Participants:
Scene Title | Die Happy, Bridge |
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Synopsis | This city is thick with common thieves Still passing around the same disease Who's running this town and why are we Still drinking that Kool-Aid like it's free |
Date | January 7, 2019 |
Ruins in Queens
The air has never felt this tense before.
It's a lie, but that's how Robyn Quinn feels in the moment as she stares out the window in front of her. It's a lie she tell herself again and again, a lie she can can believe, that she can lose herself in in that moment, a lie to displace her anxiety and the never lifting sense of emptiness that has taken residence deep in the pit of her soul.
So she tells herself, at least. It's only one of the many lies she whispers to herself when she thinks no one is listening.
Eyes half lidded and staring into rain puddles, she sighs. The overcast skies overhead seem to be hanging lower and lower, building more and more frequently. A sign of the times, perhaps. She'd grown accustomed to the grayness of the world. Sights like the crumbling ruins of Eagle Electric only make it seem that much grayer.
She hates it. All of it.
A hand rises up, and then swipes across, as if trying to add colour to the dull world around her. With no such luck, she sighs and turns away. She can't linger any longer. She shouldn't be here anyway; she's only here because of the feeling she got yesterday….
After her vision.
The whirr and click of machines makes it hard to focus. Beyond the tall chain-link fence bordering the ruins of Eagle Electric, a handful of yellow-painted humanoid automatons carry iron girders in metallic hands, walking with a fluidic grace toward the site where wrecking balls and bulldozers work to plow the remains of one of the last vestiges of the Vanguard to the ground. What little of Eagle Electric stood after the detonation of a fuel-air bomb near a decade ago now rests under the treads of construction equipment.
The street outside of the chain link fence is dusted with recently fallen snow and as Robyn walks, her shoes leave scuffed tracks showing her course. She couldn’t tell why she was here, what made her come to this derelict ruin that’s sat like an old animal carcass in the middle of abandoned industrial parks. She never fought the Vanguard, she never knew Kazimir Volken, she never…
“Chica. You keep hogging the tequila an’ we’re going to have words.”
The voice comes from behind Robyn, causing her to jerk back toward the source. There’s no one there, just a single pair of scuffed footprints in the snow.
The sprawling warehouse floor of the Eagle Electric building is mostly filled with abandoned crates covered in dusty, white drop cloths. Tall shards of broken glass are arranged around the warehouse perimeter, angled just so to allow for the intuitive to see around corners, to know where an intruder is before they know where they are themselves. At the back of the warehouse, hidden by towering boxes, an old high-backed chair shrouded in white fabric is empty, while a group of people sit on the floor and up on boxes around it.
“Seriously, though, pass the drink.” Rico Velasquez cracks a smile, leaning across the lap of a taciturn blonde woman in urban camouflage. Ellinka Dolukhanov rolls her eyes and leans back as Rico stretches across her, grasping at a tequila bottle held fast in Robyn’s hands.
Opposite of Robyn, a long-faced balt British man in black lights up a cigarette, watching the exchange. “You 'ave about as much business tellin' ‘er 'ow she’s hoggin’ a drink as I do tellin' you about your dental 'ygeine. You should switch to Colgate and brush two times a day.” Ethan cracks a smile, smoke filtering out of his mouth with the barb.
Rico pauses, glancing over to Ethan, then slowly raises one hand with a middle finger pointing right up at him. He then makes a little kiss-face, because they’re both mature adults.
"Y'r both fuckin' children." This time, the voice is Quinn's own. Forceful but soft, she leans a bit away from Rico, quirking an eyebrow at him. "So here's t'bein' fuckin' children," is added with a half smile as she raises the bottle up to her lips and takes a drink, a finger raised up to him as that drink continues.
It's lowered after a moment, a dare ya look thrown to Rico, before the feeling in her throat catches up with the tequila that just ran down in it, and she coughs, holding the bottle out to him. "Figure y'earned this after th' other day anyway." Facetious, of course, ut the grin on her face is quick to fade afterwards.
Whirling around in place, Robyn stares around her, eyes scanning the area. A lump forms in her throat. She come here for- what reasons? Oh right. Her grip tightens on the copy of Wolves of Valhalla in her bag. She'd come out here for part research, part curiosity, part history lesson, part to find a mindset for continuing her investigations. And maybe, part sudden compulsion? But…
But not this deep of a mindset.
There’s a whistle blast from the construction site, followed by another, and another, and then a thunderous explosion shakes the street. There’s no plume of fire, no blast of dust, just the sound of an explosion and nothing else. Soon after, a wave of concrete dust comes wafting away from the demolition site, and it dawns on Robyn that they’re probably blasting. It doesn’t help her currently disjointed state of mind, doesn’t help the sense of confusion and disorientation rollicking through her mind.
The door to the barracks creaks open swiftly, followed by a shaft of gloomy gray daylight from outside. The blackout curtains over the tall warehouse windows otherwise keep the painful daylight out. Silhouette in the doorway, a tall and graying man in a black coat stands expectantly, one hand resting on the crown of a wolf’s head cane. Though it is the face of Gabriel Gray staring at Quinn’s cot, that is not the man hidden behind unnaturally blue eyes.
“Robyn,” Kazimir intones as he takes a step forward with a click of the cane’s metal tip on the concrete floor. “The time for rest has ended, there is work to be done.”
There was always work to be done.
The stirring comes quickly from her cot, Quinn turning to face Kazimir as quickly as she can manage. Where normally, she might correct someone, Quinn, she remains silent. She knows better than to correct Kazimir, even if it's ultimately on something so trivial. What she chooses to go by… it doesn't really matter anymore.
"Lord Volken…" There's a tenseness in her voice as rises up to her feet. There's a weariness to her movements, but as she rises to her feet, a haze seems to clear from over her eyes enough to shake that feeling. "What do you need of me?" Despite this, her eyes are still a bit half lidded, waiting to see what waits for her today.
It's better than more rest. It's better than any nightmares that may creep up on her with her eyes off the world around her.
“We found out where a pocket of resistance has entrenched themselves. I need you to infiltrate them as a refugee and then, once past their defenses, ensure that they do not pose a threat to our operation any longer.” Kazimir’s orders are swift and to the point, and as he enters Robyn’s room, she can feel a prickling sensation in her extremities at his proximity.
“They are primarily police, other law enforcement, and adjacent consorts. They are entrenched in an abandoned lighthouse on Staten Island.” Kazimir steps aside, no longer silhouette in the door. “If some escape, so be it. But their leadership must not. William Harvard and Elisabeth Harrison.”
Quinn's gaze never leaves Kazimir, even if her eyes never look quite directly at him. Respect mixed with fear, perhaps a bit more strongly than some of the others she shares her duties with. Once her task is made clear, her focus falls on Kazimir entirely, and she nods as she tries to ignore the building tenseness in her.
A small grin creeps up on her face. "Fish, barrel," she offers with an attempt at confidence. The offered names sit on the tip of her tongue, slightly familiar but not enough for her to care. "I can do this," is also offered with that same cadence. "An ol' lighthouse, eh? Guess they figure isolation's a smart idea." It's not.
Any sense of whimsicality falls away at that, looking back to Kazimir with an appropriately serious expression. She offers a slight bow. "I'll depart immediately, Lord Volken, an' see this taken care of swiftly an' wholly."
Kazimir’s response is a stoic, silent stare. He raises one hand, holding a cane in it, wolf’s head snarling with a small scar across its brow. He taps the cane on her shoulder, then nods and steps aside.
“The work waits for none.”
Robyn sucks in a sharp breath of damp, cold air. When all she sees is water her heart leaps into her throat. Arms windmill, legs kick, and she falls backwards onto crumbling concrete and asphalt, away from the yawning precipice of a ruined bridge’s edge.
Overlooking the other ruined half of the Verrazano Narrows, on Staten Island. Last she recalls she was in what was once Brooklyn, and now—
A gap in time.