-Sloane Pierce:
The world narrowed to a single, jagged slice of sound: the echo of the shot still ringing in my skull, the wet slap of blood somewhere behind me, the soft clack of my heel against the curb as I pushed off and moved.
My lungs felt like two bellows shoved into a too-small ribcage, pulling air in jagged, animal bursts. My legs were rubber and honey at once — heavy with the squeeze of adrenaline but also moving because they remembered how to move.
Habit and training took over in little mechanical rhythms: inhale, drive the hips, land midfoot, roll forward, repeat. My whole body was shaking from the inside out, a low tremor that started at my sternum and rolled through my arms to the ends of my fingers.
