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Adam likes the moments in between sleep and awareness. Where he’s awake but not worried about anything, not trying to puzzle anything out, nothing. He’s in that state right now, lying on the floor somewhere, a warm weight against him. He should be worried. He will be worried soon, but right now… it’s not a problem.
It becomes a problem the moment that warm weight is yanked away from him. Adam turns his body instinctively trying to pin the weight he’s on the cusp of recognizing between him and the floor. His body between it and whatever Adam’s brain has pegged as a threat, but sleep still addles his movements and the threat has the element of surprise on its side.
The weight is gone, and Adam opens his eyes just as Chase gives a yell, also rudely awakened.
Adam doesn’t usually know what’s happening. He certainly doesn’t know what’s happening right now. But he knows this isn’t right, and Chase does too. Adam can’t imagine Chase knows much more about who’s holding him than Adam does, and he’s already trying to summon his glow stick.
So Adam readies himself to fight, leaping to his feet, only to be painfully tugged back down by manacles attaching him to the wall. Well, if they thought that was going to stop him, they were wrong. Adam braces himself, and then pulls, hard, aiming to break whatever will snap first: the attachment of the manacles to the wall, or the metal wrapping around his wrists. It’s neither. His wrist snaps instead.
He’s broken bones before, but rarely, every time it’s an unwelcome reminder that he’s not invincible. Not always the strongest thing in the room. It makes him vulnerable. More vulnerable than he was before, manacled to the wall— now he’s manacled to the wall and down an arm. Adam sags against the wall, trying to catch his breath. He can tell Chase knows he’s hurt, can see it in how his little brother is angling the fight with his body between Adam and whoever he’s fighting.
It’s not much of a fight, if Adam’s honest. Chase is a match for pretty much anyone non-bionic, but all he’s really doing is warding this guy off. Adam’s not sure what the problem is. Chase is getting the occasional hit in, he thinks, but he’s mostly on the defensive. Which doesn’t even make sense, the guy’s practically unarmed as far as he can tell, he shouldn’t be able to hold his own against Chase, let alone threaten him.
Unless… he’s not human. Adam tries to ignore the pain, to focus, to shoot his heat vision straight, and he just about manages to not singe Chase’s shoulder, to hit the attacker’s bicep exposing the metal underneath.
Androids.
Adam doubts he’s revealed anything to Chase. He probably already knows, had already figured out that what he’s fighting isn’t a human — bionic, super, or otherwise — but Adam doesn’t know if he knows the answer to Adam’s next question. Who sent them?
Giselle isn’t a threat anymore, but she could’ve had a partner. The woman had brought Marcus back, anything’s possible.
The android lands a good kick to Chase’s ribs, sending him stumbling back into Adam. He tries to keep quiet but a garbled noise of pain comes out.
“I’m sorry, god, I’m sorry, just, hold tight, Adam,” Chase speaks in a jumbled rush before resummoning his glow stick, and jabbing at the android to keep him back.
“Yeah, yeah, all good.” It takes the time of two more blows to be exchanged for Adam to force out that response. Hold tight and breathe. That’s all he can do. Useless on the floor. He can’t even fight off the second android when it speeds into the room, deciding that the first wasn’t doing a good enough job.
Chase can probably hold them both off, Adam decides, even as the second android is aiming towards him, pulling him off the wall, and close to its chest.
Adam’s knees buckle and he’s forced to lean against the android, as the manacle pulls on his broken wrist.
“Stand down.” Adam can feel the heat of another glow stick at his throat. It’s like when they were fighting Giselle for the first time and Troy got ahold of Bree. He remembers what Bree had told them that day. Not to give in. He trusts Bree’s judgement. He wants to get Chase out of here.
“Don’t.”
Chase is frozen, still holding his glow stick, eyes darting between Adam and the androids. He raises his hands.
“Chase—”
And the glow stick at Adam’s throat flies towards Chase, who ducks letting it slice into the android standing behind him. Even surrendering, Chase is not vulnerable.
“You’re going to regret that,” The android behind Adam hisses, pulling Adam closer, even as Adam protests the further pressure on his wrist.
“Stop, I’m not going anywhere!”
“It’s two against one,” Chase says.
“This isn’t a fight anymore. It’s a hostage situation. And even if you manage to negotiate yourself out of that one, you’re still walking into a building full of us. What’re you gonna do then?”
Chase tilts his head. “Where are the others now then? Why have a hostage situation at all?”
“We don’t want to hurt you, Chase. Not yet. Adam, on the other hand?” The android snakes a hand around Adam’s unbroken wrist and pulls.
Chase recognizes what’s going to happen before Adam feels it. “No, wait —”
Adam’s other wrist snaps. His knees give out again. He tries to curl to the ground. The ground is steady, it’s not going to cause him pain. He can sit on the ground and curl around his wrists and everything will be okay, but the android doesn’t let him. It holds him up by his hair.
“Adam, on the other hand, is expendable. His only role here to make sure you cooperate, do you understand?”
Chase puts away his glow stick. “I understand.” He doesn’t bother to raise his hands again. “What do you want?”
The android nods to the door behind Chase. “Open that.”
Chase stares at it for a moment, being asked to open the same door he’d been fighting to get to, a little too much for a moment, before he complies. A third android enters, stepping over the body of the one massacred by the glow stick.
“Give me your hands.” Chase glances over to the android holding Adam for conformation before complying.
The android tugs on Adam’s hair, and Adam whines in response. It hurts, and he just wants to curl up and be anywhere but here. “Did you see that?” It asks the newcomer. “Davenport looked at me for confirmation. He’s like a puppet when you’ve got this one.”
“Just let him sit down,” Chase says, as manacles are clamped over his wrists. “I’m not going anywhere, you know that, and you can threaten him just as well from the ground.”
The grip tightness and Adam leans into the android, trying to ease the pressure. His wrists are broken, and he’s here trying to stop them from pulling his hair. “You’re not in much of a position to be making demands, Chase Davenport. I’ll do whatever I please to your brother, and you will sit there and bear it.”
“Carl,” the android standing behind Chase chides. “”We have a goal.”
Adam lets out a hysterical wheeze, catching Chase’s attention. “His name is Carl.”
“What’s your goal?” Chase asks. “What do you want?” He’s trying to keep their attention, trying to keep Carl’s attention, who enjoys torturing his brother too much and looks a weird mix of hurt and angered at Adam’s reaction to his name.
“We need an energy source, and we want you to create it for us.”
“You can’t create one yourself?” Chase looks genuinely confused now. Adam knows that look, he’s on the receiving end of that one a lot. “You’re androids. Surely—”
“Not everyone has your super intelligence, Davenport.” Carl snaps. Adam’s scalp stings, clearly this is a sore spot.
“It’s a problem, right now.” The other android says. “Our charges don’t last long and the batteries corrode too easily.”
“I… I would’ve fixed that for you if you’d asked nicely.” Chase snaps. “You didn’t have to kidnap us!”
Carl shrugs. “Too late now. Plus, isn’t this more fun?”
“Carl,” the android looks like Bree does when Adam wants to show her the new thing he’s crushed.
“Jack,” Carl mimics him. “It’s fine. We’re fine. Chase, here, isn’t going to do anything threatening, is he? Not while his brother is in such a vulnerable position.”
“No, no, I’m not. I’ll help you. I promise, but I’ll need access to your schematics, and lab equipment. And even then, I can’t know that it’ll work.”
“You’re the smartest person in the world, Chase Davenport,” Jack says. “You will figure it out.”
Then, finally, finally, Carl drops Adam. He wants to run his hands through his hair, relieve the pain, but his hands hurt too much to move. He just curls up on the floor, as Chase watches the androids leave.
The minute the door closes behind them, he’s at Adam’s side. “Hey, hey, how’re you feeling?” Chase is running his hands through Adam’s hair, and Adam feels himself relax at the slight easing of pain.
“Guess we can’t fight our way out.” Adam’s voice is hoarse. He doesn’t think he’s been screaming, but he’s not sure anymore.
“Don’t worry about that,” Chase said. “I’ll get us out of here, I promise.”
“Okay.” Adam wants to make a joke. “Let me know if you need me to lend you a hand.” He grins and Chase stares at him.
“Adam—” But whatever he’s going to say is cut off by Jack’s return.
“Here.” He shoves a duffel bag at Chase. “Schematics, spare parts, if you need anything else, you can let us know.”
“I need first-aid supplies,” Chase says without hesitation.
Jack raises an eyebrow — Adam wonders if that’s a skill all androids are programmed with, if there’s really a human who can do that, or if it’s just all androids infiltrating human society. “For the batteries?”
“For my brother. You want me to work? I can’t work while he has no pain medication and nothing supporting his broken wrists.”
Jack takes a step towards Chase. “Look, while your brother is sitting here with broken wrists, my siblings are out there dying because they don’t have batteries. Even once you make the batteries, there’s no certainty that they’ll come back, so why don’t you just be grateful, that I don’t snap your brother’s neck, and get to work?”
Chase doesn’t back down. He can’t afford to, even as he speaks, his intelligence is running through every possible thing that can go wrong if Adam’s broken wrists aren’t treated — healing wrong, infection, blood supply problems, just to name a few. “You won’t kill him. You need leverage.”
“You already admitted you would help us if we asked nicely.”
“Yes, but I certainly won’t help you if you kill my brother.”
Jack sighs. “Fine, as long as you start right after you help him.”
Chase sticks out his hand. “Deal.”
Chase sits next to Adam while he waits for Jack. “Did you hear that? You’re going to get some first aid soon.”
“Great.”
“You’re going to be okay, Adam.”
“Okay.”
Chase knows Adam doesn’t feel like talking, but he doesn’t know what else to do. So he keeps babbling, ideas for how the battery will work, even though he hasn’t even looked at the relevant information, assessments of wrist damages, even though he doesn’t have the necessary equipment, plans for the weekend, even though those are basically shot at this point. And Adam keeps responding, one or two words, but responses.
Jack brings back first aid supplies and stands guard while Adam’s manacles are removed so Chase can actually perform first aide. He can tell his brother is in pain, especially without the manacles supporting the bones. But Adam says nothing. He lets Chase align and splint the bones and takes the pain medications without complaint.
“Now help us,” Jack says, reattaching the manacles to Adam’s newly splinted wrists. “Please.”
Chase unzips the duffel bag. “Give me time. I’ll come up with something.”
Chase is conflicted. The pain medicine knocked Adam out, meaning he can’t talk this through. He doesn’t know what to do with the supplies he’s been given. Not that he doesn’t know how to create the batteries, he can do that, but he could also create tampered batteries that would hurt their captors, or a weapon.
He doesn’t know how any of that will go over, and he doesn’t want them to hurt Adam again, but he also wants to get them both out of here. He wants to help the androids. He was’t lying when he said he would’ve helped them if they’d asked, unless something nefarious was happening that he didn’t know about, he didn’t see any reason they should have better batteries. Clearly whoever had bothered to create them, or at least the first one, hadn’t cared enough to make sure their energy sources were functional, viewed them as expendable. Plus, other than Carl, all the androids, the ones who’d brought him the supplies he requested, or just came to watch him work, curious about the person they’d heard was here to help them, seemed nice. A little unaware of their own dangerous capabilities, of the threats they posed, but nice. It reminds him of how the bionic students were at first.
Maybe he should take the lesson from Sebastian, that he shouldn’t trust so easily, even if they did seem without ill-intentions. The door opens and Jack’s standing there. “Casey said you made a breakthrough.”
Chase doesn’t know which android is Casey. He hasn’t been asking for names, but he has made a breakthrough. “I’ve made progress.” He’s hedging his bets.
“How much?”
“I can do it, but I need assurance you aren’t going to kill us immediately once I do.”
Jack nods. “What do you need?”
“I need you to return Adam. If you take him back to the outpost, the others will find him. He’ll get help.”
Jack raises an eyebrow. “That doesn’t do much for you.”
“Well, if I have to fight my way out, it is one less person I have to get out.”
“I’d do the same for Carl.”
“Carl’s a dick.”
Jack sighs. “He shouldn’t have done that. He was trying to get you to cooperate. He wasn’t doing it well. I talked to him, he’s just— it’s bad for all of us, waiting to die, waiting for each other to die, and we don’t know if we’ll ever come back.”
“I knew an android once, he got crushed by a house. And he came back, himself, years later.”
Jack raises an eyebrow. “I don’t know if that’s as comforting as you think it is.” But they’re sharing, and Jack wants Chase to trust him. “Casey almost died a week ago. We managed to recharge her, but Carl, well they’re close, it scared him.”
“That’s why you took us,” Chase says.
“It was always the plan to get your help at some point, if we couldn’t figure it out ourselves. It moved up the timeline.”
“She can be the first,” Chase offers. “I can fix her first, as soon as you return Adam.”
Jack reaches out a hand. “Deal.”
Adam doesn’t go easy. “I’m not leaving you here!”
“You’re not leaving me,” Chase explains. “I’m staying.”
“That’s… that’s the same thing!”
“C’mon, Adam, what’s the worth in staying here?”
“I could ask you the same thing!”
“Look, I’ll help them, and then I’ll come meet you guys!”
“You don’t know that they’ll keep their word!”
“We’ll keep our word,” Carl says. He and Jack are waiting to take Adam to a meeting point where Bree and Leo are waiting, supposedly.
Adam glares at him. “That makes me trust this even less!”
“I said I was sorry about your wrists!”
“And that doesn’t mean that they’re not broken.”
“Adam,” Chase grabs his brother’s shoulders. “Trust me. I’ll be home in a few days, okay? It’ll be fine.”
“I don’t like this, Chase.”
“You don’t have to like it, you just have to do it.”
Adam nods, placing one of his wrapped hands on Chase’s shoulder. “Fine, but if there’s anything fishy, and I swear anything. I’m sending Bree and Leo in.”
“Deal.”
Adam glares over his shoulder at Carl and Jack. “Let’s go.”
Carl groans. “Finally!”
Chase watches as the three of them leave. He hopes he isn’t making a mistake, trusting the androids. They’ve promised to bring back conformation, a photo from today or something, he guesses, that Adam’s back safe. But there’s nothing he can do about it now, just get himself home safe. Plan the first execution of the new battery, create instructions clear enough that the androids can recreate it themselves, go home. That’s the plan. It’s simple enough. He can do this, right?
And if he can’t… well, he doesn’t have to protect Adam while fighting his way out.
Jack brings back a photo of Bree and Adam. Adam’s wrists are clearly still broken. It’s from today. Adam’s safe now, so Chase hands Jack a flash drive with the instructions. “Test time?”
“Casey’s ready if you are.”
“I am. I put this in, you learn how to do it, then I stay one day to monitor. After that I go home, I’m done.”
“Deal. We’ll leave you alone, promise.”
“You’d better. If you don’t, we will find you.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
Casey and Carl come in, and Chase can practically feel the anxiety in the room increase tenfold. Casey’s bouncing on her heels and Carl looks like he might break someone else’s bones.
“This better work.” Chase has no doubt Jack might be the only thing stopping Carl from breaking his bones if it doesn’t.
“It will. I’m the smartest man alive. This will work.” He remembers this anxiety, waiting for Bree’s chip to work. And that… that was quick. This was months of build up for the androids. The procedure itself will take an hour. Thought that hour, Chase explains the procedure to Jack, acutely aware of Carl watching his every move. Casey lines prone on the table, without batteries and for all intent dead. Chase has to bring her back. And when Casey opens her eyes, comes back, Chase knows he’s done it. He’s gotten through the hard part, and now he get’s to go home.
It’s 24 hours later when Jack and Carl drop him off at the pre-arranged pick up spot. Bree is waiting for him. She’s understandably weary of the androids. The last few she met haven’t exactly been friendly, and these ones did return her one brother with broken wrists. But she’s met with a relatively unharmed Chase, babbling about batteries. The androids are much more relaxed than the last time she saw them, and she knows whatever they wanted from Chase it worked.
“Let’s get you home, Chase.”
“Wait.” And he’s handing the androids a piece of paper. “If you ever need help, just call me. No kidnapping required.”
Jack laughs. “Deal.”