First Entrance

[just_a_chemical]

[previously: Morning in Rapture. Contents include little girls brainwashed to drain fluids from corpses, as well as some who aren't quite dead yet; also dysfunctional family relationships, also injectables.]

Here come two more life forms, Enterprise. One you can't see: it's internal. Girls have their secrets. Don't you pay it any mind.

The one you can see is a lanky teenager, almost six feet tall, barefoot, wearing what looks like a 1940s nightgown (her little white sacrificial-victim dress), and carrying a book and a foil-wrapped pep bar.

This obviously wasn't where she expected to end up. She'd been headed into her room, where the quarantine door would lock behind her and she'd lie there pretending to read until the sickness subsided. Process all these new memories in peace, but this--

Either it's a very bad reaction to her latest treatment, or she's suffering a relapse in her mental conditioning, or... or she's suddenly in another place.

She's not sure which option is worse.

Comments

[shut_up_dammit]

By this point, Leonard had gotten use to the idea that he's been plopped into his future, but everyone else has been pulled from their own worlds, their own times, from places that might have the same name but definitely aren't the same. He wasn't happy about it. But he was a doctor and since this ship's crew was busy trying to figure out what happened, he was taking rounds talking to the people he hadn't gotten a chance to yet, making sure everyone was alright.

That's what doctors do, right?

So he approached her with a bit of caution, not sure was to expect. He wasn't fully trusting anyone - nothing against her. He didn't reach out, though. Despite her height, he was a few inches taller and quite a bit bulkier. He didn't want to scare her off.

"Let me guess, you just showed up here too."

[just_a_chemical]

There are a lot of strange things going on right now.

There's being in a new place--it doesn't just look different, but the scent and temperature and air pressure and humidity and ambient noises are all wrong too. There's having people around, which isn't a normal occurrence in her quarantine room.

And then there's the fact that the people here are unfamiliar and also healthy-looking. That never happens.

"Mother's not going to like this," she says.

[shut_up_dammit]

His eyes narrow on her a little. There's something odd about her. Something not right. Although Leonard doesn't thinks he's dangerous, he chooses to keep his distance from her just a little.

"Your mother's the least of your problems right now."

[just_a_chemical]

She would disagree with that--really, her mother is generally the most of her problems--but she isn't about to say that, not out loud.

"What should I be worried about instead?" she asks.

There are so many possibilities that it's hard to prioritize.

[shut_up_dammit]

Leonard crossed his arms, less in scowling and more because he was confused and didn't know how this going to react to him.

"Well, the fact that you've been teleported to a spaceship in god only knows where would be a good place to start."

Maybe that wasn't the best way to say that. Oops.

[just_a_chemical]

"I wouldn't worry about that."

Although--

She glances around, quickly. No one that she can see... so far.

"But if anyone else from my city comes in, that's cause to worry. And a security problem."

[shut_up_dammit]

Leonard blinked and narrowed his eyes at her.

"What do you mean? Why would that be a problem?"

She seems perfectly fine... okay, well maybe not perfectly but she seemed okay enough.

[just_a_chemical]

"My city's full of junkies. Well-armed ones."

With superpowers, but she's not going to volunteer that information.

"Their addiction's made them unstable, and they don't handle change or surprise well at all. If one of them ends up here, you'll know it. They'll attack, and they won't stop attacking."

[shut_up_dammit]

Leonard frowned deeply.

"I see your point." He paused. "The drugs they're on make 'em like that then? Because a withdrawal process could calm 'em down, if that's the case."

[just_a_chemical]

"It's the withdrawal that does it," she says. "They need more and more of their drug to stay sane and intact, and it's very hard to come by anymore. They'll kill to get it, and with the condition their minds are in, the killing doesn't bother them."

Which is why Eleanor and her mother live in the old city prison. It's the most secure place left.

[shut_up_dammit]

"Withdrawal eventually does end. We'll just have to quarantine them and let the drug pass through their system without anyone being in the damn room."

Though if a drug was powerful enough to knock the empathy out of someone, Leonard wondered how long that withdrawal would last.

[just_a_chemical]

"It doesn't end," she says. "The withdrawal is a progressive degeneration. You can tell how bad a person's addiction is by how mutated they've become--a friend of my mother's, a scientist, started out as human as anybody. Now he lives in a tank of water, and he's a giant... thing, somewhere between a slug and a fetus, and completely mad. He's the worst I've heard of. Most fall apart less dramatically. They end up getting killed before they can progress that far."

[shut_up_dammit]

"Jesus." If that was true, there was no telling what the hell kind of drug they were talking about here. Leonard sincerely hoped none of these people came onto the ship. They had enough to deal with without crazy withdrawals that turn people into some goddamn crazed monsters.

"I'm guessing you haven't taken this damn drug then."

[splendid_roman]

Ian had only just arrived here too, but it wasn't the most surprising thing that had ever happened to him, so he was fairly calm about the whole thing. Others were definitely not so used to this sort of thing and he made his way over to the teenage girl. Although she was the same height of him she was definitely just a girl and probably more likely to be worried than he was.

"Are you all right?" he asked her, smiling. "I'm sure there's a good explanation for all this." Even if he didn't understand it.

[just_a_chemical]

Eleanor doesn't have much concept of normal, but she does have a concept of familiar, and this is not it. It's all wrong--but not wrong in the familiar way of her old hallucinations. It's a different kind of wrong.

Which probably means it's real.

"What's going on?" she asks. "What is this place?"

[splendid_roman]

"I don't know," he admitted reluctantly because that answer wasn't very helpful. "I just found myself here. It seems to be fairly safe, though." No one had tried to kill them yet, so that was always a good thing.

[just_a_chemical]

Lack of violence doesn't necessarily mean it's safe... but it seems clean here, well-maintained, and people don't seem to be bristling with weaponry.

That's a step forward.

"People are just... appearing?"

[splendid_roman]

"They seem to be. I suppose it's really just some sort of advanced technology that looks like magic, but otherwise one minute you're somewhere else, the next minute you're here." Some sort of teleportation maybe, but then there should be some structure that would make it possible.

[just_a_chemical]

"Well, that's easy enough," she says. "Break down matter into molecules, and then move them from one place to another--we can do that."

She can do that.

"But only at a limited range."

This is nowhere near her city. She can't teleport herself back.

[splendid_roman]

"Really?" He was curious about that. He wasn't too sure if he believed in teleportation - he'd have to see it to believe it - but this girl certainly did. "What is it that limits the range?"

[just_a_chemical]

"Some people pretend they can teleport, but really they're just turning invisible and running past the other person very quickly before they reappear. For actual teleportation... it's easiest if you can see your destination, make sure there's nothing already in that space. If you can't see it, but it's a place you know well enough, it's not too bad. People can pass through water, metal, concrete that way. But there's reinforced glass that people can't get through, for high-security areas."

[splendid_roman]

Ian blinked. "You've seen teleportation done?"

[just_a_chemical]

"I have," she nods. "The waiters used to do it, at a restaurant my mother took me to once--that was their trick, appearing at your table with whatever you ordered and then disappearing again. I didn't like it; they startled me every time they appeared. But I was six years old and half-asleep, so I was easy to startle."

It also seems to her a really wasteful use of the power. Teleporting in and out every time you go to a customer's table is bound to take a lot of energy.

[splendid_roman]

"That sounds like a expensive trick," he said, frowning. "Is teleporting really that easy, where you're from?"

[just_a_chemical]

"It was an expensive restaurant," she says. "And it used to be that easy--physically tiring, probably, but people could just eat more, like you would if you were exerting yourself by running around. Just energy of a different kind."