Stefan sat at the foot of the stairs; he hadn't had the chance to leave that cave. His knees were raised to his chest, and his right hand wrapped around his shin, where fresh blood percolated through the threads of his pants and in between his fingers. His eyes, they were ethereal, their natural blue colour was drastically diluted, and he was shivering like a stray animal caught in the rain. Finn bent down in front of him, his hands on Stefan's knees as he called him. He seemed to be in a reverie – still, dazed, lifeless.

"What happened to you?" Finn whispered to himself.

Gavin walked in, stopped for a second when he saw what Stefan looked like, and then knelt beside him, too. Finn was shocked to see him there, all torn up, but at the same time, it was in his nature to put Stefan before himself.

"Stefan," Gavin shook him into consciousness. "Stefan!"

Soon enough, Stefan jolted dramatically, returning to the world, and blinked a couple of times until his eyes were their shade of blue. He stopped shivering, but for some reason, was still colder than normal.

His voice came out as a shudder, alarmed, through his bouts of suddenly heavy breaths, "You c-can't be here."

His eyes spun around the room, turned to where Benjamin had been. Gone; nothing but a pool of blood and the knife that had caused it. It stood slanted in the ground. Stefan placed his hand on his forehead and grimaced with pain. But it was an unfamiliar pain, like his body was being pricked by rime needles. The strangest part was that he looked fine on the outside – he was dressed in filth and worn clothes, but his skin was pale, smooth and unscathed.

"He got away," he murmured.

"Stefan, do you know what happened?" Gavin asked, filled with empathy. It was a question he already knew the answer to.

Dominick arrived in time to hear those words.

Stefan tried to catch his breath for a moment, and when he did, he said: "Yeah. I've been chipped. Benjamin shot me in the leg to keep me from running away, and then he injected me. After that, everything went blank. Why does it h-hurt?"

"Okay, just breathe, you're okay," uttered Gavin, trying himself not to freak out.

Finn helped Stefan onto his feet, asking if he could walk. Stefan nodded, and he did not hesitate to lead his friends out of that room. But they could not shake their anxiety, dread. Stefan was chipped. It was unexpected, something very difficult for them to absorb. Was this part of Abba's plan? If so, where did it fit in?

Stefan walked in front of them, stumbled only once or twice. Relentlessly, he endeavoured to mask his incessant pain. He thought the AIM chip was supposed to heal you, not tear you apart.

"Where's Aimee?"

"With Abba – on the fourteenth floor about," uttered Finn.

"Don't worry; Val's got her back," Dominick assured him. "The sooner we get you to them, the better. They need to know that you're okay."

Was he? The word 'yeah' fought its way out of his mouth, a thread of a word. It did not matter; Dominick spoke truth, he had to get to Aimee and Valerie. And then put an end to Abba. As Stefan thought this, his pain diminished as swiftly as it had come. His body was no longer tingly all over; he could breathe, like a human. It was an even more unusual and sudden change.

"Weird," he said. "It stopped. The pain, I don't feel it anymore."

The others barely had time to enjoy the news; he had not ceased walking. They passed the fourteenth floor, it was empty. As they continued on, and levels were left behind them, their temperatures started to rise. Three floors up and they were walking onto a battleground. On the seventeenth level, in the ash and flame, they found them: Abba, Aimee and Valerie were in a triangle, either engaged in combat or choking heavily on smoke. Every now and again, you could hear the crackle of burning wood and the faint yell of an agent or soldier, somewhere in the building.

Stefan, Gavin, Dominick and Finn ran into the room, evading the debris at their feet or whirling through the air. They thought it was over; soldiers and agents had crumbled like freshly baked cookies. There were hardly AIM soldiers left and GINM had, at most, ninety agents – less than half of what had come in. The fire was the result of rifles and passionate fire launchers that had come into contact with the infrastructure. AIM was disintegrating, crumbling.

"Aimee, Valerie, we have to get out of here," Stefan warned. "The whole place is coming down."

The restless, slowly failing floorboards verified that. At once, it all came to a standstill: the fight that Aimee, Valerie and Abba were so engrossed in, the lung clotting debris that had wrapped around them like a tornado, everything, because there was a look on Abba's face when she heard Stefan's words, a look of utmost despair and loss. AIM was her baby, the tangible reminder of something she could care for and watch grow, her Aimee. Building her company was the one thing she believed she had done right and the one thing she had always been able to control, until then. Accepting its fatality was unimaginably impossible.

Meanwhile, Aimee was swept by her selfishness, watching her friends, realising that she was keeping them there, forcing them to fight. They looked like they had been in a real-life horror movie, she could not ignore it. At that moment, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Abba's hand motion towards the holster at her lower back.

"It ends here," her hands shook with indecision.

"I couldn't agree with you more," Aimee said calmly, her hand stretched in Abba's direction with caution. "But shooting my friends won't fix anything. You wanna put an end to this? So do I. I'll come with you."

The unanimity of her friends' voices, loud with objection, reached her ears.

"No, it's what she wants," Aimee turned between them and Abba, "isn't it? You want me, Benjamin, immortality and longevity at once, regardless of the sacrifices you have to make along the way. My suitcase is waiting outside in a chopper. I will come with you, but only if you promise to stop this."

Submitting to her fate, Aimee coerced herself not to cry. The others couldn't even look at her; Stefan was waiting for her to call her bluff.

He intervened, "Aimee, this is not a choice! We still have some fight left in us; you don't have to go with –" Abba. He stopped talking the second she raised that gun again, its bullet nipping him in the thigh.

Stefan brushed it off, and lied, "She missed. Aimee, she missed."

Before Abba could retry, Aimee charged at her, gripping her equipped hand. But eventually, Abba shook her off, and Aimee slid across the floor like it was slick with water. Valerie tried to disarm Abba, as Stefan hurdled over a massive type of cabinetry, which had been lodged at a fifty-degree angle between two other pieces of furniture, and ran towards Aimee. That was when two warm bodies suddenly dashed towards Abba from the flame and dust, and in that moment of distraction, Valerie snatched Abba's gun and tossed it aside.

The two bodies emerged; the first was Kimiko. She vaulted onto Abba's shoulders and forced her body onto the ground, pinning her down at her arms. She waved something over Abba, some kind of advanced X-ray machine, which was no bigger than a Tablet.

"Shoulder," she said.

Luna, Kimiko's abettor, sat beside them and drew a painfully thin scalpel from her belt. Then, she raised Abba's shirt sleeve. For a second, she was hesitant.

Abba kicked and yelled in a fight to break free, until Luna's blade cut through her fair skin. The microchip was there in her shoulder, it had been there for so long that nerves and strata had grown around it like ivy, and it acted so swiftly that her incision was already healing. Luna hurried and removed her gun from its holster, aiming it at the chip and dropping the blood-painted scalpel onto the floor. Her hands, too, were coated in red, as her finger pulled the trigger.

Everyone's muscles tensed in anticipation of that gunshot of finality, but it didn't come. The gun was not loaded with bullets; it was a laser, fine as a needle, and careful. Abba had stopped wriggling, but she cried. The laser was painless, what hurt was bearing the fact that her microchip would be gone in a matter of seconds. She was defeated.

When Luna finished, the incision was approximately the length of her thumb nail. She retrieved her scalpel and stood up, whilst Kimiko tumbled backwards, releasing Abba before coming to a graceful stand. They stepped back, as if they had sensed the tranquilising dart that then twirled through an opening in one of many broken windows and into Abba's neck. Stefan and the others instantly peered outside, endeavouring to trace where the dart had come from, and they saw her; there, on the flat-lain roof of a neighbouring building a short distance from AIM, was Celeste. She was lying belly down with a dart-loaded sniper rifle, positioned for another shot. She could see Gavin through the ocular lens of the gun, the bright mint eyes that watched her warmly and the smile that met his mouth. And although she knew he could not see her expression, she smiled, too.

"It's just a sedative, it won't kill her."

The words left Luna's lips and brought Gavin's thoughts back inside. She had been talking to Aimee, who bared this look of concern, shock and disbelief. A force was tugging at her, a desire to run to Abba's side for whatever reason. She blamed human nature, her upbringing and mother-daughter bonds. Dang it, why did she care? All the same, it was soon too late to do anything as a group of GINM agents swarmed into the room. One of them hoisted Abba over his shoulder, another two grabbed Luna and Kimiko. Four more ripped Aimee and Stefan away from each other, and two others got Gavin.

"Aimee," Stefan screamed, struggling pointlessly in the burly arms of the agents who'd grabbed him. "You let go of her! Let go of her!"

Celeste tried to stop them, but surprise had temporarily thwarted her aim. She only had a clear shot of the men around Gavin now. She hit one in the chest, allowing Gavin the opportunity to free himself and knock out a few of them, but they were surrounded, there were too many!

Stefan managed to break free and came to Gavin's aid, shoving off numerous men, punching them and kicking them, when he unintentionally pushed a blonde-haired agent with such force that he tripped and fell out the window. Seventeen floors down. Stefan neared the edge where the man had fallen, repeated in his head he's dead. It was an accident; he couldn't freeze, he wouldn't allow himself to. He looked up to the rooftop where Celeste was. At that moment, she was taken by agents, too. Naturally, she put up a fight, but it was futile.

There was a gun in Stefan's hands, he had taken it from the blonde, and with it, he shot the next agent who came his way, glancing every now and again at the door through which Aimee and the others had been carried. He spun in Gavin's direction and shot all the men he was fending against. Needless to say, Gavin appreciated Stefan's timing. Gavin picked up a gun and the two of them rushed towards the exit, ready to shoot anyone who proved to be a blockade and a threat. But when they left the room, they were greeted by a familiar face, one they would rather not have seen.

Gavin breathed, "Buckley."

Neither he nor Stefan lowered their guns.