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.

I didn't know how to approach them.

I'd forgotten how to start a normal conversation when we weren't facing some sort of potentially world–ending situation.

And I think they'd been expecting me to just go back to my office once some sort of normality had been restored in the A.R.C. The thermostat had been reset, someone had come it to tape up a polyethene sheet over my broken window and I'd gone up to my medical lab to put a couple of stitches into my knuckle, lucky I hadn't broken it, and on the way out I'd taken my stethoscope from one of my desk drawers'.

'Hey!' I called out rather awkwardly to Danny and Connor who were standing in the kitchenette. My voice had seemed quite loud, brash almost. I winced.

They turned, quickly, and blinked back at me in surprise. 'Hi,' Danny responded brightly as he held up a cup from his hands and nodded back to the worktop at the drinks they'd been making. 'Tea?'

I wasn't really stopping. 'Later,' I replied, 'have either of you seen Becker?'

Connor frowned. 'Becker?'

'I just want to check his lungs,' I explained, 'I don't know how easily the spores from that fungi spread and if he was in an enclosed space with it for a longer period of time without an air filtration system then…' I didn't need to finish; Connor nodded.

'Think he went into the locker room,' he said. At that moment I heard his phone start to ring again. It seemed like that had been happening a lot recently. Perhaps it was my imagination. He pulled the phone out his pocket, looked down at the caller I.D and rolled his eyes before declining the call.

'You only just missed him,' Danny continued.

I just nodded, turning on my heel and heading down the corridor towards the military locker room.

I hadn't ever been inside it before.

I heard the noise of the loud and gaudy voices the second the door cracked open, and I didn't know how but it instantly made me feel a little better.

It was the normality, I assumed, like what I'd be craving to feel for so long because in here no one was tiptoeing around me, no one was afraid to be shouting and laughing in case that somehow offended me.

The only offensive thing in there was the smell. It was very definitely masculine, powerful– just not necessarily in a good way- but I wasn't completely unfamiliar with it.

As I stepped inside, I immediately noticed Becker sitting on the edge of one of the tables behind rows of lockers and benches, and somewhere behind them must have been a shower cubicle because there was a faint mist of Radox scented steam.

'Becker?' I called quietly to claim his attention as I shut the door behind me.

He brought his head around, recognising my voice, and he quickly got up, turning his back on the men who were congregating around their lockers with the uniforms in various stages of completion.

'Anna?' he returned as he stepped around the table. 'Is everything okay?'

I just held up my stethoscope in way of explanation. 'I need to listen to your chest,' I said, 'honestly I don't know how long you were down in those tunnels, but the spores can spread virally so if they got into your lungs…'

Again, I didn't need to finish because Becker nodded. 'So you want to check me out,' he concluded.

'You don't mind, do you.' It wasn't a question; it wasn't a request. Medically I was quite within my right to ask him to do whatever I wanted in concern for his health. I stopped in front of him.

'Course not,' he said.

I hadn't noticed quite how much taller than me he was until I looked up as though to eye the apex at the top of his lungs above his clavicle and realised that was above my head. 'I... can you sit down?'

His eyes glimmered with amusement before he sat back on the edge of the table behind him, 'hmm?'

'Yeah, and sorry, but you're gonna have to take your shirt off.'

Again, he didn't seem too thrown by it. He grabbed at the back of the neckline of his top and dragged it up over his head. There was a whistle from somewhere behind him and for the first time in months, I laughed. 'Daniels,' he barked quickly without even looking, 'get out.' One of the younger looking soldiers crossed the room with his head ducked, but amusement clearly evident on his face as he passed us on the way to the door. 'Sorry,' Becker said as our eyes met.

And despite his resolve, Captain Becker was a playful sort of person with a glint in his eyes that usually made me feel at home and an expression that was always half expectant and half annoyed.

The seriousness of his expression now did nothing but amplify my own amusement, while I calmly pressed the diaphragm of my stethoscope to the palm of my hand so that it wasn't too cold when I put it to his skin. 'Okay, I need you to take one breath in through your mouth and out through your mouth, and if you start to get dizzy or anything let me know, we can slow down.'

He nodded, and I took half a step closer to him, pressing myself into the table as I leant over to put the diaphragm to the apex of his lung.

He took a breath in, and out, and I moved my hand across to compare the other side.

Okay. Standard bronchovesicular respiration.

I moved down to the second intercostal space to check the upper lobe of his lungs. 'Deep breath in,' I told him, 'and out.'

Again it was normal. I moved down to the fourth, checked that, and wasn't surprised to hear that even that was regular. The whole time his gaze didn't move from my face. I could tell there was something he wanted to say. I immediately assumed it would be something about what had happened, something about Nick, perhaps, because we hadn't really had a chance to speak since before it had happened and he was the type of person to want to say something about it, to offer his sympathy, to tell me he was there for me if I needed him.

Before he could say anything, I had to lean a hand against his ribs to balance myself as I leant across to check the midaxillary, but not wanting to put to much pressure against him, I barely let my fingertips press into his skin. And my hands must have been cold because he jumped slightly. 'What are you–'

I pressed the stethoscope to his side. 'This is a midaxillary,' I interrupted quickly, '6th intercostal space, it's normal procedure.' I moved my hand to compare with the other side. 'Breathe, Captain.'

He inhaled one final long breath before he slowly exhaled.

'Right,' I said quietly, 'perfect, your lungs sound fine which is good but your heartbeat seems a little faster than I'd expect…'

His gaze dropped to the floor as he nodded his head. 'Yeah,' he said, 'it does that sometimes.'

Well in that case it was less of a concern. 'Okay.' I pulled my hand back from his chest, and jumped when suddenly his hand closed around my fingers, pulling it up to inspect it, and I saw his eyes shift over the wound I'd stitched close a few minutes ago.

'Your hand,' he started softly, 'is it okay?' in the confusion I'd forgotten that they were all there to see it, and I didn't remember until he continued in clarification 'you punched out a window.'

'I…' I had to stop; usually I would try to play that down, find some technicality to make everything seem like much less of a big deal that it actually way. But I couldn't. He'd been there and seen it. 'Yeah…'

'So is it broken?'

I shook my head. 'No.'

'Good,' he said as his thumb inadvertently slipped across my bruising knuckles before he let go of my wrist. 'Connor was right you know.'

I pulled my stethoscope from around my neck and squeezed it in my hand as I looked up to meet his eye with a frown. 'What?'

'You save people,' he repeated in reminder.

I felt my eyes rolling. 'I'm not–'

'Don't be humble,' he interrupted in complaint, 'come on.' I instantly didn't like the way that had made me feel. Humble. Like modesty, it required a certain level of self–assurance I wasn't sure I quite contained anymore. It seemed strange. I had to turn and quickly make my way back to the door. And I didn't get to see his confusion, I only heard it in his tone. 'Anna–'

I had another stop to make. 'Everything's fine with you, Captain,' I cut in reassuringly, 'don't worry.'

There was an unmistakeable sadness to the way Jensen looked when I slowly came to a stop in front of him.

He was still sitting at the desk in my lab, staring somewhat unresponsively at the ground and clutching something in his hand that I couldn't see from such a distance.

He didn't look up when I stepped in through the doorway but somehow he must have known it was me who had come to find him. 'I know I used to be somebody else,' he said with a standoffish sense of clarity, the likes of which I hadn't ever heard him use before.

And it confused me, until I got close enough to him to see what it was he was so desperately clinging on to.

I snatched a hand up over my mouth as I saw the photograph and Nick's face smiling up at me but not before I could catch the noise that escaped through my lips.

Jensen turned, glancing at me not apologetically, but in a way that mimicked every scrap of complicated and intense sadness I was feeling. This was the picture, the one that had been taken just before we'd stepped through that very first anomaly. 'This is him, isn't it?' Jensen clarified, 'this is Captain Ryan.'

I bit down on my lip, my hand coming up to rest against his around the picture as I nodded. 'Yes.'

'I used to be somebody else…' he repeated slowly, questioningly, like he never thought he'd be able to wrap his mind around it. I couldn't find the words; I didn't even know where to start with something like this to comfort him when I couldn't even begin to imagine how this felt, and what had to be going through his mind right now. 'What if I just think I'm someone I'm not.'

'No.'

'What if everything I think I knew about myself is just wrong.'

'No, I know you,' I said, 'and I knew Captain Ryan. And, there has to be some sort of explanation I can find, I can find out what that is and you can know. For sure. Jensen– perhaps we've all lived other lives but what's important is who we are right now.'

'You're absolutely right,' he said. Then I heard him exhale a long and shaky breath. 'And that's exactly why I have to go.'

I whipped my head around to him. 'What?' I demanded in horror.

He slowly turned on the stool to face me. 'Anna, if I stay here, I'll always be looking back, wondering who I am, but… I just want to go.' His voice cracked, his eyes starting to water as I titled my head and stared back at him in confusion.

I quickly wiped the single tear from my own cheek and sighed. 'Jensen, you can't leave,' I said desperately. And my words made him exhale a noise that cut right through to me. 'You can't.'

'I have to. I don't belong here anymore.'

'Course you do,' I insisted.

'Anna, I died today. You had to bring me back to life. I think I really have to quit while I'm ahead. I want to forget about the creatures and the anomalies.'

'And us?' I suggested quietly.

He shook his head, 'no,' he said firmly. 'Never. But I have to forget about Captain Ryan, because I can't…'

'What's going to happen to us? It's your team,' I said.

He shook his head again, wiping away his own tears with a frustrated and flustered eyeroll. 'No, Anna…' he started softly, leaning forward to take both my hands in his, 'it was his. And it should be yours.'

'But I can't.'

'Yes, you can. You were made for this place. And it needs you to do this.' He let go of my hands and sat back. 'And I'm gonna miss you all so much, you have no idea, but you'll be just fine without me. So, go on, go take it.' When I started shaking my head, he shifted in his seat. 'Take it,' he repeated firmly.

I took a deep breath. I would never feel ready to do that. I saw him sitting there beside Jensen, leaning against the desk, watching Jensen with a smile on his face.

'He's right, sweetheart.'

And hearing those words from his mouth made them seem that much more possible.

Jensen stood up and I realised he must have let go of the picture at some point because now it was my hand and I was squeezing it so tightly it had almost completely crinkled. He smiled, leant forward and wrapped his arms around me in the warmest hug I'd had in quite some time. A hug that wasn't furthered by sorrow or sympathy, but admiration and respect. 'Anna Havisham,' he said softly, 'my dear, thank you, for everything.'

I smiled as I pressed my face further into his chest. 'You too,' I responded passionately. 'Jensen, be happy, okay? Feel it for all of us.'

'I will,' he said as he nodded. Then, pulling back just far enough to look down at me, he smiled. 'Good luck.'

I thought about knocking as I approached the office but my movement must have caught his eye because Lester looked up before I had a chance and waved me in. 'Miss Havisham,' he said, as I came in through the doors, whilst he threw down one of the files quite dramatically onto his desk.

I sat down in the chair opposite him at his desk but couldn't quite relax. 'Are you alright?' I asked.

He sighed. 'That woman who was here earlier,' he started in explanation, 'has been trying to shove her men onto us, and she's getting more and more persistent the longer it takes until we can find a leader for the team. And I'm running out of believable excuses as to why it's taken us this long to make an appointment.'

I raised an eyebrow. 'And you answer to this woman?' I asked.

His eyes narrowed in contemplation. 'No… and I never will if I have anything do with it.'

I nodded. 'I have some ideas,' I said quietly, 'if that helps.'

'Thank you,' he said genuinely. 'You've saved our bacon before, but never quite as importantly as you did today. It could have been… everything. And, what I said before, I want you to know that I meant it. No matter what happens with the team now I really did think– do think– that the best…' he stopped and paused to try and think about how he was going to continue. 'You can do it,' he said and I found myself shaking my head before I could stop it, like a reflex, 'the team… if you want it, at any point… well, it's yours.' He met my eye across the table before he leant in, lowering his voice almost like he didn't want me to hear him. 'Step up, Miss Havisham,' he said.

I bit down on the inside of my cheek. I was never going to be ready, but everything was different now.

I turned my head, looked at him, as he leant back against the glass window of Lester's office before my eyes moved down past him, to the hub where everyone was gathered around. The team- our team...

I took a deep breath.

I turned back to Lester, looked him right in the eye.

'Call me Doctor.'