Hot Box

Knowing they would be expecting her to appear on the ground, Ketna took a more disruptive approach. Gathering up speed enough to run up the wall, a combination of the grip of her soles and the right momentum she launched herself off the wall, higher to the other side, one more jump out the mouth of the entrance and far higher than any of them had been prepared to aim. Some shots fired in reflex, but none of them landed even close.

Despite her impairment, her movements were a blur, the launch from the air caught the huddled thugs off guard, the first she made contact with died to a blade in the neck before they could react, their neighbor could not turn in time to retaliate, Ketna's foot catching their upper torso knocking them back as she fell to the ground. The third in the party turned to face her in time to pull off a few rounds before the knife in her companion's throat was wretched out to seek home in her side. The shots she made did damage to the remainder of armor at Ketna's thigh but made no impact.

The one she had only kicked but had not killed was back on their feet again, this time shots made contact with her chest armor and shoulder, the second piercing through. They had no more lucky shots to give and the knife she carried found its place in them as well. In the struggle they withdrew their own knife, catching her side before their life left them.

Across the way, the other group fired rounds over the cover they had, a few left cover to attempt to deal with Ketna directly. Between the new wounds and second wind from the rising adrenaline, Ketna's behavior appeared more beast than human. Leaping from the ground to the large figure that sought to take her on personally. From there it was a blur. Not the coordinated dance she had exhibited earlier, but vicious mauling of anyone that appeared within 5 feet of her, anything that moved that seemed even remotely like a threat. Hands and blades ripped flesh and metal alike, violent and relentless, she did not stop until all sense of danger had been eliminated from her sight.

Ketna was not sure how many she felled or how long it had lasted. Her sense of self slowly began to return to her when she recognized her true name being called to her by her only friend through earpiece.

"Munin-" Ketna cut him off. "I'm here." She took a deep breath of the open, untainted air. "I'm here."

"That is a relief." It was rare that Munin made any emotive inflections in his voice, the hint of worry meant he was more concerned than he let on. "I was uncertain if your state was due to the poison or your- usual loss of self."

"Column A, Column B.." Ketna muttered, taking inventory of the new injuries on her body. Slowing down from all that caused the nausea to catch up with her again. Unable to stop herself, she tore off the remains of the visor and hurled on the ground again.

"When you entered the bunker I lost contact with you." Munin explained without prompting, possibly due to his usual pragmatic nature, possibly to help provide Ketna grounding. "While I did not doubt your resourcefulness, I had begun work on my own means to assist you, your contact was all I needed to know how to direct the next stage of events. I'd say my prep work paid off."

"I'll fucking say." Ketna agreed, worn over the comm. "Thank you. I'd be dead without you."

"More times than this. Are you fit to drive?"

"No, but-" She paused, considering her surroundings. "I think I know how to throw them off- Cut off any security cameras in the area, would you?"

"Done."

With Munin's verbal confirmation, Ketna hefted one of the corpses off the ground that was close enough to her build, lack of noticeable cybernetics, not to mention species, she began relieving it of its clothes. While not as fine work as the wire stripping earlier, occasional spasms and tremors continued to impede her movements.

"How, exactly." Munin asked over the earpiece.

"They want me dead, I'm going to make them think I died." Ketna answered while she began to strip herself of the suit.

"If you are planning to leave a corpse in your place, I doubt that will convince them for long."

"I only need to throw them off long enough to make it out by foot."

Her words were strained by the growing exhaustion while she struggled to slide the body into the suit, followed by the balaclava, and what armor pieces that remained. After which she dressed herself with the clothes she stole from the body and transferred what remaining tools and gear she had on her into the pockets and bags of the stolen clothes.

Even with the injuries, poison, and general exhaustion, hoisting the re-clothed body was the easy part. Identifying one of the cars that still had a gas tank, she made about setting the corpse in the driver's seat. A few more touches to the body, such as stabbing it in places that had clear gashes on the body suit, and crude removal of HUD's hardware in the helmet before affixing it to the corpse's head and her decoy was ready to go.

"If the movement I've caught is headed in your direction, you don't have much time." Munin warned over the earpiece.

"Just- One thing." Ketna huffed while hoisting a discarded RPG.

Five rounds on the body next to it was more than enough for what she needed. First, she aimed at the car she had left behind. The gas tank provided a fantastic explosion of fire, engulfing the whole thing in flame, with any luck it'd engulf the body and melt it into a very difficult-to-identify mess. The next round, she begrudgingly, but without hesitation, took out her own bike.

"Decoy is in a flaming car and my bike is scrap, heading out on foot, got a suggestion."

"If you can make it here." A set of coordinates were transferred to her phone. "I'll have a transport arranged." Munin offered.

"Sounds good, I should be able to make that."

One cursory glance across the field and she spotted one body with a hat, which she stole swiftly on her way out. Without any hood or makeup she was limited on methods of which to obscure her real identity and she needed every prevention she could muster while she was vulnerable. From here on out she had to pretend she was not any person of interest, if she was lucky most would just overlook her for being homeless or high, enough to be background noise, but not enough to attract cops.

She managed to get some distance stumbling through sidewalks and alleys without too much trouble. Some people seemed to stare at her too long. A loud but suppressed heave made her a less desirable subject to watch. It was only a 4 mile walk but it was the longest 4 miles she had ever walked, exhausted, injured, poisoned, and on high alert she managed to make it to the cab stopped at the corner.

"Pickup for Sophia." She confirmed the name Munin had provided her to give to the driver.

The cabby glanced her over but didn't linger long, she probably had picked up worse in the past, the door to the passenger seat swung open and Ketna all but collapsed inside.

"I got your drop-off point, but sure you don't need a hospital?" The woman glanced back for a moment at the light, trying to get a better look at her passenger.

"Naww." Ketna waved her off. "Just need a fix, I'll be fine." Just another druggie in the back of your cab, pay it no mind.

"Suit yourself." The driver muttered under her breath but refrained from making any additional suggestions.

Riding in the back of the car, her mind fought with the desire to shut down. She desperately wanted to sleep, but the fight to keep her cognition had left her with too much anxiety to know if it was truly sleep or slipping loss of consciousness.

The cab dropped her off at the location Munin had arranged for their remote-driven car to retrieve her and finally Ketna felt as though she was in the clear, but her guard refused to drop. It wasn't until she was on the operating table, safe in her home and in Munin's presence did she finally permit herself to pass out.

---------

Ketna hated losing consciousness, she avoided it any way possible, so much so to the point she rarely permitted herself to be put under anesthesia if she had to be operated on. In the rare times she did permit it, regaining consciousness meant wrestling with a panic attack, if she was lucky it only stuck around in the form of a panic spike she could ground her way out of. Munin was well-practiced in the procedures required for when she woke from unconsciousness, both voluntary and involuntary. He remained in her line of sight as her eyes flickered open.

Ketna sat up fast, wincing at the injuries, breathing hard and slow while Munin calmly provided information of what had happened while she was out.

"You're stable and safe." Munin announced first. "Nothing unusual or particularly interesting occurred while you were out. You are, however, significantly poisoned."

Ketna didn't respond with words, breathing slowly, nodding her head in acknowledgement. That much, she expected.

"And by significantly poisoned, I mean it exceeds the limits of what even you are capable of surviving."

"It was.." Ketna worked through the fog. "A lot more than what would have been appropriate for any human, it was deliberate."

"Deliberate and concerningly aware of what specifically to poison you, with." Munin emphasized a bit more pointedly.

Ketna paused, looking at Munin directly. "Concerning in what way."

"They picked a poison that, of its many effects, is known for targeting the metabolism." Munin passed Ketna a piece of paper, which she held weakly. "Either it was a lucky guess, or they deliberately targeted your metabolism with specific knowledge of your recovery rate."

Ketna closed her eyes and exhaled heavily, knowing exactly what Munin was implying before he inferred it. "I suspected it while I was there. Xerxes must have boasted in a way that revealed my tolerance, possibly even my recovery rate. Expected he would at some point, didn't expect this as the result, though." She glanced back over the paper in her hand, checking the list of effects.

"Not to bring shame to a difficult situation, however-"

"Okay I know where you're going with this." Ketna cut off Munin before he could continue his lecture. "Fucking him wasn't what caused this, it was because I had to be cheeky and show off how I can't really get drunk."

Munin said nothing but held a long, vacant stare. Ketna waved him off.

"Yeah yeah I know. Wouldn't have been this bad had I not done that. But like I said, that's completely unrelated to me fucking him."

"Do you suspect he had a hand in this?"

"Directly? I don't think so. Those weren't his men and it wasn't his territory so I doubt it. If he really wanted to kill me he'd do it himself, not something passive like locking me in a hot box."

"I suppose you will have to investigate that further to find the answer to that."

"Guess I will." Ketna responded, bitterly. She was looking at the paper but she wasn't reading it. Her mind had wandered off to the events of the day before. He was behaving erratically, even for him, was it because he knew what was going to happen? Her head hurt too much to focus, all of her ached too much to focus.

"For now, you need bedrest. There is no effective cure for the poison you have. Using nanites to scrub foreign bodies did work for a time but once it's bonded there isn't much that can be done. Your natural restoration will work it out of your system in time, but with metabolism being impeded as it is, it may take significantly more time than most other poisons. I'll see what I can do to ease any lingering side effects you may have but for now," Munin pointed to the IV in Ketna's arm. "Intravenous fluids until your nausea passes."

Ketna, nodded in acknowledgement, not knowing what more to say then dragged a hand over her face before she fell heavy back onto the bed. Difficult as it was to think, her mind set to work figuring out who or what orchestrated the trap, along with what potential involvement Xerxes may have had in it, deliberate or unintentional. She felt as though the anxiety of those thoughts would keep her up, but the physical exhaustion won out and she found herself asleep before too long.

---------

Munin warned that the poison would last longer than other poisons, but she still wasn't entirely prepared for how it lingered. More often than not, when she was no longer actively being poisoned, it could take anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour for the poison left to run its course. A full day had passed and she was still feeling the after-effects. Also as Munin had warned, her healing wasn't nearly as quick as she expected it to be. Still faster than the average human but she had to take more care not to disrupt the delicately sutured wounds as they had not fused in the amount of time they would have, normally. Munin was right, they really picked the perfect poison to slow her down. She hoped they would never learn how dangerously close they had been to actually killing her.

This meant she was effectively 'off duty' until she healed both from the physical wounds and the poison in her system. Which also meant she was spending way too much time longing for intimacy to contrast the discomfort she was in. It was frustrating to think that the most intimate sexual exchange she had in the last few years had been Xerxes. And that wasn't even genuine, it was borne out of manipulation. He was the last person she should be getting close to and not at all a person she should be occupying her mind. Especially not after what happened the other night.

In restless, idle thought, she flipped through a listing of escorts scanning for any that might suit her preferences and also have the augments to handle her. She had thought about contacting R'Vindr but his detachment wasn't something she wanted to deal with right now, it also wasn't what she was really looking for. She wasn't even sure if she was looking for sex, what she wanted most was someone to hold her for a few hours. Anything to make her feel more like a person.

Why was it so difficult to find someone that could keep up with her, that could be aggressive, pushy, rough, teasing, but also be affectionate, warm, and care about her well-being. It shouldn't be that difficult, right? But it was, it always was.

Ketna sat the slate back down in resignation, she was still too injured to be thinking about getting railed, anyway. With any luck, maybe the book she had been working through would serve as a barrier to keep those thoughts at bay. And that it did, for a few blissful hours, until something awakened in the back of her mind.

It was Xerxes' intel that made the whole situation deadly but it absolutely wasn't Xerxes' assets that were used to pull the whole thing off. Those drones were Charotech, which now that she was thinking about it, the owner of which had been there for the meeting. The territory it happened in belonged to another member that was present. She mentally ran through her knowledge of the meeting she had crashed just weeks ago who had been in attendance, what they controlled. Bits and pieces of what made the death trap what it was, could clearly be traced back to all that was in attendance that day. Was that it? Did they plan her death that very day? Was that the reason they had that meeting in the first place? If so, then Xerxes had freely given her up not a few mere meters away from her, only falling short of announcing her presence out-right, most likely that was for his benefit, not hers.

So then what was that afterward? A pity fuck? That he then expected her to thank him for? She wasn't especially surprised at the later part, that was completely on brand for him. It absolutely made sense that he would make a point to give her the best sex he'd ever given her after planning her death then expected her to thank him for it, like some sort of Last Meal before an execution. And everything else after that was just making use of her before she potentially died. He probably thought nothing of clawing up her back because he knew he would never have to answer for it. His potential fugue state might not have even been real.

God Fucking Damnit.

Tossing off the blanket, Ketna hefted herself out of bed, too angry to be halted by her injuries. She didn't care if something tore, adrenaline was making her antsy, craving. She needed to hunt, to kill, and not doing something about it would be worse than dealing with the consequence of a few ripped sutures. Maybe she would pay R'Vindr a visit, she was too pissed for any kind of intimacy now and getting fucked out of her mind with no strings attached would at least quell the carnal need to rend flesh from bone.