Chapter 19: Project Janus

The morning air had cooled considerably since the helicopter left. Jarrin's ribs complained with every breath, and Jolly Roger flickered in the periphery of his vision, a white-and-blue silhouette that materialized when his attention drifted too far. The bubble sat heavy in his pocket. One use. That was all Riptide's liquefaction property gave him. One shot to dissolve something solid, or someone.

Dinah stopped walking.

"Wait," she said. Her AC/DC pulsed amber behind her. The speaker head on top of it had been spinning slowly since they left the mechanical room, but now it snapped to a full rotation, tracking something through the building's wiring. "The Hydra agent's left the basement."

Jarrin looked at the building's cracked entrance. SHIELD vehicles still idled at the curb, their engines humming. Two SUVs and the DE/N's red-and-white car, enough people to handle whatever was in this building if they just stood still and waited.

"He's heading toward the exit," Dinah said. "East corridor, ground floor. Moving at a controlled pace. He's not running. That means he's looking for something."

Jarrin pulled his hands out of his pockets. Jazz was already walking toward him, her boots clicking against the broken pavement. She wore the red leather jacket tight and had that look in her eyes.

"We're not following him," she said.

"We are."

"We are doing absolutely nothing with him. He's a Hydra problem. Hydra has people for that. We have three broken ribs and a stolen concept we'll never get to use if we keep playing detective."

Dinah stepped between them. "She's right about one thing. The agent is moving toward the exit. If he reaches it and radios his contacts, he'll have thirty minutes to get out of the city with his full report. After that, every checkpoint between here and the nearest airport will have his description."

Jarrin considered it. Dinah had a point. The SHIELD team could track the agent through Tony's sonar and pulse-glasses. They had the institutional weight and resources.

Except that Tony's team was probably still cataloging Kazir's equipment in a secure hangar somewhere, and every second they spent there was thirty seconds the Hydra agent gained. And a Hydra agent with Stand abilities who knew about Jolly Roger and Poker Face was exactly the kind of loose end that would come back to bite them at the worst possible moment.

"Fine," Jazz said. "But I'm not running after him. I'm making sure you don't get us both killed trying to."

They went back inside.

The corridor from the main entrance to the east wing had taken a beating from the earlier collapse. Sections of the ceiling had caved in, and the concrete beneath their feet was cracked in uneven patterns that suggested multiple explosive charges going off in sequence. But the path was clear enough if they moved along the walls.

Dinah led. Her AC/DC threaded through the building's electrical grid, reading residual signals like a dog reading scent trails. She could see the agent's path even without seeing him directly, just by detecting the interference patterns his Stand left behind in the wiring.

"Every thirty seconds or so, his presence creates a harmonic disturbance," Dinah said. "Like a low-frequency hum. He's been passing through every junction on this floor and deliberately avoiding camera mounts."

"Camera mounts," Jarrin said. "He knows what they're looking for."

"Obviously. He's Hydra."

They turned a corner and found the first physical trace. A doorway, or what used to be a doorway, had been dissolved along its edges. The concrete frame hadn't exploded or cracked. It simply melted into a smooth, glassy surface, like the material had been temporarily restructured at a molecular level and then restored. Liquefaction residue. Jarrin could practically see where Riptide had been, or where someone with a similar power had passed through.

"The agent isn't liquefying things," Dinah said, examining the frame. "The residue pattern is different. No chemical breakdown, no molecular disruption. This is structural density modification. He's making walls temporarily intangible, walking through them, then restoring them behind him."

Jarrin pocketed his hands and kept walking. Density manipulation. If an enemy could make themselves impenetrable, that put Jolly Roger in an interesting position. The bubble could steal the property, but only if it connected. And an impenetrable person was going to make connecting difficult.

They moved in silence for another minute, Dinah's AC/DC pulsing as it tracked the interference pattern. The signal grew stronger as they approached a corridor that branched off to the left, leading toward what looked like an old service elevator shaft. The doors had been pried open. Beyond them, a narrow passage descended beneath the building's foundation.

"Underground tunnels," Dinah said. "Connected to the adjacent commercial building. The signal leads through them. He's heading that way."

Jazz pulled a card from her deck and flicked it ahead. The card sailed through the dark opening and bounced off a wall ten meters in. No traps. No charges. Just concrete and darkness.

They went in.

The tunnels were old. Brick arches overhead, cracked and stained with decades of water damage. A service corridor that had probably been dug sometime before the building got its modern face. The air was cold and smelled of damp stone and old copper wiring. Dinah's AC/DC rode through the tunnels' wiring, which still carried faint electrical signals from the building's grid.

Halfway through, Jarrin heard something. A sound too deliberate to be settling pipes or shifting groundwater. Footsteps, but muffled by the thick walls and the sound-dampening material that Hydra obviously installed. They stopped when he stopped. Started when he started.

"Someone's following us," he said.

"Or following what we're following," Jazz said. She pulled three cards between her fingers. "Either way, we're the ones who got here first."

The tunnel opened into a wider chamber. An underground utility room, probably where the building's old boiler systems lived. The pipes were rusted and dead, but the wiring still carried current, fed through a connection that hadn't been cut. Dinah's AC/DC pinged. The signal had stopped moving.

"He's here."

Jarrin stepped into the room. A woman stood in the far corner, half in shadow. She wore a dark tactical suit with no visible insignia, her hair pulled back tight. No weapon. No visible Stand. Just a woman standing in a dark room, waiting.

"Calla," Dinah said. "Hydra embedded agent. Stand user."

The woman's eyes moved to Jarrin. Then to Jazz. Then to Dinah, who was still scanning the wiring with her fingers pressed against the wall.

"I know who you are," Jarrin said. "You've been watching us since before we walked in. Maybe since before we arrived in the city. That puts you in a position of significant advantage, which you're apparently choosing to waste by standing there instead of doing something useful with it."

Calla's face didn't change. She looked like a person evaluating a legal document. Assessing terms.

"Immunity," Jarrin said. "I'm offering immunity. You walk out of here with us, you tell us everything Hydra knows about Stand programs, and I make sure your name doesn't end up on anyone's kill list. I'm a lawyer. Sort of. I know how to make sure a deal holds."

"Hydra doesn't do deals," Calla said. Her voice was flat, trained, stripped of any unnecessary emotion. "I don't have anything you want that I'm willing to give."

"Everyone has something they're willing to give," Jarrin said. "The question is whether they know what that something is before the other person figures it out for them."

Calla stepped forward. Her Stand activated.

Jarrin felt it before he saw it. A pressure wave, subtle and wrong, pushing against his skin like atmospheric change compressed into a weapon. Calla's arms moved and the air around her hands thickened. Density. She was manipulating the density of everything near her, making it denser than it should be, turning ambient air into something heavy enough to crack bone.

Jarrin pulled the liquefaction bubble from his pocket. He couldn't use it on Calla directly, not yet, but he could use it on the room itself.

The bubble floated forward and hit a steel support beam on the far side of the chamber. It dissolved the beam's structural integrity instantly. The beam collapsed, and the ceiling groaned. Debris rained down, but Calla's Stand absorbed the impact, her impenetrable zones expanding to shield her from the falling concrete.

Jarrin pressed his back to the wall and waited. Jazz had already thrown two cards. The portals opened, linking two positions across the room. She stepped through one and appeared behind Calla, delivering a savate kick aimed at the woman's shoulder. Calla's density field shifted to intercept the kick, but the redirected force hit the wall instead, cracking it in a spiderweb pattern that Dinah was already reading through the building's grid.

"Her Stand has a feedback loop," Dinah called out. "Every time she redirects force, she absorbs it. If we can overload the loop, she can't sustain it."

Dinah grabbed a dangling wire and pressed her palm against it. AC/DC surged through the wiring like a current of amber light. The electrical signal jumped from the wall, through the air, and into Calla's chest. The woman staggered. Her density field flickered, thinning to a near-transparency for a fraction of a second before snapping back.

Jarrin saw the opening. He grabbed the liquefaction bubble and pressed it toward Calla's exposed chest, but before it could connect, she raised her hand and hardened the air into a solid wall between them. The bubble hit the wall and popped, releasing kinetic force against nothing. A wasted shot.

"Dinah, now!" Jarrin shouted.

Dinah routed more current through the wiring. The surge hit Calla again, harder this time. Her density field destabilized completely, rippling like a pond struck by a stone. Jarrin stepped forward, pulled the last card from Jazz's deck that she'd thrown into the room, and placed the liquefaction bubble on its surface. Two concepts layered. One strike.

The bubble hit Calla's exposed skin. Liquefaction hit her density field. The property tore through Calla's defenses like acid through paper, dissolving the impenetrable zones around her arms and legs. Calla screamed, a sharp sound that echoed through the chamber, and her Stand collapsed. She went to one knee, then both, then her back hit the wall.

Jarrin stood over her. Jolly Roger pulsed behind him, recovering, still visible enough to matter.

"Project Janus," Calla gasped. The words came out slow, forced, like she was dragging them from somewhere deep. "We call it Janus. Two-faced. Looking forward and backward at the same time. Stand users embedded into every major intelligence agency in the world. CIA, MI6, MSS, FSB, Mossad, DGSE. Twelve active agents. Forty-seven in pipeline."

"How many can you deploy simultaneously?"

"Six. The rest are dormant, waiting for activation. Every one of them has a different Stand. Different capabilities."

Jarrin looked at Jazz. Jazz looked at Dinah.

"The Architect knew about this," Jarrin said. "His whole operation was built around Stand users. If Hydra has twelve active agents, then the Architect wasn't working alone. Someone was feeding him information about Stand capabilities."

"Probably the same person who made me," Dinah said quietly.

Calla's eyes focused on Dinah. A flicker of something crossed her face. Recognition? Fear? Too difficult to read.

"You know more than you're telling," Jarrin said.

"I know the project's name and its basic structure. That's all they trained me on. The rest is compartmentalized."

Jarrin studied her. She was telling the truth. Her Stand had collapsed and she couldn't maintain the lie if he pushed further, but Dinah's AC/DC reading was still confirming the electrical signature of her nervous system. Everything matched. Twelve agents. Forty-seven in pipeline. Embedded across the world's intelligence apparatus.

Sirens echoed from the tunnel entrance. SHIELD had found them.

The escort team came through the chamber door, armed and ready, and saw Calla on the floor with Jarrin standing over her. The lead agent took in the situation quickly. A radio crackled. Within thirty seconds, Calla was cuffed and led away in silence. She looked at Jarrin once as they passed. Something passed between them. A recognition of the transaction, whether she'd wanted to make it or not.

Jarrin walked back through the tunnels with Jazz on his left and Dinah on his right. The tunnel opened back into the building's basement, and from there, the path led back to the ground floor, back to the corridor, back to the morning light that still hadn't changed since they left.

Twelve active agents. Forty-seven in pipeline. Embedded across the world's intelligence apparatus. The word Janus repeated in his head like a case number he couldn't stop looking up.

"I hate it when we leave something unfinished," Jazz said.

"We're not leaving it unfinished. We're handing it to people who have better resources for the next phase."

"Handing it to people who have worse resources for exactly the same problems."

Dinah said nothing. Her AC/DC pulsed amber. She was still reading the electrical traces, still mapping what Hydra had built. The signal from Calla's Stand was fading as the agents transported her away, but the data she'd absorbed remained. Names, numbers, locations. Enough to track twelve Stand users if someone had the right equipment and the right access.

Jarrin pulled out his phone. Tony's relay was still active, or at least Tony was still active enough to answer if Jarrin called. He didn't call. Instead, he typed out a message, kept it brief, and sent it to Tony's secure channel. Janus. Twelve active. Forty-seven pipeline. Embedding agents worldwide. We have names, need locations and capabilities data. Then he deleted the sent message to avoid leaving a trail that Hydra's own embedded analysts couldn't find in Tony's server architecture.

They walked out into the parking lot. The SHIELD vehicles were still there. The DE/N's car was gone, probably already en route to some federal courthouse. The morning sun had moved higher, and the light hit the building's cracked facade in a way that made the damage look almost artistic.

"We need new clothes," Jazz said. "I can't look like this and go get into a hotel."

Dinah checked her phone. "There's a hotel six blocks east. Four stars, full service. I'll book us rooms."

Jarrin looked at her. Dinah. A woman who had been a prisoner in a cloning facility, then a weapon, then something more complicated than either. Her Stand, AC/DC, now lived in her body and moved through every electrical grid on the planet. She could disappear into the wiring and come out anywhere connected to a power source. She was invisible to every detection system on Earth.

And she was bored. They all were. The Architect was beaten. Kazir was in custody. Hydra's agent was in SHIELD's hands. The mission was over. They were free.

"Six blocks is too far," Jarrin said. "There's a hotel three blocks east."

"I know where the hotel is," Dinah said. "I'm booking it."

"I know the one," Jazz said. "The one with the rooftop pool. I want that."

Dinah looked at Jazz. Jazz looked at Dinah. A conversation happened that Jarrin wasn't part of, and it didn't involve words. Dinah pulled out her phone and booked the rooftop pool hotel.

They walked. Jarrin's legs ached from the tunnel. His ribs throbbed. Jolly Roger flickered, barely visible, a ghost of a Stand that was slowly healing after everything it had absorbed. The bubble in his pocket still held Riptide's liquefaction property, waiting for its single moment.

Three blocks. Jazz and Dinah walked ahead of him, talking in a low murmur, occasionally looking back at Jarrin like they were waiting for something. He caught up. He always did, eventually.

The hotel was exactly what Jazz wanted. Rooftop pool, marble lobby, a restaurant that probably charged more for coffee than Jarrin made in an afternoon. They checked in with Jazz's card, which Jarrin hadn't asked about and Dinah hadn't asked for. The receptionist handed them three room keys and a smile that said nothing.

Jarrin took the elevator to his floor, kicked off his boots, and went into the bathroom. The shower was steamy even before he turned it on. He stepped into the water and let it run over him, letting the heat work on his ribs, on his arms, on the places where Jolly Roger's impact had bruised him from the inside.

Jarrin stood under the shower for a while. The water was hot, almost too hot. He let it wash over his face and shoulders, letting the steam fill the room, letting the tension drain out of his muscles one knot at a time. His ribs still ached with every deep breath. Jolly Roger pulsed faintly in the corner of his vision, a white-and-blue ghost that would vanish if he passed out and reformed if he slept properly. He needed to rest. He knew that. He also knew that the shower was a good excuse to do nothing productive for twenty minutes, and he was going to take it.

Down the hall, Jazz had reached Dinah. The two women had been talking on the balcony, standing too close, the conversation moving in ways that Jarrin couldn't hear from three doors away. Jazz had that look again. The one that meant something was about to happen.

Dinah followed her into the room. Jazz closed the door. Jazz had always been the one to act first and explain later.

The water ran. Jarrin turned it off. He stood under the spray for another thirty seconds, letting the heat settle into his ribs, then stepped out and wrapped a towel around his waist. The bathroom mirror showed him a man who looked like he'd been through several explosions and hadn't slept properly in a week. His hair was still wet. His blue eyes were still blue. His dread was still dread. He looked like himself, at least. That counted for something.

He opened the bathroom door.

Jazz was in the hallway, half out of her clothes. Dinah stood in the doorway of the room, already stripped, watching Jazz approach. Jazz stopped in front of Dinah and kissed her. Dinah kissed back. Jazz sank to her knees, and Dinah's hand went into Jazz's hair, and Jazz's mouth was busy in a way that made Jarrin stop and consider, briefly, whether he should go back to the shower or just walk into the room and watch.

He walked in.

Dinah looked at him. Jazz looked up from Dinah's neck and smiled, that wicked grin that meant everything was going exactly how she wanted it to go. Jarrin dropped his towel. Jazz stood and wrapped both arms around his waist and pressed her chest against his stomach, and he pressed her against the wall and she arched into it and Dinah came up behind Jazz and took Jazz's ass in both hands and the three of them collapsed into the bed together.

Clothes came off. The room was expensive enough that nobody cared about the sheets. Jazz pulled a card from her deck, the stored copy of Jarrin's cock that Poker Face had kept, and she pressed it against herself and it became real, flesh and heat and length. She turned around, dropped to her knees, and spread Dinah's legs. "Fuck, Dinah, look at you," Jazz purred, pushing in slow. "I've been wanting this all damn day." Dinah's back arched off the mattress. "Don't stop, don't stop, right there, yes, fuck, Jazz, yes, yes, right there." Dinah's hands gripped the sheets, knuckles white. The bed rattled against the wall. Jarrin stood in the doorway, still wet from the shower, cock already hard at the sight. "Christ, look at them. Look at you two." He walked in slowly. Jazz glanced back at him over her shoulder. "Get in here, Jarrin, get in here before I come without you." Jarrin pulled out of Jazz and shifted his weight sideways, pushing between their ass cheeks. Jazz gasped. "You like my ass too much?" Jarrin grunted. "It's fat. More cushion for the pushing." He pressed back against her, and she arched into it. "Oh fuck, fuck, yes, right there, harder, deeper." Dinah moaned, eyes rolling back. "God, Jazz, you're so good at this, I swear to God, I'm gonna come, Jarrin, get in, get in, get in." Jarrin pulled out and pushed into Jazz from behind. She cried out. "Fuck, yes, yes, yes, harder." Her legs locked around his waist. "Harder, harder, don't slow down." He pounded her, and at the same time reached down and worked her other cock, slick with her own come. Jazz's head fell back, her mouth opened in a long, ragged moan. "Oh God, Jarrin, oh fuck, Dinah, look at him, look at what he's doing to me." Dinah crawled over and straddled Jazz's face. Jazz groaned into her pussy. "Mmm, fuck, Dinah, you taste so good." Her hands gripped Dinah's hips. Dinah's fingers tangled in Jazz's hair. "Don't you stop, don't you dare stop, I'm coming, I'm coming, Jarrin, I'm right there, keep going, keep going, fuck." Jazz's eyes were closed, her mouth working Dinah open, and Dinah came hard, her body shaking, her thighs clamping around Jazz's head. Jarrin was still pounding Jazz's pussy, and the room was loud with it, with moans and curses and the bed slamming the wall. He came deep inside her. "Fuck, fuck, yes, oh God." He pulled out and his load spilled across Jazz's stomach and her thighs. Dinah collapsed on top of Jazz, and all three of them were panting. Jazz laughed. "Again." Jarrin pulled out and came on Dinah's legs. They leaned over him and licked the come from each other's skin. Jazz kissed Jarrin first, then Dinah. Jarrin kissed both of them, one after the other. They turned on each other and licked the come off each other's faces and breasts. Jazz sucked on Dinah's nipples, and Dinah returned the favor, tongues working over peaked skin. Jarrin kissed them both again, slow and deep, and then they just stayed there, breathing hard, skin slick, the hotel room warm and expensive and silent except for their ragged breathing.

Jazz lay on his left side. Dinah lay on his right. All three of them were naked and sweaty and exhausted. Stains marked their faces and breasts where he'd come. The hotel room was quiet. The rooftop pool was somewhere above them. The world kept turning, and Jarrin's ribs still hurt, but the ache felt manageable now, almost distant. Jolly Roger pulsed faintly behind him, alive, visible, his Stand still there, still working, still ready for whatever came next. Jazz's arm was wrapped around his chest, her breathing slow and even. Dinah's hand rested on his stomach, her fingers relaxed. Jarrin closed his eyes and fell asleep with one arm around each of them, the stolen liquefaction property still warm in his pocket, and Project Janus's name burning behind his eyelids like a case number he'd need to look up again tomorrow.