Categories > Original > Sci-Fi > Project Innocence
Note: So no one will be confused, every chapter starts at "scene 1." I just thought I'd clarify that. Hopefully the chapters will continuously get longer. Wish me luck.
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Scene 1: a young woman lying on her back in a basement-turned-soundproof-bedroom. The door is shut and a locked with a door chain. Music is blasting throughout her well-wired, improvised yet extremely efficient stereo system. Using the computer the girl had canceled out the vocals of Evanescence. She just laid there, singing each note perfectly with the music.
The younger sister sat at the foot of the basement stairs on the other side of her sister's bedroom door. Call it a stakeout if you will. She wanted answers, and the answers she sought were on the other side of the door.
She couldn't hear a sound coming from the room, but she knew that her sister was listening to Evanescence. She couldn't hear a single word of what her sister sang, but she could feel each word as her sister sang it.
Her older sister could sense her outside the door; she simply ignored her presence and hoped that she would leave on her own. However much she hoped for privacy, she knew her sister was too stubborn and would sleep outside the door if that's what it took.
"Sleep away little sis," she sighed as the song changed.
An alert on her computer sounded causing her to bolt upright to respond to the urgent message. Her eyes widened as she read, "Dia, hostages, five dead. Standoff, turn on the TV."
Nadia turned on the TV to see the violence unfolding before her eyes. She replied to the message with a simple: heading out. She carefully observed the surroundings of the building on the TV before grabbing her duffel bag, and shutting off the music. She unchained her door, but as she opened it she was sure to lock the doorknob just before rushing past her sister.
Her sister yelled after her but she was already out the back door of the house. The younger girl let out a yell of frustration and ran after her sister.
Scene 2: A rural area near a city park, several miles away from the standoff. A teenager sits anxiously in his bedroom as he watches the live coverage of the standoff. The window of his bedroom is wide open.
"What's taking her so long? Why isn't she there yet?" he groaned to himself. He knew that if it lasted much longer the death toll would continue to rise. The police were refusing to negotiate with the hostage takers, even though they were killing hostages.
The police in this city didn't care about innocent lives. They had stopped caring years ago. This city was being thrown into chaos and the authorities and politicians didn't care. All they ever talked about was all the problems with the condition of the city, but that's all they ever did. All talk and no action.
The teenage boy hears a noise outside his window; he quickly gets out of his chair and looks outside.
"What took you so long? Why aren't you already there?" he demanded quietly.
"I can't get close enough to the building and still find a place to shift," came the reply.
The boy reached his hand out the window to help his friend up. She quickly accepted the gesture and climbed inside the bedroom.
She threw her duffel bag to the floor, opening it and digging through it.
"What are you looking for?"
"Anything that might help."
"You don't have time for that! Listen, they have fourteen live people inside that vault and they've already killed five! That's not including the security guards and janitorial staff that they took out on their way to the vault! Dia, you don't have time!"
"Alright! Alright! I'm going!" she quickly stripped off her clothes, her body changing as she stripped. "Hide my stuff and leave the window open, this is Refuge right now."
"Ok, now get out of here!"
But she was already out the window and down the street.
Scene 3: A skyscraper in the middle of a crowded part of town. The lights are out in the building and only the dim emergency lights are lighting the interior. Hostages are locked inside a vault rigged with explosives, several armed men aiming high-powered assault rifles at them.
The leader of the gunmen called the police again, listing his new demands. While the gunmen in the vault continued to torture and terrify the captives.
Through the sewers underneath the building, a strange creature ran so fast that her feet never touched the filth underneath her long enough to stick. She followed the passages that she routinely studied. Slipping out into a back alley through a manhole, she could see the moving shadows cast by the police lights.
She ripped open the security code panel on the freight elevator and rewired it to open. She reached her arm into the elevator, pressed the "down" button, and pulled her arm back as the elevator descended. As soon as it was below her, she grabbed into the upwards-moving pulley cable and rode it up the building. She listened carefully for any sign of the chaos.
One floor below the vault she quietly pried open the elevator door and slipped out, moving stealthily throughout the connected offices, making her way towards the stairs to ascend to the next floor. Climbing up the stairs her thoughts raced, questioning what would happen when the evidence of her entry was discovered by authorities. Wondering what the hostage takers and their captives would later tell police.
She refused to feel fear; she knew that she couldn't afford to feel it.
Without a single sound, she slipped through the door to the upper level. Crouching she ran under the cover of anything she could find. She found a place from which she could get a much better view of the situation. She noticed a guard outside the vault with his back turned towards her while the leader was across the room making his new demands to the police down below.
She easily crept up behind the guard and broke his neck without ever drawing the attention of the leader.
She slipped into the vault, motioning for the captives who saw her to remain quiet and pay no attention to her. But it was too late, a hostage gasped, alerting the gunmen to her presence. Gunfire erupted before she had the chance to avoid it. A bullet shot right through her left upper arm, the bullet passing through and striking the gunman on the other side of her.
She made quick work of the gunmen despite her injury. The vault reopened and the leader came in waving his semi-automatic around balanced on one arm, and holding a detonator in the other.
Her eyes widened as several hostages cried out in fear for their lives. "Explosives, great..." she thought.
She quickly glanced around the room and located the explosive device.
"Whatever the hell you are, you sure as hell aren't gona mess this up for me!" the captor roared at her.
She lunged at him but he was expecting it and shot a few rounds at her. She panicked, overestimating her speed, not protecting herself from the gunfire.
Three bullets passed through her body; shoulder, stomach, chest.
She managed to extract his gun from him and bend the barrel enough to make it unusable. He cackled wildly and pressed the detonator button, running out of the vault and locking it behind him before the bomb could explode.
She grabbed the package as the short countdown started and held it tight to her chest, curling her body around it. She hoped to absorb most of the force, regardless of what it did to her.
She was terrified, but she held onto the bomb even as it exploded, the cries from the hostages loud in her ears before the explosion overpowered the sound.
She lay limp and unconscious for a moment, burns covering her body. Her eyes opened and she realized that the hostages had surrounded her, trying to see if she was dead or alive. She sat up quickly, pain throbbing throughout her body.
"It's alive!" a man yelled out in both fear and amazement.
She ignored him and began searching for a way out of the vault. Fear engulfed her more and more as she looked for her way out. She'd be caught. She'd be held by the government, doing whatever they pleased with her. She didn't want to be a weapon. She didn't want to be a captive. She didn't want to be caught.
There was no way out of the vault other than how she came in. There was no way to open the vault from the inside, just a thick, solid steel door. She dug her nails between the door and the steel underneath it. Using every ounce of her strength, she managed to bend a corner of the door open to form a tiny gap. She squeezed through the gap to the other side.
"Does anybody know the combination?" she asked the traumatized people inside the vault. Someone quickly told her the combination and she opened the vault door, releasing them. After the hostages were out of the vault, she took off down the stairwell as fast as she possibly could. She was in pain and her movements were sluggish, even though they remained faster than average.
Every here and there she'd end up leaning against the railing as she ran, or she'd stop for a moment on the between platforms and lean against the wall before taking off again. She made it down to the bottom floor of the basement and found her way to the freight elevator she had sent downwards beforehand.
She pressed the button for the ground floor. Once the elevator opened into the alley she began climbing the wall of the building next to the one she had just come from. Once on the roof she went down the stairs into the apartment building, which, luckily, had been evacuated due to the events unfolding in the building next door.
She exited through the emergency exit and ran back towards her friend's house.
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Scene 1: a young woman lying on her back in a basement-turned-soundproof-bedroom. The door is shut and a locked with a door chain. Music is blasting throughout her well-wired, improvised yet extremely efficient stereo system. Using the computer the girl had canceled out the vocals of Evanescence. She just laid there, singing each note perfectly with the music.
The younger sister sat at the foot of the basement stairs on the other side of her sister's bedroom door. Call it a stakeout if you will. She wanted answers, and the answers she sought were on the other side of the door.
She couldn't hear a sound coming from the room, but she knew that her sister was listening to Evanescence. She couldn't hear a single word of what her sister sang, but she could feel each word as her sister sang it.
Her older sister could sense her outside the door; she simply ignored her presence and hoped that she would leave on her own. However much she hoped for privacy, she knew her sister was too stubborn and would sleep outside the door if that's what it took.
"Sleep away little sis," she sighed as the song changed.
An alert on her computer sounded causing her to bolt upright to respond to the urgent message. Her eyes widened as she read, "Dia, hostages, five dead. Standoff, turn on the TV."
Nadia turned on the TV to see the violence unfolding before her eyes. She replied to the message with a simple: heading out. She carefully observed the surroundings of the building on the TV before grabbing her duffel bag, and shutting off the music. She unchained her door, but as she opened it she was sure to lock the doorknob just before rushing past her sister.
Her sister yelled after her but she was already out the back door of the house. The younger girl let out a yell of frustration and ran after her sister.
Scene 2: A rural area near a city park, several miles away from the standoff. A teenager sits anxiously in his bedroom as he watches the live coverage of the standoff. The window of his bedroom is wide open.
"What's taking her so long? Why isn't she there yet?" he groaned to himself. He knew that if it lasted much longer the death toll would continue to rise. The police were refusing to negotiate with the hostage takers, even though they were killing hostages.
The police in this city didn't care about innocent lives. They had stopped caring years ago. This city was being thrown into chaos and the authorities and politicians didn't care. All they ever talked about was all the problems with the condition of the city, but that's all they ever did. All talk and no action.
The teenage boy hears a noise outside his window; he quickly gets out of his chair and looks outside.
"What took you so long? Why aren't you already there?" he demanded quietly.
"I can't get close enough to the building and still find a place to shift," came the reply.
The boy reached his hand out the window to help his friend up. She quickly accepted the gesture and climbed inside the bedroom.
She threw her duffel bag to the floor, opening it and digging through it.
"What are you looking for?"
"Anything that might help."
"You don't have time for that! Listen, they have fourteen live people inside that vault and they've already killed five! That's not including the security guards and janitorial staff that they took out on their way to the vault! Dia, you don't have time!"
"Alright! Alright! I'm going!" she quickly stripped off her clothes, her body changing as she stripped. "Hide my stuff and leave the window open, this is Refuge right now."
"Ok, now get out of here!"
But she was already out the window and down the street.
Scene 3: A skyscraper in the middle of a crowded part of town. The lights are out in the building and only the dim emergency lights are lighting the interior. Hostages are locked inside a vault rigged with explosives, several armed men aiming high-powered assault rifles at them.
The leader of the gunmen called the police again, listing his new demands. While the gunmen in the vault continued to torture and terrify the captives.
Through the sewers underneath the building, a strange creature ran so fast that her feet never touched the filth underneath her long enough to stick. She followed the passages that she routinely studied. Slipping out into a back alley through a manhole, she could see the moving shadows cast by the police lights.
She ripped open the security code panel on the freight elevator and rewired it to open. She reached her arm into the elevator, pressed the "down" button, and pulled her arm back as the elevator descended. As soon as it was below her, she grabbed into the upwards-moving pulley cable and rode it up the building. She listened carefully for any sign of the chaos.
One floor below the vault she quietly pried open the elevator door and slipped out, moving stealthily throughout the connected offices, making her way towards the stairs to ascend to the next floor. Climbing up the stairs her thoughts raced, questioning what would happen when the evidence of her entry was discovered by authorities. Wondering what the hostage takers and their captives would later tell police.
She refused to feel fear; she knew that she couldn't afford to feel it.
Without a single sound, she slipped through the door to the upper level. Crouching she ran under the cover of anything she could find. She found a place from which she could get a much better view of the situation. She noticed a guard outside the vault with his back turned towards her while the leader was across the room making his new demands to the police down below.
She easily crept up behind the guard and broke his neck without ever drawing the attention of the leader.
She slipped into the vault, motioning for the captives who saw her to remain quiet and pay no attention to her. But it was too late, a hostage gasped, alerting the gunmen to her presence. Gunfire erupted before she had the chance to avoid it. A bullet shot right through her left upper arm, the bullet passing through and striking the gunman on the other side of her.
She made quick work of the gunmen despite her injury. The vault reopened and the leader came in waving his semi-automatic around balanced on one arm, and holding a detonator in the other.
Her eyes widened as several hostages cried out in fear for their lives. "Explosives, great..." she thought.
She quickly glanced around the room and located the explosive device.
"Whatever the hell you are, you sure as hell aren't gona mess this up for me!" the captor roared at her.
She lunged at him but he was expecting it and shot a few rounds at her. She panicked, overestimating her speed, not protecting herself from the gunfire.
Three bullets passed through her body; shoulder, stomach, chest.
She managed to extract his gun from him and bend the barrel enough to make it unusable. He cackled wildly and pressed the detonator button, running out of the vault and locking it behind him before the bomb could explode.
She grabbed the package as the short countdown started and held it tight to her chest, curling her body around it. She hoped to absorb most of the force, regardless of what it did to her.
She was terrified, but she held onto the bomb even as it exploded, the cries from the hostages loud in her ears before the explosion overpowered the sound.
She lay limp and unconscious for a moment, burns covering her body. Her eyes opened and she realized that the hostages had surrounded her, trying to see if she was dead or alive. She sat up quickly, pain throbbing throughout her body.
"It's alive!" a man yelled out in both fear and amazement.
She ignored him and began searching for a way out of the vault. Fear engulfed her more and more as she looked for her way out. She'd be caught. She'd be held by the government, doing whatever they pleased with her. She didn't want to be a weapon. She didn't want to be a captive. She didn't want to be caught.
There was no way out of the vault other than how she came in. There was no way to open the vault from the inside, just a thick, solid steel door. She dug her nails between the door and the steel underneath it. Using every ounce of her strength, she managed to bend a corner of the door open to form a tiny gap. She squeezed through the gap to the other side.
"Does anybody know the combination?" she asked the traumatized people inside the vault. Someone quickly told her the combination and she opened the vault door, releasing them. After the hostages were out of the vault, she took off down the stairwell as fast as she possibly could. She was in pain and her movements were sluggish, even though they remained faster than average.
Every here and there she'd end up leaning against the railing as she ran, or she'd stop for a moment on the between platforms and lean against the wall before taking off again. She made it down to the bottom floor of the basement and found her way to the freight elevator she had sent downwards beforehand.
She pressed the button for the ground floor. Once the elevator opened into the alley she began climbing the wall of the building next to the one she had just come from. Once on the roof she went down the stairs into the apartment building, which, luckily, had been evacuated due to the events unfolding in the building next door.
She exited through the emergency exit and ran back towards her friend's house.
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