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| Scene Title | Special Interest |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Noriko is captured by the Institute, apparently as a subject of particular interest. |
| Date | April 10, 2010 |
Solstice Apartments
Noriko's apartment.
Noriko slips back into her apartment, coughing heavily while she unlocks the door a rag that used to be white held up to her lips. The cloth stained a rather shocking shade of crimson. She lets out a faint whimper, feeling her sense of the water around her flickering wildly unable to get control of it at all as she stumbles in through her door. Today was one of those days where the last bit of it was nothing but a haze, her cough not getting better since she started coughing up blood the other day. She heads almost immediately for the nest of blankets that she had made.
The snow has been relentless of late, coming down in gentle, lacey curtains that, upon reaching the earth all too quickly become daunting dunes of icy powder. The apartment buidling, at least, is heated, and offers temporary respite, badly needed considering the state of Noriko's lungs.
Temporary respite only, though. It's chilly in Noriko's apartment, much colder than it ought to be. Maybe her heat was accidentally turned off? That seems crazy, considering the weather. Her pipes will freeze! But as settles into her blanket pile, she can feel the heat from the nearby floor-level air vent brushing against her nest, so she knows the heat is on. This is when Noriko notices a draught creeping into the room from the direction of the bedroom, or at least the room that would be a bedroom if there were a bed to justify it as so. A source, then, of the unexpected cold. The cause, however, remains uncertain.
Noriko blinks as she shivers in her nest of blankets, and she looks past to the open window, coughing as she gets herself up and out of the blankets reluctantly. Soaked feet pad over to the window as she reaches up to shut it, keeping warmth in her apartment more paramount then wondering about opened windows. Once the window is closed, she turns around and moves towards the light switch to flick it on.
The switch toggles up, and light floods the room, immediately bringing to light one very simple fact: Noriko is not alone.
A voice, mediated through the crackle of radio static barks: «Contact!»
A man in what looks like a full biohazard suit, complete with filtration mask and tinted face shield, kneels in the corner of the room, before just a shade in deeper shadow. He has been waiting for her, and he has an automatic weapon trained on her. His expression, every last feature, is invisible. He makes just one motion, the pulling of his trigger.
At once, a burst of three rubber bullets pound into Noriko's frame, the first hitting her in the stomach, driving the wind from her, the next, driven up by the recoil, strikes her solar plexus, contracting her ribcage in an amazingly painful way. The last finds the space right below her collar bone, just next to her right shoulder, causing a crisis in balance.
A second voice joins the first, from the bathroom behind Noriko, as another shape moves in her periphery. «Subduing.» A strong arm grips Noriko by the waist from behind, and its compliment rises up around her, bringing a pressurized gas canister with an affixed mask up towards her waiting mouth. Its hiss is matched by the hiss of the headset radio just behind her ear.
Noriko blinks as she sees the one man, her head tilting to the side a little before a soft scream rips from her throat as the wind is driven from her by the rubber bullets. Off-balance and dazed as the second man grabs her, there isn't really much of a fight for the hydrokinetic. Her powers failing her when she needs them the most from the sickness that is wracking through her small frame. As the mask is raised up to her face she goes into another coughing fit while trying to draw air into her lungs, the clear plastic gaining spots of red as blood flecks in it, black creeping into her vision as she can't get in the breath that she needs.
The gas floods her already taxed lungs, fogging her mind and causing her vision to swim. It's hard to breath… much too hard.
«Easy,» the shooter says, getting to his feet and crossing over to where his companion holds Noriko, «She coughing blood. Easy!» His gloved hand shoots out to grip the can, thumb pressing the valve closed. The gas cuts out, but Noriko's already inhaled more than her body can handle. As she starts to lose feeling in her limbs, she hears the voices of her attackers, as if from the mouth of a dark well, far above, as she sinks from sight and sound.
«Confirmed - Allard, Candace. Hydrokenetic. Special interest.»
«She's secure. And she's sick.>
Noriko blinks as the gas is in her lungs and then her vision swims in and out while she sinks into the arms that have her around her. Her eyes rolling in her head as her vision finally goes black, she hears the voices but she can't quite comprehend them.