A clumsy knuckle tipped over the smooth, shiny block of wood so that it was just out of reach. A frustrated grunt followed, and a hip slid to the side as an arm scooped forward and wrangled the block a little closer. Calloused, strong fingertips shifted and tried to palm the block with infantile inelegance. The fingers themselves jerked and spasmed, as if their owner had never really used them before, until they carefully wrapped around the rounded corners of the block. A smug sigh of satisfaction spilled from a pair of lips. Hand/arm/shoulder raised the block to eye level. It was painted red on the edges, and in the middle was a large letter 'Y'.

- - {
Assessment: {\[
| Task Status = > nearly complete: "That's the last letter! Great job!"
\]},
Reminder: {\[
| Introductory Gaean Grammar  = > alphabet - letter Y: > \["Y is the penultimate letter of the alphabet. It initializes words such as Yellow, Yak, and You! Y often has a 'yuh' sound but contextually assumes a long 'ee' sound, like the letter 'E'."\]
\]}
} - -

"Eeeeyuh." A throat vibrated and lips pouted. "Y. Eeeyuh."

- - {
Assessment: {\[
| Pronunciation Guide = > not quite: "Keep practicing! Almost there!"
\]}
} - -

The throat practiced until the ear was satisfied, and then the lips smiled. The eyes were bright. The hand gently lowered the block until it was in line with several more. The brow knit in focus, and the lips named all the letters in sequence.

"K, I..." The lips said, then paused. The brow frowned harder. "...N... Z, Y. Kinzie."

‎‭"Very good!" A bug chirped from nearby. Its long, pointy head and big eyes were an encouraging sight as it clicked and clucked little comments on her work with the blocks. It was smaller than Kinzie, but only by a few inches, with a shiny carapace that covered most of its body. Graded shades of green, orange, and brown colored the chitin wherever it was visible-hands, arms, head (otherwise, the bug was clad in one of the standard jumpsuits tailored to any Kandarosian worker). At last, it issued its verdict. ‎‭"You've done great today. Why don't you try my name next? You should have just enough time until ‎‭𐰯𐰞𐰅𐰗 returns to escort you home."

The Friend set a new pile of blocks in front of Kinzie to occupy her, then returned to cleaning up around the one-room schoolhouse. Kinzie rolled her eyes behind its back, but set herself to the task of spelling out the Friend's‎‭ name, 𐰖𐱃𐰎𐰖𐰄𐰣. 

For several weeks, Kinzie had been confined to the Soldier dormitories, where big, spider-faced creatures looked after her basic necessities throughout the evening. The soldiers were brusque and no-nonsense, and the way they handled her body made her feel more like a big wet bag of puke than a person. It was hard to stomach the repetitive embarrassment of mealtime, bath-time, and bedtime: her mind craved independence even as her limbs struggled to rebuild motor control. During the day however, she attended school, and school equaled liberation.

In the classroom, there was a spot near the front, just for her. It had a colorful rug made of very soft fabric and a cubby with her name on it where she kept a few small things. There was plenty of space to stretch, roll, and struggle. There was a panel of round, clicky buttons that made sounds whenever she tapped them, and there were always snacks within reach. Around the ring of her floor space was a perimeter of identical school desks.

None of the other daytime students - a smattering of other Gaeans, some children, some adults - begrudged Kinzie the space that she took up. Even with the awareness of her physical and cognitive impediments, she relished the sense of camaraderie in the classroom. People read books to her; people put math problems or historical timelines on the big, shared note board. Kinzie watched it all with rapt attention.

‎‭As for her specific tutelage, 𐰖𐱃𐰎𐰖𐰄𐰣 mostly insisted on physical coordination exercises and speech therapy. Occasionally, it would assign a "symbiote synchronicity test" - exactly as was happening now. It was a fancy term, but all it meant was that Kinzie had to arrange blocks and read out words, which was the same as most any other day.

The bottom line was clear: if Kinzie remained obedient, hard-working, and patient, then she would be dubbed a good girl, and good girls got more responsibilities, and more responsibilities meant more trust, and more trust meant more of her neural assistant would be restored, and then maybe she could get back to playing on the two-way radio, and driving the big trucks around, and eating sandwiches, and hanging out on voice chat with her friends. The bugs probably had all that stuff, so if she worked hard, she could probably get back to her old life, and that thought alone made it all worthwhile.

Suddenly her ears perked straight. Kinzie blinked and set down a block that she was only half-aware of picking up.

‎‎‭"𐰗 𐰣𐰀𐰽𐰃𐰞?" The voice had a powerful, soothing rasp that caused Kinzie's head to turn.

The Soldier cut a hulking shape within the classroom even without its armor. Its spine was straight and tall; its shoulders were broad. Like any Soldier, it had two pairs of arms-one pair large and thick; the other, short and crooked. Its face held a focused expression. Its eyes were perfectly round/shiny/black, while its mouth was covered by interlocking chelicerae, clasped politely together.

Ever since they'd met, there had been something familiar about the Soldier. Kinzie felt like she had hazy memories of some far-off encounter, nothing concrete. She'd even dreamed about the Soldier before, although it looked a little different: the panels of vestigial exoskeleton were shrunken by comparison to the dream-version, surrounding only the sides and back of its head instead of the whole scalp. In place of its missing exoskeleton, its pale, tufted fur grew thicker from its head, resembling Gaean hair. A crew cut. Where in Kinzie's dreams the Soldier was all monster and teeth, while Kinzie was awake there was only an authoritative presence of care and consideration.

Kinzie yipped a wordless sound, turned, twisted, then over-extended. Lazily, she crashed to the padded carpet beneath her.

‎‎‭𐰖𐱃𐰎𐰖𐰄𐰣 watched Kinzie to make sure that she wasn't injured, then cocked its head back toward 𐰯𐰞𐰅𐰗. "𐰘𐰺𐰣𐰅𐰍𐰄𐰣⹁ '𐰣' 𐰋𐰅 '𐰔' 𐰀𐰺𐰀𐰽𐰃𐰣𐰑𐰀𐰚𐰄 𐰊𐰀𐰺𐰚𐰃 𐰽𐰘𐰖𐰞𐰅𐰖𐰅𐰢𐰅𐰔."

‎‭Kinzie rose on unsteady knees and hands to clamber over to her panel of buttons. She slapped one, and it said, "𐰯𐰞𐰅𐰗!"

‎‭The interlacing knuckles of the Soldier's clawed mouth-parts flexed, but it held an easy and relaxed stance. "𐰀𐰞𐰊𐰀𐰉𐰅 𐰢𐰄? 𐰉𐰀𐰕𐰀𐰚𐰞𐰀𐰺𐰃𐰣𐰑𐰀𐰣 𐰉𐰀𐰎𐰽𐰅𐰑𐰄𐰖𐰗𐰺𐰆𐰢. 𐰑𐰀𐰎𐰀 𐰖𐰈𐰺𐰈𐰖𐰅𐰢𐰄𐰖𐰗𐰺 𐰢𐰆?"

‎‭"Home!" one of the buttons on the floor said as Kinzie smacked it. She hit a few more with awkward, disjointed gaps. "Home! Time! 𐰯𐰞𐰅𐰗!"

"Okay, alright, Kinzie. I didn't forget about you; don't worry." The Soldier marched over and knelt beside her, reaching out a strong, three-fingered hand.

‎‭Kinzie rammed her face into the palm and breathed deep of the comforting, maternal stench that emanated off of the Soldier's bare, leathery skin. 𐰯𐰞𐰅𐰗 roamed its thumb over Kinzie's nose and forehead and eyebrows and cheek; it stroked through Kinzie's hair and scratched at the back of her neck. "Were you a good girl for 𐰖𐱃𐰎𐰖𐰄𐰣, Kinzie?"

‎‭A sleepy look was already passing over Kinzie's eyes. 𐰖𐱃𐰎𐰖𐰄𐰣 said, "She was very good."

‎‭"Sssss, that's my girl," 𐰯𐰞𐰅𐰗 hissed. "Let's get you a little treat to celebrate, huh?"

The drive through town was no issue until Colleen reached the Kandarosian checkpoint, and at the checkpoint, she had simply needed to flash her green sector ID and then wait for a minute before they let her pass. Surprising, given the bugs could probably smell the gunpowder on her: a highly illegal substance. But Colleen wasn't going to question the fortuitous oversight.

Onward into the industrial parks, there was barely anyone or anything around, and it was a straight shot to Two-hundred-twenty South Industrial Road. When she arrived, there was a booth with a barricade at the mouth of the service loop that fed the address - which should have been manned, but wasn't - another strike of luck. Colleen passively crossed her fingers that the guard wasn't onto her, ratting on her to the employees of the facility. Maybe he was just on break or something.

Colleen passively realized that might be sexist.

Maybe she was just on break or something.

Then came the hardest part of the drive: switching the limo to manual. But once she figured out where the switch was hidden, it was easy to ram through the boom barrier. Colleen didn't know how to park, had never driven a car personally, so she just took her thumb off the accelerator and let it roll until the limo hit the curb in the bus loading zone, and that's where the limo sat. 

According to her now-dead contact, this sprawling complex of pipes and vents and tanks and smokestacks was her best bet to find the AI research lab that had been stringing her along for years in promise of a surefire solution to the Bug Problem. With that in mind, she hadn't yet seen a single living soul here. Maybe par for the course if this was a real chemical processing plant - these things were mostly automated - but it didn't bode well for the secret research facility proposal.

Margo called, and they chatted until Colleen said goodbye - then threw her phone into a drainage ditch that ran alongside the concrete pavement up to the front doors of the small, two-story admin building.

It was covered in corrugated sheet metal. One window looked over the entry gate and tarmac. The shades were drawn. The eaves of the roof were dotted with security cameras: little, black, always-watching half-bubbles. The kind more for deterrence than active monitoring. She stepped up to the doors and tugged on them: locked. There was a keycard scanner, but she elected not to fiddle with it.

Colleen wandered around the side of the building, casting half-interested glances out around the grounds. A summer breeze cut through the sweaty warmth of the day, and while it carried an acrid, eye-watering scent, the feeling of cool on her cheeks was still completely welcome. She ran a hand through her hair, fluffed it, and got the wavy locks off her neck so the breeze could cool her even better. The silk of her blouse had noticeable sweat stains at her armpits and along her rib cage. She pinched the fabric and tugged it off her skin, flapping it a few times to try and get some airflow as her tail swished behind her.

She rounded another corner to the back of the building, found another door, and tugged on it: locked. 

"Mm," she murmured and blew out a frustrated breath.

The noose was closing. She had to keep swallowing back the idea of what a PR catastrophe this was going to be. Of how much work it was going to be. Of course, it was going to be a catastrophe; it was going to be much more than that. She had made the conscious decision to go as nuclear as possible: full vengeful bitch, scorned woman, hellfire heels and brimstone blush. At the end of the day, there wasn't going to be any work left to do. It wasn't going to last longer than the next two or three hours at a maximum. One way or another, things were going to catch up. And they were probably going to catch up with a stand-off between her and the authorities in a siege on this stupid shack in this ugly industrial park.

Something was gonna crash down on her and sweep her away eventually, whether it was the bugs or her own people, and she wanted to royally fuck up at least one Quartex scientist's day before it happened. At least one. She had visions of tearing down the whole research facility, but it was seeming less likely with every passing moment, and she only had two bullets left. Maybe she could shoot the lock off a door, but it seemed like a waste.

Alright, then.

Colleen continued to circle the perimeter of the building as she fished the derringer out of her pocket along with the last two shots she had at her disposal. She flicked open the chamber of the double-barrel pistol, dumped the spent shells onto the walkway with a clinking chime, and slotted the live ammunition into place. She thought about Lucy Gullway, the contact she'd shot dead in a rundown apartment, and about the bodyguard - whose name she still didn't know - who she'd granted an impromptu execution on her way back into the limo.

Neither of them inspired deep mental distress in her, although she did find that the appearances of their punctured heads had been icky and unpleasant to witness. Their corpses made her feel frustrated more than anything. The bodyguard in particular had been heavy, cumbersome, gross and inconvenient as she wrangled him into the limo and tried to position him in a way that took up the least space. All the times he had rolled over and bumped her legs, she had lashed out and kicked him with the bottom of her heel, though it hadn't been very satisfying.

Colleen grimaced and exhaled forcefully through her nose as she rounded the last corner of the building and found herself out front again with a new perspective. The chain-link gate, the booth and busted barrier, the tarmac service loop, the sidewalk, the drainage ditch, the bus loading zone, the limo, and the man in a khaki shirt and khaki slacks poking through the door of the limo, turning over the corpse, hand on the taser in the holster attached to his belt.

Colleen felt nauseous. She felt invincible.

"Hey, there," she called out to him and stepped into the open.

The man started, looked back over his shoulder, then gasped - whipped around - drew the taser - fired it.

The sequence of movement was too fast to comprehend. At ten meters, just outside the effective range of the weapon, Colleen was struck. She barely felt the pinch of the taser's probes stabbing into 1.) the base of her belly and 2.) her upper thigh. And then it came: a storm of razor lightning that carved through her musculature. Immediately, her vision narrowed to pinpoints, her jaw gritted, drool foamed through the gaps in her teeth, her fist clenched, and she fired a shot into the ground.

The noise startled the guard, who dropped his stun gun from the sound and reached for his radio. The batteries in the taser ran out of juice, Colleen roared. Fiery agony in her bicep ignited when she lifted her arm, cocked the hammer of the gun, and shot her last round. She clipped the guard across his shoulder, and he spun. His head thwacked against the open door frame of the limo with a hollow thud like a market-fresh melon. His radio scattered across asphalt to some place underneath the vehicle while he collapsed bodily to all fours.

The guard choked. Blood spat onto the ground from the bullet hole below his collarbone. Colleen roared again, not sure if any words came out, maybe a "fuck you," hard to say. She was right in front of him now. She didn't know when she had crossed the distance between them. She kicked the guy hard in the ribs. He raised an arm to try and fend her off; she whipped back and threw the pistol down with force. Her elbow torqued out of place while the hunk of metal crunched into the man's nose with another starburst of blood.

He collapsed. His skull smacked into the running board of the limo on the way down, and then the strength drained out of him. The guard sagged flat against the ground. His chest fluttered: light, fast breaths. It seemed like he was saying something, Colleen couldn't hear it over the ringing in her ears.

She grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, lifted his head, and propped him back into the open door frame of the limo. He looked up at her with crusty, green eyes, raised his hand, and that's when she slammed the door shut around his face for the first time. Then again. Then again, and again, until the glue that held the plates of his skull together started to give way and his head began to deform. Colleen kept going until she wasn't scared anymore, and by then the ringing in her ears had more or less stopped.

She straightened up, smoothed out her blouse, and exhaled slow. Invincible.

Colleen sucked down deep and shaky breaths that filled her chest to the very bottoms of her lungs and squeezed them empty with speech-practiced flexes of her diaphragm. She tossed her hair back, combed both hands through it. She casually feathered the ends with her fingertips as she looked herself over in the smudged bathroom mirror. 

She looked sweaty but, at a glance, no worse for wear.

On closer inspection, there were small cigarette burns on the hip and thigh of her slacks where the probes of the taser had stabbed through the fabric and buried into her skin. She'd had to dig her phone back out of the drainage ditch in order to search up the taser model and how to remove the barbed probes, because it had hurt like a bitch whenever she tried to pull them out normally. Luckily, she found a method on how to remove them with only a minimum of additional bitching and moaning, which had saved her the dignity of dragging the spent taser around with her.

Colleen prodded gently at the faint bags under her eyes with the side of her pinkie and quirked her lip. Barely halfway through her thirties, and the rigors of age could not chill out and let her be. Her tail lashed, and she took another deep breath. She envisioned the various corpses of the day. She envisioned roadkill and dancing animated skeletons. She envisioned the drone girl: a rapidly decaying skin-sack of guts. Colleen inhaled a big, deep, brain-clearing breath and left the bathroom.

The inside of the chemical plant's admin building was cozy, for what it was. The bathroom exited out onto the first floor into a waiting room with a few benches. Half-open doors stood to the side with two empty offices behind them. An elevator took her up to the second floor, which was empty as well, aside from a few computer desks in the main room, a locked office with someone's name on the door, and a break room. Colleen helped herself to someone's leftover chow mein from the communal fridge. It was one of only two meals there, other than a soggy sandwich embalmed in cling wrap - wet and unappetizing.

With fork and styrofoam container in tow, she wandered back to the elevator and elbowed the button for the basement, wincing at the soreness in her tender joint. The button didn't light up; the elevator didn't move. Colleen huffed, fished the dead guard's key card out of her pocket, smeared it against the elevator's key card reader (an abundant feature around here: she'd used it to get into, yes, the bathroom, but also whichever stall she chose), and tried again. The basement button lit up, the doors shut, and down the elevator went while she ate.

And further down.

And further down.

And further down.

And further down.

The longer the elevator took, the more Colleen's adrenaline gave out, and anxiety took its place. More and more real, more and more close, more and more on edge with every second, she started to think she might be in over her head. Her weapon was spent, her elbow was starting to really hurt, and who knows how many more people there might be down here. At least a few lab coat types, maybe another guard. She envisioned the action-movie choreography of tearing through the facility and ripping everyone she found to shreds with her bare hands. It seemed unlikely. Her elbow was really starting to ache.

And then there was this other thing. There was a background noise to everything - hard to place exactly what it was, but it was kind of like the background chatter at a dinner party or the fizz of a boiling pot of water. It didn't seem like it was coming from the elevator, but then, where was it coming from? 

The elevator finally slowed and clunked into place after what felt like minutes of slow descending. A flash of divine inspiration cut through the noise - a voice - and it said: "You're about to get royally fucked, you nasty little bitch, and it's all your dumb fucking fault."

A little tune played, the doors rolled open, a bank of flashlights blazed the light of justice upon her, and, praise be to courtesy, Colleen had just enough time to say: "Oh, fuck you all," before the first tranquilizer hit her.

There was waking; there was swimming; there was floating. Dizzy, angry pain. An ache in so much of her musculature, a sludgy sluggishness that slimed in auras around her knees, ankles, wrists, shoulders, elbow. Sore.

Her whole body felt awful. Her vision was waterlogged. Gray shapes oozed and writhed, caught in a net of wet eyelashes. Someone pinched her nose while someone else massaged her pharynx. Her mouth twitched; her lips pouted/parted. Plastic coated fingers pried her jaw open wide, pushed inward, and suppressed her tongue. Colleen whimpered, too weak to gag. 

The tip of a thick plastic hose smeared with lidocaine thrust past her teeth and hit the back of her throat. Colleen coughed faintly and swallowed it. It pushed and pushed and bottomed out somewhere inside her. Somewhere she could almost feel.

Colleen moaned. She tried to pull away, but her body was tired. She tried to bite down on the hose, but her teeth didn't want to comply. Someone slipped a firm piece of plastic inside her mouth that locked in place around her gums.

Colleen moaned again, tried again to shake away. All she could accomplish was a small nod back and forth, which elicited a firm grip on her chin - angled her backward - wide plastic tube at her lip, lined up to her right nostril. She smelled the faint scent of fruit as cold lubricant pushed (gently/easily) into her nose in smooth inches through her nasal cavity. Then further back, curling against mucus membrane until it was snugly hiding somewhere above the roof of her mouth. The back of her throat itched. Again, Colleen coughed.

A pillowy plastic cup ringed by medical elastomer squished against her face, and someone clipped elastic straps around her scalp. Colleen breathed, and she couldn't smell. It felt eerie. She wondered if she was drowning. Bright lights above. Wince. Her neck relaxed to one side. Surgeons in blue coats paced back and forth; clear plastic face-shields glinted in the medical lamplight. Mirrored windows surrounded the chamber and reflected the silhouettes of this and that and these and those. The voices of hundreds of people seemed to be talking in pulsating unison, like the crashing of waves directly into her fore brain.

"-awake?"

A haunting, familiar voice was mixed into the background commotion. All around her, people were talking in cut off sentences. Soundbites jumped back and forth. She looked for the speaker, saw no one.

"Rise and shine, Madam Lynxpin! It's so good to-"

It was a woman's voice. Colleen squeezed her eyes shut. She tried to raise an arm, to pull out all the plastic shit stuffed into her face, but her muscles were too tired. Too sore.

"Hnf," Colleen huffed through one nostril.

"Ulkh," she half-swallowed around the tube.

And then she sank back into sleep.

Colleen awoke with a shake. She lay on a table under glaring spotlights. She felt raw and dry from plastic tubing that tunneled through her face. She'd been having the most awful dream about being chased through a maze, but, now awake she wondered if maybe the dream was better. Around her, she could hear voices, everywhere: that same background commotion from when she had fallen asleep. Colleen twisted and turned, looking for the source, but she couldn't find it.

"Shhh." The buzz of tens of voices filled her mind. Occasionally, the odd word would almost be audible. Her body felt fuzzy, like somehow the events leading up to her capture had ripped through something essential to normal function, and now the background radiation of the universe was rushing to fill the void.

Colleen flopped her head around and looked at the room (sterile/functional/blurry), and then she strained the muscles of her neck to lift her head and look down over herself. Strapped to the operating table, as she was, her silk blouse was torn open to her belly, and her bare skin shone tan under the harsh lights. Between her goosebump-dotted breasts, electrodes and wires adorned her. Lower down: slacks untouched, heels missing, stockinged feet limp.

"You could just kill yourself the next time you get a chance," a very reasonable voice suggested. Colleen's instincts told her that it was an angel. "Then you can come back to life."

"Shah ahp," Colleen grunted around the plastic gag and tubes, though she instinctively knew that arguing with the angel was fruitless. It probably wasn't even real. The only noise-making device nearby: a suite of monitors that beeped reports on her stable condition. No divine fire was here, except for that of the blazing light bulbs overhead. And those held no heat, spiritual or otherwise; her body was left cold and barren. She flexed her fists and arms against gauze, tape, and more tubes.

"Cunt." The angel-voice said.

Elsewhere, there was a shuffle, a throat clearing, and finally, an: "Mmmmn. Yuggh."

In the corner of the room, shadowy figures crouched, watching her, and one of them stood up from a chair. They stretched their hips, then their back. They inhaled a shaky breath, cracked a knuckle, and stepped into the perimeter of light that ringed the operating table.

The person was... It took Colleen a moment, but she determined that the person was a woman. And the woman was a tall, rectangular sort of woman in the middle of a rough forties or a mediocre fifties. She wore a surgeon's apron, and a clear face-shield with paper mask underneath that obscured the lower half of her face. Colleen squinted; visible laugh lines cluttered the tops of the older woman's cheekbones. A green cloth scrub-cap was tied tightly to her scalp, under which tented two hard nubs at her temples. A greasy salt-and-pepper curl of hair had come untucked near the edge of her ear.

Colleen immediately liked her, though she didn't know why. Perhaps it was the gentle care with which she poked and podded at Colleen's body, checking the monitors with care.

The square woman nodded at some number on a screen, brushed her errant curl back behind her ear, and pressed the back of her hand to Colleen's forehead; warm and strong. Colleen sighed. The doctor nodded again,  cleared her throat - about to speak - then caught herself. She hovered there for a second, just watching Colleen. Colleen had a dumb, adoring expression; she couldn't help it. The doctor was utterly fixated, and bore down into Colleen's sleepy eyes: stern/steady/an element of distinctly masculine heat.

Colleen flushed. Her skin prickled. She breathed heavy against the restraints.

Angel-voice asked, "What would she look like with her eyes gouged out?"

A vivid image of the doctor's mutilated face overrode Colleen's thoughts. She knew the bloody, pink flash wasn't real, but for a moment, blood dripped and splattered against the inside of the face-shield in such ominous patterns that she couldn't bear to look.

She winced and turned away, but then: a frown in Colleen's periphery, a sigh in her ear, a turned back, and careful-clicking steps. Colleen felt like she had failed some kind of test. The doctor crossed the room and thumbed an intercom by the door.

Colleen watched the tall woman brace an elbow against the tiled wall and lower her head down to the speaker. Colleen's ears twitched when the woman said, "Doctor Amparo, she's awake."

In the intervening minutes between the intercom call and whatever would happen next, Colleen was twitchy/irritable/restless. Her tail swished as she wriggled her hips to try and get comfortable on the table, or escape the restraints. Whichever.

As time pissed, more people in surgery garb began to filter into the room and mill about. Occasionally, if anyone passed close enough, a sudden wound would appear, dripping blood everywhere, until they wandered out of view, and Colleen's attention shifted to the next imaginary wound. It made it hard to look at any one person or another, although it wasn't long until the double doors into the operating room burst open and in strolled a face Colleen had never, ever wanted to see again.

The girl was a curly-haired redhead, small/sharp-featured/tight-lipped, and she was positively swimming in her protective equipment. She had grown no taller since their schooldays together, and she barely looked any older. Despite herself, Colleen's blood ran cold. Shadows loomed larger at the edges of her vision. The straps to the bed were tight. Inescapable. The tubes plugged into her face felt like they were starting to tunnel into every inch of her body.

"Collie, oh my goodness, how long has it been? Or should I say, 'Madam Lynxpin?'" The redhead said with a cheerful cackle. Her voice was high and squeaky, pulled right out of Colleen's middle school memories. "Good morning! I'd hoped to be here when you awoke, but nothing happens without Madam Lynxpin's say-so, does it? Ever the diva."

Beneath the blinding lamplight, Colleen was fuming. She bit down on the plastic gag fixed between her teeth and growled. "Noth'ya."

The girl laughed and stomped on a button set into the floor at the foot of the operating table. "I knooow~ I bet you're proud of yourself. When you passed out during intake, I somehow knew that was just your way of being difficult. Poor Adrian had to monitor you all night."

The table tilted and adjusted in a grinding, mechanical fashion until it propped Colleen up in a seated position, face out to the assembled crowd, arms and legs stiffly pinned down to its hinged surface. The operating room was perfectly clean and devoid of anything but medical tools and a metal stool here or there.

The redhead stood, front and center, smug and easy. She'd produced a round, red apple from one of her lab coat pockets, which she was skinning with a scalpel. Behind her, the other surgeons moved to line up in formation. Most of them looked terribly ordinary - boring even - when Colleen wasn't imagining them dripping in blood.

"Flabby old men too good for you?" the angel voice asked. "What do you want? Girls? Kids? Dogs? Margo? You could have them all if you were free."

Unpleasant images of naked bodies and humping animals flashed through her mind; Colleen furrowed her brow and tried to make the angel stop.

"How long has it been, Collie? Twenty years, give or take? I mean, other than the quarterly reports I've been sending out. Not that those count. The character limit on Privacy Box codes never lets me express myself the way I can in person," the girl said. Then she affected a crooning lilt. "Since you never pick up any of my calls, I could scarcely believe it was really you. You must know, I was ecstatic. Of all the people in the world to stumble into my lab on a murderous rampage, it was one of my dearest childhood friends."

Colleen tugged at the restraints, grunted into the bit-gag. The heat of her breath fogged the clear muzzle, but she was no closer to freedom. The images kept flashing through her head.

"Seriously, Collie, ecstatic. I can't wait to show you around. I think you'll find I'm doing something really special here at Quartex." The doctor beamed, clapping her hands together. "Oh! But I'm getting so far ahead of myself. Of course, you already know me, but in case you couldn't tell, it's Doctor Amparo now. I am senior administrator of Quartex's neurological research division and physician-in-chief here at the Kingfisher Lab. Beside me is my team: Doctors Becker, Poji, Afreo, and Min. Everyone, say 'Hi' to the governor!"

As the other doctors made small waves/bows/gestures of greeting, Colleen continued to writhe. Doctor Amparo curled a finger to the squared-off woman. "And naturally, Adrian has failed to introduce herself: my faithful second in command. Please, Doctor, if you would do Madam Lynxpin the honor."

Promptly, Adrian stepped forward, and Colleen's internal slideshow of profanity went quiet. Even the background hush of the universe stopped. Doctor Folu was stiff, solid, and unbreakable. She kept her hands behind her back, and she only bowed her head and shoulders. Her eyes remained level, fixed upon Colleen. Her voice unexpectedly quiet and monotone. "I am Doctor Adrian Folu, a neurocognitive scientist. My expertise is in memory access models. I assist Doctor Amparo with her on-site projects here at Kingfisher."

Once done, she stepped back into the line, and with a bored drift, she started to look off toward the ceiling. Maybe it was an effort to be somewhere else, mentally - like a thoughtful boy on picture day, watching a butterfly, Colleen thought.

She lingered on Folu in welcome mental silence, at least until Doctor Amparo snapped her fingers with a huff.

"So that's everyone, aside from the help, aha! Collie, I just know we can stand here chit-chatting all day, so I think we ought to kick this off. First, Doctor Poji will read you a few disclosures, you know, so Legal doesn't throw a fuss. And after that, we can get started. Stations, everyone!"

As the assembled doctors all split off in different directions, one of them - a slouchy, sleep-deprived older man - adjusted his glasses as he approached Colleen, face buried in a clipboard with a pile of papers on it. "Okay, so! For your own safety, you'll note that we have equipped you with some protective equipment that you will wear for the duration of your stay. We will endeavor to keep you comfortable, healthy, and sane while complying with all site regulations; however, please keep in mind that-"

Colleen, horizontal again, jerked her shoulders against a thick, padded-leather strap. Doctor Folu stood at the head of the table, large hands cupped around Colleen's chin, palms pressed into Colleen's cheeks, dwarfing her face. Colleen could feel the heat of Folu's crotch against the hair on her scalp. The searing light of the operating room's lamp sizzled into her soul, nibbling holes on the way through her retinas. In the shadow at the corona of that bright light, the glinting of Folu's dark brown eyes glittered under her brow, barely visible but staring.

"Shhhhushush." The universe muttered.

Slice, rip; chill air flowed over Colleen's suddenly bare shoulders.

As a pair of hands shredded and removed what remained of Colleen's blouse, Doctor Amparo laughed. Someone grabbed a handful of one of Colleen's tits, rubbing the sensitive fat between wiry fingers and pinching the bud of Colleen's nipple, tugging it to see how far it would stretch. Colleen winced/sneered/grumbled into the muzzle that wrapped around her face, while Folu adjusted grip against the flexion of Colleen's neck. For just a second, the look on Folu's face was some mix of pity and mercy that sapped the fight out of Colleen.

Slice, rip; chill air blew under Colleen's suddenly exposed knees.

"It's going to keep getting worse," the angel-voice said. "Unless you listen to me."

Colleen snorted and mumbled into her muzzle as scissors chopped through her slacks from hip to hem and tore them away. Colleen felt fingers slide down her ankles, squeeze the arches of her feet, and tug her stockings off in a process of slow, septic molestation. She heard Doctor Amparo giggle from the other end of the table and say something about Colleen's toes, though she couldn't quite hear.

Colleen mute-howled her frustration, half at the muscled captor that held her down, but more so at the evil bitch that - from the sound of it - was taking a deep, huffing inhale of Colleen's hosiery. The humiliation was unbearable.

Amparo had to die, at a minimum. Colleen thrashed. If only she could raise herself, if only she could see the vile redhead: the universe might agree and grant her some miraculous power to delete Amparo from existence. Maybe the leather straps would disintegrate. Maybe she'd have her gun back. Maybe, precision laser beams might blast out from Colleen's corneas to slice away the seams of Amparo's skin suit: maybe then, to spread her musculature across the wall - a fresh, new anatomical model for the lab. But any time Colleen tried to look, Doctor Folu squeezed, forced her to freeze, forced her to stare into those warm brown eyes.

"Wishful thinking," the angel-voice said. "But if you die, you can come back. And then you can kill her with your bare hands."

"Shhhhshushhhshh," the throngs of hushing murmurs said.

Fingers squirmed in between her toes, thumbnails scraped across the soles of her feet. Doctor Folu brushed a knuckle over her cheek. Sensitive, soft. Colleen bit harder against the gag and felt it flex against her teeth and tired jaws. Fingers traced the veins up her calf, over her bare thigh. Her naked skin prickled, goose-bumped. She flinched. Doctor Folu adjusted her grip.

"You've been a very naughty girl, Collie," Amparo giggled.

"Isn't she detestable? Shouldn't you get your fair shot at her?" the angel-voice said.

"Wha' ah' h'uuugh! Heee he ahoooone!" Colleen strained and tossed her head back and forth and whined, and tears collected in the corners of her eyes as drool pooled out of the corners of her lips. She twisted and looked for the source of the voice, but once again, there was none.

"Oh, you're just so cute when you wriggle, aren't you? Yes, aren't you just so cute?" Amparo cooed.

Folu winced, near-imperceptibly. "...Doctor?"

"Doctor!" Amparo chirped gleefully in response. "I say it's time that we soften her up for surgery. What do you think about ten milliliters of beta blue?"

Folu paused, barely. "Right away, Doctor."

A droplet of sweat curved around the inside edge of Colleen's thigh and beneath her knee, where it hung in the lee of her left leg LCL like an itchy dewdrop on the underside of a delicate leaf. A babbling brook of blue fluid drained from a clear plastic packet into clear plastic piping that emptied into the gully of a catheter that was taped down to the back of Colleen's hand, and that's where the mysterious drug "Beta Blue" found access to her bloodstream.

In a matter of minutes, Colleen's pulse began to slow; her thoughts, thick and cloudy, muddled into the gray and foggy banks of the incessant background chatter she'd now been hearing, or rather: feeling, for what seemed like at least an hour. Colleen knew the voices were fake or something. She had at least enough bare-minimum awareness to know that the word "schizo" had a meaning whenever she spat it at homeless people on the street.

She had some time to think as the doctors prepared glimmering tools, even as difficult as thinking became - frankly, the calming effects of the drug were making it easier to think. She knew that she hadn't been awake long. She knew that she had spent some time unconscious before that. She knew there were surgeons all around her now, and she also knew that there were armed guards that shot her with a tranquilizer gun when she came down the elevator. That was a lot of people. Maybe there were even more people to support the facility. Keep things clean, keep everyone fed, and so on.

Colleen couldn't quite remember when she'd first heard the voices. Was it some time up in the city? Was it in the elevator? Or maybe after she woke up? She was fairly confident that the bugs had nothing to do with it, but she wondered if Quartex had done something to her while she was sleeping. The background hum of voices seemed to greatly enjoy that idea, but Colleen didn't trust them any more than she trusted a gang of mysterious surgeons. Though maybe it was unfair to put everyone on the same level. Nadia Amparo - the most notorious sociopath to ever graduate from Redfern Preparatory High School - had few equals.

"That's good," said Angel-voice. "Hang onto that feeling. You'll need it to reincarnate."

"Hagh hoo," Colleen muttered through the plastic mouthpiece, her voice still somehow full of casual malice despite the fact that her eyes were starting to drift in opposite directions.

"Did you say something, Collie?" Nadia asked. Colleen blinked at the split images of her and her big smile until they aligned into one shape. Nadia was holding something big and silver that looked like a medical buzz saw, and probably was a medical buzz saw.

Colleen swallowed and faintly shook her head. Colleen felt roller-coaster dizzy, and every nerve-ending was wrapped with cottony Q-tip filling.

Nadia smiled and split into two or three fuzzy figures again, although her voice rang loud and singular. "Alright, squad, where are we at?"

A chorus of comments ranging from "Almost ready!" to "Good to go," rang out around Colleen, while the red-headed hydra of Doctor Amparo grinned and looked from voice to voice.

"Alright, everyone clear? We're-"

"She's going to saw off your fucking body parts," the Angel-voice said, "and you're too fucking stoned to stop them. What were all those ten-pound bicep curls for anyway? You need to die."

Colleen screwed her eyes shut tight, which only served to make her hyper-aware of the sweat gathering in the corners of her joints. She chewed the inside of her cheek, and the skin-buzz rippled pleasure down through her lip and jaw and up into her ears and back around into her lips. She sighed, and the fog coated the inside of her plastic muzzle.

The muscles in her back and neck began to turn to ooze. "Hawh... Iwh hews uhd..."

"Yeah, that does feel good, doesn't it?" Nadia smiled and dragged two fingers around the side of Colleen's throat, down her collarbone, around her shoulder, and onward to her bicep. The trail of heat and revulsion that seared through Colleen's body made her shudder. She would have felt nauseous if the drugs allowed. But instead, all she felt was supreme erotic enticement for the sickest living being on the planet.

Which again, granted some of the bugs she held in recent memory, set a pretty high bar.

Nadia squeezed Colleen's elbow. Colleen groaned bodily. She could feel how swollen the joint had become - it felt fat and squishy, like the world's biggest grape, and it hurt. But it didn't just hurt. The sensation warped and jumped through her skin in sparks of pleasure until Colleen's groan of pain boiled off into a ragged moan.

Nadia grinned. "Say, Collie. You've been such a good girl; how about we put you to sleep for this first go-round, hm?"

- - {
Alert: {\[
| Timer  = > 5 minutes - Morning Medicine
\]},
MediaStream: {\[
| LiveFeed  = > Quill News Network: > \[

"Wow, isn't that just amazing?" 

"It sure is, Harry. You've got to admire the spunk of those teens."

"Absolutely, Kim. We've got some stiff competition if any of these 'kidfluencers' shoot for the news desk."

"Hey, there's a good idea! A few more of those and you might be out of a job." Kim Korvette laughed and turned to a different camera. "All jokes aside,"

"Tonight's top story is no laughing matter. Amid the hunt for missing person: Governor Colleen Lynxpin, a new witness has come forth who may have been the very last living soul to speak to Colleen before her mysterious disappearance. It's now been exactly twenty-four hours since the first search began for the Governor, and tonight we're prepared to share a special tell-all interview with Governor Lynxpin's executive aid, Margo Lanutria."

The camera pivoted to a different angle as Harry Redcomb seamlessly picked up where his co-host left off. "But first! What do we know - what are the facts? Exactly what happened on that sweltering Wednesday afternoon? Let's start with a word from Quill News Field Correspondent Rick Sivil, live at the scene of the automated Kingfisher Chemical Processing Plant where the trail of Governor Lynxpin runs cold as we speak."

The view of Harry Redcomb shrank to take up only half the screen while a late-evening scene of the processing plant panned into view on the other side. A grizzled older reporter gripped a microphone in one hand and an umbrella in the other. A light drizzle pattered around him.

He was half-yelling into the microphone as he began, "Behind me is the quiet industrial park - like many others along Industrial Road - where the limo of Governor Lynxpin appears to have veered out of control and crashed. Authorities suspect that the crash occurred shortly after six pee-em on Wednesday, only minutes after she made a direct call to Quill News to make her shocking announcement that Den had been visited by a Drone."

\]}
} - -

Colleen groaned and shut her eyes tight. The image of the newscast remained - a phantasm behind her sinuses that was somehow crystal clear and ever present no matter where she looked, high-jacking her imagination to play out the scene.

She let her head sink to the side away from the speckled tiles on the ceiling and over toward the smudged window that looked out onto one of the facility's hallways. The hall was dimly lit by yellow track lighting at ankle-height, barely enough to illuminate the alternating periwinkle and robin's egg squares that checkered the floor. It posed a vague reminder of the emergency lights embedded in the floor of the gubernatorial airliner that flew her over hundreds of miles of desert and jungle to facilitate quarterly trips to Nest (as well as the annual photo op at Crater Park).

The first hour since she had woken up was the worst of all. A headache like a cracked windshield smashed through every part of her brain from the base of her skull to the corners of her brow, all of which would have been bad enough if it wasn't for a nonstop feed of Quill News twenty-four hour coverage that drooled a mind-melting slurry of current affairs (propaganda) and lifestyle pieces (also propaganda) and ads (also propaganda) and more. The hourly updates on her own missing person status, with all the subtle spins and turns of phrase, made it worse. She was pretty sure that DeSamzo was already swooping in to take her place, the fucking vulture. 

But five hours had passed and the headache was mostly gone now, so long as she didn't move around too much. The mind-numbing flood of the news had begun to fade into the background.

- - {
Alert: {\[
| Timer  = > Time for: - Morning Medicine
\]},
Angel: {\[
| Pussy = > Here Kitty Kitty: "How many lives have you got left?"
\]}
} - -

Outside the window, a tall and broad shape passed quietly and stopped at the door. The sound of keys jingled just out of view, and with a scratch and a click the door opened. The figure cleared her throat and stepped inside. The way she walked was careful, attentive to the length of her gait, the angle of her knee, and sensitive to how much toe or how much heel went into each step. In one hand, she held a small paper cup. Colleen blinked, and the woman paused, "Ah. Pardon. I didn't mean to wake you."  
  
It was Doctor Folu. Colleen shook her head. She tried to speak, but an ache in her rubbed-raw throat sent her into a choking fit, and then each spasm of her lungs sent a glassy crack through her migraine, adding a sprinkling of whimpers to the fit as well.

Folu said nothing, but quietly picked up Colleen's water bottle from a nearby table, and pressed it into her hands. Colleen's fingers shook, but she kept a hold of the bottle and greedily lapped at the nozzle, which eked out drips of soothing liquid into her throat. Once hydrated, Colleen turned to look at the doctor.

The pill cup was sitting on the table by the water now. Folu had pulled a stool to the side of Colleen's bed and was patiently flipping through a small notebook, scribbling notes. She was no longer in her mad-scientist surgeon garb. The mask and scrubs and so on had been done-away with. Her face was strong-featured, her black and gray hair was tied back in a thick, curly ponytail. The nubs that framed her forehead, which had been hidden underneath the scrub-cap before, were now plainly out in the open. Thin prongs of bone - antlers filed down to a manageable fistful on either side. Colleen stared long enough, that she didn't notice Folu return the look. She fell entirely by accident into Folu's gaze. The doctor had long eyelashes.

"Better?" Doctor Folu asked, finally.

"Not really." Colleen said.

"Mn. Your meds will help." Doctor Folu said.

"Fuck they will." Colleen said.

Doctor Folu paused and glanced at the meds. She reached into her pocket and recited the names and dosages of five drugs off of their respective orange phials, confirming she had brought the right ones, and finally looked back to Colleen. "Yes, actually, they will help. Vin-K to dull the migraine, and a corticosteroid for the swelling, which will also help with the pain, along with-"

- - {
Reminder: {\[
| Encyclopedia Add-on: Vin-K, a.k.a. Vinocorp Kandomorphin > \["A post-surgery analgesic deployed in a small number of cases where conventional pain management is likely to fail. Derived from synthetic compounds meant to mimic K-Com β, it is one of a number of medical marvels introduced to Gaean society by our Kandarosian neighbors."\]
\]}
} - -

"Fuck a bug, you take them then if they're so fucking good for you." Colleen snipped out a hoarse whisper.

"I don't have swelling at the brain stem to mitigate, Madam Governor." Folu said.

"Oh, fuck you." Colleen rasped.

"I'm sorry, Madam. You won't have to deal with me anymore if you take your meds." Folu said.

"Charm didn't work, and now you wanna bargain?" Colleen sneered. "I'll tell you what I told the last guy. Try whatever you want, but I'm not taking them."

Folu looked off toward the ceiling, thoughtful. She paused and rolled her tongue along the inside of her cheek. "Mm. Doctor Becker's thumb did look pretty bad."

"Hah. Yeah. I got that bastard pretty good." Colleen said, then sniffed "Don't sit there in the dark like a freak, turn on the light."

Doctor Folu reached forward to a remote at Colleen's side, and tapped a button with an icon of a light bulb on it. Immediately, dim little lights prickled throughout the room, bringing it out of the dark and up to a cozy, late-night warmth. Colleen smirked at the subservient gesture, and casually glanced at the remote with a hint of surprise, as if she hadn't noticed it was there. Doctor Folu was handsome. There was an annoying girlishness that swelled in Colleen. If her baiting had irritated Folu at all, it wasn't showing.

"You're just going to sit there and stare at me until I take them, aren't you?" Colleen asked.

Doctor Folu nodded. "Yes, that's the plan."

"Well, fuck it, fine then. Give." Colleen said.

- - {
MediaStream: {\[
| LiveFeed  = > AdBreak: > \[

A beautiful, skinny twenty-something turns toward you in slow motion. Her brown hair glistens in perfect waves that cascade over her shoulder in an effortless fibonacci spiral. Her cheekbones are too perfectly arched to be real. She shows a hint of shoulder, a hint of collarbone, nude but not slutty. She tilts her head in a coy, friendly way and her teeth gleam through a pert smile that should make cupid blush.

In a loose, two-fingered grip, she raises a pink plastic bottle and covers her mouth.

"For the lamb at home, or the lioness on the town - there's Rivièr."

\]
\]}
} - -

Doctor Folu picked up the paper cup and passed it to Colleen.

Colleen death-stared at Doctor Folu (whom - for her part - remained placid). Then she rattled the pills around in the cup with a half-thought of dumping them on the floor, and then she paused, and then Colleen tossed her head back and dry-swallowed the lot of them. Colleen crinkled the cup and tossed it at Folu, where it bumped off the Doctor's shoulder and into her lap. Doctor Folu pocketed the cup, although her eyes did not leave Colleen.

"Thank you. Please, open your mouth." Doctor Folu said.

Colleen frowned. "Open your asshole."

Doctor Folu leaned forward, rested her elbows on her knees, and loosely clasped her hands together. Her eyes fixed on Colleen, still passionless and cool. No flicker of heat. Unthreatened, patient.

Colleen narrowed her eyes.

- - {
MediaStream: {\[
| LiveFeed  = > AdBreak: > \[

A gentle stream runs through a glen on a stormy day. A deer drinks at the water's edge. Two voices hum through the background. Voice one is a woman's voice, adult and a little motherly, maybe thirty years old, with a hint of hopeful anxiety. Voice two is a man's voice, a little older, maybe in his fifties, confident but courteous. The deer walks away into the woods. The clouds break and reveal the word Murlan.

"Murlan is not for everyone. Call your doctor if you have unusual changes in behavior, your depression worsens, or notice thoughts of suicide, and especially if you have muscle spasms as these may become permanent."

"People taking KNMI's or some chronic pain medications shouldn't take Murlan. Side effects may include nausea, dizziness, sweating, dry mouth, insomnia, sexual side effects, and high blood pressure. If you have a history of neurological conditions in your family, consult your doctor to determine if Murlan is right for you."

"Taking Murlan helped me."

"Ask your pharmacist about Murlan today."

\]
\]}
} - -

Colleen's harsh expression began to crumble when she realized that she had lost time. A few seconds maybe. Doctor Folu had moved: she was no longer in the chair, now sitting on the edge of the bedside, hip close to Colleen's knee, but not touching. Folu was slipping a silver penlight into the pocket of her lab coat. Her thumb was leaving Colleen's chin. Colleen's mouth was wide open.

"Welcome back." Doctor Folu said.

Colleen's eyes flitted from Folu's pocket, to her hand, to her face, to her pocket, to the window, to her hand. She inhaled slowly. She'd lost a few seconds. Folu's hand on her chin - her mouth open - whatever petty defiance she'd put up over the pills, to try and egg a response out of the doctor, she'd missed her chance. She nearly asked what had happened, but exhaled slow. She could wrangle this back. She could get her hooks back into Folu.

"I hate you." Colleen said before she realized the words were coming out of her mouth. "It's in my head. I can't - I can't stop it. It just keeps playing. Why did you do this to me?"

The words spilled out of her, her defenses shattered. She felt weak and sick and stupid and -

- - {
Alert: {\[
| ANGEL  = > 2 hours until: - psspsspsspsspss. Here kitty, kitty.
\]}
} - -

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Colleen screamed and her body lurched forward. She grabbed onto Doctor Folu's bicep, clawed at it, grit her teeth. Her hand flexed around the stiff muscles beneath the lab coat, and the look she gave Folu was rabid.

Opposite her, the Doctor's focused attention had taken on a concerned edge. Like dealing with a feral cat, Folu inched over in a slow and deliberate arc, so as not to startle the woman. Colleen's chest was heaving in and out; her exposed collarbone breaking out in a sweat. The slim length of her neck; fluttering. Folu gently placed a firm hand on Colleen's shoulder. Folu's voice was a murmur. "Madam, I'm going to help you lay back down."

Colleen didn't say anything. Her jaw grit tighter, and she sneered enough to show teeth. Her eyes swiveled to look up at Doctor Folu, and they had narrowed to slits. Folu leaned in anyway, and placed a hand in the middle of Colleen's back. Folu lowered Colleen back to the bed, the beautiful woman snarling all the while.

It took five minutes for Colleen to gather herself. She clenched and unclenched her fists at her sides, and her breath came stuttering through ribs that shivered. Her jaw shivered and she winced back tears whenever they threatened to appear. She gripped the blankets at her knees and pulled them up around her chest, bunching them in her lap, and squeezed them tight, and there she buried her face, until she could reign it in and get it under control.

When she was done smothering herself, she raised her head. With bloodshot eyes and a deadened expression, she noted that Folu was still there, and she said, "I'm scared."

Folu didn't say anything, but she noted the flicker in her brow, and the softening in her eye. The turn of her shoulder just a little more squarely toward Colleen.

Colleen's eyes started to water and she said it again. "I'm really, really scared."

Kinzie Barro woke up in her cot in the armory of the Soldier barracks. The barracks was a four room affair. The main room was low ceilinged with a floor covered in trap doors. Each door slid open to a capsule set into the ground, barely large enough for any one of the many identical Soldiers to maneuver, and that's where they slept. Of the three side rooms, there were the lockers, a mess hall, and an armory. The lockers were too uncomfortable for a mammal like Kinzie to sleep, and the mess hall ran a little on the cold side, so the only place for Kinzie to sleep was on a fold-out cot in the armory, surrounded by the glistening black armor-plated suits on one side, and the rows and rows of stingrods and tranq rifles on the other.

A couple of weeks ago, the weapons and armor hadn't registered as anything other than wall ornaments to Kinzie, but a couple weeks ago she had been sitting on the floor at school, playing with blocks, as most of her higher brain function stayed locked behind a firewall. Now, the armaments felt... both oppressive and alluring somehow. Taboo. She knew she wasn't supposed to touch them, yet the only thing she could think of was grabbing one of the rifles off the shelves and blasting away at the first person who came in the door.

‎‭Maybe she would have given into temptation too, if it weren't for 𐰯𐰞𐰅𐰗. Kinzie's ear flicked and with a slow, slow inhale she could smell 𐰯𐰞𐰅𐰗 cleaning, just a few shelves away. She twitched her nose, and one of her ears pointed up to see if she could hear anything from the bug.

‎‭"Ah, are you awake, 𐰚𐰄𐰣𐰔𐰄𐰅?" 𐰯𐰞𐰅𐰗 asked.

‎‭Kinzie grumbled, and pulled the blankets tighter up around her head. She hated how 𐰯𐰞𐰅𐰗 could sense every little thing about her. She also hated that 𐰯𐰞𐰅𐰗 was always 𐰽𐰀𐰉𐰀𐰎 6'𐰑𐰀 𐰆𐰖𐰀𐰣𐰃𐰚, and was cleaning the armory like an hour before before Kinzie could even think to 𐰅𐰞 herself.

- - {
Timer: {\[
| Custom Alarm  = > Early wake-up: > \["This is your custom wake-up call! Rise and shine, Kinzie. It's time to greet the day."\]
\]},
Assessment: {\[
| Physical Status = > well-rested: "Get some breakfast and hit the gym, girl! The day is your's."
\]}
} - -

‎‭"You certainly taste awake. Much earlier than usual." 𐰯𐰞𐰅𐰗 remarked, and Kinzie could hear the bug across the room place the rifle back upon the shelf with a delicate *clink*, and then a few silent footsteps later, run a hand over the thick comforter that cocooned Kinzie, pausing to sit atop her hip. "𐰚𐰄𐰣𐰔𐰄𐰅, we don't stay in bed after we wake up. We get right out of bed. You know that."

In reply, Kinzie simply hissed.

‎‭"Why don't you go to the locker and relieve yourself. You taste terribly tense, and I'm sure it will help you relax." 𐰯𐰞𐰅𐰗's voice oozed condescension, as if her early ass schedule wasn't the exact reason that Kinzie hadn't been able to jerk off in a week. And whenever she was at school there was never a chance. Classes - and expectations - had been getting tougher faster than she could keep up with, and all of her pent-up horny energy was channeled directly into stress over assignments. And then it was right back home where she was surrounded by a whole army of like thirty huge... muscly... sweaty bugs.

‎‭𐰯𐰞𐰅𐰗's body pressed down into Kinzie from above the blanket, her head hovering right where Kinzie's ear would be. In a clicky little purr, she said: "No one else will be awake for another thirty minutes at least. I could even join you. If you like."

Kinzie gushed.