I ran.
I didn't know where I was going.
I didn't know where I'd been.
I just knew that I couldn't stop, because if I stopped, I would have to face what I'd done, and I wasn't ready.
I would never be ready.
The blood was drying on my hands.
The tears were drying on my face.
The city stretched ahead, indifferent and eternal, and I ran toward nothing, toward no one, toward the end of a story I'd stopped understanding chapters ago.
"Gabriel."
The name was a prayer.
"Gabriel, please."
"Please come back."
"Please tell me what to do."
No answer.
There was never an answer.
There would never be an answer.
I was alone.
I had always been alone.
And I had killed someone, and I didn't remember, and the only thing I knew for certain was that I would do it again.
Because that was what I'd been made for.
That was what I'd become.
A weapon.
A hunter.
A woman who woke up with blood on her hands and no memory of how it got there.
"Daddy."
The word was barely a breath.
"Daddy, where are you?"
I ran.
The darkness swallowed me.
And behind me, in a room I would never find again, Rue's body cooled on the floor, and the truth died with her.
