Welcome to Hell

[RacingTheSunrise]

The world is a scary place now. If you had of asked us when we started how this would end up, we would have said a better world. After all, that was why we created the nanobots in the first place- the heal, correct and make better. We made them self sufficient, capable of surviving, healing and reproducing on their own. But we lost control. They didn't know when to stop healing- the result was super-human, completely instinctual creatures with no thought process other than to survive. The perfect race, so to say.

Quickly, the nanobots overtook the main lab, where the controlling signals were sent out. They realized soon after that they couldn't live long having to overtake every person on the planet, however, so they adapted. If you are so much as touched by any "healed" human, you're changed. The process is slow and painful, and by now it's spread across half the planet. Our only hope is to get back to base, and hope we can stop it.

Welcome to Hell.

 

[RacingTheSunrise]

Are they gone? Oh God. Please. Just please be gone.

Finley knew the Healed didn't stay in one place for long. Another instinct, that of always moving to evade predators, that could almost be considered lucky for those who hadn't been changed yet. It meant that, considering the young woman had been hiding in an air-tight panic room for four hours, she could most likely leave and be safe. Cautiously, she stood up and opened the door, just a crack. The room was devoid of any form of life. The once orderly lab was in shambles- tables overturned, papers littering the room, glass shattered everywhere. The sight of what had been almost home for her for so many years almost brought her to tears.

She had arrived at the building for the first time with her father when she was just a kid. Her mother had passed away the year before, and her struggling father wanted to spend as much time with his young daughter as he could. He knew children in the lab was something he wasn't technically supposed to do- but he was high up on the chain of command, and he kept her in the low-security areas, so no one really bothered him about it much. Besides, it was only for a couple hours after school. When she got older, her father was thrilled in her love of science, and made her his own personal student, giving her a lab coat and everything. By then, everyone knew her as the boss's genius child, and knew she most likely be their superior when she was older.

Usually, these memories made Finley grin. But now, seeing what her father's life work had done to her home, made her want to cry. Still, she shook her head, gaining her composure. She reached upwards, pulling her loosely curled hair into a messy bun before straightening out her lab coat, and made her way through the rubble.

"Hello?" She called out, her even voice echoing throughout the eerie building. She hoped to God there was someone else left alive- anyone. There were other panic rooms situated throughout the building, but they had come in so fast- quickly, Finley bit down on her lip hard enough to draw blood. She wouldn't think about that. She just had to find someone who could help her think of a plan to stop the damn things before they Healed the whole world- which they would, if he didn't stop them.

 

[The_One]

"What the hell!" Artemis cried out in pain as he woke up. Immediately, his arms shot out to clench at something in the darkness, anything, but recoiled back quickly as he made contact with stone hard concrete. "Ow!" He hissed and rubbed his hand. Nothing was worse than waking up to some unknown darkness and then realizing that you were trapped under slabs of concrete. Or maybe he was rather lucky. He thought back to those damned creatures which had took them by surprise, coming in suddenly and from all directions at once. Those creatures may have a human appearance, but they had come at him with such inhumane ferocity that he couldn't call them humans anymore. The healed. The term flashed briefly across his mind, something he had heard those scientists mutter countless times as their chattered excitedly to each other like kids about their new breakthroughs at the lab. "Great job. Now I hope you're happy because of it." He remarked bitterly. It wasn't their fault, he knew, but still he couldn't help but blame his current predicament on them. Speaking of his current predicament, Artemis arched his neck and looked above him. The special military personnel uniform he was wearing had absorbed most of the impact from the concrete that landed on him, but now it restricted his movements in what little confined space he had.

There were small specks of light above him. Where he couldn't see before filled him with hope as he used his two free arms to push against the piece of concrete where the light was peeking in from. Thankfully, the concrete budged when he pushed against it and gave away when he pushed harder the second time. From the flood of light that stabbed at his pale grey eyes, he guessed that it was sometime in the afternoon. It had been early morning when the healed ransacked the building, their sudden appearance bringing a rude awakening to his morning drowsiness. A quick survey of the rubble around his body showed him what the condition of his feet were. Trapped underneath the concrete, his right leg felt okay, wriggling his right toes to send some blood flow into his feet. However, from the left knee down he couldn't feel anything. He grimaced at the awkward position his left leg was in. Hopefully it wasn't broken.

"Hello?" Just then a light feminine voice echoed down the otherwise deserted hall.

Artemis answered it frantically, grabbing at his sudden lifeline. "Over here!"

 

[RacingTheSunrise]

Finley snapped her head towards the source of the shout. For a moment, she wasn't sure if someone had actually answered, or if she was just hearing things. Filled with an overwhelming sense of hope, she padded as carefully through the room as she could, careful not to trip over anything. She had been about to call out a second time when- Wait, is that a person? Quickly, the young woman made her way over.

"You're alive! And not Healed!" Finley, in her complete and absolute glee, spoke before she thought. Obviously, it sounded stupid, but he was too relieved to care much. She was, however, still thinking enough to run her gaze over him, checking for injuries. Outwardly, he seemed fine, though his legs were still trapped. He must of pushed the rest of the concrete off of him, as the Healed wouldn't have left him alone if they had seen him, and she made a mental note to check for strained ligaments from the force of pushing that much weight.

Though she wanted to help get him unstuck immediately, she knew it wasn't a good decision. "Can you move everything?" She asked him, quickly. "Did you hit your head? Are you dizzy? Is there a tingling sensation anywhere? Are you bleeding?"

 

[The_One]

Artemis took a glimpse of the young woman standing over him and nodded meekly, happy that there was another soul in this seemingly empty place. Now that she mentioned it, he actually did have a headache, but it was light and wasn't the foremost of his concern.

"Yeah uh, I have a slight headache. I can move my arms just fine… Bleeding I'm not so sure, but other than my left leg which I'm hoping isn't horribly crushed I think I'm fine." He tried to sit up abruptly, but the sudden pain from his left leg made him gasp. "…Okay so I can still feel something. This probably means that it's just dislocated." Some sweat dripped off his brow as he turned towards the young woman. "Sorry but could you please help me with this?" He pointed at his trapped legs helplessly, the rubble too far out of his reach for him to move without bending his legs.

From what he could tell, the young woman was around the same age as him, maybe slightly younger. And judging by her lab coat and the swiftness she acted with to ascertain his condition, she could be anyone from a lab assistant to a nurse in training. Either way, he hoped that she was strong enough to lift the rubble that was pinning him down cause otherwise he would have to drag them out by force, and that would cause him tremendous pain and most likely cause even further damage to his left leg.

 

[RacingTheSunrise]

Finley nodded, deciding it was probably best if she got him unpinned from the rubble sooner rather than later. With swift, almost mechanical certainty, she knelt beside his feet and hooked her fingers under the slab of concrete. It took every ounce of strength she could muster, but she finally managed to lift it up and off of the man. Leaning back on her heels, she rested her hands against her knees and breathed deeply. Man I need to work out more, Commented the ever-present voice at the back of her head. Or at least work on the arm muscle thing, because apparently the runs and rather simple workouts she forced herself into weren't really cutting it.

"Don't stand yet," She told him, her typically soft voice taken over by the forceful doctor inside her. After all, that had been what she wanted to be as a kid- a doctor. Instead, she got swept up in the life of a scientist. Leaning in close to the man, she placed a long-fingered hand on the side of his face and pulled his eyelid up gently. She didn't see any specks of blood, meaning he most likely hadn't suffered a concussion or other brain injury. When certain of her opinion, Finley stood up herself and reached out a hand. "You're good. Can you get up yourself?"