𝐅𝐋𝐀𝐑𝐄𝐒, ᴘᴇʀᴄʏ ᴊᴀᴄᴋꜱᴏɴ

013 ── warrior bled.

The iron flooded down her throat, and Theia Harlow endeavoured, in her agitation, to breathe.

        Smoke clogged in her chest; rigidity lining the hollow of her body. Malignant to any other but her, a child of it. Her body had been bound in a curling of steel links, indented to her skin at each heaven of the Amazon's arm. She struggled in their hold, protested while persisting through the blistering heat possessing her skull, clamorous and pungent — her biceps writhed, pulled to align with her shoulder blades. A collar was firm around her throat.

        "Like a dog." Kinzie had jeered, her foot curving to the redhead's spine to keep her bound to the floor. Her lighter was locked in the Amazon's hand, rotated flippantly, idling over its detail. "Take their weapons."

        Their descent into the building was shrouded in a dense silence. Scraping and groaning, Theia's amble was coarse and wrong, apparent to those watching in their reticence. Twitching and searing beneath their gazes, heavy on her back, on her lungs as they tightened. It was an effort to overlook each screech of her leg, overlook how each punitive jerk of her limbs made the metal plates grate and her eyes squeeze together, her unease in their moisture.

        She was faulty no matter what her skin was forged from; this fact was a blight on her soul, a blight that doused her in cold.

        Her confliction was abiding, beholding archaic roots. A child born of inferno and mercy and hysteria twice over. An ancient thing knarled about her, visible yet fleeting, quickening as her head continued to pound and her thoughts warped into her undoing.

        A shoulder knocked harshly against hers; shaking, it was, with her shudders and receding air. Her head lifted barely, eyelids faltering. Sea green was the only visible colour through her darkening haze. His concern, coloured red, was missed entirely.

        "Move!" Her forearm seared as metal dug ever deeper, a yell tearing from her clouded lungs as her body reared back.

"Stop it!" Hazel shouted, the only part of them left unbound. They heeded her words unwillingly. Theia tugged at the metal hanging from her limbs, a prisoner, a body, neither and both. A girl afloat.

        He could only watch.

        The cavern they were lead to was vast, shadows dancing in tandem across the floors, the walls drifted in shade. A vagueness. They were marched as captives, fractures of light cinching on their chains, their apprehension. Percy's arms tensed in the hold of the two warriors, ripples of blue and purple striking down his flesh, pushing to make his indignation striking. His gaze caught on her, again and again, in her chains. Her head hung low; refusing to look back.

        Look at me, he urged with no words at all, as if his eyes, vigorous and wide and fixed entirely on her, reach a hand to her, pull her back. Please, please, please.

        Fluorescence caught on their shadows, ever winding, ever humiliating. The rattle of her chains was a roar in her ears with the mass of her blood. She exhaled — choking on her own blood.

        Conveyor belts wound through the room like water slides, carrying boxes in every direction. Aisles of metal shelves stretched out forever, stacked high with crates of merchandise. Cranes hummed and robotic arms whirred, folding cardboard boxes, packing shipments, and taking things on and off the belts. Some of the shelves were so tall they were only accessible by ladders and catwalks, which ran across the ceiling like theaters scaffolding.

        Ghosts uprooted from behind the towering metal, patrolling and marching in their uniformity. Women in black uniform patrolling the other — men in orange jumpsuits, like prison uniforms, driving forklifts through the aisles, delivering more pallets of boxes. The men wore iron collars around their necks as she did.