Yari Sawyer's liberation from Skath-controlled Piraeus comes as a surprise and at a cost.
Last Night on Piraeus |
Summary: | Yari Sawyer's liberation from Skath-controlled Piraeus comes as a surprise and at a cost. |
Date: | 17/09/17 |
Related Logs: | http://battlestarorion.wikidot.com/The-End-to-Cottage-Bliss http://battlestarorion.wikidot.com/Wedding-Night-Fright http://battlestarorion.wikidot.com/Rule-of-Thumb |
Sheridan, Piraeus |
2049 |
Two months after Ionia's first birthday celebration, and hours after Visilis' 6th, the Baltus household faced a rude awakening. It was a quiet chaos, at first: a curtain fluttering in the breeze, when moments before there hadn't been a draft. A creak on the floor, when all bodies were tucked into their beds…or engaged in some sort of private, nocturnal activity within the protected confines of their own bedchambers.
Yari stirs, growing stiffly impatient in her post-coital recline on the bed. Doctor's orders, to ensure his seed sown is given adequate time to take…but she's thirsty, and has to pee. Yari lies there for a grueling six seconds more, listening through held breath for any indicator of his imminent return to her side. When she's satisfied that he'd maybe become preoccupied in his office or prolonged his trip to the kitchen, Yari hastily shimmies out from under the sheets and shuffles with legs as close together as she can manage. Not that it'd matter in a few seconds.
Her exit from the bathroom is heralded by an overly loud (faked) gagging into the toilet, which she promptly flushes. Now to solve the second problem. After checking on her slumbering children, Yari patrols the halls - a wisp of silk-clad woman sneaking in the steps of her husband for the kitchen, so that SHE might trouble the tap for a glass of water. Unless she's caught and ordered back to bed, but she's confident in her abilities. She's good at being quiet. She's had to be.
She can see the light on in Titos' study, sees a shadow move over the floor, then back again. He's making his own quiet sounds in there, no doubt cross checking finances or perusing this week's shift in market values — it's one responsibility she's content to be denied. Yari scurries on toward her secretive errand then, before he finishes whatever he's doing.
It's half a step IN to the kitchen that the ignition for the rude awakening is truly lit. There is a flash - like a bulb overhead angrily spits its last spark. Except she hasn't yet hit the switch. A hum, a buzz, like a speeding bee cuts the air and something warm and wet strikes her face.
The taste of the warm wet is familiar. It's a flavor she's had the displeasure of sampling last week, when Titos bit her lip too hard. One hand dumbly probes her face to collect a sample of the confusing sensation though it already registers in a deeper, more primal part of her brain. Her scream cuts the slumbering serenity of the home, but only for an instant, until a third hand claps over her mouth and she feels something cold and hard - antithesis to the warm and wet - press between her eyes.
She's blinded by the light shining there and can't see the face of her attacker until the intruder thumps a fist over her cowering head and hit the switch to illuminate the scene. Dr Titos Baltus, third of his name, is sprawled unbecomingly across the floor beside the pantry. The growing pool of blood ebbs nearer and nearer to her bare toes already, drained from the gaping hole in his skull.
Turns out, he is made of the same stuff as those his ilk had worked tirelessly to beat into submission, all these years.
Yari blinks again, and again, mouth struggling to form words, even after the hand holding it shut gently eases its grip. She shakes her head, denying whatever accusation seeks to pull the trigger a second time.
The intruder gives her a choice, then. A chance. Lowers the gun, to boot, but Yari imagines just how fast that weapon could rise again if she answers incorrectly. As quickly as the dead man's temper, no doubt.
Minutes later, the hastily dressed mother is throwing a shawl about her head and shoulders, shaking her oldest son awake, then swaddling the infant Ionia to her bosom. Argus is gathered by his brother, and deposited onto Yari's bent back, where he clings like one of the primates in her hobby zoo. Visilis muscles a knapsack, hugging it first to his chest, then dragging it between his knees when it grows too heavy.
"Where's Daddy?" he demands to know. "We aren't supposed to go anywhere witho—"
Yari stumbles ahead of him to bar the view just a little too late. Her instinctual retrieval of a dropped pacifier three steps back costs them all, dearly. Titos was gone from the kitchen, but spatters of his DNA remain, as does the congealing pond on the floor. Her son may be small, but he isn't stupid.
A second intruder emerges from behind, pocketing something into his vest. Wordlessly, he yanks a combative Visilis (who had one of Titos' discarded shoes clutched in a death grip) from the floor and motions for the young mother to resume her exit. She's led into the darkness and first steps toward freedom by the very assassins responsible for the heavy silence now haunting the house they leave behind.