Melissa
Qia
udonoodles
Half Pint
Sep
stormphrax
shylarah
Hound55
Festive
Location: Beneath the Foundation
Human #5.094 life and death CRUEL CRUEL CRUEL
Interaction(s): Haven, @Skai
The air hummed with bulbs being flicked on and spotlighting cells that lined the walls. It was a sorry sight; wherever this was it had clearly suffered many years of neglect, and was now just grimy concrete and metal paneling on all planes. Lights buzzed and flickered above separately to the harsh, blinding glare that bathed the cells and blinded the occupants. There was no sunshine down here, nothing natural; only the ugly, artificial fluorescence that bathed everything in a sickly green-tinged white.
Stephen was groggy as he came around, his mouth dry and throat sore and head heavy and pounding. He slowly lifted himself from the concrete floor, muscles stiff and bones achy, and tried to orient himself, blinking hard against the aggressive lighting that assaulted him. It took a few minutes to get his bearings, to feel steady enough to rise to his feet and raise a shielding hand in front of his eyes as he walked toward the light; only when he was close enough to reach out and touch the cool iron bars that gated him in did the icy sliver of fear and paranoia cut through his confusion and sober him to the reality of his situation.
He leaned against the iron, pressing his cheeks to the bars as he craned to see the surroundings. The lights did well at their job, the glare harsh enough that it swallowed his vision, but what little he could make out did not inspire hope. More dirtied walls, more iron bars, more vague figures trapped behind them. His personal jail seemed to connect out to a walkway that rimmed a wider space - some manner of empty hall - with identical cells lining the outer edge, and more still below. Wherever this was - whoever had built it - it had capacity in mind.
The buzzing of bulbs gave way to rustling and low groans from other occupants. The lights had roused them, Stephen realized, and in the same moment realized that the lights must have been switched on purposefully. He doubted there was any intention of a feigned day/night cycle in this dreadful place, and the position and intensity of the lights suggested a petty kind of vindictiveness. They were unpleasant and they were meant to be. The cells were sparse and improper even for the most basic forms of captivity, and they were meant to be. The room was cold, and dingy, and smelt of damp and other unmentionable odors, and it was meant to be.
A sudden burst of anger filled him, intensified by his mind drifting to Scylla, now alone and left behind, however far away he had been taken. He clenched his fists, gritted his teeth; was this just the latest in an unrelenting series of tragedy and misfortune, injustice delivered upon him and others so casually? What was next? What of those left behind - would Scylla ever know what had happened to him? Would anyone? Or were they living on borrowed time, waiting in an invisible, imperceptible queue before they, to, would suffer such a grievance, seemingly for no better reason than being picked as a cosmic plaything? It all boiled and bubbled inside him, and instantaneously his fists were pounding on the bars with all his might, the air around his skin glowing a soft violet as he wrapped his hands in psionic energy, willing them to bend and shatter the iron that entrapped him. It did not break, did not give, and as he slammed and hammered away he could only scream in angry frustration, before the feeling went as quickly as it had arrived and left only despondency and heartache in its stead. Stephen slumped to his knees, exhausted, his hands unwrapping to curl around the bars as he leant his forehead against them. Hot, indignant tears pushed their way through closed lids and rolled down his cheeks.
The display of fury sparked hope in the heart that beat a weary rhythm in the cell beside him.
There was mistaken relief that she wasn’t alone in her misery, that the one she loved was close by. Maybe even an arm’s length away if she reached far enough through the bars of her enclosure. Even if she could only touch him with one finger, her world would no longer spiral into darkness and grief. He hadn’t fallen by the hands of his creations, hadn’t been harvested into a monster she wouldn’t recognize, hadn’t been killed by him, the man whose very voice terrorized her with memories of horrors she hadn’t dreamed of in a week. The utterance of her name, drawn out in a cooing voice like she was a beloved pet, had sent her into a fit of disassociation so strong that she’d simply sat on the dirty concrete floor and stared at the blank wall across from her. Trapped in her mind, her imagination had taken her to a flowering meadow beside a lake. The sun above warming her skin and feathers. She had been close to succumbing to her exhaustion. Lulled into sleep by her fantasy with her head and back against the bars behind her, feathers peeking through them where her wings slumped behind her, until the sound of someone awakening beside her dragged her back to the present. Her heart leapt within her chest at the notion that her lover was right there.
“Rory?” Her hoarse voice carried between the cells like a feather in the wind.
Stephen’s head shot up at the sound of the voice beside him. Hoarse, but firm and feminine; it wasn’t Scylla and for a moment he allowed himself the hope that she had been spared entirely from this harrowing incarceration. He drew a deep and weary breath before answering his neighbour.
“No. I’m sorry, but no; I’m not whoever you’re hoping me to be.”
He craned his neck, trying to bend his vision to see who it was he was addressing. There wasn’t much, but through the bars he thought he saw…feathers? And wasn’t the name ‘Rory’ oddly familiar…?
“Are- are you the girl from the beach? At PRCU…Wings?”
Haven’s heart plummeted, and yet she found naive comfort that the voice did not belong to him. Maybe he’d won against web and fang and escaped before the others returned from running her down? She hated to think he was alone, grieving for her because he likely assumed she’d been caught, but at least he wasn’t destined to become his second favorite toy.
Her breath left her chest in a whoosh at the mention of her old nickname. She closed her eyes to the pang of grief that pricked at her eyes and when she spoke again her voice was tight against the dry lump in her throat.
“Yes… did we know each other before?”
Stephen turned, pushing his own back against the bars to sit as a mirror of his co-inmate.
“No. I mean, not really. We were at PRCU too, and everyone knew the girl with wings. Just like everyone knew Robert, or the lizard-lady. You stuck out. And then we met you on the beach after…after everything closed down. You and your team. But we didn’t know you, or much of…” He trailed off, racking his brain for old team names he’d since discarded to save himself the bittersweet recollection. “Blackjack, wasn’t it?”
He paused, before sidling across the floor to sit against the wall immediately abutting Haven’s cell, to hear her and be heard better, at the same time dropping his voice.
“You didn’t come to the Foundation, though, not like Scylla and me. Thought you’d escaped it all. How long have you been here? How’d you get here at all?”
“He hunted me down.” There was a pause as Haven tensed at the thought of the last time she’d been conscious. “He sent his creations to find me- I think I used to know one of them.”
Mei. She had hardly recognized her old teammate.
“Rory stayed behind so I could run.”
“For all the good that did you…” Stephen muttered, the anger still simmering low and making him unkind. “‘He’, though - who’s ‘He’? You know who put us here? The last thing I remember is a dark corridor and a prick in my neck, then lights out and I wake up here.” He rubbed his neck, soothing the goosebumps that rippled up his spine as he recalled his abduction. “You sound like you’re familiar with whoever these creeps are.”
“I was taken by him before.” There was silence for a moment as Haven drew her arms around herself and took a shuddering breath. She couldn’t bring herself to form his name in her mouth. A chill began to crawl up her spine, as if she knew Daedalus was listening to them and would appear the moment she spoke it aloud. Her voice returned in a whisper, a subtle tremor highlighting the fear he invoked within her. Any anger she might have carried in her chest was overwhelmed by her misery, and made her next words heavy and small.
“He makes you into something new. Something horrible.”
“That monster - that terrible gargoyle that wrecked up PRCU, the final straw. That thing was him, wasn’t it? And it was after you. And now here you are again. I heard Torres yelling his name at the dance, and he’s whispered about at the Foundation like - like some boogeyman.”
Stephen brought his hand up, splaying and flexing his fingers as he played with the indigo iridescence of psychic energy that coiled around his skin. Was this what Daedalus was after, too? Like he was just spare parts to be taken apart and put back together again.
“If it wasn’t for the dance I’d say they’re just frightening themselves for fun…an evil that you hope is only imaginary. But we’re here, aren’t we? He is real, and we’re here in his clutches, and now Daedalus gets to-”
“--don’t–”
As she cut off Stephen, Haven herself was interrupted by a blast of static and the whine of a microphone's feedback, stilling the stirring prison into silence. A few raspy breaths loomed over them through some unseen tannoy, and then a sharp intake that settled into a sickly, vicious tone, barely-masked animosity and sadism bleeding through every utterance.
"Hhhhello, children. Unnn...ruly. Disssobidient little imps. Some of you have...ran from me. Fled en..tirely, rejected your true purpose that would be gifted upon you. Enlightenment. Evvvvolution."
There was a pause, and the atmosphere was thick with the weight of a hundred held breaths. None spoke nor moved in response to their captor's unhinged words.
"You've FAILED! You can't escape me you can't hide from me I will and have found you and brought you back to where you SHOULD. ALWAYS. HAVE BEEN!"
Thick and fast, full of rage; another pause, and a shaky breath played out over the speakers as Daedalus calmed himself. When he spoke again, his tone was even and measured and matter-of-fact.
"I am only interested in the best. The strongest. Those who sit decidedly, by their own hand, at the top of the food chain. Anything lesser is simply a waste of time."
There were growing murmurs now, the last few imprisoned rousing to alertness and heeding his words.
"The air you are breathing is laced with an atomized low-dose neurotoxin. In small amounts you will metabolize it without harm and suffer perhaps only some drowsiness or a headache; but we have already passed 'small amounts', and every new breath each and every one of you takes only hastens your inevitable death. Painful. Slow. Rotting from the inside."
This incited panic, and quickly. All across the prison, captives sprang up, screaming or sobbing or yelling incoherent threats until the din drowned out all other noise. There was a loud and harsh buzzer, and the hysteria was quieted, before Daedalus continued.
"Panic will serve you poorly, let me assure you. Level-heads and pragmatism will win the day here, children. I have three doses of antidote; only three, no more, no less. Three, for those who prove themselves deserving and capable enough of seizing it."
The spotlights went out, and plunged the jail into utter darkness once more. Only Daedalus' vile words snaked their way through the black.
"As I said; I am only interested in the best. The apex predators. I'm sure you can all count. If there are more left than I have treatment for, I won't be choosing for you. Best to be quick about it."
A tittering giggle trilled over the tannoy, devilish, playful, that belied a far deeper sickness.
There was another harsh buzzer, ringing through the heads of everyone there to hear; instantaneously, the prison was bathed in a blood-red light, the klaxon blaring and each and every cell door slowly and inexorably sliding open.
Captives began to creep out, confusion painting some faces while others were already steeling themselves for the terrible work that would have to be done.
"Good luck!"
And then Hell broke loose.
Stephen was groggy as he came around, his mouth dry and throat sore and head heavy and pounding. He slowly lifted himself from the concrete floor, muscles stiff and bones achy, and tried to orient himself, blinking hard against the aggressive lighting that assaulted him. It took a few minutes to get his bearings, to feel steady enough to rise to his feet and raise a shielding hand in front of his eyes as he walked toward the light; only when he was close enough to reach out and touch the cool iron bars that gated him in did the icy sliver of fear and paranoia cut through his confusion and sober him to the reality of his situation.
He leaned against the iron, pressing his cheeks to the bars as he craned to see the surroundings. The lights did well at their job, the glare harsh enough that it swallowed his vision, but what little he could make out did not inspire hope. More dirtied walls, more iron bars, more vague figures trapped behind them. His personal jail seemed to connect out to a walkway that rimmed a wider space - some manner of empty hall - with identical cells lining the outer edge, and more still below. Wherever this was - whoever had built it - it had capacity in mind.
The buzzing of bulbs gave way to rustling and low groans from other occupants. The lights had roused them, Stephen realized, and in the same moment realized that the lights must have been switched on purposefully. He doubted there was any intention of a feigned day/night cycle in this dreadful place, and the position and intensity of the lights suggested a petty kind of vindictiveness. They were unpleasant and they were meant to be. The cells were sparse and improper even for the most basic forms of captivity, and they were meant to be. The room was cold, and dingy, and smelt of damp and other unmentionable odors, and it was meant to be.
A sudden burst of anger filled him, intensified by his mind drifting to Scylla, now alone and left behind, however far away he had been taken. He clenched his fists, gritted his teeth; was this just the latest in an unrelenting series of tragedy and misfortune, injustice delivered upon him and others so casually? What was next? What of those left behind - would Scylla ever know what had happened to him? Would anyone? Or were they living on borrowed time, waiting in an invisible, imperceptible queue before they, to, would suffer such a grievance, seemingly for no better reason than being picked as a cosmic plaything? It all boiled and bubbled inside him, and instantaneously his fists were pounding on the bars with all his might, the air around his skin glowing a soft violet as he wrapped his hands in psionic energy, willing them to bend and shatter the iron that entrapped him. It did not break, did not give, and as he slammed and hammered away he could only scream in angry frustration, before the feeling went as quickly as it had arrived and left only despondency and heartache in its stead. Stephen slumped to his knees, exhausted, his hands unwrapping to curl around the bars as he leant his forehead against them. Hot, indignant tears pushed their way through closed lids and rolled down his cheeks.
The display of fury sparked hope in the heart that beat a weary rhythm in the cell beside him.
There was mistaken relief that she wasn’t alone in her misery, that the one she loved was close by. Maybe even an arm’s length away if she reached far enough through the bars of her enclosure. Even if she could only touch him with one finger, her world would no longer spiral into darkness and grief. He hadn’t fallen by the hands of his creations, hadn’t been harvested into a monster she wouldn’t recognize, hadn’t been killed by him, the man whose very voice terrorized her with memories of horrors she hadn’t dreamed of in a week. The utterance of her name, drawn out in a cooing voice like she was a beloved pet, had sent her into a fit of disassociation so strong that she’d simply sat on the dirty concrete floor and stared at the blank wall across from her. Trapped in her mind, her imagination had taken her to a flowering meadow beside a lake. The sun above warming her skin and feathers. She had been close to succumbing to her exhaustion. Lulled into sleep by her fantasy with her head and back against the bars behind her, feathers peeking through them where her wings slumped behind her, until the sound of someone awakening beside her dragged her back to the present. Her heart leapt within her chest at the notion that her lover was right there.
“Rory?” Her hoarse voice carried between the cells like a feather in the wind.
Stephen’s head shot up at the sound of the voice beside him. Hoarse, but firm and feminine; it wasn’t Scylla and for a moment he allowed himself the hope that she had been spared entirely from this harrowing incarceration. He drew a deep and weary breath before answering his neighbour.
“No. I’m sorry, but no; I’m not whoever you’re hoping me to be.”
He craned his neck, trying to bend his vision to see who it was he was addressing. There wasn’t much, but through the bars he thought he saw…feathers? And wasn’t the name ‘Rory’ oddly familiar…?
“Are- are you the girl from the beach? At PRCU…Wings?”
Haven’s heart plummeted, and yet she found naive comfort that the voice did not belong to him. Maybe he’d won against web and fang and escaped before the others returned from running her down? She hated to think he was alone, grieving for her because he likely assumed she’d been caught, but at least he wasn’t destined to become his second favorite toy.
Her breath left her chest in a whoosh at the mention of her old nickname. She closed her eyes to the pang of grief that pricked at her eyes and when she spoke again her voice was tight against the dry lump in her throat.
“Yes… did we know each other before?”
Stephen turned, pushing his own back against the bars to sit as a mirror of his co-inmate.
“No. I mean, not really. We were at PRCU too, and everyone knew the girl with wings. Just like everyone knew Robert, or the lizard-lady. You stuck out. And then we met you on the beach after…after everything closed down. You and your team. But we didn’t know you, or much of…” He trailed off, racking his brain for old team names he’d since discarded to save himself the bittersweet recollection. “Blackjack, wasn’t it?”
He paused, before sidling across the floor to sit against the wall immediately abutting Haven’s cell, to hear her and be heard better, at the same time dropping his voice.
“You didn’t come to the Foundation, though, not like Scylla and me. Thought you’d escaped it all. How long have you been here? How’d you get here at all?”
“He hunted me down.” There was a pause as Haven tensed at the thought of the last time she’d been conscious. “He sent his creations to find me- I think I used to know one of them.”
Mei. She had hardly recognized her old teammate.
“Rory stayed behind so I could run.”
“For all the good that did you…” Stephen muttered, the anger still simmering low and making him unkind. “‘He’, though - who’s ‘He’? You know who put us here? The last thing I remember is a dark corridor and a prick in my neck, then lights out and I wake up here.” He rubbed his neck, soothing the goosebumps that rippled up his spine as he recalled his abduction. “You sound like you’re familiar with whoever these creeps are.”
“I was taken by him before.” There was silence for a moment as Haven drew her arms around herself and took a shuddering breath. She couldn’t bring herself to form his name in her mouth. A chill began to crawl up her spine, as if she knew Daedalus was listening to them and would appear the moment she spoke it aloud. Her voice returned in a whisper, a subtle tremor highlighting the fear he invoked within her. Any anger she might have carried in her chest was overwhelmed by her misery, and made her next words heavy and small.
“He makes you into something new. Something horrible.”
“That monster - that terrible gargoyle that wrecked up PRCU, the final straw. That thing was him, wasn’t it? And it was after you. And now here you are again. I heard Torres yelling his name at the dance, and he’s whispered about at the Foundation like - like some boogeyman.”
Stephen brought his hand up, splaying and flexing his fingers as he played with the indigo iridescence of psychic energy that coiled around his skin. Was this what Daedalus was after, too? Like he was just spare parts to be taken apart and put back together again.
“If it wasn’t for the dance I’d say they’re just frightening themselves for fun…an evil that you hope is only imaginary. But we’re here, aren’t we? He is real, and we’re here in his clutches, and now Daedalus gets to-”
“--don’t–”
As she cut off Stephen, Haven herself was interrupted by a blast of static and the whine of a microphone's feedback, stilling the stirring prison into silence. A few raspy breaths loomed over them through some unseen tannoy, and then a sharp intake that settled into a sickly, vicious tone, barely-masked animosity and sadism bleeding through every utterance.
"Hhhhello, children. Unnn...ruly. Disssobidient little imps. Some of you have...ran from me. Fled en..tirely, rejected your true purpose that would be gifted upon you. Enlightenment. Evvvvolution."
There was a pause, and the atmosphere was thick with the weight of a hundred held breaths. None spoke nor moved in response to their captor's unhinged words.
"You've FAILED! You can't escape me you can't hide from me I will and have found you and brought you back to where you SHOULD. ALWAYS. HAVE BEEN!"
Thick and fast, full of rage; another pause, and a shaky breath played out over the speakers as Daedalus calmed himself. When he spoke again, his tone was even and measured and matter-of-fact.
"I am only interested in the best. The strongest. Those who sit decidedly, by their own hand, at the top of the food chain. Anything lesser is simply a waste of time."
There were growing murmurs now, the last few imprisoned rousing to alertness and heeding his words.
"The air you are breathing is laced with an atomized low-dose neurotoxin. In small amounts you will metabolize it without harm and suffer perhaps only some drowsiness or a headache; but we have already passed 'small amounts', and every new breath each and every one of you takes only hastens your inevitable death. Painful. Slow. Rotting from the inside."
This incited panic, and quickly. All across the prison, captives sprang up, screaming or sobbing or yelling incoherent threats until the din drowned out all other noise. There was a loud and harsh buzzer, and the hysteria was quieted, before Daedalus continued.
"Panic will serve you poorly, let me assure you. Level-heads and pragmatism will win the day here, children. I have three doses of antidote; only three, no more, no less. Three, for those who prove themselves deserving and capable enough of seizing it."
The spotlights went out, and plunged the jail into utter darkness once more. Only Daedalus' vile words snaked their way through the black.
"As I said; I am only interested in the best. The apex predators. I'm sure you can all count. If there are more left than I have treatment for, I won't be choosing for you. Best to be quick about it."
A tittering giggle trilled over the tannoy, devilish, playful, that belied a far deeper sickness.
There was another harsh buzzer, ringing through the heads of everyone there to hear; instantaneously, the prison was bathed in a blood-red light, the klaxon blaring and each and every cell door slowly and inexorably sliding open.
Captives began to creep out, confusion painting some faces while others were already steeling themselves for the terrible work that would have to be done.
"Good luck!"
And then Hell broke loose.
