The sun drips in through the blinds, slow as the leak in Olivia's kitchen sink.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
She can hear it, even in her bedroom. That's how quiet it is.
Nothing but her breathing and Henry's breathing, both low and shallow, not wanting to waste what little oxygen they had left.
Normally, she wouldn't able to leave it alone, dripping, letting go of that precious natural resource. But now the water was toxic, and she didn't want to go anywhere near it.
Lincoln went out. He wanted to stay, but they needed food. Something, anything. If she starved herself any more, what little milk she still generated for Henry would dry up.
And, if at all possible, she wanted her son to live longer than she would.
Lincoln was adamant on saying they would make it, all three of them. He spun beautiful yet impossible tales of them being the only people left on the planet, making their way past the impending apocalypse.
So many had died already. Charlie and Mona had been caught in a freak tidal wave off the coast of Hawaii. Astrid just stopped coming to work. And her mom, she didn't know. Phones and cars had stopped with all the other electricity.
Even now, Olivia knew that Lincoln might not walk back through that door.
The only one she was sure would survive was Secretary Bishop. He would find a way to cross over, save himself. If he hadn't already. How could he not, with all his technology? He had done it before, he wouldn't hesitate to do it again.
In the beginning, she had gone looking for something to help her cross over, to save her and her son. But the lab had been cleared out.
She had felt the exact moment their world began to end. The machine whirred to a screeching halt, and the air seemed heavier somehow. In the coming days, the heat would slowly rise until it was so hot you could get a sunburn by standing in the sun for only five minutes.
Olivia glanced down at her son, cradled in her arms, asleep on her chest as they lay back in her bed. He was sweating, the heat from the outside seeping in.
When Lincoln got back, she would ask him to close the blinds all the way. They could live in the dark, if it kept them from burning alive. She would place her son in the crib, take Lincoln to bed, and ask him to tell her another story.
She would shut her eyes and listen as his words painted a picture of the three of them, in a small house, secluded. It would snow in winter. They would build snowmen, make angels in the white blanket. Spring would bring green grass, not the hay-orange that it was now.
And then she would cut him off mid-sentence with a kiss. And she would let him love her, like she had fought for so long. And she would let herself love him, the only father her son ever had.
And they would try and hold on to that last happy moment, until the world died.