Author's Note: Liz posted a story? It's a Christmas miracle! :D

It's been a while, and as my former readers might have noticed, this is NOT, in fact, an Outsiders story. Weird, right? Hahaha

If you haven't seen the movie Extraction on Netflix, you should stop right now and go watch it immediately. If you don't have Netflix, well then, you should go sign up for the free trial or whatever and then watch Extraction. It's a good movie. It's the first story I've wanted to write fanfiction for in literally years, because the characters are that much fun to watch and work with.

This particular story takes place right after the events of the end of the movie (the VERY end of the movie). I know a sequel has already been ordered, so this is my little take on what could happen next, while we're waiting for whatever genius story Mr. Russo is developing.

I'm not completely finished writing it, but I'll work on posting chapters regularly. Enjoy, and as always, feel free to critique and/or make suggestions!

Liz

Summary: After losing everything, Ovi turns to the ghosts of his past to guide him out of the darkness. Problem is, now he's hungry, lost, and alone, and being one of the good guys isn't all it's cracked up to be. If only ghosts didn't suck so much at telling you how to survive.

The Bad Guys

Chapter 1

"You know that he is dead, Ovi."

The boy leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and stared at the rug beneath his feet. It was definitely not Persian. Sure, it was nice enough to fool most people, and it would make them think that this bigshot doctor fellow was a bigger bigshot than he really was, but Ovi knew better. This was fake.

"Ovi?"

Ovi cleared his throat and rubbed his nose. "But it was so…so real this time."

"You saw him die."

"I saw him get shot."

The man sighed as if they'd been through this a hundred times in the past eight months, which they very likely had been. "Ovi, you need to understand - it is not uncommon for someone who has gone through a traumatic event such as yourself to have something like this happen. Do you remember what we talked about? What you did not have?"

Ovi reached down to run his fingers across the rug. It was definitely not silk, and absolutely not Persian, no way. "Closure," he recited. "I did not have closure." He looked up at the man who sat behind his great fake-mahogany desk twirling a pen like he had much better things to attend to. "But I could swear that I really saw him this time."

The doctor sighed. Was he actually a real doctor, Ovi wondered? How much school could he possibly have needed to learn how to ask stupid questions? "Were you wearing your glasses, Ovi?" And there it was, another stupid question.

The boy closed his eyes. "I was in the swimming pool. So no, I was not wearing my glasses. But I –"

"It is the same as the other times, Ovi. You were not wearing your glasses. The world was a blur. Just like the time you spent with him in Dhaka."

Ovi recalled how he'd set his eyeglasses down on the bar at the club right before going out to the alley. Right before they'd come and shot his friend. Right before he'd been grabbed and tied up and taken. No, he hadn't had his glasses. But his eyesight wasn't that bad. "It really looked like him, though. I think it might have…."

The man leaned back in his pleather chair, not missing a beat with the pen-twirling. "Let us go through this again, Ovi, alright?" He stared at Ovi until the boy sat up and leaned against the couch cushions. "You remember why this man –"

"His name was Tyler."

"– that does not matter, he could just as easily have been another man with a different name. You remember why this man came to get you, right? Tell me why he came to Dhaka to get you."

Ovi's throat tightened. Another man with a different name, and Ovi would likely be the one who was dead instead of the man whose name was Tyler. Which he wasn't. Dead, that is. Tyler Rake was not dead.

Was he?

"Ovi. Why did that man come to get you?"

Ovi swallowed. "He, uh…he thought he would get money."

"That is right. He was a mercenary."

"Yes, but –"

"And what does that mean?"

He hated this question. He hated the answer. And he was starting to hate the man who kept making him say it out loud. Ovi clenched and then released his jaw. "It means…it means that he was paid to do things."

"That is correct. This man, Ovi, yes, he took you from the men who kidnapped you. But he did not do it because he cared about you. He did it because he was promised money in exchange. A very large sum of money, no doubt." As if he'd made a point, as if he had any idea what he was talking about, the crazy-boy doctor (Ovi at this point still wasn't sure which of the two of them was more crazy) gave a leisurely stretch, tossed his pen onto the desk, and leaned back even farther in his chair. "You knew the man for less than twenty-four hours. It is admirable that you came to care for him, but that speaks only to you, Ovi. You were just a boy living through a terrible situation. It is only natural that you would look to the person who seemed to have intervened on your behalf as…" he paused a moment to look to the ceiling, searching for the correct word. "As a hero of sorts."

"He rescued me." Ovi was desperate to validate somewhere, somehow, with someone, what he knew to be true. What he thought he knew to be true. No, he was sure. He remembered.

Didn't he?

"He was sent by your father to retrieve you. Not to rescue you. They are not the same. He expected to be paid. That is all. It was something he'd done many times before. You were not special to him. You meant nothing."

"But he knew there was no money! And yet he still –"

"Oh, but Ovi, you have told me before, don't you remember?" The doctor sat up and sifted through his notes. "Yes, here. You said that he told you he would not leave you on the streets because you were his only chance to get his money. This was not the kind of man who would risk his life for a boy he'd just met and would never see again. He did it for money, as he had many times before."

"But he –"

"He expected to be paid."

Ovi closed his eyes and took a slow breath. "No. No, not at the end. He was a hero. He –"

"He killed many innocent men. Men who had families. Young men who had their whole lives ahead of them. Is this something that heroes do? No. This was a very dangerous man, Ovi. He was not your friend."

Ovi closed his eyes tighter, but rather than shutting out the images of Tyler Rake snuffing out one life after the next, it only made them more vivid. His voice, when it came, was a shallow whisper. "Those men were trying to kill us. They were the bad guys."

"No, Ovi. Those men were trying to kill him. From their perspective, the man they were pursuing was the bad guy. They'd been told he was a terrorist. And in a sense, he was, no? A hired terrorist. A man who killed indiscriminately because he was being paid by your father to do a job."

The smugness. It made Ovi's skin crawl. He looked up at the doctor. "You are being paid by my father to do a job."

And now, smugness in a smile. "No, Ovi. I am being paid nothing. I am treating you because I owed your father. This is how I am repaying him." And I don't care about you any more than Tyler Rake did. He didn't say it out loud, but he didn't have to.

Ovi hung his head again and stared at the stupid, tacky rug. "But I saw him this time. I…I think I actually did this time." The carpet blurred. "It seemed so real this time."

The doctor slid his box of coarse tissues across his desk. "It will get better, Ovi. In time, you will feel your connection to this man who died on the bridge weaken, and then it will slip away. But first, you must accept that he is gone. Only then will you be ready to move forward."