Humble Pie [16/20]
Dean waits until everyone else is asleep before going back downstairs and looking at Ash’s folder. It’s not until 4:36 am that he finds what he’s looking for.
The picture was obviously taken a long time ago, because instead of a man staring out at him, it’s a boy. But it’s still unmistakable: the dark hair, shorter in the picture and less tousled; the pale skin, lacking the slight stubble of a beard that he has now; the blue eyes, wider and more innocent than Dean would’ve believed.
He’s just a kid. Just a scared kid.
“Dean?”
He doesn’t jump. He wasn’t surprised, or anything. And it’s not like it’s dark and quiet and Gabriel just appeared out of the shadows or anything. He didn’t jump.
He closes down the window quickly, but not before Gabriel’s seen what he’s looking at. He expects Gabriel to get angry, shout at him again, but instead the other man just looks incredibly tired.
This is almost worse, because Dean knows that look and it’s the look that would make Sam sit down and talk about feelings. And Dean doesn’t want to talk about feelings. His feelings are perfectly fine where they are, thank you very much, and he doesn’t want to put them outside, voice them, stick them into the cold light of day, because if he does ... If he does, then ... Then he’ll have to ...
Anyway.
“So you found Dmitri’s file, then?” Gabriel asks, his voice flat, defeated.
“Yeah, well, I was just looking at what Ash saved and, y’know, I sort of saw his picture, so ...”
“Right.”
Neither of them moves. Neither of them says anything. I would say that neither of them breathes, but then we’d have two dead bodies on our hands and although they’re inevitably both going to die one day, it’s not going to be because they forgot to breathe, so yes, they do breathe. But quietly.
Gabriel looks like he’s battling with himself, his internal conflict written clear in every line on his face, in the angle of the eyebrows, slant of the mouth, darkness in the eyes.
It’s also a very long internal conflict, and Dean’s starting to feel very awkward, so he’s just about to break the silence when Gabriel speaks.
“What does it say?”
He blinks. “Uh ... Come and see for yourself.”
Gabriel moves almost reluctantly over to the laptop, where Dean opens up the window again, scrolling to the right page, and there’s Castiel’s face, smaller and brighter and yet more.
“My God. He was so young …”
Dean swallows, but his voice still manages to come out scratchy. “What happened?”
Gabriel breathes in deeply before answering. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean exactly that. I don’t know what happened to my baby brother. I don’t know, because I wasn’t even there.”
For a moment, Dean doesn’t think Gabriel is going to say anything else, and he can’t tell if he feels disappointed or relieved. But then Gabriel starts speaking again, slowly at first and then speeding up, as if some great weight has been lifted, opening the floodgates, and it’s all he can do to let it all pour out. And Dean just listens.
“We were born in Russia, and we lived there until Dmitri was nine and I was thirteen. Our mother died when Dmitri was five, so we grew up with our father. He was a good man, but he was never made to be a father. Or maybe he was, and that was the problem. There was always someone else he could be helping, you know? Only he never managed to get around to helping us. He had some ... unpopular ideas, too, both political and spiritual, and in the end we had to leave Russia. We came to America, because America is the land of the free, and that was my father’s dream: freedom.
“We didn’t do well here. We didn’t have much money, were living hand to mouth most days, and our father was going from job to job. We never saw much of him. Until one day, he just didn’t come home. He left, for some reason that I will probably never know, and I had to look after my brother. That was when Dmirti was twelve. I got a job. Did the best I could, but it was never, ever good enough. I couldn’t ... Our family had been torn apart, and I couldn’t just sit and watch it all collapse.
“I met Crowley. He was just starting out back then, too, we were just two guys with big ideas and big dreams and with him I didn’t have to be responsible anymore. I started seeing more and more of him. I was so, so selfish. I figured Dimi was fourteen, old enough to take care of himself, I thought he’d be okay.
“And then one day I came home to find him gone. I’d been with Crowley that night, come home late, and I always wonder, if I’d come back just an hour earlier, two maybe, could I have stopped all this?
“I never found out what had happened to Dmitri, not until I saw his picture on the news. I looked for him everywhere, of course. Crowley and I, we could’ve been rich, but most of the money went towards finding my brother. Only I never did.
“And then he just appeared, after all these years, and I ... But now ... He’s not ... I’ll never forgive myself.”
For an awful moment, Dean thinks Gabriel is going to cry.
For an even worse moment, Dean thinks he’s going to cry.
But then the moment passes, as moments always do, and Dean finds his eyes wandering back to the computer screen, and a pair of blue eyes that will haunt his dreams for weeks to come.
“So, what we need to do is find good, strong, hard evidence that Divinity Inc. is kidnapping and enslaving people,” Dean says the next morning with a renewed determination he didn’t know he had. ‘Something that’ll not only hold up in court, but that’s actually impossible to argue with, ’cause we can be sure they’ve got friends in high places who’ll try to bail them out if they can. Once we’ve got this, we can use it to bargain with them for Castiel’s release, and our safety.’
“Now, I can’t let you do that,” Henricksen says somewhat testily. “If you want my help, you’ve got to promise we’re taking these guys all the way to the courthouse, or I’m out. I want to take these guys down, not just secure your asses.”
“And there was me thinking you were just helping us out of the kindness of your heart.” He says it lightly enough, but Sam knows him well enough to recognize the undertone of danger in his voice.
“Look, we can discuss exactly what we’re going to do with this evidence once we’ve got it, okay?” he says, forever the peacemaker. “But right now, what we need to focus on is actually getting the proof. All we’ve got so far are a whole lot of stalker documents made by Ash and a heap of ideas that we can’t make work.”
“What if they’ve destroyed all the evidence?” Jo asks, and shrugs when everyone looks at her. “Well, it’s what I’d do.”
“Remind me never to get on her bad side,” Dean mutters.
“They’re a big company,” Sam says. “There’ll be heaps of bureaucracy and what have you. Even if they do try to destroy all evidence, I’d be very surprised if there wasn’t something they’d missed. There always is.”
“Okay, great. But that still doesn’t solve how we actually find this stuff.”
Henricksen looks thoughtful. “I might just have a solution for that one. There’s someone I know - got involved with her a while ago through witness protection - and she works for Roman Enterprises now, or at least she did, last I heard. If there’s a link between the two companies then it’d make sense to use her. Charlie Bradbury. One of those computer-whiz types. I could get in touch with her, see if she can do some digging …”
Dean nods. “If there’s anything to be found, it’s most likely to be on a computer somewhere. This Charlie could be just the person we need.”
Charlie Bradbury looks as eccentric as she probably is, her too-red hair and brightly printed T-shirt warning you ‘don’t taunt the octopus’ combining with the numerous electronic devices she has about her person to make her look like some kind of insane futuristic inventor on crack.
Yeah. She’s definitely a techie.
“I’ll have to access the database on-site,” she’s saying, and Dean is fading in and out listening to her because she keeps spouting nonsense computer-y terms that are just unhelpfully confusing. “It’s the Morgensterns’ private server we’ll want, and that can’t be opened remotely.”
Dean raises an eyebrow. “Can’t you just hack into it?”
“Nope. It’s got enough firewalls and security software to make it the Fort Knox of cyberspace. Technically I could manage it, but it would take me far too long. I have to use a company computer. The Morgensterns’ computer would be best, but I’m not gonna push my luck.”
He sighs. Bang goes that plan. “Okay. Right. So we need to get you inside somehow. And if it’s so well protected, how do we know that you’re even going to be able to access the server?”
“I can do it. I’ll need some time, but I can do it.”
“How?”
Charlie grins and lets forth a spew of technical terms and complicated explanations, until Dean finally holds his hands up and says, “Okay, fine, you win, I really don’t want to know that badly.”
“Let’s get started then, shall we?”
So, finally, it’s the day of the convention. (I’ve skipped out all the planning meeting-y sort of bits between the last scene and now for two reasons: a) it’s incredibly boring, and b) there’s this little thing called suspense, and right now I’m using it.) I’m also going to try to slow the whole thing down and simplify it a bit, partly because otherwise we’d both get lost, and partly because we’d be here till next Tuesday, and now that the end is (nearly) in sight I rather want to just get on with it, don’t you?
So here’s the simplified version.
Charlie needs to get into the Morgensterns’ private server on the company database. To do this, she needs a series of passcodes, which she has obtained through some means that I’m not even going to attempt to explain because they’re far too complicated (and anyway professional discretion and all that). She also needs to be in the building using one of the company computers. She’s going to do this today, during the convention, because chances are all eyes will be turned to the happenings at the auction, rather than her merrily hacking into the computer system.
Once she’s gotten in, she’s going to copy everything onto a memory stick and get out. As soon as she’s out, Dean, Jo, and Gabriel get into the convention, find Castiel and get out again. Ellen and Crowley will be posing as guests at the convention, ready to create a diversion if things go sideways. Charlie will have hacked into the security cameras and Sam will be checking the video feeds for signs of commotion while using the headset system Charlie set up and the blueprints of the area Ash supplied them with to guide Dean and the others to the right place. Bobby will be sitting with Sam in the van they borrowed from his friend Frank, ready for a speedy getaway if necessary. And Henricksen will have joined the other cops at the convention so he can let Sam know if they start smelling a rat.
That’s the plan, anyway. Of course, the real thing will go somewhat differently, but that’s what always happens. Plans always go sideways. The only difference between pulling something off and face-planting in the dirt is what you do when the plan goes sideways. That’s your measuring stick. That’s what you’ve got to be good at.
Luck and bluster. Dean’s two main traits. I don’t know about you, but I think they’re going to be fine.
It’s 9:30 am, and the big, unmarked grey van comes to a stop in the parking lot of Divinity Inc. It’s instantly forgettable in the fact that it’s inconspicuous, but not so inconspicuous as to be conspicuous, if you get my drift. The only remotely strange thing about it is that no one gets out for a full ten minutes.
Sheriff Jody Mills pays it little attention. She’s already been standing here freezing her ass off for the last half hour in the name of public safety. Not that she technically needs to be here, because this convention is so chock full of private security that you’d think the President lived here, but this is such a huge event that it would be wrong for the cops not to at least appear to be taking an interest in the proceedings, so she needs to be seen standing around looking professional and hardcore.
She checks her watch again. 9:42. Today is going to be one hell of a long day.
“Sheriff Mills?”
The voice is unfamiliar and authoritative, and Jody turns to find herself facing a man who looks like he’s very used to getting his own way.
“Victor Henricksen, FBI,” he says smartly. “I’m here to keep an eye on the situation.”
“So the Feds really don’t trust us, huh?” she says lightly, but if Henricksen’s got half a brain he’ll be able to detect the first few bubbles of indignation beneath the surface.
“It’s not that. This is about the Winchester case.”
“Winch- Oh, of course.” She internally berates her brain for being so slow this morning. “You think they’ll try something?”
“They’re not stupid,” Henricksen replies confidently. “They know what they’re doing. I’m just here to get some perspective. You do your job, I’ll do mine, and we won’t step on each other’s toes.”
That seems reasonable, and she’s just about to say as much when a junior cop appears. He’s one of those sweet, hard-working, eager-to-please types who obviously joined law enforcement because he wanted to ‘make a difference’. Evidently no one ever told him how much damn paperwork is involved.
“Okay, we’re good to go,” Charlie announces, standing up and stretching. She’s been tapping away at her laptop in the back of the van for the past fifteen minutes, setting up what she referred to as a ‘pinch’, although in reality Dean has absolutely no idea what the hell that means. She muttered something about ‘taking out the company system’ so they’d have to call their ‘IT specialist’ in - her.
“I’d give it five minutes before they start panicking, ten before I get a call practically begging me to come take a look.”
“And they will do that because … ?” Jo asks.
Charlie grins in reply. “Because none of their computers are working anymore. I took them all offline. And they won’t be taking any chances, not today of all days. They’ll want everything sorted like a hundred years in advance. Throw in something like this, and they’ll do anything to get it fixed.”
Dean exchanges a look with Sam. “Well, you gotta admit, it’s original.”
Jo is the next one to make a move, exiting the van at 9:56 and making her way to the entrance She’s given a little bit of trouble, but nothing too drastic, and she gets in with her fake press pass Charlie set up for her, thereby using that handy ‘freedom of the press’ loophole.
They let Charlie into the building at 10:00 am, hurrying her through the ID checks and getting her to a computer as soon as possible. She can’t help but notice how frazzled everyone looks - they should’ve opened the doors to the convention ten minutes ago, but the computer situation means they won’t until they’re back online.
“Right. Let’s get this party started.”
She sits down at her computer monitor, fingers just itching to get going, and begins tapping a few keys, speaking quietly into her earpiece as she does so.
“You hearing me?”
“Loud and clear, Princess,” Dean answers, his voice weirdly reassuring, because although Charlie hasn’t exactly led a sheltered life up until now, she’s never really done anything quite like this. Usually the way she rolls is to hack into a computer system from afar, taking as long as she needs and being super careful. To stride right up into a building and then get into their computer system is ... well. It’s something new. And it’s far more dangerous than sitting at her laptop a hundred miles away.
“The password is up on my laptop. Read it out to me?” She was up all night for three days in a row getting this damn password. It had better be worth it.
“Sure thing. Ready?”
“Uh ... Now I am. Shoot.”
“Okay. It’s four-thousand, foxtrot, eighty-two, ninety-four, delta, oscar, tango, six.”
“Copy that.” She types 4000F8294DOT6 and presses return with a slight flourish, and grins when the light flashes green, letting her into the Morgensterns’ private company server, with all their documents and files bared before her eyes.
She slides her fingers over the back of the monitor to find the USB port and then firmly plugs in the drive, before selecting everything on the server and ordering it to copy onto the memory stick. There better be enough space, because if not, they’re screwed.
“It’s copying across, but it’s big so it’s gonna take a while.”
“Okay. You’ve probably got ten minutes or so before you really need to make a move. But we need those files as soon as we can so we can send Dean in.”
Copying item 507 of 14,978. Time remaining (approx.): 8 minutes.
“Come on, come on, come on …” She taps her fingers lightly against the keyboard, hums a couple of bars of a song she heard on the radio this morning, chews the inside of her lip. Nothing makes it load faster.
She’ll just have to resign herself to waiting for what could be the longest eight minutes of her life.
Ellen and Crowley enter the convention under their covers as guests at 10:14, just after the doors finally open. At roughly the same point, back outside in Frank’s van, Dean is starting to get cabin fever. Because every second he waits is another second he could be doing something, another second when he’s not looking for Castiel, another second wasted. Because he has to find Castiel, he just has to. He can’t imagine having Castiel’s death on his conscience.
He can’t imagine having Castiel dead.
Finally, Charlie says the words he’s been waiting for: “I’m done here.”
“Finally.” Dean practically leaps out of his seat and immediately makes for the door. “Wish me luck.”
Sam catches his arm as his brother goes past him, looking up into his face.
“What?”
“Just ... be careful, okay?”
“C’mon, Sammy, you know me. I’m always careful, right? Just make sure you do your job, and the others do theirs, and I’ll be fine.”
“Just want to run over those jobs again?” He’s stalling, and they both know it, but Dean plays along. Speedily.
“Jo and Gabriel are with me. Jo’s already inside, so are Ellen and Crowley. They’re on surveillance and distraction. Charlie’s plugged you into all the security cameras around the site, which you’re watching like a hawk and yelling if there’s anything we need to be worried about. Bobby, you’re-”
“Getting ready to drive like fury, I know.”
“Great.” He raises his voice to talk over the intercom to Henricksen, already in position. “Henricksen, you need to let me know if you hear anything at your end, right?”
“I’ve been ready since you first told me this plan, Winchester. Just don’t screw it up for the rest of us.” His voice, slightly squashed over the intercom, still manages to convey that brand of mildly irritated humor specific to Victor Henricksen.
“Man, it’s so flattering to know you’ve all got such confidence in me. Okay, people, we’re moving out.” He turns, checks the ammo in his gun one last time before tucking it in the back of his jeans and jumping out the back of the van. “Let’s take these fuckers down.”
The picture was obviously taken a long time ago, because instead of a man staring out at him, it’s a boy. But it’s still unmistakable: the dark hair, shorter in the picture and less tousled; the pale skin, lacking the slight stubble of a beard that he has now; the blue eyes, wider and more innocent than Dean would’ve believed.
He’s just a kid. Just a scared kid.
“Dean?”
He doesn’t jump. He wasn’t surprised, or anything. And it’s not like it’s dark and quiet and Gabriel just appeared out of the shadows or anything. He didn’t jump.
He closes down the window quickly, but not before Gabriel’s seen what he’s looking at. He expects Gabriel to get angry, shout at him again, but instead the other man just looks incredibly tired.
This is almost worse, because Dean knows that look and it’s the look that would make Sam sit down and talk about feelings. And Dean doesn’t want to talk about feelings. His feelings are perfectly fine where they are, thank you very much, and he doesn’t want to put them outside, voice them, stick them into the cold light of day, because if he does ... If he does, then ... Then he’ll have to ...
Anyway.
“So you found Dmitri’s file, then?” Gabriel asks, his voice flat, defeated.
“Yeah, well, I was just looking at what Ash saved and, y’know, I sort of saw his picture, so ...”
“Right.”
Neither of them moves. Neither of them says anything. I would say that neither of them breathes, but then we’d have two dead bodies on our hands and although they’re inevitably both going to die one day, it’s not going to be because they forgot to breathe, so yes, they do breathe. But quietly.
Gabriel looks like he’s battling with himself, his internal conflict written clear in every line on his face, in the angle of the eyebrows, slant of the mouth, darkness in the eyes.
It’s also a very long internal conflict, and Dean’s starting to feel very awkward, so he’s just about to break the silence when Gabriel speaks.
“What does it say?”
He blinks. “Uh ... Come and see for yourself.”
Gabriel moves almost reluctantly over to the laptop, where Dean opens up the window again, scrolling to the right page, and there’s Castiel’s face, smaller and brighter and yet more.
“My God. He was so young …”
Dean swallows, but his voice still manages to come out scratchy. “What happened?”
Gabriel breathes in deeply before answering. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean exactly that. I don’t know what happened to my baby brother. I don’t know, because I wasn’t even there.”
For a moment, Dean doesn’t think Gabriel is going to say anything else, and he can’t tell if he feels disappointed or relieved. But then Gabriel starts speaking again, slowly at first and then speeding up, as if some great weight has been lifted, opening the floodgates, and it’s all he can do to let it all pour out. And Dean just listens.
“We were born in Russia, and we lived there until Dmitri was nine and I was thirteen. Our mother died when Dmitri was five, so we grew up with our father. He was a good man, but he was never made to be a father. Or maybe he was, and that was the problem. There was always someone else he could be helping, you know? Only he never managed to get around to helping us. He had some ... unpopular ideas, too, both political and spiritual, and in the end we had to leave Russia. We came to America, because America is the land of the free, and that was my father’s dream: freedom.
“We didn’t do well here. We didn’t have much money, were living hand to mouth most days, and our father was going from job to job. We never saw much of him. Until one day, he just didn’t come home. He left, for some reason that I will probably never know, and I had to look after my brother. That was when Dmirti was twelve. I got a job. Did the best I could, but it was never, ever good enough. I couldn’t ... Our family had been torn apart, and I couldn’t just sit and watch it all collapse.
“I met Crowley. He was just starting out back then, too, we were just two guys with big ideas and big dreams and with him I didn’t have to be responsible anymore. I started seeing more and more of him. I was so, so selfish. I figured Dimi was fourteen, old enough to take care of himself, I thought he’d be okay.
“And then one day I came home to find him gone. I’d been with Crowley that night, come home late, and I always wonder, if I’d come back just an hour earlier, two maybe, could I have stopped all this?
“I never found out what had happened to Dmitri, not until I saw his picture on the news. I looked for him everywhere, of course. Crowley and I, we could’ve been rich, but most of the money went towards finding my brother. Only I never did.
“And then he just appeared, after all these years, and I ... But now ... He’s not ... I’ll never forgive myself.”
For an awful moment, Dean thinks Gabriel is going to cry.
For an even worse moment, Dean thinks he’s going to cry.
But then the moment passes, as moments always do, and Dean finds his eyes wandering back to the computer screen, and a pair of blue eyes that will haunt his dreams for weeks to come.
“So, what we need to do is find good, strong, hard evidence that Divinity Inc. is kidnapping and enslaving people,” Dean says the next morning with a renewed determination he didn’t know he had. ‘Something that’ll not only hold up in court, but that’s actually impossible to argue with, ’cause we can be sure they’ve got friends in high places who’ll try to bail them out if they can. Once we’ve got this, we can use it to bargain with them for Castiel’s release, and our safety.’
“Now, I can’t let you do that,” Henricksen says somewhat testily. “If you want my help, you’ve got to promise we’re taking these guys all the way to the courthouse, or I’m out. I want to take these guys down, not just secure your asses.”
“And there was me thinking you were just helping us out of the kindness of your heart.” He says it lightly enough, but Sam knows him well enough to recognize the undertone of danger in his voice.
“Look, we can discuss exactly what we’re going to do with this evidence once we’ve got it, okay?” he says, forever the peacemaker. “But right now, what we need to focus on is actually getting the proof. All we’ve got so far are a whole lot of stalker documents made by Ash and a heap of ideas that we can’t make work.”
“What if they’ve destroyed all the evidence?” Jo asks, and shrugs when everyone looks at her. “Well, it’s what I’d do.”
“Remind me never to get on her bad side,” Dean mutters.
“They’re a big company,” Sam says. “There’ll be heaps of bureaucracy and what have you. Even if they do try to destroy all evidence, I’d be very surprised if there wasn’t something they’d missed. There always is.”
“Okay, great. But that still doesn’t solve how we actually find this stuff.”
Henricksen looks thoughtful. “I might just have a solution for that one. There’s someone I know - got involved with her a while ago through witness protection - and she works for Roman Enterprises now, or at least she did, last I heard. If there’s a link between the two companies then it’d make sense to use her. Charlie Bradbury. One of those computer-whiz types. I could get in touch with her, see if she can do some digging …”
Dean nods. “If there’s anything to be found, it’s most likely to be on a computer somewhere. This Charlie could be just the person we need.”
Charlie Bradbury looks as eccentric as she probably is, her too-red hair and brightly printed T-shirt warning you ‘don’t taunt the octopus’ combining with the numerous electronic devices she has about her person to make her look like some kind of insane futuristic inventor on crack.
Yeah. She’s definitely a techie.
“I’ll have to access the database on-site,” she’s saying, and Dean is fading in and out listening to her because she keeps spouting nonsense computer-y terms that are just unhelpfully confusing. “It’s the Morgensterns’ private server we’ll want, and that can’t be opened remotely.”
Dean raises an eyebrow. “Can’t you just hack into it?”
“Nope. It’s got enough firewalls and security software to make it the Fort Knox of cyberspace. Technically I could manage it, but it would take me far too long. I have to use a company computer. The Morgensterns’ computer would be best, but I’m not gonna push my luck.”
He sighs. Bang goes that plan. “Okay. Right. So we need to get you inside somehow. And if it’s so well protected, how do we know that you’re even going to be able to access the server?”
“I can do it. I’ll need some time, but I can do it.”
“How?”
Charlie grins and lets forth a spew of technical terms and complicated explanations, until Dean finally holds his hands up and says, “Okay, fine, you win, I really don’t want to know that badly.”
“Let’s get started then, shall we?”
So, finally, it’s the day of the convention. (I’ve skipped out all the planning meeting-y sort of bits between the last scene and now for two reasons: a) it’s incredibly boring, and b) there’s this little thing called suspense, and right now I’m using it.) I’m also going to try to slow the whole thing down and simplify it a bit, partly because otherwise we’d both get lost, and partly because we’d be here till next Tuesday, and now that the end is (nearly) in sight I rather want to just get on with it, don’t you?
So here’s the simplified version.
Charlie needs to get into the Morgensterns’ private server on the company database. To do this, she needs a series of passcodes, which she has obtained through some means that I’m not even going to attempt to explain because they’re far too complicated (and anyway professional discretion and all that). She also needs to be in the building using one of the company computers. She’s going to do this today, during the convention, because chances are all eyes will be turned to the happenings at the auction, rather than her merrily hacking into the computer system.
Once she’s gotten in, she’s going to copy everything onto a memory stick and get out. As soon as she’s out, Dean, Jo, and Gabriel get into the convention, find Castiel and get out again. Ellen and Crowley will be posing as guests at the convention, ready to create a diversion if things go sideways. Charlie will have hacked into the security cameras and Sam will be checking the video feeds for signs of commotion while using the headset system Charlie set up and the blueprints of the area Ash supplied them with to guide Dean and the others to the right place. Bobby will be sitting with Sam in the van they borrowed from his friend Frank, ready for a speedy getaway if necessary. And Henricksen will have joined the other cops at the convention so he can let Sam know if they start smelling a rat.
That’s the plan, anyway. Of course, the real thing will go somewhat differently, but that’s what always happens. Plans always go sideways. The only difference between pulling something off and face-planting in the dirt is what you do when the plan goes sideways. That’s your measuring stick. That’s what you’ve got to be good at.
Luck and bluster. Dean’s two main traits. I don’t know about you, but I think they’re going to be fine.
It’s 9:30 am, and the big, unmarked grey van comes to a stop in the parking lot of Divinity Inc. It’s instantly forgettable in the fact that it’s inconspicuous, but not so inconspicuous as to be conspicuous, if you get my drift. The only remotely strange thing about it is that no one gets out for a full ten minutes.
Sheriff Jody Mills pays it little attention. She’s already been standing here freezing her ass off for the last half hour in the name of public safety. Not that she technically needs to be here, because this convention is so chock full of private security that you’d think the President lived here, but this is such a huge event that it would be wrong for the cops not to at least appear to be taking an interest in the proceedings, so she needs to be seen standing around looking professional and hardcore.
She checks her watch again. 9:42. Today is going to be one hell of a long day.
“Sheriff Mills?”
The voice is unfamiliar and authoritative, and Jody turns to find herself facing a man who looks like he’s very used to getting his own way.
“Victor Henricksen, FBI,” he says smartly. “I’m here to keep an eye on the situation.”
“So the Feds really don’t trust us, huh?” she says lightly, but if Henricksen’s got half a brain he’ll be able to detect the first few bubbles of indignation beneath the surface.
“It’s not that. This is about the Winchester case.”
“Winch- Oh, of course.” She internally berates her brain for being so slow this morning. “You think they’ll try something?”
“They’re not stupid,” Henricksen replies confidently. “They know what they’re doing. I’m just here to get some perspective. You do your job, I’ll do mine, and we won’t step on each other’s toes.”
That seems reasonable, and she’s just about to say as much when a junior cop appears. He’s one of those sweet, hard-working, eager-to-please types who obviously joined law enforcement because he wanted to ‘make a difference’. Evidently no one ever told him how much damn paperwork is involved.
“Okay, we’re good to go,” Charlie announces, standing up and stretching. She’s been tapping away at her laptop in the back of the van for the past fifteen minutes, setting up what she referred to as a ‘pinch’, although in reality Dean has absolutely no idea what the hell that means. She muttered something about ‘taking out the company system’ so they’d have to call their ‘IT specialist’ in - her.
“I’d give it five minutes before they start panicking, ten before I get a call practically begging me to come take a look.”
“And they will do that because … ?” Jo asks.
Charlie grins in reply. “Because none of their computers are working anymore. I took them all offline. And they won’t be taking any chances, not today of all days. They’ll want everything sorted like a hundred years in advance. Throw in something like this, and they’ll do anything to get it fixed.”
Dean exchanges a look with Sam. “Well, you gotta admit, it’s original.”
Jo is the next one to make a move, exiting the van at 9:56 and making her way to the entrance She’s given a little bit of trouble, but nothing too drastic, and she gets in with her fake press pass Charlie set up for her, thereby using that handy ‘freedom of the press’ loophole.
They let Charlie into the building at 10:00 am, hurrying her through the ID checks and getting her to a computer as soon as possible. She can’t help but notice how frazzled everyone looks - they should’ve opened the doors to the convention ten minutes ago, but the computer situation means they won’t until they’re back online.
“Right. Let’s get this party started.”
She sits down at her computer monitor, fingers just itching to get going, and begins tapping a few keys, speaking quietly into her earpiece as she does so.
“You hearing me?”
“Loud and clear, Princess,” Dean answers, his voice weirdly reassuring, because although Charlie hasn’t exactly led a sheltered life up until now, she’s never really done anything quite like this. Usually the way she rolls is to hack into a computer system from afar, taking as long as she needs and being super careful. To stride right up into a building and then get into their computer system is ... well. It’s something new. And it’s far more dangerous than sitting at her laptop a hundred miles away.
“The password is up on my laptop. Read it out to me?” She was up all night for three days in a row getting this damn password. It had better be worth it.
“Sure thing. Ready?”
“Uh ... Now I am. Shoot.”
“Okay. It’s four-thousand, foxtrot, eighty-two, ninety-four, delta, oscar, tango, six.”
“Copy that.” She types 4000F8294DOT6 and presses return with a slight flourish, and grins when the light flashes green, letting her into the Morgensterns’ private company server, with all their documents and files bared before her eyes.
She slides her fingers over the back of the monitor to find the USB port and then firmly plugs in the drive, before selecting everything on the server and ordering it to copy onto the memory stick. There better be enough space, because if not, they’re screwed.
“It’s copying across, but it’s big so it’s gonna take a while.”
“Okay. You’ve probably got ten minutes or so before you really need to make a move. But we need those files as soon as we can so we can send Dean in.”
Copying item 507 of 14,978. Time remaining (approx.): 8 minutes.
“Come on, come on, come on …” She taps her fingers lightly against the keyboard, hums a couple of bars of a song she heard on the radio this morning, chews the inside of her lip. Nothing makes it load faster.
She’ll just have to resign herself to waiting for what could be the longest eight minutes of her life.
Ellen and Crowley enter the convention under their covers as guests at 10:14, just after the doors finally open. At roughly the same point, back outside in Frank’s van, Dean is starting to get cabin fever. Because every second he waits is another second he could be doing something, another second when he’s not looking for Castiel, another second wasted. Because he has to find Castiel, he just has to. He can’t imagine having Castiel’s death on his conscience.
He can’t imagine having Castiel dead.
Finally, Charlie says the words he’s been waiting for: “I’m done here.”
“Finally.” Dean practically leaps out of his seat and immediately makes for the door. “Wish me luck.”
Sam catches his arm as his brother goes past him, looking up into his face.
“What?”
“Just ... be careful, okay?”
“C’mon, Sammy, you know me. I’m always careful, right? Just make sure you do your job, and the others do theirs, and I’ll be fine.”
“Just want to run over those jobs again?” He’s stalling, and they both know it, but Dean plays along. Speedily.
“Jo and Gabriel are with me. Jo’s already inside, so are Ellen and Crowley. They’re on surveillance and distraction. Charlie’s plugged you into all the security cameras around the site, which you’re watching like a hawk and yelling if there’s anything we need to be worried about. Bobby, you’re-”
“Getting ready to drive like fury, I know.”
“Great.” He raises his voice to talk over the intercom to Henricksen, already in position. “Henricksen, you need to let me know if you hear anything at your end, right?”
“I’ve been ready since you first told me this plan, Winchester. Just don’t screw it up for the rest of us.” His voice, slightly squashed over the intercom, still manages to convey that brand of mildly irritated humor specific to Victor Henricksen.
“Man, it’s so flattering to know you’ve all got such confidence in me. Okay, people, we’re moving out.” He turns, checks the ammo in his gun one last time before tucking it in the back of his jeans and jumping out the back of the van. “Let’s take these fuckers down.”