He jerked awake disoriented, the air around him was thick and warm, his shoulders felt tight and he was lying on his back. Wolfgang never slept on his back.
He opened his eyes and saw darkness. He knew he hadn’t gone blind overnight because he could feel the coarse fabric over his eyes. He’d been blindfolded.
Quickly he noticed this was not his bed and he did not fall asleep while playing with Kala. His shoulders hurt where his arms were pulled back and his hands were tied behind his back. He was restrained then.
He squirmed around the space until his head bumped against one of the sides of his enclosure. Wonderful. He was inside a fucking wooden box. Restrained and blindfolded. He breathed in deeply to ground himself. If he panicked, They would know he was in trouble and he couldn’t have that. They’d do something stupid like come to his rescue again and risk their lives in vain for him.
Wolfgang tried to remember how he got into this situation. How long had it been? Not long enough or he would have suffocated by now. Unless whoever put him there gave the box holes to ensure a steady airflow inside. There was no point in thinking about that until he understood the situation better.
He and Kala took a trip to Berlin to see Felix, he remembered that. Ever since Wolfgang moved to Mumbai to be closer to Kala and Raj, Felix had insisted he came to Berlin at least once a month. Your boyfriend is rich, you can afford it! he said. Not that Wolfgang had a boyfriend to begin with. He still wasn’t sure what it was the three of them had. Boyfriend was not it, though.
Kala didn’t want to stay in Berlin proper —inside Fuch’s kingdom—, claiming there was no reason for Wolfgang to play nice with the man. Besides, it was too close to his old place. The police will be watching, Wolfgang. Nomi still hasn’t scrubbed your records clean.
She was right, as she usually was about this kind of things. It was reckless and irresponsible, but Wolfgang wanted his own clothes. He had a sizable closet back in Mumbai, but he didn’t have his own black jacket. The one he had on the night of the diamonds, the one he had on the day he killed his uncle, the one he had on the first time he and Kala kissed.
Wolfgang wasn’t a sentimental man, but he was a man of routine. That jacket was part of the routine ever since he woke up connected to seven other people around the world. That’s how he found himself in his old apartment, the mess in his old room was a stark reminder of the time he was taken by Whispers and the BPO.
Everything was just as it had been that day. There was still a half-drunk beer on the table, the closet door was open, there were clothes strewn around the floor.
That’s where his recollection of the events stopped. He was standing in his old room, contemplating his old life when someone got to him and he blacked out.
His head hurt where he probably hit it on the floor when he fell, or when they handled him. How much time had passed between the moment he was taken and now? Without seeing his surroundings, he couldn’t tell.
Wolfgang focused on his breathing, trying to think straight. In a corner of his mind, he could feel the quiet hum of someone doing dishes —maybe Capheus? The bond felt quiet and content on that end, so it could be him. With the next inhale, he smelled flowery shampoo and bubble bath. Nomi. He went through the motions one by one until he got to Kala. She was reading a book, curled in the hotel suite sofa, glancing up the door every once in a while.
She was safe. Whoever got to him didn’t know about Kala. He took a sobering breath and got to work.
Wriggling out of handcuffs was difficult enough when your hands were in front of you, but it was near torture to go through the motions with his arms pulled back. Will would find a way to do this in seconds, the bastard.
“You know, if you’re in trouble you can just say so,” Will’s voice was next to him as if he was trapped with him, but Wolfgang knew the man was in another continent altogether.
“I can fucking do it,” he bit back.
“Well, I can do it faster. And without the burns you’re leaving on your hands.”
Cocky bastard, he thought.
“I heard that,” Will whispered in his ear.
With a sigh, he stopped moving and let Will share his body. It was always a surreal experience, letting go of his control to someone else, but it was a familiar feeling by now, like throwing the first punch in a fistfight.
Wolfgang had to give credit where credit was due, Will took about a minute to break his right hand free of the restraints. He quickly threw his hands up to remove the blindfold and assess the situation.
“A coffin?” Will asked. “Who did you piss off?”
“Don’t think out loud or Kala will hear.”
“Kala will know regardless. What happened?”
“We’re in Berlin.”
“I know.”
“I went to my old place,” he admitted under his breath.
“For fuck’s sake, Wolfgang! Did you not learn anything from the time I went back to my old place while the feds were looking for me?” Nomi’s voice was exasperated, as if she should’ve figured out they’d eventually be in this exact situation.
“Do we have to notify the whole cluster for this? I am fine. I’ll get out of here and deal with it, as I always do.”
Nomi took a step back. Wolfgang couldn’t hear her but he knew she was still hanging out at the edge of his consciousness, waiting for the moment she’d have details to work with.
Wolfgang knew it was useless to brace for what would happen then, but he still did it. With a thought in her direction, Wolfgang stood in front of Kala, looking down at her reading quietly for a moment longer.
“Wolfgang? Where are you? You said it would be quick.” She’s giving him space to explain, not looking down their bond to see by herself where Wolfgang was.
“Well, there was an inconvenience.”
“Wolfgang.”
“Don’t freak out if you feel me punching something. Or someone, when I get out of here.”
As fast as he got to Kala, she got to the coffin he was imprisoned in. “Wolfgang!”
“I’m fine. I’m handling it.”
They were back at their hotel room, pulled by Kala’s emotions. The book she read was abandoned on the sofa, as she paced back and forth.
“This is not fine, Wolfgang. We speak the same languages and this is not fine in any of them,” at least it wasn’t panic, she just sounded exhausted. Wolfgang would take it as a win.
“It’ll be fine. How long has it been?”
“Five hours.”
Wolfgang focused back to his body and touched the wood above him with a new determination. The box wasn’t padded, so it wasn’t impossible to break, but it wouldn’t be easy either. He took a deep breath and clenched his fist, punching upwards with as much strength as he could muster.
The box didn’t budge.
“You’re not fighting a person. This is the wrong kind of fist to break something.” Sun was casual as ever, almost bored.
Of the eight of them, she was the one he was most glad to see there. Together, the two of them were a force to be reckoned with.
“By all means, be my guest.”
Sharing with Sun was always a calming experience. Unlike Wolfgang, she didn’t bottle her emotions, she pushed them into her fist and she fought with them. It made her a great weapon, a formidable opponent. Wolfgang was glad he didn’t have to fight her because he knew she would end him without breaking a sweat.
Sun flexed his hand, feeling each bump and knuckle, stretching the tendons in his wrist with a circular movement. She didn’t even brace for the punch, she just hit one, two, three times, with a wildness that made him wonder how she was feeling in the outside world. Sun’s meditation habit meant that she was the least likely to spill out into the bond, meaning sometimes they could go days without feeling anything directly from her. This ferocity suggested there was something else going on at the surface.
Wolfgang could feel the pain in his knuckles, but he didn’t step in as Sun punched and punched and punched until the wood gave and dirt fell on his face. He scowled but he wasn’t really surprised to be underground. It made sense, why would they put him in a box on the surface if he could eventually break free of his restraints? Kala, however, was not having it.
“You were buried alive?” her panic was enough to bring the rest of them into this then.
“Who would do this?”
“—I was buried alive in The Root of All Evil.”
“I think this was a Leverage episode—"
“—no, you’re thinking of Buffy—”
“Guys, guys, please, calm down.” That was Will. “Wolfgang will be out of here before any of us can say exhumation.” Will rolled his eyes at the chorus of exhumation that followed. He pinched the bridge of Wolfgang’s nose, feeling the headache forming behind his eyes. “Look, you and Sun got this. I’m going to Kala to find out who put you here.”
The was a soft murmur through the bond, but one by one, they retreated to their own corners of the world. Still, Wolfgang felt observed while going through the motions.
Sun took her place inside of him and got back to work, punch after punch knocking more and more dirt into the box. When the hole was big inside to fit an arm, Wolfgang asked her to stop.
“I’m going to suffocate with the dirt if I just lay here,” he says when she sends a question his way. She didn’t even need to say it out loud, Wolfgang heard it in his head the moment he spoke up. “I have to make my way out.”
With a final blow, Sun splits enough wood off the box to give him space to work with. She stays close though, ready to fight, aware they could encounter a gun the moment he stepped outside the box.
It turned out, crawling out of a grave was by no means easy. Again: not impossible, but not easy. The scratches and splinters in his arms will remind him of this particular event for weeks to come. Whoever was on the other side, better have a gun pointed at his face or Wolfgang would kill them without stopping to ask questions.
When he finally shoved enough dirt out of the way to feel a breeze, Wolfgang swore he could hear someone mumble fuck. With a final push, he crawled out of the hole and took in his surroundings. It was dark, but he expected it to be: Kala said five hours had passed since he left. The place didn’t look familiar, but Wolfgang didn’t expect it to be either. If he was taken from Friedrichshain at five pm, they could’ve driven him out of Berlin to dump his body.
Wolfgang heard a voice spewing furious German to someone on the phone. He breathed in and stood up, following the voice. There was a man pacing back and forth in front of a car, with his back to Wolfgang.
He couldn’t hear the entire conversation, but the man raised his voice in alarm. “You said I had to watch for people coming for him! Not for the guy coming out of the fucking grave. He was supposed to be dead!”
“We need to know who set this up,” Will followed closely, guessing Wolfgang was less than a minute away from breaking a neck.
Fine, you do it. Wolfgang agreed.
Will didn’t need to be told twice.
A clean grab and twist later, he pinned the man down against the car in a move easily achieved by a cop. A part of Wolfgang’s brain recoiled, reminded once again that he was telepathically connected to a pig.
“I’m not a cop anymore,” he breathed, taking Wolfgang with him to the home gym he was training in. He kicked the punching bag hard enough to make the chain it hung from rattle. Will was enjoying Wolfgang’s adventure with the sick glee he recognized from himself. Violence, was a thing that both of them enjoyed a bit too much.
When Wolfgang blinked back into himself, he was pulling the man’s arm back, Will’s voice rang inside his head as Will took his place and asked in the man’s ear, “who are you working with?”
The man thrashed against the hold, but Will twisted higher until he heard a bone in the man’s shoulder pop. The telltale scream that followed made Nomi materialize next to him. “We could use his phone, you know? You don’t have to go all macho on him.”
“But we’ll get answers faster if we do,” Kala was looking down on the man with the gravity of someone calculating the exact dosage to poison your coffee with. Wolfgang loved her more in that moment than he did a minute before.
“Come on, who was on the phone,” Wolfgang’s voice sounded strange to his own ears. Will didn’t ask, he demanded in an even tone that threatened further bodily harm. Wolfgang had to admit he found it hot.
“I don’t know, man! They never use a real name.”
Will looked at the man, sizing him up. “His phone. Don’t let him run. He’s got a zip tie in his right back pocket.”
Wolfgang patted the man down and took his Glock, putting it in the waistband of his jeans. He went to the pocket Will mentioned and tied the man up to the car door by his injured arm.
It was Nomi who got to the phone first, dialing her own phone and picking up on the other side. She took him with her to the apartment she and her wife lived in, pacing around a room full of screens and devices Wolfgang only understood through Nomi. Amanita was typing away on a white keyboard.
“It’s a pre-paid. I’ll ping all the nearby towers to get records but this isn’t going to be fast,” the woman said as she did something Wolfgang didn’t have the brains to understand. He watched the different towers ping in her screen around Dogan’s Kingdom.
“I’m calling him back. We need a live call to narrow it down,” Nomi said, scrolling down the phone to find the call log. The phone rang once before she turned to the rest of them in alarm. “What do I say?”
“You better start rethinking your last sum because I just subdued you man.” Lito’s entry was flawless, he didn’t miss a beat between Nomi’s panic and the man picking up the call. He even managed to make Wolfgang’s voice sound different, almost imitating the man currently tied to his car.
“Did you kill him?” the man on the other side asked. He was also speaking German, but he had a foreign accent. If Wolfgang had to guess, he’d say Dutch.
“Well, that depends on how much we’re talking about.”
“I didn’t think you had it in you, Henri.”
“As I said, it depends on how much we’re talking about. The grave is dug already. I just gotta do what your people didn’t do.”
The man on the other side of the line laughed. “You’ve got balls, kid. You might still have the makings of a King. Josh would appreciate it if you disposed of the body in a timely manner. The assets will be in your apartment before dawn.”
Wolfgang looked at Nomi to know what to do, but the man hung up before he could say anything else. “Neets?”
“I have an approximation. I’ll narrow it down while the boys work,” her fast typing was loud in his ears and Wolfgang felt a wave of affection coming from Nomi. He was back in his body when Riley touched his left arm.
“Are you alright? You were out for a long time. You might have hit your face.”
It was as if her words summoned the headache back. Wolfgang had been ignoring it as he was bound to do when the adrenaline was high during a fight, but Riley was right, this had the makings of a migraine. Wolfgang rolled his shoulders back and walked towards the car.
The man inside was looking at him strangely and Wolfgang wondered if he’d been speaking out loud. He usually didn’t mind, but it would benefit him to keep his mouth shut on his next steps. Wolfgang opened the door and the man fell to the floor pulled by the handcuffs, his groan made him sound young and Wolfgang’s stomach tightened.
Before Them, he wouldn’t have hesitated to kill this guy. Hell, even after Them, he had killed many times —and he was sure he’d do it again, for Them—, what was different with this guy?
“I would do it,” Sun was by his side, echoing something that happened almost a lifetime ago.
“Kala wouldn’t.”
“I think he’s useful alive,” Kala chimed in, her tone even. “We’re going to his apartment, pick up the assets and find out who Josh is.”
Wolfgang looked up and locked eyes with her. “We told Raj we’d be back for the banquet.”
“Rajan's flight lands at eleven.”
Wolfgang smirked. Felix would be happy to know Wolfgang was staying for a while.
“Where to, then?” Capheus called from the driver’s seat.
“Let’s find out.”