Experiment X

24 | The Transport Ring

AN:The next chapter will continue Teresa's/Manu's storyline. Honestly, this is just a filler chapter, but it's needed to tell the story. So enjoy!WordSpeak

24 | The Transport Ring

It is somewhere between the darkest hour of the night and dawn. There’s a damp chill in the air as a screen of mist falls from the clouded, dark skies. Above the alleyway, the shadows conceal, blot out the sky and make it nearly impossible to see beyond it, or anywhere around for that matter; but for Tallie she doesn’t care: she just wants to rest, and be alone.

Her eyes are wide, and streaming out the fear that truly awakened within her, taking in her violently trembling hand, or the outline she can make of it. She feels her lips are wet, as her skin, water trickling from her dampened hair, along her forehead and slipping into the tears that have escaped again. She wrenches her eyes shut, and leans her head back against the rough edge of the wall, resting it there. The one image of Seke being crushed by that girl with the long black hair, who terrifies her, rips through her mind as it has constantly since viewing it happening. He had only just been there…A reach away…Oh why hadn’t I looked up? She thinks her self-deprecating thoughts reel in her own darkness. Why hadn’t I been more careful?

My carelessness ended me up with no partner, the thought fires through, squashing her into feeling no bigger than the tears she feels in the palm of her hand. “No, no,” she breathes out into the night, shaking. She clutches at her stomach, and her mouth falls open as she retches silently, and then bursts into sobs.

For a few moments, the pain eventually subsides into an awful numbness and her eyes flitter open, sticky, and blurred with tears. I need to pull myself together, she thinks. Crying will not bring him back from the dead…She needed to begin to think clearly. Not dwell on the past. What’s done is done. Only moving forward now. And that means heading for the Transport Ring. No looking back.

But, at least she doesn’t have to worry about death…for now. Even still, the thought alone of that girl chasing after her gives her the chills. She remembers the deadly look of her eyes: if she hadn’t flown away when she did, Tallie knows she would be dead. That looked defined her easily enough: the girl craves bloodlust, which makes her question her sanity. Tallie turns her head, blinking, and sees a distant light: it’s blinking, dark for a few moments, but then flickers back to life. A streetlight, perhaps?

Abruptly, there is a metallic clanging sound in the opposite direction beyond her in the alleyway, a scrapping, shuffling sound, and moving in the dark. Or is that her imagination? She wonders staring into the murky dimness. Scrambling to her feet, upright, propping herself against the wall, Tallie calls out, stammering:

“W-who’s there? Speak now!”

No one answers her, and she can feel her legs begin to quiver as much as lips, and instantly she thinks about fleeing to the air—but something hold her there, grounded. Curiosity? Or something more. A throbbing instinct within her? Possibly.

Just then, she can barely see a towering figure of muscle and glinting eyes, and she immediately thinks of that massive one—the one who she remembers quite well at the beginning of this Tournament, before they had been transported here. His number…Thirteen? Heart beating through chest, she swallows, and trains her eyes onto the shadows before her.

There a peculiar sigh of relief, and the figure steps from the blackness toward where Tallie is standing, the faraway streetlight providing some illumination, if only minimal. But it’s enough to see him for who he truly is: and this person is not Thirteen, fortunately. Instead, she can see the outline of an eight upon his Specialized Suit, his core of firelight glimmering in the dark. He’s nearly as tall, and built similarly to this Thirteen, but his skin is darker, and sweeping black hair folds against his chiseled, shadowed face gleaming in the drifting mist.