Title: Mercury
Disclaimers: Nothing belongs to me, and no one would pay money for this.
A/N: It's that wacky part of the year where I rewrite and revise. But this time, I offer a new chapter.
Feedback: Opinions, ideas, criticism? Too much cussing, not enough cussing? More Frost or even more Frost? Shitty characterisation? Even weaker plot? That's what the review button is for.
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1. Human
1988
The strobe lights wash the jumping crowd in blue; it's like looking at a series of Polaroids taken seconds after another, but don't quite connect. Bodies together feel like a sticky, sweating thing, and it's warm and it's sex. There's friction between the skin and there's the smooth sliding between material. Rubbing everywhere. She thinks it's a woman, but she can't be sure. Everyone everything feels the same it doesn't matter anyway there is no one only us.
The base is a lot like senseless thumping of headboard and together with the desperate happy screams of the crowd it's like she's in her flat with the neighbours trying to fuck themselves into oblivion in the room next door. The regular, synthesized notes sound a lot like the dead tone at the end of the telephone line when someone hangs up on her. Why is she here, when it's cheaper to masturbate?
It's better than sitting in her empty flat listening to her neighbours going at it next door. And it's a lot better than getting shit-faced in front of the television watching infomercials. She can't afford addiction. It was like holding a gun to your head and hearing it click empty because you can't afford the fucking bullets.
She finds that she'd been pushed to the edge of the crowd near the bar, so orders a light beer, and gatecrashes a circle of couches. Fuck RESERVED. Even moneyless shits like her had to have someone to sit.
There's two men sitting there already, and she drinks her beer with her legs sprawled on the table, waiting for one them to say anything. They don't. One has long blond hair and looks like he should be in a biker gang. There's a blond girl on his lap, and a mocha brunette under his left arm. He doesn't notice her for obvious reasons. The other is just watching, sneering. His hair's cut fashionably short so that the front is long and it falls into his eyes. There's something about them that scares her. They're dressed to casually, and they look ...hungry. Eager. Like the world was their oyster and they were about to eat it. The brunette with bangs turns to her, and she gets the feeling that he'd noticed her the moment she'd sat down, but just didn't give the shit. She tries to look disinterested.
"You can't read the sign?" he raises his eyebrows and she can't tell whether he's teasing or serious. He seems completely relaxed and controlled sitting on bright green couches with the music loud like gunfire.
"Fuck you," she says automatically and her heart isn't in it tonight. She takes a calculated drink.
He smirks then, sudden and deprecating.
Suddenly there was darkness like going blind and only the shouting of the crowd. It takes a few seconds for her eyes to adjust and the emergency lighting to switch on. The crowd's almost silent for a heartbeat, but then a girl screams, setting off the chain reaction. The crowd surges towards the lighted EXIT sign, shrill and coarse voices calling out, the slapping of shoes and heels against the floor echoing until it sounds like a stampede.
It's just a fucking blackout, dickwits.
Because the stupidity of people never stopped being funny, so she takes another drink and sits back. She never realised how single-minded a crowd of people could be, and they poured out through the middle with people getting stuck and crushed at the edges. Still, it take only about a minute for the last of the crowd run through the emergency exit, and the DJ closes a metal door behind them. The door's thick, and made out of iron or whatever it was, and she hadn't noticed till now. The door looks heavy and the DJ... well he looks fucking scrawny.
Suddenly, fluorescent lights flicker on, making Diane blink. What the fuck?
"Looks like we have a few smart ones," the brunette man says, and some people laugh.
She doesn't know what the fuck is happening, but she'd be fucked if she was going to sit next to the psychos in charge of the stunt. She backs away quickly from the chairs, while the brunette slides out of his chair, like the vinyl against acrylic. He smiles, and she thinks he looks pleased. No, he looks like he's having a fucking ball. She stands beside a raver, and she knows somehow that they're in this together. They're the same, and the brunette, the blond and his girls aren't.
"The fuck is going on?" asks a man in a red shirt from the middle of dance floor. "The fuck are you people?" When no one answers, he begins backing away as well. "Mother fuck," he mutters.
It's their expressions, the way they walk too smoothly and stalk you with their eyes. The raver murmurs, "I don't want to die," and for the first time in a while she actually cares about her life. She can't explain, but she knows doesn't want to die like this. Men dressed in black appear from nowhere, and she doesn't understand why, but the guns reassure her. She doesn't mind being shot, just not...
Friendship and love don't exist, she thinks suddenly. There's only desperation.
"You smell that Quinn?" the brunette asked the blond loudly, but he's addressing everyone. He breathed in theatrically. "Now that is what I call an appetiser. Nothing better than old fashioned fear to season a meal."
'Quinn' chuckled and stepped forward, but stopped when the brunette held out his arm. "No. I need these ones," he said dismissively.
"Aw Deac," the blond one was saying, "you already got a lot of them for the programme. Who's gonna notice if we take a few?" He sounds casual, but respectful.
"I'm going to notice, Quinn," the brunette says flatly. "These aren't for the programme. Fucking Jackal sent half my security team back in a box. But," he considers, "I suppose I can spare one." He's looking directly at her.
Quinn grins lecherously, and she looks away. "Just one," the brunette reminds him.
The blond is looking at each one very carefully. She can see him her peripheral vision and it seems like he's spending eternity looking at her. She doesn't shrink back, because she doesn't want to move. If she moves he might notice her more. He might pick her. She doesn't want that. She holds herself still with every cell in her body screaming to run.
Suddenly he steps forward and reaches out. She flinches away reflexively, but he grabs a girl behind her who looks on the verge of hysteria. She tries to get away, but the man's grip on her is so tight that she sees red spreading from the wrist. He pulls her toward the main door and she screams and kicks but his hand remains firm. The blond is grinning again, hungry and perverse as he whispers into the girl's ear. Diane looks away, and gives a quiet sigh of relief.
A man nudges her with the butt of the gun. Choices, choices. She lets herself be herded toward the same exit.
Outside, she watches the two men and the girl get into the limo and drive away. Around her, others are getting into their own cars, but she is being directed into what looks like the back of a refrigerator truck. She takes one look at the gun pointed at her, and climbs in.
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Lined up against the wall, Diane is listening to the men holding the guns.
"Humans," he begins, "are the useless filth of this planet. Fortunately for you, Frost's looking for some new employees." The man chuckles, although the other men in black seem incorruptible.
He pulls a minor from the line, a boy with spiked hair and half his face pierced who probably got into the club using a fake ID. At the moment he smells like urine. The man pulls back the boy's head to show blue veins and white skin.
And without warning, the man buries his face in it, and red splatters onto the wall and on the ground. Blood pumps from the holes thick and red, and pools on the tiled floor. The boy's body crumples onto the floor.
The man has fangs. Fangs dripping with blood, like a snake. The word vampire pops into her head like some stupid revelation. It was fucking crazy, the whole thing was fucking crazy. "You have a choice," bloodstained lips say, and laugh. "Who am I kidding? You don't have a fucking choice. It's either the blood or a Christmas dinner."
One of the men in black is carries a syringe with red liquid in it. She's never realised that blood could be so dark, and opaque. She knows it's blood. At least, if it were a film, it'd be blood.
The man takes her wrist with a cold hand. She takes the chance to look at him closely and he looks normal, if a bit pale. He has thick brown lashes, and he's smiling so faintly that she can barely tell. He looks her in the eyes when he injects her with it. It hurts, but Diane doesn't flinch, and after it's done, she examines her wrist. She doesn't feel different, and there is only a small red puncture where the needle went in. For a minute she wonders if this is some bad trip.
Her eyes catch the raver's and they look at each other blankly. If this were a film, she'd see defiance, love or fear.
But all she sees is her own emptiness reflected.