(Untitled)

[askwhatsreal]

[oom: Sometime after this, Annie tries to escape. She opens a door.]

There is a girl huddled on the floor, bound hand and foot in iron chains. She is barefoot, wearing a purple hospital shift and bruises up and down her body. Most noticeably, three tight rings mottle her upper arms in blue and green (the color of her eyes, if you care to make the

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[claudiometer]

It's a second before the sound gets through to Claudia; she's caught up in her plans for the El Camino in the garage. But when it does?
"--Oh, dude." She's on her feet and searching the pockets of her tool belt for something that'll work as a lockpick before she's entirely aware she's doing so. When her brain catches up with her hand, she half wishes she had enough hair to justify bobby pins.
"What happened?"
(You don't ask someone in chains and weeping if they're okay. The answer's pretty obviously 'no.')

[askwhatsreal]

These chains don't look like they'd part to the tune of a bobby pin: they're linked together as tightly as a Japanese puzzle box, assembled by mechanisms and machines.

Annie turns to the questioner, and waits for the knot in her throat to go away before speaking.

"I tried to escape."

She wrings her hands, and the handcuffs jangle in response.

[claudiometer]

"I think you made it." At least, Claudia doesn't know of anyone around here with that kind of sadistic streak.
As for the chains, once she gets a closer look... well, mechanisms are her thing. One of her things, anyway. And she's always got that kind of tools on hand.
"If you want, I could try to get those off."

[askwhatsreal]

Annie looks her over: tool belt, determined eyes - but kind.

"You can always try."

Her eyelashes feel heavy, from the tears - she tries to wipe them away and almost gets an eyeful of metal for her efforts.

[claudiometer]

"Every little bit helps." And if she can't get all the way through the things, there's bound to be someone around here who can bust her loose.
She fishes a Swiss army knife and a box of eyeglass-size screwdrivers out of her tool belt. "I'm Claudia, by the way."

[askwhatsreal]

"Annie."

Every time she says it reinforces her identity, brings back concrete memories from her childhood.

Claudia may find that fiddly knives and screwdrivers aren't enough (unless she's a miracle worker).

[claudiometer]

"Good to meetcha. Wish it was better circumstances for you, but... at least you escaped." For now, anyway, but there's no point in getting into that.
As for the chains... well, she's not a miracle worker, but she is a tech person, so when she hits a layer of circuitry she's not entirely at a loss.
"Do you know if these wires are live?"

[askwhatsreal]

She shrugs, a little helpless.

"They were. Not sure, now."

[claudiometer]

"Probably better to err on the side of caution, then. Last thing I want to do is zap you."
She examines the circuitry for a bit (some of it reminds her of how she wired her electrified handcuffs... which is making her glad they're the first item on her shelf in the Warehouse, really; when you're 14, you don't exactly think of the horrendous shit people might get up to with your answer to a challenge), then says, "I think if I break this connection that'll cut the power flow."
She's half thinking out loud and half trying to keep Annie in the loop regarding what she's doing. And since she won't find out if that connection keeps the power flowing until she tries, she breaks it.

[askwhatsreal]

Annie braces herself for the shock - you'd think she'd be used to it by now (some things can't be rationalized).

It doesn't come.

"They must have turned them off when they unhooked me from the machines," she says, gratefully. (a girl can only take so much)

[claudiometer]

"Unexpectedly nice of the sort of 'they' who'd do this in the first place." But Claudia's not arguing! Knowing she doesn't have to worry about zapping Annie by accident is a load off her shoulders, in its way.
She keeps working at the mechanism, going a little faster now that she knows it's turned off. It's still slowish going, but eventually she says, "Okay. I think that might do it."

[askwhatsreal]

Annie tunes out as Claudia tinkers. She's trying to reconcile 'nice' and 'them.'

(Needless to say, it doesn't work.)

She hears Claudia's voice, distantly, but it doesn't register.

[claudiometer]

Yeah, Claudia can't exactly make it fit either, between the chains and the epic bruises. Hence the 'unexpectedly' - and she half suspects whoever cut the power might not have known they did it.
"Annie?" she says, when she doesn't get a response. "I think I got it, give it a try."
(She can't really sympathise, but... she knows a bit of tuning everything else out. Not for the same reasons and not to this extreme, but.)

[askwhatsreal]

Annie startles, looks up.

"Sorry, I -"

She takes a breath.

"Sorry."

She fiddles with the handcuffs. They slip down her wrists, and off her fingers.

"Wow." Annie looks at Claudia with grave eyes. "Thank you."

[claudiometer]

"It's okay. I think you're a lot worse off than I ever was, but I've tuned out the whole world before too." Until she realised that tuning it out was doing more harm than good.
She smiles a little, when it turns out she got the cuffs loose. "You're welcome. And welcome to Milliways."

[askwhatsreal]

"I'm glad you haven't been this bad."

She's rueful. "There's a reason they just call me 'the crazy girl.'"