Lisa had already slid over behind the wheel and was waiting for Marllowe to come back. The passenger side door opened up and the man climbed in. There was blood all over his face and a wince was frozen on his lips. He shut the door and gripped his leg tightly. "Let's go, Mrs. Neville. We are done here." He said in a pained and grating voice.

That's when Lisa noticed the gunshot on his shin, the blood caked on his pants. "Oh no." She muttered and put the car in gear right away.

"Sector 27. You know where that is." He said, gritting his teeth as he pulled out a small rope from under his seat and tore a piece of cloth from his shirt under the kevlar vest. He pressed the cloth on his wound and tied the rope around it tightly.

"You sure, you are gonna be fine, Marllowe?" Lisa said as she floored the gas pedal.

"Don't worry about me." He grit his teeth again as he put more pressure on his wound and tried to breathe more normally. "That girl in the back has stopped making any noise. We gotta get to 27 before the virus hurts her more than it already has. Go faster, Mrs. Neville."

Lisa shifted the gear and slammed harder on the accelerator. Other than the sequence panel and all the other cool gizmos, the driving functions of the truck were pretty much like any other automobile.

Marllowe, pulled out a flask of whiskey from the dashboard. He took a sip before emptying the flask over his face. The alcohol streamed down his forehead, down his temple, down his cheeks and sliding over his jaw, washing off the blood.

That's when Lisa looked at his face for the first time. And she lost control of the steering for a second.

"Y-You...it's you!?" She said, her voice trembling. "Marllowe isn't your real name! Y-You're that guy! The government had put your posters on each wall in Sector 22. They call you a terrorist!"

He looked at her. "And does that bother you?" He smirked.

Lisa scoffed. "Not in the least. I knew that it wouldn't be a normal person who'd get so reckless while trying to help me out. Also, I hate the government pigs for what they did to my husband," she said. Then her face sobered up for a bit. She frowned at the road ahead. "Um...did you...did you kill everyone on that plane?"

"Nope. Not everyone," he said. "And no, they won't follow us for now."

"Good to know," Lisa said as she kept driving. "Also, since it's obvious that you aren't just some guy with a tough sounding last name, I'm really curious to know what your real name is."

He drained the last sip of whiskey left in the flask and let out a sigh. He looked out the window. "It's Erik," he said, "Erik Koehlwin."

###

"Erik, what's going on?!" Germaine snapped at him as Erik carried Cathy deeper into the house. Gemma rushed after him.

"Get the key to the ice-box, Gemmie. The girl needs the shot!" he said as he disappeared in the hallway at the end of the living room.

Clint and Marie watched the confusion from their spot on the stairs. That's when another familiar face walked through the decontamination unit. It was Lisa Neville. Clint was struck with guilt and awkwardness at the sight of her.

"Where did Erik and his sister go?" Lisa asked the couple.

"That hallway over there." Marie pointed a quivering finger at the corridor.

"Thanks." Lisa nodded and rushed into the corridor, holding onto her belly protectively.

That's when Marie took Clint's hand and led him downstairs.

"Whoa, what are you doing?!" Clint said, his face turning red with nervousness.

"What do you think, you idiot? We are going after them!" Marie said, her voice was stern.

"I don't want to!" Clint whined. "I-I–"

"Shut up, Clint!" Marie hissed. "Did you even see Cathy?! She looked awful. You are a doctor. Wouldn't it be better if someone like you was present while they did whatever they were planning on doing to her?"

Clint groaned again and then nodded timidly. Marie led him down the stairs and through the corridor. They could hear distant voices of Erik and Gemma, who were arguing in a completely different language now.

Marie and Clint followed the sound of their voices. They soon found themselves in the pantry. The voices were coming from an open trap door.

Marie and Clint stared at the dark opening in the ground before stepping down into it. The arguing voices were getting louder the farther they descended. The only voice the two of them could comprehend was that of Lisa's frantic pleading.

"Cathy! Cathy, stay with us, dear!"

The stairway led them into an antechamber with stone walls and bare concrete floor. The voices further led them to a catacomb-like room, lit by hurricane lanterns. Cathy lay twitching on a bed by the wall to the right. Lisa was on the stool by the bed, talking to her, trying to keep her from sinking into a deeper unconsciousness.

Gemma and Erik were by a bureau cabinet against the wall on the right, still arguing in their home language, browsing through what looked like a bunch of different keys. There was a refrigerator by the wall opposite to the entrance. And in a dark and distant corner, a diesel generator was whirring incessantly.

Marie immediately dragged Clint after her to the bed Cathy was on. They crouched next to Lisa and looked at the half unconscious girl. "What happened to her?" she asked Lisa.

Lisa shook her head, her breath was ragged with anxiety. "She has the virus. Erik said he had something that could help her. I hope whatever it is he finds it soon. I'm getting more and more scared for her," she said.

"There's something that can stop the virus itself?" Marie raised an eyebrow.

Lisa nodded. "According to Erik, there is."

By then Gemma and Erik were done fumbling with the keys. Erik unlocked the fridge and pulled out a vial filled with an icy blue serum. Gemma was pulling a syringe out of one of the drawers in the bureau. Erik loaded the syringe with the serum. Gemma quickly stepped up to the bed with a pair of steel scissors. She leant over Cathy and cut open the girl's shirt from the front, revealing the wound on her chest. The skin around the stab mark was turning purple, a dark spider-webbing of veins seemed to spread across her pale torso. "Make it quick, Erik!" Gemma snapped.

"I'm ready." Erik rushed over to the bed and stuck the needle close to the wound on her chest. He pushed down on the plunger of the syringe. The icy blue liquid drained into Cathy's wound.

"What's in the syringe?" Marie asked Gemma.

"It's EpiFreeze." Gemma said. "It's meant to stop the epicytes from multiplying in her bloodstream. If she hasn't fallen too far into the dream state, then the serum won't work on her."

"What are epicytes?" Clint asked.

"Cells of dandelion fever that multiply in our bodies," Gemma said.

"How are we supposed to know if we haven't gotten late yet?" Marie asked.

Gemma pulled up her sleeve and reviewed her wrist watch. "If the color of the wound doesn't change within the next thirty seconds, then we can lose all hope."

Ten seconds passed. The color of the wound was still purple. Cathy's breathing was still faint.

Marie cursed under her breath and tightly joined her hands. She started to pray.

Fifteen seconds left. The color was still the same. Cathy's chest was barely moving with her breath now.

Lisa gripped the edge of the bed-frame tightly and leant ahead, trying to boost Cathy's morale. Even though the girl clearly couldn't hear her or anyone else.

Ten seconds left. Erik's forehead was now glistening with sweat. Clint was biting down on the inside of his cheek.

Five seconds left. Only five!

That's when Cathy's fingers twitched and turned into a fist. Her knuckles turned white. That's when her toes curled downwards, her joints made a painful popping sound as her digits cinched and twisted.

"Oh shit!" Clint pulled out a handkerchief from his pocket and shoved the piece of cloth into Cathy's mouth just before her teeth snapped down on each other. Her jaw tightened around the handkerchief and her limbs started to shiver. And soon her entire body was shaking.

Erik held her down by the shoulders. Clint held her by her ankles. "She is having a seizure, don't let her twist herself too much, she might hurt her spine."

Two more seconds left. Gemma held her breath, her eyes never left the wound. Then suddenly, Cathy's body went limp. The seizure ended. Then the wound started to turn blue.

Gemma seemed to collapse with her sigh of relief. Marie noticed the change in color of the wound. "Is she...is she out of the woods then?"

"Not yet." Erik shook. He stepped back from bed. "She had already committed a hunt back in Sector 22. The fact that the parasite in her body wasn't able to find a new host meant that it was settling down to consume her instead. And then she fell in a second dream state. Mind you, we didn't pull her out of that state by giving her the EpiFreeze, we just managed to freeze her in it. We stopped the infection from spreading. But she can still die for a different reason."

"I thought the hunt was the last stage of the virus." Marie frowned.

"That's what the government wanted everyone to think," Gemma said. "That's what they declared in their PSAs and health safety bulletins. They didn't want us to know that the infected can be saved even after the hunt. Or the fact that there was something like EpiFreeze that can stop the virus from spreading in your body."

"Wait, back off a minute," Lisa said, "you said the infection stopped from spreading inside Cathy, what else is still there that can kill her then?"

"There are multiple reasons," Erik said. "That wound on her chest is gonna take some time before it turns blue. The epicytes in her body can still damage whatever area the EpiFreeze hasn't reached yet. She can still wake up. But if the damage to her internal organs is too bad then she might still die because of our medical limitations to help her heal after she wakes up."

Everyone frowned in worry for the girl.

"There's...also another reason that she can die," Gemma said with a lot of reluctance.

This time Erik was frowning too. As if he knew the other reason but didn't want to say it out loud.

"What's this...other reason?" Lisa asked.

Gemma swallowed hard before she spoke again. "She is in another dream state. And the virus doesn't just affect your physiology, it affects your psychology too since it tries to numb your brain of all its sensory functions. To stop you from fighting back while it feeds off your inner organs," she said, "so, while frozen in the dream state, if a very traumatic memory or an episode is triggered, then there's a chance of her never waking up. Even if the EpiFreeze turns the whole wound blue."

Clint frowned. "You mean...she'll get stuck in a comma?"

"Pretty much." Erik nodded.

"And since you don't have any life-support equipment, there would be no way of saving her then, right?" Marie said.

Gemma sighed, her expression slumping into sadness. She just nodded.

"She is gonna make it," Lisa said, gritting her teeth. "She is a fighter. I know she will fight back! And she will win! If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't have been alive right now. She saved me and my baby, she can save herself better than anyone!"

Marie nodded. "Yes, she gave us a chance to take shelter in her home. If it wasn't for her helpfulness, we don't know what would've happened to Richard Neville. We probably wouldn't even have known about the rain. Fate can't be this cruel. It won't hurt someone who has helped so many."

Lisa looked up at Marie. "W-Wait...you knew Richard?" she said.

Clint swallowed hard. "Y-Yes we've crossed paths with him recently."

"Cathy told me that even though Richard was infected, it was someone else who killed him. She never really told me who it was though," Lisa said. "D-Do you guys know who it was by any chance?"

Clint and Marie exchanged worried glances.

"You know what, forget it." Lisa shook her head. "I gotta stop being so selfish. I just wanna focus on Cathy for now." She turned back to look at the girl. She wiped the perspiration off of Cathy's brow with a handkerchief.

"R-Right," Clint mumbled quietly.

"If the three of you are gonna stay with Cathy here then you can grab those chairs from that corner and settle down," Gemma said. "I wanna take my brother upstairs and twist his ear a bit." She glared at Erik who just rolled his eyes.

"Sounds good." Marie nodded.

###

The Koehlwins left them alone in the catacomb and walked back upstairs through the pantry. Gemma led Erik through the kitchen and into what used to be their Mom's room.

"I'm so tired of you running off on these little adventures of yours," Gemma said, speaking in the language of their country. "Who even is that woman? Who is that girl? And we used up the last of the EpiFreeze on her." She closed the door as they entered the room.

Erik made his way over to the desk on the left and sat down on the swivel chair. "Service to humanity. Did you forget?" he said. "That's all I did."

Gemma scoffed as she pulled the first aid kit from the cabinet. "I bet that's what you think you are doing," she said as she took the kit to her brother and crouched down in front of him. She started to undo the kneepad of his injured leg. He tried to stop her and do it himself. She slapped his hand away and hissed like a cat. He smiled at her ruefully and stopped resisting. She took off his kevlar knee pad and sliced open his pant sleeve with a scissor, exposing the gunshot on his thigh. She winced. But she also felt too tired to scold him about it. "Should I even ask how you got that? Or why you are even dressed up like an operative?"

"Doesn't matter," Erik said. "Cuz I'm gonna tell you anyway."

Gemma sighed and rolled her eyes. She started to clean his wound with a generous amount of spirit alcohol.

"I busted an Agent," Erik said. "An Agent of the Vigilant Squad."

Gemma raised an eyebrow. "And what did that even accomplish?" she was sterilizing a needle with the spirit now.

"I was able to get my hands on a special grade weapon. They call it the Peacebringer." He scoffed.

Gemma paused. She looked up at him. He smirked at her. He knew he had her attention now. "Don't tell me..."

"It has the Fragment in it." He nodded, still smirking.

Gemma rose to her feet. She shook her head, frowning skeptically. "The Fragment is not real," she said. "It was just a rumor. A red herring. They just wanted to draw out the rebels so they set the Fragment like a honeypot to trap us in."

"Then what about the truck standing right outside our house?" Erik said.

She glared at him but still rushed over to the window to take a look. She parted the curtains. The armored truck with its chrome-like shine, stood out on the street, loaded with guns and turrets and missile launchers. Gemma frowned. "What about it?" she said, gripping the curtain tightly.

"I spent the night in that truck," He said. "In Sector 22."

Gemma's eyes went wide. "You're lying. T-The rain...the rain burnt that city."

"It didn't burn the truck though." Erik smirked again. "I survived the rain in it. Those two women I brought over, they were in that truck with me. I had to fight off two squads of operatives and a Vigilant Squad agent to escape with it. You still think the Fragment is not real?"

She turned to glare at him again. "It's not real!" Even she felt a pang of uncertainty when she said it. "An agent and two squads came after you because it is a special grade weapon."

"If the Fragment was just a rumor then why did the government arrest all our friends of the Last Hand? Why did they violate the provision that stops them from arresting people who had just recovered from a serious injury?" He rose to his feet and stepped closer with his wounded leg. "I'll tell you why. Maybe the Fragment wasn't really a honey-pot. Maybe our friends got really close to the truth. And the government did what it does. What it did to Richard Neville. What it tried doing to Neville's wife, their unborn baby and that girl fighting the virus right now."

Gemma was terrified now. All of this sounded like the truth. A truth she didn't want to believe in. "Wh-What are you even planning now?" she said. "Erik, what are you gonna do?"

Erik stared out at the truck standing in the street, clenched his fists, his jaw was set. "I'm gonna use their own weapon against them. I'm gonna bring the Last Hand back from the dead." He stared right into her eyes with that resolute anger that she had come to both fear and hate. "I'm gonna take Ardvenia back from these monsters."