Chapter One

"Breathe." she gasped, heart hammering as she pressed further into the crevice in the rock, "Goddamn it, breathe!"

It wasn't unusual for her, to be whispering to herself, to her lungs, squashed as far into shadow as she could get, but that didn't mean it got any easier. Her lungs were panicked, she knew, starved of oxygen and fuelled by an equally panicked heart. Organs could be such a drag, as Lifeline might say.

Thinking of Lifeline was a bad idea, if she wanted to breathe evenly anytime soon. A very bad idea. Instead she closed her eyes, pressed her palms flat against the coarse surface of the mountain and listened.

Down, way down from the crack into which she'd squirmed near the peak of one jagged rock face, down where the water was running, others were running. The splashing was loud, loud enough that she heard each footfall, and had she been in better shape she might have allowed herself to chuckle at their stupidity.

Her skin burned. Her neck ached. Though it had been long enough since she'd taken a syringe for it to have worked, she cursed that it was all she'd had.

If I hadn't given-

No, breathing. All she could afford to think about right now was breathing.

The two-man squad rushing through the water seemed to have lost her trail, for their sounds drew quiet, and further away, but gunfire still spattered on the other side of the mountain. Close enough to require noting, far enough away that she could note it in a minute.

Her sides and her stomach spasmed.

She lifted one hand from the rock to clutch her abdomen, she couldn't help it. The pain was too alive to brace herself against it until the wave passed.

When it did, all at once, she gasped out loud again.

Shit.

That one was bad. She needed a medkit. She needed another syringe, maybe two, but a full kit would be so much better. She took a second to thank whoever was in charge of the cafeteria food for whatever they had done to ensure Bloodhound was too sick to participate. On her own, with them on her trail, she'd have been done for already.

As it was, she breathed. She gave herself exactly three minutes to pull her body back under some semblance of control. She cheated and took an extra twenty seconds just to stop the shaking she was left with at the end, when the pain subsided and oxygen returned to her blood. With the adrenaline easing up, she could think clearer, which she needed.

It was just a shame that it left her with that weak nausea and the trembling.

She turned her thoughts on what she was facing, and swallowed hard. With nine other squads still in play, it was a really bad time to be on her own. A really fucking bad time. The knowledge that she'd have to face some still-full squads, on her own, was daunting. Her gear sucked, they'd landed in a low-tier zone and she'd lost a whole lot trying to keep- Trying to keep her team alive.

For a moment, she almost regretted signing back up. Almost. The aftermath, the recovery time, the agony of the procedures that realistically the odds said she was facing, all of it… She wasn't sure she could do it. The knowledge of the pain of it all loomed high and dark in her mind. She shivered involuntarily as her stomach turned.

Beats the alternative, though, right?

Being on the outside permanently. Life, as it was for norms. Civvies, as-

Normal was hard. Normal was something that she hadn't spent much time learning. The Games made sense, in their own bloody, cut-throat kind of way. You didn't get too close to anyone, and the only thing you had to do was survive.

She was a survivor. That was something she knew. Fighting, killing, those were things she knew too.

But the aftermath… If she wanted to live for another Game, she had to endure. Otherwise, what? She just… gave up?

The idea of metaphorically tearing up the details on the chip under her skin, of signing, effectively, her own DNR, was…

It wasn't what she wanted, was it? She didn't want to die. None of them were keen -save maybe Octane- for the rush of reanimation. Sure, in theory death being temporary was better than not, but the process post-games was… Well, there was a reason that they weren't held more regularly. Reanimation was… indescribable. She wasn't sure how they stood it, the agony; that sensation of the tearing and reforming of every molecule that they were made from… Only it was that or nothing.

Stop it.

Permanent termination. The final Game Over.

And she didn't want that either, that much she knew, not yet. Not now, not when-

Don't.

She took a deep breath and held it with her eyes screwed shut, and counted to ten. When she let it out again, she let it travel off her shoulders, down her arms, through her fingertips into her thighs and from her legs to her toes to the earth underneath.

She could do this. She had done this. She could focus, she could get in, get gear, and she could get out. She could stalk, she could hide, and she could disappear. She could do this. She could win.

When Wraith opened her eyes again, they were steeled with new determination.

The win is out there, and it's waiting for me.