"She should be fine," Anne says.

"Should be?" Jimmy asks worried.

"Well as long as she doesn't get an infection," Anne answers.

"Ok, so why hasn't she woken up yet?"

"She lost a lot of blood. Her body has to recover. I would give her a transfusion, but I don't have the proper tools."

"Can I sit with her?" Jimmy asks.

"Yeah sure," Anne says. I hear the footsteps and the scrap of a chair. I feel a hand put over mine.

"She'll be Ok," I can just barely hear Anne say.

"I know but still," Hal says.

After a moment Anne speaks again. "She will be fine. You should be with Matt and Ben. Hopefully your dad and Weaver will be back soon."

"Ok get me if she wakes up," Hal says and a few seconds later I hear a door close.

I'm just finished tying my shoes when Hal walks in.

"You shouldn't be getting out of bed", he says.

"Don't worry, Anne said I could," I say and when I look up at him, his face is full of grief and worry.

"What's wrong?" I ask.

He gives a little laugh. "How can you tell?"

"Hal?" I say trying to get back to the topic.

"It's my Dad. Weaver just returned, but my Dad he wasn't with him. Weaver said they took him," he tells me and I actually think he may start crying. I walk up to him and give him a tight hug, but I don't say anything.

When I pull away, he says "I still have to tell Matt and Ben."

He sits on the cot and I sit next to him.

"You won't be alone. I'll be there, so will Anne, Weaver, and the entire Second Mass. You and Matt and Ben will not be alone," I say and he looks at me.

"You'll be there… when you passed out in my arms on the bike, I thought… I thought you might have been…," he trails off, not even able to say the words.

"It scared the hell out of me, and I realized that if you… died, I don't know what I would do with myself. For that split second before I realized you were still breathing, I was completely and utterly terrified that you had left me," he admits. My eyes widen at how he phrases the last part.

"And I realized that I didn't want to live without you," he says, finally looking at me. He places his barely shaking hand over mine and entwines his fingers in mine. I'm speechless and I can tell he's starting to think I don't feel the same way. So I lean toward him and touch my lips to his, just barely. I pull a few inches away to look into his eyes and smile. He moves his hand that isn't holding one of mine onto my arm and slowly trails upward. He moves his hand over my over my shoulder and gently over my neck to my cheek where he moves it into my hair. I take my hand and hold it there, pressing my cheek into it. He moves toward me and kisses me again, but this time with more passion. I move my hand to his hair and am about to deepen the kiss more when I hear gunfire and pull away.

We immediately jump up and race outside. Hal still has his weapon, but I don't have any. But then again I don't really need one.

"Follow me," Hal says and I run after him. We arrive at another smaller building. I realize that we were in a school; a boarding school with many small buildings. We weave through all the fighters until we get inside the building. Weaver's just coming out as we go in.

"Laura, nice to see you on your feet," he says and tosses me a loaded gun.

"Let's go figure out what's going on," Weaver says and he brushes past us. I look at Hal and give him a smile. He just told me how he felt when he thought I was dead and now I'm being put into danger again. He must be feeling something about that. We follow Weaver toward the gunfire and when we get there we see two fighters firing at a skitter and four at a Mech. They must've been another patrol. We race down a grassy hill and I kneel behind a car for cover. Hal is right beside me and we start to fire at the Mech while Weaver goes for the skitter. After half my Mech ammo is gone I see something out of the corner of my eye.

I tap Hal's shoulder. "Hal."

"What?" he says looking at me in concern and I point. He looks over and I see a flash of the green skin that belongs to a skitter and hear the cries of a child over the firing of guns. I look at Hal and he gives me a similar look of understanding.

"Let's go," he says. I look to see the Mech occupied so I run out from behind the car and bolt toward the woods. Hal's right behind me and as we near the skitter I see we have a problem. The skitter is dragging a boy away. Not only is the boy shielding the skitter, but it's the identity of the boy that makes my heart drop as well. Because the boy the skitter has I know.

Matt.