Participants:
| Scene Title | I Am Become Death |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | The Engineer, Amid Halebi, has been eluding agents of the Commonwealth Institute for weeks. Now, with information pertaining to his location, the Institute and the Department of Homeland Security tighten the noose around the terrorist organization Mazdak and the nuclear man who could bring a second Midtown event to New York City… |
| Date | January 4, 2011 |
The Atlantic Ocean
At 16:00 hours we will make our move on Amid Halebi.
A clear blue sky spreads as far as they eye can see in every direction but towards the mainland. This late in the afternoon, the sun is dipping down towards the western horizon, sinking towards the distant silhouette of the New Jersey skyline. Staten Island is but a muddy blot to the north, and this far out beyond New York City even the Statue of Liberty looks small, though defiant, against the setting sun.
A long Coast Guard vessel will bring a small team of Institute agents within operational range of the fishing trawler that Halebi is believed to be resident on.
Out on the open ocean the air is crisp and cold, whipping across choppy surf that rocks the Coast Guard patrol boat up and down on its gradual approach towards a rusting fishing trawler anchored in these choppy waters. The blue and white hull of the Barbarian — according to the faded designation on the hull — is stark against the dark turquoise of the ocean, its long trawling arms set with netting and chains, rivulets of brownish-red rust running down the vessels sides.
Prior to making visual contact with the trawler, Institute agents Olivia Roland and Rene will dive off of the Coast Guard ship and travel underwater to the vessel.
In the dark, beneath the ice cold surface of the Atlantic, two dark shapes zip speedily through the near lightless watery depths. Dragged along by the whirring turbine of a diving scooter, two sleek and black-clad forms converge on the rusting hull of the Barbarian, a jet stream of air bubbles and swirling water trailing behind them as they navigate around dangerous drags of netting. They move, one ahead of the other, towards the underside of the trawler and then up around one side, Olivia's goggled head cresting the water before Rene's does.
Roland and Rene will await the arrival of the Coast Guard vessel, negating the crew once we are in visual range.
From beneath the water, a small air-powered harpoon gun with a tow cable attached rises up in one of Roland's hands, her blue eyes narrowing behind her diving goggles. Lips work and tongue presses against her rebreather to press it out of her mouth, hanging down beside her cheek as cold fingers squeeze the trigger, launching the hooked projectile up towards the railing on the port side of the ship. It clanks down onto the desk, then scrapes back before hooking onto the metal of the railing. Roland turns, looking at Rene beside her, offering a silent thumbs-up.
Your team's objective will be to infiltrate the trawler by force and arrest the members of Mazdak present. You will likely be met with resistance, but remember that these men may possess vital information about Mazdak, especially if Halebi is not present…
Atop the choppy waters, the Coast Guard patrol boat zips along, closing distance with the darkened and silent fishing vessel. No movement up above deck or in the windowed helm of the ship is visible and despite the trawling nets being cast out, the anchor has been dropped and the boat is making no forward progress. Inside the cabin of the patrol vessel, Roger Goodman curls gloved fingers tightly together, his brow furrowed and dark eyes squared on the ship.
Remember what is at stake here.
"Bring us around, slowly," Goodman calls to the Coast Guard officer piloting the patrol boat who slows the speed of approach. The orange-trimmed vessel begins moving in a slow and broad arc around the bow of the trawler towards the port side where access to the deck can be had. Reaching down around his neck, Goodman pulls up a pair of binoculars and scans the Barbarian's cabin through the windows, his posture tense and jaw set. "Lupinetti and I will stay back and provide assistance if necessary." Reaching up to hold in his ear-bud headset, Goodman turns his focus to the other members of the team. "Roland, Rene— wait for Sawyer's signal before joining them on the above decks."
and Good Hunting, Agents.
Sawyer has her own binoculars, watching the waters and the boat for anything out of the ordinary, for any reactions to the team in the water. Not seeing any, she gives a nod toward Goodman and then back to Odessa and Calvin, a nod of her head to join her as she nears the side of the patrol boat, now creeping up along the trawler's side.
She reaches out to to grab onto the trawler's metal ridge — once her balance is assured, one hand slides into the pocket of her amphibian-ops-style suit for her gun as she crawls over the edge and onto the deck, crouching and waiting, listening for any sounds besides that of the slosh of water and her own team's moves to join her, eyes watching the cabin for any of the Barbarian's crew to come greet its guests.
Agent Price feels exceptionally drab, dressed in all black. Pants instead of a skirt. And only the chunky one inch heels of functional boots instead of the customary average of three and a half inch heels. Even the patch over her scarred and useless eye is a matte black. Her shaggy-cut white hair is pulled up on top of her head in a ponytail that whips about in the wind. All in all, she cuts a rather monochrome figure.
Except perhaps for the green shade of her face.
Odessa Price has never been on a boat before. Nor does she actually know how to swim. She at least feels assured enough in her ability to not drown, even if she won't be able to move well in the water. She's resolved simply to not end up falling overboard and into the fucking ocean. Fingers press over her mouth as she fights the urge to lean over the side of the patrol boat and vomit into the water. Truth be told, suffering from the hangover from hell isn't helping at all. Last night was a night of bad decisions.
Which leaves her glancing toward Calvin Rosen just before she's hoisting herself up behind Veronica.
Shagged, fagged and well-rested, Calvin's feeling fine for all that he appears to be of a very ladies first mind when it comes to inflitrating an unfamiliar floating tin can full of angry men and guns. Black BDUs are less chic than his norm, but not offensive to his frame — broad shoulders and wiry muscle bound thick under kevlar and coarse canvas.
There's bruising mottled up the right side of his face, tell-tale of too much fun had somewhen around New Years, but he is young. These things happen.
Vibrant red dreads swept back from his face but otherwise unbound, he found time to put on eyeliner on the drive over and looks to Goodman rather than Odessa, who may be wondering why he tried to call out sick today after already missing — you know. A lot of days. But he's focused back on the game in time to watch Odessa's ass go up after Veronica's, and fleet on his feet enough to push up and hoist himself into a lazy handspring over the rusted rail once he's reached it. Tadaaa.
As all three agents climb up and onto the deck of the trawler, their feet touch down on the wooden flooring slicked with seawater and ice. Crabs are spilled all over the deck, legs curling inwards and pinching claws snipping at the air. Some are on their backs, others are scurrying around the deck from a tipped over metal cage that looks to have only been half emptied into a large plastic bin. These crabs look to have been recently caught, though the trap they were caged in has toppled over from the rack it should be sitting on at the edge of the boat, a tangled spool of thin rope slithering through the morass of crustaceans.
The moment Odessa lands on the ship, she feels queasy and vertigo briefly sets in, causing her balance to wobble and knees to shake. It isn't sea-sickness that is getting the best of her, but a harrowing sense of detachment from her lifeline, her Evolved ability to bend and control time. It's always felt like that, like she lost a sense whenever she was negated in the past. This, likely, is Rene's doing.
«Keep your eyes peeled for activity, there are at least six Evolved men on this vessel. Rene is actively negating the entire ship, since he can't maintain line of sight that means you're all in his blanket effect until he comes aboard.» Goodman's voice grumbles through the headsets worn by the three agents, loud over the sound of wind whistling across the ship and the creak of the long metal arms holding icy netting high above the deck.
From the back of the ship, metal stairs ascend up to the captain's cabin where the ship's helm is, while another set of stairs descend down into the crew quarters, galley and other internal areas of the ship. That door is notably left partly ajar, swinging closed and open as the fishing ship rocks on the choppy waves.
«Deck's empty. Come aboard so we have Price's ability to work with.» Veronica's husky voice cuts through the radio, figuring six men against three, with these two liabilities are not odds in her favor. Her dark eyes glance toward the captain's helm and then to that door.
Turning to look at the other two, lifting a foot to shake off a crab that's decided to latch on to her boot, the brunette agent tips her head toward the stairs descending below. "Watch the door — don't go down, just watch it, til we have Rene and Roland on board. Got it?" she murmurs quietly, before lifting her chin upward. "I'm gonna check out who's above."
Clearly not trusting the dreadlocked newbie to follow orders, her brown eyes sweep to his face once more. "Remember, we need them alive if Halebi's not with them."
She moves to the stairs to climb upward.
"Ever get the feeling your surprise visit is expected?" Odessa hisses under her breath, clinging to the railing as she waits for equilibrium to return to her. The roving, abandoned crabs are eyed for a few moments before her gaze shifts toward the stairs. She'll feel much better when the Haitian is topside.
But the knife she pulls out of her belt goes a long way to making Odessa feel as though she has some power over the situation. Unlike Agent Sawyer, firearms just aren't her thing. Fingers with a white knuckle grip around the handle, she pushes away from the rail and cautiously (still getting her sea legs) makes her way further on deck, creeping into position to watch the door as instructed.
"Yeh. Make more sense to torpedo the fucking thing and net out the survivors like goldfish, y'know?" asked in a quiet aside to everyone and no one, Calvin spins once on cloudy ice, bits of crab leg and seaweed already stuck to one boot. He also unstraps his sidearm in the same movement, effectively confirming any and all fears Veronica might have about his presence here.
"Bet I can moonwalk on this stuff," he tells Odessa once Bossy Mcgee's out've earshot up the stairs, a dry sniff into the cold marking at least a passing stretch of focus onto the open door in question. There're already bits of ice crystalized into the ruff of his mane. "Maybe if there weren't so many crabs." Another ice-skatey type spin is flawlessly executed somewhere in the background behind Odesssa. "Y'don't look so good, by the way."
Calvin's pirouette is spied through Goodman's binoculars, eliciting a wordlessly mouthed, 'what' from the stand-in operations director. At the side of the boat, there is a clatter of Roland's hook rattling on the railing, followed by the slosh and splash of water running off of a body emerging from the frozen depths of the Atlantic. Climbing up onto the boat in her thermal wetsuit, Roland lifts up her scuba goggles and unshoulders her air tank, unzipping the water-proof pouch at her hip that has contained her side-arm and an old zippo lighter. The more practical gun, rather than the lighter, is withdrawn as she creeps across the deck, eyeing Odessa and Calvin, then looking up to watch Veronica ascend the steps to the cabin.
Behind Olivia's ascent onto the deck, Rene is pulling himself up alongside of the ship on her tow line as well, gloved hands grabbing the rail with a slap and slowly hauling his lanky frame up, legs swinging over the rail and shoulders rolling to shrug off the heavy air tank that his hands are busily beginning to unclip.
As Veronica ascends the metal steps to the cabin, the dappling of dark red on white-painted metal is obvious. A few small droplets just before the partly ajar door to the radio room and helm. Through the windows, without even opening the door, Veronica can see a man sprawled out on the metal floor inside in a pool of his own blood, face down.
Getting his bearings and sliding off of the rail, Rene lifts up his goggles and lets them rest atop his head, dark eyes sweeping the deck before he settles his senses more evenly, lifting the negation effect from the agents he can clearly see, restoring the agents abilities to them.
Above, Veronica grimaces, bending down to check the man's body for weapons and identification — just in case there's anyone who might make it to the helm while they check below. The search yields a wallet with an identification of a man that is not Halebi, which she tosses back onto the body before tapping her radio.
«Captain's dead. Coming down.»
She descends carefully, bottoms of boots slippery with ice and crab parts, the brine from the watery mist of the ocean also making the steps a precarious place.
She nods to Roland and Rene, and then moves toward the ajar door to the descending stairs.
"Rene, Price — you two want to go ahead, make sure anyone below is negated or set on pause or whatever? Rosen and I will take the rear — Roland, you want to wait up here, in case the attack comes from the water?" She's used to being the one to make the calls, thanks to the leadership she was thrust into and intended to fail back at the Company, but there is a polite lilt, making them questions rather than orders, that probably has to do with her own uncertainty.
When Odessa presses a hand over her mouth this time, it's to stifle a giggle at Calvin's antics. Nervousness makes her giggly. At the comment about how she doesn't look so good, she responds flippantly, "Yeah, well, I'm on a boat."
Her good humour fades a little bit as Roland and Rene come aboard, but she's breathing much easier once the negation is lifted. It brings some of the colour (that isn't green) back to her face. But Sawyer's declaration that the captain is dead has Odessa lifting her head toward the entrance to the captain's cabin, gaze wide. "Well, that answers that." Something is wrong here.
A look is slowly angled to Rene, followed by a shrug of Odessa's slender shoulders. "I solemnly swear not to shank you this time." Promises, promises.
"I love takin' the rear," muttered too drearily to achieve anything like actual humor, Calvin shows no readily apparent reaction to Rene's arrival and the return of his ability. He doesn't have one yet, according to his papers.
All he has is his gun, which he's still holding onto when he moves to comply. Leading the way, this time, round the side of the deck towards the rigging and all of that nastiness.
Veronica's omission on the method of death perhaps is telling, but that she chooses to keep it to herself is likely for good reason. Rene responds to Odessa's comment with a narrowing of his eyes and a downward turn of his lips into a frown, visible distaste in his expression from the way he recalls too many times trusting Odessa and one too many times winding up near eviscerated for it.
«Sawyer, what condition was the captain in? Does it look like he killed himself or was another party involved?» The difference between suicide and murder means everything when dealing with a pack of zealous anti-American extremists. "Might've done themselves when they saw the Coast Guard coming…" Roland offers as a possibility in a quiet tone of voice, walking across the deck of the ship and staring over the edge into the water. "But there's so many 'Guard vessels out here on the water, they'd have a pretty short life-expectancy if they just decide to up and shoot themselves when they see law enforcement from a distance. But…" Olivia turns to look back up to the pilothouse and narrows her eyes.
Rene breaks his frustrated stare from Odessa as he moves to follow behind Calvin, headed towards the stairs, then cutting ahead of the redhead to lead the way with Odessa. The Haitian stops at the stairwell, just a few short steps down to the door that keeps slapping open and closed, then ducks down the steps and into the doorway, pushing it open slowly with one hand and keeping a narrow profile in the doorway.
The hallway beyond that door is a cramped thing with faux wooden paneling on the walls and a water-slicked floor. Four flimsy doors are set two on either side of the hallway with an open doorway to the galley at the end, tables crooked and lights flickering inside. The hall is unlit, calling for Rene to reach not only for his sidearm in its water-proof pouch at his waist, but also the small flashlight with it. Hand-over-hand holding the pair, he steps into the hall and leaves room for Odessa to follow at his heels.
Fluorescent lights flicker overhead, one torn free from the ceiling and hanging by two broken brackets and a tangle of wires. There's no sign of gunfire, no bullet holes in the walls or shell casings on the floor.
There is blood, though.
"Most of his head is blown away, but there was no gun on him," Veronica murmurs quietly as she joins the others, glancing at Roland before following the others down the steps, gun at the ready. She arches a brow at Calvin's remark. "Funny, I'd've thought it was the other way around," she tosses lightly. He is wearing eyeliner, after all. And pirouetting on crabs.
That's as much humor as she has in her before she turns somber and careful again, eyes darting here and there, ears alert as she listens for any telltale sounds.
Eyes dart up — it reminds her of the bookstore's backroom. "Check the galley," she whispers, nodding forward, before her eyes dart to the four doors. "If no one's in there, we'll each take a door." Which one holds the tiger?
The temporal manipulator descends the stairs to the crew's quarters quietly. The sight of the hall isn't terribly gruesome to her. She performs autopsies after all, and even enjoys it most of the time. Odessa adjusts her grip on the handle of her knife as she makes for the galley. There's maybe a little more sway to her hips for Calvin's benefit. Maybe.
Four agents winding near single file down a dark hallway in a boat with blood slicked on the floor and no spent casings. Veronica's jab earns a peep at her ass as if at the lead of a riposte, but return fire never comes. Calvin looks at Odessa's instead (distractedly) in between veering his eyes up at battered lighting and down to measure seawater and blood stirring sluggish across their boots.
He's more reserved, now. Slightly. It's creepy down here, surrounded by creaking metal and incoherent aftermath. «Any movement topside?»
As Rene takes the lead down that narrow hall, his eyes turn warily towards Odessa's knife for just a moment. There's a warning glance of excuse me offered by the Haitian before he turns to the first door on their right when they approach it. He motions to Odessa to keep an eye on the door to his left while he takes a step back, then leans forward with a kick to the right door, knocking the flimsy thing out of its frame by the shabby aluminum frame into a bunk room. The door swings against the wall with a noisy smash, and the Haitian's flashlight under gun posture sweeps the darkened room, curtains drawn over the windows.
Stepping inside, Rene's eyes scan a stain on the hardwood floor, dark and red. As he turns to look back over his shoulder to Odessa, however, there's an immediate recognition of something gone terribly wrong. From inside of the room a man leaps into Rene's periphery brandishing a fire extinguisher, one hand on the handle and the other guiding it like a bludgeon towards the bald man's head. It collides with the side of his head and sends him staggering aside, and disappears out of the door frame as a flannel-clad man blurs past Odessa's field of vision, followed by another resounding clang as Rene is struck yet again.
Down the tightly crowded hall, Veronica and Calvin can hear the sound of a struggle and crashing inside one of the bunk rooms.
"Fuck," Veronica swears, moving to the door that Rene and Odessa just moved to, gun raising to shoot at the man wielding the fire extinguisher, aiming for his kneecaps to keep the man alive, two shots fired off swiftly — the silencer on the gun probably a moot point, as anyone else in the rooms in the belly of the ship no doubt knows that they have company.
"Odessa, is Rene out?" she hisses at the same time. Because if Rene's out — if his power is out — if Halebi is on the boat — they might very well be screwed.
Gunfire in any confined space is deafening, more so when that confined space has few outlets for the sound to escape from. The one door in the bunk means that the report of Veronica's handgun is a near deafening explosion that rings through the ship, painfully loud even down the hall. What she blindly fires on inside of that room isn't a man at all, visible only in the muzzle-flash of the gun going off. Whatever it is, it is diaphanous and insubstantial, allowing the bullets to punch through the floor and strike the wall inches from Rene's head where he lays on the ground.
Finally does the incongruent shape where once a man was register on Veronica, moments too late to give her any canny edge against it. An ambulatory cloud of living smoke rises up belching ash and sparking with tiny combustions of orange fire like an angry fist, but when the hum of telekinesis rumbles through the air, Veronica remains steadfast on her feet, while the smoke cloud is blown backwards against the wall.
It flattens out, swirls and churns and then blasts over Veronica like the exhaust of a car over a mouse, billowing out into the hall in terrifying familiarity to Odessa.
Samson Gray is little more than a roiling mass of charcoal black smoke, dripping with ash and blossoming with fire as he fills the hallway with heat and smoke, before slithering like an overly fat python towards the galley, his powers restored by Rene's incapacitation.
Soon, there is screaming coming from the galley, warning shouts and intermittent flashes of blue and orange light that causes all of the lights in the ship to flicker and sputter.
"Jesus fuck!" Odessa staggers back out of the way when Veronica lines up her shots. «The Haitian is down!» she calls over the radio. «Rene is down!» Her clear blue eye widens as she tracks the all-too-familiar smoke's movement.
"Gray!" Odessa calls and then shoots a frantic look over her shoulder to her fellow agents. "Negation gas!" she shrieks. "I can't stop him! Fucking negate him!" Then, she turns and she bolts down the hallway toward the galley as fast as her legs will carry her. "Gray, stop!"
"Fffuckin' — don't — " Calvin is saying on the way to reaching for his radio switch. Too late. Veronica fires and he hunches into a duck against inevitable risk of rocochet, making himself…slightly smaller. Like that will help. Also there are like. Still three other exciting mystery doors that they totally haven't even opened yet? Cal eyes the nearest one like the handle's a snake, teeth grit against adrenaline heat.
These people are ridiculous.
«Movement down below. One subject so far. Baldy's down with a case've blunt trauma. Shot's fired. Ahm….» While the others rush about going aah aah aah, Agent Rosen stands in the hallway with his hand to his ear, leaning just enough to get a load've the flashy disruptions issuing forth from the galley. «Yeh. Someone's beat us here I think. Odesser's screaming about Gray.» For those topside, there is screaming to fill out the background noise. «Permission to abort so we don't all die.»
Not again. Too late, Veronica realizes that she assumed the captain was shot, not having investigated the head wound too closely, the no-doubt precision of the scalp laceration concealed by congealed blood at a glance.
«Samson Gray, keep an eye top side, be prepared,» she says flatly into the radio, her heart pounding filling her own ears as she grabs a canister from her utility belt, finger pulling the loop as she breaks into a run, and hurls the metal cylinder into the galley from afar, following with her gun raised.
"Is he here for Halebi's power… oh, shit," she mutters, pulling the Adynomine-dart gun from her holster as well. So much for aborting, unless Goodman's voice comes through to direct her otherwise.
Goodman's voice isn't coming through with much of anything at all. There's a static pop and crackle over the headsets, generated by the EM disruption that is wreaking havoc with the lights and only getting stronger now. When Veronica charges for the galley past Odessa, it leaves Odessa and Calvin downstairs, though not for terribly long. There's a sound of slamming boots on the steps, a dark silhouette in the doorway.
"What's going on down there!?" It's a panicked call from Olivia Roland, unwilling to abandon her position entirely, straddling the line between stairs and above decks. "All I'm getting over the radios is static!" The smell of smoke causes her to hitch her breath in the back of her throat, even while the situation seems to be spiraling out of control.
When Veronica clears the way into the galley, there's a three foot round sphere of yellow gas held in very careful equilibrium with the remainder of the air pressure of the room. There isn't so much as a breeze in the galley, despite the windy conditions outside and the door wide open at the end of the hall. The air is just abruptly still.
There stands the smoky silhouette of Samson Gray, and it is hard to tell as obscured as he is if he is made of smoke, or just surrounded by a thick blanket of it. All around him it is evident that there was a slaughter not long ago. Bodies are slouched over tables, thrown about the room. There's more than six men in here, all of them looking to be in some measure of middle-eastern or western-Asian decent. Two such men are crowded in the back of the galley, one slouched down on the floor with a gun shakily held in one hand. He's luminescent in his hands, where skin is burning around where a horrifying blue-gold glow is swirling beneath his skin, where bones glow white hot. The smell of cooking flesh stinks in the air.
That he is more unshaven and slightly thinner does not hide Amid Halebi's likeness from Veronica, nor does it conceal his terrifying and presently uncontrolled ability.
The gun and his fear are directed at the solidifying cloud of smoke and ash coiling into a vaguely humanoid form in advance. It has an ephemeral impression of a man, regal profile, thick eyebrows, all sculpted from smoke — like some sort of mythical genie come to life. One of his hands is directed towards that sphere of gas, seeming to keep it contained with some Swiss-army knife application of Aerokinesis. It isn't how Thalia Ashford would have used it, but he is more an innovator than an impersonator.
Away from Samson and Amid, with the sphere of negation gas between them is another man is crouched in wide-eyed horror over a body, cradling a young man in his arms, tears streaming down his cheeks. He's short, overweight, thickly bearded and with hair swept over the top of his head. He — at the very least — doesn't appear to be the threat here.
"Hello, Agent," is the whispery voice of Samson's, emanating from the cloud of smoke. "It seems you and I are at something of an impasse, doesn't it." Samson's smoky hand extends, throwing Amid's gun aside and then forcing the radioactive man up against the kitchen wall. "Our friend here seems to be… ready to blow. You can shoot him," Samson's brows rise, "with that little dart of yours, which saves everyone on this boat. But then… he's mine. Or you can leave… and maybe I don't kill him quick enough and we all die. Or…"
Samson looks across the room to the other man. "I'll trade you. Halebi for the fat one… and the lives of all your friends. You just have to… forget I was here."
"Or I could do this," Odessa waves her hand and halts time around herself and Samson as she makes her way further into the galley, striding past the frozen Agent Sawyer. "Ooh!" she squeaks with an illustrative look to Halebi, "Look at that. No more nuclear man." The knife has been exchanged for her own adynomine-dart gun, which is held at her side rather than pointed at the brain-stealer.
Scarred lips twist upward in a smirk. "I see you're making good use of your new toy." A glance is spared to where the negation gas is seemingly suspended. Only now it's held by her own ability, rather than his. She's not foolish enough to let him just blow it at her. Odessa's head jerks back to indicate the secondary prize Samson is after. "What's so special about the fat man? I need this mission to go well. What has he got? I can find it on the Registry." A reasonable substitute? Odessa's methods of negotiation are kosher. This may be why she's been considered a high functioning sociopath in the past.
"I think we've been down this road once before," there's a look of strain on Samson's face when time is frozen around him, a stillness in his smoky exterior that seems wholly reliant on a focus that is now pulled in an untold number of directions. "I recall it ending poorly for you." Danger sense, smoke form, telekinesis, aerokinesis, temporal manipulation — even Samson Gray has his limits, and this is beginning to tax the number of cognitive functions he can muster at a single time.
"I want that one, because it's the hunt that you don't understand. I tracked him all the way here, a teleporter, the first I've ever managed to get this close to. I think he needs line of sight, and trapped in a windowless galley he's… still sport, slippery— like catching fish with your bare hands." Samson's nose rankles, visibly solid behind a thin cloud of smoke.
"The salmon to my grizzly," the bearded Djinn of a man colorfully opines, one thick brow raised. "I'm willing to trade the man you want for him. I've had my fill of the rest of the crew… there's no need to be greedy."
He wants her to give him a teleporter?! "Don't think I don't appreciate the hunt. I do." And she knows if she denies him this one, he will kill her. He almost did the last time. Odessa's gaze narrows and she sighs. "And I suppose you need me to stop holding him still for you, too. Fine." She raises her dart gun and fires it at Halebi.
"I won't try and stop you." Odessa shrugs and steps out of the way of what's ultimately about to ensue. "I'll leave that to Agent Sawyer. He's all yours. Best of luck to you, Samson." A conductor-like flourish sets time to resuming again, though she keeps a close eye on Amid Halebi, to make sure the adynomine is doing its work.
When the world resumes, the only thing truly out of place is Odessa, and Samson appears to have skipped a few frames in his positioning, giving her use away. The white-haired agent shrinks back against the wall with her arm outstretched as though she's attempting to continue use of her ability. "Veronica, I can't hold him!" she cries.
«SKKKKKKTshots! IsKKKKKKKKcoming downSSSSSKKKKTTTbogeys?» Dante's voice cuts through the static of the headset, and heavy boots descend the stairway into the galley, a single gun outstretched. The Agent has to blink heavily, trying to force his eyes to adjust to the dark as his gun whips around, looking for something Not So Friendly that's in need of a lead enema.
"Samson," rung hollow back at a nasal call to Olivia on the stairwell, Calvin switches tack from one closed door to another, clear eyes cut stark blue with a lurid light of their own against the darkness shuddering in waves through the boat's narrow hallway. He's alone for the moment. Kind of. Caught midway between the situation in the galley and Roland's encroach, with Rene down for the count within leg's reach. "Negator malfunctioned."
Unawares of the progress or lack thereof going on in the galley save for what he can discern from snatches of the odd screech of dialogue here and there, he's quick to switch gun hands to better balance himself for when he kicks the door opposite The Haitian soundly open to the sight of a single haggard chap hitting himself stiff in the guts with the blunt end of a rusty prybar.
Dante might catch the barest slash of a smudge of eerie light about Calvin's glare when he coldcocks the imbecil with the butt of his gun and wrests him out into the hallway by his collar. A shoving kick sends him staggering down the claustrophobic path, either into Dante or past him to Roland. "Arrest him, please!"
"Mist-" Veronica was just beginning to speak when the world got put on pause, and she blinks when the word slips from her mouth to a slightly different scene. Eyes flick from Odessa to the smoke cloud to the terrified men, one of whom now has a dart in his body. "-er Gray," she continues, her husky voice making the effort to sound more confident than she feels, her pulse pounding in her ears making it hard to think and feel.
That he doesn't want the radioactive power takes her by surprise, and her eyes dart back to the heavyset man he wants instead. "I don't think he wants to go with you," she says, making a show of tossing the dart gun in her left hand to the ground at her feet — as if in surrender.
The right hand swiftly rises and she pivots to aim at the man that Samson wants — they likely would have if Samson hadn't shown anyway, after all.
Or at least that's what she tells herself, as her finger pulses on the trigger.
Everything happens remarkably fast.
Further away in the ship, where Agent Lupinetti is clambering past Agent Roland, there's a heavy crash as the man that Agent Rosen cold-cocked collapses to the ground with a bleeding cut on his head from the butt of a handgun and a concussion from the impact, The prybar in his hand clatters heavy and noisily to the floor, and his dignified position is one of slouched ass-in-the-air and knees bent, face on the floor prostration.
Roland holds her ground, letting Dante pass but remaining where ordered, even while the call of voices and then a gunshot fill the galley up ahead.
The noise is, again, painful. A loud report of a .45 caliber handgun blasting in a confined space has everyone's ears ringing. Amid looks utterly confused when he finds an Adynomine dart lodged in his abdomen from a gun he never even saw fired. That no groggy sleep and potential coma comes with it has him continuing to radiate light and heat out of his body on a growing scale.
The gunshot, however, is wholly unexpected by Samson.
An explosion of red paints the wall behind the teleporter a slick shade of cortex as he jerks back and then slouches down the wall before slumping to the side in a heap. Samson turns, throwing a hand out of the haze of smoke towards Veronica. As lightning builds between his fingers, he relinquishes the telekinetic grasp on Amid, sending an arcing bolt of lightning square into Sawyer's chest, launching her off of her feet and into a wall. Where telekinesis failed, the lightning seemed to — unusually – work.
Samson changes his focus, turning his back on Amid in favor of Veronica's lightning-wracked and now prone form, smoking from direct electrical contact to her now burned and blistered flesh and clothing. "You made a very poor choice in— " One of Samson's brows arches quickly, realization of something tickling the back of his mind where Archie Rasmussen's danger sense lives on.
Shattering like an ashen sculpture, Samson breaks apart into a choking cloud of smoke and rolls to the side away from Veronica and then upwards through the drop ceiling with a telekinetic fling of tiles aside into now exposed ventilation piping. Moving fully in his smoke form, control over air is relinquished, letting the negation gas flow like yellowish fluid from the broken yolk of an egg, forming a low lying ground fog of cloying gas.
It isn't Amid that Samson is fleeing from, but rather what Calvin can see stirring in the other room. Legs move, a groan waveringly emits from where Rene was laid out by a fire-extinguisher. Fleeting consciousness isn't enough to focus on his job, but as Rene starts to get back up into a semblance of motion, there is enough happening for Samson to realize when he's lost.
The radioactive glow spreading from Amid's hands begins to fade, dying down to reveal skin horribly burned by his own ability. Blisters swell on his palms and knuckles, on his face where his skin was exposed to the nuclear heat. The Engineer slouches down in his seat, murmuring in Farsi to himself, hands shaking but otherwise making no attempt to move.
That he's crying is perhaps from the pain.
Odessa drops down to the ground and scoots away from the released cloud of negation gas as quickly as she can manage, throwing her hand out to halt it with much the same look as what Samson had done, though an entirely different method.
«Agent Sawyer is down!» Odessa cries, hoping the comms work again now that Amid's ability has diminished. «I have Halebi contained.»
A whole lot of stimuli assaults Dante's hypertuned senses, getting knocked against by the tumbling man before he manages to get his feet. "What th—" The gunshots make him wince and shake his head. "Ow." he says, running down the hallway, gun towards the floor. Throwing himself through the doorway, Dante executes a perfect tuck and roll, coming up with flawless form and gun raised.
…to a finished scene. Amid is cooling down, Rene is staggering about, and smoke is swirling up through tiles in the ceiling that slowly clatter to the floor. With a click of a hammer being let down, Dante shoulders his hand gun and looks around in brief confusion. "Did I miss everything?"
But there's a Sawyer to attend to, and Dante holsters his firearm, putting a hand to his ear as he looks over to Veronica, eyes widening. "Christ Almighty…" «Goodman, come in! We need first aid in here.»
First aid? «Does anyone have a visual on Gray?» Valid question, based on gunfire, lightning flashes and the reduced amount of screaming.
Content not to go into the area where he was last seen, Calvin flicks an irritated look sideways after his disarmed but as-of-yet unarrested captive before skirting sideways across the hall from that room to the one with Rene in it. A miniature flashlight is produced from somewhere in his jacket, bulb flicked light across the taller man's eyes once he's helped hoist him all the way up onto his feet. If he smells suspiciously like Odessa's brand of girly soap, that's probably not the kind of thing a concussed straight man is going to pay heavy amounts've attention to, right?
"You remember your name?"
Crumpled in a heap against the wall she was thrown into, it isn't until moments after Samson has disappeared that Veronica is able to finally take in a ragged sob of air, that her jolted lungs and heart manage to function again. Dark lashes flutter as she tries to rise up, but slumps back in pain and lack of limb-control for the time being.
Poor choices indeed. It's one thing she excels at, lately.
Assaulted by the scent of Calvin's lady-hands, Rene offers a puzzled look in confusion as his eyes open slowly. Any attempts at righting himself stops as he slouches back down onto the floor on his side, blood running dark from a split on his forehead and another on the bridge of his nose where he was struck by the fire extinguisher. "Rr… " he slurs confused words. "Rene," is offered uncertainly, followed by a look up to Calvin, then more confidently. "Rene."
Batting his eyes open and closed, the Haitian looks as baffled as a man with severe head trauma would, discombobulated and unaware of his surroundings. "Wher's Angela?" He asks in an undertone, "A'need… " his brows furrow, eyes track from side to side then move up to Calvin again.
Oh. Hi there. Welcome back to now, Rene.
Meanwhile, when Dante called for Goodman to come in he likely means in a broadcasting fashion. Up on the deck of the ship, there's a bright flash of violet colored light and a rush of air, followed by an audible snap preceding the noise of footfalls thumping on the deck. Coming down the stairs, Goodman lays a hand on Olivia's shoulder. Leaning in, he speaks in a hushed tone to her, then begins treading down the stairs, his button-down black wool jacket making his silhouette stark against the dim light spilling in from the end of the hall.
"Where is she?" Goodman asks in a hustle, eliciting a point from Roland to the galley before she disappears up the stairs. The Coast Guard patrol boat's first-aid kit is carried in one hand in severe under-anticipation of just how badly Veronica is injured; only just barely better than nothing. Goodman pauses at the doorway that Rene and Calvin are in, briefly assessing the situation before continuing onward, barging into the galley before hesitating on seeing a cloud of gas clinging to the floor, frozen in time.
Goodman's eyes grow wider when he spots Veronica's prone form laying on the floor, and he's quick to move to her side, slower in crouching as he sets down the first-aid kit on the floor. "I'm having Roland radio back to the Coast Guard to close in now that we have the situation secure." Dark eyes angle over to Halebi who — while Odessa said she had him contained looks more to have just given up. Seeing the grievous burns on Halebi's hands and the bereaved look on the man's face, Goodman looks around the galley again, to the body struck by the gunshot, then finally depresses his earpiece. «No sign of Gray. We have an all clear, someone needs to restrain Halebi.»
"On it, boss." Once Odessa's caught her breath, and collected her thoughts, she climbs to her feet and approaches their target. "Amid Halebi, you are under arrest for acts of terrorism." And probably treason or some other shit. She's not a cop and this is her first arrest. She'll let the people of higher pay grades handle the important details of exact charges and Miranda warnings (if such things are even applicable in this state of martial law, suspension of habeas corpus, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera).
It's easy to handcuff someone when you can just suspend them in time and manoeuvre them as needed. Though it isn't necessarily for the sake of ease that Odessa uses her ability to perform this arrest, but because she really doesn't want to hear Halebi screaming when she slaps cold metal around burned flesh.
One moment he's slumped against the wall, the next he's face down with his wrists cuffed behind his back. Handy. "He's got Adynomine in his system. Between that, Rene, and I, we should be able to transport him safely," Odessa murmurs. Then, she tips her head toward Veronica. "Gray hit her with lightning." After she plugged the teleporter can be left out of the report at this time.
Dante is reaching for his own handcuffs, turning to go for Halebi. And then he's down, with Odessa standing triumphantly over him. Blink. "…nice trick." Putting his gun away, Dante glances around…and goes to restrain the man in the hallway.
"The Coast Guard can help us finish cleaning up this mess. Though…" He glances up to the hole in the ceiling. "It looks like we didn't get all the bad guys."
"Wrong shady organization," corrected helpfully of Rene's stumbling concern, Calvin crouches down to pry one of his eyes a little wider open before reaching to take up his wrist. "Don't worry. I won't tell anyone."
Veronica's face is contorted with very physical pain, but when she turns her eyes to the corpse on the floor, she swallows hard. Her whiskey-brown eyes fill with tears for the briefest of moments before they look into Goodman's and then close again — to rest for now, to let her body be cared for. Tomorrow — she'll deal with the rest.
"A Retreiver Unit will be waiting for us on mainland Staten Island, we'll be taking Halebi to Miller Field for processing," Goodman explains looks over his shoulder to the Engineer, "from there he'll be taken into Institute custody. As for Gray, I'll forward word of his appearance to Agent Hanson at the Department of Homeland Security, I'm sure she'll be thrilled to know that he's still on the loose…" Looking down to Veronica, Goodman exhales a breathy sigh and slowly begins to rise up to stand.
"Homeland Security will want the rest of these men that are still alive detained and questioned if they're not SLC-positive. Those that are will be processed along with Halebi at Miller Field and moved to a secure location." Veronica knows exactly what that means, she'd seen it happen to a ten year old boy once.
The Coffins.
Adrift on the Atlantic, savaged by a predator come hunting for their abilities, Amid Halebi has not shared a word with his rescuers come captors. For good reason as well. But what lies in Amid Halebi's silence or his Farsi murmuring is more than the story of a Mazdak extremist come to create a nuclear explosion in the continental United States.
The processing at Miller Field will give rise to a different wrinkle in this investigation.
Provided the agents involved are able to see the man behind the power.
Or care on doing so.