Day 01 Again - Tumblr Posts
Again
It wasn't supposed to be like this.
This time it was supposed to be a win!
SHE was the one going in to con them! To catch Londes and rake in all that bounty and start to whittle down her entirely unjust debt.
How the fuck had it all gotten twisted around? How had she become the victim AGAIN?
She was Faye Fucking Valentine, dammit!
It had seemed so simple. Masquerade as one of many gullible fools seeking enlightenment or absolution or whatever the hell these people were enticed by. She just wanted a life free of debt. A slate scraped clean. A fucking chance at making her own mistakes instead of being held hostage by bullshit beyond her control.
The decrepit building should have been the first red flag. And, truthfully, it had been. Her hackles had been raised.
But it had also made sense. If you were conning folks out of a fortune by getting them to sign over their life rights and whatever... tricking people into paying out the ass for the "latest and greatest" gaming technology... why wouldn't you be holed up in some abandoned warehouse waiting for the dust to settle before emerging to lord your riches over the masses like the mastermind you were?
So she had swallowed her fear and ventured in. Crept past the rooms with doors blown off or otherwise unhinged, slipped underneath the tentacles of technology that reached down from the dislodged ceiling tiles to dangle in the air of hallways and vacant rooms alike. The sense of ill ease had ramped up when she came across the first body. But she hadn't been without protection. Her trusty Glock always had her back - was always tucked away behind her back until the gun was needed, in fact.
Who was the corpse? Who knew? The body was relatively fresh, so to speak. The air of the interior of the building was thickly cloying with the disturbing scent of decay, though this particular body showed no signs of that yet. So he wasn't the first, whoever he had been. But he certainly hadn't been killed in whatever disaster had left most of this quadrant of the city in disarray. Someone else searching for the man behind the program. Someone else hunting the bounty that Faye herself was after.
Her heartbeat pounded in her chest, all her senses straining. Perhaps it had been an overconfident oversight to chase this tech-whiz, this supposed guru, on her own. Like so many times before, the dollar signs of the bountyhead had filled her mind with all the ways she could spend said money after turning this yahoo in. Don't count your chickens before they hatch, wasn't that the saying? Well, Faye had the tendency to not only count her chickens but to daydream up all the ways she'd cook those birds too.
And now, poised on the brink of success... or else about to plunge into the time of doom that had met the other corpses she was encountering... now she was feeling regrets.
And... something more than that. There was a whine in the air, not quite like Ein's favorite way to voice his complaints... something more like... a high pitched hum, perhaps? It tickled at her fragmented memory. Something to do with televisions?
The combination of the sound-that-wasn't-exactly-a-sound and the rotting flesh of half a dozen unfortunate souls was beginning to take its toll.
Without warning her vision blurred. Stumbling, panting with abrupt fear, Faye continued forward. This was a mistake, her mind told her. You've fallen into a trap again... again... again...
Suddenly she was terrified right down to her boots. The enormity of the error loomed over her like the damaged ceiling tiles so far above that they were lost in shadow. She was a stranger in a strange land, utterly alone. No one knew where she was. No one was looking for her. No one would be coming to save her. Alone... alone... alone...
Alone again. Tricked again. No hope for you here, no hope at all...
Fumbling lethargically for her COMM device, Faye struggled to keep standing. She wouldn't give in to whatever was happening. She couldn't let this bastard win. Just a few more paces and she'd be in the room where all the intact cords seemed to be leading. Oh, wouldn't Ed be overjoyed to discover whatever lay at the end of this maze of wire? Ed... maybe just... Ed... if she called Ed, well, maybe she wouldn't have to share the bounty very much. Ed never cared about woolongs. Ed might be able to unravel the mystery... or at least let Spike and Jet know that...
"Help... I need... help..." Faye activated the COMM as she managed to enter the room at the end of the hall, dread tingling down her spine. So many bodies.
Was she about to become the latest? It wasn't fair. It wasn't FAIR!
The COMM made a little noise as the connection was made. A sliver of hope shot through her and Faye grasped onto consciousness desperately. "I'm... in a little... trouble..."