Bullet in her middle. Tore up – what? Her stomach? Liver? A kidney?

A little voice reminds: It was always going to come down to this. You knew that, didn’t you? You kept coming at the beast. One day the beast would return the favor.

Then, a defiant voice: Not. Dead. Yet.

She slides a trembling hand into her pocket. Finds her tin of blue. Pops it: not much left but enough for now. She almost fumbles it, drops it on the bed but manages to cup her fingers into a little shovel and scoop out some Cerulean.

Nora presses powder to each temple. Blue flecks flaking onto the white pillow and bedsheets.

It washes over her, a tide of fire, hot like a habanero, then warm like whiskey.

Soon her breathing grows deeper. Fuller. The Blue won’t mend her – it’s strong enough for superficial wounds but not a gut-shot.

But it’ll keep her alive for a little while longer.

She stays like that for a while. Stilling her breath. Willing the wound to go numb. Trying to imagine how she’s going to escape. Trying not to think about her father. That last one: an impossibility. Her mind wanders to him. Is he dead? He must be. This moment, she thought it’d bring her happiness. To see the man who poisoned her life himself poisoned? But was that what she wanted? For her father to die?

It isn’t. She just wanted him to finally pay attention. That was all. All of this was to force him to see her. To see who she was, and who she’d become because of him.

And now he’s dead.

And she’ll be dead soon too if she can’t figure out what to do next.

I’m gonna die.

Again.

Skelly escaped the gobbo temple and thought that was the end of it. Now here she is, reminded of her own mortality once more. Death doesn’t stare her in the face so much as whip past her at what feels like a hundred miles-per-hour.

The quad barrels through downward-sloping Underworld tunnels. The quad bounds and growls. Tires bounce over hard rock, giving the whole vehicle a bounce and a lift where Skelly’s stomach feels like it leaves her body and gets left behind. Burnsy’s loving it. Hooting. Letting go of the handlebars and holding two blister-red fists up in the air. It’s then she remembers:

He was a stuntman.

I’m driving though hell on a four-wheeler with a formerly-living stuntman.

Once again her brain reiterates what she now feels is absolutely true:

I’m gonna die.