un_fallen | (no subject)

[From here.]

Raguel is very good, but he is not River Tam; in a physical fight his movements are strong, quick, but he lacks her unerring instinct, the unthinking grace.

At first it had been only four Reavers, then five, then all too soon it was ten... and twenty. Too many. A firestorm to destroy them all would also have destroyed any evidence remaining here, and would potentially have broken the Shé Xuán apart.

He'd searched it. He'd been ready to abandon it. But Destroying The Evidence is a repulsive idea that has been long entrenched in the very core of him. It was becoming clear, however, that he wasn't going to have a choice if he wanted to be around to find his target.

But then the flood had - suddenly - lessened. The nearest dock had been damaged when Raguel's skimmer had been rammed away from it, so that the moment he'd pulled the airlock's lever down to admit a torrent of madness and violence, the ship's air had begun venting out through a fracture. The Reaver ships had begun a sluggish process of undocking and abandoning their fellows; the lack of air had finally reached a critical point and one by one those on board fell, gasping, to the floor.

There'd been one more major change in the look of his surroundings. The door to that bizarrely well-organized room must have locked when it had swung closed, because he'd found a hundred new marks on it; dents and scuffs and smears were all over the door and extending for several feet around it. He'd gone to check the room again (stepping over a few new corpses) and found everything inside as he left it, with one exception. The strange stick with the button on it, abandoned on top of the folders, had retracted its prongs.

"Uh huh," he'd mumbled, and pocketed it.

There had been two inhabitable moons in an escape pod's range of the ship when it had been attacked, he'd remembered. One of them was a sparsely populated mining colony. The other was a moderately populous border moon with a budding economy and a promising climate.

He'd headed for the mining colony in the battered flagship. If you were going to crash-land a vessel (just as he was) on a moon, the last thing you wanted was pictures of it beamed around the 'verse by some technologically shrewd wunderkind. The colony might not even have had electricity, let alone have recognized the Shé Xuán from broadcasted pictures. If he'd been planning this sort of thing, he couldn't have wished for a better place. And it was beginning to look as though ELIZABETH RYDELL had planned this down to the second.

--

She does not stay long on either of the moons, but there are traces of the escape pod to be found there if you know what you're looking for. It's been disassembled, then certain parts melted down and 'found' in one of the mines with the rest of the ore. From there she leads him on a long trail winding from one planet to another, using a string of different names that he discovers when he bothers to check. But there are very few places that are not covered by surveillance of some kind; certainly not the places that ELIZABETH RYDELL frequents, and not all of them have been erased. They aren't centers of commerce, but there are crowds or centralized food and shopping, there are electronic eyes and there are people. Someone's always seen her, and Raguel doesn't have to rely on electronic records alone to know where she's been.

He knows what she looks like: young, fair complexion, blue eyes, hair falling in reddish-blonde waves past her chin. As the weeks pass, it falls down to her shoulders. She never cuts or colors her hair, which he finds odd. She's smart, that much is clear, but she's not a professional. Careful, but still makes mistakes. Moves around, but doesn't disappear. She relies on the kindness of strangers that she never trusts with more than a heavy bag, never for more than a moment. And she's finally found a place to settle down when Raguel arrives to highlight where she went wrong.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

un_fallen

...

"Okay. Who told you to set it up, then?"

From:

walk_ins

"I don't know," she repeats. "I was contacted anonymously. No names, no faces, no addresses I could put a trace on. I have no idea who it was."

From:

un_fallen

"And you trusted them to pay up?" he asks, disbelief clear in his voice.

From:

walk_ins

"Yes," she says, her voice calm and precise. "They paid half beforehand."

From:

un_fallen

He wants to ask how much. But it would only make him angrier, and he needs to keep his focus.

"So how did you get this?" he asks tightly, and pulls the strange stick with the button out of his pocket. He throws it onto a table with a little more force than necessary.

From:

walk_ins

That makes her recoil a little - instinctively, the same sort of instinct that jumps at loud noises, and pulls hands away from candle flames.

It's momentary.

"It was there when we boarded," she replies. "In my locker."

The... the thing gleams slickly (sickly) on the table-top: a greasy, oily sort of shine.

Lizzie tries not to look at it.

From:

un_fallen

"Access to the ship," he muses. "Not that tough, but Crowley's not lax on security. Might be footage." He nods to himself, staring into space.

"How'd you know how to use it? Had to turn it on before I figured out what it was."

From:

walk_ins

"They told me what it was," she says. "When they told me where it would be."

She sounds faintly confused, as though this should be obvious. After a moment, she adds, "There wasn't footage. Not on any of the Shé Xuán's feeds. I looked."

From:

un_fallen

"Well, damn," he says, but he doesn't sound particularly put out about it.

"They give you the gun, too? Guns, I guess." A pointed look at the one in her lap.

From:

walk_ins

"Gun," she corrects.

From:

un_fallen

That, of all things, seems to catch him off guard. He stares at it, swallows a few times before he can speak.

"Gun," he repeats.

"How much?" he asks, nearly inaudible, still staring at the weapon in her hand.

From:

walk_ins

When Raguel looks down, her fingers tighten convulsively on the barrel.

She makes herself relax her grip.

"Èr shí wàn," she says. "Credits."

From:

un_fallen

"Someone who could afford it. He'll be disappointed there wasn't a higher bounty," he says, still looking at the gun.

"Still. When it comes to pieces of silver, guess the number doesn't matter, huh? I don't think you want to be holding that."

He says it all in the same level tone of voice, but the metal is already growing warm in her hand.

From:

walk_ins

Very slowly, signalling her intentions, Lizzie inches forward in her seat and leans down, placing the gun carefully on the carpet.

In a moment of clear, crystalline absurdity, she thinks: I hope it doesn't singe.

From:

un_fallen

It doesn't singe. It turns red hot, then white hot under his glare, and then it's just a smoldering pile of blackish metal. It doesn't singe the carpet, however. That would be impolite.

"Learned that one from an old friend," he says. His fingers are trembling a little with effort. Recently, it's the effort of keeping it all in.

"You're very good at this," he says, between deep breaths. "No hysterics. No lies. Wonder why."

From:

walk_ins

Just as slowly again - perhaps without even realising it - Lizzie is pulling her feet in under her chair, away from the smoking lump on the carpet.

"You'd know if I were lying," she says.

(Her face is always pale; her eyes are always wide. In her lap, her hands are shaking.)

From:

un_fallen

"Yeah. Most lie anyway. Guess you have more experience with my type."

His expression clouds, then settles into what passes for 'business mode' once again.

"We can make this quick, then. How did they contact you - for the money, and the instructions, and that?" he asks, gesturing to the metal rod. "And how much of it did they leave up to you to work out?"

From:

walk_ins

She opens her mouth, pauses, closes it again.

She's confused, and it shows in her face. She's afraid it's a trick question.

Finally, uncertainly:

"By wave."

How the gorram hell else would they have contacted her?

From:

un_fallen

"Video, audio, text?" he asks, counting off on his fingers. "There's the option of cutting out letters and pasting them onto a piece of paper, but that's hard to do by wave."

He seems completely serious.

From:

walk_ins

"Text," she says coldly.

From:

un_fallen

"Uh huh," he says, nodding. "Did you receive it at work, or somewhere else? And how long ago?" He raises one eyebrow.

"And you haven't answered about how much of it was left up to you."

From:

walk_ins

"My personal account. About - a fortnight before the attack, I think. Less than three weeks."

It was a Sunday, and she was in her pyjamas. It's funny the details that stand out.

"They gave me the codes to override the escape pod mechs, and the crybabies. The decoys," she clarifies. Then a nod at the slim black wand on the table. "That - they told me how many hours out from Lilac to turn it on. And that - "

It's not guilt that makes her hesitate. But she'll be damned if she'll let this dòngwù know that he's - that she's -

"And to be sure dà yé was dead before getting away."

From:

un_fallen

He doesn't think it's guilt, at least. He's staring blankly at the floor - or maybe at the melted gun, it's hard to say. For several seconds he doesn't move; there's not even a hint of the gentle motion of breath.

"Must've been pretty sure you'd go through with it, giving you that much information," he says. He sounds very calm.

From:

walk_ins

Her shoulders lift a little, and then fall, in the smallest of shrugs.

"I suppose they took the same gamble I did. Anyway, they'd shown they could contact me, they could get information, they could get things onto the Shé Xuán. If I'd backed out, I don't think the first half of the money would have been the only thing I didn't get to keep."

From:

un_fallen

He gives her a look, one that clearly says you can not possibly be serious.

"Think a sharp civil engineer like yourself would know better than to believe she didn't have any choice."