I own no part of the Doctor Whoniverse. Seriously, I don't, but I keep getting their mail and their magazine subscriptions. The interstellar postal service has really gone down hill since the switched to private ownership.


"You're wrong," Karena said, shaking her head. "You're wrong. I would have noticed a hitchhiker on my own ship!"

"It wasn't your ship, and you didn't notice the egg sack," the Doctor said. "You said you knew that engine inside and out? If you did, you'd've seen it."

"I did!" she said. "I mean, I do know those engines! It's an old ship. There's bound to be cobwebs in the corners." She crossed her arms, sulking. "That doesn't mean you're right."

"No, it's possible that a thousand alien ships have landed on this planet, and any one of them might've been carrying sempry, but…"

"But what? Hmm? Don't hold back on my account. I know you've got another shoe to drop." She glared at him.

"The one we're after," he said, "its cells mutated while it was still in the egg. That means radiation. The radiation of a blown-out engine crash landing a stolen space pod, for example."

"I didn't steal it," she said angrily. "Anyway, if what you say is true, then the eggs would have hatched miles up in the mountains. The Sempry wouldn't had travelled all the way down here, they'd be off hunting squirrels or terrorizing farmers in the countryside."

"How did you bring the pod into the city?" he demanded. "When did you bring it in?"

"I asked a giant eagle to carry it," she snapped. "How do you think I brought it here? I hired a wagon and horses."

The Doctor frowned at her until she rolled her eyes and fished in her pocket. She pulled out a matte-black case, about the size of a small deck of cards, and tossed it to him. "There. Satisfied?"

He turned the case over. "An S.E.P. field? These are banned by the Shadow Proclamation, a thousand years imprisonment if you're caught with one outside of a museum." He stared at her, but she only shrugged. He couldn't even pretend to be surprised. He sighed and threw it back to her. "A bit large, isn't it?" he said.

"I haven't had any complaints yet."

"Well, you've got one now. The eggs were mutated by the engine blow-out, but it wasn't enough to hatch them. The radiation from the S.E.P. field, however, and one last burst from the engines to get the pod through those doors…" he pointed to the large, double doors that led from the carriage shop's yard onto the builder's floor. They'd been boarded up decades ago, but there were signs that they'd been opened again only a few years past.

"The sempry are a cooperative species. The nest in your ship could have been made a hundred years ago, and a million lightyears away. Cold space would keep the eggs dormant, waiting for heat to trigger the lifecycle. Your engines mutated them, the crash woke them, and the S.D.P. hatched it. I'm sorry, Carmen. There's no other answer." He turned back to her and in the electric light of the torch, he could see her face was pale, her hands clenched in shaking fists.

"You're wrong," she said.

"No, I'm not."

"You are accusing me of murder, Doctor."

"You didn't know what you were doing," he muttered, turning away. What was he doing? He asked himself. Why wasn't he angry? He should have been giving her a dressing-down for her carelessness, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. "It was an accident," he said.

Karena wasn't comforted. "So, it's manslaughter, then! Well, you're wrong anyway. It wouldn't be the first time."

What wouldn't he have done, the Doctor thought, to have a chance to go home again? What risks would he take, how careless could he be, to set foot on Gallifrey? He felt nothing but sympathy for the corner she'd been backed into. It was a terrible thing, to realize that a mistake you had made cost the life of someone – or everyone – that you loved. But you had to accept the truth. There was no hiding from it. It would follow you wherever you tried to run…

"Yes, I've been wrong before," the Doctor agreed. "But I'm not wrong this time. Carmen, I…"

"That is not my name," she snapped. "I am not that woman anymore. You left Carmen out there," she gestured up, at the dusty shadows among the ceiling beams, "somewhere on the other side of the universe. You abandoned her a hundred years ago and a million lightyears away. And she is not coming back." She turned her back on him.

The Doctor was growing angry now, but he checked himself and looked up at the pod. He frowned thoughtfully for a moment, making a few calculations. "That's too bad," he said, casually, "because I have no use for middle-aged housekeepers. What I could really use is Carmen's help right now." He ducked around to the other side of the escape pod and used the sonic to open the maintenance hatch under the engine.

"Help?" Karena followed him around the pod. "You need my help with what?"

"Not your help. Carmen's."

He glanced at her, and then dove waist deep into the maintenance hatch that accessed the pods lesser mechanical functions: the radio equipment, medical supply box and survival gear. Carmen had taken most of that with her when she first crash landed on Earth. The transmission circuits were back at her house hooked up to a large, black rotary telephone, but the sensor relays were still where they ought to be. And the laser diodes – all twelve of them.

"What are you doing in there?" Karena demanded.

The Doctor used the sonic to unscrew one of the diodes and stuck his hand down out of the hatch. "Hold this, will you?" he said, and waited a full four heartbeats (eight if you counted both hearts) before she took it from him. He smiled.

"I'm going to build a cage," he said, unscrewing another and dropping it into her hand. This time, she was there waiting for him.

"Wire cage?" Karena's voice was muffled through the metal pod.

"What? No, not wire. Electric," he said. "If I can adjust the frequency of these laser diodes, I can create an electrical cage that should disrupt the sempry's ability to create special distortions. They'd work their way through a wire cage in seconds…"

He felt something shuffling at his knees and looked down to find Carmen wriggling her way into the narrow – now much narrower – space inside the pod.

"Ah, excuse me… ah, oh!" The Doctor made as much room as he possibly could for her, but by the time she'd stood up, their bodies were pressed together and their faces only inches apart. She'd put on a few inches in her middle-age.

"I didn't say wire cage," she said. "I said why a cage? You need a trap, not a cage. We have to kill that thing."

"I won't kill it," the Doctor said. He tried to get his arm up to unscrew another diode, but there was little space and she wouldn't move. He could feel her hot breath on his cheek.

"That mutated monster has killed six children. Probably more. What are you going to do? Live trap it and drop it in the woods somewhere like a misplaced rabbit!?"

The Doctor cleared his throat and looked away. He was beginning to feel claustrophobic, trapped in the same space as her. "I can name at least seventeen uninhabited planets where even a mutated sempry can hunt to its heart's content for a thousand years without hurting a sentient soul. All we have to do is catch it and I will carry it away from this planet forever."

Karena seemed to shrink a little at that. "So, you'll fly that creature away, that thing. You'll find it a home, take care of it after everything it's done… but you'll leave me here, alone." She smiled bitterly and slapped the two diodes she held into the Doctor's hand. "You're on your own, Doctor. Good luck, but I want that thing dead. I will see it dead." She slid down his body and ducked out of the ship.

He muttered a curse under his breath and considered letting her go. He could take what he wanted from the pod and build the cage that he needed, but… it would take longer without her help. She knew the local streets and had a better knowledge of where the six children had gone missing that he did. She also knew the tech in this pod better than he did, reluctant as he was to admit it. He might spend all night building the cage only to have to wait for days and nights before the right sempry wandered into it. The job could take weeks, or it could take hours, depending on Carmen's help. The sempry could kill more children in that time, and what's more, the Doctor had no interest in hanging around 1930's Spain for weeks.

He ducked out of the pod and went after her. "It won't fix anything," he shouted. She was halfway to the hall that led to the front door of the ship. "Killing that creature won't stop the guilt you're feeling right now. Karena."

She stopped short but didn't turn around.

"Believe me," he said, walking towards her. "You can kill the goblin that killed your cousin, but that won't make it go away. That anger, that grief that's gnawing at you… the fear in the pit of your stomach. You can kill a hundred of them or a hundred thousand." He stood behind her now, a few feet away, but she had to cross the gap, not him. "You can kill the whole species, but it won't stop the pain."

She sighed. "So what will? Following your plan, I suppose?"

He shook his head. "No. I don't know. I haven't figured that out yet," he admitted, "but I'll let you know when I do."

To his relief, she laughed – sadly, but still it was still a laugh. She turned around and even in the dim light, he felt her eyes on him, searching, calculating and, after a moment, she nodded. She walked up to him and then past him, taking the sonic from his hand. She ducked underneath the pod and stood up into the maintenance hatch. He saw blue light and heard the whir of the sonic unscrewing the remaining diodes.

He crouched at her feet rather than trying to fit himself into that small space with her again. He asked the one question that still troubled him. "What did you mean before, when you said it was my turn? It's more than just a game, isn't it? It was important to you…"

"And to you," she said, dropping a diode without warning. He was just quick enough to catch it. The sonic was silent for a long moment, and then she crouched down next to him to look him in the eye. "It means trust," she said. "It was your turn to trust me this time, to trust that I know what I'm doing here. That I'm right… this time. You're not always the only one with the answers, you know."

"I begin to suspect…" He felt another piece fall into place. It felt right, familiar, this way of doing business with her, taking turns, following the rules. "So, we're friends who don't trust each other?"

"I trusted you the last time we met," she said, the old anger creeping back into her voice. "I trusted you with my life, but you wouldn't listen. You thought you know everything, and by the time I… well, by then it was too late, wasn't it." She shook her head. He stared at her, blankly. It was his future. He didn't know what had happened between them yet.

She scowled. "I'm surprised you haven't guessed," she said. "You're usually so clever at figuring things out." She couldn't tell him his future, but she couldn't resist the urge to hint at the damage he had caused. She knocked her fist against her right leg, just above the knee. It was a hard sound, a solid thump of… metal?

The Doctor stared at her.

"Bonded polycarbide," she said, "coated in a self-regenerating sheath, a clone of my own skin cells. The Engineers did a good job with it. Bulletproof, even, except the sheath, of course. It does everything I need it to do, better than my own leg, in fact. I could never have afforded something like this on my own."

"How…?" But he knew she wouldn't answer him. "We could… trust each other, both equally, this time," he said. "We could work together, do better… I could do better," he corrected himself. She had already lived it. She couldn't change her past.

Carmen smiled and shook her head. "You can't," she said.

"I can try…"

"You can't, because you didn't." She put her hand on his knee. "It will happen because it's already happened. You know how these things happen, Doctor. Don't worry about it. Besides, this works for us. Today it's my turn to trust you, and tomorrow…" She shrugged her shoulders.

"We just met," he reminded her. "I don't know the rules. I think we can do without them this once. We can both trust each other, equally." He held out his hand.

She hesitated. "You're only going to be disappointed."

"I trust you." He smiled and pushed his hand closer. "Hello, ma'am. I'm called the Doctor." He raised an eyebrow.

She stared, and then she sighed, and then she shook her head but she also shook his hand. "Carmen," she said, reluctantly. "Carmen Santiago Ortiz, or what's left of her. And I've got work to do, so if you want this cage finished before sunup…"

He let go of her hand, still smiling, and watched her disappear back into the maintenance hatch. A moment later, a blue glow lit up her face as the sonic whirred away. One-by-one, Carmen dropped the diodes into his hand, along with a few other parts that he hadn't thought of needing yet. It wasn't a very complicated cage, to be honest, the calibration of the electrical output would be the tricky part – and he couldn't be sure he had the figures right until the sempry was actually inside the cage – but with Carmen's help, it shouldn't take long to build. The more he thought about it, the power hook-up would be tricky, too, what with the changes she'd made to the fuel system, but the Doctor was confident that once it was hooked up, he could keep the cage powered for at least an hour which was more than long enough to transport the Sempry to a new world far from Earth. He could save the world.

And if he could just keep Carmen in line… maybe he could save her, too. This time.

.

The Doctor jogged easily through the midnight streets of Zaragoza, squinting up at the sot-stained street signs and trying to match the names against the illegible scrawl that was Carmen's map. She might have been a doctor herself for all that he could make out her handwriting, and he was pretty sure she had written it that way on purpose, but he was relying on her knowledge of the streets and he had promised to trust her.

It had been tempting to send her out here instead of him, to act as bait while he finished the cage, but as hard as he tried, he didn't trust her not to shoot the sempry on sight. She could finish the cage just as quickly as he could with the figures he'd given her. He had an hour to find the mutant sempry and lure it back to the shop. He trusted Carmen to have the cage finished in an hour.

The Doctor glanced up at the sky. Night has switched over to morning by now, and there were few people on the streets. Men lurked in doorways, smoking cigarettes, and women stood with their skirt hiked up at the hip, gathering under the yellow light of the lamps. One of the women called out to him as he hurried passed and he turned to scan her with the sonic. She recoiled from the strange, blinking device and one of the lurking men stepped forward, ready to defend his merchandise.

The Doctor frowned at the sonic.

"Am I not good enough for ye?" the woman said, resting her fist on her hip.

"Rats," the Doctor said. "Big rats, hairless, long arms, about this long…" he measured the size of the sempry with his hands. She stared at him, open-mouthed in amazement. "You're right," he said, snapping his fingers. "It would be too clever for that. It'll keep to the shadows… and the rooftops. Thanks anyway." He jogged on and the woman rejoined her fellow street-walkers on the corner to laugh at the looney and wait for saner customers.

The Doctor was very aware of the night people, the pickpockets and worse, but he guessed rightly that they wouldn't bother with the crazy man and his blinking penlight running around in an oil-stained coat and third-hand cap. He didn't even have his tie anymore, just a loose-collar shirt missing its top two buttons. He grinned, feeling the wind in his hair. The game is afoot, he thought to himself as he ran, and then skidded to a halt as the sonic chirped louder, picking up a radiation trail that matched the sempry's signal leading down one of the narrower side streets.

He checked the sign, but it wasn't on Carmen's map. He was two blocks north of the road where Angel had last been seen. There were fewer lamps here; half were dark and the other half were so covered in soot that they gave off hardly any light at all. There were no women gathered under these lamps. Even the pros looked for safer streets elsewhere. The houses on either side of him were hunched, crooked and crouched together for warmth. Doors here were double barred, windows shuttered and latched tight. Behind them, the Doctor could hear the raucous laughter of women and the angry cussing of men. The sonic was blinking faster now, beeping louder, as he headed into the alleyway.

The Doctor's eyes were on the rooftops and not on the ground. He tripped over a pile of old cans and caught himself against the wall, waiting for the clatter to die down. No one looked out of the windows overhead. No one opened their door to see what was going on out there. Not in this neighborhood. It was the perfect hunting ground, really.

He was about to move on when he heard a different sound, a soft sniffle coming from behind a rotting beer barrel to his left. Warily, he peered over the rim and saw a small, round face looking up at him from out of a pile of dirty cloth.

The face was a child, and the cloth was its clothes. The dirt was smudged on its cheeks. It was old enough, it might even have been one of the gang of boys that had attacked him on the street that morning.

Putting the thought aside, the Doctor reached out his hand. "Hello. I'm the Doctor, and I'm here to…"

"Pendejo!" the child shouted, throwing a handful of dirt at him – definitely one of the original gang. "Déjame en paz!" The boy shouted and tried to run, but the Doctor caught his arm.

"Wait a minute," he demanded, struggling to hold onto the squirming child. "I'm looking for a… for the goblin," he said, feeling a bit silly. "Duende. You know it? Have you seen it? Is that what you're hiding from?"

The boy stopped twisting and looked up in horror, not at the Doctor but over him. The night seemed suddenly a great deal darker, the streets emptier than they had been before. Slowly, the Doctor loosened his grip on the child and turned around. He looked up. A black shape hung from the gutter near the mouth of the alley. He wouldn't have thought anything of it; it looked like a sack of forgotten laundry until it opened its eyes.

"Duende! El Duende! Corra!" the boy tore free of the Doctor's loose grip and ran away down the alley. The Goblin's eyes followed the child and its body seemed to swing forward as if it meant to give chase.

"Hey!" The Doctor shouted. "Hey! Over here!" The sempry hesitated and turned is red eyes back to the Doctor. It hissed and swung down to a lower window ledge.

"That's right," the Doctor muttered to himself. "That's right. This way." He twisted the sonic, running through the likely frequencies without taking his eyes off the creature. "I've faced down armies," the Doctor cried. "I think I can handle one, little space-rat!" He aimed the sonic at the creature, guessing that he could stun it with about 150 kHz. He pressed the button and laughed as the sempry shrieked and cowered back against the wall, but it didn't try to run and it wasn't stunned. It recovered faster than he thought it would. It was hissing at him again, but the sound was different this time, deeper, soft and regular. The creature was laughing at him.

The Doctor backed away, more carefully this time. He had two narrow walls on either side of him and the creature was blocking the entrance. If he had to run, there was only one way to go. He took a step back, and then another. His eyes were on the sempry that hadn't moved but was watching him the whole time.

A handful of rotten leaves showered down on him from above. He tore his eyes from the sempry to look up… directly into another pair or red eyes and an open, hissing mouth full of sharp, yellow teeth.

The Doctor gave a shout and leaped back, stumbling and nearly falling over. More than one! There was more than one and he should have guessed it! Sempry nests can hold up to three eggs at a time. Of course there would be more than one creature that had been mutated by the ship's radiation, and he couldn't fight them. Not here. The sonic had no effect. The Doctor felt the bruises aching around his throat and knew that his only chance now was Carmen. He would have to run and hope that she had finished the cage in time.

The Doctor turned and ran. The sempry gave chase. He could hear them scratching at the brick, scurrying over the roof as they chased him out of the alley and down the street. When he looked back, he could see them swinging from lamppost to rain gutter, and they were gaining on him. He hoped the child had been able to escape, but for himself, he had no idea which way to run. He'd lost Carmen's map, but there would have been no time to stop and check it now. He thought he recognized one of the buildings up ahead, crossed his fingers and turned the corner… and almost ran smack into a blind alleyway.

He spun around to run out again, but it was too late. The first of the Goblins had reached the mouth of the alley. He was trapped. He tried to think his way out, but there were very few options that he could see, unless he learned to fly. There were no doors and no windows low enough to climb through even if he could get them open. There wasn't even a convenient fire escape or manhole nearby. He fumbled desperately with the sonic, trying every frequency, but none had any effect on the sempry. It dropped down from the roof to a second floor window. It hung by one arm from the ledge, snickering and then… a gunshot rang out. And then a second. The noise cracked like thunder between the brick walls. The sempry shrieked, and the Doctor covered his ears.

The Sempry swung past him fleeing up the wall again and over the rooftops. The Doctor's ears rang in the silence and he turned back around slowly to see the dark silhouette of a woman in long skirts standing at the mouth of the alley, backlit by the streetlights. He may not have recognized the dumpy, hourglass shape, but he knew the way she held the gun loose in one hand.

"How many times do I have to save your life, Doctor?" Carmen said, pocketing her pistol.

Relieved, he hurried out of the alley. "What are you doing here?" he demanded. "You're supposed to be back at the shop, working on the cage!"

She stared at him blankly for a moment, and then smiled. "Oh, right. Well, you're welcome, anyway," she said, letting him hurry her away from the alley and into the open street.

The sempry couldn't get a drop on them if there was nowhere to drop from. "There's two of them," he said, "maybe more. But I think I've got an idea. 150 kHz. It hurts them… well, it annoys them, anyway. If I can amplify the sound of the sonic, there's a good chance they'll follow us back to the… to the…" He frowned and looked her up and down. "You've changed. That's a different dress."

"What, this old thing," she said without missing a beat. "I think if you run now, those things'll follow you anywhere. That's twice you've stolen their meal out from under them."

"Ah, right. Right." He frowned at the row of pockets the front of her skirt. He couldn't remember seeing them before. "And the cage…?"

"It's done."

"What, already?" He would have thought she'd need at least twenty minutes more.

She shrugged and her gaze grew distant as if she were pulling out the file of some memory from a long time ago. "I mirrored the diodes and hooked the power cells up to the pod engine. Easy as Babel Fish pie. All you've got to do is set the ignition keys, start the engines and the couplings should snap into place… if you had the frequency right, that was."

"Alright. Well… Allons-y!" he said, and turned to run, expecting her to follow him.

"Doctor, wait!" He looked around. "The shop's this way." She hooked her thumb in the opposite directions.

He looked up and down the empty streets. It all looked the same to him, and he'd thought he was on Karena's street, that he'd turned down Karena's alleyway when he'd gone down that dead end. Turns out he was wrong. It wouldn't be the first time.

He nodded for Carmen to lead the way. "Ladies first," he said.

She hesitated and looked down at the band on her wrist, checking the time, he guessed, wondering why she bothered. "I suppose I could make a small detour," she muttered to herself. She looked up at him and grinned. "Vamanos!" She said and took off running.

The Doctor followed her, in part to keep an eye on her, but also because she was running so fast that he had to struggle to keep up. He was disappointed, until he remembered the mechanical leg she wore. Better than the original, she'd told him, and now he believed her.

"I like the new dress," he gasped as they darted through an intersection. Something knocked over a trashcan behind them, a cat – or a rat. "Good color, goes well with the hair," he added. "Red hair… it was black before…"

"It's always been red," she said. There was another crash behind them. Carmen looked over her shoulder. "Two of them, you said?"

"Two, that I know of."

She frowned, thoughtfully and then ran faster. The Doctor, already straining to keep up with her augmented speed, began to fall farther behind, but Carmen reached out and took his hand. She pulled him along with her, leading him on a zig-zag route that he never would have found on his own. He recognized the street now, the high wooden fence that surrounded the lot behind the carriage shop. The gate was locked and boarded shut, but Carmen skidded to a halt in front of it. The Doctor doubled over, gasping. He looked up. The top of the fence was at least eight feet high.

"Give me a moment," he said, fumbling for the sonic.

"I don't think a screwdriver is going to pry loose all these wooden boards. We'll have to climb." She looked at him, his hands on his knees, his breath coming fast. "Can you make it?"

He nodded. "I can make it. But Carmen," he said, "you're not… you're not my Carmen. You've changed."

She looked at him. "You think you're the only one who gets to?" she asked.

He shook his head, but he was looking hard at her. The face and voice were the same, but the clothes were different, more worn out and patched up, and her hair was its natural shade of burnt copper. She was older. Not by much, but definitely older that the Carmen he'd left back at the shop.

She smiled and squeezed his hand. "It's always nice to see you, Doctor. Now, come on." She stepped back and crouched down, holding out her hands with the fingers laced together. "You're not as old as you used to be. I'll give you a boost."

He hesitated, but she seemed sure of herself, so he entrusted his foot to her hands and the next thing he knew he was flying through the air. He managed to catch himself before his feet hit the ground and bent his knees to absorb the impact. For a moment, he waited for her to follow him, but she didn't appear. Beyond the wall, he could hear the sempry hissing and scratching over the rooftops. They wouldn't have any trouble getting over that wall.

He raced across the muddy yard to the back door of the shop. He tried the handle, but it was locked, and as he fumbled for the sonic in his pocket, he could feel the breath of the sempry on the back of his neck. The sonic was set at the new frequency, and he had to twist the handle to get it back to default settings, but before he could aim it at the lock, the bolt turned and the door opened. The Doctor ran through and slammed it shut again behind him, turning the bolt just as something heavy slammed against the wood from outside. He'd made it in time – with a little help – but there was no time to celebrate. Walls and doors meant nothing to a sempry, it would find its way in.

Carmen stared at him, his mud-stained pants and the leaves in his hair. "What happened to you?" she asked. "You're early."

He ran past her toward the pod and the spaghetti mess of cables and diodes on the floor beside it. "You said it was finished." He pulled open the access panel on the side of the pod and stared at the knot of bypass wires and circuits. He shook his head and backed away, unable to think straight with so many new facts and figures working through his brain.

"I said what? I just finished it. I twisted off the last wire in the power cells when you knocked, but I haven't had a chance to test it," she said, staring at him as if he were mad. "What's wrong with you?"

The Doctor grabbed the hand lamp up from the floor and shone the light over her. Green dress, the same green dress, but no pockets. No pockets. Her hair was ink-blackened with rust red showing at the roots. It had been red before.

"Not my Carmen," he muttered, relieved.

"Doctor, what happened to you?"

He frowned at her. She'd lied to him before, but he didn't think she was a good enough actress to fool him this time. She didn't know. "Nothing," he said. He could already hear the sempry scampering over the roof. "It's nothing. There's no time to test it. We've got to hurry. They're coming."

"They?"

He jumped up the ladder and reached into the pod's cockpit, flipping a few switches and listening to the whirring the power cells hooked up to the diode grid. There was a loud bang from the ceiling and a crack, then a crash as broken glass rained down on them. The Doctor threw up his arms to cover his head, and then looked up through the broken skylight. One of the sempry shrieked. In the dark, it was impossible to see what was going on above their heads.

"Start the engine!" the Doctor shouted. Now would be the time to worry about those frequency numbers, but he wasn't worried. He trusted Carmen, and she seemed to think that this would work. That it had worked. "Turn it on!"

Carmen flipped open the cover on her wristband and pressed a sequence of buttons. The electric cage hummed to life. The control panel in the cockpit exploded in sparks. The Doctor covered his eyes and reached down blindly to flip the final switch.

The cage turned on. The diodes lit up. Like an explosion of light and cord, the net snapped open. It was a thing of beauty, blue stars against a black sky. The sempry shrieked again as the net swept them up and held them. Carmen shouted to him, but he couldn't hear her over the noise. At the same moment, a broken beam fell from the ceiling, striking him on the back of the head. He fell from the ladder to the cement floor. The last thing he saw was Carmen's silhouette backlit by the blue glow of the electric cage as she ran along the cables, battling voltage to keep the power running steady, and then everything went dark.


THE END

No, not really, but wouldn't that be just devastating :D

I'm tempted to do it. That's just the mood I'm in.

-paint