Wildlands (rskde & BurningWillows)

[BurningWillows]

Red only nods, "Has either of them woken up at all? I heard someone saying Arya hasn't woken up once yet. What about Kyle?"

She pulled the hood lower, seeing the first signs of actual cover after days of running. Halfway across the clearing she paused, noticing the disturbance in the dirt. Looking up to the roof, she could see someone and sighed in audible relief.

"HEY!" she screamed waving her arms at whoever was on the roof, "HELP ME! PLEASE!"

 

[Risky]

Al shakes his head again. "Neither of them have woken up yet, Red." He says to him before standing up. "You can watch them for awhile, I'm gonna go check on Winters." He says before walking out of the Medbay and up to the roof where he grabs his rifle.

Winters motions for Al to walk over before pointing down at the hooded figure.

Al takes cover before resting his rifle on the wall, aiming through his scope at the hooded figure. "Identify yourself!" He yells down to the figure. "Or at least give me a good reason why I shouldn't shoot you!"

 

[BurningWillows]

She pulls down the hood, revealing her fiery red locks and deep chocolate eyes. Freckles cover her cheeks, and her rosy lips open to speak. She doesn't know it but she reminds the men on top of the roof of someone.

"Please," she yells back, "Please I need your help!

 

[Risky]

"Is that..?" Al starts before zooming in the scope more. He shakes his head before putting his rifle over his back. "Winters. Watch her while I go down there." He says to the man next to him before walking downstairs and out the lobby doors. He pulls his mask over his mouth and nose and putting his cap on his head. This allows him to only be recognizable by his eyes.

He navigates through the minefield carefully before reaching the woman, his eyes scanning her face, only to be disappointed by not seeing the emerald eyes of Emberly. "What exactly do you need?" Al asks her through his mask.

 

[BurningWillows]

She looks over her shoulders like something is watching her, wringing her hands. Her red coat is out of place in the hot country of Bolivia, and she looks like she's been in the woods for days, mud and dirt staining her jeans and the bottom of her coat.

"Please," she looked back at him, "Please hide me. The cartel...their looking for me. Please sir, I can explain inside."

He wasn't budging, obviously untrusting.

"Please," she stared at his clothing, "You look military. My military, not Bolivia's. Please...please let me in. The longer I'm in the open, the easier they'll find me."

There was a rustle in the trees making her jump before a rabbit hopped by.

Shaking, she pulled a picture from her pocket, trying to convince him she was no threat, "This is my sister. I was looking for her when they took me. See, she's military too. Her name was Emberly."

 

[Risky]

A string of disbelief floats through his mind, this was Emberly's sister? They look alike, and it hurts to just look at her.

"I know Emberly, but there's no point in looking for her anymore. Follow me." He simply says before turning and navigating his way back through the minefield.

Meanwhile his mind is going crazy with mixed emotions, almost as if the entire scenario where Skull Face shot his love was hitting him again. He feels his fists clench as they walk into the lobby.

"You're American, then?" He asks her. "What's your name?"

 

[BurningWillows]

"I'm not looking for her anymore," her voice sounds sad as she follows him inside, "The cartel leader...Skull Face...he, uh showed me-"

She cut off, looking both devastated and repulsed at the memory surging in her head.

"They..." she tried to take a breath, unable to continue explaining what they had done to her poor sister's body, it was too gruesome, "I'll tell you later. I know she's dead."

It took a few calming breaths once they were inside before she could talk again, "My name is Serena. So you knew my older sister?"

 

[Risky]

"Yeah, we used to date." Al says quickly. "She was the reason we moved out here to this hotel, she sacrificed herself so that me and my battle buddy Winters didn't die, even though I was the one who wanted to be killed." He says to her.

"My name is Alex, but everyone here just calls me Al, I'm the team sniper." He explains to her. "And the place around us is known as Casper Main."

 

[BurningWillows]

"Wait you dated my sister?" Serena eyebrow raised, "Dang, you were cute looking."

She blushed then, apologizing for the openness of her words. Moving further into the lobby she looked around.

"I was told about that. We were told back home she died in battle weeks ago in Afghanistan. I knew something was up then. She might be three years older than me, but we were always super close, and I knew she wasn't in Afghan."

Serena looked back at him, "I should probably admit now that I can be a little snoopy. I'm a journalist back home. When I heard the news about Emberly I started digging, wound up in Miami at one of the cartel's harbors. I thought I was being sneaky, but I got caught and instead of killing me they turned me over to Skull Face for bait. For Em."

She sighed, "Long story short, Em was actually dead by the time I arrived in Bolivia, but they thought 'Pretty american girl, hey we can use her'. I've been there for I don't know how long, and I finally escaped but they've been trying to kill me since. Thank you for hiding me inside."

 

[Risky]

He nods. "You're not so bad yourself." He retorts before leaning against ones of the walls in the lobby. "The CIA figured it'd be safer for everyone to believe we are dead, honestly we aren't meant to be in this country fighting against the cartel, but here we are." He says to her.

"And now that you're here, Shrake will want to use you, as a soldier or whatever you can do, because we can't technically allow you to leave now that you know we are here." He explains.

"So get comfortable, I'll contact Shrake once you tell me how you could possibly be useful around here." He says to her while crossing his arms and raising his eyebrows at her, listening intently.

 

[BurningWillows]

Her eyes widen more, "Wait I can't go home?"

Her shoulders sag and she almost feels like sinking to the floor, "I'm not a soldier. I got nothing to offer. I'm just a journalist. The only thing my sister and I had in common was our love for languages, really. It was useful with that awful group -they kept speaking Spanish thinking I wasn't fluent. But really, I don't have anything to offer Alex."

 

[Risky]

He raises his eyebrows even more when she says that she's fluent in Spanish.

"Ohhhh, that's perfect, we need a new translator, whenever we capture one of the cartel members, we have to beat them until they start speaking their broken English, but now you can easily get any information out of anybody, or just help us communicate in general." He explains.

He grabs his walkie from his belt, turning it on. But before he speaks into it, he looks over at her. "Everyone here is still recovering from Em's death, so just keep it between you and me that you're her sister, alright?" He asks her.

He then speaks into the walkie. "Shrake, we've got a new translator, I'm showing her to her room." He says through the walkie. Shrake gives him the green light to do so. He motions for Serena to follow him, walking while talking to her.

"Sorry you can't go home, but once we're done here we're all going back to the States as heroes, so it really isn't as bad as you're making it out to be." He explains.

 

[BurningWillows]

He's a little awkward with how blunt he is, but she finds it somewhat charming that he isn't beating around the bush. As he leads her upstairs, she listens and nods, unsure why she can't tell anyone she's Em's sister.

"I don't need to be a hero," she smiled, "I'm more for enjoying the simple things in life, like a job, take out, se-"

She cut herself off, blushing at what she just about said.

"Um, so uh..." she stuttered, trying to change the topic, "I'm not going to have to stare at more dead bodies am I?"

Because that's an even better topic then sex! Goddamn it Serena, get it together.

 

[Risky]

He shakes his head. "Not unless we get attacked here, but you'll get used to it eventually I guess." He says to her. "Sorry if I'm a bit forward, I'm a trained killer, I don't really have many social skills." He explains to her.

He leads her to the open room next to his. He points to his door. "That's my room, if I'm not there then I'm on the roof on watch duty." He explains. "And that's your new room, it's in good condition considering this is a bombed out hotel." He says to her while pointing to the door next to his room.

"So, you can do whatever until Shrake has something you need to translate, maybe you can grab the radio equipment from the storage room and intercept some transmissions, if you want to, I mean."

"And, I'm here whenever.. If you need me for whatever, considering you enjoy lifes simple pleasures." He says with a laugh, obviously joking about what she had just said.

 

[BurningWillows]

"I might take you up on that," she smiles back, joining in on the joke before adding, "Would you mind helping me bring up the radio equipment. I'm not sure what I'm looking for. Sure I might be fluent in six languages, but that doesn't teach you how to properly toast a pop tart. I have no idea what I'll be looking for."

 

[Risky]

"Sure. Follow me." He says to her, walking towards the stairway and walking down to the basement of the hotel, where a large crate of dusty radio equipment sits. He grabs the sides of a crate and lifts it up, turning towards her.

"I'll carry it if you want, it's not very heavy." He says. In reality it weights around fifty nine pounds, but he is trained to lift way more than that. He walks back upstairs with the equipment before placing it down in her room.

"Anything else?" He asks her, leaning against one of the walls of her room, which he seems to do a lot.

 

[BurningWillows]

As he sets the crate down she starts rummaging through it, looking at all the pieces and whatnot.

"Were these my sisters?" she asks all too quietly, hiding the shakiness in her voice.

 

[Risky]

Al nods. "She was always on duty, constantly on this radio here, she would help us find out exactly what was going on and how we could stop it, or keep it going." He explains.

He kneels down next to her. "She was an amazing person, I couldn't have asked for a better person at my side." He says to her quietly.

 

[BurningWillows]

She tried to hide the tears, but as he bends down near her they start to overflow, spilling down her pale freckled cheeks.

"Alex," she sobbed, leaning into him without permission, one hand covering her eyes as they cried, "They've...they've..."

Serena's trying to tell him, but the memory makes her want to gag. But this is the first shred of kindness she has felt from anyone in weeks, and she clings onto it, crying into his shoulder.

"They still have her body," she sobs, forcing the words out, "They've...oh god Alex, they staked her body and hung her in the main courtyard like a fucking decoration. They made me sit in front of it...for hours...staring at my sister's dead eyes."

 

[Risky]

He seems shocked by her leaning into him at first, but he awkwardly wraps his arms around her, trying to comfort her while she cries.

"Yeah, every dead Ghost is a trophy to them. We're gonna kill all of them, I promise, okay?" He asks her quietly, trying to soothe her with empty promises.

He doesn't know if the Ghosts will actually complete their mission. But now he wants to, to avenge Em.

He strokes her hair softly, he knows that Em used to like it when he did that, so he sees if that soothes her too.

 

[BurningWillows]

The tears start to subside as he strokes her hair. The only other person who ever did that to comfort her was Emberly.

"She's the only Ghost they've strung up," she whispered, "The rest are just burnt after a day or two of celebrating I was told. But they treat her like some object. Alex, is there any way we can get her body out of there. They...do things. Defile...things. I haven't slept because of it."

She shook in his arms, disgusted with what she had seen, "I know its stupid to ask, but I had to. Every time I close my eyes I see hers, staring at me. They look so sad."

 

[Risky]

He nods. "We'll do something, just for right now you gotta rest, alright?" He asks her quietly. "You've obviously been through a lot." He says to her. She reminds him so much of Em, and as much as he wants to get his ex girlfriend properly buried, he knows it's suicide to run straight into the cartel's courtyard.

"You gotta tell me where Skull Face is, and then we're going to kill that bastard." He says to her while continuing to stroke her hair, considering it seemed to start to calm her down a little bit.

 

[BurningWillows]

She listens, murmuring thank yous when he says they will.

"I can show you on a map," she explains, pulling away from his shoulder and getting up, offering her hand to help him up. She's not sure where to find a map, but the adrenaline is still coursing through her and she doesn't feel tired. She lets Al lead, wanting to show him now, while its still fresh in her memory.

"They moved me a few places, so I saw a couple compounds," she explained as they walked, "They'd strap me full of explosives and stick me in their trucks with the cocaine. Their doing it with a handful of girls Alex, they load us in like we're objects, and then if they get pulled over or attacked they use us as bait, or they just blow us up."

She lifted her arm, showing still healing scars down her pale arm, "They're assholes. But that was the other thing I wanted to tell you, about the kidnappings. They're taking girls, teens and early twenties, like me. You should warn...whoever, that all their compounds and cargo trucks will be rigged to blow now. With these innocents inside. Some are from Bolivia, but most of them that I met are from America like me. Most of us were kept were Emberly's body is. If we can retrieve my sister's body, maybe we can save some of the girls and get them back home."

 

[Risky]

Al nods. "Yeah, one of our teammates named Kat warned us about safety devices on their trucks, we can easily take out the trigger man from a distance if you can identify him." He explains.

Al leads her into his room, closing the door when she walks in. He grabs a map from his bag and opens it, placing it on the bed.

"Right, point them out and I'll mark them." He says to her, grabbing a red marker from his pack and getting ready to mark the locations she mentions.

 

[BurningWillows]

They take seats on the floor, and Serena chooses to sit right beside Alex, pointing out spots. She starts where she remembers being flown in, and explains how it was a lot of landmarks she had to memorize. It takes them a while, Serena pulling it from memory piece by piece. After a couple hours they're finished, the map marked up with several different compounds she'd seen, and the main one she was at the most, circled twice.

"Now what?" still untired and feeling a little better that she's being helpful, Serena hopes that Alex has something else for her to do other than sending her back to her room.