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Part 2
Location: Sharman Square, in the apartments
Timeline: During the Riots, Night time
Timeline: During the Riots, Night time
Justine sighed as his corpse slumped over. “So be it,” she intoned. He had gone out cursing her to his last breath. How was she supposed to know? And by the look in his eyes, he knew he’d signed his own death warrant. She couldn’t let a rampaging psycho loose on the city, only to attempt to hurt and kill more innocent people. “Your fate was sealed the moment you put that thing on,,” she murmured as she stood, then picked up the mask, using her sword. A moment later she appeared in her room and grabbed her camera, taking pictures of it, only to flash back and take another picture of Bozo in his downed condition.
A moment later she put the mask into the concealed compartment for her blade, and hid it away, only to appear in the kitchen, near Racheli or where she had last seen her new roommate. Her eyes scanned the room looking for her as she sheathed the weapon.
Racheli felt as though her insides turned to liquid, or at least she thought they were, though it was impossible to tell through the icy grip her body was in. Her temperature continued to drop at an alarming rate as it burned her. Her teeth gritted to keep down a scream through more black blood seemed to seep from her pressed lips and stain her shirt front. The image on her shirt, whatever it was, became indistinguishable during her vomiting. The ooze now plastered her shirt to her skin while it chilled her to bone. Her hand still weakly gripped the knife and pinned it during her fall underneath her. Thankfully the weapon was flat on its side or else it would’ve sliced into her side and more blood would’ve spilt over the floor. She knew she had to get out of here. Somewhere, anywhere was a better place than watching those two idiots clash right near the kitchen. Already they had blown a hole into the floor, half blinding her, before they were sucked quickly out of sight.
Good fucking riddance, assholes. Racheli’s teeth gritted, nearly biting off her tongue in the process, against her cells seeming to rip themselves apart. Her body twisted weakly over to her belly as she began to army crawl toward the door. Behind her with every inch, Racheli left a smearing trail where she had been laying. Her shirt was plastered to her front and the blood marred the image, chilling her surface more. It only helped a little in getting her to stop sweating through her messy hair was drenched, increasing her desire to just lay down and die.
”I’m not...going to fucking die here,” Rach snarled and gave another push, her torso finally reaching the fallen door’s edge.
On managing to edge on top of the door’s remains, thanks to Bozo’s uncalled for force in his entrance, the sick woman flipped over onto her side then flat upon her back. She was grateful her vomiting had ceased for the moment. Her breathing was heavy as her chest heaved up and down, her head tilted back to clear her airways for more oxygen. Her eyes were leaking the same black and skirted down her face, turning the outside to greyish color. She knew, without being psychic, that she looked likely as shitty as she felt.
Movement stirred in the corner of Racheli’s eyes causing her head to whip about, regretting it the moment she had with hiss of pain. A man stepped into the scene, his features included dark hair, average build and the very same eyes shared by the woman laying at his feet. His image was ghostly at first, and gradually decided to take a solid shape and sharpened to be recognized officially by the two females in the room. Rach’s face paled to pure white on seeing her father standing before her. He was dressed as she recalled him last, in a flannel hunting shirt with a white wife-beater underneath. His pants were still stained with red blood from his latest victim as he lowered his face down to hover above her. His lips curled into a smile when he spoke in a sickening, fatherly voice. “What’s the matter Rach? You don’t look so hot, hun. Something making you sick, sweet heart?”
He reached to touch her head only have Racheli flinch and jerk away. “Git the fuck away from me, you damn bastard!’
A dark clad figure flickered into the room, the six-foot amazon goddess from only a minute earlier, this time a couple of feet from the edge of the hole. She coughed a little in the dust, glancing around, looking for Racheli. She spotted trail of black ichor and followed it to the door where she saw the other woman there, and then the man as Rach shouted. Justine rushed across the space, and reached out to grab him to create some space. Instead her hands sank into the shoulders and out the back of the male image. She withdrew them immediately, glaring, before kneeling down to Rach, ignoring the ghostly figure, to begin checking her over. What is happening to you,” she said. “Where are you going?”
The man chuckled quietly when Justine asked her questions, his head shifted about the room and sought a seat. It took him a moment or two before realizing all possible choices were too far to be within comfortable conversation range. Biting his lip a moment, Racheli’s father, Michael Garth, finally decided to remain standing at hearing his daughter speak. His eyes dipped down to study her crumbling figure that still continued to bleed out from her face and show clear signs of something terrible happening. His posture didn’t seem to be the least bit surprised at what was happening as the dark brunette ignored him, moving to check Racheli’s vitals.
As Justine gingerly too Racheli’s wrist, clean of blood, she replied as she flinched at the touch. Her breath was rattling in her chest with each word, trying to breath at the same time. “Don’t touch me. I don’t fucking know what’s going on, I wish I did… It feels like every part of me is burning. God damn it. It hurts. I’m trying to get outside… cool off.”
The mess that was once a proud, aggressive woman, curled up into a ball then hissed in pain.
Having stepped back, Michael ended up speaking while his ‘daughter’ was busy dealing with her agony. ”It’s too hot in here, it’s killing her. You need to take her outside else she’ll die, or to be more correct, we’ll die.”
Gabriel cursed his rotten luck after finally digging himself out from under the massive pile of garbage that he'd unwittingly buried himself under. He wasn't injured in the slightest, thankfully, having shifted to ARMOR function while he was falling, but the stuff he'd been buried under was heavy- heavy enough to give even his default form trouble, but light enough that he couldn't justify upping his ARTEFACT mode.
Not to mention I'd bring the whole building down just going up to Mode 3. He looked around at his and Bozo's handiwork. In particular, Bozo himself.
"Jesus H. Christ..." he muttered. Bozo was very clearly, most sincerely dead, blood flowing from every orifice. It seemed like a perfectly horrible way to die. The only question was, how the hell it had happened. He noted the raw flesh on his face where his mask had been.
"Fuck. What the hell happened to him?"
"difficult to say, sir," chimed Daedalus. "perhaps the physical damage is a result if that steroid i detected from the leak in his mask. hard to say without the mask in question. perhaps another meta stole the mask and inflicted this on him?"
"I'm never going to be able to tell without that mask. Let's head back up, see what we can find out." He floated up toward the hole in the ceiling, another realization hitting him.
"Shit. That girl. Can you still detect her?"
"yes, but... sir, her signal is very faint. without proper attention, she may not survive. and this location is far from ideal for the kind of treatment i'd need to give her."
"Shit. That probably means the Forge. She's not gonna be pleased with that, much less anyone else."
"the price we must pay to be heroes, i fear.
"No kidding," he commented, rolling his eyes. ”All this hero stuff seemed a lot easier when it was just a concept.” He propelled himself up the hole he'd made, wincing at just how many floors he'd ruined. He even thought there might be a gas leak on one of the floors, which was just asking for trouble. Soon, given his luck.
Remind me to wire some money to this establishment for repairs. Or replacement. he emerged onto the top floor to be greeted by the sight of the girl- Rach, he thought- severely deteriorating. Next to her was some… woman, though that was a poor description. She was practically some kind of supermodel, decked out in black and indigo, with a fierce-looking sword strapped to her back. And, considering the phase signature rolling across his sensors, the blade wasn’t just a conversation piece.
Must be the meta I sensed earlier. Before Bozo died. I’d ask her about that- particularly about the mask- but I’ve got more pressing issues to take care of, he thought, glancing at the girl on the floor.
"So, uh… I take it I have you to thank for Bozo down there getting a face job?”
“It wasn’t my idea,” the woman responded, turning to the armored figure now hovering nearby, a hard expression coming acrossed her masked features. On the floor next to her was the mask. She glanced at the man standing over Rach who said something to the effect of her.. .or rather ‘we’ as in plural that they were dying. And she needed to cool off, quickly. There was a sense of urgency to those words. Something that filled her with real dread.
Gabriel sighed. Obviously he hadn't made any friends tonight with his... activities.
”Okay. I know neither of you have any particular reason to trust me, but I need you to listen. That girl there, she's undergoing a traumatic genesis effect- she's making such a violent transformation into a metahuman that it is literally killing her. I have a facility where I could stabilize her, but I need to take her there now. As in, right now. I've been studying meta effects for over a year now, I know what I'm talking about. You can come with me if you like, to make sure I’m not just putting her in some dungeon somewhere. So... please, I need to be quick. She won't last much longer in her condition."
It was a gamble, to be sure, letting not just the transforming girl, but the as-yet-unknown meta come to the Forge, but he didn’t have a choice- either he got these women to trust him on this, or the girl died.
Her mind, that of an investigator and writer, knowing the importance of even a single word made all the difference in the world in meaning. The ‘we’ didn’t seem to be a coincidence. She didn’t have anything to back it up, other than the ghostly image, but … she was willing to operate a little on faith. I mean… she could do things most people couldn’t.
“The mask was killing the guy,” she answered as she looked at Rach, brushing black-ichor coated hair away from the other woman’s face. “I will take her outside. It’s colder, it should help slow or ease this process,” she said. One hand gently laid the mask on Rach’s Chest, and then immensely, supernaturally, inhumanly strong arms lifted Rach like she was a paper doll. “Change of plans. How far is this facility of yours? If it’s close enough I can get us there…” Justine snapped her fingers, meaning instantaneously.
Gabriel sighed in relief at the other meta's response. Maybe he could salvage something out of this situation yet.
"I suppose, 'not far' is a relative distance, given our respective... talents, but it's a mile or so off the coast. Deep down, like... Really deep. Keeps unsavory types from stumbling onto it, you understand. If you need specific coordinates and spatial references I can have Daedalus tell you what you need. Otherwise, we're just gonna have to fly. My programs can get us in quickly enough after that."
He paused for a moment, then remembered something else.
"Er... Also perhaps relevant, there's a gas leak somewhere on the third floor... and I think perhaps I should wait to apologize about that until we're on our way..."
Racheli hadn’t flinched when she was picked up or when her hair was touched, her body limp. Her weight was a few notable ounces lighter which was expected from losing the contents in her stomach and tossing it up across her front. Her arms hung downward with little to no sense of life to them. Her skin was already paling from its usual complexion, giving her a sickly look. Her head weakly leaned against the stranger’s hold as her eyes sagged. Darkness was swirling around Racheli’s eyesight edges while her body shivered uncontrollably, unable to hear the pair’s words properly.
Beneath the surface was still a boiling anger, but it was like water under ice: contained, but flowing. Part of her wanted to beat this man’s armor to pieces, or rather take her sword and dismantle it, and the meatbag underneath. She wasn’t going to do that though. He’d been trying to help, even though… Now both girls needed to find a new place to live. And well… her alternate identity might have been compromised.
The armored figure… his words seemed true. They felt right or had the ring of truth, and there simply seemed to be no time to waste on the matter. And, what he said lined up with the image of the man that Rach had been talking to. Two independent sources with the same information? It also seemed that the pilot of this suit had some knowledge… it wasn’t just a military prototype piloted by some jarhead, not by the speech patterns. No, probably a scientist, inventor, or engineer of some kind. Intelligent, for sure. Maybe he really could help. She was still acting on faith… and she didn’t exactly have the time to compel the truth out of him. Either, he would do what he said, or he would not. There wouldn’t be any room for gray or waffling on the matter. It was simplistic, maybe. But right now, simple was what it would have to be. No decision made in real-time in the field was ever perfect anyway. Better to adapt as things happened. Hell, she hadn’t known her apartment was going to get blown apart when she had been drinking her morning cappuccino.
“You might want to hurry.” Michael stated, his eyes studying Racheli. His figure had stepped closer until he was lingering just outside Justine’s personal space as his head darted, mildly amusement on his face, from one talking individual to the next. Neither one knew exactly was going on and he was only required to state the minimal. At least until the right questions were asked. His mind was not surprised neither human bothered to address him, likely because of his semi-ghost appearance. However, he needed to be careful how much information he gave else they would’ve allowed the host to die. Save thousands by sacrificing the one in theory and harmed his ability to live out his revenge, his lips frowning a bit then vanished a second later at the thought.
”She isn’t going to last much longer and if she passes out. Her survival rate drops considerably,” He pointed out while stepping back, his body edged toward the door. His head looked at the armor a moment and seemed to absorb a fact before casting it away for later. ”As for the genesis effect, yes you are correct. It’s thanks to a virus she ended up contracted over several hours ago from a dead blood relative. She’s been hosting it since her flight which showed symptoms of a ‘common’ flu until recently. Through it’s not contagious...yet. However, I’m afraid to say I’ve not managed to find any suitable hosts to inhabit yet.”
He paused just outside the frame door as if trying to suggest where to go. ”At this rate, she’s going to be another notch in my recent history. Through if she attacks you, then it would be best to know she’s not in her right mind when she does. Merely trying to get me another body before hers burns out.”
Gabriel flinched at a male voice reverberating through the room, finally realizing there was another individual in their midst. Or... was there? Gabriel's brow knit in confusion- now that he'd noticed the man, he could see him just fine, but... that was the extent of his awareness. No biometrics, no vital signs, no thermal signature... the man was a living hole in his awareness, an empty void. All he could read off of him was a faint phase signature.
Okay... That's disconcerting. Even more so because, now that he could actually hear the man speaking, what he was saying was... troubling, to say the least.
Suitable hosts? Virus? None of what he was saying was particularly comforting, made all the more distressing by his complete ghosting of his sensors. And how does he know all of this, anyway? He doesn't seem the scholarly type, he thought, giving him a once-over. Well... if he does know how to keep her from deteriorating any further, may as well take advantage of it. He doesn't seem any more keen on her dying than the rest of us.
"All right then, sir, what do you suggest we do? Assuming, of course, you really are acting in the interest of keeping her alive."
’Of course I am, if she dies so do I. I’m not a virus that can survive being airborne for long,” Michael admitted, through he was partly lying in his words. He couldn’t survive at all in the air but rather through touch. However he knew if he had stated that outright then his current saviors might consider letting the girl die. The mental projection shuffled slowly backwards until his back was pressed against the wall right beside the now empty door frame. He crossed his arms and became comfortable out of habit, his actions based on the information about the individual’s behavior he was currently projecting. It was easy to gain through her memories as he could access her brain stem and the memory cells within it,”so first off, you need to cool her down. Quickly as possible as the virus, aka me, is currently altering her insides to become a place I can survive. However I’m more adjusted to deep space environments which are very cold. This room is a furnace compared to what I need. So, her body is trying to cool itself off by using our blood which is the black stuff spewing out. Right now.. she’s getting close to losing about a pint of blood at this rate. I assure you, she will survive and her flesh will sustain any below freezing temperatures without frostbite.”
Just when he paused, Racheli’s body twitched and her mouth started to trickle another stream of black. It was a clear sign another wave was coming and it would catch the brunette if she wasn’t aware. Michael gave the model a look that questioned how much longer she was going to let this go on.
Justine looked at ‘Michael’ then over to the green-armored figure. “Meet me outside, on the north side in the snow drifts,” she said. A split second later she simply blinked out with a pop as air rushed to fill in the space the two girls had been occupying. On Gabriel's displays there was a registering of an interesting phase signature to it, a distortion in the quantum foam, and something akin to a wormhole. Space around her had distorted for the briefest of instants.
Was it space-fold? Was it quantum tunneling? An actual wormhole?
In the same instant they disappeared they reappeared outside on the north side of the building, and both of them plunged into the snow, the masked woman up to her upper shapely thighs, almost to her waist. She laid Racheli to the side, then plunged her arms into the snow and quickly dug out a trough, only to put the weakened woman into it. The air outside was chill enough for their breath to fog, and even the black ichor that coated Rach to steam in the frigid air. She’d begun to rapidly cool, even without being buried. Just as fast though, Justine was covering the woman up, now in the trough, burying her in snow, packing it around even her face, leaving her mouth and nose exposed enough to breathe but not much else.
Reaching back she withdrew the sword, Edgewynd from it’s scabbard over her shoulder. The silvery metal, something other than steel, rung cleanly in the brisk air. She transferred the weapon to her off-hand, then reached through the mental connection she had with the weapon, calling silently on it’s power. Give me the power to heal her, to handle the damage and the blood loss, she almost prayed silently. A moment later the blade glimmered then shone with bright golden radiance a couple shades darker than sunlight, a pure and vital energy. That same light flowed into Justine as she placed one hand on Racheli laying encased in the snowy, icy makeshift sarcophagus of sorts.
Energy, vitality, life, pure radiant healing energy surged through Justine and into Rach, increasing in radiant intensity. The snow around her glowed from within as the light suffused into the diseased and dying woman she lay in a bed of healing sunlight. The air around Justine shimmered as small flecks or orbs of light floated up around them both slowly, swirling faintly…
When the cold air surrounded her body, Racheli’s shivering had gradually died out and came to a stop. Her figure was still limp in Justine’s hands while the woman began to bury her into the snow. Rach’s mind had expected it to be freezing but instead, it was more inviting than anything. The blood collected at the back of her throat was quickly swallowed back down. She made a soft cough as it rubbed her raw insides, her eyes still closed to the scenery around her. Her breathing and pulse were steadier than before, yet still very weak to the touch. It was pretty easy to tell the virus had ripped her up from the inside and her immune system was trying to win a losing battle. She was a fighter after all, and the fact she would possibly die as one wasn’t a surprise to her.
It hadn’t taken long for the snow to hide her while her ears faintly caught the wailing sirens and shouts in the background, sounds of the chaos unfolding on Sherman Square. For the moment, Racheli didn’t give a shit. Even if she did, it was pretty clear she couldn’t move and to try wasn’t in her give a damn list for the time being. Anymore dwelling on the fact were pushed away when another sensation filled her as Justine placed a hand over the makeshift frozen coffin. A glow started in Racheli’s core, not warm as one expected, but cool and refreshing. It was like a pure river was flowing through her blood veins giving her worn out body strength again. It glided from her heart and spread, reaching to the farest corner of her limbs where it circled about at the tips then flowed back in.
While Justine healed Racheli, the projection the virus had chosen stood by and watched idly. His focus primarily on the two’s interaction rather than the hellish scene outside, his image patiently waiting for the scene to end. Seeing it happen from the outside, even he couldn’t deny the beauty through he knew the effort was only a temporarily one. In a few hours, his virus would be once more reconstructing the woman’s insides again and it would restart the whole process over. The only difference was, instead of nine hours, it would only take a few minutes to reach the stage where he had been forced to leave off.
Taking the brief peace until Rach woke up, he approached the healer. ”You realize you only delayed the process and likely made the restart much worse. There’s no way you can get me out of her, or at least without killing her. The only thing we can do is begin the merging process which if she can’t sync with my brain patterns, then she will die anyway. Knowing that… I have a question.”
Michael paused to ‘inhale’, then finished with his question. ”Is she really worth the effort to save at all?”
Gabriel blinked as the swordswoman jumped outside through some... unusual means. He tilted his head, then shook himself roughly- now was not the time for science! There was a girl dying outside! Gathering himself up, Gabriel went to the window he'd entered the apartment from before launching himself outside.
North side. Snow drifts. From his higher vantage point, it was easy to see where the swordswoman had warped to. And the girl, buried in the snow. And Mr. Ghostly-Ass too. He still had some questions for that guy- if, indeed, he was a guy.
"sir."
Gabriel jumped slightly (as much as he could, floating in midair) at the mechanical voice in his head.
What? I'm kinda busy here.
"i am aware. sir, there's something that's come up. something... unusual. distressing.
This whole evening has been distressing, Daedalus. You're gonna have to be more specific.
"it's the girl. her phase signature seemed off, so i cross-referenced it with a number of other signatures in my database and, well... something came up. a match. almost identical, in fact."
Gabriel perked up at that. Phase signatures were largely unique to the meta that possessed them, like fingerprints. Even two metas with the same powers would have vastly different phases. There was some precedent for similar tags, but it was rare. Gabriel himself had never seen such an event personally.
Huh. That could be something. Who was the match?
well... you.
...
...Pardon?
"it's true, sir. whatever is causing that poor girl's meta effect, it's somehow linked almost directly... to you."
The energy and light flickered out as Rach regained a modicum of consciousness. She knew the healing power of the weapon wasn’t fully expended, but she wouldn’t be able to pull her that far back from the brink again. Not for a full day anyway. Justine looked at Michael, or the image of the thing wearing him. “I know,” she said quietly.
“It might be possible to filter you out of her bloodstream in dialysis but I doubt that, since you’re bonding to her genetic code. Or at least I would assume so, by the physical changes being made,” she said. Her gaze turned back to Rach, looking at her for a moment. “You’re right, I barely know her from Adam. I made a promise that I would help her… look after her. That doesn’t end just because it gets difficult.” Her eyes turned back toward Michael. “I know she wouldn’t understand. Probably call me naive or something. It is Giri.. an obligation. Sure she has one to me to help with things around what.. was .. my apartment, but I have one to look out for her.”
She shrugged a little “Maybe she’ll appreciate the effort, maybe she won’t. Maybe she’ll live. Maybe she’ll die. But what matters is that I try,” she said quietly. Like she’d tried with Bozo? That thought was like a slap in the face, though she kept it from showing.
”The laboratories I was imprisoned in attempted to see if such a thing was possible. All the test subjects I was exposed to died rather...horribly. Since I was so interwoven into the prisoner’s DNA, it meant peeling me away was rather a hassle. Through it was likely because they weren’t concerned with discovering a way or a cure to remove me. Their experiments likely didn’t help, either. My original methods were much more gradual which would’ve allowed my host, in theory, a higher survival rate. It would’ve also allowed me to create more than one, infecting a whole populace on a planetary scale.” Michael stated simply the facts he could recall, his body leaning down and examining Rach’s calm state. “You humans have such a streak for aggression and taste for violence. If you knew her past, I’m almost sure your views might change. Not many hosts I’ve encountered has had the taste for blood at such a young age.”
A pleasant smirk graced his line lips, betraying his enjoyment over an hidden punch line. ”This might make my job a little bit easier…”
Justine stood, looking at ‘Michael’ tilting her head a bit. “Maybe. Maybe not. Just because one desires something, or thinks about it.. feels strongly about something, doesn’t mean they will do it,” she said calmly. “So tell me this… why shouldn’t the both of you be incinerated?” It was a hard-edged question, and would have likely been the safest answer, with what this ‘Michael’ was telling her. If he was a mental projection of the virus that was killing Rach. It would have been better to put both of them in a blast furnace, or even a plasma furnace and have them reduced to the constituent molecules, or.. even just carbonized.
Rach wasn’t someone she knew well, but she didn’t really want the girl to suffer.. and this thing was dangerous as hell. The last thing she needed was for it to get loose. She didn’t have the means to reliably destroy this … thing.. herself. Not at the moment. Perhaps the guy in the armor could do something about it? Thermite would do the job most likely.
It was perhaps, despicable in some ways.. but it was also efficient. Kill one, save a lot, right?.
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