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Alex walks through the city of Vitraan, taking her time to wander the streets. This city was theirs, their safe haven as much as any morph could hope for. Morphs, a sort of sub-race of humanity. Quite a few, like Alex, were originally born human, but either by choice or necessity have taken to having their bodies altered to that of a bipedal variant of some animal or another. Being a fox morph, her entire body is covered in russet colored fur, two digitigrade legs and a head with not only a long, pointed muzzle but fairly large ears that move to catch all the sounds of the city. But morphs are not generally held in much regard to other humans and are seen as being beneath them. At least, they do for all the morphs that would actually live in Vitraan, a city that could easily be considered as having been abandoned by humanity rather than something taken over by morphs. And Alex is out enjoying her morning walk through the city streets.

Despite it being a bit too early for most people to be walking around the streets, Alex is still keeping her eyes open to anything that may end up presenting itself. That isn't to say the city is completely deserted as she nods to a few of the other morphs that she passes, some of them having a long drive to work or are doing some things before such. And some simply have nowhere else to be. Alex turns to one of the less used roads and about halfway down hears the scream in the distance. She quickly turns and sees a little squirrel morph, likely no more than seven or eight years old running in her direction and away from a couple of rather large humans.

Alex looks around quickly to see if there's any good way to escape. Ideally, she could run into the main roads, but that wouldn't really help matters all that much. However, there is a rather tall fence step nearby. It is an odd feature for the city and a testament to how the city was never really constructed in any sort of coherent manner. There is a side-path that is more for foot traffic towards some of the rural areas, but the ground is located about four feet above the ground of the road Alex is currently walking. Most morphs can simply climb it if they really need to go up there or there is often a step stool they can climb as well. Alex moves next to it and slouches down a bit, holding her hands low and gesturing behind her with her head. The squirrel girl nods and rushes Alex. When she gets close she jumps up, onto Alex's hands and Alex helps vault her up high enough to reach the road above. She then turns and makes sure that the girl not only made it but has also resumed her escape. The humans will still be able to follow her, but unless the girl is stupid, the extra time it'd take them to climb up onto the raised road themselves should be more than enough to get to safety or at the very least out of sight. Satisfied that she's helped someone in need she smiles slightly before being grabbed roughly by the shoulder and thrown to the ground. Alex cries out and clutches her head, pressing her hands reflexively against the hurt area. Unfortunately, it seems that continuing the chase for the little squirrel girl is far less of an issue now than getting revenge on her for helping their quarry escape.

"Stupid, fucking bitch. Have you no fucking manners?" He shouts at her before kicking at her in the gut. "Do you know how long it took for us to track a girl like that? How much money you just cost us?"

Alex makes no response to their shouts, merely tries to protect herself as best as possible by curling up into the fetal position, her tail wrapping itself between her legs, giving an additional minor cushion for her ribs. The two men seem to take a lot of care to avoid hitting her in the face, but instead are focused entirely on her ribs, stomach and back, though one is frequently kicking at her legs as well. She makes no other attempt at protecting herself, merely hoping that they get bored and either chase after the squirrel girl or go do something else before her body gets too badly injured. Alex cries out as one of them gets bored of simply kicking at her and proceeds to just step on top of her and stand on her chest. She turns to dislodge him and he falls off. The fox morph then tries to use this as an opportunity to escape and quickly tries to rise to her feet. But just as she's about halfway to standing upright the other human grabs her back and throws her forward into the wall. Unfortunately, she was still too off-balanced in the process of standing upright that she isn't even able to get her hands in front of her in time and her face collides with the concrete of the building, splitting a small gash on her forehead. She moans as her red blood starts to stain her russet colored fur. She raises a hand up to the wound as she struggles to stand again.

"God damned bitch, you just had to bleed on us and ruin the fun!" the one that threw her into the wall curses and kicks her in the side of the head, sending her to the ground once again.

And then the kicking continues, but this time with a lot more force, a lot more anger. Before they were simply trying to inflict pain, but now that she's bled, they've given up that pretense and now are trying to utterly break her. Alex tries her best to try and protect herself to minimize injury, but there's only so much she can do against the relentless assault. On top of that they are rather indiscriminate now about where they attack, having no qualms about attacking her head, back and gut with equal impunity. Tears fall freely down her eyes as she just hopes they have enough restraint to stop before they end up killing her, and all because she tried to help a little girl escape these two. Just as one of the two humans is about to try jumping on her again a sound comes from the distance. One of the humans turns to look and sees a couple of officers running in their direction.

"Shit. Cops! Run!" The one that looked orders. The other gets in one last kick before fleeing as well. When they arrive at where Alex is still crying, not yet having grasped that the attack has ended now, one stops to see how she's doing while the other continues the chase after the two men. Unfortunately, after rounding the corner the second cop no longer sees any sign of them and shrugging begins to make his way back to his partner.

"They got away," he says as he looks over at Alex, who coughs up some blood, every breath she takes sounding extremely ragged and shallow. "Man they really did a number on her. Wonder what she did to piss them off that much? Don't really ever hear of this level of brutality without good reason."

The other agent is currently on the phone with emergency services. "This is Detective Matthiews, I have a badly wounded woman and am requesting an ambulance to my location. Yes, she is a morph, will that be a problem? An hour and a half? How could--okay. Okay. Fine. Good bye."

"Well that certainly doesn't sound good," Detective Ryan comments.

"Get this, even though the nearest hospital is only like ten minutes away, because she's a morph, the earliest they can get to her would be in an hour and a half because the driver they use to get morphs isn't expected to show up for work for another hour."

"So in other words, we're much better off just taking her there ourselves than actually waiting for an ambulance. Given how they were acting, if we came in a few minutes later I doubt she would even have survived an hour and a half wait," he turns his attention to Alex. "Come along then, let's get you to the hospital."

Alex makes no real response to the conversation, instead is still cowering and trying to fight for breath by way of painful gasps. Her posture shows that she is aware that the first two humans are gone but is more to try and protect her body from this new pair of humans than anything else. As detective Matthiews reaches out to touch her to try and get her attention she suddenly reacts strongly and tries her best to try and back out of their reach, trying to stop further assault. This time she doesn't try and get into a standing position to try and run away but rather sits up and tries to use her hands to try and keep them away.

"Hey now, stop that," Detective Ryan says, "we're only trying to help. Those two are gone okay, we need to get you to the hospital, okay?" Alex doesn't even really seem to acknowledge that he's said anything, intent on only trying to slowly back her way over to the wall for some protection and keeping the two detectives at bay.

"It's okay, we aren't going to hurt you," Matthiews says, bringing out his badge to show her. "See, we're cops. We're the good guys."

Whether or not she understands the words they are saying, the moment she sees the badge a very disheartened expression crosses her face and all of the fight drains out of her. Instead, she sighs and slowly starts picking herself up. Curious as to the exact reason for the change in behavior Detective Ryan leads her gently to where they parked, careful to not aggravate her wounds. She spends the entire time holding her ribs while walking, making no effort to get away from them or engage them in any way. When they get there she goes into the back seat without question and buckles up before going back to holding her own ribs, her breathing still extremely pained.

Detective Matthiews chooses to sit in the driver seat this time, though that doesn't really mean much anymore. With how advanced the AI has become on the cars, really the steering wheel has become more a safety feature in case something happens to the AI rather than actually allow someone to drive the car. Instead, Detective Matthiews gets into the seat, tells it to go to the hospital then once everyone has buckled in begins the process of driving itself there, checking traffic and dealing with everything else in regards to moving the car. The ride to the hospital is a rather quiet affair. Not only are they uncertain as to whether or not Alex can even hear them, her dejected stance conveys clearly that she's currently in no mood to talk one way or the other, even if she could speak. Detective Ryan can hear her crying softly to herself and it somewhat pains him to know he can't really do much about it at the moment. She hasn't responded to a single word either of them have said so it's entirely possible she's deaf so trying to comfort her with words isn't an option. Whenever he turns around to try and gesticulate to her she's either looking out the window or at the ground and trying to get her attention only gets her focus on the latter. As such he's pretty much forced to just stare out the window while they drive. Matthiews, on the other hand, is busying himself by not only letting the hospital they're heading to know that he's on his way with an injured Morph but also to inform the local police about the attack and a general description of the two suspects. Unfortunately, they weren't really close enough or facing towards them enough to get much more than a very vague description of height and weight and what they're wearing, but he hopes it'll be enough. Morph or not, getting assaulted like that is a crime.

When they stop at the hospital, Alex stares at their location in confusion, clearly having been expecting that they would have been trying to arrest her rather than take her to get treated. As they move her out of the car and towards the hospital she makes no effort to try and get more than a few feet from them and still refuses to leave their side. However, her face head is looking around all the time, trying to take in every single detail. They are met by somewhat annoyed looking nurse as they enter. Detective Matthiews looks around a bit, somewhat surprised the nurse they meet is human. Having never had any reason to go here before he had half thought that it would be only natural for the hospital in Vitraan, the one that does a lot regarding caring for the morph population, would be primarily staffed by morphs. After all there should be plenty of doctors who for one reason or another would go morph. But other than a few support staff that aren't actually able to treat people everyone in this hospital that isn't a patient seems to be human.

"This the one?" she asks. At a nod she leads them to a table that had been set up and gestures for Alex to sit. She does so, her head still looking around. "What are her injuries?" she asks. Alex sits on it, one hand grabbing the bed for support while her head is not paying anyone attention but rather on everything else going on in the hospital.

"Well, she's clutching her ribs so I think those might be broken, and possibly some head trauma. She seems to be deaf."

"Is that right? How nice." She moves her stethoscope to Alex's back, "Okay dearie," she says in a much louder tone as if that were the problem. "Deep breath now." When she doesn't respond the nurse says it again louder still, then finally resorts to flicking Alex's ear to get her attention. Alex jolts suddenly and looks about ready to bolt before seeing the two detectives again and gripping the table more tightly as she looks over. The nurse places a hand on her chest and then pantomimes breathing in deeply. Alex eventually gets the hint and inhales as much as she can, though she ends up whimpering a bit as she lets the air back out. The nurse moves her hand onto the front of Alex's chest and repeats the gesture. After getting a second deep breath she pulls the stethoscope away. She then goes about looking at Alex's head wound as well as her ears.

"Well, good news is it isn't anything serious. Given how her kind tend to be I imagine she'll be back to normal in like a week or so. Even still probably best to take a few x-rays just in case and perhaps prescribe some generic pain killers to help her sleep. Probably will need to have that head wound cleared out and given some antibiotics to prevent infection, though that shouldn't be too much an issue anyway. I don't see anything at all wrong with her ears or head to imply trauma causing the deafness. Meaning either as a Red it's a botched conversion that caused the deafness, or she's just being really stubborn and only pretending to not hear. Either way, none of my concern. Please escort her up to room 412 and I'll tell radiology to go prep. They'll be ready in about ten minutes. Might as well do a blood test while we're at it. Anyway, off you go."

They're assigned a nurse to go and escort them up. Alex obeys reluctantly and given they are going through fairly simple hallways spends most of her time looking around with intense interest. The detectives are looking around and noticing how empty the hospital seems to be in the way they're walking around. Even if they don't need as much medical attention as humans, he'd still think that a hospital of this size should still get a lot of business. It definitely doesn't make sense to build a hospital this large if no one is ever going to be using it. When they move into the elevator Alex starts to act particularly nervous but having no means to talk to her about it the two detectives just chalk it up to her being somewhat claustrophobic. Once they get up to the room the nurse leaves them, claiming to come back soon once the test is ready. Alex moves over to the window and stares out of it for a moment to get a feel for how high up they are as well as whether or not it's bolted down. Once done she begins to look around the waiting room they left them in, looking at all the labels and anything else that may come as an interest to her.

"Rather large place, considering," Matthiews says.

"Must be a magnate hospital, possibly even the only Morph hospital in the entire city. Would not surprise me. Still, for a place this size I'd expect to see a lot more activity on the day to day, even from people just doing checkups."

Having no idea what all is going on other than that they put her in a room way up Alex eventually goes to sit on the examination bed that is in the room, keeping her legs closer towards the window than the exit to the room and turns as best she can to observe what the other two are doing and any sign of anyone entering the room. She even does the best she can at reading any of the labels on anything within eyesight, though she isn't fluent enough in knowing what all those are. She ends up grabbing at one of the towels and using it to try and wipe off some of the blood from her face, though it's only a temporary measure. It'll clot soon enough. She then moves over to the window, staring out it and trying to get a feel for where she is and how high up she is. Frowning, she still goes about checking the window and finds that she is able to unlock it and open it up a little bit, letting in a little fresh air into the room. After waiting another moment, a nurse shows up with a needle in hand.

"Radiology will be ready in just a moment and we can head on over just as soon as I administer this. Don't worry, it's just a simple antibiotic and mild sedative, nothing to worry about," the nurse says calmly while focusing more on drawing out the liquid from a small vial into the syringe.

Alex's eyes go wide at the sight of the needle and her ears pull back to her head. She quickly scans the room to see what odds she'd have of bursting through them without getting close enough to that needle but given her injuries and the two men nearby she doesn't like her odds one bit. She quickly shakes her head and signs out the words for 'don't want' but the detectives either don't seem to know what she's doing or don't care and the nurse is just ignoring her and slowly making her way closer. Alex bites her lip slightly and then quickly turns around and rushes to the window. The two detectives cry out in shock at her action, having thought nothing of it. The nurse is similarly distressed and holds the needle up in as passive a position as possible, trying to not scare the morph any further. But not having any of it, before any of them can move to stop her, Alex pushes herself out the window and towards the ground. The other three rush towards the window, half in an attempt of trying to catch her if she grabbed onto a ledge, and half from the macabre interest to see what fate befell her. Thankfully enough, Alex has survived the fall, though there is now a pool of blood where she landed as well as one of her legs has become obviously broken, even from the distance the others can see. Alex doesn't stop at the bottom, though, but instead slowly picks herself back up and starts limping back into the city. While Detectives Matthiews and Ryan begin to head out the door to try and see if they can catch up to her, the nurse pulls out a phone to make a call, her face looking more annoyed or disappointed than it is actually concerned.