Dottie rushes through the compound, and when out of the sight of people or cameras that she can see, jumps off the upper deck where the labs lie. Grasping onto struts and beams she tumbles to the lower levels, closer to the ocean, moving toward the containment area.
When she does see people, she barks, her voice distorted by the hazmat suit, "I'm on my way, to your stations!" like she clearly belongs there and is clearly a Roxxon employee who knows what she is doing and on her way to help in response to the alarms that are blaring.
Frank eyes the dangerous Doc;
"Why would you do that Doc? You took the time to experiment on 'em... don't think you'll leave such precious commodities behind..."
he then whispers an aside to the woman he carries;
"I need you to hang onto the ladder by yourself for a minute... can you do that?"
"Yes, arms are strong. I could walk if I had my braces and crutches, but they took them."
Ohnn to Frank: "A thug like you wouldn't understand the intricacies of Waste Characterization and disposal of biological waste, but I assure you we have learned much from them, and if we have to lose them, it will be only a small setback."
Dottie rushes through the compound, and when out of the sight of people or cameras that she can see, jumps off the upper deck where the labs lie. Grasping onto struts and beams she tumbles to the lower levels, closer to the ocean, moving toward the containment area.
[dice=Perception, staying alert for cameras and stuff]1d20+12
When she does see people, she barks, her voice distorted by the hazmat suit, "I'm on my way, to your stations!" like she clearly belongs there and is clearly a Roxxon employee who knows what she is doing and on her way to help in response to the alarms that are blaring.
[dice=Deception]1d20+12
If there's any electronic security associated with the access port, Dottie swipes Booker's ID across it, and presuming success and confirming unlock, she reaches down to the handles to give the port hatch a good turn.
Card swiped, some lock in the door clicks and Dottie turns the wheel to open the pressure door. This is the highest level of the shaft, though there is some headroom above for machinery. The interior is dimly lit in red, and far below there is a shimmery patch of Zero Matter.
Dottie pulls a metal tool from her Handy Inspector Disguise field bag (inside the lab bag) suitable for sliding into the mechanism that turns the wheel to make it less likely the hatch will shut.
She remembered the image on the monitor: Ohn floating above Frank.
She then looks down, looks at her suit as if to reassure herself that the hazmat suit is still on her, swallows, and then finally jumps down the shaft, bouncing off the sides of the shaft to then forcefully land on Dr. Ohn from above.
The aim of course is to attack and grab onto the floating Ohn, not knock Frank and his new girlfriends off the ladder.
Dottie falls with style to the unsuspecting Ohnn. She neatly dodges the black disk and propels herself at him, one knee taking him in the soft side and the other leg wrapping around him. She ends up hanging from him hanging from a black spot.
Frank nods to the woman, gesturing to her to hold onto the ladder tight, then turns his attention back to Ohnn.
Arm and coil now free from their carriage, the enforcers eyes narrow;
"Sounds like you have everything planned out Doc... except th-"
His coil poised, his words die on his lips as a Hazmat-suited Dottie Bomb is dropped on the unsuspecting villain... With a hard grin he shouts to the girls;
"That's the cavalry ladies!"
Ohnn struggles in Dottie's grasp, swatting at the device on his wrist.
Frank nods in satisfaction as Ohnn flails and he lashes out with one of his coils, attempting to ensnare the villain further;
As his coil finds purchase, the enforcer flashes a hard smile;
"Make a wish time?"
A heavy sigh hisses through the mask of the hazmat suit. "You're supposed to be the big guns. Do I have to do everything myself?"
While going for the device is tempting and absolutely may even be a more tactically sound plan, Dottie's thinking is far baser: why go for the wrist when you can go for the neck?
Dottie grasps onto Ohn's head and spins about like a gymnast on a trapeze, using his neck as fulcrum.
Ohnn dies with a crack, his now lifeless body help limp in the force from the black spot that hangs in the air above him.
The two younger women gasp.
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At the gasp, she purrs. "Hello, I'm the War Widow, so nice to meet you, we'll be relieving you of torture today."
To Frank: "Now what are you doing, flirting with two girls half your age in an elevator shaft? Anyway, keep holding that arm..."
Still hanging, now upside down on Ohn with her legs around his waist, she grabs the wrist device. She lets it slide onto her own wrist and fastens it into place.
She then sits up and grabs onto the ladder.
Dottie moves onto the ladder, navigating the strange gravity here where the black disk is pulling upward and gravity is doing its normal thing.
Nathan West is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
"Bozhe Moi" says the blond girl.
"Let's go, big guns." says the other girl.
Frank nods with a wry smile, keeping Ohnn anchored as Dottie relieves his corpse of the bracelet.
"Girls meet Granny Dot. She's a dab hand at killing bad guys and order me around. Let's get out of here yeah?"
Once ready he allows the girls to climb ahead of them, then pauses his own ascent.
"We got you two. What about the others? Can't leave them here... being rescued shouldn't be a lottery right?"
To the blonde, "Я так далека от Бога, как только можно, сестра."
Dottie fiddles with the wrist thingy, hoping to make the spot go away (assuming it is in the way of climbing any further).
To Frank, with possibly an audible eyeroll. "Sure, let's just load dozens of terrified trafficking victims given uncontrolled transdimensional darkness superpowers and load them all onto a helicopter designed to carry, at most, about six people. I am sure that will go down real well." A beat. "And by that, to be clear, I mean the helicopter will go down in the water with us in it."
"Also, I know you hurt your ear, but you do hear the obnoxiously loud claxons blaring, right? How much time do you think we actually have?"
She turns and gives Frank a look through the plastic mask covering her face. "Save who you can, not who you hope you can save. Or you just might kill everyone you hoped to help."
The dark spot sizzles and disappears.
The girls climb toward the surface.
Dottie tries to filter out the alarms, paying attention to any other sign of resistance.
Frank winces, not sure how to proceed.
Everything Dot said made sense. It was savvy and about self preservation as much as time sensitivity.
I think if you could be a hero again Mom might let you come home...
The words echoed again in his mind.
Hero. Again
Mulling the words both real and remembered he nods.
"Sorry Partner... If I got time enough to play hero, maybe I'll have time to save another son or daughter... Get to the chopper and I'll try an' get to you."
With that he drops down the ladder, coils scraping against the bulkhead as he disappears from sight.
Dottie calls out to the rapidly descending Frank, "Heroes don't just abandon their partners!" She adds, calling into the darkness, "Especially not after their partner goes to the trouble of rescuing them!"
Dottie's annoyed at the moment for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact is in the unlikely chance Frank succeeds in rescuing the rest of the prisoners, the occupancy capacity of the helicopter is ruled by physics neither she nor Frank have the ability to alter, and so she decides transport of anyone other than herself and their immediate party is his problem. If he survives this at all.
And that is the other thing that annoys her: she kind of cares a little bit if he dies. Not enough to go after him, mind, just enough to tickle at the back of her mind.
But: to the issue at hand. She is in an elevator shaft which someone could shut the hatch to at any moment, with two underfed test subjects. SHIELD protocol dictates attempting to rescue them despite possible dangers they themselves pose due to Darkforce exposure, and besides, Dottie is still in her hazmat suit, and even she isn't so awful she'd just abandon them where they are.
So, she waves to them to begin climbing, letting the fully physically capable one go first. As she reaches to help steady the second one, she asks. "Okay, what are your names and where are you from?"
The blonde moves smoothly, but Dottie's keen eye can tell that she is tiring. Between breaths, she huffs, "Petrovna, Laynia Petrovna." and she chuckles, "Like the James Bond."
The other woman grunts and says, "Silhouette."
Laynia looks down, "You have a way out of here?"
Dottie offers a wry smile at the James Bond comment. Answering the question about the way out of it.
"<<About six stories above the top of the elevator, there's a helicopter. If they haven't disabled it. If you need me to carry you, say so, this is the time for speed and humility.">>
She pauses. <<"We could also see how this doohickey works but I don't want to gateway us into the ocean by accident, and I'd rather not toy with transdimensional dark matter if there's another way.">>
Frank slides to the lower level, his cables pulling him back through the hatch into the ring of what Frank assumes are more cells. No threat presents itself at the moment.
Doubt still playing on his mind, Frank moves quickly moving to the next clockwise cell from the last opened.
Like before he clangs the door with a coil, addressing the occupant;
'Hey! Anyone awake in there? Don't be afraid, I've come to get you out of here..."
Frank's coil rings against the third door, and no one answers. He does notice that the door is beaded with condensation, an the sound from his banging sounds deeper than the other doors.
Frank cocks his head, worried his eardrum is acting up and throwing his hearing off.
He brings his coils to bear on the chamber door, once again attempting to wrack them open;
Frank's coils tear through the steel of the door, and he instantly regrets it. Water sprays through the gap, puddling on the floor. After just a moment, something thuds against the hole, partially blocking the flood of water. Frank sees the pale face and upper torso of a boy. Could be 10, could be older, hard to say from here. There is no immediate sign of life in the eyes that gape toward you.
Dottie talks to the women as they climb, though not so rapidly as to put them out of breath. She inquires about their schedule, who they interacted with if anyone, and if they were ever taken anywhere beyond where they were being held. If asked why she wants to know, she explains it's important to know anything and everything about this place and the people operating it if they are to escape.
Laynia huffs with exertion and says, "The want me to do things...make things...There is something inside me that I can shape to make...things. I think they put this thing inside me...Is like flexing a muscle, yes? But not a muscle you know is there...You must find it."
"That thing is called Darkforce. Or Zero Matter. It can do amazing things. It can also drag us all to oblivion. If you can use it to make rather than destroy that will be a first that I've seen. I don't say this to frighten you. I say this so you know. Maybe you'll be the one to change things for the better."
She doubted it, but she was stuck with these girls now, so might as well try. A flicker of hope pushed tentatively at the coldness in the center of her gut.
As he gains his footing on the pooling floor Frank looks to the other untouched doors.
"Gotta hope those cells are airtight..."
He lashes out with his coils again, hoping to rent the door enough to free the pale boy...
Frank pries the metal of the door further apart, and the pale body washes into this interior chamber. Frank can see that the cell beyond the door is much like the other two that he has opened, but this one has circular hole in one of the external walls as though something cleanly cut through it.
As the water gushes in Frank struggles with what he's seeing...
The kids dead? They cleaning up what's left?
He leans down to examine the body, hoping the boy is clinging to life, but fearing the worst...
"Kid!? You hear me?"
"That thing is called Darkforce. Or Zero Matter. It can do amazing things. It can also drag us all to oblivion. If you can use it to make rather than destroy that will be a first that I've seen. I don't say this to frighten you. I say this so you know. Maybe you'll be the one to change things for the better."
She doubted it, but she was stuck with these girls now, so might as well try. A flicker of hope pushed tentatively at the coldness in the center of her gut.
Dottie will keep climbing. When they get to the top--hopefully the hatch is still open!
The goal from there is to figure out how to get to the helicopter.
As the water gushes in Frank struggles with what he's seeing...
The kids dead? They cleaning up what's left?
He leans down to examine the body, hoping the boy is clinging to life, but fearing the worst...
"Kid!? You hear me?"
Unresponsive and stonecold, Frank's brow furrows as he tries to recall the Emergency First Aid & Triage section of his SHIELD Field Agent training...
C'mon Frank! Heroes save lives! Who cares now how hungover you were!
Breathing deep he thinks...
The 3Ps. Preserve Life. Prevent The Situation Worsening. Promote Recovery.
Preserve Life.
... then acts.
Dottie motions to the girls to let her exit the hatch first, and she monitors activity--motions, orders being shouted over loudspeakers, etc.--before determining the case is clear.
If the coast is clear at the moment, she offers a hand to both Laynia and Silhouette to help them out of the hatch.
"I know you're exhausted but if we get caught, they'll have no mercy. Move like your life depends on it."