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xp_logsLaurie, Kyle, Nica, and Alison's terrible, horrible, very bad night continues.
Laurie carefully labeled the last jar and placed it in the specimen fridge. She’d need to write up her observations at the end of the day but she was positive this particular mutant’s organs might be useful for several experiments involving viruses.
The Baron had wanted to find a useful pathogen that could be easily controlled and unlikely to break containments when put in place.
She looked over at the young girl laying ready for her on the table. At one time she’d cared about a clean workspace, about infection protocols and ‘Do no harm’
The Baron had no use for those things, he’d quickly made her see the error of her ways. Speed and results were what mattered and if she wanted to matter, to not be put back in the room, then she had to keep providing both.
Alison came to in about the same state she went out in: cold, restricted, and completely terrified. She could still feel the bones grasping at her arms and legs, only this time they weren't bone, but leather straps. The weight wasn't a boundless ocean but a restraint system keeping her tied down to a table. The freezing cold was metal, not water.
Still, the parallels were too much for her. She woke up screaming and thrashing, trying to get free from the hands that no longer held her.
Someone was screaming. Once that would have spurred Nica into action, diving in to try and save the day, but she was no hero. She was a murderer, a failure. What good could she do? But still she pushed open the door of the operating theatre and went inside, an automatic response more than a choice. The room inside was a laboratory out of the worst horror movie nightmares, blood and body parts and who knew what else splattering the walls and lying discarded on the floor. And on the table was the latest victim, a familiar blond, screaming and trying her hardest to break her bonds.
<I>You should do something,</I> a small voice said inside her. Nica winced. What could she do, besides get another person killed? But she moved forward any way, only to be suddenly assailed with a sensation of fear unlike anything she'd ever felt. Her heart pounded, her mouth went dry and every fiber of her being screamed at her to run, only she was rooted to the spot. What was she so afraid of?
A sound from the other side of the room caught her attention and provided the answer. Laurie was there, her labcoat covered in gore and her skin a faint purple. Nica remembered from the X-Men's files that excessive powers use made Laurie turn purple. She must be using her pheromone power to create the fear reaction.
Everything reeked, and Kyle had stopped analyzing it forever and a half ago. It didn't matter if the smell of shit was under the smell of dead stuff or if the smell of blood was bigger and browner than the fake-orange tang of antiseptic clenser. None of that mattered, everything smelled bad and dead or dying.
His hands shook as he pressed himself up against the hospital corridor, trying to listen for anything under the screaming and around the hailstorm of smells. His hands shook and sweat ran down his back, cold and clammy, and Kyle ground his teeth against the shaking to try to force it to stop.
Everything reeked of blood and shit and death and fear and nothing he did, not biting his tongue or pressing his forehead against the cold tile or, fuck, he'd even tried stupid meditation tricks in his head and fuck all of it worked like it should, his heart was racing and he couldn't smell his own sweat under all the smell of fear, but he could feel his shirt sticking to his skin, and every breath he took, shallow and fast, brought in more of the smell of fear, heavy and thick and coating his tongue in a way he hadn't smelled and tasted since
Not since Genosha
Kyle's hands still shook and he still dig his claws into his palms and he could still feel sticky clammy sweat everywhere, but fear is anger's cousin, and Kyle's deep growl swept the screams and cries for help out of his mind.
It took Alison what she would later reflect back on as an embarrassingly long time to come down off her own terror, sore and aching from where the straps had bitten into her skin. But in her sort of dazed coherence, it was the small, little things that came back to her and cut through instinct to get at the rational mind hiding beneath it.
People always forgot the weird little quirks and limitations that came with Alison's powers, herself included sometimes. The weirdest and most round-about side effect was that her powers acted almost as a budget version of synesthesia. But where the most common example was seeing sound as colors, Alison could feel the tactile sensation of sound, instead.
It was something that was so inherent to her abilities, so core to her sense of self, that she almost never thought about it consciously. But she could easily feel when it was missing, as easily if she was missing a limb. And so when the crazy machines and beeping vital equipment all failed to prick at her senses like they should have, she felt its lack. And when Kyle started growling, that one she felt.
She reached with her powers, twisting as light flowed from under her skin. It was a simple flex of will; too simple, like reaching for a cloud. It floated, aetherally. She dug deeper, below the foggy, hazy feeling that she realized was her mind's contribution to this... abomination of a world was the only way she could describe it. She was real, she realized, and so was Kyle, and probably the others, but everything else was fake, as though it was some sort of shared delusion, a dream world where their fears and expectations mingled into a kaleidoscopic mishmash of sense and insanity. Her skin was glowing not because she was actually using her powers, but because she thought she was, and if that was the case, then all she needed to do to wake up was....
--her will hooked around her powers, and the false not-light beneath her skin exploded into an inferno of molten brass.
The subject was awake? And using her powers? Laurie went still, glanced up at the corner where she knew in her gut and her mind and her soul that she was being watched for any mistake, any little tiny error that would make her the girl on the table and not the one doing the cutting, and bit her tongue so badly that she could taste blood.
Her heart raced, her hair stuck to the back of her neck with a cold sweat, and she bore down on her power, soaking her gloves and sleeves with it, until even her outer clothes had blossoms of purple.
She was not going to be the one on the table.
Huh. So that's what his voice looked like. It was pretty striking, Kyle half noted. It'd have been more cool if he wasn't running head-down ignoring the rapid-fire beat of his heart and breathlessness. He could go without breathing for as long as it took to take a diving leap over the table, through the outer edge of Alison's liquid metal light show and grab Laurie around the waist. She was rank with her powers, and her shirt was sticky, and his heart did that goddamn flutter-stop-flutter as his healing factor fought Laurie's powers.
Kyle's entire chest hurt. His back hurt. His arm hurt. His jaw hurt, and he was pretty sure that wasn't from hitting the floor and knocking his head against Laurie's, she was pretty squishy, so somewhere he filed the pain under "my stupid friend made my heart stop and then my stupid healing factor started it back up" so he let himself groan. "This is like the third goddamn time. Or second. I don't even know. How many times I gotta fight you?" And did it count if she didn't' remember the worst time?
The combination of Allison's extreme dazzle and Laurie's pheromones had literally knocked Nica onto her ass... and onto something soft and sort of squishy. She scrambled up in a hurry, brushing off her butt, and yelped as she saw what she'd squashed. It was a sort of like if someone had crossed a baby dragon with an octopus - it was scaly and kind of slimy and hay waaaaaay too many tentacles. "Ew! Ewewewew!" was all she could manage backing up away from the thing as fast as she could, until she bumped into the operating table. Only it wasn't an operating table, it was an ornate, if very dusty and cobwebby wooden dining table. And the lab wasn't a lab, it was a sort of fancy dining room, or would have been if it hadn't been neglected and abandoned for however many years. Water stains and peeling wallpaper weren't that fancy. "Wait, what? What the fuck just happened?"
"Ugh, my head," Alison muttered, rubbing at one eye. "Did anyone get the plate of that bus that hit me? Or the three that came after it?" Seriously, her head was killing her and she felt like she'd gone ten rounds in the ring with fucking Kyle again, even though she'd sworn never ever ever again after each of the last five times.
Then something brushed against her leg, and in the span of half a second she'd screamed (again), lept backwards (knocking over her chair in the same motion), and then used the sound of the heavy chair hitting the floor to absolutely blast another one of the weird dragonsquid things halfway across the room into a wall, where it hit with a splat.
Four hundred percent done with Halloween. Maybe even four hundred fifty percent. Kyle was so done with it, it was a stupid holiday, he couldn't even eat candy. He picked up his arm, shook out some of the numbness, and then dug around under his ass and in his pocket to retrieve a frantically buzzing phone. "Yo, Doc Grey says it's some kind of fear nonsense, and we gotta find the holy grail or a horcrux or some shit." All he really could read clearly was fear and object, his head was still pounding from Laurie's gone-evil-again induced heart attack antics. "So, yeah, somebody find that, I'm just gonna, you know. Be here. For a couple."
Nica's head was still spinning but as she looked around, she saw none of the others was really able to do much. Allison was dead on her feet, Kyle was worse and Laurie... Nica's gaze skittered away from the other woman, still remembering the figure in the blood-stained lab coat. It was up to her then. A simple task, and yet... Swallowing down the sudden lump in her throat she forced herself forward to the table - it was the only thing in the room.
Everything was dusty and cobwebby, apart from the marks left by Allison... and a metal goblet, set between two candlesticks. The candlesticks were dull and old-looking, but the goblet looked like it had just come out of a Pottery Barn - shiny and gleaming, the silver reflecting the room around it. "
Got it," she said, her voice shaking.
"Let's get the fuck out of here."
Laurie carefully labeled the last jar and placed it in the specimen fridge. She’d need to write up her observations at the end of the day but she was positive this particular mutant’s organs might be useful for several experiments involving viruses.
The Baron had wanted to find a useful pathogen that could be easily controlled and unlikely to break containments when put in place.
She looked over at the young girl laying ready for her on the table. At one time she’d cared about a clean workspace, about infection protocols and ‘Do no harm’
The Baron had no use for those things, he’d quickly made her see the error of her ways. Speed and results were what mattered and if she wanted to matter, to not be put back in the room, then she had to keep providing both.
Alison came to in about the same state she went out in: cold, restricted, and completely terrified. She could still feel the bones grasping at her arms and legs, only this time they weren't bone, but leather straps. The weight wasn't a boundless ocean but a restraint system keeping her tied down to a table. The freezing cold was metal, not water.
Still, the parallels were too much for her. She woke up screaming and thrashing, trying to get free from the hands that no longer held her.
Someone was screaming. Once that would have spurred Nica into action, diving in to try and save the day, but she was no hero. She was a murderer, a failure. What good could she do? But still she pushed open the door of the operating theatre and went inside, an automatic response more than a choice. The room inside was a laboratory out of the worst horror movie nightmares, blood and body parts and who knew what else splattering the walls and lying discarded on the floor. And on the table was the latest victim, a familiar blond, screaming and trying her hardest to break her bonds.
<I>You should do something,</I> a small voice said inside her. Nica winced. What could she do, besides get another person killed? But she moved forward any way, only to be suddenly assailed with a sensation of fear unlike anything she'd ever felt. Her heart pounded, her mouth went dry and every fiber of her being screamed at her to run, only she was rooted to the spot. What was she so afraid of?
A sound from the other side of the room caught her attention and provided the answer. Laurie was there, her labcoat covered in gore and her skin a faint purple. Nica remembered from the X-Men's files that excessive powers use made Laurie turn purple. She must be using her pheromone power to create the fear reaction.
Everything reeked, and Kyle had stopped analyzing it forever and a half ago. It didn't matter if the smell of shit was under the smell of dead stuff or if the smell of blood was bigger and browner than the fake-orange tang of antiseptic clenser. None of that mattered, everything smelled bad and dead or dying.
His hands shook as he pressed himself up against the hospital corridor, trying to listen for anything under the screaming and around the hailstorm of smells. His hands shook and sweat ran down his back, cold and clammy, and Kyle ground his teeth against the shaking to try to force it to stop.
Everything reeked of blood and shit and death and fear and nothing he did, not biting his tongue or pressing his forehead against the cold tile or, fuck, he'd even tried stupid meditation tricks in his head and fuck all of it worked like it should, his heart was racing and he couldn't smell his own sweat under all the smell of fear, but he could feel his shirt sticking to his skin, and every breath he took, shallow and fast, brought in more of the smell of fear, heavy and thick and coating his tongue in a way he hadn't smelled and tasted since
Not since Genosha
Kyle's hands still shook and he still dig his claws into his palms and he could still feel sticky clammy sweat everywhere, but fear is anger's cousin, and Kyle's deep growl swept the screams and cries for help out of his mind.
It took Alison what she would later reflect back on as an embarrassingly long time to come down off her own terror, sore and aching from where the straps had bitten into her skin. But in her sort of dazed coherence, it was the small, little things that came back to her and cut through instinct to get at the rational mind hiding beneath it.
People always forgot the weird little quirks and limitations that came with Alison's powers, herself included sometimes. The weirdest and most round-about side effect was that her powers acted almost as a budget version of synesthesia. But where the most common example was seeing sound as colors, Alison could feel the tactile sensation of sound, instead.
It was something that was so inherent to her abilities, so core to her sense of self, that she almost never thought about it consciously. But she could easily feel when it was missing, as easily if she was missing a limb. And so when the crazy machines and beeping vital equipment all failed to prick at her senses like they should have, she felt its lack. And when Kyle started growling, that one she felt.
She reached with her powers, twisting as light flowed from under her skin. It was a simple flex of will; too simple, like reaching for a cloud. It floated, aetherally. She dug deeper, below the foggy, hazy feeling that she realized was her mind's contribution to this... abomination of a world was the only way she could describe it. She was real, she realized, and so was Kyle, and probably the others, but everything else was fake, as though it was some sort of shared delusion, a dream world where their fears and expectations mingled into a kaleidoscopic mishmash of sense and insanity. Her skin was glowing not because she was actually using her powers, but because she thought she was, and if that was the case, then all she needed to do to wake up was....
--her will hooked around her powers, and the false not-light beneath her skin exploded into an inferno of molten brass.
The subject was awake? And using her powers? Laurie went still, glanced up at the corner where she knew in her gut and her mind and her soul that she was being watched for any mistake, any little tiny error that would make her the girl on the table and not the one doing the cutting, and bit her tongue so badly that she could taste blood.
Her heart raced, her hair stuck to the back of her neck with a cold sweat, and she bore down on her power, soaking her gloves and sleeves with it, until even her outer clothes had blossoms of purple.
She was not going to be the one on the table.
Huh. So that's what his voice looked like. It was pretty striking, Kyle half noted. It'd have been more cool if he wasn't running head-down ignoring the rapid-fire beat of his heart and breathlessness. He could go without breathing for as long as it took to take a diving leap over the table, through the outer edge of Alison's liquid metal light show and grab Laurie around the waist. She was rank with her powers, and her shirt was sticky, and his heart did that goddamn flutter-stop-flutter as his healing factor fought Laurie's powers.
Kyle's entire chest hurt. His back hurt. His arm hurt. His jaw hurt, and he was pretty sure that wasn't from hitting the floor and knocking his head against Laurie's, she was pretty squishy, so somewhere he filed the pain under "my stupid friend made my heart stop and then my stupid healing factor started it back up" so he let himself groan. "This is like the third goddamn time. Or second. I don't even know. How many times I gotta fight you?" And did it count if she didn't' remember the worst time?
The combination of Allison's extreme dazzle and Laurie's pheromones had literally knocked Nica onto her ass... and onto something soft and sort of squishy. She scrambled up in a hurry, brushing off her butt, and yelped as she saw what she'd squashed. It was a sort of like if someone had crossed a baby dragon with an octopus - it was scaly and kind of slimy and hay waaaaaay too many tentacles. "Ew! Ewewewew!" was all she could manage backing up away from the thing as fast as she could, until she bumped into the operating table. Only it wasn't an operating table, it was an ornate, if very dusty and cobwebby wooden dining table. And the lab wasn't a lab, it was a sort of fancy dining room, or would have been if it hadn't been neglected and abandoned for however many years. Water stains and peeling wallpaper weren't that fancy. "Wait, what? What the fuck just happened?"
"Ugh, my head," Alison muttered, rubbing at one eye. "Did anyone get the plate of that bus that hit me? Or the three that came after it?" Seriously, her head was killing her and she felt like she'd gone ten rounds in the ring with fucking Kyle again, even though she'd sworn never ever ever again after each of the last five times.
Then something brushed against her leg, and in the span of half a second she'd screamed (again), lept backwards (knocking over her chair in the same motion), and then used the sound of the heavy chair hitting the floor to absolutely blast another one of the weird dragonsquid things halfway across the room into a wall, where it hit with a splat.
Four hundred percent done with Halloween. Maybe even four hundred fifty percent. Kyle was so done with it, it was a stupid holiday, he couldn't even eat candy. He picked up his arm, shook out some of the numbness, and then dug around under his ass and in his pocket to retrieve a frantically buzzing phone. "Yo, Doc Grey says it's some kind of fear nonsense, and we gotta find the holy grail or a horcrux or some shit." All he really could read clearly was fear and object, his head was still pounding from Laurie's gone-evil-again induced heart attack antics. "So, yeah, somebody find that, I'm just gonna, you know. Be here. For a couple."
Nica's head was still spinning but as she looked around, she saw none of the others was really able to do much. Allison was dead on her feet, Kyle was worse and Laurie... Nica's gaze skittered away from the other woman, still remembering the figure in the blood-stained lab coat. It was up to her then. A simple task, and yet... Swallowing down the sudden lump in her throat she forced herself forward to the table - it was the only thing in the room.
Everything was dusty and cobwebby, apart from the marks left by Allison... and a metal goblet, set between two candlesticks. The candlesticks were dull and old-looking, but the goblet looked like it had just come out of a Pottery Barn - shiny and gleaming, the silver reflecting the room around it. "
Got it," she said, her voice shaking.
"Let's get the fuck out of here."
