The mate to a key and lips to a secret.

[enigmaestro]

WHO: SKRULLOCK HOLMES, TONY STARK, EDWARD NYGMA, NORMAN OSBORN, DR. JOHN ZOIDBERG and YOU!
WHERE: The Quarantine Room.
WHEN: February 22nd (evening) to February 24th (afternoon).
WARNINGS: None necessarily? Bickering doesn't merit a warning.
SUMMARY: Skrulls in the dungeon. Well, one anyway.
FORMAT: I'll introduce the setting in paragraph, but you choose what format you prefer.


The area for the quarantined is spacious and clean. Although technically under police custody, the room is established in a large auditorium of City Hall. There are five walled 'dividers' that offer the quarantined the semblance of privacy. Never mind that every inch of the room is taped on camera -- cameras that Mitchell Hundred can control with a word. Never mind that there are armed guards on the other wise of each exit. Never mind that the communicators of the quarantined have been disabled from encryption capabilities.

They were allowed a bed. Access to any bathroom was to be monitored. Meals would be provided. They were handcuffed but not leglocked. If any of the number disagreed with their situation, heavier imprisonment was negotiable.

The quarantined were to be questioned by those in authority, or those who were experts on Skrull detection. Or those who thought they were.

ooc || begin a thread with your character name in the heading. anyone can tag into your thread, including other quarantined individuals.

Comments

[hacktivist]

He was surprised to recognize the dull ache inside, a strange grinding where ordinary pain was processed.

"Ah, yes. Regrettable, especially with the benefit of hindsight."

The acknowledgment was more hushed. Soft. "The knowledge that the woman she replaced is likely dead also does not comfort you. Clearly for us both, friendship is a grievous tactical error."

[alldeduction]

"Yeah. I'm sure you do think that." His face and voice were hard as stone.

"But you're wrong. She died a hero and I wouldn't trade her friendship for anything. It's no error."

[hacktivist]

Ghost was silent for a very long moment.

"I did not say she did not die a hero. She--and you--are both martyrs to your cause."

It was odd, though. Friendship. Species loyalty was par, but--this--didn't quite fit with what he knew about Skrulls, from home. He was trying to process, realizing he had made a different...and much more serious error.

And aloud, slow, rearranging the pieces. "Vulcanus is not in any danger from you. You are in danger from Vulcanus."

[alldeduction]

"Don't even try." He said, with a scoff. "Just don't. Don't pretend you have any idea what's going on, because you don't."

[hacktivist]

"You won't enlighten me. I may as well guess."

He turned away from the divider, then turned back, projecting from his gauntlet an image of the Højere base.

"ImPorts destroyed this facility. Made themselves a minor nuisance to Vulcanus--a financial itch that needed scratching. I don't know what company line they fed you. Offered you protection, perhaps. If they knew you knew how dangerous this world we have encroached on was to anyone different. You. Candy-..."

The lenses dimmed suddenly, sad little dying stars.

"They are as responsible for her death as I am. They will use you all and leave you for dead. Corporate policy."

[alldeduction]

"No. You can't pin her death on anyone but yourself, Ghost." His face was hard and he was brooking no nonsense about this.

"We made our choices. I have no interest in your propaganda."

[hacktivist]

The sound he made was unique, even filtered as it was, an inhale cut short and then rejected.

He was wrong.

He looked back over his shoulder, then turned again to face the skrull.

"I am sorry. She was my friend also."

No excuses. He wouldn't permit it. He was struggling in vain to keep himself under control, emotionally, physically. But a part of his brain never surrendered to the human part, and it kept ticking away inside him like a hideous, horrible bomb.

"I am in a position to do you a favor. But I require one of you."

[alldeduction]

"A favour." His tone was dead flat but he gave out a long breath.

"What would you possibly think I'd be willing to do for you.."

[hacktivist]

He watched levelly through the divider.

"Tell me how many Skrulls there are infiltrating currently."

[alldeduction]

"And then I get what, exactly." He wasn't going to answer the question. Not yet, and probably not ever, but he might as well know what the stakes were.

[hacktivist]

"I will protect Watson."

He rolled his shoulders, "Whether or not he is a skrull has no bearing on this offer."

[alldeduction]

He blinked. Whatever he had been expecting, that hadn't been it.

He said nothing for a long moment, and then with a low, crisp tone replied, "I can't. Sorry. I won't endanger them like that."

[hacktivist]

The lack of scorn, the lack of laughter--brought him up, made him bolder still.

"What makes you think the opposite offer wouldn't hold, Sherlock? He is an imPort. If he remained dead it would be a mercy."

It made him sick to say those words, but he kept himself rigid, still, silent.

"I am, as you say, a murderer."

[alldeduction]

His blood boiled. It seethed. It burned in his eyes and fled from his knuckles as he gripped them tight and white and he slammed a palm against the division between them, hard enough to make the handcuffs bite into his flesh.

"And you wonder why I fight monsters like you?" He spat it out, seething. "I will never tell you. I hope you try. I hope you try to go after him and I hope he puts a bullet in your heart."

[hacktivist]

Monsters like him. It was too similar to what Stark had said, and for a moment he oscillated inwardly, weighing--off-balance enough that the thin ray of possibility was struggling to break through the clouds of his disorganized thoughts.

Business. Back to business.

This one was proud. But even if Ghost's mind worked around people, it usually terminated at the end of the same road where their desires did. He had identified a want--not a need, but a want, and it was something.

"I would not advise you harm yourself."

He landed on the floor. Stood, a hunch to his form. If he wouldn't give, he wouldn't give. But...

"If you wish to know what I'll be doing out there, while you're detained. With or without your information, I plan to bring him into my confidence. I plan to protect him. I plan to find the Sherlock Holmes whose life you lived for a time and whose eyes you saw through. If you are still alive by the end of it, so much the better. You are not my enemy."

He half-turned away. "If you are dead by that time, I hope you are with her. Goodbye."