[ her preference is to work from home. she has a husband, and a son, and a warehouse-cum-bolthole to look after. there's a lot of her job that can be done with her plugged into her computers, brain surfing the web and communicating with less than savory people over encrypted networks. but there are some things that alison has to do in person. meets with skittish people, overseeing transport of some things that she really doesn't want to think about, the occasional trade of money or microchips from one person to another.
sometimes ( a lot of times ) these things go wrong.
it happened a lot during those first few months when she and doctor lightcap were the only two heading up the american effort to get the ppdc personnel out of hong kong. alison's very rusty and nearly useless self-defense skills improved exponentially. she learned how to make and shoot laser rays. she learned how to stitch bullet wounds. she discovered what it looked like when the light went out of a man's eyes.
what would you be willing to do to save our family? caitlin had asked at the beginning of everything. alison's answer hasn't changed. it's still whatever it takes. but these days she tries to hide the lengths to which she's gone when they go belly up. tendo must suspect. he's heard stories of the scraps the rangers have gotten into when they tussled with the government. he's seen her small scars and the occasional fading bruise on her skin. ( she always waits until they're mostly faded to come home. ) but he's never much had a taste for violence, and even though alison knows he'd understand, she wants to protect him from this.
it gets hard sometimes, though. carrying the weight of the things she has done. it's her burden and her's alone to carry, but sometimes... sometimes she wishes she had an easier time letting people in.
it's a late and bitterly cold night in seattle when alison lets herself into one of the ramshackle thing masquerading as an apartment the ppdc has in the city. in exchange for some information on where the next anti-ppdc strike was going to be, a particularly nasty informant wanted a lot of cash. and they wanted it delivered in person. they probably should've realized it was a trap. in retrospect, everything about it screamed trap. but what's done is done, and alison is alive ( if a little banged up ) with a thumb drive of encrypted military files.
she tucks the drive into her jeans pocket and walks to the bathroom. the single light bulb flickers to life when she flips the switch. hell is probably too light an adjective for how she looks. split lip, bruised and possibly fractured left cheekbone, slice on her right bicep that may need to be stitched, and arterial spray across her face and neck. red covering her hands from where she caught one thugs jugular with the knife that caught her arm before ramming it into the abdomen of another.
with a sigh, she peels off her long-sleeve shirt and notes the bruises spreading across her ribs with a small frown. they'll have to be wrapped in a bit. once she's done cleaning up. the icy water sputters a bit as it comes out of the tap, but it washes away the drying blood on her hands well enough. alison wets a bit of her shirt so she can clean off her face and neck. but the creaking of floorboards outside the apartment makes her freeze. her thoughts catch up with her a second later and she curses under her breath. yancy, right. he was supposed to be coming through seattle on his way to san diego, wasn't he? she should've remembered that. ]
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[ her preference is to work from home. she has a husband, and a son, and a warehouse-cum-bolthole to look after. there's a lot of her job that can be done with her plugged into her computers, brain surfing the web and communicating with less than savory people over encrypted networks. but there are some things that alison has to do in person. meets with skittish people, overseeing transport of some things that she really doesn't want to think about, the occasional trade of money or microchips from one person to another.
sometimes ( a lot of times ) these things go wrong.
it happened a lot during those first few months when she and doctor lightcap were the only two heading up the american effort to get the ppdc personnel out of hong kong. alison's very rusty and nearly useless self-defense skills improved exponentially. she learned how to make and shoot laser rays. she learned how to stitch bullet wounds. she discovered what it looked like when the light went out of a man's eyes.
what would you be willing to do to save our family? caitlin had asked at the beginning of everything. alison's answer hasn't changed. it's still whatever it takes. but these days she tries to hide the lengths to which she's gone when they go belly up. tendo must suspect. he's heard stories of the scraps the rangers have gotten into when they tussled with the government. he's seen her small scars and the occasional fading bruise on her skin. ( she always waits until they're mostly faded to come home. ) but he's never much had a taste for violence, and even though alison knows he'd understand, she wants to protect him from this.
it gets hard sometimes, though. carrying the weight of the things she has done. it's her burden and her's alone to carry, but sometimes... sometimes she wishes she had an easier time letting people in.
it's a late and bitterly cold night in seattle when alison lets herself into one of the ramshackle thing masquerading as an apartment the ppdc has in the city. in exchange for some information on where the next anti-ppdc strike was going to be, a particularly nasty informant wanted a lot of cash. and they wanted it delivered in person. they probably should've realized it was a trap. in retrospect, everything about it screamed trap. but what's done is done, and alison is alive ( if a little banged up ) with a thumb drive of encrypted military files.
she tucks the drive into her jeans pocket and walks to the bathroom. the single light bulb flickers to life when she flips the switch. hell is probably too light an adjective for how she looks. split lip, bruised and possibly fractured left cheekbone, slice on her right bicep that may need to be stitched, and arterial spray across her face and neck. red covering her hands from where she caught one thugs jugular with the knife that caught her arm before ramming it into the abdomen of another.
with a sigh, she peels off her long-sleeve shirt and notes the bruises spreading across her ribs with a small frown. they'll have to be wrapped in a bit. once she's done cleaning up. the icy water sputters a bit as it comes out of the tap, but it washes away the drying blood on her hands well enough. alison wets a bit of her shirt so she can clean off her face and neck. but the creaking of floorboards outside the apartment makes her freeze. her thoughts catch up with her a second later and she curses under her breath. yancy, right. he was supposed to be coming through seattle on his way to san diego, wasn't he? she should've remembered that. ]