08 / 16 / 11 - Adam, Faust, Gabriel, Jean-Paul, Madrox, Terry
=XF= Cafeteria - First Floor - Titan Enterprises
This isn't a large cafeteria by any means, but it's fully functional, with a variety of food options and seating for fifty or so souls. Along the walls and in the center of the black-and-white tiled room, chairs surround tables, making them easily configurable for just about any size group. The back wall is taken up by the traditional cafeteria line, where a small selection of food is prepared varyingly every day. A chalkboard near the front of the line lists the day's entree, pasta, vegetables, and soups, while an open refrigerator display at the end offers pre-made sandwiches, salads, and drinks to compliment the soda fountain. Although the pickings are a bit slim - especially when it comes to desserts - the two women who cook for the employees of Titan Enterprises know their stuff, and it is without fail delicious.
Other lunch log dictated chinese, so I guess Terry is having chinese when she crawls out of bed and out to the cafeteria. She plops a tray piled high with noodles and sesame chicken in front of a seat, then promptly pushes it away from her when she sits down. WHO IS SHE SITTING WITH?
Faust looks up from her bowl of vegetable fried rice, another that once contained stir fry sits just to the side, accompanied by a pocket-screwdriver, to Terry. She has a very tall glass of water as well. "Not to your liking?" She wonders, tugging lightly at the collar of her turtleneck.
Madrox is sitting at the end of Terry's table, stirring his noodles and meat and a few vegetables I guess. He hasn't eaten much. His brow is furrowed and he's watching the movements of his own fork.
"It was when I got it, but not so much now," Terry answers, folding her arms on the table to pillow her head. Her voice is muffled.
Jean-Paul, trailing after Terry, is nagging her: "He didn't say anything else about Jeanne-Marie?" She is probably pillowing her head to try and escape from him, but too bad! He sits down opposite her. Sucker.
She is. "/No/. Just that she's involved some how, but that is not news, is it?" Terry kicks at him, and probably hits someone else instead.
"I can't imagine why," Faust offers blandly, tugging one lengthy sleeve further down of her hand. She continues munching through her bowls of food, appetite unfettered, taking a sip of water now and again. "You were the Agent in charge of the interrogation, were you not Agent...Cheseapeak? No. Cassidy."
Oh boy, Chinese. Gabriel, in a mode of distraction, winds up with a bit of, well, everything in his stir-fry. He will just get to surprise himself while he eats. Coffee, soda, and some delicious almond cookies enhance his meal beyond the noodles and kitchen-sinkery. Straying to an open spot that is conveniently nearby and also flush with the likes of others, he sets tray down and attache case down and then gripes, mostly to himself, "You know, it is a lot easier to treat people in an actual medical facility." Nobody else probably cares about that, Gabe. His brows wing up over glasses at Cheseapeak. Well that is a name.
"Not really." Jean-Paul fails to react to her kick, so it probably /did/ hit someone else. He lifts a bottle of water from the edge of the tray and thumbs it open to take a sip. "Had he talked to her?"
Madrox stiiirs his stir fry. He is too far away from Terry to get kicked. Pity. "I know they're not doing a damn thing with Jeremy yet. I'm right there with him."
Terry lifts her head and pulls her hair back from her face, giving Jean-Paul a glare before looking at Faust. "Aye. I'm Cassidy. And I do not /know/. Twas hard enough to get the information we /did/," she shoots back at Jean-Paul. "Please tell me you have some aspirin on you?" she asks over their heads to Gabe.
Faust nods, repeating the name after swallowing a bite of her rice. Cassidy. Cheseapeak. Easy confusion. She flinches as Terry's foot solidly collides with her leg and frowns darkly. "What on earth was that for?"
Jean-Paul gives Terry a sort of huffy look at her glare and snap, but it doesn't last terribly long as she pleads for painkillers. He drops a shoulder in a brief gesture of contrition. "Still nothing, huh?" he asks Madrox with a glance down the table.
"Aspirin, Tylenol, ibuprofen," Gabriel answers, and forgoes taking his seat just yet to pop open his attache case. He produces those little single-dose sample foil packs of the above-mentioned drugs from a pocket, and slides them all over to Terry. Then, he sits.
"Nothing," Madrox says. Pick pick. "I've heard more from Essex whining about us in - Denmark or whatever his memo meant than I've heard from Jeremy."
"I wonder how old that memo was," Jean-Paul says as he stirs his fork through the noodles. "Denmark was--." He pauses to count back with an expression that briefly clouds. There are no good memories of Denmark. "It was a while ago."
Terry blinks, then colors. "Sorry. Was an accident," she apologizes to Faust before taking up the foil packet from Gabe and shooting him a quick smile. "At least /something/ good came out o' that mission," she mutters with dark satisfaction, picking at the pills and washing them down with a sip of soda.
"Might've been a year or more ago. Now that we know what Project Allergen is, he was probably referring to our smashery there." Madrox wiiiinds a long thread of noodle around the tines. "Everything's very clear in hindsight. I wonder what happens if we shut the project down. We got Hugh. We can get Silvio, I'm sure."
"Mm," says Jean-Paul, vague and a little quiet in reply to Terry and Madrox. He eats his veggies. While briefly quiet, his expression is more thoughtful than emo.
Raising her brows in a bland gesture, Faust picks up her chair and scoots a little further out of the range of Terry's swinging feet. She picks at her food with renewed attention, simply listening to the conversation around her. Gabriel's attache case does pull at little of her attention, once it is opened, dark eyes peering to see what else he has in there.
"Perhaps we should ask Mr. Ponting about his potential whereabouts," Gabriel says, removing his laptop from his attache case before closing up and setting aside the latter. While the former boots up, he finally turns at least some attention to his meal. "One would think he would know at least a few locations in which we could look. Ah, not to mention, other operational areas. Safe houses. That sort of thing."
Oh, also, besides laptop, there is some paperwork and a whole bunch of medically things. And a case for something. Gabriel is really boring, Faust, sorry.
"I am not sure we have the time t' try again. We are running up against the deadline," Terry murmurs, finally picking up her fork to stab at some chicken.
"We have other ways to find him, if we look. If we focus. If we have time, we can ask," Madrox says, as his wind-up of stir fry becomes rather excessive. He can't stuff that in his mouth, man. "Jessamyn's going to be the problem."
"Ask nicely," Jean-Paul says to Terry with a gleam in his eyes. "Smile pretty. Are you trying to say that doesn't work on him?" His gaze shifts back toward Madrox with a tip of his head. "Jessamyn's /been/ a problem. Remember that shapeshifter?"
Alas, Faust doesn't let the boring contents of Gabriel's attache (although the medical things gain a second look) disappoint her. Tidying up her things, she stands with a soft, "Good Afternoon," to the gathered table before heading out.
"If it doesn't, maybe /you/ can try the smiling," Terry retorts, the corner of her mouth twitching as she narrows her eyes slightly. She leans over to examine Gabe's plate, but at least she doesn't try to steal his food. Yet. She's distracted by Faust's departure, obv. "Afternoon."
Gabriel eats a few bites of delicious surprise stir-fry (really, not too surprising, but). There is a bunch of random thrown in. The broccoli calls to you, Terry. "Jessamyn West was the name of, ah, Debauer's handler, yes?" he more comments than really questions. "Ah, good afternoon," he asides to Faust when she departs.
"See you," Madrox says with a brief glance-up at Faust. Then back to the table. "Yeah, Debauer's handler. She's done too good of a job keeping herself at a remove. We still know barely anything."
"Unless it's another -- what was the name they kept using for travel arrangements?" asks Jean-Paul with a snap of his fingers. "Unless it is something like that, it's a link too strong and too specific to assume is coincidence." He doesn't really say bye to Faust. He is rude. Or focused. Or obsessed. Pick one.
Setting aside chopsticks and sitting back, Gabriel taps a thumb against his chin in thought absently. Then he gestures, smallish and circular, with that hand. "I suppose it could be a travel name, but why use a moniker that we're familiar with?"
"Mossman?" Terry asks, sweeping in to steal a bit of broccoli while Gabe is distracted (or not).
"Carpenter doesn't keep changing his name," Madrox says, small frowning at his plate. "She's their Carpenter. Hugh and Silvio are just some of her prominent field agents."
When Adam returns, his path takes him to to the cooler for juice. So I guess he's looking for juice instead of cookies. Maybe he's running on a sugar low but doesn't want to ruin his boyish figure. He's on his way back out when he slows at the cool kids' table to catch wind of their conversation. "Ponting?" he guesses as to their main subject.
"That's a little daunting," says Jean-Paul to Madrox, while absently nodding at Terry. Mossman. "Who are the less prominent agents? How many of them are there? We take down a fair number of people in our operations, but what does that really mean to them? Is it like losing someone out of the hub, losing someone on a team, or losing a hired hand?"
Gabriel's eyes dip briefly to note the very tail end of the broccoli-snatching, but he voices no complaint. "Yes," he more or less answers Adam, still looking thoughtful. "The idea that they would operate in much the same fashion as we do, organizationally, is an interesting one. If the likes of Ponting and Constantini are in one small branch of al-Sahra, however, that almost seems to suggest that they might be bigger than we think."
"We've been taking down a lot of al-Sahra agents, but on different projects," Madrox says, shaking the stirfry off his fork. Whatever, eating. "I'm inclined to think Silvio and Hugh are important to Allergen, but I don't know that. We might only be seeing the tip of the organizational iceberg. We've been hurting them. Getting rid of us has to be some kind of priority."
"It is. That was the whole point of Allergen, seems like." Terry huffs a humorless laugh and waves her fork in the air. "A whole project, all our own."
"Not quite getting rid of," Jean-Paul corrects with a point of his fork at Madrox. "Co-opt. Some, anyway. Did Ponting have anything to say about Jessamyn grudge? Does Ponting share that? Is it just because we make them look bad, or what?"
"I would think it suggests they are just as big as we've thought," Adam says to Gabriel's point, sliding into a seat. (Not by Jean-Paul or Madrox.) "If Ponting is a second to Jessamyn on Allergen, it seems doubtless that he's important to the project."
"Their organizational goals may be co-opt, but as yet persuasion doesn't seem to be their strength. Why Pete," Madrox segues. "I don't understand that. I never have. Why try to push some of us over, clumsily, but outright go after him?"
"Ponting thinks we're all a bunch of mental cases with no discipline. Seems more like he wanted to be using us, not destroying us." As for Jessamyn's grudge, she just shrugs. "Maybe she thought he was critical to us?" says Terry.
"Mm," Jean-Paul murmurs, the noise one of agreement to Madrox, but not quite perfect agreement. "Maybe it's not their strength because they don't all agree." He scrunches his nose just slightly at the point about Pete. "I don't know."
"Mm, allergens are generally irritants. Bothersome, but not necessarily life-threatening," Gabriel quietly worries over semantics. "Perhaps Mr. Wisdom has maintained his status as being a thorn in their side since leaving our agency. Or, perhaps we should review which missions he participated in."
"Not a bad idea," Madrox says with an incline of his head toward Gabe. "Because that seems like a damn specific grudge." He drums-drums his fingers on the table. "What /does/ happen if we close Allergen down? Are we promoted on their threat scale? Do they agree to destroy us or try harder to suborn us?"
"Was he only targeted particularly after he left?" Adam wonders, sounding dubious of the possibility. He glances at Jean-Paul and Madrox. "And the fact that they have failed to persuade our organization over doesn't mean they don't want to." He pauses to consider Madrox's question. "Well, I am confident that what they won't do is fail to respond."
"Why should we close Allergen down?" Jean-Paul asks with a sideglance and a thoughtful tip of his head. "They are trying to get a handle on us. I wonder if we could get a handle on them, instead, and control it -- somehow." Does he have ideas? No. But he has an /idea/.
"They started targeting specific agents after he left, so I am not--" Terry looks across at Jean-Paul, forehead furrowing. "Seems a wee bit o' symbiosis."
"They will be expecting -- something," Adam says, cautious but not dismissive. "They have to assume we know everything Ponting knows by now."
Madrox rubs his chin and owns, "I'm rather more comfortable with infiltration than smashing, my track record aside. Jessamyn's purported level of . . . hostility might make that difficult, but there has to be a way. Maybe we could seem to go over. Maybe we could make overtures."
"Obviously we just need to replace her with someone we can control," says Jean-Paul with a light trace of snark. "If they can try it, why can't we? Other than all those things we don't quite know yet."
While loading up another bite of delicious on his chopsticks, Gabriel asks, "How valuable do we think they feel Ponting is? Enough to attempt to retrieve him? Or, ah, is it more likely they will cut their losses in regards to him?"
"I do not know," is Terry's answer to that question, along with a briefly pained look. But not for the chopsticks. THough she's using a fork.
"We have to get close. We have to get /in/ before we replace anyone. We need a Debauer of our own," Madrox says, using his fork as an air-jabbing tool. "And if Hugh's Jessamyn's second - I don't know. They've tried to force releases before. We haven't given in."
"The only way to really tell is by their response to his capture," Adam says. "Or -- well. Ponting might have an idea of how well he's valued. It might not be /accurate/." He watches Madrox and his infiltration talk carefully.
"We have no idea how valuable they think he is, but if I were Dante--." Breaking off with a short gesture, Jean-Paul nods downwards to the far away cell.
"Forcing and, ah, retrieving are two different things. If, say, someone like Terry was picked up, I would think that if negotiations broke down or otherwise weren't possible, we would attempt to mount a serious rescue mission of sorts," Gabriel says, with a vagueish gesture to the redhead. "But it becomes a question of importance and, ah, values. We might do well to be wary, I suppose is my point."
"We'll watch for it," Madrox says with a drop of his chin. "My point was that negotiating with us, uh, never works. So either they'll go to extreme measures or we'll be very disappointed. An attempt on their part is a chance for /us/ to get data."
"Thank you, Gabe," Terry says, mild humor appearing in the set of her lips.
Jean-Paul gives Terry a sort of silent, doubtful look, perhaps weighting her relative value and finding her wanting. He's a good friend.
"Well, you're Head of Intel," Gabriel comments mildly to Terry, corner of his mouth twitching upwards.
"You would think them capable of retrieving their own people," Adam says, "but they have scientists languishing in prison. And Debauer, for that matter."
"Oh, to be valued," Madrox croons. And with a beat, "I'm not sure al-Sahra - cares much about tools in custody. It's hard to see even Hugh as much more than expendible."
Jean-Paul opens his mouth, closes it, and eats his noodles. Instead, he glances at Adam: "I wonder how they weigh the costs."
Terry narrows her eyes at Jean-Paul, then widens them as Gabe clarifies. "We'll see how long that last," she mutters with a sigh.
"Necessity?" Adam guesses. He turns his bottle of juice slowly on his table. "I don't know that I expect much professional loyalty from them. I expect them to value necessity to their projects."
"Yes, ah, that is why I said it depends on importance and values," Gabriel says, before eating some more stir-fry. Don't worry, Terry, he'd try to save you, anyway. He will try to save everybody. He has terrible priorities. "That is something we do not always see eye-to-eye on with them."
"Carmen died in jail. How many telepaths did they have?" Madrox raises a finger and lowers it. "Carmen. Debauer's gone. Portal Project's dead. The Danish project is dead. Maybe they can't waste resources on rescues. I don't know."
"They are quick to cut their losses," Adam murmurs, lips thinning.
The reminder of Carmen's death provokes a twitchy look of irritation from Jean-Paul and a mutter of, "Stupid." He nods at Madrox's list with a brief tip of his head. "They place a lot of value in secrecy. All this time, we still only know so much. If they started to break everyone out of jail or whatever -- well."
"Well, moles are generally considered expendable by nature. The risk of discovery is too great to think otherwise." Clearing his throat slightly, Gabriel then wets it with a sip of soda. This is then followed by a sip of cooling coffee. "It's almost as if, ah, they approach it like an invasive cancer... Sometimes, you have to sacrifice a body part, most or all of an organ, in order to keep the body alive. Certain ones, however, you can't live without. We just haven't found those, yet, it seems like."
"Who /would/ they save, then?" Adam wonders quietly. "Who is the heart they can't lose?"
"But Debauer's fate isn't the exception. It's the rule. Only Project Portal brought above-and-beyond reaction from them, and when we defused that threat," Madrox snaps his fingers, "they stopped. That was that. Secrecy may be a priority, but it seems even someone like Hugh only knows so much."
"Might tell us something about structure," says Jean-Paul, his noodles cooling in the face of distracting conversation. "We can extrapolate form their behavior when it is so consistent, I'd think."
"So let's see what happens," Madrox says, a bit subdued. "Guess we have Carpenter to talk to tonight."
"He doesn't even know the person above him," Adam says, just a bit baffled at the idea. Before he stops and goes, "I suppose we don't, either."
A brief expression of exasperation sneaks onto Gabriel's features, here and gone, at the mention of the meeting. "No, ah, we don't," he says. "One thing to ask, perhaps: if Carpenter were to be, ah... removed, would our organization persist? Can the same thing be said about Jessamyn West and Project Allergen? Priorities again, I suppose."
Tipping his head, Jean-Paul looks discomforted. "Hard to say." He pokes around at his plate and then rises without much in the way of explanation. "See you tonight, I guess." And then he skips off. Walks off. Walks off in sober and serious fashion.
This log with 90% less class warfare.