capture

It’s dark, darker than it was when you left your house. You were only on your way to your best friend’s as usual. You made her a promise, a promise that you would protect her from the ones who wanted to kill her. Your mind is hazy, you feel like you’ve been drugged.

When you blacked out, you were crossing by an alley. Someone stuck you with a tranquilizer. Gaia damn it!

The first place your mind goes is the possibility that hunters did it. But that’s not true, is it? It can’t be true, because a hunter would have killed you right off. After all you’re a monster that needs to be slain for the good of humanity, right? What a load of horseshit.

The next place it goes is Pentex. Pentex would happily tranquilize a Garou to scrape her for DNA, hold her down to do experiments on, or sell her to the Black Spirals as a breeding mare. But it can’t be Pentex, because if it were, you’d see sterile white lights, you’d be strapped down to a gurney. You’d feel the tubes under your skin and stuffed into your orifices. This place feels too clean to be a Spiral hive, but they’ve done similar things before.

Now that you think about it, you definitely feel things under your skin. Along your arms, embedded into your back, anywhere that skin could show and even where it can’t. The thought makes you feel violated in a way you never have before. You don’t know what’s happened to you. Something is around your neck. It’s spiked, and it’s digging into your skin. When you try to move your head, you hear chains rattling. When you try to move your arms, they’re bound together tightly, in a way you can’t break with your own strength. So too are your legs bound. You’re trapped here, chained to something, tied up.

As your mind continues to clear, you smell the faint tinge of blood in the air. It could almost certainly be yours, but it doesn’t smell warm, either. How long have you been here? Something on your ear hurts. It feels heavy and broad. You don’t know what it is, and you don’t like it.

You try to shift to free yourself from your binds, but even beginning the process makes your entire body light up with pain as if it were set on fire, from the points where you feel things under your skin. Unable to do anything else, you scream into the blackness. They’ve stuck you with silver. They thought ahead. The wolf part of your brain panics, it forces you to try again, to get away by any means necessary. It burns more than anything you’ve ever felt. More than the klaives of the Silent Striders who tried to kill your sister. More than the stone table that was thrown at you, or the lightning shot at you when your sister was abducted. More than the electrocution when she broke down. It’s keeping you in your normal shape, because it hurts too much to shift.

Whoever did this intended on torture, you’re sure of it.

Your brain is locked in a loop of contemplation and panic. You feel the frenzy come on, you’re forced to try to shift, you stop from the awful burning. In the moments after, your mind is clear, you try to figure out what’s happening. You panic again. You shift again. They knew what they were doing. They didn’t take you for any clear purpose if they’re doing this, you realize. They did this just to see you suffer. You almost can’t breathe because of whatever’s around your neck, because of the burning.

You think back to your sister again. To your best friends. To the lover you never thought you’d have. You’re going to die here, and they’ll never know what happened to you. And a darker part of your brain wonders if that isn’t the intent. To get you out of the way, so they can be preyed upon just like the….

…. the Sabbat.

Long ago, before you were run out of Victoria, you heard a rumor about a wolf who had been caught by a pack of Sabbat dogs, tranquilized and tagged like an animal. They only called them leeches; it was your sister who described the finer points when you brought it up. Suddenly, you’re acutely aware of what’s been jammed into your ear.

Now you know for sure. Someone definitely wanted you out of the way. They stuck silver under your skin to keep you here, and make sure you suffered for calling in the cavalry that night your twin was taken.

Your Rage boils over, and you howl as your wolf mind tries again to shift in vain. You know exactly who did this. Of course she’d want to see you suffer. She wants unlimited access to your loved ones to use as her twisted playthings.

Rage soon fades to despair. It hurts too much to break free. You’ve tried and tried and tried but they have you in their vile grasp. You don’t feel your clothes. You can’t get away. It hurts. All you can do is cry and beg to Gaia for mercy.

In between your own sobs, you hear footsteps. You dread what’s coming next. You don’t know what time it is. They could be dead already. They could be coming back to have their way with you. You’ve seen the war ghouls and the monstrosities. If you don’t become one of them, you’ll be dead. Parts for stapling onto others under the hand of a fleshcrafter.

You hear a voice from your right.

“Ugh.”

The lights turn on, revealing a warehouse by the shore. Why is it always the warehouses, you wonder? Did they not have enough time to drag you back to Portland where they were hiding? Or is that next for you. When you look down, you see the haphazard shards of silver jammed under your skin without a care. Some of them look like they were placed to ruin your tattoos out of spite. You have been violated. Violated and man-handled. Your blood is on the floor under you.

When you look to where the voice came from, you see a woman who you only caught a glimpse of during the last ordeal. She’s approaching you. You’re scared. When she reaches out to you, you jerk away out of sheer instinct. She doesn’t look amused.

“Will you hold the fuck still or are you as much of a cunt as the one who tied you up?”

Now you’re confused. When you pause, she removes the thing from around your neck. It’s a spiked collar, plated in silver, like the thing abusive dog owners put on their animals to force them to obey. You see the coils on it that indicate that it’s an electric collar. They were going to use this on you. You feel the warm dripping of blood down your torso as the spikes are removed. She looks hungry. She ignores it.

You ask why she’s helping you.

“Because this practice is fucking disgusting? I’m not gonna fucking put up with this shit if I don’t have to.”

You thought the Sabbat deal was brotherhood. But here she is, freeing someone who’s going to run off and bite their heads off.

“Yeah, well, surprise, I don’t give a shit about any of them.”

You ask, then, why she’s here.

“...Because I made fucking mistakes, alright? That’s all you need to know. If it weren’t for… obligations, I’d dump them like the trash they are.”

… She’s right, that is all you need to know. You don’t ask any more questions. You just know you’ll remember it.

She systematically pulls all the silver out from under your skin and from your wounds, and unties you. She pops the tag off of your ear, and helps you up. You’re a bit disoriented, and she gives you a look.

“Listen, are you gonna go save the Indian bitch or what?”

She’s right again. You don’t have time to waste here. You need to go. You shift without pain, and you’re off, not caring who sees you.

When you arrive, that cunt’s just about to bring a scimitar down onto your best friend’s neck.

You bite down on the arm wielding it and pull back. It comes apart like butter.

She never saw you coming.