Sapphira could hear only her measured breathing. Her heart rate normalized. The cold concrete against her head and outstretched fingertips was soothing. There was not a sound in the air, not a thing that moved within her sight, blurred by tears. She realized suddenly that time had passed: Sapphira had blacked out.

She moved her hands and felt a small object beside her. She sat up slowly, wiping the tears from her face before discovering what she had done. She picked up the object.

An ATI injector. A bold red omega printed on the glass vial. Property of the Doctor.
A slight pain sat gnawing in her chest, but the fear and the sadness was gone. Her mouth twitched, lips pursed. The voice was gone. She would smile from relief if it weren’t such a pointless facial expression.

The mission. She remembered her purpose: Sapphira had many things to do and staring at corpses wasn’t one of them.

Cera’s words. Harmony. Blackburn. They were relevant somehow. Sapphira could not recall their memories. She was impressed in a way. This was a memory long suppressed in her past, and whatever serum Miss Foley had treated her with was powerful enough to evoke nearly every detail, like a vivid dream. And yet, like a dream, at its end there only remained pieces. If only Sapphira could taste it again, but Ignota was a long flight away, an isolated and violently xenophobic people. She would not likely see the drug again.

There was another problem, Sapphira noted. Ruffling through the Doctor’s belongings, she came across four more omega-imprinted vials. These were modified ATI injections, the emotion-suppressants he had been synthesizing for his personal use to retain specific, base emotional functions. Their results were an unknown variable, and yet so was the panic attack that crippled her earlier. She needed the vials. Emotions were too compromising. The choice was simple.

Her time here was up. There was nothing here for her anymore. Sapphira walked to the elevator, stretching her limbs.

The top of the bunker disappeared over the horizon behind the helicopter, indiscernible in the desert sands. The soreness in her chest refused to diminish before the sunlight ceased and the stars broke out in the sky. She looked up at them briefly as the pain finally slipped away, and continued flying west without another thought.