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Breanna was idly watching the camera feed from her underwater drone on the seabed, keeping an eye out for the shipwreck the mark was after whilst thinking of ideas for where to take Emily on their next date. Suddenly, she was jolted from her thoughts by a dark object appearing out of the darkness. She sat up and took over control of the drone so she could get closer to the object to investigate. It appeared to be a metal coffin like thing which sent a shiver down her spine and only intensified when she manoeuvred to view it from above and realised it was an honest to God iron maiden.
What was that doing there?!
She circled it for a moment, wondering what had happened for an iron maiden to end up on the seabed and hoping that there hadn’t been someone in it when it’d been dumped into the ocean. A stream of air bubbles started rising from its mouth as Breanna watched, making her shudder again despite the logical explanation that there was a fish or other creature inside, but then she got the fright of her life when suddenly a human face appeared behind the face of the iron maiden, screaming, and picked out ominously in the light from the drone.
“Holy shit!” Breanna shouted, shoving her chair away from the counter violently.
“What is it?” Eliot asked a moment later, ducking his head out from the galley and ready to leap to her defence if necessary.
He relaxed a fraction when he saw there was no one else there and came closer to see why Breanna was staring at her computer in horror. She caught all that from the corner of her eye, but she couldn’t tear her gaze from the feed on screen.
“There’s someone down there!” She jabbed her finger at the screen even though most of the view was filled with the face screaming silently and thrashing around behind the mask.
“What the hell?” Eliot muttered, putting a grounding hand on her shoulder despite even him having been taken off guard.
“A diver?” Parker’s voice floated down from above, heralding her arrival from the deck of the boat they’d chartered into the cabin where Breanna had set up her station.
“Someone trapped!” Breanna could tell her voice was still higher pitched than normal, but she was still struggling to process that someone had apparently been trapped inside an iron maiden on the seabed.
She’d seen some awful things, both before and with Leverage, but this was definitely the worst.
“How far away from our current position?” Parker asked, voice immediately slipping into a serious ‘all business’ tone.
Breanna glanced at the navigational data at the bottom of the feed, latching onto the request to fend off her horror at the situation.
“About 500 yards northwest,” she reported.
“Eliot, get ready to dive. We’re going to need a bolt cutter ready for when we surface again,” Parker instructed, before tapping her earbud. “There’s a person on the seabed and Eliot and I are going to rescue them. Sophie, tell the captain we’re making a stop. Harry, gather all the blankets you can find and a first aid kit.”
Breanna immediately sent Sophie the coordinates to pass onto the captain, before Parker added almost as an afterthought, “Oh, and some of Eliot’s soup.”
“We’ll get them,” Eliot said lowly, squeezing with the hand on Breanna’s shoulder before turning on his heel and disappearing off to prepare for the dive.
“How are they even still alive down there?” Breanna was mostly thinking aloud as she pulled up another window so she could track and direct Eliot and Parker.
“There might be an air pocket,” Parker replied anyway, before darting off after Eliot.
Time was of the essence after all, if they were to have any chance of rescuing the trapped person before they drowned.
Breanna watched as the submersible craft descended, gradually getting closer to the iron maiden in what wasn’t actually a very long amount of time, but that felt like years as she waited with bated breath. The face had vanished out of sight again, the person presumably collapsing back down, and it was all Breanna could do to not think about how it was almost worse if they died while a rescue was so close.
“We’re going to save them,” Sophie said softly as she sat down next to Breanna.
“But what if Eliot and Parker don’t make it in time?” Breanna glanced sideways at her briefly, hating that she sounded like a petulant kid.
“Then we’re going to retrieve their body and make sure they’re returned to their family.” Sophie’s tone brokered no argument.
Breanna gave a small nod, grateful for Sophie’s certainty as she turned her attention back to the screen.
“Approaching now,” Eliot’s voice reported through the comms, as the headlights from the craft appeared in the feed from Breanna’s drone.
“I see them,” Parker added, and shortly after, the arms of the craft emerged and reached for the iron maiden, no doubt controlled by Parker whilst Eliot kept the submersible steady.
Breanna and Sophie watched with bated breath as Parker finagled the claw grips into a position where they could get a good hold on it, before then the craft slowly rose up again, making sure the iron maiden was secure before speeding up. Trying not to think about the fact that the air bubbles had stopped, Breanna set her drone to return to the surface and monitored the ascent of the submersible, right up until it was about to breach the surface. Then she jumped to her feet and hurried up onto the deck, knowing Sophie was right on her heels, and skidded to a stop next to where Harry was waiting with a concerned expression and an armful of blankets. The submersible was floating a short way away, and as Breanna reached the side of the boat, the hatch on top popped open.
“Throw me the winch rope!” He called out as he and Parker switched places so that she had control of the craft. “We’re going to have to pull it aboard before we can open it.”
Breanna looked around, but Sophie was already on it, grabbing the metal clip attached to the end of the rope and pulling enough rope free so that the slack would let it reach Eliot. She swung it a few times to get the feel of it and then let go, the clip sailing forward and straight into Eliot’s outstretched hands. Then he jumped into the water and ducked under the surface, attaching the rope to the iron maiden before resurfacing again and swimming the short distance to the ladder on the outside of the boat. They’d come prepared to potentially retrieve something heavy, a fact which Breanna was very thankful for now as she darted across the deck to the winch controls, hitting the button to pull the rope in. Slowly but surely the iron maiden was pulled out of the water, Eliot clambering on deck just in time to help Sophie and Harry guide it over the edge of the boat and down onto the floor, and as soon as it touched down, Breanna dropped the winch control. Instead, she snatched up the bolt cutters Eliot had got out earlier and went to town on the padlock, allowing the others to pull off the chain and finally throw open the iron maiden. Inside was a youngish Asian woman wearing nothing aside from a few stray bits of seaweed, and she wasn’t moving. Breanna prayed that she was just unconscious, and watched, barely breathing, as Eliot lifted her out and laid her on a blanket Harry had just thrown down.
“Is she still alive?” Parker asked as she clambered over the side, submersible now secured.
Harry draped another blanket over her as Eliot knelt down to check for a pulse, cursing quietly before switching to CPR. The next couple of minutes felt like years, and then Eliot sat back on his heels, scrubbing a hand over his face.
“We were too late,” he said quietly. “She’s gone.”
“No!” Breanna couldn’t help her cry, dropping the bolt cutters with a thud.
The mental image of the woman’s face pressed against the face of the iron maiden flooded her brain, and she was sure she’d be seeing it in her nightmares too. Harry set a hand on her shoulder, murmuring platitudes which Breanna didn’t really hear, and suddenly it was all too much so she flung herself at him, pressing herself into his chest. Later she might be embarrassed, but now she needed physical comfort and Harry was the one who was right there. He was taken off guard but quickly wrapped his arms around her, and he might not be her actual dad, but his hug felt like it and he let her bury her face in his chest as she fought back tears. She could hear the other three murmuring but didn’t pay it any attention.
Not until Sophie gasped and suddenly there was the sound of choking and spluttering. Pulling away from Harry, Breanna turned around to see Eliot rolling the woman onto her side as she threw up water, whilst Sophie had her hands to her mouth and even Parker looked surprised.
“What?” Breanna gaped at the sight.
Eliot knew best out of all of them how to tell if someone was alive or not, so if he said someone was dead, they were dead.
As soon as she finished emptying her lungs of water, the woman pushed herself away from Eliot, scrabbling along the deck until she was pressed against the edge of the boat, one of the blankets clutched to her but looking like she’d fight tooth and nail if anyone came close. Unsurprising given that she’d been locked in an iron maiden naked and thrown into the ocean.
“You’re safe now,” Sophie told her softly, crouching down so she was at a similar height but moving no closer. “We found you and freed you, and we’re not going to hurt you. I promise.”
She waved her hand, indicating for the rest of them to move further back, whilst continuing to speak in that same low tone. “I’m Sophie, and these are my friends – Parker, Eliot, Breanna, and Harry. What’s your name?”
The woman stared for several moments, before uttering a single word. “Quynh.”
As Sophie continued to talk to Quynh, attempting to reassure Quynh that she was safe, the others moved towards the other end of the deck, staying in sight so she could see they weren’t doing anything nefarious while the distance would hopefully make her feel less crowded.
“I’ll get her some clothes!” Breanna announced, belatedly realising that the woman’s state of undress couldn’t be helping matters, even if she did now have a blanket covering her.
She ducked back into the cabin, briefly wondering about who’s clothes would fit Quynh better before deciding to just grab her own spare set. She added a towel to the top of the pile and snagged the hoodie that had been discarded on a chair in the common area. As she remerged, she headed towards Sophie and Quynh, moving purposefully slowly until she was a few feet away.
“Here, I got you a towel and some clothes,” she told Quynh, putting them pile down on the deck between them before backing up again. “They’re mine but hopefully they fit you okay.”
“Thank you,” Quynh replied carefully after a moment, eyes tracking Breanna’s movements before fixing on Sophie again.
She darted forward to grab the pile of clothes before asking, “How did you find me?”
“We’re looking for a shipwreck,” Sophie explained. “Breanna here was using her little camera thingy.”
“Submersible drone,” Breanna corrected before her brain caught up to her mouth.
Then she noticed that the conversation seemed to be putting Quynh a little more at ease, so she continued. “It’s got a camera with a live feed so I can monitor it from up here, and that’s what I was doing when I saw-”
She cut herself off before she said ‘the iron maiden’ because even though it was still right there on the deck (and they should really get rid of it or hide it), she figured it wasn’t necessary to point out that detail of the awful thing Quynh had just been through.
“-you,” she finished instead.
Quynh had quickly shimmied into Breanna’s clothes while she was speaking, and now wrapped the towel around her head like a scarf before pulling the blanket around her again.
“Do you want some soup?” Breanna glanced over to where Harry had set the thermos earlier. “It’s hot so it’ll warm you up.”
“Please.” Quynh nodded, clambering to her feet, and looking ever slightly less like a cornered wild animal.
Eliot picked up the thermos and brought it over, unscrewing the cup and passing it to Breanna so he could pop the lid and pour out some soup into the cup.
“Here you go,” he said as Breanna held out the cup to Quynh. “It’s winter vegetable. I made it myself.”
Quynh eyed him for a few moments, and then presumably decided that he wasn’t an immediate threat as she took the soup and immediately started drinking it, despite the steam rising showing that it was still very hot. She soon finished the cup and noticing her gaze flicking to the thermos in his hand, Eliot held it out, ready to pour more.
“Have as much as you want.” He waited for her to start drinking again, and then asked quietly, “How did you end up down there?”
“When we didn’t die from being hanged, they threw me into the sea.” Quynh’s eyes flashed with anger, and the combination of her expression and her words chilled Breanna to the bone. “She escaped after that and has been living her life ever since. So much for the two of us forever.”
“Who did this to you?” Breanna glanced at Eliot, wondering if he felt the same fury on Quynh’s behalf as she did. “We can help you get justice.”
Quynh just laughed, a dry, slightly unhinged thing.
Breanna glanced at Eliot again, but he looked as lost as she felt.
“The people who did this to me are long dead. No, the only one left is her. Andromache.”
Breanna’s immediate thought was that Quynh had been driven insane by the trauma that she’d been through, but then she thought of how the woman had definitely been dead when they pulled her from the sea and suddenly her being unable to die seemed a little more believable.
“We can take you to shore.” Sophie spoke up, easily hiding any confusion or disbelief. “Is there any other way we can help you? Contact someone, perhaps?”
“Returning me to land is all I can ask for.” Quynh shook her head, appearing to push down her anger. “I’ll be able to find my own way after that. But thank you.”
“We can ask the captain to return to land now, but it’ll take a few hours,” Sophie told her, glancing briefly at Breanna for confirmation.
“I can wait. I’m just glad to not be drowning anymore.”
Well, they could all accept that.
*
A while later they were heading back to shore, abandoning their search in favour of returning Quynh to dry land. Breanna had called Hardison via the satellite phone to ask him to see what he could find about the woman and who this Andromache might be, and then for lack of anything better to do other than hover near Quynh, she returned to monitoring the feed from her drone. She may as well survey the area around their route as they went, and it would be a little less to search later when they returned to the sea. For the second time that day, however, she shot up in her seat as she spotted something on the screen. This time thankfully it was a lot less horrific.
“I found the wreck!” She shouted, pushing herself away from the counter and rushing into the main room where the others were gathered, chatting and trying to distract Quynh from her trauma.
“I found the wreck!” She repeated as she grabbed the doorway, almost swinging into sight. “We can steal the treasure out from under him and make him pay for hurting all those families!”
Quynh appeared to perk up in interest at those words. “You are treasure hunting for revenge?”
Breanna bit her lip, realising she’d said too much, but Parker nodded.
“We help people who can’t help themselves, act where the law leaves off. Our current target rented out accommodation that wasn’t up to code, and when his tenants complained, he kicked them out on the street and sued them for breach of contract.”
“Go get this treasure then. I can wait a little longer to feel solid ground under my feet once more.” Quynh said quietly but firmly.
*
The boat docked in the harbour that they’d set out from, and as Breanna carried the padded bag that held her submersible drone up the jetty, she spotted a blond man leaning against the harbour wall a little way down from their berth. At first glance, she barely paid him attention, but then when she happened to look back his way, she did so at just the right time to catch him watching them. There were a few other people in the harbour, some working and some just watching the sea and/or the boats, but something about this man, in particular, set off Breanna’s spidey senses so she kept watching him from the corner of her eye as she deposited her bag and turned so she was ready for the others to pass stuff to her. That was how she saw his reaction when Quynh emerged from below deck. It was subtle, but as she’d been purposefully watching him, Breanna caught the shock that flashed across his face and body language briefly. She was going to warn Quynh, however before she could, the other woman panned her gaze across the harbour and as soon as her eyes landed on the man, she suddenly stopped moving, almost causing Harry to walk right into her. Unlike the man’s, Quynh’s expression was inscrutable, but the way her attention was solely focused on him, well, she had to know him.
“Is he one of the people who put you down there?” Breanna asked, before thinking back to Quynh’s earlier wording and correcting herself. “Or well, somehow connected?”
Her words broke Quynh’s concentration, drawing the other woman’s attention to her, but then Quynh shook her head.
“I’ve never met him. But he’s family. A family member who I can’t blame for abandoning me,” she said cryptically, before starting moving again, striding with purpose past Breanna and towards the man.
Breanna turned to watch, ready to raise the alarm (i.e., alert Eliot) if Quynh needed help, but all that happened was Quynh stopped a few feet away from the man and they both eyed each other warily, speaking quietly enough that Breanna couldn’t hear what they were saying. They kept talking as the Leverage crew carried all of their stuff off the boat, and as Eliot shook the captain’s hand, pressing a generous tip into his grasp as he did so, subtly enough that Breanna only caught the action because she’d been expecting it. Then once everything was piled at the end of the jetty, ready to be packed into the rental car once they brought it around, and the crew had gathered by the pile, Quynh finally gestured over to them. She led the man towards them and once she had everyone’s attention, she began introductions.
“These are the people who rescued me,” she told the man. “They’re thieves.”
There were simultaneous protests and denials from Breanna and her crew, because yes it was true, but they didn't go around advertising that fact, but Quynh just spoke over them all. “This is Booker, he’s a forger and a mercenary.”
She waited for the hubbub to die down before adding with an amused smile, “You’re all criminals by today's laws. Criminals who help people.”
“How did you know to be here?” Breanna asked Booker, trying to figure out how he could have found them or even known that they’d rescued Quynh.
He shared a look with Quynh before replying, “We have a connection.”
He gestured between himself and Quynh with his thumb. “When I knew to start looking, it didn’t take long to find the only people operating in the right area and then track you to this harbour.”
“You make it sound so easy when I know for a fact it can’t have been.” Breanna raised an eyebrow at him.
“I know people who know people who know people.” Booker shrugged, although the corner of his mouth curled up a little in amusement. “Although I kept running into the kind of issues that make me assume you’ve got a hacker working with you?”
Before she could reply to that, her phone started vibrating in her pocket, so she pulled it out to glance at the screen seeing as she rarely got phone calls. Hardison.
“Speaking of…” She swiped to answer and put the phone to her ear, gaze still on Booker. “Hey.”
“There’s a mercenary with weirdly little internet presence after you,” Hardison said in lieu of a greeting. “Or well, the woman you rescued.”
“Yeah, he seems friendly,” she replied, giving Booker a crooked grin. “I hear you’ve been fending him off.”
“He’s there?” Hardison exclaimed. “I called as soon as I noticed y’all were back on land, but I expected that you’d have a few hours at least before he could reach you.”
“I’ll message you later,” Breanna told him, knowing that it was only a matter of time before they went their separate ways.
Talking to Quynh and Booker took precedence over talking to her brother, now that the urgency was over.
“We’re okay,” she added in a quieter voice, hearing the worry in Hardison’s voice, and knowing all too well how it felt to know her friends were in danger but be unable to do anything to help due to being at the other end of the comms but physically elsewhere.
“Let me get this straight,” Harry spoke up for the first time since Booker had appeared. “The two of you have never met before, but you’re connected in a way that means you-”
He pointed at Booker before continuing, “were able to tell that Quynh here was not only alive despite being trapped on the seabed and get enough information to track her and us to this specific harbour. Also, you came to find her, because of that connection.”
Booker chuckled drily, somehow projecting amusement at Harry’s words whilst seeming distinctly unamused with the wider situation. “Yeah, that about sums it up.”
Any hope that Breanna had that he might go on and explain the whole situation was dashed when he added, “She’s a friend of a… friend.”
It was definitely a massive understatement but given that they’d only just met and didn’t have the same mysterious connection that Quynh and Booker had, Breanna didn’t think that they were going to get any more of an explanation.
So, she’d have to find out herself.
“I bet we could help each other out sometimes,” she stated lightly. “Given our similar lines of work. So, here.”
She pulled out her phone again and quickly opened an app that Hardison had built and that she’d improved upon and found Booker’s phone. It was likely a burner and had pretty good security, but she piggybacked on the network provider’s connection to send a notification through the system that would normally be used for emergency alerts.
“That’s how you can contact me.” She gestured her phone at him and grinned when he pulled his out and snapped his gaze from the screen back to her. “If you’ve gone up against Hardison, then you must have a setup with a secure connection.”
Booker blinked in surprise, his expression changing from impressed to shocked. “Hardison? He’s your hacker?”
Then his gaze narrowed, and he stared at all of them in turn. “Which means – San Lorenzo, 2010. That was you.”
Breanna was aware of Parker and Eliot subtly tensing next to her, and she caught Sophie’s expression out of the corner of her eye – the one she always got when something reminded her of her late husband. Harry just looked confused. But before any of them could say or do anything, Booker spoke again.
“Good job.” He sounded distinctly impressed, and on a different level to his reaction to Breanna getting past his phone’s security. “I was watching that situation in case there was a job for my crew, but I’m glad you stopped it getting that bad.”
Turning his attention back to Breanna specifically, he looked her up and down before giving her a wry smile. “I’m guessing you weren’t there, given that you must have been, what, five?”
“Hey!” She protested.
“I’ll message you,” he continued, placating her.
“Now that that’s agreed, we should go,” Parker spoke up, using her ‘leader’ voice. “We have a job to finish.”
“And you have a lot to catch me up on,” Quynh said to Booker, before turning his gaze to Breanna and the others. “Thank you again for freeing me. I’m in your debt.”
“I’m just glad I spotted you,” Breanna replied, running a hand through her hair, and trying not to think what would have happened if she hadn’t.
“Perhaps we will see each other again, but for now, goodbye.” Quynh nodded at them and then turned on her heel and strode off down the harbour, Booker keeping pace after giving a small wave.
“If their crew is who I think they are, I’ve heard all sorts of rumours.” Eliot’s voice was hushed and awed. “A lot of them I dismissed as impossible.”
“More impossible than a woman being hung and then locked in an iron maiden at the bottom of the sea and still walking away?” Breanna asked as they retrieved their gear and started towards the vehicle awaiting them.
“That does raise a few questions,” he admitted, looking thoughtful.
As they piled into the Land Rover and drove off towards the final stage of the job, Breanna got Eliot to recount all of the stories that he’d heard about the other crew, which had to include the mysterious Andromache, and the more she heard, the more determined she was to find the truth. Once they’d dealt with their mark, she was making it her mission to get Booker to tell her.
If these people really kept coming back to life, well, Breanna wanted, no- needed to know.