You Will Die

Participants:

delia_icon.gif eve_icon.gif

Scene Title You Will Die
Synopsis Eve Mas and Delia Ryans find Adam Monroe.
Date September 3, 2017

The Oracle Room in the Cat’s Cradle is a private, sequestered space. Here, apart from the noise of the club and the city beyond, a modern-day oracle can find the future in smoke and shadows.

The lights are off right now, save for a small night light plugged into a wall socket that sheds a warm orange glow across the floor like candlelight. In the deep shadows, there is little that can clearly be seen, just the threat of the future looming behind every corner. Warnings unheeded and disasters impending committed to oil and canvas.

The door to the oracle room clatters, lock tumbling, and as the door opens, spilling with a crack of light from the hall, the silhouette of two women is revealed to the dark of the room. Their shadows cast long and stark across the floor, and as Eve Mas reaches for the light switch, the redhead behind her spots something in the room over the oracle’s shoulder.

A black cat.

Mao.


The Cat’s Cradle

Oracle Room

September 3, 2018

8:14 am


Mrow.

1) There's a tickle in her nose.
2) Her eyes begin to water.
3) That slight twinge takes over where she…

"You keep cats in here?!?" her voice takes on a panicked undertone just before the Ah- Ah-CHOO!! Two… three… four… five… the number almost seems endless before Delia snorts loudly through her nose and wipes it on the side of her sleeve (gross). "I dink I'b godda die… whad de hell Ebe…"

Because the name of the place shouldn't have been a clue. Then again, Delia's only manifested this particular aversion to the feline form in recent years. Outside, they're cool. Outside, she can handle the fur and the fluff and all that stuff that goes with it. In here with the closed windows, dark shadows, questionable dusting habits, and lack of vacuum… it's not so great. "You should hab war’d me!!"

“That is not my pussy cat..” Eve says slowly as the door opens and Delia sneezes, making the paler woman jump at the fright at her back, “Ah ah! Hello kitty what are you doing here? …how did you get in here?” Puzzled Eve draws closer to the black cat peering down at it, “I’m sorry Dreamy this is..” very weird. The doors had been locked.

With a nervous look over her shoulder, “As I was saying he's blonde, old, cheap and he slips through my fingers even if I see him.” Eve needed an advantage, the words of Alice Shaw ringing in her head as the painting of the Three Mothers looms over, hanging above the fireplace. Her dark blue dress rustles as she moves to sit. “I need to see in his head.”

Eyeing the black cat, “You aren't spying for him are you?” She softly says to the animal, the light illuminated the rest of the paintings hanging and stacked around the room, the plush pillows right as she left them.

Mao,” is all the black tabby stray has to say for herself. She struts up to Eve, purring loudly as she rams her head into Eve’s calf against the fabric of her dress, then begins making her way over to Delia. Big yellow eyes stare up at the redhead, and the cat offers a protest of “Mrow” regarding either something or literally nothing. It's hard to tell.

Tail twitching, the errant cat prances toward the open door excitedly. She seems more than eager — and willing — enough to show herself out. How she showed herself in is another question entirely, until Eve notices the metal cover of one of the room’s vents laying on the floor. She must have gotten herself stuck in here.

At least she didn't piss on anything.

“Ugh.. ged id away…” Delia grouses, gently shoving the yellow eyed monster back with a foot. Internally, she laments for the days of readily available cell phones, signal, and being able to call anyone at a moment’s notice. Amadeus would be able to take care of this, likety split. As the cat approaches the door, the redhead (who was in the way) leaps out of the way and across to the other side of the room. Cats… it’s like they have a sixth sense about who is allergic.

Finally, she finds a wooden stool, likely the one that Eve sits on while she paints, and perches up on it. “Ogay,” she says, snorting loudly in an attempt to clear her blocked nasal passages. “You dink.. hack… You think he’s in the city? Ugh… stupid cats…” She looks toward the open door, half expecting the cat to come back with an army of its buddies.

Eyeing the vent covering, Eve runs after the cat and shuts the door, peering down at the edges imagining that the cat would still try to get back in. “Poor lost soul..” She whispers before turning back to Delia and making her way to the large table in the center of the room, reaching into the ashtray to retrieve half of a joint she lights it and pulls on it deeply before blowing the smoke up to the ceiling, “I think he's near. Not sure how near..” all Eve knew was that they were connected.

“His blood brought me back to life so maybe.. there’s a trail from me to him..” it's not an exact science she feels being brought back from the dead. Twice now, passing her joint to Deli, “This is shit will knock us out.”

As if she needs it.

With Eve, it’s better to just fake it until you make it because there’s no sense arguing. But still… “You know, it’s wasted on me, right?” Not that she’s wasted, because she’s not. Where did she see those chips again? “Because I can fall asleep like..” She slides one finger off her thumb. “Like that…” She tries again with no success. “Like that.” Finally there’s a *snap*.

Satisfied, the redhead waves off one more hit and glances around the room. “Are you going to fall asleep at the table or what? I mean.. I can do it standing up” snicker “but you might not be comfortable.”

Well.. Eve looks at Delia, “If only I could,” she’d dream even more but.. she dreams enough. Of course she does. Obviously.

The seer throws herself backwards landing into one of the plush overlarge pillow behind her, there are others around the room for Delia as well. “I've never tried to sleep standing up..” thoughtfully as she continues to smoke and puts the joint out in the ashtray. “I just.. wake up standing.” In a tone of bewilderment, falling asleep while standing sounded fun and all but Eve liked the “old fashioned” way. Getting comfortable, Eve opens her mouth wide to yawn, snuggling into the pillow with a soft smile as she begins to close her eyes.

“You know.. we should have a safe word. Like.. Banana.” As if that would help anything…

…but you never know.


Elsewhere


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The sun is high in the sky and water spreads as far as the eye can see in every direction. Lounging in a reclining chair atop the desk of a long yacht, Adam Monroe basks in the sun, shirt off and black swim trunks patterned with red flowers. Lazily, he reaches one hand out for the Midori green drink at his side with just a dash of ice left in it, fingers brushing the paper umbrella.

Monsieur Monroe,” comes the lilt of a French voice across the deck of the ship. Adam stops reaching for his glass and instead pushes his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose, twisting to look back at Siobhan as she strides out of the shadow of the ship’s cabin. “Mademoiselle Joy wishes to speak with you.”

Making a noise in the back of his throat, Adam slowly pushes up to his feet and snatches his drink as he does. “Well it's about time,” he admits with a lopsided smile. But Siobhan shakes her head and threads a lock of dark hair behind one ear.

Non, it isn't about that,” Siobhan clarifies. “She says she caught some… mice?” One brow raises slowly, and Adam’s expression changes from stern expectancy to childlike glee. Knocking back his margarita, Adam sweeps past Siobhan and twirls his wrist and the glass at her.

“Perfect timing. I was wondering when that would finally happen.” Flashing Siobhan a smile, Adam carries himself with a slapping, bare-footed stride into the ship’s cabin and out of sight.

Siobhan watches him depart, one brow slowly raised in wonderment.

What is he up to?


Meanwhile…


A peal of thunder awakens Eve from what felt like a deep and dreamless sleep. Delia likewise bolts up in uncharacteristic disorientation as she finds herself within the high-walled courtyard of an old brick-walled castle. The sky is dark overhead, snow and sleet driving in freezing wind, but there's thunder and lightning behind it.

Or…

No.

That's artillery fire.

Eve immediately recognizes the high walls of Bannerman’s Castle on Pollepel Island, recognizes the circling shape of birds in the sky backlit by the flashes of fire in the clouds. Another blast cracks away on the outside of the castle, briefly illuminating the swirling storm of birds overhead.

Nearby, the bloodied and broken corpse of Gillian Child's lays in a darkening pool of her own blood that soaks into the frozen mud of the courtyard, with her body swarming with fireflies.

The past ain't dead.

The look of shock on Eve’s face mixes with horror at the sight of Gillian, of where they are. Shaking her head from side to side, “No no no this isn't right.” Her white eyes wide as she peers over at Gillian’s corpse and tears fill her eyes, she remembers they were going to dream but seeing Gillian like this? It still shocks and scares her. Looking down at her boots, she wants to look away from that. The fate she saved her from. “Delia.. Delia.” Reaching out to grab at her hand before she sniffs at the air and twists her head up towards the dark sky.

“Where.. is he.” She can't be distracted, a firefly flies around her head and she tries to swat it away with a pale hand. “Come on. Let's.. not linger.” The fabric of her dress whipping around like tendrils of smoke enveloping her. Adam isn't here, he couldn't be.

The scene is familiar enough to Delia, at least the feel of it. When left alone in her own dreams, war is all she can imagine anymore. The body doesn't alarm her as much as it should, or would if she wasn't totally aware. Still, it's disturbing.

Looking down on herself, her scarred skin glints where bits of mirror have embedded themselves inside her. Bits of people leftover from the war, people who would never get these bits back, even if they did wake up. She passes a hand through the air, much like a mime does, and like a curtain dropping, her image is changed to the one that Benji drew for her. One like she used to be.

"We're not really here. So let's find out where we are."

The sound of artillery fire continues, roaring into the air and colliding with one of the castle’s towers. Bricks rain down from above with smaller stone debris and flaming wood. When the debris crashes to the ground it creates a huge cloud of dust that blows past Delia and Eve, swallows them in its chalky embrace, and then peels back with the sound of roaring prop engines of a passing plane overhead.

Machine gun fire chops through the dark, and a siren in blaring in the distance. Tracer rounds light up the night sky, and a half dozen men in gray and black uniforms carrying rifles jog past, shouting in…

German?

There's another explosion, closer, and it rattles Eve and Delia down to their cores. The explosion blasts off the top of the nearby church, and its now that they realize Pollepel Island is gone. This isn't even America judging from the long red banners hanging from the adjacent building, marked with a Swastika.

“«Captain Monroe,»” a German officer inside the church shouts, and both Delia and Eve can suddenly understand the language as though native speakers. “«They've started shelling the city center! We have to find Colonel Volken and Herr Brum!»”

That's a start.

There's a blink and cough when the cloud of chalk embraces them and as the German words mix into English and Pollepel Island is no more.. Germany. “I've really got to stop leaving the country without my passport.” Eve quips thoughtfully and looks over to Delia. Her hair twists in the wind as a thin layer of chalk rest on her skin. “Come on Dreamy, lets get some sausages.”

The name Volken causes Eve to freeze. Remembering more of what Alice was talked about.

Tiptoeing though she probably doesn't need to do that, over towards where the voice is Eve’s eyes are wide as she peers into the church for the source of the voice. This time it's a dream for sure, she's sure of it. Looking down at her person, she frantically pats herself down and looks worried before sighing softly in relief and sagging against the door. Yep, her boobs are bigger here. This is still a dream. Never mind that her dress and hair are moving like they have a mind of their own. “I'm a D here, we are definitely in his brain.” Said softly to Delia before offering the dreamer and her partner in crime a high-five.

The return on the high five is a little hesitant. After the delivery, Delia plucks at the shirt she’s wearing and stares into the collar. “Well you get all the luck…” she gripes, “…D’s and no dream herpes.” A snap of her fingers though and the dreamwalker is clean, but once again scarred by the bits of broken minds.

“So who is Colonel Volken and Herr Brum?” The question is innocent enough. Benjamin had sheltered Delia practically all her life, so she has nothing to draw on for reference. What she does do is attempt to melt into the scenery, replacing her clothing with the same uniform that the soldiers in the dream are wearing and setting the same stern look on her face. Eve doesn’t receive the same makeover, there’s no way a uniform could hide those things.

Creeping into the church, no one seems to notice Delia or Eve, not the soldiers, not the pair of frightened dogs leashed up in the atrium, nothing. It's as though they're observers, and Delia can feel the subtle disconnect from the dreamscape, as if someone or some psychological effect is distancing them from the subconscious just enough for the native mind to remain indifferent. She's certain if they attempt to interact that will change, but until then they can observe in peace.

“«I suppose we do.»” Adam Monroe’s voice is familiar to Eve, no matter than language. He looks as though a day hasn't passed, dressed in an SS officer’s uniform in shades of gray and black. The three soldiers gathered in the church atrium look to Adam for direction, and he gives it to them.

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By drawing his Luger and shooting all three soldiers dead. As the last of them hits the floor, Adam exhales a steady sigh and looks to the smoke rising off of the barrel of his gun. “Well this is a wash,” he says in more familiar English. The dogs are barking, but don't seem to realize what's happened, and Adam doesn't pay them much heed. “Sorry, chaps. It sounds like the wind is blowing in the wrong direction.”

Bolstering his Luger, Adam steps back into the small church, walking to the back where a mortar round has demolished the rear of the building and a small fire is burning in the broken wreckage. Leaning to the side, Adam picks up a satchel from one of the pews and flips it open, retrieving a stack of card stock folders from within, stamped with German writing and more swastikas. He pitches one straight into the fire, then holds the others and watches the first start to burn.

Beside him, on the opposite pew, a radio crackles to life with a burst of static. It draws Adam’s attention and he sets down the folders, moving over to the portable radio. After he picks it up, he sits on the pew with the radio in hand, shoulders slouched and head down. Then, finally, he presses the call button.

“Mind if I ask you a question, Carp?” Adam lowers the radio, waiting for a response as he stares into the flames.

Eve’s eyes grow wide as she shakes herself off much like a dog would, chalk dust sprinkling to the ground as she peers closely at the bodies of the felled soldiers. Feet rising off the ground a little as she leans forward so much that she begins to pitch forward, gravity doesn't work right for her here though and she floats gently when her head snaps up to stare at Adam as he goes to talk to the radio.

“This must be when The Mother of the Wind was talking about, nazis. He helped them.” Adam really was a son of a bitch.

She glides over to where Adam stares into the flames, circling him slowly as she studies him. “Never ages a day… Lucky.” More likely a curse after your first one hundred years but whose counting anymore, “I wonder if he knows how old he is, if he can even remember with all those cobwebs in there.” Squinting at his face she peers at her ears as if they hold the answers she seeks, for now she's content to listen to his conversation.

She doesn't focus as much on the scene playing before them as she does on that barrier. Something in the back of her mind keeps her from testing it, like you would test packaging of hamburger in the store by poking at the saran wrap until it breaks. For now, she just keeps her mental tentacles to herself.

The shots jar her though, as does the callous lack of regard displayed by the shooter. When Eve moves toward Adam, Delia moves around the room. The urge to poke at the dead soldiers with her foot is almost insurmountable, but she manages somehow. "Would you rather be able to see or live forever?" she muses to her counterpart, still closer to the bodies than she is to Eve and Adam. "I don't think I would ever want to be this— "

Oh.

"Remind me to apologize to Nick when we get back."

«We’re supposed to be radio silent. Over.» The voice on the other end of Adam’s radio brings the conversation back to the past, as Adam watches the first of the files finally catch fire and burst into flames on the pile of burning timbers at the back of the church. There's a deadness in Adam’s eyes, a vacancy of someone who is lost, drifting listless in the events around himself.

“Well, yes,” Adam replies into the radio, the sounds of shelling continuing outside. “But it's boring over here.” His voice has his usual glib tone, but none of that amusement spreads to his eyes. “Over-rover,” Adam says flippantly, releasing the call button to let whoever it is on the other end respond.

A long, tired sigh comes over the radio, followed by «You're awfully chatty, for someone who is about to test the limits of their immortality. Over.»

Adam’s lips curl in a faint, rueful smile. “Oh, I don't know. You think it's going to be that bad? Maybe the Fuhrer will have tea and biscuits ready? Over.” The smile is an honest one, and for all he knows he's the only one who’d ever see it.

All that comes through the radio is a longer, deeper sigh. Adam stares into the fires, then stretches to grab another file folder and holds it in his hands, contemplating the flames before he calls back.

“Look, all I'm saying is that maybe we both make it out of this? Over.” Adam pitches the next file into the fire, and flames begin to kick up the colored card stock and curl the edges of papers black with heat.

«Exactly, in what way, do you see that as a possibility? Over.»

The question elicits a raise of Adam’s brows, and he drums his fingers on his knees, before reaching for the second to last file. “How married are you, exactly, to the Fatherland?

The voice in the other end of the line goes quiet.

“He’s a handsome man, be nice to him.” Nick that is, Adam she regards with a keen curiosity, looking lost she almost loses herself to his face and those dead eyes. Eve feels a pang in her heart, he like her has seen too much. People weren’t meant to experience as much as either of them had, “Trials of the flesh and trials of the mind,” she frowns as she looks at him before her eyes cut to the radio as the two comrades continue speaking. Eve’s head cranes over and she tries to peer down at the folder he is holding to discern that he has, what he’s burning.

“I.. I value my seeing.” An understatement, for all the trouble it caused her, she had saved many lives because of her gift. She’s left just as much chaos in her wake if not more though. The veins in Eve’s neck pop as she squints harder at the file, “What don’t you want to the world to know?” Head tilted to the side, her wild mane of hair keeps away from her face floating up towards the ceiling, the sounds of shelling outside can be heard but she doesn’t feel them.

He’s burning things and she can’t touch or even grab them? Dema’s dreamwalking lessons are causing endless grief. Observe, don’t interfere… If it was up to Delia, she’d just club the information out of Adam but the thought leaves almost as soon as it’s formed. She just can't even.

Before Adam can reach for it, Delia races toward the pew to read the title of the last file. "What does that one say? This one is—-" It's hard to read, words and numbers never mean as much to her in this state as they do out there. So instead of concentrating on the words themselves, she tries to feel them through their host.

Obviously, Adam didn't stay to the bitter end of the war. So who did he leave with? Who is he talking to now?

"Eve, what do you know about him? Is any of this familiar to you?"

“Sorry,” Adam says after an awkwardly log pause, “Over." The file in his hand is labeled, and even though neither woman speaks German they can understand it all the same.

Project Heisenberg.

The file sitting on the pew across from Adam is similarly titled:

Project Hydra.

Both file folders are full of documents, photographs, and other information not accessible without turning the pages. The folder on the fire is wholly consumed now, its name lost to time. The radio in Adam’s hand crackles back.

«You know the answer to that. Over.»

Adam rolls his eyes, lobbing the folder for Project Heisenberg into the fire, and his careless toss has a document with a paperclipped photo flying out to land on the floor under a crooked pew near the flames.

“I'm just saying, things… don't have to end like this, not for people like us. Over.” Adam’s voice has lost its glib tone. There's a sadness, a weight, a burden.

«You're considering defecting. To the Allies. Over.»

That assertion has Adam laughing at how serious and surprised the man on the other end sounds. “I'm not considering it. While we've been talking I shot the three chaps with me, and opened a few doors. Over.” He shot them before, but that doesn't sound nearly as dramatic.

«You— did what!?»

Adam waits, the silence between the shock and his response purposeful. “You didn't say over, Carp.”

«»

«Over.»

“Alice said.. he worked with the Nazis to figure out the limits of his gift but instead he learned the true nature of us. Of humanity. He's been trying to start our world over for centuries, nukes.. viruses… genocide of all kinds.” Eve says this softly as the page from one of the files flutters to the ground and Eve’s avatar floats away from Adam to peer down at the page making sure she doesn't touch any part of it.

“I'm looking at this page, try to see Hydra.” Eve knows that monster, the endless heads. The symbolism doesn't bode well in her head. “He was working with them on projects. He has no true allegiance but to himself.”

Watching Adam’s behavior she raises an eyebrow, “He's quite full of himself. I wonder why he cares..” or cared enough to resurrect her. Maybe he was paying her back for taking her head in the 1600s.

“Does he care? He’s a freaking Nazi for crying out loud..” Delia’s voice reaches a near fevered pitch as she reaches the fireplace. She hesitates, reaches out, reconsiders and recoils, then reconsiders again and …

“Fuck it.”

It’s a dream, it can’t hurt her, this is her place. This is where she lives… at least thirty-three percent of the time.

The fire is hot, but she knows it’s all in her head as she reaches in and…. Hesitates. That feeling that they’re being kept and that their camouflage is merely temporary is a tough barrier but it’s time to poke through the saran wrap.

She grabs the folder.


Elsewhere


Towel draped over his shoulder and sunglasses hanging from a pocket of his trunks, Adam Monroe descends the stairs from the cabin to the yacht’s below decks area. The hardwood floor slaps under bare feet, and Adam moves with familiarity and purpose through Siobhan’s ship up to the fourth door on the right. It's open a touch, but with a gentle tap of his knuckles on the door he announces himself anyway.

“You have something for me?” Adam asks through the door, and for a moment there's silence on the other side. Then, belatedly, Joy calls back for him.

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“Come on in,” is her casual invitation that Adam briskly takes, nearly before she's even finished speaking. Inside, the lushly furnished bedroom looks distinctly Japanese in styling. Predominantly wood furniture with dark lacquering, two folding screens depicting a sun over a mountain and a moon over a mountain, respectively.

Adam shuts the door behind himself, and looks around the room, then slowly raises his brows expectantly. Well, is his wordless inquiry.

Joy moves out from behind the moon-patterned screen, her loose white t-shirt partly concealing the slim straps of a bikini around her neck. It falls like a dress at mid-thigh, and like Adam she is barefoot. Were it not for their individual reputations, they might look like a couple out on a cruise.

“I found two intruders,” Joy offers with a languid tone of voice, coming to sit on a narrow wooden bench at the foot of her bed. Adam looks around the room, then back to Joy with abundant confusion.

“Did you tuck them into your sock drawer?” Adam asks, arms out to his side as he gestures around the room. Joy slowly shakes her head, then taps at her temple with one finger. Adam tilts his head to the side like a dog that heard a strange noise.

“A disembodied dreamwalker was trying to hide two other consciousnesses from me.” Joy says with a slow spread of her hands. “The dreamwalker slipped through my fingers, but the ones she was protecting fell for a trap.” Crossing one leg over the other, Joy looks at Adam intently and delivers the news. “One is the daughter of your old friend Benjamin Ryans,” and friend is ironically used there. “The other…”

“It's Eve.


Elsewhere


The observation room is dimly lit by a single electric lamp hanging from a hook on a concrete wall. The room is divided into two sections, a theater where unoccupied metal chairs are arranged on tiered levels, and two containment cells with thick glass windows and steel doors. The cells are divided by a brick wall in the middle.

In one cell, Eve Mas is shackled to the floor by chains at her wrist and throat. The window in her room is different than it is from the outside, it's a mirror. Her reflection isn't herself, either, it's an emaciated man with a shaved head in a sleeveless shirt. He has stitch marks on his right arm at the bicep, and the skin of his arm from the stitches down is far paler. Overhead, an electric light buzzes noisily.

In the other cell, Delia Ryans is in much the same state. Shackled to the floor by wrist and neck, she too sees someone else in the reflection, a wiry man with short, cole black hair and a dark complexion. He, too, bears an out of place limb in the form of a leg stitched on at the calf, paler than the rest of him.

The precog’s eyes grow wide as she comes too in her new surroundings, blinking as she looks from left to right, her body begins to shake as she panics and tries to scramble back into the wall but meets resistance from the chain and is yanked back with a loud choking sound. Frantic she places her hands on her floor and tries to push herself away to no avail, once her eyes meet the mirror and her.. Uh.. no not her reflection the pale woman does the only thing she can think of in that very moment, she screams.

“I ENJOY BEING A WOMAN!!!”

Shaking her head from side to side, “No no no no, you turn me back. Turn me back!” she shrieks at the glass, spittle going flying onto the surface but the man’s reflection still shows, “Dreamy? Delia!!”

While not as concerned about her appearance, Delia is a bit worried about the shackles. She tests them, tugging at first, then wrenching her arm to the side in an attempt to break it. When they don’t crack or snap at the weld, she just sits back and looks down at herself, then looks at the mirror again. The reflection is definitely different, and a bit gross…. But she’s pleased with her skin tone, she finally got that tan she’s been working on.

“Hi Eve!” Her voice is a little too cheerful for the moment, but really, it has to be. The clairvoyant is already panicking and that just doesn’t help. “Guess what? I have three legs! One of them isn’t mine though. How many do you have?” All the while, she’s trying to change her skin, to go back to either her own scarred self, or even the skin Benji made for her.

“Dreamy this is no time to joke about porn!!”

The lights in both cells go out, and that act, followed by the turning on of lights in the observation room kills the mirror effect, allowing Eve and Delia to see out. In the observation room the seats are now full. A group of men, mostly in their forties or older, save for one handsome man with an eyepatch and Adam Monroe. All are dressed in suits or the uniforms of SS officers.

“Gentlemen,” Adam says as he moves up to the glass of Eve’s cell. “I present to you Patient 1 and Patient 2, twins, recently moved from our Treblinka site. Neither are Super Men, though both have undergone the flesh grafting process of Project Hydra, as you see.”

Some of the old men rise from their chairs, peering into the cells through the glass walls. “But today I would like to show you the marriage of two of our most promising projects: Hydra and Heisenberg.” In Eve’s cell, a small door the size of a doggie door opens, revealing a metal mesh grate.

“These two specimens have had partial cerebral matter swapped, and undergone dutiful conditioning as outlined in the documents you found on your seats. I posit, through this experimentation, that I have been able to link their thought patterns together so that what one experiences, so too does the other.”

Adam turns to the group of officers. “Are you ready for a demonstration?”

The reappearance of Adam has Eve’s back stiffening and she looks forward with a slight tilt of her head at the other men behind the glass with the blonde, she tests her chains once more with no give whatsoever and she settles until Adam starts speaking of genetic experiments, “Ahh they are science faries,” Eve has killed men of science because they unnerve her, now she’s about to be subjected to God knows what. Hydra and Heisenberg meeting in the middle. Sharing cerebral matter.

The pale woman only has one thought as to what kind of experiences they will be interchanging, pain. Everyone was so curious with pain. Eyeing the metal mesh grate, Eve looks nervously to her audience, “This..” she doesn’t continue because well.. They have to know. It’s why they came, they have to find out. The older woman takes deep breaths and looks to the ceiling, “Brace yourself Dreamy!”

“Excuse me…” Delia says from her cell, trying to get the attention of the men outside. She can’t exactly wave and the voice coming out of her mouth is not that of a woman approaching thirty. It’s a man. “Excuuuuuse me!!”

Once again, she wrenches at one of the chains. I’m stronger than I think. She repeats it in her mind, like a mantra. I’m stronger than anyone gives me credit for. Again, she yanks at the chain, this time a little more desperately. Again and again, she yanks at the chains holding her, pulling until her wrists are rubbed raw and start to leak.

“If it makes any difference to you, I’m not ready for a demonstration!”

“Project Icarus has given us tremendous understanding of the Super Men, and thanks to my generous donations to these two subjects,” Adam flashes a smile into the cages. “We’ll soon have a better understanding of their magnetic fields and how they interact with one-another.” Mourning to someone out of sight, Adam gives a thumbs-up.

I'm stronger than I think.

And the grate in Eve’s cell begins to exhaust a fine greenish-yellow smoke.

I'm stronger than I think.

“The chlorine gas we’re pumping into subject 1’s cell is a lethal dose.” Adam walks up to the glass, heedless of the voices calling out from within. “You'll notice the subject’s eyes already beginning to water. Soon, his lungs will begin rejecting the gas, and agonizing convulsions will come next. Then, of course, death by asphyxiation.”

I'm stronger than I think.

Delia feels a strange, sympathetic sensation as her eyes begin to water. Her skin flushed with color, prickling with irritation, lungs burning. Though she isn't exposed to the gas, she feels everything Eve is exposed to. She can feel Eve’s breath shortening, feels her eyes burning, feels death approaching swiftly on a black horse.

I'm stronger than I think.

“It's simple, really.” Adam says with a flourish of one arm. “You breathe, you suffocate, and you will die. The other experiences death as an outsider.” But Delia refuses that outcome.

I'm stronger than I think!


Elsewhere


Joy winces, recoiling from the bench and jolts up to her feet. One hand clutches at the side of her head, and she wavers, coming to slouch against the opposite wall. Adam watches her with wide eyes, noting the trail of blood trickling from her nose.

Fffuck,” Joy exhales breathlessly, and Adam moves to her side, one hand on her shoulder. “They— they broke out of the psychic trap.” She turns dark eyes up to Adam, who tilts his head to the side in query.

How?” He asks, having either underestimates Eve and Delia, or overestimated Joy. She shakes her head, moving a hand to wipe the blood from below her nose.

“I don't… I don't know,” Joy murmurs, “the dreamwalker is stronger than I anticipated. She's— someone trained her. She shouldn't have been able to— ”

“It's alright,” Adam murmurs, glancing to the floor and then back to Joy. “You let me worry about Eve. As for the dreamwalkers…” He dithers some, not having an immediate plan. “We’ll figure something out.”

Joy looks up at Adam, uncertain of that.

Uncertain of a lot of things.


Elsewhere


The scream from Eve echoes through the basement of the Cat’s Cradle. Gasping for breath, eyes watering, she awakens from her dream with tear-streaked cheeks and aching lungs. Delia, too, jolts awake with a jerk of her arms, as though she were still tugging on those chains. Her chest rises and falls in sharp breaths, phantom pain from the dream trap still tingling in her eyes and lungs. Blood smears her upper lip, mouth, and chin.

She was able to escape, but it was the hardest battle she's ever fought in that plane of consciousness.

They almost didn't.

Eve continues to scream as pale hands go to clap at her cheeks, shaking her head from side to side the sound slowly trails off and Eve is left sitting upright, coughing and placing a hand on her chest. “D.. Dreamy!” The woman crawls forward on the floor to her redheaded friend, clutching at her arm. “Are you alright?” Wheezing, Eve squeezes her eyes shut and wiped at her mouth, that was..

You did it!” She saved them, Eve’s mind races with what they just went through and the oracle reaches over and pulls another joint out from the table and lights it hurriedly, puffing an O shape to float up towards the ceiling. “He must know we were there…” Eve looks to the closed door to Cat’s Cradle almost as if she expects the blonde to come barging on through.

She's awake. She's awake. And at this very moment, she never wants to fall asleep again.

I am stronger than I think.

That thought resonates through her head and even though she repeated it quite often since hearing the whisper in her mind, she never quite believed it. Now she does. Still shaking and feeling the eerie effects of a dream too real, the extent of her ability hits her. Slowly, she turns her head to look at Eve as a large grin spreads across her face, "We did it! We got out!"

This has never happened before. She faced off against someone else in a dream and won.

“Eve, I remember the folder. I remember everything in it.” She pauses and swallows hard as she wipes the blood from her face with the back of her hand, smearing it across her skin.

“We’re going to need help.”


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