Night one

When: the first night after "On a promise"

Blood red clouds boiled across a sky the colour of mottled bruises
Cass shivered
The chill wind moaning through the naked, twisted trees surrounding her, tugged at her hair and prickled goose bumps across her skin, making her pull her thin jacket tightly around her and fold her arms to try and hug a little warmth back into her body
Where the smeg was she!?
Looking around, all she could see was dark and forbidding woodland in every direction, with no sign of anything even remotely resembling shelter or civilisation
"Shit" she muttered, her voice sounding weirdly flat in her ears, like she had just spoken in a soundproofed room
Why was she here?
Something hit the dead leaves on the floor near her feet with a wet spap
And then another behind her
And another
And another
Cass looked up at the sky, holding her arms out
Spap, spap, spap all around her, a slow staccato beat and then finally one on her face
Rain!
She smiled as she looked down to wipe the droplet from her cheek
How long had it been since she had been out in the rain!?
Years?
Shit – Put that way, she personally had never been in the rain! – A first!
Sticky...?
She bought her hand up to examine the red discolouration smearing her fingertips
What the smeg was this shit?
That weird metallic...
As the heavens opened, the ground around her erupted into a frenzy of slickly bouncing red droplets
Blood!
It was blood!
Everywhere!
In her hair, her eyes, her mouth
She was getting drenched in smegging blood!
Clutching her jacket around her, she hurried under the eaves of a nearby tree, hoping to shelter from the worst of the nightmarish downpour, but the bare branches above offered little in the way of refuge
The stench of the stuff made her want to gag
What the smeg was this!?
Gazing out into the storm, she scraped her blood-slicked hair back off her face, glumly resigning herself to the hours it would take to wash and restyle it; reminding her, as well, that she needed to find some more dye for it sometime soon

Her ruminations were interrupted as the ground suddenly heaved and swelled beneath her feet, the tumultuous tremors making her loose her footing and fall to the floor; her cry of shock and fright lost amidst the tortured shriek of the falling trees all around her
Lying amidst pooling blood, Cass tried pushing herself up, only to have another crunching subterranean thump reverberate through her and send her crashing back down onto the ground which, terrifyingly, gave way beneath her, pitching her screaming into a stygian void filled with blood, dirt and falling trees

Her cries, as she fell into darkness, were echoed multitudinously as the falling trees around her morphed and shifted their form to assume her exact likeness; each of them screaming in a deafening cacophony which slowly petered out, as one by one their bodies blew apart in twisted showers of death and gore
An unidentifiable, dark shape moved in the distance amidst her doppelganger’s, impossibly defying gravity to swim up and down through the air, bringing death to whomsoever it touched
Swimming
Terrified beyond reason, Cass continued her helpless, screaming fall, each second bringing her closer to the menacing shape, which, seemingly sensing her, torpedoed up to meet her, scything through a cluster of also-Cassandra’s in a burst of blood and guts, their screams cut short as Jaxx barrelled through them
Smiling, he reached for her...

-------------

Cass jerked awake with a cry, dislodging the remains of her takeaway and scattering cold, greasy noodles across the floor around the Science Desk
“Oh, shit” she breathed shakily as she glanced around the mercifully familiar surroundings of the Drive Room
That had all seemed so real; and yet here she was, at the Science Desk where she had been since she had left Jay on the Promenade
“Smeg...” she rubbed her grimy face with her hands and, snatching her fags up from the desk in front of her, slumped back into her chair
Looking up at the monitors as she lit her cig, she saw that it was early – 2:40 am; she must have fallen asleep an hour or so back while she was poring over the experimental data Phi had collated from Jay’s blood samples – It was fascinating and scary work, but...
She could have died today
All those GELF’s had looked like her, she reflected, and yet that smegging freak Jaxx had torn through them all without so much as a second thought
She was so lucky to be alive
Taking another drag of her cig she was surprised to find that her hand was shaking
She had been utterly helpless
They were all dead and she had just got lucky
She was alive
They were all dead and she could have died
She could have smegging died!

<tbc/>

<ooc>I've got another post almost ready to go, detailing the inspection but if anyone fancies contributing towards us passing or failing, get in touch and we can do a joint one :) </ooc>