Components, Part I

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Scene Title Components, Part I
Synopsis Hallucinating from the effects of the H5N10 virus, Eve Mas finds herself in a waking nightmare.
Date April 1, 2010

Ruins of Midtown


Some music is playing throughout the place that Eve Mas calls home. Old school, some blues and then some jazz. Ah, My Funny Valentine the Nina Simone rendition is currently on play. The woman in question had felt well enough to get out of bed and make herself some breakfast. She looks sickly still.. not too bad though. Maybe she's starting to get better?

"My funny valentine.." she sings softly as she stirs the sauce for the pasta. Her long hair is pulled back so that it doesn't fall into the pot. Her snake Nanai slithers around in his glass case, tongue flicking out at the glass.

"Kylie! Beatrix!" she calls to her imaginary friends, thanks to her recent hallucinations. "Dinner is almost ready!" she coughs for a bit but then she moves back again to stirring the pot.

Outside the frost-decked windows of Mas Mechanics, snow lightly falls down on Midtown. Eve is fortunate enough, in a way, that the edge of Midtown her mechanics shop rests on has been shoveled by local residents. The street, while narrow from the towering snow banks, has afforded the availability of cars to proceed down, much as anyone can drive on these streets. Perhaps if Eve's shop had been on the other side of those tall concrete barricades that keep people out of the heart of Midtown, things might have been different.

But then again, this was always going to happen, if her dreams are to be believed.

While figments of her fever-addled imagination do not answer her voice, the track of headlights approaching the building do shine in through her windows as if in answer. Bright white from two vehicles, streaking past one after another, making Eve's long and black shadow dance fretfully against the concrete wall behind her. In its glass cage under heating lamps, one of Eve's snakes flicks its tongue, coal black eyes staring at her silently.

She never has visitors, not at this hour and not here.

"O'Hera! I need you to get my mommy's gun!" she says loudly but significantly softer then how loud she was speaking before. Her eyes are wide and she looks down at her paralyzed right arm, damn virus. Shaking her head, the music is cut off and soon so are the lights along with the shove.

Hera, I told you- nevermind." She says as she walks to her room and reaches in a drawer to withdraw a heavy looking gun. If she wasn't a deadly woman with a gun, or if she had never trained with her right arm as much as she did with her left, then she'd be screwed. But luckily.. Eve has done so.

She slides against the wall in the hall, looking towards the front door. Waiting, watching. Trying not to breathe too hard.. but then she coughs. Damn virus.

Headlights pass by the window, one vehicle pulling up in front of the mechanics' shop at the edge of the snowbank. Without any streetlights to view the road, Eve can't quite make out what exactly the vehicle is, and the second glaring pair of headlights only illuminate a corner of the vehicle as a thick, dark shadow. Within the confines of her madness and her home, Eve can hear thre approach of footsteps up through the snow, the crunch of the ice-crusted drifts as visitors approach the residence's front door.

«Site Zero-One, hot. Magi's calculations were spot on, we have signs of movement.» There's a crackle of a voice, the kind that comes out of a respirator just on the other side of the door. There's so many people outside, and behind Eve's eyes she can see their shadows moving like phantoms in front of her windows, all chalky white and pale with stiff motions and smooth black faces — horrible monsters.

Eve looks to her left at her girls, who all scream in unison. Eve tries not to scream as she puts her face into her shoulder and breathes heavily. "Shh. Girls, follow me." She says and the singer is crouching and moving to a room directly in front of the front door. Her back to the wall she tenses her muscles, ready for a strike at any moment.

"The Boogeyman and his family are here. But remember what I said?" she asks before she goes into a coughing fit and wipes blood from her mouth. "I'll always protect you girls." She says softly, "Just like you protected me." In the dreams.

The girls nod at her and whimper but Kylie, the leader and most strong shushes the girls and pulls them all together into a tight hug. Watching as Eve nods at her. "Good girl." She whispers softly, to herself.

Hallucinations abound, and Eve can't even trust her own senses. There's a shadow standing in front of her window, all bulbous white head and dark featureless face of smooth black. It's body is silhouette by the glow of the vehicle headlights, peering into the garage. There's a slam of a knock on Eve's front door, four steady and rhythmic pounds that echo in the back of her head. Maybe she should have braced for what was coming, but her prescience isn't what it's been lately, not when the door comes bursting open with a powerful kick.

White covers the intruder's form, creased at the edges and heavy with plodding steps and click-hissing breath. The black face he wears is reflective and smooth, with that rasping hiss of breathing coming from it. Though Eve's eyes aren't as focused on his mask as she is the assault rifle he carries at his side, lifted up slowly to sweep around the interior of the building.

«Clear.» Comes in a clicking crack, followed by three more of the white clad men stepping into the building, their boots clomping noisily on the concrete floor as they enter. «Sweep the ground floor.» The lead creature hisses, and the two at his back move out to either side of the entrance, assault rifles readied at hip height, while the masked intruder in front carries a canister in his free hand.

She stays silent in the shadows, edging to the side and then she's behind one of the men. Back pressed against the wall she lifts her left arm and cocks the gun.

Eyes turning over to look at the girls one more time and she pulls the trigger, straight for the leg. As she opens fire, her girls vanish as if they were never there. Eve's body is at a heightened sense now, the adrenaline pumping through her as she doesn't wait to see if the bullet hit home, she dodges behind a corner a slides down the wall.

This is her domain, nobody can navigate it like she can.

Though it would be so much easier were she not vomitously ill.

There's a mechanical scream, a spray of red when white plastic shreds under the powerful kick of a .45 caliber handgun. The roaring report of the gunfire shakes the building, vibrates thorugh Eve's skeleton and causes the walls to flex and breathe outward like a pair of concrete lungs. Sweat beads on her brows, her pulse pounds behind her eyes and in her ears, and that screaming, white-clad figure collapses down to the ground, gun rattling on the concrete and one hand clutching his leg. For a moment she can almost see his face contorted in a scream behind the plate of black covering it.

«Contact! Contact!» Croaks one of the other pair, and the white clad men turn, reflective Eve's face in their visors, stealing her image with their very presence. The building's walls flex and bow again, breathing in and out before weeping tears of saltwater from their pores. Her snakes are laughing, coiled together and hissing sylables of distrust as the rapid crack of automatic gunfire fills the room.

Pain lances thorugh Eve's stomach, not the kind that implies blood and death, but like being struck with a hammer. A black rubber ball flattens against her abdomen, bursts blood vessels and leaves a welt the size of a silver dollar. Seven more rounds smash against her body, rubber bullets excruciatingly painful in their impact.

The man ont he ground bleeding thorugh the leg of his NBC suit thinks otherside as he screams against the black plastic visor of his mask, clutching the exploded back of his knee. Another man moves in, this one with a rifle raised to his shoulder. Shadows move to Eve's periphery, and she's shooting at figments of her imagination, bullets ricocheting off of concrete walls, shattering windows, punching through drywall.

There's a snap sound, pain hits Eve in the neck, bristles of a dart tickle her chin and the right side of her body begins to go numb, fingers struggling to keep hold on her gun.

She struggles to breathe before she blinks and just gasps as her body numbs. Eyes rolling in the back of her head, she tries to sit up but can't, with a rattled inhale, Eve breathes out, "Who.. are you?"

There's no answer from the masked figures as Eve slouches up against one of the breathing concrete walls, sliding down it slowly with her gun tumbling forward from her hand. She blacks out before her body even hits the ground, but her eyes flutter open an unknow amoutn of time later, and she can feel the pressure of people carrying her by her arms and ankles. The cold arctic air is blowing across her body, eyelids heavy and breathing hard. She can see a van, enormous and white, plated in armor. The back doors hiss as they split open and reveal a hydraulic ramp that slides out, carrying with it an enormous gray metallic coffin-sized object. It in turns splits down the middle, pressurized gas hissing out as Eve is carried towards it.

She black out again, just for a moment, eyes opening again to be staring up at those white clad figures staring down at her. There's a hiss, and the doors of the coffin begin to close down in around her. In the dark of this case, Eve can hear hissing behind her eyes, her snakes are laughing, the walls are closing in around her, and then the lid seals shut with a click, the hiss isn't snakes that she's been hearing.

It's gas.

And that's the last thing she hears.


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