Olivia fluttered around the girl in Adam's arms, tears in her eyes and her voice shrill. Isolde watched the three of them, wondering at the comfortable way that Adam held Olivia's daughter. She absently dug under her cast with her fingers, trying to scratch an itch that was too in the middle to be got at from either side, and scowled when she realised she couldn't reach it.
As the sergeant moved into the kitchen of the tidy home to find something – anything – to scratch her itch, she suddenly noticed just how little room there was in the house.
Isolde felt herself start to breathe faster as the walls suddenly seemed to close in on her, and knew she had to get outside before the panic attack affected her so much that she started to hyperventilate and eventually passed out. Mumbling excuses that went unheeded by the others, she staggered outside and fell to her knees in the street.
Once her breathing had calmed down, Isolde looked up at the sky. The kitten she'd found had followed her outside, and rubbed against her mewing. She smiled a little and scratched the tiny cat on its head, trying to keep her mind completely free of the terrible montage of thoughts and memories that always inevitably came up after a panic attack like that… but they came anyway, no matter how hard she tried to keep them out, and so she bowed her head and allowed them to explode fully into her mind.
First there was the darkness. She'd never liked the darkness: it was close, hot and dangerous. The stink of other people pressed her from all sides, but she couldn't see them, couldn't feel them… but she could hear them.
The eardrum shattering screams had scared the girl at first, but soon she learned to revel in them: they were lifelines of sound that meant she wasn't alone. Then came the light – horrible, glorious light – that meant danger and death to anyone that saw it. Slimy hands grabbed her and no matter how hard she struggled and screamed they wouldn't let her free to return to her dark existence.
Isolde didn't remember the next bit: she'd been told that her memory had blanked it out to try and protect her sanity. All she knew was that the next memory was her staring down at her bloodstained hands, holding a gun and her eyes stinging with tears.
She remembered looking up at the doorway of the room that she could never quite remember and saw movement: shakily she'd raised the gun again and pulled the trigger, but it was out of bullets and her hands were too sore to fire again anyway.
She'd thrown down the gun, preparing to fight the next shadow with her bare hands… but the people in the bulky armour didn't appear to pose a threat to her. One of them even seemed to know her name: the tall brown-haired woman kept saying it like a question. Isolde… Isolde…! She'd had blacked out then, and woken up in a clean white room.
"ISOLDE!"
The sergeant jumped, torn from her reverie, as Harmony screamed her name in her ear to try and get her attention.
"What?"
Isolde, ashamed to have been caught remembering, scrambled to her feet and looked around wildly. Harmony was standing there, staring at her, as were the other members of her squad (except Adam, who she assumed was still inside with the injured girl).
Isolde shook herself, trying to remember what was going on and what had been said. The girls around her were just staring at her, though, and she wondered what she'd said or done to warrant such attention.
Finally she just got sick of their staring, judging eyes and roared
"WHAT?"
None of the women around her would meet her eyes except her oldest friend, Harmony.
"Isolde… are you feeling ok?"
Isolde stared at her.
"What do you mean? I feel fine."
Harmony cleared her throat awkwardly and stepped closer to speak conspiratorially to her sergeant.
"Izzy, you were crying like a little girl."
Isolde's face blanched and she looked around quickly. Her squad refused to meet her eyes: they'd obviously thought that she was an emotionless robot.
"What, you've never seen a grown woman cry like a little girl before?"
She stormed off, not really angry with them but very angry with herself for allowing herself to drift off into La-La-Land so soon after a Locust attack when all their lives were in more danger than usual.
Before she could get very far, the lookout above the ruined wall yelled
"INCOMING!"
With no further thought Isolde ran back to the wall, grabbing her gun from Alice.
"We have to get these people out of here now! This place isn't gonna last much longer."
Isolde growled the words as she ran, her trigger finger itching. An incoming mortar forced her to dive away and for an instant she saw the other women ushering Stranded away from the contact zone, down the other end towards the far wall. Then she landed with a heavy crunch and rolled to her feet, wincing a little as she felt her broken arm scream in complaint. Isolde ignored it, however, and brought her gun up to rest comfortably on her shoulder in a well-practised manoeuvre.
The Locust horde was too much for her, and suddenly she couldn't hold them off by herself. Isolde slowly retreated, ducking behind cover where possible, trying to sneak glances to see if all the Stranded were out yet.
Harmony waved to her from the back: the ok signal, meaning all civilians were out. Isolde nodded to herself, glad that she didn't have to bother with the Stranded as she wildly mowed down wave after wave with her Lancer.
She let her mind wander momentarily in the calm that she always felt firing at enemies and gasped as a sudden memory hit her: a man's face and cold, soothing voice telling her it was all going to be ok… and a hand raised above her holding a scalpel.
"ISOLDE FOR FUCK'S SAKE GET THE HELL OUTTA THERE!"
Harmony's voice on the radio brought her suddenly back to the present and Isolde lifted the dipping barrel of her Lancer one last time. She shifted so she could fire one handed and primed a grenade with her free hand: a diversion so she could perform a tactical retreat without getting shot in the ass again.
She threw it left handed and watched it sail in slow motion towards the centre of the crowd of Locusts. They turned simultaneously as Isolde turned tail and pelted up the street towards her waiting squad, the sudden force of the explosion throwing her to the ground at Harmony's feet.
The matriarch of the squad helped the sergeant to her feet and brushed her down a little, pointless as it was, and clapped the younger woman on the shoulder.
"Nice one, Sarge. Now let's head off before we get strung up for Wretch food."
Isolde could only nod, her throat dried out by either dust or the sudden memory she'd had. Maybe it was a combination of both, she mused as they jogged up the street towards the hole in the back wall where the Stranded had escaped from.
Alice had moved ahead and was doing something to the wall of the biggest concrete building in the encampment. Once the squad was clear, she backed up quickly and hid behind a partition. Isolde turned and ducked behind a ruined car to watch, curious. The Locust troops, having been only temporarily stunned by Isolde's grenade, rushed up the street. As soon as most of them were in the shadow of the huge concrete structure, Alice pushed a button.
The effect was instantaneous: the C4 charges on the support pillars detonated and the huge building seemed to crumple and fall like a giant being brought to its knees. The tonnes of concrete smashed directly down onto the majority of the Locust soldiers, crushing them beneath its weight. The Locust lucky enough to be behind the block were thrown backwards by the shockwave, and those unlucky enough to be caught in front of the rubble were mowed down by Alice and Isolde.
The two women grinned at each other, sharing an oddly special moment. The moment was then subsequently ruined by Adam Prescott clomping back in his size twelves to fetch them because otherwise they would have been left behind. Isolde scowled at him but scrambled to her feet and noticed Alice did the same.
Isolde led the way, breaking into a steady rolling lope that ate up the distance between her and the rest of the squad with ease. She loped past them and continued up the narrow dirt path, her feet sure even on the uneven surface. "Keep up, kiddies!" Isolde couldn't help but throw the words over her shoulder to tease her squad. She heard them groan loudly, and smiled.
