The next morning Skye was woken yet again by a knock on the door. She groaned as she got out of bed. Her head was pounding a bit from last night's drinking, but she knew from experience that it would go away soon enough, once she drank a couple glasses of water.

"Oh, good morning, sir" Skye yawned as she opened the door to reveal the Director standing there.

"Good morning Skye. I'd like to see you and T-K in my office as soon as possible, please. I've already given him the message. I'll expect to see you both in about thirty minutes."

"Yes sir!"

The Director nodded his approval and walked away without another word. Skye closed her door and quickly threw on a pair of jeans, a black T-shirt, and one of her denim jackets. She ran a brush through her hair and then pulled on her boots and made a beeline for the kitchen. Grant was already there, digging though the fridge. Skye just grabbed a box of cereal out of the cupboard and threw a few handfuls in her mouth, then washed it down with two glasses of water. Grant had found a protein shake and elected to drink it as they walked hand in hand to the Director's office.

Director Coulson didn't keep them waiting when they got there. He was a man of few words, and as such got right to the point.

"I want the two of you to go back to Hillman Street. Skye's work restoring the internet might just be our ticket out of this. You got interrupted last time, but I need you to try again. T-K, you're her backup. Anything happens, you deal with it so Skye can stay focused. Get Fitz to get you set up with radios. Skye, if you get that connection established, you radio me for further instructions. Got it?"

"Yes sir" the couple chimed. The Director nodded in approval, and they took that as their sign to move out.

Just like Skye and Bobbie had done the day before, the two of them stopped in the armoury and loaded up. Skye strapped a holster to each hip, a sheath on each thigh, and attached a small blade to her ankle. Grant had a similar setup, with the addition of a large rifle strapped over one shoulder. Next, they went into the coms room and picked up their radios. Skye also grabbed her laptop from the corner where it had been charging and stuffed it into her backpack.

"Ready?" Grant asked.

"Ready."

When they got to the garage, they both started walking over to their respective vehicles, but both realized at about the same time that the other wasn't following. With a sigh they met in the middle and wordlessly each held out a fist. Once, twice, three times they hit their fist against their open hand. On the third hit Grant held out two fingers while Skye held her hand out flat.

"Ha, Scissors beats paper, Lola it is!" he yelled triumphantly. Skye made a face but climbed into the red jeep anyways.

He drove just as madly as he had the first time, but this time he only had one hand on the steering wheel. The other was holding her hand, his thumb tracing light circles on the back of it. Skye smiled. It was the first time she had felt any true sense of, well, peace wasn't really the right word, nor was happiness… Something in the middle of that, she thought. Whatever it was that she was feeling, she liked it and, when the feeling intensified as she looked over at Grant, her smile grew with it.

When they pulled up in front of the building in which they'd met, Grant hopped out first. He pulled the machete out of the sheath on his thigh and swiftly sliced the head off of the nearest zomb, then spun and did the same to another. Once the immediate area was cleared, he came around Skye's side of the jeep and gallantly opened her door for her. Hand in hand they strode into the high-rise and together they cleared everything in their way. It didn't take long for them to make it up to the 14th floor where the servers were housed. With one swift kick Grant busted the door open, and Skye rushed in while he stayed outside to guard her back.

Once inside Skye quickly ran over to the work station and turned on the computer there. Fortunately the building that they were in ran on solar energy, which kept the server room operational despite the hell outside its doors. As the desktop booted up, Skye also pulled out her new laptop and connected it to the workstation which would allow her to pull the data from the workstation computer and from the servers and save it onto her hard drive, and to transfer some code she had already written on her laptop onto the servers.

Once the workstation was running, it only took a few keystrokes for her to diagnose the problems that had overloaded the server. While it would have been virtually impossible to fix the mess from offsite, the workstation allowed her to implement several override codes which cleared all of the issues in minutes.

Outside, Grant had a couple of zombos wander by, but he dealt with them with as much ease as he had the ones outside. "How's it going?" he called through the door as he finished off another dead-head.

"I'm getting there! I should have this thing up and running in about five more minutes."

She was typing furiously, trying first one thing, then another, and another yet. She was almost there, she could tell, but roadblocks were popping up with every other line of code that she typed.

Finally, with one last stroke of the enter key, there was a significant amount of beeping that came from several of the servers, and she had access. Skye whooped at the top of her lungs. "I got it Grant, I did it!"

"Seriously? Awesome! Get the Director on the radio so we can get out of here!"

She nodded and closed the door once again, turning around to face the computer once again and starting the code transfer from her laptop to the workstation system and then pulling the radio out of her pocket.

"Director? Sir, I have access" Skye said into the walkie-talkie.

"Copy that, Skye. Any open channels of communication on there?"

"Um, looks like England and Australia are open. Islands seem to be doing alright… wait, scratch that, Hawaii is gone. There's a central chat which broadcasts to all survivors. What should I post sir?"

Outside Skye heard Grant fire off a couple of gunshots. "Everything okay?" she called.

"I'm dealing with it! But if we could get out of here sooner rather than later, that would be nice…"

"Skye, post the following message," the Director's voice ordered from the walkie talkie. "Survivors at coordinates 35.7248 and -18.3976. Requesting Assistance."

"… Requesting…. Assistance… Got it. It's sent, sir." The gunshots continued outside the door.

"Good. Anything else you can do right now, Skye?"

"Not really sir. I can stabilize the connection here so that I can get it up and running faster if I come back, but it's not possible to broadcast the signal. I'll need the hardline connection every time I want access."

"Right. Do that, then come back to base. Director, out."

"Yes sir. Skye, out." She closed up her laptop and stashed it back in her bag, then went back to typing a few more lines of code into the workstation computer. "How's it going out there, Grant?"

"Skye, we need to move!"

"Two minutes!"

"One!"

Skye ran over to one of the servers and pushed a few buttons, then hurried back over to the workstation. Her code had done its job and she quickly powered down the computer and threw her bag over her shoulder. She pulled her gun out of her hip holster and took her knife in her other and then threw open the door and whipped the knife at the zomb that was practically on top of Grant.

"Let's go!" she yelled. She didn't have to tell him twice. There were at least six other deados coming towards him, and she estimated about eight corpses littering the ground around him. She shot clear the path to the stairs and they ran down together.

When they were outside Grant tossed her the keys. "You drive" he told her breathlessly. Puzzled, Skye grabbed the keys out of the air and ran around to the driver's side, gunning the engine as soon as Grant was inside too. As soon as the door was shut behind him, he maneuvered himself around and pulled the sunroof open, then stood up on his seat with his torso out the now-open window. His intent became clear pretty fast when he fired up the flame thrower and blasted the hoard that was following them. "Yeahh!" he yelled as he torched the zombies. Only when they were well clear of any pursuit did he sit back down in his seat and shut the roof.

Skye laughed exuberantly. "We did it!" she grinned. "That was crazy. And, is it just me, or does zombo killing always make you hungry and horny too?"

Grant laughed. "I could definitely go for a burger about now…" Skye looked over at him briefly and he winked. She just laughed and turned her attention back to the road.

She didn't see the way that his face fell the moment she looked away.

AN: So there you go! Hope you liked that chapter... The next chapter is also the last one! So please, review and feel free to go and check out some of my other AUs! :)