Futuristic Ｔ Ĥ Λ Ŀ Λ Ƨ Ƨ Λ

Poe · Jan 30, 2016

K A Y E || M A T T I X

A gun. A choice. A number.

An explosion.

Kaye’s eyes flickered between everyone present. Everything seemed to move in slow motion as the smoke filled the room and her hand kept on her wrist, finger desperately tracing the patterns to keep her mind at bay. To focus. “Three?!” she called out in the smoke over the yelling, though it seemed small. Of course it did. She was small. Her voice was small. In only moments she felt another pair of hands on her, and she jolted at the unfamiliar touch.

Negative one. Their fear of being zero hand to only be realized but exceeded. Was this how it was all supposed to happen? If she had not shown up that evening, would they have found her any way? Why was she marked? Why were any of them marked?

Kayana, breathe. They…we just want to help.

No, no, no. They never helped. No one ever helped. There was smoke and silence and the sound of the militia. She could not see. Not Three, not the red head, not the picture that had been projected on the wall, now reduced to light beams broken by debris. The hands on her yanked her back but she would not budge from the hold her hand had on her wrist. Small triangles, patterns, a continuous loop. They pulled harder, tearing her grip apart and restrained. No, no, no. They did not want to do that. Who were they? How did they not know?

Her breath quickened as they pulled a blindfold over her eyes and forced her from the room. She could not reach her tattoos, she did not know where Three was, she was alone with her mind. Alone without an anchor. Alone in a secluded space as they forcefully seated her in some sort of vessel.

Kayana, this is going to hurt just a little.

We just need to take a look at what’s going on inside that head of yours, Kayana, since you won’t tell us.

A white room, she could remember it now. A government facility. Testing. Her mother and father standing over like watchful guardians or guards. Needles and tests and you are something else, Kayana. The fight. The restraint. The pain.

Her heart was beating in her throat now, hands wriggling to no avail as she tried to grasp at her tattoo and to anchor herself in someway. Eyes squeezed shut under the blindfold trying to remember, but remembering was like trying to move through molasses. Too many walls. Too many blocks. Too much to keep back in the depths of her. She could not keep thinking, the panic welling in her chest making it hard to breathe, her body as still as she could manage but the suffering still radiated through her veins.

She was shaking now. Hands balled up in fists, edging a panic attack.

Kayana, tell me what you know.

She did not know anything.

What are you feeling?

Nothing.

Define nothing, her mother’s voice asks as it always does.

No.

Do you feel well enough to continue?

And that was the loaded question. A no would result in restraint, in needles and prodding and sedation. They liked to test while she was awake, they liked verbal confirmation, but maps of her brain activity would do. Little monitors would do. If they could calm her personality, her fight and drive, they would get down to the brain. The intelligence. The clever girl they had raised.

A yes only meant enduring. Yes was a choice, no was a sentence. Pavlov’s dog. A learned response. Habitual like the voices.

But she had said yes to the redhead.

She had said yes.

And for the first time in quite some time, she had not been ready for the fallout.

Aldur · Jan 31, 2016

EVE KNOX

Eve hit a nerve. It filled her with pride as if she just won the top prize of a tournament. She was unable to hold off the corners of her mouth for long. They were acting like they were sentient, rising, reaching for her ears. Just as Eve was about to say anything else she had been interrupted by everyone else in the room and loud shattering of glass.

EVERYBODY FREEZE!

And smoke. Eve's eyes widened to their full extent. She crouched down instinctively, trying to make anything out through the thick smoke. It was pointless. Nothing was visible, just more orders from the guy in charge. "Fucking shit!" Eve thought out loud. Suddenly, Eve felt a grip on her arms, and a blindfold being put over her eyes. She yelled "MOTHERFUCKERS!" There it was. Authorities, or, at least, she thought so. Eve jerked her body violently, but to no avail. There were too many. "Fuck off!" Useless. "Shitheads!" Futile. Eve was being carried somewhere, she didn't know where. Was this about the fight club? Not like anyone gave a damn earlier anyway. Couldn't be.

Cole was gonna bail her, right? Was this even bail-able? There was far too much force. Too much just to catch Eve. Why would they also take the other people in the room? No, it was related exactly to this. Someone was a rat, someone had to be the rat. They were in the room with everyone else. It was Eve's best bet. She finally gave in and let herself be manhandled away. This must've been how Kaye felt earlier.

That thought brought a smirk to Eve's mouth.

sorrow made you · Feb 2, 2016

IDRIS DALCA

Dylan’s shout came to a surprise for Idris. Had she been bottling that up for the entire meeting? He wouldn’t put it past the girl, but damn. She even made him wince slightly. He pulled his hand away from her, giving Dylan some space, only to have his eyes catch the credit counters above their heads. His eyes widened with confusion. “What the hell…?” He muttered, only to have his thought abruptly cut off.

The shattering of glass made Idris spring into action. Eyes already switched to red, targets were popping up everywhere in his vision. How many were flooding through that window?! On top of it, the smoke made it incredibly difficult to comprehend the situation. Even though Idris eyes could partially see through the smoke, it didn’t change the fact that these men in black armor suits were surrounding them quickly.

Out of instinct, Idris grabbed hold of the nearest that reached out for him. In one swift movement he shoved the person out of the way, His attempt was in vain, though, with how a couple others grabbed hold of his arms and proceeded to slam him against the wall. A thick blindfold was placed over his eyes, warranting a loud and vicious growl from the struggling gang leader.

“Get the fuck off!” Idris snapped as more hands met his person, manhandling him toward the door, forcing him to stumble forward. No matter how much he struggled, he couldn’t loosen the grip they had on him. If anything, his struggling made it worse. Anxiety filled Idris. His vision was gone once again. Once again he had to rely on his other senses. How long would it be till his robbed vision would be given back? Would it ever be given back?

And who the hell were these people? Authorities? No, they were much more professionally trained than the run of the mill cops. Military, possibly. Regardless for who they were, Idris wanted to slam the face of the guy that took it upon himself to move his legs for him into a block of cement.

Now that the shuffling sounds of struggle seemed to subside some, Idris knew that the others were beginning to comply. As much as his pride stung at the fact that he would have to bend to these assholes, his anger was beginning to simmer.

simj26 · Feb 3, 2016

If one were to continue to watch her features for any sign of flickering emotion, they would have to use a microscope to find any trace of it. She had lost her temper, and she had lost the gamble. A fairly pricey gamble it was, as well. There was no reason to do so again, especially to the words of an ancient codger such as this one. When the elderly man spoke, she duly ignored him. Selective hearing was one of her original’s talent, and as an AI copy of the original, it would only stand to reason that her selective hearing was much of a greater skill than hers. And so, after all was said and done, she deleted the old man’s ramblings from her memory banks, and dwelled on it no longer. She raised a gloved hand and waved, almost as if to humor the coward of an old fart. A coward, she termed him, as he left before a rebuttal could be made, like a child tossing a stone at a rabid dog, and then running back to his mother’s arms.

She rolled her shoulders, and rested both her hands on her cane. It was becoming a habit, standing like so. Her expression reverted back to one of neutral observation, she turned her gaze from the closed door, to the lady who had wrested her gun from her hand, and then to the redhead. While she no longer posed a threat, without her gun, Elliot still exuded a cold, calm sense of hostility...or at the very least, attempted to. That metaphorical windows of passive aggression that Elliot gazed through were, however, broken when the literal windows to the room were broken. Shouts of panic, vulgarities, orders rose above the air, as an explosion sent tremors across the atmosphere and smoke into her eyes. Elliot, ever the cucumber of the lot, took her steps backwards, towards where she thought the door was, one hand raising her cane to her head’s level, its tip directed ahead of her, a stance that wouldn’t be out of place in a fencing class. A shadow darted ahead of her optics, and she swung her cane, catching the shadow by the side of its head, or so she hoped it would.

Now, the issue with Canne d’Arme, was that it was a fencing sport of sorts, which is to say, it was most used in duels. One on ones. Mano a mano. That, of course, meant that it’s largest failure was when the wielder faced against multiple opponents. While Elliot was most confident in her skills even when facing odds as great as such, there was another opponent she had to wrestle with at that moment- the clouded vision. With no godly way of seeing what was what, she was, in the end, tackled to the ground. She had liked to think she’d given them some bruises to remember her by as her cane was wrenched away from her hand, and a black cloth was wrapped around her optics. She would have gone the distance, and exerted some more mechanical force upon her captors, but thought better of it, and simply relaxed as the armored personnel propped her up on her feet, and nudged her in a direction. By the sounds of it, at least, they weren’t treating her as roughly as the rest of the motley crew. Perhaps they could be reasoned with. Perhaps they could erase her fellow captives off the face of Thalassa. Perhaps they could even be bargained with to let her do the honors for specifically two of them. A bullet to the old man’s head, and a garrote for the mercenary.

It wasn’t in her programming to have a vibrate mode, but Elliot swore she was shaking with enthusiasm and thrill at the thought of being the one that tightened the noose around the mercenary’s neck. There was a saying within the Lost Atlantis Casino: “No one beats Elliot Leighton in a game of poker and gets away with it.”, a saying that many of the staff hands would claim to be very well supported. And what the mercenary had just done, was calling her bluff and raised a bigger bluff, one that she, herself, Elliot Leighton, proprietress of a casino, had fell for. She had a reputation to uphold. As she was led down to wherever, she could only register this whole shindig as a secondary priority, with her need for a rematch with the mercenary being the topmost one.

That thought brought a smirk to Elliot’s thin lips.

Coin · Feb 5, 2016

<a href="<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_2016_02/57a8c79aee94d_threehacked.png.53760403c7127617d3dddc3ce72fc7e6.png" class="ipsAttachLink ipsAttachLink_image"><img data-fileid="103966" src="<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_2016_02/57a8c79aee94d_threehacked.png.53760403c7127617d3dddc3ce72fc7e6.png" class="ipsImage ipsImage_thumbnailed" alt=""></a>

Three never heard the breaching equipment, grapple hooks, the hum of maglevs, the cocking of guns or even the clatter of armored plates rubbing up against each other. The windows just suddenly exploded into thousands of tiny shards as men clad in black burst in with guns raised. For the first time in her life, Three was on the other end of her former profession. She never heard the hired guns that kidnapped Kaye -- had this been a trap all along? The alternative, a much more realistic one, was that their meeting had been found out and an outside (or inside) source had been tipped off.

Out of the corner of Three's eye, she saw the rolling of a palm sized can. Immediately recognizing the pattern and brand name of the smoke grenade, a million different scenarios flew through her mind from her training as the smoke filled the room. Smoke meant thermal imaging, meaning escape was cleanly out of the question. Fighting back while impaired and unarmed could lead to shooting, too many would be caught in the crossfire -- including Kaye.

"Three?!"

Kaye.

Springing into action, pushing through the smoke, Three located Kaye and pressed her to the wall before standing in front of her and well in between the gunmen. Acting as a shield in case any idiot among their ranks had another gun and decided to make things much messier than things needed to be, Three raised both of her hands in the air to show that she was surrendering.

"Stay behind me, raise your hands and don't do anything you'll regret," Three hissed back at Kaye under the ensuing chaos.

All she could do now was hope that the gunmen weren't on a kill mission.

"We're unarmed," she called out, "Don't shoot!"

Sunbather · Feb 8, 2016

There was, ultimately, little to be down. Wether you were old or young, black or white, real or manufactured. The colorful mix swooped up and placed into god knows what, they now sat in isolated darkness, nothing but the sounds of one another's nervous breathing to pierce the deprived state of mind. The feeling of drifting continued. Not unlike being placed in a capsule of sorts, which floated inside a cube filled with liquid. Floating and not floating.

Dylan whimpered. Not so much out of fear, but out of anger. Her face distorted by a grimace that forced her teeth to grind upon one another and veins to shine through her temples. Did she just sentence all these people to death? And what about her sister? She couldn't die. Not yet.

There was little to be down, however. None of them had the tools needed to actively resist. At most, those with a little more than natural eyes might've been able to peek through the polytetrafluoroethylene based masks serving as blindfolds, only to take in the sight of those they've met only moments ago in a kind of shabby hotel room, shackled to the plain, stainless steel-esque benches they were seated on, and a grimly blue wall of steel surrounding them.

Their jounrey continued, seemingly aimlessly. Until, after what must've been an hour at the very least, the floating slowly faded out, as if their means of transportation had come to a halt but their vessel rode out the momentum created. A crepitated swoosh announced physical movement of their mobile prison, proceeded by a few slow steps.

"Take them to the hall."

The voice sounded as if the man it belonged to was in the process of shaking a cold. His words seemed to be pushed through a soft but terribly persistant wall of slime in his throat. His command were carried out quickly though, weird voice or not.

Steps. Just so many steps. And still, nothing to go off on, nothing to suggest so much as anybody's else mere presence being a given.

And then - Light.

Garish greens and dissolving yellows danced with one another, melting in each other and piercing through the eyes of those unfortunate enough to witness it. As one of the toxic rays of light penetrated Dylan's now pale-in-comparison retinas, she ached audibly, one eye squinted, the cheekbone of said side reaching upwards while the other half turned away to escape the blinding light.

In front of the unbearable spectacle, a tall and slightly overweight man stood. His arms crossed behind his back, he sported an almost purple teint. The kind of pigmentation a nightly creature would possibly adopt upon wasting away in a dimly lit room. His hair was a little longer, reaching down to the collar of his oddly casual looking, plain white shirt.

[/size]

[/Centerblock]

[/bg]

[/Row]

[/Color]

Poe · Feb 9, 2016

K A Y E || M A T T I X

Don’t do anything you’ll regret.

She should have felt regret. They’d been moving too long. Kaye had near torn through her own palm trying to get at her tattoo to focus, to breathe, to ease the painfully rapid beating of her own heart. How could she not regret this? Her panicked breathing was ragged and low as she tried to grasp for her wrist. Just a few moments. Triangles, dotted patterns, one bigger than the next. Circles and lines and shapes that were infinite.

They halted. Voices. Her hands were unshackled and her fingertips jolted to her wrist, nails digging into the skin as her index finger traced over and over and over again.

List what you know Kayana.

She did not know anything. Where they were, who was still among them, whether or not they would survive the trek into the facility. She knew her name, the distance in steps that they had walked, the rawness of her wrists from where she had nearly broken her own wrist trying to get at her tattoos. She needed to breathe in through her nose, out through her mouth. She needed to focus.

But when they were seated and the blinding light flooded the hall, Kaye’s mind snapped. A thousand different images, hushed and screamed words bellowing in her ears though she knew no one was speaking around her. If we go on, we can monitor… No, no, no. Her mother’s birdlike features, her father’s piercing green eyes, the feeling of being restrained to a chair. Kayana, sit still.

She’s shutting down.

We’ve gone over this, Kayana. In and out. What do you know?

Fear and pain.

Kaye glanced up with wide, processing eyes as she watched the man speak before them. She could not bring herself to move and look, but Three was beside her. They were all there. The man was tall, overweight, with long hair. She watched him carefully, her mind in overdrive, deciphering every little bit of his appearance. The plain white shirt he wore, cotton, arms behind his back. It was to assert dominance, to show confidence. He stepped with wide steps, a subconscious cue that he was not afraid to encounter new situations. Nothing within him mirrored the panic set into Kaye’s bones.

Then again, the researcher was never concerned about the subject.

Is she a danger to herself?

Hardly. She would have to feel more to be a danger. A pinprick of pain radiated through her wrist as she was sure her nails were deeply set into her skin to try and draw her attention away from her rapidly beating heart. The man spoke, words about rhetoric and the Letter to Humanity. She had heard of it, seen transcripts of it, been pushed and pushed to understand. In those last few months at the facility, she had been hardly responsive. Everything internalized, never expressed. Protection. Knowledge was power, but it was also a target. They fit into this. Somehow. Some way. Targeted by their tattoos. Always the target.

“It’s not like you can refuse to partake in our research,” he chuckled.

We will keep her here until we get the answers we’re looking for. However long that takes.

Kaye cast her eyes downward, her short hair falling slightly in front of her eyes. She knew what was next. The example. The gunshot. The sound of a body sliding out of its seat and falling to the floor with a sickening sound. Elliot was dead. The first casualty. When people pushed forward out of fear, it did not matter who was in the crossfire. It was meant to be a reminder of compliance but Kaye had known from the moment she walked in what this was. They were expendable. Each and every one of them.

Unless, of course, they had a use.

And suddenly Kaye wished that rifle had been pointed at her own head.

At least then she could have shattered her skull before researchers had the opportunity to break open the contents of her brain.

Aldur · Feb 10, 2016

Oh was this not the greatest way to spend your day! Assaulted (all with smoke grenades and shit), blindfolded, carried away into the metaphorical sunset and then tied down to who knows what. What am I? An animal? Eve would take being beaten to a pulp any day instead of being tied down like some giant slab of meat waiting to be cut up and served in small portions to a bunch of entitled, snobby motherfuckers with a hearty appetite for ignorance.

At least one more fight. That's all she asked for. A fair fight in which she tore open the chest and crushed the head of whichever asswipe ordered this. Occasionally she'd jerk her body around up to no avail, grunting, and everything just to emphasize her great displeasure. Until suddenly, they were being moved around again. That was it. "I'll rip your hearts out!" She murmured half-assed and shaken tone. Her conscience and instinct taking swings at each other had it not been obvious. Eve tried her hardest to keep quiet during the time in which she was being carried to yet another unknown location. At points her heavy breathing was audible, being two steps away from foaming her mouth. What am I? An animal?

Alas, their journey ends and as soon as that happened, so did the blindfolds get scrapped. Intense amounts of light entered Eve's eyes. She recoiled within seconds, looking at the ground and closing her eyes again. Her heart was trying to escape her chest even if the breathing toned down.

As Eve was recovering she could perceive a man's voice. She tried opening her eyes, slowly, but she couldn't. Not yet. She heard a chuckle, which made her twitch. Eve swore that if she found out the guy's district and it went over a hundred she'd lash out. The guy stated the name of his 'facility' and elaborated on the situation.

Just get on with it

And he did, for the most part. Eve opened her eyes. She was successful this time.

"This is The Letter Humanity. Doubtlessly, you have all heard of it at the very least, though of course you do not possess the knowledge to even grasp its significance."

And you do... fuck off!" She'd have died to say this to his face, but given the guards in the room, she decided it was not a very good idea for the time being.

"It's not like you can refuse to partake in our research, mh mh mh..."

What the fuck was so funny? It was fairly obvious he was the bad guy, constantly chuckling to himself just furthered the cliche. All that was missing was the twirly mustache. But it got serious, fast. Faster than you could say "Elliot got shot in the head and it went boom". It wasn't funny. It could have been anyone else. Eve felt sick to her stomach. Even if it was Elliot, she couldn't help but feel an immense anger towards their captors. Soon enough she'll get to fuck them over. It was all she could hope for.

simj26 · Feb 11, 2016

This was probably how she sounded to the rest of the little gang earlier. Overtly confident and pretentious as all hell. But she had a bedrock upon which she could build her confidence upon. One belonging to her original, but a bedrock nonetheless. She had several reservations made for this fine gentleman what had them bound and ungagged in this facility of his. Cogito No More, or whatever he called it. A shoddy attempt at a fancy name, no doubt. Although both Elliots lacked in the ability to decipher Latin, the phrase “Cogito Ergo Sum” bounced into mind at the iteration of the name. Under all pretenses, the use of dual languages was a huge no-no in terms of naming. For Thalassa’s sake, if they wanted a Latin name, make the whole title Latin. If their naming was indicative of their system, then Elliot figured she was looking at a bunch of hacks. She did not speak up, however, and only silently judged them in her seat. As they spoke, she slowly changed her mind about siding with them. Clearly, whoever they are, they seemed to go to the same expositional school as the redhead, and failed in the first month of classes. As always, she was deprived of answers. Just vague statements that just meant “I don’t fucking know what I’m rightly talking about, but I’m just lauding my big dick around so you’ll feel intimidated.”

Then he threatened her original’s earnings, to which she did react. She shifted, attempting to reel around in her seat, to at least glare at the speaker, before the shot heralded her passing.

It was a mess when she died. The circuitry aside, and the stiff upper lip, both literal and metaphorical, that she would not fail to showcase even in the last seconds of her life, her processors were running on overtime attempting to keep up with the overload of information, cross-references, and…emotions. HER money, forwarded to state? Impossible. Absolutely unacceptable. Elliot Leighton, the original, was not one who would readily agree or accept her cash being stuffed into the bank of faceless governmental officials of Thalassa. Elliot Leighton, the replacement, loathe as she was to follow orders, recognized, at least, her one and only directive to protect the funds of her original. However, sadly, before she could even twitch to react to the challenge that her captor issued, the contents of her head were forcibly expelled. The connection to her optics severed, there was just a short static in her mind’s eye before her body shut down.

Mordecai · Feb 12, 2016

Oh, shit.

Turin hadn’t even made it on to the lift, because the minute the heavy steel doors pulled apart to open, uniforms swarmed from the other side. With the muzzles of their guns pointed firmly in his face, he didn’t do much to protest besides lift his hands up to the sides of his head, unfurling his fingers to show he was unarmed and not dangerous. It didn’t matter. One of the men, a brute and bald, clocked him in the side of the head with the side of his gun, causing him to stagger down to his knees as a hood was placed over his eyes. The moment of cockiness, of dismissing himself from the hotel room was now gone, and Turin was reduced to a scared child. A scared, lonely child.

He began to grind his teeth and his hands were shaking as they moved him. Blood dripped down the side of his head from the small scratch left by the officer’s gun—dripping through the handsome locks of black and silver hair that hung at the side of his face. Despite the nervousness pooling in his gut, his heart beat rhythmically on time—one, two, one, two, drip, drip, drip as if it was keeping time with a leaky faucet. The officers moved Turin, guided his movements in to a truck? Maybe? He was bound, but gave no resistance. No tightening of muscles, no humanly response. The weight of his skull rolled against the wall of the vehicle as his eyes searched the dark fabric pulled across his face. He swallowed down a bubble of naseua. There were others, he could hear them—some loud, some quiet, some sniffling, some not, though all he could focus on was the smell—like iron had been ground into sea salt. He wanted to close his nostrils, but all he could do was part his lips and try to avoid breathing through his nose.

They were shuffled like cattle to the slaughter house. Blindfold removed, he blinked away the light.

Truthfully, Turin was not a smart man and hadn’t a clue what the man at the head of the room was going on about. He didn’t care, he didn’t want to know. Words breezed in and out of Turin’s ears and a part of him would have cursed his brain for not paying better attention. Alas—all he could hear was the delightful silence. Funny, considering the room was anything but silent, but there was no routine dripping—not from a sink, not from a rooftop… he couldn’t focus on anything else, he just kept waiting to hear the next splash. His hear too felt confused, like a singer who suddenly didn’t have the instruments playing to keep time with. It was just a trick of his mind, he knew his heart was working like the fine piece of machinery it was, but it was all very confusing.

The gunshot was the noise to end all other noise.

It rippled through the atmosphere and his attention turned at once to the mouthy woman he had met earlier, briefly. But as she hit the ground, he felt nothing. She was another one, another body, another corpse—one of metal, parts, and design by the look of it. The corner of his lip twitched. He worked in a medical center. She was just another one.

Her death marked an important reminder for him though.

Best start to pay attention to what words are actually being said. It may save his life (or not).

Sunbather · Feb 13, 2016

The execution had done its job. Eyes and minds alike were glued to the motionless remains of what was now the second Elliot Leighton to find her end. The man, weighty and tall, his dimly greying hair combed back, lowered the hand he gave the commando with. His expression was deprived of the previous amusement and cockiness he readily displayed, as he scanned every last one of the captured individuals.

“Elliot Leighton was a criminal. Artificial Intelligence is not to possess weaponry without explicit consent. Such was not the case. I will not let Thalassa escalate into an unruly state just because we face dire times.” A fanatic righteousness coated his speech, unwilling and unable to back of his stance. He now faced the wall behind him, covered in a variety of differently sized screens all the way up to the ceiling - presumably, as it was hidden in a wad of machine-produced smoke, the clouds painted green from the lighting.

“Miss Quinlan… I am aware you have found a few files of citizens not unlike you.” Hovering above his head and below the first wall-mounted monitor, a sleek set of letters spelled out Conomo Inc., the sight not unlike a promo shot for a commercial. “We are not unwilling to work with you. Whatever you think about the authoritative body, the top districts or this very facility, we do not see you as an opponent. But… do not make the mistake of believing we see you as anything more than a necessity either. You WILL cooperate. You will find this is a matter far exceeding ethics.”

Grim determination aside, the development did not take a turn in favor of the captives. With nowhere to run and someone hell bent on accomplishing… something with their aid, it was not exactly a promising decision to refuse cooperation. Just as the anonymous scientist turned around, a glimmer of insanity twinkled in his eyes and it was if it set of the now eardrum-torture that was the alarm. A faint red glimmer emerged and vanished, interrupting the grey-green colorstream present.

The intensity was broken for a second, then tightened anew. “What is going on? How’s a breach even possible, I…” But he couldn’t finish his thought, for the very ground he stood on broke apart and crumbled away, a gaping hole in the eastern corner of the hall. The view was astonishing. They must’ve been about as high as 200, the atmosphere-shield causing a distorted vision onto the clouds that moved below them. With the room finding an untimely end, the soldiers immediately marched out ready to react accordingly to emergency protocol.

Dylan, now panicking herself, found the restraints letting up, the foundation of their seats being torn and alongside of it, the finely fibered black mechanism locking them into place weakened as well. Elliot’s lifeless body slid off the seat it had previously hung in, now not supported by the restraints. With some rather rough motoric skills, Dylan tugged and squirmed her arms free. “Pull free!” she screamed, while her own hands - seamed with red lines from her cuffs - worked on the lower mechanism. The building still shaking, it appeared the entire facility fell apart just outside the walls they were in.

“To the exit!” she screamed, still struggling with her own restraints.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Turin was not a little man, but he was frightened like a child. It was hard not to be when he was of rational mind and spirit, thrust into a situation that was doing its damnest to kill him. Nevertheless, his ears pricked to attention shortly after the gun had discharged, ending the artificial life of one Miss Elliot Leighton; her business card, given to him earlier in the evening, weighed heavier in his pocket now than it had in the previous hours. It felt like an anvil, the last living thing she had on this Earth, if Turin was to believe that AIs were ever really living in the first place.

At once, his chocolately brown eyes snapped to the head of the room as the man continued to speak. Listen, Turin, listen close he uttered to himself internally, training every nerve of attention on the man: his words, the way his lips curled, his posture, trying to find something, any shred of information he could use for his own survival-- all others in the room no longer of any importance to him. He focused with such intensity, it nearly caused him to not notice any other events transpiring, until a particular comment-- a breach-- possessed him. The bars holding down his chest and waist went slack, though not completely loose. At once, he began to writhe, the muscles in his shoulders bulking as he strained, much to his chagrin, against the binds.

That stupid little redhead, the one who had gotten him into this mess in the first place, encourged them all to do so, though he paid her no mind. The minute he had managed to get himself free, he was planning to dart away-- where? He didn’t know, but he had a robot heart, two legs, and a taste for his life on the tip of his tongue.

Dylan, second to free herself from the machinery, shot up and hurried towards the man with the mechanical eyes, aiding him in shaking off his restraints as well. After moments of adrenaline-fueled strengths going to work, her toxic gaze scoured the perimeter for possible exits, tools or other useful qualities. “Fuck…” she uttered, more breathing the word out than speaking it.

Her steps quickly followed Turin’s, the only apparent exit promising a chance of survival - And the rest followed. Some sooner, some later, the discrepancy of their physical state showing. Just then, however, another tremor went through the ground, cracks emerging as far as the eye could see. “RUN!” she screamed, and sprinted out, closely following the already leaving man with the silvery-black hair. Her metal leg making contact with the ground just a second before the earth gave in behind her, the fissure ripping apart her and Turin’s path, causing them to disappear from the remaining one’s sight, though they soon found their own stability disappearing.

Cut off from the rest of the group, Dylan lost her sense of orientation for a moment, fine pieces of gravel raining down from above. “Shit… Hey, you okay?” Rubbing her head, the redhead’s eyes were glued to the only one to be trapped inside the ruin-like corridor.

It was like the world was crumbling around them, which was silly, because only the building was taking damage, but in Turin’s heart, it felt like the entire world. Like the very Earth was breaking apart to try and swallow them whole. It was dizzying, the smoke, the dust all caked the inside of his nostrils and made him cough. His decisions were irrational and he was turning corners, picking routes based on sporadic, mind-numbing thoughts. Everything was happening so quickly, he nearly skidded right off the path as it crumbled.

And then there was a voice, almost soft and delicate amid the destruction. His eyes turned to her, noting the collection of dust and debris that had collected in her hair, and probably his, too. “You?” he snorted, wiping a hand across his eyes and trying to blink away some of the dust, “Yea, I’m fine.” It wasn’t an ideal situation. In fact, it was so far from ideal, Turin would have rather been the one shot in the room just minutes ago. At least the end would have been a bit nicer.

“You okay? I bet you weren’t expecting this, huh?”

Still busy with combing through her red mane, she eyed the grey coating that gathered under her nails. “No… And I expected a lot.” she admitted, lacking the defeated smile her behavior otherwise indicated. Her hands pressing against the floor, she propped herself up and regained her footing, then swirled around in an attempt to gauge their next move.

“We have to get the others.”

It wasn’t a command nor a plea, rather than determining a fact. Extending her arm, she let her fingertips graze over the cracked walls that caged them. “Any ideas?”

Ever since he had stepped foot in to that hotel room, Turin had never trusted the fiery redhead standing across from him, but never once did he believed he’d be in a stone cage with her, she being the only chance of his survival. “Why?” he asked, though his tone wasn’t particularly accusing, “This mission hasn’t caused you enough trouble yet?” His left hand pressed up against one of the stone walls, feeling the coolness of it seep through him.

“If you can give me one good reason why this is so important, I’ll do it. I’ll help you…. if we can get out of this.”

Her face remained turned away, now consciously instead of accidentally. She eyed the two sadly greyish finger prosthetics, her hand clenching into a fist. “Because we can’t let them die, of course.” Air exited her nose forcefully - she scoffed at his question. “You can run if you want. But I brought them here. Now I’ll get them out.” It didn’t exactly lower her motivation that a friend of hers was along the other men and women, but the burden of responsibility would’ve made her rescue even Elliot. Rage rose inside her, thinking of the ruthless murder, her cheeks mimicking her fiery hair.

“I just want to…”

A heavy uncertainty weighed her down, the pause allowing for cracks to spawn below her feet, representative of the brittle drive lingering in her head. “Look, do you think this”, she gestured around, “wouldn’t have happened even if we weren’t in this hotel? Whether you like it or not, we’re in danger now. And we’ll be in danger afterwards too.” Now stomping towards him, she straightened out her back as much as she could, trying to match his height unsuccessfully. “Don’t be a damn idiot and just help me!”

“Don’t yell at me for killing a whole lot of people out there,” He remarked blankly, “I didn’t get them into this mess. You were the one who did this, you were the one who condemned them all to death-- that little AI included. Maybe, eventually, somehow, we would have all ended up here anyways, but you certainly sped up the process by putting us all in one place, didn’t you?” his tone really wasn’t as aggressive as it should have been because, truthfully, he felt a little twinge of unhappiness for her pooling in his stomach.

He knew she was blaming herself, and maybe she should have, but at least he could see there was a conscience in that head of hers. “Don’t call me an idiot,” he answered, “That was more than enough of a reason for me.”

Dylan’s face reddened by the second, a mixture of anger and embarrassment flooding blood into her cheeks. Unlike Turin, her tone was flowing with aggressiveness. “I didn’t speed shit up, I brought us together, I…” She stopped, breathing loudly as she glared up into his face, her gaze as toxic as the color of her eyes. “We’re gonna be fighting… whoever. You realize that, yeah? We’re gonna to be stronger together.” Biting her lip, her tense body finally loosened up and turned away, now moving towards a plate of gravel sprinkled with cracks. A heavy kick with the prosthetic followed, dust emerging plentiful.

“This looks weak. Are you gonna help me or not?”

Her face had darkened, and lacked the previous drive, instead carrying a weakly anger. “At least you wanna get out of here, I’m sure. So just help me…”

The wave of emotion undulating off the young woman was met with a matured look of boredom. Turin was not a man of his emotions, never had been, and her anger possessed no strength over him. “Brought us together, right,” he answered, though his tone wasn’t completely convinced. Brought us together to get sniped he internalized, but closed the distance between them and looked up and down the damaged wall.

“Yea,” he agreed, noting the cracks that spined down the wall like veins. It was weak, alright, but the trick was getting it to not crumble down on top of them. For being thirty-five, Turin was not lacking in physical prowess, his fingers gritting into the cracks in the wall and peeling out chunks of rock.

Dylan watched him proceeding to action with a bit of surprise, her furrowed brows and scrunched nose softening ever so subtly. She, too, now got down on her knees, shoveling away at the gravel. “Why did you come anyways... “ she mumbled, as the two of them slowly but surely created a narrow exit.

Automated response - OOC Goals and hints:

⊷ Something is happening. The facility is crumbling, and with it your restraints are starting to fall apart. You have no idea of the building's complexity, but sitting duck is no option. You'll have to escape.

The groups in which you find yourselves are as follows:

Eve, Kaye, Vonnegut and Three stay above. The holes in which the other two groups fell are unaccessible from above. Find a way down or an exit.

Idras, William, Shadin, Brian and Arina have tumbled into a spacey hall with fancy machinery, lab equipment and the like. Guards are rushing up and down outside. Try to advance.

@Aldur Forgehammer @Mordecai @Poe @Coin @CRiTiCAL ERR0R @Tronethiel @SayGoodKnight @korigon @Grin @BlueInPassing @simj22

sorrow made you · Feb 14, 2016

IDRIS DALCA

Every little notch in this adventure so far was increasing to Idris’ boiling point. Being manhandled was one thing, but he felt that surely they were all being sent to their deaths. No sight meant that they were going into the situation completely blind--metaphorically and literally. How easy it would be to have a gun pointed at the head and just pull the trigger… these assholes.

In contrast to Idris’ slow simmering, the actions brought upon the group seemed to move fast. Even the hour’s ride seemed like only a few minutes to Idris. His mind was whirring and his senses going haywire without his sense of sight.

They entered somewhere, then were strapped to something. Idris strained, fighting in any subtle way in order to show his resistance. Whatever these guys wanted, the gang leader was sure as hell that he wouldn’t make it easy. Finally blindfold was removed, but replaced with a blinding light. Instantly Idris vision was disrupted again. He hissed and attempted to look away, hoping that it wasn’t intended to actually damage his augmentations. Everything was a static pale green for a good minute before he could make out any shapes or forms. Though, a man’s disturbingly optimistic voice had already begun to ring out.

Who the hell was this guy? Cogito No More Facility? What the hell was that? Whoever this guy was, he was pissing Idris off, and he silently wished him a great amount of sadistic pain. Whatever he was talking about, Idris hoped that he’d just get to the chase. By now, his vision had come back just enough to make out forms and colors. Dark room was now being illuminated by some screen.

Letter To Humanity? It sounded important, and Idris felt he probably should have known what that was, but… maybe it was a district thing. He couldn’t recall it off the top of his head. But then the man started to explain. The mention of tattoos warranted Idris to look down at his covered chest, right where his tattoo resided over his heart.

So these guys did know about the tattoos. Research? Were they test subjects now? If Idris hadn’t been so extremely unsettled already, he definitely was now. And that chuckle made Idris want to slit the man’s throat. If, y’know… he wasn’t strapped down and all.

And then it happened. It happened so clearly. With his vision completely restored, Idris honestly wish he hadn’t. Eyes widened, zoned in at the debris that was now Elliot Leighton. Flashes of memory reared up, burned into Idris’ head. His friends, his brothers also were murdered in such a fashion where they were left defenseless. Killed off like filth. Even if Idris’ first impression of Elliot was negative, never would he want someone to die in such an unjust manner.

He was frozen. His mind was screaming. As much as he wanted to thrash, break free and lash out, he was trapped in his own frozen boldy. Even the blaring question of ‘why’ was trapped at the back of his throat. Within the ice cold chill, something within him grew white hot. It was only a matter of time before he completely lost his temper.

Elliot was a criminal. the words rang, but he couldn’t hear.

Miss Quinlan… Upon hearing Dylan’s name, Idris turned his eyes to the man. Did he dare take another from the group? No, not Dylan. He would make sure it wasn’t Dylan. How, he didn’t know. But the words from the man had changed from some kind of self-righteousness to more insight about why they were here.

They WILL cooperate. Yeah, right.

And then, if to add to the tension within the room, red lights started to mask over the pale green. Alarms. What the hell was going on? The man looked disturbed. A breach? What… what the hell was going on now?

Before the other man’s thought could be vocalized, the ground started to crumble. Idris was utterly shocked by the sight, and what was below--or rather, what wasn’t below the crumbling floor. What the hell?!

Idris could feel the snug pressure on his body loosening up, but it wasn’t till Dylan screamed to the group that he started to act. He pulled his wrists up, breaking free one of them so that he could pull at the other. Before he knew it, Dylan was at his aid, helping free the rest of his body. Once the restraints were undone, he grabbed hold of Dylan’s arm. “Let’s go!” he told her and started to push her toward Turin. They were heading for the exit. But Idris knew the others still may need help.

As Dylan went toward the exit, Idris spun around and headed toward the closest person to help them with their restraints. “Quick, quick!” He snapped, eventually resorting to just ripping the restraints apart. Eyes that had gone honey brown previously were now red again. Once the group was free from the mechanisms, Idris went to double back toward the exit where Dylan had headed--only to stumble and catch himself when another rumble erupted.

RUN!

The floor was crumbling once again, and instincts told Idris that he was too far away from Dylan to follow after her. Circular targets filled his vision, searching for the nearest exit. There! Off to the side nearby were double doors now swinging open. “This way!” He called, motioning for the rest of the lot fo follow.

As he ran, the targets in his eyes went haywire, locking onto anything nearby and then releasing them from his sight as more things shifted and moved. The young brunette girl whom he vaguely remembered from the hotel room was alarmingly close to the crumbling edge of the floor. Would she make it? Idris didn’t take it to chance and reacted quickly by grabbing her by the arm and slingshotting her in front of him. There were no time for words. All he could do was grab hold of her, tuck her head, and throw the both of them into the corridor before them. Idris landed on his shoulder, cushioning the landing for the girl. There was a loud roar as the space trembled and dust and debris filled the area. “Close your eyes.” He said quickly, pushing himself up enough to roll over her, using his body to shield her from the oncoming rubble. Once it seemed to subside, he moved off and away, sitting on the ground far enough to give her space.

As he shook the dust and gravel off, he looked around to find a few others with them. The old man, the sharply dressed and the guy with the long hair. More than them though, were machinery that Idris couldn’t begin to describe what they did. As silence started to fill their space, he could hear something further down the corridor. Footsteps and yells of command. Guards were down there. Looking back, they way they had come was now clogged with rubble. Great… what to do now?

Tronethiel · Feb 14, 2016

William Fitzgerald was confused. One might say he was confused as hell, shit, fuck, or whatever expletive appropriately described the complete disarray that was his thought process at the moment. Will had thought that everything was going to level out, at least a bit, once the blue-haired woman had disarmed the top-hat bitch, but obviously that hadn't been on the program for the night. Will had lived a fairly interesting life. He'd seen things. Up this point, no one would have accused him of being boring. A secret rendezvous, threatening firearms, being kidnapped by a government swat team, and now finding himself in an unfamiliar and collapsing room with a bunch of barely acquaintances , however, was definitely outside of his comfort zone and his range of expertise.

"Not a-fucking-gain," he said, glancing around at his new partners in not-knowing-what-the-fuck-was-going-on. "No one is more about fun than I am, but I'd say I've reached today's limit for unpredictable shit happening. A five minute breather would be great. Really." He rubbed at his wrists and looked at the brute of a man who'd helped the group break their restraints. "Thanks for the help anyway, sir. Who knows what would've happened if we'd still been cuffed." He walked over to the brunette and offered her a hand to help her regain some composure. Lying stricken on the ground, covered in dust, never looked good on anyone, Will had found. Well, at least during the one time it had happened to him within the last five minutes.

Will glanced around the hall, filled with towering and complex looking machinery as a he proffered his hand. He couldn't even begin to imagine what the room had been intended for. Advanced technology was quite common in Thalassa, but this seemed on another level. It was as sinister and foreboding as the name of the facility, Cogito no more. Will had no idea what that meant, but it sounded strange, foreign, and like it's owners, fully intended to dissect him or to perform some other awful experimentation. Suddenly, a pebble and a puff of dust rained down on him from the cracking ceiling and he quickly side stepped. The sounds of rumbling and creaking all around them were concerning at best, and he decided it was probably a good time to be leaving.

Will flashed a smile, mostly to comfort himself, cleared his throat, and spoke. "Well, I'd love to have a good chat about the specifics of what in the fuck is going on right now, but I think it would be a good idea to exit the building, flee for our lives, and maximize our chances of not dying. Any objections?"

hosaki · Feb 15, 2016

Arina Smirnova

The lobby was deathly quiet when she exited. Save for the 'ding' of the elevator (which was now becoming only a memory), not a sound was to be heard. No murmuring couples, no guests tapping in impatience, not even the clicking-clacking of the receptionist's nails against her computer keys. Where was everyone? The silence pressed down on her, until her own steps dragged to a stop. What was she so afraid of? "…Just get out of here…" Arina muttered to herself, shaking off the weight of foreboding with a defiant stomp to the door.

"Oof!" A collision against what felt like two hundred pounds of steel sent her stumbling back. She did not even have enough time to look up, let alone apologize, before the cold muzzle of a gun was pressed to her forehead. "We almost let this one escape. Take her in." "Wh-" Rough hands pulled her forward into the night air. She stumbled in shock- Come on, RESIST. But the gun, there was a gun pointed at her, one pull of the trigger and it would blow her brains out, she'd be nothing but a blood splat on the pavement…

Despite her manic internal monologue, only whimpers managed to escape her lips. Her vision, the sole certainty she had left, was not spared: she was blindfolded and shoved into a carrier of sorts. This can't be happening, not to me. A good ten minutes or so were spent on a wild struggle against the restraints that held her back. Can't be happening can't be can't be CAN'T BE CAN'T BE CANTBE --

Nausea washed over her in tidal waves even as she struggled for air in her escalating panic. Then the futility of it all sunk in. She was utterly powerless in this situation, no matter how much she wished to think otherwise. Her movements gradually slackened until she lay limp. She could hear her captors approaching once again, this time accompanied by others who were unceremoniously thrusted into her situation, yet even this did not offer her any reassurance. Throughout the ride, she could only think of her frail mother swathed in sterile sheets, and her brother standing by the bedside. The two of them painted a picture of desolation that seemed to slip from her grasp with each passing second, until she could no longer reach the boy's lone shoulder nor the woman's outstretched hand.

At the proud unveiling of their new holding cell, Arina could only express dead indifference. What did she care about the Letter of Humanity? It might as well have been mere extraterrestrial gravel. She wanted to GO HOME, not serve as an experimental subject in some deranged experiment. It was all that red-haired woman's fault for getting her into this, all hers. Arina threw a glare towards her direction, but could not maintain it before her hatred melted away into guilt. No. It was her own fault for shirking her duties, for losing sight of what mattered. She had essentially abandoned her mother and her brother when she made the decision to skip her job. She KNEW that every cent, every hour mattered-

Her thoughts screeched to an abrupt halt at the sound of a gunshot. A thud. Arina stared at the body of the beautiful lady from the hotel room, with bile rising up her throat and eyes wide in fear. That could have been her, back at the lobby. That could still be her in the near future. AI or not, Elliot Leighton looked human, acted human. To Arina, she WAS human. And that was the frightening thing about the government, that they could murder without batting an eyelash. The brunette couldn't bear to look at the sallow monster before her any longer. Instead, she focused on steadying her tremulous hands. Noncooperation was not a choice.

She barely had anytime to react before all was thrown into chaos with the sound of the alarm, signaling the literal collapse of the world around them. In the panic of falling rubble, one clear voice rang out. "Pull free!" It was the trigger that set things in motion again, clearing Arina's mind of the slow moving black water that had threatened to pull her under into despair. She bashed the metal cuffs onto any hard surface she could find like a man possessed, even as jolts of dull throbbing pain shot up her arms. Eventually she was free, though she did not know if she had removed her restraints herself or if someone else had done it for her. Her vision shook with the whirl of rock and gravel; her blood rushed in her ears, competing with the pulsing sirens. She felt herself running blindly towards a voice, felt the ground fall away bit by bit underneath her feet until she went along with it, and felt strong arms encircle around her in a bid to help cushion the fall.

When the dust cleared, Arina coughed and pulled herself up, uttering a word of thanks to the man who'd offered her a hand. "Are you all alright?" She took count of the people present: the dangerous looking man, the old guy, the man with outrageously long hair (wasn't that a pain to wash?), and the same man who'd greeted her back at the hotel room. Guards tromped up and down the halls outside; it would only be a matter of time before they were discovered. They were trapped. She only gave a weak laugh in response to the man's comment before sinking into silence. One misfortune just came after the other. "What we need is a distraction." That was easy to say, but harder to do.

korigon · Feb 16, 2016

The world was falling apart.

Mentally insulting himself for such a dim-witted pun, Brian Nichols tried to gather his surroundings. Conversation was echoing around him, yet he had no focus. What had just happened?

Like rewinding back on a TV, Brian witnessed the events that had led up to where he was now. He'd left the hostel floor and had just reached into his suit to grab his wallet, which contained a mirror. Rounding the corner, he had come face to face with them - special ops, government agents, very special forces - whatever they were. Before he could react, they just tackled him, and Brian found himself slamming onto the floor with a thud. They could have at least given him a second to take his hand out of his vest. Something, just a random hunch, told him he probably would have been tackled no matter what he was doing. They had slapped a blindfold on his face, taken away the kerambit that was still in his jacket, and then plucked his hat off his head like a farmer picking eggs from a chicken.

After that, things got blurry. His ankle had been twisted when he was thrown to the ground, and every step he was forced to take probably made it worse. Then he was moved to someplace else, where they were. Had Brian not been in such circumstances, he would have felt shame at being returned to the group that he had just left, not in a quiet way either. The memories got muffled here - had he dozed off? He'd done it before. Next thing he knew he was shackled to someplace like your common prisoner.

It was useless to try and remember the incoherent ranting of whoever that man was. It had continued for some time, until the tirade was interrupted by the quick death of Miss Elliot Leighton. So she was an AI! How amusing. Brian had rattled out a choked laugh, but that was his only outward emotion. It was wrong, of course. The AI was, for lack of better words, a bitch. But she was still capable of thought, thought and emotion. And now her life was snuffed out by some unknown figure who she would never learn about. Too bad! Brian would laugh because he found it funny. Leighton would have done the same thing to them, had she the chance. The freakish events continued, growing even more odd and bizarre by the minute. Like he had never been there, the man who's name Brian would never know just dropped out of the world. One moment he was speaking, the next he was gone. Brian was equally unfazed. The man was responsible for death, abduction, and probably worse. Brian could not care less about the deaths of two insignificant people. Ah, now he was sounding like Elliot Leighton. Now to the present. It was with difficulty that he escaped his bonds, and with even greater difficult, he stood up after slipping through the crumbling floor. If his ankle wasn't sprained before, it was now.

"Oh, of course! That's it! We need a distraction. As if that wasn't clear to any of us.. Would you care to suggest anything, or do you just want to sit around and throw out the obvious?"

@BlueInPassing

Coin · Feb 21, 2016

<a href="<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_2016_02/57a8c7f936c07_threehacked.png.86cd664d8197daeb71f525a4ce4b29d5.png" class="ipsAttachLink ipsAttachLink_image"><img data-fileid="107340" src="<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_2016_02/57a8c7f936c07_threehacked.png.86cd664d8197daeb71f525a4ce4b29d5.png" class="ipsImage ipsImage_thumbnailed" alt=""></a>

Patience was a difficult virtue.

The rattle of machine gun fire and the thud of high pressure explosives had a way of thinning the patience of even veteran soldiers. Three, however, knew patience in high stress situations better than she knew social cues. So, she did the best she could her situation and kept her composure. Though she was still restrained, she had enough confidence that she could free herself of the shackles and even pry the others free. All she needed was the right moment, and the barrel of a rifle not pointed at their heads. She had seen enough brains dumped on the floor for a retired day.

Of all the opportunities that Three was waiting for, the floor crumbling away, taking the loud man and his tin soldier's attention away, was not one of them. Usually patience didn't dump opportunities directly on her lap. Usually -- but Three wasn't about to let an opportunity so golden slip away. The restraints were loosening up, and with only a bit of effort and tugging, her arms were free. Finally standing and seeing that there was only minor damage to her wrists, it had become apparent that only Kaye, the cyan-haired girl and the hairy looking man remained on the same floor as her. The rest were well out of sight below and the hole formed would not serve a safe route out. They'd have to find another way.

Moving first to Kaye, Three pried the cuffs apart and split the rest of the restraints with relative ease.

"Come on, Kaye," Three assured the other woman, placing two hands on her shoulders and looking into her eyes. "We need to get out of here. The superstructure might be unstable, and there's no telling if those guards will come back. Look around and find anything I can use for a weapon while I get the others out. Can you do that?"

Kaye gave a meek nod, giving all the assurance that Three needed to continue on alone for the moment.

Next came the other woman with obnoxiously bright hair. In much the same matter as Kaye's restraints, Three pried apart the metal cuffs and used the shattered metal to slice through the fiber straps.

"I'm sure the prospect of being held at gunpoint isn't appetizing to you either," Three tossed the metal aside, inspecting the torn synthetic skins of her fingers. "Let's get the last guy out of his cuffs and find a way out. If we're not quick about it, this whole place could come down on our heads."

(@Aldur Forgehammer)

Poe · Feb 21, 2016

K A Y E || M A T T I X

It had all happened so quickly.

The collapse. The screams. The jolt of her body against the restraints. There was blood, to be sure, caked on the inside of her wrist where she had allowed the restraints to gnaw into her flesh, marks from her own nails prominent in the pale flesh. It did not hurt. None of this hurt. She could feel her heart beating in her ears, eyes wide as if to take in everything she could, but nothing stuck. Was this it? They were gone, all of them, but not Three. No, not Three.

It took a few seconds too long for Kaye to register why she her thoughts had ambled to Three. She was speaking. Or at least, her mouth was moving and Kaye heard her own heart beat with every curve of her lips. What was she saying? Find what? A weapon? Why was she nodding?

Her hands were free, cradled against her chest as she traced her fingertips over the bloody pattern etched into her skin. It was too much stimulus and she could not focus. Tell us what you know. There was a hole. The building was unsteady. There were four of them and no exit that they knew of. Eve did not like her. Cole had probably told her how he’d had his heart broken by a robot. Three was breaking metal. The red haired girl was gone. The only one that knew anything for certain.

They weren’t left with any answers.

Just questions. Always questions.

What the hell kind of weapon was she supposed to find?

Kayana, it’s not too much. Breathe, you can process this.

Process it, like a supercomputer. Like she wasn’t even human anymore. Her feet carried her away from the others, but only to put some distance between them and her thoughts. Her mind was screaming, pounding at the skull and ready to burst. There was too much. Too many variables. What had been so important that she was dragged out of her apartment? Was this all inevitable? Had the government seen her coming for years? Did her parents know? Seven. Seven deadly sins.

Was this the fate she deserved?

Kaye crouched down by a bit of debris and brought her hands to her face, covering her eyes as she exhaled. She could die here, she decided. She could die here and the world would not be changed. Three, however, could not. Eve could not. Vonnegut could not. She did not know their impact for certain, but it was not her place to decide their fates. If she could give them something, anything, she would do it but she needed a moment of clarity. She needed these thoughts to stop racing. Dylan. Seven. Letter to Humanity. The end of man and the rebirth. Round and round the universe goes.

She was just so very small. A cog in a bigger machine.

What do you need right now, Kaye? Right now.

A drink.

No, no she needed a weapon. That’s what Three had asked for.

Struggling with a few rocks, Kaye found a bit of a kinked pipe in the wreckage and she tugged it out. It slipped out of her hand and clattered to the floor, echoing in the intensity of the moment, and she gathered it back up in her hands. She brought it to Three, holding it out to her when her ears perked up. Creaking. The tension against structure. Minutes left, maybe.

“The structure is overstressed,” Kaye said suddenly, her voice louder than she anticipated, “There’s too much weight, we need to move. The floor isn’t going to hold around it.”

@Aldur Forgehammer

Aldur · Feb 22, 2016

Just do something!

[media]

[/media]
It was unbearable, being tied to a chair with the premise of a whole building collapsing on top of you. Eve felt a tad desperate, if she was being honest. She flailed her arms up and down until one of the shackles weakened progressively. Oh, what she'd do to the motherfucker who brought all of the to this place. If what Eve thought earlier was bad, this'd be even worse.

She was almost there. The left shackle almost gave in. Not before Three, seemingly out of nowhere came to Eve's rescue. After her shackles had been removed, Eve's whole body stood up in a jerky motion. Like a rabid dog, eyes wide and back hunched, she scanned the room for the guy. Nothing. Just collapsing. She heard Three's voice and turned around, but all she could catch was "If we're not quick about it, this whole place could come down on our heads."

Eve nodded once. She looked around herself once more. It all happened as if time slowed down. Loud crackling noises in her ears, Kaye rummaging through the rubble. A pipe. Eve frowned. The woman darted across the ruined room, jumping to one of Vonnegut's shackles, grabbing it and trying to rip it from the chair. So what if he's repulsive? So what if he makes bad jokes about Eve's dead parents? He wasn't in a ring, facing her. And they had to work together. What if the stupid tattoos demanded everyone be alive if any objectives were to be revealed.

She had succeeded. Vonnegut's left arm was now free.

"Hey, Three!" She shouted. "You think we can punch a hole through that wall?" Eve pointed towards one of the weaker looking walls in the room.

@Poe @Coin @Grin

Sunbather · Mar 5, 2016

With combined efforts, Turin and Dylan eventually broke through the layer of rubble, a small pathway emerging, framed with pipes and their sharp edges, and dirt, and other structurally important components. Remnants of what appeared to be escutcheon scattered across the gravel. Behind the gravel, a dim, orange light reminiscent of old-timey libraries shone through.

“Finally…” Dylan mumbled, annoyance seeping through her words. “I don’t think you’ll fit through this.” She stated her conclusion with an overwhelming sense of finality. Without further comments, she crouched down and slithered through the small hole, her body disappearing in batches; first her head, then her torso, then, with three little wiggles, her legs and feet.

After a second, the dull sound of shoes hitting debris with a thud sound roared a few times, first rapidly, then in continuously increasing intervals. Little bits of grey and dirt falling of the structure with each hit, Dylan scoffed. “Does it crack at all?”

A medium sized piece of metal had rolled towards Turin’s feet, its shape that of a frustum, presumably slowly falling off the ruins above.

“Maybe we need something to hit with.”

Soot had collected in his hair like falling ash, collecting in the long black and silver strands that twirled in loose curls around his prominent cheek bones, sticking to his forehead and neck as sweat began to dabble his skin. It was hot and stressful, their situation, and dust was beginning to collect in his lungs, causing him to cough and sneeze with discomfort. He had become, more or less, immune to the sound of crumbling about him, so when Dylan’s words sliced through the dull droning, it took him back in surprise.

She squeaked through the small break and, agreeing with her as she wiggled her way through, he considered for a moment the likelihood that she’d leave him there… completely trapped, left to die, but just as he considered the gravity of that, Dylan’s voice chimed out from the other side. “Yes,” he answered when she asked him, watching as the debris wall separating them began to fill with spider webs of cracks.

“I think I have something,” he answered again, rolling the metal chunk closer to himself with his shoe, before hoisting it up. It was damn heavy, the weight bearing into his powerful shoulders as he hauled it above his head and with every ounce of strength in his muscles, chucked the metal chunk against the debris wall. It collided with a loud crack and a groan as the debris shifted, sliding, tumbling.

Caught off-guard by the impact, Dylan felt the force of the heavy object smashing against the crumbling wall, her still natural foot hurting a bit. With a pained hiss, she pulled her legs in and propped her body so that she could push herself further away from the cement that would now inevitably crack any moment.

“Just a bit more.” she deducted, realizing how redundant her statement was. She could observe Turin’s legs moving and his shadow dancing in the dim light through the small gap she had shimmied through the other side, but his motions failed to hold her attention for long as she realized an increase of warmth. Aching, Dylan twisted herself to take a peek behind her, eyeing the source of the orange light.

Suddenly, her otherwise quiet voice sounded from the other side. “Hurry!” A genuine urgency was palpable, and quickly, desperate stomps joined Turin’s attempts to smash the cement into pieces again. “You have to see this!”

He could practically taste the urgency in his mouth when she hissed out the words, encouraging him along. Though confident the first attempt at smashing the wall of debris had badly tweaked his shoulder, he hauled it up again and, bringing it down with all his might, the chunk of metal fell through his fingers as the wall came down. It crashed and boomed, rocks tumbling over one another, as they exploded with a mushroom cloud of dust.

Turin began to hack, digging his face into the crook of his elbow as he was dusted in a film of the debris powder. Once everything began to settle, he brushed it away from his face as best as he could, blinking through the haze that had collected between his dark lashes. “What do I have to see?” he asked, seeing through the cloud a blaze of orange and the faint outline of Dylan. Turin advanced, scrambling over the rubble to join her at her side.

Unable to suppress a coughing fit, Dylan fanned through the now dust-filled air, as her skin, from hands to nostrils to legs began to be covered entirely in a mud-colored layer of cement powder. Sprawling in an attempt to shove away all remnants of the wall, the redhead emerged from the gravel, and recuperated on her knees, one hand balled to a fist and close to her mouth as she coughed, the other pointing towards the source of the light, eluded to by an orange cone of light filled with clouds of billowing dust.

A machinery of sorts peeked through what must’ve once been ceilings and floors and walls from stories higher than their own, just prior to the phenomenon tearing apart the structure. Shaped like a humanoid creature grotesquely deprived of features, a single eye faithfully gave of light as if nothing ever happened. As if it was not buried underneath debris worth a five person domicil. .

“...fuck is that?” she asked, and though her apocope was mundane as could be, it was justified. The ‘head’ of the construction moved, though faintly enough to push it aside as a figment of one’s imagination, but a pulsing energy seemingly radiating from the… thing erased any and all doubts of its presence.

For the first time, Dylan seemed less in charge (or demanding to be in charge) but rather hoping to be told just how to react. Loud shots sounded from above. Though the sound was faint, it was clear there was some sort of conflict finding its climax just now.

“Uuuh--” Turin had just begun to wonder if a piece of debris had maybe hit him in the head a little too hard, but knowing Dylan was staring in wonder at the same thing he was was something of a comfort, to say the least. “I don’t know, and I don’t think I want to know,” his eyes, as faded blue as a late summer sky, squinting, a hand coming up to pull more dust away from his lashes and try a good look at the humanoid piece of machinery, but it never seemed to go completely in focus for him. His age, probably, and the dust still hazing the air.

“I think it’s time we pretend we didn’t see anything and book it outta here before we die under falling debris,” yet, despite his advice, he couldn’t peel his eyes away. His heart was slamming in his chest with more violence than he had ever experienced before. If he hadn’t known better, it almost felt like the machine heart in his chest was drawn to the machine peeking through the cracks in the wall. That was absurd, but a confused mind enjoyed playing tricks, and Turin’s was no different.

Her palms laid flat on the ground, feeling the small spikes of stones and bolts press into her sin, Dylan pushed herself up, now standing straight next to Turn, her hair mirroring his in that it’s true color was desaturated underneath the film of dirt. She nodded, but remained still. “I don’t think we can.”

With a quick motion of her hands, the counter appeared again, hovering over head like a poorly designed target. “If we’re… monitored or something like that, they’ll know that we’ve seen it… don’t you think?” She grinded her teeth, the words slightly muffled. Eventually, a desperate sigh escaped her small mouth.

“Call me crazy but…”, she paused for half a second, as if to grant him actually calling her crazy, “I think we have to… you know… deal with this right now. Here. Finish whatever weird shit this is.” A forceful exhale later, her lungs spoke a clear language of contamination, and as if to highlight their situation, chunks of brick and metal rained down from above in little batches, causing the redhead to look straight up.

“You’re right though. We need to get out of here.”

The gap in between the odd machine and its prison-like pile of gravel seemed promising, and so Dylan stepped towards the eerily lively technology, slowly, as if repulsed. “Think you can squeeze through here?”

“Okay, fine,” his eyes darted up, watching as the ceiling trembled apprehensively, quivering like a leaf caught in an autumn breeze, “We can deal with that, but let’s deal with surviving this first, right?” She seemed to be about on the same page as him, mentioning at about the same time that they needed to get out-- and soon. Breathing out through his nose, his lips parted, the taste of dry debris collecting in his lungs and throat, caking all the way down until his innards felt like they were made of sandpaper.

Each breath was almost enough to cause his blank expression to twist into a grimace as he burst into another coughing fit, though his gaze focused on the small gap. “Yea, I think so. You go through first though, so at least one of us will make it out, if I can’t,” he remarked, doing his due-diligence to ignore the life-like machinery just outside his field of vision. What he couldn’t see didn’t exist, right? At least, that was a cozy lie he rather enjoyed wrapping himself up in.

Dylan grunted, as if to protest, but wordlessly moved towards the gap. Her motions, from her steps to the way her spine curved as she bend down to make her way through, changed from tense to unadulterated fear, almost, as she moved right next to the mechanic human.

Her small frame fit through with ease, and the sound of fast, panicked little steps echoed on the other side as she was in far enough to distance herself from the thing.

Out of Turin’s sight, the redhead turned, her neck’s skin’s color shining through cracks in the film of dirt as she turned her head around. The room she entered seemed damaged, but resistant to further decay. The ceiling splattered with cracks, it was surprisingly anti-climatic, void of anything but the elongated body of the machinery and a dull-black pile of fabric next to the wall farthest away from her.

“Looks safe. Come over.”

Despite the spacious, hall-like qualities of the room, the acoustics were anechoic, her voice swallowed by the walls instead of reverbing, dancing around like they had in the room above. It was unsettling.

“Uh… quick, ideally.”

She wormed her way through and it was a tight squeeze for even her little frame, so when she vanished beyond and, a few moments later, beckoned him to join, all Turin could think to do was groan internally. Collapsing down to his knees, his hands explored the small gap-- taking into consideration its dimensions and how uncomfortable and claustrophobic of a way to die this was bound to be. Torn between allowing himself to be crushed to death by the crumbling room, or to proceed through the gap and probably suffocate, Turin proceeded.

Against better judgement, naturally.

His shoulders bowed uncomfortably in the small space, using his boots to propel himself forward as he clawed with his hands on the opposite edge, emerging with a pained groan on the other side. He fumbled around before managing to find his footing, dusting himself off haphazardly (though what was the point? He was beyond filthy). “Okay, I’m here,” he answered, though again he had to try and wipe away his face to see anything.

The room felt sturdier, despite the cracks and dents throughout. The walls were still quivering, but seemed keen on holding, so Turin turned his attention elsewhere, though his eyes still refused to linger any longer than a fleeting second on the machinery. He did, however, find the pile of cloth and his brows relaxed from the scrunched state of despair they had been collected into previously.

“What’s that?” he asked, stepping hesitantly closer. Not sure, at this point, if it was about to jump out at him. Turin was many things, but a brave man was not one.

Though Dylan’s instinct was to step towards Turin and just yank him into the room, she refrained from giving into the impulse, instead staying still, reluctantly, with crossed arms and demonstratively rolling eyes.

“Don’t roll your eyes too hard, you’ll detach your retinas,” he scolded with something of a half-amused smile tipping the corners of his lips into the soft, black stubble that handsomely dotted along his jaw and cheeks.

A tingle of relief ran through her forehead, as she, too, struggled to formulate a thought that’d advance the two any further. Until Turin mentioned the dark lump of fabric a bit further. “Laundry?” she stated, half joking in an attempt to calm herself down.

Their eyes and conversation turned back to the fabric, as Turin continued to close the distance between it and them, finally close enough to lift a foot and brush it with the tip of his boot.

Dylan’s quiet steps brought her closer, following Turin, as the previously faint pile gained contours and qualities. Ones she really rather hadn’t seen.

It had hardly been anything more than a light tap, but all at once, the pile unwound, and at the image below, Turin shot back in surprise until his back slammed up against the opposite wall. “Holy shit--” he breathed out, his hands gripping at the plaster wall, his nails digging into the flaking paint, “Fuck, fuck, fuck… that is one big pile of ‘oh hell to the fucking no,’” what was one supposed to say when they inadvertently stumbled upon a mass grave?

A crimson mask covering the heads, a pile of bodies was stacked, all dressed in unitary attire, all looking equally terrified. Or, well, looked terrified before whatever happened, happened. Chunks of their bodies missing, some lacking an arm, some with deep red puddles in inguinal areas, another deprived of his head.

“FUCKIN’ HELL?!” Dylan screamed

Turin’s eyes were wide and glossy, fading from blue to grey as his pupils quivered in apprehension. How had he not noticed it before? The smell of damaged flesh… had he really become so immune to it from his years working in a hospital? He saw dead bodies every day, they never bothered him before, but now these… these left a terrible imprint in his soul.

Automated response - OOC Story, goals and hints:

⊷ Group A (Eve, Kaye, Vonnegut and Three) discover cracks in one of the walls closest to where the phenomenon from earlier ripped the scientist out of sight. Behind it lies what appears to be a laboratory. A matte black duct or tunnel of some sort begins here, its entrance rectangular and quite large. A possible way out. On the other side of the room is a door, which seems sealed shut, but there was a keypad located right next to it. Another possible way out, maybe?

Group B (Idras, William, Shadin, Brian and Arina), still bickering with one another, were overheard by a guard. The cone of light emitting from his flashlight peeks into the dimly lit laboratory. “Freeze!” Heroically, William pushes Arina backwards, the rest of the group following her unintentional motion and duck into hiding. A gunshot -- William drops, screaming. Alerted and heavy, an army of boots come rushing towards their squad mate, as another loud rumbling sounds through the facility. A blinding light -- And William, the guard who shot him, as well as a part of the interior are gone, clean holes in the wall. Shadin and Brian discover a few handguns with spare heat-based ammunition loaded in the chambers. The light of additional, new flashlights announce that reenforcement will arrive any second.

@Aldur @Mordecai @Poe @Coin @CRiTiCAL ERR0R @Tronethiel @SayGoodKnight @korigon @Grin @BlueInPassing @simj22

Poe · Mar 12, 2016

K A Y E || M A T T I X

She could hear Three and Eve, but Kaye’s mind was racing. Her eyes darted around the room. The structure was overstressed. There wasn’t much time. Eve wanted to punch through a wall. Did she not know what overstressed meant? Without much control, her feet started to wander off as the other two started to entertain the idea of punching their way out of here. Minutes left, she was counting to herself. One, two…seventeen, eighteen…one minute passed as she walked.

There was a crack. Small. Kaye sized. She, too, was small.

Without so much as a mention back to the group, Kaye did her best to slip through the slight hole in the wall and stumbled out onto the other side. A laboratory. Her neurons fired, eyes wide, hands shaking as it all came back. Tests, words, you’ll be fine, Kayanna, just breathe. She shook her head no. No. Now was not the time, her brain needed to stop. She needed it. She needed the brain lucked behind the trauma. How could she get to it? How was she supposed to get to it?

Everything was crumbling around her and she was crumbling, too.

Kayanna, we just—

Shut up, she thought to herself over and over again. Shut up, shut up, shut up. There was a hole. A duct. She could fit, the others could fit, but it did not seem safe. Frames and brackets and suspension – the place was collapsing bit by bit and she could not see an end where a duct was a good idea. All it took was one little bit of give. It wouldn’t hold. One hundred and fifty four…one ninety…one fifteen…four hundred and fifty nine pounds. Two hundred and eight kilograms. There was no way. They were too heavy. All three of them together.

Instead, her eyes flickered over quickly to a sealed door with a keypad. Her feet moved slowly, despite the urgency of the situation and she kept muttering for her mind to shut up, shut up, shut up, she had too much to do. They needed to get out. How could they get out? Her hand found the pad for a moment, eyes taking in the make and model and all the possible number combinations that would make sense on a keypad with only a four digit pin. First attempt, failed. Second attempt, failed. She let out a deep exhale. She looked closely at the screen, noting the fingerprints and indentation from pressing and calculated. What were the odds. How many combinations could be created without…

Kayana, we—

Got it.

With a green verification, the door unlocked and opened before her, but suddenly she had no idea what to do as the voices came washing back over her with glaring intensity.

Perfect, Kayana. This is what we were looking for, now just one more time. Show us you can do it again.

“Three? Eve?” she called out, hoping the women could hear her from the other side of the wall before yelling a bit louder, “Three!”

@Aldur @Coin

Sunbather · Mar 13, 2016

Automated response - OOC Story, goals and hints:

⊷ Group A (Eve, Kaye, Vonnegut and Three) Kaye has opened the door. It slowly parts, but the sudden pull that comes through the widening crack already tells the story: Something was sealed for a reason. Kaye, Eve and Three get slowly lose their footing, inching closer to what lies behind the door. Vonnegut, trying to hold on, trips and falls into the vent. His scream echoes for a while, until it is silenced. The three remaining in the small room slowly get a glimpse of what lies behind: A blindingly bright orange light, backed by impenetrable darkness. Screams sound faintly from behind the orange light. "Why isn't it shutting down?!" a confused male voice sounds through. And indeed, the source of the orange light seems to move in even motions - A humanoid skeleton of gigantic proportions, with tubes drawing in everything that isn't nailed to the walls. The soldiers behind the human-like framework appear panicked, as they, too, slowly get sucked into the void that leads to the tubes. Now's the last moment they could possible escape by choosing the vent instead, but uncertainty lies ahead in either case.

(New scenarios will be presented after participation)

⊷ Group B (Idras, William, Shadin, Brian and Arina) The group has not replied in any capacity. Refer to the previous plot advancement.

@Aldur Forgehammer @Mordecai @Poe @Coin @CRiTiCAL ERR0R @Tronethiel @SayGoodKnight @korigon @Grin @BlueInPassing @simj22

Aldur · Mar 13, 2016

Busting through walls. How about going head first? Eve lowered her gaze and shook her head. Bad idea, honestly. She tried to think of a better thing to do, asked for a summary. I got a message, and like the dipshit that I am, I went to a shit hotel, met some shitty AI broad with a superiority complex and got kidnapped by a squad of armored fuckheads, thrown into some shithole that is currently collapsing under the incompetence of the people it hosted for who the fuck cares how long. Now that she thought about it, smashing through a wall felt like the best course of action. At least for her sanity. She couldn't break down. Oh boy, not now.

But then, there it was. Her lord and savior, Kaye. The one who for once was more useful than the whole group. One small shard of hope. A duct they could fit through. It's okay. It's okay. No need to get nihilistic just yet. Eve took her gaze and directed it towards Three, nodding towards the open duct. She quickly followed after Kaye where at the end, Eve found her brother's ex -girlfriend calling out for her and Three. "Yeah, hello from the other side!" she shouted at Kaye to keep her own sanity within reach, grasping at the last few bits of it.

Send help! She saw a bright orange light. Am I fucking dead? she told herself with a half-sarcastic tone. Of course, she wasn't. The amount of effort she had to produce today was wild and on the 6 digit scale. Whatever that meant. And then, potentially out of nowhere, a spooky scary skeleton of enormous proportions appeared into the scene. She felt terrifyingly stunned by the tubes going into the gargantuan structure. The dashing ace journalist, Vonnegut Singh flew right into an air vent with the precision of a bullet being fired by the best marksman. Screams, then silence. As much silence as a collapsing building could provide.

With hesitation, she eyed both Kaye and Three before diving into the air duct herself. No way was Eve going to let herself be transported into a spooky skeleton anytime soon and going back into the old room was no way to go.

Coin · Mar 13, 2016

<a href="<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_2016_03/57a8c86a1eeaf_threehacked.png.2a5c3f9a7b54ddd9546f71787e2430f0.png" class="ipsAttachLink ipsAttachLink_image"><img data-fileid="111700" src="<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_2016_03/57a8c86a1eeaf_threehacked.png.2a5c3f9a7b54ddd9546f71787e2430f0.png" class="ipsImage ipsImage_thumbnailed" alt=""></a>

If the day got any stranger, Three would believe anyone if they told her that she was finally dreaming.

There was far too much happening at once for any of Three's training logic to kick in and formulate a proper plan of action. Backtracking would surely waste too much time, heading toward that thing didn't sound like it ended well for the guards and eggheads trying to contain it. In essence, they were caught between a rock and a hard place. Three struggled to maintain her footing, using the pipe Kaye had fetched to make for a makeshift pick to anchor herself. Vonnegut, however, was not so lucky. He fell right through Three's fingers in her attempt to save him and right into the open vent until his screams were no more.

Cursing to herself, Three brought her attention forward again, shielding her eyes against the blinding orange light. As her eyes adjusted, she could now clearly make out that it was indeed a skeleton at the source, one far larger than she could have imagined belonging to a normal human. Despite her gut feeling, backtracking didn't seem like a very bad idea anymore compared to what lay ahead. That was, until the other woman with them, the one with the bright blue hair, jumped down the same vent Vonnegut had fallen down.

Did she just kill herself?

Three and Kaye were left alone in the room, the situation quickly deteriorating. Had Three missed something? Was there perhaps a reason she had jumped down the vent? The building creaked and shuddered from behind them, and the tubes leading to the massive skeleton seemed less and less appetizing as the screaming became more apparent. The woman who'd jumped willingly down the vent seemed less a lunatic compared to anyone choosing the former options.

"Kaye!" Three shouted, letting go of the pipe and grabbing a hold on Kaye before she lost her balance too. "Hold on tight, we'll make it out!"

With Kaye firmly secured, Three followed insanity down the vent as well. She just hoped her robotic joints wouldn't give out from the fall.

(@Poe)

Sunbather · Mar 13, 2016

Automated response - OOC Story, goals and hints:

⊷ Group A (Eve, Kaye, Vonnegut and Three)

One after the other, they all tumbled into the air duct, away from the titan of a machine, and away from the screams of the desperate soldiers. The wind piping into their ears as the dashed down the curved, endlessly unwinding vent, announced the cool sensation that ran across their skin, and the sound of the almost irresistable pull the tubes exerted faded from their hearing within mere seconds. The faint screeching of their fellow escapees roamed through the tube, until an uncomfortably fleshy thump sounded, signaling the end of their spiraling journey.

Harshly, Eve was the first to find herself make contact with an occean of fabric. A stale, unpleasant odor insulted her nostrils and tastebuds. Just seconds later, Three, metallic fingers still clutching Kaye, the two women landed just to Eve's side, barely avoiding a rather painful collision. Vonnegut was nowhere to be seen. On the other side of the room they were in, an above averagely measured tunnel was located. With poor lightning inside of it, sight alone didn't get one very far when peeking into it, but very faint, heavily reverbing voices sounded from somewhere inside. A man and a woman spoke, but their words were unintelligible. No other exit seemed to be here, aside from a second vent, similar to the one they came through, that seemed to transport... something upwards via pressure techniques.

@Aldur @Poe @Coin @Grin

Mordecai · Mar 13, 2016

Unable to keep her eyes on the pile of bodies, Dylan turned away with quick, vigorous steps. She stomped into the ground, her boots’ thumping steps underlining her mood. “Fuck… Fuck!” For once, she seemed to yearn for vocal expression, but, ironically, she now couldn’t find the words. Fanning at her face to get rid of the oddly medical smell the corpses exuded, Dylan ran little circles a few steps away from Turin, tirelessly. “What are we doing?!” she asked, not particularly directing her voice towards the handsome man with the mechanical heart. The bodies shimmered in the same orange light they had just passed, their skin seamed with vein-like fluids glowing brightly.

“Okay, okay, okay-- uhm--” he needed to listen to something, something rhythmic, something constant. He was terribly missing his leaky faucet back home and, for once, would have given anything to be back in that rickety old apartment-- safe, sound, warm. Shielding his eyes from the corpses, he clenched his eyes shut, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. The bright orange light, like a swarm of fireflies, caught his attention and caused his eyes to crack open again, not daring to glance back at the corpses, for he was already fearing the worst. “We just… leave them behind. Come on, we can’t stop here. We should keep going,” quickly, his eyes began to work every corner of the room that was bare of human corpses, “What do you think?”

Dylan expressed her distress by continuously stomping her prosthetic into the ground, her body shaking in a mixture of disgust, fear and simple anger. “Yeah…” The way she shook her head, it was overly animated. Her entire upper body moving along, an unstable quality lied in her motion. “Okay… We need to get out.” Another rumble shook the building. “We’re clear on that.” The cogs ran inside hot inside her head. “Okay…”, she repeated, her speech becoming obsessively repetitive, “We were really high up, right? Back in the lab. So we need to get down, to get out. To get to a normal district. Right?”

The redhead checked the display once more. -1. Still, in bright red. “We find that man. Then we get out. No idea how we could find him. But he’s probably… Here. Right? Somewhere?” She exhaled forcefully, her nostrils wavering. There wasn’t a lot of noteworthy objects inside the hall-like room, other than them, the bodies and and a few devices here and there. A single exit marked the wall closest to the pile. “Let’s bail.”

“Yea?” He answered, though assumed she was just outwardly projecting her thoughts. A nervous hand dragged through his hair, pushing the silver and black locks away from his face that was still in possession of ashy skin, coated in a layer of grime and dust from the fallout. “Huh--” was all he could manage out when she pointed out the exit sign and he couldn’t help but wonder for a moment how he had missed it. The brain was a fickle thing when distressed, he supposed.

Turin took Dylan’s forearm gently in his hand, dragging her towards the door, shoving it open with his shoulder. “Let’s just hope we don’t encounter any more bodies, yea?” Beyond the door was a dark corridor, descending downward with cement stairs. It was impossible to see what lay beyond, but they were running thin on options, so without hesitation, Turin began to descend two at a time.

Watching Turin head forward momentarily motivated Dylan. His previously removed behavior seemed to turn into what seemed like team work -- A comforting thought for the moment. Just as his sizable frame disappeared into the dark, and Dylan motioned to follow, she heard an aching sound from behind her, and it froze the blood in her veins. One foot on the step below her, her upper body twisted around, trying to make out the source of the noise.

Her pupils widened, as one of the bodies, still laced by a golden liquid, had propped up, shaking in its place. “Not enough… Not enough sacrifices… Not enough…” it murmured, its voice unpleasantly vague, contrasting the otherwise masculine body.

Even her gasp was void of sound, as she hurried. Hurried away from the thing, trying to catch up with Turin. Unbeknownst to her, he was greeted by a similarly unsettling sight. A lump of flesh, coated in a gel-like film, sprawled and crawled on the crowd. Heavy breaths escaped it, and the blindingly bright lighting of the hall that stretched out at the foot of the stairs reflected in the gelatinous cover the organism seemed to be protected by. The phrase, uttered unevenly and interrupted by coughs, echoed through the wall, reverbed off of the metal and pierced the two prisoner’s ears. “Not enough to ascend.. Not enough to appease… They weren’t enough…” Its voice was child-like, making Dylan squirm as she thought of her goal. Her one drive. Her one source of motivation and energy. Her chest rising quickly, she didn’t dare to step off the stairway, instead hovering above Turin.

“Fuck!”

Turin slammed on the breaks, his sneakers sliding against the damp cement before he scattered back. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” He nearly tripped over his own feet as he scattered back until his back slammed against the opposite wall, his chest rising and falling with his heartbeat slamming loudly in his chest. It dripped. It was dripping against the tile. Drip. Dripdrip. Drip. And suddenly, he didn’t miss the sound anymore. The creature, if it could even be called a creature, moaned out words-- incoherent, mostly, but some he was able to make out. Ascend? Appease?

“Dylan!” He barked for her, “What the fuck, Dylan!” His hands scrambled back, scrambling against the wall as his eyes darted around, peering through the darkness until he found something.. Anything. His fingers curled around a brick, picking it up as if that would defend him from whatever was coming at him.

“Get your ass down here, Dylan!”

Making the leap of about four or five steps, Dylan appeared next to Turin, eager to report of the unsightly… thing they had left behind, only to gaze into an even worse abomination’s face. Face being used loosely. A plethora of breathy obscenities left her mouth, drowning out the rambling of the creature that ache in front of them. “What… What are they doing in this place?” Her voice sounded fearful. For maybe the first time in years, she was scared. Genuinely scared.

“Do we… kill it?”

Oh, thank god, there she was. He had feared the worst for a split second, but seeing the little blaze of red peer in from the corner of his eyes was enough to allow some comfort to return back into his overly beating heart. “I don’t know,” he breathed back, watching the creature move slowly, mumbling out in a pitiful tone of voice. “I-- fuck, I don’t know,” his other hand, not currently holding the break, ran through his hair… over and over and over. “I uhm,” God, what did they do? He didn’t know. He was emotionally prepared for these kind of situations, “Can it even die? Look at it.”

She surely was readying herself to do a lot of things, but looking at… this? It was just about the last thing on her list. “Let’s just… run past.” The involuntary glances she had given it revealed it to be barely moving. The blob appeared slow, wounded and void of any relevant energy. The corridor in which it laid, still lit up by unpleasantly bright lights, was laced with ducts, of sorts, steam piping into them from all angles. The structure seemed half intentional, half malfunctioning in the face of the buildings collapse.

“I say we run past!” She repeated herself, her voice growing louder and louder. Truthfully, she tried to drown out the pathetic, guttural words the creature squeezed out, hoping Turin would handle the situation better than her. “We have to find a way down eventually! They can’t just… Just shut off an entire section! Right?!”

In an attempt to motivate Turin and let this awful being behind her, she stepped forward, preparing herself to dodge any and all possible contact with whatever lied there, between them and the exit, as faint voices reached her ear. They seemed familiar, but she couldn’t for the life of her put a face or a name to it.

“You hear that? Come one!”

“Right, run past… right, uh-huh,” he gripped the brick a little tighter. Dylan had stepped in front of him, about ready to dart past and, not giving her an opportunity to back down (and, subsequently, not allow himself back down), he gave her a brisk shove in the shoulder to put them both in motion. The creature barely even moved in their direction as they bolted past and descended further down the stairs.

Collab with

@Sunbather

Futuristic Ｔ Ĥ Λ Ŀ Λ Ƨ Ƨ Λ

I'm a lady Poe.

Memory Dealer

from the bottom of the dark, dark sea

Awful, Terrible, No-good Layabout

world's okayest lobotomite (they/them)

Attachments

Le photographe est mort

I'm a lady Poe.

Memory Dealer

Awful, Terrible, No-good Layabout

the traitorous queen

Le photographe est mort

from the bottom of the dark, dark sea

The Absurdist

One Thousand Club

Never seen a bluer sky.

world's okayest lobotomite (they/them)

Attachments

I'm a lady Poe.

Memory Dealer

Le photographe est mort

I'm a lady Poe.

Le photographe est mort

Memory Dealer

world's okayest lobotomite (they/them)

Attachments

Le photographe est mort

the traitorous queen

Users who are viewing this thread