Division NPCs (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
survivors_of_new_york) wrote2021-07-23 09:32 pm
survivors_of_new_york) wrote2021-07-23 09:32 pm
For The Lost
[You don't last long as a cop if you can't keep your head, can't spot a liar, can't notice patterns. Not anywhere, especially not where Benitez cut his teeth in Manhattan South, which - before the flu came - had the highest per-capita crime rate and third-highest per-capita homicide rate in the city.
Benitez has noticed a pattern, buried in the reports before him. Working a desk isn't the same as working the street, but feelings come back to him all the same. The numbers, the reports - something creeps up in his throat. The words come off the page and take on a life of their own, like a newly broken lock on a tenement door - a warning of horrors and dangers behind.
He pauses as he reads one sentence, ruffling a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. He re-reads it - then takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes.
They're losing people. Not to the flu, that's a given - even though Kandel says she'll have a vaccine out soon - but in the sense that they just...disappear. Here one moment, gone the next. Not at the rate that would create a panic - maybe a half-dozen a month - and most of them are civilians by the outposts, but some have been right out of the BoO. Some bodies turn up, but not nearly enough to account for even a fraction of the lost.
It's too steady. Too consistent. People don't disappear like this unless someone makes them disappear.
He hesitates - then snaps a rubber band around the report and heads off, looking for Lindianne.]
Benitez has noticed a pattern, buried in the reports before him. Working a desk isn't the same as working the street, but feelings come back to him all the same. The numbers, the reports - something creeps up in his throat. The words come off the page and take on a life of their own, like a newly broken lock on a tenement door - a warning of horrors and dangers behind.
He pauses as he reads one sentence, ruffling a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. He re-reads it - then takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes.
They're losing people. Not to the flu, that's a given - even though Kandel says she'll have a vaccine out soon - but in the sense that they just...disappear. Here one moment, gone the next. Not at the rate that would create a panic - maybe a half-dozen a month - and most of them are civilians by the outposts, but some have been right out of the BoO. Some bodies turn up, but not nearly enough to account for even a fraction of the lost.
It's too steady. Too consistent. People don't disappear like this unless someone makes them disappear.
He hesitates - then snaps a rubber band around the report and heads off, looking for Lindianne.]
no subject
[She pauses, head cocked in Rabbit's direction as she strains to listen to the words. For a moment, her grip on PAtrick's arm tighten until it's painful. Then, finally, she shoves him roughly towards Mother. The look on her face could stun a black bear from ten feet away.]
Rabbit, with me. Let's check this thing.
[She takes point when the time comes. Whatever's in that basement... whatever comes of Patrick's conspiracy... she'll be the first one to face it. Faye said as much back when they first met: they're connected to this city and its people. She owes them this much.]
no subject
It's a door like any you'd see in any tenement in the city at this point - slightly splintered, paint slightly peeling, a rusty old doorknob that looks like it needs more than a few cans of WD40...that is, before you take another look and see the thick padlock and chain that's reinforcing the deadbolt.
Rabbit swings the bolt-cutters over his back and puts the teeth on the padlock. As soon as Lindianne gives him an affirmative signal, he breaks it, letting the lock clatter to the floor. The door slowly swings open, seemingly of its own accord, like it's releasing a breath it's been holding for months. Then...silence.
In front of Lindianne is a long stairwell down. Her NODs struggle to amplify the ambient light down there, because there is none to amplify. And - the smell...that sickly sweet smell...]
no subject
[They both know what that smell is. Lindianne's caught a whiff of it every day fighting to retake New York. The Dark Zone reeked of it during her desperate trip into it. Anyone that's set foot in the mass graves of Central Park knows what that smell signifies. It's death down there. Death and rot and decay.]
[She hesitates for a moment. The darkness is suffocating. NODs are useless when there's no light. The idea of fighting for a penlight and turning it on makes her stomach twist into knots. Common sense screams that whatever is down there is best left unseen. That's Hell down there. No one sane would willingly face it.]
[But there's no choice.]
[The first step on the stairs falls like a death sentence. The penlight is blinding against the oppressive darkness. When Lindianne strides into the darkness, it is with the grim certainty that whatever is down there will break her.]
[She prays she's wrong.]
no subject
The staircase creaks beneath her feet, and Rabbit's as he follows behind her. As her penlight darts to and fro, tracing over the corners of the space, the pipes and breaker boxes tell what this place might have been before the poison struck. A utility cellar, maybe, or low-rent apartment space. Water drips from condensation on the pipes, and rats scurry underfoot. The smell is strong enough now to block out conscious thought. And then...
Barrels. Robins-egg blue 55-gallon plastic drums, dozens of them, are stacked floor to ceiling in this basement and duct-taped shut.
It's easy to pick one out for investigation, but it's heavy, and the contents slosh around with any maneuvering Lindianne or Rabbit might undertake to make it easier. The duct tape seal is no match for a knife the kind either of them might have.
Acid isn't the be-all and end-all to body disposal that some might think it is. Even a strong acid like HCl takes several days to dissolve skin and connective tissue, and several more to dissolve bone and teeth. In the meantime, the remains form a kind of biologic sludge, the scent of which is overpowering.
As the barrel is jostled, a few fragments of bone are stirred up, along with some teeth, and sink down further into the acid.
Now that they're down in the basement proper, the two of them can see a door that wasn't visible from upstairs. It's locked - and, if you squint, you can see a glimmer of red light leaking out from underneath.]
no subject
[It isn’t until her knife cracks the seal, that the light falls on the contents, that the truth comes into stark contrast. She lurches backwards away from the sludge, one hand pressed against her nose and mouth. Her eyes dart just as quickly to the mountain of identical containers. It doesn’t take a genius to realize what this basement is: a graveyard.]
[The thought rises unbidden: which one is Sam? Bile rises in the back of her throat. Her nose stings. Training is the only thing that keeps her from throwing up; it’s a close call even with that factored in.]
[Aaron Keener’s voice echoes in the back of her mind: “You haven’t seen the base savagery people are capable of when their backs are to a wall.”]
[She moves for the door before Rabbit has time to stop her. The wait to breach feels like eternity. Time stretches like tree sap. And the dead remain silent.]
no subject
He wrenches the bar, shattering the lock. Metal dents underneath his foot as he donkey-kicks the lock, sending the door flying open.
The inside of the room is bathed in red light from a handful of jerry-rigged bulbs overhead. From the layout, this seems like a combination of darkroom and detention center - a few pens like the kind you might keep a large dog in are in the center of the room. Off to one side, a few exposures of what looks like homemade porn hang from clotheslines, and an exposure bath and some development chemicals lie beneath them.
On one side of the room, a young man stripped down to his underwear is handcuffed to a radiator. His face is bruised and covered in dried blood - he looks more like a tomato than a person. Knots have formed on his cheeks where it looks like someone took a pipe or sock full of batteries to his face.
Rabbit takes a knee to check his pulse.]
Postman, Neptune Two. We have one more for the EMTs. Blunt-force trauma, possible brain damage.
Copy, Two.
[The young man opens his eyes - or, at least, something moves on his face. His shoulders heave with panicked breaths as he squirms, like a caged dog backing away from a man with a whip. Rabbit is gentle as he lays a hand on his shoulder.] Hey, take it easy. We're JTF. You're safe now.
[He takes out his multitool and gets to work on undoing the cuffs.]
What's your name?
[Nothing but whistling air sounds. It takes a few false starts through bruised and swollen lips for anything intelligible to come out.]
S-
S-
S-
[A determined swallow. Then:]
S-S-Sam.
no subject
[He's luckier than almost everyone else in Benitez's files. There's not enough left of them to give anyone closure. The basement feels too small for so much suffering. the air is thick. Lindianne can't breathe. Can't think. Can't do anything besides put a hand on Sam's shoulder and squeeze it as gently as she dares.]
[They're down there for what feels like an eternity. She fades back up the stairs at some point before the JTF medics arrive. The building will be sealed up, of course. No one else is going to be using this as a base for inflicting human suffering. The perpetrators are either dead or in lock-up. It's over.]
[Try as they might, the JTF never find a sign of Eugene Peterson. They never find his body. The only reminders that he ever lived in an ECHO recording and the watch in Lindianne's hands.]
[Neptune won't have to look hard to find her when they come looking. All they need to do is listen for the inarticulate cry of rage and the sound of metal skidding across the floor. She's sitting halfway up the stairs to the second floor, arms folded over her knees and her head buried inside the protective circle. Her ISAC watch lies at the foot of the stairs. The orange glow feels like a match against a starless night: almost pointless.]
[She says nothing. Merely sits.]
no subject
Heard about what you found down there.
[It would seem any inclination he had for chewing her out earlier is gone. His eyes are creased. He seems more tired than usual, his beard grayer in the moonlight.]
You doing okay?
[It's a stupid question, he knows - what's she supposed to say? "Yes"?]
no subject
No, I’m not okay.
[Lindianne raises her head to look at Mother. Her jaw is clenched so tight that it seems like her teeth might fracture. If she’s been weeping, there’s no obvious evidence of it. The beacon on her shoulder casts a soft orange glow across the side of her face as she shifts to stand up.]
We failed our people, Mother. If Benitez hadn’t had that hunch, how long would this have kept happening? How many more people have to die on my watch?!
[A mountain of barrels. The memorial wall at Camp Hudson. The ECHO at the police academy.]
[She ducks her head to the side. Doesn’t make eye contact.]
I’m starting to think… maybe we were never meant to succeed.
[Her eyes are fixed on her watch on the foot of the stairs.]