She was still walking seven minutes after she was stabbed. Bright headlights burned her eyes. Honking and casual chatter pierced her head as she staggered up the semi-busy street, ignored by passerbys. To the passing New Yorkers, she seemed nothing more than an early drunk. In the patchy light, her wound was nearly invisible on her black coat. Any red that did escape the thick fabric pooled in her boots.
This step will surely be my last, she thought as her right foot thudded onto the sidewalk. Her body lurched forward, leaning all its weight on one foot. For a moment, she rested like that. Then, her right leg crumpled.
She tipped over and collapsed on the rough pavement.
A wave of searing pain pulsed through her body, and she screamed. She curled around the wound as pain pulsed all around her limbs. Spectators crowded on the sidewalk. Someone took out their cellphone.
Why am I still here? she wondered. Another wave of pain wracked her body. She bunched up the edge of her chocolate-brown coat and pressed it to the oozing hole in her stomach. I'm done dealing with this pain. I'm done. I'm done. I just want to die!
However, some instinct urged her to stay alive, to keep moving. Slowly, her shaking left arm pushed her torso off of the ground. Her weak legs twisted underneath her and pushed up to a half standing position. The arm not clenched over the wound braced her body against a store window. The bloody handprint she left on the window smeared as she stumbled on.
Where am I going? Hesitantly, people stepped forward to stop her, urging her to rest and wait for the ambulance. Why don't I stop? she asked herself. Why can't I stop. Now, she felt weaker and more frail that ever, and the waves of pain occurred more and more often. I can't continue.
Again, she tumbled to one knee. She stared down the road in horror as her legs tried to keep moving. This time though, her brain won, in part due to the weariness brought on by blood loss. Her shaking legs finally gave up. She curled up on the ground and closed her eyes. Ambulance sirens screamed around the corner, growing louder and louder every second.
Her body ached and clenched with pain. Sirens wailed. People yelled and murmured. Cars whooshed by. The noise filtered through her ears, banging on her eardrums when it reached them, and weaving through her brain so that even the pain wasn't as loud and noticeable. Her thin connection to life was almost destroyed by the sudden force of a splitting headache. Damn it, she thought. Why can't I just die!
The current of noise that delved deep into her mind washed away the barriers of pain that had block off the answers she searched for. With a final surge, the wave of confusion, pain, and fear crashed into her conscience. Outside of her head, the ambulance arrived. As the paramedics loaded her into a stretcher, she was thinking more clearly than she had been since she was stabbed. The haze that had hung over her thoughts had been washed away.
Though the people around her rushed around with a frenzied air, she was completely calm. From her mind, she picked out two recent memories. The first simply showed a hard-eyed young man watching as she received a case of papers to be taken home and edited. She couldn't quite recall what the old scientist had said when he handed the papers over. It had been something about the papers' importance, about their potential to change the worlds. For a brief moment, while the ambulance turned a corner, she wondered why he'd said "worlds," but she quickly dismissed it as unimportant.
The second memory was more recent. She watched a steely-eyed man drive his steely knife into her stomach and grab the case of papers. With a jolt, she realized he was the same young man who'd watched her receive the papers.
Heart racing as fast as it was able, she tried to say something to the nurse next to her. However, she wasn't able to force the words out. They were stuck, lodged in her throat. The nurse noticed, and poured a tiny amount of water down her patient's throat, with a warning to take it easy. Then, throat revitalized, she opened her mouth to speak again, but again, the words died.
The words died with her, the bearer of a secret that would never be revealed.