“Great,” Rupert agreed. He knew Teresa from that encounter at his apartment. More importantly, he trusted her to handle this with some manner of intelligence; no 'Grr, mutant smash!' from her, or so he had reason to hope.

He flipped his phone shut, feeling slightly reassured. It wasn't until he was halfway back to Jay's office that he realized something: they were expecting him to be there when Teresa arrived.

Oh.

***

This brings us to Rupert, at the hospital, sitting in the waiting room near Micheal's room. He was reading an old medical journal that had been left out on tasteful wooden coffee table. He was trying not to think of all the sick hands that had flipped through it before him. When all this was said and done, he was going to go compulsively scrub his hands. For now: he was waiting for Teresa, from child services. Right.

The Police officer who was assigned to the guard the boys room, watched intently as people came and went. He was broken from his revery by a squawk on his radio, he listened to it as he was told to leave his post and get some coffee as it would be better for his career. So the man did and wandered off down the hallway. A shortwhile later a man in a black italian suit with four very large men made their way toward the now unguarded room they stopped as they past a man sitting in a waiting area near the boys room. One of the largest men leaned over and said,

"You look tired you should go get some coffee." He said in a way that broached no questioning on the matter.

(( OOC: Sorry I'm being slow posting lately. Damned dingoes! But, hey, I cleared 200 posts! Yay me! ))

Sonya/Doug pulls the rental car into a parking space about a block from the hospital with a renewed appreciation for both cruise control and minimal traffic late at night... the trip had gone much faster than she'd expected.

Come to that, she's also developing an appreciation for credit cards and expense accounts and not having to worry about how to afford food. She has some reservations about working for the Order, no question, but they certainly do pay the bills... and it's not like they've really done anything bad, it's just some of her conversations with Syn have left a bad taste in her mouth. I'm probably just imagining things, she thinks, and They're probably up to something, but it's not my problem, and Yeah, I'm going to have to keep an eye on them.

Utterly failing to notice the inconsistency of her internal monologue -- not for the first time -- she hops out of the car and starts jogging towards the hospital. Halfway there she decides she should check in with Syn; she probably won't have the chance once she's inside.

Her call goes to voicemail, as it usually does: "Hey, this is me. About to check out a reported mutant, a kid at Yale-New Haven Hospital. No idea what his deal is, but it sounds like his Dad's a real piece of work. All goes well, I'll be bringing him in tomorrow; I'll check in again in an hour or so."

She hangs up as she walks through the lobby, but keeps the phone to Doug's ear, carrying on an entirely fictional conversation with his entirely fictional, slightly hysterical wife. "OK, honey, please just calm down. I'm right here in the lobby, I'll be there in a minute. I know, I know, but the doctors here are great, he'll be fine..." She continues the patter as she walks confidently past the front desk, as though she knows exactly where she's going; unsurprisingly, nobody tries to stop her.

A couple of wrong turns later she finds the correct elevator, then finds an unoccupied men's room. Stripping down to her bodysuit and shifting into Teresa's body takes practically no time at all, but it takes her several minutes to encourage the still-mysterious suit to shift into an outfit that seems suitable for a harried social worker.

All of that taken care of, she takes the elevator up to the correct floor and takes a deep breath as the door opens. OK, showtime! A nervous-looking police officer gets in the elevator to go down as she gets out, and she nods to him brusquely before stepping out into the hall.

She recognizes Rupert immediately, but the well-dressed fivesome trying to intimidate him are strangers. She stops short, deciding to see what's happening before she gets herself involved.

Rupert noted in sort of an off-handed way that the police guard was wandering away from his post, but he didn't really take it to heart. He'd just gotten settled into an article about the Ebola virus—he hadn't heard about that in years. Apparently, though, there'd been an outbreak just this September, in the Congo. It was scary stuff. Honestly, a lot more scary than most mutants he'd met. At least there was a cure for muties.

"You look tired you should go get some coffee."

Those words, from the mouth of a muscle man, made him look for the police officer who should be at Micheal's door. The police officer he'd off-handedly watched leave. Right.

The spokesman of the muscles had three friends with him, arranged around a man in an Italian suit. Italian suits: never a good sign. Even if Rupert didn't recognize the man wearing it from the business section of the newspaper, he'd still have known who he was looking at. This was clearly a situation that called for impulsive, timely action. Rupert volunteered himself with a sigh.

He set the magazine down, and maneuvered his own body between the five men and their target. “Sirs,” he glanced to the muscles, “Mister Hodgins,” a respectful nod of acknowledgment to the father, “I'm with the police.” He didn't mention which state's police. “I'm afraid your son isn't allowed any visitors.” Especially not assholes who beat their own children. If you weren't going to take care of your kid, you just shouldn't have one.

The Elder Hodgins flicked his chin toward the man as he finished his tirade about being a police officer. The larger of the muscle men fixed his attention on Rupert and said,

"Identification" It was less a question then an order, it seemes these men were well trained and knew where powers lay. While the men would question the "Officer" Mister Hodgins would take the moment to slip away, his men knew what to do and shifted absently covering Hodgins' retreat. Hodgins ducked into the room. shutting the door beind him with a soft click. His one big mistake lay on the bed, it seemed that he survived the beating as there was little in the way of life support. Hodgins had to make sure their wouldn't be a next time. His partners in Congress would revoke his membership if they knew he had sired a Muttie for a son, he couldn't afford the loss, it was simply business after all, nothing more nothing less. He walked closer to the sleeping form when it stirred and said through the last veil of sleep,

"Daddy? I had the strangest dream..." Before Micheal could finish his sentence he past through that last veil and conscience rushed back to him with abandon. "Dad? No not again!" Micheal yelled from the room, while jumping down off the bed, the wounds on his back opened fresh as he landed pulling out stitches, he screamed out in pain. He tried to hit the call button in his hand but realised that it had pulled out of the wall as he fell.

"You were my one big mistake Micheal, and I am going to make sure it is not remembered." Jonathin Hodgins pulled a gun from the his blazer...

At first, Sonya just watches the proceedings, hoping to get a better understanding of what's going on before she has to commit herself. But the boy's first cry from the hospital room put an end to that plan almost as soon as it starts, especially when the four gorillas start moving in on Rupert in a less-than-friendly way. Which leaves her with a tactical dilemma -- help the detective, or help the kid?

It takes her less than a moment to decide she's got the choice backwards, as she's probably better equipped to handle the goons than Rupert is anyway. Teresa's instinctive suggestion is a spinning kick to the back of goon #1's head; Sonya privately chuckles at that and draws her trank-gun instead.

She gets one free shot, at the goon whose back is facing her, before the two flanking him notice their partner dropping to the floor with a dart in his neck. A second goon goes down before he can reach her, but the third closes the distance and disarms her with a vicious chop to her wrist. She resets Teresa's form to eliminate the pain and numbness from her hand before shouting "Rupert, I've got these goons, go help the kid!"

The goon's knee comes up into her solar plexus without pause, but reflexes Sonya didn't even know she had have already spun her around so it deflects against her hip, kept her spinning into a high-kick against the guy's jaw... which he blocks with one arm and grabs with another, twisting her leg and dropping her on the ground. She doesn't fight it; instead she adds her own strength to it and twists her foot out of his grasp, rolling to her feet a few feet away. "Go!"

This time she waits before commiting herself, balanced perfectly on the balls of her feet. Since when do I fight this well? she asks herself, not really expecting an answer.

"Identification"

Rupert knew what the muscles were doing, and it wasn’t hard to predict where Hodgins there was going to go while they did it. Still, there was a very large difference between knowing you were being stalled and doing something about it. Especially when there were four men who were determined in their biceps, triceps, and yes—even their quadriceps—to keep you right where you were. He didn’t bother pulling out his identification. They weren’t interested. Neither was he.

"Dad? No not again!" Came the yell. Another thing Rupert wasn’t interested in: getting beaten into unconsciousness by four men who were backing up a child abuser. Unfortunately, he wasn’t about to just stand there. The muscle men knew it. He knew it. A pain-filled scream left the room. Rupert and the muscles shared a look. He was going to make a break towards the room. They knew he was going to make a break towards the room. He knew they knew, and they knew he knew, and they all knew that none of them cared that any of them knew. Sometimes, a man has to get himself hospitalized in pursuit of what is right. Sometimes, other men have to put that man into the hospital to collect their pay check at the end of the week.

None of them knew about the cute young woman until she tranqed Muscle Number Three. And then Number Two. Four took out her gun arm, but it didn’t slow her down.

"Rupert, I've got these goons, go help the kid!"

That’s the point where Rupert stopped gaping, and started sprinting. The room wasn’t far. Which was good, since men who were wheezing after ten feet shouldn’t be sprinting. He missed whatever transpired between Muscle Numbers One and Four and the petite woman as he crashed through the door of the room, and just kept crashing. Why the hell should a guy stop to think, when he can ram at top speed into the back of the man pulling the gun, and see what happened?

Micheal couldn't believe his eyes as he saw his father pull a gun from his coat. He closed his eyes as he heard the click of the hammer, he knew what was coming...

The Elder Hodgins turned as he heard the door open, and turned toward it, gun still in hand. He leveled the gun but not in time as he was hit fullbore by the man that came through the door. They crashed to the floor and the gun sounded...

Micheal cringed as he knew it was over, the gun cracked and his life past before his eyes in a hail of music and smiles... then he didn't see a white light, or a choir of angels. Only silence, he opened his eyes and saw a man ontop of his father and screamed...

Rupert’s ears were ringing. At first, he didn’t even know that the scream was a distinct sound: it sounded like just a continuation of the gun shot’s assault on his eardrums. It didn’t help that it felt like his head had hit something on the way down. He groaned, and brought up his hands to cover his ears. Wet. His hands were wet. He frowned, and brought one up in front of his face to look at it.

...Right. That had been a gun shot, and he was covered in blood.

He slowly brought his gaze up to the mutant, as if the boy held some answer for all this.

Sonya locks eyes with the bodyguard facing her, waiting for him to make a move... which he does, a blindingly fast roundhouse kick to her jaw, which her right hand comes up to block and her left hand follows up with a strike to his groin before she even sees it coming. He blocks the punch and steps back; she stays with him and aims her right hand with stiffened fingers at his throat, which he evades by another step backwards.

I've got him on the defensive! she thinks incredulously, stepping into what she somehow knows is about to become a devestating high-kick. This goon is good, even she can recognize that, but somehow she's better -- it's like her body is operating on some kind of pre-programmed combat routine, without her being in any way involved. This is so freaking cool!

Of course, that's when everything goes wrong. The sound of a gunshot echoes from the hospital room Rupert had just wheezed his way into (and what's with that anyway? shouldn't a cop be in better shape than that?) and she startles, clumsily missing her kick. Her opponent recovers the initiative and drives an elbow at her neck, which she just barely dodges.

Then there's another gunshot, much closer.

And something kicks her in the chest like a mule on steroids.

Sonya has seen enough television to know that, when someone is shot in the chest, they go flying against the far wall. And she slept through enough of her basic high-school science classes about Newton's Laws to not realize how ridiculous that is. So she's somewhat surprised when she keeps her feet... and surprised again when the world goes red and cold around her.

She's vaguely aware of the two bodyguards turning away from her and running towards the hospital room door, and she tries to take the opportunity to nail her dance partner from behind. Instead she simply pitches forward onto her knees, bright arterial blood spilling onto the shiny tile floor.

She tries to say something -- she's not quite sure what, probably something absurd like "I'm shot!" -- but her throat doesn't quite seem to be working.

The loss of blood from his back was making Micheal light headed, and the sight before him wasn't helping. His father laid sprawled on the ground a puddle of blood growing steadily around his body in a sort of halo, but Jonathin Hodgins was not an angel, not by any streatch of the word. Micheal had stopped screaming before the strange man had come in and attacked his fathers men, but he still hadn't closed his mouth. The smaller man sat above his father's body with a look on his face that matched Micheal's own. The strange mand had come in and decimated Jonathin's men, leaving only the three in the room now. The boy in a corner, a cop on his knees above a corpes, and a strange man standing tall and proud.

Two violent, crunching, slightly wet snaps later, Rupert’s shock was thoroughly and completely worn off. He got to his feet with a slight wobble, steadied himself, and glared at the newest addition to their little party.

“Can’t you freaks go for five minutes without killing someone?” He ignored the corpse at his feet. That was going to catch up to him later. For now—and even for later—he was going to just repeat one simple word in his head: misfire. That was a misfire, not a murder. Most people that got tackled weren’t in the habit of dying, or football players would get even fatter checks than they did already. ((ooc: Note to all the folks not in Americaland: American football. The kind where you, ah, use your hands. Yeah.)) Rupert rubbed at his temples, still glaring at the Asian man. “They only said they were sending Teresa.” Deep breath, and a count to ten.

“Never mind. Look, that’s the kid there. You’ve got mutant doctors who can help him, right? He looks like he could use another doctor. I’m... stating the obvious.” He was also smearing another man’s blood on his temples. He realized that with a shocked jolt, and pulled his hands back to his sides. “You and Teresa take him, and get out of here. And I mean now. Security will be here soon. So will the police. If you think I’m going to let you do—” His hand gestured erratically to the corpses on the floor. The two he didn’t have anything to do with. “—that to any cops, then you can count me out of your little ‘Resistance’. Fat lot of good you freaks have been doing.” He was a step closer to the man’s face. He wasn’t quite sure when he’d gotten there. It let him lower his volume but still sound every bit as pissed as he was, though, so he wasn’t about to back away. “What the **** have you been doing? It’s been weeks since I’ve heard from you. Weeks! Do I have to drag a beat-up mutie baby out of my pocket any time I want to hear from you? They are dying in the Camps, and I’m just sitting on my ass watching it like a good little lap dog. What the Hell is wrong with you? These are your own people! What, did you all collectively miss that Holocaust lesson in high school history because you were off lighting things on fire with your minds and snapping peoples’ necks for kicks? Do you understand what’s happening... in...”

Recognition dawned. Rupert was familiar with the Camp rosters, and certain individuals had been very high-profile as of late. He blinked, and backed down for a moment. “You’re Shrapnel. Good job on the escape. We’ve got no leads on you, or on Gore.” The moment was up. “You know what’s going on. Can’t you kick the collective pansy asses of the rest of the Resistance into doing something? I’ve got the collar control, I’m ready to sabotage the drugs in the food, I just need you guys to provide ******* transportation. Is that really so ******* hard?” He wheezed, and looked around the room as if realizing he was in a bad ‘I spy’ picture. “Where’s Teresa?”

His eyes hit the hallway. “Oh.” He said simply. “****.”

It had been awhile since he’d had a good rant. Naturally, he was clutching at his side and wheezing by this point. He could take pride that he hadn’t put in much room for the guy to get a word in edgewise, even with his wheezing. Now that was a tirade.

They say your life flashes before your eyes, just before you die. Sonya has never really believed that -- after all, how would anyone really know? So she's surprised to realize that it's happening to her, remembering...

...sitting in Mama's kitchen, watching her cook, chewing on a piece of bread so big she had to hold it in both hands, her legs too short to reach the floor...

...her little sister coming home for the first time, so tiny and shrivelled and funny-looking she'd wondered if they'd have to take her back like they had with Aunt Lydia's car...

...renting a tandem bike with her best friend Melissa, the cut on Melissa's leg when they accidentally crashed into a park bench, waiting with the bike while the ambulance took Melissa away, convinced she'd somehow crippled her best friend, and her relief when it turned out to just be a few stitches...

...discovering Jane Austen the summer of 10th grade, and the summer spent endlessly rewriting the first ten pages of what was going to be her very own Regency romance...

...kissing Hector after third-period English, and Mama and Lyssa consoling her with hot chocolate and butterscotch cookies after Hector turned out to be a two-timing jerk...

...finding that weird body, all pale-skinned and hairless, lying in that alley; waking up a moment after touching it to see herself standing there, wearing her clothes, fleeing in panic...

...slicing her own arm with a knife in Calley's kitchen, and watching it seal up like magic...

...wait. Hold up, there. That's important.

Sonya barely listens to the thought, lost in her own memories, her triumphs and regrets, as the room starts to fade. Should've made a move on that skinny-ass white boy when I had a chance... But it grows more insistent, perversely stronger as she weakens: Damn it, girl! I am not going to die here. Not today. You can fix this!

I can? Sonya doesn't exactly snap out of her funk, but she regains a sense of involvement with her surroundings that she'd lost to shock when the bullet passed through her chest. Oh... of course... right...

It's harder than she expects it to be to shift... what normally takes nothing but a thought is a huge effort, what with blood loss and shock and everything. But she manages it, and all at once she's alert and aware. Wow. That was... something.

She slips on the puddle of blood as she tries to get up, landing on her back. She tries again, more carefully, and catches her reflection in the waiting-room mirror. Jesus! She looks like something out of a zombie movie: her entire body is covered in blood, front and back; even her hair is matted with the stuff. It's almost funny, until she realizes it's all her own blood -- or, well, Teresa's blood, in any case -- and is suddenly overwhelmed by the sickly-sweet smell of it, the taste of it on her lips.

That's when she throws up. Which makes her look even more like a horror movie extra.

OK. Got to get this under control. Can shower later. Who knows what these bastards are doing to Kelly, or the kid... She retrieves her trank gun and dashes to the hospital room door, throws it open, and... stops.

The two other bodyguards are on the floor, probably dead. So is their boss. Rupert is standing, covered in blood -- nowhere near as badly as she is, granted, but still. And there's a new figure facing him, apparently hostile but not actively fighting.

> “You know what’s going. Can’t you kick the collective pansy asses of
> the rest of the Resistance into doing something? I’ve got the collar control,
> I’m ready to sabotage the drugs in the food, I just need you guys to provide
> @!$@# transportation. Is that really so ******* hard? Where’s Teresa?”

"Here. And still alive, no thanks to you." It wasn't fair: she'd told him to go protect the kid, after all, and what with the mutant powerhouses he'd deal with he had no reason to doubt she could take care of two "merely human" bodyguards. It's not his fault she's not one of those mutants. She knows that. She just doesn't care.

"And, no, @#!@$ transportation isn't that $!@#!@# hard. Disabling those @#@!!# killer robots your bosses built to #!@$!@# kill us, that's more of a problem." Her heart isn't in it, though... the truth is she agrees with him. As far as she can tell, the Resistance is spending more energy on infighting and stupid training exercises than it is actually planning a breakout. But she's not quite ready to admit that to Rupert... she gets the impression that the only thing keeping him on their side is the idea that a successful breakout would redeem his sins.

"I'm guessing that's the kid you called me to pick up," she continues, startlingly matter-of-fact about it. "So, who's he?"

(( OOC: Wow, this got long. ))

> “ I am actually unrelated to the resistance as of yet.
> And lucky for you officer I can go several more minutes
> without killing anyone, you're welcome by the way for
> only making you dirty your just hands with one body
> of your own.”

It's at about that point that Sonya realizes that the three bodies lying on the floor are in fact dead. Yes, in retrospect, the unnatural angles of the two necks should have given that away immediately. Also, all the blood... Kelly is almost as covered in the stuff as she is. But they hadn't.

She manages to hold it together at first, until the new guy starts smooshing the blood around like finger-paints in Kindergarten. That makes her retch again, though thankfully there's nothing left in her stomach to throw up. Afterwards she wants to apologize for being so unaccustomed to death, but she manages to keep her jaws clenched on that, too.

She misses much of the conversation during her epic struggle with her own digestive system, tuning back in only when the stranger winks at him.

> “You got some harsh moves, and being shot tends to ruin
> a good fight, but then again you are up and they aren’t."

"Um... yeah. Thanks." She's not really sure what else to say... it's a bizarre compliment, but she's fairly convinced it is a compliment. Ultimately she tears her attention away from the blood and the corpses and the men and their conversation and focuses on the boy, who is staring around the room in what she's fairly sure is shock.

Part of her mind is reminding her that time is short -- no doubt, the cop she'd seen going down the elevator will soon be coming back up, what with the gunshots and everything. And she's not at all sure how she's going to get out of the building covered in blood, let alone how she's going to bring the kid with her... her original "social worker" act was clearly not going to work.

But difficult as all that is going to be, it will be much worse without the kid's cooperation.

"Are you Michael?" She wants to give the kid a hug or something, but covered as she is in blood and vomit, she doubts she'd be doing much good in the process. She settles for kneeling down on the floor, to bring her eyes down to his level. "I know this is all pretty scary, huh? But you need to be brave for just a little while longer. I'm here to take you somewhere safe, where doctors can take care of you and nobody'll be able to hurt you. Is that OK? Can you stay brave long enough to come with me?"

(( OOC: BTW, Shrapnel, I don't know if you'd know enough about martial-arts styles to know this or not, but if you are, you'll recognize Sonya's fighting style as a fusion style, not "pure" enough for competitions or anything, but used by a number of covert commando/assassin training organizations in Japan. ))

((ooc: Sorry for the delay in reply!))

There was a stereotypical college conversation. It went something like this: What’s your zombie plan? Back at the time, sitting around a table in the courtyard between academic buildings, Rupert had laid out a detailed plot involving fortifications and some ingenious adaptations of a spud launcher with flourishing waves of the greasy french fry in his hand. Apparently, he could have spared himself some breath and just said: ‘I’d have a minor heart attack. ...Yep.’

Teresa was back on her feet and standing in the doorway of the room. She was covered in blood, and smelled like something dead, chewed, and chunkily expelled. It just reiterated that small point he kept forgetting: mutants were not human. Rupert felt his heart give an outraged clutch at this blatant disregard for the natural order.

>“Here. And still alive, no thanks to you."

“Ack.” He said, with all due dignity. Ah, but Teresa Take Two wasn’t done yet:

>"And, no, @#!@$ transportation isn't that $!@#!@# hard. Disabling those @#@!!# >killer robots your bosses built to #!@$!@# kill us, that's more of a problem."

Rupert just nodded mutely. Never. Argue. With a zombie mutant.

>"So, who's he?"

“What?” With a jarring stutter, his heart started beating again. Rupert looked back at the young man he’d gone off on. “He’s not with—?”

>“I am actually unrelated to the resistance as of yet.”

Ah.

The rest of his speech, and his little homicidal calling-card show with the blood and the floor, did not leave Rupert any feeling better about this situation. It might be the fact that he was covered in blood, it might be the small boy huddling in fear, or it might even be the wafting perfume of vomit in the air: Rupert was beginning to think that somehow, sometime, this whole thing had gone horribly wrong.

>“My purpose for following you is simple, I want information on the guards who work at >the camps, and names will due, addresses would be better. I would like to obtain that >information without having to dig into my ten minute limit. ...So, you think you can >help?”

Rupert just stared at the guy. Then, with all the unfrayed sanity in the world, he barked a laugh. “Right. Right, of course. You would be here to shake me down for information.” He took a deep breath, and then said something very unwise with very little forethought: “No, I don’t think I can help you at all. Sorry, but just... no.”

He had another man’s blood soaking through his clothes, and some seriously unresolved moral issues. Combine the two, and he was suddenly quite sure that he didn’t want to give away so much as the hair color of the camp’s mail man to Snap-Happy over there. Especially not when there were more important things to deal with. He looked back to Teresa as she knelt next to the kid, with the sort of head turn that implied he was blatantly ignoring the Asian mutant. “To state the obvious yet again: you’ve got to get him out of here. And then,” he took a deep breath, and let it out; “you’re going to have to knock me out. I think the only way I’m going to be able to dodge questions on this one is if I’m just another victim.”

His eyes briefly back out the doorway, into the waiting room, where two other bodies were on the floor. He’d thought she taken them down non-lethally, but it was getting harder to think. It was getting harder not to join her in tossing up his lunch, too. This just... wasn’t going how he’d planned for things to go.

He tried not to think of what that meant for the Camps.