Dadlan & his smol <3

There are a lot of things that Dolan remembers. Every detail of the mission where he'd taken that bullet in the thigh, the day his favorite gun had jammed and he'd broken the thing in two and thrown it away. He remembers the deep scratch in the linoleum floor of the orphanage closet he'd hidden in as kid so many nights, and he remembers the first job he'd taken after he'd gotten out of that place.

But there are a lot of things Dolan can't remember. Like where he was the first time he'd been approached by the Umbra runner, if he'd laughed in his face or simply ignored them. He doesn't remember what he'd been drinking, only that it had been strong, and he doesn't remember what had happened after he'd blacked out that night- last week? The week before? He doesn't remember all the details of his first meeting with them, other than the feeling of the pen scratching the paper when he'd signed it. He doesn't remember who had been the first one to tell him that it's a dog eat dog world, but he guesses the sentiment stuck and that's all that mattered.

Because despite his initial disgust, here he is anyway. The night air bites at his face, threatening snowfall before sunup but he barely feels the pinpricks. He's near the back of the small group, all of them dressed in all black, tactical rifles perched on shoulders and toting backpacks full of all the other equipment they'll need.

They move and look more like a covert military operation than a well connected mafia organization for hire, but he supposes that's why they'd approached him to begin with. He's never been interested in shortsighted people and their small catches and their safe wins.

This is as farsighted as it comes. A big catch, a big risk. The back alleyway leading up to BioTech is dark, quiet, smelling vaguely of oil and burned rubber. Somewhere off in the night, some tires squeal, some sirens ring. This isn't a safe city in the day, and much less at night. But the building they're approaching is about to be the most dangerous place in town.

One of the operatives near the front of the group of about six men jerks his head in Dolan's direction and he lets his gun fall back from the strap around his arm, slings it across his back. The back entrance to BioTech is nowhere near as grand as the front, but it's every bit as secure. The building juts into the sky like a a broken, boney hand, each tall and angular tower made of black glass shimmering like deep, dark water under moonlight.

The head operative takes a step back from the entrance way, away from the security scan pad at the entrance, making room for Dolan. He fishes around in the cargo pocket of his pants and pulls out a mostly empty latex glove, ringed with dried blood around the edges. When he flips it inside out, several fingertips fall out into his gloved palm, the skin grayish-green and hacked away at the edges.

Dolan rolls the appropriate ones across the screen at the prompting, and then digs in a different pocket, pulls another bloody mass from a plastic bag and holds it up to the scanner, holding his palm up as background as the laser lights leap from the screen, bathing the removed eyeball and ocular nerve, writhing across it and down. Once the lights fade, the security system is silent for a long moment, and the head operative casts a steely glance in Dolan's direction, wordlessly warning him.

Then the system gives a low chiming noise followed by a dim green lighting flooding down from above the entrance way, then a series of hollow clicking noises as the door unlocks itself and starts to automatically slide open.

Dolan nods his head in mock politeness, sweeping his arm out toward the door to signal the head operative to go in first, even though the bloody latex glove full of all the dismembered body parts swings from his hand.

And just like that, the environment changes so drastically that it's like stepping into another world. Things outside are dark, dingy, ashen and made of metal. Inside BioTech, the country's leading biochemical experimentation center, everything is made of thin sheets of glass, fiber optics, and chrome. Nearly nothing inside doesn't shine or reflect some sort of light, including the floor, which in some places is also made of glass, opening up all the floors below it in a vast cavern where the light ultimately cannot follow to completion.

"Spread out. All security should be gone, but look alive. We're after Lab P-211. Basement level."

The head operative jerks his hand forward and the group splits into three pairs, one taking the winding glass stairs upward to monitor the control center at the top of the east tower for threats, while the second two snake down the stairs toward the basement level labs.

Dolan had only asked for the bare minimum of information needed to complete this job. He hadn't agreed to it for any reason other than solely the money, which he currently finds himself hard up for. He has no interest in the organization, as tight-knit and fraternal as it is. They'll probably try and get him to stay on after this. Unless, of course, they realize how he's planned to make this job actually worth his time. They won't. They'll ask him to stay and he'll say no.

All he knows about this job, really, is that they're here to steal weapons. Biochemically engineered weapons that any high bidder would kill to get their hands on. Who that high bidder is currently doesn't interest Dolan. All he needs to know currently is where Lab P-211 is so they can load up the vans waiting outside and go back to headquarters, where Dolan's real prize is.

Down at basement level, the rooms are chopped up along the long, opaque glass hallway. From the waist up, all the walls are transparent, making it easy to scan through all the labs and their strange, other-worldly contents. Some house transparent refrigerators of vials full of brightly glowing liquids. Some are eerily empty save for a metal examination table, a large flickering overhead light, and an inconspicuous drain in the middle of the floor. Some simply house floor to ceiling metal filing cabinets.

But near the end of the hall, one of the operatives shoots his hand up silently, waving the rest of them to him as he pushes open a metal door to a metal-encased room with P-211 stamped on the door.

The door swings open with a loud bang and ringing echo, rattling all sorts of things scattered around the room. On the walls are screens of varying sizes with the BioTech company logo slowly spinning as a screensaver. There are also large light boards for x-rays with all sorts of notes tapped around them, chemical formulas scratched in a frenzy. In the middle of the room is a large piece of equipment with what looks like vitals constantly flashing across one screen and the other is stuck in the same screen-saver mode.

The north and east walls are panels of glass with dividers to create more rooms, smaller in size and open for observation from this main hub room. In one, a medical table rests, straps worn from an unknowable amount of time of use, surgical equipment all around, but it's empty of anything obviously valuable. In another room, there's a lone tiny desk with some sort of large contraption hanging over it, multiple metal arms hanging down to form a crown-type shape for a small head.

"This has to be the right place, it looks like they're experimenting on people here."

One of the men slowly starts walking by the glass rooms, looking into each of them as casually as if he were on a stroll in a zoo.

A different separated section looks to be storage of some sort which most of the men immediately gravitate to, working on the door quickly. Tucked away in the far end is an odd section of the glass observation rooms mostly because it isn't glass. It's an all-metal square, tiny, no more than a closet, really, with a heavy locked door to match.

As most men are working on the main door of interest, the head operator waves Dolan to follow him to this mystery door.

"It's probably nothing but it doesn't hurt to check."

He shrugs, slinging his gun back around behind him as he works on the lock. Much to both their surprise, it's probably the easiest lock they've encountered, popping open quickly. The door is so heavy that it slowly starts to swing open on its own but the room is so dark that they can't see inside. He grabs a flashlight at his side and shines it into the pitch-black room, earning a soft little whimper of pain from within the metal walls.

A tiny, thin girl, definitely no older than six at the very oldest, cowers in a corner opposite from the door, though that's really only just several feet away. Her hospital gown is dingy and old, probably sterile white at one point, with old flakey splotches of blood. The purple mane of hair on her head is the length of her body and looks only a few months away from dragging the ground, and probably would right now if it weren't so tangled and matted.

Through the long pieces that hang in her face, her blue eyes peek out at the two men looking in at her, curious but also afraid.

"What the hell... It's a kid?"

At the exclamation, a few of the men from the storage room rush over quickly to see the scene for themselves. They all glance at each other then back in at the child, nearly like none of them have ever seen one before.

Dolan's head tilts on his own like some sort of curious bird or a robot and he says the first thing that comes to mind.

"That shouldn't be here."

It's not in any way untrue. He studies the small child with a slightly furrowed brow, but not with any of the shock or awe that the other men do, gathering around and leaning in to peer around the open door like they're being entertained by an exhibit at a circus.

Clearly this little girl is an experiment. He can think of no other reason for her presence here. Her presence and her appearance work together to confirm this conclusion. Media sources have been accusing BioTech for working on extra-human technologies for months now, and as Dolan's eyes dart from her wide eyes to her hair to her pale skin, there is something extra-human about her that raises some flags. But still. She's so small.

"Are we going to gawk at her until they come to open the place up, or are we going to get what we came for?"

Dolan asks after another few slow seconds in a low, gruff voice that seems to snap most of the other men out of it. They hop to, going back to searching the storage containers and wheeling out large trays of strange looking technology from the other rooms.

The head operative stands closest to the open door as the little girl keeps squinting, holding a tiny hand up to her face to shield her eyes from the bright and unexpected light penetrating the pitch blackness around her.

Dolan reaches out and pushes the man's still extended flashlight down wordlessly, his expression unchanged since they'd first opened the small enclosure he can now identify as some sort of cage.

"So?"

Dolan looks back up at the leader, who reluctantly peels his eyes away from the little girl.

"We were told to bring back the contents of P-211. The buyer, I believe, wanted a measure of anonymity-"

There's a soft sort of racket from the next room, a low whooping sound, the loudest any of them have been since entering the facility. One of the men peeks his head through the door leading to the next room.

"We got it. This has gotta be it."

He waves the man and Dolan into the next room over, and the head operative takes one last look at the child and slams the door of the cage shut, making the metal ring gratingly to the point that Dolan grimaces slightly.

In the next room, the men are working quickly to remove a series of titanium briefcases from a refrigerator, laying them out on the examination table, one after the other. Nearly fifteen of them.

"Biological stuff. Epidemic pathogens, probably."

One of them reports back proudly, folding his arms at their findings. Dolan keeps scanning around the room. There are other things here, still. Pieces of strange technology, experimental solutions. Files on God knows what, but probably things that are very valuable.

"If the client said the contents of P-211, better safe than sorry."

It's a suggestion, but Dolan phrases it intentionally like a comment, or an order even, although he says it directly to the head operative.

"He's right. I want it all packed up and toted out. Not a single file left."

The man scramble to comply, starting to disassemble the room piece by piece in a slow process of moving items out, down the hall, up the stairs, and back out to the vans. Dolan stands watch with the head operative, eyes locked on the man intensely, trying to feel him out.

"And the kid?"

Dolan keeps an even tone, an impartial and even indifferent one.

"Well she's a content of the room, isn't she? She'll go in the van, too."

Dolan nods tightly, watching briefcase after briefcase leave the room, then the thin, color-flashing computer servers, then box after box of files. He's not sure whether the head operative's order makes him feel better or worse, or the same. He lets his mind fix itself back at the headquarters, at the secret vault back behind the boss's office. He's about to take the pay-day of his life. And any little slip up could cost him his life. He gathers up the last few boxes of files as the leader opens the cage door again for the men to gather up the little girl.

Dolan makes sure he's out in the hall before they reach in for her. No way in hell is he letting some small, ratty science experiment derail the score he deserves.

Bizarrely, much to every single man's surprise, the young girl doesn't fight any of them. They reach in and grab her arms but she lets them, stands herself up before they even have a chance to pull her to her feet, and walks with them silently out of the room.

"There's something not right about that one..."

The men comment as she's walked by them in the hall, their eyes trailing and faces twisted in grimaces. It's nearly like they're watching some roadkill be paraded around in front of them. A broken sort of robot to be scrapped for pieces more than a living thing.

Her eyes never once flick up off the ground where her small feet pat, not even when they open up a small cage in one of the vans and usher her into it with a forceful shove. She just sits pressed in a corner of it without a word, hugging her needs in the space that's cramped even for her tiny frame.

"Damn thing must've been a lab rat for years, barely even looks human. Sure as hell doesn't act human."

All the men continue to whisper, throwing last glances at their odd cargo before slamming the truck doors closed with all their loot locked away inside. The car ride back to home base feels longer than the ride to BioTech, mostly because there's a lot they're each individually thinking about their excitement, the anticipation of being paid for a mission of hard work, everyone gushing about what they're going to do with their next check.

Only the head commander of the group seems all that perplexed by something, mostly because he knows that he's the one who will have to answer for their unusual package.

So, much to the poor man's horror, who is waiting back in the warehouse dock for the men to return than their boss himself. The ground group immediately bursts out of the vans and start unloading their findings like a well-oiled machine.

"Mr. Dominic."

The commander steps out to personally address Kynton. Kynton Dominic seems pleased as he glances over all the things the other men pull out of the vans and store away, a disturbingly pleased smile on his face.

"Welcome back. It looks like it went well. Is this everything from P-211?"

"Well, yes, it's everything-"

As Kynton goes to nod, his eyes naturally drift back over to the vans. Then narrow. Glare. Smile dropping to a thin-line, tight-lipped frown. Two men pick up a small cage with a form inside of it- A tiny child looks around with wide eyes, glancing through the bars down at the ground as the men carry her container above their heads.

"Stop. Drop that."

The two freeze, confused, looking to the commander who just nods quickly over Kynton's shoulder. As they're told, they abruptly drop the cage and it clatters to the floor loud enough to catch the attention of anyone within the entire warehouse. The little girl inside whines ever so softly as the metal box tumbles and turns over on its side.

"What is this?"

Kynton walks over and peers into the bars, still keeping his narrowed eyes on the girl. She peeks up at him but only for a brief moment before curling up in a tight ball and hiding her face from view.

"Hey, who are you?"

He reaches between the bars, snagging a lock of dirty purple hair between his fingers, giving her a good few tugs in an attempt to demand her attention. She doesn't budge even when her head jerks with the pulling.

"What the fuck did your men bring back with them?"

In a fit of impatience, Kynton stands, kicking at the cage with a loud bang, the force of his heel making it slide back several inches across the floor.

Dolan stands silently at attention for as long as he can manage while Kynton comes to terms with what they've brought back. But when the towering man leans down over the little girl in her cage and pulls at her hair, Dolan swears he can feel fingers pinching from behind between his ribs, grubby hands taking handfuls of his hair to yank.

And that's how kids are supposed to treat each other. Especially when left unsupervised, left to their own devices to pick out the smallest and weakest among them. It's not how adults are supposed to treat children, science experiments or otherwise.

So Dolan clears his throat forcefully until Kynton's attention has turned to him.

"With all due respect, sir, bringing her back seemed like the wisest thing to do given that she's clearly one of the lab's long-running experiments for a reason. There's probably quite a bit of valuable gene therapy findings or DNA manipulation methods detailed in the files we're hauling in that won't make sense without her. Most of what we brought back seems connected to her somehow."

The boss is staring at him now, eyes narrowed as he listens, and it's not clear whether he's actually trying to filter through what Dolan's saying, or is just mentally fuming, in his rage incapable of any logical thought. Dolan has wondered for some time how this thing manages to run, manages to attract such noteworthy and well-paying clients with a leader like this. It only made his decision to clean them out after all this is over all the more obvious.

Without waiting for an answer, Dolan walks over calmly and squats, tugs on the bars of the cage until it's upright again. There's no sense in being rough with her, risking any sort of compromise of the years of work and scientific yield she represents. Harming her would be like destroying a treasure map when all you want is to find the treasure. It's not logical.

Before he goes to straighten himself, the little girl shifts to reposition herself the best she can and her head turns, her eyes catching his dead on. Dolan's been told all his life that he has the strangest blue eyes anyone has ever seen- icy and light and even otherworldly. But looking into her eyes now, Dolan thinks perhaps now he's finally seen the strangest of them all.

Not strange in a traditional way, in the way that Dolan's are. Strange in that the color is deep, rich, intense. A hue more vibrant and beautiful than typical human eyes ever are. And strange in the sense that now that he's looking her dead in the eye, he's having a hard time looking away. Their blank faces stare at each other for a few more moments before Dolan tears himself away and stands, clearing his throat again, swallowing, continuing to ignore Kynton.

"Take her into the warehouse with everything else."

He nods in the direction of the men working, who at this point nod back at him as if he were one of the shot-callers.

"Oh, so this was your call, was it?

Kynton stands right in front of Dolan, tall and proud, shoulders back and chest puffed up, gold eyes darting around Dolan's expression. The man gives a stiff nod which has Kynton nearly growling in disgust.

"Perfect, wonderful. Well, we've found who her caretaker will be until our client gets here."

He roughly shoves Dolan back with enough force to try to topple him over, before turning and looking at the actual head commander.

"The client didn't say a damn thing about a person, just weapons. So. You better have an idea about what to do with her when we're inevitably stuck with her."

"Sir...?"

The operative's brow knits, obviously confused by the order. It makes Kynton sigh, rolling his eyes as he jams a thumb in the direction of the men carrying the cage. They roughly toss it up on top of a tall wooden crate, wiping their hands off as they turn around.

The girl shifts to her knees and crawls to the other side looking out over the edge of the crate, peering down at the ground then out over what she can see of the warehouse curiously. Her small hands grip the bars so she can pulls herself up and tuck her legs crisscrossed under her, plopping back down calmly, just trying to give herself a better seat to take in her new environment. Still silent, of course.

"Don't show her to the client with all the other stuff first, I don't want him thinking we fucked up. So think of a couple of backup plans in case we're stuck with her. Pull a connection to our links in the slavery market, see if anyone wants to buy her off our hands, or, if you're so inclined, keep her and raise her to be one of the call-ladies of HQ. That one's gonna be a long-term plan so I'd rather you sell her but, if you can't, just make sure she grows up pretty enough to be desirable to at least some of our men."

His eyes watch in disgust as this dirty child sits and looks out over everything, eyes snapping to men as they walk by and following them with her gaze to try to see what they're doing.

"That seems like hell of a tough job given what you'd be working with. But figure it out. And you-"

Kynton's attention shifts back to Dolan, arms folded in front of his chest, head-tilted to the side as if speaking with someone inferior to him, like Dolan himself is a dumb naive child.

"You ever had a pet before? Well, now here's your chance. Just feed it and make sure it doesn't die before we figure out the best way to make it useful."

With a dismissive wave, Kynton turns on his heel and walks out the massive open bay door of the warehouse, walking his way back to the main HQ house. The lead operative lets out a loud sigh, yanking his helmet off so he can run his hand through his hair in frustration but also temporary relief that the moment is over.

"Damn. If we sell her off, people are just going to buy her to do sick stuff to her now. She's better off staying with us where at least she'll have a good several years before anything happens."

He's mumbling to himself over all the pro's and con's to the options Kynton gave him as some other men walk up with wide smiles, clapping him on the back as if nothing in the world were wrong.

"Nah, if the client doesn't want her then just kill her. Throw the cage in a lake or something and get ride of any evidence. That way you don't have to worry about that stuff."

"Yeah, you're probably right."

They all talk it over as they turn to close up the van doors, continuing on their way as if this were no bigger of a deal than someone telling them to pick what they want for dinner tonight. All leaving Dolan alone in the warehouse with all their findings and his new assignment.

When the van's engines whir to life and Dolan hears the gravel crunch outside the warehouse, the doors slamming and bolting from the outside, he knows he's finally alone again.

The fluorescent lighting overhead is edgy, grating, flickering in some spots and jumping on and off more decidedly in others. It's an old warehouse that had been repurposed, has probably been here for longer than Umbra has. Most likely already on the property before Umbra had bought it and transformed it into their headquarters. Of course, it's highly unlikely that they actually bought it, in the traditional sense of the phrase.

The place is huge, high metal-vaulted ceilings and cement floors scattered with crates and large metals bins. Thin walls, covered with metal shelves lined with all kinds of containers, that make the place just as cold as the night outside, if not even more. He pulls the thick, insulated black jacket tighter around him as he sits on one of the storage crates.

Across the warehouse he sees the tall crate that the barred cage had been stacked on top of. In it, the little girl has her knees pulled to her chest, chin on her knees, her wide eyes looking around the place almost merrily, as if she's enjoying the change in location. Dolan sighs at the prospect of a night, maybe more, locked in here in the cold. The silence, that doesn't bother him. He can handle that. Of course, there's more to consider than that, too.

He looks around for any sign of food, already not expecting to find any. But near the crate the child sits on is a small metal box that's reminiscent enough of a refrigerator to get Dolan on his feet. Not like they'd need a refrigerator to keep anything cold in here, with the extreme low the temperature is at already. That sends another thought ringing through his head. Why can't he stop thinking like this? If he holds out one more day, at the most, he'll have all this in the rearview.

But he can't reason his brain into leaving any of these unwelcome thoughts behind. So he crouches to investigate in the refrigerator, pulling out two bottles of water and a package of some kind of jerky. He seats himself on the fridge and leans a little, holding the water bottle out to the little girl through the bars of the cage slowly.

"So do you talk at all?"

He doesn't mean to ask it. He's actually be quite enjoying the quiet. But something presses at him to ask, so he sighs and just goes along with it, peeling open the bag of jerky and adding a piece along with the outstretched water bottle. Then he looks at the piece again, deems it a little too small to not reasonably be a choking hazard. So he fishes a larger piece out instead and replaces it.

The little girl nods slowly but doesn't speak to go along with her answer, just slowly reaching out with a shaky hand to grab the jerky first. When she pulls it back, she gives it a quick sniff, tilting her head as the odd mix of flavors and spices.

When she takes a bite, everything changes. Her eyes light up and she can feel her mouth water. The texture isn't great, it's tough and difficult to bite through. But the flavor. It's amazing, something more than disgusting grool and glop, whatever the scientists decide to feed her any given day. Or sometimes decide not to feed her at all. This is definitely better than those days.

She tries to shake her had to rip off a bite so she can actually chew and enjoy whatever this is but she has a hard time getting the odd meat to tear for her convenience. The strange man with bright eyes is watching her struggle, though that isn't too different than any average day in her life so she continues to try to figure her way out through this.

The more the food hangs in her mouth, the dryer her tongue feels. Her eyes snap to the water bottle a little longingly.

"... Have?"

He tilts his head, brow furrowed, so she points to the bottle, looking up at him only for a short moment before looking away again.

"Can I have?"

Without waiting for an answer, she tries to greedily reach out for it. Her hand knocks into the bottle and sends it rolling out of his grip, falling to the floor. Immediately, she drops the jerky and backs away from him as far as the cage with allow her, pressing herself up into the corner in a tight ball. She covers her head with her thin arms, tucking her face between her knees, fully expecting him to lash out at her over making him drop the drink.

He's taken aback by her visceral reaction to something as simple as the bottle falling in the floor. He leans over to grab it, trying to make his movements as slow as possible to keep from setting her off. This time, noticing her weakness in trying to eat, he twists the cap off the water bottle for her and holds it out to her, sticking his arm through the bar nearly up to the shoulder to reach her on the other side.

"Hey, don't worry about it. It's fine. Do you... you want some help with that?"

She's still holding the jerky, seemingly unable to tear bite sizes pieces off, which Dolan should have thought of. He takes the large piece back from her with another set of slow, calm, deliberate movements, and starts ripping smaller pieces off from it, setting each one down on the floor of the cage as he rips it off.

"So then, what's..."

He opens his mouth to ask his next question and closes it slowly, sitting back uncomfortably instead, repositioning himself on the surface of the fridge. What the hell had come over him to ask that? What was it he'd told all the men back at BioTech? Let's just do what we came here to do. He'd do well to remember that himself.

"You, uh. You cold in there? It's gonna be a long night, so I guess I'll try to find us something to use for pillows somewhere. God, can you lay down in there even? Pretty small."

He rubs at the back of his head, weighing his choices. No one is coming back here tonight, of that much he's pretty certain. They'll wait for the adrenalin to die down and do the exchange in the earliest hours of the morning, way before business hours. They still have a good chunk of time to kill.

So no one will be here to catch him. On the other hand, who cares about anyone catching him. He's not sure at all what she's capable of. Sure, she looks like a tiny little girl stuck in a cage. But they'd found her at a lab in a solid metal box. The scientists clearly were onto something, for some specific reason.

If he lets her out, will she turn on him? The thought of a child as pathetic looking as this one being a threat goes from laughable to upsetting very quickly, which makes Dolan shake off that concern just as fast. This is ridiculous. He'll be fine. He can put her back in the cage before anyone gets here, and it'll all be fine.

He pulls the key to the lock from his pocket and fiddles at the squeaky lock for a second or two before it pops open and the door swings wide. He steps aside to give her some space to crawl out, but she doesn't move.

"You wanna stretch your legs or not? It's not the height of luxury out here either but I bet it feels better to sleep on the floor here than in there."

She looks from him to the open door then back to him for a long moment, really trying to read him the best a child can, figure out what exactly he's doing and why. It doesn't seem to make sense but she decides to play along with it, pulling her gown up some to make a pocket to put all the pieces of jerky in, a helpful carrier as she crawls out of the cage.

The wood of the crate feels bad under her bare feet so she quickly works to figure out how to get down, pacing along the edge, staring down at the ground.

Oh. This must be it, this must be what he's doing.

"Test?"

She looks over at him but he doesn't respond, just continues to stare. It seems like confirmation, or at least it checks out with what she knows of confirmation and conversation with grown-ups like him.

Nodding, she looks back down at the ground for a moment and then jumps off the incredibly tall refrigerator-height crate. A hot gust of wind whips around her, blowing her hair all around in one big mat. The air pushes down on the floor under her, cushioning her fall, making her float in the air for a few seconds before she drops the last remaining few inches to the ground.

When she lands, she falls forward a bit, a couple of bites of jerky slipping out of her makeshift pocket that she greedily has to snatch back up off the floor and collect all over again. The room is warm now, charged with sudden heat, but it doesn't phase her. She just looks back up at him with wide, innocent eyes, trying to swipe a small hand across her face to push the hair away from her to see.

"Pass? Did a good job?"

The way he stares down at her makes her think otherwise. When people usually have a reaction like that, it's never good. She can feel her eyes get watery but she ignores it in favor of running back to the base of the crate, hopping up and down, dropping all her pieces of food so she can life her arms up above her head, trying desperately to get back on the crate. There's no way she can with the huge height difference between it and her.

"I'll do again- I'll do good-"

Dolan catches himself at just the right point to keep from being bowled over by the sudden gust of wind and he's struck by the thought that maybe this was really a terrible idea.

But then when her feet touch the ground again, she's back to questioning and searching with those eyes, and she seems like nothing but an unsure child again.

"N-no, it wasn't a test. I don't think- it doesn't. Never mind, it doesn't matter. You don't have to get back up there again yet. I thought you'd be more comfortable down here."

For a little emphasis, he crouches in the floor, pats it with an outstretched palm. Even though she's demonstrated that she can talk, something about making motions to her, communicating with body language seems to want to take forefront. Maybe it's because, out of all the ways this little creature is clearly a human child- or something close to a human child- she seems to act much more like an animal, like some kind of pet, than he could have predicted.

"Here. Why don't you sit here and finish eating and I'm going to look for some pillows"

He pats the ground again until she complies, plopping down with her jerky and her water and something about that sight, although he thought it would be comforting to see her stationary and controlled, disturbs him a little.

He will be the first to admit that he doesn't have the most functional idea of what childhood ought to be. His own was unconventional, and he knows full well that his experience in its entirety should not be modeled for any child. But he also has enough common sense to know that sitting on a cement floor in a dirty lab gown eating what are practically army rations is not any small child's idea of a good time. And yet here she is, sitting calmly, going along with all of it.

It's a moment of weakness, he knows, when he reaches into his pocket- one of the ones that hadn't housed any dismembered body parts during the mission, and feels around, eventually pulling out a small, shiny wrapper twisted on both ends.

"You probably don't know what this is. But I'm going to take a wild guess that you're gonna love it."

He drops the piece of candy into the little pocket she's made to hold her jerky before he strides towards the wall shelves several yards away, scanning across the crates for any that look like they may contain blankets or anything even close.

This being a storehouse for a criminal organization, he doubts he's going to find anything that a normal person would be able to use. But Dolan has always prided himself on being unconventional, regardless of the fact that it was more or less beaten into him.

When he gets back to the middle of the floor, he holds several large stretches of cloth, like a painter's drop cloth, that were draped over several larger crates. He's filled them with packing materials from other crates- styrofoam and packing peanuts, straw and everything in between. And with a couple of quick knots on the open sides, he drops two pillows down on the ground and rips the other cloth in half, draping one half right over the little girl's head.

"I guess you probably don't do bedtime stories, huh? I certainly won't mind that."

The strange man keeps moving around, walking here and there, collecting stuff up in his arms. She has no clue what he's doing or why but she's inclined to follow him and investigate- No, wait. He didn't say she could, didn't tell her to come along. Nothing to be done about it, she plops down on the floor.

Where she's seated, she starts taking each bite of jerky out of her pocket and lining them up on the floor in front of her in an incredibly neat row, patting her finger across them to count them out. When she pulls out the shiny wrapped object the man had given her, she tilts her head to examine it, looks down at the line of food in front of her, then back to the wrapper. It doesn't fit in with the rest of the food nor does it smell like food so she sets it off to the side.

Suddenly, a large object is draped over her head and she spends a quick moment fighting with it, flinging it off of her completely with a small little pout. That's when she notices the fabric had messed up her neat line so she quickly snaps back to work to get everything straight and counted again.

There are about nine pieces in front of her which is a good number, better rationing than she's used to. This could last for days if she plays it right and it's not like he told her how to eat it and when so he can't get upset at her for this. She scoops up seven of the pieces and sticks them back in her pocket, grabbing up the two leftover pieces in each hand to eat right now.

He sits down near her with two bulging bumpy objects, propping one up against a crate and leaning against it. It makes her tilt her head as she chews through one jerky bite. Now her mind is bubbling with questions.

"What's that?"

She points at the strange thing he's leaning against then down at the second one he dropped near her.

"This?"

The question continues along when she grabs the weird shiny thing he handed her, holding it up for him to see in case he didn't know what she was referring to.

"What's st-...s... story?"

She has to test out the word a bit before it feels right, like she repeated it back correctly. At this point, she's completely turned around to face him but she doesn't get up to join him with the little set up he has, more content to ask all her questions at a distance.

Dolan’s head tilts on its own, eyes narrowing a bit. She sure doesn’t lack for curiosity. And he can reason that with the time she’s spent in the lab, she may not be as familiar with some outside objects as he’d taken for granted.

“Well this. Is a pillow. Kind of. A really shitty-“

He chokes the word back and pauses even though her expression stays the same. She’s staring at him so deeply it makes him feel twice as badly despite her face not changing at all.

“A really poor excuse for a pillow. Its just a makeshift one. You can... well, you’re small enough that you can lay on top of it so it makes the floor not as hard for you when you sleep. You’re mostly just bone, after all.”

He taps on the top of her shoulder gently, and sure enough, he can feel the hard crest of the bone there. She turns to look where he’s tapped as if the sense sound is interesting, too.

“And that.”

Dolan points at the candy she still holds.

“It’s food. You gotta take the wrapper off, twist it on the ends. Then you suck on it in your mouth for a while as it melts really slowly. Its sweet, kids are supposed to like that kind of stuff I️ think. Its strawberry maybe? Can’t remember.”

She opens her mouth in another question but Dolan cuts her off this time.

“A strawberry is a kind of fruit. Fruit’s stuff that grows outside and you can eat it and usually it’s really sweet. If you know what you’re doing.”

She seems somewhat satisfied at that as she keeps investigating the pillow, not fully getting onto it or accepting it yet. As Dolan watches her, he tries to remember the last thing she’d asked him. Oh, yeah.

“And... stories? A story is just a thing you make up in your head that’s not real, but you pretend that it is real for fun. Sometimes to help your brain go to sleep. I️ don’t know a ton of stories, though, so if you want one, you’d probably better make one up yourself.”

He folds his arms over his chest, continuing to watch her with a slightly discerning look. It makes sense that she wouldn’t know what stories are. That she wouldn’t know what much of these things are. And that’s not necessarily criminal. Dolan hasn’t grown up with candy or stories. Sure, he’d known what they were, but that had only made not having them worse. So maybe he’s the one doing her the disservice here by giving her things she’ll just miss later.

Well, it’s too late now. That cats out of the bag. She starts to pull the blanket off her and he notices the pieces of jerky lined up in front of her.

“You know there’s more where that came from too, right? And I’m not positive, but there could be a bag of chips around here somewhere too, some of the guys had one before we left.”

He’s scanning the place for any sign of it when he sees her cock her head out of the corner of his eye.

“Kid, don’t even ask what chips are. Words don’t do them justice. Just eat the rest of that jerky and let me see what we’ve got here.”

She shakes her head quickly when he points to her line of food, shoving the last one she had allotted for tonight into her mouth quickly, afraid he'll take it away.

"No, you gotta save stuff you eat. If you eat it all at once, it goes away and you hafta wait for more. You don't know when to wait for, though."

It seems so obvious and she states it so matter-of-factly, furrowing her brow at him. How has he survived so long just eating everything handed to him? Has he never had to save anything before? She can't even understand that type of life, it must be nice.

The strange man starts looking around as if to get up again but she can't begin to understand why.

"You're not supposed to get up once you've eaten and it's dark. You've gotta sit real still and not move around until morning or else the people in the big white dresses get mad."

Again: How does he not know this? She reaches out and tugs on his sleeve a little to try to keep him in place, keep him from getting in trouble with anyone.

What's the point in getting up again anyway? He's had everything- Oh. Oh of course.

"Are you still hungry? I used to get up a lot when I was still hungry but I'd get in trouble. Here, you can have my tomorrow food."

Reaching into her makeshift little pocket, she pulls out two more pieces of the jerk and holds it out to him, waving it a little bit around up at his face when he doesn't immediately take it from her. He keeps hesitating which makes her pout so she just opts to set them on top of his knee, patting at them to make sure they stay balanced.

With that out of the way, she crawls to her pillow, as he called it, and carefully climbs on top, pulling the piece of candy with her to tuck it away for a later time. It's perfect, though, because she had an odd number about of bites of food and now this candy makes it even.

Once she's comfortable, she pats her shoulder where he had poked her, trying to figure out if there's something wrong, but she can't figure it out.

"Hey, mister, did I do something bad?"

She tilts her head back to look at him upside down, pointing to her shoulder to show what she means.

His eyes keep focusing on those two little pieces of jerky balanced on his knee after her hands pull away and she sits back down, somewhat satisfied with herself, looking maybe even like she pities him a little bit. It takes him a second to gather his thoughts. Those two little pieces of jerky on his knee seem to clear out his brain altogether for a few moments.

"No. No, look."

He swipes them off his knee before they can wipe his brain again, and he drops them back into the little pocket she's formed with her dress.

"First of all, there's nobody in white dresses here, and the lights are still on, and there is more than enough food here for us to both have as much as we want, okay? I just have to find it. So don't be saving stuff up for tomorrow. There's food for tomorrow too, just go ahead and eat it, alright?"

He rubs his forehead with the back of his hand, trying not to let the strange wavering feeling in his chest make his tone come out harsh. Without any more hesitation, he pushes himself off the ground and starts rooting around the crates to his left, trying to focus on where the bag of chips could be instead of everything she'd said.

"And you're...no, you didn't do anything bad. Why would you say that?"

He still sounds a little flustered, no matter how hard he tries, and he leans his head further into a crate under the guise of looking extra thoroughly so his voice is slightly muffled to help conceal his tone.

The chips aren't in that crate or the next, but thrown haphazardly into the one after that are several bags of chips, a bag of crunchy looking chocolate chip cookies, and an apple. Apparently a really healthy bunch he's signed on with.

He brings them all back to their newly designated sleeping area, and when he sits he makes sure to sit a little further away from her this time, nodding his head to her as if he's just trying to give her enough space to feel comfortable. Really, he's just afraid of her coming over and nearly touching him again.

"Okay. See, these are the chips. Hold on let me open them for you- okay, chips, you gotta crunch them up good so you don't choke. And drink plenty of water after. And these are cookies, maybe eat these after everything else. And the apple. Maybe start with the apple. Small bites. Chew really good."

He lines the food items up in the right order after opening all the bags, musing to himself that all this junk food really is the worst thing he could be giving to someone as malnourished as she seems, but it's not like he has any other options.

The sight of all the food out before her makes her eyes go wide and her mouth water. It's more than she's really ever seen in one sitting. How did he just so happen to randomly find that while looking in a box? She's looked in a box before and never found food. It's usually just hard pieces of metal. Things with flashing lights that can't hold her interest.

"We could eat for a long time with all of this! You have saved your food!"

She's proud of him, plain and simple. He hadn't seemed to be the type of person to do this, but here all this stuff is out in front of her. But is he telling her to eat all of this now? There's no way, that's just too much.

Rolling off her pillow-bed, she crawls to the line of food, snatching up the chips and cookies then carrying them back to her pillow, stuffing the bags under it for safe keeping. The edges of the bags poke out a bit which earns a soft "uh oh" from her as she tries shoving the visible openings under with soft crunching sounds.

Finally satisifed, she works back over towards the apple. He said to eat this first so she'll make this tonight's food.

The tall man seems exasperated with her but he shrugs and gets back to the bag of jerky. That's when it hits her, just before she reaches for her apple.

"I forgot-"

Rather than crawl, she stands abruptly, padding her way over to him. With her tiny hands, she snags both of his much larger ones and presses his palms together, straightening his fingers out so his hands are flat against each other.

"You gotta do this before you eat. I've seen the big people in white dresses do this before. I dunno why, I guess maybe the food doesn't taste good unless you do this. But it's a big rule."

It's called praying, but of course she wouldn't know that. She just keeps his hands pressed together and bows her head silently for the shortest moment, nowhere near long enough to have said anything to anyone, really just more mimicking the motion because that's all she knows of it.

Her head bobs back up and she's smiling, proud of herself now that she was able to teach him something else since he's going around teaching her all this new information. She keeps her hands pressed against the backs of his, her little fingers wrapping around his thumbs to keep him in place, head tilted to the side so her knotted hair sways stiffly.

"... Aren't ya gonna do it? You gotta to eat."

"I. Um."

He freezes again when her hands press his together, staying flattened out against his hands like she's trying to help him practice the pose of it. Her hands are tiny, so much tinier right up next to his than they had seemed before now.And they're so gentle. Despite how he can see the bones prominent in them, she's still so soft and gentle.

His first instinct is to rip his hands away, to shove them back in his pockets, to tell her that there's nothing out there to pray to and blessing this food wouldn't go far enough, anyway. But he swallows back a strange lump in his throat and meets her expectant eyes. He fully intends to tell her that he's not going to pray. He's not going to change his behavior to suit this little girl they found in a box on a mission to a lab to get something entirely different.

But when he opens his mouth, none of that comes out.

"Um. Thank you for... this. Help it be... decent, somehow. And to, to taste good. There, done."

He nods his head at her a little, satisfied with his efforts but still feeling a little too shaken up to flatten back out the crease that's between his eyebrows.

"So the...the people in the lab really did that before they ate?"

What hypocritical bastards. Dolan really wishes he believed in God, or at least in hell, so that all of those dumb fucks would go.

Of course. They'd just been doing their jobs, studying what was assigned to them to study. Just like Dolan is doing his job, watching this... rather complicated piece of the puzzle for a while before the job is over and he can get out of here and never look back.

But damn. If he doesn't still feel like that and everything else he keeps telling himself and wanting desperately to take hold of is just a cop out. Really, he's no better than they are, is he? No matter what he tells himself to qualify and justify the situation, this is just a little girl. A child.

A rests his head back against the crate behind him as she settles herself back down, almost even happily, satisfied to have completed this unknown ritual that she knows somehow is the right thing to do.

"Listen. You, uh. You should really try to get some sleep. Let me know if you get cold?"

"I don't get cold. Never-ever."

She sits back and happily munches into the apple. It's so sweet and juice, liking drinking something and eating at the same time. It's beyond proper description. So she takes another big bite again to relive the experience. It's just as good this time around.

How he had just randomly found this, had the control to hide it away for who knows how long, then just suddenly hand it off to her is... Amazing. He's amazing! Maybe he knows where more apples are, maybe he knows how to get them.

"I've bowed my head lots and it's never made the food taste good until now. Maybe that's why they used to do it all the time cuz it takes a long, long, looooong time to work."

The world seems to rapidly be piecing together for her the more she spends it asking questions, spends it sitting near this tall man with all the answers. She still works over the apple, so distracted by the wonderful flavor, texture, and sensation of all of it that she doesn't really notice his appearance too much.

As she sinks into this new reality, she picks up on it more. He's bundled up in a big, thick jacket, collar pulled up tight to his neck, thick long pants, hands tucked in his pockets, and he twitches every now and then.

Like she just said, she's never been cold before but from what she's heard and what she's seen of the scientists that go with her into the "freeze chamber," whatever that is, this seems like the signs of being cold.

"Hey, hey, mister-"

Standing back up, she drops what's left of the apple into her pocket to get back to at a different time, and gets back close to him, right up staring at his face.

"Are you cold? You don't have to be cold either."

She lifts a hand up and pats lightly at his cheek with her palm. Even she can notice the extreme difference between his skin temperature and hers, something she hadn't noticed with his hands probably because she was too busy teaching him. Now, it's obvious. It doesn't mean she moves, though. No, she stops herself from just patting his cheek to steadily keeping her hand resting on it, even going so far as to bring her other small, thin hand up to his other cheek. It's an amusing form of cupping his face.

"Is that better? You aren't cold anymore?"

His brain is flashing, making pit stops over and over at certain conclusions very quickly, with hardly enough time for any of them to sink in properly.

First of all, she keeps touching him. Keeps coming up to him so calmly and just touching him, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Dolan knows the real world, and it is not full or sweet, innocent, pure little touches like these. These are few and far between. So much that his body barely catches up to registering what she’s doing before his brain is onto the next thing.

Which is how she’s acting toward him. He’s the one that had overseen her being carried into the warehouse in a cage, for God’s sake, and now she’s shoving food at him insistently, trying to give him tips on what he should and shouldn’t do to not get in trouble, trying to help him stay warm. That’s not something to be expected, either.

While his brain is trying to process, decide how in hell hes going to respond to this, she keeps staring at him with those wide blue eyes, her head tilted curiously. As much as none of her actions reflect what Dolan knows about the real world... she’s not exactly a part of the real world, is she? She clearly knows nothing of it. If her appearance isn’t enough if a clue in to how abnormal she is, then the softness, the gentleness just adds to it.

But. He cant imagine she’s learned, grown up in an environment that’s taught her how to be gentle, how to notice and care for someone else. He’s pretty sure no one has taken the time to teach her to be selfless, to tell her to share food and look out for the people around her. That’s highly unlikely. He thinks, judging by the room she came out of, that if she had learned from her environment, she would be much different.

She seems to be getting tired of waiting for his brain to Russian-roulette some kind of an acceptable response in the absence of an immediate one for him to pull from. She squeezes his face ever so slightly under her hands to maybe encourage some reaction from him.

“Uh, yeah. Yeah that’s... that’s better. That feels better. Thank you.”

It dawns on him only after he says it that it’s actually true. His face feels warmer under her hands and he starts to wonder if this is something similar to what she had done crawling down from the crate earlier. Is she about to fry him somehow?

Her face couldn’t suggest anything further from that, and she actually smiles when he affirms what she’s doing and thanks her. Its a pretty little expression on her face, as gaunt and pale as it is. Dolan can feel something deep inside him pinching, twisting almost and it makes him shift his weight uncomfortably.

She grins wide and proud when he says that what she had done is working, pressing her fingers into his skin a little and pushing his face around, forcing his expression up into a funny looking smile.

"See? I can do good and be useful. I think the dumb tests are bad, sometimes they say I'm not doing something, but I'm trying. You see that now, right? I can do lots even if the white dresses say I'm not doing good."

Happy with his expression, she lets go of his face, only to move both her hands to his arm. She gives him a few hard tugs to pop his hand out of his pocket, allowing her to lift his arm from his body. In the empty space, she plops down by his side, drops his arm to drape over her.

There's something comforting about being pressed up against him here. She goes to reach back for the apple but a long yawn stops her, makes her small body shake as the tiredness it foreshadows begins to set in. So, she drops the apple back down, figuring she can just eat it when she wakes back up.

"I'll keep you warm so you can sleep, okay? We'll both sleep right here and no one will be cold, never-ever."

With her knees pulled up to her chest, she cuddles down into the puffy material of his jacket, burying her face in it so she can sleep.

Things around the inside of the warehouse begin to quickly quiet down now that the curious child has drifted off. Some of the ceiling creaks from the wind outside, but, other than that, not much else is left.

If one listens very closely, the sound of some sort of rowdy party can be heard from the main gang house a little ways away. Lots of drinking and games, driving cars on a makeshift racetrack, and pretty ladies standing around with the sole purpose of lifting their short skirts up should a man feel the need to get a little action tonight. It's loud and wild, but also somehow like it's part of a different world entirely with how the wind makes it sound even further in the distance than it actually is. An echo of a different reality beckoning to whoever may hear it.

It's really only a matter of an hour, maybe two, before a handful of them will have to settle down, zip their pants back up, and get back to work showing their client around, loading things into a different car. They'll be paid and then tomorrow night the party will continue with more drinks and women, something crazier than the last.

Dolan pretends like he falls asleep soon after she does, but really he’s up for most of the next few hours, trying to come to terms with how he can go from blackout drunk and broke to a little girl cuddled into his side snoring happily in a matter of a week. Its a lot to take in, especially when she burrows in a little deeper periodically throughout the night. Especially when he realizes that the place where she’s snuggled into his side is warm and actually very very comfortable.

The time passes slowly while his brain chews through everything. But not so slow that he loses track. Even though there aren’t any windows in the warehouse, he’s keenly aware of when it’s rolled around into the earliest hours of morning. The churning in his stomach grows stronger and stronger.

He tries to move without waking her, scoot away and like the pillow up around her to take his place, but somehow she’s managed to get handfuls of not his jacket, but his shirt underneath that and for as frail as she is, damn if she doesn’t have a tight grip.

So he settles back in, watching her sleep peacefully, trying not to let himself think about all the things she’s seen and lived through. More than most people have to experience in a lifetime, probably. In only a few short years.

Gravel crunching under tires outside saves him from how that thought begins to spiral, but throws him into a new panic altogether. They’re here. Back with the vans, with the client. Coming for the handoff of the stolen goods they’d acquired. At which point, as the men had discussed before leaving, they’ll eliminate anything that complicates the operation too much.

The van doors slam outside, and in response she pulls tighter to his body, burrows her face into him, hums a little in unconscious response.

Dolan exhales in a quick, short burst as he lets all the jumbled thoughts in his brain grind to an abrupt halt. It doesn’t make the kind of sense he wants it to and it’s not what he wanted. But in this moment, he knows exactly what his next move is.

“Hey, kid. Hey.”

He jostles her shoulder a little bit, shaking her gently, slipping out from under her. They don’t have the time for the luxury of an easy awakening.

“Wake up. We gotta go.”

Dolan takes the pillow she’d left unoccupied and empties it of the makeshift stuffing, starting to fill it with the extra food, the blankets they’d used, anything that seems like it can be of any use.

“Come here, we gotta go.”

It doesn't feel like she's been asleep nearly long enough, at least not as long as she usually is locked away in that tiny metal room. She rubs her eyes and looks around a bit before her eyes settle on following him.

"Hey..."

His face doesn't look panicked, he looks just as stern as before, but the way he moves scream stressed and afraid, it's the sort of frantic jerky movements she knows very well. She stands up but immediately topples over, her brain not fully awake yet to process how to be coordinated. After a quick second to whine a little, rub at her chin where it hit the floor, she tries again with more success.

"Hey, mister, is it test time already?"

She pads over to him, tugging gently on the leg of his pants, watching his hands carefully as he tries to pack up the pillow with all sorts of different things.

"It's okay if it is. It only lasts the day and then you get the dark to yourself, I promise."

There's no easy way to comfort him, her own voice trembles and her hands shake, just like they always do when she hears the scientists walk into the room outside of hers. It means hours and hours of pain and discomfort where her only relief is the terrifying blackness of night. Minute after agonizing minute of torture and fear, but last night wasn't nearly as bad as usual. She was moved to a room where lights were left on and she was given a friend, so maybe she can pretend she isn't terrified if now there's something to look forward to after all the tests during the day.

"We never cease to deliver, you really hired the best of the best."

Kynton's voice echoes in from the outside as he smooth-talks further with the client. Just hearing his voice, she steps closer to her new friend, grabbing onto him more.

"That's the mean man who pulled my hair..."

She mumbles, turning to look back up at him with a deep frown. Though, if she thinks about it, pulling her hair is nowhere near as bad as what she's used to, she should be glad that's all that happened. That doesn't mean it felt good or she enjoyed it. She especially doesn't enjoy how the voice gets closer to the building they're in. He must be the new person in a white dress that's going to test her now, or maybe he's Mister's bad person. Either way, she doesn't like the prospect of seeing the man with tall black ears again so she pushes into her friend's side.

Something about the way she talks in long stretches, rambling a little, with her trembling little voice in trying to explain things to him and comfort him makes him pause, look down at her with her hand wrapped up in the extra fabric of the big pocket of his cargo pants. She's eying the same door they came in through, the one that's been locked from the outside all night.

What had she said about tests lasting all day, and then stopping at night time? Does she think that she's still at the lab?

"Well, not today kid. Not tomorrow either if I can help it."

He swallows back a random, unwanted and unwelcome lump in his throat as he finishes packing up anything he can think to pack quickly as the voices seem to stall, but keep growing ever closer.

His eyes roam quickly across the structure, imagining the blueprint of the place, all the normal engineering conventions of this sort of building. Seldom is there only one entrance and exit point. Especially in buildings like this with no windows. Usually, there's a twin door at a point symmetrical to...

There's a tall, thick, sturdy metal shelf covering the wall that he's examining, so he slings the pillowcase over his back and goes to move toward the wall, but she's still clinging to his leg tightly, her little body still trembling as she stares at the door.

"Kid, we gotta. We gotta go over here."

It's like she's nearly frozen in fear, unsure of what exactly to do in this new and strange and ultimately terrifying situation. That, strangely, seems to freeze Dolan for a second, too. Just a second before he hears footsteps dangerously near the door.

He bends down and scoops her up, holding her close to his size and to his surprise, she automatically slings her arms around his neck, holding on tightly. He doesn't have much time to process that before he takes off toward the wall, wedging both of them between the shelf and the crates beside it and using his body weight to push the shelf, kick it away from the wall until it tilts and crashes loudly on the cement floor, spilling all kinds of boxes and storage crates and their contents.

There's noise of concern outside the warehouse, and of course they'd all heard what's going on inside. So Dolan has even less time to think than before. He grabs up one of the tactical rifles they'd used last night, slings it across his shoulder, and feels along the wall for the doorknob which, thankfully, he finds.

It's locked, but a couple of swift kicks changes that, and as the front door starts to unlock, Dolan and the little girl clinging to him slip out the back and out into the back alleyways leading away from the compound.

It's incredibly dark outside as the man runs quickly, faster than she's ever seen anyone run or run herself. His strides are long and they carry the two of them far away quickly.

With his gait, it jostles her and she bounces some which makes it hard for her to look anywhere, but she manages to peek over his shoulder at the large building they left behind.

"We're in trouble..."

She mumbles quietly, more to herself than to him, as she watches a small crowd of men burst out of the door they exited from after a minute and then from around the front of the building as well. All of them are scanning, searching, flashlights trailing to spot the two fugitives in the darkness. And despite all of this, the tall man carrying her never stops, he just keeps going and going, eyes fixed ahead, focused.

For what feels like a long moment, she just stares up at him in awe, trying to figure out how he worked up the nerve to do all of that, to run like he is. Or maybe it's too short of a moment because light flashes across his back and pours into her eyes making her flinch.

"Hey! What do you think you're doing?!"

It's not the voice of the mean man who pulled her hair but of the man that Dolan kept periodically looking at and talking to before. When that man yes, the man with tall black ears comes into view, shining his flashlight in the same direction, screaming words she doesn't understand.

With that, the group begins to chase.

"If they catch us, they won't feed us and we'll have to do even more tests for being bad..."

She whines quietly, sinking down to duck behind his shoulder, pressing herself up against the baggy material of his jacket at his chest.

He hears them yell, sees the spotlights swing over his shoulder and then sees his own shadow on the ground in front of him, but he doesn't look back.

"Shhh."

Dolan manages to hold his finger to his lips while he's running, trying not to scare her any more than she is already, but tryin to convey the serious graveness of the situation. The good thing is, no matter what situation Dolan is in, he carries a type of self assurance that convinces him that he can outsmart whoever needs to be outsmarted in order for him to come out on top. Some people have tried to tell him that this self assurance is actually arrogance but, of course, he thinks they're completely wrong.

Dolan starts evasive running maneuvers, kicking and knocking over everything he can find to put between them and the men pursuing them, running in a zigzag motion that their flashlights seem to struggle in keeping up with. Once he's escaped their spotlights, he crosses in front of one of the other old, ancient buildings belonging to Umbra and ducks into the dark alleyway beside it.

At the end of the alley is the chain link fence, taller than he is, that surrounds Umbra's headquarters. He can hear her whimper into his jacket at the sight of it, and the sound of footsteps behind them grows ever closer. Dolan curses silently to himself, thinking about how he probably could have been inside Umbra's safe by now, spiriting away anything valuable in their possession that he wanted.

But this little girl keeps digging in tighter to him, and he sighs. With a running start, he leaps up on top of the dumpster pushed against the wall and from there propels both of them onto the vertical surface of the fence. He only has one hand to hold onto the open grating with, and the metal is rough, scratching and ripping at his skin.

After a few feet of climbing, he can peer over the fence and see down the other side. He slings the pillowcase full of all their makeshifts supplies over first, and it hits the grass on the other side with a thud. Gingerly, he positions himself over the top of the fence, holding onto it tightly.

"Hey, hold on really tight, okay? There's gonna be a big thud and we're both gonna shake, but it's going to be okay. Okay?"