closed for @hunter-nightwind
Tonight hadn't gone to plan in the slightest, not that there was much hope in their feeble plan in the first place, once the group had made it outside of the walls of the compound things began going wrong. Alarms blared which made Maia feel as though her ears were going to bleed from how it distorted through her aids, it threw off her focus and as a result she got separated from the group. She was the youngest but also the one with the most defects as the humans told her, as a result she had more of a connection to their original species than the others, though she didn't fully understand what that meant as they had been experimented on and selectively bred by humans for at least three generations now.
She wanted to go home, that's all she knew and her home wasn't back there behind the tall walls. Her panic as she ran to find somewhere safe and far from there under the full moonlight as she saw flashlights and heard yelling and footsteps chasing her had her heart thumping in her ears, not something she was used to feeling, maybe this was a mistake. But just as she thought that, something caught her eye, it looked like an archway being formed amongst the trees, it almost appeared to be shimmering and calling to her. So she turned with a skid, guards close behind her as she bolted for the archway and ran through it.
Maia didn't stop to look behind her, though it felt quieter and there was no more flashlights lighting the ground in front of her, she didn't even realise the trees she had ran towards were gone. It had been just after moonrise that they had made their escape, timing it for the changing of the guards, something Maia had been in charge of tracking due to her habits of being far more observant than the others.
Eventually she couldn't keep running, her legs shook and her chest burned, she had no choice other than to stop and rest. She saw a large rock and lay on it on her back, staring up into the moon as she tried to control her breathing, everything hurt, her feet were bleeding as she was barefoot. She lay there for almost an hour, her exhaustion causing her to be unable to keep herself awake now that she had come to a stop, as a result she didn't hear guards surrounding her, but when she heard them yell at her in an unknown language, her aids still turned on in her ears, she quickly woke up, these weren't her guards, who were they? She stayed still and quiet, not knowing what they were saying to her but she was scared and knew she had no strength left to try and run, internally crying to the moon for help.
