Karmageddon

by

Sheffield

Disclaimer: these characters don’t belong to me; no copyright infringement is intended or money being made, this is fanfic.

Warnings: a little violence and a bad word or two.

Thanks to Techgrrl for the sterling beta, cliche eradication and comma-police work. All remaining errors, cliches and misplaced punctuation are mine.

Here’s the full list:

And the title? Came from another, similar, email. Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like a serious bummer.

"Heads up, people."

You didn’t need to have Sentinel hearing to take notice when Simon Banks made the announcement from the doorway of his office.

"We have a fax from the FBI: they believe a hit man is headed for Cascade. Get on to your snitches, keep an eye out for any leads, take a good hard look at anyone you think might be the target. I want this guy."

Simon passed out copies of the fax; half way down the page Ellison was already hitting the speed dial.

"Sandburg, where are you?"

"I’m in my office with two of my students: why?"

"Stay there. Lock the door. Do you know the students?"

"Yes. Jim, what’s going on?"

"Lock the door and I’ll tell you."

He heard his partner muttering to his students about his "macho mother-hen cop partner" and then the flimsy lock snicked shut. He should have made Sandburg get some decent security at his office. Memo to self: get Sandburg to safety, catch bad guy, buy lumber and a decent mortice lock...

"OK. OK. It’s locked. Now will you please explain what’s going on?"

"I’m on my way over. Don’t open the door to anyone but me, or for anything else - don’t go outside for any fire alarms, bomb threats, security checks... whatever. There’s a hitman headed for Cascade and there’s a chance you’re on his list..."

"Man, why is it always me?"

Jim was already in the truck and pulling out of the parking lot, cellphone clasped to his shoulder.

"Listen, Sandburg, I’m in the truck and I’m going to put the phone down so get on with what you were doing but leave this line open, OK?"

"Yeah, yeah."

Jim put the cellphone down on the passenger seat next to him and concentrated on driving. Ten minutes. What could happen in ten minutes?

Actually, to Sandburg, quite a lot.

So he kept his hearing focused on the cellphone and listened intently as his partner made a joke of the whole thing to the two anxious students, then launched back into whatever he had been talking to them about, some stuff about pre-Columbian burial protocols in Guatemala.

He pounded up the stairs and said loudly

"Sandburg. Open up. It’s me."

Blair opened the door and smiled broadly.

"See," he told his students, "what did I tell you? Macho cop mother hen."

"Is it safe for us to go now?" one of them asked anxiously.

"Yes: I apologise if I held you up, but better to be safe than sorry."

Sandburg looked critically at his partner and Sentinel and said gently

"Well? What’s up?"

"He’s a hitman and the FBI think he might be on his way to Cascade, although they don’t know his target. He’s good, Chief; never failed to take out his target after he’s taken the contract."

"OK, but what's that got to do with me? Why the mother hen overdrive?"

"His method is that he doesn't do the job himself; he subcontracts. Involuntary subcontractors. His last couple of hits got real ugly. He kidnapped the student daughter of a police lieutenant in Seattle and the two year old son of the head of a private security firm in Vancouver. And ordered them to do it. The two year old was returned safely after the hit was made; the father - the guy who did the hit - is in jail for life. The police lieutenant did everything by the book but it didn’t help him. The FBI couldn’t find his daughter and they couldn’t protect the target. The hitman took out his target with a car bomb that killed four innocent bystanders. And the cop’s daughter was dismembered and returned in pieces..."

He didn’t think Sandburg needed to know _all_ the details on the FBI alert; that the girl had been raped and tortured before she’d been killed, that her ordeal had been filmed and sold as a snuff movie, and that her father had eaten a bullet when the first of the tapes showed up in Vice.

"And I thought... well, if I were a hit man and did a bit of research into Cascade’s finest...."

"You’d come up with the fact that the Cop of the Year has a tendency to go into Blessed Protector Overdrive around his partner, and that said partner wanders around with a 'hostagesR'us' poster stapled to his back?"

Blair was laughing but he was taking the potential threat seriously.

"So what do you want us to do? Stay joined at the hip till you get this guy?"

"I thought ... safe house?"

He looked at the sardonic glare Blair gave him and moved seamlessly on "Or I’d take you home, pick up some stuff, and then you could stay at my father’s for a few days? He’s got decent security already, and he can afford to take on some more, short term."

Blair was laughing again.

"Oh man, don’t you watch TV? You have to go straight to the safe house - the bad guy is ALWAYS lurking round the homestead when you go back for your stuff."

Jim grinned back.

"Well we’re lucky this is real life and not TV."

When they were heading back to the loft, Blair was too quiet. Something was bothering him; something other than the potential threat to his safety from this unknown hitman. Jim said nothing. Blair was the talker: when he’d thought it through, he’d say it.

"Would you do it?"

"Chief?"

"Say worse came to the worst: would you kill someone? In cold blood? For me?"

"I don’t know," he said honestly. "It would depend."

"On what?"

"I don’t know. On who it was? And why someone wanted them dead? It’s not like I haven’t killed before."

"In self defence."

"Mostly. But covert ops... I could do it, if I had to."

"You don’t have to," Blair said quickly. "I’d die for you, you know? But I don’t think I could kill for you. It wouldn’t be right, not in cold blood. So just in case the issue comes up, let me make it clear I don’t want you to do it. If he gets me, and it’s a case of you having to kill someone to get me back, my vote is that you don’t. I trust you, man: you’d find me, sure, but don’t kill someone else on my account to do it, OK?"

"Now who doesn’t watch enough TV, Darwin? Don’t you know that people who make speeches about what should happen in the worst-case scenario are always sure to meet up with the worst-case scenario?"

He laughed as he said it, and Blair laughed in response, and neither of them said what they were really thinking.

"So, what does ARek mean?"

Blair was reading the FBI fax, trying to process the information.

"It’s just a name?"

"Yes, but is it 'Arek', like someone with a lisp saying the name 'Alec', or is it 'A-rek' as in 'I look like a wreck', or a train wreck? And why are the first two letters capitals but not the remainder?"

"Don’t know."

"Well, where did it come from? Is it some kind of FBI code name - the ARek project - or is it what he actually calls himself? I mean, if you phoned someone up and said 'My name’s ARek' you’d have to explain that the R was a capital too, you couldn’t get it from any pronunciation. Does the guy leave notes at the crime scenes or what?"

"l’ll check it out, Chief; it’s a good thought."

"Why don’t we head out to the station, and we can both check it out?"

"Oh no you don’t: you’re going to my father’s and staying there till I get this guy."

"Don’t go all macho on me, man. This is a serious mistake. I’m supposed to help you work, not sit around relying on some guy on minimum wage in a store-bought uniform to 'protect' me."

"Don’t go there, Sandburg. This isn’t open for debate."

Sandburg wiggled his eyebrows and cooed "I love it when you get neanderthal."

They pulled up outside the loft, still bantering good naturedly as they pounded up the stairs. And then suddenly Jim stopped, pushed Blair behind him and drew his gun.

"What?"

"Someone’s been here. I can smell them."

"Is anyone here now? Piggyback your hearing. Any heartbeats?"

Jim slowly let down his guard, his gun hand relaxing, the handgun pointing down to the floor.

"No, whoever it was is gone. Stay behind me."

Cautiously Jim unlocked the door and opened it.

The darts hit him in chest and neck and thigh and ankle and he heard Blair’s voice calling him as he fell into darkness.

* * *

He woke up with a pain in his neck so bad that he thought he’d been hanged. He breathed through the pain as best he could and then opened his eyes. Blood. Blood, Blair, something else.... He tried not to focus in on his sense of smell and the momentary panic receded. Despairingly he listened to the silence of the loft that confirmed Blair’s absence. He found he had been propped up on the sofa, his head had lolled to the side hence the stiff neck, and the room was filled with the soft white noise of a TV tuned to a dormant video. Something was wrong with his hand... he looked down and saw the video remote had been duct taped to his palm and, already knowing what he would see, he pressed play.

Blair’s face came into view, utterly furious, fighting a grip on his hair that held him turned to the camera. His mouth worked against the confines of the gag, but Jim couldn’t make out what he was trying to say. The camera pulled back and Jim saw himself, unconscious on the floor, and Blair, handcuffed and gagged and held firmly by someone in a hockey mask, someone large and anonymous and holding a knife to Blair’s neck.

Blair looked at Jim’s body on the floor and then at the camera and then Jim found himself pleading with the picture, zoning on the smell of blood...

"No, Blair, don’t..."

His partner nerved himself and then, as if in slow motion, threw himself forward onto the knife. Jim felt a bizarre flash of anger - what did Blair think he was DOING - and then steeled himself to look, really look, and gauge the damage. The knifeman pulled the blade - blood, but no dangerous damage - and then slapped Blair around the face a couple of times. The anthropologist took his chance, kicked out at the man’s groin and made a run for it, out of camera range.

Jim listened intently. He’d made it to the kitchen, knocked the phone off the hook and pressed 9... been grabbed before he could press any other numbers... fought - God, all this had happened while he’d been lying there in front of the camera like a dead fish on a slab. Blair had thrown something at his attacker... a cannister of tea, from the smell.

Scent! Blair was trying to give him a scent to follow. Blood, Blair’s blood, and Earl Grey tea. Blood and bergamot. He could follow that, to the ends of the earth if he had to.

Blair was dragged back into the camera range and pushed up towards the lens, growling furious complaints through the gag. Jim checked him out, feverishly cataloguing the signs he could detect through the videotape. Not a life threatening injury, bloody and painful but not serious. Adrenalin rush that was powering him through his escape attempt. Fury. That’s my Blair, he thought proudly. Then Blessed Protector Syndrome cut in. That’s my Blair, and some asshole walks in here, sets up half a dozen dart guns tripped by the door opening, and walks off with My Guide. Mine.

ARek had just become a walking dead man.

Blair looked around the room one more time but there was still nothing he could find that would help him. Cameras watched him, up high in the corners of the ceiling, out of reach. There was a mattress and some blankets on the floor, and a chemical toilet. And that was it. No windows, white walls and ceiling, a slightly soft surface that felt strange, weird pressure in his ears. Soundproofing maybe?

There was, of course, a door. A very stout, firmly locked, door, with a cut out, like a catflap, at the bottom.

He had travelled here in the trunk of a car, the trunk had opened and a blanket had been thrown over him, and then he had been bundled into here and the door slammed shut. He had managed to shake off the blanket, and then wriggle his body through his cuffed hands to get his hands round to the front so he could pull out the gag. His Swiss army knife was still in his pocket but he decided to hold off on trying to pick the lock of the cuffs until he had an idea of whether he was being observed or not.

The flap opened and a box was pushed into the room.

"I need your clothes. All of them. Down to your skin."

The voice came through speakers in the ceiling. He looked into the box. It contained a pair of coveralls and a key. He picked up the key and unlocked the cuffs but made no move to strip, instead muttering "Fuck you."

The lights went out.

"Light, heat, water, food... are rewards for co-operation. If you fail to co-operate you will be drugged and stripped anyway but the coveralls and blankets will also be withdrawn."

The lights went back on.

"Fuck it!" He started to undress.

"...And you’ve had no word from this ARek about what he wants, who his target might be?"

"Nothing, Simon. The tape just shows that Blair’s alive and that ARek’s got him, but there were no instructions, no threats, nothing. Dammit, this is all my fault! I knew he would target Blair, and I just walked him right into it..."

"Jim, cut it out. This isn’t helping Blair. You can beat yourself up later." When Blair is around to talk you out of it, Simon thought grimly.

"Hey, Ellison: package for you."

Major Crimes watched apprehensively as Jim cut the tape on the parcel. It was a big box... big enough to contain who knew what... a human head, say. Jim sat down abruptly. Simon looked over his shoulders and held up a boot, a shirt...

"His clothes. All of them."

Simon gently unpacked the box, transferring Blair’s shoes, pants, shirts onto Jim’s desk. His Swiss army knife was there too, along with his wallet and keys. Without comment, Simon added a pair of boxers to the pile and then took out a brown envelope and handed it to Jim.

Ellison slit the envelope and out fell a photograph, of a middle aged man that neither detective recognised. The only other thing in the envelope was a slip of paper cut from a magazine. It said "Tuesday 7pm."

"What’s that?" Simon asked, reaching for the little piece of paper.

"Our deadline," Jim said grimly.

Jim broke the handgun open and let the bullets fall into his open hand. He was immensely calm, now that it was time for action. Blank-brained and content, he cleaned the weapon, pocketed the bullets, and loaded the gun with a complete new set of bullets taken from a fresh pack.

He put aside his worries about his partner, he put aside his worries about what he was doing. This was how he had been trained; to separate out from himself and his fears, to lock them up in a box and leave them behind, focus only on the action he would take.

Lock-and-load completed, he stood up and walked out to find his target.

* * *

He works by remote control: doesn’t like to get up close and personal with his targets. Blair’s psychological profile of the killer was coming along nicely. Unfortunately that was the only thing that was. He sat, uncomfortably dressed in orange coveralls and no underwear, and tried to work out what he could do to help Jim find him when he had no idea where he was.

There is, he thought, nothing more boring than being kidnapped. Aside from the occasional moment of bowel-watering terror, there is nothing to do, nothing to watch, nothing to read, nothing to think about - except things that you don’t want to think about anyway. Kidnappers never locked you up with a week’s worth of marking, which would at least be a useful way to pass the time. On the dresser in his bedroom there was still that Vikram Seth novel Naomi had bought him five years ago that he’d never had the time to read. If he’d had two minutes to prepare, he could have brought that with him.

He paced a while but going commando in coveralls was really not to be recommended. Same problem with sit-ups. He tried a little yoga and the knifewound in his chest started to throb and a small brown stain appeared on the coveralls. Oh great. He assumed the lotus position, closed his eyes, and tried to get to that place where none of this would matter. Instead of his usual mantra he found his busy mind was thinking "I am not here, this is not happening." He squirrelled around that for a while, and eventually decided it was as good a mantra as any.

He slowed his breathing.

I am not here. This is not happening.

Breathe in.

I am not here.

Breathe out.

This is not happening.

The flap at the base of the door opened and a package was pushed inside. He opened up the sturdy cardboard box and found a portable TV and VCR, the battery operated kind you buy to take camping, if you’re the kind of person who goes camping with a battery operated miniaturised version of everything you’ve left behind to go camping in the first place...

The perp had taped a news programme. He felt himself go hot and cold as he watched it, watched the footage of the corpse on the gurney and his partner, Jim Ellison, Cop of the Year, being led away in handcuffs.

"Prominent Cascade businessman Earl Stephens was today gunned down in a bizarre motiveless murder by detective James Ellison of Cascade PD’s Major Crimes..."

And then there was white smoke coming from the vents and he was choking, falling into darkness...

"You OK?"

Bed. White ceiling. Antiseptic smell. IV tube leading into the back of his hand. Ah. Cascade General - your usual room Mr Sandburg? But the face looking down on him was...

"Jim!"

"No memory loss, then."

"Jim?"

"Maybe a little aphasia."

"JIM!"

"Definitely lost the power of rational speech. Ah well."

"J I M ! ! ! ! ! ! ! What the fuck is going on? You were led away in handcuffs for killing some guy..."

"Well, duh! We found the target, explained the situation to him, faked the hit and the arrest, and here we are. ARek returned you unconscious in the trunk of a car parked outside the station about half an hour ago."

"Did you get him?"

Jim’s eyes slid away to some obviously fascinating spot on the wall at the side of the bed.

Weird stuff in the Ellison/Sandburg household, chapter 147, Jim thought as he loaded this stranger into the passenger seat of his truck. Who are you and what have you done with Blair Sandburg? But there was no point saying anything. You don’t mess with someone who has just been kidnapped, anaesthetised, dumped in the trunk of a car, hospitalised and now released AMA. Jim knew that. Everybody knew that.

But on the other hand, when had Sandburg ever done this grey ghost schtick before? Even after Lash, even after Golden, even after the Fountain, for goodness sake, he’d always bounced around cracking jokes demanding to get out of the hospital. But this time he’d just sent for the forms, frowned at the nurses and said gently, "You know this is how it goes. Don’t hassle me, OK?"

And no one had.

He was good for that much, at least. The Ellison frown-of-death over Blair’s shoulder had protected his partner from three doctors, an administrator, and Simon, so far. But why wasn’t he bouncing? Sandburg always bounced.

The loft was dark and quiet. They went up in the elevator without speaking; what was there to say? Jim busied himself with make-work. Building the fire. Blankets. Tea. Lots of possibilities in tea. The whole boiling kettle finding teapot warming pot measuring out leaves waiting for water to boil ritual. Took up, oh, almost ten minutes.

He gave in, and said, "Uncle!"

The grey ghost who had replaced his partner looked up from his tea but said nothing.

"What? Come on, Chief, talk to me here."

Blair smiled thinly. "Well, that has to be a first. Stoneface Ellison wants to talk, and Bigmouth Sandburg doesn't? Hey, let's really weird everybody out, and I'll go to the station tomorrow, and you can go help Professor Davies with Anthro 202."

"Yeah, if you like. If Davies is the elegant blonde who got divorced last year?"

"Er, no, that's Eleanor Dereham; Stu Davies is fifty-five and smokes a pipe."

They fell silent. Blair sipped his tea and Jim studied Blair covertly, looking for clues. Blair sighed theatrically.

"You going to monitor my every breath till I confess all?"

Jim wouldn't have put it that way but, he realised, well, yes.

"OK, OK, uncle right back at you."

Jim composed his face to an expression of alert and, he hoped, intelligent interest.

"ARek. You stiffed him on the - albeit warped and twisted - deal, me for whatsisname. So he's still out there. And you just KNOW I'm a psycho-magnet. He'll be back"

Jim's face cleared. Oh, was THAT all. And then twisted up again in a complex picture of guilt when he realised he ought to have mentioned the arrangements to Sandburg.

"It's covered, Chief - there's..."

At this point a large, ski-mask-wearing, knife-wielding, presumably psychopathic bad guy came crashing through the skylight and ran down the stairs towards them, screaming "aaaaarghhhh!!!"

Jim's eyebrows went up a millimetre, he kicked the guy casually in the balls and took his knife away with an entirely too audible snap of the radius. Or was it the ulna.

He glowered menacingly at the psycho on the floor - who was still screaming "aaaaargh!", only now it had modulated from an inarticulate attempt to communicate bloodlust and rage into an inarticulate attempt to convey "Ow! You broke my fucking arm" - and said "DO YOU MIND?  I'M TALKING WITH MY 

P A R T N E R  HERE."

Sandburg froze, and then made that little snorting noise that meant he was on the verge of laughing, which was good, wasn't it?

"I was going to tell you" he offered apologetically, "but I hadn't got round to it."

Sandburg, now helpless in the grip of hysteria, nodded encouragingly.

"We had a stake-out team in place the minute we got you back. Neither of us was ever in any danger."

Sandburg slid off the sofa and lay on his back with his legs in the air, like an upturned beetle, and howled his appreciation between redfaced gasps for breath.

Jim thoughtfully cuffed the perp's unbroken wrist to the opposite ankle leaving him face down on the floor - well out of range of Sandburg - with no way up except to put his full weight on his broken radius. Ulna? Whatever. And listened to the embarrassed stake-out team making their way up the stairs.

And frowned.

After all, they'd been late, and slow, hadn't they?

"I hate sloppy work," he said meditatively. Sandburg was screaming with laughter now and he carried on manfully ignoring it. Sandburg was just...being Sandburg, he supposed.

by Sheffield

March 2001