Survival

WARNING: Graphic depiction of violence, depiction of sexual assault and murder. Please read with caution

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Having two parents that worked for SVT wasn’t always easy. Evangaline’s father worked exclusively in the security department but her mother was a walking, talking genius. She was one of their best coders but she also worked in the robotics department headhunting the best and brightest that Earth had to offer. Some days it was too much for Evangaline because every time she met someone her mother worked with they expected great things from her as well.

Nevermind the fact that Evangaline had no interest in coding or robotics. She loved art and design. She’d been drawing for as long as she could remember. It was everything to her and her interest in technology only extended to the point that it would enhance her art. She loved the realism you could get with digital medium.

Being the child of two stars at SVT also hadn’t really helped her on the friends front so she mostly kept to herself any time they got to a new place. Her father was one of the best at maintaining building security and so there had been a few times where he’d been used to push people out that weren’t performing up to standard. The children of those people generally attended the same schools she did and weren’t very forgiving.

This new school was no different. In fact, it was a little worse because this was her senior year. She had scholarships to several different art schools around the world just waiting for her, and her parents had both pushed out people that had been underperforming. Thankfully she still had Coda. They talked every day and it was such a huge relief.

One of the boys at her school was the son of the former head of security. He was obnoxious and loud and always trying to make Evangaline look like a fool in the two classes they shared. It was frustrating beyond belief for her because she didn’t enjoy talking in front of people anyway. What was even more frustrating was that every time she proved to be more than what the boy expected he would be twice as vicious the rest of the day. Worse, he would seek her out just to berate her for her parent’s abilities, as if any of them were responsible for his parent’s ineptitude.

He’d followed her home twice and both times she’d reported him to building security and both of her parents. His mother had been fired as a result because she’d tried to act as though the behavior was normal and entirely acceptable. SVT wasn’t perfect but they did expect morality, on some level, out of their employees.

She’d also asked her parents if they would mind transferring again because the animosity from the boy had only gotten worse after his mother was fired. He’s actually started being physically aggressive with her and Evangaline had reported his behavior to the school on three separate occasions. It further alienated her from the other students but that was honestly the least of her concerns. He’d made serious verbal threats against her twice and she was starting to fear for her own safety. Something was wrong with him and Evangaline wanted no part of it.

She’d actually just started working on some projects for an application packet to a school she was really invested in attending because they’d let her do it remotely which meant she could also take paid projects at the same time. Her mother had helped her find a small apartment for herself in the purple district that they agreed to help her pay rent on while she was in school as long as she kept her GPA up.

She was chatting with Coda in DMs and listening to music while she worked, completely lost in her own little world. Her mother was out of town on conference and her father was working late because there had been a few attempts at breaching security in the last week.

Coda was telling her about a new robotics project she was working on. One of the kids on her track team had been injured and the prosthetic that they’d been given was garbage so Coda, being the absolutely wonderful person she was, had taken it upon herself to improve it. She was getting ready to tease Coda for being a real life paladin when someone grabbed her from behind and slammed her face into her desk.

Things went in and out for her after that but she knew that there was someone tugging at her and moving her. She tried to struggle but her limbs felt heavy and she was fairly certain that her head was bleeding. She pushed as best she could but the hands kept grabbing at her. She started kicking and someone was screaming but she couldn’t tell if it was her or whoever was attacking her.

Suddenly a hand was trying to cover her mouth and she bit down as hard as she could. She felt blood fill her mouth but she didn’t let go. There was a hit to the side of her head and she saw stars. When she regained herself the person was on top of her moving and she felt searing pain in her lower body.

The second she realized what was happening she started fighting harder. She reached for anything she could find because as out of it as she was whoever was doing this wasn’t getting away with it. She started thrashing and moving away as best she could despite the nausea and the spots dancing in her vision.

She apparently fought hard enough because they got knocked off of her for a moment and she kicked out at them. She felt it connect but she wasn’t sure where it hit. She immediately started reaching for something heavy so throw or hit them with. It took a moment and she felt them tugging at her again but she managed to get hold of one of the figures she’d collected over the years. She grabbed it with both hands, taking a chance, and swung it back at them. When it connected she made sure she hit there again. She just kept going until the other person’s grip slipped from her entirely.

She immediately grabbed her phone and ran to the hallway bathroom because it had the strongest lock. She called her father and then took a shower to try and clean herself off. When her father called her to tell her that the building security was coming up she ran to her room and put clean clothes on not even looking to see if her attacker was still there or conscious.

Security barged in and took charge of the situation. By the time her father made it back to their building she was sitting at the table with a medic looking her over and determining if she’d need stitches for the gash on her forehead. She winced every time they touched her and as soon as she saw her father she was out of the chair crying on him. He held her close and demanded a report. No one had told her anything about who had attacked her or why they were still in her room instead of being escorted from the building in cuffs.

Then she heard someone say that they were dead and her world sort of went in and out of focus after that. She remembered her father moving her to the living room and sitting with her while she tried to focus on anything at all, besides the fact that she had killed someone.

Months later they were in a new place, she’d found out it had been that same boy. None of it made sense to her but she was on prescription marijuana at that point and she’d immediately started taking self defense classes. She’d told Coda the entire story, even though no one else knew that the boy had sexually assaulted her. She hadn’t even told her parents and the security team had only asked her once if he’d done so. When she’d said no they’d stopped that line of questioning immediately.

Coda hadn’t treated her any differently after the confession and her parents had made sure the story never hit the news. SVT had helped them bury the incident and they’d already been in the process of relocating so her mother could head up a new robotics division with her own team anyway. Life wasn’t perfect but ET was coping as best he could. He refused to call herself Evangaline anymore, clearly it had been a perceived weakness and that wasn’t something she’d make the mistake of again.

She’d been passing herself off as a boy online to avoid harassment for so long that Coda had created a voice changing program she could use on comms. What was the harm in doing it in real life as well, and if ET never left the house it was even less time spent lying.