Her red lipped mouth only tugged at the corners; the apparition of a smile, not even quite a full hint of the thing. She heard the scramble of his handlers and superiors, but not from the earpiece—she could just see them, hear them, like she was in the corner of the control room, even as she stood before Agent Knight. 

“It wasn’t always gold,” she said in pure afterthought, remembering her dark hair, her dark eyes. Mom and dad were both dark haired. That she was gold-haired and gold-eyed would have made them laugh. Sometimes it made her smile, just imagining them making fun of it, “I know who you are.”

Despite the cave and the wooded surroundings, there were signs of life and chaos all around, trash flittered about the mouth of the cave, old tarps, as if someone had thought to use the area for hiding…from soldiers, from drones, from each other. She could smell the fear and the metallic stench of blood, even if it had been at least a year since it was spelled, from the faintness of it. 

She walked around him like he was little more than a tree. She had been stabbed. She had been shot. The thing about dying is that dying again didn’t hold the same level of fear, so you were a little more adventurous, especially if you were likewise depressed, or racked with survivor’s guilt. No knife pierced her, no bullet she’d ever seen lacerated or broke any surface of her body. She’d let them get close, too. 

Very close. It didn’t matter. 

“Who do you help with knives and guns, Agent?” Her sing-song tone held bitter undertones, her head turning sharply to regard him as she stopped to give him a slight glare. “I’m scared you’ll try to help with those weapons. If you want to help, call in a medical team…but I imagine they’d have better things to do out here, anyway.”

Again, she just sounded sad as she walked into the cave, towards the variant, the grotesque ‘reject’, whatever numb buzzword or cruel label you wanted to throw on them. Dawn just thought of them as poor souls. The screeching scream came echoed and blasted from the cave minutes after Dawn went in, the ghoul finding a new target. 

Then the light came. First, gold, bold, and brilliant. Then brighter, and brighter…and warm, without ever threatening to become hot. When it went white in its pure brightness, the screech became a woman’s scream. Over the span of a minute, the light died down, until the golden girl in the white suit with the gold shimmer cape and the fine, delicate, gold line details upon both suit and part of her skin just walked out.

“She’ll rest. Try to get her to a place where she can emotionally and psychologically recover. Preferably away from the corporation that failed her.”

It all came so matter-of-factly. She had considered healing variants before, but she knew so many of them either didn’t want saving, weren’t sure, or would struggle just as much either way, that she couldn’t bring herself to do it. The Ghoul was one of the very few that she knew, in her heart, would be better off.

If the poor woman wasn’t plucked up and studied. Dawn pitied the people who did that, if they did.