One moment, she was faced down on the cold concrete floor, three subterranean levels below the Australian Outback; men ran around, yelling things that were garbled. Gunshots echoed. Sounds echoed. Echoes drowned by her blood loss; drowned by the darkness pulling her deep within. What was she saying a moment ago to Rai? 'Come back!'

It was a moment ago, no?

Then there were moments that followed, where she was floating above the ground, floating past bodies, floating, above it all... into the abyss.

Was she still alive? Or was this death? The movement of her soul out of her body? Had she died, waiting for Rai to come back for her? Did he ever make it to Tehreem? What if he was dead? Exterminated like the rest of them? What then? What would become of the world?

It was a long ordeal, this business of dying. So long, and Ezra felt tired. Can I just be done now? Her soul ached for release. The world was going to burn. She wanted no part in it. Even though she was the one who'd lit the match.

Sorry, Dad, Shaki... I tried. I tried so hard to fight this, to survive. To make it home; make it back to you. To save you...

But the world wasn't letting go. Part of her could laugh at the irony—a world she'd doomed was still holding onto her—as she lay bloodied on the floor, dying.

Maybe this is my penance. This is how I pay for what I've done—a slow death...

Hallucinations began then, she was sure, as those minutes and perhaps hours passed. Her hearing dulled and her breath became barely there, and everything she saw and experienced felt tinged with the surreal. The floating above the ground. The bright sunshine hitting her face. Frantic screams of someone to hurry up. But hurry up, to where?

Then the warm breeze whipped her hair into her face, in some open-topped vehicle. Who was driving? Not her. She didn't know how to drive... did she? Had Dad taught her? She couldn't remember anymore.

Blurred face snuck glances at her as they dodged muffled bullets?—like they were being chased. Vague words floated in the air, "Hand on, Ezra!" But who was that telling her to hang on? Hang onto something? Hang onto life? What? Was her subconscious telling her to hang on? Why though? Why hang on? The world was about to die, and so should she. Surely! She should be the first one to die for what she'd done...

The jostle of the vehicle hitting a ditch made her back and shoulder sear red hot. She screamed. At least she thought she screamed. Was this Yamraj's modern solution to reaping souls, instead of riding his black buffalo? Was the God of death and justice carting her across the realms towards the deepest layers of Dante's hell in some sort of a war vehicle? Did Dante's hell exist in narkalok, hell, or was that just a mortal man's vision?

Just let me die, she remembered thinking clearly. Just take me where you must already and let me die...

Instead, the rumble of the engine struggling to sputter back to life rang in her ears like the peel of laughter. No, the world wasn't done yet.

Someone, or something dragged her out of that vehicle roughly, in a hurry to dump her somewhere. An inscrutable pain shot through her clavicle, making her scream. Making her wonder just how many bullet holes she actually had. Had someone shot her some more after Rai left? To ensure she was dead? Perhaps. If she were one of them and she came across the doctor responsible for unleashing a new horror on the world, she would have shot them too, not once, but many, many times. They would have deserved it, no?

But snippets of the Outback continued for what felt like days. Dusty and dry, being pulled across the harsh land on some makeshift stretcher; hungry vultures circled the too-bright-to-look-at sky above. She wondered what it would feel like to have her flesh ripped into by their sharp beaks. Not pleasant, she supposed.

Whoever it was taking her on this journey went off-road and then hid her behind some dry brush. Why? It all felt symbolic for reasons she couldn't tell.

Is this what they meant by life flashing before your eyes? They forget to mention the images would all be imagined, not things that transpired. Images of things she could never really see in life. Things that could make her regret her choices in life.

Then the sun set and night fell. An eerie silence wrapped the desert in its gloom until her ears filled with it. Her throat parched, her lips cracked, her eyes strained. It hurt to even look at anything. She was hot and cold. Hot and cold. Was this hell? This felt like hell. Burning hot one moment, freezing cold like the Arctic the next. Days upon days of it. Day and night. Hot and cold. Funny how no one ever said hell could also be excruciatingly cold. Another irony. She appreciated the irony.

This is it, she thought finally, drained of her will to live. This is the end. It has to be.

She fought someone or something trying to shove what felt like water past her lips. Or maybe it was poison, the first of the tortures in the books for her. She groaned, failing to fight them off. With what strength would she? Her arms, if those jellies wobbling at her sides could even be called arms, were weak and pathetic, like her.

I can't drink. Surely dead people don't drink—especially those responsible for killing millions if not billions. Surely, water is for better souls... Just let me die!

Perhaps she'd uttered those words. They left her alone then and Ezra was sure the woodpecker sound in her ears was from her teeth, chattering in the cold desert night. Even the roaring fire bursting forth in front of her, blazing against the dark outback, beneath that vast open sky with its dazzling array of stars she would never see, gave her little warmth. Despite it, hell was kind of beautiful, she noted.

Or was she still in the process of dying and this was their beautiful world, the one she was destroying? Why hadn't she ever noticed it? She should have. She should have noticed it when she had the time. Their world, their sky, their land, it was beautiful. All beautiful.

And now I'll never see it.

The last images her dying mind conjured were of some familiar faces. Tehreem, though she looked haunted. Gaunt almost. Scared perhaps. Another face, one she wasn't expecting, was Rai's. Why would she see Rai in the moments of her death and not her family? He seemed intense. Like in life, though his eyes were rimmed with tiredness. Perhaps he was tired of her. She wouldn't blame him.

But the days continued still—for dying was a long business she'd learned by now—and the outback was replaced by some greenery of hills, then the sounds and smells of familiar suburban streets accosted her senses, except they seemed even more of a mess than before. The air was thicker and more polluted. A strange tinge of red hung about. Buildings burned, and so did effigies. Countless shopfronts with their smashed glasses and pried open grills lay barren as if looted. Masked faces and people donning garbage bags, gloves taped to their hands, shouting at her, waving their fists while robbing whoever they could find. Some were even robbing hearses parading down the street on the opposite side.

"Get them!" Angry mobs chased the vehicle. Forget about vultures, Ezra worried it would be these people who'd pull her apart, limb by limb. Maybe they recognised who she was, Dr Doom.

"They have supplies!"

The vehicle picked up speed, threading left and right past approaching figures, and hurled weapons, through dark streets that burned with hatred.

"These people are animals," Tehreem's gaunt image screamed, even her voice was thin and wispy over the din of chaos. "We have to get off the streets, Krish!"

You don't say. Ezra looked from one apparition to another, from Krish to Tehreem. Where were they going? Was this her mind's way of telling her she'd condemned them to hell as well with her doings? That she was dragging them with her?

Everywhere she looked, graffiti disgraced surfaces, from light poles, to shop fronts, to buildings that seemed abandoned. Angry messages about defiance were scribbled over large posters of 'Get your Gateway Vaccine for Chimera 98'; voices that read 'get fucked government', 'this is a conspiracy!', 'they are killing us instead of feeding us' etc in bold bright—and banned—spray paints.

People ran around, armed with bats and steel pipes, knives and guns—whatever they got their hands on—screaming at each other to "keep the fucking distance!" Yet others snatched supplies from weaker ones. Others, looking dishevelled, stood by the corners of those devastating, anarchy-filled streets with cardboard signs around their necks that read, THE END OS NEIGH. REPENT!

A Molotov cocktail hit the vehicle still transporting her through hell. The flames burst right by her feet. The flames leapt towards her rubber-soled army-issue boots. Ezra stared at it a moment, then at the chaos of the world beyond the flames. Bleary-eyed. Tired. Was this a glimpse of what Chimera 98 would do to the world upon release—if General Watergate got what he wanted? Was this Yamraj's way of showing her all the ways she'd sinned?

Yet the torture didn't end. Her mind wasn't done yet. The vehicle swerved with another raining bottle of fire. It hit a post box. Ezra lurched forward, her head rammed against the seat hard. Then blackness.

For how long, she couldn't tell you. Maybe this was it.

This was her end.

A/N: I don't know what's possessing me to try and expand this right now. After a couple of weeks of umming and ahhing I had written few hundred words, with no intention of posting them (yet). But today, sitting on the train with nothing to do, I began tweaking what I had and adding on more till I had something that resembled a chapter. I figured why not post it?

I don't think I'll make it for Wattys this year, but if I can get it to 50k with a satisfying place to end on, I will throw my hat in the game. If not, I shall still chip away at a story I like anyway. Win-win. Right?

This chapter went a bit more internal than I'd initially planned.

Hope you enjoy!