There were two more of them, she remembers, but this time she isn't lucky enough to look around in time to see the shadow shooting across the face of the nearest apartment block towards her. All she feels is the impact. The car weighs two tonnes and lands on her at most of two hundred miles per hour, with the front bumper turned sideways to line up with her torso, hitting her head, shoulder, spine and legs all at once. Arika ploughs into the road under the weight of the vehicle, tumbles confusedly over and through the shattered wreckage which spins out in all directions from the collision, and rolls to a halt in the middle of the white line, about a block short of where Moxon is now holding Susie at gunpoint.
She lies there for a long moment, taking stock. She counts off her injuries: the hole in her hand, the bruise on her eyelid, painful sprains in ligaments she didn't even know she had, bones in her shoulder rubbing against each other in ways they shouldn't be and blood from her forehead wound trickling across her eye and dripping off her nose onto the asphalt under her head. She wants to sleep. She wants to go back to sleep until she wakes up in the hospital and it's all better, and for a moment she lets her eyes close. But a tiny part of her brain screams, You are vulnerable now. You are vulnerable and people are trying to kill you. GET READY. AND DON'T THINK ABOUT IT.
- Fine Structure, Capekiller https://qntm.org/capekiller