Shaula's lip quivers as she also considers the true danger that Ajax has found himself in.
Thoughts of Ajax's blood spilling across the ground fill her mind, yet more so the thoughts of Ajax's frozen victims, their remains strewn across the hallway floor. Her mind unconsciously crosses the threshold into a state of slowed perception as her thoughts churn in her skull, trying to make sense of what Ajax is putting himself through.
She doesn't notice her surroundings anymore.
Ajax… H-He must be in the middle of killing them. Why else wouldn’t he be here helping Dzan and Sigvor? I… I need to help him. He's going to be killing almost two dozen terrorists by himself. He's not a soldier, he's not a warrior… What if he gets PTSD? He… He's not ready to be a killer, I know he’s not ready! H-He could still get hurt. He could still die…
She wants to leave, yet her mind freezes as she considers possibility after possibility about what could happen to him.
Shaula had faced that crystal mage in combat. She had been impaled through her heart. She had felt a sense of grand elation when she realized that she had survived the attack, that she was even capable of surviving it. But, she still knew she wasn't invulnerable, which meant that he wasn’t either.
One good shot to the head and they could both still die.
The thought of Ajax's head being smashed open flashes across her consciousness for a brief moment and she tries not to vomit. His blood and brains spilled across the floor without her there to prevent it, to save him…
No… No, that's not possible…
Her eyes tremble as she tries to keep her intrusive thoughts at bay.
What if the two of them could even regenerate a destroyed head? That was still a possibility after all. However, even if she or Ajax somehow survived their brain being destroyed and were able to regenerate an injury such as that, there would be no guarantee that their memories would regenerate as well.
Thoughts of Ajax forgetting her fill her mind all of a sudden and her eyes start to water. All her common sense seems to leave her when she considers the possibility of something like this happening to her beloved.
What would she do if he were to forget her face? The thought of him looking at her face and being unable to recognise her, it would be as if he had truly died and a stranger had replaced him… a stranger that she would take care of and love for the rest of her miserable, regret-filled life.
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No, he's still not going to be fighting someone who could push him so far. He's not going to be risking himself like that either. Unless… Unless that was the only thing he could do to prevent the innocent people in those buildings from all dying… he wouldn't… he wouldn’t…
Shaula starts to hyperventilate. However, because her body's nerves and muscles have not caught up to the pace of her bullet time, she perceives her lungs to be lagging as if they're following her commands over a slow internet connection. She feels no lightheadedness from her panic breathing either.
In this body that doesn’t need air to survive, the action of hyperventilating is something more akin to a nervous tic than something that could actually calm her down or otherwise affect her mood physiologically.
Meanwhile, even possibilities go through her mind. Crucially, what if Ajax makes a mistake? What if he kills someone who isn't a terrorist? From what Shaula has seen, the terrorists aren't wearing obvious cult garb, they just look like normal people. What will he do if he finds terrorists mixing into groups of regular people in those buildings?
Oh no… Why am I standing here… Why am I standing here? Frozen…
Shaula's eyes tremble as she considers what Ajax is dealing with, all while she was talking to Dzan and Sigvor without a care in the world. She had even doubted Ajax and thought of him as someone who would run away from his responsibilities. She had thought he had run away.
She could not have been more wrong and she feels as if she has truly committed an unforgivable sin. Her best friend had gone above and beyond the call of duty. He had thrown himself into a situation where he would be forced to make choices that even she might not be able to make in his stead.
Her heartbeat races. At its current pace, doctors from Earth might assume she's on the verge of a terrible heart attack, yet it only keeps hastening.
Flashes of Ajax's face pass through her mind as she tries to process her own thoughts. She considers possibility after possibility of what Ajax is facing all by himself. The things he might have to do…
What if the terrorists take hostages and use them in order to force him to back off while they attempt to destroy the apartment buildings? Would Ajax be able to save them? Or would he kill the hostages along with the terrorists in order to save the most people? Did he already kill innocent people to stop them? Did he already make the choice while I was killing that fucking guard captain? While I was helping Jelli and Barden and…
Yet in the end, all of the possibilities are meaningless.
Shaula can only consider where he is right now. She needs to get to him. She needs to help him. She needs to save Ajax, just like he saved her. She needs to find him. He didn't even shout for her to come help him. If he had shouted at the top of his lungs with all of his power, she would have heard him and recognized his voice even in the next city over.
She would have come running over, even if she was in the middle of fighting the crystal mage, or in the middle of interrogating the guard captain, she would have come to help him. She would have killed all of them, the city guards, the statue marchers and every last human supremacist who was making life so difficult for her that she wasn't able to help Ajax when he needed her.
He's all alone… He's all alone right now…