The year is 2015, unusual humans have been around for decades, but well hidden and covered up by the government. But every year there are more and more, and the secrecy can't continue forever... what will happen when the world becomes aware of them?
Sapphron had had yet another round with her father’s lawyers about ‘patent violations’. Her father was just being a major pain. The lawsuits would blow her small start up out of the water, or she’d have to dip into her own funds to fund the legal battle, either of which would still end up with the startup’s hands tied for years in court.
Her current paramour, Tracy , had suggested a weekend away from it all, away from phones and tv. A weekend in a small chalet on the side of a mountain with a view of a valley and just a small generator for electricity and keeping the chill out.
The weekend had been relaxing so far, the cold mountain air was refreshing and very relaxing, and the private alone time had been even more relaxing.
Aegis was knocking back her fourth scotch (Legal Scotch at that, it was 18 years old!), when the now empty glass slipped from her fingers and shattered on the floor. At first, she was sure she’d accidently, in her buzzed state, activated her desolidification powers and dropped the glass.
But she tried to pick it up, and couldn’t lean forward, all she could do was fall back on the couch, nerveless.
”Saph? You ok?” Tracy’s voice sounded concerned, and then there they were, checking pulse and tugging on Sapphron’s arm, trying to get her to move. But Sapphron couldn’t, it’s as if her body were no longer on speaking terms with her mind. Tracy then moves out of her line of vision, off doing something and making noise.
A strange voice then reaches her ears. ”You’re sure you didn’t f$@& it up this time, Shay?” A strange voice says, a woman’s voice, full of annoyance.
”I gave her the drops last night, like you told me, exactly what you told me. Same with breakfast. Might as well have given her skittles for all the good it did, didn’t even notice it. I poured the whole damn bottle into her scotch tonight, and it took damn near all that was left in the bottle to knock her out.” Tracy sounds annoyed and angry.
A woman comes into Sapphron’s view. The woman is tall, with deep red hair, although she’s shaved the side of her head. A blue tattoo like circuitry is on her cheek and forehead, and she wears an almost patriotic ski suit, to deal with the chilly air. ”My my, you are a tough one, Ms. Sinclaire. I do hope you don’t die from an overdose. But, it’s really not going to affect the outcome of things if you do, other than making things a tiny bit messier.” The woman’s eyes begin to glow green, like fireflies, as she leans forward. ”Now now, try not to think about your bank accounts, pass codes, and any other deep dark secrets you might have…” She says as she touches Sapphron’s cheek with one hand, and grabs her wrist with the other hand.
The woman jerks and spasms, and her hair begins to grow out on the side of her head where it’s shaved, still red. Her skin begins to roil and ripple, and bits of it begin to randomly become metallic gold or silver. ”Ahh! F&%$! She’s a meta…” The woman jerks her hands back, panting, as her body continues to ripple and spasm. She stands with hands on her knees, trying to get herself back under control.
”F$~%! I had no idea! She looked normal…” Tracy says, looking at Sapphron with wide eyes. ”No wonder it took the whole bottle to knock her on her ass…”
The panting woman nods. ”Well, nothing for it, we’ll just have to go messy. Go get the knife, I can get what we need from her head, and just her head, after we remove it. It’ll last for 10 minutes or so afterwards.”
Tracy gulps, but runs off to the kitchen, and is gone for a minute before there’s a sudden crashing sound.
”Shay! Quit making a mess and get back out here with that knife!” The woman calls out.
”Sorry ma’am, ain’t gonna happen no time soon. Yah cain’t move too fast with a broken leg… and maybe a back, ain’t too sure…” A male voice says in a deep haitian accent.
The woman looks up, and with a snarl moves out of Aegis’s view. The next few minutes are curses in a female voice, laughter in a male voice, sounds of things being smashed and broken, like a train wreck in slow motion. Finally there’s a woman’s voice that rings in triumph. ”You idiot! You think you’re the only Meta here? Let’s see how well you move around with your brain turned into goo!”
”Ahhh! Ahhhh! Mah head! Ahhhh!! AAAAAAAhhahaha ha ha ha! sorry lady, mah body don’t do what I want it to, what makes you think you can make it do what you want?” The woman comes flying through Sapphron’s field of view and slams into a wall hard. Then as she’s standing up, shaking her head, a figure leaps over Sapphron, a steel stool in both hands. The stool swings down hard and catches the woman in the head, the metal on the stool ringing loudly and the woman’s head making a thunk sound. Then the stool raises up and down two or three times, producing more ringing and more thunks, before the figure finally straightens up and drops the stool.
Turning around, the man displays his features to Sapphron for the first time. His face is battered and scarred, and looks like it was sewn from one side to the other, and very recently. Black blood oozes from the stitches and over his grayish ebony skin. His eyes are whitened over where the pupils are, in the way one expects of a blind person, but he doesn’t look blind. There’s a kitchen knife sticking out of his neck at an angle that should have the blade pushed well up inside his skull, but he seems to barely notice it, or the thick black sludge that oozes out around the blade.
”Sorry ‘bout the mess, ma’am. Ah don’t like to leave such a mess, but she didn’t give me much choice, Ah swear.” He says, his accent thick and haitian, but also sluggish, as if his tongue is having trouble making words. ”’Scuse mah…” He reaches up and jerks the knife out of his neck, releasing a gush of black sludge… and maggots and centipedes. He winces slightly, but drops the gore coated knife on the remains of the chair. ”Figger.. Figg.. Figure…” He works his jaw until something pops and his face looks less lopsided. ”Sorry, she dislocated my jaw. Anyway, figure ye’ll be fine in a few hours. Heard her say you were Meta. Doubt you’ll die.” The centipedes and maggots seem to be sealing over the wound on his neck, somehow eating it closed. ”Sorry, had to make sure she was a Meta ‘fore I came in. B*&!! changes her skin like a teenage girl changes her mind about boys.” He laughs, then coughs and coughs up a cockroach, which he then reswallows. ”Sorry, little buggers keep tryin’ to get out. Cain’t blame ‘em, I sure as hell wouldn’t be in this body if I had a choice. Anyway, ye’ll be fine in a bit. I’ll just take the b+&%* here and get out of ye’re way. I left the human in the kitchen, should be safe enough, don’t think it can walk.” He turns back to the redhead, then stops, and sighs. ”Dahmit, like I said, body don’t work so well, includin’ de brain. Even when it ain’t been stabbed wit’ a kitchen knife. Mah name is Zhombei.” He digs into his torn and rotted clothes and digs out a small metal business card. ”Dey don’t give me paper ones no more, on account of de bugs eatin’ ‘em.” He laughs hard and drops the aluminum business card on Sapphron’s lap. ”Ye ain’t been caught yet by the Govharmint, I seggest ye call dem, if ye wanna keep it dat way.” He goes over and picks up the redhead, and tosses her lightly over one shoulder, then slams her head against the wall as he pivots. ”Good b&+!!, stay asleep. Anyway, de human ain’t my prey. Just dis one. Gotta get her put down a hole somewhere where she cain’t find no other people to steal dey faces. You have a nice night ma’am.” He tips a non-existent hat, then looks up, and groans. ”B&+!$ done busted mah hat, I liked that hat, it had character… so did the corpse I got it off of… dahmit…” And the man walks out of Sapphron’s view.
An hour or so later, her body begins to get pins and needles, and she can slowly move. The little mountain cabin is totally trashed, interior walls shattered, roof caved in in two places, and some faint groaning from the kitchen. Judging from the sounds, water pipes were busted and the tank of water next to the cabin is slowly draining out onto the floor in the kitchen.
The night is just like the one before it. And the one before that, and the one before that… the days were blurring into a long chain, until it was painful to even remember he was once human.
Then, something new happened… A woman appeared in the lab. That wasn’t just a phrase either, she literally appeared in the middle of the lab, crouched on the top of a table, straddling a bunsen burner and the sink. ”Bloody hell, at least he didn’t leave it in his locker like last time.” The woman says with a cockney accent. She reaches down and picks up a silver picture frame. Dr. Louis had left it on his work station today, against all lab rules. Surely Ty would have said something about that… if he had a tongue…
The woman slipped the frame into her pocket, and then vanished again, appearing over by the computer. She turns it on, slips a flash drive into it’s access port, and begins typing. After a few minutes, she grins. ”Good girl, you go sniff out the payday.” She pats the computer before vanishing again, reappearing near the samples cabinet. ”Now, while we wait for that.. let’s see what we have here…” The door is locked, and the woman frowns, but then her fingers enter the door. Not opening it, but actually slipping through the glass to snag a box of samples, which she pulls through the door as well before slipping it into her backpack.
She looks through the glass at the small clear plastic box full of goo. ”Well now, what are you?” She reaches through the door and is about to grab the box when a second woman appears, this one appearing in a smoky haze that coalesces.
”Gotcha!” The other woman growls out in a southern accent.
The cockney woman turns, and makes an annoyed sound. ”What the bloody hell are you doin’ here? You shouldn’t be able to be in here…”
”You should quit wearing the same painted jacket, Porter. It’s very distinctive.”
The purple haired woman looks down at her leather jacket, the back of which has an ornate diagram made of rubies and diamonds. ”B#%~*%#s, this is my favorite jacket, you haredin!”
Then the two women perform what can only be called a most exquisite and dangerous ballet, both vanishing over and over again, their forms a blur that moves so fast, it’s as if they are filling the entire room at once.
Finally though, only one woman is left, the second woman who appeared, and she’s holding onto a jacket with rubies and diamonds. ”Dammit to hell!” She spits. With a sigh, she begins going around, tidying up the lab, trying to make it look like nobody had been there. She finds the flash drive, and jerks it out before turning the computer off, and then counting to ten before turning it back on.
Finally, she moves over to the cabinet she’d seen the woman standing at, and looks inside. ”Well dammit, she got something.” She bites her lip, and then pulls a phone out of her pocket. A few seconds later, she smiles. ”Granny! I have a problem! Sorry to wake you up so late…” She listens. ”OH! Sorry to interrupt your lunch then! I didn’t know you were going to Japan! Anyway, do you have 5 minutes? I caught Porter stealing something from a research lab…. no.. no… she got away again, but I got her favorite jacket. Yeah, well, better than nothing…. yes… anyway, she stole something from a cabinet… no I don’t… yes… of course that’s why I’m interrupting your lunch… well, if you can see what it was, maybe I can replace it… Ok fine… really? Thank you!” She goes silent, as if waiting. A minute passes, two, five, and then she perks up. ”A person? She couldn’t have had a person in there… I’d have seen the body… what do you mean he’s still in there… what? Goo? Ewww, yes there’s a box of goo… it’s a person? Oh my god! That’s so nasty! What do you mean rude? It’s goo! It can’t hear me! Vibrations? Oh fine, whatever. Are you sure it’s alive?” She sighs. ”Fine, I’ll take it out but I’m not opening it’s box!” She reaches out one hand and touches the pane of glass on the door of the cabinet. It’s thick glass, bullet proof, an inch thick. And she vanishes and reappears on the other side of the lab, holding the pane up without actually grabbing it, her palm just stuck to it. The pane is set on the lab table, and she walks over to the cabinet, reaching in through the missing pane and taking the small plastic box out with Goo inside. ”Ok Granny, got it. I’m not opening it though, I’ll drop it off at… hmmm… Your house!” She hangs up the phone, and ignores it when it rings a minute later. Humming, she scans through her phone for something. She studies the phone for a moment, and then the lab vanishes in a sickening lurch.
A small room, a closet, with a painting on the wall of a kitten chasing a ball, with a very distinctive pattern framing it. ”Now then, you just wait here for Granny, she’ll be back from her little vaca soon, darlin!” She pats the plastic box and drops it into a metal container with a lid, which she re-closes afterwards.
Saffron tries to stand, using whatever is nearby for support, as she tries to process everything that just happened. She looks over the metal card Zhombei had placed in her lap before pocketing it and making her way into the flooded kitchen, if Tracy was still there Saffron would make her way over to him, try to wake him if he was unconscious and begin to question him. "So care to explain any of that?"
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It was the late shift, 2:14 AM. Hotaru knew it was actually 2:12:37..38...39 AM because she could hear the Verizon tower on the office building next door pulsing the time on it’s carrier wave. There were exactly… zero… customers in the diner. The only other person in the diner was William R. Gorbrit the 4th, aka Billie-Ray Square, as he was better known by his friends and other low-lifes.
Hotaru had managed to get him to quit hitting on her.. for tonight at least. Or at least, until the Dukes of Hazard rerun ended on the local indie channel. She hadn’t quite gotten the hang of deciphering the new digital tv broadcasts, although she could listen to it if she concentrated. Instead, she had two of her favorite FM stations going, the local police band, and her telephone going on in her head (actually, she hadn’t bothered charging her cell phone since she bought it, mostly because it shorted out about two hours after she bought it). But as far as Verizon was concerned, her cheap $50 clamshell phone was getting excellent transmission strength.
Then something odd happened, the Verizon tower hiccupped, and a new tower began taking over. Something down the block, and it was identifying itself as a Verizon/Sprint/T-Mobile/AT&T/Clear-wire/Virgin Mobile tower. Every phone for 4 blocks around suddenly disconnected from the main towers and switched over to the new tower. Communications slowed down, and curious, she connected… but got a strange return query pulsed in machine code. She’d never heard that before, and wasn’t sure how to respond to it. But she couldn’t get a signal, so switched back to the Verizon tower. But the rest of the phones in the area kept trying to ping the new tower, and none seemed to be able to get a signal. It was like standing in the center of a bull fight ring while everyone ‘hurrah’d.
Then it got worse, the power went out. Everything, street lights, diner lights, and judging from the squeal and thud in the distance, the traffic lights as well.
”Hey! What the hell! They were about to trick Roscoe into ruining Hogg’s plan!”
Heading out onto the street and looking around, Hotaru saw that there was nothing on for at least two blocks in each direction. She walked to the intersection to look, and the streets were dark for two blocks in those two directions too.
She was about to head back in when she noticed a man standing across the street in front of Epstein’s Fine Jewelry. She noticed him because he was broadcasting radio signals.
”Yeah, lights are out. You want me to start now?”
”Yes, but make it messy. If you can, leave something dead.”
”Got it. You said you don’t care what, right? So no reason I can’t pick up a few bucks on the side, right? Got a nice little diamond store picked out…”
”Heh, you had to go steal ice huh? Yeah, that’s fine. Just make sure you make a mess and get out. The rest of your fee will be in your account, Mr. Snowjob.”
”Great, I’m out.”
And then the man’s form shifts, and when it’s done, his clothes have torn from the sharp cold blades that sprout from his body. The man stretches, icy vapor rising off his skin. He holds one hand out, and icy spikes fly into the door, smashing it’s frame. More and more spikes slam into the door, ripping it off it’s hinges. Then the man starts into the doorway, but pauses, something causing him to turn around. Perhaps Hotaru gasped, or perhaps he just sensed something,
”Well, hottie, you picked the wrong night to go walking in the dark. Made things easy on me though, didn’t have to hunt down someone and drag their body back as a fake witness. Always easier when there’s a real witness…” And that horrible hand raises up and then things go crazy. Cold envelops Hotaru, and pain, and then there’s the sensation of flying, and then crashing, glass, things landing on her over and over. Then grayness…
...but not blackness. A haze of pain, but pain is good, it means you’re alive. Looking down, she sees an icy spine two feet long, like an icicle, it’s sticking out of her abdomen. The end shines redly in the dim light. Her abdomen should hurt, but the ice seems to be numbing it. There are a dozen shattered icicles, some larger than that one, stuck into the wall behind her. She can tell, because she’s laying on her back in a pile of what used to be groceries in the little convenience store on the corner. The slushy machine is slowly leaking the last remains of Cherry Slush over the floor, the rest having already been splattered against the wall.
The air around her is odd, hazy, like a heat shimmer. A can of pork and beans falls off the shelf she crashed through and bounces off her chest… no… it bounces before it hits her chest, as if the heat shimmer had pushed it away.
Movement is pain, but she manages to push herself to her feet. Blood dribbles down her leg as she stumbles to the human sized hole in the twisted metal security door that used to be covering the window of the convenience store. An oddly Hotaru shaped hole, some part of her mind supplies with a giggle.
She looks out the hole and into the eyes of a man… she thinks it’s a man. He opens his mouth, but then stops, and reaches to tap the air in front of her face. His finger is made of stone… so is his face, under the hoodie. ”Huh, guess you’re alright. Sorry, didn’t see you until it was too late.” He says, his voice deep and rumbly. ”I’ll be back in a second, let me go deal with ice for brains.”
Then he walks across the street and into the jewelry store. Shortly thereafter, the side of the store explodes outwards, and the ice covered man flies through the cloud of bricks and jewelry and slams into the stone wall of the office building across the street. The hoodie covered man comes out of the debris as well, and follows up, grabbing the icy man by the ankle and proceeding to slam him over and over into the street, making the ground bounce and leaving man shaped dents in the concrete.
Then the icy man roars and everything goes white. Hotaru’s lips turn blue almost immediately as the temperature drops to the negative 40’s farenheit. The liquid in the store freezes almost instantly. Ice rhimes everything in sight, not that much is, with walls of flurrying snow filling the air.
It’s gone almost as soon as it’s there, no more than 10 seconds of hell, but then the snow falls to the ground, and immediately begins to melt as the temperature rockets back up to near 70. Seventy never felt so warm before.
The stone skinned man comes over, empty handed. ”Bastard got away. You need medical help, and I doubt you can go to a normal hospital with those sparks going off around you. You want help?”
Tracy's leg is bent at an angle that was not natural, and judging from the way his back's bent, it might be broken as well. There's a bruise on his face the size of a frying pan, and oddly enough a frying pan with a Tracy shaped dent in it laying next to him. He probably won't be as pretty as he was, given the way his nose is smashed, and the cut on his face is sure to scar. It's doubtful he'll wake up anytime soon.
Since he wasn't coming to anytime soon she wouldn't bother trying to wake him she likely wouldn't even touch him for fear of furthering his injuries."I would feel sorry for you if you hadn't just tried to kill me." She knew he wasn't able to hear but thinking aloud wasn't new to her."You had to ruin my drink didn't you? She sighed and rubbed her temple thinking of her next move, with Tracy out cold and this disfigured she knew he'd need medical care soon. She gathered any thing she could carry and made her way out the door, if she had a phone she would call 911 to tell them about Tracy if not she'd find a phone as soon as possible.
"Pulse." Hotaru says, even though he hadn't asked. "And... yeah. I do." she says, looking down at her stomach. It reminded her of cherry slushy. Worse, that when the ice melted, she was just going to wind up with an ever-increasing hole. And that was very, very bad.
She struggled for a moment to grasp what had just happened. Through the shell-shock, Hotaru rubbed her thumb across her index and middle fingers, spreading the red. "I do need medical help... and I can't do hospitals. They'd know what I am... or not let me leave." she explains. "And not letting me leave would kill people, I think." She says, mouth twisting into a grimace, as she stumbled towards him.
Slowly, though, adrenaline won out over the shellshock of having been sent through a wall. That had just really happened... and she was fine! Well... not fine, per-se. That was definitely overstatement of the last six minutes of her life... she double-checks the time to see how long she was out for, if at all, and then puts her feet back into motion. This was real! She'd known that there would be others like her... and that there were going to be a lot more villains than heroes. That's why she'd stayed underground in the first place. Not to mention having read all the stories of what happens to specials who the government notices. But right now - this was real. Giant hole and all. That also meant that her shield was stronger than a steel security door. Good to know.
The girl probably looked insane as she smiled with the red paint between her teeth. "I'm going to go with Shale or Sandstone 'til I get a name. Or you can use one of those if you like it. That was crazy!" she grinned, as she managed to gain full control of her legs, and her senses recentered on now instead of a full minute ago. "I'm going to need bandages. Or something else."
As she reached the open gap in the building once more, she looked at the damage to the street and storefront. "Doesn't make any sense. Too... obvious. It'd be really hard to cover this up." she said, mostly as a mumble to herself. "He shut down communications, though. All of them. Total Blackout... He didn't shut me down... and I don't think he even saw me at first." from the amount of jabbering and steady shift of emotions, it was clear she was still foggy from everything that had happened, and was as much asking unspoken questions as thinking out loud.
"Gridlock." The man says, then picks up Hotaru without even skipping a beat. In fact, she might as well be a feather. She can almost feel that he barely notices her weight as the ground suddenly vanishes, his body straightening, and then they are whistling through the air like a ballistic missile, landing three blocks away on the third floor of a parking garage. "Wasn't him, he's just hired muscle. Ice melts, so things will be wet. TNT, robery, maybe someone used liquid oxygen as an accelerant and it leaked to explain the cold damage." He moves over to a van, and holds Hotaru with one hand while opening the door with the other, not even a grunt of strain. "Lay in the back, got some friends who can help with the medical stuff. You look like Sparky. So don't touch anything metal, I need the van to work, and this thing is a rental, so it don't have the mods for Sparky." After closing the door, he moves to the drivers seat. The van dips as he enters, and metal groans.
His phone comes out as the van starts, and all Hotaru get's from it is a squeal of static as he begins to talk. "Yeah, it's me, G-Lock. No, he got away. Not sure who he was working for.... yeah... big mess... got a wayward lamb... been sheered... not sure, not a shepherd. ... yeah... Better ask Ms. Globe Trotter to take her to see the sisters three... yeah... no... maybe... ok... Tell S I'll put the special pattern up in...." He looks at the clock on the dashboard. "Ten minutes."
Saffron has a phone, but it's useless out here with no signal. Fortunately she has a Land Rover outside.
Or rather, she did... where it used to be, is nothing but an empty bit of gravel. She does find a note, scrawled in the dirt. It looks like someone dragged a stick in the dirt to make it.
NEEDED CAR. YOU GOT MONEY. I DON'T. THANKS! Z
Finally, the second woman moves over to the cabinet she’d seen the other woman standing at, and looks inside. ”Well dammit, she got something.” She bites her lip, and then pulls a phone out of her pocket.
She didn't get me I'm not just something, it's me Goo, er I mean I'm Dr. Bender I think, he tries to tell her as he listens to her phone conversation. As he continues to evesdrop on her phone conversation he thinks, I don't believe that is really her Granny. He continues to listen commenting every now and then, Yes, I'm alive. That was rude I can hear you. Finally, upon hearing she is going to take him he can't help but think, Its off to Grandmother's house we go!
It takes Goo a second to get his bearings as he looks at the small room, a closet, with a painting on the wall of a kitten chasing a ball, with a very distinctive pattern framing it. Looking at the picture he thinks, I was expecting the big bad wolf. His thoughts are interrupted as the second woman speaks to him ”Now then, you just wait here for Granny, she’ll be back from her little vaca soon, darlin!” Do you have to go? he asks as she pats the plastic box and drops it into a metal container with a lid, which she re-closes afterwards. Nice meeting you, no you don't have to put that lid on....wait.
Goo sits in the darkness of the box satisfied, At least they know I'm alive. As he waits he tries to put the events of that evening together. Dr. Lewis, Porter, Granny, Japan, Goo, and second woman. Those women were able to do things, incredible, physics bending things. Goo concludes that he shouldn't be surprised about the women as he was a sentient puddle of goo. How do all the pieces fit together, Goo wonders as he begins to formulate a hypothesis.
But for all of her mind jumping around, the girl did as he'd told her, and didn't move from the spot she was in, content to simply listen to the one-sided conversation on the radio. Gridlock was an interesting name. It spoke of a lot of things Hotaru didn't know about him. Though, truthfully, she'd chosen pulse because it was just a hint of what she did. And because she really liked beats. They were soothing. She smiles again as she closes her eyes and lets herself drift into a remembered song.
Zack had been trying out his new plan of being a superhero for exactly three weeks now, with mixed results. He’d not exactly found a vast underground empire of criminals to stop. He’d managed to stop two guys from breaking into someone’s house, more or less by accident, a week ago while taking a shortcut to get home. That was about it.
Tonight, however, he was feeling pumped! He was going to figure out where all the crooks were and really put a beat down on them! He was certain there had to be something out there worth his time! No way could all this speed be going to waste! After all, he was the fastest man (boy?) in the world!
That was when he heard the gunshots. Multiples, and a sudden whoop whoop of a police patrol car. Quickly ditching his bike into the alley and jerking his ski mask down, he raced down and around the corner in time to see a tableau that froze the blood in his veins.
There was a museum on that block, and at 1 (or was it 2?) in the morning, it should have been a tomb. Instead, there were three men hiding behind the stone lions, trading gunfire with four policemen that were ducked down behind their cars.
What froze his blood was that one of the men had a long thick tube on his shoulder, and had just turned around the edge of the statue and fired. A streak raced for the police cars, as did Rocket, but even as fast as Rocket was, he was not fast enough to out-race the missile. It hit the left hand car just above the passenger side front wheel, and the car turned into a small red mushroom cloud, flipping end over end in slow motion. The two police officers behind it flew backwards, the air full of crimson droplets. High speed vision had it’s down side too…
Rocket ran up the steps, the car crashing down behind him, a burning wreck, and his fists slammed into the gunmen, back and forth, until they were beaten and unconscious on the sidewalk outside the museum. The other two cops had guns pointed in his direction, yelling at him to get on his knees, as he stood there.
”You, boy, are a huge annoyance.” A voice said from the door of the museum. Looking up, Rocket saw a woman in a low cut top standing in the door of the museum, holding an old looking sword of some kind in a scabbard. ”Well, guess there’s nothing for it…”
Rocket moves to subdue her, but as he gets close to her, her mouth opens and she screams. And then Rocket’s world dissolves into agony. Again there is a down side to high definition high speed vision. He can see the air rippling as the sonics pass through it, like a heat shimmer. He can see the concrete peeling back as the wave moves toward him. Then the wave hits, and agony burns along his entire body as flesh is stripped away in horrible strips that go flying. Clothing turns into tatters in an instant, and the sonic shockwave picks him up and flings him backwards, tumbling end over end, so that he gets flashes of the scene. He, see the clothes and skin of the gunmen he knocked out shredding as the wave rolls over them, sending their bodies flinging as well. He sees the burning police cruiser shred as well, bits of sharp metal being flung back as shrapnel. The undamaged cruiser as well, the thin sheet steel on it’s panels turning into thousands of bits of shrapnel as the scream washes over it. The windows shattering and the shards flinging out like little buzz saws.
The two previously uninjured cops are flung backwards as well, shedding skin and clothing in a macabre dance, their bodies limp, like rag dolls.
And it just doesn’t stop, it goes on and on, across the street, the wave widening, ripping the facing off buildings, sending the windows slicing inwards as razor sharp shards. The street’s surface rips and tears, turning into gravel that flings itself away from the voice, turning into yet more shrapnel.
Finally Rocket skids over the torn and shredded ground, landing a good 20 meters back down the roadway. A water main nearby spews water into the air, it’s seals broken by the scream. Car alarms sound in the distance, the nearer ones unable to work due to their electrical systems being shredded.
As Rocket looks up, he sees the woman walking calmly down the steps toward him. ”Well now, you should know better than to stick your nose into things that don’t conc…” And the woman’s voice cuts off as a red and yellow blur slams into her and she goes flying backwards into the side of the museum!
Rocket manages to reactivate his high speed sight, and what he sees is another woman, this one in red and yellow suit of some kind. She barely seems to be exerting herself, changing directions like a pinball, as if inertia meant nothing. She moves from one police officer to the next, checking vitals. The two who were not in the initial missile explosion she picks up and carries away, one at a time, to a block away, behind the corner of a building. The other two are apparently already dead.
She returns and kneels down, touching Rocket’s throat, checking for a pulse. ”You should stay out of this, you’re not fast enough to deal with her.” The woman says, her voice so rapid that Rocket has trouble making it out. Then he’s being carried away, left inside the doorway of a building half a block away. The woman leaves him and then reverses course in so little time that a blink of an eye would be jealous.
The first woman stands up, and unleashes a second scream, this time at the woman in red and yellow. The woman runs forward through the hell wave, as if it didn’t exist, the shockwave rolling over her. She drives a fist into the screaming woman’s stomach, cutting off her scream. Then as the woman flies backwards, the red and yellow speedster strikes her in the chin, the throat, the stomach again, driving her back into the wall again, then pounding her up the side of the building, one punch after another as she runs up the wall, her feet barely touching the stone.
And then she’s out of sight, over the top of the roof of the museum. Sirens can be heard wailing in the distance.
The good doctor isn't sure how much time passes, it feels like a few years, but it's probably a few days, maybe a week or two.
Finally though, the lid is lifted off of his box, and a wrinkled elderly hand reaches in to pull his box out. "Sorry about that, Dr. Bender. I swear sometimes I don't know what that girl is thinking." The hand and voice belong to an elderly woman who carefully carries the box out of the closet. Ty finds himself being carried through a nice, but turn of the previous century, house. The furniture looks to be all antique. Hand made doilies cover the tables and shelves, old tarnished silver adorns everything. An actual hand-crank record player sits in the corner. The tv at least, is from this century, a large flat screen on the wall, maybe 60 inch. "Now then, you certainly have gotten yourself into a pickle, haven't you Dr. Bender? Do you need anything? Food? Water? You've been in there for 3 days now."
"Hey! No sleeping, unless you want the big dirt nap." The voice says, firmly.
A few minutes later, the van pulls into a second parking garage. It parks in an out of the way portion of the garage, an area without security cameras. "Wait here, don't move." The man picks up a backpack from the back of the van, and steps out.
A few minutes later, a woman enters the van, and leans down over Hotaru. "I tell ya, Grid. You got the damnedest luck. You go looking for an ice ass, and find hot ass instead." The woman winks at Hotaru, and the man makes an embarrassed noise outside. As she leans over Hotaru, Hotaru realizes that her gray skin is actually fur. Extremly fine and thick, each hair no more than an eighth of an inch long. "Now, this won't hurt..." She reaches out and puts a hand firmly on Hotaru's breast bone, just below her throat.
Then the world drops out from under Hotaru. Everything goes black, and then a second later, she falls, landing on a bed of some sort. The van is gone and Hotaru is in a room looks like an operating room. Instruments, lights, the whole nine yards... other than the intricate tile design on the wall, all complex geometric patterns.
Three women, sisters it looks like, based on their appearance, identical triplets, walk into the room. Oddly, each has slightly different eyes and hair. One green, one red, one blue.
The woman who brought her here looks up. "Trinity! She's got a half an icicle sticking out of her stomach."
The three women walk over, and begin to examine Hotaru. "We'll take care of it." They say in perfect unison.
"Thanks Shim, you work too hard." Red says, examining the icicle.
"You should take the night off. There's pizza in the kitchen." Blue adds, checking out Hotaru's eyes with a penlight.
"No beer, last time you got drunk you trashed my tv." Red says, holding a scalpel threateningly and pointing it at the gray furred woman. Then she turns to Hotaru. "Can you speak? How many of me are there?" She asks, snapping her fingers to get Hotaru's attention.
Violet is at home, resting quietly, on a Saturday afternoon. The TV is on, pizza pockets are steaming on the table, and soda is fizzing softly in her glass. The afternoon SyFy bad B movies are about to start, Sharktoberfest, followed by Sharktopus vs Lavalantula, and then finally the premier of Sharknado VI : Galactoshark!.
And then the doorbell rings, which is enough to make Violet jerk and jump, nearly knocking over the pizza pockets. She wasn’t expecting anyone, ever. Reaching out her mind, she finds… a shielded mind, that resists her efforts to poke around.
Carefully she opens the door a crack, to find a man dressed in an old fashioned flight jacket and pants. A leather mask covers his face.
”Hi. You can call me Ace. I’d like to talk to you, if you don’t mind. Inside though, if you don’t mind. I don’t know how long your nosy neighbor will be fooled by a Jehova’s witness knocking at your door.” The man says, taking his leather gloves off, one by one, while waiting.
The old paranoia’s are hard to shake. All day, something had been gnawing at the back of Briana’s head, like someone was staring into her skull, or looking at it through a sniper rifle scope. She hadn’t noticed anyone at all, however. She’d used every trick she knew to find a tail, and nothing.
Finally, she’d headed out to an old industrial complex. Last ditch effort, if you’re being followed, leaving yourself vulnerable could flush them out. Hard to pass up an ambush opportunity like finding your prey in an old abandoned clothing manufacturing plant. Lord knew there were enough old abandoned places around to hide in. Of course, having a place you knew like the back of your hand, and had some weapons stashed around, made the ambush work for you instead of against you.
She’d almost thought she’d been wrong, after nearly an hour of walking around the place hadn’t tripped any traps, when it happened, someone showed up.
Not that the person really was very good at ambushing. They didn’t hide, didn’t shoot at her from the shadows. No, this idiot walked right out into the open, as if they wanted Briana to know they were there first. She was walking along the railing, next to the old dying tanks, when the person stepped out.
The woman was tall, she’d give her that. Even accounting for the combat boots, the woman was over 6 foot 2. And she obviously worked out, muscles slid under skin like well oiled machines. Two heavy looking blades criss-crossed on her back. The jeans and gray top looked like they’d seen combat before, as if she had picked old friends to go with her on this day, rather than something new. The jacket was the same, black leather that was torn and patched, having seen heavy use. Only the mask seemed undamaged and new, covering the woman’s face.
”Briana McClaine… Cadre operative… deceased…” The woman’s voice, a contralto, might as well be breathing liquid helium for all the warmth in it. ”You’ve been sanctioned… I’m here to gain full measure of you…”
He can't even manage to speak before the blur-of-a-woman chastising him is gone, but several agonizingly long seconds later his mind clicks back into gear. "Like hell I'm not fast enough!" And with that Zach runs after the other two. He isn't sure if he can manage to run up the side of a building, but he decides if she could do it so can he!
With a deep breath he builds up steam and charges after them.
"Not sleeping... just concentrating on... not exploding the van." she says as they stop. He digs out the backpack while she watches, and stays put. Then there's another person? "Beast?" she says, in a low voice, head tilting as she sees the grey furriness. It's clear it's not said in fear or meant as an insult, but instead she's actually excited about it. She grins when the comment of cold versus hot comes up. "Ano..." she says as the woman reaches towards her chest... and then she's somewhere else. "Nope. Nightcrawler." she says, grinning at the new room. Then the three came in. "Well... he called you the sisters three... so that's sort of cheating I think. But... there's also a red, a green and a blue one." she says, not really wasting time on explaining how she knew there were three of them... at least, visually. "And I prefer to think I have half of an icicle in my stomach. That's really most of the problem." she says, trying for more humor. S for Shim, not for Sandiago.
"Now then, you certainly have gotten yourself into a pickle, haven't you Dr. Bender? Do you need anything? Food? Water? You've been in there for 3 days now." Pickle, that’s an understatement, how about my old life back, he asks. As he contemplates her offer of food he tries to remembers what is was it is like to eat, the hunger and the cravings but has had little desire to eat. What was his favorite food, he couldn’t remember but the woman who took him from the lab had a southern accent and he thinks, Fried chicken and lemonade would be appropriate.
Six weeks.
Briana shook her head. Six weeks was all I got.
It had been a quiet, boring month and a half living as "Laney McBreigh" in Atlanta. She had a downtown apartment, a little nicer than what a temp could afford, but she didn't invite anyone over so it mattered little. She had a gym membership courtesy of her current office job with TransUnited Shipping. One of the execs, Martin Quince had even taken a liking to her and promised that he'd be able to find her a permanent position once his regular executive assistant returned from maternity leave. She didn't know if she would accept his offer, since she wondered if it was her ability to speak Farsi that impressed him so much, or her propensity to wear stiletto heels at the office.
One of the hardest things to do when adopting a mundane life was to simply relax. Every time she entered a room, she surveyed it for threats and calculated the best way to take down each individual in the room. She had lived most of her life on the razor's edge, poised to take action without hesitation. It translated into a subtle stance and posture that could be noticed by others similarly trained. It was as natural as breathing, and it required conscious effort to relax that readiness.
Hence, the heels. They were horribly impractical, a total liability. But they did one thing well: made her walk and stand like a normal woman. Well, two things actually. They also drew the male gaze.
Now, those awful, ankle-breaking monstrosities of fashion were back in her locker when she changed into a comfortable pair of sweats and gym shoes. She had been hitting the gym hard since she got the membership, trying to work out that nagging soreness in her shoulders as well as generally keep in shape.
She had tried to shake that feeling when it hit. Paranoia, she had told herself. But it persisted, so she decided to flush it out. And it worked. And she may have been paranoid, but someone was still out to get her. I can't believe it was only six weeks.
"My full measure? Well, I'm five-foot-nine and my weight is none of your business," she answers, stalling to make sure she's only sensing one opponent. "So, who are you?"
Zack charges toward the building, and then leaps toward the wall... and keeps going, momentum keeping him glued to the wall. Before he knows it, he's on top of the museum, and there are the two again, the woman screams again, and the ceiling collapses under the running speedster, sending her crashing into the museum below. Zack's rapid response retinas can just make her out as she moves, she somehow runs on the debris, using the smallest fragments of glass and twisted metal to simply keep going, even after she slams through a glass case containing rock samples. The glass case shatters and fragments shoot out like daggers, burying in the wall, but the red and yellow woman doesn't seem to notice it. Instead, she runs up the falling debris and slams a whirwind spinning kick into the screamer's stomach and both go flying over the other side of the museum.
There's some low level hum from the equipment in the room, and some more outside it. But the only source of radio signal that's recognizable is the phone in 'Shim's pocket, trying desperately to contact a tower that isn't there. Even background radio signals from space aren't present, indicating wherever Hotaru is, it's shielded.
The three women nod. "Yes, three of us." They say in unison.
"Well, the bad news is, you have a fist sized hole in your liver. There's also lacerations to your kidney. And to your bowel, and spleen." Green says, looking at Hotaru's stomach carefully.
"Worse news is, the icicle was negative 30 Celsius or thereabouts when it hit. Your liver is frozen solid, so's part of the spleen. Good news is, the cold kept you from bleeding out immediately." Blue adds.
"Worst news is, the organs are ruptured from freezing. When they thaw, you die.." Red concludes, looking at the other two.
The gray furred girl grimaces. "Well, do something!"
The trio look at her, then sigh. "Well, of course..." They respond in unison. All three reach out and touch each other's fingertips, centering the touch over Hotaru's stomach. Then they take two steps back. Each leaves a trail of light in the air, one trail red, one blue, one green, from their fingertips. Where the light meets, it turns bright white, like an arc welder.
Blue : "Thrice wend, and thrice we mend..."
Green: "Thrice and once, the life depend..."
Red : "Reaper nears:—'tis time! 'tis time!"
Blue :
"Round about the corpse go;"
"In the torn entrails throw."
"Girl, that under sky sits,"
"Days and nights has sixty-six;"
"Restor'd flesh fighting rot,"
"Liver'd rent be not!"
In Unision:
"Double, double toil and trouble;"
"Flesh mend, and blood bubble."
Green :
"Whole the rent flesh make,"
"Cup of life in thy hand to take;"
"Eye of newt, and ring of truth,"
"Wool of bat, and strength of youth,"
"Adder's fork, and healing balm,"
"Lizard's leg, and nerves calm,"
"For a fool in powerful trouble,"
"Like a hell-broth boil and bubble."
In Unision:
"Double, double toil and trouble;"
"Flesh mend, and blood bubble."
Red :
"Scale of dragon; fang of snake;"
"Mended mummy; whole again doth make;"
"Draw of the ravin'd shark;"
"Blood return and scar mark;"
"Liver of dying you;"
"Whole again, by morning dew;"
"Sliver'd ice in dark ellipse;"
"Melted gone, flee Tartar's lips;"
"Kidney whole and healthy;"
"Honored greater than wealthy;"
"Make the spleen thick and whole:"
"Pay the fee, gold in the bowl,"
"To the flesh, cleave the soul!"
In Unision:
"Double, double toil and trouble;"
"Flesh mend, and blood bubble."
As the three chant, they march around Hotaru, their fingers leaving more trails of three colored light. As they reach the trail left by the previous sister, the light changes, red and green to magenta, green and blue to black, and blue and red to purple. Then as the trails touch again, for the third time, the light turns bright white and forms a column that rains down on Hotaru's stomach and chest, bathing her in blinding white light.
The sensation is something like being a 100 volt fuse in a 50,000 volt circuit. Finally though, the chant ends, and the three have vanished, leaving only a single woman with black hair and hazel eyes. "I'll bill you." She tells Hotaru, and then collapses into Shim's waiting arms. She vanishes with the woman in her arms.
Hotaru's stomach is whole and unblemished and unscarred.
"Yes, yes, I know you're Doctor Bender." The old woman says, forcing her way up again. "Chicken and lemonade, not picky are we." She vanishes into the kitchen, or at least, Ty would have to assume it is, that's where one keeps such things usually.
Fifteen minutes later, she returns to the table, carrying a plate of food. When she sits down, she settles her silverware, and begins eating herself, fried chicken, lemonade, corn, and cole slaw. Reaching out, she opens the case, and then drops a bit of fried chicken the size of her thumb into the container. An eyedropper is is pulled from her sleeve and a few drops of lemonade drop into the goo as well. "Now now, we don't want you overfeeding, until we see what happens. Not much left of you, maybe a pound of you at most. I think you need to put on some weight, maybe get yourself back up to where you were before you got yourself in trouble. But we don't want to overfeed you... Might turn into a gremlin if we do."
"Your executioner, murderer..." The woman says, walking forward calmly, pulling the two swords off her back with an ominous ringing sound. "You have two options. You can tell me everything you know about Cadre, their weaknesses, where to find Emil Montrose, and the passcodes and IDs you had that you shouldn't have had, and in exchange, I'll make sure your execution is quick and painless."
She slams a sword into the railing, and sends a good six feet of wood and metal plummeting into the depths. "Or you can try to fight me or get help, and I'll slice you to death an inch at a time and keep you alive for two or three days..."
If it wasn't for Tracy needing help she wouldn't have cared even slightly about Zhombei taking her car after saving her but with his life on the line she needed to act fast. She went back inside gathering anything she thought would help Tracy once he awoke, placing pain killers beside him along with any other medical supplies she thought he might be able to use. After doing anything she could for Tracy she didn't see much in the way of options so she'd start walking back to the nearest town, after all she didn't have to make it all the way there just enough out of the woods to call for help.
A cold lump of ice grows in Briana's belly. Six weeks. Her face grows hard as the other woman talks. Not with the government and not with the Cadre. So who?
At her threat, she barks out a sharp laugh that echoes around the factory. "Not leaving much room for banter, are you? 'Two options: kill you fast or kill you slow.' Has that ever worked?"
She sets herself into a combat stance, not backing away. "How about this: you tell me who you are and who you're working for. And then I prove that Briana McClaine is dead, because she would kill you for this insult, while I'll just hurt you a bit."
The cabin is well stocked with medical supplies, including Tylonol.
Saffron has little trouble walking the 5 miles in to get to where she has a signal on her phone. The question is, who does she call, and what story does she tell...
The woman continues forward, showing no attempt to defend herself as she approaches. "Works for me, I get the information either way, and when they refuse, they can't say I didn't make the offer..." The woman moves closer and closer, like some unstoppable force. "I told you who I am, your executioner. I don't work for anyone. And if you hurt me, I'll give you a name before I kill you."
"Acceptable terms," she mutters. Time to get serious. She wasn't likely to get answers any way except by beating this woman severely.
In a blur of movement, she races forward to get inside the reach of those swords and brings her knee up into the woman's abdomen.
Her first call would be easy, a quick anonymous call to the nearest hospital or 911 informing them that someone was badly injured at the cabin and would likely need air evac. Her second call was much more reluctant but with everything that had happened she need answers, she found the card Zhombei had given her and called the number listed.
Whippoorwill's knee slams up and into the woman's abdomen, she doesn't even try to dodge it. And Whippoorwill learns why as her knee slams into what feels like solid stone. Pain lances from her knee, up her leg, and into the base of her spine. There's not the slightest bit of give in the woman's flesh, despite how fluidly it moves.
Whippoorwill's only reference is when she once punched the side of a tank while drunk. She had her hand in a cast for three weeks after that, while the bones grew back together. The crunch in her knee feels much like that, but without the benefit of the alcohol to cloud the pain.
The woman doesn't even bother with her swords, she launches up into the air, and drives her knee up and into Briana's chin. Bones crunch, and stars explode as the blow connects. Everything goes black in a flash of pain.
Briana wakes up some time later, the woman standing over her, her swords back on her back. Briana's jaw feels like it's been hit by a semi, and the agony is excruciating. "I expected better, honestly. Last Cadre special forces guy managed to last more than one hit. Doubt you can talk with that jaw smashed like that, so blink. One blink for 'I will talk when my jaw is better and please may I have a quick death' and two blinks for 'I am a stupid ass b$*!& who wants to have some more bones broken before I go for option 1'."
Regardless, as the women begin to circle around her, she tilts her head in time, watching the green light more often as her eyes were drawn to that wavelength more. As they spun around, pieces of it penetrated more than others, and she was left with her other eye squinted slightly, so that the other brow was raised. As they all three disappeared... she was left wondering what the woman meant by 'Bill'. Life-saving services... were not going to be cheap, and she doubted she could pay in anything short of blood.
She frowned slightly, perplexed... then high school english reared its ugly head. "Was that MacBeth?" she offered to the empty room, not really remembering it properly at all. But still, she pushed herself up, off of the bed, given that she seemed to be 'fine'. It was interesting to think that maybe her mutation had saved her in ways other than fitting through a brick wall. Like, by keeping her internal organs from turning into a solid chunk of ice. It hadn't helped the liver, but...
Finally, she reached the geometric shapes, and started playing connect the dots while she waited for some other stimuli. After all of that excitement, all of that pain, and then all of that energy... she felt empty. Very empty. More empty than she'd felt in a very long time, to say the least - there wasn't even anything to listen to. Except the dull hum of the electronics... which she was careful to move as far away from as she could.
Absently, she began to hum in the tune that the three - or was it one? - woman had chanted in.
His eyes widen as he sees the battle as if in slow motion. She needs my help! But can I, against someone like that?!?
He continues to follow, peering over the lip and looking for an opportunity to take down the screaming murderer. Perhaps if I run down just around the corner, on the next wall over, I can approach her without being blasted again? He shudders at the thought as he launches himself over the lip, his legs a blur, attempting to approach from out of the murderer's frame of vision.
I hate getting hit in the face, Briana thinks through the haze and coppery taste of blood. She wanted to puzzle out why this had gone so bad; why she was lying beneath this woman, defeated. But she didn't allow herself that self-serving luxury.
She stared daggers at the woman, letting the pain bring her focus. She didn't blink. Instead, she leaned toward the railing as if she was about to retch, then pulls her Desert Eagle from her waistband and unloads it point blank into her chest.
She tries to roll off the platform, dropping to the floor below.
The next fifteen minutes are the longest fifteen minutes he has ever experienced. She talked to me, She heard me, she called me Ty, I remember there was someone else who used to call me Ty, he remarks to himself. Thoughts and ideas race through his mind at the possibilities of being able to communicate.
Grandma returns carrying a plate of food and she sits down. She begins eating the fried chicken, lemonade, corn, and cole slaw. It might be some trick on her part he concludes maybe she can’t communicate with me, but he tries, hopeful as he thinks, Hi can I have some, remembering his manners he adds, please. Reaching out, she opens the case, and then drops a bit of fried chicken the size of her thumb into the container. An eyedropper is pulled from her sleeve and a few drops of lemonade drop into the goo as well. Thank you, he remarks. This is delicious can I have some more he thinks. "Now now, we don't want you overfeeding, until we see what happens. Not much left of you, maybe a pound of you at most. I think you need to put on some weight, maybe get yourself back up to where you were before you got yourself in trouble. But we don't want to overfeed you... Might turn into a gremlin if we do." Only if you feed me after midnight, he quips as he savors the taste of the fried chicken.
After he completes the meal he is energized and curious he can’t help but question Grandma. How can you communicate with me, some sort of ESP, he inquires. He continues his queries wondering if she can help him become human again, can he contact his family, as well as who she is and what happened at the lab the other night. I hope this is not a dream, he concludes.
And then everything slows back down to normal. The screamer lies limp in the pit of concrete, the woman in red and gold kneeling on her abdomen, her fist pressed against the screamer's chest. The screamer has a few nicks and cuts, but nothing major, nor does the red and gold woman have any blood showing, both somehow able to survive that incredible fight without any major injuries.
As Zack races up, trailing blood from his wounds, the woman stands. "Told you kid, you're too slow for this fight." She turns her head, looking at Zack from over 6 ft of height. "You look like crap too, mask is torn, clothes torn, blood everywhere. You know how much DNA you're leaving behind?" She reaches down to pick up the limp screamer. "Give me 5 minutes, I need to drop her off somewhere she can't do any harm." And then the woman leaves, a sonic boom left in her wake. Zack's eyes managed to see her actually run rather than jog like she was doing before, but only as a long blur that vanished onto the horizon.
About ten minutes later, there's another boom and the woman reappears, carrying a bucket half full of water and a pair of brushes. "Clean up your blood..." She tosses a wet brush at Zack, and then her form blurs and she begins cleaning up the area of all blood, the brush in her hand moving fast enough look like a single large piece of wood rather than a brush moving back and forth.
Things keep going from bad to worse, Briana sees the bullet hit, right in the chest, even sees some jiggling... and also sees the bullet, flattened, whiz past her head as she rolls off the platform, having bounced off without any apparent damage to the woman. And it didn't hit armor, the woman isn't wearing any...
She manages to land on the next floor down, but almost immediately, the woman steps off behind her.
"I'll take that as 'Please break some more bones...'" The woman says, and not sounding at all disappointed.
Briana's ankle cracks as the woman sweeps her leg, slamming her into the ground again on her back. She doesn't lose consciousness yet, but her ankle is broken.
And the pain in her back is worse, like something is trying to eat it's way out from the inside... Even worse than the pain in her jaw and ankle...
"I can hear your thoughts, boy. How else. And you can hear me talking, that's how people communicate." She continues to eat, and when it seems nothing untoward has happened, she drops a spoonful of corn into the case, along with some more lemonade. "Don't make a mess in your case, I'm not scooping it for you." She warns him, shaking her spoon at the case. "Now, what to do with you?"
Briana tries to spit the blood from her mouth, but all it does is dribble out. She wipes the rest off her lips as she tries to force herself to her one remaining good foot but the pain in her shoulders cause her arms to give out. She feels the cold, dusty concrete floor on her cheek while the pain increases tenfold, and she wishes she could scream.
The Desert Eagle tempts her, as it's still in her hand. She rolls on her tormented back to eye the woman again, eyes blazing. She brings the gun up and aims for her eyes, mouth, anything that's not her rock-hard skin.
"I can't read your mind, boy. I can only hear your thoughts. If you don't thin it, I don't hear it. So don't assume I know everything you do." The woman says, spooning a tiny amount of cole slaw into the box, and another few drops of lemonade. "I was mostly thinking out loud. I don't think I've heard of any one like you before, boy. I'm not sure how to help you, other than feed you and talk to you. And I'm too old to adopt anyone, much less an adult man in a plastic box." She eats a bit more, and then sighs. "And don't ever joke like that again, I don't kill people..." The way it's said, Ty get's the idea there's a 'anymore' tacked silently on the end of that statement.
The bullet slams right over the bridge of the woman's nose.. and flattens out like a pancake. Her head rocks back on her shoulders, but then moves back forward again. The spent bullet drops to the floor. The mask has a small hole in it, but other than that, nothing seems to have happened. "Good shot, that actually stung a little."
The woman reaches out and grabs Caitlyn's wrist, twisting it so the gun is pointing off to the side. "Shall we snap your wrist next? I can do this all day. I can even go get a friend of mine to repair your face and ankle, so I can break them all over again... so, you ready to talk?" She asks.
The pain in Caitlyns' back is insane, it makes her jaw feel good by comparison. It feels like her lungs are trying to batter their way out of her body...
Do you think you could contact my family for me let them know I’m alive. My wife must really be worried, He asks her, Perhaps, you could compose a letter for me? After she replies he continues his questioning, What is you real name anyway and how did you learn to hear peoples and Goo’s thoughts.
Something in the confidence of her voice makes him agree and he joins her, trying his best to outdo her in how quickly he can clean any blood from the area, willing him self on to be just as fast of a blur. Blood...DNA...why didn't I think of that?
"I'm not a kid you know?" he says, realizing it sounds a bit childish and petulant as soon as the words leave his eighteen year old lips. "And I bet I could do that stuff too--I mean, what you did was amazing, you totally whooped her--but, well, you've got to give me a chance!
"Who are you, anyway? And who was that screaming lady? I didn't know there were more...like us...and now I see both you and her. What's going on?"
She wished she could clench her jaw. She wanted to scream. The pain in her back made her near insensate. She squeezed her eyes shut as the agony overrode her will to keep fighting to escape; instead, she wished for it to end. Her head lolled back as she pulled feebly away from the woman's hold. For a moment she shudders and goes limp. But as a new surge of pain courses through her, she drives a kick against the woman with her remaining good foot in true desperation.
"Ty... what are you going to tell your wife? How do you think she'll react if I send her a letter telling her it's from you, and you're alive and living well with an old black woman in Atlanta, sitting on her coffee table in a glass box?" She says, sighing. "Until we figure out if you can go back, do you think it's fair to put your wife through this too?" She asks, her voice sad but firm.
"Names.. we don't trade names... I don't like knowing them, but I don't have a choice. One reason why they don't bring many people around me, the less I meet, the less who's name I know. Everyone calls me Granny. I was born like this child, oh... 1953. Lived in an insane asylum until I was 28. Then they closed, and I escaped. Been hiding ever since."
Briana moves to kick the woman again, but as her foot goes up, her back slams into the ground, and the agony spikes through her. Her body jerks and spasms, and then her back explodes... literally... blood splatters the ground and her body wracks, and something wet and slimy slaps her face... bloody wings, growing as they spread out around her...
As Briana sits there, panting, bloody wings dripping on the ground behind her, the woman snarls. "Well, that complicates things..." And then her fist slams into Briana's forehead, sending her back into sweet oblivion.
Briana slowly wakes up. Her back aches vaguely, as if she had a sunburn... as does her jaw... and her wrist.. and her forehead... and her ankle... although somehow they all seem to be working again... somehow...
Something is new though... wings... huge... white... wings...
She's in a room... a jail cell.. iron bars... and mirrors beyond them, on the wall. She could see herself... wrapped in white cloth, silk of some kind, like a roman toga... no doubt to fit around her wings..
It was like a vision of an angel... From the Cistine Chapel, fluffy white wings... only a halo was missing... How could someone like her be an angel? Someone who'd done... what she'd done...
And then the spasms hit, her body jerking, her arms clutching her stomach as the wings jerks and spasm... and the white feathers begin to run red... like blood... bloody wings...
She closes her eyes and wills it away... wills away the blood...
Finally the spasms ease... when she opens her eyes, the white wings are gone.. replaced with... brown wings... with bright blood red pinfeathers...
Reluctantly he agrees with her reasoning, I guess you’re right. But longer we wait the harder it will be, that I’m sure of.
"Names.. we don't trade names... I don't like knowing them, but I don't have a choice. One reason why they don't bring many people around me, the less I meet, the less who's name I know. Everyone calls me Granny.”[/b] Okay, Granny it is then, he responds.
”I was born like this child, oh... 1953. Lived in an insane asylum until I was 28. Then they closed, and I escaped. Been hiding ever since."
Oh, I’m sorry to hear that, not about your escape, the asylum part. He sputters, I’m glad you escaped. Continuing, I am really happy to have someone to talk to, we can figure out the rest as we go along. Goo offers with great anticipation, What’s on TV tonight, can you tell me what has happened on Game of Thrones.
She was studying herself in the mirror, turning her face this way and that. It was so odd, seeing her old hair color again. Her strawberry-blonde locks were back, after spending what felt like a fortnight at the salon, bleaching the black dye from her hair and restoring the old color that she'd been born with. She tossed the curls over her shoulders with a shake of her head and smoothed her new pencil skirt with nervous hands.
Her first day at work, and she couldn't believe that she actually felt anxious. She smiled at the reflection in the mirror, batted the mascara-laden eyelashes over her deep azure eyes, and gulped.
This is it. The start of my new life, she thought as she applied another coat of lip gloss. And you're doing a piss-poor job of make-believe, an unbidden thought strayed through her mind. A temp? A secretary? Is that who you think you're going to be?
Her heart started pounding as she stared at the reflection, unable to stop the cruel voice in her head. Is this going to balance the scales? Make it all better? Filing papers, keeping schedules? Making coffee? How much coffee is going to make up for all the blood you spilled?
Stop it, she tries to silence the voice. It's a start. It's something. I will find a way. She turns away on a heel and steps out into the world.
* * *
Briana rubs her eyes and stares in the mirror. Thoughts scream in so many directions that she can pin nothing coherent down. Sensation travels into her brain as the huge, monstrous appendages twitch and move like living things. She sinks to her knees, mesmerized.
A tentative hand reaches out and catches a wing as it flops like a newborn's. She feels warmth beneath the soft, downy feathers, and frighteningly, she feels her hands upon it. It's too much; her hand recoils as the wing flaps violently, beating uselessly in the confined space. Terrified, she turns away from it and its twin similarly begins moving, flapping in wild panic.
It's too much. She draws in a deep breath and screams.
As she's panicking, pain suddenly lances through her head, blowing all her thoughts away. Not enough to stun her, but certainly enough to derail her panic attack. Much like someone slapping someone who was in a hysterical fit to snap them out of it, but safer.
A man is standing there, staring at her. "Snap out of it... it's real.. they are real... not sure why they went from white to brown... I liked the white better." He says, his voice hard. "You want food? Water? There's a portable toilet under the panel on the floor over there." He nods toward the corner of the cell, where the floor has a square seam on it.