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 Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2015 10:53 pm
Too much pressure.
It felt like drowning, downing in too much sound, smell, touch, too many eyes and ears and mouths all at once, a nightmare to anyone claustrophobic, a living hell to those immune.
It felt like drowning even as another hand reached out towards him.
This hand felt different. There was something odd, and not necessarily in a bad way. It was just off, all focus suddenly shifted on that single beacon of possible hope. It was just a hand, it could have been anybody's but it reached through the mass and was just a small burst of effort away. It was reachable.
"This way!" The voice could have been anyone but it felt like someone reassuring. It was clear, loud, ringing despite the noise. Around the hand, the flesh seemed to have recoiled slightly, leaving a small opening to be pulled out of.
"Take my hand." The voice continued, and it was a command, not a request.
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Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2015 8:08 am
He couldn't break free, bodies everywhere, too many of them and not enough of him, and somehow it was familiar, fighting against a sea of hostility that was probably his own fault for taking on in the first place.
And then there was hope.
There was no hesitation, it was reflex. Because somewhere in the very heart of Rep there was something that wanted to trust people, that craved it more than anything. Pride got in his way a lot, scared that there was some ulterior motive around every corner, but when it came to life and death there was nothing to doubt. He would not be mocked for this. Anything was better than this.
He reached out with rapidly waning strength and took the hand.
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Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2015 11:08 pm
The first thing Rep felt as he grabbed the hand was a moment of triumph that wasn't his. The pain in his bitten arm flared and then darkness.
Voices.
Abstract sounds. Humming. Loud. Lights.
Clicking.
Someone was flashing a pen light into one of his eyes. It was already pried open, his vision blurry. Everything felt harsh, surreal. Nausea was thick, worsened by a pounding migraine. He was for some reason, bound, seated in a chair in a minimal white room with no windows. The big three of the Death division were all present.
-"Hey!" Mark snapped his fingers, trying to stir Rep. He looked slightly nervous, just slightly. "Can you understand me?"
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Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 8:54 am
Rep groggily and reluctantly came to, leaving the world of hard to define dream sounds and sensations, feeling as though he had woken up into the worst hangover he'd ever had. It reminded him of dangerous ODs, of week long binges, in other words, of things experienced long before he'd had a fear shield making sure he couldn't excessively harm himself. The headache was so intense he wasn't sure where he even was at first, his eye throbbing as its pupil vainly tried to shrink down and blot out the light so blindingly shone into it. His first primitive instinct was to curl up in a ball, but even as he attempted to tense his muscles he realized he was restrained. He was confused, dazed and hurting and it was hard at first to focus at all.
It was the snap of fingers that made him flinch, painfully loud against the stark migraine that made even the white room seem flecked around the edges with shifting colours. The flinch seemed to clear his thoughts just enough to line up his senses into some semblance of coherent order. Mark. Mark was there. It didn't mean he was safe, usually quite the ******** opposite, but it probably meant he was home, a fact he only found himself more attached to as he noted the others.
When he finally made himself speak his voice sounded as bad as he felt. "Aye." He said, and tried to remember how he had even gotten here in the first place. There had been zombies. So many ******** zombies. And then a hand.
"Whit happ'nd?"
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Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2015 7:54 pm
"Well," Mark commented, "at least you're saying something other than," here, he raised his fingers into air quotes "'the infection' for hours and hours." He scrutinized Rep, entirely unsure how phased the other actually was. The restraints placed on Rep suggested that he was anything but actually quite sane for the past alleged few hours, and sometime between then and now, the currently interrogated had lost his coat, most of his shirt, and his pants were mostly accessories. In the corner, Oz was washing his rather bloodstained gloves.
Anyone walking into the room could have easily had the wrong idea.
The Death assistant snapped his fingers again. "Hey, hey! Stay with me. Focus. What do you remember?"
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Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2015 8:13 pm
Rep's already concerned expression became even more so at the allegation he had been repeating the same thing over and over for hours. He could remember nothing at all about it, able to recall nothing other than blacking out completely and waking up where he was. Taking stock of his surroundings also meant taking as much stock of his present state as he could given the restraints. The desire to joke sarcastically at Mark vanished as he realized the state he was in.
He reflexively - like a wild animal - flicked his attention to Mark's fingers as he snapped them, before returning it to the other man, squinting irritably.
"I don't remember ******** anything much. I was like. There were zombies, they massed up like...like huge.. and ******** chased me, saying something about how I was a chosen one or some ******** thing and how they'd be if they could get me and I got ******** caught and squashed." he set his lips in a thin line. "I was going to ******** die. And then there was a hand. Then I woke up here." He spoke quickly, bouncing over the mention of the hand as quickly as he could, he'd been concerned about the hallucinations he'd been having and wasn't keen on admitting them in front of Team Suspicious Dissapearance if he wanted to get home to Harrison again. "What happened to me, how'd I get back here?"
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Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2015 11:13 pm
Before answering Rep's multiple questions, Mark turned to look at his lead, who was seated impassively fiddling with his cell phone. It was less impassive as in more Caelius probably thought his phone was more interesting than Rep, but only because he had recently discovered that cell phones could do more things than just send text messages, a true groundbreaking discovery to the Death division. Oz was also fiddling with his cellphone, but for various other (future blackmail photos) reasons.
That left the Death assistant who made a squeaking noise, something like a trapped animal who knew whatever he did was probably going to result in a negative response as well. He licked his lips nervously again.
"Well so like, you went in, and then I tried to radio you, and you weren't answering and I was like, oh wait, what if you're missing, and I called Oz down to find you-"
-"you're welcome," Oz cut in.
-"Anyway, Oz said you were you know, very dead, so I thought," Mark suddenly coughed, and looked really uncomfortable, "that you know, that like, I'd see you know, how the mission was going" a pause, and then a hurried excuse, "and you know, check if you were really dead." If Rep didn't know any better, it almost sounded like the Death assistant went looking for him.
"So anyway," he continued hastily, "I, err we found you," (there was no we), "and you were like sort of dead looking so I was about ready to read your will - you have a will right? - and then you turned around and just stared at me and started saying the same word over and over. You don't even want to know what I, err, we did to get you back, but anyway, the point is you're not really dead, you're actually still alive."
He glanced over at Rep as if this was the most informative piece of information ever.
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Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2015 7:10 am
Rep momentarily followed Mark's attention to Caelius and was relieved that the other man was preoccupied with his phone, it meant no one was getting maimed. A little of his sardonic humor returned as he amended - as long as it wasn't Twitter he was reading.
His head ******** hurt but he paid attention regardless, giving Mark a curious look and listening to him recount events. Oz got a disdainful look for his comments because of course he would consign him to death without a second thought.
But he was surprised, deeply surprised that Mark had come back, walked right into danger because...what? Because of him? Surely not. He didn't pretend to think he was worth risking anything for, it had to be some other reason, something valuable, an order. He had to be some incidental thing retrieved on the way to the actual goal, but it didn't change the fact that he had been saved. He was here and not there, not wherever he'd been repeating the same thing over and over and over.
Harrison wouldn't even ******** have known, he thought. He didn't know where he was, he might just never have come back. But thanks to Mark of all people, he was still alive and intact.
When you came from a country where people said thank you for holding open a door or simply driving a bus to the relevant stop, it was really ******** tough to find a suitably weighty way to say thank you for saving your life. There was no way to do it in a way that expressed the sincerity of the thing without being vulnerable and un-manly and therefore making everything even more awkward than it was. But at the same time he couldn't let it slide, even if Mark didn't want to admit it. He understood it did little for anyone's cred to admit s**t like that.
"Well." he said, looking flippantly. "I'm glad you checked up on the mission status. Thanks. Seriously."
His life wasn't worth much in the grand scheme of things, but it meant everything to him.
"So like." he went on. "I'm still alive. Am I okay? I got bit. Again."
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Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2015 4:03 pm
Mark scratched his head awkwardly as Rep said his thanks and pretended to ignore it, mumbling under his breath about how it wasn't really him and something about imaginary jet planes, and just as he thought Rep was finished asking questions, hurriedly rushed in his own. "Yeah so, about that." He fidgeted. "Uh, do you want the good news first or the bad news?"
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Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2015 5:36 pm
Rep looked grim. "Give me the good news first." he said. That way he could be pleased for a few seconds before he had to deal with the negatives.
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Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2015 4:40 am
"The good news," Mark repeated, "is that you're still alive!"
Dramatic pause. Awkward pause.
"Of course, the bad news really, is that you're still alive. Did I mention how not dead you were because that um, is like, a really, really big problem. Well, like a good-bad problem sort of deal. I think the actual odds are something like zero point zero zero zero zero zero zero zero three percent, and that's like, barely better odds than winning the lottery. So yes." He cleared his throat. "Congratulations to being the luckiest man alive and possibly the only person immune to the uh, the infected." Air quotes.
At some point when Mark was talking and doing the air quotes and Rep has his attention focused probably on the zero zero zero zero percent part, the room had become oddly empty of any unimprisoned individual other than the Death assistant. Either Caelius and Oz had some sort of Death stealth ability beyond the detection of level three rogue death spies, or they had jumped into some trap door, or just because nobody really was surprised at this point.
Mark squinted at the window behind Rep, suggesting very strongly that they were still not alone, and this was probably not a two-sided window. He cleared his throat, made motions to get a chair to sit next to Rep to and then realized there was no other chair and just sort of awkwardly shuffled from left to right food.
"So," he started, "So there are like, uh, political problems. See, you technically count as like, a uh, a sample, you know, immunity and all, it kind of makes you sort of valuable as you know, sample material, but we're pretty adamant on keeping you in this division for the time being, if you uh, know what I'm implying here. But now, the second point is - what was I saying - oh- the immune thing. It means you could go anywhere and not get infected. Anywhere. I actually have this whole protocol I'm supposed to like read to you about not getting ahead of yourself and stuff since everyone is expendable so on so forth but I like, forgot it and uh-"
Mark reached forward and awkwardly patted Rep's shoulder. "You're in good hands. Yeah. Yeaaaaaah." Wiping his hand on his dirtier shirt, he leaned forward, just slightly, so it looked like he wasn't talking and whispered, just very quietly, just enough not to be noticed by anyone listening on the other side of the not two sided window, "As long as you avoid direct eye contact, he'll probably forget about you." Baneful From this point forward, Rep is immune to all sorts of infected missions. This is a blessing from ??? and lasts for a limited period of time. Yes. Every single infected mission ever involving glowing whatever coloured eyes/zombies/insanity. Enjoy. This effect lasts for a month only from this post. It would also be a great time to propose any sort of mission including search/rescue/ infiltration/ and of course his favourite, getting rid of all the zombies. The immunity to the undead types from this rp (green eyes) is permanent.
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