necessary_child | (no subject)

(no subject)

Behind Sam's door there are, as predicted, several dozen very unpleasant people with guns. If they look like soldiers, then that's because they are - some kind of mercenary, anyway. Beyond them, they appear to be in some kind of laboratory or medical facility: everything's white and steel, with a prominent scent of disinfectant.

Sam, his normally expressive face hardened and almost blank, his jaw clenched, forcibly shoves them backwards with magic that sends them sprawling into each other like dominoes, moving them just far back enough to allow one of the other two to shut the door.

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Jack just shoots out the lock.

Yes, with Atton on his back.

"Definitely flashier," Sam comments, quietly.

A yank of magic swings the door open, and the tall man who'd been hammering on it promptly falls flat on his face.

He's in his forties, bespectacled, and they see as he pushes himself up he has eyes like chips of blue glass set in a lean, sharp face. Under a mess of ash-blond hair his skin is sallow, though his cheeks are red with effort. and under his labcoat he's wearing a shirt and tie, and looks to have started the day neatly-dressed.

"Trixiebell!" Sam beams, though his smile doesn't reach his eyes, which are suddenly as cold and bleak as if they'd never danced at all in five thousand years. "Oh, it's been an age!"

"You have a - excuse me," Atton hops off Jack's back, and points his gauntlet at the man. "You have a nickname for him! He must be special."

"No problem," Jack says to Atton, training his own gun on the new member of the party.

"Hey there. We haven't been introduced, have we?"

Smile.

It's not a nice one.

"He was ever so special," Sam agrees brightly. "So special that I had to bring you two to meet him!"

He reaches out with the tip of his sword, using the flat edge to raise Trixiebell's chin up to look at them properly.

"You know, I never got your name. Not that I actually care that much, but still."

The doctor stares up at them, dull-eyed with sullen fear. He opens his mouth to say something, but Sam cuts him off.

"I assume my things are locked up in there." He nods to the room - an office, by the looks of things. "Key or code?"

The man swallows before he answers. "Safe set in the wall. Three twists clockwise, four five two two nine one two, then one and a half anti-clockwise."

"He's a helper," Atton chirps. "Is nice."

"Bit late, really, is my feeling," says Jack.

"Perhaps three out of ten for effort?"

"I think we should subtract at least two for lack of originality, though," Sam says dryly. "Seeing as his password is the letters of the alphabet that spell 'devil'. I expect better from my mad scientists, I really do."

He looks down at the man sprawled on the floor in front of him. All this waiting, all things that this man has done to him... and he just feels tired. Wants it all over.

"Can't even be bothered to grovel properly," he remarks. "I'm deeply disappointed, really."

And he is. He'd thought this would be more fun, more ... vindicating... when all it really is is a bloody mess.

Thoughtful pause. "Oh well!"

CRASH.

A sizeable chunk of the ceiling comes down, burying Trixiebell. Sam sweeps past the pile of rubble, into the office.

"Someone set that on fire, will you?"

Atton shrugs, fiddling about with his gauntlet. "Sure." A few flicks, and then he sends a stream of fire over at the rubble, setting it alight.

Jack glances over the fire, apparently making sure the rubble starts to burn efficiently enough, but them follows Sam without a word.

They may joke, but he knows that expression (or lack thereof) on Sam's face a little too intimately.

Best to be done with it fast.

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