Sgt. Riley Finn (sgt_finn_riley) wrote in chaostheory_rpg, @ 2009-11-13 22:08:00 |
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Entry tags: | complete, ethan rayne, riley finn, week three |
Who: Riley Finn & Ethan Rayne (joint post)
What: going AWOL for a good reason
When: following
this
Where: LA-to-Nevada-and-back
It didn't take him long to figure out what to do. Maybe he'd been listening to Spike too much; maybe he'd been away from the propaganda machine for too long, or maybe he just didn't *care.* But he wasn't going to just blithely put his signature on a sheet of paper to okay the murder of someone who was just a pain in the ass with a penchant for practical jokes.
Riley practically threw his clothes into his duffel bag, alongside a handful of handguns and one stungun that he'd kept from the Initiative. An army knife went into his boot, and he called the airfield outside of LA and got himself a seat on the first transport heading to Nevada. The dropped him off in Lovelock, Nevada after an hour and a half flight, and at the Lovelock car rental agency, he rented an SUV and tossed his bag in the back.
The facility itself was located about sixty miles west of Lovelock, but it had no access other than helicopter or land. Getting in was going to be easy, but out? That was going to be another story entirely. If he was lucky, the small team transport choppers would still be docked there, and he might be able to take one back to LA, although getting landing clearance was going to be a bitch.
The drive to the facility was an hour long, and he spent the drive on autopilot, trying to formulate a plan. He knew the layout, roughly, because it was similar to what the Initiative had used in Sunnydale, and there was no way he was going to forget that. The big X-factor in this plan was going to be Rayne himself, because if they ever needed a little help to get out of a place, Ethan Rayne would be the warlock to do it. He knew enough to know that 99% of magic required a lot of preparation, ritual, and certain ingredients that were almost always hard to find, but it was that one percent that wasn't Riley was hoping Ethan knew, because he had a feeling it was going to take a lot of planning, a lot of luck, and a few magic tricks to get them both out alive.
Stopping about ten minutes out, Riley went through his bag and secreted all the guns on his person, making sure that they were all within easy reach. The stun weapon he carried freely, blending in with most of the other soldiers at the base. His ID got him onto the base, and into the building. After that, he was on his own. He knocked out the guard that was leading him to the conference room, and he held his breath the entire time he scanned the building plans to find the high-security lockdown. No alarms sounded, so Riley moved fast, ducking into corners and down hallways until he was on the high-risk barracks. There were still many cells occupied, although he knew the one he wanted was at the end.
Ethan's cell 'door' wooshed away and with a stromp of combat booted feet a large, dark-haired soldier with hard, dark eyes entered the small room.
"Rayne. You're up. Time to get you moved." the gruff young man said as he entered the cell.
Ethan was laying on his cot, arms behind his head and eyes closed and he didn't bother to change any of it as he spoke. "Moved to where?"
"The clean rooms." you didn't have to see the smug smile on the man's face in order to know it was there.
Ethan's eyes shot open and he nearly fell over himself as he leaped out of the cot. He fled to the wall farthest from the door, and the soldier who was standing in front of it.
"No, no, no, no," Ethan was holding up his hands and shaking his head, "that can't be right. I'm not that kind of threat! I--I think you need to check your paperwork, and with your superior. This is obviously some kind of horrible mistake."
The soldier entered the cell fully still grinning like the cat that ate the bird and the 'door' flicked itself back on automatically behind him. He moved over to the side of the room Ethan had retreated to, but remained within a few steps of the doorway. Ethan shifted with him, still shaking his head. The soldier obviously didn't have the time to play too many games with Ethan because he drew his weapon and pointed it at the older man. Ethan's hand shot up in the air and his face went slack.
A quick look up and down the hallway showed Riley there was still no one there, and Riley hurriedly shut off the electronic lock and invisible barrier. Inside the cell the soldier had been about to say something when the 'door' to the cell swept open yet again and the impressive looking Riley Finn stepped inside.
"C'mon, Rayne, let's go. Move it," Riley hissed. "They've sent out the execution order on you, and I'm here to make sure that doesn't happen." He motioned with the stun gun. "Move your ass, man."
"I'm well aware of that young Mr. Finn," Ethan said dryly, lowering the pointer finger of his right hand to point in the direction of his intended escort to the execution room.
The armed soldier, surprised by the intrusion that shouldn't have happened, took an extra moment to swing his weapon toward this new threat and Ethan took the opportunity to dive to the floor behind his cot. Riley was actually thankful he'd brought the older stun cannon, because the new ones looked a hell of a lot more lethal and less friendly. He swung up and shot first, and again he briefly wondered if he was losing his conscience or gaining a new one because he didn't flinch when the other soldier hit the floor. Even as he went down, the bull of a man was trying to surge and struggle up to his feet, and Riley was urging his stunner to recharge faster, please!
Once Ethan was there behind the cot, he rolled over onto his back and stuck the top half of himself under the makeshift bed. Reaching up into one of the support bars Ethan pulled out a small cotton bag he had stashed there. He spoke a few hurried words of Latin over the bag as he got back to his feet and rushed over to the two struggling men.
"MOVE!" he yelled at Riley as he brought up his now open palm and blew it's powdered contents at the soldier's face.
It wasn't exactly Fire in the hole! but Riley's instincts, more than anything else, responded to the urgency and he dropped, tucking his hands behind his head to protect it. The dust hit the man mostly in the muzzle area and after a beat his eyes rolled backward in his head and he collapsed to the floor, out cold. Ethan moved to take the now abandoned gun but Finn beat him to it and the look he received from the younger man said it was best not to argue the point. As soon as he saw the other soldier drop, Riley scooped up the gun and then glared at Ethan.
"Don't even think about it."
Ethan followed Finn out into the hallway and into the direction that he had to assume was the exit. They were moving at a brisk pace and made it up several levels before their luck ran out. There was a shout behind them and then the alarm sounded. They quickly ducked into a side hallway and then they stopped and it looked as if Riley was attempting to formulate a plan.
"Damn, damn, they're faster on the draw than they used to be, or I'm slower one," he muttered, thumping the back of his head against the wall. He was rapidly reformulating what passed for his plan, because Ethan had done his part splendidly. Thinking back, he remembered the medical helicopter sitting on the lawn, and made that the new objective. He just hoped nobody got injured enough to need it.
Ethan scanned the area quickly, looking for something small and sharp and spotted the fire extinguisher box on the wall. Taking a few steps over to it he raised his elbow and drove it into the glass, shattering it into nicely sized pieces. Retrieving one of those pieces from the floor Ethan closed his hands around it and pressed, hard. It took a moment for the glass to puncture the skin and Ethan let out a hiss of pain when it did.
"I can't believe you came here alone, and without a plan." he grumbled as he raised his bleeding hands high and wide. "Sentalo signore Janus. pieghi la mia volontà e rendali ciechi."
After a few tense moments of chanting, sweat beginning to bead over his face Ethan got his reward. The lights in the facility flickered as the power went out and the back-up generators failed to kick in.
"There. You'd better make this quick. I don't know how much time we have before that spell fizzles out on us."
"Bring that glass with you; they've probably got your blood in the lab downstairs but don't leave them anything they can use to throw a homing net out with."
Ethan gave Riley a lopsided grin even as he did as the man suggested and pocketed the glass. "I'm a devotee of Chaos and a damned fine Sorcerer. They'll need a lot more than my blood to locate me. I am, quite literally, untraceable by magical means."
"Secondly? I just got the paperwork on you a couple hours ago," he pointed out, grabbing Ethan's shirt and hauling him along until he was running on his own. "If I'd stopped and waited to talk to Giles and Buffy, pick up a few Slayers, make a plan, and then get out here with an assault force, you'd be dead."
Ethan's head had whip lashed back as Riley reached out and yanked on him like a dog on a leash. It certainly knocked the smug right off of him, at least for the time being. When he was able to put his feet, one before the other, properly again he was released and they ran, Riley taking the point position and Ethan hoping not to get shot in the arse.
"Well, aren't you the dashing hero." Ethan told the boy, only partially sarcastic, as they ran. "How is ol' Ripper these days?"
"Don't know; haven't talked to him since I got to LA. When I have seen him, he's wearing a lot of black these days and is swarmed over with good-looking girls. And no, he doesn't know you're coming." Riley waved off the dashing hero part, scanning the lawn ahead even as he was running double-time across it.
Ethan continued to follow along behind Riley, trying to will himself not to think about Ripper dressed on in black and especially not about Ripper being pawed on by masses of swarming females. In fact, it was probably best for not to to think about Ripper at all. Before Ethan knew it they were outside the facility on what appeared to be the front lawn. It was the first time that Ethan had been out of doors, without a black bag over his head, in nearly four years and he slowed to a crawl as he looked around him almost as if in awe. His brain didn't even register that young Finn was pointing at something.
"Helicopter," Riley shouted, it was a Medivac, same one he'd seen earlier, but it would do nicely. "Hope you don't mind heights."
Riley tossed the stun gun to Ethan. Surprisingly, Ethan caught the weapon, he wasn't the most athletic of men after all, and looked down at it with slight confusion.
"If you shoot me, we both die. You shoot them, we both live."
The words 'live and die' seemed to snap Ethan from his little stupor and he took a more firm hold of the stunner weapon he'd been given and turned back toward the building, where the guards and other personnel would be coming from any moment now. Secretly, he really hoped that he didn't need to fire it. Firearms were not his forte and anytime he attempted to use one, it definitely showed. Ethan Rayne had the aim of a blind man with Parkinson's.
Hopping into the cockpit, it took Riley a few minutes to reacquaint himself with piloting, because he was usually a passenger, but he was certain he could manage it enough to get him back to Los Angeles. After a moment, he started the rotors and the blades started whipping. "Rayne! In, now!"
Ethan jumped and sent an errant stun blast into the defenseless ground near his feet. Turning back to the helicopter and flashing a sheepish look at it's pilot he climbed in and struggled to do up his harness as the front door to the facility burst open and the first group of soldiers spilled out onto the lawn.
"I do believe, Mr. Finn, that this would be our cue to exit stage left, post haste." Ethan yelled over the sound of the roaring winds and helicopter engine.
"For once, I agree!" Riley's harness was already in place, and he was reaching under the console for something. Finding the little tracking box, he ripped it off with a screech of metal, and he tossed the useless device out the cockpit before turning the tail rotors and lifting off. He tipped the chopper forward, just enough to turn the blades towards the soldiers pouring out and keep them from getting closer.
"Bloody hell!" Ethan screeched, grabbing hold of the sides of his seat as the craft lifted off at an impossible angle.
The helicopter lifted off smoothly as Riley straightened it, and soon they were in the air, out of weapons range and the chopper was untrackable with the homing beacon torn out. He took the co-pilot's helmet off the console hook and held it out to Ethan as he piloted with one hand, keeping the gyro level easily.
Ethan refused to let go of the seat until the aircraft evened out to a normal level of flight and even then he only released one hand to reach out cautiously and take the offered helmet. It became to difficult a task to put the thing on using only one hand and so he had to relinquish the hols his other hand had on the chair in order to accomplish the task.
"Where are we going?" he asked once the helmet was properly in place.
"Los Angeles," Riley answered through the helmet's radio. "Didn't mean to toss your lunch around like that, but people don't wanna get chopped up in the blades." He flipped two of the toggles on the ceiling of the cabin and tilted his head so that he could look at Ethan.
"Sunnydale's been wiped off the map, the Slayers have been awakened, and Giles and the others have been holing up in LA at the old building Angel used to work at," Riley explained in a nutshell.
Ethan looked at Riley with a slightly confused look. He really had no idea what the young man was on about and, quite frankly, he wasn't entirely certain that he wanted to know. As such he decided to keep his mouth shut on the matter.
"So that's where I'm dropping you off. They've got a helipad on the roof from the old lawyers' clients or whatever, I don't know. But I'm landing there, and turning you over to Giles as soon as I can get someone on the squawkbox."
The miles were passing underneath them, but Riley was watching the radar to make sure they weren't being followed. Nothing else seemed to have gotten in the air, and he was staying far out of military and civilian airspace, riding just under the radar line.
"So you've 'busted me out' as it were," Ethan raised his hands to perform air quotes around the words busted me out, "just to take me to a new prison? How ever shall I thank you Mr. Finn?"
Riley would've given Ethan the incredulous look he felt spreading over his face, but he didn't dare take his attention off the controls for that long. "I didn't think Los Angeles was a prison; what Giles does with you when I get you there is up to him. If you want to thank me? Don't turn me into a demon like you did him, because then I'd have to kill you and that would waste the whole trip."
"How about you just drop me off at the nearest not-inhabited-by-Buffy zone you find and we'll call it even?" Ethan retorted.
"Sorry, can't do that." He patted down his pockets with one hand, until he found his cell phone, and then tossed it to Ethan. "Do me a favor, plug that into the radio console. Right side, lower corner about a half inch from the radio handset. There's two black cords, one with a red plug, and one with a white plug--take the white plug and put it in the phone jack, on top, where there's a picture of a headset. After that, turn it on--green button's clearly marked--and hand it back to me."
Ethan stared at the phone in his hand, then at the console, then at Riley and back to the phone. "What you don't have the English version of the instruction manual? Just the Jibberish?"
"It's not jibberish, it is English. Maybe not the Queen's English, but it's close enough. Besides, I thought you were the big bad smart-ass of the team." He smirked. "You can do it."
With a roll of his eyes Ethan leaned over, as far as his harness would allow and drug around the console looking for the approperate wires. Once he found what he was pretty sure was the correct one he inserted it into the phone, pressed the power button and held it out for Riley.
"Task complete Master."
Master earned Ethan a roll of the eyes, and Riley fiddled with the phone for just a moment. "There we are. Sometimes it's good to have the right connection."
The radio crackled to life, and Riley's telephone anonymously called the operative chatter line to see what was being said about their escape.
Escapee, Rayne, Ethan, considered armed and dangerous, escaped with unnamed operative, possibly under duress or enchantment, take caution during reacquisition and reapprehension. Do not pursue outside of state line. The computer-like voice read out the announcement again, as if on a repeater.
Ethan made a disgusted face at the voice coming from the phone radio. "Armed? Under duress, indeed. Your government wouldn't know the truth if it stood up and slapped them in the face."
Riley turned it off after a moment, and instead unplugged the phone from the radio. He almost thought about telling Ethan how to remove the phone's SIM card--because that's where his information was stored--but he knew that'd be nearly impossible. He'd wait until they got back on the ground to do it. "Well, looks like once we hit California again, we're good. They won't come in over civilian airspace, and they're not going to cross state lines because our jurisdiction got cut back. Since the Sunnydale branch of the Initiative got shut down, we've got no official presence in California and can't operate there except under blackout conditions, like I am. Was." He blinked, just having had a realization. "I think I'm officially on the shit list."
"You certainly do have a knack for stating the obvious, Mr. Finn." Ethan snorted.
"I really didn't think about that," he admitted. "I just knew that I wasn't going to stand by and let someone get murdered. Hopefully the chaos you caused back there will encourage the rest of them to break out before they're next," he continued simply. "I wasn't thinking beyond that."
He sat in silence for a moment, and then pointed. "See there? Tall building in the middle with the spire? That's where we're heading; the Pod is right beyond that skyscraper."
Inside Ethan was feeling the effects of waning adrenaline mixed with trepidation and excitement, the latter two caused by the thought of see Ripper again after so very long. Ethan followed the line of Riley's finger with his eyes until he could see what the younger man was talking about.
"Joy." was the deadpanned response.
It didn't take them much longer to get snagged by civilian air traffic controllers, but with the mention of "private consultation at the Wolfram and Hart building," there was no further problem.
The helicopter landed on the helipad, and Riley turned the rotors off. Stepping to the edge of the roof, Riley pulled the cell phone apart, popped out his SIM card, and threw the rest of the phone off the side, where it cracked apart on the pavement.
That done, he fumbled it into his pocket before pressing on the intercom. "Could someone unlock the roof access please?"
In the library, Giles nearly shot out of his seat as the unnoticed intercom behind him crackled to life. "What in God's name are you?" he asked the infernal piece of machinery, before pressing the button. "Oh. Yes. Hello?"
Up on the roof, Riley smiled. "Mr. Giles, could you come up to the roof please? I have a surprise for you."
Ethan climbed out of the helicopter, taking a few extra moments than Riley as it required another struggle with the harness, and tossed the helmet onto the vacated seat. He stayed behind Riley, nearer to the helicopter and waited with the harshly reigned in anticipation of seeing Ripper again very soon.