Akira barely heard the flurry of activity going on beneath her. Hell, she could still hear Levi’s howl ringing in her ears. Not like hearing anything mattered anymore. The one voice she longed to hear, had forever been silenced. She couldn’t handle it. So, she had pushed herself into a corner of the room, creating a trail of blood as she did. She’d made herself as small as she could by bringing her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. She kept staring at her father’s lifeless body, hoping it might move again. She kept pushing her back against the rough stone of the wall and dragging it from side to side, in the hopes that the pain would wake her from this nightmare. When none of this proved fruitful, she began to rock back and forth as new tears made their way down her cheeks.

She sobbed. He was gone. He was really and truly gone. The man who had fostered her love of archeology, was dead. She was broken and empty; void of anything other than grief. She took a swallow from the bottle of Scotch she’d found sometime after her father had died. She didn’t want to feel anything anymore, so she drank.