The Full Story

Participants:

cat_icon.gif elvis_icon.gif

Scene Title The Full Story
Synopsis A Brian-sent assassin finds Cat.
Date February 5, 2009

Village Renaissance Building, Fourth Floor Safehouse


Ringring-ringring-ringring

Seven p. m. on a Thursday evening, and her phone rings. A disposable type she gave the number of for use by Phoenix people to contact her as she works to locate those not yet accounted for. Cat's at home then, being off the streets to avoid getting locked up for violating curfew. She picks it up from a table and answers. "Cat," she begins. "Speak to me."

It's a public phone in the back of an old biker bar, you can hear the crowd and bad rock music in the backround. "It's Elvis, I need to see you." Her voice sounded scratchy, and it wasn't just the connection. "Are you free?"

"Not right now," Cat answers. There's relief in her voice, and perhaps the sound of fingers typing at a computer keyboard coming through her end of the phone. "Curfew started in the city an hour ago, it isn't safe to be out. Good to hear from you, Elvis. Now I can take you off the missing persons list." A pause follows, while she thinks. "I don't know if you heard, Teo said we should go to ground for the next six days. Do you need a safe place to bed down?"

"I have some information, I don't want to trade it over the phone." She pauses as glass breaks in the background. "I can get to you, don't worry about that, Cat. Just tell me where I'm going, remember what it is you people keep me around for. Curfews aint no problem."

"Greenwich Village," Cat replies. "Number 14 East 4th Street. Call me before you enter the building, and go to the first elevator to the left of the security desk. The doors will be open when you get there, or soon after. Get in, and you'll be brought to me. Cool?" The typing sound stops.

"Ye-"and a pause as she turns away to cough, wet and hoarse. "Ugh, yeah I'll be there in an hour. Thanks Cat, see you when I get there."-click-. Elvis steps back with a waver, suddenly flush for a moment. Then it's out, pressing through the crowd. She'll pause outside, working on a cigarette or two to keep herself on her boots. Then on goes the helmet, and she mounts her Triumph. She'll take her time, but shit this is a street triple R so it's not like she really has to hustle to keep her time. Sure enough, almost exactly fifty minutes later in comes a text to the same phone: Outside now.

When Elvis sends the text, Cat takes the elevator to the first floor as she said she would, and either as or just after the woman arrives, the doors open to reveal her standing there with the control panel open, ready to push the button for the fourth floor. "Welcome back, Elvis," she greets calmly. "This won't take long."

Elvis takes her time, bootheels clicking audibly as she slips over to the Elevator. Helmet hung in her off hand, she was pale and sickly. Like she'd lost way too much weight way too fast, her face was one big bruise from her chin to her right ear. "Hey Cat."she almost growls softly, pausing to swallow dryly. "Can I smoke in here?"

"I can deal," Cat replies, on the issue of smoking, "once we get to the fourth floor." It doesn't take long, the doors close, the car moves, and a short time later they reopen on that floor. She steps out, looking curious about the info.

Elvis unzips her jacket with a sigh, producing a cigarette and that old HRC lighter for a steady flame. Then as soon as she tucks it away she produces something else, A Colt mustang with a stubby silencer already mounted. "Brian tells me you're a turncoat. He told me I should make you pay, and suffer and everything else. Tell you what though, Cat, Brian is a know-nothing peice of shit. So rather than shoot you on sight, and just figure the rest out later I think I want to hear your side of the story. I don't mean to threaten, but there's no polite way to tell you I've come here to kill you and I do respect you enough to be honest." From the woman who looked like she'd struggle to weigh triple digits if she was soaking wet, but shit how much did she really have left?

The elevator doors close as they step out onto the fourth floor and Cat turns back to see the silenced weapon aimed at her. Her back straightens, her head is held high, and she eyes the woman squarely. "Isn't that interesting? Brian hates me, he'll take any opportunity to drag me through the mud. Anyway, I've nothing to hide."

"I'll start at the beginning. We crossed the river by motorboat and got to Jersey City, the warehouses. We find the Jersey cops already there, flashing lights all over the place. One cop tells me they spotted someone they thought was a terrorist going in, and one of them investigated. He hit a tripwire, and soon they're shooting it out, cops versus Vanguard, with a sniper whose gun sounded like a tank cannon taking potshots. One of the rounds went right through a Brian, just missed my head, and took out part of the wall." She pauses there, watching to see if Elvis is following.

Elvis she wavers, widening her step just a touch. Her gaze is glassy, but she's clearly paying attention. "A simple yes or no would suffice Cat, you don't need to give me the blow by blow. I dont reckon your stupid enough to try and lie to me, when I'm this fucked up. I dont know you well enough to know if you're a turncoat or not, but I do know you're not stupid."

"It doesn't make sense if you don't hear the full story, Elvis," Cat continues. She doesn't seem the least bit afraid of the weapon. There's no trembling, no begging, just telling the tale in a calm voice without flinching away. "We eventually found our target, in the third building. It was in between the cops and the Vanguard, at risk of getting hit by one side or both, so Al used his power to yank it out to him. Just then the building blew up, all three of us got thrown across the street and Al dropped the box. Homeland Satan landed about that time, and my legs wouldn't move right. No visible injury, no sign of a tranq dart, nothing. I crawled to the target, my legs got better the closer I got, and I set the thing on fire with the thermite grenade. Then I looked back to see the agents with boots on the ground, Al and Brian both down, and knew if I tried to help them I'd not be able to move. That effect would return, and there'd be three taken instead of two, so I bailed."

There's a dull nod, as Elvis lifts the pistol to slip it back into a shoulder holster."He's such a worthless fucking bastard, isn't he?" She yawns back against the wall of the elevator car, before producing a folded up scrap of map. "This is where I hid everything, there's twenty Mac-11s, silencers, ammunition, and the dies to make more of them. I have some of the dies to mass produce Mustangs too, but they arent finished yet. It's hidden in the black van, it won't be too hard to find. You have like six more days, before they'll come and tow it. The other drop bike and Roger are somewhere safe, with another biker. I destroyed everything else that could tip anyone off to what I was doing." She cocks a little smile, lifting that cigarette to pull hard a few times. "That's everything Cat, I'm sorry I don't have anything else."

"You want me to work up some kind of better hiding place for the gear, Elvis?" Cat replies. "I wouldn't say he's worthless, no. But his heckling annoys." She doesn't say it, but she does entertain some ideas of what she might do or say the next day when they have the big meeting and she comes across Brian or Brians there. And there's more speculation. Elvis was on the Eagle Electric team, she doesn't have any data from that location…

"How'd the mission go on your end, Elvis?" she asks, as she studies the map. Cat doesn't need to take it and refer back to it ever. She's seen it, and that's enough.

"Bad, the Brians ruined everything. Both died, the Fed died. There was a huge dude, I don't know how the mortar got cooked." Elvis pauses a moment longer, swaying again as she works at her cigarette. "Truck went, I followed. I'd fought this dude, big fucker and been runnin around all night so I was already pretty fucked up. I got the call out, before the fucker pitched me off the bridge." She finally puts a hand to the wall to steady herself, looking back to Cat as she tucks the map away. "I almost drowned, I felt like I was lit on fire. I've never turned on so hard, I swam to I don't know where. Then I called a friend, and he came but there was another gunfight and then I was alone. I spent two days in a boat yard, before I could get a hold of anyone. Brian came, told me you were a traitor. Told me I should come here and ghost you, and then I ended up here." She lifts a glove, coughing wetly for a moment before wincing. "Have you seen Abby? I'm pretty fucked up, Cat."

"I saw Abby a week ago," Cat replies, "started looking for people to figure out who and what we have, who's missing, dead, captured. Conrad's gone," she relates, her tone going somber. "He pulled the ConEd plant in on top of him to stop the virus getting out. Helena took care of the truck, she found infected people in it and torched the thing with lightning to sterilize it, and now she's in prison. That thing I told you about, that made my legs numb? Homeland Satan had it on the bridge too. She just went down and stayed down, Abby said the numbness got her too, it made her fall into the Hudson River. There were a bunch of people who went over. Sergei got hit by bridge cables Kazimir broke. But… Kazimir's gone. Abby purified the earth of him."

She pulls the phone out to make a call, bringing up Abby's mumber. "You don't know how the virus got cooked at Eagle Electric, but you believe it did? And the big guy you fought, what did he look like? Is he still alive?"

And she presses the button to call Abby.

"I killed him, bout as well as I ever killed anyone. He's dead, and I saw the thermite sparks coming from the mortar as I went after the truck. "She slumps back. "Fuck, every friend I got in this fucking club is either in the locker or fucking dead."Elvis grumps, slumping back as she grows perhaps even more flush. "God damnit, not fucking Conrad."She closes her eyes, rolling her head slowly too and fro. "We really fucked this shit up, didnt we."

"No one said it would be easy," Cat replies quietly. "Missions have risks, and this was a big one. We're a smaller force, we took on a larger one, and beat them. Now we need to figure out how we get our people out of prison. Tomorrow, that's Friday, we're having a meeting to start working it all out." She listens for the other end to pick up.

"We did everything ass backwards, we did everything wrong and now are paying for listening to a fucking math nerd." Elvis frowns, as truly she can. "We couldn't just teleport in five hundred pound bombs. This is what happens, when civilians try to play war." Apparently, Elvis isn't a civilian.

She doesn't argue with Elvis, Cat at that moment hears the other end pick up and speaks into it. "Abby, it's Cat. Call me when you hear this, I've got someone needing your help." Then she ends the call. "Voicemail. She's probably working or something." Nothing to worry about. "Do you need a place to crash, Elvis?"

Elvis just nods"Yeah, if you don't mind. I think I fucked myself up really good." She smiles around her cigarette at least. "Thanks Cat, I owe you after this. I'll move out as soon as I can walk to my bike, and if you need anything fixed in the mean time I can take care of you. Fair nuff?"

"No need," Cat replies, pulling out a keycard and moving to open one of the doors, the unit marked 403. "This is a safehouse, after all." She stands aside to let the woman go in. "What this floor is for."

And indeed in Elvis goes, peering about curiously in search of a couch. "I know, I just hate free loading. Just, tell Abby its important when you get a hold of her for me." She shrugs out've her jacket, as she makes her way towards said spied couch. "I sorta think I might be dying, like literally."

"Do you need stitches and such, Elvis?" Cat can send for Ben if need be, and tend some things herself. The unit has basic furniture and appliances, one bedroom, bathroom, the same basics as a standard furnished middle income NYC apartment.

Elvis head shakes softly, before slowly sinking back into the cushions. "I'm starving to death, ever since the night I haven't been able to keep anything down and I burned up everything. I'm hungry, but I can't eat. The doc I talked to said he thought I had cancer, so I don't know what the fuck's going on. I got a flu, I'm coughing up blood, it hurts to swallow, I got at least a couple broken ribs from that big fucker I fought. I've had this migraine, and it hurts to eat anything but cigarettes." She forces a smile, looking up to Cat as she lights another. "You want fries with that?"

She waves dismissively. "It was a outlaw doctor, so don't take what he said to heart. He's just making some shit up I'm sure, if it was cancer it wouldn't have come on so fast. It was a few days ago, I dunno my mind isnt all there right now yaknow? You cool if I just sorta, faint right now?"

"Sleep well, Elvis," Cat replies, as she watches for a bit until the woman is asleep.

Elvis is out like the proverbial light, the moment her eyes shut she's gone away to Neverland.

There's a bed with sheets in the bedroom, Elvis may find this when she wakes up. She'll also have a blanket over her, but she'll still be clothed and armed. Cat's not about to try taking anything, lest she wake up and come out fighting in the belief she's under assault. Then she slips out.


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February 5th: Would You Kindly Get In The Van?
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February 5th: Supplies
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