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The OOC
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Three Months Ago…
It was quiet at this time of night, nothing much moved. Pedestrians had long since gone to bed. The occasional car glided past the front of the research laboratory, the hum of the engine disturbing the otherwise peaceful evening. Martin shifted, shrugging his jacket about his shoulders. Everything had been wonderfully peaceful until someone had thrown a rock at one of the stylish walls of sheet glass on the front of the building. It hadn’t done much, but his boss had told him to go out and chase off whichever drunk or vandal thought it was a good idea to try to smash the front window of Newton Enterprises research HQ. It was cold and there was nobody to be seen. Probably some kid threw the rock on a dare. He looked around again. Nothing.
There were four guards on duty and apart from them, just Doctor Phips who, for whatever reason liked to work late on a Thursday. Martin might have thought it was a deadline if Phips didn’t do it every week. Maybe he was avoiding his wife? Martin didn’t really care, the man kept to himself. With gloves hands he fumbled for his walkie-talkie, “Hey, there’s nobody out here. Whoever threw the rock bolted. Can I come back inside now? It’s kinda cold.”
There was a brief pause, then the radio crackled into life, “Yeah sure Marty. Buzz yourself back in.”
As he turned to head back to the warmth of the building he caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye. Motion. Something coming straight at him. Fast. He turned. There was no time to yell, to reach for his gun, to do anything. There was just enough time for Martin’s heart to lurch in his chest before it hit him like a freight train, knocking the wind out of him, cracking his ribs and sending him flying back a good two yards. His head hit the pavement and his vision blurred, though as he lay, gasping painfully for breath he thought he saw a masked figure in black leaning over him. He felt a hand at his hip, deftly picking his key-card from his belt, “Thanks.” A female voice remarked, though Martin was in no state to do anything but register that it had spoken.
The people called her Blur. It was all they saw when she came at them or sprinted past. Sometimes they fought back, though most of the time they just stood there dumbfounded, like the security guard tonight who had hardly moved as she slammed a tonfa into his chest. Blur carried two of the weapons.
She crossed the few yards to the building in the blink of an eye, swiping herself in. There was another guard behind a desk that she knew, from the last time she had been here that that was where the security cameras were, “Hey!” the guard spotted her as she stepped through the door, standing up and reaching for his gun with practiced efficiency.
Blur came at him, faster than he could have imagined. His eyes went wide as he brought the gun up. She swerved as he did, arcing away from him as he pulled the trigger, then swinging back around, vaulting the desk in a flying kick as he tried to bring the gun to bear on her. Her foot connected with his shoulder, sending him bouncing off the far side of the desk and his gun flying across the room.
As he struggled to rise she hit him again, slamming one tonfa into the side of his knee. There was an unpleasant cracking sound and the guard howled in pain, collapsing to the ground. She kicked him between the legs for good measure then turned to the screens.
“Now, Doctor… where are you hiding.” She mused as her eyes darted from one grainy image to another until she found a man in a white lab coat hurrying along an internal balcony… “Presumably he wants to see what is going on.” She commented to the groaning security guard, “It’s a silly move really. If he were sensible he’d have locked himself in an office or hidden in a broom cupboard. Anyway… got to dash.”
She shot off again, brushing past another security guard as he hurried down the stairs to find out what the commotion was. It took her seconds to get to the third floor and a heartbeat to cross to where the doctor was staring out, over a railing, into the lobby in horror. He was a tall man, tall, bird-like and unhealthily thin. His hair was thin, a little too long, his fingers white on the metal of the balustrade. Blur stopped abruptly she approached him, only a few inches from the older man, pressing a tonfa into the back of his neck, “Don’t move or your friends will be scraping you off the floor.” She hissed, her hand fumbling at his belt for his security card.
Only the top scientists had access to the prototypes lab and there was one night a week when a top scientist stayed late with very few other people around him, “You won’t get away with this.” Phips stammered, fear lacing his voice as he made a feeble attempt at defiance.
“If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that.” Blur sniggered, lifting his key card before tossing Martin’s down off the balcony.
She left the doctor where he stood, frozen and trembling, dashing round the corner to where she knew the prototype labs were. She swiped in, the lights blinking on automatically as she stepped across the threshold.
The room was white and sterile. Cabinets around the edge held all manner of electronic stuff. Other pieces stood on tables in the centre of the room. It looked valuable, though in truth Blur had very little idea of what any of it was supposed to do. She would probably have no chance of selling it, though tonight’s mission was not about making money; it was for the pure joy of destruction. Blur sped around the room, lifting a few easily shifted items at random, filling her spare pockets, then reached into one, carefully lifting out the incendiary grenade she had stolen from some Mafioso types with leather jackets and too much cologne.
She walked back to the entrance, tossed the grenade inside, then pulled the door closed, watching the flash, followed by an instant fire through the window of the door. It was quite pretty in its own way. Blur smirked slightly then turned to leave the way she had come.
It took the guard less than thirty seconds to scramble up to the to the last floor, skipping entire steps, ascending to the third floor in small leaps and bounds. He was out of breath from the effort, but it paid off.
The impossibly fast woman was striding back towards the stairs, where he now stood, his chest heaving slightly as he clenched his service pistol tightly in both hands. “Fr-freeze, goddamnit!” He realized how hollow the words sounded to a woman that could be out the door in less than a minute without breaking a sweat.
“You know, someone ought to teach you about picking your battles. I’m done here so I’m just going to leave now.” Blur smirked slightly, hazel eyes sparkling with pleasure. There were certain people she enjoyed hurting and she knew she had hurt them in the pocket tonight.
He knew he didn't stand a chance in hell against someone that fast. He kept his eyes on her body language, waiting for the moment she would break into a run.
When her body shifted forward, the night watchman did the only thing he could think of.
He stuck out a leg, hoping to trip the incredibly fast woman, hopefully without shattering his leg in the process.
There was not much room to manoeuvre on the balcony. There was probably time for the guard to get one or two shots off before she passed him. Blur darted about as she accelerated towards him, half running up the side of the office wall as she blasted into a high-speed somersault, landing a few feet to the side of the guard then racing forward again. It was for this reason that she completely missed the fact that he had stuck a leg out until she collided with it.
She tipped forward, landing on her stomach and sliding forward across the polished floor. Stolen devices shattered in the pockets across her chest, jabbing her with shards of glass and metal. Her head hit a balcony railing with an audible crack that slammed her jaw shut, causing her to bite her tongue.
Her mouth filled with blood. She raised herself up to her hands and knees, spitting a mouthful out, “Vulcan’s axe, that hurt.” she muttered under her breath.
“Alright, are you gonna…”
He paused for a second. What did she say? He'd only heard that phrase once before, on his way in for his shift. He didn't remember much of it, it had to have happened a while ago.
The weeks blended together in his head, and in his confusion, he dropped his stance ever so slightly, trying to figure it out.
Blur lurched back to her feet with speed that surprised her as much as the guard. She considered fleeing but her head was spinning and she was liable to end up over the edge if she tried anything fancy to avoid flying bullets. The only option was to fight.
An unfamiliar feeling of panic welled up inside Blur as she swung her left tonfa at the guard’s wrist, batting his gun away, sliding her whole body to the side as he pulled the trigger. The bullet grazed her shoulder, cutting through her blouse and opening up a ragged gash in an explosion of red-hot pain. The gun though, went flying off into the foyer. The guard’s right wrist looked a little too limp but he swung with his left fist, barely missing Blur’s face as she swayed away from, her back thumping against an office wall as she stumbled back.
She was in tight quarters, she was dazed and fighting an opponent who knew what he was doing and for the first time since she had started her crime spree, Blur felt in real danger. It was not a nice feeling. He lunged forward.
He was, however, still much slower than her. Her knee came up, hard, driving into his belly with considerable force. The man stumbled back. With a yell of fear and frustration, Blur launched forward, shoving the man with all her strength. He staggered back, then abruptly vanished as he took the long tumble to the lobby floor below.
Blur hadn’t intended to do that. She followed him, the fear in her chest turning to a sickening feeling as she saw the man lying very still on the ground three floors below her. She was a thief not a killer… she stood, watching as the tall, skinny shape of Doctor Phips raced over to the fallen guard. His appearance brought her back to the moment; she had screwed up, used more force than she needed to, but there was nothing she could do about that now. Now she needed to escape.
In the blink of an eye, Blur was gone.
Two floors below, the shattered guard lay in a pile of broken wood, having tumbled through the front desk. He sputtered and gasped for breath, his lungs on fire and the wind ripped out of him.
His right shoulder was on fire, and he could feel the sensation of a warm, coppery smelling liquid pooling around the side of his face.
He couldn't move his limbs, only hazily gaze around the room, trying desperately to keep his breathing even and steady.
The pain was excruciating, his body broken and twisted. He could barely even let out a moan of agony...
Bad things tended to happen at 1 AM. Like the death of an informant, or a call about hospitalized family. Or a break in at Newton Enterprises HQ. But all of those things tended to be oblivious to anyone not directly concerned, at 1 AM, everyone was too busy managing their own emergency to care about others. Detective Lucy O’Brien picked the wrong line of work if she wanted to be oblivious. She looked up at the building, seemingly in-place in the district it had been positioned in. The lights were on, still. Couldn’t have been too bad, right? The 28 year old scratched at her brownish-reddish hair before feeling for her Glock 34 just to make sure it hadn’t magically disappeared.
She had been a little late in making note of the shattered, window, distracted by the looming essence of corporation that was Newton Enterprises HQ, towering over her like a titan. She blinked, rubbed her eyelids (even if she knew it wasn’t healthy), and then took a look around the scene for anything that was a good indicator or a hint for what had occured.
Body, obscured by the dark, a good two yards from the door. Lucy’s partner slammed his door shut and headed over, she reached into her windbreaker to put a hand on the pistol in her waistband holster and keep him covered. Detective Warren put his hand to the guard’s neck to check for a pulse.
Lucy bit her lip and waited for him to turn and say “Dead.”
“Alive.” The more senior detective said, “Call medical.”
Lucy did so, she called for a 10-52 and slowly pulled the Austrian pistol from it’s holster, scanning around for anything else that became immediate to her, soon finishing her mental documentation of the potentially hazardous environment around her.
“Should I call for backup too?”
Warren hesitated, “Not yet it. Start your sweep of the building, I’m gonna wait for the ambulance.”
Lucy nodded, she brought her handgun up and aligned the sights with her optics before starting into the headquarters. She didn’t like to admit it but this was exciting to her, adrenaline pumped, her heart remained at its normal rate of a low 66. She went into fight mode as she entered the lobby with her pistol raised and took a good look around, and the first thing that came to the forefront of her mind was the security guard passed out on the floor, holding his knee, his firearm a good distance from its owner across the floor. The guard himself was unpleasantly sat in a pile of urine. She rushed over to the guard and looked around for any trace of a weapon discharge, and finding nothing, she came to the conclusion that the guard was held up and told to kick his weapon across the floor.
Or the guard was incapacitated before he managed to get a shot off. But someone had knocked the guard out at the front door. In order to have held the guard up inside, she wouldn’t have approached an armed security officer from the front and held him up, unless the guard suddenly lost his nerve or a personal threat was delivered, but that seemed unlikely. After all, who in the hell delivered personal threats to Newton Enterprises?
While this was certainly a major contender for ‘worst night shift ever’, at least the pain of the multiple shattered bones and ruptured organs was eased by the morphine being fed into his body. He was vaguely aware of doctors and nurses coming in and out of the room, along with the man sitting next to his bed, eyes darting from the clock to the crippled guard.
He was a hawk-eyed man in a neatly arranged black suit, a pair of darkened rounded glasses tinting his eyes.
“Eric? Can you hear me, bud? Come on, wake up. I don't have all night to wait on you.”
Eric shook away as much of the haze as he could, and saw the man next to his bed.
He must've been around 40, from the lines on his forehead and the grey streaks in his neatly cut, straight black hair.
“While my superiors would like to give you your redundancy cheque and cut your dying body out of the picture, there is a small but no less vocal minority from Dr. Phips. It would seem the good doctor has seen this unfortunate accident as a hidden opportunity for the both of you.”
The man straightened his tie with a gloved hand, clearing his throat before continuing.
“Your body is beyond repair. Christ himself couldn't fix this, and neither can the doctors here, not that that would stop them from charging you out the ass for the expense of trying. You will spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair, struggling to cover the rising tide of debt that will engulf you until you finally shuffle off this mortal coil.”
“That is”, he said, bending down to reach the clipboard on the floor, “you sign this. All bills will be covered, you'll get your life back, and your job, and we get to try out some fancy new medical technology. Sound good?”
Eric didn't really know what to say. Partially because his mind was still foggy from the drugs and pain, and the rest coming from how suddenly this was dumped in his lap.
“I'm going to interpret your slack jawed silence as an enthusiastic ‘yes’, partially because of how much of an idiot you'd have to be to turn down something like this. I will not ask again. I will not return, nor will anyone else even bother to stop by. Send the release, and we can get you vertical again.”
Eric groggily signed the offered contract, his signature somewhat sloppy but good enough for the man and himself.
The man clapped his hands together, a smile forming on his face. “Good! Great! Wonderful! Smart move, Rankin. Maybe you're worth more than a cheap night watchman.”
He stood up, and leaned out the door to the room, and whistled, which summoned a group of people in lab costs to roll the room out of the room, the lobby, and the hospital, the bright lights from a street lamp leaving spots in his eyes as he was loaded into a van, and taken off towards whatever destination his ‘benefactor’ had in mind.
Present Day, Museum of History and Industry, Central Seattle (11:30am)
It was a busy day at the museum of history and industry, busy enough that Janet didn’t really have time to stop and chat, although the person she had just seen did warrant a little bit of gossip, “Hey Pete! You got a minute?”
Pete was one of the security guards at the front desk and was currently staring blankly at the security monitors, ostensibly checking for anything fishy, though his expression suggested nothing on the screens was actually registering. He shook his head, blinking at Janet, “Urgh… sure, hi.”
“You see that woman who was through here before, big dark glasses and a full facial cast. It was like something out of a cartoon.”
Pete looked up at Janet, frowned, then looked back at the screens, “Where is she now?”
“Looking at that display on cats and dogs.” He was suspicious, she supposed the recent crimewave was reason for him to be worried, “Seriously Pete, none of that stuff is at all valuable.”
“Looks like she’s leaving anyway.” He noted. Apparently a full facial cast was not hard to spot when you were actually looking, “Did she do anything suspicious.”
Janet rolled her eyes, “No. She didn’t… she did give me this phone though, said she’d found it lying around.” She reached into her pocket, pulling out the slightly out-dated iPhone the woman had handed her before mumbling something she assumed meant ‘lost property’. It sounded like her jaw was wired shut as well. Janet was perversely curious about what had happened to her and what she might look like after the cast was removed, Pete did not seem in the mood to gossip and she wasn’t about to push it. She handed the phone over, “I tried turning it on but it’s out of battery. It has a name on the back though… Ansem Texeira. So we’ll know who to give it back to when he comes in.”
Pete grunted, taking the phone off her and tossing it in with the other random detritus they collected over the course of the day and promptly forgot about it.
Six hours later (5:30pm)...
Pete still had two hours left on his shift after the museum closed and he was replaced by a night watchman. It was perhaps his favourite two hours of his shift as he could turn the small television he had onto boxing without offending any customers, “Excuse me…” a timid sounding female voice came from the near one of the twin entry corridors that came into the main hall.
Damn…. Someone hadn’t locked the door on time and a random member of the public had got in, “We’re closed.” Pete replied gruffly.
“I’m wondering if my phone is back there?” she asked.
She was annoyingly persistent. He looked up, his eyes going wide in surprise. The woman in front of him wore all black combat gear, with military style webbing over the top like some kind of commando with a couple of wooden batons hooked onto her belt. She was not particularly tall, with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail and a domino mask on. She looked very much like the descriptions of the criminal known as Blur, “Shit!” he swore, fumbling for his gun.
He was sure he only took his eye off her for a second, but when he looked up, gun in hand, she was nowhere to be seen, “Seriously?” she didn’t sound so meek anymore, though not angry either, just mildly exasperated, “Do you greet everyone who shows up like that?” Pete swept the room. Her voice seemed to echo, “I just want to know if you have my phone behind that desk. It says Ansem Texeira on the back.”
“Where are you? Come out where I can see you!” Pete ordered.
“So you can shoot me?” the woman gave a short laugh, “No thanks. Do you have the phone or not. Ansem Texeira…” she paused, Pete thought her voice was coming from behind the big black pillar to his left. He trained his gun on it, willing her to step out, “Really, do I have to spell it out? An…SEM TEX…eira.”
“Oh Shit!” Pete swore again, awkwardly flinging himself across his desk, out of the reception pod to land on the floor with a dull thud.
“I’ll take that expletive as a ‘yes’.” The woman remarked. Abruptly the middle of the desk exploded, showering Pete with small pieces of wood and plastic, though thankfully the frame of the reception pod kept him from getting any more seriously hurt. At the same time all the lights went out, apparently there had been a second bomb that had taken out the fuse box.
Blur, for her part was rather pleased with the result. With no lights and no cameras it should make finding exactly where she was or what she was up to a much slower task. There was enough natural light to see where she was going, at least in this part of the building, and she zipped past the guard as he fumbled for his radio, making a bee-line for the visiting display of antique Japanese weaponry. There was a rather interesting looking Japanese nodachi that she really wanted to get her hands on. Not that she really needed it but she knew who owned it and, more importantly, who they had the weapon insured with. Stealing stuff was fun, but it was so much more entertaining when you were stealing from someone who deserved it…
