A Promise Of Violence

Participants:

hull_icon.gif noah_icon.gif

Scene Title A Promise of Violence
Synopsis Shattered, but not broken.
Date January 28, 2019

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

It’s been sixteen hours since she went outside.

“Stupid, fucking useless telecom grid.”

Sixteen hours since she saw what little sun there is in Seattle’s winter months.

“Stupid fucking useless cops!

Illuminated only by the glow of a laptop computer connected to so many wires and cables as to no longer be portable, Clover Hull has seen better days. The dark circles around her heavy eyes accentuate that the sleeps she’s gotten in the last sixteen hours hasn’t been consecutive or prolonged. Staring at an open window with blueprints of buildings labeled DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS in block print, it feels like she’s staring through them at times. Dragging a hand down her face, she sighs, then reaches over for a half-finished can of Surge cola that expired sometime in 2012, then drinks from it without a second thought.

“Alright, so… twelve possible holding facilities in the Safe Zone proper, divided by…” Hull looks around, then slumps her shoulders, “one,” she adds with a huff of breath, “means— fuck. Maybe I can find the arrest records and…” she trails off, setting down the can of soda before her laptop flickers, winks out, and the rest of her trailer goes dark.

What the fuck!?


Snoqualmie Settlement
Snoqualmie, Washington
PNW Dead Zone
January 28th
3:57 pm


The door to Hull’s trailer swings open with a crash against the aluminum siding. Wires and cables spool out of a partly opened window, snaking their way up onto the roof where a dozen solar panels are arranged to reflect a mostly dull gray sky unloading a bounty of light rain across them. “Fucking— fuck,” Hull hisses, squinting against the bright gray sky.

Hull circles around to where a metal ladder rests up against her trailer and climbs to the roof, then walks with clunking bootfalls over to the solar panels, checking the cables. Connections are fine, it must be the battery cells. She’s been running too many electronics off of them for too long and her fears are confirmed, they’re dead. “God damnit!” Hull hisses, punctuating that expletive with a stomp on the roof that leaves a dent in the metal to slowly fill with rain.

As she turns to look out over the mostly lightless settlement of Snoqualmie, centered around a suburban neighborhood, her attention locks on a single truck coming up the road. Noah Bennet’s. At first she just stands there to watch, but as the truck comes peeling around the corner and careens toward her trailer, Hull scrambles down off of the roof and drops down in front of the ladder as the truck skids to a stop.

Gasping for breath, covered in mud, and armed with a revolver Noah Bennet bursts out of the truck and locks a look on Hull. “Where’s Cyrus?” Noah barks, to which Hull squares her shoulders and balls up her fists.

“Where’s Cyrus?” She shouts back at him. “I’m sorry, where the fuck have you been? I left your four messages at your Evil Dead cabin and you haven’t so much as fucking come by! I know you were at Linus’ garden getting tomatoes! He said you— ”

“They took Claire,” Noah says breathlessly, which takes Hull a moment to process. “They took her, Clover. I need to talk to Cyrus, April, everyone.” Hull’s eyes widen for a moment, then narrow as she looks around with a furtive, halfway-lidded glance. She shakes her head, then jerks a thumb over her shoulder into her trailer. Noah, trying to calm down, shakily holsters his gun inside of his jacket and follows her in.

As Hull walks inside, the fumbles around for a small oil lantern, lighting it and setting it beside the small sink just opposite the entrance. “Silver’s gone. Her, Wilmer, Levi, and Joss went south about six weeks ago to scout out Praxis’ work in San Francisco.” She upturns a look to Noah, looking him up and down. “Sit the fuck down and tell me what happened.”

Noah rankles at Hull’s attitude, but he needs to rest. He can already feel a dull ache in his chest and he finds himself slouching down into a small booth seat right inside the door quicker than he expected to. His right hand won’t stop shaking and Hull notices, but tries to make it look like she doesn’t. “Someone— came to the house.” As Noah explains, Hull retrieves a cell phone from a drawer, powering it up. It won’t get service out here, but she has redundant files she needs access to.

“A woman, young, dark hair, gold eyes. Telekinetic.” Noah scrubs a hand over his mouth. “Her and another, maybe Chinese? Korean?” He squints, uncertain. “Blue eyes, didn’t look natural. They… they attacked me, told Claire to go with them. The blue-eyed one must’ve been… some sort of teleporter, they just…”

Easy,” Hull says, crouching down in front of Noah. “Okay, so she got grabbed. Your daughter’s an ex-mercenary freedom fighter, she can handle herself. You need to chill the fuck out and take a minute.”

As much as Noah hates what Hull is saying, he can’t argue with her logic. He’d screamed the entire way over here, slammed the heel of his palm into the steering wheel so hard he bruised his thumb. Blind rage never served him, never helped, but it’s been harder and harder to keep it down after all these years. He chides himself on being ambushed, on getting soft in his old age. He regrets getting old, he regrets failing. Hull can see his eyes wandering even as he’s silent, knows that look and what often goes on behind it.

Bennet,” Hull says firmly, resting her hands on his knees. “Cyrus got nabbed by the cops in New York. If you’re looking for backup that doesn’t hate your guts,” and Hull isn’t sure April Silver would even fit into that category entirely, “you’re looking at her.”

Swallowing down the lump in his throat, Noah gasps for breath and nods. Focusing on Hull’s problems made ignoring his own easier, made recentering himself simpler. It was like what Ivan Spektor used to say, nothing solves problems better than a handle of vodka. No, wait. Not that. Fear is the natural enemy of rational thought.

“Why was Cyrus in New York?” Noah asks, trying to find his voice as he does. Hull gives a squeeze to his knees and stands up straight, then paces around in front of the sink.

“He was following the Triad there, Zhao. Christ, Noah, if you did more than attend the civil defense meetings you’d know this.” Hull’s exasperation earns a flat look from Noah. She knows he retired, knows he was trying to distance himself from this. Then she sees his hand shaking again, and her expression softens. “He was there with the guy we rescued from Mazdak, Martin Pines.”

Noah’s eyes narrow. “Why does that name sound familiar?”

Hull shakes her head, brows furrowed. “Don’t know, he’s got something t’do with the Company be we couldn’t figure it out and he kept his shit shut. I intercepted communications from Mazdak when they went to move on him, we were in the area and intercepted. Cyrus wanted to keep him local and I headed back here because up until my fucking batteries died I could do my job without pants on.”

Noah stares silently, and also judgingly, at Hull.

“I have them on now.” Hull mumbles, checking the old phone now that it’s booted up.

“How’d Cyrus get arrested? What for?” Noah asks, eliciting a brief look up from Hull to Noah and back down to her phone again.

“Not sure, I can’t get a police report because of,” and all Hull does to explain is wave at the darkness of her trailer. “What’re you gonna do?” Is the question Hull’s been too nervous to ask. She doesn’t know Noah Bennet well, not the man everyone says he used to be. To her, he’s always just been the quiet old guy who lives off by himself. To her he’s only ever been someone who minds his own business and that Cyrus has begrudging respect for. She’s never known the man he was before the war.

“I’m going to find my daughter, and you’re going to help me.”

But she’s about to.


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