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Lian Hui peered out from where she stood at her threshold, taking in the other recruits of the programme. She caught the flickering blue eyes of a blonde-haired girl for an instant, before her attention was turned to Elizabeth Dalton. She spoke almost cheerily of helping to be helped, of chances - or rather, a chance. Intriguing, how the authorities had made the first move by capturing them, and now pretended this was similar to a game of chess between them and the inmates. [i]Make the right moves, and stand to gain.[/i] No, the playing field was far from even; the inmates were no players, only pawns. Lian Hui listened impassively to their mission, feeling her feet carry her into the corridor. At once, quivering laser-points were trained on her. The inmates had yet to exit the facility, but precautions were still being taken to corner their unleashed and collared hounds while they were still home. 

A drug cartel was mentioned. Lian Hui imagined heat rising in an explosion, feeding on old wood, cocaine, and lives. Questions rose in her mind, like the smoke and ash that would soon be, as Cortez voiced immediate displeasure. Would there be casualties? Would they encounter stumbling blocks to nullify? And where, in all of this, would these individuals band together? Lian Hui peered around herself, as Cortez left through a blast door, at the prisoners with a master they were now to please. Cooperation would be a new lesson, after years of singular operation.

Lian Hui followed through to the armoury. She did not know what she would find. She had had few weapons to call her own, a sparse and scattered collection. She walked the perimeter of the room before she came across a suitcase lying benignly on a shelf at eye-level, tagged with the words [i]'L. H. Wong // Aconitum'[/i]. A canvas bag was propped up against it, similarly labelled, and unzipping it revealed a compartment with clothes that had been her disguise, and another with five daggers neatly sheathed on a belt and a smooth pistol.

Content with the weaponry haul, Lian Hui swung the straps over her shoulders. With her back to the rest of the room, she swiftly tugged off her prison-issued garments and pulled on the clothes she had found neatly-folded - combat trousers, a simple shirt and black leather vest - before moving onto the suitcase and ran her fingers over it. It was a black case, sturdy, with a combination padlock. Lian Hui toyed with the numbers, hands working deftly to the first code that came to her mind, like a thought that had been waiting to be formed.

The lock [i]click[/i]ed open.

She cracked the lid open, and pursed her lips to hold in the breath that would not expel. None of the chemistry equipment it held was personally familiar to her, but she knew their purposes, if not their contours and edges. But those she soon would too. Test-tubes, autonomous Bunsen burners with their own gas canisters, beakers, measuring cylinders - the foundation to any laboratory were there. But so were micropipettes, syringes, and even sealed canisters of corrosive chemicals, though Lian Hui was far more inclined towards the few colourful leaves and blossoms packed away in vacuum-sealed packets. There were vials too - some already filled with liquids Lian Hui would need but a sniff to identify - and a secure drawstring pouch she now recalled contained powder that would burn and blind upon contact. Her last discovery, here with her now, to complete a circuit that had been broken. Now, delayed, Lian Hui could feel the time she had lost creeping back on her, devoid of memories and sensations that should have coloured the memories, but were instead missing and grey.

Lian Hui locked the suitcase once more, and boarded the plane, deciding that perhaps the chessboard was not destined to be entirely dull.

As they flew in the plane, Cortez busied himself with whetting his blades, and sharing his stories. Before Lian Hui could feel a flicker of doubt, he hastened to clarify he had not committed sabotage. Lian Hui gazed at him, waiting for disgust or perhaps worry to gnaw at the insides of her cheeks and leave them raw with distrust. But the emotions didn't come, and eventually she looked away to put the briefcase into the backpack instead. 

When it came time to jump, Lian Hui lined up with the rest, an eye open for demonstrations. Her parachute was strapped onto her, light and tight against her spine, as though to impress upon her that her life would - in just under a minute - lie cradled in its canvas sheet. She allowed herself a moment of stillness to peer into an abyss of height and fog, before she took a step, and hurtled toward ground.

Diagrams and graphs and curves she had encountered in Physics textbooks once upon a time - in a bid by Manchineel to see her pick up another science - flashed in her thoughts. [i]Terminal velocity, zero acceleration[/i] came to mind as the Earth came into focus. Indistinct shapes began to take on meaning to form trees and mountainlines again. As Lian Hui felt her speed come to a constant, and saw the ground come closer and closer, she groped for the string and tugged it.

At once, her navel was lurched back as the parachute opened in a flutter behind her. She heard the wind roar in her ears, scrape her cheeks, as her lungs struggled to reclaim the breath that had been jolted out of her, until - steadily - she came to a drift over the jungle. 

She had been right. She hadn't been frightened by the fall. She couldn't feel adrenaline rushing in her veins, no thrill of stepping into Death's arms, only to wrench away at the last second, that would leave her worn by the time she reached solid ground again. Not for the first time, Lian Hui wondered where the fear, the excitement, was as she glided over a clearing. 

She hadn't found an answer when she landed, and so she occupied herself with unclipping the parachute. It lay sprawled over twigs and leaf litter, and keeping it promised to be only a hassle. Lian Hui tugged at the corners to fold it once - twice, and then disposed of the attempt entirely. She produced the belt of knives from her bag to buckle around her waist, and tied the drawstring pouch along, tucking in a few discrete vials. The belt came with a holster for the pistol, and that too was added to the ensemble.

Finished, Lian Hui turned to the others who had landed, to ask, [color=00a651]"Where to now?"[/color]