capeandcowllogs | A quiet desperation's building high

Entry tags:

A quiet desperation's building high

WHO: Keith Anyan (

motherloaded), Jack Bauer (

ctu_savior), and others involved in the endgame of this plot
WHERE: An empty storefront downtown.
WHEN: Earlier today.
WARNINGS: Violence! Death! Destruction! You know, that stuff.
SUMMARY: With his killings at an end, Keith finally goes down.
FORMAT: Prose to start with.

There isn't any point anymore.

The 'Porter is intact. Keith knows, has to know, that there was never really any chance of destroying it in the first place. Even now, he can only self-deceive so much.

In some ways, the pain isn't helping--he came off rather the worse for the wear in the fight with Beatrice the day before, and he's certain he has a broken rib somewhere. In other ways, though, it's better like this. He's strong enough to use the pain to ground himself in reality. And the reality is this: his plan to fix this world, to stem its poison, has failed. The rest of the police force is certainly onto him by now, and if they aren't, others are.

There's only one thing left to do, and that's bring this pitiful show to a close.

Last night, Keith broke the lock on a dormant storefront that used to house an antiques shop and slipped inside to hide, to nurse his wounds and wait for the inevitable. Now he kneels in the back of the room surrounded by dust and a handful of forgotten items as obsolete as he is.

With one steady hand, he draws a grid in the dust, and he meticulously sets a chipped chess piece, a black queen, in one of the squares.

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There's a trail, of course. With as many people as Keith has attacked, with a fight at the most important building in the City, with an attempt at destroying that building, there had to be a trail, and Jack Bauer follows it mechanically, inevitably, to the dusty, empty store.

He finds the broken lock, draws his weapon, slips inside. There's no anticipation in him at ending this, only sickness and anger and a tiny amount of hope that this isn't what it looks like. Jack has never been exactly close to Keith- has anyone on the force, really?- but he's a police officer and Jack would much rather believe that he's been brainwashed or subverted somehow like Yusuke was. Better that than dealing with a betrayal of this magnitude.

There are tracks in the dust, and they lead only one place. His face grim, Jack follows them until he finds himself looming over Keith, kneeling in front of his strange, dirty board.

"It's over, Keith."

No one has been close to Keith. He's made sure of that. Closeness invites all the things he's spent so long suppressing. Closeness might have stopped him from committing the past week's murders. He doesn't understand that last part. Not yet.

Keith looks up to meet Jack's gaze, his face as expressionless as ever, maybe more so. His eyes are empty. He has no illusions left, no hope that Grandmother will rescue him. But it's better this way--he can embrace the end more fully than he ever allowed himself to before. "No." He stands up. "How inefficient. The forces of my world wouldn't have allowed a man like me to go free for so long."

He reaches for his gun. It's out of bullets, but he knows that if he pulls it, it'll up the ante. "But it isn't over until you destroy me."

"It's over now," Jack snarls, putting his sights on Keith's chest as the suspect's hand begins to travel downwards. "Don't you move! Keep your hands where I can see them!" He begins to realize or at least suspect that Keith has a death wish, that this could be him trying to make Jack the instrument of his suicide. If that's the case, I'm not going to oblige this son-of-a-bitch, he thinks to himself, hot with fury. He wants to see Keith held to account for what he's done, not given whatever escape he might want. You aren't going to play me, Keith, not anymore.

It's hard to hide by now, isn't it? Whatever method Keith might once have had for feigning self-preservation, it's gone now.

He stops for a moment, realizing how he's tipped his hand. Was that a good idea or not? He can't tell anymore. He's not sure he ever could. Slowly, he lifts his hands, palms outward...

...and lashes out with one, aiming with trained precision at Jack's solar plexus with the heel of his hand.

The air in Jack's lungs rushes out in a pained grunt as he doubles over. His hand remains clenched around his sidearm, but he doesn't drop it. Nor does he use it. Instead, he immediately straightens up, and as he steps forward he brings a taser out of his jacket with his free hand. The metal prongs at its front crackle as he jabs it towards Keith's chest.

It would be awfully fitting if Keith were to wind up on the wrong end of a taser. Unfortunately, as far as he's concerned, that's a fast track to being incapacitated and easily taken alive. So it's not going to happen--even if stopping Jack in time is a bit of a challenge. Keith slams the side of one hand down against Jack's, trying to knock the taser from his grasp.

He'll make Jack shoot him, or they'll settle this hand-to-hand. The former is preferable, since Keith isn't sure if Jack could beat him at the latter--but all roads lead to the same end, as far as he's concerned.

Pain shoots up Jack's arm and the taser falls from his grip, clattering to the floor. Keith is strong, and younger than him. Possibly better-trained as well, by whatever twisted future system produced him. It would be safer to just shoot him, but that would be the easy way out. Jack jams his weapon back into its holster, then grabs at Keith's shoulders while slamming his knee upwards towards his gut.

Keith was hoping too much and too hard for that gun. He's not quite fast enough to fully escape the next blow. He manages to pull one shoulder away in time and start to turn to deflect the incoming knee, but it still staggers him briefly. He steps back to try to regain his breath. At his heel, the old black queen topples over.

His mouth twitches.

"I won't go with you. There's no system here that has the right to judge me." His voice is flat and lifeless. "I'm humanity's last defense. That's my destiny."

Keith moves with near-blinding speed, lashing out one long leg to smash a booted foot into Jack's ribs.

Jack cries out and goes straight down to the floor, pain flaring in his ribs, on his hands and knees. He's definitely stronger, he thinks, and grits his teeth. He'll just have to improvise, then.

"You're insane!" He yells as he gets back up, grabbing a nearby antique chair and swinging the expensive old wood down towards Keith's head.

Edited 2011-02-27 01:31 (UTC)

There's a hunger in Keith's eyes pushing him onwards. He wants this over with--all of it, over with. And he won't get that if he doesn't go down fighting.

He dodges forward as the chair comes at him, barely even letting out a breath as it cracks down hard over his shoulders and back. Maybe another rib fractures. He's not sure. It's hard for him to isolate feelings of pain anymore (and maybe that's part of why he can't find it in him to deny what Jack is saying).

Keith brings his elbow up to try to slam it into Jack's windpipe. He's gleaned a little bit of the police code from his time with them, as distant as he's kept himself, and he's pretty sure that if he kills one of them, they'll be more willing to kill him. Besides, this way he makes Jack fight with all he's got.

Jack barely catches the elbow before it compacts his trachea, and the impact stings his palms. That could have killed me, he thinks. Jack realizes that he may have no choice but to get serious here, and weighs his options as he grapples with Keith, holding onto that arm. Jack's carrying a knife, but the moment it would take to reach for it could prove fatal. Instead, he maneuvers himself behind Keith and gets his free arm around his neck while kicking at the back of his knee.

At the same moment, there's a sound of indrawn breath from the front door of the old shop - Matsuka, gasping for air after running across the city, chasing after the familiar cold steel of Keith's mind. He's not sure what he'll do when he finds him, but he has to get to him first, because he knows what Keith wants and he has to stop it somehow.

He reaches the door of the antique shop just in time to see Jack get his arm around Keith's neck.

Keith can't quite wrest himself free of Jack's grip, but he does twist and turn deftly to avoid the disabling kick. It's that turn that lets him catch sight of a familiar face out of the corner of his eye.

A last thought, muffled by the weight of all his shields, slips out. Matsuka. You came. It's hard to read the emotions in it. Perhaps a touch of satisfaction? Or is that disappointment? Maybe a hint of reproval, of this is what you should have done in the first place; but also the faintest flash of uncertainty, of maybe Matsuka shouldn't have to see this...

Keith is just a fraction of a second slow in trying to smash his way out of Jack's grasp. There's a tiny trace of a smile on his face.

Jack has excellent combat awareness, but he almost doesn't notice Matsuka's arrival- his world is narrowing down to him and the other man, to strength, leverage, position. His mind notes Matsuka's presence, confirms that he's unarmed, then files him away as not a threat, focusing on the task at hand. Keith's strong, a few seconds more of struggling and he'll be free and in a position to try to kill Jack again. Jack's not willing to bet his life on being able to fend off the younger, stronger men any longer, not with his ribs and solar plexus aching this badly. He makes a decision.

One hand grabs Keith by the chin, the other grasps the opposite side of his head at the temple. Jack tenses his muscles-

"Damn you Keith."

-and twists Keith head brutally on its neck until he feels something break within.

Matsuka, barely in the act of reaching out from the doorway, feels with his Mu senses the moment that Keith dies.

In the wake of the sick crack of breaking bone, there is an interval of silence. Matsuka can't even breath.

Then the bottom drops out.

Abruptly the whole store shakes under a sudden expanding wave of telekinetic pressure that shatters any remaining windows, knocks old furniture in all directions, and rattles the building down to its foundations. Surrounded by a greenish glow of out-of-control psychic power, Matsuka leans back his head and screams.

Jack is slammed straight to the ground without knowing why- the onslaught is too sudden and too unexpected for him to process anything more than screaming, pressure, and green light at first. As he finds himself shoved against a wall by an invisible force, he looks up to see the source of the power, the man he'd dismissed as not a threat seconds ago. A moment later an old desk slides across the floor and into his chest, and Jack grunts as he feels himself beginning to be crushed between the furniture and the wall. He doesn't understand what's happening, but he does understand that he is in more serious trouble now than Keith could ever have given him.

The outburst kicked up clouds of dust inside the abandoned building; through it, Matsuka looks around with wild eyes. It doesn't take long for his attention to fix on Jack.

You!

In the next instant he's darting across the room, propelled by his own telekinesis faster than it would have been possible for him to run. A swing of his arm buffets the desk aside to splinter in a corner.

Edited 2011-02-27 04:04 (UTC)

His legs scrambling frantically against the floor, Jack hauls himself up to a sitting position against the wall as Matsuka approaches. Uselessly, he draws his sidearm again. "Stand down!" He yells, his voice almost inaudible over the sound of the energy coming off Matsuka. "I am a police officer, a POLICE OFFICER! Back off now!" His other hand takes out his badge, as though Matsuka could possibly care about that shiny little plaque in the state he's in.

Matsuka is indeed in no state to care about the badge - it's hard to tell if he even sees it, and he gives no sign of hearing Jack's words at all. His mouth opens, but the voice that cries out goes directly into Jack's mind.

Unforgivable!

Another wave of telekinetic force surges out from him - this time it's focused on Jack, and it hits like a hammer.

Jack cries out again as he is slammed off the floor and straight through a wall, tumbling head over heels into another room, covered in crumbling drywall plaster. He coughs, partly from the white dust filling the air and partly from the feeling of the air being brutally squeezed out of his lungs by the dual impact of the wall on his back and the telekinesis on his chest. His ribs feel like they're about to give out, his nose is bleeding, he can feel bruises beginning to form all over his body from both Keith and Matsuka. His gun is gone, lost somewhere in the ragged hole behind him. He reaches for his communicator, a cry for help, but that's gone too. His head swimming, Jack lies on the debris-covered floor, tries to get up, tries to think of a way to get out of this alive.

Nothing comes to mind.

Edited 2011-02-27 23:41 (UTC)

Seras had just pulled up in a patrol car in response to Jack's call for backup when she felt the ground shake and saw the windows of the building shatter. Running inside she is just fast enough to see Jack thrown through a wall. She doesn't hesitate, and draws her sidearm to open fire on Matsuka.

"Captain Bauer! Captain!"

Distracted from Jack by Seras's arrival, Matsuka whirls just in time to meet the salvo of bullets with a psionic shield that stops them in midair before they can reach him. His eyes don't focus on her at all; instead he throws back his head in a noiseless cry, and another surge of telekinetic power shakes the building like a thunderclap, kicking up more dust and sending cracks running through the interior walls from the force of impact.

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A quiet desperation's building high

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