[center][u][b]Day 6, November 29th An apartment above 59th St 8:30 AM[/b][/u][/center] Tiny lines of frozen moisture crept along the window pane toward the center, it’s blue aura glowing in the new day sun. The light easily broke through the frozen pane and was lain across Tracie Armond’s face as she slept sitting against an empty book shelf. Most of the books had been used to light a fire, the remains of which sat in the center of the living room surrounded by sheets of metal and loose hunks of concrete. Tracie awoke suddenly, silently. Her deep eyes scanned the area around her quickly as her hand gripped the trigger of her stubby Beryl. The room was empty, and quiet, and still. Exactly as it had been 8 hours ago, when Tracie found it and set it up as a camp. She heard thugs running in the street below, their boots crunching against the ice and snow. Hush grumblings echoed in her ear, even four stories up with the windows closed. Tracie shed the linens and quilts she had covering her, revealing her armored form; sat cross-legged with her rifle held gently across her lap. She pressed the scanner on her wrist and watched the four men jog down the street. She couldn’t tell if they were infected, but she didn’t rightly care. There wasn’t much she was willing to do right now. Food. Tracie munched on a packet of oatmeal as her eyes scanned the only part of the skyline she could see: the top of the recently dubbed Ed Koch Bridge, formerly known as the Queensboro Bridge. Her new team would be coming through the subways underneath it. She smiled a girlish smile as she remembered that she was present during the renaming of the bridge. Being upper echelon of the CIA often times meant attending events like that, especially if they were being held a few miles from your HQ. She could still feel the fresh sea breeze, smell the cork popping on the champagne bottle. Then all she could smell was the soggy oatmeal and she settled back into reality. Remembering the renaming, however, set off a course of remembrances, all tied to the CIA. [center][u][b]Day 4, November 27th Somewhere above 33rd St 12:21 PM[/b][/u][/center] Tracie forcefully placed the receiver back on it’s base, making the lamp on her desk wobble. She slid a lock of hair behind her ear and sat down at the chair. Her office was large; brown and eggshell white were the primary colors of the room. Spots and splashes of green and blue could be found in knick-knacks She was set on the 60th floor of a split high-riser. She read through an emailed report as her cell phone rang and buzzed next to her. She copied down a note on a legal pad and buzzed her intercom. “Get in here, Gerad.” She picked up her cell and answered the call. “Yeah, Jack. Go ahead.” A thin, yet smart looking young man entered the room, rim horned glasses framed his face quite delicately. His eyebrows were thick but they only accentuated his full orbs of green, he knew that. Tracie hardly looked at him as she handed him the note she’d written. He went off back into the hallway. Jack was saying something Tracie had expected to hear. She’d been up here for two days straight. Luckily, communications could still be handled through the highly sophisticated CIA channels. She’d been told to handle information analysis of the ground. One of her only two field agents was missing, the other was dead. He fell from a third story roof into a dumpster. His body was looted. Her instincts told her it was a chase gone wrong. Gerad was an analyst, and a good one. He happened to be one of the only one’s who stayed, after the others were given the option of a helicopter extraction. Tracie didn’t blame them for leaving, this was a shit-show. Jack was saying something she’d hoped to hear. The President was signing an executive order tomorrow morning. It was a new directive for special operations within the Big Apple. Tracie was to meet with what was left of a Delta Ranger squad in Hell’s Kitchen. They would be one of the first Division members. Tracie was ecstatic at the thought of getting out of the office, but she couldn’t see what was to come, she couldn’t have predicted how hard it would be. She couldn't have known that she'd loose them a day later. [center][u][b]Day 6, November 29th 42nd St and Lexington Ave 9:30 AM[/b][/u][/center] Tracie strode, not too quickly, along the icy road, along parked cars and piled up trash. Her black scarf coiled around her masked face protected her from the biting cold. There was a brisk breeze going by which would do some serious damage to an unprotected body. And yet that memory stung her more than the cold ever could. She still heard the splattering gun shots and desperate pleas. For the first time in her career, she'd truly failed. And now she had to live with that. Tracie's upper torso was like a turret, turning from one axis to the next, allowing her tunneled vision to constantly scan for movement, or signs of life. Luckily there was nothing to be found among the flittering, fluttering snowflakes. Tracie walked between a parked car and an overturned one to get onto the sidewalk. She sidled up next to a gated grocery store and used a key to open the locked entrance to the basement. As she did she eyed the closed off entrance to the 7 line. In the basement Tracie had to turn on her head-mounted flashlight. She walked through a narrow passage before coming onto a large empty room; the other end, which would normally be closed off, was blown open to reveal a passage into the subway. Edging past the crumbled rock and exposed rebar, Tracie peered into the dark subway platform. Her flashlight played on the decaying colors of the tiles and the structural beams. Some rats fled the light and ran down the steps into the tracks below. Tracie held her Beryl in front of her, it’s sights just at the edge of her vision. Her breathing was loud to her, but still calm. Quickly she made her way down the tracks and into the tunnels; she was already wearing her breather mask. [center][u][b]10:49 AM[/b][/u][/center] Tracie had reached the halfway point of the rendezvous. She sat in an opened subway car, taking a sip of water from her canteen, when she heard the familiar ripping of a flare. She closed the canteen and stood up in the car, pulled the breather mask back over her mouth. Her rifle pointed ahead of her, Tracie glanced out of the window, saw shadows approaching against the ancient, vandalized tunnel walls. There were four, exactly what she’d been expecting. Tracie carefully slid from the cart and stepped ahead slowly. She heard the voice of a team leader, then more walking. That’s all she needed to know to recognize that this was the group she was looking for. The thugs and brigands in the city didn’t know anything about tactics, not really. She turned her flashlight on, to warn of her presence. She heard guns ready, rightfully. Tracie whistled a few familiar tunes, the core of the Marine Corps cadences. Only after a few short moments of silence did she then reveal herself to the group, left and right arms extended in front of her, above her hips; rifle slung on the right side under her shoulder. If this wasn’t the group she was looking for, and just some gangsters, she would still be able to reach her pistol before they could pull the triggers, of that she was sure. But, alas, no violence was not necessary. The four soldiers stood there, slightly anxious, mostly resolute. Clean faced and fresh booted, she envied them. Tracie nodded to the soldiers as they approached, standing to the side, allowing them to pass and her to fall in line in the middle. She marched in step with them as if she’d been there all along. “Howdy, yall” she said in a joking tone. “Anybody got some gum?”