Lena Oxton stared at the sky. She raised a hand, tracing a line across the pale blue spattered with dirty-looking clouds. Her back pressed uncomfortably down on the cracked, ruined cement she was lying on, an all too clear reminder of how she was bound to the earth.

This wasn't home. Home was up there.

Her breath caught in her throat. Bloody hell. Here it came. She twisted over quickly – too quickly – and pain shot through her chest.

Shit. Shit.

She pushed laboriously off the ground. 5 metres. That's all she had to walk. She could make it.

SHIT!

The pain slammed into her again, rippling through her chest and down her left arm. Her right hand involuntarily grasped at her chest, as if she could punch through it to get to the root of the pain. She pushed forward, tripping over the doorframe that marked the entryway into the tiny shack. She flailed, catching herself on a dirty workbench. She was so close now.

She hauled herself onto the chair standing in front of it, fingers grasping blindly around until they connected with a thick cable. Lena bit her lip. This was gonna hurt like a bitch. In one quick, jerky motion, she pulled her tanktop off with one hand and with the other, shoved the cable into a socket in the center of her chest. She gasped fruitlessly for air as she slammed her hand onto the button mounted at the cable's source and electricity coursed through her chest.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, it stopped. Lena slammed her forehead into the table, doubled over, gasping like a fish out of water. Finally, breathing back to a steady, if somewhat shallow, rhythm, Lena glanced at the monitor in front of her. The tiny red line coursed up and down at a regular tempo, and fell flat as she disconnected herself. Shaking and sweaty, she pulled the tanktop back on, concealing the dull metal socket that stood out sharply from her skin.

This what what the sky had done to her when it had cast her out, plummeting thousands of feet to the ground. It was why she'd never fly again. The sky was home, but it also housed all of her demons. Yet she knew that she'd have to conquer it one day. The implant was breaking down. She had to find Ziegler. Maybe where she was now she'd be able to fix her once and for all.

Maybe she'd have a heart of flesh again. Not one of steel.