ArchivedLogs:Take the Sky From Me

Take the Sky From Me
Dramatis Personae Dusk, Nicoleta, Rasa, Spencer
In Absentia	2014-04-08 Part of Perfectus TP
Location Some room, somewhere
As prisons go, it could be a worse one. There's thick plush carpet on the floor, the room actually kept fairly warm via a pair of steam radiators in the corners. Beneath the carpeting the floor is just heavy solid concrete -- the walls as well, implying the place is likely in a basement of some sort. It's a large room, but plain, bare of any sort of decoration. There's a set of full bunk beds, liberally adorned with pillows and blankets, and a bookshelf at one side of the room holds an eclectic assortment of the sorts of paperbacks found at the grocery store -- tawdry romances and thrillers and whatever happens to be Very Popular at the moment. Over time more mattresses have been dragged in, set against the walls together with their own complement of blankets and pillows. Up near the top of the room there's a tiny slit of window, long and narrow with barely enough room for an average person's hand to fit through even /before/ the grate that sits over it; this, as well as another window in the thick heavy door, provides the only source of light, making it dimly lit during the daytime and nearly pitch-black at night, save for the light that glows in from a streetlamp across the street. In the back of the room there's a tiny -- windowless, lightless -- bathroom. Sink, toilet, no shower, no door. Disorientation seeps under the heavy eyelids of one of the lumps on one of the mattresses, stirring the body to alertness. It is not a pleasant process. First, the vaguely comfortable oblivion of sleep starts to fade away, then the growing, gnawing ache begins to take over, clawing at a point in the mind and nudging it repeatedly to say something is not right. Something is /not/ right. It is difficult for Rasa to wake though, heavily medicated as ze is, in as much pain as ze is. It's also impossible for hir to tell how long it is taking for hir to wake up. It seems like only a few minutes ago that they laid hir down for the first time on this bed, checked all the bandages that line hir back and covered hir up with a blanket to keep the chill of hypothermia and shock off. In truth, it was a little over an hour ago and it's still hard for hir to have anything other than a few scrapes of alertness amongst the mess of hir situation. Everything hurts. With a noise somewhere between a growl, a gurgle, and a groan of pain, ze wedges hirself up on one arm, peeking out of a squinting eye to try to see where ze is and what the hell is going on. Nicoleta only just arrived a bit ago herself. Got her marrow scraped, quite a bit of blood drawn, and some painkillers in her system. She's sitting on a bed herself, slightly dazed, staring at a wall. Nicoleta is slowly distracted by the noise under the blanket, a wary eye as she looks over to it. Nicoleta's dressed in a bra, a pair of jeans, currently barefoot, and is bandaged around her waist quite a bit. "Shit. You alright under there? Seems these fuckers are on a spree." The door doesn't actually open, when Dusk arrives back in the room. He's just unceremoniously /shoved/ back /through/ it as though it weren't even there, pushed, stumbling, back in with the others. His leg buckles under him as he stumbles back into the room, dropping to his knee with a ragged-harsh gasp and almost immediately toppling down to one side to take his weight off that knee and onto the other. He doesn't look like much. Middling-tall and pale, mop of tousled black hair hanging in loose waves around his face, a dark scruff of five-day-old beard shadowing his jaw roughly. There are a pair of deep puncture wounds half-healed in his wrist, and he's barefoot and shirtless, a hole torn in one knee of his jeans; they hang low on his narrow hips. He's leaned forward to brace his hands against the ground; the long-lithe muscles in his arms flex, briefly, but then these too give out and he just drops to topple onto his side on the carpet. His eyes are closed, though there's an odd almost sunken look to them. His back, at the moment, stays facing the door; there's a very faint but near-constant tremor running through his shoulders. Rasa makes a couple other attempts at speaking or moving that primarily produce a few hitched breaths and gasps of pain. "No," ze eventually utters, lifting hirself just enough to turn hir head toward the sound of Nicoleta's voice. Hir hand reaches up and tugs down the the blanket from over hir head, revealing a mop of stringy, curly black hair, a cheek and an ear. Ze is laying on hir belly, so most of the rest of hir face is smooshed against the ground. Ze cracks hir eyes open a little further and stares at the other woman dully before a shot of adrenalin at the sound of Dusk's entrance causes hir to shudder onto hir side, injured back pointed away from the door. Under the blanket, Rasa is likewise shirtless, hir side bruised horrifically and a simple pair of loose pants around hir waist, keeping hir modest. Ze just stares and stares at Dusk in disbelief, hir skin a clammy shade of yellow. As Dusk comes in, Nicoleta's looking him over, before turning back to the shuddering Rasa. "Me neither. Welcome to the fucking party. What they take from you?". Nicoleta's voice is full of rage mostly as she asks this, a slow scowl as she turns to Dusk. "I'd ask if you're alright, but none of us are fucking alright in here. Lunatics probably going to slaughter us like cattle when they're done with whatever the fuck they're doing." Her reaction times between looking around are a bit dulled though due to the pain killers. For a time, Dusk doesn't say anything. He just lies where he is, quivering on the ground. Eventually, slowly, he starts to move, turning over and crawling -- it's a slow process, his /arms/ don't exactly seem to be working all that excellently, either, shoulders moving only weakly and uncoordinated. This /may/ be due to the two massive scars that are torn open and jagged down along his shoulderblades, still very red and raw though with his rapid healing they're no longer bleeding, just ugly mangled flesh torn and slowly beginning the process of repairing itself. His movements are accompanied by an odd clicking -- it's only /barely/ audible and likely easy to miss over the scraping of his arms against the carpet; he only makes it halfway back towards a mattress before he gives up and sinks back down against the carpet, flopped again onto his side. "Probably," he finally agrees, his low voice rough and quiet. "At least," here he's just a little bit hopeful, "they stun cattle first." "At this point, I think they want my skin." Rasa asks at length, summoning the strength to pull hirself off the mattress and toward Dusk, hir voice still ragged with pain. Ze is slow moving, but ze doesn't give up until ze could reach out and touch him. Ze doesn't though. Instead, ze slumps against the ground and rests a little, studying Dusk now that ze's closer. Ze then starts whispering, quietly so as to not startle him. "Dusk, it's Rasa. It's me, Rasa. Don't... freak out." Ze swallows hard at ze stares at his head before lifting hir voice to Nicoleta. "Do you want to know why, or would you rather not?" "Go ahead. They've been doing a lot of blood transfusions and fucking with my bones. Probably learned I have more blood than the average fucker.". Nicoleta doesn't ask if /they/ want to know about her. "Hope my brother isn't trying something dumb. He narrowly got out of this, probably tracking me the fuck down right now. And if the police find us, I'm out of the fucking country. So, there's no win for me. Hope you fuckers get out of here, though.". Nicoleta's laying on her back, slowly, looking at the ceiling. "Fuck this all." Dusk's nostrils flare; he draws in a deep breath as Rasa comes closer, head turning towards hir with a low growl rumbling in his throat. "Rasa? Oh -- oh /fuck/. Oh, fuck, they got /you/? Oh, shit, no." His shoulders are trembling again, faint and shivery. His head turns back towards Nicoleta, though his oddly sunken eyelids don't open. "-- More blood." This is very abrupt. His quiet growl grows a little bit louder. "Shhh. Yeah. I'm here. No use fretting about it now. Wait." Rasa sprawls out on hir belly and turns hir head fully toward Nicoleta, pushing hirself back into a sitting position on hir knees. Ze gives a little whimper as ze settles into position hir gaze out of focus for a while, fists clenched. When ze hisses out a breath, ze speaks again "You make more blood? How tapped out are you? Dusk's pretty much a vampire. He'd appreciate a donation if you were up for it." "A vampire? No clue how much extra I got. I don't know..". Nicoleta thinks for a second, before sighing. "Fuck it. Go ahead. Not too much, I need this shit too.". Nicoleta's holding out an arm in Dusk's direction, closing her eyes. "I'm also a hemokinetic. So I probably could stop you if you went like, ravenous maneater. Unless these painkillers decided to let me fucking die if that happened." Dusk's head tips, breath catching in a rough-raw scrape of sound as Nicoleta holds her arm out towards him. "Oh, fuck." In his current state his /lunge/ is slow and uncoordinated, a wobbly weak push of motion, but he shoves himself towards her, zeroing in on the thick vein in her arm like it's a /beacon/. The /vampire/ part is clear enough as his lips pull back, fangs wickedly long and very sharp in his mouth and he dips his head, lifting her arm to sink his teeth down in one quick stab of motion; the soft growl that sounds in his throat as blood starts to flow is almost desperately hungry. There's /pain/, of course, that's kind of inevitable with being /punctured/, but his venom works fast and the pain is soon /followed/ by a kind of druglike euphoria-rush that doesn't exactly /numb/ Nicoleta's pain so much as make it irrelevant. Dusk, to his credit, does not go ravenous maneater. Though he does seem kind of /tempted/, still somewhat trembly after some minutes when he forces himself to pull away, only then remembering himself enough to manage a rough: "-- thank you. Thank you." And then, a very belated: "... I'm Dusk. I should probably. Know your name. /Fuck/. Rasa. How'd you get here?" "Went out for coffee." Rasa replies softly, slumping forward, eyes half closed, sliding hir feet out from under hir to rest hir bum on the ground. "Van. Choking. Couldn't breathe." Then ze starts coughing, whimpering softly when the spell finishes. "Dunno much else." Ze turns hir head to watch the others, hir head tilted to one side. "Fuck. That's harsh. Dude asked for a light. Gave him a light. Proceeded to turn into like, fire or something, burned me. Chick with tentacles tried to take my brother, he got the fuck out of there though. He's probably looking for me.". Nicoleta sighs, the kick coming in after she winces in pain. "Shiit. I'm Nicoleta. Why the fuck you think they're doing this?". Slowly, on her arm, any blood still flowing is beginning to stop, before hardening over, kind of a blood bandage to..stop more blood. It wavers a bit though, due to lack of much focus power. "What did they take from /you/?". This is to Dusk. "Motherfuckers." Dusk's shoulders twitch; the motion comes with a rough bark-gasp of pain. He starts to reach out a hand in Rasa's general direction, but his arm slumps back to the floor instead. "Crazy-ass bastards aren't mutants. They're doing this to take -- to take. /Take/ our powers." His fingers twitch against the carpet, and he rolls onto his side again to keep the mangled-raw wounds gashed into his shoulderblades off the carpet. Nicoleta's question makes him twitch again, a full-body spasm that comes with a sharp rasp of breath that's almost a /laugh/, manic and hysterical. "-- The sky." Rasa turns and starts crawling over to the others, slow and steady to give hir back a little bit of a break. "They took his eyes. They took his wings. Stupid fuckers. Those wings are going to bring all hell down around their ears. They attract too much attention. C'mere, Dusk. I'll take care of you for a while. Everyone's pretty worried. Maybe, if we live through this, I'll give you my wings." Ze moves in closer and stretches out hir legs, offering hir lap for his pillow. There is, very /abruptly/, a SmallChild in the room where there wasn't before. Seven or eight perhaps, freckle-faced and touslehaired, beelining towards Rasa with wide-worried eyes. "Rasarasa," Spencer is /stage-whispering/; he's dressed in a Batman tee shirt and jeans, sneakers lighting up with each step, "Rasa did you know the whole /school/ had a /meeting/ today, B said. What happened why are you here --" He hasn't seemed to notice -- or maybe recognize -- Dusk at /first/; it's only a moment later that he does, stopping to look down with his eyes widening further as he drops to his knees beside Rasa and Dusk, staring at Dusk's back. Not exactly horrified, just /puzzled/. "... Dusk?" "His wings? Fuckers. They're probably using my marrow to like, control blo- HOLY SHIT.". As Spencer suddenly appearing, Nicoleta is shouting out, but quickly muffles her voice since, you know, MIGHT BE RESCUE. She herself is stage whispering back. "Who the fuck are you? You guys know this kid?". Dusk is slow to move, too; the quiet background clicking-sound continues as he shifts over to drop his head into Rasa's lap, still turned onto his side. "My wings," he agrees softly, shoulders twitching once more in a futile habitual attempt to move limbs that are no longer there; it draws a soft rasp of pain at the shift of torn and mangled muscles. "If we live through this --" He drops off into very sudden silence at the familiar voice cutting into the room. His face pales, his muscles tensing. "/No/." This is strangled, hoarse. "No no no no /no/. No, Spence, get /out/. Get out go /home/ get /out/ go -- go back to Jax. Go /now/ /go/." Rasa inhales sharply and can't breathe again. It takes hir a few seconds to get hir lungs to work properly again and when ze does, tears are spilling down hir cheeks. "Spence." It's a squeaky word in hir throat. "Spence, I found Dusk. I found him. He's not so okay, but I found him. You... go tell your pa, okay? Please? Tell'm I couldn't get to my phone. Tell your pa, I need another. Do you have one right now? Maybe one of your brother's phones?" Ze swallows hard at the knot in hir throat, blinking tears away as best ze can. "Dusk is right," hir hands are shaking as ze speaks. "Just go. go, go, go give your pa a hug for me, okay? Tell B I'm okay. Go now. Okay? Go." Spencer shakes his head, frowning apologetically. His eyes are still locked on Dusk's back, lip starting to quiver. "I -- I could. I could bring you one. Can I bring you one? I could." His voice is shaky, quavery. He reaches a hand, first for Dusk, then for Rasa, pulling away from both of them at the sight of bandages and mangled flesh. His eyes lift to Nicoleta, wide and worried. "I'm /Spencer/," he says, as though this should explain everything, "who are /you/." "I'm Nicoleta. I guess it's nice to meet you, Spencer, though the circumstances are shit. Look, this is a bit to ask from a stranger, especially a kid, but if you return your family, ask them to contact Toma Lupei. Lives at the Sunrise Apartments in Clinton. Third floor. Tell him to not look for me, got it, kid?". Nicoleta sighs, closing her eyes again as she lies on her back. "Fuck today. Fuck it." Once more, Dusk's shoulder ripple-twitches, a futile attempt to raise a wing that isn't there. His breath rasps out in a rough half-gasp of pain that he stifles before it can turn into a proper sob; he grits his teeth /hard/ to compose himself. "Spence. Spence, man. You need to go. Back to Jax. And no, don't bring a phone -- not yourself. Don't /come/ with a phone, okay? But you can try teleporting one in if you want. If it doesn't make it, don't worry about it, okay? That's fine. Just let him know we're alive and we're here and we're --" His teeth clench down hard. "But go, now." "Go talk to your pa, Spencer. Please. Go ask him. Jax'll know. Go." Rasa pleads with Spencer now. "He's your pa. You gotta go to your pa. You gotta go be safe." Ze gives another shuddering breath. "This isn't safe, Spence. This isn't safe at all. Go to pa." Spencer's eyes flick between all three of the others, brows furrowing slowly; he seems to be listening very intently to what all of them are saying. His gaze darts around the room, looking at it, as well. His hand drops, fingertips tracing very lightly against Dusk's arm for a brief moment. And then, just as suddenly as he arrived, he is gone. Lupei sighs again. "Hopefully we can get rescue. Seems like we're going to be in here for some time, though, so. We'll need to stick together if we're going to survive. Learned that in some movies.". Nicoleta cracks a small grin, as she begins to doze off. Dusk is quiet; he exhales a shaky relieved breath when Spencer vanishes, but this time it /does/ end in a sob. His teeth press against his lip, his shoulders starting to curl inward but stopping with another ragged-pained gasp. "Right," he finally manages. "Right. Stick -- stick together. We'll --" He draws in a slow breath, fingers clenching and unclenching. "Think if we ask nice they'll bring us some movies?" A beat of hesitation, before, "... or maybe at least books on /tape/." Rasa's hands clasp over hir mouth for a moment, fighting back more tears and sobs. Ze sits there trying to get hir ... everything back in order before letting hir hands fall down to Dusk's arms. At the touch, it's plain to tell Rasa's mind is still spinning, hir panicked mind pushing hir thoughts to Dusk. << They're searching. They're getting close. Can't say much. Can't say it out loud. >> Ze puts a mental image of the room they are in in Dusk's mind, letting him see Nicoleta with hir eyes, see hir feet sticking out on the other side of his body. "I ... can maybe read to you. You want one of those shitty detective novels? I think there might be one of those." "Yeah." From Dusk, Rasa will get -- a boatload of pain, a wealth of panic, as well. His usual exuberance is /struggling/, a tiny spark that is fighting for life beneath a heavy dose of terrified /lost/ anguish that is reaching and reaching and reaching for /something/ but finding nothing to anchor itself to. << They'll find us, >> he manages, and /some/ part of him does believe this but beneath it there's another part that's not, entirely, /certain/ whether or not he /cares/. << They always do. >> But, right now, outwardly, just: "Something noir?" It's just a little wry, but there's /almost/ a dose of amusement in it. Almost. "I think I'd like that."