The chaos didn't fade.
It was murdered.
Then she heard it. Boots, Moving away.
A calm overhead voice replaced the violence:
"Sector deviation corrected."
A pause.
"Reallocation in progress."
A soft confirmation tone followed. Clean. Pleasant. Administrative.
Like a meeting had ended.
Like nothing had happened.
Mara stared at the floor.
At the blood slowly spreading toward her hand.
One second the corridor was a slaughterhouse. The next, it simply… stopped. Like some distant administrator had flipped a switch and decided the culling quota was met.
Mara didn't move.
She stayed frozen against the wall long after the last shot, ears still ringing with phantom THUNKs, fingers clawing into the blood-slick floor as if she could root herself to something solid. Her eyes were wide, unblinking, locked on the spreading lake of red crawling slowly toward her knee.
A severed fingertip lay inches from her sleeve.
Pale.
Still twitching.
She didn't remember it landing there.
Her breathing fractured first.
Short, useless gasps that wouldn't fill her lungs. Her chest rose and fell too fast, like a broken bellows pulling nothing but air that refused to stay. A tiny, pathetic whine slipped out of her throat before she even realized she was making noise.
"No," she rasped.
Her voice sounded distant. Wrong.
"No no no—"
Her hands moved without asking permission. They attacked her bleeding arm, smearing the blood in frantic streaks. Not cleaning it. Not stopping it. Just spreading it. Rubbing it into her skin like she could push the evidence back inside her body.
Her fingers slipped.
She dug harder.
Her nails raked raw furrows through the open cut. Fresh blood welled up immediately, hot and slick. She kept wiping anyway, breath hitching faster and faster as panic took full control of her motor functions.
"I didn't do anything," she whispered.
To the floor.
To the bodies.
To whatever might still be listening.
"I didn't—I didn't fucking do anything wrong!"
Her voice cracked like cheap plastic under pressure.
The vomit came without warning.
Her body folded sideways and she puked hard, acid and half-digested protein paste splattering across the metal beside her leg. Strings of it hung from her lips as she gagged again, deeper this time, stomach spasming violently as if trying to expel the fear itself.
Nothing left.
Just bile.
Thick mucus and tears poured down her face, mixing with the blood already coating her hands.
She couldn't stop shaking.
At first it was just her fingers.
Then her wrists.
Then her shoulders.
Then everything.
Fine tremors exploded into full convulsions. Her teeth clacked together so hard she tasted new blood. She grabbed fistfuls of her own hair and yanked without thinking, ripping strands loose from her scalp. The sharp sting grounded her for half a second.
Pain meant she was still here.
"I want to go home," she whimpered.
The words came out small. Childlike. Stripped of everything she used to pretend she was.
"I want to go home I want to go home I want to go home—"
The repetition broke her.
The words dissolved into wet, guttural sobs tearing out of her chest like they were clawing their way free. Not elegant crying. Not quiet suffering. Ugly, snot-drenched, mouth-open wailing she couldn't stop even when she tried.
Her face twisted into something she wouldn't have recognized. Eyes squeezed shut. Nose running freely. Drool and vomit and tears mixing together on her chin.
Her hand slammed against the keepsong on her chest.
Chime.
She flinched violently.
"Stop," she begged.
Chime.
"STOP IT! It's all your fault. Why did i even- Why- Why did i pick this fucking thing up. I should have left it where it was. Maybe then- Maybe then Sene would still be here."
Her fist came down again. And again. Dull impacts against her own sternum. Each hit sent fresh agony through her already cracked ribs, but she couldn't stop. Her body had decided pain was preferable to helplessness.
She wanted to break it.
Rip it out.
Make the sound stop.
"It's my fault," she gasped suddenly, the thought arriving fully formed and immediately poisoning everything.
Her breath collapsed again.
"Sene wouldn't be missing if I just stayed where I belonged and did what i was supposed to."
Her voice shattered completely after that.
She folded forward, forehead striking the bloody metal floor with a dull knock. She didn't even react. Just stayed there, rocking violently now, arms wrapped around her head like she could crush her own skull and disappear inside it.
The sobbing turned into raw, choking howls that scraped her throat until every inhale burned.
"I can't do this," she gasped.
"I can't do this I can't do this I can't do this—"
Her nervous system gave up trying to maintain dignity.
Her bladder released without warning. Warmth spread through her clothes and pooled beneath her. She barely registered it. Shame required stability. She had none left.
She just kept rocking.
Kept crying.
Kept trying to breathe.
She was disgusting.
Broken.
Weak.
"I don't want to die...not here" Mara whispered weakly.
And the worst part—the part that hollowed her out worse than any wound—was the cold, crystal-clear understanding settling slowly into her chest like ice water:
This was normal here.
People died screaming in corridors like this every single day. The system didn't care. The city didn't care. No one was coming to save her.
No heroic rescue.
No second chance.
Just meat waiting to be tagged and purged.
Mara curled into the tightest ball her battered body would allow, every movement sending sharp reminders of what the corridor had done to her. Her shaking had downgraded to smaller tremors now, shock creeping in where panic had burned out.
Her voice was gone.
All that remained were small, broken whimpers leaking out between uneven breaths.
The compliance officers were already gone.
Reassigned.
The corridor sat in administrative silence.
Like nothing had happened.