One

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One

The woman stands by the window, watching nature run it's course from inside the abandoned cabin, the sun's light barely cresting its gold and tangerine light across Hope County

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The woman stands by the window, watching nature run it's course from inside the abandoned cabin, the sun's light barely cresting its gold and tangerine light across Hope County. The evidence of her rest had been disposed before dawn's early call, the anxiety of being found and thrown back into St. Francis' Veteran Center to have her morals and humanity stripped away like the wolves they call Judges. She had heard their howls, desperate and murderous to anyone not in Eden's Gate. She hopes to God that they never found the Judge she had murdered on her escape. She didn't dare turn on any radio, hoping the avoidance will keep her from snapping.

She dumps the water from her cantina in the sink, knowing fully of the Bliss infused poison she drank at the Center to keep her drugged. She remembers a moment of being able to function without being murderous or in a drug - induced coma, she was starving and confused. She could barely make out the oldest Seed with Pratt behind him, a tin of meat just behind the dog cage bars.

A quick undecipherable motion from the red head and the tin slips into the cage, the ravenous hunger propelling her weakened body to the meat, eating the raw muscle of something long dead in mere seconds, the amount severely not enough for her slow dying body. The two men just watch, Jacob taking mental note as always as Pratt watches helplessly as his long-time friend and Co-worker becomes like a feral monster. The breaking point of Pratt as that night he forces her to flee.

She erases those thoughts quickly as the roar of a truck engine similar to the Cult trucks fades into hearing range with the noise approaching quickly. She scrambles to collect her scavenged bag and MP3 player from the floor, quickly jumping through the window and booking it to the west. Her body ached badly from her lack of nutrition over the past weeks, especially since she escaped, not daring to hunt or stay in one place for too long in fear of being returned to Jacob. Her feet pound heavily into the damp soil beneath her shoes, leaving a trail from window to river as she skidds to a stop at the edge of the sheer cliff, her body freezing up in fear.

"Hey,I found foot prints! She's heading to the river, hurry up!" She silently cries as she tries to force her frozen muscles to take the jump, but no such luck as the cultists approached quickly. Her legs snapped awake quickly as the first Peggie approached her, the weak muscles propelling her into the rushing river. Yelling and howling was all she heard before her body hit the water hard, a snap resonating from her arm as she gets swept in the rapids.

When she finally emerged for a moment from the swirling water she was yards away from the cultists and Judges. The waves crashed over her head again, pressing her into the riverbed quickly and pinning her quickly to the muddy clay. Her body struggles against the current to reach the riverbank opposite of the Peggie jackasses. After what felt like hours she finally emerges, coughing and clawing her way onto the bank of the opposite area, any pain suppressed under adrenalines fast degrade.

She wastes no time to get up and sprint into the orchard, ducking and dodging, only pausing to momentarily grab a fresh apple from the tree, before she goes back into her sprint. She hops a barbed-wire fence, sliding into long grass. She takes heavy breaths, crouching there for a long moment. She moves back to the river, her body aching for rest in a safe area.

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