thecapitol | I'm coming up on infra-red.

Entry tags:

I'm coming up on infra-red.

Who| Wesker and Black Tom
What| Keeping that peace
Where| Peacekeeper HQ
When| Post-Crowning
Warnings/Notes| Wesker and it's Black Tom. In the same room. Do you need more warning?

For all his talk, for all the Capitol's flowery speeches, Wesker was a Peacekeeper only in the sense that he received a paycheck from Peacekeeper HQ. He did not investigate crimes. He did not make arrests.

He enjoyed neither donuts or burnt, two-day old coffee.

He was something different. Something special. A precision tool, for use in select situations. (When the breaking of bones just wasn't enough.)

As such, he often had time to spend. Time to listen. To watch. To learn.

And with the ready access provided by his position, he could go seemingly anywhere. Even if the Monitoring Department, with its banks of silent screens, watching unblinking over the city seemed an odd choice. The odd shoplifting compliant, the occasional scuffle aside, the Capitol was not a place of petty crime.

Still, he watched. As silent and steady as another piece of office furniture.

Only the slow tracking of his head to follow the ant-like figures across the screens the only movement he made.

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Like Wesker, Tom's found that the information is by far the best part of being a Peacekeeper. He has eyes over the entire city, and over the next few weeks he spends as much time watching his coworkers as he does the citizenry. He's sure, naturally, that they're doing the same to him. Tributes don't become Peacekeepers if they don't have at least some eye on the future.

"The way you're watching that screen, someone might think you're eyes deep in a rugby game, lad."

It's only been a few days since Tom's reached the same position Wesker has - a Peacekeeper and a Mentor - and yet the way Tom carries himself it's as if they've always occupied that same small rung, with only Kevin to accompany them (and him having been shuffled off to the marketing department, where his penchant for business jargon seems better appreciated). If anything, it might seem as if Tom wants to hold himself above Wesker, and is holding back not out of respect but out of some lip service towards good etiquette.

Tom uses his cane to walk over to one of the chairs in the command console and take a seat. He has a mug of coffee, which he's had made fresh because like hell is he going to drink the swill they had in the pot ever the weekend. He leans back.

"Mind sharing what's got your attention so?"

Wesker straightened with a deep inhale, head turning from the screens at Tom's voice and watching him instead as the man brushed past - inviting himself in. It was the sort of behavior that Wesker would take from others as stupidity, some foolish desire to kick at a hornet's nest, or a complete lack of self-preservation; but from Black Tom Cassidy....

They were cut from too similar a cloth for Wesker to take it such face value.

"It reminds me of home. Of the time I spent doing just this, at the end."

Tom might not have been chosen, as he was, but he was clever.

"Watching the devastation around you as that disease wreaked havoc. That sounds like a cynical comparison to make to our lovely city here."

Not, Tom thinks, an entirely inaccurate one. Working as a Peacekeeper, in a short time alone he's uncovered plenty of flaws in the security systems, ones he hasn't chosen to disclose yet. The people of the Capitol are not taught to think critically, and the Districts are woefully lacking in education. A more finessed mind would find the loopholes over time, but they've remained unexploited.

Tom's sure Wesker's aware of some of them too.

"Perhaps you've seen something I haven't."

"If one thinks of that way, yes," Wesker replied in an easy, low drawl, his broad shoulders rolling in what would have been helpless shrug from anyone else. ('Helpless' was not a term anyone typically used in any fashion to describe Wesker.) "I was recalling how much I learned simply by taking some time to watch and listen."

The things T had been capable of when given free range had been breathtaking -- it almost made the end of the world worth it. (Would have, if he'd been able to complete his work. He was certain.)

His head tipped, red and gold slanted toward Tom.

"What have you seen?"

"When I was a lad I was too impulsive. Would that I could go back and tell myself to stop and observe instead of just barreling ahead."

Tom doesn't seem unnerved at all by Wesker's strange eyes; if anything, the occasional physical marker out of the ordinary makes Tom feel somewhat at home, like he's dealing with mutants and superhumans again instead of normal humans. Mutants have always done better among their own kind, and though Tom has no great ideologies about the quirks of his genetics, most people like him are more at ease among others that wouldn't be subject to typical human biases.

"I asked you first," Tom says, lip twitching into a bit of a smile, as if this were a playground game. "But since you asked. I've seen quite a lot of graffiti in the city that isn't appearing on the cameras. It's almost like people are aware that there are limits to our surveillance."

So Tom had, but Wesker wasn't the type to stick his neck out when the rewards were so uncertain. He waited, silent and unmoved, until Tom spoke again.

"Interesting," he said. "You don't think it's coincidental, and yet they remain, uncovered. Have you not brought your suspicions to our superiors?"

He purred the last, the emphasis in how coolly it drew between them. A careful, calculated testing of the water.

"I'd like to be entirely certain of someone's guilt before I bring them in for questioning. After all, that's the luxury of all these cameras, isn't it?"

It's not because Tom gives a damn about accidentally screwing someone over. It's because he doesn't want to look bad crying wolf.

"I may, at some point, suggest a quiet reorganization of our camera system."

"And if one were to want a truly private moment with someone dear and beloved, it would be convenient if such places still existed," Wesker added softly.

He proposed it as a lover's tryst, not because he believed Tom worried about such things, but because it was too seditious even for Wesker to say aloud otherwise.

And because he didn't trust the new victor anymore than Tom likely trusted him (if he were as smart as he appeared.)

"Is that what you think they're doing? Having a good shag?" Obviously people aren't using the blind spots for that, but it's an entertaining theory that both of them know is quite fallacious (~~and phallacious~~). "Well, I suppose some people like privacy more than Molotov and I do."

He takes a sup of his coffee, using both hands because one of them - the one with the mutilated fingers - doesn't have much dexterity anymore. "Now your turn. What have you noticed?"

"Statistically, some must be," Wesker replied dryly, lip curling at one corner in an amused sort of sneer. "It's natural law."

If it existed, it had been bent, somehow, somewhere, by someone to scratch their specific itch.

Then, for a moment, he went silent; the space between them filled only with the gentle hum of machinery and the noisy pull of liquid from Tom's cup as if he were considering whether or not to share to turn.

And he was, partly.

Mostly he was waiting for Tom to finish.

When the room had quieted to just the buzz of the computers, then he reached out and flipped a switch, and the sounds of the street poured in. A flurry of conversation, clacking footsteps and jangling jewelry. The bustle of life.

"It's more than just blind."

A woman barked at her Avox - 'hold the bags higher, don't bounce them!' - and then they disappeared out of sight and her high, tinny voice dropped away as abruptly as if Wesker had turned the sound off again.

But he hadn't moved, and the rest of the busy street continued to play on for them.

He looked sidelong at Tom.

It takes Tom hardly a moment to notice what Wesker's talking about. He raises his eyebrows slightly, then lets off a cool whistle that, coincidentally, helps cool the coffee held to his lips.

"So it is." He twists his chair to his computer and pulls up his own file of the same footage. "I presume you've been tracking who's been going there and with whom?"

He would be disappointed if Wesker weren't. There are few people here who seem to have their priorities right and basic common sense.

"One needs a hobby," Wesker replied easily, with all the enthusiasm of a man who might have been collecting stamps rather than traitors to his government.

He shifted, just slightly, to watch Tom's screen.

"Most seem coincidental, though I have noted a few repeat visitors."

Tom can appreciate a little detachment, and he looks at the footage with the same dispassionate interest, one of a shared idle hobby that hides an actual vicious intent, a vindictive hunger to see others suffer.

"Anyone of interest?" He takes another sip of coffee and starts to download the footage to an external drive so he can look it over from his Suite.

Wesker could guess which end Tom intended his means to get him to. He'd proved himself time and again to be self-serving as he himself was. But whether the man had a preference to the decor... he had still to work out.

And since Wesker was firmly on the side that saw the Capitol writhing in its own bloody excrement, he had reason to be cautious.

"None I would be comfortable naming at the moment." Folding his hands behind his back, he canted his head - a considering gesture. "If the hand were to be played too soon, I doubt there would be opportunity for a second round."

By contrast, Tom doesn't care one way or another for his surroundings. His spitefulness would like to see the Capitol cowed and begging him for mercy for the indiginities he's suffered at their hands, but he can't find it in himself to root for the rebels when they strike him as utterly incompetent. Let them cancel each other out, as far as he's concerned, so long as he and Molotov and Arya rise above the occasion.

"Point taken. I'm sure I'll find some noteworthy clips when I review the tapes myself." He drums his fingers on the desk. "I think it's obvious that it isn't just rebels from the outside nibbling at the city's toes."

"Is it ever?" Wesker mused, head canting to one side, mouth pursing bemusedly. "It's always when you're already preoccupied with the neighbors trying to sneak over your back fence that the landlord turns up on your doorstep with a molotov cocktail and an eviction notice."

And then that the dead came slouching down the street, in Wesker's case.

"The world never goes quietly."

"Has that ever happened to you? I haven't had relations that bad over a flat in many a year." Tom chuckles and returns to watching the cameras. "Few things do, Mr. Wesker. And those that leave easily are hardly worth registering."

He toggles with one of the viewing functions and zooms in on a building with one of the screens.

"I heard that a few months back all the research buildings were being tagged with foreboding messages. Do you remember anything about that?"

"The infected were the least of our concerns in the beginning," was all he said, taking a slow step closer, boots a whisper against the carpet. "Before everyone truly understood what was happening."

Government sanctions, threats of lawsuits, competitors circling like carrion birds all ready to tear free their piece of the empire Umbrella had built.

There had been a great satisfaction in seeing how many changed their tune when they realized Umbrella was the only one suited for survival in the new world. So much sniveling, so much begging.

"Idle vandalism at the time. But given recent events, it makes one wonder who knows more than their telling." His thumb tapped against the heel of his other hand, a second heartbeat. "The records should still exist."

"I imagine they weren't the greatest concern until the end. Nothing drives the human race to devour itself more quickly than a specter does." He clicks a few things on the computer.

"You've worked with the science department here, haven't you? Or is that something they just dangled in front of you and never followed through on?" Tom strokes at his beard, perfectly trimmed as always, and leans back in his chair, mulling over some ideas. "Were you part of the medical team when all those viruses were released?"

"They weren't released," Wesker said, a simple purred correction.

A small distinction - release verses escaped - but an important one in Wesker's opinion. A release could have been spun, handily shifted away to a convenient target, and he could have respected them for their ingenuity, but to miss it entirely when it was wriggling out from under their own noses....

"My experience was of use to them then, and again during the xenomorph escape."

"Oh? Escaped, then? Are you certain that it wasn't something more sinister?" Tom generally assumes the most sinister of his foes and employers, because it's the way he himself thinks, and it always leaves him more fortified against a doublecross than he would be to take things as they appear.

"Tell me of the xenomorph escape. That was long beyond my time here, and so many of the records have been...altered."

"If it had been intentional, one assumes there would have been more made of it then attempts to make it disappear as quickly and quietly as possible," Wesker replied, head cocking into a thoughtful cant. "They didn't even try to blame our mysterious rebel friends."

There was a disappointment in the way he said it. For the opportunity missed, even if he lulls himself to sleep with images of Snow's bloodied corpse.

"The Xenomorph, however, they wouldn't have been able to hand off. I wasn't present for the initial rash of bad--" Midword, Wesker was cut off, an page breaking into the room. A cool voice, calling him away.

His eyes rolled up toward the speaker, flush in the ceiling, then back down to Tom.

"It seems duty calls." Hands unfolding from behind his back, he ducked his head, magnanimously. "Some other time, Mr. Cassidy."

Tom frowns a bit, unhappy to let the story end there, but he and Wesker work together. There will be plenty of opportunities in the future to pick the man's brain.

"Aye. Keep the devil on your left, lad. I'll man the station here."

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I'm coming up on infra-red.

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