My legs started burning this time round just past the 7th floor and by the time we'd reached the 11th Connor needed to stop for a second to catch his breath.

'It's hard work this,' he muttered, undoing a couple of buttons on his waistcoat. 'I need to go back to the gym...' I glanced back at him over my shoulder as I resumed the climb up to the next level. 'Can't believe I washed Caroline's number off. I'm such an idiot. She's gonna think I'm too cool to call now.'

'Maybe you'll bump into her,' I suggested.

He huffed doubtfully. 'When was I ever that lucky, A?'

I patted him on the back as we stepped up from the last stair onto the landing of the fifteenth floor. 'There's a Nanaism for that.'

He hummed like he wasn't surprised by the statement. 'Go on then, hit me with it.'

'What can go wrong will go wrong, cause you bet that it would so you stacked up the odds.'

His eyes rolled. 'Don't tell me that's why it's been going so badly for me this whole time.'

I shrugged in response.

He grabbed a hold of the door handle and pulled, releasing a wave of fog that hit him right in the face before he quickly pushed it closed again.

He coughed.

'Smokey?' I asked.

'It's a demon,' he said. 'I think we're gonna have to find another way in.'

I cocked an eyebrow. 'Yeah?'

He brought his gaze down from the ceiling, and the sympathy in his expression immediately started to make me twitch.

'What?'

'I've got an idea,' he said, 'but you're not gonna like it...'

As he turned his head back up to the ceiling, I mirrored him and immediately saw the hatch to air vents above our heads. 'No.'

'Anna it's the only way,' he replied. I backed up.

'Tough. Not gonna happen.'

'A,' he caught my hand and pulled me back towards him. 'I'll be with you the whole time. Plus, look, they're air con vents, they're practically luxurious. Assassins can live in vents like that.'

'Connor, rather get shot.'

And I wasn't even being dramatic. My claustrophobia was the only rational fear I had and rightfully so. I got locked in a chest freezer as a kid and almost died. The psychological trauma from it was seconded only by my PTSD from the gunshot now, which strangely in my day-to-day life was much more likely to be triggered.

'We have to,' he said.

And he was right. I slammed my hands down over my eyes, screaming hoarsely into my own throat, before I took a long hard breath and slowly lowered my hands. 'Fine.'

'Oh, you know what?' Connor called down to me, as he stuck his head through the vent, 'it's not that bad.'

'Is it not?' I replied satirically.

'Anyway, it's clear,' he relayed, 'it looks good. Come on.' He pulled his body up through the hole and manoeuvred himself before he reached down to offer me a hand.

I shook my head. 'Not sure I can do this...' I said softly. I could feel the apprehension closing in on me already. All of a sudden I felt cold and just the thought of being up there started a tightness like the rising of nausea up my throat.

I couldn't even get in lifts. How could I get up there into a smaller space?

'Anna,' Connor returned calmly as he smiled, 'of course you can.'

I knew as soon as I was up there that I didn't like it. I started to panic; I couldn't remember how to breathe. I was going through the motions but the air wasn't getting to my lungs, and so I heaved faster and faster desperately.

'Hey, hey, Anna, look at me,' Connor grabbed my shoulders, and shook them. I just about managed to find his eyes. 'Calm down, calm down. You're okay. Slowly.' He took a deep breath in, before he steadily exhaled. Then he did the same thing again. 'Do it with me, Anna, in... and out...'

I copied his rhythm, mimicking the rise and fall of his chest.

'There we go, there we go, ey?' he gave my shoulders a final squeeze as I finally sat back on my heels and somewhat calmly looked up and down the vent. 'You alright?'

I nodded restlessly and quickly gestured for him to lead the way, 'come on.'

'Okay, alright, don't worry, look,' he held out the blueprints on the crinkled piece of paper for me to see, 'the server room should be just up here, and to the left...' He tilted his head and turned the paper. 'Oh, no. That might be the right... I'm not...'

Raising an eyebrow I reached out and pulled the map out his hands. I quickly glanced over it, looked up and down the tunnel again before I frowned at him. 'That way!' I grumbled and took off crawling in that direction. Whoever said men could read maps.

He followed after me. I could hear him mumbling under his breath and I glanced back over my shoulder at him; I couldn't tell if he was talking to me.

'What?'

'I'm trying to remember Caroline's number,' he replied. '077896...' He looked up from the smudge on the back of his hand to meet my gaze, 'don't put me off!' he complained.

I turned back around.

It took us a little while to reach the grate in the server room. I stopped on top of it and tried a couple of times to stamp it out but it was wedged too firmly in place. So, bracing my hands against the top of the vent above me, I shuffled until I was crouched atop it before I jumped pushing down with my hands to increase the force of my body weight and it snapped open. The grate fell down into the fog, and with nowhere else to go I went down with it.

'Anna!' Connor yelled after me as I crashed down into the server room. 'Oh god! You okay?'

I'd landed on my feet. And despite the fact it had frightened me a little because I hadn't been expecting it, I nodded. 'Yeah.'

When I looked up, he was dangling upside down out the vent. 'I think it's that one,' he said and pointed over to one of the machines, 'I think that's the aircon.'

I pointed back at it for clarification as I made my way across and he nodded. 'Okay.' I pulled the server door open and put my finger down on the button to raise the temperature. I held it there for a while and watched the temperature gage climb up into the thirties.

'That's enough,' Connor elucidated.

I let go and ran back towards him.

I expected him to hold out a hand, especially considering he was blocking the entrance to the vent with his body and even if I had been able to jump up I wouldn't have been able to pull myself through without him moving out the way first.

'Connor,' I said, as though trying to remind him that I was there.

I watched him point back over my shoulder. '... worm...!'

I spun around.

Perhaps I should have been more afraid. It was almost sad how the feeling of imminent danger felt more like home than I had yet experienced while actually being back here.

I reached around to the waist band of my jeans and slipped out the jawbone knife from its sheath.

It had saved my life already a hundred times from all sorts of different things that wanted to kill me. I'd made it when I got stuck in the Jurassic. I'd found a carcass of a young allosaur and noticed how its temporomandibular joint looked like the perfect shape for a handle. So I smashed its skull with a rock, broke its mandible in half and sharpened it against the boulders in the river.

As the worm lunged I punched up into its head, kicking it back against the nearest machine and stabbed down through where I assumed its brain was then kept cutting all the way down its neck until blood oozed out.

Then, retracting my hand and wiping the blood from my knife onto my trousers, I pushed it back into its case at the small of my back.

Connor reached out once I was close enough and I jumped, grabbing his arm just above his elbow, knowing that was better leverage for him. As he started pulling I grabbed the edge of the grate with my other hand and helped to take some of my own body weight.

'Where did that come from?' Connor commented as he fell back into the vent and pulled me with him. I landed half on top of him but with no easy way to get off I put my effort into making sure I was crushing his chest so he could still breathe.

'Think it's working?' I asked.

Connor glanced down through the hole. 'I hope so.'

By the time we'd waited long enough for the smoke to clear and clambered back out the grate to start descending the staircase one final time, I had decided that I never wanted to see the inside of an air vent again.

Nick and Stephen were sitting on the steps outside the building when we came out.

They were both soaked through to the skin with what looked like a combination of water and a strange, viscous reddish-orange substance that had chunks of what looked like internal organs inside it.

'The hell happened to you?' I asked as I sat down beside Nick on the step.

'Oh trust me,' he returned, putting his arm around my shoulder, 'you don't want to know.'

I rested a hand against his thigh as leant in and put my head on his shoulder for a moment, soaking in the sun with my eyes closed and trying to ground myself with my surroundings.

It still didn't feel real.

None of it.

The weight of his arm around me. The feel of his lips as they grazed my forehead. It felt like a dream and I quickly had to open my eyes again just to make sure it wasn't.

As I lifted my head I met his gaze and leant in again to press a couple of quick kiss against his lips. When I pulled back I saw he was smiling.

I knew maybe even before he did that he wanted to say something. I cocked my head. 'What?'

'You seem different,' he said softly.

I frowned. 'Good different?' I asked. When he didn't respond my hand tightened a little against his thigh and I shifted a little bit closer to him, 'bad different?'

To some extent I knew what he'd meant by his statement. It shouldn't have really been a surprise. Before, I had taken extenuating circumstances to get me to even touch him in public let alone kiss him. Perhaps he preferred it that way. I'd never even had to ask before because it wasn't like I had a choice. Now I took every opportunity to feel his touch and hold on to him and kiss him and just listen to the sound of his voice. I had missed him so much that it still hurt to even now.

'I don't know,' he said, 'just... different.' As if he could sense my sudden anxiety, he took a hold of my hand. 'You don't have to worry,' he continued, 'it's not gonna change anything. After what you went through... I couldn't have done that.'

I responded with a small smile.

He didn't know that.

The truth is no one really knows what they're capable of. Not until it really comes down to it. Sometimes in the moment your body takes over, your head get lefts behind somewhere entirely different, and that's either what saves you or kills you.

I believed in him. Had Nick been in that same situation he would have been fine. In reality there was no way of knowing that for certain.

He kissed the top of my head again. 'You wanna go home?' he asked. I nodded. 'Okay.'

Standing up, I hopped down the first few steps, before I paused and motioned for him to give me a second. 'Gonna get you a towel, first,' I said, cause... ew.'

Ryan– Jensen– was hanging nervously around the back of one of the ambulances. I passed him and a couple of those same civilians we'd rescued from the twelfth floor when I reached in to grab a towel from the back of the vehicle.

I spared a quick glance back to Nick, only to see he was now mid-conversation to Stephen and decided just to wait instead.

I could feel Ry– Jensen– looking at me but I tried to ignore it and instead distracted myself contemplating how tired Nick was and how much convincing he would take to go straight to bed with me when we got home.

The intensity of Jensen's stare burned into me and I couldn't ignore it.

He was still rather pale. I doubted the shock had worn off, for almost a month now he'd believed that the anomaly research centre and dinosaur thing was some elaborate joke and the longer it went on the funnier it was.

I expected he felt rather stupid about it now. I felt kind of sorry for him.

I turned my head quickly, locking eyes with him in such a way that made it impossible for him to pretend he wasn't staring.

He'd taken off his suit jacket, unbuttoned the top few buttons on his shirt and rolled his sleeves up to his elbows.

He looked thoroughly rumpled.

He cleared his throat presumably out of awkwardness before he finally said 'you don't say much, do you?'

It occurred to me that aside from that initial hello I hadn't actually said a word to him. And that was a long time ago.

At least it felt like it was.

It was a long time to be working with someone and not have spoken to them.

I had to actively remind myself to respond. 'Still getting used,' I said. Because it was the truth. I often still forgot that I wasn't saying stuff out loud; for a very long time I hadn't needed to.

Jensen didn't know that. So far he was up to speed on very little. He pulled a face in confusion.

'To what?' he asked, not unkindly in any way, just sort of curious. 'Speaking?'

'People,' I answered.

Across the square, Nick stood up. He stepped over the police tape and quickly came over. Once he was close enough, I wrapped the towel around his shoulders and smiled up at him.

'You ready, sweetheart?' he asked. I just nodded. 'Alright then, lets go home. See you tomorrow, Jensen.'