UNBROKEN

FULL STATS & BIO // INSPIRATION // VISAGE

—  the alibi,  29th may 2044,  with johana herrera.  @joxherrera

as he makes his way to the alibi under the protection of night time, nik wonders why his tired bones bring him back to that basement every month. there is no healing in violence, this he knows. and yet as he steps down into the poorly lit basement, nik can smell catharsis. it lingers of every corner of this place, and it’s this that entices him to come back each time.

here, his brother has no control, and while it doesn’t mean nik can fully set down his armour and be free, there is a silent promise of secrecy about this place. so with his eyes on the current fight, nik allows himself to let loose a muted laugh as a particularly good punch lands.

it’s then that he catches the sight of jo next to him. he acknowledges her with only a nod, eyes quickly turning back to the fight playing out before them. one of the bodies in the ring parries their opponent, dodging a forceful hit that nik was sure would be enough to knock them out. another grin shines on his features as the display of skill plays out in front of them. only once the fight dies down in energy, both fighters starting to run on fumes, does he turn his head to look at her. “didn’t fancy it this month?” he asks, nodding towards the ring.

•

The fight is bloody but they always are, if you don’t know how to duck. Jo watches without flinching, though she does grimace at the sound of bone likely breaking beneath the force of a blow. She gives Nik a sidelong glance and scoffs, amusement coloring her expression and tone as she looks at the two large men duking it out in the ring. “Little ole me? Fighting one of them?” She shakes her head, smirking, “I wouldn’t stand a chance, Nik.” Oh, she’d stand a chance, and they both know it. Bulk did little against agility and the willingness to play a bit dirty, which Jo always was. Better to win the match than lose for playing fairly. And in the Alibi the only rule was to win or give up rations, and Jo had given up plenty early on to learn she never wanted to again. She’d been hungry before and didn’t fancy it anytime soon again.

“What about you? Didn’t feel like showing off tonight?” People would watch the current match without complaint but they came for Nikolai’s. To see Alexei’s brother show the ruthless Volkov side of himself. The one they rarely saw when he was in enforcer-mode, running things with control and certainty. 

2nd june. the alibi bar. with @joxherrera​​

the night is cool, stretching out blissfully empty ahead of eva. things have started to return to something of normal at the qz over the past few weeks, the calm after the storm assembling slow and steady along with the rebuilding they were doing around the zone. the chore routine hadn’t quite returned to its normal rigor yet either. it’s why eva finds herself here with time to kill. 

she doesn’t often frequent the alibi. with ration cards slim to come and the only other starring quality of the location being the fight club eva avoids incessantly, there’s never much reason for her to. but she knows the fight club’s schedule is clear – she had made sure it was before she’d taken a seat at the bar; the disarray around base has her seeking comfort in uncomfortable corners.

a bottle in each hand, eva slides back into the stool she’d previously occupied. she slides one of the bottles over to jo, already raising her own to take a swig. “you’re getting the next round.” she states, tone light and tongue a little loose. “–bottoms up, yeah?”

•

Jo is used to feeling restless. Her entire life has spanned before her in a maze of choices, moving from one point to the next, never settling down, never catching her breath. Even in Idaho Falls. Recently, the familiar faces she’s seen have set her on edge, coupled with the storm several weeks back and the subsequent repair work  – it left Jo wanting a reprieve. It’s how she ended up in the Alibi alongside Eva, downing her drink as her friend gestures at her to drink.

She needs very little encouragement to do so and snickers, taking a healthy swig from her bottle and waving a hand at the bartender, indicating another two drinks should be ordered. “Somehow, I always end up getting the next round, and the next round, Rhie – how does that always happen?” Asked with a grin as she hands over the newly proffered bottles of amber liquid. It’s not great but it’s something, and that’s all they need right now.

 The relief that sets into Felix’s shoulders is quite obvious when the splinter is removed. To think that such a miniscule inconvenience could inflict so much pain was always baffling to Felix. “Hey now, don’t your highness me,” he said with a laugh. “I’m just tryna ensure you don’t have to listen to me whine about it all day.” he said, shaking his hand a bit to loosen it up.

 “Really though, thanks. I was helping moving some lumber and debris earlier – guess a whole bit went right through my gloves.” He’d need to see about patching them later, cause he really didn’t want to have to deal with that again. And given the current state of the place, the likelihood of having a repeat was higher than he’d like. 

He shouldered his backpack and hopped off the bed of the truck, closing the gate before making his way to the passenger side door to hop inside. “We going clockwise or counter, do you think?”

•

“No one’s making you whine about it, even if it stays stuck all day,” but she tosses the tweezers back at him and hops inside the truck. She adjusts the mirrors as he rambles on and indicates going counter clockwise. “We’ll want to be closer to the mall when it gets darker, so let’s start further out and make our way back in.” As confident as she is in her ability to survive these days, she’s in no mood to test it out. 

The confusion that passes over her face has him questioning his memory more than anything. Maybe she wasn’t the one he remembers that had passed through Jackson, needed a bit of patching up before she was good to go. Maybe she just looked like her. Or maybe he was just completely out of line, his head untrustworthy enough as it was.

But her head had jerked in such a way that seemed to indicate she wanted him to follow her. He hesitates only a moment before deciding it can’t hurt and rises to his feet, following through the exit to the cafeteria that she’d indicated, rounding the corner that he thought he’d seen her go around.

He barely understands what hit him before she’s got him shoved up against the wall, a forearm against his throat and something pressing against his side - presumably nothing good. He hisses at the sudden, jarring motion of it all, pain flaring from injuries still healing. But mostly he has to choke down the immediate response that rises in him, the sense that he needs to fight her off.

“Sorry,” he finally mutters, strained against the pressure of her forearm, though he’s not even entirely sure what it is that he’s apologizing for. “I must’ve confused you with someone else. My mistake.” He gestures vaguely with his free hand before holding it up in a sign of truce. “Will you let me up?”

•

Why is he here? It’s the first thought that crosses her mind as she stares up at the man. Her past is her past and any part of it showing up in Idaho Falls was a threat. A thread that could unravel everything. “I think you did,” she relents, if only for the fact that he helped her once. Jo retracts her knife but doesn’t release her grip on him entirely. “I’ve never been to Jackson before.” she says though, it seems, they both know it’s a lie. But before Jackson was Portland and it’s too close for comfort for her. 

He still has absolutely no idea what to do about this. They’re going to be trapped, and nobody’s going to know what happened to them and it’s not - you can’t not know. He doesn’t know where the people he has left are - doesn’t know if he even has them left. People move past him in a blur of limbs and stuff and noise. He isn’t seeing any of it. It’s like - he knows he should be helping but he can’t. The ringing in his ears drowns it all out. A familiar-ish face swims into his vision. She’s saying something at him and he doesn’t understand what. It’s still fuzzy. Fingers snap in front of his face. He blinks at them, and they don’t disappear. Huh. Matty allows himself to be dragged towards the stairs before reality clicks back in. The screeching’s overwhelming. He can be helpful. He can do this. He’s charging up the stairs before he even really thinks about it.  

•

Compassion has no place in a time like this, building shaking and winds howling around them, like a wolf before the hunt. Maybe if they weren’t in imminent danger, Jo might’ve been kinder – more understanding. But she can’t be. There’s so little margin for sympathy these days and absolutely none right now. So she drags Matty back to the stairs and pushes him into action, following him back up and then down, up and down. 

Who: closed ! @joxherrera​ When: June 10th Where: Grand Teton Mall, food court

Getting a share of rations, even ones that were rumored in hushed tones to be on the ‘lighter side’ than they used to be, was something Gabe was still adjusting to. He felt like he needed to be rationing out the already rationed foods - as if what he was being given for the day was something he should be hanging onto, just in case, for days to come. Even the small bowl of assorted vegetables and potatoes that sat on the table in front of him he was picking at slowly, carefully - both like it needed to be preserved and like he was afraid he was about to lose it all at once.

It wasn’t just protecting the bowl of food in front of him that had his eyes searching his surroundings, the faces that passed. He was used to the discrete - or maybe not as discrete as they thought - glances sent in his direction. He knew his arrival, nearly dead in the middle of a storm trespassing where he shouldn’t be, wasn’t as easy to swallow by some as by others…In the end, the gazes didn’t bother him much. He didn’t care much about the opinions of strangers, anyway.

No, it was the familiar faces that he was more concerned about. Ones that haunted his dreams. One in particular that was said to be stalking these very halls, too. Fortunately, the familiar faces he’d come to find in Idaho Falls so far were friendly ones. At least, he really wanted to believe so.

And this one - this one was a face from many years back…

He raised a hand to gesture in her direction, pointing a finger as he thought a moment. “You - You were in Jackson, yeah?” Jackson - a place that he was still thinking about, wondering whether he’d made the right choice in coming to Idaho Falls instead of going back there. “It’s - it’ll come to me…” His memory wasn’t quite what it once had been, and he’d never been particularly good with names to begin with. Besides, if he recalled correctly, she was only in town for a few months or so.

•

The weeks drag by in the wake of the storm. Repairs and recon and rations are the only thing on anyone’s mind. Rations, especially, are an immediate problem because there are so few viable solutions. With most of the gardens destroyed and food stores blown into oblivion by gale force winds, everyone’s been pulling double time, doing everything they can to rebuild and replenish. It’s exhausting work but Jo welcomes the distraction as, she suspects, most Idaho Falls residents do. 

Her morning shift ends when she grabs food for lunch, leaning against a dirty wall of the food court (always something to her back if she can help it). Jo pushes around her food, the sad vegetables looking as unseasoned as ever but food is food is food and she stuffs a few bites into her mouth, chewing and glancing around the small sea of people before her.

Morale is low and if faces didn’t give it away, the lack of talking and general din of unnatural quiet would. She pushes off the wall, taking another bite of her veg and discards her empty bowl when someone’s voice makes its way to her ears and she glances up. Spotting a familiar face is jarring on the best of days but especially on a day like today where her patience has run thin, well worn and weary. Her survival instincts kick into over drive on demand and despite giving him a confused look, as though she doesn’t know what he’s talking about, Jo jerks her head towards an exit. 

who - @joxherrera​

where - near the gates

when - 27 may 2044

Felix sat perched on the edge of a truck bed, one leg hooked under the other knee, eyes keenly focused on the cuticles of his finger. Though his hands were well calloused, scared and rough from years of assorted labor, it would seem that even then with the added protection of his gloves, splinters were still something that Felix counted at one of the world’s worst annoyances. Like just about everyone, the days after the storm had been filled with no end of various tasks cleaning up the mess that had been left in his wake. Getting trapped in the water treatment plant had left him no exception to the fact that all hands were needed on deck. And hauling out the splintered limbs of trees that had toppled had left him with a splinter shoved up his finger that had been bothering him immensely since the day before. 

He and another soldier were slated to make the unenviable patrol to restock some water and basic supplies at the look out posts that dotted the wall that ran perimeter of Idaho Falls, and when he heard the crunch of boots on gravel, Felix looked up from his hands. “Hi, you Johana? I’ll be ready to go in a minute,” he said, adjusting his grip on the tweezers he held grasped in his left hand. While Felix could use both of his hands interchangeably for the day to day task, there were just some things that required a minute dexterity and finesse that Felix preferred to use his right for. And unfortunately his right hand was the one with the splinter. “Actually, could you give me a hand? I swear I’ve got a splinter the size of a needle shoved up my finger and I can’t get a grip on it with my left,” he said, holding up the pair of tweezers with little enthusiasm and a sheepish grin. “Oh, and uh, I’m Felix. Sorry, should’ve started with that.”

•

Jo observers the storm’s lingering damage as she trudges through town towards her appointed meeting place. While she doesn’t usually mind working with newbies, she doesn’t want to play babysitter today as they venture out to the lookouts along the wall. Still, she takes her assignment in stride, backpack slung across a shoulder as she moves around and over fallen branches and tree limbs. It will take weeks to clear it all, and that was being generous. The devastation the storm left was more than just physical damage. Supplies were diminished and the means of getting more had been damaged. Gardens uprooted and soil upturned in the violence force of the tornado’s gale. She approaches and gives a nod in his direction, “that’s me, you’re Felix, yeah?” Jo glances behind him to take inventory of the water in the bed of the truck. In the grand scheme of things, it might not seem like much but given the state of affairs, the jugs might as well be liquid gold.

  “Jesus, what did you do?” she asks, nonplussed by the request as she takes a few strides over to him and grabs his hand unceremoniously, inspecting the offending splinter in question. Snagging the proffered tweezers, she twists his hands towards the light of the mid-afternoon sun and furrows a brow.  “Did you like, jam it in or something?” The fact that he was complaining about a splinter already told her all she needed to know about him but she keeps that thought to herself and proceeds to pick at it until, finally, she snags the end and pulls it free. “You good now, your highness?” Jo deadpans, tossing back the tweezers in his direction and heading towards the driver-side door. “Because I don’t know about you but I’d like to be done with this run before it gets late.” Before the sun goes down. She’s not afraid of the dark but she’d be an idiot not to be on her guard once it’s dark out. 

“Ándale, muchacho,” Jo gestures at Liam to pick up the pace. “You walk like you’ve got nowhere to be.” Her impatience spurs her on as they trek through town in the aftermath of the tornado. It had blown through Idaho Falls like a motherfucker and several of the already run-down buildings never stood a chance, the middle school included. It’s why they’re out there in the first place, searching for a new abandoned building that hadn’t been completely destroyed by the storm. One that could serve as a new lookout since the middle school was no longer viable.

She kicks up rubble as she climbs over debris, dust covering the tops of her worn boots, mud caking the bottoms. Patrols have been going out less and less the days after the tornado hit, so anyone not on one was charged with tasks intent on rebuilding and reinforcing and, in Jo and Liam’s case, recon. Several others had gone out too, reporting back their findings so they had to search elsewhere to at least have something to bring back to the enforcers. And as afternoon quickly bleeds into evening, Jo is keen to get a move on so they can report back. 

Chaos reigns as people shout and yell and move, move, move. Hauling ass and supplies down to the basement as the fucking roof starts being stripped away. The high-pitch screech of the storm and the metal bending to its will is sharp enough that Jo’s teeth ache and the hairs on her arms stand up as she grabs another pile of supplies. She stampedes down the concrete stairs to the basement level, intent to get as much down there before the entire godforsaken building is torn apart. She’s not too keen on staying down there but with the river far enough away from them, she holds out hope that it won’t flood. The soldier is moving fast, too fast really, but they all are – or they all should be. But she ends up nearly running someone over and swears, half at them, half in annoyance and only trails off when she sees who it is.