[]Ruined Garage

[Continued from ATK1. Any characters that were in the carpark continue posting here]

Jez took deep calming breaths and finally managed to stop his frantic panting. He still trembled lightly from a combination of fear and a deep seeded exhaustion that refused to lift from his body. At least the blood coming from his face seemed to be slowing down. He grabbed the collar of what passed as a shirt and used it to wipe his face off, further dying the shirt red. When he pulled it away he winced at the sight of the shirt. He felt extremely dirty and sticky. He wanted a hot shower and to go home, but in the back of his mind he had a sinking feeling that he wasn't going to get that any time soon.

Finally done staring at the city around him, Jez though it would be best to find someone he could walk down the street until he saw-

Jez froze, eyes wide as he finally turned down the street and spotted THEM. The dog things mulling down the street, seething and pacing in a large group. Jez registered them as canine, but those eyes and teeth were not like any dogs' he had ever seen. As if sensing his awareness of them several of the dogs looked up and their ears perked up at him. Those eyes weren't gleaming with playfulness.

Ohgodohgodohgodohgodtheywanttokillme! Was Jez's first thought. For a moment he was frozen like a deer in headlights, staring at the vicious carnivores. Then there was a rush of adrenaline and he turned on his heel like a bullet and began running. As he turned there was a bright flash and an explosion met Jez's ears. He stumbled as the blast knocked into him, but painfully remained on his feet. It hurt to run but the adrenaline in his system, boosted by the embedded device he hadn't even noticed yet, washed it away... at least temporarily. For now, Jez was running, sprinting for life and limb, a painful flair in his chest told him he wouldn't keep it up for long... Jez's brow crinkled, he was supposed to be good at this...

The handle is still not budging, and Syrus has been trying to pry it open to the point where even his voice is back. "Fuck-shit-augh-goddammit-Ihatethis" now sounds exactly that, instead of some awful gargling indecipherable noise.

When he had been going at it for five minutes without progress, Syrus had thrown a fit (a very small one), then taken a brief respite out of frustration and began ransacking the interior of the vehicle. He'd unearthed a substantial amount of ordinary, every-day objects like CD's, candy wrappers, empty bottles, lighters, condoms-- all manner of things people left in their cars. There is a very basic first-aid kit, several coins, a few stray cigarettes. There is a pair of sunglasses still in the case, several pens, and an unopened box of tissues.

Syrus muses to himself for a while, then pockets a small bottle of iodine, the lighters, the pens, and the sunglasses, (the cigarettes and the condoms he leaves alone.) Shivers a bit; only now does he realize his jacket has disappeared, and with it, his wallet and cell phone. God damn.

Briefly he wonders how on earth had he gotten here in the first place. There are a few fuzzy bits in his memory, names he had no faces to, faces he had no names to. And still that suppressed anger within.

Then Syrus shakes himself and shuts the matter away, resolving to figure the entire situation out after he has left the car.

And that is how, when Syrus turns back to the window again, he first catches sight of a figure standing a ways off from the vehicle. Syrus stares for a while, squinting to be certain it is an actual person. Then, without an alternative choice, he raises his hands and presses them against the glass. Smacks his palms against it a few times, then glares, as if willing the person to walk his way through sheer telekinesis powers alone. As he does so, his wrist twinges. Syrus doesn't even notice.

The twisted canines were done with the distraction. Nothing held their highest esteems like fresh meat did, and before long they were loping back towards the scrawny thing that reeked of the delicious iron odor that promised food.

More of the creatures emerged from behind the building... a few of them had manes already clotted with red...

Julya could see it all happen from the roof and heard people yelling below. There would be nasty trouble if those things got into a garage full of people. She looks around everywhere until she finds a large hunk of concrete she can drag over to the edge, and waits for one of the things to get closer. She plans to take out whichever one is closest to the boy running away first, and after that?

She runs to get two more chunks while she still has time, and then takes careful, calculated aim...

Jez was running as fast as he could, but every step felt like a sledgehammer of pressure was running through his knees and joints. It was just some pain, he had worked through pain before. He bit his lip and kept running, trying to ignore the painful signals coming from his body, including the strangely painful throbbing from his left wrist that seemed to be intensifying as the seconds inched on. Mind over matter. Mind over matter... he just kept chanting to himself, but tears began to well up in his eyes from the pain.

It wasn't up to his mind however when his knee gave out mid-stride. Jez gave a yelp of pain as he fell to the ground and his knee twisted awkwardly. The moment he hit the ground and his momentum was gone Jez could tell his muscles weren't going to allow him to get going again. He wheezed and coughed on the ground trying to get air into his lungs. A few coughs left some spatters of blood on the ground and Jez feebly wiped his mouth as he struggled to even to push his torso up so he could get into a kneeling position.

The dogs sprinted closer, and Jez frantically tried to urge his body to get moving. He moved slow, like an extremely elderly person with arthritis doing something painful, and the moment he tried to put weight on the knee that had given out intense pain shot through his leg.

The dogs drew closer to their delicious prey...

For a little while he just sits there and stares off into space, though in reality he is counting them again, and recounting. It's hard to count what with them clambering all over each other and around the fallen pillars and slabs of concrete and occasionally coming up to him for a scratch behind the ears. But while there's a lot of things that he can't do, he knows he can count.

One.
Two.
Six.
Nine.

There should be ten. There were ten. There'd been ten the last time he counted. So he counts again. One three six eight.

Very slowly, his blank expression starts to change. The corners of his lips twitching downwards. Eyebrows drawing together. Bewilderment.

To confusion. To suspicion. To anger.

To action.

He can hear voices. None of them sound familiar although nothing is familiar these days save for the dogs. It doesn't matter who they are, though. All that matters is that there's eight where there should be ten and he can smell blood.

One of the remaining puppies scrambles to him as he stands up. He pauses only to scratch its head and nudge it in the direction of the others again, and then--

There's a crowbar on the floor next to him. A second later it's in his hand.

Down the stairs. Two at a time. He doesn't know why there's people in the garage, it's always empty, the city is always empty, he doesn't know why there's people. The voices again. Not the masked bitch, not the bleeding heart, not the cowboy or his friend. New people. Where had they come from? It doesn't matter. There's dogs missing and Satero will find them.

A jolt runs up Ben's arm as he continues to stare at the car and he nervously palms at the metal set into his wrist. There's a urge to smack the thing with the pipe he has in hand, but the one eyed man ends up inching closer to the rusting car.

He flinches violently as the person inside the vehicle starts to bang on the windows and almost runs back to his original hiding spot. Another tingle from his arm keeps him in place, though. Ben closes the rest of the distance between himself and the person in the car.

He can't see too well inside of the car, but from what he can see, it doesn't look like the kid glaring out at him is someone to be worried about in the "going to shank my ass as soon as I help him out" department. Ben gives a small, if not retarded and unnecessary wave.

"Hi. You, uh, need some help there...?"

His eyes snapped open and it only took him a few seconds to react.

It wouldn’t go down as his proudest memory yet, though. He tried to push himself up with his arms, one of them gave out on him and he nearly tripped over the rubble. He spun around (gotta pick up what your surroundings are and you have to fast, because anyone around you already knows) and his eyes darted every which way. Too many sensory details hitting him at once.

Sounds. Dogs. Wind. The thunder of blood in his head. Holding his breath now and waiting for--

There’s nothing happening but the world is moving too fast for him to care, and now he’s moving too fast too as he scales over pieces of wall, ceiling, something has fallen here, something has fallen far too fast—

He thinks he has tripped at some point because his arm is bleeding now, bleeding down this – oh god, what is that, that was never there before – thing and he isn’t sure if he likes the looks of that at all and it’s fart too dirty around here and if it gets infected he doesn’t know what he’ll do with himself.

Saeth feels something else, too, working its way in his head. Something that leaves a bitter after taste just screaming that he did nothing to deserve this and there must be some sort of horrible, terrible misunderstanding.

Someone has to have answers for him, Saeth concludes successfully. What he doesn’t conclude successfully, however, is that the first person he sees will hold every single answer to every single question he has ever had in the whole wide world.

He also has not learned that full-body tackling people (growling included, partially) is not the way to go about greeting strangers. Just so easy to find with that red hair, though, and he nearly couldn’t help the compulsive behavior to attack the first thing he could find. He could be sorry later.

Getting to the roof was proving to be more difficult than Mikhail had thought. This was a parking garage, and from what he knew of parking garages (he supposed he knew, since he felt confident about it, and even if he had not a single thing in his memory bank to support the fact that he knew, the feeling alone was enough for him), there had to be a ramp leading up to the next level somewhere.

Theoretically. His level of the concrete structure was in such a state of decay, littered with rusting cars, remains of cars, and hunks of concrete from the broken pillars or what once was the floor of the level above. The largest obstacles, however, were the areas where the floor of his level had fallen through, due to some unimaginable impact or who really knew what. Well, at least he knew he wasn’t on the ground floor. All the same, the obstacles were forcing him to constantly change his route, doubling back and searching for other ways to get to that devilish ramp.

Perhaps surprisingly, he wasn’t all that frustrated. Each newly discovered obstacle earned nothing more than a stare and a blink or two before he planned a way around it, working his way through the labyrinthine parking structure without the slightest hurry. Rushing was simply not something that came naturally to him. Of all the things he knew without remembering, the firm belief that he would always have all the time he needed was strongest.

Mikhail was normally quite attentive, constantly surveying his surroundings in his slow, measured way. But he paused as he walked around an overturned SUV only to find a fallen pillar squarely in his path, looking for the simplest route around it. He did not, however, think to look behind him.

Not for a route, mind, but for a very distressed young man hurtling toward him at that very second. A strange sensation seemed to leek up from his arm toward his brain, as though the odd, metallic hindrance to watch-wearing on his wrist was telling him there was something he ought to know right now. It was oddly like having déjà vu, except that he was quite certain whatever it was he was supposed to know hadn’t quite happened yet. But the feeling lasted a mere second before it was quite forgotten for the time being, as something heavy, but thankfully too soft to be metal or concrete, slammed into him from behind and knocked him to the ground. The gravel-strewn concrete floor scraped some of the skin off his hands as they moved instinctively to catch him, though he wasn’t fast enough to avoid the wind being quite knocked out of him. Just fast enough, though, to stop from cracking any ribs, at least.

Knocked prone by his attacker, he couldn’t yet see what exactly what was on top of him but he could hear what was almost like a faint growling. Great, some kind of animal. Mikhail pushed himself as far from his attacker as he could get, rolling over the concrete and back to his feet as his hand went instinctively to his side for his – wait, where was it? Mikhail didn’t often show panic, but this was about as expressive as he ever got, frowning as he searched himself frantically, patting down both his sides in search of the weapon he was confident he always, always, kept on his person.

Mikhail felt naked, stranded without both his watches and his gun. This was a far more pressing matter to him now than his attacker, who he had noted was not an animal about to kill him but very violent, dark skinned man. He never bothered too much about people.

“Where is my gun?” He inquired of the stranger, his voice bearing the sharply accented syllables and blunt tone of one whose native language was Russian and who might not be entirely fluent in English. He nearly glared down at other man, looking over him intently as though suspecting that his attacker had stolen it when he had fallen.

It was dark down in the bottom, so emerging completely into the light, even overcast light, is pretty harsh on his eyes. He wasn't going to stop before, and he isn't now. Not while he still has enough energy to run.

The growling and some whimpy scream catches his attention before the blurs resolve themselves into real shapes he can sort-of recognize... It had taken him this long to realize that there was no clarity to his vision any longer, a clarity that (he was sure) he remembered being there. It's only a passing concern, though, because one of those shapes is some poor wretch and judging by the patchy coloring on the blob, he is bleeding. A lot.

The other shapes are massive, ugly, and he can smell them from a distance. Absolutely beautiful.

Oh, and they are obviously headed right for the smell of fresh blood!

It just so happens he's headed that way too. For no other reason than he feels like it's a good idea to steal food from big.... dogs. He thinks they are dogs.

He opens his mouth and screams at them as he runs, his lungs jarring in his skinny chest and making the drawn-out sound bounce in his throat. "NICE TRY, BUT THIS ONE'S MINE, BITCHES!" He hardly notices as the closest dog is hit with a chunk of concrete in the face, it yelps and makes a turn that gives Ashke just enough space to slide to a semi-stop to grab the collapsed man, skinning his knees in the process.

Jez could hear the barking and snarling getting closer. He really couldn't get up for the pain. He covered his face and closed his eyes. Tensing, he readied himself for the impact of claw and tooth.

"NICE TRY, BUT THIS ONE'S MINE, BITCHES!"

Jez uncovered his face and looked up in time to see dreads flying everywhere next to him and then realized a man had slid down next to him. The man was tall and skinny and for a moment Jez stared at him blue eyes wide, but his eyes were of course drawn to the death barreling down the road towards them. Jez's arms shot to the man, clinging to him as he attempted to use the man's support to stand up so he could run away from the beasts the man had so fearlessly ran through

"Ohblodyhellwhatthehellisgoingon!" Jez finally managed to vocalize through his choaking and coughing. He didn't really have time to absorb what was going on or why the man had screamed exactly what he was screamed. He also didn't notice that the pain that had been running through his left wrist and arm had abruptly stopped the moment he had touched the man beside him, but he had bigger things to worry about.

The idea of consequences was never very prominent in his mind – and that wasn’t changed now, either. Saeth felt something jolt in his hands and sting, but he brushed it off. Maybe he accidentally scraped them more than he had known. That was in the back of his mind now, and while he was not aiming to rip out any throats, he may as well play it off as much.

Saeth made himself stand at full height (which wasn’t as tall as he wants to be, but he is willing to work with what he has) after the red head stranger had made his way away from him. Saeth brushes himself off with his still stinging hands, but then lets his arms hang loosely. Not tense. Not giving off any other evidence of attack. That’s how he was taught, of course, to not give any hints.

Upon the stranger’s question, Saeth’s eyes darted around the nearby area. Guns? Now he was feeling a bit inferior. If the stranger is playing off that he isn’t armed just to get an upper hand – well, it’s possible, but Saeth wouldn’t let that happen. But he was unarmed himself, no knives, no firearms. He took pride in the fact that he doesn’t need any…unless someone else has a gun. Can’t exactly fight bullets.

He offers a shrug, tilting his chin up and glower over at the stranger. Trying to make himself seem a little bit bigger. Saeth takes a few steps to the side, halfway edging towards this other man, halfway asserting the situation further. He knows he himself is unarmed. The other is potentially unarmed. Didn’t see him coming, didn’t notice until just now. Or didn’t care. He doesn’t seem like the type to care about anything. Oddest accent he had ever heard, Saeth couldn’t place it. He isn’t familiar with anyone outside of those closest to him and doesn’t make the effort to change that.

Never needed to before this. Perhaps that’s what got him stuck here, wherever here was.

“I don’t have your gun,” Saeth snaps, cold and shallow. He pauses before adding, “In fact, I don’t have very much anything at all. Care to tell me about that?”

The tips of his fingers twitched a bit as the boy stirred, waking from a sleep most deep indeed. "Nghhh...mehh." He sniffs incomprehensibly and rolls over onto his stomach, his brow furrowing as he senses light just beyond his tired eyelids. Suddenly the boy sits up with a jolt, the ancient leather seat beneath him growling in protest at it's fidgety passenger. "WHERE---? WHO---?" He glances about in confusion, his large emerald eyes blinking back his previous exhaustion.

Remmy Hagar sits back in the---back seat of an old car, hmm---calming down slightly as he tries to take stock of his situation. Where was he? "Huh...well..." The teen taps his chewed-on fingers together, glancing upwards in thought, his mouth hanging upon slightly. One might say the boy looked a bit like a mental patient...and, in truth, they'd actually be quite right. Relatively harmless and good-natured, but a mental patient nonetheless.

"We, um, I was...doing.....hm. I think...huh." Remmy reaches up to scratch his curly-haired head, causing his oversized hoodie sleeve to fall away from his hand. The motion revealed an odd, almost alien-like metallic device, forcefully embedded into Remmy's wrist. His tired eyes widen and he looks upon it in surprise and horror. "What...what IS that?!!", he questions loudly, in earshot of no one but himself. He bites his lip and thrusts his left arm out in front of him, as if trying to distance himself from the befouled wrist as much as possible. Come to think of it, Remmy didn't recognize this car either---and what was this, a parking garage? His green eyes dart about nervously, and against his better judgment and fear of whatever was on his left wrist, the boy couldn't resist his most tempting habit; he immediately shoves all of his fingers into his mouth and starts to knaw them obsessively, uselessly trying to will away all of his frightened confusion. "I...I can't remember what I was doooooing....", he says mournfully, his voice cracking, muffled by his fingers. "I can't...I don't...." His wide, worried eyes drift to the car door. "I, I, I, I have to leave...I have to LEAVE and find...!!"

Ashke is thankful for the rocks; wherever they come from they are sparing his miserable little not-life. Another careens into a snarling dog that is getting too close for comfort, but not before even the poor sight of Ashke's rotten eyes could catch the slobbering second mouth of the beast. "OH, SHIT! HAHAHA! I bet they're hungry, fuck!" He yelps as he drags the bleeding man up over his shoulder.

One dog tears at his leg. He is lucky, horridly lucky... as he runs the mouth comes away with only fabric and the dog's paws give out until its ugly snout is grinding into the ground.

No time lapses before he is running full tilt for another skyscraper. "BUMPY RIDE THERE?" He asks his cargo. His luggage. His rescue.

His. Ha. Ha. Ha. if only he weren't laughing out loud, it might be easier to speak with him, but the capacity of his lungs seems all but exhaustible.

The words are muffled, but Syrus can just hear them in the silence of the car. He almost rolls his eyes in exasperation, but then thinks better of it. He is the one in need of assistance here, after all.

His glare turns slightly condescending, however, if that is even possible. "No shit, Sherlock," Syrus mouths, (rolling his eyes unconsciously as he does so.) To make his point, he pulls emphatically at the handle once more, indicating with a jerk of his head at the unmoving door.

As he does he takes in the stranger, not bothering to mask his outright squinting. The man certainly seems amiable enough, if he is not simply walking away from Syrus' plight like some people Syrus knows would do (here, he scowls to himself.)

But wait. As soon as that thought runs through his head Syrus realizes that, wait, hang on, no one comes to mind, not immediately anyway. His scowl deepens, but before he can delve into this further he half-shakes his head. Concentrate on current dilemma first, before anything else. Right.

He looks to the man outside the car again, and is raising a hand to gesture again at the car door when suddenly there is movement from behind the stranger's back. For a moment, Syrus simply stares, not even bothering to squint. There was just so many things wrong with what he was seeing that it takes a while for his mind to register it.

Then, frantically, he makes twirling motions with his hands, willing the stranger to turn around because dear God what is that dog, no, thing--

(Suddenly, being in the car doesn't seem like such a bad thing after all. Not with those...monsters, prowling out there.)

Fuck my life.

That was the most prominent thought running through his head, swiftly followed by the realization that he urgently wanted and needed to get as far away from those dogs as possible. If only he knew where they were.

The increasing number of sounds had him disoriented. He could hear the dogs among several voices, but couldn't for the life of him figure out if they were above or below. He was going to hazard a guess and say below. How far below, though, he still wasn't sure. Judging from the broken down remnants of the buildings he could see from his current position, he figured he was near the top of the parking garage.

Gritting his teeth and fighting past the pain in his leg, he used the wall to balance himself, hobbling slowly--but surely--towards the roof of the parking garage. He quickly discovered he was merely one level below, much to his relief, but as he approached the roof, he just as quickly became aware of the presence of another person, though just what they were doing he couldn't tell.

As he limped heavily onto the roof, he looked over at the figure, standing at the ledge....pushing.....rocks off the edge? A faint, pained yelp from ground-level and he was more than positive that this person was attempting to take care of the dogs. A common enemy, however, didn't guarantee safety for himself. With some hesitation, he spoke up, praying fervently in his mind that whoever this person was wouldn't shove him off the roof as well.

"H--hey!! Are you...okay?" he called, frowning as the words left his mouth. This person was quite obviously faring much better than he was.

Jez felt the wind knocked out of him as he was roughly thrown over the strange man's shoulder and his own stomach collided with the thin man's very pointy shoulder. The man screamed something about the dogs being hungry and all Jez could say in reply was "Huuuuuurrggohgodnohuurrrrrrgggg-" The man proceeded to sprint with Jez over his shoulder. Jez was torn between being grateful to the man or terrified out of his mind at his insane laughter and the fact that he was currently kidnapping Jez. Regardless of how his conflicted emotions would eventually resolve themselves, Jez was positive he couldn't be as scared of the man as he was of the dog things. So in his new, rather uncomfortable position he wrapped his arms around the man's waist like a vice, trying desperately to keep himself from flailing and bumping around quite so uncomfortably. He really couldn't do anything for his legs flapping around in the air though, and Jez just closed his eyes and wished that this would all stop, well not the man, he should keep running.

"BUMPY RIDE THERE?" the man asked before breaking back into insane laughter.

Jez simply focused on clinging like a monkey to the man and didn't answer. He hoped the man would stop laughing in such an unnerving way... Jez was feeling more and more like he was trapped between a rock and a hard place as the laughter tickled new uneasiness in the back of his mind.

While Mikhail was only looking over the stranger in hopes of locating the gun he was certain he must have dropped somehow, he couldn’t help but pick up a few details about the man in front of him in the process.

He looked to be around the same age as Mikhail was (though Mikhail wasn’t even sure how old that would be, to be honest), though obviously of a different ethnicity. Mikhail didn’t have the slightest idea what that was, but he didn’t particularly care. He noted that the other man was now standing easy, relaxed. He didn’t look about to attack Mikhail again, but then, that could be the point. Whatever Mikhail had done before waking up in that car, it had taught him well to always be on his guard.

Like the other individual, however, he didn’t easily let on that he was keeping an eye on the other man, though he always kept him in his peripheral vision as he continued to look for his gun. It just had to be there somewhere.

Mikhail saw the stranger move closer, ever aware of their spatial relation to each other as he didn’t really feel like getting tackled again, even though his eyes were still moving through the shadows near the fallen blocks of concrete. His hope that a gun was hidden there somewhere, however, was fast dwindling. Either the stranger had taken it, or, more likely…maybe he hadn’t had it to begin with. That was a very disconcerting thought. Mikhail didn’t like to be unarmed. He had the feeling he was decent at defending himself without one; no expert to be sure, but he could hold his own. All the same, there were some things you couldn’t fight with fists alone.

Oh. Well, the stranger was quite emphatic about not having Mikhail’s gun. Mikhail wasn’t really one to take people at their word, but considering he couldn’t remember ever noticing or feeling the gun at his side since he woke up in the car was finally causing him to accept that there was no gun. Well, since that was the case, there was no use worrying about that any further. He added ‘find a new gun’ to the top of his agenda, well, right below ‘get to higher ground so the wolves/dogs/whatever they are don’t eat you and you can find out where the hell you are’.

Oh, right. The stranger had said something else. Asked him a question. It had barely registered with Mikhail – he was simply indifferent to other people most of the time. The snappish way the other man was talking to him didn’t really help either; Mikhail just found it mildly irritating. Nonetheless, the man had answered his question, so he would answer his.

“Do I look like I have unlimited resources?” He replied, but while blunt, as was his way, his tone was quiet and carried no real anger. Having paid his question debt to the stranger, Mikhail turned, still mindful of his goal of reaching the roof of the building. The sooner he did that, the sooner he could find a new gun.

However, Mikhail felt the strangest sensation as he started to walk away. The annoying thing in his wrist seemed to twitch, and at the same time, he had a strangely alien-feeling notion that he ought to go back, that he shouldn’t be leaving the other person. He needed him and he needed to stay close. How bizarre. Mikhail frowned and kept walking, hitting his wrist against his side with much the same air as one would swat a fly.

It felt like he had been lost for an indefinite amount of time in a swirling vortex, not knowing up from down and losing all sense of where he had come from and where he was going. But now his mind was clearing at last.

He opened his eyes.

Rough and gray, like concrete – it was concrete – below him, though there was something black attached to something rusting a short distance away. He moved his hands and felt the palms slide along the gravelly surface below – he was lying face down on the floor of wherever he was. He sat up. It was a parking garage.

The object nearby was a car, though one obviously in an advanced state of decay. In addition to the wind blowing though the abandoned garage, he could hear the snarling of what sounded like wild dogs not far away.

He liked this place already.

The smile was evidence of just that as he stood up, absently brushing a hand down the front of his shirt to remove the crumbs of concrete that had stuck to it, but he looked down as something dark red caught his eye. Very much standing out on his dirty white shirt was a large stain of what looked like long-dried blood, causing the fabric to stiffen over a large patch on his chest. Odd. He didn’t feel injured. But it was dry; it could be an old injury.

He reached a hand under his shirt to feel under the area for the source, but what his hand touched certainly wasn’t the scar he’d been expecting. It was metal, rounded and smoothly integrated with his flesh. Well, at least it was now. Judging by the blood both soaking his shirt and crusted over the skin around the large, strange device (as he flaked off the dried blood he could feel the scars branching out around the metal), the implantation, whatever its purpose, had not been a simple process.

He didn’t really mind. There was something in the air here, something he liked –

But where was here? Mm, that was the question. For that matter, he wasn’t sure who he was exactly, either. The realization of his lack of this knowledge seemed strange to him; he didn’t feel as though his identity had changed at all, he felt very confident in who he was. He took a moment, however, to compile everything he could remember, and came up with only the following.

One, his name was Scarborough.

Two, he was a monster. He was quite certain he had done a great many terrible things, though he could remember none of them. Nor did he feel any remorse. It was not his fault he had been born as he was. One could only act in accordance with their own nature. Fighting it would always result in a loss, and Scarborough did not like to lose.

Three, he had been framed for something that he had not done and he still carried a considerable amount of anger for that. He had done plenty of wonderfully horrible things, after all. There was really no need to make things up, and besides, that was a horrible corruption of justice. And he did like justice, in his own way.

He could remember nothing else, but he didn’t think there was anything else worth remembering anyway. His current situation was far more interesting. He ran a hand over the metal in his chest again, tracing the scars, and peering down at the grisly sight. His smile widened. It was wonderfully fitting.

He inhaled deeply, breathing in that scent in the air that was so intoxicating. It was so acrid he could nearly taste it; it smelled like terror and death and fear of death, and Scarborough would be hard pressed to say which he liked better. He had never smelled anything better.

He followed the scent toward what he guessed must be the source, as the smell grew more powerful the closer he moved to one of the cars. He ran his tongue over his lips, but frowned as he felt a sharp but fleeting pain, quickly followed by the metallic taste of blood welling up in his mouth. He sloshed it around before swallowing it, and ran his tongue more carefully over his incisors. They were the same shape, but the edges were considerably sharper, especially on his canines. His smile returned.

Scarborough found the car that was the source of the marvelous odor at last, and he could see – and hear, a boy in the backseat of the car. He appeared to be gnawing on his fingers amidst moans of distress, something about needing to leave and do something. Scarborough folded his arms over his bloodied shirt, staring through the car window for a moment before taking hold of the door handle and forcing the car door open. It hadn’t really been his intention to force it, but it was so rusted it seemed to have little intent of opening normally.

Well, no problem for him. He found just about anything would crack open with the right amount of force.

“Hello there,” He said pleasantly enough, though the smile stretched across his face was a few yards short of friendly and seemed to have quite another meaning behind it. “It must be awfully dusty in there. Why don’t you come out?”

Scarborough hadn’t decided yet what he wanted to do with the boy. He found it was more fun to be spontaneous.

His eyes bulging in alarm and disbelief, Remmy stared up at the hulking beast of a man who had just wrenched the car door from it's frame. He was absolutely terrifying to behold, really---tall and muscular, with eyes like daggers and a toothy smile of similar violence. And the way he just ripped the car door of it's hinges---and with such ease at that---Remmy couldn't help but flinch away when the man addressed him. And without the door, Remmy could swear he heard what sounded like the howling and snarling of dogs echoing in the distance....and what was he doing here? He knew he was going to do something, but it was like everything in his mind was just gone...and that thing. That wretched, forceful, invading thing, what was that thing embedded in his wrist..? And now, this strange man's smile. He was surely smiling but... it held so very little warmth. That...smile of his, it...it was just...

No. No. No. Remmy shook his head slightly, attempting to clear his mind. What was he thinking? Here he was, alone, frightened, confused; and the first friendly gesture encountered he flinches from? Remmy lowered his eyes, his cheeks flushing with embarrassment. What a horrid boy he was; obviously the stranger was just trying to be nice---how dare he judge this man solely upon looks and first impressions! He was just being nice. Kind. Trying to help.

Surely, he was...

Remmy took a long deep breath through his nose, as if meditating upon the situation. Then slowly, carefully, he opened his mouth and gingerly released his hands from his own gnawing vice-grip of anxiety, charmingly leaving a string of drool from his fingers to his lip. "Oh, um..." The boy hastily wipes his hoodie sleeve across his mouth. "I---I'm sorry." He then looks back up at his "liberator" with a reserved but curious expression, weighing on the man's words. Remmy blinks at him, then swallows, craning his head out of the newly created doorway. "Is it... safe out there, mister?" he asks, his voice quietly nervous as he peers about. "I...I don't...I don't really know what's going on, even the stuff in my brain seems kinda funny. I don't know why." He frowns slightly and furrows his brow in thought, still trying to get his bearings---but to little success. Shifting slightly in his seat, Remmy unfolds his legs out from underneath himself and swings them outside of the car, worn, dirty sneakers connecting with the weathered concrete. The boy glances up at the older male through his mass of dark curly hair, his green eyes bright and honest.

...Odd. Remmy suddenly feels a rush of...relief, looking at this man. Scary as he was, it was as if....well, he didn't know exactly. The boy glanced blankly over at his own wrist, the strange metal device once again covered by his long sleeve. "My name's Remmy," he announced suddenly, head tilting upward to look the man in the eye again. "...I think I just remembered that," he added proudly, obviously one of those simple people content with every small victory they won. Chewing absentmindedly on a fingernail, Remmy fidgeted slightly and tried to match the grin the man first gave him, as he smiled back.

"So, um, who are you mister?", Remmy asks innocently, as polite as an emotionally and mentally awkward teen could be with half of their own finger stuck in their mouth. "Can you help me, is that why you are here? 'Cause I don't know what's going on, not at all. And that's...weird, I think. I'm not so good at thinking too much right now, but I think that's probably weirdness. Y'know...not knowing stuff." Remmy smiles up at the man, his expression sweet but still the tiniest bit nervous.

As Scarborough opened the car door, he could both smell and taste the fear radiated by the boy. It struck him how much the two senses seemed linked now; each scent seemed to brush his tongue with a certain flavor, though fear’s taste was by far the strongest. It was marvelous.

Scarborough waited patiently, smile never fading, as he let the boy stare, taking him in, still gnawing at his fingers all the while. Scarborough knew he must present quite a sight at the moment – bloodstained shirt, extensive stubble, and all in all just about as rough, dirty, and mean-looking as he suspected he had ever been. It wasn’t his fault he’d been dumped there in that condition, but all the same. The expression on the boy’s face, as he just stared with all his fingers in his mouth, almost made Scarborough laugh. There was nothing more funny or rewarding than being feared.

Unfortunately, he could smell the fear dissipating as the boy seemed to come to some conclusion to give him a chance. That would do well for now. Scarborough could have his fun with him later. As the boy drew his fingers away from his mouth at last, Scarborough wondered idly how much pressure it would take to bite one of them off for good. Perhaps they were fun to chew on, since the boy seemed so fond of it…

He kept right on smiling, however, as he listened to the boy with the most patient and good-natured of airs. Even monsters were less scary with a smile. Less scary, but no less dangerous.

“You have no need to worry; you’ll be quite safe with me. I will protect you,” Scarborough charmingly assured the boy in the car. “Of course you don’t know. You’ve been through quite an ordeal, I’m sure, but you needn’t be afraid as long as you’re with me.”

Scarborough’s smile widened as the boy finally swung himself out of the car, and he let his hand drop from where it had rested on the side of the door. It was always nice when they came willingly. He watched the boy with eyes that calculated above the unfaltering smile, watching him look around and down at his wrist. He looked back to the boy’s face, however, as he spoke again, eyebrows raising a bit in pleasant surprise.

“That’s very good, Remmy,” He said kindly, speaking as one would to a child who’d just tied his shoes for the first time. “See, things out here aren’t so bad. It won’t be so confusing, once you adjust.” Scarborough paused as Remmy asked for his name, thinking for a moment before taking a step away from the car, though his smile never faded.

“I’m someone you can trust. Yes, I am here to help you. Don’t be afraid.” You will be afraid when I tell you to be. “I know exactly why we’re here.” Scarborough continued to speak in the same manner, unhurried and paternal, almost matching the grin on his face. Not matching his eyes, but those were so much harder for the average person to read. “You may call me Scarborough. That is my name and I won’t answer to anything else,” He replied, but though his tone was somewhat playful, it was equally serious.

Someone he could trust...how...refreshing. It seemed like it had been awhile... And as odd as it seemed---and it was odd even to him---Remmy DID feel as if he could trust this man, with his inviting smile and his warm words. Someone to watch over him. Safe, safety. A protector, just like the man said. It was...a comforting notion. Remmy hadn't the faintest idea of where he was or what was happening, and then suddenly; someone promising to show him the way.

"Scarborough. Scarrrbooooorrrrohhhh," Remmy repeated, sounding out the man's name, letting the syllables roll over his tongue. He seems to think for a moment, processing the new bit of information before nodding to himself. "Scarborough...it's a nice name. Yes, I like it!" Remmy concludes cheerily, clasping his hands together and grinning up at his new companion. Unfortunately, in that motion, both sleeves of Remmy's much-too-large hoodie fell down a little, once again revealing the metallic device embedded in the boy's left wrist. Spotting it, he gasped in horror and quickly clamped his other hand over top of it, attempting to keep the bizarre thing hidden.

"THAT---I, um, its a, a, a, a---" Remmy swallowed, his head bent over, eyes darting to and fro in shame. After a moment of seeming deliberation, Remmy slowly, silently, extends his hand up toward Scarborough, his head still lowered to avoid eye contact.

"I... I don't know what it is," the boy says mournfully. "When I woke up in the car, it um, it was...it was just there. Now like I said, I'm not good at remembering a lot of stuff right now for some weird reason," he adds. "But I think I can remember not ever having...whatever that is."

Remmy finally gazed back up at Scarborough, his eyes wide and frightened of the unknown anomaly. "What is this Scarborough? Why can't I remember this? Did..." The boy bites down on his bottom lip in a feeble attempt to cease its sudden trembling. "...did something bad happen to me?" Down at his side, the fingers of Remmy's right hand twitched. Resist, resist, resist, don't bite them, don't bite them, don't chew on them, don't bite them, no, no, no...

Saeth seethes. Silently at first, until it turns to a low hiss, which then turns into words.

“Don’t you walk away from me,” Saeth demanded, feeling his legs push him forward without his consent. Only a few steps. That was exactly not the answer he wanted from the stranger and was exactly not what he had expected either. He wasn’t sure what he had expected, to be honest, but a little bit of anything could be helpful. Saeth held his ground after the few tiny steps.

His arm was starting to feel funny again. He picks at the foreign object in his arm, nails digging into the skin surrounding it. It is as if the little contraption was urging him forward. Well, he wasn’t about to find himself slave to something he didn’t even remember, now was he. He frowns again, sending glowers at the red head.

“Listen up,” Saeth snaps again. “First of all, it’s rude to answer a question with a question. Figured you should know some manners here. Second, I guarantee if you leave this building alone you’re going to get yourself killed before you can count to ten.”

So he only had two points. Maybe he should have planned that speech better. Regardless, he considers those to be the two more important things he had thought of during his small amount of time of consciousness (excluding the first, ‘oh god oh god I am going to die’ thoughts he may or may not have had). He stuffs his hands into the pockets of his opened jacket, hands balled into fists and clenching enough for his nails to leave marks in his palms.

He feels as if he should know something more about this stranger. Not in the sense that they had met before, not that he had forgotten a name or any minor detail about the person. But nothing came up. Nothing but the odd sensations that jolted through him every once in awhile.

His tongue was like a lump of sand in his mouth, gritty and heavy with the taste of dirt and vomit lingering at it's back. Bridhe was well acquainted with the taste, and knew full well the other symptoms that would accompany the sandpaper-like texture of the inside of his mouth. The headache, the soreness, the vertigo whenever he chose to sit up... He took stock of his body parts one by one, making sure they were still intact before slowly opening his eyes to try and figure out just where he had passed out this time.

What he saw surprised him, as it wasn't often that he woke up with his nose brushing against the rotted, crinkled rubber that had once been a tire. In fact, the curly-headed male slowly realized, the smell of decay seemed to be everywhere around him. He tried to sift through the foggy, muddled mess that was his mind to identify just where he was and how he got here.

He came up with... Nothing. All he knew was that he was here, that he hurt, and that he really, really had to take a piss. Bridhe (at least that's what he thought his name was, he supposed he looked like a Bridhe even if he couldn't remember what he looked like) barely managed to remember that he was male, he was legal and that he didn't belong in the gravel next to some white trash Cadillac. What the hell was a Cadillac, anyway?

A groan managed to escape against his will as he sat up, ignoring the protest of his stomach as his small form hunched over in the dirt, trying to make heads or tails of what was going on. The ginger-haired boy (man?) hoped that these clothes were his, rubbing hands over dusty jeans before tugging at his t-shirt. It had strange markings on the front that he assumed were words, and it frustrated him that he couldn't read them. Bridhe felt he should be able to read, that seemed like something he would be able to do... Right? His frustration was shifted as he caught sight of something glinting on his arm in the dull light.

"That hurts." The words sounded alien to his own ears, a single dirty digit prodding at the still healing thing that was embedded in his arm. "But, I mean... It's part of me, right? I guess I've always had it--"

Bridhe stopped, freezing as the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. That was a bad thing, right? Yeah, definitely bad. A shudder travelled down his spine as he heard something nasty and mean snarling in the distance, that something shortly followed by many more somethings. When he rose he almost crumpled to the ground, catching himself on that rusted heap that was once an automobile before trying to open the doors in desperation. When tugging and cursing failed he settled for the next best thing: A piece of rebar sticking like a gnarled branch out of a large chunk of concrete that had once been a pillar. He shifted, busting open a window before crawling inside as he held onto that makeshift tool for dear life.

Only after he had broken the window and climbed inside the stinking car did he realize that if he could get inside so could the thing that made that noise. Shit.