Deviation Actions
Description
So our story begins!
If you missed it the history before this all starts is here: nomi800.deviantart.com/art/The…
I wasn't going to post these so close together, but I decided to go ahead for two reasons:
1. there is a slight hole in the next part that I need to finish writing, hopefully this will motivate me to finish
2. Katrina's head shipped!!!
so I anticipate being kind of obsessed with her for the next little bit 
Ummm there's a part to this that I've sort of hinted at many times but never actually said before. It was never supposed to be some big secret, I just never found the right time to tell you guys. Part of that was because I didn't want it to be the defining part of Knox's character, part of it was because well frankly I got a little shy when I first posted her backstory and never included it... uh you'll see what I'm talking about...
btw I stopped mid photo shoot and spent like 15 min trying to decide what to write on Knox's note, I'm sorry, just seemed to fit how she feels about the whole thing...
I'm anticipating Knox getting a lot of hugs for this one <3
A Boy Named Alice - Part 1:
Knox had been on the job for six months. Red-rover's release was getting closer, there were signs it was already being tested on the streets. Knox had been undercover with a local gang, she had sucessfully convinced them that she was one of them. She had tons of dirt on lower members but there was a core group of six men that would significatly slow the release if she could just get them all in prison. The gang trusted her and she had information to pin all of them except one guy; the ringleader. He never got his hands dirty, but that was going to change. With the Red-rover's release so close he would have to slip up and Knox was ready. Until, her boss at RIOT pulled her out. He felt things were getting too dangerous, she had done excellent work and he didn't want her in unreasonable danger. Knox was furious, he was cheating, pulling her out of the game before she could win. She was so mad she forgot to tell her boss about the strange guy who had been looking into RIOT computers that morning. He had said his name was Telstar, but refused to tell her what he was trying to do and took off quickly.
As she left RIOT headquarters she ran into Lin. Lin had no idea what was happening with Knox's work so she didn't think anything of it when she said she was going back undercover that afternoon. Knox didn't bother to check with her team first, if she had, she would have known that they had already released rumours that her character had been arrested. She would have realized what she was walking back into...
She met the core gang six men, all larger, tougher, stronger than herself at a warehouse on the outskirts of town. She was used to meeting at places like that, it had never occured to her before how isolated she was from help. She tried to lie her way out of the situation, but they broke her down quickly. They tied her to a chair, they beat her and put cigerettes out on her skin until she told them her name and that she worked for RIOT. The fact that she worked for RIOT and not the government, the police, or the military, put her in the worst possible situation. It meant that the gang had free reign to kill her, to humiliate her, to destroy her, to use her shattered body to send a message to all other RIOT agents to stay out of the game, and they did just that.
The moment they confirmed that she worked for RIOT a video camera was produced, they made her introduce herself before they filmed everything that came after to be sure that whomever found the tape would know exactly what happens to caught agents.
Over the course of the three hours that they had Natalie, they beat her, they tortured her, they raped her, they made her preform vile acts, they broke her. They broke her so completly that the fearless, optimistic, life-loving, Natalie welcomed her inevable death. She was only sad that her parents would find out what had happened to her. When they were done as a last cruelty they told her she could go if she could walk to the door. They roughly redressed her, and pulled her up onto her broken leg. As she stood wobbling one of the men came behind her with a crowbar. What was supposed to be the final hit, missed when her legs gave out, and instead of smashing in the side of her head he only knocked a small hole in her skull. They couldn't be bothered to stand her again, so they gave her a couple final kicks and left her to bleed out on the floor. Before they left they placed the memory stick on her stomach, ensuring whoever found her body would know exactly what happened.
Natalie was rapidly loosing consiousness, she knew she was dying she accepted that, but she didn't want her parents especially her dad to see what they had done to her. She was too weak to throw the memory stick away from herself so she did the only thing she could think of she stuffed it down her pants.
Back at RIOT, Lin ran into Walter in the hall. Walter asked if Natalie had been mad about her job being cancelled, Lin was confused. It only took them a minute to realize what had happened.
They got the location from Natalie's boss and rushed to the warehouse taking extra RIOT agents with them. Lin charged in first with her back up, she didn't have time to look at Knox as she made sure the gang was gone. Walter and Landon were the first ones to Natalie. Walter surpressed tears while he pressed his shirt against her head to stop the bleeding. She had stopped breathing just seconds before they arrived. Landon pounded on her chest to get her heart going again. A helicopter took her to the city's main hospital.
On the way, the paramedics cut her clothing off. The little memory stick with the tape on it fell out of her pants. They didn't have time to do anything with it as they rushed to stablize her.
Working at the hospital that night was Lin's older brother, Amir. A certified genious Amir worked in emergency because he found it the most interesting, but he was studied in every medical field that captured his attention. There wasn't a better doctor for the job. He knew Knox through his sister and when he saw her name on the incoming list he knew it was bad.
From the moment the paramedics passed her over to him it was a race to get her stable. They passed the tape over to Amir with Knox. He watched it by himself in a locked room whenever there was a break in surgeries. Ironically the tape made to mock her death, ended up helping to save Knox's life by showing Amir exactly what injuries to look for. Before he had even finished the tape he found several potentially life threatening injuires that he may not have found in time otherwise. Having a RIOT agent for a sister he understood that the politics were different from the average citizen when it came to reporting crimes, he didn't know what to do with the tape. He felt it was wrong to give the tape to her parents when she was still so close to death so he decided to keep it secret until he could ask Knox what she wanted done with it.
After almost a full day in surgery and more than a few times when they thought they would lose her, Knox was stable in the intensive care unit. She had drips, a catheter, and a tube down her throat. Half of her head had been shaved and a metal plate put in to replace the hole in her skull. She had pins in her leg, and on several ribs. She lost a section of her small intestions, and an overy, she was extremely lucky to keep both kidneys. She was black and blue with bruises all over her body. She had cuts and burns. She was so weak her parents were only able to view her from behind glass for fear of infection.
She woke up the first time two days later, she was only awake long enough to learn that she hadn't died, was in hospital, and that Amir was her doctor. She found the latter the least surprising.
When she was awake enough to ask questions, through a notepad since they wouldn't take the tube out yet, she asked about the tape. Amir told her he was the only one who had seen it. Knox swore him to secrecy. It was too much for her to keep the tape herself so she left with Amir, making him swear that he would keep it safe and secret.
Hearing the events she realized she had gotten lucky, no one but Amir knew the full extent of what had happened to her, only that she had been beaten badly. No one else knew that she had been raped, no one knew what they had made her do. In her eyes the best possible situation, it was her fault she had been in that situation, she was responcilble and she didn't want anyone to know what had happened.
Still she was worried that if her parents or Lin got a good look at her or her injuries, now that the swelling was going down the bruises on her throat were beginning to resemble a hand, and the cuts on her shoulder a bite mark, they would piece things together. So she locked out all visitors.
Amir didn't really know how to explain to her parents or Lin that she didn't want them to visit, but he begged them to understand that since she was an adult paitent he had to respect her wishes.
Natalie spent a month and a half in hospital. Amir wanted her to stay much longer, but she began experiencing nightmares, panic attacks, and flashbacks. It got so bad she reached a breaking point and couldn't take it. One night she got out of her bed in a suicide attempt, but her legs gave out before she could get anywhere. The nurses found her huddled in the corner of the room bleeding from ripped stitches and refusing all help. Amir made a deal that if she never attempted to hurt herself again he would let her leave as soon as he could. So Natalie behaved.
Things that she had never delt with before in her life were now any everyday occurance. She had to take a regiment of pills to keep her modified insides working. Pills for pain, pills to keep off infections, and after she had a panic attack when a male nurse touched her, pills for anxiety. They also rearranged the staff so she never came in contact with men outside of Amir.
Dispite his better judgement, he was in a tricky situation trying to balance his friendship with Knox against what he wanted for her as a doctor, Amir kept his word and gave Knox clearence to leave as soon as she was stable enough to be on her own.
Knox left for her apartment in the middle of the night. She took a taxi there to avoid her parents and Lin. She was still covered in bruises, now yellow along with blue. She could only take a few hobbled steps at a time, but she managed to get into her apartment. She locked the door, hobbled over to the couch and fell asleep.
She woke up to paniced texts and missed calls from Lin. She text her back, just to let her know she was alive, then ordered a pizza. She stayed in her isolated bubble, laying on the couch watching children's television shows and eating takeout, for another two weeks.
When Knox finally re-emerged she tried her best to seem like her old self. She met with Lin and visited her parents. She seemed eager to get back to work. Her bosses at RIOT had a meeting to discuss her future there. Her days of undercover work were done, she couldn't be trusted to follow orders, and she wasn't in any state to do it anyway. They talked about letting her go, but Lin and Walter testified on her behaf and saved her job. She was demoted and her pay was cut, but she was still a RIOT agent. It was the best she could have hoped for.
The pay cut was a problem, without the extra pay she couldn't afford her apartment. Lin suggested she take on a roommate for the spare bedroom. Knox agreed and posted signs around town.
One of the first people to respond was a young man named Alice Mercury, who often went by him nickname, Telstar. It took Knox a while to remember that Telstar was who she had run into the morning before everything had happened. His apperence had changed, he seemed messier, both physically and mentally. He had trouble forming full sentences, he would drift off half way through. He would often stare off into space and had trouble compelting simple tasks, but most interesting to Knox, the whites of his eyes were almost completly red.
Dispite Lin's protests, she took him on as a roommate. Telstar was an odd roommate, he often just sat around for days. Then unexpectidly he would disappear for hours, only to come back looking distraught. It took Knox a while to notice. She was having her own problems. Her body was healing, but her mind only seemed to be getting worse. During the day she did her best to surpress it. She used her acting ablilities to hide her pain, everyone told her how amazing she was doing, but she felt like a timebomb. She couldn't have one night stands anymore, she couldn't have any sex anymore, she paniced the moment a man went to touch her. Amir begged her to get help every chance he got, but she ignored him.
She started to develop her own coping methods. She couldn't explain why, because she had never wanted a piercing in her life, but when she walked by a tattoo shop she found herself drawn inside. The sting of the needle, toying with the new metal, took her mind away from other things. It became a pattern that after every bad panic attack she would go see her piercer and get a new hole. Her parents and Lin were very concerned about her changing apperence, but there wasn't anything they could do except encourage her to do other things.
What she really needed was a new project, a new goal to work towards...
