Checkmate - Resetting The Board

Participants:

adam_icon.gif ash_icon.gif huruma_icon.gif kaylee_icon.gif maury_icon.gif peter_icon.gif sabrina_icon.gif

Scene Title Checkmate - Resetting the Board
Synopsis Adam comes to Pinehearst to clear the air about his ties to Arthur, and make a quick buck in the process. However, what he winds up getting his hands on is far more than he realizes.
Date July 23, 2009

Pinehearst Headquarters


Between the verdant branches of trees, the stars shine dimly against a blanket of blue-black night. Creeping across the heavens, dark clouds of an encroaching storm move on inexorably, threatening to swallow the light of the moon and cast the night into utter darkness.

Against this backdrop, the green glass walls of Pinehearst Headquarters looks like something out of a storybook; a glittering glass palace situated amidst a twilight forest. Approaching Pinehearst's rear entrance by cover of the forest, a handful of individuals sweep between the trees, crouching down on the edge of loading docks for the supply entrance to the biotech company.

"Sir," one of the darkly dressed men looks over his shoulder, motioning for a shorthaired blonde man carrying a sword to approach, "there's no signs of security on the rear entrance. Carlos and Ingram have radioed in, the security locks on all of the exterior doors are compromised." A smile starts to creep up the man's face, "It looks like you were right, those kids are making their move soon."

Two more darkly dressed gunmen move out from the woods, passing by Adam Monroe and one of his hired mercenaries, creeping between parked vans marked with the blue and green double-helix logo of the Pinehearst Company. Their assault rifles are raised at the ready, eyes trained down the sights as they watch the back doors, moving quickly towards the rear entrance and up a short flight of stairs to the loading dock doors.

A silent hand-sign from one of the pair informs the man talking to Adam to rise up from his crouch, giving his employer a firm nod before hustling between the vans, dropping down into a crouch again at the base of the stairs the other ascended. The advanced pair of mercenaries begin making hand signs, counting down from three fingers. When they reach nothing but a closed fist, one of them slams the open button for the cargo bay doors.

Corrugated metal groans in protest as the bay doors begin rolling up and open, revealing a storage room stacked high with crates. The two advance mercenaries flanking the door swing out from either side of the entrance, rifles trained in opposite directions as they file inside, while the third man crouching at the stairs gives the signal to Adam and the rest of his men.

All clear.

Adam has brought along his sword just for this expressed purpose. He waits for the men to call the entrance clear and stands up. Another half dozen black dressed men up and Adam mentions to Michael, "Keep our exit clear." he says, then he circles his fingers to Kaylee, Huruma, Ash, Sabrina and three of the other half dozen men and they begin to make their way into their facility. He walks in, confident and cocky, as if nothing could harm him. "Alright. Once we're in, we're going to be hitting the offices and labs." he says, "I want anything valuable, sellable. If you're not sure, take it." he looks to Sabrina specifically, "I want you to see if you can find any files on the finances. I want Petrelli's money."

Ash is dressed for war. He's got a bullet proof vest on over his tanktop, a very wicked combat knife on his belt. Tucked into a holster on his belt also is a .45, and there's a sawed off shotgun in his hands. He turns his eyes towards Adam as he begins to move, slinking in along beside him. His movements graceful, fluid. His eyes and face are cold, showing no emotion at all as he moves along beside his new boss.

Sabrina eyes the sword Adam has and tugs at her own black button down shirt underneath the vest she's been given. At least she's wearing jeans of the same color and not a skirt. There are still heels though. "If I knew we were going to an anime convention I would've dressed more appropriately." She mutters under her breath, glancing this way and that and otherwise moving like a teenager might as she watches her friend palm a lipstick in a convenient store. Around her neck she has the most awesome of weapons: a keychain with a rape whistle and a little thing of pepper spray on it, which she pulls out from underneath her shirt. As Adam actually addresses her, she snaps to attention and nods at him. "Somehow when you said this would be an information gathering session I pictured something more like a conference room. With more folders. And less guns."

She knew they would be doing stuff like this at some point, but Kaylee wasn't expecting to get tossed into something major so soon. Making sure to dress in all black and her hair pulled back in pony tail, she is crouches down near some of the others, looking out on the building below. Lifting a hand to rub across her stomach which twists with her nerves, the action hindered by the bullet proof vest she's wearing.

As she's motioned to by her boss, a hand rests on the knife strapped to her thigh as she rises. A hand gun is also in a ill fitting shoulder harness. If she's lucky she'll never have to use it. She picks up he pace to follow after Adam, giving Sabrina an amused look. Shaking her head she focuses ahead, mind reaching out as far as it can to look for anyone that isn't them.

The tallest of the group is dressed for a small scale war as well; body armor, though light, is some of the most resilient- the belts slung around Huruma's torso and hips are loaded with a few firearms. The largest being an M-16 near her side and ready to be flicked into her hands. There is also at least a duo of knives strung on her, and some things that may look more at home in a civil war. On her hands, without much of hindering her dexterity, are a pair of gloves belted on her arms, fitted with razor sharp, curved blades that seem truly to give her claws.

The woman follows the signals in silence, keeping just a stride behind Adam and slinking along just as quietly as Ash; her own expression, however is more predatory than it is cold, and her building emotion largely that of excitement, which shows in the glint of her eyes.

The back warehouse is a primary shipping facility, something Adam had heard about in his few trips through the Pinehearst building. Medical supplies and parmacuticals were shipped in and out of here on a daily basis, thousands of dollars in anesthetic and other medical supplies are stashed within the supply crates stacked six feet high in tight columns. Normally, they would be moved down into the subterranean laboratory levels, but it seems ordinary business operations ended some time ago.

"Sir," Michael turns his attention quietly towards Adam, crouched behind a stack of the medical supplies. "We could probably start loading this onto the vans outside, Terry and I can hotwire them, move what we can. We could probably unload most of it on Staten Island without a problem." A sudden creak and clank of metal interrupts Michael's words as a pair of double doors leading deeper into the building opens. Michael quickly quiets, and one of the pair of advance mercenaries slips beside the opening door, watching as a man in a black tactical vest and brown uniform walks in carrying an assault rifle.

Just as the security officer sees the cargo bay doors opened, the mercenary slips out from behind the door, wrapping one gloved hand over his mouth and withdrawing his combat knife with the other, driving the wedge-shaped blade into the side of the security officer's neck, dragging it in a deep ragged cut along the front of his throat before forcing him quietly to the ground.

Kneeling at the mercenary's back, Terry looks over his shoulder towards the room the security officer came from, then down to his shoulder to the black padlock emblem on the patch. Bringing a hand up to his ear, he depresses the communications switch for his comm. «Mister Monroe, Sir. Stillwater Security, I recognize the insignia. It's a PMC based out of New York, the building's probably running a contract. We should be careful, these men are mostly ex-marines.»

Across the warehouse floor, the remainder of Adam's mercenaries crouch by the bay doors, watching the rear entrance quietly. Michael looks to them, then back to Adam with one brow raised. "What should we do, Sir?" Knowing the layout of Pinehearst as he does, Adam surmises the room beyond here is the biological containment wing, an area where the majority of Pinehearst's legitimate biotech research was done, which also means the lab archives aren't far away. It's exactly what he was hoping for.

Adam considers for a few moments, pressing his hand to his ear to listen to the report about the security. He pauses for a few moments before he says, "Let's see what's beyond those doors first." his chin lifted with a determined expression. "We may need the manpower to pull more of this." he has ignored Sabrina's mutterings and instead walks towards the door. He pauses for a moment, then turns to the group, "Follow me in." he says without much concern. He pauses and turns to Ash, "Once we're in and have dealt with any initial resistance, take Sabrina to anything that looks like an executive office." and then, without any care for what might lie beyond the door, Adam kicks through it after having drawn his sword.

Ash flicks a look over towards Huruma as she slinks along next to him, a faint smile tugging the man's cold features into amusement, but it fades just as quickly, a ghosting of a smile and it's gone. His attention turns back to the front and where they're going as his feet flow across the floor. The shotgun is cradled by his chest, and his weapons are secure, not making the slightest bit of noise as he walks, whether it's a stealth mission or not. A slow and confident nod is given to Adam's order in regards to Sabrina. The man shoots her a cold little grin before turning back and watching Adam kick through the door.

Maybe Sabrina should've agreed to take more than the taser she tucked into a pocket somewhere. When the guy gets his throat slit, she pales considerably and slaps a hand over her mouth, turning away slightly and trying to surpress the bile that rises in her throat. It's probably not good form to vomit in the middle of a…well. Whatever this is turning out to be. Hostile takeover? She always thought that involved more negotiations and less throat slitting. That's probably something they explain to you in a secret class while you get your MBA. Swallowing hard, though unable to keep her hands from shaking, she grimaces at Ash's smile, moving to follow him. And skirting any blood that may be near. "…do you have a business degree?" she hisses in whisper to him.

Kaylee doesn't have a lick of combat training, so she doesn't moves like the some of them. Watching as Adam's men slice open the security guards throat, it kinda drives home exactly what could happen. Oh… god. Can she do this? Though even as she watches the blood glide thickly down the guys neck, she doesn't feel sick about it.. it's just.. necessary. She really expected to feel differently about it. Odd. Her eyes go to Adam and she nods listening. A glance to Sabrina, she smirks and whispers, "Ah come on.. it's not so bad, really. Just don't think of it as a person." She comments lightly as Adam approaches the door. As he removes his sword, Kaylee licks suddenly dry lips, nervous about what might be beyond the door. Her gaze is intense as she watches Adam kick the door in.

Huruma's eyes catch sight of Sabrina once she feels the woman's emotions wriggle about, offering up a silent and mysterious little dose of something more calm before moving on and coming to the side of the door that Adam approaches. Attention on several things at once and her sensory field up around her and through the building, she is getting both static and unwieldy signals as well as the unsuspecting ones that do not seem to be realizing anything out of the ordinary. Those are mostly in the office spaces. Huruma's hands find the handle of the rifle under her arm, and long fingers ready it against her while she pins expertly against the wall- just before Adam draws the Kensei sword and forced his way through the door.

Nodding affirmatively to Adam's order, Michael makes a hand-gesture to the men guarding the back doors to stay in place, and then rises up to follow behind Adam, packpedaling and keeping his eyes upturned to the security cameras above the back doors. "These cameras… they're not on," and given that Michael sounds surprised by it, the odds of it being Adam's work is slim. "These kids," he pauses in mid-stride, looking back to Adam, "they did this?" It's rhetoric, entirely, not a question he expects Adam to answer, but more for his own vocal puzzling out of the situation.

When Adam takes the lead and steps over the body of the dead Stillwater mercenary, he strides down a uniformly designed white hall lit by fluorescent bulbs, reinforced glass windows that view into what he recognizes as ground floor research rooms. Given the hour of night, the scientists have all gone home, and the computer equipment here isn't what he's looking for at all.

With Terry and Michael following behind him near Ash, Adam catches something other than the monotonous hum of the fluorescent lights down the hall. "As long as you've gotten out of here that's all well and fine, Lewis." It's a familiar voice coming from around the corner of the hall, a voice familiar only to Adam, "I've got Peter here with me, we're going to go meet up with Doctor Meier and retrieve the sample of the Advent Virus before moving to meet up with the Chesterfields." It's Maury.

Hearing the voices, Michael and Terry halt, raising their assault rifles and looking ahead to the four-way junction, trying to figure out whether Maury's voice is coming from the left or the right hall. Glancing over to Ash, Michael arches a brow, relying on Ash's usually keener senses. What Ash hears, and reliably so, is that the voices are coming from down the right corridor, where a plaque on the wall reads, "To Archives."

Maury? Oh, this is a treat. Advent Virus? That sounds expensive. At any rate, Adam immediately holds up his hand to stop everyone. He turns and whispers gently, "If anything wierd happens, come out firing, no matter what." He creeps down the hall quietly, his sword still out and pauses before he turns the corner. He's quiet for a moment, turning to give his men a rather sardonic grin, before he steps out. "Hallo Maury." he says, "Peter. Nice night, isn't it?"

Ash lets a low rumbling chuckle escape him, amusement plain in it in reply to Sabrina's question. "That would depend miss. On what kind of business you're talking about." A very cold smile lifting his lips and staying in place now. His dark eyes slide over to Huruma, who other than himself seems to be the fighter of the group, well besides the boss that is. "Should have worn a fuckin body glove." He mutters a bit as he walks. The mention of cameras already being off doesn't seem to have any effect on the man, he just takes it in stride and keeps on moving. He holds for a moment, listening as the voices echo towards them.

He lifts a hand and gives a crisp motion to Michael indicating the right corridor before he slips up to the corner of the wall and waits for the signal to lean out and open fire with his sawed off. He turns the corner with Adam, staring down the hallway to Maury, no idea who this man is at all.

Sabrina does not turn the corner because she is not suicidal. She'll just hang back, thanks. "It's very likely this could all have been solved by a strongly worded letter." She mutters, not daring to really raise her voice. At least she's feeling less terrified and more calm now. Must be that adrenaline! "Perhaps a few choice words, some ambiguous legal references that might be threats. There could've been a meeting. A negotiation catered with sandwiches and cookies. Without death and small armies and breaking and entering."

Kaylee glances up as Micheal does, as brow arching. "Wow.. Busy little bees ain't they?" she murmurs, moving with the others. As her head comes back around, she almost runs into Adam, Kaylee stops just short of his hand and takes a few steps back. She tilts her head a bit listening to the conversation, a look of confusion. There is a short nod to Adam's orders, she leans against the wall near the corner.

As Adam steps out and Ash starts to follow, Kaylee catches Sabrina's words. She slowly looks over at the woman and arches a brow. She leans towards the woman and whispers, "Um.. If you haven't noticed. Their armed, I don't think a bunch of flowery words on pretty letterhead and some tea and sugar cookies are gonna cut it. Chances are, they'd rather shoot you then, negotiate." She gives the woman a wink and a grin. "Relax… It's Adam." As if that explains it all.

Somehow, Huruma know that the Scooby Gang would come around. They know a lot of tricks, not exclusive to one situation. If the cameras are out- it was one of them, she is confident. She hangs back around the curve of the hall, lifting a hand to silence Sabrina with a scornful glare downward at the blonde, and a forced little buzz of fear down the woman's spine. Will you be quiet, woman? A demand, though wordless.

She recognizes the voice down the hall that Adam goes to meet, of course. Maury Parkman. She also recognizes the name of the doctor that he speaks of, though for the most part ignores the words and keeps track of what is physically going on.

When Adam rounds the corner, it's a somewhat unexpected sight playing out in front of him. Standing in the hall, looking to have just exited one of the archive rooms, Maury Parkman slowly closes a cellphone, the overweight and balding old man raises one brow slowly as he sees Adam approaching, tucking his phone into his pocket. That's about on par, what isn't expected is when he spots Arthur's youngest son, Peter, clearly positioned in a wheelchair just behind where Maury stands. "Adam, what're you— " when Ash rounds the corner, Maury takes a half step back, holding out a hand towards the wheelchair bound Peter as if to inform him not to move.

"Did Arthur send you?" Maury's eyes narrow, breathing in and out slowly, watching the blonde man whom at one time he saw clearly eye-to-eye with. Turning his focs towards Ash, Maury's brows furrow for just a moment, a very brief look of concentration before he turns back to Adam, head tilting to the side. "If he did, he has a very poor sense of taste."

Adam considers the situation thoughtfully. There be the spawn of Petrelli, both Arthur and Angela. And here be Maury. He gives a bit of a thoughtful look, lifting one hand to scratch his chin a bit, "Well, I am….what did he call me? His sword arm?" he begins to walk forward with the sword resting against his shoulder, looking about to see if Maury is carrying anything, "So, where are you taking baby Petrelli?" he asks.

Ash flicks a quick glance back into the hallway as he hears the women talking, but he doesn't say anything or do anything to signify they're there. His shotgun is not lifted, not yet. He can do that almost instentaneously, so no need to raise people's aggression unless need be, plus Adam seems interested in speaking to this individual. His eyes regard Maury cooly, even a small amount of amusement on his face. The shotgun is toyed with a touch, but not lifted, his attention moving to Adam, then back over to Maury. His eyes flicker over to Peter, then back to Adam, and finally resting on Maury. A very… unfriendly smirk lifts up one corner of his mouth and he tilts his head to either side in a classic 'enforcer' type move, his neck popping a little bit as he stands at Adam's side and just stares down the hall.

"Of course sugar cookies wouldn't cut it." Sabrina sniffs in reply to Kaylee, nervously running a finger along the line of the chain around her neck. "There would've been an assortment. Also coffee. Not that it matters now." There's a pause as Sabrina listens intently to what's going on around the corner, swallowing hard as that shiver of fear tenses up her shoulders and quickens her breathing a bit. This of course can be explained away due to the circumstances and the fact that Huruma is kind of terrifying. "I know it's him." She continues then in hushed, nervous, fear-inspired babble to Kaylee, "But I sort of expected a businessman however…unconventional…to have an army of lawyers and a slew of lawsuits in his arsenal. Not an actual army and…a katana. Do you know the sort of people that carry around katanas? No, you don't, because no one does because it's ridiculous. We are sneaking into a heavily secured facility being led by a man with a -katana-. And if he dies? There's no one left to sign our paychecks." The last is whispered in a horrified tone. NO PAYCHECKS FOR ANYONE EVER AGAIN!

The continued babbling in her ear, actually makes it hard for Kaylee to hear the conversation. She catches only a couple of words, as Sabrina drones on. Baby? Who's got a baby? What? Okay it was amusing in the beginning, now….. Turning her attention back to Sabrina, blue eyes bore into the woman as she lifts a finger to her lips. Shooshing the woman, the telepath adds a heavy dose of Obi-Wan—ness to the sound. Feel the force. Feel it telling you to… Shut it, so she can hear! A glance beyond to Huruma with an apologetic smile for egging it on, Kaylee listens in again.

When Sabrina continues, the second response that she gets from Huruma is the tall, dark woman turning halfway on her heel to face Sabrina and Kaylee, lips pulled in an angry snarl. Evne though Kaylee obviously helps quite a lot, there is no need for using her ability, Huruma feels. It is likely that she can manage a threat on its own in this case, covered in guns, explosives, and knives.

Her gaze settles on Sabrina, and her low voice growls. "Now, you will be quiet, or I will knock you down th'first elevator shaft tha'we find…" And with that, Huruma turns again to peer past the edge of the corner in the hall, the feelers in her head only barely circling the group ahead and the current mood. Here is to hoping Adam gets to business.

Tensing visibly, Maury takes a hesitant step back towards Peter. "I'm getting him out of here, Adam. We're going to put an end to Arthur and get the hell out of this mess. He's completely lost his mind, ever since he took Sylar's ability, he's just— " Maury tenses up, he was about to say something, then bites off his words and reconsiders how to deliver it. "I don't know if you figured it out yet, but he's the one who ki— "

A sudden shuddering rumble of the building cuts off Maury's words, followed by a low, sonorous hum that vibrates the building, an unnatural sympathetic vibration of the walls, floor and lights, causing everything to tremble for a moment as the sound rises up through the building, the effect of some Evolved ability. The moment following, the fluorescent lights go out, followed by red security lighthing flashing on with strobing alarms blaring emergency klaxons. Someone has activated the security system.

"What the— " Peter wheels back in his chair, looking up to one of the flashing red lights, and if Adam's estimate it correct, that is Phoenix starting to make their move. "Maury," Peter spits out, turning to look up from his chair to the older man, "we don't have time for this, we have to get to Alison!"

While Maury and Peter begin conversing, something keeps filtering in to Ash's hearing between the shrieking beeps of the security alarm, something that sounds like labored breathing and howling. It's an incongruent sound to the labs, but he swears he can hear something like the baying of wild animals from beyond the empty hall across from where he is, and it's getting closer.

Turning his focus back to Adam, Maury's voice takes on a more pleading tone. "We can't let Arthur get out of this alive, Adam. Not after what he's done, he told me he'd protect my boy, I— I'm not going to keep playing the fall guy for him, or anyone." While Adam, Maury and Peter are conversing, the sound of gunfire breaks out from the warehouse area Adam's group had just left, the two mercenaries left to guard the back door opening fire at something. The sound of popping automatic weapons fire continues, too many guns for just two men, followed by chatter shouted back and forth between radios. «Squad-Alpha reporting in, unidentified intruders at the loading dock, joining with Squad-Romero to sweep the containment level.»

Since they didn't round the corner to be with Adam, Huruma, Kaylee and Sabrina can see eight men in black tactical vests and born uniforms converging on the warehouse from the back parking lot, the gunfire has stopped — presumably with the two rear guards dead.

Adam frowns as he hears gunfire, but his eyes focus on Maury quietly. Maury, one of the founders. Maury, one of the people that had kept him locked up for thirty years. Sniveling, cowardly Maury. Maury who is now lecturing him. Deigning to lecture /him/. He smiles at Maury for a moment and says, "Good for you, Maury, good for you." then the sword swings off of his shoulder in a quick practiced motion. This is Takezo Kensei, the sword saint, one of the greatest swordsmen to ever live and oh has he been practicing. And his sword, his wonderful sword. Samurai swords were often measured in bodies they could cut through and the sword is most definitely a five body sword and it swings right into Maury's side, cutting through the man. And Adam has only one thing to say to Maury now, "Thank you for now taking responsibility for the thirty years you stole from me."

Ash can hear what's going on in the hallway, though he'd like them all to shut their yaps so he can pay full attention to what's going on between Adam and Maury. He fingers the shotgun, his fingers dancing against it's cold metal length with a soft tapping of flesh on metal. He keeps the annoyance of fof his face at what is going on behind him in the hallway, but yeah… some people are going to get bitched out by him if he gets the chance. Then that noise gets his attention as the conversation goes on. He drops and spins, looking around. "Fucking… animals?" He lifts his eyes to Maurey. "You guys keeping fucking animals here?" Then Maury is well, cut almost in half and Ash looks over to Adam with a sigh. "There's some kind of fucking animal howling going on, and a shit load of gunfire back there." He motions back away from him before he looks to Peter, then back to Adam. "Change of plans boss? Or keep going as is?"

As soon as the building gives its great rumble and the lights change to that crimson bathe, Huruma moves forward, though her ears catch noise at their rear. She only expects the girls to follow, but if Kaylee is feeling plucky- Huruma rounds the length of the hall in time to watch Maury's torso and side meet with the sharp tooth of Adam's katana. Whether or not the old man buckles and falls-

"We need to move. There's something here." Even she can realize that, through the spanning emotions flaking through her head. Huruma's voice even carries a short distance as she joins Adam where he has met the men already in the building. Peter might have the chance of recognizing her from ages ago, and Maury, depending, will know her from a more recent …stint. The rifle in her hands remains at the ready. "An'a group coming up behind, from where we came." The short heels of her black boots come to rest with hard-soled thumps on the floor.

As the whole building shakes, Kaylee presses her back to the wall, breath catching eyes darting a bout as it goes dark for a moment. Holy crap… that's… awesome whatever that is. Then as the red light come on, Kaylee's eyes drop down to spot the gunmen behind them. Oh shit. Grabbing at Sabrina she shoves the woman behind her towards Adam's direction. "Behind us." She hisses loud enough for the others to hear over the loud alarms.

Kaylee lifts a hand toward the group of soldiers as her ability flares out to a guy in the center of the group, her mind moves into his easily invading it as she whispers, "«Stop.»" Immediately, the man stops looking confused, why did he stop? She can feel the struggle of his mind to comprehend. A small smile touches Kaylee's lips. She remembers what it felt like when she told that boy to drown himself, as she says next, "«Shoot your men.»" The image of of the Securities guys flashes in his mind. There is a wicked little edge to her voice as she whispers fiercely, her hand giving a vicious flick as if cutting something. "«Kill them all.»"

Almost as if he's in a dream, the man in the center lifts his assualt rifle…. No one sees it coming, none of them, as suddenly the burst of sound erupts from the gun, spewing out bullets. One by one the men fall dead to the ground body's littered with gaping holes, as the guy slowly turns in a circle. None of the men have time to react. When it's done the man stumbles a bit and blinks. "Oh my GOD!! GOD!! OH MY GOD!" What did he do?!?!

The man babbles uselessly until Kaylee's mind slips in again. That hand comes up, the look on Kaylee's face is almost…. amused as she whispers. Her voice way too calm for what she's done, "«Now… Turn your weapon to you.»" Slowly she see's that rifle turn, slowly…. shaking… he's fighting. "«Good… Now… Pull the Trigger.»" That said she doesn't watch as the mans head it ripped apart with his own automatic weapon.. When he falls to the floor, she's already around the corner, a satisfied smile on her lips.

Maybe she should be quiet. Kaylee is telling her to be quiet and the scary lady is telling her to be quiet so Sabrina decides that it might be a good time to shut her mouth. She does so just about the time the building starts shaking, the lights flash, and then the alarms are going off. Bracing a hand against the wall, eyes wide and staring at the newly appeared gunmen, she makes a decision. She's pretty sure it's not a good decision but really, she hasn't made a good one since she decided to get up this morning and become some sort of felon instead of following her father's advice, moving back to Boston, and marrying a nice liberal Harvard educated doctor like her mother wanted.

Taking a deep breath, Sabrina rounds the corner with both shaking hands up. She was pale before but absolutely all color drains from her face upon seeing the cut up Maury and Adam's sword all bloodied. "I AM A PACIFIST, PLEASE DO NOT SHOOT ME!" she shouts to be heard above the alarms, "I AM LOOKING FOR THE EXECUTIVE OFFICES AND WOULD LIKE TO GET THERE BEFORE BEING KILLED HORRIBLY! ANY DIRECTIONS YOU CAN PROVIDE AS A MEMBER OF THIS FACILITY WOULD BE GREATLY APPRECIATED. PERHAPS TO A HALLWAY MAP OR DIRECTORY? THANK YOU IN ADVANCE FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE!" That's all directed in a loud rush at poor, crippled Peter and the sliced up Maury, both of whom probably have lots more on their minds right now.

"Maury!" Peter screams not quite as loud as Sabrina's shrieking cries as blood from Adam's sword spatters across his face, his hands grasping ineffectually at the air when he sees Adam's gleaming sword rip straight through Maury's side effortlessly. The old man stumbles and slams up against one wall, leaving a bloody smear as his side wipes across the matte white walls, one hand going to his waist to paw at the open wound.

Staggering back, Maury grabs a hold of Peter by the scruff of his shirt and begins running, pushing the wheelchair backwards as he stumbles and slips in his own blood with each footfall, Peter screaming all the while. Maury slams the wheelchair and Peter with all his weight into the double doors, sending them flinging open, causing Peter's chair to tip to the side and deposit the younger Petrelli on the floor in the other hall. With the doors swung open as they are, Adam and Ash can for a moment see several figures in black uniforms and balaclava masks approaching the hall where Peter was flung, not Stillwater security, that's for sure. One of them, unmasked, is a rougish looking blonde man with a scruffy beard in a black suit, seemingly out of place amongst the body-armored paramilitary people.

Maury slams the doors shut, rolling to the side as his bloody gut paints a swath of crimson over the pushbars, his fingers tapping repeatedly on the security lock keypad, leaving red fingerprints on the numbers before the keypad turns red, reading locked. Gasping out a deep, rasping breath, Maury's focus turns back to Adam, eyes wide. "You— you're a son of a bitch, Adam." Then, the old man's brows begin to lower as alow throbbing sensation hums in the back of Adam's mind and then spreads outwards towards Ash and the others, even Kaylee feels the tingle in her mind, but recognizes it as an overwhelming invasion of a psychic force stronger than any other telepath she's felt before. She knows something's been changed, her perceptions of something.

To Adam and Ash, all they see is Maury simply vanish in the blink of an eye as if he were never there to begin with. Huruma, seeing Maury vanish, is visually fooled by the psychic manipulation of the generations-trained telepath, but she can feel something, smell something, taste something on the wind — fear. Maury may be able to mask himself with his telepathy, but he can't hide his emotions from Huruma.

She can feel him fleeing, moving thorugh a door that — to everyone's perceptions seems to remain closed — gradually making his way up a flight of stairs and away from the hallway. He's wounded, he's slow, she can track him and —

Something suddenly washes over Huruma, dozens of thinking minds abruptly entering her field of emotion perception. The cannibal is suddenly presed on by a great weight of tormented emotions — pain, anguish, terror — all leading to one singular and unifying feeling among the dozens of minds rapidly approaching this location; madness.

Ash can hear it closer now, those wailing cries, the sounds of animals. They aren't animals, it's the horrified and pained cries of human beings that sound as though they are being tortured, but also the thundering of footsteps against metallic stairs coming from that hallway. There's got to be over two dozen of them from how many voices he can hear.

Surrounded by the flashing security lights, blood, confusion and gunfire, Sabrina sees only one open door that could possibly lead her to safety. It is the door Maury and Peter had emerged from when Adam first encountered them, a door leading in to an office filled with filing cabinets and a computer connected to a dual-monitor setup. She saw the archives sign earlier, but fear and horror make rational thought and connection of information difficult, one would imagine. But at the very least, it's a desk to hide behind.

Adam grits his teeth as Maury makes a run for it. He starts to run for Maury and the retreating Petrelli before he pauses as the door swings open and more men appear through. Then the doors close and he pauses. Blinking. Maury disappears, much to Adam's chagrin. He swings in the air a few times, as if he could catch the disappeared Parkman, but he knows that's useless. He lets out a loud angry noise and then turns to his people.

Some appear affected, but they still have things to accomplish. "Everyone, concentrate. We're almost through." he points to Kaylee with his bloodied sword, "Make sure we're not interupted." then to Michael and three other men, "Take everything. Files, cabinets." he points to another three men, "Knock in those labs, take anything that looks useful." then pauses thoughtfully. Advent Virus, "Carefully." he adds. He turns to Huruma, assuming she looks stable, "Find Parkman. Sniff him out." and finally to Ash, "Kill anything that moves." he rushes into the archives behind Michael and a couple men who are starting to figure out the best way to steal cabinets. He looks down at Sabrina, he's assuming she took refuge inside, "Get up. On the computer. Find me what I need. Find me everything." he steps back into the hallway and yells loudly, like a madman, "TAKE. EVERYTHING."

Ash looks down at Maury for a moment, no remorse of any kind in the man's eyes for the other man's imminent death, cut open as he is like that. He doesn't spare a second glance for the soon to be corpse, instead looking to Adam and waiting for the Boss' directions on what to do from here. He turns when he sees, and hears Sabrina and he blinks, shaking his head before he simply reaches out to put his hand on her shoulder. "Sabrina…" He tilts his head to make sure he has her attention. "Shut the fuck up." Fucking crazy ass women is all that's going through his head for the moment.

He watches Maury move into the other room and then vanish, a light blinking from him before he dismisses it and immediately moves to the situation at hand. "Fuck… those aren't fucking animals. Those are people, and they're coming closer Adam…" His voice a heavy murmur as he racks his shotgun, chambering a round. Then he notices the men in the other room, and he lifts the shotgun to his shoulder, unleashing a solid blast before he racks the shotgun again with very quick speed and strength, the motion effortless as he unloads another round into the other room. The door swings shut though, both rounds punching into the door. Ash gives an annoyed grunt before he spins around and moves down the hall a few feet, readying himself for whatever it is that is coming closer. He gives a nod to Adam's order, reaching down to loosen the knife in it's holster, and the pistol as well, then back to the shotgun, a feral grin touching his lips at the prospect of a good fight coming up.

The visual illusion comes only after she feels that invasive hum in her brain, and Huruma is not fooled in any part by the attempt at disguise. Her senses flare angrily, and that tendril that latches onto Maury's emotions lashes out with a shock of fear, and the woman raises the rifle to fire-

-and though she is ready to pull back on the trigger, the wash of something so familiar that thunders into her field of activity causes her to jerk herself around with an inhuman snarl of her own- one that almost sounds like those outside. Her senses flare again- angrily, yet searching something out. Whether on purpose or not, she practically ignores the order to pursue Maury; perhaps she has enough confidence that she will be able to track him afterwards nonetheless- it is something she prides herself upon, and they all know it.

Huruma turns away from all of them, and steps straight out towards where the cries and howls of madness begin, rattling their way down the paths of the building.

There is madness, yes. Murderous madness out of pain, anguish, terror. Pain, anguish and terror that have uprooted from the emotional cries for mercy. Kill me, end my suffering, end my pain.

That is her name. Huruma had best live up to it. For her sake, and for the sake of all that she claims to be. God would not be pleased, should she forget her purpose of being merciful towards those less than.

And so she does. The moment something reels into her line of sight, the trigger on the rifle pulls back. Successive and accurate shots- BANG, BANG, BANG, aimed for the heart's chest cavity or the head.

Rounding around the corner, Kaylee feels it another telepath invading her mind, it makes her stumble to a stop. A hand goes to her head, something is wrong. GET OUT OF MY HEAD, YOU SNEAKY SON OF A BITCH! she screams at him mentally. Could this be what she could be like down the line? That thought is only fleeting, but an exciting one.

Adam points that bloody sword at her catching her attention.. What? Her eyes widen a bit and then she nods. Clearing her mind, she presses against the wall near the door watching with eyes and mind for any signs of life other then the crew with Adam.

As the sounds of howling reaches her ear, Kaylee slowly pushes away from the wall, her brows furrowed, what the hell? She jumps a bit as Huruma starts shooting, watching waiting, ready to try and manipulate the minds of whatever is coming.

Since all hell is breaking loose, Sabrina does sprint for the archives room, throwing herself behind the desk with the computer to get away from the crazyness in the hall and the weird feeling in her head. Really, it's more of a stumble than an active throw because running in heels on floors slick with blood doesn't do a lot for traction and grace. "I thought what you meant by 'various unspecified duties as the situation demands' covered the three am phone calls about which color tie would go with your suit or asking me to track down where you left your pants for the evening.

Not spend my nights dodging bullets and breaking various laws and do you -know- how hard blood is to get out of anything?! Your dry cleaner is going to KILL me!" Sabrina protests at Adam's order from behind the safety of the desk. Of course, there's gun fighting and shouting and screaming and Adam is yelling like a madman, so she carefully peeks up over the top of the desk so she can see the monitor, pulls down the keyboard and mouse. She's terrified. This is a terrifying situation! But since the computer is already logged in, she starts getting to work, typing up a quick batch file to pull up all files that the computer can access into one magic stream of information. And it works! A little black box opens up and starts streaming, at a ridiculous pace, everything that computer can get its hands on. Or bytes on.

Except it's a lot more than Sabrina thought it would be and as she lock onto the words as they speed past faster than anyone ought to rightly be able to read, the scrolling text is mirrored in her eyes as they move back and forth, back and forth in split second bursts, in an almost hypnotized way. She doesn't even notice when the trickle of blood that starts trailing down from her nose turns into more of a gush. She's that enthralled with the data.

Michael and Terry drop to one knee on either side of the hall, raising their rifles as the sounds of howling and screaming comes closer and closer, when the door to the stairwell down the hall bursts open and the first moving figures emerge, it's Huruma who's already had a psychic bead on their location. Naked, screaming, bloody people come piling out of the double doors one after another, at first they just seem like crazed lunatics, running and howling as if the devil himself was chasing them. Her immediate barrage of gunfire cuts down the first three in a hail of bullets, but she can feel something, she can tell something is wrong. She's feeling emotions like theirs above her now.

Some of the people, half-dressed in blood-caked hospital gowns, lope and bound from the doorway, bloodshot eyes wide and screaming as if their skin was on fire. Then, as if the gruesome situation was not bad enough, one of them is on fire. But the flames aren't consuming him, he's creating them. Springing down the hall, this pyrokinetic test subject brings all of Adam's worst fears to light. He knew Arthur kept human test subjects down in the basement levels, but he'd never imagined Petrelli would cut them loose to attack intruders.

These are failed test subjects of the Formula, each one of these wild, crazed lunatics is a dangerous an unstable Evolved. At first the steady stream of bullets down the hall keeps them at bay. One claws and climbs over the other, the pyrokinetic is shot several times in the chest, causing his flames to go out and his body to fall backwards. Two more climb up over what is now a mound of eight corpses, one of them sprouting bone-like protrusions from bleeding holes on his body, screaming at the top of his lungs as he charges over the mound of corpses. Another running ahead of the fray takes four bullets to the chest and keeps running, the wounds beginning to seal up almost instantaneously as the bullets are spat out as the holes seal shut. A regenerator.

"We've got this, sir!" Terry shouts out, popping out his spent magazine and slapping in another, "Go handle— " when a ceiling tile smashes open and falls down on Terry, the young mercenary's eyes lift up to the darkened hole in the ceiling in the moemtn it takes for two arms to reach down and grab him by the head, fingernails digging into the soft flesh under his jaw as elasticy and distended arms stretch far beyond the limits of a human. Howling and screaming echoes from the drop ceiling, followed by bouncing footfalls as another section of ceiling tiles collapse behind Adam near the locked door, and a blood-soaked naked woman drops down, covered in thick layers of ice that slough off of her skin, turning a pinkish red hue in places as she sweats blood out of her pores.

"Oh god! Oh god!!" Terry's screams grow wild as he's dragged up into the hole in the ceiling, legs kicking wildly and gun firing blindly, blood — his or the test subjects is uncertain — begins raining down from within.

Ash is calm and collected, and deadly accurate with his shotgun. Incredible strength in the man's arms, as the shotgun barely jumps when he fires it, and that is far from normal. Slugs punch through heads, blast chests apart, gore and body parts flying everywhere as the slugs continue on through other people behind the target. When the shotgun is out of ammo he tosses it to the side, pulling the pistol and the combat knife as he begins to run forwards towards the crowd of approaching people, murder in his eyes. The knife is flipped around in his grip, and not a shot is fired until he hits the crowd.

A throat parts to the slice of the knife as brains splatter the wall from a shot from his gun. The crunch of bone sounds as his foot connects with a man's knee and the knee collapses backwards, only for the man's skull to be split open by a horrendously powerful blow from Ash's knife. He trusts Haruma not to shoot him, paying no mind to the assault rifle rounds punching into bodies around him. When the pistol is out of ammo it's flipped around to be used as a club, collapsing faces, cracking skulls open with viscious blows. Ash himself is rather quickly coated in blood as he slaughters his way through the crowd, trusting the warrior woman to be there with him, via gun, or in close combat once it's empty.

When Terry is pulled up through the roof Ash turns and sprints back over, jumping up beneath him to grab onto his legs and yank down hard. Any limbs that may drag down with him are sliced at with the combat knife in his hand before he simply grabs Terry, corpse or person and slings him down the hall towards Adam, then spins back around to face the horde of test subjects.

Adam has a scant moment to consider this. How madly, wonderfully, surreal this is. Arthur was quite a piece of work and…almost brilliant. If he had this kind of research in Germany…but that's all the reminiscing that he has time for. The naked woman is turned to and Adam quips, "Waste of a perfectly fine bird, you are." and immediately slices into the woman where some ice falls off. He yells into the office and any labs that were broken into. "KEEP WORKING." and runs, nay leaps, into the oncoming traffic of zombie evolved and friendly fire. He shrugs off any damage and just goes to work. His every move percise, perfected, powerful and finessed. Limbs disappear, heads fall. While the tide continues coming, so does Adam fight his way deeper and deeper into it. If a person were to have time to study, his movements would look almost beautiful.

"They are above!" Huruma's voice echoes through the open spaces, and as the regenerator bounds forward to meet her out of the many that have fallen around his feet- Huruma ceases her fire, whirls the gun off of her, jolts it around, and slams it butt-first into the Advent regenerator's face. It knocks him flat, and yet she slams the gun into the massing pulp of his skull again, and again, and again- swift movements, brutal, yet with that same finesse that Adam plows into the crowd alongside of Ash with.

Taking her own advice and taking into stock the quickly slipping number of feral human test subjects, Huruma snarls loudly and slips back again, soon turning to wind her way upstairs on the same path taken moments ago by the elder Parkman. Along the way, her voice echoes again while she sets up her rifle, readying her hands. On the way, a slight echo of something said comes through the din- something in a tongue that none of them will recognize, but something that Huruma finds true to utter as she goes.

The same moment applies as she goes up as it did downstairs- the moment she is able, it is open fire. If there is one thing that she will be most proud of tonight, it is this, in some strange, yet fitting way.

"Oh my god…" Kaylee whispers in horror as those… things come pouring out of the stair well. Taking an involuntary step back, she actually feels a bit sick seeing them… Who would do this? Frowning, she steps forward again hand lifting towards one of the mad creatures, eyes narrowing as she mind works to try and invade it.. to take hold of it in her special way.

But there is something already there these creatures have already be manipulated. Her head shifts to the side, her eyes unfocus some as she tries to push at the compulsion already there. It doesn't hardly budge. She pushes a bit harder, an soft ache between her eyebrows telling her how hard she's pushing. The strength of it amazing, it feels… stronger. Oh my god… to have that kind of control.. There is awe behind that thought as she yanks her mind back out stumbling back a bit.

"ADAM!" she yells over the alarms and snarling beasts. "I can't do anything with these! Someone already got them programmed.. It's strong, I can't budge the compulsion. It's not that Maury guy. Someone much worse." She moves against the wall.. Suddenly helpless in the situation, a dull ache in her head all she has to show for the effort.

It's too much. Even as Sabrina has this thought it's frantically erased so that she can overwrite it with more information. There's so much of it. It's not stopping. And she can't look away. The only good part of this is that she appears to be oblivious to the chaos around her. At least on the outside: she just unblinkingly stares at the computer screen with blood gushing from her nose like someone just broke it. Her breathing is getting ragged and strained as the stress starts overtaking her system and all she can taste is pennies. That's never a good sign. When her eyes well up with tears they stain pink trails down her cheeks since they're tinged with blood. The words, the names, the faces and historiessome all too familiarflash before her eyes and are filed away somewhere in her head. Files upon files upon files upon files. It's pulling them from servers somewhere else in the building and it just seems never ending. There is no terrified peanut gallery commentary from Sabrina this time, just a grimace of unblinking pain as the light of the monitor flickers over her gross, bloodied face. She needs to look away and she can't. In a room full of flying bullets, crazy homicidal maniacs who may or may not be economics majors, a guy with a katana, and zombies with super powers, she's going to be killed by words. Fuck those kids and their 'words can never hurt me' rhymes. Where the hell are they now? Sabrina makes a mental note to track them down and hit them as hard as she can with one of the thickest textbooks she can find.

Sadly, that mental note and concise internal summation of her situation is then immediately overwritten by the file of a certain katana weilding madman.

Half of Terry's body slaps wet to the ground when Ash yanks him down, everything from the waist down lands with a wet smack on the tile, lower intestines spooling out like a tumbling ball of yarn and the click-clatter of a portion of his spinal column rattles on the floor. Then, with a hissing shriek, one of the creatures in the ceiling drops the rest of Terry's torso, dropping down beside Ash, long arms stretching out as tendons and muscle slide around shifting and transforming bone, fingers distending from sone kind of flesh manipulation.

It leaps straight at Ash, arms lashing out more like tentacles than anything, disjointed bones separating while flesh continues to elongate, one rubbery appendage lashing around the arm that commands Ash's combat knife, only for the soldier's fist to slam into the side of his head. He staggers, rubbery arm releasing from Ash's, followed by that knife finding itself buried up to the test subject's sternum. It lurches forward, belching out a mouthful of blood, before it begins to dissolve around the knife. Several of the now motionless corpses are also doing the same, beginning to bubble up and melt as if boiled away, flesh pulping off of the bone like par-boiled chicken.

The flesh manipulator sloughs down the wall, bones beginning to soften and dissolve away, even as another pair of these screaming creatures starts to plow through the doorway, one of them causing the sheet rock walls to buckle and bend, and the tile floor underfoot to crack and upheave, manipulating earthen elements as if they were extensions of her body.

The other one, at first, doesn't seem to have an outward ability, not until Michael starts firing into him, and sizzling globs of acid spray out where there should be blood. Droplets of it spatter across Huruma's forearm as it leaps into the air, beginning to sizzle and burn away tiny circles of her skin.

While Sabrina is downloading the archives, piling through records that Arthur had Roger Goodman steal from the Company, she comes across a pertinent piece of information. Across the hall, in one of the unoccupied labs, is a refrigeration unit containing an experimental drug listed in the archives as refrain. With no one able to stop shooting to get to the drug, it poses Sabrina with a quandary — continue downloading information, or brave crossing the hall to the lab.

Adam hasn't stopped cutting people in half. Sometimes in quarters. He has been stabbed, burned, mauled, electrocuted, iced and so forth, but his body refuses to stop. Each moment, he begins anew, which is not the same that can be said for the never ending trail of bodies. Slice upwards, downwards, side, kick, cut, kick. This is what he was made for. For a second, a mere second he gets a respite as the sheer bulk of bodies causes some zombies to have to stumble before advancing and he turns to the hall. He looks around and frowns, this timing is completely off.

The scoobies are scheduled to do something stupid and soon. Even he didn't have any idea how many people Arthur had experimented upon. His reflections are quick, and his orders come hastily again, "Kaylee, help Sabrina. Ash, start clearing a way out. Michael, get the men to start pulling the stuff out of here. I'm going to buy us some time." and he does so. He reaches into his jacket as he sheethes his sword and pulls out….grenades. Pins…pulled. Grenades, flung. Sword, protected. And then there is…. BOOM. While he can't stop all the zombies, he can certain stem the flow. And while parts of him fly across, in the smoke, a body begins to reform nearly isntaneously. Handy that.

Ash registers Adam diving into the melee as he himself moves back into it from trying to rescue Terry. The dissolving creature was paid little mind after the knife was driven into it, killing it. A nod given to the man who punched it in the temple in thanks for the save. The acid thing is avoided. Ash can't heal like others can, so he leaves the acid bitch for Adam as he crashes into the zombies. His first motion sends a head spinning through the air, the combat knife is sliced clean through a man's neck, severing throat and spine in a brutal display of strength. Where Haruma and Adam move beautifully, Ash is brutal, efficient, but no less deadly.

He kills with no compunction for what he's doing. His gun is tossed behind him and a brass knuckle is slipped out of his pocket. It actually takes him a moment to slip it onto his blood slicked fingers before it's applied to the sternum of the man with the bony protrusions from hsi skin, shattering his chest with a terribly destructive blow, leaving him on the ground to die a long painful death. He glances to Adam for just a moment, long enough for a set of claws to rake across his cheek, leaving four good lines of blood on his skin. He grunts and turns, slamming the point of the knife through the woman's temple, then ripping it out. He sidesteps, lifting his foot and driving it into a man's face, collapsing his face back into itself, Ash's foot coated in another layer of blood as it sprays from the man's ruined features. His clothes are soaked with blood, his skin coated with it, hair and face slick with the red fluid.

Ash stops, breathing a little bit heavy, but not terribly so as he surveys the carnage. Severed limbs, body parts, and unedentifiable human bits of gory loveliness scattered around the hallway like a madman's psychotic painting. "Fucking zambies." he mutters, and yes he said the word wrong.

He looks down at the knife and sighs a bit at the notches in the metal, but sheathes the blade again, turning to scoop up the spent .45, slipping the blood coated gun back in it's sheath before he gets a better look around him to see if there's anything else period to kill, since everything within his immediate area is dead, though Adam might have some stuff left to kill, same for the others.

Then Adam gives orders and he nods, turning, slipping a brass knuckle onto the other hand. He makes his way back towards the women, smashing his way through the few zombies that made thier way past him and Adam, crushing skulls, breaking legs, arms, anything he gets his hands, and especially his feet on. He gets back to the hallway junction and then turns, watching Adam blow himself up with a chuckle before he simply stands at the junction, securing the way out of here, holding it against anything that may come after those moving in and out of the hallway.

A snarl comes from Huruma as the acidic blood spills, but her aim is true, and thankfully, so are her feet as she backpedals away from the source in order to fire a series of bullets into its head. "Idiot, if you fire, fire with a purpose." Oh, Michael. With with the program. Headshots and heartshots. The acid eating at her skin is all but truly ignored- she has had worse.

The next bullets are already finding purchase in the advent terrakinetic- the sight of which gets an irritated shiver of muscle under Huruma's features. She fires enough to hear the click-click of the magazine, though she only backpedals again to discard it and place in her second. She only brought these two- so the next time she will start getting her hands certainly more dirty.

She's got to stop the information. Not only does she need to go get thatwhatever that drug in that last file was, it's importantbut she needs to stop the download before she passes out. The problem with that is, while the information is scrolling, Sabrina can't look away. But she's a smart girl and while part of her would like to calculate how much the fine and jail time would be for destruction of private property, her mind is too busy to do that math, which means when her hands come up and shove the monitor off the desk, she feels only relief that it smashes on the ground, cracking the display and pulling the power plug out from the back. There's a map in her head and a sequence of numbers that tell her exactly where she needs to go, so she forces herself up onto shaking legs, rubbing one hand over her face to get rid of the blood but really only smearing it as she looks across the hall. She really doesn't want to die tonight.

"I really don't want to die tonight." She croaks at Kaylee, "So follow me and make sure nothing kills me while I go get something so that Mister Monroe won't kill all of us after he's done doing whatever it is this whole thing is really about." With that weird explanation, Sabrina takes off into the hall, doing her best not to slip on parts of people, or people who used to be people, so that she can burst her way into the unsecured lab. Numbers whirl through her reeling mind and she stumbles her way over to the right rack and display and batch of vials. Not that one, not that one, aha!

Creatures are melting in puddles of red nasty goo and Kaylee can only stare at them in wonder, eyes wide and her mouth agape. Suddenly her mouth snaps she and she gives a shudder. "Like.. Ew. Seriously.. this place is totally and completely twisted. Shawn of the Dead anyone… Wish I had a shovel right now."

Orders shouted at her by Adam get a nod, even if he isn't looking and she moves to the door, leaning against the door jam, so she can deep an eye on the fight. "You alright in the there, Sabrina. Time to try and get out." Glancing in as the monitor smashes into the floor, she stares at the blood covered woman. "You look like hell." She exclaims as Sabrina makes her way out.

Hurrying after Sabrina, Kaylee isn't sure how she's going to protect the woman.. Especially with one nasty charging their way past the amazing exploding and reforming Adam. Wonder if he does parties? What the hell is she thinking? And how is she going to stop it. Oh wait! She's got a gun! Fumbling it out of the ill fitting shoulder holster, Kaylee points the gun at the thing and pulls the trigger.. Oh shit. What? Oh! Safety. She thumbs off the safety and fires wildly into it not stopping till the clip empties. Of course, by an act of God or something the thing that use to be a person, lands dead at her feet and proceeds to melt. Eww. She shuffles back away from it, and darts into the lab after Sabrina. Standing by the door she watches Sabrina search, while she tries to figure how to change the damn clip on that damn gun.

They're blue and bioluminescent, if only to a faiht degree. The thin vials are labeled with a serial number, and there are racks of them lined up in the refrigerated case. On an estimate, Sabrina's cunning intellect is able to map out a pattern to the trays and estimate a number of three hundred of these luminous blue vials, though the adrenaline throbbing through her veins and the fear causing her hands to shake makes it difficult to consider pulling up the detailed file on just what Refrain is.

With the deafening ring in Huruma, Kaylee and Ash's ears from the sound of grenades detonating in an enclosed space beginning to fade, the distant cries of the Advent Virus test subjects seem to have quieted, their route of entrance to the area has been cut off thanks to the explosion, and even as Adam's dismembered limbs begin to reform — bone extending before muscle weaves itself in a bloody lattice, followed by latering of skin — the dust from the grenades has already settled.

In the lab, Sabrina is able to find durable security cases with foam depressions designed to contain the very racks that the Refrain vials are contained in, sliding one tray out at a time, depressing them down into the foam slots, and locking the Halibuton suitcases closed before opening up another case and starting over again.

Just when everything seems to be going as planned, the power flickers once, twice, three times. The lights go out for a brief moment, followed by a change of the alarm klaxons. Now, instead of a high-pitched beeping, there is a thundrous buzzing sound, followed by an automated message blaring over the intercoms.

«Warning. Coolant Breach Detected. Reactor Heat Levels At Maximum. Please Evacuate Facility.

Reactor? Suddenly that springs to mind a flash of information in Sabrina's mind, a surge of information flashing across her eyes as she sees schematics for a miniaturized nuclear reactor designed to power roughly a city block, one installed in subterranean levels of this building. Her mind leaps across pieces of memory, radiation sickness, exposure to fallout, Chernobyl.

Suddenly, sticking around doesn't seem like such a good idea.

In truth, no one can heal like Adam. No Claire, not Peter, not Gabriel. The speed and automatic nature of it defies them. Bones don't need to be reset, they do that on their own and while Claire might slowly begin to grow another limb, Adam looks more like someone's pouring bone and skin into a body cast. He's already standing up as the alarms begin to go off. He even dusts himself off as he says, "That would be the Scoobies." he comments to anyone near enough to listen. "Alright people!" he calls out, "Time to go." and…things…begin to be dragged out of offices. File cabinets, vials of liquids, anything that looked expensive enough to steal. "Let's head out to the vans and get out of here."

Ash blinks and snarls in anger as he notices that he missed one, and it's gotten over towarads Kaylee and Sabrina. "Kay. Fucking shoot it!" He shouts to her, ready to sprint into action. He begins to move even as Kaylee fumbles with that gun, and he's just started running before the shot rings out and the thing falls. He skids to a stop, sliding a few feet on his blood slicked shoes before he spins back around and literally skates back to his standpoint at the hallway, Just in time to find himself a bit more action. He takes a swing, and the opponent dodges, bringing a grin to Ash's lips.

Ash steps in close, lifting his leg in a feinting kick, only to drop back and jab straight at the poor human's chin, a hard crack sounding as the brass and Ash's incredible strength collide with the man's bone. His foot lifts again and he kicks the man in the sternum, feeling ribs shatter beneath his blow, putting the thing on it's back. Ash's foot comes down hard, smashing the person's skull, bits of bone and brain matter sticking to the bottom of his shoes. Hey, he'll have some traction now, no more blood skating for Ash. Then the lights dim and the collant breach thing and Ash blinks. "The fuck is that Adam?" And it's right about then that he notices Adam's body stitching back together, and he turns to watch it in fascination, though that's short lived indeed.

He looks to Adam and nods his head, then moves to help. Ash hefts large amounts of stuff per hand, taking it from the mercs with them to haul it outside, then come back in to do it again, able to take two man's load on his own, though he does strain underneath some of it, the man's exertions previously tiring him some. He stops after a few loads, standing out by the vans and just loading stuff onto them instead of interupting the flow of stuff.

Sabrina needs her hands to work faster. "Help me with this!" she says frantically to Kaylee, indicating which vials she wants her to pack up. "As many as you can get we need to— " and then there's the warnings and she closes her eyes for just a second, trying to parse the information. "LEAVE IT! LEAVE IT ALL!" She shouts out, starting to haul cases towards the door so she can be heard properly. "MISTER MONROE! ADAM!" she never, ever uses his first name, "Leave it! Take these cases— there isn't any time! It's going to be hugethere's a nuclear reactor here! It's going to take out at least a city block! Radiation sickness everything. EVERYTHING! These things are important, get everyone in here, we need to take these and we need to go. Fast. Faster. TEN MINUTES AGO NOW!" While she's bloodied and shaking and likely terrified, she appears to be (and sound) absolutely certain of this. "WE NEED TO GO!"

Adam frowns at Sabrina. But, at her behest, he suddenly says, "Listen to her. Let's do this." also, he gives her a look, a look that says 'you better not make me dock your pay'.

Giving up on the clip, Kaylee shoves the gun back in the holster with a frustrated sound that almost like a growl. She shakes her head to try and dispel the ringing as she approaches Sabrina. Then the lights flicker and Kaylee looks up. What the… And then the alarms go off, eyes widening.

Hurrying to Sabrina, she looks over the box and glances at the woman confused. But, she does as she asks, grabbing the indicated vials as fast as she can without breaking them and pressing them into the cases, snapping them shut as fast as she can. Then Sabrina is moving for the door and Kaylee grabs what she can comfortable carry and starts for the door as well. "Hey.. Whoa wait up!" When one of Adam's men are near she shoves the cases at him and moves to grab another, intent on following everyone else out.

Refrain.

Klaxons blare and wail warnings as Michael slides through the blood of enemies and comrades alike, hauling cases of a luminous blue chemical in one hand. Turning to the entrance of the facility, he slings his rifle over one shoulder and rushes at full speed down the hall, through open doors slicked with the gory remains of the Advent Virus' failed test subjects. He meets up with a handful of Adam's other mercenaries, slinging the cases to them as Sabrina and Kaylee follow behind him.

It is a term in musican notation, meaning "To Repeat", often a verse that reiterates itself through a song's lyrics.

Filing cabinets are tipped over, paperwork stolen, information and documents, drugs, sedatives, muscle relaxers, painkillers, anything that Adam can sell on the street, anything he can rob from Pinehearst, from Arthur. The vans are hotwired, started up and loaded to the roof with stolen cargo. Climbing into the passenger seat of the van that Ash climbs in to drive, Michael pops open one of the cases, looking down at one of the glowing blue vials as he rolls it around between his fingers, the slim blue cylinder reflecting in his irises brightly.

Refrain also has a double meaning. To proactively stop from a task, to give up, to walk away,

Laying the vial back down in the case, Michael looks out towards Adam as the blonde and now raggedly dressed swordsman climbs into another one of the stolen vans, even as Ash puts the van into drive, peering out the window, seeing Sabrina and Kaylee climbing into another. He looks back down at the case, curiosity in his eyes.

To a point, the drug Refrain utilizes both meanings. It is both a recycling of the past, and an arrest of the future.

As the glass structure of Pinehearst begins to grow smaller in the rear view mirror, Michael leans his head back against the seat cushion, eyes falling shut, listening to the sound of rain pattering on the windshield and thunder rumbling in the distance.

Now the Refrain is free. And soon, it will come with its own price on the street.


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