"No one listened there, but men. And hearts rot still as they did, then. Now I don't want to be the one to say it, but maybe this one's too far gone for change." - Saher Galt, This One.

Chapter 1: The Flashback

Alice woke up with cold perspiration gently sloping down her face. Her dirty blonde hair was matted to her forehead like fly-paper. She was in a bed; not exactly her bed, but without doubt a bed. For some reason, it looked strangely and utterly familiar. The room she was in was giant, about three times as big as an average room. A feeling of coldness shrouded Alice as she lay in the bed, even beneath the many blankets. The floor had beautiful black tiles, caressing the dark, gloomy silence in the room. Along the walls of the room were at least thirty paintings. Big paintings, small paintings, canvases, every type of paintings imaginable. Other than that, there was almost nothing, besides a few mirrors and about twenty windows.

There were also several wooden dressers in the large room. One of them looked familiar, déjà vu if anything. Yet it was as if she had seen it before…opened it, perhaps. It was a rather short, beige dresser with 3 drawers, the top one of which was open; inside, it had about ten or twelve pristine white t-shirts. On top of the dresser was a picture frame with a photo inside; Alice dressed in a gorgeous white wedding dress, holding onto a rather handsome man in a tuxedo. Spence. For some reason, she remembered this man. She had never met him, not in her memory, but she just knew who he was. It was as if her very breath was ripped from right out of her lungs. A stream of hatred surged through her veins at the very reflection of Spence.

But before she could think about Spence further, she heard a smash of glass and a man screaming from another room. Slightly jumping, she strained to hear what was going on.

"They probably don't have me on file yet!" he yelled in an furiously assertive tone. A stronger and more full-toned voice replied something that Alice did not quite understand. As Alice quickly tried to get out of the large bed she was in, a woman came into the room. She was a well-built, tough looking woman, with her hair tied back into a pony-tail.

"Report, soldier." She said in an firm voice, as the two of them locked eyes.

"What?" Alice questioned, breaking the momentarily intense stare.

"Your report?" The woman said again, this time looking slightly irritated. Alice didn't understand what she was asking for, but before she said that, about nine or ten other people entered the bedroom. Unexpectedly, Alice had a premonition. A white blur flashed behind her dazzling, blue-green eyes.

In it, she was watching through a dusty, rectangular window. In it, our or five people were in a small hallway, looking around and making way to the other door across the hallway. The lights were all fluorescent, and most of the people inside the hallway were nearly squinting. Behind her she heard another three or so people quietly talking. Suddenly, still looking through the glass, Alice saw a laser emerge from out of nowhere. Swiftly floating across the room, it sliced right through one of the Commandos. Coming back the other way, it cut off the same short, broad shouldered woman who had talked to Alice, with heat steaming off of her now gushing neckline. Alice flashed back into the bedroom.

"She's not responding." The woman said. "Maybe it was the-" Her voice trailed off from Alice, as the flashback now continued. Again, looking through the dusty window, she saw a large, black man getting ready for the laser. Behind her she could hear screaming.

"Open it!"

"Shit. I'm trying!"

"Kaplan open the door! Its coming!"

The man clenched his hands into fists as the laser came back at him. But he could not simply jump over it. The laser had become a grid of lasers, speeding at him. Alice looked away in shock, not wanting to see what would happen next.

"Kaplan!"

"Hold on. I almost got it!" Kaplan screamed.

"Hurry up!" a woman said.

"Got it!" He replied.

Alice looked back into the window, hoping that the man hadn't gotten sliced in half, but when she looked, she almost threw up. He fell into pieces as Alice watched in horror.

Suddenly, the vision stopped. Alice felt control of herself once more.

"Kaplan!" She blurted out, without thinking. The room suddenly became eerily quiet, as everyone looked at her. The man known as Kaplan stared at her with questioning eyes.

"Yes?" He asked, not sure how she knew his name.

A flood of memories came over Alice at that very moment. Six years of thoughts and emotions rushed into her mind at an intense rate. For more than two minutes, she was reminded of feelings she had felt in seemingly another life, as the others stood there, waiting for a response. She suddenly remembered the man in the photograph, Spence. She remembered that fateful day, a day almost exactly like this one, where she lost Rain and Kaplan and Matt. She remembered getting out of the hospital and saving Angie. She remembered the five years she spent on the road, slowly killing off all of the undead. She remembered Claire's fleet of survivors and destroying Tyrant. But most of all, she remembered Carlos. Everything about him. The way he smiled whenever the two of them talked, how his eyes would glisten when he was talking to her, and that final minute of his life when the two of them ultimately kissed. She remember it all.

"I'm Alice. And I'm not letting you die."