I didn't notice that the temperature had dropped so quickly. It was a worrying sign because I was getting frustrated that the fogging of my breath was obscuring my vision, but never seemed to correlate the two in my mind.

When somebody burst back through the hub doors, I didn't even look around; I was so almost nearly finished that it only occurred to me a couple of seconds later that it could have been the creature.

I froze, turning my head slowly back over my shoulder, and quickly sighing in relief when I saw it was just Jensen. He stumbled to a stop in front of one of the work benches and quickly kicked in one of the side panels to reach through to the fire extinguisher underneath. He only saw me when he turned back. 'Anna! What are you still doing in here?'

'I'm so close,' I replied hurriedly, 'I just have one more wire to fit.' I put the small flatheaded screwdriver between my lips for a second, pushed the wire into the housing in the junction box and pinched, twisting the ends together before I shoved the whole thing back into the casing in the wall.

Then, slipping the wires back into the rubber casing, I slid the nut down the wire to readjust the pressure filler cap.

I tightened it with the spanner before I stood up. 'There. I'm done. I'm done.'

'Heads up.' I spun around just intime to catch the extinguisher he'd thrown at me before it could take me out. It landed in my arms, winding me a little and I stumbled back before I caught myself. 'Come on,' he continued, 'let's get out of here.'

I nodded a mutual agreement and made for the doors. Just as I passed him, his phone started to ring and I paused in the doorway. 'Jensen?'

'Go ahead,' he said as he pulled his phone out his pocket. I nodded, stepping through the doors and taking the immediate right turn into my lab.

I had only just put the extinguisher down on the desk in front of the window when I heard it–the snarling, the growling of the creature, and my head whipped up.

It was in there.

My eyes widened, my breath hitching in panic at the sight of Jensen standing those few feet away, staring right up at it.

'No,' I said. 'No! Jensen!'

He must have heard my voice through the glass because his head turned towards me, just as I started towards my door– coming to help him somehow. I didn't know how I was going to do it. A distraction maybe. Throw something at it. A box. An extinguisher.

'Anna! No!' he yelled back, 'don't! It's– it's too dangerous.'

I skidded to a stop.

He looked down to the extinguisher on the ground beside him and I could see the deliberation in his eyes; If he reached for it the movement might cause the creature to lunge at him.

If he didn't, he wouldn't have any sort of defence.

I crossed the lab in a second, stopping again in front of the window and climbing up onto the desk before I slammed a fist into the glass. 'Hey!' I punched at the glass again, ignoring the immediate and quite catastrophic pain in my hand because the creature turned, just for a second towards my noise, meaning Jensen had just enough time to snatch up his extinguisher and blast the smoke right into the creature's face.

'What's going on?' Connor asked as he came stumbling into the lab. 'The doors are frozen shut! Where's– oh my god. Jensen!' I barely had time to notice that there were people in the room behind me when I smashed a fist into the glass again and one of my knuckles split open.

'Damnit!' it was the inconvenience that annoyed me.

'Anna?'

I shook my hand, trying to ease a little of the pain, and a spurt of blood splattered down across the desk beside me. Everyone stepped back. 'The organism's searching for heat,' I said, 'it's so cold in there that its being drawn towards his body.'

Jensen forced the creature back.

'What can we do?' Becker's voice cut through to me. 'We have to help. What can we do!?'

I shook my head. 'Nothing…' I answered. 'We have to wait.' Because maybe the creature would go first, the fungi would shrink and condense in the atmosphere just like it had in the lab, and maybe Jensen would be able to hold on that long. His body was stronger. But it was at that moment the extinguisher stopped, the gas ran out and Jensen fell back.

No.

Not him too.

'Turn off the cold air,' Lester ordered.

'The creature's not dead yet,' Sarah replied.

'Jensen's going to die if we don't.'

I balled up my fist again, ignoring the pain, and slammed it back into the window. The glass cracked.

'Um? What are you doing?' I heard Connor ask in outrage. I tuned him out, blood colouring through the cracks in the glass, and I punched again, my own self be damned. As the crack split further I finally reached down, fingers closing around the top of the fire extinguisher on my desk and I pulled it up, slamming it into the centre of the fracture and the glass shattered.

I kicked it through, and when the cold air hit I was sure I'd never felt anything so bitter and biting.

I jumped through the broken window and down into the hub, feet crunching against the shattered shards before I reached back for the extinguisher. I pulled it through, hauling onto my hip, I glanced up.

'Get out of the lab,' I told everyone quickly. 'Shut the door behind you.' I saw Connor frown in confusion but I continued before he had the opportunity to inject 'go on!' I didn't have time to stop and chat; I had the creature's attention, and just as it took a step towards me I let out a brief spurt of carbon dioxide into its face and it fell back. 'Becker,' I said as I looked up to meet his eye. And I hoped that somehow he would understand what I was asking. To get them out, to shut the door to stop the heat from the rest of the building coming into the hub from the broken window. But as my eyes met his I saw his own determination. That he wanted to be where I was standing. That he wanted to be the person putting himself at risk, not for any sort of glory but to keep the rest of us safe. So instead of a demand I posed a question. 'Get them out?'

Becker nodded, plonked his hand down on Sarah's shoulder, immediately pulling her to the door.

Danny turned to Connor. 'Better do as she says,' Danny told him, pushing him back after the others.

'Danny?'

He jumped up, hurdling the desk into the hub through the window behind me.

'Don't mind if I join you, do you Ace?' he asked.

I heard the lab door slam shut and realised that I didn't have a choice so it made no difference if I replied or not.

The creature lunged at me again and I let out another squirt of carbon–dioxide at it, forcing it back.

'See if you can't lure it that way,' I instructed, pointing to the opposite end of the hub and tossing the extinguisher up into Danny's arms.

He nodded in response and did as I said while I quickly turned and rounded to the other end of the room.

'What's the plan here Ace?' he called, as he reached his spot and fired the gas from the extinguisher as the creature took a swipe at him.

'Keep it busy,' I returned. I grabbed a hold of the dust-sheet we'd used to cover my desk and the chemicals were still there.

I heard another blast from the extinguisher. 'Alright, quick as you like.'

I'd had to put in a glycerol order for the infirmary. Mildly antimicrobial and antiviral, FDA approved for treatment for wounds. The order had arrived, it had been put on my desk, and I immediately picked up two glass bottles of it and threw them onto the floor.

I knew it was here somewhere. There were so many other types of medicines and medications that had been dumped on the desk that all looked the same, I couldn't distinguish them without picking them all up.

The creature swiped again, catching the extinguisher and it was batted right out of Danny's hands and sailed across the room.

The sound made me jump, my gaze dropping back down to the bottles when by some miracle I saw it, potassium permanganate– an antiseptic, nestled among the others. I grabbed it, ripped the lid off and poured the powder onto the glycerine.

The compound began to smoke, igniting immediately and exploding into flames in my face. The noise made the creature turn and sensing the heat it abandoned Danny and started straight for me.

I waited.

I had to; it had to be as close as I could get it for this to work.

'Ace?' Danny called nervously.

I held my ground as in a few long strides it crossed the room, and was inches from the fire when I kicked, dredging up all the ice crystals that had formed from the vapours in the air, from the ground and smothered the fire immediately.

The flames died, the creature froze in front of me, rigidity spreading through it as the thermal shock echoed through every inch of its body. Its own momentum made it crack, it shattered in on itself and dissolved into chunks on the floor.

I saw the lab door flying open, and Connor was the first to hurdle the desk, dropping into the room from the broken window. He lost his balance when he landed, stumbling awkwardly across the room towards Jensen.

Jensen!

I snapped my head around, my breath tangled and I ran at him.

I reached him first and skidded down in front of his frost–bitten body. Connor fell down next to me. Becker was the last one through the window and as he came towards us he stopped behind me to quickly crouch down and wrap a blanket around my shoulders before he was off, moving around to find somewhere to stay by Jensen's feet.

'We need to get him out of here!' Danny said, crossing the room and crouching down opposite me.

'Don't touch him!' I replied. From his side Danny couldn't have seen the fungus spreading up over Jensen's cheek, towards his eyes. They were still open. They had the same glassy emptiness I'd seen so many times before, and I felt it bubbling inside me– the tightness sweeling in my face like a warning that the tears were coming. 'He's got a chance,' I said, 'but we have to wait for the cold to kill the fungus. We have to…'I trailed off, a little out of breath from the exertion of trying to maintain any composure when I wanted to dissolve into a puddle of the floor. 'We wait…' I said weakly. My voice broke and I tried to clear my throat. 'Okay?'

I turned my head back to Jensen's cheek, where the fungus was creeping further and further across his face, and my expression contorted in distress.

It wasn't working.

Danny saw it, he reached forward to grab Jensen to help him, to wrap him in a blanket to try and protect whatever was still inside him from freezing but I leant over, slammed both hands against Danny's chest and shoved him back. Becker had to catch him to make sure he didn't topple over. 'Danny, listen to me!' I spat.

'It's killing him!'

'I know it is! If we take him out now, he's gonna end up like that thing over there.' I gestured wildly, angrily, at the remains of the creature. 'Trust me.'

He paused for a second, staring at me with an almost unreadable expression that was somewhere between frustration and resolve. Then he nodded, just once, just to show that he did.

And I waited, shivering violently but barely aware of it until Connor's head turned towards me in concern like he thought I wasn't far from freezing to death either.

I studied the fungus intently, watching for the moment its progression faltered, and it stopped reproducing and the spores stopped spreading over him.

And it felt like forever, especially when I was so close to falling apart and couldn't surrender even a fraction of the feeling to conform my expression when everyone was looking at me for the next word.

I saw the fungus stop, reproduction halted, and I held my breath for a final second before it started to crumble away from his face.

'Okay,' I said, nodding, whipping the blanket off my own shoulders to throw over Jensen's body. And everyone started pulling him down to lay him on the ground, wrapping him up in so many layers I couldn't get my hand through them all to find his neck, to search for a pulse, to see if he was still alive after all of this. Instead, Connor got there first, his hand burrowing through the layers and I pulled back, waiting for the sigh of relief.

But there was nothing.

And he was taking too long; if there had been a pulse there he would have found it by now.

His eyes shifted harrowingly back to me, and I reached up to cover my mouth. 'Anna,' he said, like I wouldn't understand if he didn't speak it aloud.

I shook my head.

I didn't want to hear it.

Connor didn't understand. '…he's gone.'

'No,' I mumbled in reply. My eyes fell onto Jensen's face and I felt my eyes start to well again, but I wasn't going to let the tears fall. I wasn't going to give in that easily, and I wasn't giving up. 'No…' I shook my head. I'd already decided. You can't have him too. I sat back on my heels, raising my arms above my head and interlocking my fingers. 'Not today.'

I punched my hands down into his chest and the dull thud that echoed was so distressing I had to grit my own teeth, as I raised my hands and readied myself to do it again.

The noise made me wince the second time. And a third time had Danny grimacing. 'You're hurting him,' he said quickly under his breath.

'Right now he can't feel a thing,' After a fourth and fifth thump I stopped, grabbing his chin to tilt it back to open his airways and allow the air to reach his lungs quicker, before I pinched his nose, blew three long breaths into his mouth, then pulled back, laced my fingers together over his chest and started to push the rhythm into his heart.

I started counting to thirty.

'Anna?' Connor said weakly. I looked up to him but kept counting in my head. 'Is he…?'

I couldn't respond; I hit 30 compressions and had to lean in to start the airflow again.

'I can't…' I heard him mumble in continuation. 'Not again…'

The insinuation killed me.

My heart twitched, the tears clouding my vision so much that I started to see Nick's face in Jensen's place.

'Not again, please…' he repeated, 'not again.'

'Connor!' I snapped.

His head whipped around to me, he blinked just for a second before he realised what he'd done and he quickly hid his face.

I started the compressions again. And I hadn't ever noticed before how many numbers there were between one and thirty.

Reaching it, I put one hand against his neck because that was the procedure. 3 breaths, 30 compressions, 3 breaths, 30 compressions, check the pulse.

I fell back, crying out, tears springing from my eyes like an ambush. Connor's arm wrapped around me, pulling me effortlessly into him like I needed comforting. 'No,' I said through the broken noises, 'no, he's alive…' and I didn't even have time to explain what was going on before Jensen took a breath.

Another sob tore through me and I clung tighter to Connor. 'It's okay…'

'I can't–'

'It's okay,' he repeated calmly. His hand ran up to smooth my hair down on the back of my head. 'This is what you do, Anna. You save people.' I pushed my mouth against his shoulder to shut myself up, because I couldn't take any more of the horrific noises coming out of me. I needed to be quiet. I let the tears freeze on my cheeks. And turned my morose gaze to the empty walls of the building, trying to ground myself. 'You save lives.'

Becker and Danny helped Jensen sit up, moving to reposition some of the blankets around him.

I knew I'd done that. I knew it should have meant more to me– that I had just restarted someone's heart but everything inside me was just numb. I felt nothing.

'I couldn't save him,' I said. I hadn't even been able to try. Nick Cutter was dead long before he made it out of the A.R.C.

'That wasn't your fault.'

It wasn't true. It couldn't be; there was no way I would feel so guilty about it if it were. Because I had known, as much as I'd tried to convince myself I hadn't– I recognised that bad feeling and said nothing when I could have warned him, or better still, I could have forced him to leave with me.

When my eyes fell shut, I was back in that corridor, staring up into those brilliant bright blue eyes as he pressed a kiss against my hand before he let go of me forever.

And I could still feel where his lips had been against my skin. Even now his kiss lingered on me.

'I…' My voice cracked, and I had to shut my mouth again, swallowing an almost painful lump in my throat. I missed him. I missed him so much it was excruciating. The pounding in my heart was violent, and physical, and tougher than I was. Every beat felt like a punch to the chest.

I just wish I could have at least said goodbye.

'I know,' Connor said softly. 'It's okay, A, I know…'

I had two choices.

Forget him. Never go back to the house, leave that door closed, like he never existed, and throw away his toothbrush, bleach him from my mind like sunlight on an old photograph, tune out the pain, and not let the snow settle on the wet ground.

Let the pain be a plague knowing one day I might wake up and find it didn't hurt as much as the day before. Remember him, and live with the headache when I drenched myself his cologne because it was such a tangible reminder.

Problem was, I didn't feel strong enough to do either.