Averin (Part III)

Dispassionately observes Doctor while his shaky hand tries to stop the flow from his severed carotid.

The girl slumps down next to him, their shoulders touching. She can wait. That feeble attempt won’t save him, she knows. Nobody’s coming to the rescue anytime soon. She knows that too… made it reality after all – barricading the doors.

It will take eleven more minutes to break in.

Doctor has enough blood left for four minutes and forty-two seconds of life.

“Tell you what,” she utters softly. “If you too return from the Nether, I promise not to kill you again. But you have to go there first.”

Doctor looks at her, gaze animalistic with terror when she presses the scalpel to the inside of his wrist, cuts deep. More blood seeps out, but that isn’t the goal. The severed tendons are. And soon enough Doctor’s fingers go lax, the slash on his throat losing its dampener.

She peers into his eyes as they turn glassy, stares into them until that needless rescue comes and wrestles her to the floor, stares into them while they cuff her and drag her away.

He never returns from the Nether…

She doesn’t resist the soldiers, haven’t done anything to her or her own to warrant a trip to the Nether. Besides, it’s pointless. Where is she to go? The girl knows nothing but the Labs she’s created in. Her whole world exists behind those walls.

And she cannot abandon the rest to save only herself.