A/N: The penultimate chapter, with the last one to be posted later tonight. Hope you enjoy!

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My eyes open twice before I'm ready to actually wake up, but the darkness and empty rock in front of me allow me to drift away again without difficulty. The third time, once I realise that I've been staring at the wall for several minutes, I roll over onto my back, twisting my head around. Lily is right there, raising her head at my movement and smiling. I'm not sure what I've done to deserve the expression.

"What time is it?" I ask, my voice croaky and rough.

"Early morning," she replied. "You slept all of yesterday. I think you woke up in the night, but you went off again fairly quickly."

It was meaningless noise to me. Very cautiously, I sat up, the pain in my injured shoulder making itself known again.

"I've got some stuff to bandage your arm," Lily said, reading my expression correctly. "I didn't want to wake you since you weren't sleeping on it, but we should give it some support now. And if we go down to the river, we can get some cold water on your face, though it might be a bit late for that to be effective."

I raised my left hand to my face, feeling the swelling she was referring to. My eye was mostly unaffected, but my cheekbone was very tender.

"Sounds like a good idea," I said.

"What else hurts?" Lily asked, moving to offer me a hand up.

I took it, heaved myself up, and groaned. "Pretty much everything," I said. Other than my shoulder and my face, the back of my left thigh seemed to be the worst of it. I could practically feel the indentation left by a ferocious boot. I was also sure that there were bruises over the rest of my limbs, and up my ribs as well.

"Yeah," I said, finishing my assessment and giving Lily a rueful smile. "Basically everything."

She didn't smile back, her eyes full of sympathy. "Come on then," she said. "You had a lot of visitors as well."

"Really?"

"Don't sound so surprised."

I was surprised. After so long away from the apes, I'd forgotten that I'd once had a place among them, that some might count me as a friend. I instantly wondered how Oren and Jasmine were doing, as well as Tinder and Lake.

Following Lily through a maze of tunnels and caves, I looked around with far more awareness than I had done during the reverse trip. It wasn't, perhaps, a natural habitat for the apes, but they'd clearly made it their own and from the leaves and tree boughs I saw, they'd made it feel like home. Eyes watched us from all sides, peering around the rocks, halted in the passages, but although I gave nods of greeting, I didn't say anything, either vocally or by signing, and they were likewise silent.

When we emerged out of the tunnels, I came to a stop, blinking in the bright light reflected off the water. The open plateau was slightly shielded from the main, noisy waterfall, but the river was clearly audible, rushing along below and throwing shimmering light over the roof and walls from the high sun. Clearly, it wasn't as early in the morning as I'd thought Archer had meant.

"Sit." Archer interrupted my observations by pointing to an outcrop of rock. "I'll be right back." She hurried away, across the empty space.

Ignoring her instructions, I walked past the rock, to the very edge of the open area, where a strung bridge of logs allowed me to see further around the valley. The opposite cliff was sheer and high, though not as high as the one above my head appeared to be. Off to the right, a series of tunnels through the rock arched above the path out to the forest, and below the river raged past, a strong current flowing away. It was a strong, defensible position. I hated that I thought of it as such, and hated even more that the thought was necessary.

"I told you to sit!" Lily's disapproving tone made me smile, but as I turned towards her, and the place she'd expected me to be, I saw something else that made my smile widen until my cheek ached.

Caesar was waiting for me, having clearly been watching me assess his new home, and Blue Eyes was right behind him. I walked forwards far more eagerly now and would have embraced them both again if Lily hadn't seized my wrist and dragged me down onto the outcrop of rock. I scowled at the top of her head as she rummaged through a pile of cloth she'd dumped at my feet, and Blue Eyes gave a long panting laugh. As Lily manoeuvred my right arm into the position she wanted and began wrapping it in place, I had to content myself with watching the two apes saunter over and plant themselves onto the rock close by.

"I have questions," I said bluntly, wincing as Archer tugged on my shoulder.

Caesar nodded, but my eyes turned instead to Archer.

"How long have you been here?" I asked.

She bit her lip, even as she held up a cloth soaked in cold water and pressed it to my cheek. "Since about 24 hours after I left you."

My flinch had nothing to do with the chilly water on my face. For several seconds, I didn't look at any of them, but I couldn't keep my accusatory gaze away from Caesar for long. "You didn't tell me," I stated quietly.

He shook his head. "Didn't want to distract you," he said. "After you said she was alright, didn't think you needed to know."

I blinked, thinking back to that hazy period. He had come to see me, asking questions about Archer. I'd thought he'd been concerned for me. Apparently not.

There was a loaded silence, but I was too tired, and I'd been away from them for too long, to be willing to hold a grudge. Caesar had been doing what he'd thought was best. And I probably would have been distracted by the knowledge that Lily had been in close contact with the apes, especially back then, when I'd trusted her so little. She was watching me, almost waiting for me to look at her, and didn't shy away from my gaze. Her huge eyes, set slightly too far apart for her small space, shocked me once again with their bright blue colour.

"Alright," I said, looking back up at Caesar. "What about Red? What happened to him? Does he know about this place?"

He blinked, clearly trying to keep up with my bouncing thoughts. "No," he said. "Was out in woods when attack came. Thought it was soldiers but killed one of those who went with him." There was no hesitation in his words, but I wondered how much that must have cost him.

Ape not kill ape.

"Where are they now?" I asked.

Caesar shrugged. "Don't know."

I frowned, looking away. The idea of two hostile forces roaming the woods made me uneasy, especially when Caesar was undoubtedly at the top of both their lists of targets.

"Jac."

I looked back up at him, waiting as he hesitated, as if unsure of how to proceed.

"Is there anything more, that you learned? About the soldiers?"

Now I looked away because I had to because I knew exactly what he was asking. There was so much more that I knew about the soldiers now – the layout of their camp, their hierarchy – all the things that I hadn't been able to convey during my brief signed communication. But he'd also offered me a way out, asking it as a question to which there were two possible answers. Gazing into the distance, I remembered John's face, the way he'd apologised to me about the gas. I remembered him walking out of a cold room, leaving me to be beaten and interrogated.

"Yeah," I said heavily. "There's more."

I told them, avoiding their gazes as much as possible, everything I'd seen, guessed, or put together about the soldiers. I told them where supplies were kept, where they slept, where they planned, how they trained. At some point during my outpouring of information, Rocket came to join the group, followed soon after by Maurice. Though I gave them brief glances, I kept talking. It was easier than stopping and trying to start again. Cornelia and Munchkin joined us as well, the latter climbing up into my lap. I groomed him absently with my left hand and prayed that he couldn't understand what I was saying.

My voice was hoarse and my head aching by the time I'd exhausted all my knowledge, and the apes had finished asking their many questions. Caesar went quiet early on, leaving it to the others to extract every drop of information. He was staring off into the distance when silence fell.

"Caesar?" I asked, worried though I couldn't say why.

"They will never stop."

I searched his familiar face, those striking eyes. "No," I said, remembering the Colonel's fervour. "I don't think they will." Another silence fell during which I looked down at Lily, but she was still watching Caesar. "What are you thinking?" I asked, turning back to him as well.

"That it may be time to look elsewhere," he said slowly.

I tilted my head. "Meaning?"

He just shook his head, waving a hand, as if shoving the idea aside for later.

A sharp alarm call caught our attention, all of us coming to our feet together. Cornelius leapt back to his mother, and the wet cloth that had been cooling my cheek fell to the ground as I turned, watching a chimp come racing up to us.

"What is it?" Caesar asked urgently.

The ape signed, too rapidly for me to understand, though their eyes kept flicking to me. I whipped around, looking to Caesar or Blue Eyes for a translation. Both merely stared at me.

"What?" I demanded. "What is it?"

Caesar's answer was simple. "Music."