ArchivedLogs:Getaway People

Getaway People
Dramatis Personae Hive, Jim
In Absentia	2013-03-07 The raid, from the outsiders' point of view. (Part of Prometheus TP.)
Location ???
Shadows dapple the ragged gravel service road through the scratchy winter tree branches. It carves irregular swaying shapes through the sunlight filtering through the dirty windshield. The driver's side window is down, and Jim sits his ass on the window sill, boots on the driver's seat, with a pair of binoculars held against his face. No signs of spontaneously occurring drones. Or guards. Or /tigers/ for that matter, Jim is a master in cynicism and paranoia equally - it helps cut back on surprises. The ash from his cigarette drops onto the cab's dirty rooftop, spins in loose spirals and is whisked away by a passing wind. Hive is quiet, in the passenger seat. Quiet in a manner of speaking, anyway. He hasn't /spoken/ in a while. Out loud. But there are pulses that come from him all the same, sometimes just a brief quick touch, sometimes a harder fiercer /squeeze/, bearing down on Jim's mind. He manages to look pale even through his naturally tan skin, head slumped against his window and his fingers curled in a hard grip against his knees. << Ffffu, >> leaks through, sounding rather like Hive's actual voice rather than his usual mental /battering/, certainly not the first and certainly not the last accidental swearing. The passenger door opens. Hive leans out and retches. The sound of retching lowers Jim's eyes - not like he can /see/ him through the cab roof, though, and though his mouth compresses into a harder line, he resumes his slow scan of their surroundings until it is complete before he slides his bulk back into the the seat. He reaches over the gear shift between them to push Hive's (<< stupid boyband shaggy messy >>) hair back from his forehead with an old-time frat-partier's practical execution. "Keep it together, Hivey." It's said at the point of a harder squeeze on his mind, though is notably not in complaint. Gruff is easier to do than worried. << made out of fucking blood, >> is Hive's somewhat disgruntled reply. He continues leaning out the car door for a moment but then slumps back against the seat, his eyes open but oddly vacant. His breath hisses quietly in and out through clenched teeth. Quietly, and then suddenly louder and sharper, his fingers clenching down again. << Gorram /dragon/?! >> is a little horrified. A little disjointed. Jim mouths the word '...dragon..?', not looking /thrilled/ because these tidbits of psychic leakage also come with the word 'blood'. He flicks his spent butt out the window and rolls it back up again. The cold doesn't bother him overmuch, but he doesn't even know if Hive can properly /feel/ his own body right now and the last thing their team needs is for the Queen Bee to get hypothermia. "C'mon, buddy," he semi-pat-shakes Hive on the shoulder, not rough but with a firm grip, and then reaches to grab up Hive's opposite hand, gripping it in the crossways mutal-thumb-trap like they're about to have an ARM WRESTLING match. Except that there's no table to rest under their elbows, and he's absently patting the back of Hive's knuckles. In hard SMACKS. "Stick in there. You hearing me?" If Hive is hearing Jim, it doesn't show. His hand is limp in Jim's, his eyes still glassily fixed on some indeterminate point in front of him. The voice that sounds in Jim's head next is quieter, as though quite distant; it does not sound like Hive but someone deeper, gruffer, though the << fuckshitassdamn, >> is pretty Hivelike. "Hey. Asshole." Jim goes from smacking at the back of Hive's hand to giving his cheek a swat somewhere between a smack and a Firm Pat. "You gotta tell me what's going on, man. Do we gotta get over there?" Smack-smack. It's like hitting a TV when it gets static-y. "/Hive/." There's a hard mental pound against Jim's mind, at this smack, and then Hive's head turns, eyes rotating slowly to fix on Jim; it's only a moment later that they actually seem to /focus/. "Dragon," he says, frowning. "Acid. Blood. Ten left on floor one eleven on floor two. Flicker's --" His frown pulls deeper. His eyes drop to look at their hands. << Nine, >> is duller, his eyes shifting glassy-vacant once more. "-jesusfuck-" Jim grits his teeth against the hard thump slung against his mind, and he talks right over the disjointed semi-rambling, "Yeah, okay, I don't care right now. I needa know -- /HIVE/." See Jim not learn. Or just not care. He smacks him again. No /harder/ but with zero apology, "Do we gotta go?" The smack is met with another mental assault, this time /stabbing/ its way in; there's a brief disorienting sensation of other minds pressing against Jim's; guards on high alert, Flicker's overactive buzzing now laced with pain, scientists scrambling to save their data, and then it all withdraws into silence. "Ten on floor two," Hive says, with a heavy-dull weight to his tone, and the mental footnote that comes with this: << eli >> is whisper-soft, inadvertent. Hive lifts a hand slowly to touch fingers to his cheek. "No," he says, still dull, "Not yet." The yield of pain for either of them is high; Jim fights the invasion it like an animal in a snare, older, willful, set in his ways, he rides it out until it fades, leaving stinging tracers and after-shocks of images lanced in his mind. And he takes it for the information it is, and tries to process it as well, settling back for a moment into his seat to massage his forehead with the heel of his palm. All he can really come to from all of it is, "Damn." Not Damn! to curse the heavens to nor Hot Damn! to celebrate their progress. Sometimes, it warrants just the statement, not the curse. Damn. This is answered with a quiet thud. Hive's head drops back to the side, resting against the window once more. His fingers tighten, clenching inward, relax, clench again. There is a return to silence. A sudden stab again, much like before. This time Flicker's presence comes with more pain than overdrive-energy. Just something searing-burning, for a brief moment before it withdraws. In the passenger seat Hive is doubled over, one arm curling beneath his knees. "Yeah," is his eventual gruff answer. Jim's eyes turn forward when Hive doubles over, focusing instead on the landscape outside. Winter in upstate New York has a stark prettiness to it, and for a disjointed minute, between one throb of mental throb to the next, he's thinking what a good shot this view would make, with the dappling patches of light lining up down the road ahead like stepping stones. He lays a hand loosely on the steering wheel and uses the other to fish himself out a cigarette. Then rolls down the window again, hooks a hand out to rest on the hood of the car, and climbs his ass up onto the sill to scan their surroundings once more. << You /do/ pick the prettiest spots to take me on dates, >> comes, gruff again, a minute later. Hive is still doubled over through this, though now it seems more an exhausted slump than anything else, head resting against his knees and his arm curled under them. And then: "They're coming out. Let's go." It's not urgent. It just is. "Yeah." It's Jim's turn to say this, just as brusquely. He drops back down into the seat, cigarette dangling lazily off the side of his mouth. The keys turn in the ignition, the big motor roars to life with a wet purr. And they roll forward with a crackle of stones under the tires. "Just hang in there." Maybe he's saying it to Hive. Maybe he's saying it to everybody. His eyes don't leave the road to indicate. << Next time, I'm just ordering us a fucking pizza. >>