Participants:
| Scene Title | By Written Word |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Hana does the most uncharacteristic of things — tasks Ygraine with delivering actual physical letters. |
| Date | December 7, 2010 |
A Midtown Street
It's very early in the morning. Absurdly early. It's not so very long ago that curfew lifted, and even the sun has only recently rousted itself from bed. Hana Gitelman, on the other hand, is wide awake and alert, for all that Midtown is largely an empty and abandoned place. Even these outer reaches of it, where the buildings are still largely intact — making allowances for damages done by vandals and looters — seem to belong to a ghost city, no part of the bustling metropolis that is Manhattan.
Dressed in dark jeans and her ubiquitous black leather jacket, latter zipped firmly against the frigid air, the Israeli sits in plain view at the top of a building's entrance stairs, coincidentally one of the few places well-exposed to sunlight at this hour. Her legs stretch out to a step some distance down, shoes braced casually against its pockmarked surface. Her hands are gloved, seeming charcoal against the jacket's glossy darkness; the fabric was probably originally marketed as black.
Patient as Hana can be, she waits today with poor grace; she needs to be elsewhere, and soon.
Amidst the quiet, sharp ears can readily enough pick up the rumble of a powerful bike's engine somewhere in the vicinity, though the effects of the concrete canyons and crazy acoustic arrangements provided by damaged shells make it rather difficult to say quite where the vehicle might be. When it cuts out, somewhere in the middle distance, there's an eeriness to the haunted silence of the dead neighbourhood…
A short while later, footsteps softened by flexible, gripping boot-soles are much harder to hear, as they make their way through the building from the back, moving towards that front entrance. Accustomed though she is to exercising in or running messages through the ruins of Midtown, Ygraine still finds herself acutely aware of all the empty spaces and blocked sight-lines around her. After all, she expects this building to be occupied, and the clandestine nature of the summons would be sufficient to set her on edge anyway.
Even so, the Briton's come unarmed, still not having touched a firearm since the night she shot one of the Vanguard.
Hana is never unarmed; but since she expects company, invited it, none are in evidence when the summoned Brit comes into view. Admittedly, doing so at Hana's back does bring the Israeli quite quickly to her feet, the better to turn and look at the new arrival. Not quite the approach Hana had in mind to expect, but she doesn't waste their time with complaints. Doesn't really have inclination to make them.
"I have two letters for you to deliver," she tells the courier without preamble. That they're critically important goes without saying. That Hana, Wireless, is resorting to the written word — strange.
Ygraine quirks a wry smile, inclining her head by way of greeting - before slightly narrowing her eyes at Hana. The oddness of the situation prompts her to dart an instinctive glance past the Israeli, as if she might spot the reason for the unusual choice of delivery.
Then she quickly refocuses upon the other woman. "Where, and how soon?", she asks quietly and rather tensely. In the age of high-tech encryption and secure lines, it seems obvious that hard copies are for the irrelevant, the truly vital… or the very odd. And something that's either vital to Wireless, or some strange trick… either could make a courier's life prone to the effects of that fabled Chinese curse.
Unzipping her jacket, Hana reaches into an interior pocket, withdrawing the two aforementioned envelopes. They're the small, standard letter-size kind of envelope, cheap and white, with absolutely no lettering on them. In fact, the only distinguishing features are a black sticker and a blue one, each placed across the tip of their respective sealed flaps.
Holding one up in each hand, she turns the envelopes so Ygraine can see the stickers. "Black goes to Redbird Security. To Elisabeth Harrison's hands, and no other. Blue to Noah Bennet, again, particular." Dark eyes remain steady on the courier. "As soon as possible."
Ygraine raises a brow, pausing a moment before stepping forward to accept the two envelopes - hefting each carefully to assess weight and solidity. "Any preference on who I find first?", she asks. "And… hmmm. Is there a significant risk of problems? Unconventional routes are open to me, but are far slower." And rather unpleasant. Try walking along the ceiling of a sewer some time, even with a breathing mask….
The envelopes have little weight — not much more than a piece of paper each, plus the paper of the exterior. "No preference," Hana supplies upon the courier's inquiry. "I don't expect you'll meet trouble." The quirk of her lips might have some relationship to humor. "But don't draw attention to yourself either."
Another smile from the Briton, this one faintly rueful. "The main reason I'm still a courier is that it provides cover for being a courier… but you don't seem the type to give me needless advice. Should I be seeking to avoid the notice of the network as well? And should I wait for a reply from either of them?"
"You have nothing to hide from the network," Hana assures the Brit. Part of the reason, perhaps, that Ygraine isn't being told the contents. She nods towards the packets of paper in Ygraine's hands. "No replies. They should understand why." Her faint smile is a match for Ygraine's rue. "Bennet will likely relay the relevant points to the rest." What points are relevant, implicitly, is up to his discretion.
Ygraine nods slowly and cautiously, rather intently studying Hana's face for a moment. She opens her mouth, opts against asking if anything's wrong, and then tries again. "Anything else I can do?", she offers, as she busies her hands. Elizabeth's letter is rested upon one of her shoulders - where it quite impossibly stays put, as she twists her arms behind her and stashes the other letter in a pocket added inside the lining of her jacket, concealed and protected beneath the armoured reinforcement guarding her spine.
Something's wrong, it's pretty clear — equally, if Hana was going to share, she would have already. "I don't believe so, but thank you," she replies to Ygraine. Stepping backwards down the stairs, she inclines her head to the courier. "Safe travels," the woman offers.
A slight pause, then Ygraine inclines her own head, reaching up to remove Elisabeth's letter from its perch, but just holding it in her hands for the moment. "And you", she replies, tone quietly intense and expression rather worried.