Chapter 1: One-In-A-Million Circumstances
Six months after the signing of the Joint-Quarantine Protocol...
Day One-Hundred Eighty-Nine of Infestation — 26th of August, 2182 A.D, Earth Standard Time
When one is running for their life from the threat of a painful death, they might easily forget a few things. What someone said to them the previous morning. The location of a particular object that might come in handy. Their mental map of the nearby area. Their mother's maiden-name. Things such as that. They may even forget, or deign to disregard, what direction they should flee in. So long as it's "away from the threat", it's usually good. Especially when that person has several Xenomorphs hot on their heels...
Samantha Carman Quinn skidded around a sharp corner, her arm straining painfully as she used her hand to grab the wall's edge and swing herself around the turn. This was the first turn she'd taken, so far, and she'd only taken it once she was certain that her pursuers were far enough behind her for it to be safe. Turns slow you down, after all. And "slow" wasn't something you could afford to be, in this place.
As she sprinted down the blue-gray corridor, doors and silver room-numbers flying by, she occupied her thoughts by mentally berating herself for being careless. In order to avoid panicking, ostensibly— though you wouldn't catch her dead admitting it.
Good! Great! Fantastic! Great job, Sam. You've really done it this time, haven't you?How could you forget to seal the airlock!?You stupid, stupid woman! For fuck's sake!—, were just some of the things that she seriously considered yelling aloud.
You see, for the past three months, she had been hiding in the airlock of a large marine tank that had used to be part of an aquarium— the kind that used to have sharks and manta-rays in it, before they all starved to death over the course of the infestation. She had chosen the airlock as her hiding spot on account of the fact that the electricity of the doors and tunnel blocked out Xenomorph Electroreception. Or at the very least, that had been her theory. It had been working fairly well— Xenomorph echolocation and infrasound couldn't go through the air-tight doors, and the heavy smell of chlorine blocked out Samantha's scent. She could pop in and out multiple times, root around for food and supplies, and they'd never get tipped off to her presence.
Until— without the slightest amount of humor, mind you, as much she would have loved to be in a laughing mood, right now… she forgot…
She forgot to seal the airlock door overnight, and thus: wound up letting her scent lead them right to her hiding spot. How the Hell a person just "forgets" something like that was beyond her, but it happened, and she'd only managed to escape thanks to her just so happening to leave her hideout right as a group of Xenos tracked her down. She shouldn't have stayed up so late trying to draw— her late-night grogginess had cost her her livelihood! As little as one mistake, it seemed, was enough to seal your fate...
Her only warning of attack was a faint "whoosh", and it was all she needed to hop, mid-bound, to avoid taking a two-foot blade of black exoskeleton through her leg. The metal sparked and left a deep gash in the floor behind her. Five Xenomorph Warriors close behind. It was only thanks to Samantha being abnormally quick (an award-winning track-runner, actually) and thanks to Warriors being less nimble than most Xenomorphs that she could outpace them. Otherwise, Samantha would have long ago been bestowed a gaping hole in her forehead at the receiving end of a Xenomorph's pharyngeal jaws.
A deep snarl met her ears, evidently in frustration, as they continued pursuing her on all-fours. One of them was crawling along the ceiling, another was on the wall to her left, and the other three were on the ground… last time she checked, that is. She pretty much had to guess from where exactly the next attack would come from.
She cursed as a Xeno's tail-blade whipped through the air above her head— inches away from scalping her. The rush of wind slapping the back of her neck, and the sound of whistling air belied the attack's source. This forced her to glance behind her, unable to shake the urge. She wondered if one or more them might have broken off to try to pursue her down another path...
Her glance backward confirmed that the situation hadn't changed.
They all had their limbs splayed out to either side— their heads, spines, and hip-joints moving with a constant, spring-like, side-to-side motion; with their arms swinging up and around to yank the ground backwards for forward momentum, like a paddle scooping through water. Their legs looked as if they were swimming— it was much the same way monitor lizards move when they ran, though this only occurred to her in a brief flash of deep memory.
Sam could tell that all five of them were sprinting at full pelt in their pursuit. They were really trying to catch her…
She sped up.
Although Samantha was still keeping a distance of, at least, ten feet between her and her pursuers, she knew that she wouldn't be able to keep this up for longer than some minutes. She found it logically to assume that Xenomorphs have proportionally large hearts, like birds. In which case: they could likely expend more energy over longer periods of time than any Human, least of all her, despite her prize-winning speed.
They might not have been able to outrun her in the moment, but they would outlast her. Besides, she had already been running for the past ten minutes, her leg muscles were starting to burn, she'd not slept very much at all last night, and she had to force herself to take full breaths.
She had to end this chase, fast. But where to go? It wasn't as though you could hide behind a potted plant!
No… she, and any survivor of the Infestation knew, at this point, that you had to take multiple measures in a Hell-hole like this. Find something with a lot of electricity running through it, cover your scent with something pungent, and make sure that your "home" is sound-proof. That airlock in the marine tank had had all of those. Samantha had, sometimes, thought about writing a guidebook on surviving a Xenomorph infestation, in case anything like it happened again... should she survive the Infestation, itself. But in order to do that, she had to survive this fine mess.
In her destination-less sprint, she flew past a large window viewing a small park-area outside the complex. The five Warriors following behind, casting dark shadows behind her in the yellow, morning light. She looked around, for the umpteenth time, for an exit— an opportunity. Something to get them off her tail.
There was nothing, just more locked doors and room numbers. She furrowed her brow— the tiniest worry that she might have gone down a dead-end path sprouted in her gut. For the first time in two weeks, she considered the possibility of dying. There was little chance of survival if she tried to fight, with no weapons. She couldn't think of any solutions— any way out of this. The knowledge of it gave her a very abrupt and painful headache.
But, alas, a tiny light at the end of the tunnel appeared— a door that was hanging ajar at the end of the blue-gray corridor caught her eye at the last moment. It was only thirty-five more yards away, and the Warriors behind her weren't gaining any ground, so she could make it! The only hindrance being that she would have to be very quick about shutting the door behind her. It was a heavier, more solid obstacle than most doors in this place, marking the delineation between Districts. And entering a new District meant new opportunities— more options than she had at-present.
Granted, she had no idea where she would go after that, or what she would do. She supposed she'd have to cross that bridge when she got to it... soon, she would be able to find a new hide-out and get back under the Hive's radar. Soon, she—
Samantha felt the air flee her lungs and her feet leave the ground. A blur of movement, a burst of pain through her torso, and the sound of furious hissing met her senses but were not registered. Time slowed. The smallest of her thoughts managed to be heard amid her mental noise— that one of the Xenomorphs must have taken a leap at her and gotten lucky.
Her spine had flexed inward painfully and it felt as if someone had shanked her between the ribs with a rusty steak knife. Her short flight then ended, when she fell face-first onto the floor and tumbled. Said floor, unbeknownst to her, happened to have been severely weakened by a months-old acid-splash…
The sound of groaning metal and buckling steel shook the world around her, and just as she thought to get her legs moving again, and get back up: she plummeted into a sudden darkness. A cacophonous storm of debris was all she could register. Time slowed down as Samantha's body spun in her descent, turning upwards.
As her mind worked overtime to allow her to react to the rapidly-changing circumstance, and her perception of reality slowed to a crawl: nothing seemed… real to her. She couldn't seem to hear anything. It almost felt like a, uh… dream.
When she finally landed, spread-eagle and not painlessly, on a metal floor after what seemed to be a twenty-foot drop — an incredibly loud "bang" prompting her mind to slow down and time to speed up again — she snapped back to reality. Her injuries made themselves known, along with newer ones. She'd hit her head on something on the way down— a dull, suffocating migraine throbbed in the back of her skull. Stars in her vision. She was only partly aware of the things happening around her, and she knew that she was less aware than normal, but... she couldn't bring herself to think straight. Then it all began to fade...
She could hear the loud thumping of her heart in her ears starting to slow down. Debris, metal, and a few girders fell around her; the sounds of their impacts muffled from all of the blood rushing to her head. Again, everything suddenly felt like it was a shifted reality, as though she were looking back on the events of an old story, even as they were happening, right now.
A square, steel section of flooring fell from above and landed on her chest, bringing a whole host of previously-undetected pain from elsewhere. Her skull throbbed. Her left shoulder felt as though it were dislocated. Her whole right leg felt like it was being slow-cooked. A great pressure squeezed her lungs. Her spine ached and felt stiff. She wouldn't be surprised if a rib or two were broken. And she was pretty sure she felt blood spill down her scalp.
She stared upwards at the bright... beautiful golden light filling her vision, catching a glimpse of a Xenomorph turning away from the giant hole she had apparently fallen through. More girders, up above, warped and bent, no longer able to support the gargantuan weight of the superstructure. The walls sheared in places, gnarled steel and titanium straining to remain upright...
Almost anticlimactically, though, the muffled noises of the ongoing collapse dwindled to nothing...
Well, then… not what I had in mind... but... still a better way to go than by Chestburster, she managed to think with a... new, bittersweet feeling of acceptance that doused the pain in her body. At least this way the Xenos wouldn't get the chance to kill her, themselves.
She had been a thorn in their side for a while.
As her vision began to fade, and the pain started rushing away like the tide of the ocean, she whispered, or thought she whispered, with a small smile; "at least I won't be a baby Xeno's first meal".
Then, she blacked out.
The Old Soldier reared up on his haunches, skidding to a halt as the floor of the structure fell downwards into an abyss, the human going with it. He and his Hive-Mates had herded the human down this path specifically to attempt to corner it— he had been aware of the structural weakness of the local area, due to a skirmish some time ago, and had hoped the prey would be halted by the noticeable crookedness of the floors in this vicinity. He hadn't accounted for the human completely ignoring it, nor for one of his fellow chasers causing the human to plummet into a chasm. The Hive-Mate who had done so, incidentally, had his head and skull crushed by a giant, metal prism falling from above, and promptly fell into the pit.
As the collapse occurred, he urged his fellows with a caution command, and backpedaled the way they'd come. Once the area stabilized, again, he investigated.
He rose up onto his hind legs and walked up to the edge of the gigantic hole— at least twelve tail-length across. He hadn't expected the weakness of the local structure to be this extreme.
The human was down there. He perceived the creature's heart slowing down. With a pulse in his throat, he saw that the human was trapped under rubble and metal, the newly-dead Hive-Mate some tail-lengths away. Other humans had succumbed to lesser injuries many times before, and he surmised that this one wouldn't last long enough for them to extricate her from the pit and bring her to the Hive.
He sent a mental image of the dying human through the Hive-Mind, to the Nexus. His Mother immediately sent back a feeling of irritation, and audibly called him and his group back to the Hive with a loud screech which rang throughout the halls. Though, he and his group didn't hear it from this distance, he knew that she was, indeed, calling, and they could feel it. Mother would have found great satisfaction in the collection of this particular human. It had been evading capture for a long time.
He turned, stood upright, and walked back the way they had come, barking a short hiss to his group (who had been surrounding the hole, themselves) to follow him.
Mother called to him through the Hive-Mind again, a tug on his senses, and showed him that humans had invaded the Hive's territory, a sizable distance away. She wanted him to go there and nullify the threat. He plotted the course in his mind...
As was common for occasions such as these, he knew that others would be sent here to check if the human was truly dead. In particular, there was one sibling of his who was the most likely to be sent to do so— one whom the Nexus favored, and one whom the Nexus typically sent in his wake.
The Old Soldier forged onward, and left his ponderings behind...
An hour-and-a-half, later.
On the outer edges of the Xenomorph Hive Territory, on the line between the Commercial and Residential Districts of New Scena City, only some miles Southeast from Lake Ambria, a vent's grille stirred in an old and cobweb-smattered hallway. Its slats warped with a "bang", twisting outward, then the whole of it burst off of its screws and launched a-clanging down an empty hall. An inhuman hand reached out, brown and bronze stained the oppressive grayness, and a topaz-colored shadow emerged.
The shadow slunk out and stalked in a circle, silently padding across the granite tiles, and then chose a direction. The cobwebs about it undulated with the new flow of air, giving life to what had been an oppressively static passage. And as the shadow passed, there went a solemn legacy. Coasting at a brisk trot strode a horror and hero; a ghost clad in demon-skin.
Thus strode the Xenomorph Queen's prized Scout. Thus strode Anteros.
Anteros had been ordered to search through a specific area for the corpse of a Human. And if he didn't find it, he would have to find out where said Human went. It was the story of his life, practically— go here, search for this, find it if it isn't there, repeat. An average day for one of the Hive's Scouts. Although, Anteros was nowhere near "average".
Every Scout would take up reconnaissance, and run "search-and-destroy" tasks for the Hive. Usually about two-to-three of these situations would pop up, per day, giving Scouts like him a lot of spare time they didn't need. Usually, they'd either eat or sleep during their "downtime", even if they weren't really tired or hungry.
Anteros was different. Very different. He had a name, he had interests, and he had doubts. His Hive-Mates had never even given him a second glance, not a whisper of understanding, but his Queen had known these things about him as quickly as they'd become apparent.
His abnormalities were praised as a stroke of good fortune, and thus, Anteros was given more free rein and… "trust", as well as fewer mundane responsibilities, despite the existing list of them already being painfully short. As far as Mother was concerned: if his "hobbies" helped the Hive and he continued to serve loyally, then all the better.
However, today was one of those days when he had to carry out at least one task for his Queen. And now, Anteros was trotting through a dark hallway. The lack of light and electricity told him that this entire floor had a power-cut. Apparently, a Human female in question had taken a nasty drop, and fell from a corridor above him, onto this floor. His Queen wanted confirmation that the Human was dead. What was interesting about this was that the Human in question had been quite the troublesome thorn in the Hive's rump. To the point that he'd even heard of the Human several times through the Hive-Mind— she had evaded capture and death at least two dozen times.
Anteros understood why this was a problem— but the more rational parts of him squinted at the idea that one Human simply staying hidden for a few months was truly that high of a priority. He had never raised the point, though, as he knew it would beget confusion in any Hive-Mates he tried to convey it to. The capture of Hosts was all they could ever want to think about, and the denial of it only frustrated and angered.
But, as mentioned before, Anteros was different. Because Anteros was Anteros. More on that, later.
He tilted his head to the left and right, neck twisting along its length, scanning the structure around him. Still nothing. No pulses of power or echoes of electricity. He had been trotting through this floor's hallways for about twenty minutes, and he still had half of the place to go. It was an underground storage facility where the Humans placed all of their surplus supplies. All granite-tile floors, stainless-steel walls, and lacquered-wood doors. He had observed enough to know that the entire planet was a "colony", and a particularly important colony, at that. It, apparently, needed to have supplies like food, water, and raw-material routinely shipped to it from other worlds.
Why such an important planet couldn't make its own supplies, Anteros didn't know.
Because many of the products stored here had a shelf-life, the Humans had dropped the temperature of this area down to just above freezing, and shut off the power to the entire floor. Evidently, no one saw fit to undo this when the Hive sprang up. If the Human female he was searching for did die, then her corpse would be ice cold by the time Anteros found it. Thus, he'd go without a meal.
Of all the places, the Human had to die here, he thought. Marvelous. He'd usually rather not eat Humans — more on that later — but he'd been forced to skip an earlier meal due to an unexpected attack by the Human military.
Maybe he was just looking for something to complain about, though.
He opened his maw and breathed in, tasting the air, trying to find the distinctive scent of "Human". Because he and his breed of Scouts lacked dorsal-tubes, he had to breathe and smell strictly through his mouth and throat. He had learned enough to surmise that his sense of smell was quite a bit better than others of his kind.
As the ice-cold air flowed into his lungs, he abruptly halted, catching the scent of something… out of place. A sterile and… artificial scent that only Humans could have manufactured. He'd smelt it before.
That aquatic tank?, he mused, skull tilting. The pungent smell of fish and what Humans call "chlorine".
Hmmm… Mother did say that the Human female had been hiding in a "large box full of water"… could that be what she was talking about?, he asked himself. His brain clicked the two details together, and he broke into a sprint toward the source of the scent, leaving the dwindling cobwebs billowing behind him.
The dark corridors would have been impossible for a Human to traverse in, but when you have echolocation and infrasound, it all just looks black, with a white outline for each object. Well... at least, he thought of the color as white. Having no "eyes", his kind could not discern color. He continued running, taking a left turn at an intersection— constantly swiveling his head on its axis, probing for the Human. If she was alive, he would hopefully see the bioelectric energy of her heart, diaphragm, and lungs. If the Human was dead, he would have to find the body through smell, alone.
He swung his skull to the left for the last time, catching some distant pulses of energy, making him skid to a halt. Some way ahead, he felt a prickling pressure on a spot on the front of his dome, and he focused his senses onto it, sending vibrational pulses in that direction. His sonic sight zeroed in on the area, and detailed to him the situation.
The Human was alive. Heart rate almost painfully slow, diaphragm struggling to work. The sound of labored breathing touched Anteros's skin. She was barely hanging on.
Like clockwork, and to his chagrin, he began to feel a heat in his skull, and an urge to snarl. The Ancestral portion of his psyche became eager, but Anteros suppressed the rising burn in the back of his head. No. None of that, he reminded himself, admonishing the part of him that wanted to tear the hominid apart, limb from limb. When she dies, I must bear witness, and I must remember.
One of the things about "giving in" to the urge and the burn, is that it negatively effects your memory of the time period you spend in the trance. He prided himself on his self-control. And thus, kept his cool every time he had to fight or kill… forcing himself to remember those moments in excruciating detail. Those memories were now a constant reminder. The perfect monument to what he hated the most about his life. To what he couldn't control...
But, again, more on that later.
He sucked in a quick breath, hissing, and calmed himself down. The Human was in the fifteenth room down the hall, on the left. Twenty meters away. She must have been in a great deal of pain. The faintest sound of groaning that fluttered against his skull being his clue.
Anteros trotted forward, nearly silently, and toward the small wooden door that separated him from his quarry. Coming up to it, he turned and rose to stand on his hind legs and reached for the door handle. By this point in the search: any of his Hive-Mates would have knocked the thing off of its hinges, but Anteros had taken to the subtlety of opening doors slowly and quietly. Despite the constant, nagging urge to run in "guns-blazing", created by the Ancestral.
His clawed hand closed around the ice cold, aluminum-alloy handle. Anteros could feel his heart-rate speed up. As usual.
He nearly startled, at the sound of the Human launching into a loud coughing fit. The Ancestral bucked in agitation, even harder. He waited until the hacking stopped. After all was silent again, he ever-so-gently pushed downward… and growled in irritation when the damned handle snapped straight off with a metallic "clink".
Crap, he thought, raising the small piece of metal up to his dome. Apparently he would have to knock the fucking thing off of its hinges. Damn this frigid temperature, he thought, wondering why the Human couldn't have fallen into a sauna. Hissing in distaste, he tossed the broken handle over his shoulder. Coming up with an idea, his tail snaked its way up and under his right arm, pressing the tip against the wood, gently. Just under where the door handle had been...
Samantha's eyes opened without prelude. Immediately greeted by the low, bluish light of the afternoon that flowed through the hole in the ceiling. At first she hadn't the slightest idea what was happening, or what had happened. She groaned, feeling her bones pop and crack as she shifted where she lay. That was when she noticed that she was squashed under a massive, square-shaped piece of metal flooring. Then she remembered how she had ended up there. Oh God, please tell me I didn't survive that, she begged, internally.
She looked down as a bitter cold tortured her lungs, forcing a cough out of her throat. She was pinned under a few massive steel girders which pressed the steel square down onto her, keeping her pinned. Her injuries didn't feel as bad, anymore. Not quite as overwhelmingly painful as she remembered them being, prior. She reached with her right arm around to touch the back of her head. Feeling only what had to be a crusted-over scab under her hair, she concluded that the wound had sealed up before any major blood loss could occur.
Although she still felt way too fucking dizzy from the blood loss that had occurred. She grabbed a lock of her normally raven-black hair, and pulled it up so she could see it. Stained and matted with crimson. She cringed in disgust and flicked the lock out of her sight. It was still hard to breath, and her leg was still in a sizable amount of pain. As was her left shoulder. And her ribs. But other than that, she was quite lucky.
Just fucking wonderful, she thought, frowning. The one time that she actually wanted— no, needed to die… and it had to be the one time that her shitty luck turned around. Her mother had always said that the luck of the Irish was a fickle thing.
She didn't know how long she'd been unconscious, and she wasn't sure she wanted to know. She tried looking around, but it was too dark to see anything beyond the spotlight that illuminated her position, on account of the massive fuck-off hole in the ceiling. It would have been all upside-down to her anyway, seeing as though she was lying on her back and couldn't sit up… or move, at all, really. She erupted into a loud coughing fit from the biting cold in her throat. Damn… she probably had an actual cold, now too.
As morbid and/or painful as it would be, the reality of the situation was that Samantha either needed to find a way to kill herself, or get moving, fast. The Xenomorphs would probably find her, easily, like this, and she wasn't about to take the bet that they might not bother to search. How she hadn't already been taken by now was anyone's guess. They didn't exactly need her in "top condition" to Infest her. The worst fate imaginable if one believed the stories... perhaps she was having a psychotic break, and they had already taken her to the Egg Chambers?
Okay, she really needed to get moving, now! Just as she attempted to get her arms into a position where she could push the debris off of her, she groaned as a new wave of dizziness, and fatigue struck her. Not to mention that her left arm would barely respond to her will, since it was apparently dislocated at the shoulder. Which was weird, because it didn't really hurt, that much... that could either be very good or very bad. It could either mean that it wasn't as damaged as it could have been, or it could mean that she somehow lost all of the feeling in her shoulder joint while she was unconscious. Potential nerve-damage.
Still, though, she tried to move her arms, again, and made an effort. Another wave of tiredness and pain forced her to stop, and made her limbs suddenly feel as though they were made of lead. What could only be extreme exhaustion set in.
Maybe she should… just go to sleep… yeah… yeah, a nap sounded good at the moment. Samantha closed her eyes...
Her senses shot straight up in alarm, however, when she heard a creak, nearby. She oriented her head backward to find darkness.
Crack!
Tendrils of fear sprung to action and strangled her throat, taking the air out of her lungs, as a small "hiss" tinged the darkness with insidious context. She gulped.
"Fuck..." she whispered.
Well... what else is there to say?
Anteros felt his tail snap straight through the five inches of wood and hissed in alarm. Fuck… I hope she didn't hear that, he thought. He sent a pulse to check, only to hear the Human whisper a similar curse.
Fucking Hell, why did she have to hear that?, he asked himself. Seeing no point in continuing to take a subtle approach, he yanked his tail out of the door and stepped back a bit. He dug his clawed feet into the floor, gathering power in his legs—
The door exploded into a shower of splinters and stakes as Anteros charged straight through the obstacle, head down, arm held in front of himself.
Ignoring the Human's loud gasp for the moment, he chirped a few infrasound pulses, each sound-wave spreading across the room, touching every nook and cranny. As the sound-waves bounced back to their source — Anteros's skull — his mind immediately measured how much, and in what way, the sounds had changed. The room was quite large, filled in every corner with small to large wooden crates, no doubt with labels that Anteros couldn't read. Upon gaining the mental image of the room, he then understood why the Human female was in such pain that he had sensed. She was almost completely squashed by a section of metal flooring and several girders, a lot of them seemed to have acid stains. There was a giant fuck-off hole in the ceiling, flooding the room with low-light. It was fairly obvious what had happened.
He then noticed something about the Human which surprised him. She appeared to be calmly staring at him... or in his general direction, seeing as though he was still in the shadows. Her calm facade was most likely a reaction to how afraid she truly was, seeing as though an extremely prevalent scent of terror was currently wafting into his mouth. But, instead of screaming, or attempting to get away, like most Humans would do... she simply stared at him, wide-eyed. Probably well-aware that her end was approaching.
Low light was pouring in from the hole in the ceiling above the Human, creating a sort of "spotlight" on her. Neatly, this very spotlight also highlighted the middle of the room, where none of the boxes happened to be. It was evident that she had probably made the weakened building structure collapse in on itself; most likely as she was running.
Anteros, having run out of excuses to hold off on doing his task, refocused on the Human and took loud, deliberate steps toward her, making sure she heard each footfall. Any of his Hive-Mates would have already impaled the Human with five different appendages by now, while snarling in rage; and though the Ancestral was loudly demanding he do so — in the form of a searing sensation in the back of his head — Anteros adamantly refused. Causing the burn to ebb, and reduce into a bothersome ache. He always gave his victims at least the respect of seeing him first, before he killed them.
If you could call that "respect".
The scent of the girl's increasing fear was almost eye watering... if he'd had eyes. But she surprisingly kept her cool, not "freaking out" as he stepped into the light. She could most definitely see him now. Though he didn't have "eyes", as a Human did, he could still see light and its sources, or the lack thereof.
Huh... tough girl, he thought. She had just survived a near-death experience, and he was about to kill her, yet she managed to keep herself composed. This wasn't simple terror freezing her in place, she was still blinking and visibly breathing through her nose with deliberate calm.
That burning in the back of his skull came back again, redoubling itself at his idle thoughts. He snarled aloud to himself. No! Fuck off! I have to remember this!, he affirmed to himself. There was little point arguing with his own instincts, but it helped him to maintain control.
He didn't enjoy remembering these kinds of things. He was simply the only one of his kind that gave enough a damn to give this sort of thing any thought. But he felt he had an obligation to remember.
A responsibility.
Again, more on that later.
Anteros approached and lowered himself to one knee. He bent at the waist, ever so slowly, maw and teeth drawing near to the woman's face. He stayed silent and still, hoping the message was clear.
That defiant hardness in her eyes evaporated...
He swung his tail up, over his shoulder. It drifted down in a smooth arc, the blade at its tip coming to hover above the woman's face. He resisted the urge to wantonly mutilate the Human, as his instincts kept begging him to do so. Her eyes scanned the blade above her, and she slumped, drawing in a deep breath. Her eyes closed. Anteros respected this Human's courage, and produced a near-silent hiss through his teeth.
Goodnight.
Six months ago...
Prometheus was born...
A tired man in a worn, old coat left his workplace, quietly. His name was Nigel Williams. And he was always tired.
A cohort of suits had barged in, today, demanding the use of the PSA-broadcast system to relay an emergency message. He'd bade them to be his guest, relinquishing his chair, and sat silently by as the suits did their work.
A dark legend, come to life, then, he'd thought, chewing on a cigar. Problematic. He then spent his time pondering the nature of catastrophes, and how his place in what would soon become a harrowing disaster would unfold— was this how Prometheus felt? How Odin felt upon giving of his own eye? Perhaps he would be this era's Zarathustra or its Giles Corey. Perhaps if he were a greater man, at least.
The day went by, and by the time the suits were done, his allotted time to work was over. The suits warned him that the local area was dangerous, and offered to spirit him away to relative safety. Nigel couldn't recall why he refused, and he simply took his things and left.
The walk home from his workplace was long, and shadows followed him— of the mind and of the spirit and of the physical. An old tune from better days walked alongside him, shielding him and sheltering him from that which haunted his steps. He hummed it, shuffling along on his way, the words to a song's chorus that he couldn't recall the title of recurring in his smoke-filled consciousness...
"Slaved to a new Black Gold,
Following the beat of the chemical.
Search this electric soul,
Crawling at the feet of a pedestal…"
The next few lyrics were lost to him, and had been for a long time.
The tired man in a worn, old coat found his willowing way home. The shadows of the mind and spirit fled from him, briefly... but the physical ones did not. It was as he slid his keycard through the reader and unlocked his front door that the shadows of the physical finally fixated upon him, and at that moment: his future locked out all but three possibilities.
Nigel Williams walked into his home, took a bottle of flavored water from his fridge, and drank it. In the first moment, a brief peace settled on him. In the next, he thought he heard a sound. In the last, he felt, for only an instant and yet for eternity, that the wheel of fate had turned upon him. The sensation passed, he turned to close his front door, and the Shadow presented itself to him in a flash of fang and talon.
Nigel Williams, friend to the ear of nearly every Guardianite, was never seen, again.
For the sake of maintaining a consistent glossary…
Scout = Runner
Soldier = Warrior
Ranger = Spitter
Worker = Drone
Sentry = Lurker