Screaming like a stuck mynock.

"You're married with a kid. If this goes pear-shaped, you have the most t'lose. And you," turning to Will, "you're practically married with a kid, if you count Doc."

From:

Guppy, feeling a lump in his throat, nods and looks at the floor. He can't say anything right now, because the only thing stopping him bursting into tears is the fact that he's gripping onto survival with both hands.

If you die in there we're all going to die.

From:

"Ye maybe right but still, shouldna 'ave to go in alone."

From:

"If it intensifies every time something enters it, two people going in'll be worse than one," Atton says, heading towards the humming. "Stay at the edge, I'll toss you the weapons when I come back through. We need to find some rope, too, then one of you can keep a hold of me and drag me out if it all goes wrong."

From:

Guppy follows him, looking around for rope, and fighting back all the graphic mental images of funerals and his baby boy growing up without a dad, knowing that his only defence against these outcomes is to not fall over the line that his sanity has been balanced on for these last few years.

And he's not falling over it. The desperate, intense need to survive seems to have installed some sort of safety rail for him to cling on to.

From:

"We've some string but 'avena seen rope, 'rhaps ye should take one o'these rails with ye an could pull ye back out."

From:

"Want t'bet it won't be long enough?" Atton pauses, thinking. "Coats, maybe? If we tie all our coats, scarves, any other long pieces of clothing that we don't desperately need, and tie them to a rod or two, we could use those as a long, not especially secure rope. We can use the string to tie them?"

Atton is not particularly enamoured this plan, but he thinks it'll work. So long as the makeshift rope doesn't just fall apart.

From:

Guppy delves into the bag and brings out a scarf and the shirt with the blaster hole in. He uses his knife to rip the shirt into several thinner pieces, and ties them with a knot that tightens as the rope is pulled.

"How long do you reckon we need?"

Edited Date: 2009-03-18 08:35 pm (UTC)

From:

The jacket Will's wearing is already off and he's tying it to one of the rails and starts attaching it to the piece of shirt.

From:

"Well, let's see," Atton says, heading towards the humming. There's a passage, lined with glowing lights, beyond which a circular room with their weapons can be seen. "Quite long."

He shucks off his coat and scarf, tying them to the makeshift rope.

From:

"Is there any chance that something could reflect the torture waves?" Guppy asks. "Because I've got a space blanket in here; it's not strong enough to use in the rope but it's metallic, because it's used for hypothermia."

He dissects the shirt that has claw marks in it. It's not like he can take any of them home and let his wife see them.

From:

"'ow would a blanket do that? Wouldna some sort o'mirror be better?"

From:

"I'm not sure, t'be honest. Apart from forcefields and thick metal, s'not a great deal that completely blocks them, as far as I know. But, y'know, extra clothes'll help."

From:

Guppy gets it out to show them; it's like a blanket made of tin foil, but more like a fabric.

"We could wrap this over a thick layer of clothes." he says. "Other than that the only metal I've got is a few tins of food."

From:

"Couldna 'urt ye any, Atton an might 'elp."

From:

"Well, most of our clothes are going into the creation of this rope - which, by the way, is a better investment of fabric than lots of clothes to act as protection. We don't know how intense'll it'll be, so we don't know how many layers I'd need, but we know that the rope is our friend and would never say cruel things to us."

Beat.

"I'll, you know, take the blanket, though."

From:

Guppy takes off his baseball cap and wraps the blanket around that so that it dangles over but he can see where he's going. He passes it to Atton, then begins to dissect a pair of trouser.

"Hey Atton, are the glowing lights what's emitting the torture field?" he asks. "Because if it's not out here, it must be localised, and if it's from the lights, could we smash them with the rails before you go in?"

From:

Now Guppy gets a long look,

"Say that 'gain, 'ow could 'ittin' the lights stop it?"

From:

"It'd smash the lights. If they're the generators. S'difficult t'say," Atton says. "Pass me a rail. When I go in, I'll try smashing them. We don't want to try hitting them before I go in - whenever something enters the field intensifies. We'd have to put the rail into the field to smash them, and then if it didn't work, it'd be worse for me when I went in. So I'll just take one in with me."

From:

"Oh yeah, good point." Guppy says, tightening the rope then securing it carefully to the pole. He then ties it around Atton in a climbing harness fashion, puts the hat on him, and tries to get him covered with the space blanket.

"You're very brave." he adds quietly.

From:

The rail Will's holding gets handed over,

"This is the longest one, 'opefully can smash 'em 'fore gets too bad."

From:

Patting Guppy: "You are very overly sentimental."

He takes the rail, holding it loosely in one hand as he steps into the passage. There's a visible grimace of pain, and his shoulders hunch slightly, before he whacks at the lights with the rod.

The rod just bounces off them.

From:

"You can do it Atton!" Guppy calls out encouragingly. "Kick ass, bro!"

He passes the end of the rail to Will, and holds onto it himself, in case it gets jerked out.

From:

Will tries to anchor himself and winces sympathetically as Atton goes through.

From: