Moaning, Romy cracked her eyes open, realising she’d fallen to the ground. Lucas was swaying above her. Blood poured out in a sheet down his throat and onto his naked chest. But it was as though once his body registered the mortal wound, a dam burst: blood spurted, covering the ground, covering him, and covering her.

Romy lay on the floor, too weak to move, gasping as the red wave poured over her. She couldn’t shift her eyes from his widened gaze.

For the first time he looked afraid. He’d intended to rape her. Had made her weeks in Jimboomba hell. But it didn’t mean she couldn’t see his humanity when all else was stripped away.

The soldier toppled forwards, no longer in control of his actions. She spat his blood out of her mouth, struggling for air as he slid his hands over her in desperate movements, still trying to kill her in the time he had left.

The slippery movement of his hands became weaker.

And weaker.

Until his death rattled within him like a loose bolt in a broken engine.

A high-pitched noise rang in her head, a tinnitus of excruciating levels. She pushed the heels of her palms into her temples as the ringing intensified, building to overwhelming degrees within seconds. Had Lucas damaged her brain when he choked her?

Someone was shaking the door. The edges of Romy’s sight began to blur as she stared at the dead officer on top of her.

Knocking.

The twins, she realised in a daze. Pulling herself from underneath the dead man, Romy approached the door, slipping twice in the large puddle of blood.

Phobos and Deimos gasped when they saw her.

Anger stirred deep inside her, a defensive mechanism at what she’d done, but she could barely feel it through the thick numbness encasing her.

Deimos gripped her arm as she swayed. “Where did he get you?”

Romy looked down. Blood. The ringing sound restarted with resounding force. Nausea swam upwards at the thought of how Lucas’s blood was covering her. “Not mine,” she choked out. “Not mine. Not mine. Not mine.”

Her voice was high-pitched. Hysterical. She knew it, but couldn’t stop. She wasn’t in control anymore.

Phobos pushed past her as Deimos remained where he was—glued to her side.

Phobos returned with the keycard. The reason she’d killed a man. "A rapist," she corrected herself. She didn’t mean to kill him. Kill him. Kill him.

Deimos looked at her strangely. “Who was a rapist, Ro?”

Romy stumbled out of the bungalow and into the tree line, emptying the contents of her stomach. Every time she thought of the blood on her hands she was wracked with another bout of gagging. Why wouldn’t the ringing stop? The blood was red. Bright red.