Chapter Text
Private chat: Renee Walker.
AndrewM:
job listing is live.
ReneeW:
Thank you! Hopefully we’ll get some bites soon.
AndrewM:
not likely.
they’ll have the same problem they always do.
ReneeW:
You shouldn’t be so cynical
They’ve revised the responsibilities and adjusted the pay. It’s a lot more attractive than last time.
AndrewM:
that job description means nothing and the pay is still not enough
ReneeW:
Remind me not to let you near any potential recruits
AndrewM:
potential victims*
ReneeW:
Very funny.
🖱️💻
It was supposed to be a job that made ends meet. The little cash Nathaniel still had that wasn’t being tracked across the country had been spent on replacing the tyres on his car, shot out in a bloody getaway, adding another name to his list of victims. He hoped it would be the last time he’d need to resort to such desperate measures, yet his conscience didn’t feel any heavier for it. He was holed up in Chicago, living out of his car, and needed to fund his way out of America to start his new life.
It was supposed to make ends meet. He shouldn’t have applied for something so closely aligned to his father’s work, for fear of crossing his path again. A job at a desk in a tiny union didn’t seem like it would cause too much harm, though. He circled back to that advertisement 2 or 3 times, working against the clock as his allotted hour of using the library’s computer was drawing to a close. As a last ditch effort, he submitted an application and told himself it wasn’t stubborn devotion to a hopeless cause. He had relevant job experience; it was better to be close enough to keep an eye on his father’s business; unions had a reputation for doing minimal referee checks, desperate to hire quickly due to chronic understaffing; and any other excuse he could find that wasn’t his need to be a part of something good . Something that could undo or rectify the harm he’d seen his father inflict upon others. He wasn’t willing to admit that he could have such a blatant vulnerability.
Never mix family and business, his mother had said. Her inheritance wasn’t nearly as comforting as her presence. It wasn’t as sound as her finger on a trigger.
Now, he was standing in the foyer of the Independent Workers Association, gagging at the obnoxious shades of orange that accented the walls, with a brand new name and terribly ironed dress shirt.
“Hi!” The man behind the reception desk cheered. Nathaniel felt his name fading into obscurity as he put on his most surface level smile.
“Hi there – I’m Neil,” he lied, easy as breathing. He scribbled Neil Josten onto the sign-in sheet, familiarising himself with the roll of the pen.
The man’s smile grew so wide that Neil could see he had a gem embedded in one of his in incisors. “Welcome! Welcome, welcome. My name is Nicky. Happy first day!”
He flung a lanyard at Neil, the non-descript access card hitting a still healing scar on Neil’s chest. He managed to play it off, ignoring the sting as Nicky rolled his chair away to deal with something else.
“Renee will be up here soon to introduce you to the team and take you to your desk.” He passed over a laptop and headphones. “Don’t worry, the first day is always slow. Hell, I’d be surprised if they make you stay ‘til 5.”
Nicky carried on like this, rambling and trying to make small talk. Even though Neil gave uncomfortable, stunted answers, erring on hostile, Nicky didn’t show any signs of discomfort. He did, however, call to rush Renee once he’d run out of questions to ask about the weather.
Milling around the foyer, away from Nicky’s frantic, bubbly energy, Neil looked closer at the walls, covered in picture frames; a mural of the past century. The shots were all about solidarity, standing starkly against employers and government officials in their high fashion suits and wealth. Some of them were more melancholic. Remembrances of past figureheads. Plaques to honour the deaths of former employees. Wins and losses, Neil supposed. A framed flyer stood out, stark blue against a sunrise of oranges and yellows.
No one dies at work. They are killed through greed and negligence.
Neil felt his skin prickle across his back. Greed and negligence didn’t even begin to cover it.
Behind him, he heard soft footsteps approaching and turned in time to greet his newest coworker. His early detection of someone clearly trying to keep quiet didn’t go unnoticed. Her eyebrow twitched. Neil was adept to notice.
“You must be Neil,” she said, sticking out her hand. From her hair to her shoes, she was dressed like a school teacher. A washed out kaleidoscope of rainbows; a calmer version of Nicky’s ensemble. “I’m Renee. I’ll be looking after you.”
Suddenly, Neil felt suspiciously over-dressed. His white shirt was grey with age and his slacks were ill-fitting and out of place, but seemed a little too nondescript to be in such a busy place. So far, his impression of IWA was that professional attire was the least of their worries.
“I’d ask if you’ve been in the movement long, but I think I can guess.” She started walking, barely motioning for him to follow. “You look familiar, though I have a knack for finding doppelgängers.”
That prickle on his skin made an appearance again. “I find that most men with brown hair look similar,” he deflected.
(Of course, he didn’t naturally have brown hair. It was a hasty dye job in a public bathroom, good enough to be passable. Fake name, fake hair colour – even his contacts were hiding obnoxiously blue eyes.)
Renee didn’t respond to that. The elevator was silent, only going down 2 floors, but it felt like hours of calculated tension; a new form of torture Neil wasn’t yet acquainted with. Renee had a pleasant smile and a scrutinising eye. She was looking for answers in Neil that he himself didn’t have yet. He was also meeting Neil Josten for the first time that morning.
The elevator doors opened to a city of desks all clumped in groups of four or six, decorated heavily with an eclectic assortment of protest signs and handmade ornaments. Every wall was covered in posters for all sorts of political causes, ranging from local boycotts to international petitions. Interspersed between these were pictures of people drinking, laughing, yelling outside of official looking buildings. Straight away, Neil noticed an abundance of photos of pets on desks and monitors, then an entire wall holding a mosaic of yet more pet photos. The whole floor looked more than personalised; it looked lived in. The one thing it was missing was the people.
“You’ll have to forgive me,” Renee said, leading him through the maze. “Most of the people you’ll be connected with are out at the moment. Paid union meetings require a few more people on the ground, and we’re only a small organisation.”
She smiled again. She smiled too much.
“Your desk is opposite mine and Allison’s,” Renee said, making a pathway past locked meeting rooms and empty workstations. “That way, you can just pop your head up if you have a question.”
His desk was blank. It was a scar in the middle of an otherwise overwhelming environment.
“This used to be Seth’s desk. Do you know Seth Gordon?”
It felt like a silly question. Neil had no connections there, and nothing on his false resume suggested that he had any Chicago contacts. “No,” he replied, suppressing the instinct to question why she’d asked.
A considering hum. “He’s a pretty intimidating name in the private business sector.” She sighed a little wistfully. “He’s taking a well deserved break, at the moment.”
Nothing more was said about Seth Gordon, and Neil got the distinct feeling that he’d been told everything he was allowed to know.
Renee changed the subject by running down the list of jobs Neil would be doing, none of which he could start on due to him not having a laptop set up for him yet. When Neil gave away his confusion (“Did I show up on the wrong day?” He had attempted to joke, which didn’t entertain Renee in the slightest), he was dismissed briskly. Any question relating to the structure of the organisation, in fact, was met with cold discomfort. Renee tried her best to maintain a sunny disposition, but her frustration was evident.
“So…you’re essentially just helping out the organisers,” she summarised. “Sending out newsletters, cleaning up our data – things that might seem small, but have a big impact on our ability to do our work.”
“Can I do any of that without a laptop?”
Renee sighed deeply. “You got me there.”
Neil felt a presence behind himself before he saw it. A short, stocky, blond man who’s disinterested facial expression clashed horribly with his mug that read KILLER PUSSY. He flicked his eyes over Neil’s face, scanning as opposed to glancing, and sipped his drink. “Unprepared for new staff?” He asked, more to get a reaction from Renee than Neil. His sarcasm was nauseating. “That doesn’t sound like IWA.”
Neil suddenly had the feeling that he was somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be. It took a lot to inspire that kind of dread in a proud fugitive.
“Andrew, don’t be annoying,” Renee said, still pleasant as ever. “Aren’t you supposed to be at a meeting?”
“I went; I took pictures; I came back. I’ll talk IT into prioritising our fresh meat.” He turned his attention to Neil. His gaze was intense, like an anger that felt comforting. It complemented his all black outfit and its harsh angles. “Welcome to the circus.”
He was gone before Neil could ask questions, and Neil had nothing but questions at that point. Any residual confusion was turned on Renee, then, who looked 10 shades of embarrassed.
“This is probably a good time to sign you up to your own union,” she said.
📓✏️
After a tour of the floors and a walk-through of the emergency exits, Neil was left at his desk with a notepad and pen while Renee was rushed off on an urgent call. In the absence of a directive, he wrote his new name on the cover of his notebook, tracing his pen over the lines again and again, too tired from a terrible sleep in his car the night before to think about anything.
That familiar blond hair was back, barely visible over the desk divider. Neil thought he’d relax a bit with the familiar face — only this face wasn’t quite familiar. Same basic features, but the blank, bored expression Neil knew was now distinctly pinched, frown lines etched deeply across his forehead. Andrew had a posture that was strong and dismissive. Whoever this was slumped heavily into the chair beside Neil, wearing sweatpants and a hoodie, distinctly not Andrew.
“Your laptop.” He nearly threw said device on the desk. “Don’t break it. Don’t sell it. Don’t watch porn on it.”
His voice wasn’t like Andrew’s either. Neil was half-listening to the instructions he was being given about connecting to the server, half trying to remember all the ways Andrew was different from this guy.
A knack for doppelgangers, Renee had said.
“Did you take any of that in? At all?” He asked, finally taking on that tone of defeat and boredom that Neil had been expecting.
It must have been clear that Neil was struggling to stay focussed.
The man sighed. “I’ll email you the instructions.”
“What was your name?” Neil asked.
The double-edged question wasn’t lost on ‘Aaron’, who immediately added: “Andrew is my brother. If you have issues with nepotism, I highly recommend you quit now.”
Neil had about 3 solid issues with nepotism, ranging from his father’s attempts at murder to his father’s successful kills, but he obviously couldn’t discuss that. “I don’t mind.”
“Good to know your morals are flimsy.” Aaron hauled himself out of his chair, no pleasantries as he left.
The whole day was feeling concussive. Neil had assumed he’d be a smudge of suspicious activity in this organisation, but the only person he’d met that had a drop of sincerity to themselves was Nicky, dressed like an acid trip and allergic to silence.
This just had to make ends meet. He needed a ticket out of America and a new life, and he needed something honest to keep him sane. Unfortunately, he got the feeling that honesty was hard to come by in a place like this.