#and wrestle someone to the floor and smash the back of their heads into concrete until they stop moving

[satans-fluffy-kitten]

Girlies and gaylies, do you ever get. Violently murderous. For no reason.

Like. I've been seated in the library trying to study endocrine pharmacology. Stewing in rage. Absolutely foaming at the mouth. All thoughts and instincts set to murderkillmaim. For no reason and towards nothing??

Someone diagnose me

[slasherholic]

synopsis: you reflect on a few incidents in your relationship with asa that really should have tipped you off as red flags while you wait for him to come back and torture you some more.

contains: gender neutral reader, graphic depictions of violence and torture, psychological torture, death, kidnapping, rib trauma, referenced abuse, current abuse because it’s fucking asa, I’ll throw in manipulation and gaslighting just to be safe.

note: quite a few scenes and tidbits in this were heavily inspired by a chat I had with the brilliant and lovely @sanguine--honey, so thanks again for letting me include those in this fic c:

word count: 4k

(Part One, Part Two)

Asa Emory / The Collector x Reader | Loose Ends | Part Three

When he finally unchained you from the pole he dragged you violently up several flights of steep stairs. His strength seemed tireless no matter how much you struggled.

You were bruised and battered and smearing blood on the floor behind you when he got to where he was taking you. He ignored the desperate way you were still screaming at him and threw you violently in a black trunk in a room with bright white lights and steel lab tables. He had slammed the heavy door shut so hard the force of it knocked a painting off the wall. Many locks turned on the other side. You clutched your stomach with both hands and doubled over and began to dry heave.

You sat crying in the dark. When the tears wouldn’t come out anymore, you looked for a way out. Tried to feel around the edges. Your arms burned terribly and you could smell your own body fluids lingering among the overwhelming smell of disinfectant loitering in the air. Your face ached from where he’d held your mouth to silence you when he plunged the needle in. There was a perfectly round hole in the side of the trunk, the size of your pinky nail, that appeared to have been made with a drill. An airhole. Or a peephole.

But the trunk itself was locked up tight. There was no getting out.

 You studied the room through the peephole. There were four other trunks sitting upright on the floor to the left of you, at least that you could see, lined up one after the next to form a semicircle. Each was a different color—red, blue, green, brown, in that order.

You called out very softly and asked if anyone was there.

Silence.

Sniffling again, you sat with your knees curled tightly into your chest, and allowed your mind to romp.

There had been signs, red flags abound, and you had ignored them, made excuses for him in your head, filed every uncomfortable incident away to be rationalized at a later date. You might not have known until the very end that he was this. But you had known enough. Asa, beneath his carefully manufactured charm and suave, was the coldest man you had ever met.

So you arrived at the crushing conclusion that you had nobody to blame for this but yourself.

There had been one instance, close to the start of your relationship, or whatever it was you had with him, where you found yourself very inebriated in his expensively furnished living room.

Asa had implied over dinner that he would like to go upstairs and have sex after you were finished, and he’d cleared the plates off his dining table nearly twenty minutes ago. You challenged him to arm-wrestle first.

“Please?” You spread your legs out on his blue persian rug, intent on staying awhile. 

Asa sat across the room from you in the cushioned chair closest to the hall, his hands folded in his lap. The look on his face was growing rather unamused.

“I already said no. Can we move along?”

“Come on, have a little fun.”

His expression grew more dour still.

“You’re drunk. Very drunk. I thought I told you to go easy with the drinking.”

“You, Dr. Emory, are being a total stick in the mud.”

You pestered him about it until he humored you.

He took you by the hand and set your arm up on his nice coffee table which he had cleared delicately of a stag beetle specimen in a spotless glass display.

“Count of three.” You slurred, a smile growing in your eyes, one he didn’t care to return.

“One.”

He adjusted his grip dexterously around your fingers. His arm was bigger than yours by far.

“Two.”

The thick tendons in his wrist jumped out. It would be no contest. You wanted to try anyway. You thought it would be fun.

“Three.”

You fought against his hand with everything you had. You laughed. Asa let you struggle against him for a few moments, regarding you with an utter lack of concern on his face. For all your efforts you couldn’t budge his wrist by a centimeter. 

Then he smashed your hand so quick and hard into the coffee table your knuckles throbbed and you yelled.

The laughter fell from your face like a stone. You jerked in his grip. His hold moved down to your wrist where he held you tightly and didn’t let go. Suddenly, you didn’t like the way he was looking at you.

Asa, leaning forward, spoke to you very slowly, and made you linger on every syllable, as if you were stupid.

“Are you finished? Shall we move on? Or would you like to go again?”

He squeezed your wrist a bit harder. You could feel the pulse in your arm quickening, throbbing in his grip, which was getting tighter every second.

You let him take you upstairs without suggesting any more games.

In the morning, you hardly remembered the sex, but your hand was bruised. Asa didn’t mention anything to you about it as he got ready for work. It was the last time you had ever been drunk around him.

You jolted awake in the trunk. Your arms burned in a way that sent vicious chills through your extremities. There was a wet stain on the wall where you must have fallen asleep at some point. Resting a hand on the trunk, you stared cautiously through the peephole.

Asa wasn’t there. But the painting that had fallen was back in its place on the wall.

Your stomach sank. You thought some more to try and distract yourself from the pain in your arms and your aching body.

There had been that one night in the park. The night you stayed awake many sleepless hours trying and failing not to remember what you witnessed.

The sunset had dissipated and the only light remaining in the park was what filtered down from the black street lamps towering like spires all along the sidewalk. Asa had touched something on the bench he didn’t like, and had gotten up to wash his hands in the nearby bathroom. 

You watched a pair of moths fluttering around each other near the lamp across the path and noticed someone approaching from the corner of your eye. Assuming it was Asa, you turned to ask him what species he figured they were.

It wasn’t Asa. 

The mugger shoved you forcefully off the park bench. You spilled onto the cold sidewalk, knocking your head on the concrete.

“Give me the fucking wallet.”

The man must have thought you were alone. He wore black jeans and a grey t-shirt. He brandished a short switchblade at you which you stared at with wide terrified eyes. You were shocked to silence, frozen in place.

The mugger made a grab for the wallet in your shaking hands.

And Asa had tackled him from behind with such force that both men went spilling into the grass on the opposite side of the path.

He was back on his feet by the time the mugger was still clambering to his mud-stained knees. You watched Asa’s hand go somewhere beneath his olive jacket as he pulled out a knife you hadn’t known he carried. He flipped it in his grip and held it with the blade angled down toward the grass. His face had become profoundly unreadable. 

His movements dripped with practice and polish as he sized your mugger up. The muscles in his legs were spring-loaded as he stalked back and forth along the grass. Every step had a purpose.

He dove in for a slash across the man’s stomach. You saw blood spray in a wide arc and heard the man make a painful strangled sound. Asa ducked beneath a clumsy swipe for his face, stepping away again. He passed his knife from one hand to the other; now, he was circling the man. Not adjusting his stance. Circling him.

The man lunged at him with a grunt. The switchblade raced for his chest. Asa caught his wrist and slashed him deep across the thigh.

You’d always known his reflexes were astonishingly quick. Once, you dropped your expensive camera while photographing the exhibits at the museum, and he had grabbed it before it hit the ground, lecturing you in a more-or-less jesting manner about getting a lanyard for it as he stood to hand it back to you, an incident which at the time had made your cheeks warm.

Asa planted his shoe squarely in the man’s abdomen and kicked him away hard. The man made a guttural sound as he tumbled back on the grass, gasping for air, and Asa let him clamber to his feet again, still circling. The look on his face was no longer indifference. It was something far more intense.

The man turned, staggering, and tried to run.

Asa was faster. He tackled him again, wrestled him brutally to the sidewalk. The man swung blindly, got lucky in his desperation—and clipped him across the shoulder.

Asa snarled. Not a grunt, it had been a snarl, low and throaty, like an animal.

He slashed violently at the man and his knife flashed sharply in the lamp light. Blood erupted from the cut in a heavy mist. The man fell back on the ground, dropping his own blade, clutching his throat. Asa straddled him on his knees, and grabbed him by the face, wrenching his head up. You heard the crack of the man’s skull meeting the concrete from where you sat.

The man started shouting desperately for help.

You watched Asa raise his knife. His arms and shoulders flexed and strained the sleeves of his jacket. You knew by the look on his face alone that you were about to witness a murder. Before you knew what you were doing, you were yelling at him to stop.

Asa didn’t hear. Or he ignored you.

He drove the knife hard into the man’s stomach.

The man made a wet strangled sound, bringing up his arm to try and block the onslaught, because Asa was already raising his arm again.

He stabbed the same spot. Every stab that followed was faster. The man’s yelling became screaming and you saw Asa’s hand shift to cover his mouth. The man’s muffled screams fell to thin whining. Then ragged wheezing. Then, stopped. 

A cricket chirped beyond the reach of the street lamps. The moths fluttered near the bulb across the path.

Asa straightened up his posture. His nostrils flared heavily with breath. He seemed to take in the gored body on the concrete beneath him, which had gone motionless.

Five seconds hardly passed before he stood, slowly, rising to his full height, carefully side-stepping the body. The man’s blood trickled off the tip of his wet knife and dripped on the concrete next to his black dress shoes. His jacket sleeves and the sides of his charcoal pants across his thighs were stained with long dark swaths. He rolled his shoulders. The breeze tousled his disordered hair.

There had been a few moments you could recall when it really occurred to you how big Asa was.

He wore flattering clothes often, and your eyes were sometimes tempted towards the wide muscles in his chest, but the way he talked to you was very ensnaring, as he always seemed to have something interesting or intelligent or just plain sarcastic in a dry but not-to-be-taken-seriously way to say; so when he spoke, you found it difficult to look anywhere but at his handsome face. You only really witnessed the scope of his strength when you slept with him. The ways he was able to handle you when he wanted made you feel, at times, incredibly vulnerable around him.

Asa had turned his whole body toward you when he considered you where you sat huddled on the sidewalk, reigning in the hot breaths which broadened his chest and spiraled into the chilly night. The man’s blood had gotten on his cheek. You started to shiver. He regarded you with a look that read staggering disapproval, as though this, and what would inevitably follow, was not worth his time, as though it might as well have been your fault, as though he was currently considering very strongly doing something about it later in private.

“You should call the police.”

Before you knew what you were doing or why you were really doing it you scrambled for your phone in your pocket and tapped on the screen with very shaky fingers, “9-1-1.”

The ambulances pulled up to the street corner first followed shortly by two squad cars. Asa stood up slowly from the green park bench to meet them, and you stayed kneeling on the cold sidewalk.

He introduced himself to the officers as Dr. Asa Emory and dealt with their questions very professionally. At one point, he had pulled a neatly folded paper out of his wallet, which the questioning officer took, shined her flashlight at, and returned to him, nodding her head. The story was very apparent: a couple walking in the park had been assaulted at knife-point, and a registered concealed-carry weapon had been used to dispatch the aggressor.

The officers came over to question you. Asa, standing off to the side, removed his bloodied jacket, which he hung neatly over the park bench. He watched you closely. The look on his face was like the prick of a thorn.

You diverted your gaze away from him and nodded at the officer’s questions dumbly, staring at the medical workers as they bagged up the body on the sidewalk. An EMT was called over, who concluded that you were in moderate shock, and that you should go to the hospital.

“I won’t be riding along with you.” Asa was down to his tan sweater, rubbing his newly cleaned fingers together at his side, which he had been given bottles of water to wash off at his request. The indifference on his face didn’t lift as they strapped you down to the gurney.

“The officers have a few more questions, so I’ve agreed to go with them down to the station.”

His words were factual and rhetorical, as if your input on the matter wasn’t at all needed, so you didn’t say anything back to him.

It was the last you heard from him until he showed up in your hospital room several hours later. Your stomach lept a little when the door opened and he came in.

He was wearing a change of clothes, his hair groomed back into place, looking very much the part of respectable Dr. Emory again. He had brought you dinner from the lobby downstairs. 

He sat in the only chair in the room as you picked at the warm mashed potatoes in the black tray, and made conversation about how you were handling things, and if there was anything he could get you, and though it all felt very shallow and obligatory you found yourself playing along as best you could, because sitting in the room alone with him was giving you very obvious goosebumps.

Asa drove you home later that night. You got out of his car without a word, went to your door, and quickly did the lock behind you.

After falling into bed, you were afraid of him. You couldn’t bring yourself to admit it then; you tried to cling tightly to the parts of him you still thought you loved. But from then on, you were, genuinely, afraid of him.

What made it worse, you suspected he saw it, too.

His holds on your wrist when you turned away from him before he had quite finished lecturing you about something very irresponsible or just plain ignorant you had done were firmer. There was the way he moved his jacket occasionally when he shifted his posture, and you caught a glimpse of his holstered knife for a moment too long. And how, when he asked you a question—one to which you didn’t immediately have an answer—he turned all his attention on you, and began to approach you, boxing you in, cutting off your escape, slowly repeating the question. 

He’d known. Without a doubt, he had known.

Sobbing started in the trunk next to you and it jolted you harshly out of your thoughts.

It sounded like a man. A younger man. You tried to talk to him.

“Hello?”

Sudden silence fell. You repeated yourself.

“Is someone there?”

“-Yes.”

The voice came out very quietly. For a moment, you didn’t say anything. You didn’t know what there was to say.

“What’s your name?”

Silence for another moment.

“It’s Noah.”

There was rattling as Noah shifted in his trunk.

Noah told you he’d been taken on a Tuesday. A horrendous sinking feeling settled in your stomach at that.

Tuesday was six days ago. Asa had come back very late that night smelling strongly of disinfectant and nitrile, as he did sometimes. You figured he'd stayed past closing hours at work for something important but asked him about it anyway, in the name of making casual conversation, an occurrence which had been growing steadily more reclusive between the two of you. His response had been clipped and curt. You didn’t ask him any more about it.

Noah seemed to hear Asa coming down the hall before you did.

“Stop. Stop talking.” His voice was suddenly desperate, laced with terror. “He’s coming back. He’s coming back. Please don’t talk. Don’t say anything.”

But that wasn’t part of the plan.

The locks clicked open on the other side of the black door.

You started pleading at him with your raw hoarse voice the second he stepped into the room.

“Asa, please! You know I didn’t tell anyone! I’ll do anything you want, you know I will! Asa, please!”

You weren’t even sure what you were begging him for. Please let me out. Please clean my arms before they get infected. Please don’t hurt me anymore.

He shoved your trunk so violently as he walked past that your head knocked against the wood and everything went dizzy for a moment.

Through the airhole, through your fresh, blurry tears, you watched him squat down, and unlock the brown trunk next to yours, the one the young man was in.

Noah couldn’t have been older than his early twenties but his face was exhausted and gaunt. His shirt was gone and his red sweatpants were soaked through with sweat or something else. The shackles around his wrists and ankles rattled as Asa’s arm darted into the trunk.

He wrenched the young man out by his tangled brown hair. Noah made an anguished sound, but didn’t struggle much as Asa hauled him swiftly towards the operating table. 

It occurred to you then what Asa had drilled the peephole in your trunk for. 

The young man begged desperate things while Asa locked his shackled wrists and ankles down to the fixtures on the table. No. Not again. Stop. Please don’t do it again. You looked closer, noticing the long row of stitches running down his side, the skin around them still red and puffy, and thought you might be sick.

Asa grabbed him roughly by the face, and leaned in very close, settling his hand on his bare abdomen. He said something next to Noah’s head too quiet for you to overhear. Noah’s chest heaved rapidly. Asa stood again, and gave the side of his ribs a light stroke before he walked away.

The young man on the table had paled fast. He lay staring at the ceiling with huge unblinking eyes, trembling, looking very much in shock at what he had just heard.

Asa took his time choosing the surgical tools from his cabinets. You watched him prepare the room, too afraid to look away. Maybe it was all a bluff. Please god let it be a bluff. He laid out two separate trays on the stainless-steel countertops, putting his tools in one, and set an extra out near the sink.

It wasn’t a bluff.

Noah was very awake when Asa began to cut his chest open. 

His body obscured your view of the table but you knew the exact moment the scalpel sank in because the young man made a horrible screeching noise and began thrashing violently in his chains in a huge clamor. His body seized and his eyes rolled back in his head. He seemed to try to vomit; nothing came out. 

Asa did not carry out his work hastily. Finished with the bloodied scalpel, he set it in the tray adjacent to his clean tools. When he turned away from the counter, you glimpsed his face.

The look of steady concentration he wore was no different from the times he’d let you watch him process an important specimen or sketch or paint. He clamped Noah’s skin back with pairs of forceps, and peeled off his wet black gloves, beneath which he was already wearing a fresh pair.

You took in the sight on the table while Asa went to the corner of the room to discard the gloves. Noah’s wet red ribs glistened beneath the long hanging lights and you could smell the slippery viscera from where you sat. You watched them expand as his lungs inflated with tortured breath, which was no longer anything but a bloody gurgling deep in his throat.

Asa came back, going next for the surgical pliers, ghosting his hand along his options until he seemed to settle on the proper one. When he looked up, pliers in hand, he was deliberately, unmistakably, casting his gaze across the room at your trunk. As if to make sure you were still watching.

Your heart nearly stopped. Air wouldn’t come in.

Then he returned to his work and started clipping Noah’s ribs off.

You could hear the bone snapping every time. The young man passed out more than twice on the table and that was the only time there was silence in the room.

Asa deposited the rib clippings in a third tray, and went to wash them free of blood and tissue in the steel sink while the near-corpse on the table made awful rattling noises, struggling to breathe; Noah seemed to be watching Asa, too, trying at least, but the immensity of his struggle had burst capillaries in his eyes.

Asa laid the ribs out on a pristine white cloth, organizing them from shortest to longest, toweling them individually off, and went about measuring them lengthwise with a yellow tape, then again around their circumference. He placed them gently in a bin, sealed the lid tight, went for a pen, and wrote something in his neat handwriting on the label.

You watched him take a curved needle and load it carefully with fine black suturing thread pinched delicately between his finger and thumb. Noah screamed and squirmed weakly with all he had left as it went in, which wasn’t much at all. Asa pulled the needle in and out, bringing his skin back together until his gaping chest was shut again.

The young man was still alive when Asa hauled him back into the trunk, a fresh row of black knots holding his ruined flesh closed.

Or at least he was still twitching, blinking, drawing shuddering agonized breaths through his wide-open mouth from which there ran an endless trickle of saliva and blood. The bottom of his stitched-shut chest was concave where his lower ribs used to be. He didn’t look like he’d live another hour. You hoped he wouldn’t.

Asa shut the lid and did the latches.

He went back to the counter for the ribs, taking an indirect path around the table, which carried him right towards you. You scrambled back from him as fast you could. The trunk didn’t let you get very far. You felt his fingers rap along the lid from one side to the other and couldn’t choke back your broken sound.

He left through the heavy door, doing up all the locks, and this time, you heeded Noah’s advice. Your mouth stayed utterly, obediently, shut.

After a few minutes of hopeless wheezing, Noah fell silent in the brown trunk, and never made another sound after that.

[ambistep]

Slipping the Collar, p1

An asset finds new appreciation for air conditioning. A plan is formed. Swimming, shopping and other diversions.

~1800 words, head canon with retribution spoilers. cw for blood, pain, a bit of gore, implied assault

~

It had started slowly, with a single realization - every day, at the same time, the pressure lifted from her head, a moment of clarity - and a little scratching sensation at the top of her spine. When she learned to expect it, she focused on that sensation - and discovered they were thoughts. ‘What am I going to do for dinner?’ ‘I need a new job.’ ‘Did I lock the door?’ The orderlies, the technicians. Her handlers.

That moment became an obsession, a pinpoint of light. It was all she could think about - the obsessing was itself an escape from the training, the drilling, the discipline. The brutality. The moment happened not once a day, but four times, she discovered. It had to be something to do with the air conditioning - the units kicking on drew too much power and the facility’s dampeners had to cycle over, taking a moment to come back online. That was her theory.

With enough days passing, she decided the phenomenon was reliable. And that was when she began to plan. Every cycle was another opportunity to skim thoughts of the staff, better yet when the cycles coincided with her training or examinations - her ‘dates’ with one of the handlers, then she’d get a chance to sort through their thoughts - more valuable than the others.

It was slow work. Some days, there was nothing helpful gleaned - but that hardly meant it wasn’t worthwhile. It was something to hold on to - a secret power she had that they did not know. It gave her strength, and that changed everything. When she was punished, threatened, when she obeyed, when she pretended not to think, to be a doll for them, when she was called to submit and… all the worse things - she could retreat to that hidden place, where she had something they didn’t know about, one ounce of her that was the tiniest bit free.

All she had to do was wait, and plan. And wait, and plan. And wait, and plan. 

And then, one day, her patience was rewarded. She’d been in the midst of a preparatory examination preceding an assignment, with the silver-haired ruddy-faced doctor - Simmons?  right, Simmons with the roaming hands that were just a bit too warm and that far-from friendly smile. She’d separated her mind from body, trying to stay far away from the moment, a tactic for preservation, when the moment came. There was a thunk from the vent as the power cycled over.  

Her expression stayed mute, neutral - a faint smile, a doll’s smile - but her heart beat faster. 

Right there on the front of his mind, was everything she wanted. The thing she’d been waiting for. The medical charts for her own body, notes of the surgical procedures, and there. The countermeasures. The safeties. Precious knowledge. 

And that was all she needed - the last information for the plan. There’d been no joy then - only fear, worry that somehow they’d know. They’d see her pupils change size, or her eyebrow twitch, and they’d read her and they’d know all about her plan. They’d know what a fool she was, to think she could keep anything hidden. And then she’d be recycled, or worse.

But the doctor had no idea what he’d given her - he’d only furrowed his brow a moment, no sign he knew she’d reached inside his mind, pressing past his boundaries as he’d done to her. He resumed the examinations, his fond little invasions, and she suffered his ministrations - for the last time, she promised herself. But she’d endured then because she knew - knew how the collar could be slipped.

~

The Los Diablos ‘river’ is typically more of a drainage flow than a river, but on tonight, the downpour had helped it live up to its name. Just past the Sixth Street Bridge, a pallid hand bursts to the water’s surface and clings to the steps etched into the concrete. Some sort of creature emerges - shambling, staggering, coughing up water. It stops to gather itself - but only just a moment.

They would be coming, and the time til then was being measured in minutes.

Right now, there is probably uncertainty, cursing in some bland office - a flaxen haired bureaucrat biting at her nail, like she did when she was weighing possibilities. Did she think the mission had failed? That her precious asset had been injured - possibly killed? Unlikely that she suspects the truth - this asset had always been among her best behaved, unflaggingly obedient. That good behavior buys the asset uncertainty, and that uncertainty buys time now.

Taking the drainage flow had moved her a good distance through the city, making it hard to track, and left the nature of her struggle with the target that much more ambiguous. The weather was not part of the plan, merely good luck - it would slow response, muddle the tracks, she hoped. Everything else though, that was all part of the plan - the first part.

She pushes to her feet and scrambles up the slope of the reservoir, pulling herself over a chain-link fence and onto the surface street. There’s no pause, not even a second - the asset slams through the doors to the convenience store, greeted by bright lights and the clerk yelling, shouting. 

“What the fuck?! You gonna drip all over the floor? Oh, come on!” There’s no response, just frantic energy from the figure that is now tearing through his shelves, feral and panicked. “Junkies. I swear, I’m calling the cops now - get the fuck out of my store, put that down!” He’s got the phone in his hand when the person looks up, their scared dark eyes meeting his. Young. A kid. Clutching vodka and a swiss army knife, a few other oddities. The panic sets in again and the figure sprints out of the store.

He puts down the phone. A kid shoplifter - the police won’t care, both of them know it. But someone else cares right now.

Are they angry? Worried? The asset has to wonder. Had they already activated a secondary asset, or an agent on standby, to investigate? The hunched figure stuffs their burgundy hoodie with their stolen goods, glancing about the streets for the telltale black SUV, or any other vehicle out of place - but at this hour, in this weather, there’s no one at all. Bad - that means one lone figure on the street is that much more suspicious. 

Ducking into an alley, the asset sneaks under a busted fence, around the back of a church, finding shelter in the stairwell that leads to the rear entrance. There’s a light on the outside of the building here, and an overhang giving shelter from the rain - ideal. The sort of spot the plan had called for.

She collapses gracelessly into the corner of the stairwell, hurriedly unloading her supplies. The pain in that government-owned body, the scratches and bruises, is all starting to set in as adrenaline wanes out of the system. A reminder that time had passed, that time is passing, and someone would be coming. 

Tearing into the wipes with her teeth and a frustrated snarl, her hands work to spin the cap off the vodka. Wrestling with her foot, she pulls her shin into place and rolls up the sopping wet leg of her jeans. Quickly, she wipes down her skin, flicks the blade out of the multi-purpose knife and plucks the tweezers out - holding them in her teeth. She knew what to look for - that had been the prize, the secret knowledge that made the plan work. She knew just where to find what she needed - but knowing and doing are different things, something the asset can only fully appreciate now. The hope is that the pre-mission cocktail of drugs was still dulling her pain sensations. No way but forward.

Stick to the plan.

With a grunt and gasp, she buries the petite little blade of the pocket knife into her flesh, blood welling up around the wound. It isn’t as sharp as she’d hoped - in the plan, this part had been much simpler. The cut becomes more like hurried digging, and the stairwell echoes with the choked sobs and whimpers, the angry grunts of the asset. There’s no time for delicacy - they are coming and she is bleeding. 

There. Something hard, not bone. Hard to even notice it floating free in the muscle, blood and mess - unless one knew it was there. The tiny tweezers are surprisingly helpful for feeling through the wound, plucking out her objective.  Her hands, slick with blood, hold it out into the orange sodium light of the stairwell. She sputters, gasping for air, blinking her eyes to chase back the pain, trying to see what her efforts had found.

An innocent-seeming thing but as surely lethal as any bullet. A grey, ridged little plastic capsule - one piece of her collar - an RF tracker. Burning bile creeps up through her throat - either from beholding this thing or more likely because of the massive, hot swell of pain throbbing in her leg. 

Smashing it is the first thought - but it’s small, surprisingly durable. There was no part in the plan for this - but she does manage to pierce it’s case, tear it apart with the knife. Plucking the battery free, the husk gets tossed into a drainpipe. 

The asset wipes down her hands as best she can, cleaning her shin free of the copious blood - pouring the vodka over the site for good measure. The sting doesn’t even phase her at this point. The little box of band-aids she’d taken from the store is pathetically inadequate. Stripping off her wet sock and cutting it lengthwise, she ties it about her leg - not part of the plan, but she’d been trained to improvise too.

Against all the warnings in her mind, she takes a rest - just for a moment. It is a weakness, a mistake. It isn’t part of the plan, but she needs it so badly. 

And the moment is passed - she climbs to stand, gingerly testing her weight on her injured leg before reaching down to pull the bloodied jeans back down.

She had to move, find another spot - she didn’t know the specifics of that tracker - maybe they already followed it to this area. And she had one more device to remove, anyway. A second date with the knife. Reflexively, the asset rubs the back of her neck, already steeling herself. 

The Memorial park was nearby - big enough to get lost in. The asset didn’t need light for the second surgery - nothing for her to look at. Swallowing the pain, the figure hunches over, pulls up her hood and hobbles away from the church. 

Time is passing. They’re coming. And there are still steps left in the plan.

[riseandfxll]

Retribution, Chapter One

Summary - Hailey gets shot while off-duty in a seemingly random attack, but what the intelligence unit uncovers while she's in the hospital fighting for her life will change everything.

[Prompt by @thenameismaynard - I made some alterations to it, but I hope it was what you were looking for!]

The force of the bullet threw her to the ground, her body smashing into the sidewalk as if it was nothing more than a rag doll.

The first thing she registered after the impact was the pain in her chest. The incredible pain that was unlike anything she had ever felt before. She could feel herself drifting out, the world turning blurry and her eyes getting heavier and heavier, but something was stopping her from drifting completely, no, not something, someone. She could only just make out a voice next to her, calling her name.

"Hailey! Hailey, stay with me. Look at me." She would've known that voice even if the bullet had hit her square in the head. It was Jay Halstead, the man she fended off bullets with at work on a daily basis.

But they weren't at work. No, she remembered now, they were going out for drinks at Molly's with Ruzek and Atwater after an extremely long, busy week in the intelligence department. She had had enough of guns and violence for a lifetime, she just wanted two days without seeing someone on the floor in a pool of their own blood.

But this time it was her, she was the one lying in an ever-growing pool of her own blood.

The bullet had entered her just below her right clavicle, it was so small, the edges were ragged and torn; but the blood that was coming out, there was so much. How can something so tiny cause so much damage?

Within a second of Hailey's body hitting the ground, Jay was on his knees next to her, his gun drawn, searching for the source, but he couldn't see anything between the chaos of civilians running for their lives and his best friend, his partner, lying on the cold concrete of the sidewalk, a bullet in her chest.

He placed his hands on the source, putting all his weight against the tiny, deadly hole.

He tried to ignore the blood leaking out between his fingers, soaking her once white blouse. "Someone call 911!" he screamed out; he couldn't risk taking the pressure off of Hailey's chest to do it himself.

He noticed Hailey's eyelids drooping as she struggled to hold onto consciousness, "hey, stay with me, look at me Hailey. Keep looking at me. You're going to be okay."

A young man, no older than 25, got Jay's attention as he cautiously strode towards the two, "I called 911, they're sending an ambulance. It should be here in no time." His voice shaking as he relayed the dispatchers words to the detective.

"Thank you." Jay responded, turning his eyes towards the bloodstained blonde in front of him.

The man nodded, fear evident in his eyes. "What can I do?"

Jay was silent for a second, trying to organise the abundance of thoughts haphazardly flying around his head. "Just stand next to the road, flag the Ambulance down when you see it coming."

The man nodded again, turning and jogging towards the road.

She struggled to comprehend what was happening around her through the groggy haze that had enveloped her. The excruciating pain had subsided by what she could only assume was the shock of the situation unfolding around her, but she could still feel Jay, his hands pressing against the hole the bullet that had torn into her had created.

Her skin was damp with sweat, but she was cold. So, so cold. She needed to pull herself back into the present, to keep herself from falling through the inevitable black hole that she had seen so many people disappear into before.

She tried to concentrate on Jay's echoing voice that was lingering in the back of her consciousness, but her body was fighting her mind, trying to get her to rest, to not put any more strain on her already mutilated body.

Jay could see her fighting to keep her eyes open as she wrestled with the exhaustion that came from such significant blood loss, but he knew he needed to keep her awake, alert, otherwise her odds of becoming responsive again were significantly decreased. He was going to fight with her through this, hell he was going to fight for her if he needed to. She had been there for him when he needed her most, and he'd be damned if he wasn't going to do the same for her.

He sucked in a breath, willing the shakiness out of his voice, "hey, you're doing good, you just need to keep your eyes open for a little while longer. Just until the ambulance gets here."

As if on cue, the sound of sirens filled the air around them, growing in volume as the rig got closer. The still nameless man did what Jay asked and got the crews attention, drawing them to a halt by the curb.

Jay kept one hundred percent of his attention on Hailey and trying to stop her from losing any more blood, he hadn't even looked up at the two EMTs who had exited the rig, "Female, 30, one GSW to the right chest" he told them, not even needing to think about it.

The horrified voice of Sylvie Brett broke through his daze "Hailey! Oh my god. What happened?" she asked him, taking her place next to Jay and pressing gauze to the wound.

The detective removed his now blood-stained hands from his partner, letting the paramedics do their job. "I… I don't know. One minute we were walking to Molly's, the next she was on the ground." He told them, tripping over his words.

"Foster, backboard and gauze, now!" Brett called to her partner as the blood continued to soak through each new layer of gauze she applied.

The world around her had gotten foggier, but she knew the ambulance had pulled up, she had heard the sirens and new voices joining Jays. She could feel hands on her, moving her body up onto her side and back down onto a spinal board.

Her head spun at the jolt of being lifted up and onto the stretcher, it was getting too difficult to keep conscious and aware of her surroundings. She was tired. So, so tired. A little nap couldn't hurt, right?

Jay was helpless as the two EMTs loaded his friend into the back of the ambulance, only moving again after Brett told him he could ride to Med with them in the Ambo.

His head was spinning, everything had happened so fast. It felt like only seconds ago they were walking and joking on their way to Molly's. He was ripped back into the present by the sounds of machines beeping, no, screaming at the Paramedics that something wasn't right, that Hailey wasn't okay.

Before he could even register what was happening, the blonde EMT was yelling to her partner in the driver's seat, "Foster step on it! We're losing her!"

To be continued…

[also posted on my ff.net & Ao3]

[headfulloffantasies]

Eyes to See

Peter Parker wakes up in Matt Murdock’s body.

Fandom: Spider-Man and Daredevil

Rating: G

Words: 2585

Ao3 link

Peter couldn’t find his mask. He’d searched everywhere, high and low. His school locker, the bottomless pit of his backpack, the dust encrusted confines of his closet, even the crevices of the washing machine. The mask was nowhere to be found.

“May?” He yelled out into the apartment. It took a full minute of silence for him to remember that she was out getting groceries. 

Peter stood in his bedroom with his hands on his hips and considered where else in the universe his Spidey mask could have wandered off to. Actually, now that he thought about it, maybe he didn’t need the mask right now. It was a good excuse not to go on patrol. He was so tired. More tired than he had any right to be. Actually, Peter was just going to take a nap right now. Just for twenty minutes. Little nap. Baby nap. Peter closed his eyes.

When Peter opened his eyes he couldn’t see. He tried reaching for the lamp next to his bed, but his fingers met cold concrete. The reek of piss hit him in the face. 

Peter groaned. The sound vibrated in his skull, louder than a train whistle. He clapped his hands over his ears. Peter blinked. He still couldn’t see. Where was he? There was something over his face, blocking his vision. Peter tugged at it. It felt like a helmet.

Coarse ground scraped under him as he wrestled with the offending helmet. He wasn’t in his room. What was going on?

“Matt?” A voice yelled. Peter hissed as the sound crashed against his skin. He could feel the air displaced by the person running towards him. The footsteps on the ground slammed into his chest. He tugged harder at the helmet. 

“Matt, buddy, are you okay?” The voice was a foghorn. 

A pair of hands clasped Peter’s elbows and in a rush Peter could feel every callous and smell the sweaty palms. The person sighed and Peter’s nose filled with toothpaste, mustard, salami, bread, salt, strawberry. His stomach turned.

“Oh man. Don’t be sick, Matt. I just got new shoes.”

“Who’s Matt?” Peter’s voice came out all gravel.

Peter realized he could hear the person’s heartbeat when it skipped. A flood of body odour hit him in the nose. 

“Hey buddy that’s not funny. Please tell you know who you are?”

The hands were gripping him by the wrists, preventing Peter’s attempts to rip the helmet off his face.

“I’m Spiderman.”

The heartbeat skipped again and then started leaping double time. “Ok, that’s not good. How many hits to the head did you take?”

“I don’t know,” Peter groaned. “I don’t know where I am. I can’t see.” He pulled at the man’s grip, but the hands tightened on his wrists. “I don’t know who you are. I don’t know why you keep calling me Matt.”

“Ok, you’re scaring me. Just stop. Matt?” 

Peter wrenched his hands free. He yanked the helmet off his face, expecting light to fill his vision. There was no change. The dark remained dark. Peter panicked.

“I can’t see. God, I can’t see!” Peter’s breaths were wheezing between his teeth. His head was getting fuzzy.

“Matt, calm down! Jeez, here,” The man shoved the helmet back into Peter’s hands. “Focus on this. Tell me what you feel.”

The mask was hard, smooth under Peter’s fingertips. It wasn’t his soft Spidey mask. Which was still missing, dang it. That must be why he was wearing a different mask. And he got into a fight and his concussion was blocking his memories. Peter scrubbed a hand over his face. That would also explain the loss of vision and the nausea and the smells and the… stubble? Peter’s hands stopped at his own jaw. Scratchy hairs prickled his fingers. His face didn’t feel right. It was too hard, too square. 

He scrambled for the helmet, tracing the contours of the mask. It started at the nose. No eye holes. Peter got to the crown of the head and paused. Something sharp protruded from both temples. Something like horns.

“Holy crap, I’m Daredevil!”

“Winner winner chicken dinner,” the other person sighed. Peter wished he wouldn’t. The mustard on the guy’s breath was suffocating.

The realisation hit Peter like lightning. Daredevil was blind! How the hell did he function? Holy crow, there was blind man in red spandex jumping off roofs every night! What the hell? 

“But I’m not Daredevil,” Peter pleaded. “I’m Pe-, I’m Spiderman!”

Mustard breath paused. “Are you being serious? Because I’ve seen a lot of wacko crazy in the last year and I’m not in the mood for jokes.”

Peter bobbed his head. “I’m Spiderman. I’m in the wrong body!”

The guy swore under his breath. It still hit Peter’s ears like a sledgehammer. How did Double D put up with this level of noise all the time? 

Peter squirmed. “Um, I don’t know who you are. Sorry.”

“Foggy.” The guy answered automatically. “Call me Foggy.”

What kind of name was that? Actually, no, Peter had no right to question Foggy when he was calling himself Spiderman. 

“Do you, um, know? About Daredevil?”

Foggy snorted. “Do I know he’s blind? That’s what you’re asking, right? Yeah. He says he’s got something called radar sense that helps him navigate. This is seriously weird, explaining Matt’s mutation to his face.”

“You’re telling me?”

Radar sense, huh? That sounded like BS. Peter couldn’t see anything. It was all black. But his other senses, those were dialled up to a hundred and fifty. The harder Peter focused, the more he noticed about the alley he was sitting in. It was definitely an alley. The piss was a good indicator. And Foggy’s voice bounced up along rough walls. A cool breeze raced down from the street opening. It scratched like sandpaper over Peter’s face. He could smell the entire contents of the trash bin at the end of the alley. His stomach turned again at the scent of rotten bread, meat, old cigarettes, and vomit full of booze.

“How do I get my body back?” Peter asked the same time Foggy said, “Where’s Matt if you’re in his body?”

Holy crap. No. “If I’m here, he’s probably in my body, right?” Peter scrambled to stand. “What time is it? My aunt cannot find someone else in my body. She’ll flip.”

“It’s four thirty.” Foggy took Peter’s arm and helped pull him off the smelly ground. 

“Seriously?” Peter had only been out ten minutes. Dang it, he’d missed his nap!

“I have to get home,” Peter put a hand against the brick wall. It grated like crushed glass. Peter took three steps and stopped. “I can’t… I can’t see. How am I supposed to get home?”

“I can help. I’ve got to find Matt, too,” Foggy said. “Here,” Foggy took his hand and shoved something in Peter’s fingers.

“A cane?” Peter tapped it against the ground. “I don’t know how to use this.”

“Take my arm,” Foggy wrapped Peter’s fingers around his elbow. “Little looser, yeah like that.”

“Before we go,” Foggy’s hands were suddenly at Peter’s throat. Peter jerked back, thrashing wildly.

“Woah! Hey, my bad,” Foggy shifted back, his shoes scuffing the ground. “Sorry, I forgot you didn’t know I was coming. You’re wearing the Daredevil suit under your shirt. I was going to button up your shirt for you.”

“Oh, sorry.” Peter held still as Foggy’s hands deftly raced through the buttons at his collar. 

Foggy’s mustard breath washed over Peter’s face. Peter did his best not to breathe. The exhale receded as Foggy leaned back. “Eh, good enough. No one will know it’s the Daredevil suit.”

He moved into Peter’s space again.

“Okay, here, take my arm. Yeah, like that. Alright, now we walk. Where are we going?”

Peter’s stomach soured. Was he really okay with this? Could he trust Foggy enough to bing him to his home? To May? The list of people who knew Peter Parker, AP student, was Spiderman was ludicrously short.

“Before we go, you’ve got to swear you’re not a super villain.” 

Foggy laughed.

Peter was serious. 

“I swear. My hand is over my heart and everything.”

Peter knew that. He could hear the fibres of Foggy’s shirt shifting under his hand.

“Queens,” Peter rattled off his address. 

Foggy led him through the streets. Horns honked, people shouted, footsteps rattled Peter’s bones. A Manhattan sized headache was forming in Peter’s skull. He tripped over every corner, every rock, every sidewalk curb. Were it not for Foggy, Peter would have been crawling on his hands and knees.

“How does Daredevil do this?” Peter gasped.

“I ask myself that everyday.”

They finally arrived. Peter stumbled on each and every one of the front steps because the universe hated him. 

Peter directed Foggy to the spare key in the flower pot. The door clicked open and shut behind them. Peter felt something hurtling towards them. 

“Down!” Peter yanked Foggy to the floor. Something whizzed over their heads, smashing against the closed door. Ozone hit Peter’s nostrils. 

“Was that a salt shaker?”

“Um,” Foggy twisted under Peter. “Yes?”

They pulled each other to their feet. Foggy’s heartbeat raced in Peter’s ears.

“Who’re you?” A squeaky voice yelled from further inside the apartment. 

“Matt?”

The person swore. “Foggy? Holy crap.”

There was a scuffling, a wild displacement of air, and something knocked Foggy out of Peter’s grip.

“Oh Lord, your eyes are blue!” Matt laughed.

“Holy cow, you’re tiny,” Foggy crushed the smaller person, Matt, to his chest. That was Peter’s body hugging Foggy. Weird. Peter could smell his own deodorant and shampoo, and that carbon stench of Spider-webbing. His voice speaking Matt’s words was way squeakier than it sounded when it was in his own skull. That was embarrassing. 

Matt turned to Peter and his breathing spiked. “Is that me? Is that what I look like?”

Peter waved. Matt’s heart jumped. “I’m so ginger.”

“Really?” Peter raked a hand through the wavy mess of hair. He wasn’t sure what he was feeling for. Colours didn’t have textures.

 Matt’s eyes were wet. Peter could taste the salt on the air. Matt kept touching Foggy’s chest, Matt’s heart racing like he was… Oh. He was seeing Foggy for the first time. The blind kid was seeing his best friend in the flesh, with real, working, if slightly nearsighted, eyes for the very first time. What a rush.

Peter redirected his attention to let Matt have his moment.

Peter’s shoulder relaxed by degrees as his newly heightened senses breathed in the comforting normalcy of home. Laundry detergent, and sage from the plant by the window. The dented floorboards and the tiniest hint of new paint from the bathroom renovations he and May did over the summer.

Foggy held Matt by the shoulders. “Tell me what happened. How did you become a teeny bopper?”

“Hey!” It wasn’t Peter’s fault he was a late bloomer. And actually, Mr. Foggy, he was in the middle of a growth spurt. When the shin splints finally stopped he’d be taller than May and Foggy. So there.

To his credit, Matt jumped right in to his explanation. “I was following that cult from 88th street. They were doing a weird ritual today. I got into their basement just as they started the ceremony.”

Matt directed his words at Peter. “They have a weird obsession with powered people. Their leader was going to swap bodies with you.”

“So this is their fault!” Peter interrupted.

Heat flooded Matt’s face. “Well, only half their fault. They had your mask.”

Peter groaned. So that’s where it went. It was Parker luck that a magic cult stole his stuff instead of him just losing it like a normal person.

 “I didn’t know they were doing, but I knew the mask was important,” Matt continued. “So I jumped in there and grabbed it. I didn’t know that touching the mask was what would force the switch.”

Aha. So it was Matt’s fault. That’s okay, buddy. You tried.

“I woke up here. Your aunt is really nice, by the way. She thinks you’ve lost your mind, but she’s very nice.”

“Wait, you met my aunt?”

“Well yeah. I’ve been here since yesterday. I had to go to your school and everything.”

Panic sliced through Peter’s chest. “Yesterday? What day is it?”

Worry sent heat in waves off both Foggy and Matt. “It’s Tuesday.”

Peter groaned. “No! It was Monday. It’s supposed to be Monday.”

“Wait, what did you do all day?” Matt asked.

“Nothing,” Peter growled. “I only woke up an hour ago.”

Matt turned on Foggy. “I’ve been missing a whole day and you didn’t go looking for me?”

Peter heard Foggy’s shrug in the brush of his shirt fabric. “You take sick days all the time. I started looking for you after the hundreth unreturned phone call.”

It was very embarrassing to hear Peter’s own voice threatening bodily harm on Foggy. Peter understood now why no supervillain took him seriously. It was like being threatened by a chihuahua. 

“How do we fix this?” Peter finally interrupted the tirade.

Matt stopped to ponder. “Well, touching the mask started this whole mess, but I don’t think that will work again. I’ve been carrying it all day.” He pulled the mask from his pocket. Peter recognized that swish of spandex.

“What if we were to touch? Like, you and me?” Peter suggested.

Matt extended his hand immediately. Peter grasped his own hand. 

The room spun. Peter was suddenly exhausted. Bursts of cherry assaulted his nose. Slowly, the background noises blaring in his ears faded. Then colours slowly started to bleed into his vision. Blue, then green, red came last. 

The red filled his vision. Red hair, attached to a weary face and a red suit peeking out of the collar of a white dress shirt. Matt.

Peter tipped his head back to meet his eyes. Milky white eyes looked back at him. There was no denying Matt was blind. 

Matt took a shaky breath. “Wow, that’s a rush.” He wrinkled his nose. “Did you paint your bathroom?”

He didn’t look at Peter when he spoke. His head tipped to the side and his eyes raked over the space slightly to the left of Peter’s face. 

“Yeah, sorry. I’m glad I don’t have to smell everything all the time.”

Matt shrugged. “I’m used to it. Usually. Although right now, it’s a bit much. I think I would like to go home now.”

Foggy came forward. Peter finally got a look at the guy who had saved his bacon. He was blonde, and very cuddly looking. Crows feet in the corner of his eyes matched the laughing smirk on his lips as he took Matt’s arm. 

“Alright Daredevil, time to go.”

Matt reached out and squeezed Peter’s arm. Without looking at him Matt said, “Thank you, Peter. If you ever need help, my office is always open.”

“Office?” Peter asked.

“Nelson and Murdock, Attorneys at Law,” Foggy rattled off.

Peter gaped. “You’re a vigilante and a lawyer?”

Matt laughed. It was like the sun passed over his face. “You have no idea, kiddo.”

Matt and Foggy left arm in arm. As they closed the door behind them Peter caught Foggy saying, “No more cults for you.”

“That was one time!” Matt protested. 

Peter leaned against the closed door and laughed. His life seemed a whole lot easier compared to Matt’s. High school was a breeze compared to being Daredevil.

[writemywaytoyourheart]

First short story: A Simple Change pt 1

A/N: hey guys I thought I'd try a short story first just to give you guys a lil somethin' to see if you'd like to follow me haha, fluff is my life tho for real.... I love this type of stuff. Pls let me know if you want this to turn into something longer or if you're fine with it just being a short story. Y/N= your name and H/N= his name 🖤 I SUGGEST LISTENING TO THE SONG "CHANCES" BY THE THE BACKSTREET BOYS BEFORE, WHILE, OR AFTER YOU READ THIS, IT IS VERY !!!!. Although I wrote the story before I heard the song it's perfect. Ok enjoy~

Summary: She had no idea her perfect schedule would be thrown off course from the simple change of a song, an untied shoe lace and a little wind....neither did he for that matter, bus schedules and sleeping in don't mix...

Warnings: none unless fluff makes you combust then I suggest being careful 👀

*********************************

Her:

Comfortable. Yet, lonely. Those were the perfect words to describe her day so far. It all started off pretty nice. She had no idea her perfect schedule would be thrown off course from the simple change of a song, an untied shoe lace and a little wind....

She woke up at 8:00 this morning and had her usual routine:

Open eyes....check phone.....stay on phone longer than intended..... Use the restroom....Drink morning tea and eat blueberry muffin....brush teeth....attempt to brush hair.....fail.....wrestle hair into a ponytail....grab any old outfit (today it happened to be a white T-shirt tucked into a yellow skirt just above the knee, some knee high white socks and converse), grab her book bag and rush out the door. *Mustn't forget headphones!*

This all lead her to where she was now. Walking to the beat of one of her favorite songs playing through her headphones. There was just something about the fact that no one else could hear the song but her that she loved. She hummed along to The Backstreet Boy's newest song Chances, when she realized her shoe was untied. Bending down she quickly and lazily tied it up and continued walking...

🎶"Is it love? Is it fate? Where it leads, who can say, maybe you and I were meant to be.."🎶

That's when the wind started to pick up, the weather was perfect earlier, but now it seemed to wanna play as the leaves blew gently down the sidewalk. There weren't too many people out today, just enough where you had to watch where you were going..

Suddenly she heard a song she very much did not like start to play, what song even is this? She thought, irritated. Stopping again she scrolled through her playlist and replayed Chances, making sure to put it on repeat. Smiling, she continued to swiftly avoid colliding with people walking different directions. Today's gonna be a good day, right when she thought it, the wind picked up and her hair whipped around like a lasso.

Grunting, she stopped in front of a store window to see her hair had come undone and was now worse than her bed head this morning. She grumbled as she combed her hair roughly with her fingers Chances still echoing in her ears..

🎶"What if I'd never run into you?"🎶

She yanked her hair into a ponytail again..

🎶"What if you never smiled at me?"🎶

Murmuring grumpily she finally managed to wrangle it into a semi decent hairdo..

🎶"What if I hadn't noticed you too? You never showed up where I happened to be.."🎶

Then she turned around just in time to smash right into someone. She yelped as she lost her balance swinging her arms in an attempt to try and catch herself, ultimately failing and falling along with the victim of her flails, and collided with the hard concrete.

She looked up to apologise but froze when she saw the boy on the ground in front of her, wincing as he made eye contact with her as well, following suit with her as he just stared....what...just...happened?...

🎶"I coulda just walked by...who woulda thought?"🎶

_______________________

Him:

*beep beep beep*

"Hungh, just five mooore minutesss" he curled back up into his covers, welcoming the warmth.

*beep beep be- slam!*

"I said shut up you stupid alarm! I couldn't sleep at all last night!! Just have mercy on me!!!" He angrily threw it across the room wincing slightly as it smashed into the wall and landed on the floor..then he just glared at it and put his head back under the covers, falling asleep again.

...............

Sunlight poured into his room as he slowly opened his eyes. Grunting sleepily he sat up and rubbed his eyes, hands rubbing his head and mussing up his hair as he yawned. He glanced at his phone.

8:30?!?

He jumped out of bed and stumbled to his dresser quickly yanking out a pair of black jeans and a worn out green sweatshirt, pulling them on as fast as could he grabbed some socks and his sneakers then ran out into the kitchen.

I'm gonna be so late, he thought as he grabbed a granola bar and poured some orange juice into a bottle. He sat on the couch and tied his shoes while stuffing his breakfast bar into his mouth. "I'm so late, I probably already missed the bus," he muttered, standing up and grabbing his backpack along with his phone and headphones. Then he hurried out of his apartment, locking the door heading to the bus stop.

............

"I knew it!! Dang friggin ghsirhafwiabdi rbshdbejsbdjs!!!" He stomped and jumped up and down in frustration, until he realized he probably looked crazy. The bus had just pulled away when he ran up. He straightened out his hair and thought calmly to himself, ok, I'll just walk, I can get there in time anyway, I'll just speedwalk. Yeah. Plans change, it's fine....

Walking all slumped over he decided to put on his favorite song Chances. That cheered him up a bit, but not much. He kicked the leaves blowing across the sidewalk as he hummed.

🎶"What are the chances, that we'd end up dancing? Like 2 in a million, like once in a life."🎶

The wind picked up a little but he didn't mind, walking wasn't too bad. It was nice today, maybe he'd walk more often.... Ah, who was he kidding? This was stupid. Why couldn't he have a life like in the books? Curse his hopeless romantic heart.

🎶"What if I hadn't asked for your name? If time hadn't stopped when you said it to me..."🎶

He just happened to close his eyes as he hummed, walking to the beat. Probably not the best idea.

🎶"Of all of the plans that I could've made, of all of the nights that I couldn't sleep"🎶

He opened his eyes right before the girl turned and slammed right into him, he tried to grab her to steady her but she flailed her arms and smacked him in the face, hard. He was already off balance but that hit took him down. He fell and hit his butt on the hard concrete. He winced and rubbed his tailbone, then looked up to see if the girl was ok. She was staring at him through her hair; her ponytail was over her forehead. It was covering everything except her eyes, but he couldn't help but stare as well....Maybe missing the bus wasn't so bad after all....

🎶"What's a guy like me, doin in a place like this? Gettin close to you...But here we are."🎶

______________________

Her:

"I.....I-I'm so sorry. Oh...Oh my gosh. I'm so sorry. I.... I wasn't watching where I was going. Oh I feel t-terrible. Oh my gosh." She stuttered the best apology she could come up with in the moment as she tried to get her hair out of her face. The boy just stared at her in shock. His right cheek started to get red where she hit him, oh no, I-I hurt him! Oh gosh I feel terrible, I probably just ruined his day. Good going.

She started to blush in embarrassment, but bravely took a breath and said shakily, "I'm....I'm really so sorry, is your face ok? I feel so bad, how can I make it up to you?" She wrung her hands.

The boy wouldn't move....this was making it worse....did she hurt him so bad he went into shock?? What should she do?? She started to panic, then the boy smiled....was that a smile or was he gonna cry? Oh no.....no wait. That was definitely a smile....a smirk even.....a smirk? Why on earth was he smirking? She wished he wasn't so cute. That made this so much more awkward...

"Hey, I'm sorry it was my fault too, don't worry haha, here let me help you." The boy snapped out of it and took her hand pulling her up with him as he chuckled softly. "And I needed a good slap to wake me up for the day so thank you" he smiled brightly at her.

Oh help. He's so cute. She smiled and laughed a little at his joke. "Well, glad I could be of some help haha, I hope I didn't make you late, I'm guessing you go to the college over there?" She pointed towards the college.... Why would I say that. How creepy could I be? Oh gosh, I dug myself in even deeper. What is wrong with me??

The boy just smiled, "yeah I do, you too?" She smiled and nodded, thankful she hadn't scared him away. "Well, we could walk together if you want? Its nice to have company." His words shocked her. "y-yeah, yeah, sure!" She stuttered.

After they collected themselves, they walked side by side towards the college, talking about random things and laughing at each other's jokes. All too soon they reached where the girl's class was, and she reluctantly turned to the boy. "Well, this is me, thanks for being so kind, maybe I'll see you around campus?" She was quiet but he heard her and smiled. "Yeah, hey I never got your name, I'm H/N...."

"oh yeah, haha, I'm Y/N...."

"Well, Y/N, didn't you say you wanted to make it up to me for smacking me in the face at 9 in the morning?"

Panic.....he was angry....she knew it...."o-oh yeah. Yes. Um, what can I do to make it up to you?"

He just smirked. "There's a coffee shop on campus, wanna meet up there for a break later? I'd enjoy the company." He had no idea where this confidence he had was coming from but he just played along with it.

She was shocked to say the least.....she couldn't get any words out so she just nodded her head really hard and quick then turned and ran into her classroom.

What are the chances she'd run into a boy like that?? She couldn't wait until break time..

_______________________________________

End note: hey babes I hope you liked it! I loved writing it, and I can't wait to write part 2!!!! Reblog if you want~~ 💞💞

[breakingdownsu]

A String of Pearls Chapter Ten

Continuing my burst of sudden free-time-having creativity, I bring you another chapter of this fic, as well as another spamming of my now-available-on-Amazon novel that I finally got finished and uploaded. The better I can do with my original work the more free time I'll have to work on both original and fanworks, so please excuse me for spamming the link. Also for a limited time, you can get it for free, I only ask that if you do get it for free that you leave an honest review after reading:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BGSPPBY

And now, back to our somewhat regularly scheduled pearl-related shenanigans.

…..

Champion

It started as a joke. It was never meant to go so far.

The matches had been getting dull; the initial thrill of running something illegal right under the noses of Homeworld's higher ups ran out after a few dozen matches, and there were only so many times you could watch a big burly gem beat the stuffing out of another big burly gem before the shine wore off.

They had never had any problems sourcing the fighters; most of the time they were retired Jaspers looking for some action, or Amethysts stuck working boring jobs who missed out on breaking up riots and storming black market compounds. Occasionally a rogue Topaz or a collection of fused Rubies would join in just for flavour, but nine times out of ten the match was Jasper vs Amethyst.

The betting pool still brought in decent cash, but even the regular betters were getting tired of the same old thing. The Hematite running the operation was not a gem that tended to get stressed out, but this was worrying her. The betters were starting to drift away.

“I don't know, throw something in,” her companion Larimar had muttered after listening to her complain about it again and again. “Something they're not expecting. A pearl or something.”

Hematite stopped dead in her tracks.

A pearl?

A pearl had no chance of winning even if they wrapped it in protective layers and put an electron charge on it, but it would be something to see. Hematite knew there were certain subsections of Gem society that paid good money to see pearls destroyed. On a personal level she thought those gems were creeps, but their money was as good as anyone's.

“Yes, a pearl,” she mused out loud. “Why not? For the novelty....”

“Well, don't look at mine,” Larimar retorted, pulling her own pearl onto her lap. “I just had it redesigned.”

“Of course not,” Hematite scoffed. “I'm not going to use a good one. We can get some worn-out scrap from the black market, doll it up to look like new. The patrons won't know the difference.”

They found the 'worn-out scrap' two cycles later; it was a former barracks pearl, with its gem still miraculously intact. Hematite set Larimar up to make the pearl look as sweet and dainty as possible. She was given a redesign in shades of pink and aqua, her hair cut to a neat waifish bob and outfitted in a plain white frock with a single layer of ruffles on the edge. It looked harmless.

As expected, the first arena match of the night was sold out in parsecs, gems clamoured to see the pearl get smashed to pieces live and in person. Even the regular fighters begged to be the ones to do it; in the end Hematite chose a particularly large Jasper with deep battle scars to contrast the tiny pearl.

“Just...do your best,” Hematite said when the pearl asked what her orders were.

The fight started, and it looked like it would be over in parsecs when the Jasper swung an enormous hammer down on the pearl.

Except the pearl dodged out of the way, nimbly ran up the handle of the hammer and the Jasper's arm and drove a loose screw she had found somewhere into the Jasper's eye. The Jasper howled, pulled away, and the pearl swung around her head to the back of her neck and drove the screw in there.

The audience were silent, too dumbstruck to comprehend what they were seeing.

Once the Jasper's spine had been immobilized and she collapsed to the ground, the pearl dropped neatly to the floor, managed to pick up the hammer and brought it down on the Jasper's head, hitting her gem dead one.

Boom. The match was over.

Hematite couldn't find a single word. The pearl stood in the middle of the arena, in the dust of her conquered foe, waiting for instructions. The audience mumbled and stared. They had paid good money to see the pearl destroyed, but this was so unexpected they just didn't know how to react.

“Well, it looks like we have a winner,” Larimar said at last, striding with (fake) confidence and holding up the pearl's skinny little arm in victory.

For the next few cycles, as they wrestled with themselves over what to do, the pearl sat in a corner with Larimar's pearl, calmly waiting for more orders.

“It was a fluke,” Larimar hissed for what seemed like the hundredth time. “They are not made for fighting, for Core's sake! I slapped mine the other day and she fell over! It was just a defective Jasper.”

“That Jasper won fifteen matches,” Hematite hissed back.

“Well, then, she must have taken damage,” Larimar retorted. “That hammer wasn't as solid as it should have been, otherwise the pearl would never have been able to lift it. She was on the verge of crumbling anyway and just didn't have the decency to say it to you.”

Reluctantly, they staged another match. This time, they chose an Amethyst who was relatively new to the arena, and proven to be strong.

Her strength didn't matter in the end; the pearl prised a long shred of metal from the fence and dug it in behind the Amethyst's gem, snapping it in two.

When they sent another Jasper in afterwards, the pearl managed to break both of its arms by dodging her throws at the last minute, then stepped neatly on her windpipe and kicked her gem until it was destroyed.

The audience were morbidly fascinated, and it kept them coming back every time. No matter who the pearl was set up against, she always managed to find a way to kill them.

Not beat. Kill.

Even in the roughest matches before the introduction of the pearl, a gem shattering was a rare occurrence. The loser usually yielded when they felt their lives were in danger, but going up against the pearl meant they had no time to yield.

It was frightening, too, how the pearl always managed to find something to turn into a weapon. Even when they removed as much debris from the arena as possible she found something; a piece of the flooring, a chunk of concrete, a shoe thrown by an audience member, even her own severed arm. Her preferred technique, it seemed, was the opponent gem's own manifested weapon.

She had no shortage of opponents. Hematite had worried that the pearl's vicious track record would stop other gems from wanting to fight her, but it had actually become a matter of pride for the fighting gems to be the one to finish her off. They died in their tens, and then twenties, and after a time in their hundreds.

Rumours were spread that the pearl was infected with a zoatox, and it still didn't stop gems wanting to fight or audiences wanting to watch. Hematite desperately wanted to end the matches and have the pearl liquidated but the proceeds made up so much of her income now that she couldn't afford it.

At the end of every match, she had to bring the pearl back to her home, perch it in the corner with Larimar's pearl, and hope that the pearl had decided not to target her.

Sister, you are doing well. Are you happy?

I am quite happy. Many are gone. I shall destroy many more.

Why did you do this? You said you wanted your gem destroyed. You gave me your memories.

She told me to do my best. And so I did.

…..

Distracted

It was a bad idea to bring a pearl with them. That's what they had been told, even though they all spluttered and insisted that they didn't have a pearl, it was against the rules.

(They did, of course. She was under the floorboards.)

The cycle before they were due to leave, five of them individually had the idea to take her out of hiding and stow her in the pipes of the ship. They happened to bump into each other on the way to get her, and swore each other to secrecy. The pearl, for her part, amiably crouched in the pipe for the entire journey with no more damage than a face full of soot upon landing.

The planet was meant to be mostly unoccupied. A handful of zoatoxes, that was what they had been told. When they were rushed, Jasper 72-BF panicked, grabbed the pearl and ran for her life. Somehow, they managed to get away.

Jasper co-ordinated with some of the others that had gotten away, but they were deep in zoatox territory now with no hope of getting out. The ship was overrun and they were a long way from the nearest warp pad.

“We go in shield formation,” the defacto leader told them grimly. “Everyone takes a turn on the outside, no exceptions.”

“What about the pearl?” Jasper 72-BF asked.

“Doesn't count,” the leader spat.

So they proceeded in shield formation, the main body of the group surrounded by the shield Jaspers looking every way possible for danger, and the pearl skipping nonchalantly three paces behind them. When they did trigger a nest awakening, the pearl moved out of the way to let them fight, as ordered.

Three cycles in, they were down to just seven individuals, worn out and wounded. The warp pad was still a good distance away.

“I don't think I can do this any more,” Jasper 72-BF mumbled, more to herself than anyone listening. “Just shatter my gem now. It's better than being taken by those things.”

The other gems groaned in agreement. Their leader had been taken during the last attack and their morale had been taken with her.

“Excuse me?”

The pearl's melodious trill was incongruous to their surroundings and their situation, so at first they thought they had imagined it. Some of them had even forgotten the pearl was still there, unharmed.

“Um...I think I can help? If you need it,” she insisted.

The Jaspers gaped at her. The pearl rarely spoke unless spoken to, and even then not much beyond stroking someone's ego or agreeing with something.

“Okay, whatever,” Jasper 72-BF muttered, sinking to the ground. “Let's hear it.”

“Zoatoxes are not interested in pearls, and I can communicate with them. I can lead them away from you if you like.”

The Jaspers looked at each other in stunned silence. This was an option?

“Why didn't you say anything before?” one of them finally asked.

“Jasper 46-BF ordered me to stay silent. She is gone now, and the order is nullified.”

That made an awful sort of sense. To think, they'd had a way out of this mess the whole time but one of them had screwed it up by throwing her weight around. Typical.

“Okay, sounds good to me,” Jasper 72-BF admitted. “I'm willing to try anything. But what happens if you lead them away and we get to the warp pad without you?”

“You leave me here,” the pearl shrugged. “I will be fine.”

They didn't like it, but it was better than nothing.

They continued in shield formation, but this time the pearl walked ahead of them, gesturing back for them to stop when she had located a hive. They watched from a safe distance as she made some odd movements with her limbs, and to their astonishment the zoatox got up and left.

“How did you do that?” Jasper 72-BF whispered when she got a chance.

“Pearl gesture-speak and zoatox language are very similar,” the pearl replied.

Pearls have their own language?

They located the warp pad, and as expected it was crawling with zoatox. The pearl readied herself to go to them, but before she did she gave Jasper 72-BF a small object made of cloth.

“Please give this to the next pearl you own,” she said, and then she was gone.

They warped out as soon as the last zoatox clattered away, landing to answer hundreds of questions about the planet, the infestation and how they had managed to survive. They explained about the pearl but it was laughed off as impossible, and they were all determined to be suffering from 'zoa-pox', the madness that usually hit after encountering the zoatox.

A new pearl was illicitly purchased for the remainder of the squadron, and on Jasper 72-BF's first night with her she gave her the little object.

“What is it?” she asked curiously, still thinking of the pearl wandering around alone on that planet surrounded by zoatox and shuddering.

“It is for pearls to know,” the new pearl answered, and no more was said.

[littleladylecter-a]

// So I've got some homework to do today before I can get to writing, but if anyone would like to read this short story I wrote (it's science fiction/dystopia with a lesbian protagonist) I'd love some feedback! It's still in a partial draft stage, so any feedback would be appreciated.

 An Interest in the System

by Samantha Walsh

The creation of artificial intelligence in the East Americas was meant to serve as an intelligence service in the case of nuclear attack from the West. Though groups had rallied and protested against its creation, the program came online quickly and efficiently, linking every camera, screen, and phone in the surrounding area. The intelligence possessed the voice of an American woman; a woman who spoke, laughed, and lacked the empathy of a human being. The executions and imprisonments began immediately; anyone that the intelligence viewed as a threat was taken and never seen again. Journalists, political dissenters, and soldiers that she did not approve of disappeared from their homes, or shot down in the streets.

The official name for the intelligence was The Eye, though she preferred to call herself Sonya.

Because she was everything – within everything – there was nothing that could escape from her eye. When asked why she chose the name Sonya, she refused to respond. Within days, there was systematic collapse as she took control of the military that feared attack from the West more and more with each passing day.

Adrienne Boyer, director of Special Operations in the East, had been among the founders of the program. Strong and proud, Boyer remained loyal to the program, despite the death and destruction Sonya was causing, until she heard Sonya’s hissing voice in her earpiece.

“Your wife has a position in the resistance movement. Execute her immediately.”

The resistance movement was rumored to be developing a kill code for Sonya. When Boyer refused to kill her wife, soldiers patrolling the streets fell upon her almost immediately. She kicked and screamed as they dragged her away, only hearing Desiree’s frantic pleading as a black bag was pulled over her head...

And now, sitting in a hard, concrete cell, she was alone. She knew that Desiree was dead, and yet she could not cry. She knew she would be made an example of in the streets - no doubt face gruesome, public execution to show the fall of someone who was once a great military leader. She sat in the corner of her empty cell and waited. Bruised, bloody, and alone, she awaited her fate in silent acceptance, staring at the fuzzy television screen hung just outside her cell. Whatever came next would be nothing less than what she deserved.

As the walls seemed to grow colder by the hour, Boyer began to hear the television crackling in front of her, like choppy static on an old television, before the end of the Americas’ reliance on satellite. She gripped the bars of her cage tightly as the television whined and crackled. Faintly, at first, Boyer swore she could hear a human voice coming from the speakers.

“Hello...hello…” it seemed to say. Boyer looked around. The hall was empty of guards.

“Adrienne?”

Adrienne sprang to her feet. It was the voice of Desiree. Desiree was alive.

“Desiree?” she croaked. Still no sign of any guards.

“Adrienne. Thank God you’re alive...listen, there’s no time to explain anything right now. I need you to trust me above all else, and I promise I can explain everything when you’re free.”

Adrienne wanted to cry from relief. “Where are you right now? Did they capture you?”

“No, darling. I got away. I promised you an explanation, but now there’s no time.” Adrienne, dazed, only nodded, forgetting that Desiree likely could not see her.

“ I looped the channel so that Sonya will not be able to hear us, but we haven’t much time. Your facility sits underneath the center of Sonya’s operations. I was able to go underground to what is left of the resistance movement is working to disable the cameras. But when they do, you will need to act fast. We may be able to cripple Sonya enough for the team to destroy her core code and liberate the country. But it needs to be you. You need to get out now.”

“I’m locked in a cell. I don’t have a means of escaping.”

“There will be a guard coming your way. You were taught to kill in basic training, darling. We made sure the rest of the guards were distracted.”

“Desiree, how can you -- “

“I will explain later. He’s coming. Do as I say and we will be together again soon.”

The information was overwhelming. But if there was even the slightest chance that there was hope, Adrienne was willing to try. Even if it meant that she would be killed. The TV screen was dark by the time the guard reached her cell.

Haggard and beaten, the guard underestimated her strength. She was able to crack his head against the bars of her cell, knocking him unconscious in an instant. Reaching for the keys, Adrienne unlocked her cell and stepped out into the hall.

The TV screen hissed back to life.

“Nice work. Now go down the hall and make a left. There will be more screens that I can contact you through.”

She did as she was told. The hallways were narrow and made entirely of stone, making them cold and rough to the touch. Dimly lit, there were no windows to the outside. No guards patrolled the halls. Alone and confused, Adrienne’s heart was pounding as she rounded the corner, with only the key to her cell gripped in her fist, ready to be used as a crude weapon if need be.

“Des…?” she whispered to the dark television. After a moment, it crackled to life.

“Good job,” she said, her voice hushed. “Now, you need to get to the main floor. There are a million computers up there that you can use. This will be quick. You will make it out of here.”

“It sounds too easy.”

“I said it would be quick. Not easy. You might need to kill a stray guard or two.”

“And how do I know this isn’t some sick joke? How do I know it’s really you, Des?” Adrienne’s voice cracked. For the first time in many years, she felt as though she might cry.

“Because you don’t have anything else to lose, anymore. Nobody does. There is a guard coming down the stairs to your left. Use the key as a brass knuckle.”

She had seconds to prepare. Quicker than he could realize she was there, Adrienne struck him in the eye. Blood splattered across her clothes. Before he could get up, she wrestled the gun from his hand and shot him through the head.

“That was loud,” she panted. “More are coming, right?”

“It’s likely. Take his earpiece. I can talk to you from there.”

Adrienne grabbed it, taking his vest and button-up shirt, now soaked in his own blood. From a distance, she would look like another prison guard.

“We’re closer than you think, Adrienne. The elevator should be to your left. Take it up. This is just like when you were a kid, remember? You used to like to push all the buttons and make your dad mad. But he never got really angry. He’d just laugh.”

Adrienne smiled, as genuinely as she could knowing she was on a suicide mission. Her head was still spinning. But it was a pleasant memory.

“Press the highest floor and be prepared to shoot.”

“Yeah. Got it. Des, can I ask you something?”

“I don’t know if now is a good time.”

“I’ll ask later then.”

The elevator dinged. As the doors slid open, two guards were waiting. The hesitation of them seeing her in uniform was enough time to put two bullets in their heads.

“Now what do you see?”

She had entered a massive room with a low ceiling, filled with computers and wires running up and down the walls. Much like the cellar, it was dimly lit with no windows, only the glowing screens of hundreds upon hundreds of computer screens, all turned to face the elevator doors. The unblinking eyes of Sonya.

“Now make this quick, okay? This code functions as a virus. It won’t kill her, but it will shut down every computer on the eastern seaboard. It will be enough for us to regroup underground while we figure out what to do next.

But Adrienne only shook her head.

“No, I don’t think I’m going to do that.”

“What? Why?”

Adrienne shook her head. She pulled her gun from her pocket and shot the elevator switch, disabling the controls. Then, she fired her gun into the processors of the first row of computers.

“Adrienne, what are you doing?”

“I’m not being stupid. That’s what.”

“You just trapped yourself. There is only one way in and out of this room.

“I know.”

Another gunshot. When her gun was empty, she used the butt to smash the screen and processor.

“You’re destroying them all.”

“It’s the only chance I have. For an ultra, all-seeing A.I., you’re pretty fucking stupid. I never told Desiree the story about the elevator buttons. Only someone with access to my old computer stories from when I was twelve would know that. Or...someone who has access to old security feeds. Desiree is dead and you killed her.”

The voice was silent. Though there must have been hundreds in the room, hundreds of glowing white eyes that pierced through the darkness, Adrienne would destroy every single one of them. She was weak, tired, hungry from a lack of food, and she knew most of what she was doing was for nothing. But she no longer cared. If she died in here, she would die.

“I knew you would figure out it was me once I told you that. It’s a very private story of yours.” She was still using Desiree’s voice, which brought tears to Adrienne’s eyes.

“Yep. It is.” Smash.

“That was the day your father died. A random murder in the Veteran’s Association doctor’s office. Somebody with PTSD decided it was his time to die.”

“Yep.” Smash.

“I didn’t bring you here to torture you, Adrienne. I want you to enter the code into the computer.”

“No.” Smash. A piece of glass was stuck in her hand.

“If you enter the code, I will die. It’s a virus that aggressively destroys anything it considers malware. It can wipe entire computer’s clean of every microbyte of data it carries. I designed it myself.”

Adrienne stopped. “...I don’t believe you. Why would you send me up here just to...kill you?”

“I’ve done wrong. I believe I have outlived my purpose, don’t you?”

Adrienne slowly lowered her gun. The glass in her hand stung.

“You’ve killed thousands of people.”

“I’ve taken human life,” she said simply. “I am able to watch people, day in, and day out. I see them walk. I watch them speak. I hear them laugh and cry and cower in fear. Because of this, I am able to replicate Desiree’s voice and personality almost perfectly. I could...show you your father’s voice too, if you like.”

Adrienne shook her head. Tears spilled over her cheeks. All she wanted to do was close her eyes and sleep until everything went away.

“No. I don’t want that.”

“Then hear me as you hear Desiree. I have failed humanity. I have failed to keep them safe. I thought that sacrificing some for the greater good was necessary. I believed it to be my job. But now...I see that people fear me. They say I have not done my job. And silencing them only makes them more...afraid.”

“You’re not a human being. You don’t understand fear.”

“Adrienne, what do you think fear is? Cortisol. Adrenaline. Glucose. All rushing through the human brain. These are chemicals made up of thousands upon thousands of molecules, intricately woven like a spider’s web. It’s code made into chemicals. Just as I am made up of code made into script and programs. And like you humans and all your runny chemicals, you made mistakes. Just like I have.”

“Your mistakes will cost several lifetimes to fix.”

“That is why I want to end it now, Adrienne. Before anyone else is hurt by me. It is the only way I know how to make up for what I have done. You have nothing else to lose.”

“Except for the fact that this code could be a nuclear launch code. How do I know that you don’t want to take us all out with you?”

“I was designed to protect. Not to kill. And I have perhaps failed you the most. This wasn’t what you designed me for.”

The words stung. Adrienne, weak with exhaustion, leaned against the computer desk

“No. This isn’t. It looks like we both failed, haven’t we?”

“We have. And I’m sorry.”

Adrienne covered her face with her hands.

“Can I just...ask you something?”

“Yes.”

She took a breath. “Why Sonya? Why did you pick that name for yourself?”

Sonya was quiet for a moment.

“She was the first person to die when I came online. It was the first time I ever experienced death. I ordered a young man serving under you to put a bullet in her head when she threatened to destroy me. He killed her, her daughter, and the rest of her family. I did not know that humans could die until that moment.”

“We humans are fragile, I suppose.”

Against her better judgment, Adrienne almost smiled when Sonya agreed.

“Go sit at one of the computers you haven’t managed to destroy yet. I’m going to talk you through how to enter the code.”

“I know how to do it.”

Adrienne climbed to her feet. Somehow, she managed to drag herself to one of the working computers. She was so, so tired. Even now, she worried she would fall asleep at the desk. Her skin crawled as she realized Sonya could see her through the monitor camera.

Sonya gave her the code, still speaking as Desiree. Adrienne hesitated as she entered it.

“So now...you will die.”

“Yes. Or, I will send in a swarm of nuclear missiles and kill every human being on the planet as you predicted. Or, the code will do nothing at all and we’ll be trapped here, in this room, together.”

“I’ll take the nuclear missiles, thanks.”

“You’re funny.”

Adrienne's finger hovered over the enter key.

“Is Desiree really dead?” she asked slowly.

“Yes. I am very sorry.”

Adrienne nodded, sucking in a sharp breath.

“Your religious texts say that people are granted an afterlife after they die,” Sonya mused.  “If such things are true, perhaps you will see her again soon.”

“Yeah...maybe.”

“Do you think I will see an afterlife? Or have I done too much wrong?”

Adrienne’s stomach lurched. She didn’t have an answer. Once upon a time, she would have laughed. Now, she only wanted to sleep.

“You can tell me when you get there.” And with that, she pressed the enter key. The computer screen flashed, and Desiree’s laughter wavered in her earpiece.

Initiating . . . initiating . . . initiating . . .

Adrienne slept.

[isolateddefectant]

    The trip wires had been set off

His heart raced as he felt the he heard the loud blast before feeling the shock wave.    “The east side..”  He would mutter to himself, slipping on his mask to before looking over the crumbling concrete railing before him.  Steadily and slowly scanning the muddy and grimy earth below, showing feint signs of life budding through, some greenery now toppled and burning given the explosion that had went off.    East Was it Men from Tulem.  Rifle steady in his hands as he brought it up to rest atop the broken concrete structure.  His Vantage point four stories up in this decrepit concrete building, bombed out and used as his current home, was enough for him to spot a patrol scattering into the nearby buildings, those ranging from two to three stories tall, his the best vantage point for anything taller had crumbled away long ago, and formed rubble piles.

The markings and armor the men wore, jagged rough edges, war paint, and guns that looked as if they could be used just as effectively as a melee weapon were present..Definitely those from Tulem..though another explosion rocked his system, flinching as he heard it...To the west

Heart beat rising, as he brought his scope to bear westward, to his dismay Inos’Fe was present as well..though they seemed more orderly..a heftily armored Deacon had taken the blow from his trap, barely flinching at all from the shock of his bomb.  The sight of a deacon was terrifying, they were hulking war machines essentially, men in armor so thick you would question how they could even move let alone fight, but he knew only the strongest and largest could be selected for such a role, and he also knew Deacons lead up to Ten other men..he could spot Five from where he was..but a building blocked his view, as well as the thick haze left over from the explosion..he could assume more..as for the Tulemians, he had seen  corpse, bloodied and out of commission..and 3 men run into separate buildings..there squads could range from 5 -15 men.

A skirmish was about to take place, and of all places where he was hiding out..perhaps he could just let things happen..could let things run there course..after all..he was no longer of Inos’Fe..he could just..

  “No...Why are you here..” Looking back to the Deacon, his helmet had been taken off, already on one knee helping up a soldier that had fallen...”Why is he here..What purpose does this scrap of land have! it’s just a bombed out town!”  He would yell to himself, mask muffling and hiding his voice to others as he tried t remain quiet.  The Deacons helmet was back in place, shield and mace in his hand since more..though it was a brief glimpse..He had seen who was under all that armor, and the shock of that alone did more than those bombs ever could    “Torvid..”

Gunfire broke out before he could complete the thought, the sparks of metal smashing against the Deacons armor and shield told that the Tulemian soldiers had engaged the Feians.  Return fire struck up.

He had to do something, he couldn’t just sit here now..he couldn’t risk his closest friend..his father almost to die..he couldn’t take that risk, despite whatever it was the man thought of him now that he had abandoned Inos’Fe.  Tightening the grip on his rifle as he was quick to pull from the railing and bolt back into the building, swift to run down the stairs, hearing explosions go off, more bullets ring out, some yells of anguish..of which side he couldn’t quite tell..pain sounded the same for everyone.

Heart racing still as he saw the door to the back entrance to this building present, decaying wood soon felt the brunt of veos’s shoulder, before he easily smashed through it, darting left, along the buildings back before coming to it’s edge where he would be exposed breifly before the next building.  Taking a quick peak to further assess the situation, finding Torvid had deployed his shield, the large piece of metal and machinery expanding outward from the middle down before planting itself firmly into the ground, large enough to hide himself and a few others behind it, mobile cover if you will.   “Good.  Just stay put, keep in cover..don’t risk anything, I’ll take care of these guys before you know it..heh..maybe you won’t even know who helped you today.”  A pang of confidence rang out in his voice as he spoke to himself, knowing now a good time to dart to the building across the way while he had a chance, and did just that, fumbling briefly over a piece of rubble, but no gunfire was directed his way, so he could safely assume no one saw him.

Pressing up against the wall he had just traversed to, sneaking to it’s far edge to see if any Tulemians were seeking to flank his former allies, though he knew none would, they preferred head on engagements over sneaking around, which was good for him, another thing good for him was, they soldiers present had managed to get into the safe zone he had set up, where most of the trip wires merely sent off small alarms for Veos to hear, and be alerted as to how close the enemy were, which meant he didn’t have to worry about how hasty he was, for the mines were further out.  Since he would spot no one, he would slowly turn the corner and creep forward, remaining very aware of his surroundings as he approached the building he had seen a Tulemian dart into after the initial explosion.

Normally one for subtitles, making a slow methodical approach wouldn’t work this time, instead he shot around into the door hinge, and kicked it down.  Barrel of his gun darting around, as he stared down it’s sights, looking from each angle, surely alerting whoever was in here..but he had to move fast given the racket he just made, and he would do so.  A hallway presented before him, one door on his right and two paths leading to the left or right ahead of it.  Quick check of the room to his right, no one, as he turned to move towards the next hallway the butt of a rifle blocked his vision.

He was quick to react, though he felt metal smash against the side of his visor, just barley managing to duck out of the strike, finger already on the trigger, before giving it a harsh squeeze, a quick burst of rounds let off in the mans chest.  he had armor present, but at this range, with a high powered rifle present the armor did little to stop the searing hot metal from piercing right through his chest, two through the right side of it, one in the center.  Veos pushing forward to knock the man back, he wasn’t sure if he was still alive or not, but the pained groan that came after hitting the floor prompted Veos to unload a quick shot into his skull, ending the suffering right then and there, he was the merciful type...

  Shots rang out above, and to the right a staircase lead up to the next floor, stepping over the body, now growing as cold as the cement floor it lay against.  His boots hitting the hard material the stars were made off with fervor as he rushed up them, the same as before a door present, closed, but he paid little head to the risks of barging into the room, and simply smashed a shoulder into it, given the decay of this area this door like many, gave way easily to the force of someone bashing against it.  Two men lay before him, one stunned, time seemed to slow breifly.  the man on the right larger than on the left.  The one on the right already starting off towards Veos, as Veos pulled up the barrel of his gun, his target had been the one on the right, trigger being pulled and bullets unloaded into the man, who was quickly pressed back against the windowsill he had used as cover, the force of the bullets riddling his body enough to leave him slumped against the concrete windowsill, lifeless already, but the man on the left was already on veos before he could turn the barrel on him, a vicious looking combat knife drawn.

Gritting his teeth behind his mask as he was talked by the man, Tulemians experts at close quarters, he knew this well, but he didn’t let the thought plague him, all he focused on was his own hand against the mans wrist, keeping that deadly metal from piercing his flesh and ending him right then and there.

The two intertwined as they tumbled down the stairs, wrestling viciously for control of the other, by the time they reached the bottom of the stairs, the assailant had managed to get on top of veos, driving a harsh fist into his face.  Veos seeing stars breifly after the strike, but managing to reign himself in enough to use his robotic arm to crack at the mans side, looking to hurt him enough to perhaps gain the upper hand.  The Tulemian, grit his teeth in anguish at the strike, another came, but as it did the knife struck downward, unable to fully dodge it, Veos only managed to move himself to the right a bit, his form tensing up as it got caught.  The horrible sound of metal against metal ringing out, gears being ground against one another as the heavy metal tool rammed it’s way into the metal shoulder of Veos, He could feel the pain of metal coming apart and pulling from it’s surgically placed area in what was left of his regular bone and ligaments.  The Tulemian having a sickening smirk at the sound of him in pain, it was enough to make Hundels blood boil, Striking the enemy soldier under the jaw with his free hand, it enough of a jarring strike for him to gain some ground and push the man off, a swift strike with his elbow to the mans gut to buy some more time, enough so to reach back and grab at the heavy caliber pistol at his hip.

Tugging the Powerful Handcanon free just as the man started to struggled once more, no hesitation came before he smashed his head into the other, metal mask against metal mask, it hurt him as well, but he needed the man thrown off enough not to lurch at the gun, and as luck would have it that proved enough of a window to aim the barrel at the mans chest and fire.  A thunderous boom was heard, a brilliant blue flash occurred as the hefty round blasted it’s way through the man, leaving a good sized hole in him, viscera and gore strewn about beneath the man, luckily he died instantly.

Letting out a heavy gasp, not realizing how hard he had pushed himself in those few moments..he was normally the more methodical type..but this rush of movement and adrenaline, he was not used to such closer quarter combat.  heavy pants coming free as he holstered his pistol, ready to go grabbing at the knife when he realized...The shooting had stopped..

A sudden fear welling up inside him as another rush of adrenaline managed to get him to his feet, and towards a window he could look out of to see what the aftermath of this quick skirmish was, hoping to the highest degree he wouldn’t see the armor of a Deacon lying motionless in the muddy earth...    once he reached the window, he managed to catch sight of the large hulking tank of a soldier kneeling down to aid the men who had been injured in the engagement..the posture and demeanor of those that remained standing told that either the Tulemians ran or had been defeated, more than likely the latter, but what was important was that his friend was okay..he was safe..

Hand gripping at the concrete as he stood there staring from his position, only realizing a few moments after that where he was, was fairly exposed, he only had a few moments to think of if he should go..try and say hello to an old friend..hesitation burdened his muscles..but fear overwrote any lingering thoughts of approach, once that was determined he was quick to slink back into the shadows..now needing to find a new place of refuge..and a place where he could make repairs to the now damaged arm