-Kate Andersen-
Lucky number six's hand was flying towards my neck, grasping it up and forcing my head into the cold, hard brick wall. I chortled a scream through the crush of my wind pipe. Frantically I kicked against number six, I kept willing my feet to be harder, faster, stronger. Snap, crunch, snap, two of his ribs broke under the impact of my toes. Still it did nothing to his resolve as my body started to convulse without air. I could hear the crackling sounds of bones morphing back together and my eyes widened. I wondered if this was a trait of more Nocturnals than I'd realised, or if it was simply for Scavengers or Ides operatives.
Through the dark doors, the shriek of bending metal ached through our ears. My mind was starting to black out into an oxygen-less void, still I could hear the quivering cry of the poor soul who'd broken free on the other side. In the panic of hearing those noises, number six clamped his hand just a little tighter, everything seemed to make a popping sound in my head and the world blurred into a pitiless black and white movie reel before cutting out entirely.
It wasn't until I felt my heart force itself to beat, my lungs achingly pulling air down through my sore throat that I realised I had died again and come back. My windpipe was setting itself right, that didn't stop the ache. This time instead of just hear water at my ears coming round, I could feel something wet. Barely opening an eyelid, I didn't even register the red surrounding me fully. Relief washed over me, like the heavy waves that had taken me out of this world again, because I could smell rain and I was ok. My eyes closed once more, and I became weightless. As if lifted by nothing but a gentle breeze. It wasn't like being dead. Then again, nothing itself was like being dead.
The breeze carried me out and rested me down against a cool wall. Soft, cold fingers brushed the hair from my face and then the rain went away, as did the gentle wind. I lifted a lid again, watching a black and red silhouette slash through the white halls into an air vent like an artist angrily striking his brush against a blank canvas. But all that was left behind was a slight speckle of rose petals that fell from the gaping vent like blossoms.
I was so tired, head so heavy, it was hard to keep my eyes open as my nose dribbled coppery liquid over my lips and chin. I held my hand up to catch it as it fell, then it stopped, like turning off a tap in my mind. I don't know how long I'd sat there, somewhere far off in another realm. Shock had bottomed out into a state of not realising anything exists, my senses so overloaded they cancelled themselves out and a bubble had formed over my ears. Apart from the taste of my own blood every time I swallowed, I could detect nothing. I didn't even move as a figure drifted past me, angry feet on the ground, straight into the dark doors. He was angry, I realised as my dazed mind came back to reality and I let my hand drop to my side, the blood in it dried.
I could feel it, frustration. Then I could hear it as he started to make phone calls. The subtle beep of dialling numbers sounding more like using his thumbs to box gloveless. The raspy, deep tenor of his voice becoming strained. A growl under his breath. But my mind wasn't rushing to translate what he was saying. When he walked out through the doors and stood before me, smoke scent finally reaching me through the copper, I slowly pulled my head up to look at him. My eyes not quite focussing on stormy brown eyes.
"It seems you've sustained injuries, Miss Andersen," He offered his hand forward for me to take. I stared at it not quite sure what to do. The vibes I was getting off of him were like being thumped all over, his expression looking like thunder didn't do much to counter the fear I felt swelling within. "I can help you with it, if you'll come with me." He moved his hand forward a little more, pulling his lips up in attempt of a smile, to me it was more a threatening sneer, as if I were the animal in the trap and he the hunter pulling me from it simply to hang me up and skin me.
I glanced away, looking at my legs where they were bent against my chest. They were heavy and limp and didn't remember how to move although I told them to in my head. They were asleep. Rough hands yanked me up from the floor and the room flipped over as I felt myself fly through the air. I landed with a bump that made my ribs ache where they hit his shoulder-blade. An undignified fireman's lift, and moving in a direction away from my cell, the upper levels, the labs I'd seen so far and further into secluded corridors my mind tried to map whilst it was wakeless in the waking world.
Burning. Burning wood. Strong up my nose. Feelings I'd had earlier today, after being surrounded by flames. A gaze that had made me feel sick, as if I were being dissected alive. It hit me hard,
Who was that?
Doctor Daniels, someone you don't want to get on the wrong side of here.
Doctor Daniels, and he was carrying me away from the familiarity of the halls above.
I flung both of my fists into his back as hard as I could. Pounding them again and again. He growled in pain. More of a response than I'd gotten from almost anyone so far. My feet kicked up and down as I tried to struggle out of his grasp. I didn't trust this man, he'd gotten Rin from Ides, he'd had all those men killed. He'd...
I tumbled from his grasp as he threw me towards a wall. Holding himself together, panting in pain. Blood was bubbling from his mouth. I'd kicked him in the teeth with the back of my heel, little tooth marks in it sealing up. I was somehow unaware of the sting of it.
He spat blood, littering the floor with it and approached me with a bit of a limp. Not from his legs, but his upper body, where it was obvious I'd injured him quite badly. He'd had to sway side to side, his muscles stiff and unyielding to the damage done.
He pulled a gun from his side and aimed it for my head. "Get up and walk, before I do some damage that your scrawny body won't be able to heal from."
Hesitantly I pushed myself up on wobbly legs and did as he said. For now anyway, he was still human and I had some advantage. At least I hoped. If I played along I might get out of this with my scull intact.
* * *
When we reached a huge, black metal door that pulled on my strength, and looked as if it could hold back a lot of force, I realised I'd either have to chance being shot on the head now, or possibly worse later. I turned quickly to swipe the gun from his hand. But I wasn't quick enough, and jerking back he pulled the trigger. I felt a sharp piercing in my shoulder, hot wet liquid splattering against my neck and face and trailing from a bullet wound. Feeling an adrenalin surge, I pushed my hand forward, fingers straight and tight together as they punctured his chest, breaking through a rib I'd weakened earlier. More red hit my face, and a horrible, warm feeling filled my body, making me gag. What was it I had begun?
He had been reduced to his knees holding a hand over the wound, whilst I quickly dug the bullet out of my shoulder, my nails were worse than tweezers as they were attached to thicker fingers that had to dig for the proverbial gold.
Two loud bangs shattering my ears, this time pain erupted from my stomach, such close range had made the wounds gaping. I stumbled back and slumped into the door, holding my hands over the holes and feeling them pull back together slowly. All the while, Doctor Daniels struggled to get access to the room beyond, and as the doors parted behind me, I fell back into it. Before I could recall myself to my feet, Daniels had crawled in, rasping on his own blood and then those doors shut us into a world of darkness.
This room had green and blue lights, making the darkness absolute instead of illuminating them to my eyes. I could make out the details of lab equipment, the fact the floor beneath me was a metal mesh suspended somewhat, that there were stairs leading down to all of the laboratory equipment. Beyond those faint details, everything else was shielded from my Nocturnal eyes without straining past a pain barrier I was on no state to combat. Unlike any of the other labs, this place was dark. Not simply by its lighting, but in nature.
"Damn it...damn you!" Daniels growled as he started dragged himself over towards the metal stairs, his every movement reverberating around the room and making my ears ache.
I looked down at my wounds, amazed that I was pulling back together. That I had not died to come back again. I was a little weak, breathless, but I forced myself up to my feet. "Let me go back to my cell, doctor Daniels, and I'll leave you to get medical assistance."
He'd got himself near one of the worktops down the stairs, a laugh gargling from his bloody mouth as he pulled himself up to grab a little vial from amongst a tray of them. It was red, a red vial. As he pierced the top of it with his tooth and swallowed it down I could detect diluted blood and several mixed chemicals. Serums, stabilised in blood. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and threw it aside, the little bottle tinged against the metal floor and then smashed.
"That sounded a lot like a threat, Miss Andersen," Daniels laughed eerily as the world shrunk around me. My stomach turning in knots, even as it knotted itself back together. "Only, once that Scavenger blood is absorbed into my system, you'll be in no position to make threats." He pushed himself up from the ground, spitting mixed red to the floor. I watched his hand moved towards a panel on the wall and flipped a switch. A large green ray of light lit the room and I was on my knees, splitting pain warping my mind.
I couldn't tell how long had passed before I found myself again. Still surrounded by green, only the beams were smaller and I had been moved across the room, to its lower section. He'd localised the energy cage I was to be kept in. Reaching my hand for the beams, I felt a sharp fire spread from my fingertips all the way up my arm and hit my head like a bolt of lightning. I had to withdraw it.
Very little sound got through, it was muffled at best from where I was. He was on the phone, somewhere across from me, but shielded for the most part in the darkness the odd green and blue lights seemed to impose, contradicting themselves in the most mind boggling sense.
When he'd finished, he approached me out of the darkness, his eyes black, iris's shimmering eerie white, pupils bright red. His body had almost doubled in size and his glance was far more menacing than before. He leered at me through the beams. "Now, you're going to tell me where it was they took you before you were delivered so beautifully to Ides."
"Never," I crossed my arms, lacing my glare with as much stubborn insistence as was humanly possible. Sharp pain ripped through my body as he pressed a little button on a watch he'd put on since I'd been whited out by those green lights. I curled into a ball within my energy cage, sound leaving my mouth, but I couldn't hear it, as the green glowed in at me. Burning my skin, but leaving it without mark.
"I have many questions and you can bet I will force every single last answer to them out of your pretty little mouth." He shouted through the haze of pain.