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Cole can’t tell how many days it’s been. He lost count somewhere around day fifteen. They must know he was counting. Gabe taught him that himself. The rations feel like they are coming at random hours, and the ever-bright fluorescent lights don’t help with that.
It’s a constant state of wanting to sleep, to lie down, to close his eyes, and his broken ribs protesting against it. He thinks of nothing and everything, lying as motionlessly as he can, grateful that there’s been no more beating for a while.
He misses his left arm. He misses everything, but god, if only he had that goddamn prosthetic with him he could at least break the chain on his other arm. He’s like a dog tied to a pole now. He can’t even pace around the cell. Not that he would want that with his bruised body and the cameras.
He dozes off in and out of consciousness a few times when the door hisses.
His eyelids press harder against themselves. He thought he was behaving, so what happened?
There are less footsteps this time. And something is being dragged on the floor. There’s a horrifying thud and it’s unmistakably a person being dropped to the ground. They hit their head against the metal floor pretty bad.
He finally turns to look what they have for him today.
Hanzo is lying there, motionless and out of it.
He tries to get up and rush to him when he sees Gabe standing there with a pistol. He raises the gun, points at the ground where Hanzo is dropped at, and Cole can’t breathe anymore.
The shot’s sound is so loud it makes Cole want to puke. He watches everything without even a blink. Gabe’s— Reaper’s hand was not aiming for his head. He shot— He shot his leg.
Cole just laughs at that. A wet, pathetic sound filled with disbelief. This can’t be happening.
“No– No you can’t– Please.”
Cole's mind races, grasping for something, anything. He knows this game. Gabe taught him this game, back when he was a scared kid with a rusty gun. Leverage, he'd said. Everyone has something they can't stand to lose. Find it, and you own them.
“He’s got nothin’ to do with this!” Gabe is completely motionless. His eyes drift back to Hanzo, the blood starting to pool and creeping across the floor toward him. He moves to apply pressure and then is reminded of the chain.
Gabe raises the pistol again. “Come back to me, Jesse.”
The sound that tears out of Cole isn't really words. It's something animal, something that lives in the space between a snarl and a sob. He hits the floor on his side, ribs shrieking, and still he's crawling, reaching, the cuff cutting into his wrist until blood runs down his forearm.
"Don't—" His voice splinters. "Gabe, don't. I'm begging you. Me, okay? Just me. He doesn't know anything. He doesn't know any of it, you know that. You know that."
Hanzo’s hair is loose beneath his head, soft and dark against the metal floor, and he’s breathing faster. His eyes are moving under their lids like he's dreaming, like he's trying to fight his way back to consciousness and Cole wants to scream at him to stay under.
The pistol raises again, aimed square at Hanzo's other leg now.
"Come back to me." Reaper says again, and this time the vocoder catches on the last word. Just a flicker.
Cole forces himself still. Forces his breathing to slow, forces the panic down into a place he can lock it away. Think. Gabe taught him to think under pressure. Gabe taught him to read the angles, find the exit, play the game.
"You don't want me back," Cole says, and his voice is steadier now, low and rough. "You want a weapon. Someone to point at Jack. Someone who knows all his hideaways and protocols. This ain’t the same thing."
Gabe doesn't move. The pistol doesn't waver. But he doesn't pull the trigger either, so Cole presses the advantage, small as it is.
"You think threatening him gets you what you want? You think I'd ever be loyal after this?" He jerks his chin toward Hanzo, toward the blood still spreading. "That ain't how it works. You taught me that too. Loyalty's given, not taken–“
Gabe shoots again. The gunshot echoes off the metal walls, and Cole's ears ring with it. He can't look. He can't make himself look at what Gabe has done, at the new wound, at the blood that must be pooling twice as fast now. He presses his forehead to the cold floor, and the wail that comes out of him sends iron-hot pain to his ribs.
"I'll do anything." The words tumble out, broken and desperate. "Just— please. Please let him go. Get him treated. I'll work for you. I'll give you whatever you want. Every safe house. Every protocol. Jack's coordinates. I don't care anymore, just stop."
Silence.
Cole's breath hitches against the metal. His fingers curl against the floor, nails scraping, and he waits for another shot. Waits for the sound that means Hanzo is gone and none of this matters anymore.
It doesn't come.
"Look at me."
Gabe's voice. Closer now. Cole raises his head, and it takes every scrap of strength he has left. Hanzo is still breathing. Both legs now ruined, a mess of blood and torn fabric, but breathing. Alive.
Gabe is crouched down, mask tilted, pistol resting on his knee. He looks almost casual. Almost like the man Cole remembers.
"There he is," Gabe says quietly. "There's the boy I know. Loyal to a fault. Would've saved us both a lot of trouble if you'd just led with that."
He's silent, and shaking. From the cold, from the adrenaline, or malnutrition.
"You meant that?" Gabe asks. "You'll work for me. No tricks. No stalling. You give me what I need, and when I point you at a target, you pull the trigger. Even if it's Jack. Even if it's Angela. You do it."
Cole looks at Hanzo. At the slow, shallow rise and fall of his chest. At the blood, so much blood. If he doesn't get help soon–
"Yeah," Cole says. "I meant it."
"Say it."
"I'll work for you." His voice is hollow. Empty. He's not even sure he's lying anymore. "I'll pull the trigger. Whoever you want. Just get him out of here. Get him to a medic. And I don't want him touched again. Not interrogated, not threatened, not so much as looked at wrong. He walks away clean, or the deal's off."
Gabe considers this. Then he stands, holsters the pistol, and taps the side of his mask.
"Medical team to cell block four. We've got a retrieval." He pauses, looking down at Cole. "Congratulations, mijo. You just saved his life."