“It was a stormy night, Sonia was working on a car that had been commissioned by a customer for scrapping months ago, it was a heap of scrap metal that the world had used and left behind, it was almost like her, at least a reflection of her past self; broken, useless. Suddenly, she heard a racket coming from the front of the building she inherited from her dad who was also a mechanic before he went missing in the darkness of the city's underworld, jolted, she decided that she should be cautious in investigating.”

“The wrench was still in her hand when she rounded the corner, the metal cool and familiar against her palm — not quite a weapon, but close enough to count. The front door hung open, rain lashing across the threshold, and in the spill of the streetlight she saw a figure sprawled among the scattered tools and toppled shelving, one arm twisted at an angle that made her stomach drop. She stepped forward before she could stop herself, because whoever — *whatever* — had crashed through her door wasn't moving, and the blood pooling beneath them was the same color as her father's old coveralls. "Oh my gosh" she exclaims as she gathers the courage to approach the figure, as she moves closer, she can tell that the person is a man, a young man, at that, he has that face of a model and and she had to admit that she felt attraction to him”

“As she moved closer, the injuries on the man's body became, easier to see, his right arm, twisted in an angle that would have knocked out a man of lesser will-power, but this man is still awake and moving, trying to find shelter from the rain, his body is marred by welts, as if someone was torturing him, even unconscious his face is twisted in pain and then I realized "I need to save him, even if it's not for anything else, my life's already rundown, if I have a dead body in my workshop as well, I won't just be rundown, I'll be in prison or worse, if this guy has any friends in the underworld" Then, she moved with the urgency of a woman with not much to lose but everything to lose, she grabbed the man by the arms and lifted him, "uughhhh" they both groaned, Sonia because she was carrying someone almost her own body weight, and the man because she pressed his injuries.”

“She staggered backward under his weight, boots slipping on the rain-slicked concrete, every step a negotiation with gravity that she was determined to win. The workbench loomed to her left, and she aimed for it like a ship spotting harbor in a storm, the man's blood soaking through the front of her shirt and warming her skin in a way that felt deeply wrong. She lowered him onto the steel surface as carefully as she could manage, which was not careful at all — his body hit the metal with a wet thud and he gasped, a shallow, rattling sound that meant he was still alive, still here, still *hers to save*. Her hands were shaking as she reached for the trauma shears on the wall, the same pair she'd used a hundred times to cut through seatbelts and upholstery, never through fabric that held a man's skin together. *Focus*, she told herself. *One thing at a time. Stop the bleeding. Then figure out who did this. Then figure out what the hell you've just walked into.* The rain kept coming through the open door, and somewhere in the dark city beyond it, someone was missing their captive.”

“She scanned the workshop with a mechanic's eye and found what she needed in seconds — a length of steel rod from the scrap bin, clean rags from the drawer under the compressor, and a roll of medical tape that had been gathering dust in her father's old first-aid kit since before he disappeared. Her hands stopped shaking the moment she picked up the rod, because this was 'her' language — tension and leverage, holding something broken in place so it could start to mend — and she knew exactly how to make it listen. She aligned his arm with a careful tug that pulled a deep groan from his throat, his brow tightening even in unconsciousness, and she murmured without thinking, "I know, I know, it hurts, but we're almost there, you just need to hold steady."”

“After realigning his arm, his face finally twists Into what seemed like relief, from the pain and everything else that burdened him, that peaceful expression was mesmerizing, it made her want to stay by his side, and so she did, until her vision darkened and she fell asleep by his side”