Chapter 9: Revelations
#9 of Infected
I sat in the darkness of my room, the door locked with a sign plastered to the front that read: Please keep out. Stay away for your own safety. After the incident with Falco, I deemed it necessary for me to leave the Great Fox for the safety of everyone else. When I told everyone what I was planning on doing, they all rejected the idea vehemently, saying that it was an accident. The bruises on Falco's wrists don't look like an accident and neither do the bandages. I thought sorrowfully, cringing at the momentary state of bloodlust I had suffered. I sighed and lay down on my bed, staring at the dark ceiling and started counting for the hundredth time the number of minute grooves I could find. I hadn't found more than thirty when someone unlocked the door and stepped into my room, letting the door close behind them. I looked up and saw Bella standing there with her staff on her back while she carried a duffle bag in her paws.
"Grab whatever you need and meet me in the hanger." She said as she threw the bag onto the bed and walked quietly out of the room. I stared after her as if she were crazy, but the adventurous/curious side of me wanted to know what we were going to be doing, so I climbed off of the bed and grabbed an extra set of clothes, a bracelet that Fox had given me when I'd gotten back onboard and a pair of custom dog tags that had mine and Fox's names on them. I draped them over my neck and crept out into the hall before taking off silently to the hanger, leaving my friends behind again and hopefully keeping them safe. I stopped infront of the hanger doors and took a deep breath to calm my nerves before walking into the cavernous hanger, the team's Arwings hanging from anti gravity repulsors in the docking bays. I spotted Bella next to one of them and made my way over as quickly as I could, my heart pounding with what I assumed was adrenaline. I stopped next to her and looked at the Arwing we were about to steal when she picked up one of the dog tags around my neck.
"A gift from Fox when we were friends way back when." I explained. She shrugged her shoulders and opened the cockpit the Arwing before tossing our bags into it the undercarriage cargo bay and climbing into it herself. I climbed in after her and sat in the cramped secondary seat behind her when I remembered her buggy.
"What're you going to do about your buggy, Bella?" I asked as I looked at it sitting in the corner, the energy rifles gleaming in the semi darkness. She looked back over her shoulder and pressed the button for the canopy to close over our head before shrugging her shoulders again.
"I'll get it back sooner or later, but right now, you are more important than my buggy, Hazel. I don't like it when friends beat themselves over something that's out of their control and I intend to help you through it. So I think you should strap yourself into the seat 'cause I've never actually flown one of these things before." She said as the hanger lights came on around us, bathing everything in a bright light that blinded the both of us for a few seconds. The radio phased to life and Fox's voice rang out as clearly as if he were standing next to me.
"Oh come on, Hazel. What is it with you and leaving without goodbyes, huh?" He asked almost angrily. I pushed the canopy open and saw Fox standing in a pair of boxer shorts and a tank top, a set of dog togs around his neck that were identical to mine. I smiled and jumped out of the Arwing to walk over to him, trying to keep him from poking me on the forehead. "If you're planning on leaving, Hazel, at least wait until we land on Sauria. Then you and Bella can go look for the Krazoa temple and ask them if they can shed some light on the parasite. Until then, I'm going to have to ask that you don't steal our Arwings so you can leave. We aren't made of money and those things aren't cheap to make." He said after a sigh. I nodded once and grabbed my bag from underneath the Arwing when the speaker system crackled to life.
"Distress beacon received from a colonization ship marked the Aphrodite." ROB's voice echoed in the hanger. Fox ran back out the hanger and in the direction of the bridge, leaving Bella and me alone.
"Wonder what's going on?" She asked as she jumped out of the Arwing and landed next to me, a curious look on her face when I saw her standing behind me. She touched her paw to the small of my back and rubbed it softly while she looked at me. I shrugged my shoulders and pulled the strap on her bag to get it out of the cargo hold when a humming sound reached my ears. I turned back to look at Bella and my eyes went wide when I saw her face. One of her eyes were hanging from the eye socket while the right side of her head was gone, giving her a bloody, lopsided grin. I batted her paw away and dove underneath the Arwing to get away from the horrible face of my friend. I popped up on the other side and tried to even out my breaths while I clutched my chest with the pain my heart was giving me. Bella stepped around to the side I was on and I saw that her face was back to normal. I blinked at her a couple of times before ridding my head of the awful image I saw in it.
"What is wrong with me?" I asked aloud as I sat down on the ground. I looked down at my paws, one a dull silver and the other gloved with a forest green, fingerless glove that Bella had given me, and watched a small discharge of electricity come off of my paw. I'm a freak, nothing more and nothing less. I thought bleakly as I slumped defeatedly against the hull of the Arwing, my head making a dull thud against it. I saw Bella walk over to me from the corner of my eye and sit silently next to me, her knees drawn slightly to her chin. She stared at her buggy sitting in the corner of the hanger and I noticed that her eyes bloodshot with bags underneath them. Her fur had lost some of its sheen and her hair was hanging limply next to her face. She looked over at me and gave me a tired smile as she crossed her arms over her knees.
"I haven't told you a lot about myself, have I Hazel?" She asked suddenly, her eyes burning holes into my head. I told her no and she sighed as she looked back over at her buggy. "I wasn't born on Nanuet, Hazel. I was born on Ceria, where I was treated like a princess." I looked at her as if she were crazy, taking in her desert proofed clothing and dual edged staff while also remembering how well of a fighter she was. She ignored my gaze and continued. "I had people waiting on me paw and foot while I never had to worry about things going wrong. Life was paradise for me. I had parents who loved me and bought me nice things, things that made me look beautiful and made me feel superior to those around me. Amazingly, I didn't have any friends at the time, but I saw the other children from time to time. I always ostracized them for not having my beauty or wealth, but I could never shake the feeling that somehow, they were better off than I was. I ignored the feeling for the most part, putting in the back of my mind by indulging in fancy parties and being showed off by my mother to her friends. But it always festered inside me, eating away at my happiness slowly, making me wonder if I was really as well off as I thought.
"It wasn't like I didn't try and make friends, but I just couldn't see how the other children were better off than I was. I wracked my brain for weeks trying to find a solution to it, but I never could find any reason for their joyous smiles when they didn't have fancy play things or gorgeous outfits to wear everyday. It wasn't till I was fifteen and at a masquerade ball that my parents had been invited to that finally understood why I was so miserable, why I wanted friends. I'd been to balls and galas all the time, but this was the first time I'd actually been introduced to the more... perverse side of some of my father's friends. I remember sitting in the garden outside, my hair gently waving in a soft breeze while I was gazing into a reflecting pound surrounded by lilies; the moon setting the water aglow with it's pale light. I had gone outside to get some fresh air when I heard a grunting coming from the bushes nearby. Being curious was always my shortcoming and I was wondering who could've been making that grunting and panting. Coupled with the intoxicating aroma that was wafting on the breeze towards me, I couldn't resist taking a peek through the bushes to find out what was going on. I stuck my head through cautiously, making sure whoever it was couldn't see me, and had to put a paw over my mouth to keep from gasping at what I was seeing. Till that moment in my life I hadn't seen anyone having sex, let alone being so close to such an act, but that what was happening. There were three of them, two raccoons and a tigress, and the tigress had a leash around her neck. One of the raccoons was tugging on the leash roughly; bringing her mouth down onto his long cock while the other was pumping into her violently. I tried run away from the scene I was witnessing, but the smell of the action held me captive, making me long for it. I could clearly see the tears coming from the tigress's eyes and I felt sorry for her, the fact that she was being forced to do that made me forget about the longing and made me angry at the raccoons for forcing themselves onto a helpless woman.
"After that, I couldn't bring myself to look most of my family's friends in the eye, knowing that behind them might lie a perverted mind who'd raped someone in their lifetime. I started spending more time away from all the glamorous things I had been so enthralled with before and began spending more time getting to know the children I had ignored for so long. Some of them had grown up and left me behind for other things, but some of them had stayed to pursue opportunities to marry me." Bella shuddered at the thought and looked at the wall, her eyes looking to her past. "I didn't want to marry any of the suitors that my father had picked out for me for the simple reason that I didn't like any of them. Each one I saw couldn't hold a conversation with me long enough for me to realize that they were staring at my chest. I had to constantly cross my arms over my dress just to keep their attention on my face. But that didn't seem to matter to my father, so long as the suitor had a lot of money to give to the cause. It infuriated me that I didn't have a choice in my future husband, but I never voiced my opinions aloud because I was afraid of what my father would've said. That was when I met Maximillion..." Bella trailed off as a dark scowl heated her features, making her look a lot more fearful than she was a second ago. "He came to see my father one day and of course, my father took an instant liking to him. He was a tall, handsome wolf with fur as black as a new moon and eyes that were a brilliant shade of burgundy. He had velvety soft voice that melted my heart the first time he spoke to me and I found his gaze to be unimaginably deep, as if he'd seen more than his appearance let on. None of that mattered, though, as I couldn't keep myself from him for any length of time. My parents were thrilled that I'd found a suitor who I liked and had set the wedding for the following month. We were to be wed in an enormous ceremony, filled with decorations and guests and expensive things that would've seemed unnecessary to me if I weren't so enthralled by him.
"The closer the date for the wedding got, however, the less I felt for him. I had been so taken in by his charm and grace that I hadn't noticed the way he stared at me when I walked, the lust so apparent in his eyes that I'm surprised he never tried anything whenever we were alone. He did rape me eventually, and my parents asked me about the way I looked at him every day since, but I explained it off as wedding jitters. I never looked at him or my parents the same way again. They were so blinded by the fact that I was getting married to a very well off wolf that they never stopped to think of what it might do to me if I were to get married at eighteen. I cried myself to sleep the day before the wedding and I resolved that I wasn't going to go through with it. I left him waiting at the alter and ran, ran as far away from my old life of luxury and carelessness as I possibly could. I spent the next few years hiding from the search parties that my parents had sent after me, but I made it off the planet without getting caught. Then I stayed on the cargo freighter until I made it to Nanuet and was caught by Alexander. He made me his pet for a couple of months, but found that I was better suited for other work. He taught me how to fight and made me work for him, bringing in new pets for his enjoyment while he kept me from getting taken away. Then you showed up a year later and the rest is history."
"Do you miss them, Bella?" I asked quietly, my head now leaning against her shoulder while I felt tears spilling down my cheeks at the knowledge that she'd gone through a worse life than I had. She let out a dark laugh and shook her head, giving me her answer without a word. I dried my tears on my gloved paw and sighed sadly, letting her words sink in to my head while I wondered if I should tell her my life story or not.
"You don't have to tell me about your life if you don't want to, Hazel. I just needed to vent some of it out of my system before I had an emotional breakdown, that's all." She pointed out as she wrapped an arm around my shoulder. I nodded and decided that if she trusted me with her most intimate memories, then the least I could do was give her mine. I took a deep breath, shuddering breath and stared down at my clasped paws, keeping my eyes down so she wouldn't see my tears.
"What do you see when you look at me, Bella?" I asked in a whisper. "Whenever I see myself in a mirror or a reflective surface, I see what I could become. I see the monster that I was back when I was fighting Falco and I can't stand being around people. My life has been one long, painful heartbreaking journey, making me wonder if I was meant to even live this long. Even as a kid I was constantly in danger. I had been born on Corneria because my parents hadn't wanted to have me born on whatever home planet they'd been raised on, so I didn't know any better. I got strange looks from the adults that I met, but to the kids, I was just another one of them. I met my first real friend in the third grade in a girl named Geno Verfa, and I thought we would get along for the rest of our lives. That all changed when we hit high school, though. Kids I'd grown up with who had never given me anything but smiles and laughter started looking at me funny and I didn't know why. I asked my parents about it, but they never gave me a straight answer. So I got around it and spent more time with Geno while keeping myself busy to avoid the stares I was getting. Then my dad started acting funny. He would lash out at my mom and me for no reason at all, his voice almost cracking with fury one minute and then he'd change to hysterical sadness the next. I could here my parents talking at night and I heard the word death more than once. That was when he went completely insane. He went berserk one night and started beating on my mom. I was asleep through most of it, but I saw him kill her right infront of my eyes. It was the most horrible thing I'd ever seen; my dad, my gentle, loving dad had just murdered my mom. It made no sense to me. I'd always seen them around the house, kissing each other, telling each other how much they loved the other and more than once I had to block out their love making with my pillows.
"But that was what had happened. My mom was dead, my dad was deranged and I was left without a family. I moved in with Geno and stayed with her till the end of college, when I moved in with my boyfriend at the time, Axel Umos. He had a nice apartment and we stayed together for a couple of months..." I trailed off, my eyes blurring with the tears that were pooling on my eyelids. I wiped my eyes again ad looked up to see Bella looking down at me, her eyes soft with understanding. I took another deep breath and continued on to what my life was like up until I met her; the kidnapping, the prison I'd been locked in, meeting Jasper again, and the eventual fight between me and that dragon. When I finished, I found myself hyperventilating from dredging up my worst memories and letting her into my past. She tightened her grip around my shoulders and hugged me closer to her, trying to soothe me with calm words while her paw ran down my back softly. I leaned into her and sobbed silently, my voice drowned out by the blanket of sadness draped over me. Mom, I miss you so much. I wish you were here to help me through this. I thought desperately through my sobs, clinging closer to Bella so I could escape my memories. I fell asleep in her arms and I didn't want to wake up.
"Where am I?" I asked aloud, looking around at the stark white walls and closed my eyes against the bright light assaulting my face. I tried to bring my arm up to shield my face, but it wouldn't move. I looked over at my wrists and saw that they were bound in heavy chains, the glare of the light coming off them making me have to squint to see them. They rattled incessantly against my efforts to get free and I started to feel panic setting in.
_ _
"Amazing, truly amazing. I never thought my little symbiotic parasite would be able to do such wonders to the body of my niece. Truly remarkable." An excited voice commented. I looked over in the direction of the voice and saw a set of gleaming eyes glittering at me. The eyes frightened me and I tried to wrestle my way out of the chains to get away from whoever it was, but they tightened around my wrists until they were cutting off the circulation and the blood was starting to drain out of my paws. I felt my paws start to tingle with power, but the energy was siphoned out of me and spiraled into the air above me, leaving me feeling sapped and dreary.
_ _
"Ah ah ah, we can't have you breaking free now can we?" The voice asked in a condescending tone that made me glare at the eyes angrily, though in reality that was all that I could really do. I heard the click of a lighter being struck and saw the red dot of a cigarette as it was lit before the sound of shoes hitting the ground reached my ears. I continued to glare at the bobbing glow of the cigarette and watched a man walk over next to me. He was a slight fox wearing a lab coat and jeans while a button down beige colored shirt covered his chest. He took another drag of his cigarette and smiled down at me before blowing the smoke into my face. "You know, I can't believe that of all the people that my parasite was forced upon, it had to be you, Hazel. I mean, what were the odds that my brother's daughter would be infected and still be capable of rational thought."
_ _
He walked over to a table that I couldn't see and came back with a syringe in his paw that looked like a pen and was filled with a sickly yellow substance. I tried to protest him putting that in me, but I didn't have enough strength to open my mouth to speak. He stuck it in my neck and pressed his thumb down on the plunger, sending whatever the liquid was rushing into my veins. I heard the hiss of the substance as it fled through the syringe and felt the deadened sensation in my body intensify as I lost all feeling in my limbs. I even suspected that my heart was slowing down, but that would've meant that my lungs were going to slow down my breathing as well and I wasn't looking forward to having to fight against my lungs just to breathe.
_ _
"Oh, don't worry, my little blossom," the fox said as he caressed my cheek affectionately, the cigarette slightly obscuring his smile while he brushed some of my hair out of my face. "You're a very rare and unique specimen that I won't let die too quickly. I still have far to many experiments and statistics to run before that happens. Luckily, our species has long lives, so we won't have a limited time together. Just come find me and all your answers'll be answered, Hazey." I was fading in and out of consciousness during his little speech and I couldn't keep my eyelids open any longer. His voice grew fainter as I slipped farther into sleep, though I thought I felt him kiss my forehead and tell me good night, but I wrote those off as hallucinations. "Sleep, my dear. This'll all be over soon...."
_ _
_ _
_ _
I woke up groggily and groaned as I pawed the sleep from my eyes, a little surprised that I could move my arm again. I heard quiet breathing to my left and looked over to see Bella sleeping next to me, her shoulder rising slightly with each breath. I stared at her bare back and gingerly put a paw to the spot where the syringe had gone into my neck, not feeling anything unusual or strange but feeling as if I had been changed even more. Bella turned over in her sleep and she draped an arm over me, her breath blowing over my face like a wave. I snuggled closer to her underneath the blankets and nuzzled her cheek gently while I replayed the dream I just had, trying to pick out familiar things in it but coming up empty. What was that? It couldn't've been a dream; it felt too real. I thought as Bella stirred slightly in her sleep and hugged me closer to her body, her warm fur feeling comfortable against my numb body. I wrapped an arm around her and sighed at the dream, frustrated that I couldn't figure out anything else about it. I settled into the soft, inviting sheets and closed my eyes to try and remember who my uncle was, even though the fox in my dream called me his niece. I faintly remembered seeing him every once and a while when I was a kid, but all my other memories of him where dim and hazy at best. I tried to dig up clearer memories from the back of my head, but the effort gave me a headache and I stopped trying after a few minutes. I yawned quietly and set my head down against the pillow underneath it, my nose inches from Bella's as I fell asleep again, my dreams plagued with blurry images of my uncle and more images of the room I had been in.
So ends another chapter of Infected. Same deal as every other chapter, DO NOT STEAL MY O.C.'S!!!!