When we first travelled from the cabin to the clearing, it had taken us close to an hour. We'd gone slowly, trying to avoid detection. The trip back was much different.

It was a panicked, frenzied car ride. Lia, Max, the Ortiz's, Jack, and I had piled into one car and taken off. The other three agents had stayed behind and only out of duty. We knew that there were likely some stragglers in the woods, escaped prisoners trying to find their way to safety. They would wait for as long as they were able, doing interval sweeps of the immediate surrounding area before heading for safety.

I'd learned that some of the escapees had already gone—several had been injured and had gotten on one of the few helicopters we had on standby out, some of the others had hopped into the car that was missing and headed out. I'd thought that they were headed back to the cabin but that had not. Instead, they were headed off to another rendezvous point, a secondary location I hadn't even known existed in the event that the cabin became compromised.

And now it appeared that it had.

Grace was driving with Jack sitting beside her. Every so often they spoke in low tones but it was clear that they didn't really know how to talk to each other. I knew that Daniel's parents had always been closer with my biological mother and had only met Jack a handful of times but it was clear that the years apart, years filled with distrust and fear and hatred, had taken its toll on everyone.

Malcolm was half-sprawled on the middle bench seat, eyes closed, as Lia tended his injuries as best as she was able with our limited amount of medical supplies. Max and I were in the very back. His hand was on my knee as I stared out the window in silence.

"It'll be alright," he murmured for my ears only. "He'll be fine."

"It's not just Daniel. Tasha and that MI6 agent...what if something happened to them? They're only here because I asked for help on this."

"And if you hadn't you'd probably be dead right now, Jack would still be in prison, along with a lot more innocent agents who now have the chance to get back to their families. Everyone involved volunteered for this mission, Melanie. We all knew the risks."

I turned to meet his eyes. They were strong and insistent and after a moment I released a breath and nodded. I knew that he was right. But there was still a part of me that wished I had attempted to go it alone.

It seemed like both minutes and hours before we finally pulled up at the cabin. In reality, it had been a little under a half-hour. The wheels on the car screeched to a stop, screaming at the speed at which we'd come flying in at. With lives at stake, we hadn't wasted any time and had instead pushed the vehicle as fast as we could until the little wood shack had come into view.

When I saw it, my heart sank. The door to the cabin was ajar and bullets from a gun were clearly the cause of the shattered windows. And by the door, on the frosted ground, was the first sure sign of blood.

"Oh, my god," Grace whispered.

"Bloody hell." Lia turned round to face Max and I, her eyes wide and skin very white.

The doors opened. Max and I had to wait until Malcolm had hobbled out of the car to jump into the seat in front of us and get out. By that point, Grace, Jack, and Lia were already inside of the house. The two of us ran as Malcolm moved as fast as he was able given his injuries. His face was lined with worry for his son.

Inside, the scene wasn't much better. Tables and chairs had been overturned and there were bullet holes on several of the walls. Five feet to the left of the door, a body lay in a pool of blood. It was the MI6 agent. A bullet had gone straight through her forehead.

"Daniel!" Grace exclaimed. She was crouched on the ground in the kitchen, bending over a prone frame. I moved in a state of shock into the kitchen, hoping and praying that somehow he was still breathing. I felt my own heart pause and stutter in my chest as I approached Grace and Malcolm who had finally made it into the cabin.

"Is he—?"

He was alive, but barely. I could see three visible bullet wounds, one on his leg, another on his hip and a third in the abdomen. Each area had pooled with red sticky blood but his chest was still rising and falling.

I felt like I could collapse to my knees. Instead, I raced back out to the car and got the medical supplies. Malcolm called for an extraction team as Grace and I patched Daniel up. Max and Lia were canvasing the rest of the cabin for Tasha. Jack was outside, surveying the area for any possible sign that the attackers were still here.

Max and Lia found Tasha in the bedroom. Her wrists and ankles were bound together and she'd been shot in the abdomen as well. Max began tearing strips of clothing into bandages. I didn't know where he was finding all of the old clothing but I did recognize the shirt I'd been wearing before I'd changed into the outfit that I was currently wearing being ripped to shreds.

It was incredible to me that both Tasha and Daniel were still alive. I couldn't believe the error of Scorpion to come in and not finish the job. Perhaps they'd been startled and forced to leave quickly. I didn't know...but I was grateful.

I knelt down next to Daniel, one of my hands holding tightly onto his. He was unconscious and his eyes moved beneath his closed lids. His hand was limp in my own but I held onto him like he was a lifeline and I was drowning in the ocean. Like if I let him go, I would lose myself.

He was so pale. His skin had turned sunken and sallow, the loss of blood making him appear sickly. He looked so close to death that I was starting to fear that each one might be his last. Grace and I had bandaged him as best as we could. We'd stitched up the wound but there was no way of knowing what kind of internal damage he had. We didn't know exactly where the bullets had gone but we knew that they were no longer inside of him. There were three distinct exit wounds on his backside.

Grace brushed his hair off of his forehead. She was sitting at his head, holding him half-cradled in her lap. Fresh tears fell from her eyes and landed on Daniel's skin. They rolled like little rivers down the side of his face, disappearing into the blanket that we'd placed beneath him on the ground. There was another covering his front to keep him warm.

Malcolm was sitting in a chair a few feet away. He looked ashen, skin almost as pale as his son's. It had been a struggle to get him to sit down. He'd been pacing but the more he walked the worse he looked and it wasn't until Grace finally snapped at him did he finally sit. His knee kept bouncing in agitation.

Footsteps sounded and Max walked into the room. He looked exhausted but I hardly noticed. I could hardly bring myself to look away from Daniel. It wasn't until Max crouched next to me did I even acknowledge him.

"How's Tasha?"

"Better than Daniel. She only had the one bullet wound. She had a few cuts and some bruising but it seems that it was the shot that caused her to lose consciousness. I think she must have been the last one to go down. The shot wasn't very well placed. I'd guess that whoever attacked them must have been startled in some way and left hastily. They probably assumed that Daniel was done for and Penelope was already down. I think they shot Tash and bolted."

"Will she live?"

"Yes, I think so."

I exhaled a breath I hadn't realized I was holding. Some of the weight slipped from my shoulders but I still carried a heavy burden. Daniel's life hanging in the balance. My brother's life still on the line. Tasha injured on a mission I asked her on. Brent injured in a hospital. It seemed like everyone I loved was in danger of dying.

I leaned into Max and he placed a hand on my shoulder comfortingly. At least he and Lia were okay. Them and—

"Can you go check on Jack?" I asked Max lowly. "He's outside keeping watch for the helicopter and I-I don't want to leave Daniel."

He nodded, squeeze my shoulder, and got to his feet. A moment later he was out the front door and I had turned away, focusing my attention on Daniel once more.

I'd thought he would be safe here in the cabin. I'd told him to stay behind, that it would be safer here. In reality, he'd probably have been safer with me. At least there, even in the middle of enemy territory, I could have watched his back. I could have kept him safe.

And to think that I'd told him we'd talk when I got back. It was a foolish thing to say. We should have talked when we had the chance. I should have been able to say everything that I'd been too afraid to say before. Even the things I still wasn't sure that I felt but should have said anyways just in case.

Like I love you. Was it true? I didn't know. Not completely. There was a part of me that loved him in a platonic friendship sort of way. But that part had been there from the moment I'd met him when we were children. It was the part that had morphed into something else, the part the changed the words from 'I love you' to 'I'm in love with you' that I wasn't sure still existed.

But I should have said it anyways. Just in case. I hadn't and now he could die. And if he did I would never, ever, forgive myself for getting him into this ridiculous mess in the first place.

I held onto him a little bit harder, mentally praying for him to be okay, and then I murmured to Grace and Malcolm that I was going to go check on Tasha.

I rose to my feet stiffly and walked with sure steps to the bedroom where Lia and Max had found her. Lia was sitting next to her in a position similar to the one that I'd been in with Daniel. She was holding Tasha's hand. Tasha, like Daniel, was draped in a blanket to keep her warm.

Lia looked up at me with eyes that were big and blue. "How is he?"

"Alive. For now." I swallowed thickly.

"He'll be fine, Mel. He's a fighter, that one."

"Yeah." I went to sit beside Lia and placed my hand on Tasha's arm. "They both are."

I felt just as bad as bringing Tasha into this situation as I had Daniel. Even though Tasha was a fully trained operative, she'd taken courses that were slightly different than Lia, Max, and I had. Like our other friend Henri, Tasha had committed more to the tech analyst side of covert operations. Her job would require her to be directing units on the best ways to proceed in a situation and how to keep the agents safe.

Because of this, her defence classes hadn't been as encompassing as the ones that Lia, Max and I had taken. Of course, she knew how to use weapons and hold her own in a fight, but her skills weren't as refined as the rest of ours were for the sole fact that she didn't need to use them as frequently.

Even though she was trained, same with Penelope the MI6 agent, we should have had enough sense to leave a field agent with them to keep them safe just in case. We'd just assumed that the cabin was secluded enough that they would be safe while we tackled the dragon inside of the mountain.

Max rushed back into the room, carrying a stiff red portable emergency stretcher. "The helicopters are here. They've sent two."

"Let's go."

We loaded Tasha up onto it and then Max and I carried her out towards the waiting helicopter. Daniel and his parents were already loaded up in the first and it was taking off just as we got Tasha into the second. The rest of us, Lia, Max, Jack, and myself, hopped into the other chopper and it took off, following the first into the night.

*~*~*

"Is he still in surgery?"

I looked up as Jack came to stand before me. We were sitting in a hospital in Munich, waiting for news on Daniel. Tasha had come out of surgery relatively quickly. Her wounds, as we'd predicted, were minimal. Most were simple flesh wounds. They would be painful but she'd heal.

We still didn't know about Daniel. The doctors had sent news out once in the few hours that we'd been sitting here but it hadn't been very telling and so we waited in fear of bad news. It was only Grace, Malcolm, Jack and myself in the waiting room. Lia and Max were with Tasha. I'd gone to check in on them a few times but Tasha was still sleeping and so I'd grabbed teas for my other friends and gone back to fretting.

"Yes." It was a tight, tense little word.

Jack nodded and took a drink from his cup. He was drinking coffee and I noticed that he drank it black like I did. "If he's anything like his parents, he'll pull through. They're tough people. He'll be fine."

"I hope so."

"You and I," he started slowly after another minute had passed. "We should talk. There's an empty room around the corner. One of the nurses said that we could use it if we needed to rest."

I closed my eyes. It was the last thing I wanted to do at that moment but also the thing I wanted to do most. Everything I'd been doing, all the running and the bullets, had been leading up to this moment. Now that it was here, especially under these circumstances, I wasn't sure that I wanted it anymore.

But it was necessary and so I rose to my feet and nodded him on. Grace and Malcolm watched us go but said nothing. I got the feeling that they were slightly glad to see us leave.

Jack ushered me into a bland hospital room right around the corner from where they'd put Tasha in recovery. I went to sit on one of the two beds as he closed the door behind us. He sat down on the one across from me.

"You look so like your mother," he said. "It's why I called you by her name before. You're almost an exact replica of her. Except for the eyes."

"So I've been told. Brent and Lydia Grimes showed me a photograph of the two of you. I do have to admit that the resemblance was pretty uncanny."

"Yes, it is." His eyes, my eyes, stared back at me. "How did you find me? How did you even learn who I was? Your mother and I...we told Duncan and Casey not to tell you about us. It was too dangerous."

I felt something in me break at the mention of my parents. I hadn't forgotten about their deaths, that could never happen, but there had been a part of me which had hidden it away and made it so I hadn't thought about it. Like a curtain had been covering it in the dusty abyss of my subconscious.

"They, um, they never told me. I found out on my own. Sort of. My friends were the ones who helped me realize that I was adopted. It was Grace who told me your names. My parents, Duncan and Casey," I corrected as Jack winced and I felt a twinge of guilt, "they're dead."

Jack's eyes flashed with pain. "No. How?"

"Mom was killed in a deliberate hit-and-run and dad got shot. My brother, Wes, he was taken by Scorpion. They have him now. They gave me until July seventh to get to them and deliver Vavilov's research or they would kill him."

Jack's jaw clenched. "I knew there was a reason they had regained a sudden interest in me. I mean, they've always been after Alexi's work and me but never have they been after it with such passion and ferocity. They must be planning something big for it."

"Do you have it?"

"No. I know where it is but you would never get to it in time to save your brother and even then...I couldn't give something like that up. Not to them. No matter how much I want to help you save Wesley's life, I cannot do it at the expense of the millions of lives which will be lost if Scorpion gets their hands on his work. I'm sorry."

I shook my head. I'd been thinking along the same lines anyways. I loved my brother but I couldn't give Vavilov's work to a bunch of power-hungry, mass-murdering, psychopaths.

"I figured as much," I said. "Which is why I'm not going to ask you to tell me anything about Alexi Vavilov's work. The less people who know about that, the better. I need something else from you."

Jack's eyes went hard and calculating. Not defensive, but like he was slipping into a mode that would allow him to tackle whatever challenge I was getting ready to throw at him. "Name it."

"I need to know everything that you know about Scorpion including where they might be holding my brother. No one knows that organization better than you do. I don't have much time. Only a few days and I need to get to him. He's waiting for me to come and save his life and I need to do that."

And so we talked.

In order for me to get a clear idea of the terrorist group which was holding my brother hostage, Jack felt it was best to start at the beginning. He spoke to me about his days at Oaks, including his involvement with Randall Walker, the man who now ran the European branch of Scorpion. He'd taken over for his father who, along with Randall, had originally recruited Jack to join their ranks.

It was Randall Walker, Jack told me, who wanted Vavilov's research desperately. It had been his father's dying wish to get it and when he'd died, Randall had taken up the hunt for it.

It was Randall Walker who had issued the mission to kill my parents in an attempt to bring me home.

It was Randall Walker who kidnapped my brother and wanted to use me as leverage against Jack before disposing of us all.

Everything seemed to lead back to him. This whole mess was because he had decided to befriend my father when they were only fourteen. Had he targeted another boy, my life could have been entirely different. I could have grown up like Lia with parents who lived this life and knew the cost of living it. Instead, the life I had caused me to bring those I loved into pain and misery without preamble. They had no forewarning about what the world was really about.

Jack's fingers kept twining and untwining. He was staring at the floor as his voice took on a very dark tone. "Randall was the one who ordered your mother's death. He knew that he didn't need the both of us alive and he remembered that we'd been friends in school. He assumed that it was Elizabeth who had turned me. He didn't realize that I'd been a double agent the entire time and that I'd never been his man.

"When we went on the run after leaving you with your aunt and uncle, Randall told his men that if they came across us then to kill Elizabeth and take me alive since I would be more cooperative without her around. He never realized the extent of our relationship. How in love we were.

"We were camped out in Rio when they caught up with us. We'd been there a few months. It was too long. We got comfortable and it cost your mother her life. They tried to catch me but I managed to get away. She died almost three years after we left you. It's been almost fourteen years since she died..."

I knew this already. Giulia had told me when they'd caught up to them and killed her. Hearing it from her hadn't really been shocking or gut-wrenching, but hearing the pain in Jack's voice, pain that still sounded fresh, caused something to twist painfully in my stomach.

"I left Rio and headed to a small town in Moldova. I stayed there a few weeks to gather myself. I planned, got supplies in order and then left. I refused to get comfortable. I knew that Randall was looking for me