As they pulled onto the main road, the engine of the car rumbling beneath them, Sammie finally broke the tense silence that had settled between her and Andy.

"Where exactly are you taking me?" Sammie asked, her voice cautious. She still didn't know if she could fully trust this woman, even after what had just happened. She was too new to this whole immortal thing, if that's really what she was now.

Andy's eyes flickered briefly to Sammie before returning to the road. "Paris," she said simply, her tone unreadable as she drove. There was no explanation, no extra details—just the destination.

"Paris?" Sammie echoed, a slight edge of disbelief in her voice. "You expect me to just leave everything behind and go to Paris?" She knew that her life had been turned upside down, but Paris? Why Paris?

Andy's hands tightened on the steering wheel, the lines of her face betraying the exhaustion she carried, not just from the past few hours but from something far deeper. "Yeah. Something's happened recently, something big. It's put all of us in danger." Her words were clipped, her voice hardened by experience. "We don't have time to waste."

Sammie processed that. She still barely understood whouswas—these other immortals Andy spoke of—but if this danger was as real as Andy was making it sound, then she couldn't afford to ignore it. Still, she wasn't about to be dragged halfway across the world without getting her things in order.

"All the more reason for me to get to one of my safehouses first," Sammie countered, her voice firm, trying to regain some sense of control in this new, chaotic world.

Andy gave her a sideways glance, one brow raised, curious and impressed. "Safehouses? Plural?" Her lips quirked into something that might've been a smirk. "Alright then. But we're leaving Australia today. No more detours."

"Noted," Sammie responded. Her mind immediately began running through what she would need—supplies, weapons, clean IDs—and what she still had access to. Her fingers were already flying across her phone screen, pulling up encrypted data to locate the nearest safehouse. "This should be easy," she added, the confidence in her voice a sharp contrast to the swirling chaos she felt inside. "Turn right at the next set of lights."

As Andy drove, the faint sound of Sammie's phone tapping and occasional directions filled the car, her eyes flicking between her screen and the road ahead. Andy stayed silent, lost in her own thoughts as the city blurred around them.

When they reached the nondescript building that housed Sammie's safehouse, Andy followed her out, her eyes narrowing as she took in their surroundings. To her, it was just another forgotten corner of the city—until Sammie stepped up to the door, and crouched down, looking into the hey hole with her eye. A light came out from the space and scanned her eye. The locks clicked open with a soft hiss, and the door swung wide as Sammie stood back up, waving her hand at the now open door, a smirk on her face.

Inside, Andy's confusion was evident. Her eyes scanned the room, taking in the cluttered space filled with high-tech equipment, half-built drones, and screens displaying lines of code. "What the hell..." she muttered under her breath.

"Don't touch anything," Sammie warned sharply, her fingers moving quickly as she bypassed the security protocols to make sure nothing would attack Andy. Not that she figured it would keep her down for long, but she still figured it was rude to attack her guest. "I didn't exactly plan on having company, and this place hasn't been used in a while."

Andy crossed her arms, stepping back from one of the nearby workstations, watching as Sammie quickly brought the systems online. The equipment whirred to life, the screens lighting up with surveillance footage, real-time drone feeds, and endless streams of data. For someone like Andy, who had spent millennia on the battlefield, this was something entirely foreign—an unfamiliar, yet impressive, shot her another glance but said nothing, silently astonished. Booker might've known his way around technology, but this? This was something else.

"Give me a second," Sammie murmured, her eyes fixed on the screens as she pulled up the latest feeds from her compromised hideout. She saw it immediately: police swarming the area, investigators piecing together the explosion, and worse—some of her equipment was missing. Sammie's expression darkened as she keyed in a few more commands to track down the missing equipment. Without hesitation, she sent drones to the scenes, executing a plan that would ensure the complete destruction of her tech. If anyone got too close to her secrets, they wouldn't live long enough to use them.

Andy's eyes narrowed, a low whistle escaping her lips as she watched the carnage unfold on the screens. The drones moved with precision, swiftly and efficiently neutralizing the threats. "You're not messing around," Andy muttered, clearly impressed.

Sammie didn't even look at the screen. She knew her drones would do their job, trusting the programming she had coded herself. She pushed away from the terminal and began rummaging through the room, grabbing supplies, throwing items into a bugout bag—currency from different countries, burner phones, gadgets she'd need for the road. Her movements were fast, methodical, but there was a strange undercurrent of urgency, as though she knew this might be the last time she ever saw this place.

"Need any weapons?" Sammie asked, glancing over her shoulder at Andy. She gestured to a table piled with gear—guns, bullets, and drones she had been in the process of outfitting with makeshift armaments.

Andy's eyes swept over the table before walking over. She picked up a gun, checking the weight and balance before slipping it into the back of her waistband. "Not bad," she muttered, pocketing a few extra bullets as she gave an impressed whistle. "You've got quite the operation going here."

Sammie gave a small, humorless smile as she zipped her bag shut. "Want a passport while you're at it?" she asked, reaching for a set of blank IDs.

Andy chuckled, shaking her head. "Not exactly legal."

Sammie shrugged, barely hiding her amusement. "If you haven't noticed, nothing I do is legal."

Andy's smirk widened, her expression softening slightly as she took in the strange world Sammie had built around her. "You know," Andy mused, "I'm starting to understand why you." Her eyes roved the room again. "This? This is impressive. I've met people who know tech, but not like this."

Sammie didn't respond, instead pulling up two fake passports for Andy. With practiced ease, she finished creating new identities for both of them, adding them to her growing stack of clean papers. She glanced around the room one last time, her eyes lingering on the equipment she had built, the tech she'd poured herself into for years. This had been one of her sanctuaries, her world, and now she had to leave it behind.

She sighed, the weight of it settling on her. "I'm guessing it'll be a long time before I can come back here," Sammie said quietly, more to herself than to Andy.

Andy, sensing the heaviness in her words, remained silent for a moment. She understood what it was like to walk away from places that had once felt like home. The loss, the finality of it. "Let's hope you won't need to," she said softly, her tone gentler now.

Sammie looked up, meeting Andy's gaze. There was a flicker of understanding between them—two women caught between worlds, forced to leave everything behind time and time again. Sammie slung her bag over her shoulder, giving one last, wistful glance at the safehouse before following Andy out the door.

As they got into the car and drove off into the dark, Sammie felt the sting of finality. She was leaving behind not just a place, but a part of herself—one she wasn't sure she'd ever reclaim.