A/N: Apparently I write some of my best work whilst traveling at seventy miles an hour.

Contemplate that.

Also, I forgot to say that Melody from the last chapter isn't my character. She belongs to Twilight-na of deviantART. She writes awesome 9 stories, so go check her out!

Gracepunk

Panic.

That was the only word that could accurately describe the immediate situation.

The second Caleb collapsed, Jen rushed to his side and quickly picked him up off the ground, lifting up his shirt to get a look at the wound on his side. What she saw made the blood drain from her face.

"Oh my god..." she gasped. "Ben!"

Ben immediately ran over, struggling to see in the darkness. "What is it?!" he exclaimed. "What's wrong with him?!"

"He's been shot!" she shouted, her voice cracking and her eyes glazed as if she were about to start crying.

"Let's get him inside," said Ben, gesturing to the largest of the three tents. Jen nodded and gently picked up the lifeless body of her brother, carrying him into the tent.

"Andrew!" exclaimed Ben, gesturing for Andrew to follow them inside. "See if you can light this place up a bit, okay?"

Andrew nodded and made a small fireball in his hand. However, the little flame only succeeded in throwing more shadows around the inside of the tent, so he tried something different. He clenched his hand into a fist around the fireball and increased the intensity of the fire. A moment later, his hand began to glow white, casting an even, smooth light, even though it was draining his energy as he tried to maintain it.

Ben quickly laid down a few blankets, and Jen gently laid Caleb on top of them. She then peeled the sticky sweater away from the wound before taking it off of him completely and tossing it to the side. The light green short-sleeve shirt he was wearing underneath was completely soaked with blood, and Jen pulled that off too, finally revealing the wound.

Andrew almost gagged.

Most of Caleb's abdomen was smeared with blood, most of which was dried and cracked. The wound itself was located just above his left hip, a relatively small bullet hole. However, it looked like it had been torn open several times, and there was a small yet steady stream of red sticky blood and pus flowing out of it. The skin around the wound was angry red and inflamed, and there were black streaks that stood out in stark contrast with Caleb's pale skin. The streaks started at the wound and spread outwards, reaching across his stomach and up towards his ribs.

Andrew wasn't a doctor, but he knew that the wound was more than serious.

Ben's reaction was similar to Andrew's.

"Holy shit..." he muttered, his face growing pale. He quickly reached under Caleb's back as if feeling for something.

"Dammit, no exit wound," he said quickly, pulling his hand back. "The bullet's still in his side, and we've gotta get it out before this gets any worse."

It was right at that moment that Caleb came back into consciousness. He coughed a bit before slowly blinking his eyes open, his face contorted in pain. He looked confused until Jen leaned into his field of vision.

"Hey..." she whispered, smiling sadly as she gently stroked his hair out of his sweaty face.

"Hey..." he said weakly, a pained smile creeping onto his face.

Jen sighed a bit. "Why didn't you tell us...?"

Caleb looked away guiltily. "I, uh... I couldn't..."

Jen narrowed her eyes in confusion. "What do you mean you-" Then she stopped, and her face went blank. "I'm gonna kill him."

Jen started to stand up, but Caleb quickly grabbed onto her wrist, holding on with surprising strength for someone who had been walking through a freezing cold forest all day sporting an infected bullet wound.

"Please don't go..." he whimpered, his voice cracking to reveal how scared he really was.

Jen was still for a moment before sitting back down, holding onto Caleb's right hand. "Don't worry," she said, the anger melting out of her voice. "I'll stay."

At that moment, Ben spoke up. "We better hurry up and get this over with before it gets much worse."

Slowly, Caleb nodded, grimacing as if the movement caused him pain.

Ben sighed and reached into his medical bag, searching for the equipment he would need. "How did it get like this?" he asked Caleb. "And when did it happen?"

"Happened this morning..." he whimpered. "I pushed the twins out of the way, and it hit me instead."

"Well how did the wound get torn open?"

"Partly from when I fell off the cliff, and..." He trailed off as if he had said too much.

"And...?" Ben pressed.

Caleb gulped before slowly holding up his left hand and unclenching his fist. Sitting in the palm of his bloodstained hand were several small but deadly-looking pieces of metal shrapnel.

"I got all of it out except the actual bullet..." he said quietly.

"Holy shit..." muttered Ben, Andrew, and Jen at the same time. Before they could say anything else, however, Caleb went into a coughing fit, which only caused more blood to flow from the wound. Jen helped him sit upright, and a few minutes later, when the fit finally subsided, he had blood trickling out of his mouth.

"Alright, we need to hurry up," said Ben, making sure he had everything he needed, which included a variety of scalpels, tweezers, and needles. The sight of all those sharp objects made Andrew feel slightly queasy.

Ben nodded to himself and then reached in his bag one more time. Then he stopped, the color draining from his face. "Shit..." he muttered.

"What is it?" asked Jen hurriedly, her eyes wide.

Slowly, Ben reached into his bag and pulled out the bottle of morphine. Or what was left of it. The glass jar had shattered. Ben remembered the crack he had heard when he fell off the cliff that morning, and now he had gotten his answer. He looked in his bag again and cursed even louder when he realized that all of the jars containing liquid medicine had shattered and contaminated one another. The only one that had survived was the tiny vial of antivenom, but that wasn't of any use.

"Bad news, guys..." he choked out. "We're going to have to do this without morphine."

Caleb groaned and closed his eyes. Jen slowly moved so that Caleb's head was in her lap, and she would be in position to hold his arms down. Andrew pressed his sleeve to his nose, which had started bleeding from maintaining the light for so long.

"Let's get this over with," said Ben as he reached into his bag and pulled out and put on a clean pair of surgical gloves. As soon as he picked up a scalpel, however, someone slowly came into the tent.

It was Christopher.

And if looks could kill, then he would have dropped dead on the spot.

"What do you want?" snarled Jen, her voice practically dripping with venom.

"I... I want to help," Christopher said quietly.

"How could you possibly do anything to help?" exclaimed Jen, louder this time.

"I can make him sleep through the operation."

Jen was quiet for a moment before looking down at Caleb, who was looking up at her with wide, pleading eyes.

"Please..." he whispered.

Slowly, Jen nodded. "Okay..."

Christopher slowly walked forward, taking care not to look anyone in the eye. He then carefully knelt down next to Caleb and gently placed his hand on his shoulder.

"I want you to sleep until the operation is over," he whispered to him.

Almost instantly, Caleb's eyes closed and his body relaxed. The look of pain almost completely left his face.

"Thanks," Jen muttered quickly. "Now get out."

Christopher nodded and quickly left.

"Well that makes things slightly less complicated," said Ben. He twisted the scalpel in his hand a bit before looking back at Jen. "You still might want to hold his arms, just in case." Jen nodded and did as he said.

Ben took a deep breath to steady his hand, and then he cut a slit right through the bullet wound.

Almost immediately, Caleb tensed up and a look of pain crossed his face, but he didn't wake up.

Ben cut another slit across the wound, creating an X with the bullet wound right in the center.

Andrew noticed that Caleb's breathing had sped up a bit. The poor kid could still feel the pain.

Ben put down the scalpel and picked up a piece of gauze, which he used to dab at the wound to remove the blood and pus that had begun to leak out, releasing a foul smell into the air. He then picked up a long thin pair of tweezers.

It was at that moment that Andrew averted his eyes, not wanting to watch for fear of throwing up.

Using the tweezers, Ben reached into the bloody wound and fished around for the bullet. Not only was the sound horrific, but the smell of infection and decay grew stronger. Caleb let out a low groan, and Andrew noticed that Jen was having to hold him down.

"There it is..." muttered Ben after a minute of searching. He slowly removed the tweezers, taking the bullet out. It was covered with blood, of course, but there was something else... It almost looked like the bullet was dripping with sticky, black sludge.

Ben's face immediately drained of all color, and his eye widened. "Oh shit, this is not good."

"What is it?" exclaimed Jen.

Ben held the bullet up a bit higher for her to see.

"It's the Pitch."

Jen gasped and clutched her chest as if she was having a heart attack. "Oh my god..." she muttered, suddenly looking as if she were about to pass out.

Ben quickly turned to Andrew. "Here, take this," he said, reaching into his bag and pulling out a small stone mortar and pestle. "Go find a piece of wood, turn it into charcoal, crush it in the bowl, and bring it back. And hurry!"

Andrew nodded and quickly left the tent, taking the light with him. He ran into the trees, ignoring the somber stares of the others, and started searching. A moment later, he found a small, dry piece of wood. He picked it up and it immediately caught on fire. As soon as it turned into charcoal, he put it in the bowl and used the stone stick to crush it into fine charcoal dust. He then ran back to the tent.

As soon as he made it back, he noticed that Ben had found a flashlight, and he was cleaning the wound with rubbing alcohol. Jen looked like she was on the verge of having a panic attack, and Caleb was covered in sweat and trembling. His breathing had become more ragged and forced, and his sleep was fitful. One of them had also put a small towel in his mouth to keep him from hurting himself or crying out.

"Here," said Andrew breathlessly, handing the bowl to Ben before bringing back the bright light.

Ben nodded and poured some water from a bottle into the bowl. He mixed it up for a minute before reaching into his seemingly bottomless bag and pulling out a dropper. Then he collected some of the charcoal water and dripped it right into the wound.

Caleb gasped and started breathing faster, his hands clenching into fists. Jen gently stroked his hair to try and calm him down. Andrew thought he heard her whispering something, but he couldn't be sure.

Ben repeated the process, every so often dabbing at the wound. Andrew noticed that the piece of gauze would draw out a black substance, but he didn't know if it was the charcoal or the Pitch. Another thing he noticed, however, was that the black streaks radiating out from the wound seemed to be disappearing, drawing back in closer to the wound.

Finally, Andrew summoned the nerve to speak.

"I'm probably gonna regret asking this," he said quietly, "but what's the Pitch?"

Ben glanced up at Jen, but she just shook her head. "You tell him," she said.

Ben nodded and glanced at Andrew, all the while still cleaning the wound. "Caleb is the last Seer alive for a reason," he said. "Do you know why?"

Andrew gulped and wished he had studied his history when he was in school. "Well... I know that it's supposed to be an extinct Grace..."

Ben nodded. "The Seeing Grace is the only one that can only be passed on through inheritance. That's why there were so few Seers to begin with, because most of them never lived past their first year."

"You can always tell if someone is going to be a Seer, because they're born with one silver eye and one gold eye," said Jen. "The silver eye turns bright purple, and the gold changes to something else."

"About thirty years ago, there were a couple hundred Seers alive in the world," Ben continued. "But then people started to get paranoid – especially the Ungraced. They thought that the ability to see the future shouldn't belong to humans, so..."

"It was genocide," said Jen bluntly. "They killed every single Seer in the world... and their families. They didn't want to take the chance that the gene would be passed on."

"That was when a couple crazy bastards invented the Pitch," said Ben. "It's a special type of poison that doesn't hurt anybody except Seers."

"What does it do?" asked Andrew cautiously.

"In everyone else, it just gives you a mild fever, no matter how strong the dosage," said Ben. "But... it's much more deadly to Seers. It causes really high fevers, which is what kills them. There are some different types of Pitch, but they move at different speeds. We're lucky, because if this had been one of the faster versions, he would have been dead within minutes."

"Is that what those black streaks are?" asked Andrew, gesturing to the streaks which had now receded back within a few inches of the wound.

Ben nodded. "It's a good thing we caught that when we did, because if we had waited a few more minutes, the poison would have reached his heart, and well..." He let the sentence hang.

Andrew slowly nodded, and silence returned as Ben finished cleaning out the wound. A few minutes later, the black streaks had completely disappeared. Ben took a deep breath and sat back, stretching his sore back, which resulted in several wicked cracking noises.

"How did you do that...?" asked Andrew. "I thought you said you couldn't heal infections or poison."

"I can't," said Ben, "but like I said, I know how to get rid of them. Charcoal dust absorbs any poison. It hurts like hell, but it'll save your life."

"Good to know," muttered Andrew.

Ben nodded and began stitching up the cuts he had made, unable to heal them with his Grace because of the infection. A moment later, he turned to Jen. "Help me sit him up."

Jen nodded and gently lifted Caleb into a somewhat sitting position so that Ben could wrap the bandages around his abdomen.

It was only then, now that the panic had worn off, that Andrew noticed something. Because Jen was holding Caleb upright, he could see his back. At first he thought it was just the light playing tricks on his eyes, but then he realized that what he was seeing was real.

Caleb's back was covered in long, white scars.

Andrew's eyes widened as he tried to imagine what could have possibly caused that kind of damage. He also tried to imagine how much pain those injuries must constantly give him. Now it actually made sense why Caleb was always slouched over.

Right at that moment, Ben finished bandaging the wound, and Jen laid him back down. That was when Andrew also noticed that there were several deep scars crisscrossing his chest and shoulders, seeming to extend from the ones on his back. He also saw that Caleb's right arm bore as many scars as his back. And he couldn't help but notice one particularly deep scar stretching across his right wrist.

One more thing he noticed was that the kid was completely emaciated, and it looked like his ribs were about to tear through his scarred skin.

Not wanting to get caught staring, Andrew turned to Ben. "H-how come he didn't bleed out? I thought bullet wounds were supposed to bleed a lot."

"Depends on where you get shot," he said. "The bullet missed all the important stuff, which is why it didn't bleed as much. It's also why he isn't dead. It was close, though. If it had been even an inch higher or to the side..."

"So what do we do now...?" asked Jen quietly as she pulled a blanket up around her brother.

Ben was quiet for a moment, deep in thought. "Jen, I need to talk to you."

Jen nodded and gently laid Caleb down. She looked at Andrew. "Will you stay here with him? In case he wakes up?"

Andrew nodded.

"Thank you," said Jen. Then she followed Ben outside. He led her away from the tents to the darker part of the clearing.

"I'm not gonna sugarcoat this," said Ben. "There's a very high possibility that he won't make it through the night."

She had been dreading hearing that. "What is it...?"

"It could be the infection that will get him. I mean, when a wound looks like that, there isn't much I can do. I don't think we have to worry about blood loss, but we'll definitely have to make sure the Pitch doesn't relapse. And if that doesn't get him, then it'll be the cold."

This caught her off guard. "What do you mean the cold?"

"It's twelve degrees at the moment, Jen, and if he gets sick when his immune system is compromised like this, then he will die. No doubt about it."

Jen took a deep breath, blinking back tears.

"He didn't have much of a fever, so if we can just make sure he stays warm, then the chances of him surviving the night will be higher..." said Ben quietly. "Not much higher, because that infection he's got is a fucking monster, but it'll at least give him a chance..."

Slowly, Jen nodded. That was when her sharp eyes detected movement. She looked up and saw Christopher emerge from his own tent.

Almost immediately, Jen's anguish was replaced with rage. She flew across the clearing, grabbed Christopher by the throat, and slammed him into a tree. It all happened too fast for Christopher to take in.

"Why did you do it..." snarled Jen, her face only inches from Christopher's.

"We... h-had to... k-keep... moving..." he choked out, barely able to breathe because of Jen's death grip.

"It wasn't your place to decide," she growled, her grip tightening threateningly. "And now my little brother is dying because of you."

"Jen!" exclaimed Ben, who had finally processed what had happened. He was standing a few feet behind her, ready to hold her back if she tried something.

Jen glanced over her shoulder at Ben before looking back at Christopher.

"If he dies," she said slowly, "then I will kill you."

Christopher knew the look in her eyes. She wasn't bluffing. And he was terrified. Slowly, he nodded, and she dropped him to the ground before stalking back towards the tent.

Andrew had heard every word they had exchanged. It helped that it was dead silent, and he had abnormally good hearing.

When Jen came back, Andrew slowly stood up. "Jen, I think I can help," he said. However, she shook her head.

"It's okay," she said quietly, the anger disappearing from her eyes. "Thanks for helping, but I think we'll be fine..."

Slowly, Andrew nodded. He turned and left the tent, nearly bumping into Ben as he left. He waited a few seconds, and then Ben came back out.

"I think she snapped," he whispered to Andrew before walking to the last tent. Inside, the twins were sleeping, curled up together like puppies. Ben picked up two spare blankets and handed one to Andrew before dropping to the ground and curling up against the cold.

"Try and get some sleep," he said. "Tomorrow's gonna be rough..."

Andrew knew exactly what he meant by that. He knew that the odds of Caleb surviving the night were next to nonexistent. That was why Jen had made them leave. She wanted to stay with him for his last few hours...

With a sigh, Andrew quietly laid down and wrapped himself in his blanket, wishing there was something he could do.

It was just around midnight when Andrew woke up with a gasp. He had been having a nightmare, but he couldn't remember what it was.

Slowly and quietly, Andrew wrapped his blanket around his shoulders and exited the tent. He stood outside, breathing in the icy midnight air, his breath creating small clouds, but he still wasn't calming down. All the cold did was burn his lungs.

That was when he remembered what had happened to Caleb.

With a sigh, Andrew wrapped his blanket tighter around himself. He held out his hand and made a small flame appear on the end of his thumb as if it were a candle. Fire always had a way of calming him down. He wasn't sure if it was the light or the heat, but it was soothing.

Then something sparked in his head.

As quiet as he could, he made his way to the tent with Caleb and Jen. He entered slowly and saw that Caleb was bundled up in blankets, and Jen was lying right next to him. They were both asleep, but Andrew couldn't help but notice how pale Caleb was.

Andrew took the blanket off of his shoulders and laid it on top of them. Then he sat down next to Caleb and gently took hold of one of the blankets. A moment later, Andrew saw his fingers start to glow red as he used his Grace, taking away the actual fire but still putting out the heat.

A few minutes later, the entire blanket had warmed up considerably, and Caleb had stopped shivering.

Still, Andrew continued. He felt a headache start to form from the extensive use of his Grace, but that didn't matter at the moment.

All that mattered was keeping this kid alive.

This continued for half an hour before Andrew started to get dizzy and tired. He laid down, but he still continued to put out fire heat.

And then, just before he fell asleep, he saw Caleb open his eyes.

"Thank you..." he whispered to Andrew.

Andrew only had the energy to smile before losing consciousness.

A/N: They're still not out of the woods yet, guys. ;) But at least you finally got to learn about the Pitch and why Caleb is the only Seer left.

Now for the question: what do you think will happen next? Mwa. Ha. Ha.