At Forty's request, Naila brings down two cups of coffee. She looks rather chipper with the mugs in her hand, one decorated with cats and the other a patch of daisies, even as she walks down that cold-looking hallway.

"Oh! A little Aretha today, I see," she says, tipping her head at the record player as if to say hello.

"You seem happy," Thirty-Seven snorts as he moves a red checker over. Forty quickly steals it, and he gives her a deadpan look.

"There's been no dead animals around my property lately," Naila says, starting to hum to "I Say a Little Prayer".

"That's good," Forty says, making another move that results in a chip steal. Just a few more and she'll have won for the sixth time this morning. "That means maybe the disease has run its course in the area."

"I think so. It was really only birds and scavengers. Herbivores were basically unaffected. If anything, I see the deer more now," Naila laughs, setting the two cups beside Forty's elbow.

"They most likely only infected birds, hoping it would spread to other animals through contact. They chose the wrong season, though, huh?" Even before they got to Naila's, it was obvious there were very few birds left in the woods. Most had already begun their migration for the winter. The viral agent must have only caught stragglers and the unfortunate scavengers who feed on them.

"Consider us lucky, then," Naila says, taking up the daisy mug and clinking it against the cat one. Forty takes a delicate sip, then tips it at Thirty-Seven.

"Come on," she says, smiling, wiggling the cup just enough that the hot liquid inside sloshes into an arc. Thirty-Seven scowls at her, but takes it anyways.

"So that's why you wanted a little extra today," Naila hums, watching as Thirty-Seven's face goes through a variety of emotions before landing on disgust.

"Can't do it," he wheezes, wiping at his mouth with his sleeve. Forty shrugs, easily draining the rest of the cup.

"He's become a bit of a lab rat for you, huh?" Naila comments, laughing as Thirty-Seven scrubs at his tongue. He finds some human food appealing. This is not one of them.

"You could say that," Forty chuckles, leaning across the table to wipe at a spot of foam on Thirty-Seven's cheek. He immediately stops fidgeting, his eyes honing in on her.

Touch is easier between them now that they've voiced their feelings. Thirty-Seven is still rather repressed, but he won't flinch back and act like Forty is made of acid when he gives into her affection. Where she can spend hours curled into him, around him, beside him, he likes the stolen touches. He'll throw an arm around her shoulder as she reads, ruffle her hair when she's talking. Each time he successfully makes a grab at her, she'll catch him preening for a while. She doesn't comment on this, finding the habit endearing.

Those eyes go from admiring to telling her that there will be a shortage of cuddles now that she's made him try this vile stuff. As they run out of things to do, Forty makes games out of whatever she can think of. The latest is dedicated to making Thirty-Seven try human food in hopes he'll find something he likes. It's both hilarious and practical. If she's lucky enough to find a food he can keep down, then that's one less meal they'll have to get blood for. If he hates it, then she gets to see that sour face he makes when something doesn't taste right. So far, he's only enjoyed tomatoes. Forty hates tomatoes.

Naila clears her throat between the two of them, a goofy smile on her face. Unbeknownst to Thirty-Seven and Forty, she's seen this coming from the get-go. Perhaps the compound should have resorted to biological warfare sooner if it meant these two got past their emotional constipation. All it took was locking them in a room together.

"I think I might hike the forest today, make sure there's no leftover carcasses," she says, tapping at the glass. The Aretha record still plays steadily in the background, seemingly a favorite of the two.

"I'm coming with you," Thirty-Seven says eagerly, almost flipping the checkers over in his haste to get out of his chair. Naila snorts, pushing him back towards the table with a finger to the forehead.

"Absolutely not. It's like having a fucking golden retriever when I walk with you. Besides, it's still not totally safe. There's a lot of precautions I need to take." She gathers Forty's mug up with two fingers, the glasses clinking loudly against each other.

Thirty-Seven withers, sinking back down into his chair. With little remorse, Forty makes the last move of the game. He gapes at her like a fish. "You'll just have to stay in with me," she laughs, clearing the board dramatically.

"God, worst punishment ever," Thirty-Seven murmurs, flicking the one checker he stole from Forty back at her. She catches it easily, tossing it into the box with the others.

Naila makes to walk back towards the hallway, swaying a little bit to the music. "I'm sure I can take you out soon," she sing-songs, waving goodbye with the two mugs. "You just have to be patient."

"I don't do that," Thirty-Seven calls after her. Forty hears the clank of her climbing up the ladder, then the hiss of the safe door closing.

"I'm sure we'll get to go out again soon," she says, noticing that Thirty-Seven is genuinely disappointed. He shrugs, pushing at the ring the coffee mug made with his index finger.

"I just... miss being outside," he says. Forty knows it's his way of telling her he's not seeking to get away from her specifically. She totally understands. The garden needs tending, the trail needs hiking. Forty's antsy too, but safety comes above all else.

Forty hears the release of air the door makes. She tosses a look over her shoulder, expecting Naila to arrive with more coffee. Instead, the hallway is deathly silent, the lights still bright as ever.

"Naila?" Forty calls, getting out of her chair to go check on her. Maybe she is having trouble getting down the ladder. She once told Forty that her joints ache now that she's older, and climbing is a major workout. "Do you need help?"

Heavy footsteps. Forty's blood runs cold, her senses zeroing in on the hallway. She hears the scoot of Thirty-Seven's chair, and he materializes behind her seconds later. Those footsteps do not sound like Naila's garish fuzzy slippers she insists on wearing. Rather, they're durable, calculated. It's both militant and familiar.

The gun appears before they do. It's large, a shiny black, and aimed directly at Forty and Thirty-Seven. "Stand down specimens!" a male voice commands. He appears behind his gun, clad in full tactical armor.

"No fucking way," Thirty-Seven breathes, and Forty looks over to see his veins bulging and red leaking into his eyes. She feels her own claws shoot out of their sheaths, now glossy and sharp after proper care.

"Guys!" Naila yells, rounding the hallway with a pistol pointed at her head. The woman holding the gun is none other than the gray squad leader, her hair now buzzed down to the scalp. She wears a sleek black eyepatch now, and the gloves on the hands holding a gun to Naila's skull are made of the same material. Forty doesn't know why, but she feels betrayed. She'd always had a good rapport with this woman at the compound, and now she's threatening to kill one of the most precious people in Forty's life.

"Initiate sedative," the man with the large gun calls. Two officers appear behind him, each tossing two canisters into the living room. They immediately start releasing a sweet smell, and Forty claps a hand over her and Thirty-Seven's noses.

Thirty-Seven is fully transformed behind her, and his teeth grate on her palm. Forty can tell that it's taking everything in him to hold back right now. She can feel her own fangs slipping out, some long buried anger bubbling to the surface. How dare they? How dare they desecrate her temple of peace, threaten to shoot the kindest human Forty has ever met? It's almost shocking how fast the aggression rises to the forefront of her mind. She feels animalistic, ready to rip the officers in front of her limb from limb. It would be incredibly easy if they didn't have Naila at gunpoint. Fucking cowards.

"You let her go!" Forty yells, daring to walk closer. Immediately the red-haired officer cocks her gun. Naila gasps, her eyes pleading. Forty freezes, worried that any move the female officer perceives as threatening will result in Naila's death. Forty has seen too much of that these last few months.

"If you do not submit to the sedative, we will have to take you in by force," the male officer calls, his voice muffled by his respirator mask.

Beside her, Forty feels Thirty-Seven flinch. She remembers how often this gas used to be used on him, how it would waft in through the crack in her door. He must have been asleep more than he was awake at the compound, with the monitors frequently resorting to heavy sedation in order to move him. She puts a comforting hand over his own, but it's no use. He's locked in an endless cycle of memories, his eyes dark and distant.

"I'm not going back!" Thirty-Seven snarls. Forty feels his muscles bunch, and she desperately scrabbles at his shirt. The gun taunts her, aimed directly at Thirty-Seven, ready to shoot at even the slightest movement.

Don't do it, she begs, unable to say the words out loud. Please, don't do it.

"I'll go," she says, curling her fingers so her claws are hidden away. "It's me that you want, right? I'll go."

Thirty-Seven whirls on her, staring at her like she's just sprouted a second head. "No you fucking aren't," he growls, throwing an arm out to pull her behind him. "You can't have her back. You dumb assholes should have stayed in your little cage. Now you've pissed me off."

Forty reacts just a second too late, her nails just whisking over the back of Thirty-Seven's shirt. He moves faster than she knew he was capable of, clearing the couch and launching at the male officer in one move. The gun goes off, the noise of it making Forty's ears ring. Thankfully, the muzzle is redirected towards the roof by Thirty-Seven's shoulder, blasting a dent in the metal.

Forty bundles her shirt around her nose to block the still escaping sedative, then throws herself into the scuffle. The red-haired woman tosses Naila to the side, choosing to aim her gun at Forty's fast approaching figure. Naila crashes into the kitchen counter, braining herself on the edge. Forty just begins to cry out for her before the officer lets out a warning shot, just grazing the shell of Forty's ear.

"Look, Four-Zero. Ah know yer reasonable," she says, her hands shaking. "We're friends, right? You 'member?"

"My memory is actually a little fuzzy," Forty spits, then redirects the gun with the hilt of her hand and punches into the woman's wrist. This time the bullet blasts through the metal, sending a small spray of dirt tumbling onto the carpet. The officer's bones crunch, her hand dangling uselessly. It takes a second for her brain to catch up to the pain, then she starts wailing.

"Officer down!" one of the other men behind her yell, quickly reaching for their triggers. Forty ducks as they haphazardly fire, making sure to run in the opposite direction of Naila so she doesn't get caught in the crossfire. She's passed out, a slow trickle of blood staining her pink hair. Forty feels helpless as she can't so much as blink in the woman's direction without a stray bullet coming her way.

Thirty-Seven clings to the commanding officer's back, using those terrifying fangs to pierce the glass of the man's helmet. His claws rake over the Kevlar bodysuit, leaving long lines of torn fabric. One of the other officers takes a shot at him, the bullet just barely missing him and burying itself in the wall by his head. He doesn't notice, just continues to maul the first man.

All Forty can smell is blood. It's intoxicating, even if it is human. She feels the full transformation take over her features. Her muscles feel bigger, more corded than they've been in a while, and her fangs drop down as far as they can go. Forty barrels into one of the male officers, knocking him back into the red-haired woman. They both careen down the hallway, colliding with the metal walls.

"Wh– what?"

Thirty-Seven's voice sounds woozy, and Forty immediately looks in his direction to find him wobbling, still attached to the man's back. His nails are buried in the officer's cheek, pieces of gore flecked on the tactical mask. Somehow, the officer is still fighting, using his shoulder to throw Thirty-Seven onto the coffee table.

The table snaps in half, the loud boom of it cracking competing with the groan Thirty-Seven lets out. Forty can see his eyes shifting between unfocused and predatory, though the sedative is acting fast. The officer he'd been fighting with braces against the wall, holding a gloved hand tightly to his side. Forty can smell his insides, sees the blood pooling on the floor by his feet.

"S'ven?" she calls, rushing to Thirty-Seven's side. The two officers in the hallway are still knocked out in a pile, and slowly the commander sinks to his feet, vomiting up a handful of blood.

Forty cradles Thirty-Seven's head in her lap, desperately trying to keep his eyes open. "Come on, come on! We have to get Naila and get out of here." She slaps his cheeks, tries to manually open his eyes. He just blinks at her, unseeing. "Come on!" she screams louder this time, shaking him.

"Stand down, Four-Zero," a voice says. Forty whips around to find the remaining officer training his gun on Thirty-Seven. "Or I'll shoot him."

Forty's blood seems to level out like hot magma in her body, and for a split second all she does is stare. There's something about the audacity of this man that leaves her genuinely stunned. She's used to people thinking they can get whatever they want out of her, but the way the officer so casually threatens the man she loves stokes a primal rage in her so deep it nearly paralyzes her.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" She roars, sending a chunk of the coffee table at the officer like a spear. He narrowly dodges it.

"I mean it," he says, his voice quivering. "I'll shoot."

The gun stays firmly trained on Thirty-Seven, and Forty realizes with a sort of background anger that the officers have avoided shooting her even though they had plenty of chances. They need to take her alive. After all, she is their only hope for a cure.

"If you dare touch him, I'll kill you so fast you'll die mid-blink," she snarls, tilting her head menacingly at him. The bullets rattle in the gun, the officer's eyes holding a long-buried evolutionary fear. The lioness. Humans kill anything stronger than them, even if it doesn't pose an immediate danger, because in reality they are always afraid. "I'll bite my fucking tongue off so you can watch me bleed out, see how that fixes your little disease."

Forty smells urine, and she looks down to see the officer has wet himself. "I... I was told to bring you in unharmed, Four-Zero, but I will not hesitate–"

"Then do it. Fucking do it!" Forty screams, grasping the gun tightly and pressing it against her head. "Kill me. I hope everything you've ever worked for dies with me. You'll live a sad, fruitless life. And then at the end, when you can't ever find a cure for the infection, I hope you'll die just like me, a fucking freak. A Chupa."

A few things happen at once. The officer shifts his hand minutely to the side, blowing past Forty's ear and burying two bullets in Thirty-Seven. "No!" she screeches, grabbing the muzzle of the gun to redirect it without thinking. She rips through the officer's throat with her other hand, but he doesn't loosen his grip on the gun before firing one more time.

The blast goes directly through Forty's hand.

It's a strange agony, to say the least, to feel one's bones and flesh fly away. Forty lets loose a blood-curdling scream, her shirt falling away from her mouth so she gets a lungull of the sedative. The officer falls to the ground along with his gun, dying words nothing but a gurgle.

Forty thinks she's hallucinating when she looks at her hand. The whole outer edge is missing, just her index finger and thumb left. Blood spurts from it, and even worse than that she can smell her burnt flesh where the hot muzzle cauterized a section of the wound.

Her vision goes fuzzy, blood seeping from her hand in a river of red. Her knees give out, then she falls onto Thirty-Seven's stomach. All she sees is crimson. There's the fire leaking from her and then sanguine staining Thirty-Seven's pants, though thankfully the shots missed arteries. Forty crawls in her daze to look at him. When she brings a hand up to caress his face, maybe try to wake him up, she realizes she doesn't have enough fingers to cup his cheek properly.

As her vision fades to black, she hears frantic bootsteps coming from the hallway. Distantly, the distorted notes of "I Say a Little Prayer" float up from the now broken record player.