WARNING: There may be content which some may find uncomfortable or distressing. There are only suggestions of such sensitive topics in this chapter, however as the story progresses I'd like to let you know such themes may surface more. I will give particular warnings at the top of chapters which include any sensitive/distressing content I believe you should be warned about prior to reading it, though I will never include anything insensitively or anything that has no real justification to the plot. Just a friendly warning so you know if the story is for you or not!

A/N: Just a thank you to those who have taken the time to read the story so far, especially when the plot is only just starting to develop. It gives me the encouragement I need to sit and work through the writers block when I know what I want to happen, but can't pluck the words from the garbled ideas floating around in my head to string a sentence together!


CHAPTER TWO


It was a Sunday night and as normal a calm silence cloaked the house. The clock on the landing wall ticked softly in the darkness, unheard by those deep in their sleep. It was late and everyone had gone to bed hours ago yet sitting up in her small wooden framed bed in the pitch black of her room, was a young child. Her blonde hair was bedraggled as if she had been tossing and turning all night, and her dark eyes were deep set and tired, with a greyish hue tinting the skin under them. However she remained stiff, her knees clamped against her front, cocooned by her covers which hung around her shoulders. There was a heavy unsettling atmosphere hanging in the darkness of the small room, something thick and potent but indefinable by words. Yet moments later, there was a shift in the omnipresent mood when there was a soft, gentle rattling coming from the end of the room. A small breath hitched in the air as the door handle slowly turned.

Holding her knees against her tiny frame so tightly that she almost couldn't breathe, she scrunched her eyes shut at the familiar noise of the bottom of the door sliding across the thick carpet, and back again as it clicked shut. She screwed her face up painfully tighter and waited, expectant and fearful of the sound that she knew came next.

As she knew it would, the floor at the end of her bed creaked sharply and then groaned as someone slowly approached.

"Shh…It's past your bedtime Claudia…my little Claudia…"

She retracted herself even more into a ball and her feeble arms ached with the force she held herself inwards with. She buried her head into her arms and let out a muffled whimper as she felt the end of her bed lower with a heavy weight.

"Don't cry angel shhh…It ruins your pretty face."


After crying on the hallway floor for what felt like hours, Claudia felt as if her soul had poured out of her with the tears that had flowed down her cheeks. It was if she was empty, a shell with nothing more to give anymore. Her throat had suddenly become so hoarse that it seized to let any sound come out of it and her eyes became so dry that they stung mildly.

Somewhere deep within her past was the last time she had let such pain ripple through her bones and clench in her chest. It was as if she had even forgotten what it was to cry, and let an unadulterated primal instinct take over. But now it was over, and she felt nothing, as if beneath her rib cage was hollow space where feeling once was.

Feeling like she wasn't governing her own movements, Claudia finally pushed herself off from the floor – something in the back of her mind telling her that Eden could be back at any moment. Even as he filled her thoughts she had no overwhelming desire to cry anymore. In fact, what little emotion she did feel was one of self-hatred. Why had she come here and done this to him? Messed his life up even more?

Not even caring to remember the shotgun laid on the floor, she willed her legs to move down the hallway. How could she be so stupid? After seven years and at the first opportunity she had she'd cracked; let herself believe her silly little fantasies had a chance of becoming reality.

She descended the stairs, a small ball of anger suddenly growing in her stomach. First at herself, at her selfish desperate actions and then, at the world she existed in. The world in which she still couldn't have the one thing she cared most about. The one thing she had always tried to protect. Her thoughts were jumbled, crashing and blending into each other. This was everything she had ever deserved. Yet then it still wasn't fair and as much as she condemned herself to it, she loathed such fate from the pit of her core.

A sudden deafening bang sent her thoughts into non-existence and her hand shot out and gripped the stairway railing instinctively. An abrupt wave of voices filled the stairwell almost being washed out by the thunderous chorus of many feet thudding against the wooden floor.

"Take what is yours!"

A sickening panic set in yet Claudia found herself rigid and unable to fathom the ability to move. The chanting was deafening now and her heart had suddenly accelerated, thumping against her chest as her fingers went stiff around the railing.

From that moment to the next thing that happened, the time that passed was a good few seconds. However it felt like she didn't even have the chance to gasp when a horde of men rounded the corner and swarmed the staircase. It was as if her senses couldn't work quick enough to register what was happening. There were shouts and booms and crashes. There was orange, orange everywhere. There were the ear-splitting blasts of guns and then screams – such shrill screams.

A heavy impact thrust into Claudia's back in the chaos, one that sent pain surging through her body. She stumbled forward from the force, causing her to lose her footing on the step and her body was hurtled down the stairs, colliding with several hard objects on the way. The momentum was unrelenting and then suddenly, not even being able to anticipate the collision, her forehead smashed into the corner of the concrete wall, slicing through the skin like a knife through butter.

She hadn't even the chance to register the unbelievable pain that surged through her skull before everything disappeared and she fell into nothingness.


It was late that night by the time Claudia roused. It was only from the intense pain that throbbed in her head that she slowly prised her eyelids apart, only to squint in recoil at both the agony she was experiencing and the glare from the light above. Lifting her arm and holding it over her eyes in an attempt to block out the light, she came to realise she was lying flat on something.

She was undoubtedly exhausted and found it an immense effort to lower her hand to her forehead and gingerly graze the skin to find the source of the pain that pulsated in her head. She flinched slightly as her fingers traced along a raised line sitting above her eyebrow, skimming along a row of uniformed staples that was keeping the skin together.

Trying desperately to remain awake to process the information, she lolled her head to the side to get a better angle of the room. In her state of fatigue it was hard to will her eyes to fully focus, but from what she could make out, from the shaggy rug on the floor, the brown leather lounge chair, the unlit stone fireplace, she was in someone's home. She had not even a second to question whose couch she was slumped on as a movement caught her eye and she focused her attention to the door, craning her neck backwards to get a view.

The door was slightly ajar and through the gap stood a man, facing the other way so only the back of him could be seen. He had dark hair and wore combat pants with black lace up boots and a tatty khaki jacket. From the way he stood and how his head jerked every so often, Claudia realised he was speaking.

"I'm finding it hard to believe why a woman would want to fight in this cause."

"Ah…" The reply came from an unseen source. It was a strong deep voice, and had a peculiar accent but what was most striking, was that it had a cold almost inhuman tone masking it. "But by the prison identification number branded across her back, we can begin to assume she is not a woman of ordinary repute."

The sentence finished with a strange, sharp mechanical hiss.

The man nodded what seemed respectfully. "I'll have her kitted up with the rest."

He stepped aside and under Claudia's intent eyes, a towering form passed by the gap in the door. The door was only open wide enough for her to catch a fleeting look at who walked by. He was a giant of man of almost unfeasible stature. The thick padded sheepskin coat he wore swayed by his knees as he took a heavy stride. Yet the thing that would of evoked a hitch in her breathing had she not been in such a weary state, was the mask that caged his face, infused with tubes and metal. There were thick plates which curved around his wide jawline and down through the middle of his bald head, holding the center-piece over his entire nose and mouth. It was all she had time to see before, with another unsettling hiss, he was gone.

The man still standing outside of the door turned around, revealing he was of a foreign descent. He leaned in the room slightly and extended a hand round the door handle. As he grasped it, for a quick fleeting moment he looked directly at Claudia with unwavering eyes, before pulling the door closed with a soft click.