Ariett stumbled onto the landing pad, eyes flickering open only to be faced with a scene far more gruesome than that which Donny had priorly left behind. She quickly averted her gzae skyward, but then slowly forced herself to look back.

Once the vessel had started spinning wildly and people had started dying again, she had been quick to close her eyes and curl up in a ball, hoping that she would not be next, listening in horror to the shrapnel flitting about them.

Three more dead, [i]children[/i] among them.

There were two ways to rationalize such extreme flirtations with death. The first, and [i]most[/i] rational one, is to realize one's own mortality, and that death could strike at any moment. The second, perhaps misguided path, is to focus on one's own survival against all odds, and to infer from that a blessing of luck and safety not granted to the common man.

As Ariett's eyes swept their surroundings, hollow and numb, it was the latter which had rooted itself into her subconscious.

The small woman stepped towards the suited men, her legs weak and uncertain at first but quickly stiffening. Upon reaching them, she heaved Hiecro's body of the man still gifted with the attachment of his head. Without turning her eyes from the prone man as she checked that he was alive, she addressed the man in the wheelchair, who appeared to be the leader of the five—now four. "I don't know what twisted world you've dragged us into, but a lot of people died to get us here, your man included. So I beg of you, please, just tell us what we need to do to get [i]out[/i] of here." Though monotone at first, her words were filled with anger by the time she fell silent.