That strange hobby of hers

[Saeryn]

The streets were deserted, they should be, it was almost 1 in the morning in the middle of the docks. In the distance a few beams of light could be seen moving from cars passing in the distance on some unknown business. Most of the docks were shaded in darkness, even during the day there wasn't too much activity, many of these warehouses were abandoned and condemned which now provided a home for junkies, bums and anyone else who just didn't want to be noticed. A few of them still had shipping crates left in them, it was cheaper to leave them behind rather then move them. The tall bare sided buildings were only identifiable by the numbers painted on their sides, and a few chain link fences separated them every once in awhile. A few towering cranes were in the background closer to the sea. These warehouses were further from the shore and were mostly storage before something went from a ship to a truck. Of course the docks weren't exactly the most renovated place, economic slumps and owners simply running out of money meant that for now several of them were deserted, broken windows and picked locks marking which ones served as a way to get out of the rain. As for now there wasn't any activity on the docks, except for the few streetlights that were on the sidewalks and the traffic lights blinking back and fourth for cars that weren't there. In the beams of light the rain could be clearly seen. The only thing on the street tonight was one woman walking across the side walk keeping her head covered by the hood of her black jacket.

Saeryn Ashford walked through the rainy streets on the sidewalk, heading towards her destination this early in the morning. She was wearing a black rain jacket with a hood covering her head. The lack of people made her paranoia racked mind a bit more at ease, being someone as dangerous as her tended to make one a bit more cautious, unnecessarily so. She looked for a certain number on a warehouse, they all looked the same to her. Finding the number 23 she turned through an open chain link gate. Saeryn walked through a small parking lot, the post for a security guard was abandoned and had been for along time. She walked over to a door in the side and walked inside into the dry, well lit interior of the warehouse. It was cleaned recently, it not being caked with dust or infested with rodents like the others Saeryn being here several nights recently. She was finally out of the rain and pulled back the hood to her jacket. She leaned against the wall for a moment, brushing a black bang of hair out of her face. Her pitch black eyes had bags under them from the lack of sleep, she hadn't slept for more then one or two hours in several day, every time that she tried to sleep the nightmares from when she was asleep in the tank returned, greeting her to her own personal hell, she would awake screaming in cold sweat. It was starting to get to her and she could tell, the shadows moved to their own demented shapes that were just tricks of her sleep ravaged mind.

But Saeryn out those thoughts out of her mind, hell it's the reason she started this stupid experiment. She dug inside of her jacket for a moment and produced a pack of cigarettes, sliding one out and putting it in her mouth before fishing out a lighter, it was a way that she calmed herself down in the recent days. Once it was lit she leaned her head back for a moment before talking it out of he mouth and walked further into the warehouse. There were several shipping crates in rather good condition but she walked past them closer into the middle. This place was meant to store and process lumber shipped in from other parts of the word. One of the main features of this warehouse was the machinery meant to dry out wood, essentially they were like giant microwaves for wood. Of course now the valuable machine was gutted and cannibalized for other facilities somewhere, leaving giant metal containers with heavy duty glass, covering one side and heavy duty latches. This is the reason why Saeryn chose 23.

Holding the lit cigarette in her hands Saeryn walked down the corridors formed by the shipping containers and the containers. The floors were clean, except for a few black stains just like Saeryn's own blood. She looked to the side to see the malformed humanoid shape inside. It used to be a human, but it had been twisted into something else entirely. Extra limbs had sprouted from the sides of it's torso, the limbs ending in viscous talons. It's head had split in half, forming a toothed maw with eyes just like Saeryns to either side. It's legs had become strangely muscled. Saeryn looked through the heavy duty glass, placing her hand without the cigarette on the glass as she looked inside, the inside of the container was stained black from the gore that the thing bled from the many lacerations caused by the rapid mutations. It wandered around, completely ignoring Saeryn's presence, they always did. Saeryn reached into a hole left when the device's control panel was taken out and there was a small note pad and a pen. She scribbled down some notes and moved to the next one, it was her new habit.

Saeryn's touch, skin to skin caused humans to rapidly mutate and become twisted monsters, some kept their humanity enough to know what they were but were so twisted they often asked for a death, but more became mindless monsters that would tear apart anyone else nearby, while they were extremely aggressive to normal humans they didn't even acknowledge Saeryn was nearby. But Saeryn didn't know the exact details of what her ascendancy did, she just knew that it mutated people, and that she could extend the range of it past her tough but it took a severe told on her body, most often it was best for her to just make people nearby sick. But for the most part she knew nothing about what she did to people, that's why she spent her sleepless nights doing this. They were people that Saeryn thought that nobody would miss, at least she though. She knew that this would bring unnecessary attention to her, but her new hobby wasted away the sleepless nights and she could find out more about her ascendancy without having to turn herself in to sky gate. She just looked at her twisted pets, she didn't feel any remorse for what they used to be, nor any guild for putting them through such torture, she just wanted to know more about what she was.

[Kitsuneblue]

Matt was grumbling as he trudged through the pouring rain. His sweat jacket was soaked through, but he hardly seemed to notice the rain at all. He was clothed in wet and old jeans and sweat jacket, unshaven and his wet hair was hopelessly tousled. Added to that a coat of dust all over him which the rain had hardly washed off and he actually looked hardly out of place as he wandered between the large warehouses at the docks. At one in the morning no less.
If someone saw him, they might assume he was there to look for a place to sleep away from the rain. Either one of the numerous homeless or a drunken sailor who didn't want to board his ship yet.

But then again he was neither swaying nor were his clothes bad enough to belong to a homeless bum. And of course underneath was a thoroughly fit body which was only more noticeable with his jacket plastered against his upper body.
No, the only reason his unintentional “disguise” would hold up was because of the rain obscuring a clear view.

“Can you prove that an ascendant is involved Petty Officer?” could be heard in a low growling voice as he slipped into warehouse number 26. “No of course I fucking can't. Not unless one of them turns up again, ripped to pieces or melted or whatever the newest freak of the month likes to do in his spare time.” The SEAL practically stalked down the dusty corridor, leading to the – of course – deserted main storage area. He was bristling with pent up anger and still grumbling to himself. “Let the police handle it, he says. Don't get in their way, he says. It's not like the damn police is even looking for them. They're not even trying. Fucking...”

He exited the warehouse again and walked into the downpour without slowing down, though the cold rain in his face stopped his tirade for the moment. At least the next warehouse on his list was only two buildings away. He and Frank had narrowed it down considerately, but that had still left him with 10 deserted warehouses he needed to check for...well he wasn't exactly sure for what. It all depended on what had happened to those missing and as Major Barrow had enjoyed pointing out to him, he didn't fucking know what that was. Still, going from their last known whereabouts, they had managed to reconstruct where they probably had vanished. Now it was just a matter of looking for some clue, some evidence that could tell him just what he was up against.

He reached the next depot and glanced at the number before he approached the door. Number 23, only two more to go and he hadn't found anything aside from dust, dirt and rodents yet.

'Well,' he thought as he reached for the doorknob, 'maybe I'll get lucky this time.'
::It isn't a matter of luck. The calculations were correct::
'I don't doubt we're in the right place generally speaking. There isn't a single soul out here. It's pissing out here and still not one bum has taken shelter in any of the eight warehouses we checked. They're afraid of something here. All the same we have found fuck all.'

[Saeryn]

Saeryn just took notes about what was in each cell. Things such as how long they were living, how active they were, what mutations they had. It was all to try and find out the most that she could about her ascendancy and the twisted things that it created.There was little rhyme or reason to their mutations, the only thing consistent is some sort of natural appendage meant for killing. Most of them had some sort of laceration in their skin from the new limbs Saeryn's corrupted had gifted them with and all of them were acting as if Saeryn wasn't even there. She also knew that they didn't even acknowledge each other, a few of them sometimes worked in tandem to make their meals easier. She passed the cell of the one mutated human that hadn't devolved into a bloodthirsty beast, it was dead. They didn't last too long, most of them having burned out their bodies energy supply during the horrific process that turned a human into the twisted creature, so they usually starved in a few days and Saeryn got rid of their bodies. There were a few rare cases that she noted where the mutated monster could last more then a week, but most of them starved before then. For now they were passive, not even being aware that they were incarcerated. However they always turned aggressive if something other then Saeryn or another mutated creature was nearby. All of these things Saeryn kept noted down and was figuring out a piece of a time. She had tried everything to determine what mutations they had, things such as where she touched, how long she held them, and so far nothing had any effect. She walked from cell to cell, taking her notes and not even giving a second glance to a collection of what anyone else would call horrific monsters, having long been desensitized to them.

She quickly passed the 10 makeshift cells, only 7 of them had living creatures. But they didn't even take up a fourth of the warehouse, one side, the side that Saeryn entered was mostly long empty metal shelves meant to store the lumber that would mass through this place. The other was a collection of shipping crates that were not empty. They formed a maze of metal that Saeryn had no way of moving or changing. Saeryn had the notes that she had taken and walked past the cells to a set of metal stairs that led to a catwalk system that led to an office that Saeryn kept her notes from over course of this little experiment. When she reached the top of the stairs she could see one shipping container that stood out, it was dented and twisted from the inside.

The container was the only way that she could possibly keep that thing in side of this place. It was an experiment of hers that went horribly wrong. She had done it before when she was tearing up the facility that she was held in. Injecting someone with her blood causes terrible mutations, the other two that she did it to were torn to shreds as their bodie's shifted and warped but somehow when she did it here this person stayed alive. It's body barely had skin anymore but it had become inhumanly muscled and large, she was lucky to get it in the shipping crate. Right now it was calm, but every once in awhile it'd try and tear it's way out, so far the container held and Saeryn just hoped that little more then a giant sign saying that she was here would escape. At the moment it wasn't' doing anything,she knew there were times when it would lash out at it's prison, to be honest she's been hoping it would starve but so far it's stayed alive and violent.

Saeryn put it out of her mind for now, unfortunately what she wanted to find out about, what injecting her blood into someone would do, since there was no way to find out how that thing had changed. She put it out of her mind, hopefully the container would hold or no one would be stupid enough to open it and it'd just starve like the rest of the mutants. Saeryn continued into the office, stopping a the door for a moment to flick the remains of her cigarette down onto the concrete floor below. Inside were a few piece of furniture that weren't taken away. She slinked down into a chair, rubbing her black eyes for a moment before placing the notes at the side and opened a drawer with a bottle of tea that she had left there from the last night. She took a short drink from the bottle before every light flicked off. The lights from the main warehouse, the lights in the office suddenly she was pitched into complete darkness.

Saeryn panicked for a moment, placing her hands on the desk to stand up and feeling broken glass under her hands. She lifted her hands up, feeling cuts on her hands and looking up. She shrieked when she looked from her hands into the face her deceased mother, falling back in her chair and stumbling on the floor for a moment still full of broken glass, even it's mere touch causing her skin to cut and bleed. Saeryn was paralyzed by the sight of her mother, exactly the same as the last time Saeryn saw her before she was coughing up black blood and starting to change, the only exception was her eyes which were just empty sockets. Saeryn's mother seemed to still be staring right at her with a half smile on her face. She reached down to the floor and picked up a large shard of glass, her head turning slightly as she started to move towards Saeryn. Saeryn wanted to back away, to move, to scream, to do something but she couldn't, her mother spoke to her, [B]"It's been so long dear, and I still haven't finished my revenge for what you did to me, come to mommy... We have so much catching up to do." Saeryn still couldn't move as her mother was right up to her, all she could do was stare as she saw the glint of the shard of glass as it slashed down at her.

Saeryn screamed as she entered the light, her head was laying down in the office, there was tea all around her hand as well as a black trail leading from the glass that hat cut a small gash on the palm of her hand. The lights were still on, she had fallen asleep, she couldn't stay awake forever. She looked at the cut on her hand as she stood up and looked for something to try and stop her bleeding. It was then when she heard the door open on the warehouse, followed by actual words. Saeryn's eyes went wide when she realized that it wasn't her mind playing tricks on her... someone was here.

[Kitsuneblue]

Matt stopped his grumbling the moment he saw the recently cleaned and well lit interior of the warehouse. Even before the door shut behind him, the soldier had his gun out and ready and was sneaking deeper into the warehouse. He kept close to one wall, moving carefully and silently between the wall and shipping containers, keeping an eye out for anything unusual.
He didn't doubt that he had found exactly what he was looking for, but that wasn't enough. He had to find out what was going on and who was behind it. If it was simple people trafficking or anything similar he would inform the police and if it was actually one or more ascendants doing anything creepy then he would try his luck again with Major Barrow. However, no matter which it ultimately was he needed some evidence, some way to convince the authorities to act.
Finally the corridor between the shipping containers and the wall opened up to an open space with several large metal and glass constructs in the middle.
At first he only noticed a few black stains on the ground, but when he took a few more steps into that direction he could finally see into one of these constructs. Something was looking back at him.

”Holy shit!” he thought, deeply shocked, as he stopped for a second to decide if he should move forward or get the hell out of there.
Even though he knew it was a bad idea, he kept moving toward the holding cells, keeping as close to the shipping containers and thus in a bit of cover as he could. Those couldn't be the missing people he was searching for, at least he really hoped they weren't, but something was going on here and he needed to know what before he could decide what to to and who to call for backup.

[Saeryn]

Someone was here, Saeryn was already shaken up from her drug induced nightmare but this made things worse. Panic was immediately taking over, she must have forgotten to lock the door on her way in, a dumb little mistake which was going to get her work here discovered. There was no way that Saeryn could avoid a thorough investigation with what she had done here, chances are JW would recognize her work almost instantly, having plenty of examples from the facility as well as the conflict in the canals. In short she had to make sure that her visitor wouldn't leave.

She quickly moved to where the office overlooked the isles of storage space, she could see a man walking to the holding cells. She couldn't see him in detail from this distance, but the thing that did stick out was the fact that he was definitely bigger then Saeryn, most people were, he had a gun, and that he was alone. He didn't seem to notice her watching him, he did however notice one of the cells, it was hard to see with the tinted glass of the device as well as the black blood staining the cell itself, but when he did he was clearly horrified by what he saw, then again most people would when they saw what Saeryn did to people, at least he was spared the gruesome transformation process that birthed such monsters. At least the discovery stopped him from noticing Saeryn, and even more lucky for her that he didn't run screaming from this place or call for help. Saeryn moved past the window to next to the door to the office, one by one she quickly flicked the light switches, and one by one the lights in this place shut off, plunging the facility into darkness.

Saeryn knew this place better then he did, the warehouse floor turning into a maze of steel and cells full of monsters that were the things of nightmares. Saeryn moved from the office to the catwalks, for the most part the leftover storage crates and racks obscured line of sight for the most part, the darkness should do the rest. She got the stairs without getting shot, so that meant that hopefully her visitor hadn't seen her. The sight of the intruder made the mutated people start to act much more aggressive, some of them could be heard banging against their cells or yelling in anger, the sounds of that varied due to their ruined voice boxes. Saeryn cautiously made it to the bottom of the stairs, trying her best not to give any clue that she was inside of here. Saeryn made it to the door, by now her night vision having taken effect. She grabbed the key to the door and locked it, it was a key that she found in this place, apparently whoever actually owned it didn't care enough to check that one wasn't left behind. This was the only way in, the large warehouse doors being locked. Her guest was trapped, now it was time to deal with him.