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 Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2014 9:30 pm
V retreated a few feet until she was just behind Jack, saying in a stage whisper, "Look, Mother, no welts!" as she lifted her crossbow.
Clicking his tongue, Jack braced his weapon and studied the door. He didn't want a repeat, not with fresh, angry reminders still on him.
(( You may not push her into the pods, )) Owain said with amusement as he caught the hunter's thoughts, cheerful as ever. Perhaps more so these days, even when it seemed foolish to be. (( Not if she is useful still! ))
---
The cost of what? The clones . . . Had they found something? Had they--?
But the moths began to disperse to signal the end of their conversation, and Stormy clenched her jaw a little. Tugging her hood down, she began to run after the fluttering trail of insects as fast as her legs would take her.
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Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2014 10:06 pm
There was the sound of hands, slapping against the stone door. Echoing wetly through the room and into the hall. --- The whispers followed her, the words swifter and more insistent as Stormy ran. "How many lives are theirs worth? How many? How many?" And then suddenly. "Four little lives, fluttering on my doorstep."Two already gone. Which were they?
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Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2014 10:43 pm
"Never thought we'd get to be in a zombie movie in the desert," V commented off-handedly, unflappable as ever. "Seems a little counterintuitive."
"How far back is the way we came through?"
"Oh...A ways. Why, thinking of quitting so soon?"
"Thinking of exits if this gets messy," Jack snapped. "Any other doors?"
"This seems to be the only one forward."
"Great." The wet slaps made his stomach turn, reminding him of the nauseating sounds of organs slapped on a slab. A bead of sweat travelled down from his brow and to his neck as he swallowed. "Close to a charge yet?"
"Ish."
"Which means?"
"Easy, Jackie! Two more hits or so should do it for him."
"Be quick about it when they come, then." Neither of his would help right now, not against what sounded like quite a few.
Jack touched his pendant on a sudden whim, running a finger over it with narrowed eyes. Nobody had bothered checking after five weeks on post, nobody had honestly considered that these things ran on runic power and that it wasn't limitless, that at some point they needed to be looked at. Then again, nobody had needed to. This was a one-way road, an extermination group sent not with the hopes of being successful but with the expectation of at least being an annoyance in the horseman's machinations.
He muttered, Deus just to test it and didn't feel so much as a flicker of power in the pendant.
Cowardly or not, Jack took another step back from the stone door, his weapon raised, his mind on the hunt for solutions to their predicament as the slaps echoed all around them.
---
"More than that," she panted under her breath, each time more emphatic, more anxious. "More than that." Who was left, who had been taken? Who joined Fred Ashton and were they too smears on the walls or just faceless meat ground to make more? Or was it just toying with her? (Of course it was, who was she kidding. Maybe they were the insects.)
Don't think about it, just move.
Adrenaline carried her forward and her legs seemed to blur under her, the sand a barely acknowledged obstacle beneath her boots, the slight chinks of Gale's charm bracelet a gentle reminder. She swore the wind was at her back, carrying her to the lair and towards the nearest entrance.
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Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2014 11:02 pm
"Four...little...lives...do you wish to...save them?" The fluttering, breathless quality of the whispers trailed along ahead and behind her. "Do you wish...to make their inevitable and bit...less...immediate?"
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Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2014 11:36 pm
< < Don't stop. > >
She began to slow anyway, half from the question, half because her heart was pounding too hard to be ignored. Sand was kicked up as Stormy put on the brakes, her eyes darting about before settling on the air behind her.
They were once seven people, with only bits of pieces learned and shared from all but one, but known nevertheless. Fred Ashton loved fried Oreos almost as much as he loved scrambled eggs and ketchup. Eric Yao would've been a bank teller if Deus hadn't picked him up. Carla Nuñez always checked that her skittles and m&ms didn't mix and only ate the green ones of both. Tyler McQueen once dressed up as Lightning McQueen at his niece's 5th birthday, complete with a cardboard box car. Alicia Benson once rode a dragon during a mission and swore the bumpy ride gave her more pleasure than her boyfriend ever did. Valerie Reznikov secretly loved romcoms even though she acted like they were too cheesy for her tastes, which surprisingly made her lovelife more complicated. Jack Hawthorn lied when he said he hated her. Names. Partners. Lives. Souls. People.
It was just like the fake trials The Circle had put them through. It might as well have been another live feed, another group whose lives were in her hands, another choice of whose lives were worth more?
It paralyzed her with fear to have to face the question again.
"How?" she asked in a small voice, and Thane's growl was ignored. "Tell me what to do."
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Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2014 11:44 pm
The membrane began to shift like a living thing. --- Another set of hands joined the first. Then another. The way back was gone. --- The moths turned away from their path to circle her once more. A manic, fluttering carousel. "Four of the blood...an even exchange. We are fair. Four lives for four more...females...fertile. Those who could bear more like you."
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Posted: Thu Sep 11, 2014 10:18 am
McQueen made a soft sound of alarm and yanked his sickle out of the membrane. "Got a live one here," he said as he backed off.
Nuñez, having been studying the entrance they'd come from in case more clones decided to show up, whipped around. "What about—"
But she could see none of them were moving. There wasn't any reason to believe they would, but she had held onto a shred of hope.
"We find the others," McQueen replied, turning to lead them back out and toward the fork. Maybe they'd have better luck going up the steps.
If there are any others, Nuñez thought bleakly as she followed, muttering, "Sorry," to the ones left behind.
---
Jack cursed as V let fly arrow after arrow at the wall of hands. Where were the others?
---
Four others. Fertile. Humans, she thought with a wave of sudden horror overcoming her. Women with the hunter gene. Stormy lost a few shades of color as her imagination betrayed her.
Her voice cracked. "No." The whirlwind of moths were dizzying to watch, but the idea was more nauseating—no, no. "I—I-I can't—I don't know how—" Hunters joined knowing there was no going back. Condemning ignorant civilians was as good as killing them herself, and she already had enough blood on her hands even trying to make a deal with this creature.
"You've taken two've us already!" Stormy pleaded with them. "Let two of us go!" Maybe it would see reason; maybe it was insane for her to think so, thinking she owned bargain chips that were already deep in someone else's pocket.
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Posted: Thu Sep 11, 2014 8:27 pm
Yao's head began to turn. --- The door cracked. --- A swirling wall closed in around Stormy, "Which two?"
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Posted: Thu Sep 11, 2014 8:44 pm
"Tyler--"
"Keep moving," he said and picked up the pace.
---
V continued to fire, for once not a chatty and smug little b***h. The glow of her weapon was a welcome sight, but Jack remained tense, welt-covered, and grim. Between shots, a long arm holding a longer weapon slashed at the door.
No point in delaying the inevitable.
---
"Me," she answered without hesitation, which was a first. The runic torch was now out of her pocket, and with a flip of the switch came on. Its light was comforting against the barrier of moths. "But you already said I could before the deal, so that doesn't count. I can't tell you the other two if I don't know who's left, though," Stormy continued, going on the fly. "You have to let me see them in person, see who's really worth it."
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Posted: Thu Sep 11, 2014 9:07 pm
A pause and shift, the fluttering forms begging to merge and take shape until a living sculpture of McQueen and Nunez, racing from something unseen. The moths broke apart after several moments, and then came together once again. Jack and V fighting, an indistinct form behind them, reaching toward the taller hunter. "Choose."
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Posted: Thu Sep 11, 2014 11:48 pm
Damn it. Maybe it had been too much to hope she could be allowed to move forward, but she always had been a creature of irrational optimism. And now she felt its fragments, broken apart by days and days and weeks and weeks of nothing but a slow descent into hell, dissolve and mix with the sand.
"Choose."
She stared into the ever shifting forms of her team before her for the longest seconds of her life.
Decisions were what she should have been the elder of in that tower, because they were the most frightening things in the world to her. Being unfettered was her constant goal in life, along with meeting everything and everyone with a smile, and that meant avoiding responsibility as well. And she had done well on that front for the most part: deferring to others, following leads, suggesting but never standing firm, remaining flexible and never in charge because those never ended well. Her first promotion? It got so awkward that Aria had to intervene to get her something, and then they'd all nearly gotten gunned down just to recover one item. No wonder she never actually got another assignment to officially move from trainee to hunter. Nevada's artifact mission? A disaster that ended with bugs, a broken artifact, and a broken friendship.
(She still had nightmares of Nevada's shadow over her, cold hands at her neck insisting they trade spots, green eyes that bore into her but never got what they wanted, no matter how much Stormy tried to give in to make her happy again.)
On missions she was the one who usually ended up in the worst situation. (Swallowing sand and giant dragons and piercing bones and hurricane strength waves and a murder in the dark for a false hope and bugs and bugs and more bugs and always, always falling--) The only things she could ever complete without a screw up were the mundane things: Moving. Training. Cutting hair. Her own best friend and sister hadn't wanted her around. And now, having gone on a pointless and risky journey to prove nothing to no-one, she had to decide the fates of people she either only was just beginning to know or knew too much about?
Abruptly, Stormy let out an unpleasant laugh.
Her features grew more manic, a sickening mix of horror, fear, and humor. This was real. This was happening.
For once, Stormy wished she wasn't so open-minded. She wished Gale was there to take over, tug his goggles down and tell her everything would be just fine. She wished Evan was there to chastise her for cursing and boldly state that they weren't making deals before slicing the wall of moths away. She wished Tuck would exist again just long enough to say I got you, Stormygirl. She needed people to make the important decisions for her, she always had, because they had both feet on the earth and their heads tightly wound on their shoulders and a brain that didn't visit ideas like trading humans for hunters just to live another day. They were smarter. They would have done the right things, made sure there was only minimal casualties, cut down the clones and blown up the base or gotten out before it all went to hell in a handbasket.
All she was good at was running, and she couldn't even do that now.
Her eyes grew watery. < < This is not an impossible decision, or even a difficult one. > >
And she couldn't lie and say it really was, when it came down to it.
She felt disgusted with herself for feeling even an ounce of relief that the unchosen wouldn't know it was because of her that they weren't coming back, that she could dare recognize a silver lining in knowing that she wouldn't have to worry about his living ghost anymore, that she could feel at all okay with basing her decision on just who was better liked, who to her had a better reason to exist.
(This was the most convenient compromise, she thought darkly, to save lives and get rid of her longest-standing problem. Now she knew one answer: Jack's life was worth at least three people. She could almost imagine him snorting and saying What a bargain.)
I'm so sorry we couldn't be friends. And unfortunately, she meant it.
"The first two," Stormy said, doing her best to reign herself in again as quickly as possible.
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Posted: Fri Sep 12, 2014 12:18 am
Yao collapsed once more, along with the other bodies. Ahead, McQueen and Nunez would be treated to a sudden flash of sky. An opening to the outside that hadn't been there before. --- The door broken down, and it was Jack that the first shambling creature of ever shifting features first stumbled into. More figures joined, all seeking to lay hands on him and as they did so, those features shifted once more and stilled. The last thing he saw would be his own face, staring down at him with uncharacteristically obvious stupidity, V's screams cutting short in the back ground. --- "Done." And with whispered finality the wall shrunk down once more into a single, skeletal figure, beautiful in its own horrific manner. Nest stared at Stormy with eyes the glowed with the blaze of Insanity, papery skin and muscle sliding to display a smile of many teeth, gently yellowed through millennia of simply existing. "Now you owe me three."And with that she burst into moths once more, dispersing in every direction and revealing two figures stumbling out of the desert ground. All the moths were gone save three, which fluttered in Stormy's face and disappeared in three searing bursts of pain across her body. Later, when she was home and a luxury of quiet and idle privacy, she would feel something move under her skin. Questing fingers would find flesh raised in a winged form that shifted beneath her touch only to disappear once more. You owe three. --- When Jack woke, he was naked and alone next to the tables. On one, V was laid, marked out as the others two had been, waiting to be cut apart in a very particular way. His clothes and phone were nowhere in sight, but glinting from a cask of dried seeds, he would find a pendant.
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Posted: Fri Sep 12, 2014 10:10 pm
She stared ahead and let the weight of it all hang precariously above her, suspended on puppet strings. The pair of Moons seemed to erupt out of the sand, but Stormy barely registered their gasps and coughs and muffled words. Her attention was on the three wriggling forms beneath her skin, things that made her scream in pain on the inside but eerily stoic on the outside.
Had that been worth it? Another question she didn't know the answer to.
Her gaze came into sharper focus as she studied McQueen and Nuñez, made sure they were nothing worse than a little beaten and bruised and exhausted. And then, ignorant of whatever their questions had been, Stormy beckoned them to follow her and turned her back on the base. Maybe it was the look in her eyes, or maybe it was just a shared sentiment, but neither of the hunters put up resistance.
They trudged back to base, weary and silent and alive. It was as close to a victory as they could get.
---
The last wild thought Jack had as they were overwhelmed by things wearing his face, as V's shriek pierced his ears, and as a paralyzing darkness came over him, was, I think I had a dream like this once.
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Posted: Fri Sep 12, 2014 10:57 pm
This was not the first time he woke up naked nor next to a woman, but he didn't think his own clinical nature would get so literal: tables, markers, specimens? Had that honestly worked? Then again, V was so easy her legs might has well have been the Mexican-US border.
(Naturally he found his sense of humor right when he was on the brink of death. That was his way of dealing with stress, not the biting sarcasm he usually dealt people.)
Squinting, Jack forced himself to sit up with a wince. The welts were still on him like a bizarre and localized version of chicken pox. His surroundings were decidedly not the infirmary, but at least it was quiet for the moment.
Now, think.
Clones. His face. How did that...no, prioritize. Survive. He looked over and saw V stretched out and prepped for--vivisection? No, dissection. Remarkably merciful of them, the stupid lucky b***h. He swore one of his kidneys had been taken last time. Or was it a floating rib? Both? Nevermind. At this point he was more disgusted with the idea that a horseman might have touched his junk than he was with the idea of being a bargain bin organ donor.
Anything else?
He scanned the room, cursing. He still hadn't recovered from the first capture and the blinding light. For all he knew, his saving grace was a few yards from him, or on the opposite side of the room, or existed only as a hallucination. Then he saw a familiar glint.
It was a long shot, but it was a good first step.
Jack flexed his fingers and toes experimentally. Then he swung his legs over the counter and attempted to get up.
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