The stasis gel drained as Zane opened his eyes and looked up to the ceiling of his pod hole. Then he was in the foyer of the pod room and his stasis pod opened. He pulled his mask off and looked around. Fargo and Holly were coming out of their pods as well.

"Are we there?" Holly asked, placing her mask on the bed of her pod.

"I don't think so. I don't feel like we traveled anywhere." Fargo said.

"Zane get up." He slid out of his pod and looked to the interim head of global.

"Allison what are you…?"

"Allison?!"

"Jack!" Zane cursed in confusion as Carter came into the room and crashed Allison against him. "Jack what is happening?"

"The launch sequence has been hacked." Carter said. "Henry said someone else is controlling it." Allison and Grace shared a women glance and Zane looked passed the group down the hall. So much for space. Grace was up, pulling people out of their pods and shoving them out the door with Allison and Carter escorting them out.

"How did this happen?" Allison asked. The entire crew ran from the door of the ship and into the hallway. Suddenly, the big ass batteries turned back on and the whir of the FTL drive hit his ears. He pulled Holly further from the ship and pushed her out the door, ending up the only body in view of the ship.

Zane was slammed back into the wall from the force of the launch, and slid down to the floor.

He blinked his eyes open to see Allison supporting his neck.

"Fine, I'm fine." He said, trying to get her to stop fussing.

"You're bleeding is what you are." Allison said, but she did allow him to stand and as he did, shaking himself slightly to get the wind back into his lungs and a disapproving sigh from Allison, he looked into the launch bay; The Astraeus was gone.

In Allison's, or Fargo's however you looked at it now, office, the key members of the crew were gathered. Guess he was a key member, that was cool. Allison had an ice pack pressed to his head, the mother in her coming out for some reason as she pampered him. As the crew was discussing nothing, Senator Wen, Henry and Carter entered. His eyes brows came together in confusion. Usually Jo would be all over this and she wasn't here.

"We have lost a multi-billion dollar space ship." Wen said, flopping down in Allison's chair.

"That's all right. I crashed a multi-million dollar prototype once, and I'm still here. I think you're safe." Allison smiled down at Zane as Wen looked at him incredulously. He shrugged at her. He could give a rat's ass of what this woman thought of him, even if she had pardoned him of his past.

"So you're feeling ok?" Allison asked, that same smile on her face.

"Yeah. Where's Jo?" He asked. Allison's smile was suddenly gone as she glanced at Carter. The sheriff sighed, before glancing around the room.

"Jo is…" Zane looked at him further.

"That is a good question Mr. Donovan. Where is Ms. Lupo? She is the head of security and we did just have a major security breach." Wen said. Allison glanced over to her desk and saw Wen's hands on the letter Jo had given her before she left. Allison decided to stay and she squeezed Zane's shoulder.

"She resigned." Allison stated.

"What?" Zane was sitting up straighter. It took him a second to register that Jo would be here if she hadn't resigned. "But where is she?" Even after their fight, he figured she would be here if she knew he was hurt in anyway. They were still, well… something.

"She left." Carter said, slowly.

"Left where?" Senator Wen demanded.

"We don't know. She just needed some time." Allison said.

Zane glanced at the Doctor, and then at the sheriff. This was some joke they were playing on him. Jo was waiting around the corner, getting back at him for the many, many times he had done something to piss her off. Then Carter had his phone out.

"She's not answering." He said.

"When?" Zane hadn't noticed that he had spoken until Allison looked at him.

"Just after she said goodbye to you." Her reassuring squeeze on his shoulder wasn't exactly reassuring.

Jo pulled up to the side of the deserted beach and climbed out of her car. The breeze was salty, and softly blew her hair off her shoulders as she clambered down the embanked to the rock beach on the Northern California coast. She was still insisting that being out of Oregon completely was better than just being out of Eureka. She removed her boots and rolled up her jeans slightly. The roaring of the waves was comforting, like her mother hugging her again.

The last time she had been at the beach was just before her mother died and memories from that day came flooding back as she finally let her walls down: there was no one to be strong for here. Just her, and the sand and the waves and the seagulls. She found a large boulder and climbed onto, her toes finding grips in the old stone. She breathed in deeply, listening to the otters off in the nearby harbor.

Then it happened just like every time she tried to clear her head. That stupid last kiss would come back. The look in his eyes when she pulled away, the honesty in his voice when he said she was never a hook up. She sighed and opened her eyes to the grayness around her. Being out of Eureka didn't seem to be helping her try and figure out what she wanted. She breathed in deeply trying to clear her head again.

"All right. Let's go, get the epiphany over with." She said, stretching her neck down to her shoulders on each side. She breathed, just breathed. Taking in the clarity of the salt air, the freshness of the ocean, the lack of pollution. She breathed out all the toxins in her life; letting her love of a convicted felon out, the stress about her life in general, the still embarrassing jealousy of her best friend. She breathed out again, telling herself that she was starting to feel slightly more grounded.

Then the rain started. Pouring in freezing sheets she was soaked in moments.

"Oh great." She said, sliding down the rock and landing on the wet sand. She ran barefoot to the embankment and scrambled up it. By the time she got to her car, she had to dump her boots over to get the accumulated water out of them, and she was completely soaked through to the red lingerie she had allowed herself to take from the stack Zane had purchased for her. She slammed her door closed and pealed out of her jacket, turning the car on and blasting the heat. She huffed, blowing out the air from her lungs before pulling onto the high way to head back to the hole in the wall hotel she was staying in.

"Carter what is your problem?" She asked, yelling into the receiver of a pay phone. She had turned her cell on just in time to see 40 missed calls from her friend before the battery died from nonuse. "What part of a walkabout do you not understand?"

"Jo, listen to me." He said. She could tell that he was angry but she didn't understand why. He knew that she wasn't going to be reachable for the next couple months and she had only been gone for one. Allison had promised to "keep her job" open for if and when she came back. The Vegas sun was turning the phone stall into a sauna as she had pulled over to the first phone she saw, and she was regretting that now.

"Ok, I'm listening."

"We need you to come home." She could tell by the careful way that he spoke there was something that she wasn't being told. Then again, she had mentioned she was calling from a pay phone and most likely an unsecure line; unsecure and Eureka didn't bode well together.

"Why?" She obviously didn't care about unsecure lines.

"There was an issue." She laughed slightly at her friend.

"What kind of issue." She asked slowly.

"A security one." She huffed into the receiver hoping that she had got it into Carters ear. He hated when people breathed at him over the phone.

"You aren't going to tell me until I'm there are you?" She asked, fanning herself with her hand. The desert wasn't doing much for her either. She didn't know where else to go on said walkabout and had briefly thought of calling Taggart to ask him how this was supposed to go down. The beach had simply rained on her, the city found her attempted to be mugged; what a surprise that thief got when her fist came flying and he was in a head lock in a heartbeat. The desert was just making her spend too much money on water that she apparently wasn't peeing out.

"Nope." He said, popping his p over the phone.

"Fine. Give me two days." She said. She could probably make it in one, but she wasn't really in a hurry to get back to the chaos that was Eureka.

"Thank you." Carter said before she heard him solidly hang up the phone. Jo hung the phone up and fished in her purse for the keys to her car.