ENDING OPTION #2: This is the unhappy ending I originally planned but didn't want to write. This alternate ending begins two days after chapter five's romantic night together. The events of chapter six never happen in this timeline.

The front door slammed against the wall as Miles barged through it. "Jason, out the back door. Take Charlie and check the south perimeter. Do it now."

Jason, trapped in his Patriot programming but recognizing an order to protect Charlie, immediately headed for the back door. When Charlie didn't follow he paused, doorknob in hand, and waited. He wouldn't open it to check for danger until they were both ready to go through it.

"What's going on?" Charlie demanded.

Quietly Miles said to her, "Bass and Connor are back. I just saw them turn off the main road and on to the drive. We haven't seen Jason, real Jason, in two days. Do you think those two are going to make him any better?"

Charlie's posture sagged under the weight of the news.

"I know he means something to you, kid, so I'm trying not to get him killed, but this just got more complicated. He needed to be better by now."

"We can't just turn him out," she protested.

"We can't have him growling at every man who gets within twenty feet of you either. Bass and Connor are going to be a hell of a lot less patient with his guard dog crap than I am."

"Miles..." Charlie pleaded, but the words wandered away from her. There was nothing to say.

"Go check fences," he said. "We'll unload the wagon while you're gone. Don't come up until you've seen me take the horses to the barn. He likes horses, right? Maybe a couple more to brush will snap him out out it."

"Thanks, Miles."

"Yeah, don't mention it. You've got a gun and a knife, right?"

"Yeah."

"Good. If this gets ugly, everybody else dies before you. Got it?"

"Miles!"

They both heard the rattle of wagon wheels and hooves on hard packed dirt as Bass and Connor pulled up in front of the house.

"Go!" Miles ordered.

Jason threw open the back door, leveling his weapon at the yard as he searched for threats. Charlie shoved at his back, pushing him forward so she could get through the door, and took off at a dead run down the gentle slope behind the house. Jason quickly matched her pace, leaving the house and whatever dangers it held behind them.

The south perimeter was secure. Charlie had known it would be. This was busywork, something to keep them out of the house. Jason's eyes had watched her as much as they'd watched the horizon, and now they focused on the house. Despite being left out of Miles' confidence, he seemed to have identified the real trouble.

He stood stiffly and stared at her with the muscles in his jaw and throat twitching. The Patriot programming was still in control, but Jason was trying to fight his way through. "Identify the threat, please."

"What?" Charlie gasped. His tone and inflection were flat, and he was still focused on her protection, but he was speaking through the training. This was new.

"Identify the threat."

Charlie looked away. Jason would know what was going on soon, but for now he was closer than he'd been since the night they'd been together. She couldn't bear to say something that would send him further away. She bit her lip and grasped for a conveniently bent truth, something that wouldn't send him deep into protection mode. "Miles has company. We're supposed to stay away for a couple of hours."

Jason nodded. "Retreat," he said.

"Yeah, I guess. Far enough from the house that you think I'm safe. Lead the way."

He crossed the perimeter line and marched further south, moving rapidly over uneven territory to lead her further from the house. She hopped over fallen logs and tangled brush to keep up with him as he made his way along a narrow deer trail before cutting sharply left through a break in a thicket of trees. She didn't know where he was headed, but he seemed to know. He'd only been out beyond the perimeter once without her. He'd been stuck in Patriot mode at the time and she'd sent him off to hunt for food, cherishing a few hours without his aggressive protection. He hadn't been able to communicate whatever he'd found when he came back, but apparently he remembered it now.

He stepped over a small stream and turned to offer her a hand across it. She didn't need it, but took it anyway, and he pulled a little harder than was necessary as she crossed, the excess of momentum causing her to land hard against him and press the length of her body to his. He reached his other hand down to steady her, but the hand landed on her ass and pulled her harder against him. The Patriot was still in charge, still following its rules, but Jason was running the game. She looked up at him and smiled, but what she saw caused her to jump away from him with a shudder. His expression was still blank.

He let go of her and began moving again. They moved upstream along the edge of a creek for ten minutes, the ground underfoot growing damp and mossy. She heard the rush and crash of the waterfall before she saw it. It was twenty feet high and just as wide, a wall of rushing water sliding over a fortress of gray rock before the river cut off into the woods. Jason moved to the edge of the sheet of water, ducked, and disappeared. Charlie followed, pleasantly surprised to find she stayed dry as she passed through the narrow space between the water and the rock face.

Inside, the hollow was lit with the filtered glow of sunlight through water. The mist near the crashpoint of the waterfall abated some as she moved deeper into the cave. A mottled blanket and some old beer cans were shoved into a corner in the back wall of the cave. Jason grabbed the blanket and shook it out before spreading it out again.

"It's clear," he said. "No human or animal threats. The cans on it and the decay of the blanket indicate it was here before the blackout."

She answered, "Affirmative." Her dad had had a phone that talked before the blackout. Jason's literal, flat state reminded her of it.

She dropped to a seated position on the blanket and began to unlace her boots. It had been a long walk and there was a pool of water on their side of the fall that looked perfect for soaking her feet. It was about four feet across and kept fresh by the current of the waterfall. She could see the bottom of it, and nothing lurked in the depths waiting to slither over her feet.

Jason sat beside her and stared, blankly at first, but then he began to blink rapidly as if trying to clear something from his eyes. Charlie's heart fluttered as she reached out to touch his cheek. He squinted his eyes shut and pressed his head into her hand. She hated that the gesture reminded her of a dog, but he was her adoring puppy and if he needed to be petted she wasn't going to deny him that. The expression on his face was still blank, but the movement of his body as he leaned towards her let her hope he was breaking through.

"We're safe here," she said, trying to coax him out with her words. "You found a perfect hiding spot. It's long abandoned, not close to anything. No one is looking for us; no one has reason to look here. It's very safe. You can relax here." This time when his eyes met hers she could see that he was behind them. He was no longer a shell on autopilot; he was her Jason.

"How are you?" she asked.

"Tired," he said. "I've been trying to fight my way out so long."

"You're here now."

"Yeah," he said with a dry smile, "And all I want to do is take a nap."

Charlie grinned. "That's *all* you want?"

"OK, not all I want, but we better not. Not now. I don't feel in control enough to lose control. I just want to hold you."

"You really want to take a nap?" she asked.

He shrugged, unwilling to own his own desire.

She patted the blanket she was sitting on and pulled her feet out of the water. "How convenient that we have a blanket."

He lay down and she rested her head on his chest, listening to the beat of his heart, her head rising and falling as his chest moved with his breaths. Sleep seemed a long way off.

"I love you, Charlie," he said. "Promise me you'll be safe."

"I love you, too," she said. "And I'm not having this conversation again."

"I need to know, Charlie. No matter what, no matter who attacks, even if it's me, I need to know you'll fight."

"Jason…" she protested.

"If the Patriot training goes out of control, don't let me kill you. Don't make me live with that. I couldn't anyway."

"But you expect me to live with killing you?"

"You wouldn't be killing me. You'd be killing an enemy attacking you. I'd be collateral damage."

"Drop it," she ordered.

He sat up suddenly, knocking her head off of him and onto the ground.

"No, Charlie," he barked. "I won't drop it. I will never drop your safety. How do you not understand that by now? Patriot dog or myself, militia, rebel, whatever it's always about keeping you safe."

She stood up and yelled back at him, not willing to give into his stupid belief that he was evil. He'd always doubted his place with the group, and she still felt guilty that before they'd gone into the Tower she hadn't done enough to let him know he had a place in her life as something other than a human sacrifice. "You don't get to tell me what to do. *I* decide what matters to me. *You* matter, you idiot, and I will NOT hurt you."

He jumped to standing, yelling back at her with the same fire she threw at him. "What if I try to hurt you? What will you do if the training takes over and I come for you? What then?"

Charlie let out a frustrated shriek and shoved hard at his chest. His feet slid on the slick ground and he landed half in, half out of the pool of water beside them. The momentum of her shove let the rest of his body slide in behind his chest. She saw his head go under and she jumped into the water to pull him back up.

Jason came up spitting water and gasping for breath, shaking off her hands and placing his own hands around her neck, forcing her under the water. Charlie's mind spun and her lungs fought against the water she swallowed. She struggled to come up, desperate for breath, and he still held her under. Her stomach clenched as she admitted that this was more than a playful swim. She'd attacked him. The training had taken over. The Patriot was going to drown her.

She grabbed the knife strapped to her thigh and made quick shallow cuts in his leg, hoping the pain would make him loosen his grip and fight her off. He didn't. The hands around her neck held her under with cold efficiency. Her lungs burned and her vision began to blur. Panic gave way to a soldier's instincts. Only one of them at most was going to live through this and if she didn't act quickly, killing him fast enough to loosen his grip, they'd both die. He'd kill her and then die himself, either slowly from the tiny injuries she was inflicting or suicide when he realized what he'd done. Miles would never know what had happened to them. Worse, Patriot Jason might kill Miles, her uncle never suspecting what was in store for him as a man he recognized approached their home.

She stared up through the churning water and focused as clearly as she could. She'd only get one chance to do this. She could only bear to make this cut once. She tightened her grip on her knife and thrust hard upward, sliding it through the muscles she'd caressed and between the ribs she'd traced with her fingers. It pierced the lungs that had blown hot breaths over her skin and drove into the heart she'd felt beating beneath her cheek less than five minutes ago. She slid the knife to the side, opening the wound, making it quick, and felt blood, hot and sticky, run through the hole she'd made.

His grip went slack as he slid under the red water, and she was finally able to come up for breaths that burned as she desperately sucked air. Each inhale let her think a little more clearly. Each thought brought more pain.

It was over. She was alive and he wasn't. Knowing it was what he'd wanted, what he'd specifically asked for, was no comfort at all.