salvage_epps

Tracking him (it), following that monster from port to port and mitigating damages as only she can, Maureen refuses to rest. Defies her body’s need for sleeping and eating, for basic human contact and comfort until she has no choice but to collapse, until she’s faint from hunger, until she clutches gratefully at any outstretched hand.  None of it helps.

She’s seen things that she can’t possibly have seen: ghosts, damnation and sin itself. No one would believe her if she told them. She doesn’t even believe herself most days (or nights). Her nightmares are no better and no worse than reality. Bodies broken, battered, decaying—mass executions and cold-blooded murder. Screams.  Caged animals, running, scurrying with no chance of escape. Haunting her. Taunting her.

Her team, her crew, they were her family—gone. Her boat, destroyed in a fire—sunk. Sole survivor. Soul survivor.  She looks in the mirror and all she sees are large eyes, sharp cheekbones and dark hair. She touches the locket around her neck; it belongs to a dead girl complete with photographs of her dead parents. These people are as strange to her as she is to herself. She may be living but she isn’t alive. She wonders if her soul survived after all because

he’s still out there. Collecting.

Greer, Murphy, Dodge, Stantos, Munder—he has them all, for now. But when (if) she manages to stop Ferriman, what will become of them? Of her? She’s not certain she’ll survive another face-off with the demon, not certain she wants to—why should she, with her broken mind and her broken heart? Heaven, Hell or someplace in between, where will they all finally end up and does it even matter? No. She tells herself that she’ll do whatever it takes to stop him (it) and wherever they end up is of no consequence.

He’s still out there. Collecting.