![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hexmixEthan stood right where Chris had left him, as still as he possibly could, determined not to let on how the shoes they’d forced on him pinched, or how cold he was in only the same gray sweats, the creeping chill of whatever half-collapsed tunnel they’d been dumped in eating through that sad barrier like it was nothing.
He did turn, slightly, mostly looking out of the corner of his eye, as the bound man was frogmarched over.
Ethan hadn’t seen him before that morning, when he’d spotted him being shoved into a transport van identical to the one Ethan was being loaded into, but was guessing his circumstances weren’t all that different from Ethan’s.
Too dangerous to be let loose, not dangerous enough to be put down.
Although, Ethan considered, taking in the sheer amount of restraints the man was swaddled in–there was an actual straightjacket, what kind of Silence of the Lambs shit was this–he was adjusting his estimate a little.
“--don’t think so,” Chris said, his voice echoing down the tunnel to them. He sounded pissed. “This is my operation, my team. Accepting your pet liability is as much as I’m willing to–”
Ethan turned more fully towards the sound of his voice, catching the smirk the bound man directed at one of his handlers as he did so.
“--so don’t start trying to tell me how to do my damn job,” Chris continued. Ethan could barely make out the breadth of his back, discernable as Chris solely because of his size, his black tactical wear lost in the poor lighting of the tunnel.
“Wonder how much it’ll set things back,” the bound man said, drawing Ethan’s attention, “if I were to, oh I don’t know, decide not to cooperate. What with Golden Boy back there on the warpath.”
“Don’t fucking dare,” one of the handlers said. There were three of them, which was more than Ethan had ever been assigned, even after he, ah. After there’d been complications.
The man merely smiled and hummed, self-satisfied. “I told you I’d make you all regret it,” he said, disturbingly calmly, considering all three handlers froze up, their expressions a varying array of shock, fear, and wide-eyed panic, as if they were all bracing for extreme violence.
“Make them regret it somewhere else,” Ethan said. “I don’t need whatever fucking shit this is.”
The handlers jerked to face him, one of them even looking around to, Ethan guessed, try to locate where his own handler was. The bound man turned his eyes–a very, very pale color that looked almost white in the shit lighting–to Ethan slowly, the smile never dropping from his scarred lips.
“Sorry for the imposition, friend,” he said, his smile widening as he looked Ethan over. “No hard feelings.”
Ethan glared at him. “Consider that fair warning, friend,” he said, his anger, thankfully, boiling up over the panic that had started to set in. He’d done everything he’d been told. Chris had been doing everything he’d been told, doing everything he could all so that Ethan could have this. Could have this chance. And now this fucker was out here about to pull some kind of..of tantrum that would undoubtedly fuck it all up.
“I don’t give a shit about whatever issues you have with them,” and he gestured, a quick slash of his hand, in the direction of the handlers, which caused at least one of them to flinch, “do not do anything to fuck this up for me.”
“Oh,” the man said, his grin cutting wider, “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Alright,” Chris barked, his footsteps loud as he stormed towards them, “Here’s how it’s going to go.” He came to a stop between Ethan and the handlers, his bulk a familiar barrier. “Get those restraints off him and get back to the surface.”
“But–” one of the handlers tried to protest, his voice edging towards frantic.
“Do it,” Chris said, his own tone leaving no room for compromise. “Your boss isn’t the one giving the orders down here. You don’t like it, you can take him and leave.”
“Don’t you know what he is?” another one of them tried. None of them, Ethan noticed, having to shuffle over to even see around Chris, had made a move to do what they’d been told.
“Told you what you could do if you had a problem,” Chris said, and he was standing at fucking parade rest now, his voice settling into the obnoxiously neutral tone he used when he was getting ready to be real damned stubborn.
“You’re insane,” the same handler repeated, but moved to start jerkingly removing the other man’s restraints. “You’re going to get us all killed.”
Ethan could practically sense Chris rolling his eyes. “You’re going to be waiting up in Control. You get your ass killed up there, that’s your business, and more importantly, not my problem.” He strode a few steps forward so he could address the bound man directly. Ethan followed at his right, keeping the practiced two steps behind.
“Karl Heisenberg,” Chris said, finally giving Ethan a name for the smirking bastard, “You’re being loaned out to Hound Wolf Squad for a Cat 6 DELVE operation. In accordance with BSAA Rouen protocols, you must formally give your assent to cooperate in this mission.”
The handlers had been begrudgingly working him out of his restraints, and though he made no move to touch them, they would occasionally jerk back, almost as if they’d been shocked.
Heisenberg worked one of his arms free of the straightjacket as a handler was pulling it off of him, immediately setting to rotating his shoulder, which popped. Loudly. “Formally, informally,” he said, sounding amused, “I do, to honor and obey, till death do us part, yadda yadda. That good enough for you, big guy?”
Chris just stared at him for a beat before continuing as if he hadn’t spoken at all. “For the duration of this mission you will be acting as an official transfer to Hound Wolf Squad, which makes me your CO. Your code name for the duration of the mission is Feral–”
“Hold on,” Heisenberg butt in, the smile wiped off his face by an expression of seemingly genuine offense, “but what the fuck is that–”
“Why not go with Rabies,” Ethan said, still glaring at him. “Or Mange.”
One of the handlers snickered, which made Ethan disproportionately pissed off at them instead.
Heisenberg shot him a narrow look but all he said, his voice low, flat, was, “Careful.”
Chris sighed, but continued manfully on, like a recording of himself, “Failure to follow orders, putting team members in danger, and unauthorized use of force will all result in immediate expulsion from the Rouen Program.”
Heisenberg seemed to perk up at that, looking back to Chris with a considering expression. “What, no slap on the wrist? Gone just like that?”
“I shouldn’t need to repeat that this is a Cat 6 DELVE. Cat 4 and above transfer rite of expulsion and, in extreme circumstances, rite of execution, to the purview of the CO,” Chris replied.
Heisenberg blinked, shook his other arm free of the straightjacket, and said, “Huh.”
With the rest of the restraints gone, the handlers just stood around casting shifty glances between Heisenberg and Chris, one of them still holding the straightjacket up as if expecting Heisenberg to slip right back into it.
“So I ask again,” Chris said, “In accordance with BSAA Rouen protocols, for your formal assent in–”
“Yeah, yeah,” Heiseberg grumbled, rolling his eyes and rubbing absently at a wrist, “I get it. I step out of line and you can off me.” He rolled his neck, popping it with a groan of satisfaction. “Well,” he added, the grin returning, “you can try, anyway.”
Ethan wanted to meet the veiled threat with one of his own. Knew this asshole was just trying to rile one of them up, him if not Chris, for whatever revenge he was looking to get on his handlers, or the BSAA, or who the fuck ever, Ethan still didn’t give a shit. He bristled all the same.
Chris, on the other hand, didn’t even act like he’d heard, instead turned to the handlers and said, his raised voice echoing ominously down the tunnel, “You had your orders.”
The one holding the straightjacket turned and left immediately. The other two waited just a moment more, exchanging a glance, before they too headed back up the tunnel towards the lift that would take them straight to Control. “Your funeral,” one of them called back, the voice nothing next to Chris’ boom, but echoing strangely all the same, feeling, to Ethan, whose nerves had already been shot before all this posturing bullshit, like some kind of a spell. Or a curse.
“So,” Heisenberg said, looking between the two of them, his brows arching, Ethan assumed, at the sudden dearth of handlers, “what the hell is a DELVE operation?”
