Cassie had to leap backwards to travel faster than the sine wave of the whip cracking. Still it came forward enough to rip her rifle from its already tenous one handed grasp and send it skittering across the floor. It slashed into her hand too, but she hardly felt the pain. She was too focused on other things, having one of those horribly clear split-second infodumps you get when your adrenaline's that high.

She couldn't escape. Whips were kinda crappy weapons but they did one thing well, and that was area denial. She had nothing left to shoot or hurl at the demon.

There was really only one option left: suicidal last-ditch charge. She could get close and maybe give the cabron a belly ache before one of those huge clawed hands caught her and cracked her head open like an egg on the bulkhead.

So she sprinted forward at the exact moment the whipcrack ended, where the reload would take longer and she'd be inside its effective radius anyway. Drawing Blood Drinker, she aimed for an icepick-gripped stab into the creature's lower stomach. She didn't think she was gonna survive this, but at least she could give the foxtrotting thing sepsis of the bowels.

Dad, Guru Johann, Patricia...gonna join y'all now...