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 Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 6:22 pm
Björn lifted his hand as if ready to backhand the poor man and mumbled something under his breath, but the hand dropped. Never murder people who were trying to help, that was his motto. Liam climbed in easily, telling Jeddeth he "had something way faster and more fun, if he'd like", leaving Björn to fend for himself. The poor man stood outside, trying to do advanced physics and physiology in his head, which had never been to school, and just ended up cramming himself into the rolling metal death trap.
"If I break my back, remind me to blame you."
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Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 6:27 pm
The van rattled and hissed at odd intervals, sounding for all the world like a sick rattlesnake. As it trundled into the city, tense silence descended as Ethan stared out the window and Richard smoked cigarette after cigarette. Only when Jeddeth went into a fit of coughing, having never before been forced to remain in close quarters with the acrid smoke, did Richard crack the window. An ill-timed wailing of police sirens made both him and Ethan jolt.
"Ehn. Ah. Traffic accident," Richard said, peering down the street where the patrol car had gone. Ethan shuddered, taking a long smoky breath and letting it out in a tired sigh. By the time they reached the apartment building, it was early evening and the sun had just begun to set. Ethan watched it sink behind the city walls, thinking wryly about the last time he'd watched the sunset. Yeah. That had turned out great.
"You lot stay here," Richard said, parking the van out front. "Me and Ethan'll get the others. Thank Christ almighty, Jared's got his own car so they'll just follow rather than try to squeeze in here."
He left the van, and Ethan followed suit silently.
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Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 6:30 pm
Björn got out, but did not follow. His only intent was to stretch, and that he did. Loudly. Damnable muscles and bones. Liam, however, stayed put obediently.
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Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 6:38 pm
Jeddeth jumped out of the van and scuttled, spider-like, onto its roof, stretching and yawning. He leered at Richard as the man gave him a glance before hurrying inside.
"He's so scared of everything," the boy mused. "Odd. Ethan's not scared of much, is he."
---
"It's about time you got back."
"Ran into a speedbump," Richard said dryly, nudging the door open as a crowd of three other men bustled around it. Ethan's expression, determinedly stony, brightened instantly.
"Marcos!"
Marcos, a stringy man with an eye blinded by the ugly scar that slashed across it, grinned widely and grabbed Ethan in a headlock.
"You little ********," he said affectionately. "Last time I saw you, Piper blew your knees off."
"I got better," Ethan said cheerily. Marcos gave a snort of laughter. Richard pushed past all of them moodily.
"Yeah yeah, why don't you just ******** make out and get on with it," he said sourly, thinking about his own less-than-welcome reception. "Quit your manhugging and ********' pack, would you? We're leaving in ten minutes."
"Ten?" a man at the window said, looking around jumpily.
"Yes, George. Ten minutes. Move."
George gave Ethan a look of barely-disguised alarm, and scurried out of the room. Marcos gave another snort, and threw Ethan onto the couch.
"Play look-out for the bad guys while we pack," he said. Ethan grinned ruefully.
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Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 6:45 pm
"Not any more," Björn shrugged, pulling one arm as far as it would go over the other side of his head.
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Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 6:58 pm
Jeddeth looked at the building, head tilted to one side.
"That's good," he said. "He probably should be, though."
---
By the time ten minutes had nearly passed, Ethan was already aware something was wrong. The man George was behaving very much like a rat trapped on a sinking ship, looking every which way for an escape route.
"Terrance," he said, nudging the man beside him with an elbow. "What's..."
"...up with George? Who the ******** knows," Terrance said uninterestedly, loading his beaten old gun with a fresh magazine. "Guy was always weird after Piper took up the drill on 'im."
Ethan winced, clenching his own hands into fists reflexively. The drill. Gods, but he'd forgotten about the drill. The lights gave a sudden waver and Ethan jolted, looking up.
"What're you all twitchy about?" Marcos said, grinning. "Wiring in this place is s**t. Chill."
"Sorry," Ethan said, remembering a creature with white blazing eyes sneaking up behind him after it had killed the lights.
"Alright. Ready to go? We're - for god's sake, Ryan, leave the goddamned plant, we're not taking the ******** thing with us - we're gonna head out, hopefully we'll reach Aekea in a couple hours."
"Wait," George said anxiously.
"Why?" Richard snapped.
"Just...just wait," he said, voice whimpering. "I...I don't...I'm going to be sick."
Richard scowled, watching as George skittered past him and into the bathroom.
"Spineless git."
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Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 7:02 pm
Björn just shook his head and looked to Jeddeth.
"Not afraid," he said "Wary, maybe. Paranoia isn't a good thing. Most of the time, anyway."
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Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 7:09 pm
Jeddeth gave a small shrug, and said nothing more.
---
By the time George had finished retching, Ethan was feeling a little nauseous himself. Ryan and Terrance exchanged irritated looks, while Marcos idly played with his lighter, flipping it between his fingers and dropping it now and then. Richard looked ready to ******** spineless git," he hissed, checking his watch. "I've had it. I don't ******** care if he pukes in your car, Jared, we're leaving."
Jared, a slight, dark-eyed man a few years older than Ethan, just sighed and closed his book, getting up from the couch.
"Fine," he said sourly. Richard went to the bathroom to fish George's head out of the toilet.
"All of ya, outside! Move!" Richard barked. Terrance hefted his bag onto his shoulder and kicked the door open. He froze for a moment, and then staggered back a step, eyes gone painfully wide.
A man, his face flayed and sharp filed teeth the color of iron bared in a terrifying grin, looked at him with cracked glass eyes, and stepped smoothly into the apartment.
"Good evening."
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Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 7:14 pm
Björn pulled his arm even further, and his shoulder gave an angry pop.
"....ow?"
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Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 7:23 pm
Jeddeth looked down in alarm at the pop.
"Are you-" he began, then cut himself off. Obviously a pop of that volume did not constitute being okay. "Eesh."
---
Terrance staggered back further, sweating bullets and eyes still stretched impossibly wide. The flayed man shook out a embroidered handkerchief from his old suit's breast pocket, polishing his cracked eyes.
"I see a little light in you," he said, voice smooth as oil. Jared, Ryan and Marcos had all shrunk back, looking askance. Only Ethan, gone rigid and gray-faced, was properly afraid. He stood, stumbling against the wall. His hand groped at the window, trying to find the latch to raise it and scream outside for help. But he couldn't seem to speak. His voice had deserted him.
"Mister Walker," the flayed man called. Another man dressed in an old-fashioned suit sauntered into the room. He gave a metallic grunt.
"Find Mister McBride and Mister Ringwald, if you please," the man said. Walker gave another grunt, heading towards the bathroom.
"Hey," Ryan said finally, taking a step forward. "What-"
Ethan found his voice in an anguished scream as the flayed man took hold of Ryan's head and twisted impossibly, breaking his neck effortlessly.
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Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 7:29 pm
Björn's head snapped up and toward the building. Alright, so that was a little out of place. But...maybe it wasn't what he thought it would be. Hopefully not. Oh, God, he hoped not.
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Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 7:34 pm
Jeddeth snapped to attention, peering up at the building.
"...when were they supposed to come back?"
---
The flayed man was not finished with Ryan. Extracting a long, ornately made pocketknife, he sliced open the corpse's belly and dug around inside. After a minute, his skinless face crinkled into a dreadful smile and he pulled something out. A strange, ugly little thing, looking mechanical and organic at the same time. A weak light pulsed inside it before the flayed man yanked it free of wires that seemed more akin to veins, and the light winked out.
Ethan and the others stared in a purity of horror as the man threw Ryan's corpse aside.
"Next," he said silkily, putting the little object into his pants pocket.
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Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 7:37 pm
Alright, enough of the horrible, terrifying silence. Björn and Liam immediately went sprinting for the building, knowing quite well that 'it's quiet, too quiet' was an extremely valid point.
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Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 7:47 pm
Marcos flung an arm across Ethan's chest, looming over him. Terrance fumbled for his gun, breath coming in sharp bursts as the flayed man turned his attentions to him.
"I still see it," the flayed man said, cracked eyes fixed on Terrance's. "Do hold still."
"Stay away," Terrance said, training the gun on the flayed man. "Stay back!"
The flayed man gave another iron-colored grin, looking briefly over his shoulder as a voice that was unmistakably Richard's gave a shout of horror before being abruptly cut off. Ethan winced, making a strangled whimpering kind of noise. The flayed man looked over, and his iron grin widened terribly.
"Mister Cebcharik..." he crooned. "My dear, dear boy...what an unexpected pleasure."
Ethan swallowed another scream as Terrance, trying to bolt past the flayed man, suddenly toppled to the floor with a good deal of his throat in the man's hand.
"Tut, tut," he scolded the corpse, taking up the knife again and cutting. George, bloodspattered and weeping, burst into the room a second later.
"You said you'd leave me!" he shouted, clutching his gouged and torn arm to his chest. "You said if I lead you to them you'd spare me, Weaver!"
"I have no patience for whining traitors," the man called Weaver said impassively, ripping another of the weird objects out of Terrance's gut. "Obviously, you did not count on the simple fact that I would lie."
George screamed as Marcos hissed and tried to lunge at him, bolting out the door.
"Mister Thatcher," Weaver called. "Incoming."
---
Down in the lobby, a vulture-like man, his face flayed and his eyes made of glass, sat on the staircase reading an old issue of Vogue. As George ran squealing down the stairs, he caught him and twisted his neck absently, like ripping the head off a doll. He looked up, spotting Jeddeth, Liam and Björn.
"Oh! Well, good evening," he said in a nasty voice, sharp teeth bared in an iron-grin.
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Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 7:50 pm
Liam just stood there a moment, mouth agape. That...that was not human. Björn, however, had no time to dawdle and question the race of terribly frightening little things. He tried to rush past with no regard for his own life. Ethan was up there somewhere, so was the Scottish kid, and so were "the other guys". This did not bode well.
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