She is not dainty.
Small, yes; her arms are thin and he is sure that he could fit his entire fist around one of her biceps. Despite this—and despite the fact that his fingers are long and narrow—there is a certain strength in her, he thinks.
When the machine breaks; when it explodes and pops, she does not scream. The red-haired girl, the one with the braids, screeches; grates on his ears like… like screaming, he supposes.
But her—she merely flinches and wipes the blood from her face. Or oil, or—or maybe it's something else, but she wipes it from her cheeks and she keeps working on the generator. She does what must be done, and he can respect that.
He wonders if she will scream when he appears from thin air. It is always a shock for them, for the survivors. They hear him breathing, he thinks. Perhaps a deep rumbling from where his lungs used to be, but not quite breathing, not really. They hear breathing and they're afraid, surely. They are on their guard, but they still scream when he is there where he wasn't before.
They scream and scream and scream, until the Entity takes them high, high above and they can scream no longer… at least, not where he can hear them.
Will she scream? There is only one way to find out, he decides.
He no longer hears the bell; merely feels it as it vibrates inside of him, changes the outside. He can feel the cool wind on his flesh—gray now, and it used to be brown, still darker than hers. She is very pale, like clouds, maybe, or—
She does not scream. Her eyes grow wide and she fumbles a moment with the flashlight by her side; squeezes it tighter, then takes off running. The other girl lets out another shriek and darts away, opposite of her.
It is hard to see her with that blasted hat on; she blends into the trees and only when she passes in front of a particularly bright car—though they are all dull now; rusted and ruined, ruined, ruined—can he see her.
He trails behind her almost like a dog. She is a bone and he is a beast, wanting to gnaw the meat off of her skeleton. Yet part of him—a part of him that is supposed to be long dead and hopeless—wants her to make it out of here. She has worked so hard, he thinks to himself. She has not screamed yet; she deserves it.
But something inside of him urges him to take Azarov's Skull and use it to bash in her own skull; beat her down and then hook her up, so the Entity can take her high, high, high.
She dodges once, twice. He grows frustrated and lets out a feral growl when she drops a fucking palette on his shoulders.
Philip says let her live; Entity says make her pay.
She tries to make it through a broken window. He grabs the back of her shirt—a flimsy thing which surely offers no warmth—and hauls her back to his side. She cries out, but it is not a scream.
Before the Entity takes her, he decides, he will make her scream.
I will be adding more short drabbles eventually. They probably won't be connected, but who knows.