Snippet #1539726

"Dimitri." The voice was soft but insistent, tugging on the edges of her consciousness with a pull just a bit stronger than a feather. "Dimitri, are you in there?" Of course she was, where else would she be? They were calling her name, Dimitri knew it, and why would they be doing that if she wasn't around. The room didn't afford anywhere to hide. Still, she couldn't seem to pull herself away, the entire side of her face glued to the white wall. White walls, white room, white clothing. Drowning in snow. "Dimitri, come along." A female touch along the side of her face, how odd. And still the girl floated, mind far from the material world.

The guard glanced desperately at the door. A good six inches shorter than the young woman, she didn't quite know what to do with the test subject. Sure, she knew she'd been given to this one for initial training because there was no chance of an... accident. No one told her the girl was braindead. Or at the very least autistic. Dimitri Helikos appeared to be in her own world, slim body pressed as close to the wall as she could get it, head cocked against the cool white. At the door, the senior guard snickered. He, too, had worked with the girl when he first came to the institution ten years ago, and even at six or seven, she'd been disturbing. By now, though, he knew how to handle Her Spaciness.

"Parker, the collar isn't just because it looks pretty on her, you realize?" the guard, whose name was Daniel Cronan, asked. With brusque, efficient movements, he crossed the room, ignoring the song Dimitri hummed under her breath, skating over her half-closed eyes. A chain leash hooked neatly onto the loop of the collar, and to the utter horror of Mariah Parker, he yanked. The girl fluttered away from the wall without the least semblance of resistance, her dark hair the last thing to fly as she was pulled by the neck. Remarkably, she didn't stumble. Even more strangely, when Mariah glanced at the girl, her eyes didn't appear, as she would have expected, bovine and complacent. Rather, they breathed perfect mute awareness.

Trainee guard Mariah Parker almost crossed herself. They'd assured her that Dimitri Helikos would not fight. No one had warned that it was because the girl was an alien.

"Oh, hello Daniel. It's been a while. I didn't realize something was going on right now." Not a bit fazed by the leash, Dimitri stood straight, weight equally on her feet and hands secreted in the pockets of the zip-up jacket she always wore.

"I've mostly moved on to... More dangerous types, 'Mitri." He shrugged. "This is trainee Mariah Parker. She's going to take over after today, I'm just showing her the ropes." It was weird, Mariah decided. Weird weird weird. Cronan, who appeared to take his job seriously, was talking to the girl as though she wasn't a science experiment, but Dimitri certainly behaved like one. The stare she fixed Mariah with was neither warm nor cold, a vaguely curious neutral.

Abruptly, her attention shifted. "It's still raining, you know. May I...?"

"Not today, Dimitri." Almost without remorse, Daniel tugged the leash again, to turn the girl's attention back to him. "Come on."

She sighed, hips already a sway and a whisper towards the door of the room, as the bottom of her skirt brushed the floor and her bare feet. "I thought not."

Pulling her down the corridor, Daniel talked over Dimitri as though she did not even exist. "She transforms into an Orca whale, so it's not as though there's a risk of her escaping in the halls - she'd kill herself before she killed us. That's one reason she's minimum security. The other is that she has never shown any signs of hostility. Dimitri is one of our most cooperative experiments." In truth, there was a part of Dimitri that long since left. She knew these halls, she knew where and who she was, she didn't know where she was going, but it didn't matter. Daniel was right. There was no reason to fight. What would she do if she got out? Stand in the rain. And that would be worth it, but then they'd never allow her out again. So it wouldn't really be a good trade. Not even to answer the hungry, lonely rainsong.

Dimitri felt the difference in the air immediately. She didn't know which corridor this one was - after a while, they all blended together, but she knew the humidity had decreased, that it was drier, tangier here. She didn't like it. It was too far in, and hard to hear the rain. Voices were calling her from afar again, and all of the sudden, there was a sharp jerk at her neck. Dimitri blinked, returning to earth.

"'Mitri, we're here. Comeon girl, you gotta go in." A door stood open in front of her, the young female guard looking oddly between her and it. Inside, things seemed very dark and very dry. Oh well. She could always just count off the Fibonacci sequence if she really needed to. Unclipped from the leash, Dimitri sashayed into the dark, where a male and a female, approximately her age, waited. It appeared as though she had in some way interrupted them. Dimitri shrugged, and sat down in a corner. Maybe they wouldn't talk. Maybe she could listen to the rain.