Thread: To the Last Syllable (Mr. M & Bathos)

Lyla followed him up the street, and while she was not a girl who was naturally inclined to obedience for its own sake, she stuck as close to the throwback's side as she dared. On one occasion, she nearly knocked into the back of him when he stopped short--as he was wont to do--and turned his head sharply in all directions. She couldn't see his face through the mask, to tell what he was thinking, but she got the distinct impression that he was sensing something that she could not. Well, if she were a mutant, she'd be able to sense it, too, right? She wrapped this thought around her like a security blanket, and it acted as a barrier between her and her encroaching paranoia. When they reached the public stairs, she turned and looked him square in the mask. His voice was different now, muffled, nothing like the calm, steady baritone she'd come to know in their short acquaintance. Lyla didn't like it and found she couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic with his well wishes. There was a moment, between her terse nod and her pivot away from him, when her expression softened for once, and her wide mouth parted as if she were about to offer him words of thanks. The moment was fleeting, however, and her eyes hardened with something like resolve, and when she dashed up the stairs toward her home she didn't spare a backward glance. -------------- The week unfolded from that point, for Lyla, like an especially disturbing horror holo. It built momentum slowly, chugging to life with the meandering pace of a first act, and it wasn't until the third act, when all seemed hopeless and her fate utterly sealed, that she traced all of the many disturbing events back to their origins. She couldn't have said why she chose to return to the surface level--this time with the presence of mind to use the stairs --except that it seemed she'd ultimately end up there, anyhow. The datacard fiasco had cost her a job and, subsequently, her apartment when she couldn't make rent. She didn't have many friends, and, considering her current state, those she did have couldn't possibly be expected to take her in. She had hardly slept, and her typically fair complexion was marred by two purple marks of exhaustion beneath her weary blue eyes. Instead of the classic blue number she'd worn on her last trip to the surface, she now dressed a little more practically in thick, black, low-slung pants and heavy boots of the same shade. The peaks of her hipbones, along with a smooth strip of pale flesh, were visible between her waistband and the hem of her t-shirt and jacket. Over her shoulder, Lyla carried a duffel stuffed near to bursting with clothes and toiletries. It was everything she could gather before she was evicted from her place. She took the same set of stairs she had the week previous, so she wouldn't be lost right away. She wasn't an ace navigator by any means, but the path the throwback had shown her was a simple one. The streets weren't quite as empty as they had been, and there remained at the base of Lyla's skull an incessant, changeable buzzing that, even after having a week to grow accustomed to it, made her dizzy. But for the most part, everyone left her alone. Lyla had almost reached the throwback's lair--or at least she thought she had--when the buzzing in her skull flared into a blinding pain. It did this sometimes and she'd learned that when it happened her only option was to wait it out. But she was in the middle of nowhere on the surface and she couldn't afford to just sit around and wait for trouble to find her, so she stayed on her feet, staggering onward with her head in her hands. There were five of them, strolling out of the alley with smiles on their faces like they'd just shared a zinger of a joke. Surface punks, dressed in drab, grime-covered clothes with their hair styled like geometric puzzles. And when they saw Lyla, they all stopped short, and the pain in her brain burned brighter. Lyla whimpered and swayed, but kept walking. She was working under the theory that if she just put her head down and passed them quietly, they would leave her alone. She was wrong. An arm halted her progress by wrapping like a steel band around her shoulders. Hey, there, princess, the owner of the arm offered, and Lyla shivered. Whatcha doin' out this way all alone? Lyla sighed and looked up at the punk through a grimace of pain. She only looked at him. She didn't struggle against him, couldn't even work up enough fear to make her pulse flutter. Leave me alone, she said, words running seamlessly into one another as if she were drunk. She was just so tired . Nothing felt real, as if she were watching it all on a busted holo player rather than living this nightmare. What fun would that be? the punk asked, and his friends snickered from somewhere behind them, but Lyla didn't look at them. I don't have any credits, she explained and was answered with more laughter. That's okay, the punk whispered, right against her ear. She felt his rough lips and coarse stubble against her skin. It's not your money I'm after, princess. Lyla gave an ineffectual jerk at that. Somewhere in the recesses of her brain, she was aware that she was in trouble, that everything was not all right , and that she was about to suffer something terrible. Not my type, she mumbled. The punk actually giggled . You're not ours, either. She was dragged out of the dim light of the street, pressed up against something cold and hard that she registered, many seconds later, was a wall. There were hands on her, pushing her jacket from her shoulders, fumbling at the fastening of her trousers, and still she could barely prop her eyelids open. Something like alarm was tingling up her spine, though, whispering at her to fight, and she brought up a knee instinctively. She caught the punk right in the groin. Bitch! he hissed, before crumpling to the ground with a solid thunk, and Lyla pushed forward, only to be shoved roughly back once again, now by three men, rather than one. Shit, she said, without much feeling behind it. She was going to be raped. She wasn't so far gone that this little detail had escaped her. After, she was going to be left to rot or actually deliberately killed. Once again, there came the thought of how unfair this was. She'd escaped death just to endure a week of hell? She silently wished that the throwback had never found her in the first place. If she was going to die, anyway, then he could have saved her a lot of unnecessary hassle.