beanside | Fic: Half Moon, Night-Time Sky

Title: Half Moon, Night-Time Sky
Authors:

beanside
Pairing: Eventual JA/JDM/JP (and others)
Rating: R (future installments will range from PG-13 to NC-17.
Disclaimer: This never happened. Never will. No offense intended.
Summary: This is an RPS Post Apocalyptic AU, set 50+ years in the future.
Warnings: References to non-con and slavery. Violence.
A/N: As always, mucho, mucho thanks go to

mona1347, who is awesome in all ways. *MWAH*

One thing you could always count on bureaucracy for: They never could get there on time. Tom shifted in the fine mist that whispered up from the lot behind the Agency, coiling playfully around their feet. "They did say they'd be here at nine, right?"

"Would you relax? They'll be here. The fucking UN is never on time," Allison snorted. "If they ever were, I'd be worried."

Metal rattled behind them and Tom glanced over his shoulder at the holding cage. Right now, it held one Peter Jonas, who managed to look both sulky and defiant. It made him want to reach through the bars and smack a bitch. But noooo, they had to behave. No inhumane treatment of prisoners. Never mind that the sleaze had killed dozens, maybe hundreds of slaves, or sold them to be killed.

They had to be nice to the vermin.

"What," Tom growled, managing to make it less of a question than a threat.

"I'm freezing," Jonas whined. "Why do we have to wait out here?"

"Hides the stench better," Mack quipped.

Jonas glared at Allison for a moment. "Wait, I remember you." Jonas tilted his head and flashed an oily smile. "Fucking whore. Did you like the master I sold you to? I'm told he had a very...refined taste for giving pain. Did he make you beg?"

For a second, Tom thought she was going to ignore Jonas. Then she turned, lifting her rifle towards Jonas.

Tom stepped quickly between the cage and Allison, using his bulk to push aside her gun. "Go inside. Call the transport and see when they'll be here."

"Welling," she growled. "Out of the way."

Tom turned to face her, looking down through his good eye. "Stand down, Mack."

She seemed to think about disobeying for a moment, and then sighed, lowering her weapon. "Yes, sir," she finally said, turning and stomping into the building.

"Truth hurt, baby? Don't forget, I tasted your rather dubious charms. You needed someone who could play you like a violin, bring out the whore in you," Jonas taunted.

Allison stopped short, shoulders stiff. For a moment, Tom braced for her to turn around. He wouldn't stop her, but trying to make Jonas's death look like an accident would sure as hell eat up Tom's night. Then Allison shook her head and kept walking.

Tom waited until the door swung shut behind Allison before he rounded on the cage. "Keep talking and your tongue might freeze. I'd hate to have to cut it out."

Jonas sneered at him from behind the safety of the bars. "Aw, is the pretty boy angry? Not so pretty after Angeline cut out one of those baby blues, are you?"

"I don't have any complaints," Tom said, voice harsh.

"There's a bounty for you, you know. From the Chief of Security himself. Thirty thousand credits for anyone who brings him the one-eyed bastard who killed his wife."

Cold slid down Tom's spine at the memory of Frank Bentley. As bad as Jonas was, he couldn't even hold a candle to Bentley. Or his late wife. Angeline.

Tom'd been born in Putnam Valley, just after the first wave of Deathknell. Worried at the proximity to New York City and its high death count, his family had moved to the Midwest, settling in Okemos, Michigan. When the dust settled, Michigan, like many of the northern states, had been absorbed into Canada, choosing to remove themselves from Chancellor's tyranny. He'd joined the Canadian Forces when he'd gotten out of school, and after the requisite two years, applied for and had been accepted by JTF2, the country's elite fighting force.

They gave him basic, and then sidelined him for three years in a community outreach called the Agency. The Prime Minister had wanted somebody to watch them, make sure that it wasn't a cover for anti-American terrorism. Tom spent three years chewing at the bit, doing security for the Agency's main compound. He'd watched the slaves roll in, watched good people die, and watched the Agency appoint field agents with only a fraction of his training. What bit his ass the most was watching the most horrific human rights violations he could have imagined, broadcast live to the American people as "justice." Bentley murdered seditionists and runaways, slow and ugly deaths. So when the UN came knocking on the Agency's doorstep, looking to take Bentley down, Tom had jumped at the chance.

That had led him to a back room two years ago. Angeline Bentley. His arms strapped to a dentist chair, a locked basement in US territory, and nobody coming to look for him. A razorblade slicing his flesh, cutting the delicate skin around his eye. The odd pop and searing darkness as the razor sliced through and lifted the front half of his eyeball right off. The wetness on his face.

She wasn't trying to kill him. They planned to maim him, take both eyes, deafen him, cut his tongue and fingers off. It would be a warning to the Agency.

If it hadn't been for Christian, she would have succeeded. He could still remember the look in Angeline's eyes when Kane's bullet struck, that moment of shock before it exited out her face, blowing bits of her onto him. Officially, Christian had never been there. He'd defied UN orders to get his man out. When Tom was washed out of JTF2 for failing the Bentley mission, Kane offered him a job. Tom had accepted.

Cold wind spilled across the tarmac, forcing Tom's mind back to the job. No reminiscing; he was alive, he had one eye, and that left him enough to take these bastards down.

"Bounty," Tom drawled. "Huh. I'm flushed as a schoolgirl."

Jonas sneered. "You killed his wife and his unborn son."

Yeah, Tom started that rumor himself. He was proud of it. Kane wouldn't take the fall for him. It didn't matter that Kane would be executed for other crimes if he crossed US borders; it wouldn't be for saving Tom's ass. Besides, Tom didn't intend to let Kane die anyway. Bastard was too useful.

"I did," Tom said. "Anybody out looking for you, Jonas?"

Jonas didn't answer, but his eyes were wide and white in the darkness. The world was unkind to little fish that hung around with sharks. The UN would scrape away whatever useful information Jonas had, and then line him up against the wall like all the others.

Then Jonas sneered. "You think they'll have me for long? I'm too useful, I know too much for them to leave me here." A smirk touched his lips, and he glanced behind Tom. "Good-bye, Agent Welling."

Dropping, Tom rolled away, turning back so he could bring his rifle into play. His lighted scope lit up the field.

A transport loomed, electric motor nearly silent. A gun muzzle poked out of the side window. In the crystalline calm of adrenaline, Tom was glad that he'd sent Allison inside. He brought his rifle up for a shot through the windshield, knowing he'd never have time to pull the trigger.

The single shot was impossibly loud in the quiet. Tom jerked automatically, heart pounding a frantic tattoo against his ribs, and there was no pain. No pain, as Jonas's knees slid out from under him. Looking strangely affronted, Jonas started to speak. Blood burbled over his lower lip. Their second shot took Jonas in the forehead. He crumpled; a puppet with its strings cut, and slumped against the front of his cage.

Distantly, Tom heard the Agency go on high alert, their sirens muffled through the wall. His fingers felt locked on the rifle's trigger. He stared through the windshield, knowing they could see him there, trying to make out faces in the shadows behind tinted glass.

The transport drew back, deliberate and slow. A light flicked over Jonas's body. Then something clicked like the end of a round, and the transport jerked recoiling across the field, carving gouges in the mud, through the broken fence. Gone.

Tom exhaled. Goddamn, he thought. Christian was going to fucking kill him. Not that he wanted to die or anything, but couldn't they have at least wounded him? Put a bullet in the vest? He was going to be the goddamn laughingstock of the Agency.

The door clattered open, letting out a clown car’s worth of people, and Allison crouched over him. "Tom, you hit?"

Tom gave her a singularly disgusted look.

Sitting back on her heels, Allison smirked and waved away the medic. "Ah. Nice of them to take a clean shot straight through your ego. Did you even get a round off?"

Ignoring her, Tom pushed himself back onto his feet and went to survey Jonas's body. The medic was taking his pulse, despite the obvious splatter of Jonas's head on the brick wall. "Faster than he deserved," Tom muttered. "Christ, what a mess."

Allison nudged him with her shoulder. "Guess somebody didn't want him talking to the UN. How the hell did they get this far past the border?"

Tom shrugged, dragging a hand through his hair. There had been rogue slaver elements in Vancouver for years, rats living buried in their city. More than one freed slave had been dragged back across the border. Sometimes the Agency never saw them again. Sometimes they got them back.

Sometimes, the only thing they could do was sit back and watch pirated transmissions of the poor bastard being executed for treason.

For an unmarked US transport to roll up on Agency grounds and execute a slaver... no. That was brand new.

With a sigh, Tom trudged inside to report.

It wasn't a long walk of shame. Kane's office was close enough that he'd no doubt heard the gunshot, but being grand poobah, he wasn't allowed to check it out himself. Like a good general, Kane stayed behind his desk with a security detail shoved beside him. The disgruntled look on Kane's face was almost worth the bureaucratic headache.

Tom stepped in and gave a quick salute, watching Kane's tension bleed away.

Eyes flicking over Tom, Kane spared a grudging smile. "Damn, boy, what's it gonna take to get rid of you?"

"More than they've got," Tom said. Looking at the security detail poised awkwardly in Kane's narrow closet of an office, he gestured them to leave. "I can babysit him from here, guys."

Kane gave Tom a one-fingered salute of his own. Once security was out, Kane settled back in his chair, visibly relieved. "Casualties?"

"None on our side. Jonas is dead. Fuckers rolled right up in an electric transport."

"Mm. That's irritating." Kane leaned on his desk, fingers steepled, thinking. His desk was uncharacteristically cluttered, laid thick with folders and paperwork. "First he talks too quick, and now he's executed. He didn't give us anything worth crossing the border for. I don't-"

Kane was cut off by the motorized purr of his data machine. He straightened sharply, pushing himself out of his chair to grab the papers as they rolled into the tray.

Tom watched him, feeling the first flicker of concern. "Something up?"

Kane grunted, not listening, attention on reading the first paper in the stack.

"Is it Jonas?"

"Mm? No." Kane sat on his chair again, not looking up from his chair. "Welling, shut up."

There should've been a sharper tone attached to that statement. Kane leaned his elbows on his knees as he read through the stack, hair sliding from its tight restraint to dangle in Kane's eye. Kane ignored it, his expression drawn, the color slowly leeching out from under his tan.

"Son of a bitch," Kane breathed finally. His eyes closed. His fingertips touched a grainy picture on the last page, a woman's blurry face. "Fuck."

Tom stared. "Sir?" he hedged carefully.

Kane looked up, remembering that Tom was there. "Get out," he said shortly, and grabbed his phone.

It was bad. Tom rose and moved back, lingering long enough to make out what number Kane dialed. Jeff Morgan's. "What do we do about Jonas?"

The look Kane gave him was blank, protocol overridden by something else. Fear? Regret? "You make the call, Welling. Now leave and close my goddamn door."

Tom went, pulling the door shut behind him. He stayed close for a second, listening hard, but the soundproofing was solid enough to muffle Kane's voice to nothing. Grudgingly, Tom let go of the doorknob and continued down the hall.

Abandon all hope; it was time to call the UN.