Chapter Text
They were professionals. Experienced professionals, who had careers spanning years and dozens of cases. A few of them had worked together before, though never all at once. They had been company elite. Now, well, they weren’t the only ones to survive the purge, but they were the best, and best connected, ones to do so.
Also, they had always enjoyed their work. The company had been very good to them. Best days of their life, really. They didn’t want it to end, not like this.
With Vlad Masters’ money, they could rebuild.
As for Vlad Masters himself… well, as they said, they were in this line of work because they enjoyed it. A spot of revenge was not above them.
Their present location was ideal for that. Off the grid, independent water and electricity, reasonable size, good access to roads, lots of ways out, defensible, and, most importantly, disposable. Should it become necessary, they could and would torch the place, leaving little evidence of who they truly were or where they were going. It had no ties to them.
Of course, to preserve that margin of safety, few of them had visited the place before securing the hostages. This led to some unfortunate discoveries, especially when it came to the members of their endeavor who hadn’t had much in the way of communication with the others in the past.
For example, the Raven was much too superstitious and jumpy for someone with his kill count. Paranoia was one thing. Paranoia had kept them all alive and free while so many of their colleagues were killed or locked away. This was distinctly beyond paranoia.
“I’m telling you,” said the Raven. “I saw someone out there, looking through the window.”
“I had that window in view the whole time,” said the Peregrine, annoyed. “No one was there.”
“Of course,” said the Raven, dismissively, “you didn’t see it. You spend all your time making fun of things you don’t understand. This place is bad, Hawk. We should never have come here.”
“You’re not trying to convince us this place is haunted, are you?” asked the Peregrine, snidely.
“It may not be the place,” said the Raven, looking towards the room they were keeping the hostages in.
“Look, whether or not the Fentons are ‘haunted,’” said Hawk, exasperated, “we’ve already started this. So, let’s finish the job without tempting each other into putting in overtime.”
What a nice euphemism for murdering one another. If there was any luck in the world for people like them, the Raven would be killed in a car accident somewhere far away, before any of them had to work with him again.
“Raven, why don’t you go do… I don’t know. Whatever it is people do to get rid of ghosts. If it’ll make you feel better.”
Satisfied that the Peregrine and the Raven probably weren’t going to start a gun duel in the middle of the living room, Hawk left. There was another hour before he had to call Masters again, and he wanted to have a nap before then. It payed to be well-rested at times like these. It also payed to have a snack, he thought, swerving toward the kitchen.
Only to see Nightingale, the only female member of the crew and their drug expert, pointing a presumably loaded gun at something in the refrigerator.
He froze. She hadn’t seen him. Evidently hadn’t even noticed him. What the hell.
Slowly, he raised his own gun, because if she was going crazy, who knew what else she’d do. Good thing, too, because the next thing he knew, she was turning her gun on him.
He fired.
.
“The hell do you mean, she was pointing a gun at you?” demanded the Owl. “She didn’t even have a gun on her!”
“She had a gun,” repeated Hawk.
“I told you all this would go bad,” said the Raven.
“Shut up, you lunatic! This bastard just shot my girlfriend! And if you all don’t get out of the way—”
“Look, man,” said Falcon. “We get you’re upset. We all are. Nightingale was a master of her craft. But we need Hawk. He’s our coordinator. Why don’t we just tie him up and make sure he doesn’t get wired any of the cash. You can do that, right, Owl? You’re a tech genius, right?”
“That doesn’t fix what he did,” growled Owl.
“Yeah, but you’ll have a bunch of money you didn’t have before, and Nightingale’s cut, too. And how about this goddamn traitor’s cut, too?”
There was a bit of protest at that.
“I’m not a traitor,” said Hawk. “She had a gun! I don’t know what happened to the damn thing, but she had it, pointing at something in the fridge.”
Everyone glanced at the still-ajar fridge. Nothing was in there but the food they had bought for themselves during setup.
Until suddenly there was. Five guns swiveled to fire on the fridge.
“What are you lunatics doing in there?” screamed Nightjar, who was supposed to be keeping his full attention on the hostages.
“If you’re all dead in there, I’m going to be—” came a slightly more muffled shout from the Vulture.
“Did you all see that?” asked Peregrine, words faint.
“Yeah,” said Falcon.
“I told you this was a bad job. We should quit before more of this happens,” said Raven.
“Yeah, yeah,” said Hawk. “I agree. Let’s call Masters early. No point in giving him time to weasel, right?”
“We should just leave,” insisted Raven.
“You can,” snapped Hawk, wrenching open the door and stepping into a snowstorm.
After a shocked minute, the storm vanished, but left a lingering sense of cold. The room he’d stepped into was where it was supposed to be. Hawk looked over his shoulder.
“Why’d you stop?” asked Owl, suspiciously.
“You didn’t see that?” asked Hawk.
“See what?” asked Falcon. “You standing there like an idiot?”
Peregrine suddenly started screaming and clawing at his arms, scraping at them with his fingernails and even the muzzle of his gun which was such a stupid breech of gun safety rules that no one was particularly surprised when he shot himself in the arm. Nor was anyone near the direct line of fire. They had enough sense to move away and not try to help someone who had just lost their mind.
When he raised his gun, however—
“Seriously!” shouted Nightjar. “What’s going on out there? Don’t make me use the explosives!”
“It’s fine!” shouted Hawk.
“You’d better be sending someone in with the whole story in the next five minutes.”
“It’s got to be gas, or something,” said Falcon.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I mean… Oracle of Delphi stuff. This house must be built on a fault.”
“Sure, fine, whatever,” said Owl, backing away. “I’m out of here.”
“No, you’re not,” said Falcon. “You need to do the wire transfer, still. We all leave together.”
“After making sure Nightjar doesn’t get trigger happy,” said Hawk. “Let’s go.”
“Oh my god!” screamed the Vulture.
When they burst into the room, the Nightjar was thrashing on the floor, foaming at the mouth. Before they could really react to this sight, he seized once more, then lay still.
“That goddamn-! Where’s Nightingale?” demanded the Vulture. “She poisoned him!”
.
Silence. He was dreaming. He was watching. He was angry.
(He hadn’t even started yet.)
The intent had been to scare them, to confuse them, to punish them because Jazz had gotten hurt and that wasn’t ever supposed to happen, no.
He wasn’t quite sure how so many corpses got on the ground. It was rather upsetting.
All he had done was break some of the bad woman’s bottles of drugs. The ones she was using on Jazz. And the other ones, too, just in case. Then he had walked around a bit, practicing. They were supposed to be little scares. To make them go away, but…
(Scaring people who had inhaled hallucinogens was apparently very easy.)
He didn’t like this. Where had the bodies come from?
He let his feet hit the ground, ghost-soft but still audible, as he followed his body and Jazz’s. He had to make sure they didn’t hurt her.
.
(“Listen, do you hear that? Someone’s following us.”)