Chapter Text
The culprit: John McCoy, 44, Vesper-Revacholian, pulls out his gun and fires. The movement is sudden and fluid, well-practiced, calculated. There's no room for error. If it were a performance instead of a murder, he would've earned a standing ovation. Instead his applause is the single clap of his gun.
The victim: Percival Gallagher, 38, black market arms dealer, takes a shot to the forehead. He doesn't have any time to react, halfway to his own gun, eyes rolling in the back of his head. He slumps and stumbles onto the floor, limp, useless, almost instantly dead.
The witness: Guillaume Bevy, 41, radio personality and true crime reporter. Pulled behind John McCoy half a second before the shot, he is the unwitting target without even realising it. This will change soon. His shout is equal parts alarm and dismay: Alarm, because what the fuck, you just shot a man; and dismay, because, what the fuck, do you have any idea how valuable his info is? He doesn't notice…
…The second witness: An unidentified person of indeterminate gender, cloaked in shadows, cursing and aiming a gun down from the fire exit. John McCoy hears the voice floating down to them. Response is immediate: Again, pull Guillaume Bevy behind him as he turns; again, aim, shoot, no hesitation allowed. The bullet ricochets and misses (it's always harder to aim up than down, and the angle is awkward), John curses, another gunshot snaps in the air. Hits its mark, almost—would have if Witness Two hadn't fumbled the ball, or if John McCoy hadn't pulled himself and Guillaume to the side. Instead it grazes John’s arm, just barely, sparking blood.
John aims and fires again. Misses. Three bullets for three chambers and he has to reload. By the time he does, discarding spent cartridges, shoving new ones in one by one, Witness Two—graduated to Culprit Two—is ascending the fire escape, fleeing.
“Shit,” John says, firing again. It misses, bounces. He almost throws his gun to the ground but puts it away instead. A few fast paces are made to the fire exit, close enough to grab the ladder before aborting midway through to return to Guillaume in a rush. “God fucking damn it, Bevy. I told you we shouldn't have come here.”
“What the fuck was that?” Guillaume demands—no longer focused on the dead man in the doorway, but pointing up at the fire escape. It's dark and wreathed in shadow, and anybody who hadn't been standing there as witness wouldn't be aware whatsoever of a shooter in the midst. Then he points at the dead man, remembering himself, and adds, “Is he dead?”
“Probably.” Grabbing Guillaume, John pulls him to the door. They step over the body, John breathing a quiet “Excuse me”, then they're tucked away inside, door closed tight, corpse shoved out into the alley. In this moment, Guillaume is astonishingly aware that he’s graduated from witness to becoming an accessory to murder, and he’s just going to go along with it.
John braces his body by the door, checking his gun. In the pale light, his face is sculpted and dark, eyes sharp with attention. It's hard to see John McCoy, usually so composed and mild-mannered, beneath the heavy stubble and the wild eyes. “Find what you're looking for so we can get the hell outta here, Bevs.”
Guillaume already is. It's a musty office building mostly for dealings than anything, record-keeping, names of clients. One would think that such information is a bad idea to have in such a place. The reality is, the names are obscured and ciphered, the purchases masked by the restaurant this place masquerades as. Guillaume’s been looking into this place for a while, and especially into how it informs the RCM, so to be here now with an RCM officer is…
“Shit,” John says, shoving the barrel closed. “Bevy, I only got four bullets.” Always Bevy or Bevs, never Guillaume, never G-Bevy, oddly impersonal to both his career and his personal life. He's never been able to figure out why. That's not important.
What is important: “Only four?”
“Including the three I got loaded.” He's got his ear to the door, listening, and seems to hear something to incite alarm: The grip on his gun shifts, eyes frantic as he looks around. “Is there another gun in here? No? What the fuck kind of arms dealer is this guy?”
“Here.” Guillaume finds a breechloaded pistol on the desk and sets it down. Doesn’t know guns enough to know how many bullets it can hold, but knows well enough to know that this gun—like John’s—are illegal in Revachol during times of peace. Internally, he's cursing himself, over and over: Should have bought some fucking bullets. Should have bought some fucking bullets. “I don't know if it's loaded.”
“That’s yours now.” Instead of taking up the weapon, John circles around, grabbing the edge of the desk, and pushes it: With Guillaume’s help, adrenaline pumping through his veins, the desk wedges the door shut. Guillaume resumes grappling though the folders, plucking a few seemingly at random to shove into his shoulder bag. The door bangs and strains: Guillaume jerks away with alarm.
John looks around then starts for the opposite door, the one that leads to the lobby. “Follow me,” he says, and Guillaume does, grabbing the pistol and keeping it in his hand all the while.
Into the lobby—Seolite restaurant, no customers despite always being open, unknown despite being in the heart of the city. No one knows that it exists—John charges several steps to the front door. Their pursuers haven't thought to circle around, though the five who are there get up to their feet, weapons at the ready.
John shoots two of them before they can—a woman in the chest, leaving her gagging and bleeding, blood spilling out of her mouth; a man in the neck, stumbling back onto the table before falling over. He grapples at his throat, trying to staunch the bleeding. An employee screeches and runs—John’s gun briefly jerks to follow him, decides it's not worth it, and aims its last shot in another man’s stomach.
The man recoils, hand clenching his belly, half-bracing himself against the table. In the time it takes John to empty his gun, two shots have rung out from the other end, and Guillaume has yet to shoot a single one. Instead he's ducked down behind a booth, gripping the gun tightly in his hands, half-crawling to the other side to get a better angle. He hears John snap out a curse before collapsing down beside him, the sharp scent of blood joining him as he empties his gun and loads his last bullet.
“The blond woman’s a sharpshot,” he says through grit teeth—glancing over, wetness flows thick and heavy down his arm, stark against the black leather. “I’ll take her. You shoot the guy by the door. Hurry, she's approaching—”
High heels coming closer to the danger, fast and snappy, Guillaume doesn't have time to let himself think. From the other side of the booth, he peeks, makes to shoot—
Another gunshot pierces his ears. He flinches away from the bullet and pulls back, nothing at first and then a sharp, burning pain against his cheek—he hadn't peeked out as much as the man expected him to, probably, or wasn't the person he expected to peek at all—and then there's an otherworldly shriek behind him.
When he turns, the world’s twenty shades brighter, and the woman’s half-buckled to the ground, grabbing at her leg, so apparently overwhelmed by the sheer pain that she can't stand up straight or even think about using her gun. John pulls his knife out of her thigh and stabs again, twists, and wrenches it out before grabbing her as she doubles over to use as a human shield. He stands and aims his gun at the man beside the door, woman clenched against his chest, one of her hands on his arm, the other reaching for her leg. The agony is so immense her mouth is parted in a silent scream.
Guillaume, looking back from behind the booth, realises that the attention is on John this time, not him—John is the real threat, here, after all. Taking a deep breath and bracing himself, he lifts up his gun and takes aim, just like he's practiced, just in case—just like he's practiced, just in case—