Yeah, the haircut's hot, but this has gotta stop – good shoes won't save you this time.
- Can't Catch Tomorrow: Lostprophets

The last few minutes had passed in a completely blackened fashion, but Zharov was just thankful that they'd only blindfolded him and tied his hands in front of him. A man with unbound legs and unrestricted arm movement had a lot of freedom in tight circumstances, providing he picked those circumstances carefully. Whoever it was that had found him, called for backup and then trussed up his hands without once checking his prisoner for weapons or waiting for said backup ought to have been shot by his commanding sergeant. And this was Zharov's professional opinion. His personal one was much more violent. Whoever this guard was, he disgraced the name of soldiers everywhere. In fact, judging from the man's inept behaviour, he was betting more along the lines of 'paid crony'. The guard evidently hadn't had any military training but at least was bright enough to wait for the backup before escorting Zharov into the base.

Which had been a bit of an oddity in itself, blindfolded as he was. He was absolutely sure there had been no doors visible in the scenery around him, but he'd only been led for thirty seconds before walking straight into an elevator that descended with a smooth and startling efficiency. Then he remembered the sparse tree population of the taiga, and supposed that for someone constructing a "massive" underground base, hiding a lift shaft in a tree (fake or hollowed out) would have presented no problem.

His most urgent problem (all things considered) was that the guards he could sense around him did not appear to be as inefficient as the first guard. He had seen the awkward, lined shape of their bodies under their thick arctic padding, and it spoke of tough muscle and solid armour. They had held their guns like they knew what they were doing, not like a rookie nipping outside for a quick smoke. Then had come the blindfold. He'd gone quietly because he knew that any violent protest would have been met with terminal resistance. It was against his nature, but sometime you just had to go with the flow. Besides, given the choice between being dragged semi-conscious into enemy territory and walking calmly with four of his five senses still active, he'd take the smart option.

They went down a little way in the elevator – not far, he guessed. He was marched out, now with a hand on each shoulder. He fought the urge – hard – to shake them off.

The first thing that hit him was that it was warm – ridiculously so for a man accustomed to living in the northern wastes of Russia. There was also a faint susurration of noise, as if many people were passing them by and not saying anything. He was escorted along this corridor for about thirty seconds before making an abrupt left turn and being pushed forward. Zharov didn't allow himself the luxury of stumbling, and sailed the extra momentum easily. There was a pause, a very brief whummmm noise, and then total silence. His hands, still bound, carefully removed his blindfold. He looked around while blinking a few times to dispel the blurriness.

It was a cell. He had figured as much, but it was a cell with the strangest construction he had ever seen. He was stood on a flat square of concrete about six feet by six feet. The walls on the left and right were sheer metal that rose ten feet. There wasn't a back wall; instead, there was a narrowing slope of concrete that stretched about nine feet to a flat, tapered point that housed a single small slot, presumably for ventilation. The metal walls bent inwards to follow the slope.

But why would a cell need ventilation when it apparently had no fourth wall? Where there should have been a wall was simply a rectangle of empty space that led onto a corridor lined with what was either metal or grey linoleum.

Cautiously, Zharov approached this non-existent fourth wall. Straight ahead was another cell, empty, with a construction design identical to his own. Looking right, he saw that there were a few more cells on both sides of the walkway before the grey, dull-shiny corridor resumed with a blue-white wall colouring and light blue carpet. Looking left, he saw that he was in the last cell before the corridor stretched out into a room holding four desks that hugged the walls. There was door in the wall he could see clearest in his limited line of vision. And in the wall adjacent to that, he could just make out the edge of a large, doorless opening in the wall that led into a room, a room so big, with moving pictures –

As he leaned forward out of the strange gap in a room supposedly meant to hold prisoners, his head hit an invisible force and bounced him back into the room. It wasn't a violent push, just a gentle reminder that whoever had designed this cell had one clear purpose: to divide the world into two bits. The inside, and the outside. They had done their job very well.

Zharov backed away from the strange wall and as he did a harried-looking man hustled past whilst deep in conversation with a slightly more relaxed-looking woman. No sound reached him. Zharov thought that one over with a worrying prickly sensation on the back of his neck: no sound meant that the air vibrations created by speech and motion were not touching his ears. Something was blocking their progress. The force-field. And if there was no sound, then there was going to be no air flow, which must have been the purpose of the air vent at the back of the cell.

Having explored every inch of the cell with his eyes, Zharov turned his attention to his roped-together wrists. He knew how to let people bind his hands – crush the fists together and brace the wrists. That meant, should he ever need to shake the ropes off, if he pressed his hands together like he was praying – like so – there was just enough laxity in the ropes to slide them down. (He'd had a very psychotic and slightly odd drill sergeant who had come back from the Cold War with the kind of paranoia normally associated with crack addicts.) Now that his hands were free, he allowed himself the luxury of pulling awkwardly at the neck of his constricting winter gear. The heat in here truly was oppressive. He stripped off the insulating layers until he was clad only in his base layers, and then pushed his unworn clothes into a corner of the cell. He wasn't sure if he'd need them again.

He tried very hard not to interpret the many ways that sentence could be perceived.

Zharov rubbed his wrists where the burn from the rope used had not quite faded and looked around the cell again. He was a little claustrophobic at heart and the cell made him uneasy; he was also so wound up on unused adrenaline and pent-up stress that, when something touched his shoulder and hissed his name, he whipped around and reared his fist back to strike before his brain could register any emotion barring anger.

There was nothing there.

He lowered his fist, hardened eyes glancing at every corner of the cell. There wasn't much space and there wasn't anywhere for a person to hide.

"It's me, Violet," said the voice again. Zharov took a pace back, staring wildly at the empty space.

"Where are you?" he growled.

"In front of you. I understand this is difficult to accept. You were told I have 'special abilities'."

It took Zharov a moment to process this, before a few front pages from American newspapers floated across his recent memory.

"An understatement, I see. Or rather, I do not see. You are a 'super'?"

"Yes."

"How did you get in here? Into the cell?"

"I saw you coming from the ventilation shaft I was in, so I followed you in. The guards know there's a loose cannon in the base but they don't know I have... stealth techniques. Suffice to say that I can get you out of here. Your base layers... are they made of the same material mine is?"

"I assume so."

"Good. In a moment, I'm going to take your hand. I need you to back up close to the forcefield and tell me if anyone is coming."

Zharov slowly retreated until he could check in both directions. "It's safe."

Immediately a small, light, fragile-feeling hand slipped into his. He could feel the tendons on the back of her hand rippling. For a man not used to flights of emotion, he felt a moment of strong but very powerful protectiveness – it was his job to protect her, and look how that had turned out. Chasing on the wake of that strange surge was a feeling of guilt: she might be hardened and cold, but she was still painfully young, and she was trying to protect him, an extra burden on a pair of shoulders that looked too tired to hold much more. The slenderness of her hand and the bones Zharov felt lifting the surface of her skin testified to this, as did the way he felt like he could crush her fingers with one tolerably determined squeeze.

He felt better for not being able to see her; it hid her eyes, which was something to be thankful for on any occasion.

There was a brief tingle in his palm and when he looked down at his hand he couldn't see it. His entire body froze up in his trained response to shock. Violet must have felt the tension in him.

"I've extended my... special abilities to cover you. Don't let go of my hand or I can't guarantee it'll continue."

"How will this get us out?"

"To anyone outside, this will look like an empty cell that should be occupied. The guards here, while well-equipped and mostly well-trained, aren't instructed in the basic arts of logic and lateral thinking."

"Meaning, little Taiga?"

"Meaning they'll see an empty cell, and enter it to check it out rather than assuming that no-one could have got past such impenetrable defences. The security patrols around here are pretty regular, and they'll be even more so now that you're here. In fact, I'd be surprised if you're not assigned a permanent gua– ah, here he comes." She paused. "And less of the 'little', if you don't mind."

He felt the tug of Violet's hand and moved to press his back against the wall of the cell, eyes on the door.

"Tread carefully," said Violet, and he could hear professionalism in her voice. "Breath gently. We're in luck; it seems to be lunch break or something. I've seen it a lot busier along here."

The guard Violet had spied was indeed approaching. The look on his face when he saw the apparently-empty cell, Zharov thought, was well worth waiting for.

Violet was right. The man reached up to the radio clipped to his shoulder, spoke a rapid series of words, and without taking his eyes from the cell, slapped the palm of his hand onto the wall beside the door. Instantly, the gentle noise of the building filtered back in. Zharov felt Violet's hand slipping him forward and out of the cell as the distracted guard dashed in to run his hands over every part of the wall.

Violet's hand might have been slender, but the sheer strength in it amazed Zharov. She moved without waiting for him to catch up, dragging him into the corridor and to the left. Her grip was like steel and Zharov, unused to moving without a visible reminder of his body, was reduced to relying on spatial awareness alone, something becoming harder now that the corridor was filling with guards. And, striding along in their midst with an expression like thunder, a tall red-haired man with all the bearing and composure of a leader. Instantly, Violet's hand dragged him to the side of the corridor to avoid the leader-man and the loose knot of guards around him. Zharov looked ahead, presumably right through Violet then and through the large doorless entryway he'd glimpsed previously. She had been right. That main room was massive. This room was big, busy, more crossroads than enclosed space, and it was rapidly filling up with people. There seemed to be nowhere to go.

"I know that man," whispered Violet's voice in his ear. He turned to look at the redhead who had stalked past them and who was now harassing the guard at their cell's entrance. The guard looked like he was trying to explain himself. "He's dangerous. Don't get too near him." And her hand drew him away again.

They went through the doorway on their left and Zharov caught another glimpse of that giant room again before the were heading away from it, carefully slipping in between the people moving through the corridor. "Where are we going?" he asked, careful to keep his voice low despite the babble of voices all around him.

"Trying to find a hangar. We need some kind of craft. We'll never survive outside like this."

"What about the pilots? Andropov and Gorlovich?"

Violet stopped for a moment. He couldn't see her face, but he fancied she was fighting some kind of internal battle.

"I don't want to leave them," she said at last. "But how can we help them if we don't help ourselves first? Maybe if we can find a 'copter we can get to them before these guards do."

Zharov was instantly angry. These were his men she was talking about, not some kind of expendable machinery.

"I will not leave my –"

Instantly, a hand clamped over his mouth and small but very solid body pushed him into the wall of the corridor and out of the way of the pedestrian crush of people. When Violet spoke, it was in a voice as icy as the snow above them, and it was right into his ear.

"We. Have. No. Choice. We are trapped in a base run by an evil and highly-intelligent megalomaniac who is very quickly going to figure out that their infiltrator isn't normal. When that happens, he'll start instructing the guards to use heat sensors and we are not hidden from that. No. We're not. So unless we get out of here soon, he will kill us. He will have no qualms about it at all. This way, we have at least a slim chance of rescuing your men. We will have no chance at all if we are dead."

Her voice had never risen above a murmur, and would have been well disguised in the mumbled conversations around them. She'd still managed to spit out the last word with a ferocity that bespoke pure rage. Zharov shook his head free of her hand in one movement.

"Then let's go, little Taiga," he hissed back, and they began to move forward again.

--I--

Violet kept her grip on Zharov's hand just a shade too tight for comfort, despite keeping most of her displeasure with his little outburst locked safely away. She was highly irritated at his lapse in professionalism. He was a solider using a hitherto-unknown stealth technique and he had nearly shouted out in a room full of unaware passers-by.

They were slipping along the wall of the corridor, extremely aware of any nearby guards. Violet was tailing whoever seemed to be going in the direction they needed (up), slipping through behind them whenever they used their keycard to open a door. Zharov was keeping pace and had adapted well to his newly-invisible state despite his previous outburst. In all honesty, Violet wasn't sure it would work when she'd first thought of it, but by keeping half an eye on the flow of power through her hand and into his extremely warm one she managed to maintain the invisibility over two people. Contrary to what she'd expected, it wasn't a drain; instead of sharing her energy supplies over two people it seemed to tap into his own, halving her expected burden. All she need to do was make sure she kept pushing her invisibility into his hand just the tiniest bit. His body seemed to adapt and do the rest of the work, like she was a battery and he the now-completed circuit.

Three corridors and four square, metal staircases carefully navigated later, she slipped into a large room just behind a guard and stared at what was before her.

Three helicopters, neatly lined up on landing bays, in a large metal hangar. The floor above was made of metal slats; Violet was willing to bet it would slide back to reveal open sky. There were two or three guards loitering around the empty room on a balcony that ran the distance of the hangar, half-way up the wall. The temperature of the room was considerably lower than that of the corridor they'd left behind. Violet could see her breath misting in the air and she hoped it was too slight to be noticed.

This was all wrong. Syndrome would never leave such an obvious weakness in his base undefended. Nevertheless, this was the only chance they had, regardless of whether it had all the hallmarks of a trap. She hadn't been kidding when she'd had a go at Zharov; all evidence had pointed toward Syndrome being as ruthless as she remembered and had no desire to be in his clutches again. It wouldn't take him too long to figure out who she was, and God knew what he would do to Zharov and his men.

Settling on an internal compromise, she tugged Zharov toward the middle helicopter and hoped that their eventual visibility would be disguised between the other two, larger craft. It was the smallest; it might have been a scout helicopter. Its cabin held a pilot and passenger and its main body looked like it would hold luggage or equipment, but no people. It also had a sign stuck to the windscreen in both Russian and English: "DANGER – awaiting repair. Do not use." Further along the side of the helicopter was a tangle of wires sticking out of a panel.

"Kasatka?" she whispered. "Is it fixable?"

"Yes," he replied shortly, "But I will need to see my hands."

Violet paused, calculating the risk. She was fairly certain she'd be able to blow a hole in the roof with a well-crafted shield (a cone, pointy, thrust hard toward the ceiling should do the trick), but visibility here could throw the whole game.

Did they have a choice?

She took another look around. No guards in sight for the moment.

"Roll up your sleeve," she whispered. "I want to be able to grab your arm if we need to phase out again."

His hand flexed in hers for a moment before a whispered "Done" reached her ears.

"Go," she said, and stopped her power flow.

Zharov plunged his arms into the depths of the helicopter circuitry immediately, not taking time to readjust to his newfound visibility. Violet's eyes roamed around the hangar, continually seeking intrusive guards. She didn't like this vulnerability at all. Zharov was muttering to himself in fractured English, entirely consumed by the task at hand. Twice, Violet had to grab his arm to phase them out when a guard wandered past. She kept scanning the hangar, ever so alert for trouble. There was no way that Syndrome hadn't rigged this hangar for some kind of trap; he just wasn't banking on his intruders' superhuman stealth capabilities.

Her attention was drawn back to the helicopter when Zharov very quietly closed the panel and gave Violet a nod. "All done –"

"Stay where you are!" a voice shouted from high above them, the sound amplified by the metal walls. Something ricocheted off of the helicopter beside Violet and hit her shoulder with paralysing force, spinning her around. Violet took control of the movement and backed herself against the helicopter using the energy of her spin as she felt a dull but powerful ache begin in the soft spot between pectoral muscle and shoulder. Looking up, Violet saw a guard staring down at them from a window so high up the wall she'd missed it, but what was pointed at them was unmistakably a gun.

"Get in," Violet snarled immediately. Zharov clawed open the door to the cockpit of the helicopter and shut it behind Violet as she clambered in, moving over to make room for her. "Rubber bullets," Violet said flatly, wiping the blood from a vicious-looking bruise on her shoulder. "Only deadly at close range. We should be fine in here."

"Take off?" asked Zharov, his urgent brown eyes meeting hers in the lighted interior of the cockpit. Violet could hear boots now and heavy feet running.

"Take off. I'll take care of the roof."

Zharov flipped all the startup switches and for one surreal moment, Violet found herself admiring his dexterity even in the lower temperatures of the hangar; once again wondering how his metabolism, which appeared to be able to melt sheet metal at ten paces, managed to keep him so warm and not just burn him away.

She heard the very welcome sound of the rotors starting up as Zharov checked everything. The low noise evolved into a high-pitched gale as the helicopter lifted from the ground just ahead of the swarms of guards that were flooding into the chamber in amounts too great to have been coincidence. Her 'trap' hunch had been correct.

As she focused on the roof above her, preparing the shape of the shield in her mind that would rip it open, she became aware of the fact that they were no longer moving upwards.

"What is it?" she yelled over the roar of the rotors.

"There is something wrong with the rotor hub," shouted Zharov, furiously flicking switches. "The problem was not just with the wiring. The rotor system cannot cope with two passengers."

Violet nodded to show she understood and cast a glance down to the ridiculously wind-swept hangar below them. The guard were firing but the strength of the winds generated by the helicopter in the enclosed space was enough to misdirect the bullets, although there still was a stray pinging noise as a bullet struck the underside of the craft. She turned to Zharov and met his gaze full on.

"Take off. Get out of here. Get the pilots, head to Noril'sk."

"I cannot, I have told you –"

"I'm getting out."

She moved to open the door to the cabin on her side, mentally gauging the distance to the floor, when Zharov grabbed her arm in a rock-like grip.

"No," he said simply. "I leave no man behind."

"Just as well I'm not a man. Give the information about this base to your government, get it to my agency, they'll send in special backup."

Zharov said nothing, but there was a fiery glint in his eye and his grip didn't lessen.

"They need to know this place is here," Violet ground out. "Get to the radio I left with Andropov. Radio for help, all frequencies. They already know you're there. Time for everyone else to know too."

"You will not come out of here alive," said Zharov flatly, and she saw the pure rage boiling behind his eyes. She looked downwards, and then looked back at him.

--I--

She looked at him. Zharov wanted to recoil; she looked unhappy, and tired, worn down by too many years of ruthless secret-keeping and burden-bearing.

"I might," she said softly.

And for a moment there was silence in their little world. The noise of bullets bouncing from the craft was not there, the rotors soundless, the muffled shouting below non-existent. There was only Zharov's shocked realisation that she meant it. She really meant this.

"You do not have to do this," he said quietly, trying to reach out to her with his sincerity.

Violet shrugged out of his grip and looked down again, and Zharov realised that this was the first time she had seemed fully human to him.

"Maybe not," she said in a low voice. "But maybe it's for the best."

There was a pause, and the sounds from below filtered back in again. In that moment of hiatus Zharov saw a glimpse of the pain she bore. It wasn't obvious and she hid it well, but it was right in front of you if you knew where to look. It was in the set of her shoulders, the line of her jaw, the grip in her hands. A person in pain will tense up to lessen the burden. She thought that burden so heavy that dying would be a relief. A relief.

"I'll take care of the roof for you," said Violet, never raising her eyes to his. "Good luck, Kasatka." And she'd opened the door and dropped the twenty feet to the floor.

Zharov stared downwards in shocked incomprehension, jolted out of this reverie only by the noise of tearing metal. Looking up, he saw a giant hole had formed in the roof of the hangar – large enough for the helicopter – and there was clear blue sky beyond it.

There was nothing he could do. He had never felt this helpless in his life.

He headed upwards.

--I--

Violet braced her shins in the long seconds before she hit the floor, running over the physics in her mind. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. She could just shift the force caused by her landing –

Her feet hit the floor and she let her joints absorb the shock by dropping her to her knees. At the same time, she focused hard on the force of her landing, projecting upwards and beyond her body. Dimly and at the edge of her concentration, she heard the sheer noise of tearing metal and the flow of power she'd used to shift her kinetic energy faded.

Then she looked up.

The room was filled with guards. Guards filled the floor, surrounded her on all sides on the balcony, poured into the other two helicopters, wrestled with a control panel on the wall to open the roof hatch. Guards who had guns that fired rubber bullets. It was a clever move on Syndrome's part – such bullets were only deadly when directly aimed or at close range, and so this avoided accidental killings or damage to his precious base. She didn't have long before the guards watching her decided just waiting for her to make the next move wasn't going to cut much ice with the boss.

She uttered a quick prayer to whatever deities might be listening, commending her soul to any god that could find it. Then she jumped.

Later, Violet would look back on it and label it as her most definitive attempt at self-annihilation in her four years of self-disregard. The casualness with which she regarded her own possible death, the way she didn't register any pain despite the massive amount she must have been dealt, her temporary amnesia of her shield capabilities, her sheer unadulterated focus on her Last Stand – it all added up to self-destruction on an overly-dramatic scale. She was going to drown in the darkness, drown in the blood, and drown willingly.

She landed on the shoulders of a nearby guard and his knees buckled under him, Violet having focused all of her weight on the heels of her feet. She rode the momentum smoothly, following him down before rolling and swiping out the feet of a guard right next to him. That was the first advantage of facing insurmountable odds. You hardly had to aim.

This seemed to galvanise the loitering guards, who had previously been unsure as to how to deal with a single small girl. Violet was a definate threat now and they'd been trained to handle that. Shots sounded off all around her but she kept low, taking out another guard with a quick yank on his hamstrings. That was the second advantage of having more enemies than allies: most of the time they ended up shooting each other or getting in their own way. And she would play the few advantages she had for all they were worth. She might not outlive this fight, but she could even the odds in it considerably.

She slid left, a textbook manoeuvre, taking down a few more guards with well-placed blows to the backs of their knees. She jumped again and sailed over their heads as they fought to get their guns to follow her speed. She was slight, and she was fast, and in a room full of guards who had been taught that bulkier was better she had a tactical superiority over them as individuals. They were slow and clumsy.

Violet thought for a moment that this was probably their first real skirmish; they'd evidently never been in a hostile situation in this job before. That would explain their awkwardness, the holes in the otherwise-tight security, their inability to adapt to new situations. And they must have all been rookies, not a sergeant or captain or commander among 'em, because there was no order amongst the confusion. It was just a a babble of men trying to keep up with a foe too fast (or invisible) for them to see. That was another flaw, Violet realised later. There were no women. The guards were all men and used to relying on brute strength, something any man could have if he trained hard and long enough. But women were built differently, biologically speaking – a man's dynamis was strength, but a woman's power was speed and technique. You needed both in a guard system.

Violet hooked one ankle around a guard's neck, twisted, rolled, jackknifed off a wall in a smooth rebound and laid out another three guards with a swift spin. She hardly dared believe it, disappointment tingeing the shock underneath the focus. She was holding her own. She was surrounded by enemies who had a vast superiority of numbers and she was holding her own.

There were more guards pouring in – she could feel the density in the air of the room change. But it wasn't changing much; the hole she'd punched in the ceiling seemed to have jammed its opening mechanism and the gap created was ostensibly too small for the other two helicopters. She'd bought Zharov running time, though she was willing to bet there were other hangars sending out craft as fast as radio messaging would allow.

Somebody grabbed her arm and yanked. Violet manipulated her body, shifted her centre of gravity and tightened the arc so that she landed her bony shoulder into the man's solar plexus. He dropped her and doubled over, wheezing. Violet used his back as a launch pad, tucking herself into a tight ball to minimise the impact of the rubber bullets and promptly landed on another guard. This one had been watching her descent and was prepared, however; his arms caught her across the back and she flew away. But she had control, tight control, and she angled her drop so that she landed on her hands. Flipping over and turning in a tight, sweet circle, she touched down on the floor of the hangar.

There was sweat pouring from her body. Her energy supplies were good but her fat supplies weren't, and this was a punishing pace nobody could sustain for long. She threw her weight behind every punch and kick, locked her muscles so iron-clad that they never budged with every block, and it had been at least eight hours since she'd eaten. She was fading in an unusually figurative sense. The guards knew it. They could see her laboured breathing and the way her movements lacked their previous razor edge.

But she didn't stop. She had reserves of energy that were severely depleted, but there was still some left. She was here now in order to drain that tidal breath, the bottom ten percent, that last gasp of energy. She had no reason to save any for later. It was here and now or not ever.

Tidal breath, Violet remembered faintly as she delivered a bone-crushing elbow jab into the face of a man behind her. The bottom ten percent of our lungs is reserved for tidal breath. The fabled last gasp of drowners and chokers. Once you expel that...

She turned on the spot, pivoting smoothly, and caught another approaching guard in the throat with her heel. There wasn't as much power behind it this time. Still, you didn't need much power when hitting a man in the trachea. Less than a pound of pressure to break skin, she thought crazily.

She could feel herself being backed against the wall now. There must have been someone of a higher rank controlling things, as it wasn't the free-for-all skirmish it had been at the start. Violet focused instead on defending the small space she had, no longer losing energy to fast twists and movement. It was hack-slash-parry (insofar as she could with bare hands) at those within reach. Fortunately, more men were still pouring in so the guards nearest her were being pressed forward by the crush. None dared approach her directly. There were men lying immobile, groaning and gasping all over the hangar and none wished to risk her wrath. They're not men, Violet thought with some level of disgust. They've got socks in their pants instead of –

Someone swung the butt of his rifle at Violet's head, or made a spirited attempt at a throw. She ducked instantly, kicked the man in his sock drawer and rolled again. She could feel a bead of sweat making its way rather insistently down her throat but there was no time to wipe it away. Suddenly, a hand grabbed her upper arm, fingers digging cruelly into the muscle. Violet twisted, planning to use her shoulder to drive the man into the wall, when her other arm was grabbed equally as harshly. The combined force of the guards working in tandem pushed her back about three feet and smashed her back into the metal wall of the hangar. Then there was a sharp force under her face, pushing her chin up, exposing her throat. It was a gun barrel.

She kicked out, once, wildly, and was rewarded when an arm and the gun barrel fell away. She dropped, intending to sweep out the feet of the other guard, when another arm hauled her back up again.

Violet was never quite sure what happened next. There was a sudden, black, soundless explosion and the shock of it sent her entire body limp.

Later, she'd realise it was the butt of a gun across the side of her face. Her mind went numb, useless, blank, and she sagged in her captor's grip. They let her go and she slid down to her knees, fell backwards, slipped down the wall and sprawled out. Her vision went dark but her mind kept turning over, disjointed and disorientated, trying desperately to make the connections which would spark her body back to life again. She could hear distant shouting and in the confusion of her brain she recognised it to be her own inner voice yelling at her. But she couldn't quite hear it... there was something she need to be doing, something that should be happening, but it was too far away...

Over the next few minutes she washed in and out of consciousness, waxing and waning, losing time. Her only coherent thought was the last ten percent. The last ten percent. She had a feeling it was important but she couldn't figure out why.

The floor was cool. She felt it under her body. There was something urgent happening around her – she could feel the susurration in the air. There was something urgent going on in her own mind as well, something she should be aware of. Her inner voice was screaming at her now but her own thoughts seemed so detached from her, separated by a thick layer of impenetrable fog. Instead, she let her senses (what was left of them still operating) hold sway in her mind.

Violet was half-aware of arms picking her her up, one under her knees and one under her shoulders with a gentleness she couldn't fathom. A hand, presumably somebody else's, tipped her head sideway and forwards to lie on the chest of this stranger, easing the tension on her spine considerably. A finger traced the length of the scar on her face, ending with a thoughtful tap on her collarbone. She should have felt angry at this violation, enraged that someone dared touch her, frightened that they would do it again. She felt nothing, she saw nothing.

Then there was movement, a slight vibration in the cavity of the chest of the man that carried her. He was talking, and now moving. Violet was trying to get back thought, trying to get back anything that this semi-conscious drowsiness prevented. Any coherent thought at all. She succeeded for a moment in cracking her eyelids but they were simply too heavy, and no messages were getting through to her limbs. She'd drained them of everything they'd had to give, and this... this, surely, was the last of her energy.

Violet was pretty sure that she'd decided to stop fighting something, just a little while ago. So she simply let herself drift, flotsam on the big sea of emptiness that surrounded her on every side, and let total darkness take over. It was something of a relief; she'd spent so long fighting. If she was going to leave, then she welcomed it and drowned in the clean, clear, aerated blackness.

Ten percent, she heard in herself as she drifted further and further away. Drowning. The last ten percent...

To be continued.


Miss Keith: Yes, they'll meet properly, but not quite yet. Sorry about the cliffy...