D-Class Wing, Cell Hallway
@Wayward
"What if we refuse to follow you?"
The scientist's lips pulled into a sneer, staring at D with morbid curiosity.
“This happened the first time we did surgeries with you as well.”He leaned forward.
“Would you like me to tell you what we did to you..?”A small laugh.
“Both guards here attempted to drag you away. You resisted. So they threw you to the ground. And they began beating you. With steel-toed combat boots, butts of their guns, their fists. Then one of the doctors sedated you, and you were dragged away helplessly…”The scientist looked at D with evil curiosity.
“Would you like to reenact that scene, or will you come along willingly?”
D-Class Wing, Cell 2.4
@Qia,
@Silver Carrot
Pia was eager for good news. But alas, the cellmate only stood there, trembling, and hung his head.
"You've given us a chance to fight back against these people. We won't forget that."
The cellmates licked his dry lips, nodding feverishly.
“Be safe… Be safe.”Before two guards appeared in the doorway of cell 2.4. The cellmate immediately shrunk back, a terrified yelp leaving his throat.
“Time for your surgeries. Come with us.” One of the guards said dispassionately.
If Pia or A resisted, the guards would simply restrain them while a scientist would inject them with a sedative. It would make them go limp, and they would be dragged helplessly from the room.
D-Class Wing -> Hospital Wing, Surgery Room
@Wayward,
@Qia,
@Silver Carrot
Pia, A, D and VV were escorted from the D-class Wing, guards at the front and back of their group, and led by the scientist who had spoken with them before. Any resistance was met with a sedative, making saying no a tragic impossibilty.
They were marched down the hallway, where they saw a marked-off section ringed with guards at the intersection. VV’s eyes widened, recognizing it. Beyond the barrier, she recognized the hallway they had been originally captured in.
It meant not all of the facility was secured.
They turned the corner, and walked up to a sliding door marked ‘Hospital Wing’. Walking past rows of gurneys and blue curtains, some hosting moaning cellmates while others remained empty, they eventually reached the door at the end of the room. It was marked ‘Surgery Room,’ and opening it revealed a row of uncomfortable stainless steel operating tables. The guards shoved each of them onto their own separate operating table, immediately retraining them with metal cuffs attached to the side.
Under the blinding light of the operating lamp, more scientists moved forward, throwing on blue gloves above them. And, one by one, VV, Pia, A and D were given anesthesia and a drip, and the world melted into darkness.
In the darkness, each saw a vision from their past, unearthed by the activation of their abyssal connection.
@QiaThe screech of tires and the shattering of glass echoed in her ears, a cacophony of terror that seemed to stretch on forever. The world spun around her in a dizzying blur of colours and sounds. She was a teenager, full of life and laughter, sitting in the passenger seat of her best friend’s car. They had been singing along to their favourite song, the wind whipping through their hair before everything changed in an instant. The car swerved violently, tires screeching against the asphalt. Her heart pounded in her chest as she gripped the seat, her knuckles white with fear. Then, the car flipped, the force of the impact throwing them around like rag dolls. Glass shattered, spraying them with tiny, glistening shards. The world outside the windows became a whirlwind of sky and ground, indistinguishable from one another. The car landed with a sickening crunch, the sound of metal bending and breaking filling the air.
And then silence.
She could hear her own ragged breathing, feel the sting of cuts on her skin, and the dull ache of bruises forming. A bolt of raw adrenaline shot through her veins, propelling her into action. She blinked rapidly, trying to clear her vision, and with every ounce of strength she had left, she crawled out of the wreckage, her body protesting with every movement.
As she emerged from the twisted metal, her eyes widened in horror. Her best friend lay motionless on the asphalt, blood pooling around her, dark and ominous, seeping into the cracks of the road. The sight sent a wave of panic through her, her heart pounding in her chest. She stumbled towards the body, her legs feeling like they could give out at any moment. “Please, wake up,” she whispered, her voice trembling. She reached out with shaking hands, desperate to find a pulse, a sign of life. The world around her seemed to fade away, leaving only the two of them in that moment of fear and uncertainty.
But there was no response, only faint, laboured breaths that grew weaker with each passing second.
As she knelt there, a strange sensation washed over her. She could feel the blood flow in her friend’s body, weak and erratic as if she had developed an almost supernatural awareness of the life force slipping away. It was a chilling realization, one that made her heart ache with a profound sense of helplessness.
Her hands trembled as she pressed them against her friend’s chest, trying to will her back to consciousness. “Stay with me,” she pleaded, her voice barely above a whisper. The world around them seemed to blur, the sounds of distant sirens and the murmur of onlookers fading into the background.
All that mattered was the fragile thread of life she was desperately trying to hold onto. The fragile thread that was being cut right before her eyes and within her body.
She could feel it slipping away, like blood through her fingers.
@Wayward "What's wrong doctor --?"
"It isn't looking good; the bleeding is internal." The voices were muffled.His head was faded; he'd been slipping in and out of consciousness for an hour. The machines by his hospital bed, none of which he could name or understand, hummed, chimed, and alarmed in such jarring sound that he had blocked out the cacophony to a dull roar to hear the conversation outside the closed door.A sharp, searing pain coursed through his stomach. He held against the worst of it, pressed his eight-year-old hands firmly to the spot where it hurt... the nurses had said something about keeping pressure on the wound."But HOW the HELL did this happen?" A third voice, male, and angrier than the first two, interjected."We're still looking into that." The doctor spoke calmly, attempting to ease the third person's anger."Will you be able to help him?" The female voice asked, holding back a stream of tears."We're... we're not sure... it's... it's in God's hands right now. The boy in the hospital bed shuddered. Mom... Dad... The sounds around him faded to silence; the world went dark.
@Silver Carrot"You skipped meals again, didn't you?"
She looked up to see the mathematics teacher, and her good friend, staring down at her disapprovingly. How'd she get in her house? 'Oh right,' she thought. 'I gave her a key.' She turned away from her friend and sighed.
Her friend gritted her teeth and began to raise her voice.
"Johann's death wasn't your fault! I can't believe you'd resort to some story about ghosts or physic powers just to justify rationally blaming yourself! I can't keep watching you destroy yourself like this!"
She finally stood up and confronted her friend.
"Shut up! I am so sick of nobody believing me! Everybody telling me that it'll all be okay and move on, and pretend that everything's fine! I can't put this behind me!" She began to get more hysterical as she grasped the sides of her head. "How am I supposed to go back to work with a smile on my face?! How am I supposed to deal with this?!"
Furniture began to wobble and levitate around her. Her friend looked surprised, and her mouth was moving, but she couldn't hear what her friend was saying anymore. But the fear in her friend's eyes told her everything she needed to know. It was only strenthening her own swirling chasm of negative emotions. It was getting hard to breathe. She collapsed to her knees as her friend, with blood streaming down her face from a blurry shape hitting her, fled the room. Everything was a tornado of furniture whizzing around her. She was blacking out. That's when she could feel something for the first time. Something else in her head.
@Estylwen“Kill him.”She stood there, shaking with the gun in her hand. It wasn’t hers, it was
theirs, these mafia thugs that kept harassing her.
“First you want me to be a front, and now you want me to kill for you? You’re crazy.” She said, putting up token resistance. She could see the poor man on the floor in front of her, trembling on his knees. He had entered the store at the wrong time, and overheard the mafia thugs talking to her. It was enough that they had to kill him.
One of the thugs pulled her up by the collar, baring his teeth.
“You either kill him, or we will, and we’ll make it agonizingly painful.”He smirked.
“Trust me, you’ll be doing him a favour.”She stood there, staring at him, tears pricking her eyes as he stared into her. Satisfied with the fear in her eyes, he roughly let her go, and gestured to the man on his knees.
“Stop making us wait. Finish him now.”Heavy, quick breathing. She started to hyperventilate, finger tightening on the trigger, staring at the man on the ground.
And, a tear rolling down her cheek, she pulled the trigger.
@Wayward,
@Qia,
@Silver CarrotAnd, after the visions stopped, a presence was felt in Pia, A, D and VV. Dark, suffocating.
“Give me your pain. Give me your suffering. Suffer and grieve. And I will give you power…”To describe the presence was like a thousand voices screaming in the head, earth-shattering, disorienting, and complete. The darkness took shape, and a presence seventy times higher than the tallest skyscraper was felt. The closer the presence got, the more a sense of dread swallowed them up. So close, the breath of death was upon them.
And in the next instant, it stopped, and the presence disappeared.
Hospital Wing
@Wayward,
@Qia,
@Silver Carrot
Pia, A, VV, and D awoke in the gurneys, side by side and across from one another, curtains back so they could see one another. Each shared stitch marks sealing the cut found in the center of their chest just below the rib cage, near the heart. Each had a metal cuff chaining their hand to the side fo the gurney.
VV raised her head a bit, feeling disorientated but not in pain. In fact, she was feeling pretty strong. Like there was extra life in her bones.
“You guys alright?” She whispered, seeing the others beginning to stir.
“Ah, you’re finally awake.” Said a voice.
VV watched a slender woman in a business dress clack her heels down the hall, stopping in front of their beds. She pushed up the glasses on her face, looking at them with sharp eyes.
“Good. I have a task for you. You’re finally ready...”VV narrowed her eyes from where she laid.
“Ready for what?”She had a smirk on her face.
“Oh, going outside. You’re going to destroy the leader of the Wilds for us.”“Who?”“Big guy, wears a hoodie, can’t see his face. He’s got those biting wisps swirling around him. I believe you saw him when you woke up, yes?”VV’s mind reeled.
That guy?
“No way, you can’t be serious.”“I’m afraid I couldn’t be more serious. You’re leaving in ten minutes.”