Continuity Corporations : Chapter 4 - Narcolepsy

 

MARCH 12 2021 

The Girl huddled herself to retain any warmth that remained clung to her frail body, pulling her legs up to her chest and wrapping her arms around her knees as her sister pulled a fluffy, damp blanket over her back. The clothes they had been given – sitting surrounded by others alike them in a thin-walled hut of frozen wood, antiquated and brittle – were too little to stave off the cold; men and women with white puffy vests had came in and threw down a handful of blankets as dusk had set in, to be ripped from their bodies when dawn came once more. It was a temporary reprieve. 

The hut itself was of cruel construction. The Girl nor her sister were sure what it was – perhaps a warehouse or shed? The walls were utterly thin, looking to be made of little more than tree bark, glistened with ice and spats of frost and serving to provide no protection form the wind and cold that howled in through the valley. The structure itself was old, almost ancient if the Sister had to make a guess. There were windows and a door, yet the glass had been torn down and replaced with boards of more recent, beige-coloured timber, and the door yawned empty like a crevasse in the wall. The structure was cruelly cold, yet the door – or what remained of it – was ever-open and that was the greatest cruelty of all. Beyond the doorway listed light, amber and yellow; a golden glitter that scattered atop the mashed snow into a reflective concourse of diamond light. The Girl looked at the snow, deep and dark bags beneath her eyes. In her delirious mind, that glittering was the most wonderful thing, the only beauty in the current moment. The others around her, ailing and ill, were dirtied and bruised. There were a handful of others, not as many as had been in the hut from the prior night yet surely more than would be there tomorrow. The darkness ebbed, displaced by the golden light that glittered and glowed through the doorway. Some slept atop the floor of concrete tiles, others lying in unease and horror. Some wept. Others remained silent. The Sister clung to the Girl, who stared beyond the door.

 The hut was the only structure to be made out of wood in the complex. Through her brief jaunts across the courtyard the Girl had seen the others: flat-topped pedestals of concrete that merged into the ground and looked hazy, as if distant, with doors of metal and glass. That was where everyone else lived, it seemed, and was where those torn from the hut were taken. There were three such buildings. One lay directly ahead, facing the hut on the far end of the courtyard. The others sat to the left and right of the courtyard, the three buildings and the hut forming the corners of a square with the courtyard between them a gap of snow and tile, the concrete floor covered in frost and marred by the rough footsteps of the many who crossed its surface.

"Fucking hell." Spoke a voice, gruff and grim in the evening silence, "Why'd we get put out here."

The Girl looked up, moving her head to peer around the curve of the door-frame. Her sister moved to a side and shot a cursory glance across the other dozen in the hut, all asleep or still. She leaned too, her taller frame granting her a better view of what lay around the corner.

There were two people leaning against the outer wall of the hut, dressed in the white puffy vests and large cargo trousers those who did not rest in the hut wore. Large staves hung at their side – black metal with a tip like a birdcage, a shape alike a lightbulb within it. The Girl glanced down across the form of the baton and flinched. Her Sister recognised this, the flinching motion abated with a gentle hand around her shoulder. The Girl was pale and thin, gaunt and of short brown hair with a tired, blank face. She was young, a child, likely below the age of ten. Her Sister did not know how old she was, nor her name, and was much older than her. Perhaps at some point the Sister, had she met the Girl under more favourable circumstances, would have been a role model figure. A mother, an aunt or a teacher, perhaps, for she bore a studious and generous personality, the Girl wrapped in the blankets of both as the Sister squatted shaking and cold beside her. Her flesh was similarly pale, hair a tawny brown colour and face gaunt and slim. With her heightened age – perhaps similar to the Girl's absent mother – she was taller and stronger than the child, with her body clad in the same black overalls that everyone else in the hut wore.

"I know," said one of the figures leaning against the hut, head turned away from the door-frame, "Fucking freezing, isn't it?"

"Meant to be colder tomorrow."

"Did I tell you about the door?" the gruff man said, sighing and turning to the woman. She leered at him, seeming uninterested in partaking in his converse.

The other one grunted and shrugged, turning to glance through the doorway and catching the leer of the Girl and her Sister. He sneered at the older woman.

"The fuck are you looking at, bitch?" he snarled, face grizzled and gruff with stubble and hair. The other one leaned forward, stepping beside the doorframe as the former loomed in the gap. It didn't matter that no door swung upon the hinges. No-one could leave regardless.

The man grunted and groped at his toolbelt, finding the long handle of the black metal stick as the Sister shied away, voice stuttering and mumbling in apology as the Girl remained huddled, motionless.

 He swung up on the staff and beat down upon her Sister, the caged lightbulb flickering as a snapping jolt of sound rung out, jostling a few of the sleeping huddled awake as the Girl flinched momentarily. Her Sister screamed and kicked, the man grabbing her leg and shouting expletives as he then cracked down on her shin, the snapping jolt quietened by a shrill scream.

The other one, a bald woman, lingered by the doorframe and watched as the sordid beating took place. She seemed not to notice the Girl staring at her, eyes darting from the glittering snow to her bulk silhouette. It became apparent to the Girl that there were parts of the woman – and the male guard too, she supposed, that were bare. Arms and legs were covered: the former in a thick thermal suit that lay beneath the puffy vest, the latter in baggy cargo trousers tucked into the boots. The boots covered the feet, gloves over the palms. Yet the gloves were fingerless; the fingers remained bare, as did the neck, face and head.

The Girl blinked slowly, tired, and looked down to the ground as her Sister screamed.

Inside the concrete buildings the air was warmer and the lights were sharper, white light casting across the cold concrete corridors as the Girl, her Sister and a handful of others walked slowly, lead on by two of the puffy vest-wearing guards, hands clutching the black metal sticks that sparked and snapped. Her Sister bore a few more bruises, now, and a deep and gloaming emotion festered behind her eyes. Everything was blurry to the Girl, however, and her legs seemed to move independent of her. The corridors of concrete, flat and square with sharpened angles, swopped beside her in a blur of perpetual motion. Gashes in the wall permeated the hallway with light, white and brilliant, that burned the eyes of the Girl as her tired legs forced her past. She winced, yet the searing radiance imprinted itself upon the back of her eyelids and dots flickered across her vision. Everything hurt, to a degree, with burns and bruises across her flesh, a tired weight in her eyes and a dull aching pain everywhere else. Her legs hurt as they moved and her neck felt sore and swollen, as if something was clinging to her at the nape – below where her scalp fell fuzzy and flat. She shut her eyes and her mind waned, legs continuing to move and body continuing to ache as consciousness fell. Everything felt distant, for a moment. Sounds of walking and industry delegated themselves to a distant and afar portion of her mind, where they hung and echoed like spirits as the light dulled itself in her eyes and the world fell beneath her.

Before unconsciousness slipped from her and the world, terrible and cold, came back into view, the Girl had a dream of quiet solace. She was alone, standing, in a green dress that would have been too big for her at her current age of seven years. Yet her brown hair was longer, her shoulders broader; arms more muscular and body taller than before. It was the dress her mother used to wear, patched together from fragmented memories, and she was older. The colours were dimmer yet the air was warmer and the sky was blue above, a river flowing ahead and bisecting the land around her into a small island of sorts, a flat plane of long grass surrounded by the rolling hills of valley peaks, trees knotted by brambles alike castle towers around her, guarding the moat at established points across the landscape and protecting her isle with their thorns. She sat, alone, as the sky rolled above her, and jerked sharply when she awoke. The coldness seemed colder, then, and the smiling face of the woman before her – who stood, bent over, before the Girl and her peers – seemed deeply, deeply unnerving.

It was as if the woman was trying to be kindly, trying to replicate the warm smile of the Girl's own mother yet failing at some uncanny, unseen hurdle. She was pretty in the way the Girl's mother had been pretty, and the Girl cringed internally as her face melded with the fragmented memories that jostled in her mind. Had her mother looked like this? It seemed impossible to tell – her face was sallow, pale in skin and sharp in features, and for a moment she saw her mother their, that horrible image of the grey-haired and one-eyed woman before her anchoring itself into her memories like a tumour affixed onto her body. It spread like a disease. She could not remember her mother's face, yet now she saw this woman. Her hair was grey-silver and long, tied into a plait that rested beside the shoulder of her green trench coat jacket. She did not wear the puffy vest – she was not a guard. Yet the guards stood either side of her in reverence. Was she their mother? No, she was too young, and the guards looked too different. Perhaps the woman told them what to do. That seemed a reasonable assertion to the Girl. The woman's smile dropped and she straightened her back. She was not as tall as the guards, yet her presence seemed to dwarf them, the cold and empty room being a large hollow cube of concrete without visible doors or windows that felt all the bigger because of her. How did they get here? The dream formed a patchwork blank in the Girl's mind that obfuscated that brief passage of time, and her eyes darted to the others either side of her. Her Sister stood to her left and a stranger: another young girl, this one seemingly in her teenage years, to her right. They stood straight, arms to their side, faces utterly blank. The backs of their head had been shaven just as the Girl knew her own to have been, a metal plate grafted messily amidst the shaven hair. The Girl looked back to her Sister. It felt as if she had bene glued in place, arms paralysed and legs aching and still. Her Sister similarly bore a metal plate at her neck, visible like a piercing as she stared straight ahead. All of a sudden, the back of the Girl's neck felt sore.

She looked ahead. Where were the guards? They seemed to have moved, as had the pale-haired woman who had poisoned the Girl's memory of her mother. Her voice was visible. She was talking down the line, to another woman towards the right of the Girl, standing beside the shaven teenage woman to her right. Time dilated for a moment and the Girl felt lightheaded. Everything snapped bright, and a fuzziness of the mind set in. The pale haired woman was now beside her, talking to the teenager.

"What's your name?" She asked. Her voice was stern and posh-sounding, cutting deep into the bitter air.

"E-Elise." The teenager responded. Her own voice was weak and quiet.

 "And when were you born?"

"January 16th, 1998."

 Sounds fell distant once more. There were other questions, some medical in nature, others pertaining to things that the Girl had no knowledge about. Everything blurred, and then the Teenager was gone. Her eyes darted left and her Sister was gone too. Only the woman stood before her; she turned to the guards.

"You can go."

And they left. The room seemed colder now, more open. Exposed. Empty. What was this used for? The thought had not crossed the Girl's mind, yet it now – in her stress and tire – ebbed into question. It was empty, utterly square and of concrete construction. Lit in a bright white light, yet the Girl could not tell from where. There were no lights she could see, and the room was enclosed.

 The two guards stepped away, and a section of the wall opened up, a panel seemingly forming from the smooth grey surface and sliding to a side to reveal a dark and tight corridor. The panel sealed and the woman turned to face her. She bent over, hands on her thighs, leaning to get down to the Girl's level. Again, that face. Part pretty and part unnerving, motherly yet uncanny, one eye sealed behind a silver eye-patch, the other emerald green and leering deeply.

 She smiled, and a shiver fluttered down the Girl's back, as if she could feel more memories of her mother get corrupted by her presence.

 

"You know," the woman said, her voice considerably softer yet sharp nonetheless, "...that thing in your neck? It's impossible to disobey what we want you to do whilst it remains there." A pause split between them; "...but, of course, you don't have to obey the orders that aren't there.

The Girl did not know why the silver-haired woman had said that. Those words were like a poison that seeped into her mind, and she wondered if they had been orders in and of themselves: a coded command or the instigator for a mentally-activated intrusion. Yet her neck felt sore: as the day passed in narcoleptic amnesia, and as the Girl sat with her Sister in the hut, it felt like a tumour upon her back. The sun set. The puffy-vested guards threw in the blankets, thin and wiry. The Girl huddled beside her Sister.

 "Are you alright?" Her Sister said, wrapping her hands around the Girl's shaking shoulders. She nodded quickly.

"I saw you fall asleep," the Sister spoke, soft and quiet, "You looked pained."

The Girl nodded. Her Sister pulled an odd expression, perhaps one of annoyance, and darted a look towards the open crevasse of the doorframe. Shed from the lamp-posts, golden light was glittering upon snow, and two figures leant against the external wall of the hut. It was a temptation, it seemed, yet something surely stopped any from taking into its grasp. Her neck ached.

 There was weeping, soft and shallow. As the Sister contemplated the Girl looked beyond her to the source of the noise; it was the teenager with the shaven head, Elise. She sobbed.

There were less in the hut, the dozen or so from the night before having thinned to about half. The Girl watched as a few of them lay still, some sitting or crouching, all dejected and silent. She watched as Elise stood up, legs shaking and bruised as the blanket fell from her shoulders. She lurched forward, wailing, and the two guards turned their heads from the wall. The gruff man went to move, yet the woman pushed him back, as if tired or ignorant. Elise rushed forward. She passed beneath the doorframe, froze, and clattered to the snow beneath. Her limbs seized, sobs choking into clasped grunts as muscular contractions halted all motion and movement. The woman guard stepped towards the body, living and frozen, and poked Elise with her foot.

"Fucking hell." She muttered, turning to the gruff man. "It's freezing, isn't it?"

"Mhmm." He didn't even look into the hut, affixed on Elise and the shaven woman. "Door seized up earlier. Had to break a chunk of ice from it."

"Really?" the woman asked, hooking her arms beneath Elise's body and lifting her up with a grunt. She turned around and, for a moment, the Girl caught sight of Elise's face. Snow peppered her features, clinging from the tumble to the ground. Her eyes were open, wet and teary and locked towards the Girl for a split-second as the woman swooped in her turn.

The gruff man grunted.

 

"Is it always this cold?"

 "Oh yeah."

The woman started to trudge across the snow towards the leftmost building, looking back to the gruff man for a moment and gesturing towards the metal door of the concrete building. He stepped forward, not even darting a glance to the others in the hut, and walked over to the door.

The Girl's neck felt sore, itching, and her small fingers glanced across it to the source of her pain. The pain had grown greatly since the silver haired woman had spoke to her, a cause for concern in the Girl's idea that what she had said had been some sort of coded message or veiled command. No-one else seemed to hurt as she did, never spoke of the pain or grunted or wailed at the bodily intrusion. Indeed, her fingers touched something cold beneath the shaven nape of her neck, diamond-shaped, smooth and tough. It felt like metal, the points at which it melded into her skin where the itchiness and soreness was rampant. Her legs killed, still aching from the zombie-like walking in a dull background pain. Her Sister looked to her, then to the thing at the back of her neck. She reached back to her own silver diamond, similarly embedded into the flesh, and seemed surprised when she found it. As the Girl pressed down, the soreness grew greatly; she drew her hand back with a snap, then in one quick motion, dug her fingernail under the silver diamond, feeling a sharp sting when the thin metal plate separated from her flesh, and tore it from her skin. It clattered to the ground, backside wet with blood, and the ache in her legs stopped.

"Fucking hell." The gruff man slid his keycard down the entry lock, the metal door whirring as some unseen mechanism churned, the door remaining stationary nonetheless. The woman tutted, jostled the paralysed Elise in her arms, and turned to the man, speaking something unheard to the Girl and her Sister as the man marched elsewhere, dipping out of sight behind the concrete wall as the woman stood in silence.

It was as if a flip had switched in the Girl's body. Her muscles had ached before, her legs and neck and back sore, an assumed effect of her lack of sleep that had ended as soon as the metal diamond had been torn from her neck. She held her hands before her face, breath fogging in the cold as frost settled atop the purple blanket wrapped around her. Everything felt more supple, her joints more flexible even as the cold bit down hard and sharp.

 The Girl looked up to the two guards, still standing by the metal door, the woman still holding the paralysed Elise as the gruff man trudged back, clutching something in a half-gloved hand. It was not the black metal pole of the baton but something else entirely, long and slender and thinner than those snapping truncheons. A small section of it was black, the small handle at its base, yet the rest of the slender pole was red and tipped with a great metal arc, curved and serrated like the stinger of some horrible insect. He stood beside the woman and raised it up, bringing it down upon mechanical hinges that protruded from the metal door. Ice glistening across their surface shattered like glass as the metal pick came down upon them, the man smashing down a few more times before wiping the residual crystals away with his hand. Trying the keycard again, the door slid open, and the woman slinked inside, dragging Elise to an unseen chamber.

The man with the ice pick stood by the door, swinging it shut with his free hand as the other clutched the malicious tool.

The Girl inched forward towards the doorframe, her Sister clinging to her purple blanket in an attempt to pull her away. Yet with an unseen strength, the Girl darted forward, passed the threshold, and touched her hand upon the snow. There was no change; no muscular contraction. No paralysis. The ache had abated entirely and her limbs felt free from control.

The snow felt different on her hands; she had not felt for some time. That quantity of time, that temporal distance, was unknown to her, blending into the monochrome washes of sleep-in-waking and distant thought. It was a prickling sensation across her hands and the brightness of the light scattering upon it made her wince. Her Sister came up behind her, lifting the Girl to her feet as neither ushered a word. No-one else was awake or aware in the hut, all resting in melancholy patience, as the ice pick guard stood by the door

Cold – it was cold underfoot, and the two observed their surroundings. The concrete complex seemed to have been crafted atop a pedestal of sorts, a ledge with stairs that swooped down to the left beside the beside the building that Elise had been taken into. The stairs were covered in snow, difficult to see in the white blankness of the artificially-lit night.

A gabble rang out nearby, a squawking that split through the silence of the night. A loud noise; the Girl clasped her hands around her ears and the ice pick guard jumped alert. It was a siren of sorts, whooping and technical-sounding, masked behind the wail of a more traditional air raid screech. He swung upon his heel, pick in hand, and faced the two young women standing before the hut. There was a silence as the siren screamed, as the man locked eyes with the Sister as his face curled into anger. A moment of confusion passed through him yet was abated by that loathing expression: he lurched forward with stark speed and swung the pick, the Sister scooping up the Girl into her arms as the harsh edge of the ice pick cleaved down across her.

 Coddled into the Sister's chest, her arms wrapped tight around her, the Girl head and felt little. There was a rocking and the world spun, a shrill scream as the ice pick cut into the sister. The Girl's arms were wrapped around her Sister's shoulders and something warm and wet trickled down across the back of her hand. The sister lurched and it seemed like the two would fall over, the Girl shutting her eyes tightly as she rocked back and forth. One of the Sister's legs came up off the ground, the woman letting out a grunt as the man yelled out and staggered. There was a moment of stillness; she attempted another kick, yet was heaved up by the man's free hand. The rocking turned to a tumbling, and the two fell to the floor. The Girl hit her head. Everything felt dizzy, sounds louder and colours sharper. The Sister, shaking, a deep cut across her back and thigh, stood to her feet. The man kicked her in the side and she fell again, her stomach to the snow-covered concrete, blood dying the white ground a red that glittered crimson as the light touched it. With a mutter, the pick raised up, slamming down into her back again as the woman screamed. The Girl watched as the pick sank deep into her flesh, tearing the skin and bloodying the snow.

They were perpendicular to one another; the man hoisted the pick up, the Sister's voice growing hoarse as the pick tore and peeled flesh from her back. The black metal tip of the pick was now a dull, glistening red; the Girl got to her feet.

 "Fucking bitch." the man muttered, bringing the pick down upon the Sister's head, the metal edge just short of her face as he stumbled to a side. The Girl had leapt, arms around his shoulders as her finger – wetted with the blood form her neck – dug into his skin. The Sister looked up and the man struggled, stumbling backwards into the wooden wall of the hut. The Girl let out a yelp – the first sound her Sister had heard her make in many days – yet remained clinging nonetheless. He reached back, stumbling, as her fingernails sliced into his neck, forming tiny cuts that stung, and grabbed her by the hair. With a ripping force, he bent forward, hauling the Girl off his back and onto the ground; she slammed into the concrete, back hitting the rock as her head, bloody from the first fall, smashed against the rock again. He sliced at her with the pick, a laceration forming across the width of her torso where it cut, blood splattering to the snow beside the stairs. She screamed, shrill as the siren, with an anger that drowned out the alarm. She crawled up into a ball, bringing her knees to her chest and tucking her arms in, groping at the snow as the man sliced down upon her bony back. Another cut, deep, sliced across her vertebra. The Sister was still on the ground, shuddering, and got to her feet slowly. She was covered in blood and evidently freezing. With disturbing calmness, he swiped at her face with the pick, the tip of it slicing across her cheek and forehead as she stumbled backwards, slipped and fell to the ground again. He turned back to the Girl.

She was still in the snow. Dead? No, that was impossible. Frail as she was, the man felt certain that those wounds wouldn't be fatal . He had seen worse; he brought the pick up again, this time slashing into her shoulder as he brought it down. She let out a grunt, yet did not cry. She raised herself, overalls tattered across her back, and sat upon her knees. He sneered and swiped again.

 The blow hit the Girl in her temple and she fell to her side, now facing the man.

She scrambled with speed, the man lurching forward as she kicked snow behind her, scurrying between his legs as he brought the pick down to the concrete, turning with his feet planted to grab her by the ankle. He did so and the Girl spun around, throwing the bloodied ball of snow she had concealed in her hands. It hit him squarely in the face, snow and blood in his eyes, and he grunted and flinched. She reached for the pick. Her hands were wet and slippery, sliding down the metal pole before digging into the sharpened tip. He winced and pulled sharply, tearing it from her hands and cutting deep across both of her palms. Wincing, he stumbled back towards the lip of the stairs and rubbed his eyes, bloodied and sore.

 What the man then felt was horrific, a sharp pain in his fingers. Through blurred vision he watched as the Girl scrambled forward towards him; he swooped in a kick yet missed, and the Girl – like a rabid animal – brought her teeth down upon the unarmoured fingers of his ice pick wielding hand. He grabbed at her neck, yet now his hand was wet from the snow he had rubbed over his face, her own neck and back wet and bloodied from snow and wound. No purchase could be found.

She bit with all the might in her jaw, the bone in his index finger snapping with a tactile crunch as his hand opened and he screamed. He kicked and thrashed, throwing the Girl off his limb as he bent to reach the ice pick. The Girl scrambled and pushed the stick of the ice pick. It clattered down the stairs. He looked up to her and watched as she leapt again, the weight of her tiny body pushing itself onto his torso as he too stumbled back and, with a slip from his heel, hit the stairs beneath him. His back fell to the stairs, a crack sounding out as he rolled to his side, shoulder jabbing into the hard edge of the concrete steps as he fell, down and down and down. When he reached the bottom – but a few feet from the ice pick – he did not move.

 It was no surprise that the man was dead, as his neck had been twisted horribly in the fall, the parted snow of the steps leading down to his twisted body like a snail's trail, glistening slime replaced with a crimson tinge of blood in the frost. The Sister walked forward to retrieve the pick as the Girl looked down to the man, his eyes still open as he lay dead. She turned as she heard her Sister walking up beside her. The woman was covered in blood, her tired eyes wild and concerned as she looked to the Girl and the cadaver she stood beside.

"Are you alright?"

 Her voice was soft. The Girl nodded quickly.

"Good." She said, looking ahead to the snowy trough they stood within. The siren was still blaring, yet no-one clamoured in this empty disc of frost. The Sister wondered whether or not the alarm had anything to do with them, or whether it pertained to the function – or malfunction, she supposed – of something within the complex.

"Come on." the Sister said, walking ahead of the Girl and taking her hand to pull her along. The Girl snapped her hand back – her palms had been sliced horrifically as she had tried to grab the ice pick. The Sister gave pause for a moment yet seemed to understand, walking ahead with the Girl tailing behind her.

 When the Girl looked up to the Sister, almost twice her size, her gaze fell upon the woman's neck.

The silver disc remained there, sitting like a louse in the fur of a dog.

 The complex was surrounded by a fence, tall and broad, that encompassed the disc-like trough in a wide ring. It was a chain-link tipped with coils of barbed wire, the gaps between the wires of its form big enough so that both of the young women could climb up it. The Sister wrapped her fingers around the fence, lifting her bare foot up to the fence before seemingly thinking better of it. She looked down, vision tracing the point where the fence met the ground. It was wide, nestled between the foliage and the trough. There was a point in which the wide gaps of the fence were opened, pried apart and peeled into a wide hole. It looked as if the wire had been gnawed by something, perhaps a fox or badger. She gestured with the pick.

"There. Crawl through."

  The Girl did so, getting to her hands and knees and scurrying through the opening . She was so thin that none of the wires touched her, and scrambled to her feet on the other side.

"Wait there."

 The Girl watched as the Sister threw the pick over the fence, embedding itself in the snow nearby where she stood, and picked it up as they clambered atop the wire. She held up the pick, heavy, in both hands as the Sister dropped down beside her, skin prickled with a few more cuts where the barbed wire had slashed her. The Girl held out the ice pick and the Sister took it. She looked a bit older, now, her face tired and defined.

Perhaps the Sister was old enough to be her mother.

"Come on, little one." her voice was a calm whisper. The Girl felt inclined to follow, and she did, as the two of them both trudged into the wilderness.

The air had grown colder and the siren sounded more distant as they descended, rushing through freezing swathes of snow-covered brambles and briars. They had left their blankets atop the stairs and the tundra was awfully cold, yet both ran with renewed vigour at having seemingly escaped their captors. The Girl felt unsure about the metal disc at the back of her Sister's neck, and worried that at any moment she would collapse, paralysed, yet she ran and ran and ran. No such collapse occurred, even as she ran and bled.

The taiga descended steeply in a slope, the snow turning to a muddy mush that sat atop the shaven detritus of autumn foliage. It was dark, their eyes having adapted yet ineffective nonetheless. With every step came unfamiliar sensations; their sprint turned to a jog and then a slow and methodic walk, shoulders and arms groping for purchase as they bumped into the trees and bushes that disguised themselves in the gloaming.  

The Sister reached back, feeling for the Girl – she was there, and the Sister wrapped her arm around her as she walked slowly. In the darkness she could not see her face, leaning against a tree as they stood alone. Wind swept between the trees and the bushes danced around them, flickering into shapes that swayed and grew. Shaking, whether from cold or fear, the Girl stood. 

"Are you ok?" The Sister said, one hand clutching the pick as she leant over to face the Girl. They were surrounded by the foliage yet it offered little warmth, and her face seemed to warp and shift in the darkness. The Girl nodded, even as she stood cut and wounded. The Sister fell silent for a moment.

"What's your name, sweetie?" She said, voice soft and calm. The Girl remained silent. The Sister pushed.

"Would you to know mine?"

Again, silence. She let in a sharp inhale as the wind whipped past, the Girl's shaking intensifying. The Sister rubbed a hand down her arm, exposed where her small overalls had been torn. Her skin was prickled with goosebumps.

"My name's Verity." The Sister said. "I'll get you somewhere safe, ok?" The Girl nodded, though was unsure whether or not the expression was read in the darkness.

The hours passed, yet time once more seemed to twist and contort uncontrollably around the perception of the Girl. Her eyes felt heavy but for a single blink, and when the blink had passed she stood beside Verity. Dream-memories flared up and faded from her mind, of her alone in the tree-guarded isle once more. She wanted to hold onto such visions, yet they faded as she tried to grasp them, like reaching for something just beyond grasp and pushing it away as you clutched for it.

Light cast upon the snow once more, gilded from the amber glow of a lamp-post that lay ahead of the two escapees. They were standing on a precipice of sorts; ahead lay a small gorge. It was not particularly large, no canyon or ravine, but instead a small ditch of sorts that a river passed through, a large grey bridge standing over the body of water as it flowed from the large wall of rock across the ditch. That wall of rock was alike the one that the Girl and Verity now stood upon, shrouded in snow and rife with the husken silhouettes of tall trees. Verity was looking down to the bridge: it looked like nothing more than a connective strut in a wider structure, a small spanning limb that dodged over the river; the middling section of a road.

"Be careful." She said, "Don't get too close to the edge, sweetie. We're gonna follow the rock until it slopes down, and then we'll follow the road ahead. There's a town that way."

The Girl looked up to her.

"How do you know?"

 Her voice was squeaky and hoarse. It was the first time Verity had heard her speak. She looked down to her, shocked:

"I used to live in this area." She said, "I recognise the bridge. If we follow it that way," she pointed down to the right of the bridge, "We'll reach a small village. Not many live there, so it should be quiet."

The Girl nodded and looked to the treeline ahead of them. She flinched when she saw one of the trees move, pulled back into the darkness, and was abated when Verity proclaimed it to be nothing more than the wind. She was not convinced.

They continued down the snow, Verity keeping a close eye upon the Girl, as they walked across the lip of the rock face. It was not long until they found a point, perhaps where the water from that prior river drained, that they could descend onto the hewn tarmac of the blacktop road. As the Girl traced her feet through the water, it felt as if it were the coldest thing she had ever touched and a flickering memory of her solitary dream surfaced. Verity looked back to ensure she was alright as she passed over the water, then trudging over the meagre hill of the roadside verge and stepping up onto the black top.

"There won't be any cars." Verity said, turning to face the Girl as she stepped out onto the road, "We're a ways away from any big town. There's not much this way."

 The Girl looked to the road. It was barren and unused, or at least seemed so. There was a dead animal in the middle of it, bright orange and rotten with age. A fox, hit by a truck or car. It seemed that nothing had passed over it in some time, and the blood had dried to a crisp.

Routine lamp-posts abated the darkness around the pair as they walked, washing the darkness away with amber light. Verity remained clutching the ice pick as they walked, silent, and time once again dilated.

The Girl's eyes fell heavy and Verity took note – she had seen something similar occur when they had been lead through the brutalist halls of the complex. Her eyes slept yet her body remained active – only for a moment or two, a few minutes at most, before she awoke once more. She had never seen her sleep, and wondered if she even needed to, whether or not this bizarre narcolepsy stopped her from needing any true bodily rest. Did she ever grow tired? The questions were fascinating yet not pertinent. She pressed on and prayed softly.

When the Girl opened her eyes, she and Verity lay crouched in a small patch of bramble just off the beaten path of the road. It took a moment for the Girl to regain her bearings, a few seconds more than the usual, and she let out a high-pitched yawn. Verity looked to her quickly, rubbing a hand upon her shoulder as the Girl's muscles started to twitch and shiver, as sensation set in. They were hunched together and Verity still held the ice pick. Where were they? The Girl rubbed her eyes. The road was ahead of them, so perhaps they were in the verge at the side. That seemed to be the case, as a lamp-post loomed nearby and cast a yellow light across the black top.

There was a car in the road, long and slender and totally black in colour. Verity crouched, watching it intently, and muttered something under her breath. The Girl did not catch what exactly it was that she muttered, but she seemed deeply annoyed. Silence split for a moment, tension broiling as the car doors and windows remained shut. 

"Ok." She said, turning to the Girl in a whisper and withdrawing into the bushes, "We're gonna go around the road, we'll still follow it but... but at a distance."

 "Who are they?"

Again Verity fell silent for a second. She looked to the black car and then back to the Girl.

"I don't know. But that's not normal. It's a funeral car, used to transport special boxes. There's no reason for it to be going here."

 The black car seemed unnerving, then. Verity withdrew into the briar, gesturing for the Girl to follow her. She did so, and the two departed from the roadside.

Though empty, the roadside seemed to have offered some mild warmth, perhaps from the fluorescent hum of the lamp-posts above. As they skittered into the tundra once more, surrounding choked by trees and foliage, the warmth sapped from their bodies. Coldness drew sharp into them, yet that coldness seemed lesser than that which was expected. Perhaps adrenaline, the movement, the excitement and anxiety was warming them up. The Girl did not know, though that – though she was shaking and her feet felt numb – she knew she could continue, and darted to follow Verity. 

There was only a touch of light in the area, now, the yellow glow from the lamp-posts swallowed by the gnarled form of trees and coiled limbs of briar. The exertion continued; time slipped from her mind.

When the Girl came to it was as if nothing had changed, though Verity was walking at a considerably slower pace and seemed pale and weak. The adrenaline of their jaunt had faded, and the slashing wounds across her torso had dried and bled and frosted in the weather. The Girl recognised this and felt a sting across her as her own wounds, the cuts in her palms and back and side and the bruise across her face aching considerably. Verity stumbled and fell, leaning against a tree as she spluttered and coughed, dropping the ice pick to the ground as her eyes lulled into tiredness. The Girl rushed to her side, picking up the heavy tool from the ground as Verity moved weakly in protest of her fatigue. She groped down to the snow and clutched a handful of snow, bloodied and red, and rubbed it across her face. It seemed to wake her up; her back straightened, the cold acting to revive the awareness of her surroundings. She looked down to the Girl, who did not feel nearly as tired as the older woman before her looked, and reached to take the ice pick off her. The Girl handed it over without protest, and the walk continued.

Again they reached a lip of rock, this on more sloped and steady. The rock was not slick with snow nor frost and the large chunks that protruded from the side seemed relatively easy to stand upon. Verity sat down upon the boulder, the Girl beside her, and frowned as she looked out to her surroundings.

 "I... don't remember it being so big."

Ahead was the village, a motely clutch of wooden houses bisected by the grey ribbon of the road. There were lamps and lights across it, the night still in swing, and the small huts were bathed in amber. Across them were similar such buildings, though they seemed taller and thinner; more modern. Copies of one another, flat-topped towers like cardboard boxes across the village. One of the larger buildings Verity recognised – it was the closest to them, a large building of white bricks surrounded by a thin fence of wire, spiked with sharp rods at the top. Verity bit her lip. There was a small hole in the bottom of the fence that she could see, another hole gnawed by a fox?

"Sweetie, we're gonna cross that fence." She said, pointing to the wire.

"There's a little hole in the bottom of it, we'll crawl through it. Is that ok?"

 The Girl nodded and thought for a moment.

"I feel hungry." Her voice was squeaky and quaint.

That proclamation made Verity ease a bit. It was perhaps the first childlike thing she had ever heard the young girl say.