She was so, so cold, yet burning alive. She was blinded by light and surrounded by darkness. She screamed but the sound seemed to go back down her throat. She felt hands, hundreds of them, thousands, dragging her deeper and deeper into the dark. As the claws dug into her, pain, anger, sadness, loss, more emotions than she could name assaulted her.

Her eyes flitted under her lids, awake but not seeing, consumed in an abyss of sensation. It was not the first time she had awakened only to slip away again. Sometimes her eyelids would flutter, and she would see light or dark or colors or nothing at all. Sometimes she heard things, soft skittering and dust blowing through an empty land. Other times it was so quiet she could hear the absence of her heart beating. Occasionally her skin reported something hot, something slimy, something shifting. More often than not, it failed to report at all.

Then, after a million and more uncountable moments, her eyes finally opened.

She immediately regretted this. A bright light stabbed her retinas and she shut them in an instant, the thin veil of skin providing a weak shield. Her body was sore and unpleasantly sticky and she lay in pain for a few moments, before opening her eyes again, this time slower.

The light that had assaulted her so harshly before had been the sun. She was very definitely outside, with no ship in sight. No ship and no Deathless, bearing her hard-fought-for prize. It shouldn’t have surprised Rat, that the Butcher King had lied. Rat had probably had heard more lies than truths over life so far. But there was something singularly off-putting about an immortal being lying. Almost as if they weren’t supposed to be able to. After all, something had to keep them accountable, right?

Rat pushed a hand to her eyes, sun still a little too bright for her to work up a proper level of rage just yet. As she brushed her eyes, her hand came into contact with a mudlike gunk that had a dull, rotting smell. When she sat up she found herself sitting in a huge red puddle of goop, in the middle of a mud plain. No, not mud; she recognized the scent now. It was clay… some kind of strange clay, dyed red... As though in answer to her unasked question, the sticky clay bubbled, and a very dead, very rotted little mammal corpse floated to the surface. Rat reached for it, but her movement disturbed the mud, and more corpses floated to the surface; snakes, lizards, more little mammals, and a few birds. She raised a clay-covered hand to her nose but didn’t need to inhale to understand the source of the strange red dye. She shivered at the implications.

She moved to wipe some clay off her skin but hesitated. It was cool and damp, not yet baked by the sun. So it was morning, probably shortly after dawn. The sun would continue to rise and scorch the Earth with its relentless gaze. Instead of brushing the only protection she had against the rays, she made a valiant effort to stand, which immediately failed, depositing her back into the sludge. Underneath the slime, pins and needles danced all over her skin. This would be harder than she thought. It took a few more tries before her twiggy legs managed to successfully support her weight.

Her memory on the Buther King’s plane was faint and she had no real idea where she was but unless she was on an entirely different continent, the ocean would still be east. And that meant food and water. So she started walking towards the rising sun. While the clay served to protect her fragile skin, it dried quickly, drying her skin in turn. To fight the urge to scratch it off, she turned her thoughts towards the ship. Playing back what actually happened, it was possible she’d been on there less than a day. Which means, the Butcher King should definitely be still waiting around. He probably skipped town the minute she disappeared. Or maybe he waited around to see the ship blow up and then dipped. Or maybe the ship hadn’t blown up at all. Where did it go? How did she get out of it?

Again, the details on crossing between the ship and Earth were fuzzy, way too fuzzy for her damaged brain to wrap around right now. She had to stay focused on walking. Her head pounded and her throat burned and with every step her feet lifted less and less until finally, they gave way underneath her and she lay in the sand, counting her breaths as they passed by her swollen tongue and cracked lips.

It took several seconds for the distant, heavy thrum of a hover transport to scratch her surface of awareness. A patrol. Was this it then? They’d find her, bring her back, this would all slip into the back of her mind, one more shitty memory?

Going back to slavery was surely better than dying in the desert. Shelter, water, some kind of food. That was worth being a slave for, right?

Her eyes drifted shut as the humming got louder. It had been a nice thought, hadn’t it? For just a moment, she was going to be more than just a slave. She was going to do something worthwhile. She was going to have a real purpose…

---

Everything felt wrong. Not bad wrong but certainly not right. Rat shifted where she lay, taking stock of the squishy thing she was on top of. It had a smooth texture but not like water. Like a squirrel’s fur, but less snarly. There was something else, a light cloth, on top of her, ranging from her toes to her collarbone. Her limbs rested, sluggish, but unrestrained under the sheet. They must still think she was asleep. She had an edge right now.

Her eyes shot open and she sprang upright, sitting but ready to jump to her feet at a moment’s notice. Her head spun and she held it steady for a moment, taking the room in.

The room wasn’t the cell she expected. It was a mostly white room, save for one wall, garishly painted with brightly colored orbs floating at the ends of strings and several small, baby animals attacking the spheres.

There were a couple other tools hanging around the room, small mechanisms attached to rubber hoses, some with gauges. There was a tiny, ineffective looking hammer, several bottles of liquid, a jar of wooden sticks, and another of cotton swabs. Rat did recognize a rack of bandages. Was this a laboratory? Was she here to be experimented on?

A rattling sound shot adrenaline through Rat’s body as a door handle turned slowly. She leaped to her feet, her hands raised, fingers splayed like claws to tear at the skin of whoever had captured her.

Rat’s failure to immediately respond to the woman’s entrance should have been lethal. But all the horrors she’d planned for had left her unprepared for the small, brown-skinned, pretty woman, in matching blue pants and shirt who entered the room. The woman carried a tray with a bowl, filled with something brown that smelled sweet. Rat shook her head, a feral twitch that should have sent clear thoughts to her brain. Her eyes raked over the woman, surveying every single place that could hide a weapon. When the woman finally acknowledged Rat, her brow pinched. Rat smiled. The woman wasn’t taking Rat seriously, a lethal flaw.

"Who are you?" Rat’s voice, rough with thirst, was a low growl. "Where am I?"

The woman took a half step backward, lines marring her face in an odd response, close to fear or anxiety. Then she met Rat's incendiary gaze and her expression softened to something Rat had never seen directed at herself.

"Miss, it's ok. This is a safe place." She took a step forward but Rat snarled and forced her back again. "I am Doctor Yasmin Boutros and you're in my office. You looked like you’d been hurt so you were brought here. What's your name?"

There was something to her voice that Rat didn't care for. A slowness, a softness, something people reserved for talking to the very young or very stupid. Still, being underestimated was good. She lowered her hands, though the tension never left her arms, pretending to relax. "I don't have a name. Rat, I guess, if you have to call me something."

If Yasmin was trying to hide her confusion, she was failing rather miserably. "Uh, well, Miss… Rat you were found alone, out in the desert, caked in mud and blood. Do you remember what happened?"

Rat's fingers twitched. "I woke up in the middle of nowhere… it was bright, so I covered myself in the clay to hide from the sun. Then I headed east."

Yasmin nodded in a way that indicated she didn't understand at all. "Right. So, can you tell me why you were in the desert? Do you remember being naked?”

Rat raised her eyebrows, replaying her waking in the desert. She wasn’t entirely sure if she’d had clothes on under all the clay at all. "Guess they burned off."

"Burned off? Your skin doesn’t show any, well, recent burns. Miss, why don’t you start from-"

"Alright, can it with the fucking 'miss' shit.” Rat clawed at her scalp, pulling through her stringy hair. “Makes my stomach crawl. Only simpering cowards call me Miss. Call me Rat or don't talk to me."

"Oh! I’m sorry m… Rat. Of course. Can you please tell me more about how your clothes were burned?"

Rat waved her hand. "It's a long story and you're way too clean to handle it. There was fire and hot things. Hence, clothes being burnt off."

"Right.” She took a few notes on her clipboard and Rat’s skin crawled at the scratching.

“Well, as I mentioned, there aren’t any recent burns on your body.”

The woman wasn’t wrong, Rat was realizing. She scratched at her left arm, finding nothing but her old scars. The burning pain from the sun, the aches and pains in her bones and muscles, it was all gone.

"What. The. Fuck did you do to me?" Rat fixed Yasmin with a stare that could bore through lead. She patted her body, looking for malformations or mutations. The tears in her lip and eyelids from the ship, the cracks in her skull… she couldn't feel any of it. All she felt nauseous, sick, unclean. "What fucking magic did you do to me."

"Nothing. Miss-Rat, I promise!” She held her hands forward as if to calm a wild animal. It was a stupid gesture. You never patted your hands down at an animal; it could be perceived as a threat. Rat was willing to bet that there wasn’t anyone in this squeaky clean facility knew Jack all about handling wildlife. She took a step forward.

“Rat, can you return to your bed?”

Rat’s lip twisted into a half snarl, half-smirk. The doctor knew better and took a step back.

"We didn’t provide any treatment. A simple triage - we checked you for injuries. I was just bringing you some food.” The small woman still stood with her hands out. There was no reaching for a weapon, no eying a drawer or fumbling for a pocket. If she didn’t call for backup soon, she’d be no match for Rat and they both knew it. The doctor took another step back and gestured at the tray. “Try to eat a few bites. You’ll feel better and then we can talk a bit more when you’re done. Just - you’re safe, Rat. No one has done anything to you and no one will without your say.”

Rat eyed Yasmin with contempt, tuning out her insipid assurances. Before she could decide how to handle the doctor, her stomach growled loudly. The woman had brought in food and if she was trying to kill Rat, she could have pretty handily done so while Rat was sleeping. So she slunk over to the bowl, half an eye on the woman at the door, and brought it up to her lips to taste the contents.

Her mouth was flooded with an exquisite, overwhelming sensation. It was unlike anything she'd ever had. She scooped up the stuff with her hands, greedily swallowing it down. Her heart pounded. She knew eating food from a stranger was dangerous, but she couldn’t stop herself.

“Rat, maybe you want to slow down. You’ll upset your stomach-”

“Yasmin," Rat growled, between swallows, "what shit is in this?" She slurped down the last dregs of the stuff, sticking out her tongue to catch any of the sticky white goop that may be sticking to her face.

Yasmin looked baffled. "Uh, no-nothing, just oats and sugar? We kept it mild. You don’t have an oat allergy, do you? Maybe you shouldn’t eat so fast."

Rat wanted to laugh. Oats were a dusty tasting crop that didn’t remotely resemble the goodness she’d just consumed. But laughing would add too much time between now and her next bowl. "Is there more? Give me more. Now."

Yasmin’s face changed a little with each bowl. At first, it was a little disgusted and afraid, thin eyebrows furrowed, nose wrinkled. Second bowl in and it had morphed to curiosity, head tilted, eyes watching over Rat’s ravenous feasting. By the third bowl, it was concern.

Rat was almost done when a rising burp began to threaten her sleepy, bloated contentedness. She tried to finish the last bite, opening her mouth just a little, when a burp turned into unexpected vomiting.

“Oh, honey.” Rat felt Yasmin’s light hand on her shoulder and Rat wheeled on her, splashing her neat blue shirt.

"Fucking hell,” she managed between retched. “You poisoned me, didn’t you?" She gagged again, destroying her attempt to be threatening.

Dr. Yasmin seemed to be reaching the limits of her patience. "No, Rat." Her voice was strained and her cheerful tone was forced. "You feel sick because you ate too much too quickly like I warned you against. I did say you might get sick, but you told me to,” she took a deep breath “mind my own damn business.'"

Rat snarled, an effect woefully undermined by her post-vomit trembles.

There was a knocking at the door.

Rat sprung to her feet, crouched and hunched over to keep her body compact. She splayed her fingers and growled at Yasmin. "Who is that? What did you do?"

Yasmin ignored Rat and wiped some vomit from her top. She took a deep breath and opened the door. In stepped a portly man in a clean black suit with a white bowtie. His face was half turned away from Rat as he spoke to Yasmin.

"Doctor Boutros, a pleasure to see you."

"Likewise minister. I appreciate you taking some time to see us so quickly.” Yasmin lowered her voice in the way parents did when they thought their children couldn’t hear whispers. “She’s been through a lot. It’s hard to tell exactly what level of trauma, but she isn’t an ordinary patient. I haven’t been able to run a full physical triage; she doesn’t like being touched or even questioned. I don’t know if you’ll be able to get anything out of her but I hope you can try." Her voice was relaxed, maybe even familiar. The word 'minister' gave Rat pause. She had heard that title before. But where?

"It’s no problem, Yasmin. Really. It's my job after all." He smiled and turned to face Rat. His lips moved, presumably making noises, but Rat heard nothing. Nothing at all. It was as though each of her five senses had been rerouted to focus on the small charm dangling from his left earlobe: a pair of brass hands, reaching down from above and crossed at the wrist, fingers forming empty circles. The Brass Embrace.

Her heart rumbled in her ears like echoes in a cave and she smelled gravel and mud and incense. For the fraction of an instant, she saw a flash of silver in the corner of her eye. The minister’s eyes flicked back to Yasmin, in slow motion, before going back to Rat. This movement set Rat off.

She launched herself at the man, a coiled spring wound too tight. The two collided, her fist meeting his solar plexus. As he crashed against the wall, time seemed to slow again. Rat flew past him, out the room. In the hall stood another man, face frozen except for his panicked eyes, which darted about the scene. He was dressed in torn, dirty work clothes that showed off powerful arms. For an imperceptible second, she thought maybe he was also a slave. Then she saw the Brass Embrace again, pinned to his shirt, and time sped up again. She pushed herself off the minister and raked a claw across the worker's face. Rat didn't wait around long enough to see if he was hurt, his cry of pain was enough. Without time to think, Rat blindly charged the door atop a small staircase.

The door gave way as she shoved and she was assaulted by a kaleidoscope of light and sound. Gone, gone were the clouds and flat earth tones of the mines she grew up in. Everything was bright. The people, the hundreds of people, hustling around the roads, moving and shifting, all a blur of vivid reds and greens and yellows. And all talking so loud. A shout, a laugh, a cry it all blended together. Hellos and goodbyes, conversations, accusations, bartering, and fighting all collapsed into a noise that mixed with the low drone of machines. Rat's ears hurt. Her eyes hurt. The world span a bit and a hot sweat broke across her clammy skin. Her stomach sloshed around its supply of oatmeal and stomach acid, enough to make her belly ache but not enough to be repelled from her system.

She rubbed a hand against her goosebump prickled skin when a pair of hands planted on her shoulders, pushing hard as someone tackled her to the ground. She flailed, clawing at the person on her back, but they held firm. The sounds around her turned ugly. People gasped and screamed, trapping Rat in an auditory hellscape. She lashed out, slamming the back of her skull into the man's face. The face gave way in a satisfying enough way that the man’s grip loosened.

Her feet had just started gaining traction as she took the chance to survey the area around her. People were staring. Some looked like they might get involved, a few stared dumbly, but most were running. Rat assessed the situation. People were scampering, adults pushing passed each other as little children ran underfoot. Around them, cars swerved to avoid the darting pedestrians.

A quick look at the roads told Rat to avoid them. Sidewalks were safer. Alleys provided cover, but could dead end. Roads were the absolute most dangerous, as a small fleeing child was about to find out. Scaling a wall would put the most distance between her and her pursuers but also made her an easy target for guns...

Roads were too dangerous but the little child was stopping for breath and didn’t even hear the damned bus that was hurtling towards them and dammit Rat couldn’t focus on anything else.

She didn't know what she was doing. The kid was basically already dead. There was nothing she could do, so why was she running towards the road, trying to do anything? She couldn't do anything except get in the way. Was this the purpose that had kept her alive? Would she die now to save a small innocent life as some cosmic payback for the deaths that had surrounded her for her entire life? Maybe that was good enough.

She didn’t even really reach the child in time. She managed to get between the kid and the screeching bus, turn towards them and close the gap between the two to less than a foot, but the bus was on her. She shielded her face, feeling the heat of the bus and hearing the scream of tires-

The crunch of metal on skin, glass shattering, and somehow even more people screaming hit her first. Then she felt the cool metal of the vehicle touch her skin, felt it push against her, the force rendered gentle by her slowed perception. The pain would come next. It probably wouldn’t last long, but it would come, sharp and fast.

The moment stretched on, lengthened unnaturally by adrenaline and likely her brain’s acknowledgment that it was all ending now. But the sounds around her, the screams fading, the gasps, the hissing of steam from the vehicle, those were all real-time. Was she dead already then?

She opened her eyes. People were gathering a safe distance away, staring at her. She looked down and saw the kid, a frozen statue, inches from her. And they were alive. Alive, alive and unharmed. Rat looked behind her at the vehicle, and through the shattered windshield she saw the people inside. Some of them had some small cuts, rubbing their heads or holding limbs gingerly but they seemed fine.

They were fine.

Rat didn't know what to do. She didn't know what to feel. It should have killed her, but she lived yet again. So she tried to get angry, as she always did when she cheated death, but no fire sparked in her. No bodies lay in ruin around her. No one had taken her spot in the afterlife. She turned to the child, who was shaking now, and opened her mouth to speak, when she saw, in her peripheral, the minister. No time to check his reaction or anyone else’s.

She just ran.