Helen finished her third set of lunges and headed to the food shelves to pick out her breakfast. Over the past weeks she had been there (2 weeks, 3 days, she believed), she had developed a kind of routine. Exercise, food. Mental exercises, more food. Second set of physical exercises, food again. Brief sponging off of her body, rinsing of her battered clothing, bed.

As she looked at the shelves, she added number 283 to her mental to-do list assuming she ever got out of this hole and back to The Sanctuary. (283. Strike all canned fruits and canned meat like substances from the Sanctuary grocery list. The fact that neither had ever appeared in the Sanctuary's kitchen didn't really matter. As far as Helen was concerned, she never wanted to see any of it again.)

The shelves were getting low, she noticed again. As a result, she chose only a can of peaches for her breakfast. The room was dim; the result of her unscrewing some of the light bulbs in the hope that she would be able to keep light longer. Being trapped in this room in complete darkness was something she couldn't even bear to think about.

Despite knowing logically that she was eventually going to die down here, already buried in the earth with the rotting corpse of her former lover, some part of her apparently refused to give up and accept that fact. She ate, she drank, she conserved, she exercised, she slept.

"Human resilience is an amazing thing," she said aloud. She made an effort not to talk to herself, but she still forced herself to use her voice a few times a day, simply to prevent herself from forgetting how.

Spooning up the heavily sweetened peaches, she wondered about the previous night. As she drifted off to sleep, she woke with a start, sure that there was someone else in the room. She had screwed the light bulb back into the fixture near her bed, to find that she had illuminated the walking corpse of John Druitt, approaching her with decomposing hands outstretched.

Uncharacteristically, she had frozen, cowered in the bed, whimpering.

"You thought you could be rid of me that easily, did you, Helen?" the corpse rasped. He lunged at her, and she jumped backward, striking her head sharply against the wall. The apparition disappeared.

It was over an hour before Helen could force herself out of bed to check on the well wrapped body she had dragged into the bathroom and somehow forced into the tub all those days ago. The smell of decomposing flesh leaked through the plastic lined fabric of the shower curtain she had used to wrap him in.

It wasn't the first time she had hallucinated since being trapped down here. She knew that the combination of poor diet, lack of sleep, lack of stimulation and the noxious gasses rising from the body were causing the visions. She had seen Daniel, even spoken to him, before he vanished when she reached out for him. Ashley and Will had made an appearance, seemingly searching the room for her but unable to see her. Tesla and Watson had turned up, "tsked" over John's body and disappeared.

After she ate, Helen worked her way through a serious of mental challenges she had created years ago as part of a test for "genius" abnormals. She forced herself to work through them step by step, even working on variations for some of the more elaborate math problems. Then she reviewed past cases, cases where people had gotten hurt or abnormals had escaped, replaying them in her mind, looking for the flaws, things that could have been done differently.

Her second meal of the day consisted of a tin of pears and a can of cocktail "weenies."

Sighing, Helen took the spoon and the empty tins into the washroom and was rinsing them when she heard an unfamiliar noise. She froze, dropping into a crouch, as three figures appeared in the middle of the room. They were wearing desert camouflage and carrying P-90s, American issue military weapons. All three of them had breathing apparatus strapped to their faces and large oxygen tanks on their backs.

"We're safe, Hammond," an unfamiliar male voice with a Southern twinge. "We'll report in a bit."

"Copy that, Team Alpha."

Helen frowned. This was the first time her hallucinations had included strangers.

One of the figures lifted some kind of device to its face. "Air is safe to breathe."

Daniel? That sounded like Daniel's voice. Helen slumped a bit. Clearly her visions were back on track.

Her guess that it was Daniel in the room was confirmed when he lifted off the breathing unit and settled a baseball cap on his head, looking around the dim room. The two others removed their masks as well, revealing Ashley and a man Helen didn't recognize.

"Whew! Does anyone else smell that?" he exclaimed, confirming that he was the source of the Southern accent.

"Decomp," Ashley said flatly. She looked terrible, Helen thought. Hair lank, black circles under her eyes. She was swamped in the fatigues. She had always been small, but somehow she seemed even smaller now.

Daniel said nothing, Helen noticed from her position in the darkened bathroom, but his jaw tightened as he stared around him.

"All right, team," said the Southern accent. "Fan out and conduct a search."

Daniel and Ashley both looked at him. "Cam, it's a pretty small room. There isn't much 'fanning out' to be done."

The man Daniel had identified as Cam shrugged, looking somewhat shamefaced. "Okay, okay. Ashley, you check the bed area. Daniel, you check over there," he waved vaguely in the direction of the bathroom. "I'll….um….I'll check out the shelving."

Ashley and Daniel exchanged glances and shrugged. "Got it," Ashley said. She stalked over to the bed and began pulling it apart.

Daniel proceeded more cautiously toward the dark doorway in front of him. He flicked on the light mounted on his weapon. Helen flinched away from it from her position behind the sink, a movement Daniel apparently noticed, for he focused the light, and the weapon, directly on her.

"Oh my God," he whispered, bringing the Southern man and Ashley to his side. "Helen?"

"Mom?" Ashley added.

Daniel dropped into a crouch to match Helen's, waving the stranger back and motioning for Ashley to move behind him.

"Helen, its Daniel. Daniel and Ashley. We've come to get you."

Helen looked from one to another, to the curious face of the strange man hovering just outside the doorway. "You aren't real," she muttered. She felt tears on her face as she desperately wished they were.

"What? Mom, it's me!" Ashley burst out, making a movement towards her. Helen shrank back and Daniel held up his arm to stop the younger woman. Helen could almost see him thinking.

"Helen, I'm sure you have been hallucinating, seeing all sorts of strange things. I know it's hard to tell fantasy from reality after that happens. But I need you to think with me for a few minutes, okay?"

Helen nodded mutely. If that kept her from being alone for a few minutes, it was worthy of her attention.

Daniel handed his weapon to Ashley and sat down on the floor in the doorway. The other man dropped a lit flashlight on the floor at Daniel's side, illuminating the room slightly. "Helen, I assume that you have seen Ashley and me in your visions? And maybe Will or Henry, other people that you know?"

She nodded again.

Daniel waved behind him and the strange man moved forward, arms resting on top of his P-90.

"Helen, you've near seen him before, have you?"

"No," she said weakly.

"This is Lt. Colonel Cameron Mitchell of the United States Air Force. He's a friend of mine, we work together, and he came with to help get you out of here. You haven't hallucinated any strangers before, have you?"

"No." Her voice was a little stronger, she noticed.

"Ma'am, pleasure to meet you," Cam said, smiling and giving her a jaunty wave with one hand. "Love to get to know you better once we get outta here."

At Daniel's gesture, he backed away, still smiling.

"And however you hallucinated about me, I'm sure it wasn't dressed in fatigues and carrying that," Daniel continued, waving at the gun Ashley was holding.

"No, that's true." Helen was thinking now. Hallucinations tended to be either completely fantastical or included elements of a person's reality. Thus far, she had experienced only familiar elements, although John's walking corpse was definitely fantastical. She really couldn't qualify Daniel's appearance in military gear that way though.

"Helen, I'm not a hallucination. Ashley and Cam aren't hallucinations either. We're real, we're here, and we're ready to get you out of here whenever you want to leave."

Helen rose from her position behind the sink, staring at Daniel, who remained seated on the floor. He slowly stood up as she approached him. She reached out her hand, touching his face and giving a slight gasp when she actually touched flesh and he didn't vanish. Stepping past him, a hand on his shoulder, she grasped Ashley's hand and found herself engulfed in a hug with her daughter, the weapon slung over her chest digging uncomfortably into both of them.

Her face buried in Ashley's shoulder, she heard Cam speaking.

"Hammond, this is Mitchell, we are ready for retrieval with one extra passenger. Please confirm."

"Confirmed, Colonel Mitchell. Four to return to the Hammond. Please ensure the new passenger is tagged."

"Excuse me, ma'am," said the younger man. She unfolded herself from her hug with Ashley, but found herself holding both Ashley and Daniel tightly by the hands. Cameron clipped something to the deteriorating sleeve of her blouse. "You're going to need that."

Helen looked at it curiously.

"Hang on, Helen; we're going to be taking a little ride." Daniel smiled at her, raising her hand to his lips and pressing a kiss on it.

Helen glanced around the room that had been her prison and smiled. "I'm ready whenever you are, Daniel."

"Hammond, this is Mitchell, four to beam up." Daniel glared at him, and Mitchell shrugged. "What, like you haven't always wanted to say it?"

The room vanished before Helen's eyes and she materialized in what seemed to be the bridge of some kind of futuristic ship, facing a blonde woman wearing her face.

What she did next caused a great deal of panic, but seemed perfectly reasonable at the time.

She fainted.