Georgia fixes the new R&D hat she had managed to spend a fraction of her pay on to acquire from a scientist who spends a small fortune regularly on wasterat blubber for his hair, so never wore the thing. She sniffs and fiddles with the bill of the hat, trying to bend it and break it in. The hat was far too new. It did not have that weathered and well-loved feel to it yet. It would.
Still, she tries to stop fiddling with her replacement hat, as much as she hated that it was blue and not red, and draw her attention to the machineshop before her. It was alive with powertools ripping and sparking away. Booming voices called out over the symphony of labour, directing, arguing, laughing. The smell of metal and oil was so thick she could all but taste it in her mouth. Where others might see cold, dirty metal and grease, Georgia could see through it all. There was a warmth here, a common passion among so many within those metal walls.
She felt disoriented as she stepped inside and her new sense began to alert her to all the movement around her. Her head aches as she tries to keep track of it all. It felt like too much even for her. She tries to push it to the back of her mind as she strides up to Carolyn. She clears her thoat and tries to announce herself over the din of activity, "Hey, Cara! Its me! I came to see how you were doing."
Carolyn was welding a new piece of armour onto one of her mech's legs when Georgia showed up behind her. Wearing her usual jump suit with a pair of thick gloves, she was sweating like a pig. Turning off the welder, she places it down at the mech's feet and takes off her welding mask, rubbing several dozen beads of sweat off her forehead as she then reached for a bottle of water beside the welder. "Hey Georgia!" Carolyn says, a little fatigue in her voice as she presses the bottle of water onto her forehead to try and cool herself down. Her cheeks were flushed, and her breathing was heavy: She had been working hard up until that point. A couple of men around her glanced and grinned to themselves, but she either didn't notice, or didn't mind the attention. "Settling into the new place alright? Nobody's bothering you, right?"
She was momentarily distracted, watching the scene with some confusion and wondering at what the guys were staring at before she shrugs her shoulders. "I moved the last box over this afternoon... No one has really bothered me, really... It's been boring, just sitting with nothing to do and no one to keep me company." Her arm moves to her chest to hug Thomas but the bear was absent. Her fingers tap awkwardly over her ribs before clenching and unclenching it at her side. "Has everything been fine here?"
"Yeah, yeah, things have been fine here." Gently patting the side of her mech, she glances up to the open cockpit. It had just been cleaned and fixed up, looking as good as the day she first assembled it. "So, are you here to keep me company, Georgia?" Carolyn asks with a sweet, friendly smile, as she turns back and looks Georgia eye to eye. "Because if you are..." Her eyes glance about the area, the two had been given some space to work by everyone else in the machine shop: Everyone was focused on their own projects, and not on them. "... We need to talk."
Georgia offers a wide smile and nods, "Yeah, I thought we could take a walk, too..." Her smile falters for a moment before she shuffles her feet and reaches into her jean pockets, taking out the radio she would normally hear reports in from in case anyone higher up the chain in BCSEC had orders for them, "Alone." She sets it aside. "That's why Thomas is back home. A nice time for just you and me." She had heard a little about the radio incident. It troubled her deeply for a number of reasons. For now, though, she just wanted to catch Carolyn up.
Carolyn looks up at the mech, hesitating. She was in the middle of working on it, and walking away from a work in progress generally set one back a number of steps when they returned to it later. Looking up at the ceiling, she takes off one of her gloves and scratches the back of her head. "Georgia, I don't know if I can walk away from my mech right now... I'm not finished putting her back together again. Besides, it's safe to talk here... I don't know how safe it is to talk where guards are patrolling and where under cover agents could be lurking anywhere." It was, perhaps, a bit paranoid, but given that everything from their radios to their mechs had been bugged, it stood to reason that Carolyn was not comfortable talking about things that could get them kidnapped or killed out in public.
She chews on her lip, shuffling from foot-to-foot nervously. Finally, she grabs Carolyn lightly by the arm and leans in close to her, talking quietly, "What if I told you I met a guardian angel and she might be here?" She frowns and looks concerned for a moment, "She saved us, all of us, on that mission, Cara. And I'm worried she got hurt because of me."
Resting a hand over Georgia's hand, she lightly squeezes it and closes her eyes. Carolyn takes a deep breath and shakes her head. "Georgia, there are lots of people in the Bunker. I can't go off looking for them when I wouldn't even know where to start... Especially not now... I need to have my mech ready by tonight, for an assignment my father gave me." Looking into Georgia's eyes with earnest, she smiles a little. "I hope I can repay her one day for saving you, but that day isn't today."
"There's rumours about the marketplace. I think I can find her. I want to find her before anyone else does, but if I don't find her by tonight, I'll come back here, alright?" She furrows her brow before hugging her friend, not caring about any of the grease or sweat. "Be careful, though." She pauses, "I'll take my radio with me, if you want. Then you can check up on me on a private channel if you get too worried."
Without hesitation Carolyn hugged Georgia in return, tightly, patting her on the back with a frown of concern. "Alright. You be careful too, alright, Georgia?" She taps her mech's leg lightly. "I'll keep in mind you have your radio."
She smiles slightly, "I will, Cara." She draws back and starts to leave before turning back, "Was there anything else we needed to talk about?"
"I... Ah..." Carolyn looks to her mech, then leans down and picks up her welding mask again. "I won't be here tonight, Georgia, I... I'm going to be busy."
She furrows her brow, "So you said..." She takes a step forward, a worried feeling beginning to gnaw inside of her, "What are you doing?"
"Oh, you know... Things... And stuff." Carolyn scratches the back of her neck and takes off her welding mask, putting it on the ground once more and sighing. "Dammit I was hoping to get this done within the hour, guess not..." Climbing up her mech and into the cockpit, she starts working on something else absent mindedly. "Well... Georgia... Do you remember that one time we stole a bunch of stuff to make Christmas lights? Er... Sparkly plugs?"
Georgia walks closer, feeling a bit of irritation with her beating around the bush but moves to the edge of the cockpit, "Yeah, I remember. What about it?"
"Right, well..." Carolyn says as she starts working on her communication system: The whole thing had been ripped out for some reason. "... Well... I'm going to do that, tonight... Except, instead of a sparkly plug... I'm going to be stealing... A person. From the Council of ADAM... With uh... Help. So... Uh... Yeah." She clears her throat, her lips parting to add more, only to close a moment later. There was nothing she could say to alleviate concerns about this.
She blinks and her fingers tap lightly along the mech, "Is it Adam?" She looks at Carolyn, "Regardless of who it is, you can count on me to be here to help, but my guardian angel is Adam's friend, so it might be important to her."
"Yes. It's Adam... Look, no offense to your guardian angel, but, this is a delicate and secretive operation. I don't think I could convince those who have passed these orders to me in secret to bring on a mystery mutant woman." Looking over the new com system she was installing, she closes her eyes and inhales sharply. "We can't trust her right now. We don't know her motives... Again, I'm glad she saved you, but we have to keep this between us for now... Then, later, when we have Adam, we can look for her. Return him to her. We just... Have to be sure of a few things first, okay?"
Georgia tenses and looks at Carolyn, "The only reason more people did not die was because of her, Cara. Now, you're going up against the Council, who, by far, are a lot worse. I think you need all the help you can get, and I think regardless of if you want her there, she's going to be there, so better to have it cleared up who is on whose side before going in."
Carolyn hesitates, and shakes her head, opening her eyes with a steely determination as she continues to work on her mech. "I can't do that. I can't go looking for someone when I don't know where they are... Georgia... Adam looked right through me, like I was wallpaper. I can't trust this woman, I don't know her... I don't know why she saved you. What if she saved us just to use us as bait later? As sacrifical pawns in some... Greater scheme between her and the Council... What I know is this, Georgia: I can trust you, and I can trust my father, and I can trust a few other people. We're gonna break out Adam, and we're gonna do it because this is our colony first. If we have to depend on strangers we can't trust with powers we don't understand whose motives are unclear to solve our problems, then we don't deserve to succeed..." Her eyes seemed to darken as she looked down to her knees. "Georgia... Sometimes... People do good things just so they can hurt you later when your back is turned... Maybe you can trust this woman... Maybe, just, maybe, she drew the beast to you specifically to get your trust, knowing it couldn't really hurt her... At no point was Adam even once scared for his life despite this beast coming for him... We can't trust people we don't know. Especially ones this powerful, who know things so apparently dire, that the Council would risk setting off a massive conflict with U-ARM just to kidnap him. We need to depend on ourselves for once in our lives..." She looks over to Georgia, and smiles softly, though a little bit of pain managed to ebb out from the way the corners of her lips struggled to remain upward. "I'm sorry, Georgia... I can't take this kind of a risk. Not on something this secretive, and possibly deadly... If you trust her this much, I'll understand. I'll let you go and won't say a word to anyone... But I can't trust her, Georgia. Not right now. Not with... God knows what on the line."
"Just like I have special talents that others don't understand," she works her jaw, "I'm not stupid. I know I confuse people, I'm different. I'm not dumb." She clenches her hand along the side of the mech, sighing softly, "I won't tell her anything, I won't get her involved. I'll be back tonight. I do have to try and thank her, because she saved you, Cara. That means the world to me."
"I was never given a chance to save myself... But... Pass along my thanks, if you do find her." Carolyn gets back to work on her mech without another word.
Georgia turns and leaves the shop, a bitter taste in her mouth after the exchange. A part of her wished for Thomas' comforting embrace right now to soothe her frayed nerves, but there would be none of that. A niggling at the back of her mind tries to explain why. She brushes it aside and begins to walk off into the marketplace, alone with her racing thoughts, her sour mood and a lot of questions. She thought she never would be alone so long as she knew she had Thomas and Carolyn in her life... Yet, right this moment, she felt bare of their presence. She tries to push it away and just focus on the search, only stopping once to buy some sweet bread to eat.
Just in that moment, a tall looking woman with blonde hair walks beside her. Wearing a large trench coat that seemed to hide a much smaller frame underneath, her orange eyes looked over the sweet bread. A small smile creeps onto her lips, but she otherwise remains silent.
Her eyes trail over the woman before settling on her orange eyes. The orange eyes the woman in blue and Adam had both possessed. Georgia tears off a piece and offers it to the woman, "Want some?"
The woman shakes her head and smiles. "Not necessary, I've already had my fill today." She motions over into a crowd, away from the merchants, where the two would be lost in the noise. She speaks calmly into Georgia's mind, her aura of warmth seemed repressed. "How are you doing, Child of Sodom?"
Georgia pops her food into her mouth and chews, thinking, a mix of emotions running through her. She had taken a chance to rest and it had done her well, but emotionally she was feeling strained. "I'm not flying without wings from the tenth floor, at least?" She studies the woman. From what she could see, which was not too terribly much, she did not look very injured, "What about you?"
"I'm doing... Adequately... I am concerned." She looks around the crowd, smiling that none seemed to notice them, despite how odd the pair looked. "For obvious reasons, I hope."
The silver-haired girl nods, "Yeah. Your friend." She starts chewing her another piece of bread idly before swallowing. "I wanted to thank you for all of your help. Carolyn, my best friend, she thanks you too, for saving me."
"Ah, one of the pilots? That's good." Glancing to the sky, she briefly brushes against Georgia. The incidental brush gave Georgia the sense of warmth that was lacking, and confirmed that she was able to repress it. "This place is full of... Confused people." She comments, almost as if observing, rather than being part of it.
Georgia nods in confirmation that it was one of the pilots. At the contact, she draws away, her cheeks flushed from the sudden warmth it had instilled in her. "Are you saying there aren't confused people where you're from?"
"There are... Just, in a different way." She frowns a little. "A very different way... A way that I'll need Adam, and those... Files you got me... But Adam insisted on being captured."
The young mutant girl nods and swallows the last of her bread, "I guess that leaves two questions for me to ask... Why did he want to be captured... And what is Regenesis?"
She looks around at the crowd once more, and switches to speaking in Georgia's mind. "He wanted to be captured so he could try to warn the Council of an impending threat to mankind. He wanted to open a dialogue... Even when I told him it was pointless. Regenesis is... It's a complicated scientific experiment. It involves the eradication of radiation and the refinement of mutations to a point where everyone can be equal with them, where they become stable improvements... It's all theoretical right now... Either way, I need to get Adam back."
"Of course, I expected that," she lifts her hat and scratches her head, feeling a bit at a crossroads. "You're going to try and break him out, aren't you?"
"Yes." The woman replied simply and bluntly. "I am. I'm also aware others will try, but I doubt their ability to succeed."
Georgia rubs over her face and looks exhausted for a moment, "Just tell me this, on a scale of 1 to yes, how likely is it that the Council has been following any of us or listening to us or already knows all of this? They are rude, no good dirty radio peepers, after all."
"Well." The woman looks up into the grey sky and shrugs. "They'll be paranoid enough to set up defenses for it whether they know of it or not. They won't intend to keep Adam long... And, they are indeed, no good spies. Much like... Children, who can't keep out of the cookie jar."
Georgia smiles slightly at the analogy, "Well, good to know. Thomas never liked them anyways." She looks up at the sky, trying to see what she sees with no luck, "What's your name, anyways?"
The woman pauses for a moment, and then smiles sweetly. "Evelynn Winters." She spoke aloud, before gently holding Georgia's hand, to give her that feeling of warmth again. "And you?... Will you help me?"
She meets Evelynn's gaze, "I already planned to. I won't be going in with you, though, Eve. I have to keep my best friend safe. So I'll see you there, alright?" She pauses, "I'm Georgia Rhettland, by the way."
"Ah, I see..." Evelynn says, her smile fading a bit. "It is nice to meet you. I hope the other children of Sodom do not hurt you too much."
She bites her lip and looks at Evelynn, feeling like she had just trodden on more toes today on accident. "I know our best chance is to work together. People are too busy playing the Council's game right now, though. All about not trusting one another... Well, if you can please trust me, Eve, I will help you... We'll help get Adam out of there. I would like your help on it, but I can't get them to agree to have you there, before we get there. If you understand? I don't even know if Carolyn will forgive me for having said anything about this..." She sighs and looks down.
"I cannot wait. I need to slip in tonight. As for the pilot... I do not believe she would appreciate you slipping secrets, no. You can feel free to tell them that I will be sneaking in, though... I will... Avoid them. I don't trust that they can do things quietly... It's not in the nature of the Children of Sodom to do anything gracefully, try though they may." She grasps Georgia's shoulders and looks her eye to eye. "Please... Don't concern yourself with impressing me. Keep yourself alive, do what you feel is right... All I ask is that you don't try to kill me. Let me do my work, and I will let you do what you feel is right. Be proud."
Her heartstrings tug for a moment before she raises her chin, "You can't go in alone. Cara will have plenty of others to help her, but you're going to need help. I'm going with you."
"Are you sure?" Evelynn asks her empathetically. "I can handle things alone if needbe."
"I'm sure. I feel this is right. I just hope Cara will understand," she looks down to the ground and rubs the back of her neck.
"Whether she does or doesn't, you have my gratitude... Meet me back here, in the market, tonight. I know a few ways to slip in..." She replies softly. "And thank you."
"Yeah... I'll see you tonight. Take care til then." She waves and starts off back through the crowds of the market. As she gets further from Evelynn she grabs her radio in her hand and takes a deep breath. She flicks the switch and gets ready to say something. Hesitates, then releases it once more. She did not know what to say or what she could say.