[center][img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/292173065305980928/364248146114772993/coollogo_com-10438470.png[/img]
[sub]Banner credit to Nitemare Shape. Thanks Boss![/sub]
[hr]

[h3]Lost Haven General Hospital
21:12[/h3][/center]

Darya was uncomfortable. No, it was more than that, her throat hurt. It was raw and dry, so she coughed, but almost immediately, there was a sudden pressure on her neck, squeezing the airway tight and cutting off precious oxygen from her lungs. Her eyes snapped open to see the snarling face of a woman with her hands wrapped tight around the girl's neck. 

"This is what you get for killing the Captain, you mutie bitch," the woman growled, low enough to not be heard. Darya could only gurgle in response. "After I put you down, I'm going after that fucking archer, and then all your other disgusting freak friends!" To punctuate that statement, the woman spat in her face.

With what little time she had, Darya's brain kicked into overdrive. She swiftly realised she must be in the hospital, because this wasn't her bed or her room at the hotel. The woman above her, wearing a black bodysuit and her blonde hair tied back or cut short, she didn't know which, had to be one of the terrorists. Which meant the police officer outside her room that would have been assigned to her as a guard due to her status as a temporary government official was either dead, disabled, or in league with the Hounds. So no help was coming. And she couldn't possibly use her power in a hospital to enough effect to save her life without killing or putting at risk dozens of civilians, if she could even use it at all right now. Which meant she had to fight.

Her hands came up swiftly, monitoring probes and an IV ripping out as she did it. Instead of going for the hands around her neck, she went directly for the eyes, slapping her palms against the woman's face. [i][color=aquamarine]She got too close, it's too personal,[/color][/i] she thought. [color=aquamarine][i]But I can't go easy on her. [/i][/color] She dug her thumbs into the woman's eyes, eliciting a scream and an immediate relief on her her throat as the assassin tried to remove Darya's grip on her face. The hero sat up as the woman leaned back, but her legs were still pinned. Two quick jabs lashed out into the woman's throat, and then another hard swing into her sternum caused the blonde to buckle around the middle, gasping for breath. Darya took her by the shoulders and bodily shoved her off of the bed, surprised to note that she did so almost too easily.

Coming off the bed onto the same side, she landed her feet as hard as she could on the woman's stomach, but before the could get down and render her unconscious, another two figures stepped into the room. Both had silenced pistols. Behind them, she could see the blood splatter on the wall from her guard. Anger clouded her mind alongside fear of the gun, and she rushed the two new opponents. Her training had never covered what to do about two gunmen, but she was well taught enough to improvise. Their surprise cost them the initiative, and she got underneath one's raised gun, grabbed the weapon, and used her momentum to haul it back the wrong direction, snapping his trigger finger in two. She moved past, in between the two of them, as the other swung his pistol to try and track her, keeping it low and to his side. Darya spun past her first target onto the opposite side, keeping her hold on his gun.

The man whose gun she held drew a knife with his free hand, as she would not let his hand leave the gun. She ignored it for a moment, speeding up in her move around him and then dropped off of her feet, using him as a lever to swing both her legs up in a double kick to his partner's gun arm. The pistol swung up towards the ceiling as it went off, and all three crashed to the ground. With her trapped enemy face down, she continued her grip, wrapping one arm along the backside of his elbow, and rolled across his back, dislocating the shoulder. He wheezed and lay still as she rolled off of him into a crouch. The other was scrambling for either of the dropped guns. Darya launched herself into a flying tackle, taking him back to the ground and sitting on his chest. There, she grabbed the sides of his head by the ears and slammed the back of his skull twice in quick succession on the tiles of the room. The second hit had a sickening crackle sound to it, so she halted, staring.

A slowly expanding puddle of blood rolled out from the man's head, and she got up in horror, turning to the other two. Another pool of blood was oozing out of the second gun man, who was feebly struggling, now on his back, to extract his own knife from his sternum, where he had fallen on it. The woman's face was turning steadily darker shades of of purple, and her throat was a mess. Aghast at the damage she had wrought, Darya hurried out of the room, only to find even more horror outside.

Three bodies lay dead outside of her room. One was Faulkner, a bullet through his throat. A police officer and nurse lay next to him, a large throwing knife in the officers temple and two bullet holes in the nurses heart. She ran past them, barefoot and hospital gown flapping, to the nurses station, which was also full of corpses. The assassins clearly hadn't bothered with subtlety. At least twelve dead now, three at her hands, and she didn't have the heart to check in the other patient's rooms. She raced around the desk and snatched up a phone, swiftly punching in the emergency code. Dispatch was delayed picking up.

"Nine one one, what's your emergency?"

[color=aquamarine]"I am at the hospital, there are many dead people!"[/color]

"Ma'am, I need you to slow down. Are you safe?"

[color=aquamarine]"Yes, I think so."[/color] She glanced around the area, crouching as the man on the line reminded her that there could be more.

"Okay, I need you to tell me which hospital and which floor."

[color=aquamarine]"I'm sorry, I don't know. I just woke up."[/color]

"Okay, tell me what's happening since you woke up."

[color=aquamarine]"I woke up to a woman trying to strangle me. I fought her off and the two men with guns, and....oh [i]Allah[/i], I think I killed all of them."[/color]

"You killed all three assailants?"

[color=aquamarine]"If they are not dead or dying, they will not be attacking any more, no."[/color] Now that her panic was settling down, Darya wondered at the strange echo she was getting from the dispatch operator. It was subtle, but there.

"Okay, ma'am, I need you to tell me how many people are still alive? Are there any other victims nearby?"

[color=aquamarine]"No. There is a dead FBI agent and a police officer down. It seems they killed all of the staff. I haven't checked on the patients."[/color]

There was a slight pause before the response. "Ma'am, I need you to stay right where you are. Help is on the way. Just stay down and wait for someone to come find you, okay?"

Darya startled in horror as two things clicked in her mind. The first was that help couldn't be arranged that fast without a location. She had not given them any indication as to where she was except the hospital. It would take what, twenty minutes for them to check for a non-responsive officer. The second was that she had not dialled the outside connection first, so she was not actually talking to the dispatch, she was talking to someone [i]inside the building[/i].

[color=aquamarine]"You [i]bastards[/i],"[/color] she whispered, before realising she shouldn't have given up that she had caught onto their plan.

"Shit!" came the response, and the phone clicked with the hang up. And now Darya was alone, on a hospital floor that more resembled a slaughter house, with blood on her hands as well as all over the floor, with enemies of unknown number coming for her. And no way to call for-

She snapped her head around to the whiteboard behind the nursing station. "Trauma Recovery Ward – LHGH" it read across the top. After slight pause for new horror to notice that her own civilian name was on that board, she vaulted over the counter and raced back to the deceased policeman. With a grimace, she reached down to his shoulder and clicked the radio transmitter on. [color=aquamarine]"Dispatch?"[/color] she asked quietly.

She was rewarded with a different voice, female and sounding over-worked and exhausted. "This is dispatch, who is this?"

[color=aquamarine]"Oh thank the Prophet. I am at Lost Haven General Hospital. There are multiple dead, including this officer. Hounds have infiltrated security and are on their way to kill me. I don't know how many civilians are still in the building."[/color]

"Holy [i]shit[/i]!" The radio crackled, and was not addressing her when she heard, "All units, I repeat, all units, this is Dispatch issuing a 10-34. All available units report to LHGH, we have an active emergency, multiple HoH on site with unknown civilian casualties. Code Two, I repeat, Code Two."

The radio crackled again, then addressed Darya, "I don't know who you are, but it'd be real nice if we could get numbers on those HoH. Don't put yourself in danger though. If you have to get out, do it. Over."

[color=aquamarine]"I'm afraid my first priority has to be the civilians, dispatch. But I think they're after me, to be honest."[/color] She glanced up, thinking she had heard something moving.

"Oh hell, are you a metahuman? That's right, one got transferred. You the water one?"

[color=aquamarine]"Tiamat, yes, that is me."[/color]

"Alright, Tiamat. You've got about fifteen minutes before SWAT arrives, and about a dozen cruisers are on their way. Is that badge...is he dead?"

Darya's voice was thick. [color=aquamarine]"Yes."[/color]

"Take his radio with you and clear out of there. Try to get to the ground floor or the roof if you can, collect civilians as you go. We can extract them once we get there. I've just gotten two choppers en route. And good luck. Over and out."

Darya grimaced again, and pulled the radio off of the dead man's belt, then realised she had nowhere to put it and was quickly running out of time. She bolted across the hall, into her room, and then had to duck as two rounds cracked into the door frame. The man with the knife in his chest apparently had gotten the strength to try and kill her again, but it faded from his eyes before he could pull the trigger a third time, and his head lolled to the side. Darya cursed, then went to the blonde. She had suffocated already, and as much as she hated it, Darya needed clothes. She fumbled for a bit, found the fasteners, and by stages managed to yank the body suit off of the woman's corpse. Struggling into it, she found that they were nearly the same size, though it was tight around the hips and thighs, as well as her chest and upper arms. She couldn't get the front zipper up all the way and still have full mobility. [color=aquamarine][i]Shit, now I'm going to look like some white Hollywood action girl. How embarrassing.[/i][/color]

She checked the belt on the suit, found a third silenced pistol tucked into a holster. Her uncle's training paid off again as she noted it was an Sig 226. A spare magazine from each of the assassins and the two out of the other guns gave her probably more than enough ammo, but she snatched the .45 off of the officer's body and tucked it into the back of her belt. One more pause to take Faulkner's cell phone and then she moved for the stairs, only to find herself having to duck into a side hallway and slide into an open room door. The stairwell door had just opened, and she heard boots tramping up the halls and a large amount of calls between troopers. 

"Room 4, move!"

"I've got bodies here!"

"Hall clear, checking rooms!"

"She's gone, these are ours!"

"Holy fuck, she took out Freeman!"

"She's still here, find her!"

Darya exhaled slowly as she eased the door closed. Looking behind her, she was relieved to see that the bed had been empty when everything started, so she didn't have to feel even more guilty than she already did. She listened closely. At least four distinct voices, and probably two or three additional that hadn't said anything yet. She didn't know enough about tactics to understand what they were going to do, and she certainly didn't fancy her chances against more than two armed opponents at once. Even then, it was risky.

A sudden shot rang out, and Darya winced. The nurses and her allies were already dead, which left only one target that could have been. She didn't want to kill these men, monstrous as they were, but if it was between them and the patients on this floor, she knew what call she had to make. And she couldn't wait in ambush, that would just end with more people dead. As silently as she could, she slid the door open again, and peeked around the corner. Two men were standing about ten yards away, conversing in low tones. These had what looked to be full body armour, unlike the thin tactical suit she had stolen off of the assassin. They thankfully held handguns and not assault rifles or something equally unpleasant, except that one also had a shotgun slung across his back, one of the short pistol grip variety. 

One quick inhalation for nerves, and then Darya stepped out of the hallway. With the drop on the men, even out in the open and in full lights, she had time to place both shots were she wanted, and she was very well trained by her ex-military uncles. Both men dropped like puppets with their strings cut as nine millimeter rounds entered their spines at the base of the skull, and she moved across the hall and peered around the corner.

"Hey, where's Adams?"

"Shit! She's here!"

Several cracks rang out, but nothing near her. Still, she ducked back and slid down the wall a few feet, until she was near a door. She knew going into any given room might be trapping her and possibly a civilian with no exit, but between that and the open hall, she'd prefer the former. Two men turned down the hall as she thought of that, and her pistol went off again, twice at each of them. One dropped, the other she only got in the arm before he ducked back around the corner and called out her position. [color=aquamarine][i]Shitshitshitshitshiiiiit[/i][/color] ran through her mind as she made the split second decision to charge instead of retreat. At worst she would die, but maybe they'd leave the patients alone if they got her.

She stuck her pistol around the corner at head level and squeezed off two more shots along the wall blindly, rewarded by a gurgling shout. She ran out across the open space in the middle of the floor and leapt across the counter, slamming into the wall with a thump as bullets impacted above her, destroying the white board and causing it to fall over her. She scrambled out from underneath it and put her back to the bottom of the desk, then listened. Multiple shots tore through the desk, probably more nine millimetres, but none close to her. She judged one angle based on the hit on the desk versus the wall, poked her head up, and fired two into the center mass of the man who had shot it. He dropped and she did the same, more rounds hitting where she had been. She scooted away from that spot.

"You fucking freak! I'll fucking kill you!"

If they were carrying the same as the assassins, she figured they'd have probably two spare clips on them, at anywhere between ten and fifteen in a magazine. If she could run them dry, she'd be in a much better position, but then again, any one of those bullets could end her run very quickly. She popped up and fired three more times, missing everything, and scooted again. This time she almost didn't make it away, and there was a loud boom. Someone else had found the shotgun, both the noise and the large smoking hole in the desk bearing the evidence. She ejected her magazine, slotted a fresh one in, the stuck her arm through the holes and emptied it in blind fire. At least one person screamed, and they all sounded like they had moved to cover. [i][color=aquamarine]"At least they're not treating me like an easy target anymore,"[/color][/i] she muttered to herself as she reloaded again.

Thinking quickly, Darya glanced up at the wall to her left, looking for the emergency exit map. It wasn't there, nor on her right. As movement sounded on the tiles, she counted three enemies still active, and at least one of them had a radio. "We need more up here, she's too good with a fucking gun." The response wasn't clear to her, but she knew this would be problematic. And her adrenaline was starting to run her brain, conscious decisions giving way to panicky fight-or-flight. She cycled a few breaths through her nose and out her mouth, listening for clues.

One man fired a few shots through the desk again, and Darya stood up to return fire, only to see the butt end of the shotgun come swinging from below the lip of the desk, taking the Sig out of her hands and nearly breaking her finger the same way she had to one of the assassins. She ducked back down as the Hound laughed. "Not so tough now, huh, bitch?" She heard the man stand up as she yanked the .45 from behind her back, aimed through the desk, and fired twice into the man's torso. The sudden change in kick from her previous weapon gave her arms a shock, but the bark of the big gun going off stung her ears more, unprotected as they were. The thump of the man hitting the floor was still audible was, though. With the breathing space she had, she set her feet under her in a crouch and ran for the edge of the desk, making for the outer hall outside of the ward. Several rounds chased her, but nothing hitting it's mark.

Breathing hard, she checked both sides as the went through the swinging door. Several hallways extended off to either side, but the elevators right in front of her were off, so she had to choose quickly. She could hear men running after her. Three more emerging from a hallway on her left made her decision. She caught a look at the submachinguns they lifted as she ducked through the the door next to the elevators. Bullets ripped through the open air behind her, several striking the door frame.

For a normal girl, being in the bathroom would be problematic in this situation, and Darya admitted to herself that she had been hoping for a room that cut through to another door. Thankfully, though, this was a good spot for [i]her[/i]. She closed all the stall doors, plugged the sink drains with paper towels from the open box on the wall, slammed the faucets on, and then ducked behind the entry door frame just as the three kicked in the door, which swung in and hit her. Two of them stood with guns raised, the last one slowly stalking along the stall doors in what Darya could only think of as a classic blunder straight out of Hollywood movies. 

"Come here, little freak," the man said. "I've got a bullet that needs planting in your brai- SHIT!" Darya didn't need a lot of water to coat their guns, fill the barrels and trigger guards, and freeze them solid, nor did she need a lot of time. Eschewing killing as they panicked, she lashed out with the butt of her .45, taking the first man near the door directly behind the ear and dropping him like a rock. The next tried desperately to fire his gun, but his finger frozen to a stuck trigger gave him nothing. She smashed him across the nose with another pistol whip, feeling sick as she watched his face [i]collapse[/i]. But she had no time for regrets. The third man, having had his hand off of the trigger, was free to swing it like a club at her head. She ducked low and punched with her free hand, weak and off balance, though she managed to hit the sweet spot just underneath the sternum. He fell back winded, and she dropped her weapon in order to seize him by the gun arm. With one hand in the middle of his shoulders, she hauled him upright and smashed his face through one of the sinks, then stepped back. She felt the air of a bullet rip past her head at the same time she heard the shot, and twisted around to look as she dropped to the ground.

The last two from the ward had followed her, and both were firing one handed now that they had missed the surprise shot. Darya launched herself [i]through[/i] the stall door near her, then used it as a springboard to leap across the tops of the stalls as the pair fired into them. She could feel her power surging through her own body, fluids shifting in response to both her muscles [i]and[/i] her control. She had no time to wonder at the sensation, though, as she hurtled over the last stall and shot her hands out to grab one of the men. She actually went over his head, but managed to snag his elbow as she did. She rolled over him, carrying the elbow with her and the man with it. The joint snapped under pressure at unnatural angles, but she kept rolling until just before she landed on her feet, releasing him as [i]he[/i] flew across [i]her[/i] back, straight into the wall across the hall. He cracked the paint as he rebounded onto the tiles, but she didn't watch him, instead turning to his partner, who had nearly got his gun in position to put a round in her.

She skirted around his arm as he fired, feeling the graze on her thigh as she grabbed his forearm and bicep. She planned to lift herself up and the well-built man's frame and knee his elbow, but her new-found strength instead hauled him down, shoulder ripping out of socket, to smash his elbow down [i]onto[/i] her knee, snapping it backwards. As he stilled in shock and screamed, whole body tensing, she let go of his arm and threw a series of rapid blows. Sternum, ribs three times, foot to the crotch, and then twice across the jaw. He went down like a sack of potatoes, and she finally stilled, listening. Their were groans from the first man she had pistol-whipped, the man in the hall, and the one buried in the rubble of the sink. Nothing else except the running water.

She looked down and hissed at the gouge in her thigh, running nearly from hip to knee, then paused as she moved to find bandages. She remembered her arm being hurt [i]very[/i] badly. Rolling the sleeve of her stolen outfit up, she saw a wide scar across her forearm. Apparently either Doc Holliday had tended to her, or she had been in here much longer than she thought.