It smells like rust and metal and burnt hair. The world goes from dark bronze to bright bright, too bright. Helena hurt all over and can't move, still can't move, but knows that she has too. She can not risk being stuck again. She takes a breath and fresh air fills her aching lungs. It tastes funny and wrong so she takes another, fills herself up until she feels like her chest might break. She has been empty for too long. She takes a shaky step forward, grabs on to the edges of that damn machine and holds on for dear life. She stumbles and her hand slip, the metal cutting in to her skin. She relish the feeling, lets the pain wash over her, she hasn't felt anything for so long. Her sight start to come back to her and she sees the tiny creature waiting for her. "Just a child" she thinks and her chest snares together, cramping, and she almost fall again. The redhead comes to meet her and tales her in her arms, helps her out into the world. Not a child, but almost.
She looks around her with still blurry eyes, takes it all in. Still in the Warehouse, but not hers. It looks the same but everything is wrong. It feels wrong and it smells wrong. It smells like rust and metal and burnt hair.
The woman wraps a blanket around her in a half-hug.
"Are you okay?" she asks and Helena almost jumps. She has forgotten that there are sounds like that, voices that aren't her own cold thought.
"Yes" she answers and it's almost true. "What year is this?"
"2010" she answers as she takes hold of Helena's arm. "This way" she pulls Helena with her, gently. "Quickly" she adds against her own actions.
Helena takes hold of the hand on her arm. Let's the warmth of her skin fool her, make her feel like she deserves it. The woman smells like linen and freshly baked bread.
They arrive at a door. "Here we go. James is waiting for you on the other side. One sec." She disappears behind Helena and Helena wants to scream. She wants to grab hold of her and shake her and beg her to leave. To get out while she still can. To get away before this place destroys her. To get a new life and be a child again. But when she turns around the redhead is gone and another woman stands in her place. Helena sees something silver flash in her hand. The smell remains but the child is gone.
"There's going to be ever brighter out there" she says in a different voice. Helena stares. The woman takes the blanket and raises it over Helena's head.
"No, I want to see" Helena protests. She needs to see. Needs to know it worked.
"You'll have to wait. Your eyes." Helena nods and lets her lower the blanket over her face. Like a veil on a funeral.
The door opens loudly and the light breaks through the blanket and Helena has to press her eyes closed. Sand and dust and some other smell she can't identify fills her up. A new pair of arms take hold of her and hold her close. She wants to push them off of her. Old friend the man named James calls her but she has never heard his voice before. He smells wrong and his embrace feels like a straitjacket.
She is placed in a car like nothing she has ever seen before where the windows go dark and her blanket comes off. James is talking and the car makes sounds and there are things that confuse and frighten her but there is just one thing she cares about.
"I need to get my things" she says. James stops mid sentence and agrees.
She is taken to an apartment where she is caught up as quickly as possible. She needs the vest from her home and she will get it herself. She will blend in as best she can in this strange new world. A world that makes her angrier the more she learns of it. So much progress has been made but nothing has changed. She is given a passport with a name that is not hers and told that they will fly there and she doesn't understand. No aircraft can make that journey but she nods and agrees.
As they walk through the airport she is frightened. Scared that the people will see, will sense the otherness in her, the wrongness. But no one seems to notice, no one spares her a second glance. The aircraft is enormous and maddening. She understands the
relationship between gas and fumes and the worlds decay. Still she needs to get to London so she gets on and hates every second of it. The inside is cramped and smells fake. Still she tells herself the air in there is better than the air in London. Every breath makes her sick and she almost whish she was back in bronze.
She goes to her home and plays the interested tourist. She stands in the back and listens to clueless people talk about her brother. She is planning to wait for the last tour to end before she can sneak in and get what she is after, when two warehouse agents gets in the way. She should have known they weren't far behind, you didn't become and agent for being stupid, through the jury was still out on the man who grabbed the re-enactor. They make everyone leave and she is fuming. She assumes they still thinks she is a man a figures she can use that to her advantage.
And fooling the man proves easy. She soon has him right where she wants him with a tesla to his throat. It was almost to easy but then the woman comes out of her study, all gun and hair and amazements. The look on her face almost makes Helena want to smile.
She catches a whiff of the other woman's smell. She doesn't know if it is her hair or her perfume, but Helena knows she is doomed. She smells like apples.