Lights.
Voices.
Footsteps.
Winter slowly opens her eyes as reality comes back to her, groaning slightly from the grogginess of her slumber. She’s disoriented, trying to register where she is. It isn’t until she sees the silhouette of a figure residing over her, holding a square metal object, cyan peeking out of whatever kind of helmet the person was wearing. She hears his voice speak, modified in what she’d consider mystical.
“Sir, she’s awake!” T-6 exclaims, peering over the Winterlance.
There’s excitement present in his voice as his boss walks over to Winter. Arch Extent looks down, a bit cautious as to who this native was and what she was really capable of.
She was the one who destroyed that door. The monster he had been wondering about.
“I have some questions for you.” Arch Extent walks around to the side of the examination table.
Winter turns her head to the other side, blonde locks falling past her face as she views the man in the peculiar hat speaking to her.
His hands are in his pockets, skimming his gray eyes over her figure from head to toe. There’s two noticeable scars that lace over the left side of her face, the color combination of her hair and complexion were quite reminiscent of someone familiar from his previous project. There was a disconnect though, like something he knew, but it wasn’t there. There was the difference being that she was a Winterlance, and not someone from Earth. She’s something he’s never met or encountered before, and it makes him question her origin. Despite being mesmerized at the fact that a Winterlance exists, he notices the female trying to lift her arms, adjust her legs, and watch as the cuffs rattle and shake. There’s no way she should be able to get up, not when the metal cuffs are magnetized to the highest degree possible.
“Maybe I’ll answer yer questions if you minimize the handcuff kink goin’ on here.” She tries to rattle again, but the cuffs are held to the table by powerful magnets. His reaction appears unpleasant. Arch Extent’s composure returns to normal, and he follows up with his first question towards the confined Winterlance.
“First question: Who are you?” The Arch takes his hands out of his pockets. He doesn’t expect anything amiable from the female, only hopeful that he could get more information about this Winterlance.
“A pretty pissy huntress who’s ready to kick your ass.” Winter snarls out.
“Charming…You’re a Winterlance.” Arch Extent slews out, reaching for a pair of sanitized black gloves. The scientist carefully pulls them over his digits, tugging at the elastic until it fully covers his hands. They make a snapping sound, something that makes Winter blink. “I’ve never met someone with your mutation before.”
“Where’s the princess, weirdo?”
For Winter, she believed Princess Aress to be captured just like her, tied down by metal cylinders around her ankles and wrists that glowed with an ominous color of coral. It’s her duty as a huntress to help protect the Tribesfolk of Divon, even if it was royalty, in regards to safety in travel. If she were to fail this mission, she knows the potential for repercussions from the Cloaks tribe. However, the scientist’s expression emits something more somber.
“Dead.”
“You fucker! You killed her, didn’t you?!” Winter rushes up, teeth aggressively flaring and anger fully revealing itself. Winter wanted to be optimistic in that there was a chance to save the teenage princess, that she’d be returned to her family–not truly a pawn being traded. The huntress makes an educated deduction that the man she was talking to in the hat was none other than the Demi-God the princess referred to earlier.
“No. She died of a natural cause–if I can even call it that. But you…You aren’t affected.” It’s true; Winter wasn’t infected with the Cosmos Plague. Absolutely no sign of it. Even T-6 decides to step up into the conversation to point to a holopad.
“It’s completely normal! We actually don’t have any data on Winterlance blood. So…this is quite exciting! While you were asleep the last half hour–”
“You took my fuckin’ blood?!” Winter shouts, nearly panicked.What sort of magic would they perform with her blood? She didn’t understand what was going on, who these people were, or what this place was. “Lemme guess…You’re the Demi-God? The person King Uthar traded her to?”
“You natives keep calling me that. I’m not a Demi-God.” Arch Extent loathes.
He’s a bit irritated that name has unfortunately plagued him since his first contract with the natives. Truthfully, it’s due to their lack of understanding technology and how this planet has devolved that lead to it. For them, he’s presented himself as godly from his vast medical knowledge to his simple usage of electronics that an everyday Earth person would use. However, the natives of this planet were what Atlas had reminded him grimly: test subjects. Nothing more, nothing less. They’re all a means of acquiring the cure to Cosmos Plague and whatever else Seraphic Inc. wanted out of them.
He couldn’t waste anymore time with the Winterlance, already pulling out a syringe from the lab counter. It was filled with a sedative, something to knock her out before they continued analyzing the qualities of her blood and how her body functioned. Every second here was a second wasted to save humanity.
“We’re sedating her, T-6.” Arch Extent grabs Winter’s arm tightly, pulling it aside so he can get a clear view of where to inject. He uses the tip of his finger to indicate where a visible vein is to inject the syringe.
“You got it, boss!” T-6 replies happily.
Winter quickly becomes alarmed and she reacts on raw instinct. Her digits grow cold, moisture reaching the top of her dermis as ice morphs out of her skin pores. She encases both hands and arms, shattering the metal shackles that bound her down to the examination table. Arch Extent and T-6 hear the cuffs crack, literally snap into pieces as Winter flings up her arms.
Arch Extent was able to see the abilities of what a Winterlance could do. It was destructive ice, able to tear through the alloy like a knife through butter. Her speed was undoubtedly unmatched by any other type of Tribesfolk he’s ever experimented on.
“Sir–” T-6 tries to finish his sentence. Unfortunately, it was at that very moment that T-6’s lifespan appeared to expire. Winter’s ice claw slices clean through his neck, decapitating the unsuspecting scientist in the helmet. His head rolls to the ground, crimson splattering across the floor as his body topples against the once pristine tiles. She’s fierce, ready to kill what she considers to be her captors. The man in the hat was next on her list to take care of while she planned her escape out of this bright prison.
Winter simply smacks Arch Extent to the side with such violent force that his body lands on the ground, sliding into one of the wall screens. His back makes cracks instantly appear on the screens as he hits it. He’s already winded from the encounter, things fading in and out from blurriness. In the midst of it all, Winter leaps off the table and delicately takes her ice claws to pull the teal-lined hood over her face. She knows he’s still alive, and she’s going to at least finish the job of killing the man who was the reason for why she dropped Princess Aress.
If it wasn’t for Demi-God, Aress could have been alive…Right?
Arch Extent regains himself, waving his hand in front of him to push aside any dusty residue from the screen he had broken. The scientist was greeted by a ghastly sight of a woman with giant ice claws, one of them drenching in fresh blood:T-6’s blood. If he doesn’t do something, he’s going to die and everything he worked towards to find a cure for Cosmos Plague will surely be in vain. He needs backup, and his jittering fingertips successfully click a button on the square device in the pocket of his red vest. An emergency signal manages to send out to the nearby security in the facility, sending a message that Arch Extent was in trouble.
–
Not too many rooms over, the security personnel reviews a holo-alert, blinking questionably behind the helmet as he reads the message.
“Huh…? Arch Extent is in trouble?” A security personnel cocks his gun. “Let’s see what the trouble is…”
The man hastily makes his way to the lab room the Arch is located in, door sliding open to a formidable scene. The sight makes him want to vomit: T-6’s head detached several feet from his body, and a woman with crystal-like ice aligned along her arms, hovering over the boss. He shouts, raising the plasma rifle up at Winter.
“Step away!” The security guard waits a few moments to see if Winter would respond.
She simply stands there, not following any command screamed at her. In Arch Extent’s perspective, he’s saved, for the moment, but he doesn’t expect this Winterlance to give him any type of mercy afterwards. The security personnel who had walked into his death sentence would only be fodder to stall Winter until he came up with a new means of escaping.
“I said move it!” The guard fires off the plasma rifle, Winter simply raising her ice-encased arm to take the shot.
He takes a step back, amazed that a piping hot shot like that didn’t make much of an impact into her ice. There must be more elements that form her ice besides just frozen water–properties that could allow it to take a hit or to slice through material that couldn’t normally be cut through.
“What the fuck?!” The security personnel shouts out.
How did a shot from that plasma rifle not penetrate her ice? Arch Extent is shocked.
The Arch watches as Winter pushes off from her feet, springing at the security personnel to disarm him by nudging away the rifle. Not only did she quickly disarm the weapon, but she takes the same right arm to lance right through the unfortunate target's chest. Gore embellishes the floor abstractly, the security personnel having his chest ripped open with a clean hole to see right through.
How heavy is that ice on her arms? She was able to slaughter him in seconds with such speed…I’ve never seen any mutation like that here in Division 5.
Arch Extent remembers how many stories he’s heard about the Winterlances, the one tribe that seemed to never make an appearance.
If this is what she is capable of, then the small security team here will die just as fast. I can’t die here. Not yet.
The scientist gazes to the door, watching the last three personnel strut in with plasma rifles all ready to fire at Winter. He needs to get into a position where he can be safe, make an escape, anything. He could get up now to run away, but it’s possible with the huntress’ speed that she’ll easily catch up and slice him up like a butcher. His adrenaline kicks in and he begins to reach for one of his plasma-based pistols on the lab counter while she’s distracted. Arch Extent hears the shouts of the three men scream as they open fire, seeing how Winter was easily able to keep the ice up along her arm to shield herself from the incoming hot shots.
She can easily cover herself in ice to protect herself from any of those shots…I need my gun. Since none of the shots are penetrating her ice, it means I need to aim for–
The Arch’s thought is cut off as he intuitively raises the gun to the front of him, feeling a sharp pain at his neck. The front of his pistol touches her forehead, her fine ice had almost sliced through to decapitate him. Instead, it only left a mild cut that was left bleeding on the scientist’s neck. Winter had stopped once she realized the weapons being used in an attempt to kill her were now at her head. Arch Extent was lucky and managed to land his gun at a blind spot he had planned.
--her head...
The two stare at each other as if they were in a trance. Their breaths synchronized, gulps, everything. They were both trying to decipher one another–anticipate for the next move of who would do what.
Winter pondered, knowing that her ice was potentially useless, that his finger could slip and that magical weapon could cause harm to her head. Arch Extent knew that she could easily decide to move her arm in the direction it was planning to take him out, just like his fellow employee T-6. They were each other’s demise.They were locked in a dance of possibly paying death a visit.
No…I can’t kill her. She’s the only one who isn’t affected by Cosmos Plague.
“So tell me..what are you gonna do?” Winter decides to break the silence.
“I could ask you the same thing…”
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