the_vigilante | wake up or you'll wake up six feet down (rp for fortheportfolio)

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wake up or you'll wake up six feet down (rp for fortheportfolio)

"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.

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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.

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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.

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Ray snorts immediately, and now he tosses the rebar aside in earnest. "Right," Ray says, the fight slipping back out of him. "Kid, you don't kill me, one of your buddies is gonna. It's only a matter of time, and far as me or Blume is concerned, you'll be doing this goddamn city a favor."

He turns his back on Aiden, now, heading for another table, this one equally covered in cans and bottles. When he gets there, he picks up a bottle and shakes it before he uncaps and upends it. Only a few drops slide out, and he sighs. "Damn."

"What is your problem?" Aiden asks after a beat.

For all that he took the contract, for all that he would have killed Ray, no questions asked, if his conscience hadn't stopped him, he doesn't get it. So Ray pissed off a tech company, maybe he was indirectly responsible for the deaths of a few people, so what? He doesn't understand why Blume wants him dead for whistle-blowing, albeit a little violently, nor does he really get why Ray's apparently wishing for death for it. He's killed a lot more than eleven people in his almost fifteen years on the streets, never mind the fact that none of them were technically innocent.

They'll come back to the rest of the fixers in Chicago, later.

Ray puts the bottle back down with a thud, reaching up again to wipe water off his face. "You miss the part where I blew the lid on their little operation? And where I took out eleven people in the process? You read that contract, or you just see the number of zeroes on it and decide to go for it?"

He huffs out a breath, shaking his head and huffing out a breath. There's nothing like apology on his face, but some of the fire does ebb back. He doesn't really mean to be going at Aiden, here, when it is Blume he's so mad at, mad that they used him, him and Frewer and Rose all, and that he didn't see it coming until it was too late. "You got any idea about..." he begins - and then stops, because, "No, I ain't talking to you about this."

There's too much alcohol still in his system, making his lips looser than they should be. He's not about to go spilling his guts and secrets to some fixer who is, apparently, still just planning to kill him at the end of whatever this game is.

"I read the contract," Aiden snaps, scowling. For all that he plays himself off as just another street punk, for all that he is in a lot of ways, he's not an idiot. "What I don't get is, people you killed or otherwise, why Blume suddenly thinks it's the Chicago South Club. So, you made them look bad, maybe tanked their stocks for a couple of days, you don't try and have someone killed for that.

"And you don't try and kill yourself over eleven people," he finishes, some of the heat in his tone receding as something occurs to him.

Everyone handles taking a life differently, he knows, and doubly so if it's their first time -- he wasn't so cold, so desensitized, once upon a time. This is different, though, this feels like more than just grief, regret. The guilt is right, maybe, but, for how out of place his reaction feels to any degree, and how disproportionate Blume's absolutely is, he can't help but ask, "What's this really about?"

It doesn't help his suspicions that Ray started to get into -- something before he backed off of it.

"You do if they were collateral damage," Ray returns lowly - and then huffs out a sigh. Okay, apparently he is getting into this.

"You got any idea what Blume's up to, besides a general sense? I'm guessing not, or you wouldn't think they're just a tech company." Aiden can correct him if he does already know any of this, but Ray doubts it.

"Me and a couple of friends were working on something called ctOS. It's supposed to create a smart city, you know, keep track of the infrastructure and anything that could go wrong. What I realized is... what could go wrong. I pointed it out, they showed me the door. So I, uh..." He gestures, vaguely, flicking one hand open violently by way of boom.

"Yeah, I don't really do collateral damage," he answers, absently but still somehow bragging. When he wants to kill someone, he doesn't involve civilians -- or the cops, if he can avoid it. He doesn't need either of those things on the rap sheet he's slowly building.

Either way, a second or two after Ray continues, he shakes his head, not entirely able to get his head around that. "So -- what? They want the vulnerabilities there? Why?"

You're not helping, Aiden, and the look he gives him says as much. He didn't mean for their to be collateral damage, either. He just wanted someone to see the danger they had created - to do something about it.

"Fucked if I know," he returns immediately - but he does know. "Money, power, the ability to fuck over anybody they want whenever they want. You name it. Somebody up in that glass tower saw a potential there and decided to go for it, and they don't care who gets stepped on in the process."

That makes a little more sense. If they leave the vulnerabilities, then they can do whatever they want, like Ray said, and blame it on bugs in the code or hackers. Then they come out looking like heroes, when they 'fix' the problem, whoever they throw under the bus for the mishap the villain, and the cycle repeats. They've done it once already, if what Ray's saying is true. They made him the bogeyman.

There's just one problem, though.

"So, what happens when someone on the outside actually figures this all out and uses it for themselves?" What happens when someone gets inside the system and uses it for their personal gain and does a lot more damage? Which is exactly the point Ray was trying to make, with the blackout.

"And that, kid, was my goddamn fucking. Point." He punctuates his sentence by picking up the bottle again - only this time, he throws it across the warehouse so that it smashes on the floor somewhere behind Aiden.

He also stumbles a little under his own momentum, falling back against the table. "Whoa," he mutters.

Aiden doesn't quite flinch, but his fingers do tighten and relax on his arms, where he has them folded over his chest. A hum follows, an acknowledgement of Ray's point, and then he lapses back into silence, watching Ray as he thinks.

"Get your shit together," he tells him finally. "Get out of Chicago." Don't let the bastards get you down and all that.

Ray snorts. "Kid, I would fucking love to get out of this shithole. But those fuckers made good and sure they can find me anywhere I go." He gestures back over his shoulder. "I've got a microchip back there, like I'm some goddamned stray dog. I get anywhere close to their little receivers, I'll light up their boards like a Christmas tree."

"You do this shit for a living," Aiden points out.

If he can take down a good chunk of the East Coast and the Midwest with a few lines of code, Ray should be able to disable a microchip, he thinks. Maybe he's giving Ray too much credit, considering most of his experience with hacking lies in bad sci-fi movies and occasionally working his way around a security system, so he doesn't have to break to enter, but he doesn't think so. Causing a blackout on that scale seems suitably complicated and on the level with frying a microchip.

"Maybe if I had the right equipment, I could. Best I can hope to do right now is end up a vegetable when the thing goes up in flames and takes my brain with it." He pauses a beat. "And before you say anything, being dead's one thing. I don't wanna be rotting in some hospital sitting in my own shit and eating applesauce for every meal."

He figures Aiden would just point out that he's been committing very slow suicide for the last month.

"You're still not too far off," he shoots back, making a face. No, Ray's not a vegetable, but, "Think you could even piss in a straight line, right now?"

Ray immediately reaches down toward his fly like he's about to whip it out here and now. "Come a little closer and find out."

Fuck you, kid. And speaking of, as he takes his hands away and crosses his arms.

"Why the fuck are you here, anyway? You decided not to kill me, why come back and..." He gestures in the vague direction of the rain barrel, at a loss for what to actually say about it. Yes, he gets Aiden was trying to sober him up; he just doesn't know why.

Aiden flashes Ray an entirely unimpressed look. Whip your dick out and see how fast he shoots it off. When the expression fades, and at the question, he shakes his head. "I don't know."

Which is a lie, but he's not sure he wants to get into the fact that, beyond the hardass, white trash exterior, he actually has a heart, and again, that kicking Ray while he was down felt unfair, dirty. He's not sure it still wouldn't, even if Ray did get his shit together, either. He supposes it depends on how much of what Ray's told him so far is true, and he's definitely going to do a little digging, when they part company. If Ray played him, he'll hunt him down and kill him, and laugh all the way to the bank, but if he's actually the victim here -- well, he's not sure how this ends, then.

Ray's expression, abruptly, is a little too knowing, despite how glassy his eyes still are. "Yeah, well. I think you got more idea than you're gonna tell me, but that's your business, kid, and whatever ideas you've got chasing themselves around up there, you can just take me right out of them. I ain't your... whatever you think I am."

He has no idea what Aiden's motivations toward him could be - but he really just doesn't give a fuck at this moment.

"Yeah," Aiden decides after a minute and on a heavy exhale, some spell, somewhere, breaking. Maybe he shouldn't care. Maybe this isn't his problem, anymore, even if Ray's telling the truth, especially if. His conscience is clear.

That in mind, he drops his arms and starts towards the door. As he heads out, over his shoulder, he reminds him, "Figure it out. Get out of Chicago."

Ray doesn't respond to that verbally - but another empty bottle does go sailing into the wall as Aiden leaves, and he figures that says enough.

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wake up or you'll wake up six feet down (rp for fortheportfolio)

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