Snippet #2430509

As she’d thought, the room was soon invaded by a group of security guards, and though they were unprepared for the assault—spearheaded by Gallius—they recovered quickly enough, putting up at least a token resistance to their deaths, and in some cases quite a bit more than that. Andromeda was quite content to let the more violently-inclined among them have all of this particular brand of fun. She, after all, had no particular desire to know what it felt like for blood to dry in her pale hair. Nor, indeed, to have bruised knuckles or wounds of her own. She was not a trained fighter, something that she made a note to rectify as soon as she was clear of this place.

For there was no doubt in her mind that she would be free of it. The whole affair was only a matter of time. If this didn’t work, something else would. Perhaps something quieter.

Unfortunately, someone let a guard through at some point, probably not something that could be helped, though she certainly blamed them for it anyway. Unfair, perhaps, but then, so was life, as they all well knew. The guard, breathing a sigh of relief to be clear of the main melee, set his sights on the young woman and raised what appeared to be a nightstick, stepping forward menacingly. Her expression—cold, impassive, unafraid—did not change. Sociopaths did not feel much in the way of emotion, including fear, though Lilith was having fun with his. He knew he was going to die, but he was apparently determined to take down at least one of them before he did. How droll.

The demon's whispers were honeyed poison in her ear, promising power and satisfaction the like of which she’d never been able to know—not as a little girl in a dirty, poor household, and not as an unwitting prisoner in this place, watched over by white-clad wardens who knew nothing. Ordinarily, Andromeda did not pay the whispers much mind, because they came from that, and she didn’t trust it. It was an unknown quantity, the upper limits of its abilities were unknown to her. She knew not if it would one day overtake the sanctum of her mind, painting the crystalline walls of it a passionate red that she did not want, and this made her wary, like one predator circling another, fundamentally unsure of what territory belonged to whom, or if it must be contested at all. But today, today she would at least take the suggestion for what it was.

Suddenly and without warning, she stepped forward as well, placing the index and middle fingers of each hand on the corresponding temples of the guard, opening a telepathic link between the two of them. That much, she knew how to do, but for the rest, she would need Lilith’s guidance, and reluctantly, she surrendered her control. It was like something else slithered under her skin, fitting just as comfortably into it as she ever did—more so. Andromeda was pushed gently to some corner of her own mind, through which she could see the goings on, both inside herself and out in the world, but she had little control over any of it. She was a spectator in some grand theater, with the expensive seats but no real power at all. She watched dispassionately as Lilith called up the power they shared now, surging forward through the mental link and enveloping the lesser mind within her power.

Physically, Andromeda’s body leaned forward, a dark chuckle escaping her parted lips as the nightmare images Lilith so easily produced assaulted the poor fool’s consciousness. “Fear me,” she mouthed breathlessly next to his ear. And fear her he did—the healthy tan of his skin faded until his pallor was sickly white, and he tried and failed to swallow several times, Adam’s apple bobbing frantically in his throat. His eyes were unfocused, because what he was seeing was not right in front of him, but inside his head, and there was nothing he could do to rid himself of it. Lilith drank in the terror with undisguised delight, the wry little smile that took up residence on her face so very unlike anything Andromeda would wear.

He clutched at his hair, tearing it from his head and leaving bloody spears on his hands, the floor, his face. He picked frantically at his skin as she convinced him that there were things, dark things, crawling underneath it, and she would have been more than content to watch him destroy himself before the pragmatic voice in the back of her head reminded her with no feeling that they didn’t have time for that. Lilith pouted a bit, unhappy with this complete lack of appreciation for the subtle tortures of the mind—or in this case, the not-so-subtle. But she conceded that the host had a point. “Fine,” she conceded with a sigh, “Have it your way, then.” She withdrew, and with a bit of effort, Andromeda reasserted herself, looking down at the quietly-muttering man without any of the amusement Lilith had displayed. The voice at the back of her mind promised that this was just a taste of what she herself would one day be able to do, but Andromeda wasn’t honestly sure if it tasted sweet or bitter to her.

She’d never actually killed another human being before, though ironically enough, a murder was the reason she’d wound up here in the first place. It looked like she no longer had any choice. Glancing about the storage room, she found that there wasn’t much she could use, so she inspected the madman himself, instead. There was a utility knife on his pocket, more a boxcutting tool than anything, but she supposed it would have to do. Hiding the shake in her hand, she extracted it from his belt, flipping the blade into the extended position and contemplating it for a moment. The rest of the battle was dying down around her—she’d have to be quick. Though she felt no particular remorse for this, it did make her parents right about her, and she didn’t favor the thought overmuch. It didn’t matter.

Tightening her grip on the tool, Andromeda drew it across the man’s throat, silencing his incoherent babbling forever.

Retracting the blade, she looked at it with an air of academic inspection for a moment, then pocketed it, deciding that it couldn’t hurt to have it with her. The nightstick, she would leave alone. As the other fights stopped, she was already onto the next thing, examining the room with a calculating eye. They needed to find a way out of here, and quickly, but going back out into the hall would cut their time even shorter. Surely, there must—

She almost didn’t believe it, but she noticed an odd seam in the wall. Ignoring whatever anyone else was saying at the moment, she stepped past another pair of bodies and to the wall, running her hands along the seam for just a moment. Her brows furrowed slightly, and she rapped first one side, then the other, with her fists. There was a marked difference in sound. Withdrawing her new knife, she scored it along the wallpaper and peeled a bit, eyes narrowing with her satisfaction when she saw it. One part of the wall was indeed an ordinary plaster constriction, but the other was only a thin layer of the stuff over what had once clearly been a door. “I think I have our way out,” she said flatly, turning back to look at the others over her shoulder. “Help me get to this door—I’m guessing it leads somewhere.”

Perhaps, on an ordinary day, she would not have chosen the risk. Today, however, the alternative was an almost-certain death out in that hallway, and she was going to take the risk. Whether they came or not.