Aiden Pearce

"Yo, so you know that blackout, a couple of months back?" Aces starts. Aiden didn't catch his name, if it came up at all, but the guy's had more face cards show up in his hands than there are in the whole of the deck, so the moniker feels appropriate.

"Yeah, what about it?" Lamb asks, glancing up from where he's been frowning down at his cards. He's getting fleeced, but he hasn't noticed yet. No one at the table has, as far as Aiden can tell, but that's their problem, not his. He's not about to fill them in.

"Word on the street's dude who cause it is in the city, now," Aces answers, picking up neat stack of chips to add to the pot. "Call," he mutters, before, "Word is Blume's got it out for him, too. Fifty thousand to anyone who can bring him in -- or roll up with his head on a spike or some shit."

"This ain't TV," Blank puts in. Aiden hasn't been able to come up with a nickname for him, drawing a blank. The guy is, as far as he's concerned, completely unmemorable. "Blume's a tech company. You really think they're gonna post some bounty, like they suddenly the Club?"

"I'm just telling you what I heard, man," Aces protests, holding up a hand. Blank throws down his, folding, and Aces continues, "Ask any kid in the Yards. There's a fifty thousand dollar contract on the dude who caused the blackout."

"Guy was a desk jockey or something for them, wasn't he?" Lamb wonders, laying down the turn card. Aiden, more interested in the conversation than the game, barely glances at his own hand. Fifty thousand dollars would be nice, especially considering money's tight now that Nicky's had her baby, and as Lamb continues to point out, "Sounds like it'd be an easy job. Dude probably doesn't even own a gun."

If there's a price on his head, their guy has probably bought a gun since then, Aiden thinks, but the Lamb's assessment isn't far off, otherwise. Chances are he doesn't know how to use it, not like he does, so the hard part, then, becomes finding Blume's guy before another fixer, looking for an easy pay out, does -- or before he skips town. Aiden doesn't want to have to leave Chicago, easy paycheck or not, not when Nicky might need him.

"You in or you out, man?" Aces asks, breaking him out of his thoughts.

Aiden glances down at his cards, his attentions again cursory, then taps them into a pile on the edge of the table and sets them down. Without reaching for his share of the chips, he starts to stand. Fifty thousand dollars will make what he's leaving behind look like pocket change. "I'm out."

Behind him, a chorus of jeers start up as he heads for the door, but he ignores them. He's got bigger things to worry about now.

► ►
It takes him too long to piece it all together -- who he's after, exactly, where he is -- but somehow, somehow it's still him who gets to Raymond Kenney first. While it should feel like a Godsend, however, the check all but in the bank, it puts Aiden on edge, instead. For all he knows, Ray's a hell of a lot more prepared than anyone's been lead to believe, and he's walking into a trap. For all he knows, this is some CPD set up, to see how many would-be murderers they can bait into catching, and it's still a trap, albeit one that ends up with him arrested, rather than with a bullet in his head. Maybe. It really depends on how the CPD is feeling today or if Lucky Quinn has them cleaning house.

Either way, he doesn't go in the front door and he doesn't let the cameras catch him. He hugs the building, instead, slipping from one blind spot to another, so that Ray or whoever's watching doesn't see him, and works his way around the back. From there, he finds a way up to a window on the second floor, climbing a stack of pallets high enough until he can pull himself up onto the catwalk under it, and pries it open just enough to slip inside. He takes the time to catch the window, once he is, and close it again quietly. He allows himself a breath out then (so far, so good), and on the inhale flinches, the smell of alcohol hitting home like a sucker punch. It takes him a minute to remember to breath through it, and when he does, he edges towards the railing of the walkway, and looks down into the warehouse.

Someone is definitely sleeping in the proverbial bed, here, and like Baby Bear, Aiden finds him still there, who he imagines to be Kenney sitting at a table in the center of the room, apparently unaware. He's also the source of the smell of booze, Aiden notes, a mostly empty bottle and glass at the table, too. Aiden makes a face, disapproving, getting drunk when half of Chicago's looking for you a terrible idea, but starts down the stairs all the same. Ray doesn't seem to notice him, doesn't move up until Aiden has the barrel of his gun pressed up against the back of his head, and even then, it's only a minute thing, just him stiffening, straightening.

"Ray Kenney?" Aiden breathes at his ear.

"Yeah," he answers dumbly.

Humming, Aiden cocks the gun and -- well, he's not sure what makes him hesitate, really. Maybe it's how easy this all seems, even for what's supposed to be an easy contract. Either way, however, he's pretty sure he hears Kenney hiss, "Just fuckin' do it, man," and then, for whatever reason, he can't. He fucking can't. He bites out a swear of his own, then at a loss for anything better to do, decocks the gun and brings the butt of it down on Kenney's temple, instead. Mercifully, Kenney slumps into the table, and Aiden watches him for a moment, frowning, before willing himself to move, to head for the door.

He's fucking himself, he knows he's fucking himself, but he can't do this. He can't be someone's apparent suicide. He'll leave that to someone else.

► ►
Aiden's not sure what makes him go back any more than he's sure what made him leave, but the next night, he's back at the warehouse he found Kenney at. He goes in the back again, this time hoping not to be seen from the street rather than by the cameras, it still smells like booze when he lets himself in, and Kenney is still unconscious -- or is unconscious again, considering the bottle and glass have been swapped out for what looks like two empty six packs. Either way, Aiden wonders if Kenney isn't trying to kill himself, either by drinking himself to death or waiting here for someone else to find him, when someone already did, and that disgusts him more than the smell of booze did, last night.

He's tempted for a minute, then, to just fucking leave Kenney here, to the suicide he's too much of a coward to even do himself, and he turns to head back towards the stairs. He stops when his eyes fall on a nearby drum, filled with what looks like water, and all at once, he has a better idea. Marching back to Kenney, he fists a hand in his hair and pulls, trying to drag him back to consciousness or at least out of his seat. No matter his reaction, though, one thing is sure -- Ray's about to get a nice bath in the form of Aiden dunking him.

"Get up," he hisses, regardless, belatedly.

To say that renovating the Bunker has been an experience would be an understatement.

They've been lucky, to a certain degree, Aiden thinks, in having Blume come before them and lay the groundwork, figuring out the backbone of the convoluted plumbing and electrical necessary to keeping everything working when the whole thing moves, and the fact Ray actually knows what he's doing where he doesn't, but it's still taken time. He and Ray have still had to stop and rethink on more than one occasion, had to work something out with Nudle's help, a hundred different windows open on the big screen in the heart of the Bunker, or either one of them just calling it quits, period, for a few days, to go about their daily lives. It's been a challenge, all, but they're making progress. The bathroom is finished, with a working shower, now, and the kitchen's coming along. He and Ray have finished one section of the cabinet work, and there's a full-sized fridge and microwave, and --

Well, happy with it or not, it takes Aiden until Christmas fucking Eve to realize that a turkey's not going to fit in the microwave, no matter how impressive it is, and that, in lieu of presents, none of them really in need of anything, he was going to cook and he needs to figure something out. And that's how the Bunker ends up with an electric range, set up in the middle of the would-be kitchen, that as far as Aiden could drag it on his own, and there no real place for it, in between the counter tops, yet. He'll apologize for it later, if he has to, he'll make Ray help him move it. For now, however, it's not in the way of the fridge or the path up to it, and it's not like there's anyone around to pass judgement, at the moment, anyway, so there it stays. He's more concerned with the groceries he still needs.

He heads out again, that in mind. When he returns sometime later, it's with a bag of groceries under one arm and a twenty pound turkey, overkill for the three of them but what he's used to buying, this time of year, under the other. He heads for the haphazard kitchen, either way, planning on setting them down and then going back out for the couple of other bags he still has, out in the car.

The clock on the dash reads 3:59am when they cross the state line into Nevada, and save for the grumbling of the engine of Ray's truck, and the occasional jangle of metal from the thing that he and Tobias have been putting together as it lists side to side whenever he manages to catch a pothole just wrong, all is quiet. In the back, just barely visible in the rear view and only if he sits up straight, stretches, Clara is asleep on the floor, one of Aiden's coats draped over her as a makeshift blanket; Frewer, nearby, is unconscious, too, though Aiden suspects that has more to do with whatever pills he downed earlier than anything else. Ray, beside him in the passenger seat, is asleep, too, for all that he knows, their conversation having whittled away to nothingness some half an hour ago, and Aiden glances over him briefly, before returning his attentions to the road.

They've been driving for days, now, up from Oklahoma City and a Blume data center there, then west towards San Francisco, where apparently the Bellweather is alive and well, despite Aiden having given the proverbial dynamite to destroy it to Ray, sometime after Damien. There's a brief stopover planned, somewhere in the desert, for the bones of the beast in the back, but there's still miles to go before and after, both, and if there's anything he's learned in the last several decades of driving for a living, being behind the wheel, no matter how long, gives a man time to think. The whole wee hours of the morning thing doesn't really help -- nor does the fact that, for all that the four of them might be the only living souls for miles, now, the truck has become sort of a liminal space. It lends itself to an emotional review of the last two years, and he glances at Ray again, that in mind.

He wonders, then, if he knows -- if Ray really knows how much their friendship means to him. He knows he's not the best at showing it, for all that he tries to hide behind his little black baseball cap, but it means something to him that Ray calls him brother. It feels like it means something to Ray, now, too, for all that Aiden's half-sure it wasn't anything at all, at the start, just the grown-up version of one guy calling another dude or bro, and even two years later, it still stings in the best way, every time Ray says it. He needs to be someone's brother, and after Nicky and Jacks --

Blowing out a quiet breath, he shakes his head faintly and tries to put the thought out of mind, but they've been driving for days, now, and being behind the wheel at this hour is a black hole that pulls everything back to it. By the time the clock on the dash reads 4:13am, he's given up, given in to it, more, and on a whim but quietly, he starts, "Back in Chicago, with everything going on with Damien, you could've left. You could've slipped out of town while the cops were on me, and sent me the virus to get the ghosts out of your machine when you'd found somewhere to hole up for a little while. So, why'd you come back?" A beat. "Why'd you really come back?"

He suspects he knows the answer, it all floating around in his head along with his feelings on Ray calling him brother. He also suspects Ray won't actually answer, for all that he has to be asleep, right now, but well, maybe he hasn't so much given in, after all. He'd love to thank Ray for having his back, for being family, but he's never really been good with the mushy stuff. That was always more Nicky's thing, and she's more than the thousand and some miles between them away from him, now, so this will have to do. At least, maybe, he can get all this shit off of his chest, even if Ray isn't conscious of any of it.