I will keep it short!

Eteri: yeah, not as safe as they thought. The problem they have is that Cal wants Gillian to be safe and Gillian doesn't want to leave him behind.

OK, let's get back into it

The only thing Cal could do was to buy time and pray Gillian had finally decided to make a move, so he backed away from Warton and toward the door of the library, hoping he would not consider there might be another way around him.

As it turned out, it didn't seem to be a problem for Warton who tilted his head on the side with a loud crack of his neck, a gesture that only then Cal remembered Ward doing all those years ago. Then the man took Cal by surprise, swiftly locating and picking up his knife, ignoring the library altogether and making a mad dash for the same door he had come from. Cal looked at his speedy movement, horrified, banking on the adrenaline to shut down the pain he felt in various parts of his body and running after him. He wasn't that far behind, but Warton was faster and Cal hoped to God Gillian could be fast enough. Then, right before turning the corner to the main hallway heading for the cube lab, he heard something that nearly glued him to the spot in terror.

"Dr Foster!" Warton's voice echoed in the empty office, a note of sadistic pleasure in his words. "Nice to see you again!"

Gillian's hands felt like they belonged to two different and distant worlds.

The one around the phone showing glimpses of the fight going on in Cal's office was clenched on the device, shaking and sweating; the other hand, loose around the gun, barely had a hold on the object that, between then two, would have been far more helpful. She knew she should have, but she couldn't move. She couldn't just stand there and watch Cal putting himself in the way of a freight train and take the hit, but she wasn't able to do anything concrete about it.

Then she heard his voice, not through the phone but loudly and vividly from behind the door, telling her - begging her - to go. Maybe it was that, or his relentless strength when it came to putting himself in danger for others, but Gillian finally realised all the pain he was putting himself through would be for nothing if she didn't move her ass. So she ran, gun in one hand and phone in the other, blessing whatever God that she had removed her heels hours before making her escape faster and mostly silent. Running, literally for her life, she stopped paying attention to the feed coming from the phone, knowing with a sad feeling at the pitch of her stomach that failing to get to safety would have only made things worse for Cal.

She was moving as fast as she could, turning the corner and realising she would have to drop something soon if she needed her hand free to punch in the codes for the door of the lab and the cube, when she heard the noise. Footsteps, heavy and approaching fast like a stampede, and before she could turn around to check if it was Warton or Cal, she heard him.

"Dr Foster!" Warton's scarily cheerfully voice echoed behind her, close, way too close, for comfort. "Nice to see you again!"

Gillian might have had a decent head-start on him, but he was pushed by instincts far darker and stronger and before she knew it she felt his hand clutching at her shoulders. She screamed in fear and anticipated pain, rumbling on the floor as Warton collapsed on top of her from behind. She fell knees first, her hands letting go of the gun and phone which slid away on the smooth surface of the floor, immediately fighting back with frantic movement when she felt he was trying to flip her on her back. She put up a good fight but it wasn't enough, he was stronger and had on his side the sick rush of adrenaline of a disturbed yet determined mind, and eventually Gillian was laying with her back on the floor staring up at Ward's doppelganger in all too familiar and daunting image of the man hovering over her with an evil grin on his face and a knife in his hand.

"No!"

She screamed, raising her arms and hands and waving them in his face, a desperate gesture of self defence that seemed to do nothing but amuse and excite her attacker. Warton kept grinning, clearly satisfied, then used his free hand to try and seize Gillian's and put a stop to her futile resistance. He was about to lean down on her, looking forward to perhaps leaving a matching small cut on the other side of her neck, when something hit him from behind with the force of a truck. Gillian, who had closed her eyes not to look at him, opened them in shock when the oppressing pressure of his body on hers disappeared, and saw Cal and Warton tussling on the floor not too far from her.

"Go Gillian, run!" Cal yelled out, not looking at her but instead keeping his hands firmly around Warton's throat. "Now!"

It was the fear, mostly, that shook her out of immobility. In another moment she might have been able to see the irony, that fear could work well either way, but wisely she let the self-preservation thoughts move at the top of her list. She stood up as quickly as she could, her whole body shaking, and was about to reach for the lab's door when she heard a scream of pain coming from Cal. She turned around and saw a gash in the fabric of Cal's shirt, revealing a thin bloody line underneath left by the knife Warton had not let go of. If Cal felt it or was aware of it she couldn't tell, because he grabbed one of plant pots nearby and threw it over at Warton, following with a quick charge to take advantage of the fact he had to avoid the projectile. Cal's hands went for the wrist of the hand holding the knife and he put the whole weight of his body behind as he pushed Warton up against the wall, hammering his hand on it enough times until he finally let go of the blade.

"I said go!" He yelled again, the plea in his voice buried under panic and fear.

Painfully, filled with shame, Gillian realised that standing there and watching him fight wasn't going to do either of them any good unless she decided to intervene, but she didn't really know what to do. The best option, for lack of others, was to follow his plan and hope that without the distraction of looking after her he could best Warton at least long enough to get to safety too. With that sad epiphany powering her brain, Gillian started to make her way to the lab door again, and once again a cry of pain dragged her attention back. Cal was still on his feet and holding onto Warton's wrist with both hands, but in doing so he had left himself exposed and the attacker had gone for a dirty shot, kicking his right ankle with all the strength he was capable of with the intention of sweeping him off his feet.

It didn't work, but Cal felt a whole new level of pain coming from there and nearly gave in. Instead, his brain had a moment of clarity through the fog of agony when he saw Gillian was still in the hallway. He realised she wasn't going to go and get herself somewhere safe as long as he was still going head to head with Warton, and as much as he appreciated the sentiment he also wished she would just do as told. Somehow, her refusal or inability to think about herself helped him to gather enough strength for a desperate Hail Mary and a rush of adrenaline and action. He backed up and channelled all his energy in a well placed headbutt, hitting Warton right on the nose with his forehead, ignoring the immediately feeling of soreness there to take advantage of his opponent's sudden dizziness to free his own hands and place a few precise punches to his face, his ear and his diaphragm. The blows could have certainly been stronger, but he hit his targets dead square and in the blink of an eye Warton had a black eye, a ringing noise in his ear messing with his balance and was gasping for air.

If it hadn't been for Gillian waiting for him to run away with her, Cal would have probably taken advantage to go for either the knife or the gun and end it…but she was calling for him with pleading eyes, and at that point he was running on fumes and was too weak to be confident he could deliver on the last step. So he took a last look at Warton, who had slid down to the floor, resisted the temptation of one last kick to his face and instead limped away towards Gillian.

The moment he put a little weight on his right ankle he saw bright stars of pain in his head but powered through, clinging onto her who had come a little closer to support him. The door of the lab was only a few steps away but with Warton growling behind them it seemed like a million miles, but somehow they managed to make it. Without even needing to say it they decided to save precious seconds and didn't lock that one behind them, far more eager to get to the cube. They didn't look back, too scared to see if and how close Warton was catching up with them, and they hobbled over to the entrance of the cube like contestants in the goofiest three legged race of all. One hand around him, fighting against the nearly dead weight of his body leaning on her, Gillian used the other one to enter her code and God, the beeping of the keypad and the sound of the door opening was music to her ears.

They rushed inside just in time to see Warton storm into the lab, Cal's gun in his hand pointed in their general direction. The first shot was deafening in the confined space, the bullet stopping abruptly on the protective wall of the cube, much to Cal's and Gillian's relief. Cal threw himself inside while behind him Gillian closed and locked the door, then he went for the controller in his pocket and blinded the walls of the cube so that Warton would not be able to see them. Gillian, who never once had felt the need to do so since they had installed the precious piece of equipment, grabbed the handle of the door and pulled forcefully a few times to make sure it was locked, gasping and shouting in surprise and terror when a second shot exploded somewhere around them. Behind them, they could hear Warton yell and scream and bang on the door of the cube trying to get through and they both held their breath. Without saying a word, Cal went for the metal table at the centre of the room and flipped it on the side, then reached out for Gillian's hand and dragged her down to the floor where they crawled and sat down together. He covered her with his body as best as he could, her face buried in his chest and her hands seizing around him with every blow to the door right behind there, the two of them trapped between the door and the table and praying all the extra money they had spent of the top of the range features of the cube had been well spent.

Hiding away, clinging onto each other, they curled up in that makeshift trench and waited, Gillian gasping and shaking at every noise and Cal just closing his eyes and breathing through his nostrils, trying to find some inner peace to chase the demons of fear away. They lost track of time, they couldn't even look around and all they could do was sit there and listen to Warton. He fired more shots, Cal had kept count knowing there were 9 bullets in the gun and sighed relieved when Warton ran out, but he was far from done. After the ninth shot there was the dull click of the empty chamber, followed by a thudding noise on the cube probably produced by the now useless gun thrown at their refuge. What followed was a long slur of frustrated screams, insults and random noises, combined with crashing noises of what was more likely the room and equipment being trashed.

There was no telling how long that went on for, neither of them dared to open their eyes and just tried to get closer and closer, the mutual proximity their only solace and, perhaps, the last drip of sanity they could hold on to. Eventually, impossible to tell after how long, silence fell around them: no more yelling, no more crashing, no more shooting. For the first time in forever Cal attempted to open his eyes, which didn't help much since he had blinded the walls of the cube. He motioned to get the controller back from his pocket but Gillian flinched in his arms, burying herself deeper into him desperately seeking for protection. So he decided to let go, that after all he didn't really want to know, then he wrapped his arms around her tighter and closed his eyes again, finally letting the reality of the situation come down on him and passing out.