In a way, Octavia had almost wished that the location of their mission had taken place in the actual arena. She would have felt more at home and useful in a survival situation like the locations it had taken place, especially the jungle or the mountains. Instead, though, the teams were stationed in the White Room and tasked with making sure that the puzzle pieces be delivered to the right people when they arrived after their deaths.
From what she’d heard from those inside the arena, none remembered how they’d gotten the piece, and apparently it involved teams from the future - even including some of the actual people who had been in the arena itself.
While the main objective was to hand out the pieces, the pacing was a lot different than other missions she’d been on in the past. Some days there were multiple deaths and multiple pieces of the puzzle to be handed out but some days there were none at all. Others were mostly in charge of the pieces or helping the “dead” get to medical, so Octavia took to keeping guard and making sure that COS couldn’t infiltrate. Based on prior missions, they knew COS knew they were going back on missions from the past, so she figured it would only be a matter of time before they tried something here on what was arguably the most important since the puzzle pieces were what led them to going back in time in the first place.
The White Room what mostly what it sounded like, a huge white room, but sometimes there seemed to be walls, doors, or places to hide. After finding what looked like a wall, Octavia decided to take a walk around the edge to make sure no one was lurking or waiting to strike. Soon, though, she started to hear footsteps come up behind her and turned to see one of her teammates approaching.
It was Paul’s first mission since arriving on Atlantis and he had to admit, it wasn’t what he was expecting. He was used to combat, putting his weapons to use, strategizing with the tribe of Fremen he was with, and riding giant sandworms into battle. The current mission involved a lot of classic ‘hurry up and wait’ and it was making him antsy. He missed Callie and he was itching to be more useful.
Pacing silently along a wall, he came upon one of the team. He nodded at her, coming to a halt as he came up beside her. “Anything?” he asked, his voice just above a whisper, brows arched upward in inquiry.
Octavia shook her head and stopped for a moment to face the guy when he walked up. "No, not really. Which I guess should be a good thing, right?" The less action in this case meant there was less of a chance COS would screw up anything, but she couldn't help but think something was coming. And also, boredom.
"It's Paul, right?" She asked him. She'd seen him around here and there, but they'd never had a real conversation until now.
"This place is a little too quiet and sterile for me," Octavia admitted. She was used to the gritty and getting her hands dirty. Even on the missions she'd been a part of, back home and Narnia especially, there had still been an element of survival and battle.
He gave a nod in agreement. It was a good thing that, so far, it had gone off without a hitch. The boredom did nag at him, though.
“Yes. Paul Atreides, originally of Arrakis.” A slight smile tugged at the corners of his lips. “We are in agreement there. It is not the kind of mission I am used to. I’m more the open combat type. You too?” He could only assume so. She looked like she knew how to hold her own.
Octavia had no idea where the place he called home was, but she didn't ask questions. There were a lot of places she'd never heard of when it came to where people originated before Atlantis and that sometimes even included people originally from earth.
"Yeah, combat is pretty much what I've come to expect when I'm off on missions. I'm not Sent out on that many really. The last one I was assigned to involved going back home." The familiarity of home was nice in some ways, but the reminders were also painful in many ways. She almost preferred the eerily quietness of this place.
"So, I guess you've had your fair share of combat then yourself?"
Paul shot a cursory glance around the room. “This is my first Atlantis mission. I have to admit, I was expecting more excitement, though perhaps I shouldn’t speak too soon. We are doing well so far.”
Atlantis was more like his birth planet of Caladan, where sea power ruled. On Arrakis, it was desert and spice. It had taken some adjustment to go to the desert and he found it was taking some adjusting to go back to abundance. “I have seen my fair share of combat, yes. Raids as well.”
“There usually is, but I guess that’s how this place works sometimes. It doesn’t always give you what you expect. Predictably unpredictable,” Octavia said with a small shrug. That mostly meant that being prepared and on guard was key. “I lived in space for the first sixteen years of my life, and there wasn’t much combat there, not for me at least. But when I was sent down to earth, fighting to survive became an everyday thing.”
Octavia was curious about Paul’s home and what type of battles and raids he’d fought, but she wasn’t necessarily feeling especially chatty about her own experiences. So, she kept her questions to herself for now in order to keep from being asked about hers in return.
Those thoughts faded after a few moments, though, because when passing by a section of the room, Octavia felt like she was having a dejavu kind of moment. “Didn’t we pass this door earlier?” She asked and stopped walking. Usually it was hard to tell the difference between structures within the room, but whenever the doors appeared, there were symbols on them and this one was the same as the one they’d passed a few minutes ago.
Paul could believe that. If the completely random happenings on Atlantis itself were any indication, the place could throw anything at you at any time. He couldn’t fathom how it worked. Once, he had been reverted back to being a child. It didn’t seem possible, but he was beginning to learn that magic took many forms. “Predictably unpredictable. That is the most accurate description of it that I’ve heard so far.”
He wasn’t chatty on the whole, he was a man of few words, so he asked no questions, nodding silently to acknowledge that he had heard her. It didn’t seem like a good place to be chewing the fat, anyway. If they were somewhere else, he might have been more curious, but at the moment, he wanted to stay hyperfocused on the task at hand.
And it was a good thing. At Octavia’s asking if they had passed a door earlier, he paused along with her, completely blue eyes staring at it. “Yes…” he trailed off. He was about to say something else when someone came through it. Someone who was not a part of the team.
Octavia could practically feel the hairs on the back of her neck stand up as soon as Paul confirmed that she wasn’t crazy, and he’d seen the same door earlier. She’d just started to draw her weapon when someone burst through and came at the both of them. A COS Agent.
Even though she had a gun with her, Octavia was always going to be more comfortable fighting with her broadsword. She blocked an attack and charged forward after the agent to keep him from getting further into the room. As much as she’d like to kill him and be done with it, she could hear Becker’s voice in the back of her head telling her that they needed the agent alive for questioning.
With a punch from her free hand, the agent was knocked back towards Paul. She was about to give a quick radio call to the others to let them know COS was trying to infiltrate, but the radio was knocked from her hand and slid several feet across the floor.
As it so often did in combat, things began to happen one after the other at a dizzying speed. Paul had the benefit of his Bene Gesserit training, though, and with his total mastery of every nerve and muscle, he was able to roll with the punches. Also one to favor blades to firearms, he drew his crysknife - a blade made from the tooth of an Arrakeen sandworm. Also known as Shai-hulud, the creatures grew to monstrous sizes, parting the sands of the deep desert, so it was no tiny weapon.
Octavia’s radio skidded to a stop on the floor out of her reach and he dashed toward it, scooping it up and tossing it deftly back toward her. Slipping in toward the agent, he sliced the man across the cheek with his blade, enough to both hurt and distract him without killing him.
Catching the radio, Octavia quickly sent out the message to the rest of the teams elsewhere in the white room. ’COS engaged in the southeast corner. One but unsure if more will follow. Send backup.’ That was all the message that needed to get through. Whomever responded would find them easy enough if they followed the fighting.
She now focused on the agent and swung at him with her sword a couple of times and connected once to his back. This one had a gun on him and fired off a shot, causing her to duck out of the way, but she used the opportunity to slide forward on her knees and used her sword to knock him to the ground so Paul could make a move to subdue him.
As Octavia relayed the message, he tried to distract the agent, attempting to get in close again to strike with his crysknife. Gunpower wasn’t much of an advantage in close quarters, though the agent still managed to get off a shot that rang in Paul’s ears. As soon as he saw the opening, he swooped in, tackling the man the rest of the way to the ground and pinning him there. He looked like a tiny wisp of a man, but he was skilled in the weirding way and could be deceptively strong when he wanted to be. Wrenching the gun away, he tossed that in Octavia’s direction as well, along with a verbal warning of “catch!”
They just had to keep him from getting away before he could be questioned.
Octavia caught the gun easily when it was tossed over to her, holding it in one hand and her sword, both pointed straight at the agent while Paul secured him. There was still the urge to knock the agent as hard as she could in the head with the hilt of her weapon (or to put a bullet in his leg, hand, or even between his eyes), but she stood back and ready to strike if he tried getting away. She knew better than most that looks could be deceiving, but she was still impressed with how well Paul was handling the agent and keeping him pinned on the ground.
There was a confirmation on her radio that someone was on the way, so it was only a matter of time before they were able to get him secured and hopefully taken back to Atlantis. “Whatever you’re trying here, it isn’t going to work,” she told him but the agent only turned his head and smirked at her before mumbling a few words and disappearing right in front of their eyes.
She looked around to see where he’d gone, but Octavia knew it was no use. This wasn’t the first time COS agents had disappeared after they’d been captured. “Damnit!” She shook her head and lowered her weapons. “I don’t know how they’re doing it, but this has happened before.”
While Paul focused on summoning strength that he didn’t look like he should possess in order to keep the COS agent pinned down, he trained an ear on everything else going on in the once boring, white room. Confirmation that someone was on the way came quickly, and Octavia’s words to the agent shortly afterward. It was all expected.
What wasn’t expected was his sudden crashing to the ground when the man underneath him disappeared. He was quick to recover from the shock, back on his feet as fast as he could manage, rubbing an elbow. There would be a bruise. It was the least of his worries.
“Did he apparate?” he asked, his mind automatically thinking about Callie’s ability. But he didn’t have a wand. Not that he could see. “What was that?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe not that exactly but something similar.” For a group of people who were set out to destroy creativity, they sure did use it to their advantage whenever possible. Octavia knew that there was nothing that they could have done differently, but she was still kicking herself that the agent had gotten away. There had been multiple instances on past missions when agents had been in their custody but disappeared before they could bring them back to Atlantis. Bringing them back for questioning may have been the best case scenario, but this was exactly why Octavia wanted to kill the agent right then and there and be done with it. They all needed to die.
She held the agent’s gun in her hand. “Well, this didn’t disappear,” she said dryly and secured it in the waistband of her pants under her shirt. She still held her sword in her hand and looked around, noticing the door was now gone too. “The door he came through is gone.” She didn’t know if that was a good or a bad thing. “We kept him from getting into the room at least,” she told him and looked up to see other team members approaching.
“Are you alright?”
Paul wiped off his crysknife and tucked it back away. “This is my first experience with something like that.” It did give the opposition a massive advantage. “Do you think all of them can do that?” He wondered if the ability came naturally to them or if it was a piece of technology.
He glanced at the gun as she tucked it away. “That is something, at least. Maybe we can glean some information from it.” It was a long shot, but he had his fair share of surprises in the immediate past. As the others approached, he nodded in agreement to her statement. It wasn’t a total failure. If the COS agent had gotten through, it could have been catastrophic. “I’m alright, it’ll bruise, that’s all. Are you well?”
“I’m not sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they can or some other sort of failsafe to avoid capture.” Whether that was disappearing or death, though, Octavia had high doubts that they had the honor or courage to actually follow through with the latter.
“That’s a good idea,” she replied about the gun. It was something she hadn’t thought of but had only been glad to have gained another weapon. Not one she liked or wanted to use if she could help it for a multitude of reasons she didn’t want to think about, but maybe they could get prints or something off of the weapon once tech and engineering got their hands on it.
“Yeah, I’m alright. Pissed, but I’ll be fine.” Octavia looked over to him. “We should get back, let the others know what happened, and check in with Command. They’ll want to know COS was here.”
Looking back, Paul was relieved that it hadn’t been a lasgun. They might not have been so lucky if it had been. Nodding in agreement, he started off in that direction, eyes still warily scanning the room for any other mysterious doors that might have appeared while they had been otherwise engaged. “Glad you’re alright,” he said to her as they went. Paul did like her fighting style. It reminded him of the Fremen back on his homeworld.