It barely heard the alarm.

Only a wet crunch right after the door broke off its hinges with a crash. There was always someone behind the door watching and monitoring. Now just a carcass, an empty shell. If it hadn't been so consumed with rage it would have empathised, but instead it stepped carefully over the limp figure and ran.

Professor Joanne Dudgeon strode across the room and angrily force-fed the newspaper into a protesting shredder.

'Parasites!' she scowled, as the machine strained and grumbled through the newsprint, before grinding to a noisy, shuddering halt in a stinking cloud of burning metal. Dudgeon cursed again, ripping up what was left with alarming ferocity over the bin, which hissed and sucked the pieces of paper out of sight. A tiny robot sped out of a hatchway in the skirting and meticulously cleaned up the remaining debris, retreating apologetically. She ignored all this, and instead looked moodily through a dramatic glass wall, which made up one side of the room. A ferry full of photo-happy tourists wandered lazily up the Thames. 'I have an MBE, for God's sake,' she muttered.

A stirring in darkness.

Hungry.

Tired and hungry.

Cold, tired and hungry. Angry too. Hot rivers of rage bubbling underneath its skin like magma seeking the slightest weakness, an opportunity to explode. Searing away the last vestiges of sanity and leaving the creature aware of one purpose, one thought: find the boy.  ...read more »

'Well what?!'

The Dragon never let you finish a sentence. She deliberately interrupted you to throw you off your guard, and it worked. Kath told herself to stay calm; none of this was her fault. She risked a glance upwards and found the woman staring fiercely at her with a gaze that bored right into the back of her skull and out the other side, as if the woman could see what she was about to think, before she even thunk it. 'Thunk' isn't even a fucking word, pull yourself together! she thought. She banished the smile quickly, before the Dragon decided to make an example of her.