Participants:
| Scene Title | Sympatico |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Partners… in the truest sense of the word, so far. |
| Date | January 6, 2009 |
Elisabeth's Apartment
Today's the day that she and her new partner are going to literally hit the bricks. She invited him to her place for coffee and breakfast before they head out on the first day of actually being partners. When she opened the door to admit him to her apartment, she's dressed for work — a pair of dark brown slacks, lace-up brown shoes with decent treads on them, a peach-colored tailored blouse tucked in, and her blonde hair caught back from her face. A tan blazer lays on the back of a chair with her shoulder holster - empty - laying on top of it as they pass through the living room to her breakfast counter. She's already got breakfast going, it appears. Some muffins, blueberry, set out, and a pan and cut up veggies ready for the egg mixture on the counter. "Hope you like omelettes," she tells him with a grin over her shoulder. "Go ahead and leave your jacket on top of mine. Hope you wore good shoes today, I think we'll be pounding the pavement a bit." A police band scanner squawks quietly on the counter in the kitchen as she takes a place there and gestures him to one of the bar stools.
Darius is dressed very similarly to how he was the day before when they met. The shirt's changed to a crimson and is a mock turtleneck whose elastic nature does little to conceal his sculpted pectorals. He took off the trenchcoat and laid it over the chair to reveal his preferred holstering at his hip. In fact, its slung a little low. "Omelettes are fine." He notes with an approving eye on the veggies. "So I thought I'd start things off with a bombshell." Sitting on the stool, he leans forward a touch and puts his forearms on the counter. "I got a tip that someone wants to blow the bridges along the Hudson."
Liz was in the process of picking up the coffee pot to pour both of them a cup when he said that, and she turns and looks at him in alarm. "Excuse me?"
"Sorry.. I'm used to people wanting to blow things up." Darius gives her something of a wry expression and straightens. "One of my contacts on the street tells me that someone's angling to blow the bridges on the Hudson. Wouldn't say who, maybe they don't know. 'Soon', of course, is all relative from what they were saying. I wouldn't have a heart attack at 'now' but I'd conservatively give us a week or two.. maybe three. It wouldn't be an easy job."
Elisabeth pours the coffee and bites her lip. Welllll…. shit. As she pours, she asks, "Your contact give you any better information than that? Like any kind of lead on 'who'?" She moves to set the coffee in front of him, glancing at his face as she does, and then moves to toss the mushrooms and onions into the already-hot pan on the stove. She had everything prepared for when he arrived.
"Sadly no." Darius reaches out for the coffee and slides the cup back and forth between his fingertips. "But I doubt its an evolved group. There's just no motivation for it. The national guard have the lower levels locked down. The upper level would be too obvious to plant a decent sized bomb on. Not if you wanted to destroy the bridge. Seriously damage it, sure, but you'd have to be a bloody genius to know exactly where to put a satchel you could just drop and walk from. Unless they've got a water breather or a SEAL working for them and plan to take it out from below. That'd take some serious explosives, too. Our best bet? Start legworking property losses on explosives in the region. If we can get an idea of 'how much', I could plot you some likely scenarios."
Elisabeth tosses peppers in the pan and watches them sizzle while she listens. "Sounds like something we should do this morning. The legwork I was planning on is far less time-sensitive at this moment than *that*." She seems to be weighing something, but she doesn't bring it up at the moment. Instead, she asks while she cooks, "How much explosive would it *take* to take down those bridges? If it were going to be done, I mean." She glances at him again. "If you wanted to completely remove those routes and could work out the logistics of placing explosives… and it would have to be small charges, so something more powerful than just dynamite, right? How much of what would *you* use to do it?" She grins a little. "Bearing in mind that I know you're not a construction or demolitions expert… which might be a thought for us, contacting some of those guys to answer the questions."
Darius scratches the back of his neck. "Well… demo work was part of the training." His other hand brings the coffee to his lips while the scratcher goes back to resting on the table. "Unless you were going to drive a truck onto the bridge, last time I checked they weren't allowing those, you'd need something military grade and well placed. Someone who knows what they're doing. Someone.. like me." Awkward much? "Of course the whole thing would go alot easier if they had a plant in the national guard. Easy access to material, personnel, timetables.. if they do then we've got a serious problem. Hell, all they really need is an evolved who can control minds."
Closing her eyes for a long moment, Elisabeth keeps her back to her partner. Shit. She pours the egg mixture in, allowing it to sit properly for omelette making. She buys herself some time by sipping from her coffee cup while she does it, and then she looks at him. "So….. what if I tell you that I think you're wrong. That I think an Evolved group out there may in fact be behind it… and so far as my intel can come up with, they in fact do have mind readers."
Darius takes a deep breath, considering. "Look, I know there are evolved terrorist groups. You take out Pariah and someone else will take their place. The thing I'm looking at is motivation. What possible use could they have for blowing the bridges. Yeah, it'd screw with the infrastructure but the infrastructure is already fragile. They want destabilized government? In New York, they have it. Unless they want martial law instated here so they can have an excuse for open fighting. Which would be just stupid since the US military presently outnumbers Evolved by a significant figure if you start talking statistics."
Elisabeth nods slowly, and instead of answering, she finishes the omelettes. They dont' take all that long, after all. Once they're plated and the stove's off, she sets one in front of Darius and one at her own seat and then comes around the counter with her coffee in hand to sit in the other stool. "Well… you're welcome to call me a crazy to believe them if you want. But I have a meeting coming up with a contact, one Will's demanded to meet. I can't prove it, but I know he knows people in one of the organizations. A bunch of info got passed my way not too long ago, and he says that they've heard the same rumors. To blow the bridges. If it's the case, well… maybe they have some other kind of attack in mind. Maybe blowing the bridges is a prelude to something else — if the island is cut off, it'd make a hell of a petri dish for a bioweapon, for example. Or just a hell of a statement if you could put another nuke somewhere in town and kill a large portion of the population instead of just a small section of it."
"Why bother with the bridges if you're going to nuke the island?" Darius shakes his head. "And.. if its a bioweapon.. then it won't be waterbourne or airborne.. an island won't stop those at the distance of a broken bridge. But.. that is a frightening thought." The omelette is briefly forgotten as he thinks. "Of course.. what if this bioweapon was being dropped on long island and this blowing the bridges thing was a reactionary to contain it as a backup to actually thwarting the exposure?" He takes fork to omelette and sighs. "I hate conspiracy theories."
Elisabeth goes very still and then breathes, "Oh *shit*." And they'd do it too. Her eyes go very wide. Well… that answers the 'why would someone DO that' question. Liz has to force herself back to the topic at hand, and she looks at Darius. "You mind if I ask about your source for this whole bridge thing? Cuz… gotta tell you, they're sounding pretty similar to the sources I've got out there." She grins a bit. "And that's likely to make Will even MORE cranky than he was before."
"Fuck the captain." Darius proclaims as he eats omelette. "As for sources.. lets keep those quiet for now, hmm? You don't know how far you can trust me and I don't know how far I can trust you. So lets just keep our info in the open and discuss. Like for instance, you keep going real quiet when I toss conjecture out there so I know you know more than you're letting on. I don't want to know who told you. All I want to do is stop this thing. So first question. Do you think that the bombers are in on the bioweapon or against the bioweapon people?"
Elisabeth smiles a little bit. "Clearly I need to work on my poker face." She toys with her omelette while they talk, grateful that he's not pushing too hard. She would LIKE to trust him — the instant liking she took to him makes it easy for her. But she knows better in this world. For all she knows, he's a plant to check out her loyalties or something. "I think you just tossed me a possibility that hadn't occured to me. I've heard rumors from my sources about a major biological attack coming from one of the terrorist groups — I'm reasonably sure I know which group my own sources are aligned with, and thus far their actions have not given me cause to run anyone in on suspicion of involvement." She glances at him. "Everything they've given me so far has been passed up the chain, and it also went to HomeSec." She pauses. "You do know the 'gas main' a couple weeks ago was an assassination attempt on Rickham, right?" Although it's been kept out of the news — testament to the power of some people — the boys in blue at our own precinct, at least, know about it because several of our own were shot.
"I know whitewash when I see it." Darius notes blandly as he works on breakfast. "Alright, since we're in brainstorming mode, how's this for a theory. The bioweapon is engineered to remove the evolved genome and is a government experiment. The terrorists don't have anyone placed high enough to stop it so they're going to blow the bridges to contain it and draw some media attention on the thing in order to topple the existing regime and keep themselves alive at the same time."
Elisabeth purses her lips and looks thoughtful about that. "Not an unrealistic possibility," she concedes slowly. "The other possibility is similar, but plays on the suggestion you made a few minutes ago — what if the terrorist group, well funded and highly placed, has decided that a bioweapon to take out the Evolved genome is useful to them because they've managed to work out a vaccine of some kind, so that only the people they WANT to keep their abilities get to. And what if the bridge blowing is, in fact, the US government attempting to contain that biohazard to just the city in the hopes that it won't kill everyone it comes into contact with." She considers. "Although… hell, with the anti-Evolved sentiment out there, I'm not even sure they'd want to stop it. They might only take that move if this proposed bioweapon was somehow a hazard to the *entire* population. Maybe it mutates and attacks normals?"
"Alright, flipping it over, the group in question wants to wipe out all of the normal population." Darius concedes equally. "Why do it on the island where it can be contained and not on the mainland? Unless they're behind the bombing of the bridges and they want the island to be an example to the government if it doesn't heed demands. Which.. seems a bit off to me. If you're willing to commit genocide, why bother bargaining with the government you want offed?"
Elisabeth nods slowly. And she forces a smile for him. "Seems to me we have three viable options here. And the only thing I can really tell you about the intel I have that makes it our problem as well as HomeSec's is that it almost certainly involves at least one Evolved group. If it doesn't, it's not even our jurisdiction." She considers, taking a bite of the veggie omelette in front of her. "I think your idea of looking for explosives purchases is a good one, in lieu of any better information to work from. If any of our sources come up with something more, something better, we can make other moves, but…. right now? It's damn nebulous, and not something we can exactly do much with. As much as that sucks. Knowing something's coming and not knowing from which direction or any details is incredibly frustrating."
"You think?" Darius slides the empty plate away from himself and sips the coffee again. "Thanks for breakfast. Tomorrow, my treat." He muses a moment. "Alright. So.. I'll make a call to NCIS and the local Army goons. Give them the heads up in case HomeSec is playing this tight to their chest. I know a guy down in Quantico that might be able to help, too. While we wait for that.. we start pestering construction and demo companies. They may not be keen on fessing up losses though since it might mean their license."
Elisabeth laughs softly. "Well, 'less than cooperative' doesn't usually happen around me, you know. The whole influence 'em to tell the truth takes on all new meaning when your voice has hypnotic properties." She looks amused, but also thoughtful. She's never had the opportunity to really use it to interrogate people before. "You know… I wasn't a detective, so the two of us could be somewhat at a disadvantage here. A hostage negotiation is a bit different than pounding the ground for clues. Though I'm finding that in spite of the frustration, I like it." She shrugs easily and finishes her own meal. "Wanna make your calls from here while I make a list of the places we need to start visiting? There aren't THAT many companies in this town specializing in demolitions. We'll start with them before working on the construction companies — there are a lot more of those."
"Sounds good to me." No time like the present, Darius gets up from the stool and unclips his phone from his belt. "Hey, what's detective work but asking questions. We seem to have that bit covered." He gives a grin as he surfs through his contact list and places a call.
 January 6th: The Woods are Lovely, Dark, and Deep |
 January 6th: Pounding the Bricks |