#opq ensemble

[factorialsotherfandoms]

(More Lucie lives OPQ au because fuck it I have the best copium.)

The director's computer is easy enough to find, situated at the big fancy desk instead on the rows below. Lucie is not quite sure why it is in the computer room and not his office but, well, the computers are all on an intranet so even if they are wrong, this will work, it will just take a little longer.

Getting in is easy enough - they found his password earlier - but the files they want... Protected, of course, and it needs cracking before she can copy them.

That's what her decryption software is for, at least.

A quick check and, while the employee computers have USB ports in the side of the screens, the main one requires actually accessing the tower.

Annoying, but doable.

She pulls the correct flash drive - orange - from her lanyard, and waves Jeffrey over.

"Plus this in for me?"

"Er, sure, any specific slot?"

"A USB one."

There's a momentary staring match which follows her sass, which she of course wins as Jeffrey ducks down, and plugs it in. The other three are off, somewhere, looking for evidence and making some distraction - the walkie talkie is silent, so they're either dead or safe.

The 'installing device driver software' alert pops up in the corner, and Lucie shakes the thought away.

A few seconds later, it's ready.

"Thanks." She navigates through to the command panel, and boots the hacking software up. As soon as it is going she pulls her arms back, letting her shoulders settle against the back of her wheelchair once more.

"Is it done?" Jeffrey asks, hands fiddling with his knife as he stands watch by the door.

"Ten minutes," Lucie replies. "It does not need me here while it works."

"Right..."

Jeffrey sticks his head into the corridor, looking quickly side to side before ducking back in, "can't see any trouble. We should wait here."

"Oui," Lucie maneuvers over to one of the other computers, wriggling the mouse in the hopes of finding anything interesting.

"Er, Lucie?" Jeffrey asks.

"It's fine," she finds nothing on the first, and moves on to a second. "We should gather information, no?"

"Sure, I guess."

Lucie catches him fiddling with something in his pocket, and can only pray it is not another hamster. How her boys survive these missions without her she honestly has no idea.

She leaves him be, and quickly flicks through the second computer. There are a few research reports and data tables - she grabs a second flash drive, and quickly copies those across - and then... An email alert pops up in the corner.

She would leave it - she should leave it - except that the subject line reads "Situation D'Urgence!" and is marked as important.

The text of the email is all in French. She skims over it quickly, expecting a security notification about a break in, and instead... Something about neonatal specimens escaping confinement, a hunt, all human workers to evacuate immediately as per containment breech protocol.

"Jeffrey?" she asks as she clicks it open. "What did the others say they were doing?"

"Looking for specimens," he replies. "More fetuses in jars. That sort of thing."

A thought occurs, and she starts searching the reports.

"I think they found them," she says. "Emergency all staff alert. Something escaped."

"Escaped? What do you mean escaped? This was supposed to be a safe mission!"

She ignores Jeffrey's panicked screeching, quickly searching the documents for the terms she saw. In one she finds photographs from a dissection of the creatures.

Babies her ass.

"Jeffrey," she cuts across him. "The babies are not babies."

"What do you- Oh."

Labeled as néonatal, the figures are still the size of an adult human. Maybe they were even human once; it is hard to tell, with the leathery skin of their chests pulled aside, so the workers might photograph their organs. The five inch long talons, the extended teeth, the scaled black wings - all of that is labelled in explicate detail, too. Lucie is a little thankful everything is in black and white, but adds the images folder on this computer onto her flash drive just in case the originals are still there. The photos looked old, distorted and grainy, though, so maybe not.

But then why not do better dissections themselves?

"Those? Those are the /babies/?" Jeffrey asks.

Lucie points to the labels, "yes."

"Fuck. Fuck, fuck, um," Jeffrey grabs his walkie talkie, clicking it to speak. "Um, guys?"

"Not fucking now, pizza boy," Benito sounds out of breath. "Wait, no, grab Lucie and get out of here."

In the background, Lucie can hear the distorted sounds of a fight.

"Doc?" he asks again.

"Not now!" Benito replies, and someone in the back screams.

Nothing else comes.

Lucie quickly turns back to the reports, skimming through them.

"Lucie? We... We should go," Jeffrey says, glancing at the door.

She turns her wheelchair to glance over at the main computer, checking the processing bar. It's less complete than it should have been. Merde, there must be something complicated about the encryption.

She pulls the flash drive from this computer, clipping it back onto the lanyard under her shirt.

She should go. A fight has broken out, and she is a liability to the team like this.

But, nobody else understands the decryption software - she's tried to teach them, but it just never sticks. And the French, nobody else speaks it, and all the documents here seem written in it. If they need a password finding...

Maybe they should have delayed the investigation until the Order could have found another hacker and another French speaker, leaving Lucie with her usual job as mission control. But... But people had been disappearing, and her boys had traced everything to here, and there /should not have been anything dangerous here at 3am on a Sunday/.

But, she had made her choice a week ago when they denied the assistance and set Emi up as mission control (well, agreed to leave her at their Order-supplied office with a phone, energy drinks, cand the coursework the now teenager has due Monday), and her choice was still her choice.

Lucie snatches Jeffrey's walkie talkie away.

"The software needs more time," she tells the other group. "I'm sending Jeffrey to you. Don't worry about me."

She then pulls the battery pack out of it - not wanting to hear the objections - and shoves both parts back.

"Run," she says. "They need you. I'll hide."

"But-"

Lucie makes sure to run over his toes as she turns and looks for a large enough cupboard.

"Come back here once you're done," she says. "I'll be fine. Don't get bit."

Jeffrey calls for her, but she ignores him. She sees him hesitate, but... Well she pulls open the door to the locker.

It's... Mostly equipment, but on a shelf is a bag of... blood?

The door slams as Jeffrey leaves; Lucie looks at the locker, pulls the blood bag off the shelf, tape and scissors from her bag, and takes a deep breath.

She has to be careful, and no matter how careful she is, it might fucking hurt.

She turns her wheelchair ninety degrees, until it faces another wall, and turns it off. With a huge amount of tape she forces the joystick to forwards, then lifts up the arm.

She undoes her seat-belt, and shifts her weight to the side.

Falling hurts, falling is noisy, she's pretty sure she slams her shoulder on the metal, but it is the best option she has. She drags herself about, cutting open the blood bag and pouring it all over her wheelchair - an obvious suggestion of what might have occurred here. The arm is a little high, but she manages to pull it down. A little more blood is smeared along it, but that is fine; she turns on the power, and lets it go.

Getting a replacement will be an ass, but dying would be worse.

With her wheelchair gone she can pull her remaining, useless leg into the locker with the rest of her.

She gives it one moment, then another, as agony shakes up her injured spine.

And then Lucie reaches out, and pulls shut the doors.

Some of the lab coats in the locker fall on her, but all the better. She curls up at the base as best she can, ear to the wood and one eye squinting through the crack under the door.

She keeps still, she keeps silent, she refuses to die.

It's harder, though, in the dark locker, without a radio or a headset or anyone nearby. Every creak is a monster, every echo is gunfire, every groaning pipe the death of one of her boys.

Every second is a memory of a time she would rather forget, of being hunted, quiet, a child at her side and a monster's claws through her spine.

She breathes only through her nose.

She watches, and waits.

And waits.

And waits.

Something drops from the ceiling, and she stifles a gasp. If she moves, if she makes even a sound, she is a sitting duck.

One, two, three of the creatures from the dissection photos are there, but thinner, warped, stretched out. They sniff the air, turning this way and that.

One looks dead at the locker.

Lucie stops breathing.

It turns away.

They are slow, they are smelling, until all at once they leap in to a frenzy. They leap on her wheelchair, ripping it apart with their claws and their teeth, sucking on the foam cushions where the blood has seeped in.

She thinks, somewhat manically, about how they're certainly helping look like she was eaten.

Slowly, slowly, slowly she inches up her hands, covering her ears so she does not have to listen to claws on steel.

Did she get blood on her hands?

Dear god, she hopes she did not get blood on her hands. From the frenzy, from the frenzy she thinks they can smell it..

The monsters howl, and anger seems to shake the very building itself.

She is going to die.

Lucie is absolutely certain that she is going to die as one, two, three monsters turn towards the cupboard.

(She is going to die, and she can only hope that her boys were not stupid enough to come back for her, that they took the paperwork the group found earlier and escaped.)

One steps closer.

(They needed her French and her computer skills, but they could have waited for the Order to send someone else to join the team. They could have waited, they should have waited.)

The others step closer.

(If Lucie dies now, she dies knowing she has saved someone, that her death gets the Order the information they need to save other people from her fate.)

All three move closer.

(It's a better death, she thinks, than the one she should have had in Greenland.)

And closer.

(It's a better death.)

And closer.

(She is still)

And closer.

(fucking)

And closer.

(terrified)

And closer...

One puts its hand on the locker door, and Lucie reminds herself not to breathe. It's the only thing she can think now - don't breathe, don't breathe, don't breathe -

Somewhere else in the facility, another monster screams. The three who remained straighten up, frozen for a moment, before scampering away.

Lucie still holds her breath until her vision turns black, only then letting it out as a slow sigh.

Alive, alive, alive.

Now stay hidden, stay safe, don't cause more problems than you are already being.

She knows, she knows her boys would not agree with that, that bringing someone they didn't know and trust here would have been worse, that if they delayed innocent people - more innocent than she has ever been - will die.

It doesn't stop her feeling like it curled up, and alone, in the bottom of a locker and hunted by monsters.

---

It feels like hours before Lucie hears another noise, though her careful count says only fifteen minutes.

It starts with the door creaking open, and a quiet whisper of "Lucie?"

She would sob in relief to hear Diego, if she was not so terrified, if she was not still waiting to die.

She screws up her eyes, and tries to remember how to breathe.

"Lucie!" Diego's next call is panicked, desperate. "No, no, no, no, Lucie? Lucie!"

He saw her wheelchair.

He must have seen her wheelchair.

How can she...

"Diego?" she manages to whisper.

It doesn't seem enough, and her mouth isn't working, so she slams her hand on the metal door.

It cuts Diego quiet.

"Lucie?" he whispers.

"Here," she whispers back.

She doesn't think he hears her, though, because he still moves carefully towards the locker. He seems hesitant as he opens it, creaking the door open so, so slowly...

Lucie throws off the lab coat she was hidden under, and reaches for him.

Diego kneels, and hugs her, and she clings as tightly back as she possibly can.

They stay like that for a moment, shaking and clinging and revelling in each other's presence, before Diego pulls a little away.

"I can't carry you far," Diego says. "Do you mind if-"

"Just call him," it's still hard to talk, fear still crushes her lungs, but Lucie tries.

Diego scoops her into his arms, and calls for Luis by name.

All three of her other boys poke their head around the door, though Luis is the only one who comes through. Jeffrey gives her a nervous wave, Lucie gives him a thumbs up back. Benito takes Luis' shotgun, and points it down the hallway.

Luis looks from Lucie in Diego's arms, to the wheelchair, and back again.

"You have need of a Super Mexican Lift?" he asks her, words joking but eyes serious.

"I just need my flash drive," she gestures to the main computer, where the software is finally, finally done.

Thank god she wrote it to decrypt then copy everything that had been in encrypted folders, rather than waiting for her to select folders herself. It does mean more shit porn to sort through later, but she doesn't want to wait.

Luis goes to the computer, and looks, "errr..."

"Diego?" Lucie sighs. "Could you-?"

Diego carries her over to the computer, just close enough to lean over and complete the last few operations herself. The twisting hurts, but she would never forgive herself if they failed only /now/.

"Go round the back, and pull out the orange thing," she says, once everything is properly closed.

"Yes, ma'am," Luis half-teases as he does what he's told. It takes him a moment to find the right one, but he unplugs it, flicks the extension back into the case, and hands it over.

Lucie clips it back onto her lanyard, and reaches out.

It's a little complicated to get her from Diego's arms to Luis' back, but together they manage it. She has to cling tight, and Luis has to hold her leg and her stump in place, but they manage.

"Right," Benito sees Lucie is still shaken, and so he takes control. "I want to get the fuck out of here before more of those shits get out. So /I/ am going to open doors for you two and call Emi to get us a cab, while you two can do a final sweep and meet us outside."

"Why us?" Jeffrey pouts as he says it. "You have the shotgun."

"I didn't see you making a plan. Are you going to make Lucie sweep the building?"

"Sure," Lucie leans her head a bit more to the side, just so she can glower at Benito. "Let me just find my legs. Oh, wait, the fuckers ate it."

She earns a small laugh from Diego, at least; it is enough.

Somehow they get outside unaccosted - probably because it is half past three on a Sunday morning, and Luis has already taken out the security team. Benito calls Emi, who they all know won't actually be working on her coursework no matter what she promised. They take burner phones on missions, yes, for emergencies, but cabs want payment details, and it is not worth the risk of their escapades being chased back to them; Emi receives the call on the office landline, then calls them a taxi from her mobile. At least they only need a taxi this time - easy enough to say her parents were out with friends and her mother's wheelchair broke and the repair company will get that in the morning but everyone needs home - not an ambulance.

Lucie remembers calling an ambulance for her boys. She wouldn't wish that fear on anyone, let alone her daughter.

The cab comes, and the driver's questions are easy enough to lie about. Diego ends up napping against the window on the short ride home, while Jeffrey may as well be a skin suit of bees for all his vibrating. It's interesting to see this side, how they stop, how they calm down.

Emi meets them near the Order with a transport chair, and Diego wakes up enough to help Lucie into it. Someone else has to push the stupid thing, but it is cheap, and it gives her a way out of bed until a new one can be delivered.

Luis ends up pushing it on their walk home, as Diego is still mostly asleep.

"What happened to your wheelchair anyway?" Emi asks.

"I used it as bait," Lucie replies, sounding more confident in her plan than she had been at the time. "I meant it to look like the monsters ate me already if they were clever, but maybe I used too much blood as they ate it instead. Oops."

Diego gives a slightly pained whine; Lucie reaches up, and takes one of his hands. She squeezes it, and he squeezes back.

"They ate your wheelchair," Emi frowns. "Gross."

For some reason, the comment makes Lucie giggle. Maybe its how late it is, maybe it's the adrenaline crash, but she giggles none the less.

"I told you throwing blood bags on the wall would work," Jeffrey complains. "But nobody ever listens to me."

"It's fine, nobody died," Benito shrugs. "Pretty sure the worst injury was pizza boy here running into a locked door."

"Hey! You ran into it too!"

"Yes, well, we all know Doc doesn't have a brain to concuss," Lucie offers.

It draws laughter from the rest of the group as well.

Success.

Abuelita is waiting for them at the house, hurrying everyone into the house with hot chocolate and blankets. Lucie is helped onto the significantly more comfortable couch, everyone knowing she will sleep there tonight if she sleeps at all. The boys stay around, in the chairs or on the floor, while Emi is shooed off to her actual bedroom.

Luis gets some hard looks about it, too, but Abuelita softens when Lucie reaches out to put a hand on his shoulder.

"Did you find what you needed?" is all she asks of the group.

They all look to Lucie.

"I'll check in the morning," she yawns, shuffling to find the most comfortable position. "Someone else can write the report."

She doesn't want to think about it just now. All she wants to think about is the sound of Abuelita putting on some late night game show and settling into /her/ armchair, of Emi putting music on upstairs and definitely not sleeping just yet, and of her idiot boys all safe and nearby.