A sound buzzed through his teeth and bones, startling Dell awake. With a hoarse cry he sat bolt upright, groping for a weapon on pure instinct.

It was still dark. No morning birds sang yet, and only the constant hum of crickets pierced the silence. He pulled himself out of bed on automatic, joints working from muscle memory alone. He was clear into his overalls, shotgun in hand, before he even really woke up. It wasn't until he was halfway down the stairs that he realized what the noise was: his sentry's target alert, a little PDA blinking blue with alarm on his nightstand. Someone was in the garage.

When he stormed downstairs he found the dog alone on the couch, its head tilted sideways and its ears high. "Well, c'mon then," he told it sharply, and in reply the dog woofed and darted ahead. It beat him outside, through the open door he knew he'd shut and locked before bed. It started sniffing circles through the dew-wet grass, and leapt aside as he thundered past it.

All he had to do was round the side of the house to see the lights bleeding through the garage windows into the evening. That cinched it. Dell grit his teeth and ran.

The front door was tight shut, but the back gaped open like a wound. The dog barrelled in and he followed, the butt of his shotgun to his shoulder. But he found no danger, no sign of the enemy he expected. Instead there was blood on the ground, a little track of it leading from a fat splatter at the foot of a tipped-over shelf. The trail went to one of the poles, painted it red at about hip-height, and staggered left again to disappear behind an aisle of shelving. He cussed, and followed it.

The door had not been forced open. He'd scarcely noticed the empty state of the couch when he left, and the arsonist's absence was last on his mind. So when he found her in a bloody heap on the ground, unmoving, he nearly dropped the gun in surprise.

Didn't take him more than a second or two to get his bearings, though. The wild spray of blood a few feet from her, the spent bullet shells scattered at random across the concrete, the familiar beep of alert when he moved within the sentry's range of fire—they all spoke volumes.

The dog was upon the ragdoll body in an instant, and so was Dell. Gun put aside, he knelt down in the congealing puddle and (carefully, carefully) rolled her over. "You'd best not be dead," he told her in a tight, rough voice, searching for signs of life. "I can't do nothing for ya if you're dead…"

She had a pulse, though it took him far too long to find it. Her breathing was ragged and uneven, bullet holes riddled her chest. She was slipping away. "Alright. Alright…"

First things first. Standing, he left her with the dog and went to the sentry. It beeped at him, almost cheerful, and he shook his head at it as he popped open a hatch on its side. A few switches flipped and dials twisted later, its beeping ceased and its wide barrels drooped downward. This done, he turned his attention to the stout, rectangular shape hidden under a tarp just a few feet away.

The few seconds or so it took him to rip off the tarp and haul the weighty box next to the arsonist and set it up felt like a thousand years. He'd swear that pool of blood crept inches further across the floor every time he looked back at it. But at last he let it thump to the ground, slammed the power button, and hastily tapped a series of keys.

The box—light blue, loaded down with munitions, gauges and countless other strange parts—started to hum, low and deep. Very quickly it was alight with a soft blue glow, and the glow reached out to the arsonist and enveloped her.

Dell eased down onto an overturned bucket a short ways away, brows knit. "Hope this works," he said to the body on the floor, trepidation in his voice. "Dunno why it wouldn't. Exceptin' this'n's a prototype. Never did get it out on the field… well. Guess we'll see, huh?"

The dog had trotted back over to him, watching him attentively. It wagged its tail and set its chin on his knee. With a sigh, he reached out and ruffled its ears. Then he settled back, rubbed his eyes, and said a little prayer on the off-chance someone was listening.

All he could do now was wait.

Darkness still tinted the garage's high windows. Dell had long since drifted off into a kind of tired daze, letting the hypnotic sounds of the machine lull him to sleep. When the arsonist moved, hours later, he missed it.

She shifted, a thick groan issuing from the mask. Slowly, she tried to sit up, failed spectacularly, and dropped back down to the ground. The grunt of pain and resultant smack of flesh on cement startled Dell from his trance. He blinked awake, and found her pushing herself up again. After a second—a third try, she managed to slouch forward into her own lap, puppet-like.

He could see her blinking through the gas mask. She didn't seem to see him. She didn't seem to see anything, actually, she was staring moon-eyed all over the garage. It was eerie to watch. Everything from her chest down was an ugly mess. Holes shredded her damp clothes, and she lay in a crusting brown puddle of her own blood. A muddled noise escaped her.

"You're alive," Dell breathed in relief. The arsonist flinched magnificently, jerking backwards so hard she hit the machine with her head. Wincing, she hunched up into herself.

"What," she croaked, voice uneven and muddy. She only looked up when he spoke again.

"Just me," he said, raising his hands peaceably. "How you fee—"

A high, alien noise cut him off, and it took him a little too long to realize it had come from her, had been some grotesque approximation of a woman's cry. It was so sharp and loud it sent the dog, which had previously been napping at Dell's side, running for cover.

She was staring at him like she'd seen a ghost, shoving herself backwards with both feet as hard as she could given the circumstances, which was not very hard. "No," she was saying. "No, no no no, you're not … how? You're, you're …" Her back hit the knobs and drawers of the machine, and still then she was pushing away so desperately he thought she would knock it over. "Go away. Go away!"

Dell leaned backwards, hands on his knees as he watched her beginning to mount a full-scale panic attack. She was cringing, she looked small and pathetic. It took him a moment to find his tongue. "Hold up. What're you on about?"

"You're, you're s'posed t'be dead," she said fitfully, words slurring together. "Oh my God. It was an accident. I swear it was an accident, you were my—you were my friend, you were the only friend I had, I wouldn't have …"

Her wide and staring eye was hugely dilated, pupil blown out far wider than anything he had ever seen. "An accident?" Dell said, quietly. What did the doctor put in that prototype?

"Please," she begged.

He chewed his lip. When he stood up, she pulled away from him, trying to protect herself with her arms. He turned off the blue box, and the twining lights vanished. For a couple seconds he just stood there, weighing his options—battling his own curiosity. The curiosity won. "What happened?"

She couldn't speak properly for a few seconds, gaping. Then a piercing, broken kind of sound split the air before dragging off into words. "I, the. Th-the explosion. It was—it was me. The rockets, I … I fired one low … and one hit the shed and you were in there and it—i-it—" She stopped short, deathly quiet but for her panicked breathing. "It wasn't on purpose," she said, a few seconds later. "I know how fucked up I was about the thing on, with, with the bus, but it wasn't on purpose, I swear."

"'Course not," Dell said—was all he could think to say—but she didn't seem to hear.

"And then I—I ran away. I ran away." The little of her face he could see contorted with horror. "Oh, my God, I ran away. I killed you and then I ran away and then I—don't know what happened. This happened," she said, one hand touching the gas mask. Then she dug her fingernails into her palm and sunk deep, deep into herself, covering her face with her hands. "I'm, ohhh, f-fuck. I'm—I'm sorry, Tobias. I'm so sorry."

That was the lightbulb, the realization of oh hell, she's hallucinating. Dell shot a worried glance at the prototype dispenser. "It's—" Damn it, he was no good at these things. "Campfire, hey," he tried again, "I ain't this Tobias of yours. Tobias ain't here."

A long silence followed.

"I'm Dell, see? Dell Conagher. 'Short bald jackass with a shotgun', remember?"

Uncomprehending, she only stared, and shook.

It was a long while before she said anything else. Fact of the matter was she'd fallen unconscious again, and lay fitful and twitching against the dispenser. But finally, well after Dell's stomach had started telling him it was more than past time for breakfast, she came back, blinking and slow. "Hey," he said, as she shifted groggily, like she was trying to wake up. "You in there?"

The arsonist stopped dead before looking up at him. "… what?"

"How many fingers am I holdin' up?"

"More than one."

He was holding up three, and that was good enough for him. "Can you move?" he said. She glanced up at him again, bleary-eyed. That one pupil was still huge, if not quite as wide as before.

At least she seemed to get the idea this time. Cumbersome and slow, she pulled herself to her feet, using the dispenser as a crutch. Her knees shook the whole way, even with all of her weight on the machine. Dell extended his hand to her, and she stared at it for a long time before understanding dawned in her gaze. "… Conagher?"

"Yep. But you can call me Dell."

"Dell."

"That's right. Anything hurt?"

"Head. Stomach. Nauseous," she said. She seemed heavy with exhaustion, and she was shivering even under all those clothes. Thank God he'd never taken that dang box onto the field, they'd have all been slaughtered. More than usual. "Where am I?" she said, and at last looked down to notice her decimated clothes. "What—happened?"

"Tell you later. C'mon now, take my hand."

Another long silence. Then: "I don't … think I can walk right now."

He dropped his hand, and noted to himself that this all felt very familiar. "All righty then," he said after a moment, and picked her up for the second time in as many days. This time she didn't make a fuss, just sort of let herself be scooped up.

Dell called the dog, and it bounded ahead of them, tail wagging. He managed to kill the lights and lock the door behind him on his way outside, where the sunrise was just starting to paint the skyline. By the time they got back to the house and he lay the arsonist down on the couch, she was out cold.