Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges (Mild Language)

Summary:
June 03 2014: What happens when a hacker and a revolutionary tail the same man? Beer, of course.

Parking Structure Stairwell

Concrete steps, iron railing, your average public stairwell here to serve all your stair climbing needs.


Characters

NPCs
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Mood Music:
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Down a little side alley, in an otherwise strictly commercial part of town there's this little joint. There may not be a password, but due to a distinct lack of signage you certainly need to be in the know in regards to it's existence. They call it "Room 90", and it's been operating since the early 70s. When jazz started getting political, it went underground. Over the years it had changed, heck when the Partisan steps out into the alley it's the thump of hip-hop behind her.

Lifting a hand to pull down a ratty "SIERRA BULLETS" ballcap, before smooshing her ponytail out through the back. Backpack sliding back over her shoulders, and off she goes. Surprising how invisible combat boots become under a pair of ripstop cargo pants, how nobody looks twice at a chick in an M65 who keeps her ratty suunto clad wrist right next to her beltline. If you know what your looking for, the bitch sure as fuck ain't no civilian.
The old fellow in a rumbled brown suit in front of her, who seems terribly more distracted by texting than he should? He doesn't know what to look for it would seem, especially as he turns towards the underground carpark. Just the place where nobody will be looking, right? It's like a Le'carre novel, a well oiled machine waiting to be tripped.


Jericho Trent does know what to look for, but he's not looking for it right now. More acquainted with 'not a civilian' than most, he's quite literally in another world right now - a world made of ones and zeroes where data is as solid a brick wall and cell phones live breadcrumb trails for those who know how to look. And he does. And he is. He's just leaning on a street corner at the moment, in a hoodie with the hood pulled up and both hands in the pockets, despite the season. He's also watching the old rumpled brown suit, and comes walking up toward the car park casual as you please as said suit enters it. The girl? He might not even have seen her. Certainly not on his radar at the moment.


Partisan lifts her hands to her pockets, a moment later they come away gloved. Then slowly lifts a bandana from around her collar until it's around her face, yup this is a motherfucking hit. So who is the guy in a rumpled suit? Well he's got three numbers of particular interest on his barely used Iphone2, the phone numbered for the VA and the one for the ORI. The ORI was the "Office of Retired Individuals", it was basically the VA for the CIA. Then a bunch of latin american phone numbers, most of them colombian. Alex Doe, is what that phone comes back to. Not very creative are they? Sure that comes back as a legitimate name, but no it absolutely can't be real. Doe? Really? Anyway, Mr.Doe steps down the staircase into the carpark and stops. Slowly bowing his head, as the Partisan arrives behind him. "You should really be more careful Alex, your losing your touch in your old age."Before out of her pocket comes, a cellphone which she hands him. "I'll keep in touch alright?" Mr.Doe doesn't respond, but he does move on like nothing ever happened. Leaving her to stand in the stairwell, watching the old man go.


Boots echo in the stairwell behind the Partisan. Work boots. Maybe steel toes? Jericho doesn't need to stay as close to track the cell traffic. It's the Colombian connections he's interested in, mostly. Some of those… go places. He wants to know why they all dovetail here. A moment later he rounds the corner just in time to hear that last little bit, and pauses. That voice… sounds very familiar. Normally he's a bit more on the ball with things like this, but he's had a looooooong few days.


Partisan 's own supernatural hearing is not taking a day off, nor the rest of her senses. So she waits for Alex to get away, before asking quietly. "Are you after me, or you after my friend?"gloved hands falling casually to her side as she eyes the hacker. "I reward honesty very well, you would do well to remember that young man."

The hacker behind her pauses for a moment longer and then pulls his hood back. "Partisan, yes? I actually didn't know you were here." He looks off down the stairwell, still tracing. "I'm after your brown suited friend there. After a fashion." He eyes the position of her hands. Is she armed? He certainly wouldn't put it past her. The young man thing makes him smile wryly though. Not many call him that, but he's not prepared to dispute the point, despite her seeming youth when last he saw her.


"I would appreciate, if you didn't do that. He's out of the game, and as such he should be off limits."Turning slowly to face Jericho, peering after him from under the rim of that ratty ballcap. "I hate to get all, territorial and shit but he's none of your concern. Not anymore, alright? And yes, The Partisan or Pericoloso or whatever else you want to call me."


"I kind of like Wolf, actually. But it's your name." Jericho shrugs and leans back on the railing of the landing he's currently occupying, hands still in his pockets. He's not, it seems, inclined to keep walking after the guy. "I don't really care about him, per se. I'm more interested in connections. You can learn a lot by charting the flow of information hither and yon. And even more by disrupting it and seeing what comes looking."

Jericho looks like he's musing now. "But after watching you at work, I don't think I'm very inclined to cross you. Not over this, anyway."


"Wolf is a description, not a name."Offers Part, before finally lifting a hand to tug down her bandana before she starts to undo her gloves and stuff those back away. "Playing spook, with retired spooks, is a game that becomes lethal very quick. Once you leave the game, you leave the game. Go after them, and you're attacking the community. You really shouldn't be so eager to fuck around with a bunch of retired spooks, some of them are plenty dangerous and mighty clever you know. Besides, you don't need to worry about Colombia. There's already someone handling the narco angle in this town."


The draws another shrug from the brown haired man. "In for a penny, in for a pound. When you're tracking an organization with global reach and absolutely no scruples, you tend to get a bit blase about being in more danger. Just kind of doesn't register." A short pause. "Not entirely a good thing, on reflection, but there you have it. I couldn't care less about the narcs. Like I said, this is about information. Understanding how and to whom it flows is how I stay alive." He seems quite serious about that. "Though that sometimes means you spend time chasing down leads that don't pan out." He takes a step forward and sits down on the step, tugging a messenger bag around front. In it are two beers. He pulls out one and uncaps it, taking a pull at it. The other he flips, holding it by the neck and offers it to her.


Partisan accepts, before digging around in her own bag and producing…well it's complicated. She's got a pair of mason jars, with a grenade stuffed inside, and much of the space filled up with…rice? To said mason jars she's taped a tallboy of PBR, which she removes in turn and offers one over. So boom, now there's alot've beer to share! "Everyone is always concerned about conspiracies, There hasn't been a decent conspiracy worth talking about since the Hungarian revolution. Its all a bunch of creepy nerds, hanging out with other creepy nerds with delusions of grandeur. It never works out, because the moment they start some actual shit someone like me chews the eyes out've their face and skull fucks them to death."Popping the cap off with her bare fingers, before getting a sip. "There are things you should be hunting, fucking conspiracies arent them."


Jericho smiles a thin, humorless smile and sips his beer again, accepting the beer from the Partisan in exchange. "It may surprise you to know that I agree entirely with you. Nasty business, hunting conspiracies. Frequently boring. Hours are long. Pay sucks." Another pull from the bottle. "However, this one is trying to kill me. And they've come close, which is saying something. I mean, I'm no Wonder Woman, but I'm just a bit harder to put down than your average Joe. So it's not really a hobby for me, you understand."


Partisan sighs "and how many have you killed yourself then, just hitmen and whatever I'm presuming?"lifting a hand to rub at her brow. "Give me a name, and we can go snag his ass right now. Nothing a little old skool interrogation couldn't help along, followed by a brutal execution where his buddies can see it right? They just need shit to become expensive."


"Oh I've killed plenty. And cost them plenty. Every once in a while you may here about mysterious brawls in the dead of night that leave random buildings in odd parts of town completely gutted? Sometimes that's me. As for names, I could give you a few. No one I know who will actually stop this insanity though, by being dead. Believe me if I knew that I'd have tried it myself a long time ago." Jericho flashes the Partisan a grim simle. "I have this sort of anger issue when people ruin my life. Makes me trigger happy. And code happy. I've spent the better part of a year trying to hit them where it hurts."


He takes a sip of his beer and regards her for a moment. "Mmmmm. Y'know what though, I came across something the other night that may interest you. At least, it may mean more to you than it does to me. Here, catch." Jericho reaches into his pocked and tosses her a thumb drive. It's smeared with what looks like dried blood.


"I don't own a computer, unfortunately. Too many clever boys, not worth the security liability. Hell I don't even have a smartphone, too much of a footprint."Lifting a hand to politely refuse the gift. "Still I appreciate the thought, why don't you explain to me what it is and why you think it's my sort've thing?"


"'Cause your name's in it. Though, there does seem to be some debate as to whether you're a 'you' or a 'they'. Lots of discussion I didn't really follow about your activities. Lots of griping about the fact that you're disruptive and a… what was the phrase they used? Ah yes, an 'unknown factor.' The Cliff's Notes? There's something big up in the immediate area and while they don't know who or where you are, they don't want you in the way. You've made a habit of that, it seems." Jericho finishes off his beer and opens the tallboy Parti gave him.

"The kicker was at the end of about two gigabytes worth of text files. That's a lot, in case the terminology is unfamiliar to you. At the end there was an encrypted file. Took me a bit to crack it. Care to guess what it was?"


Partisan raises a brow "I've been overthrowing governments, and hunting down jackasses in the jungle for more than a hundred years young man. I would be terribly concerned if they didn't write about me, though I do sincerely appreciate the heads up. I always remember kindnesses, necessary or otherwise." Lifting her beer towards him in salute, before taking another swig. "Do tell, you certainly have secured my full attention."


Jericho's wry smile becomes a bit less brittle and he ducks his head in acknowledgement of her thanks. "It was gun cam footage from quinjet Beta. Well, more accurately, stills from what I surmise had been gun cam footage. Which was about the quality as you might expect IR washed gun cam footage to be. Which is to say, it was shit. However some of the stills did quite clearly show you and your, uh, twin in action. She's good by the way. Not quite on your level though." If Partisan hadn't surmised from the entire FUBAR'd nature of the op, yeah, there's a security leak somewhere. "Now it's not like they'll be able to find you with it. The upshot for them was simply that you were active again. Or you-plural. They can't decide which."


He takes a pull at the PBR. "Mmmm. Good stuff. So, you hide better than I do. A *lot* better. I don't mind telling you that I'm a bit jealous. So maybe you have nothing to worry about. But they'll be looking, now. And these are not, in my opinion, people to be screwed with lightly." He chuckles. "Well. Or maybe they are. I'm not exactly an insurgent legend." Yeah, he did some digging on the name after he heard it. Came up with rumors and urban legends but he knows if half the stuff bandied about on the terrorist messaging boards is true, the Partisan is in an entirely different weight class than he.


Partisan huffs "I don't know of many I'd consider who were on my level, Cap, Frank Castle, a few Mercs we don't need to name. It's unfair to compare her to me, or anyone else. She is good though, thats only with like three weeks of training too. Girl is a prodigy."Pausing to roast the lip of the beer bottle with her lighter, before setting it aside and snagging a cigarette. "Oh gee, stills of me running around and a coke head on the team. Yeah Shield is really kicking ass, fucking amateur hour over there. If they'd just asked us, I could've told them the guy was a cokehead. I'm the one who sold him the shit, but hey no lets not ask the fucking legendary killer we have on the op with more than a hundred years of experience doing this sort've thing."


The tirade makes Jericho smile. "I'm not exactly thrilled about it myself. But I thought you should know. I was considering, actually, whether it was worth trying to find you. I wasn't entirely sure looking wouldn't get me shot. You've got quite a reputation, y'know. And unlike you, well, unlike your reputation anyway, I'm quite mortal." He considers the 'cokehead' angle. He'd heard one of the independent operatives shot a hostage but given his persona non grata status with the guards and security staff, he'd spent enough time in handcuffs post mission to make him think twice about asking. "My compliments to your prodigy too, if that's what you got out of her after three weeks. You must be a helluva drill sergeant."


Partisan digs around in her bag some more, before producing it. The holy motherfucking grail, the big deal. a Thales Patriot, stamped with the CDC logo on either side. She flips it over to him with a shrug. A radio that was designed for the feds, it came preset with every encryption for every state, local and federal organization preset and it autoupdated the encryption. "I use radios more than cell phones if you need me, I hang around on 149.220 most of the time. If you need me, just say Partisan followed by a location. If your being forced to transmit against your will, state your location followed by my name. I'll come and fuck some shit up, alright?"Puff puff, before she pauses to ash that cigarette. "My reputation is largely well deserved, unfortunately. I'm not a hero, I'm a Partisan. I do whats necessary, not whats desirable."


The hacker stuffs it into his bag. "Thanks." He means it too. "I know how that works. I'm not a hero either. I'm just someone trying to stay alive and figure out if I can trace this spiderweb out far enough to find a way out before the spider eats me." He eyes her for a long moment before nodding to himself. "You seem to have gotten by well enough without it, but give me a buzz if you ever need tech support. That's kind of my thing. ell, beyond shooting and flying." And maybe wearing digital werewolf armor, but no need to go making this awkward.


Partisan smiles "looking for me would not have gotten you killed, but yes I probably would have beaten you pretty severely. Take my advice, don't try to stay alive. Try to be -better-, every time. If all your working for is not losing, you're not going to win very often. Focus on becoming better, on improving whatever basic aspect of yourself that you feel is your core. It'll pay off in time."


Jericho chuckles. "I think you were a good drill sergeant." He looks her over again. "Maybe in another life, mmm? I'll keep that in mind. Thanks." He stands and stretches. "And I meant it when I said I'd back you up, if ever you felt you needed it. If nothing else, I'm a lot less squeamish about blowing things up in the middle of the city than most you're apt to meet." After a moments thought. "Feel free to come by Sal's Bar, too, if you ever need to relax and drink. I'm there most nights. Though… I'm not sure I'll be working there much longer."


Partisan smiles "I've built terror cells, guerrila movements, insurgencies and special forces programs across the world honey. Never a drill sergeant, always a Partisan. The last one, except for those desperate fucks out in Ukraine these days. Pity I don't have a gulfstream, I'd love to spend a week over there fucking up Ivan's shit."Then a pause as she starts digging around again. "What are you doing for supplementary kit, or just that tronmagic shit?"


"I use that as little as possible. It's… obvious and I'm trying to lay low. I've got a pair of Uzi's and other than that it's finders keepers with me." He opens the other pouch in his bag and shows her a sleek handgun that looks like a scifi prop. "Found that in an underground research lab last week. But mostly it's a bit more prosaic than that. M4's and MP5's are a lot of what I find. I've got a couple M4's right now. Sometimes cheaper russian stuff off affiliated street gangs. AK's, a lot of them. Or SKS's. They're pretty fond of Berrettas. The odd flashbang and lots of C4. I get stuff off the black market when I have a specific need, but I pick up and move too much to carry an extensive armory with me."


Partisan nods mutely "Get yourself a proper fucking kit, you stupid git. A 1911 with a threaded barrel and a rail, like a real fucking American. Get yourself a good can, and a good light, and spend as much as you can afford on a holster. If your going to insist on a subgun, lean more towards the PDWs. High cyclic rate weapons do much better against most energy shields, so your Bruger and Thomet MP9s, HK MP7s and P90s are good choices there but none of them suppress very well. Do it anyway, because it'll disguise where your from even if it lets people know theres shooting going on. If you need a good longarm, I'll build you a good AK or an M4 or whatever else."She produces the goodies soon after, a fencing tool, lockpick kit, a det kit, a brick of C4, and then the real deal shit. White Phosphrus grenades, CR gas grenades, a pair of RKG-3 anti tank grenades and a bunch of little RGN grenades. "You need to up your violence, the one who brings the most aggression in the shortest timeframe always wins a fight in our world. Out fight, then flee whilst they try and figure out what the fuck just happened. Also, gas grenades are a wise decision. How mnay folks do you see with a gasmask?"


Jericho listens, nodding. He'd been, in truth, trying to avoid upping the level of violence. But that had been in the past year because he'd been doing this act solo. Sustainable violence is a team game, and there was only one team in the game. Now? Well… there's a small chance perhaps not. "Other than you and your protege? Can't really think of any in the last year or so." He observes the kit as it comes out, clearly impressed with the amount of firepower she's got on her and just as clearly quite familiar with what most of it is. Then he frowns, as a thought occurs to him. "Say… does she, um, hide as well as you do?"


Partisan nods softly as she replaces things in a specific order, everything goes right back into its place. "She does, and she has someone very fucking terrifying ready to come down and visit extraordinary unkindness on any whom should seek her out."Glancing after Jericho, before shouldering her kit once more. "Be very clear with what your about to say, because you just stepped into a motherfucking minefield and you'll be lucky to escape with just loosing a body part."Finally flicking that cigarette into a neat little pocket ashtray she's got. "Why do you want to know about my protege, young man?"


"Because she's in the pictures and in case I hadn't made it clear, they will be looking. And they, I'm a bit surprised you've not asked, are Hydra." He puts his hands in a placating gesture. "Look, you're training her so I'm entirely willing to own up that maybe she'll be fine. You know how to do a SEER act that makes Houdini look like a street performer, from what I hear. But, out of the overabundance of paranoia I have, I was making sure. Cause she's on their radar now, even if they don't know who she is, and these idiots are relentless."


Partisan just guffaws for a moment, before breaking into laughter. "Oh fuck, those guys are still out there? Holy fuck, you have -got- to be fucking kidding me. Hydra, no shit. No fucking shit, Fucking Hydra after all this fucking time? Well honey, if they wanna play they are more than welcome to. I've been a little lost with no war to fight I'll admit, and well they die like pussies."


The raised eyebrow is worthy of a Star Trek movie, but at least Jericho doesn't look put off. Instead he cracks a wry smile. "I'm glad someone finds this amusing. I'll take your reaction to mean my paranoia is in this case entirely unnecessary." Suits him. Paranoia is draining enough worrying about himself. Being paranoid about someone else? He wouldn't have time to get anything done.


Partisan waves a hand dismissively "They're poorly trained, overly complicated and under armed. I was always better at running insurgencies and shit than they ever were, they're late to the party worthless fucking tryhards. I'll kill the lot of them, and I'll post the videos on youtube to rub it in. I'll rape their bank accounts, murder their operatives and burn down their houses with their families inside. They wanna play around in my backyard, I'm gonna fuck their shit up."


Jericho stands at this point. "Be my guest. Maybe you'll hit the branch that's after me and give them something else to worry about for a while." He cocks his head with a smile as he half turns. "I can give you a line on some of those bank accounts, if you ever want. Just watch your back. Not to underrate you, but they've looked plenty dangerous from down here where I've been."


Partisan snorts "Your just a kid, of course they look scary. Now give me a list, on actual fucking paper of people involved. Addresses, bank accounts, phone numbers, places of employment. Give it to me, and then keep your head down because I'm gonna go fucking work and I'm not gonna stop until they're dead or I'm bored."Tossing her can in the garbage before glancing back to Jericho. "Can you do that?"


It may surprise her that Jericho hands her a list on two sheets of paper. Both appear to be complete gibberish. "Familiar with one time pad ciphers? I don't trust the digital world with everything either. I know better than most how easy it is to crack things when you know what you're doing. These fifty names on that list I'm certain of. Personal information. Dead drop zones. Bank accounts. Everything I'm completely certain of." There's a lot more, it's probably obvious, that he's still unraveling. "The key's in my grave. Little present from Hydra. Under the headstone. Enrich Jotter, the name is." An anagram for his. Someone thought they were being cute.


Partisan eyerolls "Alright, I'll snag the key. Now keep your head down alright?"Glancing at the sheets, before folding them into fourths and tucking the documents inside her jacket. "Remember, fix your fucking kit and let me know if you need help alright?"just like that she moves back the way she came, stuffing her hands into jacket pockets and heading on her way.


Call him crazy. And maybe he is, but he could get to like her. Sort of. In a very cautious kind of way. He heads back up to the surface. He has, after all, more traces to run down. And a kit to work on. Apparently.


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