Vacation Or War
Chapter Two-Musings of Dark Eco
Where...?
Disturbing silence greeted this question, nothing in the void that knew the answer. After a second, Lauren almost forgot she'd asked it, and then she remembered again. It was a fight against a horrible current that ebbed and flowed with every breath she took, swallowing thickly as her sense of urgency flared one second only to be doused the next. Something, something was wrong, but time and again it slipped through her fingers when she tried to grasp onto it.
She couldn't guess how long she'd tried and tried to communicate this simple inquiry to herself, failing upon each attempt to even comprehend that a question had been asked. She was a bird, lazily circling on a warm updraft without a notion of where the nearest land was, nor a care. Warm and relaxed- that was the definition of her state; weightless and unaware of the world.
Panic snapped through her, and she gasped while eyes suddenly drove open. The fear ripped through the comfort and the quiet as she realized her question was still unanswered, and this time she was lucky enough to remember what the question was: Where am I? This was not the feeling of waking up after sleeping on Chelsea's couch. To begin with, the smell was all wrong. Chelsea's house smelled sweet; her mother used scented oil diffusers to give the home a nice floral scent that changed every few months when she had to buy a new one. What she was smelling in this moment was sterile, like the air in a hospital...
Sharp inhales slowed, and she nearly forgot again. Eyes that had sprung open, confronted by nothing but muddy pink-ish shapes and shadows, failed to spur on horror and dread. She was certain she should have been afraid, but her mind failed to bother with it. The idea felt far-away, and unimportant.
Groggily, she tried to reach her hand out into the fuzzy expanse. Her arm moved slowly, made heavy by something. Reaching out, further and further, she was confounded as fingertips found cold. It was stark contrast to all else, and she pushed against the cold to realize it was solid, too. Smooth, cold, she wouldn't mind pressing her face against it... but she couldn't imagine moving the bulk of her body towards it. Even her hand seemed to labor in remaining there, like something was wrong with her arm.
Something was wrong with her.
Frantic, she gasped. She gaped and swallowed as her eyes tracked over her extended limb and saw shapes that refused to make sense until she squinted and sussed out the truth. Her arm was pale in her view, bare and lacking covering. Within the crook of her elbow, the soft spot where she could often see blue veins beneath pale skin, something had been inserted. Something had been put beneath her skin, the top of it held flat to her arm by a dark band. From this intrusion, something else was connected to her. A long, thin shape that extended out of her sight.
It didn't hurt. Nothing did, but there was discomfort. She hadn't felt it before, but she felt it now. Stiff places on her body, like knots had formed that restricted her movement. One of those places was that crook of her elbow, where she stared through the muddy pink to try and understand what was going on.
Her legs stretched, searching for ground. They found none. Her other arm shifted, desperate for some sense of gravity or stability... but there was none. She was floating.
Floating... floating in liquid? In water? No, too thick, too thick, it's... something else...
The fear did not fade this time. It held onto her, grasped about her lungs and made her pant- but how was she breathing? A leg kicked without thinking as she let out a primal noise of distress, irrationally feeling that she was going to drown now that she realized she was floating in some kind of medium. No such fate occurred, though; she could smell that sterile air, after all. Her head turned, as slowly and lethargically as her arm had moved, trying to gather information with her eyes. Even they, free in their sockets, seemed to lack any sort of speed as she urged them to collect data and tell her what was going on.
On her face, she could feel something... strapped. Rubber, maybe, or a soft enough plastic that it had melded to her face and formed a seal. A mask, she realized, covering her face and preventing her from breathing whatever it was she was floating in. From that mask came another long, thin shape. A tube, one that extended up and out of her view. She tried to look further up, tried to follow it, but her neck refused to comply. The knots where there, tight against her shoulders, arresting other muscles around them as they tried to stretch and flex.
She had a breathing mask. She was provided an air supply. Mental confusion, the fog that had left her numb and drowsy, was fading away as she put more and more information together.
Numb! That was the comforting warmth she'd experienced- a failure of her nerves to recognize any adverse stimuli... but that failure was correcting itself, and touches of pain were beginning to bloom. Those stiff places, those knots were beginning to feel less like stress and more like the discomfort of having an IV... but bigger. Was the intrusion she'd seen in her arm... a needle? It had been secured like an IV, but there were other parts of her body that felt like that, too, and they were not quite so traditional in placement. Her shoulders, for example, were not usually a place one inserted an IV needle, nor were the backs of her knees, or her ankles.
Another discomfort was companion to the first; a faint and fuzzy sense, like a shape at the very edge of her vision. Struggling, she fought to identify it, fumbling with the words to explain it to herself. It was... like static, making her skin feel tight as hairs stood up against the odd claustrophobic feeling created by the viscous liquid she was suspended in. Electric, irritating her from within, as if tiny sparks were racing just beneath the dermis, hopping from nerve to nerve in search of a path to the ground that could not be found.
She knew this feeling. In her lethargically terrified mind, she knew this feeling from arm's length. From far away, the memory could feel just about the same- dimly shocking as she finally roused it to the center of her brain.
This sensation was not unlike when she'd held the bottle in her hand, and the bottom had melted.
"Hell."
She cursed when she could see it in her head; the remembered glass jar and the device she'd been staring at with wonder. Drip, drip, drip, little drops of black liquid had fallen into the jar, and then eaten through it, oozing onto her palm and leaving her in a frozen, silent scream. It was the last memory she had before waking into this present, and neither that nor this felt right enough to be real- and yet, both felt too real to be wrong. It was an impasse between sensory information and logical possibility, one that caused a headache to spring to life as the snap judgement of impossible coursed through her panicked mind. Such pain made her let out a guttural noise into the mask, shaking her head as vigorously as she could and the whole of her body swaying to and fro in the attempt to dispel the argument of which had the right of it and, consequently, should be trusted.
Instinct could be trusted- Lauren liked that certainty. Shucking the squabbles of her higher brain, she liked the way it felt to finally get a grip and halt the sensation of things sliding away from her while she was unsure and afraid. Confidence could be found there, enough to reach out her other hand to the cold barrier that surrounded her and begin to investigate. Was it glass? It was curved, forming a circle around her. If she kicked it, would it break?
Could she kick it? Movements were hampered by more than the medium she was trapped in; the needles warned her not to bend too far in any given direction. Going with her gut, a snap decision was made; she needed to get these needles out of her. Whatever was happening, whatever she was experiencing, it was against her will and without her understanding- Lauren would find a way to free herself, and find answers.
The intrusions of the needles into her arms had felt, at first, as if she could not bend them at all without risking some sort of internal damage. It didn't help that she feared them on their face; just looking at where the metal barb sunk into the crook of her elbow made her skin crawl. She didn't want to imagine what it had taken to get something like that into her vein, and the more she thought about it the more her gut instinct demanded it be yanked out as soon as possible.
At long last, the haze was clearing, and she had one fact in her head that needed no argument nor explanation:
I need to get the hell out of here.
Right hand crawled over to left elbow, away from the cold barrier that held her and to the strap that kept the needle flat against her skin. It was awkward, her right arm wanting to stay as straight as possible. Eventually she found it best to extend her left arm as well, until the hand of her extended right arm could reach her left elbow while both limbs remained in their stiff and uncooperative state.
At first touch, the strap around her arm felt of similar texture to denim; rough and tough cotton that had very little give one it was wet. Through her pink and muddled vision, the strap appeared black, and as clumsy fingers crawled over it she came to realize there was a snap on the back of her elbow that held it snug to her arm. The reach to get at it tested the boundaries of how far she could push her right arm, a slight bend introduced as fingernails scrabbled at the edge of the band and grasped it. Pain shot through her right side; from fingertips to shoulder she felt a vicious stab that almost made her jerk away from her task, but she forced her fingers to hold tight. With a twist of her wrist, the snap was pulled up and open, and the band around her left arm had gone slack.
A breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding was let out in a rush; she had made progress. The next part was to get the needle out- a task that was accomplished by a slide of her right palm against the inside of her elbow to extract the barb of metal as smoothly as she could manage- though the motion made the points on her shoulders burn. It didn't matter, she told herself. Seeing the first needle, a thin object that had only been an inch long despite how massive it had felt while under her skin, float freely next to her was a sign that she'd made the first step towards freedom.
With her left hand free, getting her right arm loose was no great difficulty. Soon she had both arms, free of anything that would hamper their movement from the elbow, down. Her shoulders were the next objective; they prevented her from reaching particularly far in any direction so long as they remained embedded in her flesh. They, too, were banded to her body, using a harness that her newly liberated arms quickly identified as looping under her arms and then connected across her chest and back. There were three snaps, in the middle of her chest and beneath either arm, and removal of those snaps very quickly released the pressure she'd been feeling from the points of insertion.
She didn't care if they were not fully removed at this very second; attention turned to her legs. The backs of her knees could be reached as she bent her body and removed the straps that held them, sliding out another pair of barbs that had left her floating like a discarded doll in sludge. With those gone, she was able to bend her legs and reach her ankles, achieving a full removal of those, too, as quickly as her hands would allow as he fought the weight and viscosity of... whatever it was she was floating in.
Shooting pains still went up and down her limbs, even after she'd removed the needles. In the pink goop that she floated in, she could see wisps of darker shades; her blood, streaming from holes in her skin that led straight to her veins. Her jaw set as she put herself to the task of ignoring that and focusing on her last major obstacle she could identify at this stage; the cold glass.
Her hands reached out to either side, finding that she was trapped in a cylinder; the radius of which being about a foot shorter than her own arm-span. That was good. It meant she could press her palms firmly against the sides of the glass and control her position within it. Likewise, her feet reached out, and she became a spider in a tube with all four limbs braced against the cold. Shuffling, she moved herself down, down until the tube on her breathing mask grew tight and tried to lead her head back up. At that point, the tips of the needles that had yet stuck into her shoulders finally pulled free. Better than that, however, Lauren felt something particularly cold against her rump. Looking down, there was a black base to the tube she was inside. She'd found the bottom which, in turn, meant she'd found the edge of the glass.
The closer she was to the edge, she told herself, the more easily it would break.
Her position changed, rising her rear and lowering her shoulders. Her back faced the bottom, and her hips squared to the surface of the glass that was now her target. Palms braced, shoulders pressed against the opposing surface for support, she squared herself up to kick out with all vicious abandon.
The hit was something she'd never forget. The jarring pain that rocked through each part of her that had been stabbed, and was now bleeding, as well as through her bones. Such a pain may have discouraged her, if the idea of staying trapped did not terrify her so much. Claustrophobia was setting in, the insane and irrational need to get out making her kick again, despite the way it hurt- heat was taking over for that. Adrenaline made sensation a far-away thing, brutal shouts coming out of her as she struck the glass again, again, her heels hitting in similar places each time. Four, five, six hits? She wasn't counting.
She just felt a burst of hope as she saw the crack form.
Her legs broke through on a final hit, and she yelped into the mask attached to her face when she felt hot pain rake up her left calf. She pulled her legs back in against the sudden suction that was produced by the goo leaking out, hissing as her skin was scraped by edges of broken glass.
The tube was draining, and she was soon able to stand up. She began to thrash around as her body was liberated from the liquid, throwing her shoulder against the glass to make a bigger hole. With the cage already weakened by the first hole, she broke through almost instantly, flying out and bound for the ground. Shock turned to joy, and she shifted her body to try and roll on what she identified as the floor.
Instead, her head was violently whipped back as she reached the end of the breathing tube. Her body jerked, the whole of her weight stressing the mask until the line connecting it back to her glass prison gave with a sudden snap!. Just as quickly, she found herself on the floor in a heap, her head rudely introduced to the floor with enough force that it left her forehead bleeding.
"Fuck...!" She growled out of gritted teeth, her hands reaching for where she felt the thing was strapped on. There was a clip at the back of her head, under her hair, that she released, tossing the mask away and groaning. "Owie..." She began to look about as her bells stopped ringing, blinking against white lights that had appeared in her vision when her head met the floor. Metal floor, she noted; cold and dark. Dark could describe the room on a whole, actually. Eyes wandered further as the white dimmed to sparks around the edges of her vision, and she found little blue and red running lights along the edges of the floor that provided the majority of illumination in the room. Forcing herself up on her hands and knees, she plopped onto her rump as her sore neck finally consented to lift up her head and let her look about properly.
Lauren found herself in a barren room with dark gray metal floor, ceiling, and walls. The alternating red and blue lights appeared to be supplemented by a single long light fixture on the ceiling that gave only dim, white light, leaving the room with a foreboding and strange feeling. There was a hallway at the end of the room that took a sharp ninety degree turn to the left before vanishing- the next logical place to look for an exit, but there was something between here and there that gave her pause and the desire to investigate.
The object rose up out of the floor, looking to be some sort of display. She was only a foot or two short of it, and reached out to use it as a crutch while pulling herself out of the puddle of goo and glass she'd made. She hadn't realized it before- the floor was covered in the viscous fluid she'd been floating in, and shards of broken glass had been carried with it during its spread. It made her step carefully, aware of bare toes against the cold floor, as she came around this podium-like object to look down at it.
She was right; it was a display. Not only that; instead of roman characters used by her native language of English, she was faced with precursor symbols.
All at once, things seemed to make a bit more sense. Of course, she felt like laughing out loud in sudden relief. It's a fucking dream! Or nightmare, she supposed, but it didn't change the fact that she should have guessed this was nothing more than a flight of fancy her brain had cooked up after a long night of worrying about how things would go at Chelsea's house. The point was, none of this was real.
For that moment, she had respite. She could breathe deeply, and the shaking fear was gone.
Looking up, it was back nearly as quickly. In coming around the display, she'd turned herself to the other half of the room; the half she'd come from. At that end of the room, there were a total of three glass tubes, each raised up from the ground on a black cylinder covered in buttons, lights, and a small digital read-out screen about the size of her hand in the upper right corner of the panel. The tube on her left was the one she'd just come from; shattered, empty, with the needles that had been stuck in her body hanging like the limp and lifeless tentacles of a monster. The middle tube had an occupant; it was full, and the pink goo the person floated in left them a dim shadow without easily discernible features at this distance. The last tube, on the right, stood open and empty. The glass had retracted upwards, over another black cylinder that connected it to the ceiling. It appeared to be where all the tubing was housed when it wasn't in use, and the uppermost section had a red symbol stamped on it that looked similar to a bio-hazard sign.
Curiosity brought her to look back down at the display she was using to fight the weakness in her limbs that came after the adrenaline rush. She had memorized the symbols, she could read them- she decided to do so. The information on the display was organized into three columns; she could only assume to correspond with the three tubes. With that assumption, she proceeded to read the one on the left; matching it to the tube she had just broken out of.
CONTROL INFORMATION
SUBJECT ID: IV-DWP-13
Sex: Female
Name: NA
Weight: 112 pounds; low body fat, healthy weight range.
Height: 4 feet, 11 inches
Hair: Light
Eyes: Light
Skin: Light, no scars or major identifying features aside from small birthmarks on the left side of the neck (2, arranged along the collar bone) and under the left breast. (3, triangular arrangement)
Information of Note: Captured for unauthorized entry into Fortress; no city identification. Unconscious, taken for medical analysis. Blood tests revealed genetic anomaly, put into intravenous circulation immediately.
Update: Subject appears to resist sedatives; genetic anomaly may account for ineffectiveness of certain chemical compounds. Current dosage is triple recommended amount.
Lauren had to blink, her brow furrowing as she read. She knew it was talking about her, but the Fortress? She glanced around once more before reading on.
EXPERIMENT SUMMARY
Opening Observation: Subject entered extreme growth upon entering circulation, aging with continuous integration. Supplements added to life support to prevent malnutrition from hyper-metabolism; all indicators report nutritional requirements have been met thus far. Hypothesis that genetic anomaly would mean different reaction appears to be correct. Request second test subject.
Update: Subject's physical characteristics have begun to change after forty percent integration. Hair turning darker than expected naturally.
Update: Subject does not appear to experience a rejection cycle. No seizures or respiratory arrest have been recorded. Hypothesis: keeping subject sedated prevents rejection cycles.
Update: Subject has crossed fifty percent integration; hemoglobin appears purple instead of red. Blood samples must be taken with specially eco resistant equipment. Eye color has changed.
Update: Hair and nails also metabolized at an unprecedented rate. Subject removed from circulation for one hour for clean-up.
Update: Aside from extreme growth and altered pigmentation, subject still appears to be fully human. Bio-systems nominal and unchanged. Estimated growth; subject has matured three years in the span of 14 days.
Update: By assessment of the project leader, test subject has failed to produce desired results. Biological samples have been taken and stored for records, subject scheduled for termination.
Current blood integration level: 68 percent
Run time of experiment: 14 days, 2 hours, 6 minutes
"Scheduled for termination...?" What the hell was all this? Aging, physical characteristics, integration, eco?!
She glanced at the ID again. IV, DWP.
Intravenous, Dark Warrior Program. The fortress in the Jak II game, the Dark Warrior Program; they'd been pumping her full of eco! But she'd never seen anything like this on the game...
She looked herself over for the changes described before she could start all out panicking again. She wouldn't be able to check her eye color, but she reached for her hair to find it black, feeling a tightening frown on her face as she looked down at herself and found her body several years more mature than when she last looked at it. Her hands shook, horrified that she hadn't noticed on her own. She was taller! How did she not notice that?
She tucked the damp strand of hair behind her ear, finding the next shock.
Her ear. She'd bumped it with her hand... and it felt a lot longer than it was supposed to. Both hands flew up to grab the offending body part, her jaw coming slightly open as she could actually feel it. Long ears, Jak-style ears, that responded to her grasp like regular skin. Like it was really hers.
Like it was really real.
"No!" She snapped at herself, shaking her head violently. "It's just a dream... just a nightmare... Keep your head on straight!" She scolded herself, looking down again. She wanted to read the rest. The center column was not unlike hers; apparently there was a girl in there with the same genetic anomaly as her, resistant to the sedative and reacting the same way with the eco by growing older. This other girl, conversely, had only been in circulation for a week instead of two. Maybe she was the second subject that had been requested?
Oddly enough, she wasn't scheduled for termination. Though there was no mention as to why, there was a note that the experiment was going well with her. Subject 16, as she was known on the display.
Loor looked to the last column, still curious on why the tube was empty.
EXPERIMENT FAILED. Subject terminated. Notes archived, contact project leader for access.
"Just a dream." She muttered again. She couldn't let herself get frightened by her brain making up strange fantasies. She couldn't. She'd had loads of Jak II related dreams; it was only a matter of time before one of them ended up dealing with dark eco. Still, as she said it to herself, she felt horribly uneasy. Even if this was a dream, the girl in the middle tube was a prisoner. It wouldn't be right to just leave her, not even in a fantasy.
She decided she had to release her, then escape. She was curious about what could be next in her strange flight of fancy, but she also felt frantic and sick. Her stomach was twisting as she leveraged herself to move, certain that if she went to the button panel below the glass tube she'd be able to figure out how to release the occupant. With any luck they'd wake up once removed, and the two of them could figure out the next step together.
Behind her, she heard foot steps, interrupting her train of thought as it projected the short-term future. The clinking of metal-on-metal, and heavy foot-falls in time, signaled the steps of an adult who was making no attempt at being stealthy. It was something that made her half-turn, but it was too late. The owner of the steps was already close, escaping her notice until they were right behind her. Mouth half-open to ask a question, everything stopped when she felt a hard and cold shape press against the back of her skull. It was round, shoved against the bone and hair with violent intent in a way that she was certain would leave a bruise.
"You girls are determined to be troublesome, aren't you? I was alerted when your vitals picked up, but I never expected you to get out."
Lauren's heart took a leap up into her throat, shoulders tightening as she stared forward. The voice she heard was low and menacing, and certain of his power.
"Just a dream... just a nightmare..." She muttered again. This wasn't possible. Sparks flew up as her mentality ground gears trying to understand some kind of cause and effect- but the before and after were far from congruent with each other.
And yet, the gun at the back of her head felt very real. It jabbed against her skull, the pain of it making her wince and hiss air between her teeth with a sharp inhale. Once again, she was reminded that she was bleeding, and her body felt rubbery because of it. She'd also been reading- she seemed to remember hearing somewhere that reading was impossible in dreams, as the part of the mind that comprehended the written word wasn't active during sleep. Likewise, pain was often cited as something that couldn't be slept through. Was she missing something?
Had her device done this?
No. The VC-M1 could have plausibly made electricity into a liquid that resembled eco, but that was all it was meant to do. There was no extra bits, no extracurricular technology in it but the energy conversion. For her to be standing in a room, in the fortress, hearing that voice, was just straight impossible with the information that was currently available to her.
Still she repeated; "Just a dream, just a nightmare."
No matter how she muttered, blood thumped through her temples at a frantic pace. The voice she heard, growling and cocky, was Errol's.
"Want to prove that little theory?" He asked from behind her, a smirk evident in his tone. He was amused by all this, she realized... but there was an undercurrent to it. Amused, but annoyed. "We were going to kill you today anyway. This experiment has been quite interesting, but ultimately a failure."
Failure. Her information, the information she'd read, named her a failure- but the other girl hadn't been. The one in the middle, whom she intended to free, her information indicated something had been going well. If she were standing in the Fortress, with Errol over her shoulder, she could make the intuitive leap as to what had happened.
A leap she had to make, if only to keep him talking.
"Not completely, it looks like." She spoke while slowly putting her hands up, not that she needed to show the fact that she was unarmed. What was she going to do? Pick up a shard a glass and try to stab him? Like that would work. She'd slice up her hand, and she was bleeding enough as it was. "... did subject sixteen change into the monster you wanted, Errol?"
Errol didn't react at first. She dared to think she surprised him.
She yelped as the cold spot on the back of head moved and then struck her with blinding force. The metal barrel of the gun felt as if it had left a print on the back of her skull, whipping her around and causing her to crash into the glowing informational display. Gasping and throwing a hand up to clutch the now throbbing pain, she stared up her oppressor.
His face was not what she expected. She expected the animated and cartoony proportions that Jak and Daxter characters were known for. Big eyes that were all the wrong shape, and hair that defied the laws of physics. Instead she saw a man of tan skin covered with gray tattoos, wearing a tight racing outfit overlaid with armor branded with the Baron's mark. A metal mask was on his head, slid up to push his flair of red hair back and out of his face. Long, pointed ears stuck out from his head. Brown eyes glared, but a cruel mouth smirked. He stood dangerously close, his gun jammed under her chin.
This was Errol, but this was no cartoon. This was a person. Lauren's dreaming theory evaporated from her mind, and she whimpered.
"You know me." He noted with only mild surprise. There was something in those wild brown eyes- curiosity. It was likely the only reason she yet lived.
"In a sense." She evaded, trying to figure out how her words could save her. That magnificent brain of hers twisted itself to find the answers she needed. There had to be something. "... not as well as I thought." She admitted, as panic did little to aid thinking.
His other hand seized her by the collar of the shirt she was wearing. She only briefly noted it wasn't the same as the one she'd been wearing back at Chelsea's house. Her back screamed as she was forced backwards on top of the podium, the hard metal edge of the display digging into her flesh. "Are you the scientist, then?" He spat out the question as she gritted her teeth against a reedy cry of pain. "Two girls appear in the middle of the night, one for me, one for the lab boys. She wakes up, she cries, she doesn't know anything... but maybe you're the one I should have interrogated that night?" He laughed, almost as if he expected her to laugh too, like it was a joke. "Was it a device? Maybe magic? Precursors only know, I'm sure. I'm also sure that if you don't know anything..." He trailed, the barrel of the gun pressing harder into her chin.
The message was clear; she was dead if she pleaded ignorance.
Mouth left open, undecided on whether she would break and speak or try and struggle, Lauren didn't know what she could say to placate him. She didn't know how they'd gotten here, but she didn't have all the information, either. As she hit this roadblock within herself, she made horrifying eye-contact with Errol; he knew. He knew she had nothing useful to say, and his grip tightened on his pistol with the intent to use it.
She was dead. Certainty made her ready to do something stupid; ready to kick and bite and scratch until the very last second- she had nothing to lose at this point.
From behind her, a strange sensation struck. Heat and sparks, dancing over her skin from one side and making her feel as if she were somehow standing next to a bonfire that, instead of giving off heat, made the air crackle with energy. Her body responded to it, her head twisting without thought to search for the source. Somehow, somehow, she forgot that Errol was there. He became unimportant as this feeling, this crackling and burning feeling, grabbed something in her core and yanked on it from a distance.
Abruptly, the middle tube on the other end of the room exploded. From where she was pinned, she could not see it fully; it was her peripheral vision that saw shards of glass and globes of pink goop thrown out into the air, violet sparks dancing between them. Errol, on the other hand, had also looked, and he was in awe of what he saw- so much so that his grasp on both gun and girl loosened. Lauren realized it would only be for an instant, and an instant was what she needed.
Pitching forward, Lauren's body acted before she knew what it was doing. Her head collided with Errol's metal breastplate, causing her more pain to her head and only making him back off a few inches. Her hands both went for his greatest advantage; his pistol. At first his fingers tightened on it, twisting to get away from her clawing hands and shoot her, but both of them soon took a tumble that knocked his shot askew and left the bullet on the ceiling.
A weight hit them both, coupled with an incredible roar. In a heap they went over, and Lauren managed to wrench the pistol from Errol's hand as her little body then twisted to get away from whatever hit them. Whatever it was, it hadn't been aiming for her; it had been aiming for Errol.
At first she rolled, over a quarter inch of that pink shit and bits of broken glass. If she gained any more cuts, she was too frantic to know about it. Then, she'd stopped and come up onto her knees, struggling up to her feet as quickly as she could. She was looking up, back at Errol, back at whatever had attacked and given her the chance to escape death at his hands.
In a word, she was unprepared for what she saw.
It was a girl, but it was a monster. Silver hair sprayed over her shoulders, covering pale-as-death skin. Black eyes were narrowed into angry slits beneath silver brows, the face screwed up into a bestial snarl that showed off fangs that were made for grasping prey and ripping flesh. She wore what appeared to be a prison uniform; a stripped off-yellow thing with precursor symbols printed down the side and leg, likely with their ID number. In this moment, she was knelt over Errol with one hand holding down his shoulder, the other upraised to show a set of five black claws, long, thin, and ready to rip his throat out.
She was ready to kill him.
Lauren's stomach tightened as the world seemed to slow down and hesitate. Something was wrong about this picture; something was about to happen that simply could not be allowed to happen. Unaware of how she managed to move so suddenly, she launched herself at this creature that had just saved her life and was about to take Errol's instead.
Screaming, she tackled it, the two of them rolling into a ball of limbs. It snarled, but Lauren kicked it away with a strength she didn't know she could muster at this moment. After that, she had to decide whom she feared more; Errol, or the animal that had tried to kill him. She glanced to the beastly girl- she'd hit the far wall, head first, and seemed to be dazed.
Satisfied for that single second, Lauren turned and found Errol back on his feet.
She also found the gun in her hands, using the barrel to arrest him in his place. His face was stupefied, unsure of how to feel about all of this but still looking as if he planned to kill her, and possibly this new creature as well.
"Knock your friend away, and now you'll kill me yourself?" He asked, not seeming to have any doubt that she'd use the pistol now that she had it. He was only feet away, nearly point-blank.
"Friend?" She was tempted to look but knew better. She couldn't take her eyes off of him, or he'd liberate her of the weapon she managed to steal. The creature she'd tackled was over by the wall, and as long as it didn't jump her or Errol again she couldn't spare another second to glance.
"We found her with you." He was trying to rattle her with the smirk on his face. "I assume she's your friend."
Chelsea! It seemed so obvious now, of course! They were found together, Errol had said that before- but the creature she'd seen... that had been Chelsea?
There was too much going on. She needed to focus. She needed to get Errol out of the way and get the hell out of here.
With a yell, Lauren fired three shots. Two missed, and one found home in Errol's upper leg. Still bellowing, she emptied the clip just to the side of his foot, and then threw the weapon across the room, not looking to see if Errol fell down after letting off a short cry of pain.
Instead she looked behind herself to where the creature would have landed after their tussle.
Once a pale creature, now a still-pasty but more peach-skinned girl. Brown haired with a natural silver streak in the front, splitting to either side and framing her face as she laid like a ragdoll on the floor. The claws were gone, as was the feeling of electricity from the air. The same long and pointed ears adorned her head as they did everyone else's.
She looked just like Chelsea, plus maybe a year or two.
She was Chelsea. Diving to grab her, picking her up without thinking, Lauren ignored the way her limbs protested as she lifted Chelsea up from where she laid passed out on the floor. There was no time to figure out a different way of doing it- she'd just have to power through the weakness the best she could.
Turning again, she found Errol had fallen to one knee. His mouth had twisted into a cruel line as brown eyes glared up at his assailant. Both hands were wrapped around his thigh, putting pressure over where the bullet had struck, dark red blood oozing from between his fingers. "Leaving?" He spat. "I wonder how far you two will get. I wonder..."
He trailed off, and then the strangest smile took over his face. Anger remained in his eyes, but the amusement was back. Red brows furrowed down as he nodded, as if agreeing to something.
"A little game of cat and mouse in the streets... I think like it. Run, little mice. Run away and lick your wounds- I'll come sniffing, soon enough."
Even after her back was turned, Lauren could still hear him laugh. It followed her down the hallway, and past the heavy metal door. It rang in her ears, like she'd never be rid of it- a taunting, arrogant laugh that made her too afraid to do anything besides run.