15. chasable

[exnihilo]

[Spam for Zane]

[Mira has had insomnia, off and on, for her entire stay on the barge. It's improved a bit since the mirror barge, but it is not at all strange to see her roaming the ship at odd hours. She avoids the patrols, creeps silently as a matter of habit. She peers at the stars and takes the occasional apple from the dining hall. Mostly, though, she winds her way up and down the stairs. Every murder so far has been in a stairwell. It makes sense - confined space, tight angles, good for concealment and sudden strikes. There is no tension of fear in her shoulders, no glancing back. She has her staser in her boot, but that, too, is not unusual.

It's not a trap, because her goal is not to stop whoever it is; her goal is not to survive or conquer. Only to see. The rest she leaves to skill and chance. And to that end, pins holding her unruly hair in place have been modified to carry some of Barbara's tiny bugs, hacked and modded with less skill but more advanced tech, transmitting to a screen where Mickey broods and watches and waits, and to Mira's neural Direct Interface. The culprit attacks from behind; but now Mira has eyes in the back of her head.]

Comments

[godsays]

[ He strikes fast: drops from above, lands silently and gracefully on the edge of a railing, and launches himself at her from behind. His face is shrouded. ]

[exnihilo]

[She doesn't tense when he lands on the railing, barely has time to anyway - but she drops into a crouch as he leaps for her, displacing his target and reaching for her staser.]

[godsays]

[ The less subtle might not have caught it, might just have thought that it's just a shift in Zane's body, but with a Push on the metal ceiling, he actually changes direction slightly midair, without touching anything, and brings his feet down hard on her back. Lands, glances off the wall with one quick step, and goes to sink a glass knife in her back. ]

[exnihilo]

[She does catch it, but there's not enough time to react at the speed he's moving; the weight forces her hands onto the floor to brace. Her dress saves her, though, an innocuous sheath wrap of fractal smart-polymer military hardware. The blow makes her grunt with Zane's strength behind it, but the glass blade shrieks and skids and doesn't penetrate the cloth-like armor. She gets her hand around the handle of her staser and kicks back towards his knee with a heavy bootheel and unerring aim guided by her new vision, more to buy herself a moment of time to twist around than because she expects it to actually land.]

[godsays]

[ The armor is a surprise, and he has to readjust. The staser catches him glancingly, a shock of pain that would have him stumbling if he weren't controlling his movement almost completely by steel instead of pewter.

It's violence that guides him now, the red rising in his vision, the voice that still whispers kill, kill.

He tackles her with unnatural strength and takes a handful of her hair, trying to slam her head into the wall. ]

[exnihilo]

[She twists, struggles, makes a noise between a shriek and a groan and revels in the pain on her head as some of her hair rips out, just trying to avoid being stunned. An instant without resistance will be all he needs, she knows, and then she will be dead.

Which isn't to say she imagines there is a way for her to win: not now that she can see how he's moving, the impossible speed, the carefully trained economy of his movements. She is going to die - but now, right now, she is thrilled, filled with pain and gasped breaths and brightness, completely real, completely alive, dancing with something beyond her, life and death hanging on every minute decision. She wants it to last as long as it possibly can, as many vicious moments as she can get, so she jabs with the staser again, up into the armpit exposed by his hand in her hair, her free hand clawing at his face, trying to jab eyes hidden behind the dark warp or try to claw it away.]

[godsays]

[ She likes this, he realizes, the sublime viciousness of the fight.

He has to end it quickly; there are patrols around, and though he's seized a moment between them, there's no way to guarantee how long the moment will last.

His other hand catches her wrist short of his armpit, and he twists and breaks the bones, requiring a surge of pewter-driven strength. He tries to use the shock of that moment to get her fully on her stomach, pin her down so she doesn't have the leverage to fight back.

And if he succeeds in that, he will just touch the knife to her throat. Just dig in enough for a trickle of blood. If she enjoys this, then he'll slow it down - he'll take a few long seconds to enjoy the intimacy of death. ]

[exnihilo]

[The shock of the pain in her wrist is white-hot, sears momentarily through everything, and she is pinned before it clears, dazed with endorphins and ache. The blade lowers - and it is not one clean strike like Arkin, not one vicious overpowering strike Steve, not a vicious barrage like Jerry. A thin slice, a tease, a caress. She arches slightly, reflexively, whimpers and keens.]

Yes. Yes.

[She still struggles, tries to get a knee up, to throw him with a twitch of hips - his strength shouldn't change his weight, except something does, something she doesn't understand is bracing him. She's utterly caught, and that only makes it better.]

[godsays]

[ His movements might be slow, but there's no hint of hesitation or uncertainty. He knows just how to dig it in, to neatly sever the artery. His gloved fingers curl over her jawline, and he watches the blood spread. ]

[spam]

[americasdirtiest]

[Even having prepared for it, even knowing it wasn't permanent, it's harder than Mickey expected to watch Mira die. He's spared the worst of it, of course, by the fact that his viewpoint is restricted to what's behind Mira's head. In a way that makes it worse, though, leaves it to his limited but brutal imagination what actually transpired. It's no better when the image goes still and he bolts down the stairs to find her body on the landing in its spreading pool of blood.

He'd told her to try not to die, and he saw all too well that she had definitely tried, but they'd both known that this was pretty inevitable. He's shaken anyway, fingers fumbling on the communicator to hail her warden. He's recovered a little by the time she gets brought back and safely ensconced back in her room, but he still looks a little green around the gills when he joins her there.]

Hey. How's the, uh, after-afterlife treating you?

[He sits down next to her on the bed, pulling two things from his pockets: his communicator and a joint he found in his room. He holds it up to her questioningly.]

Thought it might help.

[spam]

[exnihilo]

Well.

[She smiles, sounds tired content, the sort of weariness that is also deeply-rested, the lazy morning kind of idleness. (The morning after kind of aches.) She takes the joint and holds it so he can light it.]

Thank you.

[spam]

[americasdirtiest]

[He does, and produces a cigarette for himself, drawing deep. He leaves the cigarette between his lips as he exhales and reaches for the communicator so he can pull up the video.]

Good news is, I was watching, and we got a good look at the son of a bitch. Not his face, but... You'll see.

[He shifts back until they're shoulder-to-shoulder, so they can both watch the screen at once.]

You ready for this?

[spam]

[exnihilo]

There can't be many candidates.

[Musing. Not many people who can move like that. Not many -

She settles in, eager, as comfortable as she can be with the ache in her wrist and twinge in her neck; the joint will help with that.]

Yeah.

[spam]

[americasdirtiest]

[It starts right up when he hits play: the figure dropping from above, then somehow shifting in mid-air. You'll see, he'd said, and Mira's right that there aren't a lot of people who can do that.

The screen goes dark for a second as the assailant knocks the camera -- Mira -- over, then bounces off the wall and pulls out a glittering, transparent knife. The rest is all struggle, the view skewing wildly as Mira twists on the ground, then righting itself on the attacker's shrouded, murky face. Mickey hits pause before the very end and lets out a breath.]

So... definitely superpowers, right? Except I don't know any inmates who can do shit like that -- not that I know of, anyway. Anyone new show up while I was gone?

[spam]

[exnihilo]

No.

And any of the recent inmates with mystery powers wouldn't have access to them yet.

Hand me that notebook?

[Nearby on the coffee table. It's nice, a Christmas gift. It locks, and there's a pen beside it.]

[spam]

[americasdirtiest]

[He gets up to grab it, tossing it casually over to the bed. He stays standing, fidgeting with his cigarette, pacing again.]

Unless one of 'em's got a new and seriously over-fucking-generous warden.

[spam]

[exnihilo]

Most of them aren't even paired.

[She opens the lock with the swipe of her fingertip, then flips it to a page covered in neat rows of names, every single person on the barge. Some of them are already crossed - Bush, with his wooden leg, not given to stealth, Mason with his general incompetence, Arkin, Jerry, Clementine and Steve on account of being victims, Mickey for being off-barge, Stephen for being in a coma. Cassel because he wouldn't use a knife. Now she goes down the list, ruthlessly striking out everyone who doesn't fit the build of her attacker, muttering under her breath: girl, girl, too short, girl, too broad, too thin, girl, too short, too short, girl, girl, girl, too tall -

At the end, six names are left: Ben, Simon Monroe, Merriel Shelton, Hercules Hansen, Dean Winchester, Zane Venture.

She strikes out Simon with a muttered too cold, Hansen with human only world, Dean with fights differently, because she's seen him fight before. Then she crosses out Snafu and Ben without saying anything at all. ]

[deshabille]

[Her ribbon twists and writhes where it's pinned on her chest. She knows what that means; even if she hadn't been through it what felt like a hundred times with Hannibal, she'd know instinctively. The ribbon looks like a dying black worm. She makes the request with less a heavy heart and more an irritable one, her step taking her quickly to Mira's room, the first place she thinks to look for her.]

[After a few moments' wait, she knocks on the door with bare white knuckles, her foot tapping an impatient tattoo on the floor.]

[exnihilo]

[The door slides open at a DI command, and she waves wearily from the bed. She's smiling, though, pleased and triumphant and something deeper, satisfied, worn out and hurting in the best way.]

[deshabille]

[Mal would argue about 'the best way'. She'd argue about a lot of things regarding Mira's interpretation of this situation, but this isn't the time, probably, or the place.]

[She slips into the room, her eyes hooded and her arms stiff at her sides.]

You died. [Injured pride, concern, and irritation blend.]

[exnihilo]

I took a risk.

[Acknowledgement, though not apology. She didn't jump, this time - or if she did, she was at least hoping to fly.]

[deshabille]

Was the reward worth it?

[exnihilo]

Yes.

[Smug as a cat with cream.]

[deshabille]

[Her lips twitch.]

And you gained . . . ?

[exnihilo]

I know who the recent killer is.

[She went hunting; they both caught their prey.]

Besides, it was fun.