Chapter Text
When Elliot falls asleep during his lunch break, I take us to the store and buy cigarettes. With a lit cigarette in my mouth, warming my face, and my phone in my pocket, warming my hands, the winter's bite barely touches me. New York's buildings loom around me, like chess pieces waiting to be toppled. I'm so close now. Stage 1 is nearly ready.
The dull thud of a fist against flesh pulls me from my thoughts. I pause and glance round.
Again – twack.
It's coming from under the bridge.
Someone groans.
It sounds like a fight. I turn to avoid it, but I stop once I catch sight of the black SUV. It's just visible from where I'm stood, sleek and shiny, and I have to catch my appreciative whistle before it slips through my teeth.
Under the bridge - twack!
The abandoned SUV, the punching... Some rich prick is being mugged. What else could it be?
Tossing my cigarette on the ground, I go around the corner. Just a little look won't hurt.
I see the man on the ground first. His heavy breathing draws my eye. He's haggard, with a thick coat, and skin plastered in dirt and spots from weeks of not bathing. He's clearly homeless.
The man beating him up clearly isn't.
He's a handsome sucker, that's for sure, with brown hair and toned muscles – but that's where the appeal ends. It's pretty hard to find someone foxy when they've just bludgeoned a homeless person.
"Please, stop!" cries the homeless man, as the rich man lands another punch.
It is the perfect image of everything I'm fighting against. This is why stage 1 needs to happen, to stop the rich beating down the poor.
But for now, I can't do anything. Sure, two against one is a better fight, but Elliot is skinny. Practically a noodle. He doesn't go to the gym and he doesn't eat right. This rich man, this suit, he's built. Like a frigging brick house. Besides, I can't risk Elliot walking back to work with unfamiliar bruises - or landing in hospital. He doesn't know I'm back yet, and an incident like that would definitely raise suspicion. So yeah: There's nothing I can do.
I back away.
Someone grabs my arm.
"Hey!" I snap. Another suit. God damn, slippery sonuvabitch! Must have been behind me, watching. He looks older than the other one, though not by much. His brow is set in a scowl. I try to push him off but he's too strong, "Get off me!"
Fuck. I just had to look, didn't I. I just had to see a little justice. A little redistribution of wealth – a rich man being mugged, or at the very least, beaten. Of course, it was too good to be true. Instead, I find the exact opposite. What did I expect? The big men always take from the little men.
The punching has stopped.
I glance over.
The homeless man spits blood. Our eyes meet in a thrilling moment of camaraderie, and then a pile of notes flutters down in front of his face. He snatches them up and runs.
Well, fuck you too then. Not that I blame him. Can't say that I wouldn't get out of the line of fire myself the minute I had the chance. It's my job, after all. Protecting Elliot.
The man wearing latex gloves slips his wallet back into his blazer. He drapes the blazer onto the hood of his SUV and, finally, looks at me. I feel like I know him from somewhere, but can't think of a name. I'm pretty shitty with names, to tell you the truth. I try not to give him the stink-eye, but, damn, part of me really wants him to punch me, just so I could punch back. But that part of me isn't big enough to provoke a potential murder. Murder. Dramatic, I know, but this is New York. Would also explain the gloves.
The Suit stalks towards me. He doesn't take off those latex gloves.
Okay. Time to be good. Injuries aside, Elliot has ten minutes of his lunch break left. The last thing I need is Angela or Gideon asking where we've been and Elliot not being able to remember.
I raise my hands. "Listen, man, I don't want to fight you."
"Relax." is the response, "This is all just a little misunderstanding. Right?"
That's supposed to be my line, surely? I glance sideways at the man who has hold of me. "Yeah." I say, drily, "Sure looks like it."
Suit laughs.
I meet his eyes and refuse to look away. "Look, if you're planning to beat me up - I wouldn't. Sure, you'd win and I like a little rough-and-tumble as much as the next guy. But I have about six minutes of my lunch break left, and people are gonna wonder where I am."
I glance at Scowls. He doesn't react, though he doesn't look like he wants to be here any more than I do. Which of these cockbags am I supposed to be endearing myself to anyway? Both?
Suit narrows his eyes and nods to the man who has hold of me.
I'm released.
So, the young'un is in charge. He only looks a few years older than Elliot, in his early 30s at most. Young and rich - an over-achiever? Or just some guy picking his parents pocket? Either way, that's no weakness. I need something to get me out of this mess.
But before I say anything else, the Suit speaks again.
"I feel as though I've seen you before." his eyes narrow, "Where is it you work?
He's trying to read me. A job marks a person with value. More value, more security in situations like this. Everyone will notice a CEO disappear, but a retail assistant? A mail man? Yeah. Exactly. Point being, Elliot may be liked at AllSafe, but if I tell this guy that we're just a regular cyber security engineer, one of hundreds, I lose my leverage. He'll be completely in control. If there's one thing I hate, it's not being in control.
"None of your business. Now, if you don't mind…" I move away, but Scowls blocks my path.
"Don't be rude." Suit chides gently. I hear the snap as the latex gloves are ripped off, followed by the slide of fabric over skin. "I'm sure we can come to an arrangement if we just talk this over."
"Or, I could leave." I turn back around and freeze when I see that he's got his wallet out.
"Let's say, 300 and you don't gossip about this to your colleagues or family?"
I glare, "I don't want your blood money."
I can tell by his expression that he took that personally. Good. The sonuvabitch offered me money.
His eyes shift nervously. He doesn't want anyone to know about this. He cares what people think of him. That's his weakness.
"I'll be nice." I shrug, "I won't say a thing, no payment required."
"How do I guarantee that?"
I grin drily. "Show a little faith in your fellow man."
That seems to confuse him. "There must be something you can get out of this." he says, "Some form of blackmail."
"Trust me, man, I would blackmail people like you until the end of eternity if I thought I could get something out of it." I shake my head, "I get nothing from this. So don't you worry your pretty head about it."
He looks me up and down. He checks his watch.
I arch my brow. "Late for something?"
He fixes me with an unamused stare. "Your six minutes are up."
"Time sure flies when you're having fun."
Okay. I'm being a jerk now. I should reign it in before he decides to beat me.
He shifts nervously and, after a pause, pushes back his shoulders. "I'll take that leap of faith. But if you breathe a word of this to anyone, I will find you, your family, and all your friends, and I will make sure you regret it."
I just grin – and that throws him off. "I'd be disappointed if you didn't."
I move away and this time nobody stops me.
"Oh, hi! I'm Tyrell Wellick, Senior Vice president of Technology." "Elliot. Just a tech."
The image of corporate elites beating up homeless men swirls in my head. That night, we launch the hack against E-Corp, and it feels like the justice I didn't get earlier that day. But there was no way to do it without Elliot getting involved, which is how, when I next head to the arcade, it's Elliot and not me.
It's a funny thing, when we're both conscious. Maybe one day I'll tell you all about it, but for now let's keep it simple: He's the main program running, and I'm just a tab in the background, and sometimes we switch, and sometimes there's just one of us.
"Who are you?" he asks, and it nearly kills me.
He's forgotten again. Me, the project…
I tell him the plan anyway.
"What if you could take down one conglomerate? A conglomerate so deeply entrenched in the world's economy that 'too big to fail' doesn't even come close to describing it?"
He listens, only interjecting to ask a few questions. It's refreshing. It's been a while since he listened to me.
"Tomorrow, AllSafe is gonna get a visit from the FBI and the US Cyber Command. You are gonna modify the .dat file, and put Colby's terminal IP address in there."
"Terry Colby?" he says with disbelief, "You're gonna frame him? No one's gonna believe that. I met him. He's a moron."
"So are the FBI. Even if they don't believe he did it, they'll believe he gave someone access to it."
"And he'll just go to jail. What good will that do?"
"You don't take down a conglomerate by shooting them in the heart. That's the thing about conglomerates, they don't have hearts. You take 'em down limb by limb. And as they unravel, their illusion of control unravels."
The idea is planted, and I slip away somewhere on his train ride home. Slipping away isn't something I enjoy. I black out and become stuck in some disorientating slumber - like Sleeping Beauty, only there's no magical kiss that can wake me up. There's a deep dark void and when I come back, everything is different. A different place. A different time. Missing information. Delayed memories. Sometimes hours pass, sometimes days, sometimes months and years. But let's not get into that. It's a bit of a downer.
I'm awoken later, at night, by Elliot crying.
Elliot cries a lot. I can't escape his episodes, like electric pulses, pressing into me. He cries for hours, until the exhaustion pushes me to the front and he's gone completely.
I'm curled into the corner of the room, by the bed. My fists hurt from clenching our pillow so hard. On my ankle, feel something cold and wet. I glance down. A little black dog is nuzzling my leg.
"What the actual hell."
The dog looks up at me. Since when did Elliot have a dog? It whines softly. I check its collar.
FLIPPER
There's an address that is in no way ours, a phone number, again not ours, but if that didn't give away that Elliot stole the mut, there's the name of the owner: Lenny Shannon. Given Elliot's history, I know exactly what's happened. Lenny Shannon must have been a real prick if Elliot thought to steal the dog off him. I chuckle, shaking my head fondly. That kid, man, what will I do with him?
"I don't think we've met." I show Flipper my hand, "I'm the other guy. Currently nameless."
After a thoughtful sniff, Flipper licks my hand and whines softly.
"Good girl. You adjusting well? The move wasn't too stressful?" I breathe a laugh, "The mess can be annoying but, hey, that's what it's like having a roommate. Still beats your old owner, am I right?"
I sit petting her until the stickiness on my face starts to annoy me. I get up, dump the pillow back on the bed, drop a couple of pieces of feed into Qwerty's tank, and go into the bathroom. I turn on the shower. As the water runs down my back, I think about corporate elites beating homeless men, repeating the image in my head, until I'm scrubbing our skin raw. I turn on the icy water and it hurts, but it cools down my skin. I towel off, and put us to bed. Flipper curls up on the pillow next to me. As I lie my head down, I feel the weight of Elliot's misery pressing into my gut. The feeling is too familiar. How many more nights of this? I can't stand his sadness.
I'll fix this. We'll be at peace when our project is done.