Abby turned the handle on the door in front of her, and stepped into the familiar hallway. She saw the familiar flashing red lights, and heard the familiar alarm. Her head ached and her arms felt heavy as she reached down for her pistol. Pulling it out of her thigh holster she shook her head and started running as fast as she could down the hall. Something about this time felt different. She had to get out of here; now. She sprinted to the end of the hall and reached for the door handle, but found that the door in front of her had no handle. Now panicking, she holstered her gun and ran both hands over the door from top to bottom. It was nothing but flat wood. The alarm was getting louder and louder, and her sense of unease grew. For a moment she stepped back from the door, closed her eyes and put her hands over her ears; to try and think. Then, she heard a sound coming from the other side of the door. She slowly lowered her hands and put her ear up against the door.

"Abby! ... Abby!"

Someone was calling her from the next room. The cry started out faint, but kept getting louder and louder every time she heard it. She stood back from the door again and took a few deep breaths. The alarm was pounding in her head, and she was becoming more afraid, and more aggravated with each passing second. Then, in one swift motion, she raised her knee and kicked the door as hard as she could. The door flew open, and one of the rusted hinges broke off, leaving it hanging on at an odd angle in the frame. She stared at it for a second, not completely believing she had been able to do that. Then, the voice came again.

"Abby! Come on, Abby!"

She shook her head again and ran into the next room. Thankfully, the second door handle was intact. She turned it and walked into the operating room; relieved to see that it was still the operating room. There she found Ellie again. She was standing in the middle of the room with her back towards Abby. Abby stepped closer and still she didn't move. When she was close enough, Abby reached her arm out and put her shaking hand on Ellie's shoulder. Ellie turned around and looked at her with the same puzzled face she had last time Abby saw her here. They stared at each other for a second before Ellie opened her mouth.

"Abby, come on!" she shouted.

Only it wasn't her voice that was coming out of her mouth. It was someone else's. Abby pulled her hand away, and suddenly everything started to get hazy. Abby was having trouble making out the room clearly now, and her surroundings started to dim. Still Ellie stood un-moving, until everything went black.

"Abby!" Lev shouted, slapping Abby's face and shaking her shoulder, "Abby, come on, get up!"

Abby opened her eyes, but everything was a bit blurry.

"Oh my god" Lev sighed, exhausted, resting his hands on her shoulders and putting his head on her chest.

Abby was lying on her back in the sand, Lev on his knees beside her, his upper body now resting perpendicular on top of hers. Abby's vision was coming back to her, but the sun was still out, and starting to set on the beach. Her current condition coupled with the sun reflecting low off of the water made it hard to see anything at first. She looked down at Lev's head, which was bleeding behind his ear. She looked over to see that their boat was still where they left it. There was no one else on the beach with them. Abby put her hand on the top of Lev's head. He raised himself back up and helped Abby to sit up. As soon as she was upright, Abby's head started pounding. She reached out with her hand and touched the side of Lev's head, but he shook her off.

"I'm fine," he said, "I think one of them threw me into a tree..." he trailed off.

That's when Abby remembered everything that had happened.

"Ellie..." she said.

Lev looked down, then back up at her, shaking his head.

"Fuck!" Abby screamed at the top of her lungs.

She knew this was going to happen. She knew it, and she did everything she could to prevent it. But she had failed. Any sense of loyalty she had left for the Fireflies was gone; right now all she felt towards them was anger. She had to get Ellie back, and those ass holes wouldn't know what hit them when she did. Abby felt something that she hadn't felt in years; hatred, and the grip of desire for vengeance that came along with it. Her nostrils flared as her breaths became shorter. Her jaw set and she closed her eyes for a minute. She had to calm down. She had to figure out a plan, and she wouldn't be able to do that by continuing to sit in the sand and hyperventilate. She tried to take deeper breaths through her mouth. She opened her eyes and saw Lev looking at her.

"How long have we been here?" she asked.

"I don't know, really. I woke up maybe 10 minutes ago. That's when I came to wake you up."

Abby looked around. The sun hadn't completely set yet, and she could tell from licking her lips that it hadn't been 24 hours. They must have only been out for a couple of hours. She couldn't quite believe that their boat was still sitting anchored. Either the Fireflies wanted to leave in a hurry, or they actually believed her when she said she wasn't Abby. If they had thought the three of them really did just steal this boat, they would have no reason to think Abby would be able to find them. But she could. Catalina Island, Avalon, domed building. She remembered.

Ellie came to and the first thing she noticed was how badly her neck hurt. She squeezed her eyes together tighter and raised her head, which had been slumped forwards. She went to put her hands on it, but only one moved. She opened her eyes and looked around. She was in some kind of medical facility, sitting on the floor, with one hand cuffed to a desk that was bolted to the floor.

"Oh shit" she said quietly.

She tried to bend her legs to stand up and let out a yelp, quickly biting her lip to keep quiet. That's when she remembered she had been shot. Gritting her teeth, she looked at her leg. Her jeans had been cut off at the knee, and her calf was wrapped up like someone had treated it; treated poorly, but treated nonetheless.

"What the fuck?" she said.

Ellie didn't remember getting knocked out, and her head didn't feel like she had been. She supposed at some point she must have simply passed out. She remembered Lev screaming, turning around, being shot, Abby screaming, and then... and then what? She couldn't remember what happened after that. She looked around the room. The fluorescent lights were dim and blue, adding an even more uncomfortable feeling to the already uncomfortable blue room. There was metal desk behind her back, a metal operating table in front of her, and a filing cabinet up against the back wall. There were a few boxes and duffle bags along the edges of the walls. Abby and Lev weren't here though. She didn't know what happened to them. Maybe they were here somewhere being held as well. Maybe they had been killed on the beach. She didn't know. All she knew was that she felt immediately furious, and she had to get out of here. But she didn't know if she could walk.

She remembered the broken scissors in her jacket pocket, and patted herself down. For whatever reason, they hadn't checked there; or hadn't found it. Cringing, she sat up straighter against the desk and reached her free hand into her jacket, pulling out the half scissors. Bringing the tip to the handcuff, she began trying to pick the lock. After a minute or two it started to seem like she wasn't going to get anywhere when suddenly, click. She hadn't exactly unlocked them. But she had shifted the pins enough that the cuffs loosened a little as she pulled on them. It was a tight squeeze, but she managed to get her hand out. She rubbed her wrist for a few seconds, then tried to get on her hands and knees. The pain in her leg was excruciating. It was all she could do to not scream as she shifted. She couldn't lean on that leg, but she managed to get onto her left knee, with her right leg just sort of trailing behind her. She tried crawling towards the door, moving in short distances by pulling herself forwards with her hands, then resting on her left knee. Every movement was agony, but she was almost to the door.

Just then the door swung open and a tall man entered the room. Shit! Ellie thought.

"I thought I heard something in here" the man said, gesturing down the hall and then entering the room.

A second man came in behind him. Ellie swung the broken scissors at the second man's leg. She managed to stab him, but the scissors were old and dull, and she didn't know if it even broke skin.

"Bitch!" he said, and kicked Ellie in the stomach.

She dropped the scissors and collapsed onto the floor. The two men picked her up under her arms and set her back down against the desk. Ellie yelled when they dropped her on the floor. She couldn't remember her leg, or any part of her body, ever hurting so much as this. The second man picked up the broken scissors and walked back over to where the handcuffs where still attached to the desk. He bent down, unlocked the handcuffs and picked them up showing them and the scissors to the other man. He raised his eyebrows at him and set them down on the operating table.

The first man who had come in stood over her now. He was a tall, blonde man with a buzz cut. He wore the same outfit the men on the beach did. He regarded Ellie for a few seconds. She looked up at him and grimaced. She was furious, but almost powerless to do anything about it. She didn't have her belongings, and she could barely move. The man reached into his back pocket and nodded at the other man. The second man walked over behind the desk and grabbed Ellie's arms. She fought him as hard as she could, managing to elbow him in the face once. In response he jerked her arms down so hard that she thought one might have just been dislocated. He eventually got both of her hands behind her back again, and the first man knelt down in front of Ellie with a long zip tie in his hands. Reaching around her, with his face right in front of hers, he proceeded to zip tie her hands together behind her, around the leg of the desk. Ellie had turned her face to the side to look away from him, but then he spoke.

"See, Todd? This is what we get for trying to make her comfortable."

Ellie turned her head and spit in the man's face. He looked at her and wiped his face off. The two men stood up, and the first half-turned away from Ellie, before turning back around and slapping her in the face with the back of his hand. Ellie's head hit the desk, but she bit her lip and didn't cry out. Todd walked out of the room carrying the scissors and handcuffs, and the first man went to follow him out.

"What do you want from me?" Ellie yelled at him.

He stopped and turned around.

"If you're gonna cut my head open, just do it already!"

He looked down the hallway, then closed the door behind him and walked over to Ellie again.

"Why would we want to cut your head open?" he asked

Ellie felt exasperated.

"You're the Fireflies right? Isn't that what you want? You want to make a vaccine right? So why don't you just do it? Why am I still here?" Ellie spat out angrily.

The look on the man's face changed a little then.

"There is no vaccine," he said calmly.

Ellie felt confused. She didn't say anything, she just stared at him. He continued after a second,

"The only chance we had at a vaccine died when you and your friend decided to shoot up the Salt Lake Outpost."

Ellie's face flushed hot at that. If he only knew...

"That was quite the stunt," he continued, in a more stern tone of voice, "After that, the Fireflies suffered terrible losses. Outposts broke up, morale dropped, and we were all but obliterated. All because of you."

Ellie couldn't believe this was happening. The man squatted in front of her and rested his arms on his thighs, looking her right in the eyes. She looked down and saw his Firefly dog tags around his neck; "Alexander". Then she looked back up at his face.

"No, little girl," he said, "I'm not here to get a piece of your brain. I'm here to make sure you're punished for what you did to us."

Ellie wanted to scream. But she couldn't find the words. It was almost as if she had entered into a state of shock. She didn't know if Abby or Lev were alive or dead, and here she was, tied to a desk in some Firefly facility, about to suffer through who-knows-what, because of a crime committed by a dead man; a dead man that she hated for a long time for committing this crime. She didn't know whether she was more angry or sad now. She looked at the floor before the tears welling up could fill her eyes, and Alexander stood up and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him. Ellie's eyes darted from one spot on the floor to the next. She couldn't find the ability to focus on any one thing, and the grip of panic was beginning to take over. Just then, she managed to find just enough power to call out.

"Hey!" she screamed.

After a few seconds the door opened and Alexander stood in the door frame, looking impatiently at her.

"My friends..." she said, quieter.

Alexander took a breath and then stepped into the room. He walked around the operating table and stood in right in front of Ellie. She didn't want to look up at him, so she kept her eyes forward and said, still quieter,

"... are they okay?"

Alexander squatted down in front of her again and took Ellie's chin in his hand. She shook her head away from him, so he grabbed it tighter and held it against the side of the desk, lowering his face until it was right in front of Ellie's. Then he said, in a calm, but rough voice,

"Your filthy little friends got what they deserved."

Then he shoved her head away, stood up and slowly walked out of the room, closing the door behind him. Ellie was in a rage now. She felt like she had just been stabbed in the center of her chest. She started hyperventilating. Everything felt hot. She tried as hard as she could to pull her hands apart behind her back, but the zip tie just cut deeper and deeper into her skin. She thrashed around against the desk for a minute or two before exhaling deeply and sitting still again. She couldn't stop herself from crying now. She banged the back of her head against the side of the desk a few times before screaming as loud as she could,

"I'll fucking kill all of you!"

But no one came back into the room.

Abby and Lev walked into the boat's cabin and looked around. Their stuff was left in a bit of a mess, but otherwise it didn't look like anything significant had been taken; aside from Abby and Owen's tags. But right now, she thought, she never wanted to see them again anyways. Neither of them was looking for anything in particular. It was only that they hadn't seen the boat in a long time, and were both feeling a little bit lost at the moment. After looking around for a few minutes, They both just stood there. Abby was standing in front of the bed, looking at the back of the boat. Lev was at the bench. After a few seconds he turned towards Abby.

"What are we going to do?" he asked.

Abby licked her lips and bit the bottom one for a few seconds, then turned around to face him.

"We're gonna go get Ellie back," she said flatly.

"How?"

"Those men were Fireflies. My guess is they put her on their boat and went back to Catalina Island. We're going to go there, and we're going to find her."

Lev was confused, but he didn't want to press the issue now. He just nodded. Abby walked over to cabinets and looked inside. There were a few boxes of ammunition left inside, and they both still had their backpacks. The man on the radio had said there were 200 of them there. She hoped she wouldn't have to deal with all of them. But she was willing to, if that's what it took. With one more deep breath, she walked outside and pulled up the anchor. The boat started drifting a little bit. Lev went into Abby's backpack, pulled the keys out, and walked outside. It took a few tries, but the engine eventually turned over, and Abby started driving towards the sunset.

Not long after setting off Abby and Lev spotted a huge building in the distance. The sun was going down, and it was difficult to make out exactly what it was. But what was clear was the giant dome atop the building. It sat right on the coast, and if that wasn't the large domed building the man on the radio mentioned, then Abby didn't know what would be. She turned the boat to the right a bit so that they didn't pull up to the coast directly in front of the huge building. By the time they reached land the sun had gone completely down, and it was night. Abby set the anchor down and turned the boat off just in front of the shore. She climbed up onto the front of the boat and hung onto the mast as she strained her eyes to see through the darkness. There were lights just up the coast a few hundred feet or so. It couldn't be the domed building. There must be more of them. Abby had no way of knowing how many people were on this island, where Ellie was, or if she was even still alive. But fear and reservation had left her body. All she could think was that she was going to go through this entire island if she had to to find her. She jumped back down and nodded at Lev to come into the cabin with her.

"There are some lights up that way" she said pointing with her thumb, "it's not the big building, so that must mean they're spread out. I don't really know what we're walking into..."

"Nothing we can't handle" Lev said.

Abby looked at him and smiled. He smiled back at her.

"Okay, well... I think we have plenty of ammunition. What we don't have a lot of are arrows. How many do you have left?"

Lev pulled his backpack over and counted.

"Five" he said, grimly.

"Well," Abby said, "we can make a few more before we leave. But just in case, I want you to carry this."

She handed him a small pistol in a holster. He took it without saying anything and stood up, attaching the clip to his belt and fastening the buckle around his leg. They spent the next half hour or so getting everything that they might need together, and dumping everything they didn't need out of their backpacks. They managed to make four more arrows for Lev with what they had been carrying, but no more. After checking that all of their weapons were loaded and working, they walked out onto the deck of the boat, jumped down into the dark. shallow water, and walked towards the shore.

Just past the shore was a small hill leading up to the land, and the lit area. They passed moldy and half-broken wooden beach chairs with the skeletons of old umbrellas hanging off of them. There were knocked over and broken glass and iron tables scattered around. Abby walked through the area and looked around for anything that might come in handy. She picked up a particularly large shard of broken glass, wrapped it in a rag, and put it in her pocket. There was one knocked over wrought iron table that looked much more rusted than the rest. She turned it completely upside down and inspected the four legs. One was rusted enough that she thought she could break it off. She held onto the bottom of the table leg, and raised her own leg to kick it off. It took three kicks, but the leg did eventually break off. Abby inspected it, and slapped it against her hand a few times. It curved a little like a bow, with the foot sticking out, a spherical shape with a flat bottom, at the end. It weighed about 5 or 6 pounds, and it was sturdy. She decided it would work as a melee weapon in a pinch, so she slipped it into the straps of her backpack, and they kept walking.

They walked out of the apparent outdoor lounge area and further inland until they saw a large wooden sign. It was covered in peeling white paint, with "Descanso Beach Club" written in fading blue paint. They were now practically in the shadows of the lights coming from the nearby building. As they got closer and closer to people, Abby started to get a sick, nervous kind of feeling in her stomach. She didn't think the Fireflies would have set up in an otherwise-inhabited location; which meant that, in all likelihood, everyone on this small island was a Firefly. It hadn't really hit her until this moment that she was going to have to kill Fireflies if she wanted to get Ellie out. This feeling was different than fighting her way off of the Seraphite island had been. She never really felt any kind of pride or loyalty towards the WLF. So, while it had hurt to face off against people that she knew, it didn't quite feel like a betrayal; not like this. This feeling was new. Abby couldn't exactly define it. It wasn't quite betrayal, it wasn't quite guilt. She didn't know what she was feeling, really. She just felt... like she was doing something she shouldn't be doing.

It wasn't that she cared about the Fireflies; she didn't, really. Maybe it was some kind of deeply ingrained sense of duty left over from her childhood. The fact that she had spent four years searching for and killing the man who did, essentially, what she was about to do, was not entirely lost on her either. However, she never regretted what she did to Joel. That was more about her father than anything else. There was, of course, the remorse that came along with cold blooded murder; but not to the point of regret. Still, the thought remained in the back of her mind. But none of it was enough to stop her feet from taking her forwards. Now, no amount of guilt, or fear, or mis-spent childhood loyalty would keep her from getting Ellie back. There were two things left in the entire world that Abby cared about; and the Fireflies took one of them from her. She would get Ellie back no matter what it took; and, if she made it out alive, she would deal with her conscience later.

Ellie sat still against the metal desk, half falling asleep, half blacking out. She had kicked and screamed for a long time before she exhausted herself. At one point she had inadvertently bent her right leg without remembering the gunshot, and when the pain shot up her thigh and through her hip, she immediately straightened it again, slamming it against the floor. This resulted in the wound opening back up, and the bandages were now soaked through with blood on the back of her calf. She hadn't been given anything to drink, she was bleeding, heart broken, in pain, and, finally, exhausted. So she sat, slipping in and out of reality. Her head slumped forwards on her chest, her chin resting against a small blood stain on her shirt that formed from the blood dripping slowly out of her mouth. She had moved beyond arguing the point that she had nothing to do with what had happened. Not that she had anyone to argue it to. No one had come back into the room since Alexander left. But since then, she had spent hours furiously arguing her case; sometimes in her own head, sometimes screaming out loud. But at this point, she didn't care anymore. It didn't matter what they did to her now. She thought, if she could only have had a chance at the men from the beach... She would recognize them again instantly, and she would show them exactly what happens to people who hurt the people she loves.

Then she thought of Abby. The last thing she remembered was getting shot, and hearing Abby scream; then nothing. She could still hear it clear as day. The thought made her shift uncomfortably against the desk. She had cried so much in the last couple of hours that she had no tears left in her. But the despair still came in waves. She wished she had never turned her back on those two men. She wished she had shot them both as soon as they stepped out of the boat. She wished they had left the museum house an hour earlier that day. She thought about the day they spent before leaving; going around the museum and getting together everything they needed. If they had just left all that shit behind and started walking that day...

Ellie hadn't even expected to live through Santa Barbara. What a cruel joke, she thought, that she should live through that, just to end up here. Maybe this was her punishment; for leaving Jackson in the first place, for leaving Dina and JJ, for everyone she had hurt along the way. She thought about how badly she had wanted to kill Abby, and how hard she had tried to; and now she's gone. She was so stupid to have thought she could have had a life with her. Abby was too good for her, she always thought that. She was too good to be true. Ellie was too happy. It was all something she didn't deserve. And now the world had taken it away from her.

Ellie was jerked out of her semi-conscious thought process by her arms falling apart, making her fall a little bit to the side. She opened her eyes and tried to pick her head up. Her wrists had been separated. She tried to react, but by the time she found the energy her hands were behind her back again. Two men she hadn't seen before had detached her from the desk, and added another zip tie around her wrists behind her back. They abruptly picked her up, one holding each of her arms, and Ellie cried out when she stepped on her bad leg.

"Come on!" one of the men shouted at her.

"I can't fucking walk!" Ellie shouted back with a cracked voice.

The two men gave each other an irritated look and started dragging her out of the room. Ellie tried as best she could to hop along with them on her left leg. But every time she did it was agony on her right leg. Eventually she just let them carry her, semi-upright, down a long hallway and into another room. This room looked almost identical to the last, except there was no operating table in it. There was another large metal desk, bolted to the floor, and one metal chair in the middle of the room. One of the two ceiling lights was out, creating a painful combination of blue light and shadow that made it hard for Ellie to see anything clearly. They sat her in the chair, her hands still zip tied behind her back, and tied para-chord around her waist and the back of the chair. Then they left the room. Ellie looked around. There were no boxes or duffle bags in this room; just the desk and the chair. Even if she could try to get to something useful, there was nothing here. She struggled against the rope holding her to the chair for a few seconds before Alexander walked into the room.

Abby and Lev managed to clear out the Descanso Beach club within minutes. When they first approached, Abby could see that there were only 6 people inside the small restaurant; drunk people. One man was out back pissing against the side of the building. Abby crouched and walked slowly up behind him, grabbing him around the neck and twisting his head until it snapped. There was an empty beer bottle next to the, now dead, man. Abby picked it up and walked over to the open window, motioning for Lev to stay where he was. She threw the bottle onto the ground as hard as she could and it shattered. After a second, a woman came to the window.

"Tim what the fuck?" she said, laughing.

Abby pulled her out of the window and broke her neck, leaving her next to Tim. There were four people left inside, all sitting together around a table. Abby pulled out her pistol and screwed on a silencer. Lev knocked an arrow and walked over so that they stood on opposite sides of the window. Then, at the same time they each aimed into the building. Abby shot one of them in the head, and Lev shot one in the back, leaving them motionless, but still sitting in their chairs. The other two tried to run, but Abby jumped in through the window. She pulled one out from behind a counter and put her arms around his neck. The other tried to grab Abby from behind, but he just fell down behind her when Lev shot him too. Abby pressed her gun against the last one's head, pulled the trigger, and dropped him. Lev got his arrows back, and they carried on towards the domed building. The big building was near the coast, at the bottom of a massive hill. Abby thought it would be a better idea to get higher up the hill and make their way down towards the back of the building. That way, should there be any lookouts, they could take them out first. So they started their ascent.

"I thought there would be more people around" Lev said while they walked.

"Me too" Abby said, "There's probably a lot more in the big building. But if this island is their home base, they're probably scattered all around. We also can't be sure that all 200 stay here all the time... or whether that guy was even telling the truth..."

Lev nodded, and they kept walking. As it turned out, there wasn't anyone stationed on the hill. It was the middle of the night by now, but it still seemed odd to Abby. If nothing else, this was just bad tactics on their part. She thought how easy a place like this would be for the WLF to take if they wanted to. But she didn't let her guard down. She didn't have a regimen with her now. They walked diagonally upwards and towards the building until they were right behind it near the top of the hill. They both knelt down and Abby pulled out a rifle, pointing it at the building and looking through the scope. There were a few pallets stacked with what looked like supply crates out back, as well as a few fires lit inside barrels, surrounded by a handful of people. She raised the scope upwards towards the building itself and tried to see inside the windows. She saw a few people here and there milling around.

"It doesn't look like they have dogs" Abby said, still looking through the scope.

"Good" Lev said, half under his breath.

Then Abby came to one window on the third floor that caught her eye. It was painted blue, and she could make out a metal operating table inside. She looked at the neighboring windows; they also had metal operating tables. It wasn't ridiculous to assume the home base would have a medical setup, but the sight of it sent panic through Abby. She quickly shook it off. Worrying about what might be happening wouldn't get them inside any quicker. She put the gun down.

"Alright, well..." she said, tapping her finger against her knee, "it doesn't look like there's 200 people in that building. But it's hard to tell from here. I think we'll be able to get inside pretty easy. I'm not completely sure what we'll find inside though."

She paused, waiting for Lev to say something. But he didn't. He just nodded and kept looking at her.

"You don't have to come with me" Abby said after a few seconds.

Lev blinked.

"Of course I'm coming with you" he said.

"Yeah, but Lev..."

"I love her too," he interrupted.

Abby was taken aback. She hadn't let herself feel emotional about the situation yet, and it was something of a shock. She looked away from Lev and back down the hill at the building, letting out a deep breath.

"Besides," he said, "I'm not gonna let you go in there alone."

Abby half smiled and grabbed Lev's hand. He squeezed it and smiled back.

"Okay then," Abby said, standing up, "Let's go"

When they got to the bottom of the hill it was evident they weren't going to be able to sneak past the group of people outside the back door. Nor were they going to be able to take them out one at a time. Lev drew his bow and Abby aimed her pistol. One by one, in quick succession, they shot down the dozen or so people from the shadows of the foliage. They waited a minute to see if anyone was going to come outside, but no one did. So they walked towards the back doors. Lev was able to recover one arrow, but the rest had broken. Every one of them had been armed. Abby pulled a gun from a holster one of them was wearing and looked at it. It was the cleanest looking pistol she had ever seen; and, affixed to the front of it, was an actual silencer, not a makeshift one. She holstered her pistol, and held onto the new one.

The doors were heavy metal swinging doors without glass. Slowly, Abby pulled one back, holding her new gun up. She quickly stepped inside with the gun pointed forwards and looked around. It was some kind of loading dock, and no one was inside. She motioned her head inside and Lev followed her in. It was a mostly empty room with high, vaulted ceilings. There was one broken down semi truck sitting along the back wall, and a small set of stairs against the opposite wall. They started walking towards the stairs when they heard voices coming towards them. Quickly, they ran towards the semi truck and hid behind it. A man and a woman came into the room and started walking down the stairs. Abby knew if they went outside, they would raise alarm, and she couldn't let that happen. She looked around and found an old car battery on the ground behind them. She picked it up and threw it as hard as she could into the corner behind the semi.

"Huh? What was that?" the man asked.

They both pulled handguns out and started walking towards them. Abby shooed Lev underneath the semi truck and they waited until they could see the two sets of feet. The two Fireflies walked around the truck and stood behind it, right where Abby and Lev had been a moment ago. Then Abby nodded, and they both crawled out from under the front of the truck. They snuck up behind the two. Abby grabbed one by the neck, and Lev threw his bow over the neck of the other, and they both held on until the two collapsed on the ground. Abby looked around and saw an air vent above the truck. Quickly, she ran up the stairs on the opposite end of the room, and bolted the door shut with a 2x4, then ran back. They climbed up onto the top of the truck. Abby bent one leg, and Lev stepped onto her thigh. Abby put her arms around his legs and stood up straight, lifting him high enough to pull the vent open, and pull himself up into it. Then Abby shook her hands out, held her breath, and jumped as high as she could, just barely reaching the bottom of the vent. It creaked when she grabbed onto it, but it held as she pulled herself up.

They crawled until they found another vent above an empty room. When they dropped down into the room they both looked around. It looked like an office.

"Where do you think we should look?" Lev asked.

"Third floor" Abby said.

Lev didn't ask any questions, he just nodded, and they continued to make their way up to the third floor, slowly, and as quietly as possible, leaving a trail of dead bodies behind them as they went.

Alexander closed the door behind him and stepped closer to Ellie. She squinted her eyes and then blinked them open. Then she let out a sigh.

"We have to stop meeting like this, Alex" she said sarcastically, spitting a little blood onto the floor in front of him.

He chuckled.

"Oh so you're a funny person? See, I don't like funny people. Can't help but feel like they're bullshitting me. And I'm not a man to be jerked around."

He put one hand on the back of the chair and punched Ellie in the stomach with the other. She got the wind knocked out of her, and it took several seconds before she could gasp. She didn't say anything, just took deep, difficult breaths. Alexander let go of the back of the chair and walked around behind her.

"See I don't think it's funny to slaughter dozens of helpless people" he said, still circling Ellie, "and I don't think it's funny to rob the world we live in of a surgeon. A surgeon, who may have had the answer to..." he paused for a second, and shrugged, "...all our problems. And I don't think it's funny, that me and mine have been forced to hide out on this fucking island..."

Ellie coughed. There was nothing she could say to this man to get her out of this, and she knew it. Whether she was about to be beaten to death, or just tortured, there's nothing he could do or say to Ellie that could be worse than anything else she had already been through. She didn't know this man. She wasn't conscious in Salt Lake. And the woman she loved was gone, along with Lev, and everything else she had ever cared about.

"Well," Ellie said, straightening a little bit in the chair, "as soon as you're finished whining about things you don't find funny, we can talk about what's really bothering you."

Alexander stopped walking around her and bent over so his face was right in front of Ellie's.

"You've got some mouth on you, don't you?" he said narrowing his eyes.

"Why don't you ask your sister" Ellie said, smiling.

Alexander stood up straight and hit Ellie so hard across the face that she and the chair fell over onto the floor. He raised his hand to hit her again but he stopped when he heard a commotion outside. He looked at Ellie on the floor, still smiling, took a pistol out of his holster and walked towards the door.

Abby and Lev had made it thus far by eliminating one person at a time on their way through the hallways of the third floor. But as they exited the previous room, they knocked someone over who had been leaning against the door they just opened. He yelled and Abby quickly stuck the piece of broken glass in his head. But it was too late. The two other men in the hallway started yelling. Lev shot one with his bow, and Abby ran as fast as she could towards the other, throwing him onto the floor. She stomped on his head a few times until he stopped moving. Then she pulled the broken table leg out of her bag, turned to Lev, wide-eyed and said,

"Okay, now we've got to move fast."

They started running down the hallway until they had almost reached the end when a door swung open in front of them. Alexander stepped out of the room with his gun pointed at them. Abby and Lev stopped. Abby started raising her hands slowly, so Lev followed.

"What the fuck is this now?" Alexander asked.

Abby was about to say something to him when she looked into the room he had just come out of. She saw Ellie's foot, not moving. She snapped, and in one instant she looked back at Alexander and swung the wrought iron table leg as hard as she could against the side of his head. He fell down and she hit him two more times in the head before throwing the table leg on the ground. She stepped over him and into the room. Ellie was lying on her side, tied to a chair. There was some blood on the floor next to her face, and her leg. She ran over and knelt down in front of her. Ellie opened her eyes and, for a second, she thought she must be hallucinating. Then Abby put her hands on her face. They stared at each other for a couple of seconds.

"Hey!" Ellie said, feeling the tears start again.

"Hey" Abby said, half laughing and half crying.

Lev ran behind the chair. He got the para-chord untied and cut the zip tie apart, freeing Ellie's hands. Ellie let out a sigh and pushed herself up onto her elbows. Abby leaned down and put her arms around Ellie. Ellie held herself up on one elbow and put the other around Abby.

"I thought you were dead" Ellie said.

"I thought you might be dead too."

Lev walked around in front of Ellie and she stuck her arm out to take his hand. He smiled, but didn't say anything. Abby forced herself to let go of Ellie then.

"Look, we have to get out of here. I'm pretty sure we cleared out this floor, but I don't know if anyone else would have heard all that."

"I can't walk" Ellie said, pointing at her leg.

Abby looked at her leg, then at the rest of her. She looked at Lev, and then out the door.

"Okay" she said, standing up, "Lev, we can't go back the way we came, so we've gotta go out the back staircase. I need you to go in front of us."

"Okay" he said, pulling his last arrow out and knocking it in his bow. He turned and went out the door, then stood waiting for them.

Abby squatted and put one arm under Ellie's knees, and one under her waist. Ellie put her arms around Abby's neck, and Abby stood up. She carried Ellie through the empty hallway and to the stairs. They came across only one person in the stairwell on their way down, and Lev shot him before he ever even saw them. When they made it to the bottom Abby had to set Ellie down to break open the doors she had stuck a 2x4 between. She kicked it only once, and the piece of wood broke, allowing the doors to swing open to the loading dock. She bent down and picked Ellie up in her arms again, and carried her out of the building, past all the bodies lying outside, and back to the boat.