Three Calls from 9127

[SedatedAlice]

The following posts are rated GD: GrimDark
Please read at your own peril.

T.o.C.:

• Part One: SUNDAY, 03:24:15 EST
• Part Two: SUNDAY, 03:47:26 EST
• Part Three: SUNDAY, 04:28:17 PRIMAL EST

Written in response to obsessively thinking about what happened after a wonderful RP session on Paragon Chat, these sets of posts will follow the exploits of Ariel Parker, also known as Aestus, on an adventure through the Shadow Shard.  I have not quite flushed out where the end of this story lies, but I will try and keep this updated as often as I have something new to add!

Feedback is appreciated.
--SA

[SedatedAlice]

The buzzing had been going off for a good thirty seconds before the melody began - something loud and annoying meant to grab attention and keep it long enough to be silenced.  The room was still spinning as the woman rolled over, tangled in the sheets she'd sweated through once she'd fallen into depression-fueled nightmares.  She let the caller go to voicemail before she cracked open an eye to see the ID on the number - she was hoping it was him and praying it wasn't but she was a goddamned bleeding heart, hadn't she admitted that? The number was an area code she knew well -  Portal Corp used a unique four digit number to denote what parallel monstrosity their assets were calling from - nine one two seven was Firebase Zulu.  Sh*t.  She'd ignored two calls earlier that night, blaming the drinks she'd had but knowing deep down she didn't want to be pulled away; she was waiting for him to make an appearance so she might coax a smile out of him and carry the memory of it as ray of sunshine in her heart to guard against the abject loneliness that was her life.

There'd been no third call earlier.  Three calls meant desperation - in the 'Shard, desperation usually meant someone was dead or dying or presumed so and there was a mess to clean up that only someone like her could handle.  All those guys who'd spent two and a half years in that sh*t hole before the Portals had gone active again had left the minute they could - but not her.  She knew the 'Shard like the back of her hand and she knew the dangers and how to pull someone back from madness if she got there in time. The brass usually respected it when she said she needed some time off but if it was bad enough they'd call. 

A glance at the call log told her she'd missed a nine one two seven caller two minutes before she'd let this one go to her voicemail.  The knot in her stomach that had been there since she'd sent him that stupid message bloomed into cat's cradle of her intestines. 

One day she'd figure out just what the heck she'd been drinking tonight in order to fade the faces that flashed before her eyes every time she seemed to relax even a little.  She held the phone up, staring at the horror that was the background image.  It changed every minute or so - a cycle of men's faces missing half their skulls after she'd ended their madness permanently, saving them from the life of slavery that her brother had endured for five years before she's gotten up the courage to deal with his corpse.  That's all he'd been in the end, a corpse, walking and talking with the voice of the Ravager, another Wade if he'd been given half the chance. 

The face that looked at her now was Darius Quinn, a quiet kid who'd left behind two youngsters with his husband.  Priscilla and Peter.  She knew their names - she knew all names of the kids she'd deprived of a parent; each recorded meticulously in the back of her brain and in the paperwork of the scholarship fund she'd started with all of her back pay from Portal Corp.  It was her own quiet way of providing for the families of the men whose madness she'd ended.  Those kids would have a shot at going somewhere other than Paragon University if they wanted – a chance to get out of this damn city and never look back, because this city crawled inside of you and kept you here if you so much as gave it a chance.  She'd try to impress that on the kid when she'd taken him hunting in Astoria - the people there would never leave, never move, never give up because this City got in your marrow like a parasite and you were willing to die for the idea of it.  She might have run off to California to escape the pristine halls of her parent's shrine in Founder's Falls, but she'd come running back hadn't she?  Maybe not to Founders but to King's Row, a slum to rival Port Oakes except it smelled vaguely better and the trains ran on time and the homeless were less noticeable.

The phone lit up again, insistent she answer the call she'd spent half her life running from. 

"What."  The brick was at her ear now, but she could still see the face of Darius Quinn floating on the backs of her eyelids. 

"Parker? That you?"  She knew the voice – Paul Davis, third in command at Zulu.

"No, m'a fuckin' ghost.  What."

"Why the hell didn't you pick up earlier? Sh*t.  General's about to call it on the team that went out yesterday morning, even though they've only been silent eighteen hours."  The words rang in her ears.  In the 'Shard, you went radio silent for twenty four hours and they started the paperwork on your death benefits so your next of kin wouldn't be left hanging.  No one came back whole after twenty four hours of silence.

"Tha's why you're callin' me?" 

"Yeah.  Get your ass here now."  He didn't acknowledge the slur in her words; to do so would mean he'd have to call someone else and they both knew there was no one else.

"Tell Hammond m'comin'.  Trains ain't runnin' this early.  Gonna take me n'hour."

"Just get here." 

[SedatedAlice]

The world was still spinning as she sat upright in bed with her face in her hands, rubbing away the fact she hadn't had a good night's since the Portals went down and she was still drunk - but a shower and a run would fix most of that before she got to work.  The lamp came on beside the bed, shedding light on the pile of leather and corsets tumbling out of her closet.  Had she really tried on each and every one again to make sure they still fit, even if she had no prospects at ever using the damn things again? 

She'd always appreciated bondage more than the average girl, but Duncan had driven her to this insane need to always be in control.  It had only taken being pinned beneath his overwhelming meta-induced strength as the drunken lust had drowned out his common sense and she begged him to stop but he didn't.  Just that once and the switch in her brain was flipped and she vowed she'd never be made helpless like that again.  She never reported the crime.  She didn't even consider it one - just a learning experience.  To call it what it was would be to admit a weakness she couldn't deal with.  Not now.  Not ever.

No man was to be trusted.

But could she really cling to that assertion now after her mouth had run away with her? She flipped through the messages on her phone.  There it was – two words she sent to him earlier that night.

I'll wait.

It was an acknowledgement of a feeling she thought she'd vanquished when she'd punched Duncan hard enough to break half the bones in her hand.  It was the feeling that a man mattered to her - she knew the timing was crap but she'd wait for him until it wasn't because there was something between them that made her insides squirm pleasantly.  She glared accusingly at the empty side of her bed, as if it were the reason for frustration.   

The cotton sheets unwound themselves from her torso as her feet were carrying off to the bathroom to start the routine that had to happen if she was going to be at all coherent when General Hammond was shouting that the men were lost and she would have to argue the twenty four hour rule with him and vow she'd find them.  She turned the shower on, letting the water run cold as two fingers found the back of her throat, inducing the reflex that would start the cleanse of her system.  Five minutes under the icy water and the world wasn't spinning anymore. 

Ten minutes later she was out the door in her running gear with the duffle bag slung securely across her back.  Her watch said 3:47 am - she'd had less than an hour of sleep before she'd gotten the call.  She was going to have to run to Talos - about thirty minutes to the ferry where she'd get a cup of the worst coffee you'd ever tasted but it was better than nothing. 

Her feet pounded out a steady rhythm on the sidewalk as she ran, freeing her mind to think about the letter she'd hastily written.  She always wrote one when there was the possibility she wasn't coming back; she might be phoenix-bound but if she didn't follow the rules the bond would break and she'd be just another corpse to cry over. So she wrote the letters, included a copy of her will, and she left them in her duffel.  Hammond was a jackass and a worry wart but he always made sure personal effects got back to the person named on forum seventeen twenty one b as the next of kin. 

This letter hadn't been the hardest she'd ever written.  Just the shortest.  A name, followed by two words, and a closing she hoped conveyed every feeling she couldn't write.  She'd scribbled his name on the outside of the envelope, wondering why she'd chosen him - except she had no one else.  Her mother despised her and was living in some god awful dimension she retreated to when the signs were there that the invasion of Praetoria wasn't going to go well.  Her father was dead, buried in Astoria (wondering if he was still in his grave was something she didn't like to dwell on).  Her brother was dead, the first background image on her phone and the one that haunted her the most - and she didn't have friends.  Well.  She didn't used to.

"Are we friends?"

A question she never got a response to - but he'd set her shoulder and listened to her talk about Davenport so she guess it qualified.  Three days earlier she'd redone forum seventeen twenty one b and listed the name he didn't like as her next of kin. He was the only one she trusted anymore.  Beneath his cynicism and despair and that awful way he liked to push everyone away she knew he was a good man.  An honest man.

[SedatedAlice]

Peregrine Island was a shithole with a fresh coat of paint thanks to the illustrious Portal Corporation.  Jogging down the main corridor was usually an invitation to be shot, beaten, stabbed and robbed, but even the bad guys had to sleep - and no one was looking for a blonde in a T-shirt and sweatpants.

Her key card got her access to the building with no fuss, and her retina scan got her keyed into the right location - nine one two seven, Firebase Zulu: Shadow Shard.  She held her breath and walked through; portal travel was a sucker punch to the gut if you weren't expecting it. An exhale and heart beat later she was staring at orange skies and turrets and a dimensional shield that kept the shadows at bay so you could catch a little shut eye if you got the chance.  She sprinted across the metal platforms towards the conference room, praying that in the hour it'd taken her they'd found a signal and heard from the assholes so she could sleep off the rest of her hangover.

The look on the General's face when she walked in told her it was going to be long day.

"We lost contact with Bravo team at oh nine sixteen primal eastern standard yesterday.  Coordinates put them in the caves to the western side of Firebase Zulu.  Mission was recon – there are rumors that Nemesis is making a play for the seals of Ruladak."  The words were out of Davis's lips before she'd even dropped the bag. 

"How many."  Her voice held no hint of the slur anymore.

"Five.  Armed and supplied for three days out in the field."

The General turned to say something, but she cut him off. "Ain't been 24 hours.  I'll go, take a look.  No harm in that, right?"  But she was already out the door, the bag in hand.  She didn't want there to be an argument over resources or time – these were lives and they mattered and she wasn't about to leave them to Nemesis or madness or worse if she could help it.