Skyler was holding onto her sister's corpse. Somewhere between dreaming and wakefulness, she became aware of a weight on her, and her imagination filled in the gaps. She could feel blood, hot and sticky, dripping down her neck and soaking into her shirt. Her teeth grit and a quiet sound of distress left her as, eye still closed, her hands searched until she felt the godawful hole blown in the back of Lauren's head.

She jerked awake, immediately sitting bolt upright. As soon as she did, she felt the weight lift and heard Adrian scramble across the room. Oh shit. Oh Jesus. It took a bit of sitting there with her pulse pounding to put together that she must have combined a nightmare she'd been having with…

Wait a minute. Had he been on top of her? She threw a look his way, but was too drained for it to be as suspicious as she wanted. He looked about as startled awake as she had been, though, so she made the executive decision to let whatever that was mellow for now.

There had been entirely too much time for Skyler to dwell before she'd passed out, camped inside the building waiting for the smoke to clear and whatever was left of the horde to disperse. A little about where the world had gone that she'd just witnessed the gruesome death of what had likely formerly been some poor college student and done nothing; Mostly about how it sucked ass that she had to be out here thinking about it in the first place. She wanted out of this fucking city.

At the same time though, she found herself reluctant to actually go out there. Damn it, she'd never been squeamish before. Well, she'd definitely seen Adrian scavenging off of corpses before. Maybe he'd appreciate some barbeque. Hrk. Why did she do these things to herself?

For real though, she got the feeling that the kid might've been more rattled than she was. A somber air had hung over both of them, and at the moment he sat hunched against the far wall carving into the floor with a couple of claws. Eventually the erratic scrape-scrape-scrape compelled Skyler to stand.

"Hey. Kid," she called, snapping her fingers a couple of times. Not surprisingly, he gasped and startled, in that sort of "had forgotten he wasn't alone" way she'd come to expect. "You ready? You ready to go?"

It took a moment, but he did stiffly follow her motions heading out, without another sound. Fair enough.

Okay. She inhaled sharply and rubbed her hands together as she neared the door, trying to be her own hype man, which proved to be something of a mistake when she could still smell the odor of char-grilled skin. She was sure her face must have turned a little green but she strained to ignore it.

"Hell yeah. Let's get out there and kill some shit."

She braced for whatever the hell she was going to be faced with and swung open the door.

Something was wrong. The wrongness thickened the air, clung to his skin like the moisture before the sky dropped down. It carried on the odor of the burnt Others as the entrance to the outside opened. Weakness came into his legs at the thought of going out there. This wasn't right; He was so used to death. So much was changing. Nothing was scarier than that, and he couldn't help but feel like he was stepping right into it by taking the path that the monster was leading him down. But there was nowhere else to go.

Adrian held his breath against the biting wind, stepping over the glistening ground where the whiteness had burned away in a daze. Somehow, it was both silent and barren and loud. The hollow echo down from the high places hardly disguised all of the thoughts and whispers that had taken him up since he'd watched the Long Tongue be torn into shreds.

Me. Going to- going to be me, nothing matters none of it mattered should have died when you had the chance, would be easier to just lay down and die-

Most of the time what he was hearing was either unsettling nonsense or just more of a feeling, but lately some of it had gotten more distinct. Usually the only thing that made it leave him alone was the killing…

Curled, blackened fingers reaching upward caught the edge of his vision despite him trying his hardest to keep his eyes focused forward. Don't look. Don't look, it was only making it worse. Heart pounding, he fixed his gaze solidly on the movement of the monster's back in front of him as she kept up a quick and determined pace.

What was she looking for, anyways? He was rarely focused enough to picture goals that weren't immediate. Keeping track of things, that was difficult. The monster, though, she seemed to know exactly what she wanted. Whatever it was, he assumed it must be important. That determination was assuring, somehow; They were going somewhere, at least.

To keep his thoughts anywhere else, Adrian let his mind drift. He found himself trying to imagine the place the monster was headed towards. Maybe there was food there? An abundance of it, enough to not go one day without. Taken by the fantasy, more details started drifting in. It could be someplace safe, away from the worry of being killed at any moment. The constant struggle to make it to the next day would be quieted, and he'd never be gripped by the despair that had taken him at the thought of dying alone again… He could feel a pang of hurt in his chest at the impossibility of these things, but didn't want to think about that. Not now.

He swallowed everything down as best he could and blankly followed the footsteps of the monster guiding him.

"Now that's going to be Market St. that we passed… And we're going to have to get over the bridge… So that means that… Uh…"

Skyler did not like this uncertainty of their direction. It was disorienting, both with the one-sided vision and travelling largely past dusk. It struck her abruptly that she'd unintentionally gotten herself adjusted to Adrian's fucked-up sleep schedule and hadn't even really thought about it until now. To be fair though, she was pretty sure that too much light would fry his retinas or something; she'd seen plenty of the Hunters sporting a bunch of nasty gashes in place of eyes, and it seemed like a more likely explanation than anything.

Well, they were away from the scene of the previous day, anyways. As long as she wasn't headed in the wrong direction, she was going to carry herself with confidence and not complain. She had a winning goddamn attitude and if this was an interview she was going to get the fucking job.

Unsurprisingly, the down time she'd bought them with her bonfire hadn't lasted forever. Skyler was already having to pop interested parties that had come to check out their roasted former buddies and had noticed fresher meat along the way. Thankfully the roiling tension before the horde had dispersed, although she wasn't sure she liked what it had been replaced by. Christ. She couldn't look at these commons the same. Her and the guys laughed at them for being so fucking stupid; it had been a good, long while since she'd gotten a reminder of what they could do when they were joined.

A mud-splattered orange sign sticking up out of the snow by the main road caught her attention. After a moment of squinting, she recognized it as reading, "EVACUATION ROUTE". Maybe five hundred feet ahead and up the moderate slope of a hill, the reflective gleam of another managed to stand out as a concrete indicator that they were headed the right way.

Stupidly, she let her thoughts get away from her for long enough to wonder if the kid had made this walk before. Seeing him like this, shuffling with his hands shoved into his pockets like he was switched onto autopilot, let her imagine it. Either he'd never made it, or he'd made it too late. Which was worse?

Nope! Not chasing that one right now.

She shook her head and took the radio from her belt, cupping it near her face to muffle the sound of the faint blip. The sound of Train greeted her before she spoke.

"Four Dog."

There was a brief pause, before the familiar voice responded.

"Miss Skyler, am I glad to hear from you. Thanks for checking in and letting us know you're still kicking. Any more news for the folks at home?"

"We're coming up on 95 Station. Do you…" She wiped her brow again. "Do we have any idea how bad it is?"

Another few seconds passed, which already wasn't a fantastic sign.

"That is a good question. It's uh… Well. Last word we had from Officer Keller before he went down with the ship was a 100% casualty rate. Our guys, civvies, whole operation. But, you know." He cleared his throat. "If you're there, it's probably not a hot zone anymore."

Skyler winced, shrugging at Adrian although all he showed was some half-hearted interest in the sound of a voice that wasn't hers.

"Yeah. Fair enough. Thanks."

"You okay there, sister? You're not sounding so hot."

"Fucking, should I be?"

"Okay, okay. Dumb question. Listen, just keep us filled in here, alright? We're pulling for you. Really."

Aaand suddenly she realized it had been kind of assholeish to drop off the map while she'd been busy considering the possibility of fucking some grimy-sexy survivalist and having a crisis. Oops.

"Shit. Sorry. Can do."

"Good luck out there. You'll be here before you know it."

Gravel began to crunch under her feet as they neared the apex of the hill. She exhaled slowly, watching her breath waft out as a cloud of steam, and switched the radio back off.

"Alright, kid. No big deal. You ready to cross a bridge?"

Adrian slowed, stopping when he stood several steps away, and glanced up enough to cast her an impressively weary look. Really, he looked exhausted enough that he practically appeared to have been punched in either eye. When he finally broke eye contact, he sighed lengthily, and from the clink-clink-clink she could hear, he was messing with her tags almost frantically.

Skyler shook her head. "Yeah, buddy. Me too. Let's get this done with."

Why were they here? The hairs on back of Adrian's neck stood on end as his nose twitched to take in the air. Death. There was nothing here but old death. It was different than the pulse-pounding scent of fresh carnage; once it had cooled for that long, it lost its appeal as food and settled into something heavy and… sad. There was no better way to describe it than smelling sad. Even the sight of the building looming up over the hill brought a shiver over his skin.

The monster seemed to share the same hesitation; for once, her steps were slow and measured, and her teeth pressed her lip firmly. Oh no. What must be here that even she thought it was bad?

He thought about staying behind. He really did. For a bit he stood, wavering, until he made a soft sound of discontent and followed in her tracks. This was going to kill him eventually.

Whatever had happened here had been long ago; he could tell by the whiteness that had covered up any sign of Others having visited here and the stale scent. There was something deeply unsettling about disturbing the stillness of this place. The monster pressed on though, the sound of their footsteps too loud against the emptiness but with nothing around to hear.

What was this thing that he was feeling? It was almost like he was encroaching on something else's territory. He both knew that they were alone and felt like this presence was listening and pressing in around him. There was something that he nearly wanted to call it, but it eluded him. It was frustrating enough that he looked to the monster for some kind of answer, but his attention was taken by the first bit of broken bone that he could see jutting bleached and gnawed up towards the sky.

His heart beat an uneven step as the surroundings began to blur nauseatingly.

A nightmare. He was walking into a nightmare.

Coming up on the crest of the hill before the bridge, it became obvious that 95 Station had pretty fucking absolutely been compromised. The scene greeting them wasn't a gory one, considering the months ago that it had fallen, but some of the story was still there. Some great force had caved in the face of the co-opted auditorium shelter. Prior to the day before Skyler wouldn't have attributed this being possible from anything short of a Tank, but now she could just imagine the Commons crashing into it with their bodies, drawn by the huddled masses inside, until it crumbled like a barricade against a tsunami. Or maybe it had been both. Who knew? Anyone who did was still around here somewhere. Run off the side of the road leading up was one of their evac Humvees, somehow turned onto its side. There wasn't any need to look inside of that. And the bridge…

"Hell," she uttered, shuffling through snow-blanketed debris until she looked over the jagged edge of the destroyed structure, past twisted rebar and to the solid sheet of white that was the ocean inlet below. They'd blown the bridge, not that it had saved them. Well, there went the easy way over.

Now that she knew that wasn't happening, she was ready to get out of dodge. Being here, for lack of better words, gave her the fucking heebie-jeebies.

"Change of plans, kid," she called, making a 180 only to find that he was no longer behind her.

"Uh. Adrian?"

She didn't immediately spot him, until she caught a glimpse of a figure standing just at the edge of the destroyed wall and the distinct eye shine of an infected, which gave her a shock and had her just about to whip her rifle in that direction before catching up with herself. This couldn't possibly get any more horror movie.

"Shit," she breathed, shaking her head. "Wish you could tell me when you were about to go off and stare at demons. Come on. We've got to…"

Whatever she'd been about to say left her when she got close enough to actually follow his line of sight. There was a clear view into the largest room through the hole. Past the point where the weather had blown in, the seating had been removed and an assortment of sleeping bags and blankets had been brought in, now thrown into utter disarray. But that wasn't what caught her attention. The emergency escapes at the back had been barricaded with what looked like everything that had been available to the people inside, which must have been the nail in the coffin, because that was where most of them lay. It took a few seconds to truly process that the tangle of clothing scraps and sharp angles was made up of human bones.

This place was a goddamned crypt.

And being here sure felt like intruding on a grave.

Skyler had seen a shit-ton of death for sure, but there was something very special about this. Only the faint crunch of shoes on the ground made her conscious of the fact that she was now staring, too.

Adrian had taken a step further in past the crumbled brick. Oh, hell no. She wasn't doing this.

"No. Come on. Don't do this to me."

She didn't think he even heard her, his eyes glazed and wide as saucers. Her fingers just missed brushing the back of his sweatshirt when she unthinkingly reached out to stop his next few shaky steps.

This kid was going to kill her.

No. No no no nonono this wasn't real, this couldn't be- this couldn't be, could it? The small voice that questioned these things was nearly entirely drowned out by all of the noise.

All of the details felt too vivid, splayed out in colors that shouldn't exist. His eyes riveted on the back of the room. On the scratches gouged into every surface with the flimsy not-claws of Clean Ones. And the bones…

His heart beat wildly as he looked frantically around for an explanation. Why were they still screaming?! They were supposed to stop when they were dead! He had to stop them, but he was rooted in place by a deep, cold feeling of dread very much unlike the rage that accompanied hearing something so loud. Closing his eyes only left him with flashes of imaginings of what must have happened here, writhing bodies and formless chaos-

Something grabbed his arm, and raw panic took over. He felt sharp fingers dig into his skin and threw himself back with all of his might, barking out a short scream. Off his balance, he hardly realized when he hit the floor aside from scrambling backwards away from his assailant. Get OFF of him! It was- it was the dead. They were everywhere; they wanted him.

He shrieked again. NO! No, they couldn't take him, he wouldn't let them! To his own surprise, he felt a hot core of defiance bubble up and through his limbs. It didn't matter what they were screaming at him, he- he wasn't going to give up and lay down here! He was still alive and he was going someplace and he wasn't going to join a nameless pile of bones or scorched Others-

Sometime between him blinking, the delusion wavered, leaving him gasping and bewildered. Nothing moved besides him and the monster, no matter where he looked. The screaming faded into the sound of the wind whistling outside. Still, he sat breathless and shaking for a long while. Eventually he saw the- monster's?- legs in the corner of his vision as she shuffled closer, then a motion directed down at him.

He grit his teeth, but accepted her offered hand up.

It was the only one he had, after all.

The path down to the bank was steep and gravelly, the kind of grade that crumbled under each step and would have left either of them on their asses if they weren't wearing good shoes. Skyler firmly kicked the surface of the ice, finding it thick enough not to break. That was all the promise they were going to get. She gestured to Adrian, and with only a second of hesitation, he followed, leaving her with another twinge of, Oh no, this kid actually trusts me, doesn't he?

He did stop at the edge of the ice though, tentatively edging one foot out before wrinkling his nose disagreeably. Skyler snorted, although truth be told, she far preferred this to his bout of freaking out at what she could only presume were hallucinations.

"Yeah? Well, I think you want to get out of here as much as me. So you can deal."

He may have had a point, though; the bay was considerably wider looking out at the opposite bank from down here than from up on the bridge, fractured and jagged in a few spots, and she wasn't particularly looking forward to taking a late December bath in the Atlantic. One of them had to take initiative though, and whether she liked it or not she was the one leading.

She put her back to the water, beckoning with both hands like she was coaxing a kid she was teaching to fucking ice skate while she backed up.

"Yeah, you got this. Just follow me. You jump off of buildings and shit, this can't be that bad."

By the time that he'd taken a few slow steps out, Skyler felt one of her feet go out from under her and crashed down to the ice, barely catching herself on her hands to stop herself from busting ass quite so badly. Fuck. Watching where she was going would have been a good idea, probably.

As she was in the middle of hauling herself back to her feet, Adrian closed the rest of the distance between them and paused. He shifted in what she read as uncertainty up until he presented one hand. Seems he knew how to repay a favor. Skyler took a deep breath, then pulled herself up, careful not to stab herself on his damned claws. Unexpectedly, he tugged further, placing her hand determinedly on his shoulder. She didn't know how to interpret that.

"Uh. Great. Awesome. We're… trusting each other. Yeah," she mumbled. The pit of her stomach did a tiny flip and her heart clenched just a little bit.

He was steady, though, more so than her, anyways. She wondered whether it was more mutant bullshit or if he was just good at it.

Not to mention the fact that he was seemingly helping her either out of appreciation or the goodness of his little leaper heart, again. This kid was full of surprises and it was starting to sit weird with her. Things were so, so much fucking easier believing that he'd been stripped down of everything that had made up whoever he had been. A walking ghost; one of those leftover impressions on this mortal coil Lauren would have talked about. Except it kept becoming more and more obvious in these small ways that Adrian wasn't dead.

Before them the far shore drew closer, while off to their side lay the expanse of water out into the ocean while the wind and the inevitable push of seawater drove plates of ice inward with a low, faint groan. They'd come to a near stop, which she found was because Adrian was staring out with the kind of fascination usually reserved for people who had gone their lives without seeing the coast.

Fine. They could have that.

Braced against the cold, Skyler too came to a pause, facing out and away, aware still of the hand she had on the kid who'd tried to murder her's scrawny, fevered shoulder.

"And, uh," she muttered under the ambient noise, deciding she didn't particularly care whether he heard her or would possibly understand, "Thanks."