debut - Nikola

Sep 07, 2011 21:53

He and Kate can agree on one thing: they've got to try. Lotus blocks them at every turn when they try to find information on Carentan, on Ravi, on Will and Magnus but Magnus wouldn't send a distress call if she didn't need it and if it's Worth's time node she needs, he'll give her the best approximation to it that he can. Stolen conference calls with the Big Guy over one of the Lotus computers (hardly a secure transmission, but he's in a bind and he's willing to bend the protocol accordingly) give them the idea to send in one of the missiles because if nothing else, it might buy them some time.

Kate's deft with demolition, it seems, and knows just where to dismantle the missle to render it (relatively) harmless and with enough raw material for Magnus to do something with. It's impressive, her skillset, and while he'd been skeptical when she'd come on (bloody Cabal contract killer, hardly impressive background on that front) she'd proven herself again and again and now, in front of his own eyes, had been thinking on her feet and more than pulling her weight. When she sends the jeep rushing headlong at the barrier, there's a flash and Declan's flat on his back, seeing stars and head swimming.

Declan's not sure if it's worked but he's got to hope it has. It seems he's gone through too, though, and from the ache in his head and in his bones, it's half killed him in the process. No matter, he'd much rather be in the thick of it than standing around impotent outside. The weather's not what he'd expect; from the little scrap of a message he got from Magnus, he's expecting the cool of autumn fading into winter because days in Carentan last for years and night's almost upon them.

Declan's always been decent at tracking, though, and he usually only needs a moment to reorient himself before he can find a bearing and keep true to it. This terrain is jungle: hot, sticky, sweaty and not what the French countryside should feel like at any time of the year, much less winter. The soil's sandy beneath his boots, give even though there's a healthy amount of plant cover on the ground as well as in the trees. It reminds him of the hell that had been a recon in Costa Rica to stop an Abnormal smuggling ring and he hopes he hasn't lost his memory and ended up back there. That'd been miserable weeks of squatting in the jungle, waiting to make a move.

He half expects his compass to twirl wildly and be unable to find a bearing at all but there's a north, more or less, and he decides to follow it. One of two things will happen: either the jungle will clear out into civilization or it won't and he'll know just how fucked he is. He's not discouraged, not yet, and makes his way out as efficiently as he can without sacrificing the opportunity for recon. If this is somewhere he's stuck for a while, he's going to know it and know it well.

It's not particularly in his schema for jungle to see a baseball field and when that's what the jungle clears out to show, he can't help but think he's wandered into Zimmerman's subconscious. There's a path though, and he follows it, a regular yellow brick road.

"One hell of a bump to the head, Dorothy," Declan mumbles, mostly to himself and is shocked to find he doesn't have a lump there.

That makes the current hallucination all the more disturbing. When he manages to make his way to some sort of Compound and lab, he's not all that surprised to see Tesla standing there.

"Where the bloody hell are we, mate?"

nikola, debut

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