[tms] Psycho
[Set in you_wantedmore. and_domineering and neverhaveto_ask are referenced with permission and Vaughn is an NPC. WARNING: For character death.]
Bristow took the bait.
Whatever it was that Lauren had teased her with before she was shot, it was enough to get the woman out of Los Angeles and off the grid. It was a window-a small one at that, but it was enough. Vaughn was alone, on injured leave, and unprotected. Alec wasn’t sure how he had convinced the CIA that he was in the right by breaking every regulation they had in order for his vengeful vendetta about his now presumed dead wife, but he wasn’t going to complain either. It made it all the easier for him to grab Vaughn and take care of business like he was trained to do.
This was clean up. Vaughn was a liability, and it was likely he wouldn’t buy the corpse that they had provided as Lauren. He would want them to check dental records, take every precaution to make sure that Lauren was really and truly dead, and Alec couldn’t have that because … she wasn’t. He had made sure of that. And now he needed to make sure not only that Vaughn didn’t go sticking his nose where it didn’t belong, but that he also wasn’t silenced in a manner that would get linked back to the Covenant. Alec had never been so pleased to have a twin that was completely insane and never captured by the police. Manticore had disposed of his corpse long ago, and all it had taken one quick phone call to make sure that the records were in order and the authorities continued considered him still at large.
If he wanted to, he could make it so that the body of Michael Vaughn would never be found, not by the CIA or any other agency, but this wasn’t one of those instances. In this situation, he needed for there to be answers-maybe not necessarily the correct ones, but answers nonetheless.
He made the grab the day after Bristow left for Wittenberg. Vaughn passed an alley between two buildings, and Alec yanked him inside, one arm crushing his windpipe to silence him while he injected him with a sedative with the other. If his assailant hadn’t been genetically superpowered he might have managed to get away, but Alec was too fast and too strong to be your average everyday assailant. Once Vaughn was limp against him, into the trunk of Alec’s car he went to be driven out to the building he had chosen as his base of operations.
It was really fairly simple as far as buildings went. Your standard concrete warehouse, but it opened to an urban wasteland-a mix of ruined concrete structures and plant life trying to survive. Isolated enough that he could do what he wanted to do and not attract any undo attention, but not so isolated that Vaughn’s body would never be found. Inside, he had all the tools he needed to copy his twin’s MO to the letter. There wouldn’t even be a question when the body was found as to who had done it, and Vaughn’s death would just be considered an unfortunate side effect of having a sadistic, crazed serial killer at large. He bolted Vaughn into the chair, put on his gloves, and went to work.
He was halfway through tattooing the back of Vaughn’s neck when the man started to come to, his head jerking a bit as he woke. “What?” he frowned. “Where am I?”
Alec’s hand clamped onto his neck firmly holding him in place as he continued to move the needle against the back of his neck. “Please hold still, Mr. Vaughn. You’re disturbing my work.”
He tried to struggle against the hold on him, but after a few tries he gave up, focusing on getting information out of him. Standard CIA tactic, and Alec was more than happy to play. “Who are you?”
“I have a lot of names.” He was still etching the tattoo into the back of Vaughn’s neck, but he was more than capable of multitasking. “You can call me 494.”
“49-” Vaughn’s voice hitched with a wince when the needle dug in a little too much. “What do you want with me?”
“Quite simply? I want you dead.” It’s said with the cool detachment of any assassin. Alec’s been killing people since he was eight years-old, and Vaughn was no different from the rest. While he knew that there was no way Vaughn was making it out of this situation alive, he still was subconsciously covering his tracks-mimicking Sark’s speech patterns and affectations, as well as the slightest edge of his accent, let Vaughn make of that what he will. “The people I work for said I could take care of things however I liked, and well-I decided to have a little bit of fun with it.”
“Who do you work for?”
“That’s not important. You won’t live through this long enough to try and find them, so it’s-a moot point.”
“This is how you’re going to kill me? Strapped to a chair and tattooing the back of my neck?”
“Not quite. This is just me getting everything in order.” He pulls the needle back and looks at his work, makes sure that the barcode is just perfect before placing the tattoo needle back on the table behind him and making his way around in front of him. “After all-can’t frame someone else for your crime if you don’t get all the details right, can you?”
“You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”
“Oh, but I do. Your name is Michael Vaughn, and you work for the CIA. And as good as they are, Mr. Vaughn, they’re not that good. They’re not my caliber of good. They just don’t have the luck for it.”
“And how do you know that?”
Alec moved around him, stripping off his gloves so that he could crouch down in front of him, letting him get a clear view of his face. “Because they don’t know the information that I know. They don’t know that a certain serial killer who shall remain nameless is dead. My company did a fabulous job of covering that one up. What they also don’t know is that he had a twin. A perfect genetic match-right down to the fingerprints.” He held up a now bare hand to wiggle his fingers and illustrate the point. “As far as they’ll be concerned, you’ll just have been yet another unfortunate victim, and they well never even think to look in the direction of myself, my company or my client.”
“But why me? Why do they want me dead?”
“I think you can find the answer to that question yourself if you think about it long enough,” he replied, getting up again and heading back towards the other table where the weapons were kept. “It’s your life, Mr. Vaughn. Have you made any-regrettable offenses lately?” He was playing a character at this point, pushing himself so far from the picture as to not let his emotions get the better of him, but he knew in his gut that he would enjoy this. He couldn’t help it. Having Michael Vaughn’s blood on his hands was something he’d been looking forward to for quite some time. It was making the predator in him sit up and pay attention, and he wasn’t going to deny the pleasure there. Or this taunt that slipped out before he could even reign it in. “Though I will say this-by the time I’m done with you? You’ll wish that I didn’t intentionally miss you with that knife.”
“You?” Vaughn’s head snapped in Alec’s direction with wide eyes. “But Katya-”
“Katya Derevko was there, but I was the one who actually threw the knife,” Alec replied coolly. “And I missed-killing you would have been bad for business right then.”
“So this is about Lauren,” he spat. “She got what she deserved.”
That statement pissed him off. He turned on his heels and moved in closer, bracing his hands on either side of the chair and looking Vaughn dead in the eye. “Whether or not that’s true, actions have consequences. You’re about to face yours.” He paused for a moment, before pulling out a nine millimeter and checking the sight. “Have you ever been game hunting, Mr. Vaughn?”
He paused for a moment, before shaking his head. Alec just nodded as he moved back around, and pulled Vaughn out of the chair, hands still cuffed behind his back He placed the gun in the back of the man’s waistband as he started to walk him towards the back door of the warehouse.
“I’m going to let you go, and you have to hunt me down-and hope I don’t kill you first. Sound fair?”
Vaughn didn’t respond, just waited for him to undo the cuffs before moving to reach for his gun. By the time he turned around, Alec was already on the other side of the cement park.
“Catch me if you can, Mr. Vaughn.”
***
He got close a few times. There were moments where the bullet just missed him by inches-mostly because Alec was teasing him with it, wanting him to think he was getting close, but really he wasn’t in the ball park. He didn’t have Alec’s training and skills. Which was the exact reason why he was going to lose.
Alec caught Vaughn from the front. He disarmed him, broke his shins to force him to his knees, before easily snapping his neck. Once he was sure that the man was dead, he pulled out his pliers and removed all of his teeth, putting the finishing touches on the MO, before leaving the body to be found. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, Michael Vaughn was a victim of a deranged man, not the target of a sane one.
Even the room where he was held matched it.
He put in a call to his employers to inform them that the job was finished, and then one to the police to inform them to find the body, sounding like a frantic and startled man who’d just heard gunshots in the area. After that he was gone as though he was never there, heading back to the safe house where he and Lauren were staying to clean up and move on.
As far as he was concerned, that was a day well spent.
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Bristow took the bait.
Whatever it was that Lauren had teased her with before she was shot, it was enough to get the woman out of Los Angeles and off the grid. It was a window-a small one at that, but it was enough. Vaughn was alone, on injured leave, and unprotected. Alec wasn’t sure how he had convinced the CIA that he was in the right by breaking every regulation they had in order for his vengeful vendetta about his now presumed dead wife, but he wasn’t going to complain either. It made it all the easier for him to grab Vaughn and take care of business like he was trained to do.
This was clean up. Vaughn was a liability, and it was likely he wouldn’t buy the corpse that they had provided as Lauren. He would want them to check dental records, take every precaution to make sure that Lauren was really and truly dead, and Alec couldn’t have that because … she wasn’t. He had made sure of that. And now he needed to make sure not only that Vaughn didn’t go sticking his nose where it didn’t belong, but that he also wasn’t silenced in a manner that would get linked back to the Covenant. Alec had never been so pleased to have a twin that was completely insane and never captured by the police. Manticore had disposed of his corpse long ago, and all it had taken one quick phone call to make sure that the records were in order and the authorities continued considered him still at large.
If he wanted to, he could make it so that the body of Michael Vaughn would never be found, not by the CIA or any other agency, but this wasn’t one of those instances. In this situation, he needed for there to be answers-maybe not necessarily the correct ones, but answers nonetheless.
He made the grab the day after Bristow left for Wittenberg. Vaughn passed an alley between two buildings, and Alec yanked him inside, one arm crushing his windpipe to silence him while he injected him with a sedative with the other. If his assailant hadn’t been genetically superpowered he might have managed to get away, but Alec was too fast and too strong to be your average everyday assailant. Once Vaughn was limp against him, into the trunk of Alec’s car he went to be driven out to the building he had chosen as his base of operations.
It was really fairly simple as far as buildings went. Your standard concrete warehouse, but it opened to an urban wasteland-a mix of ruined concrete structures and plant life trying to survive. Isolated enough that he could do what he wanted to do and not attract any undo attention, but not so isolated that Vaughn’s body would never be found. Inside, he had all the tools he needed to copy his twin’s MO to the letter. There wouldn’t even be a question when the body was found as to who had done it, and Vaughn’s death would just be considered an unfortunate side effect of having a sadistic, crazed serial killer at large. He bolted Vaughn into the chair, put on his gloves, and went to work.
He was halfway through tattooing the back of Vaughn’s neck when the man started to come to, his head jerking a bit as he woke. “What?” he frowned. “Where am I?”
Alec’s hand clamped onto his neck firmly holding him in place as he continued to move the needle against the back of his neck. “Please hold still, Mr. Vaughn. You’re disturbing my work.”
He tried to struggle against the hold on him, but after a few tries he gave up, focusing on getting information out of him. Standard CIA tactic, and Alec was more than happy to play. “Who are you?”
“I have a lot of names.” He was still etching the tattoo into the back of Vaughn’s neck, but he was more than capable of multitasking. “You can call me 494.”
“49-” Vaughn’s voice hitched with a wince when the needle dug in a little too much. “What do you want with me?”
“Quite simply? I want you dead.” It’s said with the cool detachment of any assassin. Alec’s been killing people since he was eight years-old, and Vaughn was no different from the rest. While he knew that there was no way Vaughn was making it out of this situation alive, he still was subconsciously covering his tracks-mimicking Sark’s speech patterns and affectations, as well as the slightest edge of his accent, let Vaughn make of that what he will. “The people I work for said I could take care of things however I liked, and well-I decided to have a little bit of fun with it.”
“Who do you work for?”
“That’s not important. You won’t live through this long enough to try and find them, so it’s-a moot point.”
“This is how you’re going to kill me? Strapped to a chair and tattooing the back of my neck?”
“Not quite. This is just me getting everything in order.” He pulls the needle back and looks at his work, makes sure that the barcode is just perfect before placing the tattoo needle back on the table behind him and making his way around in front of him. “After all-can’t frame someone else for your crime if you don’t get all the details right, can you?”
“You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”
“Oh, but I do. Your name is Michael Vaughn, and you work for the CIA. And as good as they are, Mr. Vaughn, they’re not that good. They’re not my caliber of good. They just don’t have the luck for it.”
“And how do you know that?”
Alec moved around him, stripping off his gloves so that he could crouch down in front of him, letting him get a clear view of his face. “Because they don’t know the information that I know. They don’t know that a certain serial killer who shall remain nameless is dead. My company did a fabulous job of covering that one up. What they also don’t know is that he had a twin. A perfect genetic match-right down to the fingerprints.” He held up a now bare hand to wiggle his fingers and illustrate the point. “As far as they’ll be concerned, you’ll just have been yet another unfortunate victim, and they well never even think to look in the direction of myself, my company or my client.”
“But why me? Why do they want me dead?”
“I think you can find the answer to that question yourself if you think about it long enough,” he replied, getting up again and heading back towards the other table where the weapons were kept. “It’s your life, Mr. Vaughn. Have you made any-regrettable offenses lately?” He was playing a character at this point, pushing himself so far from the picture as to not let his emotions get the better of him, but he knew in his gut that he would enjoy this. He couldn’t help it. Having Michael Vaughn’s blood on his hands was something he’d been looking forward to for quite some time. It was making the predator in him sit up and pay attention, and he wasn’t going to deny the pleasure there. Or this taunt that slipped out before he could even reign it in. “Though I will say this-by the time I’m done with you? You’ll wish that I didn’t intentionally miss you with that knife.”
“You?” Vaughn’s head snapped in Alec’s direction with wide eyes. “But Katya-”
“Katya Derevko was there, but I was the one who actually threw the knife,” Alec replied coolly. “And I missed-killing you would have been bad for business right then.”
“So this is about Lauren,” he spat. “She got what she deserved.”
That statement pissed him off. He turned on his heels and moved in closer, bracing his hands on either side of the chair and looking Vaughn dead in the eye. “Whether or not that’s true, actions have consequences. You’re about to face yours.” He paused for a moment, before pulling out a nine millimeter and checking the sight. “Have you ever been game hunting, Mr. Vaughn?”
He paused for a moment, before shaking his head. Alec just nodded as he moved back around, and pulled Vaughn out of the chair, hands still cuffed behind his back He placed the gun in the back of the man’s waistband as he started to walk him towards the back door of the warehouse.
“I’m going to let you go, and you have to hunt me down-and hope I don’t kill you first. Sound fair?”
Vaughn didn’t respond, just waited for him to undo the cuffs before moving to reach for his gun. By the time he turned around, Alec was already on the other side of the cement park.
“Catch me if you can, Mr. Vaughn.”
***
He got close a few times. There were moments where the bullet just missed him by inches-mostly because Alec was teasing him with it, wanting him to think he was getting close, but really he wasn’t in the ball park. He didn’t have Alec’s training and skills. Which was the exact reason why he was going to lose.
Alec caught Vaughn from the front. He disarmed him, broke his shins to force him to his knees, before easily snapping his neck. Once he was sure that the man was dead, he pulled out his pliers and removed all of his teeth, putting the finishing touches on the MO, before leaving the body to be found. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, Michael Vaughn was a victim of a deranged man, not the target of a sane one.
Even the room where he was held matched it.
He put in a call to his employers to inform them that the job was finished, and then one to the police to inform them to find the body, sounding like a frantic and startled man who’d just heard gunshots in the area. After that he was gone as though he was never there, heading back to the safe house where he and Lauren were staying to clean up and move on.
As far as he was concerned, that was a day well spent.
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