"Isla! Isla, are you okay?" I hear General Sato yelling. I open my eyes, hoping that I'm just waking from the virtual reality program and I will be back in mechanics sector; but I'm still on the floor, still in a pool of blood, and Nate and Gabriela still lie motionless beside me.

In front of me is the snowy heap of the President's lifeless bones and flesh, stained red with blood.

General Sato runs toward me, and pats me down for gunshot wounds.

"Did he shoot me?" I ask, still in shock.

He searches my body. "No. No, you're clean."

"What happened here?" Winston asks, walking through the gaping doorway, smoke still hanging in the air.

Daniel. I push the General out of the way, and see Daniel still by the corner tapestry. He is crouching down and struggling to untie himself.

I immediately run toward him. I reach to help him up, but my hands fall through his image. I try again and again, but my hands just sweep through him.

"Isla, stop," General Sato says, "he's a hologram."

"What?" I cry, my voice hardly even audible anymore.

"He's not here."

"But he's somewhere. We have to find him," I say, trying to stand, but I just fall down again.

"What the hell is going on? Where is Phoebe?" Winston orders.

"She was... she was shot in the stairwell. She told me to run, so I left her. I'm sorry," I say, as the blood drains from Winston's face. I hadn't considered until now that maybe he loved her, and the thought makes me feel even weaker. I take a breath and continue. "McCleary and Gabriela were together, and Nate was one of Gunther's cyborgs. The kind Declan warned us about. He and Gabriela were the moles."

Winston crouches in pain over the news I've just told him. His lover is gone, and his old friend was a traitor.

"Alexander told us you were in trouble," Sato says, "so Winston and I set up an attack from outside. I shot the President." His words sound like the closing of a chapter.

"Wait—where is Alexander?" Winston asks. He looks back into the hallway. "He isn't here anymore." Winston flaps his hands as he begins to panic. "We need to find him and Phoebe, and move out."

"No, we need to finish our jobs. We need to release all those people from cryogenics," Sato orders.

"I need to find Daniel, he's here," I add, but I'm ignored.

"Alexander will be wherever Gunther is," Winston says.

"You will not abandon the mission to find Alexander and Phoebe, do you understand me Win?" Sato orders. "You will release the people in cryogenics."

Then an automated voice sounds over the loudspeaker: "10 minutes to self-destruction. Please evacuate the facility. 10 minutes to self-destruction. Please evacuate the facility."

"Gunther," Winston says under his breath, and then runs out of the room.

"My dad... Daniel...," I start.

"Winston and I will find them. You need to get out. Are you okay to walk?" Sato asks.

I'm not okay, but I can walk, so I nod, and stabilize myself. We walk toward the main room at the center of the bunker, and I notice one of the doors on the way. On the front, it reads, "Room 321."

358. Nate wanted me to know the number 358. Maybe it's a room number.

"Where is room 358? Nate told me to remember the number 358. It's on this floor somewhere. We need to find it."

"We don't have time to do that, Isla. We need to get your dad and the refugees, and you need to get out of here."

I push him away from me and limp ahead. "Then go. I'm finding Daniel."

He groans. "These are all in the 320's," he says reluctantly. "It will take less time if I help. Let's check the other corridors."

He runs ahead of me, and I find the strength to catch up. "Check over there," he orders, pointing to the corridors to the right. I pass the stairwell where Phoebe was shot, and shiver, but I keep running.

330's.

I count two corridors down, and point to a hallway across the main foyer. "It's that one," I yell, and we both race toward it.

We run down the hallway until we find room 358. I've stopped thinking. It's like I'm outside of myself, watching a blood-stained version of me standing in front of room 358, tearing the gun from General Sato's hand and aiming.

I shoot at the handle like Nate did before tearing me from the closet. I shoot again, and the bullet bursts through. I reach my hand through the hole and unlock the door before pushing through.

"9 minutes to self-destruction. Please evacuate the facility."

In the center of a dark room is one single stream of light shining down on a boy: Daniel. He's crouching in front of a TV, displaying the image of Gabriela, President McCleary, and Nate lying dead on the floor. I run to Daniel and tear the tape from his mouth.

"Isla," he shouts, and the sound of his voice immediately puts me at ease.

"Knife," I say to Sato, and he pulls one from his sheath. I cut through the ropes holding Daniel's wrists together, and as soon as I do, he springs his hands to my face. His palms against my cheeks anchor me back into my body.

Neither of us try to fight it anymore: He pulls me to his lips and we share a kiss. It's not gentle and tentative like I imagined our reunion kiss would be. It's desperate and thankful, and more beautiful than I could have ever imagined. We were born for one another, and just as our hands and souls fit perfectly together, so do our lips.

My eyes fill with tears, but for the first time in a long while, they are tears of joy, and as we pull away, I see the same tears filling his eyes. We search each other's faces, laughing and crying.

"You're really here," I say. "You have no idea what I've done to find you."

"8 minutes to self-destruction. Please evacuate the facility."

We're zapped back to reality, and I help him to his feet. "I have to get my dad," I say.

"We need to get to the control room," Daniel says. "That's where I can turn off the self-destruct command. C'mon, I know where it is," he grabs my hand, and leads me out of the room. "You too, sir," he calls out to the General, as we race back to the main foyer.

Daniel leads us to one of the stairwells and down a flight. We run into the hallway of the floor below, hopping over dead bodies. "Here!" he shouts.

"Really?" I ask, as we enter a room marked "Cryogenics."

"The control room is through here," he says.

"7 minutes to self-destruction. Please evacuate the facility."

As I follow him in, I see that the room opens onto a grand, cavernous hall, striped with blue light that emanates from hundreds of cryogenic chambers, some of which are filled with frozen bodies. It's a forest of frozen people, captured indefinitely in time, but where are the ones who occupied the empty chambers? There had to be more survivors than this.

"Over here," Daniel says, standing at the entrance to a smaller room off to the left.

"Can we shut down the chambers from there?" I ask.

"No. There's a panel in the back of the room that allows you to do that."

"Okay, I will get to the panel," the General yells, already running to the back of the room. "You shut down the self-destruct process."

"Go find your dad," Daniel says, smiling—I've missed that smile so much—before entering the control room. I immediately leave his side to check the forest of frozen bodies, until a familiar face stops me in my tracks.

"Dad," I whisper. There, suspended in time, is my dad, terror frozen in his eyes.

There's a small control pad outside the chamber, and I start frantically pressing buttons; but I can't set him free.

"Self-destruction canceled. Please return to your posts."

Daniel did it.

In the new silence, I hear muffled voices at the back of the room. I move through the chambers to get a better look.

"You don't have to do this, McCleary's dead," Alexander insists.

His back is turned to me, and in front of him, Ispot the control panel guarded by a tall, black haired man in a suit. This mustbe Gunther Quail.