Archive of Our Own ^beta

“-mos,”

Heartbeat pounding in his ears, adrenaline coursing through his veins, gun gripped tight in his hands as he ducks from cover to cover. 

Exhilarating violence, blood and gore, taking potshots as he runs room to room and obliterates any target he finds, their dying cussing and cursing tallies on a sheet, notches in his belt. 

Breaking through overwhelming odds with a hoot and a holler, mindless, freeing destruction fulfilling his basest needs. 

Music blasts through his skull, he’s a rockstar, he’s—-

The jack at the base of his skull is yanked at, head going along with it like being pulled by a puppet string until the visceral pop of disconnection vibrates between his ears, the blinding, flashing neons of the digitally constructed world blink out as his head drops back into his pillow, neurons scrambling to reboot and process what’s going on. 

He lands in the drool spot he’d been leaking as he laid there, face down and spread eagle over his shitty mattress. 

“I’m gonna bite your hand off, Vic,” Deimos’ limbs creak, his fingers curl into the open port in his skull, fingering the empty space like itching a scratch inside his ear as he worms his way onto his side. 

He can give his roommate the stink eye now, returned with an equal amount of disgust from Victor. 

“You’ve been holed up in here for three days,” Factual information, sure. Deimos is fully aware of how sloppy he looks now that he’s back in the real world, which means he immediately goes for the fat cable in Victor’s hand. “No, shower. Shower. Go get a shower.”

The slap fight doesn’t last long, considering Deimos has been practically motionless for three days. Being punched out of his gourd for that long means his back has turned into a rigid metal pipe, his limbs fritzing when he gets them moving again. Victor continues to be disgusted, even as he throws Deimos’ arm over his shoulder and hefts him up onto his uncooperative feet, toeing aside beer cans and miscellaneous technological detritus that litters the floor of his room. 

“Stay in the real world for a minute.”

God, Victor’s such a nice roommate. 

The water that spits from the shower head is comfortably cold on Deimos’ overheated skull, cooling all the metal bits jammed into his head. It lets him check out of reality for a while, face up into the stream. 

He’d rather be prone in his bed again, but he hauls his heavy arms up. He can get his hair washed, even with all of the motors and pistons that power his joints and hands complaining with the motions, big rubber plug in the back of his head to keep his rig from going up in sparks, the plastic gloves that protect his limbs from the water crinkling whenever he moves, extra stimulus that he’s really hating right now. 

… He can check his messages at least, right?

His focus goes hazy as he pulls up the application from memory, tuning out the physical sensations in favor of rapid-fire reading. 

Lotta spam. 

Ads. 

At least three mechanics telling him it’s time to get one or two limbs serviced, autogenerated and sent en masse. He hasn’t been to a mechanic in years. 

Something catches his eye the same moment Victor decides to barge into the bathroom. 

“Dude!“

“Shit-“

“The fuck?”

“Sorry, I thought-“

“Text me first, damn,” Deimos scrabbles at the wall panel to get the water shut off, snatching the towel Victor’s holding out. “Or light a candle, put on some jazz, christ.”

“I thought you might’ve- Y’know. Bluescreened.”

God, he’s such a nice roommate. 

Deimos has to check the time with that comment, an hour and a half, gone. He scrubs at his face with the towel, then heaves his sigh into the fabric. His legs feel unsteady, his whole body feels unsteady, and Victor notices enough to push him to sit on the closed toilet. 

“You’re fucked up, man,” it’s not said unkindly. Victor leans against the wall, arms crossed and worried frown on his face. “… You need to get looked at.”

“Do I look like I’ve got ‘get looked at’ money?”

“I’ll take some extra shifts.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Yuh-huh.”

“… How much you think I could get for a lung?”

“You? You’d be paying them to take those things, they’re charcoal.”

“… You got a smoke?”

The answer is yes. Because Victor is a good roommate. 

He can see the little spark of envy when Deimos rolls the plastic off of his arms, uncapping his thumb to let the little flame sprout from the digit. A hundred years ago, he modded the lighter into his fancy new hands. Back when they worked right, before they became legacy pieces and the price to upgrade far exceeded his ability to cough up the cash to maintain them. 

He knows Victor wants to be able to get his own upgrades, give himself an edge in the fight to get a better job, but there they both were. 

One guy stuck with all the low-end bits he was born with, the other stuck with failing pieces of old tech instead of a whole body. 

He offers his thumb out for Victor to light his own cigarette with. 

The fan kicks on as the little room starts to fill with smoke. 

Deimos’ mind snaps back to that message, the one that caught his eye. His focus goes back to it, and reading through the text must make his face do something weird, because Victor prods his shin with a foot. 

“You good?”

“… I think I’ve got a job offer.”

The weather is wet and cold, it makes all the connecting points of Deimos’ limbs feel stoved up and aching, but he suffers through it to join Victor on his trek to work. It’s always worth it, one of the few boons to the shitty job is that Victor eats free, and Deimos gets a discount on the greasy meals the fast food joint doles out. 

It’s one of the better places in the area, Victor swearing that it’s at least 25% actual meat by volume, but still in a part of the neighborhood where people don’t question the blitzed out guy sitting in the corner all day. 

It also helps that they have free wifi there, and Deimos’ attention doesn’t need to be mindlessly wasted on video games. 

He can reply to that message without racking up a data fee, and Victor’s boss is away, so he can get into the office and jack in to their high-speed data to do some freelance while he waits. 

It’s scarce work, clients are fickle and tend not to be patient, they’ll drop him for someone with better availability if he lags on a project. He picks through offers, grabs the short and easy stuff and gets single digit payments for transcribing videos, correcting software patches, helping some kid on the other side of the planet with their math homework. 

When his rig was fresher, he did bigger stuff. Better stuff. 

Less legal stuff. 

And that’s what that message was about. 

Old client, he’d done gigs for them before, tricky little puzzles to play with in the forms of codebreaking and gathering intelligence. Sharing secrets. He remembers them, because their handle almost edgy as his own. 

2BDamned. 

So edgy. 

Last he’d heard from them, it sounded like they’d gotten into deep shit and cut ties, disappeared into the aether. Hard thing to do, but they managed it, and earned all the more respect for it from forum peers. 

Damn, that was half a year ago now, wasn’t it? Around the same time that they found legendary psycho Tricky the Clown dead in an alleyway over in Central, that old hacker madman business put Deimos off getting in too deep, lest he utterly succumb to the bluescreen of death. 

He hasn’t taken an under-the-table job since. 

He’s kind of wary about the new message now, returning to an old handle is high risk. 

Could be a trap. 

But-

The office door opens, and Victor slips inside with a brown paper bag, the largest soda cup they have on offer, and a grocery sack full of ice. 

Best roommate. 

“How are negotiations going?” Victor gets the plastic bag settled around Deimos’ neck, where he can rest his head on the ice like its a travel pillow. The heat he’s radiating causes some of the ice to start cracking, and it feels so good. 

“Nothin’ yet. The guy can take a while,” Deimos goes wrist deep into the paper bag, drawing out the fatty delicacy that is 25% real meat product 75% junk filler that tastes just as good. He gets the biggest bite he can manage out of the burger after unwrapping it, talking as he chews. “If I can get ahold of ‘em, we’d be like. Set.”

Victor is once again showing signs of disgust, so Deimos deigns to chew with his mouth closed, but the swig of fizzy, fruity soda paired with his mouthful still makes Victor cringe. 

“… Is it worth the money, though?”

“Dude, anything is worth the money if I can get my rig fixed. Hell, could get you some better burger flippers, too.”

Victor looks at his hands, flipping them to inspect his own palms. “I don’t know…”

“Well, whatever, promise I’ll share the loot.”

“If you get caught doing something sketchy, I’m kicking your ass out on the curb.”

Deimos gives him a p’shaw. He’s never been caught lacking. Not so far, anyway. Might be a little rusty, may have a few holes in his head, but getting caught?

Unthinkable. 

He sucks down some more soda under Victor’s unimpressed gaze. 

“… Hey, does that 25% meat thing apply to just the burgers, or is that like. Everything.”

“… Never ask how the sausage is made.”

Victor heads back out, and Deimos’ right shoulder starts flaring up with the usual aches and pains that accompany the simple action of having his hand up to feed himself. 

He decides he’ll do anything to get the aches to stop. 

The alert for the new message flits into his periphery. 

2BDamned: Glad you’re not dead. Download this. 

There’s an attachment. 

… Maybe almost anything. 

[not at home pc. time sensitive?]

2BDamned: Trust me?

How desperate is he?

The ice crackles around his shoulders. 

His arm pings “Error!” as he lifts a fry to his mouth. 

He can hear the commotion of entitled customers using Victor as a stress toy. 

Readjusting in his seat, he reclines a little better, closes his eyes, and starts the download. 

[if you fry me, ill haunt the grid and hunt you down]

2BDamned: I would hope you would. Perhaps we would still be able to work with one another. I enjoyed your artwork. 

The wording gets his haunches lowered a little. The comments he’d leave in the packets he’d send over, warnings about how to treat the malware he’d devise, full of bad jokes and dumb, crude ACSII art. 

Of course, this could straight up be an AI that scraped through the guy’s chat logs. 

2BDamned: Have you gotten it?

[running an old OS, melting ice]

2BDamned: Open it when it’s finished.

[pushy]

2BDamned: Important. 

He can’t throw the package through any sort of virus detection without his external PC, more than half his actual mind is baked into his hardware and the free space grows smaller by the day. He’s pushing it with this download, he can already feel the lag in his head like vertigo.

It would suck to bluescreen in Victor’s boss’ office. 

He may as well finish the meal he got. 

It’s still good. Salty, hearty. Comfort food. 

He’d probably ask for it if he had a choice of a last meal. 

He pulls the trigger, opens the file, and watches the code burst behind his eyes as a program forcefully takes over his senses. 

Thrown into the void, disconnected from his body, he can only just feel the spasms before he blanks out. 

The heat in his core cools. 

There is fluid against patches of his skin.

The aches of his limbs gone, but his edges are all out of place, hands far away, feet even further. 

“Stay calm.” The voice is mechanical, like text to speech directly in his ear. “I would have explained, but we have a very narrow timeframe to get this done. You trust me?”

Deimos tries to respond, but he’s quite suddenly aware of the pressure in his throat, in his sinuses, he tries to swallow and it sticks. 

“Text it. Stay calm. Relax.”

[what did you tunnel me into?]

“Something I need. You just need to move it for me, it’s easy.”

[im not a delivery boy]

There’s something else in this system. He can feel it prod against his control like a big fish in a little pond, circling around his grip and nabbing at the limbs he’s trying to slip into. 

“Sixty seconds after I stop talking, I’ll open the container it’s in. You will move it to the exit. If anything moves, he will dispatch it with prejudice, so heads up. It’s going to get bumpy.”

[with what?]

He doesn’t get a reply, instead, time moves by faster than he thinks it should. There’s a strong pull against whatever is shoved down into his throat, dislodging it and snaking it out as a current pulls him forward. The weight of his body is immense, but the crash of it doesn’t hurt. He’s solid. 

He drags air into his lungs, and it just keeps coming in, keeps expanding his chest past what he thinks should be possible. 

He blinks, and vision comes in. 

There’s color, monochrome, desaturated and grayed, despite the way his brain is trying to fill in where other colors should be, those shoes should be brown. 

…

Shoes. 

Someone is standing right there.  

That other presence acts the moment the feet start to turn. 

[what the fuck is this thing?]

He feels his arm snap out, gripping the closest ankle and dragging the person down, grip so strong he feels the bones snap in his fisted hand. 

He gets to learn the meaning of prejudice when his body moves without his input, leaving a smatter of dark substance on the concrete floor where the person’s head once was. 

“Don’t worry about it,” the electronic voice is calm, and the other presence seems distracted enough by something to let Deimos get the hand out of the gore. “I’m a bit of a gamer myself, I’ve seen what you do. This is in the same vein, just get to the exit.”

The body gets to its feet without him, but he’s the one that notices the klaxons blaring out, the marker lit up in his sight. 

2BDamned isn’t wrong, there’s an entire permanent HUD display fielding his vision, an arrow points out the direction to head towards. The body is decidedly not headed that way, but Deimos reigns in control despite the shock of the situation and the sight on the ground, jerking control back into his hands. 

He gets the hang of the movement in a few steps, faster than he’s been in years as he puts distance between himself and the crime scene he technically just made. Even with the distracting fight of his limbs against him, the movement is more fluid than he’d experienced in the real world… Practically ever. 

Until control is wrenched away again, the sight of movement like some kind of trigger that sets the body off and as he’s put in the passenger seat, he has the spare braincell to notice how huge the arms on this thing are, gigantic mechanical hands that can wrap around the persons’ face.

He’s sort of glad that he’s not seeing in high fidelity, with what happened to that guy. They leave the sight behind, onwards, through. 

A gun is aimed at him, and the massive arms come up to shield his face as shots are fired, thuds of pressure in the heavy plates, alerts sprouting up, but no pain. The security detail can’t touch them. He’s almost sure he’s the one that pushes them forward, into the fire, almost pissed that someone else would have the advantage of a firearm. 

Their thumbs find their way into some orbital sockets, the wail visceral and satisfying in a way his brain immediately balks against. That can’t be him.

Can it?

Is he the one that picks up the gun?

He has to seesaw like this, getting closer to the exit and being forced a few steps back by this body’s inexplicable need to wreck anyone they come across, forced in and out, escape and destruction, weaving and pulling and stretching him until he’s not sure who’s doing what, until they start to work in tandem, server and client, a tangle of machines.

He points the way, left, right, third door, flight of stairs. He starts to be able to focus on things outside of the motion, catching things in the corners of his eye that the other presence doesn’t, aiming them towards an attacker that would’ve had an opening otherwise. 

The gun spits, bodies fall, oppressive force, power, thrill. 

Like a game. 

It’s just like a game. 

He almost misses the fact that this last door is the marked target, bursting through it, about ready to put their hand through the body on the other side-

The first flash of pain hits them squarely in the chest, knocking the wind out of their gigantic lungs, putting them square on their back. 

They feel paralyzed, like a flipped beetle, limbs twitching for purchase as the figure leans over them. 

EMP gun. 

Fuck. 

“Very good. Thank you. I will assume your credit address is the same.” The text to speech voice rings in his overcharged head moments after the figure taps something out on a tablet, the EMP gun tucked under their arm.  “I’ll keep in touch.”

And just like that, Deimos is ripped backwards out of his head. 

Deimos comes to, and his body is burning. 

His limbs won’t cooperate, just flailing hard when he tries to reach for the jack in his head, jerking around until he slips out of the office chair and clatters hard onto the floor, all his aching nerves flaring with pain he’d somehow left behind. 

[vic]

He doesn’t have it in him to shout, but the text is enough to call Victor to the office, the door smacking hard into his shin. 

“Oh, fuck, shit, what happened?” Victor flinches when he tries to pull the plug for Deimos, dropping it immediately, it has to be burning to the touch. “Holy shit Deimos, holy shit.”

He… Doesn’t quite remember what happened after that. He has glimpses, Victor’s coworkers crowding into the office with more ice, getting pulled back to the walk-in freezer, shivering despite how hot he felt. 

He remembers Victor apologizing to someone, his head cradled in a lap as lights flash by, a car ride? They don’t have a car. 

His stomach lurched, he… Definitely threw up in someones car. 

He’s in his bed when he starts to come back online.

His sheet is pulled up to his chin, eyes feeling like ping-pong balls and his head stuffed with cotton. 

Hollow puppet. 

Everything hurts. 

He can register his fingers now, his toes, tapping them against each other to calibrate, then rotating his ankles, wrists, carefully bending each joint and needing a few tries until he gets the little green checkmark behind his eyes, and he hears shuffling and clanking to his left. 

“… Vic?”

“Oh thank fuck, you didn’t die. You’ve been out all day.”

“Too ‘spensive to die.”

The bed creaks with added weight, and Deimos spares the energy to peel one eye open. It’s dark now, only the hall light on. Victor has a trash bag in hand, and lolling his head lets Deimos know the guy’s been picking up his mess. 

“Did’ja know you’re the best roommate…?”

“You’ve told me… Twenty, thirty times?”

“Good.” He gets his hand up to his head again, fingers starting to hook into his port, but Victor pries the digits out. 

“What happened?”

Deimos has to really pry into his memory to figure that out, but it’s… Fragmented, corrupted in places, he knows he was tunneled into something, but… 

His hardware wasn’t meant for streaming like that. Pulling back the extra data from wherever he went, he has to guess it didn’t all fit. 

He can’t remember. 

It aches in his temples when he tries pulling up the messaging client, and the CPU usage makes his fingers twitch as he navigates to the last chat log he had. 

2BDamned: I hope this covers the costs to update your rig.

“… Gimme the cord-“

“No-“

“Need to check my wallet, please, Vic,”

Victor has to relent, helping Deimos onto his side so he can plug in. 

The PC takes the brunt of the processing away from his fried mind, easing the tension behind his eyes as he spills into it like a drunk stumbling into their home. 

He spares some of his data plan to dig down to his digital wallet, fingertips worrying at his scalp as he waits for it to load. 

When it does, his stomach lurches again. 

Victor’s there with the bag before he can make a mess, but there wasn’t much left to come out after that car ride. “What? What happened? Did you get hacked or something?”

“N, no. I. I got paid.”

He can’t figure out where his shaking stops, and where the vibrations of the bus start. 

The time between his last attempt to hurl and the moment he registers that he’s sitting on the bus is lost to the space between his wetware and his hard drive, clutching at a bottle with jittering hands, blanket still wrapped around his shoulders. 

His skin feels clammy, cold despite how he’s sweating from every inch of flesh he has left.  One ear is ringing loud, an insistent screech that follows wherever he turns his head. 

Automatically, he sips at the bottle in his hands. One of those sports electrolyte things, aggressively blue. 

It’s the sweetest thing he’s ever tasted. 

… Which probably isn’t a good sign, sensory distortion isn’t a good symptom to have.

Bus… Bus, money. He got money. 

“… We gotta launder it.” 

“You need to launder your laundry.” A little part of him is glad that he guessed right, that the body seated next to him actually is Victor. His head is swimming. 

“Vic,”

“I know. I’m talking to someone about it.”

“What?”

“What, what?”

“Victor, do you know criminals?”

Victor’s expression could slice granite, and Deimos gets the idea that maybe he’s overstepped a little. The idea that Victor may have shady contacts is absurd, though. 

He’s Victor. 

Who only does real jobs. 

Makes sure their rent is paid on time. 

He doesn’t even have any tattoos. 

Hell, he’s pretty sure Victor has a degree. 

He thinks, at least. 

Remembering things hasn’t been his forte for a hot minute, as evidenced by how he’s pulled out of digging through his plaintext memory to find the note about what kind of degree Victor has by the guy snapping his fingers right in Deimos’ ear. 

“Stay in the real world, man.”

It’s hard. 

If he focuses back in to his surroundings, he can see eyes glancing his way, judging. He knows he looks bad. He knows it, he knows. He wants to lay back down, or curl up, his ear won’t stop ringing as the bus brakes and slows to a stop. 

The driver is impatient with how Victor has to help Deimos stumble out, peeling off once they’re out on the curb. 

“Where are we?” This looks like part of the office parks, the towers here not so adorned with neon as the business district their neighborhood is settled in, this place is bleak, wet, and boring. 

The sky is dark, as are most of the windows that sit like scales in these towers. Deimos’ clock reads 1:28 AM. 

Victor straight up hushes him, jumpier than he’s ever seen the man, checking every which way before he starts guiding Deimos along with both hands on his shoulders. 

This is fucking weird. 

Pushed into an alleyway, Deimos has half a mind to be concerned that his roommate is about to off him behind a dumpster and make off with all his new coin. 

Would he?

No…

…

Would he…?

His ear won’t stop ringing. 

Deimos isn’t pulled behind the dumpster, though, he’s pulled down three little steps, facing a door that appears to lead into a basement in one of the buildings. Victor pulls his phone out again, mashing his thumbs at a speed that Deimos is really envying right now.

He opens his mouth to try and get some information, but the door they’re stationed by starts creaking open. 

“Welcome, welcome, come in, get out of the cold,” The speaker is hidden on the other side of the door, but that voice alone says a lot. Deep, loud, and definitely coming from someone who has to be big. 

And Deimos is right. 

He’s shuffled into the hall far enough that the door can be closed behind them, revealing the speaker, and the sheer amount of security keeping that door closed. There’s an entire turret aimed at that entrance, mounted to the ceiling with the barrel seeming to stare at them, and if he weren’t gaping at the man from the other side of the door, he’d be gaping at Victor for knowing about places like this. 

But he is gaping at the man, an actual giant, he literally has to lean down in order to keep his head from hitting the low ceiling here. Head to toe, he’s garbed like he belongs in a clinic, poking Deimos into processing what kind of place he’s in, and something finally pops in his head. 

“You must be-“ The giant starts, but there’s a really a literal pop in Deimos’ ear, and the world goes silent. 

Something wet trickles down his neck. 

The pleasant expression on the mans’ face drops. 

Victor tries to catch him as he goes down, but he blacks out before he can kiss the ground. 

“Oh, and this, utterly reprehensible work… No, no, this will need to be completely redone. Ah… Yes, that would make sense… If we were to move this here, it would free up the necessary space…”

Slow, methodical plucking nags at the back of Deimos’ head. He’s on his stomach, face planted in some kind of donut shaped cushion, staring at a large wet stain on the concrete floor beneath him. 

He feels… Numb. 

It takes a dribble of spit falling from his open mouth for him to realize that wet spot is drool, and he’s probably been in this position for a while. 

“Oh… Oh! You’ve come back online, wonderful news,” The plucking pauses, a set of hands coming into view to readjust the angle of the surface he’s resting on. It’s just enough for that giant in the doctor’s garb to be able to bend down and peak at his face. “Ah… Can you hear me?”

“… You messin’ wif m’brain?” Oh god, it’s hard to talk. 

“Yes! Horrible work, here, really quite sad. Your cochlear implant completely burst! And oh, these coolant lines are entirely misplaced,” The man disappears, and the pressure of another little pluck makes his toes twitch. “The thermal padding has been doing all the work in keeping your noodle al dente.”

“Wuh…?”

“You’re par-boiled, sir! Half-cooked. Perhaps Victor is more apt for food metaphors…”

Victor does like food metaphors. 

He tries to lift a hand, habitually needing to put his fingers where they don’t belong. The limb doesn’t respond, hanging limp in the corner of his vision. “M’arms…”

“Marms?”

“Mmm’ arms?”

“Oh, yes, for your safety, they’ve been disconnected. I do prefer a patient that can simply be turned off- It saves on the drug costs,” A little tiny click, and his left eye goes out. “Truth be told, you’re being an example patient! My typical clientele would be inconsolable if they’d woken up in the middle of this type of procedure.”

The words are going in one ear and out the other now, data being logged yet completely unprocessed, face going half numb as pieces are removed and the man continues chatting. His eye comes back on. 

He doesn’t mind the chatting, the doctor has a nice voice, and the words have a rhythm he can blindly follow along with. 

He said something about a cochlear implant… Right? What was that? That’s like… That’s his ears, right? He didn’t even realize those weren’t natural. 

Not that he was really totally there when he’d had his head worked on the first time. 

The fact that this situation isn’t ringing those alarm bells is probably a good sign. 

Another click, and it’s stunningly easy to focus back to the present. “-there, oh, yes, that fits nicely. Magnificent, almost as if it was made for you!”

“And you’re sure no one is going to be looking for these?” Victor. That’s Victor. His voice is the first thing that actually gets Deimos to put effort into moving, immediately grabbed by the back of the head and held down by an absurdly firm grip. 

“Ah-ah-ah, I have tools in your noggin that will puncture your brain. Stay still, please.”

Point taken. 

Or. Point not taken. 

Victor courteously squats down to peer up at Deimos’ face, softened up from the bus ride. “I saw your brain.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Yeah. It’s tiny. Crazy, with how big your head is.”

“S’where I put my ego.”

“I bet. Skinner said you got knocked out because one of your ears exploded.”

“He’s very lucky!” The doctor chimes in. “If he’d had anything better in place, the combustion would have taken more of that temporal lobe out! Only needed to scrape the cooked parts off, absolutely delicious."

Victor looks a little pale at those words, and Deimos finds that he wishes he did not have a processor put back in place at that moment. ‘Sausage. Don’t ask.’ is what Victor mouths out. 

Oh god. 

This is how he figures out that his setup won’t overheat if he thinks too hard now. 

“Almost there, almost there. Your diagnostics are looking top of the line, just phenomenal. Coal to diamonds, really.” His head is pressed forwards with the familiar feeling of his memory banks being slid back into their brackets, the wiring tickling his neck as it gets tucked back into place. “What color would you like for the casing? You seem like the type that’d enjoy the transparent, perhaps in purple?”

“… You got yellow?”

“I do! Ah, like your eyes. Tasteful.” The doctor-slash-probably-cannibal steps away, and the door slides shut behind him shortly after. It gives Deimos a chance to force himself up, turning on his side to wedge an unresponsive arm beneath himself like a jack. 

“You should probably be careful-“

“Did that guy eat part of my brain?”

Victor looks a little pale, a little queasy, standing up straight and wringing his hands. “Skinner is- He’s. He’s good at what he does, man, and you were cooked, so.”

“No, dude, what if he gets prions-“

“Do you have prions?”

“I don’t fuckin’ know, Vic!” He makes the mistake of looking towards the little rolling table next to the work surface he’s laying on, a bunch of pale, meaty bits lined up on a metal surgical plate. “He took more out?”

“You- You seem fine without it?”

“No shit, I keep saying I’m in my hardware, but dude. Dude, that?” He can only use his shoulder to gesticulate his feelings, nearly unbalancing from his tripedal state with the motion. “That had better not get ate.”

“… He takes 20% off if you let him keep what he cuts.”

…

“Vic. How do you know this guy?”

Victor’s mouth opens when Skinner reenters, holding several differently curved plates all wrapped in plastic, electric yellow and transparent. There’s a long cord in his hand, too, matching in color, nice woven cable… God he’s a sucker for accessories. 

The doctor seems more chuffed than upset at Deimos’ position, and his good mood has an entirely new angle with the information Deimos now has. No one is that happy with their job unless it’s feeding them. 

Good god. 

He has to talk about this on a forum. 

“What a problem solver! I see you’re already putting that processor to good use. If you could lay back down, I’ll reconnect your arms.”

Victor, as always, helps Deimos off of his perch, or else he would’ve needed to bellyflop and probably break his jaw on the way down. A few little clicks, and he can sit himself up properly, Skinner checking each of the plates he’d brought against the preexisting brackets  that kept his head shut. When the right one is snapped into place, Deimos immediately runs his hands over it, feeling out the new port. 

Damn, that’s a big hole. 

Vic slaps his hand away, so he runs his fingers up over his scalp instead-

Wait. 

“Later,” Victor stops him from loudly asking if the doctor cut his fucking hair.

20% if he keeps what he cuts. 

He doesn’t see any hair on the floor. 

He pleads with his eyes, Vic, say it ain’t so. 

Victor says nothing about it, turning instead to take the new cord. “What do we owe?”

“Originally, 59,455. Discounted… Yes, 47,564. He’ll be fine for the bus ride, but he’ll need at least a week in bed, once all the drugs wear off. Then we can see about those arms.”

… He’s on drugs?

Skinner holds out a hand, but Victor directs it towards Deimos. 

He’s about to question it, but he notices the blue surgical gloves are gone, the man’s hands are a lot like his own. 

Bigger, like. Holy fuck, huge, but the same seams in them that could split apart for delicate work, nine fingers on each hand, each one a half of the original four. 

It’s how he was able to modify his own hand, good for tinkering with delicate computer parts, insulated to keep the risk of static shock down. 

And the kind that have an NFC chip for discrete money transfer. 

He takes the hand, letting his money go with a breath and a firm shake. It’s only a notch out of what he’d been paid. And thinking about that amount of money doesn’t blast his CPU usage up. 

… Thinking about where it might’ve come from does make the ticker raise, looking into that void and finding nothing staring back raises his hackles. 

Victor helps him to the door as Skinner gives them a “Toodles!”

Bundled back up in the blanket they’d brought, the sun crests over the horizon and leaks down into the alley he’d been guided down some hours earlier. Deimos can hear things that used to seem like muddled background noise. Engines running as people make their way to these towers to work, chatter of the walkers making their commutes.

He remembers- Hey, that’s new. He remembers, when he’s first gotten his eyes recalibrated, after Victor had taken him in as a roommate. He’d been completely floored by all of the little things, the texture of bricks and the clear words on street signs. 

It’s a lot like that, hearing things that add another layer to reality that he was missing before. 

“Hey, you’re not pre-heating already, are you? We need to go back in?” 

“Wha? No, dude, the noises,” He pauses, trying to articulate what he wants to say, gesturing vaguely to his ears. “HD, surround sound, shit man, it’s- A lot.”

It actually is a lot. 

He’s not fritzing, but with the all-around clarity, Victor can tell there’s overstimulation in the cards. He ushers Deimos out of the alley, back to the bus stop. 

There’s another thing, the standing, and walking, moving. It’s not so bad, all the pains dulled down to feeling off, and-

Oh. Fuck, yeah, he’s on drugs. This must be what painkillers are like, shit he’s forgone for the sake of maintaining actual necessities like the water bill. God. 

He can afford painkillers. 

The first thing Deimos did when they got home was reinstate their wifi. 

“He said you need to be laying down-“

Ignoring him. 

“Deimos, you just had brain surgery?”

Nope, busy. 

“Are you actually trying to clean under the fridge?”

He’s actually watching a breakdown video on toaster ovens, and replying to the anonymous forum thread he made discussing nightmare ripperdocs. And downloading a few movies he’d missed since he became mainly bedridden. 

And Tetris. He’s got Tetris going, too. 

“I need to go to work,” Victor gives up on prying him up from the floor, where he’s flattened his hand into all its spidering pieces to fit a cloth under the fridge. 

“I’ll be fine, go on.”

trashed-crash:

its actually pretty normal for ripperdocs to be into cannibalism. i mean, their operations are illegal and they have to get rid of all the biomass theyre removing, it just makes sense to actually use it somehow

throwaway667676777676 in reply to trashed-crash:

How does it feel to lie on the internet?

trashed-crash in reply to throwaway667676777676:

how do you remember how many sevens you stuck in that handle?

numbersnumbersnumbersnumbers in reply to trashed-crash: 

typed out the word 7

These people are fucking dweebs. Close that tab. 

Nothing like his old forum activities, discussing the many conspiracies that surround the conglomerates that actively control their lives. He’d be funneled down rabbit holes, obsessively reading into leaked documents, or leaking his own little crumbs he’d found. There’s one company that’s been under fire from whistleblowers, unethical human trials and money being spread out into weapons manufacturing-

“I’m going to call Sanford over.”

That puts a scratch in the record. 

“Do not.”

Victor’s phone is in his hand. 

No. 

No, no no no no. 

He lunges, he can tell he shouldn’t have the moment he leaves the ground with the way his knees click, but he does it anyway. Victor, too shocked by the unexpected burst of motion to defend, squeaks like he’s just seen a spider as Deimos snatches the device in his ten spindly fingers and immediately tucks into a roll. 

Victor’s gut reaction is to absolutely goal-kick his ribs in one swoop, and good god, the man definitely played sports. 

His fingers don’t have a strong grip when they’re separated, the phone skidding across the floor, but Deimos can see the message that was already sent. 

No…

“The fuck did Skinner give you?!” Victor’s snatching his phone back, cradling it protectively against his chest while Deimos flips onto his back and tries to suck some air in. 

“What fucking sport did you play?” That’s totally gonna bruise. 

There’s regret on Victor’s face, just a hint, but he leaves Deimos on the floor to grab his jacket and sunglasses. “I’m going to be late.”

He doesn’t blame the guy, that was totally his own fault. Mental note: Vic’s got a fight response. No flight. 

“… Bring me back a double…?”

“… Yeah, fine.”

Good fucking roommate. 

He still has some movement in him after Victor leaves, enough that he can haul himself onto his feet and finish knocking trash into the can. 

At least the place isn’t going to be thrashed while there’s company over. 

He doesn’t hate Sanford. 

Not at all. He loves the big guy, clicks with him in all the best ways, and he’s a blast to get completely wasted off of cheap beer with. 

Sanford just has a lot on his plate, always has, and dragging him over for stuff like this always leaves this nasty guilt festering in his chest. He’s hardly ever over just for fun, mostly just when Deimos can’t follow Victor to work, needing babysat in case he goes haywire and chokes on his own tongue. 

He’d been part of the paramedic unit that came when Deimos had his first crash. 

Nearly died, had to be resuscitated on the spot because his boot looping had cascaded into a critical failure. Being forced to reboot the whole rig is a nightmare process that has so many side effects, it’s only used in worst-case scenarios. He couldn’t breathe on his own for a while. 

He knows he’d only been living with Victor for about a week at that point, still learning the ins and outs of his system. Even new, it was never quite right, buggy, fragile. Most of that time was utterly wiped from his memory by the event. 

The only thing he can really, truly remember is foaming at the mouth while being bodily lifted by the EMT, getting told all those nice things emergency personnel say, like, “I’ve got you,” and “You’re going to be okay.”

All while his software flashed the warning, “A fatal error has occurred.”

Aand now he has a fancy new computer in his head that’s letting him actually access his own blackbox in vivid fucking detail, uncompressed footage recorded automatically, and the heat in his face isn’t even from an overclocked processor. 

He pulls an icepack from the freezer anyway, this time thunking it against his ribs, and meanders back to over to the couch. He starts getting his tabs all closed out, noticing a message now that the distractions have died down. 

2BDamned: Are you available?

Aw fuck this guy, really. 

[i just got out of brain surgery]

2BDamned: Which means you are not actively in brain surgery?

[no but the surgeon ate some of it and i have to come to terms with that]

2BDamned: So I’ve read. I’ve heard it’s common for Ripperdocs to partake in cannibalism. 

[really actually fuck you]

2BDamned: I’d like to request your services again. 

[i dont even know what i did for you, thats sort of why i needed the brain surgery. you fucking cooked me]

2BDamned: You didn’t communicate that with your surgeon, did you?

[not the kind of surgeon that asks questions]

2BDamned: Perfect. I assume you’ve replaced your hardware?

[you apparently read my forum posts, why ask?]

2BDamned: Courtesy. Will you accept the offer?

He chews on his cheek. 

He doesn’t know when Sanford will get here, but he’s not about to mention that he’s expecting company to a guy that’s digitally stalking him. 

That sounds worse than it probably is. He sort of knows 2B. 

2BDamned: Tick tock. 

Looking back at the blank space the last job left, it was only twenty minutes. 

[right now?]

2BDamned: It’d be preferable. 

[same payment?]

2BDamned: I’ll double it if you hurry. 

[let me lay down this time]

2BDamned: Perfect. 

The gut-twisting feeling of being tunneled into another system ends, and the crashing sensation of being slotted into a familiar place begins. It hits like a freight train, the sights and sounds of the last job, left behind in this other head. He remembers- remembers-

“There you are,” 2B’s text-to-speech voice. He’s laying somewhere this time, it’s dark, cramped, claustrophobic. 

The other entity is there, too, not roiling like it had been the last time, but deadly calm against his mind. 

“You won’t be piloting this mission, you will be a passenger. He will get you to a location, where you will be doing some simple computer maintenance for me. Easy-peasy.”

[this is a guy that i stole you]

“Yep.”

[and killed a half-dozen people with]

“Indeed.”

[can he hear me?]

“No, and it’s probably better that way. He knows you’re there, and he’s amicable to the idea of cooperating so long as you don’t impede him.”

[by impede you mean stop him from killin people right]

“Indeed.”

He doesn’t force himself to slide into the limbs, then. Instead, he watches out of the strangers’ eyes, listening as they listen. He catches on to the idea that they’re waiting for something, noting sounds and the directions they come from. 

Beneath them. 

There’s chatter as people are passing, and the body shuffles forward when there are no voices to be heard. 

He notices, as they creep, that there’s something kind of… Different, about their sight. Still low quality, maybe worse, but more centered. And the overlay, it’s all red, plus a different style of HUD…

[how much am i allowed to know?]

“How much would you like to know?”

Victor’s voice comes up in the back of his mind, ‘Sausages, Deimos. Sausages.’

[does this guy have a name?]

“Yes.”

They slide forward, inch by inch. 

[what is it?]

“I can’t tell you that.”

[hardee har har, jackass]

“I’m sure he would prefer to keep his privacy.”

[are people looking for him?]

“Absolutely. Many people. Entire companies and agencies. He is incredibly popular. Hence, privacy.”

[for the killing people bit?]

“That, amongst other things.”

They come upon a vent in what Deimos will call the floor, eyes twitching down to get a glimpse of polished gray tiles. High end. Office building. 

[why did you need me to get him out? he seems capable]

“Memory issues tend to make him… Noncompliant, I needed a remote control,” They seem to pause, considering something, or becoming distracted. “I did want to see if he’d play nice. He didn’t rip his relay out of his own head this time, which I assume is due to the fact that you’re so used to running on such limited hardware.”

[did you know that before you fried me?]

“Yes. I did. I’ve mentioned that I’ve played games with you before, your specs are displayed on your in-game profile.”

[forgot about that]

“I can’t imagine how you remembered anything. A reason why I’m happy to assist with funding you, bettering your security benefits me greatly.”

[howd you find my forum posts?]

“It’s the same account I found you from originally, when you were advertising code cracks.”

[do you know where i live too?]

“No. You’ve kept that hidden fairly well, but I could probably find that out if I really wanted to.”

Creepy. 

They’ve been staring at this floor for a while, and Deimos is a little tired of the sight. 

He reaches, making their finger twitch. 

The reaction is immediate, the hand clenching hard. Very obvious what that message is, a finely tuned “Fuck off.”

Alright. 

[can i get extra coin for getting hit with that EMP gun?]

“No. That was for him. Be glad it works as well as it does.”

[why didnt any of the security detail have one?]

“It would backfire on them just as much as it would put him down. Terrible security flaw in that prison.”

So. That was a prison. 

Mental note to look for recent breakouts, then. 

Slipped up, 2B. 

Doesn’t really nudge the counter too far in Deimos’ favor, though. 

… That also means that, if that was 2B themself… 

They don’t have a rig?

There’s someone passing again, but this time, Deimos can feel their temporarily shared pulse jump up only a notch from the calm pace it’d been keeping, the body dragging forward until their boot can connect with the grate they’d been spying through, then shooting backwards, angling their body out of the opening. The timing is precise, their whole weight crashing down into the passerby. 

Deimos can’t help the way he forces their eyes to move as they stand, but the other guy seems to find it helpful, his attention having been drawn to the pistol in the back of the guys pants. 

He didn’t look like security, wearing a suit and all, but who is he to know what dress codes are like in fancy offices? The gun is plucked up, unceremoniously shoved into the front of their pants, and they soldier on. 

[what kind of place is this?]

“You probably shouldn’t know that, actually.”

[you cant even give me a little rundown?]

2B doesn’t reply right away, leaving Deimos to watch their hands disabling a security camera with… Percussive means. 

Really just ripped that right out of the wall, huh. Damn. 

It’s kind of mesmerizing to watch, when he’s not the one half-enacting on the bizarre order of operations. Like the best kind of awful content one can skim from the deeper parts of the internet, people pulling blackboxes out of the heads of criminals for court cases, skimming off the top and uploading it for money or shits and giggles. 

That being said, he’s still ungodly grateful for how low-quality the feed is. The hypergore isn’t sitting so well after having seen what he saw at Skinner’s office.

He wonders, for a moment, if the forced calm of his pulse and the apparent raging psychopath he’s sharing a head with is making it easier to swallow the sights, if it’d be different if he were alone. 

This time, when their hand connects with someone’s face, they’re not crushing it. Instead, there’s a discharge, a hefty amount of electricity passing through their palm and into the victims’ head. They collapse, twitching, and a little ticker goes down on the still-visible HUD.  

Must be some kind of battery. 

Speaking of, when was the last time Deimos had charged his own limbs? God, maybe it is a good thing that Sanford’s coming over, he might wind up needing someone to plug him in. 

“You’re in something like a security firm,” 2B’s voice finally returns. “Don’t let that make the task daunting. Digital security isn’t their forte, and it’s notoriously leaky.”

[took a while for not a lot]

“I’m multitasking.”

Deimos isn’t. He’s almost hyperaware of their surroundings, his involuntary eye movements being used to their advantage when his attention catches on an opening door. This time, they dart to hide behind it, a woman distracted, walking out and down the hall without noticing their precarious position. She’s going to walk straight into a horror show in a few feet, but they slip into the room before she starts screaming. 

He gets to witness firsthand how they had been in the vents in the first place, their augmented leap to snag the cover off, a second jump to catch the ledge, then hauling themselves in like some kind of cat. 

“You’re getting close. Be prepared.”

[got it]

He has to wonder if they needed to leave the vents, or if the detour was strictly scenic, because after an agonizing stretch of crawling in the dark, they’re dropped into an empty office space, cubicles creating a maze of low walls. They stand there, scanning the room at first, then… Awkwardly, they shuffle about. 

The other guy doesn’t know what they’re looking for. 

[boss, which cubicle?]

… Nothing. Multitasking? Sheesh. 

Deimos starts… looking. 

Computer maintenance has to be a euphemism, right? He’s probably here to skim data, needing a physical access means these crunchy old shitboxes probably aren’t the target. Admin’s computer, probably. That’s what he’d go for. 

There’s a door tucked in the back with a big window set in it, a nameplate mounted on the wall. Maybe. 

The other guy catches his drift, stepping quietly, careful with the door and keeping it from creaking as they slip in. 

Computer. 

Nice one. 

Control is relinquished, and Deimos has to catch the entire body before it goes limp. Fucker just noped out. 

Fuck him, it means Deimos gets to enjoy the office chair. 

Or, he would, but this body is pretty fucking huge, and he can’t get comfortable. On top of that, his hands are still gigantic, working with the keyboard is actually an effort. 

… And now he wishes this body had better eyesight. He leans forward, squints, and he just… Can’t. 

He can’t fucking read the login screen. The glare of the backlight against the shit-tier lenses he’s looking out of makes it actually impossible to make out the text on the screen. 

Shit. 

How’s he supposed to do this?

Brainstorming, he pulls the desktop computer around, staring hard at the ports, and… Taps at them. Points, gesticulates, trying to actually communicate with this other guy for the first time. 

Can you plug in?

It takes a beat, two, then his hands are taken away. The other guy digs into a pocket in his coat, slapping a short cable down on the desk with agitated force, and goes limp again. 

Well. 

He. 

Gives himself a thumbs up?

What else is he supposed to do? He hopes his brain explodes on the way out again, that way he doesn’t have to remember how hard he’s cringing. 

Shaking it off, he finds the port on this body, simple peripherals that are way more rudimentary than what he’s used to, jacking in with the awareness that he’s doubled up now. His body back home, plugged into his pc, tunneled into this guys’ head, plugging into another pc.  

“It’s in the manager oh you found it. Nice. And the cable. Perhaps you don’t need me.”

[i still have no idea what kind of “maintenance” youre wanting me to do]

“Easy. A system backup.”

[thats it? this guy couldnt do that?]

“I also need you to wipe the drive afterwards.”

[still, thats basic 101, this guy has a dedicated port in his head for interfacing]

“No, I put that there for you.”

… Huh?

He’s booting the PC into bios, the mindless task of disabling the passcode lock like making a sandwich on autopilot. Doc was right about leaky security, they have none of this locked down. 

While his mind is flicking through the controls and navigating the stupid proprietary menu options, he lets himself poke at Hank’s OS. 

It’s… Cavernous. 

… Nothing installed, actually, no peripherals aside from the drivers running all the visible chrome the guy’s got, and it’s a lot of chrome, but otherwise it’s like some kind of virgin system. It’s not like he’s in a secured partition, not a virtual machine running parallel either, he has… Almost free reign, aside from getting kicked around when he wants to do something physical, like trying to remotely control the pointer on someone else’s desktop. 

He can obviously tell Deimos is poking around, because he slams their fist on the desk again. 

[this guys rocking this shit with absolutely zero computer knowledge isnt he]

“He refuses to play games. Or learn how to use a browser.”

[he doesnt HAVE a browser]

“L-O-L. Are you doing what I asked?”

[yeah hacker voice im in, give me a minute to get the backup]

“Great.”

… There’s writing software on this PC. 

He assumes the other guy can see what he sees, probably watching the virtual desktop, considering it’s displaying through his brain. 

you should download a web browser

Hank bashes their hand on the desk again. Jesus. 

okay be that way get bent too

The PC reads Hank as a valid drive to back into, and that’s stupid funny. It gives him a clear view of the open space and-

Shit, he flips back to Hank’s OS, digging through his specs like someone possessed. 

Five? Five bays? Each drive sitting at a 1024 terabyte capacity, practically double a full human brain’s worth of storage. Where the hell did he fit that?

The backup finishes, all that’s left is to clear the PC’s disc. He’s got an entire automated little diddy for that, which is technically a virus, sure, but it works. The body is starting to move as he starts deploying it, something outside their head is coming into focus as Deimos moves his attention away from his little job. 

Tuning back into reality, he’s met with the barrel of a handgun. 

Security. 

There’s an entire group over another suited mans’ shoulder, with weapons drawn. 

The other guy strums their fingers. 

“You won’t remember this, but you don’t need to experience it.” 2B’s voice declares. 

He can’t get a thought in before he’s wrenched out.  

Even with his new hardware, he’s still left shaking, unable to keep the bile in his stomach, dragging fingers against whatever has him pinned. 

“Hey, hey, buddy, Mo,” He can’t remember- can’t remember- Where was he?

He hurts. Everything hurts. 

His head feels like it’s been split open. 

“You have to breathe, bud, come on. You’ve got this,” Breathe. Breathing. He hacks up his first inhale, and his second, but the third comes through, deep, until his lungs have that ache that started after he began smoking. “Real good, okay, I’m gonna get you back on the bed.”

His body is heaved up with next to no effort- He must’ve rolled off at some point, deposited back on his damp sheets, the warm thing that’d been squeezing him is gone now. 

He cracks an eye open. 

And immediately shuts it, the lights of his room blinding.  

“You still in there?”

“Mnggh.”

Can Sanford appear when he’s doing something cool? Like… When he was standing all on his own? He really regrets doing that now, he can’t even bring his hand up to pull the cord to his computer out. 

Sanford does it for him. 

Then his weight is resting on the bed, Deimos’ head tilted so that Sanford can peel his eye open, the grippy, synthetic pads of his fingers make it easy to do. “Know it hurts, gotta check.” 

He’s fine with whatever he sees in Deimos’ bleary eye, probably a pinprick of a pupil with how bad the light hurts, and switches up to pressing his palm to Deimos’ forehead. 

“Not overheating?”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Malfunction? Glitch? Vic said you just had some parts replaced.”

“I’unno, doin’ a job and- And I’unno,” He’s really gripping the rails to keep from blacking out, taking shallow little breaths to keep his body from jostling his head too hard. It feels a lot like his nose has been broken, that twisting, sharp, icy kind of pain. 

“You were- what? Mo, shit,” There’s that concern, not the one that was probably already present, but the one that crops up when he’s about to be accused of having ‘self-destructive tendencies.’

“S’good money, s’guy that. Paid for, the, the shit,” If he could talk with his hands, if he could just do that, he’s sure he could convey what he wants to say. He can’t, though, and his mouth is having a hard time forming the words without heavy slurring. 

He can feel the hollow space again, the missing time slot, deleted data. 

Deleted data. 

Fuck. 

“Fuckin’ bassard, fuckin’… Oh god,” It wasn’t because his rig was trash. It wasn’t because he was fried. 

Of course it wasn’t. 

2BDamned is a hacker, too. Led him out into some system they control, whatever dirty work he’d done either bad or sensitive enough to warrant wiping the history out entirely. 

“Mo?”

Sanford’s a big guy. It’s easy to forget sometimes how fast he can move, because he’s definitely built more for caber tossing, or prying cars open to get unconscious passengers out of car wrecks. It makes the way Deimos is scruffed by his shirt and held over his empty trashcan jarring as hell, caught the moment he started heaving again to save his mattress from another tango with the water vacuum. 

When the purge of his achingly empty stomach ends, he’s hauled around like a toy, gathered all up and tucked tight to Sanford’s body, kept upright while his entire being begs to be laying down again. He doesn’t understand why, his addled brain screeching to a halt with the whole position and he can hear Sanford’s heart right now, until he hears the little rattle of pills in a bottle. 

“The hell am I gonna do with you?” Sanford’s words rumble through his chest, and thank god for the new gear, or else Deimos’ head would’ve actually exploded. It’s not like this is a new sort of thing- He was used to how buddy-buddy Sanford is, but the real estate of his mind is so easily preoccupied with all the things he now has room to think and feel that he almost doesn’t register that Sanford’s feeding him medication, just dry swallowing the pills and realizing too late. 

That’s the theme, it seems. 

“What wassat?”

“Pain killers, chucklehead.”

“You brought me ibuprofen?” 

“Vic said you didn’t get any scripts, so… Grabbed something from work.”

“Did Vic tell ya it got done in a creepy basement?”

A long pause. He can still hear Sanford’s pulse, all strong and steady, clear. 

What a damn good time to have new ears. 

“… Explains some things.”

“Mhm. Vic’s come to the dark side with us, filthy crim’nals all the way.” He gets a gentle little bop to his shoulder, listening as Sanford breathes a sigh. 

“I thought you were quitting that.”

“Did you?”

“… Can’t afford to. Mom’s… Not doing great.”

Oh fuck. 

He tries again to get his eyes open, squinting against the light to get a look at his friend. 

Sanford looks so tired. 

“Should be back home,” Deimos starts, but Sanford shakes his head. 

“No, she. She’ll be fine. She’s having her-time, and I need a damn break.”

“I don’t think I’m givin’ you much of a break, bro.”

“Trust me. You are.”

That eases some of the guilt, a tiny bit. Enough that he can let his head fully rest on Sanford’s shoulder again without trying to ease up his weight. 

Sanford doesn’t offer up anything he doesn’t want to give, but the guy would give away his kidneys if he thought it’d help someone. The fact that he’s still got Deimos in his lap probably means he wants him there, so who is Deimos to argue?

Deimos may be hurting, may have to come to terms with the fact he’s probably been badly played to some degree by 2BDamned, may still be reeling in the aftershocks of being tampered with, but he feels safe. 

And god, there’s no stronger drug than that. 

A crash through the front door and the subsequent scuffle wakes Deimos from his first non-blackout nap in nearly five days, the dull throb of his head now blissfully muffled under hospital grade painkillers and the fog of semi-consciousness. 

“The news! Turn on the fucking news!”

“Chill the hell out- Shit, Vic, Deimos is-“

“Get him out here.”

“He’s asleep Vic,”

That doesn’t stop Victor from barging in, throwing the hallway light into Deimos’ face. He doesn’t even get the chance to scrunch his face up when Victor’s shaking him by the shoulder. “I told you, if it was something sketchy-”

“Victor-“

Deimos has no idea what’s happening, just sucking in air when Victor decides to drag him off of his bed by his shirt, the distinct popping of seams registering faintly behind the way his head swims with the motion. “Did you fucking blow up a building?”

That

Is a one hell of a question to try and handle before he can get his eyes open. When he does, he sees an enraged Vic. 

Sanford’s over his shoulder, stopped mid-deescalation, staring at the two, waiting for a pin to drop. 

How could I have blown up a building? Why do you think I blew up a building? When did a building get blown up? I just woke up and I have no idea what is happening?

Deimos can’t push any of those words out, instead just staring wide-eyed and dumb at his roommate. 

“Wha…?”

Victor’s not deflating. No, he’s getting more worked up instead, about to start dragging Deimos across the floor by his collar when Sanford snaps out of it and forces his way between the two, pulling Deimos under an arm and jerking Victor’s hand away from the shirt. “Calm the hell down and explain what’s going on.”

“We get wifi and the fucking Science Tower detonates-“

“How would that even work, Vic? How would that work?”

“Has he told you about all the shit he used to do?”

“… The Science Tower exploded…?” Deimos finds his mouth, and the drugs are evident in his slurring. He must sound wrecked, because it does get Victor to stop for a second, focus back on Deimos, and get that little worried crease between his brows. 

It’s just a moment, before he works himself back up to being upset. The man turns, gesturing for the other two to follow. 

Sanford helps Deimos to his feet, getting an arm over his shoulder and taking most of the smaller’s weight for him. 

Victor has the TV on now, having flipped through the free channels to find the singular news outlet. There’s a reporter onscreen, a live feed of billowing smoke obscuring a familiar logo brought up next to her grim face. 

“-Fire has been contained, but the perpetrator or perpetrators are presumed to still be at large. CCTV from inside the building was disabled in several areas, but a legacy system caught at least one suspect, according to officials.”

The image shifts, the full screen playing out the mentioned footage. A dark, masked figure in a shiny hall, their attention on the camera recording the scene, stomping towards it like a freight train, hand wrapping around the lens before the feed cuts. It flashes to a still frame, a clear image of the hand, and the mask framed behind it. 

“The suspect is believed to be Hank Wimbleton, who escaped Central High-Security Prison only two days ago.”

Another flash, this time to a set of mugshots. Dark, hollow eyes set deep into their sockets, only one of them capable of staring forward. The rest of the face is built back into the approximation of a steel skull, the scarring and disfigurement suggesting the chrome isn’t all for looks- Like the guy had his face blown off from the nose down. 

Deimos doesn’t know why, but he fixates on it, an itch like he should recognize it, but can’t find any of the connecting tissue. 

… He’s kinda pretty. 

Sanford’s gone rigid against his side, and Victor’s gone pale as a sheet, apparently floored by the news. 

Two days ago, he had twenty minutes missing from his memory. 

Today, the same. 

The money in his wallet sits heavy, 2BDamned’s offers in his chat history. 

Panic. 

[what did i do]

He’s sent the message about a hundred times, staring dead through the air. 

There’s chatter all around him, strangers all discussing the recent event as they’re crowded around the bus stop, on phones or with each other as he burns through another cigarette, the third since he’d sat down. 

He jumps at a weight on his shoulder, blinking from his HUD to look up, Sanford’s hard stare gone soft. 

“He’s worried about you,” The words feel like they have a hundred meanings. 

Victor kicked him out. 

He couldn’t lie. He couldn’t say he hadn’t just done another job, that there was an absurd amount of money transferred to his account that evening. 

Put giant baby puzzle pieces together as if there was much room for doubt, and shoved him out the door. Said something like, “I can’t do this again.”

He has that on the back burner, shit to think about later. 

The bus creaks as it pulls up, Sanford helping him to his feet, carrying his bags for him. 

He doesn’t even know where they’re going. 

He doesn’t know why Sanford’s taking him with.

He doesn’t know anything, does he?

Sanford bargains for a seat, coaxing an older man to give it up so that Deimos can collapse before his knees give out. 

He hasn’t felt like this since he was dumped out on the street with a computer in his head and no recollection of who he was or where his limbs had gone. 

Someone had given up their seat on the bus for him then, too. Started chatting, saw someone in a bad situation and offered their couch. 

Victor’s such a good guy. 

Maybe that’s why it hurts so much, having him figure it out so fast? Before Deimos even had the chance to try and piece it together, he knew. 

Immediately pointing at Deimos. 

He sucks in a hard breath, his plastic palms digging against his eyes while he hunches in on himself. 

Is it because he was caught, that he feels bad? 

Does he care that he probably definitely did it? Helped with it, at least? It felt numb, hearing about the casualties. He feels numb, thinking about them now. 

If he was offered the money, knowing what he’d be doing to get it?

He knows he would’ve still said yes to it. 

Because they needed rent. 

And he needed to get himself fixed. 

Right?

Is it greed? 

He knows Sanford’s done things he hates to talk about. They’ve bonded over it before, living their double lives in the pursuit of a paycheck. 

Sanford has his mom to take care of, has debts to people for it. 

Would Sanford say yes if he’d been offered?

[what did i do?]

Those holes ache. 

The reactions they caused were violent, both times. Fucking with a rig can do that, sometimes, the way the brain is wired to the machine and the way the machine interacts with the brain. It’s all electrical, all targeted shocks, if it’s not careful, not controlled, done fast and messy, deleting a span of time can have worse consequences. He’s lucky so much of his head is made of silicone and circuitry now. 

He’s lucky he’s alive, really. 

Why is he alive?

Doing something that bad, being in a vulnerable position, being that trusting? He’s a loose end here, completely able to be clipped, and isn’t. 

The paranoia starts seeping in. 

Sanford brought him to a motel, on the outskirts of the city. Deimos sits in a chair as his friend has a discussion with the man at the front desk, their voices hushed, wouldn’t have been audible to Deimos only a few days ago, but he can hear them clearly now. 

“I’ll owe you a favor,” Sanford says, reluctant. He’s leaning hard on the desk, after intimidation got him nowhere with the clerk. 

“After the mess you left in the last room?”

“If I were doing that again, you wouldn’t have a choice and you know it.”

“But I have a choice this time?”

“Yeah, and like I said. I’d owe you.”

The clerk considers this offer with great thought, his eyes sliding over to Deimos, a heavy frown on his face. 

“Little guy in trouble?”

… Little guy…?

“Do you actually want to know?”

The man keeps considering, almost a full minute elapsing before he slowly shakes his head. He gestures for Sanford’s hand, sliding a chunky machine across the desk, a ring just big enough to reach through. Sanford hovers his palm in the middle of it, glancing back at Deimos, just briefly. 

Deimos doesn’t feel like he deserves the expression, the one that says ‘It’ll be okay.’

The machine beeps. “Usual room.”

“Thanks.”

Deimos forces himself to his feet, taking his own weight this time to follow Sanford out. He’s feeling deathly calm now. 

The ‘Usual Room’ is towards the back, the last door on the right arm of the U shaped building, on the second floor. It’s been a solid year since he’d last climbed a full set of stairs, the task made only slightly less daunting with Sanford’s hand between his shoulders, keeping him grounded for the climb. 

208. 

Sanford puts his palm to the electric lock, and the door hisses as it slides open. 

It smells strongly of bleach in there, but the lights come on with the motion of their bodies, and it reveals pretty standard fare. Full sized bed, little desk, uncomfortable looking chair. There is one of those fancy holographic TVs sitting up on a set of dressers, as well as a stereo set of all things. 

“You come here a lot?” He’s never felt so awkward, trying to talk to Sanford. 

“For… Work.” Ah. More awkward. 

Sanford sets Deimos’ bag next to the mattress, careful with it, knowing his PC is wrapped up in a few hoodies and sweatpants. He even pulls it out, scooting a lamp to set it up on the bedside table. 

“You remembered your chargers, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I borrow them?”

“‘Course.”

He shuffles to his bag, dragging a side pockets’ zipper open to dig out the cords. “Two or four?”

“Two.”

Even though they were coiled all nicely when he’d packed them, they still managed to get tangled on the trip. He has to sit down to start picking at the spirals, separating them out. It’s weirdly hard, his vision’s getting blurry the longer his tries at it, his fingers not quite listening, not interpreting the pressure into sensation, not quite moving the amounts he wants them to. 

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

“Huh?”

“Mo, you’re crying.”

Something drips off his chin when he looks up, and, shit. He’s leaking. He pauses with his hands at his face, about to try and scrub it away, but. 

His hands aren’t waterproof. 

Fuck. 

He can’t help it. 

He chuckles. 

Man, what kind of stupid idiot goes for the hands that aren’t waterproof? 

… What kind of dumbass goes for the hands that have stupid, delicate little parts? 

Ones that aren’t meant to be used 24/7, that aged out faster than he could save up for the inevitable replacements?

Why didn’t he think about that?

Why doesn’t he think?

He’s laughing, and it goes ugly, his face leaking with it, and fuck it. 

Fuck it. 

He digs his palms back into his eyes, digs them in hard while his laughter turns to gasps, and a sob breaks past his barriers. 

He fucked up, but he was always fucking up. Right from the start, he’d always made bad calls. He can only imagine what he’d done in all of his missing time, not just the recent blanks but the years of life missing, the blank history. He woke up one day and didn’t know anything, had some sort of fresh start and used it to completely fuck over the lives of the people that took him in. 

He’s put people at risk. 

Victor was right to shove him out, but what if it gets back to him? What if they find out where he’d been, and they go bust down the door to the apartment? 

What if Victor’s not safe?

His thoughts keep running at miles a second, blurring in a carousel of sheer panic. 

What if the guy he’s working for finds him?

What if they come looking for Deimos and see that he’s gone, what if-

“Breathe,” Sanford’s knelt in front of him, prying his hands away with gentle fingers, gathering both of his wrists into one hand to pull them away from the grip he’d gotten on his own face. “You need to breathe.”

He can’t though. He can’t, because Sanford’s in it, too. Sanford’s in it deeper, helping him like this, putting him in this motel, taking responsibility. 

He has his mom to worry about, his mom, who’s alone right now, who could also be in danger-

He’s spiraling, a fan clicking on in his head now, the sheer amount of panic pushing even his new rig to start chugging, while simultaneously giving him the brainpower to cycle faster through every worst case scenario he can imagine. 

Police. 

FBI. 

Hank. 

Bursting through doors, taking anyone they find. Gathering threads or cutting the ties. 

Looking for him. 

“Deimos, snap out of it,” He trips on his thoughts as Sanford grabs his shoulder, giving him one sharp shake. He’s pulled away by how close Sanford’s gotten, close enough he can see worried eyes through the tint of his sunglasses. “You need to eat something, okay? So tell me what you want to eat.”

“I don’t… I’m not…”

“I watched you throw up. Twice. You have to be starving, I’ll go out and-”

“Don’t go,“

Sanford drops his wrists in favor of grabbing Deimos’ by the back of the head, dragging him forward until his face is buried in the mans’ neck, other arm wrapping around his back in a tight squeeze. 

“You need to calm down, worst thing you can be doing right now is freaking out, alright?”

“How can you not be freaking out? Why are you- Why help? Your mom-“

“My mom’s gonna be fine, Mo, and you’re gonna be fine.”

“But-“

“Trust me.”

The last person he trusted led him here. 

He wants to say he can’t, he shouldn’t, it’s all going to end badly and he’s going to wind up somewhere bad. 

But it’s Sanford. 

And it was Victor. 

“… I’ll order a pizza. You can get a shower, and we’ll talk about it, okay?” Sanford doesn’t let him go immediately, not until Deimos nods his agreement into his shoulder. 

His eyes feel disgusting. His face feels itchy. He hasn’t cried in… Really, he can’t remember ever crying. 

A shower would be nice. 

He can put his feelings on the back burner, too. 

When he steps out of the bathroom, there’s a familiar face in the room. 

Skinner makes the room feel like a dollhouse, somehow even bigger than Deimos remembers, but there are crinkles around his eyes that suggest he’s happy to be here. 

“Greetings! You’re not dead!”

Sanford’s sitting in the uncomfortable looking chair in the corner, arms finally plugged into an outlet, leashing him to the spot. Deimos tries asking with his eyes, ‘Why?’

“He brought a present,” Sanford seems… Calm, but cowed. Not quite shrinking, but pretty clearly uncomfortable with the situation. 

“Indeed! The donor was quite insistent that I get these to you as hastily as I could, so I’ve come to set them up personally,” The man slaps his ungloved hand on a large, long box next to his hip. “Quite an out-of-the-way spot you find yourself in, and such a friendly face at the counter. I didn’t know Bert was still in the area!”

… Donor?

“What… What’s going on?”

“Oh, he must’ve decided to surprise you. Doc does enjoy his happy little jokes, when the mood strikes him,” Skinner hefts the box up with little effort, but the way the cardboard sinks suggests whatever’s in there has to weigh quite a bit. Sanford has to duck under the maneuvers Skinner takes to get the package laid onto the bed.

Deimos finds out Skinner is used to being armed by the fact that there is a knife hanging from his belt loop, hidden under his long coat, because it’s used to slice the tape open. 

Sanford sits up straighter to get a glimpse at the objects in the box, after Skinner pulls the loose bubble wrap out. 

Oh. 

Shit. 

“Ah, what a lovely selection. I hear these are all the rage with the young athletic types, in fact, I believe that this exact set was chosen by that nu-olympic pole vaulter-“

Deimos tunes Skinner out as he continues rambling about pop culture icons and the ad scam that is the nu-olympics, turning instead to Sanford, who looks just as shellshocked by the contents. 

Arms. 

And legs. 

New. Still with their plastic stickers to keep the matte gunmetal chassis from getting scratched. 

Designer. That’s designer chrome. 

“Doc sent these?” Sanford interrupts Skinner’s gushing as the bigger man lifts a leg out to point at a feature, something about ‘great quality suspension,’ like someone would talk about a car. 

“Indeed! He does like to keep my client list filled, not uncommon for him to… Pay it forward, so to speak. I don’t mind saying it gets people to come back.”

Sanford pulls some kind of face with that comment, quirking his mouth to one side like he’s trying to figure out a flavor. “Yeah, because he usually wants something back for the presents.”

“Business is business, dear Sanford.”

“… Not to butt in but like, do you guys know each other?”

“… He-“

“I’m more familiar with his mother, but I’ve fixed him up a time or two.”

Deimos has to balk at that. 

Sanford’s mom. 

Skinner. 

“Not like that, Mo. Christ.”

“Yes, she is far out of my league… Oh, did I say that out loud?”

Agony. 

It’s agony, keeping the stupid guffaw in his mouth. If he hadn’t collected himself in the shower, and didn’t have the gnawing guilt of having Sanford witness his breakdown, he wouldn’t have been able to help himself. 

And then he’d probably break down crying again. Better not. 

Like he’s trying to change the subject, Skinner begins unpacking the limbs. “Not to be pushy, but I do not have an abundance of time to be here. It’d be best to install these quickly, so please. Lay down.”

He’s reluctant to move, knowing what he knows about the surgeon, the still very visible knife, his own tender flesh. 

“… I’m simply going to plug these in, no need to be nervous.”

He’d be nervous getting a haircut from Skinner. Which he apparently had gotten. The guy probably won’t leave until this is done, though, so he moves forward and goes prone on the bed. 

“You won’t need this trash to take a shower anymore,” Skinner prods at the crinkling glove still pulled over his arm, not pulling it off, but just pushing it down until he can start pressing the tip of the knife into the spring loaded pins that lock his arm into the ring that’s hard-installed in his bicep, twisting it little by little to unlock it from its socket. The weight of the heavy prosthetic falls away, only a few wires to unplug to disconnect it completely. “Hm… Even these… Whoever did your upgrades really should be shot.”

“That’s pretty harsh?” Weirded out by the guy as Deimos is, he wouldn’t really… Expect the expect him to talk like that. He’s… Polite, cordial… decent? For a cannibal. 

“Our craft is to give better function to the body, not to hack it to bits and crudely jam electronics in place,” There’s a little scraping that he feels as a vibration more than anything, Skinner poking around at the inside of his arm, until there’s a shooting jolt of pain that lances through his muscles. “Yes, see? That shouldn’t happen. I can’t fix that without replacing the entire coupling system, and that would mean I would need to take it up a couple of inches… Quite a lot of meat, there…”

“No thanks.” No arm fillets. No. Nope. 

“Perhaps at a later date? Either way, the new pieces should relieve some of the pain. Much lighter-weight, you won’t have to strain so much to operate them,” He stops poking around, getting back to business and putting the new arm in place, software and drivers immediately shot directly into his head once communication is established. The limb gets popped into place with a satisfying click, and Skinner steps back. “You can compare them.”

He can feel the difference when he starts sitting up. 

Lopsided, the weight of the older arm still feels dragging, the new one feels featherlight in comparison. He rolls his shoulder and, yeah, the pinging needles of his nerves still flare up, but the bone-deep ache is definitely lessened. 

He lifts them both over his head with a grunt, hands on top of his head, fuck. 

It’s good. 

It’s so good. 

“Get the rest on me.”

“Right away!”

Skinner’s personal delight over the success is evident, and maybe, maybe, Deimos might be able to see why he likes his job outside of getting to eat people. He does actually seem to take pride in his work, he’s quick enough, and… Nice. 

He’s really nice. 

Maybe that’s why Victor knows him, an under the table doctor that does favors isn’t always the sketchy type that Deimos pictures. 

Except the obvious sketchiness. 

His old limbs make a pile in the box, not even unwrapped from the still-wet plastic that protected them in the shower, going under a tape measure, Skinner noting the sizes then adjusting the length of the limbs. 

“Can you make me taller?”

“I wouldn’t recommend it, but…”

“Not right now, Mo.”

Deimos pouts, but…

“… Later?”

“Later.”

The last of the screws are tightened in place, and Skinner straightens himself up. “Alright, that should be all. Run the calibrations, won’t you?”

Deimos knows the motions, the checkmarks hitting as he bends and taps and holds poses. He sits back up, scooting to the edge of the bed, getting his feet on the ground. 

Like his hearing, the pads of his feet are different, HD, the texture of the laminate flooring cool and smooth. The bedding under his fingers is cheap, but soft, worn, fuzzy. 

He breathes. 

And stands. 

It feels so light, but so sturdy. His knees don’t try to buckle, the impact of his weight doesn’t reverberate up into his bones as he takes the first few steps, impact lessened by that suspension Skinner had mentioned. 

It feels good. 

He feels good. 

He feels like bouncing, so he does, jumping up and down and pumping his fists in the air because he can move. 

“Ah, you may not want to- Your head is still…” Skinner trails off, but Sanford takes that as his cue to step in, having unplugged himself at some point, he grabs Deimos by the shoulders and holds him still. 

“Chill, bud.”

“You chill,” Deimos doesn’t have a better comeback, busied with how he can lift his hands and grab Sanford’s wrists. They’re solid under his touch, plasticky-smooth, he tells his fingers to tighten and they listen. 

Sanford uses his grip to spin Deimos. “Tell the doctor ‘thank you.’”

“No need for that, but do let me know when you want to have your couplings reworked. Quite awful, and I’d give you a steep discount if you’d allow me to… You know.” Deimos can tell that he’s smiling behind his paper mask. What kind of smile, he can’t say. 

“… Uh. I’ll… Think. On it.”

“Wonderful. Sanford can tell you how to contact me, I no longer… Use business cards. I’m sure you understand.” The man gathers the box up, and Deimos can’t be offended that he doesn’t even ask if he wants to keep his old limbs. 

He doesn’t have anywhere to keep them. And he’s sick of looking at them, anyway. 

Skinner leaves with a twiddle of fingers, and then the door closes. 

“… We gonna talk about that at all?”

“He takes care of mom’s pacemaker.”

“No, I mean. Who’s Doc?”

Deimos’ benefactor, Doc, is apparently Skinner’s boss. 

And, on occasion, Sanford’s boss. 

And… “Bert,” the front desk guy. His boss, too. 

Some kind of ringleader in a series of sketchy businesses, which is why Sanford brought Deimos to this motel. 

It’s under some… Dubious kinds of protection. To ease Deimos’ mind, Sanford takes him back to the office to coax Bert into letting him see the security hub. 

“All closed loop, physical tapes. Good for me so I don’t get robbed, good for burnin’ when we’ve got a job,” Bert says, just a little musically. 

“So, you can’t hack it.”

“Nope. Unless someone’s jacked in to this, but you’d have to have some real legacy tech to hook up, I’m talking classic RCA peripherals.”

“That’s legal?”

Bert just laughs. 

“Funny guy,” Bert claps him on the back, then scoots past him. 

“While we’re down here,” Sanford starts up, shifting his attention to a door in the back of the office. “Can I rent something?”

“What happened to all the fancy toys I sold you?”

“Short notice, still at home.”

Bert seems not to like that answer too much, but he shuffles to the door. It’s a lot like the door to the rooms, heavy, needing a keycard or an NFC chip to goad it into opening, but there’s an added keypad that needs punched into. Bert dials his code in, then slaps his name tag to it, causing a beep. The door doesn’t open, though, not until a light switch panel is slid aside, revealing an old-fashioned key lock that needs turning, too. Bert feeds it the key from his belt loop, causing the door to finally hiss and slide aside so he can disappear into the dark room beyond. 

Christ. 

He’s only in the back for a moment, reemerging with a handgun gripped by the barrel. 

“All I’ve got to loan out, got cleaned out this morning. Sure you can guess why.”

The implications are a stark contrast with the levity of the statement, the overt assertion in the words. 

Bert seems to trust Sanford a lot, and apparently by extension, Deimos.  

Sanford takes the gun, shakes Bert’s hand in a transaction that seems to put a full skip in Bert’s step, and guides Deimos back out. 

When they settle back in the room, pizza delivered, his new hands not trembling under the weight of a soda can, Deimos pops the question. 

“You’re tied up in all this shit too, aren’t you?”

“I already told you about Doc,”

“No, I mean. With what’s on the news.”

Sanford doesn’t answer right away, instead giving his pizza slice a thoughtful chew. Eventually, he just shrugs. 

“I’ve got a feeling I am.”

“And that’s why you’re being all nice to me?”

“I’m being nice because we’re friends, chucklehead.” Sanford kicks his shin from his spot on the uncomfortable chair, and Deimos feels almost giddy that he can kick him back. 

“You think your boss has something to do with mine?” Deimos’ mood isn’t as thrashed as it was, but he has always been decent at bouncing back. New toys are a great distraction, and the newfound ability to walk on his own has eased some of the helplessness out of his mind. 

He can run, now. 

“Probably, since Hank’s involved.”

Hank. 

“… He’s part of this?”

“… Yeah. Yeah, he is.”

He… Doesn’t quite know what to make of that. Is it much of a bombshell? Or is it expected, with all the branches in this network? A surgeon, a motel, a laid-up hacker and a mass-murderer. 

He has to wonder a little about the details of Sanford’s job here, a legal EMT and… He’s never been detailed about his extra-curricular activities, just that he disappears sometimes and comes back to drink it away at Deimos’ apartment. 

Old apartment. 

“I could try and contact Doc,” Sanford offers. “If you’re wrapped up in this, the least he can do is offer you protection for it.”

“He apparently already gave me an arm and a leg,” He thinks on that for a second. “… Fuck, man, how’d he-“

“This is his motel, Mo. Bert probably told him I got my room when he saw I had someone else with me.”

“But how’d he know about my jank chrome?”

“Skinner?”

It makes enough sense. Not sense he likes, but enough that he’s not going to overthink it. 

Not right now, at least. Not with his better mood. 

“How’s your head feeling?”

“Like someone ate part of it still, but. I’ve had worse.”

“… Do you actually think he ate it?”

“My brains were all laid out like sashimi on a plate, ‘Ford.  Dude said I was delicious. And, you heard how he was talking about my arms.”

“I dunno, he seemed more interested in whoever cut you up.”

It’s a prod. 

Sanford’s been sharing a lot tonight, and he knows the guy probably wants the favor returned. The pizza feels heavy in his gut with the unspoken question. 

“… You don’t have to talk about it.”

“… It’s. It’s just complicated, y’know? Or- Not complicated, ‘cause I don’t really know who did ‘em. Whatever happened when I got all this,” He knocks his knuckles against his skull. “Put me out of it. Can’t remember a single thing, probably ‘cause they scooped so much out. It’s uh, cognitive corruption, that shit that happened to Tricky.”

“Tricky the Clown?”

“Yeah, like, it’s a kind of a factual rumor that it’s what killed him, but it’s totally what drove him bonkers. There’s- There’s whole conspiracies about that, man- Like-“

“No, I know ‘em. The Science Tower is a whole thing, not surprising that we’d go and bomb it.”

For some reason, some fucked up reason, that eases his more of his edges. 

The Science Tower, most people know it as a research and development firm that dabbles in security, and a huge eyesore. Most of what they advertise tends to be anything from robotic vacuum cleaners to automotive production machinery, but that’s their front end. 

In Deimos’ circles, people spread data. 

The Science Tower’s parent, Nexus Corps, has some seedy business going on. Really seedy. 

Augmentations. They’ve never publicly stated that they’re making chrome, but Deimos has seen the blueprints, torturous shit that he can’t imagine would go well. Trying to move people entirely into their computers, no brains left. 

Tricky the Clown was a major contributor to what was released, definitely someone who’d been on the inside, but his sharing and spreading of documents fizzled into long, spiraling treatises on electronic music and rambling about non-consensually becoming immortal. 

Smart guy went totally bonkers. Most think someone from Nexus fried him when they figured out who he was, but there are circles that believe he was one of the purported human trials they had going on. Some kind of subject for those experimental rigs, threw too much of himself into digital storage and utterly corrupted. 

Bluescreened in an alley. 

“… Didja know there’s a clown cult?”

“… Off topic, Mo.”

“Right. Uh, that’s kind of the long and short of it,” Sanford doesn’t seem to mind the lackluster explanation, just nodding and setting aside his pizza crust. Deimos is not going to let that go to waste, nope, that’s a prime vehicle for garlic dip. “Your chrome’s all voluntary, right?”

“Yeah, it’s optional for EMTs. They like having a couple guys that can lift a car off the ground, so they’ll certify it.”

“Shit, you went and got your totally legal back all engraved?”

“I’m going to get the arms done up, too.”

“You should lemme me etch something.”

They go off track like that, Sanford nicely allowing his mind to wander around without having to get back to the situation at hand. The food helps a little, with the fatigue and the next round of medication he has to take. His hands are steady, pen fitting nicely between his new fingers, he can doodle out ideas on the ancient notepad left in the room. 

Sanford leans in to the topic, sketching out concepts for what Deimos can do to his new arms, since his old customization is gone. The time passes almost kindly, Deimos kept out in the real world and not hating every moment of it for once. 

When Deimos starts to droop, he’s already splayed out on the bed, staring at the ceiling. 

“Scoot, bub.”

Sanford looms over the bed, his sunglasses and bandana disappeared to the aether. 

“You’re staying?”

“You asked me to.”

Oh. Right. 

He did do that. 

Even now, the thought of Sanford going back out stirs the panic back up, but. 

“What about your mom?”

“One night won’t hurt, and my phone’s charged.”

“You sure?”

He answers by gripping the blanket Deimos is laying on, dragging it up and forcibly rolling Deimos into the other side of the mattress, pulling the worst kind of squawk out of the smoker. 

Sanford pays it no mind, settling in to the vacant spot. “Nice and toasty, thanks.”

“I’m gonna file to get your certification revoked, gonna get you stuck with some low-tier teddy-bear arms.”

“I could rock the soft arms.”

“It’s fucked up that they can just. Do that.”

“Better than letting some guy run around smashing peoples heads unchecked.”

Deimos flips to his side, dragging his new pillow to fit between his head and how he usually likes to tuck his arm. It’s going to be weird to get used to, the slightly angular surfaces and the rigidity isn’t super comfortable under his head. 

Maybe he’ll invest in some sleep-arms. 

If he doesn’t get arrested. 

Or killed. 

“You don’t have a rig, yeah?” he’s going to spiral if he doesn’t distract himself, and he can do that by pointing out how Sanford has a phone in his hand, tapping away at the screen. 

“Nope.”

“Can’t imagine that.”

“I’d go mental if I had ads beamed right into my eyeballs,” the phone gets set on the bedside table. Sanford gets himself tucked under the covers, Deimos shuffling about so that he can drag the blanket over more. 

“Crack an adblock package and you never have to have your brain highjacked to smell taquitos against your will.”

“You live in a nightmare reality, Mo.”

“No, cause I’ve got adblock.”

“Aren’t those sensory commercials illegal?”

“Nah, that lawsuit was fake. Just turns out people would scrape the code and use it when they were eating like, celery, so they phased ‘em out.”

“… That’s kind of ingenious.”

“Doesn’t sell taquitos as well.”

Sanford just hums, and he gets the idea that it’s probably time to wind down. 

It doesn’t seem like Sanford has  trouble falling asleep here, if the way he quickly starts snoring is any indicator. Deimos doesn’t quite have that luxury, he hasn’t tried sleeping outside of the apartment in years, if no one counts the times he’s blacked out. 

The heater by the exit is loud, wheezing out air every time it kicks on, but the room stays tepid. Someone below them is still up, rummaging through their things, engines rumble as people leave or enter the city. 

He could turn his implants down, theoretically. He digs around in his head to find the settings, but thinks better of it, going deaf right now is probably not a safe bet. 

Tired as he is, he can’t simmer down. 

He keeps thinking. 

It’s not blind panic now, but puzzling out what he’s been given, considering his options. 

[what do you want?]

He doesn’t expect a reply to come, not with the hours of inactivity. Hell, 2BDamned might just drop him and disappear again. 

That train of thought derails when a message pops up. 

2BDamned: Have you calmed down?

[yeah]

2BDamned: Good. You’re somewhere safe?

[as far as i know]

2BDamned: Will you trust me again?

He swallows. 

[will you tell me whats going on?]

2BDamned: I will. Open the application. 

He’s sitting, now. The room is dark, the only light coming through a crack in some blinds off to the left. 

There’s a strange smell in the air. Burnt, not like the smokey scent of a grill, but this disgusting tinge of things that shouldn’t be burned having caught fire. Plastics and cloth. The body is moving on its own, a little weight in their lap, just barely perceptible. He’s allowed enough control to glance down, to see that there’s some kind of little furry mound sat on their legs, their fingers almost clumsily stroking over the fur. 

There isn’t much sensation, but he can imagine the fur under his fingers, filling in the blank spot. It has to be soft. 

The furry thing readjusts itself, going from a little ball to flipping to its side, stretching narrow limbs out as it yawns. 

Aw. 

Kitty-cat. 

This is a lot nicer than-

FUCK, wait, he remembers-

There’s movement in the room, another person. 

“Is he there?”

The body grunts, a voice coming out of them that requires no motion from their face, artificial and toneless inflection, but oddly… Soft-sounding, quiet. “He’s freaking out now.”

“Hi, Deimos.”

The other person steps forward, crouching down in front of them, a hand immediately going to scratch at the cat’s ears. It yawns wide, reaching out to lazily bat at a string hanging from the person’s hoodie. 

They wear a full-face mask, the lenses a deep, glowing red, a kind of wearable Deimos recognizes as an alternative to getting an implanted rig. The piece that covers their mouth modulating their voice to the point that it sounds like that text-to-speech program. 

That’s gotta be 2B. 

“Sorry for jerking you around, this was all very short notice.”

[you got me kicked out of my apartment for a system backup you fucking bitch] 

The lenses blink, and the pause lets Deimos know the person is reading his message. Identity confirmed pretty succinctly. 

He’s not sure what reaction he expected to get, but it wasn’t the amused snort that they let out. 

“If that’s the worst you’ve experienced so far, you’re pretty well off, aren’t you?”

[you fucked with my head a lot too]

That gets the guys’ mask to angle down. “It seemed to be the safest bet, especially the first time. That was for your own safety, I didn’t think you’d have the capacity to regulate yourself if you went back to your old rig with the excess… Trauma, I suppose.”

[for my own good bullshit man you fucking fried me twice]

The other guy- Hank, he has to guess that he’s riding around in Hank’s head right now, the weird depth perception now must be from the way one of Hank’s eyes is listed off to one side, too damaged to see out of. The other guy grips the body up when Deimos starts trying to move it, getting a fist clenched before he’s locked out. “You’re pissing him off.”

“Is he trying to hit me?”

“Yes.”

“How well can you hold him off?”

“… Enough.”

“Interesting. I’d appreciate not being hit, you’ve seen what Hank can do to someone’s face,” 2B unhooks the cats claw from his string, straightening back up, Hank following the motion with their eye. “And now that we know where you are, he could make us match.”

The threat gets Deimos to let off. 

The idea of Hank busting into that motel sets his teeth on edge. 

“Scared him.”

“Not my intention.”

[what is your intention?]

“I like you. I want to offer you a position.”

…

[youre doc, right?]

“Unavoidable that you’d figure that out at this point. I was surprised that you were local, I considered that you may have been out of my reach until you were taken to Skinner.”

Hank’s focus shifts back to the cat, uninterested in the conversation, he can feel the prickling agitation and-

He realizes. 

Hank wasn’t feeling much of anything during the breakout, during the infiltration, because alien amusement starts bubbling up when the cat gets a burst of energy, trying to chew on their fingertips and kick at their forearm. It’s not his own amusement, he feels that separately, it’s… Jarring. 

It’s fucking strange for a cat to make a guy seem way more scary. 

“… Are you both too amused by that thing to pay attention?”

“You’re taking too long.”

“Untwist your panties.”

Hank seems to be doing something with their expression that gets Doc to back off, not afraid, but losing some kind of nonverbal argument. 

“I work against Nexus, and I have connections. If you agree to offer your skills to me, I’ll help you in any way I can.”

[why should i give a shit about nexus?]

Doc could explain. He could tell Deimos what they did there, he knows it. He could probably tell him all the seedy little details, lay out the facts about what Tricky the Clown spread, but that would make Deimos a liability. 

The thing Doc says is an out. 

“… Are you curious about it?”

And it’s a fucking terrible out, because he knows, Doc knows what he does on forums, knows he’s proposed his own batshit conspiracy theories, that he’s interested. 

That he would’ve derailed the last job if he’d known where he was. 

Because he’d be too curious to pass up the opportunity to run Hank through the walls trying to find things. 

[if i dont agree?]

“I could wipe your memory again, allow you to go back to playing games and wondering what you did. I doubt you’ll pick that option.”

He. 

He doesn’t think he wants to go back to that. 

The feeling of being stuck on standby, idle. 

He has the money to coast on. He could get a shoebox apartment and never leave it, or try to find a way to reintegrate into society with half a brain, no history, and packed with unlicensed machinery. 

The world’s fucked. 

He at least knows Nexus is fucked, too. 

He could do something about it. 

[can you at least keep my ex-roommate safe?]

He wonders how the others were brought in. He wonders if Skinner had been in such a bad position, or Bert. 

Or Sanford. 

“I’m certain I can find a way to do that.”

He gets how they’d agree to it. 

When Deimos wakes the next day, his memories are oddly whole. His head doesn’t ring quite so badly, he’s not coming to with the burn of bile in his throat. 

The talk with 2B- With Doc, it stays. 

He has information. 

He has mobility. 

He has money. 

He even has direction, laying low until some kind of second phase is acted on. 

He’ll get the details when the time comes, and for now?

For now, there’s a big, heavy arm wrapped around Deimos’ waist, his face mooshed against a broad chest, and a general warmth blanketed around him in the chill of the room. 

As much as he gets flustered by Sanford, this particular situation isn’t one he’s unused to. Being drinking buddies means that, occasionally, they’ve crashed on the same bed before. They’re both well aware of the fact that Sanford likes to grab stuff in his sleep, and when he’s awake, and it only took two occurrences for Deimos to give up on reading too deeply into the position. The guy’s tactile and it’s just how he shows his appreciation for people. 

Dude’s an EMT. Getting to hug people is probably something he needs and can’t really do when they’re all broken up. Literally broken up. 

Instead of awkward, it’s just kind of comforting. It’s hard not to feel a little safe, a little cozy, especially being able to just listen to even breathing and a steady heart. 

Plus, he’s really leeching on that body heat. 

He’s so used to overheating in the night that he stopped using blankets, and without the oppressive heat building up in his skull, his torso’s left getting a little refrigerated in the morning air, the heater absolutely pathetic in keeping the room anything above tepid. 

So he enjoys it, lets the lingering fog of his meds cloud his mind up and coast on the contact. 

The morning treads by, easy and quiet. 

Later, he’s flicking unbranded fruity cereal rings across the room, sending bits through the hologram of the news anchors face as she gives updates on yesterdays’ story. He tried to eat them- the cereal pieces, but had some kind of weird allergic reaction to them, his throat itching after a few bites. 

Then Sanford tried to eat them, and had the same result. 

So. They’re not going to eat the cereal. 

“You seem pretty relaxed,” Sanford notes, digging through Deimos’ bag to find a hairbrush. 

“Being in the loop helps,” a direct bullseye when Hank’s face appears again, right between the eyes, his mugshot has been a hot topic. “Talked to your boss last night.”

Sanford pauses his search, lifting his head, eyes immediately worried. 

“What happened?”

“Well, your boss and my boss? Same guy, knows where I am, did a little threatening.”

“And that made you feel better?”

“Nah, I almost socked him in the face, but. He offered me a position.”

“… You said yes, didn’t you?”

Deimos shrugs. “At least this way he won’t blitz my shitz.”

Sanford sits on the bed again, rubbing at his temples, then his eyes. “… You know the kind of stuff he asks people to do, don’t you?”

“Yeah, He… Didn’t wipe me this time, I can remember it.”

“Can you handle that?”

With his pieces put together now, he can give that more thought. 

“… Would it be fucked up if I said I kind of like it?”

“Yes,” He knows that tone, that deadpan flatness. The look Sanford gives him over his shoulder, the dead-eyed stare. 

He can’t hold it for long, puffing a humored laugh through his nose, pulling a grin out of Deimos. Sanford offers out his hand, and he takes it, gripping tight. “Welcome to the fucked-up club.”

Deimos slides onto his stomach to start digging through his bag, producing his brush from a hidden little side pocket and handing it up to the big guy. Huh, weird, there’s something else in there. 

He pulls it out. 

Cigarettes. 

Hastily scribbled onto the carton, there’s a note. 

Stay safe. 

“Did I ever tell you Vic was the best roommate?”

“All the time.”

That’s the thing that’s keeping him sane, the promise that Victor will be okay. 

Because, he can guess, that Doc’s the one keeping Sanford’s mom safe, why Sanford seems to be tentatively okay with everything happening.

And there’s a target to blame if it goes wrong. 

“Can I smoke in here?”

“Bert will actually murder you.”

Damn. 

“… You have a lighter?”

The morning is cold and damp, his sockless feet on the rough concrete, fingers feeling out the icy railing as he leans against it. His head swims with the hit of nicotine, that first smoke of the day settles somewhere behind his eyes. The parking lot is empty, there’s a fine mist that the distant skyline only just barely bites through, with its dark buildings and vibrant neon gone pastel and hazy. He knows he’s not that far, but it feels like it’s the farthest from home he’s ever been. 

He kind of is, isn’t he? As far as he knows, he’s never left the city. 

He’s going to have to find a real place to stay. 

[what kind of stuff can i ask you for?]

2BDamned: What do you need?

[sixty billion credits, a boyfriend, a girlfriend, and a penthouse with a pool]

2BDamned: I can offer a cat and a shed. There is arguably a pool if the pipes have frozen this winter. Haven’t checked. 

[hank would kill me if i took that cat]

2BDamned: Likely, but he can find another. He has an awful habit of attracting strays in unlikely places.

[potkettle]

2BDamned: Touché. 

2BDamned: Really, what do you need?

[how long can i stay at the motel?]

2BDamned: Until it’s compromised. It’d be better to get you out before that happens. 

2BDamned: I’ll pick you up this evening for dinner. We’ll talk then. 

That’s… Weirdly daunting. 

Technically. Technically he’d met Doc. 

It felt like meeting him in person. But, not, at the same time. It feels like he’s there, when he’s riding Hank’s rig, but. 

He was wearing the costume of someone more impressive. 

He stubs his cigarette butt out on the railing, stuffing the burnt up filter back into the carton. It’ll carry the smell inside, but it’s better than littering where Bert can see. 

As he’s going in, Sanford’s coming out, redressed and fresh as ever. 

“… You gotta go?” He still doesn’t like it. 

“Real job, but it’s going to be fine,” Sanford claps a hand onto Deimos’ shoulder, pulling him in for half a hug. “I’ll stop by mom’s, then I’ll be back.”

“Uh, might not… Be here.”

“What do you mean?”

“Doc wants to get dinner?”

Sanford’s grip tightens on him, just a little, but relaxes after a moment, like he remembered something. 

“Hold on,”

He disappears back into the room, and like Bert had before, he reemerges with the gun. 

“Dude, the fuck.”

“It’s not that I don’t- Well. Okay, I do not trust him. But I’m not saying shoot the guy,” His tone is conveying that he may actually be suggesting that Deimos shoots the guy. “He’s just a trouble magnet. 

Sanford doesn’t take Deimos’ hesitation, sticking it into Deimos’ hand. 

“You don’t even know if I know how to use one,” It’s in his hands now, he supposed. Sanford just looks smug when he automatically checks that the safety is on before he shoves it in the back of his sweatpants, making sure his shirt hides the jut of metal sticking out of his lower back. 

“Don’t show up in my truck because you blew your ass off.”

“I’ll blow my dick off instead, promise.” 

They bump their forearms together, and Sanford descends down to start his trek to the bus stop. 

Deimos is alone. 

He has his head. 

He has his feet. 

He… Has to go down and get the door code from Bert, because Sanford let the door shut. 

Bert charges him for the “lost keycard.”

Fucker. 

mr_fear 

topic: anyone else get itchy throat after eating bootleg cereal

my buddy got me these knockoff fruit rings out of a vending machine this morning and my throat started itching after a couple bites

then he tried it and the same thing happened to him

no history of allergies or

He’s interrupted from his post by a knock at his door. 

He’s wasted most of the day, between his still-healing brain telling him it’s time to snooze, and intermittently waking up to check the news, evening crept closer and closer. 

Now its jaws are around his neck. 

May as well let it bite. 

He lets the door slide open, taking the chance on the roulette of life. Could be the cops, could be his new boss. 

He’s surprised that he’s surprised that it’s the latter. 

There he is. 

Dressed nice. Big furry collar on his heavy coat, nice pants. Shiny shoes. Not the ratty hoodie and frayed jeans he’d seen the night before. 

The mask is still in place, but wearable tech guys can hardly be peeled out of the shells they stuff themselves into. 

“Was I supposed to dress up?”

“… We’ll stop somewhere first.”

Damn. Tell a guy he looks like shit without telling him. He’s never been particularly presentable, but he doesn’t own much past sleepwear. Hell, he doesn’t even own a jacket, still draped with a blanket and planning on leaving like that. 

And he does leave like that. 

Not many words are shared, Deimos follows the man down to his car, something old-fashioned, which rings up as expensive in his mind because it’s shiny as the polished towers in the distance. 

No wonder he could drop so much money in the span of a few days, he must be rolling in it. 

And rolling in enough to be this ostentatious means he’s probably not on law enforcement’s radar. 

He settles into the leather passenger seat, the engine near silent as it starts. 

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you look worse than I thought you would.” Casual, Doc’s not looking at him as he says it. He pulls them out onto the road, the turn sharp. 

“Sorry, I forgot to pack my tuxedo when I got kicked out.”

“I did ask you not to take it the wrong way. I meant, I didn’t expect your health to be as bad as it is.”

“I did mention the brain surgery?”

Doc drums his fingers on the steering wheel, expressionless, coat hiding his body language. “… I’m sorry.”

Deimos doesn’t really know what to say to that, so he…

“… You just ran a stop sign.”

They run. 

Lots. 

Of stop signs. 

“This should also fit.”

His new arms are great. They’re fantastic. 

They are carrying. 

So many shirts. 

Button downs, graphic tees, sweaters, Doc keeps piling them on. 

There’s a clerk watching him struggle. He gets the idea that they see this pretty often, probably predicting movements in their head of where Doc will go next, because their eyes flick towards the pants a moment before Doc starts heading that way. 

They seem amused by their correctness. They offer no help when Deimos pleads with his eyes. They have the good sense not to intercept someone who’s on a roll like this. 

“Do you wear jeans?”

“What even kind of question is that?” 

“Cargo pants, then.”

He has to wonder if this is something Doc just. Does. 

Does he go clothes shopping for Hank?

He tries to picture getting all that chrome into a polo. 

“You’re going to need to try the pants on, at least. I can’t tell if these are small enough.”

He was halfway hoping he wouldn’t be pushed to the changing room, but here he is, stuffed into the little closet, making studious work of not looking in the mirror as he finds a good spot to stick the fucking gun.  

He hasn’t done that in… A pretty long time. Looking in a mirror. 

He hasn’t even checked how his hair looks after Skinner cut it. 

He does rifle through the pile of clothes he was handed, picking through the stack of pants to find the size that seems right. 

He sticks them on, and… Good enough?

The mirror is at his back. 

He could check. 

It’s right there. 

It’s almost hard to keep his eyes focused when he turns, automatically wanting to zone out or look away, but. No. 

He looks… He looks pretty bad. 

Like he hasn’t slept. 

Like he hasn’t eaten.  

His skin’s a sort of off-color, there’s a rainbow of ill shades around his eyes, cheeks all hollowed out and the lack of a shave in a few days has him looking more than a little scraggly. 

He’s clean, at least. Aside from the i and patch of beard, he’s kempt, the short haircut is tidy, like a barber did it, fuzzy on the sides. The yellow casing doesn’t look bad, kind of slick, and… The pants fit. 

Kind of make his butt look good. 

He wishes Sanford was here. 

Not to look at his butt, just. 

Seems like it might be fun to do this sort of thing with him. 

He goes ahead and tests out one of the shirts, because he can get his hands to work with the buttons. Something in his head goes ‘maybe we shouldn’t have clothes that need buttoned, because what if we can’t button them later?’

He pushes that aside and twists in front of the mirror. 

Yeah. Kind of fancy. He tries tucking the shirt into the pants, but… He’s never really done that, and it kind of makes him look more like a dweeb. No, no tuck. Maybe a sweater…

The sweater definitely makes it easier to hide the gun again. 

When he steps out of the dressing room, Doc’s seated with a jacket on his lap, tapping away at a tablet. He doesn’t look up as he asks, “Did anything fit?”

Then he looks up. 

“Oh, that looks good.”

He doesn’t put his old clothes back on, they’re stuck into a different paper sack from the rest of the new pile of laundry he has to take care of. 

Doc’s tablet slides between the NFC reader and his palm when he goes to pay, the purchase taken from him. 

Doc hands him the jacket he’d been holding, and takes the bags himself. 

It’s a nice jacket. Long, leather. There’s a pocket on the inside that he could theoretically stick his cigarettes into. 

He does that, actually, swapping them to smooth out the weird bump they were making in his pants. 

Kind of classy. 

He doesn’t get as many weird looks when they step out onto the street again, even though he’s still got his old sneakers on. They’re probably the nicest thing he owned, not getting much use outside of the short walks to the bus. 

“Do you do this for everyone you hire?” Doc drops himself into the drivers seat after he plops the bags into the back seat of the car. “Fancy clothes and dinner?”

“No, typically it’s dinner and a movie.”

It is so hard to tell if he’s joking. 

“I’m joking. You needed clothes.”

The gift horse is staring at him, daring him to pry its jaws open. 

His fingers worry at his new coat instead. 

Fingers that this guy gave him. 

Doc’s driving is bad. He thinks it is, at least, in comparison to the steady stop and go of the busses or the smooth trip of the subway. It’s jerky when Doc does listen to the stop lights, like he’s not really used to it, and it makes Deimos sort of wish he’d run them so his head wouldn’t need to be braced on the headrest.

They narrowly avoid a freight vehicle as they merge into faster traffic. 

He really hopes Sanford doesn’t have to drag his spaghettified corpse out of a car wreck. 

He clutches at his chest when he can finally get out of Doc’s deathtrap. 

“I’m taking a cab back.”

“I wouldn’t recommend it.” Their voices echo in the parking garage, and Deimos fits a cigarette between his teeth. He moves his thumb up to-

Fuck, right. 

“Would you kill me if I modded these hands?”

“I’d prefer to mod them myself, first.”

“I knew there was a catch.”

“I think you’d like my ideas.” 

Doc beckons him to follow once he digs the lighter he’d sniped off Sanford out of his carton, the puff of smoke sighed out with the rest of his post-racecar-adrenaline. He didn’t really pay attention to where they’d headed, somewhere in that nicer part of the city he knows, but there’s a long escalator instead of stairs to climb, and it’s a little hint that he’s not anywhere he belongs. 

The view at the top confirms it. 

Straight ahead, buildings part ways for a wide thoroughfare that leads directly to the Science Tower. There are still police lights flashing around it, probably swarming with investigators and crime scene analysts, like some kind of movie set. 

“It’s fine to gawk, but don’t slow down,” Doc nudges his shoulder, pointing down the street when he has Deimos’ attention. “They’re making quite a spectacle of it.”

“That’s kind of what happens when skyline feature blows up, I think,” If he squints, he can kind of make out some of the damage done to the exterior, way up high in the sky. He was up that far? How the hell did Hank manage that? “Why do they got the cop lights on still?”

“Theatrics. And a diversion. They’re not watching the building as thoroughly as they want you to think.”

Not as much as he thinks could be a pretty wide margin. He sticks close to Doc, and his radius of rich energy. 

Really, the whole place is stinking of money. Everyone around is pretty visibly covered in chrome, but not the kind he’s used to seeing, not the patchy work-with-what-you’ve-got clunky tech of previous years, not the licensed kinds that tell you what someone’s job is. It’s all sleek chassis and small form, high-end and fashionable, the stuff people get because it looks nice. 

He sees a lot of open skulls, too, clear casing is in vogue, and he’s sort of happy Skinner thought he was hip with the times. 

He sort of is now, isn’t he? 

He’s dressed like them. 

Has a body like them. 

Blends in with them, all except for his shoes. 

He wonders if they have fucked up nerves, too. Wonders how hard it was to have their brains scooped out. 

Wonders if this is what he looked like before he can remember. 

Doc guides him to one of the more lit-up towers, a huge complex of fancy businesses at the ground level, advertising for restaurants a little higher up, and he has to assume it dissipates into start-up offices the further up it goes. 

… He’s getting a fancy dinner. 

“Couldn’t we go to a fast food place?” The menu is ridiculous. 

Portions are measured in ounces, and he’s trying to deduce sizes based off that mysterious unit of measurement by trying to imagine how many cups of water that has to equal. 6 ounce steak? Is that little? Big? They have 20 ounce options?

Doc just appears to be amused by how Deimos is pouring over his food homework, comfortably reclined in the secluded booth. 

“Where’s the fun in that?”

“Some of ‘em still have play-places.”

“You do not.”

“I do.”

He’s only gotten stuck once, too. 

“How old are you?”

“No idea, and probably wouldn’t tell you if I did.”

He settles on something that sounds like it’ll probably be decently in the middle of some sort of size. None of these things have prices listed next to them, and at least half of them have “truffles” listed as ingredients. 

He’s half-convinced they’re putting chocolate into everything before he remembers that he has a working rig- He can just search stuff now. 

… It’s some kind of… Weird… Mushroom rock. Thing. 

“You know, you’ll have to tell me a few things if we’re going to work together.”

“Like what?”

They used to use pigs to find them back in ancient times, when pigs were a thing. He’s kind of surprised there’s real plant-stuff here, but, y’know. Rich people. 

“I’d need at least a few details about your roommate in order to make arrangements.”

“Ex-roommate.”

“Ex-roommate.”

A waiter tops off his water, which he’s been impolitely chugging every time the glass is refilled. 

It’s a bit of a catch 22. He really doesn’t want to say anything about anything to this guy, but he logically has to. 

He has to trust him. 

He kind of gets why Doc chose this restaurant, he’s not totally stupid. 

It’s a fucking power move. They’re right next to the place he just blew up, and Doc bought him a wardrobe and is probably going to foot the bill for whatever truffle-coffee-ground-encrusted-steak he picks. 

… Should he have caffeine while he’s still technically recovering from brain surgery? Search engine says it’s safe. Ish. He tries not to fall down a rabbit hole of self diagnosis there, fingers starting to pry into his port the more he fades into his rig. 

“You have attention issues, don’t you?”

“Would it be a deal breaker if I did?”

“Not necessarily, Han… J, mentioned something about your focus being all over the place.”

“And his is laser focused on- On, you know.”

“It seems to work out well.”

“He’s like, fine with it?”

“As fine as he is with anything. If he didn’t enjoy it to some degree, I doubt he’d let you do anything.”

… Does Hank like him?

“But, the task at hand. What do you want me to do with the nebulous concept of keeping your roommate safe?”

“Ex.“

“Ex-roommate.”

“I’unno, man. I just don’t want him to get pulled into shit,” He pulls his fingers out of his port, instead ruffling his own hair to try and clear his head up. “And I want him just. To not have to worry about shit. Or to have to work so hard, or… I don’t know.”

Doc watches him with that blank stare, the angles of his goggles give a permanent disappointed look, and he starts shriveling under it. But Doc just nods his head. 

“Send me the address of the building he lives in, just that, and I’ll figure something out.” 

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. Then order your food. You look starving.”

Coffee encrusted steak is delicious. 

Truffle macaroni is delicious. 

He is utterly crammed full of food to a degree that’s making him want to pass out, but still. 

He kind of craves one of Victor’s burgers. 

He couldn’t eat it, no way, and it’d clog up his arteries and only have the most basic nutrients available- empty calories to power his brain. 

He just misses Victor. 

“I apologize in advance for what’s about to happen.” Doc never ordered food, but he’s pantomiming dabbing his mouth with a napkin, tapping it at the solid mouth cover like some kind of potential goofball.

He realizes that the restaurant has gone silent. Deimos sits himself up straight, leaning to look where Doc’s looking.

A set of burning crimson circles set upon the face of a hulking figure, head to toe draped in black. It’s obvious who it is, and obvious who he’s staring at, second moving like they’re trying to pass through a dialup line. 

2BDamned: I’m going to need you to shoot him.

[what????]

2BDamned: You do have a gun, right? 

Hank moves like a freight train revving up, slow at the start and chugging into an all-out bolt, headed directly towards them. 

The motions are automatic. 

Like the hazy split of his mind during the jobs, he doesn’t know where it comes from- If he’s doing it actively, or if it’s something else. 

Just programmed in. 

He can almost make out Hank’s eyes through the tint of his goggles by the time the shot is fired, his head jerked back in a quick flick, the smoke leaving the barrel. 

It’s all quiet, then there’s yelling. 

What was this?

What the hell was all of this?

The cops don’t show up for full minutes, which gives credit to Doc’s statement about the Science Tower not being watched. 

Hank’s flat on his back on the floor, just a little hole sizzling in between his goggles. 

No blood. 

There’s no blood coming out of him. 

No one seems to care that there’s no blood. 

Doc is talking to an officer. 

“-Bodyguard, I’m grateful I brought him with me tonight.”

“Him? Really?”

He tunes them out, his focus shifting to the elevator that keeps pouring more cops out. This time, it’s a red-coated EMT, pulling a stretcher along, passing through gaggles of restaurant-goers all grouped around officers, talking over each other to explain what they saw. 

Their eyes lock. 

Oh. This is elaborate. 

He doesn’t get the chance to stare at Sanford too long, because the officer that was talking to Doc steps towards Deimos, hands on her hips and looking him up and down. 

2BDamned: Drag it out. Download and execute this. 

A file appears after the message, and he recognizes the type. 

License. 

He grabs it immediately, and forces a smile at the cop that he knows isn’t hitting his eyes. He hopes he just looks tired. 

“Exciting night,” he greets, sliding his hands up and down his thighs with nervous energy. 

“You do this often?”

2BDamned: Curious about your acting skills. 

“Nope, I was hoping I wouldn’t have to, kind of spoils the Boss’ dinner, doesn’t it?”

The loading bar jumps forward. 

“I don’t think I’ve met private security that isn’t happy to put down someone this well-known.”

His pulse thumps. 

“… You’re not gonna tell me that’s the guy that’s been on the news, are ya? Like- the guy?” He hopes the way his face has gone pale just makes him look shocked. “I’ve only been working… What-“

2BDamned: Three days. 

“Three days? I’ve hardly even been out of training.”

She does another once over, and like she’s gotten ahold of some kind of puzzle piece, she gives a disarming smile. “You’re holding it together pretty well, then. Can I get an ID number?”

2BDamned: 12-009-16D0425

He rattles the number off, the officer tapping it into a clunky wrist-wearable, watching the thing as it loads whatever profile is attached to the number. “Thank you Mister… Neil Downe.”

[holy shit thats absolutely terrible]

2BDamned: I think I’m hilarious.

He has to force another smile when she looks back up. “It doesn’t look like your current appliances are logged with your ID.”

“Ah, they’re pretty new. I uh- I had some unlicensed pieces for a long time, the… Standard medical type. Wasn’t voluntary.”

“You went through training with medical prosthetics?”

“I had a leg up on the guys that got ‘em when they started, basically had them all my life.”

She nods, and that gets her to back off. Nothing makes a person more uncomfortable than involuntary prosthesis. Fucker. 

“You do have the license for your new appliances, don’t you?”

He can see Sanford only slightly pause in finally getting Hank unceremoniously hauled up onto the stretcher, his head lifting, a flash of worry. 

“Of course.”

He holds out his palm, heart hammering harder now as she holds the wearable up to it. The machine beeps this time, and when she looks at the screen, he wants to throw up all that delicious coffee-encrusted steak. 

“… Oh, these are the sports models. They come in gun metal?”

“Yeah, I think uh… There was someone using them in the nu-olympic pole vaults that had this set. Had my eyes on them for a while.”

“I hear most people do their shopping after the olympics,” She appears totally disarmed at this point, chatty, as she scrolls through the specs outlined by the license. 

It feels weirdly invasive, to have someone reading it. 

“… I’ve never heard of a Two-Shoes rig before.”

“That’s from my company,” Doc helpfully butts in. “They’re catered towards VR gaming, but we’ve agreed to test the viability of the system for personal security use, as I’d like to widen my consumer base.”

Her face twists a little, for a moment. 

That kind of expression that says, ‘Oh no. Nerds.’

Then it seems to check out in her head, like it explains something. Maybe why Hank had shown up in the first place- He was clearly going after tech conglomerates. 

“Well, everything checks out. I’ll have to take your firearm, but this situation is pretty cut and dry.”

She… Isn’t even going to ask for his firearm permit, which he doesn’t have. Or his security authorization. Just blindly trusting whatever he says. 

That easy?

It’s that easy?

He’s forced to give some dummy contact information, filling out a form awkwardly on her wearable, which she turns to Doc to have him peck out the same type of info excruciatingly slowly. He thinks he’s doing it on purpose, hunched over and leaning close like he’s not used to wearables while having one right on his face. 

Deimos notices that Sanford and Hank are already gone, the officer leaving them to regroup with the other cops. 

Doc holds his tablet to the table’s NFC reader, but it flashes a notice that the check was already paid. Comped. 

That’s sweet. 

2BDamned: We don’t have a lot of time to tail the Ambulance.

Doc’s driving is more erratic than the last two times, but that can’t stop Deimos from popping the question. 

“The fuck was all that about?”

“Killing a flock of birds with buckshot.”

“Did I kill Hank?”

“Hopefully, no, but it’s usually much harder to get him to play dead.”

“The fuck, Doc?”

“It was the best way I could think of to get him out of the Science Tower.”

…

“He was still in there this whole time?”

“I told you that they weren’t watching it.”

They take a hard left turn, Deimos nearly having his head clocked by the door. 

“That’s insane. You’re all fucking insane. That could have gone so badly-“

“But it didn’t. Because I put stock into promising people.”

“You’re fucking crazy.”

“Calm down, Neil.”

He cannot fucking help it. 

He’s a stress-laugher. 

And the driving is making him pretty damn stressed. 

The ride smooths out when they merge onto the highway, mostly empty, so few people ever leave the oasis of the city and make it into the cold, muddy wastes beyond. The sky and the earth eat each other at the horizon line, making it look like the road is just a bridge out into a gaping void. 

A thing Deimos has never seen before. 

Miles traveled, he can see a vehicle pulled off to the side of the highway. Big and boxy, an ambulance. 

Doc slows the car to a crawl, then a stop, then it’s put into park. 

The back doors fall open, Sanford standing in the back of the vehicle, waving an arm. 

“Come on,” Doc pulls himself from the car. “Grab your clothes.”

Bag of clothes hugged in his lap, Deimos watches as Doc leans over Hank’s head, digging tools into the little hole Deimos had made in his skull. It’d be grosser to watch, if he didn’t come to the conclusion that there wasn’t any brain left in there, as impossible as that seems. Is. 

It is impossible. 

People go bonkers if they go too far. And Hank had to be human. He knows what fake skin looks like, and that’s not what Hank has, not on his little bit of face, at least. 

Here in person, with the mask gone and his vacant eye staring blindly up at the ceiling, he’s sort of hit by the thought, again. 

Hank is kind of pretty.

Doc pokes something, and Hank’s fist clenches. 

“There you are. We’re heading to the eastern safehouse, don’t move.” Doc pats Hank’s partially mechanical cheek, the big guy’s eye starting to roll around in his skull, inhaling sharply. 

Alive. 

He was dead. 

Hank was totally, definitely not breathing. 

Doc’s gaze shoots up to Deimos as he inhales to start a string of cussing, but he’s silenced by the look. 

2BDamned: Stay quiet. 

[he was definitely dead]

2BDamned: I’ll explain later. 

[is he gonna zap my brains out?]

2BDamned: I have no idea, so stay quiet. 

He hugs on the bag tighter, leaning back where he’s seated slowly, to keep that shifting eye from catching on him. 

It doesn’t work.  

Hank locks on, wide-eyed and wild, panting like a dog. 

He only notices that Hank doesn’t have eyebrows when he realizes he’s having a hard time reading the expression on his face. He’s going to go out on a limb and say Hank looks… Utterly panicked. Like he’s having a really bad time, like. The worst time. Doc grabs Hank’s head as he reels up to start slamming it against the stretcher, quickly shoving a thumb drive into the access port at the base of his skull- No. A port, not the port. There’s a few, and that one seems to force him to go limp. 

“Good to know. He didn’t immediately try to kill you.”

“The actual fuck, Doc.”

“I play fast and loose, it gets more results.”

“The hell did you do to him?”

“Emergency bypass. Imagine a falconry hood, it’ll calm him down.” That seems fucked up on so many levels, especially with how far away the eye suddenly looks. 

“You’re not gonna do that shit to me.”

“Don’t give me a reason to.”

The drive feels endless, unnerving without any real windows to look out of. He tries to distract himself, first realizing that he has no data this far from the city, then noting that the medical equipment can only hold his attention so much. 

He winds up looking at Hank a lot. 

It’s unsettling to look at his hands from this angle, to see them from an outside perspective. 

Deimos used those to kill some people. 

It was definitely different, shooting him versus shooting nameless faces in Hank’s body. It’s not like he actually knows Hank, there’s just an aspect of unreality, this sort of distance between using a proxy and being there in reality, pulling a trigger. 

He really did just think of it as playing a video game. 

Lost in his thoughts, he almost doesn’t notice when the ambulance slows down, turning to slowly make its way over a gravel path, and the eventual stop. A few minutes, and Sanford opens the back doors up, climbing in just enough to start the process of pulling the gurney out. When Deimos climbs out of the back, he’s greeted by an old, run-down automotive shop, squat for being a two story building. It’s clearly not been in business for years, all the windows shuttered or boarded up, but Doc produces a key to get the door open. 

“Put him in the office, then get the ambulance into the bay.” Sanford does as he’s asked, silent, and Deimos knows him well enough that he’s annoyed by having orders barked at him. 

“… Hey. All my shit’s still at the motel-“

“I’ll have Bert collect it.”

“… Did I just get kidnapped?”

For how short he’s been since they’d ditched Doc’s nice car, Deimos doesn’t expect it when Doc huffs a little laugh. He’s messing with a thermostat, pulling off his heavy coat and loosening his tie. “I’d say I’ve liberated you.”

“You’re kind of a pretentious shithead.”

“I am.”

When Sanford passes by again, he reaches out and ruffles Deimos’ hair up, quiet as he heads back out to move the vehicle. 

… At least Sanford’s here. 

He doesn’t have chargers for his limbs. 

He thinks it was on purpose. 

That Doc never planned to take him back to the motel, and didn’t hint at it so he wouldn’t have thought to grab his chargers. 

It means he runs out of juice, his limbs going useless and have left him on a dirty, dusty couch in what used to be a waiting area, unable to make any daring escapes. 

He’s not alone, though. 

He’s leaned up against Sanford’s side, tucked under his arm while Sanford scrolls on his phone. 

“How do you have data out here?”

“Mm? I don’t, this is a dead zone. I’m playing 2048.”

“Can I watch?”

Sanford lowers his phone a little. 

Deimos’ head is hurting again. 

A dead zone isn’t a bad place to be, but he’s never really experienced it before. Sure, he’s only just gotten his wifi reinstated, but it’s different. He could risk a couple credits if he really needed a fix, he could leech off a neighbor if he was careful about it. His entertainment library is slim without his pc, and he’s in serious danger of letting his mind wander all over the place. 

Hank looked really scared. 

Maybe he thought he’d gotten caught, being in an ambulance and all. Or maybe it was the concentrated reaction he was having before the bullet smashed through his skull, put on pause while he was… What, knocked out?

Could Hank feel fear?

Deimos hadn’t noticed it when he was in his head, when there were guns aimed at him all over the place. Hell, Deimos hadn’t been scared. Jarred, yeah, but again.It all felt like a game. 

Sanford’s rubbing his shoulder a little, pulling him back to reality. 

“You okay, Mo?”

“I think my head’s giving up the ghost.”

“You should probably sleep, Doc’s going to take a while in there. Think that bullet ricocheted down into the abdomen.”

That sounds painful. 

Intermittently, he’s been hearing the muffled sound of power tools running from the back of the building. No yelling, nothing like that, but the obvious sound of work getting done. 

He thinks about when he’d poked around Hank’s head, the massive list of drivers and no other software. 

“He’s basically a robot, ain’t he?”

“I don’t know him that well, but looking at him? I think there’s just a couple bones and some skin left.”

“And lungs. He has lungs.”

“Then lungs too, I guess. Are you worried about him?”

Is he?

“… I’unno. Maybe, ‘cause he’s been my job the past couple of days.”

“… What do you mean?”

“… Been running remote access software into his head and kinda piloting him like a mech from those cartoons.”

Sanford pauses the swiping on his screen, up to a 1024 block and a billion 2s and 4s. 

“You can do that?”

“I guess. He’s so chromed up that his whole body is basically a computer, so. Yeah. Didn’t really question it before, cause… I was just doing it.”

“Another reason I’m never gonna get a rig,” Sanford shuffles until he can get his hand on Deimos’ head, waggling it around. “Don’t need you hacking into my brain to open jars for you.”

“I don’t gotta do that when you’ll just do whatever I ask,” He knocks his head against Sanford’s shoulder. It pangs, but it’s worth it. 

“I didn’t realize you two were so close,” Doc has emerged from the back room, tossing a drill into one of the open chairs. Sanford sits up a little straighter, his grip on Deimos a little tighter, which is sort of adorable in a fucked up way. 

Dude really doesn’t trust Doc. 

“Sanford, your transfer agreement was put in, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Good. We’ll move your mother later, I think Skinner should be able to pick her up when he’s finished packing,” Sanford’s really tense against his side. “… Unless you’d rather have Bert escort her.”

“Skinner is fine, he’ll know how to take care of her.”

“… So you guys are totally ditching Nexus?”

“No, we’re going to be headed towards their headquarters, Nexus City. We’ll make a pitstop in Central. Regroup. We’ll lay low here for a day first.”

They have a whole city? He’d never heard about that- But to be fair, he’s never looked at a map. He never even thought about leaving Victor’s-

“What about Victor?”

“Who?”

Fuck. 

Sanford squeezes his shoulder, tight. He can’t tell if it’s a warning, or something else. 

“Is that your r-… Ex-roommate? I’m in the process of taking care of that. Contract negotiations with the current owners are ongoing, but an apartment complex isn’t a bad investment.”

He’s. 

Buying the building. 

That’s… Not the worst, Deimos thinks. If Victor wanted, he could leave it, if he stays, Doc would be inclined to protect the property he put money into. He may have Victor’s first name now, but there’s a guy on another floor with the same name. 

… It’s not bad. It’s not bad. 

There’s still a pang, fear, anxiety. 

He misses Victor. 

He doesn’t really want to leave him behind like this, not after all the talks they’d have about burning down the fast food joint and going on the lam, or about how Vic would save up and buy his own franchise, then they’d get a nice place in a taller tower. 

… He wonders how many strings he can pull. If he can work something out from the outside. 

His thoughts are interrupted by a forth body entering the room. 

“I thought I told you to keep laying down.” Hank’s chest is pried open, his guts hanging from his splayed out ribs, clear sacks of fluid hanging in the opening that are very clearly housing the few organs that are left. Unbundled wiring is being half held together by an arm that trembles as he moves, and with his face out in the open and sculpted the way that it is…

Dude looks like a fucking zombie. 

Deimos’ legs aren’t charged. 

He can’t run. 

“… Which one is he?” Hank’s voice is still that flat, oddly soft voicebank. Doc doesn’t answer, doesn’t glance back at the two, but doesn’t stand in the way of Hank’s path. 

“Go lay back down.”

“He is one of them. Which one?”

“Why would I tell you that?”

“I need to know.”

“Why?”

“To know that you didn’t fuck over something useful.”

All three seem to be surprised by that response, the long pause giving Hank a chance to scrutinize the two on the couch. Doc doesn’t do anything to stop the monster truck of a man from stepping in front of Sanford and Deimos, the hand not cradling his mechanical guts coming up, grabbing Sanford’s head. 

Deimos is helpless to watch, he can’t force himself up to grab at the arm, the vivid memories of watching a man’s face contort in agony as electricity was shot through his temples-

But Hank just forcibly turns Sanford’s head, leaning to check the back, finding only the natural contours of a head untouched. 

Then Deimos gets grabbed, and Sanford does grab Hank’s wrist. 

Hank doesn’t seem to care, fighting Sanford’s strength to just turn Deimos’ head to the side, his grip unyielding and feeling like being stuck in some kind of horrific can opener. 

“This one?” Hank asks. 

“… If you kill him-“

“Why would I?” Deimos’ head is twisted again, this time forced to look up at Hank, which is really putting strain on his neck because Hank is tall. His pulse is hammering in his throat, his stomach dropped to his feet, and he’s being forced to keep eye contact. The bullet hole is still there, right between his eyes. “I want to keep it.”

With that, Hank shoves Deimos’ head back as he releases him, shaking Sanford’s death grip off. He then just… trudges back to the backroom. 

A collective breath is released. 

“I think I pissed myself,” Deimos wiggles his body until he can sit upright. Doc is still staring at the door Hank disappeared though like he’d just seen a talking mongoose waddle out through it. “The hell was that?”

“… I will not pretend to understand a single thing that goes through that man’s mind.” Doc’s fingers creep up under his mask, probably scrubbing at his eyes. Deimos almost gets a peek of what’s under there, but.

He averts his eyes before he can see. 

He can be a little respectful. 

“You two can sleep in the break room, it has a keycode lock, so… I’ll pull the cots out.”

Like a keycode lock will keep Hank out. 

Sanford’s nice enough to carry Deimos off to the break room once everything is set up, and it takes very little negotiation to decide that they’re going to huddle up on one cot while Deimos is still immobile.

They’re both relieved when the only vent into the room is about eight inches across. 

“What if he can pull himself apart and have his arm crawl through the ducts?” Deimos’ query gets a chuff. It’s not a legitimate concern, they’ve been going back and forth for a couple minutes on the topic. 

“What if he can detach his head and has a bunch of little spider legs to move around with?” Sanford offers up. 

“What if he can shrink down like, really fuckin’ small-“

“I think I could take a four inch tall Hank.”

“What about six inch tall?”

“Nah. That’d be way too much of a challenge. Six inches is where you gotta start being worried.”

“I think that’s eight inches.”

“Buddy, six is more than enough.”

They’re both giggling between words, because they’re actually twelve years old and this is the funniest thing ever. It bounces Deimos a little, where he’s been sprawled over Sanford’s chest.

“Did’ja have dinner?” Deimos should try to sleep, but the motel room issue is happening again. Too unfamiliar, kind of uncomfortable, Doc’s usage of power tools isn’t helping. Sanford seems to be in the same boat, he doesn’t have any sleep in his voice, even after he yawns. 

“Grabbed something before Doc called me out.”

“… Are they like, gonna be looking for that ambulance?”

“Nah, it was all kinda smart. Had two ambulances arrive, Doc had this fuckin’ freaky body double of Hank, just stuck it in the one and snuck the real thing in the other. I’ll be dropping this one off at my new job, and everyone’s gonna think Hank’s six feet under for a while.”

“Until he blows something else up.”

“Probably.”

“… You done this before?”

“… Once, yeah. Last time was… Well, Hank got caught.”

“But you were okay?”

“… You thinking too much?” Sanford’s hand is rubbing up and down his back, big broad motions with nice pressure. Pretty overt that he’s trying to be comforting. 

“Technically never really had this much change all at once, y’know?”

“Yeah… It went okay, Doc will find everyone somewhere to stay, might look for a real job for you. You do what he asks, he’s fine enough.”

“If you don’t?”

“… Don’t wanna find out. He’s got my mom.”

“… When he was- Not threatening but, making his point. He was saying he’d nuke all this outta my head and just leave me to play games.”

“How’d you feel about that?”

“… Like, the way he said it, it made me feel like that’d be the worst thing in the world. Getting stuck doing what I’ve been doing, trapped in bed, stuck in virtual all the time ‘cause reality sucked.”

“This better?”

“I’unno. It’s something, but. I really don’t know, ‘Ford.”

The conversation dies off, Sanford keeping his petting going, but the sound of power tools has died down. It clears enough space for Deimos to notice his headache again, and he wishes he could lift his hand to press at his eyes, just get some pressure to relieve it. 

He closes his eyes instead, and despite the environment, he finds himself slipping off. 

He’s staring at his lap. It’s not his lap, it’s their lap. 

Their head lifts, and in the dark room, he can make out a body on a chair across from them, slumped and unconscious. 

Breathing. 

That’s his body. 

He doesn’t control the way they stand up, their purposeful steps forward, the way their hand clamps onto his hair and pulls his head up. 

He can see his own half-lidded, glazed eyes, how they stare blindly into nothing, just little slips of gold. 

Their other hand lifts, fingers cradling his cheek, but their thumb. 

Their thumb

starts pressing

at his eye. 

He wakes with a start before the pressure breaks, feeling cold and clammy, shivering in the empty cot. 

Sanford’s not there. 

He reaches up to scrub at his eye- He can, yeah. He can do that. He feels the drag of a charging cable pulled along with the motion, someone plugged him in while he was unconscious. 

Deimos can’t remember dreaming before. That’s what that was, right? A dream. All the fucked up actions he’s committed and witnessed finally catching up to him, getting jammed up in the paper shredder of his mind. 

He’ll worry about it later. 

First order of business; getting a cigarette.

His back feels achey and pops when he gets himself pulled off of the cot, which, yeah. He slept on a cot, on top of Sanford. That was going to happen, an inevitability. 

Some little voice nags at the back of his head, ‘Hey, maybe you shouldn’t barge out of the nice locked room when there’s a psychopath and a killer out in the rest of the shop?’

It doesn’t seem to be a bad thing that he ignores it, he doesn’t see Doc or Hank out in the waiting room, so it’s free game, right?

Wrong. He’s scruffed by the back of the sweater he’d fallen asleep in, dragged back a few paces, and completely thrown into one of the chairs hard enough to nearly topple it over. 

Above, Hank looms. 

“Ow?”

No response, just dead-eyed staring as the fuckin’ brute crosses his arms. 

Okay. Not immediate death. And he’s got his ‘guns’ put away. 

“Can I ask what the excessive force was for?”

“Told not to let you out.”

“Where am I gonna go? it’s all mudflats and wasteland out there.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

He’s got that little urge, the one that Victor only brought out every so often, when they were both stir crazy and stuffed too close together, rubbed just the wrong way to start snapping at each other. 

He feels a little like being a dick. 

So he slips his pack out of his pocket, sprawls himself in his chair, and lets the flame just nip his cigarette. 

There’s the faint movement of muscle in Hank’s face, he can sort of make out where he’s raised his hairless eyebrow. 

“Hope there’s no sprinklers in here, pretty sure it’d suck for the both of us, since my head’s not plugged up and I doubt yours is either. Might fry the shit outta both our rigs.”

It takes a minute for two and two to come together, but the math checks out and Hank drags him again, like a ragdoll. Deimos gets the impression that Hank’s a little bit creative with problem solving. 

He could do what anyone else would do, snatch the cigarette and stomp it into oblivion. Hank’s solution?

Punching a fist-sized hole through one of the shutters blockading the window and bowling Deimos across the floor to land near enough to the new porthole. 

Getting gathered back up, Deimos peeks out at the noontime horizon. Not much out there but muck and drizzle, the tangy odor of polluted rain somehow amplified out here. May as well add to the pollution. 

He keeps his smoke puffing out of the opening, aware that he’s being watched the entire time, almost positive that Hank isn’t even blinking as he stares holes into the clear casing of the back of Deimos’ head. 

“You stare a lot,” No reply. Maybe he isn’t staring- Oh no. He is. He really, really is. “… Are you like, live-streaming this to Doc?”

“No signal.”

“Oh, you do know some computer stuff.”

That gets his gaze to shift away. Huh, touchy subject?

“… You always that big?”

“Were you always that small?”

Oof. Touchy subject. 

“Where’d Doc and ‘Ford go?”

“Out.”

“Top secret?”

“For food.”

“Awwww, bastards couldn’t take me with?”

Hank’s head tilts a little, kind of like a dog. He’s hard to read, no lips or anything but the very minute twitches of his forehead when his eyebrows move and the forming creases change shape, but Deimos already feels like he’s getting the hang of it, because he can read his face as looking…

Confuddled. 

“… You eat?” Even the toneless voice almost mirrors the expression, like the audio software has the capacity to emote and he simply doesn’t use the feature. 

It takes Deimos a minute to understand why he’d ask a weird question like that, then- Oh. 

Hank’s all… Hollow inside, isn’t he? He knows some people have those feeding pumps sometimes, when they’re so chromed out that they don’t have room for organs, or people who just need them, one of those markets where the commercial product wound up actually helping the medical side of things flourish with innovation. 

Deimos lifts his shirt up, showing his still-fleshy stomach. “So far, yeah. Just head and extremities.”

“… Hm. Lame.”

“I’m not gonna give up french fries to stuff a bunch of hydraulic abs in my gut.”

Unimpressed. Hank’s entirely unimpressed. Even finding a new spot to stare at. 

Fuck him. 

Deimos lights a new dart, and watches the rain outside. 

The sound of the returning engine isn’t what Deimos expected. It’s not that soft, near-silent hum of the electric motor that pushes the ambulance forward, but the huffing roar of something gas-powered. 

When he hears it, Hank finally pries himself away from guard duty. His stomps rattle the floor as he shoves himself into the garage bay, Deimos peering through the window to watch him slam his palm into a button that gets a bay door to lift.

Deimos needs to be stricken down. 

He can be manhandled and share a bed and all the other shit and still be normal. He can be. 

He definitely can’t be normal about Sanford on a motorcycle. 

He has to whistle, it’s loud enough to make it through the door to the bay, catching Sanford’s attention and getting him to look up. He sees Deimos’ wide grin and just shakes his head, utterly exasperated when Deimos puts his fingers into a big heart. 

There ain’t nothin’ like a guy on a motorcycle. 

Doc rolls in on his own bike, and…

Yeah. Really nothing like a dude on a motorcycle. It just does something. He even has an entirely different jacket for it. 

Now, the concept of Doc driving a motorcycle is a completely different story. 

Sanford and Deimos both watch as Hank ignores the returning pair completely, wandering out the door. 

Probably sick of Deimos at this point. 

Sanford’s the one to bring him a beautiful, gorgeous, greasy paper bag. 

“We thought you’d sleep longer,” Sanford explains. “You really should be sleeping more.”

The impulse to talk with his mouth full of fries is strong, but Deimos manages to swallow before he opens his mouth. “I think leaving me with the… murder… Bulldozer…”

His words die off, because Hank comes back in from the drizzle and mud with something tucked under his arm. 

Sanford turns to look where Deimos’ attention got grabbed. 

“… Is that…”

“Yeah, he had one last time I jacked into his head.”

Muddy and wet, amenable to being cradled like a baby, Hank’s found another cat. 

“Mo, please don’t say he’s going to do what I think he’s going to do with it.”

“Nah, he- Get your phone out.”

He digs through his intermittent blackbox recordings, taking some stills and taking the phone. No data, but he can drop the files from his hand. 

Sanford takes a minute to look through the images, brows furrowed. 

“Really?”

“Yeah. Hold on- Hank!”

Sanford startles, and Hank turns from the hall he was headed down, glare full throttle. 

“Can we see your friend?”

Deimos thinks he’s going to get ignored, or murdered, because Hank just stares for… An uncomfortable amount of time. 

Something makes him relent, stepping just close enough to see the cat he’s got, all snuggled in to the warm, living machinery. 

“Nice p-“ Sanford smacks his head out of pure, unfiltered, fear-based instinct, and immediately regrets it when Deimos clutches the bell that just got rung. Holy hell, maybe he should sleep more. 

Hank makes a weird sort of noise, and walks back the way he was going before the interruption. 

He’s pretty sure that was a laugh. 

He turns on the sink, staring at the retreating remains of his stomach acid and brunch. 

Yeah, he needs to be trying to recover more. The nausea hit hard and fast, but he has the ability to move himself now, and he got a little taste of how fast he can get when he darted for the bathroom. 

There’s a knock at the door, and Doc opens the room up without waiting for a reply. 

“When we get to Central, I’m tying you to a bed.” Casual, unserious, but damn is that an opportunity to say so many things. 

“That’s what she said,” Bungled it. Total flop, utter trash. He sticks his face down to the tap and rinses his mouth out, the metallic taste in the water probably fine if he doesn’t swallow it- aw hell, he swallowed some. 

“I’m going to have Skinner check you for complications.”

“I’m pretty sure this is normal.”

“I wasn’t aware you had a background in brain surgery, I’ll have to increase your pay, maybe give you a promotion.”

“Haha. Boss jokes. Can I throw up in peace?”

“Are you going to throw up again?”

He stares at the clean bowl of the sink, noting the little orange and black hairs stuck to the surface. Did Hank bathe that cat? Maybe he had Doc do it, or maybe Doc insisted on doing it after he saw how dirty the poor thing was. 

“… Are you okay?” Doc’s gotten closer, leaning to peer at Deimos’ thousand yard stare he adopted while imagining Doc wrestling a wet cat. 

He realizes he hasn’t responded, but it’s too late, Doc’s called Sanford over for an ‘Is this normal?’ assessment. 

“Yeah, that’s kind of normal for him.” They’re talking like he isn’t really there, and to be fair, he’s not. It takes effort to stop staring and remember where his limbs all are, effort he’s not putting in. 

“Any particular reason?”

“He’s zoned out. Saw something and he’s thinking really hard about it. Watch.”

Sanford squeezes past to Deimos’ other side and nudges him, getting him to shuffle his feet while he’s still picturing a garfield-esque reimagining of the situation. It’d be funny if a Hank version of the preposed strip had the cat being chill, and Doc’s being a sort of hectic cartoony fight-

Oh he’s at the cot. 

Sanford did the thing. 

“Fascinating.” And Doc just watched that. 

With his faculties back in place, he flips both birds, and flops into the cot. 

Nearly half an hour later, when he’s right on the cusp of passing back out with his new coat as a blanket, the keypad on the door starts beeping as the code is pecked in. Deimos turns to his side, expecting Sanford, but finds Doc instead. 

“You’re still awake.”

“Was almost not awake.”

He didn’t think Doc could be awkward. The man’s fumbled a few times, sure, but now he looks like he doesn’t know what to do with what he has in his hands. 

What he has in his hands is a plastic water bottle and a granola bar. 

So he comes in, he sits on the extra cot that hasn’t been used yet, and he drops the supplies next to Deimos’ cot, scooting them a little closer with a foot. The door to the room closes slowly, the pneumatics hissing in the quiet space. 

“You’re younger than I thought you would be,” Doc starts, folding his hands in his lap. “You look younger, I mean. I don’t have information about you that you don’t know.”

“It’s the cigarettes and energy drinks,” This feels a lot different from the dinner. Doc’s not all dressed up, back in that hoodie he’d seen him in the first time, must’ve had it on under the biker jacket. It makes him look less intimidating, the cuffs of the sleeves are worn in a way he recognizes- the way cuffs get when you’re restlessly picking at them. 

Tentatively, Deimos takes the water. 

“How long were you in the city?”

“As long as I remember.”

Doc chews on that while Deimos takes little sips. He wants to down the bottle, but he’s been trained by alcohol to do the right thing, keeping himself from upsetting his stomach more. 

“I’m sorry I’ve upheaved your life like this.”

“Does me being young make that worse for you?”

“No. Why did you accept my job offers when you knew it wouldn’t be legal?”

“‘Cause I had to, I couldn’t do real work.”

“So you know we do things because we have to.”

“There a point to this?”

“Yes. I had to get you because I need you, like I need everyone I’ve brought in.”

“And you need to threaten ‘Ford with his mom?”

“I’ve never threatened Sanford’s mother, he takes me checking in on her as a threat, which means she’s raised an excellent son.”

That almost gets Deimos’ mouth to quirk up, almost. 

Doc pauses again, and he can see the fingers itching to pick at the cuffs like an automatic response, more expressive than any face he could make out beneath that mask. 

“I try to take care of everyone. I won’t say I can accomplish everything, but I am going to help you as long as you work with me. So if you need help, ask for it.”

What would he even need help with? He already asked for the important bits, he already was given the basics for facilitating whatever jobs Doc’s going to give him, in exchange for this… Weird kidnapping situation. 

Unless…

“… Are you like, actually worried about me?” He hears the first noise Doc’s made that passes the filtration of the mask, a cluck of his tongue, not replying, but his fingers settle a little. “Sanford was making you out like this big mean mob boss, but you’re just a- like a teenager throwing a rager, Hank’s throwing shit into the pool and you’re try’na find a spot for some shitfaced kid you found on the porch right now while someone’s called the cops about the noise.”

“That’s a horrifically apt metaphor for what I’m currently dealing with, yes.” Doc settles his head in his hands, strumming his fingers against his scalp. 

Damn. 

Dude might actually care about shit. 

“… So you’re really sorry about frying me?”

“I am.”

“And you really thought it was better than the alternative?”

“Yes.”

“… Okay,” Deimos sits himself up, turning so his feet can plant on the cool cement floor. He holds his hand out, getting Doc’s attention. “I’ll forgive you for that.”

Doc takes his hand, and they shake on it. 

“You’re still a shithead bastard, though.”

“You’re a self-destructive prick.”

“Potkettle.”

Doc snorts. 

“Why can’t I ride with Sanford?”

He’s got a whine to his voice, staring at the big, safe ambulance. 

“He’s going a different route, and he needs to check in to his new station. They won’t be happy with a stowaway.”

Doc’s pulling that leather jacket on, having stuffed Deimos’ new clothes into his saddlebags. The motorcycle, which would have Deimos chomping at the bit to get on, is a daunting mistress with the idea that Doc’s going to be behind the handles. 

Hank’s newest cat is pleading for attention, clean and dry, weaving between Deimos’ legs. 

“… Where’s Hank?”

On cue, Hank emerges into the service bays, donning a black helmet and having cut the tails of his long coat into something masquerading as a riding jacket, he marches by only to take a smooth stoop to scoop the cat up, letting it poke all kinds of little claw hole into he leather as it clambers up and onto his shoulder. 

… Pretty.

“You could piggyback Hank,” Sanford says it as a tease, and immediately shrivels when Hank’s visor snaps over to him. Then it swaps to Doc, who have what looks like a silent staring contest. 

Maybe they’re texting. 

… But it’s a dead zone…

“Fine,” Doc’s hands go up, then he’s slapping the button for the bay doors and pulling himself onto his bike. “Don’t cry to me if you want to swap.”

That wasn’t directed at Deimos, it was directed at Hank. Hank, who Deimos can feel looming behind him. 

He turns, but only has time to watch himself be scruffed by his own coat again and hauled off to the second bike. 

This is how he finds himself testing his own grip strength against Hank’s waist, speeding through the wastes next to Doc. The ambulance is far ahead, he can’t make out much in front of them for the bulk of Hank’s body and the darkening gloom of the night. 

Everything lead up to this insane situation, Victor pulling him out of bed to take a shower. 

If he’d been left there a while longer, would he be in this spot? Would the window Doc needed him to reply have passed? Hank still stuck in prison, Doc failing to get someone into the Science Tower. 

Sanford bumming on the couch because he’d be taking a real break. 

Deimos stuck in bed, playing games in his head. 

Here and now, he’s exhilarated, blasting his playlist through his own skull and he can’t stop grinning like a madman. 

Doing something. 

He feels free.