ATOMS ; GLENN RHEE

THE BEGINNING (OF THE END)

They weren't told why they were sent out, other than a muttered 'crowd control'; as the car alarms beat into her eardrums, she's starting to believe this is more than a simple riot.

Hair on the back of her neck begins to rise and she faces whatever caught his attention, one fact vibrantly clear:

Something is very wrong.

In the surrounding hysteria ensuing, a solitary figure stands eerily still. Blue Eyes straightens, his hand drifting to his belt. Beckett almost forgot they're armed—she's gradually coming to terms with her highly probable concussion.

Blue Eyes clears his throat, "Please return to your vehicle, we have everything under control." Liar, Beckett refrains from saying. They definitely do not have anything under control.

The man, Beckett guesses from head size, says nothing. She furtively glances at Blue Eyes without moving her head, not wanting to visibly let down her guard. His face is equally impassive, but she doesn't miss the sweat accumulating on his temple. Beckett convinces herself it's from the Georgia summer heat that licks them up their back and on the face; not the fire, not the smoke, not the distinct smell of flesh or burnt hair.

"Sir, return to your vehicle. I will not ask again." Louder now, his voice reverberating a few yards. His holster is firmly gripped between his fingers, leather salivating with perspiration, and Beckett can't seem to find the strength to mimic him, hands adhered to hips.

Her gut is clamoring to run.

The figure staggers forward, and she steps back, riot shield gleaming orange. His head quirks, like he can't quite place something, and Beckett feels a small sense of relief trickle down her chest—this man could very well be deaf, or speak another language.

Foreign words are on her tongue, vaguely rehearsed from that same high school class, when he lunges.

Blue Eyes succumbs to the force, back smashing through the windshield of the cruiser. The thing's legs flail in different directions, wayward, like they're not entirely unanimous with the body, pummeling into Beckett's shield with pure deadweight. She smacks against the ground with little resistance—wrist emitting a sickening CRACK. Polycarbonate connects with polycarbonate, jagged cracks flaring along her visor—further obscuring scant vision. 

Beckett scrambles, yet unmoving. It's too much, far too much—physically feels her mind grasping at air, a hand protruding from her chest only to sink back in with nothing. Fire, smoke, her wrist, screaming, car alarms, burnt hair, groaning, a baby's wails, gunshots, gunshots, gunshots.

She can't see, she can't fucking see—why can't she see?

Who threw the grenade?

A few struggling seconds pass as she attempts to tear the splintered helmet off, hands slipping and sliding along Kevlar, and when it clatters to the side with her obstructed sight, a curtain plummeting from the depths of a theater, Beckett is left to watch her superior's jugular be torn out.

No words come to her. Not a gasp, or a cry, or, well, anything. Silence. The beast tears into the crevice of his shoulder. Gorging itself on chunks of muscle and strings of tendons. Blue Eyes is choking up, blood gurgling from his mouth, down his cheek. But, his eyes aren't quite blue anymore—dilated pupils feeding on the pigment in the same essence as the monster forcibly straddling him.

Leather-clad fingers twitch against the cruiser's trunk; begging, maybe. The PA far, far from them fizzles out with an ear-piercing screech.

Beckett swallows, and she can taste sanguine.