Before Time Runs Out:

The Cave:

Anna was sitting with Grace in her lap when the sound of commotion could be heard coming from the tunnel. She got off the bed and pulled out the small hide-a-bed and made Grace lay on it before pushing it back in. The bed didn't have anything but a small piece of foam that could be slept on. So when Anna pushed the bed back in, Grace had at least six inches of head room. She stayed quiet as Anna extinguished the lantern light and grabbed something from the cupboard that had been set up.

Grace assumed it was a weapon of some sort but because she really couldn't see, she could do nothing as whoever was in the tunnel came running out at Anna. Anna never had a chance to fight back as she hit the ground hard. Grace stopped herself from crying out by biting the insides of her cheek, she could see Anna lying on the ground as a man turned the lantern back on and bent down next to her. He touched her neck to make sure she had a pulse before looking for something in his bag that he had with him. She saw the man pull out a knife and bend over Anna and noticed that the man looked oddly like Anna herself. She presumed it was a relative of some sort, but why would one of Anna's relatives want her dead.

The man moved down to her waist and pulled her shirt up, where the bullets had entered. And then it all made sense, the man was after the bullets that had lodged themselves in Anna. He was looking to remove them by himself and be long gone before her father and Uncle Steve could get to them. She saw him cut into Anna and then looked away. She made a mental note to tell her father and Uncle Steve what the man looked like. When she turned her head back, the man was done cutting the bullets out of Anna. He stood up and left the way he had come, making sure to turn off the lantern as he went out.

Ten minutes later, Grace pushed the bed out and went to Anna. She felt for a pulse and was relieved to find one. As Grace sat in the dark, holding Anna's head in her lap, the sound of more footsteps could be heard in the tunnel leading to the cave where the two were. She hoped it was her father and Uncle Steve and knew that if it wasn't, she wasn't going to be able to get herself back into the hide-a-bed and rolled back under. She held onto Anna and grabbed the weapon that had lain useless as she was knocked unconscious and cut open.

Anna was breathing slowly and as the first of the people came out of the tunnel, flashlight in hand, Grace let her own breath out that she didn't even know she was holding.

"Danno!" Grace yelled as she ran to her father. She hugged him briefly before going back to Anna.

"Some man came before you got here and cut Anna open. I didn't watch but I saw his face. He looked like Anna, like he was a relative. She made me hide in the hide-a-bed so he wouldn't also hurt me. She's alive but she's breathing slowly."

"Can you tell us what he looked like Gracie?" Kono asked, pulling the child away from Anna as Chin and Steve bent down to examine her. They lit the lantern again and also grabbed a few other lanterns, turning them on as well.

"He looked like he might have been her brother. He cut her open to take the bullets from her. He didn't see me and he left the way he came, out the tunnel you just came in. If I saw him again, I could point him out to you. Danno, I wasn't scared, well at first I was, but then Anna told me everything was going to be okay and I got to talk to you. She was in so much pain."

"Where did you get this weapon Monkey?"

"Anna was holding it before the man attacked her. She took it from one of the cupboards. She said this was her special place, the place that she could go to when things got too hectic in the city, when she just wanted to get away. I told her we should all come up here every few weeks while we were eating lunch. When she got off the phone with you she came over to me and got me all comfortable before pulling me into her to keep me as warm as possible. She didn't want to mess the bed up just in case someone other than you came through the tunnel."

"For someone who just went through what you went through, you are very talkative."

"I have to be Kono. At the moment Anna can't talk, so I'm her mouth. If that makes sense to any of you."

"It does Monkey."

"Did you call mommy Danno?"

"Not yet, I wanted to make sure you were okay first. I told myself that I would make sure that you and Anna were back in the city before I called her."

"How is she Uncle Steve?"

"We need to get her to a hospital. She's lost a lot of blood and I don't think I can stop it. Whoever that guy was, he didn't care what he cut just as long as he got those bullets out of her. Grace, do you know what kind of knife he was using?"

"It looked like a steak knife; you know like the ones we use when you host a BBQ Uncle Steve."

"I was afraid of that. Kono, get Gracie out of here, back to the cars. Danny go with her. Chin and I will stay here till we have the bleeding under control and then we'll follow you down."

"Got it boss; come on Grace, let's get you out of here."

"It really is really beautiful here, despite all that has happened. She seemed to be at peace here when it was just the two of us, before we got back to the quad and before the shooting began. If it hadn't been for Anna, I would have gotten shot, but she stepped in front of the bullets, protecting me like I was her own, like she had somehow done it before. I got the feeling that this wasn't the first time something like this had happened to her. She wouldn't talk about it after getting off the phone with you Uncle Steve; it was like it was something that she didn't ever want to think about again. But this had brought it back to the surface."

"Thanks for the information Gracie. How about you get down the mountain and back to the cars and we'll follow in a few minutes?"

"Okay, but just don't let her die. She saved my life."

"We'll do our best Gracie," Steve turned towards Danny, "have a chopper waiting when we get down. I don't think she'll make it if there's only an ambulance. And next time you pick a girlfriend we all approve of, do a background check on her."

"I did, nothing came up in her background that screamed 'someone wants you dead'."

"We'll talk more once were at the hospital. And you should have Grace checked out as well, just to be on the safe side."

"Dually noted."

Danny grabbed Grace's backpack as he and Kono escorted his daughter out the tunnel they had come through to get to the pair. Grace seemed to be sort of in a shock like state, not really comprehending what was going on, yet understanding what was going on at the same time. Kono and Danny knew that if they didn't get Anna to a hospital soon, she would die of blood loss. If the man that came before them hadn't cut her open, she may have been able to survive an ambulance ride, but he had and they needed to get a chopper to there location as soon as possible to ensure that Anna would survive.