Participants:
| Scene Title | Impact |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Messiah comes into direct conflict with FRONTLINE when a CDC vaccine shipment is raided. |
| Date | April 20, 2010 |
The snow stopped falling hours ago, but much of the southern halfof Staten Island is still buried under fifteen feet of drifting snow. Much of the island's southern half resembles a white sand desert, with rolling dunes of glittering ice-crusted snow spread out as far as the eye can see in every direction. Sometimes these drifts where they sink down are broken up by the roofs of buried houses, ice-rimmed chimneys sticking up like buried monuments of some long forgotten civilization consumed by the snow and ice.
Only on the southern most tip of the island are roads regularly plowed. Massive earth-moving construction equipment has hauled snow up and away from a single artery that cuts from the bridge crossing the Arthur Kill river into New Jersey all the way into Staten Island's reclaimed zone. Snow banks on the sides of this barely two-lane street reach to nearly twenty feet in height. It's these cliff-like piles of frozen solid snow that serve as the perfect places for the ambush that lies in wait.
» Rebel: T-Minutes 10 Minutes till arrival.
The text-message pops up across Claire Bennet's cell phone, an alert that the CDC vaccine shipment to the reclaimed zone is almost here. The members of Messiah gathered up on this snowy cliff overlooking the highway are exposed to the freezing winds and terribly frigid temperatures, though two of their own are less affected by the cold, for different reasons.
Claire's regeneration affords her a certain resistance to the wintry chill and a numbness to the pain frostbite would normally afflict on her. The man currently crouches down on the snowbank in a black wool overcoat, face wrapped in a red scarf, however, is only just now beginning to no longer feel the effects of that chill as his skin begins to shift color. Knox had said the Tin Man would be joining Messiah for this raid, but it is hard to imagine that the man who was President of the United States of America and had the title robbed from him would be a member of this revolutionary order.
Sliding down the frozen slope as his weathered and old skin begins to darken to a steel-colored hue, ex-President Allen Rickham's body converts to a form of living steel the moment his feet his the pavement. There's an audible crack of the icy street under his feet, fingerless gloved hands curling into fists as he moves to stand in the middle of the east-bound lane, then takes a crouch and rests his fingers down on the ground, bending onto one knee like a sprinter waiting to begin running.
The plan is simple enough. Rickham disables the van, Huruma controls the security with emotional manipulation, while Claire and Ash kill any resistance.
Ash lurks up ont he cliff with the rest of the team. Needless to say Rickham's presence most definitley surprised Ash, though shock was not part of it all. Shock is a rare emotion for him after some of what he's seen and done, though doubtless others on the teem are more inured to it. For this mission he's wearing a variation on his old tactical suit. A white body glove with white netting on his back adn his hips serves to hold his weapons of choice today. His combat knife is at his hip as always, and a pair of .45's sit a little closer to his back. Across his back itself is a pair of sheathed kukri's. Tangled in the netting are a few random objects. A smoke grenade, a flare, some nylon rope, all of it covered in teh webbing so it doesn't show.
And his face is covered by a full mask with a pair of goggles over the eyes. He watches Rickham move and nods his head a bit, slipping up towards the edge of the cliff, hanging back just enough that his head doesn't stick out, still allowing him to blend with his ssurroundings. "Fucking cold." he mutters quietly, though with the no doubt utter lack of noise out here, it's probably quite audible to ther est of the team.
White, Gray, muted shadows- that is the route of everyone's clothing, it seems- except for those red scarves wrapped around necks and arms. Huruma is in similar gear to what Ash has on, though she is two-toned with a twilight gray. The red of her scarf is pulled up over her nose and mouth, a pair of translucent winter goggles pressed intently to the small circles of a pair of binoculars. They must be night or thermal or something- because she has really made no verbal contact with anyone so far, save to say that she was going to find a place to perch and wait. And so she did.
Huruma watches Allen through her second pair of eyes as he readies himself down below where she is currently tucked away, waiting. There are various weapons on her, but the main deal seems to be the military grade M-16 ready on her back.
Eyes follow Rickham quietly, fingers tighten around the cellphone she's holding, the tightness in her stomach, that she always feels about now, sinking in. A shot gun slung on her shoulder, hand guns at her waist, plenty of ammo stashed into various pockets. Claire's dressed in almost all black clothing, some body armor over that, a black long coat her only real protection from the cold. Her red bandana is tied around her neck, but she opted to go without the goggles, unlike others.
"I don't know, Ash… Seems alright to me." Claire says softly, angling a small smirk his way, eyes slightly hooded. "By the way… how was the hangover." She teases, brows lifting, before glancing back to watch Rickham in the distance, brows furrowing.
Less than a mile away on route 440, the delivery van headed down the snowy highway rumbles across the broken pavement patched with ice and snow. The driver and his passenger converse quietly up front, while interior refriegeration coolers hum loudly, creating a background noise that buffers two seperate conversations. Seated on a narrow bench facing the opposite side of the van, FRONTLINE Squad-01 commander Michael Spalding looks antsy, the constant whirr-click-whirr-click of the hydralics in his suit's legs accompany a jittery bouncing of one foot. Missing his helmet and the left arm of his Horizon Armor from the encounter at the Lighthouse, the soldier himself seems less worse for wear, with only healing cuts and scraped across one side of his face.
"So, you ever been on a Coast Guard ship before?" Michael offers to the woman seated across from him in the back of the van. "Crawford's pretty excited that we get to do some maneuvers with the Coast Guard, she's been looking to get out on the water again. I'm just glad I get to have some time with you Squad-Two newbies. There's— " Michael cracks a smile, lopsided as it is, "always a bright side to everything, right?"
Far ahead, the highway is open and desolate, yellow headlights tracking across the expanse of white beyond interspersed with half buried lamp posts that have no electricity going to them.
Rachel grins faintly back at Michael as she sits there, before she shakes her head, "No, I can't say I've had the pleasure of being on a ship. Most of my time was spent on the beach." The former Marine is seems to be relaxed, while she sits there, but the hand that is close to her gun seems to betray the fact that she isn't quite as relaxed as she may appear to be. Her eyes looking out the windows for a moment or two before adding, "And I wouldn't go so far to say that we're newbies, after all, we did pass Sarisa's little illusion test with flying colours. Having a teleporter on the team can be a rather handy feature." She winks while she looks around the van, "Tell you what, when we get back, first round is on me."
Ash has his own red scarf tied abotu his calf, where it is plenty visible to his team mates, but not to those who are going to be ambushed. His eyes cast around the high way, ready, though he doesn't pull any of his weapons yet. At the moment, they're protected form the snow and ice, once they're pulled, they won't have his body heat to keep metal from icing over and locking up in the gun, or from spoiling the edge on his weapons. He glances Huruma's way, watching her as she perches, then looks about a bit more, watching Rickham, until Claire speaks up. He turns his head, his goggled eyed facing her, then turns his head back, grumbling stuff about indestructible girls, and women not feeling the cold, and a few other random tangents he feels like grumbling about. The question of a hangover? Earns her a raised middle finger, though his shoulders shake and soft chuckling can be heard from him.
His head snaps up though at the sound of approaching vehicles, all sense of joviality from him is gone, there's work to be done now. He reaches to his side pulling out his binoculars and lifts them up, aiming down range at the vehicles approaching once the headlights become visible. He pulls in a deep breath, then lets it out, a puff of mist escaping his mask. His binoculars are put back in their case, which is left off to the side so they don't' get damaged. it's then that he pulls his guns, his .45's covered in masking tape to hide the black metal, carefully applied though so it doesn't catch on any of the moving parts. He creeps a bit closer to the edge, and there he sits and waits.
Huruma's binoculars lift after another few moments of silence, tilting off into the direction of the oncoming roadway. She can see the lights coming, and that is all she needs to know before hoisting herself over the freezing cliff and sliding about halfway down; she comes to a stop somewhere along the expanse of snow, jagged and making more than enough cover for her to carve holes with the toes of her boots to wait like an overgrown albino bat, camouflaged against the frigid cliff face.
The finger she receives from Ash gets a soft chuckle from the regenerator as well. There is a flash of teeth as she grins, and says around her chuckle, "Duly noted." Claire shakes her head with amusement.
The sight of headlights, the rumble of engines echoing off the snow, Claire tucks her cellphone into the pocket of her pants. "Looks about like show time." The shotgun is grabbed at her side and checked a final time, making sure she's ready to go. A hand reaches up, fingers hooking into her red scarf and tugging it up on her face, not that it matters much anymore. She's a fugitive.
Wearing black, makes her a target, which is how it works. It's her job. Can you hear the Regenerator bunny banging those drum? Or as long as she stays out of the gas.
"Deal. Sanderson'll probably want to get in on that too, I know she hates being on boats after those military maneuvers you and her were on, whatever that all was about." Glancing ahead towards the front of the truck, Michael squints when he sees the drivers conversing about something and feel the truck slowing down. "Hey, guys? What's the hold up?" Michael asks, leaning forward and coming to walk between the refrigerator units to leans into the front seat, his dark eyes growing wide as he notices someone running down the middle of the highway. "What the f— "
As soon as the heatlights hit him, Allen Rickham breaks into a sprint. Each footstep sounds like the pounding of a drum, thousands of pounds of solid iron barreling forward and gaining momentum as he moves. A trail of blood red snaps in the air behind him from one end of his tattered scarf, and the iron colossus of a man barrels headlong into the glow of the oncoming van. Rickham balls up a fist, winds back and as the delivery van comes crashing towards him there is an //explosion of steel and glass as the metal-mimic plows his fist into the van's engine block through the front grate.
The windshield explodes with a shower of white glass, the hood buckles inward and tires rear up off of the ground as the punch stops the van dead in its tracks. Rickham's other hand comes up when the vehicle stops, punching the underside of the van and gripping his fingers around the underside of the engine before ripping a large portion of the vehicle's undercarraige off, wires hoses and pierces of torn metal clatter to the ground as a body comes careening forward out of the van's blown out windshield.
Not belted in like the drivers, Michael Spalding is launched head first out of the van from the arrested momentum, arms over his face and black-armored body gliding through the air like Superman before gravity pulls him down to the street and he impacts with a puff of snow, rolling and bouncing along the ground with occasional scrapes of metal.
That fall would have killed most men, but michael Spalding has earned a reputation for being invincible in the media. In his roll and tumble, Michael eventually rights himself and slides back across the ground on one knee, a hand braced fingertips down on the ice, one held out beside himself for balance, forehead split and blood running down the side of his face.
Rachel blinks as she sees the man running, and the fact that he isn't going to stop. "Oh… this can't be good," Micheal will probably hear her say, right before she twists to the side to get her hand more firmly on her gun, and her other hand on the bandolier of grenades that is hanging next to her. Moments before Rickham slams into the vehicle, there is a flash of white light inside the van. About twenty feet behind Rickham, there is a complementary flash as Rachel lands on her feet in the snow and ice of the Highway. The marine doesn't even take a moment to think before her gun is shouldered and is firing a few bursts at the Rickman, before she begins to head towards Micheal's direction.
"Grabbed the grenades before I left," she yells to her commanding officer as she slungs them over her shoulder, "Don't think anyone survived that," she adds, hunkering down to present a smaller target to anyone else that may be there. Her eyes beginning to look around, searching for any other threats.
Ash closes his eyes, breathing dep and rapid, bleeding all tension from his body, and clearing his mind. Then his eyes snap open and he looks out over the high way before he shifts to swing over the cliff edge, planting his boots hard into the side of it to give himself something to hang on to, but he keeps himself pressed tight to the wall so as not to look out of place, just a big lump of white on white. Eyes go over towards Claire in her big black outfit, a wince crossing his features beneath his mask, then turns his attention back to what's at hand. His head turns just enough that he can see the vehicles approaching from his peripheral vision.
He watches as Rickham takes off, barreling down the road towards the van, hears his pounding footsteps. And, just as Rickham plows into the vehicle Ash drops form his perch, sliding down the cliff face and coming down onto his feet. His knees flex to absorb the impact, but he's not moving yet. Eyes watching Spalding fly through the air, a crease of amusement touching his features behind his mask. He's waiting though. Claire is the distraction for a reason, they need to know what they're dealing with, and she can't be killed. So there he sits, crouched down and waiting. Rachel's flash of teleportation is noticed, but not reacted to yet. Ash waiting for the moment to strike like the predator he has become.
The black outline of Huruma's M-16 against her clothing and the snow face is really the only hint that she is initially there, in the peripherals of the action. Her gun is at the ready, but she is not firing and otherwise staying quite still, tensed to dodge should she be fired at. Step one, Rickham, step two, observe aftereffect. Step three-
-let them have it. Her eyes dart about for Rachel, but spotting a teleporter is not her immediate concern, and so her eyes behind the goggles fall onto Michael Spalding. The first hint that something is wrong is the sudden wave of blissfulness that comes over him, tingling warm down his skin.
It quickly moves from a piano-sized serenity, into a sudden wash of despair, jerking him from either extreme roughly so.
"And here we go." The words murmured as she watches the scene below a hand goes to Ash's shoulder. "Two… so far. Work around behind them. I'll draw fire." His shoulder gets a squeeze before Claire moves away from Ash along the ridge, crouched down to stay out of line of sight until she's ready to take a shot. This was going to be tricky, she has to keep moving to avoid the grenades they are known to carry.
Once in place, she hunkers down shotgun ready. Taking a deep breath, Claire lets it out slowly feeling the calm fall over her. There is a twitch of her shoulder as she waits patiently, she doesn't want to jump the gun just yet. Fingers tighten about the pistol grip of her modified shotgun.
"Nnh— aah!" Clutching at his head, Michael doesn't rise from his one knee, black gloved fingers pressing into his short-cropped hair. The massive up and down emotional swing has Michael's head swimming, and the FRONTLINE soldier coupled with Rachel Mills is absolutely nothing like what the team had prepared for, but thankfully with their combined skills there's nothing they shouldn't be able to handle in an ambush. "Mills! Ggg— go!" Michael reaches down at his side, pulling out his sidearm and lifting the matte black pistol up, brown eyes wide and sweeping across the snow blindly, booted feet scraping on the side as he tries to train his sights on something, but the awkward kilter of bliss to dread has his mind — and heart — racing.
Looking over his shoulder to Rachel when she appears in a flash of light, Rickham's metal brows furrow with a scraping sound, hematite-black eyes glowering at her before he draws his arm out of the engine black, sleeve shredded and glove torn to pieces, but only tiny nicks and scrapes shinning silvery on his pitted metal body.
Oil spurts out of the engine, mixing with gasoline in the air and slicking Rickham's arm as he turns his attention to the two men in the drivers and passenger's seat, the white powder of exploded air bags filling the cabin. Rickham continues to move, storming around along side the truck for the back, to secure what they'd come here for. Ash and Claire can handle the rest.
Michael's not thinking straight, but the whining crackle-hiss coming from both his and Rachel's radios is indicative of transmission blockage, Rebel's assistance to the team scrambling any attempt of sending advances warning of the raid electronically. "Mills! Mills where are they!?" Michael shouts, backing up to try and settle shaky vision on something around him.
"I don't know, Sir," comes the rather calm response from Rachel. The woman's several tours in the Middle East have gotten her fairly used to being in situations where she doesn't know whats going on. Not completely. "However, there is a metal guy currently tearing up our van, if you want to fire in that direction," Rachel gives him a bit of a hint, before pausing a moment and then adding the obligatory, "Sir."
Looking around, Rachel spots the black form of Claire rising over the ridge, and says, "There's also one over there, Sir. Be right back," Rachel says, a little eerily calm, but no doubt that Micheal is used to it but now as Rachel grabs a grenade from her bandoleer, and pops the pin, pausing a second to let it prime before she teleports towards Claire, disappearing in a flash of white before reappearing in the same flash and dropping the grenade. She pauses for a moment to say, "Merry Christmas," before she flashes and is buy Spalding once again. "Come on, I've got an idea," she yells to him, as she grabs him and teleports him to another place, hopefully breaking Huruma's hold on him for a moment or three. Or perhaps not.
Ash watches everything happening, his eyes flickering over everyone involved. He watches as Rickham moving for the back of the vehicle, and nods his head before he looks to the Frontline team members. His voice, deep and solid, rings out through the air. "We're hear for the vaccine! Not your lives! Stand down and we'll let you live!" Once he's called it out he sprints away from his location. Those are trained soldiers, and they'll be able to find him by location, but a moving target is more difficult to hit. He sprints for the front of the truck, his feet carrying him as fast as any olympic runner could move. He's got a single gun out in his right hand, knife in his left.
At the vehicle he stabs the air bag to deflate it, his knife sheathed in a fluid motion before that hand grabs the door, and he rips it open, not off it's hinges or anything, but open, trusting on his proximity to the drivers to avoid being shot at. out one of the drivers, hauling him out onto the pavement, and putting a gun to the back of his head, a khukri in his other hand that is held to the man's throat, that way if the teleporter hits him from behind she'll have a rough time of avoiding the man's death. "Stand down!" He barks out to the soldier's. The fact that he's taken the man like he has should show his desire for this to be handled peaceably, or well… as peaceably as possible with what's happened already. "Vaccine belongs to everyone, and we're here to make sure that happens." His voice rings out over the highway, loud, projected.
Sometimes, the damage can be done and stay that way- it is all up to whether or not Michael is willing to fight it wholly- or whether it has already made him so submissive that it has conquered his moods. With Huruma behind it, one can never truly tell until they get the target away from her for long enough. When he disappears with Rachel, Huruma snarls to herself and steps down onto the slope of the snow, skating over the hard face and down to the icy asphalt, where she takes off like a jet for the shelter of the truck. This is why she hates teleporters.
When she sees the woman teleport, Claire is on her feet in time for Rachel to pop up beside her, dropping the canister and gone again. It doesn't even take a glance for Claire to throw herself forward even as the gas bursts out of the canister. Feet sinking deep into the slope of snow as she tries to get away from the gas, skidding down it to put distance between her and the sickly yellow gas she knows so well.
But Claire can feel a slight tingling on her skin, this is a very bad thing if she isn't imaging it. It doesn't slow her down though, she continues down the slop, though with more care so she doesn't snap an ankle cause if she got enough of a dose, she's screwed. The shotgun is brought up and she starts looking for targets, ready to open fire. Now the black isn't such a good thing, but nothing can be done about that. If this is finally her moment… so be it. There is surprising amount for acceptance.
When she sees the woman teleport, Claire is on her feet in time for Rachel to pop up beside her, dropping a grenade and gone again. It doesn't even take a glance for Claire to throw herself forward even as the grenade explodes, she can't take the chance it's something else.
As shrapnel tears through her, making her jerk forward and she starts to tumble down the rest of the way of the embankment, bones snapping, red splashed across white, til she hits a flat surface heavily. And she lays still, looking all the world dead.
Reorientated after Rachel's flash of teleportation, Michael feels his senses coming back to himself as he trains the sights of his sidearm down on Ash, only to see the mercensary grab a passenger out of the van. Dark brows furrow, one of Michael's eyes blink shut as blood runs down into it. There's a tense moment where the soldier starts unwinding his fingers from around the grip of his pistol, only to have a thunderous explosion of a grenade behind him change everything.
It's not so much the explosion but the shockwave that has Michael screaming, "No!" But his roar is drowned out by the sound of crashing snow as those twenty foot high cliffs of snow and ice on either side of the road suddenly become disturbed by the blast. Michael turns back to Ash, about to squeeze off a round from his gun before his legs are swept out from under him by an avalanche of snow.
Gun lost into the air, Michael is toppled onto his back, arms covering his face as a landslide of snow covers him entirely and those walls of snow begin collapsing outwards from the grenade explosion, a torrent of white powder blasting up into the air, slamming into both sides of the truck and blinding vision.
In the back of the van, Rickham is rocked onto one knee, snow having filled half of the back of the van, burying him up to his knees. There's a patch of snow somewhere, smeared red, where Claire Bennet's regenerating form is buried.
As soon as Rachel heard the sound of the avalanche her eyes went wide. Oops. Regardless, as the snow begins to collapse around everyone, Rachel blinks in her customary white light, before she reappears on top of the snow, free from the clutches of the ice as she looks around her gun at read as she begins to walk towards the van, "Get away from the van, or I will shoot," she shouts to whoever may be in there and occupied, eyes searching for the civilians, since their state really does dictate her next moves.
Ash sees Spalding holding his gun, and beginning to unwind his fingers from it, and where most would relax, Ash does not, he keeps solid and tense, waiting for the man to put his gun down and fully stand down type deal. Then the thunder of the grenade goes off, and despite himself a snarl rips from his throat. His arms tense, the blade of the khukri biting just at ouch into the hostage's neck, not slicing anything more than the top few layers of skin, but still causing a little line of read to show on his throat. Then the rolling thunder of the avalanche comes, and Ash blinks. He watches Spalding go down, but Ash himself is already in motion, turning and diving for the driver's seat of the truck.
Ash leaves the driver there to be buried in the snow, and instead slips into the spot between the wrenched open door and the truck, saving himself from being completely buried in the white avalanche. Once it's over he slips up into the truck onto the driver's seat. He hears Rachel's call and he shakes his head, his own gun already out and pressed against the passenger's skull. "Put the gun down or you will be responsible for the death of an innocent man. As I already said, we're here for the vaccine, not your lives. Now stand down!" The last line is shouted, the sound no longer echoing, but still loud enough to cut across the open air. He calls into the back of the truck. "Got it?" This to Rickham obviously.
Huruma would be swept off of her feet if she had been one second slower. She is attempting to find a hand to the back doors of the truck when it comes rumbling down and inwards. The woman yowls when it hits the truck and seeps in, as she is perched already precariously in the space ahead of Allen. She says something that sounds like a curse that floats to the iron man's ears, but turns herself around to peer readily out of the back of the truck, rifle at the ready.
Rachel. Without a moment of pause, Huruma's eyes find the young woman and assault her with a bomb of terror, Rachel being enveloped cap-a-pie in fear.
Those that know Claire know that isn't isn't truly down, but for everyone else…. she's as good as dead. This gives her an edge of surprise.
As Rachel shouts her threat, the smear of red a bit behind her bows up, like a bubble of air under the snow. Suddenly there is a spray of blood darkened snow, Claire Bennet pops out. Blood streaking her features, coat and clothing shredded. Her red bandana has falling from her face to hang around her neck again, so anyone beyond will see her. Even as bits of red rain down around her, there is the familiar cha-chak of the shotgun, followed by the roar of it firing, pain will tear at the woman's legs.
Then Claire is on the run getting out of the way.
The refrigerator doors are locked, but of course this just means the sound of snapping hinges and crashing in the back of the truck means progress is happening. Pulling out a plastic cooler from the refrigerator unit, Rickham nods his head, "Got it," he states flatly in a hollow, metallic voice. Hematite eyes, however, settle on something else inside of the freezer. While Ash is distracted with Rachel outside of the van, Rickham is relieving the refrigerator of a metal tray containing four vials of what looks like ink, though Huruma is in plain sight to see him grabbing something that wasn't on the rest of their shopping lists. Plucking the cylinders out one by one, he deposits them into interior pocket of his jacket, then drops the tray with a clatter on the ground.
"We're good." Alan bellows, turning to look at Huruma, nodding his head. "Let's get out of here."
As Huruma's fear runs over Rachel, she shivers and hesitates. That hesitation providing all the time that Claire might need for her to pop up from the snow behind her and shoot her leg. There's a burst of red as Rachel's leg is sent forward from the blast of the shotgun, knocking the Frontline Officer down to the ground…
… where she lands on hard tile, groaning as she finds herself bleeding on the floor of a close Starbucks. "Fuck," the ex-marine almost yells as she twitches on the ground. Getting to a sitting position, she realizes the interference on the radio is gone and she quickly scoops it up. "This Officer Rachel Mills, requesting backup and rescue for the transportation. We were ambushed and there was an avalanche, over," she says into the radio, before adding, "I'm about a mile away wounded in a closed Starbucks, if I could get some medical help sent my way…" She sighs, and then leans forward, looking at her leg and muttering, "Well… could have been worse…"
Ash nods his head, and grabs hold of the passenger of the van. He hauls him back through the back of the van towards the rest of the party that seems to have made their way back there, but for Claire. "Lets go shot gun girl!" He shouts to her, but the gun is held to the man's head as he climbs out of the back of the van with everyone else, climbing up the bank of snow at the back and onto the surface of it.
"I still have a hostage!" He shouts to the two Frontline people outside. "I have no desire to kill him, but if you continue to attack us he will die." But then… Rachel is gone. So Ash just turns and shoves the man back down towards the van before he moves across the snow to see if Claire needs any help. She can regenerate, but she was freaking blown up. He'll offer her an arm if she needs it.
Even with her eyes and face largely covered, the inquisitive, raptorine tilt of her head is unmistakable when Huruma catches the last pair of black vials being tucked away. She pauses there, peering at the metal man for what seems like a long and very awkward few minutes- but it is only a few seconds in reality. Saw what you did there, mister Rickham.
Her eyes narrow behind the goggles, and one hand finds a new grip on her gun to swing it around to cover the other, bare side of the van. Now, now, where was that other one? While Rickham maneuvers a getaway, she watches for signs of Spalding.
Once she hears Rickham's bellow, Claire slows to a stop, taking a moment to rip at the straps on one side of her vest, so fingers can hook under the edge of her shirt and lift it up far enough to show the white of a rib sticking out, something that probably happened in the fall. Ash gets a front seat view of her pushing the rib back in with her fingers, as she moves towards him. The oozing wound is closing even as the shirt is dropped. "Lets go."
Obviously, she has no need for the arm as she starts to jog towards Huruma and Rickham, shotgun ready to shoot at any resistance.
Rickham's black eyes meet Huruma's for the barest of moments, and Huruma can feel Michael Spalding's mind buried beneath the avalanche of snow, still alive with the driver. The passenger hasn't moved at all hands raised eyes wide and — quite likely — seat wet. He says absolutely nothing as the group passes by the van, and Rickham is handing out the cooler to Ash once he catches up. Not changing back from his iron form, the ex-President reaches down to pull out his cell phone carefully, the plastic dimpling from the strength of his touch. There's a furrow of his brows, then a nod of his head as he turns to look towards the others.
"Rebel says wherever Mills is she placed a distress call out. You all head up into the snowfield, I'll follow the highway and stay out of sight." Since there's no way he's going up onto the snow weighing as much as he does.
"Knox is going to meet back up with you at Shooters in the Rookery for the package." Rickham instructs, looking over his shoulder towards the blood stain where Claire had been blown up by a goddamned grenade then back to the brunette. Rickham just gives a single, affirmed nod before turning to trudge off into the snow in the opposite direction of the others; Mission accomplished.
Ash actually stands there, open-mouthed for a good few seconds, seconds that could get him killed if telo-bitch comes back to haunt them, as Claire pushes the rib back into her body. Of course, his face is hidden by the mask, so no one can really see his mouth, but he stands there all the same. But then he shakes it off, shaking his head as well, and begins to march towards the rest of the group. Hands pat over his equipment, before a soft curse is heard for his lost binoculars. They were left on the ridge and are now God knows where in the mess of snow. He grumbles as runs to catch up with the others, moving swiftly over the snow to fall in with the rest of the Messiah group. He takes the cooler that Rickham passes his way, hoisting it up onto his shoulder to carry it along with ease.
"That was the fucking president right?" He asks the rest of the group once Rickham starts to walk away.