Nora was incredibly accurate with her guess on how long it would take to drive to her stash of weapons, two days exactly, and that was including stops for bathroom breaks. It didn't take us long to prepare for the trip either, taking two cars and piling into them with supplies we may need, most notably food. It turned out that we were even lower on ammunition that I thought, because when I went into the armory to grab us a few boxes of bullets, I had to stop and stare at just how few we had left.

I only took a few, leaving the majority for the rebellion just in case, but there were barely fifty boxes left. Part of me wanted to ask how it got so bad, and how the supplies had run so low without us noticing, but that would have been a pretty pointless question, really. Ever since escaping from the Con Rồng four months ago, I'd been completely distracted by my own life, and I'd been neglecting my duties as a member of this military, of course I hadn't noticed.

Meeting Beckett and Orion so long ago, although really it hadn't been that long, reuniting with Maggie only to lose her, Lailani returning with Josie, uncovering the fact that she and Dmitri knew Vinet Ivanov on a personal level; the painful discovery that Lailani was indirectly the cause of her own son being kidnapped and tortured for eleven damn years.

So much had happened in just four months, and I felt... somehow much older than I actually was. I felt like I'd grown in maturity as well as literal age, and it was overwhelming to say the least. Even if we were getting low on supplies, though, that wouldn't stop me from fighting back, and I knew for a fact it wouldn't stop any of us. This rebellion existed for one thing, to take down the new government and free this god forsaken world from its clutches.

Sitting in the back of one of the cars, my arms folded over the door so my chin could sit on my forearms and my eyes could follow the landscape as it rushed by, my mind wandered back to Diego Manuela, and the things he'd said in answer to my questions. Saying it out loud would make me sound as crazy as he was, but... he did have a point...

The world before the war was just as bad as it was now. Hell, it was worse. I remembered how uneasy my father always seemed when watching political newscasts, with the American President giving a speech that people actually cheered for. The man was driving the country into the ground, and even my father said it, that war was inevitable, we were just steers awaiting slaughter.

I remembered... when the President died, was assassinated, by Demi it turns out, my father cried tears of joy. He thought everything would be okay, that with the tyrant good and dead, then maybe we could heal from his influence, but God was he wrong. The world back then was chaotic, and maybe it was chaotic now as well, but at least this chaos was predictable and equal.

It was a double-edged knife. Had the world not ended, I never would have met Beckett and Orion, but Ronnie would also be alive. If I was getting technical about it, I probably would have met Beckett eventually, he was Ronnie's cousin after all, but I wouldn't have met Orion. Or, hell, maybe I would have. With my love of the sky, I probably would have eventually found my way to that museum where Orion had literally been raised.

Yea. Somehow, I knew that even if the world hadn't of ended, we would have found each other regardless, and maybe we wouldn't have been lovers, Beckett would have married Shiloh, I would have stayed with Ronnie, we all could have been friends. It was... such a melancholy feeling.

This world was in ruins, but it really didn't look much different than it used to. Diego was right. The world was better this way, it needed to be taught this lesson, but I would never forgive it for taking my family from me. Even my mother. Especially Ronnie. I wouldn't let it take anything else from me.

The little town we cruised into was entirely abandoned, which made for easy and safe access I admit, but it was so quiet it made my nerves flutter in discomfort, staying close to Beckett and Orion as we followed Nora towards one building in particular. It seemed to be even more bombed out than the rest, but when Nora threw aside a few planks of wood and sheet metal, she revealed a chained up and padlocked door leading down into a cellar.

"What is this place?" I asked finally, looking over my shoulder back towards the cars were Carina, Logan, and Cass were watching the vehicles.

"Once upon a time it used to be a tiny retirement community, sort of," Nora explained, searching in her pockets before pulling out a key, "It had a population of forty, no school, one gas station, in the middle of legitimate nowhere as you can tell, but it was nice," she smiled somewhat wistfully back at me, "My grandparents lived here."

"Oh..."

"Oh don't worry," she waved a hand, "They died ages before the war, left this old place to me, I figured it was the perfect place to store all my supplies," she unlocked the padlock and yanked the chains out of place before throwing them aside and opening the doors, "Grab your lights, boys."

Flashlights in hand, the three of us followed Nora down into the cellar, just for kicks I flipped the switch I found on the wall, but of course no lights came on, so we had to settle for the flashlights. We definitely weren't expecting to see what we walked into, black cases of weapons, duffel bags filled with bullets, some supplies just thrown here, some set up and covered in a layer of dust. Inconvenient only because it would take us ages to clean all of these weapons, but hell, there were a lot.

"Where did you get all this?" Orion asked, wiping dust off what appeared to be a machine gun, his eyes wide.

"Lotsa places. When the world went to shit I started to stock up on everything I could get my hands on, even raided the old military base near my hometown when it was abandoned. I figured I'd need this stuff eventually, so I kept it all."

"Nora?" she turned to me, and I grinned, "You're awesome."

She winked back at me, "I already know that, baby doll."

"Considering how the rebellion eats up ammo, this probably won't last forever," Beckett was saying, holding a duffel bag and searching through it, "but it'll keep for a year, maybe six months. The low supplies are still a problem, just not as big a problem as it used to be."

"That's the best we can hope for at this point," Orion decided, pulling guns off the wall and stuffing them into bags, "Let's get going before someone spots us."

"This place is abandoned," Nora laughed, "No one would be within a mile of it!"

We all turned when we heard rapid footsteps to see Carina hiking down the stairs, stopping at the last one with a tight look on his face, "We just spotted someone heading into town from the east."

Silence answered, and I turned to Nora, "Thanks for jinxing us, lesbo."

"Where?" Orion asked as he pulled his gun out, dropping the bag to the ground and walking towards his brother, "Where's everyone else?"

"Logan's got a position on the roof across the street, Cass is behind the cars," Carina explained as he turned to hike back up the stairs.

The rest of us followed, guns drawn, and I knelt at the entrance of the cellar with Nora as Beckett and Orion ran over to the cars with Carina. My eyes found Logan on the roof and I shook my head a little. He must have had a clear shot from there, so why wasn't he taking it? My only guess was that whoever was coming wasn't much of a threat, but I kept that hope at the back of my mind. What were the odds of having a single stroke of luck at that point?

The person who came into town appeared to be on foot, and although I couldn't see clearly from the distance I was at, I still knew that was an immediate red card. In this day and age, if you could find a vehicle, you would not be walking, but it seemed the man had been walking a good long while, because he was swaying dangerously, limping heavily, his right arm reaching across his chest to cling to his left shoulder.

The clothes he was wearing were ratted, I could tell even at this distance, hanging on his frame and stained with uneven blotches of red, in all honesty, he looked like a zombie, but I couldn't make out any distinctive features until he was almost in front of me. When I could finally get a good look, I stopped breathing, Beckett and Orion stepped out from behind the cars, and my heart raced in panic.

"Stop where you're standing," Orion ordered calmly, though his eyes were narrowed in warning, just daring the newcomer to make a wrong move, "You came from the direction of the Con Rồng. Who are you?"

"Tobias...," was the murmured response, and I lifted my hand to my mouth as Beckett lowered his gun while arching an eyebrow, obviously recognizing the name.

"You don't look like a Tobias," he stated, and I pushed myself to my feet to run forward.

"Wait a minute, stop!"

Beckett smiled a little as I stepped in front of them, "Déjà vu much?"

"What's wrong?" Orion asked me, lowering the gun so it wasn't aimed at me, and I blurted out before I could even think twice.

"This guy is a friend! His name is Carter Abbott, he helped Demi and I get out of the Con Rồng!"

"Oh, this is him," Beckett hummed as I turned on my heel to see Carter clearly.

I was finally close enough to see him clearly, and my heart leapt into my throat before stuttering. He looked God awful. His red hair was tangled and hung in his green eyes, once incredibly bright, but now pale, hazy. There were uneven and discolored bruises blotched along his pale face like watercolor paint, purple, yellow, and black. There were cuts beneath his left eye, which was half closed, and they appeared to have been cleaned up sloppily, because there were dry streaks of blood trailing down his cheek, flaking off, obviously old.

His lips were cut, and his breathing was labored, swaying dangerously where he stood, and I was stunned when I noticed he wasn't even wearing shoes. The clothes he was wearing were obviously not his, they were too big and baggy, hanging on his frail form, sleeves covering his hands, the jeans bunched up at his ankles. At first, he seemed to be confused at my appearance, until some semblance of recognition flickered into his gaze.

"Fucking hell, what happened to you?" I asked on a whisper walking closer and lifting my hands up in case he got startled by my approach, "It's been nearly four months since you got us out!"

He seemed somewhat startled by that, though his reaction was delayed, eyes widening half of a fraction before he murmured, "Four... months..."

After standing there staring at me for a moment, not really seeing me, something seemed to break in his eyes, and I stepped closer, tugging the coat I was wearing off of my shoulders, "He needs help," I said, draping the coat over Carter's shoulders as his cloudy eyes lifted to my face, "Fuck, come on Carter," I squeezed his shoulders a little, "I said you'd be safe with us and I meant it."

Something eyes seemed to filter into his eyes, pure exhaustion, and the green of his iris paled even more, attempting to take a step forward to follow me. I suppose I should've been expecting him to collapse the way he did, eyes rolling and head tilting as he simply fell, his knees hitting the road before his body slumped, eyes focused ahead but not really seeing.

"Shit!" I fell to kneel in front of him, but he wasn't reacting to me any longer as I frame his face with my hands, attempting to get his attention, "Beckett, get the car. Hurry."

I didn't look to make sure he was doing it, I knew he would, and Orion appeared beside me an instant later, kneeling down and waving a hand in front of Carter's face before setting his fingers against the side of his neck before speaking.

"He's in shock. I can't tell what injuries he has right now, but we need to get him back to Arthur."

"Yea, no shit," I mumbled in frustration, taking one of Carter's arms and dragging it around my neck before curling an arm behind the shorter man and standing, pulling him up with Orion's help.

When I started to walk towards the car, I heard him mumble again, his voice quiet, barely a whisper, "Tobias..."

"You mean Florian?" I questioned, before looking ahead again, "Right, you were sending him inside information. Forgot about that," maybe he knew what happened to Tobias then, and why he wasn't answering any of our attempts to contact him, "Come on, let's just get you to the rebellion and patched up, you look awful."

"Safe...?"

It sounded like a near whimper, and I cringed. I'd never heard Carter sound so pathetic, it... it wasn't right. Every other time I'd come into contact with him, the time I'd shot him in the arm, and the time he'd helped Demi and I escape from the Con Rồng, he always seemed to strong, so in control of himself, serious and almost unapproachable. I liked to think because he was so short he tried making up for it by acting superior, but he wasn't anything like that right now. He was just... so weak and vulnerable right now.

"Yea. You're safe now."

"We'll leave Nora, Logan, and Carina here to grab all the weapons from Nora's stash," Orion decided as he opened the back door of the car, "We should get him home as fast as possible. Beckett, you drive," he tossed the keys over the top of the car for Beckett to effortlessly catch, "I'll see if I can't help back here."

"It took us days to get here," I warned, hugging Carter against my side as Orion put down the back seats in order to give himself more room to work.

"Then Beckett will just have to floor it, now won't he?" Orion asked, pulling the first aid kit from the trunk and laying out a few blankets, "Don't worry, Dakota. He saved your life, so we're going to save his," he held a hand out, "Come on, help him up."

We barely got Carter in the vehicle before he slumped forward yet again, and Orion barely caught him. I scrambled in after them and shut the door as Beckett quickly gave our three companions the details of what was going on, reaching out to help Orion lie Carter down. He appeared to be unconscious now, eyes closed, though his brow was furrowed.

Orion was already cleaning up the dry blood on his face when the car finally started and Beckett drove us down the road, slowly picking up speed the further we went.

"He's got a fever," I warned, hand on Carter's forehead, and Orion hummed, searching through the kit and pulling out a few things.

"I'll see what I can do. We've got morphine in here and some other medicine that should help, I can fix his face up since it's not too bad, just disinfectant and bandages are needed," he filled a needle with one of the medicine's without looking at me, "Roll his sleeve up," he instructed, and I moved to do so.

It was easy to shove the sleeve up to his elbow because of how large and baggy it was, but Orion and I both froze when we saw the mess of his skin. There were wounds all up his arm, deep scraped around his wrist that looked suspiciously like they'd been caused by low grade cuffs. There were dark bruises and cuts, a few scratches in parallels of three or four, as if someone had actually scratched him with their nails. There was... literally nowhere to put the needle that wasn't already wounded.

"Okay...," Orion turned to his other arm, rolling the sleeve up, but that one was in as bad a state as the one I was clinging to, "Alright, great. I can administer through his shoulder too, help him up and get his shirt off."

It was a struggle in some ways, not because Carter weighed a lot, because he was remarkably light, way too light, but his shirt seemed to be stuck to his body, and I discovered why when I finally managed to peel the fabric away from him, tugging it over his head and dropping it so Orion could stab the needle into his shoulder.

My hand felt it all before my eyes found it, heat dripping over the back of my hand and covering my palm, prompting me to lean to the side to look at his back. I immediately felt sick, my stomach doing a flip, nearly losing my lunch, because Carter's back had been torn, shredded, like a painting, the skin flayed off, gashes and slices cut into his shoulders and down the entire expanse of his back.

"Orion...," my voice quivered, and Orion put the empty needle down before moving to look at what had me so sick.

"Put him on his stomach," Orion decided, grabbing the already dirtied shirt so he could press it down against Carter's back when I'd gotten him turned around so he could lie with his face pillowed in my coat, "I can't tell what this is all from," Orion admitted, "I assume he was whipped."

"Whipped?" I repeated, gaping at him, "What for?!"

"I don't know, Dakota, I don't know this guy at all!" Orion answered in as snappish a tone as I'd used.

"Calm down, both of you," Beckett ordered from the driver's seat, "Dakota, you mentioned that this man worked for the Con Rồng, didn't you?"

"Yea," I agreed, "but he's not like them. He's the one who helped Demi escape in the first place, he's the one who saved us both! He's been siphoning information and giving it to our weapons dealer, he's a good guy!"

Beckett just looked at me through the rearview mirror, "Then is it possible that they found out what he was doing?" he asked, and for the tenth time I seemed to stop breathing.

I'm getting you out.

Don't be stupid. You'll put yourself in danger.

Yes, I know that.

"He knew this would happen...," I said weakly, reaching out to rake my fingers through Carter's hair, pushing it away from his face so I could see his closed eyes.

Do you realize how big of a risk I'm taking right now, helping you out?

You're trying to get out.

Don't read too much into this. Just... go, and please, don't come back, because I don't know how much longer Bay is going to fall for all my lies. Just go.

"This is our fault; mine and Demi's. Fuck..."

Carter cringed from some unseen assailant, whimpering, fingers curling into the blanket beneath him as Orion continued to wash away the blood on his back. I tried to calm him down, leaning closer and stroking my hand through his hair as I whispered to him, my brow drawing when I noticed the ring on his left hand, reaching out to touch it with my other hand.

"You'll be okay, Carter, I promise," I whispered to him, setting my forehead against his and closing my eyes.

The Con Rồng did this to him, just like they did to the world. The Con Rồng was the reason for fucking everything, they'd taken so many people from me, from everyone I knew. It was like I'd already decided, though. There was no way I was going to lose anyone else. Not even Carter. He didn't deserve this. He didn't deserve any of this.

Sure, maybe he'd been one of the people who'd initially kidnapped Demi, but he was trying to atone. That's why he helped Demi escape that day so long ago, and that's why he helped us get away the following two times. That was why he was trying to send information to Tobias Florian, to maybe help him and the rebellion take down those bastards.

Carter was trying to fix his mistakes, and he was punished for it.

Bull fucking shit.

When we finally managed to get through to Blu, I really hoped Demi made him suffer, because if he didn't....

I would.