[center][b]Contained Corporeal Reality Shard 019. New Graeline City, Palatine Heights. Aurelia Campbell-Ross.[/b] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center] Aurelia’s evening had begun so [i]well[/i]. The Heights, her natural stomping ground, had more than their fair share of refined entertainments and gourmet cuisine fit to sate even the most jaded of palates, and if one desired something a little [i]earthier[/i], a little more raucous, a little closer to the thrum of a racing heart, well, then there was the Emerald Triangle and its nebulous, encircling belt of nightclubs, bars, pleasure arcades and much else besides that made up the city’s unofficial Clubland. Aurelia Campbell-Ross was no stranger to these entertainments, and there was always something subtly seductive about the siren call of an anonymous night in Clubland, where the throb of the music matched the pounding heartbeat, the lights dazzled and the whole clientele were given over to the pursuit of their own pleasure. Right there and then, in the sweaty, sticky, alcohol-fuelled moment, nobody cared who Aurelia Campbell-Ross [i]was[/i], except as a pretty prospect for further…cavorting…down the line. It was liberating. After a long day of work, all power-suits and tablets and endless meetings, there was something very attractive about stepping out of her razor-sharp professional tailoring and into the lighter, stretchier embrace of her party frocks. The security and staff of Elysium Tower – one of the most imposing of the cluster of needle-pointed skyscrapers that dominated the Palatine Heights, and her home in the city - were colossally well-paid, and as a consequence, loyal and discreet. Self-effacing almost to the point of becoming furniture, and turning well-trained blind eyes to the actions of the building’s inhabitants, they were trusted enough that the DPG stashed visiting VIPs in the Tower, secure in the knowledge that any little personal foibles would be discreetly attended to, without anyone in the outside world being the wiser. Given the sorts of things they must have seen over the years, then, it was hardly surprising they didn’t bat an eyelid at her occasional habit of slumming it, and had always proved most adept at quietly ensuring her date for the evening had been tidied neatly away before she returned the next day. Young, attractive – if not beautiful – and with money to burn, Aurelia had drunk and danced and flirted her way through several of the city’s finer entertaining establishments, following her usual spiral out from the needle of the Tower that was her home. She’d acquired a fiery redhead on her arm, too, all milk-pale skin and bright green eyes and an explosive, startled – and startling – laugh which regularly split the air as they went from restaurant to bar and then to club whilst the sky darkened into night and the jewelled spires of the city’s skyscrapers lit up for their evening extravaganza. And then it had all started to go [i]wrong[/i]. They’d been in one of the many squares that dotted the Heights, this one framed by ornamental cherry trees in pleached array and with an illuminated fountain in its centre, laughing and talking and the both of them turning their thoughts to stickier things when [i]it [/i]appeared, sliding into view from the sparse shadows between two of the glittering skyscraper titans. At first, neither of them had paid it much mind; from a distance it had been no more than a shadow, strangely proportioned – no doubt due to the innumerable lights in the plaza – but as it drew closer and attracted the eye, the [i]wrongness [/i]of its motion had bled through into Aurelia’s consciousness and demanded her attention. Perhaps it was simple paranoia that came from being one of the Campbell-Ross clan, but Aurelia had a sudden, sharp, obscenely incontrovertible impression that it was here for [i]her[/i]. Turning to her companion [i]du nuit[/i], she kept her voice calm and unworried, giving no sign of her sudden, sharp-edged concern. “[b]I smell malatang,[/b]” she remarked with a winning smile that only those who knew her well – which did [i]not [/i]include her current companion – would recognize as false. “[b]And I’m [i]starving[/i]. Be a sweetheart and go get some, would you?[/b]” She fished some cash out of her pocket even as she spoke, directing her lovely redhead towards the street vendor’s discreet stall some way away – and out of the direct path of whatever it was that was coming. To forestall any objection about separating – even for a few moments – she smiled again, this time with just a soupcon of embarrassment. “[b]Call of nature,[/b]” she explained, and her date’s eyes lit with understanding. Thus disengaged, Aurelia assessed her options quickly, hearing her heartbeat pound in her ears. Cloaked in shadow, the thing’s loping stride had covered much of the plaza’s glittering expanse already, and whilst at first – particularly to a slightly drink-mazed eye – it had appeared as nothing more than a tall, slender man in a heavy greatcoat – as it drew closer she realised with another crystal-cold shock that it wasn’t – couldn’t be – human. Too long, too thin, moving with a serpentine grace that nothing on two legs had. ‘[i]The important thing,[/i]’ she thought wildly to herself, amid the screaming internal cacophony, ‘[i]Is not to panic![/i]’ And yet she [i]was [/i]panicking; fear rolled off the thing pursuing her – and it was pursuing her; its course had altered in a lazy curve the moment she’d peeled off from her companion – in almost palpable waves. People, that was what she needed, and lots of them. Bright lights, cameras, recording devices, the police – anything that made something stand out. Which was a shame, because she’d picked this particular square for its lack of [i]all [/i]of those. Good for a spot of romance – or something that looked like it in poor light - much less so for drawing attention. [i]Fuck.[/i] Elysium Tower had security, it was true, and – if she could get to it – the advantage of a half-mile vertical rise, but [i]getting to it[/i] was indeed the problem; she’d ranged far from home by this point. There would be no mad dash back to its safety. [i]Fuck.[/i] Aurelia was no athlete – she’d always much preferred reading a book to pounding round a track, or else luxuriating in a whirlpool bath instead of endless, repetitive lengths of a pool – but she wasn’t grossly out of shape, either, and fear lent fire to her muscles as, from a leisurely strolling start, she stretched into a full sprint. Sure enough, the thing followed her, sinuously drawing closer with every coiling, leaping bound, flitting from shadow to light-drinking black glass to covered doorway almost without crossing the intervening distance. She caught glimpses of it as she ran, reflecting in the polished glass and metal of the buildings on either side. A stretched-out creature, all interlocking segments that joined together in ways that made her head hurt and pulsed with a wavering tyrian light like an impossible heartbeat. Its skin – if skin was the right word – was volcanic glass, or something like it, warped by incredible heat. Its forearms curved smoothly into sabres of that same stuff, and it raised them with wicked intent as it came, utterly silent. Aurelia winced. She knew just how sharp an obsidian edge could be – until recently, the very best surgical blades had been obsidian. She had no breath left to call out, and focused all her remaining energy on the chase. A swift zigzag took her down a side-street – empty at this time of night, but a shortcut that would shave precious seconds off her pell-mell flight to the bright lights of the city centre and the police HQ there. The white wedding-cake of Serenity Memorial flashed past, just visible in the gaps between the buildings, and Aurelia could hear the sweet sound of crowds and the authoritative wail of sirens in the near distance, drawing closer with every frantic, pounding step. A wild smile cut itself across her face, and then died a-borning as, rising from the shadows, the air itself erupting into solidity, the [i]thing [/i]which had chased her, [i]toyed [/i]with her made itself manifest once more. She half-turned, sudden and desperate, her fear-filled scream fazing the creature not one bit, and as she turned it reached out one glittering sabred forearm and opened her up down to her spine, a long slash which cut from hip to shoulder and spilt her guts, her lifeblood and shattered fragments of bone out onto the street with a contemptuous flick. [center]------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [b]Layered Reality ??? Hollow Egress, Navain.[/b] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center] Warmth. That was the first thing that she registered, swimming back to consciousness from whatever hadean limbo she’d existed in. Warmth and light, welcome against her skin and sending a red-orange glow through her closed eyelids. Her sensitive nose twitched as she took in a first, disbelieving breath and was assailed by all the smells of summer – warm grass, the perfume of flowers and that indefinable scent of the season itself. Which was, plainly, impossible. It had been night, for one, the last she remembered, and that thing had come upon her in the middle of the city, far from any sources of grass or flowers. Aurelia sat bolt upright and scrabbled at her clothes, heedless of the damage as fingers ripped and tore and found, beneath the fabric, hale, whole, utterly unmarked skin. She stared in disbelief at it, and then deliberately took her pulse, finding it hammering reassuringly away. Just as it always had – albeit usually more slowly. “[b]What in god’s name is going on?[/b]” she asked herself plaintively, her clear tones cutting through the background drone of busy insects.