Snippet #2263007

A sudden noise at the shop window made Viola jump. The needle she was holding slipped and stabbed her finger. A drop of blood splashed onto the mouse she was working on and she sighed in frustration. Placing the wounded finger in her mouth, she did her best to clean the fur and then headed for the door to check things out.

Ghostly shapes of people running past were projected on the dusty shop window of August's Antiques and Oddities where Viola had spent the day cleaning and maintaining the items they had to sell. At the edge of the Industrial District, her shop and apartment above it rarely saw many people. Especially not as much as the stampede Viola opened the door to.

They were all running in the same direction, panicked and extremely vocal about their fear. They weren't inhabitants of this district; their clothes said something about that even if their current manner did not. One of them careered towards her, hitting the shop window before running on and leaving a streak of thick crimson Viola would have to clean later.

A wriggling sensation in her mouth drew her attention to her finger again. Due to her unhealthy condition, Viola never seemed to stop bleeding if cut. But pulling it out, instead of red blood a black shape was squirming out from the wound. It solidified into a locust. It stared up at her and rubbed its legs together nervously.

Taking the hint that something was up, Viola locked the shop door and followed her locust in the direction the running people came from. With every step she took, more and more locusts emerged from the edges of manhole covers, shooting out of gutter pipes, and from the cracks between walls. More and more torn bodies lined the street and she could smell a familiar acrid stench. Rounding a corner, Lost could be seen scattered amongst the wreckage of human meat. Viola beckoned her locusts close. From inside a small pouch she drew a vial of dark liquid. She popped the cork and moved to the closest Lost. Its hulking back was faced away from her, too focused on rendering a masterpiece from shattered rib bones. It did not notice her splashing the liquid on one of its many feet, soaked as it were in a pool of blood.

With a motion, the locusts gathered at her feet and she fell through them. They engulfed her as she fell, further down than solid ground would have allowed, but she just as soon emerged from the floor of a nearby roof with the locusts. It was a weird sensation, falling up. But she righted herself and looked down just in time to see the infected begin to writhe in agony. It flailed about, hitting another Lost and thereby infecting it. The disease would eventually work its way through them. It was slow acting, but it would have to do. These were small fry, but there had to be a reason for the sudden appearance. She looked out towards where the concentration of death felt the greatest.

It was a bit far, so it took a few times walking through swarms of locusts to get to her destination. A couple of times in, she emerged in an alley covered in mashed human. The slop got all over her shoulder, and she spent a few seconds trying to wipe it off as her locusts fed on a bit of the meat nearby. Energized from their snack, they hurriedly gathered in front of her and she leapt through them.

Finally arriving through a dilapidated wall, Viola encountered Warehouse 13 looming over her. Bright flashes of light drew her around the building, her locusts trailing after her. A towering beast stood before a group of five attackers. Logic told her they must be other Reapers, as they would have to see the Lost to be able to even land a hit. She hesitated. Since she had left Anchorage and her grandfather, she had never shown herself before another Reaper.

Green liquid was dotted on the ground, the same stuff oozing out of a large cavity in the raging beast. An opportunity.

"Get ready." She whispered to her swarm, and they drew closer to her. Then a large crack resonated in the air. A few more shots followed. One of the Reapers was firing at the Lost. Things were getting significantly more complicated and she had no way to communicate with the other party without letting the beast recover a bit. Even the beast was defended by a thick veil, some sort of magic that would block about any weapon. But Viola was not a weapon. She was just a human and hopefully that and her training was enough.

Viola steeled herself and decided to take the chance. She drew out one of the larger bottles in her pouch, one from the collection of a hysterical woman that killed her husband. With a pencil. What made these solutions work on the Lost was all the negative emotions and hate that people would put in them. It hissed like a writhing rattlesnake in her hands.

She commanded her swarm in front of her and waited for a lull in fire. Just a single pause from the one firing the gun. The beast hesitated a moment under the barrage of bullets. There was the briefest of pauses where it seemed the other Reaper took a second to enjoy the sound of their weapon. Viola took it.

It would have to be the fastest run she had done to date, but the beast somehow surviving the five Reapers and let loose on Babylon was not an option. Viola ran into the swarm of locusts, one arm in front of her, the other clutching the bottle of disease close. Her hand reached for something hot and slick in the darkness and she dug her fingers into it. Viola pulled herself out of the swarm, right up against the beast's chest. A massive glowing green organ was right in front of her. Clinging to the flesh, Viola dumped the contents of the bottle over it. Thick and black, it dripped over the organ and smothered some of its green light.

Her second was up. She pushed off against the monster and flew backwards into the air. All she could do was trust her swarm be there for her. Just as she was falling through her familiar insects, a single bullet ripped through the winter air, just to her left. Her heart was jolted into double time. The bullet had scattered a few of her insects, causing her to fall closer towards the ground before they could regroup and surround her.

Fortunately, she fell right through the ground instead of colliding with it and emerged a second later from a wall behind the attacking Reapers. Her momentum rolled her on the ground bringing her close to the one furthest back. Viola shakily tried picking herself up off the ground, but her body felt it deserved a moment's rest. At the least, she had done what she needed to; the corrosive liquid she had placed inside the thing would make its way all around the body. No one ever expected the things to have more than one heart, but her grandfather had taught her never to underestimate them. Lost always had a way to hold onto the living plane. If it was their job to make sure a Lost was dead, Viola's job was to make sure they were deader than dead.

However, sitting on the ground in the midst of a battle was making her quite vulnerable. And between a few bugs and a the monster's fist, there would be no doubt the fist would reach her. She would have to get out of its way soon.