So after the last Bella abduction set, her storyline was kind of stuck in my head. And then I started thinking about her rescue. Which, you know, doesn't ever really happen in the game - when it starts, Mortimer's an elder and Bella's (maybe) stranded in Strangetown. But I still really wanted to see Bella get out of there... So this happened.
And this one actually comes with words! haha
As always, play the song as you scroll!
The heavy footsteps approached the door to her holding cell. The moment Bella heard them, she slid onto the floor and dropped to her knees. She closed her eyes and dropped her head.
Her dark hair fell over her shoulders. It was starting to grow back again. Finally. Not that she could see it. There were no mirrors or cameras up here. Not as far as she knew. But she could feel it swing around her face and tickle her skin. And at night, she wasn't so cold anymore.
Maybe this time they would let her keep it longer this time. Just shave a little for the next experiment.
In the blur of time - how many months was it, now? - that she had been locked within these walls, life had changed. No, not changed. Ended. Her human life, anyway. And her life as a prisoner started. No, not a prisoner. An experiment.
And if she had learned anything so far, it was that they didn't like being looked in the eye.
The quick footsteps reached her door, stopping just short of ramming into the metal sheet. Their hurriedness made Bella's heart beat faster. Was she in some kind of trouble? Or were they finally finished with her?
Maybe that was why they let her keep her hair, Bella worried.
Just outside her door there was another, smaller room. A chamber, where all the wires and gears of her air supply lived. On the wall was a control panel. Before opening the door from the chamber to her cell, they always fiddled with those controls.
Bella didn't know what, exactly, they did. What they sucked out of the air, or put into it. But whatever it was, Bella knew, it changed the air; made her able to breathe it.
And she knew that whoever was on the other side of that door didn't even touch the controls before opening the seal.
The air that the others breathed rushed at her, tossing all the hair back from her face and throwing her back. Within seconds, she felt her chest constrict. Out of instinct, Bella gasped, desperate to breathe. But she couldn't even get one lungful.
The lights of the holding cell and all the winding halls she had been led down hadn't even flickered, in the time that she had been there. Now, even their luminance started to fade.
So they are here to kill me, Bella thought, feeling the cool floor spread out beneath her.
But then she heard the door shut... and someone else drop to the floor right beside her.
She tried to look up and see who it was. But she was only vaguely aware of the hand that shook her shoulder.
And then she slipped away.
Mortimer shook Bella's shoulder again, listening hard for the sound of anyone coming after them. But she didn't respond.
He turned her over onto her back and felt for a pulse. She was still alive. After all this time. After all this looking.
"Bella," he whispered. He stroked her face. And then he kissed her cheek, because he couldn't feel her warmth through his gloves. And he had been so cold, since losing her. "Bella, I'm here."
He strapped an oxygen mask over her mouth. One for her and one for him.
"Let's go home..."
The gloved hand fell away from her arm, taking the syringe - full of a hallucinogen - with it.
"She's not ready," one of them announced, turning away from her lame smile.
Her eyes rolled up in her head as she dreamed.
Another one of them marked on their charts that she had failed the test.
Again.
"She still dreams about going home," the first one announced. "Take her back to the chamber. We'll try again tomorrow."
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