Wip Wednesday - Tumblr Posts

This is one of the many, many infuriating things about disingenuous constitutional originalism in right-wing legal thinking. The whole point of America is that it was supposed to be a work in progress. The people up there with no dots knew it, and the ones with yellow dots realized it. That's why there are amendments. That's why there were immediate amendments. The Constitution was always supposed to be a first draft of a political system.

“This country was founded by a group of slave owners who told us that all men are created equal. To my mind, that is what’s known as being stunningly and embarrassingly full of shit.” - George Carlin

…PolitiFact going through history to fact check this guy was like that time CNN went through history to dig up dirt on Bernie, and all they found were videos of him planting trees, and telling kids that racism is bad.

WIP Wednesday

For anyone who thought the Deus Ex prequels needed more realism, more Pritchard and Malik, more interrogation of the experience of being turned into a bladed death machine, and more FINISHING THE PLOT AND CONNECTING IT TO THE ORIGINAL GAMES (Embracer are private-equity vultures and I hate them), allow me to present Gods of Blood and Iron! Following Reconstruction, about Jensen's recovery from his original augmentation, and Et Resurrexit, covering the events of DX:HR with very slight canon divergence, we have now come to Custos Custodium, which approximately covers Black Light and DX:MD with rather more canon divergence. Below is a snippet from the most recent chapter:

“I’m letting him in,” Jensen whispered. “Maybe he’ll overbalance.” She nodded, and he opened the door. A fist like a piledriver hissed through the air and he cut down on it with all his might, right where he had gouged the wrist before. He got another half-inch of depth. Vande put a round in Hermann’s chest, then another, and a third, her augmented hand holding the boxy little Walther rock-steady.

“Bah—unglaublich! I thought we had a gentleman’s agreement, Herr Jensen: single combat! Apparently I was wrong!” Hermann shouted as his sword slid from his arm. He struck at Jensen’s face, his left arm still outside the locomotive. Jensen blocked it and cut at the underside of the big Aug’s right wrist as the only meaningful target. Hermann grunted and bore down with his sword, forcing Jensen’s arm lower. He skipped back, disengaged, and brought his left blade over and down again at the same point. It sank in and caught. The shield blurred through the doorway and smashed him from his feet. He felt his clavicle snap. With a thump, he landed heavily on his ass beside Vande. Hermann loomed triumphantly in the doorway. Jensen saw victory in his eyes and wished he could disagree.

Then he looked at the train controls, seized by a mad idea. It was terrible, idiotic, but it might just offer a way out. And what did he have to lose? He sure as hell wasn’t letting the Illuminati take him alive to do mad science on him. As Hermann navigated his bulk through the doorway, Jensen rammed the manual throttle forward and snapped it off at the end of its range. Then he scanned the instrument panel and drove a blade through the governor module that read track characteristics ahead. It failed with a shower of sparks and the reek of burning insulation.

The big man froze. “What is this?” he growled.

“Zero-win, Hermann. This train is jumping the tracks on the first downhill curve, in about… forty-five seconds, if I remember the pass correctly. No augs for anyone. You can stay here and die, or live to fight another day. It’ll take you longer than that to drag me out of here alive. Forty.”

Over his infolink, he abandoned any pretense of cool and shouted subvocally, “Vega! Need a pickup at that first hairpin! Train’s coming off the tracks, and I’m coming with it, with one injured and about half an Icarus!”

Hermann stared at him. He swallowed. “Thirty-five.”

The shield whisked in on itself and away. The sword rose in salute, perhaps ironic, before it too withdrew. Hermann stepped casually off the side of the train, a flicker of golden lightning following him down the cliff face.

“Uh, I dunno about that vector, Jensen.” Vega’s voice shook. “Two of you and half an Icarus are gonna come out pretty damn steep. I’ll be there, but…”

“All I can ask.” He grunted as he hauled himself upright and took Vande’s hand in his left. The right might not bear weight with the clavicle destroyed as it was—he’d need repairs to the titanium sheathing. “This is gonna hurt,” he warned her. She nodded, expression closed, braced against the pain to come. He knelt and hauled her across his shoulders so her limbs dangled down in front of his chest. Holding her wrists and ankles, he lurched to his feet. Vande screamed through lips pressed tight and spasmed against his shoulders. What was the count? Twenty? Less?

He staggered onto the platform at the back of the locomotive. They were headed downhill and gathering speed. He saw the turn ahead, saw the hovering VTOL. She was right. It was a shitty goddamn angle. They weren’t going to make the jump.

Then another voice sounded in his link. “Whoever you are, get outta my airspace—I’ve got this,” and a dove-and-rust VTOL swooped up the ravine.

Jensen stared in disbelief. “Malik?”

“What? Who says? This is my op!” Vega snapped back.

“I said, get clear!” The other VTOL skidded inside Vega’s, closer to the train, and the cabin door fought its way open against the slipstream as the interloper matched velocity with the hurtling locomotive. It was definitely the Bumblebee.

Vega’s bird swerved away. Jensen heard a couple of Spanish obscenities before she dropped out of the channel.

“I got you,” Malik said, calm but focused, like she was talking to the tower. “Wait for it. Jump on my mark. Three… two… one… mark!”

He jumped. The Icarus struggled valiantly against the weight of two tall, muscular humans and the metal bolted to their skeletons, but all it did was flatten their arc a hair. The Bumblebee rolled all the way up on one wing and sideslipped, slower than they fell, and they tumbled through the door and slid across the steeply tilted floor and slammed into the overstuffed couches.

And they were in. The VTOL leveled out and fought for altitude. A wingtip screamed across the cliff face, and then they looped up and away, the train plunging to its doom as he watched through the closing cabin door.

WIP Wednesday: Custos Custodium

Still getting into the habit--have a WIP snapshot! Jensen must have had a first visit to the Time Machine, and I have to imagine that he and Koller made quite the impression on one another. Check out the whole fic here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55686901/chapters/141357007

"After me now, please,” and Koller tugged his shoulder with ginger metal fingers. He walked through what was obviously a secret doorway and heard it close behind him, waiting politely to open his eyes until they entered an elevator that dinged and descended with a grinding lurch.

They stepped out into a charnel house in blood and iron, and he feared he’d come to entirely the wrong sort of place after all. A set of modern dentist’s lights on articulated arms spotlit a vintage dentist’s chair, all cracked leather and chrome: clean, but surrounded by red streaks leading to a floor drain in the concrete nearby. Screens holding CT scans, MRIs, ultrasounds, and other imaging Jensen didn’t recognize stood around the disconcerting centerpiece. Five monitors sat edge-to-edge on the desk along one wall, backstopping a graveyard of takeout containers and soda cans that made Jensen’s old apartment look neat and Pritchard’s desk at Sarif Industries look neurotically tidy. Skeletal chicken feet jutted from several of the boxes, their bony toes held together by scraps of cartilage and tendon that had curled them as they dried.

From the ceiling hung sealed bags in droves, clearly opened and reused, each one holding an augmentation of some kind. Arms, legs, feet, eyeballs alone and in pairs, neural hubs… the array was dizzying. More augs stood in glass cases dotting the floor. Vials of Neuropozyne and a score of other substances stood in glass-fronted cabinets, a few refrigerated. A pair of wheeled carts sat haphazardly near them, stacked with gauze and bandages, needle and thread, soldering iron and cutting torch.

Sticky notes wallpapered the support pillars and posters for augmentation firms looked down from over the computer screens, all curling from their bottom corners. Water trickled somewhere nearby. Jensen smelled rust and damp and realized they were near the sewers, although fortunately not a malodorous section of them. He clenched his jaw in dismay.

“Well, let me have a look!” Koller said. “Into the Chair, come on, come on, I want to see what’s under your hood!”

Jensen held up a quelling hand. “I didn’t come here to get opened up like a can of beans. I need a… a system reset, or something. I had a bad injury, was in a coma for a while, and when I came out, I couldn’t use half my augs.”

Koller looked like a kicked puppy. Jensen watched him wring his metal hands and thought he might burst into tears. But he only heaved a gusty sigh and said, “Okay, okay, not today. But someday!” He raised a dramatic finger. “Someday you will need the Chair, and the Chair will be waiting for you. And I’ll give you a hand. Or two, or three.”

Koller’s gaze flicked to a rack that Jensen realized held replacement hands and arms for detailed aug work. Saws and drills and drivers and probes and laser scalpels… He shuddered, as much at the thought of hot-swapping entire limbs as at the armamentarium of terrifying devices on display.

They each sank into a much more normal office chair. “So, show me what’s on your mind,” Koller said, pulling out a neural interface cable. Jensen groaned and thumbed open the port on his temple, the hexagonal divot sliding sideways and bunching up the skin. “Aha, ha, I’m sorry,” said Koller as he leaned forward and plugged in the jack, patently nothing of the sort. “It helps me keep my English skills in good shape. Puns are hard, you know? It is like an exercise, a workout. Pun-ishing, yes? Yes?”

Jensen groaned again. “Just reboot my hub or whatever you need to do.”

But Koller was not listening. “Oh… that’s interesting. That’s very interesting now indeed. Hmmm. Ooh, so fancy, Mister Sarif. Someday I will shake your hand. Maybe open it up and look inside, too… hmmmmm…”

He broke into a tuneless whistle as he hammered at his computer, diagrams flashing across the monitors. Jensen recognized several from the manual Dr. Markovic had given him when he woke up in Detroit. “Icarus, very cool, very cool, yes. I bet it is dramatic when you use it. You’ll let me see sometime. Energy converter is most efficient, good, for all your power needs. And big biocells, too—who needs two kidneys anyway? Redundant. Sentinel, okay, nice, we do not need to waste anesthesia on you—”

“Excuse me?”

That got Koller’s attention. “Ah, yes, well, it is only… I don’t have very much. Painkillers, sure, but to put someone underneath?”

“Under.”

“Under, thank you—this is something I do only when I have to.”

His sources had been clear. Koller was the best there was in Prague, probably in the Czech Republic. He had only a few competitors in all of continental Europe. Jensen gritted his teeth. “The Icarus is glitchy. My smart vision and my cloak aren’t working at all.”

Koller’s eyes lit up, surprisingly still organic. “Cloak? Cloak! GlassShield is the Sarif one, yes? Ah, so cool… yes, yes, I’m looking. Eyes first. Should be easy. Blind for thirty seconds, okay?”

Despite Koller’s erratic, frenetic energy and bloodstained floor, that was more informed consent than he’d ever gotten from Dr. Markovic or Sarif. “Yeah. Go ahead.”

“Tři, dva, jeden…” Darkness. He suppressed a flinch and counted breaths. In, out, in, out. It was like staring down the pit of Panchaea, underwater, before he’d looked desperately upwards and seen the sky, that tiny, distant, hopeless hope—nope. Just breathe. In, out. In, out. His eyes turned back on like a thrown switch. In and out and he was okay.

“Try now!” Koller said, oblivious to his brush with panic. He clenched his eyeballs in the way that made smart vision activate, and there indeed it was.

“Nice. Good work.”

Koller preened visibly, then ducked his head, abashed. “No problem. I turn it off and on again, it’s all. Now Icarus… Hmmm. Okay, I see him. Mister Sarif is maybe not so smart as I thought. This one is tricky because reboot will require immediate activation. I will use laptop—we can go to the roof.”

“Activation… Christ. You’re joking.”

“I never joke!” said Koller, hand to his heart. “Okay, sometimes I joke. A lot. But not about patients. It’s seven or eight meters—those legs will be fine if anything goes wrong. Not that it will!”

“Save it for last, I guess. The cloak?”

Koller’s fingers hammered his keyboard again. “Running diagnostic… and… oh. Needs recalibration. Augmentation has forgotten shape of user and creates conflict with shape of cloak field. I will provide manual override, if you want, but calibration is easy.”

“Manual override?”

“Takes more energy but lets you expand or contract the cloak field. Physics means only some changes are possible. Meanwhile, I hit calibrate, you stand in the middle of empty space, and the field detects its own interference with you. No problem.”

“Sure. Give it to me.”

A new icon appeared in his HUD before shrinking away to nothing. “Play with it when you like. Now, I set for thirty-second delay, and… go.” Koller unplugged the cable and ushered him past a cluttered little bedroom to a flat, uncluttered patch of concrete near the sewer. He stood and waited, still as a statue. His cloak activated, but rather than hiding him, it picked out the surface of his body and clothes in golden tessellations. They rippled over him, a geometric wave of light, before fading away.

“Will it still hide my guns?” he asked.

“Yes, profiles for most weapons are built-in, or the cloak will read them from the smart link. This is for baseline. You should be okay now! Try it! I want to see. Or, see not seeing? Is like Cheshire man, I think. Smile!”

He did not smile, let alone match Koller’s manic grin, but he triggered the cloak. It worked, all right, and he became smoothly invisible to himself—although the damn thing still chewed through his energy reserves. He turned it off promptly. Koller was hopping up and down with delight, clapping his hands with a metallic clangor.

“So coooooool… okay! Now you jump off the roof, yes? Yes!”

Jensen buried his face in his palms. “Yeah. Fine. Let’s go.”

WIP "Wednesday": Custos Custodium

Oops. Anyway.

They say to write what you know, so I decided Malik's roommate has a cat. Also in this episode: Jensen learns how to skydive, and everyone is shitty to Augs. Find the fic at: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55686901/chapters/141357007

He met Malik at her apartment—a matchbox indeed, with a galley kitchen occupying most of the shared space and two closet-sized bedrooms holding a lofted twin apiece. One of her absent roommates had filled the living room with potted plants whose vines crawled across the windows and turned the sparse rays of sun that crept between adjacent buildings a brilliant emerald. A tortoiseshell cat followed her out of the back and inspected him. He ran a careful finger down its back, from one ear to the base of the tail, and it purred and shoved its head into his shin.

“Good to see you! You want to pass out on my couch for a minute?” she asked. “Fair’s fair.”

“Slept on the train. Can I drop my bag, though? Hotel doesn’t do check-in until four.”

“Sure.” She made a face. “You know you could’ve crashed here, right? London’s expensive as hell.”

He surveyed the minuscule accommodations deliberately. “You said it was cramped. You share it with three people I don’t know. And this fellow.” The cat twined happily around his ankles, rumbling like an old muscle car.

“They’re friendly! And two of them are gone at any given time. The Duke of Hork doesn’t take up much space, and he only ever throws up on Sarah’s bag.”

He raised an eyebrow at the title. The cat did have an aristocratic portliness to him. “Didn’t want to impose. It’s fine. The Task Force keeps me housed and armed. Prague’s not pricey like London.”

“All right, well, if you’re sure. Hungry?”

“How’d you guess?”

“Tear yourself away from His Grace, and let’s hit a chippy.”

An entire cod and an acre’s worth of insuperable fries later, he sat back on the bench they shared and basked contented in the sun. His black clothing soaked up the sparse rays, and though the weather was chilly still, it lacked bite. “What’s the plan?” he asked. “Not that I wouldn’t happily just bum around and clean out the North Sea of seafood.”

Malik surveyed the smaller chunk of fried fish half-eaten in the paper tray before her and admitted defeat, consigning it to a nearby bin. “Want to jump off the top of the London Eye?”

He snorted, but she continued: “I actually think I can line up another pilot friend of mine for tomorrow if you want to learn how to skydive. You owe it to yourself, with the Icarus.”

“Seriously? Yeah, for sure. Sounds like a blast.”

She nudged his shoulder. “You’re gonna be a natural. You probably won’t even need supplemental oxygen for the altitude.”

“Uh… how high were you planning on going?”

“You ever heard of HALO?”

He pondered. “Like the angels, or like the video game?”

“That’s what I thought. High-altitude, low-open. Ask your coworkers—I bet one of them was a paratrooper or something, the way you guys operate.”

“Mmm, yeah. At least one of the grunts. And I think the E-SEALs train with chutes, so Jarreau back in Chicago’s probably done it. How high is high? And more importantly, how low is low?”

She fought a smile with limited success. “How’s thirty thousand feet sound?”

“High. Cold. I see why you’d need oxygen.”

“And you can pop under two kay, but it’s not advised for beginners. I’ve gone down to two-fifty over water. I know someone who was showing off and pulled at two hundred… but he broke both ankles.”

Jensen looked at her. “Twenty-eight thousand feet of free fall? As in five miles?”

The smile won out. “Hell of a thrill. What do you say?”

“If I break my ankles, you get to pay for the replacement parts. And explain it to Sarif.”

“I’m telling Nils you’re a ‘yes,’ then. Speaking of ankles, when did you get yours repaired? It was in rough shape when I saw you in Singapore, but it seems fine now.”

“Huh. I’d… forgotten about that. Must’ve gotten fixed up while they were reviving me.” He flexed the ankle thoughtfully, then pulled it up over his right knee. It looked fine. “Guess they had Sarif spares.”

“Well, as long as it can take a landing. Not like I’m gonna get you on a dance floor… am I? I assumed pubs over clubs, for tonight.”

He remembered the Hive and winced. “Yep.”

“Too bad. I wanted to see what would happen. Figured you’d panic in under a minute.”

“Remind me why I spent fourteen hours on a train to hang out with you?”

She laughed. “I thought it was so you could drink me under the table in front of all my friends. I didn’t tell anyone you had a Sentinel—didn’t want to spoil the surprise.”

“That’s terrible.” Jensen chuckled. “Can’t wait. How many friends are we talking?”

“Just three. My roommate Maggie—she’s more or less on my schedule. She’s a flight attendant, and we’ve gone bouldering a couple times. Nils, who’d be flying us up to the stratosphere tomorrow on his way to Johannesburg. And Laura, another pilot friend. She does helo tours around the British Isles, mostly. That okay with you?”

“Shocked you have three whole friends besides me. I figure I can just about carry four people home after a couple of pubs. Especially if anyone else is a shrimp like you.” “Bold words to your future skydiving instructor, Jensen,” she said, and socked him in the arm. He pretended not to notice her nursing her knuckles as she stood.

WIP Wednesday: Custos Custodium

This week, Jensen gets to see life on the inside when he's sent into the Pent House, a supermax facility for dangerous Augs, on a mission. There'll be a lot of drugs. But at least he gets to hang out with Jarreau for a minute. The whole thing is at https://archiveofourown.org/works/55686901/chapters/141357007.

Jarreau briefed him over coffee. Hector Guerrero had infiltrated Junkyard as one Oscar Mejia over two years ago. The silent agent was in Organized Crime, not CT, but he was in position to confirm or deny the intel on the widespread terror attacks allegedly planned for the second anniversary of the Incident. Junkyard had maneuvered him into the “Pent House,” the Penley T. Housefather Federal Correctional Facility, a super-max for Augs run jointly with the state government in the middle of the Arizona desert. No one knew why, but it had been intentional. And they couldn’t ask him: he’d gone “dark opal,” no comms contact whatsoever lest he blow his cover and lose his angle—and his life. Jensen’s mission was to be “transferred in,” make contact of a subtler sort, get the intel, extract Agent Guerrero if possible, and be “transferred out” to another facility a few days later.

He had a cover identity, too, as a hatchet-man for a gang out of Wisconsin, moved down south to get him away from his known associates. He was supposed to have received his augs after a self-sacrificing act of loyalty to his boss, who’d sprung for the good stuff out of gratitude. Jensen wasn’t sure it would explain how he’d become almost half Sarif-brand milspec carbon and chrome, but the cover only had to hold up for a few days.

The cover came with a set of charges, but they let him pick a name. He went with “Derrick Walthers,” an homage to his favorite boxer, a Detroit boy whose similar build had given Jensen a lot of inspiration back in the day, and to his sort-of godmother. He warned Malik and, after a moment’s thought, Pritchard that he was going no-contact himself for several days to a week, then hung up his coat in the Phoenix office and changed into anonymous street clothes. Jarreau wished him good luck.

And then he was in an automated VTOL on an automated route out over the Arizona desert to the rocky butte where the Pent House throbbed like a steel carbuncle of anti-Aug sentiment made manifest. The VTOL came in over the pad, stopped, turned, and dropped with a bounce on its shocks. Its flight was robotic, without spirit or grace or economy, either of momentum or of fuel. Jensen thought about the way Malik made the chunky Bumblebee dance like a hummingbird and shook his head minutely.

Processing sucked, despite his best efforts to appreciate the irony. They’d changed him into a red prison jumpsuit already, with an inmate number stenciled on the zip-off top and the trousers. He’d been put in leg irons and manacles that enclosed his entire hands, both made of titanium, neither enough to do more than slow him down if he tried to make a break for it. But the heavy collar around his neck was the worst. Two guards attached long poles to it and walked him into an elevator that took him down to the processing station, while cameras and turrets scrutinized his every move.

Then they opened up his temporal port and put a control chip into him, something from TYM’s labs behind American branding, no doubt. He suspected it built on Reed’s work, as subverted by Darrow: it wracked his body with pain every time he used bioenergy.

And whenever they aimed a little remote at him and pressed the button. Which they did, gleefully. And repeatedly. One guard kicked him in the kidneys once he’d dropped to his knees in agony, but it barely registered through the electric torment. The prison’s head CO, a tall man with iron-grey hair and a permanent sneer whose ID badge read STENGER, made sure he got the message loud and clear, staring him down while his muscles locked up, myomer clawing at itself just like the flesh beside it, a quivering, full-body rictus.

The pain coursed through him like he was burning up from within. He felt a flicker of sympathy for Zhao Yun Ru before the agony overwhelmed him and he blacked out.

WIP Wednesday: Custos Custodium

This week, Jensen continues to deal with a bunch of lunatics in a federal super-max. The other prisoners are kind of a pain in the ass, too. Perceive the drama in its entirety: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55686901/chapters/141357007

Stenger’s unwelcome voice sounded in his hears before his vision cleared. “Oakes! So help me God! For once, I’d just like to be in charge of something that isn’t complete shit!”

Static turned to a white blur, and the world came back to him. An unfamiliar face in prison-guard blues swam into view and looked away. “He’s up! Stenger, he’s up!”

“About damn time. Lemme get a look at him. Move.” Stenger bent down in front of Jensen, shoving the other CO roughly aside.

“You and me, we need to talk,” he hissed. To the guard, he said, “Get out of here. Make sure no one bothers us.”

“But—but Chief! What about the riot?”

“I said out, dipshit!”

The guard retreated. Stenger went to one knee, meeting Jensen’s eyes. “Look, Walthers. What happened in the showers was a mistake, all right, but it wasn’t my fault. If Junkyard would’ve told me you were coming, none of this would’ve happened.” He stood and offered Jensen a hand.

Jensen focused on his grip while his mind raced. “Junkyard… Then you know why they sent me.”

“Yeah, I know, I know. But I can fix this! Goddammit, didn’t I tell you guys something was gonna happen? ‘Mejia runs hot,’ I said. ‘Too much pasión.’ Sure enough, he went off-script and put the entire operation at risk. I swear, I’m the only one in here who knows what he’s doing.”

Stenger’s attempt at a disarming approach raised Jensen’s hackles more than even the CO’s smug demeanor in the showers, but he kept his cool. “Good job figuring me out. What say you give me an update on the operation?”

“Soon as I saw you in Processing, I knew you were a Junkyard MVP. Nice to finally meet someone who appreciates the skill set I bring to this outfit. Just wish you’d’ve come to me first.”

“Well, I’m here now,” Jensen said, concealing improv with impatience. “Give me all the details. Is the operation compromised?” He knew he could only fish so much before Stenger got suspicious.

“It’s gonna be fine, don’t worry. If anything, we can turn Mejia’s fuck-up into a plus. After we get this god-damned riot under control, we can probably multiply the merchandise by a factor of… ten, hell, it’ll all just be lying out there.” Avarice glittered in his eyes.

What would Junkyard call merchandise in their dealings with a crooked CO…? Oh. He fought back his anger and kept his face impassive. “Where’s Mejia now?”

“I got that covered, don’t you worry. He’s squared away in Solitary on a TVI, tighter than a sheep’s asshole when the shepherd stinks of wine. He’ll be dead this time tomorrow.”

Jensen wasn’t sure Stenger realized how apropos the crude aphorism was, the prison’s top guard in on an aug-harvesting scheme run on his own charges. “Dead tomorrow? That’s not acceptable. Junkyard needs Mejia alive. I want to speak with him. Now.”

“No disrespect, jefe, but you being a VIP and all, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Since your boy went and killed Wilburg, the prison’s gone to complete shit with these filthy-ass Augs tearing up the place… no offense.”

“Isn’t the prison designed to stop something like this? What happened?”

“Frederick Flossy happened.” Stenger spat on the floor. “Budget Malcolm X type, educated just past his A-B-Cs, so I guess that about makes him a fucking genius in here.”

“Yeah, we met. The inmates obviously look up to him.”

“Word is, he managed to smuggle a biocell to one of his cronies.” Fortunately, Stenger was too riled to notice Jensen’s twitch of guilty surprise “Stupid clank bastard jammed it up his asshole and went nuts. Got into the biocells in lockup after killing the guards on duty and… ‘et voilà.’ I don’t get it. The Choke was supposed to kick in, but it’s like twenty-twenty-seven all over again.”

“What do you expect? You push a chip inside them, take away what they are… trust me, that’ll piss off any Aug.” He bit his tongue, too late, but Stenger took it as merely personal.

“Yeah, sorry about that. But again, if Junkyard would have told me you were coming… whatever. I’ve got a riot response team on the way that’ll be more than happy to push their shit in for them.”

The other guard—Oakes, maybe—stuck his head in. “Boss, cell block is clear. Looks like most of the trouble is toward the Admin building.”

“Eh, it’ll be fine,” Stenger said. “They’re just fuckin’ Augs. There’s no way they can take the entire prison.”

The PA system contradicted him in a squeal of feedback. “Woo! Frederick Flossy comin’ at you live! You out there, Stenger? Time’s up for you and your goon assholes, motherfucker!”

“Christ on a cracker!” Stenger yelled through gritted teeth. “Sorry, Walthers, you’ll definitely need to stay here. The guards are gonna be shooting inmates on sight, and the last thing we need is you getting drilled. Oakes! Get to Admin and do something about that fucking PA. I’ve got something to take care of first—I’ll meet you there.” The door hissed shut behind him.

WIP Wednesday: Custos Custodium

Have some Jensen-Pritchard snark! I ripped ShadowChild's entrance out of the events of Breach because a) she's cool, and I wanted her to pop up more than once; b) I needed to set up an augmentation trick anyway; c) I was already repurposing Breach; and d) see above Jensen¬Pritchard vibes. (That's the formal-logic NOT operator, FYI--seems more apropos than an ampersand.) Read the whole thing at https://archiveofourown.org/works/55686901/chapters/141357007

“Francis. What’ve I done to deserve this?”

“Good evening, Jensen. How’s Prague? I hope I’m not interrupting your busy schedule of brooding and kicking down doors.”

He took a slug of the new beer before responding. “How’d you know where I am?”

“I know you like to think you’re off the grid these days, but you do realize there’s a record when you use your credit chip or have a package sent to your apartment—nice slippers, I must say—and Interpol’s HR database is not their best-kept secret. Plus, I calibrated your systems. Every time you call or text, your infolink is broadcasting your position as well as your words. To me, at least.”

Jensen felt a muscle jump in his jaw. “So, you call just to chat, or…?”

“Six months ago, when the rest of the world thought you were dead and I helped you get back on your feet, I seemed to recall you saying, and I quote here, ‘I really owe you one, Pritchard.’” He forced his voice low and raspy.

Jensen rolled his eyes at the caricature. “I don’t recall saying it quite like that.” But he couldn’t deny that Pritchard had come through for him in a tight spot—and not just logistically. His chat with Sarif could have gone much worse without Pritchard’s righteous anger backing him up, and he might not have ever gotten mixed up with the Task Force or the Collective without that clearing of the air. Plus, almost anything would be better than stewing in his own aimless misery for a week. So he listened.

“Well, it just so happens there’s something in Prague that I need your help with. Tonight.”

No surprise. He took another swallow of beer. “Kinda busy.”

“Investigating TF29, I know. But if you help me with this, we’re even, I promise.”

“Fascinating. Still busy.”

“Come on, Jensen. You dropped in on me out of the blue with a depressed stranger, and I fed you, clothed you, put you up, patched things up with Sarif—”

“Sort of.”

“Okay, well, he paid you without making you sign anything. How much more did you want? Anyway, then I got you in the Collective’s good graces and helped you save your new cop buddies from a grisly and embarrassing death on that train. And let us not forget that, if not for my wise and thoughtful counsel, Faridah would have found out from someone else that you were back from the dead and promptly re-interred you.”

Jensen grunted.

“And through all of that, did I ever complain?”

“Yes. Loudly, if I recall.”

“Ugh. Well, be that as it may, I really think you’re overlooking a prime opportunity to do your two favorite things.”

He wondered what Pritchard thought those were. He wondered what he thought, himself. “Do tell.”

“Brooding and kicking in doors, of course. You get to brood over my onerous request, clearly so out-of-proportion to helping you extricate yourself from the rubble of your old life and get started on a new one.”

“Hah. What about the doors?”

“To a police station—a satellite location in Ver—uh, Verso-vise.”

Jensen sighed. “It’s pronounced Vr-sho-vi-tse, and we call them ‘precincts.’ You forget I’m a cop myself? I can’t just go busting down the door of the station.”

“I seem to recall you doing exactly that, back in Detroit. And besides, it’s for a good cause.”

Pritchard had him there, damn him. “Christ. Fine. What’s the cause?”

“A friend of mine was helping me with some research when she went dark. Based on what I’ve managed to access of the police files—surprisingly well-encrypted, by the by—they picked her up and took her to this ‘precinct’ of yours. But not officially.”

“No booking records? No charges filed?”

“Yes, those things. None of those. So you see why I’m worried.”

“This friend of yours.” Jensen put his credit chip down on the bar and twitched his head at the bartender. “She Augmented?”

“Precisely.”

“A hacker?”

“One of the best. Not as good as I am, of course, but very much in my league.”

“Of course. She got a name?”

“On the darknet, she goes by ‘ShadowChild.’ I don’t know her real name, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Jensen paid, stood, and collected his coat. “‘ShadowChild’? Jesus. So you want me to cross town, break into a police station, and break out an Augmented woman whose real name I don’t know before she gets disappeared by the PČR into Golem City?”

“Pretty much.”

“You know what she looks like, at least?”

“Um… her avatar is a stylized domino mask. Here.”

An image popped up in Jensen’s link of two blocky chevrons connected at the tips, like a pair of arrowheads. The left was black; the right, white. It didn’t look much like a mask to him. It was captioned “Shadow(hild,” with a parenthesis. Of course. “And this is supposed to help me… how?” he asked. He shouldered his way out the door as Pritchard stammered a non-reply.

Jensen exhaled in frustration and dug out a cigarette, shielding it from the wind that skirled between the old buildings and whipped his coat around his knees. “Fine. Forget it. Who needs intel anyway?” He cut the call on Pritchard’s indignant sputters and stalked into the night, trailing a plume of smoke.

WIP Wednesday: Custos Custodium

Just a quick snippet this week, in which good intentions lead straight to hell (in a franchise first) and Jensen is temporarily brainwashed by a megalomaniacal hypnotist. Liberties taken with game dialogue reflect how incredibly violative this would be, especially for someone whose head has already been screwed with several times and has Serious Issues with personal autonomy. Experience the trauma vicariously at https://archiveofourown.org/works/55686901/chapters/141357007 !

The warnings were creepy. Necessary, maybe, but creepy. Would Richard really kill to keep from being disturbed? Well, deities deserved respect, and they were entitled to a little wrath from time to time. And Jensen was a good person, right? Very good at doing what he was told. Like a loyal dog. Although not loyal enough to be kept around…

He bowed his head in defeat and resignation and trudged back out into the world of sin and misery. The doors swung shut behind him with a click.

Jensen lurched to a halt and looked around him wildly at the walls weeping with moisture. “What, he said to nobody in particular, “the fuck.”

Viznik was still there, robe blending into the walls. He quailed.

“What the fuck. What the fuck?” He rounded on the little man. “Viznik! What the fucking fuck?” Viznik shook his head helplessly, and Jensen pressed him. “What was that?”

“Ah.” Viznik sagged. “You met Richard. And you succumbulated after all.”

“More like somnambulated,” Jensen snarled. He hadn’t felt this violated since he’d learned the extent of Sarif’s betrayal, how he’d been carved up as a science experiment. “What did he do to my head?”

Viznik shrugged. “The Richard effect? I don’t know. But it st-st-stuttered, and I was free long enough to ask. And then…”

“Jesus.” Jensen scanned the passageway, looking for a brick to shy or a piece of clutter to kick, something to vent the helpless rage boiling inside him. Instead, he saw a crumpled piece of poster. It was probably just another death threat disguised as “community virtues,” but he picked it up and smoothed it.

The poster showed Richard and another man, one “Liborio,” in matching turbans, advertising something called “Explorations of the Mind: A Hypnotic Experience.” Could that have been it? Hypnosis? He ground his teeth and checked the bottom. The fine print was always where one found the good stuff, in his experience—that was how he’d passed the law classes in his Masters program. Sure enough: “Tickets on sale at Magia, Klid—” The corner was torn, but it was probably an address. He’d find it.

“All right, Viznik. I’ll be back. Once I figure out how to deal with him.”

Oh yes, I’ll be back for you, Richard, he thought direly as he climbed the ladder to the surface. Just him, though. There was no way he was putting any of this crazy shit in his report.

WIP Wednesday: Custos Custodium

This scene is mostly just for fun, inspired by hunting around Jensen's apartment for food other than cereal and wondering what kind of takeout he'd get. I make no apologies. Check out the whole thing at https://archiveofourown.org/works/55686901/chapters/141357007

“Wow,” Malik said through a mouthful of cheese, “this is terrible.”

“Yeah.” Jensen chewed, swallowed, and downed half his beer. “You know how they say there’s really no such thing as bad pizza? They’re wrong.”

“Bleh. At least the veggies are edible. What’re you up to tomorrow?”

“Work. Some of us keep regular hours, you know.”

“Sorry I couldn’t make it down on the weekend. But I figured as long as I was in the neighborhood—”

Jensen shook his head. “Glad you’re here. Wish I weren’t tied up.” He eyed his half-eaten slice and picked a dubious circle of cured meat off it.

“Well, I’ve been meaning to look around the city some more. I think I have all the papers I need.”

“This is definitely not real pepperoni. I think it’s got caraway in it. And maybe sage.” He wiped his greasy fingers. “Let me see. Passport, Aug permit, commercial pilot’s license… you have your flight plan?”

“Do I need it?”

“You want to use the CPL instead of a visa, you need a flight plan taking you out of Czechia.”

“Jesus, fine. You got a printer? I don’t want your asshole local cops poking through my phone.”

“I do, yeah, and then you should be good. Anyone tells you to get a permit authentication card, they’re scamming you—let me know.”

Malik rolled her eyes. “Remind me why I flew out here?”

“Figured you wanted to show off your bed head to someone other than Maggie.”

“Yeah, screw you. You realize yours goes flat on the side you sleep on? From the gel or whatever?”

Self-conscious, he brushed his fingers along the side of his head—not that they could feel his hair. “You realize I carry a stun gun? I can make your hair do that whenever I want.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I might.”

She matched his glare for a good five seconds before snickering. “Okay, you might, and I might deserve it sometimes. Although I’d think scooping your metal ass out of midair might get me a little grace.”

“That’s why I’d only do it if you deserved it.” Jensen scowled at his pizza, and caught her doing the same. “Pitch it? It’s pretty damn bad.”

“It is. But do you have literally any other food in this place?”

“Sure. I got, lemme see, Augmentchoos and Frogy Kousnutí.”

“Bless you.”

“The Augmentchoos have a carefully calibrated glycemic index to, uh…” He picked up the box and read off the back. “To ‘provide your augs with the all-day performance you need.’”

“Uh-huh. Sure. What about the froggy things?”

“Well, they look like little frogs. Think there’s Vitamin D in the lily pads.”

Malik sighed and slid her doughy pizza into the trash. “Fine. I’ll try the froggy friends. I have no idea how you don’t get, like, scurvy or something, eating this stuff.”

“Limes in my cocktails.” He poured two bowls of processed grains and green food dye, then fetched the milk. “Say when.”

“Ooh, big health-food guy we got over here. That’s plenty.”

“What do you think?”

“Think I’m getting hopped up on sugar.”

“Hopped up—Christ.” He sighed and grabbed a bottle from the cabinet. “Even it out with some bourbon?”

“Sure, why not? It’ll be like college all over again. Except I don’t have class to cut in the morning.”

Jensen chuckled and raised his glass. “Na zdraví.”

WIP Wednesday: Custos Custodium

In which Jensen is privileged to carry Pritchard's voice in his ear through the Palisade Property Bank. For more Pritchard, visit https://archiveofourown.org/works/55686901/chapters/141357007

“Banker’s hours” were a foreign concept to the Palisade Property Bank. In early evening, the lobby still bustled with account holders and staff. Then again, Jensen supposed, the VIP treatment included round-the-clock access for customers unused to being told no, flying into Prague from time zones the world over.

He made some inquiries, inventing a family heirloom that unscrupulous relatives had tried to pinch while the estate ground slowly through probate, and asked to look around at the secure vaults. They let him wander: the vaults were guarded by Tarvos guards and automated defenses alike, so a sightseer would be hard-pressed to make serious trouble.

A normal sightseer, at least. As Jensen made appropriate polite impressed noises over the physical security, he got a call.

“Jensen. You do like to keep things interesting, don’t you.”

“Wouldn’t want you getting rusty, Pritchard.”

“No fear. The above-ground floors were easy, all public record. The vaults, though, took some digging. I had to break into the outskirts of their security system anyway, so you’ll see on your HUD where they’ve marked out shoot-on-sight areas. Hopefully those are signed as well.”

He checked—a dashed red line of warning ran along the floor in front of the security office and across the lower lobby. “They say ‘Restricted Access.’”

“Well, they mean ‘We have carte blanche from the Czech government to murder you if you come in here.’”

“Noted.” He hadn’t even worn his armor. If he was spotted in the bank, he was sunk anyway. The dermal would have to serve, in a pinch. “Anything you can do about the countermeasures?”

“Afraid not. They’re all on an internal network air-gapped from everything else—I can’t even see them. You’re on your own from here.”

It was no more than he’d expected, although it made for a hell of a challenge. Even with his cloak, the frontal approach was right out. A laser grid on the stairs slowed him not at all, but the whole floor was scrutinized by a web of intellicam-linked turrets positioned with a care that filled him with grudging respect for the Tarvos security team. No slowly-panning cams with blind spots underneath for Palisade: they’d set two turrets looking down each length of the catwalks that joined the office spaces, one from each direction. Every blind spot was thus covered by two other cameras, and the walls were built sheer and smooth, with no alcoves to hide in and recharge. He’d lose cloak power before he hacked through a door and made it to cover again, unless he ran fast enough for the patrolling Tarvos team to hear him. Hell, these guys were good enough they might have set the cameras to cue on door motion, too.

But no one thought of everything. Smart vision let him identify the security terminal in the executive office, just at the limits of the millimeter-wave radar’s range, and a vent grille in the wall across from it. Suspiciously close to where the elevator let out, in fact. He backtracked down the stairs to the lobby and crossed to the ground floor elevator door.

Another sweep with smart vision revealed an access grille hidden behind a vending machine. Jensen looked around, saw no one nearby, and hefted the garish bulk of the vending machine carefully in his overpowered arms. Just an inch off the ground, and a little to the side, and down—with a shockingly loud crunch and jangle of cans.

A Tarvos guard stuck his head around the corner and asked in a boarding-school British accent whether everything was all right.

“Sure,” Jensen improvised frantically. “It was just sticking.” He waved his wallet past the RFID reader and jabbed a key at random. The soda fell into the slot with betraying promptness. The Tarvos guard gave him a dubious look.

Jensen held up the soda. “See? It’s, uh, lemon-lime. I wanted… orange. I thought maybe the chute was blocked or something.”

“Well… okay,” said the guard. “Just be careful. I used to work with a guy, he almost got crushed by one while he was trying to get a candy bar loose. Wouldn’t want that to happen to you.”

“Be real tragic, yeah. Good advice. I’m gonna make do with this.”

The guard nodded and walked away. Jensen pocketed the soda and slipped inside the vent feet-first, pulling a trash can in front of the opening before he closed the grille.

WIP Wednesday: Custos Custodium

One of the main reasons I tackled the series from DX:HR onwards, rather than just jumping in where I had plot innovations to make, is the series' take on law enforcement. In short, as good as the overall writing is, it seems the writers' room was allergic to actual real-world LE experience.

So you get my take. I've worked with detectives and investigative agents ranging from "dedicated civil servant aspiring always to do better" to "un-fireable and counting down to retirement." My experience is in the US, whose LE apparatus is minimally corrupt in the traditional sense (try bribing your way out of a ticket sometime and let me know how it goes) but has deep structural issues--but I've researched several other systems through the years, and I think I've got a pretty realistic take on the Augophobic PČR for an American. Let me know how your mileage varies at https://archiveofourown.org/works/55686901/chapters/141357007 !

There had to be more, some thread he could pull to track down the drug poisoning Prague’s Augmented. Maybe he could drag something out of a neighbor. He made to leave, giving the room a quick scan with smart vision, just in case.

Jackpot: a secret room lay behind a hidden door. His millimeter-wave radar revealed the mechanism as well. He pushed a button hidden in the molding, and there was all the Neon, bins of bright blue cylinders loaded into inhalers.

He found a safe, too, with a significant take in cash and credit chips. And a pocket secretary containing an email from someone named “Harmony,” warning “Cygnus” about the Dvali getting wise to their side operation and telling him how to find the lab. It was in the sewers, right underneath Jensen’s own building. He noted the directions and swept up the money to put in asset forfeiture. Then he walked outside again, closed the door behind him, and thought.

Interpol had originally been conceived as a means to coordinate law enforcement efforts across national boundaries, not as an enforcement agency of its own. Even as it had evolved and grown, culminating in Task Force 29, it still maintained an emphasis on fostering communication and cooperation with its local partners. And he had neither time nor inclination to deal with a small-time Dvali competitor. He sent an email to the whole office, except for Organized Crime, asking whether anyone trusted any of the PČR’s drug detectives far enough to throw them. Within five minutes, he had a name and number.

“Ahoj, Detektivní Blažek, Policie České Republiky, Divize Praha, Narkotický Úřad,” came the bored, monotone response to his infolink call. “Jak vám mohu pomoci?”

“Agent Jensen, Interpol, Task Force Twenty-Nine. How would you like to make a big bust with no effort?”

“Eh?” The voice perked right up. “No effort, you say?”

“Yeah. Well, you’ll need to fill out an affidavit. My investigation brought me into an apartment—I can spell out the necessity for protection of life for you in an email. Basically, a potential drug overdose. And I found a roomful.”

“A roomful?”

“Of drugs, not victims. Got video and everything for you.”

“Oho! No effort indeed. You make my day, Agent Jensen. How much product?”

“You know Neon? A couple of bins full. Maybe… three, four cubic meters total.”

“Do prdele! I make quota this month after all. May I ask, who gave you my name?”

No reason to play it cagey. “Agent Riley.”

“Sammy? Hah. Good to know. Send it—I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

he detective spelled his email address, and Jensen passed the whole thing over. He watched the door and nursed his eye-recording headache until a jittery-looking man, his own height but probably thirty pounds lighter, burst out of the stairwell in a trench coat over a rumpled suit and a tangle of gangling limbs. Two uniformed officers followed him. They stiffened noticeably when they saw Jensen, but the detective greeted him warmly enough for a Prague cop.

“Ah, Agent Clank! Sammy told me when you joined—said you had some interesting skills. I thought that footage was too tall for body camera. You took him with eyeball?”

One of the uniforms winced as Jensen nodded. “Filmed everything from entry to exit.”

“Good, good! Okay, we have it from here.” Blažek dug in his coat pockets, juggling two bottles of clear liquid and a tablet whose screen showed a half-filled warrant application in Czech. “You like slivovice, eh? Bottle for you, bottle for Sammy. Quota means I get a bonus, and you get a cut. Keep my number, Agent Clank.”

Jensen took the bottles. Slurs or no, this was downright convivial for a Prague cop. The detectives tended to be better than patrol, but still. “I’ll give him your regards. Let me know if you need anything else from me.”

Rather than waste time on the elevator, he ducked into Praha Dovoz and left Riley’s bottle with Sedlak. His augs had robbed him of his old, neat handwriting, but he just about managed a legible RILEY: FROM BLAŽEK in block caps on a sticky that he pressed to the curved glass. He took his own bottle home.

WIP Wednesday: Custos Custodium

In which Jensen and the Task Force take on Sheppard in Dubai. I rearranged some lines to give a bit of characterization to anyone but Jensen and MacReady (who have plenty), and to make the tactical briefing a little meatier. Apparently, one of the divergence points between our world and the world of Deus Ex is that 10mm caught on over 9mm, but we know NATO exists and still prefers its familiar cartridges.

Anyway, Jensen does actually like some of his coworkers. Read all about it at https://archiveofourown.org/works/55686901/chapters/141357007

“Listen up, all of you!” Miller said in commanding tones. “We’ve finally got a lead on this man, an arms dealer goes by Sheppard.”

Jensen’s eyes widened behind his shades as the name registered with him. This was the bastard who’d escaped their grasp in Detroit—he damn well wasn’t getting away this time. John “Sheppard” Trent, 42, looked the way he remembered from Detroit, anonymous but mean. And as if Jensen needed another bone to pick with the man, Miller added a nugget of new intel: “He’s ex-Belltower. One of the Special Forces commanders who disappeared during the Incident.”

“And he’s come out of hiding?” MacReady asked. “That cannot be good.”

“It’s not. He’s selling weapons and military-grade augments to terrorists.” Miller swiped at the screen to reveal an Indian man with swept-back hair, stubble, and a haunted look around the eyes. “This is Arun Singh, the undercover agent who lured Sheppard out of his hole. Best UC Interpol’s got. For three years he’s worked to get us in tight with the Jinn, an Iraqi smuggling cartel that’s infected the Eastern Hemisphere like a plague. Last week, our arms dealer sent a message to the Jinn, offering to sell them a shit-load of black-market merchandise dirt cheap. They told Singh to handle the buy.”

A woman’s voice came over comms in a German accent, overriding MacReady’s scoff. “They’re not going to like it when Interpol disrupts their party. Is Singh’s cover really that good?” Dietrich, Jensen realized, looking at the screen. And she was worried about the right things.

“It is right now,” Miller answered. “We need to keep it that way.” He swiped again at the screen to show a sprawling but incomplete edifice, jutting out of the sea in graceful curves of steel and white concrete marred by tarps and scaffolding. An inset proclaimed it the “Desert Jewel.” “This is where the deal’s going down: a half-finished high-rise hotel that’s been abandoned ever since the incident. It is not a pretty picture inside.”

“Let me guess.” MacReady, of course. Mouthy bastard. “Most of the laborers were augmented with heavy-duty industrial rigs. So when the Incident hit and they all went schizo, things got gruesome real fast.” He stared at Jensen. Jensen stared back, curling his lip deliberately.

Miller nodded. “And no one except for some homeless junkies has been inside the place ever since.”

“So what’s the plan, Director?” Jensen asked.

“Singh’s meeting Sheppard on the ground floor, inside the hotel’s main atrium. He’s sent the bulk of his Jinn crew to the penthouse levels to secure a vantage point. I want MacReady’s team to take up positions overlooking the atrium and make the arrest. Dietrich, put the SAW and the marksmen on this little artificial island section here, across the lagoon from the atrium, where you can suppress and snipe as needed. Frost, you’re in reserve, up on the roof just back from the atrium. Rig ropes for descent. Jensen, you’re going in solo from the penthouse.”

Suited him fine. “My objectives?”

“Keep the Jinn from joining the party. As far as we can tell, only one route connects the atrium to the penthouse level—a halfway-decent elevator shaft here.” Miller swiped again, and a wireframe schematic popped up insertion points and the elevator in question. “I want you to block access to it.”

“Fine. Just cut me loose. If anyone spots me… I assume non-lethal is preferred? Doubt I’ll have time to cuff ’em, but Singh’s cover will be stronger if he’s not the only one still breathing when this is done.”

Miller nodded approvingly, but MacReady couldn’t resist a jab. “And if anything does happen to him, you’ll be the one telling his wife. After you get out of the hospital, of course.”

Jensen ignored him. So did Miller. “One last thing,” he said. “Singh told us the Jinn are using some kind of portable wi-fi device to boost communications. It could pick up anything he sends our way. He’s got a better chance of maintaining cover if you disable it, but if it comes to it, your number one priority is keeping the Jinn out of that atrium.”

“I’ll keep an eye out.”

“Good. Any questions?”

Lieutenant Frost chimed in. “Sir. Director. Why is this our op? Not that I mind—we’re all itching to mix it up—but Station Muscat is practically next-door.”

“Muscat’s resources are occupied elsewhere. We were the closest station with the manpower for an op this size. We did get the intel on this mission at the very last minute, no fault of Singh’s, so we’re all scrambling a little. Sheppard has stayed ahead of the Task Force for so long by pulling exactly this kind of stunt, on the rare occasions he shows his face at all. It’s our job to make sure it doesn’t work this time.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Frost took the answer as the gentle reprimand it was meant to be, and Jensen once again admired Miller’s leadership acumen. There were no further questions. The agents and soldiers turned to the briefing screens and reviewed the scant intelligence they’d received, or busied themselves checking their weapons and armor, as the trio of VTOLs sped onwards.

According to the map, they were coming in over the Persian Gulf a few hours later when Miller spoke up once more: “Ears here.” He checked the screen to make sure the other two teams were looking. “A new wrinkle has arisen to keep us on our toes. Sandstorm coming up out of the southwest, straight from the desert. It’ll be barreling down our asses—we can’t afford to make mistakes. Our pilots will keep us up-to-date on the storm’s progress. The window’s tight, but all signs indicate the deal is on. As you were.”

Silence descended once more. The indicators for their birds crept towards Dubai. Around Jensen, the agents began rechecking their rifles and donning their helmets. He gave his own weapons a perfunctory once-over, then rolled his shoulders and wrists. He crossed his left arm over his chest, running his blades out at the wrist and elbow, slow, then lightning fast. The myomer and servos whined quietly, just audible over the rush of wind and engine.

MacReady leaned forward. “Not gonna go all wonky on us now, Hanzer, are ya?”

“Why? You want to put a control chip in me? Don’t worry, I’m in spec.” Jensen locked eyes with him and bent his right hand almost to his right shoulder. His blade flicked out halfway, the tip coming to rest against his temple without even dimpling the flesh. Then, slowly, he pointed the blade at MacReady, giving him a chance to flinch or hold up a hand, to show fear.

“But if I do lose it, I guarantee you’ll never see it coming.” And he snicked the blade out to its full extension against the shoulder of MacReady’s combat vest. The alloy rang quietly on the ceramic plates, but MacReady didn’t move. Every eye turned to look at them, including Miller’s. Jensen withdrew the blade.

“Agent Jensen! Am I gonna have a problem with you on this op?”

“Nossir. MacReady just had some questions about my capabilities.” He met Miller’s gaze through his shades, deferential but uncowed, letting the double meaning hang in the air.

“Good. Because you’re our only Aug, and our only infiltration specialist. I intend to make good use of you.” That last was delivered as much to MacReady as to him, Jensen thought.

Miller resumed reassembling his rifle, ramming home a magazine of 7.62 NATO. Jensen grimaced. He supposed the AIC didn’t plan on getting tied down in a firefight, and Dietrich’s heavy gunner could always share, but it bothered him that their commander might find himself running dry in a pinch. At least the sidearm he wore was a ten-mil like everyone else’s. Not that Jensen had an augmented leg to stand on: no one else on the op—hell, probably no other agent in the hemisphere—carried a forty-five, but he could jam nine-mil into the Destrier in a pinch. Still, if they’d had time to actually plan this mission, they could’ve optimized logistics a little better. Or at all.

Chikane broke in on his maundering. “Time to put away your happy thoughts, gentlemen. We’re approaching the target.” The team was one-third women; Agent Montañez—Carmen—rolled her eyes. Jensen met them and twitched his hand by his crotch in a subtle jerk-off gesture. She hid a smirk behind her gloved hand.

Fortunately, Miller missed the byplay this time. “You’re up first, Jensen. Let’s do this.”

The pilot opened the team circuit as Jensen stood. “Strike-One, Strike-Two, this is Strike Leader. Engage hush drives and descend to angels one-five.” The VTOL quieted, slowed, and dropped in the sky. Jensen rode the change in altitude effortlessly. He thought about telling Chikane he flew like someone’s grandmother, but Malik wasn’t there to laugh.

The cargo ramp descended, and the jump lights came on red. Jensen rolled his shoulders. They were low—less than two thousand feet, for sure. He’d told Miller about the Icarus, of course, but he might have played up his skydiving “experience” a little. Well, too late now. Green lights and a tone. He stepped forward and leapt into the sky.

WIP Wednesday: Custos Custodium

In which Malik and the Collective have much less of a plan than they realize, and it falls to Jensen to pull together the front half. See how badly a mission can go at !

“You think you could pull a trigger on someone?”

“Jesus, Jensen. Maybe in self-defense. Do I have to?”

“Just assessing our resources. What about a stun gun?”

“That I could do. Basically laser tag, right?”

“Well, one time in ten thousand, they break their skull going down. Or you find out they had a heart condition. But the modern stuff is pretty damn safe. C’mon.” He led her back to the entryway and handed her the Zap from the thigh holster hanging on a peg. Argento would have to forgive him for not bringing Malik to a real instructor—the plan coalescing in his hindbrain might need two shooters, and he’d think better with his mind on something else anyway. “Finger off the trigger. Crash course time.”

She took it in cautious fingers and almost fumbled it. “Is there a safety?”

He walked her to the TV and stood behind her, obscurely touched to see her so uncertain for a change. “Don’t worry about that yet. Point it down the hall, right over that bedside table—there’s two feet of brick behind it, and stingers don’t penetrate anyway. Good. Okay, now hold it in your right hand only, but keep your trigger finger along the side.”

She shifted her grip, and he nodded approvingly. “See that gap between your fingers on the left side? Wrap your left hand around that, but don’t cross your thumbs. Side-by-side—perfect. Squeeze and push the muzzle toward your target.”

“I don’t have a target.”

“Fair enough.” He walked down the hallway and stood in the bedroom doorway, then patted his chest. “Right here,” he called. “It’s a stun round, and my dermal armor will shed the pulse anyway. You’re basically shooting beanbags at me.”

Malik’s eyebrows climbed to her hairline. “You want me to shoot you?” “Pretend I’m Pritchard. No, wait, pretend you’re Pritchard.”

She gave him a strained smile. “Okay, so I’m pushing the muzzle at you. Great. Fine. This isn’t weird at all.”

“Now you’re ready to shoot, so now you can touch the trigger. Feel the little catch at the front of it? That’s the safety on this gun. Wiggle it with your finger. Don’t move the trigger itself, just the safety.”

“Um… yeah, okay, I feel it. Jeez, this is like learning to hover all over again.”

“I bet. Relax your shoulders.”

“I’m not—oh, I guess I am. Okay. Relaxed.”

“More. Pull ’em down. Good. Now stare at my chest, breathe out, and pull the trigger.”

“Well, one of those is—fine. Okay. Here it comes.” She exhaled. There was a snap, and the stun round took him in the shoulder, crackling in vain against his skin.

Malik yelped. “You okay?”

“Barely felt it. Now leave your right hand on the weapon, but let go with your left. Grab the slide—the top part—and pull it back, then release. Watch your fingers.” He listened for the click-click of oiled metal; the caseless stun ammo had nothing to eject.

“Hand back on the weapon and push it at my chest. Fire again when you’re ready, as you breathe out.” A snap. She stifled the yelp down to a sort of mmp noise. The dart caromed off the doorframe by his right knee.

“Sorry! Wait, should I be apologizing for not shooting you?”

“Yes. Rack the slide and try again. Right in the chest. Center mass.” Snap. “Ow.”

“Sorry sorry sorry!”

“It’s fine. Should’ve protected myself.” He shifted his hands to cross in front of his crotch. “I’ll live. Again.”

Click-click. Snap. “Good. A little high, but it would’ve taken down anyone not wearing armor. Again.”

Click-click. Snap. “You over-corrected a little. Don’t think about compensating—just aim. Hell, pretend I’m Lee Hong.”

Click-click. Snap. “Aha. That did it. Perfect. Now, rack the slide again.” Click-click. “Pull the trigger.” Click. “You will observe nothing happened. Your magazine is dry. Above your left thumb is a button. Push it.” Click. Thump.

He walked back to her and picked up the empty magazine. “This gets reloaded and shoved back in. Then you have to pull back the slide again to put a round in the chamber, ready to fire. Got it?”

“Yeah. I think.”

“Listen. You’ll have a couple of spare magazines. You even using this thing at all is Plan… E, I think. Just don't want you shooting yourself with it accidentally.”

“Plan E?”

“A is no one notices us at all until it’s too late. B through D are variations on me beating people up while you fly us out. Still need to figure out how to power it up once we’re in. You ready to go?”

“Well, I haven’t opened my suitcase.”

“That’s a yes. I want to get to Nice today, check out the lay of the land. We’ll drive, in case we need wheels while we’re there, and it’s a ways.” He reloaded the stun gun magazine and grabbed two more, then took the weapon from her and reconfigured the straps for waist wear. “Belt this on.”

“Suits me. If I never deal with that airport security again, it’ll be too soon,” she grumbled as she belted on the Zap. She was wearing a rust-colored tee-shirt with a picture of a carabiner on it over tight, light-grey jeans—he wondered whether she’d matched the colors of her old Sarif flight suit consciously, for luck—and the holster jutted out from her hip. Without prompting, she dug a canvas jacket out of her suitcase to cover it up. The magazines weighed down the pockets, but it would have to do.

Malik made another cup of tea while he hastily packed toiletries, a few changes of clothes, and his tactical vest. The long guns went in his duffel as well. He covered the Destrier’s shoulder holster with the lightweight gabardine trench he’d blown most of his second paycheck on, instead of the heavy leather. The really expensive part, and the thing that had gotten him curious looks from the tailor, had been adding the magnetized openings at the elbows for his blades. He’d skipped the Typhoon ports—he never planned to use the damn thing again, and if he had to, it would be for something important enough he could sacrifice his sleeves. He was still overdressed for June anywhere near the Mediterranean, but not flagrantly so.

“Hell, Jensen, nice coat,” she said as they headed out the door. “Haven’t seen this one before. It’s charcoal, right, not black? This is personal growth, for you.”

He growled at her.

WIP: Custos Custodium

This week, Jensen helps Malik attempt to steal a fancy custom VTOL from the DeBeers family. Of course, the plan goes off without a hitch.

Dawn followed the graceless bulk of the ship across the water. Malik raised the binoculars again, and he shaded them quickly with his hand to forestall any betraying reflections. A crane ground into motion, deafening in the morning stillness, screeching down rails set in the concrete until it came to rest alongside a section of quay. The thrum of a diesel engine heralded a tug, forging out through the harbor’s calm waters at the end of a ruler-straight wake on a lazy intercept with the ship.

He tapped Malik and crooked a finger. They dashed from the edge of the construction site to crouch behind a bollard, protected by the cloak, and waited in its shadow for the energy converter to recharge. Then they repeated the process, slowly drawing nearer and nearer to the crane. Jensen stopped and waited when they were still a few bollards away, and Malik hunkered down at his shoulder.

Longshore workers yelled and cursed as the tug brought the big ship alongside the quay. Thin ropes flew from ship to shore, followed by wrist-thick monstrosities that were drawn snug around the bollards and made fast. Fenders the size of small cars creaked and groaned as they took the pressure of the ship. The workers backed away, then turned and headed to their ready room or whatever it was, and the crane rumbled to life again. Once it stopped, Jensen beckoned, and they flitted closer.

Trucks began to appear in a long queue, pulling flatbed trailers, hissing and snorting their way between the towering, spindly legs of the crane as one longshore worker waved a pair of glowing batons and cursed unceasingly in French. Most were singles, with a few doubles and one triple that must’ve been a cast-iron bitch to drive through a European city, and the crane dropped container after container onto the auto-locking mechanisms of the trailers like an industrious robotic giraffe. The trucks pulled away again, each in turn, to be replaced by another and yet another.

The queue and the crane both paused, and Jensen nudged Malik. A tractor unit growled up under the crane, heedless of the line, and sat idling while someone inside shouted to the traffic conductor. They chose their moment amid the chaos and darted to the leg of the great machine. Jensen flexed open ports on each forearm and plugged in two biocells, waiting for the right moment to draw on them.

This time, instead of a container, the crane brought over an entire trailer, canvas now visible wrapped underneath the edge of the bed. The trailer was double-width, red flags protruding from its corners. It swung under the crane’s cables, then stabilized and lowered to the ground, revealing the streamlined shape beneath the canvas.

A man in anonymous grey fatigues jumped from the passenger’s side and directed the driver backwards underneath the front of the trailer. The driver, similarly clad, emerged as well, and the two men spent a few minutes ducking underneath the trailer with a flashlight and plugging things into one another. The longshore workers undid the crane’s cables.

“Ready?” Jensen breathed. Malik said nothing, but moved to stand in front of him, her back up against his vest. He rested his hands on her hips. The truck jerked forward, a false start, then rolled gently into motion. It came alongside their hiding place at a languorous pace. “And… go.”

WIP Wednesday: Custos Custodium

In which the heist pays off, and big feelings are had by all. Come for the fancy VTOL, stay for the angst.

Malik set down in an empty parking lot at a scenic overlook to investigate her prize, her enthusiasm only growing as she poked and prodded at its systems. To Jensen’s disgust, the first thing she did was get Pritchard on the line to make sure the computer system couldn’t be remotely hijacked. This entailed physically disabling some of the transmitters, including the one that—according to the logs—had alerted the DeBeers nephew personally when the hatch had opened. Others required only software changes. Soon, Pritchard announced himself confident that no one could get into the craft’s systems from outside, not even him, although he recommended she bring it by for an in-person look as well.

Reassured the VTOL wouldn’t turn on her in midair, Malik dove back into the interface, issuing a running commentary that Jensen tried sporadically to follow. All the flight-essential capabilities mapped to the buttons on the sticks or the console, but the other functions ran through the touch-sensitive wraparound cockpit screen. And there were a lot of functions: HUD readouts, climate controls, radar, comms, and more that he lost track of.

Eventually, she turned to disguise. The craft spoofed a transponder code with ease, but a physical registration number seemed more difficult until Malik sat bolt upright and said, “Hey. Does this interface look like what I think it looks like?”

He roused from his exhausted, brooding slump in the copilot seat and inspected it. “Smart paint? I bet so.”

She fiddled with it for a minute, then dragged him outside to see the results. It gave him a chance for a better look at the chunk of machinery for which he’d almost gotten himself killed. Bigger than the Bumblebee, yet smaller than Chikane’s and the other Task Force’s aircraft, it bore an even sharper and more aggressive profile. The nose hooked down slightly, giving the impression of a raptor’s beak, and the narrow fuselage pinched in and upwards at the rear before fanning out into a pair of absurdly wide tail surfaces angled gently down to the sides. A sleek stub of rudder jutted up between them.

The root of the wings ran most of the length of the fuselage, from which point they tapered gradually before sweeping back to sharp points. A pair of engines, each in its own nacelle, sat at the crook of each wing. The craft looked like it wanted to leap from its perch and stoop upon some unsuspecting prey. As indeed it just had, he supposed. He couldn’t see the cannon, but of course it would retract, for discretion and aerodynamics both.

Chromatically, the aircraft had become unrecognizable, white above and olive below all along the fuselage. The phony registration number appeared in black on the white tailplanes, in white on the olive sides. He walked around to the left flank, following Malik slowly on his wobbly right leg. Gunmetal streaks showed where bullets had smeared across the smart paint, but only a close look betrayed them as anything more suspicious than grime.

Malik stood hipshot, hand on her waist, and jerked a thumb at the transformed VTOL. “This thing is sweet! Man, it’s a vigilante agent’s dream come true. We are gonna get in so much trouble—and get out of it again, more importantly. Speaking of which, how are you holding up?”

“Bled on your upholstery, I’m afraid.”

“DeBeers sprang for the good stuff. It looks stain-resistant—shouldn’t be a problem. You got pretty chewed up, though. Let me see your back.”

“It’s fine.”

“Bullshit.” She grabbed his shoulder and craned her neck to look behind him. “Omigod your neck! What happened? Looks like a… a ring?”

“I bet. After I broke the gun, that exo trooper used the barrel like a cattle prod.”

“Jeez. And your whole back. Ouch. Hmm—uh, yeah, that looks nasty. It’s stopped bleeding, but I bet you could use some protein, huh? Liquids, too. Maybe a beef smoothie.”

He gagged, only partly in jest.

Some wips

Just a few things I’m working on. May not finish some

Painting thing of my brothers Oc

Drawing the main 4 South Park boys as warrior cats

Redraw of a old creek drawing from 2022

Oc band au artwork

Some WIPS I’m not sure if I’ll finish or not

Just really wanted an excuse to draw more side profiles to be honest

since it’s 2 hours away from wip Wednesday…

here’s my wip for Shaak Ti 🥰 I love her very much and want to play around with a cool idea (it’s also been a hot minute since I’ve posted art hehe)

hope y’all are well and have a wonderful day/night!💕

Missing sunshine updates.

idk if this has been done but

A Doctor Who scarf! I'm in love with it!

It's WIP Wednesday!

What’s on your hook this week? :D