Cybil (2018) #projectsuper

Chapter 16: Frozen Nightmare

Cybil was just about to make contact with Fuller and depart, when she suddenly struck a fighting pose and waited. It was in that moment when she realized she was being watched.

She had been on missions previously where she had been around masses of people, and even though she wouldn't voice it, she preferred solitary missions to group coordinated ones. Especially after...

No. She wouldn't let herself think about it. Not again. She wouldn't let phantoms of the past start interfering with her purpose.

Looking around, she didn't see anything at first. Just a whirling snow field around her.

Then, a girl. Or, at least, that's what she could make out. While it was tough to use her "threat detection" ability in these conditions due to having so much white noise to sort through, she managed it. The girl seemed to be tense, but whether she was here for a fight was anyone's guess.

Something else put her ill at ease. Scanning the girl revealed something...strange about her. Something powerful seemed to exude from her. Something she couldn't place.

"You!" the girl said, upon getting within shouting distance. "What are you doing here?"

Cybil didn't know what to say, if anything. Contact with teenagers with climate inappropriate dress certainly wasn't in the mission briefing.

By the way, where the heck was Fuller? Was he even seeing this?

The girl repeated her question, and panic began to involuntarily rise in her body as it was warmed by pure adrenaline.

She allowed the girl to close in to a certain point, and then she charged her, more out of pure survival instinct than anything else.

The ensuing fight was swift. Though slowed by the cold, Cybil had her opponent on the ground in about a minute. The girl did put up a fight, and had tried to blind her with eye poking and employ similar desperate maneuvers. Cybil prevailed, nonetheless.

Before she could finish her off, Cybil realized that the woman had disappeared, to be replaced by a more familiar one.

The girl from the pharmacy. She was back to haunt her. Cybil's heart nearly flew back up her throat.

What happened next was a blur to Cybil. She heard herself screaming for the first time ever as she saw in her mind's eye all of the events of that horrible night all those months ago, down to her running off in tears.

***

Clare was confused, to say the least. One moment, she was face to face with some sort of living fighting machine, the next moment, said fighting machine was having a panic attack right in front of her face. She was sure if she tried to put a hand on her, she might just lose it. She had no business picking another fight with this girl.

That's when she saw it. A small blue orb attached to her belt.

A teleport device.

Looking at the girl again, she saw she was a mess.

That device is our only ticket out of here...

Clare knew in that moment what she would do. She moved as fast as she could, and, soon, she couldn't hear her own footsteps. She didn't even let herself dwell on that. She had her brothers on her back and was surging in the opposite direction before her brain could catch up to her body.

She got to her, nearly knocking her down, and tapped her teleport device. The strange girl looked shocked for a moment before Clare grabbed onto her with siblings in tow and warped away with her to who-knows-where.