The only way to have a friend is to be one.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

According to Nicholas when he had asked, they had only been traveling for about fifteen minutes. It felt like it had been longer.

Both he and Nicholas had followed the PDA in the sewers and they had found a flight of stairs that led up. Having had no other alternative, both had begun to ascend the stairs without any complaint. But after a little while, it didn't look like the stairwell led to anywhere and just when he was sure they had gone the wrong way, they had found an entrance to the Residence. Further searching had revealed they were on the upper ledge of the fifth floor.

After a few minutes, they had found an entrance to the second level of the cafeteria, and that was where they had found the others surrounded by more of those things. He had found the stairs and had fired rounds from the LDA that had been, up to that point, unused. Now it was nearing the end of its first clip of ammunition. Nicholas had seemed reluctant, but he had followed anyway, taking out more of them from the entrance of the cafeteria.

Now, he and Selphie had taken point, with Laguna supporting Quistis in the center and Nicholas in the back. Had he not taken the PDA from Nicholas and strapped it onto his belt before moving, he wouldn't have liked the formation, but either way they were stuck. Though not a fighter, he was the only help they had and Squall couldn't afford to be picky.

None of them could.

He checked the time on the PDA, and remembered what Nicolas had said about the transport. Even if they didn't make it, they could infiltrate the Airstation and steal a ship if they had no other option. But at the same time there was no guarantee it wouldn't be overrun as badly as the Residence was.

Luckily, they didn't have to run around in complete darkness anymore. Nicolas had brought a couple of flashlights, probably for travelling through the sewers, and while Selphie had one, the elder man had the other, in case something tried to sneak up on them. It bothered him slightly that a civilian had been so well prepared for something like this, but even Rinoa had known what she was doing in the field when they had to escape Timber.

Just thinking about the girl was enough to bring back the feelings of pain that he carried with him, and he pushed them back down with great effort. He couldn't afford to wallow in self-pity, not with those things creeping around the corridors. He had no choice but to stow it and deal with it later if he wanted to stay alive.

The irony of the situation was not lost on him. Barely an hour before he had contemplated suicide just to get away from this nightmare, and now he was desperately fighting for survival.

Great, the sardonic voice in his head muttered. If I get out of this alive, I'll right a damned book.

Selphie crept around the corner first, to check to see if it was clear before she signalled to Squall that it was safe. He turned around and nodded to the three people behind him before following the smaller SeeD. Footfalls indicated that the others were following him.

After a few more minutes of walking, they approached a room at the end of the hall. Selphie pulled off one of the grenades strapped to her shoulders and, after everyone was out of harms way, she detonated it, and the door blew off its electronic hinges. Both SeeDs stood at the entrance, weapons raised before Squall stepped into the room first.

The room had a large table positioned in the center of the room with chairs sectioned around it's circumference. There were many electronic devices placed on the table, one in the very center of the table and undoubtedly for presentations, while the rest decorated the edges of the table directly in the middle of the seats. Squall guessed that it was just in case someone couldn't make it to the meeting.

"This is the delegation's room," Laguna explained as he entered the room, shifting Quistis onto his shoulder as he moved. "The big shots in the Cabinet come here to argue about every little thing. Gives me a headache at least once a month."

Selphie approached one of the chairs and pressed a couple of the buttons located on the holographic displayer but after a moment she looked up and shook her head. The power-outage had taken out just about everything in the city, excluding battery operated devices. Even the mechanized doors were inoperable.

"So it would seem this room is a dead end," Nicolas said after a visual sweep, and he grinned sheepishly when everyone turned to look at him. "No pun intended, of course."

Selphie rolled her eyes and Squall shook his head in response. Neither Laguna nor Quistis paid him any attention. They were about to leave when Quistis suddenly said, "What was that noise?"

"What noise?" Nicholas asked, all traces of humour having left his domineer.

"None of you heard it?" Quistis sounded surprised. "Then I guess it was my -"

Before she could wave it off, Squall heard it. A familiar scraping noise, like nails on a blackboard, but the surface sounded like plaster or metal. After a moment of silence, Squall managed to find his voice and broke through it. "Was that what you heard?"

Quistis nodded in response and Squall inwardly cursed. He knew the sound all too well. "We need to get out of here, now!"

Neither Selphie nor Laguna argued with him, Selphie grabbing a hold of Nicolas and dragging him to the door even as Squall backed out of the room behind them, the MP5K strapped at his side raised. There couldn't have been more of those things, he'd had a rough time dealing with one of them, and he only had two fire ammunition left in Irvine's Exeter.

Someone suddenly shouted out and Squall turned around, only to see that same thing that had attacked him in the cafeteria was now blocking the only exit in the room. From the simple fact that it was bigger than the one he had killed, Squall wouldn't have been surprised if it had originally been an older sibling.

Selphie immediately released her grip on Nicholas' arm, who looked a whole lot paler than he should have, and started firing into the creature's face relentlessly. Two bullets lodged themselves into the left side of its face, and one went wide, lodging itself into the plaster to the left of the creature even as it bounded forward, its tongue stretched out, though not as long as the one he had killed in the cafeteria earlier.

"The ruddy hell is that thing?" Nicholas shouted, pushing himself as far away from the creature as possible.

"It's called a Licker!" Squall shouted before Selphie could answer.

"So you got unlucky too?" Laguna shouted, even as he found a safe spot to set Quistis. Squall nodded in response and provided cover fire from the submachine gun, bullets imbedding themselves into the muscle and gore that remained of the humanoid figure's skin.

"This guy knows us personally!" Selphie shouted. "It's the thing that killed Ward!"

As much as Squall was relieved that he wasn't the only one who had difficulty with these things, the fact that there had been more than one put him on edge. If he had nearly depleted his ammunition supply against one of them, how much would it take to put another one down?

A scream from nearby tore him from his thoughts and he turned to see more of the dead creatures reaching out towards Nicolas, who had pulled out one of his own 45 LDA's and was firing into the creatures where he sat against a wall. Selphie jumped back out of range of the Licker in order to help Nicholas, while Laguna strapped on an upgraded version of the weapon the SeeD held in his hand.

Selphie pulled out one of the remaining throwing knifes she possessed and raced forward, standing in front of Nicholas – Squall had said that was his name – as she tossed it into the forehead of an oncoming zombie. Before it fell to the ground, she spun on her heel in a full circle and kicked out, pushing the blade deeper into the corpse's skull and sending it into three more of it's kind. She un-holstered her firearms and, with one in each hand, pulled the trigger alternately, sending steel bullets into her would-be attackers. She detected movement nearby and noticed Nicolas rose to his own feet, a LDA in his right hand as he added his own fire-power.

The LDA she held in her right hand ran empty, followed closely by the other but before she could search herself for more, Nicholas reached into his trench coat and handed her two more clips. Selphie grinned even as she emptied her gun of the bare clips and reloaded them before firing once again.

"I don't know how much longer we can hold them off," Nicholas said. Selphie nodded in agreement. They couldn't afford to waste their ammo on dead bureaucrats, even if they were boring old men. She re-holstered both weapons into their place, and pulled out two more combat knives. Telling Nicholas to stand back, Selphie charged forward, grateful to see there were only four of the dead guys left.

Gripping onto the handle of the knives tightly, Selphie suddenly spun, like she had seen Kiros do in the dream world, and slashed into the front of a zombies face before slashing into other's neck. While the first remained standing, the other fell to the floor and didn't get back up. Selphie suspected that she had hit a vital nerve, but didn't stop to think about it. She slapped the knife in her right hand into the forehead of the first zombie as a third converged on her position. She grabbed a hold of the zombie before it could grab her and, with her hands positioned on his jaw and neck, twisted until there was an audible crack and the zombie fell limp. She turned around and threw the knife at the remaining zombie; the sharp ended embedding itself right through the skull of the creature and the handle sticking out like a spear.

Selphie nodded to herself, glad to have taken those hand-to-hand lessons at Trabia Garden. She turned around, only to see Nicholas rushing off to help the others.

The shock must have worn off. Selphie thought to herself before reaching for her own weapon. Just as she was preparing to help her friends, she heard a door opening from behind. She was barely able to turn around when a flash of pain shot up her left arm and she fell backwards, clutching at the fresh wound and cursing at the same time. More of those things were coming from a hidden doorway that probably led to one of the more infected rooms. Why hadn't she thought of it before?

She tried raising her left hand, but found that it wouldn't obey her, and only lay uselessly at her side. Considering the size of the zombie that had attacked her, she wasn't too surprised; the zombie looked like he was built like a brick. The zombie that was leading the way out of the doorway was almost as tall as Ward had been, and he was dressed in an Estharian Military uniform. Half his face was missing and the same could be said about his right ear.

She removed her right hand from her left arm, frowning at the long gashes that ran up from her elbow and grabbed the gun that had been gripped in her opposite hand. She pointed and fired, the bullets imbedding themselves into the first zombie's skull and soon, more of those things were falling, making a pile around her.

When her first weapon ran empty, she tossed it into the face of a zombie and reached for the other, well aware that she probably didn't have any more ammunition after this. With only one working arm, she wouldn't stand a chance with a combat knife, and she wondered if anything could possibly get any worse.

Chancing a glance over towards the others, she realized that the Licker had jumped out of the path of the door in order to sneak up on the others, like it had done before it had killed Ward. It was still in her path however, but the others were distracting it onto themselves.

Frowning, Selphie knew that, had she not seen the slightly shorter tongue on this creature, she would have thought it to be related to the one that she had run into earlier. Then she remembered how it had mutated when it got a sample of living tissue and cursed loudly. If it grew any bigger – if it killed anyone else – they were dead.

Her thoughts immediately turned towards Quistis. If the Licker saw her and realized she couldn't fight back, it'd go after her and then they'd be done for. There wouldn't be a chance of them getting out of there alive, all in sacrifice of someone else.

She rose to her feet, noticing how heavily surrounded she was by zombies, who were slowly limping towards her. Looking behind her, she noticed more of them coming from another secret room, and she knew that there wasn't a chance of her getting out of there. But if she could get everyone else out of the room, she could take them out.

Schipner's message came to mind, and Selphie nodded to herself, assured that this would save the rest of her comrades. Concentrating on her stock of magic, he found a strong spell and threw it at the Licker, knocking it forward just as it had been about to lunge at Sir Laguna. "Get Quisty outta here!" Selphie shouted, even as she summoned forth another spell. "I'll distract it!"

"How do you plan on doing that?" Nicholas shouted back. "Shooting it in the back? It won't work!"

"Just go! I'll be right behind you!"

At least, she hoped she'd be. "Look! That thing got bigger, right? It's because it eats living tissue! Quisty can't defend herself, she needs to get out of here!"

"She's right!" Squall shouted at Sir Laguna, before he could argue. "Get Quistis and Nicholas out of here!"

Selphie silently thanked Squall for taking over. He was better at giving orders than she was, and she didn't want to be in charge even out of these circumstances. With one last fleeting look, Laguna ran towards Quistis, hefted her up and left the room, Nicholas behind them. Whether they looked back or not, Selphie didn't bother to check. All she knew was that the Licker was climbing onto its feet and was slowly turning around, its long tongue curving lazily in the air.

"I'll distract it!" Squall shouted from the other side and Selphie had forgotten he hadn't left yet. "Get over on this side when I've got its attention!"

"Squall, it won't let me! That thing is too quick! If I even move, it'll turn back around and stop me anyway."

Selphie sighed, Schipner's words running through her mind. The knowledge of what the virus could do – what it was doing to Quistis, what it did to everyone else – was heavily set in her mind and from the moment she had heard the words come from the video message she had witnessed, her mind had already been made up. "Besides, I'm infected! One of the zombies rammed me and I can't even lift my arm. I'd only be a burden."

The Licker was looming towards her, and for a fleeting second her determination wavered, but she strengthened it. This was what it meant to be a SeeD, to know what was best for the rest of the team. Most teams didn't have a problem with leaving their people behind if they had no choice. She and Squall had only been SeeDs for less than half a year. Though they knew it on paper, it was different to have to experience it. "You can't talk me out of this one, Squall. Even if I let you help me, we'd both get ourselves killed. Better it just be me than it be the both of us."

For a second, she thought Squall was going to continue this argument and she prepared herself to cast an aero spell just to get him out of the room. But after a second, his voice stopped her from casting the spell. "Alright. But take this with you!"

Something was suddenly flung over the Licker's head, catching its attention, but Selphie was quicker and caught it in her good arm before it could lunge towards her. Rolling back to avoid a swipe from the creature, she took a moment to look at the item she held and when she identified it she very nearly burst into tears.

The Exeter. The only thing that remained of Irvine Kinneas was held securely in her hand. The slightly oversized riffle that he was always flaunting during the war was now in her possession. Squall must have gone back after everyone had split up and found it.

She knew that he hadn't meant for her to use it if she needed to, otherwise, he would have said so. Squall understood that she wasn't going to meet them again, and had given it to her as a sentiment, the only thing she would have to remember the Galbadian Sharpshooter by. Securing it onto her weapon's holster, she nodded her thanks before smiling, despite the situation even as tears began to blur her vision. "Tell Quisty that I'm nothing but a big fat Hypocrite. And don't edit it."

Squall nodded in response to her request and she watched as the last of her comrades left the room.

The Licker turned around as it heard Squall's footsteps, but Selphie sent another flash of magic towards the monster, the Firaga spell nearly setting its neck and back on fire. The Licker turned its attention towards the small SeeD and the girl backed up against the wall of the room, noticing the window nearby. She figured that it had to be four thirty in the morning by then, but time could move achingly slow when it wanted to.

C'mon Squall… get out of range… Selphie mentally prayed, hoping that this would take all the zombies out. Thinking back on it, she knew that nothing would be getting out of the room.

The zombies were getting closer, and the Licker had climbed up onto the ceiling, probably preferring that advantage over it's prey. The moaning creatures were within arms reach and if she didn't hurry, she would be the only one dying where she stood.

Finally, she threw out her good arm, a blue field of magic flashing past the zombies, and she prayed that she had hit her target before she turned her attention towards the horde that was on the brink of converging her.

"You want a fucking meal?" She shouted. "Then you're gonna have to learn that sometimes you can't get what you fucking want!"

She reached down with her good hand and grasped the Exeter tightly for a brief second before she bypassed the weapon and grabbed a hold of a small hand held device with a small red button on top of the stick like object. Only one would go off, but then that was all that was needed before a chain reaction would start.

"If I'm gonna fucking die," she shouted, tears falling freely from her face, even as the creatures reached out for her. Even as the Licker's tongue reached out for her. Even as the last of her comrades disappeared from sight.

Her face set itself into a tight smile, thinking about Irvine's expression when she asked him about what he had said when she got to see him again.

And as she depressed the detonator, she concluded her last words to the only crowd who were around to hear them. "Then I'm gonna stay fucking dead!"