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codenamekiki · 1 year

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Title: The 9 to 5 Steady

Fandom: Fallen Hero: Rebirth

Characters: Sidestep/Iodine Becerra, Charge/Ricardo Ortega.

Rating: T, for allusions

Word Count: 3720

Shipping: none

Cross posted to AO3

A knock two doors down interrupted her morning drills and her eyes fluttered open. A dull spark on the horizon flared with the others floating there. Muffled words floated under her own door but she did not need to hear them to understand.

Another knock, another set of words, another wave of thoughts and emotions filtered from dreams to clouded wakefulness. She did not stir on the bed, fully clothed, always fully clothed, and inhaled slowly.

The hand fell sharply against her door, three quick raps, followed by a gentle, but firm, “6:30. Breakfast in thirty.”

“Thanks,” she called back, and the volunteer outside went on their way.

With a quiet breath in, she continued to stare at the ceiling, blinking slowly. It was the quietest time of the day. Plans beckoned. She would not have minded more sleep, but nothing beat the quiet before other minds started pressing against her, before the walls went up. Before she was constantly pushing pushing pushing back against something. She exhaled, as if eking breath from her lungs might eke time to a dribble.

Breakfast. Something on her belly before the day took over. Ten hours of free time before returning to line up for another maybe-bed. Two nights she had slept here and—

“Hey, Yodo, you in there?”

Two nights too many, apparently, she thought uncharitably.

Folding her hands over her belly, she purposefully kept her gaze at the ceiling. With a few more minutes she could complete her exercises. Her mouth did not move. Her eyes closed again. Any moment now they would move along and-

“Yodo?”

Her eyes cut sharply to the door, the shadow of feet beneath it. She concentrated, familiar pressure at her forehead. A moment later the “He-“ of another greeting was swallowed down in confusion and then in blessed apathy.

She stared at the door, waiting. A gentle shuffle of feet faded away and she exhaled again, this time more forcefully.

“Thirty minutes. Right,” she muttered and rolled to her side, feet on the floor. Two quick tucks and she was in her shoes. Her bag slipped over her shoulder and she was up. Even with the interruption—she did not need friends, people to ask questions or try to remember her—her facade did not break. Her calm demeanor stayed in place, mostly honest.

The time was her own. Even with the announcement for breakfast, the notice was gentle, an offer. There was no rat-tat-tat of blue-covered fingers at the glass. She inhaled sharply, too sharply this time and blinked away the memory. Here, she felt safe enough to risk the sleep behind an unlocked door.

She was the first in line for breakfast—showering was rarely an option for her in open spaces like this—where she avoided the powdered eggs and pea protein and instead globbed a lump of goopy oatmeal into the styro cup. It was the only excuse she had for the obscene amount of brown sugar she poured in after. With a carton of milk in her other hand, she quickly found a seat in the corner under the bright windows.

Cereal was familiar.

Sugar was not.

Milk was familiar.

Pinching and squeezing the carton open, less so.

But she could make her way.

The oatmeal went down easy, too easy—did she crave sugar because of conditioning, or—and she forced herself to slow, remembering the first times she had eaten too fast and too freely. However loosed she was, no one gave seconds to firsts vomited all over the floor. Watching the tables fill around her occupied her eyes and her thoughts and she put down the spoon.

Fleeting spikes of hope and desperation dulled as bellies filled. Looking for work, looking for family, staying under the radar, the paranoia of being found. Her eyes focused on her cup again, but her mind latched onto that broadcast. What crashed over her was an inane ruckus of a disordered chorus. She picked up the cup again and let the mundanity of schizophrenia relieve her alarm.

Two were eyeing her mostly empty table, approaching slowly. Before she could push them away, with eyes or with thoughts, a third joined them, beelining for an empty seat.

Before she could move, they ensconced themselves. Two across and one next to her. The one directly across nodded and then dug into his powdered eggs, smelling of sulfur and plastic. The eggs, not the person. Or maybe both?

Next to her, a woman she had observed to be called Elaine grinned at her, “What’s good, Iodine?”

Shrugging, she scooted her cup closer to her milk, preparing to abandon the table. In an instant she abandoned the milk to snap her wrist out of the path of a seeking grasp. Elaine’s searching hand hit the table with a low thud, and the woman grinned.

“Wow, you really are slick, aren’t you?”

Iodine stared, halfway to standing, but there was an echo to Elaine’s intention. She was willing to shout if she did not get her way, make a scene, draw any and all attention. Iodine bore it, even as holding position burned her quads.

The woman’s other arm perched on the table to mimic a casual conversation, and her mind settled, snapping between moods like a whip.

“How is it that a mousy rat like you sweet talked the director into private accommodations?” She blinked slowly, too slowly, old sunspots dotting her face and one tooth posterior to her right canine missing. “Don’t think it went unnoticed that you had a double to yourself… Unless, why, dear me! Iodine, did you blow her?”

There were no memories of the word in context that would explain the other twos’ sudden choking. But she knew a trap when she felt it. She tore her eyes away from their giggling and made full eye contact with the woman holding to her.

“You’re mistaken,” she explained calmly, holding her gaze.

Without waiting to be pounced again, she pulled away from the table soundlessly, bag still slung over her shoulder, both hands full.

People were still pouring into the cafeteria, and she slid around them without incident—don’t notice me. As she turned into the hallway, she cast a sideeye back to the table she had vacated, but no one was looking at her. The hole she left was like she had never been.

But people had been noticing other things… damn.

The front exit punched a doublewide threshold to the street, with a desk just this side for registration. The volunteer there clattered busy, clipboards and inventory, no nudge needed.

No one would stop her from leaving. Past the exit, sunshine teased and she resisted the urge to dart into it. Her eyes flitted once, twice for anyone who might be worth notice, but anyone passing by now was purposed, like her, and their intentions fluttered out and around her without cause for concern. One large step and she slunk along into the LD morning with only the usual worry.

Several minutes of walking ate the concrete beneath her feet in a comfortable rhythm. The sun slid steadily upward against a blue sky, hazy at the horizon. There was enough sugar in her belly to glaze a dozen donuts, and the sun was not yet hot, but she paused for boba, anyway.

With a cup that shrunk her hand, she slipped into line at the bus stop, only to hesitate when the 412 pulled up. Several passengers boarded, and no one departed. Through the windows the bodies seemed like rounds in a magazine—neat, tight, a deadly press.

The driver waited, staring, and she finally shook her head, “I’ll get the next one.”

The doors closed decisively, and as the bus pulled away, she took a slow drag from her tea. The transport disappeared down the hill before she continued. Likely, all the buses would be in the same state during rush hour. She kept to the sidewalk and out of the way, unhurried.

Almost an hour later, in the shade of several skyscrapers, she dropped herself onto an empty bench facing the road. It was a sort of plaza, still pleasant, too early for people to be taking lunch breaks. Late enough that coffee cups had been forgotten five feet from the trash. There were even some trees here, planted since the Big One, and they rustled calmly in the breeze from the ocean.

Her tea was mostly melted ice, but there was enough tapioca in the bottom to look convincing at a casual glance. Pulling a book from her bag, an old dog-eared, paper thing, taken from a box full of well worn oddities donated to the shelter, she crossed a leg over her ankle. With the bag tucked into her lap, she opened the pages.

And she read.

She read the area, the number of pedestrians, cars circling toward the narrow public lot down the block.

She read the PINs as they were tugged from the bottom to the surface of memories behind her. Useless without the attached card, which she could not touch. But still. Four digits. Transaction. Four digits. Transaction. Each one took less than two minutes.

She took a small sip of her sugar water and flipped a page one-handed.

One forty-nine.

One fifty.

Familiar pressure pulsed behind her forehead, creeping back toward her temples. She tucked the cup between her leg and the armrest without releasing the book. Everything was quiet for a moment… then steps at her back drew close, and she took a deep breath, forcing herself to relax. Turning over her empty hand, casually perched on her knee, she was ready for the note that was pressed into it. The man standing there did not linger, even as her fingers slid back like a snake to its den. He followed the impulse to get back to his meeting, his computer, his lover—whatever—and left. She pressed the twenty dollars into the open spine of her book and turned another page.

Not a bad start to the morning.

Buses continued to roll back and forth, expensive cars, news helicopters, one or two boosts overhead. Even from here she could see Sentinel’s blue cape. But she was beneath their attention—don’t notice me—and skimmed purses and minds until her tea was truly gone and she could turn no more pages in her book.

Yes, a very fruitful morning.

Sometime later when the plaza was beginning to fill, she put the book into the bottom of her bag, carefully laid it so none of its contents would flutter out. She turned toward the trash can—the coffee cups were still there—and hesitated at the sight of a man in a sport coat and polo. He was too muscled, neck running straight into his arms, to be a stock broker, and his face was too focused to be ignored. He was also drifting straight toward her.

Veering away from the trash can, she stuck the straw in her mouth again, sipping on non-existent contents. A normal motion, normal energy. But her brain was on high alert, and her heart was starting to beat the same.

Scooting around one of the raised planters, she angled toward the deeper cram of downtown. It was lunchtime now, and more people would be out and about.

“Hey kid,” a voice called, and she did not turn to look back.

Around her thoughts flew like airplanes, heavy and direct on a flight path, as she skirted between bodies.

One spiked through the traffic like a dart, and she took two steps back before he suddenly landed before her, crouched from a leap that cleared the top of her head.

A mod.

Shit.

She realized her mistake when he unrolled to his full height. It was not a mistake that she had run, no, but that she had run into the crowd. People were watching, now, too many to redirect or coerce. He smiled. Not like Elaine smiled. The threat was more subtle, still legible.

“That was a pretty neat trick you did back there,” he offered, sauntering toward her as he reached toward his pocket.

She held her ground against the training to take another step back, even as she explained, “You’re mistaken.” This man was not from the bank, and he was not LDPD, either. His shields were too steady, the cadence of gait his gait just wrong enough...

“Oh?” The curiosity sounded like acceptance. “Okay, then.” And he was still smiling.

Before he pulled his hand from his pocket, she relaxed. His shields weren’t that good. But he was not really trying to protect himself, either. Did he suspect, or…?

The same hand extended. A card rested between two fingers.

When she hesitated he laughed and jostled it in her direction.

“We’re people who know how to get things, and we like those kind of tricks. Maybe you even have a magic act.”

“Only if you count making sugar disappear,” she retorted, feeling the first bite of her own feelings making their way to the surface. Why was he hounding her? She was wearing a hoodie and a pair of ratty jeans that had not been washed in two weeks. And aside from whatever conjecture he could muster, he had not hear anything. There were no cameras to catch her movements. How…?

He laughed again, something about it more strained, but it least it was honest. She did not relax a hair, but neither did he pull the card away.

“Just take the card. Give us a call if you’re interested. No pressure if you’re not.”

“It kind of looks like pressure,” a new voice interrupted, and Iodine jumped despite herself.

But the body next to and just behind her was close enough that when she turned she bumped into the tall figure who was watching the scene play out.

She had felt nothing, heard nothing, and yet the man standing there watching her flounder like a salmon struggling upstream did so with professional interest. Certainly less than sport coat. But this was—

“Marshal Charge, good morning,” her original pursuer intoned, the same oily cast to his tone. His face had not changed, but his inner monologue had gone dark, furious. It was a lighthouse against the Marshal’s blank mindscape. “I didn’t know Rangers were in the habit of perusing business proposals on the street.”

“I didn’t know legitimate business proposals happened on the street, Patel.”

Iodine stepped away, enough to give breathing room, though admittedly that was more than most. The Marshal was not in his blue skin suit. She knew it well from the news and billboards, but she knew his face even better, and that could not be hidden by civilian clothing. He was wearing a button down and trousers with a matching jacket slung over one shoulder. There was a watch on his wrist that looked heavy enough to be weaponized.

His thoughts were—not quiet, but a dull buzz of noise that refused to make itself clear. A shield?

She could not stop staring at him.

That is until Sportcoat—Patel’s—thoughts turned suddenly chilly, rat out the girl and get him off my back… and she remembered the book in her backpack, full of ill gotten gains, suddenly very heavy to be nothing but paper.

He opened his mouth. Pressure in her forehead mounted beyond the tension of the moment, as she rammed past his meager shields.

WAIT

His mouth closed and he stared straight ahead, face gone slack.

“It’s fine,” Iodine interjected tightly, resisting the reaction to rock on her heels. Surely an icepick had been driven into her eye.

There was silence for a while until the shuffling of the Marshal’s feet, his body turned toward her—don’t notice me but he did—before he asked, “Really?”

She nodded quickly. “He didn’t really bother me. I was just startled.”

Patel was coming out of the daze, looking around as if remembering that yes, he had been standing here. There was a vice in her brain, squeezing. She was certain if anyone looked too closely they would see her veins at work.

“Are you sure?”

A spike of impatience, thrown by panic, lanced through her.

“Are you deaf, or just blind?” she drawled, forcing the words to slow as she turned toward him, half expecting him to recoil—surely he could see the psychic backlash on her face.

He looked repelled, certainly, but only in the normal way. And there was something… refreshing, in that, to be heard for her words, and not for the voiceless, touchless shove.

And she still could hear nothing from him. A bag of shaken paper, two winds slapping at each other, nothing of consequence to clarify what was going through his mind beyond the expression on his face.

“Thank you,” she intoned quietly and then darted away, shoulders hunching, as she slunk past Patel without stopping. She pulled her backpack straps tightly into her shoulders.

“You’re welcome,” he called at her back. Even at a distance she didn’t need to hear his thoughts to understand the sarcasm.

She caught the bus waiting at a stop across the street, not certain in the slightest where it was going, not caring about the numerous bodies inside.

She dropped into a seat at the back and watched as Patel and Charge spoke a few more words to each other and then parted ways without another glance. From this distance she could hear Patel’s lingering confusion, unvoiced. She glanced down at the card in her hand.

Two small letters: RK

Dropping her head against the cool window she crumpled the card before shoving it into her pocket. She took the second stop and changed buses two more times before heading to find a late lunch for herself.

With a bite of carrot cake crammed into her mouth, though she could taste nothing of the vegetable beneath a mound of icing, she flipped through the book carefully poised in her lap. The diner was mostly empty, but staff had memories as well as anyone else. Training and experience told her they saw more than anyone knew. Between bites she continued reading. Four hundred and sixty dollars. A very lucrative day. Too lucrative, if Patel’s notice had come her way.

How had he seen her? She had been operating for weeks now without issue. Had someone up high been watching? And if it was only him how had he seen? Did he have other mods? What else could those jumpers do?

Then the Marshal had shown up, the highest ranking Ranger in this part of the FEZ. The highest ranking anything in the FEZ. She jammed another bite into her mouth, making sure to scoop up a healthy stack of icing, and chewed as if she could grind her way through the problem with will.

Think, you idiot, she huffed and slurped at her milk.

The two had seemed to know each other, which said more about Patel’s invite than the entirety of anything else he had offered. And LD was a big city. They had been almost directly in the middle if the financial district. There was no reason for the marshal to not be there. Especially out of uniform. Somehow he seemed just as dangerous, and what was going on with his mind? That rushing white noise…

She shifted, uncertain, and the bunched up card pressed uncomfortably amidst her loose, soft fabrics.

She did not need to pull it out,

People who know how to find things…? What kind of things?

She rubbed at her head gingerly, willing away the lingering pain before reflexively shaking her sleeve from where it had begun to crawl up her arm.

Maybe it was all just coincidence. It did not feel like it, but she could admit that not everything was connected. It just… “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you.” She had heard the lyric on the radio in passing. Even that had felt connected.

Shaking her head she chomped down on another too large bite of cake. She would have to avoid the city center for a while, stick to the outskirts. Find a new shelter.

Hell, if the progress she had made today would be worth days of hiding. Iodine suppressed the groan she wanted to loose, the scream, in favor of chewing on the cake until it was sweet, mushy, meal in her mouth. Milk washed it down, and she made her way out of the diner, paying to the penny on her order. If the server was affronted, they said nothing as she quickly made her way back into the city.

It would be a different shelter tonight. No more Elaine, no more, “Yodo, you in there?” No Marshal charge, and no more hanging around banks like a vulture waiting for a carcass. Her plans were on hold again, but they had been before, hadn’t they? It was a marathon, not a sprint.

As she slunk her way into the afternoon, a phone booth kept its place on the sidewalk next her. She stilled, turning to fully take it in.

Could she…?

She swallowed, the last of the sugar lingering on her tongue.

She had change, thanks to the cake, and the card was not so far gone that she could not make out the numbers in bold print.

A voice picked up, asking roughly, “Yeah?”

She swallowed, throwing out, “Patel?” and winced as her voice broke on the syllables. There was silence on the other end.

“It’s the girl from the bank.”

There was a scoff, quickly followed by, “You little shit. Did you really-“

“Can you find things or not?” she interjected, aware of the time on the phone. The time on her head.

For a long moment, there was silence again, the kind of silence she wished he had employed instead of calling her on the street. Then it was broken with a laugh.

“You didn’t turn me into the Marshal, I’ll give you that much. Yeah, we can deal. What do you need?”

She rested her head against the clear pane of the booth and closed her eyes. Maybe everything wasn’t lost. Maybe this could still work.

She opened her mouth and got to work.

#fallen hero #fallen hero: rebirth #FHR sidestep #FHR charge #ricardo ortega #iodine becerra

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