ArchivedLogs:Glass Houses

Glass Houses
Dramatis Personae Hive, Cage	2014-03-04 '
Location
Luke texted well before he'd get there, but as they two men agreed, the Humvee pulls up in front of the lofts at the agreed upon 5pm. Traffic is mysteriously light tonight, perhaps from left over weather, and people just taking a 'fuck-it' day mid-week. When the black truck comes to a halt, big tires squishing through some left over slush, Luke gets his phone out again and sends, <--Sorry I'm early. No traffic.--> Notably, gone is the gaudy logo and HFH emblems on the Humvee. It appears going non-profit means the vehicle is purely personal property now. A return text comes quickly -- *(Hive --> Cage: Be right out.) But despite this answer it takes a considerable while for Hive to actually /appear/. Eventually he does make his way out the doors of the Lofts, though, in heavy work boots, sturdy jeans, a contrastingly tatty old canvas jacket, soft fleecey red cap with gold letters Theta Tau embroidered on the front pulled down over his ears, black scarf wrapped around his neck. His bare hands are shoved in his pockets, pulled out only once he makes his slow and rather unsteady way out to the car, tugging the door open heavily. "-- Yo." He /eyes/ the high /slog/ up into the Hummer with sharply narrowed eyes, exhaling heavily and gritting his teeth hard. He reaches up, jaw clenched and a rather /pained/ scowl on his face as he pulls himself -- almost in. Kind of stumbles and slips back to the curb. Tries again, actually makes it into the passenger seat the second time around. "So what's the good news." Cage sits behind the wheel, waiting patiently enough. He's wearing brown carhart jeans, tan work boots, and a black sweater with the lip of a bright yellow t-shirt underneath showing at the neckline. He fiddles with the heater, and the radio briefly while waiting, and then turns the radio off when Hive comes out. At Hive's struggle, Cage's mind wrestles with the politics of offering to help the ill-looking man, and finally his hero complex gives in. He offers his hand, just as Hive manages on his own. Luke turns the gesture into a handshakes, even though he knows, that Hive knows, that it started as something else. "Good ta see ya Hive. I got the best kinda news." He waits for Hive to buckle his seat belt, with the clear notion in his mind that he's seriously not going anywhere until the man is belted in. Even Luke is wearing one, for some reason. When they're all set, Luke pulls a u-turn from the curb to head in the direction of the new property, and his tires shudder as the 4-wheel drive kicks in to grab at the slick street. Eventually they're rolling along smooth, though the cab is noisy. No luxury ride here. "Elysium Investments got back to me," he says with a wry grin full of very white teeth. "We're a 'go'. One hundred percent, ready to roll. Thought you might like to take a look around the property. They sent me this." Luke leans across the cab to pop open the glove compartment, and hands Hive a key dangling from a chain. "There's a fence around the lot. This open the padlock." Hive settles into the chair with an exhausted kind of sigh. He takes the offered handshake, lips twisting up into an amused grin; in Cage's much bigger hand his own hand is shaky, as is the one he reaches for the seatbelt, to buckle in securely. "Shiiiit." He takes the key, fingers closing around the chain to hold it up, let it dangle in front of his eyes. "/Holy/ fucking shit, man. That is the best gorram thing I've heard in for/ever/." His eyes focus on the key, watching it rotate slowly back and forth, fading evening light winking off the metal. "I mean, you have no fucking idea how much I'm --" His grin skews kind of /slanted/ here, "-- dying to get this shit started. Break ground, get the ball rolling on -- Man, this is. Going to be incredible. And holy fuck do I need some good news this week." Luke chuckles at Hive's reaction, and nods while he drives. His driving is fairly sedate, in fact, taking it easy through the slushy streets. But the pair are halfway to the lot already. "Yeah man, I kinda figured you could use some good news." Luke's mind is awash with curiosity about the other man's condition. He's picked up on the fact that he's not just thin from when food was scarce. Hive is sick, somehow. But Luke can't bring himself to breach Hive's privacy and ask. "I can hear you, you know." There's a quiet chuckle in Hive's voice, low and dry. His head tips back against his headrest, hand lowering to his lap with a soft clink of metal as the chain pools against his leg. "Sick isn't the half of it, though, man. Sick I could fucking handle. S'just --" His head turns, eyes fixing out the window, slowly drooping half-closed to watch the city pass by through a half-lidded gaze. "Just a crock of bullshit. You seen all those videos? When Dusk and Jax were in jail? Prometheus? The labs?" Luke sighs and nods, smiling when Hive calls him out. "Shit yeah, of course your can. My bad," he says, navigating the sloppy streets with care. The property swings into view up ahead. He thinks for a moment when Hive asks, and his mind filters through the videos, and the feelings of sickness they remind him off. Sickness, and rage. He clenches his teeth for a second, and finally nods. "Yeah, I didn't watch /all/ of 'em. But I know what you mean. Why? Were you inside too? That shit is so fucked up. At least in prison they have to /pretend/ to treat you like a person..." His mind flicks through a random collection of prison memories, ending with his fist buried in the foot-thick concrete walls. "Don't apologize. Can't help what you're thinking." Hive's eyes close, fingers curling tight around the chain in his hand. "I was in there, yeah. For a -- bit." He draws in a slow breath, fingers tightening further. Relaxing. Tightening again. "And even after all that they're still fucking with people. Got a friend stuck in one of those places still. /Nicest/ fucking guy --" His teeth grind, slowly, head shaking. His breath hisses out slowly. "-- Fighting cancer," he says through clenched teeth, "is one thing. And fighting government /torture/ labs is one thing. Fighting them both at /once/ is a fucking bitch." He opens his eyes again, lips curling up slowly into a smile as the property comes into view; he shifts his grip the key, dropping it into his palm to hold it tightly. "Damn..." Luke says at Hive's explanation. "Damn, I fucking /knew/ they would've kept some of those things open. Is there... I mean." Luke's thoughts flood with the mental image of kicking down a military guard shack, and wading through a hail of gunfire. "Do you have a legal path? Or maybe... something else? A plan, to get him out? Is there any proof, I mean? To show people." Luke parks the Hummer near the gate and unbuckles his seat belt, but doesn't move to get out yet. "So far our proof is an artist who draws pictures clairvoyantly." Hive grimaces, unbuckling his seatbelt, too. "It's not really much to go on. I mean, it's enough for /us/. Not really enough for the fucking -- /cops/. Though /those/ motherfuckers I wouldn't trust as far as I could fucking throw them anyway after the shit they've goddamn pulled. And /I/ couldn't throw anyone anywhere." His teeth grind again, head shaking irritably. "So it's probably just going to be up to us again. On the plus side, we're getting pretty fucking good at this. On the downside, I've never tried it with a goddamn brain tumor before. Still." His teeth flash in a thin smile. "First time for everything, eh?" His hand moves to the door, nodding towards the lot. "C'mon, s'go check out our /prize/." Luke is all gungho, mentally, to offer his help. But it's tied up in doubts, with things like 'if they'd wanted my help, they would have asked a long time ago'. All of these thoughts swirl as he gets out, but when he does, he frowns at the utterly crooked parking job he did. Rather than get back in and repark though, he lowers his shoulder and shoves at the wonky end, just shoving the truck back into a proper position. "Fuck it," he says as they approach the gate. "It's not like I can keep it from you. It's probably fucking rude to bring it up, but if there's /any/ way I can help with that, just let me know. I've been in prison, and that's a fucking cakewalk compared to what you all went through." He sighs, hopeful that his help will be accepted, but also worried that he'll offend Hive somehow. Hive opens the door, sliding down out of the Hummer with a grimace once he's out in the cold. He's none too steady on his feet as he approaches the fence, but there's a slow smile spreading across his face. "These days, man, we can use all the fucking help we can /get/. S'up to Jax in the end, though. Kind of the brains of our --" He snorts, breath steaming white in the cold air. "Fucking /terrorist cell/, that's what the news says it is, right? But fuck it. It's not like what we do is a goddamn /secret/ anymore, it's splashed all over the goddamn. Everywhere. Should bring fucking /reporters/ with us this time." He loops the chain around his wrist twice -- probably necessary, given how badly his hand is shaking as he reaches for the padlock. The key rattles loudly against the lock, fumbled noisily in his hand as he takes a few attempts trying to open it. Eventually he manages it, though. His fingers curl into the fence, pushing it open creakily. He leans heavily against the gate as it swings inward, eyes widening slowly as he steps inside. His eyes sweep over the lot, and he draws in a deep breath. Looking over the wide expanse of ground, over the dilapidated set of rowhomes with their windows busted in that sit there already. The river bordering it at the far back end. Luke steps forward when Hive totters slight. He didn't want to interfere with Hive's moment of triumph, but he also didn't want the man to topple over. When Hive rights himself though, Luke steps back again and stuffs his hands in his pockets. "Well shit, maybe you /should/ take reporters. I mean, the world needs to see this shit. But either way, I'm there to help. You can tell Jax to call me, if he wants." He follows Hive onto the property and takes a deep breath. "Man, this is gonna be fucking good, when it's all said and done, huh?" He walks up to the closest building, a rundown row-house which makes no claims about getting to stay. The bright yellow 'condemned' poster out front probably gives it away as well. "Seems like such a waste though. You really think none of these are salvageable? They got history, you know?" "S'gonna be fucking great. When it comes to /this/ shit, I'm pretty --" Hive extracts the key from the padlock, trailing slowly after Luke with his eyes skimming over the old buildings. "Fff, I dunno, s'poor thing took a fucking /beating/ and nobody's been taking care of her. We're probably just gonna have to knock 'em down, unfortunately. Be hard to make it fit in with the -- with the -- with the --" Hive stops, abruptly. His teeth clench again, gritting together hard; his hand presses to the creaky door of the rowhome as his other lifts to his temple, face screwing up in a sudden unpleasant spasm of horror. From somewhere behind the house on the river-side there's a splash. A scrape, a rattle of broken glass. A wet soggy shuffling that thuds into the building somewhere and pulls itself in towards the door, dragging closer to where Hive is leaning. His teeth grit harder, shoulders clenching inward. An unhappy sickened, << -- Oh, fuck, >> thuds heavy into Cage's mind. Nodding, Luke reaches up to pat the weathered frame of the house while Hive laments her loss. He sighs, and looks like he's going to say something when Hive's concern becomes visibly apparent, and then Luke sways on his feet for a second when Hive cusses in his head. "Damnit, I know that noise," he says through clenched teeth. "Keep outta my brain for second..." Luke squeezes his eyes shut, shakes his head, pushes past the front door, not even aware that it was locked. The frame around the door is so rotted it practically falls off it's hinges to get out of his way. Cage grunts, and his mind momentarily fills with satisfaction. Images of the brief struggle, and Cage not wanting gore on his hands or boots, so he tears a two-by-four out of the wall to brain the poor deader with. "'Sa fuckin /zombie/," he calls from inside the house. "Don't see many of these anym- Uh oh." A crunching noise, and then Cage yells, "Fucking BACK UP, Hive!" The building shudders, and finally just gives up, collapsing in on itself. The wood was so moldy and rotten, it hardly makes any noise beyond a tired, shifting sigh and soggy crunch as it slumps inward. "Crawled out of the goddamn --" There's a rippling mental suggestion of flowing water, the East River rushing past the lot. Hive's face stays scrunched up uncomfortably -- in softer echo beneath that mental suggestion there's something /else/, a clawing /hunger/, a mindless vacant /aggression/ that probably explains the telepath's abrupt discomfort. He pulls his hand away from the door as Cage pushes through it, taking a few steps back as the rotten wood crumbles inwards. Then a few /more/ steps back as he leaves Cage to battle the waterlogged corpse. His half-lidded eyes open wider as the building collapses inward, but his expression is one of relief with the dead creature's mind no longer clouding his own; the unhappy tension in his shoulders clears up, his hand falling away from where it had been pressed to his temple. His teeth stay gritted, though, a somewhat distant expression to his eyes. After a long moment, just as the dust starts to settle, Cage's huge fist spears up out of the rubble, revealing his bare arm. The mind buried in there is more annoyed than anything else. Apparently his sense of self-preservation has adapted to his mutation, because his mind doesn't have any degree of worry or fear - not from this anyway. Shortly, he has crushed and bashed his way free of the debris, and is standing on top of it like a conquistador. His pants and boots are most intact, just a few rips and tears, but his sweater and t-shirt are in complete tatters, and this is the fact at the top of his mind. The brief mental image of opening the black sweater at Christmas, with his daughter's smiling face when he tried it on. "Fucking sweet fucking /christmas/ man... /Chelsea/ gave me this." He reaches up and tears the tattered garment from his torso and tosses it aside with the rest of the trash, and shivers. "And it's fucking /cold/!" Luke wades out of the rubble, only breaking through the surface a couple times as it gives way beneath his weight, but he eventually makes to back to Hive. "You ok, man?" "I -- huh?" Hive's eyes refocus only slowly, shifting gradually back to Cage. He blinks once, twice, then shakes his head with a suddenly apologetic wince. "Oh, shit, man. You alright? Yeah, I'm -- crap. A /house/ just fell on you." His hand skims over the top of his head, running over his fuzzy hat. "I'm -- good. Yeah. Biters just -- got. Fucked up -- brains. Um. I'm not a -- fan. Uh. But. A /house/ just fucking -- fell on you, dude." He waves a hand. Towards the /house/. Or what's left of it. Just in case Cage had not /noticed/ this. "Yeah, and now my tits are cold," Cage says with a grin. "You know I punched a tank once, right? Was on the news. Can we go get my jacket though?" Luke's annoyance is limited only to the destruction of his sweater. He's already mentally cycling through how he's going to explain this to his daughter. He strides the short distance to the truck and snags his jacket out of the back seat, which he pulls on and zip up while he walks back to the slower-moving Hive. Kind of a shambler in his own right, Cage thinks, and instantly feels bad about. He nods his head at the rubble. "Probably better not tell the union how that came down. They'll be on me to pay dues. Or sue." He chuckles and shrugs. "I did hear about the tank." Hive grimaces at this. "In your defence the guy driving it was a sick-ass bastard." He shoves his hands into his pockets -- admittedly totally shambly himself as he trudges away from the rubble of the fallen house. "Tell her a zombie did it. S'totally a legit excuse for everything around New York these days, she'll understand." His head turns back towards the house, breath exhaled short and sharp. "Jegus. Whole fucking house, man. Huff and puff and bam. Your secret's safe with me, though. -- We should get you home, man, it is /way/ too damn cold to be flashing your tits around." One hand pulls back out of his pocket, fingers gripping the key in his hand tight. A small smile touches his lips again as he squeezes it hard into his palm.