Watch The World Burn

[Emma Temple]

"I'm Emma," she replied, a hint of sorrow in her voice. The way that he'd looked at her half an hour ago was long gone; he looked at her as if he'd never met her before in his life.

I suppose, she mused sadly, He hasn't.

She let out a sigh. "There's no time to explain the rest now, but I will later. I promise. Just -"

She thought about what she wanted to do - kiss him; brush her fingers across his cheek; hug him until the look that made her feel like she was dying inside was gone from his face - but knew she couldn't. The best she could manage was a pleading shift of her eyebrows.

"- stay alive so I can, okay?"

[Frank Toussaint]

Scenes of the blanket, indiscriminate slaughter of Joes flashed across the monitors in Treadstone Tower's secret sub-basement.

Frank stared; not at the monitors, but rather in the mirror above the urinal in the men's bathroom. On the one hand, he welcomed the idea of not leaving his back open and exposed to a room where attacks could - in theory - come from any direction. In practice though, this wasn't a Bond movie, or an Austin Powers one; the likelihood of him getting into a brawl in a bathroom was extremely slim.

He sighed, shook, and headed for the sink, mildly annoyed by the way the automated soap dispensers shot gel into his palms in a manner oddly reminiscent of something he didn't particularly want to be rubbing all over his hands. The fact that he had to clean it up with paper towels was worse; more so that he was doing it while alone in his cousin's basement. If ever there was a perfect depressing bachelor moment, this was probably it.

He sighed and headed back out, meandering tiredly half a wake through the basement's corridors, scrubbing at his eyeballs with the backs of his wrists just so he didn't have another repeat of the I have soap in my eyes incident from last week. He'd check the monitors, then grab a coffee. Monitors, then coffee. Monitors, then coffee.

Be barely noticed the elevator doors opening.

"You shouldn't -" he began in confusion, as the two gunmen emerged.

Bullets tore through his gut and chest, and he crumpled to the floor.

He heard his head thunk against the ground, but didn't feel it. Even the sound was dim and distant, same as the shouts of the now four people spilling out of the elevator. It probably should have alarmed him that men with guns had just waltzed into a supposedly secret and secure part of the building, but it didn't: it was hard to breathe, and it hurt, and that was soaking up most of his attention.

He tried to move, found that he couldn't; barely managed to do much more than look down at the viscous blood oozing from the holes torn in his chest. He slumped back against the floor again, managed to wheeze out a faint whimper.

Oh fuck.

[Dahlia Ericsson]

Cerulean blue eyes fell slowly to the phone, the unbroken melodic ring still echoing through the air. It sounded horribly ominous, though there was little she could pin that sensation on. Foresight was not one of her gifts, though it occasionally cropped up in her mother’s side of the family. Dahlia was sadly relegated to the occasional “I’ve got a bad feeling about this” moment.

This was definitely one of them.

A flick of her hand turned the phone off, while she polished off her whiskey with a final sip. “Marcus, would you excuse me for...” her voice trailed off as she stepped around the desk, stilettos clicking on the tile floor in the perfect counterpoint to the noise of her office door.

The door was heavy; its’ crystal insets faceted to catch the light, now catching only the shoulder of one of the four heavily armed men pushing their way inside. Dahlia turned her head slightly, shouting for Marcus to get down as she shifted reflexively into her diamond form. Fully automatic weapons unleashed a veritable hailstorm of bullets into the air, the four of them spraying the office in an effort to cause the most destruction possible. She stood in the middle, rage etched across her sculpted crystalline features as the bullets bounced off her with no effect.

The moment one of them had to pause to reload, Dahlia moved forward and launched a roundhouse kick to disarm him then a controlled punch to knock him out. Years of training and practice with her abilities taught her how hard to hit to merely disable and knock unconscious. In close range, they couldn’t take the chance of shooting each other which gave her the advantage. Disarmed and slammed unconscious in short order, she checked the area outside her door and the hallway leading towards the bank of elevators. It was empty.

She turned back, letting go of her diamond form while striding over towards Marcus as the full effect of what she’d done sunk in. Blue eyes flashed with concern as she looked at him closely, her throat working to produce a sound past the fear suddenly lodged within.

“Please tell me you’re alright...”

[Marcus Godfrey]

A laugh coughed it's way out of Marcus' lungs.

"Not exactly," he admitted, his fingers already stained scarlet as he peeled his hand away from the dark, damp hole torn in his jacket. As he did, his knees buckled; he barely managed to catch himself on the corner of Dahlia's deck to slow his descent to the ground.

A hissing wince took over; he could taste the copper of his blood at the back of his throat, which made it pretty clear what the ricochet had punctured. It didn't hurt, though he did have an overwhelming sense of queasiness; that was probably a bad sign. He tugged the folded handkerchief from his breast pocket; screwed it into a ball and tucked it into the hand busy trying to keep his outsides inside.

"You know, its funny," he muttered, with another half-hearted laugh; one that dislodged a feeble spluttering cough, and brought a faint trickle of red to the corner of his mouth. "For a girl who transforms into diamond, you sure as hell expected me to buy you a lot of them."

[Dahlia Ericsson]

A sharp inhalation of breath accompanied staggering steps that took her to his side. Dahlia dropped to her knees and drew him towards her so he wasn't simply laying on the cold tile floor. She pried his fingers away from the wound only to add a hastily folded scarf to the effort, before pressing her own atop his hand.

"Oh Bondye mwen..." fell from her lips in a soft litany, reverting to the Creole she learned as a child as fear threatened to engulf her. She swallowed hard and found a half-hearted smile striving to reach her lips. It didn't quite get there, and the mirthless laugh lodged in her throat even as the blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

Dahlia forced her voice to work, but even as it did, the lightness sounded quite obviously forced. "They're my favorite pieces of jewelry, and you didn't seem to mind at the time. Besides...the diamonds I can create won't last more than a few hours after I stop concentrating on them."

She freed one hand from holding him to reach for the cell phone she'd left careless atop her desk. It was maddeningly out of reach and drew a string of creative Creole curses past her lips. Her desk phone, however, was close enough to be pulled down to the floor. Fingers dialed Frank's extension first, and then his cell phone when there was no answer. She was holding tightly to Marcus and trying to breathe around the fear closing tight around her throat.

"Marcus, we need help...I have to get you downstairs and call 9-1-1...there must be more of them in the building. Frank's still here...and Emma...and Joe...Bondye mwen..." her voice trailed off as she picked up the receiver and began to dial.

[Marcus Godfrey]

"Stop."

The word didn't come out quite as forcefully as he had intended, but it was the best he could muster. His hand reached up, slid between the phone and her cheek, forced her to look directly in his eyes. He felt the familiar sensation as his mutant abilities activated; felt his will coursing through his veins, flowing through his fingertips and into her as he stared unwavering into her eyes.

"You need to listen." His words were soft and faint; gentle, but insistent. He spoke slowly, working hard to dodge around the shallow breaths that were all his damaged lung could muster. "There is no time for me."

His fingers shifted on her cheek; he hadn't touched her that way, hadn't gazed into her eyes like this for a long time. He wanted nothing more than to keep her here, to spend his last moments with her, and make her the last thing that he saw. There wasn't anything special there; at least, not like you'd think. Just fondness, happy times, happy memories; but for a man like Marcus Godfrey, with the life he'd led and the example he'd followed, sometimes fondness and happy memories were all you ever had left.

But he couldn't do that. Shouldn't do that. He mustered his will, and imposed it more strongly through their physical connection.

"Security won't answer, and there are armed gunmen in the building. You need to go, find anyone you can, and get out. There are people who need you right now, Dahlia: more lives than just mine that you are responsible for. I need you, want you, to go."

[Dahlia Ericsson]

"But...I...ca-"

She wanted to say that she wouldn't...that she couldn't...but the words stopped, suddenly sticking in her throat as her mind slowed. Lashes fluttered as blue eyes blinked, her gaze coming back into focus after an eternal moment. Dahlia shifted, her movements halting and stiff as she let Marcus go, leaving propped only against the grand edifice of her desk.

Standing, she hesitated as she gazed down at him before the compulsion to leave overwhelmed her last reservation.

There were people dependent upon her for more than their livelihoods tonight.

Fingers clasped tightly around her cell phone, she turned and stumbled out of her stilettos and her office, watching the few people stumbling about the far end of the hallway towards the stairwells and elevators. They were panicked and fearful, glancing over their shoulders in expectation of further violence. These were her people...the ones she'd hand-picked to come with her in this new venture.

She paused as she reached them, searching the faces. "Lucy, is anyone else on this floor tonight? Did Hector go home already? I don't see him here..."

"He left early...the four of us are the only ones up here tonight...at least...we were...until the shots started..." Dahlia grasped the woman's shoulder with her free hand and shook her before the shrill tone of her voice got any higher.

"Stop it...hysteria won't help. Let's get out of here first, ok? Stay with me, Lucy. We'll be fine. Rob, give her a hand, would you?" Thankfully, the man nodded and took Lucy's arm in his grasp. Turning, Dahlia pressed her palm to the nearby panel and forced open the secure emergency stairwell door. That action would silently alert the police and the fire department, she mused as she ushered people inside and closed the door behind them.