Participants:
| Scene Title | Burn |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Team Bravo does it, escaping the fires of the Muspelheim bunker. |
| Date | December 29, 2009 |
Muspelheim Bunker
Antananarivo, Madagascar
"Bennet, Bennet!" Keys jingle in a lock, twist and turn with a pop and metal rattles open in a sound that awakens both Candy and Claire from too short of a slumber. Somehow, the figure of Adelle Sanderson standing in full camouflage fatigues with a black body-armored vest on, zippered collar raised and an assault rifle in one hand was not how either of them expected to reunite with consciousness.
Behind Sanderson, Don Dixon stands with a shotgun held out towards the door to the prison ward. It's only a moment later that alarm klaxons begin blaring thorugh the cells, a loud and shrieking cry that floods the prison with red security lighting. "Wake up! Wake up and get dressed we have to go!" Sanderson hurls an armful of clothing down into Claire's cell, along with a black armored vest, then turns to move over to Candy's cell, unlocking her door with shaky hands. "Allard! Get up! Get up!" Sleepy haze is pulling away like greasy film from Candy's eyes as the door slides open and clothes are thrown at her along with body armor. "No time to explain, inject yourself with this!" A syringe is tossed on top of the pile of clothing as Sanderson turns her back, looking up to Dixon with brows furrowed. "Dixon I— "
The door to the prison opens, a soldier stepping in to check on the prisoners, and his dumbstruck expression when he is hit point-blank range by a combat shotgun isn't even visible in the haze of red gore that mists the walls around him as his corpse goes flying back out the door and strikes the wall opposite with a crimson butterfly spatter.
"Fuck, Fuck!" Sanderson chambers a round into her M-16 and looks to Claire and Candy. "MOVE!"
What the fuck is going on.
Candy blinks, her mouth hanging open dumbly for a couple of seconds as she lays there in her bed. As the syringe is tossed down, she just nods her head a little, hoping that this will restore her ability so that she can go on her own rampage. Taking the syringe, she hurriedly injects herself in the shoulder, barely taking the time to make sure that there are no air bubbles in the liquid. After that, she's hoping into the clothes and strapping the body armour on. She smiles at Sanderson as she gets herself out of the cage. "Allard, reporting for duty." She even manages to have a smirk on her lips as she says that last bit, her hands rubbing together.
Startled out of sleep, Claire sits up blearily as the clothes drop to the floor at her feet, her smudged feet. There is confusing in those blue eyes as she looks up in time to see Sanderson move on, but then it dawns on her what's going on and she scrambles to her feet. There is no shame or modesty as Claire moves to start getting dressed, being stuck there for weeks has totally removed any shyness about the others being there from her.
The tearing sound of velcro, finds Claire fully dressed and pulling the vest on and stepping out of her cell. She looks at the others through stringy, her eyes hold that harsh emptiness she gets in a fight, you have to tuck away everything to be able to live with what needs to happen. "What the hell… How did you get this stuff?" Claire sounds cautious. Wasn't the old woman suppose to give them idea of when the time was right?
"We can talk while we move, come on!" Sanderson slaps a hand on Claire's shoulder, then reaches down to remove a handgun from her hip holster, handing it to Claire before rushing to the doorway that exits the prison block. Slamming her shoulder up against the wall, Sanderson pops out into the hall and sweeps her M-16's aim back and forth, checking for movement. "We're clear!"
Don seems a little more talkative as he makes a motion for the two girls to take up the middle while he covers the team's backside. "Had myself a fucked up dream, old woman came on down and said we had to do some shopping. Bout time I woke up that freaky mutant guy was letting us outta' our cells. Old lady led us like the Ghost of Christmas Past down to the armory, had us take a syringe from the Doctor's lab. Nobody was awake, we just armed up and grabbed you your shit and came back. I dunno why the alarm's buggin', nobody saw us."
Don is quick to follow the pair out into the hall, where Sanderson is taking point up until she hears Claire's bootfalls behind her, then stops abnd waves Claire to go on ahead — because really, where else does the invulnerable teen belong? "Don's telling the truth," Sanderson says with a furrow of her brows, jerking a look over one shoulder back at the hallway behind her. So many more prison blocks, but not enough keys, no way to free everyone. They have a mission to tend to.
"That syringe is supposed to be an antigen to the neuro-toxin they've been injecting you with that's suppressing your ability." Sanderson calls back to Candy, watching her warily. "No idea how long it'll take effect to work, I'm starting to feel it a little bit and I injected myself about twenty minutes ago."
Candy seems about ready to comment as Claire gets dressed, but she instead just settles for a wolf-whistle. Still, she grins like a fiend as they begin to make good on their escape, before she says, "Damn, and I was ready to do go at them. No sources of water readily available, but I suppose I can take what I need from any goons I find."
As Claire goes out in front Candy adds, "We need to be sure that we do something about all the pregnant women they have. I think they're in a medically induced coma though." She's not a doctor, but she can guess at the least of what is up with them. Claire might be a bit surprised about Candy's caring, but, no time to worry about small miracles in the life of a sociopath. Though she does say, "Kill anyone else, even Six. I don't want him thinking we're bad, and leaving us all warped and…" She shudders a little, more than a little haunted at what happened to Sanderson.
Candy surprisingly gets a quick flip of the fingers from Claire for the she wolf whistle, a small amused tug of a smirk taking the edge off, but her attention is on the others, "Etana." Claire says the name, reverence in her voice since the old woman is risking so much. "Was she in the lab? Did she tell you where to find her?" Those questions are asked as she takes the pistol. Hand works the slide with little thought, cambering a round before taking point.
Rounding on Candy, Claire points at her, "Not Six.. He's just as much a victim as the rest of us… he knows the bad guys." He did after all call Lang a bad man. "Lets go find the bug man.. then we can get to the woman." Her eyes go to the Marines, before she starts down the hall. "Did she happen to tell you where to find him?" She's full of questions today for sure.
"She didn't say shit about no bug, worm, or any other creepy-crawly man." Dixon states with a gruff snort of breath, storming into the hall thorugh Gregor's lab. "Somethin' went down, I think. The whole fuckin' base sounds like it's on alert." Into the lab, Dixon turns and eyes the tables, the samples of blood, as cowl coming over his face. "She told us to get the fuck out, an' you ain't gonna like the route she picked for us. Not one goddamned bit, but it goes right by the farms."
Sanderson comes to a stop behind Claire, holding up one hand in a tight fist for the others, a foot brought out to kick Claire at the back of her legs to get her attention. A moment later, whatever it was Sanderson spotted is fully in view. "I do not— care what is happening at the air-field, I have work to— " Doctor Gregor's eyes go wide the moment he sees armed and escaped prisoners in his lab, and the four Vanguard soldiers at his side let out a shout of surprise as Sanderson and Don both pivot their guns around towards the group. Gregor throws a soldier in front of himself, and the unarmed officer takes a shotgun slug to the chest, erupting in a haze of red as he flies backwards, while Gregor scrambles up the stairs, screaming for help.
Sanderson's surprise shot is a spray of gunfire that peppers two of the guards, but a third manages to draw his side arm and open fire. Her vest stops a round, bullets punching thorugh the rack of preserved organs between everyone that is shooting, shards of glass and embalming fluid and preserved portions of Claire's body raining to the ground in a hail of bullets.
Taking a shot square to her vest, Sanderson is knocked off her feet and lands wetly on the concrete, sliding back against the wall in the embalming fluid that is slicking the floor beneath. "Fuck— " she hisseso ut seeing the chemicals dripping out of the rack as Don chambers another shell and fires towards the guards, shattering another jar full of the fluids. "Fuck— FUCK!" Sanderson is trying to get o her feet, boots sliding in the slippery mess. "Flammable! Flammable! Go go go!" She waves towards one of the exits furiously, even as Don racks another shotgun shell, sending a spent cartridge whirling past Candy.
Two armed men still stand, and only now is Don realizing what could potentially happen with this much embalming fluid spread everywhere. One ricochet, one spark— and boom.
Candy whips her head around as she hears Grigor and then shots being fired. "We need to stop making plans… they always fail," she informs the room, before she starts heading out herself, dodging bullets and flying glass shards. Her eyes looking around, before she leans to help Sanderson steady herself, and to half drag the other woman to safety. Candy said she wasn't gonna leave her behind. The woman need to all survive, the man wielding a shotgun might as well have a red shirt on for all that Candy is going out of her way to save him.
"She told us we had to find him." Claire sounds confused, but then plans always change who is she to argue. "The farms are important.. we have to help those wo…." Then her shin is kicked, makign her automatically go silent and alert. Claire's head turns to looks over at the familiar sight of Gregor and then the men with him. The pistol comes up to aim at the soldiers, she unloads on one of them. Her eyes follow Gregor's fleeing form, but she's distracted by Sanderson.
When the order is given to go, Claire is on the move, stopping long enough to grab extra weapons from one of the down guards…. a useful skill learned during her time on the island. The sidearm is tucked in her waist line and clips tucked quickly in pockets before she hurries towards the indicated exit, weapon held out sweeping in front of her as she scans the way.
When Candy helps Sanderson out of the lab and Claire makes her exit, Don is backpedaling from the room, but the next blast of hit shotgun comes with a bigger bang than he expected. A concussive blast from the fumes in the air detonates like a grenade, sending flames and glass shrapnel ripping through the room, blowing Claire, Candy and Sanderson off of their feet and sending Don flying. The shotgun-wielding Marine lands with a crash on the catwalk outside of Gregor's lab, overlooking the vehicle hangar bay.
Emergency lights are flashing everywhere, and the freight elevator that exits the bunker is loaded to bear with tanks and armored personnel carriers. Ducking down into the cockpit of one of the tanks, Claire can barely make out Lang's bald head through her blurry double-vision. It looks like the Vanguard are mobilizing their military for something, and the entire bunker is in a panic.
Gunfire, however, signals that the explosion did not go unnoticed. Vanguard soldiers one floor down in the hangar bay are firing upwards ta the catwalk, bullets sparking and popping where they ricochet off of concrete and metal. Sanderson struggles to her feet, ducking close to the concrete wall opposite the catwalk railing. "We need to go down! Down!"
Down is nowhere close to out.
Exhaling a weak groan, Don manages to pull himself up, glass slivers embedded in the side of his face and across his forehead, also peppering the brim of his olive-drab cap. The injuries aren't serious, just painful. As he reloads his shotgun and turns to launch a blast of suppressive fire on the hangar, a bullet clips him in the shoulder, sending him spinning around with a trail of blood bursting across Candy's face.
Don stumbles back, nearly falling into the smoke-filled doorway of Gregor's lab, but catches himself on the concrete and steel door frame. "Hit the stairs!" Don bellows, waving towards the stairwell at the catwalk. Candy and Claire made this very escape route just a day earlier, they know where they need to go — it just happens to be full of gun-toting soldiers and moving vehicles now.
Candy turns her head slightly as Gregor's lab suddenly turns in to one of the circles of Hell, the one reserved for child molestors and people who talk in the theatre. Her eyes go back to the stairwell, and she just nods her head a little waiting for the other's to go in front of her. Without her power, she can't help them by being out in front, and frankly, she doesn't want to get shot… again. Her eyes look around her for a couple of moments while she follows along, ducking as a couple of bullets zing by her. "I wouuld say out of the frying pan and in to the fire, but, I think we're trying to do this metaphor backwards," she informs people, resigning herself to comic relief as they make their escape.
Sent sprawling by the blast, Claire pushes herself up on elbows and peers out, eyes narrowing at the sight of Lang. Disgust tugs at the corner of her lip, but there is more important things right now. As a bullet sends sparks near her head, Claire ducks her head down out of instinct. In her hand is still the pistol, but the irony of it, is it's not much good up here. "You all couldn't have gotten me a better weapon?" She pushes to her knees and on to her feet, her words bitter.
"Stay behind me." Claire calls as she pulls the other gun out of her belt, to draw fire to herself so that the others can hurry along using her as cover. Though she's small hopefully they will shoot at the one shooting back with silly pistols. As she opens fire on the people shooting at them, she moves sideways giving as much of herself as a target. "Move!"
"Don't you piss on this, girl1 The armory was almost empty when we got there! The General's men are mountin' up for something, fuck if I know what it is, but it means less bees int he bee-hive." Don whips around after saying that, firing another shotgun blast down to the hangar floor as he follows behind the three ladies. Sanderson, who has somehow wound up at point again, rumbles down the stairwell, firing in short, controlled bursts to disperse the soldiers gathering on the open hangar floor. Another bullet strikes her in the vest, knocking her backwards down the stairs, head over heels until she crashes to the floor below. The battered marine gets up, spraying gunfire across three soldiers at knee level, and then her gun clicks soundly to proclaim that it hungers for more ammo.
Behind her, Candy is on her way down the stairs, and the blast of Don's shotgun takes out another soldier, sending him cartwheeling through the air, but there's just too many of them. It's only until a familiar feeling of stomach-twisting nausea hits Candy and Claire that they realize rescue may be at hand.
One of the soldiers screams, he screams in a way people should not, in a manner both horrified and pained. His body flexes inwards, rib-cage folding in towards his heart, arms bending back and legs buckling forward against the movement of joints until he simply explodes in a fleshy cloud of gore like a tightly squeezed tomato.
Sanderson doesn't even so much as move, and Don is frozen in place when he sees another soldier fold like an origami crane, limbs and torso bending in inhuman directions until he ruptures and sprays a shower of steaming innards across the concrete floor. "G— God…" Sanderson whispers, before realizing the tormented soldiers aren't shooting. She waves one hand towards the doorway across the hangar. "Go! Go go go!" Her clip is ecjected, another magazine slapped in place, and as she gets up to move she sees the source of their rescue.
Limping out from behind a parked jeep, Six advances on the soldiers, his hands out and fingers spread, veins bulging down his arms as the flesh of the soldiers knots, warps and contorts. "Six help!" He shouts, wrenching the soldiers into fleshen husks, some of them beginning to turn inside out as he continues to expand the influence of his terrifying ability outward. "R— run!" Blood is trickling from the warped man's deformed nostrils and ears, eyes rimmed with crimson.
Candy watches them, and she shudders herself as she sees it, before she nods her head a little and says, "Yeah, lets." She hurries behind Sanderson and Claire, frowning as she still can't get the power that she wants, feeling it tantilizingly within her reach, but slipping away every time she tries to get to it. Shaking her head a little she says, "Please.. let this serum work. /Please," its softly spoken, and said in a way that can only be described as a junky wanting her fix. Candy's power is her drug, and she is badly craving it now.
"Yeah well… I girl like her accessories." Her tone bland, handguns sweep one way and then the other, putting holes in anyone that gets in the way. Claire's expression is grim as she pushes back the emotion that should make her feel guilty about these deaths. What would her boss thinks if he saw her now, the ex- cheerleader isn't the same girl that left.
When Sanderson tumbles, Claire's feet moves faster, boots thumping heavily down the stairs, trying to hurry to the Marine's side to protect her, but then the unease and nausea grip her stomach and soldiers seem to explode. Her head whips around and there is a small flicker of hope in those empty blue orbs. "There he is.. Don't kill him." Her demand is sharp as she glances back at Candy.
Hopping down the last of the stairs, Claire calls out. "Good Six! Good work." Before she starts for the door across the hanger taking advantage of the destruction Six causes in his wake. "Keep it up!" Encouragement is always a good thing especially when the bad stuff is aimed at the bad guys.
Struggling with his ability the way he is using it, Six doesn't hear Claire's warning to Candy, he only hears the way muscle slithers, tendons and and bones bend in the way they should not. Sanderson and Don don't have nearly the calm reaction to Six's ability that others do, especially Sanderson, who had to experience the power once. She gives the flesh manipulator a wide berth as she rushes past him, hugging her assault rifle to her chest, considering Claire's claim to not kill him with a certain level of scrutiny.
Don is slow to approach the area Six is bending flesh in, taking a wide path around the slave as he watche the bald creature lurch forward, hiccup, and then begin to choke and fall to one knee. Six throws up a hand again, gnarled fingers forcing a soldier to bend backwards like a folded reed, only to snap halfway through the motion. "R— Run." Six spits out, along with a mouthful of blood, and as Don takes up the rear and watches the deformed man defend them at the risk of his own life, he feels a pang of guilt for leaving him behind.
Down the concrete corridor, Claire and Sanderson at front hurry past rows of doors, and Sanderson comes to a stop, looking at the numbered security doors and numbered keypads. "What are these?" Her brown eyes scan the doors, as if they looked familiar. There's a look shot to Claire, then back to Candy. Those two, however, know exactly what this is, they're the farms.
"The old woman said we had to go just past here, towards a stairwell that will take us down to the incincerator level." There's a twitch of Sanderson's brow as she says that, as if unable to quite believe what she knows they have to do next. Don finally makes it to the rear of their group, looking back and forth at the three woman, then touching at his face where the glass slivers are still painfully embedded.
"Why th' hell're we stopped? Old lady said we had to go down one more floor." Then he hears the sounds of respirators clicking in the hall, pop-hissing with mechanical precision along the dozen or so doors. "Wh… what the hell is this place?" The doors are closed and locked, but Six had shown them the number codes before. But how— how are they supposed to save this many people right now?
Candy looks in the room and she says, "This is why we haven't seen any women on this island. Rasoul gathered them up, impregnated them, and put them here." Her eyes look in the room before she looks back to Claire, and bites her lip a little and says, "Maybe we can just disconnect them from the IVs, let them wake on their own. There is no way we can protect this many people." She looks towards Sanderson and Don for a couple of moments, before back to the women. She frowns while she continues to think, before finally, she bows to inevitability, "Perhaps we are not meant to rescue them… but to tell others. That could be why she showed us this, Claire."
"These are the farms." Claire says softly, moving to one of the keypads, typing in the combinations that she can remember, until she hears the lock clink softly and she pushes the door, letting it swing open lazily, showing the contents of one of many of the rooms. Eyes move over the various gurneys, "She wants us to save them." The young woman states blandly. "I…. just don't know how." This was never her kind of thing, she's never been a decision maker. It's always some one else that made the decisions.
"Problem is Candy…" Claire looks at the woman over her shoulder as she starts to slip through the door, "The US might not give a shit about all these pregnant women down here, jsut neurtalizing the threat." Blue eyes shift over to Dixon and Sanderson. "Acceptable losses am I right?" Her tone soft and with out emotion.
"Hey," Don spits out a bit defensively, "shit ain't anything like that. But— but this is a war, and wars have casualties. What the fuck're we gonna do, we can't stand here all day, that— Six— he's not going to be able to hold them off for long." Racking another shell into his shotgun, Don expells a shell twirling thorugh the air to clatter down on the concrete. "I don't care what you do just do something or get moving." There's a sound of popping gunfire beyond the hall now, back out in the hangar where Six is, but from this spot it can't be seen what's happening to him.
"Claire…" Sanderson lays a gloved hand down on Claire's shoulder, brows tensed and stare focused on the blonde. "Come on, we either do something, or we go. I don't know what the old lady wanted, but I know if we don't get out of this hallway soon, we're going to be surrounded by Vanguard and there ain't nothing that'll save us from that. I have one clip left, and then I'm spent."
In the hangar, the gunfire gets louder, and the revving of one of the parked jeeps indicates enough soldiers have poured down into the hall to man one of the vehicles. Some of the screaming has stopped as well, whatever's going on out there, it isn't in Six's favor.
Candy looks at them for a moment or two, before she says, "Nothing to do but get moving. We can't save everybody." Its an unfortunate truth, and really, it is kinda better for them to die like that, then wake up with the knowledge of how they've been violated. She shakes her head and turns to begin walking to where ever they were headed, not liking the idea of more people with guns trying to shoot them before she manages to get her ability back.
Hands grip the door frame, one still gripping the pistol, Claire is torn. So very torn as to what to do. Gun fire moving closer, the young blonde is forced to make a horrible decision. The hard reality is they are out manned at the moment and with little little to defend the women… at least for now, Rasoul won't harm his future. A hand moves to grip the handle of the door and slowly pulls it shut. The lock re-engages with a soft snick of sound, there is a finality to the sound and it leaves her feeling chilled.
"I'll be back with help if I can." The young blonde whispers, before turning to go, shaking off Sanderson's hand roughly from her shoulder, and moving down the hall so that can see the fact that she has to blink back tears, a sense of failure building and laying like a brick in her stomach. She'll make sure the resistance knows at least, maybe they will help her get back in here.
A girl can hope.
Claire's determination is echoed in Sanderson's face, even if the worry for how this is affecting the blonde is painted across her brows. The blue-eyed marine looks back to Don and Candy, then nods and begins following Claire down the hall. "The old lady said we had to head down this corridor, hit the stairs, and then pass through the incinerator."
Wait, back up a step.
"When we talked to her in— whatever that was, dreams? She told us that there's an access tunnel that connects gas manes to the incinerators in the basement, these access tunnels lead directly beneath the capitol and connect to serivce passages beneath the old Antananarivo museum that Rasoul has turned into his headquarters." Running at their heels, Don keeps turning around and looking backwards towards the distant sound of gunfire.
"All we have to do us get through the incinerator chambers, get the access hatch open, and then hide out in the tunnels until whatever this is either blows over, or we have an opportunity to pop in on Rasoul ourselves." So this is leading directly to a confrontation with the leader of the Madagascar Vanguard.
"Yeah, you make it sound so simple, Lieutenant." Don cracks a smile as the group passes thorugh a doorway into a room filled with enormous fuel-ignition furnaces. Iron doors are numbered and sealed shut, wheelbarrows near them show traces of ashes and tiny white chips. Near an old rusted fuse box is a concrete stairwell that leads down towards the sound of rumbling furnaces. "We jus' gotta run through where they burn shit and then pop up in the kitchen of a genocidal General. All in a days work," Don adds with a crooked smile, "I think this calls for an Oo-Rah."
Candy looks at Don and replies, "Well, its either this, or get stuffed with holes? Personally, I'd prefer to drown when its all said and done, fire ain't my preferred way of going. But, if you don't feel like going, I could save you the trouble of dieing and just take out the water in your body to use as a shield for the rest of us. I mean, you're not going to be needing it anyway." She smiles sweetly at the man as the go at a brisk walk, she doesn't care about the escape plan, right now, she wants to hole up somewhere and get her power back so she can feel like she has a bit of control once more.
Staying ahead of the others as an undying shield, but also so that she can work on reigning in her emotions, Claire listens to Sanderson a frown on her lips. "If he's in his kitchen at a time like this, I'll be surprised." The words crack a bit as they catch in her throat, even though she has the guilt pushed to the corner of her mind. "But we have a unique opportunity to take out that fucking son of a bitch." She lets the anger bleed into her voice. "His twisted views are what put those women down there.. and all those people in the cage fights. I vote rather then sit around we take him out."
"Oo-rah." Sanderson says in an understated manner to Claire as a solemn agreement. Shouldering her assault rifle, she gives a wary stare to the furnaces, then starts headed down the stairs behind the regenerator. At the top of the steps, Don pauses in mid-stride and turns to look back over his shoulder to Candy. The expression on his face is a conflicted one, heavy with frustration but also somewhat sympathetic.
"That tough act ain't gonna fly by me," Dixon states with a flat furrow of his brows, head quirked to one side as he assesses Candy. "You talk all big and scary, like none'a this shit phases you, but the only person you're foolin' is yourself." The shotgun toting marine takes a step forward towards the steps, and as he goes down them, something goes unsaid, and he shakes his head. When Candy moves down the stairs as well, the whirring click of a security camera focusing on her departure goes unnoticed.
Below the furnace room, enormous iron pipes are riveted to the walls of this claustrophobic concrete access tunnel. The ceiling is just barely six feet in height, enough that Don has to duck as he walks, shotgun flashlight turned on in the unlit darkness of the tunnel. At the fore of the group with Claire, Sanderson clicks on the light atop her M-16.
"Alright, this tunnel will take us to the incinerators. Etana— " She's finally picking up on the name, "didn't say what they were used for. All she said was that if we cross to the side where the waste is deposited, there'll be an access hatch we can go into."
Down the corridor, a brilliant flare of orange light causes Sanderson to stop dead in her tracks. It's the light of intense fire, and the heat from it can be felt — oppressive and dry — a good distance away. Steeling herself, Sanderson creeps towards the corner of the corridor, and as she nears that corner, the sound of creaking metal comes more fully into view.
There at the corner of the hall, the incinerator comes into view. It is a machine of grim design, with a metal scrolling grate for a floor that moves like a tank tread, carrying waste over enormous jets of flame to be incinerated, then deposited somewhere far away. An up-draft of air is sucked out of the incineration chamber, likely by a flue that reaches one of the smokestacks in the city.
But Sanderson has to take pause, as she watches the timing of the flames jumping through the moving grating, because what is being burned is not garbage of waste. What Sanderson can see blackened and charred on that moving grating, being deposited thorugh an aluminum chute onto the moving tracks, are bodies.
Not even large, human offerings, but tiny bodies the size of paired fists.
Infants; their tiny bones litter the spaces between the metallic grates, blackened and stuck in place. This is where Rasoul's unwanted children go, where the Evolved spawn of his farms are weeded out.
Candy stares at the infants while she stands there, and she shakes her head a little and says softly to Dixon, perhaps trying to convince herself, "it doesn't phase me." Her eyes look away, however, for a brief moment. Then they go back to the incinerator and she asks, "She told you where they cut off switch is too, right? Otherwise, that's gonna be a short walk into a hot place."
Sanderson can't answer, not to Candy, not right now. Instead, she's too busy focusing on staring down at the ground, eyes wrenched shut, her stomach practically turning inside and out from the horrible sensation of nausea that nothing supernatural caused, just horrified revulsion at Edmond Rasoul's barbarism. "There isn't one…" Sanderson rasps out the words in a strained whisper, her throat tight with emotion. "It's… it's three floors up, we have to go through, time— " she has to pause, swallow, look away and partition off the part of herself that wants to curl up into a ball and cry. A blast of flame rises up through the grates, and it contrasts Sanderson in one half shadow and one half orange illumination.
"We have to time our movements with the blast of flame." Don says quietly, moving to stand at Sanderson's side, a hand resting on her shoulder. "It moves like a wave, see?" There's a nod of his head as he motions to where the flames start at the far side of the conveyor belt, then burst one blast after another until they reach the near end where everyone is standing. "There's a short gap between the long blasts. All we gotta do is go one at a time, wait till the closest blast of fire goes off, then— run for it."
"Etana said there's enough time to run across if we move full tilt to avoid the fire. Thing is," Don motions down the tunnel. "About halfway down there's that metal hatch door." It's clearly visible when the flames are burning. "That's what we have to get open. We don't want to run down the whole way, 'cause there's just a trash chute at the end. I figure Bennet can get the door open, since the flames can't hurt her. Then we take turns running for it."
While Don talks, Candy can start to feel the moisture on the beads of sweat rolling down his nose.
The sight of the tiny charred bodies, makes Claire turn away. She closes her eyes, but the after image burned into her eyes stays as a reminder. Forced to open her eyes again, she looks at Sanderson. "That's the other reason we need to try and come back for the women… all those babies.." Her voice trails off… eyes going back to the bodies, throat working to keep the bile down. "And a whole 'nother reason to put a bullet in his fucking skull." The words are fierce, of everything that's happened, that bothers her the most.
Moving one side of Sanderson, Claire squints at the fire, "Okay… how do we do this."
Sanderson can't answer, not to Candy, not to Claire, not right now. Instead, she's too busy focusing on staring down at the ground, eyes wrenched shut, her stomach practically turning inside and out from the horrible sensation of nausea that nothing supernatural caused, just horrified revulsion at Edmond Rasoul's barbarism. "There isn't one…" Sanderson rasps out the words in a strained whisper, her throat tight with emotion. "It's… it's three floors up, we have to go through, time— " she has to pause, swallow, look away and partition off the part of herself that wants to curl up into a ball and cry. A blast of flame rises up through the grates, and it contrasts Sanderson in one half shadow and one half orange illumination.
"We have to time our movements with the blast of flame." Don says quietly, moving to stand at Sanderson's side, a hand resting on her shoulder. "It moves like a wave, see?" There's a nod of his head as he motions to where the flames start at the far side of the conveyor belt, then burst one blast after another until they reach the near end where everyone is standing. "There's a short gap between the long blasts. All we gotta do is go one at a time, wait till the closest blast of fire goes off, then— run for it."
"Etana said there's enough time to run across if we move full tilt to avoid the fire. Thing is," Don motions down the tunnel. "About halfway down there's that metal hatch door." It's clearly visible when the flames are burning. "That's what we have to get open. We don't want to run down the whole way, 'cause there's just a trash chute at the end. I figure Bennet can get the door open, since the flames can't hurt her. Then we take turns running for it."
While Don talks, Candy can start to feel the moisture on the beads of sweat rolling down his nose. It's subtle, it's very faint, but it's there, the simplest sensation of feeling moisture's presence in this dry incinerator chamber. There's something else here, something else she can feel, but her ability is too foggy to really pick it up yet.
Candy blinks a little while she stands there, and she looks to the other three before she says softly, "There's something here…" She trails off, as she starts to try and cling to that faint feeling of something. The young hydrokinetic begins to wander around, hoping to get something of a fix on it. She's not leaving til she knows what it is, as her alternate plan of attack is rather gruesome.
One thing Claire knows, it's being burned alive, not one of the most pleasant experiences. Still she nods slowly in agreement and offers her weapons to Dixon silently. One thing she's not going to do is destroy her clothes over this. It will look odd, but she slides the camo top off her shoulders and tosses it to the man as well as she prepares to strip down to panties and the ribbed tank top. Couching down she starts the process with unlacing boots, yes.. she plans to walk barefooted on the hot grates "You guys can bring my things with you so that I don't have to run around half naked when we get done."
Were this any other situation, Dixon would probably be very enthusiastic about his job. Now, here, like this, it's horrifying. Having to watch Claire prepare to march across the hot grates, he nods and takes the bundle of her clothing after offering his shotgun out to Sanderson. The Lieutenant, now armed with Don's gun, takes a look down the corridor they had come from with the flashlight, then looks back again towards the rupturing glow of flames. It's only when Candy starts to wander around the elbow of the corridor leading to the incinerator that Sanderson seems puzzled, watching the dark-haired woman searching the walls for something, searching the—
The pipes.
She's found what she felt, at least. The pipes in the walls here are steam pipes, while the scalding hot steam is within her range to control, it won't be of any help, since the furnace is gas-ignition powered. Plus bursting one of those pipes would probably par-boil the flesh off of everyone in the room if she lost control of it.
"C'mon, focus. Sanderson, you're first up once Bennet gets the door open. Then you, Allard, then I'll cover our rear." Standard protocol rattled off by Don. They've come this far, there's only so much further they have to go before this is all over — one way or another.
Candy looks around while she stands there, before she looks back at those around her and says in a soft voice. "I can create a path to walk on… though, I doubt you all will like how the path is created. But, it should be able to get everyone there easily enough, with less of a risk for burning," Candy gives a nod towards the corpses that are being conveyed, before adding, "I might be able to take the moisture from their bodies, and make us a path. I can manipulat the surface tension so that it'll be like walking on a sidewalk." She looks from one to the other, to try and gauge what they think.
Hands flex open and closes slowly as Claire stands silhouetted in the bright flames. She shifts foot to foot as she mentally psyches herself up for the task. She's stood before Ted Sprague as the radiation had rolled off him, burning clothing and skin from bones. "You work on that…" Claire states as she places hands on the grates and starts to lever herself on the track, letting the momentum help her. The sound of skin sizzling with the searing heat and the wisps of smoke lift form the souls of her feet as they settle on the hot metal surface.
"I'll get the door open." As soon as the opportunity is there, Claire is running, mind focused on her path and the hatch ahead, but away form the bright pain in her soles or the smoldering of sweat off her skin.
"Moisture?" Don says with a crook of one brow, "those bodies are dust and bones, even the ones on the grate. There— " the marine throws one hand into the air. "No amount'a moisture ain't gonna stop a few thousand degrees of blast-furnace heat coming up through those grates. We got boots, those grates are hot but they're a metal designed to radiate out the heat not retain it. We move fast enough we're good. Don't go blowin' yourself up tryin' to do something wild with your ability in a dry-heat furnace."
"Dixon's right," Sanderson adds reluctantly. "I can feel my ability coming back, but if I try and push I'm worried I'll pass out. The last thing we need is to try and drag you across that grating." Dixon wants to say more, wants to continue to explain why pushing herself is a ridiculous idea, but when Claire begins crossing that grating, Dixon's eyes widen as his focus is on the fire reflecting off of her, the way the flames ahead of Claire turn her to little more than a black silhouette.
She makes it down the halfway mark without incident, then as she stops at the large access hatch, her hands move out to the metal, immediately followed by a look of pain as smoke sizzles from the hot metal surface. Claire wrenches the door open with a twist of the valve handles, pushing the door inwards moments before flames leap up from a wall cascading towards her, bathing her in brilliant white-orange inferno.
Don and Sanderson both angle back, eyes wide as they see Claire's blackened skin and charred hair already reforming as the flames die down. In the time it takes her to start moving into the doorway, Sanderson is moving up to the grating edge, breathing in deep and heavy breaths. "Just watch me, Allard. It'll be easy." The flames roll down the creaking grating, and Sanderson waits for that last blast of flame closest to her. She crouches, and then sprints across with a loud clanging of her footfalls. The flames begin rising up at the head of the track by the garbage chute as she reaches the door, diving in through the open doorway well before flames come after her.
Dixon nods his head and throws a hand in the air. "Oo-rah!" He exclaims to with a broad smile, followed by a nod of his head. "Get on up in there, Allard. I'll be right behind ya."
There is only a hiss of pain from Claire as the flame leap up around her, charring her badly and turning her vision bright white, then dark as her eyes stop functioning for a time. Movement makes her skin crack open when the burn is the worse, blood oozing and quickly turning dark steam rising from it, as hands reach up to grip the edge of the hatch and pull herself up, of course she leaves the charred and burn soles of her feet behind her.
Once she's up, she crouches down next to the opening, ready to help everything get up quickly, even though they will have to grip burnt skin. By now her eyes can see again at least, as she squints down, waiting.
Candy watches as Sanderson runs across the grating, her eyes looking at the flames. "Sure, tell the hydrokinetic that running across the grate of fire is easy. I fucking HATE fire," Candy says to Sanderson, shuddering as she stands there. She looks uncertainly at Sanderson and murmers, "I wish there was a way to do this in a better way…" Regardless, she starts to run as soon as the fire reaches the same place that Sanderson had started her sprint.
Unfortunately, Candy is not quite as fast a sprinter as Sanderson, and though she makes it, the smell of singed hair is rather prevalent around her.
The moment Candy makes it to the hatch door and attempts to leap in to the narrow corridor, she finds herself fixed in place. Sanderson turns around in the hall, blue eyes wide. Panic suddenly sets in, and Candy can feel her right foot wedged between the hot metal plates of the moving grate. Every moment she stays stuck, she's being pulled away from the hatch opening, heat pressing against the leather of her combat boots. Her hands grip the door frame, trying to keep her in place, but the machine is continuing to try and pull her towards the trash chute, and towards what begins erupting from the head of the coveyor belt — a wall of seething flames.
Row by row, curtains of near white-hot fire begin erupting thorugh the grates, and Don can see Candy struggling to try and pry her foot out of where she's been trapped like a panicked animal. The heat continues to get closer, scorching the air in dry waves of thousand-degree heat that comes closer and closer with every moment. "Fuck!" Don shouts, dropping the shotgun as he breaks into a sprint, boots slamming with loud clangs against the metal grating. He reaches where Candy is, flames drawing closer, curtains of white-hot heat too close now, singing her arms, the heat burning so intense she has to close her eyes.
The steam-pipes rattle on the walls, the sweat on Dixon's nose begins levitating up into the air away from him, and just when it seems like Candy is about to become engulfed in flames, Don's arms wrap around her waist, and with a twist of his body he wrenches her up and off of the conveyor belt and throws her thorugh the doorway with all of his might.
Candy comes crashing down, striking Sanderson as she's thrown, and the brunette marine is able to brace herself and Catch candy under her arms, holding her up as she watches Don throw up his arms as a glow of fire begins to form beneath his feet.
Candy struggles as she suddenly finds herself stopped, moments away from freedom and she's stuck there at the ledge. Then Dixon charges into the furnace and grabs her before throwing her into the room. Candy hits Sanderson, and they go down in a tangle of limbs as she tries to get out from under her, turning to look at Dixon as he stands tehre. Her eyes wide with horror as time seems to slow down for the young hydrokinetic, the young woman thinking a mile a minute as, to her, the fire builds impossibley slow.
She looks up at him, her eyes filled with apology, her mind unable to come up with a way to save the man as he stands on the grate.
At the edge of the hatch, Claire watches the Asian go flying. "No!" Panic grips her then and the regenerator is already dropping to her knees and reaching down to grab Don's arms and brace herself to try and pull him up, blacken skin while it is healing, still cracks and splits open under the pressure as her hands grip at his wrists and arms. It may be hopeless, but she's going to try, blue eyes standing out on her smudged and blackened face echo her determination.
It's too little, too late, at least for Don. Even as Claire throws her arms into the flames to try and get to him, the heat is unbelievably intense, rising too quickly. Claire is brought back to a memory, a memory of approaching a panicked Ted Sprauge who lost control of his power in her own home, a man expelling radioactive heat and flames from his body. This is just as hot, but far faster, far more cruel in the manner in which it destroys the marine she is holding on to.
She can feel hs skin crisp and blacken beneath her fingers, she can see nothing else thorugh the flames, as the blasting waves of heat incinerated Corporal Donald Dixon where he stands, blasting flesh from bones and leaving little more than a charred half-skeleton behidn that crumbles and collapses down onto the metal grating in frontof Claire. She is holding bones in skeletal stumps of her own hands, blistered and blackened skin receeding away from the gnarled mass of bone and connective tissue that was once her forearms. Skin has peeled away in sheets from her face, eyes boiled white and milky from the heat as she falls backwards, letting the bones of her own hands and Don's hands clatter dustily to the concrete.
The popping rattle of the ammunition from his assault rifle exploding from the heat blasts in streaks of flame thorugh the air in the incinerator, sounding like a small firecracker salute to the marine's ignoble death. On her backside, smoke rising up from the front of her body, Claire's flesh is already slowly regenerating back. Bone regrowing where her hands once were, burned skin sloughing off for cleaner, pinker tissue. Her eyes clear, cataracts boil away and fade to blue clarity.
Sanderson is struck speechless, holding Candy up still, unable to let the small woman go, frozen in horror. She watches the flames continue to burst up in rythm, and the metal grating carries Don's charred skeletal remains away, flakes of ashes rising up from his broken corpse as it is hauled towards the trash chute at the end, to be dumped into whatever mass grave all those other bodies are deposited in.
Half-melted to the floor, Claire can see Dixon's dog-tags laying in the hall, smoking.
Candy looks in her own horror at Don, who was once there but is there no longer. She shudders her face turns as she buries it into Sanderson's shoulder. Taking great heaving gasps as she realizes that that was her without the man. She shakes her head a little and says softly, so soft that only Sanderson is able to hear the Asian, "I couldn't…."
She shakes her head and starts to try and stand up, looking purposely away from Claire and the remains of Dixon, locking away the pain that she feels once more, working on getting control of herself. When she does turn back to face what remains of their little group, the hydrokinetic is once more in command of herself her face that expressonless mask. The only hint that the death of the Marine hit Candace at all is the single tear track that goes down her face. She looks towards Sanderson and says, "Where to now?"
For a long moment, Claire is forced to sit there and endure the wait for her body to regenerate. The fact she has no clothes, expect for charred remains of the ribbed tank and the panties she was wearing, doesn't even phase her. Even the pain doesn't even bother her, her mind is fully on what had just happened, the horror of it fresh… there would be nightmares about it, that much she knows.
Even though her vision is back, hallway is blurred by tears that slip from Claire's eyes to trail down her cheeks and finally drop to the concrete. The glint of metal reflecting the flames catches her attention, brows which are finally growing back in, furrow. She reaches out with hands that are reformed and covered with fresh pink skin, letting fingers curl around the tags and yank just before the flames fill the room beyond. The pain is more intense with fresh skin, but she holds tight to the tags, ignoring the sizzle as she shuts the trapdoor.
Turning back to Sanderson, Claire holds out her hand, fingers slowly uncurling from the tags which have melted into her skin some. She has to clench her jaws, lips pressed tight to keep from her lower lip quivering. There are no words right now, but the meaning in her eyes are clear, 'I'm sorry.' Why she feels the need to apologizes isn't clear, but there it is.
Swallowing back a keening sound in the back of her throat, Sanderson slips away from Candy, fire reflecting in her glassy eyes as she watches that burning doorway and where Claire sits. "Clothes," she murmurs, waving towards the garments she dropped in the hall for Claire. Then, as Sanderson starts to back up towards the dark of the hall, without a gun, she hesitates as the sound of something down the dark corridor stirs. Letting out a gasp, Sanderson turns, no flashlight now from having lost her rifle when Don perished, she sees nothing but the utterly black concrete hall ahead.
Then, after a moment, the sound of a voice in the dark. "You've far to go yet…" the familiar voice comments in ryhthmic cadence, and as the figure emerges out into the glow of the flames, the first thing seen is a long-handled smoking pipe, then wrinkled, dark skin and traditional African garb, including a colorful head-wrap around the old woman's head. There, standing in the middle of the hall, somehow down this far, the mysterious old woman Etana gestures with her pipe towards Candy, Claire and Sanderson, lit only by the flames.
"Mourn his loss later…" She concedes, trailing smoke in the air as she turns to offer them her profile, pointing one ghostly and transparent hand towards the dark. She's a projection of some kind, a psychic image or ghost. "This way…" she urges.
"…into the dark."