I opened my eyes to calamity. Rubble had crashed down around me, parts of the floor were missing, letting the smoke rise from beneath. Cracks rippled up the side of the walls like a river of destruction. Behind the high-pitched ringing in my ears, the sounds of crackling electrical wires displaced the sound of the collapsing building around me. With everything around me, I could barely hear the sound of coughing coming from underneath the collapsed roofing. Picking myself off the ground was worse than I could have ever imagined, my muscles cried out as I forced myself off the shambled floor. Worse of all, across my leg, there was a giant gash that spewed blood sporadically. With everything going on, it was the least of my problems. My hand flew to my ear to try and tap the earpiece, but the ringing only got louder as I tapped my empty ear. I could barely get a grip on the floor, but I managed, I limped my way over to where the coughing was to find the Gemini girl, Margot. Her body was entombed under the weight of the collapsed ceiling. The thought of her being someone who was trying to kill me minutes ago left my brain as I automatically started to lift the concrete off her piece by piece until she could crawl her way out.

"Why?" She asked through her coughing, rolling onto her back with a yelp.

"Why, what?" I pressed my hands against my knees.

"Why save me?" She sat up slowly. "I'm going to have to kill you. You realize that, right?"

"I don't really know why I saved you. I just did." I said as I tried to regain balance with a piece of concrete that wobbled against my weight. "If you want to kill me though, go ahead. But, I need to find Juan and Justin under all this."

She watched me as I started to rummage through the rubble either for of the boys, "They said you were a psycho murderer. Some arsonist maniac with a thirst for blood. This whole thing you are doing doesn't match up to that."

"That's more of my second personalities thing."

"What?"

"Yeah, I apparently have split personalities," I said as chucked a chunk of concrete. "Wow, I just realized you are the first person I told this to, and I don't know anything about you besides you have to kill me."

"So, the psycho part was right." She said finally getting off the floor and walking over to me. "Why are you telling me this?"

"I don't really have much to lose in telling you this, do I. You aren't going to make me see a shrink to help. Hell, you might not even believe me. At worst, you're just going to judge me really hard or kill me or both."

"That... actually makes sense." Her hands were silver fists this reflected the orange light of the carnage and fire around us.

"Are you going to kill me?" I asked fearlessly.

"Debating it. I saw that pile over there shuffle." She pointed out. We stumbled over to it and started to move the pieces of the ceiling and beneath it all was Juan. He had a fresh cut that rode across the bridge of his nose that bleed over his face. Margot and I, immediately, started to pull him out of the chaos and check for his breathing. Thankfully, he was still breathing and barely conscious. From the corner of my eye, I spotted Justin slumped against a toppled desk.

"They both need to be taken out of here. If you want to kill me, make the choice now but I need to get him to my sister." I said to the girl. She looked at me, searching for reasons not to end me on the spot.

"Get him out of here. If I ever see you again, I will kill you without hesitation." She said as she turned her back to me and fumbled her way to Justin.

"Thank you," I said to her as I grabbed Juan's arm and slung it over my neck, dragging him out of the building through a shattered window.

The carnage had extended to the open fields around the lab. Around us, the field was littered with divots. Where a hill used to be a giant sinkhole now existed. All the buildings were in flames, from the lab to the security build, the tower that held Colts' office slowly toppled to the side and crash into the ground with a heart-clenching crunch. Lugging Juan's body through the wreckage was tiring with the little energy I had but I still carried him through.

"What happened?" Juan groaned.

"Hey, relax. I detonated the C4 and you ate a bolder. Just save your energy." Adam and Ellie were at the truck, looking out towards the mess that was A.R.D.O Labs before noticing me and Juan. They sprinted towards me and took him out of my hands.

"Get the truck started, I need to find Pepper," I said as I turned back towards the destroyed building.

"Oliver, we need to leave before the soldiers get out of the building," Ellie shouted to me.

"I left her once, I'm not leaving her again. Stay with Juan." I said as I left towards the building. Making my way to the building I shouted out her name, the barracks entrance was completely blocked off, voices could be heard behind the ceiling that trapped them in. The arsenal and security building was merely piles of concrete, barely even standing. I hoped to God that she wasn't inside when the buildings collapsed, my raced thinking that I killed her. Filled with panic, I barely noticed that I had made laps around the whole area before seeing a person at the docks. My mind trailed off as I went to the person, the closer I got, the more features I could see. Closer and closer I got when the brunette-haired girl stood facing out towards the water, a walkie-talkie at her hip was repeating the same words through haunting static, Kill Oliver Stark, like a broken record. "Pepper. There you are. We need to go."

"No." the way her voice rattled as she broke my heart.

"Pep, I'm not leaving you here again. Let's go."

"I'm giving you one chance." She said her back still towards me, her voice still so brittle.

"What are you talking about? We need to leave?" I took a step closer to her.

"Walk away, leave here now. I'm only going to tell you this once." She sounded firmer but still ungrounded.

"Pep, I'm not going to leave you."

She turned around, tears leaking out of her eyes, cheeks flushed red and a gun in her hands with the barrel pointed at my chest, "Then you aren't leaving me any other options." Her voice tried to be confident, but it trembled heavily.

I stumbled backward, my hands flew up, "Woah, hey, hey. Put the gun down, Pepper. This isn't you."

"You don't know me anymore. I don't know who you are anymore." She shouted at me; the gun trembled in her hands. "I've had to watch a lot of people die in the last month and somehow most of them lead back to you. Even after they said you were a criminal, I still believed that you couldn't have done that. That you wouldn't do that. Then I heard about Montana, that you were there when a woman was killed."

"Pepper, that wasn't me." I tried to reason with her.

"Then Colorado. Two dead, eighteen people in critical condition, and more wounded than I wanted to know. Still, I believed that you could never have been a part of that. You wouldn't kill anyone. Then you come here, back to me, and I just wanted you safe. So, when they took you, of course I was going to help you escape. I wasn't going to believe what was being said about you. I knew you. I even stayed behind to keep you safe, to stop them from chasing after you."

"Pepper-"

"Shut up!" She pointed the gun harshly at my face. "Do you know what happened after I let you go? Fifty-eight people were all burnt to death like they were nothing." She spoke with more fury, her hands slowly stopped shaking until she held the gun steady. "If they had told me that it was you, I never would have believed it, because I still had faith that my Oliver was still in there. But I saw you. I saw everything from outside that wall of fire and suddenly it clicked. I was being naive to the facts that were right in front of me. My Oliver was long dead. Everything I believed in, everything I thought to be true burned away like the people in that graveyard."

"That wasn't me, I wasn't in control."

"Is that what you tell yourself? Is that you told yourself when you beat that man's head in with your fist." She snarled. "Yeah, there was video in that room. I saw exactly what you did to that man."

"Pepper, you have to believe me, that wasn't me. I'll explain it to you, but you need to put down the gun." I wanted to inch closer, but she was being unpredictable.

"If you can't already tell, I'm all out of belief to give."

"You can't seriously be telling me that. You, who has always had the biggest heart, has no belief left within. You always believed me against all odds. Even if you can't see it, I'm the same guy. The same guy who you taught to fight his anxiety, the same guy who cried watching Bridge to Terabithia, the same guy who gave you that necklace, the same person who put you before himself at every turn, the same person who... who has been foolishly in love with you for longer than he can remember!"

Those were the words that gave her pause, her gun slowly lowered, "You love me?" She asked softly. Even I barely noticed what I said, I just said whatever was in my mind "You love me." She repeated, raising the gun back up again. "Do you think life is just a movie, Oliver? That you can just tell me that you love me, and I'll hop into your arms and we'd walk into the sunset together. You killed people! Whatever fantasy bullshit world you think we're living in, this isn't it. Death has consequences."

"I'm sorry...I-"

"LOOK AROUND!" She shouted, waving the gun in a circle. "Sorry doesn't fix shit. Sorry doesn't bring back the people you killed or un-demolish the lab. I love you certainly doesn't do shit."

"The lab needed to go. What Transgress was making would have and how they were making it is, it's wrong. You don't understand what Transgress has been doing to Amps. I have been chased around the country for a crime, I didn't commit." I reluctantly, and against better judgment, took a step towards her. "Those things that happened, it was me, but I wasn't really me. I have something inside me, and I can barely control it. Everything I did... I didn't want to do any of this."

"Transgress has been helping people, people like me, normal people who are afraid that someone set them on fire with a snap of a hand. So you can keep your 'not me' crap."

"Normal people. you mean people who don't have powers. What about people like me, huh?" I asked as I took another risky step forward. "I didn't ask for this and I'm sure that many people around the world are feeling the same way. Now they're being punished for something they didn't choose. What Transgress has been done to them, it's wrong."

"The world is safer with them locked up."

"The Pepper I know would never say that."

"Like I said before, you don't know who I am. I have watched Amps butcher people that I worked with. The naïve, happy-go-lucky Pepper you knew is dead. Just like the Oliver I knew is long dead." Her free hand went up to her neck, for a brief second she held her necklace tight before snapping it off and throwing it at me. "This is who I am now and if I have to kill you right here, right now. I will." Pulling back on the slide of her gun.

"I know you won't," I took another step closer, the barrel of the gun against. "because I know that the Pepper I know, and you still have love in there. Despite everything, even if we might have changed, inside we are still the same."

"Stop saying that." I could feel the gun trembling against the fabric of my shirt. A single tear rolled down her cheek. "Just stop."

I put my hand over the gun and started to move it away from my chest, she tried to force her arm up but eventually gave in. She wrapped her arm around me, her face buried into my shoulder, the tears draining into the fabric of my shirt. Her arm gripping around my neck like a vice, I brought my arms around her and held her just as tight, I didn't want to let her, and nothing could tear her off me.

BANG

I heard it before I could feel it. Before I could feel the bullet rip through my gut. Pepper looked at me, teary-eyed with a look of disbelief on her face, not truly understanding what she had done. From my gut, blood began to trickle out of where Pepper had shot me. Before I could comprehend what happened, she raised the gun up and shot another round into my chest. The shook took most of the impact, but I could feel the bullet tear through my skin and through my body.

"You... shot me." The words came out confused. Like it wasn't sure whether to be a question or a statement. I stumbled backward, I reached out to grab something, to support myself but came up with nothing as my body put its weight against air. Pepper watched me as I collapsed to the dirt, her eyes looked like they wanted to come to comfort me, but she stood frozen at the edge of the docks, lost but aware of everything she had done.

"OLIVER!" Juan's voice called out from behind me, he sounded like he was screaming through a wall. He held me on the floor, his unsteady hands trying to cover the holes in my body. "Pepper, what did you do!" She didn't answer. Slowly sound seemed to become quieter, like the volume of a TV being turned down. I barely noticed Ellie and Adam run in; lightning struck the ground in front of Pepper. She ran for one of the boats as the flurry of bolts chased her, Adam wanted to stop her, but Ellie stopped him. My shooter, my oldest friend, stared back at me as she made her escape over the water. My body began to wail, a white-hot pain burned where the bullets had pierced my body, I hadn't felt heat in so long, but this wasn't the way I wanted to feel it. I could feel the blood pulsing out of me, gushing down the side of my chest.

A puff of blue smoke took hold of me and spat us out on the floor of the church, Juan shouted in silence, his eyes filled with fear I had never seen before, his fingers smeared in my blood. Even Adam, someone whose composure never faltered, was panicked. Another set of hands flew on to me, sounded flooded my brain.

"Oliver, stay with me. I need you to stay awake." My sister's voice trembled with each word that left her lips.

"Hey, Stephy. How's it looking down there?" The words wrestled my breathe as I forced the words out.

"Don't talk. I'm going to heal you up and you'll be okay."

"I don't think there is anything you can do," I said to her, followed by a blood-filled cough.

"Shut up, you're going to be fine. I'm not about to lose you too!" She growled at me, I could feel her anger, her sadness, her fear. All of her emotions poured onto me.

I turned my head over to Juan, "Watch over her or I swear to God, I'm going to haunt your ass."

"You can do that yourself, okay. Just don't die." His voice seemed to move further away as he spoke. 

The light around me began to fade away but I could still see everyone was standing around me, vaguely making out everyone's expression as my grip on life weakened. Ellie with hands over her mouth, Adam watching with horror draining his face, Juan holding onto me, hoping that he could force his own life force into me. Even Megan was up, watching me with tear-welled eyes and disbelief. Then my sister, doing everything she could keep me alive. I watched the pain in her eyes as she tried, desperately forcing her powers to heal me, to make my body close its wounds. But the darkness only got worse, it felt like everyone's voices were going through walls of steel. I stared into Stephy's twilight eyes, fighting so hard to keep the tears at bay.

"Please don't leave me." She pleaded. "You're all I have left."

I wanted to say something. Anything. Let her know that everything would be okay. That she shouldn't blame herself. That I knew that she would be fine without me. That she'll have everyone here, that they would always watch over her. But my mouth wouldn't work. The last thing I saw before the darkness took me, were my sister's eyes begging me to stay before I closed my eyes.

My eyes fluttered open and I was in my old bedroom, everything was right where I had left, from the posters to the piles of clothes on the floor. I was sitting on my bed and across from me was Revilo staring right back at me.

"Congratulations. You got us killed." He leaned back against the desk.

"So, this is it? We're dead?"

"Not just yet. Our brain is shutting down and I'm not sure how l long we have before this is all gone."

"So, there is still hope. Stephy could still heal us." I stood up.

He just stared at me. "She can't bring us back, not from here. This is the end."

"Stephy can save us. We have to believe in her."

"Our body's already stopped pumping blood. In a few minutes, our brain would have been deprived of oxygen for too long. We have to accept this is the end. I just didn't expect that it would be Pep. Never would I- could I imagine that it would be her." His head slumped to stare at the floor.

"Love usually blinds you." I fell back down to the bed. Rev and I stared at each other, his fiery eyes glaring into mine.

"Can I tell you something?"

"Yeah, go ahead. I mean, what do we have to lose."

"I'm scared. I've never been scared before but right now, I am terrified." He chuckled; the laugh was almost like a cry for help. "What's next? Is there an afterlife? Or is this just it?"

"I don't know," I replied to the scared boy, the room around me began to dissolve, darkness eating away my things. My posters, clothes, curtains.

"I didn't even get the chance to live. Only got to breathe the fresh air once."

"And that's the reason we're even in this mess."

"Do you really want a fight to be the last thing you do before you die?" He sighed, the darkness slowly closing in on the both of us.

"I just thought I would die without any regrets. Get married. Have kids. Grow old."

"We can't change anything now." The darkness eating away at the desk.

"Then what can we do."

"I don't know." He said, his voice trembling as the darkness took him.

I sat on my bed, the lonely island, the last spot of refuge that I knew wouldn't last. It crept up the legs of the bed, inching towards me. I closed my eyes and tried to think of anything, a single memory, a fraction of a thought, even a single smile.

But there was only darkness.