Annihilate

Thursday starts with Tommy feeling like beating the shit out of his stupid metabolism because the effect of caffeine wears off way too fast and he keeps almost falling asleep at school.

Other than that, it’s a chill day – he hands in his essay, chugs so much Red Bull that even Billzo, king of drinking too much energy, starts throwing him concerned glances mid-history class, finally finalizes his suit design and manages to avoid Tubbo and Ranboo throughout the day successfully. He doesn’t want to pull his best friends into all of this. It’s bad enough that Tubbo, as an Osborn, is as close to it all as he is. He really doesn’t need Ranboo in this mess.

He blasts Wilbur’s songs on repeat as he takes the bus to the station nearest Oscorp Tower. His spider-sense didn’t go off like an alarm siren at the thought of coming here, and that’s probably the only reason why he’s doing it now. His nerves are on the frizz as he drums his fingers against his backpack straps and just marches into the building.

Of course, he gets held up by security almost instantly. A tall man in all black with rectangular glasses stops him and says, “Hey. Entrance pass, please.”

Time to get lying again. Tommy blinks at the man like he doesn’t understand English before shaking his head and pulling off his headphones. “Uh. I don’t have one of those?”

The guard frowns at him. “Sorry. Can’t let you in then.”

He shakes his head and tries his best to feign sadness. “I’m terribly sorry to bother you, sir,” God he wants to barf, ”but I go to Manhattan Science. We were on a tour here on Monday and I was supposed to take pictures for our school magazine, but my lens broke in my schoolbag and I only realized after we were back. My teacher said they’d surely let me take at least a couple photos as a replacement.”

Now it’s the security guard’s turn to blink at him like an idiot. “Uhm… I’m not sure I have the… I don’t think you can, unfortunately. The tower’s not on lockdown anymore, but we’re taking strict security measures.”

Tommy fully reverses their roles and frowns at him. “The tower was on lockdown? I didn’t know that.”

“The– watch the news.”

Hook.

“Why? What happened? I only know that when we were here on our trip, I noticed that there was a spider missing from one of the containers. Uh, it was for gene research or something like that. I mean, the lady reassured me that everything was fine, really, but I just had this weird feeling…”

Line.

Tommy trails off as the guard’s facial expression morphs from surprise to recognition. He pretends not to notice, looking off into space like the bumbling teenager he should be, then acts like he’s snapping himself back to reality and shakes his head again.

“Well, I’ll be on my way then–”

“No! No, wait. You were the kid that noticed the missing spider?”

Tommy nods. “Yeah. Number thirteen, right? It really is an unlucky number.”

And boom, the security guard suddenly backpedals. “Oh, that’s actually great. That you’re here, I mean. My boss wanted to talk to you, but we had a lot to deal with and the spider kind of didn’t seem as… eh, doesn’t matter. I’ll make you a deal, yeah? I’ll let you take some pictures if you let me take you to the big man afterwards. Okay?”

Sinker.

Tommy beams. “Oh, really? That’d be just awesome! Thank you so much!”

The security guard, to his credit, returns his smile even though Tommy is kind of playing him like a cheap kazoo. He gets a mini version of the tour they had around the tower and snaps pictures of everything, excluding the spiders (they have mysteriously disappeared. Tommy wonders what they did with them) and including the live lizards and holograms of all the genetic splicing research he can photograph without seeming suspicious.

He strikes gold there. While the security guard wanders off shortly to report him being there, Tommy reaches into his pocket and activates an EMP he made out of scrap on the bus ride here, shortly frying the cameras. He pulls up a hologram and looks into the disk of the table it belongs to, scrolling through folder after folder. He finds one titled ‘SPIDERS’ in another one titled ‘RADIATION’ in another one titled ‘GENETIC MANIPULATION’ (which, jeez, that wording feels a little harsh) and opens it to fifteen more folders, numbered accordingly. He opens ‘13’ to a picture of the spider that bit him and doesn’t give himself the time to get immersed in reading it, simply snapping pictures of the entire long document of research on it and closing everything again.

His heart is beating entirely too wildly as he looks through his photos, pretending to be immersed as the security guard comes back and looks over his shoulders.

“Wow, that’s nice,” he remarks to a close-up of a lizard hologram. Tommy almost bursts out laughing. “Is photography a passion of yours?”

“Yeah. That and handicrafts,” he smiles, trying to keep his shit together. “My, uh, brother taught me how to sew.”

It was actually Deo, but whatever. Close enough.

“Oh? You have a brother?”

“Two.” His smile turns genuine thinking of Techno and Wil, even as the security guard starts leading him out of the area he knows and down a hallway he’s never been in before. There’s an elevator at the end of it that’s made of pure glass. What the fuck. “They’re pretty great.”

“Hm.” He has no clue if the fucker is trying to interrogate him or if he’s just curious about him. But he’s not really lying. He wasn’t even really lying about why he’s here – Mr Nook did tell him replacement pictures would be nice. He’s hitting two birds with one stone here. Or four.

They’re going up, but Tommy notices that the elevator can also go down. The tower’s lower levels must be built directly next to Dyckman Street’s subway station. He thinks that’s how Deo broke into this place. Crawled through the ventilation system he can see through the glass elevator. Must also be how the lizard got out.

The elevator doors open with a ding, but the security guard stays put. Tommy glances at him as he exits the lift.

“Last door on the right. See you,” he calls, and then the doors close again and Tommy is left alone.

He turns back and exhales heavily. His knuckles ache with phantom pain even though he’s long unwrapped them, both the injuries from the lizard fight and the lesions from beating up Deo’s murderer healed and gone without even as much as a trace. He feels like the entire world can still see the blood on them.

He’s really just about to talk to Schlatt, huh? The guy that ordered Deo’s assassination? Tubbo’s father who always fucking despised Tommy for his sadly nonexistent privileged background?

His spider sense is not doing anything about it, so he figures it’ll work out okay. Time to get real. Tommy squares his shoulders and marches down the hallway, turning to the door and knocking on it steadily.

“Come in,” Schlatt’s voice calls.

Tommy pulls the door open – thank fuck it wasn’t a push door because that would’ve quite frankly been embarrassing – and enters the room. It’s a normal, boring office, and Schlatt’s sitting behind a stack of paperwork and a computer, head in one hand.

He hasn’t actually seen Tubbo’s dad in a long time. Even when they meet up at his house, Schlatt is almost always working. Dream usually takes care of shit around the house and watches over Tubbo, although he lets him do his own thing mostly. Tommy is kind of weirded out to see that Schlatt looks… far from his best.

Tommy inhales and the way Schlatt’s thick cologne barely covers the smell of sickness tells him something’s wrong.

Schlatt glances up at him. “Oh, hey, Tommy. Did Charlie escort you up here safely?”

Obviously, dickhead. “Yeah, it was really nice of him,” Tommy says, playing along with the weirdly nice tone. He waves his camera around. “Thanks again for letting me take replacement pictures. Mr Nook would’ve been really disappointed if I didn’t get any.”

Schlatt nods. “Mh-hm. Take a seat, Tommy.”

He sits down on a chair. It’s really uncomfortable. His spider sense still isn’t ringing even slightly, though.

“Can you tell me what you saw in our building on Monday morning?”

Like, everything? Walls. Idiots. Spiders. More idiots.

“It’s not really that spectacular,” he says truthfully. “I was trying to decide if I should take a close-up of one spider or a bigger photo of all of them. While I was thinking, I counted through and noticed that one was missing. I told some important-looking lady and she said it was fine, so I just went back to taking pictures. That’s all.”

Schlatt stares at him. He looks unnerving as fuck. His face is thinner than Tommy remembers it being, almost haggard, and he has huge bags under his eyes. “That’s all?” he asks. “Really? You didn’t– go back to the spiders afterwards? You saw nothing?”

“Whole lot of nothing,” he nods.

Schlatt slams his hand down on his desk suddenly and makes him jump. “You can’t be serious,” he says, frustration radiating off his angry face, “that’s what I brought you up here for? You didn’t even look at the spiders one last time?”

Tommy blinks at him. “Sorry,” he blurts out, speaking before thinking, “that I listened to your fucking staff, who work here, and are probably to be trusted more than a weird feeling in my gut?”

Schlatt sighs and puts his head into his hands again, massaging his temples. “Here’s a lesson for life, kid. Don’t trust anyone except yourself. Got it?”

Oh, yeah. He has that one down to a T. Tommy crosses his arms. “I’m a foster kid,” he says drily, “I got that when I was orphaned.”

Schlatt doesn’t even react to the jab, a reminder of what he has judged Tommy for in the past. His leg is bouncing. He rubs his hands over his face and pulls open his desk drawer, fishing out… glasses and a bottle of whiskey?

Tommy watches in slight (just a tiny little bit) confusion as he pours himself a glass and then glances at Tommy. “You old enough to drink yet?”

“No.”

Schlatt rolls his eyes. “Yeah, right. Forget you and my son are the same age. I’ll pour ya some anyway and then you and I can make a deal.”

He doesn’t actually think his metabolism would react to strong alcohol, so he just shrugs and lets Schlatt true to his word pour him one. It feels very strange to be here. This is just a through and through weird situation, especially because Schlatt empties his glass in two milliseconds and instantly pours himself a second one. Tommy takes a sip of the strong alcohol and wonders why the fuck he’s still here.

And what’s up with Schlatt seeming like he’s gonna keel over any second?

“Tell you what, Tommy,” the man sniffs, “I’ve come to like you a little more than I did when I first met you. I thought you have a helluva mouth on you, you don’t know when enough’s enough, never heard of manners – more trouble than you’re worth – but you’re honest, ya know? Courageous enough to engage in underage drinking with a cop for a dad. And you’re a smart kid, top of your class. Unlike my son–”

“Schlatt, I’m gonna hurl this glass of courageous underage drink right at your head if you insult Tubbo.”

Schlatt chuckles. “Loyal and quick in the head too. I just… you know, Tubbo and I, we’re not… I did a lot of things wrong with him. With both of ’em, but more with him. He was younger than Dream… needed me more.”

A short pause. If he’s waiting for Tommy to start telling him that he’s wrong and that he’s actually a great father, they can sit here all afternoon. He cited him to be honest for a good reason. Schlatt looks kind of lost in his thoughts as they stare at each other for a moment, then he shakes his head and empties his glass again.

“Eh. I know I’m some sorta deadbeat. I got issues with this,” he raises the whiskey before promptly pouring himself his third glass, “and I haven’t been whole since their mother... yeah. I’m not a good person. Just… thank you for takin’ care of my kid, yeah?”

Tommy’s spider sense weakly comes to life, like it’s trying to get him to understand something about the weird monologue that he can’t grasp because he’s too busy being baffled by it. Schlatt is really just sitting there and admitting to being a sack of shit. Days after having Deo murdered. That seems like some more serious fucking issues than his alcohol problem, honestly. What’s he supposed to say? Thanks for admitting to it? It doesn’t change anything.

He finds his voice in the wake of the hot anger in his gut. “I hope you know that you should’ve pulled it together for them,” he says. “You can’t reverse the damage you left now. And I don’t get why you’re telling all that to me and not them.”

Schlatt blinks at him and nods slowly, taking a sip for once instead of chugging the drink like there’s no tomorrow. “Damn smart you are for your age,” he mumbles. “Heard from Tubbo that a friend of yours died recently. Sorry ‘bout that.”

That’s what he gets? Sorry ‘bout that?

Tommy gets the violent urge to actually smash his glass against Schlatt’s pitiful face and color his puffy cheeks dark red with his blood. He controls it masterfully by digging his nails into his palm where the idiot can’t see it. He takes a deep breath and says, “He was murdered. I was there.”

Schlatt almost chokes on his whiskey. “You were there?”

Huh. So Tubbo didn’t tell him that much. Oh, this is so fucking weird. What kind of 4D chess bullshit is this? I know you ordered the hit on him, but I don’t think you know I know that. He shrugs and swallows the rest of his drink in one go. “I went after the two of them and beat the shit out of them. My dad arrested them.” He stands and sighs, looking back at Schlatt, who looks a little bit like he’s seen a ghost.

“Really?” he asks quietly.

“One of them told me it was a hit. Nothing personal, he said.” Tommy laughs. “When I find whoever put that on his head, trust me. I will make it personal and fucking kill them.”

He leaves Schlatt with that indirect direct threat and goes home with answers and more questions.