"And all the people say: 'You can't wake up, this is not a dream: you're part of a machine, you are not a human being.'

. . .

I think there's a flaw in my code, these voices won't leave me alone.

Well my heart is gold and my hands are cold."

~Halsey, Gasoline

Marie coughed into her homemade mask, composed of nothing more than the collar of her hoodie secured over her lips. Her one good eye was watering from the noxious air of the dump-site, and her nose was still somewhat exposed. She was careful to breathe through her mouth alone, knowing that a single whiff of the radioactive trash-site would singe her sinuses to hell and back. She huffed after her lungs and throat calmed, making sure she was silent as she could be, cursing the fact that she had to trespass in a glorified landfill. She wouldn't have to if her bank account wasn't all too drained for her to pick up quality parts at an actual shop. Then again, if the parts weren't disgustingly overpriced, she wouldn't have to lament her bank account either.

When she heard a rustle, she sped up her stride, ducking around a massive trash-heap, her golden orb sharply picking out anything potentially usable as well as any threats. Occasionally, she swept her hand up to clean some stray dust off of her cheek, trying to remain alert. Marie grumbled under her breath about Baba Yaga Enterprise's monopoly on anything technological, making it impossible to buy anything without sacrificing your arm for it, but she continued to skid through the polluted junkyard smoothly.

It was, without doubt, a Thursday, judging from how much of a graveyard the place was. The guards, all two of them, seemed hammered out of their minds. Certainly inebriated enough not to notice a petite blonde in all black tip-toeing through the refuse, which was all the better for her. If she was caught, she didn't even want to think of the repercussions she'd face. The rest of the group, too, would take the fall if anyone even began to suspect that they were repurposing parts that were meant for recycling.

Marie was nervous about it, as she always was, her stomach knotting into a noose at the very thought of having to face Arachne Gorgon's countless attorneys. Just three years ago, Kami was dragged away from little Maka, all for having the audacity to do what Marie was doing now: hunting. Being good at her job.

Marie spotted a chunk of gleaming chrome, bright amongst the rust, and her heart flopped, eye widening. It would be a good day, then. She hoped. Anything too big was useless: it would be too old of a model to do anything with if that were case. She took a sharp breath in, holding it while she bent down to where the part was, all the way at the bottom of the heap, her hands shaking as she tried to locate the number on it.

'798-Nagatsu,' she read, her eye drooping in disappointment.

No good. Now-a-days, Nagatsukasa parts were all old and incompatible, after one of the androids, Matsamune, absolutely malfunctioned and killed who bought him. Almost turned on his sister model as well. If it was a 900 level part, she could at least bring it to Azusa to try to format it for Tsubaki, but anything under 800 was sure to reject. Whatever they got out of it would probably be rust and dust and brittle disappointment. It frustrated her that Tsubaki was desperately in need of some maintenance, but there was no one selling the proper parts for her.

After they helped her escape, she became one of the most valuable cyborgs on the market if found, last Marie heard. The girl could take care of herself, but she shouldn't have to. Marie clicked her tongue, disgusted at the thought.

She felt her jaw grind as her teeth grit together, but remembered what Azusa told her about getting too emotional about the 'Cyborg Situation'. Marie brought her hand to her cheek again, wiping with the inner sleeve of her jacket and straightened, turning around to try to find something else. Everything in the site was mostly rusted to copper, utterly unusable. Besides which, it ended this way more often than not. She'd have to tell Azusa that there was nothing this time. Maybe it was picked clean by someone earlier. Marie'd have to bring up a change of scheduling, again.

If only they'd listened to her and let her go earlier, two weeks ago. Justin was never wrong about his tip-offs: they would have been able to find that box of auto-chips. Stripping them of their serial numbers and models would have been easy for Spirit: the man had a gift for ruining and repurposing. It should have been theirs. But no. Azusa just had to insist that going on a Monday was all too dangerous.

Of course it was. That's when everything new got dumped. It would probably be crawling with Vultures. Marie tugged her collar up higher on her face, breaking into a jog in order to get to her break-in slot. She barely had thirty minutes in the section she was in before Azusa's desensitizing device would flicker out and die. Sometimes, she wished they lived back in the old days, when you could just cut a line in a fence and slide on through. None of this holographic wall bullshit that burned you to a crisp if you didn't have a genius around who could make a system-freezing device with some bubble-gum wrappers and a singular screw-driver.

But that wasn't Marie's business. Marie's business was finding her way to trash-pile number six and running through the small slit in the Holo-wall before she got murdered. She squinted her eye as she sped up to a sprint, unknowing of what time it was. Any Gorgon patented technological devices within six feet of that damn wall would trigger an alarm: something Azusa hadn't been able to work her way around. And it just wasn't worth it to construct a watch since Marie had an eerily good radar for when she had to get in and out of a situation.

And she should, besides. Marie'd been trespassing since she got that damn job under Arachne, working in Giriko's division to synthetically create emotions in emotionless cyborgs. She hated working there. No one seemed to care in the slightest for the automatons they brought in, blank faced and disposable.

Marie's fist clenched while she made her way past trash-heap 9, characterized by the massive, rusted gear sticking out of it, caked in spiderweb's silk. She was close, then. She made sure to squint her eye even more. She learned her lesson after the first time she went full-sprint through the murky atmosphere and got paint-chips in her eye.

That wasn't the best doctor's appointment of her life. Mira'd been all too concerned for Marie to relax. And for good reason: she lost it, her eye, in the end.

Finally, after what felt like all too long, she spotted the flickering, luminescent wall with just the barest tear in it, off to her left. She swiveled her head, bringing her hood down closer to her face and her collar up closer to her mouth. She bit down on the fabric, knowing the fumes were most noxious the closer you got to the threshold.

Two months with bronchitis taught her that particular tidbit.

Quickly, ducking her head and curling her spine in, she sidled close to the pile so she could observe where the guards were. Talking. Loudly. She could almost smell the booze through the thick, disgusting air. Though, it was clearly a lie. Smelling anything in that place was near impossible.

The instant they turned around, swaying and staggering, she broke into a gallop and dove through the tear, making sure that she twisted her body so her rather flared out hips wouldn't catch on what was left intact. She barely made a single sound: certainly not enough to alert anyone.

With shaking hands, still holding her breath, she grasped hold of the device Azusa made and stuffed it into her pocket. She knew she barely had thirty seconds to get out while the camera pointed at her was still flickering, frozen on a previous image. After that, she'd be on her own.

She smelled disgusting. She knew she did. The streets would definitely be fuller after the theft a few weeks ago, but that was fine: Blair's Pumpkin Pub wasn't too far away and the woman was always happy to let her in to change in the bathrooms. That, and all her staff was more than happy to spray her down with some overpowering perfume that smelled of vanilla soap doused in Vodka, easily masking the smell of decaying chemicals on her skin and clothes.

It was nice to have a place she could dispose of her toxic threads at, especially since it was located so closely to the site. Blair let her have a key after one too many scares fumbling with the fingerprint identification. Risa and Arisa made fun of her for days, that she had to carry around a key as though she were from the Stone Age, but Blair was too nervous that another close call where there were sirens blaring and Marie was wasting precious seconds trying to get to safety could mean the end. For all of them. The concern was more than welcome: the fact that Blair was like family to Maka certainly helped things along.

Marie had to make double-time to the bar, everyone was more cautious after that theft. She was lucky security was still so sparse. She heard at work that they were trying to beef it up, but the police were fighting that too much caution would wear everyone down.

Marie swallowed hard as she made her way to the thresholds: nothing but useless barb wire put up for show, though it wasn't going to intimidate any Vulture that had more than five months of experience. Or anyone who knew anyone with more than that. And Marie was a veteran at what she did.

So she clenched her fists, trying to calm her shaking and jogged off, eye still watering, making good time.

Empty handed, again.

Spirit was smoking by the time she got to Azusa's house. Justin wasn't around, too busy sleeping off three nights worth of insomnia at his own home, something that seemed to be happening more and more often since the crackdown. Spirit dropped the smoke down onto the floor, immediately stomping over it with his boot and turned without saying a word to her, slinking into the house.

Marie sighed, following after him. She closed the door with a soft click, but Azusa was already rushing into the living room, her perfect eyes skimming over her friend, trying to see how the run went without asking. She must have realized, because her shoulders slumped, just barely, and she just flopped onto her couch.

"Nothing?" Spirit asked, sitting down on the armrest and absentmindedly playing with the sleeve of his police-jacket. Marie fished out the device Azusa gave her, useless for anything other than scrap metal, and set it onto the table, sitting on the loveseat across from them.

"There was a Nagatsu-part."

Spirit looked at the ceiling. "Those always seem to be floating around."

"Yeah. . ." Marie responded, running her thumb over her well-scrubbed lips. A bath in a sink was never ideal, but she supposed she'd just have to get over it. "Any news from the station?"

"They want to have a meeting for a few hours tomorrow."

"About the parts?"

Spirit nodded. "Whoever got them fucked everyone else. Should've just taken a few, so no one missed them. Idiots."

"The question is why anyone would throw them away in the first place," Marie threw back

"Well, no ideas from the station. Any conspiracy theories involving Baba Yaga?"

"Nothing. Giriko was baffled," Marie informed, setting her elbows on her thighs and leaning forward. "No news from Sid or Mira about who it could have been?"

"I'm more concerned about what they'd do with the damn things," Spirit commented. "There's gotta be something wrong with them if they're thrown away. They're too new a model to be recycled for scrap."

Azusa looked over at Spirit, elbowing him in the side, huffing. "It was probably an accident. Some incompetence that let perfectly good chips go to the trash. Why else would anyone notice?"

Marie's lower lip dropped down a bit, the realization washing over her. "Right. . .right! No one ever does inventory on the dump-sites."

Spirit's brows met. "But no one reported anything."

"B.Y.E doesn't have to report anything," Marie spat. "They're exempt from the law so long as they throw enough money at it. I wouldn't be surprised if a report conveniently showed up later."

Spirit chewed his lip, closing his eyes. "Yeah. Yeah," he agreed, sounding weary. He'd been pulling all too many overtime shifts recently. It was lucky they got him over today: it was just a shame it proved fruitless.

"Is there any good news?" Marie asked, determined to turn the conversation.

The silence in the room spoke louder than anything else ever could have.

Evidence File #11 for Case 3419

October 7th

I hate doing nothing. Baba Yaga doesn't take up enough time to keep me from thinking. If only everyone had listened to me and let me go on that run a few days earlier.

The schedule needs to change. We haven't been keeping up with demand enough.

Honestly, I don't care how tired I am. If an extra run can help even one more person, I'm ready to do that for them.

Tsubaki sent me a postcard a few days ago. She's finding the modifications effective. No one has even looked at her funny since she finally managed to human pass.

It's people like her that remind me why I do what I do.

I wish I could give her more than good luck. I wish I could do more.

Azusa wasn't comfortable with sending Marie on another run for a good two weeks, especially with the reports Spirit gave them about how security was being upped. It was a bitter pill because they all knew Baba Yaga wasn't trying to protect their trash. They were just trying to make it worse on the resistance groups. The actual parts themselves weren't the issue.

The resistance groups that sold the repurposed parts on a black market were barely on their radar: it was the people who used those parts for repairing undocumented cyborgs that really concerned Baba Yaga.

They were the ones who couldn't be bought with money. They were the ones who burned for change. And that bubbled in Marie's bones.

She never wanted to be an engineer for Baba Yaga. As a girl, when cyborgs were first being churned out, she had stars in her eyes from how incredible they looked. Back then, she couldn't have known the ugly truth about the human experimentation. About how the founder of, what had then been called Gorgon Enterprises, would lure people in with the promise of monetary compensation, only to sedate them, to change their skeletal structure, to hardwire them.

No, back then, Marie had nothing in her head of resistance groups or protests. She only thought the way chrome met skin was beautiful, the glint of the glass eyes, the slightly mechanical smile.

She'd wanted to be a nurse, at first.

When she found out that a nurse for cyborgs was uncalled for, that it was foolish, stupid, naïve ("Oh, Marie. They don't deserve help"), she took the only other route possible, as an engineer.

It was too sour to realize that her plans had failed her, that there she was, a girl who once had two sparkling eyes that saw a future of tending to, forced to watch torture in action.

It was sick.

And it felt wrong to sit about and twiddle her thumbs, to make the commute to Baba Yaga Labs and take notes about Giriko's "experiments". Marie was sick to death of seeing innocent people strapped to operating tables, and whether water or rust or electric shock, she felt each pinprick of pain echo in her as she watched them. There were pain receptors, but no sorrow. There was agony but no fear. And she'd stare as their mouths would barely open in a scream they didn't have the means to make, their coding practically weeping on the screen, begging for mercy until—

Marie always had to swallow down her tears, both mournful and furious, so that when Arachne walked in, her lacy black fan lazily held in front of her face, Marie could report to the black-haired woman with a voice that was steady.

That was why, though she was rummaging through glorified trash, she finally felt clean again. Nothing could really scrub away the horror of working in Baba Yaga, the frustration, the absolute yearning to throw Giriko to the side and cradle the prone body strapped to the table, to do something other than bullshit undercover work that was mostly patience and compliance than true rebellion.

Out in the rubbish heaps, she knew she was making a difference. Even if she came back empty handed, she could rest with the knowledge that she tried.

This time, she had to peek around every corner, her body entirely cloaked in black, new, disposable clothes. It wasn't the same hoodie-collar over her mouth, but it was practically identical, and her blonde hair had already come loose from the elastic, settling over her shoulders, making for a sharp contrast. It was the only part of her out of place among the rusted metal. It was stupid of her to have her hair uncovered, and she considered pulling her hood up and risking the chance of blunting her hearing.

However, when she stepped forward and heard the crunch with barely a second to spare, she thanked her instincts for not hindering her hearing, and she hopped backward with an agility that no one would ever expect from her. The air in her lungs felt stale as she held her breath, crouching down and sliding close to the massive heap of garbage to her side as she listened in to the footsteps of the guards patrolling the area. She slapped her palm over her mouth, stifling any sound she was going to make by breathing, and made sure to hold each muscle taut while the three walked past.

From her spot close to the floor, she could only make out their boots, high, tall things that came to over their knees, with their coarse pants tucked in. She'd seen the outfit too many times when Spirit was still working those shifts, before he got promoted at the station.

She didn't have the time for them to mosey along so lazily, and she resisted huffing and rolling her eye as her heartbeat thudded in her ears.

"It's bullshit," one of the female guards said, barely muffled through her gas-mask, practically crawling by. "It's empty as shit out here."

"Aw, calm yer tits, Sal. Only means we won't gotta do nothin' major tonight."

"I could be home, jackass. Who the fuck wants to muddle through all this crap?" she replied, the toe of her boot purposefully hitting against a random, protruding piece of junk and sending it skittering into one of the several heaps. Instead of softly settling, however, it smacked, hard, against the base, sending multiple things tumbling to the ground and kicking up dust and debris. Marie flinched at the noise, pressing herself as close to the shadows as she could. The pile collapsed close to her, nearly smothering her entire body in the heavy materials, and she thanked the fact that she was so small, else she'd be killed.

What a way to go, she thinks bitterly, her hands shaking and body feeling electric with nerves and panic.

Regardless, she was glad enough of the fact that, though security was indeed elevated, the interest levels of the people on duty for combing the area adequately were as low as always. They barely glanced over at where everything had collapsed, and as she huddled further, curling in on herself and half hiding behind the pile, they skipped the lump of her furled body entirely.

And why would they pay any extra attention, underpaid and overworked as they were? Budget cuts, Marie heard. Only the very starters were ever forced to patrol the trash sites and it gave the higher ups an excuse to pay them pennies. Not only were they novice, but they had a job no one wanted, especially during the graveyard shift, which was usually the most staffed since no Vulture worth their salt would ever show up in daylight. It would practically be a neon sign, no matter how stealthy they were. No, better to stay in the shadows, working in some horrific place during the day and fighting at night when the guards were tired, hungry, and absolutely uninterested.

The conditions were bad for them but good for her. If they actually paid them properly, she'd likely be dead multiple times over, but she was still alive.

For the time being. Because everyone knew that what she was doing was dangerous. It was one of the easiest ways to get caught. To get killed.

Marie's eye trained on the massive rifles strapped to the guards' backs, and the woman who'd played soccer with the random piece of equipment let out a groan. The larger man next to her, the one with the accent, only chuckled.

"Now lookit what you done did, Sal."

"Who gives a fuck?" she responded, scathingly. "The entire place is a dump site. Ain't no organization to be found. Just leave that shit where it is."

Slowly, ever so slowly, they continued walking, the third party sparing a glance at the fallen pile before simply sighing and following their partners, the three of them rounding the new corner the trash heap made before Marie took in a sharp gasp through the fabric of her jacket.

The waiting was the most excruciating part. It was what made her count off in her head, wondering how much time she'd lost. In her pockets, she'd managed to find a few small things, tiny fans to keep parts from overheating, some still functional scrap metal Azusa had requested, gears aplenty. The packs that she kept slung around her hips were stuffed with enough outdated parts to keep Spirit busy for a good two weeks, fiddling around and stripping them of any sign of prior ownership.

When her heart calmed, finally settling down, she got up as silently as she could, proud when she tip-toed her way, silently, around the mess that had developed around her.

The quiet was only punctuated by the faded voices of the multiple guards making rounds and Marie determined that, if she wasn't seen crouched down and huddled, she'd risk her hair being free rather than risking her hearing. The choice could save her life.

Had saved her life.

With just one eye, her ears were proving one of her most valuable assets, and she made quick work in surveying the area she'd been hiding near.

She didn't have much time left until the system freezing device deactivated. Azusa still hadn't figured out a way to make it last longer, but Marie was used to the draconian time-frame she had to work in, and she figured, with so many parts weighing her down, it was as good as she was going to get.

Still, there would be no harm in looking over what had been revealed by the woman making the heap collapse. It wasn't every day Marie got a chance like that, and she made her way forward, keen eye observing what was revealed.

The vast majority, if not everything, was absolute junk, genuinely fit for being in a scrap-yard, and though she knew she'd done her job, done it well, she couldn't help but be disappointed by the fact that there wasn't some treasure that had been lying beneath the layers of newer garbage.

That was why, when she stood and made quick work to the fence, knowing she'd have to make her way out in less than 10 minutes, she completely looked him over.

And with his silver hair, dirtied and dusty, a chunk of his face nothing but the exposed, mechanical skeleton that had the organic skin ripped off, revealing an angry looking infection and torn muscle, it was no wonder she didn't notice him. Instead, her boot stepped forward, one after the other, as she hurried.

It was the whisper that made her stop. The slight rasp, the hitch in a throat.

Her heart froze entirely, her entire body jolting before her eye went wide and she whirled around, looking to see where it could have come from. It was quiet, but it was close. It was so close, so near to her, it could have bubbled from her very bones.

It sounded nothing like the far off cursing she heard from the guards. Instead, it was the darkest, most quiet "Please" she'd ever heard in her life.

When she looked down, finally, she realized that it was a good thing that she still had her hand over her collar, holding it over her mouth, because seeing him, seeing anyone, curled up under a pile of scrap so heavy, were he entirely organic, he'd be crushed to death, made her heart ache so deeply.

Immediately, she is crouching, trying her hardest to be silent though she finds that she is muttering "Oh my God," on a loop, horrified.

There was no hesitation when her hands came to his shoulders, and when she looked at his face, something in her chest stuttered, taking note of bad he looked. And yet, he only repeated "P-pl-please", as though on a loop, sounding soft and distressed. His olive eyes were unfocused, coagulated blood flecked over what of his face wasn't exposed, mechanical skeleton, and she felt her eye prick with tears before she steeled herself, trying to think of a strategy.

"I'm here," she assured him, though he seemed to make no notice of her voice. "I'm here, hold on, okay? Okay?" she asked, starting to pull what was on top of him off, setting it to the side as tentatively as she could.

Something started to well up in her, fury, yes, but an even sharper panic than before.

She barely had any time to get herself out of that deathtrap of a dump-site, and when she looked at him, trying to determine how much he would weigh, how much of a burden he'd be, because there was no chance he could just walk out of there by himself, she realized that getting him out could end up with both of them murdered.

But when she looked at him, something seemed to come into focus on his face, and he jolted for a moment, hissing in pain and sounding more like an escaping of steam than anything else, but she was reminded, immediately, of her girlhood. Of wanting to help. Of needing to help.

She had five minutes. She couldn't gently set things to the side or she'd run out of time before she'd get even semi-close enough to dig him out. The options were laid in front of her.

She could leave. That was always available to her. She could take her small treasures with her, her small finds from the garbage site to Azusa and pretend nothing had happened. Perhaps the next time she'd show up to the dump site, he'd be there, still stuttering "P-pl-please".

Maybe he'd be stripped of parts, his system shutting down, his body refusing to work under the massive pressure it was under to remain functional. Maybe he'd be alive when some other Vulture got to him, one that saw a landmine of parts and not a person. Maybe he wouldn't be there anymore, one of the guards finding him, not knowing what to do.

None of those options ended with him safe.

Yes, she could leave. But she wouldn't. She wouldn't.

Which meant she had to act, and fast. She swallowed, hard before she dug her boots into the ground, grabbing hold of his limp arms.

"I'm sorry," she told him, knowing it would hurt to be yanked from the pile, but his moment of clarity had passed, and he was back to that same loop. In the moment before she pulled, she sent a prayer up to whatever deity liked her. If any. If any were listening or existing, in that moment, she figured she'd need them to help.

Because when she sharply tugged at him, with all of her might, the entire heap wobbled before it fell. In the moment before they were smashed beneath the avalanche, she threw them both to the side, landing hard on her belly before she scrambled to curl over the man, protecting his already wounded form with her far smaller one. But the danger wasn't in being crushed.

Partially, it was. But the real danger came from the high yelp of "What the fuck?" and "Is there anyone in sector 4?"

The danger came in the massive clatter, a symphonic cacophony that alerted everyone in the area.

The alarms were blaring so fast, she got whiplash turning around. Everything around her was ringing, alive and pulsing, her heart hammering so hard she thought her ribcage was going to splinter and collect at the bottom of her body in a pile of dust and bone-shards.

She had to run.

Her body screamed at her when she reared up with such ferocious intensity, she worried if she'd pulled or torn a muscle, but she didn't have the time to worry about such things, and she certainly didn't have the time to tip-toe her way out of the trash heap. She had been taught that it was the path of least resistance, most of the time, which was safest, most successful, even if that path was a winding catacomb back to freedom.

Not this time. This time it was running for her life. This time, it was running for his as well. She grasped his arm, slinging it over her shoulders before she realized that he was massive, bigger than she had expected. His shoulders alone took up the space of two of her, and his height was so huge, he nearly fell over her shoulder, almost bent in two.

She cursed her miniscule form, furiously, as she curled him close to her body, wishing he had some more focus, but he didn't. He was barely alive, and against her bruised, battered form, she felt his harsh breathing, the whir of his half-broken mechanics trying to keep him functioning.

Anything would have been more ideal. A piggyback, a fireman's carry, even bridal style, but she'd slung his arm around her shoulders and that was where he'd have to stay. She didn't have the time to adjust him. She didn't even have the time to think, only picking up a useless piece of scrap to throw as distraction when she made it closer to the fence. And then she was off, kicking a path so that she could book it, dragging him against her as she downright sprinted to the hole in the fence Azusa's machine was keeping open for her.

She gasped harshly and her throat burned as she raced, hearing gunshots being fired around her, metal on metal colliding around her and the siren downright wailing in her ears. She thinks she'd be deaf, but she can still make out that same pleading from him, the panic in his voice, his fear so thick that she could feel it resonate in her, her own horror mixing with his. With the loud roar going on, she figured the scrap wouldn't do much of anything at all, and she dropped it to wrap her arm around his waist, ducking her head down as she ran and her collar slipped from her mouth.

If she got bronchitis again, she thinks she might actually welcome it. It was better than finding herself in a grave, and she had a responsibility to Azusa, to Spirit, to all of her friends that were counting on her to make it out. Maka, Crona, all the kids she helped tutor on the weekends, she made a commitment to them, to live, to help the world so that it was better for them.

So that none of them would ever have to do what she was doing, putting their entire life on a string, fraying and bloodstained. They were depending on her. As was the man against her, so warm and alive. Alive. She refused to leave him behind though he was practically all deadweight.

The timer in her head told her that she didn't have even two minutes to spare when the woman-guard from earlier snarled to a stop in front of her and Marie had to scramble, her boots skidding against some metal when she changed her course and ducked down, shouldering the cyborg closer to her and trying to keep her face as well hidden as she possibly could, tucking it close to him as she evaded.

"You bitch!" the woman called out, her rifle supported over her arm as she loaded and aimed, and Marie didn't even yelp when she ducked behind a heap, shuddering and coughing, having inhaled some of the fumes so deeply into her lungs, she was worried that she'd singed something. She didn't take the single moment to adjust her makeshift gas-mask, instead, pushing the cyborg closer to her side as she kicked off from the ground, listening to the other woman's screech as she ran behind her.

Thank whoever was watching over her that she had such poor aim when she was on the move. She had likely been a sniper before she joined the Police Force, and she was too young to stop and aim, making it so that her shot would land home.

The inexperience was the best thing that could have possibly happened, especially when she collided against her partner who ran in too late, sending the two of them sprawling into a dangerously coloured puddle that had the woman screeching, rolling away and right into another pile of garbage, sending the entire thing falling. Marie didn't have the time to worry, her mind focused on getting out, getting alive, and through the sharp keen of "Sal!", she finally made it to the fence, though she could hear the thud of footsteps and the splash of radioactive waste and the scrape of the trash being thrown about.

She was out of time.

Mustering all the strength in her body, she hauled the cyborg up, and lord, he must have been close to three hundred pounds, weighed down with all his machinery. She grinded her teeth as her stomach clenched, her knees buckling under the weight.

She wasn't the Pulverizer for nothing, damnit. Then was not the time for her body to give out on her, refusing to cooperate. Hadn't she dragged him all the way there? Hadn't she pulled him from the rubbish? She was almost out of the fire. She just had to get him through the hole in the holo-fence and then she could make her way to Blair's Pumpkin Pub, begging for sanctuary.

She could do it and she knew she could, so she groaned, breathing short and sharp as she finally managed to throw him through the hole.

The flickering wasn't lost on her, nor was the fact that he made a clatter as he came through on the other side of the junkyard where she'd have to scrabble up the moat-like hole they'd situated the entire place in.

Azusa's device couldn't hold out. Not anymore. It was at the maximum time limit, and in the moment that it took for Marie to take a few steps back, getting a running start to leap through the opening, it had already started to close as the device died on her.

It caught her leg. Her left calf, and the electric fence jolted her body, making it feel like she was going to lose her entire lower half. When she fell to the other side, she tumbled, rolling and barely avoiding the already wounded cyborg.

But she couldn't afford rest. No doubt, the entire Police Department was going to show up. Soon. They were likely already on their way, probably alerting Spirit and he'd be dead worried. When she tried to stand up, her legs screamed at her and she collapsed instantly, her pant legs charred. When she looked down at what had once been sun-kissed flesh, she found a furious looking burn, the skin scraped off.

She had to shove that to the side and she nearly bit her tongue in half when she stood, again. The world wobbled in front of her, and she heard gunshots behind her, fence doors being opened, people screaming. She shook her head and stooped, scooping the cyborg up once more. His whispers had hushed more and more, though she wasn't sure if that was her deadened hearing, or him, but she could still feel his rasping breaths against her and so she had to have hope.

It couldn't have been for nothing. She wasn't dragging him from that garbage site cum potential graveyard just to have him die on her. She was going to keep him alive if it was the last thing she was going to do on that Earth.

And it very well could be, because with his hulking form draped over her along with her heavily wounded leg, she could barely move, and she could only hobble her way a few feet before she felt like collapsing in the dirt once more.

Adrenaline was a curious thing. She'd worked with it in the lab many times, seeing what properties organic adrenaline had in comparison to the synthetic versions. Though the synthetic adrenaline was adequate enough, it couldn't replicate the pure, primal feeling in a being, the push through everything. Through watering eyes and heaving stomachs and the urge to vomit. Through a spinning head and deafened ears. Through pain and horror.

It was fight or flight. It was live or die. It was make it to Blair's pub of find her grave with a cyborg who she did not know, who she was risking everything for.

It was everything in her that forced her teeth to grit down, jaw clenching as she wailed low and lay his heavy body over her, making her way behind a tree and heaving, clinging close to the edges of the grounds as she forced herself to keep working, to keep moving.

Not much farther, she kept telling herself, unknowing where she found it, but managing to scrape enough strength to scramble away, half falling as she raced down the streets, taking every dark alleyway she knew and mostly supporting herself against the walls with the cyborg silent on her side.

Everything started coming in and out of focus, going blurry and sick as she stumbles in the streets. At first glance, most would only assume her drunk, which was why a cloud of people only spared her one condescending look before they crossed the street when they saw her with, when his head was bowed, what they assumed was an even more drunk man. In her deadened ears, her eardrums having popped from the loud sirens of the trash-zone, she could only make out echoes.

It was a good thing it was dark, or the smudges of blood and grime on her would make her a dead giveaway, and the conversations about the alarms she managed to hear as she avoided crowds sounded scared and high-strung.

"Who could have-"

"Did someone break-"

". . .dead. . .?"

"Where are police-"

She continued finding her way against the dirty brickwork of yet another alleyway. And she was so ruined, she barely managed to recognize the entrance for salvation. Yet, the massive, painted pumpkin on the back door was a dead giveaway, and she fell against it so heavily, she thinks the entire pub could have heard her, even over the loud wailing of the warning bells and the radio music Blair always had blaring.

Yet, they didn't, and it it wasn't enough, and her hand came up weakly, trying to knock, but only managing to slap clumsily against the metal door. She shuddered, hiccupping and remembering that she had a key, but her fingers wouldn't cooperate with her, only shaking miserably when she tried to articulate them in any way. The fumes she'd inhaled made her oesophagus feel as though it had been entirely burned away, her eyes watering, nose likely bleeding from the radioactivity.

She wobbled on her feet, trying to support herself but finding herself dragging down, lower and lower under the weight of the cyborg, and she thought it was such a bad way to go. Right there, so close to being safe with the ring of the police cars screaming down the road.

Right on her heels. Right on their tails.

She was going to die there when she was so damn close but-

The door opened, a very confused Kim standing there, drying her hands off on her apron with her mouth open to inform Marie that she could have alerted the dead, but the second Marie loses the door as support, her entire body buckles and she finds herself collapsing to the well scrubbed floors of the Pub. The cyborg lands half next to her and half on top of her, and she clings to him as though he is her only buoy. In her haze, she realizes that she has at least had the good sense to twist about and make sure she didn't land on her side, because the parts she had in her pockets and her hip-packs were so valuable, so important, to fall on them and render them useless would be more of a tragedy than nearly anything else.

Her head is spinning, but she hears Kim's shrill voice calling for Jackie, calling for Ox, yelling for help. Marie's head can barely lift, and she finds that she doesn't have it in her to do so, only settling bonelessly against the floor when Kim grabs at her arms, pulling her out of the threshold and entirely into the bar before she scrambled up, slamming the door shut, deadbolting it immediately and telling Jackie to empty the bar.

Marie thinks she hears the faint clicking of heels, rushed and sharp, over the floors, and she must have, because the next thing she knows, the world is dizzy when she is flipped and Blair is hovering over her with more concern than ever before splayed on her face. Marie coughs and it sounds wet, her chest heaving and her arm numb with the cyborg crushing her. Through the swimmy haze in her head, she listens to Blair's voice though the sounds don't match up with her lips.

"Marie. . .are. . .okay? Ma. . .kay. . .are. . .rie? Are. . . .kay?"

Marie can only groan, her eye unfocused as the world goes blurry. Her mind refused to cooperate, and someone touches her leg only for her to hiss, kicking out before she's held down.

"Cauterized," she hears, though she can't make out the voice.

"And. . .-borg?" someone else asks, but Marie's arms are tight around the man, holding him to her and keeping his face buried in the crook of her neck.

"Is he. . ." she starts, coughing once again much to Blair's quickly mounting panic. "Okay?"

Blair's beautiful eyes spark with something before she's out of Marie's sight, and the next thing she knows, the feline-esque woman is commanding Jackie to empty the bar of customers, telling Kim to get the first-aid kit.

It was in a time like then that Marie remembered that Blair had been a volunteer field nurse; times like then that she is thankful she met people like Spirit, who could introduce her to women like Blair. But, for the most part, she could barely think, and she realized that her lips were moving without sound coming out when Blair kneels next to her and comes into her line of vision once more, starting to pull the cyborg off of her to get to Marie.

"Him. . .first," Marie insists, knowing he was in worse shape than she was, and when Blair opens her mouth to protest, Marie only tightens her hold on him and shakes her head, trying to make things sharpen but only making it worse. "Him first," she outright demands, and though Blair looks sorrowful, she nods.

When Marie finally let go of him, she knew he was in good hands.

The world went grey as his silver hair brushed over her face. Only after the fact did her vision go dark at the edges, everything fading into a black voice.

At least passed out, the pain lessened.

She woke to Blair's fretting, the other woman's slim fingers smoothing over her hair. For a moment, she went to lean into the touch, but winced immediately when her side protested.

"Marie?" Blair asked, peering down at her and ceasing her gentle tending-to. "Are you awake?"

Marie groaned, cracking open her eye and reaching her hand up to rub over her face. When her palm came over her skin, she found that she was missing her eyepatch, and with an experimental wriggle, she found that she couldn't feel her leg.

Oh, god. She couldn't feel her leg. And everything crashed upon her all at once. The frantic dash to the Pub, the cyborg and his constant "P-pl-please", the avalanche of scrap over the guards, the police sirens, the fence.

The fence.

She bolted upright immediately, despite the fact that her insides, as well as Blair, protested entirely, and threw the scratchy blanket off of herself to look at her legs.

Still there. Both of them.

"They've got enough localized anesthesia in your leg to kill anyone else," she heard to the side, and when she whipped her head around, it was Spirit, wearing a frown on his face the likes of which she'd never seen before. "We're lucky we've got Naigus, or you'd probably be dead from shock alone."

"Naigus?" Marie asked, and her voice sounded foreign and scratchy. "How did you get her here on such short notice?" Where "here" was, however, Marie hadn't pieced together just yet. When she looked around, however, she noticed Kim and Jackie huddled together in the corner, sleeping, and an exhausted looking Harvar slumped against the wall.

Still in the Pub, then. She shifted around and felt the seam of something on the back of one of her legs, and when she looked down, she realized that she had been lying atop two tables pushed together. Glancing back up at Spirit, still dressed in full police riot gear, he had a somber expression on his face.

"It's relatively easy to demand urgency when, oh, I don't know, you tell her that one of her best friends is dying! What the hell, Marie?"

Marie flinched, bringing the blanket back over herself due to the slight draft that was ever-present in Blair's Pub, but Spirit sighed, bowing his head and running a hand through his hair before he looked back at her.

"I thought you were dead when the station called," he told her, and she couldn't help the pang in her belly. After losing his wife, after losing Kami, of course he'd be worried sick. She couldn't blame him for being so volatile.

"I'm fine," she reassured, sighing and pinching her mouth.

"Well, that might be an overstatement," a woman's voice called, and Spirit glanced behind him to spot Naigus stepping out from the back area, wiping her hands. She must have just washed them, since there were still a few drops of water rolling down her fingers. "You had second degree burns on your leg. You're lucky you didn't need skin grafts."

"Yeah, lucky," Spirit snorted, finally settling his weight on one of the tables before Blair came up to him and sat down beside him, letting him lean on her.

Naigus stepped forward, bringing her calloused hand to Marie's bruised shoulder and gently pushing her down until her head was pillowed by what must have been someone's jacket. Marie knew it wasn't her own, since the smell of the fumes never really left cloth. Besides which, Blair would never be careless enough to keep something so noxious around a wounded person.

They must have changed her, especially if Naigus was there to take care of her injuries. Marie winced when she settled flat on the table once more, trying to find some kind of comfort for her tender body.

"You might want to be careful for a while. Your arm was nearly dislocated, too."

Marie's brows furrowed. "How did-" but she cut herself off with a gasp, her head swiveling around wildly when she realized that her arm injury was from dragging such a heavy form around for so long. "Where's the cyborg? Is he okay? What happ-"

"Whoa, whoa!" Spirit called, immediately jumping from the table to come console her, and Naigus's gentle press on her shoulders got more urgent to hold her down. "Sid has him," Spirit soothed, and when he stepped to her right side so she could see him, his entire, young face looked aged with how concerned he was.

But it placated Marie. No one could transport someone undetected better than Sid could, and many a cyborg had found their freedom through him.

Yet, she realized that Spirit didn't answer her second question. "Spirit," she started, but the man's eyes went to the side. "Spirit! Is he okay?"

Spirit chewed on his lip for a moment, sighing through his nose when Blair brought her hand to his shoulder. Naigus rolled her eyes and let go of Marie, stepping back.

"He's being taken to Azusa. She couldn't make it here in time with all the police patrolling the streets. You've got everyone on lockdown."

"But how can Sid-"

Naigus only raised a brow and Marie sighed, calming her worrying. She knew Sid was the best at what he did, and whether the streets were crawling with cops or not, the man was stealthy enough to get anyone through to near anywhere with no damage. The panic was just so natural and easily welled up.

And if Sid was taking the cyborg to Azusa, that meant he was in worse shape than she thought.

"So, what's the plan?" Marie asked, forcing her muscles to relax.

"For now?" Spirit asked, "Or long-term?"

"I don't think I handle long term right now," she muttered out.

Spirit's chuckle was heavy, but at least it lightened the room. "Well, for now, then, just sleep and let Azusa do her job."

Marie's smile crooked small and dainty on her face, a delicate curve of a thing. "A sleepover, then?"

"Yeah," Spirit said, his torso shaking with his slight laughter when he came to ruffle her hair.

Marie's smile dimmed down after a moment as she thought to herself. She didn't knew why she was so invested in the cyborg being okay. She was invested in every cyborg being okay, but she'd never put so much at risk for anyone before.

Maybe it was because he asked her to. Maybe it was because he needed her, and she had always wanted to be needed. Maybe it was because he reminded her of why she fought so hard.

If he was with Azusa, he was in good hands, and the weariness in her body tugged at her, again, her eyelid lowering while Naigus stepped around her, to her blind side, to fiddle with what must have been a make-shift IV line.

He would be okay. She would be okay. All of them would be.

She had to believe that.

And the pub was silent.