trans_9 | The Lurking Fear

Brenda's gotten used to wandering, pacing the halls of the ship at night to keep herself from sleep that doesn't help. The special weapons lab is a frequent haunt. Tonight she wanders in and is met with unusual silence. Usually she can hear Brainy and Lyle bantering, or Koko making chittering noises in the background, but it's silent.

Then she sees the white sheet on the table and feels her chest clench. Of course it's quiet. They're still mourning the dead...

B5's corpse is stretched out on a worktable, the white sheet over him and the blond hair just above it's edge look stark and bright under lights above him. She steps close to the table, breathing in smells of formaldahyde and stale water, and reaches out to tousle his hair a little. Why did she never talk to him more? He was so...

...warm.

His head feels like flesh and not metal.

She was calm a moment ago. Now her blood runs cold and her spine stiffens up, and she wars with herself wether or not to lift up the sheet and see, terror and curiosity deadlocked over that throbbing pain in her chest.

His name slips past her lips, and her fingers tremble, tracing the dead man's features through the sheet.

"Querl...?"

"You couldn't look at your mother either."

Brenda whips around, backing up against the table, smothering a shriek at how CLOSE he is. Her father is only steps behind her, unshaven and bag-eyed, reeking of alcohol. How did she not NOTICE HIM?!

"Not gonna say hello?"

He regrips the whiskey bottle in his hand, thumbing the cap slightly closer to unscrewed, a slow squeaking scraping sound that puts Brenda's teeth on edge just like it always used to. She backs up a step, but only shoves the wheeled table off center, bringing the glaring lights down on her own head. The sheet ruffles up under her hands as she stumbles and tries to catch herself.

Her father nods toward the body, closing the gap between then with slow steady steps.

"You told him you missed me. 'Every day' you said, mi hija."

She chokes on the words, tears spilling over her cheeks.

"This isn't the you I miss, papi..."

It only takes a split second for his voice to rise to a thundering roar.

"LIAR!"

The whiskey bottle goes up, and slams down, and she barely dodges out of the way. Pans and bottles of medicine clatter on the floor as she pushes through underneath the autopsy table and stumbles out it's other side. She turns back around to find the white sheet stained transparent gold and her father angrily yanking on the stem of the bottle, it's broken edges pierced into Querl's chest.

"GET BACK HERE!"

He braces a foot on the table, pinning the arm of the corpse between his boot and the edge, and PULLS. The bottle comes free, the table flips as his leg follows through on it's countering push and Querl, ribs shattered, face nicked by broken glass, reeking of whiskey, hits the floor with a wet smack, almost on top of her along with the table.

Brenda knows she's screaming but doesn't quite hear herself, scrambling in a puddle of alcohol to run as her father tramples the table, then the body, and chases her into the depths of the lab.

She should know the place better than he does but it's all alien now. She crashes through an unfamiliar door and crouches on it's other side, hearing the squeak of his boots on the floor outside and trying not to breathe too loud. Then she finally looks around where she's ended up and gives herself away with a scream.

Tubes, hundreds, a hallway lined with them, the grate floor emmitting eerie smoke and a sickly orange glow, lighting up the few recognizable faces on a thousand mangled bodies.

Jaime is floating in front of her in some kind of thick bubbling soup. His beetle armour is fractured around him like wrapping paper torn off a gift. His head is only half-intact, toungue loling out of an open mouth that a broken jaw won't close.

She hears the bootsteps stop and turn outside and she staggers to her feet, running down the hall. The place is like a maze and in no time she's lost, stumbling into a corner where Paco floats in one tank and his arm in another. She smothers another scream, wheels down a side hall, footsteps clanging on the grates, and smashes straight into Sean. His body seems intact, and is pressed against the glass. When she lays her head on the curve of it's surface, crying, trying to catch her breath... it cracks.

Brenda jerks her head up to see the spiderweb fracture blooming across the pane, and then Sean twitches. His hands clench, his mouth opens clumsily underneath the ninja mask that shrouds his face, and his eyes are glowing an inhuman red.

She bolts, hearing the crack and splash of the cylinder coming apart, the scream of hunger that's haunted her since the zombie flood. Her father's voice echoes after her from another direction - "GET BACK HERE, BRENDA! WE NEED TO HAVE A LITTLE TALK ABOUT HONESTY!" - and she dodges down the next side run she sees, ducking her head away from Jekka, Danny, Lyle, Kelly, Leon as she goes.

Her feet hurt, her lungs burn, and all she can do is keep running.

... Head on into a different kind of nightmare entirely. Great, angular shadows dance away from the orange light swelling from the floors. The din of beating wings - or so it sounds - floods the room. A swirling darkness darts through the corridor of tubes.

Brenda drops, tripping and crashing into the grate floor as the cloud of black, and din of flapping noises, swells over her. She curls into a ball and covers her head and face, feeling her hair tossed by the swirl of the wind.

A hand takes her arm and lifts her back to her feet. A voice level amid the insanity, "On your feet, soldier. You're not done yet."

Brenda stares up at him for a moment, taking a second to recognize who she's looking at.

Batman. She's... standing with Batman.

All at once clarity breaks in. Sean and her father and Paco and Jaime and Querl and .... Batman. Not real. Just a nightmare. Just another damned nightmare!

The cylinders around them crack as her sleepy eyes widen in recognition, the integrity of the illusion failing en masse as she reaches for and gains control.

"Son of a...."

There is shattering everywhere, the splash of the canisters erupting, and the hallway with it's eerie light and it's grate floors and it's memories is washed away in the flood.

Thick water still swirling at her ankles Brenda rubs her eyes, then lifts her head to look at her rescuer again.

"Thank you. You've got directions out of this place I hope?"

"It's not my head this place came from," he replies, steadying himself against one of the few things he can find that's solid as Brenda's nightmarescape collapses around them. He sags for one brief moment, feels the pain of his injuries wash over him, then regains his composure as if he hadn't just had the proverbial crap kicked out of him.

"Reality is warping around us, feeding off everyone," the occasional glimmer of the ship they knew forces its way into the dream landscape, but it's swirling, ever changing, "I came through a burning building, a giant bird's nest and the slave mines of a sentient lizard empire to get here."

What? He took the scenic route. But of course, there's always a lifeline, "I traced you by your omnicom signal. We have more people up ahead."

"More people..." Her brow furrows, the nightmare scape shifting, a calm hall with many branches off of it. "Okay, I think I can get us out. Who else is nearby?"

"Two Legionnaires, Duncan Idaho and Hellion," there's an unclipping sound from within the folds of his cape and he produces a bat-taser, offering it to her, "... Brainiac 5 is the closest."

Brenda takes it without hesitation, tucking it into a pocket on her plantsuit.

"Brainy first, then the other legionnaire. They'll be able to help the most with the others."

The Lurking Fear - Group 14

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