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One month— faster than Lucas expected. One month, only because of dissension and betrayal in ICA. Soders turned to Providence and offered them everything. Another selfish heart to the ranks of the enemy, but a blessing in disguise for Lucas. It brought heat off of him and his militia, if only for some time. But it was still time. Time to move unseen, away from the ICA’s prying eyes.
Hunched over in the rain, Lucas knocked on the small Chicago apartment door. Someone knocked back, continuing the code he knew by heart. Lucas filled in the end and was answered by locks clicking open one by one. He tried to contain his impatience, bouncing his leg, clenching and unclenching his fists. Olivia cracked the safehouse door, peering out to see who on earth was out there so early, then swung it open when she caught sight of Lucas in the porch light, drenched in the downpour.
“You said we’d have to go dark—“ she questioned, stepping aside to let him in.
“It’s alright now. They’re preoccupied.” Lucas knocked the rain from his boots and shed his jacket. “Are you alright?” he turned to face Olivia. She clicked all the door locks back into place.
“I’m fine, are you—“ she stopped as Lucas pulled her into a hug, taking a shaky breath to steady himself. “...are you alright?” Olivia finished, returning the hug.
“Yeah. Yeah I’m alright,” he said, pulling away and wiping his face on his sleeve.
“Let’s go sit so you can dry off. I’m soaked now. Thank you for that,” Olivia replied with a dry smile, moving down the safehouse hall toward the sparse living room. Lucas dropped his jacket onto a bench by the door and followed after. “You said they’re preoccupied? With what?”
“A defector. Their leader sold them out to Providence.”
Olivia let out a single sarcastic “ha!”, scooping her laptop out of her chair and reclaiming her seat in the small room. Lucas fell into a seat across from her, glancing about the small apartment. It housed the odd militia member whenever needed— moving through town, on the run, staying for some time for reconnaissance. So it had what it needed, but nothing more. A kitchen with a stove and a mini fridge. And all the dirty dishes Olivia had let pile in the sink, next to discarded takeaway boxes. A flat, thin mattress with an old sleeping bag stretched out in the corner. A card table with fold out chairs for eating, and a low coffee table surrounded with their two chairs and a new couch. Well, new to Lucas, but a ratty and dirty couch. Someone must have claimed it from the curb at some point.
Olivia opened her laptop in the chair across from him, clicked through a few things, then shut it.
“How’s Colorado?” Olivia asked, pulling her laptop closer.
Lucas took a deep breath, mentally sorting through the past month. “Packed up. Some members are staying behind, but everything crucial’s been scattered and moved. The ICA didn’t interfere after 47 left. I’ve cut my ties from the base, we’re officially not there anymore.” Olivia nodded solemnly.
“I’m… I’m sorry—“
Lucas put his hand up. “It’s alright, Olivia. These things happen. We all know they do.” She didn’t respond.
“Where did you fly in from?”
Lucas pursed his lips at the subject change. “Idaho. Just verifying how safe it would be to move again. Was your bus ride alright?”
“It was fine,” she said, eyes drifting to the floor. “Just like any greyhound bus ride. Long, boring, better with headphones.” Lucas tilted his head, searching her face.
“Olivia. Are you really alright?” he asked gently.
“I’m fine, Lucas,” she snapped, looking up to meet him angrily, but turning away as her expression melted, catching the deep concern in his face. “I’m fine,” she answered softer this time. “I’ve...I've had plenty of time to think about it.” She pushed her laptop onto the coffee table, moving for the kitchen. The rain continued to downpour, hitting against the blacked-out windows. Lucas simply sat in silence, wishing he had more of a way to help Olivia, some way to take the survivor’s guilt from her. He knew it too well. He knew the time it took.
“Soooo do you want crappy bottled water, a capri sun, or whiskey?” Olivia asked, pulling some mismatched cups from a cupboard.
Lucas hummed. “Whiskey, of course. But water too, probably, for the sake of my liver.” Olivia snorted and dug around for a tumbler in the back of the cupboard. Lucas kicked his boots off by the heels, stretching out in the uncomfortable chair and trying to shake some of the rain from his hair. Olivia slid his two drinks onto the table and fell into her seat with a glass of water.
They sat in comfortable silence for a moment, listening to the rainfall and early morning city sounds outside. Lucas’ mind drifted, from Olivia, to Colorado, to his escape from the Institute all those years before, to his brother, to their promise.
“The man they sent,” Olivia started, breaking Lucas out of his train of thought. “is he…?” Lucas took a deep breath.
“He’s my brother.”
“The one you’ve been searching for?” Olivia’s face twisted into concern. “The one who’s contract hits are, in your own words, ‘practically untraceable’?” Lucas nodded, eyes unfocused, resting his chin in his hand.
“He always was the best of us,” he mused.
“Why did you hesitate?” Olivia asked. She knew she might be one of the only people who could ask Lucas that. “If he’s working against us. If he’s that dangerous. I... I know he’s your brother, but…”
Lucas rubbed his face and leaned back in his seat, his drink nearly spilling. “He is my brother. And I…” Lucas shut his eyes, searching back into those years. “He’s been through more than me,” he sighed and leaned forward again, elbows digging into his knees. “He’s the reason I escaped the institute. We planned to leave together, but things went… wrong, they sent in soldiers, tried to stop our rebellion— in the chaos he made sure I got free and stayed behind to cover for me.”
“Oh,” was all Olivia could find to say.
“They couldn’t risk another rebellion. They tried to inhibit all of their emotions, stop them at the source, control them. Only 47 survived. And then Providence decided to pull the plug. They wanted a fresh start with fewer complications. So they wiped his memories. Took it all away from him and set him loose in the world and told him to be a weapon.”
“So… he doesn’t remember you? At all?”
Lucas took a drink, letting it slide down smooth. “I don’t know. No one truly ever forgets anything, you can bury and hide it and cover it just out of reach, but it’s always there. You just need the right trigger, the key to bring whatever it is back into view.” Lucas scratched the back of his neck. There was something he’d almost forgotten. Maybe… “Do you think you could help me leave breadcrumbs?”
Olivia squinted. “What?”
Lucas sounded more urgent now, a glimmer of hope springing up in his mind. “They have to be noticeable, but not to everyone. Not obvious, but not secret. Providence especially, we can’t risk them finding it.”
“You want him to find us? Lucas, he’ll kill us. He’ll kill you.”
“But if he remembers—“
“Remembers what?” Olivia rubbed the back of her neck, exasperated.
His words tumbled out as they came to mind, Lucas fixated on his new revelation. “After they captured us again, as boys, Providence wanted to see if their investment was really worth it, seeing the trouble we caused. And 47 was our best. So the Constant came to meet him.”
Olivia’s eyes widened. “You mean— he knows who he is?”
“The man came in wearing a Providence pin. I never saw his face, I was punished for my instigation, but 47, he met him, looked him in the eye—“ Lucas gestured, the half-empty glass sloshing with his movement. “I remember the man’s voice, but never saw his face.”
“And you think he’ll remember? That he’ll know enough to identify him after all these years? He’d be ancient now. Lucas, that—“ Olivia leaned back in her seat, half throwing up her hands. “it's a longshot.”
“What else do we have?”
Olivia didn’t answer.
“I can keep running from my brother, while our enemy tries to kill us, or I can meet him again, help him remember, remember our agreement, and have a shot at attacking Providence at the source, in the heart.”
“Your agreement?”
“After 47 met the Constant, we both agreed to our new goal. We were going dismantle the people that did this to us from the inside out. We were going to bring Providence down. Together.”
Olivia picked at the arm of her chair.
“So your plan is to leave a breadcrumb trail for your assassin brother who tried to kill us, hope he doesn’t kill you, hope he remembers you, and then hope he somehow remembers the face of a man he saw years ago?”
Lucas shifted in his seat, abandoning his glass to the table. “Yeah. That’s the idea. ...in less detail. We’ll have to research it, make sure all the pieces are there, but…”
Olivia rubbed her temples and scooped up her laptop again. “Okay. Walk me through this completely. Step by step.”
Agent 47 slid the cab driver more money than he owed him, stepping onto the curb outside his hotel in Sapporo. The GAMA Facility was far behind him now. The only signs he had ever been there included the now abandoned snowmobile, his room booked under his alias, and the “accidental” deaths of two patrons in the hospital. Death in hospitals was not unusual. Mistakes happen. Equipment malfunctions, infrastructure fails, people are lost. The PR team would scramble to account for the tragedies, cover their side, shift blame elsewhere. Providence, no doubt, would get suspicious. Their lawyer and most recent defector, head of the ICA, dying under mysterious circumstances? To an organization like that, nothing is coincidence. 47 wasn’t even aware Providence existed. Not until his search for the Shadow Client lead him to discover them.
Providence had always been a myth, a whispered conspiracy, a tall tale. Even to the ICA. And yet...
Something burned in the back of his mind. Something he couldn’t place or identify. A soft, faded familiarity. Had he heard of Providence before? It was possible. The contracts he took involved countless numbers of people in high ranking positions, both hiring him and the aim of his mission. He never cared for the politics.
47 checked out of his room, handing over his keycard and starting for the train station, shifting his briefcase to his other hand.
Providence. He knew that name. But like most things entangled in memory in his life, he wasn’t sure why.
The safehouse apartment was now littered with maps and papers. Lucas’ sleeves were pushed up past his elbows, and he tapped the red pen in his hands against his thigh. Olivia was walking around their map and notes, holding her laptop close, paging through her open tabs and programs. Their chairs had scooted back some feet somewhere during their planning. New dishes piled in the sink, their drinks scattered on the counter. The glimmer of hope Lucas held to grew brighter as they uncovered more— Olivia had dug deep, and traced the people that took 47’s memory away. The trail led them right to the Ether Corporation (‘of course,’ Olivia had remarked). In the settling dust of the old companies and ownerships, they received the formula for the drug, and had begun reverse engineering it to better understand the chemical makeup of it. There was only one, and it hadn’t been tested— who would it be tested on?— but it existed. And they could get it.
Then it was a matter of following the paper trail to Lucas’ home. He remembered where it was, he could never forget, but it had changed hands and companies too. It sat abandoned and rotting in Romania. It would just take the right offers and right people to purchase it. He tried to not laugh at the bitter irony of owning the home he hated so much.
They had sketched, and mapped, and pinned, and recorded, and planned and planned and planned. And now it was almost 3am.
“This… could work. It could really work,” Lucas said, drumming the pen against his side.
“It is a longshot, but I’ve seen you pull off crackpot ideas like this before. If anyone can make it work, it’s you. But,” she added, dropping her laptop onto the couch. “Hope for the best, plan for the worst. Don’t forget what he’s capable of, Lucas. I know he’s your brother and I know you miss him, but…”
Lucas nodded slowly, rubbing his nose on his sleeve, still focused on their notes and maps on the table.
“Yeah. I know,” he passed a hand through his hair. “I know. But Providence isn’t expecting us to fight like this. We play dirty. We strike hard, at the heart, at the Constant.”
“And if he doesn’t remember?”
“...we keep trying.”
“Assuming he doesn’t kill you,” Olivia deadpanned.
“He won’t.”
“You don’t know that, Lucas.”
“I trust him.”
“He doesn’t even know you!” she exclaimed, tossing her hands up. “You don’t even know him. It’s been... how many years, Lucas? He’s a contract killer, and you’re his target.” She rubbed the back of her neck and started to pace. “You told me yourself, he doesn’t make mistakes. You’ve tracked him, you know. And if I set this up, and you meet him, and he—“
Lucas softened, crossing the room to her, reaching for her arm, but she flinched away.
“We both know that’s a risk—“
“I know,” Olivia grit her teeth, her words spilling out. “But I can’t let it be my fault. You— you’re the closest thing to a parent I’ve ever had. I can’t…”
“Olivia—“
“Don’t,” she hissed, more to herself, holding back angry tears.
“Olivia,” he repeated, his voice low and gentle, putting his hands on her shoulders. Her gaze stayed glued to the floor. She balled her fists at her sides, full of anger and sadness that fueled more anger.
“They’re dead because of me, Lucas.”
“They’re not.”
“I hate this. I hate Providence. That they do any of this. It isn’t right.” She couldn’t find the right words to convey what she meant. There was nothing more infuriating than being upset and not knowing how to articulate why. She didn’t want to cry either, which made it worse. And she knew it wasn’t her fault, but it felt like her fault, it burned and haunted her like it was her fault, even if she knew it wasn’t. This was stupid. And she wanted Providence to burn. She choked back a sob.
Lucas’ chest ached. He pulled Olivia into a hug.
“You don’t have to do this. You’ve already done so much more than I’ve ever asked. You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” he said, chin resting on her shoulder.
“No,” she protested. “No, I want to. I have to be a part of this fight. Neutrality isn't an option.” She pulled out of the hug, resolved, something in her eyes burning, like it always was. “They’re going to pay for it. And I’m going to be a part of that.” She paused for a moment. “Even if that means being part of your asinine plan,” she cracked with a small smile. “Just. Do me a favor and don’t die.” Lucas shook his head with a chuckle.
Olivia glanced around the room, letting out a sigh, taking mental stock of the place, pushing her worries out of sight. It was even messier than it had been before, which was saying something. She took a deep breath, walking over and peeking out the blackout curtains. The downpour had begun to let up, the rain now falling softly, drifting down the window panes.
“Can we get out of here? Go for a walk, or something? I need to not be in here. It’d do you some good too.”
47 was perched on the edge of his seat in the airport, briefcase tucked between his feet. He sat perfectly straight, gently holding the Polaroid with both his hands. The photo made his head swim, but he couldn’t take his eyes off it. The photo of the boy with icy blue eyes. The photo with his own eyes. The photo of him. The photo from before he remembered.
Diana had passed him as he switched gates, palming the Polaroid to him as they walked by each other, just two strangers in a crowd who bumped shoulders, heading for their next flight. Diana headed deeper into Japan, himself headed further east. She had turned and watched him go, apprehension caught in her throat. He hadn’t stopped to look at the photo until he reached his next gate. Now, he felt both very alone, and very watched.
He tucked the photo into his inner suit pocket, glancing about, almost paranoid someone had seen it. Almost. It would just look like some photo of a boy to any other onlooker. But to him it felt precious. Secret. Dangerous. His head ached, trying to pull some fuzzy, non-existent memory. Looking at the photo felt both familiar and distant. Disassociative. 47 knew that was him. Diana had told him what she was offered, and who had offered it. She figured they had given her the photo as proof, extra payment, extra incentive. A down payment. They told her it was him. And he knew. There was no doubt.
And yet… it felt like looking at something unreal. Something he never knew. Distant, like a dream that slips away the more you wake up. But it stirred something in the back of his mind. Something he couldn’t quite grasp.
And then there was the fact that Providence held this information. Why did they know who he was? Why did they hold the key he had so long ago lost, what the ICA couldn’t find? Did they fabricate this photo just for their own purposes? His head swam. He felt as if the picture would burn a hole in his pocket. His scarce personal life and work were beginning to blur.
The flight attendant began to call boarding groups. 47 mentally shook himself and picked up his briefcase. He could consider it all elsewhere. He couldn’t afford distractions for now. Time would come to sort it. Diana would contact him. For now, it was status quo. For now, he did as he always did: quietly pushed everything aside to focus on work.
And yet, it sat in the back of his mind. Burning. Those blue eyes, burning.
The sun was finally peaking over the city horizon, spilling down the Chicago streets. The blackout curtains kept the safehouse comfortably dark. It kept the apartment private as well as letting any jet lagged or exhausted agent sleep whenever they wanted to. In Olivia’s case, she held a wild enough sleep schedule for the time to never really matter.
She and Lucas and walked through the city together for some time, watching as shops started to open and people started to head out for work or come back. The rain began to let up as the morning grew closer. They’d impulse bought a box of donuts and carved through half of it by the time they made it back.
Now, Olivia was curled up tightly in the sleeping bag in the corner, after insisting Lucas take the couch, claiming she preferred the sleeping bag anyway. Lucas stretched out on it, staring at the ceiling, box of donuts discarded on the table nearby, on top of their maps and marked up papers. The pipes in the apartment hissed as people in other parts of the building started their days. The city life grew louder outside.
Would this really work, Lucas wondered? He stared past the ceiling, eyes unfocused. It really was a longshot. A massive risk. Stupid, arguably.
Did 47 ever wonder? Did he ever search for his origins? He knew his brother knew somewhere, deep down. Even if 47 didn’t know, he knew . Lucas was sure it was in him. They couldn’t take that from 47, not permanently.
Lucas shifted, shifting his hands from behind his head, pulling his left palm into view, tracing the scar shaped like an X he carried with him all these years. He thought of the matching one his brother carried. Did he remember the meaning of it? Did he ever wonder where it came from? Did he want to know? Did he care?
Lucas dropped his hand down again, twisting to lay on his side with a sigh. He and 47 fought so hard to leave the Institute. They almost won. And it slipped through their fingers. And here was the idea again, of victory. He only wondered if he’d get to fight for it with his brother again. If he’d reach him in time.
Olivia shifted in her sleeping bag in the corner of the room. Lucas could hear her sleeping soundly. He’d fight for her. For a better world for her.
The hope and uncertainty and anger and ache weighed on his chest. Lucas shut his eyes and remembered.
What is our purpose?
He missed his brother.
Take the Institute down. Revenge.
He rubbed his thumb across the scar on his palm.
“Don’t follow. If I fail, don’t come back. Go live your life for both of us.”
He remembered that night. Full of fire and fear, and the last time he heard from his brother.
And they would see it all burn again. This time, they’d win.
Together. Providence would burn.