[open] come on baby and rescue me

[aintnosmoke]

[Everything after the explosion is a blur, a hazy collage of barely-there fragments and blackness that just barely forms any kind of coherent series of events. Just about explains what happened and shit all else. Half remembers arguing with Jack — same shit different day — but it was more heated than usual. Remembers the explosion and yelling for Jack in the hope he'd get a response; crushed under slabs of rock and metal bars and his dumb ass still wants to know Jack's okay.]

[Must've blacked out, pain or blood loss or head trauma, who knows. Lights and an alien facility, doctors and agents he doesn't recognise. Bloody hands clawing at arms pinning him to the bed, tying him down. Voices talking about tests, procedures, results. All staunchly ignoring his questions and threats.]

[It took much too long for him to realise where he was, and by that point it was way too fucking late. They'd moved him to a secure room once staying entirely corporeal proved more than he could manage, some explanation about nanites reacting with his SEP enhancements that he didn't fully believe, but had no choice but to accept. He didn't understand what was happening to him; why he felt cold but like something just under his skin was burning. Why something in his chest lurched and rattled when he got too angry, why the pain made his body slip away from his senses, trying to make the feeling of being something so different to what he was make sense.]

[He couldn't control it, and anyone else who gave enough of a shit to come for him was probably already dead, so he didn't have much of a choice but to co-operate. For now, at the very least.]

Comments

[personalwar]

[ So this guy had been on Gabriel's radar even back during Blackwatch. Jack doesn't remember it ever coming across his desk, which means that it had been vetoed before it could even make it that far, and Gabriel had known better than to push the issue at that point. With their friendship on tenterhooks, it wouldn't have gone over well.

Gabriel does talk around the subject rather than starting yet another argument, and Jack can't help but appreciate it. They may not have been on the same page back then, but right now they have no choice but to be. ]

We're not Overwatch anymore. That's all done. Which means that we don't have to investigate through official channels.

[ Really, isn't this what Gabriel had always wanted? ]

[aintnosmoke]

Guess there's one upside to all this.

[He'd much prefer to have Overwatch's resources behind him, but not having to go through all the headaches of making sure things aren't against a bunch of rules that leave him hamstrung and useless? Maybe this time they can make a real dent in Talon. A quietly hopeful part of him thinking they might even be able to shut them down for good, but that's a thought for another time.]

Where'd Maximilien lead you?

[That's what's important right now, no time for hope and hypotheticals.]

[personalwar]

[ It's freeing for Jack too, to be able to operate within the shadows and outside of the law. Part of him had thought that it would be a difficult change for him to make after he'd done his best to keep to the straight and narrow for so long, but if anything, that had made becoming Soldier: 76 that much easier for him. ]

At first, it was just a lot of proxy businesses and fronts, ways to hide the sheer amount of money that he'd either stolen or laundered.

[ That alone had been disturbing enough to find evidence of, because money was often the most obvious sign of power. And to have that much of it meant this guy was basically untouchable. ]

I had to keep following the trail, and finally linked him to Talon. More than that, he's toward the top of their ranks.

[aintnosmoke]

[Toward the top of their ranks? That visibly throws Gabe. Maximilien had been... Well, he'd considered him as someone who might get a leg up after Antonio, but honestly he was bottom of the list. In hindsight, the fact that he was so good at covering his tracks compared to the rest of Talon should've tipped him off that he was more than just the money guy, but. Well, he had a lot going on.]

[Didn't help that there were so many restrictions on what he could do either. His lip pulls in a frown at that thought; at the fact that Jack managed to do something he couldn't just by being free of all that bureaucracy. It puts a bad taste in his mouth.]

Almost seems like you wouldn't have found that out doing things the old way.

[There's only so long he can keep biting his tongue. Jack should count his blessings that Gabriel kept quiet this long.]