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Impossible. Now that was the word of the day. So many times she wanted to shout that word and wave her finger, refute everything she was seeing and make it go away. Even if she could shut her eyes and pretend it wasn't happening, the pain kept her grounded in this nightmare.

Seeing him gave her pain.

It took over everything else. Icy pinpricks attacked her ankle and her neck wound, spreading until all her skin was cold with sweat. Her stomach churned and head spiralled with nausea. There wasn't the familiar feeling of acidic heat in the back of her throat. An icicle sat at the base of her tongue. If she moved she was going to hurl up the entire Arctic.

She'd only glimpsed him once before, the man who held her life in his iron hand. When she first approached JAHANNAM for a loan. She'd been young and nervous, and though she was well aware that she was a minnow in a world full of predators, she hadn't learned yet how to navigate that chain. Seeing him on her way out cemented the reality that she could not survive on grit alone, not when [i]that [/i]was what was hunting her. She had to get smarter. If she only hadn’t been so desperate then she might have learned that lesson sooner.

The dying shrieks of the snake raked at her chest. It wasn’t fair. It was a predator, proud and territorial, [i]just hungry[/i], it didn’t deserve this. The stinger in her pocket felt less like a necessity and more like a trophy by the second and it disgusted her. But complicit in its destruction as she was - the way he was brutalising it was on another level. It wasn’t survival, it didn’t respect it, it was [i]cruel…[/i] and it was her future.

She wasn’t thinking about getting away anymore. The tools she’d collected - the axe, the gun, the extinguisher - she might as well have tossed. He just destroyed the monster that took so much of her to even land a strike on, all without bringing a drop of sweat to his brow. She wasn’t thinking about getting away. She was preparing herself. The poison, ankle, even blood coating her top half posed as new threats to her now - [b][i]how will she dance like this?[/i][/b]

Her morbid thoughts were pushed down as her companion moved away from her, leaving her to balance on her own. [i]Stay here?[/i] That chrome junky wasn’t serious…

[color=#A4303F][b]“No… [i]no!”[/i][/b][/color] she gasped as she limped after him, [color=#A4303F][b]“You said… you said we were leaving. You can’t go. Don’t fight him, [i]please [/i]don’t fight him.”[/b][/color] She rambled. Her face was pale like it had been painted with lead. She just missed his hand. Shit! She was losing him. It was so hard to stay mysterious and desirable while trying not to piss yourself in fear. She fell against a wall instead and held in a whimper as her ankle flared up.

[color=#A4303F][b]“I don’t know how to get to Shieldtown,”[/b][/color] she murmured, reaching for him with urging eyes, [color=#A4303F][b]“I don’t know how to… [i]leave [/i]Northbridge. I don’t know if I can.”[/b][/color]