2017-10-27: Escape
- Log: Escape
- Cast: Loren Voss, Lily Keil
- Where: Bledavik - Royal Palace (??)
- Date: October 27th 2017
- Summary: Lily enacts her desperate plan. Takes place shortly before Life Will Change.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
It's yet another boxy room, cut off from the outside world and natural light. Another familiar-enough ceiling, another round of nondescript walls and floors, a dizzying array of machines.
She's been moved yet again, sometime during the twilight hours where consciousnessness fades. Maybe it's something in the medication they're giving her that enabled it -- it would be a fair assumption, they've had to increase the dosage as she may have noticed. Or maybe it's something else entirely...
The decline continues, steadily enough. If it weren't for scans coming up null, he would have assumed a systemic infection. They've even acted accordingly, assuming there is one, adding more medication to her lines.
Blue eyes skim across the chart pulled on his tablet where the medic leans against the wall, twisted away from his patient.
At least he can take some satisfaction that no one, according to the notes, has any idea what's going on. Even Petran's just listed some recommendations matter-of-factly, without any of her usual textual implied-smirking going on. So at least, this won't be his fault if she slips...
And very soon, this won't be any of their problem, anyway.
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
How many has it been now? It's hard to say. Lily wasn't conscious for all of them, she's realized by this point. Just new ceilings, similar to the old ones. As the time has gone on, she's gotten worse, and the increase in medication isn't helping her. Remaining alert is sometimes a challenge.
The pain helps for that, gives her something to focus on and to hold onto. Her eye is the worst of it, but she can remember burns on her arms, on her side, the remnants of muscle aches from being unable to move properly...
Still moderately feverish, she is silent but wakeful. As best she can she's observed the guards outside her door, waiting for Loren's presence again. Monitors beep along as Loren is twisted away from her, and she does not attempt to draw his attention. She breathes slowly, and evenly, using her single good eye to study his person, checking vulnerabilities, places he could hide things... She may not have much longer. It's time.
Soon, she'll be a different kind of problem, and she knows it. Unless--
Another slow breath, as Lily closes her eye. Her chains remain still until there's a slow, soft clink as she moves a little more, stretching her ankles slightly as she shifts forward in her seat. Focus. Her markings pulse lightly, but her Ether dampener remains in full effect. Bandaged in places, her arms are bare, showing the strange circuits; her gray clothes, no shoes, are grayer in the harsh lighting.
She opens her eye.
Her breathing abrubtly stops. That's Loren's first warning. His second is the sickening snap and pop that follows as she shoves all the force she can muster against delicate bones in her hand and left shackle. The third is the sharp sound of pain that accompanies it, torn free from her throat.
Her hand slips free and she lunges, rapidly purpling skin flashing by as she shoves the crown off of of her head with her fingers, sending it flying up to crack against the ceiling. A rush of Ether floods the room abrubtly, her arms glowing painfully violet.
The room darkens abrubtly, a field blocking out even the cracks of light from the door, as a single eye levels balefully at Loren Voss.
Lily says nothing. There is only this instant to act as her bindings start to crackle with power.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
The Gebler lieutenant uniform doesn't leave much in the way of room for concealed hiding places. The obvious kit at his hip, on the other hand...
The whirr and occasional beep of the machines and her breathing both lead for a steady, stable background noise to the room. She's much more sedated than previous visits, and it doesn't seem like there's been any unexpected data collected.
...Nothing back from the lab regarding her more unusual traits to date.
Her breathing stops.
One piece of machinery whines out in alarm. Loren straightens, beginning to pull away from the wall, his gaze flying over to the vitals display near where she rests. Did she just--
He earns himself a frontrow seat to the desperate action that follows.
It isn't all that common to earn a full, out and out visible reaction from the otherwise generally aloof young man. He's no less than shocked, aghast. If there were a good three-word summary for this kind of face...
It'd probably be something to the tune of what the fuck.
As she screams.
As she tugs off the crown.
As it hits the ceiling with a solid thud.
As an burst of ether sizzles across the room.
As every piece of electronic equipment in here lets out a staticky snap-crack and dies.
As the lights go out and a particularly still sort of silence plumes its way across the room.
As she glows with a sickly violet luminescence fit to dimly illuminate what otherwise might as well be a crypt.
There are some things that you see and you just know that the next subsection of your life will not be enjoyable and may not, in fact, be survivable.
Of all things, his mind runs to the days after van Houten's incident. His heart damn near misses its regularly scheduled beat after that.
He's dimly aware of a number of things.
The distance of the door, for instance -- too far to run for it. The sound of her bindings snapping. The very certain knowledge he has that his tablet's dead, that everything in this room is dead.
That the lack of anyone rushing in right now -- the utter darkness from where the hallway light should be coming in -- means that somehow, no one has heard her scream or heard the massive failure of electronic equipment.
Somewhere, he thinks, his thoughts running mad as he rolls back against the wall, he knows someone has probably gotten an outage report. Or seen the feed. Or something.
But a lot can happen in a few seconds. In the meantime, he has no backup.
He takes a breath.
It doesn't help.
Action takes over where rational thought fails. One hand lifts sharply, the slip-strike shudder of a flaking rock pillar rolling in resonance with the motion straight at her thereafter. And in the next motion he takes a truely desperate action -- knowing on some level what he'll look like, a dark moving form silhouetted by the light she's emitting -- and makes to circle around the place she now rests.
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
The kit. That becomes Lily's focus for a brief moment. Buckles, straps...
No, no real useful data comes on these machines, not any more than Loren has already studied and used. But they don't matter much.
Lily's eye remains closed in the wake o Loren's horrified reaction, but she hears his gasp before she screams. She feels the lights go out across her eyelid, opens her eye only after the flash of light as she glares at him. ...she is the ligh, now.
It is not a pleasant light.
In the moments that Loren knows, that he remembers, his prisoner is in motion. Metal shatters and falls into pieces about her other wrist, about her ankles, the chair itself she's sitting in crumbling into nothingness as she stands. No one comes in to help him; no one appears even to notice--or no one that is close enough to act.
She is still staring at him as he moves into action, lunging to the side so that the pillar of earth tears bloodily across her shoulder rather than running through her chest. He's circling around her and she lets the momentum of the blow move her too, IV and monitoring equipment--what's left of it--crashing below.
The light pulses again as she turns, locks eyes on him and where the kit stands out against his white jacket. Still she says nothing; there is something inhuman in her eye as she faces him and lunges into motion. Her broken hand she tucks quickly at her wrist as she charges, slamming her head straight for his sternum as she reaches for his medical kit and rips it away from him.
Abrubtly a wall of fire flashes up between the two of them, her markings turning red-orange and lighting the room the same as she lifts the kit straight up to her face and opens it with her teeth. She looks inside it to see labls she cannot read. ...But red and yellow shout warning as she stares.
As the fire is subsiding she holds the kit between fingers on a throbbing, brutal hand, pulls the plunger from its place.
The fire is gone when she's holding it, and he has a plain view of her next action. She pops off the cap of the injector--
And slams the full package of Drive straight into her bare skin, pressing the end and driving it straight through the needle into her bloodstream. There's a stutter-short as her breath catches abrubtly, as if she's choking. For an instant the room goes completely black.
...A single golden eye glows in the darkness.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Put anything you can between her and you. Use it.
...Maybe it's too late for that now. He had, mere instants ago, hoped -- vainly -- that he still had enough time. Or at least, instinct had risen up and snapped at the chance, so he might as well call it hope. If that shot in the dark wasn't enough to kill her, flip her onto the floor while she's restrained and go from there. Get help, stun her, or just kill her.
Consequences of a future him are gone from his mind.
But the chair disintegrates, entropy eating it until nothing's left. Even in her light, he can see that much as she rises perhaps not unlike a puppet beckoned upwards by its strings.
...So much for that, a part of him thinks remotely.
As he locks an eye with her, uncertainity of what he should do now riding high for one perilous second--
Where she charges at him headlong, a solid impact sufficient to send him reeling, skidding backwards. Fire rises up from out of nowhere, sending odd mixtures of shadow and light along the walls.
--and reaction once again takes the reins. He twists, rolling into the momentum rather than away from it, shifting his weight, rebalancing a few critical degrees.
White light flashes, angular walls rising in an array around him, a once-again more powerful and potent version of the short sharp gesture he makes with his right hand.
He's missing something, the more cerebral part of his awareness pitches in, noting the gap in a certain heavier sensation that should be there at his hip.
It fully registers.
"No! Stop!"
What she took. What she's using.
I bet the leftenant has some on him!!
Too late.
Darkness uncoils itself, swallowing up even the embers.
The only thing left shining in the darkness is the barrier Loren has invoked around himself. His left hand slowly lifts, fingertips just brushing the frame of his glasses. His gaze unfocuses.
He swallows, but doesn't look away. Doesn't budge. The incandescence about him intensifies.
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
BGM: The Birthday Massacre - Broken https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RNPW5JKzVo
Anything. But there isn't anything anymore.
It was a solid plan; Lily's light is dampened on the left side by blood running down her arm, staining her clothes. It hurts, that wound. The pain shines like a beacon in Lily's mind. ...It is not strange, really, to imagine she rises like a puppet. It's too smooth, in that way. Far too smooth.
That perilous second lasts. That perilous second turns into something else. Lily's flames provide a barrier... But not a barrier to sight. Loren's barrier in turn protects against the sudden heat, but he sees quickly what it is that she's doing... too late to think to stop her.
The medical kit falls to the ground with a soft noise over his protests. The idea was put in her head in that conversation, and now...
"There's..." Her voice echoes lightly for a moment as she draws in a deep breath, "...No time." Her eye narrows, still glowing faintly, still the only light in the room besides Loren's barrier. His gaze is unfocused. His barrier is brightening.
But there is something awfully lucid in her gaze, completely controlled. It's as if the emotion draws out of it entirely for an instant.
"The same old tricks..." Lily lifts her good hand. "So Voss. Did you say I was too violent before?" Ether spikes again, this time painfully so. A faint whine echoes in the room as Lily visibly staggers. Brilliant light courses through the markings on her arms... which start to spread, about her shoulderblades, across her shoulders, partway down her sides. She grits her teeth, but keeps staring.
The light now is gold as her fingers flex and a pressure starts to form in front of Loren's barrier. Yellow light crackles like lightning before there is a sense of collapse--and it draws the power of the barrier straight into it to explode backward in bursts straight at the Lieutenant, hotter than fire, rushing with awful, sick radiance.
Still she stares, in obvious pain. "They won't help you now."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
She's a Lamb. Will it even work for her, or will she simply keel over--
No such luck, a part of him registers dully, pouring more etheric power into his shield as he focuses.
Run, and he might die.
Stay put, and he might die.
As usual, his options are fantastic.
A breath slowly hisses through his teeth as he stares her figure down, focus point somewhere in the middle distance, maintaining his stance all the while. Another breath follows. Steadier, maybe, stabilizing. Or at least finding that elusive pivot point.
Fine. Fine, then. At least this is better than...
Something about his gaze refocuses on her, properly.
Hardens.
Ever so slightly, Loren shakes his head. "Your kind... always persists in it," he murmurs, straightening his back, rolling his shoulders as if in anticipation for a strike, some report against the etheric wall he's now conjured.
Light flares.
A vibration touches off the side of the barrier, ripples cutting their way across the faceted walls of light... followed by a spidering arc like shattering glass.
In the next heartbeat, the etheric force simple... erodes, holes followed by gaps as it's siphoned away, followed by...
I can siphon magic out of people!
It's like that.
He drops what little is left, shifting his weight backwards and drawing his arms up at least absorb a part of something he can no longer deflect or evade.
Rare, unusual talents. Rare, unusual...
He staggers back as the shockwave of the hit unfolds over him, expression contorted into some mix of disbelief and pain. Everything burns hideously, but yet there's none of the usual signs associated with conjuring flame. His right arm rises as if bearing a shield -- opposite to his usual, preferred stance -- and he lifts his head as he takes one step towards the door.
With the other hand, he makes a sudden, sharp gesture. The air itself trembles for a brief instant.
The true aspect of earth is stress. Everything that happens underfoot is because of stress -- nothing is still, just in slow motion. You bundle something up slowly, grind it along until it catches, and then--
Release it. Hard-edged, honed stress-wrought forces itself through the air like a knife, a trick Lily may have seen and felt him use once before, quite some time ago...
She is perhaps lucky she's not a stone pillar.
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
It was a gamble. ...Lily had no idea of the side effects, beyond that this substance is apparently addictive.. But she's in worse shape than she was when she was captured. Still wounded, sick from something she can't explain, her options were few.
After all, Loren overpowered her before. If she was going to act...
It remains to be seen whether it will pay off in more than pain.
Agony pulses through the abrubt change in her body's balance regardless, resonates with the pulsing in her swelling hand and the wound in her shoulder and the remnants of before. But still her eye remains focused. Somehow...
Is it the drug?
"My kind," Lily replies, as if it's the most ridiculous thing in the world. "Even you don't understand me in Gebler, who know what this power is called." The light flares. The light echoes in her eyes.
Lily is not, strictly, siphoning magic out of Loren, though it may feel that way; the magic that holds back, that draws in, merely uses the barrier in that way. It's a trick, in a way... Rare, unusual Ether.
Lily draws in his pain, his disbelief, and he stares still at him. There is no no Ether to the hatred she has for what this man represents... but there is a magic in it. Loren lifts his arm, lifts his head, takes a step--
She can feel the blow coming though she does not know what it is, and her eye widens as the air vibrates--and crashes. It moves through the air like a knife, but it hits her like a hammer, slamming against a barrier that she throws up by instinct and shattering the ice as she hits the wall hard enough to make it crack, the room illuminated by blue.
The medical equipment rattles and tumbles in the shockwave.
But the mist clears less than an instant later as Lily just.. emerges from the wall, feet no longer even touching the ground. She floats there, drawing in a breath. "...I'm still not used to that element," she admits thoughtfully, and eyes the door. The dark field about the room is beginning to crackle, preparing to fade again.
Abrubtly Lily is there, her form wavering in shadow as the light in the room, and reaching out to grab hold of his arm. The very same arm that grabbed her before, the same arm that reached into her wound in Lacour.
BGM: NieR - Kaine escape https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiysEY4eN28
The room plunges into absolute darkness as her markings glow black, hard to view and pure unmaking Ether shifts into flesh and bone, cold enough to stop a heart. There is a loud crack before she opens her swollen, broken other hand and shoves outward. A wave of force crashes into him as surely as gravity would catch someone falling.
"...I told you I'd break your arm if you touched me again," she breathes, labored. "...I don't have time for you anymore."
How long will it last? Long enough. She hovers to the door and it disintegrates before her.
The blades of ice that come next spray the walls with Avehan blood.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
"Your kind," Loren reiterates.
That's right. Her kind. Don't forget who you are, who you serve.
Glass bottles roll and crash to the floor from the shelving in the wake of his attack, followed by several hundred pounds of medical equipment.
She's floating, he realizes.
He doesn't have the option of being discriminate here -- there's too much at stake. If she leaves this room in this condition...
He can already see it. She's been lost to the drug. That look in her eyes now, visible among the points where the darkness dissipates or where light flares.
It wasn't even calibrated to her weight.
He advances, leaning forward as he once again conjures up that pulse of channeled terrestrial force.
No, there's no room for anything else but an attempt at a killing blow now. It's no longer even just about him. He must succeed here. The stress working itself into the roots of the room bundles--
She's suddenly there.
She grabs his right forearm. His lips part, his eyes widen.
A point blank range, he releases the sorcerous trigger.
As does she.
It's bone-deep, the sort of cold that sinks in and doesn't back down, doesn't fade. He rolls in towards her grip, a last-ditch attempt to break her grapple and knock her off-balance as he sheds the etheric assault throughout the room.
A nauseating crack follows.
Then the onrush of pure agony. Muscles sieze and lock, nerves issue a report his mind doesn't want to listen to.
"Nn... hh..." he breathes through gritted teeth, shuddering, lifting his free -- good -- hand to try to push her off.
Which unbalances himself neatly. Just in time for that sudden pulse of force to take him across the middle and set him down in an ungainly heap on the floor.
For an instant, an inkier black rises across his vision. He lifts his head moments later to watch, dazed, as blood paints the walls across from the now missing door.
Cradling his broken arm against his stomach, he rises far more slowly than he'd like -- his entire world seems to be pain, according to his nervous system -- and gets back up onto his feet. ...Blood is pooling in the hallway.
The lights come back on, flickering and stuttering back to life. Assorted electronics scream their way back into life; sparks fly wildly. He by all appearances pays it no heed.
Loren straightens -- as best he can -- and turns to
slam his good hand into the intercom buzzer.
"This is Voss. We have a situation with the prisoner. Two men down. She's administered Drive, act as if she's armed."