Plasia groaned quietly as her eye gently flickered open. She wasn't sure how long she'd been asleep for, but her eyelids felt heavy as she forced them apart. Her vision was blurred and unfocused, and the white ceiling lights overhead were harsh and piercing, as she struggled to wake up. She slowly blinked away the black, pulsing splodges in her corners of her vision. She pushed her palms down and tried desperately to push herself up, before quickly sinking back down in defeat. There was a deep, thumping pain in her head. She gently reached up towards her face, clasping her warm hands around her cheeks. It was starting to come back to her already... the tests, the experiments, that girl, and then...
Her stomach wrenched. Suddenly, she was overwhelmed with a sudden rush of emotion as the memories came flooding back. Her survival instincts were starting to kick in, hard, but she didn't have any fight left. There was no anger, or rage, or even adrenaline.
She was terrified.
Tenderly, she teased the fingers of her hand upwards, towards her eye...
The side of her head had been bound tightly, and her eye was covered. Which was probably just as well, if her memory was correct...
Slowly but surely her eyesight came into focus, revealing a grey, featureless ceiling above her.
This isn't the E-Lab... Where... am I?
As she rubbed her hands gently up and down her face, the realisation suddenly hit her that she could move her hands. She gasped loudly and stared at her unrestrained limbs in amazement. She rolled her wrists, checking every inch of skin just in case there was some sort of subtle restraining mechanism, but she couldn't see anything. She could move, at her own leisure, something she hadn't been able to enjoy in a very long time.
Plasia closed her eye for a few, long moments, and worked on controlling her breathing. Calm, we need to keep calm... we're not in danger, we're not there anymore... We're okay... Carefully, she struggled again and managed to pull herself upright. A deep ache seared through her body, and she winced as she slowly looked around her new room. She was sitting, alone, in some sort of medical room, laid out on a table that had been pushed off to the side. The room was unremarkable, just grey walls mirrored cabinets, although a number of them looked like they had been raided recently, with various bottles and medicines still strewn over the floor.
Now that she was sat up, Plasia cast a hesitant glance down at her body.
She was tightly wrapped in high quality nano-bandages, shimmering silver strips of fabric that concealed her wounds, and had a comforting warmth to them. She could just about see the blue medi-gel that had been sprayed on her skin underneath the bandages, gently pooling at the edges of the wrapping.
Her remaining foot touched the cool tiles below the table, and she sighed softly. She was alive.
Tired. But alive.
A heavy set of footsteps approached from behind the only door into the room. Anxiety jolted through her body, and she tilted her head to try and see who was approaching.
The smell hit her first. It was sweet, alluring, like a whisper in the dark, tempting her to join hands with the unknown. There was comfort in the candied murk, but an unsettling sense of danger always permeated the back of her mind. She knew this scent well.
But something seemed different...
The door creaked open and the aroma intensified, reaching its sickly sweet climax as Leech stomped into the room, looking just as tired and worn-down as Plasia felt. Her left arm was severed at the bicep and wrapped in the same nano-bandages that Plasia was wrapped in. She had big black bags under her eyes, and was wearing a heavy frown as she carried a box full of medical supplies into the room by one of its handles, and slammed it down on a work surface on the opposite side of the room. She didn't notice that Plasia was sitting up.
Plasia's heart was in her mouth. Her eye widened in shock, and her clenched fists began to shake. Her whole body tensed and she waited, waited for her vision to go dark, waited for that spiralling loss of control she always felt when... the other one came out.
But nothing happened. The pain in her head throbbed, a little harder than before, but other than that...
Oh my god. I'm still here.
Plasia watched her closely, working desperately to get her heart rate down.
Am I... dreaming?
She blinked rapidly as Leech huffed and rummaged through the box with her one remaining arm.
"For fuck's sake, for fuck's sake, for fuck's sake, for fuck's sake! Where the hell is the regen powder when you need it?! I swear I didn't use it all on the Slave experiments, I MUST have kept some!"
She continued to rummage loudly through the box with her back to Plasia, swearing from time to time as she failed to locate her medicine.
"L-Leech?" Plasia's throat was sore and dry as she spluttered the word out. She stared at the Controller, with a vast cocktail of feelings coursing through her.
Leech froze. She straightened up and slowly turned around.
"Plasia?"
Their eyes met, Leech's narrowed into an expression of deep confusion as Plasia's eye stayed its usual soft, glass orb.
The toxic giant pursed her lips, holding her hand out in front of her as she tried to understand what was going on.
"You're... not... changing?"
Plasia shook her head, but held her gaze. "I... don't think It'll last long. I can feel her..." Suddenly she winced and broke eye contact, pressing her hand up against her forehead. "But... yeah! I'm... still here. For now, at least."
"I imagine it's the shock. That and maybe the various different painkillers I've given you. You're coked up on some pretty strong stuff right now!" Leech tried for a light chuckle, tried to diffuse the abhorrent awkwardness that was quickly starting to fill the room, but it came out more as a half-assed, tired sigh. "You were in a bit of a state when we found you! You, uh, actually had me worried for a bit."
"Worried?" Plasia knotted her fingers together and raised an eyebrow at her. "I... T-That doesn't seem right."
"What? Why not?" Leech quickly turned her attention back to the box, hiding her face behind her dreadlocks.
"Well..." She wasn't quite sure where it had come from, but suddenly Plasia felt a fire in her chest. Her stomach was thick and heavy with anxiety, but she gripped onto the edge of the table and finally, finally, for the time since she'd been dragged kicking and screaming into this horrific mess, she spoke her mind.
"Well, considering you were the one who did this to me, I didn't think you really cared about me at all! Figured I was just an experiment of yours! That's why you kept me around, right? Leech's little lab assistant." Plasia hissed as a fresh wave of pain hit her head.
"Well, if you were an experiment, I fucked up royally!" Leech snapped. Her hand stopped rummaging about in the box, and she sighed loudly, her shoulders sinking as her face twisted into a sharp frown. "That... came out wrong. I didn't... mean..."
