T19: Aurora

Toni, the stupid slut, hadn't lasted more than a few seconds, and as Aurora hurried past her sprawled body, there was a voice in the back of her head screaming at her that she wasn't going last much longer.

The tall, hard, concrete walls of the atrium threw back the echoes of the combatants' wild and frantic gunfire, along with the sharp crack and hiss of fat man-stopper 9-millimitre slugs flattening themselves against unyielding surfaces. She could see black-clad bodies sprawled between the pillars on the far side of the water, see more shooters leaning out of cover to fire. Scraping on poured concrete, the heels of her bootees felt unsteady as she scurried out into the open, pistol extended, shooting reflexively at targets she could barely see and knowing- just knowing- that she was moments from getting shot.

And then the whole structure fell away from her and the sky was in front of her and she was weightless, breathless and stunned. No longer scratching on stone, her booties kicked up and she saw their pointed toes and her stockinged knees for an incongruous, baffling moment.

Water, chill and unwelcomingly wet shocked the last of the air from her lungs and she felt it splash her face; still baffled; uncomprehending. She felt her limbs flop down in it, felt it soak her blouse and her skirt and her panties, felt it flood into her ankle-boots and squelch around her toes. Still, she couldn't breathe, couldn't think, as she lay there, sprawled and helpless and gasping emptily for breath that wouldn't come.

That was when it finally hit her- the realisation arriving along with the adrenaline-dulled pain.

Of course.

That little voice in the back of her head; the one that had been screaming futilely at her ever since she'd dressed herself that morning- ever since she'd signed her damn contract. That little voice had been right.

She'd been shot.

It was the last thought that passed through her mind, before the bright sky overhead faded away and the last dry, rasping, choking noise sounded in the back of her throat.