For Treason, Act I, Scene iv
May. 4th, 2026 10:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsKyle, Liam, Laura, Celeste and Jessie wake up in isolation and react to their abductions.
TW: Minor transphobia, violence
"RFB in the left femoral head." Femoral. He knew that term. Femoral femoral - femur. Right. The gunshot to his fucking thigh. Kyle tried to push up from - whatever he was face down on, and got two gloved hands harshly pushing him back down. Ice cold pain rippled down his leg. He bit his tongue trying not to howl, and then a sick pop, heat, the tug of stitches, the wet slap of a pressure bandage -
and he flipped, all his body weight on his arms, kicked out with the good leg, contacted someone - felt ribs give, not his, landed in a crouch, and tackled - someone. No one smelled right. These were not his people. Nobody would operate on his fucking thigh without pain meds if they knew him or gave a shit.
The stun baton to his ribs burned, and he snarled, and headbutted the wielder. The kick to his - shit fuck, injured fucking leg was worse and he crumpled, could not get his weight under him again, and went down to fists in his gut.
=
Laura's eyes shot open as the tranquilizers wore off and jumped off the cot in a defensive stance. The room smelled foreign, but the blood on her brought back the memory of the last guy she stabbed before being poked again by the needle filled with drugs. Taking in her current location, it reminded her of the isolation rooms that Dr. Rice would put her in when she would disappoint him. Her blood ran cold, did he take her back? Fear started to set in.
Looking back at the door she unseathed her claws and started to unleash fury on the door.
=
Waking up, Liam felt like he'd been out to an all night rave and came back with some very questionable decisions and maybe something died on him. It took a moment for things to come into focus, the marching band played behind his eyes, drums beating in time with his heart. A cell. Fucking hell, not again. Maybe he'd never leave anywhere ever again. Groaning, he closed his eyes for the moment, not going back to sleep. He needed to be ready to escape if he got the opportunity and right now he wasn't sure he could stand.
=
14 stared, and something almost but not quite 14 stared back. She had been forced both unconscious and awake simultaneously long before they'd gotten Celeste to this... wherever this was, and it was not doing her headache any favors.
The room was stripped bare. Four concrete walls housing what was almost a prison cell. It would have been remarkably uninspired, if not for the concerning issue that there were two beds because there were two identical blondes. 14 didn't recognize herself, and unlike how most people meant it, for 14 this was quite literal.
Sitting opposite Celeste as if looking in a mirror was, impossibly, a new her. It was like wearing a new dress that did not quite fit, stretching in ways that were uncomfortable and just ever so slightly wrong. And worse was the brain. There was something about this new hardware she had found herself unwillingly forced into that she could not yet identify, but it was already starting to itch in a way that did not quite exist.
She raised its arm/she watched it raise its arm. She made it speak/she heard it speak. Two heads tilted as one, turning inquisitively with a slow and methodical precision that came from deep thought. Briefly, 14 thought that this might be what it felt like to drive a new car for the first time after decades with an older model: fundamentally still the same, but undeniably lacking in wear and tear and with a smoothness that bordered on uncanny.
=
The first thing Jessie noticed was that it was cold.
She sat up, rubbing her head and shivering as she looked around the cell. It felt like the chill was seeping into her bones. She'd been stripped of her jacket, shoes, and socks, left in a t-shirt and jeans that felt wholly inadequate. She curled up to wrap her arms around her legs, trying to huddle with herself for warmth. She searched the cell with her head on a swivel; her eyes landed on a camera in the corner, watching her.
"Hello?" she asked hoarsely. There was no answer; just the echo of her voice.
=
Fuck he hated tasers. That shit lingered and no matter how often he trained with Bevatron or Polaris, the fire in his fingers and toes as nerves repaired themselves never got easier to handle. Kyle woke again on the same treatment table, face down, a bite guard in his mouth and manacled with his arms behind his back. He worked the guard out - it was the soft rubber kind, not too different from his mouthguard for sparring. It came out bloody, but none of his teeth came out with it. Small mercies - his mouth felt like shit. Tongue swollen, throat raw, the bittersalt taste of blood everywhere.
He worked himself down from a snap of anger - breathe in for four, hold, out, repeat until he could feel every joint of his fingers move without any extra numbness. Took inventory. Someone had dressed him in scrub pants. His hair'd been buzzed - but his head didn't ache anywhere other than his mouth. His thigh was screaming, his calf ached, his shoulder felt like it was healing off a dislocation. Every limb felt heavy and like his muscles were made of butter. Fuck. They had sedated the shit out of him.
"He's waking up. Increase the..." and fuck, the cool sting in his neck again and the room went under the waves, cool and dark and salty with blood.
---
The drugs finally wore off when Laura found herself in a new room or maybe it was a new door. The feral stood up slowly and shook off the last of the drugs and stared down at the door. She had broken through the last one when she was met with guards and took down three of them before they hit her with enough tranquilizers to keep her out for a while. Laura looked around the room and saw a camera in the corner of the room and she flipped them off.
This wasn't the Facility. If it was, Kumara would be around and Laura had that bitch's scent ingrained into her memory. No, this was another faction, she was sure of it. Looking at the door again and before she could make a step closer, a loud piercing sound came from a nearby speaker and Laura immediately went to the ground covering her ears in a fetal position. After a few more seconds, Laura screamed as the alarm continued with no end in sight.
--
Waking again, Liam got up surprised at the lack of restraints. That... it was bad that he knew these things, that he'd been taken so much. It was very, very bad if he wasn't restrained. He wasn't the best at fighting, he didn't like it, but he was still a big guy and growing. That was usually a sign for caution. Carefully, he began investigating his surroundings, assuming they'd see him on camera and stop him... which was both good and bad in and of itself. Really, really bad. He was never leaving campus again. Ever.
--
The door opened. Jessie jerked upright, staring at the man who entered. He said something that didn't quite register in her brain. She stared at him. Then he said it again, and it clicked.
"That isn't my name," she snapped. "It's Jessie."
The man crossed the cell in two long strides and backhanded her. "I don't fucking care. Get up."
--
Fourteen - Celeste - did not understand, but more importantly, she did not trust. This... would require careful consideration. And given the way so many of her memories seemed to slip between her fingers like sand as she reached for them, it would not be easy. At least for now, however, she seemed to have nothing but time.
She stared/she stared back.
Somewhere deep in the corners of her mind where 14 stuck all the thoughts she didn't want to acknowledge, a little box was slowly closing on a truth she refused to think about: 14 could not even begin to feel Irma, Esme, Phoebe, or Sophie anywhere nearby. She was aware that Weapon X had made her incredibly powerful by design, and that her additional bodies acted both as selves but also as limiters. The last time she had been alone, she had been able to slip through her mother's mental shields like they were nothing more than tissue from two thousand miles away. Even with this... thing sitting across from her, she should have had enough power to crush the minds of everyone nearby into a fine paste. She had already tried, and already failed. So...
...where had all that power gone?
TW: Minor transphobia, violence
"RFB in the left femoral head." Femoral. He knew that term. Femoral femoral - femur. Right. The gunshot to his fucking thigh. Kyle tried to push up from - whatever he was face down on, and got two gloved hands harshly pushing him back down. Ice cold pain rippled down his leg. He bit his tongue trying not to howl, and then a sick pop, heat, the tug of stitches, the wet slap of a pressure bandage -
and he flipped, all his body weight on his arms, kicked out with the good leg, contacted someone - felt ribs give, not his, landed in a crouch, and tackled - someone. No one smelled right. These were not his people. Nobody would operate on his fucking thigh without pain meds if they knew him or gave a shit.
The stun baton to his ribs burned, and he snarled, and headbutted the wielder. The kick to his - shit fuck, injured fucking leg was worse and he crumpled, could not get his weight under him again, and went down to fists in his gut.
=
Laura's eyes shot open as the tranquilizers wore off and jumped off the cot in a defensive stance. The room smelled foreign, but the blood on her brought back the memory of the last guy she stabbed before being poked again by the needle filled with drugs. Taking in her current location, it reminded her of the isolation rooms that Dr. Rice would put her in when she would disappoint him. Her blood ran cold, did he take her back? Fear started to set in.
Looking back at the door she unseathed her claws and started to unleash fury on the door.
=
Waking up, Liam felt like he'd been out to an all night rave and came back with some very questionable decisions and maybe something died on him. It took a moment for things to come into focus, the marching band played behind his eyes, drums beating in time with his heart. A cell. Fucking hell, not again. Maybe he'd never leave anywhere ever again. Groaning, he closed his eyes for the moment, not going back to sleep. He needed to be ready to escape if he got the opportunity and right now he wasn't sure he could stand.
=
14 stared, and something almost but not quite 14 stared back. She had been forced both unconscious and awake simultaneously long before they'd gotten Celeste to this... wherever this was, and it was not doing her headache any favors.
The room was stripped bare. Four concrete walls housing what was almost a prison cell. It would have been remarkably uninspired, if not for the concerning issue that there were two beds because there were two identical blondes. 14 didn't recognize herself, and unlike how most people meant it, for 14 this was quite literal.
Sitting opposite Celeste as if looking in a mirror was, impossibly, a new her. It was like wearing a new dress that did not quite fit, stretching in ways that were uncomfortable and just ever so slightly wrong. And worse was the brain. There was something about this new hardware she had found herself unwillingly forced into that she could not yet identify, but it was already starting to itch in a way that did not quite exist.
She raised its arm/she watched it raise its arm. She made it speak/she heard it speak. Two heads tilted as one, turning inquisitively with a slow and methodical precision that came from deep thought. Briefly, 14 thought that this might be what it felt like to drive a new car for the first time after decades with an older model: fundamentally still the same, but undeniably lacking in wear and tear and with a smoothness that bordered on uncanny.
=
The first thing Jessie noticed was that it was cold.
She sat up, rubbing her head and shivering as she looked around the cell. It felt like the chill was seeping into her bones. She'd been stripped of her jacket, shoes, and socks, left in a t-shirt and jeans that felt wholly inadequate. She curled up to wrap her arms around her legs, trying to huddle with herself for warmth. She searched the cell with her head on a swivel; her eyes landed on a camera in the corner, watching her.
"Hello?" she asked hoarsely. There was no answer; just the echo of her voice.
=
Fuck he hated tasers. That shit lingered and no matter how often he trained with Bevatron or Polaris, the fire in his fingers and toes as nerves repaired themselves never got easier to handle. Kyle woke again on the same treatment table, face down, a bite guard in his mouth and manacled with his arms behind his back. He worked the guard out - it was the soft rubber kind, not too different from his mouthguard for sparring. It came out bloody, but none of his teeth came out with it. Small mercies - his mouth felt like shit. Tongue swollen, throat raw, the bittersalt taste of blood everywhere.
He worked himself down from a snap of anger - breathe in for four, hold, out, repeat until he could feel every joint of his fingers move without any extra numbness. Took inventory. Someone had dressed him in scrub pants. His hair'd been buzzed - but his head didn't ache anywhere other than his mouth. His thigh was screaming, his calf ached, his shoulder felt like it was healing off a dislocation. Every limb felt heavy and like his muscles were made of butter. Fuck. They had sedated the shit out of him.
"He's waking up. Increase the..." and fuck, the cool sting in his neck again and the room went under the waves, cool and dark and salty with blood.
---
The drugs finally wore off when Laura found herself in a new room or maybe it was a new door. The feral stood up slowly and shook off the last of the drugs and stared down at the door. She had broken through the last one when she was met with guards and took down three of them before they hit her with enough tranquilizers to keep her out for a while. Laura looked around the room and saw a camera in the corner of the room and she flipped them off.
This wasn't the Facility. If it was, Kumara would be around and Laura had that bitch's scent ingrained into her memory. No, this was another faction, she was sure of it. Looking at the door again and before she could make a step closer, a loud piercing sound came from a nearby speaker and Laura immediately went to the ground covering her ears in a fetal position. After a few more seconds, Laura screamed as the alarm continued with no end in sight.
--
Waking again, Liam got up surprised at the lack of restraints. That... it was bad that he knew these things, that he'd been taken so much. It was very, very bad if he wasn't restrained. He wasn't the best at fighting, he didn't like it, but he was still a big guy and growing. That was usually a sign for caution. Carefully, he began investigating his surroundings, assuming they'd see him on camera and stop him... which was both good and bad in and of itself. Really, really bad. He was never leaving campus again. Ever.
--
The door opened. Jessie jerked upright, staring at the man who entered. He said something that didn't quite register in her brain. She stared at him. Then he said it again, and it clicked.
"That isn't my name," she snapped. "It's Jessie."
The man crossed the cell in two long strides and backhanded her. "I don't fucking care. Get up."
--
Fourteen - Celeste - did not understand, but more importantly, she did not trust. This... would require careful consideration. And given the way so many of her memories seemed to slip between her fingers like sand as she reached for them, it would not be easy. At least for now, however, she seemed to have nothing but time.
She stared/she stared back.
Somewhere deep in the corners of her mind where 14 stuck all the thoughts she didn't want to acknowledge, a little box was slowly closing on a truth she refused to think about: 14 could not even begin to feel Irma, Esme, Phoebe, or Sophie anywhere nearby. She was aware that Weapon X had made her incredibly powerful by design, and that her additional bodies acted both as selves but also as limiters. The last time she had been alone, she had been able to slip through her mother's mental shields like they were nothing more than tissue from two thousand miles away. Even with this... thing sitting across from her, she should have had enough power to crush the minds of everyone nearby into a fine paste. She had already tried, and already failed. So...
...where had all that power gone?
