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Shaw backed away from the door at the first sign of movement. By the time Ethan vanished... and then screamed somewhere in the control room... She had already turned back the way they'd come-

She didn't have a chance to take her first step.

Fingers clamped around her right forearm and pulled her sideways through the doorway. Shaw staggered into the control room off balance, her left hand already curling into a fist. If this thing was going to get her, it wasn't going to get her without a fight.

Before she could swing, the grasping hand slung her away. Shaw went spinning into the collection of tables and chairs, colliding with several before ultimately losing her balance and falling hard on her hip.

"UNGH!"

Shaw rolled away from whatever might have been coming her. The motion ended with her in a crouching position, looking back toward the control room door as slid closed.

Ethan lay beside it.... dead or unconscious; she couldn't be sure.

Next to him stood the thing that had attacked them both.

Tandem looked like she'd lost a fight with several pieces of heavy industrial machinery. Her clothes hung off her small frame in filthy, shredded tatters. Beneath what remained of her clothes, Shaw saw large, ragged patches of skin and flesh had been scraped clean, revealing the bone beneath.

...bone that didn't look like bone at all, but rather had the dull glint of metal.

There was blood, but not much. Not enough. There was something, though.... a pale pinkish fluid oozed from the ruptured flesh. It didn't run in streams, but instead dripped onto the floor in thick, noisy splatters as Tandem glared back at Shaw.

Her face was dead. The jaw hung too low on one side, and the 'flesh' of the lower face was frozen in a uneven scream too wide for any normal mouth. Half of her forehead was gone; the metal beneath severely dented. One of her eyes stared out from a bare metal socket; the orb jittered slightly every few seconds, producing a rapid clicking sound whenever it moved.

Tandem was a walking corpse. But not the corpse of a human being.

"Cyborg," said Shaw. "Lucky me."

Tandem moved to block the door. The machine-woman walked with a limp. He right knee didn't bend, and from the way her right arm dangled, Shaw guessed that it didn't function at all. She couldn't be sure, but Shaw thought she could ALMOST see the door through a puncture in Tandem's abdomen. The wound went all the way through; globules of blood/lubricant oozed from the not-so-delicate machinery within.

"Still not talking? Lemme guess... you're going to keep us here until Strgyer finds us, right?"

Tandem's head tilted, dropped slightly, then rose again. The motion was rough... jagged. Like a broken machine imitating human nod.

Tandem was in bad shape. The element of surprise was all she had going for her when she she'd attacked. But that card could only be played once.

Now? Now she was bluffing. Maybe.

"And what if I don't wanna stay?" said Shaw.

Tandem didn't move...

...but Shaw did.

Ignoring the pain in her shoulder, Shaw snatched up one of the chairs and charged.