Kill Bill
Title: Kill Bill (6/?)
Pairing: Dom/Billy
Rating: PG - NC17
Warnings: AU, violence, blood, lots of unpleasantness. Character deaths very possible.
Summary: World peace is attained at a cost. The question is whose cost it was.
Note: Aliases/glossary.
JULY 19. MANCHESTER
Billy looked at the man across from him in the dark, huddled in the remains of an abandoned petrol station. Dominic was shivering profusely, much more than Billy because of the feverish sheen of sweat on his skin. He clutched his dislocated arm much as he had since the morning, and beneath the bruises on his face, his skin was splotchy yellow.
Looking down at the gun in his hands, guilt pinched in Billy’s guts. He’d stopped them here for the night, though it went against his instincts to do it. He was certain this had not ended, that someone else would come after him. His instincts also told him to leave this injured man who was slowing him down and get moving, to hell with him.
But he couldn’t. Charlie, Dominic-nobody, as far as the world was concerned-had a history so similar to Billy’s own, he simply had to have some answer, he had to be a part of whatever had brought Billy here.
Dominic squirmed against the cupboard he leaned against, wriggling and whimpering a bit.
Billy stood up, cautiously looking through the windows that weren’t boarded up as he tucked the gun into the back of his trousers again, pulling his jacket down over it. “Stay here,” he commanded. Dominic didn’t answer; he just remained huddled and fussing. “And be quiet.”
Scanning the surroundings, Billy made his way out of the decrepit building and toward the well-lit group of shops a quarter mile down the road. They’d made it to the outer suburbs of the city, mostly neighborhoods and small shopping centers. He turned up the collar of his jacket and headed into one corner shop, noting where the security cameras were and doing what he could to keep his face out of their view.
He made his purchases, careful to keep track of his cash. Every time he had to acquire cash put him in more danger, but without credit and now spending for two, he would have to do it twice as often. Again, the idea of simply leaving Dominic behind was looking better and better. Jogging quickly back to the petrol station, he hesitated, scanning the place warily. It would be easy to simply walk away, to get moving and put the other man out of his mind and try to get on by himself like he had done before all this.
Still, he went back in, skirting the old purchase counter and finding Dominic right where he’d left him, sweating and squirming and looking pathetic.
“Oi, I brought food,” he said, pulling out a bag of crisps, two sandwiches, and a bottle of juice.
Dominic’s eyes widened at the sight of food, biting eagerly into one of the sandwiches, but slowing after the first bite with a look of disgust. “Feel like shit.”
“You look like it too,” Billy offered, eating his own sandwich eagerly.
“Your fault.”
“Aye.”
Dominic dropped his sandwich and kept fidgeting and writhing against the cabinet behind him, his face crumpled in pain.
“What’s wrong with you?” Billy asked through his own mouthful, amending it at Dominic’s dirty look. “Apart from the rest.”
Dominic wriggled again, “Itches like mad.”
“What does?”
“My back,” he grumbled, “I can’t reach it.”
Billy froze, dropping his on sandwich on its wrapping. “When did that start?”
“In the morning. I don’t know,” Dominic squirmed and grumbled, “Don’t remember.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that before?” Billy growled, drawing the gun on him again.
Dominic’s eyes went wide at the gun and then immediately raging, “What? Because you give a fuck that I’m hurt at all? What’s a fucking itch, right?”
“Shut up. Be quiet and get down on your front,” Billy hissed.
“Why?” Dominic flared.
“Because I fucking told you to.”
When Dominic still didn’t move, Billy snatched him by the collar and dragged him down. Holding him with a knee to the back of his neck, Billy wrenched up the back of his jacket and jersey. Dominic wailed, in clear pain now with pressure on his bad shoulder, his voice going high and tight in his throat and his hands spreading out in complete surrender.
Billy tucked the gun away as his hand searched Dominic’s clammy skin in the dim. He grabbed quickly for the duffle, finding the torch and searching his back. Sure enough, between the shoulder blades was an odd raised welt, red with a rash. Thinking quickly as Dominic squirmed beneath him, he dug for the pocketknife. “Be still. This is going to hurt.”
“Already fucking hurts!” Dominic yelled, “What did I do now?”
Billy said nothing, but leaned harder on him as he used the tip of the knife to make a small incision over the welt, then worked through the blood welling up to flip the thing out through the skin, gripping it in his fingertips to draw out all its spidery wires. Dominic whined through bared teeth, his legs kicking ineffectually.
Letting him go, he brought the thing around and shined the light on it so Dominic could see. He glared and growled as he pushed himself up, but quieted as he really looked, seeing Billy’s fingers swipe his blood from the tiny thing, the light inside it shifting from green to blinking red.
Billy put it down on the chipping linoleum and smashed it with the knife butt as he had the memchip in Dominic’s PID, sitting back on his heel.
“What the fuck was that?” Dom muttered, clutching his arm again with a wince.
“I don’t know. But we have to move, they’ll-" he stopped abruptly at a noise.
“But why wo-"
“Shhh,” Billy hissed, sure he’d heard something, a nearby sound. It came again, a minute crunch and scrape of broken glass from outside of the building. Billy whipped out the pistol again, thrusting Dominic back down against the cabinets, but as he did, his foot bumped against the still lit torch, its light like a beacon to their obvious hiding place. Suddenly there were shots, the distinctive pewpew sound, and bits of the cheap particle board cabinet exploding too close. Dominic made a noise of terror, covering his head as Billy darted noiselessly to the narrow entry to the area behind the counter, aimed and squeezed off one shot at the first shadow that moved, ringing loud without its own silencer. The assailant crumpled to the floor with a thump, and all was quiet again. Dominic curled fetally against the cabinets, clutching his arm and breathing fast, his eyes wide as saucers.
“Are you hurt?”
“Wha-?”
“Are you shot?” Billy asked firmly.
“N-no.”
Billy grabbed the torch, stood and moved slowly toward the gunman, keeping his own pistol trained on him, but he didn’t move. Light shining on the widening bloodpool beneath the man’s head and the wound to the cheek told Billy he’d made his mark. Something about it was irritating; the messiness, the inefficiency, usually he was much better than this, cleaner. He could not fathom where that thought came from, even as he committed this man’s broken face to memory.
After sweeping around the building for anyone else, he leaned down, grabbing the assailant’s gun and checking the magazine. He searched him, finding a second magazine and a PID. Flipping the dead man over, he yanked up his shirt and searched with his fingers, shining the light. This was harder, as this man had no welt, no rash to show, but anatomically, it was in the same place, just to the left side of the fifth thoracic vertebrae.
“Dominic,” he called, “Come out here.”
The was a shifting sound and Dominic’s voice, “Ah…no, thanks. I’m having a really bad day.”
“Come on, it’s alright now.”
Dominic slowly made his way out, shivering and disheveled, and Billy handed him the torch, “Hold it here,” he instructed, and used the knife to cut and pull a chip from the dead man’s back, both of them watching as it blinked in the exact same way as the first.
“See that?” Billy asked, “This guy has one too, and he just tried to kill the pair of us. And he’s no cop.”
“What is it?” Dominic asked, sounding both curious and terrified. “Why does he… Why did I have that thing in me?”
“I don’t know,” Billy shook his head, wiping his bloody hands on the man’s trousers. “I think it’s part of how they find us. We’ve got to move now, they’ll know this happened. They’ll send more of them.”
To Billy’s surprise, Dominic nodded, stumbling quickly back behind the counter. Billy followed, finding him struggling to wrap up the food with a bad arm. Billy pushed him aside and did it, tucking the second gun and extra ammo inside the duffle and then looking him over. “You’re sure you’re not hurt?”
Dominic lifted the eyebrow above his good eye.
“You didn’t get hit?” Billy amended.
“No,” Dominic looked down at the body again, looking bemused.
“What?”
Dominic shook his head again. “I thought… I guess I thought it would be scarier, but… I feel like I’ve seen it before.”
“Aye,” Billy nodded, understanding the feeling. “Me too.”
They quickly ducked out, heading for the wide flood plain behind the station and trudged through the dark, damp grass, keeping the lights of main road in sight but staying well away from them.
“How did I get that thing in me?” Dominic asked again in the dark.
“I don’t know,” Billy murmured, mulling the same thing over in his head, and then out loud. “I pulled one of those out of myself a month ago. Same as you, it itched like mad,” Dominic’s head turned toward him as they walked. “You had one. He had one. It all has to be connected, I just don’t know how or why.”
They walked on in silence through a light drizzle for an hour, the far off swish of cars on the road and their headlights keeping them on track. Dominic’s hair was darkened as he walked in front of Billy with his head down, plastered to his head making his prominent ears stick out. He clutched at his arm, still quaking with shivers under his wet clothes.
Finally, down a country lane a couple of miles from the motorway, they came upon an old garage on an empty lot, remains of old building materials and bricks lying about. A swift but thorough sweep of the property told Billy it was vacant and rarely, if ever visited, so they settled in a corner of the corrugated metal building where the roof was still intact. Billy built a very small fire, using a battery scavenged from an old forklift to get a spark on the driest wood he could find, masking the light and smoke with a makeshift damper of bricks and soaked cardboard. It was enough to warm their small corner of the building somewhat.
Dominic had devoured the remains of his sandwich and was leaning against a support, still cradling the arm, shivering and looking pallid. Twenty-four hours ago, this same man had tried to kill him, something he had to be constantly reminded of throughout the day. But now, even as he sat looking pathetic from the state he was in, he was all Billy had.
“Come here,” Billy said, making a decision. “Lie down on the floor.”
Dominic looked him over distrustfully and smirked. “Think I won’t, if it’s all the same to you. Every time I do that, you hurt me some more.”
Billy looked back at the fire for a moment, nodding. He pulled the gun from his trousers and put it on top of the duffle, albeit still well out of Dominic’s reach. “Fine. You’re not a hostage. Matter of fact, you’re slowing me down, so if you want to leave, then do it. Go.”
Dominic’s eyes, bright in the fire, looked back curiously, but his brows pinched at the idea, and the fear of being alone and away from everything he ever thought he knew.
“See?” Billy confirmed for him, “You can’t go back, can you? Not after what you’ve seen today. I know what it’s like. It’s weirder for me though, seeing as you were the one trying to kill me yesterday.”
“So why didn’t you shoot me like you did him?”
Billy looked over at the gun. Why hadn’t he? He had plenty of time. He had even pulled that trigger expecting to be done with it then. “It jammed. Just like it did when you tried to kill me.”
Dominic looked at the gun for a minute as well, the uncertainty of having no memory of the last several days, the interruption of his routine, the vast unknown tomorrow would bring. He finally scooted up from the wall, “Fine,” he said as he lay on the cement near the fire with a grunt of pain, “Why am I lying here?”
Billy knelt on his right side, pulling his arm from its clutch on the injured one. “I’m going to fix your arm.” He brought Dominic’s hand down to his side and then bent it at the elbow toward the roof. Just the movement made Dominic tense up with pain. Billy carefully pushed his free hand under Dominic’s jacket to feel the mangled shoulder joint underneath. “It’s going to hurt.”
Dominic laughed painfully, “Figures. Arsehole.” But he lay still, prone, eyes worriedly looking up at Billy’s face as he felt the weirdness of the dislocation under muscle and skin and damp cotton. He brought Dominic’s bent arm toward his stomach, feeling the joint move wrongly, then carefully brought the arm in an arc from there, up and around to meet the floor. Dominic’s face crumpled up in pain as he hissed, but the joint did not cooperate. Billy repeated the motion once again, leaning his weight on the joint to coax it, and finally with a half-swallowed shout from Dominic, it popped back into place.
Billy moved away immediately, as Dominic lay catching his breath, a couple of pain induced tears slipping over his temples as he tested the arm. “Fucking hell,” he muttered with a laugh, “Feels amazing.”
Billy raised an eyebrow and sat back in his place. He did not know how he had known how to do that, fix a dislocation. “You probably shouldn’t move it too much for awhile. Let the muscles settle back where they’re meant to go.”
Dominic hummed, high off endorphins the effort had set off. Ignoring the advice, he wriggled out of his jacket and tugged the football jersey off, twisting it up to try to wring the rain from it. He draped it over the bricks caging the fire to dry, then shrugged the jacket back on over his shivering frame, drawing his knees up and rubbing his shins through his damp jeans, looking over at Billy speculatively as his hand explored his repaired shoulder under the leather.
“How did you get here?” he asked. “To Manchester, I mean. How did you figure someone was after you?”
Billy turned his attention to the flames, feeding it branches from a dead tree and the blocky ends of cut two-by-fours. This last month had been a wash of utter fear, of looking at the faces of strangers and suddenly seeing enemies everywhere. He’d used all the cash he had on a bus ticket chosen not only because it was the cheapest fare, but also because something about Manchester rang a bell he just could not place. He tried to keep out of sight, away from high security places, avoiding people who would ask him questions he could not answer, who would hurt him because he did not fit into this odd society any longer. Even if he tried to figure out what about it was off, he could not remember why he suspected it in the first place. He knew things were missing that used to exist, but could not place what they were, and that people spoke of those wars and the past as if they were a bad memory that was long over. Some days he had watched families in the park, children playing with their parents, and wondered if he had ever been that small and happy himself.
“Billy?”
“Hmm?”
Dominic cocked his head in the firelight, his face perplexed and exhausted, “I think I just asked you something, but I don’t remember it now.”
Billy nodded, the flames dancing in his eyes, “’S okay. It doesn’t matter.”
Dominic blinked at the fire, and before long he lay down and curled up, falling asleep within a few minutes. Billy watched the rise and fall of Dominic’s breathing, finding it stupid and naïve to sleep in the presence of someone he oughtn’t trust so readily, though something about that felt good and safe.
He didn’t allow himself to sleep, jerking out of moments of blankness at any tiny sound, from wood popping in the fire to Dominic shifting in slumber. It gradually occurred to him over the course of the night that he was going about things all wrong. It was dangerous idea to attempt to leave the city in this manner: on foot, and with a dwindling supply of cash, no proper clothing and no real goal in mind, leaving an obvious trail behind them. He could only hope those spider things were the only tracking devices they had inside of them. Dominic’s PID now had no memchip, and should they go anywhere that required identification, it would be a red flag if ever there was one. They would need to procure identification if they were going to manage to blend in to this world, or else hole up and hide, never understanding why they were being hunted down in the first place.
Billy took out his own PID and looked again at the new identity he had become before leaving London. Vince Sandhurst. Another name and persona that meant as little to him as Jamie Holmes had after he had chosen to call himself Billy. Fear roiled in his stomach to remember how he’d gotten it, by sheer dumb luck and running into the right people.
If they could be called the right people at all.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Pairing: Dom/Billy
Rating: PG - NC17
Warnings: AU, violence, blood, lots of unpleasantness. Character deaths very possible.
Summary: World peace is attained at a cost. The question is whose cost it was.
Note: Aliases/glossary.
JULY 19. MANCHESTER
Billy looked at the man across from him in the dark, huddled in the remains of an abandoned petrol station. Dominic was shivering profusely, much more than Billy because of the feverish sheen of sweat on his skin. He clutched his dislocated arm much as he had since the morning, and beneath the bruises on his face, his skin was splotchy yellow.
Looking down at the gun in his hands, guilt pinched in Billy’s guts. He’d stopped them here for the night, though it went against his instincts to do it. He was certain this had not ended, that someone else would come after him. His instincts also told him to leave this injured man who was slowing him down and get moving, to hell with him.
But he couldn’t. Charlie, Dominic-nobody, as far as the world was concerned-had a history so similar to Billy’s own, he simply had to have some answer, he had to be a part of whatever had brought Billy here.
Dominic squirmed against the cupboard he leaned against, wriggling and whimpering a bit.
Billy stood up, cautiously looking through the windows that weren’t boarded up as he tucked the gun into the back of his trousers again, pulling his jacket down over it. “Stay here,” he commanded. Dominic didn’t answer; he just remained huddled and fussing. “And be quiet.”
Scanning the surroundings, Billy made his way out of the decrepit building and toward the well-lit group of shops a quarter mile down the road. They’d made it to the outer suburbs of the city, mostly neighborhoods and small shopping centers. He turned up the collar of his jacket and headed into one corner shop, noting where the security cameras were and doing what he could to keep his face out of their view.
He made his purchases, careful to keep track of his cash. Every time he had to acquire cash put him in more danger, but without credit and now spending for two, he would have to do it twice as often. Again, the idea of simply leaving Dominic behind was looking better and better. Jogging quickly back to the petrol station, he hesitated, scanning the place warily. It would be easy to simply walk away, to get moving and put the other man out of his mind and try to get on by himself like he had done before all this.
Still, he went back in, skirting the old purchase counter and finding Dominic right where he’d left him, sweating and squirming and looking pathetic.
“Oi, I brought food,” he said, pulling out a bag of crisps, two sandwiches, and a bottle of juice.
Dominic’s eyes widened at the sight of food, biting eagerly into one of the sandwiches, but slowing after the first bite with a look of disgust. “Feel like shit.”
“You look like it too,” Billy offered, eating his own sandwich eagerly.
“Your fault.”
“Aye.”
Dominic dropped his sandwich and kept fidgeting and writhing against the cabinet behind him, his face crumpled in pain.
“What’s wrong with you?” Billy asked through his own mouthful, amending it at Dominic’s dirty look. “Apart from the rest.”
Dominic wriggled again, “Itches like mad.”
“What does?”
“My back,” he grumbled, “I can’t reach it.”
Billy froze, dropping his on sandwich on its wrapping. “When did that start?”
“In the morning. I don’t know,” Dominic squirmed and grumbled, “Don’t remember.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that before?” Billy growled, drawing the gun on him again.
Dominic’s eyes went wide at the gun and then immediately raging, “What? Because you give a fuck that I’m hurt at all? What’s a fucking itch, right?”
“Shut up. Be quiet and get down on your front,” Billy hissed.
“Why?” Dominic flared.
“Because I fucking told you to.”
When Dominic still didn’t move, Billy snatched him by the collar and dragged him down. Holding him with a knee to the back of his neck, Billy wrenched up the back of his jacket and jersey. Dominic wailed, in clear pain now with pressure on his bad shoulder, his voice going high and tight in his throat and his hands spreading out in complete surrender.
Billy tucked the gun away as his hand searched Dominic’s clammy skin in the dim. He grabbed quickly for the duffle, finding the torch and searching his back. Sure enough, between the shoulder blades was an odd raised welt, red with a rash. Thinking quickly as Dominic squirmed beneath him, he dug for the pocketknife. “Be still. This is going to hurt.”
“Already fucking hurts!” Dominic yelled, “What did I do now?”
Billy said nothing, but leaned harder on him as he used the tip of the knife to make a small incision over the welt, then worked through the blood welling up to flip the thing out through the skin, gripping it in his fingertips to draw out all its spidery wires. Dominic whined through bared teeth, his legs kicking ineffectually.
Letting him go, he brought the thing around and shined the light on it so Dominic could see. He glared and growled as he pushed himself up, but quieted as he really looked, seeing Billy’s fingers swipe his blood from the tiny thing, the light inside it shifting from green to blinking red.
Billy put it down on the chipping linoleum and smashed it with the knife butt as he had the memchip in Dominic’s PID, sitting back on his heel.
“What the fuck was that?” Dom muttered, clutching his arm again with a wince.
“I don’t know. But we have to move, they’ll-" he stopped abruptly at a noise.
“But why wo-"
“Shhh,” Billy hissed, sure he’d heard something, a nearby sound. It came again, a minute crunch and scrape of broken glass from outside of the building. Billy whipped out the pistol again, thrusting Dominic back down against the cabinets, but as he did, his foot bumped against the still lit torch, its light like a beacon to their obvious hiding place. Suddenly there were shots, the distinctive pewpew sound, and bits of the cheap particle board cabinet exploding too close. Dominic made a noise of terror, covering his head as Billy darted noiselessly to the narrow entry to the area behind the counter, aimed and squeezed off one shot at the first shadow that moved, ringing loud without its own silencer. The assailant crumpled to the floor with a thump, and all was quiet again. Dominic curled fetally against the cabinets, clutching his arm and breathing fast, his eyes wide as saucers.
“Are you hurt?”
“Wha-?”
“Are you shot?” Billy asked firmly.
“N-no.”
Billy grabbed the torch, stood and moved slowly toward the gunman, keeping his own pistol trained on him, but he didn’t move. Light shining on the widening bloodpool beneath the man’s head and the wound to the cheek told Billy he’d made his mark. Something about it was irritating; the messiness, the inefficiency, usually he was much better than this, cleaner. He could not fathom where that thought came from, even as he committed this man’s broken face to memory.
After sweeping around the building for anyone else, he leaned down, grabbing the assailant’s gun and checking the magazine. He searched him, finding a second magazine and a PID. Flipping the dead man over, he yanked up his shirt and searched with his fingers, shining the light. This was harder, as this man had no welt, no rash to show, but anatomically, it was in the same place, just to the left side of the fifth thoracic vertebrae.
“Dominic,” he called, “Come out here.”
The was a shifting sound and Dominic’s voice, “Ah…no, thanks. I’m having a really bad day.”
“Come on, it’s alright now.”
Dominic slowly made his way out, shivering and disheveled, and Billy handed him the torch, “Hold it here,” he instructed, and used the knife to cut and pull a chip from the dead man’s back, both of them watching as it blinked in the exact same way as the first.
“See that?” Billy asked, “This guy has one too, and he just tried to kill the pair of us. And he’s no cop.”
“What is it?” Dominic asked, sounding both curious and terrified. “Why does he… Why did I have that thing in me?”
“I don’t know,” Billy shook his head, wiping his bloody hands on the man’s trousers. “I think it’s part of how they find us. We’ve got to move now, they’ll know this happened. They’ll send more of them.”
To Billy’s surprise, Dominic nodded, stumbling quickly back behind the counter. Billy followed, finding him struggling to wrap up the food with a bad arm. Billy pushed him aside and did it, tucking the second gun and extra ammo inside the duffle and then looking him over. “You’re sure you’re not hurt?”
Dominic lifted the eyebrow above his good eye.
“You didn’t get hit?” Billy amended.
“No,” Dominic looked down at the body again, looking bemused.
“What?”
Dominic shook his head again. “I thought… I guess I thought it would be scarier, but… I feel like I’ve seen it before.”
“Aye,” Billy nodded, understanding the feeling. “Me too.”
They quickly ducked out, heading for the wide flood plain behind the station and trudged through the dark, damp grass, keeping the lights of main road in sight but staying well away from them.
“How did I get that thing in me?” Dominic asked again in the dark.
“I don’t know,” Billy murmured, mulling the same thing over in his head, and then out loud. “I pulled one of those out of myself a month ago. Same as you, it itched like mad,” Dominic’s head turned toward him as they walked. “You had one. He had one. It all has to be connected, I just don’t know how or why.”
They walked on in silence through a light drizzle for an hour, the far off swish of cars on the road and their headlights keeping them on track. Dominic’s hair was darkened as he walked in front of Billy with his head down, plastered to his head making his prominent ears stick out. He clutched at his arm, still quaking with shivers under his wet clothes.
Finally, down a country lane a couple of miles from the motorway, they came upon an old garage on an empty lot, remains of old building materials and bricks lying about. A swift but thorough sweep of the property told Billy it was vacant and rarely, if ever visited, so they settled in a corner of the corrugated metal building where the roof was still intact. Billy built a very small fire, using a battery scavenged from an old forklift to get a spark on the driest wood he could find, masking the light and smoke with a makeshift damper of bricks and soaked cardboard. It was enough to warm their small corner of the building somewhat.
Dominic had devoured the remains of his sandwich and was leaning against a support, still cradling the arm, shivering and looking pallid. Twenty-four hours ago, this same man had tried to kill him, something he had to be constantly reminded of throughout the day. But now, even as he sat looking pathetic from the state he was in, he was all Billy had.
“Come here,” Billy said, making a decision. “Lie down on the floor.”
Dominic looked him over distrustfully and smirked. “Think I won’t, if it’s all the same to you. Every time I do that, you hurt me some more.”
Billy looked back at the fire for a moment, nodding. He pulled the gun from his trousers and put it on top of the duffle, albeit still well out of Dominic’s reach. “Fine. You’re not a hostage. Matter of fact, you’re slowing me down, so if you want to leave, then do it. Go.”
Dominic’s eyes, bright in the fire, looked back curiously, but his brows pinched at the idea, and the fear of being alone and away from everything he ever thought he knew.
“See?” Billy confirmed for him, “You can’t go back, can you? Not after what you’ve seen today. I know what it’s like. It’s weirder for me though, seeing as you were the one trying to kill me yesterday.”
“So why didn’t you shoot me like you did him?”
Billy looked over at the gun. Why hadn’t he? He had plenty of time. He had even pulled that trigger expecting to be done with it then. “It jammed. Just like it did when you tried to kill me.”
Dominic looked at the gun for a minute as well, the uncertainty of having no memory of the last several days, the interruption of his routine, the vast unknown tomorrow would bring. He finally scooted up from the wall, “Fine,” he said as he lay on the cement near the fire with a grunt of pain, “Why am I lying here?”
Billy knelt on his right side, pulling his arm from its clutch on the injured one. “I’m going to fix your arm.” He brought Dominic’s hand down to his side and then bent it at the elbow toward the roof. Just the movement made Dominic tense up with pain. Billy carefully pushed his free hand under Dominic’s jacket to feel the mangled shoulder joint underneath. “It’s going to hurt.”
Dominic laughed painfully, “Figures. Arsehole.” But he lay still, prone, eyes worriedly looking up at Billy’s face as he felt the weirdness of the dislocation under muscle and skin and damp cotton. He brought Dominic’s bent arm toward his stomach, feeling the joint move wrongly, then carefully brought the arm in an arc from there, up and around to meet the floor. Dominic’s face crumpled up in pain as he hissed, but the joint did not cooperate. Billy repeated the motion once again, leaning his weight on the joint to coax it, and finally with a half-swallowed shout from Dominic, it popped back into place.
Billy moved away immediately, as Dominic lay catching his breath, a couple of pain induced tears slipping over his temples as he tested the arm. “Fucking hell,” he muttered with a laugh, “Feels amazing.”
Billy raised an eyebrow and sat back in his place. He did not know how he had known how to do that, fix a dislocation. “You probably shouldn’t move it too much for awhile. Let the muscles settle back where they’re meant to go.”
Dominic hummed, high off endorphins the effort had set off. Ignoring the advice, he wriggled out of his jacket and tugged the football jersey off, twisting it up to try to wring the rain from it. He draped it over the bricks caging the fire to dry, then shrugged the jacket back on over his shivering frame, drawing his knees up and rubbing his shins through his damp jeans, looking over at Billy speculatively as his hand explored his repaired shoulder under the leather.
“How did you get here?” he asked. “To Manchester, I mean. How did you figure someone was after you?”
Billy turned his attention to the flames, feeding it branches from a dead tree and the blocky ends of cut two-by-fours. This last month had been a wash of utter fear, of looking at the faces of strangers and suddenly seeing enemies everywhere. He’d used all the cash he had on a bus ticket chosen not only because it was the cheapest fare, but also because something about Manchester rang a bell he just could not place. He tried to keep out of sight, away from high security places, avoiding people who would ask him questions he could not answer, who would hurt him because he did not fit into this odd society any longer. Even if he tried to figure out what about it was off, he could not remember why he suspected it in the first place. He knew things were missing that used to exist, but could not place what they were, and that people spoke of those wars and the past as if they were a bad memory that was long over. Some days he had watched families in the park, children playing with their parents, and wondered if he had ever been that small and happy himself.
“Billy?”
“Hmm?”
Dominic cocked his head in the firelight, his face perplexed and exhausted, “I think I just asked you something, but I don’t remember it now.”
Billy nodded, the flames dancing in his eyes, “’S okay. It doesn’t matter.”
Dominic blinked at the fire, and before long he lay down and curled up, falling asleep within a few minutes. Billy watched the rise and fall of Dominic’s breathing, finding it stupid and naïve to sleep in the presence of someone he oughtn’t trust so readily, though something about that felt good and safe.
He didn’t allow himself to sleep, jerking out of moments of blankness at any tiny sound, from wood popping in the fire to Dominic shifting in slumber. It gradually occurred to him over the course of the night that he was going about things all wrong. It was dangerous idea to attempt to leave the city in this manner: on foot, and with a dwindling supply of cash, no proper clothing and no real goal in mind, leaving an obvious trail behind them. He could only hope those spider things were the only tracking devices they had inside of them. Dominic’s PID now had no memchip, and should they go anywhere that required identification, it would be a red flag if ever there was one. They would need to procure identification if they were going to manage to blend in to this world, or else hole up and hide, never understanding why they were being hunted down in the first place.
Billy took out his own PID and looked again at the new identity he had become before leaving London. Vince Sandhurst. Another name and persona that meant as little to him as Jamie Holmes had after he had chosen to call himself Billy. Fear roiled in his stomach to remember how he’d gotten it, by sheer dumb luck and running into the right people.
If they could be called the right people at all.
CHAPTER SEVEN