Now that they're on their way, he wishes he'd just forced Joey to come along. Joey's a veteran next to JC, who holds a gun gingerly like it's a stick of dynamite with sparks flying out of the top.
D is quiet and professional and reassuring; a soldier without ego, thank god, not pulling rank, even though he probably could. When Chris went down to tell him it was now or never, he was standing in front of a monitor with Alex, speaking softly, almost intimately. Alex shrugged when D cut his eyes to him for leave.
"Goodbye," he said, stiffly, and D laughed mirthlessly. Chris looked at his shoes, because it felt like he was intruding on something private. D muttered a short "sir" and followed Chris up.
Now D walks next to him and doesn't speak until they're already approaching the sealed zone around Pen 46.
"Alex will cut the power for fifty seconds," he says. "It should be enough."
"Yeah," Chris says and unholsters his gun. JC takes a step backward and D glances at him, glances at Chris. "He'll be fine," Chris says.
"What kind of distraction was your contact talking about?" D asks softly. He's looking at JC again, not unkindly, but JC shrugs uncomfortably and looks down.
"If this is who I think it is," Chris says, "it'll be a full-scale riot in there."
He starts thinking it's a bad idea, bringing JC, when he realises he most likely wasn't exaggerating. He hasn't seen AJ McLean in over five years; he has no idea how Joey found him, but there is no other possibility, really. Joey with an inside contact? And AJ always had a certain sense of whimsy, in combination with the patented McLean taste for the grand gesture. Abigail had been the same. Low-key until she hit Joey with a surprise party for his twenty-second birthday, or decided to buy him a new pair of jeans from an Upground store in the middle of the day. She must have been disappointed in her small death.
He turns to JC so quickly that JC walks into him. JC's eyes are completely guileless. A dying breed, a man who can't lie to save his life. And dying for a reason.
"It'll get ugly," Chris says. "It'll definitely get a little ugly, and it'll probably get even uglier than that."
JC blinks and swallows and nods sharply.
"You can--" he starts, but JC says, almost too quickly,
"Don't tell me to stay behind." Chris hears the please JC holds back with some effort.
Later, Chris thinks he could have forced JC to stay in the tunnel; JC would have obeyed, unlike Justin had he been there instead.
But he's thinking about Justin now, he's a few measly yards of raw earth and concrete from Justin, so he says, "I won't," and presses on.
When it does get ugly, it happens quickly. AJ's not the only one who knows to use the tunnels, and right now, everyone's the enemy.
Chris and D fire simultaneously. When the echo dies down, there is blood spreading into a shallow pool on the tunnel floor, and JC is holding his gun in white-knuckled hands.
"I'm sorry," he says, but to his credit, he doesn't falter when he has to step over the still-twitching corpses to follow Chris.
There are more, and they're all armed with tasers and nightsticks, and maybe they don't need to die, but they're vicious and angry, and Chris is angry, too.
He hasn't had time to be pissed at Joey for sitting on his goddamn inside contact for this long, for these long, fucking agonising weeks. But he will. His hand still aches, but he thinks he wouldn't mind hitting something. Pulling the trigger isn't enough; he wants to pound them to a bloody pulp, he wants to kick in heads, he wants to stomp them into mincemeat.
JC touches his shoulder, and he almost blows his head off, almost. "Don't fucking DO that!" he snaps, but JC doesn't jerk back.
"We'll find him, Chris," JC says. "We'll all be okay."
Thinking about Justin now, after dirty killing thoughts, is soothing like a cool drink. Justin is here somewhere. The odds are on their side.
"I'm coming for you, kid," he mutters, and JC smiles reassuringly at him.
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