As his fingers closed around your neck you thought you could make out Abby's face looking down at you over Owen's shoulder.

With tear-blurred vision, you smiled. Your hand closed around Owen's wrist and squeezed.

Confused, he tilted his head, but refused to let go. The nails of his fingers dug so deep into your skin that it felt like knives were about to slice the soft flesh open.

Pressure pressed against your skull. Your legs twitched, eyes rolled back.

"I... don't... want... to... kill...", you gasped with the last bit of air burning in your lungs. "Take... this... last chance..."

But Owen was as stubborn as he was stupid. His grip around your neck loosened so he was able to lean down to whisper into your ear.

"You belong in hell.", he hissed. "And I will be the one to send you there."

Tired, you shook your head.

Your hand twitched.

He didn't even notice it.

Slowly, it moved down and disappeared in the pocket of your jacket. The tips brushed over cold, sharp metal.

"I know... my... place... I killed... for a... reason...", you gasped, still a stupid smile on your bloody face. "But... you seem to... forget... you're not a... god..."

"But you are?"

"No, Owen. I am as... flawed and brainless... as you. But I had nothing... to loose..."

Your fingers wrapped around the handle of the knife. But you hesitated to pull it out.

As your eyes met his, he still had not realised what was going on.

"Don't look at me like this.", he hissed. "If you truly want to survive have no mercy on me. Because I won't have it on you either."

Accepting his words with a nod, your grip around the knife tightened. Your eyes fell shut, you locked out the rest of the world, the sound of his breathing through the gas mask, his hands around your neck and the weight he put on your lungs.

Pain was burning inside your body.

Owen was too intent on squeezing the life out of you to notice that your hand jumped out. The blood covered blade flashed.

Surprised, Owen turned his head, distracted for a moment.

His grip loosened.

You took advantage of that small moment of weakness.

With the tip of the knife you stabbed, right between his ribs, burying the blade so deep that you cut your own thumb when you pulled it out again.

Overwhelmed by pain, Owen cried out.

Grabbing him by the collar, you jerked your head up and headbutted him so hard that the mask's glass cracked under the force.

A throbbing pain spread through your skull, but you didn't have time to dwell on it. As he fell off you and writhed under the pain, you seized the moment and slipped away.
You still did not desire to kill him.

But if he deemed it necessary to suffer a knife between his ribs to let go off you, you were willing to pay that price.

Your trembling legs lost their grip, you fell to the ground again and started crawling instead. You held the knife tightly in your hand.

But the pain didn't let Owen forget what his goal was for long. Furious, he jerked his head up and reached out to grab your foot. Forgetting that his weapons were superior to yours, he threw them away to be faster.

The first blow hit you straight to the face, perfectly placed on your mouth. The feeling of teeth breaking chased through your body, making every inch of your body shiver. The taste of iron spread on your tongue.

Coughing, you stabbed at him again, but the blood and tear blurred vision made it hard to hit him. The blade grazed the edge of the mask and tore a long cut in the black rubber.

A hiss sounded, but he didn't realize it was his problem. Instead, he focused his attention on continuing to strike at you.

Choppily you inhaled. The spurs scratched in your lungs.
While you rolled with him across the floor, fighting for the upper hand, the crack in his mask spread.

Spores swirled up, mixed with dust from the past decades that had accumulated on the floor. The air began to shimmer in green and gray as the light of the sun fell through the broken windows and hit it in the right angle.

Owen's arm wrapped around your neck, squeezing it tightly shut.

Struck by the sudden force, you gasped and twitched, struggling with your legs in the air.

Along with you, he threw himself back, right into the middle of a bush full of infected plants.

More spores swirled up. They filled the air like a green cloud, covered the two of you like a second skin and glued themselves to the fabric of your clothes.

Through clenched teeth, you stabbed behind your back blindly with the knife.

Struggling, Owen manage to doge a few stabs, but missed to notice that the sealing rubber from the mask got severely damaged in the meantime.

Hissing, the pressure decreased, but he was too busy squeezing the air out of your lungs.

You reached out again, gathering all the adrenaline that was left inside of your body and struck him with one mighty blow.

With a loud crack, the blade dug into the glass of his mask. Cracks danced across the glass, painting a spiders web through his vision.

Struck by surprise, Owen's breath hitched. His eyes windend, filled with the horror of realisation. Immediately he let go of you, jumped up and fled to the stairs as if that could save him.

The entire staircase, including half of the building was contaminated. Running would have been no use, especially not with his slowly but surely decreasing chances to make it out before getting infected.

Coughing, you fell to the floor, pressing a hand onto your burning neck to ease the pressure. The skin already began to show traces of the torture.

With the knife still stuck in the mask, Owen climbed the first steps. But before he could disappear completely between the shadows, he stopped.

His eyes met yours.

"Go to hell.", Owen, you cursed. "I'll wait for you..."