On top of the building where the sniper was posted, there stood a tall, bald,

dark-skinned man. He wore black pants, shades, and was shirtless.

He was talking into a cell phone, “Boss. I lost them. Another spirit rescued them when I had them by the throat.”

He stood, listening to the voice on the other end. “ I understand the consequences. I will make sure she is dead.”

The man strapped the black sniper to his back and leaped into the strip club. He slowly walked through the chaos, observing the corpses strewn across the floor. In front of him, he saw a man crawling on the ground with a missing leg. The man approached him and drew a pistol.

“Sorry. Wrong place, wrong time.”

He stepped on his back and shot the dying man in the head. He turned around and entered the office. There she was, lying on the ground, surrounded by purple blood that pooled around her.

He crouched beside her and tapped her head with his pistol. “Same essence as the boss….” He scanned her and waved his hand through the essence above her body. A descendant, perhaps? Or just the same species. He withdrew and gripped his sniper, aiming it at her head. “Just in case.” He fired a round and popped her head into a red mist. “Dead.”

He pressed his phone to his ear, “It’s me. Are you three listening?” he paused for a moment. “Good. The Boss had a change of plans. I want the three of you to find and capture V’zul alive. He does not have to be in one piece. His allies do not matter, do as you see fit.”

He hung up and looked at her corpse, “A challenge is what I had hoped for. Today is not that day.” He exited the building and vanished.

Police surrounded the building, accompanied by a few ambulances. The bodies were removed, and the building manager was outside, talking to the officers.

In the back of the building, three officers observed Katie’s headless body, “What the hell is this thing?” one of them said.

“I have no clue,” another officer answered.

Her hand suddenly twitched. The officers swiftly backed away and drew their side arms. She pushed herself up and slowly turned to the back door. They stared in shock. One of them ran out of the room.

She sluggishly crawled to it and pushed on it, breaking it off its hinges.

“Stop!” one shouted.

His fellow officer shot him a look of horror. “Shut up!”

“Sir-” she erratically crawled towards them, pushed herself into the air, and stabbed into their skulls.

Katie quickly retreated into the back alley at the sound of approaching footsteps. She crawled down the street, escaping the crime scene. After thirty minutes, She entered a large park. The grassy field spanned far and wide with a group of trees at the back. Katie stopped for a moment to rest. After that, she crawled towards the forest entrance and stopped again. A homeless man — soaked by the rain — exited his tent and gasped when he saw the headless body. He stared at it with his mouth covered and flinched when the body twitched. The man slowly backed away and hid behind a tree.

She suddenly snapped in his direction and crept towards the tree. He checked and saw the body inching towards him. He screamed and ran, but before he could escape, she gained speed and grabbed his leg. He fell but was stopped before his head hit the ground. The homeless man looked down and saw her hand on his stomach. She let go of him and tapped her knuckle on a tree.

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“What do you want?” he said, horrified.

She pointed at her stump and her gaping torso and his head. He tilted his head in confusion and backed away. “This has to be some nightmare; I don’t know what is going on but God. Please forgive me for my mistakes.”

She pointed at his head again.

“Wait! You want my head!”

Katie crawled past him and into his tent. She rolled onto her back and sprawled out her arms. He peeked into the tent and saw her resting; the man attempted to escape again.

He didn’t get far.

She quickly crawled after him, pushed herself off the ground, and wrapped her arms around him.

“Okay! Okay!” He stopped and surrendered. “Just kill me. I’ve got nothing to live for anyway. Just, please, make it quick.”

Katie let go of him and grabbed his hand. She pointed at his shovel and made a digging motion.

“Shovel, digging?” he thought out loud.

He watched her point back at the stump.

“Wait! You need a head to put on there!”

She raised her thumbs and dropped her hands.

“I have no idea if this is the drugs or not. But I’ll help you. I got a truck parked nearby. Do you want me to drive you to a graveyard?”

She gave another thumbs up.

“Okay, here,” he knelt. “Wrap around my body.”

They approached the truck. It was red and rusted. He opened the backdoor and laid her down in the backseat. The man entered the front and drove down the dirt trail of the forest. After a few minutes, they reached the gates of a graveyard. He parked in front of the brown and rusty gate and glanced at her headless body.

She was silent.

He stepped out into the downpour and opened the back of the truck. Katie crawled out and wrapped her arms around his waist, rubbing his back in an attempt to comfort him. The man walked to the back of his vehicle and grabbed a shovel. She felt him shiver as he walked past the gates and approached the nearest gravestone. Her body warmed, and she quickly re-heated his body. “Now I know I’m crazy,” he said to himself.

He stuck the shovel in the ground and began to dig. After some time, he reached a wooden coffin and looked at her. She phased through his body and into the coffin. Katie pushed it open, holding the body. She leaped to the surface and tore the limbs off the corpse, and removed her own limbs, placing the dead limbs onto her stumps. The limbs immediately turned purple, and the fingers transformed into claws.

The man watched all of this with widened eyes.

The entrails were stuffed into the gaping hole and transformed, and she attached the skin to her gaping wound, also turning purple on contact. She stood and stretched her arms. The man gulped at her appearance and height. She was three inches taller than this six-foot man. Katie turned and shot him a warm smile, ignoring the rain.

“Thank you, human,” she said in a raised voice.

He stared at her.

“What is your name?”

He returned to reality, escaping his mind. “I-uh. Jake. Uh, ma’am.”

She approached him and placed her hands on his cheeks, warming his body again. “I owe you one. I’d help you if I could, but I have something to do.”

She lifted him and took him back to his vehicle. “Get out of here,” she pointed back the way they came. “You don’t want to be around me. You’ll get hurt.” Katie cut into the passenger seat and reached into her portal. She withdrew food and a large sum of money and dropped them in his hands.

Before he could thank her, she whipped around and sprinted into the forest.

----------------------------------------

She jumped over roots and bushes; the crunching of leaves was accompanied by the ever-growing rainfall. Despite the freezing temperature, her body remained warm. Katie dashed past the trees, only being in her vision for a second.

Gotta find him, gotta find him, she thought frantically. Her pace increased, turning her vision into a blur. She became deaf to the noise around her, only hearing her pounding heart.

She stopped and rested beside a tree. “God dammit!” she shouted, kicking a chunk of the wood off. “Please be alive — please, please be alive.” She paced in the darkness with her hands on her head, trying to find a fix for the situation.

Fatigue had finally come. The day of emotional strain and physical trauma was taking its toll. Katie ran again, this time with less focus. She rubbed the weariness from her eyes only to smack into a tree and fall unconscious.