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xp_logs2010-10-27 01:30 am
x-scorpion.livejournal.com) wrote in xp_logs2010-10-27 01:30 am
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An attempt of Cammie's to go out and blow off some steam before her birthday takes a bit of a different turn.
The night air was crisp. She really should have brought a jacket, Cammie realized, but in the end it didn't bother her that much. It was another year with winter rolling in that she wasn't heading south for the winter. It didn't seem as strange this year.
She stretched, her ears still ringing from the music inside. Tonight, she left alone, but that was by design. It was more just the feeling she was after tonight. The beat, and the beating, and those goals had been accomplished.
Away from Silver's bright frontage, the District X neighbourhood began a fast and sudden shift towards the poorer. Manhattan was still rebuilding, even years later, and the money for redevelopment had not flowed equally through the city. Normally, there was more traffic on the streets, but tonight, her footfalls seemed to echo the isolation around her.
The lack of people should have bothered her, she supposed. But it didn't. It was a contradiction, really. At her heart, Cammie loved being around people, but at the same time being around too many of them was a Very Bad Thing if something went wrong. Besides, it was late, anyone else filtering home right now was likely plastered out of their mind.
Cammie was in this for the atmosphere, and while she wasn't going to go running headlong into something blatantly stupid, things being a little off in a little bit of a worse neighborhood didn't flip off any alarms. It was New York City, it defied explanation.
After a block, the street lightened slightly, and a man came around the corner a moment after she passed. His head was down, and only the logo of his Yankees ballcap was easily visible. He didn't hurry, walking about the same speed as her, a dozen or so steps behind. White iPod wires curled from his ears to his jacket pocket, where his hands were stuffed against the cold.
Cammie didn't react right away, but she noted that it seemed like she was being followed. Over reacting to something like this was stupid, but not paying attention was equally dumb. Still, it was a peeve of hers, especially when mostly alone on the streets. She turned down a side street for the express purpose of shaking the guy off.
The man crossed the street behind her, remaining on the same path. He disappeared from sight as she started down the street, and once again she was alone. Ahead of her, another man was waiting at the bus stop, looking up from his newspaper as she approached.
Cammie ignored him. Smiling at guys tended to give them the wrong impression and he was not her type, she could tell that from just from a glance. Besides, this was a big city, everyone got by by ignoring each other.
She pulled her jacket closer to her to fight off the chill.
"Miss? Do you have the time?" He said, turning more fully in her direction but not moving towards her.
"Sure, it's ten minutes past I'm not wearing a watch," she returned, without swearing even. She was being a good girl, in a manner of speaking.
"There's no need to be rude." He said, huffing slightly. He was certainly order than her, maybe in his early forties. Beyond that, there was a remarkable blandness to him. If he hadn't spoken to her, she wouldn't have remembered his face past a few seconds.
"It's not rude until I break out the swearing," she said. It didn't help that things like that were normally a to start coming on to a girl.
"Yeah, you keep believing that." He put his paper under his arm. "Little rich bitch who thinks she owns the place."
"I'd have it made if I owned New York, but nope, just the Brooklyn Bridge. I'll even sell it if the price is right," she returned.
"Good night." He turned as if to leave, but suddenly, all thought was wiped away by an all-encompassing burst of pain. There was a buzzing sound, and her body convulsed as a second burst from the taser lodged in her back rippled through her. The man with the newspaper opened it, pulling a pair from gloves from the folded pages and putting them on. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a syringe, uncapping it carefully and stepped forward.
"That's enough, Paul." The electricity stopped, and another figure came into focus; it was the first man who'd been walking behind her earlier. The second man had been a distraction, to draw her attention while the other cut through the alley to get behind her. The needle plunged into her arm, with kitten weak muscles unable to pull away. "Get the car. She'll be out for hours."
There were a lot of things Cammie was completely immune too. Physical damage would never be among them. She would've pointed out that the chemicals would've done nothing, but maybe they were going to take blood, which was bad news in another way.
The world a fog, there wasn't much she could do to fight it, and that helplessness was a feeling she despised.
She was unceramoniously dumped into the back seat of a New York taxi, a fairly clever idea for an escape vehicle. He'd used his gloved hands and a grabage bag in order to manhandle her back, not taking any chances.
"Her eyes are still open."
"Give the nanites a chance to work. The bitch is immune to drugs, but a little cocktail of tiny machines suppressing her cognitive functions has the same effect. If she twitches, we can always tase her again."
"Fuc-" was as far as she got with saying 'fuck you' before she was out.
***
The handcuffs chaffed. They'd put them on a notch too tight, before dumping her on her side on the small bed. Their apartment was a cheap, pre-furnished place, with a handful of old furniture scattered around. She was in the only bedroom; a tiny affair with a single window, mostly taken up by the cot she'd been left on, like a sack of laundry. The door was closed, but the sound of their voices carried, as they argued back and forth.
"We need to get outside the city. If the bitch is worth this kind of money, we're better off stashing her upstate and then arranging the meet."
"It doesn't work like that. Besides, she'd have us killed in a second if she thought for a second we had compromised her package. Trust me, Mark. I've done some work with these guys before. They know their shit, and as long as you play it straight and do things their way, they pay on time."
"Fine. When does what's his name get here?"
"Mister Houk said by four. Another twenty minutes or so."
Fuck, Cammie thought. She'd been kidnapped. For reward money, no less. Well, that was cheerful. The handcuffs were too tight to wiggle out of, whoever put them on either knew that you could generally work your way out of the damn things pretty easy or was just sadistic. Or a bit of both. So she started weighing her options. There was a window, if she could work it open. And she could spit in their eyes or something when they came in. Which didn't sound like much until she bit her cheek hard enough to start bleeding. The blood was toxic, a small amount wouldn't kill but it burned like a son of a bitch, if her observations on that were correct.
While they were arguing, she rolled towards the window, ignoring the pain the handcuffs caused.
Through the dirty glass, a figure raised his finger to his lips, silently instructing her to be quiet, while he carefully probed around the edges of the frame.
She swallowed the blood in her mouth and nodded and stopped moving. If anyone came in in fact, she would look like she was out cold. A good survival skill, really. People tended to be more relaxed if they thought you were dead to the world.
There was a faint burning smell, as a purple glow appeared around the edges of the window frame. The sound was like hearing bacon sizzling quietly, and the window moved a fraction when it finished, although appeared to be still in place. It was carefully lifted from the wall, opening up a literal hole in the brickwork. Remy's head and shoulders came through the window, and he reached over to where she was lying. His picks opened the handcuffs easily, and he motioned her to come through the hole.
Cammie didn't waste a second. She didn't make a sound as she crawled through the window, though she did rub her wrists once she was on the other side, because that chaffed. Her wrists had the red marks to show it. Sure, the two asshats were going to be pissed to find their payday had gone missing, but she couldn't bring herself to care.
Remy carefully replaced the frame, and at a glance, it looked like the wall was whole again. He motioned her across the roof to a fire escape, and from there down to the street. Instead of a quick getaway, he led her to a parked car and got in.
"Here, put de sweater on." It was the first words he'd spoken, handing her a dark, hooded sweater. "Put de hood up."
"Yeah," she said, doing just that. Even at night the hair stood out, as did her arm. Not many people walked around bandaged from shoulder to hand, after all, "Thanks," she said simply. After all, you didn't look a gift anything in the mouth.
"You don't need to thank me. Remy put you here." He said, eyes watching the street. From their position, the front entrance to the building that Cammie had been held in was visible, and a man had just entered it.
"Well then, thanks for loosening the handcuffs a bit," Cammie snarked, "Those really chaffed," she watched the front of the building, more than a little interested. If she was the bait, she was interested in what the trap was, after all.
For ten minutes, there was nothing. There seemed to be a momentary flicker through the window that Cammie had escaped from, but past that, it was a long, silent wait watching an unused door. It finally opened again and the man left, crossing the street to a van and climbing in. Remy put the car in drive and slipped into the street behind him.
On an empty street, it was impossible to trail someone without being spotted. Remy seemed to do the opposite, speeding up to catch the van. He passed over a small tube, with a cross piece on one end and a circular opening on the other. "Hold it in you palm, wit de rest up you sleeve. Lean you arm out de window. When I tell you, push on de crosspiece. It will shoot a short term bug on de van dat we can track."
"Got'cha," Cammie said, packing it away as instructed. She wasn't much for weapons, being one herself, but she could handle being told when and how to shoot something easily. And hiding it was even easier. "Who're you tagging with this thing anyway? Or is that none of my business?"
""Remy leaked you name in a couple of specific places to see who bit on it. Turns out dat my hunch was right." The cars pulled closer, but Remy signalled a left hand turn, and drew left. As the car crossed from the back to the left side of the vehicle, Cammie's side was in the midst of a blindspot between the side and rearview mirrors. "Shoot now."
"Always nice to know you're wanted," she muttered, shooting the way she had been instructed to. "Guess I'll have to be on my toes now."
The pulled past, turned, and left the van behind. In a traditional tail, a new car would take up Remy's spot, and follow the van. But their bug would have to do for now.
"Not any more den you have been. They can't get you at de school, and dey can't set up a tail from dere. Finding you in de city needs to start from scratch again, wit' out my 'target of opportunity' to start wit'. I'd avoid de club for a while." He relaxed back into his seat. "In de meantime, our mystery man will be reporting back to his organization dat his freelancers didn't find you or bungled de job. After eliminating dem, if he follows normal procedure, he'll close down de operation here and head back to his normal staging area. Only dis time, he'll have shadows following him dere, to see de next step up de chain."
"Well, there goes my Saturday nights," though it was really any night she was really bored after all, it wasn't even Saturday, "Next thing you'll be telling me is that bar hopping is also out of the question," that really wasn't important right now though. Not in the grand scheme of things. Attempted kidnappings tended to help put things in perspective, "Well, at least now the 'normal staging area' won't be a mystery. And hopefully you get the next up the chain."
"De risks you want to take are up to you. Silver excepted, going out isn't any more or less dangerous for you den it was a week ago." Remy said, as he pulled the car into a non-descript parking garage.
"Joy," she muttered, "But what I'm really still trying to figure out is what I got shot up with."
Remy handed over the syringe that had been discarded at the side of the road when she'd been taken, raising the question of just how long he'd been watching her. "Give dis to bete bleu. He should be able to make some educated guesses from de residue."
"Jesus, how long were you following me?" she asked, giving him a side glance while pocketing the syringe. She intended to have it checked out. There wasn't much out there that could get past her immune system.
"Long enough." He pulled into a spot and opened his door. "Dere's money in de pocket of de sweater. 'nough for de early train back to de school. Remy be in touch if any further threats look likely."
"Thanks. Look, if something involves me, I'd like to at least know about it," she said, "Just saying."
"Everybody needs something to hope for." The Cajun said as he turned and walked away.
"Well then, here's to hoping," she muttered, pulling out money for the bus. The hood was not going to go down until she got back.
The night air was crisp. She really should have brought a jacket, Cammie realized, but in the end it didn't bother her that much. It was another year with winter rolling in that she wasn't heading south for the winter. It didn't seem as strange this year.
She stretched, her ears still ringing from the music inside. Tonight, she left alone, but that was by design. It was more just the feeling she was after tonight. The beat, and the beating, and those goals had been accomplished.
Away from Silver's bright frontage, the District X neighbourhood began a fast and sudden shift towards the poorer. Manhattan was still rebuilding, even years later, and the money for redevelopment had not flowed equally through the city. Normally, there was more traffic on the streets, but tonight, her footfalls seemed to echo the isolation around her.
The lack of people should have bothered her, she supposed. But it didn't. It was a contradiction, really. At her heart, Cammie loved being around people, but at the same time being around too many of them was a Very Bad Thing if something went wrong. Besides, it was late, anyone else filtering home right now was likely plastered out of their mind.
Cammie was in this for the atmosphere, and while she wasn't going to go running headlong into something blatantly stupid, things being a little off in a little bit of a worse neighborhood didn't flip off any alarms. It was New York City, it defied explanation.
After a block, the street lightened slightly, and a man came around the corner a moment after she passed. His head was down, and only the logo of his Yankees ballcap was easily visible. He didn't hurry, walking about the same speed as her, a dozen or so steps behind. White iPod wires curled from his ears to his jacket pocket, where his hands were stuffed against the cold.
Cammie didn't react right away, but she noted that it seemed like she was being followed. Over reacting to something like this was stupid, but not paying attention was equally dumb. Still, it was a peeve of hers, especially when mostly alone on the streets. She turned down a side street for the express purpose of shaking the guy off.
The man crossed the street behind her, remaining on the same path. He disappeared from sight as she started down the street, and once again she was alone. Ahead of her, another man was waiting at the bus stop, looking up from his newspaper as she approached.
Cammie ignored him. Smiling at guys tended to give them the wrong impression and he was not her type, she could tell that from just from a glance. Besides, this was a big city, everyone got by by ignoring each other.
She pulled her jacket closer to her to fight off the chill.
"Miss? Do you have the time?" He said, turning more fully in her direction but not moving towards her.
"Sure, it's ten minutes past I'm not wearing a watch," she returned, without swearing even. She was being a good girl, in a manner of speaking.
"There's no need to be rude." He said, huffing slightly. He was certainly order than her, maybe in his early forties. Beyond that, there was a remarkable blandness to him. If he hadn't spoken to her, she wouldn't have remembered his face past a few seconds.
"It's not rude until I break out the swearing," she said. It didn't help that things like that were normally a to start coming on to a girl.
"Yeah, you keep believing that." He put his paper under his arm. "Little rich bitch who thinks she owns the place."
"I'd have it made if I owned New York, but nope, just the Brooklyn Bridge. I'll even sell it if the price is right," she returned.
"Good night." He turned as if to leave, but suddenly, all thought was wiped away by an all-encompassing burst of pain. There was a buzzing sound, and her body convulsed as a second burst from the taser lodged in her back rippled through her. The man with the newspaper opened it, pulling a pair from gloves from the folded pages and putting them on. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a syringe, uncapping it carefully and stepped forward.
"That's enough, Paul." The electricity stopped, and another figure came into focus; it was the first man who'd been walking behind her earlier. The second man had been a distraction, to draw her attention while the other cut through the alley to get behind her. The needle plunged into her arm, with kitten weak muscles unable to pull away. "Get the car. She'll be out for hours."
There were a lot of things Cammie was completely immune too. Physical damage would never be among them. She would've pointed out that the chemicals would've done nothing, but maybe they were going to take blood, which was bad news in another way.
The world a fog, there wasn't much she could do to fight it, and that helplessness was a feeling she despised.
She was unceramoniously dumped into the back seat of a New York taxi, a fairly clever idea for an escape vehicle. He'd used his gloved hands and a grabage bag in order to manhandle her back, not taking any chances.
"Her eyes are still open."
"Give the nanites a chance to work. The bitch is immune to drugs, but a little cocktail of tiny machines suppressing her cognitive functions has the same effect. If she twitches, we can always tase her again."
"Fuc-" was as far as she got with saying 'fuck you' before she was out.
***
The handcuffs chaffed. They'd put them on a notch too tight, before dumping her on her side on the small bed. Their apartment was a cheap, pre-furnished place, with a handful of old furniture scattered around. She was in the only bedroom; a tiny affair with a single window, mostly taken up by the cot she'd been left on, like a sack of laundry. The door was closed, but the sound of their voices carried, as they argued back and forth.
"We need to get outside the city. If the bitch is worth this kind of money, we're better off stashing her upstate and then arranging the meet."
"It doesn't work like that. Besides, she'd have us killed in a second if she thought for a second we had compromised her package. Trust me, Mark. I've done some work with these guys before. They know their shit, and as long as you play it straight and do things their way, they pay on time."
"Fine. When does what's his name get here?"
"Mister Houk said by four. Another twenty minutes or so."
Fuck, Cammie thought. She'd been kidnapped. For reward money, no less. Well, that was cheerful. The handcuffs were too tight to wiggle out of, whoever put them on either knew that you could generally work your way out of the damn things pretty easy or was just sadistic. Or a bit of both. So she started weighing her options. There was a window, if she could work it open. And she could spit in their eyes or something when they came in. Which didn't sound like much until she bit her cheek hard enough to start bleeding. The blood was toxic, a small amount wouldn't kill but it burned like a son of a bitch, if her observations on that were correct.
While they were arguing, she rolled towards the window, ignoring the pain the handcuffs caused.
Through the dirty glass, a figure raised his finger to his lips, silently instructing her to be quiet, while he carefully probed around the edges of the frame.
She swallowed the blood in her mouth and nodded and stopped moving. If anyone came in in fact, she would look like she was out cold. A good survival skill, really. People tended to be more relaxed if they thought you were dead to the world.
There was a faint burning smell, as a purple glow appeared around the edges of the window frame. The sound was like hearing bacon sizzling quietly, and the window moved a fraction when it finished, although appeared to be still in place. It was carefully lifted from the wall, opening up a literal hole in the brickwork. Remy's head and shoulders came through the window, and he reached over to where she was lying. His picks opened the handcuffs easily, and he motioned her to come through the hole.
Cammie didn't waste a second. She didn't make a sound as she crawled through the window, though she did rub her wrists once she was on the other side, because that chaffed. Her wrists had the red marks to show it. Sure, the two asshats were going to be pissed to find their payday had gone missing, but she couldn't bring herself to care.
Remy carefully replaced the frame, and at a glance, it looked like the wall was whole again. He motioned her across the roof to a fire escape, and from there down to the street. Instead of a quick getaway, he led her to a parked car and got in.
"Here, put de sweater on." It was the first words he'd spoken, handing her a dark, hooded sweater. "Put de hood up."
"Yeah," she said, doing just that. Even at night the hair stood out, as did her arm. Not many people walked around bandaged from shoulder to hand, after all, "Thanks," she said simply. After all, you didn't look a gift anything in the mouth.
"You don't need to thank me. Remy put you here." He said, eyes watching the street. From their position, the front entrance to the building that Cammie had been held in was visible, and a man had just entered it.
"Well then, thanks for loosening the handcuffs a bit," Cammie snarked, "Those really chaffed," she watched the front of the building, more than a little interested. If she was the bait, she was interested in what the trap was, after all.
For ten minutes, there was nothing. There seemed to be a momentary flicker through the window that Cammie had escaped from, but past that, it was a long, silent wait watching an unused door. It finally opened again and the man left, crossing the street to a van and climbing in. Remy put the car in drive and slipped into the street behind him.
On an empty street, it was impossible to trail someone without being spotted. Remy seemed to do the opposite, speeding up to catch the van. He passed over a small tube, with a cross piece on one end and a circular opening on the other. "Hold it in you palm, wit de rest up you sleeve. Lean you arm out de window. When I tell you, push on de crosspiece. It will shoot a short term bug on de van dat we can track."
"Got'cha," Cammie said, packing it away as instructed. She wasn't much for weapons, being one herself, but she could handle being told when and how to shoot something easily. And hiding it was even easier. "Who're you tagging with this thing anyway? Or is that none of my business?"
""Remy leaked you name in a couple of specific places to see who bit on it. Turns out dat my hunch was right." The cars pulled closer, but Remy signalled a left hand turn, and drew left. As the car crossed from the back to the left side of the vehicle, Cammie's side was in the midst of a blindspot between the side and rearview mirrors. "Shoot now."
"Always nice to know you're wanted," she muttered, shooting the way she had been instructed to. "Guess I'll have to be on my toes now."
The pulled past, turned, and left the van behind. In a traditional tail, a new car would take up Remy's spot, and follow the van. But their bug would have to do for now.
"Not any more den you have been. They can't get you at de school, and dey can't set up a tail from dere. Finding you in de city needs to start from scratch again, wit' out my 'target of opportunity' to start wit'. I'd avoid de club for a while." He relaxed back into his seat. "In de meantime, our mystery man will be reporting back to his organization dat his freelancers didn't find you or bungled de job. After eliminating dem, if he follows normal procedure, he'll close down de operation here and head back to his normal staging area. Only dis time, he'll have shadows following him dere, to see de next step up de chain."
"Well, there goes my Saturday nights," though it was really any night she was really bored after all, it wasn't even Saturday, "Next thing you'll be telling me is that bar hopping is also out of the question," that really wasn't important right now though. Not in the grand scheme of things. Attempted kidnappings tended to help put things in perspective, "Well, at least now the 'normal staging area' won't be a mystery. And hopefully you get the next up the chain."
"De risks you want to take are up to you. Silver excepted, going out isn't any more or less dangerous for you den it was a week ago." Remy said, as he pulled the car into a non-descript parking garage.
"Joy," she muttered, "But what I'm really still trying to figure out is what I got shot up with."
Remy handed over the syringe that had been discarded at the side of the road when she'd been taken, raising the question of just how long he'd been watching her. "Give dis to bete bleu. He should be able to make some educated guesses from de residue."
"Jesus, how long were you following me?" she asked, giving him a side glance while pocketing the syringe. She intended to have it checked out. There wasn't much out there that could get past her immune system.
"Long enough." He pulled into a spot and opened his door. "Dere's money in de pocket of de sweater. 'nough for de early train back to de school. Remy be in touch if any further threats look likely."
"Thanks. Look, if something involves me, I'd like to at least know about it," she said, "Just saying."
"Everybody needs something to hope for." The Cajun said as he turned and walked away.
"Well then, here's to hoping," she muttered, pulling out money for the bus. The hood was not going to go down until she got back.