Timeloop Thread #1

[knowthyexits]

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?"

Comments

[knowthyexits]

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."

[defected.livejournal.com]

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.

[knowthyexits]

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.

[defected.livejournal.com]

"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.

[knowthyexits]

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."

[defected.livejournal.com]

"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."

[knowthyexits]

"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."

[defected.livejournal.com]

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.

[knowthyexits]

"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."

[defected.livejournal.com]

"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.

[knowthyexits]

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."

[defected.livejournal.com]

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."

[knowthyexits]

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."

[defected.livejournal.com]

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.

[knowthyexits]

"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."

[defected.livejournal.com]

"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.

[knowthyexits]

"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."

[defected.livejournal.com]

"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.

[knowthyexits]

"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."

[defected.livejournal.com]

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.

[knowthyexits]

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?"