"Colonel Stone," Doyle salutes his superior, his nerves shot in his defiance, as the Colonel arrives in the medical station. Doyle's rebellious composure begins to slip as he adds, "Permission to stay, Sir."

"Permission denied."

Colonel Stone, not much older than Doyle, rose to his new rank at the first outbreak of the Carrion 33 virus. His experience not to be denied or questioned, the soldier belonging to a different unit saw the wars from a closer perspective than Doyle. This war with the dead, too.

Doyle shifts in his stance, altering one foot to the other in holding the majority of his weight and then back again. He'd been asked to be at ease after his salute, but he's anything but easy.

"With all due respect, Sir, I want to know if the civilian's contracted the virus since I came into contact with her," Doyle says his half-truth that barely hides his real curiosity as to what exactly they want with the young woman.

His superior officer narrows his eyes just long enough, for Doyle to notice.

Again, Colonel Stone repeats, "Permission denied, Sergeant, return to your post."

This time, it's not simply an assertion, but another unspoken order for Doyle not to push what's not his concern.

Now victim to the eyes of onlooking soldiers and scientists alike, Doyle no longer fits in with the entourage of camouflage. In their stares, a thousand judgments linger. Doyle's challenge was out of the question. His questions were even out of the question.

Doyle feels he has no choice to obey when Colonel Stone repeats in a bark, "Dismissed, Sergeant. Return to your post immediately."

Shoulders heavy, head struggling to hold high, Doyle leaves at last.

Would Sophie disappear forever like the rest of the vanishing women to District 4?

His conscience is a whirlwind of questions and worry, the paranoia rises the longer he stays at his post. His breath is a storm cloud with each time he draws out the staggering air atop the roofs.

"Anyone out there?" Doyle asks through the dim static in his ear back at his post. The lines are unusually quiet tonight. The snipers normally passed jokes through the lonely hours of the night, but not tonight.

"Not a soul out here, man," the voice of his friend, his most trusted, is the only voice who answers him back.

Finding a small comfort in it, Doyle finds solace in anything but the silence. A silence that speaks volumes with his comrades, that their loyalties run deep, but not to him.

It's a cold truth that disturbed Doyle. They should all be bound by their experiences, their horrors. In the old world, they would've been.

"Thanks for looking out, Williams," Doyle replies to the eyes further up in the sky than his own. The chopper in the air, that circles the dozens of miles that make up District 1, is where Williams finds his post this hour of the night.

If anything were to happen, chances were Williams would see it first. The undead growl in that distance, beyond their fences, and only Williams, can witness it on these nights.

As the hours passed beneath the stars, so did the unusual silence from the living. The only sign of life came from the distant chopper in flight, where Williams mostly called home.

Doyle felt as if he were the last man on earth tonight.

Then, the blaring alarm of nightmares shook the district in the wailing of warnings.

It only meant one thing: the dead broke in. Walking, stalking, waiting for their takeover after all this time being kept at bay beyond the fences.

What had been so quiet, so oddly isolating, now became alive on the brink of danger. The radio waves cluttered with the warning that this was not a drill and silence, was now a thing of the past.

Code Red is initiated on the airwaves, and every light in the district comes up to lift any shadow of the night.

"Miss Grey, I'm sure by now you've learned after all this time out there, that you're not like everybody else. Maybe you even knew it before..."

The doctor with a calm tone pushes her thick glasses further up the bridge of her nose, finally seeing Sophie after hours of her having waited in this tiny room.

It took most of Dr. Martin's efforts not to scream what she found in the astounding woman sitting in front of her, a medical marvel.

The chart clutched in the doctor's hands shook as she sat before the frail survivor, her unveiled excitement is anything but discreet.

Dr. Martin reveals, "You have an immunity to the virus, completely, more than anyone else that has shown minor resistance. It's the immunity that we can use to vaccinate what's left of us. You could very well help save us all. Save future generations!"

Elisa's eyes danced with all the possibilities, the relief beamed in finding such a miracle within a living hell. The eyes across from hers, much larger due to her malnutrition, matched hers in color but didn't find anything close to the same expression. In Sophie, the good doctor saw fear, a reluctance. One in which, Elisa couldn't decipher in full, no matter how many questions she'd ask.

"Don't you understand?" she asks Sophie, her voice a constant lilt that Sophie believed would never screech a course note.

"You're a miracle, Sophie. A living miracle. And I want to go with you somewhere where we can get you well and work on getting the rest of the survivor's well, too," the song from her continues.

This doctor is so optimistic, so intelligent, yet so utterly naive. Sophie's experiences told a different tale of her future, one that didn't sound as happy as Dr. Martin tried to preach it. And, she's shocked there's no mention of it in any files she has on her. Surely, if she ran her real name through with any of the other districts, especially on the west coast, she'd find something far more alarming...

"You mean cut me up? Drain the blood right out of me? Give a vaccine that won't even save most of us. Protection from a mere bite, that's one thing...being ripped apart is another. I should know. I just lived through it. No immunity can save us from that. We're all dead, anyway," Sophie replies, bitter, avoiding, readying to bolt through that open door and bulldoze through the dozen armed soldiers beyond.

None of them resembled the soldier that brought her here...that turned her in. She remembers that name: Doyle. She'd read it well on the patch over his uniform and would never forget that he was her betrayer on this round of her life.

Sophie asks, "Are we done here? I kind of just want to go somewhere where I can rest for a while. It's been months since I've gotten much sleep or much of anything."

Dr. Martin clears her throat, but her voice continues to shake as she says, "I'm afraid I can't do that. You can rest here. In about an hour we'll be heading out to District 8, where both myself and Dr. Henry Morgan will be taking a closer look at what we can do with this new discovery! You can get rest and eat in the truck. It's a long drive to Texas."

Though her words disregarded Sophie's requests, her resolve can do little to promise no trouble for her new patient. The doctor stands, adjusting her messed coat and fidgeting with her glasses all the while. Always so fidgety, Sophie noticed.

"Are you deaf?!" Sophie shrieks, "I'm not going anywhere! I'm tired! I'm not letting anyone do anything to my body! The answer is no!"

"This is beyond you, Sophie, I'm sorry," Dr. Martin is retreating but doesn't dare turn her back. For, there's a volatile spark rising in Sophie's eyes. Dr. Martin continues, "The world needs you and we have to get down to business right away, I'm afraid."

She motions to the soldiers when Sophie stands, silently asking them to restrain the woman prepping to run...or attack.

Shame heavy on her head, yet her hope stretching far higher, Elisa Martin walks over to the Colonel beyond her room.

"Colonel Stone, I need to request a vehicle and a ground unit to escort myself and the civilian to District 8 within the hour."

As she speaks her request, the doctor realizes she's interrupted something far graver.

Their Colonel is pacing in front of the security camera screens of the district. Back and forth he walks, his brow creases in worry over his steps. His expression causes her heart to drop in dread when he stops to look her way.

"Sound the code red," he orders to the men and women behind him.

The sirens blare through the district, as the doctor watches the carnage from an apartment on screen.

The cameras were everywhere in this district. In homes, like this, for this very purpose.

"Oh my God," She gasps into her trembling hand, then spins on one worn-in-loafer. She needs to protect Sophie—the last chance they'll ever have to survive this insanity and their only key to the future.

All it took was for one civilian to die, to reanimate from the virus, just as that man did in the neighboring building.

Soon, the mass infected would terrorize every street in this district. The soldiers running amok, the doctors and medical staff doing the same, Elisa finds Sophie in restraints.

Kneeling down, she begins to loosen them, as she announces through the sirens, "I know a unit that can take us out of here. You can come with me and I promise you I'll keep what I found in your blood between us when we get to the next safe house!"

Elisa knew nothing of fighting zombies or surviving out there, it was a chance she'd have to take. Staying here, was no longer an option for anyone.

The prospect of leaving the only home she'd known these past couple years terrified her. And yet, the validation of all her work, the thought of everything Sophie could bring, lit a fire back in Elisa.

She'd started to lose faith. She started to believe all her work was for nothing, that her existence meant nothing. In this new, terrifying America, she found her place at last. But with the eruption of the infected spilling out from within their gates, they didn't have much time. Though their military was great, Elisa knew the power of the dead over the living, as they all did.

She'd always said it would take one death to bring destruction. The virus, dormant in everyone, waited for an empty vessel to corrupt. Everyone she'd ever examined had it in them. All, but Sophie.

This District—with the arrival of Sophie—no longer held value to her, she held everything. Now, fate intervened with the evacuation of her unit onto safer grounds. Wherever it may lead, Elisa held the power to steer them both to safety. The other districts would take them, welcome them warmly, with her stature, her work, her reputed genius. District 8 has been wanting her for years, even before it was labeled a district after the fall. It was where scientists diligently worked on a cure and in improving the future for their species.

Sophie finally gives her a response, a nod with level eyes. The only agreement over these alarms that could register. She didn't know exactly what it meant, but reading the chaos around her, it didn't take a long-time resident to figure out.

Sophie shouts over the alarms when she stands, "I'm making no promises, but get me the hell out of here!"

Shaking off her restraints thanks to Elisa, she's with her, hurrying with a team of soldiers and doctors into one sector and then the next. Where she was going, she didn't know. Though Sophie may have followed now, her trust didn't. She'd need them for now. Just long enough to get to safety and then all bets were off.

This world didn't have a place for loyalties anymore. And people, Sophie knew, you couldn't count on. Not before and certainly, not now. Not ever. Not with her secret.

In the darkness, Doyle searched for retribution for the lives he had taken in the course of his life, as well as the responsibility for the soldiers who died under his command, and the ever-present guilt over the loss of his son. He searched for death, he searched for life, he searched for anything away from this in-between of endless nightmares and repetitive bad memories. The carnage, mourning, and the chain of horrors that Doyle struggled with every day that refused to leave. They were the weights that refused to lift him from life on enemy soil and devastating events from his own home.

Green eyes flashed open with a start, the Sergeant's jolt of life inhabiting his unconscious body once more. A fresh coat of sweat glazed his face and bare chest that riddled with monitoring stickers and wires James Doyle couldn't recall acquiring. He grabbed at them and pulled them from his skin in response, his panic over the missing pieces of his memory leading him into a fit of frenzy to remove all of them. His legs ached under fresh bandages; the pain bringing on the faint recollection of the crash and the loss of Flynn Williams in the blur of the apocalypse.

Not remembering how he got here or why he was being injected with fluids, he wonders if this is a nightmare within a nightmare.

He looks around for any familiar face, finding Sophie there to offer the comfort of her hands pushing him back to the pillow.

"Doyle, stop! Calm down," The cool press of her palms touched the slick surface of his shoulders. She was trying to be gentle yet her hold was firm to contain him as she warns, "You need to be careful."

"Why, what's happening?" Doyle asks, chalking up his memories of seeing Paige again to hallucinations.

"Nothing is happening. I gave you some sedatives to try and calm down your anxiety. You were having flashbacks...episodes....chest pains...you passed out when I came back with Abby," Sophie replies, and from the open doorway, the little girl they rescued from District 1 stares on in the commotion.

Finding his calm, not in the medication, but in seeing the scared little girl, Doyle puts on his best face to try and control his panic.

A heart monitor attached to him, the incessant tone cut right through Doyle in the irritation he couldn't quite disguise so easily.

"Ah, shut this fucking thing off!" Doyle says, rising anyway through Sophie's soft urgings. At the machine, he hits a string of buttons. Eventually, he grew tired of the attempts and bends to pull the plug out of the wall, shutting the damn thing up.

He sighs out in aggravation, tossing the plug to the floor with purpose in the small victory. In the meantime, Sophie's removed Abby from seeing the distraught soldier but has returned before Doyle had the opportunity to start missing her.

He says, "I didn't ask you to do that."

"I didn't ask for permission," Sophie replies, "You were scaring me. Scaring Abby. You said you saw your ex-wife, that she visited you, ever since then you've been inconsolable. The colony is on lock-down right now. The girl, Hannah, shot the sheriff. They've been looking for her...they found her...the colony is on lockdown."

She stops as if she's passing on too much information at once, which rightfully so, she reads correctly, as Doyle takes a seat at the foot of the bed to process it.

Taking a few beats of silence, she waits till that constantly furrowed brow of his knocks down a worried tier.

"The entire colony is in unrest. Hannah was beaten, badly, the two new arrivals have her in safekeeping. Russell's been having people arrested left and right, the jail is over-flowing. Her trial is tomorrow. What are we going to do?"

Remembering the visit from his ex, Doyle begins to explain it away. It wouldn't be the first time he's seen the ghosts of his past, he's lost count of how many times he's seen Michael, running around in his Spiderman pajamas across the room over the years. Running his hand nervously through his hair, he feels her press over his nervous tremblings so to calm him. Though she doesn't utter a word further, it's in her touch that he finds the solid ground to root his thoughts.

Clutching that hand within his own, he looks to her. She worried about him. Too much, really. It showed in the touch of her hand, the furrow of her own brow, the way her brown eyes searched his face for any sort of answer he couldn't give to ease her mind.

"Soph," he starts, "It's not our fight. I'm tired of fighting, of running."

For the first time, Doyle didn't find the need to stand up for a cause, for what was right. In truth, he's exhausted from leading the charge, of making decisions. Though it's what she loved about him, and knew that with every decision he made to protect them that it left her further in the hole in her feelings for him, she couldn't fully accept this new, broken Doyle.

Her free hand goes over his trembling brow, the physical manifestation of all his pronounced fears and past hardships.

He wants to let go, to take her in and it's that look in her eyes that compels him to lean in closer. The moment is thick with promise, with the sweet release of all their rising tension that's been building for months, but it's broken with the rush upon the cabin.

As the screams of Abby in the next room bring both of them to their feet, but their hated leader has entered behind his men and beat them to it.

Russell, holds the six-year-old in his arms, as the guard surrounds them.

"What's this about?!" Doyle has lost any of his calm and pulls back a fist as Sophie is grabbed by those flanking Russell.

He moves after her, ready to swing, but is held back by two men.

"Sophie Grey is under arrest for stealing medications and valuable resources from the hospital...not to mention concerning files we found from Dr. Martin..." He eyes the machines pointedly and the drip of the IV running loose after Doyle ripped it from his arm when they rushed the bungalow.

"You can't do this!" Doyle yells, as Sophie is dragged from the room and then the cabin itself.

In his arms, Abby flails, shrieks out her cries, but Russell does his best to hush her, then grows weary of the girl and hands her off to one of the men.

"Doyle!" The child screams through a raw throat and in her alarming voice, Doyle can feel her pain.

"You're under arrest too," Russell says, "The charges are obvious. Stealing supplies with Sophie and attacking members of The Guard. Not to mention, conspiring to keep pivotal information on Miss Grey from the capital District! We found some interesting things tonight, Doyle. You can thank Dr. Martin for her detailed files!"

Letting out a string of curses and thrashings, Doyle finds himself gaining the upper hand as he frees the grip from one of the men and lands his fist with shattering force into the other attempting to bind his wrists. His own victory is short-lived, as the butt of a shotgun finds his unsuspecting temple. Darkness, once again, encompasses him as the screams of Abby and Sophie fade out into silence.