We Care for Your Safety

[applesaucemod]

Protecting the city from the rifties -- and the rifties from the city -- is a full time job. That's never been more true than it is today, when there are metaphorical (and sometimes physical) fires to put out all over Manhattan. It's been a rough time at ROMAC in general; most of the organization's people are unfamiliar with the specifics of the recent animal attack, but even those who don't know that a number of prisoners guests of ROMAC have gone missing in the last few days (or that the computer system is still compromised) know that something has thrown the organization into disarray.

Unfortunately for ROMAC and fortunately for certain other people, ROMAC's resources are spread thin by whatever's put the Rift in a tizzy. As large as the organization is, though, there's surely nothing to worry about from the handful of malcontents at large in the city.

Surely.


[OOC: And here's the thread for taking down ROMAC! There will be a couple of player characters on ROMAC's side (check to see whether their threads are open to all before tagging in, as they may have limited availability due to prior plans), and anyone in need of 'enemies' to tag against can request an NPC from the mods. Have at!]

Comments

[andhiswife]

Greta presses her lips together as he takes her arm - not roughly, but with polished grace that is almost worse. Bad things can hide behind good manners. Even the dismissal of the guard makes her stomach knot, because the guard is still there, ready to make things unpleasant for her if she sets a toe out of line.

'Downstairs,' then. Where else would they hold people they didn't want going anywhere? The top floor, maybe - and perhaps it's just as well they're not headed in that direction, presuming the building doesn't extend as far into the earth as it does into the sky. Iman will have a shorter distance to travel, which can only be a good thing...

And then the rest of his sentence sinks in, and Greta glances over at him, unable to mask her surprise - or her growing dread.

He'd guessed that she had sent Iman a warning, yet he hadn't really tried to stop her. Why wouldn't he have tried to stop her, if he thought she was warning Iman away?

"For what?" she asks, voice quavering with the sudden certainty that they're both waiting for the exact same thing.

[mr_fring]

He glances over at her as the elevator doors slide open. He doesn't answer right away, first stepping in with her and the guard. He swipes his badge and enters his access code for the cell block. "For Ms. Asadi, of course," he says once the doors have closed again.

[andhiswife]

She twitches, the result of an instinctive desire to pull away from him countered by the knowledge that it's useless to even try. They're in an elevator, for goodness' sake; even if they weren't, she'd only make it two steps before that guard got to her. There is nowhere for her to run.

And they know. They knew all along. Maybe they even knew about the device on her door, and Mr. Fring set it off on purpose. It's all a trap, and she - she is the bait.

She is not going to cry. Her eyes sting, but she presses her lips into a thin, wobble-proof line, and breathes deeply through her nose, and refuses to cry. She is not so--so faithless as that, and she won't give Mr. Fring the satisfaction.

But she can't muster any defiant words for him, either. Iman has done this before, it's true, but they know that, and they'll have shored up their defenses. Any brave words on her part about Iman burning everything would just be giving them more to work with. So she smoothes her palms over her skirt - it's either that or wrap her arms around herself, and she won't give Mr. Fring the satisfaction of seeing that, either - and says nothing as the elevator carries her down, swift and inexorable as a fall off of a cliff.

MEANWHILE in Hell's Kitchen

[etherthief]

She's stepped back out when it happens. Needed to pace, get away from Rush's surliness and the fraught tension of the entire building, needed some time to breathe and think. Daniel is dead, just like that. For no reason that they can see. And he was one of the good ones. One of the ones that deserved to fuckin make it.

All that is excised when the little twitch of information seizes her hard and unyielding. Someone has opened Greta's door.

No. No, no, no. She wheels back sharply, nearly unbalancing herself as she staggers back to Gabriel's building. This can't be happening, not so soon, not now while everything's so fucked-

A text comes abruptly into her head.

ROMAC is

Oh fuck oh god oh god. She's breathing much too fast by the time she gets back into the building, hauls ass up the stairs, busts into Gabe's apartment where the freshly, this time deservedly bruised Rush is still trying to do his work.

"They took Greta," she gasps, standing in the doorframe. "Fring took Greta to lure me back in, the fucker! I'm going to get her. You coming or what?"

This is an even dumber non-plan than last time. This is obviously a fucking trap - she doesn't know it was Fring but of course it's fucking Fring - and there is no other reason for them to have an interest in Greta. This is her fault and she's fixing it, no time to plan, no time to find Daine or anyone. Rush is all she has now and as much as she's still stung about his attitude she fucking needs him now and she knows he won't disappoint. Not on this.

[lottawork]

There are better, far better, things Rush could be doing to occupy his time rather than to nurse a fresh, darkened bruise, but wrenching his attention back to his disorganized scattering of papers has proved difficult. Exceptionally so.

Jackson Ascended.

How fucking excellent for him.

He scowls at the scrawl of ink on paper, attempting to breach that barrier in his concentration to little avail when the door crashes open again and Rush stiffens in alarm for the second time, now growing more than a little weary of these frequent interruptions.

Asadi stands in the doorway, eyes wide and urgent, expression set in the uncomfortable, unfamiliar lines of panic, a desolate lack of control he has only ever glimpsed and not seen laid so bare, open and horrified.

Rush surges to his feet at once, papers abandoned, and makes an unerring line for the door.

"Now," he hisses as he strides out of the apartment in a clipped, resolute sweep. His eyes flick to meet hers once, merciless and cold. "We have to go now."

[etherthief]

There he is. She manages a grin, ragged and volatile. She follows him out, closing the door behind them. Shoots Gabe a text from the back of her mind. Someone should know where they are, at least.

"There's something you should know about Fring," she says as they descend to ground level, out to the street. "He tried to kill me in there, or subdue me, whatever the fuck. I shot him. I shot him point blank. Gun against his heart."

She grits her teeth at the memory. She wishes it had fucking worked. Maybe that would have been more trouble for them but on the other hand maybe Greta would be safe now. "I don't know what the hell happened and judging from his reaction he didn't either. Bullet ended up in the wall next to us, didn't touch him. He might be invulnerable somehow. Might be a Rift thing he didn't know about. Not sure." She sticks her arm out and hooks a cab. She's very good at it.

"When we see him," she says, opening the passenger door, "you watch yourself."

"Lexington and 53rd," she barks to the driver. "As close to now as you can fucking get."

They're already pretty close. It'll be a quick ride.

Good thing she's ready.

[lottawork]

Rush digests the information silently, moving briskly out of the building and into the cab. He responds only with a taut, tight-jawed nod. His hands grind into fists and flex out again in a shuddering, uncontrolled motion, the thin scars on his wrists blanching into hard-edged white.

Fring has a means of protection against standard firearms.

That is not insurmountable.

Rush does not require firearms.

There's a darkly familiar adrenaline boiling in his veins, cold and coursing, the sting of the bruise on his face wholly disregarded. He uncoils from the cab, his brusque movements charged, his expression locked in a muted, grim blaze.

They'll be expecting them.

Rush does not care.

[etherthief]

She walks them toward the building and stops across the street, looking up at it.

"He won't be hiding her away," she says. "He wants to draw me in, it'll be the same area they kept you. And he knows I know it's a trap, too, fucker knows I'm not stupid." She tilts her head to look up at Rush. "They don't know you'll be here."

Fring will expect Rush to be out of commission after all he did to him. So that at least is something.

She looks back at the building. "What're you thinkin?"

[lottawork]

He scans the building's exterior, tracing its outline, calling to mind every fragment of knowledge of its internal schematics. He fucking loathes it, that rising structure, freezing cement encased in glass and steel. He always did. The pulsing, venomous spike of hatred toward that construction burns beneath lowered brows as he examines its design.

"We find access to a terminal." The words are broken out crisply, edged with a sharpened intensity. "Set off a sequence of distractions they can't afford to ignore. Disable holding cells. Set off alarms. Shut off any systems we can access."

He looks at Asadi evenly in wordless, adamant reassurance.

"No one," he promises quietly, with a deceptively measured, patient menace, "is going to be subjected to anything."

[etherthief]

She's caught off guard by that. She's never seen him like this before, cold and hard and unyielding about the wellbeing of another person, and it's surprisingly energizing to see it now. She recovers with a tight nod.

"In no uncertain terms," she agrees.

The plan not hermetically sealed but sound enough by her questionable standards. She crosses the street between pulls of traffic, moving steadily toward the building. "Reception computers should suffice," she says. "That's assuming they didn't just jack up the front door waiting for us."

This is mostly a joke. That isn't Fring's style. The man has very few tactical flaws from what she can tell, but he does have that little bit of hubris, and that'll be his downfall.

The doors open, nothing goes off, no one stops them. Step one complete.

There's a solitary woman behind the front desk, looking harried and not even bothering to roll out her requisite corporate smile for the incomers. Just as well. Iman steps neatly in front of Rush and slides her elbows onto the desk, leaning in with a big friendly smile.

"Heyyyy, Sharon," she says with a little glance at the nametag. "I'm gonna need you to make a quick run to the restroom right now."

Sharon blinks up at her, confused, visibly unsure if she should be offended or what, then looks past Iman's shoulder at Rush. Getting no help from him, she looks back at Iman with a feebly uttered, "Excuse me?"

"It wasn't a request," says Iman calmly. "We're not supposed to be here. Either they're gonna take us or we're gonna take them. We need your computer. Doesn't involve you. Don't make it involve you."

Sharon takes a few moments to put all this together, but when she does, bless her, she gets up slowly, wiping her hands on her skirt.

"Leave your phone, please," says Iman. "Come back to get it in about five minutes."

That's all she needs.

in which I have no idea how coding actually works bear with me

[lottawork]

They wind around the passing inconsequentialities of cars, the spilling traffic, Asadi's unique abilities proving once again useful in opening those avenues that were formerly closed to them. Immediately after she directs the lone receptionist elsewhere, Rush slides behind the unoccupied computer, standing hunched over the faint blue flicker of the monitor. It takes very little effort to digitally access the mainframe functions, a success hardly befitting the term. ROMAC should have, perhaps, considered the exquisite irony of employing a cryptographer without making use of that clearly well-utilized skill set. Access and manipulation of systems unintended for Rush's eyes has always been a particular talent of his. The workarounds are contemptibly simple to establish, even simpler to apply to a delicate structure he has no qualms about dismantling in full.

He sluices adroitly into the core of those systems, navigating streamlined circuits of code with economical surety. His eyes rake the screen, fingers rattling a methodical tattoo against the keyboard. A virus is complex in theory, uncomplicated in design; an easily constructed, incomplete filigree of numbers and lines of code, launched into the binary void in its nascent stages with the sole purpose of unraveling every security protocol it encounters.

"We move quick," he says shortly, darting Asadi a look from over the desk, and this is his only warning before he executes the command.

The computer hums softly on its desk, processing the directive. A minute trickles past in agonizing silence.

Then the Base roars into a sequential chaos, alarms erupting, then lights slamming off, sending an echoing cascade of emergency sirens shrieking through ROMAC's darkened halls.

[mr_fring]

"Beautiful," she remarks, smirking darkly. She leads him away from the desk to the stairs, the doors now uniformly open for their purposes. She could have done this as well but it's better to give her breathing room after last time, better to do it loudly like this. May as well make themselves known.

Down they go.

-

Gus anticipated this, and responds to the outbreak of alarm bells with only a casual tilt of the head. Asadi is here, and quickly, too. Favoring an approach even less subtle than last time, it would appear. Well, let her make her noise. Gus never had a wealth of faith for this sort of far-world technology ROMAC seems to love so much, even less so after witnessing what Asadi could do with it. As such Ms. Baker has been sealed off un-electronically, under old-fashioned lock and key. He and his pair of guards - the only two ROMAC had to spare in light of the day's generalized chaos - are stationed some doors down, waiting near the main stair entrance to the hall.

He slips off his jacket, folds it with great care, lays it flat on the unused chair beside him.

"You will not fire on her," he tells them again. He does not like to repeat himself but he likes less to be misunderstood. "She is to be taken alive."

tw: violence, npc death

[lottawork]

The significant drawback to unleashing a stochastic, highly disorganized virus upon ROMAC's systems is, of course, the subsequent lack of a working elevator. Plunging down the stairs stirs the distant memory of being hauled up them in a set of circumstances that will, ideally, not be repeated. For anyone's sake.

The cold gray backdrop of the lower levels induces a low, inescapable chill that solidifies along the column of his spine. His fingernails have sunk into his palms, his neck taut, the slope of his shoulders rigid. He knows they are close. Fring is expecting them - expecting Asadi. He will doubtless not have anticipated involvement from the man he's presumed to have left thoroughly broken.

The alarms send subtle vibrations shrilling through the air, buried in the walls and ceiling and rumbling the floor beneath their feet. They tear down the stairs and into the hall and enter directly between a pair of unfortunate security personnel.

Rush's reaction is immediate, savage, and wordless. He throws himself gracelessly at the guard immediately beside him, bringing them both to the ground with a dull thud before the man even has his sidearm half-drawn. The full unintentional force of Rush's elbow crashes over the guard's larynx, and without hesitation he throws the remainder of his weight on it until he hears the wet crack.

[andhiswife]

It feels as if she's already spent hours in this grim little cell, alone with her thoughts. There's little else to distract her. The room is all but featureless; a narrow bench that might double as a cot is bolted to the walls in one corner, and in the corner opposite, there's a black, bowl-shaped thing mounted to the ceiling, like a bubble of pitch. The floor slopes subtly towards a central drain, the purposes of which she can guess. She tries not to look at it with limited success, and is careful not to step near it as she paces anxious circles around the room.

Iman is on her way. She might already be in the building. And all of ROMAC is waiting for her. What if she's already been taken?

No. No. They can't have captured her.

But what if they have?

This is all her fault. Or all on her account, which is the next worst thing.

Greta unfolds her arms enough to swipe at her cheeks. She can't quite stop the tears from falling, but she doesn't have to let them fall far. Whoever next comes through that door - Iman, hopefully, or Mr. Fring if not - she is determined not to be a complete mess. Keeping her head is all she can do, now.

None of the awful scenarios her imagination unhelpfully conjured up had included being suddenly plunged into darkness. Greta freezes in her tracks with a little, wordless cry, then flinches as light returns in the form of a too-bright, flashing strobe up near the ceiling.

The fire alarm. The fire alarm. It makes no sound but a faint, rhythmic ticking, but the light must mean something.

Iman hasn't been captured. She's arrived.

There are other alarms, too, she realizes. They sound distant and muffled through the cell door, but there's some kind of unearthly howling out in the hallway. She makes her way to the door, stumbling and letting out an aborted, horrified groan when she steps squarely atop that awful drain by accident. But then she's at the door, palms braced against it, one ear pressed to its cold, unfriendly surface. The muted wail of the alarms grows a little louder, and it's possible she won't be able to make out anything else if it has to compete with that, but she has to at least try to hear what's going on out there.

violennnnce

[mr_fring]

Iman growls audibly when Rush goes down atop one of the guards, seizing the other's wrist as he goes for his gun, twisting his arm back and kicking behind his knee, taking him down neatly. She incapacitates him with a quick strike to a nerve between neck and shoulder and drives him out of consciousness with a good solid chokehold. Did Rush kill his? Well, whatever, she thinks brutally. Let him do what he has to.

-

Gus rises slowly from his chair and steps down the hall toward the intruders - plural. Rush, looking relatively undamaged, impossibly, but it doesn't matter. In a way that's better.

Iman is coming toward him, her expression twisted in anger, snarling "Where is she, you sanctimonious sack of shit?" before throwing a punch. Gus is quicker than she assumes, and her passion gives her away completely; he dodges and intercepts the blow, seizing her arm and twisting it back. She lets out a furious yell and grapples with her other arm, the dangerous one, he's been given to understand - he pushes her away just as quickly, turning and slamming her unforgivingly against the wall. Its her left wrist he grabs this time, twisting again, pulling the arm behind her. His other hand stays pressed against her back, pinning her in place. She does not settle, but she is small and he can hold her well enough.

"You stay where you are," he snaps to Rush. "On your knees."

just assume violence from here on out

[lottawork]

Awareness cedes to the thin, separating fog of roaring epinephrine. The guard is disturbingly motionless as Rush shifts back, away from the unnerving stillness, breath hissing out rapid and heavy between clenched teeth. Asadi has dealt with hers accordingly, charging Fring without consideration, a tactic Rush does not need to see to its conclusion to know it will not end well, and he wastes no further time on the floor and he rises immediately from knees to feet in a fluid, unraveling defiance to Fring's curt demand before he has even completed it. The man's hands are occupied, pinning Asadi to the wall in a manner chillingly reminiscent of his deft handling of Rush. He hurls himself at Fring because he is optionless and because he has to and because Asadi is straining in his grip and because there are scars looped around his wrists in emblazoned white and because he is trembling subtly and because all rationality has been drowned in the dull shriek of unmitigated ferocity, cutting coldly to his core.

He lacks a strategy; he lacks anything concrete, any sort of tangible plan and he lacks everything save the searing recollection of Simeon flaring behind closed eyelids and the fingers that reach for the man's throat and the mindless slamming of Rush's body against his that prefaces their tangled, uncoordinated decline to the floor, his teeth bared, his assault wordless and noiseless, his expression stony and locked.

[mr_fring]

Rush calls his bluff without even questioning it - no, he won't kill Asadi, and no, there is no one coming to provide backup. That's all right. He throws the woman aside hard enough that she is left winded and struggling to recover herself on the floor; he uses that momentum to turn himself into Rush just as the collision comes.

He goes down hard, Rush atop him, teeth bared like a wild animal. His hands are around Gus's throat and Gus strikes back unrelentingly, one hand going to his throat and pushing back, the other dealing blows to his gut and anything else within reach. Break a rib if he has to. Rush's grip does not yield but Gus will not surrender easily, not now, not after everything. White got the better of him and for that he has been sent here, stranded in some strange, closed off variant of Manhattan; he will not let this happen again. White outsmarted him; Rush will not overpower him.

He twists his body forcefully, aiming to dislodge Rush's iron grip, aiming to get on top. Kill him, like he should have done before.

[lottawork]

A scattered repetition of blows land against him, but Fring is not a military-trained colonel and he is not a solitary loyalist of a disgruntled intergalactic cabal but he is ruthless and uncompromising and they are two alike substances colliding in a forceful expenditure of kinetic energy on the floor of a building for an organization whose dissolution Rush and Asadi have just orchestrated.

Fring's fingers work around his throat and twist and the initial energy output is not sufficient to maintain this momentum and so Rush goes down, he lands on his side in a painful contorting of limbs as his hands remain locked around the other man's throat. Something in his midsection reacts poorly to the treatment but it is not highly relevant at the moment because Rush has a list of requirements in order for this conflict to occur in such a way that will not end poorly for him and said list may have only recently come into being as he had yet to delineate any such requirements while engaging in his initial charge, a grievous error in planning which he has since rectified, the first of those requirements being - he must not allow Fring to get on top of him.

Items two and so forth have yet to reveal themselves, and as of the present moment Rush is having a difficult time enumerating any further stipulations between the immense pain blossoming from his lower chest region and the unyielding grip of fingers on his throat and his struggle to retain his advantage of seizing Fring relatively off guard. He clings doggedly to the man's throat, eyes boring into his, hollow and feral and flinted.

[etherthief]

She gets up onto her hands and knees, splintered and slow, her vision coming back in blurred fragments. Fring fucked her up good, but not beyond repair, she's a little unsteady but she'll be fine, and as her sight resolidifies she sees him struggling against Rush on the floor. Hands at each other's throats. Rush is fighting hard but she's not sure it's enough. She needs to get to him, needs to help, but she can't fucking move right, her head is pounding, joints buckling under her weight, fuck. Fuck.

If Gus has hurt Greta-

If he hurts Rush again-

But she can't move, and as she sags again, struggling to breathe normally, she knows, she knows she can't do it this time. She can't.

Gus is on top of Rush now, weakening but still holding on tightly, but Rush will not fold. He won't. She knows that, somewhere, in the pit of her stomach.

tw: eye horror

[lottawork]

He has ended up on his back.

He has ended up on his back, and this is not an outcome specified by the recently conceptualized requirements and this is not favorable and breathing has become a fluttering irregularity, vision wreathed in fluxing dimness -

Breath breaks out of his throat in a final ragged grasp before Fring's fingers tighten, persistent and inescapable, and Rush's teeth part soundlessly as he tears one of his hands from around the other man's throat and sinks fingers into his temple, thumb digging into his eye in calculated, methodical ferocity.

[mr_fring]

Gus lurches back with a strangled yell, his fingers loosening, going to grip tightly at the hand assaulting his eye, it's only a moment but it's enough, and he knows it; he faltered and now the hand around his throat is overpowering, pushing him back. No. No.

He will not be subdued.

He will not.

Frantic, dissembling, he pulls away, tries to wrench free, put distance between them. Regroup and attack again.

This is a tactical mistake. He knows that, too.

[lottawork]

It is only a staggered moment of alarm, but it is enough. Rush's back arches despite the pain flowering in his ribs, wiry shoulders pressing against the flat concrete as the hand around Fring's throat constricts further. Fring wrenches in his grip, catching the hand burying its thumb into his eye, and his attention is divided.

Rush's knee jerks up to catch the man in his midriff and, with the remaining adrenaline still sparking his system, he flips them both over so Fring is beneath him. Rush frees his wrist to strike at his face in a twisted reversal of what the man once did to him before, repeatedly, vicious and silent, because Fring held him and kept him contained and should have killed him then, when that was an avenue available to him, because Rush's sunken, burning eyes glare relentlessly into his and seek out the dark and terrified instinct, and with brutal finality he slams his other hand around Fring's throat and applies a ruthless, agonizing pressure.

And holds it.

And holds it.

And holds it.

bye gus

[mr_fring]

He is vulnerable, left himself open, and Rush has him flipped and held under. His breath stutters and catches and fails to come again. His eyes are locked on Rush's even as his vision begins to blur and blacken.

No, no, not like this, not so simply and through such rank failure. Not after everything he lived through, plotted, executed.

Perhaps it will be final this time. No strange other worlds. Nothing. Or, perhaps, if he is rerouted again, then perhaps Max will be there. Waiting for him. Perhaps, even, he will not be angry.

[andhiswife]

The relentless keening of the alarms masks anything quieter than a shout - but there is shouting. The first cry is unmistakably Iman, and Greta's throat seizes even as she insists to herself that her friend sounded angry, not frightened or--or hurt. She presses herself against the door, straining to hear what's happening, barely able to make out another, strangled-sounding shout that can't be Iman, can't be, but what if it is?

She can't just stand here anymore.

Greta slams her palm against the door, once, then again and again in desperate succession. Maybe it will startle her captors into dropping their guards for a moment; she's been so pathetically compliant up to this point, after all. Or maybe Iman will hear it and take heart, knowing Greta's still in fine enough fettle to beat against a door. Or maybe she's just losing her head completely, and any tactical advantage her noise-making might offer is accidental.

"Iman?!" It comes out cracked and strained and almost certainly inaudible to anyone out in the hall. She tries again, rattling the doorknob for good measure. "Iman!"

[lottawork]

He presses and continues to press even as the other man stills beneath his grip, the panicked realization dulling to glassy lifelessness, the thready pulse beating wildly beneath Rush's fingers fading to an erratic flutter, then nothing. His fingers continue to constrict as Fring fades into motionless quiet, his struggles weak and progressively weaker until he does not move again.

Rush checks for a pulse. He checks for the slight chance that the man may yet be breathing. There is only stillness, and silence.

He is no longer trembling. He shifts back and rises, smooth and controlled, one hand wrapped loosely over the abdominal stinging where doubtless a number of bruises have since unfurled in slow, painful inflorescence.

'You feel any better?'

He meets Asadi's eyes, his expression hard and blank, his breathing measured. She appears winded, but ideally not physically damaged. He inclines his head neatly at the cell beside them, the door behind which Greta is doubtless being held. Even over the wail of the alarms, the thunder of footsteps of ROMAC galvanized into organized panic, the dim pounding against the other side of the door rings faintly in his ears.

"In there," he says evenly. "I suggest we move quickly."