Written and edited on a machine that lags after every button press and movement of the mouse. Finished and revised on severe sleep deprivation. Please do let me know if you spot any errors.

Many thanks to NathanHale2 for their 'what I would be like' input that created an NPC and minor story arc for the Trio.

Reder12 pointed out that Ellie had green eyes, not blue. I can't find anything official to confirm this and a general google image search for Ellie has thrown up green, blue and grey eyes so… with thanks to wiki, I figure she might be a 14 on the Martin–Schultz scale (Very light-mixed (blue with gray or green or green with gray)) or puberty + stress = colour-changing hormones.

Or, the fungus in her head released chemicals that slowly changed her eye colour over the course of the game! Can anyone corroborate that theory? To spare everyone the wait whilst I re-played it to check, I decided to just go with the Martin-Schultz thing.

Knight Errant

Ellie rolled over with a groan. Her tongue felt two sizes too large and her head was pounding. She stretched out an arm to fumble for the bottle of water she kept by her bed - and startled fully awake as her questing fingers brushed instead against something warm and moving.

She blinked at Riley's sleeping face, smooth and peaceful save for puffy eyes. Her friend was curled on her side towards her, sharing her bed - no, sharing a disgusting mattress on the floor of some - she craned her aching head to look - mouldy bathroom. Gross.

All at once, she remembered why. Her fingers, loosely tangled in the front of Riley's shirt, clenched. Hardly daring to look, she dropped her eyes to her own right forearm. The bite site was still wrapped in gauze and felt tender and sore - but there was no visible streak of spreading infection on either side. She remembered getting sick, but… how long had it been since then? Was this just a window of clarity before she went crazy?

Part of her wanted to curl up and go back to sleep, hoping she'd be dead before she woke again, but the thirst that had woken her was too demanding. She moved shakily to her knees, trying and failing not to wake her bedmate as she twisted the sink's tap on and took a clumsy drink. You weren't supposed to use tap water without a filter but fuck t - she couldn't exactly get more infected.

"Hey." Riley's rough voice came from behind, a hand patting her thigh before the other girl stood and stretched. "How're you doing?"

"Surprisingly, not too bad." Ellie managed after another long swallow, her stomach shifting in quiet discontent. "Actually… kinda hungry. How long has it been?"

Riley smiled at her in the mirror before checking her watch.

"Man, like, four days."

Ellie snapped around.

"Are you fuckin' shitting me? Don't be a bitch, four days?! That's impossible."

Riley just shrugged, smile widening to a grin even as she let Ellie grab her wrist, twisting it to peer at her watch and the date displayed on it.

"I know, girl. But it's true. And so far, nuthin' sproutin'."

"Holy shit." Ellie breathed. She tried to stamp down on the hope rising inside as she lifted her eyes to Riley's. "Do you think…?"

Riley bit her lip. Shrugged. Eyes just as hopeful - and anxious - as hers.

"I dunno. We can check, but… it's been four days. Y'know?" Something seemed to occur to her. "Oh, and Harry hasn't sprouted yet either, far as I can tell. He's not quite… I mean, he hasn't exactly been aware for the last day or so, so maybe he might still… but yeah." Her voice rose, a false cheer injected. "He hasn't tried biting me yet either."

Ellie swallowed.

"Let's go see." She urged, left hand scratching restlessly at the bandage on her right arm. Riley agreed and the two of them left the stinking bathroom for the slightly less-stinking main room. Vomit, sour sweat and urine were the predominant odours in a room with almost no ventilation, but all three of them were contributing to the stench in one way or another so neither said anything about it.

Harry lay still as death on the cot, tied down and with intermittent rope burn along his chest and arms. His wrists had been sloppily bandaged, mostly for padding purposes.

"He kept seizing." Riley explained quietly, kneeling to swap a dry cloth for a wrung-out damp one, wiping down grimy skin and resting it over the boy's head. "But I think his fever has finally broken. No idea if it didn't cook his brain first, though." She shook her head as the boy on the cot completely failed to react and stood, turning to Ellie. "Let's see that arm of yours."

Ellie held her breath as the gauze wrapping her bite was slowly unwound. Hope against hope beat in her chest. Surely, somehow, she'd escaped infection? She had to have, everyone fell within a day and it had been four…

The last layer of gauze was stuck with blood and pus and Riley gently soaked it before peeling it away.

Ellie's hope crashed and burned. Under the dried blood and oozing sores… there were unmistakable bumps. Swollen nodes of infection, of cordyceps.

A sob escaped her, an inhalation as sharp as a knife.

"Hey. Hey!" Riley dropped her hand for her shoulders, gripping her hard and looking her dead in the eyes. "It ain't bad. Ellie, listen. It's really not. You're still you. Remember? It should be impossible, but you're still you. That's huge. Maybe you… just need a little longer, or maybe some surgery or something but whatever the case it's not in your brain and it hasn't taken you over and that has never happened before. You've dodged a bullet girl, and don't you doubt it for a second."

"Right." Ellie choked, swallowing back tears, forcing herself to listen and believe. It had been four days. Maybe she wasn't infection-free yet, but… she would be. Maybe.

Riley nodded slowly, eying her like she was trying to catch the bullshit in Ellie's seeming agreement.

"Right." Her friend echoed before releasing her to pick up her arm again. "Some of this might just be regular infection anyway, which we should take care of - it would suck ass to survive a bite only to lose to blood poisoning, amirite?"

Ellie found a weak grin for her. "Yeah." She agreed, holding still as the bite was cleaned and half-closed pockets of pus were opened to be drained and disinfected. A fresh slathering of antibiotic ointment was followed with fresh gauze and by the end of it she felt almost genuinely convinced that the worst was over and she had nothing else to do but get better. She took the broad spectrum antibiotic pills Riley pushed on her with something approaching relief.

"Alright then," Riley said, satisfied. "Let's get some food into you."

Moving to the side of the room, the pair cracked open fresh bottles of water and ration bars.

"Hey, Riley…?"

"Yeah?"

"How come you didn't get sick?"

"…"

Knight Errant

The sound of the front door slamming shut was Murat Özdemir's first clue that something was wrong. The only other time his normally mild-mannered Dad had ever let his temper show like that had been when he found out about Mom.

He tried to go back to his magazine, unnerved but trying not to be.

Something shattered and he gave up on the pretence. Swinging his legs off the bed and stuffing his mag under the mattress, he edged out into the lounge to see what was going on.

It was his Dad. And he was pissed. Fists clenched, nose flaring and staring at the remains of a glass shattered on the floor by the wall.

"Dad?" He ventured cautiously. For a split second he wondered if something bad had happened to Mom - before he remembered that Dad wouldn't care anymore if it had. Nor should he.

Dad's eyes snapped open, visibly surprised and trying to reign his temper in.

"Murat." He greeted curtly. "What are you doing home so early?"

"School was closed when I got there this morning." Murat explained uneasily. "They said - something about restructuring, or- Dad's what's goin' on?"

His father turned away. Then with a suddenness that made him jump, he kicked the couch - one, two, three times. Murat backed away despite himself. This was… unreal. Unnatural. A corner of his brain reminded him that sudden excessive temper was a symptom of infection.

He took another step back.

"Dad?"

The man who was normally always so calm, so solid, took a deep breath and breathed it out hard - and started to pace furiously. The man was almost shaking with fury, with loss of control, and it turned Murat's stomach. His Dad had always been the strength in their family, even when he and Mom were fighting, even after.

"Dad." He cut in, scared but trying to hide it. His Dad must've heard something in his tone though, cause he stopped and looked at him. Properly looked, then slumped. Shoulders down, a hand running through his hair, the incandescent temper slipped just enough to be caught and tucked away, out of sight for now.

"Sorry, son. I'm sorry. I must seem pretty crazy right now, huh?"

"Little bit." Murat joked, holding his fingers up with a scant inch between them. His relief was obvious as his Dad came over to clasp and shake his shoulder.

"Sorry. It's just. I just heard. They're lowering the legal work age again."

His blood froze.

"Sixteen now." His dad continued grimly. "And allowing for three months early service if it's a time of high need, like seeding or harvest."

"I'm sixteen soon." He choked out dumbly. He'd already been nervous about being eligible at seventeen and now… In just three weeks, he'd probably be assigned to a work group. Nobody liked to talk about it but the reason the eligibility threshold kept lowering was because they kept losing people who went out - and the city's supplies were suffering for it.

His Dad nodded, eyes flashing with fury - and fear. The hand on his shoulder tightened.

Murat swallowed tightly as his eyes searched those of a man who, until this second, had always made him feel safe. Now he was fifteen-going-sixteen and discovering that his childhood hero was just a man after all - and his world was far from safe.

"I'm going to try to get you a job in manufacturing." His father swore - an old and empty comfort. "You're young - a good age to learn the ropes. Mick's a good man, he likes me-"

"Didn't you say they let three people go last week?" He interrupted. At the time it had just been 'work news' and he'd been almost deaf to what it really meant. Nobody quit their jobs these days. If you were lucky enough to get one that kept you safe inside the walls, you did everything you could to keep it. People who were 'let go' were really just transferred into a work group, pulled from one assignment to another by the system that kept them all fed but couldn't seem to manage keeping them all alive at the same time.

His Dad hesitated.

"I'm.. I'm sure there's someone… someone older, who won't mind making some space…"

Murat nodded, as much for his Dad's sake as his own. Neither of them believing it, both of them wishing they could. The army preferred younger people for their work groups. The better to run from danger.

"It'll be okay." His Dad promised, lied.

"Everything will be okay."

Knight Errant

"You lied to me?!"

"Ellie. C'mon."

"No! You fucking lied to me!"

"You're gonna fucking whine about that? Excuse me for trying to be there for you!"

"There for me-?"

"What, you wanted to die alone?"

"If you hadn't been infected, yes-"

"Bullshit. Nobody wants to die alone - and fuck, with how sick you got you just might've if I hadn't been here-"

"Oh fuck you!"

An inarticulate groan broke the two girls' argument. Ellie and Riley shared a look of mixed anger and wariness before Riley palmed her gun and Ellie shuffled back out of the way.

"Harry?" Riley called cautiously. "How you doin'?"

Another long, inhuman groan. Riley's grip tightened, finger hovering over the trigger as she brought the gun up to aim at his skull. Inside, her stomach sank. Ellie's survival had been a miracle, a one-in-a-billion chance. It shouldn't be surprising that Harry hadn't made it, but fuck… he'd lasted so long.

It wasn't fair.

The boy's mouth moved, air ghosting out.

"What?" She asked, hoping against hope but equally just waiting for the sound of her voice to jolt him into a feral rage.

"I…" Harry croaked like it hurt to breathe. "Wish… I'ws… dead…"

Riley dropped the gun with a gust of relieved air, Ellie laughing weakly behind her.

"Holy shit. I don't fucking believe it." Riley grinned incredulously. "You still in there Brit Boy?"

"'nfortunately." Harry groaned, cracking his eyes open and weakly smacking his lips as he tried to work some moisture into his mouth. Riley cringed at the sight of his tongue, badly bitten during his seizures and swollen as a result.

Bleary green eyes drifted over the ceiling then down at his trussed-up body as his neck strained and his arms tried and failed to sit him up.

"…What?" He asked, head dropping back. Riley stowed the gun and came over to use the still-damp cloth to quickly wipe the crusted gunk away from his eyes and mouth before chucking it away for good.

"Sorry." She said offhandedly as she lifted his head just enough to check the bite wound on the back of his neck. Sweat and seizures had loosened the bandage days ago so it was easy to peek in. She expected to see something similar to Ellie's, a bite mark with nodes of infection or worse. But incredibly, aside from a gross amount of fresh and dried puss, the wound didn't actually look too bad. "You kept thrashing and, y'know, we thought you'd turn into a weeper any second."

"A… what? Ow." He seemed to finally notice that his tongue was a mangled mess.

"First stage infected." She got to work on the knots. Rope was too valuable to just cut it. "Or that's what we call 'em over here." And yeah, maybe she was explaining more to shut out Ellie than anything else but fuck it. She was pissed too.

"'Cause they tend to cry a lot but don't attack you unless you make a lot of noise or touch 'em. Next are runners - those're the worst. They'll attack on sight and are fresh enough to still be pretty fast. Clickers are the ones whose infection comes out of their face - they're blind, but can use echolocation to find you, like bats. They're strong though, and their faceplates can harden enough to stop or slow most low-caliber bullets."

"…How do you… know this stuff?"

"Military school." She shrugged, getting one knot loose at last.

"Oh. 'S how you two met, then?"

Ellie snorted and dropped down on his other side to work on the ropes securing his legs.

"Yeah, she fuckin' stole my walkman, first day."

"Gave it back, though." Riley half-teased, testing whether she'd been forgiven yet. She remembered the redheaded little slip of nothing, all alone on her first day and standing right up to her in the middle of the cafeteria, demanding her shit back. Even though she'd thought the girl was a dumbass, she'd still admired her guts.

"Whatever." Ellie just muttered.

Harry sat up with their help, wobbly and weak. Riley had tried to get food and fluids into him but he'd been so sick…

"I don't want… to alarm you..." Harry breathed carefully, hunched over like an old man. "But I think. The inside… of my mouth. Is in fact Satan."

Ellie snorted a giggle and just like that, the tension between them was gone.

"You can borrow my toothbrush," Riley offered "so long as you promise never to return it."

"Deal." Harry groaned, managing not to pass out as both girls took an arm and helped him to his feet.

The front door to their small bolthole rattled, then burst open. The three teens stood blinking and blinded into the light shone in their faces by multiple rifles.

"Wait." A woman's voice broke in, stalling their deaths. A shadow slunk forward and stepped into the light, a dark skinned woman holding her own gun which was lowered in shock.

"I don't believe it."

"Marlene." Riley straightened, relief and pride mixed with a satisfyingly smug sense of being right. "Told you so."

Knight Errant

The Fireflies escorted them out - or carried, in Harry's case. It was after dark, well after curfew, but this just gave them more freedom to move. It didn't take more than twenty minutes to pass into the slum-like East Town and settle into the heart of the Firefly camp.

"Where is everyone?" Riley asked, frowning around at the place that should have been crowded.

"Some are out on business, others left for other cities and the rest…" Marlene shrugged.

The rest are dead.

Once upon a time, Riley had thought there was no better way to die, than as a Firefly. At least then her death would be meaningful, not just another army grunt being told what to do and when to shit until the day she got infected and shot by her own unit.

Weird how that time felt so long ago when it had really been less than a fortnight. How had something so huge changed in so little time?

Ellie looked up at her, blue eyes glittering with emotion, pleading.

"Don't go."

Oh yeah. That.

But even after, with Ellie bitten and days of waiting for her to turn, hours upon hours of wiping up puke and trying to get some food into her 'n Harry and snatching only a handful of catnaps in between…

She hadn't once wished she was back with the Fireflies. When Marlene had left them there… she hadn't exactly been surprised, but she'd sure had her eyes opened. The Fireflies might mean well but they were really just flip sides of the future she'd run away from. Orders and danger and being left to die alone.

It was just a germ of a new attitude, small and new and barely even noticed… but it was there. Because of it, she followed Ellie and the Brit into their makeshift infirmary and pretended not to see the gesture to wait at the door. Ellie looked relived at being directed to lie down on a plastic-coated-but-clean new bed. Harry seemed to have reacted to the indignity of being carried by taking a nap and this didn't change as he was carefully lowered onto a second bed.

"They need IVs, both of them." She told a waiting doctor who looked sour at being told anything. "They've both been spewing pretty much non-stop for days. There's no way they're not dehydrated."

"They're infected?" The doctor directed the question at Marlene, hand moving to pick up a tiny syringe - government issued neurotoxin, guaranteed to kill in under ten seconds. Ellie's sleepy eyes widened.

Riley found her gun in hand, steady and aimed centre-mass at the doc. A heartbeat later and Marlene's glock brushed the side of her head.

"Put it down." The Firefly leader said firmly.

"Him first." Riley replied, just as pleasantly. There was a hanging second where it could have gone either way before Marlene jerked her head and the doctor put his syringe of death back on a shelf.

Riley lowered her gun, clicked the safety on and stowed it.

"Both were bitten." She reported simply, Marlene's gun still on her and a quiet Firefly execution not quite off the cards just yet. "Neither turned. I just spent four miserable days keeping them alive, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't waste all that time and effort, okay?"

"Run a full spectrum of tests." Marlene weighed in, finally stowing her own weapon. "Standard safety protocol but otherwise - treat them well. Get them back to good health."

"You got it." The doc lifted his eyebrows but obeyed, making use of pre-installed straps to restrain both teens at ankle and wrist - Ellie shifting nervously - before installing some simple saline IVs and beginning his examination.

Riley found Ellie's eyes and forced a reassuring look. She knew - she knew - that they'd dodged a bullet. She didn't know what the docs would find when they ran the tests Marlene had ordered but they'd have no reason to put them down while her back was turned.

She gave the doc the rundown on both of his new patients - estimated times of infection and onset of symptoms, how Harry had suffered multiple violent seizures and delusions but both had suffered vomiting and fever for days. How Ellie retained signs of infection at her bite site but Harry didn't.

She was allowed to stay, mostly because Ellie was awake and anxious and partly because there really was nothing else she could tell them or do for anyone. She took a chair at Ellie's bedside, exhausted and wishing she could find a bed and sleep instead but not willing to do so while Ellie looked quite so scared.

Time passed. The doc took blood samples, checked both teens' wounds - paying particular attention to Ellie's - and re-cleaned and wrapped them both. Riley was just realising that someone had probably brought Harry's junk to base with them and she should maybe go make sure nobody tried to pawn the guy's stuff off, when the doc came over with a PCD.

"I'll do it." Riley offered, more to keep herself awake than anything else. The doc looked at her suspiciously but handed it over. It was simple enough to use and all the kids at boarding school were taught to do so. Just press the sensor up against the skull behind the ear and pull the trigger.

Harry scanned clean. She stared at the blinking green result, hardly able to believe it despite her hopes, and scanned him again.

Clean.

Huh.

The doctor was surprised too - he'd seen the wound, knew it was a bite mark - but shrugged it off as a theoretically-possible 'dry bite'. Salivary glands could be damaged or malfunction even in normal humans let alone ones with fungus growing through their heads - and without them, infection through bites was much less likely.

Ellie swallowed tightly when it was her turn to be scanned. She wasn't so lucky.

INFECTED glared up at them from the device's tiny screen. Ellie read the result on her face and turned away. Riley handed the device back to the doc, who was regarding them both with a sort of wary compassion.

Ellie turned over and closed her eyes. Riley fetched her and Harry a blanket then, when Ellie seemed determined to ignore her, left to go find their stuff.

It was okay, she reminded herself. They'd survived. Ellie was okay. She wasn't gonna die.

She wasn't.

Knight Errant

A few more days passed. The doctor did his tests and frowned over Ellie's injury, which got neither better nor worse except for the open wounds closing. Both her and Harry regained their strength as fluids and food kept coming and Riley finally managed to catch some rest herself as it became obvious that nobody would be killing anyone any time soon.

Nobody could explain why but it seemed like Ellie's infection had just… stopped. She'd lost the fight, according to the doc, but for some reason the infection just… hadn't moved to stage one yet. They had an xray machine but it was an old piece of junk, barely good enough to find bullets and set bones by. The doc wasn't sure if there was a shadow in her head or not.

Marlene came by only rarely, busy as she was with running the entire Boston division of the Fireflies but very very interested in the pair of anomalies.

"The girl is infected." The doctor confirmed after every test he could possibly run with his limited equipment had been done more than once. "Her blood and breath tests both contain the typical markers and I'm sure the smudge in her xray isn't a flaw in the machine. There is definitely a shadow there and it's getting bigger - but here's the kicker: It's not as big as it should be and so far seems to be remaining in the cerebral-spinal fluid."

"So far?" Marlene repeated. The doctor nodded grimly.

"Yeah. I don't know why it's moving so slowly but it is moving. It is progressing. It hasn't sunk any roots into her brain yet though, hence her current health."

"But it will eventually?"

The doctor shrugged.

"No idea. Statistically, I want to say yes. That this is just a, a slower form of infection. But, that wouldn't account for why the shadowed parts of her brain haven't infested the tissue even though there's clearly enough fungal mass to show up in the first place. It doesn't make sense and I have no idea why. The only thing I can say with any degree of surety is that she is unlikely to be capable of being 're-infected'. Just like with all the other samples, once a body has spore markers in their blood or lungs, newly introduced spores remain dormant."

"Any progress in replicating those damned markers?" The woman grumbled, knowing there wouldn't be - especially not from this poorly-furnished doctor's clinic. The markers were themselves fully self-contained fungal parcels. Any one of them had the potential to grow suddenly and often did, later in a host's life or after their death, to produce infectious spores. An odd side effect however was that any further fungal material or spore introduced to an already-infected person or sample had no effect. Somehow, maybe chemically, the new material seemed to recognise that an infection was already established and just went dormant, eventually either consumed by the original infection or flushed from the system. This had been the first things researches had focused on but all attempts to reproduce or replicate them had failed - either by infecting the test subjects or utterly failing in tricking .

"So, although she's not even a Stage 1 infected yet after two weeks and change, she could still get there. But she might not. What about the boy?"

"Ah, now, that was interesting. At first, I thought he'd just survived a dry-bite and not actually been infected at all - if that were the case then an introduction of spores to his blood sample should have resulted in unchecked development."

Marlene shifted. This was new - and promising.

"The spore didn't react?" She assumed.

He grinned.

"Better. His immune system destroyed it."

Marlene's brain derailed.

That was… "Impossible." She breathed. Nobody beat infection. It multiplied too fast, the body reacting too slowly.

"I thought I was seeing things." The doctor agreed. "I just wish we had the fancy equipment that recorded whatever you looked at - I swear, I saw his white blood cells divide. They replicated themselves on the spot to swamp the spores."

"…No." She said flatly. "I remember high school biology. That's not how white blood cells work. They're produced in a person's bone marrow-"

"You don't have to tell me that." He interrupted. "I didn't get my degree out of a cereal box. Look, maybe I… maybe I misunderstood what I saw. Maybe it's some weird mutation of an older infection. Maybe… fuck, maybe I just need my eyes checked. I'm just tellin' you what I saw because a) it's fuckin' crazy and b) if it gets confirmed by the guys at HQ, I wanna go on record as seeing it first."

She snorted and shook her head.

"And if they don't?" She smirked.

He nodded in amused acknowledgment.

"If they don't, please forget I said said anything."

Knight Errant

The day after that, she briefed the most trustworthy of her troops about just what kind of fluke miracle had dropped in their laps - and what they needed to do about it before it was too late.

"Maybe we should hand them into the FDRA." Someone at the back - Aaron - suggested, unflinching as most of the room shot him incredulous or hateful looks.

"Seriously." He pushed off the wall. "They're oppressive, pitiless bastards who wouldn't know liberty if it slapped them in the face - but they're not some cartoon villains. They want a cure just as much as we do-"

"Yeah but they'd take the fucking credit-" Shorn-haired Sue Ann snapped.

"What are we, teenagers?" Aaron shot back. "Who fucking cares who gets the credit, this is about saving lives and staving off extinction."

"It does matter." Marlene cut calmly into the argument, dark eyes flicking between both combatants and out over the room. "Because whether we like it or not, a vaccine is the biggest weapon either side can have. Sure, the government's greater resources will probably get results sooner, despite discontinuing their research years ago - and that's a good thing . But, it'll make them heroes in the eyes of the public and that'll let them excuse all the crimes they've committed in order to get there. The usurpation of civilian government, the border executions, the bombings, the segregation of 'undesirables' and the weak, indoctrination of children, the work groups and meager rations and total lack of health care - all of it, swept away, and with no guarantee that having a vaccine will see any of our liberties restored or those injustices halted."

Mutters back and forth agreed with her.

"But if we control the vaccine?" She drove the point home. "We gain the power to end it all. To start a new government, made legitimate by the droves of people who'd rather be inoculated than guarded. To trade with foreign groups for anything we need - supplies, armaments, food, technology, expertise.

To get. Our country. Back."

"Hell fucking yeah!" Sue Ann roared, several others cheering or shouting along with her.

Marlene watched them all, their spirits lifted by relief and a sense of imminent victory. Everything they fought for suddenly felt so close.

Word would get out, though. People talked, people had friends and families who'd never turn their loved ones in but would circulate this new hope until, sooner or later, the wrong ears caught wind of it. The army would come looking, whether they believed it or not. Recruitment for the Fireflies would increase but so would the hunt for them. It wasn't safe to just put the kids on a truck and ship them out under guard.

No. This needed to be quiet. No fuss and as few people knowing about the operation as possible. Aaron was proof that hope could sway a man to the other side - and she couldn't blame him for it neither. All of them dreamed of a tomorrow without fear and it was human nature to link all their problems to the outbreak. Get rid of the monster in the dark and everything would be okay - that's what the child inside them all would like to believe.

But they couldn't afford to listen to that child. She, couldn't afford it. Not with so many lives and future freedoms resting on her shoulders.

She slipped out as the meeting broke down into celebration, her mind made up.

She'd contact Robert. The smuggler was a weasel, but one who understood the importance of being seen as reliable - especially to one of his biggest customers. He was wealthy enough to ensure that certain officials regularly looked the other way, too.

For the sake of the world, they needed every advantage they could get.

Knight Errant

"I'm going."

Marlene breathed out through her nose, reaching for patience. This girl had been a pain since the day they'd met. Bull-headed, brash, too young and stupid to be anything but dangerous - but with youth came passion and the Fireflies were scraping the barrel these days.

She shouldn't have waited. She should have just sent the girl away without giving her time to say her goodbyes.

…Then again, if she hadn't, Ellie would probably still be safe in school and Harry might have died in the mall. The Fireflies might never have gotten this bitter miracle.

"You're not." She refused flatly. "You're gonna ship out with the rest of the newbies, as planned, for some much-needed training - before you get someone else infected."

"HEY!" Ellie snapped, quick to anger and storming forward in her friend's defence.

God it was strange to see so much of her old friend in Ellie. The set of her eyes, stubbornness that could beat a mule and fear mixed with bluster that could look like bravery in the right light. For a long moment, she just looked. Took her fill of the girl who might not even survive the journey to HQ. The girl she'd promised Anna to look after but who was infected at fourteen.

Ellie's life was over already. Even if the cordyceps didn't ever develop further, the little girl who'd once played with dinosaurs at her feet was already living on borrowed time.

And the clock was ticking down.

She glanced over at the boy and, for just a second, hated him. Why had he escaped infection and not Ellie? Why did he get to sit there, green eyes watching her like a wary cat, safe and sound with a long life ahead of him? Fame too probably, since he'd be the only survivor if a vaccine was found. History would remember him, while Ellie faded into obscurity.

She turned her gaze back to Ellie and cut through the girl's angry words.

"Riley is a Firefly now. That means following orders. That means being smart, and not breaking into a quarantined area to have a good time." She glanced up at the girl in question who was tense with well-deserved embarrassment.

"Now, I thought Riley was mature enough to understand that. Since she clearly isn't, I'm not even gonna consider sending her along as escort on such an important job. End of discussion."

"Then I'm not going." Ellie folded her arms and lifted her chin.

Marlene scowled. "You don't have a choice." She snapped. "We can sedate you and ship you just as easily - not that I should even need to threaten that! Grow up Ellie! This is bigger than you, than Riley, than all of us! Whatever's happened to you could be the key to finding a vaccine - for the whole world, do you understand? That mall you were playing in? One day that might be normal again. One day we might not need walls and safe zones and ration cards. One day, this hellhole we're barely surviving might just be a footnote in history but it won't ever be if you can't get your shit together!"

It was only as she ran out of words that she realised she'd been shouting. Ellie was looking down, shoulders hunched under her verbal blows. Riley was almost vibrating with anger but contented herself with meeting her eyes and setting her shoulders. Rebellious, but smart enough to realise that arguing wouldn't get her any favours right now.

In the silence, the boy slid from his bed to his feet. His clothes had been washed and someone had made an attempt to repair his jacket - and it was from under that jacket that he pulled a damned gun.

Marlene went very still. Harry placed the gun on the bed, still within easy reach, calm as you please but no less threatening for it.

"Riley, is the only reason that I'm alive right now." He said quietly, soft vowels bookended by an old-fashioned sort of authority. "She should have shot me. Instead, she nursed me and Ellie through a dangerous, miserable experience. She is the only person in the country who I have any reason to trust and, I'm sure you will understand, if anyone other than her tries to make me go anywhere, I will do my level best to kill them."

Another silence reigned as everyone in the room recalibrated their brains.

Riley slid the boy a small, incredulous, grateful look. Ellie slowly started to smile.

Marlene narrowed her eyes, but… what was the fucking point? This wasn't a fight worth having. If having the girl along got both invaluable survivors to their destination with minimal fuss? Fine. Once they reached HQ, the sixteen year old Firefly would fall into line or be quietly shot.

She sighed, forcing herself to relax, and Ellie's smile became a grin.

"Fine." She agreed. "Riley can go with you-" she caught the girl's eye "as backup."

Riley nodded slightly, understanding the implied order. She, along with any other Firefly sent, would be charged with Harry and Ellie's safety. She'd be expected to lay down her life to preserve theirs. This wasn't a vacation - this was a job she wasn't worthy of, so she'd better damn well prove herself.

"Alright then." She sighed. "Pack up. Sally will double-check your bags and get you anything you might be missing. Be ready to move on a moment's notice - you're leaving Boston tonight."

Knight Errant

Unlike TOPF, this story won't be following canon. That means it'll be slower to update. I'd also like it to be somewhat collaborative so if you have anything you'd like to see - please do speak up! I can tell you right now that Riley, Ellie and Harry will be making their own way without any help. Also, I'm a foreigner, so I'm just browsing google maps and randomly picking places for them to go! There has to be a better system than that.