The air is smothering her. It's heavy staleness tastes miserable on her tongue and feels much too heavy inside her lungs, the misery of holding it matched only by the dissatisfaction of breathing it back out. Dust kicks up with every breath and motion as the room itself criticizes and complains about her attempts to be here. 

Her skin and matted fur is all tangled up in the shreds of what had once been a beautiful dress. The shreds flutter when she moves so that the too warm air is pushed against her body over and over like a tiny desert wind, dry and cracking where the dripping of the water pipes had been brackish and clammy, each unbearable in its own way as they work together to sap what's left of her beauty and dignity. 

Bella's ears twitch. Omn's dull and scripted explanation is drowned out by another sound that won't stop ringing inside them. It's an old noise. An old memory, attached to nothing. The screaming of that young girl reaches out through the darkness and across time and filling her so completely that she can't help but shiver even in this rusted out, sterile oven.

The memories come flooding up as images, tiny snippets and scenes that she irritably pushes past to get back to the present. The door that she'd sat on her knees in front of for an entire day without caring how far behind on her chores she got even as it stayed resolutely, cruelly shut and kept the girl's screaming trapped on the other side without her. A sweat soaked mop of blond hair that tangled almost as fast as she could brush it. The girl, with her eyes squeezed shut and teeth clenched in agony, arching her back in the midst of a seizure and clutching her Bella's fingers to the point of breaking. A shining, perfect, beautiful blue eye where once there had shone nothing but kindness.

The Auspex. 

Bella shakes her head and bites her lip. The images and the sounds disappear, leaving only this stuffy room and its perfect eye here with her in the present. She tries to lift her hand toward it, and only then does she notice how rigid and tense her entire body has become, as though someone had struck her with a Thunderbolt without her realizing it and left her there to coil in its fury until her spine snapped in half. 

Her breathing is shallow. Her eyes are hollow and hungry. Bella's hand hovers at the edges of the stasis field, and then... she turns away with a shake of her head and a flick of her tail. Her steps ring hollow as she makes her way back through Her Majesty's former lab and toward the door where the screaming will finally stop calling out her name. Just a few paces more, and she'll be free.

Her fingers reach toward her throat. They startle when they touch her bare flesh. Bella freezes where she stands, only more than a statue because of the furious pounding of her heart. Her head turns slowly until her furious golden eye appears over her shoulder.

"How soon can it be made ready?"

She slams the rusting door shut. No interruptions.