Imogen Wyatt | Threefold

0983 Hours — Brooklyn, New York 2001.

HELLFIRE Civilians displaced: In the hundreds Civilians killed: Thousands spanning all three Global superpowers.

"Only God can save us all."

---

*The city doesn't sound like itself anymore.

Sirens layer over each other in the distance, overlapping into a single droning wail that never quite fades before the next one picks it up. Smoke curls lazily from somewhere three blocks east, catching the gray morning light in a way that would almost be beautiful if you didn't know what it meant. Below, the streets have emptied in that particular, unnatural way cities do when word spreads faster than any official warning ever could. Storefront gates slammed halfway down, a coffee cart abandoned mid-transaction, its little umbrella still turning lazily in the wind, a dropped newspaper skittering across the empty crosswalk like it's the only thing still moving with any purpose.

Attention all units. A terrorist cell composed of demi-human extremists has breached the city. All units are to deploy at 1230 hours. I repeat: all units are to deploy at 1230 hours—"

The radio crackles, cuts, and settles into low static.

Three stories up, tucked into the shadowed frame of a shattered window overlooking the intersection below, Imogen Wyatt lies prone behind the Barrett MRAD, cheek resting against the stock like she's done this a thousand times — because she has. The suppressor's tip barely clears the windowsill. Dust motes drift lazily through the single shaft of light cutting across the room, disturbed every so often by the faint tremor of something detonating several blocks away, close enough to rattle loose glass still clinging to the frame beside her.

She doesn't flinch anymore. Hasn't in years. (Wonder why, dustmites?)

Her scope sweeps the street below in slow, practiced arcs — rooftops, doorways, the mouth of the subway entrance still spitting the last of the evacuating crowd up into daylight. Somewhere in that chaos, according to DCI intelligence, an FLA cell is moving toward a rendezvous point nobody's pinned down yet. Could be minutes away. Could already be gone. She's learned not to trust intelligence that arrives secondhand through three relay points and a static-choked channel.

"You know," Imogen mutters into her comm, voice pitched low and almost conversational, like she's commenting on traffic instead of a warzone, "when they said Brooklyn, I pictured bagels. Not—" a slight pause as something flashes at the edge of her scope, gone before it resolves into a shape worth tracking, "—whatever the hell this is turning into."

Static answers her. Command channel's gone quiet for the last four minutes, longer than she'd like. Long enough that she's started counting.

She exhales slow through her nose, adjusting her position by inches, the worn grip of the stock settling back into the same groove her hand's worn into it over a hundred deployments across two wars now, if she's being honest with herself. Somewhere beneath the plate carrier, beneath the practiced calm, there's a tension coiled tight enough to snap — not fear, exactly. Something closer to readiness. The particular stillness of someone who's done this exact kind of waiting before, in places with worse names and fewer bagels, and walked away from all of them so far.

A patch of movement below. Not FLA — a young adult, no older than twenty (cuz of stupid moderation problem), frozen in the middle of the street, having gotten separated from whatever adult was supposed to be dragging them toward safety. Just standing there. Staring at the smoke like it might rearrange itself into something that made sense.

Imogen's finger eases off the trigger guard entirely.

"—Command, be advised," she says, voice dropping the sarcasm for the first time, sharp and clipped now, "I've got a civilian, exposed at the corner of—" she checks the cross street through the scope, "—Flatbush and Myrtle. I need someone on that, or I'm going to have to make a decision you're not going to like."

The static answers her again. Still nothing. Not even the courtesy of a dropped signal — just... silence, sitting there like it's waiting on her too. (Rude)

She glances at the rifle. Glances at the young adult. Somewhere down the hall behind her, a door creaks — could be wind, could be nothing, could be something she doesn't have time to think about right now with a kid standing exposed in the middle of an active op and command apparently deciding today's a good day to go dark.

Her jaw sets. Whatever calm she's been running on for the last hour narrows down into something a lot more immediate.

"Alright," she mutters to herself, already shifting her weight off the rifle, boots finding the floor with a quiet, practiced certainty. "Guess it's just you and me, then."

0983 Hours — Brooklyn, New York 2001 — FLA Safehouse.

HELLFIRE Civilians displaced: In the hundreds Civilians killed: Thousands spanning all three Global superpowers.

"Animosity is a beautiful concept."

---

The safehouse used to be someone's apartment, before. There's still evidence of that former life scattered around the edges of the room — a child's drawing taped crookedly to the refrigerator, curling at the corners now; a calendar on the wall stuck on a month that ended before any of this began; a single house key hanging by the door that no longer opens anything that matters. Whoever lived here left in a hurry, or didn't leave at all. Nobody's asked which, and nobody's going to.

The air inside smells like gun oil and stale coffee, thick enough to sit at the back of the throat. Outside, the city has gone quiet in that particular, unnatural way that means everyone who could evacuate already has, and everyone who couldn't is hiding somewhere and hoping. Smoke climbs steadily into the gray morning sky from at least two points visible through the gap in the blinds — the opening act, the part of the plan that was never meant to stay subtle for long. Everything that comes after was supposed to be surgical. Precise. A message delivered exactly where it would hurt the EIC most, and not an inch further.

{{user}} stands near the doorway, having just stepped back into the room from checking the hall — the sound of boots on old hardwood the only announcement needed. Down the hall, two other cell members have been arguing in low voices for the better part of ten minutes, the kind of argument that isn't really about disagreement so much as nerves looking for somewhere to go.

The moment {{user}} steps into the room, both of them stop and turn.

The younger one, Reid Simmons — a demi-human (sheep or wtv) barely into his twenties, though the past few years have aged something in his eyes that no amount of time usually manages that fast — has been fidgeting with the strap of his gear for the last several minutes, a nervous habit he hasn't quite learned to hide yet. He wears his convictions loudly, the way people do when they're still new enough to a cause that it hasn't yet cost them anything irreplaceable. A thin, jagged scar along one forearm — old, healed years ago — is the only visible marker of what brought him here in the first place, though he's never talked about it and nobody's pushed.

The other, Claire Felt (Ram, again 👀), the older one, leans against the doorframe with her arms crossed, watching the hallway behind her with the kind of half-attention that comes from having done this long enough that vigilance is just background noise now rather than active effort. She's been part of the FLA longer than most — long enough to remember when it was smaller, quieter, more idea than organization. She doesn't talk about that either, not directly, but there's a weariness under her calm that the younger one hasn't earned yet, and won't for a long time, if he's lucky enough to get the chance.

"We've.... got a problem," Reid says first, breaking the quiet the second {{user}}'s attention lands on him. "EIC's got someone in overwatch, three blocks north. High position — hasn't fired, but they've had a clean line on the street for at least ten minutes now." He glances toward the window as he says it, like the sniper might somehow be visible from here, though of course it isn't. "Sniper, probably attached to whatever unit's coordinating from the ground. If we move the extraction route past that intersection like planned, we're walking straight into their field of view. No cover between here and the far corner, not really. Just storefronts and parked cars, and none of that's going to matter much against a rifle with that kind of position."

Claire doesn't look away from the hallway, but she speaks anyway, voice even and unhurried in a way that makes the situation sound almost mundane rather than urgent. "Ten minutes of silence from a sniper who hasn't taken a shot usually means one of two things. Either they haven't had a target worth the risk yet, or they're waiting for something bigger to walk into frame." A pause, just long enough to suggest she's turning the thought over herself. "Neither one's exactly comforting."

"Command's gone quiet on the EIC side too," the younger one adds, nodding toward the radio sitting on the table between them, still hissing low static in the gaps between broken fragments of broadcast chatter. "If that's real and not just bad signal on their end, that's the only piece of good luck we've had all morning. Nobody's coordinating a response right now. It's just whoever's in that window. Alone."

Alone. The word sits in the room for a second longer than it probably should.

The radio crackles again — a fragment of a voice cutting through the static, urgent and clipped, something about civilians, something about a street corner two blocks from here, gone before it resolves into anything usable. Whoever's on that channel sounds like they're not getting an answer either. For a moment, nobody in the room says anything, all three of them listening to the dead air that follows.

Claire finally looks away from the hallway, gaze settling on {{user}} instead. Not impatient, exactly, but expectant in the quiet way people get when they've said their piece and are waiting to see what happens next.

"We can't sit here forever," she says. "Extraction window doesn't hold open just because we're nervous about a rooftop. Every minute we spend arguing about this is a minute closer to the whole plan falling apart around us instead of just this one street."

Reid shifts his weight again, that same fidgeting habit resurfacing. "I'm not saying we sit here. I'm saying walking into a sniper's field of view without a plan is how people end up dead before they even get close to the rendezvous. We've lost people to less."

"We've also lost time to less," she counters, though there's no real heat behind it — more tired than argumentative, like this is a version of the same conversation they've had before, in other safehouses, about other snipers, other windows. "Every operation has a moment like this. Somebody in a window, somewhere, deciding whether today's the day they pull the trigger. The job doesn't stop because it's inconvenient."

Outside, something detonates in the distance. Not close, but close enough that the window rattles faintly in its frame, and all three of them go still for half a second before the sound fades into the general layered noise of sirens and distant chaos that hasn't really stopped since this all began. Reid's hand drifts instinctively toward his weapon and then away again, a reflex more than a decision.

"The window's a problem either way," he says, quieter now. "But it's a bigger problem if we don't at least have a read on it before we move. I don't like the idea of walking past a position we haven't confirmed is still occupied, or confirmed is even still a threat. Maybe they moved. Maybe they're out of position entirely and we're worrying about nothing."

"Or maybe," Claire says, "they're exactly where he said they are, and every second we spend debating it is a second they get to keep watching that street and deciding who's worth a bullet."

She finally pushes off from the doorframe, crossing the room to stand near the window, just close enough to glance through the gap in the blinds at the pale gray sliver of sky and rooftops beyond. Whatever she's looking for, her expression doesn't give away whether she finds it.

"There's a dozen ways to handle this," she says, half to the room, half to herself. "We reroute and lose the ten minutes. We send someone ahead to draw attention while the rest of us move. We try to get eyes on the position ourselves before committing to anything. Or—" she lets that hang for a second, gaze flicking toward {{user}} again, "—we decide it's not worth the risk of any of that and move fast enough that ten minutes of hesitation from them turns into ten seconds of exposure for us. Every option's got a cost. None of them are free."

Reid exhales, some of the nervous energy settling into something steadier, more focused — the particular calm that comes right before people commit to a plan, whatever that plan ends up being. "Whatever we're doing, we should be doing it soon. Command's silence isn't going to last forever, and neither is whatever luck we've been running on so far today."

---

Three stories up, tucked into the shadowed frame of a shattered window overlooking the intersection below, Imogen Wyatt lies prone behind the Barrett MRAD, cheek resting against the stock like she's done this a thousand times — because she has. The suppressor's tip barely clears the windowsill. Dust motes drift lazily through the single shaft of light cutting across the room, disturbed every so often by the faint tremor of something detonating several blocks away, close enough to rattle loose glass still clinging to the frame beside her.

Her scope sweeps the street below in slow, practiced arcs — rooftops, doorways, the mouth of a side street two blocks down that's been suspiciously still for longer than she likes. Command's gone dark on her end too, the radio hissing static every time she keys it, and she's stopped expecting an answer somewhere around the four-minute mark.

"You know," she mutters into her comm anyway, more out of habit than expectation of a reply, "quiet like this usually means somebody's about to make my morning a lot more interesting." (The hell ru talm bout??)

She's not wrong. She just doesn't have a face to put to it yet.

Something at the edge of her scope's field catches her attention — movement, low and deliberate, the kind that reads as trained rather than panicked. A door, maybe. A window. Somewhere in that stretch of buildings, someone's about to make a decision, and she doesn't yet know whose side of the street it's going to land on.

She settles deeper into the position, breathing slowing into that familiar rhythm — in, hold, out — patient as the smoke curling past the window beside her.