Author's note: This is it, everyone! The final chapter, the semi-dramatic conclusion to this way-too-long story. Thank you for the reviews, the watches, favorites, alerts, etc etc.

I hope you enjoy the ending, and remember... Zydrate comes in a little glass vial! And, oh yeah, don't forget to TESTIFY!

He'd never been good at goodbyes, but one thing he was superb at was running away. Fleeing anything like the police were hot on his trail. He'd woken up and felt cold, unadulterated horror at what he'd done.

He'd slept with her after she said she loved him. That meant something. There would be consequences to fit the action. He might as well have anchored himself to her, and while a day ago the thought of being with her and her alone had haunted him in the best way, right now he was panicked. Shilo naked in his bed, expecting something he wasn't sure he wanted to give, even if he could. Tripping, stumbling out of the bed, a fucking coward. He shoved his limbs inside their vestments.

She'd be cold, waking up alone and bare. He covered her with a blanket and did the only thing he reasonably could. He fled. When he next became conscious of where his legs had brought him, he was in a dumpster, crouched between stuffed, ripe-smelling bags of garbage with his head in his hands.

What a fuck up. He couldn't very well go back, not with his head muddled with this uncertainty and terror. If he had her, truly and inexplicably won her, and then grew bored and left her after a few months, then it would be best for him not to go back at all. If, on the other hand, leaving was the bigger mistake, then... then... then it was too late to do anything about it, anyway.

A fly zipped about in the dark, buzzing desperately, trying to find a way out. He clapped a gloved hand around it tightly and looked into the hollow in his hand, between thumb and tightly curled fingers. A creature beat its wings against the cage, yearning for freedom. He asked the bug what he should do. It, of course, said nothing, and he let it go. It decided the appetizing trash wasn't worth the danger he posed, and Graverobber was left without a fly to speak to.

"Sad," he said. "and not helpful in the slightest."

An hour's contemplation later and Graverobber arrived at the unhappy conclusion that sleeping with Shilo may have been the mistake. Being with Shilo, however, was not and never would be. She was an awesome kid- woman, he amended, thanks to him. He adored her so much he wanted to tear off down the streets screaming her name. Not that it would undo what he'd done and bring him back to her.

Two things, compounded, meant he was in a terrible pickle: sleeping with her, and then running off rather than dealing with the ramifications. He chose her, now and forever, and had to find a way back to her. Because she would be, he had no doubt, absent from his bed if he returned at this point. Absent, angry, and rightfully so.

How to solve this, how to mend this situation, he had no idea. Grand gestures seemed inappropriate, yet he couldn't wait this out as he had for previous arguments. Distance was not what she needed after vowing her love to him and giving herself over to him, trusting him with her body... No, making up for this transgression, for all previous transgressions, required a genuine sentiment.

Shilo played with the fabric of her dress, waiting for Amber to speak. The woman sat at her desk, sipping tea through sparkly purple lips. They'd sat in silence, the elder summoning the younger not ten minutes after she'd arrived back at the estate. Shilo had glumly anticipated a lecture, or a good, hard slap. Instead, she'd been pushed into a chair and offered tea. Her hand shook too horribly for her to drink it, and it spilled.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said to the maid who quickly dropped to mop up the drink from the floor. "That was an accident."

The lady smiled briefly in response and whisked the cup away before more damage could be done. Amber set her cup down delicately and held out her hand; one of her henchgirls produced an electronic file. She looked through it, a frown spreading like a rash. Shilo fidgeted.

On the plus side, it was pretty much impossible to think about Graverobber when Amber was being dramatic and terrifying. Except she just had, and she huffed. Did that mean she didn't love him, because he'd left? Did that mean it was mistake? He always had an explanation, one that totally trumped her insecurities and showed how limited her perceptions of any given situation often were. She did have limitations, and it had nothing to do with her health. She was just seventeen. Empathy was not her strong suit, probably because she'd never had to deal with other people.

Waking up and feeling that panic in the moment before realizing he was gone had been weird, because she'd liked the sex, and that wasn't a mistake. She'd wanted it as much as he had, and it did make her feel different, more grown up and more fond of him. But she'd still freaked out, that it had actually happened and she would have to live with that reality. Was it possible he'd felt the same? It wouldn't be an insult; he'd enjoyed it, obviously. Being with her like that, like he'd- like they'd both wanted. Suppose he'd panicked, wondered if it was a bad idea, and handled that the only way he knew how: running.

That was exactly what she'd done. It was! She'd woken up, jumped to the conclusion that he'd abandoned her, in spite of everything, and gotten out of there as fast as she could. It stood to reason that he might have done the same thing, for similar reasons. Fear didn't negate attachment, it just made them human.

He said he'd always come to her. How did that poem go? Though hell may bar the way. She calmed herself and thought about how he'd wrapped his arms around her, how he'd said she was beautiful and that he wanted her with him. She wanted him to mean forever, but that would be girlish dreaming. She wondered if he could ever love her like she loved him.

"Where were you?" Amber asked coldly, snapping the teenager from her daydreams. "Out whoring?"

She offered a noncommittal shrug. "How was your meeting, Amber?"

"Our meeting." She threw the file onto the desk, knocking her teacup over. Her cutting glare halted a maid from righting the spill. "Took me weeks to set up. I could have used you there. You're a strategic partner."

"You mean pawn. A chess piece," Shilo said sullenly. "The operative word is 'used' and I'm sick of it."

"Stupid little shit," the woman said, shaking her head. She left her desk and walked to an enormous armchair, dropping across it. She was high and weaving slightly. "I'm a manipulative bitch, but I ain't stupid. You want to know what the meeting was?"

"No," she said, but Amber continued talking over her, kicking her leg in the air, seemingly to admire her glittery black boots.

"Teleconference, the kind with voice and video that cost a thousand credits an hour. Not a local call," she informed the girl with the air of one imparting significant information. Shilo couldn't read a deeper meaning beyond the words, and what wasn't a local call? The outskirts of the city?

"What do you mean?" she asked uncertainly.

"Word of your exploits have gone a long way, baby," Amber crooned, pursing her lips. "GeneCo heard from the president. Know where he lives?"

"I- I didn't know we had a president."

"No, guess I should've expected that. You're so fucking ignorant," she snickered. "He lives far away. Over the water."

"That's not possible. There's nothing out there," Shilo said, confused. She'd seen where the world ended, and besides, she would've heard something. Graverobber knew everything worth knowing, and he'd told her there was nothing. "I've seen the end of the world. There's nothing but bodies."

"There are a lot of bodies, it's true. Shi, you read a lot, you know-" She paused to snap her fingers and shriek for ice water. A girl jumped twitchily and left the room to fetch water for the boss. She didn't continue until it was in her hand, and even then she complained about the number of ice cubes. Apparently, five was the perfect number. "You live on Sanitarium Island."

"I know..."

"Try to keep up with me. I know it's tough," Amber said. "This island houses how many millions of people, and all those people have to be fed and provided for. That means abundant resources. You think this place is self sufficient? You think we'd last a month all on our own? Fat lot I could do with my gold without food to eat!"

She digested this idea, adjusting all that she knew accordingly. There was a world out there, one she'd never seen or heard of. The plague... This island had either been isolated to contain the spread, or a separate cataclysm had wrecked the bridges after the entire world became, for lack of a better world, infected. GeneCo stayed here, ruling the island and influencing the world, trading its gold for the outsider's resources.

"What did he want with me?" she asked.

"What do you think? What everyone wants: to meet you." She laughed. "It's expensive like you wouldn't believe."

"Because no one ever travels between the mainland and here?" Shilo guessed.

"Exactly. There's enough fuel for all the travel we want, I guess, but there's fear of cross contamination or some shit."

"But you arranged it, right? You'll fly him out here?" She leaned anxiously toward Amber, hanging on every word like one of those ridiculous journalists.

"No, no. You don't get it. He wouldn't be leaving. You would. That takes care of my problems with you, your problems with my family..." She smiled contentedly, true peace on her lovely, designed features. "Think of it, Shilo. It would fix everything."

"What?" Shilo choked out. "Leave my home? I can't!"

"Oh? What's so important here?" With great effort, she got up and touched Shilo's shoulder without violence or sensuality. She hugged her around the neck. "Think of it. You could make your father's dreams come true. His daughter, escaping this depraved place for a chance at truly making a difference. You could change the world, Shilo, like you wanted to."

She relaxed. It was the right thing to do. She could feel it in her bones. "Would I ever get to come back?"

"I don't think so." Amber let go, stood back. "If you leave, that's it. I won't be hauling you back if you get homesick. And why would you?"

"Most of the time, I don't want to remember," Shilo said. "and when I do, it's as if I'm lying to myself."

"That's right. There's nothing for you here. Dead end jobs, your daddy's legacy, and me. Face it. If you wanted a family, you won't find one here. I'll never accept you. You're my competition," she hissed sweetly. "My brothers will ruin you. Pavi's itching for your face, and you'd be lucky if he stopped there."

"Okay. I'll do it." Uncertainly, she asked, "How do I know this isn't a trick to make me disappear?"

"I am making you disappear, but why kill you? That'd be a waste of a smashing body and mind. You'll remember when I was nice to you, if you end up in power, unlikely as I think that is." She adjusted her wristphone and played a snippet of recorded conversation from the night before.

A man's voice, authoritative and clear, declared that Shilo Wallace was creating a stir in the general population as well as his own household and he wanted her to do a tour of the country and speak before Congress. He sounded real.

"Is there surgery out there?"

"Everywhere. Why would anyone want to be themselves when they could be better?" Amber replied.

It was an obvious answer to everybody but Shilo. That was one of the good things she'd gotten from her captivity. Thank you, Nathan, for keeping me safe from this obsession with perfection, she thought to herself.

He was lucky. The graveyard air still carried the sweet smell of a funeral: incense and cheap flowers cast with reverence over the coffins. Like cheap sentiment would deter him. Graverobber kicked the lid off and hauled the body out. It had been neither freshly nor cleanly killed; maggots crawled out of the considerable incision in the man's gut. He'd been very efficiently disemboweled. Had to have been done by a Repo Man, from the look of that top notch work. Whistling, he unfolded his kit, plucked out his knife, and cut the body bag open to expose the face. Next came the needle, smacked up the corpse's right nostril into his skull. He watched the Zydrate flow into it, blue and clear and alluring, then roughly pulled it out. One vial down… And since Amber Sweet, the new head of Geneco, had the patrols look the other way at his preferred sites, he could take his sweet time gathering up the rest as he replenished his supply.

But as he moved on to an unburied body, he noticed movement.

"Who's there?"

A little girl was sitting on steps leading to a crypt. She didn't look away or move when he met her glance. Oh. Not a little girl at all. He ambled toward her.

"Hey, kid." He pulled a vial off of his belt and waved it in front of her. "You ran off so fast that night, you forgot this."

Shilo Wallace had a book open on her lap and… was that a sandwich in cellophane? He smirked. She furrowed her brow and broke the gaze, looking down at her book.

"What, don't I even get a 'hello?'"

She stared at the page too long for her to really be reading it. "You're disgusting. Don't you even care? That was someone's… father, for all you know."

He pocketed the Zydrate with a frustrated sigh. "It's my job. I happen to like it. Why so sensitive, angel? You're having dinner in a graveyard, and you didn't seem to mind my help filling a little glass vial a few nights ago."

She slammed the book shut. "You were only there because Rotti was paying you."

He scratched his head. "You'll have to explain that one to me. I thought that bitch Amber's bodyguards hauled me off and tied me up. After," he said, holding up a finger for emphasis, "she cleaned me out."

"Ugh."

"You don't want the Zydrate?"

She shook her head. "I'll never touch that stuff. Ever."

He paused. Graverobber wasn't stupid; he'd read the Evening Slice. The Wallace girl wasn't sick, just scared and very alone, now. She was hunched over pitifully. "What are you doing here?"

"Family. My mom," she explained, looking up at him. "The house is too quiet."

"You'll manage. We all do." He put his hands in his pockets.

"Yeah, I know." She scuffed her boot on the ground. Adorable. "There's a tunnel through here to my house."

He smirked. "Word of advice, kid: Don't give strangers directions to your house."

Her eyes widened, as if it had truly just occurred to her that it would be a bad idea. "Well, it locks," she tried. Now that he thought about it, he did remember her trying to run in through that door the night they met. She'd been locked out.

She put her book down and hauled herself to her feet and said coldly, "It's late."

"On the contrary, it is very early. Why so cold, little one?"

She glared at him, gathering her things up in her arms and cradling them against her chest. In a voice as icy as if he'd killed someone, she hissed, "You... you know what you did!"

"... I saved you. Twice."

"Mom," she said bitterly.

"Come again?"

"You- you talked me into getting the Zydrate, I didn't want to, and you told me to." Oh, oh dear. She was crying, snivelling. The next words were said in the most heartwrenching, mewling squeak he'd ever heard: "You made me do that to my mommy."

His brain froze. Anger. Yeah, he hadn't felt that in a while. "What?"

"The body, the one you got that Zydrate from," and Graverobber noticed how good the word of the cure he peddled sounded from her mouth, "it was my mom. You dug her up and made me..."

Rotti Largo. The body he'd stolen from the chair behind the glass wall. No. If he wasn't already dead, he'd kill the bastard himself. They'd both been duped. He'd been fooled by omission, and she'd been tricked into thinking... what, that it was all his fault? He couldn't have known. He forced himself to stay calm, retain that cool mask.

"I didn't know," he said with a shrug.

"She looks just like me," she said through tightly gritted teeth in a valiant effort to keep him from hearing the wobbly sobs tearing at her voice. "You made me do that to my mom."

He turned his head and squinted. Yeah, the resemblance was pretty striking, now that he thought about it. She couldn't honestly blame him for not seeing it before; he had been upside down and half blind with fear. "I did not force you to do anything. You suggested it, remember? Yes, I stole the body. I wasn't told who it was and so, unaware of the identity, I did what I was paid to do, Amber's guards knocked me out, and I woke up hanging from the ceiling."

"I don't care! I lost everything." She buried her head in her arms.

"Kid." He put a hand on her shoulder. She flinched. "Kid, let me make it up to you."

She sniffed. "How?"

"Some company? You look like you could use a friend."

It had all started there. He'd offered his friendship and shown her around the city some, but neither of them could have predicted where their acquaintanceship would end up. Life was maddeningly unsimple like that. He broke into her room at the Largo's again and she wasn't there. She'd vacated, taking with her all the objects she'd personalized the space with. No bugs, or teddy bears, or posters of Blind Mag. He sat on the bed. How was he supposed to find her now?

"She's not here," Amber called from the doorway. She gathered her mocha dark hair over her shoulder and looked a bit sad, mournful.

"Well, duh." He stretched. "Where is she?"

"Why should I tell you? You're mean to me. How do I know you won't make her cry, too?" She approached and touched his cheek; he smiled at her. "Convince me you deserve to know what is going on."

He seized her shoulders and threw her onto the bed, effectively pinning her body while granting her arms limited mobility. "Check my trousers if you want proof."

"That's original. Shouldn't we close the door first?" she said, licking her lips.

"Very funny, Miss Sweet."

Deciding he meant it, she touched his legs, felt the conspicuously empty holsters. She searched a bit frantically. "Where's your damn Z?" she shrieked. "You always got some, dear, so where are you hiding it? Give it to me, gimme!"

Her hands were scrabbling, nails digging against the fabric. He sprang to his feet. "I scored some earlier today and sold it. I'm out." She looked ready to lunge at him in desperation. Amber had her own supply of GeneCo grade Zydrate, but everyone knew that was hopelessly ineffective compared to Street Z.

"You mean it, huh?" She smoothed her hair and scowled. "Fine. I'm sending her where she has a chance. No one here gets to be anybody for long; you should know that by now. Out of this place, she could survive, and she'll be out of my hair."

"And where is this place, Amber?" he asked impatiently.

"Off of this island forever, so she can see the world, like my father promised she could." She examined her nails, casting her heavily made-up eyes down to hide her sudden sadness. He took in stride that there was something past the end of the world, and Shilo was going there. "You want better for her, don't you? Or will you selfishly insist on being that albatross around her pretty, white neck?"

"Yes, I want better for her. I don't think sending her away all alone is proper, call me old-fashioned. And the albatross was good luck until some idiot killed it." She stared at him blankly. "It's from a poem, Amber."

She rolled her eyes. "If you want to go to her, be my guest. You'll have to be quick. The 'copter's departing soon."

"As in, helicopter, the death contraption that flies?" he said. She smirked. "Where?"

"The roof of GeneCo Towers. Take Pavi's ID. The freak left it in my dress." She took it out of her pocket and tossed it to him. He headed for the window. She whined, "Graverobber, where will I get the glow from now?"

"Princess, you could get it yourself." He grinned. "Been swell knowing you, Amber."

The idea pleased her; a wide smile stretched between her sweet and wrinkled the skin around her eyes. "Give her a kiss for me, darling."

Amber Sweet as a graverobber. Why not? Stranger things had happened.

He ran the whole way there, and the elevator couldn't go fast enough. Sure enough, a red and ancient-looking helicopter was on the roof. Shilo watched with interest as a pilot pointed out the various parts of the craft to her. It was mercilessly cold up here, and she was bundled up in a sweater with the hood pulled up.

"Shilo!" he said, loud considering he was out of breath. Hands on his knees, he panted. Shit, he was really out of shape. "Kid!"

She turned, registered a smile. He jogged to catch up with her.

"You're leaving?" he said.

"I am. Forever, according to Amber." A weight looked to have been taken from her shoulders; she was finally and truly free. But did this escape into the future include him? He wasn't so sure, standing here, if she would be better off without any ties to her former, troubled life. "It means leaving it all behind. Except... you helped me figure out this world. It stands to reason that I could use your help for whatever comes next."

"You sure? That would mean you're stuck with me," he said softly.

"I think I could cope," she teased. She stood on tiptoe to kiss him tenderly. When they broke apart, she murmured close to his mouth, "By the way, you are kind of amazing in bed. Um, forget the kind of. I loved it."

"There's more where that came from, Shilo." He was all prepared to kiss her again, but the pilot cleared his throat and they stopped.

"Him. We're taking him with us," Shilo said, pointing at Graverobber. He beamed.

"Yes, miss. Is that why you had us waiting around?" the man laughed, and she blushed, offering no response. That was confirmation enough to put a bounce in Graverobber's step. They took their seats, closed the door, and the blades of the helicopter started their noisy motion.

Graverobber buckled Shilo in, setting his arm around her. "I've never been in one of these!" she yelled over the noise.

"Neither have I!" he yelled back.

She peered out the window, and since her attention was currently elsewhere, he slyly moved the necklace from his pocket to hers. He'd sold his Zydrate, all for cash, and bought a necklace identical to the one he'd seen on that wealthy corpse. Shilo wouldn't want an offering stolen from the dead.

They left the ground. He'd be presumed dead by the cops and the Zydrate Support Network. Amber would sell some magnificently impossible story about Shilo's fate, and that was that. The girl's eyes grew tired after watching the outside world for some time, and she dozed off resting on his shoulder. Pleasant dreams made her smile and sigh, quite different from the thrashing tumult of her long gone nightmares. She'd gone through hell to find her peace.

They'd both earned this. They had a chance for a new life together.

"Help me, girl," he said quietly. "Terrifying though the thought may be, I love you." And with the moonlight kissing her skin, she was beautiful and bright as morning. "Till the end of the world."