Night 59: Main Hallway, 1-West

[doneinthree]

[from here]

Kirk ran into the main hallway and found nothing there except more pink light coating everything. His gut feeling said that if something was happening, it should've happened already, but he was a loss to explain what was going on. The system (if he could call it that, vague as it was to describe the whole Landel's torture/

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[sanguinario]

[From here.]

Once he hit a hallway away from the blocks, he took off fast enough to put a bullet to shame. Within three seconds he had passed by everything, everything he meant to stop at - past the male block, the female block - everything was getting slightly fainter and he could just barely recognize his own thoughts in the chaos, just barely.

There were so many heart beats, twisted up in words he wasn't actually hearing, so many people rejoicing and searching and it was all just too damn much. Even now, Aguilar couldn't stop torturing him, it wasn't bad enough last night -

Within three seconds from just outside his own block he had crashed into the wall of the main hallway outside all of the patient blocks - not a wall this time, something softer, and a heartbeat was pounding in his ear but all he could hear was joy, no confusion or fear or trepidation but joy. It smelled familiar and without thinking he was snarling, pinning the body under him that he had sent to the floor. Because it was familiar, it was like him which meant predator. He wasn't thinking now, not his own thoughts, but he had enough sense to know this wasn't just him.

Not sense. He knew. This was happening to all the patients, or most of them, or enough for him to hear them all. Which meant, even now, he had to be careful. If anything, Landel and Aguilar had taught him how to be careful.

[broodings]

Considering how he was literally just standing in the middle of the hallway and listening to all of the people and creatures moving around, Stefan should've heard this attack coming. The fact that he didn't instantly set off warning bells in his head as he fell, slammed too fast and too hard by something which hadn't even been there a moment ago. He fought instinctively at the impossibly heavy thing which pinned him down, shoving at it with all of his considerable strength until they rolled over and Stefan was on top.

He sounded back a growl to match the animal snarl which filled his ears, and breathed in a strange, inhuman scent (but not unfamiliar - what was it?) before his eyes had caught up to what he was seeing. A too-white face, blood red eyes, teeth bared.

Edward?

Stefan blinked, forcing away the haze of blood lust and aggression, echoing the thought of calm down over and over in his head until he felt his heart slow. "Edward," he repeated aloud this time, his hands and arms and legs still on the other vampire's body, holding him down. "It's me. Stefan."

[sanguinario]

Entirely unsure whether the thought of calm was his own or someone else's, it still helped to actually work its meaning on him, even among the threat he was met with. His lip lowered, the animal sound extinguished. He blinked.

"Oh," he said, letting his thoughts catch up, "oh, god. I'm so sorry Stefan, I can't -"

Calm down. That was his thought this time.

"It's hard to concentrate. I haven't been able to hear so many minds at once for so long," and he was babbling in explanation, just because his sense of danger had slithered into a sense of mortification. Ever since last night, he was just sliding downhill, back into the uncontrollably aggressive newborn he used to be. Self-control. He could do that. He could concentrate now. Even if he could hear the babble of a hundred minds, Stefan's took priority through familiarity and sheer proximity.

Without conscious thought, he put a hand on Stefan's chest like he meant to push him off. Predators didn't like being pinned down naturally, but he wasn't thinking like a predator anymore. Or at least he was doing his best to ignore that part of his mind. He meant to, actually, just so that part of him went away, but he was immediately distracted by the beat in his ears, the pulse underneath his hand.

"You have a heartbeat." He said it like an accusation. "I thought I'd heard it before, but I didn't really think you had an actual, beating heart."

[broodings]

It took a second before Stefan understood the source of Edward's confusion. He'd never known someone who could read minds the way Edward did, so it hadn't occurred to him before now that the other vampire was normally capable of a lot more than simply reading one mind. How many people were there in this building? How far did Edward's abilities reach? How clear were all these thoughts now?

Stop. Stefan took a deep breath and focused on clearing his head, emptying it of everything but the most immediate concerns. He might not be able to understand what Edward was going through right now, but he could at least not add to the problem. It was easy. He'd had enough practice over the decades when it came to controlling the slippery paths of his thoughts.

Edward's cool hand on his chest brought him back to the moment. "You didn't?" The body underneath him was quiet, he realized; where you'd expect to hear a heartbeat (even a half-dead one like Stefan's) there was... nothing. He was more aware than ever of the slow, steady drumming under Edward's touch. "Come on."

Stefan rose to his feet in an instant, faster and more smoothly than any human was capable of, and pulled Edward up with him. He was surprised at the effort it took - Edward had felt like stone when Stefan had been on top of him, and apparently had the weight to match.

"You feel different," he remarked, his hand still on Edward's arm, steadying him. "I'm guessing you're back to normal, too?"

[sanguinario]

"As normal as I can be," he said, shaking the last of the violence out of his fingertips, slipping away from Stefan's hand. An actual beating heart. That meant blood. A pulse. A flow. No venom.

Carlisle would never believe me.

He didn't believe it himself. Even with the evidence in front of him, even though he knew he had seen the vampire inside of Stefan, the way his face and eyes changed - it was all very much mired in the pop culture Edward had spent the last century wading through. And the speed. Stefan had lifted them with ease, moved with the speed that was thoughtless and entirely supernatural.

Edward couldn't help but wonder what he seemed like to Stefan, who was human in so many ways Edward was not. Soft skin, warmth, a pulse. While he was cold, dead, stone. He wasn't sure how to feel. He felt - power. Like they all did. The kind of power you only appreciated when it had been taken from you.

"This is like last night. I remember hearing I.R.I.S. before, but this is all... worrisome. Something's gone wrong for Aguilar, I think."

[broodings]

"Wrong?" A question was on the tip of his tongue - you mean this isn't on purpose? - except Stefan understood just then that Edward had to be right. Letting them loose during a guided mission was one thing, but within the prison itself? In this context, the pink glow clinging to every surface of the building now appeared to be some kind of protection. From them. The Code Red had been a warning about Landel's patients unchained.

Sobriety settled back on his shoulders, that brief delirious feeling of invincibility giving way to the realization that the first thing these soldiers would need to do was contain them. Stefan was less worried about dealing with what they might throw at him than he was about what might happen to Elena if she got caught in the middle of all this. She'd promised to stay in her room until he came, but... Elena being Elena...

More and more people were entering the hallway now, and with them, a rush of monstrous creatures. Stefan tensed, ready to fight or come to the aid someone under attack, but the few harried patients seemed perfectly capable of dispatching the creatures which came at them. They weren't the only ones to have their strength restored.

"We should go." He studied Edward, who seemed to have regained his composure, and noted again the almost luminous white of his skin and the red of his pupils, Stefan's eyes picking out each detail perfectly in the dark. It was hard to imagine how he could ever hide what he was from humans. "You should find Bella-"

A growl behind him. Stefan spun on the spot, one hand lancing out just in time to grab the neck of the animal which had lunged at him. A dog, its skin cracked and rotted, teeth snapping blindly at Stefan's face. He crushed its throat with one hand and tossed the dog's body on the tiled floor.

It wasn't alone. "Edward..."

[sanguinario]

Ah. Stefan answered his silent question without ever knowing it. He looked inhuman. Edward supposed he wasn't surprised. It was just a lot easier for humans to be distracted by his looks by than what the looks made him appear to be. He was, for all intents and purposes, just a corpse. A dolled up, prettied corpse, with shining skin and bright, colored eyes. The perfect amount of distraction, enough to get close to prey. Like he needed the help. The speed was all he required.

Bella. He clung to the thought immediately, already pushing the words to make his way to her to his lips. Stefan would understand; Edward was entirely sure he would also be on his way to find Elena, or to at least make sure his brother had found her. (Was his brother like this, too? Only natural. God, if Emmett was still here -)

They turned as a pair. The animals were a pack, surrounding them with the movements of one, larger organism. Growls, the movement of wet, exposed muscle and bone, and the click of claws on tile echoed around in his head. He bared his teeth at the dogs, and then changed it to a smile when he looked back to Stefan.

"No need to worry tonight, right?" Relish it while we can, he wanted to say, but he was afraid that sounded too much like a monster. He didn't mean the kill. He meant being them again.

Edward shot forward, sweeping the closest dog with enough force to send it slamming against the opposite wall, bones snapping with ease. Its pack mate leaped forward, jaws closing around Edward's arm until they slipped off, unable to find purchase in biting a hunk of what was relatively the equivalent to solid rock. It didn't even leave a mark besides tearing his sleeve.

He twisted its head a hundred and eighty degrees, letting it drop to the floor. It didn't move after.

[broodings]

At Edward's assured smile, Stefan heard himself laugh. He watched Edward in that next second, fascinated by the force and speed of his graceful movements, as deadly efficient as a vampire even two or three hundred years older than him. And the second was over, and Stefan was moving too, his face changing at the smell of blood in the air. He might not be as strong as any vampire fuelled by the normal diet, but a few rabid animals still posed no real threat.

They were, however, an unwelcome distraction. Even as Stefan fought off the dogs at Edward's back, dodging teeth and tearing limbs to make sure the beasts didn't rise again, he looked for an opening to escape. He had the sense that this wasn't random, that the animals were specifically targeting them, and each second they spent held up here meant another second they weren't protecting Elena and Bella.

The hunger drummed inside of him as Stefan turned to face the next animal, moving into kill before it could move against him, but the dog was unresisting when he grabbed it, and he was still too much of a ripper to not notice when his prey wasn't fighting back. Its mad red eyes drooped sleepily, and Stefan became aware of a girl's clear voice singing somewhere.

The pack now lay motionless around him and Edward, most of them dead, the rest asleep. Stefan wasn't going to question it. He touched Edward lightly on the shoulder - let's go - and ran before anything else decided to track them down.

[to here]