ARCHER => S1 E8. “The Rock.” Sterling and Lana are out on a mission and things go pear-shaped.
The tech team is busy with their own issues and not offering the support necessary. As a result, the agents are left to hang for a while, depending on intel that’s going sourer by the moment.
* * *
Ah, the joys of working for a Company with a small Operations budget, Opal sighed.
She was hanging from a paracord rope she’d woven herself. The carabiners and gloves were new, but the rest of her gear was stuff she’d cobbled together on the fly.
The woman she was facing was neatly pressed and poised. She looked like she’d just stepped out of a military supply catalogue, all black leather and web belts. She looked professional and ultra-competent at her job. She was intimidating.
“I think you’re going to hand me that sapphire,” the taller woman said. Her gun was unwavering in her left hand.
“You’d really shoot a stranger in the face over a rock?” Opal demanded, all hurt feelings and accusation.
“You’d let a stranger shoot you in the face?” The woman cocked one eyebrow. “I think that says more about you than it does about me. Now do what I say and roll that sapphire my way.”
Staring down the barrel of the gun, Opal wore her most fearless expression. “My boss is going to hate me, thanks-a-freaking-lot, the least you can do is aim that at my forehead. I’d rather they need to use some skull putty rather than a whole reassembly kit. I was promised a Viking funeral when I die and I want to look beautiful for me mother. You know how it is. I’ve spent my whole life running away from dresses, so I owe it to Mummy to be the little girl she always wanted.”
As she spoke, Opal crouched with the giant sapphire in her left hand, poised to roll it skeeball-style. She drew her arm back, but at the last moment she spun her whole body around on the toe plate in her right boot.
It was a little harrowing to have shots pass so close to her head, but she didn’t let herself hesitate.
The rope was a hindrance as she dodged to the right, but she was going to need it to get back up to the roof. She shoved the sapphire into her hip pouch, trusting that the velcro would seal it up safe as she slammed her hands flat on the floor and began spinning her legs as fast as she could around the rope, winding it around her thighs.
She huffed out a breath as she shoved off the floor, reaching up to grab the rope and pull herself up higher and faster. It wasn’t graceful or lovely–nothing like the rope dancing at the class she’d taken–but it was enough to get her up to the hole she’d burned into the ceiling. Bullets pinged against the rafters and she yelped when a graze dug a furrow against her right side.
Opal clambered out of the hole faster than she’d gone down, log rolling across the asphalt of the rooftop toward the anchoring spike she’d used to attach her rope. She tried to stand up and almost fell over, the rope tightly tangled around her legs and hips.
“Shit.” She fumbled the knife out of her sleeve and began sawing through the paracord. She needed to get her ass out of here before Miss Brown-Eyes decided to shoot her in the face gangland style.
/END EXCERPT
