Re-Entry 08: Video/Spam

[itstopped]

Help!

[The cry goes out while the video is still turning on. The picture, when it appears, is chaotic: Felix Gaeta, ashen grey and soaked with sweat and tears of panic, but only for a second before the shaking camera turns on what looks like an empty Western ghost town, caught from a high vantage point, shingles visible at the bottom of the screen.

Not empty. There are snarls and yowls and a terrifyingly organic sound coming from below.

Felix's voice cuts in again, tight with fear. He's not a hero. He's not a fighter. He's the one at the controls, and for all that he's usually good at staying calm in a crisis, it's a lot frakking easier when there's a console between him and it. He sounds a little hysterical.]

SOS! SOS! I'm pinned down in the-- oh, gods-- [There's another furious roar from below; his voice hitches, the camera shakes.] --the CES. Something attacked us. I think Dean is dead. I--

[There's a scream from underneath, unmistakeably human. The communicator drops against the shingles--] Dean? [--and cuts out.]

[Open Spam for Level Two/Infirmary, Later]

[After it's all over, after they've done what they can with Dean's corpse and patched up whatever needs to be on the survivors, Felix is set adrift into the aftermath. He should get cleaned up and then stay with Dean, he knows, or else he should get back to work and keep something like this from happening again. But he can't seem to make himself go to the latter just yet, not with Dean dead less than an hour, and the former...

He's always known that the death toll exists here, but he's never had to really confront it before, not in a way he couldn't brush off and ignore. The truth is that it scares him more than almost anything else about the Barge, even here, even now. It's not ignorance; it's not that he's never seen anything like it before. It's that he has.

The pull to sit by Dean's side and wait is powerful, but in the end, he winds up haunting the door to the infirmary, still red-eyed and disheveled, constantly peeking inside.]

((Right after/congruent with this, obviously.))

Comments

audio;

[ichoosefight]

[ Oh jesus christ. It had to be Dean, didn't it. Steph's already pulling on her suit. ]

I am en route to your location, armed and ready. Is anyone else coming?

audio;

[itstopped]

[There's a nasty grating sound as he fumbles the communicator back up, the picture gone out.] I don't-- I don't know. We're, um, we're on the northwest side, near the center, I think. We were on our way to--

[Oh, frak.] Iris, she's in here too, northwest corner. I don't know what happened to her.

audio;

[ichoosefight]

Got it. Can you confirm any injuries? [ If Dean is alive or is Felix is hurt, they take precedence. Otherwise she needs to find out about Iris. ]

audio;

[timesbureaucrat]

Iris is in there?

I'm going after her.

audio

[landfall]

On my way.

[ Grabbing a sidearm and not even taking the time to bother with much else. Good thing she wears a sports bra as a matter of casual dress. ]

Stay on the line, Felix.

audio

[itstopped]

Oh, thank gods. [He doesn't know Steph, he doesn't know what the hell she's even doing, but Racetrack found him in the middle of nowhere once. He trusts her. He lets out a shaky sound, takes a deep breath.] I'm here.

spam

[mattersverymuch]

[By the time he gets the message, Dean is in the infirmary.]

[Which doesn't mean he would have gone. If Dean was dead, he was dead. So it went. He'd been back before, would be back again. No skin off the marquis's nose.]

[And yet he has skills to contribute. He's not planning to share the fact that he intends to with anyone other than (probably) Dean, but plans occasionally change.]

[He goes to check on Dean to see the extent of the injuries rather than out of sentiment - he won't be awake yet. But when he sees the man who made the call hovering in the doorway, he wonders if this might be valuable after all.]

[He speaks without announcing himself, his tone neither passionate nor morbidly curious. There is information it would be beneficial for him to know. That's all.]

What was it?

spam

[itstopped]

[He's peering inside again, but at the voice behind him he turns, blinking, squinting at the man without much recognition. This is... the guy who lives next door to Dean, he knows, and the one who tried to get him to sell secrets during the takeover. He doesn't know him beyond that, and he doesn't know why he's being asked now.

On the other hand, does it really matter this time?] Some kind of dog.

[strangehistorian]

[Squeak!]

Coming!

[itstopped]

[There's a pause before he answers this time, because he can see Racetrack and Steph on the horizon by now. Two is good... more would be better.] I'm northwest of center, pinned down above ground, two wardens incoming, estimate, um-- six or seven minutes till they get here. Seven hostiles on the ground. [It's a little easier to fall into it now that help is on the way, now that he's not completely alone out here. Now it's more like being in the CIC, except that he's pinned on a roof and Dean is dead below him.]

Spam

[with_my_teacup]

[Riddick wasn't among the first responders, nocturnal as he's been lapsing, but when he wakes blearily to the SOS cry it's really hard to put a little non-morning coffee and constitutional first on his list of priorities. Things are resolved by the time he gets to the infirmary.]

You're on your feet. What did you see in there. What went for you. We gotta do better about keeping people safe while we're 'training'.

[His voice is sleep-rough, adrenaline-terse-- who does he mean by 'we?' Equal parts the wardens, the prison vets, the strong fighters, but he's drawn to this crisis like he could stop it from happening again.

He knows he can't. He's still asking.]

Spam

[itstopped]

[He's calmer now, more adequately prepared to answer questions, although he knows deep down that if he were really settled on this he'd be in the infirmary like he should be. Still, he's terse but not angry when he replies -- almost back in military mode, really.]

There was a pack of wild dogs. Seven that attacked us, more in total. I didn't see the full number. [And then he remembers the other part.] Someone took our guns.

audio;

[theonlyresponse]

Has someone come to your assistance?

audio;

[itstopped]

[There's a pause before a reply comes, this time. When it does, the background noise is chaotic, sounds of a firefight and more yelping, snarling dogs in the background. On the bright and possibly confusing side, Felix himself sounds a lot more pulled together than he did when the initial broadcast went out.]

There are two wardens here, one more on the way, seven hostiles down, an unknown number on route. One-- [He swallows.] One warden down.

[There's a burst of static, another shot fired; he shouts something indistinct, then continues.] Iris sent a distress call about half an hour ago from northwest of my position.

Level Two Infirmary Spam

[deadly_ned]

[The worst, it seems, has happened. For the Piemaker who could bring the dead back to life, it hurt unbearably to visibly see the people he knew and liked dying and in pain. True, the Barge brought people back all the time, but it hardly made it any easier, and it took some reminding that maybe it wasn't better to grow distant to people.

He crept up to the infirmary later, hands tucked under his arms, and came across the man called Felix on the way over]


...How, um.


How is he?

Spam

[itstopped]

[He's actually gone inside for a minute or so by now, but in the end he'd wound up leaving again, retreating back beyond the door. It's irrational, he knows, on some level. Half the people here have death tolled before. Dean has death tolled before. And whatever images Felix has of how the process on his own world works, vague things he'd overheard while working for the Cylons, he knows it's different here. There are no pods, no wires, no downloads. Not even replacement bodies. It will still, somehow, be Dean who awakes.

But he's still outside the door, his own posture more or less a mimicry of the Piemaker's, looking miserable and exhausted, an unlit cigarette in one hand. He glances up at the question, slightly incredulous.]

I have no idea how to answer that.

spam

[landfall]

[ She had to puke her guts up, shower, and then puke again, and then shower again, so she's not here immediately. But she does show up eventually, in off-duty sweats with her hair wet and pulled back in a ponytail. ]

...hey.

spam

[itstopped]

[He hasn't changed yet, has only barely cleaned up, the dust of Cold Oak still on his clothes. There's another thing he should probably do, but isn't. Or he should go the frak inside... but he isn't.]

Hey.

video with pubspam mixed in

[deadliestviper]

What the Hell? Did you fucking find him?

[It's all Beatrix has to say as she stares at the screen, shocked. The CES has been undeniably brutal lately, but she never thought it'd really kill someone. Let alone someone her loved one is close to – and her concern is more for Kon than Dean.]

[Iris pub spam]

[routemistress]

[She's been in the pub all afternoon, fiddling semi-idly with a prototype sonic stun grenade on the table between a bottle of tequila and a bowlful of corn chips with guacamole. Iris never noticed Loki lifting her comm off the table when she looked up to greet someone, and it was set to silent so she could think.

The first she knows something is wrong is when other people start reacting around her; she looks around, can't find her own comm and goes up to Bea to look overher shoulder instead.]

Me bloody comm's vanished - Bea, love, what's up?

audio

[itstopped]

[The video is gone when he gets the communicator back, but he's still on audio, voice still strained and distracted with terror at this point.] What do you mean, find him? He's here, they got him, he's...

Spam

[bodilesswarrior]

[She sees the message too late to do anything. The least she can do, then, is visit the infirmary.

When she sees Felix her chest tightens, and it's a moment before she speaks, voice soft and concerned.]

Hey.

Spam

[itstopped]

[Barbara means more to him than most of the people here, but that makes it harder, in a way, to keep it together. With Riddick, with the Marquis, it was about information, pure and simple. He's good at handling information calmly when he's not on the verge of death. With Barbara and Racetrack, though... he's just not used to being on many people's priority lists, to have people checking in with him for something other than business, and there's about half a second where he kind of just wants to break down at her.

But she's still his boss, and he's made enough of a spectacle of himself today, so he takes a deep breath and flashes her a tight smile.] Hey.

[Spam]

[inhistorybooks]

[Trip's not stupid, and he's been in enough similar situations to know what you do when this kind of thing happens to someone you care about, so he knows what Felix is doing when he finds him hovering outside the infirmary door, even if he doesn't really know exactly what's going on. He doesn't know why Dean's particularly important, or that Felix is uncomfortable with the death toll for reasons which - honestly - make a hell of a lot of sense when you have the full context of the situation, but he still gets the need to be there, and the worry that you'll get in the way or it'll somehow be worse to actually be in there, so he's not going to try and convince him to go in or do anything other than what he's doing right now.]

How's he doing?

[Spam]

[itstopped]

[It's sort of the basic minimum for Trip to come check in on him, so he can't say he feels quite the same rush of gratitude that he will later with Barbara and Racetrack, but it's at least good to be reminded that he has someone again now for this. Someone whose job it actually is to advocate for him to the other wardens while Dean is incapacitated, maybe get to the bottom of this. He peels himself reluctantly away from the door with a tired nod of greeting.]

Still dead, as far as I know.