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| Scene Title | Things Could Be Worse |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | While investigating Jennifer Chesterfield's murder, Agents Sawyer and Webb are joined by an unlikely pairing after a tip from Jenn's daughter leads them directly to a confrontation with Skoll and an unexpected second. |
| Date | February 28, 2010 |
Leadership skills are learned, not earned. It's something that most people in positions of power eventually come to understand, that any number of years behind a desk does not always equate to a single year of experience in the field. Perhaps this, in a way, is Martin Crowley's singular largest failing as a Company agent, he has spent all of his many years in the Company behind a desk; or more precicely behind other people's desks. It lends itself to a certain sense of invulnerability and infallibility, when he has never had to make that difficult call, or that single bad mistake, the kinds hed investigated himself for years on end. When the shoe is on the other foot, it doesn't quite fit as well as imagined.
The black sedan that pulls up outside of Fort Greene apartments in Brooklyn is the ultimate product of that exacerbated analogy of shoes and feet, or skills learned and earned. It had been sixteen minutes since agent Veronica Sawyer arrived outside of this apartment building, twenty-two minutes since she placed the call in to her superiors asking for advisement in the Skoll case.
The tall, lanky and dark-skinned man stepping out of the back of that sedan is Martin Crowley's glaring over-reaction to a problem. The Haitian has always been, if anything, the Company's ace in the hole. He is a silent, glowering presence of antipathy to the Evolved, a failsafe against even the most dangerous of abilities. But he, like any utility is only as good as the hand wielding it.
Albert Paulson is not the most skilled hand to be reaching in that drawer. When the curly-haired and darkly-dressed telekinetic steps out of the driver's seat of the car, folding a cell phone closed against his chest, he's nodding to the Haitian to stay back while he takes point. A telekinetic is only as good as his ability, and with the awkward juxtapositioning of Paulson and the Haitian, Crowley's choice of emergency backup for Veronica could have been more aptly chosen.
"Sawyer." Scowling against the cold, Agent Paulson's furrowed brows and the black scarf wound around his face do little to hide the look of irritation on his face as he steps up onto the curb and to where Sawyer has been waiting on the front stoop of the building, like any other casual bystander. "This information of yours had better be accurate, I don't appreciate getting dragged all the way out here."
Breath visible through the fabric of his scarf, Paulson casts a dark-eyed look towards the far taller gentleman behind him, before angling a look over to Veronica. "I take it you know Rene?"
Not quite the dream team, unless by dream, you mean Nightmare — for the two men extricating themselves from the Company vehicle have both played parts in Veronica's nightmares the past several months: Rene simply because of Veronica's growing phobia of being mindwiped, and Paulson for more personal reasons. The stoic mask slips a touch as she blinks, clearly surprised that Paulson has been sent to partner with her — even on a temporary basis. Was no one else available? The jarhead? The old man? Anyone?
"If he's not there, it's because he's left," she says, her husky voice curt. "Chesterfield wouldn't bother sending me on a wild goose chase, and her information is usually good." Her dark eyes flicker from Paulson — how can this man who killed her father be so small, her male mirror? He should be looming, broad and tall, indomitable to have killed Doctor Sawyer. The disconnect makes her shake her head — to Rene. "Hello, Rene." Yes, she knows him. She's used him in the past, once or twice, and they've had a good enough working relationship, even if she's afraid of him. "What's the plan?"
"Plan is we go in there and shoot Skoll and anything else within ten feet until they stop moving." Paulson rather explicitely states, removing his Company issue side-arm from within his jacket, along with a badge folio for the Department of Homeland Security. "No questions asked, we just kick down the door and start shooting. This guy," Paulson's head jerks back towards the Haitian's looming frame, "blankets the whole place with a negation field and shuts everyone down. We send in a clean up team afterward, box everything up for Ageny Bailey to take a look at later."
The Haitian arches one brow, looking from Paulson to Sawyer and back again, but remains silent. "You have a problem with that you can wait out here on the curb, but I can't promise I won't miss your little terrorist friend in there." Paulson's jab comes with a crooked smile as he moves up the steps to the front door of the lobby. He was kidding right?
"Do not shoot at anything and everyone. If Ruskin's being held hostage or something, use your super special power for something useful and get Kozlow away from her or any other hostages," Veronica says, her voice low and angry. No wonder her father was killed, with that sort of mentality. She glances over at Rene, to see if he's with her, a tacit request for the Haitian to use some common sense. "If the whole point was just to shoot everyone up, why send you two of all people? Shoot Skoll on sight, but not at the cost of any human life that's in the apartment. It'd be different if he was an illusionist, but I don't think any of the remaining Vanguard are." She strides after, clearly not planning on staying on the curb, and to help minimize the damage he does inside.
Paulson comes to a stop at the front door, turning around with brows furrowed and eyes narrowed. "It was a joke, Sawyer." There's a click of the dark-haired agent's tongue as he pushes the door open into the lobby, "don't they have jokes where you're from?" The snorted sarcasm comes with a shake of Paulson's head as he tucks his gun back into his jacket and withdraws a single shot taser pistol from his hip holster. "Standard procedure bag and tag…" he says with a roll of his eyes, "Rene blocks abilities, we drop subdue and apprehend."
Moving into the lobby of Fort Greene apartments, Rene takes up the rear silently, his brows furrowed and dark eyes scanning the stairs that ascend from the lobby up several floors. "I mean honestly," Paulson continues on his way to the stairwell, "what do you take me for some kind of lunatic." He hesitates, standing on that bottom step as he looks over his shoulder to Veronica with a crooked smile, before hustling up the stairs.
Rene, from behind, lays a hand on Veronica's shoulder and shakes his head slowly, then urges her forward with a subtle nod.
The younger agent's eyes narrow as he claims to be joking. Jokes like that don't work without a body of work that helps to provide an element of ethos, which in Sawyer's opinion Paulson lacks — of course, she can't access most of his work, as most of his files are classified to her. When he asks if she thinks he's a lunatic, she gives a shake of her head. "Don't ask questions you won't like the answers to, Paulson," she murmurs, casting a glance back at Rene as he offers his silent commiseration.
Out comes her tranquilizer gun in one hand and then her sidearm in the other. She juts her chin up the stairwell. "Lead on." She'll pitch a fit to Sabra or someone tomorrow but for now there's a psychopath murderer to be captured.
Unfortunately for Veronica, it isn't Paulson.
The smile spread ear to ear on Agent Paulson's face is a self-satisfied one. Why, despite all honest history to the contrary, the agent holds some grudge against Veronica is beyond rational explanation. His hard-edged attitude to her on what truly amounts to their first real meeting seems almost like some sort of defense mechamism keeping him from feeling remorse for what he did to her father — or perhaps he's just a callous prick. It might be easier for Veronica if the latter were true.
Taking the stairs turns out to be a long and arduous task, but the Haitian's slow — and long-legged — pace at the back of the team seems to emphasize just how long of a winding trek they're taking, when his brisk and steady pace matches Veronica and Paulson's frantic hustle. Taser gun out and badge in the other hand, Paulson is the first to crest the fifth floor landing, with Sawyer's approach behind him just a single heartbeat slower, and the Haitian's almost tortoise-like approach somehow managing to keep up with them despite the more fluid and slower gait. However, they aren't the only ones to be waiting on this fifth floor hall. After all, Martin Crowley assigned two agents to Skoll's investigation.
Tasers in your hand may be quite continental, but brassjacket rounds are an agent's best friend. There's a figure just creeping on to that landing, and Henry has an actual pistol with him. Not a tranq gun or a taser. He's got a gleam of anticipation in his face, like this is going to be the best surprised party -ever-. There's a gesture from him, signalling his readiness, but no words.
The grin from Paulson is enough for Veronica to harness her anger and begin to channel it into the task at hand. She raises a brow at the FNG standing up at the top of the stairs with that earnest look on his open face. She nods to the door. "Someone prove their manliness and kick in the door," she whispered, her husky voice nothing more than a breath, due to the proximity to the suspect. She pulls back the hammer of her weapon, ready to shoot Skoll on sight.
As the Haitian's tall form moves to stand at the back of the group, Paulson looks over to Henry, one brow arched and a look fired off to Veronica. Good call his arches brow seem to indicate from the way he approvingly nods at keeping a guy on the door. When dark eyes settle on the Haitian, Paulson's recommended course of action comes rather quickly. When the negation field peels back briefly, like a curtain lifted from a window, Albert Paulson turns his head towards the door to Eileen's apartment, ad with a wave of his hand there is a low sonorous rumble followed by a shockwave of telekinetic force that slams against the wood door, shattering the wood frame and swinging the door on its hinges in to slam against the wall.
The moment the door is swinging open, the Haitian focuses that blanket negation field once more, rolling out from around him to swallow Paulson's telekinetic gift away like night swallows day. Paulson's next barked order comes as he trains his taser up and into the apartment. "Go."
As the Haitian's tall form moves to stand at the back of the group, Paulson looks over to Henry, one brow arched and a look fired off to Veronica. Good call his arches brow seem to indicate from the way he approvingly nods at keeping a guy on the door. When dark eyes settle on the Haitian, Paulson's recommended course of action comes rather quickly. When the negation field peels back briefly, like a curtain lifted from a window, Albert Paulson turns his head towards the door to Eileen's apartment, ad with a wave of his hand there is a low sonorous rumble followed by a shockwave of telekinetic force that slams against the wood door, shattering the wood frame and swinging the door on its hinges in to slam against the wall.
The moment the door is swinging open, the Haitian focuses that blanket negation field once more, rolling out from around him to swallow Paulson's telekinetic gift away like night swallows day. Paulson's next barked order comes as he trains his taser up and into the apartment. "Go."
Late morning light streams through the apartment's windows and illuminates a sprinkling of broken glass scattered across the kitchen and dining area floor with fine splinters of wood and withered lilac petals mixed in with the debris. Propped up against the wall is a corn broom with attached dustpan, suggesting that at some point someone attempted to sweep up the mess — if only to make it less of a hazard to cross the hardwood into the living room and bedroom beyond.
A pair of French doors painted black separate the bedroom from the rest of the space — a mere six hundred square feet altogether, including the bathroom — and have been left hanging wide open, providing the agents with a view of the rumpled bed itself, unoccupied but for a short stack of boxes pulled from the crawlspace, none of them labeled.
There is no sign of Skoll. Or anyone.
"Had to get flashy," Henry disapproves, though even his mutter remains good-humored. But since tall, dark, and silent there has levelled the playing field, he can rush through that forcibly opened door, pistol in a two-handed grip, and clear each room in turn. Old reflexes take over, here's hoping the other agents are behind him close enough to back. Otherwise, he may be the one jumping on the metaphorical grenade. …..or the literal.
"So manly," Veronica breathes, faux-impressed but mocking the telekinetic perhaps a bit stupidly since he could kill her with a glance. Eyes and weapon sweep the seemingly empty room, slowly following the eager Webb. Her brows are furrowed with irritation, knowing that she will be the one who gets blamed for their target's escape, though she was told to wait for the backup to arrive. "Be careful. Check closets, bathroom," she tells Webb, weapon following his movements to shoot at any bogeyman who jump out of the shadows.
"Stay outside." Paulson comments to the Haitian, pointing to the doorway, "Watch the stairs." Turning to enter the apartment, Agent Paulson maneuvers over to one of the street-view windows, looking out onto the snowy skyline of New York City. His dark eyes scan the apartment, motioning for Veronica to check the bedroom and for Henry to check the kitchen. As he passes through the open space of the dining room, Paulson creeps up on the bathroom.
"You're sure Chesterfield didn't screw you over?" Paulson pushes the bathroom door open with a free hand, peering in through the open space with a furrow of his brows. The bathroom is a small, cramped thing, with a stand up shower covered with a flimy curtain, a small sink crowded next to a toilet. Paulson's eyes flick up and down as he shakes his head, leaning back out into the dining room. "Anything?"
Small and cramped are two words that can be used to describe the apartment in general. Cold, too. Ruskin must have turned off the heat before she left because nothing emanates from the cast iron radiators affixed to the walls in the living room or its twin in the bedroom, which is positioned beneath another window looking out across the snow-choked cityscape and the Brooklyn Bridge spanning the East River.
There's a bird on the other side of the glass — a grotesque black thing with a bent back and eyes that glitter like pieces of polished obsidian set in its head. Utterly still, it watches the parade of agents as they spread out through the apartment and does not move except to breathe.
"Unless he can magically turn himself small enough to hide in a goddamn toilet tank, your chicken has flown the coop." No, Henry is actually saying that. He's returned to the main room, such as it is. And then he looks up. Hey. He might be in the ceiling, or something.
"I got an address on a text message. There was no smiley face to indicate it was a joke," the female agent says coolly. "I know as much as you do. I may not trust Chesterfield completely, but it doesn't really behoove her to send me to an empty apartment for kicks." The irritation is evident in Veronica's husky voice as she shakes her head. She moves gracefully, soundlessly but for the scrape and squeak of broken glass under her boots, to head into the bedroom as directed by the senior agent in the room. There, she checks the spot behind the door, then swiftly checks any closets, corners, under the bed — anywhere large enough to hide a man.
Whenever you misplace something, it's always the last place you think to look.
Unfortunately for Veronica Sawyer, she did not misplace a foot to the forehead, but that is exactly what she finds under the bed. In a matter of seconds, a confusing investigation turns into an all-out clusterfuck as a flash of black under the bed sends Veronica's head jerking away. Loping like a monkey out from under the bed, a darkly dressed Asian man comes springing towards the agent, snatching up her right wrist in one hand, wrenching her arm back and delivering a strike to her chest with the flat of his palm evacuating all the air from her lungs.
Twisting her wrist, there's a popsnap as it dislocates, and Veronica's pistol is deposited into the hands of none other than Feng Daiyu. Looping an arm around her neck, he wrenches her into a headlock while the dazed woman is reeling from the pain, swinging her around in front of himself just as Paulson is leveling up his taser. He hesitates for the barest of moments, only to have Veronica's pistol fired into his chest with two squarely fired rounds, sending Paulson falling backwards backwards into the bathroom and down hard on the tile floor.
Feng is quick to move, dropping the taser and reaching at his side to withdraw a small, thin knife from his belt, flashing it out and hurling it in Henry's direction before he sweeps his legs under Veronica, flips her down to the floor and cartwheels over her body, landing by the door where the Haitian stands with a pistol out.
Feng swiftly slams the door shut on the Haitian's gun hand, kicks it squarely closed, and then finds himself trapped between the window and Henry, where a knife sticks soundly in the wall beside the agent. <re>
Oh, hi. Look, we've both come to dance, and here I was sitting and thinking I'd have to be a wallflower all day. Henry -grins- at Feng, like he's a stripper that just popped out of a cake wearing nothing more than sugar and strategic glitter, rather than an obvious ninja assassin imported from a movie. His pistol was already in his hand, so he brings it up, firing from the hip at the newcomer. He's still grinning as he advances on him - the disconnect between cheerfully stupid expression and clearly murderous intent is possibly disconcerting. "You were waiting -just for me-," he says, sunnily.
If Paulson hadn't been wearing a vest, his spattered blood would be dribbling down the shower curtain and creating thin rivulets that gather on the bathtub's porcelain lip. A hand wrenches it open, creating a clamorous rattle of metal rungs, and a moment later the figure of Sasha Kozlow steps out and over the fallen agent with a glance down at the absence of holes oozing dark fluid from his chest before blue eyes flick across to where Veronica is sprawled out on the bedroom floor.
There's a gun in his hand, which he levels with Paulson's lower half rather than his head or his chest before squeezing off one suppressed shot into his left thigh, followed by another into his right.
There wasn't blood on the curtain before, but there is now.
The triple assault by Feng leaves Veronica stunned and gasping for breath — oxygen is the first matter of importance, then she tries to make sense of what's happening. Later it might be clear that Paulson missed the man in the bathroom, but right now, all she can do is reach with her less dexterous left hand for the tranq gun still in her holster; her right hand is useless to her, an awkward and nauseating angle to the rest of her arm. "Rene!" she calls, if he hasn't had the sense to come in when he heard the noise. The shout of her own voice makes her head swim as she tries to focus on the man who was their target, Skoll, leaving Feng to Henry.
Gunshots ring out in the apartment, muzzle flash and barrel report all in one. Feng's movements at Henry's drawn pistol are impossibly sharp, one sidestep before the gun fires, while a bullet rips through the dark fabric of his suit jacket under his right arm, a hair's breadth away from from an artery under that limb. He moves not to get away from the gunshots, but to move towards them. By the time Henry's firing off a second shot, Feng is up in the air, kicking off of a wall and over the hip-fired shot that proceeds to punch through the ajacent window, shattering glass and sending that black-feathered bird flapping away from the exploded glass and narrowly avoided bullet.
While in the leap, Feng swings one leg around, landing a kick across Henry's jaw, sending the agent stumbling back into the kitchen. Feng's landing ends in a crouch, where he picks up a broken leg from the kitchen table that had been swept up against the wall. The beveled piece of wood and the screws sticking out from one side become a makeshift bludgeon as Feng swings it to the side, smashing into Henry's hand and knocking his gun out of his grasp.
As quickly as the gun is knocked aside, Feng is dropping the club to reach out and slide a knife out of a butcher's block with a glint of the metal, backing Henry up into the corner of the kitchen with a refrigerator at his back and an old stack of magazines and newspapers on a stand at waist height by his side.
Magazine. It's not much of a weapon, but it's more than nothing. Enough to block or distract. It's abruptly rolled up into a fist-sized bludgeon. This is a bad beginning, oh yes. He's sidestepping the fridge door, though, snagging it open. Please, god, let there be something in there made of glass. Maybe Skoll is enough of a snob to drink Jones Soda, or something. Or else Henry will go to his death with a half-gallon of spoiled milk clutched in one hand, anda copy of National Geographic in the other. The knife makes him reluctant to grapple, so he lashes out with a foot, here, there, trying to knock the blade ouf ot Feng's grip.
Sasha's booted feet cause the floorboards to creak as he departs the bathroom, closing the door on Paulson behind him, and begins to make his way toward Veronica. He's not nearly as showy as Feng is; his movements, although precise, are slow and almost languid. Measured strides carry him closer, arm held up with the barrel of his weapon aimed at Veronica's chest. For whatever reason, he hasn't pulled the trigger yet.
It probably has something to do with the fact that he seems to enjoy taking his time.
Staring up at Sasha with a pleading look in dark eyes, as if to say, 'Look, I'll be a good girl,' Veronica drops the tranq gun she's fumbling with and lifts her hand to show it's empty — the other useless at the moment. She pushes herself back, to get some space between her and the approaching Russian, feet scrabbling on the floor until she reaches the wall, leaning up against it. There must be a way out of it — but her reeling brain can't find any tricks up her sleeves when there's a weapon aimed point blank at her chest.
Lunging over the top of the refrigerator door, Feng's knife flashes past Henry's cheek, leaving a shallow cut across the side of his face, only to be rewarded in return by a sharp kick to the hand that pins Feng's wrist against the island. When Henry withdraws a glass bottle of milk out from the refrigerator, brandishing it like a club, Feng snaps out with a punch, popping the glass and leaving shards slid into the skid at his knuckle. Milk sprays down over Eileen's hardwood floor, and with his hand still pinned to the counter by Henry's foot, Feng is forced to swing a leg forward, kicking the refrigerator door as hard as he can to knock Henry back against the sink.
The apartment door bursts open at that exact moment, followed by the loud pop of a taser being fired as the Haitian — complete with a bloodied mark across his forehead from the door kicked into him — comes storming into the apartment, fingers bruised from Feng's savage attack with the door. The taser darts miss Sasha, going wide over his shoulder, with one plunking into the wall near the bedroom door, but that crackle-snap-pop of the taser firing is enough to divert his attention away from Veronica for a moment.
Until a dish smashes into the side of the Haitian's head.
From the kitchen, with a cabinet open, Feng Daiyu's assault has moved onto kitchenwares. Having knocked Henry away for a moment, his search of Eileen's cupboards revealed earthenware plates, and one hurled like a frisbee smashes square into the side of the Haitian's head, knocking him off of his feet to crumple down onto the floor.
"We go." Feng is backpedaling out of the kitchen, searching the ground for one of the discarded guns. "We go now!"
The knife, the knifeblock. Henry's lunging out of the kitchen with his own butcher's blade in hand - with the cut on his cheek and that grin on his face, though now it's more of a fixed rictus, he looks like a refugee from some teen slasher flick. He's already hurled the remain glass shard, the ghost of that bottle, after Feng. But….then someone's threatening his partner, and it's Skoll himself he turns on, diverted. If only he had more arms.
Someone is going to be very disgruntled to find her apartment more of a mess than she left it.
Incidentally, a moment is all that Veronica needs. If Sasha had been about to pull the trigger, he's no longer thinking about it now. He can only process so many thoughts at once, and at the moment he's most concerned with how close those darts came to catching him in the back. "This begins and ends with Harrison," he snarls under his breath at Veronica in a wolf's hoarse growl, stepping away from her when he feels Henry's eyes on him.
Feng does not have to tell him twice. As he turns, his finger contracts around the trigger of his pistol once more and catches Veronica's partner square in the chest, throwing him back into the kitchen without inflicting any permanent damage unless he's unlucky enough to fall on his knife.
Sasha hopes that he is.
Harrison. Veronica's brows furrow and her lips part in confusion, but then he's turning to shoot at the gung-ho newbie and Veronica grabs the tranq gun she'd dropped at her side, giving it two quick finger pulses to shoot two darts at the Russian, one at what she thinks is center of his back, and one a little higher, aiming for his neck.
Feng Daiyu isn't a selfless man, he's a dangerous self-serving monster. While it seems uncharacteristic of him to throw himself into harm's way, the plunk of a dart into the small of his back as he body checks Sasha towards Eileen's window isn't out of some selfless desire to protect the man codenamed Skoll, it's out of a desire for Skoll to survive to pay up his end of their bargain.
When Feng collides with Sasha, he tackles the Russian into the window that Henry had already blown out the bottom pane of with gunfire. The pair smash through the wooden frame and out onto the fire escape outside. Tiny cuts and lacerations pock-mark Sasha's face from Feng having used him as a blunt instrument to break thw window, while Feng is slowly succumbing to the tiring effects of the tranquilizer dart buried beneath his left shoulder.
With Henry coming charging out of the kitchen with a cleaving knife in one hand, he's just in time to see the bathroom door fling open on its own. Breathing in panting breaths, dragging himself forward on his stomach, Agent Paulson is drooling a trail of blood behind himself, dust on the floor unsettled from the telekinetic field rumbling around him now that the Haitian has been knocked unconscious.
"Sawyer!" Paulson groans out through clenched teeth. Maybe he wants to ask Veronica to call for backup, or perhaps an ambulance as he is bleeding everywhere profusely. The Haitian is slouched against one wall, a line of blood truckling from his temple where the earthenware plate smashed into the side of his head.
Out on the fire escape, Skoll's movements are more pronounced sounding than Feng's.
Oh, goddammit. Everyone else in this comedy of errors is down, in one form or another. And… fuck. They get to go, without crazy Henry lurching after them. Paulson's in need of help, and reluctantly, Henry turns to tend to him, dropping down to apply pressure to those wounds with his bare hands.
With a single hop, though less gracefully than she ever practiced it in her martial arts courses, Veronica is on her feet, wobbling for a moment. She tucks the tranq gun under her injured arm for a moment to grab her cell phone, punching in first 9-1-1 and giving the address and scenario in terse words, followed by a call to the Company to call in back up and descriptions of the two fleeing suspects and their locale. The phone put away, she bends to grab Paulson's gun, heading to the fire escape to look for the two, try to get a shot off if she can — as if that's going to happen in this FUBAR SNAFU and whatever other acronym can be used to describe Veronica's personal hell.
Well, Paulson's bleeding. Things could be worse. "That could have gone better," she mutters, moving over to Rene, holstering Paulson's gun and reaching for a kitchen towel. Crouching down beside him, her useless arm resting on the opposite thigh, she holds the towel to the Haitian's head. "Paramedics are coming," she tells the unconscious man, glancing over to Paulson and Henry. "Next time I'm fucking going alone. I couldn't have done worse."
"Yes, you could've," Henry says, with maddening calm, even as he holds pressure on Paulson's wound. "If you'd come alone, you'd be dead." Oh, Henry. So reassuring. No wonder all the women flock around him.
"I would have checked the shower," Veronica points out, none too worried about hurting Paulson's feelings even as he may lay dying. Assured that Haitian is not going to die from loss of blood, she drops the towel, reholsters her tranq gun as well, then pulls out her cell phone again, scrolling through its numbers and selects one. "Feng and Skoll. Looks like they're looking for blood on Harrison next. Get the word out. We didn't catch them. Sorry." The words, laconic and weary.