Wet, was her first thought. Damp. Heavy. Wet.

For a moment, she shut her eyes, listening silently to the pit-pat serenade of droplets from across the hallway. Then she looked around and saw them now — everything wet and slick and red.

But most of all the floor. The floor. She reached down and peeled off her heels.

"Ma'am, what are you doing?" the man asked behind her.

Bodies. Broken against the walls they leaned upon. Without turning her eyes, she mumbled something something slippery. And then, casually apologizing, she extended her arm and said, "Hold these," and in an even quieter voice, almost thoughtfully, almost reflectively, before dropping her shoes in front of his chest, she said, "Please."

She didn't see if he caught them or not. But when he looked up, she had stepped forward and the rivulets of blood were trickling already between her bare, pink toes.

Crouched and picking at the soggy skin, half-flayed from what appeared to have once been a forearm, she asked, "How long?" and then turned back to look at the officer when he didn't respond.

He shook his head; he did not know.

---

It was nearly morning when she arrived home, although it was still very dark out, not unusual for this deep into the winter. Stepping through the door, greeted by the familiar voice of her apartment, she felt relaxed for the first time in days.

"Welcome home, Katya."

With the barest of effort, she mumbled, "Shower," her coat already dropped to the floor and stumbling as she was towards the bathroom before she had even finished uttering the command.

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There was a hiss as steam immediately began to fill her small loft.

She liked her water hot. In contrast to the frigid air outside, she liked it scalding. The heat made her feel clean, like it could burn her skin away and leave her raw underneath.

Home now, her thoughts returned to the scene again. A hundred men and women, their bodies strewn throughout the building like so many pieces of waste paper. She had been over this, through and through, playing everything she had observed over and over again in her head — the bodily contortions, their arrangements, the groupings.

No. Stop. There would be time to think on that. There was always time for that. No, right now, in the sweltering heat of the shower, where the stream of water beat and flogged against her, alone and uninterrupted, she turned her thoughts to the officers that had been with her.

The shock on first sight of the lobby, littered less with bodies as with body parts just one room in a building with many others — had been so surreal and disorienting that a few of the men escorting her had immediately retreated outside, their murmured apologies and broken excuses interjected by sobs and gasps. The others stood as stoically as they could, but even the best of them had to occasionally wipe away some inexplicable debris in their eye or clear the scratch in their throats, while she had plodded calmly, impassively forward.

She thought about this, because it was always like this. She never felt any welling in her chest, or tickling in her nose. Not this time, not ever.

The razor nicked her skin and let loose a thin red stream down her leg. She frowned impatiently and waited for the blood to run dry.

So, why did they feel so strongly? What did they see in those bodies that she, apparently, overlooked? As it always did when she thought about this, her mind reeled back towards the facts she had gathered and the observations she had recorded: The streaks in the blood. The paw prints -- their length suggesting dizzying acceleration streaking down the floor. The claws — wolf-like, perhaps — but what kind of wolf had prints like that?

Lost in the patter of the water around her, she felt herself losing focus. She tried to circle her thoughts back again to the officers but found that she had none for them. She raised her head and ran her hands through her long, black hair. Her eyes opened to look at herself through the misty shower doors, her slim silhouette cloudy in the mirror. She wondered if she should feel guilty for not expressing anything for the victims. But the feeling didn't come. It never did.