(no subject)

[the_death_card]

Warning for child abuse

History: Zachary Alexander was born to single mother Eliza Wilder in Brooklyn. His father was an ex-boyfriend who she never told about the pregnancy, and Zack never knew him. To support her child, Eliza worked two jobs, coming up with creative solutions to make sure that Zack never understood how poor the family actually was. She was largely successful at it, and though Zack might have wondered why he couldn't have the hottest new toys like his friends, it didn't affect his childhood.

When Zack was seven, there came a day that the principal of the school he attended pulled him out of class to tell him that something had happened to Eliza. Though Zack was too young to understand at the time, she had suffered a sudden, massive stroke and had been found in their apartment by one of her co-workers. Zack's father was contacted, but he wanted nothing to do with the child, and so, with no other living relatives, Zack was put into the foster care system.

Zack's time in the system came with its share of ups and downs. Zack had trouble adjusting to his new and unstable situation. His case worker did his best to find him suitable places, but many of her attempts were brought down by Zack acting out at home or getting into fights at school. Some of the better ones ended for other reasons, including sickness and another death, and Zack found himself being shuffled off to somewhere else.

When Zack was nine, he was sent to live with a middle-aged couple. What the couple had managed to conceal was that the man was an abusive alcoholic. He never resorted to physical violence, but he was extremely controlling and emotionally manipulative of both his wife and Zack, including withholding food or locking the child out of the house in the middle of winter. Eventually, Zack found an opportunity to run away, but he was returned to the family by police. The abuse continued until a day that Zack collapsed at school from lack of food. His case worker took the time to listen to her charge and to launch a deeper investigation, and Zack was finally removed from the home.

After that, Zack lived with an older woman who had grandchildren Zack's age. Zack actually managed to settle in the woman's home and was doing well both in school and at home when he was dealt another blow. One evening, the woman suffered a massive heart attack. Though she was taken to the hospital, there was nothing to be done, and she passed away a few days later. In some ways, Zack took her death harder than his own mother's, considering he was now old enough to actually understand what was happening. The woman's son was briefly considered as a replacement, but in the end, Zack was returned to the system.

A year later, Zack was sent to live with a family with two other children. Only two nights after his arrival, he woke with a need to use the bathroom. On the way back to his room, he heard sounds from another bedroom and walked in on his foster father molesting his eight-year-old daughter. Before Zack could get away, the man saw him and began to beat him, blacking his eye, breaking his arm, cracking two ribs, and leaving him barely conscious. The family did have the decency to take him to the hospital, and the following investigation led to all three children being removed from the home, as well as the man being taken into police custody.

For almost two years after that, Zack became nearly out of control. He got in fights nearly every day and was barely passing his classes. He began picking pockets to get money for the things he needed, and, though he came close to getting caught, seemed to have a knack for slipping away unnoticed. Then, a new child was sent to live in the group home where Zack was staying. He was as young as Zack had been after his mother's death, and, despite his best efforts to remain distant, Zack found himself becoming close to the boy. Lee was unable to pronounce Zack's name, calling him "Jack", instead, and after the boy was sent to live with some distant cousin, Zack kept the name.

After that, Jack's life took a turn for the better. His home situation remained unstable, but he found a job at a theater, working first as a janitor, then as an usher, and then in the ticket booth. While he was working there, a magician did a run of shows at the theater. For what felt like the first time, Jack found himself fascinated by the show and began to teach himself everything he could about magic, including pouring over books and using the library's computers to watch YouTube videos. When the magician himself discovered Jack struggling with a card trick one afternoon, he took him under his wing for the rest of his time at the theater, teaching him sleight of hand and how to throw playing cards, among other things.

When Jack turned eighteen, he left the system. He continued working at the theater until declining ticket sales left it shuttered. From there, he worked a series of odd jobs, resorting to picking pockets and performing street magic for extra cash. He was never actually homeless, but things were tight all the same, and he learned to improve his skills to better his own situation.

The pattern continued until shortly after Jack's twenty-fourth birthday (where the movie began). He had made something of a name for himself - even if people sometimes didn't actually know his name - doing street performances. One afternoon, after a moderately successful stop on a ferry boat that left him with a watch to pawn and a handful of cash, he discovered a tarot card - specifically, the Death card - that had been slipped into his pocket. The back of the card listed a time, date, and street and apartment number in New York. When he arrived at the apartment, he discovered three other magicians he already knew there: Merritt Mckinney, Henley Reeves, and Daniel Atlas, of whom he was something of a fan. The door to the apartment was locked, but one of the things Jack was the best at was picking locks, and it was only a matter of seconds before they were inside.

The apartment was dark and dank and looked as though no one had been there for some time. In the main room, though, they found a note that read "Now you don't", a rose, and a pitcher of water. When Henley placed the rose in the water, it started a chain reaction that led to the discovery of blueprints and plans for a set of shows. They later discovered the shows were meant to cripple or bankrupt three people and institutions who had all played a part in the downfall of Lionel Shrike, another famous magician who had died attempting a comeback some thirty years before. If they succeeded with the shows and followed the instructions given, they would also be permitted entrance to the Eye, a secret organization dedicated to the protection of "real magic". Despite the fact that they had no real clue who exactly they were working for, the four of them agreed, and a year later, they took to the Vegas strip as the Four Horsemen in a show sponsored by Arthur Tressler, a millionaire businessman.

During the Vegas show, the team declared they were going to rob a bank. They picked a man from the audience, seemingly at random, sending him through space to Paris and into the vault of his bank, the Credit Republicain, where they "magically" stole $3.2 million and dropped it over the audience. In fact, the man was a dupe, chosen weeks before specifically because of his connection to the bank. They had also stolen the money weeks before by intercepting it on its way to the bank and replacing it with fake money, which they they destroyed using flash paper.

After the show, the team returned to their suite at Aria to wait for their inevitable arrest. It wasn't long before the FBI arrived to take them into custody, and they received thunderous applause on their way out of the casino.

At the FBI's Las Vegas office, they were interrogated by Special Agent Dylan Rhodes of the FBI and Agent Alma Dray of Interpol, who had been spent from Paris to investigate the robbery. The Horsemen gave them all manner of grief and, considering the lack of actual evidence against them, were released and moved on to their next show.

On the plane ride over, a spat between the Horsemen led to Daniel attempting to read Tressler. In fact, the questions were meant to lead him into providing them with the answers to his security questions, the point of which would be revealed during the next show.

The second show took place at the Savoy Theatre in New Orleans. The team further antagonized the agents during the show by dedicating it to them. As this show's final act, Merritt apparently used his mentalism to divine the bank accounts of everyone in the audience, including their benefactor, Arthur Tressler. They bought him on stage and began to "magically" transfer money from his bank account to those of their audience, all of whom had been denied claims by Tressler Insurance.

The team made their escape with the help of some audience members who had been hypnotized by Merritt earlier in the show. While escaping, Jack was also able to plant a tracker on Agent Rhodes, who believed he was actually tracking Daniel through the crowd. By the time he realized what was really going on, the Horsemen were well on their way to New York.

In New York, the Horsemen realized that Agent Rhodes had discovered a bug that Daniel had planted on him in Las Vegas. The other Horsemen fled the apartment, but Jack remained behind to destroy some of the evidence they had. When Agents Rhodes and Fuller arrived, Jack incapacitated Agent Fuller by jamming the sleeves of his suit coat into the apartment's garbage disposal and fought Agent Rhodes. Jack narrowly escaped with a report on Alcorn, who the FBI were already investigating. He led Agents Dray and Rhodes on a high-speed chase through New York City and eventually onto the 59th Street Bridge. There, Jack's car hit the median divider and rolled before bursting into flames. Agent Rhodes attempted to pull him out of the car but was only able to grab the report. Moments later, the car exploded, and Jack was apparently killed.

Though the car chase was real, the Horsemen were waiting for Jack on the bridge to switch out his car with another, identical car, into which they had loaded an unidentified corpse from a local morgue. The real point was to lead the FBI to a warehouse in Queens where Alcorn had been hiding a safe full of money and to get the attention off Jack so he could finish another set of tasks.

The FBI, as expected, descended on the warehouse, just in time to find out FBI Agent Evans had been hypnotized by Merritt into loading the safe into a truck headed to 5 Pointz, where the Horsemen were planning to have their final show. The FBI, again apparently ahead of the Horsemen, followed the safe, Agents Fuller and Rhodes riding along, and waited for someone to approach.

Eventually, the assistant of ex-magician turned debunker Thaddeus Bradley did just that. Thaddeus Bradley, who had also played a part in the death of Lionel Shrike by exposing all his tricks and forcing him into a greater performance that went wrong, had been at every show and had been planning to sell DVDs revealing how the Horsemen had performed the tricks. He told the FBI to open the safe, revealing that the Horsemen were again ahead of them: the safe turned out to be full of only balloon animals. While the FBI puzzled over this development, the show began, and their attention was drawn away.

In truth, the real safe was still hidden in the warehouse, concealed by a false wall. While the other Horsemen performed at 5 Pointz, Jack broke into the warehouse and destroyed the wall. He moved the money from the safe to Bradley's car in order to frame him for the theft. His final task completed, Jack headed to Central Park to wait for the other Horsemen to catch up with him. Once there, he opened the gates for them, and they made their way to the carousel, where they discovered that Dylan had been their leader the whole time.

At the end of the film, they had been welcomed to the Eye. Getting into the CR AU portion, Dylan set them up in a suite in New York. They took it easy for a time (aside from learning how to use the actual magic from Dylan) before Daniel began working on another set of shows. In the first performance, Jack was apparently brought back to life, allowing him to stop worrying so much about being discovered.

During this time, Jack also became closer with Dylan Rhodes, looking to him as the father he had never had. He also found out that the man who had gotten him into magic was running a curiosity shop in New York and met Dylan's surrogate sister.

The Horsemen also encountered another mentalist who pitted them against each other, as well as locking Dylan into his FBI persona. It might have destroyed the group if Merritt and Alma hadn't been able to figure out what was going on and fix it.

As they were recovering from that, they were again targeted. While they were recovering from that, Jack stumbled onto a hotel in Cancun owned by the Eye. He told the others about it - but when he tried to take the others back, he ended up on the island instead.