Participants:
| Scene Title | Burn Them Up |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Minea brings Teo what he asked for, and despite head injuries and old trespasses and incipient terrorist attacks, everything is all right in their creepy little world. |
| Date | June 26, 2009 |
South Manhattan — Outside A Train Station
According to the crinkled scrap of lined yellow paper left for him at the drop box, it was a date. Grand Central Station's functional replacement is a hive of activity, the luggage lockers— presumably, the safe point of concealment in question— like honeycomb, commuters and tourists massed in the hallways, dining patrons seated in blossomed clusters the Oyster Bar, the Commodore, signage making the mazey hallways and ramps and staircases all alike and interchangeable as the viscera of a living hive, endless feet knocking floors of polished stone (not the manifest luxury of marble, but still—) like the droning reverberation of armied wings.
It's bright and early. Ghost holds a cup of coffee in one gloved hand and is studying the sizzling array of mystery meat available for purchase on the hotdog cart on the curb just outside the street-level exit. He frowns slightly. At the meat, despite the bulge of a weapon out from underneath the arm of a passing pedestrian, or the unpleasant clamminess of the weather, or even the police checkpoint posted fifty feet off. He isn't standing upwind of any of those other things.
Slung across a shoulder is a leather tube, the kind meant for carrying blueprints. Minea's got a military surplus hat on, black denim jacket, hair pulled back into a single braid to fall down her shoulder. Things meant to disguise somewhat who she is but not irritate the healing head wound. Coffee occupies the hand not clutching the tube as she makes her way to the appointed destination. Time to pass over the goods.
She hadn't handed them over to Helena, not because she didn't trust the woman or didn't want her involved. It was the nature of the materials that she was passing them over. If something happened, it was Minea's responsibility and the onus on her. Plausible deniability for Helena, and all the guilt for the ex-company agent. She's only seen the new face once, and she's looking but she passes over him, not recognizing the new Teo.
Severe-looking brunette at three o' clock. Blinking through the thin skein of steam that rises out his unroofed coffee, he swallows another long sip before raising his hand, once, the motion carefully corralled inside the demarcations of his personal bubble, lest he accidentally punch somebody in the face. He manages not to. "Buongiorno," he calls out, aloud.
His voice is still different. Not-Teo: too deep, edges scuffed rough from artificially introduced age. His face is similar, hair a half dozen shades too dark despite the addition of loose-stranded length, eyes still glacially pale despite the introduction of sunlight to this encounter as opposed to their last. The ghost quirks a brow down at the cup in her hand. "Diesel or unleaded?"
The Italian greeting is enough to make her alter course with a glance around her just in case there's something that she's not seeing. Or someone. Lets not get another set of stitches in the head Minea. "Diesel, never unleaded, you?" The leather case is unhooked from her shoulder, then held out in a peace offering like. "All scouts, and then whatever else I could get my hands on. Some I couldn't copy, so I took pictures and composited them for you Caravaggio." She scuffs a boot on the pavement, eyeing him and his changed face.
"Regular," the ghost responds genially. One pale eye shades downward at the fidget of her foot, but even now, he is too polite to stare or fidget in reciprocation. He sticks his arm out to the right, ditches his drink in the mouth of a trash can, before closing his hands on the proffered gift of leather. "Thanks.
"With a little luck, I should be able to figure out what's going on with their target selection based on this stuff. All my overheards have been based around architecture and layout. Haven't even found out when their fucking start date is yet." He fails to sound deathly horrified in neurotic knots about it, but Ghost is at least faintly irritable, professionally perturbed. "You look like you're— getting better."
"Find whatever it is that you're looking for, then destroy those. Burn them up, or have someone you trust burn them. The copies can be traced to me and I already have one noose around my neck, i'd like to avoid having another if those get into the wrong hands" It goes unsaid that she have the slightest reservation that she may be handing it over to the wrong hands right now.
"No extra gaping holes in my head. I assume that the blonde bird told you what happened?"
The sling strap goes around Ghost's shoulder with a loopy weave of his elbow, and he settles it comfortably with a tug of a thumb on the cinch at the base of the tube. It is comfortable enough. Only kind of gets in the way of one of his weapons, so that leaves— what would count as an arsenal on the rest of his person. Sweet.
"You're neck is safe with me," promises one of the least respectable sources on the planet, before his brow notches faintly with an unhappy sort of confirmation, which is neither utterly indifferent to Dahl's plight nor as hands-wringing as his younger analogue would have bee, once. "Yes. Sounds like a shitty situation, but it sounds like you have some good people at your back. Anything I can do?"
"I made said shitty situation Laudani. I made my bed, now I gotta sleep in it. They're keeping me safe. Ready to move me in an instant if I need it. We'll bring the fuckers down" Minea looks over at Teo, up, down, then back to around them as she digs into a pocket and produces a cigarette. There's an offer of one for Teo.
There's a spread of long, black-suited fingers, swivel, a gesture of polite refusal. "Don't smoke," Ghost says. Then, blankly, "Anymore. Thanks, though. And feel free."
You look like you could use it, he means but doesn't say. He's never been quite at that dearth of tact. After a moment, he lets his mouth crook with wry observation. Above his head, the traffic lighting changes. Idly, he tracks the hitch and flow of the crowd, rotates his locus of perception once through the proximate people. The area is too over saturated for him to get a clear idea of precisely what everybody is doing, but he has a reasonable certainty, at least, that no one is overhearing them with any kind of clarity.
"Sounds a little more aggressive than you were letting on the other week, signorina. Just keeping morale up, or did you take that personally?" He indicates the wound on her head with a lambskinned forefinger, circled close through the morning's ambient chill, not quite touching.
"Yes, well, the other week I didn't have three bullets sink into the wall between Elisabeth and I. And I didn't have half the stuff that I had." The offered smokes are slipped away into a pocket, a lighter produced and satisfied that she's not breaking some law and likely to be caught, hauled in, she coaxes the purple lighter to life, lifting it to the cigarette so that she can transfer the flame to the smoke. "Wait, let me guess, doubting my sincerity? Big bad agent with ulterior motives? Waiting for the moment to turn on the very people she helped, and are protecting her right now" Forefinger and middle close on the cancer stick to pull it away from the corner of her mouth and blow the smoke away from Teo. "I'm surprised they haven't tied my ass to a chair to make sure i'm not running off to tattle or turn coat on them."
She took that personally, then. Well, we can't all like the same things. Ghost's eyes crinkle slightly at the corners. "You talk a lot about the suspicions of others. I can never tell if you're being indignant, sarcastic, or generally feeding the logical paranoia because you have no idea what else to say. As I recall, you're the one with the tattletale Blackberry."
For all that, he doesn't sound resentful. Instead, he motions toward Grand Central Station, invitation manifest in the arc of his arm. "I was going to take the train outta here in a couple hours. Can I get you anything? I hear there's fucking excellent clam chowder down at the Oyster Bar. Overpriced, but hey, it isn't my blood money I'm spending."
"What do you think Christian would have said that answer to that is" She pulls on the smoke again, holding the smoke in her lungs until it burns a little too much then lets it go. "Blackberry is decommissioned. It's batter has been tossed and it's in possession of phoenix as a gesture of good will. Besides, Ms. Chesterfield was taking our pictures too that day Laudani. Only fair." A few more puffs taken and she's soon crushing the paper and tobacco leftover under the heel of her boot. "I gotta get back to the dog house. Still waiting for someone to come question me. I'll take you up on the clam chowder another day"
Satisfied that the smoke is dead beneath her toe, she turns as if to head off. "Guess I'm just not used to the lack of suspicion, the trust, if there is any. Not as if anyone I ever worked for gave it in abundance."
The man squares his shoulders, acknowledges Minea's busy schedule with an inclination of his head, chin chucked, half a smile. "Taking pictures is one thing. Sharing them is another.
"Chris—" No segue, there, no real ceremony. Pale eyes hood faintly, a darkening sort of memory stilting the smile out of his face as he watches her angle away, watching her profile without making particularly intrusive insistence on eye-contact. "Would've scratched the back of his big head and changed the subject to motorcycles or rooftop barbecue. With me, anyway. I don't know how he was with you, besides rough."
"Cagey bastard. You're very much like him, more I think, than you realize. I hope what I gave you helps. God knows, if I get caught passing them over…" It goes without saying. She'll see a long time in jail. "You know how to get a hold of me. God speed Caravaggio. Get on with saving the world again. I've done my part, now it's up to you and her and the hatchlings: WIth that, and a touch of her forefinger to brim of the military hat, Minea turns away fully now, off to blend in with the crowd and return from whence she came.