Brave New World

[Eyna]

Reports of a big explosion under the surface of Eliad’s capital city circulated around the news. Although it was hard to pinpoint, the city officials would with time manage to find the ground zero: a small unnoticed elevator shaft leading to a facility hidden within the sewer complex of the city, only noticeable from the smoke plume pushing out through the entrance door. A darkness spread an insatiable coldness to any who came close, and because of this outsiders were called in for help.

The judges, the Jedi, and the freelance all answered the call yet only one person came ahead of the rest… That one, was [member="Yula Perl"]. After being led to the elevator shaft, the smoke having died a long time ago now, all that stood between the young Perl and adventure was the rope that descended down the defunct shaft.

At its bottom laid a small research facility, unmarked yet most certainly felt. The lights were still yet it didn’t do much. Once-white walls had turned black from fire, the smell of burnt flesh evident as traces of the owners seemed to linger under collapsed hallways.

The force told of no one who seemed to be alive. No one except a single figure, dazed and confused deeper into the facility.

—————

Her muscles tensed up as an errant gasp for air filled her lungs with what felt like the first breath she had ever taken before a coughing fit inevitably stole it from her. She rolled over trying to get up from the ground but found herself falling off of her cold bed and onto the floor. As the coughing got worse she struggled to keep herself awake. Sweat poured down her forehead with each bead draining her already weakened state. It was as if the inside of her very skulle had been set on fire. A headache burned against the insides of her head with a tickle she couldn’t even explain. Seeing was hopeless, her ears rung with the most insistent ring and everything around her hurt but out of sheer instinct she kept pushing against the desire to fall back asleep.

Instead she dug her nails into the floor as she pried herself up from the ground with a weak pull. The floor felt rough of dust and grime that could be felt but not seen. The tips of her fingers sifted the thin layer of dirt as she forcibly pushed against the floor with her forearms. A scream parted her lips in full as she felt the burn of dirt reaching into a wound. With the support of the wall she pressed herself against it and proceeded to sit upright against its surface. Her hand traced against the opposite forearm to expose cuts. Her eyes wandered down, but with her vision still blurry and her mind on fire it was hard to make much sense of anything at all. They seemed to be some kind of symbols, but more than that it was hard to tell. She strained herself, squinted her eyes to look at the arm one more time as it swayed in front of her unable to remain still.

E-Y-N-A.

She grunted and let her hand cover the wound to still the pain but it didn’t do much. Her eyes began to wander around the room. The fire in her skull pushed out against her head but she focused as best she could. The ringing began to subside and as she took her third deep breath she felt her vision come to as well. The coughs grew smaller, her hand stifling a small one as she glanced around the room.

EYNA. EYNA. EYNA. EYNA. EYNA. EYNA. EYNA. EYNA. EYNA.

It was written across the room. On the walls, on the floor, and on her arm yet the importance of it was lost on her. It was now easier to see the state of her surroundings. The dirt and soot on the floor hugged the walls and ceiling as the lights in the ceiling flickered at irregular intervals. Along one of the walls ran a crack in a window concealed under a panel and to her left was the door. It was closed.

She tried to move but her strength failed her. Once more using the wall for support she pushed herself off the ground. Bare feet patted against the ground as she passed towards the door. In one of the corners she could see a bloodied glass shard and for a moment her eyes set on the palms of her hands.

They were scarred. Her arms too.

What was going on here? What had she done?

 

[Yula Perl]

Yula had been traipsing around the Outer Rim, fueled by the idea of possibly becoming a judge. She’d have to ask her Uncle [member="Dax Fyre"] about how things worked with the Judges, but for right now it was just a thought. After all, the Zeltron had thrown herself into many of the Coalition’s major conflicts. Maybe this was the right place for her, after all.

She’d been exploring Eliad when it happened. An underground detonation had rocked the capital city, causing several casualties and structural damage near the epicenter. While local law enforcement and rescue workers were combing through the wreckage, Yula was directed towards ground zero to investigate the cause of the explosion. Carefully, she eased her way down the elevator shaft, both hands gripping the rope as she worked her way towards the bottom.

What had happened down here paled in comparison to the surface. Hallways collapsed, rooms caved in, anything structural blackened by soot. Yula reached out with one hand and traced the tips of her fingers along what remained of a wall, digits swiping cleanly though the blackened layer. She crawled her way through the rubble, deeper and deeper into the facility until she had picked up on something.

Something alive. Not a rat, but something with a humanoid life force. Yula hastened onward, calling out as she did so.

“Is anyone there? I’m here to help you. Walk towards my voice if you can; we need to get you out. It isn’t safe down here.”

Biting the inside of her cheek, Yula hoped that she wasn’t inviting something dangerous towards her. Hopefully just a disoriented scientist.

[member="Eyna"]

 

[Eyna]

The scars on her arms and palms of her hands were a mixture of old and new. The deeper she pushed into her mind and tried to remember what they meant the weaker the push back from her mind got until it felt like it was little more than swinging at the air. She tried, desperately, to make any sense of it all but it was as if the memories just weren’t there. Another sense of panic spread throughout her system with a tense, unsavory feeling of dread mixed into it at the thought. She should have known where these scars came from given they were on her body, she should have some kind of memory of why they were there. Her eyes lifted from her arms to take in the rest of the room as her breaths grew unsteady with the realization that she had no idea where ‘here’ was either. She had only known it to be home, her world and room, but never why.

Hands latched at the side of her head as she began to stumble around the room trying to make any sense of it all, but the fire inside her skull still raged and grew more painful with each passing moment. Her shoulder bumped into the doorframe accompanied with the sound of glass cracking under the weight of her heel. A tiny screech echoed throughout the facility as she latched onto the doorframe to keep from falling over. It didn’t seem as if anyone was here. Was she all alone? Where was everyone, and why was everything in such ruins?

No sooner than the thought came to mind she was proven wrong by the sound of an unfamiliar voice. The girl was startled, pushed herself off the doorframe and with a smooth, almost well-practiced maneuver got herself back on her feet. She promptly tore an exposed pipe from the wall in order to arm herself. The metal groaned and squealed as an invisible hand seemed to tear at it, but before long the pipe flew straight into the girl’s hand and a steady flow of water began to pour onto the ground. Dirt and soot mixed into a veritable mess of filth that stung against her heel. She pushed against the corner wall to peek out across the big empty hallway, not realizing what had happened.

For now the coast looked clear and she let herself breathe again.

And only then did it hit her.

Where did that come from? How could she tear a pipe from a wall and how did she know to enter that particular stance? The pain in her heel begged her to stop moving but she had to keep pushing. She pushed towards the voice, for better or worse, knowing it could either be her undoing or salvation.

Maybe they had answers, maybe they knew where she was or even better yet who she was.

Maybe even why she was? No, for the moment she’d settle for who and where.

With a pipe in hand she carefully snuck her way down the hallway. One way or another, she would have answers.

[member="Yula Perl"]

 

[Yula Perl]

The more that Yula walked into the darkness, the more her eyes adjusted to the lack of light. The further she moved into the underground tunnels, the stranger it seemed that she did not find anyone, especially after searching through the rubble of a collapsed room, the purpose of which she could not tell.

There was a noise. Gentle, rhythmic and distant. The patter of footsteps followed by the smell of fear and disorientation. Well, it wasn’t really a smell—but that’s how it equated to Yula’s senses. Sometimes it was difficult to tell the work of the Force apart from basic biology.

“Is someone out there?” She kept talking in hopes that her voice would be a sort of homing beacon. “Are you injured?”

Turning a corner, she froze. By now she had a small display of pyrokinesis burning in one of her palm’s as a makeshift torch. The light of the fire cast a shadow on the figure at the end of the hall. Yula squinted, unable to make out much detail. Slowly, she continued forward, keeping her voice low and her movements smooth and purposeful.

“Are you alright? My name is Yula, and I’m here to investigate the explosion. What's your name?”

Was…that a pipe the figure was holding?

[member="Eyna"]

 

[Eyna]

[member="Yula Perl"]

As Yula spoke a small gasp echoed down the dark corridors. Turning to come face to face with a pink-skinned young girl, Eyna stopped dead in her tracks and assumed a defensive position. Sloppy in execution, but quite clearly trained. The mere act caused another wave of confusion to bubble up in the force. Eyna herself wasn’t unnoticeable to those that would have been used to ‘sensing’ it. There was an undoubtable darkness that surrounded her very being, yet at the same time there was a small flicker of light that seemed to burn unusually bright amidst the chaos of her disrupted mind.

As Yula stepped forward towards the girl she’d find that the girl in turn took a step back, pipe still held at the ready as if to defend herself and with each step causing her to let out a panicked gasp at the stranger’s approach. Almost as if Yula had read the girl’s mind, she answered the question that she was about to ask. The girl tried to run the name through her mind to see if it meant anything but much like anything else she had tried to remember it all came up blank.

And then the question came, the one that Eyna herself had tried to understand since she had woken up. What was her name? She thought on it and the pain that throbbed and burned inside of her head intensified as if it tried to keep her from remembering. She felt her arms start to shiver and shake before she dropped the pipe to the ground. Her hands pressed hard against the side of her head to try and stop the pain but it was all in vain.

“I don’t- know.” She stuttered amidst the pain and confusion. “I- I- woke- and- you- and this-”

The trail of thought brought her nowhere. She had no idea where she was, who she was, and more specifically she had no memory of any explosion. She stepped into the fire’s light, still clutching her head.

With pleading eyes she really only had the one question.

“Where is this?” She whispered in panic and exhaled as the pain began to numb out. “Where are we? Did you bring me here?”

 

[Yula Perl]

Yula noticed trickles of a Force presence around this girl, and while she didn’t have the most fine-tuned senses for this sort of thing, there was an air of conflict to it. Right now, it mattered little to her. Empathy told her that the girl in front of her was legitimately confused and scared, presumably from the explosion.

That, or she was an exceptional mentalist with intentions to trick the Zeltron.

She stuttered, hands at her temples, trying to make sense of it all. Fortunately, she dropped the pipe, but it didn’t rule out the possibility of her lashing out in disorientation.

“We’re somewhere beneath the surface of Eliad City. An underground explosion happened, and I came to investigate. To be honest, I’m not really sure exactly where we are either.” Yula admitted, feeling comfortable enough to gaze at their surroundings briefly, as if she could glimpse a clue from the blackened walls. “The explosion destroyed a lot of the infrastructure of whatever this is, so it’s hard to tell.”

Her heart panged for the girl, who was asking questions that Yula couldn’t sufficiently answer.

She wanted to move forward, but decided against it. The girl was working things out, no sense in spooking her away. “I’m not sure why you’re here either, but maybe we can find out. What is the last thing you can remember?”

@Enya

 

[Eyna]

[member="Yula Perl"]

No matter how hard she tried, and tried, and tried again Eyna had no recollection of any explosion. Though that didn’t say much given the fact that she had nary any recollection of just about anything at all. The city name told her nothing, and the fact that this ‘Yula’ didn’t even know where they were was alarming in itself. Could have been a ruse, could have been the truth. There was a strong desire to try and compare the pink-skinned woman against any other face that she could recollect but there was nothing. It was like a hallway of smoke and mirrors except there were no mirrors, and the smoke was gone. A heavy cloud of uncertainty lingered where memories should have been.

“I don’t know.” Eyna whispered under her breath. “I- I can’t remember anything.”

A quiet growl from her stomach echoed through the corridor. Eyna’s hand instinctively reached to press against it as her tongue pressed against the dried up roof of her mouth. A dry cough parted her lips and she felt the exhaustion press against every muscle and bone in her body.

“I am Eyna.” She said with a pause. “I think.”

Her hand grasped at the scorched wall as she stepped closer to the other woman.

“It’s what is carved into my arm.” She said and raised her other arm to show the scars that reached from side to side like a reminder, one soul to another. “I don’t know how it got there. It was- carved across the floors and walls of my room.”

Her head weighed heavy and she put her free hand up against her forehead to offer some measure of stability.

“Can we- I need to get out. Please?”

 

[Yula Perl]

Yula nodded in earnest as the young woman struggled to recollect something—anything. It must have been terrifying, she figured, to not remember anything right down to your own name.

“Here—” She offered a flask of water to the stranger as she coughed, soon identifying herself as Enya. “Alright, Enya.” Yula frowned at the scars covering her arm, the name etched into flesh as a painful reminder. Did Enya do this to herself, or had someone else branded her as such?

There were hundreds of explanations. A psychotic break, an experiment gone wrong. Force knew that there were plenty of Sith, plenty of far-reaching scientists who conducted work on humanoid subjects. Plenty of messes for the Outer Rim to clean up. Not that the Coalition didn’t make plenty of messes themselves.

It didn’t feel right, thinking of this girl as a mess, as something to be handled.

“Good idea, Enya. Let’s get out of here.” She reached out with one hand, waiting for her to grasp it. But if Enya did not wish to be lead by the hand, then Yula would not mind.

[member="Eyna"]

 

[Eyna]

[member="Yula Perl"]

The water almost hurt as it was poured down her throat. Piece for piece of her throat seemed to slowly wetten up. As the liquids passed her lungs she felt a sharp pain spark up. Eyna had to clatch onto her chest. A wet, pained exhale parted her lips with an equally wet inhale. It hurt but she needed more. With another extended chug she swallowed the water hard and passed the bottle back to Yula. The world got blurry for a second as the pain got worse before it numbed out. Her head remained on fire, but at the very least she felt at ease with the water that cooled her down in an instant.

“Thank you.” The girl whispered under her breath.

As Yula grabbed her hand she let it happen. The tug at her arm lead Eyna forward. For what felt like the first time in a while she allowed herself to take in the hallways and corridors. The soot and ashes were hard to miss, but so was the pain in her feet. She glanced down to see the glass shards that had pierced into the soles of her feet and the blood left behind in her step. The pain was blunted at this point. She tried to feel it but there was nothing. System shock, perhaps. Or maybe just another memory she could not recall.

As the corridors came to an end, with the elevator standing before them Eyna withdrew her hand from Yula’s. There was a sense of fear setting over her that she couldn’t quite explain. It was like standing at the edge of a bad decision or a mistake. A shaky breath blew through her nose, her posture tightening up into a tense mess.

“I can’t.” She panicked. “This is- it’s- I-...”

Eyna wasn’t very old. She had no recollection of how long she had been here but something at the back of her mind knew that it was her home. From the flickering dying lights in the corridors it was easy to see she was hardly out of her teens yet. It was a scared teenager who felt further and further out of her depths.

“What happens if I go through that door?” Eyna hesitated to even ask. “Who do you work for? Why did you come here? Where are we going?”

 

[Yula Perl]

Silently, Yula was grateful that Enya decided to come along easily despite her hesitance. Working on rescue operations had taught her that not everyone wanted to be saved, disoriented or not. By and large, the ones who fought back were confused, distraught and distrustful. Yula could not blame them, nor could she blame Enya for her apprehension. It seeped through the room like soot on the walls.

The Zeltron stopped and turned around to face Enya fully. She didn’t speak right away, but instead, took in everything that was Enya. Bruised, bloodied, terrified. Anxious, confused, worried. All of these things were Enya in the moment. “I’m a part of the Outer Rim Coalition. We patrol the worlds in the Outer Rim, to keep them safe and free.” She paused, wondering if she truly worked for them. “I came here because I heard the explosion, and was worried that people were hurt.”

In the back of her mind was tension, and a fear that Enya would recoil away from help. She was on the precipice of something that could potentially change her life, after all. Not everyone ignored their instincts as often as Yula did.

“There’s a medical team waiting just past that door. They’ll evaluate you, and help to heal your wounds.”

She let the pause drop there before placing her hands gingerly onto the young woman’s shoulders. “Enya, I know that this isn’t easy for you.” Olive eyes caught Enya’s own, a somewhat similar shade of green. “I’ll be with you the entire way, though. I won’t leave your side if you don’t want me to.”

[member="Eyna"]

 

[Eyna]

[member="Yula Perl"]

A cautious glance set on the elevator again. The Outer Rim Coalition was once again something she was not familiar with. However, Yula had treated Eyna with a kindness she wouldn’t have expected. Despite her gut telling her not to go she decided to reach out once again for the pink-skinned woman and trust her judgment.

“I…” Eyna shook under her own hesitance. “I trust you.”

It felt strangely hard to say as if something at the back of her mind knew that it wasn’t what she was meant to do. A routine that she had never gone against before yet had managed to crack through. Yula seemed genuine, she seemed to want to do good by Eyna even if it meant going into a broken down lab facility just to find her. Eyna most likely wouldn’t have done the same. Part of her knew that she wouldn’t have.

But this new approach to things…

Eyna took a step towards the elevator with a wary glance at her… Friend.

“Please stay.” Eyna said with a frown. “For a little?”

“I don’t know.”