"Alright, kid. You've done, uh… well enough. Haven't died, at least, surprisingly. Think it's about time to say goodbye though. This is where we part ways and all. Be a good leaper, try not to murder too many people. Eat your vegetables. Or... not, I don't fucking know. Nice knowing you, I guess."

Fucking. Useless. It still didn't feel goddamn right. Skyler scrubbed her face with her palms, sitting across the room and staring in at the literal "monster under the bed". He was still dead-ass asleep, of course. An entire day had passed since she'd sewn up his stomach, and she'd hardly seen him actively stir since then. It was like his body knew that it had a minute to actually rest now and had promptly knocked the hell out. And. She'd looked at him.

She meant, well, shit. Once he seemed to be somewhat less touch-and-go, it had occurred to her that it wasn't every day she had the chance to see one of the Hunters without the hood. She probably wasn't going to get another chance like this without messing with dead stuff. Maybe she'd wind up with something informative to tell to folks back on base, provided she survived this adventure. "Just a quick look couldn't hurt" was the mantra of many a person who got their eye taken out seconds later, but hey, that was probably why she was already missing one of those now, wasn't it? Ha ha.

It had been… disturbingly easy to see the young man from the ID photo, really. She supposed she'd sort of been expecting the infection to have rendered him unrecognizable, but parts were still there. He still had that sort of round face shape, matted hair recognizably wavy. She remembered thinking he had almost absurdly thick eyelashes, considering. It was hard to mesh that image with the mess of grime and scratches covering it now, not to mention the damn teeth. This was other people's blood he was covered in, not that she had much room to talk. There was just something way more depressing about seeing it up close and putting a face to it.

What the hell else was she supposed to do, though? She'd done just about everything she reasonably could in the situation, even if she really shouldn't have, and given the kid the best chance she could throw at him. She'd bandaged over the stitch job, hauled his dead weight back into his pillow fort… Hell, she'd even managed to prop his head up enough to get him to take some water, though he never did seem to really wake up. He could be bleeding internally or something, in which case this was out of her scope of knowledge anyways, but still. It was all a whole lot of effort for an infected that would go back to trying to eat her eyeballs given half a chance. If anything, she was being too generous here.

Was it because anything she could think to say sounded kind of lackluster? Even if it didn't actually matter any, it felt better to not just sort of stand there dumbly. After mulling it over for a bit, she settled on,

"I mean. Good luck, then. You're definitely gonna need it."

She picked herself up from the floor and shuffled out across the bloodstained carpet towards the last few rays of light streaming in through the front windows.

Dreams came and went. Brief, fleeting flashes of pain, hands on him. Phantom sounds and images like the impression left in his eyes after looking at a too-bright light. Nothing distinct enough to pick out between stretches of deep, deep sleep.

There was an unsettling stillness as he slowly started to come to, an entire world away from the chaos he vaguely remembered. Too still. Too quiet. The idea bubbled up that maybe he'd actually died, and this was what being dead was like. Distantly he could feel his heart give an uneven thump of worry. Could he move? His face wrinkled and his claws flexed. That was some relief, at least. He opened his eyes.

It took some time for him, groggy as his thoughts were upon waking up, to start taking in details. He was… alone. And he still hurt. Beyond the throbbing of his most recent injuries, he could still feel the steady ache bone-deep in his body that he couldn't ever remember leaving him, not to mention the endless emptiness in his belly telling him that he was hungrier than anything and had to eat. An icy pang of dread and panic raced through his nerves. Oh no. Did things keep hurting after they died? Could he not get away from it even by being dead? From the best his broken mind could tell, dead meant over, done, when something stopped fighting so he could continue gleefully tearing it apart under tooth and claw, the sharp red tang of blood filling his nose and rich with the excitement of his kill-

Shh. This was important. Was he really dead? It was difficult for him to use that kind of logic, especially once an idea had taken hold, but once the initial anxiety passed, he… didn't think so.

So then what had happened? His breath came in short pants as he tried to sit up, cutting off into a sudden whine when it turned out that he was back in his nested soft things and hit his head into the structure over him. He remembered flashes of what he'd been feeling. Hurt, a lot of hurt. Terror.

Monster.

Carefully he slid a hand under his covering, feeling something there. Some kind of fabric? He lifted the edge of his top just enough to see, and oddly enough he recognized it. It was the same sort of cloth the woman prey had covered her hurt eye in.

There were hints here, he knew. The pieces didn't fall into place easy, but he was trying. He'd spent so much of these past days confused, which was a near-constant, but this was different. Something about this left him more frustrated than ever, angry and floundering. He wasn't sure if he'd be able to understand any of the answers if he had them, but part of him craved them anyways, so something would at least make sense. It made his head ache trying to think about this. He let out a soft groan as he dragged himself out into the open. Unconsciously, before he even realized it was there, he started thumbing over the trinket still clutched in his hand. With that, at least one thing finally clicked.

She- the woman prey… She'd done this. The same way that she'd stabbed him and nearly killed him, she'd fixed the same wounds, too. And now she was gone again. His claws tangled underneath him and he growled. He couldn't get any further than that. Why would she have done that? He knew what "help" was, or at least the concept of it, but she had no reason to give it. She wasn't even Sister. He didn't know anything.

Suddenly feeling the restless need to move, he tested whether he could bear his weight on all fours. He was shaky, still felt awfully weak, but he managed it. Huffing through his nose, he padded carefully out of his nest room. Her scent still lingered here, not quite old yet. Fresh enough to follow and hunt her down by, probably.

Separated from the actual maddening presence of clean prey, it was easier to wonder whether he should actually do that. Insistent as the raw want in his stomach was, his wounds gave a fresh throb, reminding him of what had happened when he tried to take down this prey in particular. She was… she was dangerous. He could feel it radiating off of her practically like he could from an Other. But the predator in him found that tantalizingly exciting, too.

Resting, he let out a deep breath and leaned back into one of the perches in the wide room. He's always hated this thing. It smelled funny and something about the color was irritating enough to make him want to tear it to shreds.

He just… needed a while to try to think.

Hot blood sluiced down Skyler's front in thick pumps of arterial spray, soaking her vest and knife arm. The common still weakly scrabbled for her despite the ragged gash across its neck but very quickly its own rapid heart rate was killing it. She kicked it away from her where it sagged, having managed to get her closed in against an alley wall.

"Motherfucker," she gritted out, her heart still pounding. She hadn't even had time to get her rifle up, and these things weren't precisely sneaky. Getting used to this new lack of depth perception and field of vision was a bitch.

Okay. This was going to be fine, though. She knew the steps she had to take. How hard could it possibly be to find a working shortwave? Once she'd relayed in her position, all she had to do was find someplace secure enough to hold out until extraction. That was totally a feasible task that was not going to get her killed. If she wasn't above corpse robbing, she could even check if any of her comrades' radios had made it, but. Eugh. She cringed at the memory of the state they'd been in. Unlikely.

Alright Skyler, think. Where in an unfamiliar city might have a transmitter? Did… did Radioshack actually sell radios anymore? It'd help if she had any clue where the hell anything was. Maybe she could get Adrian back there to give her a campus tour.

Ohh, that was a bad joke. Why would she do that to herself?

There seriously wasn't any time to think about that, either. If she was going to be poking around, she had to be especially damn careful. Some of the specials were damn good at getting the drop on someone. And considering how few of the commons were out in the open, it seemed entirely likely that this was… something's turf. She just hoped it wasn't another damn Tank. They were supposed to be few and far between, but with the kind of luck she had, she ought to enter the shit lottery.

"So. Shopping list," she mumbled to herself. "One transmitter. Water'd be nice. Someplace to sleep. Flour, sugar, milk and eggs. Basic Walmart run."

Crossing the street like this was enough to make her paranoid, enough to raise the hairs on the back of her neck. Already she felt open, exposed, her field of vision too close. She never actually felt like she was alone. She squinted as she scanned behind abandoned vehicles, down dark side streets, along the rooftops.

"Yeah, well. You should see what happened to the last guy," she grumbled out loud to nothing in particular.

Skyler kept her rifle close. Let them try to fuck with her; she was really not in the mood.

However much it might still hurt, the Hunter felt much, much better now that he was able to move, the excitement coursing through him enough to override at least some of the ache. He was hunting. He'd been sure that was never going to happen again. It didn't matter that he was still weak, he felt so ferally giddy he half-thought he could take on anything, despite the quiver in his limbs. Now he could fill himself with the pounding thrill of a chase, stalk and maim and placate his bloodlust instead of having to deal with… whatever that sickening torrent of feelings he'd been trapped inside of his nest with was. He just had to find something that'd satisfy what he needed.

There was a soft clinking sound as he began creeping forward again. Instinctively he inhaled, looking down at the "gift". He quickly stuffed it into one of his pockets. Ignore that now. More important things.

The weak Others weren't enough for that itch, not really. They were too far gone, too taken with sickness to know fear. Besides that, there was a deep urgency that couldn't be appeased by anything Other. If that was the only option he had, though, he would take it.

A snarl tore free from his throat and he started to raise as he passed a small gaggle of them milling around a pile of dried bone and skin far too old to be appealing, but he shook himself and passed. These ones were hardly even aware of his presence, blindly drawn to whatever trace of scent was left. There was no real thrill in that. He quickened his pace as much as he could, given that he'd still been bleary since waking up.

He was caught in one of those semi-dazes when he was abruptly jarred from it by the sound of an Other snorting at him in investigation, probably noticing his weakened state. Good. He bit his tongue right up until it made the stupid decision to attack. He was waiting, and bowled it over as it rushed him.

Its legs went out from under it and a sharp crack sounded as its head hit the ground hard. It squalled and flinched, only for a moment. He knew perfectly well that unless it was close to a killing blow the ones like him, even these ones, didn't stop for pain. It struggled to right itself, but by then he was already on top and his heart was soaring. More screaming, still trying to resist, to scratch at his face even as he began to shred into its chest. Yes. More of this, this was what he wanted! He held back on the killing bite for as long as he could push himself to, wanting this feeling to last as long as possible.

Eventually hunger overrode him and he finally sank into the arc of its throat. Choking, dying sounds. Spurts of too-hot blood into his mouth, sick but still blood nonetheless. Covering him as it should. A slick chunk of flesh went down his throat before it'd even stopped moving. He shrieked himself to the sky, a handful of torn entrails in either fist. A couple more dumb ones fled. They might not know fear, but they had at least some ability to pick their fights.

After spending a bit satisfying the worst of the hunger, he snorted at the realization that there was nothing else to sate himself on. He couldn't have that. The past days still grated on him, and he needed to let this out somehow. Before he realized it, his hand was clenching in his pocket. Around something smooth.

There was still something else here. And he could hurt her now.

His dry, dirty lips turned up into something resembling a grin.

"Get it! Fucking get it!"

Skyler's shriek was practically drowned out from her own ears by the roar of the crowd before her and continuous gunfire. She'd bottlenecked herself on the stairwell, leaving room only to her front and side for the infected to come rushing at her. That was the issue though: She was cornered.

It had happened dizzyingly quickly. The tattered sheet proclaiming, "SUPPLIES! TAKE ONLY WHAT YOU NEED!" affixed to the outside of the housing had warranted a look, and… it turned out that the area was very much not barren of lesser infected, but rather that they had clustered themselves in spaces out of the open. It hadn't taken much to notify every damn tenant of the building that she was there, either. Ring ring, dinner. Jesus absolute fuck.

A short burst of assault rifle fire destroyed half the face of a girl in what looked like a pajama shirt and yoga pants. She tumbled back down the stairs, briefly tripping the ones behind her, not that it stopped them. In seconds they were already climbing over the newest corpse on the pile, scrabbling like wild goddamn animals. That was to say nothing of the ones trampling in from the upper floors. She had to reload, with her last box of bullets. Give her just two fucking seconds. Of course, they didn't work that way, but smashing the closest in the face with the butt of her rifle to send it pitching backwards at least gave her time. It wasn't easy, considering she was sweating enough her fingers were slick with it.

The thought occurred to her that this wasn't sustainable; she was going to run out of bullets far before she ran out of things for bullets to enter, from the looks of it. Well, fuck. Adrenaline pounded as she came to terms with the fact that this really looked like it could be it. It wasn't like her to lay back like a reasonable person and let this happen, though. She was still a goddamn badass, and she was going to go out like one, even if these guys were the only ones to see it.

A slow, sharp smile crossed her face as she patted the weight of her last remaining molly and the lighter in her pocket.

He could hear the sounds. It had to be her. He knew where she was now. It quickened his steps, to the point that he all but forgot about his soreness, even as warmth leaked into his stomach fabric. The sounds of a fight both enraged and enticed him so that he was already wild. They were prey sounds, and he had to stop them.

The smell of many Others in one place reached him, clustered around what had to be food. This was both exciting and brought another growl up through him. No, this prey was… she was his. The instinct whispered it to him, and he could feel it bone-deep. None of them could have her. Even here he could see them starting to converge, following the same signs of life as him.

Somewhere he could even scent smart Others, which was especially stressful. Would they come out after the lure of prey? He wasn't quite mindless enough even now to think he could take them in this state. It didn't deter him, though. The allure of unchanged flesh was strong.

And the closer he got, the more urgent the need driving him became. It was a pull, a call. Burning hot as the fever.

He had to hurry. He was getting so close. His.

The stair landing that the cocktail shattered on was engulfed almost instantly, helped along by the mass of bodies clustered around it. Clothes, interestingly enough, were quite flammable, and the commons had packed themselves in so tightly in an attempt to get at her that once a couple were caught by the ignition, within the span of less than a minute they all were. And man. These things didn't stop for much, but a little fire sure was something. The sound was ungodly, like a cross between a dying animal and exactly what she'd imagined someone being burned at the stake would sound like. Some of them still reached for her, others beat and pulled at their own clothes, hair, skin in a futile attempt to remove the flames.

Close as she was, Skyler was just about knocked back on her ass, falling back into her little corner of stair landing for protection. The rush of heat felt like it was going to bake any of her exposed skin. Even the infected making their way up the stairs were briefly staggered. Considering the old Victorian this housing had been placed in, she doubted it was long for this world, either.

Blaze of glory, fuckers.

As she fired down into the amassed infected below her, she supposed it was as good a time as any to get contemplative. Facing imminent death and all. She didn't think she'd be seeing her sister again, no. Even if there were somewhere for her to go to, she had a strong feeling it'd be someplace very different than Lauren. So, hey. Maybe this was just practice.

Smoke filled the corridor, the pungent, acrid kind from burning hair and fabric, with a none-too-pleasant undertone of cooked meat. Skyler choked. Was she screaming? No. She was laughing. And laughing, and laughing.

Click. As her rifle ran out of ammunition, she switched out for her knife. Through the haze she could see an indistinct figure taking up the doorway leading in below. And it was only as it happened to clear enough to allow her to see just what, or who, she was faced with, that she realized this entire damn thing had to be one big, universal middle finger aimed in her direction. She coughed. Spat. Gave one more chuckle as she forced herself into a grin.

"Glad to see you, kid."

This felt like a dream. A delusion, though he didn't know the word. As furious, as thirsty for blood as he was, the sight managed to stun him.

Not real? He wondered, but the odor of smoke and blood was overpowering, and the glow of fire was enough to hurt his sensitive eyes.

She was there. Woman prey. Over heaps of dead Others she stood before him, drenched from her head to her foot in blood not her own, as around her everything burned. Too vivid and too terrifying to exist. Not fleeing and not making the move to attack. Grinning. He recognized that she was grinning.

Every muscle in his body tensed, strained, begged to propel him forward. He wanted them to. But they didn't. Couldn't. A shriek of frustration wanted to rip its way from his throat, but at that moment, not even that would come. His tenuous grip on reality reeled. Why?! Why wasn't he killing her when it was all that he wanted?!

Sounds came from her, low and meaningless. She began descending down towards him while behind her, the floor began to fall in. All he could do was growl. Not understanding quite what he was doing, he reached into his pocket.

"Come on, then, kid. Huh? I'm right here. Came all this way after me. Aren't you gonna get a piece?"

Skyler slowed maybe halfway down the stairwell, the heat blistering at her back as she brandished her knife. It should have figured that the thing to finally creep up on her would be the one infected that she'd left alive. It was probably just the fact that she was becoming dangerously bleary from both the smoke and exhaustion, but… she was almost glad that it was him in particular. Might as well be him as anything else, right? A familiar face.

What the fuck was he doing, though? Her entire body was tensed for the attack even through spasms of coughing, ready to fight back. She'd never known the infected to hold back with their target within reach. It should have been all there was room for in his fried little brain. She threw out her arms in a clear gesture of "here I am", and still the leaper seemed rooted on the spot. It was bizarre. Maybe a little frightening. "Come on-!"

He thrust something forward in her direction, which understandably baffled the fuck out of her. Orange light glinted off of whatever it was clutched in his fist, and her gut took a plunge as she realized just what it was he was showing her. She felt disoriented and nauseated, like her legs might go out from under her.

"...The hell did you follow me for?"

Leave. The Hunter actually shook with the force of so many clashing, contradicting messages rocketing through him. At the same time that he wanted to lash out, to destroy absolutely everything in sight and especially the woman prey who had done this to him until it couldn't bother him anymore, the urge to flee this place was almost as loud. He didn't know just what it was that so made him want to run but he wanted to get as far as he possibly could from here, never look back and maybe never stop. It grated at him. He thought he'd be lost with it. The closest thing he had to something solid was the "gift" wrapped around his wrist, and suddenly it seemed much heavier than it should be.

She took another step down. He exploded into a shriek, lashing out in her direction, both in anger and a warning not to come any closer. Another. The aggression that flared up was overwhelming, and yet he still couldn't make the kill. He could almost imagine her beckoning.

Why had she done this?! Why hadn't she killed him, why had she- why had she done anything to help? What did she want from him?!

This woman prey... the monster that had killed him and then brought him back, paused. Standing in silhouette against the glow. A cracking, splintering sound, like bone being snapped. And then the world tilted and she disappeared into a shower of collapsing, smoldering debris and smoke.

Skyler didn't remember hitting the ground, but, uh. That sure was where she was. And in her barely-conscious mind, she was pretty sure that it hurt like fuck. Every ounce of air felt like it had left her lungs, whether that was from inhalation or plunging a couple of flights and hitting a heap of collapsed building. This… this wasn't quite the awe-inspiring exit she'd planned to make. Her eye widened as she gasped and found herself staring up at the kindling above. She groped into her side holster, remembering the reason she'd come to this fucking place in the first place.

All she could really make out as blackness edged around her vision was a form approaching her prone, beaten-ass body. Stubbornly she held out one arm with her prize, forcing a bloody, pained smirk onto her face.

"Hey kid," she gritted out, "I found my fucking radio."