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. ]

[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.

[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.]