A/N: Hey guys, it's been way too long. I have combined the first two chapters into this one and added some more. Sorry if this confused you, it was just easier to deal with. Hope you enjoy it. Feel free to leave a review or message me what you think of it or something you would like me to add into the story.

Thank you for reading this, I hope you enjoy!

One year.

Twelve months.

Three hundred and sixty five days

Eighty seven thousand and sixty hours.

Five hundred and twenty five thousand and six hundred minutes.

Thirty one million, five hundred and thirty six thousand seconds.

One year had passed since anyone had seen or heard from Hal Mason. Right up to this one day; the anniversary of his leaving. It seemed like yesterday, to Tom Mason, that his eldest son just up and left, no goodbye, just a note saying 'I'm sorry'. To everyone, including the Mason family, it was just another peaceful day filled with violence and destruction. Just a normal day for the fighters and the civilians of Charleston; fighting the aliens and trying to stay alive. But to the some of the soldiers it would be a day they lost a friend, a lover, a brother, a son and a fighter. No one knew what made him leave. He just did.

That morning they noticed his absence, and searched Charleston for the 18 year old. But with no luck, no one had seen or heard from him and all of his things were still here. They sent out search parties, but it was like he had just fallen off the face of the Earth. They immediately thought he had been taken by Karen but when they found the note later hidden in Hal and Maggie's room, they knew he had left by his own free will.

Just before he left a bug had been removed from his mind. For a while he was being controlled by the aliens. They had a thought he was okay, he acted fine and like his usual self.

The world had changed in the year he had been gone. The aliens were still here but they were quiet now and hardly bothered anyone. The resistance is still going and trying to get rid of the aliens once and for all.

But still, He remained gone. They didn't know if he was dead, controlled by the aliens or surviving. They weren't sure if they would see him again.

Ben's POV

Today Dad, Maggie, Pope, Tector, Antony and I are going on a trip to search for any signs of the aliens. We took horses and rode far away to the west of Charleston.

Matt always asked when Hal was coming back, Dad always looked at him with sad watery eyes, knowing it would hurt him to tell little Matt where his brother was, I knew it was my job to always say 'soon' and give my younger brother a hug. But I knew that wasn't true, Hal wasn't coming back. He left us over a year ago no goodbye, he just left us. I wasn't sure if I even wanted to see him again.

It got dark by the time we had gotten out far enough from Charleston, so we set up camp for the night and rested up for the next day. The next morning was our first day searching for aliens, we packed up the camp and headed off.

I looked over to my left, where Maggie was sitting on her horse. Her eyes still held that sadness they had since that day. She was quite now, only imputing when necessary, we barely saw her at all. One night, a few months after Hal had left, I noticed that she didn't turn up for dinner so I went in search for her, I found her in her room I walked to the door and almost knocked when I heard sniffling and crying from inside the room. I knew we all missed Hal in different ways but I wanted to help her, I felt protective of her.

Before I knew it we had stopped at a creek, the horses drank while we set off to scout the land around us. When we headed back to the horses, we all quickly noticed that one was missing and that there we no signs of any struggle.

"Okay, where the hell did the horse run off too?" Pope voiced.

"I don't know, but-" Dad was interrupted by a loud animalistic sound coming from the thick trees near the clearing.

We all raced over there to find a truly shocking sight, someone was kneeled next to the horse with a knife in his hand that was already shoved into the horse's stomach. The horse was moving wildly, trying to escape.

"Stop!" Dad shouted walking towards the man slowly holding his hands up.

The man turned around, he was maybe in his 40's with a beard and dirty red hair, and he took the knife out of the poor animal and turned it towards us.

"What are you soldiers? I'm just hunting, it's kill or be killed." His rough voice echoed. "Now get out of he-"

Before we could do anything a sound rang out through the trees and the man fell to the ground with a bullet in the middle of his skull. We were all shocked however regained enough stability to advance towards him but as we did another figure came out of the shadows holding a gun to the horse and shot it twice.

The man looked at us mumbling with no emotion in his smooth voice something about how it was in pain and it was for the best. I finally had the chance to look at his face but when I did I stopped breathing.

"Hal?"

A/N: Thank you so much for reading, I really hope you enjoyed it. Once again, feel free to leave a review or message me what you think. Lots of love x