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izzyfandoms · 5 years ago

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Chosen - Chapter One

(This is a Gender-Swapped Sanders Sides high school au)

SUMMARY: Logan Berry, Dee Ceite, Patricia Foster, Virginia Picani and Regina and Rena Prince are all 16-year-old high school students. They live relatively normal lives, with ordinary lessons and ordinary crushes and ordinary families, until one day a monster shows up and attacks them after class, and everything suddenly changes.

SHIPS: Moxiety, Logince, Dukeceit

WARNINGS: Minor violence, minor sexual implications (Remus), Remus being Remus, swearing, sympathetic Deceit, sympathetic Remus

GENERAL TAGLIST: @quillfics42 @ajdraws0430 @phantomofthesanderssides @creativity-killed-thekitten @phlying-squirrel @sly-is-my-name-loving-is-my-game

Masterpost

NEXT CHAPTER

“Does this lipstick match my eyeshadow?” Regina spun around in her chair, away from the mirror, to pout her lips at her twin sister, Rena, who was standing on her bed, lacing up her boots.

“Who cares if they match?” Rena jumped off the bed, running her fingers through her unbrushed hair and bouncing over to Regina’s side of the room. “What matters is whether or not the lipstick tastes good.”

“It’s not flavoured.”

Rena laughed, picking up the tube of lipstick and flicking off the lid. “Everything has a flavour if you’re not a coward,” She exclaimed, and, with that, she took a bite of lipstick, removing almost half of it, chewing on it thoughtfully as her sister screamed at her.

“Rena!” Regina screeched, snatching it back and holding it protectively to her chest. “That was brand new!”

Rena grinned, unremorseful, showing off two rows of lipstick-stained teeth. Regina sighed, putting the cap back on and putting it back in the drawer of her desk, pushing it shut.

She looked her sister up and down, one eyebrow raised. “Are you really wearing that to school?”

“What’s wrong with my outfit?”

Regina crossed her arms. “It’s identical to mine! The only differences are the colours and the fact that I wear it so much better than you!”

It was true, Rena was wearing a green, black and silver short-sleeved dress that was identical in every way except colour to Regina’s red, white and gold one.

Rena blew a raspberry, marching over to their shared closet and pulling out a denim jacket. It was stained with colours that would never wash out, and was one of the ugliest jackets either of them had ever seen, but that was why it was her favourite.

She pulled it on and grinned again, an unchewed piece of lipstick falling from her lips and landing on the carpet. Rena crushed it underfoot. “See, now we look different! Plus, my boots are so much cooler than yours. Hey, what if I pulled out someone’s intestines and wore them like a scarf, would that suit me?”

Regina ignored that last part, but still wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Rena, your boots don’t even match! One’s green and one’s pink, they don’t go together at all.” She pinched the bridge of her nose and spun around, picking her phone up from the dresser. “Did I absorb all the fashion sense in the womb, you… early 2000s reject.”

“Is that the best you got, you wrinkled duck’s penis?”

“Okay, that one was weird, even for you.”

Rena pouted exaggeratedly, slouching. “Uh, everyone knows a duck’s penis looks super weird, it’s like, common knowledge or something.”

“It is most certainly not common knowledge, you’re just a weirdo.” Regina then began to scroll through her phone, eyes lighting up slightly.

Rena straightened up, moving to see what her sister was looking at. It was exactly what she’d expected it to be – a picture of a school schedule, one that most certainly wasn’t hers.

“Ugh,” Rena groaned. “You’re looking at Logan’s schedule again. Isn’t that a bit stalkery? You complain when I talk about all my future crimes, and yet you do this? Hypocrite. I hate you.”

Regina glanced up. “Okay, first of all: you, like, go into such graphic detail about how you’ll murder people and eat their hearts, it’s disgusting. And, second of all: you cannot talk. You literally ate a photo of Dee, like, yesterday, and it definitely wasn’t the first time you’ve done that. You shouldn’t eat paper, you Queen of (eating) Hearts”

Rena blew another raspberry, wrapping her fingers around Regina’s wrist and beginning to drag her sister towards the bedroom door, picking up her school bag on the way. It was neon green and horrifically ugly, as expected. There were dozens of ripped stickers stuck to the straps.

“C’mon, Gina, we’re gonna be late for school. You can think about Logan and have some alone time later.”

Regina raised an eyebrow. “Have some-” Her face twisted in disgust when she realised what Rena was referring to. “Rena, what? No, I’m not- that’s gross! I don’t wanna talk about that, you’ve got to stop bringing it up!” She yanked her hand out of her sister’s grip, but Rena just shrugged.

“It’s a natural human thing, nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, I recently-”

“Nope! No, no, nope. I refuse to listen to this.” Regina picked up her backpack and slung it over her shoulder, before placing her fingers in her ears and screwing her eyes shut. “La, La, La. I can’t hear you!”

Rena hummed in thought, before cupping her hands around her mouth and shouting. “Hey, what if you and Logan fucked!”

Regina screeched in offended horror, eyes opening to glare at Rena, just as their dad, Philip, walked in. There was only a slight look of disappointment on his face.

“Girls, please,” He sighed. “My little Duchess, my precious Princess, what did we talk about?”

“No inappropriate language in the house.” Rena droned, pouting. “But, dad, I was just-”

He held up a finger in front of her mouth. “Now, now, no arguments. You’re going to be late for school if we don’t leave in a few minutes. Your lunches are in the fridge and there’s toast on the counter, you can eat it in the car.”

Rena sighed – though she was mostly annoyed at the thought of school, not their father’s interruption – as Regina smirked victoriously.

“Come on, oh, evil twin of mine, I wanna make it in time to meet Pat before school.”

***

A few hours had passed since morning, and the twins were in their final period – Mr Sanders’ chemistry class. They were sharing a desk at the back of the classroom, and were both paying more attention to scribbling their crushes’ names in their respective notebooks than to the lesson itself, as usual.

“Regina Prince, Rena Prince,” Mr Sanders called, and the girls looked up in unison. “Logan Berry and Dee Ceite, can the four of you please stay behind after class? I have some things I need to talk to you about.”

Dee and Logan were sat at the front of the room: the two girls having been actually paying attention to the lesson. They glanced back at the twins at the announcement, looking them over and the sisters blushed lightly as they made momentary eye contact.

Dee was very traditionally beautiful, with vitiligo covering the left side of her face, heterochromia, long black hair and an elegance about her that Rena found entrancing. She’d been in the same class as the twins since elementary school, and Rena’s crush had existed for just as long, never fading. Logan had perfectly neat hair that went just past chin-length, square glasses and an intelligence that surpassed that of almost everyone else in the school. Regina was almost certainly in love with her.

Rena leant over to whisper in her sister’s ear.

“Dee looks like such a snack today. I’d let her slit my throat with that eyeliner. I hope she slits my throat with that eyeliner.”

Regina rolled her eyes. “Could you be any weirder?” Rena opened her mouth, but Regina interrupted her before she could speak. “Okay, no, it’s you. Of course, you can be weirder.”

The student sitting closest to them gave the twins a weird look, pulling up the hood of his hoodie, before turning back to his work. In Rena’s opinion, he should have been used to this by now, as he’d been sitting near them all year.

Mr Sanders cleared his throat, and the sisters glanced back at him. He raised an eyebrow, before turning back to the power-point.

“What sounds better?” Regina whispered to her sister. “Regina Berry or Logan Prince?”

Rena hummed in thought, picking at her teeth and flicking a crumb of lipstick to the ground. “Regina Berry,” She decided. “I don’t want people to know we’re related.”

Regina nodded in agreement. “Smart, I don’t want to be associated with you either.”

After a few more words exchanged, they went back to scribbling in their notebooks. Regina had finally decided to make some notes on the lesson they were supposed to be paying attention to, but Rena had instead elected to work on the next chapter of her disgustingly graphic Toy Story 3 fanfiction. It was horrendous, and insanely popular online.

The lesson ended shortly afterwards, and the twins packed up their things, though they stayed in the classroom as their teacher had instructed.

Regina sat on the edge of her desk, crossing her legs and smoothing out the skirt of her dress. She and Rena had chosen to sit by the window, so she often stared out at the seemingly endless forest at the edge of the school grounds. The thick tree branches created a dense canopy of leaves that her eyes couldn’t breach, and she often found herself wondering what lay beneath them. It was unspoken rule across town that nobody entered the forest – people went missing there, on practically a monthly basis – but she and Rena had often stood at its edges, wondering what adventures lay beyond.

She shifted closer to the window. It had been raining earlier, so there was condensation creeping at the corners. A smile played at the corners of her lips as she pressed her finger to the glass and doodled a heart.

“What do you think Mr Sanders wants?”

Regina jolted in surprise, spinning around and coming face to face with Logan. She was stood beside a grinning Rena, who was making obscene gestures with her fingers that Dee had absolutely noticed by now; she was covering her mouth with a gloved hand as she chuckled. Fortunately, Logan was far too oblivious to notice or understand, saving Regina her last shred of decency. Mr Sanders was nowhere to be seen.

“No clue!” Rena answered for her, hair bouncing with her constant movement. “What do you think, Dee? Do you think he plans to kill us?”

Dee shrugged. “I doubt he plans to murder us, but we don’t exactly have much in common.”

“Yeah,” Regina agreed, looking around again, brow creased. “Where did Mr Sanders go, anyway? I didn’t see him leave.”

“He said he’d be back in a few minutes.” Logan adjusted her glasses. “He also said there’d be two more students joining us, though he didn’t specify who.”

“Wonder if we did anything wrong?” Rena piped up, moving to sit on a desk, swinging her legs. “I mean, yesterday I switched all the science textbooks with the language textbooks and all the English textbooks with the math ones, but I don’t think that’s it.”

Logan gave her a disbelieving look. “Why?”

“I’m a being of chaos.”

Dee looked like she was trying not to smile, and there was a definite fondness in her eyes as she stared at Rena. She looked like she was about to speak up, when the classroom door opened, and all four girls immediately turned in that direction.

Two girls their age walked in: Patricia Foster and Virginia Picani, better known to their friends as Pat and Virge. They’d been dating since middle school, and, if asked, Regina would definitely call them her OTP; she’d helped them get together after all.

Pat was short and liked to wear her hair in pigtails. Her wrists were always covered in hair-ties, and she mostly wore t-shirts and skirts with a pastel blue colour scheme. Her girlfriend, Virge, was her complete opposite – tall and lanky with short purple hair and a black and purple colour scheme. The pair were holding hands when they walked in, and Pat squealed when she spotted the four crowded around Regina and Rena’s desk.

“Regina!” Pat exclaimed. “Rena! Logan! Dee! My four favourite people!” She paused, before giving her girlfriend a smile. “Apart from you, of course, angel. Oh, and apart from my moms, too! But, other than that you’re my favourite.”

Virge gave a small smile back, squeezing Pat’s hand.

“Patricia, Virge.” Logan pushed her glasses further up her nose. “I assume you’re also here for Mr Sanders? He mentioned there were two more people coming.”

“Yup!” Patricia exclaimed, half-dragging Virge over to the group. “I dunno why we’re here, though.”

“Neither do we,” Dee said. “But he said he’d be back soon. I wonder if we’re in trouble.”

Pat’s expression dropped, her eyes widening. “We’re in trouble?” She squeaked. “I don’t wanna be in trouble! What-”

“I doubt we’re in trouble, Pat.” Virge interrupted, hesitating for a second before pressing a reassuring kiss to the back of her girlfriend’s hand. “You haven’t done anything wrong; all the teachers love you.”

“Aww!” Regina squealed, grinning widely. “You guys are, like, couple goals.”

She tried not to glance at Logan, she really did, but she failed, of course, and the two made eye contact, before looking away in unison. Her plight was obviously noticeable, as Patricia giggled and Dee snorted. Rena made another obscene gesture that everyone politely ignored, though Pat glanced away uncomfortably.

About a minute passed, and the classroom door swung open again, Mr Sanders finally stepping back inside. There was a large ink stain on his shirt that hadn’t been there before, and he was carrying himself differently. It was… uncomfortable, to say the least.

He smiled – flat and lifeless – as he looked them over, stepping closer.

“Girls, it’s good to see you again.”

Logan raised an eyebrow. “It’s only been a few minutes, Sir.”

“Perhaps.”

There was a whole minute of silence following that, and even Rena was fidgeting uncomfortably by the end of it.

“You know what,” Mr Sanders broke the silence, stretching and cracking his back. “I’ve never been very good at this part – I’m not much of an actor – so let’s just get this over with.” And, with that, he unhinged his jaw, and three inky black tentacles shot out from the back of his throat, each coated with spikes.

Regina yanked Logan out of their way just in time, as did Virge with Pat. Dee managed to dodge the third on her own, as Rena was too busy staring at their teacher with curious horror and possibly even minor jealousy to notice.

Dee grabbed the back of Rena’s jacket, dragging her away from the monster and scrambling closer to the back of the room with the rest of the girls. Their teacher was stood between them and the door, they were cornered.

“What the fuck are you?” Rena asked in slight awe. Dee sighed, moving to grab the shorter girl’s wrist, ready to drag her out of danger again if necessary.

Mr Sanders chuckled darkly, the appendages retreating back down his throat. An ink-like substance dripped from his eyes, ears, mouth and nose, his hair was also coated with it, having been splattered by the ink-covered tentacles.

“Does it matter?” He said smoothly. “You’re going to die anyway.”

The inky black liquid moved to coat his left arm, turning it into a much larger and much more menacing appendage with a giant claw at the end. It then jolted forward in a burst of speed, stretching inhumanly, snatching up Regina and tugging her towards him. She screamed, naturally, and even the monster winced at the ear-splitting sound.

“There’s no point in struggling.” He held her in place. “There’s no one close enough to hear you.”

His jaw unhinged again, but the black liquid formed hundreds of razor-sharp teeth instead this time, and he used his human arm – which was still abnormally strong – to move her head to the side, baring her neck.

She continued screaming and wriggling, and multiple black limbs had to burst from his chest to keep the other girls from trying to help her. The appendages were sticky like slime, and held the girls to the wall with no room for movement

“You’ll make a delicious meal.” He cackled deviously, moving slowly to savour it, his teeth just inches from her throat.

“No! No, please-” Regina begged, before being suddenly interrupted by a figure bursting through the window and landing at her feet.

It was a second storey window, making it slightly more impressive.

The figure stood up straight, revealing herself to be a woman with a messy ponytail, leather jacket, sunglasses and two large daggers, one in each hand. She used them to quickly slice off the appendages protruding from his chest, freeing the other girls and causing their teacher to writhe, scream and drop Regina.

Logan and Rena grabbed her arms immediately, tugging her back to the slightly safer area.

“Remy Starlight.” The monster hissed, in a voice that most certainly wasn’t their teacher’s. “We meet again.”

She sighed loudly, irritated, dropping one of the daggers and pulling a large needle full of dark red liquid – blood, perhaps – from her pocket.

“Unfortunately.”

Then, before anyone, even the monster, could react, she plunged the needle into his neck, injecting all of its contents with one swift move, before yanking it out and stuffing it back into one of the pockets of her jeans, looking only mildly inconvenienced.

The monster screamed in intense pain, falling to his knees, and, a few moments later, gallons of inky black liquid gushed from their teacher’s face – a horrifying sight, honestly, some of it even splashed on the terrified teenagers. It didn’t take long for it to finally finish leaving his body, and Mr Sanders collapsed to the ground, barely conscious. Remy hardly even reacted though, slicing her palm with the dagger she still held, and letting a few drops of blood hit the bubbling pool of ink. It hissed for a few moments, before dissolving entirely, and there were a few moments of silence before she turned to the teenagers, wiping a drop of inky blood from her face with her thumb and giving all six of them a simultaneous gay crisis.

“Are you girls okay?” She asked, picking up the dropped dagger and sheathing both of them, placing a hand on her hip. “None of you were bit, right? ‘Cos that would be, like, super bad.”

Logan was the first to speak up.

“Uh… no? I don’t believe so.”

Remy nodded slowly, humming in thought, before turning to the man on the floor, watching as he began to regain consciousness.

“Jeez, Tommy, I leave you alone for less than a day and you get possessed? That’s not very ‘chosen one’ of you.”

Thomas coughed, stumbling as she helped him up. “I’m not the chosen one, remember? That’s… that’s kinda the point.” His voice was rough, and traces of the inky liquid dripped from the corners of his mouth.

He looked up at his six stunned students, giving them a rather sheepish look.

“I’m sorry for that, girls. That’s not exactly how I wanted to introduce you to this.”

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vernonfielding · 5 years ago

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Life Writes Its Own Stories

Chapter 12. (AO3.)

Leo James looked like hell, faced bruised all over, eyes bloodshot and swollen. The Narcan may have saved him from an overdose death, but Jake thought it was going to take a while to recover from what must have been a brutal assault.

He made Jake and Rosa close his hospital room door before he would talk. His voice was thin and rough, like he’d been strangled on top of everything else.

A cop is running Jazzy Pants, Leo told them. No, he didn’t know the cop’s name. The cop has a few mid-level street dealers on the front lines doing the actual dirty work. He promised to protect them if things turn, but one of them got freaked and snitched to Leo. Leo’s been trying to leak to Jake, but there’s been an ugly vibe on the streets, and he was nervous. He never saw the guys who took him down – it happened fast, and after they’d beat him they’d dosed him with the Jazzy Pants and left him for dead.

“Been a long time since I was this scared,” Leo said.

“Looks like you were smart to be scared,” Rosa said.

Leo nodded, and Jake patted him vaguely on the arm. What Leo had given them was huge, but Jake had no idea what to do with it, where to even begin investigating one of their own on so little information.

“We’ve got an officer watching your room. Try to get some rest.” Jake turned to leave, but Leo grabbed for him.

“Not done yet, Peralta,” he said. Leo nodded toward a chair near the door, where a stack of clothes was neatly folded. “The jacket on top. Inner pocket.”

Jake raised an eyebrow at Rosa, who shrugged. He picked up the jacket and unzipped the pocket. Inside was a Ninja Turtle figurine (Donatello, not his personal favorite). Jake held it up.

“It’s a thumbdrive,” Leo said. “Don’t know what’s on it – didn’t want to look – but it came from the guy who tipped me off. He’s dead, by the way.”

Jake closed his fist around the Ninja Turtle. “Get some sleep, Leo.”

He and Rosa swapped theories on the drive back to the precinct. They agreed that it was possible the whole thing was a lie – Jake trusted his own CI, but Leo’s information was secondhand. A story about an NYPD cop running a drug ring sounded insanely far-fetched, the stuff of urban legends. Taking bribes, sure. Shaving a little off the top of a bag of heroin, yeah, it happened. Every now and then entire kilos of cocaine went missing. But running an entire operation was another matter entirely. Rosa hypothesized it could be a former cop, maybe someone who’d worked undercover in drug enforcement. They didn’t know for sure it was even someone in the NYPD, she pointed out.

Jake didn’t say it, but he was praying that Manny wasn’t involved. It was unsettling that they’d been told the Seven-Eight had a task force. Depending on what was on the thumbdrive, that precinct was probably where they’d have to begin their search for a dirty cop.

Back at the Nine-Nine, Jake glanced at Pembroke’s office to confirm he was still out and wouldn’t be trying to Vulture this investigation away from them. His door was closed and the lights were off. Jake inserted the thumbdrive into his computer; there was only one file, and he clicked it open.

“It’s a ledger,” Rosa said. She was leaning over his shoulder, one hand planted on his desk.

Jake scrolled through the entries – it looked like about eight months of data, starting the previous May. He pointed a finger at one of the rows. “We’ve got dates, times, addresses – looks like they were getting drops two or three times a week.”

“So that’s-” Rosa closed her eyes, lips twitching. “About 80 entries. At least.”

Jake stared at her. “How do you do that?”

“Not that hard, man.” Rosa tapped the screen. “Print this out.”

They set up shop in the briefing room, where they could use the map to pin the locations in the ledger and spread out their paperwork. Right away they figured out there were four main drops, all warehouses in or near Brownsville. They each took two addresses and got to work.

Tracking addresses to possible suspects was tedious work. Most of them led back to holding companies or developers that almost certainly had nothing to do with the drug ring – they were just unlucky enough to own under-utilized property that the dealers were basically squatting out of. One of Rosa’s warehouses turned out to have ties to a known drug cartel, which they filed away for further investigation down the line.

After a couple of hours Jake brought them bags of chips and pretzels from the break room, plus cups of disgusting vending machine mochas because the kitchen coffeemaker was broken again. An hour after that, he gave up on his warehouses and turned back to the ledger.

There were a few stray addresses they had pinned to the map but hadn’t researched yet, so he sighed and began looking them up. Most of them were small units – loft apartments, run-down artist studios – in the same neighborhood as the warehouses. One was a private storage company.

And then there was an outlier: A penthouse property in Dumbo, overlooking the river. It probably had really killer views of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan skyline.

The owner was an LLC, and the owner of the LLC was a man whose name tickled at the back of Jake’s brain – he was sure he’d seen it before but couldn’t place it. He googled the name but still nothing clicked, and then he did an image search. He glanced over the first row of photos, and sucked in a sharp breath.

“What?” Rosa looked up from her laptop.

Jake swallowed thickly, letting the pieces slot into place. “Remember the missing Rat-Dog case, a couple months ago?”

Rosa’s brows furrowed, but she nodded. “Yeah, we chased it down for the Vulture’s frat buddy.”

“Well, frat bro owns one of the drops on the ledger.” Jake spun his laptop toward Rosa and pointed to a photo of the man, his arm slung over Pembroke’s shoulders. “I think we found our cop.”

Rosa gaped at the photo for a second, then turned and locked eyes with Jake. A spark of understanding passed between them.

Jake slammed shut his laptop. Rosa began gathering up the stacks of papers they’d strewn about and Jake pulled pins out of the map. They bolted out of the briefing room, both looking toward Pembroke’s still-dark office. Jake checked the time on his phone – it was almost 8 p.m.

“What do we do?” he hissed to Rosa.

“We get out of here,” Rosa said. “Shaw’s?”

It was probably too close, but they needed to get out of the precinct now and Jake couldn’t think of anywhere else safe. He nodded and led the way.

+++

Amy glared at her notepad and the to-do list she’d been crafting for the past hour and a half. Usually lists were so soothing, sort of her go-to for coming down after a hard day, but even the perfectly shaped bullet points and the evenly spaced title letters weren’t helping her relax now. She tapped her favorite list-making pen (it was different from her note-taking pen and her just-jotting-down-thoughts pen and her supposed-to-be-taking-notes-but-actually-just-doodling pen for Terry’s monthly metro staff meetings) on her notebook and racked her brain for more things to put on her list.

She started to write “grocery shopping” – got so far as g-r-o – and then she tried to remember if she had orange soda at home and then she sighed and dropped her pen. That was the problem. Everything on her list came back to Jake.

She knew she should go home already. It was after 8, and Terry and Holt and most of the other reporters were gone; Hitchcock was still at his desk, presumably watching a live feed of a development board meeting, but his eyes had been closed for hours. As lonely as it felt here, Amy dreaded the idea of returning to her dark and empty apartment and not even having work to distract her. Not that work was helping much now.

Her email pinged, and Amy looked up hopefully – maybe someone had shot the mayor or a fire had broken out in a high-rise. But it was just Charles again.

The subject line said: “Just to confirm, neither you nor Jake said the words ‘break up.’” There was no text in the body of the email.

Amy deleted the email and looked up from her desk. Charles was watching her from his spot on the copy desk. She slid a finger slowly across her neck. He gave her an overly dramatic shrug and turned back to his computer.

Charles had figured out after witnessing several hushed conversations between Amy and Gina that something had gone down with Jake. Amy had given him the extremely condensed version of the story – that Jake was mad about Gina’s column and blaming Amy for it – and Charles had been instantly devastated. But he’d rallied an hour later and started pestering her for details. A little after noon, he’d latched onto the fact that they weren’t technically broken up because neither of them had said they were broken up.

At first Amy had found that thought somewhat comforting – it was true, after all – but eight hours later she was fed up. And it wasn’t just Charles she was fed up with. She’d realized, at some point late in the day, that her feelings about what had happened with Jake went beyond just hurt. She was angry with him. Even furious. He’d either never trusted her at all, or his faith had been so fragile, so superficial, that it couldn’t pass even the most obvious of tests.

That thought was heartbreaking and infuriariating and flat-out depressing, all at once.

Her email alert sounded again and Amy groaned and thought about marching straight to Charles’ desk and ordering him to just leave it. But when she looked at her inbox, the email wasn’t from him. And the subject line made her breath catch: “Jake Peralta.”

Amy glanced at the sender but she didn’t recognize the address: b00bman-at-hotmail. “Gross,” Amy muttered. She warily clicked it open.

“Dear Amy Santiago. Peralta has been selling the street drug Jazzy Pants. I HAVE PROOF. He also takes bribes and thinks women shouldn’t be in the NYPD. He also hates puppies AND kittens. ASK ANYONE. I can give you details.”

The email wasn’t signed, and it ended with an address and a time to meet later that night. Amy’s hands were shaking when she went to delete the email, just on reflex. Then she thought better of it and printed it out instead. She ran to the printer so no one else could grab it before her and read it again, her heart racing. When Charles popped up at her shoulder she actually yelped.

“What’s wrong?” he said, resting a hand on her shoulder. “I saw you run over here. What is that?”

“Nothing.” Amy held the printout to her chest so he couldn’t read it. “I’ve got to go.”

She hurried back to her desk and shut down her laptop, and slung her purse over her shoulder. She was just at the door when it occurred to her that she had no idea what her next move was. She needed to talk to Jake, but she was afraid if she called or texted he’d ignore her, or tell her to stay away.

“Charles?” She approached his desk with caution. “Do you happen to know where Jake is right now?”

“Oh, thank god,” Charles said, clapping his hands in delight. “I’ve actually been texting with him all day and right now he’s at Shaw’s with Rosa, and he said I definitely shouldn’t-”

But Amy was already headed back to the door. She heard him calling after her, “Yes! Go get him! Love finds a way!”

She paused just outside, feeling weirdly vulnerable, like someone was watching her. She realized she’d left her jacket inside, but she wasn’t going back for it – she already felt like she was running out of time.

Her hands were still unsteady as she called for an Uber. While she waited for the car, she peeked at the email again. She couldn’t explain why the note had triggered such an urgent, demanding sense of apprehension. There was something in the tone of it, a familiarity, that set her teeth on edge. She didn’t think it was just that Jake was the subject, though surely that was the most upsetting part.

Amy studied the email address again, and frowned. Gina’s source had emailed too. It wasn’t unusual to get tips via email, of course, but Amy had a strange feeling. She texted Gina to ask what her source’s email address was. She wasn’t expecting an answer, actually – reporters were generally very protective of anonymous sources, and rightfully so – but they’d reached a sort of truce today, and Amy hoped Gina might feel like doing her a favor.

Her heart stuttered when her cell phone buzzed in her hands. Amy looked at the screen: “b00bman-at-hotmail.” It was followed by a vomit emoji.

Amy’s car pulled up, and she yanked the door open and jumped inside. “As fast as you can,” she told the driver. He rolled his eyes at her in the rearview mirror, but the tires squealed when he took off.

+++

Jake and Rosa were at their same table at the back of Shaw’s, though with pints instead of Shirley Temples (and they’d both done a shot of whiskey, because “what the fuck, the Vulture is a drug runner now?” Rosa had said).

They’d done a bit more googling on their phones on Pembroke’s frat buddy. It wasn’t clear how friendly they were, and the photo of them was about a decade old, but the fact that Pembroke had them running cases for the guy as recently as August was pretty damning. It didn’t prove that the Vulture was associated with, much less running, the Jazzy Pants operation, but Jake knew they had enough leads to launch an investigation.

The question was what to do now.

“Go to Wuntch?” Rosa said. She was tilted back in her chair, looking cool and casual, but Jake saw the way her eyes kept darting to the front door and the exits. Shaw’s was pretty empty, which was good and bad – there weren’t any other cops around to spy on them, but they also were pretty exposed, even in the dimly lit back end of the bar.

Jake thought over Rosa’s suggestion and shook his head. “Wuntch is going to want more evidence. And she may not like Pembroke much right now, but she could still ask him about it and tip our hand. If he’s already twitchy enough to go after at least one of my CIs, no telling what he’ll do if he knows we’re onto him.”

Rosa blew her hair out of her face in a huff of frustration, but she didn’t argue with him. Jake was fidgeting with the Ninja Turtle thumbdrive, twirling it between fingers, and Rosa yanked it away and stuffed it in a jacket pocket. She shot him a glare that he read as “stop playing with the evidence, idiot.”

Jake said, “I could talk to Leo again. He might have a name he for us, maybe one of the dealers working with Pembroke.”

“Dude’s pretty scared,” Rosa said. “Even if he has a name – and that’s a big if – you think he’s going to give it up?”

“No.” Jake closed his eyes and tugged at his hair with both hands. “This is crazy. Is there seriously no one we can trust?”

“Shit.” Rosa’s chair dropped to the floor with a thud.

Jake looked up, alarmed. “What? Is he here?”

Rosa jerked her chin toward the front door. Jake spun in his chair, and it was like everything around him stopped for a moment, and just faded away. All he saw was her.

Amy’s hair was down, framing her face in dark waves, and her eyes glittered as she peered all around the room. She was biting her lip, and twisting her hands together in a nervous way. When her eyes landed on him, her face lit up for a second. And just as quickly the light was gone, replaced by a determination he recognized from their nights working together and something less familiar, a brutal sort of stoicism. His heart fluttered in his chest as she approached their table.

“Jake.” Her voice was flat, and she projected a bit so she could be heard over the music.

Jake wasn’t sure what to say (or do) – too many competing thoughts were bouncing around his head suddenly. He wanted to apologize and he wanted to tell her he still wasn’t sure. He wanted to kiss her and he wanted to send her away and he wanted to take her hand and run with her, he didn’t even care where.

Rosa cleared her throat. “I’m going to- leave.”

Amy stepped back to give Rosa room to squeeze past the table, then took her seat. She leaned forward, hands clasped together again, tightly this time so she couldn’t fidget.

“What are you doing here?” Jake said, bending toward her so he could keep his voice low.

Amy started at that, and a flash of anger creased her brow. “I thought you were done hiding,” she said, the words short and sharp.

“Amy-”

She held up a hand. “Never mind, obviously that doesn’t matter anymore. It’s not why I’m here anyway.” She pulled her purse into her lap and took out a slip of paper, which she read over first, then handed to him.

Jake squinted at the printed text in the dim light. It was an email – his name was in the subject line. As he read, he felt a hard knot form in his stomach. When he was done, he quickly folded the paper in half and then half again. He looked around the room, saw Rosa at one end of the bar and caught her eye, flagging her back to them.

“Do you know who sent it?” Jake said to Amy.

“No, but-”

“Read this,” Jake said, passing the note to Rosa as she walked up. Rosa pulled over a chair from a nearby table and straddled it, then read.

“What the hell.”

“He’s trying to pin it on me,” Jake said.

Rosa closed her eyes, crumpling the note in her fist.

“Who’s trying to pin what on you?” Amy said, looking furiously between them.

“The Vulture,” Jake said, under his breath. “Ames, I can’t explain it now, but this is bad. We need to get you out of here.”

“I don’t understand,” Amy said. “What’s he trying to pin on you?”

Jake glanced quickly around the room again before turning back to Amy. “It’s about Jazzy Pants, and I mean it, I can’t tell you everything right now. But another one of my CIs got hit today, and if he’s sending messages to you now-” He paused, because spelling it all out made it much more terrifying.

Jake felt for his gun at his side. Rosa saw him, and quickly did the same. They locked eyes and nodded.

“Jake, wait,” Amy said, sounding breathless, “what about you?”

“Rosa and I can take care of ourselves. We need to get you somewhere safe – maybe Gina, or Charles.”

“Charles is closer,” Rosa said.

“And he’s been texting me all day, so we know he’s around.” Jake stood up, grabbing his jacket from the back of his chair and shrugging it on.

“Don’t I get a say in this?” Amy said, but she stood up too, and let herself be hustled toward the front of the bar.

“We should split up,” Jake said, when they reached the door.

Rosa nodded. “My bike’s out back. Where do you want to meet?”

Jake thought it over but his mind was blank – he wouldn’t be able to think clearly until he got Amy settled. “I’ll text you, half an hour.”

Rosa took off for the back door. Jake set a hand on Amy’s lower back, but he pushed ahead of her, and opened the front door slowly so he could make sure there was no one outside, waiting for them. It was dark and deserted. Jake pulled out his phone to call them an Uber, ushering Amy along.

He said, “I’m sorry you got dragged in-”

A solid weight tackled Jake from behind. His phone flew out of his hand and he heard Amy scream. Jake thrust an elbow back, hard, and heard a satisfying grunt as he connected. He reached for his gun, and then there was a sharp, nauseating pain in his shoulder, radiating all the way down his arm. Jake fell to one knee and he was tackled again, the weight crashing into his back and knocking the wind out of him. Jake tried to kick out but he was pinned, and he couldn’t catch his breath, and then hands were pulling his arms behind his back and binding his wrists, and he groaned in pain. He turned his head, tried to find Amy, and something dark fell over his eyes and he couldn’t see a thing.

He was dragged up to his feet and tugged forward a few stumbling steps, only to be thrown again a moment later, landing hard on his shoulder. He rolled onto his back and heard doors slamming shut, felt the jerk of a vehicle taking off. Someone yanked him up so he was sitting.

He called out, “Amy!”

“I’m here!”

The relief was immediate, and followed just as quickly by terror. At least they were together, and alive. For the moment.

Jake moved his head, tried to see anything through the black veil over his eyes. “Are you okay?”

A fist punched into his stomach and Jake grunted, folding over himself. He felt the unmistakable press of a gun into the base of his skull.

Someone leaned in close to him, breath hot on the side of his face. “No more talking.”

CHAPTER 13

#b99 fic #peraltiago #jake and amy au #newspaper au #life writes its own stories

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