"Whose turn was it?" Damien mutters into a lull in the conversation, and never mind the fact that he immediately leans further away from the chess board in front of him, squirming as he tries to dip his fingers in his pocket at just the wrong angle. It's another uncomfortable minute of doing (and a miracle of concrete that he doesn't flip the table) before he comes up with a half-crushed pack of cigarettes and lighter. He pulls a cigarette out of the box, sticking it between his teeth before he leans back in, trying to shield it from the breeze that's been blowing through the park all day, so he can light the damn thing. When he manages, he slips the lighter back into his pocket, and takes a drag off the thing, resettling as he exhales smoke, and --
-- well, the look on Aiden Pearce's face, something hard behind bright green eyes, gives him pause. He frowns immediately. It's not like Aiden's ever had a problem with his little vice before. "What?"
Aiden eyes flick downwards, finding his face, and Damien realizes, then, that he wasn't frowning at him. He lets himself relax again, taking another drag off of his cigarette, and when Aiden nods to the hotel looming behind them, he follows his gaze on the breath out. When he turns back to Aiden, he asks, "You ever think of hitting that place?"
"What, the Merlaut?" Damien throws another glance back over his shoulder. "I might have considered it -- and then I remembered that anyone who could actually afford to stay there is probably more trouble than they're worth." A beat, and he clarifies, "Blume's been moving a lot of people in and out of the city, lately, and guess where most of them have been staying."
"Yeah," Aiden hums, after a moment's thought. He shifts a little, trying to get comfortable again on the concrete benches, and reaches for one of his pieces. He rolls it between his fingers, seemingly debating what to do with it, and without looking up from the board, asks, "Yeah, how much do you owe Christina, this month?"
"I should never have fucking told you about her," Damien grumbles darkly, passing the cigarette from one hand to the other so he can use his free hand to reach for his phone, sitting beside him and the board carved into the table. He takes another drag off of the cigarette as he starts to stand, the ash burning as bright and hot as his apparent hurt.
"Router's on the first floor," Aiden blurts out, setting the chess piece down as he starts to get to his feet, too. "I go in, you piggyback off my phone, and we can hit anyone connected to the hotel's wi-fi from the lobby." That's enough to get Damien's attention and he pauses, expression softening into something more thoughtful. Aiden, sensing an opening, repeats, "From the lobby, Damien."
"You've thought about this, haven't you?"
"Nobody with that kind of money is gonna miss a few thousand dollars -- not Blume, not the Club, not anyone else hanging out in there," Aiden answers, shaking his head faintly. "If we work fast enough, no one will even know were were there."
"And you and Sis gets to take the kids to Disneyland," Damien shoots back, a jab for a jab. Aiden allows it, grunting in response but otherwise silent, and Damien sighs slowly settling back down into his seat. He ashes his cigarette absently, as he works through the logistics in his head.
On one hand, if Aiden is right it should be an easy job. Hotel cyber-security is notoriously bad across the board (there's a reason why there's usually a disclaimer, once you've logged on, the hotel shall not be responsible and all that), and people traveling with that kind of money usually rack up hundreds of thousands of dollars in charges a day. A bar tab here, an order down to room service there, a town car rental, complete with driver, because God forbid they be seen in a cab, and so on. It would be easy to siphon a few thousand dollars out of every account running off the wi-fi, and if some of Blume's money gets snapped up in the process? He's not really opposed, not really afraid of Blume, even if they make things more difficult.
On the other hand, though -- well, now that he thinks about it, he really can't think of a downside. If they can do this from the lobby, and if they're careful, afterwards, which he will be, they'll make bank. He does actually owe the ex a check, this month, still, and he's always tried to be on time with those, if only for his son's sake.
"Fine," he relents, then, on a breath out. He takes another hit of nicotine before waving the thing at Aiden. "But not today -- not anytime soon. We need to think this through, actually have a plan in place, in case something goes wrong, you understand?"
Aiden stares at him for a moment before barking out a laugh, and immediately, Damien flips him off. He doesn't try to get up and storm off again, however, the gesture largely token, if only because, "Yes, yes. I realized I was talking to Mr. Patience is a Virtue after that came out of my mouth. Fuck you."
Of the two of them, Aiden is and always has been infinitely more patient, cautious, something. Either way, when he lowers his hand, it's not before jabbing a finger in the direction of the board, and with a small, fond smile tugging at the corners of his lips. "Take your fucking turn."
There's a man waiting by the door to the stairs, as Damien steps off the elevator and onto his floor, but he ignores him. The mundanity of it all fails to hit on the paranoia he's been carrying around since long before the Merlaut, and he has his head on his work, still, chasing test results and theories like a dog chasing its tail. For all he knows, the guy's one of the neighbors kid's friends, and -- well, he really doesn't give a shit. He just readjusts his hold on his bag and the laptop inside it, and makes for his door at the end of the hall, the sound of the news playing on TVs behind paper-thin walls and doors muting the sound of footsteps as they start up behind him.
He pauses just short of the neighbors', fishing his keys out of a pocket on the side of his bag, separate from the laptop, and the footsteps pause, too, but a second too late. He looks up, then, and for all that he doesn't know his pursuer, has a cold moment of recognition, all the same. They stand there for a moment, staring at each other, and then he bolts for the door, fingers tightening around his keys in case he has to used them as a weapon.
He hopes he doesn't have to. He hopes to get the door open before the other man reaches him, get it closed behind him, locked again, so that his friend can't follow, can't hold him at knife or gunpoint while he loots Damien's several thousand dollars worth of computer equipment inside. Never mind the fact that he can't do both at the same time -- the point is that, in that moment, that's what Damien is sure this is about. There have been stories on the news for months, now, about robbers waiting for people to come home at night, only to, well, rob them. Blame the fact that he's a thief, himself, for that being where his thoughts go. Blame the fact that he's a fucking Chicagoan, and this is par for the course, here in the Windy City. The Merlaut is the last thing on his mind.
To his credit, he just about makes it to the door, before they catch up to him. To his detriment, it is a they, now, as not one but two pairs of hands reach for him, and shove him to the ground. He swears, breathless, and squirms free long enough to lash out wildly with his keys, like they're a pair of brass knuckles, like they're a knife. He can't see if he hits, the fluorescent lights above him bright to the point of blinding, his stolen breath taking his reason with it, leaving him with just a pit of panic in his stomach, but he keeps trying to get away regardless. His fingers scrabble against the metal of his door before they drag him back.
Distantly, he's aware of a sound like one of Aiden's tactical batons being snapped open, and -- well, that's exactly what it is. Pain explodes across his temple, whiting out his vision more surely than the lights, if only for a moment, and one of the people holding him down breaks from him. For a brief, hysterical moment, Damien thinks that that sound was Aiden, slipping in behind them to save him, and never mind the fact that he and Aiden haven't really talked much since the Merlaut, the fact that they both decided to lay low the least of the reasons for that.
For a moment, he's saved, and then someone hisses, "Watch the fucking head. He needs to stay conscious. We need to make sure he gets the message."
The hands find his arms again, pinning him down just as he thinks to start struggling a second time, and then the pain returns, bursts of fire trailing down over his ribs, his hips, his legs like sadistic fireworks. Everything grows a little distant, mercifully hazy, after a point, lost to the repetitive drone of metal on meat, punctuated by the sound of someone screaming, then whimpering as something clamps down on it, him, as it gets hard to breathe.
In the end, his body just gives up, the thugs' efforts to keep him conscious all for nothing. He gets the message, though. It's hard not to when, when he wakes up in the hospital a week later, the police tell him no one ever touched his things, door still locked and laptop still in its bag under him. It's hard not to when they ask if he has enemies on the same breath. He knows what this is about, now, but just because he receives the message doesn't mean he listens.
The front door to Nicole Pearce's house is still half-open, by the time Damien gets there. It's a little sad somehow, like the photograph of a house left abruptly empty in the wake of a disaster, found decades later, and a little poetic, considering by the time Aiden gets here, this too will be too little, too late. It's also a little irritating, how haphazard it all is, likely to draw attention if he hadn't already made sure no one would be calling the cops, a hundred little tricks to keep them away all in the palm of his hand, but he supposes you get what you pay for, so to speak. At least they did the job. At least Nicky is gone, spirited away somewhere where Aiden will never find her, not until he wants him to. He made sure of that, too.
This is where they are, now, this is what their relationship has become, kidnapping and blackmail, and it's all Aiden's fucking fault. Him and his bullheaded refusal to just work with him, now and before, at the Merlaut, both. If he'd just listened.
Sighing, Damien takes a moment, trying to dismiss his anger, then starts forward, hobbling towards the door to let himself in. He, unlike his hired help, closes the door behind him and drifts through the living room, taking it all in. It's all so suburban. He's not sure what he was expecting, knowing that Aiden's sister had two children, neither of them even teenaged yet, but it's jarring still, being able to hold Nicky and her living space next to Aiden and his. There are fucking crayon drawings on the refrigerator, even, and Damien all but scoffs as he rounds a chair, presumably tipped over when his people dragged Nicky out, to get to them.
He takes a moment to study them, and -- well, wasn't his life so simple, so white picket fence, once, too? He's had his fingers in people's digital closets since the internet got big, thumbing through their virtual skeletons, he's always been a hacker, but there were children's drawings hung on his refrigerator, too, once upon a time. And then it all fell apart. And then he went to prison. And then Christina served him their divorce papers from the other side of a glass partition. And then she took custody of their fucking son, his son.
Mood tanking again, he wonders bitterly if Aiden realizes everything that he has here. He wonders if he realizes how much he's about to lose, now, for not wanting to play ball, just for a little bit, just long enough to catch the other hacker. Guess he'll find out. They both will.
Stepping away from the refrigerator, he starts in a slow circle around the rest of the kitchen and reaches for his phone, tucked away in his pocket. After checking the time, making sure that Aiden's had time to run the gauntlet of wild goose chases he's led him on to keep him away from here, he thumbs through his contact list to find his number. He doesn't even get a hello, when Aiden answers the phone. Instead, he leads with, "Where are you?"
"I don't think you're going like my answer," Damien tells him, tone still unhappy.
"You know what? Forget it," Aiden tells him. Damien pauses, as something on the wall, some odd imperfection in the crown molding catches his eye. He beelines for it, trying to put his finger on what grabbed him, here, as Aiden continues to rant. "I don't need whatever you've got. You brought me nothing but trouble. We're done talking."
"Oh, too late, Aiden," he snaps back, and that's when he sees it. There, cut into the molding is a small but perfectly round circle. It's almost unnoticeable, if you're not used to looking for surveillance tech, if you're not used to using it. Nicky probably didn't even know her brother was spying on her, and it has to be Aiden's, because who else would care about suburbia? He puts his phone on speaker and pulls up one of his hacking programs to trace the feed, just to be sure. "You won't believe where I am."
And all roads do lead to Rome, to Aiden. He smiles, and hits a few more buttons, gearing up for the big reveal. "Never mind. I'll send you the feed. Find a TV and look."
Somewhere halfway across town, in the little plaza Damien sent Aiden to, a line of screens built into the side of a building, for advertising purposes, spring to life. Damien, on every one of them now, leans up into the camera on Nicky's wall and waves, grinning wolfishly. He's pretty sure he hears Aiden's breath catch and the grin widens.
"That's Nicky's house! What are you doing?" he demands.
"You should hurry, my boy. Your pretty sister needs you."
He waits for that reaction, for Aiden screaming his name, and then he hangs up. The feed he's bouncing to dies about the same time, and he settles in to wait, feeling much lighter. Aiden really should have taken him seriously, the first time around.
The laptop hits the wall with as much force as Damien can muster, and disappointingly, nothing happens. It doesn't explode into a million pieces, in a spectacular shower of sparks, it doesn't even so much as crack as far as he can tell, though -- well, it's hard to tell, the only light the steady ebb and flow of the lighthouse beacon as it spins madly on, a floor above him, outside. Not that it particularly matters, for all that the laptop is ruined anyway, with or without his help, bricked by Aiden and whatever fucking virus he got into the system to get him out, but still. He would have liked for something to go right, tonight. He would have liked his tantrum to amount to something for all that it's not going to matter, here before long.
Still angry, still feeling fucked, he hobbles over to where the laptop landed, straining to pick it up without pitching off the catwalk and with his bad leg. He tucks it under his arm when he manages, and limps towards the stairs, taking them awkwardly as he tries to juggle the laptop and himself, in the near-dark and the rain, coming down hard, now. Somehow, thankfully, he makes it to the top, however, and pulling the computer into both hands, intent on pitching it into Lake Michigan, this time, he leans back, gathering all of his anger and fear and hurt to power the throw. He stops just short of it, two things catching him stock still and cold.
One, back on land, the shores of Chicago are dark entirely, from Navy Pier to Brandon Docks. And two, there's a light coming in from the former, a speed boat he imagines, though he can't hear it from here, not yet.
"Shit," he breathes, pitching his laptop into the lake forgotten in a heartbeat as fear steals his breath. He's not sure how Aiden found him (it wouldn't be hard, the lighthouse the only place in all of Chicago not running on ctOS) or how he got here so damn fast (his friends, always his friends), but the dread is real, regardless. He knew this was it, this was the end, that it was only a matter of time the second Aiden went live with Iraq's blackmail and left him with nothing, but he didn't expect it to happen so fast. He'd hoped for some small reprieve, somehow, one last little miracle, but here they are.
Not that that stops him from heading back down the stairs, as fast as he can manage, trying for his own boat, docked at the bottom.
The bad news is, he never gets there. The at least potentially better news is that it's not Aiden that steps onto the dock when the other boat lands -- it's some Chinese guy in a white suit, and all at once, his fear gives way to confusion.
"Hi," he starts brightly, flipping him a wave as he heads for him. "Damien, right?"
"Depends on who's asking," he deadpans, at a loss for anything else.
"Oh, right, yeah. I'm Jordi," he seemingly relents. The name rings a bell, albeit vaguely, and Damien doesn't try making sense of it, now. Mostly because, as the light from the lighthouse comes and goes and comes again, there's suddenly a gun in Jordi's hand. He waves it at Damien, now, and he exhales a heavy breath, closing his eyes, briefly. "I'm here for the bounty Blume put out on you." A beat. "Well, you and Pearce." And another. "He here yet, speaking of?"
Damien rolls his eyes as Jordi pushes up on his toes, as if to peer around him, and sourly, answers, "Not yet."
"Yeah, I figured not," he allows, sinking back down on his heels. "Well, c'mmon, let's go inside. We can at least get out of the rain, while we wait."
He waves the gun at Damien again, this time indicating that he should go first, and for lack of anything better to do at fucking gunpoint, he turns and heads obediently back inside. Jordi follows, humming something wordless under his breath, and once they're inside, snatches the laptop out from under Damien's arm. He turns back, briefly, just long enough to frisbee the computer back towards the docks. It lands somewhere out of sight and in the water with a splunk, and for all that it was already ruined, Damien can't help but grimace.
"Sorry," Jordi tells him, "but I couldn't have you, y'know." Damien's really not surprised the contract Blume put on him outed him as a hacker. He gives Jordi a withering look, all the same, and Jordi ignores it just as easily, before he ventures, "Strong, silent type, huh? Man, you and Pearce ... "
Damien has never considered himself silent, but this is tantamount to torture. By the time Aiden actually gets here, he thinks he may be ready for whatever end Aiden or Jordi or whoever has in store for him.
He feels Aiden before he sees him, a ghost at his back as he rounds the booth, then his knees brushing his as he slides in across from him. Belatedly, Aiden shrugs out of the bomber jacket he's taken to wearing lately, and Damien pulls himself out of the menu long enough to smile at him, before flagging down their waitress. Aiden puts in a quick order for a beer, and when the waitress retreats, leans forward across the table.
"So?"
"So impatient, Aiden, my boy," Damien teases. A pause follows, and then more seriously, he tells him, "I got you a present. Take out your phone."
He reaches for his own, sitting on the table beside him and a vaping pen, and pulls up an app hidden in the organized clutter that is his home screen. A list of nearby devices populates the screen, and finding Aiden's near the top, he taps it, then presses a few more buttons, rapid fire, not really thinking about it, not needing to. Aiden's phone, now in hand, chirps as Damien invades it, and he looks down at the screen, watching an an app adds itself to his home screen. Leaning back, Damien gestures to Aiden's phone with his own, and tells him simply, "There."
"What is it?" Aiden asks, attentions shifting between him, the phone and back again, over and over, as he pokes at it. On Aiden's screen, he can see >> BRENKS, DAMIEN appear, followed by >> DIVORCED and >> AGE: 46.
He rocks forward again as the app continues to fill out useless facts on him. Their knees touching, electric, and he smiles sharply, before he answers, "Just an exploit I wrote last night." A beat, and then, "Blume calls it the Profiler, and the CPD started running it, last week. ctOS fills it out with your digital footprint, based on facial recognition, and voila -- the police suddenly know if you're likely to commit a violent crime any time soon. It's all very Minority Report."
Aiden makes a small, almost unimpressed noise, and a little of Damien's mood slips. He makes a shooing gesture, indicating that Aiden turn their new toy on someone else, and as Aiden does so, he continues, "I said I added a few fun, new features, though, didn't I? Like the fact that you can get into someone's bank account with, now, with just the tap of a button." Or hijack someone's phone calls or text messages. Or, well, the list goes on. "Everything needs to be ctOS connected, for it to work, of course, but what isn't, these days?"
Blume's influence in Chicago is strong and it's growing every day, spreading. He hears they're opening a ctOS station in fucking Pawnee, of all places, here, soon.
"The Merlaut is," Aiden notes, looking up finally.
"Clever boy," Damien crows, his mood redoubling. "I figured I'd give you a couple weeks to play with it, before we move on the Merlaut, just to make sure it works." He doesn't understand why it wouldn't, that much clear in his tone, but he knows how thorough Aiden likes to be. He wants him to have the chance to satisfy that itch before they go live. If nothing else, any feedback Aiden comes back with might spark some new idea for new functionality, his toy ever expanding.
"Yeah," Aiden answers, ever-effectually, bright eyes continuing to dance between the screen and him. After a moment, he shifts, clicking the display off before he slips his phone back into his pocket. "Thanks."
He can only imagine Aiden slinking through Brandon Docks, later, letting ctOS feed him sensitive data. He might do the same, himself, to be perfectly honest, though he's more likely to stay in his own backyard, not a fighter, not like Aiden, if things go wrong, but, "Dinner first, though? Before you run off to play Robin Hood or whatever you plan on doing with your new toy? It's on me." A pause for effect, and then, nodding towards a woman standing at the bar, he adds, "Or, well, it's probably on her, but you get the picture."
"Sounds good," Aiden decides, and then the waitress is returning with their drinks.
It's a good night -- one of the last few for as long as he can remember, before it all goes to hell.
It all starts with a text: a link to a GPS location just off of I-294, a time and a request that he wear something comfortable.
When he texts back, he gets nothing in response, and he knows Aiden has him, his curiosity piqued. Aiden probably knows it, too, the smug bastard, but what can he do but submit? So he goes, his wonder only growing when the tinny voice on the GPS tells him to pull off onto an access road, usually reserved for county vehicles. He finds Aiden a mile or two down it, leaning up against the grill of a pick-up truck he wasn't driving yesterday, the late afternoon sunlight turning it to gold as it runs along the chrome, and he slows to a stop beside him, immediately hanging out of the car.
"Am I underdressed?" he asks, arms spreading wide, showing off his button down and jeans, the most casual things he owns. When he drops them again, when he rounds the car to approach Aiden, he continues, "You never did tell me what this was all about."
"You're fine, Damien," he promises, amusement written on his face. He was right -- Aiden enjoying making him wonder. It's oddly endearing and equally frustrating, but if he plans on commenting to that effect, Aiden stops him, pushing away from the truck to head for a shipping container a few feet off, strange out here, beside the highway. "C'mmon."
Damien follows, Aiden pausing when they reach the doors, muscles in his back straining as he slides it open. He steps into the near-dark, and again he follows, peeking into the container as Aiden retreats. He spots what looks like a fucking arsenal on a table, inside, a dozen or so guns visible before he loses count, and then Aiden's back, holding one of them out to him.
"Here," he orders, and Damien blinks, reaching to take it from him.
"What's is this?"
"It's a .45," Aiden answers, which earns him something muttered in return, sour. Aiden hums, amused, and reaches to cover his hands with his, adjusting his grip on the gun until he's holding it how he assumes is properly, finger off to the side of the trigger, barrel pointed down at the ground. And finally, finally, Aiden tells him, "You teach me how to hack, I teach you how to shoot."
"What makes you think I'm interested?" Damien asks, glancing between Aiden, the gun and back again.
"It's Chicago," he says with a shrug, as if that explains everything. If it doesn't, the fact that he's a sucker for knowledge, no matter how outside of his normal wheelhouse, does. Aiden knows him, know that, and Damien knows himself, so when Aiden brushes past him, heading for a set up of makeshift targets that he didn't notice before, perched in the bed of the truck, he moves to follow. They stop again some twenty feet off, and Aiden orders, "Stand here."
He walks him through it, then -- how to stand, not to lock his elbows, how to aim -- before stepping back, making space to let him try it. He fires, once, twice, his ears ringing louder and louder after each shot, neither of them wearing ear protection. For a second, he's not sure this thrills him much, not like it obviously does Aiden, and then the man's on top of him, Aiden's chest pressed against his back as he wraps his arms around his, around his hands. His heart jumps into his throat, and at his ear, loudly, Aiden orders, "Like this."
It sends a shiver through him, and together they squeeze the trigger, the heat and the sound and the sun and Aiden making his head spin. He doesn't check to see whether or not they hit, though Aiden must, because he hums, pleased, before letting his hands fall away. He stays close, however, shouting a cadence of "again, again, again, fingers finding his elbows, shoulders, head, where ever briefly each time, to correct him. By the time he's out of bullets he's breathing hard, and the target as a lopsided circle in the center of it. He's glad his shirt is too long, untucked, covering the boner he's sure he has. He wasn't expecting that to be so -- intense. He wasn't aware he was so fucking easy.
He turns slightly, in spite of himself, facing Aiden a little more fully, not sure what to do with this feeling (maybe pursue it?), and the look on Aiden's face stops him. He doesn't look in the least bit wound up, interested. It leaves him oddly a little cold, all at once. Well, at least he didn't do anything stupid.
"You alright?" Aiden asks, uncertain.
"Adrenaline response," Damien lies, holding the gun out to him, a barrier pulled between them as he comes down. "I can see why you're so into this, now. It's ... " Aiden takes the gun back and he shrugs, letting it go there.
He turns away then, heading back for his car, to grab his cigarettes out of where they're hidden in the door. It's as good an excuse as any, to get away for a minute, get a handle on himself. Aiden watches him from a distance, before turning around to take a few, more practiced shots at the target, himself. Aiden never really knows how close that came to something, or so Damien likes to tell himself. While Aiden does succeed in teaching him to shoot, it's not like this, nothing so intimate again, the moment gone.
It's another hurt he carries for when they fall apart.
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abeautifulgame) wrote2020-09-14 03:20 pm
outside the merlaut hotel; june 2012 (tifa)
-- well, the look on Aiden Pearce's face, something hard behind bright green eyes, gives him pause. He frowns immediately. It's not like Aiden's ever had a problem with his little vice before. "What?"
Aiden eyes flick downwards, finding his face, and Damien realizes, then, that he wasn't frowning at him. He lets himself relax again, taking another drag off of his cigarette, and when Aiden nods to the hotel looming behind them, he follows his gaze on the breath out. When he turns back to Aiden, he asks, "You ever think of hitting that place?"
"What, the Merlaut?" Damien throws another glance back over his shoulder. "I might have considered it -- and then I remembered that anyone who could actually afford to stay there is probably more trouble than they're worth." A beat, and he clarifies, "Blume's been moving a lot of people in and out of the city, lately, and guess where most of them have been staying."
"Yeah," Aiden hums, after a moment's thought. He shifts a little, trying to get comfortable again on the concrete benches, and reaches for one of his pieces. He rolls it between his fingers, seemingly debating what to do with it, and without looking up from the board, asks, "Yeah, how much do you owe Christina, this month?"
"I should never have fucking told you about her," Damien grumbles darkly, passing the cigarette from one hand to the other so he can use his free hand to reach for his phone, sitting beside him and the board carved into the table. He takes another drag off of the cigarette as he starts to stand, the ash burning as bright and hot as his apparent hurt.
"Router's on the first floor," Aiden blurts out, setting the chess piece down as he starts to get to his feet, too. "I go in, you piggyback off my phone, and we can hit anyone connected to the hotel's wi-fi from the lobby." That's enough to get Damien's attention and he pauses, expression softening into something more thoughtful. Aiden, sensing an opening, repeats, "From the lobby, Damien."
"You've thought about this, haven't you?"
"Nobody with that kind of money is gonna miss a few thousand dollars -- not Blume, not the Club, not anyone else hanging out in there," Aiden answers, shaking his head faintly. "If we work fast enough, no one will even know were were there."
"And you and Sis gets to take the kids to Disneyland," Damien shoots back, a jab for a jab. Aiden allows it, grunting in response but otherwise silent, and Damien sighs slowly settling back down into his seat. He ashes his cigarette absently, as he works through the logistics in his head.
On one hand, if Aiden is right it should be an easy job. Hotel cyber-security is notoriously bad across the board (there's a reason why there's usually a disclaimer, once you've logged on, the hotel shall not be responsible and all that), and people traveling with that kind of money usually rack up hundreds of thousands of dollars in charges a day. A bar tab here, an order down to room service there, a town car rental, complete with driver, because God forbid they be seen in a cab, and so on. It would be easy to siphon a few thousand dollars out of every account running off the wi-fi, and if some of Blume's money gets snapped up in the process? He's not really opposed, not really afraid of Blume, even if they make things more difficult.
On the other hand, though -- well, now that he thinks about it, he really can't think of a downside. If they can do this from the lobby, and if they're careful, afterwards, which he will be, they'll make bank. He does actually owe the ex a check, this month, still, and he's always tried to be on time with those, if only for his son's sake.
"Fine," he relents, then, on a breath out. He takes another hit of nicotine before waving the thing at Aiden. "But not today -- not anytime soon. We need to think this through, actually have a plan in place, in case something goes wrong, you understand?"
Aiden stares at him for a moment before barking out a laugh, and immediately, Damien flips him off. He doesn't try to get up and storm off again, however, the gesture largely token, if only because, "Yes, yes. I realized I was talking to Mr. Patience is a Virtue after that came out of my mouth. Fuck you."
Of the two of them, Aiden is and always has been infinitely more patient, cautious, something. Either way, when he lowers his hand, it's not before jabbing a finger in the direction of the board, and with a small, fond smile tugging at the corners of his lips. "Take your fucking turn."
And so he does.
damien's apartment; november 2012 (melinoë)
He pauses just short of the neighbors', fishing his keys out of a pocket on the side of his bag, separate from the laptop, and the footsteps pause, too, but a second too late. He looks up, then, and for all that he doesn't know his pursuer, has a cold moment of recognition, all the same. They stand there for a moment, staring at each other, and then he bolts for the door, fingers tightening around his keys in case he has to used them as a weapon.
He hopes he doesn't have to. He hopes to get the door open before the other man reaches him, get it closed behind him, locked again, so that his friend can't follow, can't hold him at knife or gunpoint while he loots Damien's several thousand dollars worth of computer equipment inside. Never mind the fact that he can't do both at the same time -- the point is that, in that moment, that's what Damien is sure this is about. There have been stories on the news for months, now, about robbers waiting for people to come home at night, only to, well, rob them. Blame the fact that he's a thief, himself, for that being where his thoughts go. Blame the fact that he's a fucking Chicagoan, and this is par for the course, here in the Windy City. The Merlaut is the last thing on his mind.
To his credit, he just about makes it to the door, before they catch up to him. To his detriment, it is a they, now, as not one but two pairs of hands reach for him, and shove him to the ground. He swears, breathless, and squirms free long enough to lash out wildly with his keys, like they're a pair of brass knuckles, like they're a knife. He can't see if he hits, the fluorescent lights above him bright to the point of blinding, his stolen breath taking his reason with it, leaving him with just a pit of panic in his stomach, but he keeps trying to get away regardless. His fingers scrabble against the metal of his door before they drag him back.
Distantly, he's aware of a sound like one of Aiden's tactical batons being snapped open, and -- well, that's exactly what it is. Pain explodes across his temple, whiting out his vision more surely than the lights, if only for a moment, and one of the people holding him down breaks from him. For a brief, hysterical moment, Damien thinks that that sound was Aiden, slipping in behind them to save him, and never mind the fact that he and Aiden haven't really talked much since the Merlaut, the fact that they both decided to lay low the least of the reasons for that.
For a moment, he's saved, and then someone hisses, "Watch the fucking head. He needs to stay conscious. We need to make sure he gets the message."
The hands find his arms again, pinning him down just as he thinks to start struggling a second time, and then the pain returns, bursts of fire trailing down over his ribs, his hips, his legs like sadistic fireworks. Everything grows a little distant, mercifully hazy, after a point, lost to the repetitive drone of metal on meat, punctuated by the sound of someone screaming, then whimpering as something clamps down on it, him, as it gets hard to breathe.
In the end, his body just gives up, the thugs' efforts to keep him conscious all for nothing. He gets the message, though. It's hard not to when, when he wakes up in the hospital a week later, the police tell him no one ever touched his things, door still locked and laptop still in its bag under him. It's hard not to when they ask if he has enemies on the same breath. He knows what this is about, now, but just because he receives the message doesn't mean he listens.
nicky pearce's house; november 2013 (akechi)
This is where they are, now, this is what their relationship has become, kidnapping and blackmail, and it's all Aiden's fucking fault. Him and his bullheaded refusal to just work with him, now and before, at the Merlaut, both. If he'd just listened.
Sighing, Damien takes a moment, trying to dismiss his anger, then starts forward, hobbling towards the door to let himself in. He, unlike his hired help, closes the door behind him and drifts through the living room, taking it all in. It's all so suburban. He's not sure what he was expecting, knowing that Aiden's sister had two children, neither of them even teenaged yet, but it's jarring still, being able to hold Nicky and her living space next to Aiden and his. There are fucking crayon drawings on the refrigerator, even, and Damien all but scoffs as he rounds a chair, presumably tipped over when his people dragged Nicky out, to get to them.
He takes a moment to study them, and -- well, wasn't his life so simple, so white picket fence, once, too? He's had his fingers in people's digital closets since the internet got big, thumbing through their virtual skeletons, he's always been a hacker, but there were children's drawings hung on his refrigerator, too, once upon a time. And then it all fell apart. And then he went to prison. And then Christina served him their divorce papers from the other side of a glass partition. And then she took custody of their fucking son, his son.
Mood tanking again, he wonders bitterly if Aiden realizes everything that he has here. He wonders if he realizes how much he's about to lose, now, for not wanting to play ball, just for a little bit, just long enough to catch the other hacker. Guess he'll find out. They both will.
Stepping away from the refrigerator, he starts in a slow circle around the rest of the kitchen and reaches for his phone, tucked away in his pocket. After checking the time, making sure that Aiden's had time to run the gauntlet of wild goose chases he's led him on to keep him away from here, he thumbs through his contact list to find his number. He doesn't even get a hello, when Aiden answers the phone. Instead, he leads with, "Where are you?"
"I don't think you're going like my answer," Damien tells him, tone still unhappy.
"You know what? Forget it," Aiden tells him. Damien pauses, as something on the wall, some odd imperfection in the crown molding catches his eye. He beelines for it, trying to put his finger on what grabbed him, here, as Aiden continues to rant. "I don't need whatever you've got. You brought me nothing but trouble. We're done talking."
"Oh, too late, Aiden," he snaps back, and that's when he sees it. There, cut into the molding is a small but perfectly round circle. It's almost unnoticeable, if you're not used to looking for surveillance tech, if you're not used to using it. Nicky probably didn't even know her brother was spying on her, and it has to be Aiden's, because who else would care about suburbia? He puts his phone on speaker and pulls up one of his hacking programs to trace the feed, just to be sure. "You won't believe where I am."
And all roads do lead to Rome, to Aiden. He smiles, and hits a few more buttons, gearing up for the big reveal. "Never mind. I'll send you the feed. Find a TV and look."
Somewhere halfway across town, in the little plaza Damien sent Aiden to, a line of screens built into the side of a building, for advertising purposes, spring to life. Damien, on every one of them now, leans up into the camera on Nicky's wall and waves, grinning wolfishly. He's pretty sure he hears Aiden's breath catch and the grin widens.
"That's Nicky's house! What are you doing?" he demands.
"You should hurry, my boy. Your pretty sister needs you."
He waits for that reaction, for Aiden screaming his name, and then he hangs up. The feed he's bouncing to dies about the same time, and he settles in to wait, feeling much lighter. Aiden really should have taken him seriously, the first time around.
harbor lighthouse; november 2013 (ann)
Still angry, still feeling fucked, he hobbles over to where the laptop landed, straining to pick it up without pitching off the catwalk and with his bad leg. He tucks it under his arm when he manages, and limps towards the stairs, taking them awkwardly as he tries to juggle the laptop and himself, in the near-dark and the rain, coming down hard, now. Somehow, thankfully, he makes it to the top, however, and pulling the computer into both hands, intent on pitching it into Lake Michigan, this time, he leans back, gathering all of his anger and fear and hurt to power the throw. He stops just short of it, two things catching him stock still and cold.
One, back on land, the shores of Chicago are dark entirely, from Navy Pier to Brandon Docks. And two, there's a light coming in from the former, a speed boat he imagines, though he can't hear it from here, not yet.
"Shit," he breathes, pitching his laptop into the lake forgotten in a heartbeat as fear steals his breath. He's not sure how Aiden found him (it wouldn't be hard, the lighthouse the only place in all of Chicago not running on ctOS) or how he got here so damn fast (his friends, always his friends), but the dread is real, regardless. He knew this was it, this was the end, that it was only a matter of time the second Aiden went live with Iraq's blackmail and left him with nothing, but he didn't expect it to happen so fast. He'd hoped for some small reprieve, somehow, one last little miracle, but here they are.
Not that that stops him from heading back down the stairs, as fast as he can manage, trying for his own boat, docked at the bottom.
The bad news is, he never gets there. The at least potentially better news is that it's not Aiden that steps onto the dock when the other boat lands -- it's some Chinese guy in a white suit, and all at once, his fear gives way to confusion.
"Hi," he starts brightly, flipping him a wave as he heads for him. "Damien, right?"
"Depends on who's asking," he deadpans, at a loss for anything else.
"Oh, right, yeah. I'm Jordi," he seemingly relents. The name rings a bell, albeit vaguely, and Damien doesn't try making sense of it, now. Mostly because, as the light from the lighthouse comes and goes and comes again, there's suddenly a gun in Jordi's hand. He waves it at Damien, now, and he exhales a heavy breath, closing his eyes, briefly. "I'm here for the bounty Blume put out on you." A beat. "Well, you and Pearce." And another. "He here yet, speaking of?"
Damien rolls his eyes as Jordi pushes up on his toes, as if to peer around him, and sourly, answers, "Not yet."
"Yeah, I figured not," he allows, sinking back down on his heels. "Well, c'mmon, let's go inside. We can at least get out of the rain, while we wait."
He waves the gun at Damien again, this time indicating that he should go first, and for lack of anything better to do at fucking gunpoint, he turns and heads obediently back inside. Jordi follows, humming something wordless under his breath, and once they're inside, snatches the laptop out from under Damien's arm. He turns back, briefly, just long enough to frisbee the computer back towards the docks. It lands somewhere out of sight and in the water with a splunk, and for all that it was already ruined, Damien can't help but grimace.
"Sorry," Jordi tells him, "but I couldn't have you, y'know." Damien's really not surprised the contract Blume put on him outed him as a hacker. He gives Jordi a withering look, all the same, and Jordi ignores it just as easily, before he ventures, "Strong, silent type, huh? Man, you and Pearce ... "
Damien has never considered himself silent, but this is tantamount to torture. By the time Aiden actually gets here, he thinks he may be ready for whatever end Aiden or Jordi or whoever has in store for him.
miller's rail bar; october 2012 (seto)
"So?"
"So impatient, Aiden, my boy," Damien teases. A pause follows, and then more seriously, he tells him, "I got you a present. Take out your phone."
He reaches for his own, sitting on the table beside him and a vaping pen, and pulls up an app hidden in the organized clutter that is his home screen. A list of nearby devices populates the screen, and finding Aiden's near the top, he taps it, then presses a few more buttons, rapid fire, not really thinking about it, not needing to. Aiden's phone, now in hand, chirps as Damien invades it, and he looks down at the screen, watching an an app adds itself to his home screen. Leaning back, Damien gestures to Aiden's phone with his own, and tells him simply, "There."
"What is it?" Aiden asks, attentions shifting between him, the phone and back again, over and over, as he pokes at it. On Aiden's screen, he can see >> BRENKS, DAMIEN appear, followed by >> DIVORCED and >> AGE: 46.
He rocks forward again as the app continues to fill out useless facts on him. Their knees touching, electric, and he smiles sharply, before he answers, "Just an exploit I wrote last night." A beat, and then, "Blume calls it the Profiler, and the CPD started running it, last week. ctOS fills it out with your digital footprint, based on facial recognition, and voila -- the police suddenly know if you're likely to commit a violent crime any time soon. It's all very Minority Report."
Aiden makes a small, almost unimpressed noise, and a little of Damien's mood slips. He makes a shooing gesture, indicating that Aiden turn their new toy on someone else, and as Aiden does so, he continues, "I said I added a few fun, new features, though, didn't I? Like the fact that you can get into someone's bank account with, now, with just the tap of a button." Or hijack someone's phone calls or text messages. Or, well, the list goes on. "Everything needs to be ctOS connected, for it to work, of course, but what isn't, these days?"
Blume's influence in Chicago is strong and it's growing every day, spreading. He hears they're opening a ctOS station in fucking Pawnee, of all places, here, soon.
"The Merlaut is," Aiden notes, looking up finally.
"Clever boy," Damien crows, his mood redoubling. "I figured I'd give you a couple weeks to play with it, before we move on the Merlaut, just to make sure it works." He doesn't understand why it wouldn't, that much clear in his tone, but he knows how thorough Aiden likes to be. He wants him to have the chance to satisfy that itch before they go live. If nothing else, any feedback Aiden comes back with might spark some new idea for new functionality, his toy ever expanding.
"Yeah," Aiden answers, ever-effectually, bright eyes continuing to dance between the screen and him. After a moment, he shifts, clicking the display off before he slips his phone back into his pocket. "Thanks."
He can only imagine Aiden slinking through Brandon Docks, later, letting ctOS feed him sensitive data. He might do the same, himself, to be perfectly honest, though he's more likely to stay in his own backyard, not a fighter, not like Aiden, if things go wrong, but, "Dinner first, though? Before you run off to play Robin Hood or whatever you plan on doing with your new toy? It's on me." A pause for effect, and then, nodding towards a woman standing at the bar, he adds, "Or, well, it's probably on her, but you get the picture."
"Sounds good," Aiden decides, and then the waitress is returning with their drinks.
It's a good night -- one of the last few for as long as he can remember, before it all goes to hell.
off of i-294; march 2011 (ren)
When he texts back, he gets nothing in response, and he knows Aiden has him, his curiosity piqued. Aiden probably knows it, too, the smug bastard, but what can he do but submit? So he goes, his wonder only growing when the tinny voice on the GPS tells him to pull off onto an access road, usually reserved for county vehicles. He finds Aiden a mile or two down it, leaning up against the grill of a pick-up truck he wasn't driving yesterday, the late afternoon sunlight turning it to gold as it runs along the chrome, and he slows to a stop beside him, immediately hanging out of the car.
"Am I underdressed?" he asks, arms spreading wide, showing off his button down and jeans, the most casual things he owns. When he drops them again, when he rounds the car to approach Aiden, he continues, "You never did tell me what this was all about."
"You're fine, Damien," he promises, amusement written on his face. He was right -- Aiden enjoying making him wonder. It's oddly endearing and equally frustrating, but if he plans on commenting to that effect, Aiden stops him, pushing away from the truck to head for a shipping container a few feet off, strange out here, beside the highway. "C'mmon."
Damien follows, Aiden pausing when they reach the doors, muscles in his back straining as he slides it open. He steps into the near-dark, and again he follows, peeking into the container as Aiden retreats. He spots what looks like a fucking arsenal on a table, inside, a dozen or so guns visible before he loses count, and then Aiden's back, holding one of them out to him.
"Here," he orders, and Damien blinks, reaching to take it from him.
"What's is this?"
"It's a .45," Aiden answers, which earns him something muttered in return, sour. Aiden hums, amused, and reaches to cover his hands with his, adjusting his grip on the gun until he's holding it how he assumes is properly, finger off to the side of the trigger, barrel pointed down at the ground. And finally, finally, Aiden tells him, "You teach me how to hack, I teach you how to shoot."
"What makes you think I'm interested?" Damien asks, glancing between Aiden, the gun and back again.
"It's Chicago," he says with a shrug, as if that explains everything. If it doesn't, the fact that he's a sucker for knowledge, no matter how outside of his normal wheelhouse, does. Aiden knows him, know that, and Damien knows himself, so when Aiden brushes past him, heading for a set up of makeshift targets that he didn't notice before, perched in the bed of the truck, he moves to follow. They stop again some twenty feet off, and Aiden orders, "Stand here."
He walks him through it, then -- how to stand, not to lock his elbows, how to aim -- before stepping back, making space to let him try it. He fires, once, twice, his ears ringing louder and louder after each shot, neither of them wearing ear protection. For a second, he's not sure this thrills him much, not like it obviously does Aiden, and then the man's on top of him, Aiden's chest pressed against his back as he wraps his arms around his, around his hands. His heart jumps into his throat, and at his ear, loudly, Aiden orders, "Like this."
It sends a shiver through him, and together they squeeze the trigger, the heat and the sound and the sun and Aiden making his head spin. He doesn't check to see whether or not they hit, though Aiden must, because he hums, pleased, before letting his hands fall away. He stays close, however, shouting a cadence of "again, again, again, fingers finding his elbows, shoulders, head, where ever briefly each time, to correct him. By the time he's out of bullets he's breathing hard, and the target as a lopsided circle in the center of it. He's glad his shirt is too long, untucked, covering the boner he's sure he has. He wasn't expecting that to be so -- intense. He wasn't aware he was so fucking easy.
He turns slightly, in spite of himself, facing Aiden a little more fully, not sure what to do with this feeling (maybe pursue it?), and the look on Aiden's face stops him. He doesn't look in the least bit wound up, interested. It leaves him oddly a little cold, all at once. Well, at least he didn't do anything stupid.
"You alright?" Aiden asks, uncertain.
"Adrenaline response," Damien lies, holding the gun out to him, a barrier pulled between them as he comes down. "I can see why you're so into this, now. It's ... " Aiden takes the gun back and he shrugs, letting it go there.
He turns away then, heading back for his car, to grab his cigarettes out of where they're hidden in the door. It's as good an excuse as any, to get away for a minute, get a handle on himself. Aiden watches him from a distance, before turning around to take a few, more practiced shots at the target, himself. Aiden never really knows how close that came to something, or so Damien likes to tell himself. While Aiden does succeed in teaching him to shoot, it's not like this, nothing so intimate again, the moment gone.
It's another hurt he carries for when they fall apart.