Titanium (Ti)
Atomic Number: 22
Atomic Weight: 47.867 amu
Solid at room temperature; strong metal resistant to sea water, chlorine, and aqua regia; easily oxidized; relatively abundant in the atmosphere
Warnings: Fire hazard, potentially explosive
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Both bloodied and bruised, she hauls her partner forward with his large, cool arm wrapped over her shoulders. She grunts with each step but quickens when she hears shouts from behind getting too close for comfort. "Come on," she whispers, her feet dragging as she rushes into an abandoned warehouse.
Her partner groans in her ear when she sets him down. Her heart beats wildly as she prods the ground, laughing in relief when she finds a hollow panel—a trap door. She quickly shoves her partner down and closes the hatch, despite a muffled shout from him.
She shushes him through the floorboards as she brandishes her daggers, closing her eyes to concentrate. Three squadrons are after them, one coming this way. She only has one shot to make this right.
The coughing is what first alerts her to their presence. She pounces on the closest one, slitting his throat silently and letting his body drop. The others go silent, desperately trying to hold in their coughs, but she is fast. Without hesitation, she takes the soldier's machine gun and shoots through the fog, killing them all.
She rolls her eyes as she lets the gun drop, walking through the corpses with blood sticking to her shoes. She kneels down beside the lone survivor, a middle-aged man gasping for breath as he reaches for his walkie.
"Valenski, come in. What happened?" The walkie comes to life in a flurry of Russian.
Clearing her throat, she takes the device and lowers her voice. "Rookie got spooked. All clear on my end. They must have gone east." A strangled cry echoes from the man's lips just before she slams her boot on his neck. "We'll bring home the rabbit we caught."
Without waiting for a reply, she lets the walkie drop beside the now-dead soldier.
Though she sways a bit on her feet and her left arm throbs as if the bone had twisted beneath the flesh, she makes it back to the hatch and climbs down into the low light. Her partner had lit a candle he found as he sits against the wall of the crawl space, clutching his stomach with pain filling his expression.
The moment he sees her, however, the pain dissipates for a second. "Are you stupid?" He spits out, his eyes narrowed.
She does not answer as she kneels beside him, pointing a dagger at his gut.
"What the hell's the matter with you?"
She purses her lips as she takes the ends of his blood-soaked shirt in her hands. His good arm stops her. "I'm trying to help you, you idiot," she replies.
"Do you have any idea what you've done—ah! What are you doing?"
She holds up her now-discarded jacket in her hands. "We need to apply pressure."
