Piercing was the blue of the eyes that gazed back at you from the grubby mirror, piercing and defiant, regardless of the clear signs of fatigue that that you felt, that manifested themselves as plain as day upon your pale features. Those features were one that had been described before as an echo of the nordic beauty.
Beautiful was not how you would have described yourself, though others disagreed, you believed yourself to be more average and those that held you to be beautiful to be aiming to win more than just your approval.
Well, apart from your father - when he said that you were a beautiful young lady you could never quite bring yourself to argue with him as there was something, just something, about the tone of his voice that told you that you had never ceased to be his little princess.
Your stomach lurched with the train, the taste of bile in the back of your throat reminding you that you had never been one for travel as a gentle curve in the track threatened to be your undoing.
You missed your father, your mother too, even your sister - right now you'd have done anything to be back home with them.
Well, almost anything - you still wouldn't let your sister play with your things.
It wasn't that you didn't love her, it was that she had a habit of misplacing them.
She was only five though, and well, you couldn't help but feel jealous that despite how things were financially strained back home, that your father was intent on treating her like a little princess, too.
"Ugh, my hair's a mess," you muttered to nobody in particular as your fingers ran through blonde locks, attempting to straighten out hours of what your hoodie had inflicted upon them. The disgust in your reflections features was evident enough, telling you that this, this minor concern, was the thing you needed to latch onto at this moment to quell your anxiety, to try and fight that growing nausea that you felt deep down.
Straighten, twirl, adjust.
Muss, tease, flick back.
Minute after long minutes trickled by as your hair slowly became more presentable, as you made yourself look like you were a cut above the average brat on the streets. You should have removed your hoodie, but in doing so you'd doom yourself to another fix job for your hair.
Your brushes were back home and your hindsight was perfect - you'd been told to come as you were, that everything you needed during your evaluations would be provided.
You had your imitation brand music player though, so you had that going for you.
The earbud headphones were plucked from your pocket, threaded up under the bulk of your old hoodie and placed about your neck for later. At least between the endless tests they were bound to make you do, you'd have something to occupy yourself with.
"We're nearin' the station, might want to 'urry up in there," came the voice of the officer on the other side of the bathroom door, providing a sharp reminder that you were about to hit one of the... Nicer... Stations on the outskirts of London.
A quick glance out of the windows was stolen over the dimly illuminated scenery, allowing you to see some of the outlying housing that had been erected fairly recently to accomodate the ever growing capital city.
Come to London, see the birthplace of the new age they said.
It was a load of shit, it was an excuse to push a new calendar and rebrand everything periodically when things grew stale. An event back in victorian times, a war, an excuse to overblow the events surrounding the appearance of the dark creatures that had frankly, grown tame over the following years.
Vultures, dangerous as they were, had become more inclined to scavenge from bins and eat pidgeons than attack people and then enlightened had gone around telling people that they were the immortal sons and daughters of the new age, an age without gods.
They were just some legitimised cult, one that had gained a position of power through methods nobody quite understand - one that the current government wanted to cut funding to and promised to get rid of, as their election promises said.
Yet every time they were questioned on the matter they said it came second to things such as the NHS and unemployment.
The story never changed, only the faces.
"I'll be out in a minute," you called back as you pulled your shoulder length hair back behind your ears, paused, then allowed it to fall back into position where it would as it framed your face once more. You looked awful with your hair pulled back that way.
Click went the lock on the door as you stepped from it, looking frankly little better than before.
"Ah, there y' are," came the voice of one of the officers - both of them were present now, both of them stood ready in their standard issue body armour with their faces partially obscured by standard issue helmets. With the helmets you couldn't differntiate between the pair as you hadn't paid them attention enough to do so, all you could hope to do was use the serial number on their shoulder as a guide to tell you who was...
Six two three-alpha-one... No, neither of them started that way, it was a lost cause.
"Ever been to London?" the other asked as they placed a hand upon your shoulder, filling you with a sense of dread as you were marched, with all eyes upon you, towards the carriage that you had come from initially.
"No, I almost went to scotland once though. Thought better of it," you laughed nervously, though neither of the men reacted in the slightest.
"Okay, protocol dictates that as you're a... What do they call it, a blip?"
"Nah, the official term fer them is unknown, 'till they've tested them. Blip's jus' the term th' people who find them use, somethin' about radar," the other responded to the first, as if you were not there.
"Right, you're an unknown right now, got picked up by the boys and girls in the special division-"
"That's not-" the second started, only to be dismissed with a wave of the first's hand.
"Putting it how she'll understand it, do you think usin' all the internal lingo'll click with 'er?"
"I guess not, bu-"
"Shut it. Now, where was I. Right, special boys and girls picked you up, think there's somethin' to you. You get brought down here, ran through some aptitude tests. If you're actually special, we give you a nice job suitin' your talents, good pay, housin' provided for y' till you can get a place of y' own."
"And if nothing's special about me?" you asked, feeling a rising sense of unease in the pit of your stomach once more.
"We send you back home with a little certificate sayin' words to the effect of you're not special, so next time th' boys show up, you can tell them t' fuck-"
"Language," the second snapped as the first no doubt glared at him.
"You get to show them your papers and tell them to leave you alone unless they think they're onto something. Sometimes positives look like false positives during initial tests. Don't like letting people slip through the cracks. Anyway, if you ain't special, you get sent home like that, with a little compensation for the time wasted based on the average wage. Can't be stiffin' people out of potential earnings and such, you'd have the guilds up in arms."
With this ringing in your ears, the train pulled into the station, a concrete and steel shell that had been erected in a hurry by the contractor willing to cut the most corners for cost. Flaking blue paint had been daubed over the steel girders that arched up and over the tracks, bracing the concrete platforms with what looked like temporary shelters made permanant.
"She's not lookin' too great. Slap the cuffs on'er," came the one officers voice, prompting you to look back at them, your expression questioning why.
"Trust me on this, kid, it ain't protocol an' they'll be pissed that we made a snowflake ride all th' way 'ere in cuffs. They'll bend over backward t' make sure y' ain't goin' t' report shit," came the mans voice as he reached for his belt, retriving a pair of scuffed looking magnetic cuffs.
You couldn't really resist, so you knew it was in your best interests to comply in this scenario - it wasn't your first time wearing these, either, for that matter. You'd been in trouble for minor things before, been cuffed and secured against a railing before being let off with a warning.
You were truly bad.
Trespassing on abandoned private property.
Slippery slope to murder, no doubt.
The cuffs fastened securely about your wrists as the powerful magnets were activated, then against each other as your arms were crossed comfortably before you, leaving you stood there before the door awaiting your ultimate fate.
Would those at the station be as kind as you hoped, or was reality about to come crashing down about you once more?
Clack, clack... Clack.
The train came to a halt as the muffled speakers outside warbled their announcement, Feh-taain-fahm-naaf... No, you couldn't make out any of it beyond that, but it didn't matter. Suits and officers were approaching your carriage from the outside, suits, sunglasses and bad haircuts.
Click went the door leading to the outside world, followed by screaming, anger and yelling.
"What the hell do you idiots think you're doing!?" screamed the lead suit, a scrawny man with sparse brown hair and cheap sunglasses. He wore black sunglasses at night, just because... No, you shouldn't distract yourself with pop culture. Literal pop in this case. "Protocol dictates that you treat unknowns with respect, not make them ride the bloody trains down here shackled like criminals. They're our future, not some... Some juvenile perp!"
The officers behind you grunted something in response, prompting a second suit to step forward. "Look," the second snapped, "We don't need excuses, protocol is there to stop incidents from happening. You idiots could have caused another scenario - how would you have liked that, face plastered all over the news as the incompetants you are?"
Further mumbled excuses.
"Now, Alyssa was it?" came the first's words as he turned towards you, the disgust etched across his features softening visible as he waved one of his accompanying officers over to release your hands. "We're very sorry that this happened, they were supposed to look after you and keep you safe. If you want to make a complaint, we'll ensure that they're-" he paused to glare at the two. "-investigated and punished accordingly. As we can't in good faith take you from here to the facilities after such a major... Pardon the language, but after a fuck-up of this nature, we're going to postpone things until the morning, bring in a..."
The man paused, turning to the other for a brief moment as if waiting for affirmation over whatever it was that he was about to say - affirmation that came in the form of the slightest of nods. "We'll bring in someone to take you to get something to eat, give you a chance to relax. Special or not, protocol is there to ensure things like this aren't supposed to happen, we're very, very sorry."
And with that the suits danced out of the way, their song and dance routing leaving you with new officers, new serial numbers.
New surroundings.
The cuffs, as briefly as they had been on you, had yet to make you uncomfortable as they were removed - and this was something that one of the new officers took note of with a soft chuckle, the visored face beneath the helmet turning to glance at the ones behind you. "You two are getting soft," came the mans words, before a hand was placed upon your shoulder.
And then like the lamb, you were marched to...
No, this wasn't your slaughter, but it felt like it.
"We'll have a liason up here soon," came the voice of one of the suits, as they paced up to, then alongside you as the officers escorted you towards this places VIP seating - the sole ratty looking bench that if appearences were anything to go by, suggested that nobody had urinated upon it.
Recently.
"Do you have any requests," the suit started, as he oh so graciously ensured that you'd been seated comfortably.
"We could arrange for you to go for something to eat, or... Anything else. Within reason, of course."
You had reached the outskirts of London, there was a 'you are here' map no doubt somewhere inside the station telling you just how much of a dreary hellhole this area was, how all the interesting things were deeper in the city - but this didn't mean you couldn't take advantage of this moment in some manner.
The question was, how?---
((On a completely OOC note... it's great to see that you're back and writing again. I loved reading through your past suggestion game, and I'm really excited to see where this one goes.))
Thanks! Hopefully this one'll provide satisfactory closure for the other - though it may take just a little to get going in full swing itself.
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Topic: I told them I could be anything... (Read 27813 times)