The Uncharted Within

[Jazzi]

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Steam rises in front of her face as Thallia's laboured breathes in ragged, raspy gasps. Clutching the left hand side of her stomach where her blood dyes the strips of bandage wrapped fast around her waist crimson. In her other hand, her grip remains tight on the handle of a combat knife. It's edge crusty with coagulated vitae. She ignores the drip drop trail behind her. They would find her regardless. She had to keep moving. She did not want to remember. Not anymore. There had to be an exit somewhere. There! At the end of a long marble corridor, a bright light pierces from beyond. Daylight? The outside?

"I don't want you to be overwhelmed by the ghosts here."

With a blink of her bloodshot eyes, Thallia's standing at the archway at the corridor's end. She felt her heart sink as she pulls herself up to stand tall. Eyes growing wide as she takes in the source of that guiding light from beyond the threshold. A momentary pause. A furrowed brow. The gasp of realisation. The cracking of concrete as a dam breaks, releasing a cascade of fluid memory. Raising her hands to see her palms slick with blood as she curls around the cold steel railing in front of her as she gazes out the observation deck window at the Pulsar beyond. Watching the twin ejections cast out into the void was something Thallia found soothing. Mesmerising. To the left of the bewitching view, the faint zig-zag of energetic beams cast from devices utterly unknown to her. To the right, the shadow of a rounded triangle shrouded from clear view. Behind her, the sounds of her colleagues bickering frantically in Rheinlandish. She'd come to learn enough of their language to get by, but when they were in the throes of such passionate debate, Thallia admits she struggles to keep up. Instead, she turns her thoughts to the pulsar. The Nachwirkungen.

A hand curls over the rise of her shoulder. A reassuring squeeze. A firm grasp. "Do you remember, TT-F10?"

Without moving her gaze away, Thallia raises her spare hand up her torso to caress her fingertips along pale skin. Coming to gently rest her palm over those gripping hand."I do, now. It's all unravelling Anna. We need to fix it."

The grasping hand guides TT-F10 to turn to face her compatriot. F8. Anna. "Come home. You are needed here."

Thallia gently resting hand suddenly grips in a claw like fashion, driving her thumb into Anna's wrist and twisting. Her blood stained left-hand arcing to administer a wet slap across the woman's face before darting to her hips. Catching the button fastening of her Daumann-made holster. A familiar sensation of a grip in the curl of her hand. The press of metal to her own chin as she brings the firearm up. The sharp sting as her index finger takes executive command of the trigger and pulls.

She wakes up with a start in the flight seat of her Plover. Frantically breathing, her limbs felt exhausted whilst her nerves cried out with an electrical burning sensation. The rythmic pulsing of a buzzing in the back of her neck and head as she feels the trickle of a nosebleed running across her lips. The taste of iron oddly grounding. Through the cockpit viewport, two vessels. A Bastet. A Hawfinch. The looming chunk of rock where their exit lay, as if some shard of a planet had been cut from the crust and placed into empty void. "Y...yes, l...lets..."

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