Summary:Jeriah needs to find information in M-Town. He's followed. Log Info:Storyteller: None |
Related LogsTheme SongNone |
  |
Jeriah needs to case M-Town. He needs to do so on the downlow which means that one, he needs to leave the dogs behind, and two he needs to blend in. His method of doing number one involves locking them in a van. His method of doing number two was to invite Jemma to come shopping with him. After all, two people walking down the street window shopping is natural. It is natural that they should take their time and stop to look at lots of things and talk quietly to one another.
It's not natural that they should be heavily armed but its' winter and his coat conceals a lot.
"How are you holding up, Jemma?" It's cold. It's quite cold, actually.
Jemma is wearing a coat at least, which disguises most of her metal arm. Disguising the eye and the neural implant isn't possible though, so she …. might look like she fits in out here? Probably not. Mutants don't tend to have implants.
Shivering a little as they stop at a window - it's a nice display of home furnishings - Jemma nods. "I'm ok, Jeriah. As you can tell." He has access to her systems after all. "A bit cold, but nothing that will kill me. How about you, seen what you need yet? Or do we need to do another promenade round the block?"
"I've got what I think is the information I need but we picked up a complication the last street over." He pauses to put his arm around her shoulder and looks at another display. The plate glass window makes a nice mirror.
"Don't make the look too obvious but there's three people following us. They're not mutants and near as I can tell they're also not Americans. At least, I'm not getting any hits in the databases I've run their images through."
A woman and two men. They're about a hundred feet back. Which is a bit uncomfortably close. If Jeriah and Jemma just bolted they may not have enough room to get out of sight and the chase would become an endurance race.
"Don't suppose you brought your ICER did you?"
Jeriahs arm about her shoulder has Jemma glancing up, it's not … usual … for him to do that. She smiles though, it should look natural enough - she has had SHIELD training after all. "When isn't it complicated, Jeriah?"
Pointing the cute looking plushie, the biochem uses the window as a mirror. "So we did." She snorts softly as Jeriah admits to using his brain as a computer and nods. "Of course I did. I never go anywhere without my ICER."
That's not quite true, but it's almost so.
"I might also have my regular weapon. How do you want to play this?"
It isn't usual for him to do that but it serves their present purposes well. Just two people out for a stroll. The fact that they got picked up means that someone is at minimum suspicious. Hopefully that's all there is but he's not willing to chance it.
"There's an alley up ahead. We slip inside it, see if they follow. If they do, you put two of them out and we chat with the third. I have a hunch about who these people are but finding out without going through a lot of paperwork is going to be tricky."
He starts moving again. They come up to the alley and he casually turns the corner with her. Jemma can hear the steps on the street behind them speed up. Yeah. Someone is interested in where they went.
"At least you didn't suggest we make out to throw them off the case." Jemma actually smirks as she pushes her coat open a little, giving her access to the firearm at her hip. "You sure you trust me to hit them?"
Jeriah seems to despair of Jemma being in the field. Something about Squints not being suited to field work. He's not really wrong.
Moving with Jeriah, Jemma turns the corner and turns to face to the entry of the alley, pulling her weapon and holding it ready as she counts the time it will take that interested party, or parties, to join them.
"And who do you think they are?" Her voice trembles just a little but her hand is steady, finger slowly squeezing the trigger … ready to shoot when the first person appears.
"Well, I mean is that an option you want to consider?" Jeriah smirks quietly as he hears their steps speed up. He nods. He does trust her to hit them and more to the point if she doesn't he'll be close enough to hit them. With his fist.
The first person barely has time to gape before he is put down. The next person around is the other male who gets shoved to the side for Jemma to deal with. That leaves the woman who Jeriah grabs and before she knows what's happening he has her slammed into the wall with one arm pinned behind her. She's packing. She's packing something quite advanced looking tucked in behind her belt on the small of her back.
"Hey! What gives?!" The woman shouts.
"Was gonna ask you that. What's this in your back pocket…" It's a small device of some kind…
Ah. A communicator. Jeriah takes it and tosses it to Jemma. When she opens it up there's the picture of a number of mutants and a portable blood gene sequencer. Very advanced. Other than SHIELD, only Genosha really makes these.
Jemma blushes at Jeriah's retort, of course she does. He knew she would too. It doesn't break her concentration though. "And if I did?" She manages to respond before she pulls the trigger twice, hitting the first guy in the chest. And then again, twice, to hit the next.
Holding her weapon on the woman, until Jeriah has her contained, Jemma shakes her head. "Why don't we start with a name, hmmmm?" She holsters the weapon and takes the device, opening it and frowning deeply.
"Were you about to say Genosha?" She says to Jeriah. Flicking through the photo's and examining the device. "This is incredibly advanced. Not even SHIELD has reached this level of development. And why would Genosha be here, in M-Town with photo's of what I assume are residents. Are you delivering care packages, perhaps?"
"Tabitha." The woman says. Jeriah shakes his head. It may or may not be her name and that'll be difficult to tell but that'll do for now.
"No? Why would I say that?" It's a game try but really Genosha has to have been involved at some level because no one else is likely to supply this kind of tech.
"Yeah. Look we're just the neighborhood watch okay? You guys were casing the place."
Jeriah snorts. That's clever but a lie. Jemma can see that too. The woman's bio-rhythms are saying 'liar'.
"How about you let go?"
"How about no dice?"
"Why? I don't know." Jemma answers, looking up from the device and then glancing at Jeriah. "Do you have her? I'm going to frisk her for ID. Neighbourhood watch, that's a good one. Haven't heard that in at least two weeks."
"Do all neighbourhood watch members carry photo's of the locals? And portable gene sequencer? Something that only the most advanced of organisations have access to?"
If Jeriah gives her the nod, Jemma goes through Tabitha's pockets. "I'll call you Tabby, you can call me Synergy." Jemma doesn't believe that for a moment.
"Why don't you save us all some time and just tell us the truth?"
"Go for it." Jeriah is still holding the woman's arm in a joint lock. If she tries to get free he's going to break her arm in two places and then the following fight will be over very, very quickly. There is a passport. It's Canadian, though the woman's accent isn't canadian. It DOES say Tabitha St. Martin on it, though.
Jeriah shakes his head again. Forgery, likely. We can hang onto it.
"OW!" Tabby hisses. "Gene sequencer? Don't know what you're talking about."
"She's a biochemist, Tabitha. And I have a plasma pistol in my pocket. And no that is not a euphemism."
Tabby swallows. "Look even if you've compromised the safehouse they're just going to go to another. Why don't you let me go and I'll forget that I saw you here."
"No dice. Who is paying you?"
THAT question makes the woman nervous.
"Don't mess with him, Tabby." Jemma says as she goes through the womans pockets. "He's a trained killer and it doesn't seem to matter how much I try to tame him - old habits die hard. I'm also willing to let him try, given what I *think* you're doing."
"Oh, I'm sorry. I sometimes forget that some people just aren't smart." It's so very british, the way that Jemma gives the insults. Polite but pointed. "This little beastie that you have here? That's a gene sequencer. Let me see … you would have been told to get a blood sample … with this thing here." Jemma finds a pin prick in Tabitha's pocket "And to put the sample in the machine. If it gave you a certain result, you … would have been told to contact sometime."
"Who said we've compromised your safehouse? We've compromised you and I have all sorts of concoctions at my disposal to make you forget that and send you back there, with our tracking on you."
Jemma really doesn't, she could create something certainly, but she doesn't at the moment. Tabitha doesn't know that. "Just answer his question and he won't break your arm."
"Ow! We're being paid through a fixer." The woman says.
"Yeah but you're not a local. So. Who?"
"Ow! OW! G-genosha, okay?! We were told to get samples, hold any positives and report back. I don't know but I presume that they were going to come pick up anyone we located."
"The magistrate, yes?"
"Didn't use that word but it figures they'd be moving back to Genosha. Look, they pay a lot for specific talents."
Jeriah shakes his head and looks at Jemma. Trafficking. This is mutant trafficking. Abducted from the US and shipped to be slave labor in Genosha. It MIGHT be small scale… but now he has to wonder.
"I'm never tame, just FYI." That's for Jemma but he doesn't say her name for obvious reasons.
Jemma hasn't used Jeriah's name either and given a name that is kind of cute if the assoication is understood.
"See, I told you. Genosha." She says to Jeriah, pocketing the passport as they talk. "Canada, hey? You're not Canadian, I … can't place the accent, can you?" That's to Jeriah again.
"How many of these have you held already? And where?" Jemma asks the woman as she steps back. "And when are they due to be collected?" They could blow the top off of this right now but … maybe they can use this to their advantage.
There's another blush as Jeriah makes his last quip. Jemma stammers but doesn't get her next retort out.
"She's been educated in England but she's from somewhere in Central Europe if I'm not mistaken." Jeriah says confidently. "Albania, perhaps?"
The paling to the woman and the racing of her heartbeat stuggest that he's not far off on that.
"We were to report in tomorrow night. I don't know what the pickup was supposed to be but we weren't paid for any longer next tuesday. So…" Probably before then unless they were going to be paid more.
"That means that the Magistrate will likely be moving. Which means he'll be out in the open. Where?"
"Abandoned pier in Manhattan, down on the riverside."
There are only a few of those and Jeirah can narrow it quickly enough.
Jemmas right eye flicks between nothing and blue as she watches Tabitha's reactions to their conversation. "Albania, I would agreed. Shouldn't be too hard to find out who she really is …" Jemma smiles brightly "… and report her."
Jemma glances at Jeriah and then at Tabitha. "If she goes off the grid, we'll have a problem. I'm not happy letting her go at the moment. The moment she's free she'll let them know - what do you say? Take her into custody and make it look like she's still active? Or administer some of those compounds I have?"
"Sounds good to me…" The hacker says. Before the woman can protest Jeriah smacks her on the back of the head with the butt of his pistol and collapses her. There. That solves the problem temporarily.
"I'll put a watch on the safehouse and we can go through their comm device and get more data on who is communicating with them and how. This should put us significantly closer to the Magistrate but we're going to have a very limited window to act."
Which, Jemma may realize at this point, means that her life is going to get both busy and interesting.
"I could have just shot her with my ICER… she'd still have the headache but not the bruise." Jemma tells Jeriah as he hits Tabitha with his pistol. "Let's get her out of here and back to the Triskelian - though you should check her for trackers and the like, first."
Jemma will indeed be busy. So will Jeriah. But they'll also put a Team together to do this.
"I'll do it while we move. Call for extraction with prisoners and let's get these people tied up. We can brief SHIELD while we're doing that. It will save time."
They can put a team together. But with everything going on in SHIELD the number of people they can trust is very limited. It might be time to think outside the box.
"Call Hank too. The more eyes we get on this outside of SHIELD, the better."
Sad to say but not wrong. They'll have the first steps done shortly.
"Already on it." Jemma answers and gestures for Jeriah to start moving. "I'll leave a message with Hank. We should meet him tonight, outside the Triskelian. We never know how many ears there are."
And Jemma, well … she's possible a weak point in all of this.