They were coming for the drugs. Surely it had some value. I remained motionless while they stepped over me, propping the barrels against the railing.

They were fighting now. First with voices raised, then shoving, then one brought out a weapon. Three shots rang out, and he fell dead, his blood splattering over the wall. A bullet fractured the barrel and brown watery stank leaked out, green flecks in it. The ones who shot him then started blaming each other for the loss of the drug, and more shots rang out.

But they were not so counterproductive. It was the military firing on them. They scattered, but the military did not come down the walkway. There were more explosions in the distance, but I did not care. I still had the nerve-numbing, apathy-inducing fluids coursing through me.

But then I saw it. One of the rabbits was creeping towards me, or to be more correct, towards the barrel. Most of his leg had been shot off and he had a jagged gash on his forehead, but he still had the sense to get the barrel.
Maybe I hallucinated, maybe the drugs let off, or maybe a cyst burst and for one moment I could hear. He was hissing to himself. The barrel was his, he said. It had been his once, and he wanted it.

For the first time in years, I felt a burn build between my shoulder blades. It was people like this who had killed me. For the money, for the high, I was nothing. All my fantasies of being a pilot, a legend, had been killed by people like him.

No, for now, I knew it was him.

So while he pulled himself on the ground, lurching towards the undamaged barrel past me leaving a bloody wake of clots, I slid my numb limbs up around the handrail and pulled myself up. Towards him I limped, weight hanging off the pole, moving no faster than him. My eyes burned with unshed tears, and I felt the acid trickle down my face.

He had not seen me before, but his eyes turned towards me, and he raised a weapon with a strangely rounded end. A silencer. The bullet went in my left side; the receptors in my brain still too swamped by the haze of the narcotics for it to stop me. I gained on him; he fired again but I did not see where the bullet went. His eyes were visible even through the glaze in my eye – the acid must have gotten into the remaining one.

I wanted him to know what I had known. I wanted him to feel my pain. So as I lurched towards him, I opened my mouth. He was under me now, and I reached my right paw across my body to the tubes.

The tissue was ripping; it had grown around the tubes but was still weakened by the fungus. I pulled harder, it released and a spray of green slit the gray of the metal floor.

But it was on him. Though I could see less and less, I saw the mottled fluid across his face. I heard his screeches as the buildup of the fungus splattered on his eyes and burned him. I used my left hand, pulling my teeth farther apart, snapping my jaw but seeing more fluid, this mottled with blood, make angry torrents down his face. His screams went high and he clawed at himself.
I fell on him; unable to stand for some reason I could not feel. He scratched away at me, but I saw the swelling around his eyes, and the rawness of his skin where his beloved drug, through me, was eating him.

As I lost control of my limbs and as my hearing echoed with metal, I felt him stop moving. This raid must have been such a trifle, typical job. He set out this morning, sure that this would just be another little thing.

The little things kill.