exnihilo | 15. chasable

[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.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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. ]

Edited 2015-03-22 03:16 (UTC)

[He sits back down to join her, muttering a surprised curse when he sees the list of names in all its detail. Still, he doesn't object as she starts crossing them off, even when she gets to the end of the list -- he knows how Ben and Dean fight, too, and he's pretty sure it wasn't Dead Guy -- until she gets down to the last one.

That's when the world seems to stop. He can see as well as she can who the only one left is, and that doesn't make any sense.]

Wait.

[He shakes his head, starts pointing to the crossed-off names.]

Why not Shelton? Who the fuck's that? Or Hansen, I don't know him. Or-- maybe it was one of the new inmates. That disco-looking asshole or that hood rat from Baltimore, one of them.

He goes by Snafu, and I already know what he feels like on top of me.

[This smug face is, frankly, unevitable, then, more businesslike, musing.]

It wasn't him. Hansen is the grumpy old ginger from the world with the giant robots. No way he has powers. Little and Tarr are both too short.

I felt his shoes really clearly when he landed on my back - there wasn't anything to disguise his height, they were optimized for stealth. And he's not a shapeshifter or he wouldn't have bothered to cover his face.

[It fits, it all snaps into place, and she starts talking more rapidly.]

He can move metal, can't he? The same way Marsh did. That explains the shield. And the glass knife. And - you weren't paying attention, this last flood, but he was pushing off the walls in zero gee, without touching them. That's what he did in midair, that's why I couldn't throw him off, he using the ceiling to hold us down -

[Mickey shoots her a grimace at the overshare, but fine, whatever, it's the dude she's banging. That might not necessarily be enough on its own -- someone here has experience with boyfriends suddenly flying off the handle for no reason -- but he recognizes the name Snafu where he didn't Merriel. That's Gene's friend. No powers.

Except if he accepts that, and that disqualifies all four of those, and anyone else he can reasonably think of...]

No.

[He shakes his head and cuts her off quickly, his heart rising into his throat in sudden panic.]

No, look -- why the fuck would it be him? He's a warden. He doesn't do shit like that anymore. Why would he risk all that just to turn into some psycho Batman knockoff?

...because he loves it. We talked, once, about being tools. Of how real it feels, killing.

He might have been good for a long time, but you never forget that.

No.

[It's more desperate now, but even as he says it, he remembers how he felt smashing Dean's skull. Spilling his brains out onto the floor of the Mirror Barge. Wanting, just a little bit, to eat him alive. Some of that had been the vampire, but a lot of it hadn't, and even if he doesn't want to do it again...

No, it's not that hard to imagine. He looks from her to the book and back again, eyes wide.]

He's been-- I've seen him asking around about it. Trying to figure-- fuck.

[He cuts off and turns his head away, covering his mouth. He looks a little sick.]

[She nods. It's clever.]

That's what I'd do, if I had to stay somewhere. Establish credentials, misdirect. I wonder if he has a scapegoat picked.

Not one that'd work for long.

[His voice is thick with resignation. Who would Zane pick that would hold up to any scrutiny? If there were anyone else, Mickey would have leapt on them without any help from Zane.]

[Mira thinks she would pick Ben. He's just as dangerous, and he's been shaky for a while - but probably not many people outside the kitchen staff would notice. Maybe Sylvanas, if she hadn't already seen his shape. She might be proud enough not to deny it.

But it is a terrible complication, the constricted environment of the barge.]

No. I suppose not.

[He can't do this, he thinks. Zane-- it's not even like they're friends, not like he is with Mira or Isaac, but he's always trusted him, respected him, even looked up to him. For Christ's sake, he let Zane mess with his and Ian's minds. He'd asked him to. He shivers, thinking of that.]

I-- I don't...

[There's too much loss already, too much betrayal, and it's all too fresh. For a moment, he really thinks he might just lose it again -- he's managed not to start crying out of nowhere for, like, four whole days, so why not pick it back up now?

But he doesn't. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, rubbing his face.]

Can you just let me talk to him first? Please?

[A little more gently,]

We can play this any way you want to.

[She only wanted to catch him for herself.]

[He scowls, grimly.]

If it really was him, we're gonna play it like I'm gonna knock his brain out of his skull, powers or no powers.

Mickey.

Try not to die?

[She is aware of the irony. But she says it in earnest, a quiet sort of plea. He will like it less than she did.]

[The scowl deepens, but not only with anger. There's dismay there, too, and fear, but also an underlayer of affection. Acknowledgement and a little bit of gratitude that she gives a shit. He slings an arm around her shoulders and pulls her close in a terse one-armed hug, even pressing his lips gruffly against the side of her head. He's on his feet again an instant later.]

Better go get this shit over with.

[She returns the half-hug, even though her wrist twinges hard where Zane crushed it.]

Good luck.

15. chasable

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