Participants:
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BJ NPC'd by Raquelle
| Scene Title | Where It Hurts |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Humanis First finally finds sufficient motivation for Felix to start spilling his guts. |
| Date | September 9, 2009 |
Natural light filters in pure white through the barred window of neighboring cells, deceptively cheerful in its play off concrete walls cracked and worn a smooth, uniform grey above a waist-high band of neutral blue. The floors are clean, for the most part - large drain grates worked into cement flooring every so often likely responsible for that. The cell entrances are barred over as well, chained and padlocked where the original mechanism is chewed over thick with rust. The hallway outside looks exactly like the interior, smooth and lifeless and flat, stretching on for God only knows how long before the next locked door looms out of cold sunlight to cut off any hope of escape.
It's been a quiet couple've nights around the jail. No screaming. Very little crying. No gunfire.
Combat boots tread regularly through the hall buffered up against occupied cells, marking every fifteen minutes with all the chilly precision to be expected of an operation overseen by Emile Danko. A stationary guard is invisible just beyond the bars crossing black over the doorway of Felix's cell. His presence is marked only by the occasional muffle of a throat being cleared or brief snippets of fresh orders being exchanged during shift changes. Nothing very interesting, really.
It's dark out there now, and dark in here too; a string of electric lights running off an unseen generator pitches orange light wan and warm through the burlap fibers of the bag Ivanov's been wearing for the past twenty four hours. Past assisted potty breaks and the offer of a sub sandwich some time around noon, he's been on his own in here, tied and locked upright in a metal chair at the room's center. Medical care is dispensed at the hand of one of Danko's men — a plain face and latex gloved hands that Felix never actually sees to change IVs and tend to infections.
The bootfalls tracking lax on the opposite side of the door don't sound like him, though. They're lighter. Less hurried. Maybe even a little tired in the way his heels drag in once he's shirked a robust lock and even thicker chains away to allow himself and at least one other man entry into the murky half-light in here.
"Still alive?"
He's been out, a lot. Increasingly so - lucid and conscious moments become rarer. At least upright's a change. The place is a change. Not likely for the better, however. He's puzzled that he's still alive, wondering what he's being saved for and not looking forward to finding out….when he's cogent enough to wonder anything at all. The red lines of infection creep along legs, star out from the wound in his chest, despite the IVs, and fever's a near constant companion. There's even the faintest terrible insinuation of rot mingled with the scent of fear sweat and sickness. One of those feet may have to go. He's lolled over limp, covered head back, and there's no reply to Danko's question.
Off comes the burlap sack with a sweep of Danko's gloved hand, coarse canvas scuffing rough through Felix's greasy hair once he's flopped the bag into the younger man's lap and reached for a compact flashlight instead. Grey eyes impassive in their fleeting transition from black shadow to orange reflection, he thumbs one hazy eyelid open and shines the light in, tracing blotchy halos brilliant through any conscious sight there is for him to find there before he click-clicks the light off again and tucks it away.
"Shoot him up. I want him lucid enough to remember this later," echoes dull through cotton-fogged ears. The medic steps forward. Danko steps back, frowning distantly after the sheen Ivanov's left on his glove.
It takes a few moments for the stimulants to filter through the IV, but Fel's crept back into something like clarity. He's blinking around himself, trying to track on the here and now. Eventually he orients on Danko, even as his head bobs like a top heavy dahlia. He looks like an addict on the nod.
"Sorry to wake you, but." Ssswipe. Danko pushes the offending hand long across his chest, then down the side of his leg, industrial orange playing harsh over the backs of his shoulders and off the fuzz-softened dome of his skull from behind. He doesn't look sincere. Doesn't sound sincere, voice rough and quiet because it can be. There's very little noise within or without — the thrum of the generator muffled into servitude somewhere far across the compound. The other prisoners, if there are other prisoners, are quiet. Asleep or pretending to be asleep. No heads lift when the next patrol makes its drowsy round.
"Simon says you may not last the week."
''What do you want?" It's a dry whisper that lacks ire, conviction, anything but a heaping helping of apathy. He's trying real hard to pay attention, but it lacks something. Gears meshing as they should, maybe. Simon is likely right. Bill's attempts to feed anything, let alone high fat fast food, have long since been futile - he exists on water and whatever comes down the tubes, and the bones are stark under the skin, now.
"I want to know what kind of woman thinks it's a good idea to shoot a man with no criminal record in the leg in the middle of a political to-do." Simple and straight forward enough. Emile's careful to speak clearly for all that he doesn't sacrifice the raggedy laze of his drawling emphasis on the to-do. "Name, organization, rank. Any pressing mental dysfunctions that might explain the error in judgment."
Were this conversation taking place in any other setting under any other circumstances, it'd be downright reasonable. Danko's too tired to bother with anger. He doesn't even look like he really wants to be here — a glance at his watch comes before one canted back at the door to his back and then he's scrubbing absently at his shoulder. Utterly casual. "Without getting too deep into cliche territory, this is the last time I'm gonna ask nicely."
Nicely? It's been 'nicely', so far? Fel just stares at Danko, blearily. Any attempts at wit or venom have long since been abandoned. "A…..foolish one?" he offers, after a moment. Like he's not entirely sure what event the terrorist's referring to. Is this a quiz?
Somewhere between rationality and outright lunacy is where this conversation is squarely settled. Pushing that meter towards the favor of the latter is the sound of whistling, not just whistling of any old particular song, but the off-note whistling of something fleetingly familiar, soon followed by the humble-mumble of "hunh-ha mah wah na na ba na na, your tox-ic!" There's a scuffing of footsteps coming closer to the door, not just enough for one person.
By the time the second chorus of "hunh-ha mah wah na na ba na na, your tox-ic!" plays out, it's clear the voice belongs to the only person who could push this surreality any closer to the spectrum of crazy than it already is. Bill Dean comes rounding past the cell, followed by a quiet but reluctant looking man of shorter stature and far more coppery red hair. Dragged behind the Irishman, the scuffing of feet comes not from a third interrogator, but rather the tiny feet of a young child with a burlap sack over head and shoulders.
"Ah, Felix! Looks like ol' Danks is already in'ner with ya!" Bill comes up to the bars, sliding his arms thorugh and languidly pressing his face up against the metal. "He already talk? Cause I'd hate t'have dragged this poor kid all'a way down here for nothin."
The hand Danko'd been scuffing at his shoulder with goes to his nose instead. Chin tilted up, head back, he considers Felix in his chair-tied, red streaked entirety for a beat that stretches into one more uncomfortable silence in a compound filled to the brim with them. Buffering. Buffering. And then reaching. Not to fidgit or itch, but to draw the sidearm strapped to his side away with a mechanical kind of going-through-the-motions heft of black composite to black glove. But that's as far as he gets. There's whistling.
Brows tilted only briefly into haggard dismay, he notches the gun back down into place in time to turn and face Bill and Burlap Company empty-handed. "Door's unlocked," muttered without enthusiasm, he works his gunless right hand into a creaky, claw-fingered fist and edges sideways across the cell a foot or two. Making room. Simon's already gone — slipped out on some unspoken signal while Felix was still in the process of coming to.
"Still playing stupid."
The child has Fel's attention. It takes a perceptibly long while for it to really sort of filter through, as he peers at the little figure covered by the burlap sack. They brought him a midget? Does it dance and talk backward? Will he learn about the Black Lodge now?
Wrong FBI Agent.
But Bill has really found the birdseed to make this particular canary sing. "Minea Dahl." His voice is no louder, but it is much firmer. "She's Homeland Security. I don't know her rank. She's assigned to get you."
"Daddy says that Britney Spears has multiple little evil imps up her cooter and singing her songs will give you hepatitis and possibly herpes simplex complex number SKANK, I can't SEE! And you can't SING!" BJ aka Billy Jean Cambria is a tiny bit cranky and tired and scared and putting on a brave face and channeling her father AND her mother. - She has no idea where she is, she just walks.
..She's 8.
"Ah, ain't that kid just a charmer?" Bill slides his arms out from the bars and moves over to the door, giving it a testing tug before pulling it open into the hall, stepping inside with a side-long look afforded to the Irishman behind him. "Go on, bring 'er in." There's a furrow of the Irishman's brows as he escorts the girl into the room with one hand, and in the other — the birdcage from before, that very cage with the sheet pulled over the top and multiple somethings that squeak inside.
"Minea Dahl, well," Bill looks up to Danko with a rise of both of his brows. "I think we've done gone an' found his weak point, sassy little ten year olds." She's eight. "Anythin' else on the docket we wan'na find out?" His eyes drift over to where Felix is restrained with a crooked smile.
"You know any hidey-holes a'the Evolved 'round town, ol' Felix the Cat?" Bill's smile grows some, sidling up to Felix with his head tilted down, eyes upturned to Danko with an I told you it would work expression.
"Assigned by who, and on what grounds?" So far as conversational skills go, Danko seems to be siding on the Irish and Felix side of the spectrum, here. He sticks to business — meets Bill's look with an unreadable sideways glance. His study of the little girl is less brief, but she seems sturdy enough on her feet opposite the cage bustling and rustling sinister at the Irishman's side.
"I don't know who assigned her. Whomever her superior might be. I'm not privy to their hierarchy. I believe because you were a suspected member of Humanis First," He's not looking at the child, anymore. Fel's looking at the floor, with an empty gaze. His tone is matter of fact, and his voice is as clear a whisper as he can make it. "I don't know any current safehouses. I'm not a member of any such group, and since they aren't my particular assignment, I'm not sure what the Bureau knows. They used to use the Public Library building, the main one, but I think that's long since abandoned. Same for a safehouse in Astoria I was once taken to. I didn't know the exact address. Somewhere about…" And he gives a rough idea.
There is something over her head, BJ knows her hair is going to be a mess. She has to think about things that aren't sad, because she's so mad. Being mad is easier than being sad and the singing is over, but there is something over her head, she cannot see, she can only hear. Nobody can see the dried tear stains that are quickly washed away by more tears but she takes a deep breath and then another deep breath. She's listening though, intently before piping up. "Did you know, Crawfish also known as Crayfish, also known as Astacoidea are like tiny lobsters, but did you know that when they die? They instantly start to decompose…that means when you RIP their heads off, they are all gooey or sand inside." She speaks like a tiny tv narrator before squirming once more and trying to get from under the bag by throwing herself to the side onto the ground…or trying any how. "I wonder what they'll find when a werewolf and a vicious Queen with a razor RIPS ya'lls heads off! I cannot SEE you *bleeeep*" Insert Japanese curse word. She can afford to be naughty, there is no jar and her Dad's said worse to the pizza man.
"Go put eyes on that Library," Bill notes flatly to the Irishman, who's own blue stare is flicked back to Bill with a confused expression. "Oh, m'sorry, was I jus' speakin' in fuckin' Hebrew?" His nose rankles and his face turns a slight touch red, and the Irishman winces back, setting down the cage with a rustling and shrieking of the creatures inside, looking down to the young girl with the cloth sack over her head, pushing her over to Bill who takes her by the collar.
"I'll git right on'it." The Irishman notes with a terse nod of his head, "Take David an' two others down, we'll put up a watch." His brows furrow, looking from Felix back to Bill. "What 'bout th' place in 'Storia?"
"Did I fuckin' ask about fuckin' Astoria?" The profanity rolls off Bill's tongue with a flippant wave of one hand accompanying it. "Get'cher ass outta' here!" At the snap, the Irishman takes a step back, brows furrowed, and then disappointedly nods his head and turns on his heels, hustling out of the room with a clang of the barred door being slammed open with a shoulder. Smiling to himself, Bill casts his eyes over at Felix, then up to Danko.
Then, rather succinctly, his eyes fall down to the squirming girl he keeps by the scruff of her neck. "Y'know, a'almos' want'ta keep this one." Bill's eyes flick up to Danko with a broad, toothy smile. "She's like a little firecracker, ain't she? Kinda' weird, maybe she'd make a fine recruit, slap an AK-47 in'ner hands? Or maybe just a'splosive vest?" That last bit is angled towards Felix sharply.
"Safehouses." Danko catches on the term like a treble hook, barbs sunk in deep through the slick skim of implication while his eyes catch dead grey after Bill's. He looks shorter than usual. Smaller. Something about the way he is (or isn't) holding himself, fatigues packed and turned up high behind his neck to give his shoulders false weight and the illusion of a slouch even slacker than his norm.
"What about personnel? Catherine Chesterfield, Colette Demsky, Tamara Brooks. Teo; Len Denton." He's fishing there towards the end — the space between names stretches longer while he tries to rack through his worn out brain for more and comes up depressingly short. "What are their abilities? How do we find them?"
Then: "You want to shut her up over there or are you gonna have t-shirts printed?"
Fel is frozen in place, hunched like a rat, and he's watching Bill in turn, eyes glittering, fever painting stains on hollow cheeks. Fear's back, that he thought'd gone - as Danko remarked earlier, he was long past the point where what happened to him mattered. Trying to figure out what he can do or say to keep them from tormenting her in front of him.
His eyes slide to Danko, and they are all but crystalline with the weird febrile light in them. "I don't know Catherine Chesterfield. Colette Demsky…." His voice catches. "She's Evolved. She has some ability to manipulate color. I don't know that she works with any such organization. Just at the Lighthouse, and that's just a childrens' home. Tamara Brooks is….not even sane. She can't find her away across the street without help, let alone be part of any organization. If she has a functioning ability, I don't know of it. Teodoro Laudani is a leader of Phoenix. Not Evolved to my knowledge. I don't know a Len Denton. I don't know how to find any of them. Tamara is of no fixed abode. Teodoro is presumably in hiding, since he's wanted for murder. I don't know where Colette Demsky lives now. She lived with me briefly."
BJ hears Bill and tries to translate all she can as she squirms. "People lose fingers playing with firecrackers." She points out. "I saw it on 'Fourth of July: Red White and Oops." She squirms some more and like her sister has a tendency to growl from time to time but she shuts up after a moment, breathing harder and a tacking on a panic like asthmatic like pattern but she freezes up for a moment before squirming holder as she listens. This man is talking…like when on the Closer the lady with the funny voice starts asking people questions and daddy goes 'that's what your aunt does' and then Diana goes 'RARARARA' and then it is time for bed. Oh god, it is an interomation. She has to resort to her female girly 8 year old instincts. "I-I…I have to…um, make water."
"Oh come on she ain't doin' nobody no harm by bein'— " Phoenix. The word makes Bill's eyes snap like floodlights over towards Felix. "Teo? Laudani? Him, him," Bill points a sausage-link of a finger towards Felix and lets go of BJ's collar unconsciously as the young girl talks, making his way towards where the Federal agent is held. "Where's Laudani, you tell me where he is, where I can find him. Him and that no good piece of shit Helena!" Fat fingers wind up into a fist, and one of Bill's hands reach out and grasp Felix's hair, yanking his head back.
"You tell me where Phoenix is— where they're hiding— where Helena's hiding!" His hand winds up, clearly ready to just punch some teeth into the back of Felix's mouth."Start fuckin' talkin'! Everything you know 'bout Phoenix, names, dates, places or a'swear t'fuckin Christ those rats'll eat a hole right through her so slow you'll be beggin' us t'put a bullet in you so y'don' have t'hear her screamin' any more!"
He's completely lost focus, sanity and clarity, having left BJ just behind and to the side of him, either too deaf from the blood rushing through his ears or the terrible shouting he's spitting in Felix's face to hear that she's got an excuse to leave to do tinkle. But Bill, like a bad sniper, is target-focused in his frothing-dog mannerisms on a snip of Helena's scent.
Here we go~. For all that he was listening rapt to the rattle and scrape of answers being dragged backwards slow out've Felix's gullet a few seconds ago, Danko's swiftly taken on the air of a man forced to wait outside the women's restroom for a waifu that's already had to stop some seven or eight times on the way to wherever they're headed. If he had pockets in a place where it actually made sense for pockets to be in (as opposed to pretty much everywhere else) he'd tuck his hands into them.
As things are, he sighs to himself and rubs at his nose, eyes all concrete and wet ash against orange lamplight when they flicker sideways after the recently loosed BJ with a sort've morbid curiosity for where that part of the equation is headed.
"You know what I know. I'm a fucking cop, I worked with them to take down the Vanguard. They don't confide in me, I'm their enemy." He abruptly giggles at Bill - it has an edge of hysteria. "You're doing them a favor, with me." The pulse is leaping in his throat, and….he doesn't look any more sane than Bill himself does, eyes like a trapped animal's. Breaking is sort of a weird catharsis. He doesn't have to pretend to be tough any longer. "I assume they're out on Staten, since the law doesn't go there. Not yet. I don't know where. As far as I know, Dean and Laudani are their leaders, but I don't know who else. They had something to do with the destruction of Moab, and they helped mastermind the death of Kazimir Volken." Look, Felix has a white whale of his -very own-, okay.
BJ stands there. She has to pee here. And Bitch gonna be talking about a Chinese fake bird and screaming? Oh very hot place /no/. "Well *BLEEEP* you too you *BLEEEP*. "I WANT MY AK-47 (she has no idea what that could be, she's just working on being a pain in the ass), AND I HAVE TO PEE You *BLEEEP*" The bad words thankfully are only the ones starting to get stuck thanks to the language she's been hearing around her lately. BJ stomps her foot and just falls quiet, sniffling and crying quietly as she has been as she just goes completely still and quiet. Is she being good?
…hell no, she's walking backwards slowly before turning and trying to run blindly in her sack. Did the door close? Is the door closed? She doesn't know, she's just testing. Worse that can happen is she can get knocked out. Again.
Transfixed when Felix begins to spill information out of his lips like a coma patient spills drool, it'sonly the sudden outburst of the high-strung child that catches Bill's attention. His eyes go wide and frozen in his tracks he just stands there, staring out across the space of the cell as the little girl with a bag on her head manages to totter right out the open door and hook a left down the hall.
It's like watching a car accident, Bill's mouth just hangs open and he looks up to Danko with an absolutely confused look of dumbstruck speechlessness. "Did— she just run off?" One eye narrows in a twitch, and Bill's eyes turn to watch the girl hustling across the hall, even now unaware of Felix behind him as that momentary surrealism has stolen all of his focus entirely.
"Yeah," says Danko.
Yeah, she just ran off. Both hands wound up into a rest over the top of his fuzzily shorn burr, he stands right where he is, evidently not bothered enough about it to go flinging himself off down the hall after her. His eyes fix dully on Felix instead, measuring without sympathy or — really even curiosity. Do animals feel pain? Does it matter if they do?
"Sumter may have more information. We already have confirmation that he has close ties with Teo."
Meanwhile: just outside the door, a marine (wielding an AK-47 lazily against his shoulder) is privy to the sight of a skinny 8 year old with a bag on her head blasting out through the open cell door and scrabbling her way towards — well. Eventually, another locked door. The novelty fades fast enough that he's hustling to snare his free arm around her midsection before she can get that far. Maybe he missed the part where she has to pee.
There's that rattling wheeze from Felix, culminating in a snort and a cough. It's been a good long while since he found anything funny, but BJ's defiance is a goddamn riot, down here in the First Circle. It subsides quickly enough, but it leaves him with a lopsided smile on his stubbled face.
…it is almost comical, really, her legs keep pumping when BJ's snatched up, legs still a moving even when she's in the air and she squirms a bit then goes limp, playing dead almost for a moment, hands moving to unbutton, unzip, but damn…she's too slow. And she may have just had an accident, and she's slightly embarrassed and she glares at nothing because she can't see. But she squirms and kicks out rather violently and hard, despite her wet jeans and unless the soldier moves her…a small foot threatens to hit a sensitive place.
BJ takes a deep breath and then another before just calling out. "I WANT TO GO HOME!" She shrieks, taking a skill from her sister. "I WANT TO GO HOOOOOME!" She hollers and continues kicking and flailing and if her hands are free, fingers hooking into little claws. "YOU CRIMINALS, I hope you FRY in the ELECTRIC CHAIR!" - And so on and so forth. "You made me PEE." - Criminal offense right there. These were /new/ jeans.
Staring vacantly towards the cell door, Bill's eyes fall shut and his head shakes. "Keep tha'un alive. Maybe she'll help the Pastor sing too— next time though we keep 'er sedated." There's a look from Bill side-long towards Felix, one brow raised. "And you," he reaches out and pinches one of Felix's cheeks, "get to live another day!"
Cheerily walking a few steps away from Felix, Bill bends down and picks up his squeaking cage. "You know, if we go thorugh this whole damned week, an' I don't get to use my rats," Bill's nose rankles slightly, "m'going tobe very cross." As if that somehow explains where he's going, the tall man turns and makes his way for the door, swinging the cage of covered rats from side to side slowly. "Time t'check in on the other guests!"
Then, it just starts again, "hunh-ha mah wah na na ba na na, your tox-ic!"
When Bill passes out directions, Danko rakes a look over at his back that's nearly as rank as the rot setting into Felix's near foot. Skepticism and disdain and deep, deep dislike all coils up into a fleeting sort've sideways exclamation point on the possibility that this isn't some kind've hippy bigot commune where everyone's holding hands and roasting s'mores between interrogations. For all that Bill is otherwise occupied, the sentiment is in plain sight for Felix to take in when the Littlest Terrorist steps forward to pick the bag up out've the Fed's lap, burlap shaken out once on its way to being dragged back down over his unwashed head.
"Got a kick out've that, huh?" The look's gone by the time orange light winks out into hazy black and brown, replaced with preoccupied distance or boredom. Hard to tell, save for self-control must count for something. Even here. "Maybe you can come back to it once we get around to the screaming."
A light tug to ensures the bag sits right on Felix's shoulders, and Danko turns to tread out after the others, dragging chain and turning lock back into place at his back. He passes the wrestling, cursing, teeth-gnashing mass of Marine and pissy DJ on the way without so much as a second glance, annoyance falling victim to dark humor just long enough for him to smirk to himself as he paces off into deeper shadow.
"If I don't hear from you in ten minutes, I'll send help."
