【Ｒｅｙ】 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
circumitus) wrote2013-09-28 01:01 pm
circumitus) wrote2013-09-28 01:01 pm
Entry tags:
✘ no i don't remember
Rey will have a variety of memories to share for the EMPATHY PLOT below. Since I wanted to avoid too much tl;dr, I compiled a list of helpful excerpts and such.
Physical, Mental, Emotional
Memories
Once the memories start zapping through, characters will begin to experience what Rey has experienced:
If anyone wants to share any of these memories from Rey (or if they have a personal preference), hit me up in the plotting thread over here!
Update: Pretty much anything from my Eight Lives page is fair game.
New and improved plotting thread can be found over yonder.
Physical, Mental, Emotional
→ Anyone connected with Rey might experience certain CRAVINGS: Namely spring rolls and beer. She is particularly fond of German lager.
→ Even for those who don’t smoke might feel the urge to, but not as a result to any particular addiction or anything.
→ In spite of Rey’s stoic nature, a lot of what she feels are internal. Feelings of random inexplicable anger and guilt are likely to rise. Contrary to her exterior, Rey is constantly at war with her emotions.
→ Also, random bursts of over-protectiveness and a need to stalk may happen. There is also a great deal of abandonment and loss, both from her own timeline and on the Tranquility as well. She has issues with getting close to people now, feeling like those she tries to connect with will wind up disappearing, anyway.
→ Due to the memories of eight different people stored in her head, characters connected to Rey may find themselves thinking in different languages. Whether they know them or not (and they might), some might recognize them as English, Spanish, Zulu, Dutch, German, Italian, Russian, Arabic, as well as Hebrew.
→ You might get opera stuck in your head a lot. More specifically Andrea Chenier and Dido and Aeneas.
→ As far as her headspace goes, Rey is a soldier. You may be thinking of your situation in terms of military tactics, with her century’s worth of fighting battles in her head. Being connected to her may leave you feeling paranoid. If you don’t already, you’ll be wanting to sit in the corner of rooms with your back turned to the wall, just in the likely event that some crazy will come storming in with an AK-47 and tear up the place. If it sounds like a gun or explosion, you’ll be quick to jump to your defenses, ready to be on the offense.
(BIA) PLOT UPDATE
→ As a result of Rey’s “recon syndrome”, she experiences extreme discomfort that borders on panic when alone. When connected to her, one may feel and understand this better than she ever would due to their empathic bond. Your character may be feeling a need to be connected with another person.
→ Strong familial attachments towards the remaining recon team (namely Firo Prochainezo and William Tsang).
Memories
Once the memories start zapping through, characters will begin to experience what Rey has experienced:
→ Being “born” -- the creation kills its twin. {AM}
→ Sentenced to confinement called Glass House, it is visited by a man who claims he is in love.
→ He wooed her with wicked words. The death of Jonathan, the man who loved a machine {NETHERLANDS, AM}
→ Boot camp: Rey’s memory of being a soldier before she became Sergeant Stone. {NETHERLANDS, LYDIA SHEPHERD}
→ The memory of Sergeant Schmidt, a German soldier.
→ The memory of Sergeant Sheridan, a soldier from the Defense Forces of Ireland. {LYDIA SHEPHERD}
→ A night at the opera with Orion Gideon. Rey cries. {L}
→ Rey opens a body bag which reveals one of her previous vessels. {HIKARU SULU}
→ “Goodnight, Sleepyhead.” (Death and sabotage of Stone.)
→ The memory of Safronov, a Russian sniper. {HIKARU SULU}
→ After her memories come back, Rey has a meltdown and her father is at the receiving end of it.
→ Bird Song: One of many of Rey’s episodes of mental instability during her recovery from insanity. {ANNE MARIE CUNNINGHAM}
→ Don’t worry, it’s only skin: Rey cuts her face up. (tw: self harm) {NETHERLANDS}
→ tl;dr Rey sneaks out and eats at a Chinese restaurant with her brother. (Read as: Pretty much the one pleasant memory of hers I have to offer.
→ General good memories of her time spent with her brother during the four years she had spent living together: Arm wrestling. Racing each other down the streets of future!Chicago, towards a restaurant. Hitting each other (playfully). Getting drunk, which requires a lot of booze.
→ The memories of Sergeant Schuyler, a Dutch woman from Korps Mariniers, the Marine Corps section of the Royal Netherlands Navy. {NETHERLANDS}
(BIA) PLOT UPDATE
Tranquility Memories:
→ Sending the DUPRR pilot, Russe Neson, into the The White Room.
If anyone wants to share any of these memories from Rey (or if they have a personal preference), hit me up in the plotting thread over here!
Update: Pretty much anything from my Eight Lives page is fair game.
New and improved plotting thread can be found over yonder.
STAGE TWO
→ Lydia Shepherd
→ Hikaru Sulu
STAGE THREE
→ Netherlands
(unsorted)
→ L
→ Anastasia Romanov
→ Rose Lalonde
→ Tony Stark (616)
death of frey
Kneeling at the left is a teenage boy who you feel a strange kinship to. Because he is your brother.
With family at your side, you reply: “Yes.”
You feel a rising heat radiating from your body.
Before your brother speaks, he burst into flames.
In the corner of the room, there is a man dressed in a black armored suit. As he struggles to breathe, a blade whips out of his arm, extending from his armor. It strengthens, and the last thing you see is a dark sword cutting through your face.
yet each man kills the thing he loves
To the creators, the vessel is a creation, now a woman fabricated out of metal, coils, and flesh. To her greatest admirer, a man calls her a goddess of gold and ember.
She lives in the Glass House, which is more of a cell within the solid halls, deep within Niflheim. Here she is sentenced to chains and no sun. All they do here is watch her.
No one has ever touched her before. No one comes near her, or talks directly to her. When she hears them speak, it is always amongst themselves.
She sits in her cell watching monitors flip through images of the outside world, and wonders what it must be like out there. Is there life beyond the Glass House? Is there freedom?
The vessel never knew freedom, if such a thing exists. Liberty is dying in a world where freedom meant so little.
More doctors would come. They all look the same with their blank faces and shallow tones. They are all numbers, texts, bodies in black forms and fluid shapes.
After they leave, she recalls a man’s shadow standing outside of the House, often telling her things.
“‘Yet each man kills the thing he loves.’”
Every night he visits to tell her a story or a poem.
She falls asleep before he finishes most of them.
One night, when she is awake, the same admirer comes to visit later than usual. His hand presses to the observatory glass as he always does when he venerate her, as if trying to reach in through the solid barrier built between them.
“I have always loved stories. Ever since I was a boy, I had a particular fondness for the legend of the salamander, the creature that devours the flames that burn it. Some would say that if you doused yourself in the blood of one of these monsters, you could walk through fire yourself.” He looks to her with those colorless eyes of his that she saw in everyone.
In that moment, she sees something in the man that she has seen in herself. Something that is hungry.
“But you are not a mere legend, are you? When I first saw you, after hearing what you did to your brother, it makes me wonder... what would happen to one if one were to douse in your blood? It would be a more productive alternative.
“If not for your makers, you would have long since been long disposed under the director’s orders. When your father lost faith, however, I stood by your mother.
“You should thank me.”
(It rages. It gnarls. It hungers.)
“There is something purifying about fire, wouldn’t you agree, salamander?”
the ring of fire (tw: implied sexual assault)
Born to die, she is but a vessel. She is nothing.
He calls her FREYJA.
Come away with me, he had said. He wooed her with wicked words, which led her astray from the underground home where she was born.
Men do not create gods, she thinks. She thinks, but does not speak.
The man in the driver’s seat moves, while she does not. His hand brushes over her knee, sliding towards her inner thigh. She is motionless. He frowns, and brings his hand back to the steering wheel.
Red and blue lights flash in the rearview mirror. He tips his hat as three cruisers drive around them, and take off down the highway.
The pillow pushes over her face. She twists and finds herself pinned to the motel bed. His weight pushes against her; she can’t see his face, can’t see anything at all but she knows he’s there, heart hammering in his ribs and skin hot. Her hand reaches up, lying flat on his chest but unable to apply the force needed to free herself.
Several minutes pass. The minutes become much longer than killing a person this way merits. He knows better than anyone that she is not really a person, and he does not intend to kill her.
Her intentions are not mutual.
The bed catches fire. She listens to his prolonged wailing, playing like an aria from a man who has all that he deserves.
The room burns. The wallpaper peels, the floorboards give way, the rooftop caves in. The sleazy motel, the sleazy people inside and all of their sleazy things crumble into smoke and flame...
It’s over now. This cycle has ended.
There will be talk of a woman walking by the Mojave highway, naked and on fire.
At dusk, her father finds her. After putting out the flames that eat at her but never burn her flesh, he asks what happens, but receives no answer.
He picks her from the ground and carries her away.
This man is her creator, and a creator knows what’s best: The creation is a hopeless cause. She will be subjected to termination. If given a choice, which she does not have, she would have agreed.
But she will not die.
salamander rumors: memories of schmidt
They begin to tell war stories of a pyromaniac, defined by her scarred face and brutality. If anyone asks who the Salamander is, the answers tend to vary. Sometimes it’s a woman with a sword fused to her arm. Other times it is a man who can breathe fire. Others would tell of an androgynous creature that isn’t even human, sporting gray skin and demonic features, such as pointed ears, a crooked tail, and no genitals.
When smoke plumes over the Russian forest, the rebels keep talking. Casting glances each way, they continue to tell their tales: The smoke is a signal; it means the Salamander is coming. For she is a war-torn disaster, and her comfort is the gun.
This is why they keep their distance from Sergeant Schmidt. She is an outsider, hailing from the borders of Germany. Being the legacy of two drug-addled parents who died of overdoses, she carries the memories of their bloated corpses with her. There are nights where she closes her eyes and sees her mother and father, their bodies twisted and maws open with white fluid coming out of their eyes and mouths. She hates drugs, and declines when the rebels offer some to her. Schmidt doesn’t even cast second glances as they kick back one vodka shot after another.
These Russian men only happened to be passing by when she was on her way through the mountains, where she had requested refuge in their camp to rest. Most of them are independent — rebels who want to have nothing to do with the Long Winter, the war waging for seven decades now.
Although Schmidt claims to be a revolutionary herself, they do not invite her into their tents or campfire at night. Instead she sits in the shadows, watching the trees and listening to the forest.
From far away, the wolves howl.
Through the varying descriptions they had, many of the rebels decided that Sergeant Schmidt was the spitting image of their ghost story. She listens to their talk of a pyromaniac who can walk through fire. Schmidt stalks their circle as she listens. When they sleep, she protects them.
One night a twig snaps off in the woods, followed by a crunching of snow. Schmidt leaves with her gun, and returns a few hours later. When the rebels wake the next morning, they see her sitting by the dying embers of their campfire in bloodstained fatigues. They whisper amongst themselves that Schmidt smells strongly of ash and sulfur.
People cannot help what they are, so Schmidt does not blame them. She can’t stand her own skin.
Come afternoon, more smoke rises miles in the forest. The rebels decide to move soon, but are stirred by the sound of Schmidt’s screams.
When their captain investigates, he finds her thrashing about the ground in her sleeproll. Her fingers claw at her own eyes.
In her mind, she sees a knife. Deeper, she hears a man’s voice in her head: “I CAN’T STAND YOU. I CAN’T BEAR THE SIGHT OF YOU. I HATE YOU. I HATE THAT LOOK ON YOUR FACE. STOP STARING AT ME LIKE THAT. YOU’RE NOT BETTER THAN ME. STOP IT, STOP IT, STOP IT! YOU’RE NOT BETTER THAN ME!”
You are a vessel. You are born to die.
When Schmidt wakes, she hears opera.
falling: memories of sheridan
Sheridan is no different, and reveres the man who has been more of a father to her than her own alcoholic parents. When whiskey and wine is passed around during their idle periods such as these, Sheridan always declines. The soldiers say it’s very unlike her green blood to do so, but Reinhardt commands respect for the lifestyle of those under his wing.
Over the hill, they watch as a few settlers come in and out of the safehouse. Sheridan leans in to report, Colonel Reinhardt explains that they are neither settlers nor locals. Because this whole village had been razed to the ground centuries ago due to a plague that decimated the tiny population, the area is considered condemned.
The longer they wait, the more Sheridan notices through her binoculars that these people are unwell. Their eyes bulge from their sockets, the whites turned to yellow; their skin is pale and near-blue. Even the women are balding, with straw-like hair barely clinging to their scalps. The most noticeable difference is that these people have longer limbs than the human anatomy would allow. Arms drooped to the knees. Legs long and gangly. Spines hunched over. Bones look as if they’re about to protrude from the flesh.
What’s more uncanny are the uniforms, now stretched and clinging to their bodies. Each of them bearing insignias from various nations: British, American, Scottish, Irish, Iranian, Russian, Chinese... Enemies and allies passing by each other as though no war has gone on for the last six decades.
Reinhardt thinks the same as Sheridan, telling them that they need to fall back. The village is contaminated with what people have been calling allobion disease.
When they turn around, one of those a bug-eyed willowy people wearing a Scottish insignia takes Sheridan by the throat. Reinhardt yells, pulling his gun to the Scot’s head and squeezes the trigger several times.
Shots are fired. Screams all around. Sheridan’s face covers with blood and she hits the ground. Reinhardt is dragging her to their trucks, but all that registers is falling... falling...
“remember me, remember me...”
The man beside you glances over, but you feel yourself cling to the shadows. You’re ridged as always. Unmoving, except for when you had crept towards the edge of your seat to get a closer look over the balcony, listening to the lament with great interest and heartache. An ache that has no rhyme or reason, but shakes you to your bones.
All this time you’ve kept your hands to yourself, crossed over your lap, your body constricted to the blackness that blankets you.
“But ah! Forget my fate.”
Just like you, the man beside you seems to have been equally attentive to the final throes of Dido’s dirge.
At the last note, the orchestra fades. The song ends.
An enthusiastic applause fills the golden amphitheater.
You hear a voice next to your ear, whispering. “We should leave before everyone else starts... to, um...” His words fade as he turns his head to you.
Your eyes are wide, and you’ve been shaking. Have you been shaking this entire time? Yes, yes you have. You’re terrified, because something inside of you is coming to life the moment that Dido crumbled to her death. Why? Why is this? What is happening to you?
There’s a woman’s voice in your head, and it isn’t Dido’s song. It’s the voice of someone kind and nurturing and she knows you well. A memory, playing before you with the same great corporeality of the opera you’ve been so captive to. In the memory, you see a woman. Blonde, green-eyed, beautiful. She is kind, and you think you love her. But it is your nature to hurt the things you love. And in that moment you feel it, your fingers wrapping around her throat. Tightening. She’s saying something to you.
“It’s okay, Fiona.”
Who is Fiona?
“It’s...”
You hear a snap, and the woman’s face and voice fades.
With the wild ovation below and the cast on stage taking a final bow, the man next to you moves in. He takes your hand this time, his fingers folding over yours, which had been clutching the arm of your seat until your knuckles whiten.
Cautiously he whispers your name. You jump at the sound of it.
And it’s strange, because your eyes are burning. You feel something wet streaming down your face, from your eyes, and you don’t know why. You’ve never felt this before.
Sliding his fingers up your forearm, the man helps you back onto your feet, supporting your strangely trembling self.
“Come on...” he says to you, soft and careful when he does. “Let’s go.”
Drying your eyes with the crimson scarf around your neck, you nod, and say nothing.
eight lives, eight women
Though the Salamander regarded Tejinder with a matter-of-fact nature, there did linger a certain fondness for the man. A fondness that drew her to save his life without Tremond’s say-so. For some reason, she did not wish to see him die. In fact, she found herself grateful that he still lived.
“Surely you wouldn’t have been so swift to step forward if you felt nothing for the man,” Tremond urged.
“Not to sound disrespectful, sir, but you have never understood my feelings.”
Gregory Tremond’s eyes rose. This was clearly not the answer that he was expecting. “Really? Your feelings? And what is it you’re supposedly feeling?”
“Confused.” She looked over to the body bags. The bloodied one remained stationary, unlike David’s bag. Red soaked through the open holes.
“You want to see what’s in there, don’t you?” Tremond beckoned her to the body bags.
The Salamander didn’t respond. She strode to it without prompt, as casual as anyone could to a corpse. She knelt beside the body bag and held out her arm. The pulsating had stopped, as did the rush of heat flowing to the ends of her fingertips.
“What are you feeling now, Salamander?” Tremond’s inquired coolly, like a silken trickle of false security.
“Afraid,” the Salamander whispered.
“Why are you afraid?”
“Because.” She placed her hands over the bag. One held onto the zipper, the other over the side. She leaned over the bag, already smelling the stench of rotting flesh. “We know what is in here.”
“Then what’re you waiting for? Open it.”
So she did.
The Salamander stood up.
Her own face was looking back up at her from the body bag. It could have very well been her spitting image, if not for the meat well beyond rigor mortis. Threads of brown hair had already fallen out. Worms weaved in and out of her shrunken eyes and mouth, her ears secreting some kind of off-colored fluid. Jagged jaw hung agape, ready to snap off after years in decomposition.
She flashed back to the morgue.
Long after it had shut down, the Renaissance Sanitarium still housed several bodies of the dead. But only the morgue itself. Though the rest of the hospital reeked of must after a few forgotten years, she remembered that crematorium. That smell, and all those bodies...
They were all her. Corpses of the former Salamanders. Each of them given similar records that Tremond had fabricated: A twenty-nine-year-old veteran of eleven years in whatever armed force she was a part of. Always at the rank of sergeant or something similar:
Rey Stone, the American or Canadian marine and a child of drug addicts.
Sheridan of the Defense Forces of Ireland, who hailed from a family of alcoholics and had no desire to drink a drop of hooch herself.
Silva of the Argentine Navy, raised by deadbeats with no drive in life.
Steyn, the daughter of a man who worked in human trafficking, and threatened to send her to a brothel for any insolent behavior until she ran away to the South African Army.
Sarfati, a girl who knew of war at a young age when her family were killed. She then joined the Islamic Republic of Iran Army.
Schuyler, a Dutch woman who watched her mama murder her papa while having a drunken argument, and enlisted for the Korps Mariniers to escape her maniacal mother.
Schmidt came home from school one day to find her parents dead on drug overdoses, which led into her joining the German military.
Then there was Safronov. Rey Safronov, the Salamander. A psycho who became a sniper during the Kristiv Resurgence in Russia...
For many years, she had dreams of Ashwater. Red skies dawned from the Battle-Brave, rent from the city below. These moments were trapped in time, doomed to repeat for many long and agonizing years.
With the image of herself still fresh in mind, the Salamander moved over to the other body bags. She knew what waited inside, but she unzipped them all anyway.
When she did, the face was far less decayed than her other corpse, but still withered away with golden peach-colored skin. Her eyes had turned to mush. Some of her teeth had been knocked out. It remained in a present state of disintegration, with a fly making its journey to and from her left nostril. The Salamander turned, finally, to the last body bag, and revealed it to herself as well.
This one, strangely enough, was not much different from the rest, except for a significant detail. Her hair wasn’t short and brown or black or dark red, but replaced by long, gold-colored tresses. The decay had not yet affected her. Though dead, the golden-haired vessel somehow appeared as though she were only sleeping.
The Salamander stumbled back, staring at the three corpses. The stench of her own rotten, bloody body filled her senses, while the golden one did not seem afflicted by the hindrance of time.
a terrible dream
In spite of everything, she is afraid. She fears that she will fall forever.
Kill me, she had told them, though their names now elude her. Their faces take on the shape of blank masks, shadowed by something that is no longer distinguishable.
There is one thing that she does know. The one shape that she had taken the gun from... He is and was her brother. She thinks that she should love him, if she only knew how. She wants to tell him everything.
Her head bursts. She wants to scream but there’s no sound coming from her throat. The dream is fading.
I am wicked. I deserve to die.
That night, she hurt her brother. She nearly coerced and aided a man’s suicide. She allowed a woman to be thrown out a window. More horrifically, she begged someone to kill her. She stood there, her face burning and salty-wet; her words shaken and unfamiliar as she listened to her own voice say the words.
Had only hoped to perhaps offer peace of mind.
Faye Elms... Faye Elms. Something about that name strikes a chord, and the dream starts to become something else.
She remembers waking up in a casket. When she gets out, she has only a toe tag and her mind scraped of all things that defined her. And each memory that comes back to her over time is as pleasant as milk-bones thrown to starving dogs, which would kill one another for their share.
She sees cities laid to waste. A boy crying with blood in his eyes, his hands clutching his face. She is with him, prying his father’s cold, dead fingers from his still-living son as he is seconds away from being burned alive.
There is a particular memory she watches now: Snow falling over a Russian landscape, in this place called Kristiv. Through the sniper scope, she sees a woman. Sky blue eyes swollen, smoky strands of hair clinging to her bruised, sweat-covered face. In this treacherous storm, the woman is confronted with a monster as cold as the raging blizzard. She cares very little about the sanctity of human life, because she herself isn’t human.
But now, watching this moment, between the sounds of broken sobs, there is something called regret. There is a name to this feeling as well, and it’s always been there, buried deep.
Her name is “Isobel!”
the apple does not fall far from the tree {cw: violence}
She turned to her father. He towered over her, but that was hardly imposing.
“Or for this.”
Swinging her fist back, she clocked Lucas in the nose. He hit the ground harder than she imagined he would, his glasses flying off his face. As he reached for them, she set her foot down, shattering glass and bending the metal frames.
He didn’t get back up this time. He hardly moved. He only panted heavily as she knelt by his side, hot-faced and body bloody. She wrapped her red knuckles into a tight fist, showing the damage that had been done on her own flesh and blood to the man who created her in his image.
“This is all you,” she sneered. “You created this. Let the memories in. You want to know which memory am seeing, right now?”
Lucas did not respond. He was gasping, trying to breathe through his mouth.
Rey leaned in, smelling his peppermint scent.
“The cooking. MREs. Stone’s men, from the squad that Gregory had sent her with — they always eat without her. Can hear them talking. ‘Hey, if I close my eyes, it almost tastes like ma’s cookin’!’” She lowered her voice, imitating the southern twang from her memory as the wayward Sergeant Stone. “He laughs, saying his mom doesn’t cook that well to begin with. They joke among themselves, and Stone eats alone. The food tastes like shit, cooked or uncooked. We don’t know anything about cooking, but sometimes it would be nice to laugh about it with them. Want to be able to tell them that Mother doesn’t cook well, either. Don’t have a real mother, though. Jonathan made certain of that.” She craned her neck, nose to nose with Lucas Coffey. “We both know why.”
There it was. The monster that rattled the cages in her mind, now a reflection in her father’s eye.
“Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” She took Lucas Coffey’s neck with one hand. The back of his head slammed into the hardwood floor. The broken medical equipment rattled with that force. The walls shook. She reeled her other fist back.
He may have said something. If he did, she did not hear a discernible language.
Not that it would matter, when the man’s tongue would become pulp soon.
“RE—” was the last thing she heard the man scream before her fingers hooked around his lower teeth. With a powerful wrench, his jaw cracked off, splitting his face in two like an eggshell.
stranger in the mirror (tw: self harm)
What you see is a stranger.
Be it in the glass in the windows or the mirror, that person looking back at you is wearing a face that isn't yours. You feel it every morning when you wake up. The smooth skin across your face. It enrages you, makes your blood boil at the thought that your father had taken away something recognizable and replaced it with a fraud.
It's still your face, of course. But all the flaws that had once been there are now smoothed over, healed, the scars that had once maimed you gone. Why did father have to do this? He claimed that it was to help you recover from your past demons, help us start over. But you don't want to start over. You can't. And those demons are still ever-present, chiding you, reminding you that a new, pretty face will do nothing. Throughout your previous lifetimes, all those women you had once been, those scars had been the one constant.
For the last few years you've gotten used to stumbling around the rooms in this Chicago townhouse in the dark. After memorizing the walls and corners and objects in the way, you can simply avoid that liar in the mirror.
She mocks you now, her shape in the shadows when you enter that bathroom vaguely visible and copying your every movement. Because she is you, and you are her, just like you have been all of those other women as well. They're part of you. All of them.
And yet that reflection is a lie. A joke, a mask, something that has been covering up an important part of your life.
The light shining through the room behind you reveals the liar in the mirror. Her smooth, pretty face looking at.
"You're not better than me..." You mutter under your breath, your hand balled into a fist. You see the stranger, green eyes are wide and crazed and hungry. "You're not... BETTER THAN ME."
Without warning, without any hesitation, your fist swings with all the mighty force of a battering ram, shattering the glass before you into a thousand, thousand tiny fragments, and a thousand, thousand bulging eyes just staring. Staring. The pieces clatter, making a beautiful sound as they crash downward over the counter, into the wash basin. So many...
Hearing your own rough breathing, the adrenaline still rushing through your veins, you look down into the basin to find a convenient shard that reminds you of a knife. It cuts into your hand when you clench your fingers around it, pulling it out of the basin. And still, the stranger watches you from within. You hate that stranger. You can't stand her. You can't bear the sight of her. You hate her. You hate that look on her face. STOP STARING LIKE THAT. YOU'RE NOT BETTER. STOP IT, STOP IT, STOP. YOU'RE NOT BETTER JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE PRETTY, PRETTY, PRETTY.
The searing edge of the shard cuts deep through your own skin, sliding across your cheek. You do it again, and again, and again, until you can feel several hot bloody streams running down your face, gushing from your shaky hand. It's a familiar feeling. The first thing you recognize in years since you've been cooped up in this goddamned city.
It stings, but you feel them now. Your left cheek, now bearing a cross-shaped bloody mark, and another horizontal one across your chin. The right side of your face is marred by a diagonal scar below your eye, another across the side of your forehead, and a vertical gash sliding from under your jaw. The pain, the warm blood, the feeling is soothing when you feel a part of you coming back while the stranger is slowly dying. In spite of the chaos, the red-soaked bathroom, you feel in control again.
Don't worry. It's only skin.
i know there's better brothers but you're the only one that's mine
Different as Rey’s body was, it still required nourishment. To some it would be detrimental. To her, it was one of the few things she genuinely enjoyed.
Rey learned many things about taste these last few years. She found that she had a liking for spring rolls and Hawaiian sweet bread. She also had a particular liking for German beer, with a surprising brand of dark lager that her favored Chinese restaurant served. The darker the brew, the better.
In the past, Rey’s body had excelled in certain senses where others she lacked. She had heightened speed and reflexes, keen sense of sight and hearing. But she never felt much pain, and she never knew the delight of savory cooked duck or pork sausage. Lucas Coffey, however, claimed he had never intended this for her. That it was Gregory Tremond who altered her sensory perceptions. Not out of necessity, but out of hatred. Perhaps even jealousy.
A man in a red suit pushed a cart full of steamer baskets and other trays of goods to Rey’s booth, where he opened up one lid after another to reveal the contents of each basket. After choosing a hearty lunch, the man poured a hot cup of oolong tea, checked off her orders in a flashing screen on the round table, and continued to the family at the next booth.
Before Rey was a meal of steamer baskets full of pork shumai, pot stickers, shrimp dumplings, barbecue-beef buns, steamed rice wrapped in a lotus leaf (also called lo mai gai), three flaky sou pastries, and a dan tat — an egg tart. Her stomach did leaps of which Rey had rarely ever experienced as she started to dig in.
She didn’t even give pause when the seat on the other side of her booth became occupied by a face she knew well. He wore the colors of the Auxiliary Unit, with a black collared shirt under a bulletproof vest that bore the Marchmen’s insignia. His head of ash brown hair poked out from under a scarlet beret.
“Hello, Orion,” Rey said with a mouthful of dumplings.
Her brother, however, did not come to her with an equally amiable greeting. “I thought I told you to wait until I got off work.”
Rey downed her shumai with a gulp of hot tea. After, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, her eyes meeting her brother’s over her fortune of food. “Best service is at lunchtime. Gets busy. Didn’t want to lose a seat.”
“I had to tell my captain that I had another family emergency when Lucas called and told me you weren’t home. What gives?” Orion glowered.
Mouth stuffed with dumplings, Rey pushed the steamer basket of buns towards Orion. “Bao,” she said.
Orion blinked, his brows scrunched together. “How—?”
“No, bao. You’d like it.” She lifted one of the buns off the basket and handed it to Orion. “It’s hot.”
Reluctant, he carried the bottom of the bun in the palm of his hand. He muttered a thanks under his breath before taking a bite into the bun. A surprised glint sparked in his pale green eyes, and he took another bite, before wolfing the whole thing down.
Seemed that Rey was not the only one to walk in with an appetite. Though Orion’s table manners were somewhat more appropriate than her own.
“Knew you’d like this place. Much better than the Big Crush,” Rey pressed, gesturing for one of the waitresses to come by to pour a cup of tea for her brother.
Once the waitress had gone, Orion accepted his tea, lifting the brim of the cup to his lips with a certain air of satisfaction similar to what he expressed before.
Orion cleared his throat, setting the tea back down on the flashing table between them. “You had us worried. If Lucas hadn’t told me that you’d be here...”
“You’d have found me, anyway,” she said. “Because that is what you do, Orion.”
“Yeah, well—”
“Am no child in need of supervision. Not anymore.” She tapped her temple. “We’re all in tact up here.”
Orion paused, eyebrows raised. “We?”
Shouldn’t it be obvious?
“The old lives,” Rey told him matter-of-factly. “Can’t deny them any more than you can, though you’ve tried. Repeatedly. Spending half of your time with men you hate, who wouldn’t try?”
“I’m not anything like those guys.” Orion hid his mouth behind his cup of tea, as if the cup were a shield.
“Never said you were, but you do it because you want to keep your enemies close. It’s your choice to keep them close.” Rey gestured to the food settled between them. “Like how this is a choice. Did not go from being Gregory’s pawn simply to become another man’s prisoner.”
Orion frowned, setting his tea down after a sip. “Is that how you feel? Like you’re being imprisoned?”
“Can’t seem to leave the house without either one of you sounding alarms,” Rey retorted.
“I wasn’t sure if you were... well, safe.”
“You mean you weren’t sure if everyone else would be safe.” She lifted a finger before Orion could interject. “Haven’t harmed anyone in over a year now. Not since the machete incident, at least.”
Orion snorted at the reminder. “Only yourself.” He gestured to the scars on her face.
A hand on her cheek, the deep cuts under her fingers still twinge, red and inflamed. Orion’s expression twisted with hurt as she lowered her hand.
“Better than the alternative, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Not really sure what I’d be agreeing to.”
No, he wouldn’t know.
Guilt panged Rey’s chest as she sees Orion on the Argus Tower of Old Wayfair. The gun to her head. Her finger on the trigger. She doesn’t need to pull it. But she needs to be certain. Certain that this will be a death where there will be no coming back. Hope that perhaps she could damage her memories beyond repair in the process.
No more soldiers waking up with memories of families of alcoholics, fuse jackers, murderers and pedophiles and rapists... no more. She can’t go back to that life. She won’t.
Instead, the lives become whole. Bit by bit, all of those fragments complete her. In a flash, all of those women become a blessing.
We are alive.
She pulls the trigger. Sees red blood. And falls forever.
“Hey, you okay?” Orion leaned over to touch her forehead. “You’re not getting sick, are you?”
“Apologies,” Rey replied, waving off her brother’s hand.
Plummeting into the chasms of Old Wayfair one instant, and then sitting at a table in a Chicago Chinese restaurant the next. It was a difficult transition to get used to, but by now it was as normal as blinking.
It wasn’t the first time she had experienced these shifts. She’d gotten a better handle of it since her more recent breakdown last New Year’s Eve.
Although Rey couldn’t remember the specifics, Orion had given his firsthand account that she had left home for several hours. It was her first time out alone, and she had promised to call every ninety minutes. Except she didn’t.
By the time she returned to the townhouse, it was three in the morning. Somehow, she had procured a bloodstained machete, then broke her brother’s nose and threatened to slit Lucas’ throat. She had collapsed with little effort on Orion’s part. As far as he could tell, she was blackout drunk with a life-threatening blood alcohol content that would have killed a normal human being.
Where she had gotten the machete and the alcohol in the first place, exactly, was still mystery. The fact that she had survived, however, was not.
“For what?” Orion had moved in, leaning closer to take her hand that was on the table, which Rey slid away before his fingers could come any closer.
He didn’t understand, and neither would her father. They were her keepers and nothing more, always expecting her to lose her mind all over again.
“Time for you to go back, Orion. If one of the minutemen sees you with me, they’ll start to ask questions. We don’t want that.” Rey canted her head, her lips thinned as Orion shot her a reluctant, pleading look. “Don’t worry. Am okay now.”
It was futile to hold out any hope that he would ever believe anything she said.
memories of sergeant schuyler
In 2101, an eighteen-year-old girl named Helena Lyonene goes against her father’s wishes and enlists for an Assault Group with the Royal Marines (which had once not permitted women), passing the Commando course with flying colors and later trains in winter warfare. She meets Grey Moskalenko and they become close friends. Within the next year, they become close friends and later involved. Rey Schuyler is also stationed in Grey and Helena’s unit by Gregory Tremond, where the Dutch and the British Armed Forces are also allied with America during the Long Winter war. They meet in Washington DC, where the young Helena Lyonene and Grey Moskalenko are assigned under the command of Sergeant Schuyler. Cameron Lyonene (56) oversees Sergeant Schuyler assuming command of his daughter before they depart Washington DC. The missions they are to carry out throughout their tour involve locating the sanctuaries GRIGORI’s mainframes are stored throughout the globe. There are three major locations where the GRIGORI had stationed its primary backup functions. Gregory Tremond sets Rey Schuyler out to find them, as she is completely unaware of her past lives and has little knowledge of her “employer” (Gregory Tremond himself).
In 2108, their company is ambushed in the middle of the night, during a trek through the Julian Alps. An ally, Robin de Trie, had tipped off the enemy on their location for a hefty price and amnesty in their country. Grey Moskalenko is killed in action when he is caught in an explosive frag grenade. Helena barely survives the same frag grenade, but loses her leg in the event. Rey Schuyler pursues Robin in her attempt to flee with the enemy. She is about to kill the turncoat when Helena is in need of immediate medical attention, and she chooses to tend to Helena instead, cauterizing Helena’s wound to prevent herself from dying of bloodloss. Rey disappears that night after delivering Helena to the 68W medics and buries their company.
Losing her experience of the last 7 years with Helena Lyonene’s company, Rey Schuyler is reset and stationed at Fort Jeremy, Texas and uses her old alias, Rey Stone.
salamander, burn for me and i'll burn for you
Of Schmidt, though they call her the Salamander. She has earned that moniker for all the victims she delights in burning alive. Their screams a crescendo to her orchestra of conflagration, razing camp after camp of Chinese soldiers across the snowy Russian wasteland.
Within the blaze melting ice, men, and women, one soul in particular beckons the Salamander’s attention: A solider, no younger than eighteen, is fleeing from his fallen comrades before he trips and falls on his face during his attempt to escape into the winter woods. Schmidt finds him, throws him onto his back with her gloved fiery hand before seizing the young soldier around the throat. And then she crushes her strength inward, around his larynx.
The heat bursts, exploding the boy’s body and fatigues into flames and overcooked meat.
life is a game for the fool
“Was born ready.”
Orion’s fingers clasped around the palm of her hand. Her fist coiled around his own. Their elbows propped over the flat wooden surface of the dinner table. “That’s got to be the most human thing I’ve heard you say recently, Rey.” He peeled back a toothy grin.
The muscles all up her arm constricted. No matter how hard her brother pushed, he would have an easier time moving a mountain than shifting the weight of Rey’s arm.
That didn’t stop him from trying, though. He kept at it until he shook and his face turned red while she watched him, unmoving, unwavering.
On the plus side, Orion Gideon was not a sore loser.
The back of his hand slammed against the side of the table.
“Best two out of three?” He didn’t even wince when Rey let go. If he had been a normal person, the force she had used would’ve broken his wrist. Even if she had, it would take Orion three times as fast to recover.
One of the perks of not being human.
“Beat you fair,” she said.
the white room
As you walk, you hear the sound of footsteps following behind you. Although you can’t see them, you can sense their presence. Occasionally, they make a snide comment and it’s clear that your companion behind you is male, gruff, older. You know this man, you know his name... but he doesn’t know you. Not really. You’ve given him the fake identity of someone good, someone better than you and someone he could trust. Because you know that he would not trust the real you.
The two of you have been talking, but the conversation cuts in only at this precise moment:
“—I can’t fucking see anything,” the man complains.
“Right,” you say, pulling out a flashlight with your free hand, as your other arm is wrapped around the dead weight over your broad shoulder. Offering the flashlight to the man, you flick it on and tell him: “Make yourself useful.”
He takes it, and you continue, with the light coming from behind you illuminating the dark corridors. You think that the plan is to take this man back to the ship, figure out what to do with him then. It was never your intention to kill him, but there is still blood on your hands and the determination not to spill more is greater than the urge to turn around and slit his throat or burn him alive. The deeper in you go, however, the more the harrowing feeling wrenches your insides, starting to communicate that something is terribly wrong.
Before long, the glow from the flashlight lands on a door.
I must not kill this man, you tell yourself over and over you lay the unconscious third man you’ve been carrying down on the ground, so you can approach the door.
After that, your mind is a haze. The last thing you remember is an incomprehensibly blinding room. The shape of the man who had been with you, disappearing into the colorless light. You feel that something else is there. Something that sees, that claims the man you had promised yourself to save. It wanted you, but it wants him more.
It vibrates through the core of your being, this vision of the white room before you. Part of you wants to go in. To be able to see your brother again, the only family you have that you love very much.
Instead, you step back. And close the door, the light still stinging your eyes.
YOU MCFUCKED UP
“No,” she replied, her words robotic, although her chest tightened when the redhead went to take Rey’s shoulder. Panic won over. Changing the subject then seemed to be the only logical action to take: “You’re good.”
Faye opened her mouth, but didn’t speak.
“Your shooting,” Rey clarified. “You handle a gun very well.”
“Oh.”
“Rhodes was good, too.” She met the sniper’s eyes, widened with quiet fury while Rey forced a neutral expression within her own. “She even got a hit in, right here.” She touched the shoulder Faye’s hand was quick to shy from. For a fleeting second, she felt the phantom gunshot wound the sniper’s wife had delivered. “Safronov returned the favor. Was the head, wasn’t it? Fortunately, headshots don’t hurt that much. If you die right away, that is. How long did it take for you to figure she was gone, before you found her body?”
Rey felt as though her soul had just detached from her body.
The elevator door opened. Faye stepped out alone, her left hand over her face as though hiding it for some reason. “Look, if you didn’t want to talk about it, you should’ve fucking said so.”