“Shit, shit, shit!” she panted.
Her breath was heavy and steaming in the cold air. The water splashed against her boots as she ran down dark alleys, panic morphing into adrenaline. She needed to lose them. All Hyaline had told her was to run and try and lose her tail, otherwise, she wasn’t sure what would become of her.
The sound of heavy boots was getting closer and closer. A signal of incoming danger.
“Split up! We can’t let the anomaly escape!” a commanding voice shouted.
Sardonyx was already at her limit and she wasn’t sure how much longer she was going to be able to keep running. Turning a corner, she slipped on the wet concrete before catching herself and pushing forward. The city was a maze and she wasn’t sure if she was actually headed in a new direction or instead just running around in proverbial circles.
In the short amount of time she had been present in Neos, she managed to make herself spectacularly known. Not of her volition, of course. She had been determined to remain under the radar as she searched for a way home. The less attention she brought to herself the easier it was going to be to leave, but since arriving it seemed that the divine flow of the world gave the feeling that it had other ideas in mind on how to further mess with her.
- A day prior -
“Okay… I’m not saying you’re insane, but you must realize how all of what you just said sounds, right?” the young blond woman said to her.
“Look I know it sounds crazy! But this isn’t my world. My world has barely started moving over to electric cars and you guys have ones that fly!?” the young woman sitting across from the blonde exclaimed as she mussed up her, already, messy blue hair.
“Okay. Then riddle me this. How did you get here?” the blonde asked.
“I- I don’t know… The last thing I remember was feeling dizzy and my vision going blurry”
The blond let out a heavy sigh. This was not how she expected her night to go. She hoped to close up her shop after a very fruitful day, make her way back upstairs to her home, and have a relaxing dinner and some tea. Not bring in a mildly deranged stray who was lost and far from home.
“Okay then. Let’s start with something easier. What’s your name?” she asked “I’ll go first. My name is Hyaline”.
Grey eyes glanced over at Hyaline before quickly looking away.
Should she give her name? Would that even be helpful in this situation?
“Well?” Hyaline pressed “Surely you know what your name is. You don’t go by some kind of serial number, right?”
Shaking her head, she chewed on her lip before she uttered the first thing that came to mind…
“Sardonyx”
“Sardonyx?”
“Yep… My name is Sardonyx” she said somewhat firmly.
“It’s a good name,” Hyaline said with a small smile “Okay then Nyx… What are we going to do with you?”
- Back to Present -
Skidding to a halt, Sardonyx looked out onto a busy street. She could try and lose them here. It was so crowded that it would be no problem getting lost in the madness of the night. Pulling her hood up, she made sure her jacket was wrapped around her securely before stepping out onto the street. Shoving her hands in her pocket, she tried reigning in her breathing and calming her racing heart as she made her way down the crowded street in search of a safe place to park it for the night or at least a couple of hours.
Behind her, there was some commotion with some of the crowd as her pursuers finally made it out onto the street.
She dared not look back. Instead, she listened as people shouted and exclaim as they were grabbed and shoved around.
“Neos Police Force! We require your cooperation! Do not resist!” a gruff voice shouted.
Sardonyx kept her pace steady as she maneuvered her way through the crowd, trying desperately not to draw attention to herself.
“Spread out! Check everyone’s ID chip!” said the same gruff voice.
“Yes, commander!”
‘Oh fuck…’ she thought.
If there was something she most certainly didn’t have was an ID chip. Knowing the clock was ticking, she sped up her pace and gently started to shove by people. The noise of the crowds' resentment at being treated like potential criminals was rising as more and more officers appeared and began to push into the crowd.
The hum of electric engine turbines had her looking up as police hovercars slowed, shining down floodlights. Cursing under her breath, she continued to keep her head down. If she was lucky someone would snap and start a fight with the cops and they would completely turn on them and forget her for a moment. A brief moment where she could disappear.
The loud sound of a body landing behind her startled her out of her thoughts. Slowly, she looked back and was met with the armored chest of someone quite large. More thumps were heard around her as more of these armored soldiers jumped from their hovering cars and into the crowd. People shouted obscenities as they were roughly grabbed and had clothes ripped away from their forearms in order to be scanned. They were several confirmation beeps that rang through the air as people's identifications were confirmed.
Breathing a little more heavily, Sardonyx cried out as her left arm was roughly grabbed by the brute now in front of her. Her jacket roughly moved out of the way in order for the man to use his scanning device.
There was no confirmation beep, just silence as her arm was checked for an ID.
“Anamoly found. Lack of ID chip confirmed. No cybernetic enhancements detected” the soldier said stoically “Under the Neos City Law and Codes you are now under arrest. Your destruction has been scheduled”.
“My what?!” Sardonyx shouted, “The fuck it is!”
She struggled and tried to get her arm out of the soldier's grip, but it was to no avail. The man was at least a foot taller than her and built like a brick shithouse. She could try to kick and punch, but she knew that body armor would cause her more damage than she would to it.
“I haven’t done anything wrong! Fuck! I don’t even know where I am!” she continued to shout.
The soldier did not respond and instead began to drag her towards a landing hovercar. Digging her heels into the ground, she tried her best to keep from being pulled along like some rag doll all the while trying to wiggle her arm free.
“Let go!” she screamed.
She started feeling the bubbling of energy in her belly start to build as she became angrier and angrier.
“I FUCKING SAID LET GO!” she screamed as she yanked her whole body back.
A sudden rush of air and a soft humming sound. She began to fall back as she forced this soldier to stumble. Her body never met the floor and instead, she and the soldier began to fall. Darkness encased them and she felt her stomach do some kind of summersault. Then, light.
The city appeared once again behind the soldier, but now it was beneath them?
Nyx wasn’t sure what at all was happening, so she did what came to mind in a split second as the darkness faded around them. Grabbing a hold of the soldier's arm she lifted her legs and planted them on his chest as they fell from the sky and onto the ground.
Giving her best fighting cry, she made sure to land right on his chest as his body hit the concrete. Gravity does the majority of the work for her and time feels as if it has slowed. All that followed was the sickening sound of metal crunching and her scream as momentum launched her forward.
Tucking as best she could she landed on her shoulder as she rolled and slid on the concrete. With the adrenaline still running high, she quickly got up and stumbled away from the scene. Unaware of the surprised looks and the horror left behind in her wake.
She ran and ran and ran until fatigue and nausea caught up to her and the sickening realization of what she must have potentially just done sunk in.
Leaning against the wall of a darkened alleyway, she heaved up all of what Hyaline had given her to eat until there was nothing left. The pain in her shoulder began to bloom much more furiously as the adrenaline faded away and left behind the sticky cloying feeling of anxiety and fear.
“I need to go home” she murmured “I have to go home… let me go home… please… ”.
She rested her head against the brick, the coolness of it soothing her heated and sweaty forehead. Remaining there for a few moments longer, she caught her breath and tried her best to reign in her emotions. Sniffling, she pushed away and took a few unsteady steps back.
“Let me go home… I want to go home” she continued to plead.
The sound was back… A rush of wind and the steady hum of energy.
Slowly, she turned around and was met with a glimmering cloud of swirling smoke? Mist? No, it looked a little more solid? She wasn’t sure what she was looking at…
Cautiously approaching it, she reached out with her bruised arm and threaded her fingers through the mist. It felt comforting in that moment, almost familiar, like a friend…
Pushing her arm in more, she gasped as her arm was engulfed instead of just passing through.
“This is… not scientifically possible…”
She pushed more before her whole body was encased as she gently fell forward.
The portal quickly swirled closed and disappeared. Leaving behind nothing in its wake.
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