Archive of Our Own ^beta

“ The first step to success,” one of the higher-ups once told him, “is a consistent schedule. If you want to amount to anything in this line of work, you have to keep your personal life in order.”

Antonio- or Tony, or Carlos, or whatever they were calling him now, he doesn’t know- never really bought into that idea, but he made one anyway. Working for the Liskov Institute made it damn near impossible to establish a sense of normalcy, but he may as well try, right?

1. Get out of bed, start day. 

For the nth day in a row, Antonio wakes up on a stiff, Institute-issued cot in his dorm to the sound of his phone alarm going off beside him. He lets out little more than a breath, eyes opening slowly as he fumbles to shut it off, and when he finally makes his mark, he drops his phone onto the bed and considers going back to sleep. He should. He deserves it, after that monster brawl last night. 

It’s a nice thought, at least.

He sits up with a groan, body still aching all over and half-healed after another night of insufficient sleep. He allows himself a moment to stretch, forcing some of the pain out of his arms and back for a moment, knowing damn well it’ll be back sooner than he’d like, then drags himself out of bed. He probably didn’t do himself any favors last night by falling asleep in his gear again, certain that he’ll find bruises on his torso where some of it pressed into his skin, but he barely remembers getting back to HQ last night, nevermind actually laying down in bed. Besides, they’ll heal up eventually.

Antonio grabs a quick, perfunctory breakfast from the box of snacks in his room, hunched over himself as he does. He scrolls through the news as he does- first world, then town-specific, then Liskov related, and when he realizes that he got cited as ‘a brave agent’ instead of being called by name again in the article on last night, he swears under his breath. The least those assholes could do is recognize all of his hard work every once in a while. He was off the clock, and he still dragged himself out of bed in the middle of the night to do their bidding!

He’s still covered in mud, he realizes. There’s probably some blood, too, but he doesn’t worry about that, seeing as he’ll have to shower anyway. That’ll feel nice. 

That’s his motivation to trudge to the bathroom, dropping his phone on the counter. The Institute oh-so-kindly upgraded him to a private bathroom once he got assigned to his most recent anomaly, just to give him a place to recover after a long day, but there’s only so much joy a bathroom of his own and a ten-by-twelve concrete box can bring him. He notes that, for the third week running, his counter hasn’t magically been cleaned while he was out yesterday. He might actually have to clean it himself, just like last time, but for now, the clutter can stay. He can hold out for a little bit longer than that.

In the suite adjacent to Antonio’s bathroom, a body falls like a sack of hammers. He pauses, then finishes tugging his shirt off with a sigh before reaching for his phone to text the supervisor on duty, which, if he’s correct, is-

Fuck. Brick Roscoe. That douchebag. 

Thursday, 5:16 AM

: Fairly certain that Quebec next door just passed out, or maybe slipped. Please advise. 

[Unknown Number]: lol that sux 

: Please advise.

[Unknown Number]: ok 

Antonio sighs again, louder this time, puts his phone back on the counter, and assumes that means one of the two Bricks will handle it. It really doesn’t matter which one does it. As far as Antonio can tell, they’re the same dude, and they both suck.

Ten minutes later, already showered and dressed, he sits on the floor of his dorm, cleaning off one of his knives. Some of the more expensive gear looks like a hot mess after last night, but he decides to deal with that later, maybe when he’s working. Jack never usually notices when he works on stuff like that on the clock, and even if he did, he probably wouldn’t say anything. Thank god. It makes both of their jobs a hell of a lot easier.

Once the most crucial parts of his gear are in working order again, Antonio sticks them back in his bag, pausing when he reaches for his phone. He finds nothing in his pocket, then realizes a second later that he left it on the bathroom counter. There’s no texts from Brick on the screen when he finds it, nor did he actually hear anyone break into Quebec’s room. It’s none of his business, but for once, he’d like to be in on the goings-on of his colleagues. After all, he saw Quebec get his ass kicked the night prior, a massive gash across his forehead and an obvious concussion fogging his mental capabilities, and on top of that, he refused medical care.

Thursday, 5:30 AM

: Have you dealt with it?

[Unknown Number]: dealt w what

[Unknown Number]: o u mean the thing w the guy

[Unknown Number]: ya hes dead [thumbs up emoticon]

: Oh. Guess he should’ve gone to med last nite.

[Unknown Number]: dont get chummy w me

[Unknown Number]: NEway it would have been stupid if he went to med last nite bc he got stabbed this morning. checkmate dipshit

Antonio doesn’t bother responding to that. He clenches his eyes shut and drops his phone in his pocket, opting to ignore that his neighbor supposedly got murdered right next door, and starts the walk to work.

2. Morning shift at Gas Station Anomaly. Check in on target friend Jack Townsend. 

Per usual, Antonio steps out of the supply closet to find the gas station in the exact same state he left it, save for one minor difference: at some point last night, Jack finished his book, and now, he’s reading a totally different one. New genre and everything. If Antonio had any time to read in his day-to-day life, he’d probably ask him about them more often. 

Instead, he strolls right into the store, dropping his bag off behind the counter. Jack doesn’t notice him, and as Antonio walks back around to the other side of the counter, heading for the coffee machine, he pauses. “Hey, Jack.”

Jack blinks, coming out of his daze and half-closing his book to meet his eye. Antonio swears the guy looks worse by the day, but it’s not like there’s anything either of them can do about that. “Oh, hey, Tony. When did you get here? I didn’t see you come in?”

“Just a minute ago. You seemed pretty invested in your book.”

Jack hums, glancing down at the cover again. “Guess I was.”

Antonio knows he should just continue with his day. He shouldn’t get too close, shouldn’t form a bond, but he can’t help himself. “Is that one any good?”

“God, no. It’s terrible.” Jack leans onto the counter, and for what has to be the first time in days, grins. Antonio also can’t help but smile back with a soft ‘yeah?’, and Jack continues. “Brother Riley recommended it. Something about ‘exploring new genres’ or something. I don’t know what genre-” he pauses to check the back cover, “-’tropical lovecraftian femslash’ is, or why he thinks it’s relevant to my interests, but I’m gonna finish it anyway.”

He considers telling Jack that Brother Riley wants him dead. That Brother Riley is some kind of weird, ancient god, and soon enough, he’s going to start a coup to overthrow the town, its residents, its other gods, and the shitty puppet at the head of it all. The words sit in his mouth, fully formed, gagging him at the back of his throat, but he can’t spit them out. That would compromise the mission. 

That’s probably the hardest part of working there with Jack. Jack’s a nice guy, if a bit unobservant. Antonio wants to tell him everything, that he’s in danger and that he should leave town and never, ever come back, no matter what anyone says or who gets hurt because of it, that, fuck, he’ll run away with him if he wants the company, and he wouldn’t even be upset about it, but he can’t. Some days, he thinks that the bullet in his head would be worth it, but he’s worth more here, keeping him alive by his own two hands.

It’s hard not to tell him. It’s harder not to be his friend. 

“Oh.” Antonio pours himself a cup of coffee, taking a sip. It’s garbage, per usual, and sort of tepid, but it’s better than nothing. He thinks for a second, then furrows his brow. “I’d guess that it’s either a horror or a romance, by that definition. Maybe sci-fi.”

Jack flips the book over again, eyes scanning over it for a second. “Well, the reviews say it’s historical fiction.”

“How?”

3. Morning training at the Institute, followed by fifteen minutes of leisure time. 

Antonio hates Brick Roscoe. 

Which one?

It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t even matter if one of them is blind now. They’re the same smarmy, evil slimeball, stuffed into the ugliest fucking mockery of a designer suit Antonio has ever laid eyes on, and if you see one, you know that the other isn’t far behind, ready to echo whatever the other Brick just said to make you feel bad about yourself.

As Antonio finishes puking on the floor of the concrete room, his hands and knees starting to bruise, Brick (one of them) kicks him in the ribs, sending him down to his side with a pained cough. He manages to roll out of the way of his own vomit, at least, curling in on himself and clutching his stomach, but that floor- god, that floor- always smells like death anyway. It’s only marginally better. 

People do die in there. Being an agent, they tell him, requires a certain amount of strength. Some people just don’t have that sort of willpower, nor the physical power to take down their supervisor, so if you’re picked out of the line of your fellow agents to go spar, you know you have to put your best effort into it. The higher-ups won’t hesitate to kill you. 

(He doesn't really consider this training, even if he does get to spar. He considers this a brutal reminder of just how bad SERE training can be, an excuse for the vetted members of the Institute to let out some anger on people who can’t do anything about it. He promises not to do this sort of thing to the newbies if he makes it that high up in the ranks before dying. He’d never.)

(He knows some of his superiors probably said the same thing. At the very least, he’ll be better than Brick fucking Roscoe, but that puts the bar six feet underground. If he stoops that low, he probably deserves to get his ass beat).

Antonio lets his head rest on the cool floor for a moment longer, shutting his eyes. His clothes are drenched in sweat, no longer suitable to wear to his other two shifts of the day, and he knows he’ll have to change. To do a shit ton of laundry this week, again. He thinks about just falling asleep there and ignoring the rest of the world, skipping out for one day, but then he hears Brick talking to the rest of the rookies on the other side of the room.

“That,” he says, probably pointing at Antonio like he does for every victim when he starts this speech, “is what a little bitch looks like, folks. You think an anomaly’s gonna stop because you start crying?”

There’s a collective ‘no’. Antonio didn’t even realize he was crying. He probably isn’t, but it sells the story a hell of a lot better. 

“Ex- actly. If you can’t take that much of a beating, then you shouldn’t be here. You’ll be monster food by the end of the week. Now, who can tell me- hold on, he’s pissing me off.” 

“Man, just gimme a minute,” Antonio manages to croak, expecting another kick, but Brick doesn’t walk over to him. He just snorts.

“Get off your ass and stop whining, Agent. You’re fine. How are you ever gonna get better if you don’t get a little bit hurt every once in a while?”

Is he? Is he really fine? Is any of this actually making him better, or is it just making him angry?

Regardless of the answer, he manages, with a bit of trouble, to push himself up to a seated position again, then drags himself up the wall to a standing position, breathing labored, back pressed against the stone. “I’m already better than you. What else can I ask for?”

“Yawn,” Brick says aloud, completely ignoring his brief moment of defiance to turn back to the rest of the class. He jabs a thumb back at Antonio. “Twenty bucks says I find a good reason to shoot that guy before the end of the month.”

Yeah, right. Like that’ll happen.

Antonio trudges out of the room, resigning himself to whatever penalty he’ll get for it later in favor of cleaning himself up for his actual assignment. He cleans his face off (as well as the speck of blood at the corner of his mouth, despite the fact that Brick didn’t actually hit him in the face, just in the torso, and- oh, fuck, he hopes that isn’t from a major organ), then changes clothes, gets his hair in a semi-presentable state, and drags himself back up to the supply closet with fifteen minutes to spare.

He doesn’t even sit down. He puts his back against the wall and wedges himself between that and a crate of protein bars, then falls asleep standing up, hands shoved in his pockets. 

Someone interrupts his nap eventually, light spilling into the closet. Antonio can’t quite tell how long it’s been since he fell asleep, but it certainly wasn’t enough time. He opens one eye, and there’s Jack, standing in the doorway, brow furrowed in confusion. “Hi, Tony.”

Tony lets out a sound somewhere between a pained grunt and a groggy ‘hrm’ as he puts his head back, then realizes that sound is totally incomprehensible. “Hi.”

“Is there any particular reason you’re in the supply closet?”

“Nah. Not really. Came in here for something, dozed off. Sorry.”

“Oh. Okay.” Damn. He’s too easy to trick. He grabs a bucket off one of the nearby shelves, then drops a pair of tongs and a rag into it. “The frozen drink machine’s making that sound again.”

Antonio’s stomach churns, and, surprisingly, it has nothing to do with the rest of the bullshit he’s gone through today. Maybe he is a little bit of a bitch; he’s getting too complacent in the easy monotony of gas station life, and if he doesn’t snap out of it soon, he may just end up here for good. “Gross. If you need help with it, I’ll be out in a minute.”

“I’ve got it. Just do what you have to.” He goes to leave the closet, then pauses, gesturing vaguely to his lips. “You’ve got somethin’ there.”

“Alright. I’ll fix it.”

Jack shuts the door on him after that without another word.

Antonio makes it into the bathroom, only to find the cowboy there again, leaning against the wall with his head lowered and the brim of his Stetson pinched between two fingers. He pauses in the doorway, sighing heavily. “If you’re gonna challenge me to a duel, can you please warn me in advance?”

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t say a word.

Antonio decides that he’s probably safe, then.

He takes two steps into the bathroom before pivoting to look at the mirror, and, sure enough, there’s a bit more blood around his mouth. A couple drops got on his shirt, staining it in a way that Jack hopefully won’t bring up, but that doesn’t change the fact that he did see the trails running down his chin. Fuckin’ Brick Roscoe.

“Am I in Hell?” Antonio asks out loud to no one in particular. The cowboy, maybe, but Antonio has asked the cowboy enough questions by this point that he knows it’s not gonna do him any good. “Is this what Hell is like? I feel like I’m in Hell, and I did something really, truly messed up for me to end up here.”

The cowboy stays silent for a moment, then lifts his head, turning towards the tiled wall like he’s looking out the window. In the mirror, Tony can just barely see him chewing on a toothpick with a somber, contemplative expression. “Lookin’ like rain out there,” he says. 

While staring at the goddamn wall.

After that, he leaves, and Antonio stands in the bathroom alone, staring at the ground as he tries to decipher what any of that means. Probably nothing. Hell wouldn’t give him answers that easily. 

4. Afternoon shift at Gas Station Anomaly. Check in on Jack Townsend. 

Antonio recovers quickly. It comes with the job. He does some shit for as long as he can manage, meaningless little tasks that make it look like he’s actually on the payroll, until he feels like he’s done enough that it won’t be suspicious if he chills out for a second to give his (probably broken) ribs a break.

He slips behind the counter beside Jack, leaning onto its surface. Jack doesn’t say anything, turning a page of his book, and after a second, Antonio pulls out his phone to scroll through it.

There’s two new texts from Brick, yelling at him for leaving ‘training’ early. There’s four from an entirely different nuisance, one complaining about something he did yesterday and didn’t notice until twenty minutes ago because, frankly, he sucks at his job, as well as six missed calls and a voicemail that, when he pulls up the transcript, is mostly threats. There’s one from Jerry, a link to a novelty t-shirt that says ‘I have two moods: ‘Hello’ and ‘I’ll cut you’’, that he apparently thought Antonio would like, and, admittedly, it does at least coax a grin out of him. The one immediately after, one from a childhood friend asking him if he’s in town so they can meet up to get drinks, someone he had a crush on once upon a time, wipes it right off. Silently, he blocks their number, then sets his phone down on the counter.

He sort of feels bad for it sometimes. Disappearing into thin air like he did. Abandoning the only life he’s ever known. He has a new one now, and once this one stops working, he’ll switch to a new one, and that’s just the way things have to be. He’ll never be able to be a good friend or a good husband, and he certainly doesn’t wanna put his family back home in danger, so life will always be a hell of a lot better if he just… fades away.

At least he can do right by the people around him, though, can’t he?

He lets out a sigh, then turns to look at Jack. His ‘coworker’. The guy he’s been lying to for ages now. “How are you doing, Jack?”

“I’m alright,” Jack replies, and after a moment, his face scrunches up, and he turns to make eye contact. “Why?”

“No reason. I just realized I never ask, so… I made up for it. I guess.”

“Oh. How are you, then?”

Antonio offers him a smile, one that he awkwardly reciprocates a second later. “Never better,” he lies.

5. Kill Kieffer Anomaly at least once. 

They’re not hard to find. Antonio finishes his shift, takes a nice stroll into the woods, and ducks into a bush when he sees a hint of a fancy suit. The entire process barely takes twenty minutes, and, if he were hunting anyone else, he’d probably be a little proud of himself, though.

This is Kieffer, though. That guy’s constantly hammered, and tasks like ‘going on a walk’ or ‘having hands’ give him a 50/50 shot of survival every time he does one.

He makes sure this Kieffer is sufficiently drunk and off his guard before he starts to close in. Unholstering his gun, he creeps up on him from behind, keeping his footsteps as silent as humanly possible. When he’s finally within arms’ reach, Antonio plants a hand on Kieffer’s shoulder, earning a curious ‘oh?’ from him, but as Antonio goes to whirl him around and pistol-whip him-

There’s nothing there. No Kieffer. Just this disgusting residue on his hand that he refuses to think about.

Kieffer apparently sprang away from him when he realized what was going on, tumbling to the ground in the process and landing on his ass. While Antonio watches, utterly perplexed, Kieffer seals his own fate; in a panic, Kieffer crab-walks backwards and directly into a tree, hitting his head so hard that he slumps onto the ground immediately, unconscious. 

Antonio’s heart pangs. It’ll be easier to kill him if he’s unconscious, emotionally speaking, but he can’t help but feel a little bad for the guy. It’s not like he did anything wrong, nor is he particularly apt to dying or anything. He’s just clumsy.

Antonio raises his pistol.

Evidently, so does God.

He doesn’t even get a chance to fire. There is not a single cloud in the sky, and, despite what the cowboy said earlier, it won’t rain for another week. It’s not particularly dry nor hot, but somehow, all of those factors do not prevent Kieffer from getting struck by fucking lightning. 

Nothing else in the area catches fire. Hell, Kieffer doesn’t even catch fire. It just stops his heart immediately, all while Antonio stands there and watches, completely dumbfounded. 

After a few seconds, he reholsters his gun and puts his hands up. “Okay. Whatever. That counts.”

6. Protect the Kieffer Anomaly’s corpse from one Spencer Middleton.

Spencer Middleton is a lot of things. Crafty. Talented. Downright fucking terrifying, if the mood strikes him. Actively hunting Antonio through the woods.

Antonio’s colleague, unfortunately.

Antonio only knows that because of some digging he did in the Institute’s records one lazy afternoon. After he came back and started puppy guarding Kieffer, Spencer’s presence stuck out too much for him not to notice, especially when part of his assignment was to kill the guy that the perfect soldier took to watching over Kieffer like a livestock dog to its flock. Brick told him there wasn’t anything in the Institute even remotely related to Spencer, and that he shouldn’t bother looking; that was the first thing that told him he should go after the information.

As it turns out, Spencer doesn’t have a profile with the Liskov Institute. He has five.

Profile one is from his time in the army. Like, the actual US government, as opposed to whatever bullshit they’re doing at the Institute. Not only did they consider Spencer dangerous (as they should), they had another agent orchestrate his discharge from his military specifically because they thought he could single-handedly be a threat to the Institute. Not only did he catch the agent, then a second, then a third, Spencer managed to piece together the Institute’s existence just by raiding their pockets after each attempt, then got in contact with the agency on his own.

Profile two is for Roger. Of course. Whoever wrote the file thought it was important enough to mention that Spencer was almost part of the whole ‘Roger’s Kids’ bullshit until they found Jack as their primary subject, and that, as long as they never met one another, save for brief instances, Jack and Spencer would both be totally fine, and neither of them would compromise each other. Spencer doesn’t even have a directive for that one. He’s just supposed to be in town, near-ish to Roger, just in case something happens, and stay away from Jack Townsend.

(Apparently, some of the researchers are in this massive debate over if Jack burnt down Spencer’s house or if Spencer torched it himself. They never came to a conclusive answer, and when Antonio last looked at the file, they were still arguing in the margins.)

Profile three tells him to keep an eye on the Collector. Mentions him by name, even, and that’s how Antonio learned that Brother Riley was playing Jack like a goddamn fiddle. The Institute’s theory is that if Spencer gets in good with the guy, then he can get samples of whatever they catch, assuming the guy is actually any good at collecting gods. At the very bottom, someone asked ‘couldn’t we have just paid him to get the gods for us?’, followed by someone else just writing ‘oh’ and underlining it six times.

Profile four- which Antonio assumes is his current project- involves working for the Dark God that lives under the gas station. They think that if he makes a truce with him, then maybe the Dark God could work with the Institute directly. Keep their agents safe instead of just letting them die. Recently, and parallel to Antonio’s own mission, they discovered that the Dark God solicited Spencer to protect his ‘son’, Kieffer, prior to Spencer being given the assignment, and that Spencer tends to take that job a hell of a lot more seriously than he takes any of his Institute duties.

Profile five barely has anything on it. A name, Spencer F. Middleton, with the majority of the middle name redacted. An age. A picture with the eyes slashed out. A little note that says ‘does what he wants’ alongside pages upon pages of blacked-out text with only the most minor details left behind, with one final note that he prefers to propose projects as opposed to receiving them.

So, that guy is absolutely playing the Institute, Roger, the Collector, and maybe even the Dark God for fools, garnering the attention of all of them for his personal benefit. At a certain point, it won’t even matter if they fire him; he already has the connections to do whatever he hell he pleases, and, with Kieffer, it seems like he picked the job he gives a shit about and ran with it.

Antonio tries to keep his interactions with Spencer brief. After the third or fourth Kieffer, well after Antonio figured out who he was and handed over the first corpse with Jack at his side, shaking the entire time, they spoke. Cards on the table, Antonio told him about his assignment: kill the Kieffers, see what happens. See how they rot. See if the Institute can use them later. Spencer, in turn, told him that, unfortunately for him, he’s fucked, because he has to get the corpses back to the Dark God for him to remake Kieffer every single time the guy dies, and they can’t kill each other, because then they’re both so unbelievably screwed that he can’t even bring himself to laugh about it. 

Behind their supervisors’ backs, they made a deal. 

Deep in the woods, there’s this pit. Antonio dug the entire thing out himself, by hand, over the course of a full day, then dragged Spencer out to it from the back doors of the gas station. He said that if he manages to get a Kieffer to the pit before Spencer gets ahold of it, then it’d stay there. No taking it back. Just letting it decompose. Spencer, without hesitation, said he wasn’t going to bother jumping into a pit to get a corpse back, even if he would try to stop Antonio on the way there if he was aware of it happening. They shook on it, and from there, they- well. Stayed out of each other’s way, mostly.

Maybe the lightning strike was a little too obvious. He probably should have expected this one. 

At the beginning of the walk, he took it easy, dragging Kieffer behind him without much issue. Sure, his clothes were a bit staticky, and he hit damn near every rock on the way towards the pit, but otherwise, he wasn’t a heavy guy. Dragging him along was practically nothing to him, until-

“You motherfucker!” 

His walk suddenly turns into a sprint.

With the sound of Spencer’s voice and what is hopefully not a shotgun, Antonio glances behind him, barely managing to catch a glimpse of Spencer through the trees before they both take off running. In hindsight, if he’d put Kieffer on his shoulder, his life wouldn’t be nearly as difficult right now, but he can’t exactly change that with Spencer behind him. The guy runs like he hates the ground, combat boots snapping twigs and leaving cracks in the ground, and while Antonio has to find a way around a lot of the foliage, he’s pretty sure that he hears Spencer go over a bush at one point. 

Oh, he’s so fucked. He has got to get a new job, or maybe he should just die so he doesn’t have to deal with this ever again.

That’s one of the last thoughts Antonio has before he goes tumbling into the clearing with the hole in it, Kieffer’s battered body still behind him. He trips over his own feet, cursing to himself, and he has to let go of the corpse to make sure he doesn’t land directly on his face. He hits the ground hard, coughing, barely five feet away from the hole with his body telling him to lay down and rest, and as he ignores it to sit up and grab Kieffer again-

He locks eyes with Spencer. 

Spencer freezes. The body sits about an equal distance away from either of them, even if Spencer’s the one standing. For a second, they stare at each other, trying to see if one of them is gonna make the stupid decision of moving first, and- nevermind! There Spencer goes, diving at the body like some kind of asshole!

Antonio springs right after him, scrambling to grab Kieffer by the ankle, and for a second, his fingers connect with the fabric of Kieffer’s slacks, only to take an elbow directly to the face a second later. He recoils with a shout, feeling the blood gush out of his nose damn near immediately, and, spitting it out of his mouth a second later, Antonio snarls in frustration. “Goddamnit, Spencer, we had a deal!”

“Yeah, and I’m honoring it!” Spencer shoves himself up to his feet, holding Kieffer around the waist, and Antonio grabs one of the ankles at the last second, holding onto it tightly. From that distance, Spencer can’t kick him, but he sure can talk. He never shuts up, really. “If you get the Kieffer in the pit, he’s off limits.”

“To! I said to the pit!”

Spencer sneers at him, yanking hard on the body. Antonio drags along with it, managing to get some sort of slippery traction on the muddy earth as Spencer tries his damndest to get away from him. “Same difference!”

Then, something shifts.

Whatever that substance on Kieffer is, it’s sticky in some places, slippery in others. The middle of his suit, apparently, is one of the more slippery spots. Planting his heels in the ground, Spencer tries to pull Kieffer away and manages to fling himself backwards into the bushes, leaving Kieffer to flop lifelessly to the ground. Antonio’s face lights up immediately, because, holy shit, there’s hope, only to panic whenever Spencer starts to get back up. They lock eyes again, and Antonio, realizing that he is already so injured that he’s gonna have to take a day off for a hospital visit, comes up with a plan.

A stupid, terrible plan. 

He uses the sticky part of Kieffer’s ankle to grab on tight, jerks hard to the right, and swings Kieffer’s body into the pit, going right along with it. 

When he hits the bottom of the hole, Antonio wheezes, knocking the wind clean out of himself. He wasn’t lucky enough to land on Kieffer, it seems, and he really hopes that feeling in his side isn’t a rib going directly into one of his lungs, but he won. He beat Spencer. It’s another Kieffer for his side, and- oh god he’s laying in a mass grave. 

Antonio sits up abruptly, gagging, only for a shadow to overtake him at the mouth of the pit. Spencer stares down at him- no, through him, then looks around at all of the Kieffers with a strange expression on his face. If Spencer were anyone else, Antonio would probably assume that emotion is grief, but Spencer definitely can’t feel that. Honestly, Antonio would be surprised if he could feel any emotion other than rage.

Then, Spencer takes a deep breath and sits down on the ledge, feet dangling into the pit. Antonio, careful not to provoke him, keeps his voice steady, but not necessarily rude. “Body’s in the pit, dude. Nothing you can do about it.”

“Right.”

Oh. He does not like how calm Spencer sounds. “So… you can go now. Because I won, and it’d be messed up if you jumped in and took one after I left, because we have a deal, and I know how many of these things I’ve caught.”

“It would be, and I know you do.”

Silence.

Hesitantly, Antonio asks, “why are you still here, then?”

Spencer’s expression doesn’t change as he speaks. “Because,” he says, reaching up and cracking his neck one direction, then the other, “when you get out of there, I’m going to fucking kill you.”

Antonio’s blood runs cold. Out of instinct, he makes a bad decision. “No, you won’t. You’d be fired. Hell, you’d be shot.”

“Why don’t you come up here and find out if I’m serious or not?”

Antonio doesn’t say a word in response to that. What can he say in the first place? He could beg, but what good would that do? He’s just following orders, but so is Spencer, and Antonio’s orders led to Kieffer being killed an absurd amount of times. Spencer has already killed all the other agents they sent, and up until now, the only thing keeping Antonio alive is the fact that he also watches the gas station.

Well. Everyone has a breaking point, he supposes.

Spencer’s voice snaps him out of his thoughts, tone unchanged from last time as he stares at the most recent Kieffer. “What got him this time?”

A pause. Antonio glances up at him, then down at Kieffer, then back up at Spencer again. “I was gonna shoot him, and then he tripped and hit his head on a rock.”

“His suit is singed.”

“Yeah. He got struck by lightning. It was kind of fucked up.”

Spencer sighs. “Typical. I swear, if you locked that guy in a concrete room, he’d find a way to make the ceiling cave in and crush him to death.”

“Right?” Antonio replies with a soft chuckle, one that stops the second Spencer glares at him. Right. They’re still not friends. “Look, I gotta get back for my shift eventually. You know this time was an accident. If you’re gonna murder me, you may as well do it one of the times I actually kill the guy instead of it being an act of god.”

“How arrogant of you to assume I’m not gonna kill god too.”

“I appreciate the confidence, but I’m really more concerned with my own safety right now. Are we good?”

Spencer’s eyes narrow, and he sneers down at him. “I already told you, we’re not. If you get away with it this time, I’m just gonna get you the next time. Hell, I’ll fuckin’ maim the next person to kill Kief, just to send a message if I have to. I don’t care who it is. The sheriff, that dorky gas station clerk, the Collector himself, I don’t even care if it’s Aggie Sistrunk. I’ve got a job to do, and I’m gonna do it.”

“Yeah, right,” Antonio snorts, and Spencer raises an eyebrow at him until Antonio explains. “You would not kill a ninety-year-old woman. Jack Townsend, maybe, and if it benefitted you, the Collector. I think you’d kill the sheriff for fun.”

For part of that, Spencer stops looking confused, then starts again around the middle. “The Jack Townsend that made that kid swallow his own teeth? What does he have to do with any of this?”

Antonio makes a quick note to himself to ask Jack about that later. Most of Jack’s file was redacted when they handed it to him, and by that alone, he’s sure there’s plenty he doesn’t know. “He works at the gas station. You’ve met. He wears a nametag, dude.”

“Who gives a shit what his nametag says? Yours says ‘Tony’ on it. That’s not even your name.”

“You can just say you didn’t read it. I won’t tell.”

“You’re damn right you won’t.” Spencer puts his hands down behind him, leaning back on them. His eyes go half-lidded, almost sleepy, as he turns his gaze up towards the trees. “But, yeah. I’d kill him. Back in high school, I always thought the little freak would be fun to keep around, but if I have to send a message, I will. I’ll recruit him later. Y’know, after you abandon him. You’re supposed to be watching him, aren’t you?”

7. Resist urge to strangle most irritating coworker.

Well. It’s unrealistic to expect him to get through every task he puts on his schedule, isn’t it?

Spencer still isn’t looking at him. Antonio feels his breath halt in his chest for a second at the mention of recruiting Jack, at actually dragging him into this instead of just leaving him to deal with the thousands of other little inconveniences that he already has to cope with. Nevermind the fact that, yes, he’s supposed to be protecting Jack to a certain degree, Spencer thinks he’s gonna be the one to take that over sooner rather than later, and-

Something snaps.

Antonio doesn’t usually lose his temper. His mother raised him better than that. 

That day, though? He grants himself a little bit of levity.

When his vision goes red, he stops thinking, shoving himself to his feet and vaulting himself up the wall of the pit. He gets dirt under his nails as he hauls himself up, and Spencer notices him after a half-second, already moving to block his face. Antonio, however, doesn’t plan on going for the face; instead, he springs at him before he has a chance to get away, going straight for the throat. They both go sprawling, and as Antonio straddles him, thumbs pressing hard into Spencer’s windpipe, Spencer grabs him by the wrists and tries to shove him off. 

Antonio can feel Spencer’s heartbeat jackhammering against his fingers. It’s not hard to find. The harder he presses, the weaker it gets, regardless of how close his arms feel to snapping every time Spencer jerks them in one direction or the other. If he walks away from this with a broken wrist, that’ll be fine, as long as Spencer dies here, or at least learns not to fuck with him.

“Spencer?”

Both of them freeze. The voice comes from a little further back in the woods, neither of them in view yet, but they both recognize it. The drunken slur to it. The stumble of footsteps against the forest floor. 

Fuck. Kieffer can’t see them like this, and he definitely can’t see the pit.

After a moment of deliberation, Antonio sighs heavily and lets go of him, climbing off of his stomach. Spencer pushes himself away in an instant, breathing labored as he gets off the ground and grabs what little gear he carries with him. Begrudgingly, Antonio watches him as he runs into the woods towards the voice, completely ignoring their fight in favor of getting back to his charge. He can barely hear the two of them, but he tries to listen in anyway.

“Kief! Shit, hi, okay, I got caught up in something, I’m here now.”

“The- the friggin’ agent didn’t even get me this time. The lightning did. That is asinine.”

“Yeah, it is. Not much I coulda done about lightning, but I’m sorry I wasn’t there anyway. Let’s go get you cleaned up, alright?”

“You have leaves in your hair. Everything is terrible, and I want to go lay down.”

“I’d believe that. You sound terrible.”

Then, Kieffer lets out some squawk of a complaint in response that Antonio can’t fully make out. He doesn’t try to, either. He sighs, flops onto his back, and stares up at the sky for a little while.

He should really be a better guardian to Jack. He just… wishes he knew how.

8. Clean up post-murder and fistfight. Dinner optional.

Usually, Antonio doesn’t end up in his dorm this many times in one day. This is a special case. It’d be weird if he took two to three showers a day on average, after all.

He changes clothes again. If his schedule is right, Jack won’t be in that evening, not until Antonio is getting ready to leave for the night. There’s no chance of him noticing that he’s in another new outfit, so Antonio doesn’t bother trying to pick one out that matches the last one. 

He doesn’t bother trying to eat. Cooking would take too long, and none of the crap he has in his room sounds even remotely appetizing. He sets his broken nose, cleans his face off for a second time, and resigns himself to eating whatever he can find on the shelves at the gas station again.

9. Evening shift at Gas Station Anomaly.

As he predicted, Jack isn’t there when Antonio makes it back up into the gas station. That’s pretty typical as far as how his days go; Jack won’t even be there for one of the three shifts, and, on the days he has his appointments, not at all, but Antonio shows up anyway. He’s not sure why. To sell the lie, maybe? 

He doesn’t know who he’s trying to convince. There’s never anyone else there when Jack isn’t. The part-timers barely survive twenty minutes these days, and Antonio wouldn’t be surprised if Jerry turns up dead next week. Nine times out of ten, if Jack isn’t there, Antonio doesn’t even see any customers, just weird anomalies that come in and try to either murder him, seduce him, induct him into their pyramid scheme, or hand Jack over to them when he gets back. 

That place is incredibly boring, though. After the fourth time meeting the Fox Person in a month, they start looking a little less compelling each time. 

He keeps track of the anomalies every night, though, just so he can write them into his report. If there’s anything exceptionally important, he’ll tell Jack about it when he gets back, but usually, he just deals with the issue on his own and decides that what Jack doesn’t know won’t kill him. He’s read Jack’s blog; he knows what kind of shit he already deals with, and he decides to give the guy a break.

At the end of Antonio’s shift, right as he’s about to leave, Jack walks in the store, blinking in surprise when he sees him. “Oh, hey, you’re still here. Where’s the part-timer?”

Dead. Buried out back. The monster got him last night. It’s half the reason he got called up here last night. 

Antonio shrugs. “No-call, no-show.”

“Are you serious?” Despite the fact that he’s lying, Antonio nods solemnly, provoking a sigh from Jack. “I swear, I don’t know what process the owners use to hire people, but it really isn’t working. Thanks for watching the place, Tony.”

“No problem, man.”

He picks his things up, slinging his bag over his shoulder and silently praying that he won’t have to come back up here today, but Jack stops him, stalling on the other side of the counter. “What’d you do to your nose?”

Shit. He usually doesn’t notice that sort of thing.

“Oh, that?” Antonio starts, giving himself a second to stall as he tries to come up with an answer. “I- uh. Mopped in the bathroom and slipped. Because I forgot.”

For a second, Jack doesn’t look like he’s buying it, thinking that over for a second, and Antonio almost comes clean. He almost breaks down over a single question and tells him anything, but Jack beats him to the punch. “I didn’t know we owned a mop.”

It is an actual goddamn miracle that the FDA hasn’t shut this building down, burned it, and burned the ashes. Seriously. After this assignment ends, Antonio plans on getting himself checked for every single disease he can think of.

“We do. It’s kind of gross.”

“I’m not surprised.” Jack slides behind the counter beside him, and, just to avoid being interrogated if things go south, Antonio slips out after him. Jack speaks up a second later. “Just be careful, man. See you tomorrow.”

Something in Antonio’s chest starts to ache, and he’s pretty sure it’s not his ribs.

Shit. Maybe he isn’t cut out for this line of work. Last time he checked, he’s not supposed to care about the guy he might have to kill some day, especially not this much.

He can force a smile, though. “Yeah. stay safe, Jack.”

10. Write daily report. 

• Brief interaction with ‘Bathroom Cowboy’ Anomaly. Response to agent’s question was nonsensical and factually incorrect. 

• Termination of one ‘Kieffer’ Anomaly. Cause of death: act of god (lightning strike). Brick, if you’re reading this, I know I can’t technically count this as a kill for me, but I did instigate it, so I don’t want to hear it.

• Fight with double-crossing rat bastard colleague, Spencer Middleton, over the corpse of ‘Kieffer’ Anomaly. A new ‘Kieffer’ Anomaly has already been made and is in his care.

• Second interaction with ‘Bathroom Cowboy’ Anomaly. Agent did not engage. Anomaly was not hostile. 

• Brief interaction with ‘Fox Person’ Anomaly. Anomaly tried to convince agent to leave with them, and agent refused to leave. They were not overtly hostile.

• Chased raccoons out of store with a broom

• • Agent is fairly certain that these are not normal raccoons. Agent cannot prove it, but he’s sick of them anyway.

• Several ‘Gnome’ Anomalies appeared around 20:00. Proper caution was executed in putting them outside.

• Agent noticed several more budding ‘Kieffer’ Anomalies outside near the dumpster. Please advise before Target Jack Townsend does something about it.

• Gravity swapped for about five minutes. No discernible cause. Swap only affected living things. Exactly one shelf came off of the floor. Not sure what to make of that.

• ‘Raincoat’ Anomaly entered store. It stood in front of the counter, motionless, for approximately thirty seconds before shoplifting a can of Pringles and swallowing it whole, directly outside of front doors, without removing its mask.

• • Yes, it swallowed the can, too.

• LISA-issued cellular device briefly stopped working. Entire screen filled up with pictures of Sonic the Hedgehog, which grew gradually more sexually explicit until agent dropped device into frozen drink machine and beat it with a hammer.

• • Agent would like to request a new cellular device that does not repeatedly show sexually explicit pictures of Sonic the Hedgehog.

• • Please.

• Strange dog outside. Agent pet it, and it seemed fine, but he just wanted to make sure. Dog was, in fact, a good boy.

• Agent has theory that ‘Gas Station’ Anomaly is biblical Hell. Thoughts?

11. Sleep.

Antonio doesn’t bother showering. He puts on pajamas this time, at least, stripping off most of his gear, but he’ll probably have to shower in the morning anyway, or at least some point by mid-afternoon. Body teeming with exhaustion, he finally collapses into bed, and-

He can’t sleep.

He’s dead tired, and he still can’t sleep.

Maybe if he reads something, he’ll be able to. He’ll never actually admit it to him, but he likes how Jack writes. He keeps a tab with his blog open on it at all times, and his computer isn’t all that far away from his bed, anyway.

Antonio opens the most recent post, reads through it, takes notes on how Jack perceives him, and climbs back into bed. 

That does the trick.

12. Get woken up by some obnoxious douchebag who decides a monster in the general vicinity of Gas Station Anomaly is your problem, get up, and deal with it.

Brick fuckin’ Roscoe. Unbelievable. What an asshole.