"Five!" Sam yelled, his hands shaking as he fought to keep hearing Five's panicked voice. "N—No, no! Five, Runner Five, can you hear me?"
He heard no response from the other end of the line, and every scanner in Five's area had fallen black. Not only had he lost vocal communication with her, but now she was completely out of range of the video cameras. He was blind and deaf.
"Don't lose me!" he cried into the darkness, working the controls frantically. "Janine, get on that wiring! Hurry!"
He and the owner of Abel worked quickly, their breaths short. No matter what they did—rewiring, pressing buttons, altering the transmissions—Five was gone. The connection had severed and only popped ominously.
"No!" Sam leaned into his controls frenziedly. "We've got to send someone out there to find her!"
He grabbed the voice amplifier to signal to the other runners, but Janine grabbed his wrist and wretched it away.
"We can't!" she said fiercely. "Look at the other cameras, Sam! There's a huge horde of zombs heading right toward us, and it's sunset already. If we let anyone else out for her, we'll definitely lose them!"
"Fine!" Sam grabbed a spare headset and ran out the door. "If no one else will go out there, then I can!"
"Sam!" Janine protested. "Come back—"
He had already disappeared down the stairs, grabbing a backpack from his room on the way out.
Sam ran toward Abel's entrance, pleading through his radio to raise the gates. Runner Eleven saw his attempts at escape and took off after the radio controller, grabbing him from behind.
"Five's lost out there!" Sam explained, struggling to get away from the runner. "We have to find her!"
"Sam, it's no use!" Eleven yelled back, restraining him. "It's already almost dark. It's suicide going out there now!"
"I don't care!" Sam continued battling Eleven, attempting to wriggle from her grasp. "I may not be a runner, but I can run!"
"Sam, listen to me!"
Eleven spun to block Sam's front, grabbing his face in her hands and shaking him slightly.
"You cannot go out there!" she repeated viciously, refusing to release the radio controller. She moved one hand to his collar. "When I was at my last base, someone I cared about went missing just like this. He left on a mission to collect supplies, and his radio malfunctioned. I went out after him that night, and I didn't let anyone stop me."
She growled in concentration, tightening her grip on Sam's collar. "I stumbled into a nest," she hissed bitterly. "I almost got bitten, and for what? Yeah, I found him. But by the time I got to him, he had been ripped to shreds, even beyond hope of reanimation. The only reason I knew it was him was because I found this." She reached a hand beneath her uniform and ripped off a chain from around her neck. "I found this around his mangled neck."
Sam stared at the necklace dangling in front of him. Two dog tags hung from the chain, carved with an ID number and a name: "David."
After a moment of hesitation, Sam stopped fighting Eleven, his muscles relaxing. His eyes looked vacant.
"You're right," he said hollowly. "I can't go."
Eleven cautiously released her grip, and Sam staggered backward. He stumbled as he made his way back further into Abel.
"Where are you going?" she called, closing her fist tightly around the dog tags, her eyes suddenly wet.
"Back to the tower," Sam replied quietly without turning to her. "Maybe my body can't go out to her, but I'll keep trying until my voice can."