Participants:
| Scene Title | Lookout |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Ellinka thinks about the past while watching the world go about it's business through her scope. Hans shares in her silence, and in her company. |
| Date | December 17, 2008 |
Jersey City, Goldman Sachs Tower - Rooftop
The tallest building in Jersey City is exacelt where Ellinka Dolukhanov is best at home. Even before the bomb, the top thirteen floors of the Goldman Sachs Tower were unoccipied, leaving the windswept rooftop the ideal spot for isolationsists with a knack for bypassing security to hide out. But now that the majority of Jersey City has been left untended and evacuated in the wake of the bomb, it is even more of a monolithic memorial to what might have been.
Situated on her stomach, Ellinka lays flat out on the roof, her immense sniper rifle poised at the roof's edge, barrel extending between two iron posts of a safety railing to prevent people from easily leaping to their demise. One eye is pressed up against the scope, peering out across the Hudson River and into Lower Manhattan, at a distance measured in miles she is able to pick out people moving in windows of apartments, able to sit and forget about the cold that stings at her ears and nose, forget about the cold on her bare trigger finger, and become the voyeur her profession has made her.
But while most sought isolation here, and Ellinka has to a degree found it, she is by no means alone. Some ten feet behind her, Hans Kazakova sits on the edge of a defunct air filtration system that once would have expelled recycled air from within the skyscraper. Now it is a conveniently placed seat, allowing him to stare out over the railing to the lights of lower manhattan in the distance, and the blackened scar dividing it and upper manhattan. Even at night, the scar of midtown is visible in form of darkness where once city lights would shine.
Through her scope, Ellinka watches a young couple arguing through the slatted view of their open blinds. Hands gesturing wildly, shouting muted by great distance like some mockery of silent film. A coffee cup is thrown, and she watches it shatter on a wall emotionlessly. Her crosshairs move to follow the young man, waving one hand around, watching him strike the younger, smaller and thinner girl with the back of his hand, sending her to the floor.
Ellinka winces, muscles tensing, but she remains motionless. Her single open eye continues to stare thorugh the scope as she watches the young woman stagger to her feet, hands raised fearfully. The young man stalks away, circling like a frustrated animal before she says something. The words don't matter to Ellinka, and they likely don't matter to the young man either. She said something, and that's what makes him rush forward with a balled fist raised. He winds up, and punches her square in the mouth, sending her crashing back into the plasma television, causing the picture to wink out as it topples off of whatever it was sitting on.
One blue eye watches, crosshairs moving to the woman as she weakly gets back up to her feet. She covers her bloodied face, her swolen and split lip, and the young man steps forward to loom over her, grabbing her by the hair as his fingers intertwine with the wavy locks. He yanks her up to her knees, and winds up to punch again.
Strike three.
There's a bright muzzle flash as her finger squeezes the trigger. The sound of the massive sniper rifle firing causes Hans' eyes to snap wide. He watches Ellinka fluidly draw back the bolt action chamber, discharge the smoking shell and replace it with another large round before locking it closed again. She only needed the one bullet, it was enough to destroy the young man's upper body, and blow a three inch wide hole hole clear through four apartments and out the other side of the building through a window. Somewhere in midtown, the tungsten dart the gun fires is probably lodged a few feet into concrete.
Hans doesn't ask why she fired, he has no way of knowing on his own either. From his perspective, she fired blindly into the city, and from the perspective of the people in the city, a bullet came from nowhere and killed a man, and no one really knows why, only that it happened. Only Ellinka knows all of the different angles, of the why and the how.
Hans rises to his feet, tucking his hands into the pockets of his long gray jacket. He doesn't say a farewell to her as he turns to head for the stairwell, he knows he'll see her again, and he knows that she isn't going to explain herself, and that her actions won't endanger the group.
That's what it means to have faith. That not everything needs to be explained.
It's all a matter of perspective.
 December 17th: Popcorn |
Previously in this storyline… Next in this storyline… |
 December 17th: A Night In |