The pair stood still, locked in another moment of stunned silence, before Avida took a shaky step into the room. All the pain from her previous injuries seemed to melt away as her brain struggled to process the scene before her eyes. A sinking feeling settled in her gut the longer she looked.

“I thought… that scientist said there was a weapon in here,” she said quietly, as though in a daze.

“She did,” Bellicosa replied, just as lost as her partner. “She also said there was no one else here.”

“Well, she obviously lied to us!” Avida whispered angrily. “I should’ve just killed her when I had the chance.”

Avida was slowly walking closer and closer to the sickening green glow like a moth to a flame. She reached out a hand and placed it gently on the glass, the ghastly light illuminating her saddened features. Her surroundings seemed to fade away, everything else becoming white noise.

“What the hell are you doing!? It might be dangerous!” Bellicosa scolded in a hushed but urgent voice.

Her partner remained uncharacteristically quiet for another moment before removing her hand from the glass. Still not answering the question, as though she never heard it to begin with, she turned to the adjacent wall and removed a clipboard from a hook to examine it. Her eyes scanned the top paper with a frown.

“Subject codename: Bambi. Age: 8 years old,” she began to read aloud.

“Subject? What’s that supposed to mean?” Bellicosa questioned.

“I should have known they never stopped,” Avida whispered with a frustrated sigh, eyes still glued to the clipboard.

“What do you mean? You know what’s going on here?” Bellicosa asked, startled.

“No… well… kind of, but it’s a long story.”

“Explain,” Bellicosa demanded.

“I don’t really wanna have this conversation right now. Let’s just take the kid and get out of here, please,” Avida pleaded, finally looking up from the paper she’d been examining.

Bellicosa was ready to protest until she saw the look in her partner’s eyes. At that moment, Avida was almost like an entirely different person. The fiery spirit Bellicosa had grown familiar with was gone and replaced with a sorrowful and empty gaze that seemed to pierce right through her. It rattled Bellicosa to the core with unease.

“What about the weapon? That woman said it would be in here,” Bellicosa asked, changing the subject.

“The girl is the weapon,” Avida explained, placing the clipboard back on the wall and beginning to look over the chamber in search of controls.

“How do you know?”

Avida pointed to the clipboard on the wall without looking back. The base of the contraption was littered with buttons and switches that she couldn’t make sense of, afraid to push the wrong thing. She examined them one by one without sparing her partner a glance.

“Just trust me,” she said as she continued to read the various labels.

“How am I supposed to trust you when you won’t tell me what’s going on?”

Bellicosa really didn’t mean for the question to come out so accusatory. She actually didn’t even mean for it to come out at all. It was natural to have some secrets in their line of work, she understood that. Hell, she was even keeping some of her own, which made her one heck of a hypocrite right now. She knew that, but she couldn’t hold it in any longer. Whatever secrets they’d had between them up until now, this felt like it was on a different level.

This was an increasingly confusing and messed up situation, and Avida seemed to know what was going on but wasn’t willing to explain. Bellicosa knew it wasn’t fair, and she didn’t want to invade her partner’s privacy, but how was she supposed to react? Nothing about this made sense. And she was supposed to just go along with it? When did they go from recovering a weapon to saving a child?

Avida finally stopped looking at the device and stood so that she was fully facing her partner. The uncharacteristic darkness still hadn’t left her eyes. It made Bellicosa shiver unconsciously. She wasn’t dumb. She knew whatever was going on here, it really wasn’t good. But she still felt she deserved to know about whatever she was getting herself involved in, so she didn’t back down. However, when her partner was looking at her like that, she immediately felt a little guilty.

“I get it, this is confusing right now. It’s a lot to take in. But don’t act like I’m the only one with secrets. I know you have your fair share, too. I never told you because I never had a reason to, and it doesn’t exactly make for light conversation. I’m sure you can understand where I’m coming from. But I will tell you once we get out of here because I trust you. And now, I’m asking as your partner of 4 years for you to trust me, too,” she urged, never breaking eye contact.

She had spoken so quickly, barely pausing to even take a breath. The words had flowed out of her like an overfilled dam, spilling from her tongue faster than she could stop them. Avida was usually confident in everything that she did, but the way she spoke just then had shown a rare vulnerability that slipped through the cracks in her mask. Bellicosa was speechless for a moment. A few beats of heavy silence passed.

“But… if you really don’t trust me,” Avida continued, sounding less and less sure, as if the words pained her to say, “you can check the clipboard over there and see for yourself.”

Her companion still didn’t move. Avida really thought Bellicosa didn’t trust her? The slightly older and taller of the two thought back nearly four years ago, when they had partnered up for the first time for a bounty posted by the city’s mercenary guild. The posting requested a duo, and since the both of them had been working solo up until that point, they decided to team up for the job.

The reward was hefty, and they were desperate. The bounty ended up being poached by a more experienced team, but Bellicosa never regretted it. One job with Avida turned into two, and then three, and so on until they practically ended up as a package deal. Neither of them had realized how lonely they’d been before they started working together. And once they did, they never stopped.

“I… do trust you,” Bellicosa finally sighed, breaking the stifling silence that had settled over them.

“I’m glad to hear it, partner,” Avida let a small smile grace her lips as the uncharacteristic nervousness began to fade. “Now help me get this girl out of here and to safety.”

“Fine… we’ll continue this conversation later,” Bellicosa told her.

The shorter of the two nodded before Bellicosa went over to help examine the controls. After scanning the labels and double checking that she wasn’t about to mess anything up, Bellicosa hummed to herself in affirmation. A few flips of some switches later, the neon liquid began to slowly drain from the chamber.

“How did you do that?” Avida asked, amazed.

“It wasn’t hard to figure out. The controls are pretty straightforward. You’re just dumb,” Bellicosa joked.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Avida pouted and playfully punched her arm. It seemed like she was slowly returning back to her usual self, which was a relief. Bellicosa wasn't sure how to deal with the dark and gloomy version from a few moments ago. She didn’t know much about her partner’s life before becoming a mercenary, but she figured it must have been hard for her. It had taken months of getting to know each other for Avida’s tough exterior to melt away and reveal her snarky and bubbly personality.

As the two waited, bickering half-heartedly, the last of the liquid drained from the tank with a sputter and the glass opened up. The girl inside was still sleeping, now curled up on the floor. Without the obnoxiously bright liquid in the way, the two were able to get a better look at her.

Upon seeing her clearly, Bellicosa let out a soft gasp of alarm.

“That rash…”

The girl's arms, legs, and even part of her face were covered in splotches of a nasty, vibrant purple rash. It looked as though it was seared into her skin in some places. In others her skin was raised as if a snake was winding around her limbs, strangling them. This particular pattern of rashes was easily recognizable to most people, and it only meant one thing.

“Pneuma Morta… she’s in the late stages,” Avida concluded for her partner. She had learned that much from the report on the clipboard.

“With rashes that severe, she might already be possessed. We should be careful,” Bellicosa warned.

Typically, the rashes spread in tandem with the possession, like a physical representation of how much a person’s soul had been gnawed away by the beast inside. It would start at the chest and spread outwards from there. The Church of Solomon liked to say this was because the affliction stemmed from the hearts of sinners. Too bad the garbage they preached was backed by fear and not facts.

The truth was, scientists had no idea what caused it or the rhyme or reason for how it spread. Sometimes when people are faced with a question with no answer, they will cling uselessly to whatever explanation is presented to them, even if it doesn’t make sense. They are desperate to explain the unexplainable and understand the unknown. Thus, many people truly came to believe that they could remain free from Pneuma Morta if they just kept a pure heart, and those who became infected were branded as sinners.

With the way the rashes on the girl’s body seemed to appear all over, the infection had spread significantly. It was not unreasonable for Bellicosa to think it was too late just by looking at her. They had come across many full demons that had already reached the total possession stage. The rashes on those bodies were in a similar state as the girl before them now. Yet, Avida disagreed.

“I don’t think so. I read the chart,” she stated calmly.

She took a step forward, intending to examine the marks more closely when the girl’s eyes suddenly shot open. Startled, Avida jumped back. The young girl sat up hurriedly, looking confused and distressed at the sight of unfamiliar people in the room. Her breathing started to become more and more rushed and shallow as she looked back and forth between them.

“Woah, woah, kid. Calm down!” Bellicosa said, holding her hands out in front of her placatingly.

“Bambi! Her name is Bambi!” Avida reminded her companion.

At the mention of her name, Bambi’s attention snapped to the smaller mercenary. Time seemed to move in slow motion as all three parties panicked. On one hand, two women had found a girl basically a hair’s breadth away from total demonic possession who suddenly awoke from some kind of chemical-induced coma and was now on the verge of a breakdown.

On the other hand, a young girl who knew very little outside of four concrete walls and a few people in snow white lab coats suddenly awoke to two strangers looking down at her and the lack of the comforting green substance she had come to associate with safety. Suffice to say, everyone was justifiably on edge.

“Bambi? Hi, hello. Nice to meet you. We’re not gonna hurt ya. My name is Avi, and this is Belli,” Avida explained, crouching down to the kid’s eye level and gesturing to herself and her partner.

For once Bellicosa didn’t protest at the use of the nickname. Avida had quickly cleared out the momentary fog in her brain caused by the burst of panic at the quick change in events. She effortlessly sprung into action and put on the friendliest front she could muster to try and calm the girl down. Having experienced growing up in an orphanage, she had some knowledge about comforting young children.

However, Bambi just kept shaking her head over and over again but didn’t speak. It was as if she could no longer hear or see Avida, instead staring through her at something beyond. To make sure she wasn’t going crazy, or maybe that reinforcements hadn’t arrived and she had been too stunned to hear them coming, Avida glanced behind her, but saw nothing. Could this girl see something she couldn’t, or was she just too freaked out to focus properly?

Bambi’s body began to tremble, her breathing showing no sign of slowing down. She continued to look at something no one else could perceive, her eyes snapping wildly around the room, following it. The rashes across her body began to glow faintly as the shaking increased to the point that Avida swore she could feel the vibrations through the floor. The girl stood up and stumbled clumsily to the other side of the room, making an inhuman sound akin to the cry of a feral animal as she moved.

“That isn’t good,” Avida mumbled to herself.

“No kidding. What is she doing?” Bellicosa asked worriedly.

Bambi reached the tattered mattress in the opposite corner and tossed it to the side like it weighed nothing, Avida and Bellicosa having to duck out of the way as it breezed past them before smacking into the wall. On the floor, a small storage hatch was revealed where the mattress had been. Bambi yanked open the iron door with a BANG, snapping off one of the hinges, and began digging through the compartment frantically.

“What-” Bellicosa began to question before Avida shushed her, motioning to just watch.

Bambi pulled out a strange face mask that appeared to be made of silver, looking almost like a piece of armor that covered the lower half of the face. The girl hurriedly put it on before beginning to rummage again. The markings on her body were steadily getting brighter and brighter, and even her eyes had begun to change color from a dull brown to the same startling shade of purple as the rashes. Steam began to rise up from where the mask met her skin.

The young girl next produced a clear tube from the hatch that she quickly connected to the back of the mask behind her head. She lifted her long, dark hair to reveal some kind of small mechanical device was attached to the base of her spine. She frantically gestured for someone to connect the other end of the tube to this device. Avida quickly rushed forward, feet moving before her mind had time to process what she was doing. The tube had a metal piece on the end which fit perfectly into a hole on the device, so the mercenary hastily twisted it into place and stepped back.

After it was secured, Bambi pressed something on the device and the same bright green liquid that had previously filled the chamber began flowing up the base of the girl’s spine into the tube. As the liquid reached the mask, the glow of the rashes slowly faded away and they returned back to their regular color. The steam dissipated as well, the silver no longer burning the skin. Her eyes faded back to their original deep brown. Bambi breathed a sigh of relief and seemed like she was finally able to relax.

“Did that just stop the possession?” Bellicosa asked in disbelief.

She hadn’t expected an answer. To her surprise, however, Bambi turned to her and nodded. The image the girl presented now was a stark contrast to the terrifying scene just a few moments prior. With the device pumping the green chemical through her body, Bambi’s eyes peering over the mask looked more like those of a small, curious puppy than a demonic child.

“Uhhhh okay… that’s great, I guess. I’m still not really sure what’s going on here,” Bellicosa said awkwardly.

“We need to get out of here before more Church reinforcements show up,” Avida urged before turning to Bambi. “We’re gonna help you. Do you wanna leave this place?”

The young girl hesitated for a moment before nodding. Her eyes seemed to sparkle at the prospect of seeing the outside world. For a child who spent most of her life either unconscious or on an examination table for as long as she could remember, the idea of getting to explore beyond the lab could be summed up into two words: scary and exciting.

“She said she wants to come with us! Isn’t that great?” Avida smiled brightly, turning to her partner.

“Yeah, it’s sooo great. Instead of returning to the resistance with the answer to their problems, like we promised, we get to bring more problems back,” Bellicosa replied sarcastically. “How are we gonna explain this to them?”

“Hey, don’t be rude! It’s not like we can just leave her,” Avida argued. “We can figure it out.”

As soon as the words “leave her” left Avida’s mouth, Bambi made a sad sound of protest before running over to the abandoned coloring book on the floor. A moment later, she came back holding up a page with an unfinished picture for the duo to see. The outline on the page was of a family in front of a house. A girl was playing with a dog in the yard while the parents watched from a porch hand in hand. To the side, a little boy was spraying the girl and the dog with a hose and laughing.

The coloring on the page was… interesting, to say the least. Despite it being a happy scene, Bambi had colored the little girl all over with angry purple scribbles. The parents’ faces had been covered completely by dark black scratches, and the boy had red lines drawn all over him and the grass below. The house itself was colored over in streaks of orange and yellow.

“Well, that’s disturbing,” Bellicosa commented bleakly.

Bambi pointed to the parents in the picture in distress and in a weak voice strained from disuse, she said one word: “Leave.”

“We won’t leave you, don’t worry,” Avida promised.

The kid nodded, content with the answer, and went to put the coloring book back in its place. She flipped the book closed with a skip in her step before tossing it back next to the box of crayons. Then, she returned to the hatch and started rummaging again. With her scrunched up posture, she looked like a cute raccoon rooting through the garbage. The two watched her with mixed emotions.

“How’d you know what to say?” Bellicosa whispered as Bambi wandered out of earshot.

“Isn’t that what every kid wants to hear?” Avida answered earnestly.

In no time, Bambi came trotting back over. Except now, she was noticeably wearing thick silver boots and silver gloves that seemed to go with the mask and complete the strange little outfit. The new additions really reinforced the appearance that the girl was wearing battle armor. Despite the heaviness of it, she moved as though it weighed nothing.

“Is all this really necessary?” Bellicosa questioned in confusion.

The girl nodded eagerly. She seemed content in her getup, not looking the least bit uncomfortable. She even did a small twirl for the two mercenaries as if to show it off. Avida smiled and gave a light cheer of encouragement.

“My guess is it helps to prevent her from losing complete control. The clipboard also mentioned something about skin contact aggravating it,” Avida whispered to her partner once Bambi was satisfied.

“Sure, whatever,” Bellicosa sighed, over it. “Let’s get out of here already.”

Avida took Bambi’s cold gloved hand gently in hers as they made their way towards the exit. The weight of it felt stiff but reassuring as she led her down the corridor back to the main lab. Avida felt a small puff of pride in her chest, mentally praising herself for doing the right thing. She was sure that rescuing this girl was the first step on the road to making things better.

The group had just about reached the door at the end of the hall when they heard the distinct sound of footsteps on the other side. Many, many footsteps. Belonging to what must be a large group of people. Had they taken so long that reinforcements had arrived already? Did they accidentally leave someone alive and able to call for help? Avida’s mind flashed to the researcher they had let go and cursed to herself.

But she didn’t have time to dwell on it now. Immediately, the two mercenaries got into a defensive stance, Avida pushing Bambi to get behind her. Bellicosa groaned as their day just seemed to get worse and worse. Maybe one day, they’d be able to finish a single job without encountering unnecessary complications. But that day was not today. Bellicosa couldn’t help but voice a complaint.

“Here we go again.”