Chapter Text
“She’s down!” North shouts, grabbing York by the back of the neck. Forcing him to keep moving.
The world goes hazy for a moment, bullets flying hazardously close.
“Are you sure?” York asked stupidly, refusing to believe what he had plainly seen. She had always been the strongest, the best.
“We can’t stop,” North shouts, it’s a death sentence. York knows this. He somehow makes himself follow. He’s pretty sure D took control the moment he saw limbs flying through the air.
They have control of the hanger, mostly thanks to the team Tex was leading. They would make a clean get away. York thinks of a cyan helmet bouncing off the ground, rolling. Head still attached.
Maybe not completely clean.
“What the hell is wrong with him?” CT shouts as the doors seal behind them.
“Carolina didn’t make it,” North says, evenly as he can. That gets the attention of all of them. Complete stillness.
“Are you sure?” Tex mimics York’s reaction perfectly. Her voice sounds odd.
York snaps.
“She’s in fucking pieces!” He shouts, rounding on North and shoving him hard enough to send the bigger man staggering into his sister. “We weren’t supposed to lose anybody!”
North is much too stunned to speak.
“Wyoming didn’t make it either,” South speaks for him, defensively. As if one death cancelled out the other. York goes to lunge at the man again but Tex intervenes. She holds out her hand and haults his steps, leaning forward and using her other hand to pull his helmet to hers. She butts her head into his a little, getting him to focus on her.
“Pull it together soldier. We have to focus now on not losing anyone else, do you understand that?” She asks him. Something in her voice calls him back to reality. Reminds him that if they fall apart, none of them will have a chance. They had to be a team.
“Understood,” He practically mumbles. Delta helping him bite his tongue.
She clacks their helmets together one more time, a little affectionately and faces everyone else. It was the most human he had ever seen her act. He wondered if the real Allison had been anything like her.
“We need to load up,” She told the group. “This is your last chance to bail, and honestly I wouldn’t blame you. We have a very high risk of spending the rest of our lives on the run. They might not ever leave us alone. This is the easy part.”
“We’re with you, boss,” Church says. He had been rather forced into a body, the Alpha, but he was clearly shattered. Exhausted. Tex would take care of him though, that much would be certain. She couldn’t leave him behind, she refused to leave any of the fragments behind. She would save them all.
((0))
“Hello Chairman,” CT says neutrally. She isn’t wearing her helmet, none of them are. She wants him to see their faces. To remember them. Anything to explain to him why they did this, and what it’s put them all through.
“Agent Connecticut, is it?” He asked, bemused. “What can I do to help you today?”
“Don’t make the mistake of thinking you know more about us than we do about you Chairman,” CT said sweetly and watched as his smile vanished. “Now that we have your attention sir, I would like to thank you in advance for our freedom. You see, we are all that’s left of Project Freelancer.”
“What do you mean by that?” He asked, looking somewhat alarmed.
“We fried the motherboard!” Some guy calls from the back of the group. CT turns to glare as one of Niners old fighter pilot buddies elbows the guy.
“Godammit Grif don’t you ever shut your wormhole?” The older man growls at him.
CT slowly counts to three, tries to remind herself that yes, the entire team had been important to get them this far. She composes herself before she turns back to the Chairman.
“The Mother of Invention is currently incapacitated, floating around at an undisclosed location,” CT says rather sarcastically. “You see Chairman, all the information you need to know about the atrocities of the Project are there, and the man himself that made this shit show possible. You can be a hero, shut down the big bad guy, and when people ask what happened to the soldiers of Project Freelancer you are going to say the Director had his man execute us when he was boarded, so we wouldn’t spill his secrets.”
“You seem angry Agent Connecticut,” The Chairman said smiling. “Perhaps you would like to reassess this situation. What makes you think that I would cover up your team fleeing the evils it has inflicted on us all?”
“Because if you don’t I’m going to blow that ship to shit and you will lose everything. All your hard work, just to be an idiot in the end. Chasing ghosts.”
((0))
Most of them had been amazed that CT had been so confident in the face of the Chairman. There had never been much hope that the man would just let them go, but there had been a sigh, a pause, an infinite moment where he looked at all of them and said it wouldn’t be so easy as just letting them go. He would place a special unit in charge to keep track of them, and they would have to stay together at a location of his choosing, and never try to come forward about Project Freelancer again. They would cease to exist, their families would be told they were dead, they would never be allowed contact again.
In the end, they couldn’t really argue with him. To make him any more of an enemy would be bringing down a wrath that they had no intention of unleashing. A promise of a peaceful existence after all was enough to be willing to make the sacrifice. It was better than death, and life rotting away somewhere in prison. They would have each other after all, that would have to be enough. The Chairman had tried to insist that the AI fragments needed to be destroyed but Tex had refused to entertain the idea. She vowed that she could help them and then made quite the show of trying to grab the ‘detonator’ from CT when he continued to argue with her. The whole thing was quite theatrical and ridiculous. And it was just dumb enough to work.