A/N: You guys are awesome! All the reviews, and favorites and follows! It was an amazing thing to hear from all of you, and even if you didn't do any of those things, thank you so much for reading my work at all! Also, to those who gave me song suggestions; whether through a review or a PM, you rock!

I'd like to thank Riot Siren for agreeing to become my beta! She whips my grammar, spelling and half-formed ideas into shape! Praise her!

(2:16 PM, December 24th, 2012. Edonia.)

"Muller!"

Jake looked up when he heard his name called. His eyelids felt heavy and his knuckles ached from cracking them too much. The mindless chatter of his "comrades" was like a drill to his skull, each and every single one of them, babbling on about these goddamn energy boosters. Jake's eyes found the sleek Asian woman, standing next to boxes, busy with all her paperwork.

She looked so out of place, dressed in a pretty blue dress with short, styled hair and expensive shoes and earrings. Jake figured the woman had to be wearing at least two grand in designer clothing.

The lieutenant shouted his name again.

"Just shut the fuck up," he muttered, resting his head back on his knees.

"What was that, Muller?"

Rolling his shoulders, he pulled himself to his feet, grunting when his muscles protested painfully.

"Nothin' sir!" Jake hated the deference he had to give this asshole. He was paid to kill the opposition, not take orders from a fucking idiot.

The entire company had been waiting around for what seemed like forever, and despite how the B.S.A.A. had already appeared and taken the field against the B.O.W.s the insurgents were using, his platoon was still stuck here, rotting in this ruin.

His superior jerked his head in the general direction of the Asian woman and her masked friends.

She didn't look up at him at first; too busy with a sheaf of paperwork. Jake cleared his throat audibly to get her attention and when she finally did turn around, she stopped suddenly, her eyes locking with Jake's.

A tingle went up his spine when Jake looked back at her. He had instincts, good ones, ones that were acute enough to have kept him alive as long as they had. And every instinct he had was screaming that this woman was dangerous.

Dangerous, predatory and not…normal.

Her steady gaze travelled from his eyes down to the scar on his cheek, and while Jake had never been self-conscious in any sense of the word, he felt as if the woman knew something.

"Well, aren't you unique?" A sardonic smile graced her lips.

"We can't all be as pretty as you, lady," Jake shot back. Without even a note of registering what he had said, the woman unpackaged a syringe from one of her boxes and handed it to him.

"Inject that directly into a vein, if you would. Wrist, thigh and neck are the preferred places of injection. Effects should be nearly immediate if you do it right. Please make sure to be sanitary. Alcohol wipes are over there." Plucking the syringe from her outstretched hand, Jake turned wordlessly and made to enter a nearby building when something caught his eye.

An abandoned food cart lay tipped over in an alley. Someone had ditched it before the platoon got here, and while it looked ransacked and picked clean by the birds, Jake's growling stomach made him close in on it anyway.

Rolling it upright, Jake spotted it, sitting in there in all its glory; an apple. An actual apple! Covered by the corpse of the food-cart, the birds had been unable to get to it and while it looked a little worse for wear; it was edible.

"I'll be damned." Jake picked up his prize; quite possibly, the last apple in the damn town.

(10:27 AM, December 24th, 2012. Edonia.)

America to Edonia, economy direct. If it's not a human rights violation, it damn well should be!

Sherry ached in places she didn't even know she had, and she was pretty sure she smelled like a wrestler's armpit. But she'd made it and that was all that mattered.

The agency had promised payment after the completion of her objective, but thankfully, being an agent also had its perks. Sherry doubted she'd ever get tired of hearing Simmons say: 'We'll handle your rent while you're gone.' Not mention, she'd be given full-access to all of the D.S.O's various contacts and channels to procure her equipment. While she didn't exactly know much about guns, she knew she liked the one she got. She also knew she liked the phrase: 'Not even on the market, yet.'

While the D.S.O. had been able to pull enough strings to get her a ride into the town where Jake Muller's platoon was supposedly hunkered down, Sherry knew she'd mostly be on her own for this. It was up to her to successfully infiltrate the mercenary's makeshift compound, find the target, get him to agree to become a guinea pig for a government that didn't actually have any jurisdiction over him and then to get them both out—all while maintaining a degree of professionalism and not dying.

I can do this, I can do this, I can do this, I can do this. Sherry repeated the mantra in her head while showing her government identification to her ride. He was an older man, and while it seemed he could read English, he spoke very little. The truck was a rusted monstrosity that looked like it could go toe to toe with an aircraft carrier and win. But Sherry had to admit, it had character and it would be the perfect Trojan Horse.

Now she only had to survive the ride up the mountain...

(2:32 December 24th, 2012. Edonia.)

It stung. Jake inhaled sharply when he felt the "energy supplement" enter his bloodstream. He could feel it moving through his veins, burning. It wasn't an agonizing burn, it wasn't like acid in his blood, but he was sure he wouldn't want another one of these injections.

And some of these fuckers are shooting this shit in their legs? The very thought of that kind of pain caused a shudder to run through him.

And then it was gone.

The burn, the sting, the feeling of whatever he had just injected himself with moving through his body—just…gone. Another soldier stumbled into the room with an audible grunt.

"This shit doing anything for you yet? I don't feel a thing." Jake uttered, throwing the apple up in the air before catching it. He spared a glance at the man.

Well, well. Didn't think you had it you, Mitch.

Jake had faced B.O.W.s before, and while he didn't relish the thought of having to put down a man he had fought with, he also didn't give much a fuck. His muscles once again protested when he got to his feet. Not in pain, but in anticipation.

She knew him by the scar.

As Sherry ran into the room, she watched for only a moment as the man she had been searching for pinned a humanoid B.O.W. to the wall with a particularly skilled kick.

Good, he can fight. Sherry was grateful for this development. The B.O.W.s she had seen on the way in didn't exactly instill confidence that she could pull this off without having to get her hands dirty.

"Have you already taken your dose?" While her target didn't seem particularly surprised at her arrival, he did seem ill at ease when the body of his comrade suddenly burned itself to ash from the inside out.

"Uhh, yeah. If you want one, you gotta get it downstairs, sweetheart. But – uhh," Jake pointed at the quickly disintegrating remains, "Might be a bit hazardous to your health." As if to punctuate his words, the roar of gunfire suddenly roared in the distance.

Sherry wasn't listening however; her eyes were trained on her watch, counting the beats. When she passed 30 seconds, she knew without a doubt that Simmons' information had been correct.

"Yep, it's you! You've got the antibodies!"

"Should I take that as a compliment?"

"I'll explain on the way," The stones beneath their feet shuddered with a shockwave, and the sound of an explosion sang in the air.

"You might be the key to saving the world, Jake Muller. Now, we have to get going, I promise I'll tell you everyth—" Sherry was cut off by howling war-cries as three B.O.W.s swarmed into the room, machetes and automatic rifles at the ready.

She reacted almost without thinking. Grabbing Jake by the sleeve of his jacket, she forced him behind her. Raising her gun, Sherry fired. A spray of bullets erupted from the muzzle of her pistol; the recoil she thought she had perfectly memorized shot through her arm. Her bullets struck their targets as the force of gun pulverized the muscles of her arm.

And then it was over, and all Sherry could hear was the ringing in her head and the screams of the men she had just gunned down.

At Jake's appreciative whistle, she glanced at him.

"Not bad." His light chuckle died when the bodies began to burn up from within, just like his other fallen comrade.

She stared horrified at him. "I just…killed…three people and you say 'not bad'?"

"Welcome to war, princess. And B.O.W.s aren't people."

"But they used to be." Her eyes were glued to the smoldering remains. Her hands shook and Jake noticed how hard she gripped her gun.

"Hey." He reached out, gently touching her shoulder. The contact shocked her out of whatever it was she was feeling and her attention shifted to him.

Jake lowered his voice before speaking again. "We need to get moving, alright?"

At her nod, he left her side, flung open the garbage chute and jumped down it.

Sherry settled the conflict inside her, realizing that if she was going to complete her objective, she'd have to make peace with what she'd just done—and all the things she'd undoubtedly have to do. Without another thought to the dead men, she slid down the chute after Jake.

A/N: I hope you guys liked it! The next chapter should be up within a few days, and I'll always take any song suggestions.