Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There were two guards, each standing at a cell door. Severo alongside his insignificant brother. They stood still and unmoved, despite the two delirious werewolves in one of the cells demanding to be let out.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Araya marched to the middle of the room, hands on her hips all sassy-like.

"Well?" she barked to the smaller son, an angry fire in her eyes. "I need a moment alone with Severo."

He hesitated, but after she made shooing motions with her hands, he grabbed his gun and fled the room. Severo turned to his mother, but there was suspicion gleaming in his eyes.

"Que pasa?" He crossed his arms across his huge chest. Something about the way Araya stared blankly back at him told Severo that Araya hadn't understood what he'd said.

But that was impossible, he thought.

"I need the key," she said simply, stretching her hand out palm-up. When Severo hesitated, she shrieked something in Spanish at him that sounded like she was counting to three.

Fumbling with the key and trying to hurry, as if he would be put in time-out if she reached three, Severo handed it to her. To his eye, he pressed the key into his mother's palm. If he had looked any harder, he would have seen the flash of metal as it slipped right through her hand, which was just an apparition, and falling into the dirty, outstretched fingers of Mitch Rapp.

"I'm going to have someone else watch these cuatro," she said, as if trying to squeeze all the Spanish numbers she could into her vocabulary. "It's such a boring job, Severo, and I need you doing more. I'll watch them, if you want to go and make sure there aren't any more filthy dogs like these crowding the streets outside?"

Severo nodded. Stepping past his mother, whom he did not notice lacked a shadow, he slammed the door to the cell hall behind him.

Mitch collapsed in exhaustion, his clenched hands going slack and dropping the key. He slumped against the bars, his skin gray, his eyes glazed and unfocused with a hue of silver to them. After grabbing the key and unlocking the door, she tried to haul Mitch to his feet, but he was too heavy.

"Mitch," she hissed, casting a fearful glance at the hall door like it would burst open any second. "Mitch, what's wrong? Was it the hallucination?"

"Tired..." Mitch whispered, breath heaving. A drop of sweat slid down his forehead and he stared groggily up at her. "See black...and white."

"What? You're seeing in black and white?" She gave her head a shake and was successful this time in dragging him upright. He steadied himself on the bars of the cell, but his knees shook. "Mitch, I can't deal with three loopy guys twice my weight."

Mitch nodded, steeling himself and taking a step. He clutched onto the bars for dear life as he walked, following Cleo to the other cell.

"Let's go," she said. Gavin and Andre jumped to their feet, apparently got vertigo, and nearly bashed their skulls together as they tripped and fell.

"I'm okay, I'm okay," Gavin promised, scrambling to his feet. He glanced at Mitch and his eyebrows jumped. "You, my good man, do not look okay, however. You good?"

Mitch tried to nod. But the room was swirling, his knees were buckling, and everything was very much still sapped of color.

Except for red. He didn't miss a smear of the stuff on Gavin's head just underneath his hairline, some stripes on Torres's plaid shirt on the upper half of his body, and the color on Cleo's lips.

He had always had a weak gag reflex, he thought as he tried to follow his friends to find Hugo. Since the accident, he had only thrown up once, and that had been at the hospital. Good old meds. It had burned his throat like lava, and it had taken him nearly a week to talk again.

Now it felt surreal as he watched vomit spew out between his fingers, his knees giving out. It felt like he was watching his own life like TV, watching his friends pull him upright and drag him along.

Because there was nothing to distract him from the burning. His throat, stripped of any and all protection and nearly paralyzed, screaming at him to drink water. The blistering acidity melting him into a thick, bubbling pile, making him want to toss his head back and scream.

Though he could hardly move, he wasn't unconscious. His brain was just in another place, tap-dancing in a different plane of existence.

He remembered walking to the van, his feet finally obeying him. But he didn't have any sense of up or down, and had leaned heavily on Gavin. He remembered driving back, staring numbly at the little red dot blinking on the computer, signaling Hurley would be very pissed when they got back. He remembered Gavin talking to him, trying to sign with him, even, but he remained a blank NPC.

When other colors finally began coming back to him and he became grounded where his feet were, he was standing and facing Cleo, who was snapping in his face. He nearly jumped and took a step backwards, eyes darting to take in the landscape around them.

They were at a gas station, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by small, shallow hills. Based on the signs around him, they were still in Mexico.

"Where are we?" Mitch whispered, coughing.

"We're in Mexicali," Cleo said. "Close to the border."

Mitch narrowed his eyes and spread his hands. What are we doing?

"Getting on the road to look for Hugo's brother to see if he can lead us to the Omega." Cleo sighed, pursed her lips, and gave her head a disapproving shake. "We're going AWOL."

Mitch's jaw dropped. Little alarm bells rang in a small part of his brain, but he swallowed it back. He winced as he felt the awful post-puke burn, knowing it'd make his voice even raspier for the next few days. 

He knew disobeying Hurley wasn't just bad. It was dooming their future careers. He could see himself and Gavin breaking the rules in a heartbeat, but not the others. Something had to have happened, something he wasn't aware of.

Hurley thinks we're monsters, he realized. They want to prove themselves, no matter how much they know he's right. We are monsters.