Silver ||Joel Miller||

firefly adjacent

ELLIE

Three months ago...

To say that Ellie's year was going to shit would be the understatement of the century. First Riley and her got attacked by an infected. Riley became an infected. Ellie had to...

And now she was being held fucking captive by the Fireflies. What more could she ask for?

"Ellie!"

Her eyes lifted as she heard her name from outside of the room that was being used as her temporary cell. It was Laura's voice, she knew that with complete certainty.

"Laura?!" Ellie shouted back and the door swung open, hard enough that it threatened to fall off it's hinges.

"Oh my god." Laura ran over to Ellie and fell to her knees. Laura then wrapped her arms around Ellie, pulling her into a bone crushing hug. "I thought you were fucking dead."

"Nope..." Ellie replied, and Laura let go and pulled away to take her in.

"Are you okay? What happened?"

"Riley... she..." Ellie trailed off, but then she realised she didn't have to explain herself. Not until Laura explained why she was in a Firefly base, at the very least. "Why are you here?"

"Well, Ellie, I..." Laura grimaced as she spoke, and pulled away a little further.

"Laura." Ellie pushed, and it got her a response.

"Just one second, I need them to take those fucking cuffs off you." A minute or two went by as Laura argued with one of her guards, and eventually they came in to remove the cuffs. "Look, there's no easy way to say this..."

"You're a Firefly." Ellie stated the obvious as the guard left the room again. And while her focus should of been on how to get out, it was on Laura who shook her head.

"No, more like Firefly adjacent." And what the fuck did that even mean? "I steal information from everyone and sell it to everyone, whoever will give me what I want gets what they want. I've given information to FEDRA about the Fireflies, and vice versa. It's all very situational."

"What the fuck?" Ellie's eyebrows furrowed as she stared at Laura, the one person in the world she'd trusted aside from Riley.

"Look, it's a long story and I'll tell you about it later. I promise. The part that matters is that since you went missing I have been terrified that you'd fucking died on me. Marlene told me, just an hour ago, that she'd found this kid in the mall. I knew it was you, so I came running. I've been stuck talking to Marlene for the past half hour about what to do with you." Laura explained, avoiding the topic that Ellie wanted to speak about and instead directing it back to what she didn't.

"And what's that?"

"Well, first off, is what she said true? Were you bit?" Laura asked.

Ellie froze for a second as the fear entered Laura's eyes. But it wasn't fear of her, it was fear for her. She didn't know how she could see the difference, but she knew she was right.

"Yeah..." Ellie trailed off as she closed her eyes.

"Show me." Ellie lifted her arm, the sleeve of her jacket pulled back, and revealed the now scarred wound to Laura. "Holy shit." She felt Laura grab her arm, heard Laura move to inspect her scar closer, but she kept her eyes squeezed shut.