Boxed In
1-3
Staring out at the snow-covered roof, I felt a slight headache forming behind my eyes. This was just ridiculous. Cannibals, monsters, streets stretching on for miles, and now this?!
No, that was it, I was done with this shit, I'd officially had enough and wanted nothing more than to be back in Dragons 'containment center'. Yes, I knew it was basically a prison, but at least things made sense there.
Trying not to scream, I let out a steady breath that was heavy with steam.
"So…" Madison said, standing next to me, her eyes alight with mischief, "wanna build a snow-"
"I will throw you off this damn roof," I growled, pointing a claw at Madison and ignoring her giggling.
Behind us, there was a choked laugh and we turned to see Aisha was awake and watching us carefully.
She was still worryingly pale and clutching at the stump of her right arm with trembling fingers, but the cuts and bruises that littered her skin seemed to be healing, at least.
"Oh!" Madison rushed forward, gently putting a hand on Aisha's forehead. "How are you feeling?"
"Cold, where the hell are we?" Aisha managed to say, her words slightly slurred.
Madison gave me a worried look, and I looked out over the city. With the fog and all the running last night, I'd lost track. "Uptown, north of Captain's Hill" was the best I could say.
"We need to get you somewhere safe, do you know where we can go?"
"The library, I think…"
I tried to think where the nearest one would be, but I'd completely lost my bearings. We needed to get back to the streets, or at least find a landmark of some kind.
"Come on, we can't stay here. It'll be easier if we get back to the roads."
"We'll have to carry her, she's in shock," Madison said quietly, with a pointed look. "We need to keep her warm."
Sighing, I rolled my eyes. Ever since my transformation, I'd been warm to the touch. It had worried the doctors at first, but eventually, they had decided that it was just my 'normal' temperature now.
I knelt down and Madison carefully helped Ashia stand so she could climb on my back, her remaining arm hanging over my shoulders. The position flattened my wings against my back, but I could deal.
Leaving the roof turned out to be easier than I'd expected. I walked ahead, using my clawed feet to clear a path for Madison to follow and a nearby fire escape gave us an easy route to the ground.
A nearby street sign meant we were quickly able to work out roughly where we were. My guess, as it turned out, hadn't been too far off, putting us only twenty minutes away from the hill on foot. Assuming none of the streets had turned into a fucking mobius ring or something.
Mercifully, the streets were free of snow.
"Yeah… weather's fucked," Aisha mumbled when Madison pointed this out, her breath tickling my neck. "Last week, it rained blue fire… Oh, don't get too close to Captain's Hill."
"Why?"
"There's a forest there now. The trees don't like people... Or they do, and you end up getting fucked."
Madison and I shared a confused look, then I opted to ignore that information for now.
"So, Aisha? How did you end up here anyway?" I asked, to fill the silence as we walked.
"Was looking for some food. Found snake bitch with her tits hanging out." As she spoke, her hand flexed, attempting to grope me through my vest. "Don't really remember the rest."
"Does… that happens a lot?"
"The tits, or getting eaten?"
I could feel Aisha smiling against my neck and warmth travelled up my cheeks as she and Madison giggled.
"Well, we meant insane cannibals," Madison said, walking alongside me now. Despite the smile on her face, her ears were constantly moving, twitching to face every sound. "But it would be nice to know if we should throw our clothes off next time we meet someone."
"I doubt they'd complain."
"Aren't you a little young for that?" The words left my mouth before I could stop them.
"You're just jealous that my tits are bigger. Anyway, I've fucked people before. Not much else to do these days."
"They're really not," Madison mumbled and I tried to swat her with my tail.
"Oh? Hiding something are we?" Aisha purred, literally purred, her hand pressed against my chest as the two of them continued to tease me.
Embarrassment aside, I can't say it wasn't fun listening to them chatter back and forth, and it helped to distract us from the empty streets.
It was hard to believe it had only been weeks, or months, since everything went wrong. Many of the buildings looked like they had been abandoned for years, with plants spreading across their crumbling walls.
"Aisha?" I asked when there was a lull in the conversation.
"Hmm?"
"Where is everyone? I get that there are monsters, but the city shouldn't be this empty."
"Dunno. Back when people started getting sick, the heroes tried to evacuate the city. They had checkpoints with these test things. Bro tried to get us out, but I was sick. A lot of people just vanished, though…" Yawning, she shifted against me. "Monsters probably ate them."
'Lovely…' Madison and I shared a look, our pace increasing just a bit.
Occasionally, Madison would turn sharply to look at something, and when I followed, I could just make out dark shapes in the shadows. Hunched, misshapen things with too many eyes stared back at us.
The first time one of them moved forward, I let out a growl - Mine! - that made Aisha tense. The creature, whatever it was, seemed to think better of it and backed away.
"You okay?" looking over my shoulder, I kept my voice as gentle as I could.
"I'm good," Aisha's cheeks were a little red and her voice was strained, but Madison waved me forward with a giggle.
"She's fine, let's keep going."
Whatever creature had been following us didn't appear again.
##
As we got closer to the library, I started to notice more signs of life. It was just small things at first—less rubble and more buildings that were still boarded up. More than that, there was a warmth in the air, a faint murmuring in the distance, people talking, shouting, or just living, that made the whole area feel more alive.
On one of the houses, someone had painted a picture of a house and an arrow. Another had been placed further down the road; this time the words 'All welcome. No weapons. No fighting' had been scrawled on it.
"Guess we're going the right way," Madison said, bumping me with her hip.
"Looks like it," I said back, before continuing to walk. Aisha wasn't exactly heavy, but she'd fallen asleep at some point and was now a dead weight on my back that was starting to make my wings ache.
As we rounded the final corner and the building came into view, it was like a weight lifted off my chest.
Ahead of us, cars had been converted into a makeshift barricade, reaching from one side of the street to the other and stacked on top of one another to make a wall. Wood and other rubble had then been fixed to them in an effort to reinforce the structure. People stood on top of it, some of them moving back and forth, while others held weapons in their hands.
The guards on the walls noticed us quickly, at least two of them pointing guns in our direction, though I suspected more were actually inside the buildings around us. Between the tall buildings, the empty street and the wall, anyone attacking the library would likely be cut down before they could even get close.
One guard waved us forward, pointing to a section of the wall that looked like it had once been a shipping container, the 'doors' forming a gate of sorts with a woman standing outside.
Slowly, Madison and I walked forward. The woman at the gate, as it turned out, was huge. A rippling tower of muscle, whose lower legs were covered in a brown fur that reached from her cloven feet to her skirt covered hips. Her tail twitched in irritation as we got close, the fluffy tip whipping through the air.
She glared down at us, her black horns glinting in the light and one hand resting on a battle axe that appeared to have been made out of a signpost and some scrap metal.
"Aren't you a bit young for the PRT?" she rumbled as she eyed our clothes. "Or did you just luck out on your transformations?"
"I - We're," I coughed to clear my throat and tried again.
"We're not with the PRT," Madison said quickly. "Dragon sent us, and our friend needs help." she waved at Aisha and I turned, lowering my shoulder so the guard could get a better look.
Her expression softened as she stepped forward.
"What happened?"
"We got attacked by some snake woman," I said, straightening up. "She tried to eat us and we found Aisha locked up in her home."
"Snake woman… did she have blonde hair, red scales?"
"Yeah, you know her?"
"I've been wanting to hunt her down for a while now," the woman said, scraping her foot against the floor. "But we haven't had enough people to spare for a proper search. We sent runners to the wall days ago. I'd hoped to get some help, but…" she sighed, "we haven't heard back from them in a while."
Straightening up, she banged on the gate.
"Okay, we'll let you in. See the guy inside to your right, they will tell you where to go. Just remember the rules. No fighting, no killing, and if you have weapons, keep them out of sight. Anyone with a red sash is a guard. And if you need to let off steam… try and keep it quiet."
"What do you-" Before I could finish my question, Madison pushed me forward through the gate.
"Wewillthankskbye!"
"Hey!" I squeaked as Madison slapped my butt.
"Honestly, you're kinda dense sometimes," she muttered. "Were you a nun in a past life or something?"
I stared, uncomprehending until it clicked and my cheeks went red. "Oh!"
"Yeah, oh!"
##
Captain's Hill Library was one of the largest and oldest in the city. It was a big solid building made of stone that had been weathered, patched and repaired over the years. There was a metaphor there, I was sure. Most of the windows were boarded up, but I could see people moving about on the roof.
There was maybe fifty yards between the wall and the library, in which a small shanty town had grown. Lean-tos made scraps of wood and sheet metal, canvas or plastic sheets stretched over gaps to make simple shelters with random bits of wood dividing sections from each other. One or two had curtains draped across them as makeshift doors, while a few actually had doors bolted to their frames.
The alleys and side roads between the buildings on the outer edge had all been blocked off. If I had to guess, the wall we had passed through actually circled the library. Most of the buildings that were inside the wall appeared inhabited or were being repurposed.
It wasn't just the defenses that caught my interest. All around us, people were moving about, watched over by others with red armbands. Almost all of them were like us, that is, odd mixes of animal and human parts on their bodies. Wings, tails, ears. One woman who walked past us was an actual centaur.
It was only as we were giving our names to the small man by the gate who was sitting behind a battered table that I noticed something. Almost everyone here was a woman. Dotted here and there, I could see a man or two, but they were always outnumbered and, more surprisingly, none of them had any extra features.
Keeping my questions to myself, we followed his instructions and entered a nearby building. A sheet had been hung from the windows with a bright red cross painted on it.
The building had likely been a small shop or something before it had been stripped out. A woman was sitting behind a counter, her chin resting on her hand. She had a white band on her arm with a red cross on it, and her long ears twitched as we entered.
With an 'oh!' of surprise, she jumped up and rushed towards us.
My jaw fell open and I heard a muttered curse from Madison. Not that I could blame her.
The 'nurse' was barely taller than Madison and had similar features to the woman outside the gate, only the fur on her double-jointed legs was a mottled white and black instead of uniform brown, with a larger tuft on the tip of her tail. Her horns were also shorter and more rounded at the tip, making her look less threatening.
The biggest difference was her chest. It was, frankly, ludicrously big and barely held in the halter top she wore.
"What happened?" she asked, almost effortlessly lifting Aisha off my back.
"She was attacked by a cannibal?" Madison murmured, clearly distracted and not looking the nurse in the face.
"Okay, follow me. How long ago was this, and what sort of… person was it?"
"We're not sure. We found her last night. A… snake-woman was keeping her in a storeroom when we found her."
We entered the back room, which smelt strongly of disinfectant. There were a few cabinets of differing styles lining the walls, most likely salvaged from various places, and a wheeled bed in the middle of the room.
Laying Aisha down, the nurse put a hand on her forehead, then pulled a small penlight from a pocket that she shone into her eyes.
"Sweety, can you hear me? I need you to wake up for a bit."
As Aisha mumbled a barely coherent response, the nurse also turned a critical eye on me and Madison, then nodded to herself.
"Try and get her to wake up, I'll be back in a moment." She hurried off through a door, leaving us alone.
While Madison moved to help Aisha, I looked around. The nurse had a collection of books on one side and a drawing of the human body on the wall. One of the books was open, an untidy scribble filling the pages.
Before I could try to decipher the scrawl, the nurse returned, three glass jars filled with a white liquid in her hands. She passed one to Madison and another to me before turning her attention to Aisha.
"Come on sweety, you need to drink this, then you can go back to sleep".
Lifting my own jar, I sniffed the contents. It was milk, though it had quite a sweet smell and was warm enough that I could feel the heat through the glass.
Looking towards Madison, I realised she was staring at the nurse as she helped Aisha. Following her eyes, I noticed the front of the Nurses halter top was rumpled, with damp spots forming on the front.
No, please tell me it's not…
Satisfied that Aisha was finished, the nurse turned to us and frowned. "You should drink, it accelerates healing, counters most poisons, and it's quite nutritious."
My eyes flicked between her chest and the jar.
"Oh, I see," the nurse seemed to shrink on herself, her tail wrapping one of her legs as her eyes swam with tears. "Our supplies are limited, we have to make do with what we have… not everyone can have cool powers… I mean, I understand, I do.."
My stomach twisted with guilt and shame and I looked to Madison for help, except she was already gulping hers down with sounds of enjoyment. Looking back at the nurse, she looked so dejected that I sighed. Fuck it, at least its not human flesh…
Raising the jar up, I held my breath and took a big drink. I wasn't sure what I had been expecting, but milk was actually quite nice. It was rich and creamy with a sweet aftertaste I couldn't quite place.
Lowering the jar, I realised id actually ended up drinking all of it and Madison looking at her own jar in disappointment.
"There, doesn't that feel better?" the nurse said with a giggle and I knew then that I'd been played. Ignoring my glare, she picked Aisha up and carried her towards the door. "I have a recovery area upstairs. Your friend will likely sleep until tomorrow, so why don't you come back later? If you need a place to stay, I can let you use a couple of beds for the night."
"I… yeah, maybe."
I wasn't sure if I wanted to stay here until tomorrow, but it didn't feel right just leaving Aisha here alone. It felt wrong, like I was giving up a puppy or something.
"Come on," Madison suggested, her eyes shining and tail high, pulling me towards the door. "Maybe we can find some information or something."
##
Outside, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath and tried to clear my head. I felt better than I had since we arrived, but my skin was tingling for some reason, like I'd stepped into a slightly to hot bath. It wasn't unpleasant, but it was distracting and only seemed to increase the warmth between my legs.
"Madison?" I asked as she leaned heavily against me, one hand stroking my tail.
"Hmm?"
"Do you feel… okay?"
"Great! Why?"
"Cause you're about to lose an arm!" I snapped, taking a step away and ignoring her huff.
I glanced up at the sky. The ever-present fog had thinned enough that I could see thick grey clouds above, threatening rain. Assuming, of course, that it did still rain like normal and that the water didn't fly up into the sky or dissolve people's clothes or something.
'Which would certainly explain everyone's clothing.' I thought to myself. Now that we had time to actually look around, it was hard not to notice the lack of clothing around us.
I mean, it wasn't that surprising that almost everyone's clothes were either well worn, or obviously modified in order to fit their new bodies. What did surprise me was the number of women who seemed to have barely tried to fit into something.
The centaur woman I'd seen earlier was still around, chatting with some friends across the street, with only a bikini-top to cover herself. Others had seemed to have given up on clothes altogether.
I turned to mention this to Madison, only to notice that she was staring rather fixedly at a couple of girls who were huddled together in an alley. Both had forgone clothes and were rather passionately making out, hands sliding across bodies as they-
Coughing, I looked away from the couple and tried to ignore the warmth spreading through my body. That's when I realised Madison was still watching them, a pink tongue running across her lips.
"Enjoying the view?" I said acidly, an entirely different heat forming in my chest. "Why not just go ask if you can join them?"
Madison jumped. "Huh, what? whatdoyoumean!?"
"Lets just go. There must be someone in charge here."
Madison followed behind me as I walked away, aware that my claws were scraping the pavement and my tail was raised. I wasn't even sure why I was so angry. I didn't have a problem with what those girls were doing, though maybe they shouldn't be doing it in public, yet…
"Taylor, Taylor wait!" Madison grabbed my arm and tried to pull me back, but all she ended up doing was pulling herself into me and nearly knocking us both over.
"What?" I snapped as we both stumbled slightly.
"Maybe you should let me do the talking? I mean, you're doing that whole 'I am going to kill you' glare thing again. I mean, don't get me wrong, its hot, but maybe a little intimidating?"
Glaring at her, I blew a thin stream of smoke from my nose. "I don't know what you're talking about. Lets just… find someone to talk to," I groaned, rubbing my head with the heel of my palm in an effort to ease the budding headache.
"Yeah… okay… Oh! I've got an idea!" slipping past me, Madison walked up to a woman in a loose-fitting backless dress that made room for her large butterfly-like wings and a red armband.
Madison asked her something and she pointed towards the library. Thanking her, Madison jogged back towards me.
"She said Officer Emese was in charge and that she's in the library, c'mon!"
Grabbing my arm, Madison pulled me towards the library, her cheeks a dull red. "look, did you know you've got a killer glare? Like, you've always had it, even before you got the horns and everything? Seriously, you could have rocked the 'stern teacher' look back then. Especially when you looked over your glasses at someone. Hell, It used to drive Emma wild. She was always talking about how you looked at her. Honestly, I think if you'd glared at her and ordered her to kneel, she'd have done it. I know I-"
"Enough!" holding up a hand, I silenced the stream of babble. I didn't want to talk about Emma, if possible I didn't even want to think about her. 'And especially not her kneeling in front of me!'
"Yes… mistress" Letting go of me, Madison skipped ahead giggling.
I tried to glare at her again, but the effect was somewhat ruined by my bright red cheeks. Huffing, I followed behind her.
##
While the windows had all been boarded up, the main doors of the library were uncovered, with two women standing guard outside. Interestingly, both of them appeared to be wearing police uniforms, or at least the modified remains of them.
"Where here to speak to Office Emese?" Madison said as we got close and I did my best to avoid 'glaring' at anyone. 'Honestly, I'm not that bad. I don't glare that much.'
One of the guards, a bear like woman, pointed a thumb over her shoulder. "She's inside. Go on in, you cant miss her."
Thanking them, we walked inside.
I'd always liked going to the library, even before mom died and Emma turned on me. Afterwards, they became my havens, safe places I could go without having to worry about running into her or her friends.
Seeing how the street outside had been converted into a shantytown, I was worried about what the inside would look like. Had it all been torn apart, shelves plundered for materials, the books burned for warmth? If they had, I would understand the practicality of it, lives were at stake after all. But at the same time, it would still feel wrong. Even the 'Dark Romance/fantasy' section didn't deserve that. Mostly.
To my surprise, that hadn't appeared to have happened. The turnstiles by the doors had been removed and the area around the reception desk had been cleared, but the shelves were all still there, their books intact.
"Hi!" The woman behind the counter chirped. "If you're here to read, feel free to help yourself. Just make sure to put them back when you're done."
"We're looking for Officer Emese?"
"Oh, she's right over there," she pointed to a nearby collection of desks that had been pushed together.
Officer Emese was a brown-haired woman who was talking to a young girl that was hurriedly scribbling in a notebook. As she moved out from behind the desk, the reason she was dictating became clear.
She had the lower body of a snake in a rusty-red colour. Her arms, however, had turned into wings that were covered with brown feathers and I doubted she still had even had fingers anymore.
Unlike some of the people outside, she hadn't forgone clothes. Instead, she was wearing her police uniform, or at least the blue, button-down shirt. Someone had removed the sleeves and opened the sides so her arms could fit and instead of pants, she was wearing a short pencil skirt with a slit on the side.
"So you're the new arrivals," she said, nodding at us as we got close. "I know we all look young these days," She said dryly, "but if you're old enough to join the PRT I'll eat my hat."
"No ma'am. We were sent by Dragon." Fishing a small ID out of my pocket, I passed it to her. It wasn't much, just a photo ID with PRT and some other logos printed on it, but Dragon had assured me people would recognise it. As Officer Emese examined the ID, I explained how we'd reached the city and why.
When I mentioned my dad, she sent the young woman - Lou - off to ask around the camp.
"Two weeks," she muttered, passing the ID back. "If that's true, it would explain a few things."
"You believe us?"
She snorted. "Of course I do. Have you seen what's going on in this city? Time going weird is the least of our problems."
"I feel like we're stumbling around in the dark, can you tell us what's going on? It might help when we get in touch with Dragon."
"If, you reach dragon you mean." Emese said with a shake of her head. "What the hell. It couldn't hurt. Take a look at this."
She led us to a map of the city that had been pinned to a board. Areas of it had been highlighted with various colours.
"Okay, to start with, the red areas are where all the monsters are. Don't go there at night." On the map, the entire coastline, boardwalk, docks, and parts of the quarantine wall itself were highlighted in red.
"Is that thing still in the bay?" I asked, noticing with no small amount of shame that I'd landed Madison and me in one of the biggest red circles.
"Yeah," officer Emese said quietly." We're pretty sure it's dead and that whatever it was, so it probably wasn't an Endbringer. Not that it matters. When a giant monster appears in the city and starts attacking, you don't ask questions, you just run."
'Don't I know it', I thought to myself, pushing back a shiver and not even bothering to fight it when Madison took my hand. Sometimes, the memory woke me up at night.
Looking at the map again, I tried to ignore that I'd been walking us, in an almost dead straight line, right towards the monster's corpse. Instead, I focused on a red pin had been driven into the map, close to where the Protectorate's base had been.
"The Rig was destroyed when that monster appeared. Last I heard, the Protectorate had moved into the PRT-HQ. No ones heard from them in a while, but it's a fair bet they are still alive."
"What makes you say that?" Madison frowned at the map.
"Cause they have a shield of their own." Officer Emese said with a shrug. "When they first put the city in lockdown, all the capes ran into the building, turned that forcefield of theirs on and sat back while the city fell apart. They stayed nice and safe during the riots, as Dragon built that fucking wall and monsters started attacking us. The shield hasn't come down since and none of them have been seen. At least, not around here."
"But they're supposed to be heroes…" Madison muttered.
"If it makes you feel any better, not all the capes ran off. New Wave are apparently camped out at Brockton General Hospital, along with some of the Wards and some PRT troopers are still around, but most of them have folded into the police forces and are guarding the safe places like this one. Those are the green areas by the way"
She chuckled ruefully. "And of course, the gangs—slippery bastards that they are—are still around." She pointed at a pink ring that covered a good portion of what had once been the financial district and a yellow ring to the north-west.
"Kaiser's taken a few blocks to the south, while Lung is sitting in an Endbringer shelter to the north, but I can't give you specifics, I'm afraid. We know there's other people out there, we used our radios to keep in touch, but now that damn fog is everywhere and radios don't work past shouting distance."
Slipping into a vacant seat, I looked at the map. There weren't many green areas and a couple even had black crosses through them. There were six gates spread out evenly on the outer wall, each with a specially made airlock that would let the PRT bring supplies in.
Two of them had black crosses through them on the map and three had large red circles drawn on them.
"What happened to this gate?" I asked, standing up and tapping the only gate that was still green. All the gates had gone silent, surely if one was still 'safe' then Dragon would know about it?
"Dunno," Officer Emese said. "There was a safe spot near it, but we haven't heard anything from them in weeks. Last time we sent runners, they were forced to turn back. Between the Empire and the monsters, they couldn't even get close.
"If you're thinking about trying to reach it, I'd suggest heading here first." She tapped a green circle that was, south-east of the library and north-east of the Medhall building. "It's the only hospital still functioning, what with Panacea being there, along with the rest of New Wave. They might be able to help you get past the Empire."
"Why not just go straight south and west?" Madison asked, tracing a finger across the map. "We could cut across Captain's Hill, then go round the edge of the Empire."
"Because Captain's Hill isn't there anymore," Emese said with a frown. "The whole city's changing. Some parts of it are bigger than they should be, some streets go on miles while others loop back on themselves. There's a forest where the hill used to be, a big one and its growing, spreading down south. I sent a group in there a couple of weeks ago after someone said they saw a herd of fucking deer. Only one woman came back and she hasn't spoken a word to anyone since."
Madison audibly gulped. "Right, stay away from the murder forest. Got it."
I shivered at Emese's tone. Aisha had mentioned Captain's Hill being dangerous, but given the state she was in, it was hard to take it seriously. Hearing it confirmed by someone else was a different thing entirely.
Lou chose than moment to return, waving Emese over to her. There was some whispered conversation, then she came back to the map.
"Lou's asked around, no one's heard of him. We keep lists of families that are searching for people and he's not on any of ours. Next time we send a runner to another camp, they'll take it with them and ask around, but-"
"But it'll take time," I finished for her.
"Look, you seem like capable girls. You walked into this shit-hole and managed to survive. If you want to stick around, we could always use the help."
Madison looked at me and I looked at the map. It was a long way between safe spots, especially with all the weirdness that was going on. And yet… Dragon sent us here because she wanted to help, she wanted to know what was happening.
I came here to find my dad. He's the only reason I came, I told myself and my stomach twisted painfully. But even if I did find him… then what? He can't leave, none of us can… the only hope I've got, that any of us have, is for people outside to help us, to make the city safe again. and that wasn't not going to happen if I didn't find a way to reach Dragon.
Standing up, I looked Officer Emese in the eye. "I know its asking a lot, but can you look out for my dad? If you find him, tell him I'll be back soon. I'm going to the gate and I'm going to get Dragon to send in help."
And if I had to fight my way through the Empire to protect my dad, then that's what I'll do.
AN: commission for NaGeL.
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Beta by; Majigah