Relaying the Info

There was only darkness around him save the all to familiar glow of a cigarette hanging between his lips as he strolled through the warehouses. Even though he had been here once before, the eeriness of the area made the hairs on the back of his neck stand straight and he could feel the pulsing in his temples. It wasn't the new area or darkness that made him nervous, it was the fact that it was way too calm. On top of that he had not juiced in a week and the withdrawal was getting to him; making the man more paranoid, easier to anger, and hard to calm down. He wandered around for several minutes and found himself lost, anxious, and above all scared. He had everything working against him, "Where the fuck are they? Where do I go from here?" he asked the air. Soon after speaking he broke out into a cold sweat and felt a crawling sensation in his arms, as if his blood suddenly thickened and forced itself through his body.

Hunter... A voice whispered, "Who's there?" Your past... The one you left behind Suddenly the crawling shot into intense pain. It felt like needles through his veins and he cried out in agony, "Fuck, fuck, FUCK!"

Hunter reached into his pocket and pulled one of his butterfly knives out and made one long cut on the underside of his forearm. Once the cut was finished, the pain through his body ceased and the blood began to trickle slowly at first until he saw a swarm of red maggots being forced from the wound, they all began fighting to force themselves into his body and as a reaction he dug his nails in and tried to scratch them all out, but they kept coming.

To all others who may see him though, it looks like he's scratching his own arm out and bleeding himself to death.

Tsuchi was sitting on the roof on one of the warehouses when she heard the screams. She stood up, scanning the below darknes for another noise. Another scream, and this time she recognized the voice. She darted to the fire escape and slid down, ignoring the burning in her hands.
She rounded the corner at a slow pace, not wanting to startle him. She approched him cautiously and spoke quietly: "Damien." She stepped up to him and gently but firmly grabbed his wrists. When she spoke again her voice was a tad harder: "Damien."

Hunter's head shot up once she grabbed his wrists, there were tears pouring from his eyes, "It hurts..." he whimpered, "They won't stop coming out!" He looked back down to the wound and forced his bloody nails to it once again, trying to force the maggots from his body once again and shouted, "THEY WON'T STOP!"

"Damien you need to calm down!" She grabbed his hands and pulled a pair of hand cuffs out from her jacket. She cuffed his hands together and held them as she slowly started to walk backwards, leading him towards the warehouse. She knew enough about drugs to realize that her coworker was going through withdrawl. But even so, she had never seen someone like him reduced to this over powder or whatever he did.
"Look at me Damien. Stay with me," she said.

Hunter took a deep breath and made an attempt to ignore the wriggling sensation in his arm, much to his surprise it was replaced by sharp pain once he wasn't able to see it, "Are they gone?" he asked her, "Did they all fall out?"

Tsuchi was quiet as she shut the door of the warehouse behind them. Once she had sat him down on the couch she replied quietly, gently humoring him: "Yes. They're gone. They're all gone." She watched him carefully for a moment before going to the kitchen to retrieve the medical kit from the cupboard. Coming back she knelt beside him and undid the cuffs, resting them back inside her pockets. She poured rubbing alcohol onto a large cotton ball, and paused as she raised it to clean the cut on his arm. Maybe she should have kept the cuffs on him...
Deciding that if needed she could take out the metal bacelets she gently began cleaning the self-inflicted cut.

Hunter hissed in pain once she began cleaning the wound and bit down on the sleeve of his hoodie in an attempt to redirect his attention, "Were they really there or was I just clawing out my own arm?" he said, through his teeth.

Tsuchi saw his discomfort and sighed quietly. "It'll be over soon," she mumbled. Fixing a new cotton ball with the painful liquid she answered his question: "You were just clawing at your own arm." She wiped a little more at the cut before removing the ball. Rooting through the bag she looked for something to wrap the cut in but found none. They had probably used it up a while back...
She ripped off the bottom of her shirt and used double sided tape to attach a strip of gauze to the inside. Then she wrapped the makeshift bandage tightly around his arm. "It's deep but you won't need stitches, thank god. That was never my specialty so you would have probably ended up worse off than you started."
That said she turned to the equiptment beside her and started to put things away and clean up.

Hunter winced once he received the answer ans shook his head, "It's never happened to me like this before, you know?" he shifted uncomfortably in his seat and looked at the wound, "At first it was just a hit every once in a while, then it went to every week, every day, then eventually I couldn't go more than a few hours without a booster. It started sucking everything away so I did other things to take the edge off of that one. Then I started mixing and got all fucked up." he held up his arm, "As you can see."

Tsuchi nodded as she stood up with the medical kit. "Yes. As I can see." She went to the kitchen and put the kit away, then grabbed a bucket and filled it with water. She grabbed a cloth from a drawer and shut the water off. "How long have you been off?" she asked, grabbing the bucket. She walked back over to him and set the bucket and cloth on the table in front of him. "Hand." She pointed to his other hand that was caked in his own blood. She sat on the edge of the chair closest to him and leaned her elbows on her kness.

Hunter counted the days on his fingers and said, "Well... Just over a week. So it went from one every twelve hours from none for several days. It put a real shock to my system you know?" Once she asked for his hand he held it out to her without any argument, "I'm sorry you had to find me like that. I never thought that it would be this hard to quit." He sighed and cracked his neck, "It started with a few minor things like shaking, cold sweat and paranoia- then it went to pain, tingling, and anxiety. And then it turned to pain, crawling and weird visions." He shook his head with a small smile, "All of this is strange for a week, but once you go from needing it to wake up in the morning to nothing at all; your mind gets pissed."

"Makes sense." She placed his hand in the warm water and started wiping it off with the cloth. "So what are you going to do now? You off for sure or you concidering going back on?" She paused in cleaning his hand to look up at him to make sure he answered her.

Hunter made an attempt to redirect the question with something of his own, "I have info about the library and where everything is."

Tsuchi narrowed her eyes. "Damien," she said firmly. "I need to know what your plan about your drug problem is. There's no point in doing the raid if you aren't fit to go through with it."

He avoided eye contact and dropped his head, "I want to quit for good." He said quietly, "I've tried before... I went through the withdrawal and couldn't pull through, then I tried again and this happens. If I want to get this problem away from me I'll need some help."

Tsuchi nodded and dropped the glare that was threatening to overwhelm her features. She went back to cleaning off his hand, but didn't look away from him. "You have Nadia and I if you want our help," she replied sincerely.

Hunter shot his head up and said, "Nadia can't know about this... She already has a hard time trusting me, and the thought of a drug problem messing with my judgment will make things worse." He examined the patchwork on his arm and moved to change the subject once again, "How'd you know what to do?"

"Then I'll help" She finished cleaning off his hand and took it out of the now blood-tinted water. Setting it on the table she grabbed the cloth and bucket and went back to the kitchen. She dumped out the water and grabbed a new cloth. Returning to Damien she sat down and dried off his hand. "I know things," was her only reply to his question.

Hunter furrowed his brow slightly, "Well that really lets me into your head." he said, "How long do you think this will take to heal?" he asked while touching each finger to his thumb to ensure they were still usable.

She laughed quietly and dropped the cloth onto the table, laying his now died hand on top. Sitting back a bit she crossed her arms on her knees. "Not sure. I just clean 'em and fix 'em. I don't really pay attention to how long something takes to heal, I just keep going on with life. Sometimes that not such a great thing but whatever." She shrugged and gave a slight smile. "And you'll be able to use your hand, you didn't cut anything major. Just don't exert a lot of pressure on it or something 'cause it'll start to bleed again. So unless you want me to attempt to stitch it..." She let the threat hang in the air as her smile grew.

He winced at the thought of bad needlework and shook his head, "I can do without looking like raggedy Andy for the time being." He flexed his forearm and hissed through his clenched teeth, "Although I may have to take you up on that offer."

Tsuchi smiled grimly. "Without anestetic? Yeah. I want to help you, not hinder you. But..." She looked at his arm. "Is it just hurting or is it bleeding? As in badly... I honestly don't want to have to stitch you up if I don't have you. And going to a hospital, well... hospitals ask questions and detain people."

"Fuck the hospital." he said, "No matter what goes on, they'll get the police involved and that will most likely have me deported. That won't be very fun." Hunter looked back down to his arm and rolled the sleeve of his hoodie back down so he wouldn't have to look at it and pulled a slip of paper from his back pocket, "This is info on the Library." he said, "There aren't too many cameras and the places to hide are quite small. Security is mediocre at best and the most we have to worry about is involvement of the american military. I can fight off under equipped cops but trained military will be a problem."

"Ah, yes. The american military is around..." She took the paper from Damien and looked it over. "Nadia can take out the cameras easily; she's good for small tamperings like that." She paused and noted where the personel security was. "We can lock them in a room somewhere or lead them away with a distraction or something. Same with the military..." She ran a hand through her hair. "It might be a little overboard but we could set something up the day before - something big that will take a while and quite a bit of man power - so that they're busy with that and not us. Like I said, it's probably overboard but..."

Hunter shook his head and replied, "It's not overboard at all. Light something on fire, kill a few people or blow up a building. I took down an apartment complex a few weeks back, and they kept people busy for a while so maybe you could do something of that sort. There are two things that keep the military on their toes; arson, and domestic terrorism." He scratched the tip of his nose with an index finger and added, "But if you want no deaths when you do your part, that's all up to you. What we need right now is a diversion."