"Why did you do that?!" Penelope asked as she was dragged along by her sister out of the front entrance of the administration building. Charlotte stopped on the steps and stared at her in disbelief.

"Why did I do what? Stab him? Are you seriously asking why I stabbed Conner Shepherd?"

Penelope tugged her hand away from Charlotte, panting. "What part of the plan was that? You had control. That wasn't necessary."

"Shepherd would only have pursu—"

"You promised to only kill when necessary!" Penelope ran her hands through her hair. "That wasn't… That wasn't intelligent, Char. That was personal. Making it personal means making mistakes, that's what you've always told me."

"I had to do it, Penny." Charlotte put both of her hands on Penelope's shoulders and looked her sister in the eye. "It was the best choice for both of us. I was able to use the opening you created to make it happen."

"I didn't want that to happen! I just wanted us to get free."

"Either way, it's happened now. We need to get the hell out of Hearthome now before the DHP come crashing down on us. We can talk about this later," Charlotte grabbed a hold of Penelope's wrist again and gently dragged her down the stairs and into the main square of Hearthome.

A few shadows trembled underneath some tables, others against the side of buildings, all clearly terrified from the gunshots that had echoed around the facility. Penelope had no doubt that the events of this night had likely regressed a number of the patients in Hearthome. Nightmares would flourish, and the terror would simply breed more terror. It was a sad thing. This whole thing was supposed to have been kept as secret as possible for the sole purpose of not involving the other patients. But there was no hiding those gunshots, no hiding the deaths.

"And whose fault is that, I wonder?"

Penelope's eyes widened as they passed the makeshift memorial that had been built up in the center of the square. Standing in the middle of it was the unmistakable figure of her Lord, pale skin, teeth sharp. The snakes writhed as if hiding from the sunlight.

"I warned you of listening to her. Do you understand the repercussions of ignoring my advice now?"

"I tried my best!" Penelope responded, coming to a halt and facing her Lord. "I'm sorry it didn't go the way we wanted, but I tried!"

"Trying is not good enough," The pinpricks of its eyes seemed to bore into Penelope's very soul and she flinched as if struck. "Dear girl, do not look at me with that fear in your eyes. I only want what is best for you, as I always have."

"I know… I know," Penelope nodded fervently. "I'm sorry."

"Penny, we don't have time for that," Charlotte impatiently pulled Penelope away again and started towards the front gates of Hearthome and suddenly pulled to a stop.

The gates were wide open.

Standing with their backs to Charlotte and Penelope on either side of the gates were the unmistakable uniforms of Wasp and Berlin. Ahead of the gate, down the road a little ways, were what looked to be a trail of black buses lead by a single black SUV.

"…They're here already…" Charlotte muttered. She changed direction and she and Penelope headed straight for the Rec-Zone.

"Where are we going?" Penelope asked. "What do we do now? We can't be caught by them again, Char, with what you and your group have done."

"I had a couple of stashes made around Hearthome. There's no chance of getting to the Warden's office now, the orderlies Bunker is too far away, so we're going to Marcus' backroom. We'll get those supplies, then we'll let whoever it is come through that gate, and slip out when nobody is looking."

"Just like that?" Penelope asked.

"Just like that, Penny," Charlotte confirmed with a nod of her head. She and Penelope ran through the entrance of the Rec-Zone and saw that a number of patients were all huddled together like a herd of animals. Some orderlies were crouching in front of the groups, wandering whether it was okay to move, or whether they ought to stay hidden from any more potential gunfire. There were a few cries of fear and surprise as Charlotte and Penelope entered, but Charlotte ignored them.

Penelope, however, could not ignore them. Her Lord was standing amidst the pack, clawed hands open wide.

"Look at what has happened to the flock. Their fear is… immense. Terrified souls, all of them. These pitiful souls do not deserve such treatment. And who is it that made this happen? Made them… scared…"

Penelope looked away from her Lord quickly, following her sister to the cafeteria, where she didn't hesitate to jump over the counter of Marcus Morris' deli counter. Penelope scampered over after her and the two of them headed into the back room.

"What are we doing, Char?" Penelope asked, leaning on one of the counters near the ovens. "We can't just sneak past the DHP like that."

"I don't see why not," Charlotte held up the knife that she had stabbed Conner with. "I'll kill any who get in my way."

"Stop it!" Penelope said. "Stop saying that, stop saying that you'll kill people just like that, that's not right, it's not you!"

"Not me?" Charlotte's eyes widened. "What makes you think you even know me?"

Penelope stared at her sister. Charlotte stared back. Both realised the impact of what Charlotte had just said.

"Penny… I'm sorry, I'm just stressed."

"No Char, you're right." Penelope took in a deep breath. "I don't know you. But I want to. I've helped you with this plan of yours because I wanted to get to know you better. You're not just my flesh and blood, but we were born together. We share a connection not many people have, and that connection had been severed for far too long." She looked to Charlotte. "But is killing really the way to go about things?"

"Killing can be a solution."

"And it can also damn you to hell."

"I've already ended up in hell, Penny. I work for a group called Purgatory, didn't you realise?" Charlotte chuckled grimly and looked at the point of the knife. She placed it on the counter and headed for the corner of the room. "Look, I'll try not to kill anyone who doesn't deserve it."

"…And what happens with me now?" Penelope asked. "I'm not going to work with you and Purgatory."

"I don't want you to do that anyway," Charlotte said, rummaging in the cupboards, her face turned away from Penelope.

"…So are you going to put me in another asylum?"

Charlotte stopped rummaging. She turned to her sister, her expression unreadable. "…I guess it wasn't a particularly hard secret to work out, was it?"

"Why?"

"You know why. Do you see him now?" Charlotte asked. "Do you see that false Lord of yours now, Penny? Our parents were in no state to help you. I could help you. At least I thought I could. But it's clear this place has been no help at all."

"You speak like you want me to be rid of the Lord."

"Of course I do, Penny!" Charlotte said, exasperated.

"Well, what if I don't want to be rid of him?" Penelope asked.

"Then you'd be a bigger fool than I bargained for!" Charlotte snapped quickly but then suddenly turned to the door. "What is that noise?"

As soon as Charlotte had asked the question, a figure practically dived straight through the door at her. Ollie Cox let out a yell, trying to tackle into Charlotte with all his body weight. Unfortunately, something so sloppy couldn't be effective against Charlotte and she stepped to the side, allowing Ollie to boldly smash into the top of the ovens, one foot kicking up and bending a pipe with a hiss and his elbow hit the glass door of the oven hard, shattering the glass across the floor. Ollie slowly slipped off the top of the oven to the floor with a thump and started to cough.

"Ollie?" Penelope asked, surprised. "What do you think you're doing?"

Ollie Cox stood up, clutching at his now bleeding elbow. He slowly backed away again but neither Penelope or Charlotte made a move. Ollie looked between the two of them, panting.

"We want to know…" Ollie said. "We want to know whether any of it was real."

"What are you even talking about?" Charlotte asked.

"I want to know if the conversations we had were real!" Ollie demanded. "Who was I even talking to? You, Penelope, or your sister? You were one of the only people I could talk to about my condition, about Oscar and Owen! Owen wants to know the same thing, who were we talking to! And why did you use it against us? Why did you terrify Oscar so badly?! Why kidnap us, and involve us in whatever the hell it is you guys are involved in? I thought we were friends!"

"Friends?" Charlotte raised an eyebrow. "I only needed to blend in. I don't have any recollection of what conversations we had anyway, they were unimportant."

"Char!" Penelope glared at her sister. "No, Ollie, she's wrong. You are a friend. And as your friend, I'm telling you that you need to leave now."

"Or what?" Ollie asked, his eyes darting back and forth. "You'll do to me what you did to Conner?"

"No!" Penelope said.

"Yes, if I have to!" Charlotte replied, grabbing the knife.

"Char!"

"Shut up, Penny, let me deal with this!"

"Will you stop talking to me like that!"

Ollie started laughing. As he laughed, it drew the attention of the two sisters. "Look at the two of you. So equal. So alike. Yet the moment things go wrong, you can't work together." He pointed at himself. "I get it. It took me years to even be able to communicate with Oscar and Owen. Years of my life devoted to it. To craft a relationship. To see each other as equals. And the two of you, yes, the two of you together, you used that against me. With all the other crap going on, with whatever was going on with you and the DHP, with the List, it was that which hurt me most. You exposed and used my vulnerabilities, each of our vulnerabilities. In a place like this, trust is everything we have. We patients have to stick together. You broke that trust." Ollie shook his head. "And now we're all feeling the effects."

"Ollie…" Penelope said. "Please, you just have to—"

"We're all here for a reason, Penelope. Because we need help. Because we're vulnerable. Because we're trying to understand ourselves and the actions that you two have taken has threatened all of that! Noah is getting worse and worse physically, and I can only guess where his mind is at mentally. He was fucking stabbed by your people! He's lost an eye! He has to deal with the List, and he has to deal with your crap too! Robyn… Robyn values friendship and trust more than any of us, and she was the only one who was able to see some kind of good in Conner Shepherd. And her seeing that good in him, made her better! And then you stabbed him right in front of her! I could hear her wails as I left! What kind of damage are you doing to us, Penelope? How much more damage will you accrue? Oscar's dead! I'm missing a third of myself! And what for?"

"I'm wondering that myself," Charlotte said quietly. "What are you hoping to achieve, Ollie, by confronting us like this? It's over. Whatever friendship you have, is over."

"I just want my answer. I just want to know whether the friendship we had was fake."

"It wasn't fake, Ollie," Penelope insisted.

"I couldn't give a fuck what you think, Cox," Charlotte said firmly. The two sisters glanced at each other. Charlotte looked frustrated. Penelope looked hurt.

"Ollie." Penelope stepped forward, causing Ollie to wince. She stopped, a hurt expression on her face. "I understand why you feel the way you do. I understand that I kept Charlotte a secret. But the conversations that we had, playing chess against each other, discussing Oscar and Owen and the things that we keep to ourselves, the hardships, opening ourselves up, that wasn't fake. It was far from fake. I never wanted things to get so… involved as they had. This was supposed to be kept all under the radar and nobody would be any the wiser. Things would be normal. But then the List happened, and the List got in the way of everything. This was supposed to be about Conner Shepherd and then it became so much more. I'm sorry that it affected you like that, Ollie, and I'm sorry that it affected Owen like that, and I'm sorry that Oscar is dead. But you need to let us go now."

"I can't just let you go! I just… I can't. If I can do something, anything-"

"What are you going to do?" Charlotte asked. "There is nothing somebody like you can do. You're so far away from my world that it pains me to even look at you."

"He has already done enough," a voice rumbled through the doorway. Before they knew what had happened, Rhino barrelled into the small area and grabbed a hold of Penelope with his injured hand, catching her on the collar. The fingers were pulled tight against the cloth, the missing fingers wrapped sloppily with what looked like a torn off sleeve.

"Why is everyone getting in my way!" The knife flashed in the air as Charlotte leapt towards Rhino, anger and frustration clear on her face. Rhino pushed his arm up and let the knife slide right through his meaty flesh. With a grunt he twisted his arm and used his own arm to disarm Charlotte. Instead of going in for the attack, Rhino moved backwards and pulled Penelope away, despite her physical protestations.

"Do you think I'm letting you get away?" Charlotte's eyes widened as she reached for Rhino and her sister, but Ollie grabbed her shoulder. Charlotte instantly reacted, cracking her elbow into his nose. Ollie fell backwards in pain, dropping against the glass-covered floor next to the broken oven.

As he landed, Ollie heard the faint hiss and sniffed. He glanced up and realised that the pipe he had broken with his foot when he had haphazardly missed Charlotte had knocked the gas pipe loose and must have broken the seal attaching it to the oven. For the last five minutes or so, gas had been seeping into the small backroom of the deli without any of them realising it.

At the same time, Charlotte reached Rhino and grasped the handle of the knife, pulling it free from his arm. Rhino grunted again but refused to let Penelope go. Instead, he stepped back into the doorway and raised his arm again as Charlotte stabbed downwards. A fresh wound opened up in his flesh but Charlotte was wise to the trick and quickly drew the knife out again. She twisted it in her palm and went to thrust it up into the big man's eye, but her balance was suddenly thrown out as Ollie grabbed the cuff of her trousers.

"Stop it!" Charlotte kicked Ollie away and twisted, allowing herself to be distracted from Rhino. She swung the knife at Ollie, attempting to pierce his throat with the slender blade.

"You stop it!" Penelope shouted, unable to see her sister murder Ollie. At the same time Penelope threw her leg out errantly and managed to catch Charlotte's wrist, knocking the blade from her grasp.

The momentum and the spin of the blade caused it to make a full rotation before jamming itself into the knob of the oven; the momentum spun the dial just enough to light the pilot and make a spark.

All four people in the room reacted the moment before the spark caught the gas.

Rhino's instincts, while dulled from his various injuries, were still sharp and he started to simultanously step back all the way through the doorway and rotate his body, gritting his teeth.

Charlotte reached for Penelope and Penelope reached for Charlotte. For a single moment, the tips of their fingers brushed together. Their eyes were wide, expressions mirrored, scared for one another.

Ollie directly heard the voice of Owen in his head and could almost swear he could feel a gentle hand on his own. Do you reckon we'll see Oscar on the other side? There was pain in that voice in his head. With the spark in the center of his vision, Ollie could only think: I hope so.

The spark caught the gas seeping out of the oven, and with a thunderous boom the small room was engulfed in fire, the flames callously tearing through Ollie's skin and flesh and killing him in an instant. The explosion smashed into Charlotte's back and she was thrown forward straight into the back of Rhino, who had managed to fully turn to cover Penelope with his mass. The three figures tumbled through the doorway together as the explosion forced them behind the deli counter.

The fire tunnelled through the pipe in the gas line, following it down and rupturing various spots through the Rec-Zone's cafeteria, blowing walls in a domino effect of destruction. There were screams and shouts from the patients and orderlies alike as they tried to hide from the destruction, cowering away from the flames in the cafeteria's section.

Penelope didn't lose consciousness at all. She felt the weight of Rhino on top of her and with great effort she managed to lever the big man off. He landed with a heavy thump to her side. He was bleeding from the nose and there were scorch marks across the back of his shoulders. His eyes were closed, but he appeared to be breathing, not that Penelope's attention was focused on him. Instead they were focused on the figure leaning on the doorframe.

Charlotte Hayes was breathing raggedly. The left side of her face had been burned horribly, red and blighted, the flesh over her eye glued shut, not disimilar to the face of John Doe. Her left arm hung loose and looked uneven, as if the bones inside were shattered and broken. Charlotte slowly raised her right arm, the flesh singed but still pale.

"Char!" Penelope ran to her sister and went to hug her, but Charlotte fell forwards instead, straight into Penelope's arms. Penelope fell back with her sister on top of her. There was a ragged breath in her ear, and then no more followed. For a moment Penelope was frozen before she finally pulled herself into a sitting position, her sister on her lap.

The knife of Conner Shepherd was impaled in Charlotte's back, right between the shoulder-blades, lodging itself through the bone. When the explosion had happened, it must have propelled the knife across the room.

"Charlotte… Char…" Penelope could feel herself crying. She hated crying. Avoided it when she could. But she couldn't stop her emotions from flowing out as she clutched her sister's body, with the knife sticking out from it as if Conner Shepherd's spectre had plunged it into her back. Her sister's name dripped off her lips and no more words came out. She was shaking, quivering, like a lost doe in the woods.

And then she heard that familiar, hissing voice.

"My dear, such grief, such sorrow… now is such a worthy time to come and join me. You will never heal from something that is not hurting you."

Penelope could almost feel the weight of thin arms on her shoulders, of clawed nails in her skin. Her Lord was behind her, whispering to her, embracing her as any true Lord does to an acolyte.

With her sister's body still in her lap, Penelope slowly unwrapped the bandages of her left arm, and bore the pale, scarred skin to air.

"This time… This is the time for you to join me, Penelope."

With the words of her Lord hissing in her ear, Penelope grasped the handle of the blade in her sister's back. She had to tug it to get it out of the bone but finally she pulled the blade free. With her sister's blood still on the blade, Penelope placed the tip of the blade in the middle of her wrist.

"Do it, my dear, do it."

Penelope closed her eyes, and drew the blade from wrist to elbow in one foul stroke, slicing cleanly through skin, muscles, and veins. Blood burst from her arm as if searching for its freedom, and there Penelope stayed, feeling strangely free of pain, clutching the body of her sister close, to die as they were born.

Together.