There was neither peace nor quiet anywhere to be found at the impromptu checkpoint on the road to Paradise, but the closest thing to either was the spot Ruth Truewell had picked for her and Will's recovery. Not inside the tent - far too hot and stuffy in there - but in the shade behind it. Will was still out cold, lying on a cot with a half-finished bag of saline connected to an IV and a pulse oximeter on his finger, while she sat on a milspec camping chair, the back of her head leaned against a taut part of the tent's canvas and her eyes closed. The world wouldn't go away no matter how hard she tried, but it was worth trying anyway, just to be sure. At least Will was finally taking a forced break from being her problem. And God willing she would never, ever have to get inside an isolation suit again. Just squeezing herself into the Blackhawk back to Wolf Creek would be enough of a challenge for today.

"Dr. Truewell?"

With some effort, she opened her eyes and turned towards the voice of Agent Tarzi. His head was just where the sun shone past the tent, so she raised a hand to shield her eyes from the glare.

"Just checking if there's anything I can do for you," Tarzi said, as if he needed an excuse to be there.
"No, thank you, you and your people were very helpful," Truewell said, motioning to the stacks of equipment and packaged materials for the labs back at Wolf Creek. "How goes the…recovery operation?"
"It's going," Tarzi said. "Only so many bodies we can take back with each run and we're losing daylight." He seemed to think. "Oh, we're still waiting to hear on the…screws. You know, the device components Dr. Anthros wanted us to trace. Probably have to send you the report later." Another pause. "You really did a number on your colleague. I don't wanna pry, but…I guess I just want to know if this…if this is normal, for you."
"On this scale, no," Truewell said. "Oh, you mean Dr. Anthros? No, he is…under a very large amount of stress, and he deals with that by hyperfocusing on things he can control and needing to fix everything around him. This is just an especially bad episode."
"I don't blame him," Tarzi said.
"I can give you contact information for us, they'll get the information on any evidence you find to the right people," Truewell said.
Tarzi smiled. "I'll just have it sent your way and you figure it out from there, okay?" he said. "This has 'above my pay scale' written all over it. And I think the less I know, the better I sleep. That about right?"
"Yes," Truewell said. "Very much so."
"Then I'll leave you to it until your ride gets here," Tarzi said. He produced a small plastic bottle from his jacket and held it out for her. "Here. Gotta hydrate."
"Thanks," Truewell said, taking the bottle of water, then returning to her breathing exercises.
"Don't mention it," Tarzi said. "Those suits really take it out of you, huh?"
Truewell's breath was interrupted by a dry chuckle. "I have worked very hard to work in an office or outdoors rather than in a lab."
"I like nature, too, but you have to admit the aircon is shit," Tarzi replied. "Okay, last thing before I really stop bothering you, there are some sandwiches in the gas station fridge. I don't know if we can manage hot meals before you go, so if you're hungry…"
"Thank you, you've been too kind, but even though I know it's probably safe…" Truewell said.
"Gotcha," Tarzi said. He paused again, as if searching for another excuse to keep talking. "Well, then…I'll leave you to it. You need anything, just shout."
"Thank you, you've been a big help, Agent Tarzi," Truewell said.

This time she waited for him to leave before closing her eyes again and going back to her breathing. The dry desert air started to pick up into a slight breeze as she drew in another calming breath, held it, and let it out again. Breathing really was something you took for granted when you're not being suffocated by a nanotech nerve agent or crammed in a plastic bag, Truewell thought. She really did mean her thanks to Agent Tarzi, and she made a mental note to write a more proper thank you later, when she was…well, when she was back in her office, whenever that might be. With everything she could see coming up, she would need her nerves as settled as they could possibly be.

The drive back South had been a welcome hour of respite for Jaime. The company car they had checked out for her from the motor pool was one of a half dozen black SUVs there, for that interchangeable Federal Agent vibe, and aside from being a bit bigger than Jaime's little truck, it drove pleasantly enough. Navigation in the dash instead of directly in her head was a nice treat as well. In fact, just going through San Francisco again and getting on the Bay Bridge eastward, there was a quietness in her that almost made her feel normal again. The sun briefly disappeared as she passed the Yerba Buena Tunnel, second lane from the right on the interstate.

Then Nathan was back in her head.

"Operations here," he said. "I'm showing you a few minutes out, so I thought we'd take the time and go over the briefing materials."
"CBP Officer Jaime Sommers," she reeled off, "investigating irregularities with the shipping manifest of the KS Regal. I have a warrant that covers the cargo inspection and hardcopies of their paperwork. I have five containers to check, they'll look up the row by the serials and send some dockworkers with me to open them up. Don't forget to seal them back up with the special tape after we're done looking around. Did I forget anything?"
"The gun," Nathan sighed. "You forgot the gun."
"I didn't forget it," Jaime said. "It's in the trunk."
"I know I can't make you carry, just saying your cover would," Nathan said. "How's the suit?"
"It's fine," Jaime said.
"Oh, this is important," Nathan said. "Duress code. Like, I'll know when - if it gets physical, but before that, if you get into any trouble you think you can't handle, try to work 'just doing my job' into the conversation. And if they give you any static, you tell them you'll get your supervisor on the line for them. Top contact in the phone, goes directly to me. I'll sort it out with them, it's basically my second…well, third job, at this point. You hang out around here long enough, you get the hang of that officialese."
"Ambrose?" Jaime said. "I got it. I read the brief a couple times."
"Okay, okay, I got it," Nathan said. "That you got it. That's good. There's just, uh, kind of a lot riding on this. And I don't wanna be the guy who didn't bring something up that shoulda been brought up, you know, at the post-fuckup debrief the Colonel looks at me and goes, Ambrose, you failed to mention to Sommers that so and so was this and that, directly contributing to…you know? Like that, that's what I don't want." He paused. "I'll shut up now."
"Bledsoe wouldn't send me on something dangerous," Jaime said as she pulled the government-plated SUV in front of the first long row of warehouses. "All right, what's the first place?"
"Kriophoros Ltd., should be the third…fourth one from the entrance," Nathan said. "Winged helmet logo, very original."
"One of Hermes's epithets," Jaime added. "Greek company?"
"Looks like," Nathan replied.
"And what's the first place I should actually be worried about?" Jaime asked.
"Fortuna S.A.," Nathan said. "Eighth in that row. Red diamond logo."
"Then let's get going," Jaime said.

It was rare that Becca's deafness conferred any sort of actual benefit, but the free period at the end of each school day definitely counted. Her fluency in American Sign Language meant that she could opt into performing arts instead, and a few basic CG designs and a promise to design flyers for the theater program later, the last period of the day was hers to spend at the school library on their computers. The library staff never checked on her - after all, they were so locked down that she couldn't possibly get into trouble. That would have been true, if not for the bootable live OS thumb drive Becca made just for that purpose. Today, though, what was normally posting on robotics forums and talking about Doctor Who and Rocket Girls had been turned over to a very different purpose.

The surface level search on "Bledsoe" and "Will Anthros" and "Promethean Dynamics" turned up more or less what Becca expected - the story of Jonas Bledsoe, former Army officer turned think tank fixture that used his insight to become rich off of various DotCom boom investments and founded Promethean Dynamics, a cutting edge biotech firm working on a wide variety of pie-in-the-sky medical advancements. Will was his genius lead researcher into projects like advanced drug delivery systems, virus vectors for gene therapy, and other cutting edge projects that would certainly make them rich when they came to market in 10 years. It all made a decent amount of sense - if you had no idea who William Anthros was or what his actual interests and expertise was in. Becca knew Will understood biology well enough, but the utter lack of anything robotic made her suspicious right off the bat. Above and beyond that, however, was the fact that everything on normal searches for the whole business stopped after two pages. Becca tried three different search engines and an array of different searches, and came up with nothing beyond the press releases. No conference talks, no patents, no interviews with business associations or puff pieces in the press. It was like Becca was looking at the set of a TV show - every time she tried to open the door of the facade it turned out to be just plywood held up by 2x4s.

Fortunately, Becca had more than just a normal browser on her live OS. A few moments later, her onion routed browser connected, she navigated to the most conspiracy-friendly techie dark web forums she knew, and kept digging. A half-dozen forum searches later, she had a new ominous phrase to dig for - Wolf Creek - and a place to ask it in. It was another forum in that oh-so-conspiratorial green-on-black color scheme, going by the name of BeyondUltra and distinguishing itself by explicitly warning her to use a throw-away email to register an account. Inside the member's area, there were well over a dozen subforums, the topmost one designated for 'encrypted intel drops', geographical subforums named after their respective DOD unified combatant commands and an in-progress knowledge base with articles on basic 'tradecraft', electronic surveillance equipment and general survivalism. The rules, such as they were, shone brightly atop the list of subforums:

No real names.

No politics.

Do not violate your clearance.

So, just the usual bunch of intelligence cosplayers, Becca surmised. She clicked the link to the USNORTHCOM subforum and dug through a long list of posts tagged '[FR]', apparently mostly member-submitted reports of going planespotting near military airfields and speculating about squadron movements. The most exciting bit of news of the last six months appeared to be a possible sighting of a new model of conformal fuel tank for the F/A-18, backed by shaky telephoto shots of jets parked on a desert runway somewhere. Becca sighed and started on a post of her own.

[Background Requested] Promethean Dynamics

Following up on some OSINT leads that don't add up. Officially, Promethean Dynamics (link) is a biotech research company based in Santa Clara. Lacking context leads me to believe they are a front for another covert purpose.

Becca smirked a bit. Not so hard to ape that kind of style in her writing.

Known actors:

Jonas Bledsoe, US Army

William Anthros, PhD

Related terms:

Wolf Creek (?)

Grateful for any pointers in the right direction.

-gmhfeynman

She posted it and leaned back. It wasn't that she honestly expected anything to come of this, having gone down a few wrong turns in the rabbit hole already, but it was at least something she could do from where she was sitting. What would be the next step, though? Hire a private investigator? Well, she couldn't exactly call the FBI or the CIA or the NSA, could she? Becca sighed. Some days, it felt like she could actually hear the drone of thoughts in her head, bouncing every which way except where they were useful. People always told her she could do anything if she applied herself. Did that hold for saving her sister from…whatever was actually going on with her?

She refreshed the page before her to check if anyone had actually replied in the last three minutes. She knew it was unlikely as hell, but still, there was a chance, wasn't there? Her eyes scanned the list of topics again, and it took her a few seconds to notice that her post wasn't showing. Before she could work through the possibilities of how that could be, her eyes were drawn to the top of the page, where a little number next to her username in the top right indicated that she had a new direct message. Becca clicked it and hoped for the best.

FROM: BeyondUltra Admin

TO: gmhfeynman

gmhfeynman,

we have removed your posting about You Know Where. Discussion about this location is not allowed on our board.

Do not repost, do not discuss this ruling on the board, do not DM us about it. If you do, you will be permabanned. Consider yourself warned.

Her first reaction was the obvious: frustration. What the hell was that message about, what was the deal, why couldn't she ask about…Wolf Creek. The two words shot up to the top of her mental priority list. If there was a rule about it, someone had to know something about it, and all she had to do was find them and talk to them and convince them to help her, and then…

Then the anger really came in. Becca, as a rule, didn't put too much weight on what grown-ups told her she could and couldn't do. A certain amount of being preached at was to be expected, dealt with, ignored. Occasionally, she would finally see the point and go with it. But those sermons came from people she knew, people who tried hard to impress something upon her because they wanted the best for her (or at least claimed they did). This was different. This was some Internet tough guy deciding that she was Not Worthy, talking down to her for violating a Super Secret Club Rule posted nowhere. Telling her that she wasn't good enough. Worse than even that, in Becca's mind, was that this bullshit was in the way of protecting Jaime from whatever she had gotten caught up in. And that just happened to be the fastest, surest way of pushing Becca Sommers to get something done.

That seething anger was not helped when she backed out to the forums list, refreshing the page to show another new message for her. She clicked it before she had time to worry about what it might say.

FROM: Oscar77

TO: gmhfeynman

Notified of your question. I'm going to make this simple for you: don't throw around the name Jonas Bledsoe like that. You have no idea who's reading and how far they'll go to find you.

Becca sunk back into her chair and ran her hands through her hair. She felt her face flush deeper the longer she stared at the message.

This wasn't just one asshole powertripping on her. These were people, plural, telling her where she couldn't go and what she couldn't know. Telling her to give up. But this one was different. This one actually sounded like they knew something, they just weren't ready to give it to her. Becca snorted. A new target was in sight now. She felt herself mist up, just a bit, but didn't bother wiping her eyes. Instead her hands returned to the keyboard, and in a single burst she typed and sent a reply.

FROM: gmhfeynman

TO: Oscar77

And who the hell are you?

Walking out of the latest dead end, Jaime allowed herself a yawn. Three containers in a bit more than two hours, to go with all the paperwork and procedures. The sun was getting low enough to notice. At least this time, Jaime had had the opportunity to text Becca that she wasn't coming to pick her up from school.

"I didn't know that we exported petroleum jelly by the shipping container out of Oakland," Nathan said, interrupting her train of thought.
"Well, it's all gotta go somewhere after Richmond," Jaime replied.
"Richmond?"
"Big oil refinery? Up past the Richmond Bridge?" Jaime said. "Well, at least I know one of you isn't from around here. Or gets out north of the peninsula, like, ever."
"Yeah, you got me," Nathan said, not clarifying what she had caught him in.
"Next up is…" Jaime asked.
"Vendaval SL, Spanish import/export of industrial computer components, or computers for industry, or…something, their listings are bad even by semi-shady import/export standards," Nathan replied.
"Sounds like an actual suspect," Jaime said.
"And you would be right," Nathan said. "Heads up on this one."

Jaime paused to knock on the office door next to the tall loading dock rolling door.

"Customs agent, looking for someone in charge," Jaime called out.
"Just a minute!" a bright voice replied. Jaime heard footsteps inside the building besides the sure stride of one person coming toward her. Then the door opened and an athletic-looking man five years her junior peered out into the California sun, the tie on his sleeveless shirt flapping a bit in the breeze. "Oh," he said, looking down at Jaime and then scanning the area around before his eyes settled back on her. "Customs?" he asked.
"Special Agent Sommers with the CBP, I'm here about some irregularities with the manifest from the KS Regal," Jaime said, stepping past him and into the office. "I have a list of containers I need you to run and show me the contents of any of them you still have." She pulled a folded piece of paper out of her jacket pocket and handed it over to the man. "Here's the warrant, Mr…"
"...Sanchez," the man replied. He took the warrant, but barely glanced at it, seeming more interested in looking her up and down. "Uh, sure, yeah, anything we can do to help, I'll just take you to our shift supervisor, Mr. Lewis, he'll sort you out." He indicated a door on the other side of the open-plan office. "Right this way."

Sanchez seemed to make no effort to go first, so Jaime started walking towards the door. As she went, she scanned the interior of the office. Lots of other, athletic-looking men in their early to mid 20s, all with that same unflattering sleeveless shirt and tie combo, including two guys with glasses that she could tell were simply cosmetic as well.

Either the benefits here include a really nice gym package, or these are the fittest office workers I've ever seen, Jaime thought.

As she passed them, she thought she felt their eyes follow her. When she was at the door, a glimpse at the reflection in the spotless window of the door confirmed what her bionic ear had already told her: two men behind her blocking the way back, one to her back left and two more to her back right, flanking her.

"You can go right in," Sanchez encouraged her. Jaime did so without turning around, pushing the door open and letting it fall closed behind her.

The office was cooler than the rest of the building, its own little AC unit whirring away in a corner. There were filing cabinets, a desk and even a potted ponytail palm in here, but it didn't take Jaime long to spot something that wasn't there: the other import/export companies she had visited that day had at least one wall calendar of some description, usually a wide poster-sized one with more or less systematic scribbles on it to account for ship movements, transportation capacities and important deadlines. Her eyes fell to the man at the desk, only slightly older than the office workers outside and of similar build. He, in turn, regarded her silently, waiting for her to speak up.

Jaime raised her eyebrows. "Containers are on the warrant?"
He looked at her for a few more seconds, then nodded. "All right," he said. "Sanchez will take you to see them." He looked her over again. "Get a hi-viz vest and helmet from the locker outside. We don't have accidents around here and I want to keep it that way."
"Both I and OSHA appreciate your attention to detail," Jaime replied.

Jaime grabbed the vest and the helmet from the open locker outside the door and slid them on as Sanchez led the way. The warehouse was fairly empty of activity now that she was inside it proper, save a large section cordoned off with a plastic drop cloth hanging from the tall ceiling.

"Renovation," Sanchez said, noting her attention. "Something about lead paint or asbestos or whatever."
"Right," Jaime said, keeping her eyes ostensibly on the walled-off section of the warehouse but in reality noting that after waiting a few moments, the rest of the office had emptied out behind them, the six other men all following along behind them. She hadn't seen any concrete evidence of any wrongdoing yet, but the muscle-bound entourage following her and loosening their ties, combined with the sudden distinct lack of anyone else working the warehouse, told her gut to sit up and pay attention and Jaime knew to trust that.

Sanchez affected a little whistle on the way, as his steps were in sync with the swing of his arm, rhythmic and even. He wasn't walking her anywhere, he was marching.

Jaime slowed her pace just enough to fall a few meters behind him - although she could still hear his whistling bright and piercing in her right ear, and the dull impact of the crowd of footsteps behind her. "I think we're on the right track," Jaime whispered. "I also might be about to be murdered - so much for no danger."
"Goddamnit," Nathan hissed. "Fuck. Got your audio telemetry, you're…fuck, they're following you. Stand by, when I tell you a direction you run -"
"What if this is just drugs or something?" Jaime whispered as the voice remained eerily silent about who exactly these people were. Sanchez was still marching up front, still whistling.
She heard Nathan sigh, very loudly, into his microphone. "You're there, it's your call, Sommers," he said. "Abort to the left coming up in five…four -"
"I'm staying," Jaime whispered. "Thousands of lives, right?"
"Right," Nathan replied. The faint background noise of his channel dropped from Jaime's hearing, just long enough for some cursing into a muted microphone. "Just say the word and I'll guide you out. Just…try to get where others can see you."
"I'll keep it in mind," Jaime whispered.

Now that she was in the thick of it, Jaime had to force herself to stay focused as the flood of information from her right ear and eye rushed into her mind. The slow march through a few twists and turns of the container stacks, the gaggle of footsteps behind and now to the sides of her, keeping their distance but slowly closing the net around her. Sanchez walked into the gap between two container stacks towards a dead end, and Jaime knew that her chance to get out clean was gone. But she kept going, closing the distance as if nothing at all was wrong. Sanchez had now turned where he stood, right next to the container, and he flashed his teeth at her like he'd been told once what a smile was.

"Here we are, Agent," Sanchez said. "Give me a hand on the right side, would you?"
"Happy to," Jaime replied. Sanchez went to the left-side door, while Jaime went to the right. She looked over at Sanchez and saw that he was waiting on her, probably making sure she was occupied with opening the door.

Jaime took a deep breath, opened the shackle on her side, and swung the door open. After a moment of staring into the dark, the image amplification in her bionic eye kicked in. The whole container was clad with stapled-on, thick plastic tarps. A workbench with a side-mounted metal sink stood off to the right side, bolted to the wall. Above it sat a small fume extractor and a hand shower with a gravity tank attached. There were tiny traces of chemical residue on the work surface, almost glowing in her eye's near infrared sight. Towards the back of the container sat several hardcases, strapped down to the floor. She couldn't begin to guess what was in them.

"Well, shit," Sanchez said right behind her. "I thought that was the empty one."

Jaime's reflexes from walking late at night kicked in immediately, and she dropped into a crouch just as Sanchez's hands went through where her head used to be. She flipped around and punched him in the gut with her right arm as hard as she could - only just barely knocking the wind out of him.

"Run!" Nathan hissed in her ear as she sprung up.

Jaime threw another punch that Sanchez just stepped out of range of. As Jaime squared herself up to Sanchez, he straightened back up.

"Bad move," Sanchez said.

He reached up to his shirt and ripped it open, exposing a metal-and-plastic device that seemed to grow out of the middle of his chest. With a thump from his hand, the device sprung to life with the tune of several micropumps within. Jaime watched as microspasms traveled through Sanchez's muscles together with a deep red skin flush. With a second his arms looked swollen, almost bulging out of his shirt sleeves. Jaime could hear his heart thumping, too. It wasn't a good sound.

"What the fuck," Jaime said, echoed in her ear by Nathan.

Sanchez sucked in a deep breath and started panting, the effects of whatever was being shoved into his system sucking the oxygen from his lungs almost faster than he could fill them, and as he swung a fist at Jaime, his shirt's sleeve tore entirely free of his chest. Jaime lept to the side, her bionic legs carrying her just fast enough to dodge the blow as his fist smashed the side of a wooden crate behind her. "You're gonna fucking die now, bitch!" he shouted, spittle and rage spraying from his mouth as the effects spread down his body and started to strain his pants and belt.

"I think now you should run," Nathan said.
"...yeah," Jaime replied, sending a front kick at Sanchez - which felt like kicking a brick wall. She stumbled back slightly before her legs rebalanced. "Uh, full power now?"
"Shit shit shit," Nathan said as Jaime heard his fingers fly over the keyboard. Sanchez bellowed again, and now Jaime didn't need her bionic ear to hear the others charging towards the fight. "Okay, hit him again!"

Jaime summoned her self-defense training as Sanchez rushed in for another punch. She chambered her leg and delivered her best side kick straight to his chest - and with it blasted both him and her into opposite sides of the container alley. Her right arm flew behind her on reflex, cushioning the impact and letting her roll off the container's side, landing back on her feet. Sanchez got the worse end of the deal: he hit his container siding hard enough to rupture the sheet metal, embedding his right arm and shoulder in the material.

"Woah," Jaime said.
"Up!" Nathan shouted in her ear. "Jump up!"

Jaime jumped up. Even without thinking about it, clearing seven feet from a standstill felt like nothing, despite the protest in her guts, but it wasn't enough to clear the stacks of containers around her by itself. Her left foot found the top of the door she'd swung open as she grabbed for the lip of the container above her, and between her bionic right arm and her normal left one, she quickly hauled herself up and over the edge before Sanchez - or whatever his name was - could grab at her ankles.

"Run!" Nathan shouted at her, again and again.

Jaime ran for it, all forty feet of the container. The far edge left her no choice but to jump down and hope for the best; her legs cushioned the drop just fine, though, and she barely slowed down from hitting the ground. The sounds behind her, amplified and postprocessed by her bionic ear, almost made her feel Sanchez's breath on the back of her neck. People weren't supposed to move like Jaime just had, but he had followed her this far. It took her until the middle of the next set of containers to realize she was doing an Olympic 100 meter dash pace and still gaining speed. She wasn't even breathing that hard for it. She wasn't losing the shouts and heavy footsteps of Sanchez and his friends behind her, but they weren't getting closer to her, either. She'd have felt better about that if she knew the way back out, though. There was no telling how long either side would be able to keep this up.

"Feeling like Ms. Pac-Man here!" Jamie shouted.
"Left, left, over!" Nathan said. Why did he sound out of breath? "Jesus, they're - fuck!"
"What?" Jaime shouted.
"They're trying to box you in!" Nathan said. "On your right!"

Jamie turned her head just in time to see another goon's fist come at her. What would normally have been a duck turned into a slide as the poor soles of her shoes couldn't cope with the sudden change of motion, and Jamie ended up more or less limboing under the blow. Looking cool cost her her balance, though, and she skidded to a near stop barely on her feet. Behind her, Sanchez was closing in and in front of her, two more goons - also nearly bursting out of their clothing from the strange devices mounted to their chests - moved to cut her off. Things started to look very bad.

The only way out was through. Jaime took off again, heading right at the two goons in front of her. They both looked big enough to pound her to paste, both were coming at her with full speed - and neither of them seemed to know which of them should actually tackle her. Pushing all her chips onto the table, Jaime timed the moment the two got close enough to touch each other, then sank down on her knee and pushed off the ground again. That running jump took her a bit higher than the standing one, about ten feet, maybe - just enough to clear the goons trying to reach and pluck her out of the air. She landed, heard them stumble behind her - all that momentum wouldn't just stop on a dime - and kept running, taking a left to follow the tracks of an overhead crane parked maybe fifty meters away from the latest scuffle. She silently prayed that she had enough of a lead now to make that before they could intercept her. That little move wouldn't fool them again.

There was thumping to her left; Jaime chanced a look sideways. It was Sanchez, matching her stride for stride - but he looked even more twisted than her last glimpse of him. His bulging muscles seemed to be quaking from the effort, trails of blood ran from his nose and his eyes seemed almost solid red. She watched his rictus grin open up for one gasp, only for a spurt of blood to shoot from his mouth and mark his face. Within a few more steps he stumbled, rolled over the tarmac and flopped across it, the momentum flinging his ragdoll limbs this way and that way until he finally skidded to a stop.

"Ahead!" Nathan screamed at her.

By the time Jaime turned to look forward again, she was three meters away from the crane. Jumping up was pure instinct at that point, but even that couldn't bleed off the speed fast enough. Jaime almost flew past the crane's leg, her right hand just barely grabbing onto a hydraulic line as it brushed over the otherwise smooth steel. Engineering being on her side, the line ripped free of the frame before her arm ripped free from the shoulder socket; her momentum now carried her on a swinging curve around the crane's leg while the ripped line soaked her arm in hydraulic oil. Finally the swing intersected with the crane's leg again, slowly enough that she could bring her feet forward and cushion the impact.

She was past thinking about where she was going, exactly, or listening to what Nathan was shouting at her, she just grabbed onto that line for dear life and pulled herself up at best speed. Down below were a couple of monsters hunting her. Up was away from them. That was all that mattered. Halfway up the leg was a crossbrace running across the crane's frame; by the time Jaime had climbed up to it, she didn't have a plan, but she did have the next few steps figured out. Take the brace, jump over to the gantry running in the middle, take the stairs up to the boom, then…find a way down on the other side. At least all that crap they had put in her head kept her steady through the clambering.

Climbing off the leg onto the crossbrace, she locked her eyes on the gantry, and holy shit was that far away. It seemed a lot easier a moment ago when the plan was "trust her bionic legs to make the jump" but now that she was staring at a 15 foot gap over a much larger than that fall she had to clear from a dead standstill, it just seemed insane. The vibrating of the structure and the harsh full-chest sucking of air below her as a couple more of the hulked-out goons rattled the structure as they climbed towards her reminded her of what else seemed insane, and so she drew in a superfluous breath and moved. Her knees bent smoothly, preparing for yet another display of the raw power of her bionic legs. She pushed off with enough force to rattle the frame, flying through the void in the middle. Oh shit oh shit fuck went her train of thought, until the gantry came up beneath her - and further beneath her than expected. Jaime barely tucked her head in time to avoid slamming her head into the beam holding up the next floor of the stairway as she sailed clear over the safety railing and slammed against the steel-wire netting on the far side. If that wasn't there, she would have sailed straight through the structure.

Jaime pulled herself up off the deck just as she heard one of her pursuers below ripping his way past the locked cover of the access ladder a few floors below. Jaime forced herself back to her feet and turned to look at the stairs leading upwards. Half of her was screaming to keep going, the other half that there was nowhere to go to. But if she could keep them from getting up to her, well…Jaime turned and ran the other way, heading to where the walkway started at the ladder. Her pursuer was two thirds of the way up that ladder; she braced her hands on the rails to either side and chambered her knee for a downward kick.

"You're dead, bitch!" one of the other men shouted from underneath.
"Fuck you!" added another.
"How hard can I kick him and not kill him?" Jaime hissed. She'd have to find a quiet minute somewhere later in the day to be scared of how cold she sounded.
"Make it hard enough that he notices!" Nathan fired back, helpful as ever.

The face of the man coming up to meet her looked almost feral, with streaks of snot and blood from nose and mouth, eyes bloodshot and nostrils flared out. Almost like Sanchez, just before he'd…before he'd keeled over, and -

Jaime kicked. Her foot smashed down with what she thought was maybe half force, but without any soles to cushion it, she could all but feel the man's nose break from the impact - but fortunately just that. Whether she had genuinely knocked him out or just made him lose his singleminded focus she couldn't tell, but she did see him drop off the ladder and fall down, landing with an oh-so-clear thud on his shoulders. Jaime stared at him for a few seconds, watched him roll onto his side and then lose his lunch. He was twitching, though. She told herself that she had just knocked him out. As he lay there, the shivering all over his body seemed to first intensify, then slowly fade; his frame shrank back down and the swollen muscles all over his arms and shoulders seemed to…Jaime knew "deflate" was wrong, but it was the only word she could think of.

"Fuck," she heard one of the others murmur. They weren't shouting anymore.
"Hey! There's…there's more like that if you come up here!" Jaime shouted down. Her head suddenly started swimming - from the adrenaline, maybe. "Why don't…" She shook her head, trying to clear the pounding from her ears as she gasped for breath. "Why don't we just go our separate ways?"
"Fuck," one of them whispered.
"We gotta take her out, fast," another replied.
"How?" the first hissed. "I'm two past red. You?"
"...three," the second whispered.
"This ain't happening," a third whispered. "Fall back. We have to sanitize the site."

There was no further shouting from them. Instead, two of them grabbed their fallen friend and dragged him off with them. They ran back the way they'd come, no longer nearly as fast as when they had chased her.

"Sommers?" Nathan called to her. "Sommers, do you copy?"
The danger past, the blood rushing back into Jaime's head hit her hard enough to almost knock her off her feet. Her head went from swimming to spinning, and it was all Jaime could do to just grab the railing and hold on as she kept gasping for breath. She felt like she both couldn't catch her breath and was drowning at the same time. "I can't - I can't breathe…"
Everything is under control, the voice in her head told her.
There was quiet on the line for a moment. "Sommers, listen to my voice," Nathan said, quieter and slower than before. "Your oxygen levels are fine. I think you may be having a panic attack. You will be okay. Close your eyes and keep breathing on my count."
Jaime's hands started to feel weak and her legs stopped responding to her efforts to stay upright, until suddenly she couldn't close her hands at all anymore. Everything is under control. She barely managed to roll to one side and hit the plating rather than faceplant directly into the railing. "I can't…I can't hold on…" she muttered as she tried to close her hands.
"You're okay, we'll hold on together," Nathan told her. "In. Hold. Out. Hold. Lie down if you feel woozy. In. Hold."

Her breath steadied, then a few seconds later, she felt like she didn't have to breathe at all. Her hands wrapped around the handrail just as she commanded. The voice in her head was quiet. What had it said to her? Something about…

"Sommers?" Nathan prodded at her again. "Jaime!"
"I'm fine," Jaime said. She sounded fine. "I'm fine, Ambrose."
"...okay, that's good to hear, that's very good," Nathan said. "Can you tell me where you are?"
"Still on the crane," Jaime said. "Those guys really chased me all the way here?"
"...yeah," Nathan said.

Jaime looked over the handrail, all the way down to the tarmac. Nothing about how she had gotten up here felt at all real, but the oil-soaked shreds of her suit begged to differ.

"The team is five minutes out," Nathan added.
"Oh yeah?" Jaime said. "I'll…I'll meet them at the offices." She looked around. "After I get down here."