A.N. Thank you to everyone who prodded me to update. Your encouragement, concern and continued nudging hasn't gone unnoticed and absolutely helped motivate me. I know it has been too long, and there are two reasons for that.

The first is that I got a little stuck with this chapter. I wrote it months ago and didn't like it, so I rewrote and edited it so many times but I just wasn't happy with it. Finally I just said screw it and here we are.

The second is that given the nature of this story, particularly starting with this chapter, it felt insensitive to post too soon after the shooting in Las Vegas.

So WARNING! the events of this story and chapter do hold similarities to the Las Vegas shooting, purely by coincidence. I've had the plot written out for a while and the similarity of this story to events in the real world was absolutely not intentional. Please be aware going in and do not read if you feel you will be triggered by descriptions of gun violence and targeted violence. I have added a warning at the beginning of the story, too.

As for the story itself, we have a little bit of a rewind timeline wise as we catch up on what Sam and Libby have been doing. Happy reading!

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The gunshot shattered the air, its shockwave of sound reverberated and echoed in a confusing cacophony. Almost simultaneously, a man jerked and crumpled to the ground. Seconds later, another "BANG" deafened Sam's ears and a woman collapsed not ten feet in front of him and Libby. Two seconds, and their world erupted in chaos. Two seconds passed in the blink of an eye as two people met their end. The next two seconds lasted an interminable age.

Sam's mind raced as time slowed, as if the air had suddenly thickened from a hot, muggy mess into thick, dense molasses. The first scream rang out, distorted and muted. The panic set in as people turned in slow-motion, racing for the plaza edge as if caught in a nightmare where they'd forgotten how to run. The screams, the panic, the fleeing people, the fountain… Sam tuned all of that out as pointless, inconsequential noise. Instead, he focused on each gunshot and each victim, cataloging and analyzing those data points on the fly.

Two seconds, two shots, two victims. It wasn't much to go on, but they led him to a horrifying conclusion and a gut feeling that indicated there was no other possibility. Snipers tended to prefer a smooth transfer between targets: a line, not scattered victims. It saved time, effort, and maximized casualties.

The first victim: approximately thirty feet in front of Sam and Libby. The second victim: approximately fifteen feet in front of them. Two points that made a line headed straight for them. He could practically feel the gun barrel pivoting ever so slightly to focus them in its crosshairs; the next shot would be headed straight for either him or Libby. And every instinct was screaming at him that Libby was next. She was two feet closer to the last victim, and though Sam's larger size offered the easier target, he'd heard two shots and seen two victims go down with headshots, which meant this sniper was very good. Scary good. And fast. Sam's slightly greater body mass wouldn't make a difference. Instead, if the sniper wanted to maximize casualties—which Sam had no idea was the case, but it seemed a reasonable guess—he would go after the next closest person: Libby.

Libby stood stock still, a look of horror on her face, no doubt flashing back to the two times she'd encountered gunfire in her life. Two times too many for a fifteen year old. But behind the horror, Sam could see anger, too. Anger that once again, she'd been put in this position. He registered all of this in less than a tenth of a second, but most importantly, he registered that she was frozen: a perfect target.

Bags fell to the ground, items spilled onto the pavement in disarray as he threw them from his arms and lunged toward Libby, desperately reaching. Time warped, which made him feel like he was moving too slowly, that he wasn't going to make it.

His hand brushed the back of her shirt, then contacted with her shoulder as he pushed, not thinking about the amount of force he was using, how hard he was throwing her to the ground, focused only on getting her out of the sniper's sights. Both of his hands finally landed on her back and he shoved, moving forward to cover her as they both began to fall to the ground. Just as she stumbled a step forward, her head ducked down and arms extended to break their fall, Sam felt the impact of the bullet he'd known was coming. It punched into his chest, ripping the breath from his lungs and leaving him with a single thought: thank god it's me and not her. Then pain ricocheted through his body, burrowing into his veins like hundreds of burning embers, igniting nerves from core to limbs.

He could deal with pain, however, at least temporarily. He wasn't a stranger to it, he knew how to channel it, how to use it. But just on the heels of the inferno, an all-consuming numbness slithered in after the embers, quenching them and leaving him with nothing but a disturbing lack of feeling. No more fire to focus on, no pain to fight through, just an icy nothing that stole the strength from his muscles and made him powerless to stop himself from crashing down on top of Libby.

He heard a sharp "snap!" accompanied by an exhale from Libby, but had no time to process what that might mean, because at that moment, time suddenly resumed its normal pace.

Gunfire continued as the sniper moved to other targets, but Sam knew their reprieve was temporary at best. They needed to move, now, but no matter how much his brain recognized that fact, his body would not listen.

Sam had been shot before, and he'd always been able to push through it, to continue moving, continue the mission, but this time felt different. Disturbingly different. He'd never felt so much nothing so immediately, like a vortex had opened within him that devoured his will to do anything, destroyed his ability to compartmentalize. Without that, the numbness wrapped around him and would not let go, leaving him with no course of action to fall back on; he could barely draw in breath to feed his starved lungs, let alone make it to his feet. All his body wanted to do was give into the void, lie down and let the scorching pavement kiss his face.

It was Libby who saved them. She shoved upward, forcing Sam to his hands and knees and wriggled out from under him. "We've gotta move, Sam!" she yelled, a frantic but determined light in her eye.

At her urging, his muscles finally began to respond, but they were sluggish and seemed unconcerned with the direness of the situation; his feet kept skidding out from under him, sending him back to his knees, until a strong hand seized his upper arm and Libby's lithe body slipped underneath him once more. She pulled his arm over her shoulder as he finally managed to pull his feet under himself and they both made it upright.

People were still screaming, running for whatever cover they could find and making for the edges of the plaza, and people were falling left and right. The gunshots came in astonishing rapidity, faster than Sam thought even he could accomplish. And of course, because apparently both his and Libby's luck was terrible, they were stuck standing practically in the middle of the square. Libby started to take a step to the right, headed for the nearest edge, but Sam calculated how far they'd have to go to get there and knew they wouldn't make it; though Sam's muscles had finally awakened from their frozen coma and seemed marginally functional, he knew they would be mowed down before they made it twenty steps. With a grimace, he tightened his grip on Libby's shoulder and took a step in the opposite direction. It spoke volumes to the amount of trust Libby had in Sam that she didn't even hesitate to follow his lead and move farther into the plaza.

Four steps, four steps was all it took to carry them to the relative safety of a concrete planter. Despite his muscles' spontaneous vacation, his brain had automatically been analyzing all of the angles ever since the first shot was fired, and by his estimate, the sniper wouldn't have a shot on them there. It was only a guess, and sixteen inches of concrete hardly seemed worthy of being called "safe," but it was their only chance.

They slid to the ground behind the wall and watched in horror as the rest of the carnage played out before them. Two women raced for cover, hand-in-hand, which meant that when one went down, the other soon followed. The man Sam had seen earlier, the one with the stroller and child, sprinted towards a planter not far from Sam and Libby's, wailing child in hand. He dove behind it just as the concrete above his head exploded. As far as Sam could tell, with the number of gunshots he'd counted and the number of bodies he could see, it was the sniper's only miss.

Lying flat on their stomachs, they huddled next to each other as the square fell silent. Motionless. Even the child twenty feet away in the man's arms stopped wailing. The oppressive heat weighed down upon them as an unseen eye watched from the scope of a rifle, waiting. For an entire minute, no one moved. A false calm permeated the air, disturbed only by Sam's labored breaths and the pounding of his heart, by Libby's silent shudders, by the discordant cheerful burble of the fountain. Then the illusion of serenity shattered as a man near the edge of the square, hiding beneath a bench, rolled out from under it and sprinted for safety. For freedom. Sam could only watch as the man made it no more than ten steps before the familiar crack of a gunshot struck the square and the man fell.

After that, no one moved.

Next to him, Libby inhaled shakily. "Okay," she whispered. "Okay we're staying right here. We're safe here, right Sam? We're gonna get out of here?" she asked in a small voice, looking over at him with eyes full of fear and hope.

Sam drew in a shuddering breath in order to answer her, to promise her that yes, he would find a way to get them out of this, just like he had last time, but his body rebelled and a painful cough emerged instead. Clamping down on his spasming lungs, he forced his body to relax and turned his head to meet Libby's gaze, then immediately wished he hadn't. Her eyes told him that she knew without a shadow of a doubt that he would get them out of this, that he would save them. There was so much hope and trust in them, it nearly broke his heart because he honestly didn't think he could this time.

Last time, they hadn't been trapped in one spot, their position known to the subject. Last time, Sam hadn't been hit at the start. Last time, they knew the subjects' motives and could use that against them. Now? Sam had no idea. Was the sniper just in it for the thrill? To sow chaos? Or was there a specific target hidden amongst the staggering death toll? Without the answers to those questions, Sam had no way of knowing how long the sniper intended to watch from above and pick them off one by one. If Sam had to guess, though, he imagined the sniper was in it for the long haul; everyone in the square would be waiting for a long time. Which brought him to the crux of the matter: time.

Last time, it felt like they actually had time. Time to stop and think, strategize and plan. Now, as the temperature only continued to climb, beading sweat on his brow, and as blood slipped out of his body, pooling on the pavement beneath him, hidden from view but not from his awareness, he knew they didn't have time. He was already finding it difficult to breathe, so he was fairly certain the bullet had damaged a lung, not to mention the fact that a rib or two was probably broken. And he could already feel himself weakening from blood loss. If the sniper stayed put in one of the surrounding buildings, it could take the SRU or whoever ran the scene hours to locate the subject. And Sam knew he didn't have hours. In fact, he was pretty sure he had much less than two-hundred and fifty-six minutes before he was going to pass out with only questionable hope of ever regaining consciousness.

Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, he realized he'd remained silent for too long and now Libby was looking at him with the beginnings of concern, but still with unshakable trust and hope.

Don't look at me like that, Libby, the small panicking part of him wanted to plead. I'm not the hero you think I am, I'm only human and I don't think I'm going to make it out of this one.

No, you probably won't, his realistic side acknowledged, but she can. You can make damn well sure she does.

With that realization, he finally gave her the answer she was looking for: a promise. One that he would spend every last breath he had making sure he fulfilled. "Yes, you're going to get out of here," he murmured confidently, hoping she would not notice his careful use of the word "you," not "we."

She nodded at his confirmation as if she'd expected nothing else, unaware of his word choice. "Right, we just have to wait for your team to get us out of here. It's fine, we'll be fine," she stated with false cheer, before her eyes darkened. "Just as long as we don't move, the sniper doesn't move and get an angle on us, and we don't die of heatstroke."

He huffed and rested his forehead on the searing pavement, tired of holding it upright. "That's the spirit. Your optimism never fails to astonish me."

Trying to avoid drawing Libby's attention, he lifted his torso off of the ground just enough to give his left hand clearance to shift underneath him in order to attempt to stem the flow of blood, then slowly lowered his body back down. When his hand pressed into his wound, however, he had to bite his tongue to keep himself from uttering a gasp; he could feel his ribs shift, broken ends grinding together from the pressure, a thousand jagged blades stabbing his core, confirming his earlier diagnosis. The sheer agony of the movement caught him off guard for a moment, a sharp departure from the state of calm the numbness had lulled his body into. The pain was intense but he relished it because it finally banished the last dregs of sluggishness. However, it also made it even more difficult to breathe. Desperate for oxygen, he opened his mouth wide, doing his best inhale air as silently as possible so as not to attract Libby's attention. Libby didn't need to know, Libby couldn't know. It would just freak her out.

Apparently he wasn't quiet enough, however, because moments later he heard a distant, "Sam?" from his right and a hand brushed the side of his face. "You with me?"

"I'm here," he reassured her, eyes closed and forehead still pressed into the concrete.

"I know you're here physically, but you weren't with me just a moment ago. You zoned out." Her voice held no accusation, only concern.

I have to tell her. He couldn't keep it secret much longer—if for no other reason than soon, the blood pooling beneath him would begin to spread beyond his body and become visible—but he still didn't want to burden her with it. Didn't want her to frighten her. Who are you kidding? She won't freak out, the rational side of him declared. She's not a scared twelve-year-old anymore, and even if she were, her twelve-year-old self was a heck of a lot braver than most seasoned veterans you know. She can handle it. She will have to handle it.

Okay, okay, you're right, he growled to himself, studiously ignoring the fact that talking to himself wasn't exactly a good sign, though he took it as a plus that he hadn't done it aloud yet. While the pain was excruciating, it gave him the focus he needed to pull everything together, to pull his mind back to the immediate task at hand. Pain he could deal with. Pain he could compartmentalize and work through. Would he regret it later? Probably. Then again, he wasn't exactly sure he would be around later to regret it, so…

He took a deep breath and collected himself, feeling somewhat balanced and in control for the first time since the shooting had started. Then, he let the breath out with a sigh. "Libby, I need to tell you something." No going back now.

Silence. "Yeah?..." she asked hesitantly, tone laced with worry.

"W-we have a bit of a problem," he stuttered.

"Sam, that's the biggest understatement of the year! We have a big problem, it's called being stuck in the middle of nowhere with only sixteen inches of concrete between us and certain death!" she exclaimed in exasperation.

"No, well, I mean yes, tha-that's a problem," he admitted. Just say it. Just come out and say it. "But we have another problem." He opened his eyes finally and turned his head to the side to look at her, still resting it on the ground.

Libby frowned, waiting, but just as he opened his mouth to answer her unasked question, her eyes were drawn by something near his torso. Sam followed her gaze to the small trail of red making its lazy way toward her.

He groaned. "Yeah, that's the other problem."