Blood Bourbon

Wheels Up

Everything still hurt, though the pain had dulled a bit more and he had been able to guzzle the two bottles of blood on his own and could feel his body already using it to continue the healing process. The new skin and scar tissue that was knitting itself on the inside of his mouth was distracting, as were the fading marks from the bullet holes that had riddled his body.

Ryker pulled on his clothes, a shirt and functional black tactical pants, after a shower that had eased some of the tension in his muscles, then made his way down towards the conference rooms. He followed the scent of Charlie, which was similar enough to Daryl do both soothe and cause a fair bit of heart ache. Stepping into the room, he was glad he had followed Tim's advice and drank both bottles, seeing it filled with the whole gang of humans.

It was Mary, the nurse, who stepped up in front of him first, giving him a visual once over and a frown. "You shouldn't even be out of bed. You look like death warmed over."

"He is technically undead, Mare..." Charlie muttered from where he was standing in front of a map with Tim, putting markers in various locations stretching across most of the world.

Seeing Ryker looking in that direction, Mary sighed softly. "He's marking out locations they know those bastards have used before."

"Intel is old though, we've been out of the loop for a while." One of the other humans, he believed it was Marty or something, was sitting in front of a computer, working through lines of code as he absently answered.

Across the room, talking over a digital map, Bryn and Alesky, along with the remainder of the humans were gathered. Bryn flashed him a grin, glancing up to him for a moment before answering a question about Hunter tactics from Janek, who barely looked better than Ryker felt.

"I've been better." Ryker muttered, fighting the urge to snarl as even that much movement caused his jaw to flare in pain. He probably shouldn't scare the humans any further. Mary looked sceptical, but she didn't push it, offering a shrug and moving to step beside her husband at the map. Ryker forced himself to ask. "Where is he?"

"We were waiting for you to turn on the tracker." Charlie shrugged and nodded to Marty, who pulled up another screen.

Ryker glanced to the human's computer, then shook his head and started settling up the projector, his movements single minded in their focus. The humans stayed out of his way, though he was moving slower than he would like. His body was not responding faithfully but he pushed it in even these small tasks, turning the projector towards the map and connecting Marty's computer to the system, letting it boot up and begin working.

When he was done, the map on the wall was over-layed by a projection of the same map. "There, it'll be easier to reference that way."

The room went still, and Marty gave him a curious look.

"Find him." Ryker growled, which caused the human to flinch involuntarily before turning to the computer and hitting a couple commands.

For a moment, nothing happened, driving a lance of panic through Ryker's chest. It had to work. They had to be able to find something. Anything to give them an idea of where to start.

Then the tracker flickered onto the map and Ryker's world came to a shuddering halt. He made a low noise, fighting off the panic, the rage. They noticed movement but it flickered off before the could do more than tell a direction.

"Battery of that watch probably couldn't broadcast that far for very long." Marty muttered, tapping a couple more buttons, pulling the tracker up for a second more before losing it once again.

They were lucky the watch battery had managed to function at all, though he moved to the computers on the table and distracted himself with pulling up Knight Corp's selection of drones. He found three within the general area of the tracker and adjusted their trajectory, pulling up live feeds from their cameras, though he refused to look at them. Not yet. He couldn't stand the wait until something came into view. Ryker wasn't even sure if he was prepared for whatever would come into view. He set up their tracking signals to be projected over the map as well, before standing away from his computer.