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Post by VALKYRIE on Jul 7, 2016 17:43:03 GMT
 The tip-off the Initiative gets is garbled and mostly incoherent, but Thali is close enough that she volunteers to check it out. She doesn't really think it's going to be anything, until she steps into the warehouse.
She steps into the warehouse and she feels sick. It has the strange chill of all recently abandoned buildings, as if it still remembers the warmth and movement that once pervaded its halls. You can hear the ghosts rattling around in their chains, and even as she moves through room by room, clearing each one as she goes, none of it feels quite right. She doesn't feel alone, despite the emptiness, the still life paintings of lives and jobs abandoned halfway through as their owners stood up and walked away.
When she comes to the central room, she understands that she was right all along. There's a body strapped to a lab table, surrounded by equipment, and when she moves closer, she can see that it's a boy. She's not good with ages, but he looks like a teenager. He looks like he could be sleeping, although judging from the IVs and appliances hooked into him, it's probably nothing so innocuous.
"I need a med team stat," she radios in, and then starts to look around. It isn't hard to find the files. There are trace attempts at hiding them, as if someone was trying to desperately out-run the clock, but everything important is still there, waiting to be put together. Like a puzzle. Like a crossword.
She starts reading, to understand what's happening before the med team--civilians--can arrive, and then she really is going to be sick.
lazarus
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- B rank Superhero
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Post by lazarus on Jul 8, 2016 1:03:52 GMT
 The medical team has a job to do, and they have a right to their patient, creepy lab or not. They swarm around the only injured person that they can see. The two women are quick to check the body for signs of life. There aren't many - the body's heartbeat is slower than either of them would prefer. One of them reaches for the defibrillator.
"E-Eli--" His voice cracks like old paint.
And then the memory is shut off like a switch. He loses what little he has left.
S-N19 wakes up to a painful jolt and too much white in the room. Even the dim fluorescent light in the room is too much. He involuntarily tries to shield his eyes, only to find that he's being held down by something. He gasps for air as he struggles against the restraints. Sweat runs down the back of his neck, despite how long he's been left in the cold.
"Kid, you're okay now. Just relax, and we'll see about getting those off your wrists." The medic removes the defibrillator and mutters something about sick fucks who need to be content with their doctorate degrees.
He stiffens. The voice is unfamiliar, but just about everything is unfamiliar to him right now.
VALKYRIE
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Post by VALKYRIE on Jul 17, 2016 9:26:21 GMT
She's not a fast reader, but she's worked her way through enough of what's been left behind to feel comfortable jerking her attention to the med team as they fuss over their patient.
"I can get them off him," she says uncertainly, watching the boy strain and tense against his restraints. The med team whisper among themselves for a moment, but eventually nod their heads and agreeably stand back when she motions for them to inch even farther away.
The cuffs around his wrists and ankles are solid metal, gleaming and chrome in the dim light of the room. They look well-maintained, medical and neat in their care. Thalia swallows past the lump in her throat and snaps the cuffs on either wrist before stepping back and giving him space to sit up.
It's only partly out of the goodness of her heart; she wants to see what he's going to do before she breaks the ankle restraints. It's not just her in here, after all.
lazarus
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- B rank Superhero
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Jul 17, 2016 10:02:19 GMT
Post by lazarus on Jul 17, 2016 10:02:19 GMT
Lazarus makes a fist. Then he lets go, as if he were testing his fingers. As if this is his body for the very first time. He grinds his back molars. Wherever he is, it feels very cold to be lying in a hospital gown upon a metal table. He does not rise.
He doesn't show anything more than a dulled expression, but on the inside he's terrified. These are strangers beside him, which is the same as being alone.
"Ah." He exhales, trying to find the words -- trying to find the letters in the river. "Permission to ask a question, sir?"
'Ma'am' seems old on his tongue. Outdated. Archaic. It tastes like poison, a dead possibility. In that possibility, there was only regret.
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Jul 23, 2016 23:18:39 GMT
Post by VALKYRIE on Jul 23, 2016 23:18:39 GMT
"Permission granted," Thalia answers crisply. She won't go any further than that. There were plenty of terms of use in the files she read; SUBJECT filed by an incomprehensible string of letters, initials, code names, but she can't accommodate any further to this atrocity. Or she won't. They are the both of them, despite everything, only human. He has his needs, and she has her limits. Which in a way are her needs; not as necessary as air, perhaps, but just as limiting.
The med team startles into sudden movement at his words, put their heads together like a set of mismatched dolls, black and brown hair gleaming, and she raises her arm until they still again.
lazarus
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- B rank Superhero
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Post by lazarus on Jul 24, 2016 0:01:28 GMT
There are a lot of things that he needs to know. The date and time, his present location. The room temperature, so that he knows whether or not he will need a jacket (he does). Instead, he asks:
"Who do I serve?" The words taste blasphemous in his mouth, but he won't ask why he's here. He's here for a purpose and that's good enough for him.
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Post by VALKYRIE on Jul 24, 2016 0:22:00 GMT
You don't serve anyone, Thalia wants to say, but that's wrong, and she knows it. She read the file. She knows what this is; this is a portrait in someone being created for nothing but service. And on a level deeper than that, echoing with an unarticulated fear, is understanding: she wants to serve as well, after all. She wants to be pointed in the right direction. She wants a calm and steady hand on the leash.
Is that so wrong?
"We don't know," she says instead of any of that. "You were found here." Abandoned is true, but too cruel to be voiced.
lazarus
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- B rank Superhero
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Post by lazarus on Jul 24, 2016 0:27:51 GMT
An anger rises, thick enough to choke him. If he were a lesser unit, then he might have actualized that feeling. Instead, his arms remain at his sides.
He doesn't ask for permission the second time.
"Were my services unsatisfactory?" It's a selfish question, but the only one that is important enough to ask.
Then maybe he could feel okay about his circumstance. Let it be a large failure, he thinks. Large enough to merit losing everything that makes up what he is.
As if he even knows what he's lost.
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Post by VALKYRIE on Jul 24, 2016 1:50:43 GMT
We don't know, we don't know, we don't know. She could choke on it, and it's nothing to offer. It's a shard of iron in her throat, and she can't speak through the blood that wells up. She knows what's been done to this man's body, but she can't offer give him anything lasting or anything true.
Thalia is spared further suffering (both hers and his) by the medical team bustling past her to refocus themselves around their patient, like small planets around a star.
How much do you remember? the brunette one demands. Thalia can't remember her name.
lazarus
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- B rank Superhero
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Jul 24, 2016 17:01:24 GMT
Post by lazarus on Jul 24, 2016 17:01:24 GMT
It does not occur to the boy to tell a lie. His greatest failing.
"I am S-N19. I am the anti-psionic unit of Lazarus."
The words strengthen him. He sits up. His legs are still strapped to the table, but he had no intention of leaving anyway.
"Are you hostiles?" Even if they were, he has no idea what should be done about his present situation. He is a weapon, and not an animal.
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Post by VALKYRIE on Jul 25, 2016 0:15:49 GMT
"No," Thalia interjects, before either of the medical team can speak. She snaps the restraints on his ankles as if that proves anything at all. "Have you engaged with hostiles before? Who were they?"
lazarus
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- B rank Superhero
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Post by lazarus on Jul 25, 2016 0:25:14 GMT
"I don't know." Then he amends: "I don't remember."
There is no point in telling Lazarus unnecessary things. Like the people that he's hurt. Like the lives that he's taken apart.
"Then who are you?"
VALKYRIE
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Post by VALKYRIE on Jul 25, 2016 0:32:23 GMT
"We are--" Not heroes, or rescuers. They've arrived far too late for that, the waning sun at their backs and the abandoned battlefield spread out before them. Scavengers, maybe. Vultures picking at the bones of what's left, searching for meat to slake their insatiable hunger.
"We're just the people who found you," she says, settling for the truth. "Does the Initiative mean anything to you?"
lazarus
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- B rank Superhero
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Post by lazarus on Jul 25, 2016 0:48:03 GMT
"Yes."
He knows of the Initiative, much like he knows of Walmart or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He knows that they are a private army of mutants, aliens, and battle-scientists.
"Do you serve the Initiative?"
VALKYRIE
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Post by VALKYRIE on Jul 25, 2016 0:50:25 GMT
"Yes," she says, grateful for familiar territory at last. "This warehouse was reported for suspicious activity to us. I was on patrol and came in to investigate. We found you here, and the base as it is: empty."
lazarus
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