Work Text:
Jeremy Dooley had made it big.
The high rise balcony offered a stunning view of Los Santos. Jeremy sipped a beer with his feet up on the balcony rail, watching the sun set over the sparkling buildings and the ocean in the distance. Golden light fractured against steel and windows like diamonds, but that wasn’t what made the view so good. The beer was cold in Jeremy’s hand, but that wasn’t what made it taste so good.
This balcony belonged to Fake AH Crew headquarters, and that was what put a smile on Jeremy’s face. He’d been running with the crew for a few weeks now, but it still seemed unreal to be sitting here on their balcony, drinking their beer, looking out over the city that now belonged to him.
The door creaked open, and Jeremy pulled his gaze away from the view.
Geoff stepped out onto the balcony, followed quickly by Ryan and Gavin, and not a damn one of them was pulling off a poker face. Gavin was nearly bouncing off the balcony, Ryan hid a smile behind gloved fingers, and Geoff’s grin was threatening to swallow his entire face. Jeremy narrowed his eyes.
“ … Hi,” he tried, mistrustfully. “What are you fuckers up to?”
“Big news, lil’ J!” Geoff clasped his hands together. “Me and the boys have been talking, and we think, well… it’s time we made you an official part of the crew!”
Jeremy laughed and spread his arms at his surroundings. “I thought I was already part of the crew! What, do we get matching tattoos?”
“Ha! Uh, bit more than that, buddy, bit more than that.” Geoff rubbed a hand over his beard. “Listen, hey, you know the legends about Fake AH Crew, right?”
“Dude…” Jeremy’s voice was giddy. It was hard to not still be starstruck sometimes, even after everything. “I’ve heard a million legends about the Fake AH Crew, you’re gonna have to be specific.”
“How about…” Geoff was smiling behind his hand. “No matter how many times you kill ‘em, they keep coming back?”
“Oh shit yeah.” Jeremy took a sip of his beer. “I’ve heard every conspiracy theory from aliens to government holograms. My favorite is that you collect slaves that look like you and have them die in your place from time to time, just to throw people off.” He laughed. “I think I would have seen them around by now if you did!”
Gavin snickered. Geoff cast a knowing look at him, then one at Ryan. Finally, he looked back at Jeremy.
“ … You wanna know the real answer?” he offered.
The smile melted off Jeremy’s face. “ … No way. There’s not…”
“I like the one about doppleganger slaves, that’s a new one. Definitely the closest guess so far.”
“You’re shitting me.” Jeremy’s beer almost dropped from his hand as he struggled to set it down. “I thought you just — I thought you were just really good! All those times they thought they got you, I thought you slipped away!”
Gavin laughed. “We die constantly! We suck!”
“We don’t suck, Gav,” Geoff corrected. He turned back to Jeremy. “Listen, you’re only hearing this because you’re about to join the crew for real. This is top top secret, you can’t tell anyone.”
“Tell them what?” Jeremy stood, beer and view forgotten. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Ryan gave Geoff a sidelong look. “You’re gonna have to show him.”
——
In the basement of Fake AH headquarters, there was a door that Jeremy had never gone through.
Unlabeled sleek steel covered the opening, no hinges, no knob, and no keypad. Jeremy had walked past it before, but he’d never seen what was inside. Once or twice, he’d seen a crew member emerge from it, with no mention of what they’d been doing in there.
Clearly, the secrets of the locked room were intended for Fake AH Crew members, but not for Jeremy. Until now, he supposed.
“By the way,” Geoff began as they strode down the hall, “the rest of the guys are real sorry they can’t be here for this.”
“Yeah, they’re off robbing a bank,” added Ryan scornfully. “Hogging all the fun.”
As Geoff strode towards it, the door slid open, as though it had seen him coming. Jeremy held his breath and followed the man inside.
Fake AH headquarters was drenched in luxury from roof balcony to basement, but the sight that greeted Jeremy was a different sort of wealth. Everything about the room was sleek white technology, like he had just stepped forward into the space age. Strange circular grooves lined the walls in a neat grid, each one as big as a manhole cover. A digital screen and elaborate control panel hummed softly in a corner, while shelves of strange implements and…. folded clothes?… sat in another.
“Here it is, the most important room you’ll ever set foot in,” Geoff announced. “This place is gonna change your life, Jeremy.”
Ryan and Gavin both chuckled, as though Geoff had told a joke. Jeremy’s brow pursed as he looked around. He’d always expected this room to contain piles of gold, or drugs, or lost masterpieces. A thieves’ hoard. This looked more like a starship.
“This…” Geoff ran his hand over a wall lovingly. “ … Is the respawn room.”
Jeremy blinked. “ … Respawn room,” he said slowly, sifting through each syllable for the punchline.
“When we die, this is how we come back.”
“How you — what?”
Geoff sighed, as though Jeremy was being difficult. “See, when one of us gets gunned down by a cop —“
“Or flattened by a car,” interjected Gavin.
“Or pushed out of a plane,” added Ryan.
“Or falls out of a — wait, what do you mean pushed, Ryan?”
“ — We wake up back here,” Geoff finished. “In a fresh new body, same as the last one. Good as new.”
“You’re hazing me.” Jeremy rubbed a hand over his mouth and a strangled laugh slipped through his fingers. “I’m being hazed, right? C’mon, guys, what’s this room really for?”
Ryan shot Geoff a smile. “I told you, you’ll have to show him.”
“Show me what,” Jeremy snapped.
Geoff sighed. He leaned over a control panel and began typing. “Just so you know,” he said over his shoulder, “this isn’t something you’re allowed to do. No peeking at the spares before they’re used.”
“Otherwise we’d draw dicks on each other’s faces,” Gavin explained.
Jeremy opened his mouth to ask what the fuck that meant, but before he could, one of the circular grooves in the wall hissed. A coffin-sized tube slid smoothly out at hip height, sleek white on the sides and glass on top. Something about it made Jeremy’s stomach flip, even before he stepped gingerly closer and peered down through the glass.
A human body lay inside the pod, flushed with life but as still as death. He knew who that was.
Jeremy jolted back, and his gaze shot up to Geoff. He couldn’t find words. The smug, living Geoff face smirking at him was indistinguishable from the neutral, lifeless Geoff face in the pod.
“Th-that’s — that’s you!” he sputtered.
“Not yet it’s not.” Geoff hit a button on the control panel, and the pod slid back into place with a soft hiss. “Next time I get shot in the face, that’ll be me. For now, I’m right here.”
“What the fuck…” Jeremy ran his hand over his head. “Holy shit. Holy shit this is real.”
“Sure is!” Geoff spread his arms in a gesture to the room. “This is it, lil’ J, the big Fake AH secret: immortality!” He flicked his finger at Jeremy. “And now you get to cash in on it. We’ve already got you set up in the system.”
“I stole some of your hair for it,” Gavin piped up.
“ … Set up?” Jeremy’s stunned gaze jumped over the pods. “You mean you’ve got copies of me in there?”
Ryan tapped his knuckles against a pod. “We’ve got Jeremys to spare.”
“Just need to log you in,” Geoff added. He strode across the room to the shelf of strange implements. “Once you’re connected to the system, you’re always connected, no matter how far away you get. In a few minutes, you won’t need to fear death anymore.”
He turned around with something that looked like a high-tech staple gun. When he caught the look on Jeremy’s face, he waved it with a smile.
“It hurts less than it looks like it does. All right, lil’ J, I’m gonna need your neck.”
Words had abandoned Jeremy. All those times he’d heard news reports about the cops finally taking down a member of the Fake AH Crew… He’d always scoffed at the newspaper articles over his coffee, muttered yeah right under his breath, because everyone knew you couldn’t kill a Fake.
That legacy — that immortality — was being offered to him, right there in the palm of Geoff’s hand.
“It’s okay.” Geoff tilted his head, tapping the gun against a small pale scar on his neck. “See? I’ve got one too.”
As if on cue, Gavin and Ryan both pointed to similar scars on their necks. Jeremy took a deep breath.
“All right.” He tilted his head, baring his neck. “Let’s go.”
The device pressed against him, cold metal against his skin. Jeremy bit his tongue. A quick, sharp pinch was all he felt, and then Geoff was lowering the device. Gavin rushed to a screen on the wall as it began to beep and display information. Jeremy winced and rubbed the sting out of his neck.
“Not too bad,” he grunted. “I was kind of expecting immortality to take longer.”
“That chip lets you unlock this room too.” Geoff set the gun down. “Every fresh body has one already installed. And most importantly, it’s connecting you to the system right now.”
“It’s reading, it’s reading…” Gavin’s face was inches from the screen as information flashed across it. “Oh, yes, suck up that tasty data… ”
“You always make this weird,” Ryan muttered.
The screen beeped again. Gavin sprang back with a laugh. “He’s in!”
Geoff sighed, satisfied. “Then it’s time. Ryan, I know this is your favorite thing ever, so would you do the honors?”
A gun clicked behind Jeremy’s head. His stomach barely had time to drop before Ryan chuckled.
“With pleasure.”
He never heard the gunshot.
——
The air tasted clean.
Jeremy took a very deep, slow breath, his eyes still closed. A soft plastic surface cradled his body. Something was humming softly around him, like the soothing drone of a car engine as he slept in the backseat.
Click went the gun, just before Ryan pulled the trigger.
Jeremy gulped down a second lungful of air, his eyes snapping open. He bolted upright amid the sound of familiar voices cheering.
“Rise and shine, Jeremy Dooley! You’re a real member of the Fake AH Crew!”
Jeremy’s shaking hands were gripping the edges of the open clone pod. The clone pod that he had just risen out of. His chest heaved as he stared at his own white-knuckled fingers.
… Holy… shit…
“It’s weird, right?” Gavin’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “It gets less weird when you do it a lot.”
Ryan was reloading his gun, gloved fingers making quick work. “Could you rate your murder experience for me? I was going for ‘quick and painless.’”
“Q-quick?” Jeremy could barely find his voice. “Y-you fucking shot me before I could say a damn thing!”
“Too quick, then? I can do it slow next time.”
Gavin was beaming. “You’re one of the crew now! Welcome to the family, boy!”
“Y-you welcomed me to the family by murdering me?”
“Yes, but for very practical reasons,” Ryan insisted.
“Practical?”
“See, here’s the thing…” Geoff ran his hand along the edge of the clone pod, like it was a well-behaved pet. “You’re a real crazy son of a bitch, lil’ J, and that’s why we like you. But you’ve gotta be Fake AH crazy. And you can’t be that crazy if you’re afraid to die.”
Jeremy’s gaze sunk to his own hands. He turned them over, still disconnected from the reality of it. His hands moved the way they were supposed to, just like they always did. It felt normal, all the parts in place, it felt like being Jeremy. But just minutes ago, this body had been a chunk of meat in a clone pod that he didn’t even know existed.
Geoff’s voice continued, and Jeremy’s gaze lifted again.
“We can show you the tech and tell you it works, but no one — not a damn person — really believes it until the first time it brings you back. None of us did.” Geoff pressed a finger against the side of his own head like the barrel of a gun. “Next time you’re out in a firefight, you’ve gotta know that you’ll come back even if you take one to the cranium. We don’t want your maiden voyage happening when something real is on the line, y’know? So we took care of it now. Got that performance anxiety out of the way.”
Not dead. Jeremy touched his arm, then his face. He’d been shot in the head, and he was still drawing breath. Still able to pick up a gun and fire back. Not dead. A strange smile was growing on his face.
“You guys… are goddamn psychopaths.”
“Sure, dying still hurts like a bitch,” Ryan admitted, “but aside from immortality, the whole system has some serious perks.”
Gavin nodded. “You can jump out a plane for fun!”
“Or murder your friends for fun!”
“Yeah, if you’re a bloody lunatic like Ryan, you can murder your friends for fun.”
Jeremy started to lift himself from the pod, then froze. “ … Okay, small problem. I’m naked.”
Geoff snorted. “Pff, well yeah, the pods don’t respawn your clothes. That’s silly.”
“You guys have secret technology that can download human minds into new bodies, but you can’t put clothes on them?”
Gavin frowned. “ … Oi, Geoff, why don’t we respawn in clothes?”
“That’s not important.” Geoff grabbed a folded stack of cloth off a shelf and tossed it to Jeremy. “Here.”
Jeremy caught the clothes out of the air. Boxers. He sighed and tugged them on. “That’s better, but where are my clothes?”
“Well, they’re on your, uh —“ Gavin gestured at something, then froze. “Uh.”
Gears were turning in Jeremy’s brain. “… My what?”
Geoff’s hands lifted in front of his chest, almost defensively, like he was trying to soothe a spooked animal. “Uh, lemme give you a quick warning, Jeremy. Most people feel a little weird the first time they see it, so, just… brace yourself before you turn around, because —“
Click went the gun, just before Ryan had pulled the trigger. Jeremy could suddenly feel each heartbeat in his throat. The bullet would have hit point-blank and blasted through his skull, shattering bone and ripping through brain and —
Jeremy scrambled to turn around and would have fallen out of the clone pod if he hadn’t grabbed the edge.
His body lay on the floor, limbs and head at weird limp angles. Blood was pooling out around him, a swelling puddle of gore. Chunks of pink were sprayed across the tile, and his unfocused gaze stared sightlessly across the floor, eyes just starting to glaze over with death.
Jeremy’s hand shot up to his head, where a bullet hole should be. He didn’t know how he hadn’t noticed the smell before, the soggy smothering stench of blood and meat filling his lungs.
Jeremy’s hand slipped off the edge of the clone pod and he hit the floor in an unconscious heap.
“ … You leave a corpse when you die,” Geoff finished. He sighed and crossed his arms. “And down he goes. All right, boys, let’s scrape both of them off the floor.”