Chapter 1
"What happened?"
The voice is loud, demanding, as several pairs of feet race down the corridor. They leave a trail of blood behind them. No one stops to answer. They're too panicked and worried to focus on anything other than getting to the infirmary. Curses leave every single one of them as they rush down the halls, bringing more and more attention to themselves.
So by the time they actually reach the infirmary there's a crowd behind them. Once again, they pay the crowd no mind as they lift the limp, bloody body onto an empty table.
"Get an IV going," a redhead orders to no one in particular as she stands from her desk. Years of working as the emergency physician helps her keep calm as she moves to disinfect her hands and don some gloves. "I'll stop the bleeding."
This is a usual occurrence in their line of work, after all.
Several people rush to comply but it's another redhead that reaches the medical equipment first. She pulls the necessary supplies out and busies herself with finding a vein while the physician cleans the wound.
"Eloise," the physician calls, looking up from her work momentarily to search for the purple-haired girl. She finds her huddle with the others in the doorway, wide-eyed and curious, and beckons her forward with bloody fingers. While injuries are a normal occurrence and happen almost every day, the staring never stops. "Can you bring me a bag of Ceci-Anne's blood type?"
The girl nods and rushes down the hall for the blood without any more prompting. The others that have gathered at the commotion continue to watch as she works over the unconscious figure. They're silent as they try to figure out what's happened. The amount of blood they can see spill worries them.
That Ceci-Anne's being injured severely enough to need a blood transfusion also confuses them. No one's ever been able to get close enough to injure archer and that someone finally has, has them all shifting nervously.
Ceci-Anne's the best at what she does, having trained for hours on end to hone her skills. The fact that she lacked a key sense needed to master the bow had not stopped her. She'd continued on, overcame her disabilities, and mastered her other senses. She had trained herself to listen, to hear, to use her other senses to make up for her lack of sight.
No, her lack of vision had not stopped her from being one of the best—if not the best—archer ever to work with them.
Therefore, the question is, 'What happened?'
No one asks the question as they watch the physician and her helpers work. They don't want to distract them as they work to save Ceci-Anne's life. Thus, it's not until all's calmed down and Ceci-Anne's out of danger—stitched up and bandaged—that anyone feels it is the right time to ask what had attacked her.
By then everyone's been gathered into a meeting room. Well, all the essential personal at least.
"I don't know what it was," the man that helped carried her in whispers. He's sitting on a hard plastic chair—slumped over, really. His elbows are his knees as he rests his chin on his intertwined hands. Blood still stains his iron armor in various spots and it's with a small amount of apprehension that he notes that he might never get the blood completely off. "I didn't evensee what hit her."
"What do you mean, Duncan?" Eloise asks cautiously, hands fisting and unfisting the skirt of her dress as she waits for the man to answer. Whatever can sneak up on Ceci-Anne and land such a terrible hit must have been huge and strong and it has them all worried.
"Everything was going as planned," Duncan mutters, still a little dazed as he looks down at his blood stained hands. "We hand the files and the target was dead. Tilly and I were heading to the rally point but…."
He can still see it. He can still see the blood gushing out from underneath his hands no matter how hard he presses down on the wound. Can still hear the sound of gunfire going on around them as Tilly desperately tries to hold the enemy back while he radios the base.
Every time he blinks, he sees it.
'Shit, shit, shit, Evac! We need immediate Evac!'
"But?" a short woman prompts when he trails off. She stands when everyone else sits in carefully lined seats. In that moment, she's embodies the very figure of authority. She looks like a leader and Duncan doesn't make her wait too long for him to finish his story.
"She was in our sights, just standing there one second," he continues and his gaze flickers to where Tilly sits, slumped against the wall on the floor. Where she'd collapsed the moment she'd been let go after being dragged into the meeting room for debriefing. Her head is buried in her arms which rest on her knees. She's still drenched in Ceci-Anne's blood. It soaks her clothes, stains her skin. She's as shaken as he is, if not more because she hasn't even made an effort to clean up. "Then, the next, she was on the floor."
He knows the others will doubt his words. No one will believe that someone made it to Ceci and was gone fast enough for him to miss. Therefore, he desperately needs Tilly to collaborate his story but the girl won't speak.
Hell, they're not even sure she can.
The girl's been mute since the day they found her.
"Just like that?" Eloise asks, doubt written all over her face but all Duncan can do is give her a helpless shrug.
He saw what he saw. Which was nothing at all. He didn't see what hit her. If the wound stretching from her shoulder to her hip hadn't been there he would have figured she'd been shot. Honestly, when she'd first hit the ground, that had been his initial assumption. They were being chased by armed security after all. Until he'd seenall that blood.
"I didn't see it," he reaffirms as he turns his gaze back to the short woman standing in front of them. If he needs anyone to believe him, it's her. She's the boss, after all. Therefore, he looks her straight in the eyes as he speaks, "I don't know what hit her, Leah."
Leah believes him. He's been working for her long enough now that he has her complete trust. So, she gives him a firm nod and motions him towards the door.
"It's fine, Agent," she tells him and pats his armored shoulder comfortingly. "We'll figure it out when Ceci-Anne wakes. For now, why don't you get cleaned up? You've had a long day."
Duncan doesn't need any more prompting than that. He understands a dismal when he hears one. As does everyone else. The room empties out after Leah's words, leaving only Tilly—who still can't bring herself to move—Leah, and the physician behind.
Leah spares the traumatized girl a quick glance while deciding what the best course of action to calm her would be before a vibration coming from her pocket pulls her attention away.
"Shit, Dr. Day," Leah calls the physician as she pulls her communicator out and reads the flurry of incoming messages. "Take care of Matilda, will you? I need to make a call."
"Is everything okay?" Dr. Day, blood free and spotless, asks as she watches Leah head towards the door, phone pressed to her ear.
"The clients are extremely upset with the amount of blood spilt."
It's the only answer the doctor gets but she understands the importance of keeping the clients happy. She doesn't hold it against Leah as she rushes to comfort the client. Instead, she turns her attention to where Tilly still sits slumped on the floor.
"Come on then, up you go," she mutters quietly as she helps the girl to her feet. It rubs her the wrong way that the girl is as shaken as she is. Young as she may look, the girl's been here longer than her or even most of the Senior Agents. She really shouldn't be this shocked over a wounded agent. Especially when Tilly has seen so many other agents die during her time here. "Let's get you cleaned up."
She helps the girl to her room, glaring away many curious trainees as they peer after them. Once there, she sits the girl on her bed and rummages through her drawers for a comfortable pair of shorts and a boy's tee.
"Put these on while I grab some wet wipes," she tells the girl as she places the clothes next to her on the bed and heads to the bathroom. She takes her time searching for wet wipes and decides to fill up a cup with water while she's there.
She hates moments like this. She hates when an agent is too shaken up to do nothing more than sit there and stare into space. Therefore, it's with no remorse that she drops two tablets into the cup and watches them dissolve. They'll help calm Tilly down, after all.
After the cup is empty and Tilly's as clean as she's going to get without a shower, Dr. Day leaves her be. She returns to her infirmary to check on her patients.
Tilly, for her part, curls up on her bed and desperately tries to make sense of what she saw. What had actually managed to get to Ceci-Anne before any of them could bring it down. Because it just isn't logical. What makes it worse is that Duncan didn't see it. He didn't see the huge, deformed...thingappear out of nowhere and attack.
It had been big and ghoulish and looked right at her.
Stared her straight in the eyes and would have come after her if it wasn't for him.A flash of sliver and white and then the creature had exploded. Turned into dust just as quickly as it had appeared while the man turned pale, blue eyes her way and smiled.
'Wells, if itain'tda princess.'
A nasty, evil thing that had sent chills down her spine and she swears she's seen before. Before the darkness and confusion and endless years spent alone.
She's seen the smile and those pale, blue eyes before, when she was, when she was….
When she was what?
She can't remember. She can't remember anything before the wolves and the woods.
Before waking up one day in the middle of nowhere and not knowing her own name. The wolves had found her then. Lost in the woods and struggling to survive, they had come for her. They had taken her in, care for her until Leah had found her some countless years later.
It's how her life in The Agency started.
Leah had brought her in as a trainee. She had been younger and more inexperienced then any before her but she worked her way up the ranks with her own blood, sweat, and tears. She's the best they have now—a trained, bloodthirsty killer and gifted strategist that's done it all.
She's been drenched in blood and guts before. She's been knees deep in sewage and up shit's creek without a paddle. She's survived more years and missions than any agent before her. She's killed more people than anyone in The Agency ever has. It's why she's Second In Command now. Why she's surpassed Ceci-Anne—the pervious SIC—and yet, all it takes to shake her to the core is something from before.
From before she can even remember.
Her communicator chiming from her bedside table brings her out of her thoughts and she reaches for it blindingly. A message shines on the screen and she opens it warily because it's not from anyone in her contact lists. It's an unfamiliar number and, after the day she's had, it puts her on edge.
'I have a job for you, Princess.'
— I
~o0o~
"She's fine. Dr. Day has her stabilized."
A voice coming from the doorway pulls Duncan out of his thoughts. He looks up from where he's scrubbing furiously at his armor to see a lioness—pale, golden fur and red mane—saunter into his room. She walks to his bed with deadly grace and leaps unto it without as sound.
"Don't you trust Dr. Day?" the lioness asks as she sprawls on his bed, tail flickering lazily as she watches Duncan goes back to scrubbing his armor.
"Of course I do, Ariel," he whispers but doesn't stop his scrubbing. He used to wear the bloodstains with pride. Paraded around with them on display as a show of his strength and superiority but now it's stain with the blood of his comrade.
It's stained with the blood of someone he's failed to protect.
It's stained withthe evidence ofhis failure.
They sit in silence for a long while then. Ariel lounges on the bed and Duncan desperately tries to clean his armor. Ariel watches him, of course, predatory gaze locked onto the ashamed man. She watches as he works himself to the bone trying to get rid of the blood. His muscles are straining by the time she lets out a frustrated huff.
She leaps off the bed then. Shifting skins with practiced ease, she lands quietly on human feet. She trades fur and claws and sharp teeth for baby soft skin and human hands just so she can wrap them around the man's raw hands and gently draw the brush from them.
"You didn't see it," she tells him softly as she tugs him to the bed and pushes him to sit down on it. "So you couldn't stop it," she says to him as she draws the man into her arms and cradles his head against her bare breast. "It's not your fault."
"I was supposed to protect them," he whispers as he buries his head in her shoulders and warps his arms around her naked waist. "I failed them."
"You can't protect someone from what you can't see," she soothes him, running her hand through his hair and shushing him kindly.
"You believe me?"
"You have no reason to lie," she tells him and nuzzles his cheek when he looks up at her in shock. There are unshed tears in his eyes and Ariel wipes them away gently as she coos at him, "Therefore I will take your every word as truth unless proven otherwise."
She stares down at him then, a fond smile on her lips and kindness in her eyes. Those green eyes are filled with so much love and adoration. The same amount she always looks at him with when no one's around, and it never ceases to surprise him.
Like he can do no wrong. Like he can save the world with his own two hands.
So, he can't stop the words that spill out of his mouth.
"Run away with me."
"And go where?" she asks, an indulgent smile on her lips even as she pulls out of his arms. She dresses then and he watches as she pulls on the most amount of clothing she's willing to wear. Which isn't much at all.
It could only be considered lingerie at best, blocking no more than the vital areas from view.
It's the animal in her, she had told him once. The clothing feels suffocating to it and she'd walk around naked if it weren't against the dress code.
"We'll travel the world," he tells her as he pulls her back into his arm and holds her close. "See London and Paris and Rome."
"And when The Agency hunts us down?" she asks, smile still in place even though Duncan can see the fire in her eyes. "When Leah comes after us for defecting, what then?"
"We run."
"See that's the thing, Duncan," Ariel says as she rips herself from his arms and heads towards the door. Duncan can see her skin ripple as she walks away. He can see the animal trying to force its way out as her anger increases. "I don't want to spend the rest of my life running."
"You'd rather spend it hiding?" he asks, stopping her with a hand on her arm. She tenses under his grip. Patches of golden fur appear on her skin, but Duncan keeps his hold. "You'd rather spend the rest of our lives pretending we hate each other?"
She doesn't answer him.
"How long until The Agency finds out anyways?" he continues to question and fights hard to keep his voice steady when she doesn't turn to look at him. "What will we do when The Agency finds out we've been breaking the rules?"
