There was an old world ballad about the devil going down to Georgia, challenging some southern yokel for his soul only to get his ass handed to him with a fiddle or some country-bumpkin crap like that. Now, I ain’t saying that’s unbelievable or that it didn’t happen.  Details like that get fuzzy. Lost to time through a long game of telephone in a world where telephones don’t work anymore. The devil did come to earth, but it wasn’t to Georgia or whatever it’s called now. He went to a small town. A quiet little place where people sat in creaky rocking chairs on the saloon porch watching the world go by in a little slice of heaven rightly called Goodsprings. But he wasn’t there for a quaint get-away. The devil rolled into towns like these to make a deal found at the crossroads of life and death. A trade only desperate folk would agree to. Those same gossiping mouths with nothing better to talk about say it was a deal to…

Just wake up.

I don’t agree with my mother on everything but she was right when she said there’s no devil “‘cause we already live in hell and no one’s ruling over it.” Even if He existed, they were wrong about that deal.

It wasn’t just to wake up after taking a bullet to the head. It also didn’t happen in the shallow grave dug for me. But I’ll be damned if it ain’t worth every penny.

—

When the sky started looking more like the cocktail in Vincent’s hand, did the fun really begin in sin city: the sun hanging low like caps weighing down a high roller’s pockets. Taking his land stand, going all in on the glittery descent through neon haze then finally cashing out a fat jackpot as shiny as the New Vegas skyline.

Misty ribbons weaved through ice chips and the plump cherry impaled on a toothpick as it drowned in the bottom of his glass. He yanked it up for air, let its juices roll down the tiny spear and stain his fingertips as he pondered its perfection. Too perfectly round. Too red. Too shiny. Too artificial. And when he chomped down on it, the orb exploded in his mouth. Juicy, sweet, with a giant seed in the middle to crack a tooth on like a final fuck you he’d deliver with the killing blow. Just like the city he loved so dearly, bitter aftertaste and all.

“E-excuse me.”

Leather sleeves croaked as Vincent turned to the stranger. Wispy gray hairs barely covered a shiny scalp, and his scalp was the only bit of him not pruned with wrinkles. He had a tanned hide, shriveled by the sun baking him everyday in the fields he worked and saggy like the filthy overalls clinging on his weak frame by safety-pins and thick sutures. He didn’t fit in here. Not that Freeside had become a classy place, but the high roller’s view in the Silver Slipper had a dress code.

“I heard you’re of a helpful nature,” he said in a voice as brittle as his wily white beard. The stranger swiped sparse hairs off his creviced forehead, gathering oily sweat along the way to keep them in place. “Help people in trouble,” he added as if saying it made it reality.

Vincent sipped his cocktail. He turned his focus to the lounge’s tables waiting for the geezer to stop gawking at him slack-jawed. “My empathy has been known to get the better of me.” A glance at the doorway explained how he slipped inside; the doorman, like most weak-willed men, saw nothing beyond the showgirl wrapping him around a glittery finger. “Sometimes.”

“Oh,” the old man muttered, “a gun for hire?”

Vincent’s eyes rolled under the discretion of his aviators. A sudden hankering for a cigarillo slid two fingers inside his jacket pocket.

The old man licked his lips. Droopy eyes looked to the floor again as he turned a frumpy trilby in anxious hands. Straightening out the ache in his old back he finally asked the right question, “What’s your price, sir?”

The cigarillo bounced on Vincent’s lips, “a good reason.”

The old man’s cloudy eyes stared at the flame hovering under disintegrating tobacco leaves. Slack-jawed again. “A good reason?”

Vincent sucked in smoke. His tongue tingled as honey evaporated for the bitter notes he came to appreciate. When the vapor lost its buzz he exhaled a concentrated plume away from his uninvited guest. “Give me a good reason to help you.”

“With caps? Chips? Chems?”

“No.” Vincent’s chilly blue crescents pierced dark lenses for a split-second glare. “I have more money than I know what to with. Either favors or a good reason.” Sighing, he plucked off the aviators realizing the latest needy hand begging something from him wasn’t going away so easily. He had only himself to blame for that and he knew it. Sensitive eyes squinted at the halos blooming around the lounge’s guests. The lively crowd didn’t seem to notice the poorly outfitted stranger, but that wasn’t unusual. The only thing that mattered to them was money. The money they were losing. And the money they hadn’t won yet.

“I don’t help people who don’t help themselves, but you’re here now asking for help because you are incapable—that’s not an insult, just an observation. Asking is helping yourself, so we got that covered.” The old man’s dull eyes studied Vincent’s scar and the tiny pupil under it as prickly as its owner. That was the first thing they latched on to. The first thing anyone noticed about him was also the only reason he was ever asked of anything, and gossiped about so wildly. “Now, I need a good reason.”

“It’s my daughter.” He swallowed. “I want my daughter back.”

Between white line fever and the hazy green clouds rolling towards his motorcycle, spewing out neon lightning, and head-wracking thunder, Vincent rather deal with the fever. Vegas might have been an oasis, but he stayed away from the southern lands for good reason. Radiation storms were just one of those. But the Vaqueros he pursued claimed the scarred Arizona deserts as theirs ever since the Legion’s iron grip rusted. It wasn’t the intended outcome but why intervene when your enemies were killing each other?

 Murky emerald clouds sparked. Thunder clapped. Lightning sprung forward, branching out like the bleached, bony hand of death. Spindly fingers reached for mountain peaks. Its touch scorched whole swaths of dirt to black charcoal. Menacing cackles burst seconds later. Hair fought helmet and clothes to stand on end when a peculiar sensation flooded his limbs. Like soft static on the radio, it tingled in his toes and fingers and slowly crawled up arms and legs like a thousand fiery ants. Vincent clamped the brakes. White light flashed. A leviathan bolt zapped asphalt as he came to a screeching halt. The road shattered like glass at the pin-point epicenter. Cracks splintered off. Smoke tarred his throat and lungs. Then the storm roared as if laughing at the chaos it wrought. Laughed until out of breath and all that lingered were rumbling chuckles threatening to do it again.

Vincent glared at the smoldering spot mere feet away. There was nothing but ugly in Arizona. Ugly desert. Ugly people. Ugly weather.

He didn’t lose his nerve the first time almost-dying or all the times after that, but his brushes with death never lost their pants-shitting charm. Smoke evaporated and fluttered off with the drafts gaining speed around him. He’d give it an hour before the Eastbourne storm would cross the divide and rip up the highway. Southwest mountain ranges were rife with mines and caves but searching for those without a map leading you by the nose was asking for trouble. He twisted the clutch and rolled on. Not far off sweltering asphalt on ancient highways like this, were resorts. Last resorts. Not the fun kind he’d rather be at poolside nursing a pina colada in one hand and a margarita slurry in the other. They were crumbling, desert weathered structures whose true purpose was lost to time. Not the ideal of refuges and usually taken up by some mean critter, but that could be remedied with a bullet.

The motorcycle came to a stop rolling up the slope of a lonely interchange. To his left, the encroaching stormfront. And to his right where skies were still blue, smoke plumed up in a column he knew only a fire would make. Whether that was a good or bad sign, he’d have no choice but to find out. He gave the bike some gas and rolled down to the forgotten westward highway. Over dips and hills he spotted its source, and tarnished steel winking back at him.

Vaqueros.

The moment those distasteful fringed poncho-vests insulted his eyes, Vincent cut the engine and rolled behind the cover of a stout desert broom. He crouched there like a nightstalker waiting to strike. Then glided across the highway at the right moment. Passing the gravel shoulder, he stayed low maneuvering between prickly sage brush and dry shrubs. He stopped at a twisted pinyon tree creeping over the clearing three Vaqueros made their camp in—No. Not even full-fledged Vaqueros. These were prospects sat on dusty bed-mats under sun-mottled shade, passing stale jokes like the bottle sloshing between hands. There wasn’t much to say about who Vaqueros were. Not as brain-dead as the dwindling number of Fiends back home. Better organized than Vipers yet not on par with the Legion. They had a reach as far as their gas tanks would take them. Most didn’t even speak the same language, yet even if they did, they weren’t privy to questions. But they could have been a challenge, if they put down the damn bottle.

Now, even though these men were inebriated, they still had side-arms. Which is why Vincent plucked the last stun bomb dangling from his vest and tossed it between them. Husky chuckles paused. Three mesmerized drunks swayed in their seats staring at the orb. One leaned in for a better gander at the disappearing fuse. The clay orb cracked. Smoke exhaled. Crackles sputtered. Finally putting that dying braincell shared between them to use, all three prospects scrambled to their feet. Vincent retracted and pressed his back to the pinyon trunk. Shockwaves flung dirt around the tree and threatened to knock him over. Sand dusted his dewy skin. Debris nicked his helmet to the beat of stuttering sparks.

The bomb hacked out its last coughing fit like a chain smoker on his deathbed. When that dying breath meandered downwind, taking a foul stink with it, Vincent poked around his cover. Three men lay scattered in their camp. Knocked out. Face up while little stars fluttered about their heads all while Vincent worked quickly with a line rope. When they came to, the hungover trio struggled in their shared bindings, muttering amongst themselves as if the others could explain their latest predicament. When their sight came back, sobriety slapped them hard across the face.

They were stripped of their guns. Their pride. Their alcohol. Their bikes—if you can even call those ugly-as-sin contraptions that—were toppled over and tires slashed. Their belongings littered the shady oasis as if some angry, overgrown rat just trampled through. And standing among it all, the bushwhacking rat responsible—A stranger holding their last water canteen hostage.

Pleas trampled over one another hoping to be heard first but the stranger disguised under a black visor remained silent. Mercy this. Mercy that. We’ll die out here… Nothing that hasn't been uttered before in such circumstances. Begging came to an abrupt halt when Vincent slowly reached over his shoulder. He unclipped a carabiner from the hubcap shielding his backpack and brought the clip forward, revealing it attached to an oblong funnel.

Then he unzipped his fly. Shoved the funnel down his pants. Poked the spout through his underwear and stuck it in the canteen.

“Ah… I’ve been holding that in for a while.”

 The hope in those Vaqueros’ eyes dried up faster than Vincent’s bladder.

After screwing the cap back on, he tossed the canteen just out of the men’s reach and returned to tearing up their camp for undiscovered goodies. There wasn’t much to be found and he knew that, but it was principle to add insult to injury. Calibers he didn’t use? Tossed into the brush. Spare clothes? His knife had the sudden urge to tear it to shreds. Shoes? Stockpiling shoelaces was always a good idea. Then toss the shoes in the brush—

He froze at a faint whimper.

In one swift motion, Vincent leaped to his feet and spun around. A hand lingered on the 9mm stowed at his side. The Vaqueros, struggling in their ropes, couldn't have caused that high-pitched whine. It had to be something small... Sagebrush rustled and Vincent fixed his gaze on the overgrown, prickly broom. Moving with cautious steps, he circled around it. The whimper came again, soft and desperate. He stooped to a squat. Wide eyes stared back at him beyond thorny nettles—a girl. Vincent leapt forward.

Sore elbows dug in the dirt while bruised legs dragged helplessly behind the girl. Wincing and hissing, she crawled on hot sand at a tortoise's pace. Barely a foot from him, her trembling arms gave out. Her body had gone limp, her doomed journey cut short, but with the last of her energy, she managed to whisper, “please don't hurt me.”

“I’m not here to hurt you.” Vincent pulled off his helmet as he knelt slowly next to the unarmed and inadequately clothed girl. She was a little thing. Small and fragile. A worn out rag doll carelessly tossed aside once its threads unraveled. “Those men kidnap you?”

“Did you kill them?”

“I was going to let the elements do that—” Agony twisted the girl's face as she turned on her stomach, letting out a cry that seemed to shake the very mountains. “Look, you’re obviously hurt. Doing that is just making it worse.”

Petrified eyes stared beyond Vincent. Her lips quivered. A trembling hand rose, pointing over his shoulder and he sprang up—

“Ah, shit,” his hiss was a fart in the wind of the green tornado twisting this way. Vincent smacked the helmet back on his head, scooped up the girl, and hoofed it down the highway. Once at the bike, he sat her down on the seat. Dirt caked nails clutched hot leather just to stay upright while he took the reins. “Hang on tight,” he yelled, and a twiggy grip strangled his waist.

He twisted the throttle and the engine roared like a whipped beast. Tires churned up sand and tore through the gravel shoulder then once on searing black asphalt found their grip and chewed up the highway. In the rear-view mirrors, the leviathan twister swallowed up the desert. Shredded everything in its path and gained speed with all it devoured.

Though miles away now, its approach was imminent. The RPM needle fought to climb numbers that just didn’t seem high enough. The temperature gauge that sat too comfortably above the midline decided to hike up the second the speedometer broke eighty. He glanced at the girl in the mirror clinging to him for dear life. Her tawny hair flapped like a torn flag. Timid peeps searched for the approaching monster and every time her face was more tangled by fear than the last glance.

Slapping winds deafened both riders. The twister grew twice its size the last he checked. Black clouds outpaced them overheard with ungodly speed. Vincent’s mind raced faster than that. Not only did he need to protect himself but the passenger he found on the way. Eyes flickered between road and mirror and twister and girl. The desert horizon shrank in the mirrors. Dusty whirlwinds creeped in his peripherals, consuming everything within miles of the highway and soon they would be too.

He jerked the throttle. The motorcycle growled as if to warn he was pushing its limits. Some people would pray to any deity they could think of in such dire situations. Whisper a prayer to be just an inch ahead of the storm. Promise to repent for salvation or maybe make deals of the soul for the last resort standing on the sweltering horizon ahead of them. But Vincent knew what really put that concrete jackpot a mile off the highway in the desert flats—Luck was a lady after all, and she hadn’t let him down yet.

He eased on the brakes. The bike veered off the highway and pained cries bellowed out behind him. Jagged nails dug in the kevlar vest. She squeezed tighter with every bounce, pressed her head against the hard hubcap shield, and pressed her eyes shut. As the shimmering gray blot grew on the horizon, the storm riding parallel to them hastened. Rubber scraped to a halt flicking up sand and rocks. Vincent kicked out the stand then jumped for the door. The steely doorknob seared his fingertips. Luck was indeed a lady—he had to work to gain her favor. Hissing curses powered through the burn then he got revenge kicking the door open. A draft chilled his sweat laden skin. The door bounced off a stone-hard wall, reverberating like a buzzing powercell. Vincent blinked at the dark pit descending beneath the desert: a flight of stairs.

It’ll have to do.

A strange stillness enveloped them as darkness replaced the chaos outside. There were no windows, no rancid vapors of passing vagrants, man, or beast. All that remained was the dwindling light peeking through narrow slits of the doorframe.

“I’ll be right back,” Vincent whispered as his pip-boy’s light flicked on. The girl’s frightened look didn’t change for a glance at gun steel catching the device’s green-hues. Standing at the top of the stairs, he flipped up his visor and stared into the abyss. His passenger held her breath and that was the last Vincent heard of her as he began the descent.

Light taps echoed off deathly cold concrete. Stale air dried the back of his throat. Bleak gray walls played tricks on the mind in narrow corridors like this. The eerie silence didn’t help either. There was something just wrong about absolute stillness. When the birds stopped chirping and the crickets paused croaking and even the wind died down for fear of something he couldn't see or sense was when he would high-tail it out of there wherever there was. He had that same urge now but he couldn't shoot a tornado dead.

Flat ground startled him. A brave step confirmed it was real, solid concrete. He kept flush to the wall while light bathed the chamber. Shadows cast strange shapes on bleak walls; a bed blanketed in dust accompanied by night stands and the expected furnishings of a simple bedroom. Counters and the cabinets above them made a kitchen in one corner.  Shoved to another was a scene in a mangled department store magazine; bright colors of a living room, never lived in, were dull under a powdery coat. Books on the shelves surrounding them outnumbered the channels available on the television and radio. Lastly, the third wall was taken entirely by survival stores. Stocked ages ago by the well-prepared but ill-timed.

Better than most last resorts he found.

When Vincent returned to the surface, the girl was on the edge of her seat, clutching the leather and leaning forward with a mix of fright and pain on her face. Wide eyes fixed on him. The same look he imagined he wore staring down a hungry deathclaw some years ago.

“Looks like a bunker down there,” he said. “Doesn’t look like it’s been occupied at all though. Let’s get you down—”

She pulled away from him as thin arms protectively crossed her chest. Reddened eyes flickered over him, scanned every bit of the stranger armed to the teeth in an even stranger costume. “You’re right to be cautious of some guy you don’t know, but I can see you’re hurt. I have medicine that can help you.”

“What’s going to happen?” Her voice was barely a squeak.

“What’s gonna happen?” Vincent’s brows furrowed. “Hopefully I got something to help your wound or at least ease the pain.”

“And after?”

“I’ll take you home or wherever you want to go.”

Rigid shoulders relaxed but the growing knot in her stomach hadn’t unraveled entirely. Vincent approached her side cautiously, told her his every move as he lifted her off the seat and carried her down the stairs all while pretending not to notice the stare lingering on his scar.

Her groans were muffled to a whimper descending on the bed. Stiff mattress springs creaked under her weight. The only saving grace was the soft pillow that met her head. She exhaled and counted down the minutes for the ache to go away. Batting lashes whisked away the tears before they fell. Four barren gray walls and their bland ceiling surrounded her like her own past, present, and future. Hubbub interrupted those thoughts and she searched for the man out of sight. A second lantern joined the gentle glow, bobbing towards her and sitting on the nightstand with a metallic clank.

Vincent drug a kitchen chair bedside. “Where are you hurt?”

She looked down to her hands fidgeting with the frayed ends of her shirt. The tank top might have been white under dirt smears and sweat stains. Her trials faded the tattered letters arching boldly across her chest but the pale patches left by missing shapes still proudly declared Grand Canyon Arizona. “He hit me. My lower back.”

“I’m sorry that happened.” He slowly lent an open palm to her. “My name’s Vincent.”

“I…” Her mouth hung open, caught on the sounds she couldn’t recall yet were on the tip of her tongue. “I don’t remember my name.”

Vincent blinked. He took a bullet to the head and still remembered his. Even the one he wanted to forget… The girl’s ambivalent glances finally met his eyes. Gold irises wandered back to his scar, traced its outline and counted the faded dots where stitches once held him together. He tapped his forehead. “I've been through the ringer too. Got this from a bullet to my noggin. Did this to my pupil.”

“Can you see?”

“Just fine,” Vincent assured with a smile.

Her gaze lowered back to antsy fingers curling torn threads. She sighed and stiffly turned her back to him. Boney shoulders tensed. Hands clamped the blanket like a vice as a groan clawed through her teeth. Vincent gritted his own when he saw the dried stain on her shirt. Pink stains circled maroon layers, darkening and dampening closer to its wet center. He gave her a moment to recover, waited until her heavy breaths calmed and the vice-grip to unlatch before taking a deep breath of his own. “I’m going to lift up your shirt a bit and—”

There were fates worse than death and there were people who deserved them. Whatever happened to those Vaqueros was mercy compared to the sinister things he reserved for people like them.

“I need to get something,” Vincent said, already starting for the sofa he tossed his belongings on.

“What?” She sniveled as she tried to steal a peek over her shoulder. “How bad is it?”

Vincent set up his supplies on the end table like he watched Julie do numerous times before; boiled cloth in a canister, alcohol, needles, med-x, stimpak, dressing, and gauze all in the order he would need to use. “You need a stimpak.”

“You’re a doctor?”

“No, but I know a great one and she taught me everything I need to know to…” His voice trailed off looking at the vicious bludgeon. White bits glistened in pulpy yellow and red flesh leaking from where it wasn’t supposed to. “...to help this.”

Truthfully, he didn’t know how bad it was but he had learned a few things delivering those fates worse than death to people who deserved them, and this girl was not one of them.

Fifteen exhausting minutes knocked her out. Her cries left Vincent’s ears ringing and wracked his head but nothing wracked his brain more than a persistent question of why. Why people were the way they were; why they do the things they do. She was a tiny girl. Not the one he set out in search of, just another victim of the brutal realities of life he often encountered. She was skin and bones with no hope to defend herself. She looked a lot like someone he used to know—used to be. That question followed him all his life as the idle curiosity it was for most folks. He pulled up the ends of the blanket she lay on and draped the faded green fabric over her shoulder. Tucking in the longer end, he muttered along with the distant memory of his mother saying a goodnight he hadn’t heard in decades.

He found no answer to his question until he came to Nevada and was rebirthed by a shallow grave which would give him the burning answer. The closest thing to a father he had called it the devil, but Wayne was wrong thinking it was separate from man. People made their devils. Fed them, whether they knew it or not, by their desires, needs, wrath… The ones who listened to that voice were Caesar, Mr. House, the countless outlaws, scumbags, raiders with silly names, others that warranted no names, and Vincent knew this because he was one of them. His devil lusted for revenge. For him or somebody else, he had to have revenge. For what Vincent hoped to one day call justice.

It was why he was here after all.

But he kept his ankle-biting son-of-bitch on a tight, choking leash. There were more important matters than evening a score—getting this girl to Julie for some real doctoring was at the top of his list. Still, he couldn’t be comfortable knowing that meant leaving another behind. Unfortunately, that other girl existed only as a rumor in Kingman. A lead that went colder the longer he was stuck down here deciding whose life was more important.

Sighing, he looked back to his pip-boy, turned the dials and confirmed, for the third time, all radio frequencies were still dead. That was true for upstairs as well. No stations popped up scanning the numbers. Only fuzzy background noise that brought about a strange feeling someone was right behind him. Ignoring the imaginary breath brushing his neck, he turned the knob. His stoic reflection in the dark screen blinked at him. Buzzy hums taunted Vincent, chuckled like cazadors buzzing in his ears. The GPS didn’t have the best coverage but for the pip-boy to completely forget how he got to this specific point? Fail to trace his steps like it had done for nearly a decade reliably?

Maybe those old satellites finally gave up and came crashing down to Earth.

Arms fell back to his lap. A long sigh deflated him to a hunch but there were other options besides sulking about it. Flipping through the bundle of folded maps, he plucked out his current one and flung it open. Glossy papers thundered. He glanced over the top and at the girl still asleep. Every time he stopped, it was at a specific landmark. A distinct formation, a mile-marker or highway sign or a building. Something permanent and then he jotted down the bike’s odometer reading, thus he always knew where he was.

He jumped off the chair and hiked up the stairs in a flash. He shone the pip-boy’s light on the motorcycle’s dashboard and noted a thirty-mile difference from his last stop: the interstate 40 and highway 93 interchange outside of Kingman and now. Vincent plucked the pencil from his lips. But then he took a sharp right down another interchange. Rode that for a couple of minutes before finding the Vaqueros—

That couldn’t be right…

Come to think of it, he couldn’t recall any signs or markers noting what route he was getting on. There was always some kind of sign. Ancient or contemporary to give guidance. If not to help others, to help whoever made it survive the wilds between long stretches of the desert sucking them dry—

A shrill cry shook the pencil and map out of his hands. He snatched them up, flew down the stairs, stumbling and grabbing for rails that didn’t exist until his feet stopped at the bed.

“What?”

The girl gawked up at him, saucer eyed and taking shallow breaths. “I thought you left.”

A relieved exhale pushed him down into the chair behind him. “No…” He took the map from under his armpit and evened out the new wrinkles and folds he carelessly added to it. “I was trying to figure out where we are.”

She glanced at the map. Brows that were only frightfully bunched together since he found her smoothed out. “Sierra,” she muttered. “I think that’s my name.”

Vincent flipped over the map and looked at the letters arching across flat mountains. Sierra Nevada.

“I think it is…” Her head sunk into the pillow and silence returned to the cool chamber. Vincent discreetly eyed Sierra as she stared up at the ceiling, unblinking and still as if practicing for the inevitable death she felt coming. Maybe it was her name or maybe it wasn’t, but he needed a new name once too.

“How old are you?”

She blinked. Eyes searched the gray ceiling then narrowed, unable to find what they were looking for. “I turned fifteen on my last birthday, I think. Or sixteen. I can’t remember...”

Vincent crossed his arms and tapped the map against his nose. A hum considered her then he asked, “do you remember when those Vaqueros took you?”

“I-I don’t know—a couple days ago?”

Vincent lurched forward. “What did they want with you?”

“It’s hazy—” Sierra squeezed her eyes shut again.

“How long have you been out here?”

‘I-I don’t know.” Her face scrunched and she shook her head. “I was running, but I can’t run anymore.”

Vincent leaned back into the chair. Sierra turned her head away, but her expression remained taut like the hands balled on her stomach. Her situation wasn’t anything new to him. She could have been a runaway needing to escape whatever personal hell lay behind her and simply wanted to forget it. He could understand that, even if with the hindsight he gained from simply growing up, his reason to run away from home was nothing compared to what she, like so many others had endured.

“Why did you help me?”

Vincent glanced up at the weak voice. “It’s just what I do.”

She turned her head back to him. Teary eyes didn’t really believe that explanation but he couldn’t blame her.