Another dream
...whoo, this was a doozy.
I was running. Fleeing. Desperately trying to escape, going along through this place that was part-mansion, part-maze, part-ruin. Ahead of me, leading the way and somehow always one step ahead of me, was a little girl that...wasn't a little girl, one who knew the truth about me, one who wasn't quite human and knew that I wasn't either. Behind me, military and scientists and my...fellow experiments? Fellow prisoners? I don't know, but they were hunting me just as gleefully and intently as the rest.
I fled. Running, climbing, making leaps that should have been impossible, always following that little girl as the two of us tried to reach...some sort of safety. She knew where to go, how to get us out of there, but she was the only one who knew. I wasn't as strong as her - she could get in and out easily by herself, but she'd been coming and visiting for a while, teaching me abilities for some time, until we'd finally been discovered, and now They wanted me back, and wanted her too, if They could get their hands on her. I couldn't stop, I couldn't I was managing to stay ahead of my pursuers, but only just, following the sounds of her voice and her flickering in and out of sight.
Then, after a long time of fleeing, I- I don't know. I tripped, or somehow they got ahead of me, and there was a dart... I fell. They caught me. I could hear them discussing things over me as they tied me to a gurney as shoved and IV in my arm, and the details of it are fading even now, but the police/government-type was cursing because he didn't want to be chasing a damned...infected? Something like that. I was contaminated somehow, all of my fellow experiments were, and skin-to-skin contact would infect others with whatever it was. My gurney was hoisted up into the air so I could be lowered down over a balcony to the floor below, which was the "main" floor, so I could be taken out. The ties on me weren't very strong, and I clung to the edges to keep from falling. The doctor who had put the IV-thing in me was impatient about how long the medicine was taking to get into me, and I knew once it was ll in me, I was done for, trapped forever. He cursed and pulled it out early, figuring that it was good enough, and I felt hope. I was still surrounded, though.
Two or three floors below, further down the hole of balconies than I was being lowered, I heard a call from the being who had been leading me. This time it sounded almost like a bark, and I knew that she was leaving behind the image of humanity she'd been wearing before, though it wasn't entirely gone. Gathering myself, still dangling several floors in the air, I suddenly pushed off the pallet and dropped, falling past my pursuers and down to the floor far below. By this point I'd lost almost all my clothes, was wearing nothing but skin and wild hair. I heard the bark again, calling me, telling me to run if I ever wanted to live - I'd escaped Their grasp twice, there would be nothing for me but death now. I didn't want to call out to her, because They would hear me as they gathered their pursuit again, but I needed to communicate. Instead, I barked in return (it sounded like a terrier, but so did she).
I resumed running, but I was already tired now, the drug still partially in my veins. But I had also left behind the realm of pure human now, was becoming more and more a cross between human and something else, something more like her. Again, my path took me places that a parkour champion would have been jealous of, though I knew I was nearing the end of my endurance. We tried hiding once, but they found us too soon, and only a last-second dodge allowed us to escape. I'd caught up with her by this time, running right behind her instead of chasing after vague glimpses, and she was almost entirely canine at this point, though I'd catch occasional glimpses of that little girl.
We finally had enough of a lead on them that we could double back, find a tiny hiding place in a closet, one that had a little machine that could...well, in my dream it made sense, but it could erase footsteps. So if I set my feet atop it, it would muffle the sound of my feet, even though we weren't moving. A stealthing device, essentially. I turned it on, and winced at the soft hum it made - was it really making noise loud enough to be heard, or was my hearing that sensitive? We hid in that closet, and waited, and shivered, and I tried desperately to get my breathing back. I thought, for a moment, that maybe I'd succeeded, maybe I could actually escape...!
I was wrong. I saw the barest edge of a body around the corner, but before I could alert her, before I could do anything, he reached around the corner and grabbed me, dragging me close to him and restraining me, and she just stood there and watched, and...smiled. She was smiling. And suddenly I knew that she had given them my location somehow. She had a tracking device, or something, and had been giving hints at my location the entire time, and as the chase wore on and she became more solid, had been transmitting more and more regularly, until she was a beacon that called to them all, "Here she is! Right over here, cornered in a closet, unable to go anywhere!"
I reached out a hand to her, pleading, "Why? You helped me! I'm different from them now, you were going to help me!"
She changed shape again, and this time was a woman with blood-red eyes and a vengeful smile and an indefinable air of the alien. "You humans wiped out my whole planet. I want to see you suffer. And how better to make you suffer than by making you other, making you a victim, slamming you down, and then giving you hope? Your pain when it is torn away is the sweetest victory I could ever gain."
She was the corruption, I realized. She was why we were all tainted. I don't know if she was working with the scientists and allowing them to test the resulting abilities we gained by leading us on these impossible, doomed hunts; or if she was doing this on her own, and it was just that my pursuers couldn't see her and so left her to stand in the doorway and smile triumphantly as I was carried to my doom.
There were other details throughout the dream that shifted and changed, as dreams do. For example, my fellow experiments - who were being used much like hunting dogs - were wearing masks that covered their nose and upper face, leaving just their mouths visible. For the most part those masks were blank and featureless metal, but each one had some brightly-colored eye-design in the center that was made of a different material from the mask. Some only had a single "eye," others had two or even three.
The dream ended up with me "waking up" and eventually creating first a board game, and then a video game based on it. It'll certainly make one hell of a short story. *starts planning it out*
I was running. Fleeing. Desperately trying to escape, going along through this place that was part-mansion, part-maze, part-ruin. Ahead of me, leading the way and somehow always one step ahead of me, was a little girl that...wasn't a little girl, one who knew the truth about me, one who wasn't quite human and knew that I wasn't either. Behind me, military and scientists and my...fellow experiments? Fellow prisoners? I don't know, but they were hunting me just as gleefully and intently as the rest.
I fled. Running, climbing, making leaps that should have been impossible, always following that little girl as the two of us tried to reach...some sort of safety. She knew where to go, how to get us out of there, but she was the only one who knew. I wasn't as strong as her - she could get in and out easily by herself, but she'd been coming and visiting for a while, teaching me abilities for some time, until we'd finally been discovered, and now They wanted me back, and wanted her too, if They could get their hands on her. I couldn't stop, I couldn't I was managing to stay ahead of my pursuers, but only just, following the sounds of her voice and her flickering in and out of sight.
Then, after a long time of fleeing, I- I don't know. I tripped, or somehow they got ahead of me, and there was a dart... I fell. They caught me. I could hear them discussing things over me as they tied me to a gurney as shoved and IV in my arm, and the details of it are fading even now, but the police/government-type was cursing because he didn't want to be chasing a damned...infected? Something like that. I was contaminated somehow, all of my fellow experiments were, and skin-to-skin contact would infect others with whatever it was. My gurney was hoisted up into the air so I could be lowered down over a balcony to the floor below, which was the "main" floor, so I could be taken out. The ties on me weren't very strong, and I clung to the edges to keep from falling. The doctor who had put the IV-thing in me was impatient about how long the medicine was taking to get into me, and I knew once it was ll in me, I was done for, trapped forever. He cursed and pulled it out early, figuring that it was good enough, and I felt hope. I was still surrounded, though.
Two or three floors below, further down the hole of balconies than I was being lowered, I heard a call from the being who had been leading me. This time it sounded almost like a bark, and I knew that she was leaving behind the image of humanity she'd been wearing before, though it wasn't entirely gone. Gathering myself, still dangling several floors in the air, I suddenly pushed off the pallet and dropped, falling past my pursuers and down to the floor far below. By this point I'd lost almost all my clothes, was wearing nothing but skin and wild hair. I heard the bark again, calling me, telling me to run if I ever wanted to live - I'd escaped Their grasp twice, there would be nothing for me but death now. I didn't want to call out to her, because They would hear me as they gathered their pursuit again, but I needed to communicate. Instead, I barked in return (it sounded like a terrier, but so did she).
I resumed running, but I was already tired now, the drug still partially in my veins. But I had also left behind the realm of pure human now, was becoming more and more a cross between human and something else, something more like her. Again, my path took me places that a parkour champion would have been jealous of, though I knew I was nearing the end of my endurance. We tried hiding once, but they found us too soon, and only a last-second dodge allowed us to escape. I'd caught up with her by this time, running right behind her instead of chasing after vague glimpses, and she was almost entirely canine at this point, though I'd catch occasional glimpses of that little girl.
We finally had enough of a lead on them that we could double back, find a tiny hiding place in a closet, one that had a little machine that could...well, in my dream it made sense, but it could erase footsteps. So if I set my feet atop it, it would muffle the sound of my feet, even though we weren't moving. A stealthing device, essentially. I turned it on, and winced at the soft hum it made - was it really making noise loud enough to be heard, or was my hearing that sensitive? We hid in that closet, and waited, and shivered, and I tried desperately to get my breathing back. I thought, for a moment, that maybe I'd succeeded, maybe I could actually escape...!
I was wrong. I saw the barest edge of a body around the corner, but before I could alert her, before I could do anything, he reached around the corner and grabbed me, dragging me close to him and restraining me, and she just stood there and watched, and...smiled. She was smiling. And suddenly I knew that she had given them my location somehow. She had a tracking device, or something, and had been giving hints at my location the entire time, and as the chase wore on and she became more solid, had been transmitting more and more regularly, until she was a beacon that called to them all, "Here she is! Right over here, cornered in a closet, unable to go anywhere!"
I reached out a hand to her, pleading, "Why? You helped me! I'm different from them now, you were going to help me!"
She changed shape again, and this time was a woman with blood-red eyes and a vengeful smile and an indefinable air of the alien. "You humans wiped out my whole planet. I want to see you suffer. And how better to make you suffer than by making you other, making you a victim, slamming you down, and then giving you hope? Your pain when it is torn away is the sweetest victory I could ever gain."
She was the corruption, I realized. She was why we were all tainted. I don't know if she was working with the scientists and allowing them to test the resulting abilities we gained by leading us on these impossible, doomed hunts; or if she was doing this on her own, and it was just that my pursuers couldn't see her and so left her to stand in the doorway and smile triumphantly as I was carried to my doom.
There were other details throughout the dream that shifted and changed, as dreams do. For example, my fellow experiments - who were being used much like hunting dogs - were wearing masks that covered their nose and upper face, leaving just their mouths visible. For the most part those masks were blank and featureless metal, but each one had some brightly-colored eye-design in the center that was made of a different material from the mask. Some only had a single "eye," others had two or even three.
The dream ended up with me "waking up" and eventually creating first a board game, and then a video game based on it. It'll certainly make one hell of a short story. *starts planning it out*