Weapon X - XXIII: Saviors
Sep. 17th, 2024 02:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsRogue, Maya, Logan, Kyle, Madin, and Doug have arrived at the coordinates and the town is completely silent..
You've been to one small town, you've been to them all, Rogue thought to herself. Fields of nothing, a tense vibe of 'go away, don't look at us' and that scent of fear permeating throughout.
She hated small towns.
Landing the X-Wing as far out of town as possible, they were in a random field that seemed to have seen better days. It was clearly not being used for anything, and she hoped the cloaking shield would be enough to keep people away. "I already don't like this place," Rogue sighed, as she opened the doors. "It feels wrong ...don't ya agree, sugar?"
Logan grunted in agreement. There was plenty wrong about this place. Nothing but noises from nature and this close to a town, no matter how small, it shouldn't be like this. The dead crackle silence of something trying too hard to make this place stay cut off from the outside world. "Feelin' like we're walkin' into somethin' we shouldn't be," he said as he headed outside.
There was a barely visible dirt track headed back into town from their location. Probably teenagers doing what they could to keep themselves entertained this far out in the middle of nowhere. Maybe that meant it wouldn't be as bad as they feared. Maybe Logan should just stop thinking.
"Well, cell service is out." Kyle shook a burner phone that he'd been handed. "And I didn't agree to any sucker bets, Cypher, so you can eat it." He tossed the phone to Doug, half-laughing. "Legit though, creepy. I saw a couple of pickups on the main road before we touched down, but there is like, nobody out otherwise.."
Doug took the phone back from Kyle and tapped at it. "Okay, the phone's still working, but just zero reception." He looked around. "Lights are on, I don't see any sign of power disruption..." He grimaced. "Which sounds to me like someone is running a highly illegal and very large jammer of some kind. Which means someone -really- does not want any information getting out. As a professional hacker, I find that...irritating." Not that he wouldn't resort to extralegal tactics when the situation called for it, he mostly just objected to it being used by someone else.
Madin listened to the chatter, settling the straps on their pack again. The town - such as it was - was deserted but not uninhabited. There were flowers and lawns that had clear signs of having been watered recently. Eyes trained on the houses as they passed, Madin's shoulders prickled. It felt like they were walking into an ambush. A curtain twitched. "Movement!" Madin called. "They're still at home." They paused and amended, "or someone is. But they're leaving us be for now, at least." There was minimal cover beyond standing behind Rogue or Logan and hoping for the best and that wasn't doing much.
They picked up speed.
Maya had noted the same curtain twitch but kept her head on a swivel as she adjusted her pace to match Madin's increased speed. She tapped them on the elbow before moving into the forward position, batons at the ready should they come across any hostiles.
Everyone was inside apparently, or maybe just a few someone’s. Either way, the town wasn’t particularly large and it didn’t take them long to come up on what looked like military vehicles, but no bodies. Maya paused back from them, looking for any movement either in the vehicles or around them.
She could see a grocery store not too far ahead, and what looked like a body sprawled next to another camouflaged vehicle parked haphazardly out front.
“Wolverine, Wildchild, can you smell blood?”
Logan inhaled deeply as he stalked forward, hands ready at his sides though his claws were sheathed. "Yeah, but not out here. Whatever happened out here was just the beginnin'." He kept his gaze moving from one potential attack vantage point to the other. He toed the limp body as they passed. Whatever organization was here had some cleanup to do and that meant they were still in town somewhere. Distracted or doing mop up on whatever they hadn't discovered yet.
"You can't?" Kyle's snarl at Maya was possibly unwarranted. He might not admit it. "Also Mads is right, at least a couple houses got people, I can practically taste the muttering." He shook his head. "That dude." He pointed with one clawed hand at the same body Logan had poked. "That dude is super dead, like, most of his blood is on the outside and most of that outside blood is in the sidewalk. He's been dead kinda a while."
As he trotted over to the camouflage painted vehicle, Doug pulled a thin bit of metal out of the small pack he carried for eventualities just like these. The metal folded out on hinges until it was about the size of his forearm, with a small notch on the end. "Okay, since these are probably military or military-adjacent folks given the fatigues..." He rolled the dead body aside with his foot and did his best not to look too closely at it. "That means their vehicles will probably have GPS and some kind of comms inside." He tried the door just in case, but it was actually locked. He slid the tool in his hand down between the window and the door, and after a few moments of searching, a noise somewhere between a 'click' and 'thunk' heralded the unlocking and opening of the door.
"And getting intel from the horse's mouth is always best practice," he explained with a satisfied grin. "Let's see what we've got," he continued as he began to rummage around the interior of the vehicle. "I'm gonna guess they aren't jamming their own frequencies, after all."
The Group arrives at the food market and finds a survivor, Dr. Sarah Kinney.
Military vehicles stood abandoned in front of a food market. Maya’s trained eyes quickly took in the area, noting the gashes in the vehicles. She turned to Kyle, who had several advantages when it came to senses.
“Can you smell anything?”
Kyle's voice said "Yeah, blood and shit, so we've got dead people." He gave Logan a mildly sympathetic look, the older man shared the same enhanced senses he did, and the same knowledge. People shat themselves when they died. "Gasoline too, one of these bullshit humvees has a busted tank."
Logan grunted in response. You got used to the smells. You had to. Couldn't let them distract you from the bigger picture. He trailed a hand along the two pronged scratches all over the side of one of the vehicles. Whatever or whoever had made them had fought viciously, likely in self defense from the looks of it. There was a faint hum of static through the air that only he and Kyle could hear. Something was still working somewhere.
This was one creepy place. Rogue didn't need to hear the buzz to know that it felt wrong. She had goosebumps, and shivered quickly. There was a smell that she didn't like, and when she saw how riled up Logan and Kyle were getting, she didn't want to even tap into those senses. Instead, she peeked around, walking lightly on her feet, to see what was going on. She too noted the claw marks, and the eerie silence that wasn't; there was something though, a noise that wasn't right. Frowning a little, she looked around and hesitated. "Does that...sound like breathing to anyone else? I think someone's here...."
Madin had followed tracks into the general store, noting the footsteps that had gone in, blood smeared on the floor, followed by the fighting coming out back out - the window had broken from the inside. Their feet crunched on glass as they picked their way around two fallen shelves.
"In here! Injured!" They dropped to one knee, pulling open their pack and bringing out the first aid kit.
Maya quickly moved into a guarding position as Madin pulled out their first aid kit, noticing woman almost immediately.
“We’re here to help.”
Rogue had followed quickly behind and her eyes grew as she really saw the magnitude of the injuries. This woman was bleeding everywhere, bruised to the point where her eyes were swollen, and barely hanging on. They needed to get her proper medical care as soon as possible. "Madin, y'all get her as stable as you can. Maya and I will get her out of here.... ma'am, if you can hear me, can you tell us what happened here? Who did this to you?" She glanced towards Logan, and gave him a look. He would know to be on guard from that alone.
The woman clutched a makeshift bandage to her side, blood bleeding through the ones wrapped around her arms. “My name is Dr. Sarah Kinney. You have to- My daughter-“ She leaned over and coughed, blood sputtering from her mouth. “They took my daughter, Laura. Used what they call a trigger scent on her. I tried to get between her and the civilians, but-“ Sarah dissolved into gasps, short of breath. She wasn’t sure she had much time left, there was so much blood loss. But it hardly mattered, she just needed these people to stop the program from taking Laura back.
Daughter? Trigger Scent? This sounded more and more dangerous and this time, she wasn't relying on eye contact. "Logan, this is a bad situation. Can you sniff out this scent? Or maybe you and kyle, one focus on the girl, one on this...trigger? Dr. Kinney, we gotta know -- how old is your girl? What are we looking for?" Rogue wasn't going to ask about what happened to the civilians. Considering there was nothing left around ... it didn't bode well.
“It only works on her. It’s what the program uses to- I should’ve known they would deploy it.” Without the equipment needed, there wasn’t much Sarah could’ve done to protect Laura from it, from her own DNA. “Laura is 17, fuck- she’s only 17. I should’ve-“ Dr. Kinney started hacking again. She felt lightheaded. “They’ll be takin- the airstrip. You need to get to the airstrip before they take her back. Please.”
The radio that Doug had lifted from the military vehicle earlier picked that moment to crackle to life at his hip, and a frantic voice began shouting in between the bursts of static.
"Fall back...(static)...airstrip!" The transmission punctuated with the loud crack-crack-crack of a semi-automatic rifle firing three round bursts. "Any unit this frequency...(static)...reinforcements..." A hoarse scream from someone other than the speaker cut in, followed by a longer sustained buzz signaling that someone had panicked and switched to full auto. "Does anyone read..." And then the transmission cut out, leaving nothing but static.
Doug pivoted, looking around them to take in the whole scene as his mind started racing. "Rogue, you and Echo got her?" he asked, indicating Dr. Kinney. Off of her nod, he looked at the rest of the group, gathering Logan, Madin, and Kyle with a glance.
"All right, let's saddle up." They needed to get to this airstrip quickly. He weighed the potential for unpleasant memories as he glanced at Kyle. But needs must, and at worst he'd make it up to the man after they were home safe.
"Wildchild, gimme some GTA."
Doug, Kyle, Madin, and Logan go to the airstrip to stop Weapon X from taking back Laura.
The drive out of town to the airstrip had been uneventful, where uneventful meant that sense that the other foot was about to drop never quite left. Madin wasn't driving the truck they'd taken to get there - which, admittedly - was fair, all things considered. This was their first outing with the team. The fences around the airfield were more a suggestion than proper security, a small security guard post and lever thingy that blocked the road between the fences, two small hangers sheltering -- hmm. Light planes, by the look of it and not passenger. Croppers, probably. The town maps and ordnance survey they'd all reviewed on the plane, and the satellite footage Doug had provided confirmed that the fences were enough to funnel any entry through the main gate, the terrain flat enough and treeless enough to ensure that anyone approaching on foot in daylight would be seen long before they made contact.
Their truck skidded to a halt just short of the small rise leading into the airfield, a dip in the land with a creek at the bottom providing all the cover there was amid endless fields. Madin finished their summary of the situation - -apparently this could be a learning opportunity, after all. "We have to go in via the gate, unless we wait until dark. I can take out the security posts on the main gate as soon as we clear the hill?" Madin said, offering the suggestion. "I'd have set up a kill zone there. They probably have, too."
Kyle -was- driving the truck, having gleefully hotwired it after finding 'the biggest, stupidest, most asshole extended cab truck' and then asking Madin to "plasma knife that offensive fucking bumper sticker'. Whatever orange-cheeto-voting asshole owned this, he hoped their car insurance had lapsed. "Yeah, they're gonna have a choke point. If this is Weapon X shit, they're going to move fast, so we probably don't have until dark. They move fast, which sometimes bites them in the ass." He glanced over his shoulder at Logan. "I'm thinking nice bright purple plasma distraction and then we blitz any guards at the gate?"
Logan arched an eyebrow. Not his favorite kind of plan but what else was there? Kyle was right. They had to move fast and they had to move now before these Weapon X assholes decided to make off with Laura. "Fine by me. Get them nice and distracted and we'll do what we needa do. Might give us enough time to get in and out before they realize who's even come knocking at their door." Though Logan had a suspicion that if they knew another rogue Weapon X asset was on their doorstep, they'd wet themselves to get both back to their facility. The less they realized who he was and what he was doing here the better.
"Let's get this show on the road," he said.
The truck began to move. Madin stood in the back seat, torso out the truck's window, left hand holding the oh shit handle over the door for dear life. They curled plasma around their right hand, throwing it like a spear in an arc at the gate post the moment they were within range. It hit the road with a boom. A moment later, they sent two more bolts after it, aiming directly at the structure now that they'd sent off a warning shot.
Flames crackled in dry grass where the plasma - or pieces of the gate house - had landed. They pulled themself back into the truck, resisting the urge to check the rifle they no longer carried. For just a moment, it had felt like old times, and then they were back beside Doug and it wasn't there or those people anymore.
Doug detected one logistical issue with moving the vehicle back toward the gate - Kyle was still driving and supposed to be hopping out to get the guards. And letting the truck come to a stop right in the field of fire seemed like a bad idea. "Okay, Wildchild, we're gonna have to Mr. and Mrs. Smith this," he announced. Catching a smirk from the lanky feral, Doug snorted. "No, you're gonna be the one with -your- butt on -my- dick, so you don't get to make jokes," he said before Kyle could even open his mouth. "Thank fuck for bench seats," he muttered. Trying this in a bucket seat would have been worse.
They had the passenger side facing the gate, which meant Kyle would have cover as he exited the door. "Okay," Doug said as he placed one hand on the wheel next to Kyle's and started sliding over the seat back. "On my mark in five, four..." He judged the rate as they closed on the gate. "Mark!" he yelled, lunging toward the driver's seat.
Kyle went out the open driver's door as Doug got his leg onto the seat, rolling once, and coming up running. He could see Logan just a few steps ahead, already mixing it up, and came around the older man's side, pulling one of the guards off by his face. A handful of claws into the cheeks did a great job moving someone where you wanted - and where Kyle wanted "guard in a headlock getting his stupid throat choked out until he fell down."
Logan had leapt from the truck as soon as he'd heard "mark", letting the door swing whichever way it wanted behind him. The bullets slamming into him in the few steps before he barrelled into the midst of the guards reminded him just exactly how much he hated being the healing invincible part of things. But at least he healed. He let out a low snarl as he used the full weight of his adamantium laced skeleton to deck a guard before swinging back around to sink his claws into the middle of another. One movement rolling into the next as he and Kyle weaved through the guards and put them down as fast as possible.
Madin was out of the truck the moment it came to a stop, hurling plasma at the soldiers' cars. One. Two. They exploded or smouldered depending on where they were hit. This was exhausting work but they didn't have cover up high which meant that they needed cover down low. There was movement behind the final truck and Madin paused, plasma curling around their fists, crouched low in the lee of their truck. Wasn't a soldier. Wasn't someone shooting back in civvies, either. "Got movement behind the third truck. I can't take it yet without injury to civilians."
Hunching over as her wounds were healing as the last bullet was rejected back out of her body when she came too, the smell of Sarah's blood sent Laura into a panic. While the idiots tried to get another sedation needle ready, she had already escaped her restraints and taken them out. When Laura opened the back door to the truck, she was greeted with bullets instead, which was nice. The fight escalated fast as she took those out and then hid behind the truck to heal, which brought her to the current situation. Looking down at her hands that were covered in blood, both hers, the soldiers, and Sarah's. Why was Sarah's blood on her hands?
Hearing the sounds of another vehicle joining, and then the tone of the soldier's voices changed when one of them ordered to open fire on the intruders. Peeking from behind her cover, she counted four men, and they were fighting her enemy. 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend.' She thought, 'For now.' Pulling herself together and trying not to let the overwhelming smells of blood cloud her senses, she squeezed her fists together as two adamantium-covered claws emerged. She was blinking away tears, focusing her rage on the soldiers who had turned their backs on her to focus on the intruders. They didn't know what hit them as she dug her claws deep into the backs and moved to shove him off into another unexpecting soldier.
Doug had -just- thrown the truck into park, and was about to pop out to provide covering fire, when he spotted the clawed female figure erupt from the truck. "Cào nǐ zǔzōng shíbā dài," he burst out as he slammed the gearshift back into drive. "Madin! Up in the truck bed!" he shouted as he gunned the engine. After a moment's wait, he accelerated through a sharp 180, throwing out a huge fantail of dirt as he drove toward the gate. He scanned the field, plotting vectors in his head. Thank goodness whoever owned this enormous compensator had sprung for the reinforced front grille.
"Madin, hit the gate at the mechanism!" he shouted through the open window. "Wildchild, Wolverine, make a hole, we're coming to you. I think I see the person we're here for. Make for the transport with all the screaming guys." And then, as plasma knives flashed forward, he floored it. hitting the sagging gate barrier on its far end and sending several yards of steel cartwheeling across the field.
Madin threw plasma at the gate, as directed.
Kyle gave Logan a quick glance, to see if he saw the same hair-and-claws he had spotted, and then took a leap over the unconscious guard and into a second one, taking the armored man head on. The first had been easy, a choke out, the second got a pair of shots off, and Kyle ignored the blood oozing from his gut - it burned, the pain made him want to vomit, but it. would. heal. He got his knee into the man's groin before a third burst of gunfire, and used the momentum to drop the man on the ground. He kicked the gun to the side, and then stepped on the man's gloved hand until bones cracked.
Logan ducked under the outstretched rattling of a rifle and sliced it in half with his claws before looking in the direction of the transport. He spotted the glint of claws entirely too much like his own and buried amidst the blood as they got closer was a vaguely familiar scent. Almost like his own but twisted, different, modified. A taser rammed into his back and Logan gritted his teeth to hold back the shout of pain. Once the current lifted, he spun around and neatly cut the soldier's hand off. The taser dropped to the ground with a bzzzt while he forced himself to focus on whoever was coming in next. His breath came in pants while the ground around them continued to add more bodies to its collection.
“Five minutes out people, try and make a hole for us.”
Maya’s voice crackled over their intercoms, and the sound of the blackbird could be heard in the background.
Their truck, Madin clinging to the tray for dear life, skidded to a halt closer to the girl with claws than Logan and Wildchild. Madin reached out a hand to her, swinging a surprisingly heavy body onto the flatbed.
Someone else was on comms, arranging a landing place a mile back toward town on road. "We got her!" Madin called. "Move out."
Laura looked at her saviors as she entered the truck thanks to the purple one. They each had a distinct scent but there was one scent on them, it was faint, but they had been with Sarah. Again the young feral was holding back tears as she asked, "Is she alive?", before buring her head into her knees. It was over.
For Now.
You've been to one small town, you've been to them all, Rogue thought to herself. Fields of nothing, a tense vibe of 'go away, don't look at us' and that scent of fear permeating throughout.
She hated small towns.
Landing the X-Wing as far out of town as possible, they were in a random field that seemed to have seen better days. It was clearly not being used for anything, and she hoped the cloaking shield would be enough to keep people away. "I already don't like this place," Rogue sighed, as she opened the doors. "It feels wrong ...don't ya agree, sugar?"
Logan grunted in agreement. There was plenty wrong about this place. Nothing but noises from nature and this close to a town, no matter how small, it shouldn't be like this. The dead crackle silence of something trying too hard to make this place stay cut off from the outside world. "Feelin' like we're walkin' into somethin' we shouldn't be," he said as he headed outside.
There was a barely visible dirt track headed back into town from their location. Probably teenagers doing what they could to keep themselves entertained this far out in the middle of nowhere. Maybe that meant it wouldn't be as bad as they feared. Maybe Logan should just stop thinking.
"Well, cell service is out." Kyle shook a burner phone that he'd been handed. "And I didn't agree to any sucker bets, Cypher, so you can eat it." He tossed the phone to Doug, half-laughing. "Legit though, creepy. I saw a couple of pickups on the main road before we touched down, but there is like, nobody out otherwise.."
Doug took the phone back from Kyle and tapped at it. "Okay, the phone's still working, but just zero reception." He looked around. "Lights are on, I don't see any sign of power disruption..." He grimaced. "Which sounds to me like someone is running a highly illegal and very large jammer of some kind. Which means someone -really- does not want any information getting out. As a professional hacker, I find that...irritating." Not that he wouldn't resort to extralegal tactics when the situation called for it, he mostly just objected to it being used by someone else.
Madin listened to the chatter, settling the straps on their pack again. The town - such as it was - was deserted but not uninhabited. There were flowers and lawns that had clear signs of having been watered recently. Eyes trained on the houses as they passed, Madin's shoulders prickled. It felt like they were walking into an ambush. A curtain twitched. "Movement!" Madin called. "They're still at home." They paused and amended, "or someone is. But they're leaving us be for now, at least." There was minimal cover beyond standing behind Rogue or Logan and hoping for the best and that wasn't doing much.
They picked up speed.
Maya had noted the same curtain twitch but kept her head on a swivel as she adjusted her pace to match Madin's increased speed. She tapped them on the elbow before moving into the forward position, batons at the ready should they come across any hostiles.
Everyone was inside apparently, or maybe just a few someone’s. Either way, the town wasn’t particularly large and it didn’t take them long to come up on what looked like military vehicles, but no bodies. Maya paused back from them, looking for any movement either in the vehicles or around them.
She could see a grocery store not too far ahead, and what looked like a body sprawled next to another camouflaged vehicle parked haphazardly out front.
“Wolverine, Wildchild, can you smell blood?”
Logan inhaled deeply as he stalked forward, hands ready at his sides though his claws were sheathed. "Yeah, but not out here. Whatever happened out here was just the beginnin'." He kept his gaze moving from one potential attack vantage point to the other. He toed the limp body as they passed. Whatever organization was here had some cleanup to do and that meant they were still in town somewhere. Distracted or doing mop up on whatever they hadn't discovered yet.
"You can't?" Kyle's snarl at Maya was possibly unwarranted. He might not admit it. "Also Mads is right, at least a couple houses got people, I can practically taste the muttering." He shook his head. "That dude." He pointed with one clawed hand at the same body Logan had poked. "That dude is super dead, like, most of his blood is on the outside and most of that outside blood is in the sidewalk. He's been dead kinda a while."
As he trotted over to the camouflage painted vehicle, Doug pulled a thin bit of metal out of the small pack he carried for eventualities just like these. The metal folded out on hinges until it was about the size of his forearm, with a small notch on the end. "Okay, since these are probably military or military-adjacent folks given the fatigues..." He rolled the dead body aside with his foot and did his best not to look too closely at it. "That means their vehicles will probably have GPS and some kind of comms inside." He tried the door just in case, but it was actually locked. He slid the tool in his hand down between the window and the door, and after a few moments of searching, a noise somewhere between a 'click' and 'thunk' heralded the unlocking and opening of the door.
"And getting intel from the horse's mouth is always best practice," he explained with a satisfied grin. "Let's see what we've got," he continued as he began to rummage around the interior of the vehicle. "I'm gonna guess they aren't jamming their own frequencies, after all."
The Group arrives at the food market and finds a survivor, Dr. Sarah Kinney.
Military vehicles stood abandoned in front of a food market. Maya’s trained eyes quickly took in the area, noting the gashes in the vehicles. She turned to Kyle, who had several advantages when it came to senses.
“Can you smell anything?”
Kyle's voice said "Yeah, blood and shit, so we've got dead people." He gave Logan a mildly sympathetic look, the older man shared the same enhanced senses he did, and the same knowledge. People shat themselves when they died. "Gasoline too, one of these bullshit humvees has a busted tank."
Logan grunted in response. You got used to the smells. You had to. Couldn't let them distract you from the bigger picture. He trailed a hand along the two pronged scratches all over the side of one of the vehicles. Whatever or whoever had made them had fought viciously, likely in self defense from the looks of it. There was a faint hum of static through the air that only he and Kyle could hear. Something was still working somewhere.
This was one creepy place. Rogue didn't need to hear the buzz to know that it felt wrong. She had goosebumps, and shivered quickly. There was a smell that she didn't like, and when she saw how riled up Logan and Kyle were getting, she didn't want to even tap into those senses. Instead, she peeked around, walking lightly on her feet, to see what was going on. She too noted the claw marks, and the eerie silence that wasn't; there was something though, a noise that wasn't right. Frowning a little, she looked around and hesitated. "Does that...sound like breathing to anyone else? I think someone's here...."
Madin had followed tracks into the general store, noting the footsteps that had gone in, blood smeared on the floor, followed by the fighting coming out back out - the window had broken from the inside. Their feet crunched on glass as they picked their way around two fallen shelves.
"In here! Injured!" They dropped to one knee, pulling open their pack and bringing out the first aid kit.
Maya quickly moved into a guarding position as Madin pulled out their first aid kit, noticing woman almost immediately.
“We’re here to help.”
Rogue had followed quickly behind and her eyes grew as she really saw the magnitude of the injuries. This woman was bleeding everywhere, bruised to the point where her eyes were swollen, and barely hanging on. They needed to get her proper medical care as soon as possible. "Madin, y'all get her as stable as you can. Maya and I will get her out of here.... ma'am, if you can hear me, can you tell us what happened here? Who did this to you?" She glanced towards Logan, and gave him a look. He would know to be on guard from that alone.
The woman clutched a makeshift bandage to her side, blood bleeding through the ones wrapped around her arms. “My name is Dr. Sarah Kinney. You have to- My daughter-“ She leaned over and coughed, blood sputtering from her mouth. “They took my daughter, Laura. Used what they call a trigger scent on her. I tried to get between her and the civilians, but-“ Sarah dissolved into gasps, short of breath. She wasn’t sure she had much time left, there was so much blood loss. But it hardly mattered, she just needed these people to stop the program from taking Laura back.
Daughter? Trigger Scent? This sounded more and more dangerous and this time, she wasn't relying on eye contact. "Logan, this is a bad situation. Can you sniff out this scent? Or maybe you and kyle, one focus on the girl, one on this...trigger? Dr. Kinney, we gotta know -- how old is your girl? What are we looking for?" Rogue wasn't going to ask about what happened to the civilians. Considering there was nothing left around ... it didn't bode well.
“It only works on her. It’s what the program uses to- I should’ve known they would deploy it.” Without the equipment needed, there wasn’t much Sarah could’ve done to protect Laura from it, from her own DNA. “Laura is 17, fuck- she’s only 17. I should’ve-“ Dr. Kinney started hacking again. She felt lightheaded. “They’ll be takin- the airstrip. You need to get to the airstrip before they take her back. Please.”
The radio that Doug had lifted from the military vehicle earlier picked that moment to crackle to life at his hip, and a frantic voice began shouting in between the bursts of static.
"Fall back...(static)...airstrip!" The transmission punctuated with the loud crack-crack-crack of a semi-automatic rifle firing three round bursts. "Any unit this frequency...(static)...reinforcements..." A hoarse scream from someone other than the speaker cut in, followed by a longer sustained buzz signaling that someone had panicked and switched to full auto. "Does anyone read..." And then the transmission cut out, leaving nothing but static.
Doug pivoted, looking around them to take in the whole scene as his mind started racing. "Rogue, you and Echo got her?" he asked, indicating Dr. Kinney. Off of her nod, he looked at the rest of the group, gathering Logan, Madin, and Kyle with a glance.
"All right, let's saddle up." They needed to get to this airstrip quickly. He weighed the potential for unpleasant memories as he glanced at Kyle. But needs must, and at worst he'd make it up to the man after they were home safe.
"Wildchild, gimme some GTA."
Doug, Kyle, Madin, and Logan go to the airstrip to stop Weapon X from taking back Laura.
The drive out of town to the airstrip had been uneventful, where uneventful meant that sense that the other foot was about to drop never quite left. Madin wasn't driving the truck they'd taken to get there - which, admittedly - was fair, all things considered. This was their first outing with the team. The fences around the airfield were more a suggestion than proper security, a small security guard post and lever thingy that blocked the road between the fences, two small hangers sheltering -- hmm. Light planes, by the look of it and not passenger. Croppers, probably. The town maps and ordnance survey they'd all reviewed on the plane, and the satellite footage Doug had provided confirmed that the fences were enough to funnel any entry through the main gate, the terrain flat enough and treeless enough to ensure that anyone approaching on foot in daylight would be seen long before they made contact.
Their truck skidded to a halt just short of the small rise leading into the airfield, a dip in the land with a creek at the bottom providing all the cover there was amid endless fields. Madin finished their summary of the situation - -apparently this could be a learning opportunity, after all. "We have to go in via the gate, unless we wait until dark. I can take out the security posts on the main gate as soon as we clear the hill?" Madin said, offering the suggestion. "I'd have set up a kill zone there. They probably have, too."
Kyle -was- driving the truck, having gleefully hotwired it after finding 'the biggest, stupidest, most asshole extended cab truck' and then asking Madin to "plasma knife that offensive fucking bumper sticker'. Whatever orange-cheeto-voting asshole owned this, he hoped their car insurance had lapsed. "Yeah, they're gonna have a choke point. If this is Weapon X shit, they're going to move fast, so we probably don't have until dark. They move fast, which sometimes bites them in the ass." He glanced over his shoulder at Logan. "I'm thinking nice bright purple plasma distraction and then we blitz any guards at the gate?"
Logan arched an eyebrow. Not his favorite kind of plan but what else was there? Kyle was right. They had to move fast and they had to move now before these Weapon X assholes decided to make off with Laura. "Fine by me. Get them nice and distracted and we'll do what we needa do. Might give us enough time to get in and out before they realize who's even come knocking at their door." Though Logan had a suspicion that if they knew another rogue Weapon X asset was on their doorstep, they'd wet themselves to get both back to their facility. The less they realized who he was and what he was doing here the better.
"Let's get this show on the road," he said.
The truck began to move. Madin stood in the back seat, torso out the truck's window, left hand holding the oh shit handle over the door for dear life. They curled plasma around their right hand, throwing it like a spear in an arc at the gate post the moment they were within range. It hit the road with a boom. A moment later, they sent two more bolts after it, aiming directly at the structure now that they'd sent off a warning shot.
Flames crackled in dry grass where the plasma - or pieces of the gate house - had landed. They pulled themself back into the truck, resisting the urge to check the rifle they no longer carried. For just a moment, it had felt like old times, and then they were back beside Doug and it wasn't there or those people anymore.
Doug detected one logistical issue with moving the vehicle back toward the gate - Kyle was still driving and supposed to be hopping out to get the guards. And letting the truck come to a stop right in the field of fire seemed like a bad idea. "Okay, Wildchild, we're gonna have to Mr. and Mrs. Smith this," he announced. Catching a smirk from the lanky feral, Doug snorted. "No, you're gonna be the one with -your- butt on -my- dick, so you don't get to make jokes," he said before Kyle could even open his mouth. "Thank fuck for bench seats," he muttered. Trying this in a bucket seat would have been worse.
They had the passenger side facing the gate, which meant Kyle would have cover as he exited the door. "Okay," Doug said as he placed one hand on the wheel next to Kyle's and started sliding over the seat back. "On my mark in five, four..." He judged the rate as they closed on the gate. "Mark!" he yelled, lunging toward the driver's seat.
Kyle went out the open driver's door as Doug got his leg onto the seat, rolling once, and coming up running. He could see Logan just a few steps ahead, already mixing it up, and came around the older man's side, pulling one of the guards off by his face. A handful of claws into the cheeks did a great job moving someone where you wanted - and where Kyle wanted "guard in a headlock getting his stupid throat choked out until he fell down."
Logan had leapt from the truck as soon as he'd heard "mark", letting the door swing whichever way it wanted behind him. The bullets slamming into him in the few steps before he barrelled into the midst of the guards reminded him just exactly how much he hated being the healing invincible part of things. But at least he healed. He let out a low snarl as he used the full weight of his adamantium laced skeleton to deck a guard before swinging back around to sink his claws into the middle of another. One movement rolling into the next as he and Kyle weaved through the guards and put them down as fast as possible.
Madin was out of the truck the moment it came to a stop, hurling plasma at the soldiers' cars. One. Two. They exploded or smouldered depending on where they were hit. This was exhausting work but they didn't have cover up high which meant that they needed cover down low. There was movement behind the final truck and Madin paused, plasma curling around their fists, crouched low in the lee of their truck. Wasn't a soldier. Wasn't someone shooting back in civvies, either. "Got movement behind the third truck. I can't take it yet without injury to civilians."
Hunching over as her wounds were healing as the last bullet was rejected back out of her body when she came too, the smell of Sarah's blood sent Laura into a panic. While the idiots tried to get another sedation needle ready, she had already escaped her restraints and taken them out. When Laura opened the back door to the truck, she was greeted with bullets instead, which was nice. The fight escalated fast as she took those out and then hid behind the truck to heal, which brought her to the current situation. Looking down at her hands that were covered in blood, both hers, the soldiers, and Sarah's. Why was Sarah's blood on her hands?
Hearing the sounds of another vehicle joining, and then the tone of the soldier's voices changed when one of them ordered to open fire on the intruders. Peeking from behind her cover, she counted four men, and they were fighting her enemy. 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend.' She thought, 'For now.' Pulling herself together and trying not to let the overwhelming smells of blood cloud her senses, she squeezed her fists together as two adamantium-covered claws emerged. She was blinking away tears, focusing her rage on the soldiers who had turned their backs on her to focus on the intruders. They didn't know what hit them as she dug her claws deep into the backs and moved to shove him off into another unexpecting soldier.
Doug had -just- thrown the truck into park, and was about to pop out to provide covering fire, when he spotted the clawed female figure erupt from the truck. "Cào nǐ zǔzōng shíbā dài," he burst out as he slammed the gearshift back into drive. "Madin! Up in the truck bed!" he shouted as he gunned the engine. After a moment's wait, he accelerated through a sharp 180, throwing out a huge fantail of dirt as he drove toward the gate. He scanned the field, plotting vectors in his head. Thank goodness whoever owned this enormous compensator had sprung for the reinforced front grille.
"Madin, hit the gate at the mechanism!" he shouted through the open window. "Wildchild, Wolverine, make a hole, we're coming to you. I think I see the person we're here for. Make for the transport with all the screaming guys." And then, as plasma knives flashed forward, he floored it. hitting the sagging gate barrier on its far end and sending several yards of steel cartwheeling across the field.
Madin threw plasma at the gate, as directed.
Kyle gave Logan a quick glance, to see if he saw the same hair-and-claws he had spotted, and then took a leap over the unconscious guard and into a second one, taking the armored man head on. The first had been easy, a choke out, the second got a pair of shots off, and Kyle ignored the blood oozing from his gut - it burned, the pain made him want to vomit, but it. would. heal. He got his knee into the man's groin before a third burst of gunfire, and used the momentum to drop the man on the ground. He kicked the gun to the side, and then stepped on the man's gloved hand until bones cracked.
Logan ducked under the outstretched rattling of a rifle and sliced it in half with his claws before looking in the direction of the transport. He spotted the glint of claws entirely too much like his own and buried amidst the blood as they got closer was a vaguely familiar scent. Almost like his own but twisted, different, modified. A taser rammed into his back and Logan gritted his teeth to hold back the shout of pain. Once the current lifted, he spun around and neatly cut the soldier's hand off. The taser dropped to the ground with a bzzzt while he forced himself to focus on whoever was coming in next. His breath came in pants while the ground around them continued to add more bodies to its collection.
“Five minutes out people, try and make a hole for us.”
Maya’s voice crackled over their intercoms, and the sound of the blackbird could be heard in the background.
Their truck, Madin clinging to the tray for dear life, skidded to a halt closer to the girl with claws than Logan and Wildchild. Madin reached out a hand to her, swinging a surprisingly heavy body onto the flatbed.
Someone else was on comms, arranging a landing place a mile back toward town on road. "We got her!" Madin called. "Move out."
Laura looked at her saviors as she entered the truck thanks to the purple one. They each had a distinct scent but there was one scent on them, it was faint, but they had been with Sarah. Again the young feral was holding back tears as she asked, "Is she alive?", before buring her head into her knees. It was over.
For Now.
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Date: 2024-09-24 04:54 am (UTC)