Post by Reggie Sawyer on Sept 5, 2013 2:42:36 GMT -5
sometime earlier this summer
When Reggie opened her eyes, she found herself in a dimly lit room. It didn't seem to be the same dimly lit room her kidnappers had kept her in. This one was... wider. And someone was in it with her.
"Hello?" Her call was met with no response. Not even the sound of movement. Yet Reggie was sure she was not alone. Friend or foe, she did not know. Struggling against her restraints, she found herself well stuck, and let out a soft groan. At least before they had given her the run of her small black cell.
"There's no point." The voice, female but a bit rough, came from Reggie's right. Her very far right. "They design these binds to keep you helpless. Stop trying. It's a useless waste of the little bit of energy your wristlets are probably sapping from you."
To think of it, Reggie did feel weaker. She'd thought it was the lack of sun, not the restraints. It was probably both.
"How do you know?" Reggie asked in the same tone. Apparently it was okay to talk that loud. "Are you one of them?"
"I've been here before." The voice sounded resigned.
"Then where are we?"
Before the other woman could answer, a door opened and shut. Presently a man stepped into the small circle of light. Tall, dark-haired, kind of handsome... and wearing a slight, wan smile. And a black jacket. No, a lab coat, Reggie realized. A black lab coat.
The other voice spoke up, sounding amused. "I've never seen you here before."
"I'm new." The man had a pleasant, warm, dark voice. "This isn't usually my department, but I wanted to do this myself."
The other woman did not respond. Reggie had been hoping she would. So instead, Reggie asked it herself. "Do what, exactly?"
"Explaining it would ruin it. I need a controlled environment." The man moved again, to the fringes of the lit area. There was a scraping noise, metal against metal. When he returned, there was a scalpel in his hand.
Reggie felt the blood drain from her face. "What is this? Who are you?"
"It doesn't matter. You won't remember any of this." The man gave her another faint smile. "But if it makes you feel any better" - he gestured toward the other woman - "it will hurt much more for her than it will for you."
The other woman growled. "Coward."
"Is that a challenge, Miss Moncrieffe?" A smirk crept upon their captor's lips.
"Yes. Take us on, if you've got the stones for it. The both of us."
The man glanced toward Reggie. “Can you fight?"
"If I had the sun-"
The man waved her off. "You don't, and you don't have any training otherwise. It wouldn't be a fair fight." He turned to Moncrieffe. "You'll have to pick up her slack."
No sooner had Moncrieffe's bonds loosened than she jumped at the shadowy man. He moved smoothly to his left, easily outstepping her attack. The woman was in the light now; Reggie could see her fully. She was young, not much older than Reggie in fact, and her long blonde hair fell down along her back, splashing around her shoulders as she moved. She was a pro at this; Reggie could tell by the smirk that twisted her lips, cruelly, but with more than a little enjoyment in it. And she moved swiftly; the one moment she was in the light, and the next she had slipped into the dark.
The tall man seemed to like the challenge just as much. They seemed evenly matched, and seemed to dance around the room; except that the blonde was always on the offensive, and her opponent only had to move a little faster each time to avoid her frenzied attacks. She came at him usually with open hands, knowing better than to hit him with a closed fist, especially aiming toward those high, sharp cheekbones. Sometimes she tried a kick instead, a high one, or a sweep; that one had been impressive, as it had come out of nowhere, but the shadowy man had jumped in time to avoid it. The blonde jumped and kicked toward him over and over, never landing a hit, so focused that she seemed to have forgotten about Reggie, and everything else. Suddenly Reggie realized how much of a problem that was. “He’s wearing you out!” she screamed to the blonde, hoping she wasn’t too late.
Reggie’s scream came just as the blonde had tried another high kick. It would have slammed right across the man’s face, sending him spinning to the floor, if he hadn’t moved; it would have taken just a step back, as she had been doing with the same kicks before, to avoid it. But this time, he didn’t step back. It must have been a reaction to Reggie’s words, even swifter than the blonde could have reacted to them - he held his hands out and neatly caught her foot between his palms.
Reggie knew it was over after that.
He turned his hands quickly, and the blonde spun off her other foot, and fell to the floor. She groaned, having fallen on one arm, and shook out her head and the arm first. Fortunately, it didn’t seem as though he cared to advance. Once she had straightened up again, he took a very small step back, clearly not in retreat, but in preparation for whatever else she might like to throw at him.
She ran at him again, even more angry than before, and with one swift movement of his hand to her shoulder as she reached him he sent her to the floor again.
The shadow was not a big man, not at all. Tall, yes, but barely a telephone pole around, and pale, and not very muscular. But he clearly knew something about the body. He was definitely trained. He moved just like a shadow, really. The blonde moved like a dancer, but a shadow wasn’t there like a dancer was. Wasn’t tangible.
She stood again, but with her back to him. Reggie frowned at the decision, but quickly found it hadn’t been a mistake. The blonde tried spinning ninety degrees to slam an elbow into his nose, but she barely made it five degrees when her elbow met his open hand and she ran into hard, solid body. He wrapped his other arm around her, low on her torso, clearly not a bind.
“A well-made machine,” Reggie barely heard him murmur.
“Are you going to stand there and admire me?” The blonde was breathing heavily, more so than she had to even with all her exertion. “Or let me go?”
“Hmm.” They were standing at the edge of the light, near the table where the scalpel had come from, and whatever other implements might have been on it. It was directly behind Mr. Shadow, in fact. He was leaned against it but didn’t seem quite interested in using anything there. He should have been more concerned about the blonde’s attack, but the lack of attention was mutual; he had slipped his hand lower, and her head had lolled back for a moment before he drew his hand back up to her chest. He spun her away then, with a look that Reggie might have described as “smug” had there not been so much amusement in it. The blonde growled.
“It’s all a little game to you, isn’t it? And we’re just your pawns.” The blonde had clenched her fists now, but Reggie could see her gaze moving quickly about, looking for some fresh opening for attack. For his part, the shadow was still settled where he was, but then again, if Reggie could see the blonde’s glances, then so definitely could he.
“A well-played pawn could win the game.” A faint smile was cast over the shadow’s dark features. “But I’ve tired of this particular game, I’m afraid. Return to your binds.”
The blonde did - sort of. She ran up along the slate of metal she had been bound to, then flipped slightly to catch hold of a bar suspended overhead. An apparatus of some sort had been built to extend over both Reggie and the blonde, but the console that apparently controlled it was also overhead. The blonde pressed her hand against it, and there was the sound of something shorting out, and then the entire room fell into darkness.
When the room flickered back to life a second later, the blonde gasped as though she’d been shocked, then fell clear to the floor.
The shadow moved to stand over her. “I was wondering when you’d try that.”
Somehow, the blonde had survived the fall. Reggie wondered how that was possible. The fall wasn’t much, but a normal person would have at least broken a bone. A normal person.... The blonde spat blood. “Fuck you.”
Nevertheless, the shadow offered a hand to help her up. The blonde waved it away, but their arms brushed past each other such that her fingernails scratched his arm and his fingers scraped her arm. Faint lines appeared on the shadow’s arm, but on the blonde there was... grey. A mechanical grey, embedded deep below layers of false skin. The shadow glanced from the grey to the blonde and chuckled. “A bad skin job.”
The blonde was on her feet again, and this time she had what seemed to be that same scalpel from before in her hand, and was jabbing at him with it. Each jab game more and more quickly, and directly at his face, until they came too quickly and she finally cut his cheek. The cut was deep, too; it bled profusely the moment the scalpel made contact. The blonde stepped back to admire her work. “Well. That was a sharp one.”
The shadow simply lifted a finger to the cut - which Reggie thought must have hurt to the heavens - and ran a finger along it, then raised his finger to his lips and delicately licked the blood from it with a dark, malevolent grin.
A moment later, the blonde was on the attack again, sweeping the scalpel out in a wide, angry arc, meant to slash the shadow’s chest open. He stepped back, crouched, and suddenly there was a flash of green, sweeping exactly as the scalpel had, but in the opposite direction, and much lower. It knocked the blonde off her feet and once again onto the floor. When the shadow stood, Reggie saw that the green flash had come from a strangely translucent green rod at his side. It hadn’t been there before, and it was casting his angular features into shadows of black and green. Black and green.
“In a fair fight,” he was saying, “I wouldn’t have had to use this. I was hoping I wouldn’t need to. But-” and he smirked - “I need my face.”
The blonde got up again, but she was definitely moving slower now, Reggie noticed. The shadow took up the offensive now, finally, and spun the rod once at his side before tapping it against the blonde’s head, sending her in a spiral to her right. He followed that by spinning the rod and swinging it lower in the same attack, slamming it into her right side, causing her to fall to the other side. “That was mean,” Reggie called.
The shadow paid her no mind. The blonde stumbled to her feet, then swung out with the scalpel again, feebly. This time the green light swung out in both directions from the shadows, spinning in each of his hands, then out before him, at her face and chest. She stepped back, but one of the lights changed directions and slapped her under the chin. When the blonde fell back, the green stopped moving and Reggie finally saw that he had split the translucent rod in half.
He made a vague, casual motion, and the green rods disappeared, throwing his aquiline face into shadows again. The blonde was on the floor, breathing heavily again, and he made another motion, this one like tying a knot, and a teal-colored rope appeared around the blonde’s wrists, binding them together. “Fuck you,” she spat again. “Fuck you.”
“You would.” He turned away, his black coat trailing behind him - somehow Reggie noticed again that it was there, it had seemed a part of him as he fought, all a shadow - and replaced the blooded scalpel on a different table. She had not even seen him take it from the blonde. “Go back to your binds.”
“Make me.” The blonde sat up, but only to sneer at him. The sneer disappeared when he smiled, made a small gesture, and sent her sliding along the floor led by the psionic - that was the word! - rope around her wrists.
She bumped into the slate, and the man made his way over to her, pulling her up to her feet with a small degree of gentleness. A snap of the fingers, and the rope was gone, but he had her bound with her wrists over her head, rather than at her sides as before, and around her ankles to the slate in the next second.
“If you’re just going to show off,” the blonde said, “I’d much rather you just get it over with and kill me now.”
“Oh, no,” he answered her, in that smooth deep voice, but in a tone that was deliberately patronizing. “I need you alive. Subdued, preferably, which was the reason for that exercise. Her, I need afraid, which was the second reason for that show. And here I’ve forgotten the introductions.” He glanced to Reggie for the first time since the fight. “Reggie Sawyer, meet Dido Moncrieffe, petty criminal extraordinaire. Dido, meet Reagan Sawyer, daughter of the President of these United States.”
“Oh,” Dido said on hearing of Reggie’s relation. “That sucks.”
Reggie was about to defend her family, but the shadow spoke to Dido first, clearly on purpose. “She gets to stay safe and sound... well. Safe, at least. You... I need you alive. Your conscious, at least. The necessity does not extend to your body.”
Dido gasped and was about to make a remark when the shadow made a sudden movement with his right hand; he flipped it, and sent a blue dagger flying into Dido’s stomach. Her gasp grew louder, and she panted, as though she were in excruciating pain; he pulled out the dagger, and it disappeared, but as far as Reggie could see, there was no blood, no cut, no wound, nothing to show she had been stabbed, although she was clearly in pain. The shadow rolled his eyes and stepped away. “You won’t die, for long. I said I needed you subdued; I’m making a point. I’ll resuscitate you in a few minutes.”
Reggie gasped. “That is horrible.”
“Are you afraid?” He’d been rubbing something onto his bleeding cheek; now he looked over his shoulder at Reggie, and, apparently seeing what he expected to see, gave a slight chuckle. “Good. That will make this much easier, and much less painful.”
There was the soft sound of a lever, and both Reggie’s and Dido’s slates relaxed into horizontal positions. “You’ll want to close your eyes,” the shadow advised, in a different tone, one that gave the words a kindness. Reggie shut her eyes tight, then let them ease as a bright light flashed over her, turning everything from black to grey to yellow to a sharp, bright red.
"Hello?" Her call was met with no response. Not even the sound of movement. Yet Reggie was sure she was not alone. Friend or foe, she did not know. Struggling against her restraints, she found herself well stuck, and let out a soft groan. At least before they had given her the run of her small black cell.
"There's no point." The voice, female but a bit rough, came from Reggie's right. Her very far right. "They design these binds to keep you helpless. Stop trying. It's a useless waste of the little bit of energy your wristlets are probably sapping from you."
To think of it, Reggie did feel weaker. She'd thought it was the lack of sun, not the restraints. It was probably both.
"How do you know?" Reggie asked in the same tone. Apparently it was okay to talk that loud. "Are you one of them?"
"I've been here before." The voice sounded resigned.
"Then where are we?"
Before the other woman could answer, a door opened and shut. Presently a man stepped into the small circle of light. Tall, dark-haired, kind of handsome... and wearing a slight, wan smile. And a black jacket. No, a lab coat, Reggie realized. A black lab coat.
The other voice spoke up, sounding amused. "I've never seen you here before."
"I'm new." The man had a pleasant, warm, dark voice. "This isn't usually my department, but I wanted to do this myself."
The other woman did not respond. Reggie had been hoping she would. So instead, Reggie asked it herself. "Do what, exactly?"
"Explaining it would ruin it. I need a controlled environment." The man moved again, to the fringes of the lit area. There was a scraping noise, metal against metal. When he returned, there was a scalpel in his hand.
Reggie felt the blood drain from her face. "What is this? Who are you?"
"It doesn't matter. You won't remember any of this." The man gave her another faint smile. "But if it makes you feel any better" - he gestured toward the other woman - "it will hurt much more for her than it will for you."
The other woman growled. "Coward."
"Is that a challenge, Miss Moncrieffe?" A smirk crept upon their captor's lips.
"Yes. Take us on, if you've got the stones for it. The both of us."
The man glanced toward Reggie. “Can you fight?"
"If I had the sun-"
The man waved her off. "You don't, and you don't have any training otherwise. It wouldn't be a fair fight." He turned to Moncrieffe. "You'll have to pick up her slack."
No sooner had Moncrieffe's bonds loosened than she jumped at the shadowy man. He moved smoothly to his left, easily outstepping her attack. The woman was in the light now; Reggie could see her fully. She was young, not much older than Reggie in fact, and her long blonde hair fell down along her back, splashing around her shoulders as she moved. She was a pro at this; Reggie could tell by the smirk that twisted her lips, cruelly, but with more than a little enjoyment in it. And she moved swiftly; the one moment she was in the light, and the next she had slipped into the dark.
The tall man seemed to like the challenge just as much. They seemed evenly matched, and seemed to dance around the room; except that the blonde was always on the offensive, and her opponent only had to move a little faster each time to avoid her frenzied attacks. She came at him usually with open hands, knowing better than to hit him with a closed fist, especially aiming toward those high, sharp cheekbones. Sometimes she tried a kick instead, a high one, or a sweep; that one had been impressive, as it had come out of nowhere, but the shadowy man had jumped in time to avoid it. The blonde jumped and kicked toward him over and over, never landing a hit, so focused that she seemed to have forgotten about Reggie, and everything else. Suddenly Reggie realized how much of a problem that was. “He’s wearing you out!” she screamed to the blonde, hoping she wasn’t too late.
Reggie’s scream came just as the blonde had tried another high kick. It would have slammed right across the man’s face, sending him spinning to the floor, if he hadn’t moved; it would have taken just a step back, as she had been doing with the same kicks before, to avoid it. But this time, he didn’t step back. It must have been a reaction to Reggie’s words, even swifter than the blonde could have reacted to them - he held his hands out and neatly caught her foot between his palms.
Reggie knew it was over after that.
He turned his hands quickly, and the blonde spun off her other foot, and fell to the floor. She groaned, having fallen on one arm, and shook out her head and the arm first. Fortunately, it didn’t seem as though he cared to advance. Once she had straightened up again, he took a very small step back, clearly not in retreat, but in preparation for whatever else she might like to throw at him.
She ran at him again, even more angry than before, and with one swift movement of his hand to her shoulder as she reached him he sent her to the floor again.
The shadow was not a big man, not at all. Tall, yes, but barely a telephone pole around, and pale, and not very muscular. But he clearly knew something about the body. He was definitely trained. He moved just like a shadow, really. The blonde moved like a dancer, but a shadow wasn’t there like a dancer was. Wasn’t tangible.
She stood again, but with her back to him. Reggie frowned at the decision, but quickly found it hadn’t been a mistake. The blonde tried spinning ninety degrees to slam an elbow into his nose, but she barely made it five degrees when her elbow met his open hand and she ran into hard, solid body. He wrapped his other arm around her, low on her torso, clearly not a bind.
“A well-made machine,” Reggie barely heard him murmur.
“Are you going to stand there and admire me?” The blonde was breathing heavily, more so than she had to even with all her exertion. “Or let me go?”
“Hmm.” They were standing at the edge of the light, near the table where the scalpel had come from, and whatever other implements might have been on it. It was directly behind Mr. Shadow, in fact. He was leaned against it but didn’t seem quite interested in using anything there. He should have been more concerned about the blonde’s attack, but the lack of attention was mutual; he had slipped his hand lower, and her head had lolled back for a moment before he drew his hand back up to her chest. He spun her away then, with a look that Reggie might have described as “smug” had there not been so much amusement in it. The blonde growled.
“It’s all a little game to you, isn’t it? And we’re just your pawns.” The blonde had clenched her fists now, but Reggie could see her gaze moving quickly about, looking for some fresh opening for attack. For his part, the shadow was still settled where he was, but then again, if Reggie could see the blonde’s glances, then so definitely could he.
“A well-played pawn could win the game.” A faint smile was cast over the shadow’s dark features. “But I’ve tired of this particular game, I’m afraid. Return to your binds.”
The blonde did - sort of. She ran up along the slate of metal she had been bound to, then flipped slightly to catch hold of a bar suspended overhead. An apparatus of some sort had been built to extend over both Reggie and the blonde, but the console that apparently controlled it was also overhead. The blonde pressed her hand against it, and there was the sound of something shorting out, and then the entire room fell into darkness.
When the room flickered back to life a second later, the blonde gasped as though she’d been shocked, then fell clear to the floor.
The shadow moved to stand over her. “I was wondering when you’d try that.”
Somehow, the blonde had survived the fall. Reggie wondered how that was possible. The fall wasn’t much, but a normal person would have at least broken a bone. A normal person.... The blonde spat blood. “Fuck you.”
Nevertheless, the shadow offered a hand to help her up. The blonde waved it away, but their arms brushed past each other such that her fingernails scratched his arm and his fingers scraped her arm. Faint lines appeared on the shadow’s arm, but on the blonde there was... grey. A mechanical grey, embedded deep below layers of false skin. The shadow glanced from the grey to the blonde and chuckled. “A bad skin job.”
The blonde was on her feet again, and this time she had what seemed to be that same scalpel from before in her hand, and was jabbing at him with it. Each jab game more and more quickly, and directly at his face, until they came too quickly and she finally cut his cheek. The cut was deep, too; it bled profusely the moment the scalpel made contact. The blonde stepped back to admire her work. “Well. That was a sharp one.”
The shadow simply lifted a finger to the cut - which Reggie thought must have hurt to the heavens - and ran a finger along it, then raised his finger to his lips and delicately licked the blood from it with a dark, malevolent grin.
A moment later, the blonde was on the attack again, sweeping the scalpel out in a wide, angry arc, meant to slash the shadow’s chest open. He stepped back, crouched, and suddenly there was a flash of green, sweeping exactly as the scalpel had, but in the opposite direction, and much lower. It knocked the blonde off her feet and once again onto the floor. When the shadow stood, Reggie saw that the green flash had come from a strangely translucent green rod at his side. It hadn’t been there before, and it was casting his angular features into shadows of black and green. Black and green.
“In a fair fight,” he was saying, “I wouldn’t have had to use this. I was hoping I wouldn’t need to. But-” and he smirked - “I need my face.”
The blonde got up again, but she was definitely moving slower now, Reggie noticed. The shadow took up the offensive now, finally, and spun the rod once at his side before tapping it against the blonde’s head, sending her in a spiral to her right. He followed that by spinning the rod and swinging it lower in the same attack, slamming it into her right side, causing her to fall to the other side. “That was mean,” Reggie called.
The shadow paid her no mind. The blonde stumbled to her feet, then swung out with the scalpel again, feebly. This time the green light swung out in both directions from the shadows, spinning in each of his hands, then out before him, at her face and chest. She stepped back, but one of the lights changed directions and slapped her under the chin. When the blonde fell back, the green stopped moving and Reggie finally saw that he had split the translucent rod in half.
He made a vague, casual motion, and the green rods disappeared, throwing his aquiline face into shadows again. The blonde was on the floor, breathing heavily again, and he made another motion, this one like tying a knot, and a teal-colored rope appeared around the blonde’s wrists, binding them together. “Fuck you,” she spat again. “Fuck you.”
“You would.” He turned away, his black coat trailing behind him - somehow Reggie noticed again that it was there, it had seemed a part of him as he fought, all a shadow - and replaced the blooded scalpel on a different table. She had not even seen him take it from the blonde. “Go back to your binds.”
“Make me.” The blonde sat up, but only to sneer at him. The sneer disappeared when he smiled, made a small gesture, and sent her sliding along the floor led by the psionic - that was the word! - rope around her wrists.
She bumped into the slate, and the man made his way over to her, pulling her up to her feet with a small degree of gentleness. A snap of the fingers, and the rope was gone, but he had her bound with her wrists over her head, rather than at her sides as before, and around her ankles to the slate in the next second.
“If you’re just going to show off,” the blonde said, “I’d much rather you just get it over with and kill me now.”
“Oh, no,” he answered her, in that smooth deep voice, but in a tone that was deliberately patronizing. “I need you alive. Subdued, preferably, which was the reason for that exercise. Her, I need afraid, which was the second reason for that show. And here I’ve forgotten the introductions.” He glanced to Reggie for the first time since the fight. “Reggie Sawyer, meet Dido Moncrieffe, petty criminal extraordinaire. Dido, meet Reagan Sawyer, daughter of the President of these United States.”
“Oh,” Dido said on hearing of Reggie’s relation. “That sucks.”
Reggie was about to defend her family, but the shadow spoke to Dido first, clearly on purpose. “She gets to stay safe and sound... well. Safe, at least. You... I need you alive. Your conscious, at least. The necessity does not extend to your body.”
Dido gasped and was about to make a remark when the shadow made a sudden movement with his right hand; he flipped it, and sent a blue dagger flying into Dido’s stomach. Her gasp grew louder, and she panted, as though she were in excruciating pain; he pulled out the dagger, and it disappeared, but as far as Reggie could see, there was no blood, no cut, no wound, nothing to show she had been stabbed, although she was clearly in pain. The shadow rolled his eyes and stepped away. “You won’t die, for long. I said I needed you subdued; I’m making a point. I’ll resuscitate you in a few minutes.”
Reggie gasped. “That is horrible.”
“Are you afraid?” He’d been rubbing something onto his bleeding cheek; now he looked over his shoulder at Reggie, and, apparently seeing what he expected to see, gave a slight chuckle. “Good. That will make this much easier, and much less painful.”
There was the soft sound of a lever, and both Reggie’s and Dido’s slates relaxed into horizontal positions. “You’ll want to close your eyes,” the shadow advised, in a different tone, one that gave the words a kindness. Reggie shut her eyes tight, then let them ease as a bright light flashed over her, turning everything from black to grey to yellow to a sharp, bright red.
