knowthyexits | Timeloop Thread #1

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Timeloop Thread #1

Out of all the things she's ever expected of her life, being torn away from a surgical table and brought to an Island isn't one of them. Another thing she doesn't expect is to close her eyes in sleep one day and wake up in a familiar alleyway with a gun in her hands and John being held hostage.

It all goes the same, it all progresses exactly the same. Derek is there and the child is whimpering and then the man pretending to be Sarkissian is shot and John is in her arms. It's different, though, it's different because she hasn't seen John in too long and she remembers the last time they were separated this long.

She won't let go, she refuses, even when out of the corner of her eye she sees faces that, by all rights, shouldn't be there. "John," she says, holding him closer than before. "John, I love you," she says like it's a command, like he needs to respond. "Are you okay?"

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He was dreaming.

Standing in an alley with no recollection how he'd come to be there, no recollection of the events leading up to this moment, only a blank space in his mind and a vague memory of collapsing into bed the night before. He was dreaming, but they felt like memories. Memories that weren't his own.

There was a gun in her hand and a boy he didn't know, a boy she was talking to, holding like a son, and Gaius frowned. Murmured, "Well, this is odd."

Sarah stiffens up, her body turning into ice, ramrod straight and she glares over John's shoulder, suddenly keenly aware that there are more people than just Derek and John in this alleyway. She's reluctant to let go of John, but she sends him with Cameron and exchanges one long look with Derek, wondering if he knows anything about this.

"Sarah?"

"Go, protect him," she says curtly, crossing the distance and keeping the gun held tightly in her hands, not sure yet if she wants to raise it up and press it to Gaius' face. "What are you doing here?"

"Your guess is as good as mine," he said, as calmly as he could manage with her staring him down as if he were the enemy. It seemed that all he could hope for, at the moment, was that she had control over her trigger finger.

"Keeping in mind I have no idea where the bloody hell I am."

She looks him over curtly and quickly, seeing that he hasn't skipped time, not unless he's managed to steal clothes off of someone else very quickly. She keeps the gun raised high, Derek and Cameron gone, but she's not aware if John went with them and she doesn't want to take her eyes off him to check. "How did you get here?"

"In case it isn't glaringly obvious, I'm a bit in the dark, at the moment. The same way I came to be on the island, presumably. I was there one moment, and then I was here," he said, raising his hands slowly between them, a show of submission, "Now, if you don't mind lowering your gun. I'm beginning to feel a bit insulted."

"I'm having a very trying night, Gaius," she snaps, still confused and at least grateful to have firepower back with her. After a long moment, she lowers her gun, but keeps her gaze on him sharply. "We need to get out of here. It's not safe."

"Well then, lead the way," he said to her, feeling absolutely no need to argue. If there was one thing Gaius had in surplus, it was a the drive toward self-preservation.

His eyes flickering over the weapon with an arched brow, he added, "You seem quite good with that. For a waitress."

She wants to go home, but she knows that Sarkissian is aware of where that is. The safehouse is destroyed and she can't go anywhere that will rouse suspicion. Sarkissian is a human threat, but Cromartie is still somewhere out there, at this point in time. She can't chance that danger. "I never said waitressing was all I did. It's just my job."

"No, I suppose you didn't," he conceded, watching her with open wariness. It felt a bit like meeting a stranger with the face of an old friend. Though, in reality, he supposed they'd never known each other that well.

She feels safer with a weapon, though she's not entirely sure she feels right letting him stay at the other end of the gun. She's taken from this reverie by a familiar voice. "Sarah?" calls Derek, sharp and brusque and so impatient, so very impatient and she's missed him. "What's the holdup?"

"Nothing," is all she says, curtly. "I'm coming." She eyes Gaius up and down, not sure what she's meant to do with him. "How resourceful are you?"

"I'm a scientist. I'm not a frakking... soldier. I have quite a bit of experience in not getting myself shot, and if it comes down to it, I have a general knowledge of firearms. Enough not to shoot off my own foot. Does that answer your question?" he asked, a thread of exasperation tinging his voice. Was he resourceful? Gaius Baltar was a rat in the bowels of a ship. He survived, through the harshest of conditions, through pure luck and a willingness to throw all integrity out the window.

"Right now, there are two threats hunting us," she says, already moving out of the alley and tucking her gun away as she tries to think about what they can do to avoid history repeating, but the safehouse is gone and the house is the best place to go. Maybe anticipating Sarkissian will make it different. "There's a very bad man and then there are...other things," she adds after a hesitant pause, knowing she can't say 'the machines' without sounding insane.

"Well, now that you've gone and explained it all as if I were a five year old, the whole situation makes perfect sense," he said, bitingly cheerful and following along behind her with a barely hidden roll of his eyes. He understood the gravity of the situation, of course, but it wasn't beyond him to be a bit immature when the occasion called for it.

A very bad man, indeed.

Sarah's irritation and her panic were edging out her calm and she's ready to bite out words at him. "What do you want me to say?" she demands, easing right into his personal space, her body language as threatening as she can make it.

His first instinct was to fight, to attack. Bryce remembered all to well the last time he had found himself in unfamiliar territory like this. He was unprepared then, caught off guard, but this time was different. This time, he was prepared to defend himself, to fight back.

The problem was, he couldn't tell what he was supposed to be fighting against. There was no immediate threat, no bomb at the brink of detonation, no firm hand on his shoulder, no sudden sensation of cool metal to the back of his neck. There was no threat, and that wasn't something to which he could react. For the first few moments, he stood, helpless, staring down that alley. He was, for an instant, almost lost… and then he saw it. Something or someone down there was moving, and he rushed toward it as fast as his legs would let him. It wasn't until he slowed to a stop that he caught sight of her face, of the boy's, but most of all, of the gun. He had always known she was dangerous, but it wasn't until know that she presented any real threat.

"Sarah?" He called, relieved to find that his voice maintained that air of calmness which he had hoped. He inched toward her slowly, carefully, hoping to close in on her should the need to disarm her arise.

With Cameron and Derek behind her, protecting John -- with the man they thought was Sarkissian crumpled and the girl gone -- she feels like she can take on anything, but she's still thrown to see a familiar face. She steadies her hand and the pressure on her gun and turns just enough to watch him approach, paranoid that he's here for a reason, that maybe he's been following her for a purpose all along. "Don't come closer, Bruce. Stay away from John."

Although he never had any intention of going near John, Bryce nodded along in compliance, knowing that he was still at most risk should the tension start to rise. He even went an extra mile, raising his hands into the air; surrender could only help at this point, whatever faith Sarah had ever had in him now obviously vanished.

"I'm not here for John," he told her, directing his eyes into hers as he spoke. That, at least, was in no way a lie.

Sarah doesn't know what to do. She feels wildly like panicking, but forces herself to stay steady and calm, breathing shallow and trying to put the pieces together. "Did you see how we got here?" she asks, checking her ammunition and reaching a hand out to Derek. "Gun," she demands, and she can see the denial on his lips.

She refuses to let that soften her and she glares harder, accepting another weapon before crossing over to Bruce. "You need to take this and keep an eye out for anything that looks abnormal and if you use it to turn on me, she will rip you limb from limb," Sarah warns curtly, gesturing to Cameron.

"No," it pained him to admit, but there was no way around it. Perhaps in certain situations he could feign more knowledge than he had, but this was not among them, and Bryce had a growing hunch that it was for the best if he claimed as little knowledge about what had happened as possible. Better to make himself the victim than the villain in Sarah's eyes.

The time for secrets and pretense far behind them now, Bryce accepted the weapon and began to familiarize himself with it at once. He checked the clip, counter rounds, and placed it back in; he clicked the safety on and off; he gripped the handle tightly, gauging length between his hold to the trigger.

"Who are they?" He asked Sarah, nodding from the man behind her to the woman (girl, really) she'd just gestured toward. She didn't look like much of a fighter, but Bryce had never been one to underestimate an enemy, especially not based on appearances.

Sarah's quick about movement, already thinking of where they can go and the safehouse is probably the best plan. They're still in the old house, but they can load up on weapons and stop Sarkissian before he gets to them. She can change things. "Derek, Cameron," she gets out tersely, turning over her shoulder to study them. "We need to get the C4. We need to be ready for a threat."

Cameron stares at Bruce past her and Sarah tenses up, not wanting an incident. "He's trouble," she says, in her distant way. "He's strange."

"You're stranger," Sarah guarantees. "Now, go."

"C4?" His grip tightened around the gun's handle, index finger heavy on the trigger, but the weapon remained lowered at his side. Of anyone here, he was most at risk, having the least idea of what was happening, or even where he was. His ability to follow orders may have made him a great agent, once upon a time, but this was a different game altogether, and he wasn't about to mistake stupidity for obedience. He didn't answer to Sarah, and he certainly didn't intend to stand back while they dealt with explosives. "If I'm supposed to help, I'll need to know what's going on."

Edited 2010-12-07 05:55 (UTC)

"Tomorrow morning, someone is going to try and kill all of us," Sarah says, tucking her jacket tighter and heading to the mouth of the alley to go a different way. "In another part of town, someone else is going to kill a dozen FBI agents. I need to be far away from both those events and more importantly, John needs to be far away."

Nothing about that sat well with Bryce, and he didn't hesitate to say so. "You know about these attacks and you're not going to try and stop them?" he demanded. It was dangerous, that was a given, but it had never stopped Bryce before, and it wouldn't now that he knew there were over a dozen lives at stake. Fortunately, his cover as an FBI agent forgave his objection, but even if it hadn't, Bryce didn't know if he was willing to let those agents die for the sake of his cover.

"Every day of my life is trying to stop them," she snaps at him, her lip curling up with irritation and fury at once. "So don't give me that bullshit. You haven't lived my life and until you do, you don't get to tell me what I ought to be doing differently."

"I'm living it now," he argued readily, "and I'm telling you, this isn't the way." Perhaps it was for her, but not for him, and he refused to stand back and let those agents die knowing that he could have done differently. Nothing else mattered in that moment, questions of where and how and why quickly forgotten in favor of the matter at hand, the lives at stake.

Sarah terses her jaw and stares him down, knowing that she wants to be stubborn, but proving her point in this case is costly. "If you go there," she warns, low and guttural as she clouds his personal space, "you will die. I promise you that. You will go to your death if you think you can play hero and make all this go away. You can't change things and you can't beat it. You're just a man."

He had died before. It didn't take.

Bryce couldn't afford to be cocky, at least not in that respect — it had, after all, been the enemy that saved his life — but it would be pointless to pretend he hadn't survived that incident feeling renewed and, to some extent, invincible. For the most part, though, he chose to view it as a second chance. History would not remember him, but that didn't make Bryce's role insignificant, and he had a job to do. Even a near year of living on the island wouldn't change that.

"Maybe so," he allowed, "but I'd rather die playing hero than cowering away. Besides, you've got a son to protect and I don't. Like you said, I'm just a man."

Sarah's jaw feels so tight that she fears it might snap. She can't let Bruce go off. She can't. She refuses to let him die out there when she could stop it. "I won't let you die," she insists, stubbornly. "My son is the most important thing in my life, but I refuse to let good people die. You need to know," she says, her voice shaking just once, "the truth."

This, he quickly realized, was something he had been waiting for since the very moment he first came across Sarah on the beach. That it now took a backseat to survival was only a testament to the danger they were in, and to his own instincts, but his attention was piqued, if only for the moment. "Then tell me the truth," Bryce urged, although he remained doubtful that it would effectively sway him on this matter.

"If you go there, you'll be stepping into a fray you can't win," she says, her tone terse and breaking at every turn it seems. "What those men are facing isn't human and conventional weapons or might will do nothing but get you killed faster. He'll eventually get killed, but it's going to take a lot more than just you or me to do it."

"Who is he?" Bryce asked immediately, deciding this was the first point which needed addressing. Knowing just who — or what, the way she made it sound — their enemy was would arguably be the most important piece of information when going into the fight. Improvisation and preparedness were both useful tactics depending on the situation, but thing one lacked more of the latter than the former, which made preparation all the more valuable.

"Cromartie," Sarah says, hating that she's saying all of this and some instincts in her is telling her to stop this before it's too late -- that there's still time to salvage this, but she keeps speaking. "He's a machine. And a gun won't kill him. Twenty guns will barely damage him. He'll just keep going."

"Like what, a robot?" Stupid though it might sound, the question had to be posed, and as the sole person here requiring an answer, he had to be the one to pose it. If they were going up against a machine, that changed the game more than a little, but it didn't mean he had to give up hope. He had worked with countless new technologies and gifted technicians while assigned to the Intersect project — something he had learned during that time would have to help.

"He's a machine, but yes," she snaps, terse as anything because she needs to get out of there, "a robot. Look, Bruce, we need to get to a safehouse. You aren't safe around me, not right now. If Cromartie doesn't find us, Sarkissian will."

Slowly, carefully, Bryce gave Sarah a short nod of understanding. For all of his questions — ones which admittedly still bounced around back and forth in his mind — he could appreciate the urgency of the situation. Without another word, he took a few aimless steps in any random direction, meant more for illustrating her the others that he was willing to follow along than it was in making any actual headway. He wasn't yet persuaded not to attempt to save those agents in trouble, but for now he had to admit that he was at quite a disadvantage, and the only way to better the situation was to keep gathering information.

"Tell me about Sarkissian," he urged; just because they were on the move didn't mean the answers had to stop.

Sarah's throat tightens when Bruce asks her to talk about that. She digs her keys out of her pocket, heading back to the jeep where John and Cameron and Derek are, not sure how she's going to get through this day.

"I..." She sets her jaw and knows, now, that this has got to be why she's here. "Sarkissian changes everything," she says, staring at Bruce for a very long moment. "He...he changes the way things are." Between her and John, between all of them and Cameron.

"What if I can change it?"

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Timeloop Thread #1

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