Last Company (Peregrine x noodle)

[Peregrine]

Markus Corrigan was the first to hop out of the vehicle when it came to a stop behind the hospital. The van was parked almost directly in front of one of the back entrances of the hospital, but the symbol of the Department of Homeland Security placed boldly on the side of the van would ensure that no one would tamper with the vehicle until they returned. Markus was followed less than a second later by another man, younger than Markus' mid 30's, with brown hair cut close in a style that made it look like he'd just finished a stint in the military. Markus' partner, David Kittleson, fell into step behind and slightly to the side of Markus.

Both men were dressed in dark blue uniforms that blended into black in the New York City night. Bulletproof vests covered their chests, while their hands and feet were guarded by combat gloves and boots. Minus a helmet, both men looked geared for war.

Markus rapped on the glass door to the hospital as soon as he approached, and it was swung open a second later by a nervous looking woman dressed in a nurse's blue scrubs.

"You… ah, I…" The woman stuttered, hastily stepping to the side to allow the two men into the building.

Markus entered promptly, before pausing to smile at the woman. "It's alright," he reassured, his eyes gentle and deep voice soothing. "I know things have been a bit strange, but we'll have everything covered from here. Just tell me what room she's in."

"F-four twelve," the nurse stammered again, but swallowing and seeming to get a hold of herself. "The nearest elevator is right around the corner over there."

"Thank you," Markus said, before his hand flicked, pointing off down the hallway. David turned and departed, going to call the elevator and hold it until Markus arrived. Markus, however, kept his eyes focused on the nurse. "I'm sure the person you talked to told you this, but you and anyone who was in contact with her are going to need to remain in the hospital until you've been checked. Another team will be along shortly for just that, so it shouldn't get in the way of you getting off work on time."

"The nurse nodded, before abruptly grabbing Markus' arm as he started to turn. "Checked for what," she asked, sounding somewhat desperate. "What's going on? That woman… She..."

Markus smiled again, laying his gloved hand over the woman's, before guiding her fingers off him. "The next team will be able to answer your questions much better than I can. But it's just standard operating procedure. Just like you wouldn't let a person exposed to an infectious disease leave without making sure they're healthy and safe, right?"

"Disease?" the nurse asked. "I'm not sick, am I?"

"It was just an example. You'll be fine. The other team will answer all your questions."

Finally managing to leave the nurse behind, Markus set off down the hallway at a rapid clip.

---

David released the button keeping the elevator door open as soon as Markus stepped in. The button for the fourth floor was already glowing brightly, and Markus offered the young man an approving nod. A second later, the elevator began to rise.

For a second there was silence, before the other man glanced over at Markus. It seemed he couldn't keep his lips closed any longer. "What do you think she is?" he asked, a strange excitement in his voice. "The doctor said she was growing extra limbs?"

"Arachne possibly," Markus replied coolly, the slight frown on his face enough evidence that he didn't approve of his colleague's chatter. "Asura. There are numerous options, and that's just the A's. We'll find out when we get there."

"Maybe she's something new," David said hopefully. "I've never heard of the limbs disappearing after they appear."

Sighing to himself, Markus was about to rebuke his coworker for his lackadaisical attitude when the elevator came to a halt and the doors opened. Both men stepped out of the elevator, before Marcus glanced at the nearby sign and set off down the hallway towards room 412.

The hallway was oddly quiet, the rooms adjacent to 412 completely dark. It was clear that the hospital had accurately followed proper operating procedure and kept the girl far from any other patient and doctor. David grabbed the handle, before opening the door and allowing Markus to quickly step inside.

What greeted them was an empty bed with handcuffs dangling off the edge of the railing, and a broken window.

"Shit," Markus swore, racing over towards the window and glancing out. There was no sign of anything on the ground, except for the glimmer of broken glass.

"Goddamn," David muttered. "This the fourth floor."

Markus had no time for admiration. His mind was already spinning. They had to track down this girl before she was able to do any damage to anyone, and make sure she was properly contained. His mind was already digging through information, trying to identify anything he could from the situation.

"You're in luck. Looks like we did find a new type. If she ran rather than looking for someone in the hospital, she's not one of the brutal types. But that doesn't mean anyone who she encounters out there will be safe. You call Andrews, let her know what's going on, and get the dogs out here."

"And you?"

"I'll go on ahead."

"I should come with you."

"We don't have time for that, Kittleson. I'll see if I can pick up any of her traces, but someone needs to be here to get the dogs on her trail. Understood?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good." Markus was already moving towards the door. "Call me as soon as the dogs get here."

 

[noodle]

Kera's escape had been an easy one- as it turned out, chairs were pretty easy to slam against glass. And it was incredibly fun to scamper down the brick wall of the hospital with two extra arms, almost like a spider. Her fingers and bare toes found any cracks and ledges she could use as holds, and so it took her all of a minute to get to a point where she could drop down to the alley below.

She landed on her feet and the extra arms disappeared. Grinning, Kera stretched, before she headed off in a trot, looking for....something.

She just wasn't quite sure what, yet.

It took about twenty minutes before she found her first clue as to her new purpose. Her eyes had landed on a lone man walking along the sidewalk, and almost instantly her palms began to itch. Her fingers twitched, shoulders trembled. She felt like a hunting dog, begging to be off the leash to chase its prey through the underbrush.

Kera strode forward, her body responding to the need to hunt. She dropped low to the ground, her bones realigning to put her on all fours and her legs reshaping themselves to drop her back end lower. Her spine changed, allowing her to look ahead without craning her head uncomfortably.

And so she set off in a gallop, darting down the alleyway with a speed she'd been unable to achieve before her transformation.

To be human was weakness, and she pitied their kind. They were weak even at their strongest.

Her eyes settled on her prey as he cut down another alley, quickening his pace.

She would free him from humanity.

Kera caught up to him before he could go back onto the main road, running up behind him before she springboarded herself from a trashcan. It clattered and he whirled to find it knocked over. When he turned back around, she was there blocking his path out, hunkered low to the ground. Her eyes were cold, like a predator's, and her lips curled back to reveal sharp, shark-like teeth, serrated edges and all.

He gasped, face decorated in horror. She cocked her head to the side as if curious as he stumbled back. His heel caught the trashcan and he fell over it.

She struck without a second thought, leaping from the alley floor and landing on his chest with a snarl. Her fingers became talons that dug into his skin, and the last thing he saw before his death was the stretching of her mouth, the edges going back to her ears and her jaw unhinging.

Kera left the scene messy, with a man dismembered, a trashcan tossed around and dented with its contents strewn about the alley. His severed limbs were spread about the scene in a rage and his left arm had been forcefully stuck into his back, as if he were a puzzle that was too hard to figure out.

And he was- once he'd been killed, she felt an overwhelming sense of failure. He was dead, not...unhuman. So she'd tried to put him back together differently, to no avail.

She could try again.

Kera rid herself of her bloodied and torn hospital gown a few blocks down and changed her body yet again, morphing her skin to make her completely smooth, her underbelly, underarms, and thighs becoming calloused, smooth, hard skin as her feet and hands already were. Her spine shifted again and bits ruptured from her skin, forming boney spines down her back. She was a beast now. She should look like one.

Her next target failed- she watched from the alley corner as the young girl reunited with her family and disappeared into a house. Until she figured out what she was doing, she wasn't going to face off against more than one person.

Her next target was a prostitute. The woman was dressed scantily, with more skin showing than the other humans she'd seen, which meant she was halfway to becoming like Kera. Right?

Kera tried reasoning at first when she intercepted her, but the woman was far too preoccupied with running away, screaming something about a monster.

Annoying.

When she kept running despite a warning to stop, she broke her legs. When she reached for her phone, Kera broke that too, and then her fingers. By now the woman was pinned under her, writhing, sobbing as Kera's claws dug into her neck and her foot dug into her stomach.

It was frustrating.

"Just try!" Kera screamed at her, shaking her. Her head knocked against the ground. "Grow another arm. It's easy! See?" Another arm appeared from Kera's back before it eased back into her skin.

The woman gasped something, an excuse, a plea. Unintelligible blather she had no interest in.

Kera growled, teeth bared.

That body wasn't dismembered, just...broken. Every bone was snapped or dislocated, and the little blood that was there was simply scratches from her claws.

The beast kept going, muscles rippling under her skin as she darted from alley to alley, climbing up fire escapes and leaping across the more well-lit streets to land in the next darkened byway. She didn't intend to stop. Not tonight. Not until she could make them see how freeing it was.

Couldn't they understand she was just trying to help them?

 

[Peregrine]

The nurse downstairs had already vanished by the time Markus made it back to the first floor. This late at night, the entire hospital was almost perfectly quiet, especially in this deserted wing. This made the echoes of Markus' racing footsteps all the louder as he burst his way out through the door and then hurtled off around the side of the building, towards the stretch of concrete overlooked by the now-empty hospital room.

Logically, Markus knew running like this was pointless. There was no telling how long it had been since the beast that had once been Kera Osborne burst its way out from her room. If she was tens of minutes or even hours ahead of him, the difference a few seconds would make was all but infinitesimal in comparison. And yet, even knowing this full well, even knowing there was a chance he wouldn't be able to pick up on her trail without the help of the dogs, Markus didn't slow. He didn't slow because he knew full well what these monsters were capable of. They would rip people apart without so much as a pause, Their mere presence was chaotic and deadly. And when it came time to save someone's life, who knew when a few seconds might make all the difference.

Markus came to a halt as the shattered glass on the pavement came into view. Up above, he could see a few hospital windows glowing with light, one reflecting particularly bright on the broken edges of safety glass. His eyes, however, dropped to the ground, looking for something useful. Anything that might give him a hint about the correct direction to move. He circled carefully around the glass and the nearby area, looking for any sort of clue. It was only as he rounded the far side of the scene that he noticed a piece of glass, far separated from the others, reflecting a nearby streetlight. He froze, staring at it. There was a chance it had simply fallen here naturally, caught by an unexpected gust of wind. But all of the other glass had collected within a five foot radius. Only this one outlier existed.

Trusting his instinct, which screamed such an outlier was more than a coincidence, Markus turned and set off down the pathway, which led diagonally away from the hospital. He moved slower this time, unwilling to risk racing ahead and missing something. However, Markus quickly found his instinct rewarded. As he walked down the road he suddenly saw a tattered, half destroyed scrap of a hospital gown at the entrance to an alley, caught on the sharp protrusion from a metal gutter spout.

Markus turned into the alley immediately. Many of these creatures preferred the dark and the shadows. They were masters of darkness and death, and the vast majority of them preferred ambush to direct confrontation. Down the alley he found a knocked over trash can, a stream of scattered trash continuing off down the concrete pavement. Markus continued to wind his way through the city, relying on instinct and familiarity with these dark monstrosities to guide him forward where the stream of clues temporarily ended. And then… he smelled blood.

Markus felt his heart leap into his chest, and this time he didn't bother to slow. As his hand dropped to the gun at his waist, he rapidly took off down the alley, rounding a corner before a scene of catastrophe appeared before his eyes. Markus couldn't help the string of swear words that rose to his lips.

Blood and garbage was scattered everywhere, nearly unrecognizable masses of body parts flung about as though they'd been thrown by a petulant child. The man, at least presumably a man judging by the black leather shoe that had been flung to one side, was unrecognizable at this point. His body had been torn apart to the point that someone might never have guessed he was human. Breathing carefully through his mouth to try and minimize the smell, Markus fished out his phone, quickly pressing contact 3 in his speed dial.

"I found a body," Markus said, by way of greeting. "In an alley northeast of Duane and Hudson."

Shit came David's response. Bad?

"Yeah," Markus agreed shortly. "Get the cleaners out here ASAP. We don't want the media getting this one. They'll have a field day. I'm going to keep moving."

Be careful. That was all David managed to get out before Markus had hung up on him.

From here, at least for a bit, the trail was easy. Blood spots came regularly on the concrete, in a pattern that would have been far more reminiscent of a dog's movements if it wasn't for the clearly distinct finger and toe marks that could be made out in the blood even now. A few blocks later, after even the faintest splashes of blood had disappeared, Markus found a hospital gown, leading him into another alleyway.

From here, the trail grew fainter and fainter. Whether Kera was growing more used to her changes, or her instinct for destruction had faded somewhat after the first man's death, there were no longer the knocked over trash cans and other broken bits to lead him forward. At this point, the hunt became about instinct and reasoning based off of what he'd gathered from the journey so far. And this was the point where Markus truly excelled.

He found the next body less than ten minutes later, this one a young woman. The scene still smelled of blood, but it was clear that Kera was starting to gain more control. After all, this person hadn't been torn to bits. Instead, she'd simply been broken into pieces, arms, legs and neck all repeatedly bent into unnatural directions, portions of white bone peeking through her flesh.

As Markus made his second call, he kept himself calm and in control. This was far from the worst case he'd ever worked. However, that reasoning didn't fully counteract the mounting sense of urgency that was in him. Kera was clearly killing quickly, and who knew how many more corpses she'd make tonight if she wasn't caught.

Once again, Markus set off, trying his best to follow down Kera's trail, hoping he'd find her before he found the next body.

 

[noodle]

Kera was running out of targets. The alleys she was taking had turned into residential areas instead of businesses, and fewer single people roamed the streets. Even fewer strayed into the darker corners, where she could work without worry of being spotted.

With a grumble of frustration, Kera turned back, once again taking to rooftops and swinging from poles and overhangs to clear the well-lit streets. She didn't need to be seen- not yet, when she was still fresh and unprepared. Perhaps when she'd figured out her purpose. The creature traveled efficiently, tracing back her steps until she came across a familiar scent.

The hospital?

Her heart quickened, hope flowering in her chest. Was it another one of her kind? Perhaps they'd escaped as well and began to follow.

She quickened her pace, galloping on all fours across a rooftop before she came to a short, skidding stop at the edge and peered down. A man, half-jogging from her newest corpse with his hand resting on something- a gun?

Was he hunting her?

Some hope still resided- perhaps he'd learned to control it well, had disguised himself properly and started to walk among them.

Another pair of arms sprouted from her body and she settled into a light, spider-like pace, crawling along the rooftop with her eyes locked on him. Searching for any detail that would give away the secret creature she was sure he kept hidden away from the world. But with every one of his steps, she grew more unsure- surely by now he'd know she was watching him? His hair would tingle, the back of his neck pricking with a warning, and he'd look up....but he didn't

He seemed perfectly, horribly....human.

She really was alone?

An almost disappointed sneer curled up her lips, but her fixation on him was ultimately her downfall. Her shoulder, the muscles under her skin rippling like ocean waves, caught on a flowerpot resting on the edge and knocked it off-kilter with an audible clatter.

Kera gritted her serrated teeth and leaped, sailing across the alleyway and landing in a crouch on the next rooftop in one smooth motion. She could only hope he'd take the clatter above him as a coincidence, and, that her shadow hadn't been too obvious. He was her next target, now, but she needed to attack from behind- she'd not yet had any experience with guns, and she didn't feel like getting shot less than an hour after her escape.

 

[Peregrine]

This wasn't Markus' first hunt. He'd spent more nights roaming empty streets than he could count, chasing down figments that were not only stronger and faster than him, but had mysterious abilities that transformed them from human into monster. Every time he began one of these hunts, Markus was taking his life into his hands. But that had always been the case, from that one night fifteen years ago when his world had turned upside down until now.

He'd long since mastered the mindset that was necessary for these kinds of situations. Don't jump at shadows. Remain calm, relaxed, and reactive. Only then could he filter out the random chatter of his brain that insisted there were monsters hiding in every shadow, and focus in on the real clues that hinted at an unwelcome presence.

Clues like the sudden clatter of terracotta against brick, appearing for no reason at all.

Markus whirled at the sound, his hand tightening his grip on his gun, ready to draw it at a moment's notice. His eyes landed instantly on the pot, before flicking upwards along the building, scanning the line of the rooftops.

Nothing. The alleyway was silent and empty, the shadows still. Markus took slow, deep breaths, instinctually controlled from long practice. She was here. Even if he couldn't see her, even if there was nothing in the alleyway to hint at her presence, he knew she was here. Was stalking him.

New monsters, aside from the trail of bodies they left in their wake, had another common trait. They were still not quite used to their new bodies. Of course, their brains had been completely rewired, their entire bodies restructured to instinctually support whatever anomalies their transformations had brought about in their form, but no matter how perfect their new wiring had become, no matter how sharp their new senses were, they still lacked practice. And that lack of practice made them make mistakes.

Somehow, knowing she was hunting him allowed Markus to relax in a way that had been impossible before this moment. It wasn't that he didn't understand the danger he was in. In fact, he could feel his heart pounding in his chest, his body automatically producing the adrenaline he'd need to get out of this situation. No, he was calm because, if Kera was hunting him, that meant she wasn't targeting anyone else. As long as he was careful, played his cards right, there would be no other bodies this evening. And that was a relief.

But Kera was smart, and fast, and if her escape from the hospital and subsequent hunt proved anything, it was that she was resourceful and determined. She wasn't like those who changed into demons or asura, who had such confidence in their physical form that they would blindly charge headfirst into any confrontation. No, if Markus wanted to catch her, he was going to have to lure her in.

He scanned the alleyway for another couple of seconds, before lowering his gaze. With one hand still on his gun, he dropped his other hand into his pocket where his cellphone rested, touching it blindly as he used the speed-dial to initiate a silenced call. David would pick up, and would be able to tell from the sounds on the other end of the line that Markus had found their target, and needed backup.

But first he had to lure her in. Forcing himself to relax and prepare, Markus turned away from the windowsill, one hand still resting on his gun, and began to walk down the alley.

She had to think he didn't suspect she was there. Otherwise she'd never approach.