say shadows suffering 10x fast / rp

[Wyndi]

It was incredible what a difference one month could make.

Sela carefully stepped around a spray of broken glass, the fragments glinting bright and sharp under the early morning sunlight. It looked like almost every window and door had been smashed, either by the government during its initial raid or by anti-mutant protesters craving a fun Friday night afterwards. Thanks to the open-air exposure, mildew and rust were already beginning to set in here and there inside: the whole place smelled damp, rain and mold taking root in the carpets and rugs.

The students were long gone. The teachers had fled, were in hiding, or were in prison. And the headmaster was dead, denied any form of funeral rites or even a burial. And all within a month. What might happen given a year?

Well, there was nothing to be gained by standing around and reminiscing. Sela strode towards where the main entrance once stood, the double doors now lying cracked and chipped on the ground, and stepped over the threshold. Even with the sunlight filtering through the broken windows and doors, the hallway still seemed eerily dark as she walked down it. Now and then she glanced behind her to make sure she wasn't leaving Zach behind, but mostly she seemed guided by her feet and not her head.

The door to the alumni storage room stood ajar, but looked otherwise untouched. Sela coughed as she pushed the door open wider: a thick coat of dust had settled over the shelves and plastic storage bins, and more than a few spiders were lurking in the darker corners. One scuttled over Sela's boot as she took another step in, and she resisted the instinct to fling it aside and squash it.

"I'll only be a few minutes," she told Zach. Sela made a beeline for her storage bin - aisle four, two bins from the first on the left - and eased it open without dusting the lid off. Everything inside was just the way she'd left it on the day she'd traded in Helix for Cornell, waiting patiently for her to return. Her carefully framed Helix diploma on the very top. A stack of secondhand novels, purchased for a quarter each at a used book sale. Her first psychology text, given to her by her social studies teacher - and concealed inside, a stiff paper envelope of cash. Sela tucked the latter securely into her coat lining and continued sifting through the bin. Two pairs of glasses whose prescriptions no longer fit her - why had she kept those? A faded photograph of her parents - this, she quickly crumpled into a ball before she could focus on the faces.

[dracoon]

The man wasn't about to stand there rigidly and wait for her.

He casually phased through the shadows, jumping and careening through the reflections from the broken glass before looking for supplies he could scavenge from the now-abandoned staffroom. Emptying whatever food supplies he could dig up (non-perishable goods, very important) from the shelves and the refrigerator, he leant on the table with a can of beer in his hand. The man sarcastically made a toast to those that had been killed in the conquest of branding the mutants, before he drank it all up and tossed the can into the bin once it had been emptied. He jumped once more, hopping fluidly through the distorted shadows of Helix to return to his original position.

[Wyndi]

Sela was waiting silently at the storage room entrance by the time Zach returned, her pockets newly weighed down with twelve crisp fifty dollar bills. It wasn't much in the long run, but if they were careful...it was manageable.

"What did you end up finding?" Sela asked, zipping her coat back up. (Well, she called it a coat, but it was more of a fleecy hoodie: nothing like the formal pea coat that'd been a staple in her wardrobe for so long. Dressing her age - the age of the flighty, fun-loving college student - was more difficult than it looked.) Once again, she ran over the list of things they needed: money, food, water, flashlights, basic emergency survival gear, warmer clothes for when the weather really started hitting hard. Helix was their best bet for all of the items, aside from actually going out and spending valuable cash on them.

[dracoon]

"Food," he stated, rifling through his bag to show her the cans of random things as well as a few (surprisingly still drinkable) soft drinks and beer, "And some drinks to drown our sorrows in when things get tough." He looked around and up, carefully treading up one of the larger shadows to prevent leaving any prints of their appearances. The shadow parted a little for his mouth and eyes, and he turned vaguely in her direction. "Where else have we searched that might have supplies?" he continued at last, "I know I went to the kitchen and got all the food, where else? The shed outside? The dorms? I'm sure most of the students left something behind, you know how they're like."

[Wyndi]

"And some had no choice," Sela said sharply, feeling a sick swoop in her stomach. Children as young as five attended - had attended - Helix. What had happened to the children? Had they been tagged and released, considered too young to pose a threat? Or were they imprisoned somewhere alongside their teachers, with no idea what had landed them there?

Sela brushed past Zach, stepping out into the hall again. It would not do to dwell on the suffering of others, not if her goal was avoiding the same fate. Nurse's office, she said to Zach, the telepathy more natural to her than actual speech. The nurse had used her healing abilities for the more severe injuries, but she'd kept a stock of the basics from what Sela had remembered: ibuprofen, antibiotics, vitamins, bandages, even extra flu vaccines if it was that time of year.

The walk to the nurse's office was a short one. Glass littered the floor here too, along with a mess of syringes. Sela was careful to sidestep where she could, the edges of rubber-soled boots crunching the rest underneath her feet. Is there anything you need specifically? Sela asked, starting to rummage through the cabinets. It was hard knowing what they would need since they didn't know exactly what kinds of conditions they'd be facing - should she take calamine lotion in case of poison ivy? Just vitamins to keep their nutrient intake up?

[dracoon]

"Oh, ok, need me to drop in?" he responded, "And I don't need much, just get everything- we don't know what we'd need as we go along, really. Too bad you can't see the future." He continued sailing upwards in the larger shadow, disembarking on the floors where the dorms once were. The doors had largely been destroyed, from forced entry by those who had caused Helix to end up in this disarray. The man tasted the air, searching on his hands and knees for things they could possibly use. Some of the kids had flashlights from sneaking into the kitchen at night, and there was a portable radio that was still creaking out some fragments of 'Maps' by Maroon 5 in muffled tones in what appeared to be an older student's room. Both items were taken, as Zach continued his search for items they would need.

After raiding the dorms as he had mentioned, he bounced into the shadow of the trees and entered the shed. He fondly recalled hiding out in the rickety shed when he had to teach- he was really not a good teacher, not that he cared for the opinions of others. He picked out all the rusty tools that was useless to their conquest, dropping in the smaller tools that were still functional into his bag. Who knew if they needed to build something makeshift, push come to shove?

[Wyndi]

Taking Zach's advice, Sela ended up cramming a little bit of everything into a bright red first aid bag. Bandages, latex gloves, a bottle of vitamins, antibiotic ointment, packets of pain relievers, a heat pad, a cold compress, gauze dressing pads, a thermometer, burn cream - the list went on and on. Sela could only hope it'd be enough as she yanked on the zipper, the sharp metal edge biting into her fingers.

The first aid kit went into her backpack, on top of multiple layers of pouches of preserved food. I'll meet you back at the main entrance, Sela projected to Zach as she hoisted the backpack over her shoulders again. I doubt there's much more we can feasibly take.

The headmaster's office was a few doors down from the nurse's office, and Sela found herself slowing down as she approached. The door to the office had been utterly destroyed - battered to pieces and riddled with bullet holes. The walls and furniture inside had suffered the same fate. No blood, fortunately: the media had reported the headmaster being asleep when the government forces had struck.

Sela stepped inside, tugging the overly long sleeves of her coat down over her hands so she wouldn't leave any fingerprints behind. Bits of glass and wood alike crunched underneath her boots, digging themselves further into the dusty carpet. Behind the once beautiful mahogany desk, the headmaster's chair had been knocked on to its side, the leather back of it slashed with a knife.

Sela carefully righted the chair before opening the first desk drawer. There was nothing inside but cobwebs, and she quickly slid the drawer shut before a spider (or worse) could scuttle out. Unfortunately, the rest of the drawers didn't turn up anything better - but what had she been expecting? Some last comforting letter from the headmaster telling her what to do? She wasn't the protagonist of some young adult novel; she hadn't been close to the headmaster at all. Definitely not a father figure, although it would've been nice if he had been....

Pull yourself together, Sela told herself, and slammed the last drawer shut before turning to leave. She reached the main entrance in record time, still feeling distinctly annoyed with herself.

[dracoon]

"Can we go now?" whined Zach, shaking his body flimsily in a small tantrum as he watched her emerge. Sela seemed somewhat distressed about something- then again, mused Zach, her face had always been tight and emotionless that he could never decipher her. She was an enigma wrapped in mystery. and that was what made her so attractive in his eyes. The man pushed his sunglasses back up to his face, helpfully reaching for her bag.

"You shouldn't lift so much," he stated, casually beginning to alter his appearance into something else. His usually black hair turned sooty grey, and the usually buff man turned thin and pallid. Zach's tan skin bleached to pale white (so white, it blocked Congress bills, joked Zach internally) and his brown eyes turned to a light blue. Wrinkles began to appear on his skin, and at last Zach had projected the illusion of an old white man in a suit.

"So?" he stated, his voice deep and raspy, "What do you think of this for a disguise?"

[Wyndi]

"I can handle it, thank you," Sela said, unhelpfully keeping her bag out of Zach's reach. As relieving it would be to have the weight off her shoulders for a while, she'd also grown far too accustomed to the heaviness resting against her back. The loss of it would make her feel...restless. Twitchy. Paranoid. The closer her things were to her, the better.

Besides, with Zach's new illusory disguise - "An elderly man shouldn't be exerting himself either. People will think that you've been forced to carry my bag for me, or that I'm not self-aware or selfless enough to carry it myself." Not the most pressing concern there'd ever been, but any attention at this point could unlock a whole bevy of unwanted consequences. Zach could make himself look like anyone in the world, but Sela didn't have that luxury. Short of visiting a plastic surgeon and getting her face sliced open, anyway.

Readjusting one of the straps on her bag, Sela led the way back towards the double doors of the entrance. A sense of loss weighed down the back of her mind as they left Helix Academy behind them, and this time, she did not attempt to dismiss it: like so many of her classmates, the school had been so much more than a school to her. The day she'd left her family behind - a duffel bag slung over the headmaster's shoulder, her ears plugged into a Walkman blasting Tchaikovsky to drown out the sounds of everyone else's thoughts - was still the sharpest memory she carried around.

The day had warmed considerably by the time Zach and Sela arrived at the local train station. The cloudless sky and near blinding sunlight promised a perfect day for spending time outdoors - not that either of them could enjoy it. Sela glanced at the black display looming over the dozens of passengers hurrying to catch their trains, stepping aside to let a mother pushing a stroller past. Destinations - New York, Providence, Washington, D.C., Chicago, a few that Sela didn't recognize - flashed in neon-green letters on the left side of the sign.

"Where to?" Sela asked in a low voice, plucking a brochure about train times and ticket prices off the information desk.

[dracoon]

Zach hunched, following behind her. He noticed her pause a bit near the entrance, casting a glance up at the sprawling fortress that had once been Helix. Wordlessly, he placed a hand on her shoulder to tell her he understood what she was feeling. The man remembered being offered a place here- a scrawny, disheveled mutant with admittedly a dubious upbringing, having to teach in the world's most prestigious academies. If not for Mindy, he would've ended up turning it down. Responsibility had never been his strong set, anyway. As they walked, Zach scanned the passerbys for the newspapers in their hands. Headline after headline blared the dwindling list of mutants that had gone into hiding after the act had been passed.

A lot of said mutants were forcibly removed and rounded up, some even killed for resisting arrest. He didn't actually catch concrete names on the smaller text (having only one working eye sucked) but he sensed that both their names were somewhere on that list. They finally stopped at the train station, and while Sela looked at the displays on the various boarding platforms, Zach fished out a corn dog he had found before shoving it into his mouth and offering another to Sela. They were in pristine condition anyway, he mused to himself, -apart from being a bit squished. When Sela asked to pick a destination, he took the corn dog out of his mouth before squinting at the small text. "Somewhere quaint? Countryside?" he suggested in a soft voice typical of the elderly, continuing to eat the corn dog slowly as he looked up at the signs, "You can call the shots, I'm none the wiser in terms of going places."

[Wyndi]

Sela took the rather flattened corn dog from Zach with an absentminded thanks, too preoccupied with scanning the train schedules to really notice what kind of food he'd given her. It took her a few nibbles to register that she was in fact eating a cold, squashed corn dog, and another few before she realized that being served cold and squashed did not do anything for a corn dog's edibility. Still, she couldn't afford to be picky, so she took another bite without oomplaint.

"I doubt anywhere 'quaint' and isolated enough for our purposes would be reachable by train," Sela pointed out dryly, running her finger down the list of destinations on the brochure, "These are all major urban centers. I've been to New York City and D.C., and it'd be easy enough for us to blend in in both cities, but I certainly wouldn't claim to be overly familiar with either place or the surrounding areas." Boston was on the list too, but Sela definitely wasn't about to head in the direction of home. "D.C. might be the better choice at the moment," she mused out loud, then seamlessly continued telepathically, The last place government agents would look for us is on their own doorstep.

[dracoon]

"Alright, your call," he stated, distracted by the many crowds, "I'm not familiar with the places anyway, not that I ever learnt how to read signs." Zach's sense of direction was remarkably bad- he only committed Helix to memory anyway, all the running to him was pretty much aimless. "Hey, can't say I didn't try to be helpful in this. All these abbreviations make my head hurt." With that whine, he strode over to the counter and put on a 'hapless elderly' act for discounted train tickets. They needed as much saving as they needed, and the ticket counter gave the tickets without any question. With that, he returned to Sela's side to squint at the brochures on hand. "Where can we even go in this D.C place," he stated at last before continuing it as an afterthought, --well, without pissing anyone off there.

[Wyndi]

Isn't that the million-dollar question, Sela thought, taking a look at her ticket and swiping a few more pristine brochures on D.C. off the information desk. "We can do our research on the train - we won't arrive until late afternoon at the earliest anyway." Besides, it was almost time to board: time to head towards the platform if they wanted to leave this place.

The D.C. metropolitan area is one of the largest in the country. There should be public transportation to nearby cities in Maryland and Virginia, Sela projected to Zach as the two of them boarded the train. ("Traveling light, huh?" commented one of the conductors, flashing them both a smile.) But it might be easier to stay in D.C. and masquerade as university students. There are several big schools in the area: we could hop from campus to campus and take advantage of the...facilities on each one. It might be a bit boring for Zach, but they were just trying to survive and pass undetected. And they could always move on to the next city before anyone grew too suspicious.

The train pulled away from the station shortly after. With a burst of static, the intercom flickered to life, announcing the estimated arrival time and where the restrooms and the dining car were.

[dracoon]

Zach sat in silence throughout the trip, which was honestly quite a feat for the usually energetic man. After all, he was playing the role of an old man, so he wanted to at least seem somewhat convincing. He was supposed to do research as Sela instructed- but it would only take less than 2 seconds of hitting Wikipedia for the man to begin nodding off. He tried his best to stay conscious, considering it was Sela telling him what to do and that usually was enough to double his energy reserves and get more motivated, but the words swirling around his head seem to lull him deeper into slumber than expected. He soon leant back, letting out a loud snore as he fell into a deep, dreamless slumber. Shapeshifting was exhausting sometimes, but Zach's body subconsciously maintained the features above his chest, so it was only visible that there was an inconsistency if a person got close enough.

As the train began blaring that it was time to arrive, Zach was jolted awake. He refreshed the disguise once more, glancing across to Sela apologetically for falling asleep throughout a large part of the ride.

[Wyndi]

The bitter taste of untempered black coffee lingered in Sela's mouth as she tucked her phone back into her pocket. She would've liked to close her eyes and doze off herself during the ride, but the thought of arriving in D.C. with no semblance of a plan had made her stomach twist uncomfortably. So research it had been, thanks to the train's free wi-fi.

The D.C. station was, unsurprisingly, several times the size of the one they had departed from. Yet still its walls seemed unable to contain everyone inside: swells of people pressed against Sela and Zach from every side, filling the air with chatter in English, Spanish, Chinese. Sela tried to step aside for anyone she saw coming, but god, it was difficult. For every person she avoided, another one brushed by her in a hurry. And she could feel a headache coming on like nothing else from the ruckus a few feet away: there must've been at least fifty high school students gathered, all perched on their luggage and snapping selfies and chugging down Cokes. And all of them had a limb draped protectively over their sleek black instrument cases - violins to double basses. Orchestra trip, Sela thought, but the nostalgia of her own didn't soften her irritation.

"Can you see which way the exit is?" she asked Zach. All she could see herself were flashy advertisements for dining and banking and cell phone plans - the golden arches of McDonald's the most prominent among them. Turned away from the gaggle of orchestra kids, she didn't see one of them straighten up and look at her with interest, didn't see him extract himself from his group with a charming smile. She barely sensed him at all, in fact, until he was right behind her and tapping her on the shoulder.

"Hello, Jie Jie," said the boy.

For a second, Sela froze. She forced herself to spin around - No, what are the chances; it couldn't be - everything in her tense and ready to run. But her senses hadn't betrayed her: there, in front of her, stood someone familiar and strange to her all at once. His hair shone as dark as hers; his eyes were a chilly brown, like mud frosted over. Puberty had given him half a foot on her, though he was still short by American standards.

"I didn't recognize you at first," Jaden Qing carried on, his tone light. "You cut so much of your hair off." He turned to Zach with a smile that barely warmed his eyes. "Are you traveling with Sela? I'm her brother - Jaden. She's probably never talked about me before, though, has she." It wasn't a question.

Jaden looked back at Sela, still smiling, and instinctively in that split second, she threw up a mental barrier around Zach. Even so, she was almost too late: the force of Jaden's mental probe slammed into her barrier with all the force of the Shanghai Maglev Train. She nearly doubled over, her head clouding over with nausea.

"Whoops, sorry." The apology almost sounded genuine, but when Sela looked up, he was still wearing that same half-smile. "I was just trying to find out who he was. I didn't know you'd learned to do that." She read his meaning loud and clear: I hadn't expected you to learn to do that. "You hadn't even figured out that I was - well, you know - when you left. Kind of embarrassing for a telepath, don't you think? Although with the way things are going right now, maybe that was for the best."

Sela wanted nothing more than to curl up in a corner with a cup of steaming hot ginger tea. Jaden's words struck true: she hadn't known about her younger brother's powers, not back then, not up until a minute ago when he'd tried to psychically sledgehammer Zach. Where had that come from? How had she missed that, even with the barest minimum of interaction she and Jaden had had as children? Unless -

"Jaden!"

A harried-looking older woman, presumably a chaperone, was herding Jaden's classmates towards the exit. "Come on, our bus is waiting for us."

"Sorry, Mrs. Welch," Jaden called back, sounding sheepish. "I was catching up with my sister. Today's a free day, right? Is it okay if I hang out with her for the rest of the day? Someone can take my suitcase for me."

"Well, sure." Mrs. Welch looked uncertain for a moment, but it was gone with a blink. Sela was almost convinced that she'd imagined it. The chaperone smiled at the three of them, a full warm smile. "Have fun! Be at the hotel by ten o'clock - we don't want anyone yawning at rehearsal tomorrow." Then she followed the rest of the group out. How oddly lenient of her.

Too lenient.

A shiver ran down Sela's spine. Beside her, Jaden smiled again, and this time, the smile reached his eyes.