his parents and those other people...He knows they're in Moscow...He sent in bombers...They had orders...If you didn't join him...or if you got out alive."

I'd thought the fear was gone. I thought I finally had everything back. And now it was all about to be destroyed once again. Daniel and Grace and Malcolm. Lia and Tasha. Jack. They were all at the hospital in Moscow. They were all at risk.

"Shit!" 

My voice was lost in the wind as a helicopter appeared and made to land on the roof. Wes and I hung back, hair whipping about as Henri brought the helicopter down. The moment after it touched the rooftop, he was flinging the door open. I ushered Wes inside as the door on the other side of the roof flung open.

Max and Patrick stumbled out. Their clothing was dirty and they were both covered in blood and dust. Max was clutching his shoulder and I could see blood seeping through his fingers. They ran across the roof towards us and were just past the half-way point when it happened.

There was an echoing bang. Max flinched from the sound but kept running. Patrick faltered and fell, his abdomen staining with dark red blood.

"No!" I yelled. Reflexively, I began to run towards him. I passed Max, sent him continuing on to the chopper even as he yelled my name.

Patrick was gasping for breath and clutching at his side. Blood began to flow down through his shirt to splatter on the pavement.   He suddenly looked very pale.  

I looked around, searching for the shooter with my gun held low and ready, and saw him. Randall Walker was surging towards me, his face an angry mask. He was holding a gun. Together, we raised our weapons. Together, we fired. But we did not fall together. I did not fall at all.

There was enough time for Randall's face to morph from an expression of anger to an expression of shock before the bullet lodged in his brain and he fell to the ground, dead. His eyes were open and unseeing.

I rushed back to Patrick's side. Henri and Max and Wes were yelling for me. The door to the roof flung open again and more of Walker's men flooded out towards us.

"Go," Pat whispered. His voice was deathly frail. He was looking in the same direction I was. "I'm not going to make it. Go!"

I'd made plenty of hard decisions. Done lots of things I hadn't wanted to do. I'd put so many people's lives in danger, even caused the deaths of a few of them. But leaving Patrick alive, knowing he would be killed in a moment's time, was the hardest thing I'd had to do yet.

"I'm sorry," I said as I rose to my feet and prepared to leave behind the man who had been my first kiss. My first date. My first boyfriend.

"I know."

I turned to run back to the helicopter. Bullets sprayed after me. One grazed my calf. Another very narrowly avoided my neck. But then I was in the chopper and the door was sliding shut and Henri was taking off, getting us far away from Scorpion and our dying friend.

No one wanted to talk. I could feel it in the air as I went about patching up Max's shoulder as best as I could.  Henri was staring darkly out the window.  Max's eyes were closed with the pain that came from losing a friend and not the kind that came as a result of his injury.  My pain was only internal.  I could feel every beat of my heart aching for the man we'd left behind.  The man who could only be dead now. 

Wes was pale and shaky beside me but alive. Despite the somber mood, the happiness in me was battling against the sorrow in my heart for my brother was alive. Alive and well and we were finally reunited.  

Then, Henri stilled in the front seat as he listened to something that came in over the radio.  The words were half-static and my head was pounding too much for me to be able to focus on them clearly.  From the way the colour drained from his face, what little of it was left anyways, I knew it wasn't good.

"Henri?" I asked timidly.  "What's wrong?  What happened?"

Max opened his eyes and fixed them on Henri.  We waited, all three of us in the back, with baited breath until Henri spoke.  "Melanie, your brother telling the truth. Scorpion sent bombers to Moscow. There were...there were casualties."

And then I leaned back against the seat and felt my heart drop into my stomach as he continued to talk and allowed myself, finally, to cry.