Down The Rabbit Hole [Chapter 7]

[Caligrace]

INVITE ONLY

It was there again, the pounding in the back of her skull. It started as an inch, and then it spread beneath her hair, until she felt more like a watermelon being split open than a vampire. At first, she tried to ignore it. If she pretended it didn’t exist, then it didn’t exist, right? It was a working theory, albeit a idiotic one. She couldn’t ignore the way every light, every sound, every scent threatened to tear her apart. No, so then, she tried to rationalize it. It was a migraine. She had one as a human, hadn’t she? Days pouring over textbooks, nights spent squinting a blaring computer screen as she tried to meet deadline after deadline, but that was different. That was normal. A few pills, a shot of caffeine, and she was ready to continue on with her day. No, what she felt now was unnatural – and worrisome.

This was agony.

Shaking her head, she moved the strap of her Prada bag to her other shoulder, hoping the shifting of weight would help alleviate some of the pain. When that failed to work, she quickly found herself losing hope. The pain had become a part of her, it had seeped into her bones, and had taken permanent residence in her head. With a quick lift of her hand, she pressed three slender fingers to the artfully covered gash on the side of her skull. The flaming red curls hid the sight of meat and bone, but still, her fingers knew how to find it, having traced the path thousands of times since that night. The night the thing attacked, the night it decided to carve out her brains. It was a night to remember, one that she knew she would never forget, even if the thing had become a blur in her memory.

Others told her it had been a paladin. Her family told her it had been a woman – but she didn’t know. She couldn’t remember. All she knew was it was dead – and she was walking with a cracked skull. It had starved her, it had driven her mad, and it wasn’t until she had finally gave in and tasted her first dose of warm blood in over a year, that she had renewed. It had been worse until the feeding, until she had been able to shrug off the negative effects of the wounds sustained – the dizziness, blurred sight, the inability to remember her own name. It had all vanished in the blink of an eye, leaving her with this tormenting pain and the inability for her to stay still, to stay home. She needed to move. She needed to act, to find something to keep her mind off of the pain.

That was how she found herself in at the entrance of the Labyrinth, the words of the Administrator playing over and over in her mind. There was something here, something her kind craved, something they needed – and she wanted it. She wanted whatever it was, the power it possessed, the truth it could hold. She didn’t waste time in firing off a few texts to the most trusted in her contacts before dropping her phone into her bag and descending into the darkness, her pain already forgotten as the first enemy stumbled into her path, only to collapse as a perfectly timed bullet pierced its throat.

[Hudson]

The Administrator. The name sounded strong, something that might have spoken of determination, of perseverance, and yet the strength remained a quiet one. The moniker seemed wasted on the masses. No one believed the masked man. No one trusted the unknown variable. Hudson wanted to say that he trusted the Administrator; he wanted to say that he’d placed his chips down on red twenty-three and planned on one clean sweep. He couldn’t. He couldn’t, in good conscience, trust an unknown with the future of his newly obtained family. Trusting the Administrator meant allowing a total stranger control of a game he had yet to fully understand. Yes, Hudson knew the importance of keeping the sirens far from anything related to the veil, the key to vampires returning from the shadow realm. He knew that much. He didn’t trust those sirens. Something just cautioned him against trusting the manipulative little things. But beyond that, Hudson had been thrown into vampire life headfirst. Strengths. Weaknesses. Powers. Enemies. And the Administrator. That one unknown.

He should have been more interested in the comings and goings, but he’d grown used to simply slashing and hacking. He spent most of his free time in the quarantine zone, which provided him the best of both worlds. When he tired of sharpening his blade on the bones of zombies, he sharpened his mind. At first, he’d been too squeamish to kill zombies, but he’d learned. If the Administrator served as an unknown element in the game, then zombies served as an unwanted element, an out-of-place element. Zombies didn’t belong in Harper Rock. They lacked everything that once made them human. They were empty shells. They were nothing more than reanimated corpses. They had no names. They had no hopes or dreams. Hudson deemed them fertilizer, and that was the turning point.

On that particular night, Hudson made the journey from Honeymead to the Quarantine Zone, where he practiced his aim. What he lacked in swordsmanship, he made up for with a gun. There were others in the area, but he did his best to avoid them. Halfway through his rounds, his phone vibrated.

Caligrace.

Apparently, the Administrator had weighed heavy on her mind.

Hudson had the opportunity to ignore the text. He could have read the words, turned off his phone, and returned to his mindless slaughtering, but the sender of that text mattered a lot. It hadn’t been just anyone. Sighing, Hudson turned the safety back on and tucked the gun into the holster on his thigh. His phone went into the pocket of his jeans. Looking around, he captured a mental image of the quarantine zone and thought of his sire. Hopefully, she saw his location. After that, he reached out to her mind.

“I’m coming. I’m coming.”

His words communicated, Hudson took a fadeportal that dropped him in Wickbridge. From there, he went to the station. He went as far as the line allowed, and then he took to foot. When he arrived at the location, he frowned.

The Labyrinth.

[Freyja]

W E A R I N G

A long time ago, Freyja had been human.

She had known what it was like to think that she was alive, to believe in a lie, to be a sheep, to just be a part of the herd. Athena had opened up a whole world to her. She had shown her how woefully ignorant she had been, of how much of the world she had been missing. Reality as a human, as a mortal, flesh and blood person was like living in halves. Just thinking about life before Athena was like thinking about living underwater. Everything was so slow, so quiet, so… limited.

And if that was Humanity, she wanted no part of it. She wouldn’t wish it on her worst enemy.

As such, she safeguarded her immortality with everything she had. Being a vampire was inherent to her survival. She’d learned to live undead, and more than that, she had become so fond of it, fond of the way her life had changed, that she never wanted to go back. She was willing to fight to stay the way that she was, to remain undead. To remain beautiful, powerful, and young forever. Because of that, she had taken to the deeps the minute the Administrator had made their post. She, though, had little luck with finding a way deeper into the labyrinthine caves.

She refrained from shooting any of her girls a text. She wouldn’t put them at risk, even for the sake of retaining her immortality, for the sake of spreading the realm of their dominion across the globe. There was little that she could manage to imagine sacrificing them for, and so, she had taken to those dark halls on her own, sweeping from shadow to shadow as she prowled the darkness with her heavy rifle in her arms, a pistol holstered at either hip, the leather of her jacket weighted down with dozens of spare magazines.

Kneeling in the dirt Freyja had placed the bipod of her rifle on a dusty rock wall that separated the narrow passage she had come from, from a large cavern ahead of her. In the darkness, a skeletal figure shuffled across the rocky floor, the clatter of the enchanted bones rattling through the otherwise silent floor. She assumed that most people were either further in, or were still bickering online.

An icy blue eye glared through the scope of the rifle, though the magnification was unneeded, really, her own eyesight a thousand times more clear than when she had been but a human. She could have made this shot in her sleep, as loud as the shambling ruins of a human being was being, clattering across the floor in an aimless circle. She wondered, as she centered the crosshair of the scope across the bared skull, the round aimed right for the thing’s empty eye socket, what made them decide on a circle. What made them move at all, without any sort of goal or objective to drive them.

Her finger tightened across the trigger, her body braced for the buck of the rifle, her body tensed against the roar of the beast of a weapon, when her phone went off, the musical chime telling her that Caligrace, her first, was shooting her a text. The phone vibrated in the back pocket of her jeans as it rang out, the skeleton jumping at the sound as she pulled the trigger. As the thing lurched, the round only grazed the back of its skull, sending bone shards scattering across the floor as the thing wheeled on her with a bone-dry rattle.

She frowned, and let the rifle’s butt fall, the thing already loping toward her as she pulled a pistol from one hip, and her phone from her backside pocket to shoot her closest friend and progeny a text.

TEXT
TO: Caligrace

Already on it, girl.
Find me inside.

As she texted, she sidestepped a loping swipe of a skeletal arm, smashing the butt of her pistol into the base of the thing’s skull, sending it stumbling before she lifted the weapon and put a bullet in the back of its head, sending it sprawling in a heap of bones on the floor. She frowned, nudging at the scattered bones with her shoe, finding little more than that. Bones. With that, the woman sighed and picked up her rifle again, glad that her family would be joining her at their own discretion.

[Caligrace]

How long has this been going on?

The question filtered through her mind just as her phone chimed, Freyja’s name flashing across the glass. With a single swipe of her finger, she cleared the alert and tucked her phone back into the pocket of her jeans as she gave her surroundings a final sweep. For the moment, she was safe. For the moment, there was no clatter of bone, no scent of decay and mold. She was alone in her corner, her secluded spot allowing her a vantage point that many sorely lacked. As she pressed her back to the wall – choosing to ignore the way her jacket seemed to suction to the rot on the stone – she watched as others stumbled around her. A man, his weapon hoisted over his shoulder, a woman, her hair a beacon of golden light in this otherwise darkened hell – and the entire time, she could only think how long?

She prided herself on her studies. She was as intelligent as she was beautiful, but this… this had escaped her notice. Running her tongue along a plump lip, she blew out a breath of irritation and shook her head. The knowledge that these cretins lurked deep in the belly of their home unnerved her. Already, her mind was running in overdrive, piecing together one scenario after the next. What would happen if an earthquake split open the streets? Would they crawl out? Would the overrun them? What if someone – god forbid a child – stumbled through one of the doors? What if she came down here, only to be lost forever? What if she could never find her way out? With that single thought, she felt the walls press against her, felt her chest tighten. She couldn’t breathe. Holy ****, she couldn’t breathe.

Once upon a time, she would have fallen to her knees. She would have clawed at her throat as her skin turned white, as she fought to suck in air. Once upon a time, she had been human. Now, she forced herself to stare straight ahead, to curl her hand around the butt of her gun, to feel the metal against her smooth skin. As her blood turned to ice, she closed her eyes, and forced herself to remember the truth. She was dead. She didn’t need to breathe. With that thought in her mind, she felt her anxiety began to ebb, and thought it still thrummed in her chilled veins, she could move again. Slowly, she pushed herself from the wall and smoothed a hand through her hair, the curls falling like fire over her shoulder. Somewhere in this hell, her sire was raising hell. Somewhere behind her, her childe was coming to her aid, to be at her side. She wouldn’t head forward without him.

Freyja was strong enough to handle herself, but she didn’t know how far Hudson had come. She wouldn’t call him to her side, only to leave him in the dust because she was impatient. Instead, she wiggled her phone back out of her pocket – and frowned as the ‘no service’ icon flashed in the corner. She had just… whatever. She couldn’t tell him where she was, but she was close enough to the entrance that he could find her. Putting her phone away once again, she dropped to her knees and brushed her hand through the remaining bone fragments of the skeleton she had killed. When her finger brushed metal, she quickly dusted off the key and palmed it. She had no idea where it lead, but she was almost positive that Freyja would.

[Hudson]

The Labyrinth lay before him like temptation embodied. The place beckoned him closer, whispered words directly into his mind, and then receded, like a beautiful tide. He didn’t know how long he stood there, waiting, but he eventually forced himself to take those few steps forward, to venture into the labyrinth. Armed with two handguns, a sword strapped to his back, he looked as if he were going into war. The unknown world called to him, as if he, too, belonged within its halls, mixed in amongst the other creatures dwelling there. Caligrace hadn’t been too specific with her text message, but he knew that the labyrinth was like any other untamed land in Harper Rock. Vampires went there to sharpen their blades and unleash their bullets. They went to the labyrinth when they wanted to hone their skills. The strongest went there. And Hudson, though he loathed to admit it, wasn’t anywhere near that point in his timeline.

At first, he had a peaceful walk through the corridors. He stopped to try and text his sire, but that was a mistake. First, he had no signal. Second, something lurking amongst the shadows decided to make itself known. He didn’t have time to dart out of the way, nor did he have time to come up with a counterattack, so he dropped low and swept the legs out from under the skeleton. Unfortunately, the bones didn’t break. He’d been honing his skills with firearms, not with any type of martial arts, so that move was probably the best he had in store. When the skeleton recovered from his attack, Hudson had a gun in each hand. The creature actually growled at him, something that creeped him out, and then came charging. Hudson didn’t try to dart or dodge. He raised his guns and fired. Two bullets from each gun. Four in total. Two headshots and two wasted. The skeleton stopped, swayed, and collapsed.

The allure of the labyrinth had faded.

The temptation had vanished.

Hudson wanted to get the **** out of there.

Replacing his guns in their holsters, he walked over to the fallen skeleton and stomped on the skull until it shattered. Then, he kicked at the bones comprising the rest of the skeleton, scattering them across the floor. If the creatures reformed, that one would take quite a while. Good riddance, he thought. He hated to continue, but somewhere, amongst the halls of the labyrinth, his sire was waiting. And he’d gotten better. He’d grown accustomed to handling weapons; he’d grown accustomed to fighting. He just had to admit that he preferred mental pursuits. He wasn’t a natural fighter. After all, he’d been roadkill only how long ago?

Red hair. Vibrant, like a fiery sunset. That was his sire. Nothing described the way he felt when he saw her there. Relief. Anger. Joy. A lot of joy.

“We’re getting the hell out of here,” he immediately said, no greeting following. “This place is a death trap.” He had dust and bits of bone fragments over the bottoms of his jeans and the front of his brown henley. He’d been dressed for hacking into businesses, not hacking into skeletons. “Let me guess, we’re going to find Freyja.” Immediately, he retrieved one of his two guns and turned off the safety. “Let’s go.” His seemingly one-sided conversation gone, he waited for his siress to lead the way.

[Freyja]

Hefting her rifle onto her shoulder, Freyja shook her head and slipped her free hand into the pocket of her leather jacket, seeking out the metal tin that held her cigarettes. The carry case was a godsend, an idea that her brother had had, before, when they had come into this life in a relative proximity. He had already seen the violence of their new lives very quickly after he had been turned, months before she had, and had found that, if you wanted to keep anything on your person, you needed to be sure that it could withstand the rigors of that violence.

Or, at the very least, that it was put inside of something that could hold up against that kind of abuse.

The silver case was easy enough to find, larger than a matchbox and cold to the touch, it had carried her goods through many a fight, and just now, knowing that her Caligirl and her own little one were scurrying around down here in the dark with her made her nervous. It put her on edge, knowing they were so willing to walk into the dark, so willing to let these things put a knife to their throats. She knew Hudson would be there for Cali, he had little other reason to even know what this place was, or why it was important. She doubted that he’d had time to really comprehend what it was that he had become just yet, much less to grasp at what the things that the administrator had told them would mean for their kind. The real question mark here, though, was Cali herself. Freyja hadn’t called her down here, into this crumbling hellscape filled with walking nightmares. So why would she come?

What did she really think of what was going on? Would she see things Freyja’s way, or would she be another obstacle? If she were, she would likely be harder on the tall Dane than any of these ghoulish things down in the dark. Being at odds with the redhead made Frey uneasy in the extreme. She didn’t like the thought of that at all.

She sighed, and pulled a cigarette from the case, shutting it with a snap as she placed the filter between her lips and pulled her lighter from the same pocket. She wasn’t on anything, not tonight. Not down here. Down here, she was keeping her wits about her, so the taste of the nicotine sliding past her tongue and along her throat, the gentle burn of it was almost as fantastic as a swallow of blood on her thirstiest nights. It sharpened her focus, the glowing tip of the cigarette like an orange beacon in the blackness as she made her way back along the ledge of the crumbling platform she’d been hunting on.

At the edge, she saw the tops of their heads as they stood over the crumbled remains of one of the skeletons. A rusty key in her Cali’s hand, and Hudson looking as resolute and determined as ever as he looked ready to head out in search of his truly, the whole scene brought a wistful twist to her painted lips. They were but two of her little family, but she was happy to see them. She was happy to have them so close, even down here.

She planted the butt of her rifle into the dusty rock of the ledge and pulled herself over, legs dropping from the ledge as she fell into a seated position on its edge, one foot dangling idly, the heel of her boot scraping against the rough stone wall as she leaned forward, her long rifle resting across her lap as she grinned down at the pair. “Looking for me?”

[Caligrace]

For a few moments, she found herself surrounded by silence. It was comforting, in the way that she had always thought death would be. A slow, cold embrace; one meant to soothe, to nurture. Instead, her death had been violent. It had been bloody and ferocious. It was because of her final moments that when she found a few seconds of solitude, she took advantage. Pressing the back of her skull against the stone, she worked her fingers along the chain that adorned her throat, the white gold catching a brief flicker of light down one of the tunnels. It was that light that drew her eye – a second before her silence exploded with gunfire. The shots were almost simultaneous, each one causing her to involuntarily blink.

By the fourth, she was off the wall, her rose-gold plated gun palmed in caution. Without the silence roaring in her ears, without it pressing down on her like a comforting blanket, her anxiety was back. It coursed through her veins and caused her hands to tremble. It wasn’t the first time she had heard a gun since falling into the rabbit hole, but it was the first time she had heard one so close. Using her thumb to kick back the safety, she carefully pulled her fiery mane over a bare shoulder just as the sound of splintering bone followed the echoes of gunfire. Whoever had fired the shots clearly had some issues to work out, so imagine her surprise, when her childe sauntered out of the shadows.

Of course, she had known him instantly.

His broad shoulders, the color of his hair, the intelligent gleam in his eye and the angular shape of his jaw were hard to miss. He was a walking GQ ad, and god, he worked it well. Holstering her weapon with a quick twist of her wrist, she allowed her plump, full lips to curve into a saccharine smile. “Hello to you, too, handsome,” she greeted, allowing a bit of sarcasm to drip into her words. Without wasting a second after his tirade, she lifted onto the tips of her toes and pressed her lips to the corner of his. “You’re so cute when you get all cave-man.” Falling back onto her heels, she worked her fingers through her hair, only to quickly begin to weave the curls into a tight braid. Seeing the slivers of bone on his jeans only had her cringing, and she couldn’t stand the thought of a single one getting tangled within the silken strands.

Once she was finished, she allowed the braid to fall down her back, her khol-rimmed amber eyes finding his in the darkness. “Of course we’re finding Freyja. If she’s down here, you know she’s causing trouble. I’m not too keen on allowing her to wander about unsupervised.” That was the thing about Caligrace. Her death might have unlocked that wild, carefree side – but she was still her. She was still human. At least where it counted. Freyja was her protector. Her best friend. She knew that the blonde was lethal when left to her own devices, and the thought of her alone with the cold slabs of the labyrinth walls left a tight knot in the pit of her stomach. Dropping her gaze to his weapons when he pulled them free, she arched a sculpted brow and allowed that grin to form again.

“I knew I did right in saving you,” she whispered, though she turned on her heel without elaborating. It was too easy for her to get lost in the scent of him, the comfort he offered her and she needed to focus on the task at hand. Of course, she’d barely made it two steps before her sire’s voice rang off the walls, the Icelandic lilt sending a shiver down her spine. Without another word, she wrapped her arm around Hudson – beneath the warmth of his Henley – and laughed.

“Of course we are, doll. You know I don’t like leaving you alone too long. Heaven knows what kind of trouble you’ll find for yourself,” the French-Canadian replied, voice as sweet as honey.

[Hudson]

Trouble, as if they all hadn’t found enough trouble to last them through the rest of the week. At least, he felt that way. Hacking into the police database, slaughtering zombies, Hudson thought he’d had busy days, but no. He wanted to hang his head. As if he expected anything different from Freyja. As if he expected anything different from Caligrace. In his short time with both women, he grew to know, and admire, their ability to stand up for themselves, both together and alone. They were strong women, so to speak. And while Freyja wore her strength proudly, Caligrace had a quiet strength. Hudson? Well, he wasn’t so sure about himself. He didn’t think of himself as a strong guy, unless he could count mental pursuits -- in which case, **** yeah, he was the man. Realizing he’d been lost in thought, he forced himself from mental images of himself standing atop a pile of fallen foes. Be realistic now.

Be aware of your surroundings!

“So we’re not getting the **** out of here.” He sighed, raised his right hand, and pinched at the bridge of his nose. He wasn’t leaving them, obviously, but that didn’t mean he didn’t want to drag them out of there. He wasn’t a physically strong man, as he’d admitted, so the labyrinth represented a mountain he couldn’t climb, a never-ending barrage of enemies far beyond his skill level. And, really, did any of them know, with absolute certainty, what existed in the darkness? He thought the creatures in the catacombs were bad! He let his hand fall and he looked between the women, a serious expression on his face. “How far have you gotten? Have you had any luck?” He addressed Freyja then.

Something started moving around in the darkness. He tried his best to pinpoint where the noise came from, but he did what he did best, in the end. He fired blindly. Hudson hit a few times, missed a few times, and killed another zombie. The skeleton collapsed onto the hard ground, its bones scattering in all different directions. He probably should have asked if they had any others around, but the thought hadn’t formed yet. He chose to shoot first and ask questions later. And he had a lot of questions.

Have any of the others shown up? He assumed that the others were informed in the same manner that he’d been informed, but he could have been wrong. Were they setting out like the next Donner-Reed Party? He hoped not. He wasn’t eating Freyja. With that thought, he eyed the woman. No, she didn’t seem appealing at all.

“That Administrator person. Is he or she your reason for being here?” It was a pointless question, but he wanted to believe they were searching for something worthwhile rather than bonding over bullets and bones.

[Freyja]

Freyja laughed at Caligrace’s assessment of her knack for finding herself in trouble. She wasn’t wrong, and the Amazonian Dane would be the first to admit it. She hefted the weight of her rifle, slapping the butt of the stock against the stony face of the ledge and shoved herself from her perch, landing easily on her feet, the sound of her impact lost on the gale of Hudson’s bullets. He was a bit jumpy, if she was honest, but it made her grin, to see that he wasn’t so dumb as to think he was invincible. She made that very mistake often. Probably too often for her own health.

She took a drag from her cigarette, thumb flicking at the butt and sending ash floating to the floor in a shower of grey-white flakes. She offered them both a smile as she looked down on them, long rifle draped lazily back across one shoulder as her long, slender fingers delicately wrapped about the butt of her pistol. “Actually, I’ve wound my way pretty deep into this hole. Came back up for some fresh air and a bit of a smoke. Afraid to light one that deep, the air smells… off. Wouldn’t want to set my hair on fire.” She chuckled, and lifted the cigarette to her lips again. What she wasn’t saying was, down that deep, the things that lurked in the dark were a much bigger game than the critters that rattled and clacked all over this first level.

She didn’t want to frighten the man too badly, if Caligrace was bringing him along. From the look of things, that was exactly her plan. At least he would keep the redhead’s nerves in check, keep her calm and collected. That anxiety of hers was going to get her killed one day, and down there in the dark, it was as likely as ever to happen. She sighed, the sudden exhale taking with it a cloud of smoke that drifted away from them and vanishing in the relative darkness of the shallow cavern. She rolled a slender shoulder and pulled her cigarette free again, swiping the mostly burned away shaft against the rock face of the ledge and turning to her progeny. “The way’s blocked by a bunch of doors with strong locks. Tried breaking a few of them, but as old as they are, they’re holding on tight. Might be some kind of enchantment.”

As she turned, tipping her head toward where the first door was hidden, she let her hand slip from her pistol, leaving the weapon to hang at her hip. She glanced back at Hudson’s question, a fine, golden brow rising as she offered him a wicked smile. “Why the hell else would anyone come down here in the dirt and death, if not for a shot at glory?” She laughed, the sound a melodic chime that, when listened to carefully, was laced with a madness that was unexplained, a layer beneath the mirth that lay hidden behind a golden mask, much like the laughter’s owner. She let her thumb toggle the safety on and off again on her rifle as she walked.

“I can’t speak for Cali girl, but I’m here to do what I’ve set out to do since the night I met my own sire. I’m here to be damned sure that, come what may, my life, my immortality is secure. The things that person was saying over the Net? That sounded like a damnably fine excuse to find myself down here in the dirt, playing with the dead things. I’m not about to put my future in anyone else’s hands.” She gave the man a wink, then, and stepped around a fallen skeleton, another swaying idly on the bony supports of its legs as it stared off into the darkness, standing on a ledge that fell away into nothing. With a single thrust, the flat of her palm struck its back, sending it flying into the pit, and out of their view forever.

“So. Neither of you happen to have found a key for this first door yet, have you? My first time down, the keys were raining out of the sky. Now? Now, I’m lucky that any of these things coughs one up tonight.”

[Caligrace]

“Of course we’re not getting the **** out of here,” she repeated, her tone light, even as she dug her nails gently into his spine. The touch was meant to distract him, even as he pinched the bridge of his nose, reminding her of her father when she broke curfew. When he finally allowed his hand to drop, sharp gaze finding her sire, she frowned. Was that a quiver in his voice? Was he… no, it was impossible that he was afraid. He could handle this, couldn’t he? Oh, god. What if she had lead him to his death? What if she couldn’t save him – what had she done? In the span of a second, her thoughts shifted from relaxed to chaotic, and she found herself digging her nails into her palms. The manicured tips cut through the smooth flesh, and as her blood bubbled to the surface, shots rang out.

It was too sudden, and she fell back, her eyes widening just a fraction. Whatever he had asked her sire had been lost beneath the dull roar in her ears, and she quickly tugged a pierced lobe. It took only a few seconds for the ringing to fade, and soon, their voices began to make sense again. “Of course the air smells off. We’re miles underground, surrounded by death and rotting flesh.” Despite the sarcastic bite to her words, her smile was soft as she leaned up to brush a ghost of a kiss to the blonde’s sharp cheekbone. Settling back onto her heels, she glanced between the pair, before working her braid over her shoulder. “They are, in… a way. I’m about knowledge. I need more of it, and there is something here, something that could change history. It could hold answers, it could hold the end of the world, and the thought of someone else having it, of someone else controlling my life and how I choose to live or die…”

Trailing off, she lifted a slender shoulder in a half-shrug and smiled. She spent hours scouring the forum, and even longer picking apart every detail of the Administrator’s posts. While she was thirsty for knowledge, she was also worried over someone else possessing whatever it was they searched for. It was something that was bound to tear their world apart, and in the wrong hands… no. She couldn’t think about it like that. It hadn’t happened yet, and it wouldn’t if she had a say in it. Thinking of someone controlling those she cared for sent her spiraling into an emotional tailspin. Her through tightened, her hands began to shake, and she had to quickly distract herself.

“You underestimate me,” she grinned, quickly plucking the key she had found from her pocket to toss it at the Dane. “I figured I’d wait for us all to be together before moving on. So, now that we’re here, how about we see what kind of fun we can find?” Without another word, she quickly headed for the door the blonde had indicated, palms quickly brushing over her jeans to wipe away the blood.