Heathens chapter vii

Heathens chapter seven ayy because I needed the wind down. Also, NaNoWriMo's coming up so there's gonna be formal announcement of little to no fics next month.

vii. As Soon As I Get My Gun

Funnily enough, for all the time B’s had to himself when he was out of Wammy’s House, he had never been on a roadtrip. He hadn’t had the time for it. There was too much to do, too much ground to cover, too many contingency plans to be made. Or so was his reasoning, had anyone bothered to ask him about it when he was younger, and nobody ever did, not that B ever really gave them the chance to. 

He didn’t count the ride from the hospital to the glass house a road trip, as it wasn’t really one, and he and A had irritated and entertained each other in the car at equal turns. There were no pit stops, no pauses to sightsee, and no undercurrent of a roadtrip being made for relaxation, or just pissing the hell out of each other, if some people were to be believed. Not only that, he knew he truly had no choice or freedom during the whole trip, as he was just switching prisons. 

So he supposes this is the closest he’ll ever come to a roadtrip now, sitting in the back of a cab with a bluetooth earpiece on, the dividing glass between him and the cabbie put up, yelling at Matt (or MONIKA) every two seconds. The spirit of relaxation, if it ever really is present in roadtrips, isn’t there, but the ‘pissing the hell out of each other’ part is there. And with added bonus of him being able to run for possibly two seconds before MONIKA fried his guts out.

“I’m trying my goddamn best here, B, you can’t expect me to single-handedly trawl through the CCTV footage of the entirety of Massachusetts while getting you accommodations.”

“Then let me take care of the accommodations and delegate MONIKA to half of the footage work,” he says, “Don’t be stupid, Matt, organize.”

“Oh, you have the gall to tell me that, when you’re jumping to another state entirely on a hunch!”

“It’s a fair one, and you won’t let me have people to mobilize, so I have to do all the legwork myself. Hold my hotel room for me if you can.”

Jeevas actually sits in a few seconds of silence at that, obviously balking. Curious. 

“I’m not going to hand you control over where you’re staying in Massachusetts.”

“You will if you want to get work done and not have me stay in a street while I’m in the state,” he says.

“Maybe I will.”

B narrows his eyes and glares at the back of the cabbie’s seat. The man, as if sensing his anger, even though it isn’t directed at him, presses down the gas. B feels the car glide down the street faster. 

“Then I’ll have to take matters into my own hands, which is already something you’re so daftly addressing for the sake of not giving me anything to do. Which is bullshit,” he says, “I’m already outside the sodding house, the least you can bloody do so I can do my godforsaken job is actually let me help. For fuck’s sake, Matt.”

It’s starting to rain, outside. The hotel is already two miles behind them, and with the cabbie flooring it, they’re going to cross the third mile rather quickly, but it won’t be enough to outrun the storm if it decides to pour on them now. Weather is a fickle thing, irritating in its inconvenience. 

“I am not allowed to - ”

“Okay, well, fuck what you’re not allowed to do, and fuck whoever’s in charge of the whole operation who’s apparently intent on making me do footwork without actually letting me have any control over it when I’m the only one they’ve sent out onto the field to look for their oh so precious protégé,” he says. “I’m getting out of the cab and going back to the house, the way this is going.”

“What about A?”

“What about A, you’re the one sabotaging the operation,” he snaps.

“I am following rules, Birthday. Something you apparently have never had a grasp on.”

“Don’t fucking call me that or you’re getting your throat slit, boy,” he says, borderline hissing, and his anklet gives off a beep, a tiny red dot peeking out of the dark material of his pants’ hem to signal out a warning. 

He pauses. Takes a deep breath and lets it out, slowly, plastering on the most ingenuinely calm look he’s ever had on his face. 

“Look,” he starts, amiable, “I’m frustrated. And I’m sorry that I’m taking out my frustration on you. But if you’re under so much work, then let MONIKA have a share of the load. It’s not that hard. Let her take care of my accommodations if you can’t, or do that yourself for five minutes and then go back to footage review.”

“We’re combing through a week or so’s worth of footage in an entire state, B,” Jeevas says, “Between the two of us, that’s so much work.”

B raises an eyebrow, the odd phrasing catching his attention. “Between the two of you?”

Matt only stalls for two seconds, at least. The boy deserves an award.

“We’re the only ones active right now, there’s another case that requires everyone to assist L.”

B snorts. “Pull the other one. It has bells.”

“I’m not joking, B. While A is an important priority, L is - ” Jeevas cuts himself off, suddenly. B smiles at him, or at least, at the back of the cabbie’s seat, where the leather has cracked and torn off from age. Hopefully, if Jeevas is accessing the cameras he’ll see the malice in B’s smile, teeth practically dripping red with hatred.

The boy clears his throat. “Anyway,” he says, “As everyone else is busy, we’re the only ones looking into this right now.”

“I see,” he says, too pleasantly. “So, are you going to delegate work to MONIKA?”

Jeevas pauses. Then, “MONIKA, arrange B’s temporary place of residence in Massachusetts.”

“Yes, sir.”

B lets out a sigh and leans back in his seat. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” On the laptop, he sees the monitor open a hotel’s site, quickly navigating to the room options. When the screen does nothing for a while, he realizes MONIKA’s waiting on him to choose, so he does. “Sometimes, I wonder if you just make things hard on purpose to antagonize me, Matt.”

“If I wanted to do that, trust me, everything would be so much more annoying,” the boy says, “Maybe later when you’ve found A.”

He glances straight at the camera briefly. “Don’t push your luck.”

“Not trying to, I just know how much of it I actually have,” he says. 

The call doesn’t cut off, but as the storm finally pours down on them and as the cabbie starts to ease up on the pedal both because he wants to avoid accidents and because B is no longer glaring at the back of his seat like he wants it to burst into flames - wait, no, bad metaphor, like he wants it to explode in a pile of foam and leather, more like - none of them say anything other than a few noises of approval while MONIKA finalizes B’s arrangements. 

B takes out the bluetooth earpiece once, just to ease the uneven weight on the side of his head, but has to clip it back on before MONIKA could take it as an attempt to escape. 

When it seems like nothing is happening at all since Jeevas won’t let him help, he closes the laptop and leans back against his seat, closing his eyes. He’s still exhausted from the long drive to New York, and he’d already spent most of his time there walking around and socializing, so he needs to catch up on sleep, even if it’s at the back of another cab. 

There’s an automated voice from Matt’s end of the call.It says, Sir, you have an incoming message.

“Accept it,” Matt says. He sounds like he’s wheeling away from his desk and is knocking a few things over along the way, and when he speaks, B hears it like it’s farther away from the mic of whatever he was using to communicate with B. 

He tunes it out, for a moment, thinking it’s just someone calling Matt from inside the house or is one of Matt’s outside contacts because he has no doubt the kid has those - 

“A?”

B’s eyes open. Alert.

“Holy - okay, okay, I’m connecting you - ”

There’s the sound of keys clacking, a click, and then:

“- what do you mean you’re connecting me - Matt, what’s going on?”

Alive.

B wishes it was raining less right now so he can pick out the noises from A’s side of the call. As it is, he can only listen intently and attempt to identify anything from their call that might hint at their location. 

“A, stay on the call, just a little while longer.”

“If you’re trying to track my location down, I’m at Angell Animal Medical Center. I’m using a payphone here.”

That eliminates all possibility of them running away then, considering they’d just given their location. Unless Matt is in on it, somehow, and from his slip-up earlier, that can be, but then, Matt wouldn’t be looking for A so fervently if it was just them teaming up to break them out of house arrest. 

And where would B fit into that picture?

“Why are you at an animal medical center?”

“Who looks for hostages at animal medical centers? That’s not important, I just needed to call you to tell you my location - wait, who did you connect me to?”

There’s a pause. 

“B, say something.”

Right. He hasn’t said anything since the beginning of the call. 

“B? What does he have to do with this?”

“I’m the only one they released onto the field to look for you,” he says, “And you’re welcome, by the way. You are in Massachusetts?”

“Yeah, they took me here.”

He presses the bluetooth speaker nearer his ear like that’s going to help him hear what they’re saying clearer. “Who did?”

“I was tracking down a cult case and while it’s most likely the work of a group, I have reason to believe a man named Charles Wickerton is a part of this cult. He’s who I was dealing with for the past few weeks.”

“He, what, kidnapped you?”

“No, not Wickerton himself, but I heard him on the phone with the ones who did.”

“Ah,” he says, “You were kidnapped by the cult.”

“You have a talent for making things sound so trivial.”

“I know, it’s part of my charm. Do you know where they were taking you?”

“Springfield, most likely. I think that’s where they have a base of operations. I’m not the twelfth sacrifice, I think, just a pest they want out of their way,” A says. He hears a soft thud like they’re leaning their weight against a wall, exhausted, and then a very faint hiss that might have been drowned out by the rain were he not listening closely. 

“And they want the whole group’s approval of how you go, or will you be getting some sort of ceremonial punishment?” he asks.

A laughs. “We never know, could be either. I ran out the van when they stopped for gas. Got time when the employees saw me and called the cops.”

“Matt, get on the news for that,” he says, and Matt says, “On it,” before he’s even finished. “Which gas station?”

“Uh, I think it was a Mobil,” they say, “But I’m not sure, I was busy running for my life.”

“Never thought I’d see the day you do that, but okay. How long ago was this?” he asks, “Matt’s been monitoring me along with MONIKA and has been going through New York’s footage, not Massachusetts. It’s possible he missed a few things.”

“I’m also operating on barely any sleep.”

“Matt, sleep,” A says, “That happened late last night. If it hasn’t been on the news, then I don’t want to think about what that implies.”

“It’s on the news, but some people think it’s a prank,” Jeevas says. B opens his laptop when he says that, and MONIKA dutifully pulls up several news sites for him. “And I don’t blame them, especially since witness accounts are all to go on. There’s no CCTV footage of the event ever happening.”

A pauses. “No CCTV?”

“Ah, shit,” B says. 

“They’d have to have worked fast.” 

“If it’s a small gas station with a bunch of terrified people at ass o’clock in the morning, you bet they’re going to find a way to shut them up,” B says, “But that’s already damage control to a big slip-up, which means we have a better chance at jailing them. Have you called the cops?”

“B, I’m legally dead. I can’t try that,” they say. Then, after a pause. “I haven’t tried that. I’m sorry.”

“Call the goddamn cops. We’re on our way too, so try to stay put, but it can’t help to have a first line of defense there,” he says. 

A doesn’t say anything.

“A?”

This time they do, but it’s to hiss a curse out lowly. B leans forward a little, as if that would help. “Turns out people do look in animal medical shelters.”

Oh. He’s got less than five seconds; there’s not a lot A can do now unless they make a scene, but that would endanger too many people and B knows A, knows their pesky morals, so -

“Sorry, honey, I’ll have to talk to you later. The vet’s calling us. It’s our turn.” A’s voice is sickly sweet. B actually have to pause and hold down a shudder. He’s about to interrupt, but A continues like they’re about to win an award for stellar voice acting. Notably, though, their voice is softer, but not any less tender.  “Pick us up at the church, okay? So you won’t have to go too far.”

“Which church?” he asks, in an equally small voice, before they’ve even gotten the second sentence out. 

“Saint Botolph Anglican,” A says. Then, quickly. “Bye for now, hon, see you later.”

He hears the faint clack of the phone being hung up on its rack, and then a steady dial tone until Matt cuts off the connection from his end. 

B lets his thoughts settle for a second. “We have a location.”

“We sure do, hon.”

“Oh, fuck you,” he says, and then reaches to loudly knock on the divider between him and the cabbie. The man looks a little panicked, and slows down so he can open the window, and then presses down on the gas so hard that the car swerves to the left a little, but then steadies its run. 

“What is it?” the man asks. 

“Skip the hotel, we’re going to Saint Botolph Anglican Church,” B says. He looks down at the map on his laptop. MONIKA’s helpfully changed it. “That’s on Huntington Avenue.”

“Y-yes, sir.” 

B closes the window himself this time, and then taps his fingers on the edge of the laptop, thinking. 

Jeevas is still on the line. 

“You really can’t track them right now, can you?” B asks. 

“Not conventionally, no,” Jeevas says, “They don’t have a phone, and if they do, they didn’t give us any information about it. Smart move with the payphone in case someone was tracking it though.”

“They got lucky it was us,” B says. “Does A have a direct line to you?”

“Yeah. I can imagine the fee was huge, but that was slightly worth it.”

“Probably stole someone’s wallet,” B says offhandedly, “Can you check the CCTVs around the area?”

“Around the animal medical hospital?”

“Yeah,” he says. 

“I’ll try, and I’ll keep an eye on any cameras near the church.”

“Good,” he says, and then runs a hand over his face. “I should have brought a weapon.”

“You’re not allowed - ”

“And if A’s life depends on it?” he asks. 

Matt doesn’t answer right away. Then. “I’ll find a way to get you something,” 

B nods. That’s good enough. 

-

Saint Botolph Anglican Church, sadly, isn’t that impressive.

It takes him about four hours to get there. Four hours in which anything could have happened to A in the time they’ve had to wait, because a quick check on the map shows that the medical center and the church aren’t actually that far from each other, although A has an disadvantage on foot, since they’d be significantly slower than vehicles and have a chance of being spotted. 

Still, they’re smart. If anything, he knows he can trust in their intelligence, so he does. He makes a quick stop to buy two knives and a gun, which he has to argue with Jeevas for a short moment so the boy and his AI would allow him to keep it, but in the end they do, so he carries them with him, as hidden as possible under his baggy hoodie as he makes his way to the church. He’s careful as he climbs the fence surrounding the building, vaulting himself over as soon as he’s at the very top, glad that his gloves are helping him grip things easier.

There’s no one there. 

It’s quiet too. B has no idea what goes on in churches when services end, or during the off days, when a church is just in an office building - he’s never really sought to work in one, hasn’t ever thought to be an altar boy or whatever, and if he’s asked, he doesn’t really care about higher powers. Maybe he believes in them, maybe he doesn’t, but he doesn’t care. There’s a fine line between belief and investment. 

He considers knocking on one of the doors for a moment, but if someone other than A is inside - if they somehow have even gotten inside - then that would just alert them to his presence. 

“Matt?” He asks his earpiece instead, voice low. 

“I saw A get over the fence building about two hours ago,” he says, “It was too dark, but I think they went in the back. I didn’t see them come back to the front.”

“Did you check other surrounding cameras?”

“Yes, no sign of them.”

“Okay,” he says. “So either they’re here or they got whisked off again in an unsuspecting vehicle. We don’t really know what to look for.”

“Are you going to check the back?”

“Yeah,” he says, slowly taking out the gun he’s been hiding under his jacket, tucked carefully into its holster. He takes the safety off. MONIKA doesn’t give him a warning beep. 

He walks around the back as silently as possible. The fact that it’s nighttime makes it easier for him to go unseen in the shadows, making his way around the building with a gun in hand. He’s thankful that the fence makes it harder for bystanders to spot him. They’d ask too many questions, and he’d rather not answer any of them. 

There’s no one in the back either. Around him, there’s only the rest of the fence and the walls of surrounding buildings. 

“A, where the hell are you?” he mumbles. Alright, there’s no sign of them outside, but there’s still the rest of the building, and then the area around it. If something had gone on here, there should have been someone who heard it. At least, if it had made any noise. 

He closes his eyes in an attempt to focus. Takes a deep breath. 

The area stinks of petrichor and the ever-present, faint, sewage smell that plagues cities; stinks of garbage and faint smoke, dust and something that burns his nose and his throat when he catches a whiff of it. He groans, opening his eyes to wipe the back of his nose, and then notices that the weird smell has the familiar iron tang of blood. 

It’s not that strong, so that means there’s not a lot of it, but B’s been smelling blood half-awake for months now. He knows what it smells like. He hopes he’s not hallucinating from fatigue this time, at least. 

“Ah, shit, flashlight.” 

A light from his phone suddenly shines through the fabric of his jeans’ pockets. He blinks and then looks around, hoping no one’s seen that, and then takes his phone out to point the flashlight around the area. 

“God damn it, MONIKA, really?”

“I am here to assist you in your endeavor, sir.”

“Yeah, well, don’t give away my location that easily,” he says. 

“You needed a flashlight.”

“I did, but not that suddenly. Someone could have seen,” he says. Still, he inspects the area as thoroughly as possible, shining the light on the ground and on the walls, looking for any sign of blood that hasn’t been washed away by rain, as the concrete is clearly damp from a storm that’s passed. 

There’s a small pool of it by a corner. B frowns. 

“Find anything?” Jeevas asks. 

“Yeah,” B says. “Found a pool of blood. Very ominous. Horror atmosphere’s at about forty percent here, Matt, thought you’d appreciate that, maybe leave a review on Yelp.”

“What the shit, B. Whose blood is it?”

“Do I look like I can tell whose blood it immediately is at one glance - is that the bullshit movie-grade genius you take me for, because I’m very firmly rooted in logic and physics here, not script magic.”

“B.”

B just chuckles, and then crouches down, balancing his phone on his knee for a moment and lowering his gun so he can tear off a piece of his jacket’s sleeve to soak it into the pool of blood, just in case. He lifts it up and then stuffs it into his pockets, ignoring the way the blood starts staining his jeans. Looks like he’ll have to drench this in hydrogen peroxide later, if it can be salvaged. If the night doesn’t end in violence. It probably will. 

“I just took as best a sample as I could, just in case we don’t find anything tonight, don’t worry about it,” he says, “I’m not a walking forensics lab, but I can improvise.”

“Good, I’m glad you’re useful.”

“Oh, fuck you,” he says. He takes his gun and his phone back and eyes the corner of the building that turns back to the front, and then shines the light on the pool again, tracing it towards the direction of the corner. It’s faint, washed away by the dampness of the ground, but there looks like there are dark stains pointing to that direction. 

He settles the hand holding the gun over the one holding the phone, positioning his wrist carefully. 

There’s nothing there, when he finally sees the area. Just a bunch of trashbins and a lot of wet puddles. There’s a trail of blood, but it’s very faint, and it stops suddenly, so perhaps the source of it was carried away. 

Something cold presses against his back.

“Oh, you’re kidding,” he mutters. “What the fuck.”

They actually tell him to put his hands in the air and to drop the gun, and for a moment, just for a single moment, B feels like an action movie star, which isn’t actually all that exciting as it is amusing since, well, he’s living out Hollywood’s greatest cliches of all time. He has to hold down a laugh as he slowly puts his hands up. 

“The gun,” the man behind him says.

God, being a cliche movie character must suck. He’s suddenly very grateful neither he nor A particularly like action movies aside from superhero ones. 

He crouches slowly, making sure to lift the gun to indicate that it’s what he’s going to lower to the ground. He puts it down, careful, and then pulls his hand back to lift it up. He tries to stand but then gets kicked behind the knees and has to kneel. 

Well, there goes his amusement. 

He thinks about his options for a moment. He’s very sure he has a gun trained on him. His own gun is in front of him but picking it up now would be longer than it takes for someone to pull the trigger. He has knives in his waistband. He has an ankle monitor on his leg. He has Jeevas who’s pretty much useless from afar right now. 

Hm. 

He hears the man pulling out a phone to talk to it, to confirm that yes, there was someone who came to the church, which, well, obviously points out they were waiting for him, which means they knew A had backup. Probably caught them when they were talking on the phone, then. 

“Are they alive?” B asks, glancing at the man briefly. 

The gun gets reintroduced to his face again, just about six inches from it. “Shut up.”

Creative, really. He hates living through Hollywood, he decides. 

When the man is done talking to whoever he has to talk to, some dick up the rankings of their little cult, probably, he keeps the gun aimed at B, but then slowly lowers it as he reaches forward to grab B’s arm and haul him up. 

B remains on the ground, not budging, but instead holds onto the man’s hand, keeping it in place in his arm. The man makes a surprised noise and tries to tug his hand away, at which B laughs, but B doesn’t let him go. The gun is pressed to his temple.

“You had better let me go unless you want me to blow your head off.”

“MONIKA, do me a little favor, would you,” B starts, and watches as the man frowns - as best as someone can under a mask - in confusion. B’s ankle monitor beeps, which catches his attention, and he briefly looks down. 

B smiles. “Do you know anything about electrical engineering?” He wishes for a moment that the man wasn’t wearing a mask. It would have been so easy to freak him out when B can just read off his name from thin air.

The man doesn’t answer, but just presses the gun closer to his skin. He’s been given orders to take B alive, obviously, otherwise he wouldn’t have tried to haul B away to wherever he was supposed to take him, and B thinks that would have been useful so he can get to the location where they’re potentially holding A, but, well. He’s stopped being amused ten minutes ago. He can get there another way. 

“Human bodies are very good conductors of electricity,” he says, “Especially because our bodies are made primarily of water and fat, which - well, also makes us very combustible, by the way.” He laughs, like that doesn’t make his skin sting. “So when a person is being electrocuted, you’re not supposed to touch them.” 

His hand grips the man’s, nails digging into skin, and the man looks panicked, looks so close to pulling the trigger, but he deliberates. Orders or self-preservation from what appears to be someone with a death wish?

“Do you know what that thing on my foot is?” B asks. MONIKA gives out two obliging chimes. “That’s a modified shock collar, one strong enough to fry a man’s insides.” When the stranger stiffens, B grins, wide. “Imagine what can happen if I let it set off while I’m holding you.”

“Let go of me.”

There’s a beep.

“Should we try it?”

Another, and then another, and then suddenly, MONIKA picks up the pace and the beeping starts getting faster.

“I said, let go of me, you freak - ”

Faster, faster.

“MONIKA, dearest, would you please - ”

Beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep -

B ducks and lets go of the man’s hand, lunging forward and taking advantage of his panicked state. A gunshot goes off, the trigger squeezed in a panic, and it strikes B for a second that perhaps it really just wasn’t his time to die today since that bullet doesn’t lodge itself in his head but in a trashbin several feet away from him. He rams his palm into the man’s sternum, the blow knocking the man off his feet from the sudden pain, and then he turns the same arm he’s used to slam his elbow up against the underside of the man’s jaw. There’s a small splash of red across B’s face. The guy had bitten his tongue.

As the man falls, B grabs the arm holding the gun and strikes the wrist. When the man’s fingers involuntarily loosen their hold on the weapon, he snatches it out, kicks the man’s chest so he’s further shoved to the ground, and quickly points the gun at him. He aims it a little to the right and squeezes the trigger. The bullet bounces off the concrete and hits the fence wire before slipping past one of the holes. 

The man whimpers.

“We have about five minutes until someone in the area calls the police from the gunshots they’ve heard so if you want to survive past those five minutes, you are going to fucking talk,” B says, quickly. He strides over and puts a foot on the man’s chest to keep him down, gun still aimed at him. “Where’s the detective?”

He only gets blood spat on his jeans. He squeezes the trigger again. This time it hits closer to the man’s ear, and the bullet ricochets wildly.

“Four minutes, moron.”

The response is another whimper, but this time, at least, the man tries to garble up something at him, as best as he can with a bitten tongue. It’s not bitten off, which is a consolation to the stranger, he guesses. It’s just going to be very swollen, if the guy even survives the night. 

He looks at the lifespan. Looks to be about a few years more. 

“...ows...h-house.”

“Hm?” B asks.

“House,” the man says, and points down the street. “R-red house. Basement.”

B blinks. “You’re keeping them in a basement,” he says. Hollywood movie. He hates this. “I honestly should have expected that.”

He crouches down, one foot still on the man’s chest, although the action makes the gun draw closer to the man’s face, which gets another panicked noise from him again. 

“By the way, while this is, in fact, a shock collar, it’s actually got a lot of settings,” B says, motioning to the ankle monitor on his leg, “I haven’t figured them all out yet, but from what I’ve experienced, they all range from taser to stun gun. So while I’ve been notified that it can, in fact, fry someone’s insides, it’s not going to do that to me anytime soon.” He smiles and then lifts the man up by the collar of his shirt. “So, yeah, I lied. Stun guns and tasers can’t shock someone who’s just holding the recipient of the electric current. Fascinating, isn’t it?”

And then he lifts his arm, the one holding the gun, and slams the butt of the weapon into the man’s temple, precisely aimed to hit the thinnest part of it, knocking him unconscious.