#thinking so so hard about THIS being the first time Maksim uses 'ты' when talking to Ilya.... the ImplicationsTM........

[antisocialxconstruct]

dropping this here mostly context-free because whew I've been chipping away at this for most of the month

7.5k words, CW: restraint, isolation, physical trauma (mostly blood and broken bones, some implied but not described gore right at the end)

In which Maksim has a bad time due to an unfortunate miscommunication.

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He should have noticed sooner. Letting someone follow him for this long was a rookie mistake, and under the circumstances one that could easily get him killed. You’re getting careless, Maksim admonishes himself, keeping his pace but stealing a sidelong glance at a storefront window reflecting the thin crowd on the street with him. Maybe it’s not an entirely fair criticism, two years ago he could have depended on a telepathic radar to ping anyone whose attention lingered on him just a little too long. But two years ago he also had far fewer enemies.

There. A face he’s glimpsed four times in the past hour. It had only seemed remarkable the first time because he thought they looked like…

Черт. The stranger dips out of sight again and Maksim is left with a decision–try to shake them, or try to lead them into a confrontation.

He breaks away from his planned route–whatever he decides to do next, he’s certainly not going to lead them back to his apartment–and slips down a side street onto the next block. Then he ducks under the awning of a pawn shop, slumps back against the wall and makes a show of checking his commlink. In truth he’s pushing his senses outward, searching. It’s a risky maneuver in such a crowded area, one that leaves him gritting his teeth against the potential drain as he skims for a sign of intent… of malice…

And he finds it. And, albeit distantly… it’s familiar.

His eyes dart up, off to the left. There’s a human further down the sidewalk, gazing incuriously through the window of another storefront, and Maksim’s mind offers up the same label as before. Your shadow. His features would be conventional and unremarkable, impossible to pick out of a crowd, if Maksim wasn’t actively looking for him, but the profile is a little different than he remembers… either his memory has drifted a bit, or the man had some work done after Maksim slammed his face into a countertop in Chicago.

Then the shadow’s gaze drifts away from the window, and he locks eyes with Maksim. At this distance it’s difficult to be sure, but it feels like he smiles.

Not a shadow, then, not anymore. A pursuer.

A spark of fear lights in Maksim’s chest, though he swallows it down as best he can. There’s no doubt in his mind this is one of the men who confronted Ilya, they must have given up on subtlety entirely when that backfired. Could they have been watching him that long, waiting for a chance to move in like this? He really doesn’t want to do this here, so he pockets the commlink and pushes away from the wall to begin walking again, scanning his surroundings as surreptitiously as possible along the way. He doesn’t know this neighborhood as well as some, and to his mounting frustration no promising ambush point seems to be presenting itself along his route. All the while his pursuer has been closing in, managing to keep up just enough distance and outward disinterest not to look like he’s currently stalking someone. Maksim might have been impressed by the fact that he’d gotten subtler, if he wasn’t the one being stalked.

On an impulse he cuts right, ducking around the side of a building and through the attached parking lot, assuming he’ll be able to double back to his original route and get somewhere more familiar. Instead, he pulls up short when he finds himself face to face with a sturdy chain link fence. Pulls up again when he turns around to backtrack and finds the other man approaching him at an easy pace.

“Oh now this is a little embarrassing,” the man laughs, glancing over Maksim’s shoulder at the fence that confounded his escape attempt.

Maksim meets the provocation with a glare, running some hasty calculations as he shifts his weight ever so slightly… and in the next instant he makes a run for the fence. He’s gambling on the certainty that he can scale it before his pursuer can close the remaining distance between them.

He can’t.

He makes it halfway up before he feels an arm hook around his throat and drag him backward as the man hurls him to the ground. He turns it into a roll, gets his feet under him and springs forward, claws out, aiming to shred whatever flesh is closest. His opponent brings an arm up, accepting the damage there to protect anything more valuable. When he swings his other fist around Maksim darts away easily, senses buzzing as the reflex trigger pumps a burst of adrenaline into his system. He's still looking for an opening to escape, but the other man has now maneuvered himself between Maksim and the fence. And considering the speed with which he closed that distance to begin with, Maksim has to assume running in the other direction isn't an option either.

"You look nervous, runner," the man taunts, adopting a loose posture. There's a marked lack of blood where the sleeve of his coat has been torn apart. Maksim wonders idly how much cyberware he's armed with, and then wonders less idly why he didn't capitalize on that in Chicago. Best to end this fast, before he has time to answer either of those questions.

"Just irritated," he shoots back, rapidly changing his focus. Running’s not a viable option, that only leaves one choice open to him.

His attacker laughs. "Guess I’m not trying hard enough," he says, and then he lunges. Maksim dodges back again, ducks under the follow up blow, and in the narrow moment where his opponent is overextended he moves in–fist to the jaw, elbow to the ribs to unbalance him, then he’s got the man pinned to the wall with an arm across his neck and his other hand poised to gouge out an eye at a moment’s notice.

To his credit, the other man is smart enough to freeze. It’s not so different from their first confrontation after all–he hadn’t had much fight in him then either.

Maksim bares his teeth in an indignant snarl. “I thought I said I’d kill you if you ever tried this again.”

A smirk flutters hesitantly at the corner of his opponent’s mouth. “I think your exact words were ‘if I see your face again I’ll split it in half.’”

“And did you not believe me?” Maksim growls. He can feel the minute pressure of skin breaking under his claws, drawing forth thin rivulets of blood.

“Oh no, nothing like that.” And now the other man is smiling properly, managing to sound smug even through the growing pressure of Maksim’s arm against his airway. “In fact I was counting on you to try.” He grabs a fistful of Maksim’s collar, yanks him in close as he reaches up-

It takes just a fraction of a second for Maksim’s mind to disengage from the bloodlust to register danger-

A fraction of a second too long. There’s an instant of pressure, something clamping down on the back of his neck-

And with a sudden flash of agony the world whites out.

His senses only start to coalesce back into focus slowly, one sensation at a time.

He’s on the ground. Feels like smooth concrete against his cheek when he shifts experimentally. Cool but not cold, and not the asphalt of the parking lot.

Someone is speaking, words incomprehensible and distant.

Something is.

Wrong.

His head is pounding.

It slipped in coiled up and writhing and unwelcome

When he tries to blink his vision clear everything still looks flat, skewed off center. He rolls forward, gets his arms under him to push himself up. But it doesn’t feel right, doesn’t come naturally. Every action feels sluggish, like he’s pushing through sand or pulling against resistance, limbs responding delayed and reluctantly.

slow at first, resistance, disorientation, before the cage came down around him

Panic hits him like a wall the same instant the nausea starts to well up, and he grits his teeth as he silently wills himself to move move move get up get out of here. But the sickness wins out as he falters and curls in on himself, abandoning the effort to rise.

and he fought and he screamed and he begged for someone to stop him and no sound ever made it past his lips as his hands closed around Ziggy’s throat

It’s impossible to say how long he just lays there, staring blindly down at the gray floor beneath him, unwilling to try to do anything more. Unwilling to fail. The question of what happened and where he is sits ignored somewhere in his mind, smothered by the memories of other horrors, other failures of control.

and he just kept going and the first spray of blood was hot across his face and it’s not what he wanted not what he wanted not what he wanted not what he wanted

“...rse he’s still alive.”

The voice finally, slowly takes shape, a drip feed filtering through the confusion.

It’s something to cling to, letting him claw his way up out of the trenches of memory and back into the moment at hand. They're close. Lingering impassively as he struggles.

Help me. Why aren't you helping me.

“I know how to follow basic fucking orders.”

Another voice, shot through with static and too small to make out.

“Because you didn’t tell me it was gonna lay ‘im out and I wasn’t planning on hauling an unconscious trog through the Heights. Even a small one…” Movement, footsteps approaching from a short distance as the second voice responds. Then “wait shut up, I think he’s awake.”

Someone plants a boot on Maksim’s shoulder and shoves him onto his back, turning the world blaring white again as the overhead light floods his vision. The pressure increases, tips over into pain as weight comes down to flatten him against the hard floor and he groans, grabs blindly at the toe of the boot in a feeble attempt to move it. “Sure enough,” comes the voice, and before he can make sense out of any of it a hand closes around his upper arm and yanks him upward. He has to gather enough sense to try to right himself again in a hurry, just to alleviate the sharp pain that blossoms in his already bruised shoulder. Shakily, elbow against the ground and then feet and then he’s upright, if only barely. He’s almost grateful a second later when he’s pushed back to stumble gracelessly into a chair.

“Damn burnouts… Guess we underestimated just how much of your meat you’d replaced,” his attacker laughs. Maksim bows his head and listlessly rubs his eyes, and it takes a long moment for the comment to burrow its way in through the bleary fog of pain still blanketing him.

“What…” he rasps, hating the way his own voice rattles through his head. “What did you do to me…”

The other man grabs the wrist of the hand shielding his eyes, pulls it away from his face and wrenches it around behind him. “Just a little safety precaution,” he’s saying, pinning Maksim’s other wrist behind him as well. “Switched off all your chrome for the time being.”

With a soft click Maksim feels cold metal close around his wrists. There isn’t time to panic about that alongside the dawning terror of understanding. He tilts his head to the left and draws his shoulder up, just barely able to isolate the irregular shape of something nestled against the back of his neck, and he doesn’t know what that is but it’s enough of a clue for it all to come together. The reason his vision seems off, lacking depth, why he can’t move right, why there’s a constant ache sprawling out through his body.

No eye implant. No skillwires. No pain inhibitor. No cyberware.

He screws his eyes shut and tries valiantly to steady his breathing, but his head is still aching and any semblance of focus keeps slipping out of his grasp. An experimental twist of one wrist confirms the handcuffs are fixed in place somehow, maybe threaded through the rungs of the chair. It’s the only investigation he’s allowed to do before his captor grabs him by the chin, forcing his head up until he’s squinting against the glare of the overhead light again.

“You’re lucky my only instructions were to bring you here,” the man is saying, his voice taking on a new hint of bitterness. “Where I come from, if a dog went rabid and started going after its own-” he places the first two fingers of his other hand against Maksim’s forehead–“we’d put a bullet in it.”

Maksim holds his gaze as best he can, silent except for the pained, shaky breath he pulls in through his nose. Which one of them did you know? He wonders.

Then over the man's shoulder he sees the corner of a door swing open and close again with a soft metallic groan. "That will do for now, Nav," says a new voice–one Maksim realizes he should know only when the other man releases his face with a sneer and steps away. The new arrival is an elf with a slender build, a crisp suit, and an immediately familiar face. He carries himself with the same lifted chin and squared shoulders that had defined him when he was playing gofer for Alabast, and he might have come across as sophisticated if it weren’t for the impressive gray-yellow welt of a nearly healed bruise across one side of his face. Even in his disoriented state Maksim has the sense to hold back a satisfied smirk at that–Ilya’s handiwork.

“Callahan,” he bites out, though it’s a challenge to sound suitably resentful when it’s taking all his focus just to form the words right at all. “You’re a long way from home.”

"Well you're a hard man to pin down, Avos," the elf replies, eminently pleasant as he folds his hands behind his back. "Or… Danila, wasn't it? Danila Maksimov?" Maksim must not hide the flinch as well as he'd hoped, as Callahan’s smile widens in satisfaction. "I suppose you haven't heard that name in a while."

It’s unsettling, but probably not the winning hand Callahan expects it to be. Maksim wrinkles his nose, grimacing with distaste. "Is that supposed to scare me into cooperating? The GRU's not coming all the way to California just for me."

Callahan exhales a light sigh, unclasping his hands to fidget with a sleeve cuff. "It wasn’t meant to threaten you, I just hoped to give you a bit of perspective on how deep we had to dig to track you down. I was hoping you might be a little more sympathetic to our plight here." He pauses, but Maksim sets his jaw and lets his gaze drift wearily down to the floor. He’d like to think it was a defiant silence, but the truth is he still hasn’t shaken off the disorientation and Callahan’s words are sliding off his mind with only the barest level of comprehension. The elf sighs again. “You know we could end this whole cat and mouse game right now, if you simply tell us where the reliquary is.”

That manages to push through the haze… but it doesn’t clarify anything. Confusion creases Maksim’s brow as he continues to eye the floor, another couple seconds passing as he half-expects Callahan to say more. Then, with a hesitance he doesn’t relish but can’t help in the moment, he asks, “... why would I know that?”

Callahan’s demeanor cools instantly and noticeably. “It would be in your best interest to remember,” he says.

Maksim finally drags his gaze back up to meet Callahan’s eye, but his confusion only deepens as he faces down the elf’s expectant frown. He shakes his head slightly. “I don’t- What are you saying? You know we didn’t finish the run.”

Somewhere just behind him he hears Nav scoff. He doesn’t like someone in the room being outside his line of sight, but he resists the impulse to look over his shoulder in order to keep his brittle focus on Callahan. The elf’s smug pleasantness has entirely evaporated by now, as he studies Maksim in return with a sort of cold impassivity. “It seems the intervening years have muddied your memory of events somewhat,” he says, “but I’m sure we can help you straighten them out.”

Just as Maksim opens his mouth to say something else he feels one of Nav’s hands close around his right wrist and the other around his pinky finger, and in a flash of ice-cold clarity what he ends up saying is a breathless “no no no-” as he instinctively tries to pull away. A split second later he’s met with a snap and a bright jolt of pain and he chokes out a curse as tension coils up through his arm. He had forgotten how much even a nominal broken bone could hurt, how it could light up his brain with panicked impulses to run shrink hide without the inhibitor to tamp down on his body’s responses to it. Then he hisses, “I don’t know anything.” Callahan tsks quietly and Maksim feels the pressure move to his ring finger next. “I don’t, I don’t!” He insists, the tension spreading instantly to the rest of his body as he braces for another break. “I never even saw it!”

“An interesting claim,” Callahan says, “considering there’s security footage of you returning to the warehouse site the day after your team’s run.”

Maksim just stares back at him.

There can’t be. It’s not possible, he knows that’s not possible. He was barely conscious for three days after being dragged out of that warehouse… which unfortunately doesn’t leave him with much of an alibi, but it’s the truth.

Callahan’s smile returns then, slowly, as he clasps his hands behind his back once more. “There, see? Now we can save ourselves whatever remaining time you would have spent playing dumb,” he says, apparently misinterpreting Maksim’s silence as an admission of guilt.

Nav lets go of him then and steps around to linger at Callahan’s side instead, and it’s enough to nudge Maksim out of his stupor. “I- …” He shuts his eyes tight, gives his head another sharp shake. Astoundingly, even with the threat of a second broken finger gone, the pain radiating through his hand is not helping him think straight. “Who… gave you that footage?”

Who set me up?

All Callahan says is “it’s none of your concern who our sources are,” which doesn’t help. Then something changes in the room’s atmosphere, as he shifts his weight slightly and gives Maksim an assessing once-over. “If you’re not interested in talking right now then so be it,” the elf says. “We’ve been very patient tracking you this far, we can spare another day or two for you to really mull over your options.” He tilts his head slightly, flashing Maksim an indulgent smile. “Please understand that you don’t have many.” Then he catches Nav’s eye and nods toward the door, and a moment later they both step out, leaving Maksim immobile and alone.

A minute passes.

Then another.

When Maksim is fairly certain they aren’t coming back he breathes out a string of curses as the tension drains out of him. He allows himself to slump forward again as far as his pinned hands will let him, and instantly regrets it when the added pressure sends another wave of pain up his right arm. He twists his wrist experimentally, gritting his teeth, but there’s no position that will free him from that constant reminder of how dire the situation is. Instead he can only focus on pulling ragged breaths into his lungs and silently begging himself not to slip below the surface of the panic that’s choking him.

It’s not helping.

Maybe there’s a camera on him, maybe they’re watching his composure fully break down with cruel satisfaction. He doesn’t have it in him to care.

He should have kept running. He never should have dared to think he could start putting down roots here in the first place. He never should have gotten attached to-

Some tiny, still-rational part of his mind rebels against that thought before it can fully form, but it still cascades into a wave of guilt. It’s not Ilya’s fault, they never asked him to stay and wouldn’t have questioned him if he didn’t. The only one he can blame for this is himself. Not smart enough to ask the right questions. Not careful enough to get away. Framed for something he didn’t even know had happened and he’s spent the last two years unknowingly making himself look exponentially guiltier.

What is he supposed to do if they don’t believe him?

The room has no windows and no clock. That’s the first thing Maksim determines once he calms himself enough to actually properly assess the space. No way to know where he is, what time of day it is, or how long he’s been there. Or how long he’s been alone. And in the aftermath of everything that’s happened, he doesn’t trust his internal sense of time any more than he would trust a random guess.

Beyond that observation, there isn’t much to be learned. The space is small, its former purpose hinted at by the second chair by the door, the metal desk and empty shelves shoved up against the wall on his left. All of it is faded and dusty in the way that old and forgotten things are, which is the only clue he can lift from his surroundings. Wherever he is, it went abandoned and disused for some time before he found himself there. On the desk is a little pile of things, which it takes Maksim a long few seconds to finally realize are the contents of his pockets. Commlink, credstick, and pistol, all right within arm’s reach and yet so perfectly beyond his grasp.

Not a lot of options, other than to sit and wait.

Without thinking, he tries to flex his fingers only to be instantly reminded that one of them was unceremoniously snapped in half. But beneath that burst of pain he noticed something else, and once it begins to ease he turns his focus as best he can onto his left hand, shifting and tensing muscles experimentally before pressing two fingertips cautiously to the pad of his thumb.

Somehow… his claws still work. Whatever miserable bit of metal is sitting on his neck, meddling with his implants, it hasn’t done anything to his hands. Maybe it’s distance. Maybe they’re just too low tech. He retracts the claws again and takes a slow breath, wondering how he can use that.

At two separate intervals Callahan returns with Nav in tow and starts his questioning over from the top, leaving Maksim with no option but to reiterate his complete lack of useful information.

By the end of the second interrogation he’s frustrated, answering Callahan’s questions with curt hostility right up until Nav breaks another one of his fingers.

By the end of the third interrogation pain, fatigue, and the first stages of dehydration have left him disoriented and subdued, and he barely answers Callahan’s questions at all.

Eventually, during another bout of increasingly oppressive solitude, his hands start to go numb. He welcomes this, albeit a little reluctantly, if only because it provides some relief from the dull throbbing and a new, creeping feverishness in his right arm.

At some point, against all odds, he manages to doze off, which he realizes only when the door slamming shut jars him awake again. Nav stands a few paces away, arms crossed over his chest and a distant, unreadable expression settled over his features. This time without Callahan. The jacket he’d been wearing previously is gone, and Maksim can see that the long gashes he’d left in the man’s arm have been sealed with what looks like some kind of silicone paste. No swelling, no stitches… that feels relevant, but Maksim is struggling to follow the thread of it to its logical conclusion as he blankly meets Nav’s stare.

At length Nav finally speaks, drawing Maksim’s attention in a little tighter. “Lockjaw always thought you were the team’s weakest link… Too distant.”

“Oh.” There’s one question answered, though it raises other idle curiosities. How close were they? Would he have met Nav before, if he hadn’t made a concerted effort not to learn anything about the rest of the team? Why is Nav here now? Alone? Maksim has a nagging feeling this visit wasn’t at Callahan’s request… He squeezes his eyes shut and then blinks several times in a feeble bid to sharpen his thoughts just a little more. If Nav wants to chat privately, maybe he can pan the conversation for something useful. But only if he can focus. “I always thought it was Strikeout,” he says, keeping his tone and expression as carefully neutral as he can manage. “Too clingy.”

Nav unfolds his arms and takes an aggressive step closer. “At least Strikeout never eviscerated two people for no reason.”

Maksim offers him a humorless smile. “Neither did I.”

Without another word Nav punches him hard enough to feel the room spin like it’s about to dump him back on the floor. If he hadn’t been cuffed to the chair it probably would have, but it does leave his ears ringing and his vision swimming all over again. He works his jaw, tastes copper. “You know as well as I do that’s not true,” Nav spits, and he sounds inexplicably far away even as Maksim straightens again to face him.

“When someone gets shot do you question the gun?” He retorts, earning himself another blow that snaps his head back against the chair with a burst of sensation behind his eyes. Then he pitches forward with a wet cough, pain radiating up through his nose as blood spills down over his lips and onto the concrete between his feet. If Nav had been a little more focused that could have killed him. Maksim figured he’d talk more freely if he was angry, but he needs him talking. “What w-... were you hoping to get from this?” he manages to choke out, voice thick inside his rattled skull.

“From where I’m standing it all seems to be going as planned,” Nav fires back.

Maksim shakes his head and lifts his eyes back up to meet Nav’s. “No… I know what Callahan is asking for but you… you don’t want to interrogate me. I think you… just want to be my executioner.”

Nav scowls down at him. “There’s still time,” he says, biting out each word sharp and crisp.

“You think?” Maksim arches his eyebrows, although even that slight bit of emoting lights up his face with fresh pain. But he sees the uncertainty flicker behind Nav’s eyes so he presses on. “Now I know the only thing stopping you is… whatever Callahan wants… why would I tell him anything?”

“You son of a bitch!” Nav barks, shoving Maksim against the back of the chair and pinning him there. “You do know where it is!”

“I guess we’ll never know. Does that bother you?”

In an instant the manhunter is off the desk in Nav’s hand and jammed against Maksim’s head. He flinches, screwing his eyes shut… but when a beat passes and his head remains graciously intact, he opens them again and exhales shakily.

Then inspiration strikes.

“If you pull that trigger you’ll be the next one in this chair,” he breathes. “You can see how Alabast handles people who ruin their plans.”

“It might be worth it,” Nav growls, and the gun doesn’t move.

Maksim chews his lip as he carefully formulates his next response. He’s playing with fire, and he doesn’t need to pretend to be scared. “You- maybe you could uncuff me first,” he suggests, flashing Nav a weak smile. “Say I slipped out of them somehow… you had to kill me in self defense. Callahan’s probably not smart enough to notice if it doesn’t line up.”

Nav holds his ground, gun never wavering and eyes burning with barely concealed hatred, just long enough that Maksim starts to worry he may have gambled too hard. Then finally with a snort he straightens and steps back. “Nice try,” he scoffs. “I bet that little mind control trick was pretty impressive back when you could actually do it.” Then before Maksim can respond he turns and stalks back out of the room. He takes the manhunter with him.

Once again in isolation, Maksim exhales sharply and lets his head fall forward. He coughs, gags on the thick red spittle his stomach churns up as his skull tightens with a needling headache. It would have saved him some time and effort if Nav had actually taken him up on that idea, but it’s not what he was hoping for.

It’s enough that he thought about it. Just for a second. Hard enough to envision the scenario in his head, too tempted by the prospect to notice Maksim pressing himself in to watch it play out alongside him. He was only looking for one thing.

Now he knows Nav still has the key to the handcuffs, and he knows which pocket it’s in.

Callahan clicks his tongue disapprovingly as he tilts Maksim’s head left and right to take in the mess. By now the blood on his face must be an ugly brown crust down his lips and chin, and he doesn’t know how bad the damage is but he knows half his face is nothing but dull ache and he can’t breathe through his nose anymore.

“I do apologize for Nav’s… behavior,” Callahan sighs, pressing his lips into a thin frown as he glances over his shoulder at Nav lingering by the door behind him. “I certainly didn’t approve that little discussion.” He sounds genuine enough that Maksim might have believed him, if he hadn’t been left to drift in and out of consciousness for another few hours before anyone came to check in.

“Alabast used to have higher standards,” he mumbles as Callahan lets go of his chin and steps back. The only response the elf offers him is a flat, wordless smile. He, at least, is a professional, it seems to say, and not about to let any personal feelings slip through. Maksim presses on regardless. “What are you going to do when I die without giving you anything and you have to go back and tell them you wasted two years on a false lead?”

“Oh, are we still keeping to that narrative?” Callahan asks, raising his eyebrows in a mockery of casual interest. “We can circle back to that, but I actually wanted to talk to you about something a little different.” He pauses, reaching into an inner pocket of his suit jacket to draw out a small datapad, and in the absence of any contribution from Maksim continues easily while he taps at the screen. “You’ve been keeping interesting company here in the CFS. Before arranging this meeting I had a conversation with an associate of yours and they were… very helpful.”

He holds the screen up and turns it around to show Maksim what looks to be a candid photo of another elf, taken surreptitiously in the low smokey light of a bar.

Ilya.

Maksim’s lip curls in disgust at the implication of Callahan’s words. “No. They weren’t,” he says. But when Callahan just pauses to consider him for a second, and the smile on his lips turns subtle and thoughtful, Maksim suddenly wonders if, somehow, that response was a mistake.

“Well… maybe not in the way we had hoped,” he concedes, turning the datapad back around to find something else. “In fact they were quite resistant to any bargaining, which I found interesting. They were clear that it was just the offer itself they found insulting, but… after some reflection I think there might be a little more to it.” He turns the datapad around again to show Maksim another image–this time it looks like a photo of a terminal screen, several lines of text alongside a staged head-on photo if Ilya, all of it overlaid with some kind of watermark resembling a multi-pointed starburst. "Are you aware that one Ilya Kasharin is currently wanted by NeoNET for breach of contract and several counts of theft of company property? There's quite a substantial bounty on their head, it's been compounding for three years now."

All at once it feels like the air has been sucked out of Maksim’s lungs as he stares at the image in front of him. The information itself isn’t especially shocking–he may not have known the specifics, but he knew Ilya had been running from something just like him. The real, gut-churning revelation here is the unspoken threat lurking beneath Callahan’s idle conversation. Maksim swallows, wincing as his dry and ragged throat protests, and when he speaks the words are soft, almost pleading. “Leave them out of this…”

“Really now, Avos,” Callahan sighs indulgently. “You have one very simple way to ensure I do just that.”

“I don’t. I don’t, I swear,” he insists, voice cracking. “I don’t have the reliquary, I never did, I never knew anything. Someone set me up and they wasted your time and there’s nothing either of us can do about it now.” He wishes he could sound angry, he wishes he could call up all the fury this affront deserves. He just sounds scared.

Callahan takes another moment just to watch him, features impassive. Then, with a sharp intake of breath, he begins, “if… I believed you-” and Maksim has just a single hopeful second to think maybe, maybe- “then I’m sure you can understand how simply going back to New York with that report and nothing to show for it is out of the question. But,” and here his smile returns, as he tucks the little datapad back into his jacket, “I imagine a two hundred thousand nuyen bounty would soften the blow.”

He turns to leave.

“No- no no, wait-” Maksim strains forward, even in spite of the pain it sends arcing through his arms. “Callahan-”

Callahan pauses in the open doorway to glance back, only just long enough to say, “perhaps if we bring Ilya into this conversation directly you can explain that to them yourself.”

“No- no! Don’t- Callahan! Alright fine fine I’ll tell you what happened!”

The words are out of his mouth before he really comprehends what he’s saying, but… it has the desired effect. Callahan had just stepped out of sight but he’s back a second later, a nauseatingly satisfied smile on his face as he comes to stand before Maksim once again. Behind him Nav has perked up as well, all too ready to finally hear the confession he’s been stewing over. Maksim looks between them for a moment, with the dawning horror that now he needs to tell them something.

And more pressing than that, he needs to accelerate his plans.

“I- I found out the rest of the team was planning to edge me out after the warehouse, they… they didn’t trust me.” He punctuates this with a wan smile, acknowledging what would have been cruel irony. Might as well give them exactly what they want to hear. “So I figured I’d turn things around, stick with them until we breached security and then finish the warehouse run myself and take the pay in full.”

“Piece of shit, I knew it,” Nav hisses as he steps closer, looking for all the world like he wants to take another swing whether Callahan approves or not.

That’s fine, that’s what Maksim was waiting for. That swell of vindication makes his guard thin, the last thing he’s expecting Maksim to do now is fight.

Maksim locks eyes with him, hauls himself up inside Nav’s head and then brings the full force of his will down on him in the form of a single command.

Uncuff me. Now.

This.

Wasn’t the plan.

The plan was to do this with some degree of subtlety, the way he’d been trained. Map out someone’s mind and then simply erase, redraw, tweak details. All he had to do was take Nav’s own mental image of unlocking the handcuffs, simplify it, plant the notion somewhere in his mind of simply taking the key from his pocket and passing it off to Maksim, then cloak it in some other more palatable impulse. Let Nav become his accomplice without ever realizing what he’d done.

He knows what he’s doing now. And he doesn’t want to.

Maksim’s never done this before. Never tried to wrest someone out of their own control, never taken hold of the writhing, biting animal of someone’s consciousness and let it tear and shred and shriek but refused to let go. But he holds tight even as his own body protests in turn, like laying his hands down on a stovetop and watching them blister. Nav was already moving toward him, he had momentum, that made the first step easier and it meant Callahan didn’t think to question what was happening right away. “What do you think you’re doing?” distant and muffled as Nav moves behind the chair and stoops down. Close close close but the fine motor skills are hard when the body is fighting him and he can’t afford to let an ounce of focus slip, can’t afford to worry about what Callahan sees and what he’s going to do. He just leans into the command harder and ignores the way it sets the inside of his skull alight just do it do it do itand Callahan’s stepping closer too saying “that’s enough, I didn’t ask you to-”

And the instant the pressure falls away from Maksim’s left wrist he lets go of Nav and lunges.

He sends Callahan toppling sideways into the old desk and then down to the floor and pins him there, blind to the pain of his battered fingers as he wraps his hands around the elf’s throat and digs his claws into the back of his neck. Callahan kicks under him and pulls at his wrists, choking out something unintelligible as his eyes roll. Maksim just tightens his grip. A hand snags in his hair and he yelps as Nav yanks him backward and throws him to the ground. It takes him a precious couple seconds to get his bearings again, rolling over in time to see Nav looming over him with his own gun in hand.

Nav trains the pistol on him where he lays. “That was a mistake.”

Maksim jackknifes and drives his heels as hard as he can into Nav’s stomach. He staggers, fires a shot that just barely goes wide and smacks into the concrete by Maksim’s head, and when it looks like he might not go down Maksim kicks him again in the knee. He has only a momentary opening to scramble to his feet, and a wave of vertigo nearly takes him down again before he hauls himself up by the chair that had been his prison for so long. Red-faced and wheezing on his knees, Nav tries to level the gun on him again but Maksim yanks it out of his hand by the barrel and brings the stock down on the side of his head. Nav hits the ground hard, and without waiting to see whether he’s still conscious Maksim brings a boot down on his skull and hears bone fracture against concrete. He does it again. Again. Again.

Then the room is silent.

For a single beat he stands dazed, gulping in air, before his vision tunnels and he pitches backward as the full weight of his imprisonment and this desperate, suicidal act of magic finally come down on him. His shoulder catches the wall and he tries and fails to keep himself upright against it, only to end up back on the floor. Instead he rolls over and manages to prop himself up on his forearms as he retches, although there’s nothing for his stomach to expel except bile.

He has no idea how long he stays like that. It feels like minutes but for all he knows he could have blacked out and woken up an hour later. The first coherent impulse that finally surfaces in his mind is to reach up and grab whatever Nav installed in the back of his neck. It comes away with the barest resistance and a sensation not unlike several hypodermic needles being drawn out of his flesh. Maksim shudders and tosses into a far corner of the room without any closer inspection, desperate to be rid of it. The effect is not dramatic but it is immediate–the first thing to come back online is the pain inhibitor, laying a gentle blanket of distance over his aching body and allowing him to think just clearly enough, move just confidently enough, to sit up and look around.

Nav is dead. It doesn’t take any performance of closer inspection to be certain of that. Callahan, unfortunately, is long gone, a weaving trail of spattered blood leading out the door providing fairly conclusive evidence of his escape. Maksim’s eyes drift from that back to the desk, his belongings scattered onto the floor in the chaos, and when his attention comes to rest on his commlink he finally remembers, with a sudden sinking dread, why he had to do this in the first place.

There’s no point in trying to stand just yet, he only has to scoot forward and stretch across the floor to pluck the commlink from its resting place. He thumbs the screen to life and grimaces as it informs him the battery is nearly dead. Still, surely he can make one call…

It rings twice before he hears Ilya’s voice. “Hey where the fuck have you been, Violet’s-”

“Ilya-” he winces at the ragged tone of his own voice. He sounds half dead. “Where are you right now?” There’s a momentary confused silence on the other end, just long enough for Maksim to belatedly realize his mistake, so when Ilya starts “I-” he cuts them off, “wait don’t answer that. I…” he turns the commlink over, stares at it blankly. Would he even know if it had been tampered with? “I don’t know if this line is secure anymore.”

Another second of silence. Then, “are you okay?”

Maksim makes a sound in the back of his throat that lands somewhere between a laugh and a cough. “Послушай,” he continues. “Где бы ты ни был, мне нужно чтобы ты ушел. Иди в безопасное место. Не говори мне ничего. Хорошо?”

There’s a commotion on the other end, the muffled feedback of sudden movement and a clattering Maksim can’t identify, and for a heartstopping few seconds he worries that he reached them too late, until Ilya’s voice comes through once more. “Да, я понимаю.”

Maksim ends the call there without another word, erring on the side of paranoia before either of them can say anything more incriminating.

It still takes him far longer than he would have liked to get his feet under him again, and every carefully measured movement required to pocket the commlink, retrieve and holster his gun, and fish his credstick out from under the desk feels like a gamble with impossibly unfair odds. The process is made all the worse by the fact that he’s working one-handed, his right arm clutched protectively against his torso now that the adrenaline is bleeding out of his system. At length he staggers out into a nondescript hallway.

He follows Callahan’s trail as best he can, banking on the coward having fled rather than bunker down somewhere to wait for him, an assumption which rewards him with a brief tour of a dusty workshop filled with the derelict skeletons of several machines he doesn’t recognize and then, at last, a half-open roller door. Outside he’s greeted by starlight on a paved lot, weathered and scarred with potholes, and a narrow road past several similarly shuttered buildings.

It’s an excruciatingly slow and unsteady walk to the nearest main road. But once he starts seeing signs he realizes, with a thrill of relief that threatens to overwhelm him, that he knows where he is–he’d been shunted into Bayview on arrival in the city, and it wasn’t a place he’d ever spent a great deal of time but it had been easy to build connections on the simple solidarity of them all being in the “trog slum” together. Hopefully some of those connections are still holding up.