Chapter Text
Boston, now
“What I don’t understand is why anyone would want to steal Damien Moreau’s body.”
Eliot was through the door and up in Hardison’s personal space, glaring at the bank of computer screens, before he’d consciously processed what he’d heard. “What do you mean, body?”
“Body. As in, I have alerts for any mention of his name, and he died. Poison, apparently.”
“He’s not dead.”
Hardison gave him the why does nobody ever trust my systems? look. “OK, I know you’ve got this Thing about Moreau, but he is. There was even an autopsy, with pictures, which I assure you I only looked at long enough to be sure it was him.”
Eliot glowered. “I’ve come back from worse.”
“From— from an autopsy? Dude, like, I know you, okay, but what the hell?”
The part of Eliot that never lost track of his surroundings noted that Nate and Sophie had drifted into the room, attracted by all the commotion, and Parker had appeared the way Parker did. The overall feel of the room was polite disbelief.
“Yeah.” Fuck, he’d have to do the knife thing, and not just a simple cut for this crew. He lifted Hardison’s utility knife from his pocket — his own would never do — and flipped it open. Before Hardison could even begin to sputter indignantly, his other hand was flat on the table with the blade slammed all the way through his palm.
“Eliot!” Sophie said, her usually well controlled voice laced with disbelief. Nate leaned back, eyebrows raised, in what would look like his usual I assume this is a con and you will explain it pose to someone who didn’t know him well. Hardison was past sputtering to outright shock.
Only Parker seemed unperturbed. She reached out a curious finger. Eliot yanked the knife out before she could touch it and handed it to her — just because it would heal, didn’t mean that wouldn’t hurt.
Parker turned the blade this way and that, sniffing it but not — thankfully — tasting it. “It’s real,” she said.
Sophie shook her head, fighting to regain her composure. “I know at least three ways of faking that…” she said uncertainly.
“Yeah, so do I, but this isn’t one of them,” Eliot said, pulling off his bandanna to wipe the blood off his hand and then hold it up for inspection. Hole that deep, wasn’t going to heal instantly, giving it enough time to be obvious even to a pack of grifters. And he’d bet none of them knew any way to fake the Quickening sparks, although he wouldn’t put it past Hardison to find one. “Like I said, I’ve survived worse. So has Moreau.”
Roman Germania, 261 AD
He knows by now the enemy is toying with him. The bodies of his entire centuria lie strewn around him; there’s no reason why he isn’t lying there with them.
And there aren’t any of the enemy among the dead, even though he’s certain he’s dealt more than a few fatal blows. Nobody’s even bleeding. Maybe he is dead. He’s heard the barbarians believe they’ll spend the afterlife fighting; he really can’t see the appeal.
As if they know he’s hit his limits, the men surrounding him all suddenly step back. It’s not a retreat; they’re waiting for something. The circle breaks, and there’s a man standing there, obviously their leader. The world seems slightly unreal, the way it does just before a lightning strike.
He stands, unmoving, his sword dangling at his side, as the leader approaches. It’s not just that he’s too tired to do anything else — he wants to try, but there’s something mesmerizing about him. He looks up as the man rests a hand on his shoulder, smiles indulgently, and then stabs him in the heart.
“And I came to in their camp. Damien — he wasn’t Damien then, said I should call him Deimos — said he’d chosen me. Said I could join him, or I could find out how many times he could bring me back. It was a lie, the bringing back part. He had nothing to do with it, but I didn’t know that till a lot later. So, yeah. I was a Roman centurion, I believed in the gods, and he was convincing.” Eventually. They didn’t need to know how many ways he’d died those first months.
“So how do you come back?” Hardison asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. None of us know.”
Hardison started to ask another question, but Nate spoke up for the first time. “I think we’re getting away from the point. It’s not like we haven’t faked a dead body before. Whether Eliot’s story checks out or not,” — Eliot glared, but Nate ignored him — “Damien Moreau is no longer in prison, so we should assume he’s alive and free.”
“And out to get us. All of us,” Eliot emphasized. “And he’ll save me for last. Make me watch, if he can. It’s what we did.” He could see the various looks around him shift as everyone considered just what he’d begged them not to ask. “He knows who we are, we don’t know who he is or where he’ll be. He’d have several new identities set up for him to just step into. We all do. So what you all have to do is hide. There are rules, but they don’t apply to you.”
Nate had that look on his face that said he’d already worked his way to Plan M and was still spinning threads in all directions. “I agree about the hiding,” he said, “but not the rest. You need a better plan than that.”
Sophie nodded. “Yes. We’ve split up before and it didn’t work out. We’re better as a team. You need us. And if we’re in danger, we need you.”
Hardison was next. "Oh, right, and you're going to track him down? You and what computer skills? When’s the last time you had to do something like this, huh? Back before he could be anywhere in the world in under a day?”
Eliot shot a pointed glance at Parker, who merely raised her eyebrows and shrugged. He glared at all of them, but there was no heat in it. They were right, he really was in immediate hide and regroup mode. First time he’d had to run from Moreau with a team at his back, so yeah, maybe he needed some time to adjust.
“Right,” Nate said. “Hardison…”
“Search for Moreau’s potential new identities, on it.”
“Eliot, work with Hardison. You know Moreau’s history, what places he likes, what kind of aliases he prefers.”
Eliot nodded, noting that while Nate was finally taking it seriously, he was still thinking in terms of mortals, with aliases layered on top of real identities.
“Parker, Sophie, with me. I know you both have hideouts you’ve never revealed to anyone. We need to determine which ones will work for all of us. We don’t have any idea how long it’ll take before Moreau comes after us, but I’m assuming that between us and Eliot we’re pretty high up his list of priorities.”
Eliot wasn’t sure what Nate expected him to do, other than keep the hacker from freaking out. Hardison, Elliot noted, was very carefully not looking at his knife, the hole Eliot had made in the desk, or Eliot’s hand— so much so that it was distracting him more than if he’d just given in and stared. Which wasn’t good for his hacking, or even more importantly, Hardison himself.
Right. Time to get it all out. Giving Hardison his best I am totally fucking with you grin, he gave the knife a light push. “Want this back?”
“What? No. No I do not.” Hardison pretended to ignore him and focus on his computer, but Eliot knew all his tells and just waited him out. Finally he cracked. “Damn, man, how can you do that to yourself? Doesn’t it hurt?”
Eliot thought of saying he’d had worse, but he’d messed with Hardison’s head enough today. “Yeah. It does. I usually wouldn’t be so dramatic, but like Sophie said, you all know different ways to fake that.”
“Not me, man. I leave that to the experts. No blood for me, not even fake. Unless, like, it’s digitally added. That I can do.”
“Yeah, I get it. I mean, it’s not just my job to keep you away from all that, you know? And look, I know I rib you about it, but you’re right. I have no idea how to go about changing identities these days or tracking someone down with computers. It was a lot easier last time I did it. Slower, though.”
“Yeah, I bet,” Hardison said, loosening up as he did when given a new puzzle to think about. “What, you’d just go away, turn up a few years later going ‘yeah, that was my granddad?’”
“Some of us did. I kept moving. There’s always work for a hitter“ — he’d nearly said someone with my skills, but he didn’t want Hardison to go down the rabbit hole of just what those skills might be — “and nobody ever asks too many questions.”
“Well, that ain’t gonna work now,” he said, sounding more confident as they got back into his area of expertise. “Everything’s online, unless you go somewhere so off grid they don’t even know what a grid is, and ain’t too many of those left, and none of them is a place Moreau could just disappear. Not that I can see him leaving behind his harem and his luxuries. Guessing San Lorenzo was about as isolated as he could stand.”
“Yeah, pretty much. So,” he asked, with no trace of the usual teasing mockery he might have used on an ordinary day, “you’re gonna search every computer on the planet?”
Hardison nodded, his face lighting up as he launched into the kind of tech babble that Eliot usually ignored. Not this time. “That is exactly what I’m doing. Facial recognition on every database on the planet, and I do mean every. I got automated systems going through all the public databases, but there’s a lot of them that need my personal attention. Gonna take some time, but there ain’t no hiding from me. Age of the geek, baby.”
Equilibrium regained, Hardison turned his full focus on his computer. Eliot watched, catching a few words as they flickered by — missing person requests, most-wanted lists, DMV records — but otherwise he was as out of his depth as he ever was. But it did spark an idea. “Can you find someone else for me? Went by Adam Pierson in the 90s, might be someone else by now. More of a hide in plain sight kind of guy, so he should have public records.”
“90s? Yeah, I’ll see what I can do. Friend of yours?”
“You could say that.”
Magna Germania, 315 AD
Methos reins in his horse at the riverbank. The town to the north of him is said to have a bridge, but there’s a plume of smoke rising over the forest, and Methos has seen enough towns put to the torch to recognize it.
South it is, then.
The wisdom of his decision is confirmed when he spots a corpse floating face down in the river. A familiar feeling causes him to give the body a second look. Not dead, not quite; a new Immortal, who hasn’t yet learned that the trick to not drowning is to resist the body’s desire to inhale. He sighs and looks down the river, judging that the currents will bring the body close to the bank on his side at the next bend. No sense in getting wetter than he needs to, and it’s not like the young Immortal can get any more dead.
Once ashore, the man turns out to be a mass of contradictions. He’s wearing the trousers and tunic of the local tribes, under Roman armor that appears to have taken a good number of decades of hard use. Possibly spoils of war, but Methos doubts it — it fits him too well. And then there’s the gladius — not a sword meant for dueling, which matches the feeling that this Immortal has yet to go through his first Quickening.
He sets the stage carefully, placing both their swords out of easy reach, but still easily spotted, and waits.
When the man revives, he’s examining his surroundings almost before he finishes coughing up a lungful of river water. Again, the contradictions — he notes the position of the swords but doesn’t seem concerned enough about the distance. Young Immortals who know the Game tend to be rather twitchy when their weapon isn’t on their body. He looks at Methos, and his eyes furrow — yes, he knows how to sense another Immortal.
“What are you?” he asks in the local dialect, with just a trace of an accent. “You feel like my— like the others, but I don’t know you.”
On a whim, Methos switches to Latin. “We’re Immortals, although I suspect that means nothing to you.” The man nods, confirming both his theories.
Methos has been through the introduction to immortality so many times that he can do it by rote, letting him concentrate on analyzing the man’s reaction to the information. It’s obvious some of it is familiar, while some of it is a surprise.
At the end the young Immortal shakes his head, not quite in acceptance, but not full disbelief either. “It does make more sense than what my— than what I was told. That Deimos had chosen us, granted us immortality. And that he could take it any time he wanted.”
It’s not the first time an Immortal has tried that con, but that isn’t what catches his attention. “Deimos?”
“Yeah. You know him?”
Far too well. “He has a reputation.” Leave it at that.
He nods thoughtfully. “And if he asks how I know this, who should I say told me?”
“Call me Nemo,” Methos says. Deimos will know it’s an alias, but not who’s behind it.
His eyes crinkle in genuine amusement. “Οὖτις ἐμοί γ᾽ ὄνομα?” He grins at Methos’ reaction. “Yeah, I’m no barbarian, I know my classics.”
“Oh?” Methos raises his eyebrows pointedly as he looks up and down at his mismatched attire.
He glances away briefly in embarrassment. “Yeah, maybe I am. Hadn’t realized how long it’s been since I gave up trying to run. S’pose you’re going to say I could just not go back now, but...”
Methos shakes his head. “He’ll come after you. He’s very attached to his possessions.”
The man nods and rises to leave, collecting his sword with a look that indicates a new understanding of the careful positioning. Methos calls out to him. “If you don’t survive,” he says, with a lilt that implies he expects the opposite, “what name should I remember you by?”
He pauses and looks back. “Deimos calls me Catellus. But my name was Quintus Marcius.”
It’s only been a few days since he was last in the camp. He expects it to feel different, to bow under the weight of new knowledge. He expects the change he feels in himself to be obvious — that they will look at him and see Marcius. Not that he quite feels like Marcius, after so long being Deimos’ faithful dog.
He doesn’t even attempt stealth as he enters Deimos’ tent — why should he, when Deimos can feel him arrive? Deimos, as usual, is a bright beacon; the stranger who called himself Nobody has explained why. The Game, for which Deimos had sent him out unprepared.
It’s a shock, to realize his immortality has limits.
Deimos looks him over, pausing at the hilt of his sword, where his hand is a bit too close, a bit too ready. Deimos raises an eyebrow. “Are you going to draw, whelp, or are you going to just stand there?”
He shakes his head. “I think I know what would happen if I tried.”
“Do you?”
He’d thought he was prepared, but Deimos is faster than he could have expected. He’s on the ground, a sword pointed at his neck, before he has time to blink. But Deimos is smiling at him, the same smile he remembers from the first time he’d died. They stay there for a long moment, then Deimos sheathes his sword and pulls him to his feet.
“I was waiting for you to start asking questions, I knew you were clever enough to start wondering. But I take it you’ve already found answers.”
“Yeah. And what if I hadn’t been lucky? What if the first other Immortal I met hadn’t been so curious? The man I met said it was your duty to train me.”
“And it is. You’ve no idea what a catch you are. We do love having the chance to train a new Immortal, especially one with such potential. It’s why I worked so hard to acquire you once I realized what you were. I saw you with your soldiers. Should I let such talents go to waste? Can you deny that I taught you well? How to use them, how to lead?”
There’s some echo of the centurion he was, so young and eager to prove himself, that’s responding to the praise.
“But you were on the wrong side, and so very loyal — another talent I desired. You would never have agreed without some … let us say, encouragement.”
He shudders, remembering, but he knows there’s no point in protesting the term. Move on. “And? Why play that game with all of us?”
Deimos shrugs dismissively. "Just look at them, your so-called brothers. They’re thugs, barbarians. Barely worthy of the gift of immortality. If they knew the truth, how could I keep them in line? They hated you because you were a Roman, and yet I’d given you the same gift I’d given them.” There’s an eyebrow raise, a look that says the two of them were both on the same side, keepers of a greater knowledge. “I had to treat you the same until you’d earned their respect. And you have, as I knew you would.”
He shakes his head, sorting through everything Deimos has said. There’s truth to it, but there’s also something deeper that he just can’t place.
Deimos wraps an arm around his shoulders. “You’re special, you’ve always known it. And your Empire is dying; I know the signs well. They’re playing the tribes against each other now, sabotaging any leader who stands out, but when that ends? I will need you to help me bring order to the chaos.”