Little sweetmeats? Andromeda suppressed a snort of disgust, if only barely. He was aware that a sweetmeat wasn’t meat at all, wasn’t he? It was perhaps an inconsequential thing to most, but details mattered. Tiny pieces, tidbits of information that went unnoticed to minds so caught up in irrelevancies like emotion and adrenaline. She was no such creature, to be carried away by her fear or her excitement. Andromeda was cold, calculating, calm, and precise. She was, alas, also unfortunately dependent on these people until such time as they could actually get out of this damned building and breathe the outside air again.
This was her punishment for the few times she’d ever done things for someone else’s sake. Naturally—nothing she would ever do would be so suspicious as to land her in a place like this. There were no worse places. Andromeda could have handled a juvenile detention center, or even a prison. It would have been a matter of days before she’d established herself at the top of the food chain there, and she well knew it. Here was different—because here was run by a goddamn cult, and they didn’t succumb so easily to manipulation. She’d deduced that it was a cult within a week of being admitted. Rather slow, but then she had been quite a bit younger at the time, so perhaps excusable in retrospect.
She hadn’t seen the demon coming, but then, what rational person ever would?
Presently, the striking young woman looked a little worse for wear, tendrils of her white hair clinging to the back of her neck and her forehead, fallen loose from the ponytail that contained the rest. Her dark complexion bore a faint sheen of sweat, and there was a cut on her cheek. She’d had to get inventive with the lock on her door—they’d taken to denying her anything as simple as a bobby pin because they’d at last started to wise up to what a mind geared for ingenuity could do with even an implement so simple. It was then she’d known that getting out was becoming imperative. No longer was the simple interest of seeing what they would do enough to keep her here, nor the rather interesting cocktail of fear, dread, and misery that she could feed Lilith.
Leaning back against the door, Andromeda crossed her arms beneath her breasts and closed her eyes. It made this easier, not having the visual distractions. One day, she swore, she’d be able to do it as naturally as breathing, but today was not that day. Tuning out the pointless conversation going on around her, she tapped into the mental frequencies nearby. Ignoring Murtagh’s active paranoia was difficult, but she managed it, focusing instead for those people outside their little half-dozen. At first, it was only whispers, but then Andromeda exhaled, and the last of the goings-on in the room slipped away, granting her access to the minds of those elsewhere.
“As useful as I’m sure a map would be,” she asserted coolly, opening her eyes and flicking a clear blue glance from Gallius to Cheshire. “There’s no time. One of the guards has decided to check this very room for his stash of stolen medication, and he’s got friends with him. Five of them. We have fifteen seconds before they’re here.” Lilith was quite looking forward to it, of course, but Andromeda was frankly none too pleased. This would have gone so much better if she'd just tried it on her own...
This was her punishment for the few times she’d ever done things for someone else’s sake. Naturally—nothing she would ever do would be so suspicious as to land her in a place like this. There were no worse places. Andromeda could have handled a juvenile detention center, or even a prison. It would have been a matter of days before she’d established herself at the top of the food chain there, and she well knew it. Here was different—because here was run by a goddamn cult, and they didn’t succumb so easily to manipulation. She’d deduced that it was a cult within a week of being admitted. Rather slow, but then she had been quite a bit younger at the time, so perhaps excusable in retrospect.
She hadn’t seen the demon coming, but then, what rational person ever would?
Presently, the striking young woman looked a little worse for wear, tendrils of her white hair clinging to the back of her neck and her forehead, fallen loose from the ponytail that contained the rest. Her dark complexion bore a faint sheen of sweat, and there was a cut on her cheek. She’d had to get inventive with the lock on her door—they’d taken to denying her anything as simple as a bobby pin because they’d at last started to wise up to what a mind geared for ingenuity could do with even an implement so simple. It was then she’d known that getting out was becoming imperative. No longer was the simple interest of seeing what they would do enough to keep her here, nor the rather interesting cocktail of fear, dread, and misery that she could feed Lilith.
Leaning back against the door, Andromeda crossed her arms beneath her breasts and closed her eyes. It made this easier, not having the visual distractions. One day, she swore, she’d be able to do it as naturally as breathing, but today was not that day. Tuning out the pointless conversation going on around her, she tapped into the mental frequencies nearby. Ignoring Murtagh’s active paranoia was difficult, but she managed it, focusing instead for those people outside their little half-dozen. At first, it was only whispers, but then Andromeda exhaled, and the last of the goings-on in the room slipped away, granting her access to the minds of those elsewhere.
“As useful as I’m sure a map would be,” she asserted coolly, opening her eyes and flicking a clear blue glance from Gallius to Cheshire. “There’s no time. One of the guards has decided to check this very room for his stash of stolen medication, and he’s got friends with him. Five of them. We have fifteen seconds before they’re here.” Lilith was quite looking forward to it, of course, but Andromeda was frankly none too pleased. This would have gone so much better if she'd just tried it on her own...