bigapplesauce | We Care for Your Safety

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We Care for Your Safety

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!]

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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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Edited 2015-04-29 07:42 (UTC)

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.

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!"

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."

Iman is able to lift herself up by the time Rush is back on top of Gus, but she stays where she is, staring, relieved, vindicated, horrified in some small, insignificant measure - Rush continues to work even after Gus is lifeless and she can only kneel there, staring, he didn't need her, and that's fine.

He looks up at her and she meets his eyes solidly, but a muted, distant-seeming noise draws her attention away from his advice. Her head snaps back, listening carefully. Someone is crying out, thudding on the door. Greta is well enough to do that at least.

She gets to her feet with a minimum of wobbling. "Get rid of him," she says coldly. She reaches out and pushes open the door to the cell opposite. "In here. I don't want her to see."

She looks up, catches his eyes again. "Nobody fucking knows about this."

It's too easy that no one would understand like she does why this was necessary. Why Rush had to do it. She saw him, saw what Gus had done to him. She knows.

As he starts to move, she turns to Greta's cell. She draws a breath. She might be well enough to call, even to struggle against her door, but that doesn't mean she wasn't hurt. Doesn't mean she's-

She opens the door.

Greta is there, standing, breathing heavily and looking drawn but she's standing she's not bleeding she's not bruised she's okay, she's okay.

"Greta," she says, faltering and almost a whimper, buried as she reaches forward and drags the woman into a hug, gripping on tightly, her heart is hammering but she's okay.

The doorknob jerks beneath Greta's hand - someone's coming in, and it might be Iman but it might not. She stumbles back a pace or two, her stinging hands clasped beneath her chin in subconscious supplication: please, please let it be her friend, because if Mr. Fring's terrible plan was successful, it will be more loss than she can bear...

And there she is, looking shaken and a little scuffed but alive and well and she's--she's come to the rescue, just as she'd promised. Greta has enough time to drop her hands and let out a dry sob before Iman's hauled her into her arms, and she clings back in desperate relief, turning her face into Iman's hijab and squeezing her eyes shut against a fresh onslaught of tears.

"They knew," she says brokenly. "They knew you were coming all along, and I was so--so worried."

He nods, clipped and unconcerned - fucking obviously this will remain here, buried in the pit of a structure whose foundations have been arranged to crumble and whose benefactors will lack adequate means of preventing that abrupt, inevitable disintegration. It is a simple matter of dragging the body and depositing it into the cell and closing the door behind it with a definitive clang, each movement sharp and swift and economical. The pain to his ribs is inconsequential, and the fluid heft and drag of dead weight scraping over concrete is a necessary conclusion.

Asadi appears to have successfully completed their alternate objective in recovering Greta, ideally with a minimum of injury to her person, and she seems, upon initial evaluation, wholly undamaged. Rush interjects into the reunion, catching one of Asadi's wrists until he holds her gaze unwaveringly.

"We have to go," he says, the words an urgent hiss, his eyes dark. They snap to Greta, and his head dips in a slight, meaningful nod. "They'll be regrouping at any moment."

"I know they did," she whispers, her hand moving quick to the back of Greta's head, stroking her hair gently. "It's okay. We got 'em. We're fine."

Rush's hand on her wrist is a surprise, but not an unwelcome one, and she pulls back from Greta, meeting his eyes.

"Let's go then," she says, and she reaches out with her free hand to take Greta's, lacing her fingers in and holding on, this is no time for shyness. "Follow us."

Greta huffs out a breath, somewhere between another sob and an incredulous laugh. Did everyone know everything but her? That's how it's starting to seem. At least that means Iman had prepared herself properly, and Greta is absurdly grateful for that.

It also means Iman ran headlong into a trap, knowingly, willingly, just to keep her promise and get her out, and Greta doesn't even know how to begin to feel about that part. It lends a rather different flavor to the guilt and shame already swimming through her for being the focus of all this madness. As Iman strokes her hair, she's struck with a sudden impulse to nuzzle into her neck and just hide herself there, like a child, until the alarms subside and they're all safe again. But that's foolish; it wouldn't help, and she's had enough of not helping, and--what's this 'we'?

Greta lifts her head and blinks at Rush in open astonishment. Within the same breath, she realizes there's nothing to be astonished about - he is Iman's friend, and he has reason to object to anyone being kept in ROMAC's cells. But it hadn't occurred to her that he'd be part of the cavalry, and she is so grateful that he is - that Iman has not had to do this alone - that if she didn't know how prickly he was, she'd hug him, too.

She settles for a dazed but understanding nod as she squeezes Iman's hand. "Yes, of course." Then, directed a bit more towards Rush than Iman, "Thank you."

He acknowledges her with a fractional tilt of his chin before breaking off, cutting a clear line down the cell-lined hall of the lower levels.

ROMAC's corridors are still dark save for the reddened cast of emergency lighting, and the echoing klaxons are ceaseless. Rush halts before climbing the stairs, appropriating one of the fallen guards' sidearms, sliding the loaded magazine out and snapping it in again in a fluid release-and-catch. Given the state of mind and lack of rational planning devoted to their spontaneous subversion of the building's security, it's overwhelmingly likely they are to encounter far more resistance attempting to leave than they had upon entering, particularly if ROMAC has managed to assemble its security details into something marginally more competent.

Scaling the stairs and out of the lower levels is an endeavor alarmingly lacking in any sort of obstructions whatsoever, a fact that grows increasingly and disturbingly more obvious the further they ascend.

"No virus can account for this," he says, nodding shortly to indicate the halls and stairways conspicuously devoid of any personnel. "We should have encountered someone by now."

As if on cue, there's the sound of low voices down the hall.

Two men round the corner, down near the next stairwell. The first is part of ROMAC's reinforcements, in uniform and holding a gun loosely at his side as if he's forgotten it's there. The other is in plainclothes and apparently unarmed. Despite this, the guard is the one retreating, pale-faced and backing down the hall as the other advances.

The Balladeer glances up quickly towards the group - Greta, thank god, and two strangers. They sound dangerous, but Greta doesn't look frightened. Friends of hers?

He turns back, narrowing his eyes down at this guard. The guy isn't even pointing the gun at him anymore; he's had enough. It all feels more natural when he's got a weapon leveled at him, honestly. Without, it just reminds him that he's never had this effect on people before. Back home, no one is scared or ashamed when he talks. They're angry. But this is what he needs to do to get his friend back, so he doesn't let himself consider it too closely.

"You should go home," he says quietly, dismissively. "Call her. You'll never know what could've been if you never try, you know. And for god's sake, Rick, just give me that gun and stop already. You're not cut out for this." Rick nods shakily, hands the gun over, and bolts up the stairs. With a few quick motions, the Balladeer unloads the gun, letting the bullets clatter to the floor. Sure, maybe it'd be smarter to keep a weapon while running around down here, but...really, him with a gun? People pay plenty of attention to him without one.

He checks the gun once more and tosses it aside as well, then turns with a wide grin. "Greta!" he calls, nearly bounding down the hall towards them. Only the presence of the two strangers keeps him from just diving right in for a hug. He doesn't know who they are, but he saw a few dead guards on the upper floors and knows someone must have set all those alarms off. "Are you okay? What happened?"

"Whoa." Iman steps forward neatly, letting go Greta's hand and inserting herself between her and this new guy. As far as she can tell from this matter of moments, Greta's not recognizing him, and on top of that Iman's pretty sure she just heard him talking some real personal shit to that fuckin guard, which doesn't paint this tall geek into a very reliable hole, now, does it? Still, he's not armed, that's something. She puts her hand on his chest. "That's close enough, buddy. Now suppose you tell us who the fuck you are?"

Greta stills when the two men appear, her grip on Iman's hand tightening. The armed one seems to be ignoring them, but the other one doesn't - he glances up at her in what looks like recognition, though she's certain she's never seen him before. She gapes openly as she watches the odd little scene play itself out, the guard retreating, the stranger emptying the gun with practiced ease.

And then he's saying her name as if he's an old friend, and she lets out a strangled squawk of protest. Iman steps between the two of them, stopping the man with a hand to his chest, and Greta shifts awkwardly, feeling unmoored. "I, er..." is as far as she gets before trailing off, at a loss. Why on earth is this man concerning himself with her?

The unsettling proficiency with which the first man apparently disables the second could have any number of connotations, none of which Rush is particularly interested in examining - the man appears quite intent on disarming ROMAC personnel, which serves their purposes adequately.

Neither Asadi nor her charge recognize him, however, and with the recent disposal of Mr. Fring and his incompetent security detail, Rush has little patience for the colocalization of himself and pointless obstacles. He narrows his eyes at the intruder, raises the borrowed sidearm into clear visibility, and forces a round into its chamber with a pointed click.

The Balladeer draws up short at the hand on his chest, then raises his hands in a vaguely annoyed manner as he hears the familiar sound of a bullet clicking into position. It's a little more than he can do to suppress an eyeroll. Oh, you're going to shoot him. How original.

"I'm the Balladeer...?" he answers slowly, his eyes on Greta. Why isn't she telling them? She's acting like she doesn't - oh. "Wait, do I look different to you, too?" Seriously, he checked again in a real mirror when he got back to his apartment. He doesn't think he looks any different than normal, so he'd just decided the problem was with Sunshine. And of course once he realized what had happened to Greta, the whole matter slipped his mind a bit. This was much more important.

"Balladeer?" she repeats, bewildered. He doesn't look like the Balladeer - but it sounds as if he's... expecting that?

Aside from his face, she has to admit he's doing a rather good impression of the man. He holds himself the same way, and the mild exasperation he displays in response to having a gun drawn on him is rather telling. And she has noticed a few subtle changes in his appearance before, now that she thinks about it - things she'd attributed to misrememberings or a failure to pay proper attention on her part. Things like his eyes seeming to be blue one day and hazel the next, or his hair being not quite the same shade of brown from week to week. Nothing so extreme as this, of course, but... well.

He doesn't look entirely unlike the Balladeer, either.

"Don't shoot him," she says quickly, skirting around Iman and laying a quelling hand on her arm. "I--you do look different, but I think... I think it's him." She frowns up at him, only a little less bewildered. "But what are you doing down here?"

Edited 2015-04-30 04:15 (UTC)

"Looking for you!" The Balladeer lowers his hands with a wary look at Rush. "I stopped by your apartment on my way down when the alarms went off. Your door was open."

He'd been concerned the fire alarm would frighten her. Had anyone thought to explain what those were? Even if they had, the building was in chaos; it would be better to leave together. But at his knock, the door swung open. Everything inside looked as if she'd just stepped out for a second - half-prepared baking on the counter, her phone left behind again. No sign of any struggle, and it could just have easily have been her evacuating like they were supposed to. But after what little she'd told him of possible trouble, and what Daine had let slip of cages...

Well, it didn't take him much effort to get more information.

"The guards up top knew you were somewhere down here. Just not exactly where." He gives a slightly sheepish shrug. "So I've been asking around." And yes, he absolutely does mean to say he's been listening in on people's lives, in the most pointed manner he's done since coming here. Johnny didn't count; that was too weird and he's trying hard to forget it happened. None of the guards here were exactly good people, but after he'd finished with them, a surprising number were willing to just go home and rethink their lives.

As for the ones who weren't, he might technically be a blackmailer now.

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violennnnce

just assume violence from here on out

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tw: eye horror

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bye gus

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