"You're not helping!"

"Because I'm trying to keep this damn car moving!"

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

"The bleeding won't stop. We have to–"

"Are they still behind us?"

As I open my eyes, everyone in the car is losing their minds, which is kind of reassuring since it means I'm still alive. At least for now.

Looking like he's aged ten years in the past few minutes, Dad is practically in my lap, pressing his hands against my shoulder and muttering something about staying with him, while Ellen rummages through a bag, throwing things she's finding unusable out, one-by one. Up front, Jed is whipping the steering wheel left and right as he drives through the night like a madman as Nelly looks at a large paper map that covers most of the windshield, yelling a mix of locations and directions at her boyfriend.

"That sign said Wickham Road, right? There should be a hospital at the next exit—"

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

"We can't get off course, Nel," Jed interrupts her. "I don't know if we're being followed, but it's likely those goons have friends just waiting for us to stop. And believe me, they won't let us leave so easily next time."

She throws the map down and punches him in the shoulder. "Will's hurt and he's going to bleed out if we don't get him bandaged up. We need to stop somewhere for supplies, dammit."

Aww, she cares.

"I . . . appreciate that," I croak through ragged breaths, but speaking uses more muscles than I had expected and the exertion brings a sharp pain to my shoulder. "Oww."

"Try not to talk," Dad says, lifting his palm and peeking under before I feel the flow of a warm liquid drenching the spot.

Blood. My blood. I've been shot and now I'm bleeding. The pointed recollection makes me light headed and my eyelids flutter.

"Oh, shit," Dad mutters and he presses down harder.

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

From behind him, Ellen clutches a single glove and forces a weak smile. "You'll be fine," she whispers to me before turning around. "DRIVE FASTER!" she yells at Jed, and I now I'm pretty sure that I won't be fine.

"I WOULD IF WE DIDN'T HAVE A FLAT—"

"Calm down, kids!" yells Dad and I almost laugh.

I haven't heard him so exasperated in a while, and it reminds me of when Ellen and I were little. We were such brats sometimes, and Dad's familiar choice of words now just seems so hilarious to me for some reason, until I put two and two together. That thunking sound I keep hearing must be the damaged tire and it's likely the reason we're moving so slow in spite of the urgency. That thunking sound is the reason everyone is stressed out. That thunking sound is why I'm going to die.

Man, I'm really late on the uptake today. I guess that's what getting shot gets you. Who knew?

"He's losing consciousness!" Ellen screams before my face is drenched with cold water.

"Aargh." I draw in a sharp breath as I come to, instinctively trying to sit up so I don't get splashed again. But Dad pushes me down.

"Hold up, buddy," he says with a lot more levity, obviously pleased that I'm not dead yet.

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

"I'm bleeding," I mumble, trying to touch my wound with my free hand.

Switching places with Dad, Ellen stops me. "Yes, you are. And we're trying to fix that. Now if you'll just relax for one freaking minute, maybe we can figure out how to get you help without all of us getting shot, too," she says, giving me a sip of water from the nearly empty bottle in her hand.

Too tired to respond, I close my eyes and concentrate on ignoring the growing pain in my left shoulder as the numbness is gradually replaced by sharp pinpricks. Amid the continued thunks of the flat tire, the others in the car begin to strategize.

"We can't go much farther like this," Jed says. "Otherwise we'll bust an axel and have even bigger problems."

"Let's do a quick–and logical–analysis of the situation, shall we?" Dad offers and the others groan.

You might be able to take the man out of science, but you can't take the science out of the man. Or something like that. Witty quips are much easier when you're not losing blood.

"As I was saying," Dad continues, ignoring the apathy and doing what he does best: saving the world with his brilliant mind while boring everyone to tears. "We have two, competing priorities, both of which are equally urgent. We need to speed up our journey, but since we already know that we don't have a spare tire, we'll need to find a suitable replacement. We also need to make sure that we haven't been followed or that wherever we stop is safe from other threats."

He pauses to let this sink in, only the thunks breaking the silence. When the others don't object, he goes on.

"At the same time, Will needs medical attention and while we're all focused on keeping him alive, none of us are safe. An old hospital or even pharmacy would be best, but we might have luck with a general supermarket to find bandages, painkillers and maybe even antibiotics. The problem is, we need a working car to get anywhere, hence this catch-22 situation," he says.

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

"Listen," Jed says, his tone much more reasonable now and I wonder if my father's speech is responsible for the change or if there's something else I'm not aware of, which is a distinct possibility since there are orange jellyfish floating in the middle of the road that are likely just my imagination.

"There are a lot more options for finding a tire than medicine," Jed continues, driving through my phantom jellyfish. "How about I stop at the first hospital or store we see? While two of us raid the joint for supplies, the other two look around at abandoned cars to find some wheels. Sound good?"

"Yes. Good. Just go, please," Ellen implores, and I shiver. Not just because she's freaking me out with her overt concern, but also because my body temperature is falling by the second.

"I'm . . . I'm cold," I whisper, my teeth practically chattering.

"He's going into shock!" Dad yells and the thunking gets louder as Jed suddenly accelerates.

* * *

The air smells of mildew and I open my eyes.

"Welcome back to the land of the living," Nelly says with a giggle.

Sitting on a carpeted floor with my back leaning against her, I shift. Damn, that still hurts.

"How long was I out? Where are we? What's going on?" I ask, unable to focus on one thing, but wanting to know everything.

She continues to laugh. "Hold up, buttercup. You lost a lot of blood and there's literally just fishing line keeping that through-and-through wound from opening back up. So how about you relax for a bit, huh?"

I take a deep breath and follow her orders, allowing myself to melt into her embrace. Her arms around are nice and if we weren't hiding out in the dark in who knows where, I might have gotten myself shot earlier just to end up to feel this.

"Where are the others?" I ask, remembering that the last time I was conscious there were five of us in a busted car running from an ambush of rovers.

Nelly pats my elbow. "Don't worry. Jed, Ellen and your dad are doing one more sweep of the building to make sure that it's secure," she says.

This time, I manage to push myself up to a fully sitting position and turn my head to look at her. "You mean we're spending the night here?"

She scowls. "Technically the day, but yes."

When I continue to look at her for more, she reluctantly continues.

"You were out for a really long time, Will. Good thing, too, because we never did find any painkillers and sewing you up without them while you were conscious would have been torture," she says.

I look down and push aside the fabric of my blood-soaked, flannel button down shirt. Underneath, there's a thick wrapping of bandages running between my shoulder and underarm.

"Did you say fishing line?" I ask, hoping that she had been joking.

But she nods. "Uh-huh. The hospital had been picked clean of everything and I mean everything. I guess we should have expected that. It was an obvious target over the years," she says. "Jed found medical gauze in a first aid kit though when he was scavenging for spare tires. The van actually had two flats, by the way, which made fixing that take longer than expected. So by the time we had a working car again and had checked several pharmacies with still no luck, it was nearly sunrise. So we broke in here and wouldn't you know it? We couldn't have picked a better place if we'd tried."

The room is pretty dark, but my eyes have finally adjusted enough to see rough outlines. Nelly's back is to the long wall of a rectangular space that seems to have windows on both sides, but they're all strangely dark as though they were blacked out. On the far end, there's another reflective surface, but the filtered light coming through is somehow from above and not across.

"So where exactly are we?" I repeat my earlier question, still not having it figured out.

She stretches her arms out to the side, as if revealing a big surprise. "This, my friend, is an old aquarium."

I take a second to digest the information, but I don't know what to make of it. "A what?" I ask, stumped.

Nelly drops her hands and leans over to look at me. "You don't know what an aquarium is?"

I look back at her. "I know it's a holding tank for marine life, but I don't understand why there would be a building for it like this," I say.

"Oh, wow. Life on Vanguard really must have been different. Y'all didn't learn everything about how things worked up here before . . . well, before," she says, unable to find the right words.

I shrug and then immediately regret it when the pain in my shoulder returns. "Oww. I guess not. So you tell me."

She smiles, the act igniting something in the pit of my stomach. "I'm not sure we have time for a comprehensive lesson, but sure, I can explain the purpose of an aquarium," she says before gently nudging me forward. "Can I scoot out?"

I cautiously inch away, leaving enough of a gap for her to stand. She then walks across to the nearest window.

"So these are individual tanks. They could have been either fresh water or salt water and they were set up to mimic the home habitats of whatever aquatic creatures they held," she said, pointing at the glass.

I pull my knee up and try to stand so I can get a better look, but it's a no-go and I plop back down.

"Oh, no you don't. Stay right there, okay?" she admonishes before searching for something near the glass. "Okay, so there's a sign here and it says that this tank held Glass Catfish, which are—were—found in the rivers of Thailand and Cambodia. Since they didn't have body pigment, they looked transparent."

I look down the length of the room. "What about that?" I nod toward the glass wall at the end.

"Oh, I actually looked at that earlier," Nelly says, perking up. "It used to have a Californian kelp forest with Pacific fish and stuff. I bet it was really cool back in the day."

"But why?" I ask.

Now she looks confused. "Why what?"

"Why did this place exist? The ocean is just a few miles away," I say, increasingly irritated by the thought of fish that I'm used to seeing freely travel the ocean being locked away in a dark building. There are at least a dozen such tanks in this room alone, which I guess explains the weird smell.

Nelly walks back and crouches in front of me. "Partly entertainment, I think. From what I've heard and seen, families used to come to places like this a lot. But also for education, too. And research, I guess," she says. "It was another world back then, Will."

I know she's right in more ways than one, and while I'm disgusted by the thought of trapping wild animals, there's nothing I can do about any of it. The only thing I can control is the here and now, so without thinking, I lean in to kiss her. But unlike before, this time Nelly pushes me away.

"Come on, Will. I'm with Jed," she says before standing again.

"Right," I say, bitter at the rejection and hearing her finally admit it. But being who I am, I can't drop it so easily. "And why is that, exactly?"

She huffs. "What kind of question is that?"

"Apparently for you, a hard one," I reply with a grimace.

Taking a deep breath, she's now more reserved with her answer. "He's a good guy."

I begin to giggle hysterically. "A good guy? A good guy?!" I repeat, not believing my ears. "So is that all it takes?"

Nelly pouts and shakes her head. "I don't know what your problem is, but I'm going to ignore this little tantrum because you've gone through a lot today, so—"

"Yeah, I've definitely gone through a lot," I interrupt, using my bubbling anger to motivate me to stand.

It's not like this was a surprise, though. I've known that she betrayed me in order to get the ferry back to O-Town. But I was still hoping that all the little moments we shared up until then had meant something. Apparently, they hadn't.

"I'm sorry, Will," she says, but I don't know which particular wrongdoing she's apologizing for. Honestly, it doesn't matter because I don't accept her apology.

"Why are you here with me, anyway?" I ask back, instead.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, my dad probably has the most knowledge about medicine and my sister is probably the most protective of me, but they both chose to go off with your boyfriend to 'secure the building'," I say, using air quotes around the words she used earlier. "Why is that, Nel? How come you're the one who stayed with the boy who was shot? Huh?"

She crosses her arms with a sigh. "Your dad went because he wanted to look for more medicine," she says, pointedly. "We lucked out by finding a few doses of powdered antibiotics, but he thought there could be more behind some locked doors."

"Oh," I say. That actually made sense. But . . . hold up.

"You guys gave me twenty-year old fish medicine?" I ask, already feeling different than I did before that realization.

Her face remains expressionless for another beat before she bursts out laughing.

"Chill out. You're not going to grow gills or anything," she says, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. "It was meant for the seals that were also kept here. And your dad said it was perfectly safe for humans."

This makes me feel a smidge better, so I breathe a sigh of relief and continue. "What about Ellen?"

"Oh, your sister is definitely something else," she says, not quite answering my question. "In fact, she had a mini existential crisis trying to decide which was worse: if she let your dad go with the enemy, aka me and Jed or if she left you alone with me."

I smile. "Yeah, that sounds like her."

"Sounds like who?" Ellen's question rings out from the end of the room.

Turning in that direction, I see her, Dad, and Jed rounding the corner and come toward us.

"Situation report?" Nelly asks, stepping away as if we hadn't even been having a serious conversation just moments earlier.

"All's good," Jed replies, his hand on the weapon strapped across his chest. "No one's getting in, so everyone hunker down and get some rest. We have a long night ahead of us tomorrow."