Who: Eliot Tipton What: Just a little demonstration for the Resistance. Where: St. Louis, MO When: Midday, July 30th Warnings: Consider who he's trying to impress here.
The only thing Eliot really disliked about his plan was that it deviated from his normal methods; he wasn't using just a quarter.
The fact that he'd made his escape with just one of the precious coins made this a little more acceptable - only words were required to set up the small riot that had given him the opening to fling a quarter at just the right spot on the box that controlled the electric fence. After that was a jumble of WalMarts and bus stations, going anywhere Away that he could reach with whatever money he could acquire.
St. Louis was perhaps not quite as randomly selected as that made it sound - he'd chosen it because, while it might not be the geographical center of the country, it was at least fairly close to it, and large enough to get decent news coverage. More than that, it had a lot of hospitals, and hospitals meant...
He studied the bulbous body moving upward, bobbing awkwardly as the spinning blades atop it caught air and lifted. Helicopters were ugly things, more like fat bumblebees than the swooping bird figure of their cousin, the airplane. They never quite looked as though they should be able to remain aloft, anyway, and that made taking them down almost comforting, destroying a perversion against the laws of nature and probability. The small triangle of folded paper between his fingers felt flimsy and unwieldy, so easily blown astray. That was what made his task a challenge, though, one worthy of attention.
He'd chosen the roof where he waited for one simple reason: it was the tallest building on the block and gave him the most convenient vantage point. The blueprint of it had opened up around him as he stepped inside, the dimensions and scale drawing themselves on the walls so that only he could see. It had led him to the hidden service staircase that could take him to the roof, where he sat unseen by a city full of people who never thought to fucking look up. After that, it was simply a matter of waiting and reminding himself of the statistics of how many people had to be air lifted to a hospital. He wouldn't be waiting too long for a helicopter to take its ugly, ungainly flight.
And he wasn't. The second he heard the whirring of its blades, he was on his feet, analyzing the angles in a heartbeat. The quarters he had stored up, won in poker games with the other inmates (excuse him, patients) and earned by selling cigarettes or various other sundries, clinked in his pockets. Next time, he promised himself. This was simply a very special case.
The blades were going at 230 rotations per minute, increasing steadily as the machine gained altitude. The number climbed before his eyes, the measures of the angles spreading and recalculating as it moved. And there, right there, was the weak point in the construction, the single small spot where a tiny obstruction could lock the whole thing up and send it careening horribly wrong. Considering the angle it was going at, if he wanted it to crash in the most dramatic fashion... he fingered the small triangle of paper for a moment longer, the missing numbers in the equation filling themselves in as he judged its weight and the way it would fly. Then, the numbers fixed firmly in his mind, he threw the densely folded sheet at just the right angle, at just the right speed, and watched as it neatly evaded the spinning blades and hit home.
It was just as dramatic as he'd planned for it to be, which was really no surprise. The blades locked, the helicopter's own velocity pitching it forward even as gravity pulled it inexorably down. It barely missed the building where he stood watching, just as he'd calculated. It did crash into another hospital in a wonderful burst of fire and smoke, the sort of explosion that action movies were made of. On top of that, raining debris took out those idiots below who never did learn how to look up.
He watched just long enough to make sure that the crucial piece of the helicopter was going to land mostly unscathed, the mechanism where a small folded piece of paper was still stuck, protruding triumphantly from a tiny crack. Unfolded and reported, it would send the message he wanted, assembled from letters cut out of magazines in the institution while he plotted, and signed with a flourish that was part him, and part Marcus. Them.
Dear Resistance, White pawn, e2 to e4. Where would you like me to move the knight? Yours, Marcus Ayers