PMOCT- Round 2, Part 2

When she lifted her head to find the blue-eyed young man, her first reaction was to try and find a good excuse for her lurking in an alley. Then she realized that the young man didn't look in the least surprised to see her there. He looked…Sorrel couldn't decide what he looked.
And then he half raised the book, the bull-head creature partially covered by his fingers, and Sorrel realized it was the boy from the restaurant. The next second, and she realized something else.
"I should have guessed why that cashier suggested I get this one," the young man said meanwhile, almost grinning.
Sorrel blinked. His face didn't look right, now that she saw it close up. It shifted and blurred ever so slightly, especially when she looked at it out of the corner of her eyes. It was like…it couldn't figure out how to be a face.
"It's the kind of thing an Author would do," he continued, "they think they're being subtle. Yours, I assume?" His eyes were still blue.
Sorrel recalled her voice and stood straighter. "Osteo?"
"Oh darn, you found me," he tossed the little book into the trash bin.
Sorrel watched him cautiously for a moment. "You don't seem very good at this escaped-prisoner business," she said.
"Oh?"
"That was a lot of blood you left back there. Though you don't seem any worse for the wear." She had to keep talking as her fingers inched towards the black panel on the metal bracelet. She didn't dare look down at her progress. Working for Minos or not, she thought to herself, she was still in a narrow alley with a creature that she knew was dangerous. The stun grenades were still in her backpack and, unfortunately, that meant she didn't have any better ideas.
Osteo jammed his hands in his pockets and appraised her with a half bored, half contemptuous air. "I have a pretty good medic on hand. Besides, the plot needed a new direction," he shrugged, and even the shrug looked…wrong. Half-baked, Sorrel decided. "I made one and waited to see who would show up."
"And who did show up?" Closer. Getting closer.
"A lot of police. Scientist people. Swarms of reporters." He leaned forward ever so slightly. "But I'm pretty sure you're the one the story cares about. You're another protagonist, right? Kind of…shorter than I was expecting."
Sorrel cocked her head. Had the virus made him mad? "I don't know what you're talking about."
"You're one of the big baddie's prisoners. Don't lie, I see the Yarn Ball. So now the question is whether we're going to fight or do another collaboration or just chat it up in a gross alleyway." He said all this in the longest drawl Sorrel had heard, as if the energy to speak properly couldn't possibly be dredged for her mere benefit.
Almost there.
Then Osteo's eyes drifted down and he saw what she was doing with her hands. His face crumpled into something resembling surprise, then anger. He struck out. He knocked her hand off course and before she could process the strike, Sorrel found herself with one wrist in a painful lock, and a single bone claw, half-pushed from one of Osteo's fingers, pressed against her throat. So much for "do not engage in combat."
"That looked sneaky." He looked at her, his blue eyes sharp, the rest of his face shifting and wrong and inhuman. His voice had dropped the lazy drawl as abruptly as if he had dropped a mask. "Mind telling me what you were just doing?" Sorrel stifled the lurch of panic as the claw drew a tiny bubble of hot blood.
Without enough planning, Sorrel brought her knee jerking up to connect solidly with Osteo's groin. Osteo made a strangled sound and his claw slacked from her throat slightly. Sorrel wrenched her free elbow up to crack against his chin, then brought it across his face, missing his neck as she had intended and instead grazing his cheek harmlessly.
Still, Osteo's grip on her wrist loosened enough for her to pull away. Sorrel tried to duck as his claws shot further from his hands. But it wasn't by enough, and she felt a sharp pain across her face. Then Osteo made a low sweeping motion for her torso, and that was when Sorrel realized that Minos had sent her after Osteo with more than grenades for protection.
Osteo's bone claws, rather than tearing the blue jacket, merely skittered across its surface as if it were made of bricks. Sorrel didn't have time to ponder over what had just happened because at that moment, a sudden buzz sprang through the air like a mass of hornets made of lightning.
Both Osteo and Sorrel ducked abruptly, then peered up to see two, three, five figures across the street. Four men held what looked like guns. Standing among them was the blond woman from the restaurant, her face beautiful and far too sharp. Sorrel only had enough room in her brain to dredge up some token shock at the woman.
Osteo remained crouched uncertainly. The buzz came again, and Sorrel suddenly stumbled with a sharp bark of pain. She felt something like a massive bruise across her right shoulder, but even as the entire area throbbed dizzily, she sensed that her jacket had absorbed the worst of the damage. The four men and the young woman began to cross the street swiftly. They were cut off briefly as a large automobile roared past, and Osteo took the chance to back up, grabbing Sorrel's sleeve on his way to the dead-end of the alley.  
"What are you doing?" she shouted as they jammed against the back wall, wincing at her shoulder along with (she may as well kill two birds with one stone) the cuts along her cheek and nose that were dripping with blood.
Osteo ignored her at first, too busy fumbling for his pockets with his awkward claws and looking exasperated. "If this is what I think it is," he said half to her, half to himself, "then we'll probably get out of this with mere seconds to spare. I think." He ducked just as another buzzing snapped through the dank air.
Then the first man, his head bald as a boiled egg, was upon them and Osteo abandoned his pockets to slash at the man's chest. "Look for a way out!" he shouted as the man fell back, a stain of dark red blossoming across his shirt.
"Well that may be an issue, seeing as you dragged us right into the dead end!" Sorrel bellowed back.
"That door!" Osteo snapped back as he sprang up, kicked the man to the ground and launched himself off of the wall of the alleyway. He moved in the small, narrow area like a fish moved in water. His body writhed and ricocheted, and before Sorrel knew it, he had managed to leave a considerable blow on a second attacker's head. The man stumbled from the impact, but rather than slumping to the ground, he roared a curse and swung his gun up to aim at Osteo. His companions shouted to him, but another buzzing burst in the alley. Osteo grunted, but didn't fall. His skin rippled with whatever bone-shifting was going on beneath it as he descended upon the group with a guttural snarl.
Sorrel wrenched her eyes from the sight to indeed find a metal door tucked in the brickwork beside her. It might have been red once, but rust and grime and graffiti had long since made it as gray as the sidewalk and buildings. Sorrel grasped at the handle, trying to ignore the sounds of fighting just a few paces from where she stood. She wrenched at the corroded handle and sent a silent prayer to whatever divine power was listening as the door popped open.
She returned her attention to Osteo's one-against-four campaign. It was not going well, and Sorrel couldn't imagine that the effects of their own scuffle were helping much. "Hey!" Sorrel roared to Osteo, "get your butt in here!" Sorrel lunged into the dark space, and a second later had to throw herself out of the way when Osteo's body hurled past her and collided heavily into a shelf that, until now, had sat unseen in the darkness. Sorrel scrambled to a stand and crashed the door close. He fumbling fingers discovered the deadbolt and twisted it with a thick clunk. A second later the door bucked and echoed with several harried voices. Sorrel gasped three breaths, watching the door intently. But the bolt held.
"See?" Osteo's panting voice echoed in the darkness, "mere seconds." Sorrel glanced back to him, then realized that she could make out his outline as he moved to a shaky stand. She squinted around the room and found a tiny, dusty window hiding behind a high stack of crates. Sorrel took away the crates to peer into the alley. Osteo followed suite and they both silently observed the men and blond woman huddled in a group. The woman was speaking on a little metal device.
"Who do you think they are?" Sorrel asked.
"I can guess," Osteo muttered, but didn't offer what this guess was. Sorrel turned away and inspected their temporary stronghold. The room was high and echoing, outlines of shelves disappearing in neat rows deeper into the room's depths. A warehouse, perhaps. She wondered how many other doors there were, and whether they were locked. Yet, she thought as she glanced out at their attackers, they weren't exactly running off to find an alternate entrance into the room. It looked more like they were waiting.
Sorrel sat heavily on one of the crates she had moved, and it was only then that she realized her legs felt like heated jelly. Osteo deserted the window as well and sat on a second crate an arm's length from Sorrel, as if they hadn't been ready to kill one another a mere matter of minutes before. "So," he placed his clawed hands in his lap and looked to her, "I have a proposition." Sorrel cocked her head and waited. "Obviously those goons are the third party that's going to force us enemies to collaborate," Osteo stated. "Whatever. So I say while we have a breather, we call Dionysus, get rid of those guys, and then go on our merry separate ways. Frankly, I'm getting bored with this plot."
Sorrel shook her head, trying to sift through half of what he'd just said. "I can't let you walk off."  
Osteo made a strange face, then both Sorrel and Osteo straightened and fell silent as a voice came through the dusty window.
"I request entrance." The voice sounded odd, neither male nor female, and not even human. Sorrel felt she had heard that voice before.
"Labrys," she suddenly breathed, scrambling to a stand. Osteo frowned, then his expression cleared and he nodded.  
Sorrel went to the door and called out, "What do you want?"
"To negotiate."
Sorrel paused. Then, thinking quickly, she swung the backpack from her shoulders and pulled out the little stun grenades. She replaced the backpack, ignored Osteo's suspicious expression, and unlocked the deadbolt. The two grenades sat clenched in her hand.
The door opened creakily and she caught sight of the men and the blond woman. Then a new figure was there and Sorrel stepped back to allow Labrys to enter.