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Ember nodded slowly as she understood the white wolf, if she made any mistake possible Frost would kill her. And if it came to that then Ember would submit to her death, then maybe Frost would understand that Ember never wanted to hurt her. Her blood tentacle went up against the wound, but never went in. It spread a little ways along Frosts body about in an inch or so radius then stopped and began to solidify and put a little pressure on the wound, but it was taking an agonizingly long time. Ember had done this once and it was to a hurt pup, but the pup never lived...

When she heard rustling she looked up and saw Streaking running towards them asking what happened. Ember perked up a little, his heat would speed up the process. "Streak, I need your ability over here." She said and added a little more pressure, then stopped when Frost growled. "I need you to heat up the blood that I'm placing over her wound, it will solidify and harden causing the blood from her wound to stop."

Frostridge blinked stupidly at her wound as the tendril of blood slowly seemed to stop the flow; there was a strange white haze at the edges of her vision and she felt very drained. She must have lost more blood then she realized, and the spear-head like puncture had scraped down to her bone. It was by sheer luck it hadn't hit her in the spine, but it definitely wasn't a wound to scoff at either. Not as "spectre" like as she had been apparently,a voice in her head mocked her sarcastically. It seemed that nowadays she was gaining a lot more scars and stories to tell...

Even exhausted, her ears alerted her to another presence, causing her to tense up for a moment, then visibly relax when the familiar white on black fur came into her blurred scope of vision. There was something (she barely allowed herself to admit) comforting, about his presence. As if she were back on her old team, back when it had been just the original members, before...

He barked something to the Blooded One as Frost's eyes slowly blinked at him as if sleepy as the two began to converse. Still in the aftereffects of severe physical trauma, exhaustion, and shock, she dimly wondered to herself if the black fur smelled different from the white fur along his back; some vague memory of a past memory came to mind, a conversation between her and Jane of a non-altered animal she called a "Skuh-unk."

A sudden increase of pressure on her wound caused her to growl absently at the Blooded One for a moment, but she had already sunk into the reluctant trust, Chain-Fang still clenched in her jaws. For the moment it seemed she was keeping her promise and Frostridge was nearly too far gone to care. It was as before, her body once again brought to the limit in this strange, dream-like state...

Her gaze drifted past the two to the now calm lake, hiding who knew what other dangers beneath its perfect surface....

A wolf.

Frost stiffened.

Ethereal like silvery-white smoke, yet definitely there, standing upon the surface and watching her from a a distance. The other two were oblivious. For a split second she wondered if it was Arrow, but no, Arrow had died...

Frostridge shook her head and looked once more, but there was nothing upon the clear gentle waves over white sand and unknown depths...

Perturbed she continued to watch her gaze shifting over the landscape but there was no indication that anything had been there. A hallucination brought about by her pitiful state? Not unlikely. Perhaps some toxin inflicted by the Altered water creature-

The toxin!

There was a good chance that it had been a mere physical blow, but if the spear-head like fang had had some sort of toxin in it... If even some of the Altered blood had gotten into her- It was too much of a risk to chance.

Staggering, she headed drunkenly away from the water hiding more potential threats and instead towards the shelter of the trees on the edge of the beach. The two seemed to follow behind her hesitantly as she sat back down with a wince, drawing her dagger with limp jaws.

"St-Streakuh." Frostridge murmured quietly, but with urgency. "The Bad-flesh, bad wound. Make me...mind-bad." If she began to hallucinate, even in her current state she could cause serious injury to them or herself. "You take," she clicked a notch in her dagger, and the chain ejected gently before she dropped it before him. "Tie me. Wait, sun down, sun up, then, take off."

Within a day, hopefully if it was just a venom, it would either be filtered out by her artificial enhancements or just kill her. If it was indeed a neuro-toxin, they would have no choice but to let it run its course for at least a day while her filtration did the rest; it was already too far along in her bloodstream for any outside assistance now. Precautions, necessary precautions she told herself though the though of being imprisoned and chained once more was sparking bad memories.

Frost gave a grunt and small hissing breath of agony as her wounded shoulder sent paining streaming through her as she tumbled awkwardly to the ground. Her immediate instinct was to fight back as she felt her movement restricted, but she forced herself to lie still. Precautions, precautions... she repeated to herself in her head like a mantra, a poor comfort against the raging of past nightmares...

Her one eye not turned towards the earth was focused on Streak and Blooded; though her quiet, thoughtful gaze offered no fear, faint trembles coursed through her restrained limbs. Her weakness made her feel sick with disgust at herself. She nosed her muzzle stubbornly through a loose loop of chain, taking a deep calming breath.

"Hold, tight. I...no want... hurt you." she spoke quietly, wearily, praying it was just poison and not a hallucinogen. Excruciating pain she could deal with, whether slow and bubbling, or abrupt and overwhelming. Pain, she knew, could control. But what she was most afraid of was when the tight, well-harnessed control over her own mind and body slipped away from her as before... the things she had done, the aftermath, and only faint, blurred memories to review over and over again of her failure...

A faint pressure by her wounded shoulder, not to bring pain, but to offer comfort made her glance at the perpetrator. Once again, the same offered kindness as before, her body and mind at their limits then as well, restricting her relentless force of will. There was a tiny spark of warmth within what she assumed was her "soul", (as Jane had called it) that she did not understand. Her gaze shifted to Blooded behind him and she felt some of that old suspicion bubble up once more, but quelled slightly with remembrance of her recent actions. Perhaps...Frost should give her a chance, as she had once been given...

She felt tired, sick, feverish, her stomach rolling uneasily. So far, no strange images or feelings were crossing her vision or mind. Trying to get comfortable and let her body do both its natural and not-so-natural recovery of her shoulder, and the foreign chemical running through her bloodstream, she settled into a light, uneasy doze.

But as the blurred vision began to close, she could almost swear she could make out a faint white, smoky outline of a wolf behind them...

Bullet sighed and looked to Kuro. "I have to check on Frost," she looked to the sky wondering what happened to the others. Maybe they had been attacked as well and now are dead. Bullet was lucky to make it through the blood poison. Had it not been for Frost she would probably be dead. She stood and slipped through the small opening. Making her way down the hill she watched as the elk moved around nervously,

She took a place near the tied up Frost. She didn't know how to help but it seemed Streak had everything under control. She sighed and laid down where she could keep an eye on Frost and the lake in which her attacker came from.

There was confusion at first, but Frostridge soon decided she was dreaming, or at the very least that she was not conscious. She was standing in the old human lab that had been the closest thing she had ever tried to call home, though it was devoid of life and the environment seemed to shift and sway aimlessly, giving the strange surreal appearance of being underwater. The colors seemed leeched from the already bland environment, the outlines indistinct and fuzzy as she padded silently down the long empty hallways. Her head felt hot and pangs of liquid pain shooting through her nerves made her pace slow and staggering as she moved.

There was an air of oppressive silence, as if she was experiencing a memory, but at the same time knowing it was not a real one; there were hallways and staircases and doors she did not remember. She was surprised that her head was not bombarding herself with questions over her current situation. Instead she seemed to be almost drawn forward, guided to some unknown place.

She came to an odd crossroad of hallways she did not know, devoid of any doors or landmarks and lit by the bright, garish, identical lights overhead, she was suddenly aware of a noise that sounded like some strange mixture of a familiar voice she did not quite recognize and static. It came from every direction, indistinct at some times, then growing in strength to where she thought it would clarify enough for her to understand only to fade once more...

The lights of the hallways to the right, left, and behind her suddenly went out leaving them in complete darkness. Only the path before her remained lit, disappearing bleakly into the distance.

It seemed an eternity but gradually the end came into sight, a single shiny door of metal. She paused for a moment; the static-voice suddenly grew much louder, louder to the point where her throbbing head was splitting open. Suddenly the door slammed open; blinding her with light as a frigid wind shrieked past her, ruffling her fur..

oOo

Frostridge stirred uneasily in her sleep, a faint whimper brushing past her parched lips like a whisper. Her limbs trembled, twitching slightly, jingling the chain strapping them tightly together. Her neck tensed as she tried to rise, but weakly fell back down to the damp sand. She suddenly went very still, still as if dead...

oOo
Squinting she allowed her eyes to adjust, the cold wind making them water-

Barren snowy tundra stretched for miles before her, huge cliffs of ice like the waves of a stormy sea forever frozen, rearing proudly to the cloudy, grey sky. She glanced behind her to find the same view, the hallway leading to the strange mockery of labs and human environment of her past gone, as if it had never been there in the first place.

The wind shrieked past her driving snow into her face and making her shiver to her surprise. It seemed an age since she had felt the familiar cold sapping life and heat from her body, so different from her own self-imposed ability. she took a step forward and was surprised to find her nails clicking against man made tiles. The floor of the hallway seemed to rise from the ground, a path leading her forward in a strange contrast of a creation of humans juxtaposed against nature.

oOo

The air around her body was steadily growing impossibly colder, so cold her shallow breaths were visible to the eye like faint puffs of smoke. A tiny pattern of frost was beginning to form across her fur and the wet sand below as it froze; her heart rate was sunk dangerously low, her breaths near nonexistent as her still body slowly began to wind down. Impossible, yet truly happening symptoms of freezing to death, in the middle of summer...

oOo

A huge hole like a gaping maw opened suddenly before her, a gentle slope leading down into the incomprehensibly dark and deep depths; the tiles that had lead her slowly growing fewer in number till the last one left her standing at the top of the incline. She had long since stopped shivering, as the cold had made her steadily lose contact with her extremities, her vision growing darker as weariness threatened to make her sink to the ground and sleep forever.

She took this final descent into this unforeseen shelter, the shrieking wind and stinging snow fading as she went even deeper into the blackness. It was impossible to see, not that she really cared. Down, down the silent icy tunnel with only the sound of her footsteps to accompany her...

Frostridge was deep below ground now. Some sense beyond her main five was telling her so, the pressure of hundred of tons of ice and earth above, around her made her feel like she was in the belly of some great sleeping beast, as if she were treading upon ancient, forgotten ground...

It was near pitch black, but she found she could still see just barely see; strange faint glows shimmered far beneath the dark crystalline walls of the tunnel from what she could tell, a bare offering of light for her eyes to work with.

How long had she had been traveling? Minutes, hours, days, centuries? It was impossible to tell, only that she was going down, down...

There was no fear, no apprehension, no questions, no thoughts. Only a single relentless instinct, a purpose to take one more step, then another, then another...

The tunnel suddenly opened up and she paused. A huge underground lake stretching as far as the darkness would let her see, the water the color of ink and impossibly deep. No movement, or ripple, or splash. Huge columns of nearly opaque ice, seemingly too perfectly round to be formed by the hand of nature. Like the trunks of some ancient, forest tree they rose from the bottomless lake to disappear into the ceiling so high it was impossible to make out.

Small glaciers presenting small jagged patches of ice were drifting lazily across the calm black surface of the lake, forever dancing in the hidden current as it weaved its way past the pillars and walls, never colliding, but never stopping...

But her gaze was fixated straight-ahead towards the center where a small island of stone rose in the distance,sloping up to some strange twisted structure of ice and metal, man-made and nature combined together, stretching up, and up. A bright light came from its base, casting tall dark shadows from the nearby columns, steady and unrelenting. And it was cold. Far colder then she had ever known.

She felt afraid. She felt a longing. She felt like she was home.

Without even realizing it, she leapt, landing on a ice-patch drifting past, her feet slipping as it bobbed and rippled the inky waters, before leaping for another, working her way towards the center. She needed to get to the center. Somehow, her sole new goal was to reach that awful, beautiful, terrifying light...


oOo

Frostridge suddenly sat up, her restraints jingling with the sudden motion. There was no staggering, no indication of her previous grievances or weariness as she slowly rose to a sitting position. Her eyes had begun to glow a strange, unnatural milky-white with a tint of blue that swelled all the more intimidating in the dying of day's light. She paid no heed to the others presence but looked out towards the water, a un-moving, icy statue as tiny delicate patterns of frost stretched across the ground...

oOo

There was something in the water. For a moment she thought them patches of ice, but as they began to rise from the depths, she realized them for what they were.

Lab-coats.

Even as she made the final leap and her claws scrabbled for a foothold on the strange smooth stone of the island, strange twisted figures, some horrific nightmarish creature unlike anything she had seen before began to arise; like some cruel mockery of all her fears. Shaped like humans, but melded from shadows and Altered and all manner of beasts, an utter abomination clothed in that symbol of imprisonment, the hated white coats, the hated baby-blue surgical masks, the hated goggles that only reflected her own fearful eyes...

They clawed up from the black water, in waves up the stony banks. Syringes, and scalpels, and a hundred other human-made torture devices clutched in their poor excuses for hands. No sound but her own heartbeat reaching fever pitch, the fear overwhelming her determination, her soul, and the slosh of water on rock as they dragged themselves up towards where she was fleeing- she was so tired-

But the light was so close...

With her final ounce of will she cleared the embankment to find herself on the flat plateau; a tall, perfect glass tank filled with viscous green-water rose before her, the strange entanglement of machine and ice imprisoning it firmly in place. Large searchlights had been placed into the metallic base, all pointing blinding beams of yellow light at what was held within.

A few bubbles rose around the motionless form, suspended and motionless within. A wolf with fur impossibly white, whiter then snow, whiter then lab-coats, curled upright... It seemed to glow weakly with its own faint light like a distant star, barely noticeable among the garish unnatural light enveloping it. It's eyes were shut tight as if dead or sleeping.

The sound of metal tools scraping along rock and water dripping from cloth grew closer; she could make out the faint outlines past the bright lights all around her as they began to reach the top. She was trapped.

No where to go, nowhere to run. She suddenly noticed that Chain-Fang, her shoulder harness, everything the humans had given her was gone and she felt very bare without them. Naked, pathetic even more so for she could never be human, and could barely classify as a wolf. A freak trapped between two completely different worlds...

But she was unafraid.

Frostridge trotted closer to the wolf in the tank even as the monsters hunting her drew within reach, rearing up and placing her front paws against the glass so cool to the touch so her head was level with It's. Her own blue eyes ringed with unnatural teal merely waited, no options left. Face to face, she stared at this unknown sensation, yet at the same time, so familiar, familiar as her own blood, her own bones and heartbeat...

The sleeping eyes slowly opened.

oOo

Frostridge suddenly collapsed, an unnatural scream of agony and terror filling her lungs as she writhed along the ground, fighting her restraints. The metal groaned as her markings would flare with light and her biotics threatened to overpower it, before it would suddenly shut off abruptly, only to relight once more. Snarling, screeching, growling, and snapping, the usually silent voice was alive with fury and terror.

She was speaking, pleading, but whether in Wolven-tongue or Human-speak was impossible to tell. Her front paws attempted to reach up towards her head as if to claw whatever was afflicting it out, only to be cut short by the chain. Her snarling jaws were frothing with spit and blood, still securely imprisoned as she slammed her head repeatedly into the sand, her neck muscles bulging.

For a few horrible minutes she suffered, her ankles and the bridge of her snout bruising from the restraints, till finally she fell weakly against the sand, heaving and whimpering. Her eyes remained open, the milky-glow having departed and leaving only an unseeing blue, the pupils so tiny they were barely pinpricks. Body trembling violently, she slowly calmed back down, too tired to struggle and too far gone to be called back to consciousness.

Finally, her eyes slid shut as she sunk into a deep sleep. Occasionally she would call out in a pleading voice names of her former teammates, her brother, her new allies, and other delirious-stricken words without meaning. However, her body temperature slowly began to rise once more and the frost patterns no longer were etched upon the white sand, now littered with tiny pieces of her fur and small spatters of her blood. It seemed that for now the worst was passing.

Marta gave a start as she awoke, her unnatural green eyes snapping open. She raised her head to look about in confusion only to realize the screaming echoes now beginning to fade had been inside her head.

On the alert, she stretched and rose up, taking in the desolate landscape save for the little patch of grass beneath her, a perfect square like an odd rug in the middle of nowhere. She waited, but there was no more sound to follow and she merely shrugged it off as just another nightmare or mental fragment...

Light-green holographic screens popped in front of her vision. No, nobody she knew was nearby...Damn, she was starting to think this thing didn't work anymore anyway...

Suddenly there was a ping, and the cool, human-female voice echoed in her ear. "Located, Delta Leader, former "Titan-Opus" project...zzzzzt" as static interrupted, then it continued. "-subject, known as Frostridge. 13.2 kilometers, due west."

Impossible.

"Sno-cone's alive?" she breathed to herself, eyes widening as she absorbed the news. There was no way...

She wasn't allowed to dwell on it however when another series of static and noises of her malfunctioning collar. "Signal lost. Unable to locate." the cool voice suddenly cut in again, before dying completely.

Marta swore heavily, before taking off at a steady trot towards the west. Man, it might just all be a waste of time; her collar could just be on the fritz again, but what if? She had to at least check...

As she sped away, the patch of grass she had raised withered away with her mental support gone, leaving it to dry and crumble to dust in the wind.

Well, what was she supposed to do now?

The large, sheer rock walls before her seemed an impenetrable fortress. Should have known this would be a waste of time, she thought to herself. She was about to turn around when something caught her eye; further down, the ground was a lot more sloped, a c***k in the armor. She could probably travel quicker that way..

Not only that, but a tiny faint smell of water renewed her interest.She trotted toward the slope.

After an hour she finally cleared the ridge after carefully picking her pathway up and was greeted with an amazing sight. A beautiful lake with white sand beaches, tall silver-barked trees, even patches of grass, all sheltered within the high stone walls of the valley. It was truly a sight to behold, and the best preserved fragment of life she had seen in a long while.

Speaking of life, something was moving down the bank of the lake, in the shelter of a large rock. Squinting she was amazed to see that it was not just her imagination, but a red-spattered wolf.

Excited, but also apprehensive, she stalked steadily closer, her brown pelt blending in well with the earthy ground.

As she got closer however, she was hit with a vaguely feeling wave of vicious hatred. Whoa. Someone was not happy. Another hint of sadness and despair. So there were multiple wolves here, not just the one. She had to watch her back.

Sno-cone was alive. Marta didn't feel happy or disappointed, it didn't particularly matter to her, but at least it was somebody she knew. But it seemed that Frosty apparently, was in serious trouble. How the heck they had managed to truss her up like a sheep with her own Chain-fang was beyond her; she had always thought that that thing was glued to her jaws. That in itself was a big red warning; she better then anybody knew Frostridge's level of skill in combat and the complex mind behind it Marta had only touched on once or twice. Underestimating them would be a serious mistake-

Another wave of hatred brought her attention up ahead to her right; away from the others gathered around the downed Sno-cone. A white shape barely hidden in the grass, stalking?

Was she planning on hurting Frosty? That wouldn't do. Not till at least Marta figured out what was going on. A plan was forming in her head, and she would use this twin-tail as her distraction to draw away the others. Sneaking closer, she swirled a confusing ball of nightmarish, human images, Altered, and monsters of shadow in her mind, and crept within range-

She made a faint "Hello." in wolven tongue in hope of getting eye contact and telepathically hurled the "idea-bomb" at her opponents head, slinking back towards the tree-line.