[b]Alyce - BZ - danger all around[/b]

Alyce hit the side of the truck, letting the driver know he could drive off. She watched the truck until it was out of sight. The young woman stretched and moved her neck from side to side, feeling the cracks in the vertebrae. It had been a long day. Her hands and arms hurt from lifting heavy boxes and her head pounded from all of the yelling she'd had to endure.
But now it was time to make the trek home.

The last sector they delivered to was actually quite a ways from her apartment. Thankfully she knew a back way to go in order to avoid seeing too many people. She had learned her lesson from her co-worker's mistake.
The young man had been jumped while walking home. He had been stripped, beaten to a pulp and hung upside down overnight. There were rumors that it was the work of the Fireflies, but Alyce had her doubts. Everything the group did had a point to it. What had happened to that poor bastard hadn't had any point except violent revenge.

Alyce slipped through an alleyway and heard the sounds of street fighting. The illegal fights were a haven of gambling and drugs. Damn it! They had cut off her normal route home!
Taking off her ID pass and stuffing it into her pocket, Alyce prayed that her jumpsuit rolled down to her waist the way it was would not be recognized as a Resource Distributors uniform. Putting on a confident face, she strode out into the open street.
It wasn't that busy, with people taking their supplies and heading into their homes. Alyce had to take quite a detour but ended up nearly back where she needed to be. The last bit was the scariest. She had to pass through an area that was known to be frequented by smugglers. But usually if she kept her head down and stayed against the wall no one bothered to noti-

A rough hand suddenly reached out from the open doorway of a run down building and snagged her, dragging her into the building. Alyce's scream was cut off but a smelly hand over her mouth.
"Government lackey!" a voice snarled into her ear.
"Think you could sneak past us you worthless hoarding scum!" another snapped.
Alyce felt herself being lifted up and slammed down onto a table. A light over it illuminated several dirty looking men surrounding her.
"We gotta do worse this time around," one of them said, cracking his knuckles. "Show 'em we mean business." He slammed his fist into her stomach while another man stuffed a greasy cloth in her mouth and held her down. A knife appeared, glinting in the light.
"I say we cut off this pretty hair, make her look like a shaved dog."
"I say we do some surgery on that face, make it not so pretty."
"And maybe without a few fingers she won't be able to steal from us anymore."

Alyce thrashed and kicked, trying to spit out the nasty cloth. 

"And then, when we're finished with her," the biggest one said, running the point of the knife down her cheek to her throat. "We string her up outside the quarantine zone. Let the infected find her."
Alyce screamed as a blow to her face left her with what would be a black eye, while a strong hand grasped her fingers and jerked one out of it's socket.
Her screams of agony sounded like some kind of animal. For the first time in her life, she prayed for death as the knife pressed into the skin of her chest.