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Into the Black [missedstations & Bathos]

Vince took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Like it or not, Remarque had put one over on him and he had to deal with the consequences. It was going to be a struggle not to snap the little bastard's neck at every turn, but Vince knew when to put his personal differences aside in the interest of his people. They weren't the best trained crew, not the most efficient, but they were on his ship and it was his job to make sure they stayed alive between ports.

In order to do that, they'd actually have to start moving again at some point.

Still, Remarque only had partial control of the ship. Vince had the rest, and unless Remarque wanted to make it so they all died here together, they had to share the power. That meant negotiating.

"First, you're not getting anywhere near the computer, so put that idea out of your head right now." He still had his arms crossed, and now he rocked back on his heels, watching Remarque through slitted eyes as he considered his own theories on why the IPA might have fired on the Dioscuri. He was mostly drawing blanks.

"Secondly, it's never happened before," Vince said honestly. "My last communique went out to them sometime yesterday and we got no response. Usually, that's a good thing. But, as you probably already know, these guys weren't taking calls while they were trying to blow us to bits. Rosemary's looking into it. Anyway, what's it gonna take to get my ship back?"
 
'I don't trust you,' Remarque stated very simply. It would be downright stupid to trust Vince, after all the earlier events. The man was both cruel and had a thing against him. His bruises were a nice and clear testimony – on his wrists, his upper arm, finger shaped ones around his throat. 'And I am not giving you full control back.'

'I don't care what you do. At the moment my preference is to stay alive as long as possible. If you give control over more parts of the ship, I will not obstruct what you do provided you do not put my life at risk.' A perfectly rational argument, just like he had always been taught to think. The longer the Dioscuri stayed drifting, the quicker it would become someone's target. Vince must have known that.

Remarque, for his part, hoped to hell that Rosemary didn't try to contact the IPA again, or any other agency for that matter. It would draw their pursuit back far too quickly. He was starting to feel curious too, but to think deeply on any matter he needed time to rest and relax. Perfect memory was complicated to manage.

This situation did remind him of a very similar one, six years ago... There was only so long he could hold the ship to ransom. He preferred not to kill them all – killing civilians had never been his thing – but he had no doubt Vince still wanted to kill him. Death or death? Being blown up would hurt less, so he supposed, he'd pick death. Decision made, prepared to be utterly inflexible, he tried to stare Vince down.
 
Again, Vince needed a moment to collect himself before he responded. He wasn't accustomed to taking orders at all, never mind aboard his own damned ship. He should have killed Remarque when he had the chance, that much was obvious.

"What exactly do you mean by 'control over more parts of the ship'? We need to be able to move, dammit. We need to get out of here. If those IPA guys were serious, they're going to be following our trail. These Winston-made ships ain't exactly subtle, if you follow. We can't afford to have you shutting more things off."

Vince sighed explosively. "And clean this goddamn mess up, would you?! This isn't your toy room, it's a holding cell. Also--"

"Uh, Vince?" crackled the communicator on the wall, cutting the captain off mid-sentence. It was Pablo.

Vince pressed the button. "Yes?"

"There seems to be, ah, a problem here with the thrusters and I don't know if. Well. It seems like we might be, uh, stranded."

Vince shut his eyes. "I am aware of the situation, Pablo."

Pablo's voice quivered, "Okay, because it looks really bad. Like, we're-all-kinda-standing-in-our-graves bad, and I'm supposed to be the one who fixes things like this, but the thing is, there's nothing actually wrong with the thruster, it's just not--"

"Pablo?"

"I don't want to die, Vince."

"Pablo."

Pablo actually audibly sniffed. "Yeah, Vince?"

"You will be fine. The situation is under control. And Pablo? Please, for the love of all that is mechanical, please stop talking to me over the comm."

"Uhh, okay?"

Vince took his finger off the button and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Okay, what exactly are you proposing now?"
 
This was why Remarque had liked the Requiem. You couldn't find her unless you flew into her. But before you flew into her, her defences had a high chance of taking things down. Subtlety. No wonder the Requiem was the love of his life. He'd never have left her if not for that she couldn't be crewed by one person.

'Oh, all I did, by the way,' Remarque said, because he thought Vince might appreciate the clarification, 'Is to insert a piece of code which simply asks the ship for authorisation. It's incredibly simple. So long as I keep giving it, the ship can keep moving. I'm willing to do so, provided you let me do that to more parts of the ship. So long as I am alive, you will have no problems. I will do largely what you like. You know I am reasonably good at following orders...'

He gave Vince a 'now I'm doing things this way you cannot possibly expect me to clean' look. 'Why don't you make that useless man sort this out, and let me play with your engines? I don't kill civilians unless they really give me a reason to...' No need to tell Vince he didn't consider him a civilian.

'I'll run your ship better than you ever saw it run,' was what he concluded his proposal with.
 
Breathing. Vince just had to concentrate on breathing.

He could do this. He could hand over his ship--partial control of his ship, he reminded himself--to this bastard. Vince could still fly the thing, it was still his baby. It wasn't any different than handing the controls over to Rosemary or letting Pablo tinker around in the engine room. Of course, Rosemary and Pablo were both harmless as kittens when it came to the Dioscuri and Remarque was closer to something like a plague of locusts.

No matter. He could do this. He just had to open his mouth and say the words.

"I give you control," Vince said slowly, "and we get out of IPA controlled space, first thing, until I can figure this thing out. Then we book it to the first rock that'll have us, you put her back the way she was, and we part ways. I won't come after you, and you disappear. Take it or leave it."
 
It was a reasonable deal, except Remarque thought that someone like Vince wouldn't be entirely willing to do an amiable parting of ways. He could deal with that when they came to that. It was good enough for now. He could accept that.

'Very well,' eventually he said.

The fact was, would he want to part with a ship like this by the time their deal came to an end? It wouldn't quite break his heart, but it would be a damn shame to never touch a ship like that again. If he had the time to customise something like the Dioscuri, had the time to take the engines apart to study them, he would be happy for years.

And with the way Remarque was planning to run the ship for his brief time, he hoped Vince appreciated it. If the bounty hunter liked the ship half as much as Remarque did, he would enjoy it. He cracked his fingers. 'Engine room and food?' There would be no pleases for Vince ever again, Remarque was sure of that.
 
Vince stepped aside to make way for Remarque, and together they walked toward the engine room, Remarque no doubt basking in the glory of his utter, nefarious brilliance, and Vince glowering at every inanimate object that looked at him funny, which happened to be all of them.

The engine room was minuscule compared to that of the wrecked freighter back on Quien, and the operation much smoother and quieter. Everything gleamed like new, and that was more thanks to Vince and his sleepless nights than any effort on Pablo's part. Pablo, who was fretting over a recent diagnostic pulled up on the main computer, but who was not actually touching anything at the moment.

He turned when he heard footsteps, and his eyes widened when he saw that Vince had a stranger in tow. Pablo looked nothing like the name would have implied years ago. He was pale all over, but not unnaturally so, and his hair was a silvery sort of blonde color. His eyes were bright blue and, at present, about to brim over with desperate tears. He also couldn't have been a day over eighteen years old, and even that was a generous description. He even retained the awkward lankiness of puberty.

"Um, hi," he said. "Vince?"

Vince sighed and gestured stiffly to Remarque. "Pablo, Remarque. Remarque, Pablo. Nothing personal, kid, but you're being demoted, effective yesterday. Remarque here is going to get the ship in working order again while you fetch him something from mess."

"Uh, what?"

Vince slowed down his language, like it might help Pablo comprehend better. "Go get your new boss a snack. Now."

Pablo blinked several times in rapid succession, nodded, and scurried out of the room. When he was gone, Vince said under his breath,

"It's all yours. And I swear to God, if I find that kid crying on my doorstep because of something you said, I'm gonna shove a goddamn socket wrench someplace unpleasant."
 
When he entered the engine room, both Vince and Pablo might as well have disappeared. So pretty! At least it was all beautifully cared for, if not used to its full utility... He ran his hands over everything that was within reach. It was like getting to learn the curves of a new lover. The look on Remarque was the closest he could ever come to contentment and it could almost be surprising how much younger he looked. He didn't look so worn down and tired as he stroked the exquisite machinery. A little bit creepy, to be sure.

The only words Remarque heard were 'it's all yours.' He stepped so close to the main computer that he was bodily touching, and for a moment he rested his forehead on the edge of the screen. He didn't care if Vince could see him. It didn't matter, he was home here. (Jack had always said that machines gave Remarque better hard-ons then he ever could, and no one had ever been sure if he was joking.)

For a moment he rested his hands on the controls, as if in communion, but then he began to familiarise with the ship. Basic statistics, programming style. Oh, how he needed this.

'Hello, Dioscuri,' he told the ship. 'You are very beautiful, and I promise to treat you well. I could make you prettier, but I don't think your captain would like that...' It was as if Vincent had stopped existing.

His particular streak of insanity meant that he would happily follow anyone's orders, so long as he got to do what he really liked. Vince really had nothing to worry about when it came to the ship.

And suddenly, to work. The first thing he did was replace English with the raw coding language. While his hands, as always, troubled him, he typed quickly, writing the tiny pieces of code that would keep him safe. It could not have taken more than a few minutes. He might have also mouthed at the computer something that could possibly have been a sorry.

Only then did he settle into the chair as if it was the place he had always belonged. With the air of a a satisfied cat, he curled up in it, his hands never leaving the controls. Almost in a reverie, he began to reprogram the ship's energy control. Sure, the ship was nice, but they really needed better coders on Winston.

Finally, he remembered that Vince existed. 'So, Captain.' He managed not to make it sound ironic. 'How fast do you want to go, and how far?'
 
For lack of anything better to do, and due partly to a paranoid hunch that Remarque was actually going to do great harm to the ship the moment he looked away, Vince watched his prisoner as he worked.

Though he supposed Remarque couldn't really be considered his prisoner, anymore.

"Half light speed is ideal," Vince replied automatically, and it didn't occur to him until after he'd already answered that there was some not-so-subtle boasting going on in Remarque's query. He quirked an eyebrow, but chose not to comment.

"Until Rosemary can figure out what's going on, we need to get out of IPA space. At that speed, we can cut back toward Quien and be in the Black within twenty hours."

As he spoke, Vince chose a place to be seated. He knew instinctively that Remarque wouldn't want him close to anything vital, so he chose a chair that didn't block anything but the meter readouts for the auxiliary power. Unless Remarque developed some burning need to know when Rosemary was drying her hair, Vince would not be in the way.

Vince folded himself down, knees awkward in the low chair, and looked at Remarque. The Black was dangerous territory. It was remarkably simple to lose one's way in uncharted space, all but the most basic of the navigation functions rendered obsolete once that invisible boundary was crossed. There were plenty of hostiles out there, too; some pirates out to make a fortune, some simply insane and aggressive.

Despite all this, Vince very much doubted that Remarque would care one way or another. Rosemary was the one he'd have to worry about. That woman had too much sense for her own good.
 
What a shame, Vince did not ask the impossible. Remarque had always liked captains who gave insane commands: they had made him as good as he was. Lazily he typed the commands necessary. While it was the job of the navigator to decide the direction, Remarque would just nicely minimise the energy consumption of the ship. Additionally, this would probably change the ship's entire energy signature. It would be at least slightly harder to pick up their trail.

Vince was right – Remarque did not care that they were going into the Black. If they were attacked by pirates and lost, he would make exactly the same offer to them as he had first done to Vince. He had spent much of his military career lurking in the black, waiting. A lot of the war had been like that. Sitting around, waiting, reading the reports. Then the sudden orders for battles that never lasted more than a few hours. Vince probably would not know about that. Remarque was quite sure now that the man had no military record. It was a way of behaving that Vince lacked.

'When we were, eh, talking earlier, you mentioned something interesting.' He didn't comment then, because the opportunity passed, and later he genuinely thought that he was going to die.

'You said that my file put me on the Requiem for most of my tour.' Which wasn't actually true. 'What else does my file say?'

He was still stroking the computer absently. This was the time to begin to actually think. His long and complex memory needed time to be sifted through and analysed. This was especially true of events about people: he simply didn't judge them as quite important enough to put in much thought about them. Oh, why when he was on the doctor's table, did he not have modifications to accelerate his thought process? Too late now, they executed the git. Just another one of the Council's loyal men who ended up on the wrong side of the tracks at the end of the war.

It was funny, in the company of all those people now labelled monsters, he'd always felt safe. These days, though, he always needed to look over his shoulder, and to think through every one of his steps. It was exhausting, and sometimes, he really wanted to just let go.
 
Vince looked at Remarque a long time, swiveling in little half-circles in his chair, his neck correcting the angle of his head automatically, as if he were a dancer spotting himself upon Remarque. Remarque wanted to know what his file said, but he should already have a perfect recollection of it.

Which meant Remarque wasn't convinced that his file was totally accurate. Vince lifted one eyebrow, calmly turned his face away from his new engine man and said lightly, "It's fuzzy at the moment. Were you ever stationed on the Crown?"

The moment the words were out of his mouth, Pablo appeared with a plate, a foil packet, and a frown. "Lyle's put a lock on everything fresh. He says that stuff's only for dinners," Pablo explained as he shuffled over to Remarque and handed him the pre-packaged sandwich. "But these aren't too bad, far as foil meals go."

"Pablo," Vince said suddenly, getting to his feet. "Would you go join Rosemary at the helm?"

Pablo blushed up to his hairline. "Um, sure, but why--"

"Never mind that, kid. Just go," Vince said, dismissively, and waited until he was gone again before turning his attention back to Remarque. Obviously, Vince wanted Pablo left in the dark about his dealings with Remarque.
 
Whatever Pablo bought that was edible Remarque would have taken from him with equal enthusiasm. Vince really ought to treat his guests better, rather than leave them alone of hours without food or water. He ripped into the food, and it was virtually all gone by the time Pablo left.

Remarque would allow Vince to keep their dealings secret, but he wondered whether it would be better for him if they know. Pablo was cute: he wouldn't want to see Vince abusing him.

What was with this man and the Crown? It was just one ship! 'No. I trained with some of its officers when I was in military college, but I got assigned to engineer corps, and sent to the Melancholia.'

There were plenty of dirty stories about that ship, but few of them substantiated. It was known to have trained and graduated some of the most ruthless of the Council's officers, so if Remarque had worked on it, he had always been in the elite. Which might have really begged the question of why his bounty wasn't greater.

'But what does it say in my file?' he asked again, picking at the crumbs on the plate.
 
Vince tried not to let his face visibly fall upon hearing that Remarque was not, in fact, stationed upon the Crown, but despite his best attempts some of the light still drained out of his eyes. He shrugged, anyway. There were still things Remarque could tell Vince, so he'd still have to play this game with him.

"It's a pretty thin work up," Vince said honestly. "There's not a lot of detail. It shows you graduated from the academy, you're a genius with engines and computers, and you're a deserter. The file implies you probably have an affinity for sabotage and mass murder and that you would be armed and dangerous." Vince let his gaze flicker down Remarque's body and back up. "Obviously, there are some exaggerations."

Vince swiveled in his chair again, pursed his lips thoughtfully, and went on, "There's no mention of the Melancholia in your file. You ever work with a one-eyed man?"
 
Remarque was rather offended at the look. Not all weapons were guns, and Remarque was dangerous enough if you left him in a room not tied up. He had never been a soldier, he had rarely had to fight hand to hand, and he often took his targets down from a distance. He let his irritation briefly show on his face.

But... No mention? No mention? 'My service record is suppressed...?' he muttered, more to himself than to Vince. He was surprised, and for the moment he could not possibly think why that would be the case.

'One or two,' he replied in a louder voice. 'It's not terribly specific description, you know.' The Crown and a one eyed man? Interesting. Was a personal tragedy that made Vince hate anyone linked with the military so much? But there were plenty of personal tragedies in wars, and Remarque had often been apathetic to them. Things happened, you couldn't change them.
 
"No, I suppose it isn't," Vince replied, because it was the truth. He wished to God he had more details to give, but there just weren't. He'd been fighting a losing battle for years on his pathetic little description, and it was getting him nowhere without the Crown's manifest.

"Red hair?" Vince put out there, because that was the other thing he knew, along with, "A total psychopath?"

He kept his eyes on Remarque, just in case there was any flicker of recognition across his face, but as he watched him he also pushed the button on the nearest comm station, and said idly to Rosemary, "Things should be in working order right now. Plot a course for Olympia 22, 47, 12."

Rosemary came back after almost no pause at all, "But Vince that's out in--"

"I know. We need to get out of IPA space and that's the surest way."

There was a long silence, which Vince interpreted as pregnant despite the fact that it was completely natural, and then Rosemary asked, voice sharp with suspicion, "What's going on down there?"

"We've hit a snag," Vince said breezily. "I'm dealing with it. Vince out." He switched off the communicator before Rosemary could fire more questions at him and turned his attention back to Remarque, picking up as if he'd never left off.

"Sadistic sort," he said mildly, as if the memory of the man did not make his blood boil. "Murder, rape, torture, the whole package. Replaced his eye with a mechanical one. Thing even glows in the dark. You know him?"
 
Well, there was one man he knew that fitted that description. He shifted in his seat to stare at Vince. It really did ring a bell. He'd spent four years sharing a dorm with the man, when Zachary wasn't batshit insane. It felt like a century ago. For the time, he really did not want to say anything.

He listened to Rosemary and Vince's conversation with a thoughtful look on his face. Maybe he could use the information to his advantage? But first, he would need to test Vince's reactions... He did not want to make Vince overreact again, because it seemed rationality really did go out of the window, and he didn't think clinging to the ship would save him.

He suddenly realised that he was making the pause far too long.

'Maybe might have met him,' he said, his self-induced rule against lying feeling for once like a painful constraint. It was easy not to lie if no one ever asked him about anything important. He felt bad about selling out any comrade, whoever they were, even if they were technically insane, but he had a suspicion that he was going to eventually.
 
Maybe might have met him echoed thunderously inside Vince's skull and he went suddenly, unnaturally still. Even his breath caught in his throat and the chair ceased its back-and-forth movement. Vince pinned Remarque with an intense look, eyes gone a little wider than normal, a little brighter.

"His name," Vince whispered, fingers suddenly digging audibly into the armrests on his chair. It was a struggle to get the words out, but once he had, he found it was much easier to repeat them. Louder, he said, "Tell me his name."

An old rage burned momentarily bright in Vince's chest. He'd looked for the man for so long, failed so many times, that grudgingly the wound had begun to heal itself. The thought of his late brother no longer carried with it days of brooding, sleepless nights. He didn't automatically flash on his broken body, the cruel smile of the fiery haired man who had done the breaking, or the wreckage that had once been Vince's home. He didn't think of the sound or the feel of Victor's cracking ribs beneath his hands as he spent minutes, countless, agonizing minutes, trying to resuscitate him. It was years ago now, and Vince had fumbled his way into a mostly legitimate life, and Victor's death had settled into something like an old ache.

Now it flared to life, fueled by the notion of hope, and he was hard pressed to contain the wall of emotion that hit and crashed over him.

"I just want his name," Vince said again, voice shaking.
 
Oh crap. So it was that important to this man to find the craziest Council captain. Vince was really lucky that Remarque valued his life so highly, because he might have got nothing again, but Remarque learned from experiences. He didn't quite dare be deliberately evasive to Vince.

'His name was Zachary Lang. I studied with him,' Remarque replied eventually.

Chances are, that name wouldn't help much. Zachary defected six months before the end of the war, handing over the Crown to the IPA. All record of Zachary Lang ended then: no details of arrest or trial, simply as if the man had been wiped out of existence. Remarque knew better, of course. He knew Zachary had exchanged information with the IPA, and he knew Zachary had no ideals. Someone of the calibre did nothing if they were not paid.

Deliberately he looked away. He was quite certain that Vince would find nothing and later ask him again. 'Gonna guess my my war stories aren't what you're looking for,' he told Vince, smiling grimly at the readouts.
 
"Zachary Lang," Vince repeated, and it sounded like a prayer on his lips, tinged dark around the edges with hungry anticipation. "Zachary Lang," Vince said, and got to his feet as if he were preparing to jump for joy.

He gave pause then and gave Remarque a hard, suspicious look. There weren't any guns on the ship available to Remarque, there was nothing at all he could sabotage that he didn't already have right beneath his fingertips, so he supposed he could afford to leave him alone for now. Not for very long at one time, but he could leave him.

"Don't kill anyone," Vince said by way of instruction, and he turned and left without another word. He trusted that Remarque would be tied up getting to know the ship for at least a little while longer, and he had to see Rosemary.
 
When Vince left, Remarque stared at the door for a long while. This would be interesting, but probably not pretty. It never was. He had seen enough people with scars, who dreamed of vengeance. Some went through with it, but most never felt better afterwards. Remarque was familiar with that cold and empty feeling that came afterwards.

Don't kill anyone? What a stupid instruction. Of course he wouldn't kill anyone! He had committed himself to this. Having eaten even the last crumb, he put the spotlessly clean plate onto a desk, and wandered around the room for a while. It was nice to be alone, with just the heart of the ship for company. First he leant against a wall, then slid down it until he was sitting. Funny, floors had always been more comfortable than chairs. He was closer to the metal that way.

The ship would be fine without him there to pay attention, but he had no desire yet to get to know the rest of the crew. He knew the layout of the ship from the plans: that was sufficient for him for the moment. Maybe after a day or two he would be comfortable enough to leave the engine room. For now, it was the room he was happy enough with.
 
Vince evicted Pablo from the cockpit as quickly as he had banished him from the engine room, leaving him to lounge either in the rec room or in his own quarters. He'd been ordered away from every other place that would have him.

With only Rosemary there for company, and Lyle put on alert to watch Remarque for any suspicious activity ("Why ain't he in the cell?" Lyle had asked and Vince, with a despairing sigh, had replied, "Just keep an eye out."), Vince was able finally to relax. The IPA would have a hard enough time following their ship, even if they had locked onto their signature, and Vince, for the first time in years, had a lead.

"Zachary Lang," Vince said, when he settled into his chair. "Council member. Give me anything you can dig up." Rosemary just stared at Vince until he was forced to say, "What?"

"Don't you, I dunno, want to know why the IPA is after us first?"

"Oh." Vince had completely forgotten about the IPA; they'd been lost in the haze of his enthusiasm for vengeance. "Uh, sure."

So, what it came down to was the IPA wasn't actually after Vince or any of his crew, but once Remarque had popped up on the grid, he'd been promoted from a simple bounty to a priority level one security threat. (Vince sighed internally at this, because his bounty had sky-rocketed in a matter of hours and he was no longer in a position to collect.)

Also, inexplicably, all record of the Dioscuri in the IPA registration log was gone. Rosemary tried to correct this problem with a little help from her IPA contact, but they had been suspiciously unhelpful.

"So it's like that," Vince said. "They want him dead so badly that we're nothing but collateral damage."

Rosemary rolled her eyes. "I knew your taste for war criminals was gonna get us killed."

"What's so important about Remarque?" Vince asked, ignoring Rosemary's comment because he knew that she knew no such thing.

It was hours before they were able to get to the business of researching one Zachary Lang, and Rosemary's questions about Vince's impatience were met with silence and more silence by the captain. They were able to find out a lot on Remarque, once properly motivated, though nothing that would indicate why he was considered such a threat to intergalactic peace.

Vince even found himself considering, however briefly, that maybe Remarque wasn't the monster he'd been made out to be.

That changed, of course, when he was able to find absolutely nothing current about Zachary Lang. Oh, he got his military records and record of his defection all right, but there was nothing to indicate his current whereabouts, or even if he was still living, and Vince was suddenly reminded of Remarque's awkward silence before giving up Lang's name in the first place.

"Son of a bitch," Vince exclaimed, and pounded his fist on the console.

"Vince?" Rosemary asked. "What the Hell is going on with you?"

Vince didn't answer, because he was already stalking back to his quarters. The next time he encountered Remarque, he was going to be ready.

---------------

When Vince entered the engine room again, it was many hours after he'd left Remarque alone. He was grim faced, his stride slow and measured, and when he stepped over the threshold, he turned and took the time to lock the door.

Calmly, he told the computer, "Voice lock engine room, Victor one two seven," he told the computer, and it chirped its acceptance of his command. The door was sealed.

He turned then and looked at Remarque. "What do you know about Lang that you're not telling?"
 
He had, eventually, dozed off while sitting on the floor. There was only so much entertainment that he could derive from a ship the size of the Dioscuri, and well, he was tired. He was alternating between fearing for his life and being mistreated, after all. No need to think, and it was nice to sleep for a bit.

But his sleep was, as always, shallow. Vince's voice woke him. Oh, locking was never a good sign. Never. He scrambled up. He should behave with dignity and negotiate was what his rational mind told him. What his more human part told him was that Vince was just as crazy as Zachary, and that he should just talk.

'A lot,' he replied eventually. Pay me and I'll tell you.
 
Vince nodded. "Thought so," he said, toneless.

On the one hand, there was a part of him wishing he had gotten to this stage with Remarque earlier. That he'd had him in screaming agony before he drew his first breath on the Dioscuri. The other side, the more rational side, was happy they'd come this far. Now Remarque was going to make good on his original offer, and Vince was going to get information out of him in the process.

He was next to Remarque in a matter of four long strides, and had his shirt balled up into his fist within a heart beat. He tugged Remarque close with one hand while the other disappeared behind his back.

"I want to know all of it," Vince growled, and then drew the weapon he'd brought from his waistband. It wasn't a pistol, though it was roughly the same shape and Vince did privately think of it as his gun. It was an automatic syringe, filled with a drug cocktail that Vince had only just come up with. It was somewhat experimental, and Remarque was his very first test subject.

It was a mixture of a few choice inhibitor suppressants, sort of like liquor but much more effective and without the numbness or loss of coordination. Also, there was a mild muscle relaxer in the solution, nothing that would knock Remarque out cold, but just enough to keep him loose-limbed and pliant through the pain. The ultimate result, if Vince had guessed correctly, would be a mildly dreamlike experience for Remarque. It might even be something that kids shot up for fun, considering Vince also loaded it up with a psychoactive amphetamine containing entactogenic, psychedlic, and stimulant effects.

Essentially, when Vince put the needle to Remarque's neck and pulled the trigger--which he did, immediately after drawing the needle from his waistband--it was the equivalent with dosing him with an ecstasy-based truth serum.

"And you're going to tell me," he concluded, and stepped back and waited for the drug to take effect.
 
Remarque tried to pull away when he realised what Vince was going to do. Drugs. His self control was based on practice, experience and carefully trained thought. He had little experience of drugs. Interrogation drugs were only used on the most important of prisoners and difficult to acquire... And, to be entirely honest, he had taken Vincent to be a thug. As clever as he was, this was a serious omission of judgement by his part: the used drugs in Vince's room should have told him something at least.

Dammit, once again, he realised how out of practice he was. Vince was too fast for him. If he ever got out of this, he would go back to following his military training to the letter. It was all no good if he didn't fucking train. Or maybe he should just have taken Maria's offer and spent his life in her bedroom, surrounded by the tools of her trade and the grandeur that only history could give. He cursed his own restlessness, his nomadic soul.

Remarque felt the stab of the needle. It was well aimed: only needed a couple of heartbeats go get to his brain, and the world began to lose its focus. Not too much though – it was not that sort of drug. Oh, damn. It was definitely harder to stay upright now, and he took a step forward to lean on his torturer.

'I hate you more every time you touch me,' he said quietly.

He really was going to tell Vince everything, and there was not going to be a thing he would be able to do about it. Most soldiers had experience of recreational drugs, but Remarque had never shot anything up. He never took painkillers. He had no baseline tolerance, and this was probably going to hit him, let alone what Vince was going to do. He giggled.
 
"I hate you right back," Vince said, his voice a soft, relaxed rumble, belying perfectly his rage. "It doesn't matter," he went on, and his hands came up to wrap around Remarque's biceps, spent syringe falling forgotten to the floor with a loud clatter. "Because you're going to bare your soul to me and you're going to like it when I touch you, just like a lover."

To illustrate a point, Vince drew his hands lightly down Remarque's arms, knowing full well the effect of at least one portion of the drug. His hands would feel electrically charged, bringing bright spikes of pleasure with their touch, curling into a manufactured desire and sense of intimacy in the center of Remarque's belly. Vince knew because he'd tried it before and found the experience warranted repeating.

"What happened to Zachary Lang after he disappeared?" Vince asked, though he wasn't sure the drug had taken hold thoroughly enough to force an imperative, truthful answer out of Remarque. It was of little importance. He would ask again. And again.
 
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