Night 58: Recreational Field

[promisedawhale]

[from here]Stepping outside sent chills all over Brook's body for how cold it was. He'd welcomed it when there was snow for him to play with, but given the absence of the white powder this evening, Brook only shivered and crossed his arms to rub away the sensation

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[touchedgod]

[From here.]Time dragged behind Billy. No matter how fast his legs moved, it wouldn't change the slow, sickly advance of the clock. Each second was an eternity without the steady rush of adrenaline had had been riding. He was ill in its wake, with little else to carry him. Every uncontrolled moment was an opportunity to get lost. He was edging along the precipice of his own mind... or someone else's mind, as the case might have been. It felt so much like himself, though. Nothing had changed. He remembered nothing knew. He had forgotten nothing

[tasteoftruth]

Another one. Badd hadn't gotten a great look at him but he'd seen movement. He raised his gun and circled around to where he'd last seen the prisoner, his tattered trenchcoat trailing behind him like a battered cape.

"There's no tea parties out here, princess," he announced. "Turn around and go back inside or I'll shoot." He couldn't see more than one, but it was dark and criminals were sneaky. It was possible another one was waiting to jump him as soon as he got too close to a shadow-shrouded wall.

Badd had been hoping for a quiet night where the actual prison guards would do their actual jobs to keep the prisoners from getting outside in the first place. But hope didn't get you anywhere in police work, and an order was an order. Beyond some minor...indiscretions, Badd liked to think he wasn't one of those cowboy cops who only obeyed orders when they felt like it. The badge and the oath applied even when he'd have greatly preferred to be at home watching TV.

[touchedgod]

The voice arrested his descent into frustration. An American voice. What light was there caught the shape of the gun. Even if it hadn't, the stranger's posture gave the weapon away. The shadows couldn't hide Billy from bullets, and glass ground uneasily from somewhere nearby. Billy didn't need to question the noise this time. The man could kill him if he wanted. His coat cast a a shredded shadow across the ground, but Billy was only watching the gun

[tasteoftruth]

Two hands up just meant he was probably hiding a weapon in his waistband. Badd kept his gun trained on the convict, though he was obediently aiming low to reduce the risk of hitting vital organs. It was hard to see him in the shadows, just a badly defined dark blob of a man, but there was enough shape for Badd to have something to aim at.

Still, points for honesty.

"You bet you're lost. That was the out door. You want the in door." Badd flicked his gun to the side to indicate the door in question, then turned his aim back to the prisoner. "Go back to your cell and sit quietly until we get a handle on things and you might get a shorter sentence instead of a very short sentence." He made himself sound annoyed, as if he was just a misplaced word away from firing on him out of sheer irritation. Inwardly he was glad that this one didn't seem to be pressing his luck. Maybe he'd just go inside quietly and not bother Badd with filing a weapons fire report.

[touchedgod]

His problems continued to mount. The jumbled bits of information he had gleaned from the staticy radio voice or the intercom were joined by allusions to imprisonment, which was not an unrealistic threat to Billy's progress. Still, he was astonished. That hadn't been some police cell, and from what Billy had seen of the building, it didn't much look like a police station either. It had been quite some time since the authorities were the worst of his worries. But how do you tell someone that their concerns don't matter? Exposing the big picture, begging them to realize how small they are, and convincing them that one convict who was not a convict was someone they should just let slide.

Across the city, across the world, people felt the times dying. It's last rattling breaths left the world shaking. In their own ways, they panicked and scrambled to avert it, just as Billy had. Was this someone else's gambit to save the world? He was in another soul's desperate attempt to avert disaster. Maybe it was this man's, maybe not

[tasteoftruth]

And the honesty was too good to last. Apparently the prison here had decided to assume Badd was an idiot and come up with some lazy excuse about how he wasn't really a criminal, it was a simple misunderstanding, just let me through and I'm sure you won't get in trouble for it later

[touchedgod]

Billy's hands dropped to the breast of the uniform. It was like no prisoner's uniform he had seen. The blue shirt had the starched look of the most general of military costumes. While it fit well enough, Billy couldn't feel any connection to a thing that suggested he could pass as an enlisted man. He imagined his narrow shoulders, and the hair that had become less and less well tended to. He exhaled with a shaky gasp.

"I don't know." He was pleading, he realized. "Maybe I am a prisoner, but I don't remember being arrested, or what I did to get here." Another half-truth. It was less that he hadn't been arrested, and more that this was simply not how the situation should have played out, even if he had been dragged unconscious into the back of a squad car sometime between his last memories and now. He anxiously looked back at the unwavering muzzle of the gun. He didn't have time for this. No one had time for this. But the control was with the weapon. The man's refusal to relax even a little was starting to creep under Billy's skin. An

[doneinthree]

[from here, with Wichita in tow]

Cold, but not as cold as it had been the last few days, and certainly not as cold as it had been on Delta Vega. The snow appeared to have melted since a couple nights ago, and Kirk's boots sank into manicured grass of the rec field as he headed in the direction of the shed.

He didn't get far, because right in front of them was a scene which killed whatever pick-up line he was considering trying on Wichita next. Two men, silhouetted by the dim moonlight, facing each other with the metallic gleam of a twentieth-century-style gun between them. A gun held in the hand of the taller man, pointed in the direction of the rest of them.

-where I am, or what day it is, the second man was saying, and Kirk immediately recognized his confusion for what it was. A brand new patient, without enough sense to know what he was facing here. As far as he could tell, the armed man was human, but that tattered coat definitely didn't suggest a soldier.

Special Counselling. Awesome."Excuse me!" Hiding in the shadows

[zombiefree]

"Jesus." No, Wichita still wasn't at all used to this cold. She was longing for California sun again even as she followed Kirk, knowing that getting a weapon was more important than letting the cold get the best of her and running back inside. She could handle this. Even though her hands were balled up into fists, and her pace doubled just so they could move along a little faster, she was sure she could--

Oh, good. A guy with a gun. And-

Oh, even better. Riverside was yelling at him. She almost forgot she was traveling around with one of television's greatest damn heroes. Though then, he kind of wasn't in these situations, not really. If she was remembering right, people died on that show all the time. God, had she really managed to sign herself up to act as a Red Shirt on another 'away mission'? Sure, he'd save the damsel in distress, but she'd likely get eaten by a tribble or some shit before then. Go freaking figure.

'Stay back'. Yeah, no problemo, Cap. Good luck with this one

[tasteoftruth]

See? This was why he shouldn't be getting chatty. Two more prisoners had just crawled out of the woodwork. Badd narrowed his eyes at the one in the yellow shirt. Definitely not a guard, but not wearing prisoner clothes either. He'd hate to throw a civilian back into general population.

Buuut it was more likely that the guy had found a janitor's closet and stolen someone's old shirt. Badd would not be susceptible to any more sweet talk or pathetic excuses, he got enough of those during his regular workday. "Getting really tired of everyone's bull--"

Movement. The third one, the one who hadn't announced herself like an idiot, had decided to make a break for it. Badd whirled and fired a shot in her direction before taking off running after her. The movement was barely conscious, more like the trained instincts of a hunting dog than anything human. He saw threatening movement, he chased it, he attacked it, he tried to tear the life out of it.

[doneinthree]

[switching posting order with Billy!]

Kirk saw him turn, saw Wichita moving like a dart from the corner of his eye. "Wich-!" The echoing gunshot cut off the rest of his shout, and Kirk's eyes barely took her in for a second before landing back on the gunman, seeing him run. He'd been fully prepared for several things to happen. Himself getting shot, the glasses guy getting shot, glasses guy fleeing... A sane conversation honestly hadn't ranked even in the top five of the list; all Kirk had wanted was to throw the gunman's attention off of Glasses, hoping to buy time.

Well, he got it. Regardless now of whether or not they were all on the same side, right now Kirk had to assume the guy had been brainwashed into doing anything for the Institute, and he didn't doubt "killing fellow prisoners" would be on that list. Kirk allowed himself only enough time to utter a single swear word before acting.

"Come on!" Without waiting for a response, Kirk grabbed the wrist of the bespectacled man beside him, and ran after them.

[touchedgod]

The gunfire was almost drowned by the splintering of glass just before it happened, but still too late. The sudden headache spoke to him in the way it always had, and Billy didn't have the time to question it, let alone hope that it would even think to answer questions. This sad thing that mistakenly loved him, and now urged him on and sped his feet as the other man seized his wrist. Dreamlike, Captain Kirk dragged him into action, but it only took a startled second before Billy was running with him. The questions he might have had for his angel or his hero were left behind

[zombiefree]

The flaw with initiating Rule #1 in this situation, Wichita quickly realized, was that zombies didn't carry guns, while this man certainly did. She was confident that she could run faster than a zombie if she had a head start but she couldn't run faster than a bullet. But that didn't matter! At least, she didn't think it would. Because she didn't expect him to shoot first, then chase. That wasn't in the game plan. In fact, she didn't actually believe it was a possibility until she felt someone punch her right in her shoulder with enough force to make her cry out with the shock of it.

Wait, mm no, she didn't get punched. This was more direct, a sharp crack of pain that ran from her shoulder, down her arm into her fingers, and up her neck, all at the same time. Which was a tiny bit more painful than a punch. They must have thrown a brick at- no, what was it

[tasteoftruth]

One down. Badd didn't know if this meant she was out of action or just wounded enough to stumble, but he had two other up and running targets to deal with. Normally he'd have backup to make sure she wasn't going to whip out a gun and shoot him in the back while she lay bleeding on the ground, but when you were alone you did what you could

[touchedgod]

[Switching order with Kirk again!]

The gun fired, Billy clenched. Tension ran through his gut and out into time itself. It was unpolished, and spoke nothing of the careful, conscious way he had been arresting time lately. This was just some instinctual, barely realized lunge at the clock's throat, the kind he often hadn't even noticed he was doing weeks ago. Even now it took a second for Billy to realize he was still moving as nothing else did, pulling the would-be Captain with him. In the next moment, he caught on, and he was the one with a firm grip on the other man, dragging him out of the bullet's path, just barely out of the trajectory.

The woman was on the ground ahead of them, and she grew more distinct as they got closer. Dark hair, longish, and dressed in the same uniform as Billy. There was time to look. Not much, but a little. He was in an unnatural second, busy with movement, but only his movement. It gave him a feeling of being in control, or even powerful, which was ridiculous. It was ridiculous last week, and it was

[doneinthree]

Two shots rang out in the night. Kirk had been shot at before. Granted, last time he'd had plenty of cover and a phaser in his hand to fire back, but the essential strategy remained the same: don't get shot. Spock could've explained the exact differences between a metal bullet and phaser fire, but Kirk was sure that either way, it would hurt like hell. No time to dodge, not if he didn't want to risk his companion getting shot. He moved as fast as he could, angling his body lower, only to realize too late that the gunman was aiming low in the first place.

The snow-covered field shifted; pain exploded from his upper arm as a bullet tore through it, and the grip of the glasses-wearing man was suddenly hard on him, and they were still running. Something had happened, but Kirk wasn't going to question it. Wichita was right up ahead, and they had less than seconds to lose. Aiming low or not, he did not believe the gunman had been brainwashed to give a shit about the patients' lives