"Skye?" The gun fell, and the man blinked. "Is that you?"

She felt something draining from her body, out through the soles of her feet and into the ground. The pit of her stomach began to stir.

"Oh my god, it is. It really is you."

When he stepped forward, she took a step back. Her lungs suddenly remembered how to breathe again, and she stretched a frown across her face.

"Tim." Her head barely shook. "Skye isn't here right now."

"What?" The dark-haired man frowned, his eyebrows knitted together. "Wh—What do you mean she's not—oh." His Adam's apple bobbed and he closed his eyes. "You're… You're the other one."

She closed her eyes and nodded. "I'm sorry."

"No." He turned his face away. "No, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have assumed."

"No." She was unwanted. Big surprise. "I understand why you would."

"Yeah, it's, uh—" He shook his head and sighed. "It's been a while."

"I did not expect to wake up so soon."

He hummed, slowly bending down to pick up the gun, and tucked it away in his back pocket. "Don't like the rest of us too much, do you?"

"I don't want to hurt her." An odd feeling rose inside her chest. She took a deep breath, but the weight remained. "You know what I am. You know how dangerous this is."

"Yeah, I know." He inhaled sharply, eyes scanning her from head to toe before his forehead furrowed. "Wait. You and Skye—you two aren't… You're not dead, are you?"

She blinked and froze. "No." At least, not that she was aware of. She turned her gaze down and weakly lifted a hand. "I would know, if we were."

"Okay. Good. That's good." He kept his hand on the handle of the gun as he glanced around. "C'mon, we need to keep moving. It's not safe here."

Her forehead twitched, but she said nothing. She carefully stepped through the line of shrubbery, dragging her legs through when little twigs snagged and scratched against the stitching of her jeans. She almost flinched when something touched her elbow, and snapped her head up to see his hand barely grazing her arm.

"You okay?"

She forced herself to nod. A lump rose up her throat, and she closed her eyes for a moment when she felt needles pricking her eyes.

"You really shouldn't be here right now," he spoke lowly, glancing back up to scan their surroundings again. His hand hovered below her elbow. "Neither of you should."

A cold draft blew past them. Her body shivered, but she forced herself to follow him. "I don't know where we are."

"How long have you been awake?"

She turned her head up and her eyes flickered across the landscape, breathing heavier the longer she stared at the distance. "Not long. Ten minutes."

"Shit." He sighed under his breath. "Well, it's a good thing I found you before he did. God knows what he'd do to you, both of you."

"He?"

"HABIT."

She drew in a sharp breath and clenched her jaw. So he's here.

"Can you walk?"

She forced herself to nod. "Can you?" she asked, eyes glancing at his bad leg.

He followed her gaze briefly, then softly clicked his tongue. "I'll be fine. Just a flesh wound. Been through worse, you know."

"I remember."

The buzzing from the lamp post grew louder as they walked toward its direction, flickering so briefly that she couldn't tell if it was the lamp post or her own failing vision. The man beside her said nothing about it though, too preoccupied with dragging his left leg across the cobblestone to match her pace.

"I'm guessing you can't do that thing you did back at the facility?" he suddenly asked, and she shook her head.

"I wouldn't be here if I could," she said, solemn. "It's his domain. He wouldn't let me."

"Figures," he replied and scoffed, though not at her—at least, she didn't think it was. "Means he probably knows you're here, too."

"Is he looking for you?"

He lifted his head and reluctantly nodded. "All of us, yeah. He forced us into playing his game, hunting us down like rabbits." He scowled and scrunched his face. "You, uh, you know what he did to me, yeah?"

She pressed her lips together. "I felt her pain," she said. "It was impossible to ignore, even when I was asleep."

"Yeah." He took another deep breath and couldn't hold back his sniffle. "Not the best way to go. Must've given the others a hard time, huh?"

She nodded. The images in her head were a fuzzy blur, but the emotions were all too vivid, almost as though they were her own, no matter how foreign they felt at the same time. And like any other image that has ever crossed her mind, she clung onto that emotion, swallowed the pain and the grief and the mourning, letting the strange feeling reside in the back of her throat and the pit of her stomach for as long as she could. "She missed you. They all do."

The man nodded, hanging his head low. "How are they? Can you tell?"

She blinked again when her vision began to blur. "I'm not sure. She's asleep and I can't wake her up." When she turned her gaze forward again, she realized they had reached the intersection she passed by earlier, though they were now moving past the first lamp post and now heading towards the direction she chose not to traverse, further away from the gates they started from. "She's distressed."

"I don't suppose you know why?"

She shook her head.

"Damn." But he nodded again, barely this time. "Well, people don't usually end up here willingly. I can only imagine what must've happened up there." He gave her a sideways glance, then stretched the corner of his lip a little when he nodded toward her. "I can see she chopped off some of the blonde."

Her expressions froze for a moment before her hand rose on its own volition, touching the back of her head and the tips of her hair at the base of her neck. "I'm grateful," she confessed, holding back a smile. "I didn't like the blonde either."

"How does it work between you two?" he asked suddenly, and she quickly turned her attention back toward him. He cleared his throat. "I mean, how did you know she had it? I'm sorry if that came out weird, or insensitive."

"It's fine." The next lamp post was a little distance away, creating a large expanse of darkness throughout the path in the between, but she noticed herself feeling much less anxious as before, though not any less alert, when there was one familiar, non-hostile face in closer proximity now. "I can see through her eyes sometimes, if I'm not too far deep inside. I saw us, through a reflection in a mirror." She narrowed her eyes slightly. "It felt weird seeing us like that."

He barely restrained his scoff. "Weird how?"

"I'm used to this." She shrugged at herself. "Brown hair, brown eyes. But seeing the blonde in the mirror—" She shook her head. "It felt weird. It wasn't her, wasn't us."

"I told her it was a bad idea." A light chuckle rose in the back of his throat, but stopped when his face twisted to a slight wince. Just a flesh wound, he said. "I mean, I get it. Makes it harder for them to track us down when we don't look like ourselves, but blonde? Wasn't Toby's sister blonde, too? I was surprised he was okay with it."

He turned his head away, casting his gaze off to the side of the path. She gave him a sideways glance and felt something stirring in the back of her head. There was something different about him, something she couldn't quite put her finger on. It wasn't something that unsettled her nerves—it was him, she knew and could tell as much—but it was clear that things had changed since the last time they spoke to each other. There were more wrinkles underneath his eyes, and his irises looked more dull, more muted than she remembered. A faint shadow stretched from the edge of his sideburns across his jaw and over his mouth. It looked as though his features were frozen, not in time but in emotion—the face of a man who had been through hell and back, over and over again.

"I think Jack liked it, though," he murmured, and exhaled another soft chuckle. "Probably why she chose to keep it. Are they still—you know…"

She blinked and frowned. "Hm?"

He turned towards her, glaring at her with a curious glint in his eye. "Oh, c'mon. Don't tell me you don't know. I mean, you can tell what she's feeling, can't you?"

She blankly stared back at him. "Yes, but I'm not sure what you mean by that."

"You don't—" His stare lingered for another second, then he closed his eyes and shook his head. "You know what, never mind. Forget I said anything."

She furrowed her forehead and deepened her frown. "No, tell me."

Instead of answering her, he glanced over his shoulder, making another scan of their surroundings when they reached another branch in the path. "Nah, it's nothing. You'll know when the time comes."

"I don't appreciate you hiding things from me, Timothy."

"I don't appreciate it when you call me Timothy." His gaze returned to the path ahead and he nodded at the road stretching towards their right. "There should be another exit up ahead that leads back to the main road. It should be easier from then on."

"Where are we going?"

"Safehouse, sort of," the man replied after a brief pause, and she cocked an eyebrow. He glanced at her over his shoulder and sighed. "It's hard to hide from a madman inside his own house, if you know what I mean."

She pressed her lips thin. "It's part of the hunt."

"Yeah." He grunted under his breath, trying to limp a little ahead of her to lead her down the path. "Just a matter of time before he finds us. Maybe he'll stab one of us in the leg again before he sends us running with our tails between our legs again."

She closed her eyes, breathing deeply. "Why is he hunting you?"

He shrugged feebly, suppressing another wince. "Who knows. Probably something to do with you-know-who." She froze and he paused, face scrunching as he sucked in a breath through seething teeth. "I mean, isn't that always the case when it comes to us?"

He stopped moving for a moment, hand reaching down to grasp at the fabric around the darkened blot in his thigh when his body began to sway, lurching a little too forward. Her limbs moved on their own volition, hand reaching for his shoulder before he could topple over, until his better leg stomped forward, restoring his balance.

"I'm fine," he breathed out and closed his eyes. "I'm fine. Just… give me a second."

She stood stiffly beside him, fingers curling into her palm as she turned her gaze away from him and looked up towards the scenery instead. It felt like they had progressed into a different area of the park, though not much of their surroundings had changed—shrubbery bordering the cobblestone path, trees standing tall in measured distances, casting long shadows that could easily be mistaken as something else, perhaps something more sinister.

Her eyes were more focused, though, and her head had stopped pounding, too. She was in this body now. She was in control.

"How many of you are here?" she asked carefully, turning her attention back to the older man as he finally straightened his back, no longer heaving his breaths.

"Uh, five now, I think." He moistened his lips, drawing in one more longer breath. "All of us just happened to be entangled with you-know-who, in some form or another."

She bowed her head a little, and began walking as soon as he started too. "Anyone like me?"

"No, thankfully, no," he quickly said with a shake of his head, then turned to face her before averting his gaze off to the side. "I mean, no offense."

"No." She drew in a long, silent breath. "That's good. I'm glad."

"When I say 'entangled', I mean more like me," he added quietly, stretching his shoulders back as his hand finally departed from his leg. "Not so much you, or Skye or Toby, if you know what I mean."

"Marked, you mean."

"Yeah, however you say it." The corner of his lip twitched. "Do you know everybody who's…"

"Marked?" She shot him a brief look, then turned her head down. "We had our own assignments, strictly need-to-know." Because if she did, maybe she would have found Toby sooner, and she wouldn't have carried this burden the way she did now. "But we've seen the tapes, and the videos."

He nodded solemnly. "We used to be friends, sort of, before shit went south with you-know-who. Funny how we all ended up here." His voice grew quiet; if she weren't walking right beside him, she wouldn't have heard him trail off like he did. "But we met this other dude just a little while back. Never seen him before, but I think… I remember him saying something about doing some filming thing, kinda like what we did." He took a short breath and sighed. "He also seems to know more about HABIT than the rest of us—last I saw him, he was mumbling something about some people in the surface world or whatever. Maybe his friends are still alive out there."

She cast him a short glance before turning her head back forward. Amidst the darkness in the distance, she could see the outline of a large wrought-iron gate. He nodded ahead.

"Let's hope he'll know something about getting you out of here, yeah?"

"Guys, it's me. It's Tim." He banged his fist against the center of the metal door again, and she could hear it echo through the interior walls and reverberating through the brick around it. "Open up."

"No one home?" she asked, wrapping her arms around herself as she turned her back to him, scanning their surroundings. The main street was no less abandoned, nor no more familiar than the park was to her; a few cars dotted here and there, parked by the curbside nearby buzzing lamp posts; a mundane row of shops with barred doors, windows, and storefronts; the moonless skies clouding them in quiet, still darkness.

A howl echoed in the far distance.

"Shouldn't be," Tim said, frowning. He pounded three times at the door, for the third time. "Hey guys? This isn't funny, open the door." He groaned and pushed himself off the door. After a brief pause, he sighed. "I brought the ukulele." She gave him a look. He rolled his eyes. "Don't ask."

Her lips parted, but before she could say anything, she heard the subtlest noises from the other side of the door—some rustling and shuffling at first, then a loud clang and the sound of metal dragging against metal, before everything returned to stillness.

Tim gave her a quick glance over his shoulder before he placed his palm flat against the door and pushed forward, swinging it open. Without a word, she followed him inside, finding herself in a narrow corridor almost completely devoid of light, more than it was outside, and even more so when Tim swung the door back shut behind them. She could only see his outline when he started moving, keeping her arms wrapped loose around her when she trailed a few steps behind him.

At the end of the corridor was a soft, warm glow—a dome of orange-yellow light, casting long shadows on the walls of the rectangular room the hallway had opened up to; she could already hear the hushed voices before they even reached the periphery of the radiance.

"Tim's here," someone murmured lowly, and the whispers were muted.

As Tim limped into the illuminated room, she stopped behind him, at the mouth of the corridor, barely in the dome of light, still largely cast in shadows.

"Good." A second voice spoke, more nasally but barely louder than the first. "So now we can—"

"Who the hell is she?"

Four pairs of eyes turned and stared at her. She swallowed dryly.

"A friend," Tim quickly said, his face turning to stone.

"A friend?" A tall young man in a blue striped hooded jacket glared through his glasses, past Tim's shoulder, throwing daggers at her forehead. His voice was accusatory, like sandpaper in her ears, taut but rather shrill for a male's voice. She scrunched her nose. "I thought we were done taking in 'friends', Tim."

"She's one of the kids I told you about," Tim retorted back, turning to glare back at the other man but paused briefly. "Sort of."

"'Sort of'?" The other man narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean, 'sort of'?"

She lightly bit the inside of her cheek and averted her gaze.

"Look, she's fine, all right?" She frowned when Tim raised his voice. She only ever heard that tone once, a long, long time ago. "I trust her."

"Doesn't mean we should too."

"Says the man who tried to kill us all," the first voice spoke up, scoffing under his breath, and everything fell silent. She couldn't see him from where she stood, with Tim still standing in front of her, blocking her view into the rest of the room.

"Look, she doesn't belong here," Tim eventually sighed, eyes flickering between her and his supposed friends every now and then. "She's still alive. HABIT brought her down here, so I'm gonna help get her out of here."

"And what about us?" the man in the blue striped hoodie retorted back, still no less aggressive. "You're saying we belong here? What happened to us getting out, huh?"

"We're dead, Alex." For as smooth as the first voice was, his words cut through the tension in the air like a hot knife through cold butter. "We're dead, and this is hell. We're trapped here. There's no point in denying it anymore."

"And we belong here?" the third man—Alex—sneered back and scoffed. "In hell, or—or purgatory, or whatever the hell this is?"

"Well, one of us clearly does."

Ah yes. Friends.

Something stirred in the back of her mind—an echo of a smile.

"I'm not asking you to help me." Tim stepped forward, folding his arms in front of him. "I'm not asking anybody anything. You called to regroup, so here I am. We all know what it's like out there, so I took her here, for now. But she's my responsibility, so if you want to kick me out from here on out, then fine. I'll leave."

She always loved the silence—calm, serene, peaceful—so she could never quite understand what people meant by 'uncomfortable' or 'awkward' silence. Now, standing here in this room, she could feel the pit of her stomach churning, the ghostly spiders crawling up the skin of her folded arms, and the almost-familiar sensation of the invisible tumor growing inside her skull.

Alex glared between her and Tim, then rolled his eyes. "Whatever," he scoffed and turned around, eyes following him as he disappeared past the hollow door frame behind him.

Tim looked back at her, his gaze almost sympathetic.

"You were being serious about these kids, huh?"

Tim turned his gaze back forward, to one of the men still hidden from her around the corner, and pressed his lips firmly.

"I just need some information from Jeff," he said instead, eyes scanning around the room. "Is he here?"

"No," the nasal voice replied, followed with soft footsteps as a figure slowly entered her field of vision. He was barely taller than Tim, dressed in a musty brown hooded jacket and cap. His eyes briefly glanced towards her before turning back to their mutual friend. "We haven't seen or heard from him since the last time we split up."

Tim sighed, moving his hands to his hips. "You don't think…"

"Let's hope not," the second man said, mouth squirming. "Why do you need him?"

Tim shrugged. "He knows this place better than we do. He knows HABIT better than we do."

"Well, if he knew a way out, wouldn't he have told us about it long ago?"

"It's not like he's been entirely forthright to us, either." The first man finally stepped forward, the last to enter her proper field of view. Barely different in height, almost a similar mop of light brown hair—the first distinctive feature of his that she noticed was his mustard yellow jacket and black gloved hands. He seemed to ignore her entirely at first, nodding towards Tim instead as his eyes quickly panned down. "How's the leg?"

Tim's scoff was feeble, tired. "Been better, been worse."

The other man stretched his lip and nodded. "First-aid kit's in the bathroom," he nodded towards the doorway on the other side of the room, then finally turned to her, the apparently unwelcome guest, expressionless. "And you? How are you holding up?"

She blinked. "I'm fine, thank you," she forced herself to say, breathing in deeply, and the other man nodded again.

"Brian." He turned and bobbed his head towards the man in the cap. "That's Jay. The asshole sulking in the other room is Alex." His gaze moved to Tim, before finally returning back to her. "If Tim trusts you, then I do too. You're welcome to stay as long as you like."

She wrapped her arms tighter around herself, but stretched the corner of her mouth and nodded slightly. "Skye." She swallowed, then cleared her throat. "And thank you."

In the corner of her eye, she saw Tim frown.

"I'm gonna go talk to Alex," Jay announced flatly, eyes darting between the other two people in the room but deliberately avoiding hers as he started making his way towards the doorway their comrade had disappeared to. "Maybe stop him from throwing another tantrum before we can figure things out."

Brian nodded firmly, shoulders slowly deflating. "And I'm taking first watch." He looked to Jay, then Tim, but also to their guest, before moving in the opposite direction. "I'll let you guys know if anything comes up."

She watched and waited until both men went their separate ways, only barely easing the tension previously suffocating the room. Her breath finally escaped her lungs, but when she spun her heel to face Tim, he had already turned his back to her and left the room without another word.