Sara Lee joined the Xenos. She didn't exactly fit in, but her hostility put her in good stead. So long as she wasn't on a base, she could just open up on most anything, and the Xenos appreciated it. She'd been getting angrier and angrier, recently finding herself incapable of even exchanging the basic pleasantries. She was most often quoted saying simply "Shove it" as she stormed down the halls, and had taken to fuming silently when in the cockpit, where she spent most of her time. In her bunk, she took sedatives and antidepressants by the handful, against the medical team's recommendations, trying desperately to drown the sensations that everything was broken.
That she was broken.
The first outcast...Really didn't understand what was going on. He woke up, coughing, his nose bleeding. He couldn't find his cardi inhaler. He was coughing blood, all over the floor, pleading, begging... Anguish shot down his spine.. And then, suddenly, he was fine.
He could breath, he could think..and a little girl was holding an oxygen mask to his face. She was wearing a hospital smock, tied in only two places across the back. She smiled at him, and pulled his hand up to hers, then slipped her hand off. The mask fell, before he grabbed it, pulled it back over his mouth and nose.
"You'll be fine. Just don't cross any red lines." She said, and then she turned and walked away. Her lips were orange.
Her back was a litany of scars, stitches, cuts, and scratches. The skin stretched over cavities which bones should have filled, and blood seeped from open cuts. The gown stuck to her, in some places seemed to be glued to her horrid back.
One of the doctors had been imprisoned for criminal negligence and malpractice. Another had worked in a cryer animal research facility, on torture response. A few were fresh out of med school, rejected everywhere for scoring positives on sociopathy tests. Not exactly savory figures. Their head, an aging Hessian by the name of Vladimir Zehn, an expert in fringe biology, was having a wonderful time dissecting one of the largest examples of species 23 he had ever seen. Its bulk was suspended above him, stretching from one end of the hangar bay to another.
Sarah dreampt of flames. Of crucification, of branding, torture, pain. A child screamed in pain, and roars sounded in the background. Shuttles flew overhead, children suffered. Every night, demons wrought horrible acts on defenseless people, and every night, Sarah woke, grinning. There were emotions in her dreams, snatches of life, that she couldn't recall awake. The horror, the evil...She reveled in it, In the simple joy of pain.
