There's a look on Clarisse's face as she steps out across the pavement, toward the man on the ground. Her expression is cool, unmoved, and yet something in her eyes is bright with anticipation. Maybe even pleasure.

She bends and picks up the man's gun, clicks the safety on, slips it into her back pocket. "Oh," she says, and pauses, looking down at him. "Sorry. Was that yours?"

He's bleeding, but he probably won't die from the gunshot wound. She could let him go, and just walk away, and maybe there's a tiny part of her that wants to. It's not like he'd get far, not like this. Most likely he'd end up getting jumped by infected.

But... no.

She can't. She can't. She doesn't want to and her father would never forgive her if she did and Ellie's right there watching from ten feet away and these guys were going to kill them anyway, wouldn't have mattered if they surrendered or begged or tried to run, and Clarisse hates this guy the same way she hates everything she fights, slotting him neatly into the part of her mind that separates a friend from an enemy. There's no in between.

He's still begging her, like there's another option. Getting shot hasn't affected his mouth, that's for sure.

"Shut the fuck up," she says, and kicks him in the face. His head snaps back, and he crumples onto the ground, and there's blood on the toe of her boot and he's spitting blood and broken teeth onto his chin. She plants her foot on the part of his chest where a patch of red is blooming, the gunshot wound, digging the heel of her boot in and leaning.

"You wouldn't have let us go," she says, barely audible over his shriek of pain. "So why should we?"