I have a knack for perceiving things

[pythianwoman]

Zoey was done with this place. Done with the science experiments and the pain and the living as a labrat within these too-white walls. The only thing, the only person who had helped to make things bearable had been Dahlia, taken by the Order of Morta a year after they’d taken her. Her best friend. Her only friend. The one person in the entire facility who knew the depths of her visions. Who had witnessed them at their worst, blood streaming down her cheeks as she lay in her lap.

Together they came up with an escape plan. It had been a plan long laid. Carefully worked on, carefully made. Every detail and every contingency covered. They had to.

Dahlia serves as a distraction, while Zoey slips away, silent and unseen to unlock every single door she can get her hands and stolen keycard on. On and on, door after door... until it’s time. Until their moment has arrived. “DAHLIA, NOW!” she shouts, voice pitched to carry to her partner in crime.

Chaos erupts, alarm bells filling the air and red emergency lights filling the too-white halls with an eerie red glow, and Zoey doesn’t hold back as she fights her way through the Order guard and orderlies, channelling all of her rage, all that they had done to her, into her viciously graceful takedowns. She doesn’t linger, though, doesn’t do more than she absolutely has to in order to keep them off of her as she runs through the corridors that have been her cage for too many fucking years.

And then she is bursting out of the sturdy double doors serving as her escape route, racing for the treeline with the Order’s footsoldiers in hot pursuit. She doesn’t stop until she’s lost them, until there’s no longer the sound of them chasing her. Until she no longer feels the sharp prickles of warning along her skin.

There’s no way for Zoey to miss Dahlia’s scream. And it’s a beacon, letting her know where her best friend is. It’s a cause for worry, too. Had the Order caught up with her? Had they recaptured her? She refuses to leave with her, refuses to escape without her. So she takes off, racing towards the sound.

... To find nothing. Dahlia is gone.

ShitshitshitSHIT. She swears, if they’ve taken her again she will raze the building to the fucking ground. She will ruin them. No more. They’ve made her a weapon and she will use all she has, all she IS, against them if they’ve retaken Dahlia.

There’s a smudge of a footprint on the ground, and Zoey kneels, brushes her fingertips against it. Images and sounds flicker through her mind. Dahlia, a young man she doesn’t recognize (although names appear almost in time with his face. The Séance. Klaus Hargreeves. Number Four.)

"Are-- are you... The Séance?"

"I- I have to-- go. I have to go somewhere safe. I can't stay here, they're coming. They're coming! I can't be here. You can't let them find me. Please!" Dahlia is so scared, so terrified...

He’s draping something over Dahlia’s shoulders. His coat. He’s keeping her warm. Keeping her safe. "It's not safe." "Where do we go?" Dahlia reaches for his hand.

The visions fade as quickly as they came, the last thing she sees is a house, with Klaus and Dahlia walking inside through the front door. The Order doesn’t have her. Didn’t catch her. Zoey exhales softly, before rising to her feet. Okay. She knows who Dahlia is with and where they’re going. Her first bit of business is getting out of the dirty, torn grey scrubs that had been their uniform during their time with the Order. So she can pass for something like normal. Even if she hasn’t been that in a very long time.

Real clothes. And then she finds Dahlia.

The clothes are easy enough. A little application of powers and a little bit of theft and soon she’s hiding in a secluded corner and stripping out of her scrubs before sliding into the overlarge clothes she’d made off with. She feels a thousand times better, once the last vestiges of the Order have been stripped away from her. Other than the scars and the trauma. But she’s dressed like a fucking human again. And she has actual shoes. She hasn’t worn more than slippers since she was fifteen years old.

Before long she’s standing down the street from the house she saw in her vision. The one she saw Dahlia and Klaus, enter. There is the thought of just busting the fucking door down. But she won’t. Not yet, anyway. Klaus helped Dahlia, and for that, it earns him a brief bit of... not quite trust. But politeness. For the fucking moment.

So she strides across the street and knocks on the door.