[i]Nora sat on a chair in an office. In front of her, three of her superiors sat or stood behind a desk, with the light from the window at their backs casting their forms into silhouette to Nora's eyes. She had to adjust her glasses and squint to look at them, and the scene had a vaguely sinister air that she couldn't put her finger on. "So, do you accept the assignment?" asked the foremost among them, a red-haired woman in a black business suit. Even though Nora could not see her freckled, leering, smirking face, this woman exuded a confidence that was almost terrifying in its overbearing strength. Nora gulped as she felt the wall close in behind her and to her sides. It was so unnerving, and she wished desperately that she was back in her lab. There was something wrong here, and it bothered her that she couldn't figure out what it was. Maybe it was how tall everyone else in the room seemed to be getting - no, it wasn't them, it was the entire viewpoint, the room itself curling around her vision like a fish-eyed lens. She felt yanked backward by an invisible hand, and then the room tilted and she found herself falling, falling... She stopped, and suddenly she was floating alone in darkness, the sense of vertigo gone completely as if she'd suddenly been set upright water, though she could breathe just fine in the weightlessness. Nora tried to adjust her glasses, but she found they weren't there; and with a glance downward at herself, she realized she didn't have anything else on. Her skin, pale as it was, practically radiated light to the point where she could hardly stand to look at herself for the glare. She tried in vain to cover herself, suddenly embarrassed even though she was apparently and entirely alone. Even a labcoat would have been better than nothing, and probably far more comforting to her than anything else anyway...[/i] -DO NOT OPEN THE SARCOPHAGUS- [i]The voice that spoke was so deep and all-encompassing that Nora twisted around in her spot to glance behind herself trying to spot the source of it. "Who's there?" she asked, all self-conscious thoughts gone as her curiosity was piqued. "What sarcophagus?" There was nothing in all the solid, palpable darkness around her that could have said anything, yet once again, she heard it speak. Muffled somehow, it was still louder than anything she had ever heard before, yet it didn't hurt her ears.[/i] -IT SHOULD NEVER SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY, NOR COME TO PASS, ELSE THERE WILL BE BLOOD AND SORROW TO PAY- [i]"You know, this cryptic prophecy stuff would be a lot easier to understand if you'd be more specific," said Nora with just a hint of testiness as she reached up to adjust glasses that weren't there. On some elemental level of her soul, she knew something important was happening, but her analytical mind could not process the information she was being given, like so much white noise on a working radio, and she hated this kind of disconnect in her understanding.[/i] -THIS IS ALL THAT CAN BE DONE - YOU ARE IN DANGER, YOU MUST- -[u]A W A K E N[/u]- [center]* * *[/center] Nora gasped as she woke with a start and shot up to an upright sitting position - just in time to hear the voice of Sam screeching to warn everyone to wake up. She glanced to the side and saw Jaiden push himself to his feet ([i]What is he doing in my room?![/i]) and start to shout a reply back, but the door slammed open and a multi-legged metal nightmare launched itself at him with wickedly-pointed legs. Red blood spattered across Nora's long-sleeved pajamas - the fuzzy dark blue ones, covered with yellow atom symbols and physics equations - as well as her face, and she yanked her glasses away from her face and desperately wiped them off on her bedcovers even as she saw the blurry outline of Jaiden being thrown out of the room. She surmised, through a strangely calm detachment that kept her from screaming or freaking out even as she tasted the coppery tang of blood on her lips, that she heard the door of her room snap from its hinges from the impact of Jaiden's body as he flew out into the hall and, in what would have been comic except for all the red liquid spurting everywhere, flipped over the railing to fall to the main floor. She had her glasses clean and back on just in time to see the robotic creature turn its laser-guided eyes to her, and she sat paralyzed as her mind tried to grapple with what was happening. Gone was her dream that she had just had, and now she only thought: [i]Am I going to die?[/i] She shut her eyes and screamed. Then she stopped as her scream was drowned out by a ferocious roar of anger, and Nora opened her eyes to see the drone whirl to face the source of the noise, which was a huge, muscular wolf-like humanoid - a [i]were[/i]wolf, she thought dazedly. Without hesitating, the werewolf (who was wearing a swimsuit that clung tightly to her - yes, her - well-built and furry frame) lunged forward and grabbed the "head" segment of the drone with a single immense hand, claws digging into the metal with a screech of protest. Then, with a single fluid motion like an Olympian performing the hammer throw, the werewolf ([i]Is that...Ashley?[/i]) swung the drone around and launched it out the bedroom door, then sprang forward herself to give chase. Outside the door, she heard Boxcar bark out "What in blazes is going on up there?!" as his claws clicked noisily up the stairs toward the racket. The drone landed hard against the mezzanine railing, and for a moment, Nora thought she saw the orb-shaped sections briefly separate from each other before a minuscule jolt of electro-magnetism between each segment brought them all back together - just in time for a roll of duct tape to circle around the drone like a modern-day bola. A small sphere was attached to the tape, and it made a dull gonging noise against the machine as the two collided, stuck fast by the tape. Then Ashley's muscular bulk was in the doorway, and Nora could hardly see what was going on as lightning flashed across the surface of her fur as she punched and swung her arms, each bolt of electricity leaving lingering trails of light in the relative darkness of the lodge at night. And in the next moment, she couldn't [i]hear[/i] what was going on, either. Nora fruitlessly covered her ears with her hands, though somehow through the din, she heard the simultaneous yelp of Boxcar and Ashley, and heard Boxcar tumble down the stairs while she saw Ashley recoil back with her massive paws clamped over her ears. The blonde scientist had heard many a loud noise in her days testing massive, powerful guns and rockets, but none of that prepared her for the auditory torture that lashed across her body's cells like a spiked whip. Then it was over, and Nora took a sharp intake of air as she realized she had been holding her breath against the noise. She focused back onto the drone and she finally reacted by doing a quick gesture to activate her glasses. A Heads-Up Display lit up in her field of vision and instantly poured streams of data from passive sensors built into the lenses, recording and analyzing as she saw the robot drone curl and uncurl like an injured caterpillar on the floor outside her room. It moved jerkily, its round sections heavily dented, scratched and scorched in places where Ashley had raked it with claws, knuckles and lightning. The burnt ozone smell of electric discharge filled the air around it as it wriggled and spasmed... And then the segments all separated, and Nora saw at least a dozen strobing laser beams radiate out in all directions as each segment - an identical match to the "head" with their own laser sensors and a quad of pointed legs - fell away from the others. While a few of the lasers were missing from damaged sockets, and a couple of the segments teetered precariously on bent or twisted legs, most of the segments appeared to be somehow still functional after the barrage of attacks laid into them. And what was more, they were independently tracking targets now, and aiming to leap towards a different lodger each, a few of them rolling down the stairs to attack Boxcar and Jaiden while the others sprang toward the people on the upper floor. Nora threw off her covers and reached for the blue tab transponder necklace. Her ears still rang from the noise of just a minute ago, and she knew that Boxcar and Ashley in particular were probably suffering from the effects even more poignantly than she'd ever personally know, but she had sat out of enough of the fight. "Th-they're damaged and malfunctioning," she stammered as she felt a wave of lightheadedness roll through her as she stood in her bare feet on the carpet of her room. Yet, somehow, her adrenaline turned her blood ice cold instead of heating it up as the increased pulse rate should have done. Icy calm gave her a detached strength to face the situation head-on. "Don't let up, they won't take much more of this!" The readout on her glasses told her that the majority of the segments were not going to take much more punishment, and the fight wasn't over yet.