It was electricity.
The currents were rapid and running amuck from a single slit. Bolts of lightning ravaged her veins when the slit broadened itself to the bone. The entirety of her form succumbed to the pain she bore with blood between her teeth, her stomach being drummed against a broad shoulder and the torrent of fluids running down her arm pulling sight from her eyes. The screaming amidst her was nothing but a cloudy whisper in her ears and her arm did not drop; the thing was working together with the pleading voice that berated her every action with words she didn't recognize.
The thundering of his steps stopped pounding pressure into her but an array of voices from every which way kept shrieking what she thought was her name. The stop was hasty enough to almost knock her from his grasp but that did not stop the second barrage. Hurried and sloppy, the mark almost missed, her bones weren't brittle enough for the attack to be anything but like plunging a butterknife into a raw wound. A bone cracked under the strain with the piton point of the blade she held so doubtfully in her hands wedged into the marrow.
His hand muffled her scream.
The thoughts in his head were so jumbled and torn between her requests and his demands. The enemy was closing in, tracking them religiously, and despite her dutiful attempt to help only hindered their escape. The most he could do was shush her to hide them from certain death while she killed herself in his arms.
Still, his entire form tensed when her scream fired hot air against his palm. With his body overheated and blood coursing with unstoppable vigor, he didn't know if he had the means to go on whilst nursing a broken toy he couldn't bear to throw away.
He felt a sudden jolt when her waning grip withdrew the blade, a splatter of blood flecking the puddles that nested in their footprints. When she had the energy to open her eyes, a second set of tracks crisscrossed in a merging overlay. Her thoughts dawdled on and on as she tasted the blood that sloshed her lips when they began to move again. At this point, she was starting to become nauseated but her eyes unconsciously followed that second set of footprints.
"The dog!" She exclaimed weakly.
"What dog?" Another outcry drowned out her voice, coming to another halt while a set of curious eyes looked for this animal at breakneck speed.
A dog. It wandered aimlessly amongst the trash with a face full of blood it had obtained from being too inquisitive. The sudden screech jerked its eyes to meet his. The burdened boy was stilled by its beady gaze, man and beast starting to scare each other by just being there.
"The dog..." She said again.
His mind was so conflicted by the subliminal messages she sent him and with no given motive, he attacked it. Void of all reason, he scared the animal into dashing off.
"The dog..." But the voice still came.
Another crack pressured itself into his back when she handled him as a cutting board. Her shriek only held behind the bars of her closed lips and clenched teeth, absolutely losing her breath and her stomach embedded up to her spine against him. The skin now holding onto the remains of her limb, the bones no longer attached. An eternity of blood soddened the ground and destroyed his clothes and she still cried between gasps.
"The dog..."
"Why? What do you want with the dog?"
"Get the dog..."
It was a start.
With his legs now feeble as rubber, he had no choice but to follow the second splatter of red that scribed itself into the dirt. The animal was distracted with another parade of trash cans and its litter, but the boy's mad dash frightened it into making a run for it. The woman in his care still gasped and vied as the coerce pursuit cut what was left of the limb hanging off a string of flesh. The arm fell on the ground and finger painted a muss of blood onto the street.
He didn't look back. The thick liquid running freely down his back and it scorched his skin just to know. The dog looked for him, though, and when it was cornered it turned around, driven by a pure carnal sensation to taste blood itself. The animal threw itself at the pair only to be roughly gripped at the muzzle by the boy's waiting hand and it writhed in his grasp while he dragged it inch by inch back to the arm, abiding a servant's orders as she whispered them hoarsely and staggeringly into his ear.
He did not want to set her down, but torn between her commands and his mind set, he reluctantly obeyed the logical option. The dog was still fiercely defending itself, would having snapped at his trembling fingers if he could open his mouth while he stared at the object of their bitter glory. The mutt continued to reposition itself as he struggled to peel his coat from his body, sticky with blood, and ripping a line of fabric from the bottom with only one hand... whilst watching his companion struggle with the same plight. Yet, she still helped. Fighting consciousness, she pinned the dog with a hand over its mouth.
With triumph, the dog was roughly jerked to him. The arm lay motionless... leaking all its contents onto the road and soon it was all over the enraged animal.
He had to untwine her fingers from around the beast's jaw and in a blink, it was gone.
There was so much lament pouring from him. Not even given the chance to mourn the loss she refused to cry over. She was dry-eyed, albeit a bit glassy-eyed from her blood strewn over the streets.
He looked for their means of escape once again. The improvision having shattered the amount of time they had left to flee, and his eyes burned into the ground and all around him while she struggled to sit up.
Then he saw it.
"Lan Fan." His voice growled, immediately taking action to shake her from her daze.
In response, she looked at him.
"Can you stand?"
She interpreted it as a command.
A manhole rested no more than a foot away and his seething fingers gripped the gaps, tearing off the lid with one heaving tug. He guided her to the edge where her remaining arm was spread and locked about his neck before he jumped in. The gravity of it all extracting an ocean. She took some time to recover, and in that he recovered his coat, along with the cover he sloppily dragged back over the manhole.
Eventually, they ended up upstream into the sewers. That jacket tightly woven and covering the stump of an absent limb. The space for them on the outskirts had quickly declined and her body supported by his hurried trudge began to grind her injured flank into the wall. They had no choice but to exit into the waters.
"Lan Fan." He said again, the tone in his voice building a barrier between them. "I have to go. I promised."
She stared, then nodded as his grasp evaded her and she staggered to stand on her own. Both of their breath was hot against each other and he took a step back.
"I'll be back." He then said worriedly upon examining the reality of the situation. Both of their forms now caked in blood, not that the bandage he'd placed on her helped any. "I have to go." He repeated. "I'll be back."
Taking another step back, and then another, his eyes continued to dawn on the responsibility he'd place on himself as she continued to stare dumbly at the duty she'd failed to protect. Neither one of them able to look away first... until a distant rumble of the voice he'd promised to aid sounded from beyond the manhole above them. She then turned away, jumping into the current and wading with the water against her. He fought with the grimy latter, the cover not budging until he had kicked it open. Waylaid gasps and shouting ensued from the outside and when she turned around to see the source of their astonishment, he was gone.