Summary:A hit on Jeriah has SHIELD and Jemma responding Log Info:Storyteller: None |
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Jeriah London has made some fairly powerful enemies. People with a long reach and deep pockets and a lot of investment in ensuring that he suffers for crossing them. This they have a lot of ways to do but every once in a while they try a good old fashioned assassination.
It's fairly obvious. It's made the news. They ambushed him outside a deli and now there is a televised firefight going on. Jeriah is shooting up at rooftop ambushers of which there are at least three groups. The part of the city he's in has medium rise buildings and this is a problem. He is at the bottom of a shooting gallery, pinned down and his options for getting out are both limited and destructive.
He's been in worse situations, granted, but Jeriah has never been in worse situations IN a western city. People are going to get cross with him if he starts blowing chunks of building out with one of his dogs grenade launchers.
Jemma had known the moment that Jeriah was in trouble. His concern had speared through their connection like a shard of ice. Even then, she hadn't just run off to get him help - she'd taken a few minutes to secure her laboratory while calling in a TAC team and Quinjet to be ready.
The Quinjet is inbound as Jeriah is pinned down. Nearly there, Jeriah. Jemma sends. She's in tac gear herself - though technically she shouldn't have come. This is a job for the other agents.
She can see as they approach. There's violet plasma tracing up at the rooftops. There's figures shooting down at someone who has kicked a large trash bin over and is using it and it's rancid contents for cover. The dogs are firing from other positions but Jeriah is pinned down.
Watch out they might have- The message fuzzes. Someone is interfering with radio comms. As the Quinnjet descends several of the shooters begin to shoot up at it. The aircraft is - as all aircraft - not especially armored. So even small arms fire is quite potentially dangerous.
Jeriah? Jemma curses and watches the feed as they approach. There's no easy way to do this and that shooting is a problem. The Quinjet banks and has to ascend again and move in arc to avoid getting hit. "We're going to have to jump, Agent Simmons if we want to get in there." Agent Carruthers tells her. "Not you … The jet will circle and come in from behind London. You're to try and extract him from the street."
The back of the jet is already opening as he speaks. The agents, decked out in SHIELD body armour, line up and run off that ramp to the roof nearby.
The jet banks steeply, taking a different angle - which lets Jemma exit the craft and hit the street some distance away - jumping from perfectly craft isn't exactly Jemma's thing. She'll be exposed as she makes her to way Jeriah's side.
Not that he knows she's coming - the comms are out.
Jeriah indeed doesn't know she's coming. He does know she's in the area though. He heard a snippet of her before the jamming set in. His location is not hard to tell from the plasma streaming out from it. He is keeping them at bay for now but he knows he is in a bad spot and it's only a matter of time before they maneuver somewhere that exposes the one bit of cover he has.
So he's got to move.
Jemma sees one dog dart out into the street, spraying sonic blasts from it's back turret. The other one moves in front of him and starts to walk. Jeriah is using it like a stalking horse, keeping the drone in front of him, also shooting, as he tries to get himself to a better position. Trouble is he can't do it very quickly. And he hasn't seen Jemma yet.
The gunmen on the roof have though. As she comes in at a run she starts to attract gunshots. At her feet at first, and when that doesn't deter her actually AT her.
Being shot at is not nice. Jemma tries to avoid situations like these but not this time. "Jeriah!!" She calls out, voice being lost in the noise about them. She ducks into the mouth of the alley she's passing as bullets pepper the pavement about her.
She has to get to him and can't rely on their comms. She has her ICER and sidearm … they're not going to be much use here.
Taking a deep breath as she peaks about the corner, the biochem judges the distance to the hacker/soldier … three, two, one … she takes off at a run, trying to get to him to pull back the way she came.
Jeriah gets blindsided by Jemma and goes down, which results in his dog standing over him to cover him from the fire raining down on him. It also results in him pulling a knife and getting it most of the way to her throat before he realizes who hit him.
"What are you doing here?!" He calls out above the gunfire, and then squirms slightly so he can shoot up at an apartment building to force the people there to put their heads down again.
Jemma didn't mean to knock Jeriah down, she's tiny really and had just been trying to get his attention. She has to duck behind the dog herself - drone, but she thinks of it as a dog - and leans back as the knife comes at her throat. "It'smeIt'smeIt'sme. Comms are down …"
"I got sent to pull you out while the others are addressing the threat."
She's tugging on him. "Back this way. They'll extract us …"
Jemma is slightly heavier than she should be on account of her body being made of more metal than is found in the average human body. "Can't go that way. Got any other ideas?" Jeriah gets to his feet and snaps off two shots that find home and kill their targets. "Once we get to the intersection we'll be exposed from two sides and then it's game over."
That's why he'd been moving in the opposite direction.
"Normally I'd just bring one of the buildings down. Or at least collapse the roof. But that's not an option here."
It is so not an option here if either of them like their job or not being in prison.
Jemma frowns back the way she came "I got in that way. There's alleys we can use for cover. The TAC team will engage them to keep them distracted." She protests, thinking furiously.
"If we stay on the streets, we're going to be open. What about the sewers? The subway?" There'll be an entry to the subway not far from where they're standing and the sewers … not exactly a great option but they run right under them.
"And no, you can't bring buildings down. I don't ever want to know what sort of paperwork is associated with that." Jemma does at least have her sidearm out, not that she tries to shoot anything. It won't have the range.
"You got inserted by aircraft." Jeriah points out as he continues laying down fire. "And they were mostly shooting at me, not you." They might be able to make it out though, if they moved fast.
"Subway. Give me a moment…"
All it takes is a moment for him to kill power to the subway rails. Which also kills power to several city blocks. Which is going to annoy people.
Jemma can hear the shouts as they dash down the stairs and onto the station. The dogs turrets go away and Jeriah gets on the back of one.
"Get on…" He sighs. "… Shep." The other one. Does he mean for her to ride the dog like a small armored pony?
Seems he does.
"How did you do that if comms are down?" Jemma glances at Jeriah. Cutting power isn't a problem - SHIELD can deal with that and with people using this area as a shooting range, it's not such a bad thing. "They're shooting at me now …" she also points out.
The biochem manages to keep up with Jeriah well enough as they dash down the stairs. There's people on the platform of course. Many had sheltered here when the shooting started and still more had been here waiting for connections.
"Do what?" Jemma has seen Jeriah do this before but really? Riding a big robotic dog … that's not something she's keen on. Reluctantly, she does get on - convinced she looks *ridiculous*.
Better ridiculous than dead, she supposes.
"And just what are we meant to do now?"
"They're not impacting the network frequencies as much. Just the voice and bluetooth ones." Jeriah responds. "If they had, you wouldn't have been able to 'sense' me at all. I'd have just gone blank."
The dogs take off. At a GREAT speed. They must be going fifty or sixty miles an hour down these tunnels which fortunately do not contain moving subway trains because Jeriah has killed the power.
"We're going to try to get to-"
That's a the sound of a two stroke engine behind them. Jeriah looks and sees a buggy careen onto the track. A buggy which is gaining on them and has a weapon mounted on it's frame.
"What the ACTUAL hell?!" The weapon isn't firing though. It looks like the buggy is just going to try to run them over. It's going to get to Jemma first. Shep is slightly behind Jeriah.
Jemma should have realised that though she doesn't respond - the drones move quite fast, really and she's not really all that far from the ground -it's a bit disconcerting. "When we're clear, I should be able to signal the Quinjet."
The comms blackout is likely to only cover a small-ish area.
"Did they expect this?" That's the first question that comes to Jemma's mind. This is incredibly well planned. Pinning Jeriah down, blacking out comms and now this. It's like he was herded.
Jemma glances at her arm and then the buggy again. She's going to regret this, she's sure. "Uh … I hope this works." The biochem forces Shep to turn, punching out with her cybernetic arm.
"Sort of seems that way doesn't it?" Jeriah glances behind him. "If I blast it, I might overpenetrate and hit a train further down the line." Which he is not willing to do. At least not yet. And then it's catching up to Jemma…
Her first blow snaps one of the support struts on the frame and causes the vehicle to swerve. The driver goes eyes wide and after dropping back about twenty feet, guns it and tries to just ram her at top speed.
Well. Jemma knows that she can punch through this thing. It's angled dead center on her which does rather conveniently mean that the first thing that comes into reach is going to be the engine. But as they get closer one of the passengers also pulls out a sidearm and starts to shoot.
Jemma wonders about that - and just for a moment, the thought that someone *else* might be reading her mind floats through it. She'll think more on that later and work out this was planned …
"Get out of the way." Jemma calls to Jeriah as the buggy comes at her again.
Oh good, they're shooting too. Just what she needs. Shep is urged to move towards the vehicle - the SHIELD armour Jemma is wearing provides *some* protection but moving closer is likely to make it harder to hit her.
She doesn't punch this time - but grabs the engine and tries to swing it - pulling it off the tracks and into the tunnel.
The torque of the swing nearly yanks her off the dog but it doesn't. Instead Jemma manages to lift the buggy and passengers off the track by a few inches and slam it into the wall. She has to remember to let go at the appropriate time so as to not be weighed down by the suddenly screeching mass of metal.
It catches fire as she speeds away, Shep putting on some extra to catch up to Jeriah.
The hacker looks at her with a look that says he's both impressed and unimpressed at the same time.
The end of the tunnel is coming up.
"Well. That's… one way to do it."
Jemma nearly doesn't let go - the natural human response is to hold on for dear life. She manages to force her hand to open though, showered by spark and shrapnel as the vehicle impacts. Shep doesn't give her chance to do anything else as the dog speeds away.
"How else would you have done it?" Jemma asks as she catches Jeriah. Her shoulder hurts - they might have reinforced the joints and ligaments but still … "You said you couldn't shoot."
She'll be singed. Her hair is probably a mess. Her shirt… also a mess.
"I couldn't." Jeriah nods. "And I might have done something similar. Or just had one of the dogs try to rip it up." Though that only works if she isn't riding one of the dogs.
They make the platform on the far end - they must have been travelling VERY fast - and the mecha-hounds leap up onto it startling commuters as they bound up the stairs and onto the street. They're a mile or two away but they can still hear distant gunfire as the SHIELD tac team engages the assassins.
"I've got comms back. You should too?"
Jemma's face is smeared with soot, her hair is certainly messed up and the armour battered and singed.
"Alright then. The Dogs were busy and I was there. You've all been training me since my operation, isn't about time I *did* something?" She saw the unimpressed look he gave her.
Testing the connection, she can feel Jeriah again and gets a message out to the Quinjet. "We need to get to street level so the Quinjet can come and get us."
"This way." Jeriah is back in the networks and rerouting traffic. Which he can do in his head and might be a bit fighting. He sighs a bit as Jemma defends herself.
"You're right, of course. And you did well. It was just risky." But then the entire situation was risky and there wasn't any getting out of it without some kind of bold action.
"What I'd like to know is why they had that thing down there in the first place…" He pokes at her mentally for a moment. "Your connections are all solid and secure. So at least we know you weren't hacked."
"You were worried?" Jemma looks at Jeriah. She can sense some of it, pick up some of his thoughts. "Thank you. It … means a lot to hear it … I'm a SHIELD agent though and things I do are risky." She'd join a field team, after all.
"I wondered if I was hacked - but then I realised they had that thing down here, so it wasn't like they were reading my mind. If you were to ask me, and I think you are, they had it planned you would use the subways. They herded you." She's yammering. She does that when she's worried.
As the commuters part around them, Jemma leads them to the stairs to the street. "You think it's safe to go out there? I've told the Quinjet which stop we're at, but gps positioning would be better."
"Seems reasonable." Jeriah nods. "Especially if they somehow know either me or my capabilities. Which means this was a rather well planned hit. More so than it seemed at first blush."
He listens to the distant shooting and frowns.
"It's still a bit risky but I think we can turn the positioning on. We can wait until it gets here and then head out there." There's a chance that this too has been planned for but Jeriah learned long ago you can't plan as though your enemy is planning for everything you do. You start second guessing yourself. A lot.
"We are reasonably sure they have a telepath. It's possible he's doing some work for them. But if this is just AIM well… they know my capabilities. They constructed them after all."
"It was also a logical move." Jemma points out, looking towards the shooting in worry. "I was the one who suggested it, so it was clearly an obvious move." beat "Why would they come after you now, though?" And why shut down his comms to Jemma?
Jeriah can almost see Jemma work through the options. Some of which include seperating her from him … ones that she quickly discards. They were after Jeriah, not her, after all.
"The Quinjet is three minutes out." She tells the soldier, absently petting Sheps head as they wait. "They knew where to find you. They knew to cut off your comms. They knew to have enough firepower down here to stop you. This was extremely well planned."
Jeriah sighs and nods again. "SHIELD will want to interrogate these. I'll bet you any money though that they're local low rent mercenaries who were given gear and a plan by a shadowy employer." He says that like it has been a thing before. Well. Because it has.
"Damn it. I could use a beer. I think I'm calling out for the rest of the day."
Jemma watches Jeriah carefully, listening for the call that tells her the Quinjet is landing. "You'll come back to the medbay and let me check you over, then we'll go and get a beer and you can take the evening off." The day is close to done anyway.
"You had me worried, Jeriah."