willing to kill for, and explain that the memory stick they came to find might just have all the answers that they’re looking for - Henricksen turned from ‘enemy’ to ‘slightly cautious friend’.
They reach Bobby’s house half an hour after Jo did, and Dean’s only just parked the car when Sam appears in the doorway, worry etched into his face. It’s an all-too-common expression of his these days. Dean would change that in a heartbeat if he could.
“Dean!” Sam’s upon him in a moment, enveloping him in a bear hug, and Dean presses his face into his brother’s shoulder, savoring the togetherness. He and Sam rarely physically show their emotion for each other - they’re men, that’s not so much what they do - but that means that when they do, it’s all the more important. This shows better than anything else ever could the depth of Sam’s worry.
“Jo told us you were arrested; how-?” Sam stops the moment he sees Henricksen, who has been watching this whole display with a mixture of amusement and discomfort.
Sam’s brows knit together in confusion. “Uh ...”
“This is Henricksen,” Dean explains. “It’s okay, he’s, uh, a friend I guess.”
Sam shoots him a look, and Dean shrugs. “Gordon came after me, and Henricksen killed him. Saved my life, pretty much. Then I explained about Divnity and all that crap, and he went all Superman on me and said he’d give us a hand.”
“Dean …” Sam shakes his head, lowering his tone. “What do you think you’re doing? This guy’s a cop, the cop who’s been chasing us over two states. This is the guy who killed Ash, Dean.”
“You think I don’t know that? I get it. But right now we’re way out of our depth, and I figure we need all the help we can get. Besides, if I hadn’t explained all this shit to him, he’d have locked my ass up, and then we’d be even more fucked.”
Sam still doesn’t look convinced, but he sighs. “Well, I just hope you know what you’re doing. And I’ll leave you to break the news to Jo, ’cause I doubt she’s going to be very happy.”
Shit. He’ll be lucky to get away with his body even remotely intact. “Yeah, whatever.” He turns back to Henricksen, who is looking more and more bemused by the minute. “You got Sammy’s seal of approval, so you’re in no imminent danger of being attacked.” He grins. “So, what’s for dinner, Sammy boy?”
Sam shakes his head. “You’re unbelievable.”
“Nah, I’m adorable.”
They’ve barely made it five steps before Gabriel appears, and suddenly things get a hell of a lot more complicated.
“Look, Gabriel-” Dean begins, but the other man walks straight past him, eyes searching for a man that isn’t there before rounding on Dean, stepping right up and grabbing his shirt, fists bunching the material.
“Where is he? Where’s my brother? What the fuck have you done?”
At a look from Dean, Sam takes over. He’s always been better with the touchy-feely shit, and, added bonus, he doesn’t hate Gabriel as much as Dean does.
“I’m sorry, Gabriel. Cas got taken.”
Gabriel’s eyes never leave Dean’s face, so Dean can see how utterly these words break him. For a moment, he just stands there, as if in shock; and then he throws Dean away from him with more force than he would have expected.
“You bastard,” he says, far more quietly than Dean would be able to manage if the roles were reversed and it was Sam who’d just been taken away. “You absolute fucking bastard! That’s my brother! He trusted you!” His voice rises to a crescendo, fingernails digging into his palms as he clenches his fists, and Dean can only imagine what he must be going through. It’s almost funny, because he’s never felt able to relate to Gabriel before, never seen him as anything other than a monumental irritation, and now he’s finally able to ... to sympathize, almost, Gabriel hates him even more than he used to hate Gabriel.
That’s called irony, boys and girls, and after all this time, Dean’s practically on first name terms with it.
It will take Jo an hour to battle her way into Ash’s memory stick, find the password, and hack into the satellite storage facility, although it won’t be until two hours after Dean and Henricksen arrived that anyone actually sees anything, because right now she’s broken off for an extended shouting match with the universe.
“I can’t believe you brought him here!” she screeches for the fifth time. “I can’t believe you’re trusting him!”
“Right now, I don’t think we have a choice,” Dean explains, his patience wearing thin, because between them Gabriel and Jo are going to send him to an early grave. “We need all the help we can get.”
“Dean, he killed Ash.”
“I know and I’m sorry, but there’s nothing anyone can do that will change that now. What I’m more concerned about is not getting killed myself.”
Jo looks like she would continue arguing given half a chance, but Henricksen begins to speak before can.
“Look, I don’t like this any more than you do, and I sure as hell don’t trust any of you, but it looks to me like we’ve got a common goal, so why don’t we all quit whining and start deciding what we’re gonna do. You guys do have a plan, right? Or did you drag my ass all the way out here just so you could yell at each other?”
Dean at least has the decency to look slightly sheepish, but Ellen just raises an eyebrow skeptically. “Why’re you helping us, anyway?”
Henricksen shrugs. “I think there’s something going on with the slavers, only I don’t know what because every time I get close to finding anything I get reassigned.”
“Okay, now what’s the real reason? Come on, detective, we all know there’s no way you’d put your job on the line like this by helping us unless there was some personal reason.”
He has to give her points for bullishness, that’s for sure. Her hard-headed, no-nonsense attitude reminds him of himself somewhat. That doesn’t mean he has to like it. “I think they took my niece, Nancy.”
Ellen scrutinizes him for a moment before nodding. “He can stay.”
“Great,” Dean says, breaking into the conversation. “Now, there’s no way to say this nicely, but they got Cas, and we need to get him back.”
“No, we don’t.”
All eyes turn to Bobby.
“Look, I’m sorry, boy, but we just can’t spare the time or the effort to go on a wild goose chase to get some kid back.”
“What the hell?” Dean feels like punching something. They need Castiel, they need his help, and anyway, he wouldn’t even have been caught if it wasn’t for Dean, so it’s sort of his responsibility to get him back. He can’t just leave him there. “Are you serious?”
“He’s right, Dean,” Sam says with a sigh. “I’m just as worried about Cas as you are, but running in there and getting ourselves arrested or killed is not going to help anyone. The best we can do is go with the original plan, and try and get Cas out when we get all the others. He’ll just have to hang in there for a couple of days, that’s all.”
“He won’t last that long,” Gabriel murmurs, after a pause. “Zachariah isn’t known for being forgiving.”
It’s a weird echo of something Castiel said not too long ago, and something about the fact that Castiel himself isn’t here to say it makes Dean feel very empty inside.
When Jo finally breaks into Ash’s hard drive, she finds far more than anyone ever expected. Everyone crowds around her to see, much like they did that first time, although now it’s half a day later and pushing midnight.
There is just one folder on the hard drive, and it’s clearly labeled, in very un-Ash-like style, ‘The Roman Project’. Jo glances up at everyone before double clicking on it, and a video window appears, frozen on Ash’s lively face for a moment as it buffers, before finally beginning.
“Howdy folks. If you’re looking at this and I’m not standing over your shoulder, then I’m dead. Good to know. I kind of expected something like this to happen eventually.”
“He knew?” breathes Jo, her face stricken. “The bastard.”
“But that’s not what’s important right now. The point is, I’ve been looking into Divinity and their stuff for a while now, and I’ve traced it all the way back to this guy Richard Roman, and his company Roman Enterprises. He’s pulling all the ropes, and it’s since he got on board that stuff started happening. But that’s not what’s important, because the important part is that they’re lying. When they say that all their slaves are born into slavery, they’re lying. Possibly as much as 30% of slaves are actually freeborn and are sold or kidnapped into slavery later.
“I didn’t realize this until you asked me to look into it. I’ve been concentrating on the Roman Enterprises part of stuff, because this company has its fingers in all sorts of pies and has all sorts of fishy things going on if you ask me, but this ... This is big. This is bigger than I think any of us thought it would be, and if I’m dead now then you guys need to sort this out yourselves. You’ll find everything I’ve discovered in this file, numbers, figures, stuff I’ve hacked from their records ... It’s not enough to take them down, or I would’ve done it already, because their men are everywhere, even in the police and FBI, so you guys need to be careful.
“Right. That’s about all from me. Watch your backs. These guys are powerful and they’re mean, and obviously they’ve already killed me just to shut me up, so they’ll happily do the same to you guys.” He grins brightly at the morbid news, totally out of key and yet totally Ash at the same time, and even Dean, who never knew him that well, feels his heart contract.
“Oh, one more thing before you go …” Ash’s face turns serious, and for a moment it looks like he’s battling with himself, trying to find the right words to say, brow furrowed, fingers drumming on the keyboard. “Tell Jo ... ”
The screen cuts to black, white words blinking ‘MEMORY FULL’ at them, and they all sit in silence for a moment.
Jo pretends not to cry, and everyone pretends not to notice.
Sometimes it’s better to look elsewhere.
Ash’s folder is comprehensive. It contains everything he said it would and more, all with timestamps and comments from Ash written in red. It’s all far more organized than anything else Ash-related Dean’s ever seen, and the precision of his labeling and filing, right down to copies of emails sent and snippets of videos and links to audio feeds, leads Dean to realize that, actually, he never really knew Ash at all.
He lets out a low whistle. “Well, if Ash ever wanted to go into international espionage, he would’ve wiped the floor with Bond.”
The first document Jo opens up is just a long list of numbers, cross-referenced with other numbers and something that could be codes because they’re a mixture of letters and numbers, all jumbled up together. The next two documents are pretty much the same, a whole load of numbers that mean absolutely jack to anyone looking at them, although Ash seems to have gotten the idea because his little red comments appear periodically, saying equally unhelpful things like ‘CF doc6 p89; could this be L7984?’.
Jo skips the next ten documents and opens one labelled ‘Convention’. It’s a blueprint of the area where the convention is going to be held, complete with handwritten notes about where security guards will be posted. They stare at it for a moment, because it’s almost like Ash has read their minds from beyond the grave.
“How ... How did he know we’d need this?” Sam asks, almost in awe.
“Guess he must’ve just been a genius. Or psychic.” It’s meant as a joke, something Dean does to alleviate the tension, but it’s in poor taste. He changes the subject: “Hey, Jo, try that one down there.” He points to a document with a timestamp for the day Ash died.
She looks at it for a long time, almost as if she’s trying to memorize the numbers that say ‘Ash opened this, Ash clicked on this, Ash was the last person to look at this, this may have been the last thing Ash looked at’. Then, finally, she opens it.
They’re greeted with a picture of someone’s face, a young teenage girl, and it doesn’t take them long to work out that it’s a file on the girl. Her name is here, her age, a doctor’s assessment, physical description, notes on her mental state and characteristics, a long identification code ...
“My God,” Ellen breathes. “This is one of the ones they captured and sold.”
Jo scrolls down to the next page; another face, another name. The next page, another person stares out from the computer screen. Another and another and another. A person a page.
The document is over ten thousand pages long.