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visible_sarielThere's dust falling from the walls and ceiling.
There had been a corridor - deck nine, section two or maybe three - and then flakes of rust brown char are abruptly raining from the wood of a crumbling doorway. and there are no vibrations under her feet except a there-and-gone shudder of cracked stone and tile as someone a hundred meters distant roars his wordless agony to the cracked plaster.
Her bare feet are cold, stirring tiny clouds of grit and ash as she turns in place, gaze sweeping right to left as she moves. She comes face to rusted wheels with a gurney on it's side, a greying length of hallway, a battered metal table and tray. and there she freezes, the automatic details of course correction evaporating--come about, two seven zero mark--because that tray holds a dozen dull silver instruments, and one of them's edged with something auburn.
And one of them has a jagged edge.
She stands there for a single, frozen heartbeat and then she's in violent motion; there's a sudden explosion of sound and the wall that's now to her immediate left - the one she'd assumed was just a wall - is bursting at it's shrieking, creaking hinges, becoming a door that ejects a pair of orderlies in crisp white. One of them swears, ducks behind her, grabs her right wrist with enough force to leave fingerprint bruises beneath her nightgown's thin sleeve and gestures with his free hand for the other man to take her opposite arm. "Dammit, 214's got out again; we really gotta talk to the doctor about this one. Now come on, don't fight us or there'll be some nice restraints waiting at the end of the hall--god damn, give me a hand here!" the burly man's voice goes from long-suffering to falsely cajoling to a snarl of frustration in extremely short order; Sariel's single, desperate attempt to jerk away does nothing against her captor, but her knee collides with one of the nearby table's wobbling legs as she twists and the entire setup topples, instruments and tray spilling sideways in an echoing clatter of metal on ceramic. She registers the pain of a falling scalpel slicing a fine diagonal across her left palm and then ignores it in the next breath, staring in abject horror as the second orderly advances.
Lieutenant Hagler doesn't say a word as he steps forward. His lips are blue. Sariel's eyes are on his hands as they close about her forearm; his fingernails are the same shade as his mouth, leached of oxygen and showing it plainly. And then he's meeting her eyes deliberately, and she's staring down the cloudy gaze of the dead as his frantic gasps for breath rattle in her ear.
"there'll be some nice restraints for you at the end of the--" and then she's bolt upright in bed, shivering in a cold sweat and tangled in blankets and sheets. "Oh my God, oh my--that was--"
Her left hand is sticky and sharply stinging. Blood smudges her right sleeve's hem as she clumsily rolls it to the elbow; five purpling fingerprints stare back at her.
Her stomach's turning Jaeger loops as she disentangles from the bedclothes and bolts for the stairs, racing thoughts repeating two words in as many languages as she goes.
Not again. Not again.
There had been a corridor - deck nine, section two or maybe three - and then flakes of rust brown char are abruptly raining from the wood of a crumbling doorway. and there are no vibrations under her feet except a there-and-gone shudder of cracked stone and tile as someone a hundred meters distant roars his wordless agony to the cracked plaster.
Her bare feet are cold, stirring tiny clouds of grit and ash as she turns in place, gaze sweeping right to left as she moves. She comes face to rusted wheels with a gurney on it's side, a greying length of hallway, a battered metal table and tray. and there she freezes, the automatic details of course correction evaporating--come about, two seven zero mark--because that tray holds a dozen dull silver instruments, and one of them's edged with something auburn.
And one of them has a jagged edge.
She stands there for a single, frozen heartbeat and then she's in violent motion; there's a sudden explosion of sound and the wall that's now to her immediate left - the one she'd assumed was just a wall - is bursting at it's shrieking, creaking hinges, becoming a door that ejects a pair of orderlies in crisp white. One of them swears, ducks behind her, grabs her right wrist with enough force to leave fingerprint bruises beneath her nightgown's thin sleeve and gestures with his free hand for the other man to take her opposite arm. "Dammit, 214's got out again; we really gotta talk to the doctor about this one. Now come on, don't fight us or there'll be some nice restraints waiting at the end of the hall--god damn, give me a hand here!" the burly man's voice goes from long-suffering to falsely cajoling to a snarl of frustration in extremely short order; Sariel's single, desperate attempt to jerk away does nothing against her captor, but her knee collides with one of the nearby table's wobbling legs as she twists and the entire setup topples, instruments and tray spilling sideways in an echoing clatter of metal on ceramic. She registers the pain of a falling scalpel slicing a fine diagonal across her left palm and then ignores it in the next breath, staring in abject horror as the second orderly advances.
Lieutenant Hagler doesn't say a word as he steps forward. His lips are blue. Sariel's eyes are on his hands as they close about her forearm; his fingernails are the same shade as his mouth, leached of oxygen and showing it plainly. And then he's meeting her eyes deliberately, and she's staring down the cloudy gaze of the dead as his frantic gasps for breath rattle in her ear.
"there'll be some nice restraints for you at the end of the--" and then she's bolt upright in bed, shivering in a cold sweat and tangled in blankets and sheets. "Oh my God, oh my--that was--"
Her left hand is sticky and sharply stinging. Blood smudges her right sleeve's hem as she clumsily rolls it to the elbow; five purpling fingerprints stare back at her.
Her stomach's turning Jaeger loops as she disentangles from the bedclothes and bolts for the stairs, racing thoughts repeating two words in as many languages as she goes.
Not again. Not again.
