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Never had Gabriel Soma been in such a place like this before being consumed by that mysterious Fog — antiquated and unfamiliar. It’s not as vibrant as he was used to, but even he could find beauty within the muted greens and dilapidation of the Red Forest. If only the circumstances were different could he take the time to really absorb his surroundings without the looming presence of danger at every corner.
The engineer works tirelessly on the generator before him, hyper-focused and diligent. He’s lucked out on this Trial, materialising on the outskirts of this location, with the three generators highlighted not too far from him – he does not question anymore how he is able to see these sort of things anymore, accepting it alongside the why. Gabriel makes a mental note not to rush through the three; he’s made that mistake far too often.
His breath hitches as he narrowly misses the skill check. Damn this new world for forcing him to be on edge in every facet. His eyes lose that alertness, and he sighs audibly. In the distance, he hears a soft yelp, not too far from himself, which just so happens to coincide with his borrowed ability of storing energy (whatever that truly meant). The arcane iced blue circles appear, and Gabriel’s fingers move on their own, as if this had always been an innate ability. No one else was around him, there were no stares, of any sort, to be received at the lack of progress. It will be worth it, he reasons to himself. Vittorio wouldn’t have named it ‘Potential Energy’ for no good reason.
The owner of the soft yelp rings out again - a short and agonised cry as they fall to the ground, elsewhere on the map. Gabriel’s eyes flick away from the ritualistic diagrams for a moment, tracing over the silhouette before it disappears. He had not the chance to find out who exactly it was – already were they slung over the Killer’s shoulder. But who?
Time to go , he thinks as he pulls off the generator, just in time for the machine to explode in a parade of sparks. Knew it!
The silhouettes of his teammates appear suddenly as that deafening primal and pained scream echoed across the map, another uncanny ability he has picked up in this strange new world – the man on hook, and two women, he surmises. The stuttering aura of the Killer lights up as well, twitching but otherwise eerily still – one he doesn’t see as often as others, but he recognises her: The Spirit. Gabriel could have sympathised with that haunting look of anguish that afflicted her very being had the mutilated girl not been on the killing side.
The engineer was already gone from the exploded generator almost as soon as it exploded. The Spirit’s aura evaporates, and almost instantaneously he sees one of the women begin to limp, the other unmoving from her own generator. The seconds ticked on as he paced some distance from his eagerly regressing generator before realisation hits him: No one else is going to get him. Has to be me. He breaks into a sprint, taking short glances over his shoulder as his teammate staggers and tries to break the chase. She’s closer, and he can see the braid swinging just over her shoulder – Megan? Was that her name? The memory eludes him.
The hooked man comes into Gabriel’s view, just outside the corner of a building that he isn’t so certain would hold together for much longer than a few years. He sort of recognises this one, his clothing just slightly different from the last he saw him. Gabriel stands before him, watching Meg stumble along over his shoulder and off to the side, out of their vicinity, and when she throws a pallet down does he finally unhook the gurgling man. As soon as his hands touch the other’s torso does recognition finally settle in.
Felix Richter, yes. The… Architect? His hands were the same as Gabriel’s, if Gabriel’s weren’t constantly stained from oils and grease. Creators, fixers, in their own right.
“Hey, come on, this— way….” Gabriel’s voice falters, for as soon as the German’s dress shoes touch the dampened forest floor, he’s gone, running into the direction of the crudely put together shack. Another scream rings out, and he realises that Meg had gone down. The other woman screams as the generator she is on explodes in a direction just opposite and diagonal from himself, but he can not discern who it is based on voice alone. This amalgamation of events makes Gabriel’s head spin, but he soon realises that Felix was not running to the other teammate, and he sighs in annoyance before sprinting after the pools of blood soaking the dirt.
He climbs the window, slow and steady, as soon as Meg screams on hook, just in time to watch Felix limp languidly in silence down the steps to… the basement? Why there? He watches the Spirit run into a direction no one else is going to. She is not aware of their location. He has time. That's good.
There’s zero sounds coming from the basement – no healing, no chests, no lockers opening – and this puzzles the engineer. Certainly there had to be better hiding places, but as he drops to the bottom of the stairs with a soft grunt, he comes face to face with Felix Richter once more, the man hunched over as he wraps his torso with bandages at the foot of the stairs – must be another ability, to do this so silently and without the help of kit? The German’s face is etched in pain, his teeth bared, his eyes squeezed shut so tight that it makes Gabriel’s head hurt just to see it. His blonde hair is speckled with blood, in a slight disarray. He realises that Felix is covered almost entirely in his own blood.
The sight snaps him back to reality. He sees that Meg has been unhooked. There is no pounding of his heart, and he calculates that they still have time.
“Wait, hey, let—” Gabriel’s gloved hand stills the other man’s shoulder, and Felix looks up at him almost in a daze, his eyes hollow and pained. If he had to guess, he supposes the architect had tunnel vision to heal himself. Part of him wonders if this is borne out of necessity due to being left on his own too many times, or out of instinct. “--- me. Let me do it.”
The older man relents, dropping to a crouch, his head bowed in an emotion Gabriel wants to believe is gratitude, but is likely resignation – or both?
With caution, he takes the bandages that Felix once was holding stained with fresh blood, and he leans over the other man’s back as he wraps the steadily seeping gash across his back. The sounds of recovery would be a symphony to a Killer elsewhere, but in the basement, it appears to be muffled by the dark, suffocating presence of whatever haunts this room – so Gabriel perceives, anyway.
At this close proximity, he takes the time to look closer upon the German as he works. The slope of his nose, his furrowed brows, the way his chest heaves with laboured breathing. Gabriel cannot help but feel some sort of… kinship? fascination? with this older man. Of course, they were worlds apart, almost as literally as much as figuratively, but the engineer didn’t have much common ground with the other Survivors in the first place. His dark eyes soften, warm and inviting like an afternoon on the precipice between summer and fall. He does not realise this.
His absent-mindedness causes him to miss another damned skill check. Felix heaves, lurching forward with a sharp, barely inhaled yelp. Gabriel’s hands still, his eyes widened.
“I’m—” He’s at a loss for words, and he can hear his heart begin to beat with more vigour. Okay,... he can rectify this error. Gabriel crouches to Felix’s level, with a hand that seems to only ever be tender to the machines he cares for placed upon the other’s shoulder. At eye level, he can see the German’s eyes are soft hazel, forgiving whereas his own are apologetic. If it were any lighter, perhaps he would see speckles of gold amidst the tinged green. Gabriel nods at this man before him, who seems to be of the same understanding.
“I’ll take her away from here,” he speaks in a hushed whisper, ignoring how the promise feels as though it has more weight than what he was aiming for. “Let me make up for this.”
“Thank you,” Felix says with a surprising clarity, if only just strained. Another ability taught to him, if only he could remember from who. “I’m sorry.”
Gabriel wants to offer reassurance, tell this man he has nothing to apologise for, it was Gabriel’s mistake, after all, but his heart begins pounding faster. A generator pops off somewhere in the distance. Now, or never. Or they both perish.
With a sigh of resignation, Gabriel pats Felix’s shoulder, his lips pressed into a thin line, twitching at the corners despite himself. There is a reluctance in the way his hand drops back to his side that he does not want to acknowledge past fear of taking chase. Before he can say anything else, Felix is retreating further into the basement, his pools of blood camouflaging perfectly with the stained stone floor.
Okay, I’ll find you, later. And apologise the right way. He vows this to Felix in his head, pushing down the intrigue he feels towards the older man, chalking it up as repentance, just repentance, that was all.
As he turns on his heel, running up the stairs, only to come face-to-face with the Spirit, and her echoed gasps of profound pain, who slices him with a passionate ferocity. He prays that she does not connect the dots. Don’t look into where my carelessness alerted you to, please! Eyes on me, focus on me!
Gabriel rushes forward with a garbled cry, throwing himself over the same window he had entered, his eyes wide and frantic as he stumbles further and further away from the shack, from Felix . As he throws a pallet down, just narrowly missing the Spirit, he bares his teeth in a macabre grin, in victory at the realisation that she had indeed place her undivided attention unto Gabriel. He turns heel, frantic but with some confidence, sliding over the pallet as soon as the Spirit goes to round the corner. Right – yeah, yeah, she’s gonna expect me to run off—
But the Killer is above such child’s play – her mind is sharp, her ears keen, even in death, and Gabriel was too loud, too predictable. She doubles back, the oldest trick in the book. He goes down unceremoniously with a howl before his feet even touch the forest floor.
Can’t say I didn’t keep my word…! The thought is bitter, but only due to the surge of pain.
Another generator pops off.
Slung over the Killer’s shoulder, he sees Felix Richter once more, now healed, staring at him over a fallen stone, his face wrought with a concern that is no doubt altruistic in nature at best.
In the haze of pain, however, Gabriel chooses to believe it to be the same type of intrigue that he himself had felt earlier.