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404botnotfound · 5 years

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Deliverance [2]

Careful when you’re swimming in the holy water.

SERIES: Far Cry 5 WORD COUNT: 7,557 SHIP: Quinn/John Seed CHARACTERS: quinn leonis, john seed, eli palmer, wheaty, jacob seed

HERE TAKE THIS IM SICK OF LOOKING AT IT

It had never been apparent to her just how debilitating losing her sense of time’s passage could be until now.

She imagines it’s been weeks since she’d fled the Whitetail Mountains, but between the lack of sunlight and the hours that crept by so slowly they felt like days instead she had no idea how much time she’d been stuck here in the cell she’d been thrown in after the baptism John had performed on her.

Part of her still found that amusing. She’d been raised Catholic (her mother’s insistence, not her father’s), and that meant she’d effectively been baptized twice. It’s not technically unusual and she knows people sometimes chose to have another, but it wasn’t something she would have ever chosen herself—she hadn’t been any semblance of religious since her pre-teens.

A breath is huffed out as she lowers herself on bent arms, chest almost brushing the ground before she pushes herself back up again.

For the first time since escaping Jacob’s clutches Quinn can feel herself regaining the strength and good health she’d had before her initial capture in the mountains. Being stuck in a cage once again was hardly a great feeling (dehumanizing, at best) but unlike his older brother John seemed to actually give somewhat of a damn about keeping her healthy. It was probably some kind of manipulation tactic, but she could hardly complain about not starving and having a cot to sleep on rather than the ground.

Whether or not that applied to his other prisoners, she wasn’t sure.

It was slow going and she knows she won’t be back to peak health for a while, but she was on her way and that was good enough for her. The degrading health had been the worst aspect of her time with Jacob—not the starvation itself or the deplorable conditions they were all kept in or even the mind-fuckery, but the fact that she could feel herself weakening with every day that passed.

His methods hadn’t made any sense to her while there; what was the point of trying to train soldiers when you were keeping them too weak to so much as throw a halfway decent punch?

She’d gotten John to clarify it a bit after she’d discovered that once he’d found out she gave as good as she got in wordplay he could be sufficiently distracted from pulling her metaphorical—hopefully metaphorical—teeth.

(maybe she’d batted her eyelashes a few times and maybe Jacob’s demeaning question of if she abused flirting to get her way all the time drifted into her head whenever she did, maybe Jacob Seed could go fuck himself)

Jacob’s game was deprivation of sustenance and rest, keeping the ‘trainees’ weak and demoralized until they were physically and mentally pliable enough to push and twist in the direction he wanted. Classical conditioning. Pure psychological warfare confirmed.

There wasn’t any comfort in having her suspicions validated; it had almost made her less comforted when she again heard a faint echo of come home, kitten whisper through her mind like a passing breeze.

The cat and mouse games her and John had started up from the moment he first strapped her to the chair in his workshop was something she hadn’t expected to get away with, but he’d actually seemed to enjoy it—at least in the beginning. His patience for it had begun to wear thin, if his increased threats and agitation as the days passed were anything to go by.

Though she managed to dig a few more things out of him during their ‘sessions’, he was talented at swerving around questions and idle comments that would have given her something to actually work with; in itself, that was telling. He’d probably been in a white-collar profession judging by the well-kempt appearance and intelligence, but that assumption had a wrench thrown in it every time he slipped and let the monster of Wrath loose.

Jacob had been easier to read even considering the cool and distant demeanor. Posture and vernacular said military career, careful speech patterns spoke of both intelligence and pointed restraint, and Darwinian beliefs combined with the classical conditioning he was employing meant he was well-read and clever.

John, on the other hand, switched gears so frequently and with such ease that whenever she thought she had a grasp on him it slipped through her fingers. All she knew about him was that she didn’t know a Goddamn thing about him. One minute he played the calm, considerate man of God and the next he was the embodiment of rage and hate, another he was charismatic and likeable, and the next he was a grotesque caricature of a human being.

They had to have been masks, but the question of which one was the true John Seed remained. Were they just techniques to bend people the way he wanted them to bend, simply more subtle than the closed-fist punch of Jacob’s? A way to drag out the answers he wanted to hear from the people he brought into what amounted to a torture room?

Whatever it was, it was effective—some days she’d seen him pry a confession out of a begging victim before he’d even begun to cut and carve into them.

If she thought about it long enough those confessions actually seemed to aggravate him and she couldn’t put a finger on why, since it was confessions he was after in the first place.

The sadism combined with the chameleon nature of his personality made it easy to ignore the stories of his childhood that she overheard him impart to his victims (and to her, once) as well as the sympathy they dredged up in her, but there was something raw to his anger every time the people he interrogated refused to play by his rules. He would insist that he was trying to help them, that he could free them from the bonds of lies and sin, and why were they fighting that freedom?

Psychotic behavior at its finest, but how much of that was true disposition, and how much of it was a direct result of upbringing, provided those horrific stories were true?

A grunt of exertion leaves her mouth with another push-up; she needs to stop psychoanalyzing the bastard, she knew, but there wasn’t really much else for her to do while she was stuck here waiting for her turns in that chair.

Humming and singing tunes when she was left alone with the rusty smell of blood and phantom screams seeping from the walls around her was her only other pastime aside from trying to pick apart the brain of a madman like she’d been trained to do back at Quantico. Sleeping too much just gave her headaches, and though exercising to the best of her ability gave her something to do it really didn’t do much to stop her from thinking and thinking and overthinking.

Maybe the Rolling Stones had it right, she muses, a strained hum of a familiar tune about sympathizing with the devil leaving her mouth as she continues her routine.

At least she was getting practical experience she could boast about if—when—she got the chance to appeal for her badge.

She wonders if Stevie was having any more luck with figuring out how to stop the Seeds while she counted out her repetitions; so far, she’d had no luck staying away from the bastards long enough to even breathe.

Pausing with her body flat to the ground as the unmistakable, skin-prickling sensation of being watched hits her, she purses her lips.

Wordlessly she resumes, not happy with the burn she was beginning to feel telling her she wasn’t going to be able to do much more. Her captivity with Jacob had taken more out of her than she had realized. “What is it with you boys and staring? It’s fucking rude.”

Sure enough, the voice that responds is exactly the one she expects, preceded first by a disapproving tsk. “That Pride of yours again. Hadn’t you thought that, maybe, I was just waiting for you to finish?”

“I know the feeling of eyes on my back, John.” She replies, her next push-up more strained and slow than the rest; she was shaking with the effort now. “I also know the feeling of eyes on my ass.” With a heavy sigh she pushes herself up to her feet to stretch, lamenting that she’d barely counted half of what she’d been capable of before coming to Hope County.

Baby steps.

John scoffs at the accusation as he crosses the floor towards her. “Every day you make me more certain of the sin my brother suggested you suffered from.”

“Oh, I’m not suffering from it.” Her back pops nicely when she stretches upward as best as she can with the low ceiling of her cell. “You seem to be taking a hell of a lot longer to commit to mine than any of the other victims of your insanity here. Why the delay in mutilating me?”

Not that she wants it—fuck, it’s the last thing she wants.

“Because you have to willingly acknowledge it. You have to want to atone for your sin. You have to say yes.” He says, and she lifts an eyebrow at his failure to deny the mutilation comment. Considering his convictions—otherwise decent—she’d have expected him to defend his methods.

Her shoulder begins to ache, aggravated by her exercising in spite of the injury he’d given her by tipping the chair she’d been bound to over in a rage. She rolls it, folds her arms over her chest, and then in a completely deadpan voice says: “No.”

The change is immediate; he steps closer to her cell, fury in every hard line of his body.

She goes rigid. It’s a miracle she manages to not step away in reflex, but her knuckles go white where they grip her upper arms and she has to swallow the sudden stone in her throat.

John was nowhere near as physically imposing as Jacob was but his unpredictability made him every bit as dangerous—not that her constant and conscious attempts to provoke him were doing her any favors in that regard. Stop playing with fire, Quinn.

Their tense staring contest is broken by him first, and she watches as he storms over to the workbench she’d grown painfully familiar with in the last few days as he lost patience for her glib attitude and games. With an angry roar he places his hands on the edge of the bench and shoves, tipping it over and sending it crashing to the floor. All the tools stacked and lined up on its surface clatter to the ground and either roll or bounce away.

Her eyes are wide as she stares at the workbench. Silently she scratches out her previous mental assessment of his physical capability; clearly, his lean frame was deceptive.

Then a quiet ting near her feet catches her attention and she looks down, blinking at the sight of a thin screwdriver that had rolled from the bench and bumped into the bars of her cell. Adrenaline pulses through her veins at the sight and she quickly lifts her eyes back to John, schooling her features and praying he wouldn’t notice it lying there. Please, for once, let my luck turn out in my favor.

He doesn’t turn away from the workbench immediately, but once he’s apparently collected himself he returns to her, smile all teeth. “This could be so much easier if you just bared your Pride and let me free you from it.” He hisses.

“I already told you,” she says carefully, licking her lips and not missing the way his expression flickers and eyes follow the motion, “I’m not interested in being saved and I’m definitely not interested in baring myself to you.”

Wait—fuck.

She wastes half a second hoping he didn’t notice the accidental entendre, but the way his fury is fully doused and replaced by a heat of a different kind has her swearing a blue streak internally. He leans forward, hands on the bars of her cell and expression now an open leer. “My, my, Agent, where did your mind go just now?”

Oh, no, he was not going to stick her with the Scarlet fucking Letter. “Get bent you son of a bitch.”

“And Wrath makes an appearance as well! My dear, you must have a lot to own up to that’s just aching to come out.” He laughs, and her skin prickles. “I could help you with that. You just. Have to. Say. Yes.”

Christ, he’d circled through about half a dozen personalities and attitudes within the span of just five minutes—whether she’d been napping in the dirt and starving or not, she was starting to miss Jacob. At least he was consistent.

Her mouth opens, scathing comment ready to go, but before she can get the words out there’s a hiss of loud static from the two-way attached to his belt. “John. You there?” Gooseflesh ripples over her skin and she shivers, recognizing Jacob’s voice and trying not to wonder what the odds were that he’d contact John right after she’d thought about him.

The smile on John’s face drops and his jaw ticks; without breaking eye contact he reaches for the radio and clicks the receiver. “I’m busy, brother.”

“Stop being busy.” Jacob says, and Quinn has to chew on her lip to keep the mild laughter that bubbles in her throat from the flat disregard in his voice. “You’ve got a problem heading in your direction.”

A lightness settles in her chest at Jacob’s words that she fights to keep from showing; the only real problem the Cult had been dealing with in recent events, so far as what she’d heard from Eli and the Whitetails, was one determined as hell and very pissed off Stevie Brewin, who had in just two months managed to light a fire under the local Resistance’s ass.

John stares at her for a long moment before finally stepping back, pointing at her with the antenna of the radio and smiling easily. “I have business to take care of, it seems—don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.”

She says nothing, watching him with sharp eyes while he leers at her and hoping that karma would smack him in the face in the form of tripping over one of the tools he’d sent scattered across the floor while walking backwards. When he finally turns away, unfortunately skipping the delightful opportunity for schadenfreude, she listens to his footsteps fade away as he disappears down a stairwell beyond a grated dividing wall.

There was no way for her to tell if he’d just been fucking with her by saying he’d return, but either way she was going to be balancing a fine line here. If she waited too long, she risked running into him on his way back, and if she didn’t wait long enough she risked running into him before he’d even really left.

She won’t let herself consider he wasn’t planning on going far at all and she’d have nowhere to slip past him anyway.

Tense as a board she counts out two minutes before scrambling for the fallen screwdriver at the foot of her cell and then setting to work on forcing the lock on the door open. It’s a long shot, but in a relieving upturn of her luck it works.

Resisting the urge to toss the tool away and just book it, she instead slowly slides the door open and gently sets it aside. There’s a knife on the floor ahead of her, tossed along with all of John’s other tools, and she quickly snatches it up. There was one other door in the room opposite the direction he’d left in, but it’s locked fast and requires some kind of key—one that John probably kept on his person rather than floating around.

Unhappy about it, she turns and follows after John.

The landing at the bottom of the stairs leads to an industrial room like his workshop, this one packed with crates and shelves of stored tools and supplies. All of it was stark and military in appearance, an orderly form of chaos, adding to her confusion as to where in the hell she was; this hardly seemed like the kind of place a man like John with his fancy shirts and designer shades would willingly spend time in.

It sort of made sense considering his clear and disturbing fondness for torture, but that left the supplies—she doubted he needed so many just for getting his rocks off by cutting a few people open. Her gut feeling said that, no, this place had nothing to do with John’s extracurricular activities.

There’s an open door up ahead, blocked by a cultist looking out into the hall beyond; she waits, watching and hoping she didn’t plan on standing there until John returned. Luckily, she turns around and Quinn quickly doubles back, ducking under a shelf at a near-crawl and bypassing the unaware cultist entirely.

Exposed pipes, stark metal, and solid concrete walls that almost reminded her of manufacturing facilities and laboratories, hoses and power wires crisscrossing the floors, and a few open pipes large enough for her to crouch and move through to dodge more cultists all became familiar sights to her as she moves through the facility quietly and unseen.

A lot of the Peggies were working, packing away boxes and taking inventory of their contents, moving equipment into different rooms and occasionally stopping to gossip about their boss. Much as she’d like to stop and snoop, she wasn’t about to risk her chance at getting free. Learning about the Seeds wasn’t at all worth getting found out and either shot full of holes or dragged back to John’s workshop. She’d already pushed him far enough, and that would just give him an excuse to get even more aggressive in forcing a confession out of her.

What gives her heavy pause and leaves her with an ill feeling in her stomach is the sight of repurposed sections of hallways, blocked by metal gates, with groups of shaking people huddled with in. If she weren’t a lone woman armed with nothing but a knife and her wits and had some idea of where she was going, she could take the time to try and free them.

Her stomach twists as she does, but she ignores them all and continues moving, careful to stick to the shadows as she moves up a flight of stairs and filing away a growing suspicion that whatever this place was, it had something to do with the Collapse the Cult seemed so obsessed with.

Sneaking around Jacob’s operations up in the mountains with Jess had served her well—save for a few close calls where one of the cultists catch a glimpse of something skulking around she manages to avoid confrontation through a dozen rooms and up another flight of stairs without much struggle.

Any of them that did happen to spot her moving around in the shadows just mumble something about too much Bliss before simply returning to work. Apparently the Cult’s best brainwashing weapon was also a double-edged sword.

As she passes another doorway a familiar voice catches her attention and she pauses; ultimately it’s the sight of the bow and quiver she’d nicked from one of Jacob’s hunters in the room beyond that alters her path into the room. It’s empty save for a few pipes stretching from the floor to the ceiling in one corner and a workbench up against the wall, next to which sat her recurve and quiver.

Her radio is nowhere to be found, but that doesn’t surprise her.

She carefully slinks past an open doorway with a soft glow lighting the floor from within and quietly slings both her bow and quiver over her back.

The she refocuses on the voice, John’s smooth tone coming from the room she’d just passed by and now returns to, hiding just beyond the frame and peeking inside. His back is to her as he leans over a desk in the center of the room, a single desk lamp illuminating whatever it was he was staring at and throwing enough ambient light for her to see what looked like a facility map taped up between the rows of obsolete screens and computers lining the walls.

Some kind of security hub, maybe, but all she cares about is the map and it’s what she focuses on with intent as she listens in on him.

“—is why Joseph is so insistent these two need to be converted to our cause, or why they should be important to us at all. We’re expending a lot of effort and people trying and all the while they’re helping the Resistance undermine our efforts.” She’d missed the first half of his statement, but she frowns at the half she does hear.

Joseph wanted her and Stevie to be part of the Project? Well that had a snowball’s chance in hell of happening—Quinn would sooner stab herself in the eye, and she knows Stevie well enough to know they’d be in agreement on that front.

“It doesn’t matter. You know how he gets when the Voice is involved.” Jacob says, clear disinterest in his voice even through the wash of static that distorts it. That catches her interest, however—did Jacob not actually believe in Joseph’s overarching goal for the Project?

It was far beyond a long shot, but she wonders what the possibility was they could convert him.

John lets out a scoff. “Your lack of faith in Joseph’s gift never ceases to astound me, Jacob.”

“You’re the one asking why.” Ever the dutiful soldier, it seemed, if Joseph gave the order and Jacob followed whether he believed or not. “The Deputy’ll reach the south gatehouse in the next few hours unless she deviates.”

“Hours? I thought you said your hunters last saw her by the ranger station?”

“Apparently she knows how to hotwire.”

Damn. Quinn makes a note to ask Stevie to teach her that trick; spending three days dodging Jacob’s hunters on foot just to reach another section of the County had been the exact opposite of fun.

Speaking of—

She stands from where she’d been crouched by the doorway and lets out a sharp whistle just as John presses the receiver on the radio. He whirls around and she grins at the look of bewilderment on his face. “Hey, you mind pointing me in the direction of the restroom? I think I’m a bit lost.”

This was so fucking stupid, but totally, one-hundred-percent worth watching the gears in his head struggle to get back up to speed.

The second his expression turns some mixture of impressed and wickedly amused she shoots him a cheeky two-fingered salute and then turns and bolts, a wild smile on her face as she goes. He gives chase immediately, heavy footfalls following after her as the industrial architecture of the facility blurs around her.

She jukes around cultists on her way through, following the map to the best of her memory and hoping she’d gotten a long enough look to be heading for the entrance; they all shout in alarm as she passes, silenced shortly after by loud thumps and crashing that tells her John wasn’t bothering to be nearly as careful as he followed her.

He was taller than her and had longer strides, but even with her diminished health and knowing she was on an endurance clock that would’ve made her instructors cry, she was faster and had freerunning—one of her hobbies—on her side.

The distance between them begins to grow, and he seems to realize he was losing ground. “You’re only making this more difficult, my dear!”

“Difficult for who? You sound out of breath!” She calls back, darting through a doorway and nearly running over another Peggie; they were starting to look more urgent, and that meant the ones they’d already passed had radioed ahead. Things were about to get more difficult.

Without slowing she jumps directly for the solid wall that greets her past the open doorway and plants a foot on it, pushing off at an angle and taking the sharp turn without losing speed.

“I will catch you!” He yells. She’d expected him to sound angry or frustrated, but instead he just sounded invigorated. He was having fun.

Her intent had been to piss him off and the fact she’d misjudged and failed spectacularly should have frustrated her.

It didn’t. She was having fun, too.

A doorway halfway down the hall up ahead would take her to the facility exit if her memory served her well, but she’s forced to skid to a complete halt to make the turn with no wall to bounce off of. Even with the immediate push forward she still feels a rush of air just behind her as John misses her by inches.

Alright, so he was bad at cornering but really good at open sprints. Noted.

Through the doorway she sees a large room littered with stacks of more crates and boxes, and the sheer size of whatever operation this was suddenly occurs to her; they were really digging in for something, and Quinn wonders where the line blurred between paranoia and preparation.

Two Peggies are startled at her sudden appearance, both standing on opposite sides of a stack of crates half her height.

John yells for them to grab her and the two step forward to intercept, ready for her to try and dodge around—instead, she leaps directly for the stack of crates, slapping her hands down onto the surface and expertly vaulting right between them.

Maneuvering around the rest of the room slows her down, but when she breaks through the organized chaos into the open landing, only one cultist between her and a stairwell that would lead her to freedom, she’s still moving fast.

Fast enough for her to drop her shoulder and body slam the cultist into the wall near the stairs. He collapses, wheezing and nearly dragging her down with a desperate grab for her shoulders but she skips back, spinning and taking the stairs two at a time.

Her lungs were starting to burn uncomfortably. Just a bit further, she reminds herself.

Footsteps echo after her up the stairs, and those four simple words become a mantra.

When she reaches the final landing of the absurdly tall stairwell—no windows, industrial, tons of bulkheads, were they underground?—she sequesters the bud of victory that starts to form in her chest. A false sense of security would be her worst enemy when this would be the most dangerous stretch of her escape.

Brilliant sunlight nearly blinds her as she bursts through a final bulkhead, thick metal door ahead of her ajar and beckoning her forward.

She nearly tumbles right over the edge of the raised landing outside the door, forced to quickly redirect and move for a ramp that led down to the flat, open ground of the yard in front of her. It’s a loading bay, littered with even more scattered supplies and a semi-trailer parked back up against the raised landing. A trio of white pickups were lined up ahead with their sides facing her.

She could risk checking for keys in the trucks, but she’d already gone beyond pushing her luck by taunting John rather than fleeing silently and without attracting attention. If her dad were here, he’d definitely be giving her one hell of a disappointed stare for the impulsive decision.

“There! She’s there!”

“Don’t shoot her, the Father wants her alive!”

“Aim for her legs!”

Not only did that sound hellishly unpleasant, one good shot to her legs would put her right back at square one, incapacitated and ready to be dragged back down into the depths and right back into John’s hands.

She glances around, noting the wire fence penning in the area, the opening flanked by gatehouses up ahead, and the trio of heavily-armored cultists blocking the exit—and her eyes settle on the line of trucks.

Alright, so this wasn’t her most brilliant of ideas, ever, but it was better than making a fool of herself by getting all the way to the end of the line only to have nowhere to run.

The first shot rings out across the yard and spurs her forward.

A stack of crates unloaded next to the nearest truck is used as a springboard to launch her up onto the wall of the truckbed, and from there she hops up onto the cab and then across each of the trucks with the thought in her head that Frogger was a hell of a lot less fun than she remembered.

“What the fuck is she doing?”

“Go! Go around!”

When she reaches the third truck she braces herself and then leaps, clearing the barbed wire topping the yard fence by scant inches. Her heart drifts into her throat as the freefall grips at her, the sound of more gunfire breaking the silence of the surrounding forest and sending nearby flocks of birds into panicked flight.

Pain flares up her leg as she lands, the force of her fall sending her sprawling; a noise of pain leaves her, but she forces herself back to her feet and keeps running, pouring every ounce of speed into her burning limbs and ignoring her tiring lungs.

One of the cultist’s bullets finds its mark and she stumbles as fire erupts in her arm, more pain that through sheer force of will is ignored in favor of running. It’s not a bliss bullet, or she wouldn’t have made it to the trees—the only dizziness she feels is purely the result of a tiring body begging her to slow down and stop.

She’s pursued into the woods, frantic shouts and barked orders and gunfire that causes her to instinctively duck as she runs as quickly as she dares down a slope following after her. The forest thickens as she goes, giving her more cover as she ducks in and around trees and bushes as often as possible.

After what felt like an eternity the sounds of pursuit leave her behind, fading farther and farther back until she feels comfortable enough to duck and hide under a rocky outcropping in the sloped landscape; the shade does little to ease the inferno in her blood from so much exertion and sweat drips down the side of her face.

It’s a struggle to calm her breathing as she waits, hating the way her tired limbs start to shake.

Five minutes pass. Distant but still too-close-for-comfort shouts from John’s followers reach her ears. Their hair raising calls of “come out, little girl!” and “play nice and we will!” do nothing to assist in calming her.

Ten minutes. Footsteps crunch in the underbrush on sticks and dry leaves nearby. None approach.

Fifteen.

“She’s gone.”

“Damnit. I’m not telling him.”

“Quit complaining. All of you head back, I’m checking ahead.”

The other voices drift off along with the groups of footsteps she’d been hearing until only one is left; her body is starting to shake more with the adrenaline fading and it’s a struggle to keep upright as she listens with bated breath.

The steps drift towards her hiding spot. Her eyes narrow.

With her body so unsteady she has no idea if she’ll be able to accomplish what she needs to if she’s found, but she steels herself for it anyway. The bow would make too much noise if she tried to slide it off her back in the quiet woods, so she instead reaches for the knife she’d tucked under her belt back in the bunker.

She holds completely still, keeping her breathing as even and quiet as she possibly can when a pair of booted feet enter her vision to the left of the rocky outcropping.

What she assumes is one of John’s Chosen steps fully into her sight, passing her completely without even bothering to check behind the outcropping. Fucking idiot. He stands there scanning the area; her knuckles are white where they grip the knife.

When he does finally turn around his gaze settles on her with a startled expression; she springs forward with a snarl, jamming her knife into his throat before he can lift the gun in his hands, surprising both him and herself for two very different reasons. His eyes widen and the gun drops from his hands, clattering to the loose dirt and leaves between them, one of his hands fisting in her hair in dying fury and yanking.

A yelp of pain leaves her and her fingers slip from the knife when his other hand snaps around her throat—a single painful squeeze is all he can manage before his grip on her slackens and gaze goes distant, her hair and her throat both released as he collapses to the ground on his back in a twitching heap.

She stumbles back on unsteady feet, falling back onto her ass and watching with something she can only describe in the moment as horror while he grasps furiously at the blade in his throat until his movements slow and eventually stop, blood still leaking around the sharp edge of the weapon and bubbling in his throat.

Nausea rises in her own and she sucks in a sharp breath, pressing her lips together tightly to keep herself from retching at the sight of the still body and glassy eyes laid out in front of her.

She’d wanted to be an FBI agent since she was a teenager—still did. She’d known from the beginning that there was a more than high possibility that her choice of field would lead to her having to kill someone at some point, but she hadn’t ever expected it to be like this. Not even when the stories Eli had told her gave her an idea of what Jacob might have been trying to do with her, not even when she’d been up in the mountains helping the Whitetails—that had been at a distance, cold and impersonal. It still made her sick at first, but it had been getting easier to deal with.

Suddenly, that decent ease she’d begun to grow with killing meant absolutely nothing, and she felt like she’d just made her first kill again. This was up close, she’d been near enough to see the life leave the man’s eyes, and she decides immediately that she does not fucking like it.

Worse was knowing that, sooner or later, she was going to have to get used to this as well. She’d been lucky up in the mountains and had a partner watching her back, both of them taking enemies down at a distance.

This wasn’t going to be the only time she was going to be on her own and at risk.

Swallowing, she gathers her wits and stands, moving forward with palpable hesitation and reaching down to grasp the handle; her shoulder flares with pain as she pulls it out with a sickening, wet noise. More bile rises in her throat at the immediate gush of more blood from the wound without something blocking it.

Pulling arrows from corpses was no different. It wasn’t, but no matter how many times it runs through her head her skin still crawls.

It’s only knowing that the longer she sticks around the likelier it is she’ll be found and that she was up shit creek without the metaphorical paddle—paddle being supplies—that gives her the constitution to search the body for anything she can use. She has to avoid looking at the man’s face in order to do so.

A pair of throwing knives are both tucked into her boots. Nothing in the way of food or water are on his person, but she’s not surprised considering she’d caught them all of guard.

It was still worrying. She was who knew how many miles from any semblance of civilization, and between the marathon she’d just run and the bullet wound on her arm she risked dehydration at least.

Hell, she’d be lucky if she could make it anywhere between the wound and the ache in her ankle that was more prominent in her mind without the adrenaline and urgency keeping her focus elsewhere, and that wasn’t taking into account the exhaustion that was going to settle over her quickly now.

There’s a radio clipped to his belt, and having decided that she’s not going to find anything else truly useful, she snatches it off him with quick fingers and steps away. Her eyes drift around as she tries to get her bearings and decide a direction to go; if she keeps lingering, it was tantamount to her just turning around and walking right back into John’s hands.

And she didn’t go through all this for nothing.

She lingers long enough to rip a strip of fabric from the bottom of her shirt and tie a makeshift tourniquet around her bicep just above the bullet wound, and ultimately she decides to simply follow the ravine she’s in downhill. Ravines meant water erosion, and if she was lucky she would wander across a body of water at some point. The question was whether or not she’d get to one before passing out.

After an hour of walking, her ankle slowly paining her more and more, she was struggling to motivate herself to keep going rather than finding a bush to just lay down and rest. Despite the tourniquet there’s a slow trickle of blood that’s doing her no favors, either.

Come home. Come home. Come home.

She hesitates, staring with blurry, blinking eyes up at the bridge spanning the gap of the ravine fifty feet above her. The sun was starting to set and more than the exhaustion itself—or maybe a direct result of it—the thought kept creeping into her head. Come home. Jacob’s voice was like a ghostly whisper in her ear and she sways with indecision.

She sure as fuck wouldn’t be able to make it back to the Veteran’s Center from here, but maybe if she went back to John—

Holy fucking shit.

Her head shakes rapidly to break the thoughts in her head, a shaky breathe leaving her and the motion making her even dizzier. Jesus, Tammy had been right. He gets into your head, she had told her, venomous and warning, there’s no avoiding it. No matter how long you’re with him. He gets into your head.

The knowledge that within three weeks he’d been able to plant control into her brain leaves her disturbed. What would he have been able to accomplish if she’d been there longer?

She’s too tired to be ashamed of the startled yelp that leaves her when a voice crackles through static on the radio clipped to her belt. “Brayden, do you copy?” It’s not John, just another of the Peggies.

Her fingers grasp the radio and unclip it, and she wars with the same thoughts—come home come home come home—as she stares at it and debates on responding. She could be a petty little shit and taunt them, but she has no idea how far she’d actually managed to get away from John’s bunker and she didn’t want to give them the idea that she was still nearby.

The voice that wasn’t her own told her that was exactly what she wanted to do.

“Brayden, do you copy? We need an update. Are you tracking her?”

Definitely the guy she’d killed. With him not responding they were probably going to suspect foul play and send a group out to look for him—and, by extension, her. Ignoring the voice that sounded suspiciously like a red-haired, blue-eyed wolf of a man, she decides she needs to get oriented and find somewhere safe that wasn’t with John.

With the sun setting she’d be at one hell of a disadvantage if they were still out looking for her. She’d never been taught to navigate by stars, and she was alone with no supplies and no idea if there was any shelter nearby.

It was looking more and more like her luck had been used up by managing to dodge Jacob’s hunters for nearly a week after this nightmare had begun, and Lady Luck had wiggled a glimmer of it in front of her nose with this escape only to take it away again.

Blinking down at the radio, she switches the frequency to one she hopes wasn’t too far out of range. “Eli, this is Quinn. Are you there?”

Only her footsteps as she resumes her unsteady and slowed walking pace answer her at first, and she starts to doubt that she could still reach the Militia out here. She’s about to press the button to try again when she finally gets a response. “Shit, Quinn, is that really you? Jess told us what happened, we’ve been trying to get in contact with you for weeks!”

His voice is slightly garbled, likely a result of the distance, but it’s unmistakably Wheaty on the other end. She sighs in relief. “It’s me, Wheaty. Good to hear you.” Then what he said gives her pause. “How long was I dark?”

“A little over two weeks, after that ambush. Hey, you’re breaking up real bad—where are you?”

It couldn’t hurt to share the wildly general area, considering she truly had no idea. “Somewhere in Holland Valley, I think.”

“You don’t know?”

“I just spent two weeks held captive underground, so no. That’s why I’m contacting you guys. I need help getting my bearings.”

There’s a longer pause and she assumes that Wheaty was processing what she’d told him or looking for a map, but the next voice that speaks is the one that she’d called for in the first place. “John got hold of you?” Eli must have been listening in and had chosen then to cut in. She feels a momentary pang of regret for interrupting whatever he might’ve been working on, but the concern in his voice soothes it somewhat.

“He did. I’m okay, Eli, just exhausted. I gave him a swift metaphorical kick in the nuts on my way out, so it was worth it.”

“You and the Deputy are something special, Quinn. Been at this resistance thing for years but none of us have been able to kick over the Cult’s sandcastles the way both of you have in just a few months.” Eli says, amused and relieved in equal measure. “Can you give me some landmarks to work with? Get to high ground if you can.”

She’d already anticipated the request and had—with difficulty thanks to both her leg and arm—begun to scale the hillside of the ravine she’d been traversing, wary of the open road and bridge she’d just bypassed. Once at the top she squints at the mountainside to her right and the waning colors of sunset. “I’m facing south right now, been traveling through a ravine down the mountain I think.”

She’ll need to get moving as soon as Eli gives her a direction to go in, now. This was an unsecured frequency the Whitetails monitored, and anyone could’ve been listening in.

Scanning her environment, she lists off anything noteworthy she can see; a lone church down by a small lake, spire just barely peeking up over the top of the trees, what looked like an airfield somewhere to her southeast, plus the bridge she’d just passed, and—

She blinks, having turned around to see if there was anything behind her and suddenly wondering if the blood loss was causing her to hallucinate visually as well as audibly. There above the trees was a massive Hollywood-style billboard featuring exactly three letters: YES.

What. The. Fuck.

When she realizes she’s keeping Eli waiting she clicks the receiver down, unable to tear her eyes away from the sign. “I—there’s a big ‘Yes’ sign up in the mountain northeast of me.” Really, John?

Eli doesn’t comment on the billboard and she almost wishes he would—it’d make the surreality of what she was looking at make her feel just a bit more grounded. “Can’t tell exactly where you’re at, kid, but in a general sense keep heading southeast. I remember right, Grace Armstrong is holed up somewhere near the foot of the hill you’re on.”

She winces, heading carefully back down into the ravine. “Thanks, Eli. Hey, I’m on a stolen radio right now ‘cause John took mine, so I don’t have the encryption channels anymore. Until you can swap out the keys, avoid details on the radio.”

“Got it. Damn miracle they haven’t intercepted us yet.”

“Yeah.” She says. “I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault. Put a bullet in John and help your friend put a few in Jacob and we’ll call it even.”

She laughs, feeling light in her chest and unsettled by the fact she can’t tell if it’s from the blood loss or exhaustion or she was just happy to hear from someone friendly. “Will do, Eli. Quinn out.”

#v: far cry 5 #f: deliverance #c: quinn leonis #ch: john seed #ch: jacob seed #ch: eli palmer #ch: wheaty #sh: say yes

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