The atmosphere in the plaza had shifted from the chaos of a massacre to something far more terrifying: the focused stillness before an execution.
Rex stood twenty paces from Evelyn, his body still knitting itself back together with wet, grinding sounds. His left eye had reformed into a pale, unnatural orb, but his face remained a patchwork of scar tissue.
He watched her, really watched her, and realized that the girl who had been cowering in the rubble was gone.
In her place stood something ancient, something that didn't care about anger.
Evelyn's breathing was unnervingly rhythmic. Her shoulders were level, her stance wide and grounded.
When she finally spoke, her voice didn't carry the shrill edge of rage or the tremor of trauma. It carried the terrifying, hollow quiet she had discovered in the white void—the quiet of a judge passing sentence.
"I won't kill you today, Rex, if that is the choice you make," she said.
