AN: Here's a new chapter. Haven't completed the merger of two chapters yet; however, any chapter with a heading that's been changed has been minorly edited. So far, its mostly sentence phrasing and word choice edits, so there's no need to reread those parts.

Her name is Cassie. And that's all she has. No last name. No memory of how she even got into this dark hallway in the first place. Apparently, no shoes either to protect from the cold seeping into the soles of her bare feet.

The cool air settles over her, dragging goosebumps to the surface of her skin as she shivers. While bright enough to illuminate the edges of the black, hard floor, the dim line of lights along the bottom of the walls are too faint to show much more than that. Even as Cassie stares hard into the elongated hallway, the end fades into a dark blur.

She can't remain like this. Her eyesight's too bad. The scents in the air are too indistinct with this weak sense of smell. And if she has to run, she won't get very far on her stocky human legs.

She needs to change, to morph out of this form into something more suitable for this strange place.

Cassie closes her eyes, reaching deep for the image she needs to begin, for the sense memory of limbs that are longer and leaner than what she has now. Nothing happens. The telltale itch refuses to spread over her joints; her bones refuse to crack and bend into new shapes.

She doesn't—can't—change no matter how hard she focuses. No matter how deep she sinks into the sensations of being something else. Her teeth should be elongating right now. Her eyes growing sharper to better take in this dim light. But they don't. Her body refuses to shift and change like it should because something is missing. The awful alien gift coursing through her blood is gone.

The cold air crawls its way down her throat as she gasps; the shivers deepening into trembles that won't stop even when she wraps her arms tightly around her body. The girl curls in on herself as the fear unfurls.

A piece of her is gone. How it's gone or why, Cassie doesn't know. But she knows it's gone, and that's she's stuck as a human girl all alone in a dark, endless hallway. There should be others here with her. There's always been others. But even their faces refuse to come to mind while the breaths entering and leaving Cassie's body rush in and out, faster and faster.

"Jake, stop her!"

Terror that isn't hers crashes with a voice right into her mind. Her breath catches in her throat and her head whips back up as she stares back into the indistinct darkness.

"No!"

The rage burning through that word slams into Cassie, pressing down onto her before it flickers away like a dying flame.

Each step steady against the hard floor, she's already moving forward before the last flicker dies away. It's crazy, to run towards the voice that ripped through her head, but…

I know that name. Jake. I know Jake. Jake's my…

An empty space surrounds the idea of Jake. But Cassie pushes, reaches inward as she forces herself forward.

Jake's my—

A boy, almost a man, standing alone in the woods where their resistance have hidden themselves away. Unaware that she watches him, his shoulders slump with the weight of the battle that's to come.

The heaviness of his hand resting in hers, of his head on her shoulder. This might be the last time they simply sit together in silence.

"No!"

"Jake, stop her!"

The voice blasts through again, dragging Cassie's attention back to the hallway that stretches on and on. The dim lights along the floor slip with each step from pale white into barely visible grey.

That voice, filled with terror and rage, she's knows that voice too. It belonged to—

Between the space of one step and another, the hallway is gone. The space around Cassie expands out and out away from her as she staggers to a stop. The bridge of the spaceship. She's standing in the bridge of a spaceship. The massive curved viewport, closed and black, stretches over most of the opposite wall from her. Clumps of consoles scatter around the bridge, their screens empty of any signs of activity. Not that she would know what any of that activity meant, but…a ship like this is never silent. Even if the consoles themselves are muted, the quiet chittering of the crew should be moving through the air.

The stench of blood curdles in Cassie's nose.

In one blink, the consoles are whole and the floor a spotless metallic black. With another blink, blood seeps in between her toes. The nearest console is smashed over, its metal base twisted open and gaping from whatever tore through.

What? Oh, no, oh no.

Cassie stumbles back, her heel slipping out as it slides through the red pool behind her. Catching herself on the edge of the toppled console, the warmth coating her feet induces a full body flinch.

It's warm, the liquid red that squelches between her toes. It's too warm, and that means this just happened.

Cassie jolts, her wide-eyed stare jumping around the bridge. There are other damaged consoles now. A few are smashed in like some great weight fell upon them. Others indented like something slammed into the side. Splotches of blood decorate most of them while others are spotted with some kind of blue-green liquid that oozes through the grooves of the bent metal.

All around Cassie lays the aftermath of a battle. The one that…

Wait, this is, this is—

"Jake, stop her!"

So close, too close. The mental wave rolls through her. Her knees sag, but her strong grip on the console prevents her from falling over from the shock.

That mental wave, no, that thought-speak had to have come from somewhere nearby. Mere feet from her if that. Cassie looks up, barely angling her head to the side to see him, the one who the voice had to be coming from, slouched against an intact console.

From his spot on the floor, the boy stares past her. His eyes lack the white that should be there. Instead, only the tarnished gold of the irises circle dilated pupils that fail to see her. The rest of his face is mostly normal except for the pattern of scales traveling down his jaw and past the collar of the metal grey, skin-tight shirt he wears. The fingers of his hand, the one that weakly grasps at his throat, are fused together only to peel apart into separate digits as Cassie stares.

His now normal human hand sinks down, fully revealing the gaping crevice through his scaled throat. The stench of blood curdles deeper within Cassie's nose when she inhales quickly. Yet, the sight of the dying boy before her dispels the fear and uncertainty.

Knowledge blossoms into her mind, stabilizing her. She's on the Blade ship. Surrounded by the aftermath of a battle she only witnessed on viewscreens and in nightmares.

Cassie's had this dream before. She may not remember her last name or even the names of her friends. But she knows that much. Knows that there's been endless, endless nights of replaying this day again and again. It's never been just Tom, though, sitting before her wheezing through a ruined throat. It's always been someone else amid the pools of blood, a different girl that Cassie couldn't save. No matter how hard she tries.

The blood beneath her feet ceases to bother her as she moves forward and crouches down in front of the boy who inch by inch grows more human. The brown scales fade to pale skin as Cassie watches. The jagged edges of the wound creep slowly together.

"You're almost there, Tom. Just keep morphing." The words come out of her so easily. This may be a dream, but maybe, just once, she doesn't have to watch someone die again.

The wheezing stops. Eyes that had been unfocused shift to stare straight at her. Dull-eyed pain sharpens to confusion and anger.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

His hostility vibrates in her mind. It's weird, his face is too human; he shouldn't be able to thought-speak to her like that. But…dreams just work like that. Logic and rules bend or disappear entirely in them.

"You were on the Pool ship. You shouldn't be here."

Tom, no, the yeerk wearing him leans forward, close enough to grab her if his hands weren't loosely resting on the floor. He's stopped shifting from one form to the other. Almost human except for the golden eyes and for the patches of scales around his neck. The wound still gapes at her, but no blood oozes out.

Tom's chest is still. Why should it move when he's been dead for so long now. Long enough for Cassie to know that the girl she is here isn't…she isn't quite this young anymore.

"I shouldn't be." Cassie agrees. She needs to wake up. She knows she should let this go, move on with the life that fails to come to mind in this place. Yet, a piece of her is always going to be here among the carnage left behind by…

Rachel. Rachel did all this.

Rachel is the one who saved them. The one who fought this one last battle to save the world. She only had to die killing Tom to do it.

Bitter tears well up in Cassie's eyes before she blinks them away. She breaks eye contact with the creature wearing Tom's body to look out at the damage around them. Maybe Rachel is somewhere here too. Or, more accurately, the memory of her. An illusion to talk to one more time.

Movement out of the corner of her eye causes Cassie to look back. The yeerk presses his fingers against the wound on the body it wears. Tom's eyebrows furrow in confusion when it pulls his hand away and stares at the blood coating the finger tips.

"What is this?" The yeerk looks back at her, taking in the absence of fear in her face and the misery that must be plain to see. "What did you do?"

It's one question. Only a question, yet ice flows down her back. Cassie jerks away, rising to her feet. The distance she gains quickly vanishes as the yeerk smoothly pushes himself up. He moves far too easily for someone who doesn't have enough blood left to bleed.

The floor stays level, but something's tilting, something out of sight that lurches through Cassie's insides. That question rings through her ears. What did she do? Shouldn't it be 'what didn't she do?'

She let him go. She didn't go.

"Earth to Cassie. I asked you a question." It grins, Tom's grin except for the cruel interest in those eyes. It seems to have forgotten the fatal wound it wears as it looms over her, that grin slipping away as Cassie stumbles back.

The console digs into her hip when she bumps against it. The yeerk watches her without moving forward, that cruel interest heating up into anger.

"I'll ask you one more time, Cassie. What is this?" The tone itself is calm, yet thought-speak can't hide the simmering violent intent that spoken words would have.

The dark bridge brightens. Orange light glows against the skin of the creature before her. That anger dissipates into surprise as it stares wide-eyed at her, and then turns Tom's head to the source of whatever just lit up the area around them.

Cassie follows that gaze. The viewport wasn't closed. The sight before them would be impossible if it was.

Scattered in the darkness outside, the remains of some other spaceship sit suspended in front of the viewport. Jagged pieces linger in the area around the molten ruins of the other ship's engine core as it explodes through its body. No one could have lived through that, the entire inside of the ship is torn open and swallowed by still fire.

The Rachel. Not the name of a girl. That's the name of the ship, given in honor of her memory. That's the Rachel before Cassie, the ship that carried the last of her friends into interstellar space when they left the Earth behind.

The sob escapes her. Cassie's shaking, the tears slipping down her cheeks as the next sob comes. She's the last one now. Truly the last one left.

When she shakes her head, she glimpses the yeerk staring at her in confusion before it glances back at the ship outside.

"That's not the Pool Ship." The confused voice in her head slips through quietly. The yeerk glances back and forth between Cassie and the ship before turning his attention completely towards the fiery glow before them.

A cold hand grabs Cassie's left arm, tugging it hard and away.