2009-10-06: Phase Two

Starring:

Emily_V4icon.png

Guest Starring:

Alpha Protocol Hunters

Date: October 6th, 2009

Summary:

One of the specials' hunters becomes hunted.


"Phase Two"

Manhattan

It's near noon, on a gray, early fall day in New York City. Thin, weak sunlight streams in through the breaks in the curtains on one of the hotel's upper floor rooms, one of the ones with a good view of the city's skyline. Even though it's nearly lunchtime, the room's guest is in the shower. The spray of the shower can be heard through the open bathroom door (if there had been any other people in the room). She's risen late today, intending to have a room service lunch, then take in some more shopping and dinner uptown, but all on the downlow.

It had been a mostly uneventful weekend, save for the odd call from 'Prometheus.' Maybe that's the reason she's kept to herself, stayed inside for the remainder of the weekend, and contented herself with awful pay-per-view movies and room service. Oh sure, there was a trip or two to the hotel gym and pool, a short little shopping trip to a boutique up the block, but more or less, it was a stay-at-home-weekend for Emily (even if it is at a five star hotel!). Now, after a luxurious long night's sleep and a long, hot shower, she's up and about, getting herself prepped for the day.

Some time during the time Emily stepped into that long, luxurious shower, her hotel room became a target. She's become a target; the woman who tends to make the world her target. A footstep on the balcony outside; a quiet shuffle outside her door. These things aren't suspicious in and of themselves. Pigeons, hotel staff. Nothing is unusual about the grey day in the beginning.

Knock knock knock.

Room service? Someone coming to make the bed? There's no one there, through the peephole, but out of its fish-eyed range, six men decked head-to-toe in black gear wait. They're not maids.

The hunter becomes the hunted.

Their timing is…strangely perfect. When they knock, to begin their mission, Emily has just stepped out of her shower and finished drying off. When they knock, she throws on one of the thick hotel robes, cinching it tight about her waist. She towels off her wet hair, head turned to the side a bit as she wanders toward the door. Of course she peeks through the peephole, and sees nothing.

Maybe curiosity gets the best of her. Maybe she's grown a bit too confident. Maybe she thinks things have cooled off enough. For whatever reason, she just can't leave things alone. She unlocks the deadbolt, unlocks the chain, and pulls open the door, peeking her head out. "Who's out there?" she asks, naively, looking first in one direction along the hall, then the other.

There's little evidence of the fact that the knock on the door was anything other than a hotel guest playing a trick. At first. In a moment, however, it becomes glaringly obvious that this is no trick. It's an ambush. From around the corner, the men rapidly file toward Emily's door, military boots quick to jog along the strip of fine carpeting lining the hall. From boots to gloves, BDUs to bulletproof vests, hidden heads to goggled eyes, there's barely a strip of bare skin visible. Their weapons are already raised, intent on wasting no time: large, rifle-like contraptions. Not true guns, but tasers.

It happens fast. Tactically.

One man lashes out to attempt to keep the door open; another sticks a booted foot in the threshold; from left, then right, two others immediately fire.

The first thing she sees when sticking her head out is the black boots. And even though she pulls her head back and tries to slam the door shut, she's not quite fast enough to get the door shut, but she is fast enough to pull her head back before two of those taser modules thump into the door and the door frame. Her body isn't strong enough to force the door shut on them, but she has other talents.

The only hope she has, which she realizes quickly enough, is that she needs to assume control of one of them. Fight is her first thought, but then, there are more surreptitious uses of another's body. Maybe that foot and leg forcing the door open is her key to survival.

She drops to the floor, and begins to claw at the bottom of his fatigues, tearing at the material, tugging and yanking, trying to get it out of the top of his tightly laced boot and expose some skin, any skin at all.

The team came prepared. They may not understand what it is, exactly, that this woman does that makes her different, but they — or their higher-ups — have learned that any vulnerability at all is a critical flaw around threats like these people.

The man's pant leg is tightly cinched, and the boot Emily claws at comes up and tries to succinctly kick her in the face.

Two of the men stay in the hall while three shoulder their way past the door, their colleague, and Emily, filing into the lovely hotel room, a stark contrast against the comfortable, five star decor. Surrounding her, another taser bolt is shot downward.

The boot catches her in square in the forehead, knocking her up and back from her kneeling position, so that she's lying square on her butt and a little woozy. She may even be a little concussed, who knows. When the others burst into the room, she's in no state to defend herself anymore, dazed and on the ground, unable to make contact with them in their tightly wrapped, cinched uniforms, gloved hands, and masked faces.

Like more predators that rely on shock and surprise, she lacks the tools necessary to fight back when outnumbered and overpowered. The taser bolt fired downward at her catches her flush on the inside of her thigh, right in the meat. She yelps out in pain, before she's knocked unconscious by the device.

While Emily is shocked into unconsciousness, the hotel room door still swings slightly on its hinges, and the man who delivered the kick crouches down to re-tie his boot, one of the hunters touches a device near his ear. "Phase two successfully initiated, sir."

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License