A/N: Uh oh. Elliq – my evil self – is pissed, so... watch out. Someone's gonna die in this chapter. Also, this is just an update to show that I really am working on this story... and I'm stuck on the last chapter of Fever. ****
Gracepunk
Warren stood uncomfortably outside of a small, metal room with a locked door. He was watching through a one-way mirror as a small boy – no more than nine years old – sat curled up on the floor, shivering and bleeding heavily from a large wound on his side. The boy's torturer, Rogue, had left a moment ago and left Warren to watch the child.
Rogue had tortured the child, pushing him past his limits. The boy had revealed information about the location of several other Gracelings.
Rogue had gone to deliver the information to the Baron. Warren knew what would happen once he got back.
The boy inside the room continued to shiver. Warren knew from several painful experiences that the torture room – commonly called the Cold Room – was at least twenty degrees colder than anywhere else in the prison.
Suddenly, the door opened and Rogue strode into the corridor. He roughly shoved Warren aside, even though he wasn't in the way. Warren didn't say anything. Even though he was a whole head taller than Rogue, he was rail thin and unable to fight in close quarters. Also, Rogue had the worst temper in the prison, aside from the Baron.
And his Grace made him unbeatable.
Rogue unlocked the iron door to the Cold Room and entered, not even bothering to close the door behind him. The small boy looked up at him, his eyes wide and terrified.
"Thank you for the information," said Rogue, his voice as cold as steel. "We won't be needing you any more..."
Then Rogue picked the boy up and slammed him against the wall, pinning him a foot above the ground. The boy squirmed, and Rogue sent a blast of electricity through his arm, electrocuting the boy.
Warren looked away as the boy convulsed with electricity. However, he happened to look down. There he saw the small video monitor connected to the video camera on the ceiling of the Cold Room. The video tape was still rolling, and he watched as Rogue stopped the flow of electricity and stuck a knife deep into the boy's stomach. The boy let out a wail of pain as blood gushed out of his mouth in a red foam. Blood started soaking around the knife and dripping down onto the ground.
Rogue dropped the boy on the ground – the knife still deep in his stomach – and stepped on his arm. A loud, sickening crack echoed through the room and the closed off corridor, which Warren could hear clearly due to the open door. Rogue bent down and twisted the knife a couple times, his face completely emotionless as always. He then kicked the kid in the side, cracking some ribs.
By now, the boy was too weak from pain and blood loss to continue screaming. All he could do was moan weakly and wait for it all to be over.
Finally, Rogue had had his fill. He slowly picked the boy up by the knife handle sticking out of his chest. He then slammed the boy face-first into the solid metal wall. There was a sickening crunch as the boy's skull cracked open and splattered like an egg, smearing blood and the gray matter of his brain all over the wall. Rogue dropped the body to the ground, and Warren slowly turned off the video camera. He then turned and ran out of the corridor, sickened by the whole ordeal.
Once he made it to the stairs back up to the main part of the prison, he stopped and caught his breath. He couldn't let any of the others see him ready to vomit. Then they would make fun of him even more than they usually do.
Taking a deep breath, Warren ascended the stairs. The only people he ran into were the clean-up crew, heading down to the Cold Room to clean up the mess Rogue had made.
Once he made it back to the ground level, he quickly turned down a dark corridor that would take him to the hospital wing, but would steer him clear of the main rooms.
He heard Felix long before he saw him. Felix came stumbling down the corridor out of the hospital, shouting obscenities at the top of his lungs. Warren watched from the shadows as Felix stumbled around the corner...
...and ran right into a wall.
"Stupid fucking wall..." he muttered, stepping back and feeling his way through the door. He could barely see due to the bandages wrapped around his head and face, covering his right eye.
"Are walls invisible to you now?" asked Warren, stepping out of the shadows and into sight. Felix jumped back and reached for his belt, but he found no knives.
"Aww, did the kitty cat get declawed?" joked Warren.
"If I get declawed, then I'll find some scissors and clip your precious wings," snarled Felix, his temper flaring.
Warren took a step back and glanced down at his favorite wings, the pair he wore strapped to his arms and chest all the time in case he needed to make a hasty escape from Rogue, or any of the other Gracebeasts that felt like bullying him. He was often joked because he was the worst fighter in the entire prison, and because he was one of the first experiments. He and Felix were both experiments, but he had drawn the short straw, so to speak. Felix was supposed to have been given a simple agility Grace, but instead he had gotten the agility of a cat. Instead of being a Gracebeast, the others called him the Cat Beast. Warren's Grace had been a simple stealth Grace, but something went wrong, and now, instead of simply being quiet on his feet, he was completely weightless. However, he still retained his strength, which let him fly and not be blown over by the wind. That was how he had gotten his nickname: the Winged Beast.
"So, what's the deal with your eye?" asked Warren, crossing his long thin arms over his chest.
Felix crossed his arms over his chest, looking like a small pouting child. "I'm blind in my right eye. The Healers couldn't do anything about it."
"That sucks..." muttered Warren, glancing at the ground. "But at least you get to keep your eye, right?"
Felix nodded a bit. "Yeah, I guess..." he grumbled.
Warren kicked a small rock on the ground. If he had to choose between losing an eye and going blind in one, he would rather lose an eye. Hopefully if it ever came to that, he would lose his right eye, the bright red one. That way he could at least pass off as a normal person, or at least a Graceling with his dark gray left eye.
Suddenly, the room got uncomfortably colder and considerably darker. Warren and Felix both shuddered at the ominous feeling. The feeling of being watched.
Suddenly, a loud, hiss – so deep it sounded like a growl – came from down the dark corridor, right behind Felix. He whipped around and, when he didn't see anything, he slowly backed up next to Warren, his working eye wide.
"Please tell me you have a knife with you..." Felix whispered to Warren. Warren nodded slightly, and he pulled a small dagger from his belt and handed it to Felix, who held it loosely in his hand, ready to throw it.
That was when something cold and scaly slithered over Warren's foot. Jumping back with a loud squeal, Warren looked down and saw a giant black cobra slowly curling itself around his scrawny ankle. He froze, too scared to move. The last thing he wanted to do was anger the snake and get bitten again. He had been bitten once before; the venom had nearly paralyzed him, and was the reason for the twitch in his right arm and hand.
"Don't run," hissed an old, crackly voice from the other end of the corridor. "Ssshe won't bite you if you hold ssstill."
Warren felt his blood freeze, and he saw all the color leave Felix's face. They both knew that voice. They had heard it plenty of times in their nightmares...
Slowly, they turned around. At first they didn't see her because of her dark brown snake-skin cloak. Then they saw her eyes, and the rest followed. She was standing only a few feet away in all her hideous glory.
She was called many things. The Snake Whisperer. The Walking Shadow. The Freaky Bitch, as Felix called her. But none of them were more famous than the first name she had been given:
The Seamstress.
Her name had once been Sasha, but the name had been too innocent. The Seamstress was more accurate, because it told what she did with her victims. She had tortured people in hundreds of different ways with only a needle and some thread. And there was more meaning behind her name, for underneath her snake-skin cloak, she wore a cloak made entirely of human skin. Warren could even see a bit of fresh skin not entirely hidden by her cloak. He knew it was fresh because it was still bleeding...
The Seamstress looked down at the snake, which happened to be her pet and partner in torture. She made a small gesture, and the snake slithered away from Warren's leg and towards her. The old witch bent down, and the cobra curled lovingly around her arm. She stood upright again and looked at Warren and Felix.
Warren had to keep reminding himself not to look at her snakelike eyes, the left one blue and the right one red. If he looked at the eyes for too long, he would lose his mind completely. Instead, he looked at her crooked nose and her horrible mouth. She was missing most of her teeth; there were only a few left on the top, and there was one left on the bottom. Due to her massive under-bite, the one tooth on the bottom stuck out whenever she closed her mouth.
Warren started to feel slightly nauseous, so instead, he turned his eyes to his own feet until the Seamstress finally spoke.
"The Baron wantsss to ssspeak to you..." she hissed. Then she turned and disappeared into the shadows, leaving Warren and Felix standing still as statues, to scared to move. Finally, Felix managed to swallow the lump in his throat and speak up.
"W-we s-s-should p-probably go..." he stammered, his teeth chattering. "B-b-before s-she c-c-comes back..."
Warren could only nod. Then he and Felix took off down the hall in the opposite direction the Seamstress had gone.
Everyone except the Baron feared the Seamstress. Even Rogue, who slept with a poisonous scorpion under his pillow, was scared of her. It was easy to see why.
After a minute, Warren and Felix calmed down enough to walk. They made it to the main room a moment later.
When they got there, the Baron was sitting on his metallic throne. His left eye was closed, and his right eye was gone and had been replaced by a mechanical eye-patch; both of his robotic hands were clasped together, and he rested his forehead on them, his long black hair streaked with gray falling in front of his face. His right leg – his only limb that wasn't mechanical – was twitching a bit as he impatiently tapped his foot. The small yet bulky generator strapped to his back was sparking and whirring away to keep his limbs functional, and it would occasionally let out a small squirt of oil, which would smear itself onto his body, his throne, or the floor near the throne.
"How long...?" the Baron asked as Warren and Felix cautiously approached, wary of the mindless drones watching from the shadows of the room.
"H-how long... what?" asked Felix nervously.
"How long have you been chasing this particular group of Gracelings...?" the Baron asked, sitting upright and opening his bright red eye, which was blazing with fury.
"A-about five years, sir..." said Felix, wringing his hands together.
"Five years," repeated the Baron, slowly rising to his feet, the action provoking his mechanical leg to squeak and drip a bit more oil. "And in those five years, have you even been injured by any of those particular Gracelings?"
"No sir..." muttered Felix, looking at the ground.
The Baron nodded, his aged and scarred face emotionless but his eye still betraying his anger. "And now, they find a new Graceling with an unnatural Grace, and he manages to blind you in your right eye."
Felix nodded, still looking at the ground.
"Where did you say you first saw him again?" asked the Baron.
Felix gulped before speaking. "I was following 2 and 5 through the Dead City, and then next thing I know, this kid came out of nowhere..."
"So he was in the Dead City too?"
Felix nodded.
"Did he have a number...?"
Felix pushed his spiky black hair out of his eye. "Uh... yes... I think I remember a number..." he said. "It was... 9."
The Baron suddenly got a slightly distant look in his eye, but it only lasted for a moment. "9?"
Felix nodded uneasily.
The Baron slowly nodded. "Did you happen to see his eye color?" he asked.
It took Felix a moment, but he did remember. "Yeah, one eye was green, and the other eye was bright orange..."
"Bright orange...?" muttered the Baron. "That's very close to red..."
The Baron slowly walked forward until he was a few feet away. He was a whole head taller than the six-foot-four Warren, and he was even more intimidating up close.
"This changes everything," said the Baron. "We can no longer afford to ignore them. And you getting injured does not help one bit."
Felix finally looked up, his eye wide. "Why?" he asked.
"Because," said the Baron as he turned and started to walk back to his throne, "they have this new member who can severely injure any of us. We cannot afford to ignore them any more, and you won't be able to go after them any more because of your injury."
Felix and Warren both paled, knowing where the conversation was going.
"That's why I'm sending you out, Warren," said the Baron as he turned around.
Warren's face went completely blank. He knew that he Baron wasn't sending him out because of his fighting skills; he was sending him out to punish Felix and to finally get rid of his least favorite experiment.
Slowly, Warren nodded, his face not betraying any emotions at all. If anyone had walked in at that moment, they would have thought that Warren had just been sentenced to death. Which he basically had been already.
The Baron sat back down in his oily throne. "Go arm yourself," he said to Warren. "Then leave immediately."
Warren slowly nodded and then left the room with Felix right behind him.
As soon as they were past the guards, they were at the spiral stairwell that lead up to the tower where the weapons were stored. Warren heard Felix start to say something, but he didn't want to hear it. Instead, he simply grabbed the small straps on the front of his wings that served as a handhold for when he flew. He quickly spread his wings and then flew straight up through the stairwell towards the weapons tower, leaving Felix in the dust.
As soon as he made it to the landing, he let his wings fall back to his side and he slowly walked into the weapons room. He was good at shooting, so he armed himself with his favorite harpoon gun, which he strapped to his back and arm. The part strapped to his back beneath his wings would hold all of the rope, and the part attached to his left arm was the spring-loaded gun. All he had to do was pull the harpoon out of the back piece and hook it into the arm piece.
Next he picked up a small hand-held gun. It was so small that it only held three bullets, but all he needed was one, seeing as they all had tracking devices in them. He started to load the gun, but a voice from behind stopped him.
"You should dip the bullets in Pitch," said the voice, which belonged to a slightly out of breath Felix.
"I don't like to use Pitch," said Warren, not turning around as he eyed the small jar filled with sticky black liquid sitting on one of the tables. He still had nightmares about Rogue torturing him with it.
"I know you don't like it, but you should use it anyways," said Felix. "That way if one of them gets away, they won't make it far."
"Still, I don't like it," said Warren, hunching his shoulders a bit. "It can still be lethal."
Felix rolled his eyes. "C'mon, it's the middle of October. And besides, it's only really lethal to Seers, and all the Seers are extinct."
"Fine, fine!" exclaimed Warren, finally giving in. He took the bullets over to the small jar of Pitch and dipped each one in several times. The black Pitch quickly disappeared, absorbed by the metal of the bullet. He then loaded his gun and stuffed it in a holder on his belt. Then he picked up a few more knives of different sizes before turning around to face Felix, who stood by the door with his arms crossed.
"I can't believe you're seriously going through with this..." Felix grumbled.
"Well, what choice do I have?!" exclaimed Warren, picking up a dark gray helmet. He pushed his dark brown hair out of his eyes and put the helmet on his head. He then gripped the handholds on his wings and walked towards the open window overlooking the Dead City. Far off in the distance, he could see the forest through the hazy darkness.
"Good luck," said Felix quietly, almost as if he were ashamed to admit that he was worried.
"Thanks..." said Warren. He stepped up onto the large window sill.
"Just... promise me two things," said Felix. "Catch some Gracelings, and don't die."
Warren nodded. "I'll keep that in mind."
He had no idea that he would fail at one.
Then, without another word, he jumped out the window and spread his wings, soaring through the darkness and towards the forest, where the Gracepunks were hiding...
A/N: King Cobras are the largest and most venomous snakes on the planet. Just thought I should let you know. Also, my computer nearly exploded when I was describing the Seamstress... Ugh...
Also, Rogue is based off of the villain from Fever, the Scorpion. Just thought I'd let ya know. SO... enjoy, and I'll try and update earlier next time.
... and Elliq wrote the first part. Sorry. ^^;