Eventually, after hours of daydreaming, talking - about just about everything from favourite animal to the purpose of life - and staring at each other wondering what to do, the sun rose again as the tuck and trailer rolled down a graduated sloping hill at the edge of Dursley.

"Guess he wasn't lying about it being twelve hours," Ava muttered, looking up at the rising sun with a yawn. Nathan nodded beside her, shuffling backwards to sit up against the low wooden wall of the trailer. Cramped in the small space for so long, they both needed a good stretch upon arrival, though neither had slept at all during the journey.

"Come on," the boss said rather aggressively, coming around the side of them, opening the hatch in the wall, lowering it into a ramp, which Nathan slid down.

Ava, being Ava, climbed over the opposite side and jumped down, walking back round to meet a smile and a face of extreme annoyance. "If you're going to take us somewhere and expect to be allowed to experiment on one of us, we should at least know your name," she demanded, hands on hips and lips finishing in an angry pout.

"Don't act like I've been rude. You just never asked. You could have just asked nicely now," he said, leading them away, though neither moved until he said, "Fine, I'm Patrick, now get moving." Neither could tell if he was telling the truth or simply throwing them any name to get them off his tail about it. Either way, Ava was proud to have annoyed him so easily and followed him with a skip and whirring thoughts trying to find the escape route.

He took them past the slaves, the normal people of Dursley being whipped and beaten to help build... "What are they building?" Ava asked.

"We're building a new room to house the latest progress on the production of the cure," he rattled off casually, as if he was a part of it and knew what was going on. Ava was getting a growing sense that he was being used as much as the slaves, and that he knew almost nothing himself.

"So why are there so many hollow structures everywhere when you're only making one room?" Ava asked and watched the confusion appear and fizzle away again as he shook his head in dismissal and carried on, guiding them through a large metal door which only opened with his hand print pressed against a small screen on the right. "You better stop it, then. Stop the slavery right now or we're not going anywhere."

He brought his collar in front of his mouth as Finley had done the day before. "Sir, I have the Immune and the girl, they want the slaves to be free before they enter the building." A rumbling and mumbling later, the air picked up a more hopeful tension as everyone around them stopped what they were doing at the order of the officers. "Come on then, before I change my mind." Though they both knew it wasn't his mind that would need to change.

Being needed was a powerful thing.

He led them up narrow stairs, across a metal landing, through doors upon doors upon doors that they couldn't be bothered counting once they were past twenty, up more stairs that curled so many times it was dizzying. And all the way Ava would look out the windows to see the people of the city walk home free. Finally, they opened into a small room with a computer desk along one wall and a large window above it and what looked like medical equipment laid out haphazardly along the opposite wall. Showing Ava to a spinning chair, he then walked Nathan through a door at the far end, into the room that Ava could see through the window.

"Ava," Patrick said, "Just sit here and watch Nathan and these screens." He took a seat next to her and leaned back in a facade of relaxation.

As her face turned towards Nathan, she found him looking lost and searching the glass. 'He can't see me..' she thought sadly, so she looked at the screens and immediately jumped up out of her chair and ran for the door to find it unlocked. She swung it open and charged down the stairs, looking for a way into the room the screen had shown her parents to be on. Her parents, who should have still been curled up safe at home in Smalltown.

Five rooms and ten random doors later, she burst into the room and recognised it immediately - from the broken floorboard to the mould on the sodden wooden shelf at the back - but there was one difference. One painstakingly different thing between the image and where she was stood. Her parents weren't there. What was there, was a message scrawled in barely legible script on a poster at the back, reading:

'Don't take an eye off your boy.'

Ava, in such a panic, with tears streaming down her face, span back round to run up the stairs. She raced on, trying her best to see her way back through the blurriness of tears to the room she'd left Nate in.

Her vision was awful, limited to narrow spaces where the layer of water wasn't as thick, and needing more of the moments when she wiped her eyes. She did finally find the right room but was met by armed guards upon entry. "Get out my way!" She screamed with a voice shakier than the wind she'd lived in for the last two days. "Where's Nate and what have you done with him?"

Holding her arms, they let her swing her legs with terror as they turned her to face the window. Nathan was strapped to a table, his eyes wide open, still searching for hers against the one-way glass. A man in a lab coat stood over him, one hand resting on the handle of a metal table on wheels displaying a range of surgical equipment. "Let him go!" The high-pitched squeal tore through the eardrums of the people holding her and the man next door, making their hands go to their ears in pain as she continued it in an endless wail of desperation. She made it into the room and undid one of the straps holding down Nathan. The man in the lab coat - the man who'd given her a room for the night! - fought her for control but Nathan's arm was free so it was two against one then, and he freed his other arm while Ava moved to his legs, kicking the man between his legs.

A second later, Nathan was off the table and knocking things off the cart of instruments before kicking it into the corner so Lab Coat couldn't use them. He went to shove Lab Coat hard in the chest and Ava, seeing it, crouched behind him so Nathan benched him and he hit the floor with a thud and a crack. Running from the small room to the main one, Ava faced the men who'd caught her alone. Nate was still walking towards her, unable to run. "The drugs... They degenerate muscle and tissue."

Ava, horrified and scared for her friend, turned to face him, eyes still full of tears. "What? You've been dying this whole time?" A faint nod was all she needed as motivation for what she did next. A spin, and a clenched fist flung through the air, connecting with the curved hand of the man in front, who held her hand in a vice-like grip and crushed it, grinning at the popping of her knuckles as they were crunched out of place.

"Stop!" Nathan's weak call came, hand outstretched as if he could stop her torture with only his mind, for by that point, he had little else. The man didn't stop, and instead took her other hand in his own and the man beside him stepped forward to get Nathan.

"Wait," came the deep voice of the first man, "They want him alive." So both men turned on Ava, taking an arm each and starting to pull, ignoring her high-pitched wails this time. She heard her own bones grind and pop, both her arms screaming out in pain as they fell limp to the ground and the men grabbed a leg each.

"Stop!" Nathan called, now standing over them all. "Or I'll give you The Fist," he threatened, taking his gloves off.

Both men exchanged nervous glances before picking Ava up and backing away until they were against the door. "If you do, we'll just kill you both anyway. You know what that virus does," he warned, and Nathan almost took a step back. Because he did know.

"Don't do it, Nate," Ava said behind gritted teeth. "Don't let them kill you. I don't care if they tear me apart limb by limb, but you make sure you get out of here." Nathan was shaking his head determinedly but Ava continued anyway, "Find your way to Smalltown and go to my parents, it's a small town, if you hadn't guessed," an attempted laugh filled her with a choking cough." So they'll be easy enough to find. Explain everything, they'll take you in."

"I don't want to live there without you. Or anywhere..." He looked at her and only her and for that moment, the rest of the world disappeared, taking the two armed men with it. And he got an idea. An idea he admitted to himself was crazy, possibly the craziest thing he'd ever done. Though he could never be certain of that.

"Fine. But before you kill her..." Nathan said quietly, putting his gloves back on to reassure the guards. He walked forwards quickly, too scared he'd back out if not, and put one hand behind Ava's head and kissed her. By the time he opened his eyes and stepped back, hers had already faded.

Ava, one of the Taken, suddenly gained back all her strength, tore herself from the guards' grasp and popped her own arms back into place, though with much difficulty. The world swam in front of her and her mind was still in tact, from what she could tell. Pictures and feelings and his touch swam through her head in a tidal wave as her body lurched forward to rip the weapons from the hands of the unprepared guards. A new man walked through, dressed as a person of importance and by the cowering of the guards in his presence and the way he asserted himself, it must have only been the big boss himself. 'What awful timing,' it thought, forcing Ava to aim the gun at his head and pull the trigger without warning. She thought about how much she had wanted to press herself into Nate and pretend the rest of the planet didn't exist, even as her body had been pulling back, her whole being becoming an inferno of pure lust. Lust for blood. Greed, needing more. How hard it had been to direct herself at the guards instead of Nate, the one who'd been right in front of her. But as she twisted the head of one, snapping his neck swiftly, and punched the other in the nose with her broken knuckles, again, and again, and finally kicking him so hard between his legs she thought she could hear something break through the sound of the roar of her pulse, Nathan was the only one left.

She turned to him and pulled back with all her mind, but it wasn't enough to overcome the drive of the virus. 'Let's kill him,' it seemed to say. 'I don't want him dead,' she wanted so bad to answer.

Falling onto him, she tried to tear at his turning face, claws out viciously. He lifted a hand slowly to her neck and thrust the needle in sharp. Hissing in his face, she leaned back before diving down for another attempt at murder. Luckily, she leaned far enough for Nathan to press the syringe down and inject her with what was labelled 'Cure 16'.

She fell away and lay limp beside him for a while, so he took the needle from her neck, dropped it on the floor, and sat beside her head, waiting.

And then she opened her eyes.

She saw the used syringe and, feeling in control of her body once more, she asked, "How did you know it would work?"

"I tested it on myself, first," and Nate showed her the injection mark on his wrist. To test if it had really worked on him, Ava held her arm out. He touched her forearm with his bare fingers cautiously and watched her eyes. Her beautiful blue eyes that didn't change.

A smile played along her lips. "Let's go home."

It was as simple as that. They'd pack and head out into the woods for an adventure with a purpose. They'd find Smalltown again and tell people the epidemic was over. The boss was dead, the virus was dead, and despite Nate's physical difficulties, they were alive.

And for the first time in her life, Ava wanted nothing more than to be safe at home.

With Nathan, of course.