(no subject)
Call from Det. Grant Cordell to Det. John Beston
"Hey, John. This is Grant Cordell from out in Westchester. You asked me to keep an eye on your partner? I'm out here on a call at his apartment. It's not a Magneto thing this time, but -- your partner was beat up pretty bad. It looks like his friends took him out to a private clinic somewhere to patch him up. He has a GSW to the right arm and two broken legs. I got his statement. Listen ... it looks like a private hit.
My number's ###-###-####. Give me a call. I wouldn't mind trading some info."
Backdated to May 1, 2006
---
Time.
It runs, it dawdles, it mocks, it measures. Four minutes is enough time to overwhelm searing pain with fury. Enough time to recall the timer, ticking impassively down. Enough time to struggle out of debris on one good shoulder, pressing off with broken legs and broken arm towards the empty metal trash can. Enough time to knock it over and bump it towards the deadly little package on the floor. Enough time to struggle after it with desperate will, eyes blind, sweat slick, blood a smearing, spreading trail behind.
One minute is not enough time to live.
The last minute begins ticking away, inexorable. Into it breathes sudden fresh air: wind, cool and smelling of rainswept air more than of exhaust and city, blows sudden and swift through the remnant of Rossi's window. Riding it, a woman: slender, dark, tall. Her eyes are an eerie blaze of white, opaque and unreadable. The wind ripples the pale yellow of her shirt, though the blue jeans are too snug to her legs to be bothered by it; it ripples through the loose cascade of white that is her hair. Her feet in flimsy spring flipflops touch down on the floor and the wind dissipates, leaving Storm's eyes blue and alert to skim the room and measure the situation.
The street light bathes the floor in stripes of yellow, dying blood into flat, lifeless black. No mistaking that scent, though -- acrid and musky -- mingled with the sharper tang of cordite. Gold spills as well over smooth, taut skin: the powerful, laboring back; the line of bound arms; the cold geometry of handcuffs, biting into wrists; the lift of a startled head, green eyes made opaque by night but ablaze nonetheless, eloquent where the gagged mouth is mute. Urgent sounds shape invective without speech.
Inhalation sharp, Storm crosses the apartment with swift strides, her eyes locked on the crumpled form of the man on the floor. No other sound escapes her until on the approach she catches the baleful glow of red. She drops to a crouch at his side, hissing out a breath that resolves into a low, dark-edged sound, her muted tones too smooth for a snarl. "--Damn." She draws from the purse, a flat black bulk against her hip, a thin black wallet, closed with velcro. Moving with precision despite her haste, she rips open the wallet and pulls out her wire-cutters. The seconds are ticking. 0:45, 0:44 --
Rossi writhes with frustration, small chokes of agony ignored as he curls into the scattered debris on the floor. The one good shoulder battles to pin a fallen pencil down, head twisting to scrape the gag's fold against its end. Futile effort. His leg plows into the side of the bed, forgotten in his distraction. Chris makes another sound: it is not pleasant.
Storm ignores him. Her attention is on the detonator. Breath even and gaze cool, she sets her cutters to the correct wires; she closes her eyes, opens them again, and clips. The countdown halts with 35 seconds to spare. The bomb does not explode. Satisfied, she turns her attention to the /rest/ of the mess -- Rossi. "Hold still," she advises mildly. Weight braced with one hand knuckles-down against the floor, she leans over to loose the gag and free his mouth.
Chris rears his head back, dragging it away from the pull of gag; blood streaks that white linen, fed from the battered mouth. "--/Fuck/." His baritone is ragged and thick, ripped with physical strain and the aftermath of stress. In the high-angled line of his throat, the pulse races to the breathless gasp for air. "Damn you, Munroe. Anyone ever tell you you have an unreal sense of timing?"
For answer, Ororo holds out her arm and pulls back her sleeve, still crouched on the floor. The comlink blinks sedately, coiled at her wrist. "You called," she says. "Your panic button. I came swiftly as I could." Flight helps. Her eyes are dull in the darkness, concern etching her frown as she puts the wire-cutters away in the thin wallet. "What happened here?" Her gaze is still caught on him; if it moves, it is only to travel the length of his body, skittering over points of pain only to return to his face. Her fingers slide over the open wallet's innards, hunting lockpicks by memory and feel alone. "Do you have the keys to those cuffs?"
The initial wave of relief is swift-come and swift-gone, and the wracked body on the floor slowly curls into itself, head drooping into the battered floorboards. Another sound of pain catches in his throat, barbed wire shredding the first attempt at reply. His baritone dips, thinning. "Not my cuffs," he manages, eyes sliding closed. "Somewhere in that mess -- might be a key to mine."
"Never mind," Storm murmurs, voice soft. "I will try my way." A breeze gusts into the room, through the window, its touch cool and light as it flows over him, while its summoner sets about picking the lock on the handcuffs.
Cooling, dark liquid trickles down into that gleaming metal, filling the hollows and grooves of the handcuffs with sticky weight. The back facing Storm shivers, muscles flexing and loosening under a silence disturbed only by the small, quiet sounds: of swift and uneven breath; of metal links grating. Rossi says nothing, face hidden beyond the angle of his shoulder; the callused hands forcibly relax.
Seconds tick by, marked and marred by the imperfect silence; brow furrowed with concentration, Ororo works her small pick in the small lock until she lets out a sudden breath, in time with the opening of the cuffs, which she removes delicately from his wrists to let fall to the floor as she crouches behind him.
Release from the bands prompts an unexpected cry from Rossi, agony sharp and quick as the bullet-gored arm is relaxed from its tight knit. Blood, already crusting, spiderwebs and begins to pour again, slick down the arm. "/Fuck/," he jags, eyelids squeezing closed. Spiky lashes glitter with moisture, a tear trickling down to clean a path through gore. "They teach you that at teacher school?"
"The streets of Cairo, Detective." The tide of humor is gentle through Ororo's mild voice. "Most of what I know, I learned /elsewhere/ than the classroom." Milder still, and graver, she murmurs, "I had better get you to the medbay." She eyes him, the slant of glance assessing and reassessing his injuries. The 'somehow' remains unspoken.
"Shit, it hurts," Chris says in a frayed voice, eyes fluttering open. The good arm wrestles with the floor, forcing his upper body up; the shoulder blades back, bone stretching the taut silk of skin, elbow pressing into the wood. His head hangs, black hair mussed. "9-1-1. Call emergency. Need to find the fuck, and deal with the bomb."
Bomb. Storm looks down at it, frowning. Then, still balanced in her crouch, she lifts her wrist to her mouth, tapping two fingers rapidly over the link's face. "I need a van and stretcher to my location for transport to the medbay," she tells it. "Yes. Rossi." The volume on the link is low, blurred still further by static. Ororo concludes, "Thank you, Scott. Ororo out."
Codenames or no, real names or no, Chris is almost beyond hearing. The naked brace of shoulder quivers, dark skin paler where old scars cross-hatch in white, and breath -- steadier now, but still too loud, too quick -- hisses its breeze under the fallen tangle of hair. "Legs are broken," he tells Ororo with careful dispassion. "Right arm's gone, too. You see him?"
"No." Regret breathes through Storm's voice as she straightens out of her crouch, shaking her head. "I arrived too late for that. -- The van will be here momentarily."
"Cops?" He is fading, and rapidly. The elbow slips, attempts to hold, and gives way entirely. Chris rolls onto it, pain once more stark and ugly on the pale face. "The bomb. Need to get handle it."
Storm returns to her crouch beside the bomb, narrowing her gaze down at it. Nominal C4, and yet -- something, some instinct makes her reach out and touch it. It is strangely slippery under her hands, malleable and yet, and yet -- she stops. She recoils as if stung, drawing up to her full height as she glares down at bomb and the defunct detonator with rising ire. "This," she declares, in a low voice hinted with the deep growl of a lioness, "is /silly putty/."
The figure on the floor does not respond for a moment, strength leeched and slowly seeping away in increments of seconds and rising discomfort. The heavy-lidded eyes are glazed and slivered, bare splinters of light behind the splice of black lashes. He breathes, in and out. His heart beats. And somewhere, nearly smothered by exhaustion and the grey ash of reaction, a small spark wakes. Rossi blinks. "What?"
"That the children play with." Ororo bends to pick it up and straightens again. She curves her hand beneath the bomb and lifts it, to let it sag over either side of her hand. Brows climbing, she holds it out to him, lips curling back in a blend of ire and disgust. She repeats the words as though they are the very direst of curses. "/Silly putty/."
Those pale eyes widen fractionally, framed by white. Rossi's nostrils flare to that faint, familiar odor, so inappropriate and unexpected, and he stares blankly at the deceptive clay for a hand's count of heartbeats before glancing above it at Ororo. His mouth twitches. Life rouses and stirs behind that drawn face, tickled into awareness despite itself. "Son of a bitch," he says, helpless, black mirth nudging that thin baritone. "That fucking, insane shit of a goddamn penguin. I swear to God, Munroe. If I ever find him, I'm going to kill him. Right after Tom. He's next in line."
And weakly, painfully, Chris begins to laugh.
Storm lets the silly putty drop to the floor, disdainful in the swift slide of her glance away from it, as though it is beneath notice. She wipes her hands on her jeans and looks down at the broken man on the floor. In the face of hysteria, she is only human. "Concern yourself with justice later," she advises. There is a moment's hesitation, during which she frowns, skimming the room -- shredded bits of sheet, probably a first aid kit in the bathroom; time enough wasted -- and then she peels the thin yellow fabric of the pale shirt away from her torso and up over her head, leaving behind the pale shimmer of brassiere, smooth and white over the curves of her breasts, and nothing else but bare mocha skin as she kneels beside him in the dim light. "Hold still," she advises again, and sets about staunching the flow of blood with this most unorthodox bandage.
Not hysteria, but something else: something broken, and despairing, and morbidly amused. Laughing still, tears a bright, shining ribbon across his temples, Rossi rolls onto his back to accommodate his nurse, hilarity knit with the anguish of physical pain and irony. "Fuck," he gasps, spasming through mirth into agony and then back again in dizzying, nauseating ricochet. "If you had /any/ idea -- Cassidy will never let me live this down. Thank God he's gay. Sweet Mary, that hurts."
"It will continue to hurt," Storm says. Her bedside manner might leave something to be desired, but her field dressing is more or less adequate, tightening over the wound and tied off. One eyebrow lifts at the imprecations cast on Banshee's sexuality, but she elects not to make an issue of it. "We will get you medical attention shortly." She checks the time.
"Thanks for the heads-up," Rossi drags out faintly, fresh perspiration beading across his forehead. Eyelids slide closed again, eyehollows couched in deep, bruising shadow; the tongue's accent blurs, slurring across words in tired epilogue. "No rush. Having a great time. Wish you were here. Have to--" His dulling mind wrestles with it, like the slow erosion of his voice. "Cops."
"/Yes/, Detective," Ororo assures. Her eyes close, hiding the flicker of white through blue as the temperature of the room rises, independent of thermostat. "I /will/ call the police." The flicker of headlights below draws her attention, but it is not the van she wants. Her purse contains a cell phone; she withdraws it and uses it to call 911, her glance drawn back to the wounded man as her lips thin in a grim line.
Chris's face is a closed-eyed mask; his mouth moves, obeying will without effect. "--officer needs assistance," he manages, spinning a thread of sound out of husk. "Badge number--"
Storm nods once, acknowledgment; she echoes the words, information given with swift, cool efficiency. Then the phone flips shut and the bag straightens against her naked side. And her comlink crackles to life: Cyclops below, indicating his arrival with the van. "All right. Come up," she tells the comlink. "I'll let you in and we'll get him out--"
[Log ends]
Alerted by the accidental activation of Rossi's panic button, Storm comes flying to the rescue. Literally. The subsequent nudity reconciles Chris to having his ass saved yet again by poodles.
"Hey, John. This is Grant Cordell from out in Westchester. You asked me to keep an eye on your partner? I'm out here on a call at his apartment. It's not a Magneto thing this time, but -- your partner was beat up pretty bad. It looks like his friends took him out to a private clinic somewhere to patch him up. He has a GSW to the right arm and two broken legs. I got his statement. Listen ... it looks like a private hit.
My number's ###-###-####. Give me a call. I wouldn't mind trading some info."
Backdated to May 1, 2006
---
Time.
It runs, it dawdles, it mocks, it measures. Four minutes is enough time to overwhelm searing pain with fury. Enough time to recall the timer, ticking impassively down. Enough time to struggle out of debris on one good shoulder, pressing off with broken legs and broken arm towards the empty metal trash can. Enough time to knock it over and bump it towards the deadly little package on the floor. Enough time to struggle after it with desperate will, eyes blind, sweat slick, blood a smearing, spreading trail behind.
One minute is not enough time to live.
The last minute begins ticking away, inexorable. Into it breathes sudden fresh air: wind, cool and smelling of rainswept air more than of exhaust and city, blows sudden and swift through the remnant of Rossi's window. Riding it, a woman: slender, dark, tall. Her eyes are an eerie blaze of white, opaque and unreadable. The wind ripples the pale yellow of her shirt, though the blue jeans are too snug to her legs to be bothered by it; it ripples through the loose cascade of white that is her hair. Her feet in flimsy spring flipflops touch down on the floor and the wind dissipates, leaving Storm's eyes blue and alert to skim the room and measure the situation.
The street light bathes the floor in stripes of yellow, dying blood into flat, lifeless black. No mistaking that scent, though -- acrid and musky -- mingled with the sharper tang of cordite. Gold spills as well over smooth, taut skin: the powerful, laboring back; the line of bound arms; the cold geometry of handcuffs, biting into wrists; the lift of a startled head, green eyes made opaque by night but ablaze nonetheless, eloquent where the gagged mouth is mute. Urgent sounds shape invective without speech.
Inhalation sharp, Storm crosses the apartment with swift strides, her eyes locked on the crumpled form of the man on the floor. No other sound escapes her until on the approach she catches the baleful glow of red. She drops to a crouch at his side, hissing out a breath that resolves into a low, dark-edged sound, her muted tones too smooth for a snarl. "--Damn." She draws from the purse, a flat black bulk against her hip, a thin black wallet, closed with velcro. Moving with precision despite her haste, she rips open the wallet and pulls out her wire-cutters. The seconds are ticking. 0:45, 0:44 --
Rossi writhes with frustration, small chokes of agony ignored as he curls into the scattered debris on the floor. The one good shoulder battles to pin a fallen pencil down, head twisting to scrape the gag's fold against its end. Futile effort. His leg plows into the side of the bed, forgotten in his distraction. Chris makes another sound: it is not pleasant.
Storm ignores him. Her attention is on the detonator. Breath even and gaze cool, she sets her cutters to the correct wires; she closes her eyes, opens them again, and clips. The countdown halts with 35 seconds to spare. The bomb does not explode. Satisfied, she turns her attention to the /rest/ of the mess -- Rossi. "Hold still," she advises mildly. Weight braced with one hand knuckles-down against the floor, she leans over to loose the gag and free his mouth.
Chris rears his head back, dragging it away from the pull of gag; blood streaks that white linen, fed from the battered mouth. "--/Fuck/." His baritone is ragged and thick, ripped with physical strain and the aftermath of stress. In the high-angled line of his throat, the pulse races to the breathless gasp for air. "Damn you, Munroe. Anyone ever tell you you have an unreal sense of timing?"
For answer, Ororo holds out her arm and pulls back her sleeve, still crouched on the floor. The comlink blinks sedately, coiled at her wrist. "You called," she says. "Your panic button. I came swiftly as I could." Flight helps. Her eyes are dull in the darkness, concern etching her frown as she puts the wire-cutters away in the thin wallet. "What happened here?" Her gaze is still caught on him; if it moves, it is only to travel the length of his body, skittering over points of pain only to return to his face. Her fingers slide over the open wallet's innards, hunting lockpicks by memory and feel alone. "Do you have the keys to those cuffs?"
The initial wave of relief is swift-come and swift-gone, and the wracked body on the floor slowly curls into itself, head drooping into the battered floorboards. Another sound of pain catches in his throat, barbed wire shredding the first attempt at reply. His baritone dips, thinning. "Not my cuffs," he manages, eyes sliding closed. "Somewhere in that mess -- might be a key to mine."
"Never mind," Storm murmurs, voice soft. "I will try my way." A breeze gusts into the room, through the window, its touch cool and light as it flows over him, while its summoner sets about picking the lock on the handcuffs.
Cooling, dark liquid trickles down into that gleaming metal, filling the hollows and grooves of the handcuffs with sticky weight. The back facing Storm shivers, muscles flexing and loosening under a silence disturbed only by the small, quiet sounds: of swift and uneven breath; of metal links grating. Rossi says nothing, face hidden beyond the angle of his shoulder; the callused hands forcibly relax.
Seconds tick by, marked and marred by the imperfect silence; brow furrowed with concentration, Ororo works her small pick in the small lock until she lets out a sudden breath, in time with the opening of the cuffs, which she removes delicately from his wrists to let fall to the floor as she crouches behind him.
Release from the bands prompts an unexpected cry from Rossi, agony sharp and quick as the bullet-gored arm is relaxed from its tight knit. Blood, already crusting, spiderwebs and begins to pour again, slick down the arm. "/Fuck/," he jags, eyelids squeezing closed. Spiky lashes glitter with moisture, a tear trickling down to clean a path through gore. "They teach you that at teacher school?"
"The streets of Cairo, Detective." The tide of humor is gentle through Ororo's mild voice. "Most of what I know, I learned /elsewhere/ than the classroom." Milder still, and graver, she murmurs, "I had better get you to the medbay." She eyes him, the slant of glance assessing and reassessing his injuries. The 'somehow' remains unspoken.
"Shit, it hurts," Chris says in a frayed voice, eyes fluttering open. The good arm wrestles with the floor, forcing his upper body up; the shoulder blades back, bone stretching the taut silk of skin, elbow pressing into the wood. His head hangs, black hair mussed. "9-1-1. Call emergency. Need to find the fuck, and deal with the bomb."
Bomb. Storm looks down at it, frowning. Then, still balanced in her crouch, she lifts her wrist to her mouth, tapping two fingers rapidly over the link's face. "I need a van and stretcher to my location for transport to the medbay," she tells it. "Yes. Rossi." The volume on the link is low, blurred still further by static. Ororo concludes, "Thank you, Scott. Ororo out."
Codenames or no, real names or no, Chris is almost beyond hearing. The naked brace of shoulder quivers, dark skin paler where old scars cross-hatch in white, and breath -- steadier now, but still too loud, too quick -- hisses its breeze under the fallen tangle of hair. "Legs are broken," he tells Ororo with careful dispassion. "Right arm's gone, too. You see him?"
"No." Regret breathes through Storm's voice as she straightens out of her crouch, shaking her head. "I arrived too late for that. -- The van will be here momentarily."
"Cops?" He is fading, and rapidly. The elbow slips, attempts to hold, and gives way entirely. Chris rolls onto it, pain once more stark and ugly on the pale face. "The bomb. Need to get handle it."
Storm returns to her crouch beside the bomb, narrowing her gaze down at it. Nominal C4, and yet -- something, some instinct makes her reach out and touch it. It is strangely slippery under her hands, malleable and yet, and yet -- she stops. She recoils as if stung, drawing up to her full height as she glares down at bomb and the defunct detonator with rising ire. "This," she declares, in a low voice hinted with the deep growl of a lioness, "is /silly putty/."
The figure on the floor does not respond for a moment, strength leeched and slowly seeping away in increments of seconds and rising discomfort. The heavy-lidded eyes are glazed and slivered, bare splinters of light behind the splice of black lashes. He breathes, in and out. His heart beats. And somewhere, nearly smothered by exhaustion and the grey ash of reaction, a small spark wakes. Rossi blinks. "What?"
"That the children play with." Ororo bends to pick it up and straightens again. She curves her hand beneath the bomb and lifts it, to let it sag over either side of her hand. Brows climbing, she holds it out to him, lips curling back in a blend of ire and disgust. She repeats the words as though they are the very direst of curses. "/Silly putty/."
Those pale eyes widen fractionally, framed by white. Rossi's nostrils flare to that faint, familiar odor, so inappropriate and unexpected, and he stares blankly at the deceptive clay for a hand's count of heartbeats before glancing above it at Ororo. His mouth twitches. Life rouses and stirs behind that drawn face, tickled into awareness despite itself. "Son of a bitch," he says, helpless, black mirth nudging that thin baritone. "That fucking, insane shit of a goddamn penguin. I swear to God, Munroe. If I ever find him, I'm going to kill him. Right after Tom. He's next in line."
And weakly, painfully, Chris begins to laugh.
Storm lets the silly putty drop to the floor, disdainful in the swift slide of her glance away from it, as though it is beneath notice. She wipes her hands on her jeans and looks down at the broken man on the floor. In the face of hysteria, she is only human. "Concern yourself with justice later," she advises. There is a moment's hesitation, during which she frowns, skimming the room -- shredded bits of sheet, probably a first aid kit in the bathroom; time enough wasted -- and then she peels the thin yellow fabric of the pale shirt away from her torso and up over her head, leaving behind the pale shimmer of brassiere, smooth and white over the curves of her breasts, and nothing else but bare mocha skin as she kneels beside him in the dim light. "Hold still," she advises again, and sets about staunching the flow of blood with this most unorthodox bandage.
Not hysteria, but something else: something broken, and despairing, and morbidly amused. Laughing still, tears a bright, shining ribbon across his temples, Rossi rolls onto his back to accommodate his nurse, hilarity knit with the anguish of physical pain and irony. "Fuck," he gasps, spasming through mirth into agony and then back again in dizzying, nauseating ricochet. "If you had /any/ idea -- Cassidy will never let me live this down. Thank God he's gay. Sweet Mary, that hurts."
"It will continue to hurt," Storm says. Her bedside manner might leave something to be desired, but her field dressing is more or less adequate, tightening over the wound and tied off. One eyebrow lifts at the imprecations cast on Banshee's sexuality, but she elects not to make an issue of it. "We will get you medical attention shortly." She checks the time.
"Thanks for the heads-up," Rossi drags out faintly, fresh perspiration beading across his forehead. Eyelids slide closed again, eyehollows couched in deep, bruising shadow; the tongue's accent blurs, slurring across words in tired epilogue. "No rush. Having a great time. Wish you were here. Have to--" His dulling mind wrestles with it, like the slow erosion of his voice. "Cops."
"/Yes/, Detective," Ororo assures. Her eyes close, hiding the flicker of white through blue as the temperature of the room rises, independent of thermostat. "I /will/ call the police." The flicker of headlights below draws her attention, but it is not the van she wants. Her purse contains a cell phone; she withdraws it and uses it to call 911, her glance drawn back to the wounded man as her lips thin in a grim line.
Chris's face is a closed-eyed mask; his mouth moves, obeying will without effect. "--officer needs assistance," he manages, spinning a thread of sound out of husk. "Badge number--"
Storm nods once, acknowledgment; she echoes the words, information given with swift, cool efficiency. Then the phone flips shut and the bag straightens against her naked side. And her comlink crackles to life: Cyclops below, indicating his arrival with the van. "All right. Come up," she tells the comlink. "I'll let you in and we'll get him out--"
[Log ends]
Alerted by the accidental activation of Rossi's panic button, Storm comes flying to the rescue. Literally. The subsequent nudity reconciles Chris to having his ass saved yet again by poodles.