As he came up on the sliding doors leading out of the building, Glenn remembered that Carol was the one carrying their key card as she had still been searching for Daryl when he had left her. He would be looking out at freedom and safety through a glass wall, unable to reach them, until the moment they all died.

He still couldn't hear Carol coming up, and the man draped over his left arm was in too pitiful a state to leave behind on his own and go in search of her. He was on the brink of losing consciousness, the exertion of being held upright nearly enough to take him out. The stench of urine and feces and his rotting wounds wafting into Glenn's nose made him gag.

Sinking down to his knees with him to give the man some respite, Glenn whispered into his ear, fighting his reflex to draw back when the man's dirty long hair tickled his nose. „What's your name? How long have you been here?" he asked. If he was going to die here, he at least wanted to know in whose company he was going out.

The man turned his head with an expression on his face as if he had just seen a ghost. „What year is it? What month?" he whispered, his voice hoarse - either with disuse, or from screaming. Glenn shuddered at both alternatives and gave him the current date. The man closed his eyes. A sticky fluid began to seep from them. „Nearly eight months. Name's Jim", he breathed.

Turning his head, he allowed Glenn a look behind his right ear. A shallow crater nearly the size of his palm had been gauged into his skull, and Glenn realized that he was looking at the place where the man's link implant had been.

He was a TE agent.

.-.

Andrea froze when she saw the patrol car coming back. Shocked, she returned Merle's wave as they passed her on their way back to the compound. Why were they returning? What was going on back there? She waited until they had turned around the next corner and then started running after them.

.-.

Sandra stepped out from behind the hedge where she had been hiding, waiting for Daryl to come out, and looked at the large illuminated chrono in the hall. Three minutes until the charges would be set off - and they would ignite the fuel tanks in each building in turn. The resulting explosions were going to be massive, enough to reduce the buildings that were being attacked directly to little more than rubble and badly damage those around them. Yet Daryl was still nowhere to be seen.

Stepping back up to the doors, she held her card up to the reader and entered the building again as soon as the glass doors whirred open.

There in the shadows in front of her, cast by the massive scanning arch, sat two men, one of them supporting the other, neither of them Daryl. One was a young Asian, the other, who might be a Caucasian - but it was hard to tell under the dirt caking his skin and the sores disfiguring him - had clearly been a prisoner here. Just how many people were sneaking through this building tonight?

The Asian stared at her with wide eyes. „Who are you?"

.-.

He was no longer tied down, but getting him off the table without him collapsing immediately had been incredibly difficult. Although he wasn't unconscious, he wasn't fully with her either but kept drifting in and out. Considering his physical condition, it was probably a miracle that he was even halfway conscious, and he was clearly willing to help, but given how briefly he had been in their hands, his condition was appalling. He was barely able to stand, let alone walk, his left leg completely out of commission. Most of his weight was on her as they made their way to the staircase. She was amazed that he managed to keep his pain and fear completely to himself now – apparently, getting away from the two Feina torturing him had been enough to ease his mind.

They had not been supposed to meet, ever. Yet here she was, with his good arm draped over her shoulders and her own arm around his waist to support him. She could feel his labored panting, the way he flinched every time he tried to move his bad leg, the way his breath hitched with each little hop forward that he managed on his good right leg. He was leaning into her as if they'd known each other for years. His body was fighting him every step of the way and it was an effort not to look at him, but she knew that once she took in his injuries she would no longer be able to go on.

She had finally met Daryl - but she might still lose him.

.-.

„Woman!" Ed's angry voice rang out from the hallway. „Where you at? Is dinner ready? I'm going out with the boys, I need to eat early!"

„Ed, I'm so sorry", she began, but he didn't let her finish. Entering the kitchen in three long strides, throwing the door open with enough force to leave a dent in the wall, he stalked up to her and slapped her face with his open hand, first left, then right. He took in the ingredients she had already lined up for cooking - the onions, the tomatoes, the glass jars of herbs.

Grabbing the thyme glass, he threw it at her, hitting her shoulder with it. The jar crashed to the ground, shattering on the tiles.

Ed swiped the cubed tomatoes off the counter and the sound of the bowl breaking made her flinch. The kitchen floor had turned into a nightmarish landscape of tomato cubes and glass shards. Ed grabbed her shoulder, yanked her about so she was facing her chopped onions, and shoved her into the countertop. She stifled the cry of pain even as her eyes started streaming with tears - not crying yet, but simply tears of pain and fear. Cowering away from him, she raised her hands to protect her head.

Towering over her, Ed reached out, grabbed her clothes and pulled her upright again, the fabric bunched in his fist. His face was red and his lips were flecked with spit. „I work hard every day", he yelled at her, making her flinch again, „to put bread on your table, you fucking lazy bitch." He pushed her back against the countertop again, letting go of her blouse and apron, but followed her with two quick steps.

She tried to turn away and get to the arch between the kitchen and the living room as he was blocking her way to the kitchen door. But he had her by the shoulder again in no time and pushed her into the side of the arch. „Is it too much to ask that my dinner be ready when I come home after work?"

She could feel blood running down her face from her nose and her split lips. Her whole body was aching from being thrown around and punched. She had lost one of her shoes in the scuffle and stepped into the glass shards on the floor. Looking down, she saw her own bloody footprints, emerging from the sea of tomatoes and tomato juice and highlighted by large splotches of blood from her nose.

Ed was coming for her again. He reached out with both hands and sent her reeling into two of the chairs arranged around the dinner table. She managed to grab hold of one of them to keep herself from falling to the floor. Looking up from her bruised hands clenched into the upholstery of the chair, she saw Ed's fist coming at her, blocking out the light.

.-.

Dazed, still lost within his memory of her dream, he raised his broken arm in defense and flinched as if evading an attack, nearly losing his balance from the abrupt movement, then looked at the woman next to him, remembering once more the face of the man who had grabbed her as she had stepped out of the diner a million years ago before setting out for the Feina compound tonight. He couldn't quite recall her name, but he knew she was important.

„He's your husband", he managed once his sluggish brain had supplied all the words, blood spluttering from his mouth as he spoke.

A muscle twitched in her cheek, just about visible in the light filtering down from the hall above them. Other than that, she did not respond to his statement.

Assuming that she hadn't heard or understood him, he cleared his throat of blood and phlegm, his chest constricting with the pain of coughing. „He's your husband", he repeated, more blood sheeting down his chin and dripping onto his jacket. He sagged in her arms for a moment as they reached the stairs before rallying himself again. She draped his right arm over the banister so he could support himself on his good side and then stepped around to put his broken arm around her shoulders, careful not to jostle it and hold it above his fractures.

The effort of hopping up the first step of the stairs on his one good leg had him dizzy with exertion and pain. She was holding up his broken left side, but there was absolutely no way that she could take him up the stairs on her own. As he knew that they were running out of time, he didn't wait until he had recovered from this first hop but kept going, taking three more steps in a row before he had to take a break. Reeling, he leaned into the banister, trying to breathe. This night had shrunk down into a nightmarish tunnel that solely consisted of getting up these fucking stairs again and again. Climbing them the first time around, with his leg just cramping and hurting as usual instead of broken or whatever it was that had happened to his knee, had been a bitch. Climbing them now, with the left half of his body more or less unusable and screaming in pain at every movement, would ultimately prove to be impossible – of that he was convinced now.

He looked at the woman again – he was certain that he knew her name, he just needed to remember – and processed the fear and anxiety she radiated. All that was left for him to do now was send her out to safety - on her own. Reaching out for her with his mind – and just how was he doing that, he wondered – he suddenly felt enveloped by overwhelming concern for him, and not just from her. He could sense a soothing presence in the back of his mind that seemed to be watching over them, but not interfering. Just as he was about to open his stupid mouth again to ask her why she cared so much and tell her to leave him behind and try to make it on her own, they both heard footsteps approaching them from above. Their heads whipped about in unison as they looked up the stairs to see who was coming for them.