Everybody Loves Aleksander

Link to article: Everybody Loves Aleksander.

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Aleksander Foxx had spent what he considered an intermediate time at the Foundation, which he characterized by having been around long enough to hear rumors about Site-17, but not long enough to know if they were true. Chief among said rumors was that the staff at Site-17 were less prepared for any real dangers, which was often communicated by other site's staff bitterly referring to them as 'self-important candy-asses.' At the time, Aleksander had thought that was a little harsh - after all, //everyone// at the Foundation was self-important - but he had to say, the conduct he had seen in the past hour or so had not impressed him. It was just a bunch of insurgents shooting up the place, so what? Shouldn't these people have dealt with way worse? Aleksander was the only one who had even bothered to even try and take advantage of the site's biggest resource: the humanoids! The place was crawling with them, and the staff just had them all locked up at the first sign of trouble! Which, sure, was probably intentional, but nobody ever made a good story by being a candy-ass.

And, to top it all off, it didn't even seem like they were very good at locking anything up in the first place. Beyond the obvious issue of a bunch of dudes with guns kicking down their front door, it seemed like even their internal security was lacking. At least, Aleksander found himself hoping it was, because otherwise he'd just been standing around watching some kid ineffectually dick around with a saferoom's control panel for two minutes.

[[[friday-morning|Marya]]] was the first to speak up, who was, by Aleksander's request, standing in front of him - even if he had specifically sought her out, there was no way he was letting a Blood Striga out of his sight. "Ah, are you... making any progress with that?" Her tone, while polite, had an edge of tiredness to it that suggested a lack of faith.

"Of course I am," Anne replied without turning away from the exposed wiring she had hacked her way to. "Hell, we used to rip these things out of the wall and haul them back to our safehouses just to practice on them."

"You mean... you don't have a key?" [[[scp-2800|Daniel]]] asked. Aleksander had //not// sought him out, but he decided to let the anomaly stay in their group since he thought Aleksander's suit looked cool and he lowered the chances of Aleksander being the first one shot from 33% to 25%.

Anne //did// turn around for that question, limply holding up a stripped wire in place of a response.

Daniel's expression darkened. "I don't think we should be doing this, then."

"Oh, come on. You think this is what the Foundation is gonna take issue with right now?" Anne snorted as she reached down to her standard electrician kit - which she almost certainly should not have had in the first place, but Aleksander knew that everyone hated a narc.

"Well, just because things are //bad// doesn't mean we should make them //worse.//"

"C'mon, wouldn't a bunch of anomalies dying in a hallway while trying to form a plan be a bigger issue than a busted door?"

"Oh." Daniel furrowed his brow. "Um..."

"Come on, all this infighting is what the enemy //wants,//" Aleksander said, projecting his voice in a commanding tone. Daniel looked awestruck, as expected. Marya and Anne grimaced. They'd come around. "Let's just give the kid some time, yeah?"

Anne flinched. "Please don't call me that. I'm twenty-four."

Ah, right. Kids always hated being called kids, his daughter was like that. He'd just avoid it until she warmed up.

A few more seconds of standing around, and the door snapped open. Marya and Daniel jumped a bit at the sudden thud, but Anne seemed smug as she walked into the room and began scoping it out. "Give me just a minute, I'll get everyone up to speed."

Aleksander cleared his throat, but nobody turned to face him, instead fanning out across the dimly lit and scarcely adorned room. Since when had a skip decided to take charge? Aleksander was willing to hear her out for whatever information she had as an Insurgency turncoat, and while she had that Customer Service Smile of hers when talking to him for the most part, he figured he should make nice with the anomalies if he was going to be spending so much time around them. He was great with kids, anyway, so it wouldn't be a huge deal.

Having found her bearings, Anne stepped up to the stainless steel table in the center of the room and relished sweeping everything off of it in a single motion before laying down what looked like a blueprint of the site on it. "Alright, alright, alright!" She rubbed her hands together as everyone crowded around the table, basking in the attention. "Let's get this rolling."

"Where'd you find that map?" Aleksander wasn't at Site-17 very often, but he assumed giving particularly crafty anomalies detailed information about the layout of the site's security systems was about as bad an idea as giving Lucille his car keys.

"Oh, I found it over there," Anne replied flippantly, nodding her head towards a recently disembodied hand in the corner.

Everyone but Anne snapped their head towards it, and their eyes all went wider to various degrees. Daniel, with the widest eyes of all, seemed to choke on his words a little before speaking. "Uh... Where's the uh, you know." He gestured to his body. "The rest?"

"Look, I, ah, we don't-" Anne raised an open hand towards him as though pleading. "We don't have time to get into that right now."

"Likely nearby. Not in rigor mortis yet. Bleeding slightly." Marya narrowed her eyes. "Plump. Probably still juicy."

"Hey, hey," Aleksander half-yelled, snapping in her face. "Eyes on the prize."

Brushing past that like two other people hadn't seen it, she placed both her arms on either side of the map and leaned forward like she was planning a bank heist. "Right! So, as we all know, Site-17 is currently locked down. Because everyone who works here is a jagoff, several Insurgents - uppercase I, if I had to guess - have control of the central maintenance terminal." Anne mashed her finger down into the part of the map - which, upon closer inspection, Aleksander realized, looked more like a utility blueprint - that had several systems converging on it. "That means they've got control over a lot of the site's major systems, like the power doors and the lights."

"Meaning they can open cells and stop our guys from moving," Foxx added.

Anne flinched. "...Right. So, what power doors do."

"Yeah." Aleksander paused to let Anne continue, but she just kept looking at him with that smile of hers. "I was just hoping to get across the... severity of the situation."

Anne turned to Marya. "You would assume all the power doors doing whatever they wanted would be //bad//, right?"

"I..." Marya looked at the ground. " I don't know what a power door is."

"Right!" Anne snapped her fingers. "You grew up in a cave."

"Grotto."

"Uh huh. Daniel?"

"I also don't know what a power door is," Daniel replied, eager enough to make it clear he wasn't really following the conversation.

Anne looked at him in defeat. Aleksander didn't know why she was so upset - everyone else here was practically a kid, so as the only man he'd have do some explaining. Man explaining.

"Anywho, all of our big guns are off fighting an incursion into Heavy Containment, including Blondie and that up-tight friend of hers," Anne explained.

"Well, hey, let's be fair to Jackie here," Aleksander retorted. At least Jackie //tried// to be nice to him.

"I'm telling Iris you called her up-tight if you keep cutting me off," Anne shot back, wearing a less friendly smirk when Aleksander scowled. He was already trying to ingratiate himself with the anomalies to make Iris more tolerable, he didn't need a saboteur.

Marya waited a few seconds to make sure she wasn't 'cutting Anne off' before speaking. "Shouldn't we go and help them, then?"

"Ah, you see, all those people are a distraction," Anne said smugly, looking for the reactions of the others, which ranged from muted to confused. "They're just B-teams, meant to pull away attention from the //real// operation here and die before they can do anything meaningful. They're very careful about not giving them quite enough support to make a breakthrough."

//Now// Anne got the reaction she was looking for. Marya's face twisted in disgust, and Daniel shivered. Aleksander didn't really get what the big deal was, but whatever.

Daniel shuddered. "So what are they here for, then?"

Anne clapped her hand down on the central maintenance terminal. "The cold and data storage areas are right by the terminal due to the power requirements. Good spots to find anomalies and intelligence, and protocol dictates that forces be diverted to heavy containment to prevent a catastrophic breach. Nobody worth a damn would have stayed behind in the maintenance area."

"...So, we're the only ones who can help?" Daniel asked, confidence rising in his voice. "Then we've got to help!"

//Tough talk coming from my target saturation dummy,// Aleksander thought while turning to Anne. "How do you know all this?"

"Me?" Anne scoffed. "Hell, I used to be on those A-teams. This is a common Insurgency tactic, I was with them since I was 14."

"Some parents you had," Marya muttered. Aleksander thought that perhaps she shouldn't be casting stones from a glass house, considering what she was raised to be.

"Oh, no, they left for a butterfly farm upstate when I was thirteen," Anne replied, sardonically.

"And just left you behind?" Daniel was shocked.

Everyone turned to him in a stupor. After a few moments, Anne spoke. "Are you yanking my chain right now?"

Daniel looked around, clearly unsure if what he was saying was the right answer. "...No?"

Anne nodded ruefully. "Then you are one of the funniest people I have ever met." She stood up from her position lording over her map and locked eyes with a weapon rack. "We should get going. They'll have decent guns and armor, so some long guns would be good."

"Hey, now. I'm the one with the gun here." Aleksander hefted his shotgun onto his shoulder, striking a pose befitting of James Bond. Aleksander was a lot like James Bond. Except in how everything around him dies, so, actually, he was more like John Wick. Yeah, and Lucille was like his dog, his motivation. Except she was alive. And a person. And also didn't the last movie end with-

"Aha, yeah, sure, but I //think// you'll want a little help here. There are..." Anne grabbed her chin, faux-thoughtfully. "I wanna say ten-ish people, usually? Give or take."

"I'll handle it," Aleksander replied. Broodingly. "Besides, last thing I need is another Insurgent with a gun behind me."

Anne rolled her eyes. "You really shouldn't worry //too// much about me, man."

"And why's that?" Aleksander wanted to take a hard stance with the anomaly to make sure they knew what their situation with him was like. And also because Daniel seemed to think he was really cool.

"Because I'd have shot you by now if I wanted." Anne smirked, twirling a... pistol? When the hell did she get a handgun? "C'mon, I'll put in a good word with Iris if you let me help out."

----

The heavy steel door - no, it looked more like a bulkhead - couldn't have been more than twenty or so meters down the hall, which was unadorned save for a couple of unlucky security guards who no longer seemed to have their guns or internal organs on them. The holes in their body armor made Anne feel a little bit better about not having any in the first place.

Anne turned back around to see Foxx and her fellow two anomalies making a laughable effort to look stealthy by awkwardly half-crouching. Daniel and Marya's regulation uniforms stuck out against the bland concrete and piping - it was astounding just how quickly the site's architecture lost any semblance of hospitality the second they left the humanoid containment wing for the maintenance sector - while Foxx's horribly expensive and slightly ill-fitting suit stood out for a different reason.

"What's it look like?" Anne felt Foxx's attention snap towards her. As expected, the main emotion she could sense was concern, but unlike Daniel's, it was directed inwards. Based on the careful way he was posing as though he were a generic white guy with a gun on the cover of a solid 6/10 first-person shooter on the Xbox 360, Anne assumed he was mainly concerned with how he looked. The doofus.

"Like a door," Anne replied without missing a beat. Satisfied with his mostly annoyed and slightly flustered expression, she continued. "One entrance, end of the hallway, few dead guys."

"...Like, our guys?" Daniel asked. Anne didn't need her anomaly to tell how he was feeling.

She just shrugged in response. "I was right about their guns, I guess."

"So." Foxx loaded his shotgun, facing his attention outwards to see if anyone was looking at his well-practiced bit (they weren't). "We rushing in? Or going-"

"I mean, you //could// just run at the door. Maybe if one person's dumb and opens it to try and shoot you, you could rush in and get blasted by way more than one person," Anne said helpfully. "I doubt the incendiary grenades you've been keeping in your pocket will make a dent in the door, though."

A subtle flash of Foxx's panic crossed over Anne, but dissipated as he turned his attention away. He cleared his throat as if eager to change the topic. Well, if he was gonna act all self-conscious about hiding a bomb he shouldn't have been palming at it in his pocket constantly.

Whatever. Once again, the onus fell on Anne to do something. At least Iris tried to be more helpful than her, even if it was only out of spite. "Alrighty, I'm gonna go up and ask them nicely to open the door.

"A charlatan in death. I can at least respect your commitment," Marya jabbed in a dry tone.

Anne waited a moment for someone to ask her to stay or at least ask why she was acting so crazy, but nobody even said 'Damn' or something. "I mean I'm going to see if I can get them to let us in since they don't know I defected."

Marya still seemed unconvinced. Daniel's emotion didn't go very far past simple-minded confusion and aimless determination. Only Foxx bothered to speak. "How do you know they don't know you defected?"

"They don't know that," Anne said, despite the fact that she did not, in fact, know that they didn't know that. They were SOL if she was wrong anyways. "The two of you, go hide somewhere," she said as she turned to leave.

"Ah, no, Daniel, you keep watch behind me," Foxx instructed. Daniel, not realizing that any warning he could give would probably just be him being the first one to get shot, nodded and crept down the hallway. God, he was even bad at creeping.

Foxx snapped his fingers at Marya as she went to go slink back into a corner, which she at least was good at. "You stay where I can see you."

Marya cast suspicion outwards at both Foxx and Anne, and Anne felt the familiar sensation of concern facing inwards - though far more bitter than Foxx's. Anne would have loved digging at that, but unfortunately not getting pumped full of bullets took priority.

She situated herself in the middle of the hallway - to make it look like she wasn't just hiding in the corner - and turned down the hall to face the doorway to the maintenance terminal. Encouraged by the fact she wasn't immediately ventilated, she waved her hands to get the attention of whoever was on the other side of the door.

"Hey, open up, would you?" She yelled down the hall, wincing slightly as her own shouts echoed back to her. "You guys are my ride out of here." That was a little presumptuous, considering she didn't really know who was attacking the site, but the chances of it being either Insurgency or another organization sympathetic to them were good. And if they weren't, Anne could still probably talk her way out of whatever she got herself into. And if she couldn't, she wouldn't have much time to worry about it anyways.

After a moment, the door was hefted open, not even creaking on its reinforced hinges, and a man stepped out and leveled a gun towards Anne. "Stop right there! Hands up!" He barked, but his voice wasn't, like, //that// threatening. Anne felt more lines of focus on her, one showing concern and the other incredulity. She narrowed her own focus to the man at the door - Marya and Foxx would just get in the way.

"They're already - Uh, I mean, sure," Anne said, not lowering her hands and, critically, not needing to raise them in the first place. She squinted at his gear. Soviet surplus assault rifle, tactical gear that looked fine at first glance but was scrounged together from various sets - likely Insurgency. Anne breathed a sigh of relief, and tried to pry a little bit into his emotions. Suspicious, slightly confused, and on edge, though the worry wasn't directed at Anne so much as the environment. That could go either way, depending on what kind of person this guy was; either he'd be eager to buddy up with Anne or all the more distrustful.

He turned his face to mutter something to the room behind him, giving Anne a better look at his face. Brown hair, and a beard that was short in a way that said he couldn't grow it out rather than that he shaved it. She snapped her fingers. Definitely Insurgency. "Kyle, right?"

Anne didn't need her telepathy to see how quickly Kyle's attention snapped back to her, that kind of instant, involuntary reaction that only came from someone calling your name (or when your dad whistles while the two of you get separated at a grocery store). He squinted towards her, some of his suspicion giving way to curiosity. Good.

"Who the fuck are you?" He yelled. Throwing in the curse didn't suit him, and didn't make him feel any more threatening, either.

Anne stretched her arms out to the side as though she were a mafia don greeting his brother on his visit to Italy. "Hey, it's Anne, remember?" Based on his expression, though, he did not. "Our cells worked together on that raid of a Marshal, Carter, and Dark storehouse?"

Kyle relaxed a bit. Though he still held his weapon towards her, the muzzle hung lazily, pointing below her feet. "Well, I've raided a lot of storehouses. How do I know you're not just saying that?"

Ooh, good point. Luckily, that was just about the only raid that was memorable to Anne. "That was the one with the two Coursers! You know, mercenary freaks with the white hair? Killed like half of us before we bailed, then another quarter as we were leaving!"

Foxx snorted loud enough to make Anne nervous, though she kept her focus on Kyle. Yeah, yeah, very funny for someone who probably used to work with them at his old MC&D gig, but Foxx wasn't able to peek into them like Anne could. Freaky little bastards. Killed all the hot agents in her cell.

"Oh, you mean the cell that got wiped out by Foundation task forces this past month? The one they said had a mole?" Kyle regained his all-business-no-fun demeanor again. Shit. Anne had been so caught up in her memories, she missed his rising suspicion. She must have been getting out of practice with all this since her containment. Plus, he was giving the Foundation all the credit when she fragged her old commander, but she supposed it was probably good he didn't know that.

No problem, though. As long as nobody was shooting, she could come back from it. All she had to do was brush past that - the less time he had to think about that, the better.

"I don't fucking know what their problem is," Anne said dismissively, as was common practice in the Insurgency when hearing that your comrades-in-arms were getting picked off. "Any communication I've had has been one-way. Who do you think gave you the intel on this place?"

Suspicion pierced into Anne's back. Not her fault that Foxx seemed to be a moron - of course she hadn't leaked the site's internal layout. She didn't even know enough about the site's systems to leak anything of substance, but Kyle didn't know that. The Insurgency's leadership was so paranoid they never gave out the names of intelligence sources to anyone, so he //couldn't// know that Anne was lying. Probably.

Kyle's suspicion began to lose its edge. Thank god. That story checked out for him, but he wasn't satisfied. He worked his jaw a bit before thinking of another question. "If that were true, you'd know what we're here for, right?"

"They don't fucking tell me shit, man, I dunno." Anne threw her arms up in genuine annoyance upon recalling all the times she'd been left in the dark, only remembering after the fact that you're not supposed to make sudden moves when someone is pointing a gun at you. Oh, well. If it was really an issue she would have felt it by now.

Kyle stroked his chin. He was clearly torn on what to do, meaning all Anne had to do was keep up the momentum. "Well-"

"Do //you// know what we're here for?" Anne probed. No shot he did. He was working the same job she used to.

"...Alright, good point." Kyle stifled a slight laugh. More because he was relieved that Anne didn't seem like she was likely to try to kill him than anything, but she mirrored the action. Sympathetic laugher was always a good way to establish a connection. Besides, it //was// kind of funny.

Foxx seemed relieved, but Anne ignored him. Now she had to think of a way to deal with everyone in the room. She was probably screwed in a straight fight, but she was sure she could think of something.

Kyle called something out to anyone else in the maintenance terminal over his shoulder as he lowered his rifle. "Sorry about all that," he said when he turned back around, opening the door a little bit more to appear accommodating. It was appreciated. "I wish they told us about you, we would've left without picking you up."

"Ah, no worries. I can help myself." Anne held her arms up in a nonthreatening gesture as she walked up to the door to get a better look at the room. There were other insurgents dressed similarly to Kyle, and their attention only fell to Anne briefly. They were far more concerned with the task at hand, which suited her just fine. It just made snooping easier.

"Heh, you might've been better off staying here," Kyle quipped as Anne walked past the door. "At least the mess hall //here// seemed like it had a bit of a selection."

Anne smiled. "Oh, sure, if you like powdered-"

A piercing bang cut her off, smashing into the room and echoing off the low ceiling, seeming to last for several seconds. Anne flinched and ducked to the ground instinctively as the insurgents in the room scattered.

"Fuck!" She yelled, covering her ears. "Kyle, what the fuck-"

Kyle wasn't standing there when she looked up. When she looked at the ground where he was once standing she saw him laying in a heap with half his face. God fucking damnit. That asshole just couldn't wait.
----

After killing the man Anne had just been talking to, Foxx afforded himself a single victorious fist pump before darting off towards the door, shouting something about following him over his shoulder as he went. Daniel hesitated for a moment, then started towards him - the fool - only for Marya to grab his arm and pull him into a dark corner, obscured from view by concrete reinforcement jutting out.

"W-What was that-"

"//Quiet!//" Marya hissed. She wasn't used to raising her voice, as she had learned early on in her containment that coming off as an 'aggressive Sarkic' could only end poorly for her, but the situation called for it. A good deal of vibrations came through the ground in the direction of the room, too panicked for Marya to get a sense of how many people were there, but more footsteps reverberated through the ground from far down the hall. Marya had no idea who they were from, but even if they //were// 'friendly,' it was perhaps a good idea to stay out of sight.

Daniel seemed annoyed, or perhaps simply confused, until the footsteps Marya had felt became audible. He and Marya pressed themselves deeper into the wall as more men dressed like the one Anne was talking to walked past them. Marya held her breath and suppressed her heartbeat. Daniel did the exact opposite.

Once they had clattered past the two anomalies, Marya crept to the end of the hall and tried to peek her head out. Her eyes were, regrettably, anchored to her head for the time being, meaning she had to expose herself more than she would have liked to get a good look.

The group of people were indeed armed and dressed similarly to the man who had opened the door, and were shouting at each other. The specifics of their back-and-forth were drowned out by the muted gunfire in the next room, which sounded like it had turned into a full-blown firefight. One of them pulled some kind of tool out of a bag and began to cut open - or perhaps simply melt - the door's locking mechanism.

"What's-" Daniel's voice cracked, and his hands shot to cover his mouth. When he wasn't immediately discovered and shot, he lowered his hands and spoke in a more careful whisper. "What's it look like?"

Well, it //looked// like a gang of Insurgents was going to pry open the door to the Maintenance Terminal and kill Foxx and Anne. It //sounded// like they'd be dead before the Insurgents got the door open. Marya simply looked back to Daniel and shook her head.

"Then we've... we..." Daniel puffed out his chest for a moment before sinking back down into the safety of the dark corner again. No matter how much bravado he had, even he needed to concede that he was unlikely to close the twenty-meter gap to the door without being shot full of holes. Unless cacti were also bulletproof. It wasn't like Marya had ever seen one.

Damn it, what was that fool thinking? Why did he rush in so cavalierly, and why had he even bothered dragging Marya along in the first place? It's like he was just expecting someone to come and save him...

Marya cursed under her breath. Of //course// he was expecting that. That's why he had brought her along in the first place. He probably just heard she was a Blood Striga and figured she could bail him out. Never mind the fact that she had never done anything violent as long as the Foundation had known her. Never mind the years it took for her to gain enough trust to be allowed to talk to people. Never mind the Hunger she'd done so well ignoring. He'd just throw it all away.

"What..." Daniel leaned forward, out of the shadow, a pleading look on his face. "What are we going to //do?//"

//What are we going to do?// Marya scowled to no one in particular. They shouldn't have to //do// anything. All that Marya //should// be doing is learning how to acclimate to dinnertime small talk and American board games. She shouldn't have to spill any blood. And how could she be expected to? Even the Foundation specialists marked her as impotent, a living failure incapable of the violence of the rest of her family. She had made sure of it. No, Foxx couldn't know she had lied. He's just an uninformed fool who misplaced his faith in her.

"Marya." Daniel moved closer, his voice evening out. "If we don't do something, they're going to die."

She bristled. And what if they did die? What if they just had it coming? Foxx just wanted to throw her under the bus like that...?

...No. Marya deflated, ashamed of herself. Even if Foxx was a callous fool and Anne a charlatan, they didn't deserve to die. Perhaps they deserved the beating they were no doubt receiving, but Anne had, at least, treated her kinder than most. Her mother didn't raise her to be selfish. She raised her to protect their hamlet. And Site-17 and all the idiots in it were her home now.

Damn it. Damn her good conscience. At least she got as far lying as she did.

Peeking around the corner, Marya counted five men at the door. Uninjured. Blood bags, bursting at the seams. Marya hated how easy it was to see them as little else even after so long. She'd affixed her body to its current shape for so long that there was little she could do to get out of it, its organs long solidified into place. She'd need a blood meal. Even the thought of it caused the Hunger to throb dully inside of her.

"Daniel." Marya spoke confidently, doing little to keep her voice down.

"Wha - uh, yeah?" Daniel responded as though he wasn't expecting her to say anything.

"Cacti have spines, yes?" Marya recalled from one of the many times Daniel had insisted on droning on during the meals they ate together.

"Oh! Oh, yeah!" For a moment, the fear seemed to leave his voice, as Marya had hoped.

"Good." They were unlikely to be like the chitin she grew on the parts of her body she never left uncovered, but so be it. They only needed to be stronger than skin. "I need you to stab one of the Insurgents."

"What?!" Daniel was shocked. His voice cut right through the sound of the cutter as he scuttled back towards the shadows. They definitely heard that.

"You don't need to kill anyone." //__You__ don't have to.// "Just draw some blood."

"I-I..." Daniel shut his eyes and shook his head. "No, no. I can't, they, they'll..."

Vibrations, coming through the floor again, back towards Marya. They'd hidden themselves from the Insurgents when they were running past, but there was nowhere to hide from someone properly looking for them.

"You... Fine," Marya huffed. She picked herself up, marched over to Daniel, and grabbed his face between her hands. "I don't need Daniel to do that. I need... //Cactusman.//"

Daniel's face got warmer as it was squeezed between Marya's hands. In spite of himself, his cheeks reddened. "...Mm?"

"Right now, there are people who need our help. //Your// help!" Marya brought their faces together, her fierce eyes boring into Daniel's slightly-less-vacant-than-normal ones. "And the Cactusman I know would //never// let down those in need. Even if it's scary!" She yanked him so close that they could feel each other's breath. "//Especially// if it's scary!"

Whoever was coming for them was almost upon them. His footsteps were audible now, even over the cutter. Daniel seemed conflicted - like his atrophied common sense was trying to win out over his hero complex. Marya didn't have time for him to think about it.

"Right now, I need you!" Marya yelled as the Insurgent rounded the corner, likely too confused by the spectacle to pull a gun on them. "//Save me, Cactusman!//"

And with that, she threw Daniel into the Insurgent. Perhaps a bit harder than she had meant to, and it was perhaps a rude gesture at its core, but this was unlikely to work if Daniel had been allowed to start thinking in that very special way of his.

The Insurgent was burly, a good half a head taller than Daniel, but was shocked enough by Daniel running into him that he allowed himself to get knocked off balance. For once, that unassuming look of Daniel was helping him, as if he had looked any more threatening, he probably would have been shot on the spot.

Daniel was the first to regain his footing, lacking the weight of the Insurgent's gear. Marya bit the inside of her mouth out of anticipation. Not that she was expecting much from Daniel, but placing her hopes on an idiot was better than losing all hope. However, in a move that stole Marya's breath away... he actually wound up for a punch. He seemed ill-suited to even this paltry act of violence, but all Marya needed was a little fresh blood. Even a child could get that.

Daniel's punch was sloppy and wild, but he had the benefit of his opponent still bending over. It made solid contact with the man's face, and he grunted. Yes. Yes! He had little armor on his face, any spine would have drawn blood. Marya stepped closer.

"Ow! Ow, shit!" Daniel shook his hand out, shocked by Newton's third law. It... was a totally normal hand. With no spines. He forgot the spines. //Oh, Jesus, Mary, Joseph.//

The Insurgent recovered from the blow faster than the one who had dealt it. "What the //fuck?// Aren't you people anomalies?" His face was twisted in pain and annoyance, a red streak coming down from his mouth. Daniel had managed to split the man's lip, and it was bleeding.

//Marya could smell it, really smell it, in a way she hadn't let herself in years. Fresh, hot, and pumping. Delectable.//

Perhaps she should have felt gracious for Daniel's bravery, or upset by his near-miss. But those were human feelings she could process later once she had decided to wear a human face again. There was blood in front of her, sanguine and fragrant. The Hunger was calling again, and it was intoxicating. She allowed herself to feel a twinge of regret as she closed the distance to the Insurgent, half in a trance. At least, if she was to get herself locked up in a lonesome steel cell again, she'd have some fun doing so.

"We were told to go easy on y-" Whatever the Insurgent was trying to say was cut off when Marya yanked his head down below hers to suck the blood off his lips. Even that meager amount was enough to excite her body, like a dying desert animal feeling the first drop of a rainstorm. Her throat was the first to feel real relief, having kept to much coiled up for so long, waiting for use again. It longed to stretch itself out again. Her proboscis twitched as it edged up into her mouth.

A call of her name pulled her back to the present for a moment, and she became aware she was cradling her prey's head, gently. He seemed confused. She glanced at the one who had called her name - Daniel, yes, that's what he was called. He seemed confused as well. But at least he wasn't between her and the rest of her food. She didn't need to worry much. She leaned down, pressed her mouth against her prey's...

...And shot her proboscis down his throat. He struggled, in vain, when he realized what was happening, and Marya felt something pierce her body. Perhaps he had found his weapon, and some fleeting amount of sense. No matter. The flesh could be replaced. //Would// be replaced. With his. The jaws at the end of the proboscis closed, and it retracted in upon itself, dragging anything it could grab within him back into Marya. It was hers now. Her lungs, her stomach, her heart. It was so warm. So sweet. So //good// going down. Why had she denied herself for so long? She couldn't remember anymore. She couldn't think about much of anything.

Someone screamed. Her hearts pounded. Her blood boiled. The Hunger came again.

----

By some small miracle, Anne had managed to drag Foxx behind a large cabinet of sheet metal. The cabinet itself was doing little to block any bullets, but there seemed to be enough tools stored in it to stop the gunfire. Hopefully they just put the torches with pressurized fuel cells further back in the pile. The Insurgents, on the other hand, had dug in in front of the main office's door on the other side of the room. Even though Anne could see the control panels through the office's windows, she had absolutely no idea how she was supposed to get in there now.

Foxx, however, didn't seem to share Anne's concern. He seemed almost annoyed that she had //dragged him to cover after getting shot,// and was swatting at her ineffectually with the hand that wasn't holding his gun. His voice didn't overcome the sound of gunfire in the room, but the //smell// of him cut through the gun smoke like it was nothing. A weird, thick, green ooze was coming out of him where blood should have been, and in place of the scent of iron, a stench like that of a stagnant pond wafted towards her.

//Great,// she thought. //I'm going to die in a shithole service tunnel that smells like a mosquito breeding ground.// She wished she could take solace in the fact that the smell reminded her of home, but that just made her sad, too.

Mostly, though, Anne was angry. "What the //fuck// did you do?" She yelled. The sound of gunfire began to taper off as the Insurgents realized her cover was solid.

"What I said I was going to do!" Foxx began stuffing his shirt back into his waistband, as if it would cover up the indignity of the wound. "I had it all under control!"

"//You// had it under control?!" Anne's voice was shrill enough that everyone in the room could probably hear her, but she didn't care. "I- You- We didn't even have to kill- You got shot!" She finally got out.

Foxx rolled his eyes. "Yeesh, I thought you were the one with the sense of humor." Anne considered just choking him out right there. "I have a plan, alright? You need to calm down."

"Calm?! //Calm?!?!//" Anne lunged at him, picking him up by his shirt collar. "//What fucking plan should I be calm about right now?!?!//"

As if answering her question, a screech came in from the hallway. It wasn't like anything Anne had ever heard - like a dozen birds and at least as many humans all screaming as though being boiled alive. She dropped Foxx and looked to the door. It was still shut. The noise had pierced through the steel.

The Insurgents had stopped shooting at Anne and Foxx entirely. She could hear them rustling as they aimed their weapons to the door.

Foxx just looked at Anne with a smug, shit-eating grin. "//That,// my dear," he said, "is my plan."

Anne was so shocked she let that slide. "Wha- What..." Wait. Was that why he brought Marya along? "The Blood Striga?" She could barely talk. She'd only heard rumors, but none of them gave her much faith in her chances.

"Yup," Foxx nodded, loading his shotgun. Slowly, so as to draw attention to himself. As if that was going to command more attention than the gurgling screams now coming from the other side of the door.

"How... How did you know she wasn't impotent?" Anne couldn't take her eyes off the door. The screams were gone now, replaced with sickening squelches and the breaking of bone. A muffled incantation started, sounding as though it was coming from a chorus of voices borne of a single throat.

"Impotent?" Foxx's face scrunched up. "Striga only look like humans in adulthood. So..."

The metal door began creaking, straining against some ungodly force. The Insurgents were silent. "N-No, she... She said she was impotent. That's why they let her out... She shouldn't be able to do anything..."

"Oh?" Foxx laughed awkwardly. "Well, hey, glad I got lucky."

"...Lucky?" It took Anne a few seconds to digest what he meant, but when it hit her, the anger snapped her out of her stupor. "You didn't know she was supposed to be impotent?"

"Well, no, how was I supposed to know?" Foxx shrugged.

Seeing that look on his face reminded Anne to reload her assault rifle, though she made a mental note to save one full magazine for him in the unlikely event they both survived what was about to happen. "You fucking jagoff!" Those were all the words Anne could get out through the haze of anger. This fucking guy just signed her death warrant, twice, in the span of five minutes, for two different reasons both stemming from his fucking insufferable stupidity. "Oh, 'how was I supposed to know,' you fucking dick, they fucking //make// you read everyone's files when you work here!"

"Oh, yeah, I just kinda skimmed- //urk!//" Foxx was cut off by Anne grabbing him again, this time by the neck. Part of the metal door had been worn away, and frothing blood, animated by some obscene force, was eating away at the lock. "Hey, hey, it worked out in the end, didn't it?"

Anne was seriously about to kill a man in cold blood with her bare hands, but luckily for the biggest moron in at least the lower 48, the steel bulkhead burst open, and a hail of gunfire poured into the entrance before it even had a chance to hit the floor. Anne peeked her head over the cabinet, her curiosity getting the better of the part of her that said //you are going to get shot in the head dumbass.// Luckily, it seemed like the attention of the Insurgents was directed at the thing now standing in the door. Marya - well, it looked like her, at least - was standing there, with her arms spread outwards as if taking in a beautiful landscape. Save for the glazed look in her eyes, she was recognizable from the nose-up, but her chin had split into what looked like serrated mandibles. Her tongue came down to her chest, bouncing around as though it had a mind of its own. Her throat was bloated like a baleen whale, and convulsing as though it were an entirely distinct organism, with scores of voice boxes and vocal chords, human and not, all vibrating against each other in a frenzy. The sound was unlike anything Anne had heard, like a dozen writhing animals all harmonizing together.

A hail of gunfire slammed into her, though she didn't fall down. Some of the voices coming from her cackled as her flesh was knocked out of her, only to absorb back into her body. She was already coated in blood when she had entered, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to make out any clean skin. What was left of her chest began to tear, though from what looked like Marya's own doing as opposed to the gunfire. Within moments, clawed, bony arms had torn themselves out of her torso.

Some of the voices in the chorus of her screams broke off from the others, and began frantically muttering. "Teeth, teeth, teeth. Teeth and nothing else..."

Her new arms ripped into her own body like it was nothing, paying no mind to the bullets that passed straight through her as though she were nothing but rotting fat. She tore her torso to ribbons, ribbons that danced and reformed themself into new flesh, new chitin, new bone. Her exposed organs writhed and retreated back into her body like worms retreating into the ground. As her stomach was pierced, its acid spilled out onto herself, rapidly eating away her flesh. The digested liquid shot up and down her body like hungry snakes, diminishing any semblance she had to her superficially human form.

A couple of gunshots, fired right next to her ears, of course, drew her attention back to Foxx. He had swung out from behind the cabinet and blown the heads clean off of the only two Insurgents still looking at their hiding spot. Goddamnit, why'd he have to be good at this on top of everything? That just pissed Anne off even more.

Without even bothering to get her attention, Foxx darted across the room. Granted, Anne would have been pissed if he had yelled at her too, but this just felt like he was using her as bait. She scurried after him, looking for something to shoot, but it seemed like just slipping by without drawing attention to herself was the play. Nobody was focused on her, but even so, she could feel the fear and panic in the room, almost tangible from the Insurgents. She tried to close her mind off from the emotions as she felt Marya surge in ecstasy.

Marya descended upon the nearest person she could find with the candor of a mantis that caught a grasshopper. The Insurgent managed to slash at her with a knife, but the blood that came out of the wound instead shot out and down his throat. Anne only looked at the way her skin began to pull itself apart before she turned away. Marya simply laughed, having not even laid a finger on the man.

"More... more voices to the chorus..." Marya rasped over the man's death rattle.

Foxx ran up to the door to the maintenance terminal's control panel, and started fiddling with the controls. He seemed surprised to see Anne for a second, and yelled something that was drowned out over the Striga's cacophony. //Cover me,// his lips read, and Anne pressed herself into the wall in front of him.

Not that there was much to look out for. One of the Insurgents did see them, and turned to face them, but a stream of what had once been her friend's blood flowed into her back and peeled it open like a tangerine. Her focus on Anne shot every bit of the fear and pain into Anne's head. She bit her tongue almost hard enough to draw blood - it was the only thing she could do to ground herself. She stayed like that until Marya wrenched out the spine entirely, then the woman couldn't feel much of anything. Anne stared at her lying in a deflated heap with the sanguine shadow cackling on top of her.

Anne was grabbed from behind and practically thrown into the office. She considered yelling at Foxx for that, but in truth she was grateful for getting out of the way of that. Foxx at least had enough of his wits about him to close the door.

Foxx wasted no time getting over to the controls in the room, which were, thankfully, left intact by the Insurgents, which was rare in these types of raids. Anne didn't pay him much attention in spite of how frantically he was mashing buttons, though. Her attention was still on Marya, who was now disemboweling the final remaining Insurgent. His bones were broken and twisted, rendering him unable to move as Marya picked through his innards as one would a fruit display. Mercifully, he passed out relatively quickly. The room was quite well-insulated from any sound, and while it was clear Marya was saying some sort of perverse prayer with the way her mandibles were moving, Anne was grateful Marya no longer had lips for her to read.

"Okay..." Foxx stood up from the console, looking more stressed out about figuring out the electronics than he was about the firefight or the blood monster. "Looks like everything's back to normal, the Site Director has control over things now."

"Uh huh... So, now what?" Anne pulled her attention away from the grotesque showing in front of her.

"Well, we got Epsilon-11 headed down in maybe five-ish minutes, give or take - that's the recontainment force," Foxx added. "Before then, we'll need to take care of... //that.//" He threw in a little dramatic flair as he pointed to Marya again, who had begun swaying gently and singing. As if in response, all the blood splattered across the room began slowly pooling together and moving towards her. That probably wasn't good.

"Great. Yeah. How do we do that?" Anne jumped at the chance to let her annoyance cover up the fear she was feeling. Striga were notoriously difficult to kill, and after her showing against the Insurgent fireteam Anne was pretty sure nothing they could scrounge up was going to leave a dent.

Foxx, however, was unshaken. On the contrary, he looked quite smug as he reached into an inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out three metal shapes - the incendiary grenades form earlier. "Ha, and here you thought I didn't have a plan."

"No, no, a //plan// is when you //know// something is going to happen. This is throwing shit at the wall and hoping something sticks." Anne's sensibilities as a planner were wounded by such a careless comment. "And all you're doing is fucking up Marya even more! After all you had her do you're just going to-"

Regardless of her protest, Foxx only put a finger up to his mouth to shush her and snuck over to the door and opened it as slowly and silently as you can open a heavy steel door. As he poked half his body out into the hallway, Anne could hear Marya's song. It was a simple, almost beautiful lullaby in a language Anne couldn't make out, sung by a single voice sounding far closer to Marya than anything that had come out of her mouth in the past several minutes. In spite of herself, Anne held her breath as Foxx fiddled with the grenades.

Only, he couldn't find the pin on it. In fact, upon closer inspection, the were no pins or levers on any of the 'grenades.' Foxx slowly turned his head to Anne and smiled like a nine-year-old who just got caught playing DS under his bedsheets. His guilt smothered Anne like a blanket.

"Those are fucking breaching charges, aren't they?" Anne whispered. She wasn't even trying to, that's just how it came out.

Foxx brought a hand to his chin to pretend to look thoughtful, but Anne wasn't even sure what she was supposed to do at this point. She had always kind of assumed she'd die to some crazy shit, and while a Blood Striga certainly fit her criteria of 'some crazy shit,' the fact that she had grown to know Marya as at least a decent acquaintance was simply surreal. As soon as Marya finished singing and started looking around for more food, she'd eat her. Anne was going to be vivisected by someone who disliked crowds, was good at card games, never ate her greens...

Never... ate her greens... //She never ate her greens!//

Anne suddenly perked up, her eyes shooting to Foxx. The sickening, earthy scent was still strong, his green 'blood' seeping through his clothes. If that smelled bad to //her,// then to //Marya...//

She quickly, quietly closed the gap between herself and Foxx. He was larger than her, certainly stronger than her, but the element of surprise counted for everything. As soon as he had noticed her, she jabbed him in the gunshot wound as hard as she could. He cringed and groaned. She had only done that to make sure his blood was flowing. Honest.

Marya's lullaby abruptly ended at the interruption. Her head jerked up like that of an insect to see Foxx and Anne, and she lurched towards them. Welp, now or never.

Grabbing Foxx by his dorky-ass suspenders, she heaved him into Marya with all her might, and he tumbled directly into her. Marya hissed the same as she had been, but even that was outdone by Foxx's high-pitched screaming as he realized what was happening. Marya took a little bit of solace in hearing that, if her plan ended up failing.

The moment Marya's tongue made contact with the green stain on Foxx's shirt, it retracted all two feet of itself back into her head. Her hands seized up, her arms clutching herself. Her hisses turned to wails which turned to gurgling as she vigorously shook her head, her mandibles folding themselves back into a singular jaw. Her extra appendages pressed themself into her body, where they seemed to melt back into the blood that coated her, leaving a recognizably human outline underneath all the red. As her extra joints cracked back into proper bones, leaving her with only two legs, she pushed herself away from Foxx. Who was screaming the whole time.

"You... you..." Foxx cleared his throat, attempting to control his voice cracks. Once he began speaking again, his voice was subtly though noticeably lower than normal. "Did you... recognize me as a friend?"

"Bah. You taste awful." Marya's normal voice had returned. She stuck her tongue out in a gesture that was now somewhat cute as her head and tongue had regained their human proportions. "Like pure ammonia. You reek like smelling salts."

"I think we get the picture," Foxx said as he tried standing up in the (surprisingly slippery) pool of blood.

"No, no, I think we should hear her out," Anne said as she stepped out of the control room upon seeing that she probably wasn't going to get eaten.

"He evokes a stagnant - Ah!" Marya jumped up to a standing position, probably far more used to moving around in a puddle of blood than Foxx. "I, ah... I got a little..." She brought one hand up to cover her mouth, and the other to cover her chest as she looked at the ground and shrunk back. Though it was a little hard to pull of the 'bashful maiden' look when absolutely red from head-to-toe, Anne appreciated the effort.

Foxx, however, was far more concerned with the other woman standing in the room. "There's no //way in hell// you knew she was going to do that," he said with an accusatory finger pointed at Anne.

Anne shrugged theatrically. "Hey, it worked out in the end," she smirked. "And we're all okay, I guess," she added, pointedly ignoring Foxx's still-bleeding wound.

"All... Oh, no!" Marya spun around to face the hallway, and called out past the mound of corpses slumped over an arc cutter. "Daniel? Daniel, can you hear me?"

No response. After a moment, Anne caught on to why Marya seemed so worried and her stomach dropped a bit. "Daniel? Hey, you there, man?"

"-kay now?" A small voice echoed down the hallway. Only when Anne noticed how relieved she was that Daniel was okay did she find herself annoyed that she was worried in the first place.

"What?" Foxx yelled, far louder than the rest.

"Is Marya... okay now?" His voice was shaky, though this time, Anne could hardly blame him. That was a lot for //her,// and she wasn't remotely new to this.

"Yeah! We got everything under control now!" Foxx replied. //We.//

"Okay. That's nice." Daniel paused. "I-I think... I think I'm just gonna wait over here, if that's alright with you guys."

"Yeah, you're good!" Foxx then turned his attention back to the room and looked at Anne. "Well, can't say that last little gambit felt good... but you got moxie, kid."

Anne had to stifle a laugh at his phrasing. Maybe he just felt bad about leaving her out to dry and this was his way of apologizing. It reminded her of her own dad, in a way. "...Thanks."

"Hey, we make a good team, right?" Foxx smiled, maybe the first genuine smile he had worn all day. Anne even confirmed via telepathy that he was, in fact, being for fucking real. "I make the perfect mess, and you clean it up!"

"Riiight..." Anne gritted her teeth slightly. Was that like a weird alpha-male thing? Was her literally throwing him at likely death just a way of proving herself to this guy? "I'm not sure we'll be seeing each other very much in the future." Not if she could help it.

Foxx chuckled. "Somehow, I doubt that."

He held up a hand for a high-five and nodded encouragingly. As cryptic as he was being, and as annoying as he had been, Anne was honor-bound to never leave someone hanging. She put a mediocre effort into the slap, which at least sounded like a proper high five.

Marya excitedly walked forward with her own hand raised. Foxx spun around and held up a finger to her "You stay right where you are, got that?"

"Oh, right. Sorry, sorry." Marya scurried back to her little time-out corner.

----

[[div class="blockquote"]]

[[size large]]**Mobile Task Force Alpha-9 "Last Hope" Application Status Register**[[/size]]
//You are reading an abridged document. For more information about recommendations and decisions, contact RAISA.//
----

CPOI-GRN3-6385 - Recommended for prior combat experience, familiarity with hostile Groups of Interest, and uses of anomalous capabilities in non-combat operations.

//Notes: Anne's involvement in the Chaos Insurgency means we don't know a lot when it comes to her experience and abilities, leaving too many unknowns to include her on the task force. - ##5993DE|Commander Thompson##//

//Anne Byrne has shown a great level of proficiency in all major tests of fitness and combat readiness normally given to Foundation personnel and has stated that she's open to any further required tests. - ##963333|Factotum September##//

//Based on her prior involvement with the Insurgency I don't think she's trustworthy enough for a position on the task force. - ##5993DE|Commander Thompson##//

//As a defector, the intelligence she's given us has proven to be true in all instances. She has no loyalty for the Insurgency. - ##963333|Factotum September##//

//As an infovore, her anomaly is too unpredictable to encourage the exploitation of. - ##5993DE|Commander Thompson##//

//Her anomaly hasn't shown any changes in years of exploitation by the Insurgency. - ##963333|Factotum September##//

//She doesn't like me. - ##5993DE|Commander Thompson##//

//She has been very vocal about her positive opinions of you. - ##963333|Factotum September##//

//I don't like her. - ##5993DE|Commander Thompson##//

//That isn't a valid reason to deny someone's application. - ##963333|Factotum September##//

//I don't like you. - ##5993DE|Commander Thompson##//

//I know. - ##963333|Factotum September##//

Status: ##DB8307|Pending##

[[/div]]

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