Warnings for this chapter: Callback to a suicide attempt and mention of child loss.

Chapter Nineteen

Down Nineteen

The elevator has nineteen buttons.

Nineteen buttons arranged all wrong.

1 sits at the top, comically large and clean. From there on, the buttons count downward, sometime sitting in pairs, sometimes in a string of three or in an altogether innumerable arrangement. The higher (or lower?) the number, the dirtier the button.

The last one, 19, she can barely read. It's caked in bloody fingerprints and ash.

Zofia is convinced she has gone down (and up) countless times already, though she can't be certain. There's nothing certain anymore. Nothing but how she shouldn't have bothered holding out.

It was always going to end this way.

Wasn't it?

Bing—

There's a row of numbered bulbs above her. It lights up at 4. Zofia stares at the number, her eyes fixed to it while the elevator opens, and when she finally tears her eyes away from it, she's left the cabin with its diamond-checked floor behind.

Instead, she's walking through a small infirmary. There's a bed in the middle. A man lies on it. He's covered in paper, the kind you used to put on doctor's beds before you sat down. Blood has soaked through it, forming an ugly red flower where his head is.

His named used to be Scott.

Before he forgot himself in one moment to the next and she put a hatchet in his head.

Zofia walks past him.

She reaches the gate to the pharmacy locker, and with one fast hack of the very same hatchet that killed Scott, breaks its lock. The gate squeaks open. Zofia pads forward. Her legs are heavy and weak, but she makes it to the shelves, where she reaches for a way out.

"You can't be the one to kill me," she'd written to him. It'd been a goodbye. One he'd not accepted.

Bile rising in her throat, Zofia thinks, maybe this time I'll get it right. She won't, of course. You can't get the past right. It's what you're made of. It's who she's been ever since the day (or night) below Harran's streets, convinced she had to die. Not for her own sake.

For his.

You can't be the one to kill me.

No, she won't get it right. It'll play out exactly as it always does: she'll find the morphine, she'll find the syringe, she'll sit in the far, far corner—

—Zofia dropped from her mind's trap. All at once her nerves reported in; you're lying flat on your back; you're starving; you're too hot, too cold; the UV light above you, it hurts it hurts it hurts. Overwhelmed, she managed no more than a meek pull for air.

"Open the restraints." Waltz. He sounded as if she'd got sunk into a vat of water and he stood outside of it. And while she floated in all that theoretical water, pressure at her wrists and ankles released. It came off with a sting. "Now turn her."

Zofia's world tilted, her stomach along with it. She'd been rolled onto her side. From here all she saw was the cage that'd been her home as of late, its door open, no doubt waiting for her to be put back in.

"We need to get her knees up," he continued and Zofia found herself turned into a doll, one freely manipulated, no matter if she liked to or not.

"Good. Hold her like this. I'll make this quick as I can, so get ready to strap her back in." Hands tightened on her shoulder. On her leg. "Are you listening, Ollie?"

"Sure I am. But isn't this going to hurt?"

"It'll be agony, I have no doubt. But this is the best I can do to get Sera what she wants without killing her. With any luck—" Waltz's voice grew more present, as if the water she'd been dropped into had drained away. It got louder, too. "Be careful with that!" he snapped at someone. "What did I tell you about not feeding them while I'm working."

A puff of cold air touched the small of Zofia's back. Recognition squirmed at the back of her head like a fistful of earthworms and she finally understood what he was doing. He was about to jam a needle into her back.

Zofia reacted as anyone reasonable in a situation like this might: she panicked.

It was a slow rolling panic, muted by how disorientated she was, but it was enough to make her stir against the hands holding her down.

"Hold still," Waltz warned. "Unless you want to be paralysed."

Horseshit, some tiny, unhappy voice in the back of her head insisted. A lumbar puncture didn't do that. She squeezed up a drawn out, scratchy whimper.

Or did it?

"I seriously wish you'd stop burning through your sedatives. Ollie, get the—"

A loud THUNK buffeted against Zofia's ears and suddenly the lights were out. The bright ones. The painful ones.

They'd all gone—

—Darkness fills her elevator. She can't see the walls. Can't see the floor, the ceiling. Only the buttons gleam, though they aren't doing it right. Their light won't touch anything but the single point where they sit.

She gapes at them.

They're counting downwards. One by one.

Down. Down.

Down.

Her gaping turns to a frantic grimace and Zofia slams her hand against the top one; doesn't matter how often she does it though; doesn't matter how she's bruised already; or how she screams for the elevator to climb.

Her every word is carried up voiceless, even as her throat burns.

They won't stop falling—

—She was a squirming, aching thing laid out in the dark, her eyes wide open and her heart thundering in her ears. She saw her cage still. The door remained open. There were voices behind her. Two were frantic. One (Waltz) was calm, telling the others what they ought to do.

A torch clicked on somewhere.

A hand grabbed her arm—

—the second its fingers tightened, a call for an endless sky and the touch of a sheltering night pulled through Zofia. Then metal screamed—

—her elevator plummets. It tilts sideways, the ground slanted, and its door hangs open. Zofia scrambles backwards, her heels slipping on a slick floor. Doorways rush by. Each is a memory she wants not to think. Each is a memory she ought to think.

They're what makes her, her.

They're what she wears her name for.

But if she falls into them, she'll think them. She'll remember them. She can't do that. She won't do that— oh god she can't fall—

—She didn't. She was on her feet instead. When—or how—Zofia couldn't say. She knew, logically, that one second ago she'd been curled up on her torture bed, ready to have a needle stuck into her back. But now she stood upright, surrounded by darkness, the torch she could have sworn she saw earlier gone.

A slow blink later and she realised why. She held it. In a fist smeared with warm blood.

Zofia's chest felt like it was folding inwards, clenching tight. Bit by bit, she picked up on the world around her, though it sort of felt as if everything moved at an agonising crawl.

There was a body at her feet. A Hound. And there was Ollie, past the plastic sheets for curtains and Waltz's makeshift lab. He rubbed his head with one hand while holding on to the plastic sheet with the other, steadying himself.

Then there was Waltz himself.

And the Volatile at her back, throwing itself against its cage; nothing between them but metal holding on for dear life.

The Viral, shrieking.

The Witch, curling her fingers around the bars of her prison, her voice pitched and angry. She gave off barely enough of a yolky glow for Waltz to see Zofia by. Or so she figured.

He stared at her. Had put himself between her and the exit.

Her way out.

Distantly, Zofia remembered she'd once waited for a moment just like this one.

"Don't," Waltz warned her. "All you're going to do is get yourself hurt."

Her lips twitched. Her fist tightened around the torch. It creaked.

Then someone called out from beyond the door. "Doc, we need you upstairs." There was a sliding click, the sound of a key turning in an old fashioned lock. "The lights are out all over and backup isn't coming on." The door moved, pushed inwards, a lance of light slicing through it as whoever stood behind it shone their torch inside.

"No! Stop!" Waltz snapped around. "Shut the damn—"

—The elevator slams to a halt. She's thrown from it, and lands at the centre of a thousand voices chanting Rais! Rais! Rais!, his name thundering across his arena in violent worship. Rais himself towers over her. He's the man who'd pulled her apart worse than Harran's apocalypse had managed to. Of course he'd be here, his arm raised, a gun in his hand.

The gun is pointed at Crane.

(But it's always Jade who dies.)—

—"Get her!" bounded after her. Waltz. He was behind her, somewhere, but where was she? In a corridor. Apparently. It was crowded with shelves and benches, not a square inch wasted on empty space, and rug after rug after rug was laid out on the ground.

Dim, grey light squeezed through windows knocked into solid stone. They were all barred with steel grates.

It was raining. She heard the rush of water pelting the sides of the castle; wanting in as much as she wanted out.

The man in front of her wasn't eager to let her. He didn't wear a mask or gnarly armour. He didn't even wear black veins twisting under his skin. He was an unremarkable man of unremarkable size with an unremarkable knife. A knife he held wrong.

But he'd not move out of her way—

—She walks an endless field of graves. They're no more than muddy heaps rising from barren earth. There are no headstones. No crosses. No wreaths. Not even rocks to paint a name on.

Yet she knows each one by heart.

She'd like to forget.

All of them—

—Zofia's shoulder cracked into a door. She pushed through, stumbled, and came up again in a tall, wide room. The door settled closed behind her. All the shouting that'd followed her was muffled behind its thick wood.

Zofia heard all of it. Felt all of it. Made sense of it, but in a skewed, detached way. It was like she'd begun to glitch from her own skin again. Except this time, if she sidestepped too far, she knew she'd not find her way back.

What'd you do with knowing a thing like that?

What'd you do when you realised you'd come to the end?

Stop and have a think? No. Panic? Yes, but not in a way that'd tear her footing out from under her. She'd panic forward. Make her moment count.

Even if she had no idea how she'd gotten here.

Or where here was, for that matter.

Zofia's eyes cut through the room. It was… different. Clean, for one. Decorated, rather than functional, with drapes (pulled back, allowing in the light) on more gated windows, wide carpets, and neatly arranged furniture leaving a lot of open space. A studio of sorts. A one-room home. To the right, a small sofa and a low table were carefully spaced along a set of bookshelves on wheels. Opposite of that, a kitchen nook with low countertops was centred around one of the room's windows. A ridiculously tall and long desk didn't stand far from it, the wall it was shoved against taken up entirely by busy cork boards.

There was even a bedroom section at the back. It had two beds. One looked ordinary. The other was surrounded by trolleys full of medical equipment.

"Who are you?" a quiet voice asked. There was weakness in it. A tremble. Not of fear—not a first—but exhaustion.

The not-sister, Mia, had her wheelchair pulled up next to the low table by the small sofa. She held a long-necked lighter, its end spouting a small flame, and was pointing it at one of a dozen candles arranged on the table. Maybe half of them were lit.

She was the frailest (living) thing Zofia had ever seen. Her wrists were knobby twigs. Her neck thin as a reed that'd break at the smallest pressure. And her eyes sunken, but alert. Every piece of clothing she wore looked ridiculously oversized on her.

Mia's mouth formed a startled O and those sunken, alert eyes fell to Zofia's right hand. "Please— don't hurt me."

Zofia glanced down and found her fingers clenched around a bloodied knife. The same knife the unremarkable man had held all wrong. She held it right.

She didn't need to remember to know how she'd gotten it.

Her fingers tightened. Involuntarily. She'd not wanted them to — much as she'd not wanted her chest to compress and a shuddering convulsion to rip through her entire right side. Zofia's leg buckled. With her ears whistling, Zofia's knee hit the ground.

Flecks of dirty amber smeared her vision; violent, warped brushstrokes she couldn't blink away.

"... zin … desk .." Wheels squeaked. A voice slipped by her ringing ears. Then Zofia's world snapped back into place. Breathing in sharp, ragged pulls, she forced her chin up and her legs to straighten.

Mia had rolled away from the table. But she hadn't put a lot of distance between them; if anything, she'd come closer. Within lunging distance, an oddly collected voice said from the withering, dark corners of Zofia's mind.

"Dad keeps Antizin and an Inhibitor at his desk," Mia repeated, her thin arm pointing to the side. Her fingers were all knuckles and bone. Then, after she'd grasped for her oxygen mask and taken one deep breath, she added, "They're in one of the lower drawers. I don't know which, but—"

Zofia surged up, startling Mia into silence.

When Zofia had first made to move, an instinct that was not her own wanted her to rush for Mia. But Zofia still wore her bloody name and so she cut across the room to the desk instead.

She pulled the first drawer open. Found nothing but knickknacks of an ordinary life. Went for the next one— and froze when her eyes caught on a map dominating the cork board fixed to the wall behind the desk. She recognised Villedor, sprawled out around its river and boxed in by mountains. The wall had been sketched in with thick, black lines.

Never mind that. She had more important things to do.

Zofia yanked the next drawer open. Still nothing.

Her eyes flicked up again. Drawn to the map by an itch.

Circles had been drawn over five different locations on the map, three of which were within the city, two beyond. Each had been struck through and surrounded by small scribbles, labelling their coordinates and their purpose. Depots. Bunkers. Relay stations. And each one came with the same words repeated just below them:

Not X-13

Recognition squirmed through her, but before Zofia had a chance to give the elusive thing a proper thought, the door she'd burst through earlier flew open.

Zofia hadn't ever done well with being cornered. Before Harran, she'd always reacted with a tight chest, an infuriating heat crawling up her throat, and silence. In Harran, she'd not done much better.

At first.

The corners she'd gotten into had changed then; they weren't confrontations over coffee any longer, or inappropriate comments she'd not known how to face. They'd been things wanting to tear her up, to violate her, to murder her.

She'd learned a lot since.

Abandoning the desk, Zofia made a straight line for Mia. She reached her before Waltz took his first step into the room and had her arm hooked under Mia's shoulder before he'd seen them. Then she yanked Mia from her chair, wrenched her backwards until Mia's throat was crushed against her arm, where she held the twitching girl to her chest like a shield.

Mia gasped.

Across from them, Waltz blurted a cracked, "No!"

Zofia stared at him from behind his daughter's hair. It smelled of flowers, not ruin and blood; every bit as looked-after, as loved, as you could be while the world you'd been born into was at its death throes.

"Stop!" Waltz pleaded.

She'd not. Stop. Zofia moved the knife to Mia's side, setting its point just above her hip. Mia made to shrink away from it, but Zofia's arm around her neck squeezed. The girl went still.

"Please." Waltz had his arms up in surrender. "I'm begging you, don't hurt her. I've done this to you." He pointed at his own chest. "Me. Not her. Let her go. Please."

Olli rushed in behind him. The side of his head shone with fresh blood, which'd run down his neck and pooled at his shoulder. She'd done that, Zofia realised. Somehow.

Ollie hadn't come alone. He brought two Hounds. They wore their typical red and black armour, but hadn't bothered with masks. Who would, what with how this was their home? They had brought crossbows though. Big, bulky things, loaded and ready. The second they raised them, Waltz rounded at them.

"Put these down," he snapped. "Ollie. Get them out of here."

"Doc...?"

"Ollie. Go."

Zofia's mind attempted to race. It didn't get far, only managing a stuttering lurch, but at least she put together a few words. They came up hoarse.

"Let me go," she said.

Waltz's attention returned to her. "I can't. I'll do everything in my power to keep you safe, I promise. But if you leave now you'll have turned before nightfall. If you stay, I can stop it, all I need to—"

"Let. Me. Go."

"Okay. Okay." His palms turned up. "Look, I—" He let out a sharp sigh and raked a hand down his hair. "There is an Inhibitor in the bottom left drawer of the desk. It will help you for a short while. Take it. But please, I'm begging you, don't hurt Mia. She's my daughter. She's my life. You of all people… you understand, don't you? You know I'm not doing this for myself."

She didn't want to.

She didn't want to understand.

She didn't want to remember; to go back; to know which one of the countless small mounds rising from a barren earth belonged to Theodore.

"Doc—" Ollie's voice tilted towards a warning, his tone wildly different from before.

First, Zofia thought (sluggishly and with great effort) that he'd warned Waltz off for what he was doing. Namely, offering her help. But then she felt it: an invasive fury which rolled atop of Zofia like a landslide made from hot coals.

"Tsk, Vincent. Did your pet get out?" the Lady Séraphine said, her voice sweet as boiling honey. When she came in sight—once again dressed in flowing white that melted into blood-stitched pitch—she wore a smile. "I warned you what'd happen if you let her keep her legs. She'll use them."

Zofia choked down a gnarly lump.

"Sera, I'm handling this."

"Are you?" The Lady's eye settled on Zofia. It carried enough malice in it to make up for the lifeless, vivid blue glint from her glass eye. Her focus landed on the girl who quietly wheezed against Zofia's arm. "Is he, Mia? Is your dear father handling this?"

Mia swallowed and gave a meek nod.

"Ah. Darling. It looks to me as if he's stalling." Turning her chin back to the Hounds, the Lady snapped a cold, "All of you, quit standing around. Take her back downstairs."

"For God's sake, she has my daughter. Let me take care of this—"

The Lady cut in before Waltz had another chance to argue. "No, Vincent. I've been lenient long enough. This? This draws to an end. Here and now. She'll be back in your lab and you'll quit wasting my time."

Waltz's reply drifted by without Zofia catching it; she was too busy listening to a weak voice whispering right by her cheek. "There's a balcony next to my bed. I've left the door unlocked, so you won't have any trouble getting outside." Mia struggled through a wheezing inhale. "We're just below the roof."

The corner was no corner anymore.

But before Zofia could test to see if Mia had lied for no other reason than to get away from the knife and the arm pressed to her throat, the Lady yanked one of the crossbows away from the nearest Hound. She levelled it at Zofia, the tip pointed squarely at where her chest would be. Hadn't it been for Mia in the way, and when the Lady squeezed the crossbow's trigger and Waltz shouted an anguished sort of No!, Zofia twisted on the spot and ducked to the side.

She pulled Mia along. Dragged her under, really, even if the right thing to do would have been to let Mia catch the bolt and then to run.

The other right thing was to do the opposite, put herself between bolt and girl, bear the sharp bite of pain, and—

—The elevator is frozen at the number 12. Its door is gone. She has no choice but to walk through.

Accompanied by a distant burning in her side, Zofia steps out into the world right as it buckles.

The Fall is everything Harran had been, but at a scale she cannot comprehend. Days and nights turn to weeks, to months, to a lifetime; she's always scared, always too cold or too hot, always waiting to dig another grave.

She'd like to forget it.

All of it.

—Rain pelted her skin. It was warm almost, but sharp, whipped into a frenzy by a howling wind. She'd barely had a chance to fully register the weight it added to her clothes and how slippery the roof was under her feet, when an antlered Hand sprang for her.

It wasn't Ollie. He'd not worn his antlers since the day she'd broken his nose, at least not whenever he'd been helping Waltz down in his horrendous lab. No, this was one of the girls; and she looked like a bog monsters come to life as she rushed through the rain at her.

Zofia drew back. Whatever lunge the Hand had aimed for missed, and before the ghastly thing had a chance to try again, Zofia snapped her first against her elbow. The Hand cried out. Zofia—all while struggling to hold her footing—followed through with a jab to her throat.

A few more things became clear then.

She had no weapon anymore, since what she'd expected had been to sink a knife into the bared throat. But she had plenty of pain flare with every move. She stumbled back. The roof she was on was wide and slanted. The ridge was near, maybe another two steps behind her.

And she had more company than the one Hand who was currently busy wheezing for air. There was another scaling the roof (she'd be here any second). And there was Ollie. He slid down the wet shingles, unable to catch himself.

Zofia had sent him spinning, hadn't she?

None of the Hounds stopped to help him—

—19, the elevator tells her. Silence fills it.

Its doors have come back. Polished to a shine. Its light is on. It flickers—as it always does—and the floor at her feet is freshly swept. She can almost smell the soap they liked to use to clean the dirt the Runners dragged in.

This time around, she's not alone. Familiar souls crowd into the space, far more of them than what would reasonably fit. She sees Collin. She sees Rahim. They're boys again. Collin misses his beard and Rahim has lost the early laugh lines he'd collected. Damien is there, too. He wears a ball cap and an impassive stare.

There are more faces wherever she looks. Faces she's grown used to over the years, though most are faded imprints on sun-bleached polaroids, not ever quite as sharp and clear as those few faces who've remained a constant in Zofia's life.

A constant despite it all. Despite the world making every attempt to take them from her.

She winces.

That's a selfish thought. They're not hers to keep.

Scratching at her wrist, fingers catching on the memory of a clinking bracelet, Zofia takes a careful look to the left. She knows he's here. He's always here. And, yet, he moment she sees Crane hold vigil by her shoulder, her chest tightens and a handful of tatter-winged butterflies squirm uselessly in her stomach.

It's right about then Zofia realises what she'll have to do—

—Coming to while she was crouched on the warm hood of a reinforced SUV was about one of the most disorientating things Zofia could imagine. Coming to on that same SUV while the driver stomped on the brakes and sent it skidding to a halt? Even more so.

It almost sent her flying, but a quick grab to the car's bolted on cage kept her well in place.

What now? she thought, locking eyes with the masked Hound behind the wheel (he was gaping at her).

Where'd she been going?

What'd been the plan?

"There! By the gate! Get her!" someone shouted, their voice folding into the distant growl of thunder, and as the noise tapered off, she didn't as much remember why she was here, as—

—The elevator opens for the last time.

Collin and Rahim are the first to step past her. They walk together. Much as they've done everything together since one found the other.

Zofia can't name what clamps her lungs together then. Panic. Anger. Emptiness. Thundering grief. It's too much, too real, and she can't do a thing to stop it. Stepping in front of them doesn't help. Shouting at them not to go does nothing, either. She drags at their arms. She pushes at their chests.

She begs, she pleads.

But Collin and Rahim won't hear her. Or see her. Or acknowledge her in any way at all. Then, with one more step, they've gone. Drowned in the ash that waits beyond, the Darkness and its promise of Forgetting—

—Zofia didn't question how she'd gotten behind the wheel. Or where the driver had gone. She clung to it instead and raced through rain so dense, it might as well have been a solid sheet of grey on grey. Her guides were blockades that'd grown out of debris, half-leaning fences, and the carcasses of buildings as they rose to her left and right. It was all hard to keep track of, let alone stay clear off while she raced the car down a muddy slope.

More thunder called.

It brought the sound of motorcycle engines closing in on her—

—"No," she tells Crane as soon as he twitches into the direction of his own Forgetting. "No," she pleads and gets in front of him. "You're not going. You can't go. You're not supposed to go."

Her heart is a useless lump. It doesn't as much beat anymore as much as it seizes, with each of its convulsions a lesson in agony.

Every face she's left behind plods past them, all headed the same way. Crane pushes forward to, but she can't let him.

It hurts, how he isn't looking at her. It hurts, how he won't answer. It hurts, how all she gets is a phantom memory of his warmth against her palms as she shoves him back—

—Zofia's ears rang. Light danced against the back of her eyelids and all the while the world seemed to spin.

No.

Had spun, she suddenly knew. She'd crashed.

Metal groaned around her, offended after the fact, and Zofia groaned along with it. Then, slowly at first, she uncurled from where she'd landed on the driver's side door, and stared up at the passenger side window above her. It'd shattered. Water ran in rivulets from what was left of the blunted glass and weak light teased her with the promise of a light sting.

The motorcycle's reached her. Voices rose. The bike engines died.

Zofia pushed herself to her feet and climbed through the window—

—He'd be the one after all, wouldn't he. He'd be the one to kill her. Or maybe he'd never find her (maybe I'll make it, maybe I'll make it, maybe I'll—) and he'd never know.

But he can't go instead of her. She can't let him, it'd mean she's the last one standing and she'd rather not. Yes, she knows—so deep down it's nearly entirely buried in her fever dreams—that none of this is real. This isn't Kyle. It's a memory she fabricated. A phantom.

But if it's all she'll get at the end—

—She'd run across a bridge. There were only a few more steps to go until she'd reached the other end. The bikes were at her back. Gaining on her. She'd not outrun them in the open like this.

Wearing nothing but socks, Zofia crossed the last few yards of the bridge. Buildings rose beyond it. They weren't awfully tall, but they had shadows choking the alleys between them. They also had weaving shapes crowd all around them. Shapes she couldn't put words to, no matter how diligently they scratched at her mind wanting to be heard.

No, there wasn't any meaning left to what she saw. Not beyond a simple word: survival.

A bike caught up with her. It shot past her. Cut her off. The rider brought a Hand with him, and the Hand leapt from the back, a grin splitting her lips.

The others were on her a second later. There were too many of them.

She couldn't let them surround her.

Zofia cut past before they'd closed their circle. She bolted into an alley where night had already fallen. But that didn't mean they weren't going to follow. She'd done this before, hadn't she? Run from them. Gotten caught.

(Oh, she'd run from many a thing and been caught many a time. She'd like not to be caught today.)

She wished it loudly.

Let me make it.

There were others in the alley with her. She wove around them, swung past worn out shoulders, ducked under grasping arms, and still the Lady's Hands and the Hounds they'd brought would not stop chasing her.

Why did they want her so badly—

Why wouldn't they let her get away—

She wished it loudly again. Louder than before.

This time, the night answered.

It leapt from a doorway in front of her, darkness made shape. Wide shouldered—with years upon years of wounds having covered its limbs in shifting plates and crowns of spines—it gathered itself up and blocked what left of her way out.

An old skull tilted at her, its deep-set embers for eyes glowing behind a veil of rain.

Somewhere far behind her, muffled by water and by the soft call of static enveloping her mind, her hunters began to shout.

Fear tainted their voices.

Their fear. Not hers.

The Volatile tilted its chin up. It flared a single mandible (the other half twitched where it'd broken off just shy of its cheekbone) and rattled up a string of clicks meant only for her. Its eyes remained fixed on her; a singular, unbroken focus.

A fleshy thump sounded behind her.

More clicks followed. They answered the call meant for her and she didn't need to turn around to know there would be three more of them. When she did—slowly, the motion turning her stomach—she counted three. Two stared from windows not far above. Another had only just dropped onto the ground, its shoulders rising from a deep crouch.

Her hunters had stopped entirely. Some of them were easy to spot with all the white they wore, and even as she shifted on her feet, continuing to twist her aching body to face them, they slowly backed away.

More clicks rolled by her shoulder.

Was she going to let them?

The invaders had hunted her.

They didn't like being hunted.

They weren't meant to be hunted.

It was their right to hunt instead.

A shadow crept up alongside her. It breathed in deep, rattling pulls of air, and when she stepped aside, it called a challenge out into the early night.

Come stay and die, it said in not so many words.

And when the hunters chose not to play, they found themselves deeply, deeply disappointed—

—It's rather simple at the end. Uncomplicated. Don't forget me, she thinks (selfishly) and gives the phantom of the man she'd loved a careful push. It works. Crane stopped walking for his own Forgetting and Zofia grasps the chance to go instead of him.

With any luck, he'll never have to follow.

Taff Notes: Here it is. The last chapter in Part Two of Blood from Stone. The book has one more part coming! It'll take me a while before I come back to posting, but if you'll be patient with me I'll get there!

Also, daily reminder that you're awesome and daily reminder two that reading my fics is better on Archive of Our Own (you don't even need an account) 'cause I do more edits there and you get pretty pictures :3