Chapter Text
As with every time it’s ripped out of cryogenic sleep, the Weapon’s chest aches. It takes in a deep shuddering breath, lungs creaking after who-knows-how-long of unuse. At this point, it’s not sure there is an easy way to wake up. Its consciousness is torn from a frozen nothingness into the burning bright of the storage room. It forces itself to take stock of its body, drawing awareness to its fingers, its shoulders. That always makes the transition slightly less jarring. Its eyes snap open before the speaker in its chamber can crack to life. It flicks greasy hair out of its face. They never bothered with washing its hair, only holding it down to shave it clean when it gets too long.
“Weapon 8-1R. New mission: elimination of enemy threat. Report to control room,” a monotone voice says in Russian, blasting from the sound system planted above its head. The lid of its chamber pops open, exposing it to the just-barely-warmer air of the room.
A few assistants in lab coats hover above it. One reaches for the feeding tube sticking out of its nose, giving it a long pull. It feels the tube scrape against its insides, dragging out of its body. Another unceremoniously yanks the IV out of its left arm, ignoring the blood that spurts from the wound. It lies still, letting the assistants poke and prod.
“Get up,” someone says, snapping their fingers impatiently. The Weapon obeys, legs a little unsteady after the time in its chamber. Several rows of similar chambers lie around the room, each holding a Weapon deep in artificial unconsciousness. Lucky them, it thinks.
“Get going. We have better things to do.”
One of the assistants, hair slicked back from his face, is looking at another chamber. It knows the Weapon stored in this one. Weapon 7-2A. They had fought together a few times.
She’s a tall woman, round face. She’s pretty, it’s seen the way people from the agency watch her. “Wish I could take this one out for a spin. Tell it its mission is to lay there and take it, you know? It can’t really fight anymore. Remember that whole thing in Vienna? It broke like ten bones in a fall. I can just get rid of it after,” he says, the sneer audible in his voice.
An assistant the Weapon hasn’t seen before today looks nervously around. “Should we be talking about this in front of-”
”What the hell is it going to do?” another says, laughing. “It’s not allowed to talk, much less fight us.”
“Watch this.” The assistant from before walks over from the other chamber and stands in the Weapon’s path. The Weapon averts its gaze. “I am going to kill you. I am going to slit your throat, pull out your entrails, and fuck your niece’s kids. Might bring a friend with me, who knows. What do you think of that?”
The Weapon clenches its fists behind its back. Not so much that the others notice, because if word got back to handlers that it was expressing emotions, it’ll get a few new bruises. It’s not worth it.
“That’s what I thought,” the man chuckles. “Go.”
The Weapon walks quickly to the heavy doors at the end of the concrete room, trying to put distance between itself and the assistants. Pushing past the metal doors, it turns right in the equally dismal hallway. Painted on the wall of the hall a few doorways down are red letters that mark the control room.
The room has several cubicles with handlers speaking to deployed Weapons over sleek headsets, family pictures and small potted plants creating a mockery of something mundane. A manicured hand shoots up in the middle of the room, over the walls of the cubicles, snapping. The Weapon walks toward the hand, combat boots thudding on the vinyl floor. It stands at attention behind a sharp looking woman with a tight bun and slightly rumpled pantsuit. She holds a folder out to it, barely looking up from a stack of papers on her desk. “Memorize it,” she says, the Russian crisp on her tongue. “The agency has identified an enemy threat. Weapon 8-1R will survey, locate, and eliminate the threat.”
The Weapon furrows its brows, just barely. Surveillance? It isn’t trained much on that. It isn’t that kind of Weapon. They send it in if they need someone dead. If they need someone to put in the path of bullets. If they already have a location, just need someone who can get in, get out, and leave a trail of bodies. It’s not like the Weapon can protest, though. They’ve done this before, deployed it to do something it has no training in, no feasible chance to complete. It’s always managed to survive. If it dared to think, it would think they wanted it dead at times.
The Weapon opens the folder to a profile on the threat. It looks for a date, habit at this point. This is the only way it’s able to gauge how time passed. June 16th, 2017. Huh. Its birthday was yesterday. If time passed normally for it, not strung between lapses outside of cryogenesis, it would be 64 today. It’s not sure how old it actually is. It doesn’t age when it’s in the chamber. It must be younger than 64.
It looks back at the profile. The threat is beautiful. That’s the first thing the Weapon notices. Dark brown eyes, unkempt short black hair. Freckles spread across his cheeks like stars. His name, typed out in strong uniform letters, is Shane Hollander. Alias: Gavia. Associations with an Ottawan group bent on the downfall of the agency and violent opposition to its cause. Shane is an operative with a long history of taking groups down before they ever knew there was a threat. He has connections to several international operations, a few of which the Weapon remembers being there and fighting against. Including the incident in Vienna which broke Weapon 7-2A’s arm. Fluency in English, French, Japanese, and Russian. Expertise in several fighting styles, including MMA. The Weapon is an expert in those, too, the mastery beaten into it decades ago.
“Shane Hollander lives in the Ottawa compound, along with his fellow conspirators,” the handler continues, looking at the Weapon, eyes scraping up and down its form with a little hunger behind her eyes. It holds back a visible reaction. “Other eliminations are not required, but will be rewarded.”
The Weapon’s heart kicked at that. Maybe they would let him read a book. There was a poorly maintained collection of about 50 books in one of the rooms of the facility, mostly history or informational, many of which have to be from the last century. It recognized some of them from its childhood, back in the 1960s.
Although The Weapon would never say it out loud, it knows many of them are basically propaganda The agency has been working in secret for decades for the USSR, focusing on covert world domination and control. The Weapon hasn’t been outside of the agency’s control in over half a century, but from what it can remember of its mother telling him, the world is far more peaceful and beautiful than the agency wants it to believe.
Admission of this results in refreshes, memories ripped from minds, leaving something even less human than the Weapon wishes to be. It holds these thoughts tight to its chest, sometimes the only thing keeping it alive. There’s goodness out there. Maybe it can see some before it dies.
“Deployment in one hour,” the handler says, holding out an earpiece. The Weapons can’t talk back, but there’s a button to tap yes or no onto. “Report to the transport room immediately.”
The Weapon bows, letting its loose shirt gape to allow her to see its bare chest, scars and marks slicing across its skin before her eyes finally slid back to the computer screen. Sometimes, letting them see it made the day go by easier. Today felt like one of those days. It takes the earpiece and leaves the room.
One hour later, it’s on a motorcycle with a few knives and untraceable guns strapped to its body, speeding to the compound. It has a bag strapped to its back and the earpiece jammed in its ear. It has $60 cash, enough for a cheap motel for the night. It’s almost looking forward to the broken mattress and scratchy sheets. Far better than the metal carapace of the chamber. A watch on its wrist counts down the hours until its time is up.
Ottawa is only a few hours away, thus the motorcycle rather than air transport. The Weapon prefers the solitude of a motorcycle over the oppressive observation it knows it’s under in a two-seater plane. It winces slightly after a tight turn and brings a hand to its ribs, pressing against the breaks that never healed right. They hurt sometimes, especially in the bent position it’s in now. The agency never thinks it’s important enough to ensure proper healing, only enough that the Weapons could do their jobs, so its ribs ached, its burn scars cracked in dry air, and damaged joints ground together.
Eventually, it pulls up to a diner on the outskirts of Ottawa following the directions of the handler sneering in its ear. How is it always a diner? it thinks, parking its bike a few blocks away.
“Are you there yet?” The earpiece crackles to life, the handler seeming annoyed by the wait. The Weapon taps yes.
“Good. Intelligence tells us the threat frequents this diner. Sit down and set up surveillance. Alert when there’s movement.” The Weapon taps affirmation. It sits down on a bench across the street from the diner, pulls out a newspaper from a nearby rack and settles in. The paper is in English, but the Weapon doesn’t need to understand it. It can read English, but slowly and arduously. It’s far better at understanding spoken language, anyways. No one ever needs it to read more than street signs.
After struggling through the first page of the paper, it hears a loud laugh and a car door slamming. Its eyes flick up and sees a tall, dark haired man with a bright smile walking up to the door of the diner, an arm slung around a slightly shorter figure. The other man turns around, eyes scanning the street, and the Weapon sets its jaw. Shane. It taps the earpiece. “Good. Isolate and eliminate. Report back when complete.”
The Weapon hesitates. It can let Shane have peace for a while longer. He can at least finish his meal.
A middle-aged waitress walks up, coffee jug in hand. The taller man chats warmly with her, Shane grinning awkwardly along. The waitress walks away, shooting one last remark over her shoulder.
The Weapon sighs. It sometimes misses being in the world. Sitting under a tree in the park until the sun sets too far to keep reading its book, throwing a ball back and forth with its brother talking about a schoolyard crush, watching movies with its friends and sharing a large bowl of popcorn, waking up late and rushing to school. Anything. Everything. But it doesn’t have time to miss that. If it fails, if it doesn’t complete the mission, people will die. People it loves. People it misses.
“Beautiful night, huh?” it hears behind him in English. How did someone sneak up on it?
It shoots up and whirls around, a hand on the gun in its belt. The tall man who was with Shane stands with his hands behind his back, looking across the street at the diner. He must have snuck out of the diner while the Weapon was lost in thought. “Fucking idiot,” the handler snarls into the earpiece in Russian. “You got found out?”
“If you wanted to join us, you should’ve just asked,” the man says. Switching back and forth from Russian to English always strained its brain, but it could make do. “I don’t know when the last time you’ve done surveillance was, but no one your age actually reads a physical newspaper.” The Weapon wasn’t sure either, but it must have been years at this point.
“You were reading a newspaper?” It hears in its earpiece. “This is the 21st century. No one does that anymore.” The Weapon swallows. There’ll be punishment waiting for it when it returns.
Solid footsteps approach from the left. The Weapon looks, and Shane is approaching, arms crossed.
“Hayes. Let’s take this off the street. There are kids around, I don’t want them to see,” Shane says, watching the Weapon carefully. It looks around. A family with three small kids is eating dinner at a nearby bistro, the youngest digging into a bowl of mac and cheese. The Weapon’s heart kicks. It’s reminded of its own family, back when it was a kid, when it was still a person.
”Sounds good to me,” the man, Hayes, says. Shane grabs the Weapon by its right arm, too tight of a grip to be friendly. No one ever puts their hands on it in a friendly way.
“Figure it out. Fucking shoot him in the street if you have to. Take out his little friend, too. I’m not having this on my record,” the handler snaps. “I’m telling the trainers about this. Don’t fuck it up any more than you already have.” The earpiece clicks off. It’s on its own for now, until the handler returns.
It lets itself be dragged into the alley, gearing up for a fight. Shane spins him around, shoving it against the wall, a gun pressed to its forehead. The Weapon lets it happen, giving it time to get a plan in place.
“Who are you here for,” Shane growls, his eyes flicking over the Weapon. The Weapon stares back. Originally, it was going to take Shane out at a distance, as away from the public as he could manage. Time to improvise.
It reaches behind his back slowly, fingers reaching for its gun tucked in its belt. Hayes strolls up, The Weapon’s backpack in hand, digging through it. He stands casually, but the Weapon can see the tension and awareness in his body.
“Not much in this, huh?” Hayes says. “60 in cash, a few knives. No water, comms device. Got one in your ear, though, right?” Shane rips it out of its ear and crunches it beneath his boot. Fuck. Damaging agency equipment always resulted in at least one broken bone.
Hayes unzips all the pockets. “No ID, no mission folder or anything like that. No medical supplies. You must be good if they’re just leaving you with this.” He looks at the Weapon, grinning.
“Well, not that good, what with your surveillance skills. Shocked you aren’t dead already.” He pulls one of the Weapon’s knives out from the bag and holds it familiarly in his hand. The Weapon slams its head against the brick wall it’s pressed against. It feels the wall crunch a little. The agency hadn’t given it much, but at least it got the serum. Something muddy and green they pumped into it when it was too young to know to hate them, giving it enhanced strength and healing factor. It locks eyes with Hayes.
“Never had to talk to a target before?” Shane asked. “Who are you after? Me or Hayes? Someone else?” The Weapon sets its jaw.
It knees Shane in the groin and pushes the gun away from its forehead before the trigger can be pulled. Shane groans, cursing loudly, and falls to his knees. He lifts the gun back up, pointing wildly at the Weapon. It kicks the gun from his hand. It hears a crack and Shane screams, holding his wrist. If you aren’t used to fighting through broken bones, it can be difficult to keep going. Hayes shouts angrily.
The Weapon points his own gun at Shane. Before it can squeeze the trigger, the knife flies from Hayes’ hand and hits it in the right shoulder. It lets a small grunt out, grabbing at its arm, keeping a grip on its weapon.
Hayes runs toward the Weapon. It dodges his fist. It whirls around, swinging its usable arm at Shane’s face. Shane darts away, and the Weapon’s fist slams into the brick wall, the surface giving.
It wraps its fingers around the knife and pulls it out, the handle wet with blood. It tosses the blade to the ground, hearing it clatter on the concrete.
Before it can raise the gun to shoot at Shane again, something small pricks it in the thigh. It looks down. A syringe is sticking out of its leg, Shane’s thumb pushing down on the plunger, his broken wrist hanging limply by his side. The world tilts. Oh no. How stupid could it be, to let this happen? It stumbles, the gun falling to the ground. Shane smiles. “Got you.” The last thing it sees before everything goes static is the freckles on his face. They look so much better in person.