She waited in the dim.
Finally, after hours and hours had passed, she saw the red line lacerate its way through the stone wall and knew that he was arriving.
She gripped the glass tighter in her hand.
The wall split apart as the portal opened, and he stepped through it.
He stood there, looking at her, surprised at what he saw. She stood there, her feet squared, breathing shallowly. Poised, strong. Ready.
"What," he said.
She launched himself at him, springing like a coiled snake. She took the tall man completely unawares, and was on him in a moment, slashing with the glass. She heard him scream in pain, and as she pulled her hand back to slash again, saw that it was covered with blood.
She got him.
She slashed again with the shard. This time, he put his hands up in front of his face in a defensive posture. He screamed again.
He fell to one knee, his hands still over his face. She threw out a foot, and caught him in the side of the head. He fell onto his side.
She looked down at him, bleeding, crawling in his blood. She raised the glass up, ready to grab his head, pull his neck up, and slice his throat open once and for all.
But out of the corner of her eye, she saw the portal. It was
closing-
she was running out of time. It was already only about as large around as her torso. She knew that if it closed, even if she killed him, she would never be able to get back home. She'd be condemned to dying alone in this place she hated, dying in any number of terrible ways.
"No!" she screamed, and leapt for it. She raced across the room, and got her hands on either side of the closing envelope. It took all her strength, but she was able to push it open, slightly, inch by inch.
She was close. Soon, she would be able to leap into it, back to Earth, back to where she would be free, where she would be strong again.
Back to where she could
fly.
I'm going to fly straight up into the sky, she thought to herself. I'm going to fly straight up as far away from the City as I can get, and I'm never going to go back to it. I may just go home. Never be the Power again. God help me, just get me out of this hellhole planet and away from this monster.
She pushed the portal open even further.
Almost there.
She screamed again as she felt a huge handful of her hair be caught up in his oversized hand.
"No!"
He pulled her up by her hair, she kicked her feet as he lifted her into the air. She kicked backwards with her leg, hit him, and heard him grunt in pain as her foot connected with his ribs.
He grabbed her ankle as she pulled her foot back, and spun her around, throwing her across the room and into the stone wall. She hit the wall, the air knocked out of her lungs, and she collapsed onto the floor.
She struggled to her knees, then her feet. He was on her in a flash, his long legs carrying him across the room in a couple of steps. She squared off.
His hand slapped across her face, hard.
She fell to her knees at the blow.
He reached into his sport coat, and she saw a metallic shine and in a flash, felt the cool metal of his handcuffs snapping across her wrists. She struggled against him, but was no match for his strength in the black world.
She landed a punch into his ribs again. He grunted at the pain.
He cracked her across the face with his enormous fist. She fell half-conscious to the ground, her lip cracked open and bleeding.
Dazed at the blow, she barely noticed as he dragged her across the floor. She heard another click, and looked up to see him securing the other end of the handcuffs to the stone bedpost.
She lay there, half on the bed, half off, her head pounding and throbbing.
He dragged himself across the room, making his way to the wooden chair. He sat down on it, and put his heavy hand in his hands.
He watched his blood pool on the floor at his feet.
"Fuck," he said, gasping to himself. She had slashed him across the face, narrowly missing his eyes, lacerating across his face and lips. She had opened his arms up, blood was pouring down his arms and hands, dripping off his fingertips.
He saw her glaring at him from across the room.
"I hope you bleed out," she spat. "I hope we both die here."
I thought you didn't kill, he said to himself, and closed his eyes.
She crawled behind the bed, for shelter of some kind, and tried to slip her hand through the handcuffs. Too tight. She grabbed the bed post, and beat her hand against it, trying in vain to break it in some way.
He closed his eyes, and began to reshape his body to stop the bleeding. She looked on as the blood flow slowed to a trickle, and then stopped completely. She watched as his cuts began to close to some degree, watched him force his body to be together again.
Fuck, she thought.
After a long time had passed, he finally opened his eyes. His head rotated on his long neck and those terrible black eyes focused on her as she pulled uselessly against the handcuffs.
He stood up to his full height. She recoiled, as if from a blow that was going to be arriving at any moment. But he didn't strike her.
He walked over to the front door, and walked out into the black world, closing the door behind him.
She lay there, her senses slowly coming back to her after the blow, pulling loosely on the handcuffs.
He wasn't gone long. He arrived carrying a small metal cage by the handle.
He sat down in his chair.
"That was wrong of you to do," he told her.
"Fuck you!" she spat.
He opened the cage.
"This is an immature Red Eyes," he went on. Something that looked like a long, black worm thumped wetly onto the ground. Even knowing that the creatures here couldn't usually see him, he stepped quickly back from the wriggling black mass. "I was thinking to raise it to take the place of the one you killed, but I think I'll let it do its thing to you instead."
She watched it twist on the floor, saw its vicious little tail lashing around. She hid further behind the bed, pulling on the handcuffs harder now in panic.
