Begotten.
A/N Here lies an unashamedly short first chunk. A touch dark, and with big plans - although god knows if I'll manage to stick to them I'm not great at getting past the first shot! I hope you enjoy, and I adore feedback, criticism included! Thanks, Sarah x
Preface.
Gene Hunt launches the radio across the room with vigour as his mouth becomes suddenly dry, and a chilling silence fills CID. He's deaf to his colleagues as they begin to confer, shock echoing throughout the room. He's fairly sure Ray tries to intercept him as he heads for the door, but he hears no words of protest, seeing his DS as if through a pane of glass.
Foot down, blood pounding in his ears. Scratchy radio conversation rolling around and around in his head.
"Bloody 'ell, where are you?"
"At the scene, Guv."
"When will you learn to wait for bloody backup!"
"For God's sake, don't you patronise me. False alarm, they were winding us up. I'll be- "
"Bolls? Alex? Bloody thing-"
"Wh- What are you doing here?"
"ALEX!"
He hits a cat as he screeches to a halt outside the terrace house in a particularly shabby part of Aldgate. A little girl starts to cry. He looks her in the eyes, and he realises it isn't possible to feel any more sick to the stomach than he does already.
I.
Alex feels light-headed as she begins to regain her senses. There's a pounding across the left side of her face, and a red-hot burning sensation as she tries to open her eyes. In contrast, the right feels cold and damp, stuck to something? She feels giddy without moving as she tries to orientate herself, and lets out a pathetic whimper, quickly replaced with bile as she coughs.
It's cold. It's so very cold all around except for the vicious burning, throbbing of her skull. She's shivering, or? No, the dull vibration is coming from below. A vehicle? It hurts to think.
More coughing, more bile. No, not bile; a putrid combination of pasta and red wine. She doesn't have the strength to fight her body as she lurches, hitting her forehead on something sharp and retching painfully. She wishes she could shift just a little, just enough to move her face away from her own vomit. And then she can't keep her eyes open any longer.
When she wakes again it's in the same position, she thinks. Any amount of time could have elapsed, seconds, days, hell; weeks. And that's just in this world. Tears prick her burning eyelids and she realises the substance gluing her cruelly to the grubby floor is a foul smelling cocktail of blood and sick. Blood; a lot of blood. Where could that have come from? Blink. Again. Damn, it's dark in here and she feels dizzy, unable to get her bearings. Don't want to be sick again. Head throbbing, more. It's as if he's there in front of her, that damn clown, his hands reaching out and squeezing the life out of her, her breath catching as she feels her skull crushing inwards, a yelp of pain.
"Daddy!"
"No." A little girl's voice, it sounds familiar but she can't quite pluck its origin from the depths of her mind. He squeezes harder, punishment, stars, blue eyeliner.
"Molly." It's obvious now, how could she not recognise that voice? There she is. Wearing the pale blue cardigan with daisies in her button holes. It's a hideous thing, but Evan bought it; she loves it. Wait, Molly, or Alex? She isn't sure anymore. She's getting motion sickness, chasing the child down the corridor and, why isn't she getting any closer? Pale blue corridor with daisies on the walls. Wait, that's not right. Wallpaper imploding like a crushing skull, the daisies are in the way.
Stillness. She's engulfed by her surroundings and flipped slowly, floating onto her back. It's peaceful, it doesn't hurt so much, and if she closes her eyes all she sees is stars.
Sick, sick swirling stars. Lightning bolts. Ziggy Stardust. No, that's not out yet. Isn't it? Nineteen Seventy-four. I wasn't born. No, it isn't out yet because we're going backwards, haven't you worked that out at least? Stars can be so menacing, she's trying to recoil. They start to blur, all of the black and white stars with fuzzy lines, merging into one another. Fade To Grey.
There, the chequered ceiling, the flashing lights; blinding the scene of anything evil. Gene? He's not in. Why not? Who's Gene? Alien faces in her black and white palace. The rouge isn't here. Blank, nameless, spectators. More of them, they're in the way of his office door. The Guv won't like that. Where is he? WHERE IS HE?
And now she's awake. She finds herself drenched in cold sweat, or water? It could be either, but somebody with clammy hands is pressing a glass of something cool and soothing up to her mouth and she sips gratefully, trying to take the beaker, but finding her hands stuck, tied behind her back. When she opens her eyes she's sitting up, still breathing too rapidly, reeling from her vivid hallucinations, and staring into a pair of deeply familiar eyes that make her heart skip a beat. Then a warm leering breath upon her neck.
Is this the end? This feels like the end.