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Vertigo (VivifiedVanityxSeven)

sevenpercentsolution

sevenpercentsolution

Supernova
Joined
Jan 11, 2009
Dr. Benedict Beesley had worked as a leading E.R. surgeon and attending physician in Miami's Mercy Hospital for two decades. In those twenty years, he had seen several lifetimes worth of horror - he had seen people bleed out on the floor, watched others gradually kill themselves with heroin, and had seen victims of car accidents come in with entire limbs torn off.

And yet, somehow, as he flipped through the chart in his hands, Dr. Beesley found the capacity to be astonished by what he was looking at. Beside him, an intern named Jamie looked on with similar awe,

"Two fractured metacarpals, one broken phalange, right hand," Beesley said, glancing up at the curtained bed in front of him, and then back at the chart, "Dislocated left shoulder, a stab wound to the left sartorious muscle - it looks like it just missed an artery, what the hell was he stabbed with?"

Beesley flipped through the papers,

"Object unknown - par for the course, I guess - we've got head trauma, a lacerated right forearm, a punctured windpipe, jesus, and two gunshot wounds, both of which avoided major organs, and we've got him handcuffed to a bed why?"

Jamie lifted his shoulders in a shrug and Beesley did the same; he supposed there was a reason the room had a steady rotation of police officers outside of it, but somehow the restraints seemed excessive.

"Most people stop moving after the broken hand," Beesley said, "This guy isn't going anywhere any time soon. We'll be lucky if we can keep him conscious for longer than a couple of minutes, he's fresh out of surgery and he's going to be drugged out of his mind - he's not about to run off anywhere. He's got a long road of recovery ahead of him, too. He's no threat to anyone right now."

Jamie reached out and pushed the curtain aside - but he immediately reeled back when he found a pair of enormous, icy eyes regarding him with all the warmth of an Alaskan floe.

Not only was the John Doe awake, he was sitting up, hunched over in the bed, his breathing audible through the bandage on his neck, a horrible rasping and hitching sound that could be heard with each inhalation.

"Jesus." Beesley said, putting a hand on Jamie's shoulder to steady the intern from tripping over himself, simultaneously hiding the fact he had also nearly jumped out of his skin.

From everything he had heard about the patient, Beesley had expected the man to be enormous - maybe six-foot-four, heavily muscled with biceps the size of his head and the sort of face that boxers got after years of being in the ring - but that wasn't what he was looking at. Instead, the man in front of them was thin, young, and possessed of angular, finely-boned features; if Beasley had encountered him on the street, he might have thought the John Doe was a college student that could use a few extra sandwiches.

Silence hung between them for several painful moments, broken only by the gravelly breathing; sweat from pain and medication had caused the patient's hair to stick to the sides of his face in a way that made it clear it took enormous effort to stay upright, yet he remained that way, watching them, completely motionless.

He didn't even seem to be blinking.

"Let's up his sedatives a few CCs," Beesley said out of the side of his mouth, and Jamie nodded vigorously, scratching it down on the chart.

---

Four days passed in a blur of scalpels, sutures, pain, and the pink fog of sedatives as massive doses of benzodiazepines and morphine swam through his bloodstream; at some point the borders that edged dreams and reality had softened and conjoined and Jackson had stopped being certain if he was asleep or awake.

Needles went in, needles came out.

Interns passed through, but only for moments at a time.

A giant iguana with a bomber hat gave him a funny look and then rode its tricycle out of the room.

Women in scrubs appeared from time to time; most of them were older, tired-looking women, but one day -

- one day, one of them was Lisa.

On that day, she approached his bedside very quietly; she pushed his hair back away from his face, leaned in close and she smiled at him the way she had in the bar, just before their flight from Texas.

Then she sweetly rammed a pencil into his eye.

Jackson woke up, bringing his hand to his face; pain sang through every part of him, through his injured shoulder and broken hand, through the ache in his skull and the pull of sutures on his neck and in his chest and leg and stomach. Bruises burned. Muscles screamed.

But he didn't make a noise; the pain was comforting, it was familiar and reliable. He wanted it. He focused on it. The pain meant he was between doses - it meant he had time to think.

They would come for him soon, he knew that much - though he had never failed to complete a job before, his line of work didn't have the luxury of second chances.

After all, the Deputy Secretary wasn't about to forget the missile that had been launched into his hotel room - his entire staff would be on high alert, his public appearances would be reduced only to private interviews, his family outings would take place behind barbed wire.

The window of opportunity had slammed shut, and Jackson had been the one to close it.

He looked down at the handcuffs that chained his right arm to the bed; under any other circumstance he would have felt insulted by the limited restraints, but the broken fingers of his left hand were clumsy and unsteady and the world swam around him when he tried to focus for too long - so he supposed the logic was sound.

Jackson shifted on the bed; his body ached from inactivity, but he forced himself upright, rising like Bela Lugosi from the grave, clenching his jaw in counter-protest to his resisting muscles. He moved his legs over the side of the bed, touching his feet to the floor; his thigh stung, and he remembered the high heel that had been embedded into it. A strappy black pump, predictably sensible, not adventurous at all, but deceptively useful when weaponized.

He pulled the hospital gown up his leg, eyeing the bandages on his thigh; the muscles in his jaw worked in annoyance.

He should have killed her on the plane.

He should have killed her after she made the call.

He should have strangled her to death in her seat - he could have done it quietly, no one would have heard. He would have even kept his promise and called the dog away from her father afterwards: he was honest, after all.

Jackson brought his hand up to his throat, bruised fingers touching against the bandages he found there. A pen, of all things.

Clever girl.

If he ever saw her again, he decided, he would need to write her back.
 
RE: Vertigo

Lisa's shoes sounded softly on the tiled floor of the Chicago O'Hare International Airport as she made her way through the throng of people at a brisk pace; hasty and hurried, inviting no room for someone to stop and invite her for pleasant conversation. The plane ride over had been near nightmarish for her, between her own troubles with take-offs and landings... and the fellow she'd been trapped beside for that handful of hours, towards the middle of the plane, dead centre... The sensation of time had dragged on uncomfortably. He'd given her the window seat, something she'd at first been grateful for, but later regretted, because it meant that if she wanted to get up to simply give herself an excuse to get away from him, she'd have to ask. He was overly obnoxious at best, bragging on about all of the work he did for some corporate identity she'd never heard of; she didn't have the heart to tell him that though, mostly because she didn't want to be forced to listen to him try and enlighten her to that aspect of his life... like he was bothering to do with every other. She'd let him ramble on for most of the flight, even bothering to buy him a drink or two if only to hope the alcohol would mellow him out enough that he'd perhaps doze off. He didn't, and because of her generous act, she was forced to sit through an uppity alcoholic for several hours, who only told her in an even greater detail all of the little things about him she just didn't care to know.

Maybe if she wasn't so tense she could have dealt with him better, would have been able to force herself to go through the effort of talking him down. Maybe if he would have been more observant to those around him, James Rennalds, as she had quickly learned his name to be, would have noticed the tightness in her jaw, the way her hands absently held to the armrests of the seat, of how she seemed to jump almost every time a certain flight attendant came around with his messy, reddish brown hair and dark blue eyes that never quite compared with a certain set of pale blue eyes that flashed to mind every time he checked on her and her companion... Pale blue eyes that were often icy with all of their intensity; enough to chill hearts into stopping.

All of these were subtle signs, however, small little signals she'd learned to swallow back from becoming too apparent to those around her; she didn't need them worrying or pointing them out to her. She didn't want someone reminding her of what she already knew; forgetting Jackson Rippner was going to take time.

The airport she now made her way through after that long flight was crowded, unnervingly so, and while that crowd should have brought her some comfort in ambiguity, it did quite the opposite. She was uneasy, more so than she had been on the plane. She hadn't been this on edge since those first few days after she'd watched him be hauled off by that ambulance from a house she once would have considered 'safe'. The days following his departure had been nerve-wrecking; her mind constantly replayed what had happened between them. At first she blamed herself for stumbling into that mess. The fact that he had tailed her for eight weeks, studying her daily habits and patterns only seemed to set in once he had been taken out of the picture, once the threat of him wasn't so immediate... Once things had settled enough for her to reflect, she realized that this bothered her so very much due to her failure to notice... She was never one to shut herself down from what was going on around her, or one who kept herself ignorant of her surroundings, but somehow she hadn't noticed him.


He'd been with her for eight. Long. Weeks. Jackson Rippner. Eight, long weeks paired with an endless plane ride.


That thought always sickened her to some degree, because she hadn't noticed him. Hadn't noticed the same face showing up, possibly standing in the very lobby of her hotel, parked outside her home night after night, sitting a few seats away from the usual place she ordered her beloved Sea Breezes... maybe even standing beside her at the bar ordering his own drink -- no, she would have noticed that, wouldn't she? The fact that she hadn't felt someone watching her through all of it was probably what unnerved her the most. It had taken her a few days not to turn every person who came upon her into him; every person wearing a suit, who bore that reddish brown hair, or who carried some resemblance of his overall lanky build... every one of them became him long enough for her blood to run cold, but they never had his eyes. It was always that simple detail that broke the illusion, brought her back to reality, settled her down, and helped her put on the pleasing smile she gave to everyone she saw who walked into her hotel. It had been Cynthia she'd confided all of this into; she hadn't wanted to worry her father more than he already was, and with what her mother had just been through she didn't need to force her to shoulder that burden... Cynthia was honestly the one person Lisa considered herself close to outside of family. With how dedicated she was to her job, she didn't have time for friendships or for meeting new people, and Cynthia had always been so open with everything, it had been hard for Lisa not to grow attached to the woman, to confide in her. Cynthia's involvement with what had happened had strengthened that bond between them. Cynthia... had reassured her that what her mind was trying to do to her was normal.

She'd suggested to Lisa, when Lisa had first told her about the creeping paranoia, that she should look through the hotel's surveillance tapes if she was so worried. Lisa had refused, arguing that she doubted he'd actually gone into the hotel, arguing that it would be a waste of time when in truth she didn't know if it would be. Lisa had absolutely no idea where he'd been during those eight weeks, and some part of her wanted to keep it that way. To try and figure out how he'd done any of it, to try and revive any part of what had happened made it real, and the reality of the situation was an ugly one and not something she wished to try and stomach so soon. That, and she didn't want her mind trying to puzzle out what she would have done if she had noticed him. Would it have even changed anything?

It wasn't until the four day marker that her nerves began to settle, the paranoia ebbing as the events of that flight became less vivid. Her thoughts drifted to him less and less, and when people came upon her suddenly, her mind was less likely to warp their features into what it thought it saw. Her father was calling her less, his worry falling back into what it had been before, and Lisa had started the tradition of going out with Cynthia and several of her friends at least once a week. It was more of an intended tradition at this point, as they were only one outing into it, but the fact was that she was moving on. She was recovering, forgetting, time was easing what had happened into a vague memory, or at least beginning to, and Lisa was shuffling her life around to smooth over that happening, to ease into it.

The night after she'd gone at least a day without his face coming so vividly to mind, the night that proved that she was indeed moving on... he came to her then.

Fingers around her throat shockingly real, squeezing her wind pipe, forbidding that needed oxygen from reaching her burning lungs... Her mind told her, through the cloud of that dream, that he would let go... That he had let her go. That he still needed her alive to make the call to make everything he was working for possible, to make it all fall into place... but he never released her, at least not in the dream. She awoke and took that needed gasp of air, the sound of her own heart drumming in her ears at such a volume she could hear nothing else, thus it taking her a minute to realize that it was the phone ringing on her nightstand that had forced those cold hands to grant her a reprieve. The voice on the other end of the phone had been her father's. He'd been worried. Things for her settled after that, a few reoccurring dreams of things turning out not quite how they had in reality; his knife finding her instead of her hockey stick cracking into his hand, she failing to fire off the gunshot that had indirectly forced the knife from his hands, and even her father's bullet never finding his flesh... but they were dreams only. Disturbing when she was pulled from them, but she knew that it was just her subconscious working him out of her system.


The memory of Jackson Rippner was beginning to fade, and she was almost glad. It meant that Lisa could move on.


Lisa was here on business; simple enough. She was here to see a man about his hotel chain merging with hers. It was to be a two day trip, nothing drawn out, but nothing rushed. She would arrive at his hotel sometime today in uptown Chicago, at her leisure, and have the day to do with as she pleased -- mainly, to familiarize herself with what his hotel offered to those who stayed there, his way of trying to sway her decision, followed by a second day of business meetings and discussions. She would return home after that, having the rest of the week to finalize the paper work if she agreed, or return a polite declination call if she decided that such a thing wasn't what her own hotel needed. It was a simple trip, straight forward, cut and dry, with no government officials or the like attempting to book a few nights at the Lux Atlantic. She was reassured also that Jackson was either working his way through whatever life would hold for him now -- probably likely a drawn out hospital stay, followed by quite a few years in a quiet cell somewhere -- or that he hadn't survived long past that last moment when their eyes had locked... He'd been shot through twice after all, among the numerous other injuries she'd given him... She'd almost lost count; maybe she should have felt guilty for what she'd done to him, but she didn't... and she didn't feel bad for that coldness towards how she'd responded to him.

Hazel eyes scanned the crowd, a habit she hadn't had before meeting Jackson, and her small fingers curled tightly on the handle of her suitcase. It was the same one he'd so kindly stowed away in the overhead compartment for her, a gentlemanly action she'd been thankful for at the time...

Her off-hand touched to the neck of her gray coat, checking the button there as she scanned the signs for the exit she would need. It took her only moments to locate it, her step having only found itself falling into the briefest of pauses before she was off again, heading towards the according elevator that would take her down to the first floor and out of the building. Her brown hair had less curl to it this time; she'd not bothered with the loose ringlets, and instead it framed around her shoulders in gentle tumbles. Beneath that coat she was dressed sharply, as she usually was; a dark skirt brushed the tops of her knees, and matched with the suit jacket she wore beneath her coat. The vest between that jacket and the gray shirt she wore beneath matched the jacket; the cut of each, was slightly feminine, and the ensemble was polished off by the black shoes she wore, heelless this time from the mild worry over having to walk any amount of distance.

When she'd selected her shoes for this trip only the faintest of thoughts had edged into her mind; she wondered what the officer forced to label that high heel of hers had thought about what it had been used for... Fingers found the button for the elevator as she waited patiently beside the mouth of its doors, reassured somewhat as she noted she wasn't the only one waiting and listening for the gentle hum of that machine.
 
RE: Vertigo

"So they say you don't have a name."

Jackson awoke to find himself sitting upright; at some point in his restless sleep, he had heard the sound of heavy-soled shoes striking against sterile industrial rubber flooring and a metal chair rest squeaking along the tiles and had physically reacted before his opiate-addled mind had caught up with everything. It took him a moment to realize he was staring at a police officer who had taken up camp in a chair at the foot of his bed, the same officer that had been quietly and dutifully standing guard outside of the room for the last week. A brass badge that had been polished with a heavy hand gleamed on the man's uniform: Sgt. Teller.

"They say that you didn't come with any I.D." Teller continued, "That they're still trying to get your information from the airport."

No identification? That meant Joe Reisert's wallet had gone missing at some point between the plane and the ambulance, and that was one hell of a distance to cover. Jackson said nothing; he had no choice in the matter with his breath still occasionally coming in wheezes through a still healing windpipe.

"But I read the reports. One of the witnesses involved said your name was Jack the Ripper. Bet you think that's clever."

Exactly the opposite; Jackson hated the allusion after a lifetime of being Jackson Rippner - anyone who heard his full name would immediately comment on the parallel as though they were the first to realize it, as though he had never heard it before. Again and again.

"You're getting the big boy treatment," Teller said, voice dripping with condescention; it seemed a week of standing guard was trying the man's patience. Jackson nearly smiled.

"Just because you had your hand in all of this, you're being treated like Charles Manson, but what did you do? You scared a girl. And then she kicked your ass."

A fair point: Jackson had always been a perfectionist when it came to his targets, but even with his intimate knowledge of Lisa Reisert's past life as a competitive athlete and her coping mechanisms from a high-stress job, even with her multiple attempts to attract attention - the soap on the mirror, the highlighter in the self-help book, the damn disconnected phone - Jackson had underestimated her. The most frustrating part was that he had done so in an almost imperceptible way - he had underestimated her in the sense that he simply hadn't thought about her capacity for violence.

It was a mistake he wouldn't make again, one that he had unconsciously based off of her passive-aggressive personality in regards to every other aspect of her life - he simply hadn't factored in what she might be capable of if she was cornered for long enough.

Nor had he factored in her past.

The image of her skin flickered across his vision; the white cotton of a sensible shirt and the scar hidden just beneath it - it was a detail he had missed, as his observations hadn't extended to pure voyeurism.

Not exactly.

"You know what I think?"

Oh, he was still talking.

Jackson had forgotten that he was still frozen in the same position, staring at the officer. He reminded himself to blink, and found his eyes burned in protest.

"I think you're just a pawn," Teller said, "Sure as hell guilty, but you aren't what we're after. I think you're just a paper-pusher who tried to roll with the big boys and failed. And I think you're going to rot in prison for it for the rest of your life - if you survive in there, the way you look."

This time Jackson really did smile; it was a small thing, a flicker at the very corners of his mouth, something that might have looked friendly and welcoming under any other circumstance, without even the hint of derision. He had become very good at that sort of thing.

He lifted his unrestrained hand to his throat, pressing gently against the bandaging as though to test it before he spoke for the first time in a week; his voice came out raspy, but familiar:

"You're capable enough to make it to Sergeant before age thirty," he said, "And you're proud enough to spend the time polishing your old nameplate until the letters threaten to peel. Yet you're on security detail."

Sgt. Teller's eyebrows dipped, an expression that was caught between annoyance and confusion; as usual, Jackson had hit the nail on the head. The officer was dealing with a damaged ego, so Jackson drove the spike in just a little further:

"We're all someone's pawn."

Sgt. Teller didn't speak to him again after that.

---

One of the reasons Jackson Rippner had always been good at his job was his ability to forsee outcomes: his strict adherence to logic, fact, and simplicity had given him the upper hand on many occasions where others had failed due to the complexities and fragility of human emotions.

It was why he was disturbingly calm when three big men in expensive suits arrived from Homeland Security in a disorganized, frenetic attempt to get answers from him; while they alternated between threats of jail and bargains for information, Jackson simply observed.

They were desperate, that much was clear; a week had passed since the assassination attempt, a period of time where all of the evidence and witnesses were at their most informative, and yet they had come to the bedside of a man who was heavily sedated - they had hit a dead end. They had nothing, except the testimony of a kidnap victim, the statements of a handful of witnesses, and the name of a boat that had managed to fly under the bloodhound radar.

"Give us a name and we'll talk reduced sentancing."

Jackson's voice had nearly returned to him by then - save for the strained rasp that lingered - but he was content to let them believe otherwise, given that they were already naively caught up in the fantasy that he was going to prison. Jail time had never been a concern for him for one very simple reason: he would be intercepted before he could ever get there. While mafia men, petty thieves, and white-collar businessman languished in prison, his kind had the tendency to dissappear before a formal court date could ever be arranged. It was the sort of thing that should have worried him, but one didn't get into his line of work without being aware of the consequences, and he wasn't foolish enough to believe he could escape the hospital and police custody in his current condition. Insofar as pain management went, Jackson was par none, but reality deemed that even he had physical limitations; he had decided he would bide his time and give himself as much time to heal as he could afford to.

"If we go solely by Lisa Reisert's testimony, you're going to take the hit for all of it. Everything from start to finish."

Jackson's eyed snapped over to meet with the speaker's.

"Oh, we have your attention now, do we? Give us something more to go on, and we can change that outcome."

The big bloodhound looked smug; he thought he had hit a nerve, but it had just been the mention of her that hand yanked him out of his reverie. He wasn't interested in anything they had to say, he wouldn't take any of their deals, and he wouldn't go to jail. They had nothing to barter with and nothing to keep him listening, they never had.

He let his eyes fall closed again. He would need the rest for what was inevitably coming.

---

Predictably, they had come for him in the night and he had been in no condition to argue, something they had further ensured by increasing his sedative dosage.

The man in the lead, Malèvre, was familiar enough with Jackson's exploits to know what they were dealing with - unlike Sergeant Teller, he wasn't fooled by the illusion of helplessness that the injuries and medication had created.

"I know what you are," Malèvre said coyly; the man was tall and broad around the shoulders, nearing his forties but his skin was sun-damaged in a way that made him look ten years older and implied a lifetime in hot climates, regardless of the heavily Parisian accent. He was standing at Jackson's bedside and looking down at him, a smile on his thin face, a thin little brown cigarette burning between his lips.

"And I know what you did." he continued, "And we both know you're here now because of what you failed to do. And you know what happens when men like us fail, don't you, Jackson?"

He didn't bother to play along and he remained silent only because the massive dosage of opiates had made his voice stop functioning all over again; Malèvre was going soft around the edges, as though he was looking through fogged glass.

"But I'm not here to kill you. Not yet. That will come later; until then, you have loose ends to tie." Malèvre said, and cocked his head when he saw the unfocused look in Jackson's eyes, "Are you still with me, Rippner?"

Malèvre moved a big hand out and jabbed him in the chest, a precise strike into one of the bullet wounds, and Jackson felt his brain snap back into focus; the finger dug in, but he didn't make a sound, he merely stared at Malèvre.

"Good." Malèvre added, "I think we understand eachother."

---

Pain wracked him with every step, but his plain expression belied his physical state; the woman on the other side of the booth offered him a bright, toothy white smile as she handed him back his airline ticket and passport.

"Enjoy Chicago, Mr. Dahmer," she said cheerily, and Jackson smiled back, only to drop the expression entirely when he entered the loading bridge.

He found some small irony in being seated by the window, beside Malèvre.

---

The flight was three hours long, but Jackson felt the concept of time had been lost at some point back in the hospital, driven by the lack of windows, the absence of clocks, and the over-abundance of barbituates. The flight had given the morphine time to wear off and the results were unpleasant as Jackson found himself not only more aware of the pain, but suffering the beginning symptoms of withdrawal. His carry-on had been provided with painkillers, but he was more willing to bet on his ability to adapt to the pain and discomfort, over his ability to adapt to being stoned out of his mind. He needed to be able to think - he could deal with pain.

Malèvre had been characteristically chatty through the course of the flight, an aggressively friendly captor in the sense that he persisted on giving his opinions about the in-flight movie and, occasionally, the stewardesses' rear ends. Annoyingly, there was no discussion regarding why their destination was Chicago, a lack of information that Jackson found troubling - not out of fear of the unknown, but because, from a professional standpoint, the lack of clarity made things difficult.

This left Rippner with no choice but to privately speculate; Malèvre had alluded to unfinished business, which could only be a reference to Charles Keefe - in a play off of his obsession with finishing the job, they were taking him to complete his last one, perhaps with the mocking knowledge that he could hardly function.

As they stepped out into the Chicago airport, Malèvre put a hand on Rippner's bicep, taking hold of it and steering him away from the crowd, towards the baggage claim, despite the fact they hadn't brought any on board.

Behind them, four men who had exited off the same plane wandered nearby; they lingered and gazed idly around the airport, all of them standing within a close raidus, too casual to be anything except Malèvre's back-up.

"Your mistake will cost you," Malèvre murmured, hand still gripping Rippner's arm, the hold just strong enough to be an unspoken threat as he directed him towards the distant elevators, "But now you will finish what you started, and I am here to ensure it happens. I don't believe I need to tell you not to do anything stupid."

As they walked, Jackson was aware that none of the men around him would be armed with anything more than a cellphone, as it was nigh impossible to smuggle weapons onboard any North American transport in the new millennium. It was the biggest advantage he could hope to have, and one that would dissappear the moment they left the airport.

In their current location, Malèvre was limited in what he could do - there was enough security around that he would be tagged the moment he got aggressive.

Distraction was too complicated; too many things could go wrong.

Jackson tested his leg on the ground, bearing as much weight on it as he could during each step, even briefly doing a bizarre little half-skip that made Malèvre give him a cock-eyed look. He found that the injury twinged, but it was nothing he couldn't deal with later.

Occam's razor was always the answer.

The simplest solution: people ran for their planes all the time.

Without missing a beat, Jackson went from walking to sprinting in the blink of an eye, so sudden that Malèvre was briefly staggered by it; the Frenchman dropped his shoulders in a show of exasperation before he broke into a run.

Relying purely on self-preservation and a lifetime of heavy cardio, Jackson ran for the moving walkway, skimming across it and dodging a woman who was talking on her cellphone, knocking her pile of luggage onto the walkway in the process.

"Hey!" she called after him, putting her cellphone to her chest, "You bastard!"

She put the phone to her face again,

"This guy just knocked all my stuff over! I can't believe -"

Malèvre knocked her clean off her feet; he stumbled, clawed through the pile of luggage, and kept going, kicking the blackberry as he went.

Jackson, meanwhile, took a left and darted behind a nearby column; though he normally wasn't one for playing hide-and-seek, his injuries were protesting and his breath was coming back as a wheeze. He peered around the edge of the column, looking towards the elevators that were no more than twenty feet away; the doors had yet to open and he wasn't sure he could risk -

"No." he said flatly; he could feel sweat on his hairline, a result of the strain he was putting on his body; he told himself he was seeing things, just the way he had in the hospital. He was in Chicago, not Miami, and the woman in front of the elevator, dressed in plain business-clothes was not - there was no way that -

- wait.

Jackson shut his eyes; he could hear his pulse throbbing in his temple and feel his heart thumping against his chest wall - he focused on his breathing, he opened his eyes again, and he refocused.

He had watched Lisa Reisert for eight weeks, had sat on a plane next to her for hours.

It was her.

He hadn't been brought to Chicago to kill Keefe.

Rippner pressed his head back against the column, thumping it once against the marble, gritting his teeth. Behind him, Malèvre was standing in the open, scanning his surroundings for any sign of Jackson - when he found none, he began a slow walk around the area, going right, and Jackson took the opportunity to go left, running for the escalator that went to the next floor, taking it two stairs at a time, halfway up it just as the elevator doors opened.

His options were limited; he ran for the elevator on the next floor. He pressed the button. He waited.

When the doors slid open again, Lisa Reisert would find him standing on the other side, his normally neat hair sticking to his temples, angular jawline covered in two weeks of growth, his chin tilted down as he looked at her through the hair that fell awkwardly over his brows. He was wordless, his jaw clenched, as he strode forward, putting one hand on Lisa's mouth, his other arm barring across her chest as he shoved her back into the elevator, the doors closing behind him.

He hit the emergency stop button and the entire thing jostled to a sudden halt.
 
RE: Vertigo

It was an uncomfortably long wait for Lisa; the elevator could be heard on the lower floors through the metal doors that loomed in front of her, its soft ding echoing up that mechanical shaft only faintly. Her ears were given the luxury of that reassuring sound only because of her position beside the doors; not quite in front of them so as to allow whoever needed off in this floor the ability to do so without being hindered, but not so far away as to not be the first one to board. The hum was gentle when it finally started up again, heading from the floor beneath hers and on upward, and she pushed herself gently away from the wall where she'd been leaning. Whoever had been waiting on that lazy mode of transportation had given up shortly before that sound had started up, opting for the more direct route of the stairs. The familiar clattering of wheels didn't follow them as they'd walked off, so she assumed without looking that they had minimal luggage. Lisa just didn't feel like toting her one bag down the stairs.

Doors slid open with a ding, and people exited the machine. Some were in a rush, and others moved at a leisure. Her eyes caught an elderly couple's, the last to leave the elevator and they smiled at her warming; it was an expression that she returned, breaking through the shell of isolation she'd imposed around herself to hurry along her airport adventure. Hazel eyes followed them as they walked off, she stepping backwards into the elevator with her suitcase following behind. They hadn't a care in the world, walking hand in hand with one another in such a loving way it made her almost forget her own worries, however fabricated they were. Fingers comfortably pressed in for the first floor, mildly surprised to find an all too familiar operations panel staring back at her. The airport used the same elevators as the Lux did. Rolling her suitcase beside her, she felt the elevator slow as it neared the next floor, the thought of the elevators being replaced as she mentally began going over the directions she would need to take to get to the hotel. She'd memorized it, but in an effort to keep her thoughts moving, started up that mild mental exercise to keep things flowing and away from the memories that made her so nervous. It was the location alone that was dredging them up; she'd met him in an airport after all.

The ding of the elevator stopping reached her ears, and her thoughts stilled for a moment, her eyes lifting as she watched the doors slide open so she could note how she should move to accommodate those coming aboard... but that thought was stopped dead, her breath too caught in her throat as she started, and her eyes widening slightly in a brief confusion.

Her brain couldn't place him right away; he was a mess, his hair somewhat sticky with sweat, and his face unkempt. Not the way she remembered Jackson, and not the way her mind always brought him to her in her daytime paranoia. That's why it took her a moment, a moment to overlay the Jackson she was so familiar to with what was standing in front of her now; his eyes, the tilt of his head, the expression on his face. Her brows had drawn together in that short moment of her puzzling it out, but when she recognized him her face opened, head turning to the side, her hand reaching for the elevator panel to close a door she knew would never close in time. Not this time. Jackson's hand had found her mouth before any sound of panic could pass her lips, not that any would. One needed to be breathing to scream, and her lungs seemed to have forgotten the one simple task her body assigned to them normally without thinking. Fingers that were reaching for the panel never made the distance, the backwards motion he forced her into keeping them far out of her reach as his own hand found the emergency stop; the safety those controls could have offered her turning it against her.

The shock of his sudden appearance quickly wore off however, or rather, dulled itself out as Lisa's brain kicked into a sort of survival mode.

Jackson had moved quickly, probably not even needing to rely on the shock that had played out through her to capitalize on the pause she'd given; he'd always been so very quick, almost unnaturally so. Her shoulders found the wall of the elevator with a thud, once her footing regained she continuing her own backwards motion, her hands lifting warningly spanning the distance between them with a threat for something... she didn't quite know what. She wanted as much distance between them as the small elevator could offer; it wasn't enough, but she made do. Her face had hardened, that slight frown returning as her teeth clenched. She was at a loss; she could guess at what he was here for, but why so soon? Wouldn't the police have warned her that he'd escaped their custody?

They'd assured her that they would, given what he had tried to make her do... Given what she had done to him. Her mind swam behind her eyes, starting the beginnings of stories and events she knew couldn't have happened, that were unrealistic even with their boogieman being none other than Jackson Rippner.

The bandage that wound its way around his slender throat stopped those spinning thoughts, settled them on what was both real and standing in front of her. If that small little injury -- in comparison to the rest of what he'd suffered at least -- was wrapped, she could only guess at the rest of him. It had barely been two weeks, and her own elbow still had the smallest of scrapes on it from her fall down the stairs... A gunshot wound would take significantly longer to even begin to heal, her mind reasoned, reassured her almost. Lisa's eyes flicked over him, noting remembered locations, taking in everything that was Jackson now... and she couldn't help but realize what a mess he was all over again. Her small hands remained raised as her posture straightened somewhat, she not entirely relaxing herself, but instead losing a bit of the tension that had kept her flush up against the wall behind her. He'd only pushed her so far to gain access to the elevator; Lisa had the presence of mind to note that.

If he made a move towards her, she'd lash out any way she could and try to get to the panel, until then, the stalemate was far more comfortable than any sort of engagement, and as long as he didn't press for one... She swallowed hard. "What the hell do you want?" Her words were cold and riddled with daggers as they slipped out; her narrowed eyes returned to his face, trying to read that which was usually unreadable.

Countless questions flooded to life within her, and threatened to spill from her, the insults mixed in maybe as an attempt to scare him off, but she held those back from being voiced, even though her eyes probably spoke volumes about them. Insulting him risked riling him up, and threats would merely be laughed at; his simply being here outlived any sort of harm she could warn him off with. Don't come near me or else? You'll shoot me? Stab me? Attack me with a clubbed weapon? I'm better at this than you, more experienced... Clearly indestructible... Instead, she forced herself to leave him with that one, single, venom dripped question that summed up everything so short and sweet.
 
RE: Vertigo

Rippner glanced at the lit-up numbers above the elevator door - there were five floors, one of which would give them access to the parking garage while another would take them to street-level, all details they would need.

He turned his sights back to Lisa, the muscles in his jaw and neck working visibly, signs of a man restraining himself - but just barely - and only because she hadn't waved a pen at him.

What the hell do you want?

Like Lisa, Rippner hadn't had a great deal of time to mull over their situation, but on his way up the stairs, he had concluded several things in succession: Malèvre was going to kill him whether he killed Lisa or not, and Malèvre was going to kill Lisa if he didn't. Both of them were in less-than-desirable circumstances and both of them were alone, with a common goal: survival.

Or at least, it would be a common goal when Lisa realized her situation, though the amount of time he had to explain it was limited - they had until attention was drawn to the fact the elevator had stopped moving and by then Malèvre would know where he was.

He took couple of steps to the right and then to the left, pacing like a predator locked in a cage before he stood still again:

"I'm here to kill you," he said plainly, "I was brought here to kill you and the guy who brought me? He wants to watch me do it - and if I don't, he will."

Rippner flicked head to get the hair away from his face, pushing the unruly fringe back with a heavily bruised and bandaged hand before he continued on in the same casual tone, as though he was discussing the weather or what he had for breakfast with an old friend.

"But you can rest assured, once he's done that, he's going to put a bullet into my head. He's here in the airport, probably on the first floor, with four gorillas in chinos as back-up - should I take us there? Would you like me to do that, Lisa?"
 
RE: Vertigo

His movements made her uneasy; she knew he was able to shift at the drop of a hat, both his demeanour and his actions turning around completely even as his brain was still processing whatever set him off. Her eyes noted the bandages on his hand while he did what he could for his hair, her ears trained towards him instead of to the unhappy people so very close on the other side of those large, metal doors, they beginning to notice the lack of movement from the machine. He was eerily calm as he spoke to her, as he had been on the plane, and it forced her own panic to subside even more... falling back to how things had been between them when he'd chased her through her father's home... What he was actually telling her, however, was far less than calming. Lisa's hands had lowered, slowly, as he explained briefly what was going on, and her head found the wall of the elevator. She turned to look at that door for a moment before her eyes flicked back to him, her face never fully completing that redirection.

"No, I don't!" Her reaction had been sudden, choked almost, one of her hands reaching for the panel in case his did despite her remaining rooted in place. She pulled away though, quickly, rethinking the situation. "Why should I even --" She stopped herself before the question could be fully posed, the smoothness of her own voice startling even her. Why should I even believe you? Jackson had made such huge deal of impressing that point on her that she didn't dare question it even now. This was all sounding like some sort of sick game to her, almost like a twisted voyeur fantasy, and it was turning her stomach. "Why are you here then, Jack, if not to kill me? I don't think we'd even be talking if it were as simple as you giving them what they want," Her attention turned to the elevator panel, apprehensively. Suddenly getting off the elevator didn't feel like it offered as much safety as it had before, at least not until she knew the full extent of what was going on.

How was someone supposed to respond to being told all of this, let alone by someone like Jackson Rippner... and with their history. Her shoulders found the wall again, and the palms of her hand found a rest against the small little railing that lined the elevator.

Lisa understood what he was telling her, but the reality of the situation hadn't quite set in yet, it was because of that 'why' that any sort of fear hadn't taken a hold of her. "Either you're here to do what they want, or you would have cut and run the first time they let you out of their sights, right? Which means we're about to end up on the floor of this elevator, or you need something from me for whatever reason...? Is that what this is?" She reasoned to him, echoing something he'd once asked of her. Any sort of compassion as a driving factor behind what he was doing hadn't touched her train of thought, if anything, her continuing on her intended course would have bought him more time.
 
RE: Vertigo

As far as Rippner was concerned, there were two very distinct worlds that people could live in; one of them was the world that Lisa Reisert flourished in, filled with people who drove eco-friendly cars, remembered to recycle their plastics, and whose idea of a wild night was a Sea Breeze and dancing at Palm Beach with the girls on a Friday night.

The other world was his world, and Reisert was currently hanging precariously between the two - and for someone who was about to make the full jump over, she was handling herself well. Most people would be sobbing in a corner.

But then, Lisa Reisert wasn't most people. Infuriating, yes. Typical?

Not exactly.

Still, he threw an unimpressed look her way,

"If I was going to kill you, I would have my hands around your neck right now." Jackson replied, almost exasperated, "What this is, is survival of the fittest, and right now, neither of us are fit for what's coming."

In any other circumstance, he wouldn't have said the same thing - but in his present physical condition, Jackson wasn't narcissistic enough to believe he could out-run Malèvre.

"Unless you've read a self-help book on this as well." he added off-handedly.
 
RE: Vertigo

If it was anyone else standing in the elevator telling her all of this, they would have been met with disbelief; it would have been a struggle to even get her to stop and listen to what they were saying past a certain point. Things like this didn't just happen in Lisa's day to day life; outside of her history with Jackson... her life was so very normal with only a handful of shocking bumps along the way, and even with this hurtle... It was normal; it was safe, it was warm, it was everything that was expected... It was what a typical life was supposed to be. It wasn't this uncertain feeling that was building up inside of her.

Hazel eyes never left him as she processed what he was telling her; she was apprehensive, it was obvious, and she didn't try to hide that hesitation. She trusted what he was saying to her almost without questioning, but it was natural for someone from her world to doubt things when they were being introduced to his, to want proof that couldn't exactly be given in a safe manner.

Arms crossed suddenly as Lisa stepped towards the doors, not quite closing the distance between them, but leaning against that small little wall that ran to the frame of the door, she still facing him. Her eyes left him, dropping to the floor in thought, "No, you're supposed to be my self-help book...?" She offered, building on his off-handed comment. It was clear she wasn't fully on board, but with what he'd told her about -- the fate he was potentially saving her from, she had no reason not to go along with him for at least a little while.

"No threats towards loved ones, no holding my arm behind my back to get what you want..."

"I can't possibly keep myself alive on my own, and you're..." Her eyes had lifted, her head tilting to the side slightly as those orbs trailed over the bandages around his throat and the state of his hand, "still pretty banged up, aren't you?" She didn't sound guilty at all as she said this, it more of a statement than an actual question that demanded an answer; instead, the words were more matter-o-fact; he'd pushed her one way and she'd simply pushed back, she had no reason to feel sorry for what she had done, or to even apologize. It was an almost obvious conclusion, anyone who looked at him could probably tell that something was wrong, even if he could hide the extent of that damage so very well.

She sighed softly, the crossing of her arms tightening as she looked towards the metal doors for a moment before she pushed away from the wall and walked to the control panel, "This means that your stop is my stop?" she offered by way of asking him which floor would probably be the wisest for them to get off at. Her thumb pressed the emergency stop button, releasing it, while her other hand held down another button, holding the elevator in place until a floor was selected. She turned towards him slightly, her gaze expectant. She forwent the safety of hiding behind whatever distance the small elevator had build between them.
 
RE: Vertigo

Some weaknesses weren't so easy to disguise, and Rippner was aware enough of his current physical state to know that no amount of bravado could conceal the most obvious of his injuries - and particularly not from the person who had caused them. It was due to an abnormal pain tolerance that Rippner was able to function at his current level in his condition, but was still mildly annoyed with himself for being so obviously wounded.

You're still pretty banged up, aren't you?

He didn't bother to answer; he felt it was rhetorical anyways - he simply waited for Lisa to draw her conclusions based on the evidence she had been presented with. If she was reasonable, she would see the obvious truth: she didn't have a choice. Granted, she had the free will to walk away and continue with her planned schedule as though she had never been interrupted, but the consequences would be dire.

Fortunately, she proved reasonable; the emergency brake was relieved, causing the elevator to jolt once and Jackson immediately reached out, pressing for the underground parking lot. Though the first floor led immediately to street level, it was also the most obvious route and one that would only provide them with more open space to run.

The elevator began its descent and Jackson eyed the elevator doors, suspicious that it might stop at ground-level to pick up another passenger - but it turned out luck was temporarily on their side and they passed the floor without stopping, dropping down to the sub-level. The doors opened silently, sending in a gust of cool air that Jackson found welcoming in his current state; he stepped out into the dimly-lit underground level, eyes adjusting to the change.

Transportation.

Finances.

Weapons.

For most people the concept of obtaining all three in their current situation would seem impossible, but most people were shackled by morality. Rippner had the benefit of having no such bondage.

When he finally spoke again, his voice was lilting in a mock-amused way,

"I hope you didn't have any big plans, Leese," he said, cocking his head to the side as though stretching out a muscle or working out a kink in his shoulder, "Because you're going to have to make a few schedule changes."
 
RE: Vertigo

The button Jackson had pressed held Lisa's attention while elevator descended slowly, her eyes trailing the curve of that single letter, and only leaving it when the elevator jostled to a halt to find Jackson's back as he stepped through the opening doors. She followed, her hand finding the handle of her bag so that it would roll after her as she walked after Jackson. "Nothing that can't be changed for my favourite person at the drop of a hat," She breathed dryly, eying the scattered cars around the lot. Her free hand slipped into her pocket, she either uncomfortable with the temperature change or who she was walking beside... perhaps both.

"This won't be as simple as us just getting out of arm's reach from whoever is upstairs for a little while, and then being allowed to call the police, will it?" She murmured, eyes having dropped to watch her shoes as she walked along, her thoughts deciding to direct themselves towards what was going to happen rather than what could have happened.

And she stopped, noting Jackson with a frown as it clicked. This was all because of what she had stopped. An odd sort of smile danced across her lips as she turned away from him, looking towards the lit exit quite a few ways off. "We're going to have to disappear for a little while, aren't we? We'll be the next Bonnie and Clyde..." It was an off comparison, one that had barely any connection to what was going on -- something Jackson hadn't even explained to her fully, but she wasn't so inclined to ask him for details, at least not at the moment.

That would come later, when everything began to feel more real to her.

The only hurdle her mind seemed to have made it over thus far was that Jackson was here; the boogieman who'd been haunting her first through nearly every similar face she came across, and then by her nightmares that sometimes went uninterrupted... was both here and not planning on killing her. Forward thinking would come for her later, after she'd settled into what was going on more, after she knew the direction they both would be forced to take... after she knew how long this was going to go on for.

Right now she was expecting him to counter what she was saying, to tell her that no, it was going to be that simple. All they had to do was disappear from here and the authorities could be called in. Jackson would of course disappear, saving himself from being apprehended again... but... He would disappear. That would be the end of it.

She'd been walking diligently towards the light at the end of the tunnel, "If you're going to try and steal a car while we're down here I'm going to have to kick you." She warned lightly, having no intention of carrying through with that threat if he did. The thought had came to her absently, her mind beginning to picture what would happen to them both if this was to be a drawn out thing.
 
RE: Vertigo

"In this case, 'arms reach' covers a lot of ground, they'll know your entire schedule." Rippner replied mildly, "And unless there is something very, very interesting about you that I managed to overlook in my period of observation, I don't think you're going to turn into Bonnie Parker any time soon. You've only got one kill under your belt and it was a vehicular homicide,"

He was referring to Dane, the hitman who had been imprinted with a stolen Jeep's license plate number; when he'd entered the Reisert home and found Dane on the floor, bleeding out his ear, he hadn't felt any level of remorse - it was really his fault for not seeing the SUV coming, or for not knowing to get out of the way. Granted, most people who lived in the suburbs generally didn't seem capable of intentionally mowing down another human being, but it had been easy to deduce what she was willing to do around the time she had plunged the pen into his neck. He supposed Dane had yet to make that connection.

"But the court must have labelled that one under a different heading. Vehicular self-defense? Not likely to strike fear into anyone's heart."

Though, he wasn't about to question her willingness to pick up a gun, either.

He moved along the borders of the parking garage, his stride was quick and calculated - though visibly hindered by a limp - and he was scanning the darkened level with a calculating look,

"Unless you plan to stay on foot, yes, we are going to steal a car. It won't be new to either of us."
 
RE: Vertigo

"'Period of observation?' Is that what you call it?" She'd stopped walking, somewhat unsettled by his choice of words; her voice was clearly irritated though it did not raise in pitch or volume. A colourful term for him about slipped out beneath her breath as her eyes rolled, her feet stopping as she forced herself to regain her composure. One breath in; one breath out. "It wasn't as easy as all of that," She offered softly, her mild flare of temper fading quickly. Lisa turned back to him, her footsteps resuming. "The courts put me through hell. They had to make sure there wasn't some sort of 'cover'. They wanted to make sure the whole thing hadn't been staged so that, if it had gone according to plan, everyone involved wouldn't have simply been allowed to slip off of the radar..." Her face remained towards him as her eyes turned, looking over the parked vehicles in the lot. She wondered in the back of her mind if he'd been questioned, and how extensively... or if he'd even made it as far as the hospital. If she had been with anyone else in this situation... she probably would have been offering to help them along, but not Jackson.

She wanted that distance from him, even if it was such a small thing; it was the only barrier she could think to put between them right now.

Seeming to find what she was looking for, she walked away from him, crossing that underground lot as she approached a somewhat beat up old car. Her teeth found her lip as her free hand reached for the handle and gave it a yank; no go. Shrugging that off with a shake of her head she moved down the row, towards the next older car she'd spotted, tested the door, and this time it opened. Turning, she stepped away from the still-opened door and leaned against the hood of the car; she was making it clear she had no way to actually get the car running beyond that point... She was also making it clear she didn't exactly intend to get into the passenger's seat. Arms crossed over her chest as she turned back to Jackson, almost daring him to say something about those two things.

"So yes. I have killed, but only because of you, and yes, I stole some poor man's car from him the last time I was at an airport... again, all because of you. " She sighed, expelling the air quickly from her lungs as if exasperated. She didn't quite know what to call this venture in theft, but inside she was blaming him for it too.

"What exactly is the plan in all of this...? I'm guessing that you have one... You don't strike me as the type of person who wouldn't..."
 
RE: Vertigo

It wasn't as easy as all of that.

It never was, for people like Lisa.

Ultimately, Reisert had been the one to call mid-flight from Texas to have the Keefe's moved from one room to another in order to avoid a pipe leak - which really was clever on her part - under the pretense of just doing her job. But even the most dull of cops would make the connection that Lisa's authorization had been key in the assassination attempt - moreso if it had been successful, but because she had managed to stop it from being carried out, her guilt was absolved. Mostly. But there naturally remained some questions about her connections and loyalties, which were only off-set by the fact her father had been used as a form of leverage to force her compliance.

"If it had gone according to plan," Jackson began, his tone airy about something that would leave Lisa with a lifetime of nightmares,

"All you would have to do is maintain your innocence, and claim ignorance - even the most experienced prosecutor couldn't twist circumstances to make a hotel manager look like the mastermind in a political assassination. Their only evidence would have been your testimony."

His eyes followed her as she moved away, towards a row of cars; she began to test the handles and if his head hadn't been so muzzy, he might have smiled at how rapidly her morality had waned in regards to auto theft.

He watched her pop open a car door; the thing was ancient and rickety, a station wagon complete with wood-panelling, the kind of atrocity most people would hope got stolen for the insurance money - not that Jackson cared; his modes of transportation in his job could vary to the point of ridiculous, and a station wagon was the least of the worries, as long as it kept running.

"It's one of the times lying would have been okay, Leese." Jackson added, mockingly conspiratorial; he moved to the open door of the station wagon. It was clear Lisa was under the assumption that he had a way of making a car run without keys - and he did. But he also had a broken, clumsy hand.

He slipped into the car, sitting at the wheel and looking around the interior first; the thing smelled vaguely of cat and something unpleasantly human. The rearview mirror was decorated with two hanging, intricate, and aged images of the Virgin Mary, back to back and taped together. He began to search the car, flicking down the sun-shades and opening the glove-box before he began to check under the seats - though all he located were a few food wrappers, a small bible, and an unfortunate bobble-head cat statue.

"And as for accountability - you made the choice to run. The result was your encounter with Dane who, if you had followed the rules, would have been gone by the time you got to your father's place. We all have choices to make, you're making one right now. Even if the alternate outcome is less than favorable, you still have free will."

All of it had been said with a straight face, with the same friendly, polite, and reassuring tone that had introduced Lisa to him, and with the sort of smoothness that would make the most experienced criminal lawyer take notes.

Just as he became sure he would need to resort to hotwiring a station wagon, Jackson paused to give the Virgin Mary a more analytical look. He reached up and thumbed the image, which swung heavily for something made of printer paper and he gave the decoration a deadpan look, as though it had told him a terrible joke. He pulled it off the mirror and turned it upside-down; a key fell out.

"She was never great at protecting things." Jackson said drily.
 
RE: Vertigo

Lisa had pushed away from the car hood when Jackson had slipped into the car; her arms crossed themselves and rested against the edge of the open door, she leaning against that instead. Her chin found the soft fabric of her sleeves as she laid her head on her arms, tilting it to the side somewhat, she simply listening to what he was telling her. It was his tone of voice, lulling almost, uncomfortably soothing even though she wasn't particularly thrilled about what he was narrating. He was calm as he worked, despite everything, and she watched him search the interior of that car with a fluidity that was just as unsettling... but also familiar to her.

Realizing this, she looked away. Grabbing hold of her suitcase, she stepped away from the door, and busied herself with putting that single piece of luggage neatly in the back. Closing the back, driver's side door, she turned around and leaned down, peering in at a Jackson who seemed to be having an internal debate with the car's mirror decoration.

She was about to comment on everything he'd just told her, but she stopped herself as he lifted that decoration free of its little home and forced it to present a key. "...Maybe she's protecting us?" Lisa offered casually, the words sounding a bit sappier than she'd intended them. It was a reassuring thought though, even if Lisa wasn't particularly fond of religion. Straightening herself, she held out her hand expectantly for the key. She walled herself up somewhat in that gesture, her voice more direct this time, the little comment she'd just made seemingly forgotten, "This isn't the plane again, Jackson... The focus right now doesn't need to be kept on me... I don't need reassurances over what happened, or what could have happened, or what should have happened. I was over all of that... and quite frankly, if I did need those things, I wouldn't be asking for them from you. So the focus is actually on you, right now," she started slowly, her words building conviction as she continued.

"What are we going to do?" Her question was short, simple, and direct, and probably a bit more vague than was needed, but somehow every small little inquiry about what was going to happen in their forward progress... he'd avoided. Directing the subject more towards her and what had happened than what was actually going to happen; it was as if he'd managed to, either intentionally or completely by accident, side-step the forward motion of what was going on.
 
RE: Vertigo

Protecting them.

Not likely.

Jackson plucked the key from his lap and eyed Lisa's extended hand - another correct assumption. He wasn't hard-headed enough to believe he could drive in his current condition, so he dropped the key into Lisa's palm without argument, a silent compliance, though a small part of him rebelled at the thought of placing jagged metal in her hands.

He shifted along the station wagon which, classic to 80s design, had been built with bench-like cushioned seats rather than separate pilot seats. The result was rather like sitting in someone's living room, which happened to be inside a car.

He lofted a fine eyebrow when she spoke but refrained from correcting her - the focus was not, in fact, on him. The focus was never on him and that was certainly the way he preferred it - his job was to keep the focus on his target. Always.

Though, he supposed he needed to stop thinking of Lisa as a target this time around - old habits died hard.

Right to business, it seemed Lisa's patience for small talk rivalled his.

"We're going to find a place to hide."

No sugar-coating it, they weren't evading or playing games of cat and mouse - they were hiding, because right then, that was their only logical option. A hotel, a lodge - nothing too public because he was also aware of his own, impending physical crash, something he could feel in the way his pulse was throbbing in his temple.

He mentally shook it off, like a career alcoholic shaking off a buzz. He peered at the side-view mirror,

"Though we can start," he said, adjusting it with the small switch inside the car, "By starting the car."

This could have easily been registered as pure and simple sarcasm, but this time around it was not - it was a legitimate instruction. He pointed at the side-view mirror, or more specifically what he was seeing in it - a towering figure in chinos and a black dress shirt, stepping out of the elevator. One of Malèvre's dogs, sniffing the air.

"Because that," Jackson said casually, "Is a man who is going to kill us."
 
RE: Vertigo

Feeling the metal key hit her palm, her fingers closed around it, and she took to the driver's seat as soon as she heard him scooting over, the door being closed behind her. His answer was the expected one; it wasn't something she was dreading but more... It was the direction her own mind was going with things, and if they were going to be hiding, it meant that the solution wasn't as simple as bringing the police in. He'd never outright said that calling them wasn't an option, but with how he'd ignored that comment from her earlier... and with his answer now, she could deduce enough. Lisa's head refused to finish the direction that choice would lead them; they wouldn't be hiding forever... and if the authorities wouldn't solve their problem... Her hands had moved without thinking even in the unfamiliar car, seat belt, followed by the key finding the ignition, and she would have even turned that key without that all too simple instruction from him if she hadn't turned to look at him incredulously at first.

His attention was on the side mirror though, and her eyes flicked to that before she turned in time to have him explain what she was seeing. Hazel eyes widened at that, and she froze partially, unable to look away for a moment as the hand that had never left the key stumbled quickly into turning it.

She heard a soft purr from the car starting up, but that sound never lasted as far as the engine even starting to turn over and instead died on the spots.

Dashboard lights cut out, and the key seemed to jam in the ignition somewhat.

Lisa tried again, turning around to look at the problem, thinking that maybe she was doing something wrong, but again, nothing. The same brief, almost quiet cycle repeated itself of the dashboard lights flashing and then nothing. Her expression darkened somewhat as she tried a third time, mentally pleading with the vehicle to do something, but never quite allowing those pleas to reach her lips, and finally a fourth time before forcing herself to give up. "Shit," She breathed, staring angrily at the car as if it had been the solution to everything. With how he was moving, she had the feeling that Jackson couldn't just cut and run, and if he could he wouldn't exactly be able to get very far...

She looked to the rear view mirror; fortunately whatever was wrong with the car sounded like it was more of a battery problem, and the man who'd stepped out of the elevator didn't appear to have noticed them yet. The hand that had been on the ignition found Jackson's shoulder, and her fingers curled, the action easily mistaken for her possibly clinging to him out of fear, but that action had a very real intention. She pulled him down onto the seat, albeit somewhat carefully, as she herself slid down her own seat, peering up at the mirror overhead as what it was reflecting moved out of her line of sight.

"Two choices, right? We stay here and hope he leaves... or deal with him and then leave ourselves?" She was really beginning to hope that this was one of those terribly managed lots without video surveillance...
 
RE: Vertigo

They should have known better than to get into a station wagon - and to an extent, Jackson did know better - the wood-panelling should have been their first clue that things weren't going to go according to plan and then again, nothing really had for some time now. The first sad rev of the engine lasted all of four seconds before it cut out and Jackson stared straight ahead in silence, expression blank as he listened to it creak and die several more times, taking them just another step further from their escape route - a route they hadn't really even had a chance to figure out before it had gone wrong.

Lisa was correct in thinking his chances of being able to get away on foot were slim at that point - he had expended most of his energy in the airport, and while he could likely manage to fuel himself with a second or even third wind out of pure force of will, he knew that each time would be more draining than the last, and if he was caught, he was likely to be forced to continue on Malevre's schedule.

His eyes shifted to the mirror again; the grunt was moving along the rows of cars, checking for signs of life, evidence of Jackson having been there, or still being there - the others would still be inside, combing every inch of the building for him.

Jackson opened his mouth to speak, but his voice fell away when he felt warmth on his shoulder; his head snapped sharply to the side to look at the hand that was on him, but seconds later he was being tugged down on the seat, an action he went along with, if only because he didn't have the capacity to argue about it right then. Together they slouched down on the ancient, corduroy-and-plaid seats and Jackson became more aware of the smell of the car from that angle and he had to turn his face to get a few strands of Lisa's hair from his mouth, letting out a huff of air to assist in the process.

He was silent for a moment, staring at the dry, leathery dashboard in front of him and ignoring the way his entire body seemed to protest any movement; he forced himself to focus again.

Encountering Lisa, he decided, hadn't been part of Malevre's schedule, not yet anyways - within the confines of the airport, they wouldn't have been able to act, the plan would have been to intercept her at some point between then and her next flight out. With that in mind, it had been purely by chance that he had seen Lisa, an act of sick irony or pure luck, depending on perspective.

"They don't know you're here," Jackson said finally, reaching for the ignition and twisting the key only to find it jammed in place; he was still for a moment, fingers still on the key before he tore the thing from the ignition with a horrible, angry scrape of metal on metal, tucking it into his palm, "And they certainly don't know that you're here with me."

The longer they kept it that way, the better off they would be.

He craned his neck, looking out the window; the dog was at the end of the lot, looking in windows before he crossed over and began to move down their row; Jackson shifted and slipped up close to the door, reaching for the handle and tugging it as quietly as possible; it gave with an audible pop and the door hinges creaked as it opened; Jackson stuck his head out, concealed by the SUV beside them, crouched down in a bizarre position that had him half-hanging out of the car. From the vantage point of the undercarriage, he could see the man's feet moving gradually towards them.

"Four cars to your left, there's a 2011 Audi A8," Jackson said, "If you breathe on it, the security system will activate - you're faster than I am right now. I need you to get out of the car - stay low to the ground, go around the front, and set off the alarm."
 
RE: Vertigo

The sound the key made as it tried to cling to the ignition was almost sickening, and Lisa closed her eyes against it with everything but a visible cringe.

Jackson's movements weren't what spurred those eyes into opening, but rather the protest the door made as he opened it; this car didn't like him, she found herself thinking absently, ill fit as it was for the situation at hand. It wanted him out. What he was telling her meshed in with this thought as she turned to him, worried about what he was going to do with that key. She'd reached out again for his shoulder, but her hand never quite finished that stretch, the soft 'wait' that was on her lips never breathed fully into life as she settled into a small silence. Lisa had to remind herself that whatever she thought this was, it was much more serious than that.

There were men after them, men that were possibly as lethal as Jackson, and those men intended on killing them either immediately or eventually.

There was no 'do-over' if they were caught. It would be the end of it. What they had to do to those after them to force their hand was much worse than a simple slap on the wrist, too. She inhaled, deeply, attempting to calm her nerves, but she only succeeded in, for the first time, introducing her senses to the vile smell of the inside of the car. Under normal circumstances she would have complained, but she held her tongue this time, letting that sharp smell settle inside of her uncomfortably.

When he told her about what she needed to do, she found her attention shifting, her eyes looking to the window beside her even though she knew she couldn't see the car from here. After they were out of here, he would have to sit down and tell her everything that had happened, and what was going on.

Every little detail they hadn't had time for... She forced her mind to hold to this thought as her hand found the door handle, her own door opening a bit more quietly than his had opened. It was used more, she concluded briefly while sliding out of the car, her feet hitting the pavement.

Crouching in that open door for a moment, she turned back to him somewhat, "Be careful..." Doing so went without say, she knew, but she felt that it needed to be said rather than just assumed. She didn't wait for a response from him, one wasn't really needed, and they didn't have time for that sort of thing. Her hands closed the door a little ways as she partially crawled around it, clear of it, she rose up towards the nose of the car and veered left. Lisa kept her mind centred on what she was doing, not allowing it to shift away from the subject of the car alarm, and towards Jackson and what he was doing... or towards what he might be doing.

She could see the front of the car she was intended to bother even before she passed the first car; it looked like a beast, compact as it was. Black, shiny, and generally everything that station wagon hadn't been. The station wagon had even failed to live up to the simple expectation of doing what a car was supposed to do and turn on...

Reaching the Audi relatively quickly, she made her way around the nose of it, and pulled the handle. For a split second, long enough for Lisa's heart to sink, nothing happened, but then the car alarm flared angrily to life, and it caused Lisa to jump back into the car beside it in a mild panic. Blinking, she recomposed herself, and half-crawled, half-skittered back to her feet. Again, remaining hunched over she made her way back to the station wagon retracing her steps somewhat hurriedly.

After this situation was resolved, her plan, regardless of what he tried to tell her to the contrary, was to grab Jackson, get topside, hop a cab, and get away from the airport. They could sort out the details when the threat on their lives wasn't quite so imminent, and probably after Jackson had been allowed to rest. She was in tune with him enough to know that he would be next to useless soon, understandably so, and if this little mishap wasn't to be the final table leg to him coming down, the next one probably would be.
 
RE: Vertigo

Jackson watched as Lisa made her way out of the car and he couldn't help but observe that, this time around, she had worn flats - there was a small amount of comfort in that, but it was also a curiosity: he had never seen her wear anything except pumps to business and formal events. A subtle change in routine - she could run better in flats.

As Lisa moved for the Audi, Jackson slipped out onto the concrete; he dropped into a crouch in the gap between the station wagon to his right and the SUV to his left, pressing the fingers of his good hand to the ground the way a sprinter might do just before the gun goes off; he waited, and the grunt came gradually closer, slow in his examination of his surroundings.

Seconds later and the Audi alarm was blaring, the lights flashing on and off, the shrill noise echoing through the cavernous parking lot; startled, the heavy paused briefly, and then advanced more rapidly, moving towards the sound. Just as he passed the station wagon, Jackson leapt up, catching his footing off the low-riding back end of the station wagon and using it to spring onto the man's back like a wildcat, completely silent in the process; there was a struggle as the grunt tried to shake him off, big hands reaching around for any part of Rippner that he could get a hold of, and he happened to take hold of Jackson's leg, fingers digging into the exact spot that made him grit his teeth through the pain.

Incensed, Jackson used his good hand to grip the man's jaw and wrench his head backwards, throwing him off balance enough to be distracted; in his barely-functioning left hand, Rippner produced the car key and rammed it into the soft underside of his jaw, an action that took a great deal of force, causing the key to dig into the thin cast on his hand, leaving an indent in the material - there was a gurgle of pain, something that sounded unnaturally wet as blood began to fill the lackey's mouth and he staggered in shock. As though for emphasis, Jackson gave the key a twist, damaging more of the tissue and underlying cartilage, and they fell back; Jackson briefly ended up pinned between the station wagon and the astounded man's bulky frame, but a single shove was enough to cause him to topple over, falling to the tarmac and clutching at his damaged jaw.

Rippner moved away from the car, straightening his jacket and taking a breath, running a hand back through his hair, and finally looking back towards the Audi, seeking Lisa's location.
 
RE: Vertigo

Lisa had made her way around the car to the left of the station wagon in time to see Jackson's lanky form pinned between the bigger man's form and the station wagon. Not a sound came from her, because before she could process any sort of reaction to this sight, she watched Jackson push the man from him, and his body fell to the ground. Closing her eyes and fighting back the sick sensation that threatened to rise up, she straightened herself and stepped somewhat unsteadily to the station wagon. It took her a moment for her hand to find the back door, but eventually opening she pulled her suitcase free and extended the neck. Looking back to Jackson she found he had turned around, and their eyes met for a moment, she quickly looking away...

Not nervously, but uncomfortably.

The wheels of her suitcase made more sound than her shoes did as she walked around the back of the station wagon. "We'll hitch a cab," she stated flatly, and the sound of the car alarm in the background still shrilly crying out about the vehicle's violation almost drowned her voice out.

As she cleared the station wagon, her left hand reached out, beckoning him almost as her fingertips touched to his elbow. She was attempting to lead him away from what had happened not for his sake, but for hers; she didn't need to see the man on the ground, she could hear him writhing, had caught the barest of glimpses of him clutching at his throat with trickles of blood seeping through his fingers, and she could hear his wet whimpering. That was enough for her.

"We need to get away from here... We can sort out the specifics of what needs to happen next once we're somewhere safer... and I think that you probably need to rest," she continued, voicing the small little plan that had danced through her head earlier in a rather unorganized fashion, bringing both it to life and her intent to follow through with it. The way she saw things, he was more dependent on her at the moment... True, she had a choice in the matter to just walk away, but where would that leave them both? At the present moment, he needed her more than she needed him. Which meant that if she went somewhere, he would probably be inclined to follow, especially if it didn't go against what he had in mind for them in the grand scheme of things.

Her fingers fell away from his arm as she began walking towards the light at the end of the underground lot, her arm hanging almost limply at her side, "I think that we can both agree that this was a waste..." she murmured, swallowing after the words had left her.
 
RE: Vertigo

When a nice suburban girl was confronted with a man gushing blood from his throat, the typical reaction was for them to scream, panic, and call for help - granted, the situation was not typical, and nor was the suburban girl - but had anyone else observed the scene, Lisa could have been regarded as reacting with complete coldness, simply taking her luggage and walking away.

Jackson, however, saw the glances and the stress in her neck and shoulders - he saw her hand tense, and watched the little divet that dug in beside her eyebrow when something bothered her - subtle, understated. He chose to say nothing, even when she extended an arm and touched her fingers to his elbow, a gesture that gently demanded his compliance, though he initially didn't grant it; as Lisa headed for the mouth of the parking lot, Jackson crouched down beside the semi-conscious man and tugged his jacket open. Without a word, he reached into the breast pocket and extracted the contents: a passport, cell phone, and wallet. He discarded the cell phone with the knowledge it would be more trouble than it was worth and took the remaining items before he moved to follow Lisa, opening the passport and flipping through it, ignoring the way the words had begun to go soft around the edges.

Miguel Fleman, American citizen, forty-one years old. Jackson wondered if Fleman had a family, not out of any variety of empathy, but because he wanted to know if the man would be paranoid now that he knew Rippner had his personal information - the thought might have even been enough to put a spring in his step, if his step wasn't currently burning as a result of Miguel's iron grip on an injury that had hardly begun to heal. In fact, it wasn't just his leg that was burning, it was a feeling that seemed to be creeping through his limbs, coming from somewhere in his chest and climbing up his neck, towards his head; the world tilted sideways for an instant and snapped suddenly back into place, causing Rippner to stagger just once before he regained his equilibrium.

"Not a complete waste." Rippner replied, going through the wallet for anything useful; he would drop it somewhere in the city, leave it for someone else to pick up, let it be swept away by the moving chaos of Chicago, in part because it would make Miguel's injury look like the result of a robbery gone wrong - should security find him before Malevre - though mostly it was because it would inconvenience him.
 
RE: Vertigo

Even though Lisa seemed to have retreated into herself, she was still aware or him, their history didn't allow her to let her forget who she was with, and what had just happened didn't let her direct her thoughts away from what needed to happen. Even though he didn't immediately follow her, she kept walking, knowing that he either would or he would say something countering what she was doing -- if he was doing something with the man he had just downed, she didn't want to know about it. She didn't need the details, and quite frankly, she didn't think that she could stomach them.

The small falter in his step, however, brought her hazel eyes around, her footsteps tapering off as the wheels of her suitcase rolled to a halt. She frowned lightly, the expression faint, barely making it through her inner struggle of suppressing what Jackson had just managed with a key...

Her hands shifted, left hand now holding to the handle of that suitcase as she waited a moment for him to catch up. He was distracted, looking through what was probably the man's wallet, and she found herself swallowing again, like that physical action could keep the thoughts from pouring into her head. Lisa's hand found the small of his back, a light gesture that was more so she could keep track of him rather than help him walk, but it was a silent invitation that if he needed to lean on her he could. If he actually fell over, she knew that he wouldn't be getting up again anytime soon, and she doubted she could more than drag him from the lot. The image of her wheeling him out on her suitcase came to mind, and she actually entertained it for a worse-case scenario, but she knew that that small suitcase would never hold up even under someone with a frame like his.

"We're going to a motel, somewhere far off enough that I doubt they'll look for us there, at least not right away..." She stated, ignoring his comment about what had happened not being a waste, pointedly so. And close enough that you can endure the trip, she finished inwardly. They'd come to the end of the parking lot, and the midday sun was shockingly bright to Lisa given the light change between that enclosed space as the open sidewalk, but she didn't squint it away.

She'd kept away from him earlier because he was Jackson, injured or not, the remains of her own handiwork covering him, but now she was almost forgetting who was beside her in light of those remains.

Lisa glanced to him, and would have looked away, but the sunlight seemed to illuminate details she had missed, or maybe had chosen to overlook during her panic in the elevator. She smirked, her demeanour still somewhat cold in order to hold in the churning feelings she still had for the man they had worked together to bring to the ground, "You look a mess," she offered as lightly as she could manage, attempting to let him know that despite her words, she didn't mean them as a direct insult. Her hand fell away from him as she stepped to the curb, she turning away from him as her attention trained itself to the act of hailing them a cab.
 
RE: Vertigo

Jackson admittedly hadn't looked in a mirror for nearly two weeks now - the chances he'd had to do so, he had avoided with the simple knowledge that there was presently nothing he could do about what he saw. However, he could make an educated guess about his current state: it wasn't pretty. At present, his most visible injuries consisted of the cast on his hand and the bandaging on his neck, but even a casual observer would notice his limp and the present, unhealthy pallor of his skin - not to mention the two weeks of unkempt stubble.

He could surmise that he looked like a mad man; he decided it was a positive thing for now, because it would keep people away from him. Far away from him.

Except Lisa, who was passive-aggressively using the delicate touch of her fingers on his lower back to direct him through the parking lot - a part of him wanted to knock her arm away, put enough distance between them so she wouldn't be able to, but the walk was brief enough that the touch only lasted until the light hit them. Jackson found he had to briefly close his eyes to the sun, finding they burned at the exposure before they adjusted.

You look a mess.

He raised an eyebrow, but felt no need to point out the obvious - she was the one who had caused the mess. Instead, he stood back and allowed Lisa to wave down a cab, aware that he was more likely to scare one away at this point.

Surprisingly, despite being right outside of the airport, she managed to hail one within a few minutes; the thing was old, a classic big yellow taxi, driven by a young, thin man who wore a sideways cap like a gangster; he rolled down the passenger window to peer out at Lisa and offered up the sort of smile that made level-headed women walk away,

"Hey there," he said brightly, unlocking the doors, "Where to, beautiful?"
 
RE: Vertigo

Lisa smiled apprehensively at the man; had this been a situation where she would have been able to be choosy, she would have, but it quite frankly was not. Not when they didn't know when or where or if another one of the people after them was going to appear, and not when she could see whatever reserves Jackson had left in him giving out sometime soon. She wouldn't go so far as to think of her boogieman as helpless by any stretch of the imagination, but rather... merely low on whatever unyielding reserves were keeping him going at an almost normal pace.

She looked back at Jackson, gauging him for a moment before stepping up and leaning towards the open window, "We need a motel," she started, her hands not finding the window edge but instead reaching blindly for the handle for the backdoor of the cab and opening it for Jackson, "...about twenty minutes from here." She'd said the 'm' sharply for motel, even though the thought of staying at a place like that gave her the shivers. She was on it enough to know that signing in to a place that would require identification and other verifying personal information would be risky even if she didn't know the exact reach of whoever was after them. Inwardly, she would have preferred an even greater distance between locations, but if Jackson had actually flown here as she had... which given what he'd told her in the parking lot, that they didn't know she was here... she was guessing he had. She didn't want him travelling further than he had to. They could always change locations later.

Lisa left it at that, being as short and brief with the man as she could manage without being outright rude. Stowing her bag in the trunk after shutting the door behind Jackson, she made her way around the cab, eying the front of the airport as she did so -- for what, she didn't exactly know. She'd checked the street before making to step out into it a little ways to get to the far side of the cab, but a car horn caused her to jump back, releasing a loud gasp as she did so.

Hand over her heart with her other hand pressing to the trunk of the taxi cab, she watched the car speed by before making her way around the cab towards her intended door, this time checking for traffic twice. She slipped into the seat beside Jackson. "It doesn't matter which direction or where," she clarified further, as if she hadn't ever paused with explaining where they would be going to the driver. She could almost hear her pulse in her ears while she calmly fell into the pace of things, her voice not fluttering or shifting at all despite that racing rhythm.
 
RE: Vertigo

The driver's smile stayed firmly in place up until he followed Lisa's line of vision to the man standing a few feet back; he had been distracted by the pretty girl and hadn't noticed her travelling companion - a guy who looked as though he'd just escaped a mental asylum, his neck bandaged, his hand in a cast, and the sort of look on his face that told the story of someone who hadn't slept for days and was precariously close to writing on a wall somewhere about how All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy. He began to rethink his habit of stopping on a dime every time he saw a pretty girl.

Jackson got into the back seat - no luggage - and sat silently in place while Lisa explained where they were going; the driver turned to glance back at Jackson and found he immediately regretted the decision, because the guy was staring back at him, unblinking, with the sort of eyes that made him briefly stop breathing.

"Right," he said, turning back to the steering wheel; on his dashboard was his identification for passengers to see: Eric Green. He had been doing his job for a few years, so he'd seen some pretty crazy things, but once in a while he still got blindsided; he waited for Lisa to get into the car and decided not to comment on the specifics of their travels, though it was a little odd when people didn't care where they were going.

Then again, they were a young couple and they wanted a motel, and in that situation people tended not to give a shit which one they went to, as long as they got there quick enough - though, these two didn't seem like they were exactly all over eachother. He wasn't even sure the guy was fully conscious, given the way he was just sort of staring.

"So, have a rough flight?" Eric asked as he moved into traffic, heading for a busier section of the city, mentally mapping out all of the cheap motels he could think of, "You two are looking pretty tired."

It was the under-statement of the year; Jackson looked like his head might fall off if his neck wasn't bandaged, and right then, he felt that way too.

"Where did you fly from, or are you from around here?"
 
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