Waiting For The Worms [Complete]
Characters: Rion Steiner, Rita. Later following Birdman, Garnet til Alexandros.
Content: With the recent attack leaving more of the city in ruins, Rita is left under the ruins of the Medical Center. Meanwhile, Rion takes a detour from what was supposed to be a trip back home, and Garnet learns first-hand that not everyone in Manhattan is all they are cracked up to be.
Location: The NYU Medical Center and its immediate surroundings, to start.
Time of day: Mid-morning.
Warnings: Three Galerians and a healer girl. Violence. Destruction. Language will be a given.
If Garnet hadn’t healed Rion at a better time, it was now. With no crippling pain in his legs preventing him from rushing out of the lodge, he felt the trembling of the earth and the sounds of something giant heading straight his direction. The boy still took care, though, deciding not to test his luck by going straight for the noise and instead headed right down the path towards the cathedral.
Whatever it was that hit, it came from the cathedral’s direction. The moment he felt it, and the moment that the angry sounds receded, a sharp pang summoned in Rion’s chest. Something bad had happened. Something big and it had hit him close to home. Moreover, it was close to the cathedral.
He couldn’t run, but that didn’t stop him from moving. Stumbling, gripping the steel and brick walls of the buildings he walked by. He fell. He didn’t even bother trying to look graceful and cool; Rion was neither. All that mattered was the one thing, the one terror and fear which occupied his mind then as he stumbled, collapsed, picked up again, and carried himself through the thickness of rubble and snow all over. Rinse and repeat and he was not destructible.
Battered but unbowed.
The rush had been so immediate that Rion hadn’t thought to bring his coat out with him, or the radio for that matter. Thankfully he brought both. Somehow, he felt that he would be in need of both along the way. Then again, he didn’t need to be precognitive to predict that.
Garnet. Rion owed so much to her. If not for her, he wouldn’t be able to be out here. Make his way down these horrid streets. Evade the sounds of creatures steeling away down the cold, snowy paths and raiding building to building. So many of them, all of their many legs, skittering and scattering all around with so many places to run, so many people to kill. Screams filled the air but to Rion-
To Rion there was only dead silence. Silence that filled his senses as it swam and ensnared him into it when a sickening feeling gripped him in the belly of the terrible dread.
Then he was trembling.
Because he sees her trapped underneath rocks and debris, crushed. Blood flows and goes out and out and out and the bones are so brittle when they snip and snap and she’s in pain. With a shuddering voice and her eyes quiet she looks up at him and tells him to run.
Run away, Rion.
But he can’t. He is caught in a still image where his feet touch air and he isn’t there after all, just watching the aftermath of what had already occurred, and what will happen if he does nothing.
Because he can’t stand aside and do nothing. She begged and pleaded him to kill her.
It hurts. My head hurts.
He’ll do better this time. He’ll do better. He’ll do
Nothing was better.
When the spinning vertigo came to a halt, Rion had been lying down. Curled up in an alleyway over a pile of garbage; the vision which had invaded his senses powerful enough to throw him off. Freezing, fingers numb, he brought them to his mouth and breathed. Yes, he was still alive. He had come far and he wasn’t dead yet, far from it, neither was he ready to give up.
As Rion stood up on his shaking, newly working legs, he staggered from the alley. The tip of his boots tapped piles upon piles of rubble, of what had once been a building.
Hands out, he reached for something.
NYU MEDICAL CENTER
He was here. Not here as in the Here he wanted to be, but Here as in the place he was supposed to be. As if that ever made any sense.
“Rita?” Rion’s instincts called out, his voice an echo, but in the trembling dust and frozen misty air the sound of his own was lost. So Rion stood there atop the crumbled building, the remains of the medical center. He bowed his head, brows furrowed over the empty sockets over his face. This time he tried reaching out, an invisible hand drawing him towards the source from which his vision had carried him.
Rita, are you out there? Please. Please answer me!
Content: With the recent attack leaving more of the city in ruins, Rita is left under the ruins of the Medical Center. Meanwhile, Rion takes a detour from what was supposed to be a trip back home, and Garnet learns first-hand that not everyone in Manhattan is all they are cracked up to be.
Location: The NYU Medical Center and its immediate surroundings, to start.
Time of day: Mid-morning.
Warnings: Three Galerians and a healer girl. Violence. Destruction. Language will be a given.
If Garnet hadn’t healed Rion at a better time, it was now. With no crippling pain in his legs preventing him from rushing out of the lodge, he felt the trembling of the earth and the sounds of something giant heading straight his direction. The boy still took care, though, deciding not to test his luck by going straight for the noise and instead headed right down the path towards the cathedral.
Whatever it was that hit, it came from the cathedral’s direction. The moment he felt it, and the moment that the angry sounds receded, a sharp pang summoned in Rion’s chest. Something bad had happened. Something big and it had hit him close to home. Moreover, it was close to the cathedral.
He couldn’t run, but that didn’t stop him from moving. Stumbling, gripping the steel and brick walls of the buildings he walked by. He fell. He didn’t even bother trying to look graceful and cool; Rion was neither. All that mattered was the one thing, the one terror and fear which occupied his mind then as he stumbled, collapsed, picked up again, and carried himself through the thickness of rubble and snow all over. Rinse and repeat and he was not destructible.
Battered but unbowed.
The rush had been so immediate that Rion hadn’t thought to bring his coat out with him, or the radio for that matter. Thankfully he brought both. Somehow, he felt that he would be in need of both along the way. Then again, he didn’t need to be precognitive to predict that.
Garnet. Rion owed so much to her. If not for her, he wouldn’t be able to be out here. Make his way down these horrid streets. Evade the sounds of creatures steeling away down the cold, snowy paths and raiding building to building. So many of them, all of their many legs, skittering and scattering all around with so many places to run, so many people to kill. Screams filled the air but to Rion-
To Rion there was only dead silence. Silence that filled his senses as it swam and ensnared him into it when a sickening feeling gripped him in the belly of the terrible dread.
Then he was trembling.
Because he sees her trapped underneath rocks and debris, crushed. Blood flows and goes out and out and out and the bones are so brittle when they snip and snap and she’s in pain. With a shuddering voice and her eyes quiet she looks up at him and tells him to run.
Run away, Rion.
But he can’t. He is caught in a still image where his feet touch air and he isn’t there after all, just watching the aftermath of what had already occurred, and what will happen if he does nothing.
Because he can’t stand aside and do nothing. She begged and pleaded him to kill her.
It hurts. My head hurts.
He’ll do better this time. He’ll do better. He’ll do
Nothing was better.
When the spinning vertigo came to a halt, Rion had been lying down. Curled up in an alleyway over a pile of garbage; the vision which had invaded his senses powerful enough to throw him off. Freezing, fingers numb, he brought them to his mouth and breathed. Yes, he was still alive. He had come far and he wasn’t dead yet, far from it, neither was he ready to give up.
As Rion stood up on his shaking, newly working legs, he staggered from the alley. The tip of his boots tapped piles upon piles of rubble, of what had once been a building.
Hands out, he reached for something.
NYU MEDICAL CENTER
He was here. Not here as in the Here he wanted to be, but Here as in the place he was supposed to be. As if that ever made any sense.
“Rita?” Rion’s instincts called out, his voice an echo, but in the trembling dust and frozen misty air the sound of his own was lost. So Rion stood there atop the crumbled building, the remains of the medical center. He bowed his head, brows furrowed over the empty sockets over his face. This time he tried reaching out, an invisible hand drawing him towards the source from which his vision had carried him.
Rita, are you out there? Please. Please answer me!