And in the stasis pod, Ennéa dreamed.

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Gliding, circling over a desert near steep rocky cliffs with the dark blue line of the ocean in the distance. She spread leathery wings wide, wider to catch the warm dry thermals rising over the sand. There was no other sound than the winds.

She wheeled over the desolate lands and felt the stillness seep into her, filling the ache and the cold. Cold? How could it be cold? She blinked her single eye and her wings wavered, the updraft spilling off them, losing altitude.

On the horizon, dark clouds were forming. They boiled up angry and sudden causing the winds to gust uncertainly like a spooked creature. She shivered and rubbed the goose-pimples on her arms as the temperature rapidly dropped. The dark clouds swirled and twisted, buzzing angrily. A giant locust hit her and then another and another until it was a downpour of insects pelting her. They scrabbled over her skin and tangled in her hair and no matter how many she brushed away there were always more.

They boiled out of the cracks in the hallway walls and the mesh of the heating vents, through keyholes and peepholes, and down off the overhead light fixtures. She desperately waded through the swarming mass, trying to reach her door but it was always just down the hall, in sight but just out of reach. The insects squelched and crunched sickeningly under her feet as she moved, but no matter how much she struggled nothing she did could bring her closer.

And they kept pouring in. The hallway was thick and suffocatingly close, squished full as the walls inexorably ground in closer. Their buzzing swelled and rose in pitch, higher and higher the tighter and smaller the space became. The sound drilled right into her bones. She couldn't move, could barely breathe. Insects and bodies everywhere. She couldn't see. How could she find the pendant if she couldn't see? Somewhere she could hear A-11 and A-2 screaming at her to find it, find it!!!

Their voices joined with the insect hum, rising so high it transcended sound, piercing straight into her mind. She screamed, then, too. The insects poured into her open mouth and choked her but still the sound carried on and on.

A soundless scream so loud it drowned out everything until there was nothing but it and her. She exploded into a million bloody little bits rather than listen to it.

She lay strewn and scattered about, pulled and tossed so many different directions she despaired at ever being put back together. A sob tore out of her throat. It was so unfair. Why was this happening to her? She never asked for it, never wanted it. Why hadn't he believed her?? Why? Why? Why? She'd trusted him...

She pulled the blankets over her head and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to will herself asleep, deeper and deeper. Dreamless. But she couldn't. Her mother was at work so it was just her, now her brother had left for college. She tried not to think of how alone and small she felt. How quiet the apartment was... save for the tap tap of hooves out in the hallway and soft tuneless singing.

"I can smell your Fear." The goat-lady crooned softly in her ear. "It smells so sweet." And then it laughed and locusts crawled out from its mouth to plop heavily onto her pillow.

She jerked up, scooting away and falling off the bed. Behind the creature floated the shades of her mother and her brother. They stared piteously at her, their mouths moving but they made no sound. It was her fault. Her fault! She had killed them as surely as if she had hit them with her axe.

Her axe. She reached out and tried to summon her weapon but that place in her mind was empty. There was nothing. She was nothing, she was empty and hollowed out. A withered petal whose fate was to fall to the floor and be crushed underfoot as soon as the creature finished with her.

The pale pretty face from the hallway smiled and licked its lips even as it choked her. Its fingers were icy cold. "No one will save you. No one will protect you." It purred. "Stop thinking they will. It's your fault, after all."

Her neck snapped and she fell to the ground, sinking beneath the grasses and the soil. Phoenix squad stood beside her grave along with a dark skinned teen with a single blue eye. "What a waste." Jordan muttered, and they all nodded in agreement.

She screamed at them. Clawed and tore her fingers raw on the inside of her casket, trying to make them hear her, trying to escape. It was dark and she was trapped in that confined space. But they couldn't or wouldn't hear her and one by one they turned and walked away.

She was alone and helpless and they didn't care. She never should have trusted them but then, it was her fault, wasn't it? She caused so much trouble wherever she went and never thought about the consequences. It was her fault she was there. It was nothing more than what she deserved.

Despair opened pit-like beneath her and she fell, ever falling. She had no wings.

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Ennéa tossed and turned, fighting with nightmares for two months until finally her punishment was over and the stasis pod hissed open. She cried when she awoke.