Pearl

Chapter Twenty-Six: The Faction

Victor shifted his bare feet across the rough concrete surface of the high rise building. His toes scraped along the thin upper ridge of the sixth-story window, finding purchase wherever they could.

Despite the meager footing, Victor was stable as he perched below the seventh-story room. He owed it all to his left hand, which was plastered to the wall and reinforced by his little stowaway.

Pearl had melted along his forearm over his fingers, extending out across the wall in a three-foot radius like little thin pink roots, finding cracks and shallow holes to brace him with. He may not be able to move or see his hand clearly, but at least he was anchored quite securely, which was a blessing as he strained to hear whatever he could from the single-paned window above.

He could feel the cool brand of the collar that pressed into the skin of his shoulder. To be fair, it wasn't a collar—not exactly. Rather, it was a slim metallic band that wrapped around his left shoulder, marking almost exactly the end of Pearl's hold on his body. It seemed harmless enough, if not for the invasive body monitoring and GPS tracking it channeled back to the Facility.

Not to mention the ticking bomb it contained should he behave outside of the accepted range of options. That was the reason for its strategic placement - to separate him from Pearl and hit him beyond the symbiont's reach.

Victor shrugged, trying to adjust the weight of the band on his mind as much as its position on his shoulder. It was a token reminder of the fact that he had been sent out of the Facility with a purpose: go in, grab the girl, and get out.

Bring her home.

Victor sighed and scratched at his head with his free right hand, trying his hardest to sort between his own thoughts and the near-continuous interjections from Pearl. Not that he could understand, per se. It was like listening to radio chatter in an unfamiliar language. The conversation was clearly present, but ultimately just an unintelligible nuisance to him.

The window above slid open with a creak, and Victor looked up with a flinch; yet, rather than the accusatory face he expected to see from above, instead a small object flew out the window. He stretched, straining Pearl's anchors to the limit as he extended out from the wall to catch the thing.

He jolted slightly at two simultaneous stimuli: his own recognition of the item in his hand--a gun--and the sharp shock of sudden impact, transmitted up his arm from Pearl. It took a second for him to steady his mind, and to realize that Pearl had snuck a thin tendril in through the open window. The tendril had been struck - but not damaged - when the window had closed.

"Now, where to begin?" an amused voiced asked, and Victor almost jumped out of his skin.

He wasn't hearing the words, he realized. He was feeling them as they vibrated up through Pearl, along the line of his shoulder, and into his jaw.

It felt awful, he decided. But it gave him his much-needed insight into what was going on in the room above him, so he gritted his teeth and tried to endure. Without another thought, he tucked the gun into the elastic waistband of his Facility-issued sweatpants. 

"You see, I am a representative of a certain... faction of individuals," the words continued, and Victor clenched his jaw tighter around the hollow-but-full sensation it caused in his mouth. The feeling was overall somewhere between a tickle and a muscle spasm, and made him want to press into his jaw with both hands in order to stop up the vibrations. But, suspended as he was seven stories above the ground, he knew better than to follow his instincts in that regard.

"Individuals?"

"No interruptions, please."

Victor worked his jaw, unable to distinguish between speakers outside of simple context clues.