CANINE

She moves like she works here, or at least used to. The helmet light attached to one of the rails on her skullclamp is doing its work today, clicked on to illuminate wherever Emily, alias Tundra, is currently looking. This is strictly off the books, and she can bet that Blue Umbrella is going to be here soon enough, so she's trying to work fast... and succeeding.

Papers are picked up and scattered back to the floor in seconds. While he works on the filing cabinet, she's taking out a screwdriver, expertly removing the side panel from a PC block and, rather than try to download its contents, just taking out the entire hard drive to shove in one of her multiple dump pouches. Makes sense why she has more of them than the magazines on her vest could fill. "Because I like to know what's going on and I already have a feeling that when the BSAA gets their hands on this stuff it's going to disappear."

One hard drive, two, then over to a whiteboard on the wall. She raises a hand to her helmet cam, takes a picture, and keeps moving. "The pen is still mightier than the sword, Charlie, just not in the same way it used to be. Forewarned is still very much forearmed, and I want to be as forewarned as it's possible to get."

Now she's on her way over to help him with the cabinet, having moved through the rest of the room like a very focused dervish. Out comes a small prybar with a thin spade, stuck between drawer and body to pop the whole thing out. She leafs through the first few folders, then jumps to the back.

Plus, he had learned a long time ago that there was no point in asking questions. Only thing it did was cause trouble; and usually the kind that got you kicked off the team and unable to do anything anyways, or killed. The sword had always seemed plenty mighty to him.

“Whatever you say, Em.” He continues leafing through the folders he pulled from the cabinet with little clue what he’s looking for until he finds a couple of random medical reports. He doesn’t bother trying to read them because he’s not going to understand anything anyways, just rips them out, folds them up into a neat little square, and tucks them away in a side pocket.

The next drawer he goes for is stuck fast. The metal warped inward like it’s been kicked, jamming the top of the drawer against the lip of the cabinet. His first attempt to muscle it open just breaks off the handle, so he reaches for the knife at his belt, intending to pry it open until Emily glances his way.

You, uh, want to go... watch the door?

He pauses, noting how much faster she’s clearing the room than him, and nods. Fair enough. He sheathes his knife and moves to the door, peering down both ends of the hallway with his gun held at the ready.

It’s silent.

He keeps a steady watch as it stays that way until the sound of Emily rustling through paper after paper is interrupted by a far away squeak of boots on concrete. He whips his head to the left and dials in. It sounds like one set- no two, and coming this way fast. He ducks back into the room and signals to get her attention.

“Possible hostiles approaching.” It’s more of a guarantee. They’re the only two members of the team and of the BSAA period that should still be here; which left the only other occupants as Blue Umbrella or whoever had left this mess in the first place. “At least two.”

military involvement wasn't too uncommon given the tight security around and in the facility itself and given the amount of investment put into them however there was usually was hints to when and why.

“What the- I had it earlier. I know I did.” He mumbled to himself in disbelief. Where was it? He’d let himself in this morning so he had it, just not anymore. Shit. Chris was going to kill him. He could not lose his badge. He did not have the kind of security clearance that could be easily waved off.

He turned with a growing expression of panic, missing the fact that the janitor had already offered to help, as he began scanning the floor at their feet. “It’s gotta be lying around here somewhere. Have you seen it?”

" you don't, you don't fucking understand. " his hands move around, they lift, sway, wring into fists. he scratches his palms on his filthy jeans, soaked in the blood wine flooding the basement of the castle, covered in cobwebs from the dank halls of the house hidden in the mist, laced with holes burned through it by the bile spewed out by the submerged monstrosity, frayed to near ribbons by the claws of dogmen. his clothes barely cling to his thin frame. biting air leeches his body heat, he shivers without notice, too wrapped up in his fervor. he needs to explain it, no matter how insane the story is. " you don't... "

a sharp, shaking inhale, pressed out in a cloud of fog, spiraling, swirling as he refuses to sit back down.

" they butchered her. those freaks, they... hang on, i have it here. " he spins, yanks his bag from the ground and sinks his fist into it. the contents bang against his split knuckles until his numb fingers find the soft-shelled journal. he rips it from within, drops the bag and flips through it. he locates the thick vellum, the note he found like so many others, tucked between the pages of his own handwritten notes. " this, this isn't my writing. this was, i dunno, someone. he says right here, ' miranda turned her into crystal with her touch. ' " he holds the crumbled paper before him, the delicate scrawl across the speckled page speaks of the villager hiding in the shadows and watching miranda touch the strange infant, the child's form turning into glittering crystal, than each of the lords taking a piece of the child and placing them in the amber flasks bearing their family crests, to hide away from the outsider who would come for his daughter soon.

Miranda, crystal, shadows, flasks- they cut Rose into pieces? Jesus Christ- he wished that wasn’t believable but after all the shit he’d seen in the village he wouldn’t put anything past these freaks. But it didn’t mean Ethan’s daughter was alive either. In fact, he was pretty sure being chopped up and stuffed into jars meant being super dead. Images in his head, hallucinations, and the Duke? Who the fuck was the Duke saying all this? This was madness.

But Ethan sure seemed to believe it. He could read it in his face, the hunch of his shoulders, the desperate edge in his voice. He had already dealt with the lords. Alone. This was real to him.

He shifted uneasily again.

“Mr. Winters, listen-“ he started and then trailed off. What worth did his words have? No matter how he felt they weren’t going to make things right, and it had been the right move to try and get the jump on Miranda. But Ethan’s words had sent the slow creep of guilt crawling up his spine. Right move… but they had failed this family. Failed Ethan most of all.

After a moment of hesitation he sighed. “You just have to go to the goblet…?” Christ, what was he even saying. He should not be feeding into whatever this was. But it wasn’t a bad idea to keep moving either, and if he came with him maybe it would stop Ethan from running off alone and doing something stupid as soon as his back was turned, or dying of a hysteria-induced heart attack.

(not that a team atmosphere changed that entirely, of course. if you're going to die, you're going to die.)

emily does little to wipe blood from features, instead opting to yank gator back up over features, masking the mess to some extent (though it seeps through fabric; weave turns darker, sticky in a sense as it glues itself to the high points of her face) - the pressure is uncomfortable across the bridge of her nose to say the least, but it'll go without the weight of sunglasses, which she leans over to swipe upward off the floor. they're plenty broken at that point, and she stuffs them with a touch of annoyance into parka pocket. an easy thing to replace, but annoying none the less.

" even if it is, that's a problem for later. " her tone is steady, eyes boring through assailant as if she'd kill him a second time with stare alone. there are times when she wonders if she's getting too old for this game, if there was younger blood more capable of remaining the slight step ahead. but life was precious, it's why giving it was the most important thing one could offer - and there was something that didn't sit well with asking of others what she could still do herself. gloved hand rises, she pats charlie's arm through layers, clearly grateful.

not that he needed to act, but that he still chose to. circling all the way back around to, thank god for a team.

" you say that like these fuckers can't get back up sometimes, canine. " sentiment is punctuated with a quiet kind of laugh; it's not funny, but in some way it has to be. there's a distinct desire to disconnect the horrors - untangle oneself from recognizing the weight of umbrella's actions or whatever. shoulders roll under kit and slings, hand leaving charlie's arm to collapse back over the rail of gun. " besides, i can't ask you fine folks to get covered in that mess. " the corner of eyes crinkle with a smile as hand rises, pinching mount so that night vision would slip back down over stare. thank god she'd had them up, a much more expensive fix than a pair of sunglasses.

Or at least he liked to think they had. He considered them all friends, but he wasn’t always on the money when it came to those kinds of things.

“Roger that.” He said easily. Even with all the shit he’d seen during his relatively short tenure at the BSAA, it was still hard to wrap his mind around the fact that sometimes the things he shot dead didn’t stay that way. Mutants, zombies, werewolves, all kinds of nightmares made real via mad science experiments existed now. Compared to his SEAL days he felt like he lived in a completely different world.

He fell back into step quickly, they needed to hurry if they were going to make up the time they had just lost. He kept one eye on Emily for a few more moments but, possible broken nose or not, she seemed to be moving fine. Good thing. A lot of his job would be easier if more people were built like her.

They’re already out the door and away from the house when he remembers the cry he had heard. There’s no time to stop but- “What happened to the kid?”