[PRP] Good Morning, Sunshine (Evan/Nora)

[Inle-roo]

Evan genuinely enjoyed pod duty, to the point where he volunteered for it on those rare days he was actually on the island. It was a nice change from being passed around to any outpost that needed support, but mostly it let him catch up on his sleep--evident by the way he was currently passed out in his chair in the monitoring room, his elbow resting on the console with his chin propped up on his hand to at least make it look like he was paying some sort of attention. No one ever woke up on his shift anyway.

Ol-j-man

kekeke

 

[medigel]

Except today.

The hiss wasn't particularly loud, but the alarm blaring was. About three seconds after that, said podling within began to shift, groaning and absentmindedly punching the screen like she would a fiesty alarm clock to shut it off. The woman yawned as it lifted, finding herself cramped and grumbling something about "the bloody mattress again" as she attempted to turn over and go back to sleep. One leg slipped over the lip of the pod and sank until it hit the floor, though it was awkward enough to cause even more drowsy complaints barely audible under her breath.

Two people in the labs really wanted to sleep now.

Inle-roo

 

[Inle-roo]

The abrupt shrieking of the alarm had Evan jerking into a bleary kind of awareness, instinctively reaching for a gun that he no longer carried with so much force that he nearly overbalanced and fell out of his chair. He paused in that brief moment between sleeping and waking, confused and wondering what the hell had just happened.

Realization came in a muttered string of curse words and a mad scramble out of the chair. It hadn't finished clattering to the ground before he was out the door and was wobbling unsteadily on its side as Evan burst into the pod room. He was already prepared for the worst, ready to find some hapless trainee sprawled on the ground--unconscious, maybe, and wouldn't that be fun to explain to the Lifers--and was pleasantly surprised to find the waker still fast asleep. He heaved a sigh of relief as he reached into her pod, pressing buttons on the panel until it stopped yelling at them.

The briefest of moments to compose himself--and be amused that someone had actually managed to sleep through that racket, and look at how peacefully she seemed to be sleeping, and be regretful that he had to be the one to really wake her up, to introduce her to all of this, and--before he reached inside the pod again to gently squeeze her shoulder. "Time to wake up, Ma'am," Evan said, trying to make sure that at least one of them had a nice wake-up call.

Ol-j-man

 

[medigel]

Oh good, the alarm shut off. Normally it took a solid whack or five. Today was a good day.

Today was a good day to sleep in. It was the weekend, no? She'd explicitly asked the chief constable to let her have Saturday and Sunday off to spend with her kid and the family because it had been so long, and God damn it she needed a break from that case in Chichester. Everyone did.

But somebody wanted Mummy to get up early as usual . . . although her daughter's hand was rather calloused and large today.

Nora's eyes flew open as an unfamiliar voice sounded above her.

On instinct a punch was thrown to knock him back, her legs either stretched out or cramped under her and thus unusable. "What the blood hell--?!" Who managed to get past the--

--the locks...

Her bleary vision told her this was not her house. Her body told her this was most certainly not her bed. Scrambling to get her bearings, she aimed another kick at the poor Sun hunter, nearly falling out of the pod in the process.

Inle-roo

 

[Inle-roo]

Good instincts, Evan thought as the unexpected punch knocked some of the breath out of his lungs. He took half a step back as the waker flailed in her pod, wincing as her kick caught him in the leg.

"Hey, hey, it's okay, you're okay," he said, soft and soothingly. His hands stretched out, wide open and placating, both to show her that he held no weapon and to be close enough to catch her if she actually rolled out of the pod.

Ol-j-man

 

[medigel]

This was the most courteous home invader she had ever dealt with. Maybe she'd make note of that in her incident report.

Granted, again this looked nothing like her home. Too many buttons, too much white. Very blinding. Her fist didn't uncurl as she forced herself out of the contained, stiff and wincing as one of her legs nearly crumpled under her weight. "Kind of you to care," Nora noted dryly, turning to face the man with a suspicious look. She was still tensed and mostly alert now.

"You do know that kidnapping a police officer is a career killing sort of move, mate? Would've preferred your epiphany a little earlier."

Inle-roo

 

[Inle-roo]

"Easy does it," Evan muttered as the waker rolled herself out of her pod. He took a cautious step forward, close enough for her to lean on if she needed it, and kept half an eye on her balled up hand. He wasn't worried about her doing him harm, not really, but it probably wouldn't make his welcome spiel any better if she took another swing at him.

Probably wouldn't make it any worse, either, the way it was already turning out. He smiled bemusedly at her question. "Kidnapping a--where do you think you are right now, Ma'am?"

Ol-j-man

 

[medigel]

His cautious step earned him another swivelling kick to keep back, though this time Nora careened into a neighboring pod with the momentum. She eyed it with evident disbelief as she caught her breath. "Great, breeding ground for nice nutters . . . Thought I'd seen it all."

Wincing some more, she forced herself back up, though she kept a hand planted on the container to keep her steady until her legs decided to work again. "I'll take a guess and say not the UK anymore. How about you tell me?" Nora countered. "While you're at it, how's about you also keep your distance? I've got a terrible case of restless leg syndrome that flares up at very inopportune times."

Inle-roo

 

[Inle-roo]

It was instinct for Evan to lift his leg in order to deflect her kick. Not bad form, either, he thought, taking into account her unbalanced state and apparent confusion. He chuckled at her comments, knowing that he had the one-up on her in the seeing-it-all department--he was almost tempted to bring Gir out just to show her how much she hadn't seen, but he figured she'd get up to speed soon enough.

She might not think he was so nice at that point, either, and he didn't want that. First impressions were important, after all, even though it was starting to look like he hadn't made a good one.

His smile remained as he took the requested step back, settling himself into an at-ease position. "Good guess. Welcome to Deus Ex Machina, a secret paramilitary organization based in the middle of nothing and nowhere and dedicated to the extermination of everything you've ever had a bad dream about. You volunteered to be here. Don't you remember?"

Ol-j-man

 

[medigel]

Nora gave him a blank look. "Oh, yes," she said flatly. "I remember now. Was this before I was promised a unicorn mount that could fly? Or after the leprechaun rebellion?" She scoffed, testing her weight and finding her legs a little more agreeable.

Everything in her head was foggy after a certain point, but he didn't need to be let on about that. Not until she was somewhere secure. For now, she'd let bluster buy her some time.

"Come off it. Where am I really?" Deus Ex Machina? Someone was a little too much into fiction. "More importantly, what did I drink?" Nora grumbled to herself as she touched her head. "God. Poor form to drug a lady like that."

Inle-roo

 

[Inle-roo]

/How come we don't have a flying unicorn mount?/

"Unicorns don't fly," Evan corrected. He was happy to indulge her sass, to let her disbelief play out for as long as it could before she reached the point where her new reality could no longer be denied. It was the least he could do for her, if she couldn't remember on her own.

It was on the tip of his tongue to let her know just how much he didn't need to drug a woman, but he had been raised better than that. "You really are at Deus, Ma'am," he repeated, "but maybe one of the techs can get you something for your head." There was only one door out of there, and she would have to pass by him to get to it.

Ol-j-man

 

[medigel]

She barked a laugh. So not only was she kidnapped or signed on or however he felt like putting it into some shadowy organization-slash-cult who indulged a little too harshly into white paint and sci fi techno junk, but now she was being corrected on the logic of a fantastical creature. Sure. Why not.

"Pegasus, then," Nora corrected herself with a slight roll of her eyes. "So very sorry. I don't need something for my head, I need--"

She paused. Something was starting to flicker in her memory, out of focus but slowly clarifying in patches. It was . . . huh. Her frown deepened in concentration, grasping at what she could.

"Alright, let's say I'm part of the charade," she picked back up briskly. "Why would I volunteer for this 'secret paramilitary organization'? What nightmares are you talking about?"

Inle-roo

 

[Inle-roo]

And there it was, in that brief hesitation, that moment when the veil started to slip away and she seemed to finally remember. His smile dimmed a little, becoming less falsely welcoming and more sympathetic.

"Your nightmares," he replied, and then elaborated, "all of the things that go bump in the night, the things that only you seem to be able to see. As for why you joined," he trailed off with a shrug, "everyone's got their reasons."

Ol-j-man

 

[medigel]

"You don't want to know what's in my nightmares, sweetie."

Either he wasn't being very forthcoming, or she was asking the wrong questions; she decided the former was the more likely culprit and switched tactics. "So you've seen the shadows, then?" Nora asked, trusting she was able to stand straight now and peeling away from the pod, her arms crossing. "They're our objective? Are they just spirits making nightmares, or are there actually invisible rampant unicorns prancing about that I should be worrying about as well?"

Inle-roo

 

[Inle-roo]

"Well, you seemed to take the prospect of being roofied pretty well, so you might be right on that one." It was interesting, to Evan, to watch the freshly-hatched not-yet-trainee bounce back so quickly, to compose herself and start interrogating him. He remembered she mentioned being a cop and wondered if this was how she treated suspects. She didn't seem like a meter maid, that was for sure.

"We've all seen the shadows," Evan explained. "You're just like everyone else here, in that respect. They're not some spirits, and they're not all that invisible--these are real, actual, honest to God monsters. Demons and dragons and werewolves and all that. Can't say I've ever seen a unicorn, myself, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. In fact, you should just save yourself the trouble and start believing that everything exists."

Ol-j-man