Belle is in the rebel base, walking with some other foot-soldiers and staring at the back of her head. She notices that she looks a bit weightier and more angular than usual but it’s such a distant feeling that she can't be bothered to turn away from the conversation. She can't remember what the conversation’s actually about until she talks again, however, but it comes back to her once she needs to open her mouth.

“Yeah, it’s okay, I'm leaving next week so…we can just go out sometime before then,” she says, a bit anxious and a bit meek, knowing that it won't be a week before she leaves but only a few days. How could she tell any of them, though? What if they try to stop her? Keep her here any longer than she needs to be? She can’t risk that. She loves them but she can't, they've all hurt her too much. “but are you sure we can afford that right now…?”

“Oh, don't worry about that,” her mom says, reassuring her with a tired look on her face. She's looked so tired ever since Belle told her she's leaving. “I just-“

“We don't even know where the hell you're going!” Her father cuts in, Belle freezes and locks up. She looks over at him and looks to the side. She can't just tell them where she's going! What if they try and find her?

“I…I just…” Belle sputters out, then stammers. Her chest hurts. Her chest really hurts- everything stings, why does everything sting so much? Belle looks at the wall, posterboards and flyers for tasks to do around the hanger, news of other planets that have been taken down before them, old papers of nations being taken down. None of them are left, this planet is on its last leg formed into its own sort of coalition: just the resistance, now. Just a group of people trying to not be captured at this point, not all of them even really want to be here, being captured at this point risks being branded a traitor almost indefinitely and the deals for getting out of that are…

Belle shudders, and holds her arm, which is suddenly robotic, then takes note of herself again. She considers another improbability, she never remembered being that much taller than her parents, and she doesn't remember sounding like this either. Maybe she should diet, again, why does she look like this? After a bit of staring, she looks around.

“I'm just going up north to the next city, there's a better job there and uh…” Shit, she needs to come up with a name for the fake friend she said she was moving in with. “Ronald, is, not gonna charge me anything for rent, for a while…”

Her father sighs and her mother just looks away, suddenly though a coalition mech walks up to them. Belle looks to the right, then jumps, and looks at herself again. Oh, right, she's not in a mech at the moment, her feet are steady on the ground. Nothing to worry about.

The mech trills and beeps, then lets a low growl out at them. Belle tilts her head

“Yeah I'll text…you guys. You can, keep my games, it’s fine.” She forces a smile, though, all of a sudden she’s seeing out of her own eyes again, she feels her mouth fall apart, she can still see herself.

Her face has split open from the side of her mouth, the lights on the ceiling are blurry, her clothes have been ripped off and she’s covered in deep cuts and her skins being peeled off, she can’t move, she sees her knees try and buckle to the ground and they just don’t do anything. She blinks past herself and focuses on the lights of the ceiling, trying to scream and only letting out a weak mumble. She can hear the sound of flesh being incised into, she can feel her body being invaded down to the bone, everything is cold and dry feeling. She can't move her head at all- what's happening to her? She hears mumbling, someone help- please- she doesn't understand-

Everything starts to get blurry again and she can't keep track of what she's thinking of, she's being cut into, it's dark, she feels dry, everything’s cold. Her room is cold. It always ran cold, she could see fog towards the floor when she was younger. Sometimes she liked to lay in it but she was always scared of something being in her closet, where she wouldn't be able to escape since she was all the way on the floor, and she was never really someone who was in shape…

She feels at the concrete on the ground, not quite icy but cold to the touch, lightly condensed, a pleasurable texture and temperature to her. She observes herself, seeing nothing wrong, she always liked being here. What about the closet, though? She can see inside the closet now. Her father is in there. Hes dead, she doesn't remember him dying though. She stands up and looks at the closet, feeling in danger. What if he gets her? She should try and walk out of the room. She goes to the door and walks out, going downstairs into the living-room. This isn't her living-room though, it's her grandparents, and everything is covered in moss and flora. The windows are all broken, too, and she cant help but wonder what happened. She really doesn't want to be here. She looks up the stairs, in her room for the briefest moment, and sees her father again, he's moving now, she sees herself once more and starts to run down the hall. The hall is broken down, and she can hear the tv to the right of her but she doesn't want to go into her grandfather's room. Her grandmother's room just makes more sense to her right now. She closes the door as fast as she can and locks it, and cuts herself on the jagged handle. Her other hand is cut though, and, her fingertips are all cut open, they're opening deeper, she sees lights on the ceiling, through blurred vision, she cant feel her face, she cant move her lips. She can feel her teeth. Her eyeballs wont close. She sees the ceiling. She can't breathe out of her nose. She can't move her lips. The air burns, her face is gone, her face is gone- she tries to scream but there's not enough air, she cant feel most of her skin everything's raw, everything burns, muffled voices and shadows too faint to register, she cant scream- she cant close her eyes- the ceiling darkens and burns into her retina, but she can't close her eyes- they burn so much, she can't understand anything, she asks herself if this is hell or real or if she's even experiencing this, she cant see, everything's dark, she sees four vague rectangular shapes. She tries to focus harder on them, she gets bored sometimes and stares at the tv, trying to make the blurs out when she doesn't want to watch anything. Why is there never anything good on? They never have the money for anything with a signal around them. Whatever. She turns her game on and starts playing. The main player character moves strangely, as if fully animated, walking up to another vague and oddly parsable character. They talk about going to destroy the main nest of zombies, and start to suit up, then head off. Arriving at the nest, she turns to her friend.

“So you brought everything right? You know I'm leaving soon.” She says, pulling the gun she brought out and loading it up.

“No, I'm not bringing anything. You're fighting them.” Their friend says, suddenly not equipped with anything. Belle feels furious, almost immediately. What the fuck? They had plans, they agreed they'd help eachother--

“How am I supposed to do this then?? I told you about this beforehand, why would you just leave everything back at home!?” She starts appearing visibly frustrated, then jumps back when a bunch of zombies begin to spill out of the door and attack her friend. She tries to pause the game but she can't.

She yelps, and starts firing at them, but to her dismay they were behind her too. She tries to quit out of the game or look away but she can't. She tries to pause again. They bite into her arms, and her face, and chew her mouth off, then chew her eyes off, she screams for help. She tries to pause the game again. She can feel all of it. She screams as loud as she can as they plunge into her stomach and chew on her still connected entrails, she can feel every single rip and cut cold piece of metal, her eyes burn from staring at the bright lights, they start to roll upwards, she loses focus on what's happening completely, a darkness unlike the others begins to wash over her and it starts feeling quiet, and it…

…

…

…

She feels the invasion of shallow, quick breaths inside, then outside of her half-numbed lungs. Over and over. She’s hit with an overwhelming amount of sensory and a cocktail of feelings she can't comprehend, her fingers twitch then lifelessly scramble and jerk up to her mouth as she retches up a concerning amount of stomach bile. Her eyes open without her consent and lights puncture her retinas, they immediately burn a hole into her vision and she retches more bile out. She tries, desperately, to breathe, but she can't muster anything beyond the same quick and small breaths she's been taking in for…for…

What's happening? When was she last- awake? What happened? Visions of vivid, dreams and, nightmares or, the same dream dance in her head. She looks at the vomit, barely able to see it past the blotches in her vision, then whimpers and drunkenly rolls away to the other side- immediately she cries and arches her back, hit with an alien sensation of stiffness and pain. Her body feels, like, a new pair of shoes- not worked in.

She rubs her eyes desperately, then feels at the skin on her face with the slightest relief in the back of her mind, and tries to push herself up with her other arm. For a blip of a moment her hand caresses at the underside of her cheeks, the skin feels rougher than usual-

Concrete on the floor, dusty, she whimpers again. She feels unclean, she hates being unclean, helplessly Belle is stuck feeling everything in full intensity and muted at the same time. She can't figure out what's happening nearly quick enough, all of her movements are sluggish and dizzied. Her hope for revelation is struck where it stands, when she hears something muffled break through the ringing in her ears, and the prodding of something cold and hard against her side. Her body trembles and flinches at the point it's touched, she tries to move away a bit then falls back on the ground, looking up at the tall, blurry figure. What- d- did she saysomething-

“Hwhag-haUh-“ is what preludes a disgusting gargle and another eruption of bile from her stomach, and onto what she thinks is someone’s shoe. Boot. Foot cover- She hears more muffled talking then she's kicked in the chest, it's nothing much, but right now it feels like being shoved down some stairs. Her vision dizzies even more and she reaches up to feel at her chest, barely registering how much more disjointed her breathing’s gotten. She feels bumps along her chest- is she- naked? No. no- not- bumps- it's a line- it- scars-? What-

More muffled talking, this time a yell as she’s prodded at again. She thinks it's a boot. She shivers, thinking of where it’s been amidst the overwhelming weight of everything else. Her vision is darkening again, though, suddenly she actually realizes she can't breathe, her hands weakly move to her throat as she is absolutely unable to control her lungs or bring in anything more than an airless wheeze. She starts to flail and claw, before being lifted- by her hair- she thinks- she thinks someones yelling. It's like she's underwater- she can't reach any air- she cant- think- she can't-