To Do and Die (Peregrine X DotCom)

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Once again, just as he seemed to have been doing for the past several minutes of their conversation, Jack remained utterly silent until it seemed that Andy had run out of words. He sat still, completely frozen in a way that no one with a proper body could imitate. His redirect had worked, in a way. Andy had told him what he wanted to know, and seemed prepared to follow through with that line of conversation. Yet, at the same time, Jack now regretted staying quiet. Because it was obvious that Andy wasn't going to let it go. He wasn't going to accept this half-explanation, and they weren't going to get anywhere until he actually understood. And maybe, just maybe, Andy would stop looking at him with those damned eyes.

"Just like old times?" Jack repeated, incredulous. "Well, I guess it is in one respect. Fucking hell. Have I been to see anyone? What am I going to do, waltz up to my parents' doors and show them that their son has become a monster? See if Alison might still be in love with a guy who could grow an extra dick for her?" He let out a bark of laughter.

"Are those assassins and hitmen and god knows what else after me? Of course they are. But they can't touch me. Nothing can fucking touch me anymore. But they can touch you, and they aren't going to drop the hit just because I fucked up their shit once. They've too much a reputation for that. I was more worried about that, but you want to know if I'm "okay". Well, fine then. Let me prove to you exactly how "okay" I am, how fucking little a head wound really means to me. Because what you don't understand, what you couldn't possibly understand, is that everything you see in front of you is cosmetic. It's just for looks. Oh, but I'll make you understand. And maybe then you'll back off on being so goddamned worried about me."

He stood up, backing away slightly with his arms spread wide like a showman. A mad grin, a furious, cold, painful grin, ripped across his face like a jagged slash. He lifted up his pointer finger and pushed it in so that his teeth were resting just after the first joint, and bit down without hesitation. The joint popped off in his mouth, accompanied by a shower of blood, and a shiver of pain ran up his arm along his spine, until it seemed to go full circle and come to an end right in his mouth. He almost moaned slightly at the feel of it. He spat out the joint on the floor in between him and Andy, while his green eyes, almost black in that moment, pinned him to the pillar, dared him to move even an inch to bring an end to this disturbing spectacle.

In between them, the joint twitched. It bubbled slightly, stretching and growing, until a mound of pulsating flesh, muscle, and blood sat between them. Inside of it, an arm pressed against the membranous wall, fingers standing out in relief, before it broke through. Another arm, a head, a leg, the spine, until suddenly, standing between the two of them, was another Jack, as perfect and flawless as the first. He laughed faintly, almost cruelly, at the expression on Andy's face, before turning around to grab Jack, the first Jack, the Jack who was no longer truly Jack by Jack's own will, full across the face. The body seemed pulled forward, pulled into that hand, until there was nothing left but a pile of clothes on the ground.

As he pulled on the bloody clothes, Jack ignored Andy's eyes. It almost felt good, to feel Andy looking at him that way. It felt good to have those eyes gouge into him, rip through him, tear him up into little pieces, and finally understand exactly what a monster stood before him.
 
Okay. So he was going to faint. Because of fucking course he was. Because he and Jack had been rivals before they'd been buddies, and after, too, just because Andy could never get enough of ribbing Jack, getting a rise out of him when he was so used to that cool and careful demeanor. Because Andy was Andy, and people liked him. Girls, women, liked him because he was funny and loud and looked like a rockstar next to Jack, at least when it came to their personalities. But Jack had been taller, faster, better, stronger. Andy had been okay with that. Maybe that was why Jack had lived when none of the others had. Hell, even Andy couldn't really claim a full life after everything that had happened.

But what did that strength amount to now? And where did it leave Andy?

Because he was pretty sure he was going to pass out. All his bullshitting and bravado to come down to this. The buzzing in his ears had drowned out everything around him. Those cops from before could have been right on top of him, blasting their sirens in his ears, and he wouldn't have known. The entire world could have turned to blood and fire, and he would never see, because he couldn't take his eyes of Jack. Jacks. Both of them, either of them, if either could still be called Jack and he'd just wanted his friend back, but this...this...

Andy shut his eyes against his will and wavered. He felt dizziness wash over him, the nearly irresistible pull of darkness. It would be easier, certainly. Less painful. Less...confusing. Maybe this could still be a nightmare. Maybe he'd relapsed after all those months, and maybe he'd wake up and drink until he passed out again. Any of it, all of it would be better than this. Even if it meant Jack was still dead.

Maybe.

Or maybe not.

Through some monumental force of will, Andy opened his eyes again, though he had to sit down hard to keep them that way. He took a careful, deep breath through his nose, remembering that half dozen techniques he'd learned to keep the panic attacks and flashbacks at bay. That worked here, too, right? For those times he ended up back in battle, and those times the battle zone ended up back in him? How was this any different?

He knew what Jack was doing. He didn't know why, or how, but he knew Jack was pushing. Because he was pissed and scared, and that was what he did. Andy wanted to push back, wanted to walk away and wake up...but if Jack was right, then both of them had more to worry about than how Andy was going to sleep that night.

"Fine," he said eventually, though he made no move to stand up. He wanted to be awake for this, whatever this was, and if he tried to stand, he'd ruin all that. Jack, whatever was left of him, clearly didn't trust him to watch out for himself. Face planting in the middle of the street wouldn't help that.

"Fine. So, what is it you want me to do? Run, Jack? File a fucking missing persons report? Change my name, hide out? What the hell did that ever fix? These assholes with a price on my head, I don't know shit about them, and unless you do, standing here and arguing about it isn't going to help anything. So, let's fix what we can, then. Pretend all you want you're invincible, Jack, but there's more than one way to die. And you -- you died, man. You died."

He trailed off again. They were talking in circles. He was talking in circles, and Jack...his friend was not okay. That much was clear. He'd been changed, yeah, but in more ways than he knew, and while Andy wanted to help, he had no idea where to begin. He could hardly look at Jack without feeling sick. He wondered idly if he'd always been this weak.

Andy stared for another moment, then broke his gaze, laughing a little before he tried to stand again.

"So. We got work to do. First things first, let's get the hell out of here."
 
"Good," Jack said, finishing shrugging into his jacket and starting to button it up. "At least we are getting somewhere now. But tell me, where exactly do you suggest we go? There will be someone on your place by now, that's for sure. Any place you have any known connection, someone will be watching. But that's fine, if you have any idea of where we should go, then by all means. Let's go."

The cruelty seemed to flow out of him, almost naturally. Certainly it came easily, and he didn't fight it. It seemed to be working better than the stumbling politeness he had tried before. Then again, in a way, that had always been their relationship, since the moment they had met at basic training. They had pushed each other, pulled each other, made each other so mad that it seemed they were only moments away from killing each other, until they suddenly realized that they were best friends, that there was no other person they could rely on more than each other.

Now, they were simply back to making each other mad. For now, that was enough.
 
Jack's tone prodded at his sleeping temper. His head hurt. His stomach felt tender as turned earth. Now that the adrenaline had worn off, his leg was stuff and aching. And hell if he was going to let Jack know any of that. Andy wanted to go somewhere quiet and sleep for a year.

He wanted a fucking drink.

"I got a cabin," he said, sounding almost bored. "Well. This girl I know has one. But she won't be there, and I figure they won't know it. Not yet." Not that he wanted Lily mixed up in any of this, either. But he'd worry about that later. Now, he just wanted a shower.

"It's about two hours north of the city. At least enough room to figure out what the hell's going on. My car is parked back at my apartment." He turned to study Jack over his shoulder. "Can I still have a car, or is that too fine a luxury for my newly endangered ass?"
 
Jack's lip twitched, briefly, in disgust. He was disappointed. Disappointed in Andy. He'd been in the military. He now professed to be involved in military intelligence. He should have known better. Should have known what it meant to go back to his own place, try and get to his own car. But obviously he had forgotten a lot in this past year, and, once again, it seemed talking wasn't going to get the truth of this situation into his head. Jack would have to let Andy realize exactly how dangerous this situation was on his own.

But, if he didn't keep Andy from going, could he even keep Andy safe? Maybe. Maybe. There was something he had to check first. "Fine. Let's go."

As they left the building, Jack had Andy walk in front. He had him walk in front so that the man would not notice as an extra organ grew in the palm of his hand, something that seemed half eye and half ear. Something that had a relative ability to perceive the world around it. As they made it outside Jack stepped forward, clapping Andy on the shoulder and, at the same time, latched on that strange, flat, dry organ to the back of Andy's shoulder, where he wouldn't be able to see it.

"I'll meet you there. There's something I need to do first." And then, without giving Andy time to protest, he walked away.

This area was not busy, but in the end that suited him perfectly. He needed one person, one who was not in view of any cameras or other people. Jack didn't allow himself to think about what would happen if this little experiment failed. If he did, the effects would ultimately be much worse than the death of one random stranger. But he had healed Andy's knuckles, just like he would have healed his own. Now he had to see if he could do more. See, before Andy's life hung in the balance, and his fate was dictated by whether or not Jack could pull his body back together.

He would have preferred to find one of the people hunting them, but there was no time for that. Anyone would have to do.

He was a middle-aged man, shuffling along with briefcase in hand. He almost didn't seem to belong in the area, but Jack didn't take any time to wonder what he was doing here. He ran forward, even as his fingers extended to blade-like claws, and ran the man through the back, severing his coronary artery. The man let out a faint noise, before falling forward, dead in an instant. Jack waited, silent and patient, almost clinical, as the man's blood pooled around him. Once a solid thirty seconds had passed, he bent forward, letting his fingers twine into the wounds he had made.

He waited. Waited for something to happen, for the tingle that had told him he was healing Andy. Nothing. Nothing. Why was there nothing. Unconsciously, he grabbed desperately at the wound, trying to seal it closed, until suddenly... It felt like he suddenly had another heart, pounding away in his hand. He grabbed at the man's cells, but rather than swallowing them he borrowed them, copied them, then shoved them back into place. The tingle spread from his hand all the way up his arm, across his chest, down his leg, and he could almost visualize every cell in his body setting to work, winding through the man's own body, duplicating cells that weren't his own, keeping this man perfect, frozen in time, as Jack repaired the damage.

When it was done Jack ran his other hand over the man's body, absorbing every scrap of blood on the paper. He nudged his finger slightly, and, like a puppet, the man bent forward, picking up his briefcase, and started to walk again. His hand pulled out. The man didn't even falter. Jack wondered if he would even remember it, remember that he had just died. Maybe tonight, in his dreams. Maybe not.

It didn't matter. Jack knew what he needed to know. As long as he kept a fragment of himself near or on Andy, he would always be able to draw the man back from death. Always. A part of him quailed at the thought of subjecting Andy to such torment. A part of him felt relieved, almost pleased. Let Andy taste a bit of the torment he'd gone through, as well. Maybe that would knock some sense back into his head.

Jack set off at a leisurely stroll down the street, hands shoved into his pockets. It wasn't as though he had to hurry to catch up with Andy. After all, he was already there.
 
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Andy walked the two and a half miles back to his place in stony, frustrated silence.

He'd been right, mostly. The way Jack could piss him off to no end, drive him completely crazy, and still make him feel better all in the same breath? That was nothing if not 'the old days'.

And yet this was nothing like then. They were hardly kids anymore, despite the relatively short passage of time. Andy was fucked. His body didn't work like it had, and his mind not half as well as that. And Jack?

"Fuck," he muttered. "What the hell happened to you, Jack?"

It was the only thing he could think of as he entered his dark apartment. He didn't stop to think about why it was dark when his roommate should have been home.

He didn't think about anything until the familiar sound of muffled gunfire broke the fragile silence. Something like fire exploded in his side.

He knew immediately Jack had been right.

"Of. Fucking. Course."
 
It was distant, foggy, like something heard through broken headphones, but Jack knew the moment Andy fell under attack. He knew the sound of gunfire as well as he knew Andy's voice. On the street, far away from Andy, his body crumpled, and began to dissolve. It had been vacated, and Jack wanted it gone. He didn't want anyone to find it, or start asking questions. He'd leave a scrap of DNA, though. Let it ooze into the sewer and eventually reach the river. It wouldn't hurt to have another backup somewhere, even if he already had several.

That body had been vacated, but now Jack fully occupied the patch he had left on Andy's shoulder. He wormed his way towards Andy's neck, prepared to make a small wound in order to get inside his body and start repairing the damage from the gunshot wound. It was his first instinct. His first instinct, that was, until he noticed the man standing over Andy, a gun leveled at his head. Instead, Jack threw himself forward, growing the whole time, warping into something half-spear half-claw that was incredibly uncomfortable to occupy, but was undoubtedly efficient at tearing its way through the attacker's chest. Right now, no matter the fact that a part of him screamed to get back to Andy and heal him, heal him before he could die, Jack quelled in instinct. Right now he had to get rid of the attackers.

He remembered the way the businessman had felt on the end of his fingers, remembered the way he had moved to pick up the suitcase at Jack's will like puppets on the end of a string. He was already in the wounds he had made. It was just a matter of crawling deeper. Deeper.

The head lolled to the side. He straightened it back up. He moved one hand, one leg. He opened the mouth, and the tongue rolled to the side. When he tried to speak, the teeth carved into it. There was no pain. Jack repaired the damage anyways. He turned the body towards Andy. "S... slooow d...d...the blee-eeding," he finally managed. It was so different, trying to manually control every part of this body. One eyelid drooped. He forced it open again. "A--and lie ssstillll." Play dead, Andy. Good boy.

Jack had no doubt that he had time to build a new body before the others could get here, once they realized that the operation had gone wrong again. For now, though, they wouldn't realize it. He moved the fingers, fumbling at the waist, until he finally found the radio. It was almost impossible to find the right buttons, but the more he practiced the more familiar this method of control became. He had never dreamed he would want his abomination of a body back. A burst of static on the radio.

Report.

He had to get it right the first time. Press the button. "All clear. Target h.. handled." Close enough. He hoped.

Good. Return to the van.

He'd let them go for now. At least until he had time to handle Andy's bleeding. He bent forward, trying and mostly failing to offer Andy something of a comforting grin. It probably looked more like a seizure. "Y'll be... fine." He moved the hand forward, before making an incision in the back of the hand to allow a part of himself out. He pushed it clumsily towards Andy's wound, and mostly left the part that was free of the clumsy confines of the meatsuit to do the precise work of finding the wound. He crawled in, and set about repairing. When he pulled out, all that remained was perfect flesh.

"Gonna go... clean up now." There were the people outside, in the van. They might be wondering where he... the person he was wearing... was.
 
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There were voices, speaking somewhere around his head. He knew it, but he didn't know how he knew, because he also knew he wasn't there, wherever there was. He'd have sworn his apartment, only his apartment didn't reek of gunpowder or the iron rang of blood. His apartment didn't feel like fire and cold pressing down on him.

This he knew. Death. Fear. Blood. Jesus, he'd spent a year telling himself it wasn't real, that he was home and safe. Alone, maybe, but that was better than this --

His hands moved, found a place on his on his belly that was hot and sticky and elicited a sound from his throat too near a whimper for his liking. It hurt, but he was supposed to hold his hand there, wasn't he? Somehow. Even though his fingers felt cold and his arms felt too heavy to move.

"No..." he whimpered. "Nononono..."

He could hear gunfire around him, the faint screams of dying men. He didn't want to be back here. Not alone. Not ever.

Something was changing. He couldn't tell if it was better or worse but he knew he needed to run. The first time he tried to get up, something stopped him. Pain or weakness or something or someone else.

When he could get his legs beneath him, he rolled over, gasping, and staggered away from the battlefield.
 
He found the van by hearing and sight and smell, rather than by any knowledge of its location. For a time, as he had walked, carefully and ever so precisely, down the stairs, he tried to see if it was possible to dig the memory out of the meat puppet's dying brain. He could, after all, assemble his own memories. It was all biology. But what little he got, if it was really anything, was simply incoherent static. He'd try again later, if another opportunity like this ever presented itself. It might be a useful skill.

He nearly tripped the body again as he pushed it into the van, and one of the men laughed at him. In a way, it was a blessing in disguise. It hid the massive bloodstains on the front of the man's shirt where Jack had ripped his heart apart only a few minutes earlier. He forced the hand back towards the waist, drew the gun that had been intended to kill Andy, and pulled it up.

It was slow, so slow compared to the body he was used to, the body that moved at speeds that were utterly inhuman. He only managed to get of one shot before the others retaliated, littering the meat suit full of holes. Those wounds mattered even less to Jack than they normally would have. Most of the damage was absorbed by the dead man's own cells. He could have healed the damage, but that was time he didn't need to spend. Instead he flooded out of the body, leaving behind a massive hole where its heart should have been, just to be safe.

The inside of the van descended into utter chaos. Those veteran killers couldn't even begin to comprehend what was going on. In the end, only one was left alive, with the flesh of Jack's un-bodied body wrapped around him, pinning him down. He was utterly unharmed, and had been unable to move even an inch for the fight. Not that it would have mattered much. It had lasted all of fifteen seconds after Jack had fired the first shot.

His desire to save the man had nothing to do with mercy, or curiosity. The simple fact was he needed a set of undamaged clothes. He could absorb all the bloodstains, but there was nothing he could do about rips, tears, or bullet holes. He poured into the body, before absorbing in from the inside out.

The clothes were not a perfect fit. They were too baggy across the chest, and far too narrow around the arms for the body he was used to. Shaking his head slightly, Jack made a few small adjustments, before stepping out of the van. He double checked that there were no blood stains on his new clothes, which there weren't, before heading off to retrieve Andy.

Much to his surprise, the man was no longer in his apartment. In that moment, Jack considered himself quite fortunate that he had left a small "tag" inside of Andy. At the time it had been a precaution, a way of making sure that Jack would always be able to heal Andy, even if they were far apart. Now it served the dual purpose of allowing him to track Andy down again.

Now it was just a matter of getting to him.
 
Andy had made it almost a mile in an ever slowing sprint before he realized the fading pain in his side was a cramp and the blood that stained his shirt was real and it was his, but it was no longer life threatening.

He slowed to a stop wheezing, his chest tight with panic, but the pain real enough to wake solid images in his mind. The last few minutes replayed in a fog of terror and agony inside his head. He had a clear enough idea of what had just occurred. Panic attacks like those had plagued him often in his first weeks back from the war. They could be triggered by anything -- the sound of pain against a window. A backfiring car, a curl of dust on an empty road. It only took a few minutes for reality to melt into chaos around him, and then all at once, Andy was back. He could feel a rifle on his back, a knife in his finger, fire at his heels, bloodshed everywhere else. He didn't even have time to feel afraid, really, or in no way that he noticed until he found his way back.

That first time, he'd come to holding a knife to his sister's throat. Holidays had been awkward ever since.

It was why he'd eventually moved away from his family, moved in with a former cop who could at least defend himself...though he couldn't forget how quiet it had been in his apartment, before...

Right. His apartment. He'd gone back for his car. He'd made it as far as the front door, and then --

He heard the gunshot again and had to convince himself it was just in his head even as he whimpered and staggered back against a wall, still gasping for breath. His hands found his belly on instinct, still stained red with his own blood, though his flesh had knit together again beneath.

How? Had he imagined it all again? Or had Jack somehow found a way to save him? Again?

"Of course," he whispered, his voice somewhere between a laugh and a whimper. "Of fucking course, Coulson, you son of a bitch. Why shouldn't you be able to walk through walls?" He flexed a hand, the same one he could very clearly remember using to punch a solid cement pillar not an hour ago. He should have broken a finger, dislocated a joint, bruised a few knuckles at the very least, but there was nothing.

Of course, Jack had been standing beside him then. Where was he now? And had he made a mistake in leaving his friend alone...or in finding him alive?

"Shit," he swore again, now turning to jog, not back toward his apartment -- whatever else he was, Jack was right about that. It was a bust, maybe for good -- but toward where he'd left his friend. He briefly considered calling, but he doubted Jack had a phone that was any kind of useful at the moment. His old number was defunct at best, and Andy's own phone was likely tapped by the point. His best bet was to assume Jack could find him again. Ideally before it was too late for either of them.
 
All the while Jack was working to catch up to Andy, a part of his attention was also distracted on another matter, moving that little scrap of himself up through Andy's body, to settle at the base of his brain stem. With his new familiarity with puppeting another body, this gave him a basic understanding of what was going on with Andy, how he was feeling, and where his mind, at least superficially was. Therefore, Jack knew the moment Andy calmed down, knew when he finally turned and began to head in a different direction at a more reasonable pace.

A part of him, a very, very small part if he was being completely honest, felt a trace of guilt at marking his friend like this without his permission. He tried to imagine what he would think if he found out someone had left a scrap of remote controlled DNA inside his body, but no, he would know. He tried to imagine what he would have thought about it before, but there was no way he would have believed it. It was a useless thought pattern, because Jack knew he wasn't going to pull that scrap of himself out of Andy. That connection was too important for keeping his old friend safe, and it wouldn't matter as long as Andy never had any reason to suspect it was there. Just because it could allow Jack to control his friend's body didn't mean he would use it in that way.

Having a solid sense of where Andy was at that moment, and a good guess of where he was going, Jack was able to make a beeline for the man, and even though he was moving at a much slower pace, barely more than a fast walk, he was quickly beginning to lessen the distance between the two of them. When he finally rounded a corner and saw Andy walking down the street, he lifted a hand in greeting and too a few quick steps over to meet him.

"You okay?" he asked. It wasn't entirely a superficial question. Jack might have known that Andy was just fine physically, but his mind, even though he did know that Andy was no longer in the middle of a panic attack, was a much greater mystery. "Will you let me get that blood off your clothes?"
 
Andy paused a moment when he saw Jack, caught somewhere between wanting to give his friend a relieved hug, or just punch him instead. The way Jack had greeted him, he'd have guessed they run into each other while out for coffee. And that while at the end of a workday, never mind they hadn't seen each other in a year, because at least one if them was supposed to be dead.

But the hesitation was only momentary, and then he was shoving down the faint bitterness and the much less faint fear...and the growing tang of suspicion, too. Because this was Jack. Never mind that he'd proved -- "proved" -- he could essentially duplicate himself. Jack was still in there. Somewhere. Had to be.

"Dunno," he answered drily, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the first question, because Jack wouldn't be asking if he didn't already know the answer. "Hope you've got a hell of a Tide pen."

He let the joke sit their in awkward silence between them, because it was easier to deflect, always had been. His mouth caught him by surprise when it began running on its own time. Again.

"So, who are these people, Jack? Why the hell do they want me dead, and why did they send you to do it? That can't be a coincidence. Is it military shit? Should I be worried about Tanner, Mike, cox, all them? Or have you already re spawned yourself halfway across the country?"

He tried to make it sound like a joke instead of an accusation it didn't work quite as well as he'd hoped.
 
It wasn't exactly approval, but Jack stepped forward all the same, stretching out his hand to press it firmly against Andy's side. He focused briefly, feeling the weave of the fabric as his hand wove into the tiny parts of the fabric, targeting any human cell that had managed to lodge itself there, and promptly absorbing it. When his hand pulled back, not a single blood spot remained on Andy's shirt. Jack turned aside without comment, and began to walk again. There was nothing he could do about the hole (not yet anyways. Nonliving material was far beyond his capabilities, but how long would that last, as quick as his ability seemed to be growing?), but that would at least keep Andy from being quite so conspicuous should they run into anyone. Assuming, of course, that someone hadn't already called the police what with all the gunfire, and the sight of a blood-soaked man running down the street.

Jack ignored the flavor of distrust that stained Andy's voice. It was only to be expected. In a way, it was probably right. Jack had long since given up on the idea that he was human anymore, no matter how much he wanted it to be true. He was far, far too cold for that anymore. And why would Andy trust someone who had so blatantly proven himself to be a monster?

"These people are criminals and hitmen hired by a man named Levi Altman, and the reason they want you dead is because someone promised them a lot of money to do the job. These people are hired assassins, and they don't pick their own targets unless someone tries to cross them. As for why he sent me, it is because I've been one of his most effective assassins, and every contract I complete got me one step closer to getting out of this mess. There is no way Altman knew that I would know you. If he had, he never would have sent me. He's too clever to risk something as easily avoided as that.

"So, whatever this is about, it is something you did, or something you got involved with, and the fact that you are alive right now truly is due to coincidence. Therefore, unless you've recently spoken to the others..." They were alive? He hadn't thought anyone but him had survived that trap. He had believed Andy was dead,. He knew Travis was dead. He'd seen the bullet go right through the man's head, right before the explosions had started. How many of the others were still alive? He had to remind himself that it didn't matter anymore. "Or are connected to them somehow, then it is highly doubtful they will be involved in this."

Spawned halfway across the country, huh? It would have earned a laugh from Jack, if it wasn't for the fact he honestly believed he might be able to do it, if he had a scrap of himself there. He had left more than a few of those scattered across Europe as he had returned to America, and even though he had mostly forgotten their existence, if he focused... Could he do it? He would have to utterly destroy this body first, that much was obvious, and even then his consciousness would be more likely to flee to the closest scrap, rather than the ones in Europe. But if he focused... Maybe. Maybe.

He was such a monster.
 
Andy flinched when Jack touched him, laid a large hand flat against the spot where a bullet had passed not half an hour ago.

Had that really happened? The blood was real enough. The pain had been even more so. And yet all that remained of it now was a hole in his shirt, a tear that could have come from anywhere. Andy stared, fixated, at Jack's hand on his side. He couldn't blame this on a dream anymore. He couldn't call this a hallucination. Jack had carefully, cruelly manipulated that away from him. If he went back there...even if it was easier, less terrifying...madness would only get him so far. He knew that from experience. He needed to come out of this alive. Probably.

He was still staring at his side, hardly even hearing Jack, when his words finally sank into his psyche, in particular the you. Something he'd done? That was almost funny. Take your fucking pick, he thought, but he didn't say it. Instead he said, "I told you. I work with ex-military. Just an intel group, homeland security shit. Hell, half the time I don't even see a second computer screen, let alone real sunlight. If they think I know anything..." He shrugged. "Well, I don't. But I might know someone who does."

He hung half a step back from Jack, mostly because that was what he was used to, but also because it made him feel better to have his old friend where he could see him. He didn't think he was in any danger, or at least not from Jack. Someone else out there clearly wanted him dead, and he couldn't imagine it would take to long for whoever it was to figure out the first two attempts hadn't worked. Once they realized Jack had intervened both times, they'd work to separate them. That...that was less than ideal, especially since Andy wasn't too keen on getting shot again, or not without...

"I need to get back to our HQ," he said. "The secure files are all on the network, so in theory we could break in from any coffee shop with a wifi connection. I rebuilt their security system and I'm pretty sure I can hack it. But we'd be giving up our location then, so we'd have to move pretty quick."

He chewed his lip for a second, idly fingering the hole in his shirt.

"Don't s'pose your new superpowers can hijack us a car?"
 
There was no way Jack could deny his suspicion about this whole matter. Andy professed a lack of any knowledge as to what he could have done to earn a price on his head, but Jack didn't believe it. No one dealt with a man like Altman unless there were absolutely no alternatives, and Jack knew that all too well. Add that to the fact that it would be utterly useless for Andy to break into his company's server if the man truly had no idea why he was being targeted, and it all wrapped up to one giant, obvious pointer to the fact that Andy was hiding something. But he wasn't going to say anything. So what if Andy didn't want to tell Jack what was going through his mind? It only made sense, didn't it? Jack had just come back from the dead, and had shown that he was hardly the Jack that Andy had known. Why would he trust him? No matter that, up until this morning, Jack had thought Andy was dead as well. Not matter that Jack had saved his life, and was holding himself up as a giant target for the people hunting them. He ground his teeth slightly, and briefly a part of his consciousness flickered to the him that was firmly lodged in Andy's neck. If ever he wanted to find out if it was possible to read thoughts and memories... There was a sample right in front of his nose.

But, no, he reminded himself. Andy wasn't a sample. He wasn't some stranger walking down the street who Jack had no qualms risking in the name of acquiring more information about what he could do. He was keeping himself inside Andy to protect Andy. Nothing more, and nothing less. But to protect Andy from himself... He adjusted the thought promptly. He was keeping himself there to make sure that Andy didn't die, should this body, or whatever body he was occupying at the time, get separated from Andy. That was it. That was it.

Jack forced himself to the conversation at hand. "Get a car?" He let out a faint laugh. "Sure." He strolled down the street to the nearest car, a relatively old, gold sedan, with duct tape holding one of the side mirrors in place and a carpet on the inside that looked at least a couple decades old. It was not one of those cars that would have good security systems, a remote key, and judging by the duct tape the owner of the car was nowhere near technically savvy enough to have put in some sort of starting fail-safe. He slid his finger towards the lock on the door, letting it ooze in and through the mechanism until he had completely surrounded the tumblers. From there it was a small matter to line them up into a perfect cylinder. He twisted his hand to the side, and back. There was the faint sound of the electronic lock in the door releasing. Jack opened the door without a second thought, sliding into the driver's seat, leaning over to unlock the car, before adjusting the length of the seat to accommodate his longer legs. As Andy entered the car he fiddled with the rear view mirror until it was properly in place, before sliding his finger into the keyhole on the steering column. He pressed in the break, turned the lock, and he car rumbled to life.

He was forced to leave that chunk of his finger in there, as it was locked in once the car came to life. He'd pull it back out when it was time to shut the car off. He glanced over at Andy. "So, which way?"
 
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"Motel 6 by the Park Ridge highway exit," Andy said tersely. He was afraid if he said anymore, he was going to ruin the (admittedly already stained) upholstery. He had a good idea of what needed to happen next and how to do it, and while that would have normally given him an easy sense of calm and freedom, now it made him inexplicably anxious.

Well. Maybe not inexplicably. It was true enough he didn't have any solid knowledge as to why his best friend had been hired to kill him. But he had a few ideas, and he was starting to do the math in his head. The phantom answer were...unsettling, to say the least.

Jack had seemed pretty certain their run-in was just a coincidence, but Andy was far from convinced. Coincidence was when you ran into an old baby sitter while you were out with your kids. Coincidence was selling a college roommate a house. This? This was nearly being killed in battle, only to wake up a thousand miles away, learning all your friends had died in the blast. This was moving back home because you couldn't hold down a job or food or any sentient conversation. This was living in limbo for a year with your best friend's voice in your head, then going to work one day to find that best friend was alive, but not really, and instead of killing you, like they'd been created to do by people who had tried a year before, watching everything die around you. Again. This was not coincidence. Hell, even fate seemed too weak a word here.

No, if this was happening, it was nothing less than divine orchestration. And maybe karma.

The question was...what kind of divinity created a monster?
 
That minute, driving silently down the road with Andy, was the first moment where Jack truly realized he was back in his old hometown. Somehow, in all the commotion, despite the fact that he had come here to be home, or as close to home as it was possible for him to get anymore, he had forgotten that this was the place he had grown up, that this was a place with which he was intimately familiar. But he was familiar with it. Even the simple instructions Andy had given him was more than enough to get him going, and he set off down the roads he had driven for countless hours as a teenager, first to earn his license at 16, and then in a desperate attempt to assert his own freedom against a domineering father and obsessive younger brother. He wondered what his father had said at his funeral, and if Tony had cried.

Despite the fact that Altman had promised to bring him home, the man had done his best to keep Jack on missions that weren't too close to home. All except this one. Because this one had been important. Perhaps he had kept Jack away precisely to make sure that Jack would never run into anyone he knew. Maybe he had even gone so far as to think, after all the people Jack had killed, that he wouldn't go rogue, that Altman had so much dirt on him that he'd never leave. Perhaps he had even dared to suppose that Jack was loyal. He'd followed orders so willingly, after all, no matter what Altman asked him to do. It would almost be disappointing if the man was that naive.

It was almost a shock to see the sign of the Motel 6 rising on the horizon. He could barely even remember driving there at all. Instead of worrying, Jack calmly pulled into the parking lot, found a space, and brought the car to a halt. His hand stretched out, back towards the keyhole, and the engine turned out. The piece of his finger still in the slot returned to his hand. He pulled the parking brake. "What now?"
 
"What?" Andy said distantly. He was staring at Jack's hand. Or where Jack's hand had been. Or where part of Jack's hand had been, while an entirely different, separate hand had been somewhere else. So maybe he still wasn't so sure he wasn't dreaming. The nightmares had come swift and strong after reading those reports...which made more sense? Guilt-induced fever dreams starring his dead best friend as some sort of...monster of vengeance?

Or all of that happening for real, with a dead man front and center?

Maybe if he made it as far as hacking CERT again, maybe he'd wake up. He'd be fucked, for sure. But at least he'd be awake and back in the real world where he could manage things the usual way.

"Sorry, what was that?" he said again, shaking his head.

No. He had shit to do, one way or another. If he was right about Jack...hell, if Jack was right about him, then both of them were in more trouble than either of them could possibly be ready for.

"I need to use their computer room," he said without waiting for an answer. "They'll be those big-ass behemoths from the mid 90s, probably still running Windows XP...but they'll be harder to trace. CERTs archives hardly go back that far, and everything before '98 is encrypted to hell. The idea is that by the time they figure out who's looking for what, we're...I dunno, somewhere that isn't here. Maui, maybe."
 
For a moment, Jack simply lingered there, staring at Andy. Only a moment later, though, he dismissed it all. It didn't matter what Andy was thinking. It didn't matter what might happen inside that hotel. Even if it was a trap, although the idea of Andy betraying him felt utterly impossible, it wouldn't matter. There was nothing anyone could do to keep him trapped in one place. It was, of course, far more probable that there was simply something that Andy wanted to keep hidden from him. Something that was worth killing over. Whatever it was, well, it hardly concerned Jack, other than the fact that it concerned Andy. Jack would simply keep Andy alive until they managed to get this mess cleaned up, either by somehow removing the target from Andy's head, or by killing everyone who might dare aim for that target. Either method would be effective. "Then let's go."

Jack locked the car behind them, before shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his borrowed pants and settling in to walk a pace and a half behind Andy. Presumably the man had some plan for getting them access to the hotel's computer room. Hopefully it was a plan that didn't involve renting a room.

Just before he reached the sliding door, Jack hesitated a moment. There was no point in not trying. "What exactly are you hoping to get out of this?"
 
"I'm trying to find out who's trying to fucking kill me, Jack. Why, were you hoping for a groupon for a wine tasting?"

He tried to keep his answer between annoyed and scared and just sarcastic. He was all those things, mostly. But it still just sounded defensive. Jack was asking questions he didn't like. Not because he was worried Jack would eventually figure something out -- though that was a problem in its own right -- but because he couldn't figure out why Jack was acting so suspicious. It would have been easier if he'd shared the details of his capture from the beginning, but he hadn't. He'd only said what had happened to him. That he was the first of his kind. So we're there others? Or...

Shit.

"Look, dude, you're the one who turned up out of nowhere because someone wanted you to shoot me. You don't know who. You don't know why, and I have no other recourse but to at least figure out what the hell I did to piss your boss off. Let's start with a fucking hint. Is that okay? Or should we try the whole 'getting shot' thing again?"
 
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