Author's Note

Warning: The following chapter contains British people, references to the first game, vague signs and portents and traces of Keanu Reeves. If any of this offends you on some level, feel free to skip this chapter. Besides, you won't miss much if you do.

I've made a few edits for the sake of continuity. Nobody pointed them out to me, but I'm a perfectionist anyway.

Intermission (edited)

May 19, 2011
11:04 AM

They found the white getaway van on its side in the parking lot of Inkwell Industrial. Matt was inside, but had locked the doors, and they’d bought the van specifically for being immune to just about everything the cops could do to it. Matt was taunting them from inside, and he didn’t care for that. Not one little bit.

He located a jerry can of gasoline in the parking lot, and brought it back to the van. No matter how much he wanted to stay in there, he wouldn’t be able to hide forever once the heat was on. He pulled a cigarette lighter out of his pocket and set the large puddle of gasoline alight. Almost right away, Matt stopped his taunting. “Cosy in there, Matt?!” he shouted.

The police had cornered them, but they weren’t worried. The van was theirs, and they had more than enough ammo to last out the assault. From inside, he could hear Matt scream, “What are you doing with that Union Jack?!” That threw him off for a second, which was long enough for him to be torn apart by gunfire—

September 27, 2014
5:34 AM

Hoxton’s eyes shot open, and he started gasping for air as though he really had been shot. Then he realised that it was just a dream, and he was still in Hazelwood. Matt was screaming in the bunk below him, and he chuckled to himself as a guard banged on the cell’s door with his baton, telling them to keep the noise down.

Neither of them got back to sleep afterwards; Matt’s whimpering kept Hoxton up, and it only got louder when the latter threatened him. Still, he couldn’t beat up Matt actively after lights out; as much as the guards hated Matt as well, the noise kept other prisoners up, and that was off limits. The day guards were totally fine with it after a few favours, though, and he took the opportunity as often as he could. It was just about the only thing that was keeping him going in the nick.

That, and he knew that one of these days, the fellas would break him out again. When the new mayor had been elected last year, the first thing he’d done on the New Year was move Hoxton to a lower-security prison. Someone else had arranged to have Matt moved with him, for which he was incredibly grateful, and Matt wasn’t. Some foul play had been suspected in the election, which only led Hoxton to believe that the crew were coming to break him out at some point.

Every time there was a heist in the news, he’d been pulled out of his cell by some police officer or FBI agent to talk about it, but he didn’t know anything about how or why they’d come back together. He knew who they were, to some degree, except for the one now using his old mask. That seemed insulting somehow, and he intended to rip into Dallas for it as soon as they were reunited.

Still, it broke up the monotony of prison life, and he was grateful for the small mercy, especially knowing it was temporary. And so it was that he was whistling ‘Rule, Britannia’ as he came into the visitor room again, knowing his only visitors were the FBI and he’d have nothing new to say to them, in exchange for details on what his mates were doing.

As soon as he came into the visitor room, though, he knew something was different. He’d never seen the FBI agent before, when usually it was the same one. Furthermore, there was a second man behind him, whose black suit seemed slightly familiar, though he couldn’t place it. His face was impossible to place, as well.

The day only got stranger when the man in the black suit, rather than the agent, pushed a photo under the glass screen between them. The photo was of a pair of trucks that had crashed into a shipping container in the road. “This is a still from a video that was recorded down at the docks on the night of the twenty-second,” the agent, who had introduced himself as Wilson, said. “The Payday Crew were there, attacking a convoy of GenSec trucks. According to a video taken by one of the dock workers, they had an accomplice there, calling out the situation for them. As for who that accomplice was...”

Hoxton turned the photo over, expecting to see it there, but instead he saw a pair of letters: ‘JW’. He mouthed the words ‘John Wick?’ as the agent turned around to take the second photo, to which the man in black nodded. There was a surprise; last he’d heard on the prison grapevine, Wick had gotten out of the game. To see him back in America, working with a cop, was unexpected to say the least.

The second photo surprised him a lot as well. What it seemed to show was a sky-blue pony with a rainbow mane. Wilson explained that that was the clearest frame of the video. “Are you fuckin’ havin’ a laugh?” Hoxton asked, laughing. He just barely managed to restrain himself from asking why somebody had rotoscoped Rainbow Dash into the heist video, not wanting to out himself as having seen the show.

“As far as anyone can tell, that’s real. There was definitely someone acting as their spotter that night. If you know anything about it, then...”

He turned the second photo over, finding the actual message from John: ‘Dentist knows your plight. Can help, but it will take time. Have faith.’ He didn’t know who the Dentist was, but knowing he had a proper ally on the outside led him to shake his head. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times; I don’t know enough about the crew to rat them out even if I wanted to, especially anyone new they’ve hired since my arrest. You FBI wankers can all go to hell.”

“Disappointing, but perhaps not unexpected. I guess I can chalk today up as another wasted day in the Bureau. C’mon, we’re leaving.” He waved John along with him as he stood up. Hoxton stood as well, not wanting to be jerked up by the two guards. Even if his dignity was pretty low in prison, he still prided himself on being a proper English gent, and that meant not getting manhandled if he could at all avoid it.

But as he walked back to the cell, his mind was racing. Assuming that the photo was real, then how was there even a real-life Equestrian pony? Why that one specifically, and how had she been picked up by his old crew? Why had John Wick, who supposedly had gotten out of the game after one last hit, back and trying to help him out? Who was this ‘Dentist’ person, and why did he want to break him out? He knew that being moved to another prison was for the sake of getting out, but he’d assumed it would just be a straight prison break...

Wanting to be alone with his thoughts when he returned to the cell, he even told Matt outright that he wouldn’t beat him up that day if he was just left alone, an offer Matt was all too willing to take. He couldn’t make heads or tails of the situation. But there was a much clearer hope of release now, and that made him happy.

~~~

He was back on what the crew had come to call Heat Street, but this time, he knew it was a dream from the start. The lack of any gunfire, shouting or screeching tyres had tipped him off. Still, with no further objective, he began to run down the streets, through the path he had taken all those years ago.

As he approached the burning van, he heard a noise behind him, and turned to see that the street had gone. Replacing it was a village of thatch roofs, burning like the van behind him. A meteor was frozen in midair, its trail still visible like someone had paused a disaster movie. The van and the factory parking lot were still there as he began to trace the streets of the village, adding to the surreal effect.

“I know what it feels like, to have your friends taken away from you,” a young female voice said, echoing about the village and seeming to come from everywhere at once. “To see them just close enough to touch, yet so far away you start to feel like they won’t even recognise you if you ever do meet again.”

“Where are you? Show yourself!”

“But you may yet see your friends again. And that works for me as well. The larger your group is, the more likely I may see mine again...”

“Lady, I’m not going to ask you again! Show yourself, right now!”

“You’re not in any position to be making demands,” she chided. “But then again, I might as well show you who I am. If anything, it may even help you too...” Hearing footsteps clicking on the stone path behind, he spun around, seeing another of the ponies from the show. But it wasn’t quite the Twilight Sparkle he knew; he didn’t recall her having wings of her own.

“I assure you, this is all real,” Twilight said. “And as soon as you’re out of prison, you’ll understand even better how you can help me.”

There was silence between them for a while. “What... the... fuck?” Hoxton finally said. “Why am I dreaming about shit like this? I didn’t even like the show!” As Twilight quirked an eyebrow, he looked away and added, “...much.”

“Believe, Hoxton,” she finally said, as she walked away. “You won’t have a choice, before long.”

The village started fading away, and in its place came the familiar sounds of a heist gone wrong. But it just wasn’t the same now that he knew it was a dream. And he couldn’t get Twilight’s words out of his head either. All the questions he thought he’d come up with satisfactory answers to before were now thrown back into focus. There was one new one, as well:

With all the insanity outside, should I go back at all?