"Where are we headed?" Amiah asks once we've hit the main flow of traffic. Sky is already turning green, pressing his forehead to the cool glass.

"East of the city," he answers, his shaky tone draws Amiah's attention. She spares one glance at him and grimaces. Reaching over, she pops open a compartment set in the front of the vehicle.

"There's a package of anti-nausea pills in there," she says. Sky fishes them out with a grateful grunt. He pops two little round pills out of their tin foil barrier, then passes the package back to me. "Okay, now, there are a million roads headed east out of this place, so I really need you to be specific."

"It's, um... roads... " A frustrated groan escapes Sky and he strikes the doorframe open-handed. He doesn't know the way to the Compound, neither of us do. I press my knuckles to my teeth, and for the first time since charging out the door, the spark of rage-fueled fire in my stomach begins to flicker.

Amiah stomps on the brakes and wrenches the car to the side of the road, sending us all crashing against our seatbelts. The car is barely stopped when she throws open the compartment between the front seats and fishes out a miniature newstab.

"This place was on the news a while back, the lab the Americans attacked, right?" she asks, pulling something up on the newstab screen.

"That's the one," I say, easing back into my proper seat. Her fingers fly over the screen, tapping here and there too fast for me to catch what she's doing. In thirty seconds she has a map up on the newstab screen and is grinning triumphantly to herself.

"Got it." She passes the newstab to Sky, flips a switch beside the steering wheel, and rockets back onto the road. "Okay, now save that image to memory, wipe the browser history, and disconnect the newstab from everything."

"Why?" Sky asks, already pressing buttons to get the image saved as the car lurches across several lanes of traffic.

"Because what I did for that map is illegal as hell and the police will stop us from getting to the Compound."

Sky taps with more speed. At the first red light we hit, Amiah snatches the newstab from him and pulls up the image of the map.

"Where did you learn to do this?"

"Old job," Amiah answers tersely. The light turns green, she drops the newstab in Sky's lap and hits the gas, she spins the steering wheel with alarming speed, and I throw my hands out to brace against the seats. I don't want to be tossed out of this forsaken contraption before we get to the Compound. "Map says we're sixty minutes away from the Compound. So we'll be there in twenty," she says, then burns through a red light.

With twenty minutes of racing hearts and close brushes with fatal accidents ahead of us, I lean back and try to keep all of my self inside my skin. It's difficult, especially in the silence, and the knowledge that we're headed straight for the Compound makes it a hundred thousand times worse.

"Hey," I tap Sky's shoulder. He turns in his seat to face me, eyebrows up. "How's your hand?"

The eyebrows go down, but he doesn't answer right away.

"It's fine," he says at last.

"No, how bad is it?"

He looks away and sets his knife in the cupholder next to Amiah's gun. Sighing, he runs his hand through his hair and gives a half-hearted shrug. "It's shattered, but it... it doesn't hurt much," he admits at last.

My fingers find the edge of the burn scar of their own accord. The action is becoming familiar, habitual almost.

"Were you serious when you told Dieter to kill you?"

"It doesn't matter." I bite my tongue and turn to look out the window at the light posts racing by. Sky leans back into his seat and falls uncharacteristically silent. We pull onto a road with dwindling traffic, Amiah speeding around every car in our path with frightening agility. Soon the light posts are replaced by trees, and the traffic has vanished. The road we're on winds like a snake through the forest, and more than once Amiah swerves on two wheels to avoid a car-killing pothole. We're so near I can taste it, like bile washing over my tongue. My stomach is resting up in my throat, dangerously close to spilling out.

Amiah leans into a tight turn. Unexpectedly, the road ends. The brakes screech in protest as Amiah goes from pressing the accelerator to the floor, to standing on the brake pedal. We skid across a gravel patch, stones flying, and stop a breath from smashing the front end of the car into the trunk of a pine tree. I think my seatbelt might be permanently embedded in my collarbone. In the front seat, Sky undoes his seatbelt with a shaking hand, muttering to himself.

"A concussion, whiplash, what's next? A broken nose? Sprained ankle?" He's too busy trying to pop his neck to spot the movement in the bushes.

"Get down!" I shout, diving for the floor. Mere moments later a spray of bullets shatters the front window, glass flies everywhere, the back seat explodes in torn fabric and burst foam. Amiah, slumped so low she's at eye-level with the bottom of the steering wheel, grabs her gun. When the gunfire stops, she levers herself up, takes aim, and fires over and over and over, until the chamber clicks empty. There's no return fire.

I sit up, ears ringing. Sky is crunched under the dashboard, brushing glass from his hair. Amiah keeps her handgun raised, her sleeve is torn at the shoulder revealing red skin and beads of blood underneath, but it looks like a graze. She's two shades paler, her hands tremble despite her death grip on the gun.

"Breathe," I say, because she looks like she's forgotten how to.

"I think—I think I just—killed someone," she says.

"Are you hurt?"

She gulps air in, holds it, and lets it out with a big whoosh. When she does, she lowers her empty gun. "No, I'm okay."

"Good, stay here. If we're not back in ten minutes, leave. Okay?" I take the bat from the passenger side and hand it to her. She takes it with one hand, staring at the handle as if it's a foreign object. "Hey, did you hear me? Ten minutes only, after that, get out of here. Bring the police back if you can but don't try to go in yourself."

"Yeah, okay yeah, half an hour, got it." Her grip on the bat tightens, and she loses the shell-shocked expression long enough to convince me she's alright. I climb out of the glass-littered back seat.

The gravel crunches under our feet, damp from the melted snow, on the horizon is a storm head creeping our way. A slight breeze rustles the tops of the trees, and the sun shines down with mild warmth. Not bad weather, for a doomsday. I shut the car door, trying to make as little noise as possible. Sky follows suit.

"Ready?" I ask. I'm not, standing so close to that place makes my skin crawl and my lungs contract.

"No," Sky answers, then laughs a short, tense chuckle.

"Great. Let's go then."

A wide swath of woods separates the parking lot from the field surrounding the Compound. We sneak through it, our steps crunching on dead leaves and fallen twigs the whole way. When we reach the edge of the tree line, a rumble rings out from the Compound. We drop like lead to the forest floor. Sweat drips down my temple as I skim the ruined Compound for signs of life.

The fence is burst open inwards on our side, the white van lays crumpled on its side on the basketball court. Sky breaks for it.

"Dead Redcoat," he says, back at my side in the blink of an eye. A dead 'coat, an open fence, and not a living guard in sight. Something's not right. Another rumble, my eyes snap to the source of the din.

"Look," I whisper, pointing to the silhouette of a person creeping out of the infirmary.

"I see him," Sky whispers back.

The silhouette moves slowly at first, checking over his shoulder at the infirmary. As he reaches the edge of the circle of destruction around the burned building, he breaks into a sprint. He doesn't slow until he disappears into the last standing cell block.

"Infirmary?" I ask.

"Infirmary." Sky agrees.

A burned-out fire is a sad and ugly thing. There's nothing left except fine clumps of ash and blackened charcoal, and the cloying stench of spent smoke lingers everywhere. A burned-out fire after a storm is worse.

We tiptoe over a heavy mess of reeking sludge, our footsteps squelch. Globs of the stuff have been flung against the sides of the remaining buildings and left to dry, and the black leaks out of the cooked building skeletons and onto the surrounding area, leaving sickly trails of greyish ooze. The only upside to this sticky nightmare is the lack of dust flying up to choke me. That, and I can see the paths other people have taken all throughout the remains of the Compound.

A spray of red against the otherwise monochrome ground catches my attention. It's blood, splattered in a wide circle and still shiny wet. There's a fat drop of it a few feet away, and another beyond that, an entire trail leading behind the infirmary. I follow the trail to the back of the infirm and all the way to the double doors of the laboratory. A light shove opens them.

Muck caked on the soles of my shoes sloughs off on the floor in wet grey puddles. An ominous streak is smeared across the righthand wall, not more than two steps in, a scream like that of a tortured animal erupts from the direction of the dueling dome. A body smashes into the corner of the wall where the corridor splits, another goes flying past at the same time and bangs into a wall out of sight. The one on the floor sports a dirty lab coat, blood stains the wall where he cracked his head, he groans but his eyes stay closed.

"Looks like Dieter is in a good mood," Sky whispers.

I creep forward, for the barest of seconds my eyes unfocus, the body on the floor becomes a meaningless lump, the blood on the wall stretches out into pale almost-oblivion. Then every edge, every speck, and line, and teeny tiny detail snaps into sharp focus. The door to the dome is wide open, the handle embedded in the wall.

"Come on in!" Dieter barks, strolling into view with his hands up. "What's next, sedatives? A long stick to me with?" he sings in a mocking high-pitched voice. He pauses when he spots me, hands frozen in the air. Then a slow smile lifts the corners of his lips and spreads until it looks like someone has peeled his lips back and push-pinned them to his cheeks. "Took you long enough."

I step over the threshold, my footsteps echo on the chipped cement floor. The dome unfolds before me, dirty from ages of viciousness and brutality. A section of the metal rods that make up the roof are caved in where Delilah landed on it the last time we were here, and beneath that lays a sprinkling of debris. In the center of it all is Dieter, standing over Delilah's body.

"She's hurt." Sky bolts from behind me. Dieter explodes. He throws his magno-blast at us only for it to rocket upwards and rattle debris lose from the dome. He glares up at it. The distraction leaves him open, giving Sky a break to skirt him and lift Delilah from the floor with his good hand. He stumbles to a stop just short of the door and drops her onto her feet, wincing.

She groans, leaning hard on Sky. Awake, barely. A growing red patch stains the side of her shirt and leaks between her fingers, her sweaty face is ashen and taut. Suddenly she thrusts her arm out, a gust of howling wind sends Dieter sailing smack into the farthest wall moments before another of his blasts crumbles the doorframe.

She lists to one side, Sky catches her in the nick of time and we share worried looks. I can see her fading even as she fights to stay upright.

"Get her out of here," I say, turning to the place where Dieter is peeling himself off the ground. I don't have to last long against him, just long enough for Sky and Delilah to get far away.