Bradley's Marsh
Camp

en route to Refuge
one klick from Camp

━━━━

ZOEY BLINKED herself awake at the sound of shouting.

No; rather screaming. In her dream-like state, she could almost imagine she was back at Deary-Harver Cross Hospital. Just another day of heart attacks, hover-rail accidents, and overdoses piling up her schedule.

She squinted at the ceiling above her. If she was at the hospital, then why was she lying down like a patient? And why was she in a tent?

Shadows flicked across her gaze. Outside of the tent, a large object zipped past, silhouetted by the sunlight. Sunlight? There weren't many windows in Deary-Harver Cross Hospital ... all the patients had to do was step outside to get their daily dose of vitamin D, and some sunburn on the side.

Something wet crept down her cheek. Zoey lifted her hand and dabbed at it, frowning when she realized it was blood. Her nose was bleeding. But that meant ... where was her desmopressin? The spur of panic (why was she panicking? What was so important about desmopressin? She couldn't remember) faded as quickly as her consciousness.

A doctor never sleeps on the job ...

Everything went black.

━━━━

The tent collapsed, knocked over in a blast of air that buffeted Zoey's face.

She rolled over, more annoyed than mystified that her sleep had been interrupted. What was going on? And why were her wrists tied together? Zoey studied the cord in front of her chest, seeing the marks where the plastic had bit into her flesh.

More liquid crept down her cheek. She felt light-headed, but the breeze was nice ... Not the sunlight, which was hot and boiling, but the breeze ...

A high-pitched keen exploded above her, and Zoey was finally snapped out of her woozy state. A huge insect - something with way too many twitching legs and antennae - collapsed next to her on her. Multi-lobed eyeballs focused on her as she spied her reflection more than a dozen times over, and a watery green seemed to spurt from its body.

Zoey screamed.

Twitching legs ... twitching body ... it was a bug it was a bug it was a gigantic bug and Zoey hated bugs in general - and those were the small ones.

Repulsion and more fear than she could ever describe made her roll away, splashing through cold marshy water. She'd been resting on some leaves (How considerate, a sarcastic background thought piped up). Plastic cord cutting into her hands and all, she clambered along her elbows away from that dying creature, feeling her tears fall even though she felt nothing more than terror.

Bugs ... everywhere. Flying over her, whisking her hair all around, and crashing into the earth as the marines fired their volt-guns into the sky, screeches and the flapping of gigantic wings doing little to drown out the roar of blood in her ears.

Where's Amelia?! Zoey looked left and right, cringing away from the sight of a woman being picked up off of the ground by spindly insect legs before being thrown to the marsh below. She racked her boiled brains to remember.

She and Amelia sitting together. Ichabod shooting them. Waking up with a nosebleed.

Surprisingly, she didn't feel very shocked. Not even an inch terrified of the prospect of Ichabod killing her. After all, that was what she had prepared for, wasn't it? Not that anyone knows that, she murmured internally.

That was what the rescue mission had prepared for. Ready to extract bribed members of ERAA, and multiple soldiers of EUR had paid the price in death.

Ethical Usage of Resources ... An undercover mission within a mission. Not that anyone else could know that - or figure out she was a part of it.

What Zoey did feel terrified about was getting eaten by a dragonfly/monster, so she kept crawling as all those thoughts raced through her electric-fried brain.

Her mussed hair, having escaped from its lazy braid, was caked with mud by the time she'd reached the cover of a lone, foot-ball shaped fern. She dubbed it 'The Crusader' internally as Zoey rummaged through her specially-made doctor's suit's pockets for her medication.

The blood from her nose gushed freely, staining her grey suit. Even though this bleed was minor (she'd lived through enough severe cases to recognize heavy ones), her hands were shaking as she finally recovered the small pill container.

Just another product of faulty X-chromosomes; having haemophilia didn't leave much space for squeamishness.

Zoey popped the pills, unclasping her suit's top half and dabbing at her nose on its sleeve. She was sweating through her tank top, and she kept her gaze firmly on the task at hand rather than gazing up in the air. If a humongous dragonfly was about to land on her and squash her, then there was nothing she could do about it.

The plastic cord was drawing even more blood around her bound hands, and Zoey tried to bite down into it to try and relieve the cutting pressure. The pain of bending in ways the doctor was not flexible enough to bend in was far less pressing than the prospect of bleeding to death because she couldn't undo a knot.

Another dying keen of a bug soared over her, and half of the fern's leaves were taken off by thrashing wings and legs. Her protection destroyed, Zoey finally got through the plastic with her jolt of panic - and a hand roughly took hold of her arm, the heated nozzle of a volt-gun pressed against her temple.

"You're coming with me," Ichabod growled, dragging her upwards. Being within an arm's length of the man who could've so easily have killed she and Amelia made her blood boil, and she threw her elbow up into his face in an effort to throw him off and make a run for it.

With a speed that made her gasp, he gripped a hold of her arm with his one hand and smashed the volt-gun across her forehead with the other. Zoey didn't have time to scream with frustration at her failure before everything went dark again.

━━━━

"We're taking the doctor with us! She'll be useful - for leverage or otherwise." Rough hands groped her across her biceps and shoulders, multiple people dragging her across rough, wet terrain. Zoey's head flopped down and upwards again, into the sky.

Blood ran down her left eye. She blinked back the burning red and squinted; black dots signifying the insects that had attacked camp were far off in the distance. How long had she been out?

From the dryness of her mouth and the throbbing pain across her skull, Zoey estimated at least half an hour.

Her entire face felt caked with blood and sweat, congealing across her eyelid and down her upper lip. Zoey was too numb with disgust in herself to feel much of anything. How could she have failed so desperately?

For three months she had trained beside the ERAA members, three months added to an endless list of time spent honing her body and mind to be more than Dr Zoey Royson, but a woman with a more prominent purpose of putting a stop to any dysfunctional behavior, from the Learners to marines alike.

Her boss was a secret one. With the arrival of Samson, Zoey had begun to suspect from the word 'go' that more was underfoot than just a mission to relocate the world's population into a primal ecosystem. And I was right, Zoey thought bitterly. She'd tried to warn Amelia ...

Amelia.

Her heart tightened, and for a moment the emotional grief was worse than the physical ones. A new world ... a new chance at life and relationships. Or so she'd hoped.

Where are you, Mel?

She hadn't realized the troop had slowed, and that another familiar figure was hurrying towards her. Luca's cheek had a deep gouge across it, and his eyes were narrow pinpricks in the harsh light.

"We'll make camp here," the same voice that she then recognized as Ichabod's, boomed. Those holding onto her promptly released her with scowls and mutters that she chose to ignore, focusing solely on Amelia's companion.

Her heartbeat sped up with hopefulness, though his look told her she should've expected nothing. Head and heart throbbing, Luca led her further away from the marines and other Learners (Did they know that Ichabod was a bad guy? Or had they been recruited? The realization that they had been betrayed stabbed her like a knife through her gut, worse than any volt-gun charge), and Zoey saw out of the corner of her eye how one woman hefted her volt-gun up and stared after them.

Challenging them to run.

"Luca? What's happening?" Stupid first question, which she quickly amended. "Where's Amelia? Is she safe -?"

"I don't know," Luca cut over her as she clamped her jaw shut at his interruption, telling herself to stay calm.

Just because Luca doesn't know doesn't mean she's dead. The possibility of that yawned ahead of her.

"All I know is, Ichabod has turned into a crackpot. He's got a plan ... with the help of the EEG, which is safely stored back at the old camp." A flash of something like guilt sharpened the suspicion in Zoey's chest. She shrugged Luca's grip off of her shoulder, eyes narrowing a little.

"What plan? Luca, what is he going to do?"

"I don't know," Luca repeated. He suddenly looked drained, and she presumed she didn't look much better. Probably worse, with blood covering her face. "Something to do with shipments. Dinosaurs. Something.

"Look, he's proposed an ultimatum. We work with him, he doesn't kill us."

"How can you even consider that?" Zoey's voice rose in pitch; as did her anger. "Ichabod nearly killed Amelia and I. He won't hesitate to do that to any of us, working with him or not!"

"Until we come up with a better plan, what other choice do we have?" Luca sounded scared, and he was pressing his palms together. His eyes flashed with concern over hers.

He thought she was going to do something rash, like attack the nearest marine and grab their volt-gun and start shooting. But that wasn't how Zoey was trained, even though all her instincts were opting for the first option.

They didn't have any other choice.

"Fine." Zoey shut her eyes, feeling like her confirmation drained all of her remaining strength. She wobbled a little on her feet and scrabbled for the sleeve of her suit again, staunching further blood flow from her nose.

"Come on." Luca took her arm gently and led her back to the marines. "There's a first aid kit somewhere here that I nabbed."

Back to Ichabod.

And Zoey knew what would come after, even if Luca's naïve delusion was true. The Jurassic was a kill or be killed world, and the doctor felt her heart drop to her feet, for her first kill wouldn't necessarily be a dinosaur.

━━━━