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last01standingTitle: World Behind Windows
Rating: PG-13ish
Disclaimer: I can lay no claims on DA, SPN or Life on Mars
SPOILERS: DA pilot, SPN through season four, plot premise taken from Life on Mars (UK)
Summary: Logan gets shot. That’s when things get strange.
Notes:For those of you who know LoM, it might be of interest that Logan is Sam Tyler, Dean is Gene Hunt, Bobby is Hyde, Lillith is the Test Card Girl and Sam Winchester’s disappearance has something to do with this whole mess.
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11
World Behind Windows
Seven
Winchester panics.
He combs every inch of the hotel, knocks on every door. He pulls out an EMF meter and scans for supernatural interference. He starts making a plan of attack, a methodical approach to combing the city that would have made Eyes Only proud.
Logan... Logan takes a different approach. He looks in his wallet. He hates himself for it. This is what the Pulse did to people. He doesn’t trust anymore. He can’t. He is suspicious of everyone--even a ten-year-old boy.
All of his cash is gone. He shakes his head and reminds himself that this is no ordinary boy, that this boy is a soldier. That he is trained to fend for himself. “Dean, the kid was a runaway.”
Winchester spins around to look at him. “So?”
“So,” Logan continues. “So you were talking about getting him home and he got spooked and took off.”
“Son of a bitch,” Winchester hisses and kicks at the wastebasket by the door. “What kind of place would let a kid like that out in the snow? I mean did you see him? The hair? The barcode tattoo? It’s no wonder the kid was terrified. We could have helped him and he took off. Where do you think he is?”
“Probably hitching his way south. Seemed like the kind of kid who could handle himself.” Logan swallows. “I don’t think we’re going to find him.”
“Shouldn’t have to handle himself,” Winchester says. “He’s ten years old. He shouldn’t have to handle anything like this.”
Logan hesitates and holds up his empty wallet. “If it makes you feel any better, he’s not without means. He got his hands on all my cash.”
Winchester smiles at that. “See,” he says. “Kid left my wallet free and clear while he rips you off. No one likes you.”
“You like me a little,” Logan says.
Silence hangs thick in the air and Logan regrets the comment immediately. Because even if Winchester did like him, he certainly doesn’t trust him.
But Winchester surprises him by cracking a smile and clapping him on the back. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, you’re all right for a lying civilian sent here to kill my brother.”
“I’m not going to kill your brother,” Logan says immediately and he’s surprised to find that it’s true. Sam may well have slaughtered an entire town but as long as Dean Winchester has his doubts, Logan is going to follow his lead. “I swear.”
“The last guy told me that too,” Winchester says. “His name was Rich. He was a right bastard. Left him in St. Louis. Before him it was Thorpe who couldn’t tell a lie to save his life. Before that, there was Jules. Sweet kid, a little bit psychic. Didn’t last long. Before that it was Kyle. Bobby wanted to come himself but I wouldn’t talk to him. He says he doesn’t want me alone.” Winchester snorts. “I just want my brother back.”
“What happened to all the others?” Logan asks.
“They’re not all dead if that’s what you’re thinking,” Winchester answers. “Barely half of them actually. I left Kyle by the side of the road when I figured out his game. Thorpe lasted all of one hunt before I kicked him out. Either I drive them off or they bite the big one. There’s no real in between.” He levels has gaze on Logan serious and says, “You might want to get out while you still can.”
Logan leans back and thinks of the little girl in the red dress. He’s stuck here. “I’m not leaving,” Logan says. “I don’t know if I can.”
Winchester shoots him a confused look but then relaxes. “Guess we’ve got to make a hunter out of you then.”
***
The bible according to Winchester is written in an ancient leather notebook with nearly illegible handwriting. Logan holds it fragilely half afraid he’s going to send loose pages into the wind. It is John Winchester’s Journal. Logan can practically hear the capitalization in his voice. It’s a fascinating read, as detailed as it is scattered and Logan stays awake late for weeks reading the twisted tales of paranormal encounters and wondering how he could have possibly invented this world.
And the more he learns the more he believes. The more he believes that this might be really happening. He knows he’s asleep in 2019, knows he’s hooked up to a breathing apparatus, knows his muscles are slowly wasting into nothing, but maybe he’s here too, in 2009, ten years into his past, hunting monsters with Dean Winchester.
But time travel is impossible. He knows it even before he broaches the subject with Dean. Ghosts and monsters are real but aliens, Bigfoot and time travel, those aren’t. Which means that even by this world’s rules, he must be crazy.
He’s okay with it.
He’s adapting. He tries not to but it happens without conscious thought. He starts wearing the contacts all the time because a knock to the head tends to send his glasses flying straight off. He lets Dean cut his hair almost military short in the bathroom of one of the endless motel rooms. He gets use to the coffee again, gets used to seemingly endless supplies of gas, gets used to having Dean Winchester constantly at his side.
He tracks Sam in his free time, tracing the younger Winchester’s movements through the trail of bodies and bizarre phenomena. Dean watches over his shoulder silently at first but more vocally as time went off.
“You know Sam isn’t like that,” Dean says. “He always used to be Mr. Morality.”
Sam doesn’t seem like the person Dean describes. Not anymore. There have been farm towns vanished and headless bodies turning up in parks. The strangest thing about this whole mess is the lack of press coverage. With crimes this sensational, it’s a wonder they aren’t splashed on every paper in the country. “Doesn’t seem like mister morality nowadays,” Logan says, trying to keep his face clear.
“He’s still my brother somewhere in there,” Dean says. “He’s got to be.”
Logan thinks about the piece of paper he still has in his pocket. And wonders if just finding Sam Winchester will be enough for Dean. It will be enough for Logan. It has to be. If he finds Sam he gets to go home. He clings to this notion with every fiber of his being. He’s going to find Sam and then he’s going to leave. He’s going to wake up and break the ties from whatever the hell is keeping him here.
He sees pieces of the real world sometimes, he looks through a window and sees the quiet movement of an under funded hospital and wonders why he’s so desperate to get back. He hears voices sometimes, an unfamiliar voice talking about him in an authoritative baritone.
“You never told me where you’re from,” Dean says. They’re in a car together for eight hours a day. There’s only so long they can drive in silence.
Logan folds his hands behind his head, straining his ears for sounds of home. “I’m from the future,” he says after a moment because if anyone would believe him, it would be Dean Winchester. “It was 2019 and I was transferring a witness to a safe house and I got shot and I woke up here. I think I’m in a coma.”
Dean gives him a sideways look from the driver’s seat, gauging his sincerity, watching his face. “You’re kidding, right?” he says.
He doesn’t know why this matters so much, doesn’t know why he can’t have Dean thinking he’s crazy. Dean’s a figment after all, some deep dark part of his own imagination. “Of course,” he says. “I’m from Seattle. Went to school in Yale. Good life.”
Dean snorts. “Figures the one who sticks would be a college boy guy.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Logan asks.
Dean gets that shifty-eyed quiet look he gets whenever his brother starts lurking on the edges of conversation. Logan sighs. “Tell me about this case.”
“Had one like it a few months ago,” Dean says. “Town going crazy. Turned out it was an actual wishing well. Doubt it’s the same thing but something’s happening that’s made the town turn upside-down. We can make it by morning.”
They see the flames before they see the town. “That doesn’t look good,” Dean says.
Logan’s first thought is that it must have been Sam because everything in this world seems connected to this mysterious other Winchester but he’s learned not to voice that opinion. “No,” he agrees. “No, it really doesn’t.”
It’s not the same though. Not like the Wyoming town full of corpses and fresh fallen snow. There is nothing clean about this. It’s an apartment that caught fire first, the police man tells them when Dean flashes a fake badge. There had been threats before a neighbor told them a girl who broke up with the boyfriend and left screaming I hope you burn in hell.
“I’m thinking she might be a pyrokenetic,” Dean says later when they’re catching a greasy fat-fried dinner in a run down roadhouse. “Someone’s a regular fire starter. The girl was nowhere near the apartment for days before it burned.”
“She could have planted that before she left,” Logan says. “It doesn’t always have to be paranormal.”
Dean raises an eyebrow. “Dude, it’s been freaking years since I came across something this weird and it wasn’t paranormal. Mark my word. There’s probably some freaking witch out there throwing hex bags all over town.”
Logan remembers hex bags. He’d read about them in John Winchester’s journal. Heard Dean’s rants on the witches who sold their soul for a bit of extra mojo. He remembers this with nearly perfect clarity but other things are fading. He can’t picture his penthouse anymore, doesn’t remember what piece of art hangs in his hallway. When he tries to picture it all he can think of are the cheap motel prints dotting highway motels.
“I’m going back to the room,” Dean says. “Pyro girl can wait until morning.”
“I think I’ll stay here,” Logan says, eyeing the pool table. He’s not tired. He has been asleep so long in 2019, he is almost never tired here.
“Suit yourself,” Dean says, taking one last bite of fried chicken before throwing a few crumpled bills on the table and leaving.
Logan orders another beer and wonders over to watch the game of pool, playing at slightly inebriated while he sized up the skill level. One of the kids was pretty good with the cue but he had a tendency to show off and miss the trick shot. Logan takes a sip of his beer and sizes up his mark wondering what happened to Eyes Only and his morals.
The thought stops him cold because he can’t remember anymore. He tries to remember his old mantra, the old intro to the hacks but he comes up with nothing but bits and pieces of garbled indistinct words. He feels lightheaded, half crazed. There’s light flooding his vision, an odd buzzing in his ears.
I fear Mr. Cale has shown a significant decrease in brain activity of late. It is my fear that if we allow him to slip farther into his coma we may lose him completely...
Logan presses both hands to his ears in a panic. He’s still here. They have to know he’s still here.
“Michaels?” a voice is calling and he can’t tell if it’s from the past or the future or the weird limbo where he now lives. “Michaels?”
A hand settles heavily on his shoulder and Logan spins around ready to attack but is greeted with a friendly smile of a man he’s never met before.
“Holy hell, Logan,” he says. “Never thought I’d see your face again.”
The man in front of him was big and broad with military cropped dark blond hair and dark eyes. He was wearing a dark t-shirt, combat boots and torn jeans. Logan can’t imagine a single place where he would have met a man like this.
“Come on, man,” he said. “Joe Turner. I know it’s been a while but really, I didn’t think you’d had that many knocks to the head.”
“Right,” Logan says slowly. “Joe Turner.”
Joe Turner who knows him as Logan Michaels even though that’s not his name. He’s Logan Cale. He’s Eyes Only. He’s not letting go. There is no decrease in brain function. He doesn’t belong here.
“I’m guessing this isn’t a social hangout,” Turner says eyeing the game carefully. “You’re here about the case.”
“What case?” Logan asks.
“The case,” Turner says. “Look. Why don’t I grab us a round and we can talk business.”
Logan agrees which is how he finds himself in a secluded booth with Joe Turner and a few empty bottles of beer.
“There’s a demon in town,” Turner tells him eventually. “A crossroads demon I think or at least something similar. It’s offering up trades. Something of yours and he gives you the power to do whatever you like.”
“Doesn’t sound so bad,” Logan mutters.
Turner snorts. “Not so bad? The last girl, the one who blew boyfriend’s pad sky high? She told the demon she wanted to be stronger. He asked for her love in return. Wham bam, instant homicide. Another kid wanted girls to like him. Cost him his kid sister. A cop wanted to be obeyed you can imagine how well that turned out. Thing people don’t realize about getting that much power is it’ll rot away your soul inside out. Once you let something like that in—willingly. There’s no turning back.”
“So what?” Logan asks. “We’ve got some demon dousing up normal people with power and then taking back the one key to their self control in payment?”
“Sounds about right,” Turner says, signaling the barkeeper for another round. “Paid me a visit a few days ago. Said if I got off his back, I could have anything I wanted. I told him to shove it up his ass.” He drums his fingers on the table. “Look, I know you and Winchester are here about the case, but the thing made this one personal. I need to take it down myself. There are other cases out there but this one’s mine.”
Logan stares at the beer in his hand, takes a long swallow and says nothing.
Turner hesitates a long moment and then leans in closer. “How are you doing, Michaels? Last I heard you weren’t in the best place out there.”
My name is not Michaels, Logan wants to scream. My name is Logan Cale and I was shot and I woke up in 2009. “I’m fine,” he says. “Why would I be anything else?”
“Because you spent six months in a mental institution,” Turner says like it should be obvious. “That’s going to mess with anyone’s sense of reality, Michaels. Even if you don’t have the hunt hanging over your head.”
“What?” Logan says. Everything around him feels too loud, too jumbled. The clank of pool balls, the slosh of beer in glasses. The voices all converging into one.
“Look,” Turner says. “It’s a touchy subject. I get that. But if you’re still you know.” He whistled and tapped his forehead. “You shouldn’t really be working something like this. That’s the kind of stuff that gets your allies killed.”
“I know what’s real,” Logan says.
“Keep it that way,” Turner says. “From what I’ve heard about Winchester, you’re going to need every ounce of brain power functioning.” He stood up to leave. “I’ve got this case covered. If you’re on Sam Winchester’s trail you’ve already got a bigger shit storm then you need.”
“Stay away from Sam,” Logan says automatically. Sam is his to find and Dean’s to lose. This man has no business even mentioning him. Logan looks down at the array of bottles in front of him. He feels more then a little buzzed now. He doesn’t know if it’s from the alcohol consumed or a change in the medication they’re giving him in the future. He has never been to a mental institution. He is Logan Cale. He is Eyes Only. He is in a coma. He is back in time. He is going to get back. There is no decrease in brain function.
“Taking the Winchester side, huh, Michaels?” Turner says.
Logan fumbles for his wallet, muttering, “This is a—a—streaming freedom video—broadcast. No Bulletin. This is a streaming freedom video bulletin. That’s it.”
Turner barks out a friendly laugh. “What the hell are you on about, Michaels?”
“My name is Cale,” Logan says. “My name is Logan Cale.”
“Right,” Turner says, hauling Logan to his feet. “You’re wasted.”
“This isn’t real,” Logan says. “You’re not real. They say my brain function is-is-is going down. But it’s not. I’m still here.”
“Where’s your motel?” Turner asks, slinging an arm under Logan’s. “We should get you back to the room before someone else decides you’re better off back in an asylum.”
“I’m not crazy,” Logan says. The weight of his eyelids is suddenly unbearable. “I’m not crazy.”
“Whatever you say, Michaels,” Turner mutters.
It’s Cale, Logan thinks.
***
He wakes up in the hotel room to the sound of heavy breathing. A quick glance to the other bed in the room proves reveals a missing Dean Winchester. That’s not unusual. Dean doesn’t tend to sleep much and midnight drives and midnight snack have been the norm for a long time.
What’s unusual is the man perched on the table watching him as he sleeps he sits up warily because this isn’t really all that much stranger then the demonic girl in the red dress. He is small and gray-haired with a bland face and an even blander outfit. “Go away,” Logan says.
The corners of the man’s face curve upward. He lowers himself down from the table and adjusts his tie. “You wouldn’t want me to go away,” he says confident. “I have something you might want.”
A chill creeps down Logan’s spine and he realizes that this isn’t a dream. He can see the bag of weapons just behind the man’s back but there’s no way to get to it without going through the man himself. The only chance he had was the knife Dean kept under his pillow as he slept. “What could you possibly have that I want?” Logan asks.
The man’s grin widens, an odd glint in his eyes. “Why, Logan, I have a way to get you home.”
Home. Logan’s breath catches in his throat. A way home. He thinks of the doctors whispering about decreasing brain function and the missing pieces of Eye Only’s mantra. “Home?” he whispers, voice cracking.
“Home,” the man confirms, his eyes flashing red. “Let’s make a deal.”
__________________________________________________________________________
My last final is next Wednesday. I wouldn't expect an update before then...
| 8 |
Rating: PG-13ish
Disclaimer: I can lay no claims on DA, SPN or Life on Mars
SPOILERS: DA pilot, SPN through season four, plot premise taken from Life on Mars (UK)
Summary: Logan gets shot. That’s when things get strange.
Notes:For those of you who know LoM, it might be of interest that Logan is Sam Tyler, Dean is Gene Hunt, Bobby is Hyde, Lillith is the Test Card Girl and Sam Winchester’s disappearance has something to do with this whole mess.
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11
Seven
Winchester panics.
He combs every inch of the hotel, knocks on every door. He pulls out an EMF meter and scans for supernatural interference. He starts making a plan of attack, a methodical approach to combing the city that would have made Eyes Only proud.
Logan... Logan takes a different approach. He looks in his wallet. He hates himself for it. This is what the Pulse did to people. He doesn’t trust anymore. He can’t. He is suspicious of everyone--even a ten-year-old boy.
All of his cash is gone. He shakes his head and reminds himself that this is no ordinary boy, that this boy is a soldier. That he is trained to fend for himself. “Dean, the kid was a runaway.”
Winchester spins around to look at him. “So?”
“So,” Logan continues. “So you were talking about getting him home and he got spooked and took off.”
“Son of a bitch,” Winchester hisses and kicks at the wastebasket by the door. “What kind of place would let a kid like that out in the snow? I mean did you see him? The hair? The barcode tattoo? It’s no wonder the kid was terrified. We could have helped him and he took off. Where do you think he is?”
“Probably hitching his way south. Seemed like the kind of kid who could handle himself.” Logan swallows. “I don’t think we’re going to find him.”
“Shouldn’t have to handle himself,” Winchester says. “He’s ten years old. He shouldn’t have to handle anything like this.”
Logan hesitates and holds up his empty wallet. “If it makes you feel any better, he’s not without means. He got his hands on all my cash.”
Winchester smiles at that. “See,” he says. “Kid left my wallet free and clear while he rips you off. No one likes you.”
“You like me a little,” Logan says.
Silence hangs thick in the air and Logan regrets the comment immediately. Because even if Winchester did like him, he certainly doesn’t trust him.
But Winchester surprises him by cracking a smile and clapping him on the back. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, you’re all right for a lying civilian sent here to kill my brother.”
“I’m not going to kill your brother,” Logan says immediately and he’s surprised to find that it’s true. Sam may well have slaughtered an entire town but as long as Dean Winchester has his doubts, Logan is going to follow his lead. “I swear.”
“The last guy told me that too,” Winchester says. “His name was Rich. He was a right bastard. Left him in St. Louis. Before him it was Thorpe who couldn’t tell a lie to save his life. Before that, there was Jules. Sweet kid, a little bit psychic. Didn’t last long. Before that it was Kyle. Bobby wanted to come himself but I wouldn’t talk to him. He says he doesn’t want me alone.” Winchester snorts. “I just want my brother back.”
“What happened to all the others?” Logan asks.
“They’re not all dead if that’s what you’re thinking,” Winchester answers. “Barely half of them actually. I left Kyle by the side of the road when I figured out his game. Thorpe lasted all of one hunt before I kicked him out. Either I drive them off or they bite the big one. There’s no real in between.” He levels has gaze on Logan serious and says, “You might want to get out while you still can.”
Logan leans back and thinks of the little girl in the red dress. He’s stuck here. “I’m not leaving,” Logan says. “I don’t know if I can.”
Winchester shoots him a confused look but then relaxes. “Guess we’ve got to make a hunter out of you then.”
The bible according to Winchester is written in an ancient leather notebook with nearly illegible handwriting. Logan holds it fragilely half afraid he’s going to send loose pages into the wind. It is John Winchester’s Journal. Logan can practically hear the capitalization in his voice. It’s a fascinating read, as detailed as it is scattered and Logan stays awake late for weeks reading the twisted tales of paranormal encounters and wondering how he could have possibly invented this world.
And the more he learns the more he believes. The more he believes that this might be really happening. He knows he’s asleep in 2019, knows he’s hooked up to a breathing apparatus, knows his muscles are slowly wasting into nothing, but maybe he’s here too, in 2009, ten years into his past, hunting monsters with Dean Winchester.
But time travel is impossible. He knows it even before he broaches the subject with Dean. Ghosts and monsters are real but aliens, Bigfoot and time travel, those aren’t. Which means that even by this world’s rules, he must be crazy.
He’s okay with it.
He’s adapting. He tries not to but it happens without conscious thought. He starts wearing the contacts all the time because a knock to the head tends to send his glasses flying straight off. He lets Dean cut his hair almost military short in the bathroom of one of the endless motel rooms. He gets use to the coffee again, gets used to seemingly endless supplies of gas, gets used to having Dean Winchester constantly at his side.
He tracks Sam in his free time, tracing the younger Winchester’s movements through the trail of bodies and bizarre phenomena. Dean watches over his shoulder silently at first but more vocally as time went off.
“You know Sam isn’t like that,” Dean says. “He always used to be Mr. Morality.”
Sam doesn’t seem like the person Dean describes. Not anymore. There have been farm towns vanished and headless bodies turning up in parks. The strangest thing about this whole mess is the lack of press coverage. With crimes this sensational, it’s a wonder they aren’t splashed on every paper in the country. “Doesn’t seem like mister morality nowadays,” Logan says, trying to keep his face clear.
“He’s still my brother somewhere in there,” Dean says. “He’s got to be.”
Logan thinks about the piece of paper he still has in his pocket. And wonders if just finding Sam Winchester will be enough for Dean. It will be enough for Logan. It has to be. If he finds Sam he gets to go home. He clings to this notion with every fiber of his being. He’s going to find Sam and then he’s going to leave. He’s going to wake up and break the ties from whatever the hell is keeping him here.
He sees pieces of the real world sometimes, he looks through a window and sees the quiet movement of an under funded hospital and wonders why he’s so desperate to get back. He hears voices sometimes, an unfamiliar voice talking about him in an authoritative baritone.
“You never told me where you’re from,” Dean says. They’re in a car together for eight hours a day. There’s only so long they can drive in silence.
Logan folds his hands behind his head, straining his ears for sounds of home. “I’m from the future,” he says after a moment because if anyone would believe him, it would be Dean Winchester. “It was 2019 and I was transferring a witness to a safe house and I got shot and I woke up here. I think I’m in a coma.”
Dean gives him a sideways look from the driver’s seat, gauging his sincerity, watching his face. “You’re kidding, right?” he says.
He doesn’t know why this matters so much, doesn’t know why he can’t have Dean thinking he’s crazy. Dean’s a figment after all, some deep dark part of his own imagination. “Of course,” he says. “I’m from Seattle. Went to school in Yale. Good life.”
Dean snorts. “Figures the one who sticks would be a college boy guy.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Logan asks.
Dean gets that shifty-eyed quiet look he gets whenever his brother starts lurking on the edges of conversation. Logan sighs. “Tell me about this case.”
“Had one like it a few months ago,” Dean says. “Town going crazy. Turned out it was an actual wishing well. Doubt it’s the same thing but something’s happening that’s made the town turn upside-down. We can make it by morning.”
They see the flames before they see the town. “That doesn’t look good,” Dean says.
Logan’s first thought is that it must have been Sam because everything in this world seems connected to this mysterious other Winchester but he’s learned not to voice that opinion. “No,” he agrees. “No, it really doesn’t.”
It’s not the same though. Not like the Wyoming town full of corpses and fresh fallen snow. There is nothing clean about this. It’s an apartment that caught fire first, the police man tells them when Dean flashes a fake badge. There had been threats before a neighbor told them a girl who broke up with the boyfriend and left screaming I hope you burn in hell.
“I’m thinking she might be a pyrokenetic,” Dean says later when they’re catching a greasy fat-fried dinner in a run down roadhouse. “Someone’s a regular fire starter. The girl was nowhere near the apartment for days before it burned.”
“She could have planted that before she left,” Logan says. “It doesn’t always have to be paranormal.”
Dean raises an eyebrow. “Dude, it’s been freaking years since I came across something this weird and it wasn’t paranormal. Mark my word. There’s probably some freaking witch out there throwing hex bags all over town.”
Logan remembers hex bags. He’d read about them in John Winchester’s journal. Heard Dean’s rants on the witches who sold their soul for a bit of extra mojo. He remembers this with nearly perfect clarity but other things are fading. He can’t picture his penthouse anymore, doesn’t remember what piece of art hangs in his hallway. When he tries to picture it all he can think of are the cheap motel prints dotting highway motels.
“I’m going back to the room,” Dean says. “Pyro girl can wait until morning.”
“I think I’ll stay here,” Logan says, eyeing the pool table. He’s not tired. He has been asleep so long in 2019, he is almost never tired here.
“Suit yourself,” Dean says, taking one last bite of fried chicken before throwing a few crumpled bills on the table and leaving.
Logan orders another beer and wonders over to watch the game of pool, playing at slightly inebriated while he sized up the skill level. One of the kids was pretty good with the cue but he had a tendency to show off and miss the trick shot. Logan takes a sip of his beer and sizes up his mark wondering what happened to Eyes Only and his morals.
The thought stops him cold because he can’t remember anymore. He tries to remember his old mantra, the old intro to the hacks but he comes up with nothing but bits and pieces of garbled indistinct words. He feels lightheaded, half crazed. There’s light flooding his vision, an odd buzzing in his ears.
I fear Mr. Cale has shown a significant decrease in brain activity of late. It is my fear that if we allow him to slip farther into his coma we may lose him completely...
Logan presses both hands to his ears in a panic. He’s still here. They have to know he’s still here.
“Michaels?” a voice is calling and he can’t tell if it’s from the past or the future or the weird limbo where he now lives. “Michaels?”
A hand settles heavily on his shoulder and Logan spins around ready to attack but is greeted with a friendly smile of a man he’s never met before.
“Holy hell, Logan,” he says. “Never thought I’d see your face again.”
The man in front of him was big and broad with military cropped dark blond hair and dark eyes. He was wearing a dark t-shirt, combat boots and torn jeans. Logan can’t imagine a single place where he would have met a man like this.
“Come on, man,” he said. “Joe Turner. I know it’s been a while but really, I didn’t think you’d had that many knocks to the head.”
“Right,” Logan says slowly. “Joe Turner.”
Joe Turner who knows him as Logan Michaels even though that’s not his name. He’s Logan Cale. He’s Eyes Only. He’s not letting go. There is no decrease in brain function. He doesn’t belong here.
“I’m guessing this isn’t a social hangout,” Turner says eyeing the game carefully. “You’re here about the case.”
“What case?” Logan asks.
“The case,” Turner says. “Look. Why don’t I grab us a round and we can talk business.”
Logan agrees which is how he finds himself in a secluded booth with Joe Turner and a few empty bottles of beer.
“There’s a demon in town,” Turner tells him eventually. “A crossroads demon I think or at least something similar. It’s offering up trades. Something of yours and he gives you the power to do whatever you like.”
“Doesn’t sound so bad,” Logan mutters.
Turner snorts. “Not so bad? The last girl, the one who blew boyfriend’s pad sky high? She told the demon she wanted to be stronger. He asked for her love in return. Wham bam, instant homicide. Another kid wanted girls to like him. Cost him his kid sister. A cop wanted to be obeyed you can imagine how well that turned out. Thing people don’t realize about getting that much power is it’ll rot away your soul inside out. Once you let something like that in—willingly. There’s no turning back.”
“So what?” Logan asks. “We’ve got some demon dousing up normal people with power and then taking back the one key to their self control in payment?”
“Sounds about right,” Turner says, signaling the barkeeper for another round. “Paid me a visit a few days ago. Said if I got off his back, I could have anything I wanted. I told him to shove it up his ass.” He drums his fingers on the table. “Look, I know you and Winchester are here about the case, but the thing made this one personal. I need to take it down myself. There are other cases out there but this one’s mine.”
Logan stares at the beer in his hand, takes a long swallow and says nothing.
Turner hesitates a long moment and then leans in closer. “How are you doing, Michaels? Last I heard you weren’t in the best place out there.”
My name is not Michaels, Logan wants to scream. My name is Logan Cale and I was shot and I woke up in 2009. “I’m fine,” he says. “Why would I be anything else?”
“Because you spent six months in a mental institution,” Turner says like it should be obvious. “That’s going to mess with anyone’s sense of reality, Michaels. Even if you don’t have the hunt hanging over your head.”
“What?” Logan says. Everything around him feels too loud, too jumbled. The clank of pool balls, the slosh of beer in glasses. The voices all converging into one.
“Look,” Turner says. “It’s a touchy subject. I get that. But if you’re still you know.” He whistled and tapped his forehead. “You shouldn’t really be working something like this. That’s the kind of stuff that gets your allies killed.”
“I know what’s real,” Logan says.
“Keep it that way,” Turner says. “From what I’ve heard about Winchester, you’re going to need every ounce of brain power functioning.” He stood up to leave. “I’ve got this case covered. If you’re on Sam Winchester’s trail you’ve already got a bigger shit storm then you need.”
“Stay away from Sam,” Logan says automatically. Sam is his to find and Dean’s to lose. This man has no business even mentioning him. Logan looks down at the array of bottles in front of him. He feels more then a little buzzed now. He doesn’t know if it’s from the alcohol consumed or a change in the medication they’re giving him in the future. He has never been to a mental institution. He is Logan Cale. He is Eyes Only. He is in a coma. He is back in time. He is going to get back. There is no decrease in brain function.
“Taking the Winchester side, huh, Michaels?” Turner says.
Logan fumbles for his wallet, muttering, “This is a—a—streaming freedom video—broadcast. No Bulletin. This is a streaming freedom video bulletin. That’s it.”
Turner barks out a friendly laugh. “What the hell are you on about, Michaels?”
“My name is Cale,” Logan says. “My name is Logan Cale.”
“Right,” Turner says, hauling Logan to his feet. “You’re wasted.”
“This isn’t real,” Logan says. “You’re not real. They say my brain function is-is-is going down. But it’s not. I’m still here.”
“Where’s your motel?” Turner asks, slinging an arm under Logan’s. “We should get you back to the room before someone else decides you’re better off back in an asylum.”
“I’m not crazy,” Logan says. The weight of his eyelids is suddenly unbearable. “I’m not crazy.”
“Whatever you say, Michaels,” Turner mutters.
It’s Cale, Logan thinks.
He wakes up in the hotel room to the sound of heavy breathing. A quick glance to the other bed in the room proves reveals a missing Dean Winchester. That’s not unusual. Dean doesn’t tend to sleep much and midnight drives and midnight snack have been the norm for a long time.
What’s unusual is the man perched on the table watching him as he sleeps he sits up warily because this isn’t really all that much stranger then the demonic girl in the red dress. He is small and gray-haired with a bland face and an even blander outfit. “Go away,” Logan says.
The corners of the man’s face curve upward. He lowers himself down from the table and adjusts his tie. “You wouldn’t want me to go away,” he says confident. “I have something you might want.”
A chill creeps down Logan’s spine and he realizes that this isn’t a dream. He can see the bag of weapons just behind the man’s back but there’s no way to get to it without going through the man himself. The only chance he had was the knife Dean kept under his pillow as he slept. “What could you possibly have that I want?” Logan asks.
The man’s grin widens, an odd glint in his eyes. “Why, Logan, I have a way to get you home.”
Home. Logan’s breath catches in his throat. A way home. He thinks of the doctors whispering about decreasing brain function and the missing pieces of Eye Only’s mantra. “Home?” he whispers, voice cracking.
“Home,” the man confirms, his eyes flashing red. “Let’s make a deal.”
My last final is next Wednesday. I wouldn't expect an update before then...
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