Published on: 02/11/2017 at 19:10 GMT.
AN: I am writing this story for Nanowrimo 2017 and uploading each chapter as it is complete. I will try and complete it by the end of December if it goes over 50K but I also have uni work to do. This story is an anomaly in this regard. Normally I try and post when the story is complete. If anyone is reading The Marriage Curse (another anomaly because it was written for a competition) I'm really sorry about leaving it hanging. I know how I want it to end but not how to get there. I will try and finish that story over Easter.
I hope someone enjoys this story. I have been unable to shake this idea for weeks. So I decided to write it.
The Red Wolf
Dislocated.
Sansa awoke in a panic and sat bolt upright. She was in a white room completely alone with no idea of how she had got there. She was sitting on some sort of shelf and was getting uncomfortable. She twisted and swung her legs over the edge of it. That was better. As far as she could see the room had no doors or windows only a mirror.
She wondered how she had got there and who had put her there. Then she noticed her clothing. She was wearing a strange white outfit. It had trousers and was attached to a man's tunic. It was the strangest thing she had ever seen. She wished she had her normal clothes.
She wondered how she had got into the room if there was no door. It was impossible. She must be having a nightmare. Sansa relaxed at that thought. The dream was not too scary. She had had far worse nightmares.
She swung her legs and then decided to get off the shelf and explore the room more closely. It was interesting. She found a mirror on the right hand wall and checked her appearance in it. The clothing was too loose to show her figure which was a relief even though this was a dream.
She could find nothing else remarkable about the room and sat back down to wait for something to happen. She had barely sat down when she heard a hissing noise followed by a sliding noise. Her head snapped to her left. There was now a doorway but there had not been before. That was impossible but then she reminded herself that this was a dream and anything could happen in dreams.
She watched as a woman came through the door. She was dressed extremely strangely. Sansa had no names for her clothes except for her trousers. She wondered that a woman would go about dressed as a man even in her dreams. She had never thought of anything so strange before.
While she stared at the woman the woman had been observing her too. She reached a hand into the pocket of her strange attire and pulled out a cylindrical tube with what looked like a sewing needle on the end of it. Stranger and stranger. Then she stepped up to Sansa and plunged the needle into her neck. Sansa cried out in surprise.
It hurt! Dreams were not supposed to hurt! Then the woman stepped back. As she did Sansa felt dizzy and found herself falling. The woman caught her.
"Who are you?" Sansa asked. "What have you done to me?"
The next time Sansa woke she was in a different room and she was underwater with something attached to her face that seemed to be allowing her to breathe, and attached to strange things she could not name again with needles in her skin and tubes taped to her everywhere, all over her body and limbs, and she felt wrong. Her heart was too fast and she was too hot. As she looked at the tubes they began to fill with something silver in colour. A moment later Sansa did not care about the colour of whatever was in the tubes.
It was getting into her and scorching her and it hurt more than anything she had ever felt in her life before. She screamed and screamed and screamed until the pain overwhelmed her and she lost consciousness again.
When she woke up again she was no longer in pain but she felt heavy and her head felt as though it was packed full of wool. She drifted in a strange warm haze hearing voices around her and fell asleep again reassured that she was alright.
Her last thought before sleep was that this was not a dream. It didn't worry her though. Despite the horrible pain earlier this was still better than King's Landing. Whatever this was. Sansa drifted away into dreamless sleep.
When she next woke she was back in the white room and her thoughts were sharp again. She gasped with fright.
Sansa sat up on the shelf and tried to get her breath back? How could she have thought she was safe? She had never been less safe in her life. These people were going to hurt her worse than Joffrey ever could. She felt her breathing increase speed and her heart beginning to race even faster. It began to hurt and she became convinced that she was going to die.
She was going to die right here. She didn't notice the door opening until there was a sharp pinch in her neck then the woman from before was standing in front of her.
"You!" Sansa said as her world went fuzzy again.
She lashed out at her with her fist but missed. She was losing consciousness again. She tried to fight it but was unsuccessful. She awoke again strapped to something with the woman standing above her. She struggled against the restraints but it was no use. She was trapped. She settled for glaring at the woman instead.
"I'm sorry we had to hurt you." The woman said. "We won't hurt you like that again."
"Why did you hurt me?" Sansa demanded to know.
"We are creating a new kind of super soldier." The woman said. "We had to hurt you in order to change you into that soldier."
Sansa blinked. Her words made no sense. Why would anyone make a woman into a soldier? What did super mean? She had never heard that word before.
"I do not understand." Sansa said.
The woman nodded.
"I didn't think you would." She said. "We have turned you into a mutant and given you several abilities. However you awoke before the changes we made to your body were complete. You were supposed to stay asleep until we had finished changing you. If you had you would never have been in any pain."
"Mutant?" Sansa asked, trying to get her head around the new information.
"A person who is born with abilities no human being normally possesses." The woman said.
"We have given you several unique abilities belonging to other mutants. Normally a mutant only has one ability. You have five now and will eventually have ten." She said.
"Why?" Sansa asked.
The information was overwhelming. She still did not understand why anyone would do this to her.
"Why you?" The woman asked.
Sansa nodded.
"Because you seem harmless." The woman said. "Now. If you work for us in the defence of our country against our enemies you can have a good life. You never have to go back to where we found you." She said.
Sansa thought about that. If she was telling the truth then it would be a relief. However she would never see her family again. The thought made her stomach clench painfully.
"What about my family? I'd never see them again." She said.
"You can work with us and have a pleasant life or you can fight us and learn just how unpleasant life can truly be." The woman said.
"So I am to be your slave." Sansa said.
"I wouldn't put it like that." The woman said.
"But I do not have a choice do I?" Sansa said.
"You can choose how good your life is." The woman said.
"Then I am your slave." Sansa said. "Having the power to choose how well you treat me does not change that."
The woman said something else but Sansa was no longer listening to anything she had to say. She did not care. She was a slave here. She wished fervently that she was still in King's Landing. Being a prisoner was better than being a slave. At least she had Shae, her handmaiden, who was kind to her even if she was strange and Lord Tyrion who had defended her against Joffrey and was kind to her as well.
Even if she had no other friends, well Margaery might be a friend, she was better off than as a slave. She was curious about her supposed new abilities though. What had the woman meant?
Sansa realised that she was going to have to wait until sometime later to find out. The woman had noticed her lack of attention and left. Sansa pulled against the restraints again and gave up when they did not give at all. She was stuck until someone decided to release her. She stared at the ceiling until she heard the door of the room open.
A man sat beside her bed. She watched him. He put a droplet of something on her hand. It tingled.
"This will make you sleep if you misbehave." He said.
"How?" Sansa asked curiously.
"It is full of nano machines that respond to my thoughts." He replied.
That was nonsense. It made no sense but Sansa nodded as though she understood anyway.
"Are you going to behave?" He asked.
Her pride was insulted but she nodded. He smiled again and moved around the bed removing her restraints. As soon as she was able to she sat up and rubbed her ankles and then her wrists. The man waited until she had stopped.
"Follow me." He said.
Sansa swung herself off the bed onto the cold smooth floor and followed him listening to the contrast of the sound of their steps. Her bare feet slapped against the floor while his shoes clicked on it. He lead her out of the room and down a short corridor into another room. It was empty of everything but it had a window in one wall filled with glass.
Through the glass she could see a group of people dressed the same way that she was. She watched them after a questioning glance at her escort. As she watched the group paired off into four pairs. She noticed that they were all women. Then they took fighting stances. She was familiar enough with those having watched her brothers and the men of Winterfell train. Then to her shock three long metal knives shot out of each of women's closed fists.
Sansa blinked and pinched herself. That was not possible. Except that it seemed it was. The women then fought each other giving and receiving terrible wounds. She cried out and hid her face in her hands.
"Why are you showing me this terrible thing?" She cried.
"Look at them Sansa." The man said.
Sansa shook her head.
"They have stopped now. They are all alive and unhurt." The man said calmly.
Sansa looked up amazed at that. They should all be dead. But it was as he said. There was blood but no wounds. She was astonished.
"How is that possible?" Sansa asked.
"Like this." The man said.
He pulled her left sleeve up and then plunged a knife she hadn't seen into her arm. She screamed at the pain but a moment later the wound was gone. Only a trickle of blood remained. Sansa gaped at her arm. It had hurt too much to be a dream.
"How?" She asked again.
"I assume my colleague told you that we made you into a mutant?" He said.
"Yes but I did not understand what that meant." Sansa said marvelling at her arm.
"These other women, they have the same abilities as I do now?" She asked.
"They share four of your mutations. The last is unique to each of you." The man replied.
Sansa clenched her fists and wondered how her claws, if she really did have them, came out. As she thought about wanting them to come out they did. They broke swiftly through the skin between her fingers, which healed too quickly to bleed, and extended to their full length in a couple of seconds. Sansa flinched making the man laugh. She willed her claws away and they sheathed themselves. The skin of her hands mended itself behind them.
She felt as though she was going to faint. This was too much. It was too surreal. She swayed and welcomed the darkness as it closed in this time. Maybe she had gone temporarily mad and would wake up in King's Landing with the maester standing by her bed. She hoped so.
Please Review. Constructive Criticism is welcome. Flames will be ignored.
