Encounterlogs
Mikhaels Odd Encounter Sr Elanora 240518
The story opens with a violent scene in a deserted alleyway of Haven where Mikhael's men discover a corpse in a pool of blood, indicating a gruesome conflict that took place the night before. The narrative then cleverly shifts to Calista, who finds herself in a harrowing situation, abducted and awakening in a dark, locked room, separated from any allies. With only an emaciated man in a neighboring cell for company, she experiences a dawning horror and despair as she realizes her dire circumstances. Despite her desperate attempts to communicate and understand her surroundings, the only hint of her situation comes from the interaction between the guards about their preference for "fresh ones," revealing a sinister operation that preys on humans.
As Calista grapples with her situation, a voice offers her a grim insight into her predicament: she's in a feeding farm for vampires. With this revelation, and observing the poor man being dragged away by guards to a fate worse than death, her fight-or-flight instincts kick into overdrive. She opts for a desperate escape through the sewage system beneath her cell after discarding any hopes of a heroic rescue or attempting to seduce her captors—highlighting her pragmatism and resilience. Her journey through the sewers, fighting against the revulsion and fear, culminates in her emergence into the outside world, albeit in a state far removed from victory. She’s safe, for the moment, but the haunting realization that she was recaptured so easily before looms over her newfound freedom, underscored by the gritty, tangible reminder of her ordeal clung to her skin. This moment serves not only as a physical escape from her captors but a poignant allegory for the persistence of trauma and the ever-looming threat that shadows the inhabitants of Haven.
(Mikhael's odd encounter(SRElanora):SRElanora)
[Fri May 17 2024]
At an alley
It is morning, about 62F(16C) degrees,
The empty clicking of a gun in a desperate man's hands echo over over in the desolate alleyway. The man's chest heavies even as his heart desperately tries to deep up with the spreading pool of blood that spreads from underneath the mangled man's legs. His body finally collapses, into a pool of his own blood as the thug finally seems to realize that today there will be no revenge. No sweetness and probably no hope to get payback for that mangled scar on his face and the metal plate his head. "Fuck you.... Bharghast..." He spits out another mouthful of blood.
The moon sets over Haven as the suns rays slowly warm up the cold, dusty ground. It would not be too long before Mikhael's men reach the alley... Find the corpse already cold, rigid in a pile of blood. The body is shoved into a bag into the back of a black van. Never to be seen in the midst of Haven again....
(Your target is abducted in their sleep, waking up alone in a locked room. They need to either escape or draw attention to them so their allies can come and provide assistance.
)
Everything hurts. Her throat is dry, scratchy, and raw. There's a pain behind her eyes, burning deeper into a head, and promising a migraine. Everything sounds loud. The dripping. The footsteps. The echo of groans beyond--
Groans. It's out of place. It doesn't fit, where Calista might expect to be --... was it the tavern? It's hard to remember. The last she might recall is a dull pain, near the base of her head.
Slowly, the world comes into focus, like a camera lens swiveled just right. She's sideways on the cold, hard floor. In front of her are bars and some thin, foul liquid. No one's in here with her. No one's to the left, or to the right. But in front:
An emaciated man, with long, scraggly hair, and a beard to match. He's in another cell, far beyond the reach of Calista's arm, should she try, and chained to the ground. He's wearing tattered shorts and a vacant expression.
He's watching her.
He hasn't said a thing.
It takes a moment, certainly, as things come into focus and Calista breathes in sharply at the realization that her body hurts. This doesn't feel like a dream. The sucking in of her breath so suddenly irritates her throat and she coughs. But she attempts to push herself up into a seated position and check herself for any binds like the emaciated man wears. "Hello?!?" she croaks out - to the man in the cell across from hers... anyone who would listen. She tries again with more force behind her voice. "HELLOOO?!? Anybody?!?"
Oh, the man hears. The man continues to stare. The man even talks back. But unfortunately...
Whatever language he's speaking, Calista doesn't know. The consonants are pronounced with precision, some of the sounds more guttural than English. Might be Arabic. Something in that general neighborhood. Doesn't matter what exactly, though, given that it all amounts to the same thing:
No opportunity for conversation.
Still, he communicates. His face is pinched. He seems pitying. Tired. Not afraid, not distraught. No vocabulary is needed to understand emotion. This is hopelessness.
He comes up to the bars on his cell, with the jarring, metallic scrape of his chains.
"Oh God, Oh God..." Calista breathes out the words to herself, the expression just a mantra to try and centre herself while she thinks when she receives no coherent answer to her problem. Because she is Calista, she still offers that bedraggled man a small, thankful smile for the attempt - though it feels weak and obviously completey overrun by the panic in her features. She forces herself to stand, provided she feels no injury to be unable to do so. She would move around the cell, trying to become familiar with what she has available to her. And then, her main focus would be to press herself up against the bars as tightly as possible to try and get a good view of as much of the outside of this cell as she can manage. "Does anybody speak English??" She calls out, hoping for a helpful voice somewhere, amongst the groans.
"Nope," a disembodied voice tells Calista. It's wry, and deeper than usual for a woman. It's also perfectly American, with sarcasm and irreverence executed perfectly. She doesn't follow up with anything else. There's the sound of a soft thump -- wow, does she have a mattress? What'd she do to get that kind of treatment? Calista doesn't have a mattress. She doesn't even have a pillow.
No one else answers, unfortunately. If there's someone nicer in the adjacent cells, they're not home. Or they're dead.
Luckily, whomever Calista's captors are also don't show face. They're probably close, though. Up the steps, through some heavy door, surely guards must await. This whole affair looks far too well-planned not to involve security.
"Great, so no one here could tell me... where I am? Why I'm here? What to expect?" Calista just keeps talking out of her cell, with nothing else to lose at this moment.
Calista's luck runs out. Booted feet make their way in.
She can see their outline, if she cranes her next to the side. They come closer.
Closer.
They're right in front of her cell. It's two guards, although interestingly, neither seem equipped with guns. They're on the pale side, and covered up, from hand to toe. It's an odd way to be, with the sweltering heat outside, and the overbearing sun.
They're going to fucking kill her. This is it. This is the end.
Or so she might think, until one of the guards unlocks her neighbor's door. It gives a protesting creak. The man doesn't follow suit. No protest at all, from him. He simply looks at the floor. When they hoist him up by the shoulders, he hangs there, like a ragdoll.
"Think this one's pretty much done. Dunno if we're getting much more out of him."
"Think Lissa would let us have him?"
"...We got her that new one. You know how she is. She likes the fresh ones. Don't even think she'll remember him."
There's a flash of fangs. One of them gets in first. The other snarls.
There's the sound of tearing as they drag the man away.
Fluid runs down the corridor, some of it thin and foul, some of it bloody.
Now Calista knows. She might have wished she hadn't asked.
The door beyond, up the stairs, clangs closed.
The same woman, from before: "...Yeah, that. Guessing you don't have any more questions?"
"I have so many fucking questions!" Calista spits out, not loudly, no, but clearly enough. It's an angry tone, but one that's rooted in fear obviously from what she's seen. "Where do they go? Has anyone tried to get out? What IS THIS?" Okay, so she's letting the panic take over a little bit more. There's a long way to go before the total numb acceptance shown by the man who was dragged away a moment ago.
"I mean, he got out," the unhelpful voice tells Calista. At least someone finds all of this funny. She's laughing. She's unhinged. Has to be, if she's surviving in this place.
Although...
She's right. He did make it out. Not alive, but -- they took him away. They'd probably disposed of him afterward. Calista could play dead. That's not so hard. Be still. Stop breathing. Easy.
That's one option. Of course, there are plenty others. A classic's tricking the guards. Seducing 'em, maybe. Or she could try to jimmy her cell open and hope the guards are asleep when she tries to make it past them.
Plenty of options. Just, none of them are named 'Shemra.' There's no deus ex machina dragon here to save the day.
"Yes he did..." Calista replies to the voice in a low mutter herself. With none of her other questions answered she isn't left with any more clues than she had before. She's no hulk to be able to rip off a door. She's no lockpicker, able to finesse her way around a lock. Surely, the others would have tried anything to get out too, but still Calista tries to get a good look at her cell door and any lock that it contains. In the meantime she just yells again. "HEY! I WANT TO KNOW WHERE I AM! WHY AM I HERE?" If they're going to come get her eventuall, it doesn't matter if she draws attention now. Maybe it will just mean less time in this shitty cell.
"Fuck, I'm trying to sleep," the voice tells her. "You're in a feeding farm, okay? Vamps need blood, and they like it fresh. If you want out, try being hot. They let some of us more attractive folk out as pets. Can you shut it now?"
The lock looks pretty solid. What doesn't is the grate in the floor. Some of the screws are loose. The grate's not sitting right, almost as if it doesn't quite fit anymore.
The stench is strongest there, though. It's where all that liquid is going -- where, undoubtedly, human waste swims in abundance.
She might be able to work her way in. She's small enough.
Calista snorts a little bit at the voice. "If I'm asking myself 'how does one BE hot' I'm probably going to fail," she mutters outloud again, this time not caring if she's overheard. She's busy looking at the lock, shaking it, finding it solid. But the grate in the floor draws her eye and she's dropping instantly, down to the floor. Her slender fingers touch it, exploring its give with very, careful motions to not create any grinding noises of metal that might attract attention. Yes. The screws are giving a little bit. She takes big, deep breaths to calm her body so that she work effectively and with precision so that shakey fingers aren't the thing letting her down. She clenches her teeth and pinches her lips against the smell. It would seem, she has more faith in her ability to handle human waste than her ability to seduce a vampire.
If she is able to lift the grate free or at least free one side and swivel it away - again very carefully and soundlessly - She would lay down to peek inside the hole to gauge the kind of drop awaiting her.
All the screws come out eventually. One of them's rusted in, so it takes a bit of prying, but yes -- there we go.
Calista's able to pick the grate up. Goddamn it's heavy, though. Her arms start shaking as soon as she picks it up. Still, she manages. Adrenaline works wonders.
Now, the smell in her cell is absolutely vile. It's like a trash can, left open and forgotten through a long summer. It's so acrid that the hairs on her arms raise, so sharp that her eyes sting, and bile might rise in her throat.
It's pitch black down there. Impossible to tell if it's a long descent, and if there's anything to cushion her blow. This is, in the literal sense of the phrase, a leap of faith.
Calista highly considers doing something wild like peeing into the hole in the ground to try and judge the depth of the drop but decides ultimately that every second counts, and she really isn't sure she's enough of a physicist to actually glean anything from that information. She decides to slither feet first, on her belly, into the hole, trying to grasp the floor with her arms and hands for as long as possible before having to let go. Her legs swing and her feet stretch out, looking for any kind of purchase below her. She gags, involuntarily - of course the stench is unreal. But vomiting up last night's dinner is a so much better option than becoming tonight's dinner. If she finds no purchase, she would take that leap of faith and let herself go - hoping with all her might that those fall workshops she took while doing competitive riding would do her well.
Calista's lucky. Very, very lucky -- if, you know, being kidnapped counts as being lucky. When she drops, it's only a short distance, enough to send her stomach soaring into her throat, but not enough that the impact does anything more than stun.
The splash she makes is loud. It echoes in empty space. The sewage network is vast. But...
Hm. The water's all rushing in one direction. That must mean that somewhere, down the line, there's an exit she can exploit.
Something solid bumps her legs.
Hard not to think about what she's touching.
Is it shit? Is it human remains? Is it some small animal?
Calista gags again and puts the back of her arm against her mouth and nose to try and stifle the want to heave. The instinct to follow the water is natural, and she barely waits for her eyes to adjust to do so. Truthfully, she doesn't want to get a good look at what is around her anyway. If she can touch a wall for guidance or balance, to keep from slipping on what she cannot see, she does so. Otherwise, she takes careful but determined steps in the direction of the flow. As she moves she will look for any other grates or entrances to the sewer above her, hoping that any of them give some hint of the outdoors.
There's a wall far off to the side. Calista finds it after she slips once or twice. That probably doesn't help with the stench. The feel of the wall is slippery, like moss or algae slicked against the current.
It's a long time before Calista sees the light. But -- there!
A pinprick, in the distance.
She closes in on it. It gets wider, longer, until she's right beneath it, warm rays diffusing over her like she's an angel, blessed by God on high.
It'll take some strength, but if she can push what looks like a waffled manhole cover out of the way and get her arms high up enough, she can hoist herself to safety.
Calista isn't a brute, but she is in good shape, and she's got stamina to boot. She tries to find footing and enough height to get good leverage against the cover. Using the strength in her thighs (thank goodness for squats) she tries to shove with great force against the cover. Not enough to send it flying, no she isn't delusional and isn't going to waste effort on that. Just enough to hopefully take it from its cradle and perch it askew so that the rest of the effort can just be pushing it aside.
The manhole covers comes off with a groan and an ugly sccccrraape. Above, there's the sound of rumbling and impatient honking. Calista's made it. She's somewhere in the public eye, away from whomever it was that took her. She's uninjured. She's fine.
She's...
...absolutely disgusting. It's going to be days of showering before she washes the muck off her skin. And even then, she'd probably feel the film, and remember the horrid stench of sewage.
It could have been worse.
Still can be.
It only took a second for her to lose consciousness. She was somewhere with people then, too. No one came for her. No one noticed.
Nowhere is safe, here in Haven.
As Calista grapples with her situation, a voice offers her a grim insight into her predicament: she's in a feeding farm for vampires. With this revelation, and observing the poor man being dragged away by guards to a fate worse than death, her fight-or-flight instincts kick into overdrive. She opts for a desperate escape through the sewage system beneath her cell after discarding any hopes of a heroic rescue or attempting to seduce her captors—highlighting her pragmatism and resilience. Her journey through the sewers, fighting against the revulsion and fear, culminates in her emergence into the outside world, albeit in a state far removed from victory. She’s safe, for the moment, but the haunting realization that she was recaptured so easily before looms over her newfound freedom, underscored by the gritty, tangible reminder of her ordeal clung to her skin. This moment serves not only as a physical escape from her captors but a poignant allegory for the persistence of trauma and the ever-looming threat that shadows the inhabitants of Haven.
(Mikhael's odd encounter(SRElanora):SRElanora)
[Fri May 17 2024]
At an alley
It is morning, about 62F(16C) degrees,
The empty clicking of a gun in a desperate man's hands echo over over in the desolate alleyway. The man's chest heavies even as his heart desperately tries to deep up with the spreading pool of blood that spreads from underneath the mangled man's legs. His body finally collapses, into a pool of his own blood as the thug finally seems to realize that today there will be no revenge. No sweetness and probably no hope to get payback for that mangled scar on his face and the metal plate his head. "Fuck you.... Bharghast..." He spits out another mouthful of blood.
The moon sets over Haven as the suns rays slowly warm up the cold, dusty ground. It would not be too long before Mikhael's men reach the alley... Find the corpse already cold, rigid in a pile of blood. The body is shoved into a bag into the back of a black van. Never to be seen in the midst of Haven again....
(Your target is abducted in their sleep, waking up alone in a locked room. They need to either escape or draw attention to them so their allies can come and provide assistance.
)
Everything hurts. Her throat is dry, scratchy, and raw. There's a pain behind her eyes, burning deeper into a head, and promising a migraine. Everything sounds loud. The dripping. The footsteps. The echo of groans beyond--
Groans. It's out of place. It doesn't fit, where Calista might expect to be --... was it the tavern? It's hard to remember. The last she might recall is a dull pain, near the base of her head.
Slowly, the world comes into focus, like a camera lens swiveled just right. She's sideways on the cold, hard floor. In front of her are bars and some thin, foul liquid. No one's in here with her. No one's to the left, or to the right. But in front:
An emaciated man, with long, scraggly hair, and a beard to match. He's in another cell, far beyond the reach of Calista's arm, should she try, and chained to the ground. He's wearing tattered shorts and a vacant expression.
He's watching her.
He hasn't said a thing.
It takes a moment, certainly, as things come into focus and Calista breathes in sharply at the realization that her body hurts. This doesn't feel like a dream. The sucking in of her breath so suddenly irritates her throat and she coughs. But she attempts to push herself up into a seated position and check herself for any binds like the emaciated man wears. "Hello?!?" she croaks out - to the man in the cell across from hers... anyone who would listen. She tries again with more force behind her voice. "HELLOOO?!? Anybody?!?"
Oh, the man hears. The man continues to stare. The man even talks back. But unfortunately...
Whatever language he's speaking, Calista doesn't know. The consonants are pronounced with precision, some of the sounds more guttural than English. Might be Arabic. Something in that general neighborhood. Doesn't matter what exactly, though, given that it all amounts to the same thing:
No opportunity for conversation.
Still, he communicates. His face is pinched. He seems pitying. Tired. Not afraid, not distraught. No vocabulary is needed to understand emotion. This is hopelessness.
He comes up to the bars on his cell, with the jarring, metallic scrape of his chains.
"Oh God, Oh God..." Calista breathes out the words to herself, the expression just a mantra to try and centre herself while she thinks when she receives no coherent answer to her problem. Because she is Calista, she still offers that bedraggled man a small, thankful smile for the attempt - though it feels weak and obviously completey overrun by the panic in her features. She forces herself to stand, provided she feels no injury to be unable to do so. She would move around the cell, trying to become familiar with what she has available to her. And then, her main focus would be to press herself up against the bars as tightly as possible to try and get a good view of as much of the outside of this cell as she can manage. "Does anybody speak English??" She calls out, hoping for a helpful voice somewhere, amongst the groans.
"Nope," a disembodied voice tells Calista. It's wry, and deeper than usual for a woman. It's also perfectly American, with sarcasm and irreverence executed perfectly. She doesn't follow up with anything else. There's the sound of a soft thump -- wow, does she have a mattress? What'd she do to get that kind of treatment? Calista doesn't have a mattress. She doesn't even have a pillow.
No one else answers, unfortunately. If there's someone nicer in the adjacent cells, they're not home. Or they're dead.
Luckily, whomever Calista's captors are also don't show face. They're probably close, though. Up the steps, through some heavy door, surely guards must await. This whole affair looks far too well-planned not to involve security.
"Great, so no one here could tell me... where I am? Why I'm here? What to expect?" Calista just keeps talking out of her cell, with nothing else to lose at this moment.
Calista's luck runs out. Booted feet make their way in.
She can see their outline, if she cranes her next to the side. They come closer.
Closer.
They're right in front of her cell. It's two guards, although interestingly, neither seem equipped with guns. They're on the pale side, and covered up, from hand to toe. It's an odd way to be, with the sweltering heat outside, and the overbearing sun.
They're going to fucking kill her. This is it. This is the end.
Or so she might think, until one of the guards unlocks her neighbor's door. It gives a protesting creak. The man doesn't follow suit. No protest at all, from him. He simply looks at the floor. When they hoist him up by the shoulders, he hangs there, like a ragdoll.
"Think this one's pretty much done. Dunno if we're getting much more out of him."
"Think Lissa would let us have him?"
"...We got her that new one. You know how she is. She likes the fresh ones. Don't even think she'll remember him."
There's a flash of fangs. One of them gets in first. The other snarls.
There's the sound of tearing as they drag the man away.
Fluid runs down the corridor, some of it thin and foul, some of it bloody.
Now Calista knows. She might have wished she hadn't asked.
The door beyond, up the stairs, clangs closed.
The same woman, from before: "...Yeah, that. Guessing you don't have any more questions?"
"I have so many fucking questions!" Calista spits out, not loudly, no, but clearly enough. It's an angry tone, but one that's rooted in fear obviously from what she's seen. "Where do they go? Has anyone tried to get out? What IS THIS?" Okay, so she's letting the panic take over a little bit more. There's a long way to go before the total numb acceptance shown by the man who was dragged away a moment ago.
"I mean, he got out," the unhelpful voice tells Calista. At least someone finds all of this funny. She's laughing. She's unhinged. Has to be, if she's surviving in this place.
Although...
She's right. He did make it out. Not alive, but -- they took him away. They'd probably disposed of him afterward. Calista could play dead. That's not so hard. Be still. Stop breathing. Easy.
That's one option. Of course, there are plenty others. A classic's tricking the guards. Seducing 'em, maybe. Or she could try to jimmy her cell open and hope the guards are asleep when she tries to make it past them.
Plenty of options. Just, none of them are named 'Shemra.' There's no deus ex machina dragon here to save the day.
"Yes he did..." Calista replies to the voice in a low mutter herself. With none of her other questions answered she isn't left with any more clues than she had before. She's no hulk to be able to rip off a door. She's no lockpicker, able to finesse her way around a lock. Surely, the others would have tried anything to get out too, but still Calista tries to get a good look at her cell door and any lock that it contains. In the meantime she just yells again. "HEY! I WANT TO KNOW WHERE I AM! WHY AM I HERE?" If they're going to come get her eventuall, it doesn't matter if she draws attention now. Maybe it will just mean less time in this shitty cell.
"Fuck, I'm trying to sleep," the voice tells her. "You're in a feeding farm, okay? Vamps need blood, and they like it fresh. If you want out, try being hot. They let some of us more attractive folk out as pets. Can you shut it now?"
The lock looks pretty solid. What doesn't is the grate in the floor. Some of the screws are loose. The grate's not sitting right, almost as if it doesn't quite fit anymore.
The stench is strongest there, though. It's where all that liquid is going -- where, undoubtedly, human waste swims in abundance.
She might be able to work her way in. She's small enough.
Calista snorts a little bit at the voice. "If I'm asking myself 'how does one BE hot' I'm probably going to fail," she mutters outloud again, this time not caring if she's overheard. She's busy looking at the lock, shaking it, finding it solid. But the grate in the floor draws her eye and she's dropping instantly, down to the floor. Her slender fingers touch it, exploring its give with very, careful motions to not create any grinding noises of metal that might attract attention. Yes. The screws are giving a little bit. She takes big, deep breaths to calm her body so that she work effectively and with precision so that shakey fingers aren't the thing letting her down. She clenches her teeth and pinches her lips against the smell. It would seem, she has more faith in her ability to handle human waste than her ability to seduce a vampire.
If she is able to lift the grate free or at least free one side and swivel it away - again very carefully and soundlessly - She would lay down to peek inside the hole to gauge the kind of drop awaiting her.
All the screws come out eventually. One of them's rusted in, so it takes a bit of prying, but yes -- there we go.
Calista's able to pick the grate up. Goddamn it's heavy, though. Her arms start shaking as soon as she picks it up. Still, she manages. Adrenaline works wonders.
Now, the smell in her cell is absolutely vile. It's like a trash can, left open and forgotten through a long summer. It's so acrid that the hairs on her arms raise, so sharp that her eyes sting, and bile might rise in her throat.
It's pitch black down there. Impossible to tell if it's a long descent, and if there's anything to cushion her blow. This is, in the literal sense of the phrase, a leap of faith.
Calista highly considers doing something wild like peeing into the hole in the ground to try and judge the depth of the drop but decides ultimately that every second counts, and she really isn't sure she's enough of a physicist to actually glean anything from that information. She decides to slither feet first, on her belly, into the hole, trying to grasp the floor with her arms and hands for as long as possible before having to let go. Her legs swing and her feet stretch out, looking for any kind of purchase below her. She gags, involuntarily - of course the stench is unreal. But vomiting up last night's dinner is a so much better option than becoming tonight's dinner. If she finds no purchase, she would take that leap of faith and let herself go - hoping with all her might that those fall workshops she took while doing competitive riding would do her well.
Calista's lucky. Very, very lucky -- if, you know, being kidnapped counts as being lucky. When she drops, it's only a short distance, enough to send her stomach soaring into her throat, but not enough that the impact does anything more than stun.
The splash she makes is loud. It echoes in empty space. The sewage network is vast. But...
Hm. The water's all rushing in one direction. That must mean that somewhere, down the line, there's an exit she can exploit.
Something solid bumps her legs.
Hard not to think about what she's touching.
Is it shit? Is it human remains? Is it some small animal?
Calista gags again and puts the back of her arm against her mouth and nose to try and stifle the want to heave. The instinct to follow the water is natural, and she barely waits for her eyes to adjust to do so. Truthfully, she doesn't want to get a good look at what is around her anyway. If she can touch a wall for guidance or balance, to keep from slipping on what she cannot see, she does so. Otherwise, she takes careful but determined steps in the direction of the flow. As she moves she will look for any other grates or entrances to the sewer above her, hoping that any of them give some hint of the outdoors.
There's a wall far off to the side. Calista finds it after she slips once or twice. That probably doesn't help with the stench. The feel of the wall is slippery, like moss or algae slicked against the current.
It's a long time before Calista sees the light. But -- there!
A pinprick, in the distance.
She closes in on it. It gets wider, longer, until she's right beneath it, warm rays diffusing over her like she's an angel, blessed by God on high.
It'll take some strength, but if she can push what looks like a waffled manhole cover out of the way and get her arms high up enough, she can hoist herself to safety.
Calista isn't a brute, but she is in good shape, and she's got stamina to boot. She tries to find footing and enough height to get good leverage against the cover. Using the strength in her thighs (thank goodness for squats) she tries to shove with great force against the cover. Not enough to send it flying, no she isn't delusional and isn't going to waste effort on that. Just enough to hopefully take it from its cradle and perch it askew so that the rest of the effort can just be pushing it aside.
The manhole covers comes off with a groan and an ugly sccccrraape. Above, there's the sound of rumbling and impatient honking. Calista's made it. She's somewhere in the public eye, away from whomever it was that took her. She's uninjured. She's fine.
She's...
...absolutely disgusting. It's going to be days of showering before she washes the muck off her skin. And even then, she'd probably feel the film, and remember the horrid stench of sewage.
It could have been worse.
Still can be.
It only took a second for her to lose consciousness. She was somewhere with people then, too. No one came for her. No one noticed.
Nowhere is safe, here in Haven.