They found blood the day after Zars was shot. The record was still turning on the turntable, needle bobbing pointlessly outside the record. Blood stained the floor and a bullet had lodged itself in the blood-spattered sofa. No one cared about who did it, nor did they know. They simply cleaned up the mess and went on with their lives.

Everyone but Ashenai.

She'd been the one to find the apartment empty and blood-stained, the record spinning incessantly on the turntable- the only sound in the apartment. Now she stood in the middle of the bare living room where the glass table used to be, staring at the door leading into the bedroom. This could not have happened. This had to be a bad dream. It had to be- she couldn't die this young.

The faint stench of blood still clung to this place, the floor being too-clean under the harsh fluorescent lights. The room was just as empty as Ashenai felt- there was nothing she could do for herself. The one person who might have been able to save her was gone now, body rotting in some corner of the sewers. There was nowhere to run now, she couldn't avoid her fate even if she tried.

Nothing will save me.