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The lights went off, and back on two seconds later. A wave of gunfire picked up right away, all shots fired in both directions. It was deafening and blinding. Eden was doing her best to keep her shooting precise, but everything was happening so fast. She had to move quickly, keep firing, try to protect herself, and not shoot an ally.
“Ghost, the elevator! Now!”
She stumbled back, trying to cover both sides while dashing to the elevators, and kept running while grinding her teeth to ignore the pain. In the real world at least, she knew her legs weren’t going to give way. She had to keep going. She rushed, worried for Circé, Dante, and everyone, but right now, it was shoot and run. She knew they were all rushing to get to the safety of the elevators under Greed’s control. They had bought perhaps seconds by turning the lights off and back on, but now, it was all a matter of who would make it to the elevators...
She felt her body being violently pushed against the metallic walls of the elevators, and somebody screaming. Something heavy fell on her, and the cabin suddenly moved, with the strangely familiar ding! of an elevator closing its doors. Eden grimaced. Her hips were killing her. She tried to move and suddenly realized, the dead weight on top of her was a body... and the hot liquid underneath her was blood. A lot of blood.
“Oh, no...” she muttered, unable to utter anything else.
She panicked and tried to turn around, contorting herself in the small cabin. She felt like she was covered in the horrible and haunting stench of blood now that she was catching her breath. She managed to look behind her, and her breathing stopped.
The elevator was filled with bodies. Six bodies, on top of one another. Only six. Eden realized at least two were already dead, as they had fallen face-first against the floor, and their backs were full of bleeding holes... She went to cover her mouth with her hand, shocked, but realized a second too late it was covered in blood too. She grimaced, and grabbed the handrail above her, trying to find a more stable and less painful position. She couldn’t see it under the bodies that had fallen on her, but she could guess one of her Parts had been torn off her thigh. The pain was violent, but strangely numbing at the same time. Eden guessed her SIN had taken over to help her manage the pain, but it wasn’t enough. She felt pearls of cold sweat dripping down her temple and nape.
“D-Dante?” she called out.
Despite her disgust and shock, she tried to push the body that was on her leg, and she found him: Dante was under his men, who had probably died to protect them after they had made it into the elevator. Eden panicked. She grabbed his arm, shaking and pulling it.
“Dante! Dante! Dante, answer me! Dante!”
She began crying as she called his name again and again. Finally, she heard a familiar groan, and let out a sigh of relief. He was alive... unconscious and probably injured, but alive. She looked around, but from what she could see, the two other men in the elevator were either dead or dying.
“G-... Greed?” Eden called out, panicked. “Greed?”
She realized the complete silence around her. She couldn’t hear anything from her SIN, which was a strange sensation for someone who had been connected to dozens of others for the past hour... Was it damaged? Why was the connection out? She slowly reached her hand up to touch where her SIN was. Her fingers suddenly touched an area, sending a wave of pain through her body. The hole she had found left her speechless. Somehow, her SIN had been fired at, and damaged, if not destroyed... No more communication with the outside. Eden tried to stop crying, wiping her snot with her wrist and looking up. The elevator they were in had stopped on the seventy-fifth floor, but it didn’t open. She repressed the urge to scream. Was Greed still in control? …What had become of the others? She couldn’t even reach out to Circé, Nebty, or anyone. She had never felt so terribly alone... She grabbed Dante’s shirt and tried shaking him again. For a few seconds, Eden only focused on pushing the men off his back, pulling him, shaking him. She just couldn’t stop crying, but moving was helping her calm down. Plus, she was worried he was going to die of suffocation... Finally, with the bodies pushed to the side, she managed to turn him over, and Dante instinctively took a breath in. Eden let out a sigh of relief. He was alive... He was alive. She tried to swallow her crying, and shake him again.
“Dante, wake up,” she muttered. “Please. Please...”
Without Loir, without Dante, Circé, or anybody else to answer, she felt so utterly alone. Never had she felt so horribly alone. It made no sense, but right now, she was confined in a box with dead bodies and her unresponsive lover. The panic was starting to take over her rational mind, and Dante was the last piece of sanity she was holding on to.
“Dante!”
She suddenly slammed his torso, out of anger, and he coughed, waking up right away. He sat up, coughing loudly, and Eden let out a long sigh of relief.
“Eden?”
She didn’t say anything and dove into his arms, relieved. She just really, really needed someone to hug her right now. She heard him sigh, and answer her hug, patting her back.
“...Are you alright?”
“I’m not,” she cried angrily. “I... I can’t reach out to Greed, or anybody. I don’t know what happened to the others...”
“You’re alive,” he calmly answered.
As if that explained everything. Eden shook her head. She was getting tired of everyone counting on her being alive, to survive this. As if nothing else mattered... She understood the stakes, but she just couldn’t accept how many people had died or were dying right now, all for her to end this. It was just too much on the shoulders of one person. Luckily, she wasn’t alone for now. Dante gently helped her calm down, hugging and patting her. He even took off his already pretty-much-ruined shirt to wipe as much blood as he could off her face and hands. It felt like time had stopped, for a few seconds, in this elevator for the two of them.
It was all Eden really needed to finally calm down. Her panic from before was withdrawing, and instead, a strange sensation of cold was coming over her, as if her whole body was calming down. Dante suddenly realized something was off about her leg being so far from her body. He frowned and pushed his men, searching for it. He found the piece, torn off and covered in Eden’s blood. He glanced at her leg. Her hip was covered in blood where it had been forcefully ripped off.
“...Can you put it back on?”
“I don’t know.”
Dante pulled it over, close to her leg, to see if they could put it back on somehow...
Suddenly, the doors behind him opened. Dante immediately grabbed a gun, ready to fire, but the bright light shining blinded them both.
“Welcome,” said the Governor’s voice, “I have been waiting for you!”
Dante fired immediately
