((Shit.  Ten days!  Sorry, I've had distractions of late... well, I'm sure everyone's noticed by now.  But, onward...!))<br/><br/>Tim actually surprised Santi a bit.  Though panicked and lost, when she spoke to him her words not only got through, but spurred him into action.  He snatched up her suit and ran off, obediently, toward the bathroom.<br/><br/>She was surprised, but after a few seconds --- or pseudo-seconds, or something, a voice in her mind said --- she turned her attention bach to the bitch.  Shari.  That man had been right; she was insane to be trying to... pull a miracle out of her ass, to save her.  But she'd given her word... and Tim was keeping his end of the deal, it seemed.  She had to keep her end as well.<br/><br/>She didn't expect much.  Yes, she healed fast, very fast --- she had to keep the shard of the pot firmly clenched into her balled fist, its tip firmly imbedded into her palm, to keep the wound open --- but she had never thought of trying to somehow heal another.  Never.  It was her body, her gift...<br/><br/>But she wanted to<span style="font-style: italic">know.</span>Tim had the tattoo.  The balding goatee-guy had said something about... Tim being an earlier version, or something.  Santi's number was higher... she needed to know.  Had to...<br/><br/>She kneeled next to the dying woman, and held out her hand.  She unballed her fist.  There was a little pain, nothing really... she'd forgotten what happened whenever she had tried to get piercings.  The flesh had completely healed around the shard, even though it was buried deeply into her flesh.  If she waited long enough it would fall away, the buried part taken apart as though by acid, melted away.  Her piercings had always fallen off immediately, seemingly cut away...<br/><br/>But this was no problem.  She wrenched the shard out of her palm, and though the porcelain came out rugged and half disintegrated, the wound was not immediately closed.  Blood surged up.  She slapped her hand down against Shari's breast, probably harder than she had at first intended, then drew her hand back and slid it under her bloodied shirt.  Somehow she felt their blood had to mingle for this to work...<br/><br/>She pressed her hand to the woman's breast, and she felt the hole in Shari's flesh meet the hole in her own.  Savagely she clenched her fist, partly out of anger at this woman and some form of retribution, but also partly to keep her own wound open.  She worked her hand, clenching and unclenching, molesting Shari just a bit even as she tried to save her life.<br/><br/>Tim came back as she was just starting to ease off, though it was mostly because she was pretty sure her own wound had finally closed.  She didn't know if she wanted to cut herself again or not, to keep trying... or if her own sense of curiosity had been satisfied or not.  Obviously it hadn't worked, of course; Shari was making more noise than ever... coughing up more blood...<br/><br/>There was a blur over the next few seconds.  She found her attention torn between the wet, iron-smelling suit in her hands, as well as the<span style="font-style: italic">gun</span>that had mysteriously landed there, and Tim and Shari as the boy leaned over her.<br/><br/>Shari... Shari had stopped struggling.  But the woman wasn't dead.  She was... she was breathing, shallowly perhaps, but breathing.  As Tim tore away Shari's bloodied shirt and wiped at the blood on the woman's suddenly-exposed breasts, Santi could only stare at the wound --- or what had been a wound moments before.  It was still an ungly, gooey mess of blood... but it was clotted.  The bleeding had stopped.  It had gone from severe to nonexistent... in seconds...<span style="font-style: italic">despite</span>Santi's rather less-than-gentle handling of the wound.<br/><br/>"Shit," she managed.  It was true.  Tim and She were... related, if not genetically, then by "blood," as it were.  Except her blood could heal... and heal others, as well, and his, not...<br/><br/>Tim had taped up the woman's wound with duct tape, wrapping it around her bust like a shiny mummy's bandages.  Santi had a momentary thought that it would hurt when those came off --- though she herself had experienced that and kinda liked it --- but Tim was already picking the woman up and heading for the window.<br/><br/>Thirty seconds, the other man said.  The words, and seeing him reloading his weapon, shook her out of her reverie and into action.  She found herself slipping her one-piece suit, wet and smelly and clammy though it was, over her bare --- and still a bit bloody --- body, without really thinking about it.<br/><br/>Then she was following Tim out the window, and climbing the stairs of the fire escape, brandishing a weapon the likes of which she had never used before.  She glanced down, at the eerie sight of police cars and policemen frozen in time, but she didn't allow herself the luxury of really taking in the sight.  The goateed man's near-panic was contagious.<br/><br/>It occurred to her that she could probably leap down.  She suspected that even if she broke both her legs on the landing she might still heal fast enough to escape... all she had to do was aim for somewhere she'd be concealed to increase her margin of error.  But Even if Tim could do the same as she suspected, neither Shari nor Baldie would be so lucky.  And she wanted to know what Baldie knew...<br/><br/>The sight at the top of the building startled her.  Half a dozen men, and... a<span style="font-style: italic">helicopter?!</span>Even if she<span style="font-style: italic">had</span>been half-insane from Shari's intoxicating scent and Tim's heavenly --- and unfortunately, hungry --- tongue, how on<span style="font-style: italic">earth</span>had she not heard this thing?!  How hadn't Tim and Shari, for that matter?!<br/><br/>But everything was frozen... out of time.  Baldie shouted at her and Tim not to get any closer, and she understood why: if they stepped beyond the "bubble" of time made by his device, they would freeze... or essentially, return to the same time as these armed men.  She didn't want that.  But what now?<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">“We'll take them one by one, okay?!”</span>He reached his hand out for the time-bubble wand, sticking out of Tim's back pocket.  Santi couldn't see the timer... how much time did they have left?  And was the thing so precise that it would cut out at the exact second, or would it be gradual, or what?  And... and he wanted her to do<span style="font-style: italic">what?</span><br/><br/>"H-how?!" She managed, shocked.  Taking someone's life hadn't been something she'd ever had to do... that she remembered, at least.  A lot could have happened in those missing nine years of hers... Tim might even be someone she should remember.  She held up the gun, her hand shaking, pointing it at one of the motionless men.  "Oh... s-safety, right," she mumbled, remembering seeing Baldie use his earlier.  She knew enough about guns to know they had those, at least.  She flicked it... then looked at the frozen men, remembering something else Baldie had done.  She turned to him.<br/><br/>"Baldie!  Can we do what you did downstairs?  Can we send bullets at their heads before they start moving again?"  It wasn't like her odds were good of hitting any moving targets with a weapon she knew nothing about.  Never mind that doing so meant she was killing people, something a moment later she had feared; right now there could be no doubt that she had to kill, or be killed, or worse.  "How long do we have?!"  She pointed her weapon at the face of one of the men, trying to keep her hand steady.  The moment he said she could, she would pull the trigger.<br/><br/>Four lives depended on it... and one of them was her own.