The girl gritted her teeth and closed her eyes, trying to ignore the gash. She meant to move her hand to cover the wound and maybe stop it from gushing warm blood, but when that arm moved, Seer moved with it. The barrel of the gun jabbed her in the other shoulder, right over where her clavicle faded from prominence and her bony shoulder jutted out.
"I will shoot you again," he said, and this time Nell really knew he was telling the truth.
Nell, who was by this time crying uncontrollably, whimpered and stammered, "I really want to help, and I really don't want to get shot again. Just give me tools and I can build you anything."
Seer's finger tightened over the trigger, but what followed was not a gunshot. The standing guard had intervened and used his gun like a baton to knock Seer's away from Nell. "You shoot her there, you're never getting what you want."
Nell observed, in a state of vague, dizzy, blood-loss induced delirium. She watched and listened, unsure how much of what she watched was real.
"I don't pay you to get in my way!" Seer shouted.
"No sir, you pay me and my men to make sure you get your WMD," was the pointed reply.
Seer launched a volley of curses and insults so intense than they rivaled the things Nell's foster father had called her when she had been younger. After almost ten seconds of shrieking, the guard pushed Seer out of his way and took Nell's good arm.
"I'm taking her upstairs. You better hope she doesn't die, or you'll be out of mercs as well as WMDs, and you'll still have to pay us."
Nell said something to the guard, but it came out gibberish. That was just as well, as she didn't have anything to say to him in the first place. The guard said, "Jesus, they weren't kidding when they told us you don't handle pain well."
It hurts a lot, she wanted to tell him, but what she actually said was just a slurring of syllables and sounds.