Indigo's Owl [Indigo Rewrite]

Chapter 21 - Sleeper

The shapes were people, speckled with violet slime. Some were slumped against the walls, others sprawled across the floor like they'd fallen asleep on their feet and collapsed. Athira opened the ticket gates with Black. Indigo ran through, Raph and Talia sweeping the floor while Kione, Zoe, and Shift each checked a different civilian for a pulse, careful to avoid the flecks of faintly luminescent goo that clung to them.

Athira coiled the Black back around her arm, swallowing down the creeping nausea as she observed the scene. She'd seen far worse — why was she reacting to this?

"Alive but unresponsive," said Kione, the words echoed by Shift and Zoe a few moments later.

Raph cursed, glancing around at the twenty plus people scattered around the station, all covered in the violet goo. "There's too many for us to evacuate. Kione, make sure no one is bleeding out and contact the paramedics outside." He hefted his shield. "Everyone else, with me to sweep the platforms below."

There were more people on the stairs, covered in even more of the violet goo. Athira and Raph worked together, gently nudging the sleeping civilians aside with Black and Red to clear a path until halfway down the stairs, Athira almost threw up.

"Thira?" said Zoe, placing a hand on Athira's back as she retched a second time. "You okay?"

Athira pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, willing the nausea down. The only thing that'd ever caused this kind of reaction was a Surge, but it'd always felt gradual. This felt too sudden, too... dense. "Fine. Just nauseous."

Zoe glanced down at the people either side of the staircase, her forehead creased with concern. "At least they're alive."

Athira nodded, if only because it was easier than trying to explain to Zoe that the casualties weren't the cause of her nausea — that she wasn't sure what was.

That changed when Indigo reached the bottom of the stairs and Athira laid eyes on the Sleeper.

One look at the large, amorphous blob currently contained within a large, Red-shaped box on the centre platform, and Athira knew it was responsible for her nausea.

The Sleeper looked similar to the photos — a slimy, violet mass vaguely in the shape of a slug with short, stubby arms protruding from its larger half. It was over two Raph's tall and moved like a magma flow, brimming with a powerful, drawn-out kind of force as it pawed at the inside of the Red-shaped box. Every movement was painfully slow, yet brutally inevitable.

Inevitable.

Athira was really starting to hate that word.

"Did someone beat us to it?" asked Zoe, her eyes on the Red-shaped box around the Sleeper.

"Don't think so," said Raph. "Look behind it on the far platform — there's our three suspects. Athira, you remember the plan?"

"Yep," muttered Athira, swelling the Black on her arm. She could handle a little nausea, and she was more than ready to ask these three individuals where the hues they'd found this 'Sleeper' of theirs. "I'll be done with them before —"

The Sleeper's head — or what passed for it on a blob of slime — swung towards her.

The nausea slammed into Athira as every last speck of goo in the subway flared, radiating with a dull, violet energy that was something more than just light or heat or Colour. She staggered backwards, crystallising the coiled Black as the rest threatened to spill out of her mindscape. Rathe's claws dug in. His roar was in her ears. His fury demanded fire, demanded the complete and utter decimation of this thing that dared to —