Crossing Off Your Bucket List

[Will Stanton]

One patrol does walk past the two of them, but Will slammed Conduit against the wall, wrapping himself around her for a moment. No one noticed a file cabinet sitting in the corner of the hall, after all.

If Will was alone, he'd just slip through the elevator doors through the seam on the floor and shimmy his own way out. But Conduit has bones and whatnot, and thus is some annoying dead weight. Will still slipped himself through the doors, but then two metal prongs slipped into the slit where the elevator would open, forcing them just wide enough to let the diminutive Conduit slip through herself.

The elevator car itself was several floors above them -- far enough away that it wasn't an obstacle for where they were going, far enough away they couldn't really take advantage of it. Wrapping one arm around Conduit's waist seven or eight times, Will stretched his other arm up two floors, grasping onto the ledge just outside where they were headed. He winched himself up, retracting his arm and bringing the two of them up to the proper floor.

[Conduit]

Conduit snickers as they hide in/as a filing cabinet and lets out a quiet but none-the-less audible "Weeee!" as they go zipping up the elevator shaft. She's not actively trying to sabotage them but she clearly isn't taking this one hundred percent serious either. Come to think of it, Will's not sure she ever has, even when confronted by them. At most she gets angry someone is trying to stop her.

Prying open the elevator doors the same way as before the two find themselves climbing out into more hallway, though this one seems to lead into a larger atrium of some kind. They're not up to ground level yet but there's an opening spanning three stories with multiple flashlights sweeping around as people seem to gather there. From the tone of the distant conversations, a couple of people seem to be taking charge, directing the more civilian employees and, as Conduit informs Will, gathering up cellphones and taking out the batteries like the big meanies they are.

[Will Stanton]

"They don't want electronics around you? Shocker of shocks," Will muttered. "We're not making it across that atrium, not dragging you along. But we've got to get to the other side of the building to get you your antidote..."

Will looked up. "Right. Up and over it is, then..."

He hadn't actually let go of Conduit yet, one arm still fully wrapped around the technopath. He stretched out his other arm to give himself a grip on the wall, the palm adhering to the surface like glue. Then he stretched out his...other arm? A third arm, providing more security. And a fourth, and a fifth...

Will began scaling the wall, spider-like, attempting to get high enough that security wouldn't notice them as he tried to cross the atrium via the roof, Conduit wrapped up behind him...

[Conduit]

Conduit dangles upside-down as Will spider-crawls along the ceiling, eyeing the dwindling phones still active below. Not much she can do, without active relays there's no reception down here and Bluetooth only gets you so far. Still, she starts setting off random phones to ring, play music, turn on flashlights or display bright white screens to basically flashbang people and sow chaos. It does give up the fact that she's probably nearby but the majority of people down there aren't field agents and prone to panic in an already tense situation. Add in Conduit's voice broadcasting from phones here and there and nobody really has the chance to think about looking up. They're too busy making sure the shape in the darkness that seemingly just called out isn't the escapee they're looking for.

More than one civilian gets tasered while ones already gathered up start scattering or going for cover. Conduit can't help but snicker and make shadow-boxing motions that only serve to make her sway and make Will's job more difficult.

[Will Stanton]

The chaos and confusion? Quite helpful, actually. The tasering, however? Will didn't seem on board with that, judging from the fact that the arm wrapped around Conduit squeezed her significantly tighter the first time she zapped someone. If he wasn't trying to keep quiet, he'd probably have a lecture for her about propriety and safety and respect. Hopefully, a bit of a rib-crushing grip would get some of that message across as he passed the halfway point and started heading down towards the opposite side.

[Conduit]

Conduit flails around in objection for a couple seconds before settling down, assuming this is about her moving around too much. The fact that it's about people getting zapped does not occur to her.

On the other side of the atrium Conduit makes a beeline for one of the corridors the moment Will lets her go. They pass through another couple key-card doors that provide little obstacle to the two until they reach a large open room with numerous tables and workstations. At the far wall their flashlights briefly illuminate a firing range and testing areas of some sort, here and there marred by scorchmarks and bullet-holes. Conduit immediately runs for one of the nearest tables and starts rifling through the things in varying stages of (dis)-assembly. Watches, some kind of bulky night-vision helmet she immediately puts on but then has to fold the ocular part up due to it not being fully functional. Watches and pens, a selection of suitcases. A blinking red light draws attention, lighting up Conduit's manic expression as she holds up the innocuous pen emitting the light. She then throws it in the general direction of the testing area where it detonates and dispenses a bunch of obscuring smoke.

Conduit cackles and starts shoving more things into her pockets.

[Will Stanton]

"We're not here for this," Will hissed. "Can't you just, like, not touch something for 30 seconds?"

[Conduit]

"What? No, it's what I am here for." Conduit hisses back. "I just said this is where they keep the antidote. They already gave it to me when they brought me in."

[Will Stanton]

"Wh....you said that..." Will stammered for a moment, going through Conduit's exact words.

"Put those down right now, and let's get OUT of here," he frowned.

[Conduit]

"How do you think we were gonna get out of here? C4!" she says, holding up a brick of grey plastic explosives. "Here, put some of that on the floor in the north-west corner of the room." she says, underhand-tossing Will the chunk.

"Besides, they got plenty of toys! They're not gonna miss a couple o--" She's interrupted by a silenced pistol shot and a bullet whizzing right past her head.

"That's quite enough. Drop whatever you're holding or the next one goes through your eye-socket." says a man stepping into the dim light cast by the flashlights Conduit turned on He's in what used to be a nice suit but has recently seen the inside of an air vent or service duct. In one hand he's holding a silenced Walther PPK, the other a fire-axe with a scorched blade from where it cleaved through a main power-line.

"Try me." Conduit says and sticks her tongue out while pulling down her lower eyelid with one finger.

[Will Stanton]

Will placed the C4 against his hip, absorbing it subtly and hoping the guard was too busy watching the more obvious threat to notice a bit of plastic meshing with plasticine.

"Conduit, you can't bounce back from a bullet in the eye, drop it," Will said, taking several authoritative steps closer.

If he was also angling himself to be between Conduit and the man with the gun, well...surely, that was a coincidence, right? It's not like he was plotting something...

[Conduit]

Conduit continues to give the agent the stink-eye. "Yeah right, I'm still an asset and it's not like he's got a license to k--" is as far as she gets before her head snaps back from the perfectly aimed bullet, turning her eyeball to jelly and sending her crashing to the ground. A keen observer might note the lack of an exit wound or Conduit's twitching fingers, but it's dark and the agent immediately turns his weapon on Will.

"And who the feck are you?"

[Will Stanton]

"Agent Ryan Gabriel, CIA," Will said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a badge. "We've been chasing this one for nine months, after she scrambled our central servers in Langley. Replaced the list of our operatives in the Middle East with a series of codes. Took us a week to decipher them, only to find out they were a series of rude limericks advising us to do anatomically improbable things to each other."

[Conduit]

The agent looks somewhat doubtful still, but it's not like he's appraised of every little thing that goes on at MI6 so he does lower his gun.

"Hope you weren't expecting her to return the actual data. Not that I'd imagine she would."

To the side, Conduit sits up, disoriented and one eye a ruined mess, blood running from the socket. After a moment of confusion her expression settles into one of anger and she lifts one arm to aim what looks like an innocuous pen at the agent, arm wavering a little as she struggles adjusting to her sudden lack of depth perception.

[Will Stanton]

Will took one more step, putting himself between Conduit and the agent.

"We've got our ways, don't you worry," he said, adding some Texas drawl into his voice. "You boys can go about sippin' your martinis; we get our hands a little dirtier in the States."

[Conduit]

Will moving in front of Conduit draws the agents attention to the fact that the young technopath is, in fact, still alive. Unfortunately for him (and by extension Will) Conduit already has her weapon raised.

"You actually shot me!" she screeches as she twists the cap of the pen, the bottom third of the pen firing off like the miniature rocket that it is. It hits Will square in the back and throws him into the agent, proceeding to lift both of them off their feet and sends them crashing into the far wall before exploding.

[Will Stanton]

Will, instinctively, shifted into more pure clay, wrapping himself around the agent as the concussive force of the explosion rocked them. He served as something of an airbag, preventing the agent from being turned into bite-sized chunks, though he'd obviously still be unconscious from the force of being both slammed against the wall and buffeted by the explosion.

Will? Perhaps a little bit less lucky. The force of the explosion splattered clay across the back wall, over the agent, and over the floor in general. Quite a bit of him was still in one central lump, which was slowly twitching and trying to draw itself together. Resilient little bugger, that one. But at the moment, Will's odds of stopping Conduit from pocketing anything in the room -- or, indeed, doing anything Conduit didn't want him doing -- seemed quite low. The only thing that might be a problem for Conduit is any of the army of guards she may have alerted with an explosion.

[Conduit]

"Fuck!" Conduit shouts over the ringing in her ears, pressing the butt of one palm against her eyesocket only to pull it away again when that obviously hurts, shaking her hand before wiping the blood on her skirt. "That really hurt, you jerk!"

She stomps in an angry circle as she tries to figure out what to do. Try to fix her eye somehow? Probably not doable in what little time she has before more people come running. She comes across what looks like a grenade launcher with a revolving magazine that disappointingly turns out to just be some kind of riot control gear but she fires it off in the direction of the door. The first one flies out into the hallway before bursting into some kind of gas. The second one goes high from the recoil and bounces against the ceiling and mercifully out of direct eyeshot before bursting into bright magnesium light that continues to hang in the air for a while, illuminating the room and the distant silhouettes running through the smoke-screen. By the third round she has the weapon vaguely under control again and hits the doorframe, exploding out into rapidly swelling and hardening foam. She fires two more rounds past the foam, resulting in another explosion of smoke and flashbanging the corridor with the final round adding more expanding foam to the doorframe and cutting off access.

"Well, that was fun at least." she huffs and drops the clunky weapon and goes to find a large equipment suitcase, dumping it's contents and foam inserts in order to fill it with various smaller pieces of equipment. She does pull out an eyepatch that comes equipped with who-knows-what and sticks it over her ruined eye. Once she's looted her fill she grabs a supposedly bulletproof umbrella to twirl around and drags the case over to Will. She fishes out the lump of C4 and then shovels handful of Will into the case before slamming it shut. Whistling she plants a bunch of C4 on the north-western wall, sticking detonators into each lump haphazardly. Finally she grabs a compact rebreather to pop in her mouth, loosely ties a too-big belt around her waist and plops herself down on the case.

"Fun fact." she informs the unconscious agent and packed-up Will. "This corner is the closest spot to the river, according to the blueprints. It's just, you know, beneath the waterline."

And with that she snaps her fingers, detonating an absurd amount of plastic explosives that blast a hole in the side of the building and scatter a bunch of debris into the air and across the Thames. Followed by a deluge of water that rushes into the resulting hole. Clinging to the equipment case she slaps the belt-buckle and tiny jet-propulsions start dragging them against the squall and down into the turbulent waters of the breach.

[Will Stanton]

The stunned, splattered Will was basically a big 'ol pile of play-doh, with only a hint of definition here and there to suggest it had ever been anything more -- a little twitch, the faint outline of a finger, a hole sucking in a little bit of air. Frankly, between it and the foam sealing the door, the foam might be more valuable in it's current form. It, at least, had a purpose.

Then again, that much foam wouldn't have fit in the case, bits of clay compacting and folding around the equipment. More fit into the case than probably 'should', even if she couldn't quite get everything in, and it was lighter than it 'should' be, considering what she could grab. Heck, the clay would probably keep the equipment inside from getting damaged from the C4 explosion or the filthy water of the Thames, so maybe Will was earning his keep after all.

The water rushed in, quickly flooding the room, as Conduit fought her way out and about. Sirens and alarms blared, but they would mostly be looking above the water, not for the diminutive girl in the full James Bond getup cutting through the water like a miniature torpedo.

[Conduit]

As well as the gear works, it's made for someone a little bigger and taller than Conduit. Coupled with her injured eye and a less than hydrodynamic hardcase this makes the escape less graceful and more of controlled tumbling down the river. Eventually, Conduit drags herself and the suitcase full of loot (and Will) up onto the river bank in a more industrial outskirt of London. Being a villain apparently gives you the uncanny ability to locate abandoned factories because that's exactly where Conduit heads to at least temporarily set up shop.

She sits down on a strut that once served as a mount for some piece of machinery and cracks open the suitcase, fishing around the equipment embedded in the protective Will-mass until she pulls out a pair of long pliers and some kind of miniature laser blowtorch meant for cutting through panels and such. Lifting up her eyepatch she leans forward and lets some of the water that had gotten in drain out.

"Oww ow owwww!" she complains. "Fuck that guy. You really shoulda let me blow him up for this." Taking the pliers she pokes them into the ruined eyesocket until they make a dull clinking sound of hitting metal. Losing an eye is, in the grand scheme of things, not as big a deal to Conduit as it might other people. But having a fused mess of bullet and inert nanites in the back of her eye-socket is. Any proper cybernetic replacement would need to be connected to the optic nerve behind it. She finds a good spot to grab it with the pliers, then takes the laser-cutter to hold roughly parallel to them. Turning on the laser she starts pulling and slowly twisting with the pliers while tiny drops of molten metal fall down, most hitting the ground but some sizzling on her hand. "Owwiiiiieeee!" she wails until the small chunk of metal finally comes free and she throws it to the ground along with the pliers and laser-cutter.

[Will Stanton]

The mass of clay in the briefcase burbled and squelched, the surface rippling like thick mud with a current underneath. A depression formed -- no, a hole, clay parting to one side as it pulsed and stretched. With a wet, sucking sound, the cavity deepened, inner walls folding in on themselves to form a semblance of a throat. It formed crude and malformed lips that rapidly became more detailed and precise as Will continued to recover from being blown into a zillion pieces. A soft squelching pop happened as he yawned wider and flexed an experimental grimace, regaining some semblance of function.

"W....whazzappening out there..." he burbled.

[Conduit]

"Pulling a piece of metal out of my gosh-darn skull." she huffs and picks the excised piece back up. It's maybe a fifth of a sphere of sorts, the surface uneven and with a clear imprint of organic structures, some of said structures still sticking to it in little scabs. The other side has a deformed bullet stuck in it and a frozen splash of metal around it. As well as what little remains of Conduit's eyeball mushed all up in it. "Who woulda thought getting shot would hurt so much!?"

[Will Stanton]

"..'ve been though worse," Will said, his speech becoming more and more comprehensible as he continued to regain control of his faculties. He shifted and squirmed some in the hardcase, the sound of electronics and gadgets clunking together as he tried to inventory just which bits of him had ended up where.

[Conduit]

"Oh I'm sorry, I forgot I was talking to an expert in Getting Your Ass Kicked." she says and chucks the metal chunk into the skeletal remains of some industrial machinery.

"I need something that can go online." she says as she too starts rummaging through the mass of Will until she finds a pair of glasses with a built-in retinal screen. "That'll do." she says, putting them on, then immediately taking them off again when she realizes she's only getting half of a virtual screen in her field of vision. "Godddddamnit!" she curses as she takes them off, then pauses and starts taking the glasses apart until she's left with just the two miniature projectors tied together and a short spindle of bare cables sticking out the back.

"How good are you at threading a needle?" she asks, eyeing the bundle of electronics and the bare copper filaments twisted into a vague spike.

[Will Stanton]

"I got a B+ in home economics," Will deadpanned. "They said I was a natural."

[Conduit]

"Cool. I need you to push these wires into my optic canal." she says, handing Will the small assembly of electronics.

[Will Stanton]

A hand, twisting around 360 degrees as it formed, took the wires, as Will began to slowly rise out of the case.

"You want me, after you raided MI6's tech, to jam wires into your eyesocket. And you trust me not to fuck you up while doing so, hrm?"

[Conduit]

"Yes. I do. If you were gonna screw me up you woulda done it already. Besides, I might've uploaded a bunch of their data but you still need me to decrypt it."

[Will Stanton]

"Ashlie's pretty good at decrypting things, you know," Will said, pulling himself out of the hardcase and wobbling, standing up. Still, he came over and obediently took some of the mass of wires from Conduit.

He had kept a couple gadgets from the case tucked inside his clay as he stood up -- one of the taser-things, and a pair of handcuffs. He just needed an opportunity to use them, and to hope Conduit didn't count the shit she had stuffed in the box.

[Conduit]

Conduit isn't exactly a meticulous person, so she hardly kept a mental inventory of the shit she stole. She does however, sense and control electronic items.

"Tell you what. You do this and don't pull out that taser and I won't set it off while it's still wrist deep in your guts."

[Will Stanton]

"Well, we'll see how you behave, won't we?" Will said, with a slight frown, squinting to examine the hole in Conduit's head.

[Conduit]

"I've been on my best behavior." she huffs.

The eye-socket is, well, not great to look at. It's burned and beginning to scab in places, especially in the back where she removed the bullet, but all things considered it could be worse. There's one spot that's still bleeding a little bit, right where blood vessels and nerves would normally converge to enter the skull.

"Don't tell me you're squeamish."

[Will Stanton]

"Brains are nasty. I try to avoid having them when at all possible," Will said, covering.

His hand shrunk down, fingers thinning out and elongating, until they were more spider-like and spindly, as he carefully navigated the copper into Conduit's face.

[Conduit]

"Oww ow ow! You gotta do it faster!" she says and grabs Will's wrist, yanking it a good inch towards herself and sinking the wires into the remains of her optic nerve. She makes a hissing sound through her teeth and shakes out her hands in the air as her no-longer-empty eye-socket twitches. The miniature projectors do blink to life though, giving her left eye an electronic red light to go with the more organic glow of her right. It's not a proper replacement for an eye but it does seem to be doing something for her as she looks around, accompanied by the projector sweeping the area with a faint triangular beam.

"Ooh. Topographical."

[Will Stanton]

"Kids these days, never willing to stop and smell the roses," Will deadpanned as Conduit jerked backwards. "Always just wham-bam, in-and-out, don't call me I'll call you, money's on the dresser experience."

"Congrats, your head now contains stolen tech and thus can be repossessed by the British government."

[Conduit]

Conduit looks over at Will, waiting for the punchline or for Will's sentence to make sense. Then she bursts out laughing.

"Yeah, that's what they're gonna get me for. Bwahaha! They were gonna let me off with a warning about slam-dunking their computer system into the dumpster and blowing a hole in the side of their building, maybe some community service for declassifying data that isn't supposed to exist. But stealing their toys, now I'm really in for it." she trails off into snickering. "Oh man, you're funny."

[Will Stanton]

"You'd be surprised what they can get to stick. You can't just use 'I did a bigger crime' as a get out of jail free card, you know.

Plus, those other things probably didn't result in trackable tech being implanted in your skull. I know you're good, but I'd be paranoid about that."

[Conduit]

"Just saying, they were gonna come for me anyway." she shrugs. "You worry too much. Stuff happens. Some of it explodes. Never let anybody tell you that something's impossible." she nods sagely as she quotes somebody. It does vaguely sound like good advice, but then again, it was probably uttered by the woman who submerged herself in nanites to pretend to be an AI and implant computer chips in dinosaurs and giant squid in order to sink Russian aircraft carriers.

[Will Stanton]

"I'm just saying, if I were a fugitive from both the law and shadowy forces trying to use me against my will, I wouldn't make it quite so easy to track me down.

Speaking of which... what do we need to do to get you to decrypt those files for us?"

[Conduit]

"Feel like going home with me and killing a bunch of Russians? No? Yeah, I figured. You did help me clown on those guys pretty good and I did promise you'd get all the data I get. I'd love to take you on the run from the majesty's secret service but I dunno if I can trust you not to be a narc and keeping an eye on you all the time is annoying, especially when I'm already down one. So scram and I'll make sure the robo-mayor gets the encryption key."