The Shell of Casper

- 16 - Weigh Down

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Rosie stared down the gash in the earth, at the sliding footprints, then the cut off where this girl must have slipped. She laid at the bottom, on her side with her legs propped out. Rosie didn't know how to react, how to proceed.

Watson grumbled again, digging his paw at the ground.

"Shh," Rosie hissed at him, then peered down for the third time. The girl was tall, thin, and had short, hazel hair with big curls. Her clothes were chafed and torn in places, she had one shirt sleeve completely missing, and her ankle was clearly shattered from the way it was twisted in the wrong direction. But the most fascinating thing about her was the fabric tightened over her face. To shield her eyes. Or more presumably, to shield others from her eyes.

The runaway.

Rosie almost jumped out of her skin when the girl jostled, her lean fingers curling around a stone. The brown-haired girl angled herself to look back up the ridge, a dangerous expression on her face. Rosie thought the runaway was about to scream up at her, or even hurl the rock. Though it wouldn't do her much good, since Rosie and Watson were too far up for her to even hit them, not to mention that she would be doing so blindly—

The stone whizzed past Rosie's face, scraping her shoulder. A near miss. Before Rosie could blanch, the girl down the hill had two more rocks in each hand. Rosie was too scared to move at this point. The girl crawled back to hide herself under a little overhang, cradling her leg.

Rosie breathed in.

"Who's there?" The girl shouted, her voice bouncing through the near-empty forest. Rosie winced, tightening her hold on Watson, whose tail was wagging in the eagerness of the prey located. Rosie tugged his collar lightly, to get him to stand down. Watson thumped back on his haunches and panted at ease.

"I know you're there, you're not exactly stealthy." The runaway muttered, sounding unruffled and composed, but she looked like a madwoman. Pine needles were speckled through her wild, uncombed hair and smears of muck (and possibly blood) crisscrossed her jade and grey uniform like paint strokes. "I'll take the blindfold off, I swear to god, if you don't answer me in three seconds."

So the memory-editing software truly worked through and through. Rosie had watched it over the cameras for years now. She'd watched Casper think it was only days after the scholarship seminar when it was from months to years later in reality. Casper still believed he was eighteen. Oh, the horrific realization all of them will endure when they are released to find that they are all at the brink of being in their mid-twenties. So yes, she had seen countless peers forget all the terror and stress before, but it was oddly more startling to see it happening outside of the feigned-factory, army camp hellhole.

"Sorry," Rosie said quickly, it was the first thing she could think to say. Sorry for what? Wanting to rescue her from being lost? Wanting to hear her story and take action? For coming back for the people stuck there instead of sinking her teeth into the massive scholarship and turning a blind eye? Rosie shouldn't be sorry.

The girl stared up through the blindfold of a fuzzy, grey sleeve.

"Who are you?" The girl asked carefully, her rock still aimed at where she and Watson stood.

"I'm here to help you." Rosie bit her lip, unsure of how she would manage to get this girl to her car. She was taller, most likely way heavier in muscle, and her ankle was toast.
"Are you with ARC?" She moved almost faster than Rosie could follow, because in one blink, the brown-haired girl had her fingers on the cloth band around her face. She was readying herself to kill her.

"No." Rosie stammered, feeling the need to shy from the act though she knew that this girl could do nothing to her or anyone by pulling off that blindfold. "No, I'm not with ARC." Not anymore. "I want to help you."

The girl did not look relieved in the slightest, but skepticism was etched in her stony features.

"What is next to you?" The girl questioned, inching out from the crevice she had retreated into. "Is that a dog?"

"Yes," Rosie answered coolly, stroking Watson's silky ears. His tongue lolled out, but his muscles were taut. He most likely thought he was hunting. Rosie thought of all the times Casper had sicced his baying hound after the raccoons that had been trashing both his and Rosie's yard for a month straight. Watson was born to chase and capture. "He won't hurt you."

"That's not what I was worried about." She smiled, actually smiled. "I just... if you were lying to me, I wouldn't want to hurt the dog if I happened to need to... well... kill you."

"Oh," Rosie was close to laughing. She knew that ARC's goal was to hone these young adults into emotionless, order-obeying, instant-killing machines, and yet, this girl was worried about hurting Watson if Rosie was honestly here to drag her back into the despicable facility and toss her into a cell. It gave her hope that Casper would still be able to feel the same when she got to him.

"You're not with ARC then," The girl came out entirely, cautiously.

"No."

"I wasn't asking." She folded her arms, her tone precise and doubtless. "I know that you aren't."

"Could I ask how?" Rosie was extremely inquisitive, a lot of the training that she watched was censored or unexplained. But she knew that ARC's harsh training was incredibly effective.

"You're here to help me, you say?"

Rosie cleared her throat, knowing that it'd be unreservedly lightless in these woods within the hour. This would be a damned long night, for an endless amount of reasons.

"Then we should probably get going, huh?" She bent her head, gesturing at the sky. "The sun's setting."

It was getting colder with each moment. The sun had barely been out anyways, so the cold that the night brought was torturous at this time of year.

"Oh, yes." Rosie began analyzing the hill. The placement was imposingly unfortunate, because if the runaway girl had ran about fifty feet to the left from where it appeared that she had fallen, then she wouldn't have totaled her ankle in the first place. "Good point."

"However, I will tell you after..." The girl chimed, eagerness in her tone. The trust she was offered seemed all-too-wholehearted, but Rosie had watched Casper and others get taught to read a person without having to look at them. By their movements, their tone, their words. It was incredible. This girl was not desperate for someone to save her, she just calculated Rosie enough to literally know that she was trustworthy.

Rosie lead Watson down the drastically less-steep part of the hill, and looped to where the girl was laying on the ground.

The wind picked up, disturbing both the dried leaves blanketed on the ground as well as the ones loosely clinging to their branches above. Up close, Rosie noted the girl's hands. Browned blood was caked beneath her nails, but she couldn't see where it had come from. Her lips had a prominent split that was partially healed, and the outline of the headset was still creased into the skin around her eyes.

"Why are you staring at me?" She asked suddenly, the blindfold casting a shadow over the bottom half of her face.

"Oh, I just don't recognize you." Rosie tucked her jacket tighter over herself. The air tasted like rain, and the clouds paid no attention to the additional darkness they provided on top of many other factors. Rosie prayed to the heavens that it wouldn't rain. Please, please, please.

"Persephone," She peered up at Rosie, tilting her head to the side with a wince.

Rosie didn't think she heard her correctly. "What?"

"Persephone." She parroted, clarifying that Rosie hadn't gone entirely insane. "That's my name. But call me Percy."

"Well," Rosie held out a hand, slowly and carefully until she gripped Percy's arm. She didn't want to startle her, though Rosie wouldn't be surprised if Percy knew every move she was making. "Call me Rosie, then."

With Watson trotting in tow, the three-legged pair hobbled out of the overgrown pit into the gloom of the night.