Welcome to Gaia! ::

He pauses, considering whether it might be best to check on the room. But that would be risky.

So after a moment he follows her, because of course he does.

There was a bucket in one corner, and then stench of it had accompanied him throughout most of his crawl. Delyth Arthur, Cherise Ness, and Maya Bhat were clustered into the other corner of small room, cramped with a low, sloping ceiling. Pale and sickly, they stared at him with wide eyes full of shock.

For a moment they couldn't even breath, and then suddenly the girls surged up and surrounded him, filthy hands grabbing and clinging. At least one was crying and it was difficult to tell who was speaking,

"You've come, you've finally..."

"Please it's not us, they aren't us..."

"Thank you, thank you, please, thank you, sorry we didn't..."

"We've learned the lesson, please..."

"Please get us out please!"

"It was a dare," she answered, taking a deep, shaking breath. "They say there's ghosts down here so we...we came on a dare, and then those..." a small sob, "they shoved us in here. They took our faces and it's been so long. Nobody..." her breath picked up again, the upset nearly overwhelming, "nobody even notices it's not us. We've screamed and yelled but nobody's can hear and nobody was looking."

Cherise, face angry insisted, "They knew! They found out! That's why he's here," her head whipper toward Taym, eyes wide and a little crazed.

It is a difficult thing, to learn how easily you are replaced in this world.

He summoned Fiona halfway back through, as soon as he was sure that the abrupt rune-light wouldn't attract any unwanted attention from inside the room, and he slipped to his feet among the warren of pipes, dropping immediately to a half-crouch, tense and wary and ready. Nothing happened.

He measured the silence behind the din of the machinery, measured his own breaths, the bronze hilt a cool and reassuring weight against his palms.

He stepped tentatively out towards the empty boiler room, picking his way over a pipe, and relaxed.

The rattle of metal came a half a breath before the assault: from the side, from the shadow beneath a hulking machine, slamming him full force to the ground, a pipe running along the ground catching him in the ribs with a thud, another twisting his ankle.

The thing abruptly clawing to pin him to the ground was wearing a nightgown, but its face was rapidly drifting from any semblance to the girls. When it launched itself out of the dark he'd thought it was the one with Maya's face, but it was impossible to say now: its features contorted, twisted, melted, ran like wet paint, until it was only a shabby and angry parody of a little girl's face stretched over a mouth filled with too many teeth.

It was hard--almost impossible--but he made no sound, gritting his teeth against the pain of his ribs and his ankle and of the claws sliding with relish into the flesh of his arms. What few whimpering noises of exertion slipped between his teeth would be swallowed by the metallic hum and the steam.

In contrast, the creature bared its teeth at him almost affectionately, and its laugh was low and quiet and confident, even as Fiona bit deep into its belly, sawing sideways. He felt the body under the blade shift and change, felt it slip aside, and as he scrambled to overpower it only to be tripped up by the pipes he felt rather than saw it joined by another, and was yanked to the ground again, even harder this time, and this time into a pair of arms translucent-fleshed and long-taloned and far, far too strong. It held him in place as the first made a grab for his belly, a swipe designed to inflict the same sort of pain he'd just attempted to dish out--they were copies, after all; they mimicked.

The need for survival, raw and angry, surged up and superseded strategy or anything resembling it. Back from the Sahara, glimpsed through an infirmary window, Taym had thrashed against restraints like an animal while a Life tech tried to put a tube into his arm, violent fury displacing the need for finesse. The light of Fiona's runes, sun-dappled and beautiful, flashed here-and-gone-and-here-and-gone against the peeling paint of a boiler as the blade sank again and again into something that was like and unlike flesh, and his captor wheeled backwards with an angry, pained wail that was half the voice of a child and half a sound unlike anything he'd ever heard, an unreal noise that instincts and training alike reacted to with the hair rising on the back of his neck.

He fumbled backwards, biting back a yelp as a pipe against the back of his arm burned, and when the first creature charged he grabbed, sinking his fingers and Fiona's knife into the face that now had only the faintest resemblance to a human's, and he shoved it hard against the burning metal. Wailing rose to shrieks and a stink that was like and unlike burnt flesh, and while the creature's hands were occupied with trying to push itself loose he stabbed and twisted, something black and horrible mingling with his own blood on his hands.

A second later a weight slammed into him from behind, and the second one was clawing into his back, tangling its fingers in his hair, trying desperately to pull him away. He let it, tried to ignore the white-hot pain of talons tearing through his shirt and his skin, in favor of dealing with the one he already had at a disadvantage, which a moment later disintegrated under his hands.

Gritting his teeth, thinking for a fleeting hysterical moment of America and her trust falls, he threw himself backwards as hard as he could, met with another wail as the creature on his back met the floor and the pipes in what Taym knew was a world of pain. He surged up, a half-scream of pain finally yanked from his lungs and quickly stifled: its claws were still firmly in his back, scoring long, cruel slices across his back.

He wheeled, knife at the ready, and fell on it, moving with as much predatory rage as he felt, slamming its head into the floor with one hand while he sliced and stabbed with the other. It grinned at him for a split second with a face that was almost his own, and maybe it had expected this to faze him, rather than giving him the surge of strength and speed and adrenaline he needed to finally pin the thing to the floor with his knife, dragging hard through alien entrails and strangely-made flesh.

As its thrashing beneath him grew weaker, its claws less effective, the pain in his back sharpened and pitched up as a weight settled on them. Long fingers, nearly human but not quite, reached up to touch his face, arms wrapped around him. Fiona's presence in his mind was one of urgent alert: his was nearly broken, and he felt the cool wash of her attempts to mend it fall short as the almost-hand tipped his chin back and bent to his ear.

Of course, he thought, exhausted. There were three of them.

He pants and trembles on the floor of the empty boiler room, catching his breath, and every swell of his ribcage stretches the taut skin of his back and is met with agony. He feels his way across the floor, not realizing what he is looking for until he finds it: a triangle of ragged flesh and cartilage, punctured and torn and useless.

There is no pain in his ear, but he feels the blood, and he crawls slowly and painfully toward the grate, calling through it, his usual control over his voice unchanged, his tone quiet and authoritative and unafraid.

"It's safe. Cherise, give Maya a hand up. Maya, bring me my coat and my scarf."

After a moment of silence and then of uncertain rustling on the other side, a flashlight snapped on--the one he'd had in his pocket--and a few seconds later Maya was shimmying through the duct. He held a finger to his lips as she approached, and she bit back the cry of shock and terror at the sight of him. He reached in to help her out, and took the scarf, grateful that it was dark wool as he swabbed the worst of the blood off of his face and wound it up and around into a cowl before reaching for his jacket, glad that he was facing her, that she wouldn't see why he flinched as he shrugged into it to hide the blood.

"It looks worse than it is," he whispered with a smile. "Ears and head wounds always bleed worse than they are."

"What happened?" she asked, pale and shaken, and he shook his head, scrubbing his hands on his scarf and merely telling her: you're safe now. A few minutes later and Cherise was free, and Maya went back through to reach down and help Delyth up. With all three girls gathered around him, Taym--silently praying that he hadn't yet bled through his coat, keeping his voice calm and level, full of reassuring smiles as the edges of his vision went dim and fuzzy with suppressed agony--smoothed Maya's hair back from her forehead, tousled Cherise's, and had a brief and important talk about being careful what they told people.

"You'll find out one day," he told them, certain that it was probably true, certain that these girls had been singled out for a reason, had been susceptible for a reason, "but until that day comes this is your story. Just yours. And now," he said, rueful and apologetic, "we're going to get you in trouble, but just a little bit."

He ushered them up the stairs into the main building, quiet, making them stay ahead of him so that none of them would have to see the dark stain spreading slowly, he felt it, through the back of his coat. Delyth was limping and footsore and tired, and so he stooped to carry her despite the dizzying pain this caused. The girls were taut and trembling with relief, Maya and Cherise clutching his arms, and he prayed for a clear way back to their room and for once found his prayers answered.

"I hope," he whispered as he gently lowered Delyth to the floor and ushered them in, "that you won't go looking for ghosts any more." They shook their heads, violently. "And what's the story?"

"We tried to sneak out to the woods," Maya repeated obediently, "and you--Mr. Shepherd, the security guy--found us and made us come back."

"And?"

"And you fell down in the wet grass and got muddy and dinged up so you went back to your room," Cherise parroted, before blurting desperately: "Are you going now?"

His vision swimming with pain and bloodloss--he felt it pooling behind his knees now, knew he needed to move before he started to leave a trail of it, Taym shook his head and grinned again, less convincingly this time.

"I'm going now. Stay out of trouble," he said.

They tried to hug him, Delyth crying again. Only Maya succeeded, and he felt her go tense as her hand made contact with the soaking back of his jacket.

"Stay out of trouble," he repeated, and he backed out of their room into the hallway.

Dizzy, weak, he fumbled up the stairs towards the room he'd been given in the boys' wing, and he called the number he'd been given for emergencies and told them, his voice calm and rueful, that he'd caught the girls in room 4F trying to make a runner, but they were safe in their room now. Clumsy a** that he was he'd taken a spill, so he was going off to clean up, and could the backup take his shift for the rest of the night?

He imbued his voice with the tone of a young, irresponsible American regretting his career decisions. That would make it easier to explain, when the morning came and he was gone, an irritated footnote in the personnel files and nothing more.

Careful not to leave any blood, he gathered up his bag, and he tried to reach for his bandages, but instead, exhausted, he simply touched the pendant around his neck, his hands now shaking violently, and whispered the name for home.

"Cleanup," he said weakly to the first tech there to retrieve him. "Death team, just one is plenty. Just some blood in the boiler room. Everything else is fine."

Which was about as much as he managed before his knees gave out.