EVENT: DUPRR ▒ THE SECONDARY SHUTTLE BAY

[ataraxites]

CHARACTERS: Ensemble production!
LOCATION: The secondary shuttle bay
WARNINGS: Violence, injury, graphic imagery, death etc.
SUMMARY: Discovery of the secondary shuttle bay and rescue or not of the DUPRR NPCs inside.
NOTES: March 30 onwards.

The doors are torn open as you arrive, metal ripped back like the skin of a fruit. Improvised barricades of tools and carts, shuttle pieces stand as obstacles to be carefully climbed through before you can stand in the shuttle bay itself. The space is vast, flashlight beams penetrating only a certain distance into the dark, but enough to sweep the floor, find the scattered, gored remains of at least three human bodies. The ship stands as the only complete vessel in sight - or, at least, it was. Windows smashed, the hull torn at, access doors ripped open. The inside empty. The shuttle bay is silent. But is that the silence of a catastrophe already passed, or of someone hiding, holding their breath?

Comments

[dogbane]

The wire shudders once, violently, a blur of a shadow so narrow and so small that it's nearly not discernibly a shadow at all. Except that it flicks some blood off of it very visibly, more specks spotting the floor, shaken off by the high-freqeuncy vibration.

The next instant, the miniscule throb of movement gives way to William again. William recognizable, William as William, having hands starfished in the sticky puddles on the floor, and a mess of black hair, and a slightly disheveled look about his shirt. When his elbow pops back into the proper size and shape, it knocks into his backpack, pushing it over. He winds up on his knees, crawly, a little wild-eyed, looking around at the cross-section of that one DUPRR agent's severed neck and.

and the one who's running away. Finally, last of all, at Rey. William doesn't know if he feels better, but he feels different. "He's--" he clears his throat stickily. There's a bit of secondhand blood leaking down his forehead. Just a little. William exhales, pushing himself up into an ungainly kneel. "He's fuckin' getting away."

[circumitus]

...Shit.

Rey doesn't think twice. She blinks at William, and then turns her head. She whirls around to pursue the DUPRR survivor. Scoops up the empty assault rifle along the way by the strap, swinging it over her shoulder. Even in its current state, it could still be useful.

"Stop!" Rey snaps, if not a rather fruitless endeavor. The strength poured from William's healing pays off, though. She's fast. Adrenaline pumping. A deft three-hundred-pound tank hurdling towards the running man who's not going to make it very far out of the shuttle bay before she lunges to tackle him.

First thing is to make sure this guy doesn't get himself killed. William she'll deal with next.

[volares]

He doesn't stop, but he's also slow-moving. Faster than any man his age has a right to be, admittedly, but Rey's in top form and better trained in the area. Smaller. Faster moving all around.

She gains on him, and he's winded by the time she does, breath coming out in raspy wheezes as he tries to keep his muscles moving. He's not a soldier, dammit, he's just—

She takes him down, and they spill across the floor, but he doesn't stop fighting her. Doesn't hesitate to swing at a girl.

[circumitus]

Before, every fiber infiltrating her brain wanted to kill this man, and she had been fighting it. Something's different now. She can't tell whether it's still the adrenal rush or that shift in directive snaking around inside her head -- but she's shaking.

What she knows now is that she'll say and do whatever it takes to get this man to stop struggling against her. She'll take whatever hit he has to throw at her. But it doesn't take much for her to maneuver and overtake him into a chokehold around solid arms. It's obvious to her that the man is no skilled fighter.

"Just stop!" Rey says again, more exasperated. "What happened to your friend wasn't supposed to happen. Don't want to hurt you!"

Partially a lie. Partially the truth.

[volares]

Below her, Russe doesn't stop struggling, but she does get him into a chokehold eventually. His hands curl around her thick arm, but it's not doing him any good except to get air in. He uses that air to shout at her, "You're crazy! You're all fucking crazy!" He thrashes, trying to shift them both if he can't tear away from her on his own, like maybe he can get her to drop and knock her to the floor to loosen the grip between his weight and the steel of the ship.

[dogbane]

Russe's accusations are probably not inaccurate. William's appearance certainly doesn't lend credibility to any arguments to that matter, when he finally comes stumbling into view. Even though he picked himself up out of the spreading lakes of arterial loss, it's still drenched down the knees of his pants and clotted on his elbows, some on his chin and his forehead. Underneath it, he looks kind of

worried. Big soft eyes and a slightly confused quality to his expression overall, his mouth half open, slightly out of breath. Hard to say whether it's from sprinting over or from murder. "I'm," he starts, then stops, glancing at Rey a little shrewdly. He already stopped in his tracks, but he starts to back up slightly within his own little space, his shoulders going up. He isn't sure if Rey wants him to say anything.

What could he possibly explain, anyway? What could that possibly change?

[circumitus]

It doesn't take much to figure out why this guy's so hysteric. Rey has been in his shoes on more than one occasion. The only difference is that she was predisposed to cope with it faster. Nothing was ever permanent, especially human life.

Still, she admires his efforts. She's a lot heavier than she looks, and quite effortlessly keeps him pinned down under her weight.

"Not all of us," she tells him. Calmer, though her arm has a secure grip around his neck. He can thrash and claw and punch her with all he has. She is used to pain. "This ship wants you dead, and it'll do whatever it can to make that happen. Even if it means forcing some of us to..."

She trails off. Hears William speak. She eases her hold of the man, giving him room to breathe.

"Sorry."

[volares]

The sound of William's voice does little (nothing, actually) to ease him. When Rey lets up, Russe grabs out for the floor, trying to pull himself away. But her grip is only looser, not released, so he doesn't get anywhere. The man who just murdered his friend is standing over him, and there's nowhere for him to run. Rather than trembling, frightened, he shouts.

"You're out of your mind!" He barks, "It's a fucking ship; it doesn't want anything. You've lost it. All of you, you've lost it." Said in the mournful but paranoid voice of a man who's decided they made a mistake, following the Tranquility, boarding it. Their mission was not only a total loss; it was a mistake. "We should have left you out here."

[dogbane]

"Ain't disagreeing with you there," says William, who then-- sudden as a heart-attack-- wonders if the Hellhounds could drown him back into the soupy mess of his soul as quickly as they'd hauled it out of him. He scrubs his arm absently. William knows that he won't like it when he can feel guilt again. There will be so very much to feel.

The anticipatory prickle distracts him for a moment. Sucks him into a brief, strange pause, during which he stares at Russe's face and seems to stare right through his head without really seeing him.

A moment later, he blinks hard enough to crease his eyelids, and then reopens his eyes to stare at Russe dead in the face. He inhales unsteadily, glancing at Rey. "It's a fucking ship's got monsters," he answers. "Robots and armored Goddamn aliens with acid blood. Van Rijn's been 'round for fuck knows how long, and they had Strela brainwashed into complacency or whatever the fuck happened. You don't reckon it's within your generation's tech to fuck up someone's brain?"

William looks fucked up in the brain a bit now, his words coming out too fast, tio blunt, and something very uneven about his pace as he takes a few steps closer to Rey and the other man. At some point he picked up his medkit bag again. Maybe he wants to play doctor-- but he clutches the canvas with both smeared hands for now, and Rey here to chaperon.

[circumitus]

What the man says comes as a surprise to Rey. It was very telling just how little these people knew about what they were getting themselves into when they decided to dock the ship. That this crew got dealt the same shitty card as anyone else stuck here was.

Only her eyes move when she hears William, shifting up to meet his for that brief moment.

"That's right," she agrees. "Your people have seen Strela, the Cyllene. And you think a ship messing with people's heads is crazy?"

Well, it sure as hell wasn't sane, she had to admit that. But it wasn't her fault. It wasn't any of their fault.

It wasn't our fault.

She blinks when William starts making a move towards them. Her free (two-fingered) hand whips out, gesturing for him to stop, her head shaking. Whatever the hell inspired William to kill the younger man, she doesn't want to take any more risks of the same thing repeating itself, or how this guy will react. There are too many unknowns to contend with right now.

Rey looks back down at the DUPRR guy. "Going to let you go. If you try to run out there on your own, you'll die -- and it's too dangerous to stay here." She pauses. "Again, am really sorry about your friend. We've lost a lot of people, too."

Unlike the soulless William, Rey has these stupid things called feelings to feel right now. Guilt is definitely one of them, for not acting fast enough, for turning her back on William despite having a really good idea what he was thinking. That one is on her.

[volares]

He doesn't address their accusations; at this point, he doesn't believe it will do him any good. They've made up their minds, if they're willing to kill the other members of his team for it, and he values what little life he's got left in him. Slowly, he raises his hands, gesturing his surrender and acceptance of Rey's terms.

Instead of silently accepting that he's essentially under her guard now, though, he pipes up to question her in a rough voice, "What do you want?" She could have killed him, but she didn't. If that were still their goal, he'd already be dead: instead, they're both talking. That's progress. (Then again, they could have let the monsters devour them, as well.) With any luck, they need him for something, and he can use it to get back to the rest of his people—or whoever's left.

give permission for rey to knock him out rn if she wants

[dogbane]

To go home is the honest answer that William is in no position to give. He's been overly forward already, he's given to understand. He presses his mouth into an awkward... smile? and shoulders his backpack up again. There are dark, blotchy handprints all over it now, incomplete finger marks and partial palm-prints. It could still come in handy, though. If the ship tries to stop them from taking Russe back to the-- wherever.

If he tries to stop them. But he isn't bothered so much now by that chaotic edge, the loss of control, that veering shiny-eyed mania that had taken him minutes ago. Later on, William will realize that that had been as much giddiness as mind-control, but that's a disgusting thing to think about-- later. For now, he takes a step backward, eyes moving between Russe and Rey. While the DUPRR agent is evidently an important person, what Rey does matters much more.

granted!

[circumitus]

With that, Rey eases off of him, pushing herself to her feet. The question he asks is a loaded one, which she doesn't answer right away. She glances down at the man, and then turns her head to send William an apologetic frown.

She doesn't speak. Doesn't feel that words can quite transcribe the gravity of their situation when she goes to meet with William, sliding the assault rifle from over her shoulder. Rey's grip tenses around the firearm. She looks to him with the intensity of a soldier, even though the details of her new mission aren't made entirely clear yet.

"Apologies," she whispers so quiet that only William can hear. And swings the rifle, too quick and too sudden for him to dodge or say anything in return. The butt end of the weapon clocks against the side of his head, hard enough that hopefully he didn't feel it or the feeling of hitting the floor like a bag of bricks. No telling how he's going to feel later for when he wakes up, though.

Standing over William, she takes a moment. Her mind processing that yes, this is the necessary thing to do. That it would otherwise be too difficult keeping the survivor alive while having to worry about a shapeshifter losing it on them again. That just wouldn't do, not for this mission.

Rey checks over her shoulder, to the other man. He'd asked her a question earlier -- what does she want.

"Getting out of here alive would be a great start." Rey sighs, shifting the rifle back over her shoulder. The fact that she just knocked her comrade unconscious doesn't seem to phase or bother her in any way. It's just another day that ends with a Y, really. "What about you?"

[volares]

He's pushing to a sitting position, rubbing a hand across the stubble along his throat when Rey clips William in the back of the head. His eyes widen as the man's weight slumps to the ground, unconscious. Looking between them, Russe pushes the rest of the way to his feet and lets some of his unease and distrust ebb away.

"Survive," he growls, more agreeable. "Looks like you might be my best shot." His eyes fix on William's unconscious form, and he warns, "You leave him here, more monsters might just come for him. You gonna let your friend die?"

[circumitus]

It's a predictable answer, but one that she prefers to hear. When he mentions William, her eyes don't tear away from her companion. She doesn't know whether or not the monsters would attack him while he's out, as so many others have simply ignored them during their trek to the shuttle bay. But she also recognizes that abandoning him to this place also isn't an option.

Adjusting the rifle strap, Rey bends over. She takes William by the arm and, almost effortlessly, throws his dead weight over her right shoulder. Her arm folds to secure him there, as she turns around to face the other man. The palpable strength in her build is more discernible than before, as she's carrying a grown man like he's a sack of flour.

"Not leaving anyone to die." She nods to the exit, her eyes falling back down to the man. "We should get moving. Now."

[volares]

When she hoists William onto her shoulder, Russe makes two judgments: first, that he was right about her being soft-hearted; second, that her considerable strength was no fluke. His gaze flicks across her body language for a moment, sizing her up, then he nods his assent—as though he has a real choice—and starts for the exit with her, shoulders tight.

"Russe Neson," he introduces, "I'm the pilot." He looks over at her finally, after several minutes of walking in silence. There's something expectant in his eyes, waiting for her to return the introduction.

[circumitus]

In all the chaos of what was going on, it was easy to neglect formalities. Some part inside swayed her from the desire of wanting to get close to this pilot, Neson.

With William hauled over her shoulder, she ventures first down the way they came from. She glances to Neson for a moment, studying him, and then turns around to face the path ahead of them, still vigilant.

She blinks, just once. Slow.

"Sergeant Schuyler," she says, her tone shifts ever slightly from the robotic speech she expressed before. "I'm one of the security officers here."

It's not a cover. After all, she was a Sergeant Rey Schuyler at one point in her many lives. Of all the eight women she had once been, Schuyler was mission-bound but also loyal to a fault -- she would never leave a comrade behind, even if they were a liability. Just as she wouldn't abandon William.

It would be easier for a stranger like Russe Neson to warm up to someone like Schuyler than to "just Rey".

[volares]

"And him?" Russe nods to the body slung over Schuyler's shoulder, wary and ill at ease with him still. Or maybe that's just his general disposition towards the ship, which looks ready to swallow them once they get out into the hallways proper. The monsters, at least, seem to have thinned out, or at least aren't continuing to bother or track them if they are still around. All the same, Russe remains alert, glancing worriedly around.

[circumitus]

There's no mystery behind Neson's caution, not after what had transpired against the young man who was so ruthlessly killed in cold blood. Rey can't excuse that, but she can at least speak for him.

"William, our chief medical officer."

She pauses once when they reach the hallways, before she's on the move again, alert and attentive to their surroundings.

Though she doesn't know entirely where her feet are taking her yet, all that matters now is that Neson will follow.

[volares]

"Have any of the others been retrieved?" Russe questions, following her lead, right on her heels. "You must have a way of communicating with your department."

[circumitus]

So far so good. Despite the fact that she's carrying extra weight, Rey doesn't break a sweat, her pace not faltering.

"We do, but we lost contact with each other some time ago. There's always been some kind of interference in these corridors for some reason. We're lucky we were even able to receive your broadcast from your location."

[volares]

"Wouldn't call any of what just happened lucky," He growls darkly. If he looked run-ragged before the encounter, cowering from the black and fibrous alien, he looks worse now. Dark shadows form below his eyes, giving his already stubbled face a particularly haunted impression. As they move, he simply takes her lead, unable to make a judgment on whether they're heading in the right direction.

[circumitus]

No, suppose having your own killed by one of the people the aforementioned broadcast had reached -- who were supposed to help, no less -- wouldn't be considered by any means lucky.

"It wasn't supposed to happen this way." There's an ambiguous meaning hidden in her tones. But as long as she plays as Schuyler, she can keep hiding it. Play the part of the weathered soldier who's seen too much shit.

Not like she'll have to keep at it for too long.

[volares]

Russe relinquishes an unimpressed grunt on the subject, looking everywhere but Rey. In knocking William out, she's proven herself an ally of his. He doesn't feel any particular compulsion to watch her movements. Rather, he'd like to get an eye for the ship, figure out where they're going. Except he can't seem to figure out where that is, but for a swarming darkness and a steady sensation of moving down.

"No, I don't reckon it's ever supposed to happen that way."

[circumitus]

Rey knows that feeling. Remembers it. Has made amends with it. She also feels something tugging away in the back of her mind.

It's not supposed to be this way.

She ignores it.

"Mm," is all she says in response.

It's quiet. Wherever the monsters went, she can't find them in the darkness. Her senses are honed more on Russe's footfalls, ensuring that he is still following her.

Her wrist tightens around William. Even several minutes later, she doesn't tire by carrying him. She's pretty much a glorified pack mule.

After an awkward silence, she finally pipes up again: "I know you're just the pilot, but I've been wondering... Were you aware that this ship has been spacefaring for over one-hundred and thirty years?"

She's curious to know how much Van Rijn has told the DUPRR crew. But also, as Schuyler, she only attempts to make conversation while there's still time between them.