Forgotten City: Sample 1--Diana

Diana

There was a violent knock on the apartment door. Rattling the hinges meant that the A-leader was back from his rounds with something important to discuss. The grunt in the makeshift base-Jed, by name-leapt from his seat and unlocked the door. 

The quarry that the A-leader brought in was a girl-around 17 or 18 years old. He was behind her, gripping the binder on her wrists with one hand. His other hand held a firearm aimed at the back of her head. He was limping and nearly out of breath. The girl had an obvious flesh wound on her left side, soaking her burgundy top and dark blue jeans with blood.

"I'm gonna go back out and make sure she was alone." He roughly threw her into a chair that was sitting nearby, and procured a cloth gag to fit in her mouth. The A-Leader reloaded his gun hastily. He didn't look at Jed, but instead muttered things under his breath. The young soldier was left out of the loop for a few moments.

Suddenly, the A-leader grabbed his shoulder forcefully and looked him dead in the face.          
"Watch her." was all that he said. He stood there locking their gazes for a bit longer than was customary, then turned abruptly and headed back for the hallway to go secure the perimeter. Jed wasn't usually given guard duties to perform on his own because he had barely been out of Academy for a month, so he counted it as a personal pleasure to perform this one.

It must have been that the A-Leader got into a struggle with her on the street, and brought her to the apartment for questioning. He guessed that this girl was probably one of Them. He had heard stories often enough of these people-or whatever they were. They were crazy, people said-strange, violent, filthy, even possessed. Superstitious elders in less dilapidated surrounding districts called them the "Demon-bred". Still others believed something extraterrestrial was at work.  In Jed's opinion, anyone that lived in such a poor, gloomy neighborhood where so many vicious Anomalies had been detected could very well be one themselves-man, woman, or child. His mission-the mission of the entire host of Sentries was to detain them all.

He had never seen one up close before, and from what he could see, she was just about normal. The first thing he noticed was her straight, dark hair. It was colored with a bold auburn dye and fell just below her shoulders. When she raised her head, he could see eyes of the purest hazel. Her eyes were large and a bit sunken underneath. Despite this, her soft face made her look picturesque. She shook the hair out of her face, revealing a rapidly forming bruise above her eyebrow. Jed knew his place in the order of things, but at times he questioned the A-leader's tactics. Using excessive force was tacitly accepted by many Sentries, but was it necessary in situations like this?

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The girl wrestled feebly with her binds, causing the chair to inch around wherever she shifted her weight. Jed halted her squirming by aligning the barrel of his firearm with her forehead. She looked wide-eyed for a moment, and then dropped her gaze.

For a while, he thought about whether or not to turn on the TV. He wasn't exactly sure how closely to watch the girl sitting bound in the chair. No, he thought. If the A-leader came back and saw me, I'd get a bad mark on my profile. He instead sat on the edge of the sofa and fiddled with his gear.

The girl began coughing through the cloth in her mouth. An audible wheeze could be heard from the air rushing in and out of her nose. Her face began to turn cherry red, prompting Jed to walk over and take the cloth out of her mouth. She drew in gasps of air and looked up at him.

"Water...?" she whispered painfully.

A brief surge of sympathy motivated him to agree to her request. He would not leave her alone, however, so he grabbed the back of the chair and pulled her into the kitchen area. He rested his gun on a countertop nearby. There was a glass in the sink next to an old fruit peel.

Without averting his gaze from the girl's direction, he filled the glass with water from the questionable tap. She was looking from the faucet to the floor to the door and back again with a pitiful expression on her brow. Jed felt like a bigger person helping her out in this way. Maybe she'd even develop Stockholm's. This thought cheered him up as he undid the binder and handed her the water. She drank feverishly.

Might as well get some info out of her, he thought.

"What's your name?" She paused briefly; lowering her bruised and scratched hands to her lap.

"Diana", she muttered.

"That's a pretty name. I'm Jed." He gave her a weak smile in order to portray himself as the "good cop"-a tactic he had seen in one of the contraband reels from the old decades. It did not work.

The pair sat in silence for a good minute until Diana broke it by saying, "I'm done". She then began to lazily pour the rest of the water onto the floor in front of her.

"Hey. What're you...?" Jed snapped.  She stared blankly at him for a second, causing him to become instantly perturbed.

"Okay, you're gonna clean that up." He lifted himself off the chair, standing at his full height. He began to move toward her with a frown on his face. Maybe a bad cop would work better.

The next events transpired faster than anything that had previously transpired in Jed's life.

He had meant to take the glass from her. Perhaps shake her by the arm. But in the space of a fraction of a second, she had wound up her arm and projected the glass into his face. He felt it shatter above his nose, separating into a flurry of minute daggers. The glass etched into the vulnerable parts of his head and caused him to recoil and grope at himself uselessly with his hands.

He felt for the countertop frantically, screaming a bevy of anathemas. He placed a hand on the stock of his gun, but before he could react, Diana had gotten to her feet. She swiftly locked his extended arm into a gruesome hold, manipulating it until it produced a loud crack. Jed let out a halted cry of agony and let go of his weapon.

Without breaking stride, Diana spun around behind him. She took hold of the collar of his suit and placed an open palm on the small of his back. He flailed about once, trying to free himself of the captive to no avail. He felt a burning sensation permeate from the spot of Diana's palm, to all the nerves in his torso, and then to his legs. They were suddenly out of his conscious control, so he collapsed.

Diana knelt beside him as he tried to maintain his focus over the pain. She fastened a surprisingly vice-like grip on his throat and pulled her knuckled hand back as though she were drawing a bow. If Jed could've felt anything outside of his injuries, he would've noticed the air in the room change-ever so subtly-as she remained poised for her coup d' grace. The scowl on her face intensified to a point, but instead of striking, she donned a thoughtful expression. She released him and stood up, placing her hands on her hips.

Diana dropped her head slowly to look into his eyes, and let a grin form at the corner of her mouth.

"Thank you for the water," she said.

Jed stared dumbly at her, as her hazel eyes flashed.

She walked away, leaving him bleeding and cringing on the kitchen floor-but not before taking his gun...

Word Count:  1,343