Pandora's Inheritance - Modern Fantasy RPG (Recruiting)

[Guest]

Actively Recruiting - OOC here

He woke up in the damp darkness, with only a harsh light illuminating the roof from all four sides of the small chamber he was in, a beam of piercing light, devoid of warmth and glaringly bright in his eyes. The place smelled like it had been lived in a few days at least, dank with the stench of sweat and worse. As he shifted, he could feel the weight on his wrists and ankles, and a dull clanking that made him yell in terror, yell at the unknown.

His only response was a loud beating on the door and a yelled, “SHUT THE FUCK UP!”

He yelled back, “WHERE THE HELL AM I?”

“I SAID SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Okie accent, or something a lot like it, cracking practically; he’d spent years listening to tape of drug dealers talking, he knew he had a young person, maybe a teenager, holding him there. They weren’t generally the ones to listen to reason if they were holding the power, but that observation was furthest from his mind as he shouted back in terror.

“WHERE THE FUCK AM I?” he roared back, despite a parched throat and cracked lips, another sign that he’d been in here a couple days. The last he could remember was very hazy; he knew that Soames was getting hit by something unbelievable, and the fed SWAT team was dead and an intensely chill, a surge that shuddered through him as nothing had ever come through before. And that he convulsed from the shock.

He still twitched from the remembered effects

“Subdue the subject,” crackled a radio voice, barely heard, from outside the cell, perhaps the radio unit the screw was carrying, “We’re sending a doc in to up the dosages.”

The next response wasn’t screamed profanity but a canister that came through those slits between the wall and the roof, something that clanked down in front of him; recognizable so that he closed his eyes, but couldn’t do it fast enough; the flash-bang went off, and he went out.

***

When his eyes flew open, it was still black as all get-out, and for a moment, he started to panic, thinking himself blind. But he could see just a sliver of light from the bridge of his nose if he glanced down, and so he tried to calm himself. An attempt to move showed he was bound, this time around the torso and arms, like as if secured for a medical examination. Something was in his mouth, preventing him from speaking.

He could still hear.

“This freak been misbehavin, cappin’, yew gotta watch fer him,” asserted the twangy voice once more, “He been a right pain. We done have to subdue him buncha times over the last three weeks and no dose uppin’ been doin’ nuthin.”

“That’s not terribly surprising,” drawled a considerably more nondescript accent and dialect, “These people,” he added with stress on the word, “are, in many cases, no longer showing any normal test results. Metabolisms often vary and body temperatures vary considerably.” He spoke slowly, so that it was understood, “So medication may be wearing off faster than it would on a normal person if it works at all. And private, they’re not behaving because they’re in here against their will. Anyway, I don’t even have to take a temperature reading to know this man is definitely well above the normal temperature, just put a hand over him. He’s radiating heat.”

“Yeah, but they freaks. Danger to the rest of the country.” That seemed to end the argument for the private, and the Captain seemed to have nothing better to say, or at least nothing that Shaw could hear. Moments later, he felt a needle in his arm and a lethargy that came sudden and hard over him.

Where the fuck am I? was his last thought, besides an inarticulate rage he felt welling up in him. He thought he could hear someone else’s screaming, distantly and growing ever further away.

Black.

***

Consciousness again, this time he’s patient and doesn’t panic. He knows he’s restrained and can feel himself being carried, slowly.

“So why the hell are we in firefighting gear?”

“Burned Private Chester to a cinder; Dr. Harrison jumped back in time only to get second degree burns on the hands.”

“Murderous motherfucker.”

“You sure? He wasn’t even half awake when he did it, man. We don’t even know what we’re fucking with here. You know Chester, he enjoyed pushing the prisoners around and hitting them with flashbangs.”

“Yeah, guess so. Still, these freaks can kill someone while half conscious, what’s stopping them from doing worse if we let ‘em loose?”

“Beats me.”

***

He lost track of the days, there was no way to tell at all, but for the first time in a while, he was conscious without the feeling of lethargy and vertigo, of detachment and fuzziness. His brain was moving slower than usual, but he could feel himself as part of himself again, even as he blearily adjusted his eyes to the silhouette in the doorway.
“Shaw?” it was a voice muffled and tinny, as if from behind the mask.

“That’s me,” he croaked, “where the fuck am I?”

“Can’t tell you, Shaw,” the voice replied coldly, “but we’re here to get you to an appointment. We can do this nicely or we can do this the hard way.”

The man stepped aside to show other men. As his vision quickly adjusted into a semblance of normality, he could see the men in some sort of tactical gear, though it looked like a mix of the sort of fire-fighter suit one used to fight Hazmat fires and some sort of future warrior weapon system.

The were all tense, quivering as if they had pressure on the triggers of their weapons; he’d seen that look before, all keyed up on the adrenaline – scared – and ready to go in without having any idea what was on the other side of the door.

He wanted to tell them he was a cop, one of the good guys, but somewhere down the line, that distinction became blurred. Or perhaps it was irrelevant. He didn’t have any idea why he was here, except that last he looked, he was in Baltimore, assisting the Department of Homeland Security in clearing a rowhome in Northwest of one of the freakies that’d been popping up

A chilling realization came over him.

“Wait, am I here because of…that shit? Me?”

“Can’t talk Shaw. Easy way or hard way, tick-tock.”

The others in the door, he could tell, were feeling more of a ‘shoot first and ask questions later’ policy, and Shaw didn’t want to alienate the one neutral turnkey in the bunch, if he was going to depend on these fuckers in some fashion. And that was a sobering, horrifying thought. Cops were pretty bad, in his experience, even though he was one, but corrections guys were worse. Somehow, these guys didn’t really strike him as corrections.

“MP’s?”

“Last chance, Shaw.” That seemed to confirm it, in a way, even though he was thinking aloud. But he decided not to push it.

“Yeah, let’s do it the easy way,” Shaw finally allowed.

***

The doctor was impersonal, detached in a way that made him think of a researcher rather than a person that saved lives; his only interest being in prolonging the life of a subject for no other reason except to be a test subject. He ran multiple tests, with the men in the room.

“Strange, your temperature is now human normal.”

But the brain didn’t seem willing to elaborate much. Shaw resisted the urge to say anything, except to answer the questions, ticked off a checklist and given without even looking up at the man who was answering. Shaw was certain he was a number to this guy, with as much worth to him as a rat or a rabbit; something to test but not to empathize with in any way.

The room itself was cold and sterile; in fact, the AC was cranked up and it was like a refrigerator. There was a stark metal table with pads and restraints, and all manner of instruments that seemed vaguely familiar to him; with the drug-induced haze he’d been in, he couldn’t tell if the déjà vu had a point or not.

Needles, tubes, computer displays, lamps, all ominous in their surgical stainless finish, uniform and glacial,emanating that unfeeling menace.

“Have I been here before, doctor?”

“Why yes, you have.”

That answer scared him more than anything, the idea of these people, these fuckers in labcoats prodding him with that cool detachment while he was utterly helpless sent cold needles of fear through the bottom of his guts.

He didn't even know where the hell he was or why he was there, and he was so groggy he couldn't really put two and two together.

***

He wasn’t drugged again, not that day or the next, when the guards came again.

“Your lucky day, Shaw,” this time the men were not in firefighter suits, but they were heavily armed, wearing the green-gray ACU camo that the army adopted, though with an insignia of an eagle with a blue and green heater shield; Department of Homeland Security.

By now, he knew better than to say anything, and instead just stayed quiet as he held out his restraints; they were cuffs with chains running into a hook in the cell, and didn’t even really allow him to stand. My physical fitness is gone to shit, I bet he observed, sardonically. Ever since he’d been allowed to clear the drugs from his system, he’d been barely under control as he became frantic with worry for Jill and the babies, Do they even know what happened to me, or are they wondering what happened? Do my parents know?

His fear for his family was even greater than his fear for himself, as he prayed, hard, for his family, that they were safe and not wherever the hell this was. He didn’t even know how long he’d been in here, how long they’d been wondering where he’d went. Assuming Homeland Security didn’t just say he was dead.

The jailers undid his wrist and ankle restraints, with guns trained on him by the other men, and they trotted out a medical gurney, the “Gitmo Palanquin” a college buddy once said of it, in derision.

“Easy, Shaw.” That was simple enough for the man to say, but he wasn’t the one getting strapped down and carted off without a by-your leave. All the same, he appreciated the gesture. A cynical part of him considered whether this was some sort of training they got as a result of lessons learned with handling all the terrorists and POW’s, someone to talk them down like skittish horses so they’d allow themselves to be strapped down on their way to the waterboarding.

He felt the straps tighten over his chest and arms, abomen and wrists, thighs and ankles, and then a blindfold over his eyes. Then, utterly helpless, he felt the swaying motion as he was carried through a hallway, a bit of light down the bridge of his nose and the click of boots on the concrete the only sensory input he got. Then, the rattle of a cage and a buzzer.

Then, a stop.

“Who we got here?” inquired an unfamiliar voice.

“Shaw. A212.”

“No shit, they’re dumping the alphas in?”

“Yeah, apparently the main compound’s secure enough for them.”

“Guess we’ll find out. Not like we don’t have a ol’ Damocles over the whole complex if the fuckin' suits get it wrong, though.” A beep went off, “Okay, you’re cleared. You know the way?”

“Sure do. We’ll be coming through again all day long. Us and some other crew. Heads up.”

“Well fuck, I’m being paid by the hour, ain’t I?”

***

He could feel the warmth of the sun on him as he was moved, and hear the rasp of sand under the feet of the men transporting him, like some sort of invalid. Then, the feeling of sinking down and a rasp of sand on the plastic polymer of the gurney.

He could smell the heat of the sun beating down on the place, a dry heat.

“Alright Shaw, end of the line.”

There was a sudden release of the bonds around his body, but he didn’t move.

“Get on up, it’s alright.” Only then did Shaw get up, and remove the blindfold; he was hit with the bright, unfamiliar light of a sun much harsher than what he was used to in Baltimore, and a look at the sky alone confirmed that he sure as fuck wasn’t back home anymore.

“Where the fuck am I?”

The squad leader, a blocky sort of fellow that looked like he ate weights for breakfast, seemed to mull this over for a moment, “Holding cell for Emergents, Nevada. Rest is classified.”

“What date is it?”

“July 7th, 2009, Shaw. You’ve only been here three weeks.”

He wasn’t sure what to say for that as his brain calculated everything. But there was an instantaneous relief that flooded his brain and weakened his knees; the worst fear, after the disorientation passed, was that it’d been much, much longer than that. Three weeks wasn’t so bad, his family couldn’t have gone far in three weeks.

The MP seemed to understand, but didn’t show much of anything to allow for such a reading; he used cop-sense to figure it out, though.

“See you, Shaw,” the man said, as he stepped back; but none of them ever actually turned their back on Shaw.

The men were already pulling back, leaving Anthony to the mercies of wherever he was. He looked around, slightly nervous, taking in the stark, huge blocks of concrete, the sort of thing you saw in newscasts of the Green Zone in Iraq, and the wire mesh screen overhead, that really didn’t filter out the sunlight or anything else. He had the distinct impression it was meant to keep him in. Towers, big, thickly plated, like a science-fiction artist’s rendering of a POW camp guard tower; huge with turrets atop them; a drone floated overhead with the buzz of a propeller.

There were other people in the quad, or at least, starting to filter out of square-ish prefab buildings, painted an institutional sand color to match the rest of the terrain. They seemed as fearful as him as they were of him; some of the faces were not quite human, some were very much not human anymore.

He wasn’t sure what to say. He ran a hand over his face and realized that he had some considerable scruff accumulated over that amount of time. He usually kept himself clean shaven and left his hair clipped down to a #1 razor. He only just now noticed how badly it all itched. No horns or unsightly protrusions, though.

“So, what are you guys in for?”

Even he’d admit it was a lame way to introduce himself.

[Igraine]

”So, what are you guys in for?”

Rachel finally dared look at the man from her seat on the small, hard bench, greasy lengths of once well-kept blonde hair spilling into her face. That voice, one of the few truly kind voices she had heard in some time, was the only reason she released the death grip she had around her knees, raising her head to peer up at him.

A kind voice. So very different than the filtered, muffled voices she’d heard in the drug-induced haze she had been in for the past few weeks. Or, at least, she was pretty sure it was weeks… maybe months? Or only days? She just couldn’t be sure anymore.

A genuinely decent voice, that still had a certain hint of humanity. A humanity that seemed so horrifically absent in the clearer voices she had been able to make out during moments of lucidity. There was certainly none to be found in the guards who passed her tiny cell, passing in the small plastic trays of food and removing them just as perfunctorily, as if she didn’t really exist. Or worse yet, bound her like an animal before taking her to see the “doctors.”

Oh, and certainly more humanity than even the vicious beasts in lab coats who called themselves “doctors,” who poked and prodded her, and took her blood painfully and ran their damned tests. Those emotionless bastards who asked her questions in cold, distant tones and then, in the very next breath, spoke with each other about “Evans A608” as if she was not even there.

Evans A608 That was who she was now, apparently. And between the drug-induced haze and the surreality that surrounded her at every turn, her once safe and contented and orderly life had been reduced to this nightmare from which she could not wake. Greg. Greg was dead… and all she knew, all she was told again and again by the uniformed men with guns, the guards, the doctors, was that somehow… somehow she had killed him.

Her dear, sweet Greg…

First the privations of a solitary confinement here in this desert place, because she was told repeatedly how very dangerous she was, the proof in the cuffs and the chains and the drugs… Rachel had come to come to believe that maybe, somehow, she really was. Though she had never hurt anyone she could remember, no matter what they did to her here. Her half-reasoning mind worked out a rather stinted logic that said maybe, just maybe, if she could somehow prove she was harmless, that she meant no danger to anyone, meek and quiet and unresisting – perhaps they might just leave her alone? No more pain, no more drugs, no more shackles and chains. Just sweet, blessed silence…

It seemed, though, that the true result of her acquiescence had been far worse. She remained, by all appearances, perfectly fine. If her medical tests showed anything unusual, she surely did not know it. Rachel stayed perfectly human, in every way. And so, she had been let out, into this greater nightmare.

So many… aberrations. So many inhuman faces that there were moments she wondered if, perhaps, she might be trapped in some drug-induced hallucination from which she could not wake. But the worst part of all? Rachel was genuinely, truly terrified that, despite the sometimes monstrous faces of those around her, that somehow she was truly the monster: the wolf in sheep’s clothing, set loose in a flock of strange – yet innocent and unsuspecting – lambs.

Still, nothing in her would let her deny the sound of that one voice, as starved as she had become for some type of truly human contact. A small, twisted part of her almost laughed when she considered how to answer his question though, as some horrible B flick movie line flitted across her mind. ”I’m in because I killed a man.” Quickly she squelched the dark humor that had risen up, certain that no matter the irony of the answer, there was no good way to say that, and still make anyone understand the horror behind those few words.

Rachel opened her mouth to speak, and discovered to her dismay that her voice cracked from disuse, only the smallest squeak spilling out. Quickly she snapped her jaws shut, face flush with embarrassment even as she swallowed a little spit, cleared her throat, and tried again.

“I don’t know why I’m here,” she answered him finally. That simple statement, even if it did not encompass the whole of her situation, was still a perfect truth.

[Kesteven]

"Thank you again for seeing me,” said Laura Keegan nervously. “I know you must be so busy with all that's been happening."

The office was quiet and neat, in stark contrast to the commotion of the past few weeks. The woman who had just spoken looked to be in her early forties, only a few strands of grey in her dark hair, which she was trying to adjust. Across from her sat a young man, watching her patiently, his hands rested in his lap. He smiled and leaned back.

"To be honest, Ms. Keegan, I needed the break from consultation sessions. You could say that business is booming, but it used to be if someone was seeing things, I'd ask them a few questions and refer them to a specialist. Now... I don't know what to tell them. I don't even know what to tell myself."

"No, none of us do." Laura Keegan paused uncertainly for a moment, before continuing. "I... I came because I wanted to know if my son is alright. It's been over a week since he last called and he never tells me much anyway. I was hoping he might have said something to you."

"You know, I'm not legally allowed to tell you anything, but between you and me, I know what you're going through, and I'm making an exception. It's not as if anyone has time to worry about laws like that any more anyway."

"So?"

"The whole world's gone to hell, Ms. Keegan. I can't tell you what I know you want to hear, that your son's fine. As far as mental health goes, however, I don't think there's any cause for concern."

"But... after Mark died he just got worse, and then leaving so suddenly..."

"Regardless of how it appeared, I believe Euryl was recovering, slowly. People have their own ways of dealing with grief. He just needed some time to think."

"Please though, is there any reason he might have done this? Why did he leave?"

The counsellor looked away, steepling his hands. "In his last session he mentioned a... a vision, a dream, if you prefer. It seems he felt as though his father were telling him to go to America."

"Like a hallucination? Isn't that bad?"

"A dream, Ms. Keegan. It's not uncommon in cases like this for the patient to dream about loved ones giving advice, especially if they're people the patient has recently lost, and spiritual journeys are often accompanied by some manner of physical pilgrimage. This dream was probably his way of giving meaning to his life again... although in the light of recent circumstances I can't say for sure that it wasn't something more."

"Are you suggesting that he might actually have seen-"

"Look, it's really not my place to speculate; I'm not sure of anything any more. The main thing is that this journey could be an important part of his recovery. In that last session, he was alive again - he was communicating freely, and making plans for the future. He even smiled a couple of times. Regardless of where it came from, that one dream has done more for him than I could in three months."

Laura Keegan was silent.

"I know you want to see him again, believe me, but for now all you can do is trust in him. These are troubled times, but he's a smart kid, and sometimes our dreams are all that hold us together. What he needs now most of all is freedom."

----

Euryl sat quietly, staring at the cold grey walls. There wasn't much else to stare at. Some pale light was filtering through the tiny frosted windows, but any shadows it might have cast were obliterated by the glaring electric light that seemed to permeate every crevice of the cell. For the last few minutes someone had been singing, faintly. It was a pleasant sound, and most welcome in the oppressive silence, otherwise broken only by occasional sobbing or outbursts from the other detainees.
There was a rattle of keys, and the singing stopped abruptly.

The door swung open to reveal a man in police uniform, holding a pair of trainers.

"Good news and bad news, kid. The good news is you're being let out of here. The bad news is, where you're going is much worse. The department of homeland security has decided the case falls under the domain of their 'special investigation' teams, which means we can't hold you under the normal laws, and on top of that, your medical results came back. There's a few irregularities, normally we'd chalk it up to mechanical error, but in light of the circumstances, you're being given an Omega classification and shipped off to the Nevada internment camps. You'll be held there at least until the end of the investigation, but legally, you're being held... indefinitely."

Euryl looked up from tying his laces. "What?! Don't I get a lawyer or something?"

The policeman shrugged. "Hell if I know. Like I said, it all comes under the new laws. The DHS wants you to have a lawyer, you'll get one. Otherwise, the only legal counsel you're likely to get is a pair of handcuffs and a nightstick in your ass."

"Hey, move it, Harris! These prisoners aren't gonna lock up themselves!"

The sergeant was a large man, about 20 years and 40 pounds the senior of the other cop. He looked considerably worn out.

"Yessir, just gotta put this Omega on the magic bus to nowhere."

"You," he said, glaring at Euryl. "Don't think you've gotten away with jack. Officially I'm not on the case any more but I have contacts and trust me, if you were involved in the murder of two of my best men, and I know you were, you're going to spend the rest of your god-damned life in prison, if not the chair."

"Look, I never-"

"We've already taken your statement," spat the sergeant. "Get him out of here."

"Alright, come on. I don't want to have to use this taser on you. The paperwork's a bitch."

---

The coach journey was long and arduous, with infrequent and heavily supervised bathroom breaks. The coach itself seemed to have been modified for the purpose - thick steel bars blocked every window except the front, but otherwise the thing was just a worn-out shuttle bus, as dusty and hot as any other. A number of other passengers dotted the seats, staring into their laps as a row of policemen watched from the back seat. Nobody spoke.

Eventually the coach drew up alongside the camp. It was clear that this was the final destination - barbed wire, sandy grey buildings, and nothing else in sight but desert wasteland as far as the eye could see.

"Alright folks, we're here. Welcome to hell," joked one of the guards. Another rolled his eyes and spat.

The passengers were herded off the bus and into the entrance lobby. Euryl could hear door after door slamming, rattling and clanking shut behind him. This wasn't the kind of building you could just walk out of. The one small mercy was the air conditioning, the chilly interior being a pleasant contrast to the ferocious heat outside.

They were processed, one by one, by a secretary behind a very thick screen- so thick in fact that she had difficulty hearing what they were saying, and several people had to repeat themselves. Details were noted down, photographs were taken, biometric readings were taken, again, designations were assigned, and finally, cards were distributed with name and number.

Keegan Ω02035

The photo wasn't particularly flattering, but then again, nothing in this place was. They'd taken his possessions at the precinct and unless they sent them down here, which was unlikely, all he had were the clothes he was standing in.

Ω seemed to be his classification, whatever that was. He remembered that omega was the last letter of the Greek alphabet, used to designate the lowest rank. In biology, Omega males were the weakest and most pathetic of the pack, ritually abused, and the last to get to eat. It figured. He looked again at the number - if they were just counting up, one by one, that meant there were already over two thousand people locked up here. Probably even more, if these were just the Omegas. The leading zero was an ominous marker of things to come- some bright spark in one of the many levels of bureaucracy here had built the system to deal with numbers in the tens of thousands. That was forward thinking for you.

"Omega 2035! Please report to the distribution centre!"

The slim hope he'd had that he might get some of his possessions back was soon crushed when he looked down at the pile that had been dumped into his arms. One jumpsuit, light grey. One toothbrush, pearl white. It looked as though the bristles were made by the same people that made toilet brushes. One small tube of toothpaste, the kind that just said 'toothpaste' on the outside and nothing else. One small bar of soap. Euryl was the master of all he surveyed, provided he only looked down.

Along with the other new arrivals, Euryl was hurried to the bunkhouse that would be his new home, for how long, he didn't know. Here at least it felt slightly less like a prison; there was no call for omegas to have individual cells, and most of the supervision and security were spent on the higher classifications, leaving his kind more or less free to go about their days as they pleased (his kind, he thought. He'd have to get used to that), although the security cameras in every room upheld a chilly sense of order simply by virtue of their tireless watching, and in conjunction with frequent spot-checks and strict limits on personal possessions, there was nowhere anyone could feel truly at ease. The cramped conditions too hinted that privacy would quickly become a thing of the past.

He looked at the ticket he'd been given. 44L - looked like he'd got bottom bunk. There was a boy lying on the bunk above his, reading a magazine. He couldn't have been older than Euryl - if anything, he looked younger, but with a kind of knowing calm that seemed mismatched with both his age and his clothes. With a dirty t-shirt, jeans, and a baseball cap, he could have been any one of ten million nobodies - the kind of nobody that people only hear about after the police arrive at the school. He ignored Euryl as he approached, with the same amiable detachment he showed everything else.

Euryl had barely finished organising his things into the tiny locker at the end of his bunk when he realised there was some kind of commotion in the yard outside. He wandered over to join the small crowd at the windows, and was amazed at the sight, in spite of himself. He'd thought the guard was joking when they'd arrived, but what he saw now really did look like a scene from the Inferno - all manner of twisted beasts and dark-eyed, tortured souls stalked the sun-baked dirt, as the shining towers and fences rippled with mirages in the oppressive heat. One could be quite forgiven for mistaking them for the fires and slopes of pandemonium itself. He spotted the boy from before in the corner, leaning against a wall as he gazed out, apparently unfazed by the spectacle, and sidled over.

"Hey, you know what's going on?", he whispered.

The boy seemed surprised at first, but his expression quickly broke into a friendly smile. It was the first Euryl had seen in a long time, and extremely welcome.

"They're Alphas, the big boys," he answered. "Bad boys, bad girls too. Most of them have killed someone. Some of them have killed a lot of people. They have powers you can't even imagine. Scared yet?"

Euryl shrugged, but his eyes gave away more.

"Word to the wise though- every damn one of them's been through about a month of poking, prodding, and being treated like something scraped off a lab assistant's shoe, some of them are going to be angry but most are just scared. They don't know what they did, or worse, they do, but they don't know why. When you meet them, you can be another pair of eyes that won't meet theirs, or you can be the friend they need more than anything else in the world right now. Given the situation, wouldn't you rather be their friend?"

"I guess I see your point."

"Just think about it. Speaking of friends, my name's Scott."

"Euryl."

"That Irish or something?"

"Welsh."

"That would explain the accent. Pleased to meet you, Euryl."

They shook hands. Scott's hand was light, and smooth. He leaned closer. "One more thing though. I'm a bad crowd, you know? You don't want to be seen talking to me too much, people might get the wrong idea about you."

"Like I could care what they think."

"Time may come when you'll have to. For now, let's just watch the fireworks."

[vitamin_kitten]

After a six-hour flight, the plane finally landed with a bumpy finesse at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada. As per usual, a big to-do was made as the plane taxied over the runway towards the gate. Audra sighed audibly as she stared out her window, watching as the people a few feet below drove around in little carts and waved at the plane with their orange flashlights.

Even in between napping and reading and the in-flight snack, the six hours had dragged on endlessly. It didn't help that it had felt to Audra that it'd taken forever for her to get to this point in the first place. She had stayed as long as she could at home, helping first to clean up the mess. After that, there were the funeral arrangements. Her parents were a wreck, particularly her mother. The sobbing was a never-ending occurrence, occassionally mixed with an angry outburst or self-isolation. Perhaps her mother's distance hurt Audra more than anything. Her stepfather was a good man, and was at least able to put up a front that he could deal with his emotions on his own; leaving Audra's mother to her own thoughts was easy for him. For Audra, however, who needed to be held in her grief as much as her mother and stepfather needed to be left alone, it left her with nothing but gut-wrenching pain.

Of course, theirs was not the only family mourning. The world was suffering with them. People were changing, physically, in their behavior, and alot of innocent people were getting hurt, were dying in the process. Once the funeral was over, Audra couldn't stand to be home anymore. She needed answers. The contingency of her dreams and her brother's tragic death was too spooky for her.

All the news reports seemed to have one small detail in common: they all reported on the research that was being done in Nevada in order to help the Emergents- those who'd been directly affected by the changes that had appeared almost quite literally overnight.

Well, if that's where all the research was being done, surely that's where all the answers were. Audra left and stayed in a hotel for a few nights until airports were open again, then caught the first flight she could out of Rochester.

Now, she was finally here. According to Google, the nearest camp was half an hour away. Over the past six hours, Audra had done her best to prepare herself for what she might encounter here. She knew that the camps that had been set up were probably not as pretty as they looked on TV. If she'd trusted the government to take care of her, she would have come forward with her suspicion that she had actually been the cause of her brother's death. Until she knew anything for sure, though, she was going to keep her mouth shut.

She moved quickly through the terminal to get to baggage claim. Once she had grabbed her single suitcase, Audra hailed herself a taxi, and got as close as she could to the Air Force Base.

[Lara]

She hadn't actually told anyone that she wasn't one of them, that she was nothing more than a mother trying to protect her child, but it still felt like they already knew. In the few weeks since she and Abby had been brought here, along with a good many others, she had felt more and more isolated; they treated her like there was something wrong with her, and not the other way around. But they had no proof. Maybe that was why there hadn't been more than the occasional suspicious stare...

Rebekah glanced off to the side of the building, presented with mixed feelings upon seeing Abby in the same spot as she had been the last time she looked. She was relieved, knowing where her daughter was... Yet, she was also unnerved, because it was clear that the girl was talking to someone. Someone Rebekah couldn't see -- could never see, even from the start. And, whatever it was that Abby insisted was there, it had shown up right when things started to happen. Somehow, the figment of her daughter's imagination was tied to the changes that happened to her... changes that were already making Rebekah feel as if it wasn't her daughter she was looking at, but a complete stranger.

As if sensing that she was being watched, Abby looked over right at that moment and smiled. To others, it probably appeared to be just what it was: a child's real smile, something you didn't see too often these days, especially not where they were right now -- then again, children do have that way of finding the light in any darkness... But, Rebekah couldn't shake the feeling that there was a more sinister grin lurking behind all that innocence. The question was, how long until it became a reality?

She was distracted by the sound of trucks approaching the gates to the camp. Frowning, she watched as the gates were opened, then promptly shut again, in order to let the vehicles inside. Another group of people, so soon after the last? Well, that wasn't so surprising... But the number of guards that filled the space between the trucks and the fence was. Exactly who was it that was coming in?

-~-

Abby could see her mother watching her -- she seemed to be doing that a lot these days, ever since the men had come and brought them here, to this camp. She had been scared at first; the men had been scary, and had made them leave almost without a chance to pack their bags. She had barely had the chance to grab her stuffed bear, which had a hard time sleeping without, before they had ushered them into a big van. But Cero had suggested that she treat it like a game, and so she had.

Her mom didn't seem to like it when she brought Cero up, but that didn't stop Abby from listening to him, or trying all the neat tricks he was teaching her. Her mom didn't like those either, but she would grow to appreciate them eventually. That's what Cero said, at least, and Abby trusted what he told her. After all, he had come to be there for her when her daddy left, and had stayed with her when her mom went off to work every day, not to mention how he had been by her side when the doctors had poked and prodded her body after they got out of that van.

Even now, Abby wasn't sure what they had been looking for -- after all, she wasn't sick in the slightest -- but they had left her along after a while, just like everyone else. Cero had helped with that; the doctor left really fast after he had pulled his hand away from her chest and saw it covered in blood. It vanished almost immediately, but his eyes had grown wide and he had darted out of the small room right away. She had tried to leave, to go find her mother, who had been taken to a different room, but the doctor had locked the door. He had come back, of course, and a few of the soldiers like the ones from the van had been with him...

"Cero, what does 'Gamma' mean?" she asked, recalling the word one of the men had whispered to another when they thought she wasn't listening.

"It's part of your designation," Cero responded offhandedly, more intent on the trucks that were rolling into the camp.

"What does that mean?"

"It's just the symbol in front of your number, on that little card you have to carry." He pointed at the small card sticking out of the pocket of her hoodie, where the edge of an '8' - the last digit of her number, Γ0198 - could be seen. She had to carry that card all the time, her mom said, and Abby knew that Rebekah carried her own -- Ω0684 -- in her pants pocket no matter where she went.

Abby thought for a moment, frowning slightly. "Mom says it's got something to do with the trick we played on the doctor..." She had been rather pleased with herself while telling her mother of what she had done, but her mother had just paled and drawn away...

"Nonsense, that was just a harmless prank!" Cero assured her immediately, bending down to pat her on the shoulder. He was taller than her this time around -- last time, had been a lot smaller, in order to fit behind the seat in the van. "Say, look, they're bringing new people in."

"Really?" The issue was promptly forgotten as Abby stood up to get a better look. A lot of the other people in the camp had noticed the trucks too, and so it was really difficult to see anything past all the bodies in front of her.

So, naturally, she began to push her way to the front. The fact that some of the parts she was pushing against were less than human didn't appear to bother her -- hadn't, actually, from the start; she had treated them more with surprised curiosity than anything else, and it had helped her gain a few friends during her time so far in the camp. Her mother had balked the first time Abby returned to their beds with a playmate in tow whose arms were shriveled and black, but Abby had noticed that she hid her reactions really well ever since then. Well, all it meant to her right now was that her mom wasn't likely to follow her to the front of the crowd.

[vitamin_kitten]

The look on the cab driver's face when Audra asked to be brought to the camp was a sure sign that he wasn't too keen on the idea. He had even asked her, "What?" as if she had suggested they fly to Jupiter for a tea party with the Queen of England.

"The Emergent camp," Audra repeated, feeling a little embarrassed by the driver's reaction, and half-annoyed that he was giving her a hard time. "It's not too far, is it?"

"Are you one of them?" he asked her.

"No." Audra's response was short and final and would hopefully deter any further questioning along that topic. "Can you drive me there or not?"

The driver heaved a great sigh, as if her request so inconvenienced him, and finally shifted the car into drive.

"It's dangerous you know," he said as they began to make their way. "Lots of police and military people. Protesters too." He glanced back at her in the rearview mirror. "You a protester?"

"No," Audra answered, a little less shortly this time. "I'm just ... looking for answers."

"Heh. So's the rest of the world. Where'd you come in from?"

"Rochester, New York."

"Well, I hope it wasn't a wasted trip. That's a long way to come just to find some answers."

Audra paused for a few moments before she said, "They're very important questions."

An awkward silence ensued for the next twenty minutes.

As if providing a large sign indicating where the Air Force base property started and where the camp was placed, a huge crowd of everyone from reporters to protesters to just the average layperson filled the streets. News crews filled up most of the space with their vans, and protesters took up most of what was left. There seemed to be people from every walk of life angry about every aspect of this global situation: the religious fudamentalists who preached from the sidewalk, the atheists-turned-believers who saw the Emergents as some divine proof of God, the PETA bunch who all but screamed, "Now we're not so different from the animals! This is our proof!" There were more of course, but Audra gave up trying to classify them all.

The cab stopped and the driver put it into park. He twisted around in his seat to collect his fee, and once Audra had paid it and accepted his wish for her good luck- she could hardly believe he was sincere- she stepped out and stared at the crowd. She wasn't sure what she was going to do now. She was here, and all her planning had stopped at this point.

"We know our family members are in there!" shrieked a woman beside her. She jostled Audra as she rushed forward, nearly knocking her to the ground. "You're torturing them in there! We're not stupid! The government is torturing American citizens!" Some of the other people and protesters around her cheered in agreement as she pushed her way to the front of the crowd, to where a line of military police guarded the entrance to the base. "If they can be in there, then we should be with them!"

"Ma'am, please step back," one of the men ordered, giving her a silent, narrowed-eyed threat. One of the news cameras had turned on her.

"Take me in there!" she screamed. "I'm one of them! I'm an Emergent too! I can make you explode! I'll do it!"

"Ma'am, step back!" another of the officers ordered- he stepped from his place in line to back up his mandate.

"Why don't you step back, sir?" she growled, stepping toward him and getting in his face.

Audra watched the situation unfold, though she felt as if it were happening in another world, through a keyhole window in her mind. She stared at the woman and the two MPs, watching as they began a shouting match, only vaguely aware of the news crew that was rushing past her to get a better angle of the entire thing. And then, everything seemed to freeze, including her. There was no movement from anyone or anything, no sound, no feeling. As she stood, paralyzed beside the statues of newsmen and protesters and priests, a sound ripped through the air like an explosion. One by one, the people around her collapsed to the ground, the MPs faded from her sight, and the woman stood frozen in mid-shout.

Then, it was as if someone hit a fast-forward button. Everyone reappeared as they had been not even one whole second before. The woman was still shouting. And then, above the din of voices, a gunshot. People either scattered back or ducked where they stood, Audra included. When she straightened up, she saw that two of the MPs were carrying the woman's body away.

"They've killed an innocent woman!" someone screamed from the top of their lungs. It was as if a switch had been flipped- the one that controlled chaos and panic. All of a sudden, a riot broke out. People ran, pushed, jumped, fell, trampled, screamed, spit, turned into base animals, attacking one another mindlessly. Audra ducked once more with her arms over her head, terrified, confused. More shots rang out, she was sure more bodies were falling to the ground around her.

I shouldn't have come here, she thought frantically. I've caused all these people to die. That woman is dead because of me.

She felt someone grab her roughly around the arms and begin pulling her. She struggled against the stranger- she didn't even know why. They could have been trying to help her for all she knew, but everything was madness- she was panicking, just like everyone else.

Without meaning to, she spun and her knuckles met with the soft flesh of the side of a face. In an instant of horror, she realized she'd hit one of the MPs. He viced his arm around her waist, lifting her off her feet, and dragged her towards the gate, where other MPs, and now regular officers, were waiting and fighting off the crowd. She was handed off, and dragged into the base, thrown into a van with others, and driven into the camp.

Well ... that was one way to get in.

[Guest]

While someone was commenting on pairs of eyes that wouldn’t meet theirs, Shaw was experiencing it, with perhaps the exception of the woman who answered; standing there in the hot, sun-blasted sand, he realized that he had a wide berth around him, as did the woman, and that the expression those guys had was similar to the expression people had when he went up to Carroll County with his wife a couple times; wariness, but this wasn’t racial. He tried to put it into context a bit. Clearly, these were people who were not in the solitary cells and were told all kinds of things about the guys who were. No wonder they were looking at him like he was about to turn into something and eat them all. He majored psych in college, but he didn’t need that degree to figure it out.

Neat trick, government, he thought sardonically, you got us all fearing our own. Divide and conquer it is.

“The big bad folk from solitary, I bet the screws BEEN tellin’ you about us, huh? Did they tell you that they had us in little cells barely wide enough for us to lay down and threw flashbang grenades in when we asked where we were and why we were there? They strapped us down like animals and ran tests? I bet I still got all the needle tracks on me, like some kinda junkie. Ain't that some shit? I haven't even been able to check, because they had me all strung out and tied up until just now. Did you know they kept us so drugged out our heads that I had to ask the muthafuckas for what day of the month it was? I don’t know what I did; I just found myself here one day after it all went black.”

He wasn’t sure why he had to say that, except he just knew the looks, he’d seen them all his life in certain suburbs and certain parts of town when he’d gone, and he’d learned to swallow it, because explaining your grievances to someone who didn’t think injustice existed was too painful; no one wanted to tell it to someone who didn’t believe them or would even call you an outright liar. Of course, these people would probably continue to believe that the orange jumpsuits were all psychos-in-waiting, but maybe he’d get through to someone. It was probably better that he just stated what happened to him without telling them off for being assholes or putting them on the defensive.

Then it reared up from where it was coiled in the back of his mind; the nagging thought came up as maybe you are psychos in waiting. There’s certainly evidence to show for it. His degree was psychology, but it was fairly useless In this situation.

He wasn’t entirely sure what went on except for the drug-haze and what might have been hallucinations, no one ever told him what he did.

Anyway, he just stood at the far end of the bench from the woman, after he’d said his thing to the assembled crowd, “Did they at least tell you it’s July 7th, miss? I had to ask one of the screws, and he barely told me that after thinking about it.” He was taking it calmly, realizing that, in a way, he’d had all that time as a cop to get toughened up to stress and was probably adjusting faster, in theory at least, because of that experience. But theory was out the window along with a lot of other things; he’d probably been on the unit that put some of the other Emergents in this camp until he got caught as one. The wheels of the universe, as they turned, were lubricated with irony, as far as he could tell. At least they never really saw his face and he was only providing cordons for the feds that went in and did it. Still made him feel guilty, now that he was one of the ‘them’ too.

“I got a wife and two kids, back home in Balmuh, dunno what’s going on with them. You know anyone that might know news or anything about talking to the outside?”

It was almost as if he’d summoned the stooped old man that had a bundle of things in hand, as he shuffled over to the two; he was not in an orange jumpsuit, but a light grey one. His eyes were knowing, bright , young set in a desiccated face of a man that was at least an octogenarian. A mass of wrinkles, liver spots and overly bushy eyebrows set on translucent, yet swarthy toned, skin, wisps of hair peeking out from beneath a straw hat. He had a long nose, and dark, Mediterranean eyes.

“You must be Shaw, A212, and this must be Miss Evans A608.” He deposited the packets of mail, bound with twine and seemed to take a closer look at the two, such a look as to make the universe slow to a crawl and things at the periphery of the vision to go grayscale.

“I’ve seen a lot of folk here, but I’ve never seen anything quite like you two. You’ll have to forgive them, us. I think we’re all a little jumpy here lately.” The man gave a dry rasp of a chuckle.

“That’s all your mail, what they let in anyway. It’s all been opened; they don’t let much get through. But what you can have is what’s there. If you don’t like some of the reading, be sure to leave it in the red plastic bin at the center of the camp, we don’t throw that stuff away. If you need anything, the name’s Miklos. I was retired from the postal service, but here I am now.”

Shaw picked up the packet with curiosity; only one item was making it bulky, something that looked like a lot of paper. But his attention was on the old guy, “Actually, I got a request, if it’s possible. Can you tell me where to get a comb and a shaving razor?”

“You should make all requests from the dispensary. Ask one of the, what do you call them? Screws. I like that term. They certainly do have one loose these days. Where did you come by that, young man?”

Shaw seemed to feel relaxed enough, surprisingly, that he was straight out, “Ten years on the Baltimore City Police, you hear it all, man.”

“Isn’t that how it works? You’re halfway to your pension and this happens.” It was the gallows humor of the civil servant at work, the idea that the bureaucrats would screw you as soon as you got slightly ahead. It was a familiar old saw, comfortable in that way.

“Yeah, ain’t that some shit?”

“You take care, Shaw,” the old man nodded, though he seemed oddly somber and formal, as if he were delivering something unpleasant.

“Yeah, you too Miklos. But my friends call me Tony.”

“Good day then, Tony, miss Evans.”

Feeling at least slightly better about things, he settled onto the far end of the bench, pushing Rachel’s bundle of mail toward her; he glanced over the packet for a moment, noting that most of the stuff had the look of junk mail. He started to tear it up, rote memorized action, before he remembered the words from the old postal worker; don’t tear up the reading material. He started opening one of the smaller envelopes, just because he was curious about what it could be. “What the fuck?” he said as he pulled it out. It wasn’t just a brochure; it was a lurid depiction of Jack Chick meets Todd McFarlane meets Hieronymus Bosch with all sorts of depictions of hell and iniquity. Predictably, it was done with a tilt towards magic and the paranormal, the stuff the world was experiencing these days. It was a series of Biblical quotes. The illustrations were really over the top.

He glanced up to note that people were clearing out, and quickly. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but was somewhat grateful for the privacy, or at least, the people not eyeing him with fear, or glaring at him as if resenting him for being ‘more’ emergent than they were made them feel less like a freak.

People were still watching, for some reason, but from a much greater distance. He just put that shit out of his mind. You couldn’t win these sorts of things overnight, he told himself mentally, but at least not everyone’s like that. It’s not all bad.

He put it down in disgust and left it there, and went straight for a much thicker packet, a manila folder; Rachel would know the type right off the bat, lawyers used them for delivering the goods. The return address had some law firm on it, which was equally disturbing. What did some fucking shark in a suit want with him? So did Shaw, as a cop, and his brow furrowed as he started to work it open, peeling the tape off and pressing the split metal bits together to allow the flap to open.

He pulled out a stack of papers, but he didn’t get further than the cover page. “IN THE CIRCUIT COURT FOR MARYLAND” and then “BILL FOR DIVORCE.”

Some people, confronted with such a betrayal by people they thought loved them, with their life suddenly taken out from under them, screamed and yelled; some people might expect that a big, tough sort of guy like him would go off on a tear.

It became evident why everyone cleared out all of a sudden; alpha class emergent, the dangerous kind, and he got just served his divorce after spending nearly a month in the hole. The others, they’d all seen the spectrum of responses that happened when people inevitably got told they no longer had a family in the mail. Later on, he could read for himself to find that he was cut off from all shared property; apparently the new proceedings for divorce in these cases ensured that the human spouse, in this case his wife, had full custody and so forth. And, to be fair, he’d probably sign off on it rather than hurt the kids more than they already were hurt.

The explosion never came. It was just a guy hunched over himself, weeping silent tears of grief that stained the paperwork, even as he stacked it neatly, evened the stack and slid it back into the manila. Then, surprising for a man that came off as somewhat cocky, and a tough inner city cop no less, he cried out in the open, right there on the bench, his head held in those big, callused hands of his, in total silence.

[Igraine]

Rachel watched the man shout at the people around them, with something akin to awe in her brilliant blue eyes. Her gaze was fixated on him, on Tony. Tony Shaw. That was his name, Tony Shaw… He had vented his frustration, and no little part of her own, on the gawkers and curiosity seekers all around them and, truth be told? The woman borrowed just a little courage of his, for her very own. Slowly she uncoiled her legs from their protective stance at her chest, setting her feet to the ground. She let her arms fall to her sides. Though white-knuckled hands still clutched the edges of the bench, she lifted her head now – not just her eyes – and looked directly at this brave man.

She could feel the strangeness of the muscles around her mouth, as the corners of her lips lifted into something very like a smile – the first in, perhaps, weeks. Weeks, because Tony said today was July 7th. Oh dear God… Rachel did her very best to calculate backwards to the day that she had… blacked out. It was – late June? Around the twentieth or so…? Rachel shook her head quickly, sure that between the drugs and the confinement and the hell she’d already been through, she would never be exactly certain of the days she had lost – not that it mattered anymore. Now, at least, she had a date. A new start.

Rachel smiled sweetly up at Tony when he mentioned his wife and two children, the pride and love on his face at the mere thought of his family so very obvious. Not even the question of her own family could touch the contentment there now, as she turned to look toward the elderly man who brought them both a bundle of mail.

She did have the wherewithal to at least thank the kindly Miklos, and managed to murmur that her name was Rachel – if he actually heard her before he left to finish his rounds. Still, she simply let her bundle sit there on the bench for a moment, an almost painful mix of hope and dread churning in her stomach. She didn’t actually pick it up to herself, until Tony pushed it toward her a bit as he took a seat on the bench next to her.

Carefully she held up the bundle without untying it yet. Yes, her mother’s writing… even one from her father and… her brother? The smile that brought to her face could not be diminished in the least – not even when she realized that one of the thicker parcels was from the State Bar of California. Almost she laughed out loud even, when she realized that somehow, some way, even in the middle of this national – no, make that global crisis – the “best and brightest” legal minds in the world had found a way to ensure she was disbarred in only a matter of weeks.

She turned then to Tony to share this small bit of irony with him, when she heard the sound of a man’s sobbing. And to Rachel, there was no more heart-breaking sound in this world. She had heard the sound countless times in her own offices over the years, when a man’s entire world was crumbling around him, the people he loved the very most often betraying or abandoning him – but it never got any easier.

Rachel was shocked, her mouth hanging open just a little, until she saw the papers there, with the impersonal manila folder with the generic law office return address stamp… She closed her eyes, her heart aching for him, quietly remembering the glimmer of joy on his handsome face only moments ago at the mere mention of the family that was now, apparently, being torn from him.

Without asking, without a thought really, Rachel simply lay her own mail on the bench and stood to her feet behind him, wrapping her arms protectively around Tony and holding this good, kind man tightly as she lay her head on the back of his neck. She was never really sure what she might have said, only that she whispered comfort to him as best she could.

Rachel could feel the stares, though, of the others who had been browbeaten by him earlier – she imagined she could even smell the smug satisfaction as unkind eyes turned toward the proud man, now seemingly defeated by a bundle of papers.

Instinctively, searching blue eyes flashed open and then narrowed dangerously, catching the gaze of one such interloper on Tony’s grief. Without moving an inch from where she was embracing him, Rachel held the gaze of the green-skinned man, whose gleeful smile withered under her glare. Slowly, her lips peeled back over her teeth, exposing canines that were far too long now as a low, guttural growl welled up from deep inside her chest.

The green man, mouth agape, hands shaking, finally broke from her stare, and fled back into the crowd.

[Kesteven]

Euryl watched the scene unfold, in silence. Framed in the dirty window, this strange drama seemed almost surreal. A huge slab of a man was crying tears as earnest and free as an infant's, while a woman who'd barely met him a minute before cradled him in a gesture of what was undoubtedly a love no less pure, but no less ferocious for that. Euryl raised a hand to his throat where without his notice a lump had formed, and he realised that what was surreal about the scene wasn't that it was comical or abnormal, but how natural it felt, and how strange that was. Looking back there had only been a few times in his life when he remembered seeing someone express how they truly felt, without masks or inhibitions, without expectations to live up to or a reputation to uphold. He'd felt like that when his first girlfriend confessed her love for him... and when they'd broken up after a raging argument, barely a month later.

"Funny, isn't it," said Scott, softly. "When you put someone under pressure, all that posing, all that civilization, it just crumbles like old, dry paper, and for a moment you get to see the living heart underneath. The best, and the worst."

The green man paused behind the crowd and glanced back, checking he was out of view. Self-consciously he straightened up and adjusted his clothes in a pantomime of confidence, pulling a cigarette from a pocket and lighting up. He turned to some others he seem to have an acquaintance with and muttered something. Euryl couldn't hear the words, but he didn't need to - he could see the others' pernicious laughter at the comment. Even at this distance, the beads of sweat still gleamed on the green man's brow as he gripped the cigarette between his clenched teeth, a grimace that only an idiot could ever take to be a smile.

"Yeah," continued Scott. "We're all just one step away from the beast here, no matter what shape we are."

[Twoface_ecafowT]

Pop.

Jacob worked his jaw back and forth, listening to the strange sound; more out of boredom than any inclination to resolve the complexities of his jaw. It didn’t hurt, and this was a man who trusted fully in the healing powers of faith. One need only a perfunctory glance to see it. He wore sandals and a dusty black cassock decorated with an odd assortment of liturgical vestments, most of which were out of place: white cincture draped across his shoulders, moth-eaten pallium wrapped around his waist, and a folded chasuble cradling a stack of pamphlets and coverless bible in his lap. Despite the decidedly theistic appearance, he had a child-like demeanor, shifting his feet in tedium and whistling a cheery yet indecipherable song.

Pop.

The traveling priest was sitting on a thin wooden bench in a small square room. Although this was considered the visitor’s lobby, it had the ramshackle appearance of a refurbished holding cell and couldn’t fit more than a few visitors at a time. Apparently, the owners didn’t expect, or want, much company. Jacob idly read passages from his bible, occasionally glancing at the receptionist, a squat woman with chin stubble who seemed annoyed she’d been forced to abandon her crossword long enough to sign him in.

Pop.

Jacob was a God-fearing man and thus a patient man, but he’d been waiting for hours and finally approached the intimidating woman. “Excuse me, darling.” He rapped on the counter until she finally answered. A grunt. “I’ve been waiting for hours-“

“I seen you.”

“Yes, you signed me in when I first got here. But-“

“I remember.”

“Then you would know I’ve been waiting-“

“Sir, we are busy, can I help you?” Nothing about her tone invoked hospitality and so Jacob shook his head and returned to his seat. She mumbled something about priests and young boys and gave him a deprecating stare above the rim of her glasses before returning to her newspaper. He wasn’t bothered by the treatment, whispering a short prayer for the disgruntled woman.

Pop.

He patiently waited another hour until he was summoned by a frail, wiry man who looked more like a Sears customer service rep than an MP. “Mr. Marinucci?” he called monotonously, looking down at the visitors log.

“That’s me.” Jacob gathered his things and followed the man into a long featureless hallway. Heavy-looking gray doors appeared in sporadic intervals down the corridor. He finally caught a glimpse through a door which was left slightly ajar; metal storage shelves and cardboard boxes overflowing with paperwork. He was slightly disappointed by the reality.

The man glanced over his shoulder at Jacob as they walked and finally commented, “So you’re that priest that’s here to talk to the inmates about the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost? Divine Interpretation and all that?”

Jacob had no idea what the man was referring to by ‘divine interpretation’, but he nodded and smiled nonetheless. “Yes, I’m that priest.”

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

“Look jackass, I wouldn’t make an exception if you were fucking Jesus himself. I don’t talk to nobody. I think it’s a joke they let freaks like you into our prisons to try and convince rapists and murderers that ‘the Lord’ will give them a second chance. You prey on the people who are desperate enough to listen to your shit so you have a few more bills to slip from the collection bowl on Sunday. You’re a bunch of fucking hypocrites. How do you look in the fucking mirror and tell yourself God loves you when you’re grabbing the dicks of twelve-year old boys at choir practice? Get the fuck out of here.”

Jacob absorbed the words through a smile and slow, dutiful nod. “You will come to see the demon inside you for what it is someday, and then you will see that God has not abandoned you in your time of greatest need,” he murmured through the slot in the door, customarily used for food and flash grenades. He glanced once more into the dark room and the nondescript figure squatting in the far corner. He couldn’t make out any facial features, but he could see the black outline of twisted horns against the backdrop of the gray stone wall. “The Devil has a strong hold on you, my friend. Stay strong. And God Bless you.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

The priest slipped a brightly colored pamphlet through the crack and moved on, comfortable in the rhythm of his work. He’d been met with similar hostility all day, though he remained optimistic. It would only take one repenting soul to make his mission worthwhile. The materialization of the Emergents was a bold attack on the souls of humanity by the Devil, and it would be a slow, arduous battle to reclaim them for the Lord. Jacob was prepared to fight that battle, albeit more for credibility than principle.

He had quickly learned that the job of a traveling priest was fraught with rejection. Without a congregation to call his own, he was no better than a commander without an army. His dream was to some day travel to Rome and work beneath the Pope as an officially sanctioned bishop of the Catholic Church. In order to do that, however, he would need more credibility than a history of missed opportunities at the doorstep of every house he’d ever gone to.

“There’s a man been calling for you down the hall.” A face appeared in the slot of a door as he passed by. He could only see the man’s eyes, and they had two different colored irises: one brown and one blue.

“What’s that?” Jacob turned and bent down to face the speaker through the door.

“One of the mates a few cell blocks over has been waiting for you for about an hour now, screaming your name for a god damned hour.”

“How’s he know who I am?”

“Hell if I know. Ask him.”

“Well thank you, brother. Take a-“ he started to slide a pamphlet through the slot when he was stopped by a hand placed over the opening.

“Not for me, mate, but thanks.”

[Lara]

Abby managed to make her way to the front of the crowd just in time to hear one of the men start shouting angrily at the crowd. All around her, people were murmuring to each other; it was like some of them didn't hear what he was saying at all. He was saying how he was just like the rest of them. They were still saying that he was dangerous, that they should all leave now before he did something to them. She listened to it all with confusion etched across her face. She wasn't sure what it was she should be believing, but something told her the shouting man wasn't one to be feared.

The yelling died down as one of the crowd, a man that had always reminded her of the kind postman who used to deliver the mail to her house, stepped forward and handed him something. She wasn't close enough to hear what was said, but the postman left as quickly as he had come, and the man began to look at his mail. She was in the middle of wondering if he got the same strange brochure with the giant cross that she did when movement caught her eye. "Cero, he's crying!" she whispered, eyes widening as she watched the man suddenly burst into tears and hunch over on the bench, head in his hands.

Cero was staring at two Alphas, a dark look in his eyes, though it vanished by the time he looked over to Abby. "I think you should stay away from those guys," he said suddenly, as if he hadn't heard her comment at all.

Her head turned, and she stared at him in surprise. "What? Why?"

He shook his head, shifting from foot to foot. "I... There's something different about them."

"Different?" Her brows drew together in thought as she frowned. "The men that took us away said I was different, too. You said not to believe him."

"Not that kind of different. It's something else. Just believe me," he said hastily, shaking his head as he circled around her accusation. "Look, everyone's leaving. We should go too."

"But-"

"We should go," he repeated sternly, turning and starting to walk away, though he glanced back after a step or two, to make sure she was following. Grudgingly, perhaps, she was, though she glanced behind her one more time, just in time to see the woman next to him lean over to the shouting man and give him a hug.

-~-


Rebekah finally spotted her daughter making her way out of the crowd. "Abby!"

She looked to the side to see her mom hurrying over. "Hi, Mom," she said with a bit of a smile. "Did you see all those new people the trucks brought in?"

Rebekah's lips thinned into a small line. "Stay away from them, Abby, you hear me?" she said firmly, eyes straying for just an instant towards where some of the new arrivals were still seated or looking about.

Abby cocked her head to the side, brows furrowed in confusion. "Why?"

"They're dangerous!" Even from a distance, Rebekah had seen the way the other Emergents had worried and fretted.

The others had been saying that, too, as the crowd had cleared away from the shouting man. But Abby just couldn't see how he was as scary as they seemed to consider him. After all, her father had shouted like that once... before he left, and she certainly didn't consider him all that scary. Upset, maybe, but not much more. "I don't believe you!" she said hotly, stomping her foot on the ground.

"I don't care if you do, but you stay away from them, or else!"

"Or else what?" Cero snickered, suddenly at her side. His arm curled around her shoulder as he whispered into her ear, exactly at the right height to not have to bend over. "She can't do anything to stop you, Abby. She's just talking big."

Abby was silent, taking in his alluring words as she glared up at her mother, who was looking back down at her with a mixture of anger, fear and worry, though she couldn't recognize all the emotions. "You can't stop me!" she shouted, using Cero's words for her own, spinning around to march off. As angry as she was, it didn't occur to her to wonder why her friend was supporting her now, when he had been so insistent that she stay away from them earlier.

Her mother stared at Abby's back as it began to move away, shocked at the back talk that had just come from her daughter. Finally, she found her voice. "Abby, come back here this minute!" But her daughter made no effort to turn around, and Rebekah found herself rooted to the spot, unable to bring herself to follow after her.

[Haar]

“Move and process B113. Now!” barked a sharp voice, quickly bringing visual memories of R. Lee Ermey in his iconic roll as Gunnery Sergeant Hartmann in the classic, Full Metal Jacket. Greyson was sharply jerked from his seat, feeling the sting as duct-tape was torn from his skin. Whoever grabbed him while he was hitchhiking was something of an amateur he though -- a professional outfit would have used cuffs or zip-ties. Odds were, whoever picked him up was either some yokel trying to cash in on government incentives from the DHS to turn in anyone even suspected of being an emergent. There was no evidence of any powers beyond the physical mutations that had occurred. Even then, they were hesitant to declare him a true Beta.

The air around him was heavy, and electric. Someone pushed him along -- it felt interminable to him the distance. His head was throbbing and he had a thick, black pillowcase over his head. A heavy hand pushed him into a room and slammed the door behind him. There was a loud shunking noise and the same angry voice barked: “B113, the doctor will be in to see you shortly. YOU WILL DO AS HE SAYS! You will not resist, or you will be terminated, do you understand?”

“Fuck off fascist,” Matthew spat back, “I have rights, I want my goddamned phonecall!” Of course, he was righteous in his indignation, but at the same time, he winced and silently berated himself for using the Lord’s Name in vain. He had been working so hard to stop that, and the circumstances probably merited such anger from the young man.

“Yea, keep telling yourself that. Rights are reserved for humans, and you are nothing even close,” snapped the gruesome voice.

There was no way for him to remove his hood just yet, as his hands were still bound together and he was standing there in cold blackness for what seemed like an eternity before the door opened and closed with a creaking and slam that would do the foley for a cheap 50s horror flick proud. The doctor came from behind and removed Matthew’s hood unceremoniously with a motion that allowed a crisp snap. The man standing in front of him was an obscene little ogre. Bald, scarred, and leering, standing only about 5’6”, and had a sneer that only the most methodical and amoral of scientists could ever muster under their own willpower.

“Well, it seems we are having a little trouble adjusting, Mr. Greyson,” the voice matched the persona, and sucked in air between his yellowed and nicotine stained teeth, “Let’s keep this as civil as possible and we’ll have you moved to your new home as soon as possible.”

New home? What was this about? All of this, seriously, the Via Purifico was bad enough and now some apparent science lab / paramilitary appearing organization was going to assign him a new home? This was madness.

“The Department of Homeland Security is... invested... in your security, Mr. Greyson. Not just you, but all the Emergents. Fanatics and those who have a poor understanding of the world beyond what the radio talking heads and their preachers tell them would find easy excuses to murder you and your kind--”

“My kind? And yes, I’m well aware of the the asshats who are out to kill me. I just ran away from some so-called religious order that had taken over large swaths of Oakland. I figur--”

“Well, you figured wrong. The Via Purifico, an organization we are well aware of, are quite moderate compared to some of the organizations in the South and certain portions of the Plain States. I assure you, if you were caught by those people in their home territory and killed, the courts would write them a commendation, not a prison sentence.”

It all sounded far too smarmy to be true. This guy was literally talking out of the side of his neck, thought Matthew. His eyes watched the hobgoblin doctor amble about, getting prepared for his tests. Yep. It was classic horrorshow like, with all the needles, prodding tools, sharp pointy objects and other more innocuous doctor’s equipment than you could shake a stick at.

Again, the doctor’s voice spoke slowly and calmly, though with the kind of quality like gravel being ground into a chalkboard, “First we are going to take some blood, isolate the exact cause of whatever is happening to you,”

The test was long. It hurt. There was a lot of blood taken. A lot more than the recommended pint to pint and a half. Greyson felt woozy. He was well above human normal temperature and stayed that way through the tests. The doctor wrote down the information and sucked air in through his teeth, making brief comments of “Veeeery interesting.” once in awhile. For all anyone knew, Greyson should also have been dead due to a complete lack of iron in his blood. He was not just anemic. His ferrous content was absolute zero. Everything became sort of a blur later on before he was hefted into a truck with another hood over his head and handcuffed into a military transport. Wherever, he was going, it likely was not going to be pleasant. Sleep came swiftly and easily -- if only for lack of food and blood loss.

When he woke up, he was in restraints in yet another, cold, sterile room. Another obscene ogre of a doctor looked at him and lit a cigarette, making Matthew Greyson wondering if they bred them. Two men who looked very similar -- except this one had a full head of hair, or at least a decent toupee, and had the same mannerisms as the previous doctor -- it was just too much to be a coincidence. Still, this doctor was still a good handspan taller than the other and slighter in build.

“Well, Mr. Greyson, it seems we had you mislabeled. Your appellation will be henceforth A113. You still bear genetic mutations, but the fact is that you exsanguined some our security personnel on your way in here. Quite literally, you ripped the iron from their bodies. Molecule by molecule... atom by atom. It seems, at least unconsciously, or subconsciously -- you are able to effect electromagnetic fields in ways that we do not understand.”

“Let me go, you filthy sons of bitches, you have no reason to hold me here!” Greyson screamed, adrenaline coursing through his veins and removing all haze of fatigue, drug cocktails and whatever else was being done to keep him sedated. He glared at the doctor, fury literally blazing in his eyes -- they were taking on a more intense hue than even the latent glow that had identified him as an emergent.

“I will ask you to calm down,” sucking in through his teeth, “...or, unpleasant consequences will befall you. You are one of the more unique emergents we have come across. The ability to strip people and objects of their inherent material matrices is something we had yet to encounter in our studies.”

“Well, la-de-fucking-dah, you want me to be a superweapon, don’t you?”

“Oh, no, not at all,” the doctor stated, looking at Greyson’s vital signs, his heart was pounding and his blood pressure was through the roof. “And I do advise you to placate yourself before you are... corrected.”

“Corrected? What sort of gestapo---GAAAAHHH!!!” the table surged a severe electric shock through the whole of his form, causing his hair to stand up on end and an acrid stench to fill the room as his insides were boiled.

“I told you not to excite yourself, now the quicker you calm down -- the sooner these tests can be finished and the sooner we can have you installed into your new quarters, hmmm?” The doctor seemed to wince at the stench, but did not seem to overly concern himself. He picked up some thin wire frame reading glasses and placed them upon his beakish nose. “Now, when did symptoms begin to manifest?”

Matt coughed and wheezed, his entire body felt like it was trying to kill him, in the most painful way possible. He looked up at the doctor with the sam level of malice as before, but his vitals were at a much calmer state than before, “I don’t know... early May... why is that important?”

“Well, Mr. Greyson, it seems that the first symptomatic cases began around May 7th or 8th, it is not exactly clear when or how... but that is what we know. Now, other than what we observed, have you exhibited anything before? Other than the obvious...”

“No. Not that I can recall. Thinks might have broken, but I accounted that to pure chance.”

“First time it happened?”

Matthew thought for a good long moment, “About May 10th, 11th...”

The doctor nodded coldly, and scribbled down some notes. “Now, you understand why you are here, right?”

“Well, either you are going to study me or cage me up or execute me... one of the three,” he spat.

“Well, cage you, yes. But it is for your protection as well as those in the outside world... I think we are done.”

The doctor pressed a button and the whole world went dark once again. When he woke up again, he was in a plain dormitory, beginning his new life as an emergent.

[Kesteven]

Euryl spotted Abby as she strode across the yard outside, away from the crowd. He wasn't normally the kind to get involved in other people's affairs, but this was no place for an unattended child. Come to that, it wasn't the place for any kind of child- what the hell were these people thinking, locking children up with monsters? He just hoped that she had some kind of guardian nearby. No matter how bad their captors were, they wouldn't throw a young girl in here alone to fend for herself, would they?

Would they?

Turning to Scott, he began to excuse himself, but the strange boy was nowhere to be seen. It was a little rude of him to leave like that, but he probably had other things to do. It wasn't important. Euryl darted outside, carefully manoeuvring his way past people in the doorway.

"Excuse me, 'scuse me please..."

He caught sight of the girl and approached, but stopped just behind her. What were you supposed to say in situations like this? What if she was scared of him and tried to run? Should he try and take her arm? No, that might give her the wrong idea. Euryl cursed his lack of experience with children. Living in a small family, his only sibling was an older sister, and he'd never really had cause to interact with anyone younger than himself.

"Hey, um, little girl," he began tentatively, feeling like a fool. "Are you lo-"

Boom.

It was starting again. Colour and sound drained from the world, and time seemed to slow almost to a stop. A hissing noise rose around him, like the sound of snakes moving slowly through grass. This was the feeling he'd felt that first night as he stepped outside, feeling like the ground was falling away, feeling impossibly light. The rest of his sentence escaped his mouth in a long, slow breath, as if something was squeezing the air from his lungs.

He saw her turn towards him, slowly, a look of surprise on her face. And there, behind her was... something. It looked like a mass of shadows, boiling slowly around a short creature that looked vaguely humanoid. It's looking at me, he thought. I can't see its eyes, but it's looking at me. For a moment he thought he saw a mouth, rows of jagged black teeth meshed in a malevolent grin, one that could at any moment split open into a gaping abyss, ready to swallow him whole.

As suddenly as it had come, the moment was gone. Euryl clutched at his shirt as his breath returned, and swallowed, relieved. He looked up, expecting the thing to be gone... but it was still there, standing next to the girl, bold as the sun blazing above them, as real as anything else in the yard. He could no longer read its features, but it still unnerved him deeply. Things like this couldn't possibly exist. Sure, a lot of the people here looked odd, and he'd seen some things in the last few weeks that would fall firmly into the paranormal category. But standing there in broad daylight, as if daring existence to disprove it, this thing was something else entirely.

[Lara]

"It's okay, Abby," Cero was saying soothingly, arm once again wrapped around her shoulder as if in comfort. She hadn't walked more than a few feet before starting to tear up, by now more upset than angry. "You don't need to listen to her anymore."

"But..." She sniffed, wiping the back of her hand across her eyes before looking over at him, biting down on her lip and slowing to a stop.

He hushed her before she could continue. "No buts. Things are different now. Here, she's the different one." Both hands were on her shoulders now, and he was staring directly into her eyes, a force behind his words as he kept speaking, willing her to pay attention to nothing else but what he was saying. "You can do what you want here, and she can't do a thing about-" He stopped his speech, hearing the footsteps hastily making their way over. Stifling a curse, he released her shoulders and stepped back, scowling at the interruption as the man's voice called out.

So caught up in listening to Cero's words words, Abigail didn't notice the man coming up behind her until he spoke. She blinked as the sentence reached her ears as if coming out of a daze, then turned around in surprise, surprised to see the teenaged boy standing in front of her. For the past few weeks, she had tended to be the one to make the first approach, not the other way around... so what was it that he wanted?

From where he now stood behind Abby, Cero continued to scowl at the intruder... at least, until he saw the man's eyes fall directly on to him, eyes widening just a fraction. Could the man actually see him? Oh, what an interesting turn of events. His lips curved into a malicious smile, teeth shifting into a jagged row as he stared back at the man. Suddenly, he wasn't nearly as upset about the interruption...

Abby's head still felt a little foggy for some reason, but she could clearly hear the man cut off his sentence abruptly, and could see him staring at something. Cocking her head slightly to the side, she glanced behind her as well. The surrounding area held nothing of interest - Cero was the only one there. As if on cue, her friend turned his gaze towards her and shrugged innocently, as if to say 'I have no idea what he's looking at, either'. A puzzled expression crossed her face as she turned back to the man, who was looking rather pale... She missed Cero's lips curving back into a smirk. "'scuse me, Mister, what are you looking at?" she asked curiously, staring up at him.

[Twoface_ecafowT]

“Jacob Marinucci.” The name was spoken with all conviction, muted and muffled by the stainless steel door that separated Jacob and the speaker. The priest stopped and turned towards the barrier, briefly studying the horizontal and vertical steel-studded bands that crisscrossed over its surface. Jacob glanced at both adjacent doors. This one was slightly different from the others; the slot in the door was covered by a padded metal plate.

“How do you know my name?” He bent down and lifted the slot covering. The entire room was outfitted with the same type of padding, like attic insulator. He couldn’t see anyone inside, and that meant whomever he was speaking to was pressed up against the door, purposefully out of sight.

“I heard you tell the receptionist,” the response was quick if not smug. Jacob looked down the hallway and shook his head.

“Impossible. The lobby is too far, even if I screamed it.”

“Impossible for you, but not for me.”

Jacob was beginning to understand, but there was something that bothered him still: “How did you know it was me, and not one of the guards?”

“I could tell from the way you breathed and the sound of your pulse. It’s like a fingerprint, completely unique. I’ve identified all the guards by now simply by the sound of their breath.” He laughed proudly and began to move. Jacob could hear him shuffle beyond the door, though he remained out of sight. “And your jaw makes one hell of a racket.”

“So that explains the soundproof padding.” He couldn’t believe it. This man was incredible. However something didn’t seem right. Augmented hearing to his level was certainly an awesome and powerful gift, but nothing that deserved the type of precautions the DHS had taken with him. Reinforced stainless steel, soundproof padding. This was the type of treatment reserved for someone dangerous.

The man answered as if he’d heard the thought directly from Jacob’s head: “This was the only place they could put me to keep me from hearing all their pretty secrets.”

“It obviously doesn’t do much good, if you could hear me from the lobby.” He didn’t answer, but Jacob imagined he was grinning. “What do you want with me?”

“A pamphlet, if you would.” The priest took a pamphlet from his satchel and pushed it through the slot. “Thank you.”

“Christian?”

“I was.” The self-satisfaction had left his voice and was replaced by sadness. “The Lord doesn’t include those possessed by a demon in his flock.”

“You believe you’ve a demon inside you?”

“I know I do. Me and everyone else in this place. But they don’t see it like I do. I hear they way they talk outside. Some of them think it’s a gift from God, despite where it’s put them. I see this power for what it really is. A gift from the Devil. He’s trying to lead me to sin; I know it. He’s tempting all of us.” It was as if he’d stolen the thoughts right out of Jacob’s head. Jacob had realized a long time ago that the arrival of this magic was nothing but a ploy of the Devil. The Devil knew that power in the hands of men was dangerous, and now he’s given humanity more power than it could handle. It was only a matter of time before they ended up destroying themselves. “Help me, Jacob.”

“What do you want me to do?’

“You wouldn’t have come here if you didn’t think you could help.”

“Well in honesty, I came here in hopes I’d find someone willing to undergo an exorcism.” Jacob continued the train of thought in his mind: If I could convince the DHS that the Emergents could be cured through the Lord, then the Catholic Church would know untold heights of power. And so would I. His previous notion of becoming a lowly bishop in Rome was replaced by a more savory picture. The Pope himself.

“I’ll do it.” The man answered after a moment of hesitation. “I’ll meet you in storage room 4C when they let us out into the courtyard. Stay hidden until I get there, and don’t tell anyone where you’re going. If the MP’s get scent of this, they’ll tan your hide.”

Jacob bit back his doubts and whispered a passage of the bible for strength. “Okay.” The priest stood up and began to walk away before turning back. “What’s your name, anyway?”

“Adam. Now go.”

[Kesteven]

Run, his instincts told him to say. Get away from that thing before it hurts you. But Euryl had seen enough strange things lately to hesitate before acting rashly, and was determined not to let himself get overwhelmed by a simple thing like some kind of shadow-monster squatting impudently in front of him.

Now he looked around, nobody but him seemed to be paying any attention to the creature, though he was getting a few cautious glances. Was he seeing things? Or was this sort of thing entirely normal around here? Not wanting to alarm the girl in either case, he made an effort to calm down, and tried to think logically. What if the thing was sentient, another 'deformed' human? The last thing he wanted to do here was look like some kind of bigot.

"Sorry if this sounds strange, but... is there-" anyone, he decided, just in case, "anyone standing behind you?"

[Lara]

She giggled at how uncertain the man sounded. Of course there was someone behind her -- Cero was right there...

But, wait-. Her eyes widened a fraction in surprise, and she quickly turned her head to look back at Cero. She knew he was there, had just seen him, but needed to confirm it one more time. "Cero," she started in an excited whisper, but he shook his head, cutting her off while holding a finger to his lips.

No, no, that wouldn't be any fun at all. "There's nobody there," he prompted Abby, the faintest bit of a smirk on his face.

She stared at him, brows furrowed in bewilderment. "But-"

The smirk slipped off his face. "There's nobody there," he said again, a bit more forcefully, nodding his head up towards the man.

Slowly, she turned around, a frown still on her face. Looking up at the man, eyes brimming in confusion, she repeated Cero's words. "There's nobody there." She didn't get it; if the man could see Cero, then why did her friend want her to pretend he wasn't actually behind her?

Remaining where he was, Cero slowly allowed himself to stretch upwards, keeping his gaze on the man. When they were eye to eye, although still a few feet away, his lips curved once again into a smirk. "What will you do now?" he mouthed silently, watching for the man's reaction.

[Guest]

How’d the song go? ”Now I know a man ain’t supposed ta cry / but these tears I can’t hold inside…” summed up the situation, depending on how one looked at it. There was little time there, weeping, to say much to the woman who decided to put her arms around him and provide the vital, needed human linkage to put it in some sort of perspective, and in its way, perhaps allow for someone to cope with it faster. He wasn’t alone, the embrace said. Indeed, he was surrounded by people in the exact same boat.

It didn’t make the realization that the thing that got him through his time in solitary confinement, the poking and the prodding, existed only long enough to be pulled out from under him. He felt, in that instance, rudderless and adrift in life, with the stability he’d worked to provide for his life capriciously destroyed. The optimism he had of being able to someday manage to see his family again no longer existed in such form as he knew it. There’d always been the reasonable assumption that he’d have his children and his life, and that fact gave him a certain serenity and a reason to live a life, rather than merely exist. It also hurt, of course, that his wife Jill apparently saw this misfortune, that he couldn’t control at all, as some sort of reason to just break it all off.

But he didn’t know everything about why she was divorcing him, which made it difficult for him to really do any judging. There was no conversation, no other letter in the pile beside those divorce papers, which he’d have to go through when he was more together with it. After all, he’d have to sign them. There was no thought of contesting the divorce, not only because he probably couldn’t under whatever law she was using to divorce him, the way things went recently, but also because he didn’t want some lawyer to wind up being the one to get use of their savings and other accounts. There was a certain clarity to be found in that thought; he’d rather saw off an arm than somehow harm the prospects for his daughters.

And who wouldn’t ask themselves if it wasn’t, indeed, their fault, given society’s treatment of his ‘kind?’ Some people started to believe what they were told, if they were told it often enough, regardless of the truth. He was black, and he had an acute sense of it, occasionally, in dealing with officers and other types, often guys who got through college and grad school, educated men, who nonetheless made an accommodation with themselves by distancing themselves from the problem of the community, by agreeing with the belief, as espoused by others, that it was a self-made problem, a self-hate that agreed with bigotry in order to ingratiate themselves with the establishment, whatever that meant these days . Shaw wasn’t about to buy into the same stupid bullshit on ‘freaks,’ or ‘Emergents,’ as they were politely known.

But even as he pulled himself from the woman’s arms and tried to put himself together long enough to find some dignity for himself, even as he gathered up the folder into his lap with a miserable-sounding sigh. Privacy was out of the equation, he knew that much from every account of prison he ever heard of, and he was in a position to hear more than most. He was used to pushing things down, deep inside, but this was a new one on him. He wasn’t sure how to handle it. Of course, he wasn’t alone here. There had to be a bunch of divorces coming through.

“Oh, damn, I’m sorry about that,” he said with a bit of it still in his voice, shaky and emotionally demolished, “it’s just that I never saw that one coming in a million years, just like every other asshole here that’s probably been served his papers.”

And like many others in this sandy, sun-beaten pit of a camp, incarcerated for things beyond their control, he thought society and life had all the answers, a notion that the world was being disabused of and taking badly all at the same time. It was probably worse for the modern societies, the ones that thought they knew more than the rest and looked down upon the ‘backwards’ ones with a certain degree of smug, patronizing satisfaction.

In the event of imminent emotional breakdown and the turning upside down of one’s life, he’d learned, one can always focus on the minute details as a mechanism for coping. Or, at least, he hoped that this would be the case, because he desperately needed to something to cling to. In his case, hygiene implied that he still had a shred of humanity and self-respect left, even though it was hard to find that when you were in a big cage in the middle of the desert, surrounded by angry and scared people, all of them knowing that on the outside are a bunch of people who hated your guts for…well, something that wasn’t even understood.

And like many men who reckoned themselves strong, he wasn’t sure what to say to the woman who just lent herself a shoulder in an awkward situation, “And, uh, thanks. I’ll see you.” He was already standing and starting off when a thought hit him, and he turned around, seeming to mull over it, before finally saying what was on his mind.

“ I’m gonna go find out where they issue the soap and other stuff,” and pens, the callous and pragmatic part of his subconscious said, smugly, “because I’m still all funky from the solitary, you know how it is. You wanna come along? This shit is like prison, and people in prison gotta watch their back. I don’t wanna get my rations from the screws just to get jumped. Knowing people, some real criminals are in this motherfucker, and they probably already taught people how to make shivs outta toothbrush handles. Beside, you probably need some too, right?”

Already thinking like a cop, one who’d worked undercover and the streets before; he knew there were plenty of human animals around that’d love to take advantage. Of course, it might not hold water for the newly-arrived alphas. He wasn’t sure how far it went in this place, and he wasn’t exactly raring to find out, either.

[Kesteven]

That clinched it, he was going insane. The girl couldn't see the thing, and now it seemed to have grown taller, and was even mouthing words at him.

No. A month ago Euryl would probably have accepted it and politely checked himself into the nearest mental health programme, but since then he’d had to make a lot of calls between common sense and intuition, and the times he’d trusted his intuitions instead of going along with the things people told him were the ones he’d come out on top. Knowing when to make his own judgements had saved his life at least once already; he owed himself enough to have a little faith.

There’s nobody there. There had been something strange about that. Nobody there. It sounded like she was reading off a script, but it wasn't like it was the sort of thing one usually had to memorise. There was another simple explanation, however, one which left a lot of unanswered and ominous questions.

"Oh... I see..."

He blinked a few times and rubbed his head with his hand, turning away, back towards the bunkhouse.

As if I could just go back!

He had to settle this now. Using the turn to provide elastic torsion, Euryl quickly turned on his heel and dived back towards the shadow thing, making a grab for the most substantial looking parts.

[Lara]

For a moment, Abby thought the man would take her words and leave with them, and she actually found herself somewhat sad over the thought. It certainly looked that way, what with how he was already turning to leave...However, the man surprised her. "Cero!" she cried in surprise as the man spun and lunged towards him, but her words never reached his ears.

Cero hissed as the man's arms closed around him, eyes flashing dangerously in anger as he jerked away. Or at least tried to; the man had a surprisingly firm grip, one hand around one of his wrists, the other somewhere around his shoulder. "Let go, you stupid human!" he spat, lost in a rare moment of shock that a human would even dare to try such a thing.

He stared into the man's eyes for a moment, his own narrowed into slits behind the shadows that wisped in front of them... but, then he realized that he had lost control. And slowly, upon that realization, his look of anger subsided slightly, and the faintest trace of a smirk crossed his face once again. Lifting his free hand, he laid it on the man's arm, the one attached to the hand gripping his wrist. "Well then, human, you've caught me," he said softly, words that were meant only for the man in front of him, and not the little girl standing barely a foot away. "But..." he then started, eyes and smirk widening in what could only be taken as a sadistic fashion. At the same time, his hand began to close around the man's arm, fingernails slowly morphing into claws that ran along the layer of skin. Small lines of blood began to well up along the path the claws had taken, until they met and reconnected with the bottom of his palm. "What will you do now that you have?"

As he whispered the last few words, both his wrist and the hand gripping the man's arm began to heat up, as if slowly catching on fire. All the while, his gaze never wavered, even as the smirk grew into one that split ear to ear.

[Kesteven]

Euryl's triumph at grabbing the thing was short-lived, but at least he'd found one answer- if this was some kind of hallucination or illusion, it was so hideously powerful that it might as well be real. It was talking too, its words like the hiss of hot coals on flesh, mocking him.
He gasped as the claws raked his skin, and saw the blood begin to bead on his arm. Hallucinations couldn't hurt you. Not like this. He almost wished that he had been insane, or that his fingers had passed through the thing like smoke.

Of course I could have gone back. I could have, but I didn't.

He whimpered and let go as he felt heat singe his hand, but the thing was still firmly gripping his left arm, and its black hand was getting hotter and hotter. As he struggled, the situation he'd put himself in finally began to hit home.

I'm fighting some kind of demon, he thought, staring into its horrible grinning face. He looked around. People were staring cautiously, but not one of them made a move to help. He wasn't sure if it was simple fear and indifference, or if the thing was invisible after all, but right now it made little difference.

I'm on my own.

The claws around his arm felt like a branding iron, and he was dimly aware that his muscles were starting to contort involuntarily from the pain. As he squinted up at its face through watery eyes, he realised the helplessness of his situation. This wasn't a fight, it was a game. And he was the toy.

I could die.

At this realisation, a cold wave shot through his body as the adrenaline took hold of his heart. His body moved by itself as four years of high-school karate met sixty-five million years of survival instinct, and with a desperate yell he yanked his left arm towards him, pulling the thing's face down towards an oncoming right cross.

[Lara]

Cero watched in delight as the human finally realized exactly what he was up again. Oh, the wonderful look of horror crossing his face as the illusion took hold! The only way it could have been more fun would be if it had been real.

His gaze dropped from the man's face to watch as the hand holding his wrist let go in a pitiful attempt to break away, the arm jerking in his hold as the heat began to overwhelm him. All through it, Cero wanted to laugh. How he wanted to laugh! But no, that would break all of his careful tactics, set in place should anything go wrong. And there was no way anything would, considering who he was dealing with...

Cero brought his gaze back to the human's eyes, studying the look of pain still etched on to his expression. It brought a momentary swell of pride to think that he could accomplish this, all while the man's fellow humans stood and watched in mere confusion, unable to figure out why the man was acting as he was. And all he felt was ecstasy, overpowering his body as he watched the human writhe, still trapped within his clawed grip--

A sudden jerking motion drove him from his daze and sent him flying forward. Wait, what was happening? His eyes managed to widen in surprise just in time to come crashing into the man's waiting fist. With a howl of pain, it was his turn to release his grip, his illusion vanishing in his surprise. Hissing, he stumbled backwards, hand to his face as the unfamiliar feeling of pain coursed through the injured spot. "You'll regret that, human," he growled out, glaring for a moment past his hand, then disappeared on the spot.


Abby's eyes widened in surprise as Cero suddenly upped and disappeared. What had just happened? All they had been doing was standing there, ever since the man jumped forward and grabbed on to Cero's arm. At least, until the man began shaking and struggling, almost as if something was happening to him. But there was nothing. Was Cero playing one of his tricks? She frowned; it didn't look like it. After all, Cero hadn't moved at all, from what she could see, until the man jerked him forward.

She gasped as the man punched her friend, hard, whimpering a little as she saw Cero back away in pain. "Why did you do that?" she asked, lip trembling now that it was just her and the man standing there. "Why did you hit him? You made him leave... What if he doesn't come back?" The last part was whispered mostly to herself, and she hugged her arms around her torso, looking at the spot where Cero had last been standing. What... what if he didn't come back? What would she do then? She stared up at the man, eyes beginning to fill with tears, silently demanding an explanation.

[Kesteven]

Euryl looked down helplessly, still in shock. He tried his best to explain, despite not even being sure just what had happened himself.

"He hurt- hurting me, my arm-'

He raised it to show her, but there were no burns, no scratches. Not so much as a singed hair. Aside from a peculiar bruise where his knuckles had connected, he was completely unharmed. He touched his wrist gently, in disbelief. Had he been imagining it after all?

Finally, some spark of his higher reasoning processes intercepted what she'd said.

"Wait... so you could see him?"

So she'd been lying after all. He'd suspected it, but he hadn't really believed it until now. What reason could this child have to deceive him about something like that? Since when have children ever needed a reason, asked his cynical side. "Why did you say you couldn't?"
He wasn't about to let some brat lie to him about her psychopathic demon friend and act like he was the bad guy!

Looking down at her tear- stricken face, he mellowed a little and tried to take stock of the situation. This wasn't the time to be demanding answers or berating her for lying. He didn't know what their connection was, but it was clear that to her his punch had seemed to be an unprovoked assault, and it had upset her when the thing had left, a lot. He supposed that everyone needed a friend in this place, although he couldn't say he approved much of her taste in choosing one.

"Look, I don't know what's going on. I thought he hurt me, and I panicked, okay?" He did his best to sound comforting. "He'll be back," he said, thinking about the thing's ominous parting message. "I know he will."

[Igraine]

Rachel said little as the giant of a man pulled away from her, probably having offered some kind of thanks or other, before she picked up her own bundle of mail and held them tightly to her chest as he began to walk away. Even if Tony seemed oblivious, immersed in his own grief, to what had just happened inside her; Rachel was not. She had scared herself witless, with what she had done. Had the green-skinned man come any closer, she was quite sure – she simply knew – that she would have attacked him to protect Tony. She could still feel the primal urge to defend, to fend off any threat to what she had claimed as her own, what she would rend with tooth and claw to protect and…

… How in the hell were these thoughts coming into her head? Rachel ran her hand along her forehead, closing her eyes against the sudden onslaught of sensations that seemed to rush in on her all at once. Her first few hours from solitary, this would be the first full day from under the regimen of drugs that had kept her numbed and sedated for weeks now, since she was first taken into custody. She swayed lightly on her feet under the heaviness of the layers of scent: each individual had his or her own unique thread to add to the tapestry, all overlaid by the rich umber-scented desert earth beneath them; the dry, burnt breezes all around them and the secretive moisture she could almost taste, tucked safely in the flora…

And the sounds – even through the dull roar of the thousands of voices speaking this very minute in the encampment, she could hear the heavy breaths of a frightened man fighting… something… only a few buildings away. And then, the crisp almost-whistle of a desert wind through cactus needles. The gentle *scrape click* of scorpion legs over sun-baked rock and the deafening hoof strike of a mule deer in the sand.

Rachel looked to the ground, her stomach queasy at the rush of so many sensations at once. This wasn’t… this wasn’t right. Normal people… normal human beings couldn’t possibly…

Her head lifted toward Tony when, even through all that her mind was trying to process, she heard him ask if she would like to go with him, to find some toiletries. She met his eyes with as steady a gaze as she could, giving him a nod of her head and a smile that showed not a single hint of the elongated canine teeth she had bared at the green-skinned man. “My name is Rachel. And yes, please. That would be wonderful. It would be so nice, to just take a hot shower again.”

Rachel had no concern for the people or things the hard-bitten Tony seemed to worry over. The feeling she had known before, that she was the monster to be feared in this place, had only grown into a certainty by this time. And right now she would do anything – give anything at all - to feel almost human again.

[Lara]

Abby's brows furrowed even deeper into confusion as the man started talking about Cero hurting him. What was he talking about? All she saw when he lifted the hand he was talking about was a mark that probably came from when he hit her friend.

But maybe it had been one of Cero's tricks? The thought nagged at her for a moment, but she was forced away from it when the man suddenly realized that she had been lying to him earlier. He looked mad; her mother looked like that when she caught Abby lying, too...But she never sounded like this. "He... He said not to tell, so I didn't," she responded in a small voice, a bit unnerved by his tone.

Maybe her response had been enough for him. Or maybe her tears were just finally starting to get to him. Either way, his expression softened a little, and the next thing she knew he was reassuring her. And, even if he was only saying it to make her feel better, her face brightened considerably when he suggested that Cero would definitely be back. A smile even graced her face as she nodded to the man's words, the flow of tears having stopped by this point.

That was when Rebekah showed up. Well, more so hurried over than simply showing up, with a look of concerned worry on her face as she saw Abby standing and conversing with another member of the camp. She didn't recognize him, but then again, she never made an effort to learn to recognize any one of the people here, wanting as little association with them as possible...

"Abby, come away from here," she said, a little more sharply than she had originally intended, but she had just seen the odd look in the man's eyes as he looked down at her daughter.

"But..." Abby started half-heartedly, looking over to her mother. It wasn't that she didn't want to leave - no, despite the smile that had crossed her face, she still was a little upset over how the man had been acting - but she was worried that if she left, Cero might come back and she would miss his return.

But Rebekah wouldn't take any arguments. "Now, Abby," she said sternly, grabbing a hold of her daughter's hand. "I'm really sorry, I hope she wasn't bothering you," she added hastily, finishing the sentence in a single breath directed towards the man, before she pulled Abby away.

[Guest]

"You will simply have to wait until the next general issue day for your ration," asserted a nebbish of a man, sniffy and superior. Apparently, even among the inhuman and disenfranchised, there was a hierarchy, and Shaw found himself running into it. The trustee seemed to be extremely touchy about the procedure.

It was a hot, airless room, with a desk blocking the way to many shelves, and four cots tucked away in a corner, but it was a seat of power nonetheless.

Here was a bubble; the trappings of a semblance of normalcy in the form of a camp supply shack, stacks of paper, calculators and pens, like an office of decades past, before computers. There was a man behind the biggest desk in the place, blocking the way to the supplies themselves. Shaw understood the type well enough to realize that he had to try and be polite to the man, to show deference to his position, but an angry corner of his mind told him that he should jerk this man out of the bubble he lived in.

“I understand that you have rations and a system, but we have just been dumped into the general population, and we need basic supplies for hygiene’s sake if nothing else. If you don’t provide us with what we need, we’ll probably constitute a danger, in terms of lice and other sanitary issues, to other prisoners.” He tried to keep his voice even and mellow, his body-language non-confrontational. Unfortunately, a lot of people mistook politeness for weakness. Ironically, gang bangers were, contrary to popular lore, not the sorts to make that mistake when it came to cops. A middle class white collar type was more likely to treat a cop flippantly, in Shaw's experience. Something about entitlement.

“We are not prisoners, Shaw,” the man retorted, sharply, “We are detainees and awaiting determination. Some of us, at least, have done nothing to deserve this.”

So that was how the man was living with himself; he decided right then and there that he and Rachel were the reason the respectable Emergents got lumped in with the ‘scummy’ Emergents. He couldn’t help but heave a sigh, and it didn’t help his case any that the clerk saw that he was obviously losing his patience.

He didn't actually raise his voice, though he didn't lower it either; a clear, concise conversational tone did it, a calm announcement of the facts without bothering to sugar-coat, but without getting overly angry. Reasonable, almost.

“Look, man, we have all the time in the world, but I just want some soap for a shower, you see, and I don’t want to have to ask the screws to come up in here and vouch for me. Now I know you’re selling that shit on the side and making a profit doing it. See, I used to be an inner city narcotics detective, and I know every scam in the book. You’re a fuckin’ kiss-ass that hasn’t been caught in the act yet because these people are too scared to fuckin’ know what’s up. And if you know what’s good for you, pencil-neck, you’re gonna fuckin’ give me and my friend here our rations or the camp’s gonna find out what you do ahead of schedule. I don’t think the screws will care if you get shanked because they don’t really think of you any more than they think of me; you’re just another fuckin’ number to them. So cough it up or I upset the apple cart. You dig me, sweetie pie?”

It wasn’t so much the words, though they were certainly effective, or the way he leaned on him, almost taunted him with the ability to make life miserable, in the classic cop way that Rachel, perhaps, was vaguely familiar with. Though as a family lawyer, she probably heard more about it than she saw; this was pressure tactics at its best and Shaw seemed to have no problem with it.

A good cop knew which way to lean to flip a person over and make them give up other criminals to save their skins, which was the sort of skill that translated over to making an intransigent, corrupt bureaucrat skimming off his fellow prisoners to make his life comfortable.

Still, Shaw miscalculated; the little man vibrated as if angry, and called out, “Eddie! Alex! Ronny!”

Shaw knew then and there that he'd fucked up on how to handle this guy. Dealing with people and trying to leverage them was often hit or miss, and while he generally had a good track record on it, he missed here. Of course, he also knew that the best way to handle the guy was to kiss his ass, but his dignity wouldn't allow that. He'd sooner drink drain cleaner than flatter this Uncle Tom.

“I don’t think you understand, ex-OFFICER, no one gives a damn, and I’m not about to let some idiot flatfoot with delusions of his own toughness get in my way. It’s not merely me here, I have friends and people to answer to.” The man seemed particularly agitated, as if he were snapping back and releasing his own hostility toward Shaw; indeed, he held up his hands and curled them like claws, revealing rather nasty talons on them, glistening black, as his own features took on an almost leering aspect, like that of a gargoyle or a gremlin.

There were three of them, one of them had fur and bestial features, and was rather large, the other had four arms and tusks jutting out of his lower-lip. It was disconcerting to see such heavily mutated, if that word could apply, people. The third was a certain green face that Rachel would certainly recognize. They certainly looked intimidating.

Shaw wasn’t entirely sure he’d thought this one through, but he tried not to let the fear or the spike of adrenaline, the increased heart-rate, the miniscule trembling show, though Rachel would no doubt be able to pick up on that. And something else, the sudden rise of the temperature in the room, causing the man, herself, and the others to break out in a sweat. It was perceptibly hotter in the room than when they’d walked in, and not in a natural way.

Shaw, sort of committed at this point, said, “Fuck.”

[Igraine]

Oh, Rachel knew the type quite well, sitting so self-assured and pompous behind his little desk there. A petty bureaucrat, self-important in his own little fiefdom: she knew that threatening the little man was not going to get them what they wanted, but Tony continued on anyway. She’d handled this kind before at least a hundred different times, in the offices of state and county officials, and in the innumerable county and clerk offices. All they ever wanted, in the end, was a simple show of respect for their “authority” – no matter how limited or, really, laughable it might be. And ninety nine times out of a hundred, getting what she wanted came down to a simple matter of charm, and disarming, polite flattery in one form or another.

Which, quite obviously, did not seem to be Tony’s forte. Well, in all fairness, at this moment Rachel was not exactly “at her best” either. Greasy strands of blonde hair still hung limply about her face, where normally the golden tresses would be well-tended, coiffed, and styled immaculately. The shapeless orange jump suit and tennis shoes were a far cry from the crisply tailored, form-flattering business suits and designer shoes that – not so very long ago – had been her second skin. She was tired, exhausted really, from the hundred different traumas and petty privations she’d endured and survived these past weeks. The dark half-circles, almost like bruises under her pale blue eyes, set in a once-lovely face - now just a little too gaunt - were testimony to all this.

“Tony, please… ” she whispered, laying her hand gently on his arm as she could just feel the tensions began to escalate, the malice hanging in the air that felt like small electrical shocks running over her skin. She wanted this soap and shampoo almost as desperately as she had ever desired anything in her life, but she definitely did not like where this situation seemed headed. Rachel could… oh damn… she could almost smell the presence of others nearby, and at least one so unpleasantly familiar. Intimidating this little “lord of the supply room” wasn’t going to work, but her new companion seemed too frustrated, too angry, to realize his miscalculation in time and stop himself. She may have well have screamed at the top of her lungs on the little man’s desk, for all her quiet intervention seemed to matter.

She took an involuntary step back when the three other, ah, men stepped into the room. Oh, she knew it – just knew that bastard was close by, the green-skinned man’s yellow eyes narrowing viciously when he met her own flashing blue gaze. He’d gotten a bit more courage this time though, surrounded as he was by back up of his own it seemed. Rachel watched his eyes dart from the man behind the desk, now sporting talons and a vicious leer of his own - to Tony and her - and then to the two extremely large emergents on either side of him. The wickedly fanged smile that spread – quite literally – from ear to ear on his verdant face seemed to indicate he rather liked these new odds.

At the moment Rachel heard Tony curse, two things happened, both inside her and out. The temperature rose quite suddenly in the room, utterly defeating the “swamp cooler” air conditioning in the now-sweltering building. Rachel fell to one knee, her hands flat on the floor as her head hung down. The hot air filled her lungs, sweat breaking out suddenly on her forehead, falling in rivulets down her back. “Tony,” she gasped almost breathlessly, “what… what are you doing… ?”

And then, something inside her simply gave. Fight or flight… fight or flight… That had been the choice Rachel faced all this time in captivity. And she had been a “good girl” – she had tried to follow the rules, and do the “right thing.” She had given in for weeks now, praying to be left alone, to just be allowed some peace and a few painless moments – and it had gotten her nowhere.

No more… never again. Something welled up inside her. Grew. Whether it had been there all her life, or had only just “become,” she might never know. But it was as much “her” as the person she had always been: the tough lawyer and the loving daughter and sister, the faithful lover and the devoted advocate. But it – no, she - was not going to run or retreat again.

The woman lifted her head, her baleful gaze for the unfortunate green-skinned man alone. But the eyes that fell on him now were not quite the same anymore. Steel blue eyes paled to a storm cloud gray, glinting with a feral light. Her face elongated as her lips retracted and blackened, pulled back now to reveal a row of brilliantly white and glistening inch-long teeth. A light covering of golden fur, the color of the noon sun, began to form over her face, her arms and legs, even as the sweat in this unnatural and sudden heat stopped entirely. A long pink tongue lolled out of her mouth, past her teeth, as she began to pant, sides heaving in the hot air.

The almost sickening wet sound of breaking and popping bones filled the air, as some of her joints began to retract, and others elongate or bend in the direction no human’s ever should. And as the transformation continued, there was no pain – or at least none that she could feel. There was only freedom now, as exhilarating as anything she had ever known in her life. Freedom to do as she would, as she was called to do in the moment, with no more regret or worry than any animal in the wild would know.

She growled, long and low, at the four strange men before her, round gray eyes shifting between them before something only vaguely resembling words fell from her viciously fanged maw. Half-snarl, half guttural howl, they might have sounded vaguely like, “You… should run… “

[Kesteven]

With most of the other tenants busy with the new arrivals, the bunkhouse was almost empty, and there was a strange stillness in the air. Anyone who didn't know better might have thought it was peaceful.

Some might have called it ugly, but to Euryl, the cheap pine and wavy steel of the underside of the bunk above were a soothing vision of security and normality. The mattress beneath him was nothing more than a two-inch thick padded mat, and it smelled vaguely of something like mothballs, but it was the closest thing he had to a home now, and that sort of comfort was worth a lot these days.

He heard a shuffling noise and a face appeared around the side of the bunk, lurking beneath a red baseball cap. It wasn't entirely unwelcome, but Euryl would just as soon have had some time alone. It had been a long day.

"Hey, Scott. Didn't see you there."

"Hey." There was a pause. "Saw your little run-in just now. Your horoscope say anything about meeting a tall, dark stranger?"

"Ha, ha. Thanks for helping me out, by the way."

"Can't do everything for you now, can I?"

"I thought I was gonna die!"

"You look alright to me."

There was another silence.

"I guess he wasn't invisible after all, then. You know, that little girl really had me going for a bit, pretending not to see him. And when nobody came to help... well, I suppose they're used to seeing that sort of thing here."

"No, I wouldn't say they're used to seeing quite that sort of thing," said Scott softly.

"Wait, so you're saying-"

"Mortal eyes don't give the full story, trust me, I should know. Invisible's as good a word as any for what that thing was."

"But... you saw it?"

"The second sight, man. Did you really think that with all these emergents everywhere you were the only one that had it?"

"Second sight? Isn't that just another name for that ESP bullshit?"

"Come off it. You've been seeing things other people can't for a while now. You just don't wanna admit it because then people will think you're some kind of loon."

"Yeah well, maybe I am. Sane people don't get locked up in places like this. Sane people don't get in fights with monsters made of shadows or..." Claws, scratching at the door, splintering wood. Red liquid draining steadily through the cracks. A howl, a scream. Shining faces. A music he'd never heard before, a thousand strains in perfect harmony. Gigantic eyes, glowing like twin moons. "...uh... stuff like that. Crazy stuff."

"I don't need to be a frigging psychologist to tell you you're twice as sane as the nuts that put you here. At least, that's what I thought, until you bum rushed an imp and then punched it in the face. Mind telling me what the hell were you thinking?"

"I wanted to see if it was real," said Euryl, feeling a bit silly.

"You didn't have to punch me in the face to know I was real."

"No, that was after it- you know what, it doesn't matter now."

"Whatever, man. It's real and it's pissed. You better watch out, those bastards hold a grudge like you wouldn't believe. Nothing better to do, I guess."

"What was it? I thought imps were like, ugly little goblin things."

"Imps, púca, fairies, demons, bogeys, aluxub, kitsunes, every culture in the world has myths about hidden beings that cause trouble with tricks and illusions. Accounts of where they come from and what they look like differ, but the uniting feature is that you do NOT want to be on their bad side."

"Ugh, great."

"There's only two ways to deal with spirits like that. One, win them over with worship and offerings."

Euryl cringed. He could almost see the thing's triumphant grin as he grovelled beneath it. There was no way in hell.

"And... the other way?"

"Drive it away. Taking a pop isn't going to work a second time though, he'll be ready. You'll either need magical protection, or you'll have to find some way to beat him at his own game. Trick him, distract him, scare him, shame him, whatever makes him stay the hell away. Just be careful. His kind think nothing of murder. It's just a game to them."

"Don't suppose you could help me out? Know how to do any of that magical protection stuff?"

"What do I look like, a fuckin' wizard? If we had some leverage I might be able to swing something but right now we got nothing. Besides, I have other things to worry about."

"Other than the demon out for my blood?"

"Get your head outta your ass, you're not the only one with problems. Something's about to go down. Can't you feel it?"

"I don't-"

"Stop thinking like one of them. Use the sight."

Now he was looking for it, there was something wrong. The air felt heavy, and oddly tense. There were almost waves of threat coming from somewhere, and each one of them made his heart pound a little faster. The source, closer now... he could almost feel the sweat, and the heartbeats. One of them sounded... wrong. The air was even thicker here, and hotter, almost suffocating. Suddenly flames roared in front of his eyes, and he was burning, his flesh blistering under the intense heat. Through the fire something huge and dark leaped towards him, closing razor fangs around his throat, a horrible snarl reverberating through the bones into his skull as the smoke and crushing jaws choked the last of the air from his brain.

He snapped back onto the bed, gasping and coughing.

"Wh- what was that?"

"I don't know, yet. But it sure isn't good."

[vitamin_kitten]

For the most part, the van was dark, hot, and smelled like body odor and fear. Audra was jostled along beside her fellow passengers as the van made its way across the sand. At some point, a few of the men had tried to force the door open, but it was locked from the outside. A metal partition separated them from whoever was driving; over the roar of the engine and the squeaks and jingling of the van itself, Audra could faintly hear voices on the other side of the barrier. Someone was crying.

What have you gotten yourself into? Audra asked herself as she sat crouched on the floor of the van, stuffed uncomfortably between the feet of at least five other people. Do you really think this is going to get you your answers? Do you even remember what your question was anymore?

She looked up, gazing around at the shadowed faces of the people in the van with her. Most of them were staring blankly down at the floor or their laps, some of them had bruises or bloody injuries on their faces from the mini-riot. All of them looked to be as lost as Audra felt.

What is happening, she reminded herself. That's what I want to know. What is happening.

The ride continued mostly in silence, aside from the angry growl of the engine, and with the unceasing rocking of the van. By the time it came to a stop, Audra felt carsick.

The door slid open, and an MP ushered them all out with the assistance of his gun- a very threatening and a very real presence in Audra's mind. She didn't need to be told twice; as soon as she was able to stand, she jumped out of the van and onto the sandy ground below. At first, all she could see was white-gold filling the entire expanse of her vision. Once her eyes had adjusted, however, she was able to take in what was clearly the Emergent camp. There were small, dingy looking buildings scattered throughout the otherwise monotonous landscape, which was caged in with huge concrete barriers. More people than the Health Department probably would have allowed under normal circumstances milled about in a wide open space of sand and a few benches. There were a few more vans full of people, but other than that, there was nothing. It was a hot, dry, and desolate prison.

"All right, listen up!" barked an authoritative voice. Audra turned her attention from her surroundings to a decorated man with a gun, and what was probably a permanent scowl on his face. The other people did as well. "You'll be taken into the building over there for processing and testing; if you're found to have an abnormal traits or characteristics, you will be logged and filed and detained here until we can figure out what else to do with you. Any normal folks will be free to go with a warning." He paused, looking from one face in the crowd to the next. "Most of you will probably end up staying though," he added, then pointed over their shoulders to the building he'd referenced a moment ago. "All right! Go and get processed! Do not put up a fight, or it will be worse for you!"

Some of the people began to grumble, but they were quickly interrupted.

"Hey! You're lucky we don't keep you all here regardless of your Emergent status! We're giving you the courtesy of testing you first. This is for your own safety!" The grumbling came to a gradual stop, and everyone turned and slowly made their way into the processing building.

Inside was a large room set up with gurneys and makeshift examination tables. Everyone was asked to sit on one, and the blood-drawing began. Hesitantly, Audra rolled up her sleeve, and winced as a lady resembling a toad came over and stabbed her with a needle.

"Alot of people coming through here?" Audra asked her tentatively, in an attempt to make friendly conversation and possibly calm her nerves. The woman grunted in reply, and Audra sighed. After a few vials of blood, the woman pressed a square of gauze to the puncture- hard- and taped it in place. She proceeded to take her temperature and blood pressure, then gestured toward a scale.

"Get on."

With an expression of hurt, Audra silently obliged. The toad-woman (Audra began to wonder if this woman wasn't an Emergent herself) noted Audra's weight, then pointed to the other end of the building where a doorway led into a narrow corridor.

"Go down there and wait, and we'll let you know your status when we get your test results back."

It was the longest string of words Audra had heard come out of the woman's mouth, and with another attempt at friendliness, Audra smiled as she made her way towards the doorway; the woman had already turned her back.

A few of the others from the van, and some others she didn't recognize, were making they're way toward the door the toad-woman had indicated, and while Audra wanted to break the ice and try to make at least one friend, no one appeared to be in a talking mood.

I can understand that. She glanced around at the faces. No one wants to be here ...

An MP opened the door and the detainees moved into the narrow corridor. What they hadn't been expecting, however, were what looked like jail cells lining both walls. It looked like a county jail or something. Before anyone had a chance to protest, they were each forced into cells. Some of them were in cells alone, others joined other detainees.

"Hey!" Audra complained as she was forced into a cell with two other women. The door slammed shut behind her, and she stood there, staring desolately out through the bars.

[Haar]

His dorm room reminded him of a single in one of those mass manufactured college dorm rooms built back in the 1960s. The walls were all reinforced concrete with a thin white layer of gloss paint in an attempt to make it feel less prison like. As much as anyone then liked to complain about the conformity and deadness of Soviet architecture, they sure did a fantastic job replicating it. Eitherway, this is a digression that Greyson was not going to meditate on for too long. The paper work on a small desk on the opposite corner of his room -- really a glossy brochure -- more than anything, built from a classic inDesign template that he recognized from his work at the medical record processing firm he used to work at, informed him that he was a "latent" whose power was too dangerous to be left in the general population. Given that he had little to no control, it was better for everyone if he was isolated in a "comfortable" environment during sleeping hours so no sub- or unconscious accidents occur.

He supposed he could figure himself lucky. Compared to the others, his room was private and had some amenities that the common dorms did not have. Still, it was unpleasant, sterile and there was an air of mold and institutional cleanser that lent itself to that feeling of imprisonment that he had become familiar with. He rose and walked toward the heavy steel door with a bullet-proof mesh window and tried the knob. No go. It was locked from the outside. He went over to the canvas and pine chair and sat down, resting his head onto his palms and began to think about his predicament. The room was pretty much a prison cell with a single steel toilet, sink, and the desk and bed. It was likely no larger than 10x8, if only to give the room some division of space.

As it seemed, for whatever reason, he was granted with the ability to manipulate matter on a subatomic, and electromagnetic level. In fancy parlance, he could subtly manipulate the weak and strong nuclear forces between atoms and molecules and remove specific elements from objects, and people, apparently, either to consume or manipulate their structure. In layman's terms -- if he wanted to change or eat shit, he could.

The issue was, he had no idea in the damnedest how to do this. And if he did, leaving would be a cinch. The door itself was likely galvanized steel, with nickel or magnesium reinforcement. Remove the iron from the door, like he did from one of his captor's blood stream, and the door would turn essentially into flimsy graphite and fall apart.

At least, that's how it would work in theory, but thinking back to his chemistry class, depending on the process, and the other elements that had worked their way into the door, he could just as easily create a diamond or other well-nigh unbreakable substance. And graphite itself was fairly sturdy given that it was used for writing implements -- but that was beside the point. Perhaps extracting the silicates, calcites, and/or carbons from the walls and then manipulating the rebar, he might be able to create a hole and get out of here. The question remained, how did he do it?

Matthew spent a good half-hour daydreaming about ways to manipulate the world around him, before a loud knock came from the door and it opened, with a rather statuesque blonde woman standing there in a white lab coat.

"Good morning, Mr. Greyson -- I do apologize with how roughly you have been treated lately. My name is Dr. Leslie Schumacher. I think we might have some answers for you. Would you like some breakfast?"

He felt his stomach. He was hungry, that much was true. And he rose, if only to greet her. Giving her a faint nod, he asked: "You know what is happening to me?"

"Well, you specifically, no, but there is a fair amount we have learned about emergents in the recent days -- and you are a subject of particular interest, if only for the uniqueness of your seemingly latent ability and the danger it possesses."

"That does not really answer any questions or make me feel any better, Dr. Schumacher," Matthew felt the baleful anger welling up inside of him. He wanted to know exactly what was happening to him and why he was detained.

"Please, let's go have something to eat and I'll be happy to explain as much as I can. I understand this is frustrating, but the hard part of is over. I assure you, despite the gruff treatment, we really are trying to do what is best for you."

"Yea, I keep hearing that," he spat back with venom, but hunger, as a biological motivator, and even stale cornflakes with luke-warm, past its prime skim milk, which would likely be the institutional breakfast he was issued.

He was pleasantly surprised. Decent eggs, not half-bad pancakes, and a step-above average quality sugar-based substitute syrup along with overcooked, but still decent bacon. The quality of a good Denny's breakfast -- as hard as that was to find. It was probably the first decent meal he had in a week and a half. He did not remember eating much the past few days. Likely he was just force-fed energy bars and fortified saline drips while the scientists did all sorts of humiliating tests. Or he could have been tube fed while he was in medically induced comas for transport and brain-wave observation. His throat did have that slight pain of having a tube shoved down it. He ate quickly and noisily and exchanged a few pleasantries over breakfast. His mood was surprisingly improved after the meal -- given the fact they had ground up a double dose of a powerful anti-anxyletic and placed it in his food. The logic was he probably would take in information more easily, be more compliant to questioning and answering if he were not so uptight. One of the ogrish doctors at the processing facility did write him in as extremely hostile and obstinate. Also, it was a gambit they were willing to play to have his latent powers unleashed upon some unsuspecting test subject.

The initial questioning and orientation was fairly pleasant, all things considered. It was in another cold, sterile room like one would see in a cop television drama, two way mirror and all. Dr. Schumacher introduced a few tests and explained some of the basics that were known about the Emergence. It was reassuring that it seemed to be a reasonably common occurrence. Again, the litany of questions was reasonably simple -- manifestation of abilities, strange feelings, symptomatic issues, and so on and so forth during the first few days. Weird dreams? Oh yea, that was a definite. It was all such a blur. Wow, he felt good.

Then came the tests. They were going to pry his powers out of him. Dr. Schumacher quietly excused herself after their pleasant therapy session. Matthew smiled pleasantly, if somewhat goofily. He was a bit drowsy and more than a bit woozy, but he managed to stay up. A few moments later, a man in a clean suit came in and dropped off a lead cube in front of Matthew and left the room. Sitting there, his lambent eyes would stare at the grey box. He quirked his head as a voice came over the loudspeaker: "Mr. Greyson, inside that box is a small core of decayed uranium. Do not worry, the radiation levels are well below that of which you would receive sitting in the sun everyday for a week. We just want to test a hypothesis of your 'talents.'"

"Okay, Mr. Talking Box," -- yes, the pills were that strong. But without the influences of the mind telling him what was happening being impossible, perhaps it would be easier to get the core out of the lead cube without deconstructing the cube itself. He sat there, and began to puzzle in his mind -- envisioning the little slug of uranium hidden inside the cube. Of course, decayed/depleted uranium? Safe? Hell no. He saw the pictures of the victims of depleted uranium on the internet. But he didn't care about that right now. Too relaxed. Okay! Time to get this slug out. He looked at the cube and squinted his eyes -- no, that was no good. Gotta visualize this man, he kept telling himself. He put his hands on the table and concentrated on the interior of the cube for about 2 minutes. Nope. No effect.

Meanwhile, in the other room, the scientists wrote notes on their clipboards. Finally, one of them pushed the button to speak over the box, and said: "Try imagining the valences and atomic structure -- and that dispersing and lifting out of the cube."

"Okay, Mr. Talking Box." And Matthew did just that. The cube began to rattle slightly, and up out it, small specks of fine grey dust began to appear. The slug re-formulated itself into a small round bullet, and plopped on top of the lead cube unceremoniously and rolled to a stop in a small indentation that had formed in the top during the process of rearranging the particles of matter that formulated both elemental constructs.

"Excellent, Mr. Greyson -- we will send in another test subject."

"Okay, Mr. Talking Box..." -- and the tech came in, removed the lead cube and its uranium bullet while another placed a rat in a cage.

"This may be familiar to you if you had advanced biology either in high school or university, Mr. Greyson," the voice over the box came again, Greyson noticed there was a slight British tinge to it. Who were these people? They could not possibly be DHS. Again, he was a bit too relaxed to be overly concerned about that at the moment, the voice continued: "Denature protein -- in other words, figure out a way to remove a particular element that makes up the amino acids and genetic structure of the rodent in front of you."

"Awww, but its a cute little ratty..." Matthew said. Yep, whatever they gave him was strong.

"It's a rat. Get over it. This is in the interest of science, my friend."

"Aw, okay." He looked at the rat and tried to remember the basic elements for life -- well, water -- technically a molecule -- was one of them, but they wanted him to denature protein. Okay... every protein for life contained ... what was it... come on AP Biology, don't fail me now... carbon was one, sulphur... nitrogen... hydrogen, phosphorous and oxygen. That was it. Hmmm, it seemed if he had some sort of relation to the atom, it was easier to remove. Sulphur seemed easiest, especially as he just had eggs. They were probably beaters, but their yellow color and the scent of bad eggs was all too easy to imagine. So, that is what he would going to denature from this poor white rat. Soon, a substantial portion of cake sulphur appeared next to the rat, while the rat itself, without the composite elements of life to remain... well, alive, literally dissolved into a white substance. It seemed cruel, but the doctors assure him that the process was painless. Without the supporting elements of life, the rat literally could not feel itself disintegrate into what was essentially spunk and denatured protein.

These tests would continue through several more trials -- it seemed that Matthew was coming to grips with his ability, and though was placed under severe watch with at least one armed sniper trained at him at all times (to his ignorance), he would be dropped into the general population, as he was deemed stable enough not to be a threat or cause of accidental death -- within reason.

The next day, he was moved into one of the common dormitories.

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