Fic: Solidarity 12/14 (Watchmen)
Sep. 13th, 2009 02:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anactoriaTitle: Solidarity
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
anactoria
Fandom: Watchmen
Characters/Pairing: Dan/Adrian
Rating: R overall, PG-13 for this part.
Disclaimer: No, they're not mine.
Summary: It's 1992 and this isn't Utopia.
Notes: Beta-read bymuse_of_graphia; thanks. :)
Chapter 1 Chapter 5 Chapter 9
Chapter 2 Chapter 6 Chapter 10
Chapter 3 Chapter 7 Chapter 11
Chapter 4 Chapter 8
August 1992
Adrian works quickly and quietly, now that he is alone. Oh, he makes contacts in what is left of Boston's underworld, but for the most part they are criminals with few resistance affiliations, and he allows for only the briefest of meetings. They are simply a means to an end.
The Party keeps records of its own activities, of course, and that includes lists of political prisoners. The names of anybody caught assisting refugees out of the city, or attempting to return to it after dark, are likely to be held at the local Party headquarters. Even the local branch is a large and unwieldy organization, and there is no distraction or evasion technique in the world that would give Adrian time to make a thorough search of the place. But he means to find out where the information is held, and find out he does.
He still has funds enough to make bribery a possibility, and when it is necessary, he can be swift and ruthless and terrifying. Though the need for such tactics often leaves him tasting bile, he never falters. (And yes, he has considered other options-- but then he remembers Dan's gentle hands and his concerned, pleading eyes and knows that he could not bear to be so ungrateful.) With no life to risk but his own, he does not worry overmuch about incurring the wrath of the criminal gangs, and he is quite capable of remaining below the Party's radar.
Adrian can go unnoticed, when he has to; he is practiced at disappearing into the shadows. He inhabits them, now. They are his home.
They always have been, if he is quite honest. For months now, he and Dan and the others have been carrying out their activities underground, living in society's cracks and corners. And even before that, Adrian's life's work -- folly though it was -- was done out of the public eye, without the knowledge of any other. In the shadows, and alone.
So it is strange that they should seem darker now, without fellow-haunters.
*
He meets a contact, and then another, and eventually comes to a Party official who knows the location of classified records and the passwords used to protect them, and is willing to part with the information for a price. Accepting a bribe from an enemy of the state is a risky business, and Adrian does not ask what manner of personal emergency has prompted him to do so.
The man is thin and nervous. His eyes dart around continually, seeking a camera or a listening device, or a passer-by lingering at the window a fraction too long. He hands over the plans and information, takes the money, and leaves hurriedly, never once meeting Adrian's eyes. Adrian cannot be sure what the man is most scared of.
Back at HQ, he studies the plans with care. The most likely entrance is a side-door, little-used and unlikely to be heavily guarded. The alarm should be easy enough to disable. Getting through the interior and locating the right office room will be more difficult, but certainly not impossible.
As it happens, he encounters only two Patrolmen, and they are dispatched easily enough. They are talking in low, distracted voices, not bothering to look around or behind them, and sometimes they wander paces apart. The beams of their flashlights glance thinly into corners. It appears that the Party does not expect intruders to risk entering its own territory.
The second Patrolman turns only as his partner's unconscious body hits the floor, and a split-second later he, too, is slumping senselessly down against a wall.
There appears to be nobody else in earshot, although another pair will no doubt pass this way soon enough. The relative slackness of security here surprises Adrian; but then, the Party seems more concerned with attack than with defending its own property at present. More prison camps, more Patrols on the street and at the borders. That means fewer on its home turf.
Adrian recalls Steele's lack of public appearances in the last few months; the harried note of urgency in his most recent speeches, those in which he has denounced the resistance and suggested that there are plotters who may still endanger this country's hard-won unity. The Party is beginning to seem like a cornered animal; one lashing out in fear, distracted and forgetting to defend the soft parts of its belly.
The Party's encryption software is the most sophisticated on the market. Adrian knows this because he part-funded the research team that originally designed it, and it has changed little since he used it last. A backdoor was written discreetly into the system during the development stage, before it was sold to the government. It has not been found. Getting into the files is the work of a moment, and Adrian moves methodically through the disks in the cabinet to which the plans direct him. Prisoner records for the last fortnight are on the third one he finds.
There is no mention of Dan's name.
No mention of Sam Hollis, either, or of any other alias that Adrian thinks to try. Kovacs, Walters, Juspeczyk, Archibald-- blanks, all of them.
And the night seems to contract and to grow heavy, and Adrian feels as though something indefinable is being drained out of him. Because if Dan has not been imprisoned, then--
There other disks. Other files. He rifles through them with rising urgency, the necessity of concentration the only thing keeping his hands steady.
An inventory of impounded equipment. There is nothing on it that could be Archie.
He has been here long moments now. There is little time left. He tries other drawers, other disks. Nothing.
Then something catches his eye. A manila envelope, in the in-tray beside the computer. This must be the desk of an administrative worker or a secretary; no doubt it is waiting to be passed on to a superior. But there is no name on the outside, just a string of numbers, handwritten in black ink.
The disk inside is unmarked. Adrian frowns, casts a wary glance towards the door, and pushes it into the computer.
Unlike the others, this one is not password-protected. Not part of the Party's official records, and probably not intended to be opened here. A heading flashes up, bold and stark.
TRANSCRIPT OF TELEPHONE CONVERSATION BETWEEN GREGORY DYSON [UDRP-USA, WASHINGTON] AND SUZANNE POPE [UDRP-USA, NEW YORK], 25 JUL 1992, 19:07.
Swiftly, Adrian scans the body of the document. Not what he was looking for, but a few phrases leap out: Manhattan attacks, strategic locations, state of emergency, elections postponed.
Of course. Steele hasn't quite got as far as discarding the whole Constitution; not yet. The November election is still scheduled to take place. The subject has come up in conversation at HQ a number of times, and they have always assumed that it would simply be rigged. But this-- this is much bigger.
He tabs to the end.
A risky strategy, the last line reads. I feel I should inform you that there are those in the White House who feel Steele should be [pauses] eliminated.
This is vital. A fracture in the Party; dissent and plotting in the ranks. An opportunity, if the resistance is able to take it. And if not--
There is a sound deep within the building, then, and in the thick silence Adrian hears footsteps, far-off but quickly approaching. He is out of time.
He pockets the disk, replaces the others in the desk drawer, closes the door behind him with a gloved hand. The only evidence will be the testimony of two dazed and muddled Patrolmen. Before the guards have rounded the corner, he has already disappeared.
In the eerie quiet of curfew, Adrian makes his way back to HQ. His heart flutters like a trapped moth, somewhere between elation and despair.
*
Of late, Adrian has been dividing his time between HQ and the apartment he rents, hoping to avoid drawing undue notice to either location by returning too frequently during curfew. The route he takes back to HQ tonight is circuitous enough to throw off anybody who might be following, and by the time he arrives, his heartbeat has slowed and his head has cleared. It is long past midnight, and he had slept little in recent days. His limbs feel heavy with exhaustion.
Still, he scrutinizes the building and the street carefully before approaching-- and then pauses.
Something is different. Something is not right.
There. The side entrance; the one by which he habitually leaves. It is open, swinging listlessly ajar. Adrian never fails to lock it behind him, and the key is in his pocket.
Tiredness forgotten, Adrian makes a cautious circuit of the block, sticking close to the shadows, eyes wide, listening carefully for engines or approaching footsteps. A Patrol van passes, and he melts back into the mouth of an alleyway, but that is not what worries him. The Patrols exist to enforce the curfew, to intimidate, and to arrest offenders during daylight hours. A midnight raid like this has to be the work of the secret police.
There is no unfamiliar vehicle on the street; no sound or sign of life within. All the same, Adrian enters silently, using the back door, and does not switch on the lights. He stands pressed to the wall, peering into the gloomy corridor, until his eyes have adjusted to the dense and heavy dark inside the building. Then he makes his way upstairs -- footsteps careful, breath held, as though he is the intruder.
Empty. He lets out a breath; heads to the comms. room to survey the damage.
It's comprehensive. Precious little is left. All their radio equipment, all Adrian's copies of their files-- gone. Even the furniture has been turned over, and much of it is broken. All that have been left undamaged are a few unused folders and an empty chair, solitary and mocking, in the center of the room.
There is no way for anybody to get in touch, now; no way for Adrian to share the information he has found. The other resistance groups in the city will be of little use; theirs was one of the last, and those that remain are fragmented and ineffectual.
The kitchen has been similarly ransacked, the furniture turned-over and the drawers rifled through. The bunkrooms are in the same state, as is the little room he has not slept in since Dan's disappearance. Dan's clothes are strewn across the room, his small collection of books scattered and trampled upon. Birds of Continental Europe has a cracked spine.
Adrian has practically lived here for months, even come to consider it a home, of a sort. But HQ is suddenly very unwelcoming. The corridors are too empty, and the silence is unrelenting and hard.
And broken, suddenly, by a small noise. Adrian freezes.
Then a shadow that is soft and grey detaches itself from the black, impenetrable shadows behind the door and pads towards him. He blinks.
The shadow blinks back, and mews expectantly.
It's a small cat, somewhere between kittenhood and full growth but already missing a chunk out of its right ear. One of the local alley strays that occasionally appears to pick through the bins out back, but right now, it rubs against Adrian's legs and looks up at him with another, insistent, meow.
He lets out a breath. "Have you been hiding here all night?" he murmurs, leaning down to scratch the cat behind its uninjured ear. "I don't have anything to feed you, I'm afraid. Sorry about that."
The cat doesn't seem to mind. It just butts against his hand, and begins to purr.
It occurs to Adrian that the situation is ridiculous. Here he is, cut off from contact with his compatriots, utterly alone, with perhaps the most important piece of political information in the country in his jacket pocket, apologizing to a cat. It's so absurd that he laughs, low and helpless in the gray end of the night.
*
He waits until curfew has lifted before leaving, and as a consequence spends the rest of the night perched on the edge of the bunk he can still only think of as Dan's, listening out warily for trespassers, and absently petting the cat, which has settled in a contented curl at his side. It seems unlikely that the police will return; the place probably appeared abandoned in Adrian's absence, and they left nobody to guard the entrances.
The assumption is correct. The dead hours pass without incident, and around dawn the cat shakes itself, jumps down off the mattress and stalks out, presumably off to scavenge for food. Adrian sets off for his apartment shortly after, matching his pace and demeanor to that of the commuter crowds and arriving at his building with ideas about attempting sleep. He leaves the curtains closed against the morning sunshine, and climbs into bed.
And for some reason, it is then that the awareness of loss comes upon him.
His first thought upon seeing the damage at HQ was not for Dan. In those first days after Dan's disappearance, Adrian allowed himself to hope-- to believe-- that Dan would be in touch, that his voice would crackle over the radio and inform them that he was safe, that he had simply had to hide out in France a while, or been followed and forced to change course, and that he would be back with them soon. And even after that, he had thought that there must be channels of communication from the Party's prisons, guards open to bribery or infiltrators like those who helped Maria. Dan might be able to get a message to them, somehow.
But now-- having seen the absence of Dan's name from the official records-- it appears that Adrian's subconscious, at least, has accepted that he will not be back.
Of course, there is a small chance that Dan is still alive. Perhaps he has been imprisoned in Europe, or crash-landed there, with no means of repairing Archie or returning himself. But it is a only a small chance, and every time Adrian closes his eyes he thinks of gunshots at borders or engines sputtering lifelessly over black seas, and a small place inside of him feels cold and desolate as the Antarctic wastes.
He pulls the blanket up over his head, and tries to force the thoughts down. What right has he to wallow in grief and self-pity? He is hardly the first person to have lost a loved one to the Party. Hundreds have already done so, and thousands more will if Steele and his supporters are allowed to carry out their plans.
That cannot happen. He cannot allow it.
The knowledge is clear and certain in Adrian's mind, and it is a familiar certainty; one that rings down the years and gives him momentary pause. Because he sounds just like-- himself. His old self.
But what other choice does he have? The means to change history is in his hands once again, though this time he has not sought it out. He cannot just let things continue as they are, or allow the Party to kill thousands in its pursuit of power.
Perhaps he is wrong. He has been wrong before. Perhaps the transcript is a false one, fabricated by a Party official to incriminate a rival for office. Perhaps Steele's plan will not go ahead.
But that is unlikely. And another, small voice in the back of his mind insists that he has to at least try to help, that he cannot do nothing. This voice doesn't sound like his old self. It sounds like someone else entirely.
He will have to leave. He has a rough idea of the location of the base at which Judith and the others are staying, and Maria's comments made it sound likely that that particular group was already considering an attack on the Party. There must be someone among the criminal elements in the city willing to provide transport for a single passenger, particularly one able to pay well. He will ask among his contacts tonight. It's all he can do.
Adrian sighs, and squeezes his eyes closed. The sleep he eventually falls into is blank and dreamless, but there is no solace in it.
He wakes in the early afternoon curled into a corner of the bed, a legacy of so many nights spent sharing a single bunk, and for brief seconds forgets where he is and expects to hear Dan complaining as he turns over, or to feel a warm body next to him. Then he blinks and remembers that there is nobody there; just an unoccupied space and the sunlight creeping through the crack in the curtains, painting a stripe of inappropriately cheerful yellow onto the coverlet.
*
Later that afternoon, Adrian meets with one of his contacts. After a short conference, he is informed that yes, there is a driver willing to convey him to Michigan and capable of avoiding Party checkpoints. The contact hands him a piece of paper with the telephone number of a cafe scrawled upon it, and tells him to call after hours.
He does not return to his apartment immediately. Instead, he walks into the grocery store nearest HQ, buys rice and some rather sad-looking vegetables with the ration vouchers he has left, and then hints to shopkeeper that he is willing to pay extra for something of rather better quality.
He has never bothered with such frivolities before. When the other were at HQ, they were all scrupulous in avoiding anything that might draw undue attention. Misdemeanors were dangerous. But it hardly matters, now.
The man behind the counter looks surprised when Adrian requests a single piece of his best fish, but he wraps it and takes the money without comment. Most people, Adrian supposes, are looking for confectionary, or perhaps alcohol that's more palatable than the vile chemical brews licensed by the government. (And canned tuna would do just as well, in actuality -- but buying the best is a long-standing habit, and one he is not inclined to break. He's never quite been able to help thinking of cats as the aristocrats of the animal world, creatures for whom second-class treatment must be intolerable. Even the mangiest of strays still has something proud and delicate in its bearing, some strange dignity among the refuse in a backstreet. It's a quality he has always admired.)
Sure enough, when he slips in through the unlocked side-door of HQ, it's only a moment before a dark feline shape appears from behind the kitchen door and slinks towards him, purring ecstatically at the promise of food.
Why is he doing this? Is it to reassure himself that he still has a heart? That he will not stop caring for other creatures with Dan at his side to keep him grounded in the world?
Perhaps. But in fact, Adrian suspects that his motivations are rather simpler than that. There is something comforting in soft fur beneath his hands, in the company of a creature to whom he is nothing more than a source of food and affection.
He stopped thinking of himself as the world's savior a long time ago. In recent months, however, he has realized that perhaps he no longer wishes to be that. The thought of intervening in the larger picture -- becoming an actor upon history once more -- sends a thrill of distaste through him, accompanied by something thin and cold that might even be fear.
But there is no choice; none at all.
He makes the call anyway.
*
Dan arrives under cover of darkness, his heart lightening by degrees as he flies west. He's alone, Rich having elected to stay behind in the relative safety of the Village, and feeling glad to be out of there seems kind of traitorous, but the last few days have been awkward, to say the least.
Okay, so he wasn't exactly expecting Laurie to take the news well. And she reacted pretty much as expected, at first -- wide-eyed and horrified, snapping "Have you lost your mind?" with an angry flush creeping up from her neck to her hairline -- but that wasn't really the worst part.
That came the following day, when she interrupted him in the midst of his repairs on Archie, sat down on the grass with him and asked gently if it was really true.
"You can tell me," she said, "If it's a cover story or something. I won't ask any more questions. And I'll keep my mouth shut. Or if he's-- " She swallowed. "Blackmailing you. Or anything. He'll never know you're here. You don't have to go back."
Dan shook his head, helplessly. And the disappointed look in here eyes, then-- that was the worst part.
She still probably thinks Adrian's brainwashed him, or something. But at least she was still speaking to him when he left.
The digital display on Archie's control panel blinks. Twelve minutes until the Patrols change shifts. He'll have to wait until then to fly in through the tunnel.
He tries radioing HQ. No luck earlier, but he ought to be well within range by now.
There's no response, and Dan's heart sinks a little as he remembers being unable to get through on the Village telephones, either.
No. He's not going to start assuming the worst-- not yet. They have had to change their phone lines before now, and maybe the radio frequencies have been shut down. Or maybe they're just having technical difficulties. Those happen a lot.
He parks Archie halfway up the tunnel, though, and continues up to HQ on foot, just in case. And as soon as he steps into the workshop, he notices the quiet.
It's never this quiet. Even in the small hours of the morning, there's always the hiss of a radio or a murmured conversation or somebody up and about in the corridors, getting ready for radio duty or unable to sleep and drinking coffee in the kitchen. It's unnatural. Dan breathes in deep and holds it; ascends the stairs as quietly as he can.
There's nobody here. And the door to the comms. room is hanging open and he can see that the handle is busted, and he doesn't even have to look in there to know that it's too late, he's too late--
He exhales heavily, tries to swallow back the cold sickness that's rising in his throat. Because if HQ's been raided, what's happened to the others? Arrested? Imprisoned? But the secret police are armed and they don't answer publicly to anyone, they can kill people and they just disappear and nobody ever knows, he'd never know--
Dan takes another breath, shaky but deliberately slow. He isn't panicking. Not yet. They might have gotten out in time. And if they've been taken there will be signs of a struggle, and if not perhaps someone will have left him some message, some clue. They wouldn't just leave and let him wonder, Adrian wouldn't do that.
He looks into the comms. room. Nothing; it's gutted. The kitchen, then. He pushes open the door.
And then goes still, startled by the utterly incongruous noise he hears. A kind of chirrup-purr, the same noise his mom's fat tabby used to make when he got home from school and she was expecting to be fed. There's a cat under the table. A scruffy-looking grey one, with half an ear.
Dan blinks, incredulous. The cat just looks at him. Then it stalks out from under the table and through the door, tail raised imperiously.
And God, there are footsteps in the corridor, and Dan follows it with more curiosity than hope, pressed in close to the wall and poised to jump back or strike out with a fist if he has to.
But when he rounds the corner and sees Adrian looking back at him, all he can manage to feel is relief. Like he knew all along-- like he's always known-- that the world just couldn't be that cruel.
Chapter 13
Author:
anactoriaFandom: Watchmen
Characters/Pairing: Dan/Adrian
Rating: R overall, PG-13 for this part.
Disclaimer: No, they're not mine.
Summary: It's 1992 and this isn't Utopia.
Notes: Beta-read by
muse_of_graphia; thanks. :)Chapter 1 Chapter 5 Chapter 9
Chapter 2 Chapter 6 Chapter 10
Chapter 3 Chapter 7 Chapter 11
Chapter 4 Chapter 8
August 1992
Adrian works quickly and quietly, now that he is alone. Oh, he makes contacts in what is left of Boston's underworld, but for the most part they are criminals with few resistance affiliations, and he allows for only the briefest of meetings. They are simply a means to an end.
The Party keeps records of its own activities, of course, and that includes lists of political prisoners. The names of anybody caught assisting refugees out of the city, or attempting to return to it after dark, are likely to be held at the local Party headquarters. Even the local branch is a large and unwieldy organization, and there is no distraction or evasion technique in the world that would give Adrian time to make a thorough search of the place. But he means to find out where the information is held, and find out he does.
He still has funds enough to make bribery a possibility, and when it is necessary, he can be swift and ruthless and terrifying. Though the need for such tactics often leaves him tasting bile, he never falters. (And yes, he has considered other options-- but then he remembers Dan's gentle hands and his concerned, pleading eyes and knows that he could not bear to be so ungrateful.) With no life to risk but his own, he does not worry overmuch about incurring the wrath of the criminal gangs, and he is quite capable of remaining below the Party's radar.
Adrian can go unnoticed, when he has to; he is practiced at disappearing into the shadows. He inhabits them, now. They are his home.
They always have been, if he is quite honest. For months now, he and Dan and the others have been carrying out their activities underground, living in society's cracks and corners. And even before that, Adrian's life's work -- folly though it was -- was done out of the public eye, without the knowledge of any other. In the shadows, and alone.
So it is strange that they should seem darker now, without fellow-haunters.
*
He meets a contact, and then another, and eventually comes to a Party official who knows the location of classified records and the passwords used to protect them, and is willing to part with the information for a price. Accepting a bribe from an enemy of the state is a risky business, and Adrian does not ask what manner of personal emergency has prompted him to do so.
The man is thin and nervous. His eyes dart around continually, seeking a camera or a listening device, or a passer-by lingering at the window a fraction too long. He hands over the plans and information, takes the money, and leaves hurriedly, never once meeting Adrian's eyes. Adrian cannot be sure what the man is most scared of.
Back at HQ, he studies the plans with care. The most likely entrance is a side-door, little-used and unlikely to be heavily guarded. The alarm should be easy enough to disable. Getting through the interior and locating the right office room will be more difficult, but certainly not impossible.
As it happens, he encounters only two Patrolmen, and they are dispatched easily enough. They are talking in low, distracted voices, not bothering to look around or behind them, and sometimes they wander paces apart. The beams of their flashlights glance thinly into corners. It appears that the Party does not expect intruders to risk entering its own territory.
The second Patrolman turns only as his partner's unconscious body hits the floor, and a split-second later he, too, is slumping senselessly down against a wall.
There appears to be nobody else in earshot, although another pair will no doubt pass this way soon enough. The relative slackness of security here surprises Adrian; but then, the Party seems more concerned with attack than with defending its own property at present. More prison camps, more Patrols on the street and at the borders. That means fewer on its home turf.
Adrian recalls Steele's lack of public appearances in the last few months; the harried note of urgency in his most recent speeches, those in which he has denounced the resistance and suggested that there are plotters who may still endanger this country's hard-won unity. The Party is beginning to seem like a cornered animal; one lashing out in fear, distracted and forgetting to defend the soft parts of its belly.
The Party's encryption software is the most sophisticated on the market. Adrian knows this because he part-funded the research team that originally designed it, and it has changed little since he used it last. A backdoor was written discreetly into the system during the development stage, before it was sold to the government. It has not been found. Getting into the files is the work of a moment, and Adrian moves methodically through the disks in the cabinet to which the plans direct him. Prisoner records for the last fortnight are on the third one he finds.
There is no mention of Dan's name.
No mention of Sam Hollis, either, or of any other alias that Adrian thinks to try. Kovacs, Walters, Juspeczyk, Archibald-- blanks, all of them.
And the night seems to contract and to grow heavy, and Adrian feels as though something indefinable is being drained out of him. Because if Dan has not been imprisoned, then--
There other disks. Other files. He rifles through them with rising urgency, the necessity of concentration the only thing keeping his hands steady.
An inventory of impounded equipment. There is nothing on it that could be Archie.
He has been here long moments now. There is little time left. He tries other drawers, other disks. Nothing.
Then something catches his eye. A manila envelope, in the in-tray beside the computer. This must be the desk of an administrative worker or a secretary; no doubt it is waiting to be passed on to a superior. But there is no name on the outside, just a string of numbers, handwritten in black ink.
The disk inside is unmarked. Adrian frowns, casts a wary glance towards the door, and pushes it into the computer.
Unlike the others, this one is not password-protected. Not part of the Party's official records, and probably not intended to be opened here. A heading flashes up, bold and stark.
TRANSCRIPT OF TELEPHONE CONVERSATION BETWEEN GREGORY DYSON [UDRP-USA, WASHINGTON] AND SUZANNE POPE [UDRP-USA, NEW YORK], 25 JUL 1992, 19:07.
Swiftly, Adrian scans the body of the document. Not what he was looking for, but a few phrases leap out: Manhattan attacks, strategic locations, state of emergency, elections postponed.
Of course. Steele hasn't quite got as far as discarding the whole Constitution; not yet. The November election is still scheduled to take place. The subject has come up in conversation at HQ a number of times, and they have always assumed that it would simply be rigged. But this-- this is much bigger.
He tabs to the end.
A risky strategy, the last line reads. I feel I should inform you that there are those in the White House who feel Steele should be [pauses] eliminated.
This is vital. A fracture in the Party; dissent and plotting in the ranks. An opportunity, if the resistance is able to take it. And if not--
There is a sound deep within the building, then, and in the thick silence Adrian hears footsteps, far-off but quickly approaching. He is out of time.
He pockets the disk, replaces the others in the desk drawer, closes the door behind him with a gloved hand. The only evidence will be the testimony of two dazed and muddled Patrolmen. Before the guards have rounded the corner, he has already disappeared.
In the eerie quiet of curfew, Adrian makes his way back to HQ. His heart flutters like a trapped moth, somewhere between elation and despair.
*
Of late, Adrian has been dividing his time between HQ and the apartment he rents, hoping to avoid drawing undue notice to either location by returning too frequently during curfew. The route he takes back to HQ tonight is circuitous enough to throw off anybody who might be following, and by the time he arrives, his heartbeat has slowed and his head has cleared. It is long past midnight, and he had slept little in recent days. His limbs feel heavy with exhaustion.
Still, he scrutinizes the building and the street carefully before approaching-- and then pauses.
Something is different. Something is not right.
There. The side entrance; the one by which he habitually leaves. It is open, swinging listlessly ajar. Adrian never fails to lock it behind him, and the key is in his pocket.
Tiredness forgotten, Adrian makes a cautious circuit of the block, sticking close to the shadows, eyes wide, listening carefully for engines or approaching footsteps. A Patrol van passes, and he melts back into the mouth of an alleyway, but that is not what worries him. The Patrols exist to enforce the curfew, to intimidate, and to arrest offenders during daylight hours. A midnight raid like this has to be the work of the secret police.
There is no unfamiliar vehicle on the street; no sound or sign of life within. All the same, Adrian enters silently, using the back door, and does not switch on the lights. He stands pressed to the wall, peering into the gloomy corridor, until his eyes have adjusted to the dense and heavy dark inside the building. Then he makes his way upstairs -- footsteps careful, breath held, as though he is the intruder.
Empty. He lets out a breath; heads to the comms. room to survey the damage.
It's comprehensive. Precious little is left. All their radio equipment, all Adrian's copies of their files-- gone. Even the furniture has been turned over, and much of it is broken. All that have been left undamaged are a few unused folders and an empty chair, solitary and mocking, in the center of the room.
There is no way for anybody to get in touch, now; no way for Adrian to share the information he has found. The other resistance groups in the city will be of little use; theirs was one of the last, and those that remain are fragmented and ineffectual.
The kitchen has been similarly ransacked, the furniture turned-over and the drawers rifled through. The bunkrooms are in the same state, as is the little room he has not slept in since Dan's disappearance. Dan's clothes are strewn across the room, his small collection of books scattered and trampled upon. Birds of Continental Europe has a cracked spine.
Adrian has practically lived here for months, even come to consider it a home, of a sort. But HQ is suddenly very unwelcoming. The corridors are too empty, and the silence is unrelenting and hard.
And broken, suddenly, by a small noise. Adrian freezes.
Then a shadow that is soft and grey detaches itself from the black, impenetrable shadows behind the door and pads towards him. He blinks.
The shadow blinks back, and mews expectantly.
It's a small cat, somewhere between kittenhood and full growth but already missing a chunk out of its right ear. One of the local alley strays that occasionally appears to pick through the bins out back, but right now, it rubs against Adrian's legs and looks up at him with another, insistent, meow.
He lets out a breath. "Have you been hiding here all night?" he murmurs, leaning down to scratch the cat behind its uninjured ear. "I don't have anything to feed you, I'm afraid. Sorry about that."
The cat doesn't seem to mind. It just butts against his hand, and begins to purr.
It occurs to Adrian that the situation is ridiculous. Here he is, cut off from contact with his compatriots, utterly alone, with perhaps the most important piece of political information in the country in his jacket pocket, apologizing to a cat. It's so absurd that he laughs, low and helpless in the gray end of the night.
*
He waits until curfew has lifted before leaving, and as a consequence spends the rest of the night perched on the edge of the bunk he can still only think of as Dan's, listening out warily for trespassers, and absently petting the cat, which has settled in a contented curl at his side. It seems unlikely that the police will return; the place probably appeared abandoned in Adrian's absence, and they left nobody to guard the entrances.
The assumption is correct. The dead hours pass without incident, and around dawn the cat shakes itself, jumps down off the mattress and stalks out, presumably off to scavenge for food. Adrian sets off for his apartment shortly after, matching his pace and demeanor to that of the commuter crowds and arriving at his building with ideas about attempting sleep. He leaves the curtains closed against the morning sunshine, and climbs into bed.
And for some reason, it is then that the awareness of loss comes upon him.
His first thought upon seeing the damage at HQ was not for Dan. In those first days after Dan's disappearance, Adrian allowed himself to hope-- to believe-- that Dan would be in touch, that his voice would crackle over the radio and inform them that he was safe, that he had simply had to hide out in France a while, or been followed and forced to change course, and that he would be back with them soon. And even after that, he had thought that there must be channels of communication from the Party's prisons, guards open to bribery or infiltrators like those who helped Maria. Dan might be able to get a message to them, somehow.
But now-- having seen the absence of Dan's name from the official records-- it appears that Adrian's subconscious, at least, has accepted that he will not be back.
Of course, there is a small chance that Dan is still alive. Perhaps he has been imprisoned in Europe, or crash-landed there, with no means of repairing Archie or returning himself. But it is a only a small chance, and every time Adrian closes his eyes he thinks of gunshots at borders or engines sputtering lifelessly over black seas, and a small place inside of him feels cold and desolate as the Antarctic wastes.
He pulls the blanket up over his head, and tries to force the thoughts down. What right has he to wallow in grief and self-pity? He is hardly the first person to have lost a loved one to the Party. Hundreds have already done so, and thousands more will if Steele and his supporters are allowed to carry out their plans.
That cannot happen. He cannot allow it.
The knowledge is clear and certain in Adrian's mind, and it is a familiar certainty; one that rings down the years and gives him momentary pause. Because he sounds just like-- himself. His old self.
But what other choice does he have? The means to change history is in his hands once again, though this time he has not sought it out. He cannot just let things continue as they are, or allow the Party to kill thousands in its pursuit of power.
Perhaps he is wrong. He has been wrong before. Perhaps the transcript is a false one, fabricated by a Party official to incriminate a rival for office. Perhaps Steele's plan will not go ahead.
But that is unlikely. And another, small voice in the back of his mind insists that he has to at least try to help, that he cannot do nothing. This voice doesn't sound like his old self. It sounds like someone else entirely.
He will have to leave. He has a rough idea of the location of the base at which Judith and the others are staying, and Maria's comments made it sound likely that that particular group was already considering an attack on the Party. There must be someone among the criminal elements in the city willing to provide transport for a single passenger, particularly one able to pay well. He will ask among his contacts tonight. It's all he can do.
Adrian sighs, and squeezes his eyes closed. The sleep he eventually falls into is blank and dreamless, but there is no solace in it.
He wakes in the early afternoon curled into a corner of the bed, a legacy of so many nights spent sharing a single bunk, and for brief seconds forgets where he is and expects to hear Dan complaining as he turns over, or to feel a warm body next to him. Then he blinks and remembers that there is nobody there; just an unoccupied space and the sunlight creeping through the crack in the curtains, painting a stripe of inappropriately cheerful yellow onto the coverlet.
*
Later that afternoon, Adrian meets with one of his contacts. After a short conference, he is informed that yes, there is a driver willing to convey him to Michigan and capable of avoiding Party checkpoints. The contact hands him a piece of paper with the telephone number of a cafe scrawled upon it, and tells him to call after hours.
He does not return to his apartment immediately. Instead, he walks into the grocery store nearest HQ, buys rice and some rather sad-looking vegetables with the ration vouchers he has left, and then hints to shopkeeper that he is willing to pay extra for something of rather better quality.
He has never bothered with such frivolities before. When the other were at HQ, they were all scrupulous in avoiding anything that might draw undue attention. Misdemeanors were dangerous. But it hardly matters, now.
The man behind the counter looks surprised when Adrian requests a single piece of his best fish, but he wraps it and takes the money without comment. Most people, Adrian supposes, are looking for confectionary, or perhaps alcohol that's more palatable than the vile chemical brews licensed by the government. (And canned tuna would do just as well, in actuality -- but buying the best is a long-standing habit, and one he is not inclined to break. He's never quite been able to help thinking of cats as the aristocrats of the animal world, creatures for whom second-class treatment must be intolerable. Even the mangiest of strays still has something proud and delicate in its bearing, some strange dignity among the refuse in a backstreet. It's a quality he has always admired.)
Sure enough, when he slips in through the unlocked side-door of HQ, it's only a moment before a dark feline shape appears from behind the kitchen door and slinks towards him, purring ecstatically at the promise of food.
Why is he doing this? Is it to reassure himself that he still has a heart? That he will not stop caring for other creatures with Dan at his side to keep him grounded in the world?
Perhaps. But in fact, Adrian suspects that his motivations are rather simpler than that. There is something comforting in soft fur beneath his hands, in the company of a creature to whom he is nothing more than a source of food and affection.
He stopped thinking of himself as the world's savior a long time ago. In recent months, however, he has realized that perhaps he no longer wishes to be that. The thought of intervening in the larger picture -- becoming an actor upon history once more -- sends a thrill of distaste through him, accompanied by something thin and cold that might even be fear.
But there is no choice; none at all.
He makes the call anyway.
*
Dan arrives under cover of darkness, his heart lightening by degrees as he flies west. He's alone, Rich having elected to stay behind in the relative safety of the Village, and feeling glad to be out of there seems kind of traitorous, but the last few days have been awkward, to say the least.
Okay, so he wasn't exactly expecting Laurie to take the news well. And she reacted pretty much as expected, at first -- wide-eyed and horrified, snapping "Have you lost your mind?" with an angry flush creeping up from her neck to her hairline -- but that wasn't really the worst part.
That came the following day, when she interrupted him in the midst of his repairs on Archie, sat down on the grass with him and asked gently if it was really true.
"You can tell me," she said, "If it's a cover story or something. I won't ask any more questions. And I'll keep my mouth shut. Or if he's-- " She swallowed. "Blackmailing you. Or anything. He'll never know you're here. You don't have to go back."
Dan shook his head, helplessly. And the disappointed look in here eyes, then-- that was the worst part.
She still probably thinks Adrian's brainwashed him, or something. But at least she was still speaking to him when he left.
The digital display on Archie's control panel blinks. Twelve minutes until the Patrols change shifts. He'll have to wait until then to fly in through the tunnel.
He tries radioing HQ. No luck earlier, but he ought to be well within range by now.
There's no response, and Dan's heart sinks a little as he remembers being unable to get through on the Village telephones, either.
No. He's not going to start assuming the worst-- not yet. They have had to change their phone lines before now, and maybe the radio frequencies have been shut down. Or maybe they're just having technical difficulties. Those happen a lot.
He parks Archie halfway up the tunnel, though, and continues up to HQ on foot, just in case. And as soon as he steps into the workshop, he notices the quiet.
It's never this quiet. Even in the small hours of the morning, there's always the hiss of a radio or a murmured conversation or somebody up and about in the corridors, getting ready for radio duty or unable to sleep and drinking coffee in the kitchen. It's unnatural. Dan breathes in deep and holds it; ascends the stairs as quietly as he can.
There's nobody here. And the door to the comms. room is hanging open and he can see that the handle is busted, and he doesn't even have to look in there to know that it's too late, he's too late--
He exhales heavily, tries to swallow back the cold sickness that's rising in his throat. Because if HQ's been raided, what's happened to the others? Arrested? Imprisoned? But the secret police are armed and they don't answer publicly to anyone, they can kill people and they just disappear and nobody ever knows, he'd never know--
Dan takes another breath, shaky but deliberately slow. He isn't panicking. Not yet. They might have gotten out in time. And if they've been taken there will be signs of a struggle, and if not perhaps someone will have left him some message, some clue. They wouldn't just leave and let him wonder, Adrian wouldn't do that.
He looks into the comms. room. Nothing; it's gutted. The kitchen, then. He pushes open the door.
And then goes still, startled by the utterly incongruous noise he hears. A kind of chirrup-purr, the same noise his mom's fat tabby used to make when he got home from school and she was expecting to be fed. There's a cat under the table. A scruffy-looking grey one, with half an ear.
Dan blinks, incredulous. The cat just looks at him. Then it stalks out from under the table and through the door, tail raised imperiously.
And God, there are footsteps in the corridor, and Dan follows it with more curiosity than hope, pressed in close to the wall and poised to jump back or strike out with a fist if he has to.
But when he rounds the corner and sees Adrian looking back at him, all he can manage to feel is relief. Like he knew all along-- like he's always known-- that the world just couldn't be that cruel.
Chapter 13
