T.R. Lansing (darkertides) wrote in remains_rpg, @ 2015-09-30 11:13:00 |
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Entry tags: | tr lansing |
WHO: Thomas Robert Lansing and some minor guest appearances from NPCs (Open if anyone wants to randomly jump in... he's having a small scale adventure.)
WHERE: The Capitol >> UMCB >> Streets of Austin
WHAT: Basically the “Where is TR Lansing?” scene sequence!
WHEN: September 7th – 9th
It had been a fool's errand. Lansing wishes he could feign surprise. Wishes he hadn't been warned.
But he had. Of course he had. Warnings were part of his trade. These hadn’t even been subtle.
"Olinger suspects something, Rob. Don’t go."
"It’s entirely possible that he does."
"He’s been keeping you at arm’s length. Don’t you think it’s odd that he’s making you personally go to UMCB for this? You could arrange a memorial remotely. Send liaisons. Send me. He’s stopped trusting you. Maybe he found out about the codes..."
"Perhaps. But suspicion isn’t knowledge. If I push back against his wishes for no discernable reason, he’ll know something. Distrust can be mitigated. Handled."
"But if--"
"This won’t take that long, and you’ll be here. If he makes a move, I want you to get Adelaide and Charlie out of his reach. When I get back, we’ll see about further mitigating Olinger’s distrust."
"Your wife got us into this. Rob, she lied to you. She’s been plotting behind your back. She’s going to get you arrested or worse."
"So you’ve said. See that she’s protected."
"Look, this is her fault. She’s going to drag you down with her. Drag us down. She’s not worth it. If you’d just--"
"Please, Megan, see that she’s protected. For me. Their safety is paramount. Get them out, if you need to, but keep them safe. I need the three of you to be safe. That’s the point of all this. That’s everything to me."
She’d promised she would. He wasn’t an idiot. There was no love lost between his assistant and his wife. Megan Risenhoover was loyal, highly intelligent, wonderfully competent... and had loathed Adelaide for some time. Probing questions as to the nature of their relationship and how they’d met hadn’t gone unnoticed, but Rob had been forgiving of the inappropriate level of interest in his personal life. His assistant was the closest thing he had to a friend, and a friend wouldn’t be in the wrong to question his wife’s commitment to their marriage after what had been uncovered regarding Adelaide’s past. Those questions were well-intentioned, if misguided. It really didn’t matter whether Adelaide was honest. She was his wife, the mother of his child; he’d promised to protect her, and if he had to be separated from her even from a short time, then he needed his people to see to it that she was kept safe.
The warning had been laid out in glaring neon then. Olinger suspects something, Rob. Don’t go.
He’d gone, anyway. The mayor had been so slow to act on his suspicions in the past that Lansing hadn’t been able to share his assistant’s urgency. He’d been certain that even if Olinger had suspected something, he wouldn’t make a move… and it never occurred to him that the man would move against him by taking his family into custody.
But of course, he’d thought the danger would come from a different angle. Rob’s own transgressions against the system in place. The surveillance. The contingency plans. Any number of things that Olinger could have uncovered that would give the man pause about their working relationship. Not the one thing that always, always triggered a kneejerk reaction and extreme response from the good mayor. In a way, Megan had been absolutely correct: Adelaide had been the one to drag them down, by sheer accident of birth.
Her text had been a slap in the face. Confused and worried. A jagged contrast to the banal slowness of the memorial planning. He’d wrapped up offering condolences and promising resources, made arrangements for the escort back to the Capitol building, even managed to get a light meal down, when all of a sudden what had passed for calm was disrupted by a simple notification buzz. Olinger’s dragging me to a meeting NOW...
She said that she had the baby with her. Clever, since any human being was less likely to harm a woman with a baby in her arms. Protective, since God only knew who would care for Charlie in her absence. But not reassuring. His wife and his child were miles away in someone else’s custody. Somehow that had happened. On his watch.
How had this happened? Olinger shouldn’t have been able to make any sort of move without Rob knowing. Megan should have alerted him. She should have gotten Adelaide and Charlie to the panic room, or out of the Capitol altogether, long before Olinger could organize an arrest. He shouldn’t be able to even take her in for questioning without flags. There would have been murmurs. Signs. What happened to all of their fail-safes?
Unless there was a reason Megan’s phone was going straight to voicemail. Rob could think of three, off-hand. 1. She’d been the one to turn Adelaide over to Olinger, in an attempt to cover her own ass (possible, though she’d likely have to throw him under the bus as well, claiming that he forced her to aid him in covering up Adelaide’s background and committing acts of treason). 2. Upon realizing that Olinger was moving, she’d abandoned Adelaide -- leaving the Capitol, herself, to avoid arrest (possible, but assumes she’d go entirely off the grid on purpose to avoid capture, which seemed risky). 3. She was arrested first, and was therefore unable to do anything to prevent Olinger from moving against them, or warn him about it (possible and looking likelier by the minute).
There was no scenario that Rob could come up with where his assistant would just turn off her phone coincidentally at the same time the mayor would decide to have a sudden meeting with Adelaide. Certain things defied belief. Drawing conclusions, making connections were part of his trade as much, if not moreso, than warnings.
Ten people had accompanied him to UMCB the day before, only one of whom was someone he considered to be on his payroll and would be staying at the medical center for a short while to offer assistance. Four could also safely be ruled out as neutral parties. The irritating psychiatrist, a council member with an unsettling growth, two people who’d recently been cleared from quarantine and declared fit to go back to work… the rest were part of a security detail. Protection on the road there and back. Travel insurance.
Potentially insurance of another sort, as well. A hot wave of paranoia washed over him. How many people were in Olinger’s patrol force? Were there ones he didn’t know about? If he didn’t know about this, didn’t know about Adelaide… how could he be sure what he did know? Who in the Capitol could really be trusted? Who could potentially be bought? He needed time, to sort this out. He needed his files. His tapes and records. His people. His assistant.
Megan.
He checked his phone. His own voicemail. E-mail. Nothing of note.
Well, nothing obvious. The last notification from Ms. Risenhoover was a confirmation regarding the extra rations for the memorial services. He scanned between the lines, but there didn’t seem to be any hidden messages encoded within the terse, itemized list and the shadow of condolences. No contact, then. She wasn’t able to reach him. If she could, she would have. Should have.
He tapped on Olinger’s name, unsurprised when the call went to the mayor’s recording service. The man avoided the phone unless he was deliberately making a point by using it. It probably wasn’t even on his person. Besides, if Adelaide’s text was anything to go by, they might already be quite busy having a discussion. Rob kept his voice steady as he spoke into the receiver, deliberately neutral. “Ollie, this is TR. I thought scaring women and children would be beneath you. You should have come to me, first. Really. Going after my family is a mistake, and I believe you know that. We’ll talk soon.”
The message would be clear, combined with what he was about to do, so Rob left it at that and hung up. Fuck Olinger and his hamfisted attempts at subterfuge. The mad, would-be dictator playing at intrigue and manipulation. This was an obvious play at spurring Lansing to rush madly into the arms of the mayor’s private gestapo. Once taken into custody, he knew how it would go down. There’d be a lot of waiting before he got an audience with anyone. Perhaps he’d be assigned one of the idiots from the legal department to represent him in court, if a court date was ever set. He knew that game. If someone was a threat and difficult to execute outright, sweat them out in lock up until the possibility of their doing anything damaging had passed. Rob didn’t intend to be neutralized like that, however. He wasn’t going to go back just to get handcuffs slapped on his wrists. That would be no help to his family at all. The ivory tower of the Capitol… the security measures that were in place to keep them all safe weren’t particularly daunting. He’d helped put them in place.
It was a grievous tactical error to make an enemy out of the people who knew your secrets. Olinger hadn’t learned that lesson in the past, with the Dog King, but Lansing was happy to tutor him on it.
“Ready to go, sir?”
His security detail. Terrence Neu. One of the untrusted handful from the Capitol, apparently eager to go back. Overly eager? Nervous? Lansing couldn’t tell, yet. He supposed it didn’t matter. Lansing followed suit. “Indeed. Could you load this bag on the truck for me? Thank you, Mr. Neu.”
“Call me Terry, sir. Everyone does.” Of course they did.
“Thank you, Terry.” Rob casually noted the firearm as Terry hefted the bag. The man wasn’t particularly careful about it, which was good. If he was in luck, Olinger wouldn’t want to stage a huge scene. His escort back would likely be minimal, with the mayor banking on either surprise or Lansing’s own pride to bring him back. The lack of anywhere else to go.
That part was daunting, but Rob was a tactician. Olinger didn’t perform well under pressure, but Rob thrived on it. There were places in and just outside of the city that Olinger didn’t know about, or was too frightened to approach. Places that Lansing didn’t care to approach either, but desperate times called for desperate measures. All he needed to do was take care of his security detail. His disappearance would cause a stir, buy him some time to regroup and come up with a viable plan while the mayor fretted over not having him on the radar. Olinger would naturally assume he’d go straight to the fucking Dog King. As it was, Rob didn’t have contact information for Mr. Hawkins, but it wasn’t entirely off the table. If he could make it there, he’d potentially find the resources to do what he needed in order to get his wife and son to safety. Preferably leaving Austin a smoldering wreckage in his wake. He should have never agreed to come to Texas, and was more than willing to write the entire city off as a loss at this point. There was a grand population of exactly two people within it that he cared about.
Megan Risenhoover was already written off as a loss. After all, she’d failed at the one thing he’d needed her to do.
It was eleven blocks to a decent safety point and hidden supply cache. Reaching it would be a challenge, even if he managed to keep the vehicle. Austin still had a fair amount of undead in the streets. Eleven blocks on foot was likely a death sentence. He wasn’t a large man, and his own firearm wasn’t going to replenish itself. As Terry checked the truck, Rob subtly thumbed a few buttons on his phone, causing a chime, and made a show of checking his messages.
"Something’s happened," he said, allowing some very genuine alarm to color his tone. "We have to go."
"Um… I think we’re supposed to wait for a driver and two more…"
"This is urgent. I’m needed back right now. You have the keys, and they can take another vehicle to follow us. Let’s move. Do you need me to drive?" An escape could be manufactured either way, whether Rob was behind the wheel or not, but he watched the other man’s face very carefully as the decision was made. There was thought there. Calculation. Fear and cunning. Enough to show at least some of the cards that Lansing needed to see. You must know something’s wrong, Terry. You were told to get me back to the Capitol in one piece, I’m sure. What are you more afraid of? The possibility of me crashing the car with us in it, or pulling a gun on you in the cab? Be smart about this. Weigh your options, but do it fast. Don’t let me know that you know. We need to keep this act up at least ten blocks before I kill you. Now answer me before the others show up. I don't have a lot of time...
"No, sir, Mr. Lansing. If you say move, we’re moving. Hop in. I’ll drive."
"Good man," Lansing said, a strained smile pulling at his face, satisfied that the other man wasn't a complete idiot. "And please, call me Rob."
---
Terry turned out to be dumber than anticipated. More nervous. Twitchy. Unused to driving, Rob guessed, though that didn't explain certain decisions. It hadn't been his intention to draw the attention of a modest horde (was it a horde if it was less than a dozen? would that be more accurately described as a pod?) of infected to do his dirty work for him. That particular serendipity could be placed on the shoulders of his driver. Rob hadn't even pulled a gun on him at that point. Not yet. He'd merely suggested a few route changes.
The corpses had moved to block the road, and instead of speeding up to use momentum to mow through them, Terry opted to slow down. Concern for the vehicle dictating his actions. Idiot. The truck was reinforced to take that sort of damage so that the supply runners and escorts didn't have to stop. This boy certainly wasn't the Capitol's finest by any means.
Given the scenario, Terry didn't even blink when Rob drew his pistol and barked, "For God's sake, don't just run into them now! Go into reverse!"
But Terry didn't throw the truck into reverse. He decided to try to swerve around them, instead. Jerking the wheel harshly to the right and plowing into a defunct fire hydrant. There was no dramatic fountain, since the water line had been rerouted nearly a year prior, but the scrape and crush of metal against metal was fairly damning. The hydrant did exponentially more damage than any number of the softer undead bodies would have done. Well done, Terry. Dazed from the crash and enraged by the situation, Rob felt no guilt about abandoning Terry at the scene after taking the other man's gun.
Lansing only fired four shots during his self-extraction, but hadn't been able to grab his overnight bag while escaping the truck. Not good. Certainly not ideal.
Thirty minutes later, while taking personal inventory in a building that was not the safehouse location he'd planned for, he discovered that his phone had also gone missing. So he'd gained a second pistol, but was minus four bullets, his personal belongings, and his way of contacting the outside world.
Even worse.
It was going to take him much longer to get to his family than he'd originally thought. He wishes he hadn't been warned. Wishes he could feign surprise about any of it. But the thought that haunts him most as hunger sets in is that he hadn't even managed to text Adelaide back. So much for being a better husband.