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much-obliged-timothy · 10 months

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June of Doom #30

The Old Guard - #30 - Buried Alive

“I’m just saying, he should’ve been back by now,” Joe said, pacing by the door of the safehouse. “I’m going to look for him. I don’t like this.”

Andy caught his arm. “Joe-”

“Quynh is free and she’s angry, Andy!” he said. “What if she…what if she found him?”

“She wouldn’t hurt Nicky,” Andy said firmly.

“No, the old Quynh wouldn’t hurt Nicky. The Quynh who’s been suffering underwater for hundreds of years? We don’t know her. You heard Nile; she’s free and she’s furious.” Joe yanked the door open. “He shouldn’t have gone out on his own. I knew it was a bad idea.”

Nile ran into the room so fast that she tripped over the coffee table and Joe just barely managed to catch her before she fell. She was covered in cold sweat, her eyes wide and frantic, hair messy from sleep.

“She has him,” she said, gripping Joe’s arms. “Oh, god, she has him.”

The color drained from Joe’s face. “Where?”

“I don’t know. She tricked him.” Nile pulled away and put her face in her hands. “Pretended to run to him for help. He was comforting her when she killed him.”

“How did she know where he-” Joe froze. Andy subtly pushed Nile behind herself. “Fuck! Nile! You drove us to the safehouse! You led her right to him!”

“Stop,” Andy snapped. “Nile is new to this. You and I should’ve been the ones to know better, Joe. Focus. We can use Nile to track Quynh, just like Quynh used her to track us.”

Andy fought down the feelings rising rapidly inside of her. Quynh, her Quynh, back after all these years.

But what was she going to do with Nicky? Surely she’d never hurt Nicky. The two had been close friends. Quynh had always admired Nicky’s kindness and bravery. Nicky didn’t laugh often, but Quynh got him to laugh almost as much as Joe sometimes.

She must be using Nicky to lure Andy in. Andy was the one she was angry at, surely. It was ultimately Andy who had failed her, not Nicky or Joe.

“She’ll trade him for me,” Andy said, because she couldn’t have Joe losing his composure now. “That has to be her plan. What else would she want with Nicky? She’s probably been waiting for one of us to be alone, and Nicky just happened to be the first one.”

“Where did she take him? What did you see?” Joe demanded, ignoring Andy.

But Nile just shook her head. “She had him in the back of a van. She wasn’t driving and there were no windows. She…she had a gun pointed at him. He was dead and bound.” She looked at Andy with that mix of desperation and fierce resolve that made her such a good addition to the team. “We have to find him, Andy. That rage she feels isn’t just directed at you. She blames all of you, even Nicky.”

“Nile, call Copley. We’ll go see what we can find. And I am calling Booker. He can’t be on his own out there right now, not if she’s going after us,” Andy said, kicking the door all the way open and grabbing the car keys.

Joe and Nile hurried to follow her out. She didn’t need to ask to know they were armed.

She was heartbroken over Quynh’s fate. But it was no fault of Nicky’s, and Andy would do anything to get him back safely and take the consequences herself.

***

Booker met up with them the next day, drunk enough that they smelled the booze on him before he even entered the safehouse. Joe had roughly taken him to sober up, yelling at Booker about how they all needed to be ready for anything and on guard. Booker did not drink again.

Copley tried to track down Quynh. When he showed no signs of success, Booker joined in the search. They debated moving safehouses, but decided to stay in case Quynh sent a ransom or anything of the sort for Nicky. They set up a strict watch rotation and ensured everyone was armed at all times.

It was three days before the letter arrived.

Andy unfolded it. Joe reached for it, but Andy held it away as her eyes scanned over the words and her heart shriveled in her chest at them.

“Andy!” Joe said, pleading. “What does it say?”

She swallowed down bile and read it aloud, her voice monotonous despite the horror threatening to choke her. “You will not find Nicolo. I thought of the perfect way to hurt all three of you at once. You and Yusuf will suffer, knowing you can never save him. He will suffer as I did. I can think of no more perfect revenge than this. He will cry out for Yusuf with every dying breath, and Yusuf will sob for him with every passing minute, and you will live with the knowledge that you were responsible to protect them both. As you read this, Nicolo is dying yet another death, buried alive deep beneath the earth, waiting for help that will not come just as I did. Every time you think of his agony, know you caused it by abandoning me.”

Joe sat down heavily. Nile put a hand over her mouth. Booker pushed a shaking hand through his hair.

“No,” Joe whispered. “She wouldn’t. Not Nicolo. Not him.”

“Get up,” Nile whispered. “Joe, get up. He needs us. I don’t give a fuck what she says. We’re going to find him. We’re going to save Nicky. Get up!”

Andy felt numb inside. Nicky, her kind, caring Nicky, was buried alive somewhere right now, waiting for them to find him and save him. Trusting them to save him. Just like Quynh.

She felt like she was spiraling. This couldn’t be happening again. Not again.

“Andy!” Nile shook her and ripped the letter from her hands, crumpling it up and tossing it off to the side. “Andy, he needs us. We cannot fall to pieces right now.”

“She could have buried him anywhere,” Booker said, shaking his head helplessly. “Where do we even start?”

“Nicolo,” Joe whispered, and began muttering to himself, clasping his hands together and pressing his face to them.

Nile placed a firm, comforting hand on his back. “Andy, think. You knew her best. Where would she take him?”

Andy honestly had no idea. She thought and thought, but they had traveled so many places that she couldn’t pinpoint one. The world had changed too much in the centuries that Quynh had been trapped in the ocean; she had no idea what Quynh would do or where she would go.

Nile waited only another moment before nodding to herself. “Then we focus on surveillance videos. We try to find the van they took Nicky in. It’s better than sitting around doing nothing.”

“Andy,” Joe said, picking his head up. Tears were already dragging tracks down his cheeks. “We can’t fail him. He’s alone. He must be so scared.”

And who wouldn’t be, buried alive by your own friend, knowing you would never truly die? Forced to suffocate in the cold, lonely dark again and again for eternity.

So they got to work, even if the weight of the letter threatened to drag them all down into despair. They searched and searched, abandoning sleep whenever possible to keep going. Nile and Booker took over care for Joe, who would not eat or sleep or stop for a moment unless forced to. Andy was barely keeping herself together, but she managed to cling to her fractured pieces for the sake of her team.

Nine days after getting the letter, they found him.

It was Booker who got the idea when he saw Nile on her phone with Copley. Nicky had been carrying a cell phone with him when he left the safehouse that day.

The phone was no doubt long dead, but Booker managed to track it using something which Andy did not understand but which gave them a general location.

It was just outside a nearly abandoned town, with miles and miles of ground that no longer bore crops. Condemned land left to the wildlife to roam.

They forced themselves to be methodical, mapping the area and breaking it into a grid pattern, each of them assigned grids to dig up. They checked for signs of recently turned over ground, but found none as snow had recently fallen over the area. So they dug and dug, for two days.

And on that second day, nine days after the letter, Andy cried out with relief as her shovel struck a tarp.

She cried for the others, who rushed over and helped her dig it up. Wrapped in the tarp was the lifeless body of Nicky.

“Nicolo!” Joe cried, holding his love to him and sobbing into his motionless chest. He rocked with Nicky as Booker, Nile, and Andy dropped to their knees around them.

He held Nicky until Nicky took a frightened gasp of breath, hands already coming up to try and claw away a tarp that was no longer there.

“Nicolo,” Joe said, cupping the back of his head. “It’s alright. It’s alright now. We’ve got you.”

“Are you real?” Nicky croaked out.

Joe made a pained noise. “Yes, my heart. I’m real. We all are. I’ve got you, Nicolo.”

Andy pulled her jacket off and draped it over Nicky’s shoulders carefully. She reached out and stroked his filthy hair.

“Nicky,” she said quietly. “Oh, Nicky. I’m so sorry.”

Andy could think of no words to describe the trauma Nicky had been through. Buried alive, wrapped in a tarp, dying over and over again for nine days.

The trauma made itself apparent as Nicky began to cry silently, pressing his face forcefully into Joe’s neck and grabbing onto Joe until his knuckles turned white. His whole body shook, shoulders heaving with silent sobs.

“Nicolo, Nicolo,” Joe whispered, crying again himself, stroking Nicky’s hair, holding him as tightly as he could.

Andy finally felt her own tears come as she touched Nicky’s back and felt him flinch beneath her hand. They had saved his body, but Quynh had gotten her revenge by damaging his mind.

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