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graculusTitle: All the Sinners, Saints
Author: Graculus
Fandom: Wild Wild West (tv)
Characters/Pairings: West/Gordon
Rating/Category: PG slash
Genre: dystopian AU
Word Count: 13,690
Warnings none
Summary: After the war left him horribly injured, James West made a deal with the metaphorical devil and let Inscape have access to his brain, making him the perfect super-soldier. On a mission to pass sentence on a rogue scientist on Inscape's behalf, West finds that there's much more to what's inside his head than he could possibly have imagined and that the man he's come to kill holds more answers than he could possibly want.
Part 1
He should have expected it, of course. Outside the range of Gordon's jamming system, the feed came flooding back into West's head with the power of a blow and he would have gone to his knees if Gordon hadn't grabbed his arm just in time. He'd staggered, regardless of the support, the flood of information and software updates just too much for him to handle even though the implant meant his brain ought to be able to cope with so much data.
“Deep breaths,” Gordon's voice said, somewhere from outside the fuzz of sensory overload, and he tried to comply. The only other link to reality, to unaugmented life, was the feel of the grip Gordon had on his arm and West tried to concentrate on both of those, to use them as an anchor to hold onto a sanity he felt slipping away with every passing moment. “West? You still in there?”
“I think so,” West replied, although he was anything but as certain as he wanted to sound.
There was an edge to Gordon's voice he didn't like, a panic lurking at the back of the calmly-spoken words, that warmed West as surely as the feel of Gordon's hand still holding on.
“It's all too much.” West didn't want to elaborate – one of them panicking was enough to contend with right now.
“Okay.”
Gordon didn't sound convinced and West wasn't sure he could blame him. He wasn't certain himself that this would pass, that Inscape would let it pass, that they wouldn't instantly know everything the two of them had planned, his betrayal of the corporation that had put his life back together and for what? The words of a man he'd met only hours before?
If they knew, he realized, that would be the end of it. His eyes still resolutely closed, West tried to straighten his back and to look as if he wasn't a man whose mind was trying to tear itself to pieces and reassemble itself to accommodate all the new things the corporation needed it to know. He was waiting on the lightning strike, the blow from the heavens that would drive him to his knees as his treachery was uncovered once and for all.
It didn't come.
After a few more long minutes passed the buzz of new data began to slow to a trickle. When he was certain he wouldn't either throw up or pass out, or possibly both, West let his eyes open a crack, wanting to be sure that he was still in control, that some kind of crazy override hadn't been put in place. That Inscape's grip on his mind wasn't absolute, that he could still choose to do other than they might want...
The morning sun still looked the same, watery through the low cloud, and Gordon's face – the next place he looked- just as worried as might have been expected.
“West?”
His grip on West's arm didn't move in the slightest but he seemed to be readying himself to let go, to run for it if necessary – Gordon had to know how futile a gesture that would have been, the chances of escape so minimal – but still he was there, right beside West till he knew the worst. There was something about that which resonated strangely, a sense of camaraderie West hadn't expected to see again outside of uniform, and something more, something deeper that warmed him to the core.
“Still here.” Still in charge, that was the thing he didn't say, but there was no need. If the worst had happened, if Inscape had taken him over, they wouldn't be having any kind of conversation right now.
Gordon's face cracked into a smile and his grip tightened for a moment, the briefest of squeezes, before he let go. It seemed strange, the sudden absence of pressure and warmth – the software inside West's brain calculated the temperature drop, the reduction in skin tension – the part of him that remained human oddly registering the movement as loss even though Gordon was still standing right beside him.
“Time for these,” Gordon said, pulling out a set of electronic shackles. They weren't West's – he was an assassin, not a retrieval specialist, there was no need for restraints in his line of work – somehow he was reluctant to even touch them. “Come on,” Gordon continued, pressing one end to his wrist and watching how it coiled around, tightening just enough to be secure but not cause pressure on the skin. “I can't close the other one properly if I'm holding it.”
The synthetic material of the restraints was slick under West's fingers It was cool even where it already wrapped around Gordon's wrist, taking on no warmth from his body, or from West's hands where he held the remainder of it, letting Gordon press his other wrist to it and watching it move in an unnerving way, in mimicry of the life it now surrounded.
“Are you sure...” West began, uncertain of what he was asking. He hadn't let go of Gordon's hands, his fingers still loosely wrapped around the material of the restraints, synthetic and skin both under his touch, and Gordon hadn't pulled away.
“I trust you,” Gordon said quietly, the words enough in themselves to make West look up from his study of their hands to the other man's face, wanting to see the veracity behind them, to be sure Gordon understood the risks he was taking. Not just in doing this, the crazy idea of breaking into Inscape, but in trusting a man who had a wealth of Inscape technology inside his head. “Sounds crazy, I know.”
“It does,” West agreed. “We should get moving.”
He didn't want to let go, that much he knew without any degree of doubt, but they couldn't stand here indefinitely and the longer they waited the more chance there was of discovery. And he needed time to figure all of this out, to figure out the man who'd got him into all this, the man whose restraint-wrapped wrists he had now reluctantly let go, the man he'd been sent to kill.
Report.
Once back on-grid, West had expected the demand for a status update and when it came, he'd already figured out what to say. Not the truth, of course, another sign that he was in charge and not the technology inside his head – for now, at least, if Gordon was right about the purpose of most of it – and he wanted it to stay that way. His lies had to be plausible ones, nothing that would make the corporation suspicious, that would make some kind of override switch get thrown, the corporation taking control of West, body and soul.
Target apprehended - vital info for corp. Extraction requested.
A long silence. He couldn't be certain how his deviation from mission parameters would be received – how much leeway did he really have, anyway? - it was a gamble with both their lives. Inscape wouldn't kill him, he was much too valuable an asset for that, but they had the power to control everything he did and effectively destroy who he was. Gordon, he was certain, they'd kill without hesitation if the lie wasn't close enough to the truth to be believable.
Return to base approved.
A flurry of coordinates for an extraction point followed, nothing more, and he was still in control. No reprimand, no reminder of his mission objective, just four simple words that could be either a death sentence for them both or a chance for Gordon's crazy scheme to be put into play after all.
“West?”
He hadn't been that easy to read, had he? West was certain there'd been nothing in his expression, no telltale that would let Gordon know he'd been in communication with headquarters in addition to the flurry of data he would know about, the earlier influx of information that had literally staggered him.
“Sitrep.”
“Did they buy it?”
Not a flicker of doubt in Gordon's tone or in the expression on his face, trusting West was still on his side when he had every opportunity not to be and Gordon would never know till it was far too late for both of them.
West's hand tightened on the strap between the restraints – to the observing world, to Inscape's satellites, it would look as though Gordon was his prisoner, that he was dragging him back to face justice but in reality he felt as though this was all that anchored him to reality, a connection to Gordon that didn't raise questions.
“I hope so,” West replied. An honest answer, as Gordon deserved.
The extraction had been textbook precise, no questions asked about the deviation in plan by the men who picked them up – he'd pulled Gordon into the transport by the restraints, positioning him into a corner so he was shielded from the other Inscape employees. It was a typical flight, no smalltalk, just silence and the drone of the engines as they headed toward corporation headquarters.
He could see Gordon's face from the corner of his eye, feel the warmth of his body pressed up against him and also what seemed like the slightest of tremors from the other man's body. Gordon looked nervous, which was only natural, even when he caught West looking at him – at least he didn't react in any positive way, cognizant of what that kind of response might mean for both of them. West looked away, focusing on the passing scenery while wondering just what kind of reception they would both receive at Inscape when they arrived.
It proved to be an anti-climax, the transport crew throwing open the doors and letting him step out, Gordon pulled along behind him – no interference, no phalanx of armed guards waiting for them to emerge, just a long well-lit corridor heading out from the transport landing bay.
He didn't look round, didn't check to see if they were being watched – that much was certain, constant surveillance was a way of life within Inscape itself – just headed in the general direction of the main body of headquarters, wondering how far the two of them could get before they were challenged in any way.
Surprisingly far, as it turned out, the first response to West and Gordon's movement through the building a sudden arrival of armed guards as they crossed an otherwise abandoned lobby.
“Hold it.” West had already stopped, one hand raised and the other pulling Gordon by the restraints till he was stood directly behind West, no viable target for any of the newcomers if the standing order for Gordon was still assassination. “Explain yourself.”
He could feel Gordon's breath on the back of his neck, his solid presence behind him a distraction West really didn't need. The protection he provided by standing between Gordon and the men who stood in front of them was an illusion, he knew that, knowing as well as they did the capability of the weapons they held. But it was a gesture that made him feel better about the whole situation, a little more in control, and at the moment that was all that counted.
“My prisoner has vital intel.”
At least Gordon had enough sense to keep quiet, to let West do the talking – he shared a language with these men, had probably served with some of them even if he couldn't remember it – this was the best chance of both of them making it out of this alive and they both knew it.
“Your prisoner,” the squad leader said, “is under a death sentence.”
“Change of mission parameters was authorized,” West continued. Gordon shifted a little behind him, not quite putting himself into the line of fire but leaning just a little closer to West's back – the movement puzzled him, till he felt Gordon's fingers wrapping around where his fist closed over the restraints. The warmth grounded him, reassuring West he wasn't alone here, for the first time in longer than he could remember. “I was ordered to return to base.”
The squad leader didn't reply – West studied his face, wondering if he'd seen the man before, shared a foxhole with him perhaps? His own link to Inscape was quiet, strangely so given his proximity to the servers, but he was certain that wasn't the case for the other men.
“We'll accompany you.” It wasn't a question, there was no uncertainty in the words and no room for negotiation. “Dr Loveless wants to see you. Both of you.”
“Sir?”
The doorway in which the squad leader stood had slid open, soundlessly, at their approach. West hadn't heard permission given to enter but clearly it had been given as the man turned, beckoning the rest of them to follow him.
The room itself was a laboratory, at least mostly. One side was clean and metallic, all stainless steel and polished glass – the other was more ornate, more luxurious. Long velvet drapes covered much of the walls, heavy furniture looking out of place yet oddly right at the same time.
“Ah, Dr Gordon”, a man's voice said. West couldn't help staring a little at the source of that voice – a small man in a velvet suit, its color perfectly matched to that of the drapes, a rich dark purple. “So nice of you to join us.”
“The pleasure is all yours, Loveless,” Gordon said dryly. “I see the place hasn't changed since I've been away.”
“Only for the better,” Loveless replied, crossing the space between them and then stopping as if he wanted to study Gordon, to figure out what made him tick. To take him apart piece by piece, if necessary, to enable that to happen.
The men who'd escorted them here were ranged round where West and Gordon stood, closer than West would like but he found himself unable to think of a reason why he might ask for them to move away.
West found himself tensing, though Loveless himself presented no real threat to someone with West's training, let alone the enhancements his own corporation had made. Loveless was the CEO of Inscape, after all, and ought to know better than anyone what his subjects were capable of.
“Take him,” Loveless said suddenly. “Don't interfere, West,” he continued, those quiet words enough to freeze West where he stood, the strap between Gordon's restraints pulled from his unresisting fingers as Gordon was bundled out of the room.
One of his captors had a hand wrapped firmly across Gordon's mouth, stifling any complaint he might make at this treatment, at their forcible separation, his eyes still turned towards West in mute entreaty even as Gordon was dragged out of the door.
“Where are they taking him?” West asked, uncertain why he had obeyed so readily but starting to have an inkling of why that might be when he remembered what Gordon had told him before. Except that it felt right to do what this man asked of him, even if West couldn't remember why he should.
“I need to talk to you, West. Man to man.” It was as if West hadn't spoken, Loveless ignored his question so completely. “About the lies Artemus Gordon has told you. About Inscape, about yourself.”
“Lies?”
Loveless had rocked back on his heels a little as he spoke, hands shoved deep into his pockets, the very picture of a man completely at ease rather than a man alone with someone who could probably tear him limb from limb without breaking into a sweat.
“What did Gordon tell you?” Loveless' voice was relentless, almost hypnotic. “That he was the victim in all this, that Inscape was warped somehow and only he could set it right?” He pulled one long-fingered hand out to gesture with it expansively. “That he had some kind of plan to change everything, to write some wrong that had been done to you and the other recipients of Inscape technology, because my evil plans had corrupted all the good that he had done?”
Put like that, it sounded so ridiculous. How had he ever fallen for it? Except he remembered waking up, certain he ought to be dead because how could anyone show him mercy when he was trained – programmed? - not to show it to someone else, regardless of the circumstance? Gordon had been kind to him, reassured him and he'd trusted the other man because of it.
“None of that happened,” Loveless insisted, as if he knew the way West's thoughts were running. He grabbed hold of one of West's sleeves, turning him to face the full-length mirror that hung between the drapes on one wall of the room. “The whole encounter between you and Gordon was in your mind, none of it was real. Artemus Gordon doesn't give a damn about anyone but himself and certainly not about you.”
They looked ridiculous, the two of them stood there so different and yet so alike – the mirror was distorted somehow, making Loveless look far taller than he was and making West look like every carnival freak show inhabitant there ever was rolled into one. All West could see was his scars, the parts of himself that Inscape had repaired and replaced, and still Loveless continued to talk, his voice low.
“He played on your weaknesses, West, weaknesses he programmed in to the very software in your brain, preparing you and those like you in case this day ever came and he needed an assistant, a way back into Inscape that would allow him to still keep his hands clean.” Loveless laughed then, an ironic cackle. “As if his hands were ever clean!”
It was too much to process, an overload not of data but of emotions, Loveless' account of his meeting with Gordon and his memories in head-on collision, till neither of them seemed completely real. He needed a chance to think, needed time and objectivity to process all of this, to make sense of two such conflicting accounts and figure out if there was any truth to either of them.
“Now do you understand, West, why I sent you to kill him?” Loveless asked. He'd walked away from the mirror now, leaving West alone in front of it, climbing onto a stool beside a workbench, as if the whole conversation were secondary to whatever work he was undertaking, a distraction from the everyday. “Gordon's too dangerous to live. I cannot allow him to roam the world with such power at his command!”
“What do you want me to do?” West asked, turning to where Loveless sat. The doctor's clever fingers were tinkering with something West didn't recognize, even as he thought about what West was asking, his head cocked to one side, eyes bright. “Should I complete my mission?” Loveless resembled a bird, West thought, deciding which worm to select.
“Why not?” Loveless replied. He dropped the device he was tinkering with, clearly uninterested in how it fell when it hit something else on the workbench then clattered to the floor unheeded. “Yes, West. I want you to kill Artemus Gordon.”
It was all so clear now. He'd been played for a fool, though he had no understanding of why – what had Gordon stood to gain from tricking him this way, from getting himself brought back into Inscape?Nothing good, West was certain of that, and hardly the altruistic actions Gordon had told him about, this desire to free the other recipients of Inscape technology from a captivity he had forced on them in the first place!
He didn't trust Loveless either, but that didn't matter at all. They were probably more alike than they cared to admit, Loveless and Gordon, both wanting to use him in their own ways. The ironic thing was, if Gordon had been honest with him in the first place he might have just left him alive, finding some excuse why he couldn't fulfill his mission without jeopardizing his own future the way he had.
At least now Loveless was giving him a way back into Inscape's favor, a way to repay them for all the things the corporation had given him, for giving West back his life, such as it was.
The door to the detention level slid open silently. West could feel the scrutiny of the guards, the ever-present security cameras whose feed he could tap into if he wanted, the weight of the firearm in his hand. This was the right thing to do, the only thing.
“Gordon?”
“Cell 3.”
West nodded his acknowledgment, then carried on walking. The other cells he passed were occupied too – a man with his head in his hands, a woman curled up into a fetal ball on a padded bench – but West had no interest in any of them. Gordon was all that mattered, Gordon and the successful completion of his mission.
Like the other cells, this one's front wall and door were transparent, iris recognition controls embedded in the wall on one side. His approach had been silent but somehow Gordon seemed to know he was there, looking up as West stopped before the door, the expression on his face mingled hope and concern.
He was a good actor, West had to give him that. Combined with whatever his software had done to West's cerebral cortex, Gordon had given a convincing performance of someone who gave a damn. If Loveless was right and he was an amoral bastard, then the performance was even more impressive, since Gordon could hardly be said to be playing to type.
Gordon half-rose from the padded bench on which he had been sitting, then saw the gun West was holding and froze in place for a moment before sitting down once more.
“This isn't a rescue, is it?”
Despite everything, Gordon's voice was still calm. West shook his head, still wondering exactly how Gordon had done it – how much had been him and how much the software? Would he have ever realized he'd been tricked or had Gordon planned to kill him when his help was no longer needed, once he'd played his part and got the other man safely into Inscape, letting the fox in the proverbial chicken coop for the final time?
“I trusted you,” West said, certain those words would be enough to tell Gordon he knew everything, that Loveless had told him enough to know he'd been tricked, that he now knew the truth. “But none of it was real.”
None of it, not even the desire that had led him to share Gordon's bed, the response to that desire he'd believed he'd seen in Gordon's eyes. All of it a lie, a self-serving one at that, in more ways than West could possibly have imagined.
“Is that what he told you?” Gordon hadn't moved, though it would have been futile if he had, there was nowhere to hide now. “That you imagined it all, that everything I told you, everything you felt, was a lie?” He leaned back, his head resting against the cell wall. “If I was so clever, so powerful, West, how come I'm the one in here?”
“You made me do what you wanted,” West replied. He didn't know why he'd leaned forward as Gordon had moved, why his free hand was now pressed against the wall by Gordon's cell, his face almost against the Plexiglas of the cell wall. “It was all in my mind, in the Inscape implants, I didn't have a choice.”
“So kill me,” Gordon replied, “if you're so certain I've tricked you into doing anything you didn't want to do. I'm dead anyway now Inscape have me back.”
The words were quiet, almost resigned – when he'd finished speaking, Gordon looked down as if done with the conversation, unmoving even as West continued to watch his face, wanting to see the truth but suddenly uncertain if he'd recognize it if he did. They couldn't both be telling the truth, but what did Gordon have to gain from continuing to lie to him?
He couldn't possibly expect West to rescue him from the mess he now found himself in, detained in the very heart of Inscape headquarters – that was the stuff of old-style movie plots, not real life, one man against a corporation always ended badly – so why not admit the truth now, agree that Loveless was right and West had been played for a fool?
West thought back to the conversation he'd had with Loveless, to the casual way Loveless had been able to speak and make West do things. With a few words he'd prevented him from acting, from stopping the guards taking Gordon, for one. He'd felt no such compulsion when he'd spoken with Gordon, never believing he was doing anything against his will – it might be an illusion, but if so, it was a powerful one, throwing everything Loveless had said into a different light.
He'd almost made the worst mistake of his life, believing Loveless not because he spoke the truth but because somehow the work Inscape had done to his mind and body had corrupted him, making him a willing puppet of a man who clearly had no compunction in using that power to get rid of his only rival.
“Damn it.”
Before he could change his mind, West acted. The locking mechanism of the cell recognized him, the door sliding open even as he turned to where the guards stood – men like himself, men who owed much to Inscape and gave it their loyalty as unthinkingly as West himself once had – shooting both of them without a second thought.
“Come on,” West said, turning back to where Gordon still sat, his eyes wide at this turn of events. “Before I change my mind.”
Before someone else has me believing the things I should never have believed in the first place, things that were contrary to everything which ought to be self-evident if he'd just taken the time to think them through instead of letting Loveless play on his own fears like the consummate schemer he clearly was.
He wondered for the briefest of moments how Gordon was feeling right now, going in the blink of an eye from a man on the verge of execution to the subject of as fantastic a rescue attempt as in any novel.
“Why?” Gordon stood, following West toward the door. “I don't understand.”
“Later,” West said, hoping he'd have the chance to explain, certain now that his choice was the right one, no matter what the consequences.
The building began to lock down, of course, running through a series of countermeasures designed to prevent just what the two of them were now trying to do, West's enhanced strength being put into play more than once to force a door that hadn't quite closed in time.
“Will this do?” West asked, as Gordon headed toward the nearby computer terminal, one eye still on the half-closed door that was all which stood between themselves and the security guards who would inevitably come, probably sooner than either of them might want.
“Perfect,” Gordon said, sitting down.
His attention was fully engaged in moments, his fingers flying over the keyboard as he tried to put his plan into place. All West could hope was that he'd been right, this time at least, that Gordon was someone to be trusted and not the Machiavellian schemer Loveless had portrayed him. Time alone would tell which was the case, though West wasn't quite sure what the aftermath of all this would be if Loveless were right – he didn't want to think about that right now, not when all he could hear was the click of keys from behind him and the sound of running feet in the corridor.
“How much longer?” he asked, pressing himself against the door so he could get a better look at the corridor itself.
They were surrounded, that much was clear and utterly unsurprising. West hadn't expected an answer from the man who sat behind him, still furiously working at breaking into Inscape's system, and he didn't get one.
And then he did. A datastream, sudden and unexpected as a lightning strike, sending him to his knees. Dimly, West could hear the gun he'd been holding clatter to the ground and was unsurprised when he followed it all the way down – his stomach churned too, turning a slow and lazy loop before settling once more as he blinked his way back to some kind of consciousness.
He was on his back, head in Gordon's lap, the fingers which had been so busy on the keyboard now at rest – one of Gordon's hands gripped West's shoulder, almost a little too tight for comfort, while the fingers of the other on his hair. The touch was so light, for a moment West thought he had imagined it, only his enhanced senses telling him it was reality after all.
“West?”
He tried to speak, feeling as if he was learning words all over again, his voice a croak when it finally emerged.
“What happened?” He saw Gordon's smile, a little smug, and realized the answer for himself. “You did it?”
“With your help.” The grip Gordon had on West's shoulder tightened a fraction as he tried to move, determined to see if he was really free after all. If Gordon's promise held the weight he hoped it did. “Take it easy.”
“The guards?” He had to get up, they were still in danger.
“Somewhat the worse for wear too,” Gordon replied. He'd retrieved West's gun and pressed it into his hand, clearly realizing his need to be able to defend the two of them, even if he was under the impression there was nothing now to defend from. “A lot of upgrade in one fell swoop.”
The intercom system crackled into life, the intrusion unexpected – West's fingers tightened on the grip of the gun he held, wondering just what he might be called upon to do now.
“Damn you, Gordon.” Loveless' disembodied voice was full of anger, the words clearly almost choked out, and it didn't take much for West to imagine the little man, so angry he could almost burst. “What did you do?”
Gordon didn't move, made no effort to get up and answer Loveless' demand; they had all the time in the world, or so it seemed, and that was just fine by West right now.
Author: Graculus
Fandom: Wild Wild West (tv)
Characters/Pairings: West/Gordon
Rating/Category: PG slash
Genre: dystopian AU
Word Count: 13,690
Warnings none
Summary: After the war left him horribly injured, James West made a deal with the metaphorical devil and let Inscape have access to his brain, making him the perfect super-soldier. On a mission to pass sentence on a rogue scientist on Inscape's behalf, West finds that there's much more to what's inside his head than he could possibly have imagined and that the man he's come to kill holds more answers than he could possibly want.
Part 1
He should have expected it, of course. Outside the range of Gordon's jamming system, the feed came flooding back into West's head with the power of a blow and he would have gone to his knees if Gordon hadn't grabbed his arm just in time. He'd staggered, regardless of the support, the flood of information and software updates just too much for him to handle even though the implant meant his brain ought to be able to cope with so much data.
“Deep breaths,” Gordon's voice said, somewhere from outside the fuzz of sensory overload, and he tried to comply. The only other link to reality, to unaugmented life, was the feel of the grip Gordon had on his arm and West tried to concentrate on both of those, to use them as an anchor to hold onto a sanity he felt slipping away with every passing moment. “West? You still in there?”
“I think so,” West replied, although he was anything but as certain as he wanted to sound.
There was an edge to Gordon's voice he didn't like, a panic lurking at the back of the calmly-spoken words, that warmed West as surely as the feel of Gordon's hand still holding on.
“It's all too much.” West didn't want to elaborate – one of them panicking was enough to contend with right now.
“Okay.”
Gordon didn't sound convinced and West wasn't sure he could blame him. He wasn't certain himself that this would pass, that Inscape would let it pass, that they wouldn't instantly know everything the two of them had planned, his betrayal of the corporation that had put his life back together and for what? The words of a man he'd met only hours before?
If they knew, he realized, that would be the end of it. His eyes still resolutely closed, West tried to straighten his back and to look as if he wasn't a man whose mind was trying to tear itself to pieces and reassemble itself to accommodate all the new things the corporation needed it to know. He was waiting on the lightning strike, the blow from the heavens that would drive him to his knees as his treachery was uncovered once and for all.
It didn't come.
After a few more long minutes passed the buzz of new data began to slow to a trickle. When he was certain he wouldn't either throw up or pass out, or possibly both, West let his eyes open a crack, wanting to be sure that he was still in control, that some kind of crazy override hadn't been put in place. That Inscape's grip on his mind wasn't absolute, that he could still choose to do other than they might want...
The morning sun still looked the same, watery through the low cloud, and Gordon's face – the next place he looked- just as worried as might have been expected.
“West?”
His grip on West's arm didn't move in the slightest but he seemed to be readying himself to let go, to run for it if necessary – Gordon had to know how futile a gesture that would have been, the chances of escape so minimal – but still he was there, right beside West till he knew the worst. There was something about that which resonated strangely, a sense of camaraderie West hadn't expected to see again outside of uniform, and something more, something deeper that warmed him to the core.
“Still here.” Still in charge, that was the thing he didn't say, but there was no need. If the worst had happened, if Inscape had taken him over, they wouldn't be having any kind of conversation right now.
Gordon's face cracked into a smile and his grip tightened for a moment, the briefest of squeezes, before he let go. It seemed strange, the sudden absence of pressure and warmth – the software inside West's brain calculated the temperature drop, the reduction in skin tension – the part of him that remained human oddly registering the movement as loss even though Gordon was still standing right beside him.
“Time for these,” Gordon said, pulling out a set of electronic shackles. They weren't West's – he was an assassin, not a retrieval specialist, there was no need for restraints in his line of work – somehow he was reluctant to even touch them. “Come on,” Gordon continued, pressing one end to his wrist and watching how it coiled around, tightening just enough to be secure but not cause pressure on the skin. “I can't close the other one properly if I'm holding it.”
The synthetic material of the restraints was slick under West's fingers It was cool even where it already wrapped around Gordon's wrist, taking on no warmth from his body, or from West's hands where he held the remainder of it, letting Gordon press his other wrist to it and watching it move in an unnerving way, in mimicry of the life it now surrounded.
“Are you sure...” West began, uncertain of what he was asking. He hadn't let go of Gordon's hands, his fingers still loosely wrapped around the material of the restraints, synthetic and skin both under his touch, and Gordon hadn't pulled away.
“I trust you,” Gordon said quietly, the words enough in themselves to make West look up from his study of their hands to the other man's face, wanting to see the veracity behind them, to be sure Gordon understood the risks he was taking. Not just in doing this, the crazy idea of breaking into Inscape, but in trusting a man who had a wealth of Inscape technology inside his head. “Sounds crazy, I know.”
“It does,” West agreed. “We should get moving.”
He didn't want to let go, that much he knew without any degree of doubt, but they couldn't stand here indefinitely and the longer they waited the more chance there was of discovery. And he needed time to figure all of this out, to figure out the man who'd got him into all this, the man whose restraint-wrapped wrists he had now reluctantly let go, the man he'd been sent to kill.
Report.
Once back on-grid, West had expected the demand for a status update and when it came, he'd already figured out what to say. Not the truth, of course, another sign that he was in charge and not the technology inside his head – for now, at least, if Gordon was right about the purpose of most of it – and he wanted it to stay that way. His lies had to be plausible ones, nothing that would make the corporation suspicious, that would make some kind of override switch get thrown, the corporation taking control of West, body and soul.
Target apprehended - vital info for corp. Extraction requested.
A long silence. He couldn't be certain how his deviation from mission parameters would be received – how much leeway did he really have, anyway? - it was a gamble with both their lives. Inscape wouldn't kill him, he was much too valuable an asset for that, but they had the power to control everything he did and effectively destroy who he was. Gordon, he was certain, they'd kill without hesitation if the lie wasn't close enough to the truth to be believable.
Return to base approved.
A flurry of coordinates for an extraction point followed, nothing more, and he was still in control. No reprimand, no reminder of his mission objective, just four simple words that could be either a death sentence for them both or a chance for Gordon's crazy scheme to be put into play after all.
“West?”
He hadn't been that easy to read, had he? West was certain there'd been nothing in his expression, no telltale that would let Gordon know he'd been in communication with headquarters in addition to the flurry of data he would know about, the earlier influx of information that had literally staggered him.
“Sitrep.”
“Did they buy it?”
Not a flicker of doubt in Gordon's tone or in the expression on his face, trusting West was still on his side when he had every opportunity not to be and Gordon would never know till it was far too late for both of them.
West's hand tightened on the strap between the restraints – to the observing world, to Inscape's satellites, it would look as though Gordon was his prisoner, that he was dragging him back to face justice but in reality he felt as though this was all that anchored him to reality, a connection to Gordon that didn't raise questions.
“I hope so,” West replied. An honest answer, as Gordon deserved.
The extraction had been textbook precise, no questions asked about the deviation in plan by the men who picked them up – he'd pulled Gordon into the transport by the restraints, positioning him into a corner so he was shielded from the other Inscape employees. It was a typical flight, no smalltalk, just silence and the drone of the engines as they headed toward corporation headquarters.
He could see Gordon's face from the corner of his eye, feel the warmth of his body pressed up against him and also what seemed like the slightest of tremors from the other man's body. Gordon looked nervous, which was only natural, even when he caught West looking at him – at least he didn't react in any positive way, cognizant of what that kind of response might mean for both of them. West looked away, focusing on the passing scenery while wondering just what kind of reception they would both receive at Inscape when they arrived.
It proved to be an anti-climax, the transport crew throwing open the doors and letting him step out, Gordon pulled along behind him – no interference, no phalanx of armed guards waiting for them to emerge, just a long well-lit corridor heading out from the transport landing bay.
He didn't look round, didn't check to see if they were being watched – that much was certain, constant surveillance was a way of life within Inscape itself – just headed in the general direction of the main body of headquarters, wondering how far the two of them could get before they were challenged in any way.
Surprisingly far, as it turned out, the first response to West and Gordon's movement through the building a sudden arrival of armed guards as they crossed an otherwise abandoned lobby.
“Hold it.” West had already stopped, one hand raised and the other pulling Gordon by the restraints till he was stood directly behind West, no viable target for any of the newcomers if the standing order for Gordon was still assassination. “Explain yourself.”
He could feel Gordon's breath on the back of his neck, his solid presence behind him a distraction West really didn't need. The protection he provided by standing between Gordon and the men who stood in front of them was an illusion, he knew that, knowing as well as they did the capability of the weapons they held. But it was a gesture that made him feel better about the whole situation, a little more in control, and at the moment that was all that counted.
“My prisoner has vital intel.”
At least Gordon had enough sense to keep quiet, to let West do the talking – he shared a language with these men, had probably served with some of them even if he couldn't remember it – this was the best chance of both of them making it out of this alive and they both knew it.
“Your prisoner,” the squad leader said, “is under a death sentence.”
“Change of mission parameters was authorized,” West continued. Gordon shifted a little behind him, not quite putting himself into the line of fire but leaning just a little closer to West's back – the movement puzzled him, till he felt Gordon's fingers wrapping around where his fist closed over the restraints. The warmth grounded him, reassuring West he wasn't alone here, for the first time in longer than he could remember. “I was ordered to return to base.”
The squad leader didn't reply – West studied his face, wondering if he'd seen the man before, shared a foxhole with him perhaps? His own link to Inscape was quiet, strangely so given his proximity to the servers, but he was certain that wasn't the case for the other men.
“We'll accompany you.” It wasn't a question, there was no uncertainty in the words and no room for negotiation. “Dr Loveless wants to see you. Both of you.”
“Sir?”
The doorway in which the squad leader stood had slid open, soundlessly, at their approach. West hadn't heard permission given to enter but clearly it had been given as the man turned, beckoning the rest of them to follow him.
The room itself was a laboratory, at least mostly. One side was clean and metallic, all stainless steel and polished glass – the other was more ornate, more luxurious. Long velvet drapes covered much of the walls, heavy furniture looking out of place yet oddly right at the same time.
“Ah, Dr Gordon”, a man's voice said. West couldn't help staring a little at the source of that voice – a small man in a velvet suit, its color perfectly matched to that of the drapes, a rich dark purple. “So nice of you to join us.”
“The pleasure is all yours, Loveless,” Gordon said dryly. “I see the place hasn't changed since I've been away.”
“Only for the better,” Loveless replied, crossing the space between them and then stopping as if he wanted to study Gordon, to figure out what made him tick. To take him apart piece by piece, if necessary, to enable that to happen.
The men who'd escorted them here were ranged round where West and Gordon stood, closer than West would like but he found himself unable to think of a reason why he might ask for them to move away.
West found himself tensing, though Loveless himself presented no real threat to someone with West's training, let alone the enhancements his own corporation had made. Loveless was the CEO of Inscape, after all, and ought to know better than anyone what his subjects were capable of.
“Take him,” Loveless said suddenly. “Don't interfere, West,” he continued, those quiet words enough to freeze West where he stood, the strap between Gordon's restraints pulled from his unresisting fingers as Gordon was bundled out of the room.
One of his captors had a hand wrapped firmly across Gordon's mouth, stifling any complaint he might make at this treatment, at their forcible separation, his eyes still turned towards West in mute entreaty even as Gordon was dragged out of the door.
“Where are they taking him?” West asked, uncertain why he had obeyed so readily but starting to have an inkling of why that might be when he remembered what Gordon had told him before. Except that it felt right to do what this man asked of him, even if West couldn't remember why he should.
“I need to talk to you, West. Man to man.” It was as if West hadn't spoken, Loveless ignored his question so completely. “About the lies Artemus Gordon has told you. About Inscape, about yourself.”
“Lies?”
Loveless had rocked back on his heels a little as he spoke, hands shoved deep into his pockets, the very picture of a man completely at ease rather than a man alone with someone who could probably tear him limb from limb without breaking into a sweat.
“What did Gordon tell you?” Loveless' voice was relentless, almost hypnotic. “That he was the victim in all this, that Inscape was warped somehow and only he could set it right?” He pulled one long-fingered hand out to gesture with it expansively. “That he had some kind of plan to change everything, to write some wrong that had been done to you and the other recipients of Inscape technology, because my evil plans had corrupted all the good that he had done?”
Put like that, it sounded so ridiculous. How had he ever fallen for it? Except he remembered waking up, certain he ought to be dead because how could anyone show him mercy when he was trained – programmed? - not to show it to someone else, regardless of the circumstance? Gordon had been kind to him, reassured him and he'd trusted the other man because of it.
“None of that happened,” Loveless insisted, as if he knew the way West's thoughts were running. He grabbed hold of one of West's sleeves, turning him to face the full-length mirror that hung between the drapes on one wall of the room. “The whole encounter between you and Gordon was in your mind, none of it was real. Artemus Gordon doesn't give a damn about anyone but himself and certainly not about you.”
They looked ridiculous, the two of them stood there so different and yet so alike – the mirror was distorted somehow, making Loveless look far taller than he was and making West look like every carnival freak show inhabitant there ever was rolled into one. All West could see was his scars, the parts of himself that Inscape had repaired and replaced, and still Loveless continued to talk, his voice low.
“He played on your weaknesses, West, weaknesses he programmed in to the very software in your brain, preparing you and those like you in case this day ever came and he needed an assistant, a way back into Inscape that would allow him to still keep his hands clean.” Loveless laughed then, an ironic cackle. “As if his hands were ever clean!”
It was too much to process, an overload not of data but of emotions, Loveless' account of his meeting with Gordon and his memories in head-on collision, till neither of them seemed completely real. He needed a chance to think, needed time and objectivity to process all of this, to make sense of two such conflicting accounts and figure out if there was any truth to either of them.
“Now do you understand, West, why I sent you to kill him?” Loveless asked. He'd walked away from the mirror now, leaving West alone in front of it, climbing onto a stool beside a workbench, as if the whole conversation were secondary to whatever work he was undertaking, a distraction from the everyday. “Gordon's too dangerous to live. I cannot allow him to roam the world with such power at his command!”
“What do you want me to do?” West asked, turning to where Loveless sat. The doctor's clever fingers were tinkering with something West didn't recognize, even as he thought about what West was asking, his head cocked to one side, eyes bright. “Should I complete my mission?” Loveless resembled a bird, West thought, deciding which worm to select.
“Why not?” Loveless replied. He dropped the device he was tinkering with, clearly uninterested in how it fell when it hit something else on the workbench then clattered to the floor unheeded. “Yes, West. I want you to kill Artemus Gordon.”
It was all so clear now. He'd been played for a fool, though he had no understanding of why – what had Gordon stood to gain from tricking him this way, from getting himself brought back into Inscape?Nothing good, West was certain of that, and hardly the altruistic actions Gordon had told him about, this desire to free the other recipients of Inscape technology from a captivity he had forced on them in the first place!
He didn't trust Loveless either, but that didn't matter at all. They were probably more alike than they cared to admit, Loveless and Gordon, both wanting to use him in their own ways. The ironic thing was, if Gordon had been honest with him in the first place he might have just left him alive, finding some excuse why he couldn't fulfill his mission without jeopardizing his own future the way he had.
At least now Loveless was giving him a way back into Inscape's favor, a way to repay them for all the things the corporation had given him, for giving West back his life, such as it was.
The door to the detention level slid open silently. West could feel the scrutiny of the guards, the ever-present security cameras whose feed he could tap into if he wanted, the weight of the firearm in his hand. This was the right thing to do, the only thing.
“Gordon?”
“Cell 3.”
West nodded his acknowledgment, then carried on walking. The other cells he passed were occupied too – a man with his head in his hands, a woman curled up into a fetal ball on a padded bench – but West had no interest in any of them. Gordon was all that mattered, Gordon and the successful completion of his mission.
Like the other cells, this one's front wall and door were transparent, iris recognition controls embedded in the wall on one side. His approach had been silent but somehow Gordon seemed to know he was there, looking up as West stopped before the door, the expression on his face mingled hope and concern.
He was a good actor, West had to give him that. Combined with whatever his software had done to West's cerebral cortex, Gordon had given a convincing performance of someone who gave a damn. If Loveless was right and he was an amoral bastard, then the performance was even more impressive, since Gordon could hardly be said to be playing to type.
Gordon half-rose from the padded bench on which he had been sitting, then saw the gun West was holding and froze in place for a moment before sitting down once more.
“This isn't a rescue, is it?”
Despite everything, Gordon's voice was still calm. West shook his head, still wondering exactly how Gordon had done it – how much had been him and how much the software? Would he have ever realized he'd been tricked or had Gordon planned to kill him when his help was no longer needed, once he'd played his part and got the other man safely into Inscape, letting the fox in the proverbial chicken coop for the final time?
“I trusted you,” West said, certain those words would be enough to tell Gordon he knew everything, that Loveless had told him enough to know he'd been tricked, that he now knew the truth. “But none of it was real.”
None of it, not even the desire that had led him to share Gordon's bed, the response to that desire he'd believed he'd seen in Gordon's eyes. All of it a lie, a self-serving one at that, in more ways than West could possibly have imagined.
“Is that what he told you?” Gordon hadn't moved, though it would have been futile if he had, there was nowhere to hide now. “That you imagined it all, that everything I told you, everything you felt, was a lie?” He leaned back, his head resting against the cell wall. “If I was so clever, so powerful, West, how come I'm the one in here?”
“You made me do what you wanted,” West replied. He didn't know why he'd leaned forward as Gordon had moved, why his free hand was now pressed against the wall by Gordon's cell, his face almost against the Plexiglas of the cell wall. “It was all in my mind, in the Inscape implants, I didn't have a choice.”
“So kill me,” Gordon replied, “if you're so certain I've tricked you into doing anything you didn't want to do. I'm dead anyway now Inscape have me back.”
The words were quiet, almost resigned – when he'd finished speaking, Gordon looked down as if done with the conversation, unmoving even as West continued to watch his face, wanting to see the truth but suddenly uncertain if he'd recognize it if he did. They couldn't both be telling the truth, but what did Gordon have to gain from continuing to lie to him?
He couldn't possibly expect West to rescue him from the mess he now found himself in, detained in the very heart of Inscape headquarters – that was the stuff of old-style movie plots, not real life, one man against a corporation always ended badly – so why not admit the truth now, agree that Loveless was right and West had been played for a fool?
West thought back to the conversation he'd had with Loveless, to the casual way Loveless had been able to speak and make West do things. With a few words he'd prevented him from acting, from stopping the guards taking Gordon, for one. He'd felt no such compulsion when he'd spoken with Gordon, never believing he was doing anything against his will – it might be an illusion, but if so, it was a powerful one, throwing everything Loveless had said into a different light.
He'd almost made the worst mistake of his life, believing Loveless not because he spoke the truth but because somehow the work Inscape had done to his mind and body had corrupted him, making him a willing puppet of a man who clearly had no compunction in using that power to get rid of his only rival.
“Damn it.”
Before he could change his mind, West acted. The locking mechanism of the cell recognized him, the door sliding open even as he turned to where the guards stood – men like himself, men who owed much to Inscape and gave it their loyalty as unthinkingly as West himself once had – shooting both of them without a second thought.
“Come on,” West said, turning back to where Gordon still sat, his eyes wide at this turn of events. “Before I change my mind.”
Before someone else has me believing the things I should never have believed in the first place, things that were contrary to everything which ought to be self-evident if he'd just taken the time to think them through instead of letting Loveless play on his own fears like the consummate schemer he clearly was.
He wondered for the briefest of moments how Gordon was feeling right now, going in the blink of an eye from a man on the verge of execution to the subject of as fantastic a rescue attempt as in any novel.
“Why?” Gordon stood, following West toward the door. “I don't understand.”
“Later,” West said, hoping he'd have the chance to explain, certain now that his choice was the right one, no matter what the consequences.
The building began to lock down, of course, running through a series of countermeasures designed to prevent just what the two of them were now trying to do, West's enhanced strength being put into play more than once to force a door that hadn't quite closed in time.
“Will this do?” West asked, as Gordon headed toward the nearby computer terminal, one eye still on the half-closed door that was all which stood between themselves and the security guards who would inevitably come, probably sooner than either of them might want.
“Perfect,” Gordon said, sitting down.
His attention was fully engaged in moments, his fingers flying over the keyboard as he tried to put his plan into place. All West could hope was that he'd been right, this time at least, that Gordon was someone to be trusted and not the Machiavellian schemer Loveless had portrayed him. Time alone would tell which was the case, though West wasn't quite sure what the aftermath of all this would be if Loveless were right – he didn't want to think about that right now, not when all he could hear was the click of keys from behind him and the sound of running feet in the corridor.
“How much longer?” he asked, pressing himself against the door so he could get a better look at the corridor itself.
They were surrounded, that much was clear and utterly unsurprising. West hadn't expected an answer from the man who sat behind him, still furiously working at breaking into Inscape's system, and he didn't get one.
And then he did. A datastream, sudden and unexpected as a lightning strike, sending him to his knees. Dimly, West could hear the gun he'd been holding clatter to the ground and was unsurprised when he followed it all the way down – his stomach churned too, turning a slow and lazy loop before settling once more as he blinked his way back to some kind of consciousness.
He was on his back, head in Gordon's lap, the fingers which had been so busy on the keyboard now at rest – one of Gordon's hands gripped West's shoulder, almost a little too tight for comfort, while the fingers of the other on his hair. The touch was so light, for a moment West thought he had imagined it, only his enhanced senses telling him it was reality after all.
“West?”
He tried to speak, feeling as if he was learning words all over again, his voice a croak when it finally emerged.
“What happened?” He saw Gordon's smile, a little smug, and realized the answer for himself. “You did it?”
“With your help.” The grip Gordon had on West's shoulder tightened a fraction as he tried to move, determined to see if he was really free after all. If Gordon's promise held the weight he hoped it did. “Take it easy.”
“The guards?” He had to get up, they were still in danger.
“Somewhat the worse for wear too,” Gordon replied. He'd retrieved West's gun and pressed it into his hand, clearly realizing his need to be able to defend the two of them, even if he was under the impression there was nothing now to defend from. “A lot of upgrade in one fell swoop.”
The intercom system crackled into life, the intrusion unexpected – West's fingers tightened on the grip of the gun he held, wondering just what he might be called upon to do now.
“Damn you, Gordon.” Loveless' disembodied voice was full of anger, the words clearly almost choked out, and it didn't take much for West to imagine the little man, so angry he could almost burst. “What did you do?”
Gordon didn't move, made no effort to get up and answer Loveless' demand; they had all the time in the world, or so it seemed, and that was just fine by West right now.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-04-07 10:57 am (UTC)One bit:
His attention was fully engaged in moments, his fingers flying over the as he tried to put his plan into place.
You missed "keyboard" here. I do that myself from time to time when I'm editing.
Thanks so much for the new story!
no subject
Date: 2012-04-07 12:30 pm (UTC)And thanks also for pointing out the missing word, now added. ;)
no subject
Date: 2012-04-07 11:38 pm (UTC)