[b]Ranch House, Unknown Location[/b]

[i]Times have changed 
And we've often rewound the clock 
Since the Puritans got a shock 
When they landed on Plymouth Rock-
[/i]

The music wasn't on that loud, but the old radio was placed in a peeling wall alcove about an inch from her face, and the consonants of Cole Porter were rattling round inside her head like a bag of broken glass. She hadn't slept in days. Probably days. Whilst she was quite accustomed to working without any natural light, for very good reason, she usually at least had some means of telling the time. Locked up in a basement without food, or sleep, with the continuous salvaged music loop on eternal repeat, Alchemist Oren Kovalenko had no idea how long she'd been there. 

She also had no idea that her captors planned to kill her today. 

The Erubescan scientist was in the cluttered gloom of the ranch's basement, kneeling on the grubby concrete, forced into said position by the length of aged washing line holding her hands together at the small of her back, and the brutal but very well planned cuts across the Achilles tendons along the back of each leg that rendered her usually fleet movement impossible. The wounds were wrapped in old field dressing and  crepe bandage, something visible in a few other places about the woman's person. There were bruises on her face, dried blood matting her hair, and her clothes were cut and torn. 

Not every Wanderer out there had abandoned the faction's brutal pragmatism when it came to dealing with threats. 
And Alchemist failed Kovalenko's attempt to retrieve a certain child from the group a couple of week's previous had been seen by some as a great opportunity to gather much-needed information on one of the great threats to their existence, the Citadel and its research dept. 

Unfortunately for them, and in many ways, unfortunate for Oren, she was not a good candidate to harvest information from. Her mind was unreadable, her resolve seemingly inexhaustible, and her hatred towards her captors quite intense...albeit the combination of hunger, sickness and exhaustion had put pay to any serious attempts at retribution over them. 

They had nothing to get out of her. She had nothing to give them. She did have their location though, something she could relay to Erubesco. And for that reason she had to die. 

Oren had some inkling of what was coming, even if she had no idea when, some of that instinctual fear that got the tetrapod of her distant ancestry to wriggle up onto the land. The animal fear of death that had kept the world moving for millions of years. Of course it was there. But it was muddled with an awful lot of other things. Like finally fulfilling her contract in full. Ending being beholden to that predatory reptile of medical research. 

This was all Sterling's fault. 

Sterling. 

She hoped he hadn't done anything stupid. 
It wasn't as if they'd let her know if he had unless it promised to be useful. 
And that idiot was completely indestructible. 

She really hoped he hadn't done anything stupid. 
Hoped, but had no confidence about.

[hr]

Around the cracking paint of the old barn, a large rat edged its way along the wall, between the dry grass and the rotten wood. It had skittered out of a hole in the side of the structure, home to many of its brothers and sisters, and was making its way in the direction of the kitchen, something that had sprung to life in recent days, to make full use of the supplies.  

Sadly, for the rat, its hour of judgement was at had. 

As soon as it stepped out from the cover of the barn, a streak of green and white sprang from its perch on the window ledge, seized the struggling rodent and ended its existence with a snap of sharp predator teeth. 

Well, as RE1 understood it, 'end' would be the wrong word. Once consumed all of the rat's cells would be converted into her own usable biomass, to be used how she or her powers saw fit. If anything she didn't kill the rat as much as assimilate the rat...but to the casual observer, and to anyone in the group looking at her with a level of mild disgust, it was very much the same thing. 

RE1, better known as Rei to those around her, could not eat ordinary food. Vegetable items or cooked items were quickly rejected by her body, and as such she needed a pretty constant stream of fresh prey to sustain herself. Fortunately for her, rat catching was both satisfied that, and was useful to the group in general....even if it wasn't the most wholesome activity. 

Rei was considering returning to her hiding place to try again, or potentially actively pursuing her prey in the rodent mothership that was the collapsed barn, but thought better of it when a shape caught her attention and made her stomach involuntarily knot up.  The glimpse of green and orange and little red tennis shoes that indicated the Wanderers' resident pint-sized antichrist was up and about. 

Best part of the day over. Hel was up.

Rei was about to slope away and avoid catching her eye, but it was too late, and she felt the muscles in her ankles lock up as the child's strawberry-red eyes locked onto her and she came trotting over. 
[color=f6989d]"Where's Spire?"
[/color]
Rei gave a non-committal shrug.
Probably out building an iron maiden or whatever other demented project was taking that sick bastard's fancy at the moment. 
But she wasn't going to say that. 

For whatever reason, Hel liked Spire. 
Probably because she'd be just like him when she grew up. 
[color=a2d39c]"I dunno. Have you tried indoors? We don't really talk much y'know. Toby might know."[/color]

Basically 'please bother literally anyone but me'. 
The child looked dissatisfied with the answer, though not sufficiently to act up, which was good. Hel didn't really get angry as such...she got superpowered...which was kind of a lot worse. Teaching a regular child how to behave like a decent human being was hard enough, let alone one with sufficient power and influence to punish you right back for breaking her rules.