Location: New York, New York
Esdeath Davina sank her pointy teeth into the poor bastard of a man who had tried his hands at killing her. Well, he didn't have hands now. Esdeath had ripped them off and thrown them at some of his friends. Friends who also had thought they could kill her. They were dead, obviously. So was the man Esdeath had her teeth in, after she'd drained him of all his blood and pulled his head off like a doll's. Esdeath was the only living thing left the alley. The only living thing under the moonlight. Esdeath's odd eyes, one blue, one green, looked down on her kill in all its detail. For her, things were as bright as day. She had night-vision.
Esdeath grinned to herself as she got down next to the corpse, paused, and started to feed. She'd already drank all the blood, sure, and that had given her back her strength and powers and healed her wounds, but...but she liked the taste of the flesh and organs. She liked using the bones to sharpen her teeth. Esdeath caught a scent coming into the alley. But she didn't pay it any attention, she just kept on eating her meal.
A blast of magical energy flew over her head. Esdeath dropped the arm she was eating and whipped around in the blink of an eye. A woman stood in shadows at the alley mouth. "Esdeath Davina. Vampire." the woman said. There was a small hint of a sneer in her voice. "Wanted in all fifty states for murder, theft, and some other things I don't feel much like listing off right now. I admit finding you was quite the challenge but now that I have-"
Nothing but a blur, Esdeath flew through the air towards the woman with her claws out. The vampire was stopped by a purple magic barrier that flared to life when she hit it. She was trapped in the alley. The woman was outside it. Safe from Esdeath. Before Esdeath could do anything the alley was flooded with black smoke from all sides. The last thing she thought before everything went dark was...
Location: Unknown
Light and sound came to Esdeath slowly.
"...I'm not gonna be the guy to wake the bitch up." someone was saying. "I've trifled with vamps too many times. Almost died too many times."
Esdeath heard a deep growl. A response from another. Wherever she was.
"Who says a GUY has to wake her up?" said a very young woman's voice. A perky, high voice that Esdeath already hated hearing. She heard a shuffling noise and then the voice was right on top of her. So was the heat, weight and pressure of a body. "Hey, wake up! It's not fun if you're-"
Esdeath opened her eyes, took in her situation of being straddled by a blond woman with way too big, blue eyes, and she punched the woman in the face with all her strength and sent her flying back across the room. The blond woman went with the momentum of the punch, turned her flight into three backward handsprings and came to a teetering halt on the balls of her heels. And she was GIGGLING.
Esdeath jumped to her feet and took in her surroundings. There wasn't much to look at, really. She was in a big, circular, bright white room with no doors and no windows. No seams. Nothing. Like being inside a cheese wheel. Then there were the others in with her. The blond woman with the way too big blue eyes, creamy skin and too much red lipstick, along with a whole lot of other makeup stuff that made her look like hell in Esdeath's opinion. The blond was clad in a sparkling blue party dress that hardly went an inch or two down past her ass. The others in the room were a gruff looking man leaning against the wall, wearing a waistcoat and looking at Esdeath with wariness, and lastly a man Esdeath wasn't even sure WAS a man. She could only come up with the word "Monster" to describe him.
He was at least seven feet tall, broad-shouldered and exploding with muscles all over, his face was covered by a black mask, and he had two clear, cylinder containers strapped to his back filled with multicolored liquid. There were twin tubes attached to the containers that stretched up his body and seemed to be feeding the liquid into his neck on both sides. But most horrifying of all was that his left arm below the elbow wasn't even an arm. It was an old fashioned cannon that was wider than Esdeath was from hip to hip.
Esdeath stared from person to person. Then she just couldn't help herself. "What the FUCK is wrong with you people?"
"I ask myself that question every day." laughed the blond woman a little hysterically. She crossed her arms and pulled a pouty face. "And I still haven't gotten an answer yet..."
"I wouldn't hold out hope on getting one anytime soon." said a voice. A voice Esdeath recognized from the alley. A section of wall split open and slid apart, turned into a door, and in walked the woman herself. She was tall, hard-faced, had black hair tied back into a tight ponytail, and in her hand was a long, thin black wand. The woman's eyes found Esdeath, then she looked to them all in turn before speaking again. "Now that you're all awake and comfortable in your new home...welcome to your new home. My name is Alycia Keys, and to you folks, for all intents and purposes I am God. I am the director of a classified government project, and you are its subjects. This project as I'm sure one of you has heard," Alycia's hard brown eyes went to the man in the waistcoat. "is called simply: Project X."
"Project X?!" The man in the waistcoat pushed off from the wall, shock and horror on his face, finally acting like he gave a damn about the situation.
"The letter X makes everything sound cooler." the blond exclaimed, as she laughed and threw herself at Esdeath and slinked an arm around her waist. Esdeath pried the blond woman's arm off her and spun her around before letting go. The blond just set about spinning on one heel like a ballerina before ending in a low bow. She winked at Esdeath, and the latter bared her fangs and issued a sharp hiss.
"I suppose," Alycia spoke , a thin smile on her lips as she eyed Esdeath and the blond. "that introductions are in order, seeing as you're so eager to get to know one another." Alycia gestured to Esdeath and continued. "Esdeath Davina, a vampire since the age of five, with more travel time and accumulated kills in her lifetime than any criminal ever recorded in history. Quite a feat, since I'm including other people who've lived a lot longer than you have in my kill-count." Esdeath didn't reply. She just grinned. Alycia eyed the blond woman now. "Sylvia Reynolds, witch, lived her life in the most secure magical asylum in the United States. Until she escaped, that is. She's a serial rapist who's victims are exclusively other women, and she has a talent for memory charms. As such, most of her victims have been assaulted by her on numerous occasions - they just don't remember. She wipes their memories after each attack, only to reintroduce herself, lure them in and do it all over again." Alycia paused, and Esdeath retreated several steps away from Sylvia in a show of her disgust and caution.
"You forgot to add that she's also batshit." said the man in the waistcoat, running his hand over his stubbled chin.
"Hey, it's not that easy!" cried an indignant Sylvia. "It's not JUST a memory charm. A lot of work goes into seduction, you know!"
"I thought that went without saying." Alycia said dryly to Marcus, ignoring Sylvia. "For those of you who don't know, this is Marcus Alderman." Alycia continued, nodding at the waistcoat guy. "He's a mercenary who likes to steal government information and send it off to their enemies, playing them off each other and earning a paycheck for himself in the process. He's been the single cause of more than a few of our more major, recent political troubles around the globe. He is also the only one of you that knows the details of Project X, since he was in the middle of scanning the data when we grabbed him and brought him here." she finished after a slight pause and a smirk.
Esdeath got the hint. Everyone in the room had their own ways of making people talk, and they should exercise them on Marcus at some point in the near future. Should and would.
"Last but certainly not least," Alycia spoke again, her eyes going to the twisted behemoth of a man. Her eyes were cold and showed no fear. "I'd like you all to say hello to the modern Frankenstein. His name is Jason Stark, and him and his now deceased husband once performed a wide variety of experiments on him, ranging from, as you can see, untested transfiguration techniques and potions of their own invention. Before you is the result. Without the constant injection of his potions and several others he's taken the liberty of adding to the mixture over the years, he will die within a matter of seconds. I trust you'll all believe me when I tell you that he can and has ripped people in half with his bare hands."
"Hand." Sylvia pronounced proudly. "He only has one hand." she added at everyone's stares. She frowned. "Am I the only one seeing the cannon?"
"Yes." Esdeath huffed just to fuck with the blond.
"Huh." Sylvia kept frowning. She smiled suddenly. "Well I think he looks a hell of a lot cooler from my point of view. You all don't know what you're missing."
"I'm sure they have no idea." said Alycia airily. She flicked her wand and the tip glowed purple. Esdeath felt a sudden burning on her back. "I leave you here for the next several hours. Use it to get better acquainted with one another." She turned on a heel and started to leave the room, then she paused and looked back at them. "I expect you all to be alive and in particularly cooperative moods when I return for you." As soon as Alycia disappeared down the dark hallway out of the room the wall sealed itself again, leaving nothing but smooth, bright whiteness and not a single crack or seam to be seen.
With Alycia gone, Marcus immediately removed his waistcoat, pulled up the back of his shirt and started trying to look at his back. He couldn't get it nearly high enough to look at what Esdeath suspected he was trying to get a look at though. "Anyone going to help me?" he said quickly. He sounded afraid, and hearing that fear in someone like him made Esdeath go over and help. Only of course, because she had felt a burning on her back too, and whatever it was didn't seem like something good for her health.
What Esdeath found on Marcus's back shocked her. Glowing purple numbers that looked like they were just beneath the skin. "It's a timer." she said loudly. "And it's counting down. Twenty-four hours and five minutes."
"Damnit!" Marcus growled as he stomped over to the wall and slammed his fist into it. "Damnit, damnit, DAMNIT!"
"What's his problem?" Sylvia said, a puzzled look on her face, even as she was laying prone on the floor, her back arched, supporting her upper body with her arms, and, in a remarkable show of flexibility, was extending a leg up along her backside in order to reach, with her foot, the glowing, burning numbers that Esdeath knew must be in the middle of her upper back, just as they were on Marcus and Esdeath herself.
"Our problem." rumbled a deep, throaty voice.
Esdeath, Marcus, and Sylvia looked at Jason in the same moment.
"Yeah, it's all our problem." Esdeath agreed, reaching under her arm in a not successful attempt at reaching her own numbers that she could still feel burning on her back. Her own countdown. But what was it counting down to?
Well, Esdeath thought as she eyed Marcus, she knew of ONE way to find out.
"Essy, can you come over and read my timer for me?" Sylvia said loudly, tapping her toes against her bare back in a pattern (she'd managed somehow to hike her dress up with only her feet). Esdeath hissed at her. "Woah, sorry I asked...But maybe you'd like me to come and check yours for you?" added Sylvia brightly.
"Touch me again and I'll kill you." Esdeath spat, baring her fangs.
"You might want to rethink that." spoke Marcus. He still sounded shaky.
"Why's that?" Esdeath glared and crossed her arms.
"Because that's how this works." the mercenary explained slowly. "It was all there in the files I accessed. If you try and escape, or if you try and kill anyone else here...your time's going to get cut way down. If you keep at it, or if you actually succeed, it'll go down all the way."
"Rules? Penalties? What, is this some kind of game?" Esdeath snarled.
"You heard the Keys lady." Marcus shook his head. "It's not a game. It's a project. Think of us as the trial run. If we're succesful, they'll go on to do this to other people. If we don't...there's a good chance the project will be closed down."
"Is it military?" Esdeath asked. Marcus nodded.
"It's ALWAYS military." Sylvia intoned. She now lay flat on the floor with her chin in her hands, propped up on elbows. "They kept visiting me in the hospital, you know. Kept giving me check-ups. And needles. I used to get so mad at them for it. I'd end up popping their eyes or breaking their-"
"Shut up." Esdeath growled. She turned her attention back to Marcus. "So, military, all right. What's the point of it?"
"The point..." Marcus sighed as he slid to the floor with his back against the wall. "The point of Project X is to take the worst of mankind and put them somewhere they can do some good. Maybe some wizard in Britain has created some acidic gas compound to be released on the country, or some obvious enemy of the United States is holed up somewhere in a mountain in the Nevada desert. Military forces can't be seen by the public roaming around, killing and torturing and doing the things it takes to stop those kinds of people..."
"But we can." Esdeath finished, nodding.
"Right." Marcus confirmed. "In an increasingly extreme world, we're the extreme measures taken to control it all."
"Nothing's more extreme than HIM." Sylvia gestured to Jason and giggled. She held an arm out in front of herself and considered it. "I want a cannon, too."
"Come here and I'll give you one." Esdeath replied. "All it'll take is a little pull of the arm. After that's popped off, I'll attach the cannon."
"Noooo." Sylvia crinkled her nose. "That doesn't sound like a very sanitary way to do the procedure."
"San...Sanitary- what the fuck?" Esdeath laughed. "Who the hell are YOU to talk about sanitary? How many different women have you gone down on, or forced to go down on YOU, in the last, what, month alone?"
"Who are YOU to talk about sanitary?" Sylvia fired back. "Miss I-eat-people-alive-for-a-living-and-hold-a-historical-record-for-doing-it! How many pounds of organs have you eaten in the last WEEK?"
"You have a problem with how I live with my life?" Esdeath snapped, letting her claws extend out of her fingertips.
Sylvia jumped to her feeet, her eyes gleaming. "Do you have a problem with how I live mine?!"
"Yeah, I do!"
"The cannibal judging the rapist..." Marcus chuckled, shaking his head. "That's hilarious. Cut it out you two, or you'll lose time."
"Going by how much time was on your back, I'd say I have more than enough time for this." Esdeth said.
"That would be your mistake." said Marcus. "You know how much time I have. But you don't know how much time YOU have."
"What even happens when it reaches zero?" Esdeath said, choosing to ignore his words. She was scared. "They need us for this project, right? They wouldn't just kill us."
"Why not?" Marcus shrugged. "Plenty of other lowlifes out there to press into the service." He grinned suddenly. "Want to know how much time you have left?"
Esdeath ignored him and turned on Sylvia with her claws raised. "When I figure out a way to get this timer bullshit off of me, I'm going to kill you. First thing. I'm going to kill you, and EAT you."
"Not if I eat you first." Sylvia laughed. Then she winked.
Growling in rage, Esdeath spun back to Marcus. "Tell me the time." she demanded, reaching for the hem of her top.