He woke up to a dark room, dimly lit in blue emergency lights, and thin hands still holding on to him as they lashed him in place on what felt like a cold metal table. Reaching out, he found Rick, who wasn't even trying to communicate with him any longer. „'m in the basement", he managed, feeling nauseous between the pain and being moved about in the near darkness. „Timers are running, place will blow up in five to ten minutes - dunno how long I was out just now. Get the blonde guard out, get Sandra out."

„I'll contact them through Hershel", Rick mumbled back. „I'll send Glenn to get you -„

„NO!" Daryl all but yelled at him. „Glenn is with Carol, and I want Carol nowhere near this place when it blows!"

One of the Feina grabbed Daryl's broken wrist, held it down and tied it in place with a leather belt. Daryl gagged with pain, fighting to keep the contents of his stomach down. Although he felt that they would not make that much of a difference in the face of what was happening to him, he still needed those painkillers - he couldn't throw them up. „Merle", he whispered hoarsely once he could think again. Molten lead seemed to fill his left arm. It felt hot and swollen, and he thought his skin would rupture from the pain. „Get Merle. He'll get me out." He was too dazed by now to remember that he had only minutes left, or that Merle had no idea what his baby brother had gotten himself into, or that Rick didn't even know who Merle was.

He sensed the meld with Hershel expanding until it almost felt as if Hershel were all around him, shielding him from the things that were being done to him. They were tying down his legs now, and his left leg felt as if it were being torn off when they straightened it. They had to know how badly he was injured, but they didn't care.

With a sickening sense of finality, Daryl realized that he was never going to get out of this room again. Never see the sky again, or feel the sun, or the wind, or the rain, on his skin. After all that Merle had done for him, he would not get a chance to thank him one last time and say good-bye to him. He would die down here when the building was torn to pieces by the explosives he had installed at opposite ends of the basement, and Merle would never even know what had become of him.

He would never meet Carol.

.-.

„We'll need a human for this", Enforcer of the Peace Hendik said, looking down at their tied subject just as Daryl's eyes rolled up and he lost consciousness again. „He looks misaligned, and we don't want him to die before he can tell us what he knows." After his years spent questioning humans, he had some experience in what they were supposed to look like, and he felt that this one would have looked sickly even without the blue tinge of the emergency lights. He hoped that maintenance were already on the light problem so he could use the ultra-bright spotlights on their subject.

Enforcer of the Peace Laris nodded thoughtfully. „You are wise beyond your years, Enforcer", he commended his younger companion. „According to our records, we have just received a new subject for examination, a perpetrator of violence. He was brought in by two human policemen - they should still be close enough to be here within a few minutes. I will have them called back."

Laris moved over to the com station near the door. Opening a line to the com center on the first floor, he waited for someone to answer him. „We will need the two humans who just brought in our newest … subject …", he said once the com officer had acknowledged him. „Yes, Peletier", he confirmed, unknowingly mangling the name the same way Esnik had during his meeting with Carol.

He listened for a moment, then nodded at his unseen contact person. „Yes, full examination. Scans, probes. Has he been tied in place?" His eyes unfocused for a moment as he listened, then he gave another nod. „Very good. Yes, they can start dismemberment right away. Small at first, until the scans are done. Keep him alive and awake for it for maybe … three days. I will look in on them when I am done in 6 – we caught someone in the lobby and brought him in here for questioning. I will call a meeting on security tomorrow, by the way. Such breaches are unacceptable. I only came upon him by accident as he was already leaving." He listened for a moment longer, then closed the connection with a curt hum.

Turning back to the table with their unconscious subject on it, he addressed his fellow Enforcer again. „Com will call them back, they should be here within the next few minutes. I'm sure they will be able to help us with his interrogation." He nudged Daryl's right hand, tied down as his left was. „Well, let's wake him up, shall we?"

Enforcer Hendik opened a hatch in the wall behind the table Daryl was lying on. Lined up in the hollow space behind it, cooled down to the perfect temperature and illuminated in green, hung four syringes, ready for use. Picking one at random, Hendik removed the cap from the needle and stepped back to Daryl's side again. He found a vein on Daryl's right forearm and carefully inserted the needle in it before pressing down on the plunger.

The clear yellowish liquid inside the syringe entered Daryl's blood stream and yanked him back into consciousness.

.-.

„He's been tied onto a kind of table, but maybe you'll find his tools in there with him - or the straps can just be opened", Hershel told Carol and Glenn. „Also, he's badly injured, but you can move him, I think - no internal injuries, just fractures and bruises. He might be unconscious when you get to him - he keeps blacking out from the pain."

Carol nodded in the darkness, desperately trying to control her anguish over what she had just heard. „Glenn, you look into the rooms behind us, I'll check ahead", she whispered, and started by holding her card to the reader on the door right next to her. The green light blinked on and she yanked the door open. Empty. Handing the card to Glenn, she watched in the dim light filtering down the stairway as he did the same with the door next to him and shook his head, disappointed.

Her next room was a dud as well. Then Glenn opened his next door and froze. Bathed in the cold glow of the emergency lights inside the room, he stared in, his face a mask. He took a slow, hesitant step forward, then another one. That was when the stench hit him. „My god", he whispered.

Carol stepped up next to him, sick with dread. She was not prepared for seeing Daryl injured and in pain, but if she wanted to get him out of this deathtrap alive she had no other choice. Peering into the cell, she saw a man kneeling on the floor in the center of the room. Clearly, from the way he looked, he had been here far longer than ten minutes - and probably far longer than ten weeks. His hair was unkempt, hanging down to his shoulders, and where his naked skin was visible through the tears in his clothes it was covered in weeping, festering sores. Horrible as his condition was, she nearly collapsed with relief.

This was not Daryl.

„You get him out. I'll look for Daryl. Hurry!" she said to Glenn.

Bracing himself against the horrors inside the cell, Glenn nodded and went in.

.-.

Daryl was screaming. The Feina tying down his legs had noticed the scars on his left leg and was digging into them with his sharp, clawlike fingernails on the inside and outside of his calf just above his ankle. By some horrible misfortune, he had picked one of the spots where the nerve damage caused him the greatest pain even on good days - and good days never entailed fingernails digging into the scars in his leg. Drenched in sweat, panting for air in a cell that was closing in on him, he cried out in pain.

In the back of his mind he could still feel Hershel's presence, but it was no longer enough to soothe him. His old friend was talking to him, had been talking to him the entire time, but the actual words no longer registered with him. He kept holding on to Hershel's voice, feeling as if it was the only thing keeping him from going insane. He had felt Rick wordlessly leaving their meld and closing down their link the moment they had started to torture him, but Hershel was still cradling his mind protectively, keeping him from going over the edge.

„We're on our way, Daryl", Hershel whispered, dimly aware of the fact that he was crying. „You're not alone, Son. I'll stay with you. Hold on, Daryl, you've almost made it." He wished desperately that he could speed up or slow down time by sheer willpower, make the others find him faster or give them more time to search and get him out, that he could make this happen just by promising it to Daryl. "One more minute, maybe two. They'll be there in just a moment. You'll be okay. You'll be safe." His voice broke. „I promise."

.-.

He had done his best, but the Feina was more than two heads taller and at least thirty pounds heavier, had greater reach and longer legs. Right from the start it had been perfectly obvious that he didn't stand a chance against such an adversary - but of course he couldn't just let himself get arrested. He knew too much, so there was too much that he could give away if they interrogated him.

But after he'd been slammed down into the hot concrete for the third time, blood running from cuts all over his bruised and battered body, the skin scraped off the knuckles on both his hands, one finger on his left hand and two on his right broken, his left eye swelling shut and his ears ringing from the latest impact of his head on the ground, he realized that he wasn't getting a miracle here. He was on his back, with the Feina looming over him, outlined against a very blue, cloudless sky, his weapon trained on his chest, and now he was pulling a comlink from a pocket in his robe and talking into it.

Reinforcements.

Yelling with frustration, Daryl threw up his legs, his bruised body protesting, and slammed his booted feet into the Feina's legs from both sides, taking him down just long enough to scrabble away from him. When the Feina dropped to the ground, Daryl managed to kick his weapon out of his hand and way beyond the Feina's reach, even as his broken fingers grabbed the comlink to throw it wide.

Still on his back, he rolled over, got to his knees and then to his feet and ran for the edge of the roof. He could not allow them to take him alive.

The sky embraced him for long moments.

The sun was warm and gentle on his torn skin, weeping blood.

He landed on his left leg with all of his weight and at full speed and could hear and feel his bones splintering on impact. Next, his left hip slammed into the ground, then he felt his left arm and the left side of his ribcage cracking as he crashed down. Blood sprayed out of his nose and mouth as his head hit the ground. He smiled through bloodstained teeth when he heard the Feina screaming with impotent rage. Blackness engulfed him.

When he opened his good eye again, someone in a bulky, bright red paramedic's jacket was leaning into his field of vision, waving one hand in front of his face. „… with me?" he could hear a voice calling, but couldn't connect it to the face he was looking at. He tried to blink the blood out of his eyes, but the red curtain remained. „Can … hear me?" The paramedic leaned in some more, accidentally bumping into the mess that had been his left leg. Darkness swallowed him.

.-.

Desperately trying to shut out the horrible scene playing out in her head, Carol opened the next door and found herself staring at two Feina leaning over a table that looked like an X. Dimly, her mind refusing to realize who it had to be, she noticed that a human was tied to the table and the two Feina were prodding and poking him. There was blood on his face and sprayed over his left arm, and more was running out of his mouth and nostrils. His left leg, although tied down like his other extremities, looked crooked. His left arm was definitely broken. As expected - his mind was still spewing memories into hers -, he was unconscious.

She took in the scene in front of her, the tools that he'd been carrying when they caught him lying in a heap on the floor, and flew into action without a conscious thought. Storming into the cell, she grabbed the screwdriver he had used to open the concealed boxes, raised it high in the air with a feral scream and drove it into the left eye of the Feina that had been leaning over his legs. It crumpled without a sound.

The other Feina seemed frozen in shock for a second, and this one moment of hesitation made all the difference. She ran into the gray-skinned alien, driving her shoulder into the place where the diaphragm would have been in a human, and heard it making a satisfying whooshing sound of surprise as it stumbled backward into the wall. Snarling with hatred, she raised her dripping screwdriver again and rammed it upward into the Feina's skull through the soft spot under its lower jaw. The Feina collapsed, blood spurting from its mouth and gushing from its narrow nostrils.

She left her impromptu weapon where it was stuck, looking down at her trembling hands coated in the aliens' blood. „Hershel", she whimpered, pushing herself to her feet again. Now that she would actually have to face him, she was horribly afraid of what she was going to see once she turned around, but there was no time to hesitate. They had less than five minutes to get out, or they would both be dead. She just hoped Glenn had already made it.

Hershel whispered encouragement at her. He could sense her desperation as if it were his own, and he, too, dreaded what she was going to see once she looked at Daryl. He knew that Daryl was at least half a head taller than Carol and had a minimum of twenty pounds on her. Worse yet, he would be unable to carry his own weight after his fall and after getting tortured and beaten the way he'd been. Encouraging her was all well and good, but words wouldn't help her physically carry her partner.

.-.

It was the pain that woke him. It wouldn't allow him the luxury of remaining unconscious. He could feel a hand on his right wrist that was loosening the straps holding him down, but was too exhausted to even flinch back from the touch. He managed to turn his head, feeling as if glass shards were stuck in his spine. More pain. The Feina seemed to be gone for now – it was a human leaning down over him. Blinking, he tried to focus on the person standing next to him and loosening the belt holding down his right leg.

Blinked again - the blue light made it hard to see her. Managed a tiny headshake, confused.

The woman untying him matched the description he'd been given of Carol - but she wasn't here.

She couldn't be here.

This building was going to blow up within the next few moments, and she couldn't be here with him.

He needed her to live.