but her tears will dry {open

[CHLOË LAFFERTY]

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“Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit.” Chloë grasped her side, pressing hard against the wound. Her hand slipped on the blood, finding it hard to keep still at the strange angle given the amount of pain she was in, and she winced, swearing again. This wasn’t how it had been meant to go down; she was supposed to have gone with a team to investigate a larger building with several storeys of basement, in the hope that they could relocate the base camp to somewhere below ground, where they’d be safe from the butchers. Safer, anyway. Of course, the butchers had got there first; everything had seemed peachy when they’d arrived, armed and ready to shoot anything that moved, killers and dumb shows alike, and they’d let their guard down. Just for an instant, but an instant was all the imprints needed; they were programmed to take advantage of every second. Chloë shouldn’t have allowed it; she shouldn’t have got caught up in the idea of not having to keep an eye open all the time, of being safe deep underground, sealing off the upper entrances and using the sewers that ran beneath the city for access. It was stupid to dream; dreams got you killed, because you didn’t have your head in the game. There was time for dreams when you lay awake at night, wondering what had happened to your family and your friends. Other than that, they couldn’t afford to do that; Chloë couldn’t, anyway. Dreams cost lives, because reality now was so terrible. The world had crumbled around them, where once there had been nothing but stories about the apocalypse which would separate the strength of mankind from the weak. The world had been going to end in 2012, or when humanoid robots detached from their masters, or when physicists bashed some particles together and caused a black hole that would suck in the world. It hadn’t been like that. It had been one corporation with a few geniuses behind them, who’d thought they could rule the world. They were, now—what was left of it. As far as Chloë was concerned, the world had ended long ago. This was the aftermath, the ruins; maybe they were watching the funeral of humankind. Maybe this was the beginning again. Phoenixes rose from the ashes, so maybe they would too. They’d find the Dollhouse, and the rest of the people that were still alive, and then they’d find Safe Haven and a cure. They would restore those who’d been wiped to their former selves, and take down Rossum for once and for all. Or they’d just die; on days like this, it really did feel like the world had ended long ago.

She was going to die soon, though, if she didn’t get the bullet out of her side and stop the bleeding. At least it had missed major organs; Chloë didn’t profess to be an anatomy expert, but she was pretty sure she wouldn’t be alive right now if that had happened. How had she lasted as long as she had in the FBI without getting shot a single time (shot at, maybe, but no bullet had done anything other than graze her once or twice), but now that there were no doctors, no paramedics who had the faintest idea what they were doing, she was bleeding profusely. Oh yeah, that was right: bullet-proof vests. Maybe she’d go back to the FBI building and take a few, if she didn’t pass out soon and die from blood loss on the floor of an abandoned hospital. Those damn butchers had come out of nowhere, footsteps silent – if you could create any kind of killer, it was going to be some kind of ninja, wasn’t it – and let fire before Chloë and her team had had a chance to even aim their weapons. They’d all died, or Chloë had had to perform a mercy killing as they were in the process of being imprinted to be a butcher, just like the rest; there was an agreement among actuals. Nobody wanted to lose themselves; they’d all rather have a bullet in their head than accept a fate worse than death. Chloë knew that she couldn’t bear the thought of her body walking round, killing people whose only ‘mistake’ had been to not pick up the phone. Ditch the tech, ditch the tech; you had to do that. You couldn’t go by a radio or a CD player, you couldn’t use computers and you sure as hell couldn’t use a phone. So Chloë was on her own here; there wasn’t anybody she could call to help. Alpha would come, if she knew how to contact him other than by letter. Gemma would come, if Chloë even knew she was still alive. But she couldn’t contact them; she had to fight this, just like she’d been fighting since the day the mass wipes started.

“C’mon, Lafferty,” Chloë told herself sternly, hands shaking as she held herself up against a hospital trolley, left in the middle of the abandoned corridor. There were surprisingly few bodies here, which made a pleasant change, especially since it was a hospital; it had been the most logical place for Chloë to head after she’d been shot. She couldn’t stay to make sure if anyone else was okay, she’d had to run – it was each man for himself out here, given that she barely knew these other actuals, and if she’d stayed, she’d be dead right now. Hospitals had supplies; they knew that from raiding parties. They’d have what she needed to get the bullet out of her and make sure that she didn’t die, even if Chloë wasn’t entirely sure what she was supposed to do. “Head in the game. Adrenaline.” She needed adrenaline; she scrabbled around among the supplies she’d dumped on the bed, finding a needle and casting its packaging only a cursory glance – the words swum – before ripping it open, stabbing it into her leg before she could think about it; she screamed just a little (only a little, she wasn’t a weakling, even if she had been shot) and, unable to hold herself upright any longer, slumped to the floor, pulling as many supplies as she could with her as she fell. “God, I never wanted to be a doctor,” she moaned; she usually put the bullets into people, not the other way around. Okay, so now she needed to get the bullet out. That would be...interesting. Chloë picked up tweezers, trying to hold them steady, but her hand was shaking too much. “Shit,” she said, returning to her original mantra; unless somebody walked through that door who could do this for her, she was damn well going to have to suck it up and doing it herself before she fainted. “Stop being such a girl, Lafferty, just do it.”