It's just another day, there's murder in the air/It drags me when I walk, I smell it everywhere

[john_thane]

Thane is on the pier, hunting rifle on his back, staring out across Lake Michigan and not caring too much that he's in sight of all sorts of CCTV. No one tends to come up to him when he's so obviously armed like this, not even police - and if police do decide to make this their problem, he'll either shoot them or teleport out. Or one, then the

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[war_rani]

There is a genetically-modified superdog somewhere in Grant Park with a flexible specimen collection bottle fastened just behind her fangs.

She's hunting with a single-minded determination, nose to the ground, sorting out any scent like the one she's been told to look for. It's difficult, especially as there are old patches and the train stops and starts and is obscured by the sheer number of people and the occasional acrid turmoil of leaves seared by a teleport.

But this is, in part, what she was made for. She's closing in.

[torchwoodsheart]

"He's on the pier." Tosh's voice sounds a little distant, but Gwen can't blame her. Track a Time Agent's wristband halfway across the city with your brain, and you're allowed to sound a bit distracted. "He's not moving, just... standing there."

Gwen nods a little, shifting her grip on the gun. It's heavy, which isn't unsurprising considering it's a gun meant to take off a man's head from some distance away. "Alright. You stay here and-"

"If I go with you, I'll be able to tell if he's going to teleport," Tosh points out. "You'll have at least a little warning. If I don't, I'll be alone, and there's nothing to say he can't teleport hereNot likely, but it's not a chance Gwen wants to take. She also doesn't much want to put Tosh any closer to Thane than she is now, but... She lets out a breath and nods down the street a little. "There's a park out on the water, parallel to the pier. If we head down there, it should be a bit less noticeable than just coming up along the pier behind him

[aint_a_shepherd]

Book's walking with them, with a kind of deadly grace that he hasn't had a chance to use in years. Nearly all the layers that make up the Shepherd have been stripped away, showing the Operative underneath. So while Shepherd Book would hesitate to blow a man's head off, even temporarily, Book the Operative just returns the glance and murmurs, "I've killed men at seven hundred meters. Think that'll do?"

There's no pride in his tone, no enjoyment... There is, in fact, nothing in his tone. It's delivered with the kind of casual indifference someone might use to make a passing remark about the weather. His eyes, though -- there's pain there, and guilt. This isn't something Book ever wanted to revisit.

However, if it's this, or letting another innocent girl be violated... To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal...

This is the time for killing. Healing comes later.

[torchwoodsheart]

Gwen blinks at him for a second, and then nods a little, shifting the weight of the gun and then handing it over to Book. This should bother her. All of this should, but at this point, she would even settle for a solution that didn't bring Jack back, just as long as all of this ends.

"Good enough for me," she murmurs, and swings her attention back to the pier, across the short stretch of water from the park. The pier's fairly empty - maybe people are finally getting sensible and starting to avoid parts of the city that tend to explode. Then again, maybe not. Either way, it's hard to miss the lone figure standing there, looking out over the water.

Her heart jumps a little, seeing him, and she's not sure if it's fear or nervousness or anger... Cocky, isn't he? As if he doesn't have every reason to be, at this point. But they're going to kill him tonight. They're going to kill him, and the Vesmier's going to bring Jack back, and this will be over.

[aint_a_shepherd]

Book takes the gun, feeling the weight in his hands, finding the balance, the grip. He hasn't had a chance to practice with it, to feel it firing, but that's less of an disadvantage than one might think, not with his training.

As soon as he's got the feel of it, he's bringing it up, moving smoothly into a firing stance, every movement liquid, the gun an easy extension of his arm. The guilt, the pain, those are all gone. Two things exist: the weapon and the target. There's no Book left, nothing even that identifies as an Operative: in the moment before he fires, there's only the weapon, and he is the weapon. There's only the target, and the fact that the target has a name and a face ceases to matter; John Thane is as unreal as Derrial Book. He breathes in, finger curling around the trigger, eye and hand in perfect alignment. As he breathes out, the weapon will fire, and he'll have served his purpose.

He won't miss.

[definitivestep]

Sam is... waiting. He has been waiting for a while now, and meanwhile trying to avoid engaging in conversation of any sort with Owen. It's the sort of thing you do when you're forced to be with Owen Harper for any extended period of time.

He's really starting to wonder if something went wrong, and if anyone would remember to tell them if it did.

[der_weevilkonig]

And Owen is... pacing. Making no secret of the fact that, while he did demand to be included on this little mission, so far it's just been them waiting in a storage unit for a headless bastard to drop in on them. He's got his pistol out - hey, it might be necessary - and enough sedative to knock out a horse in a thigh holster (for much the same reasoning), and...

Right. It has to have been at least a half-hour by now. Torchwood really should invest in long-range comms. Or mobiles.

He stops on his circuit of the room, eyeing the centre warily like it might have generated a Thane and just not told them.

"You know," he mentions. "There is the possibility that going on a paranoid's information about how someone's repressed whatever gave her secret coordinates to a stealth transport might be a bit mad. Did we ever consider that?"

[definitivestep]

Sam glances over at Owen with a slightly scornful look. Not that he wasn't thinking something similar, but he at least would have... phrased it better. "Considering the information was relayed through a very talented psychic who probably would have noticed if it might be unreliable..."

He sighs and paces a few steps from where he had been standing, glancing around the room unhappily. As if it won't be easy to spot the second he teleports in here - they're not exactly subtle, those things...

[war_rani]

Owen might have had a retort for that, but he's interrupted by a bright flash of light and the appearance of a headless bleeding corpse on the concrete floor.

Right under a large white dog plowing into the corpse with enough force to slide it a foot across the floor before she snaps down on the exposed cross-section of his neck, reinforced teeth shearing through a neat segment of spine which falls back into the specimen containment vessel held behind her teeth.

There's an audible confirmation message in Gallifreyan - not that anyone but the dog can understand Gallifreyan - and...