Fiona rubs her eyes, trying to ignore her splitting headache. No matter which way she spins it, she'd be responsible for the murders of three people.

"Just give it up already," Shailene says boredly, folding origami cranes before promptly crumpling them up. "It's exhausting to watch you do the same thing over and over again."

She swipes back to the janitorial schedule on her screen. There is a ten minute opening in the west wing that will be clear at 9:35 PM, which would mean they need to adjust the operations team's entrance ten minutes earlier, but they can't leave until the explosives unit has everything they need, which would take at least fifteen minutes... "Ugh!" Fiona slumps against her seat. "There has to be a solution somewhere."

"Fiona, it's three people," Shailene sighs, as though trying to reason with Fiona is exhausting. "Occupational hazard of being a janitor. Unfortunate, but we need to move on and the rest of the logistics."

Fiona gapes at Shailene. "I don't know how you can be so blasé about this. These are three people's lives on the line here. Real people just trying to do their job. No one signs up to be a janitor and expects to be caught in the crossfire of a bombing."

Shailene looks up from her paper cranes, equally annoyed. "I'm not being blasé. You're being naïve. I just have experience, and experience tells me that we need to move on if we want to make sure the rest of the plan goes smoothly. If there was a way to spare these three people, I would. But you've been pulling out your hair over it for the past hour and have made zero progress." She crumples up the crane. "And what if your shaky walkaround plan puts our agents in the op at risk? Then it'll be your actual friends who die instead of the janitors."

Fiona, unfortunately, has no response for that. She simply glares at Shailene and petulantly rearranges the schedule in front of her for the thousandth time.

Shailene looks down at her wrist as an incoming call pings her. "Don't make too much progress without me," she says, as she excuses herself into the hallway to take the call.

Fiona can hardly focus on the schedule in front of her — something about Shailene just riles her up like no one else. But there has to be a way... Fiona's vision blurs in front of her as she resets the schedule once again.

Outside, she can just barely hear Shailene speaking emphatically. Probably ranting about Fiona to Ragnar, who's been in Sacramento with some contacts over the past week or so. "Fiona is so... always has to be right... will never go for this..." Shailene's words fade in and out, only increasing Fiona's annoyance at the girl today.

Shailene's voice gets even more hushed and that's when Fiona's anger turns to curiosity, feeling a strange squirming of trepidation. Slowly, she sets down the stylus in front of her and walks over to the door. She can hear Shailene pacing up and down the hallway, something she does when she really feels like she's onto something. It helps her feel authoritative, she says.

"Listen, I agree that he's a great strategic resource," Shailene is saying as she passes by the door. Click, click, click. Fiona presses her ear against the door harder as Shailene gets further away. She can hear Ragnar speaking rapidly on the other end of the line.

"Exactly!" Shailene's voice grows as she approaches again. "See, we're just agreeing with each other. Seraph is an invaluable resource to Left Behind, and it would be a crippling loss for us to not have him. Ragnar, you're just agreeing with me."

Fiona's skin prickles at the mention of Abin's moniker around the base. Why are they arguing about him? What does it have to do with what Ragnar's doing in Sacramento?

Click, click, click. Shailene walks past again. "You and I both know that the Obsidian Tortoise technology in Sacramento is getting better by the day." Her voice fades in and out. "We need to do it before it's too late... before there are no more LB agents to fight the war."

Fiona is shamelessly hugging the door by now, crouched in an unladylike position that her mother would call "humiliating". She cracks the door open, imperceptibly so, so that the words come even clearer.

"I just don't get it," Shailene says, clearly frustrated. Through the sliver of the door, Fiona can see Shailene aggressively running her hand through her braids. "So we both agree that Seraph is invaluable, we both agree that the technology is basically fool-proof... so why don't we agree that we need to clone Seraph immediately and build our army?"

Fiona's mouth drops open. She's heard of the gangs in Sacramento, and the twisted, ethics-ridden innovations they've been developing behind the government's back. House of the Obsidian Tortoise is particularly good at genetic modifications, and cloning certainly wouldn't be out of the question as they are already cloning the Compliance Order troops... but on Abin?

Shailene's voice is even and maybe slightly excited as she continues to convince Ragnar. "An army would eliminate any need for protecting our ops teams or securing explosives off of the black market. We'd have an endless supply of paper monks at our disposal–"

Before she knows it, Fiona's pushing the door open and shoving Shailene against a wall. "What's wrong with you?" she says. This girl in front of her who she's known her whole life – she feels like a stranger.

"I've got to go," Shailene says calmly, watching Fiona's furious face as they stand an inch away from each other. She hangs up on Ragnar with a click. "What's your problem?"

"My problem?" Fiona says, trying not to let her voice get too shrilly. But it's too late. It's shrilly and it's loud. "My problem? As good as the technology is, cloning is unethical! You're becoming the very thing that you are trying to destroy. How could you even suggest that?"

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Shailene barely flinches as Fiona shouts at her. "Relax, eavesdropper. You and I both know that we're losing this fight. We need to take drastic measures–"

"Drastic measures?" Uh oh. Fiona can feel angry tears coming, the humiliating rush of warmth as hotness springs to her eyes. "We just spent an hour talking about how not to kill three people as collateral! We've been bombing anything we can bomb over the past month! Left Behind is nothing if not drastic measures."

Shailene sighs deeply, like Fiona is just a clueless puppy who doesn't get it. "Circumstances have gotten more extreme since our childhood, but Left Behind's strategies have mostly been the same. We need to amp things up, Fiona. I know it's hard, but we need to—"

Fiona is full-on sobbing now, uncaring of how frenzied and high-strung she may look. She breathes heavily and she can feel Shailene's chest against her arm, inhaling and exhaling rapidly. "Haven't we lost enough? Haven't you lost enough? When are you going to consider that people are worth more than this fight?"

This makes Shailene go silent for once. Her dark eyes, framed by the most delicate long lashes, stare deeply into Fiona's. Shailene is one of those people who always looks so innocent, no matter what they do. But Fiona knows better. "I have lost enough," Shailene finally says, softer than Fiona's heard her speak in a while. "And I will continue to lose people I love and things I care about. Which is why this isn't just a fight – this is my survival."

Without any real struggle, Shailene lightly pushes Fiona off of her. She shakes her head at Fiona again, before walking off towards God-knows-where. Fiona just watches. "And when you want to grow up, you'll see that it's yours too."

Fiona stands there until she hears the clicking of her shoes disappear. She breathes deeply, with only the sound of her sniffles to keep her company.

----------------------------------------

Fiona doesn't think. Doesn't know how to think. All that she knows is that she can't be here anymore. She doesn't know when it's started, but Left Behind has always been unhealthy for her to be around. There comes a time when she needs to truly let go.

"What are you doing?"

Fiona nearly jumps out of her skin when she sees Abin's tall frame, leaning against her door. In her haste, she must have forgotten to shut it properly. She can only imagine what he thinks of the sight in front of him — a puffy-faced girl, clothes haphazardly strewn about, and one knapsack that's halfway filled.

"Would you believe me if I said I was just looking for an outfit to wear?" she says meekly.

He raises an eyebrow, running a hand through his sleek hair. "I cannot say that I am convinced. What are you doing, Fiona?"

Fiona throws down a cardigan, exasperated. "I just can't be here anymore." She feels a rush of tears rising again, so she just ends her sentence there and keeps folding her clothes.

Abin shuts the door behind him. "But you're such an integral part of the missions." He pauses for a moment. "And unless I'm mistaken, it seems that Left Behind's a big part of your life as well."

She avoids his eye contact, feeling the familiar blossom of shame in her stomach. "I know." Fiona chooses her words carefully. "I've been unable to leave for the longest time, even though I've wanted to for so long. Something always brings me back." Her voice catches. "And I'm sick of it."

Abin just stands there, face unreadable. "So you were just going to leave everyone here?" Abin clears his throat and says the next bit a bit quieter. "You weren't going to tell me?"

She can't tell if there's a hint of hurt behind his words. The truth is, she hadn't thought it out that far. She didn't really think out any step in this plan. "I mean... you like it here, don't you? You're succeeding on missions, you're the hero..." Fiona's voice drifts off, not really sure if she really answered his questions.

Abin's gaze drifts over her messy clothes and half-packed room. "Let me come with you."

"What?"

"I'll come with you."

"I don't need you to protect me or anything–"

"That's not why I'm offering—"

"But I really have no plan or any idea of where I'm going–"

Abin breathes through his nostrils. "I want to." He says it with finality.

Fiona gawks at the man standing in her room. His silver hair is just slightly disheveled, as though he's been tossing and turning too often. The hair, which was a mixture of black and gray when he first arrived, has since gone full silver. When Fiona asked about it, theLB medical team theorized that the bleaching has to do with his time travel. Sometimes Fiona sees Abin frowning at his own reflection, as though it's a stranger he's looking at.

Fiona, for a moment, wonders if maybe it has to do with something else, of psychological nature. His lilac eyes seem muted, as though defeated. His slender fingers tap against his thigh anxiously, but nothing about him is unserious. "Okay," she says.

"Okay," Abin repeats. "I'll meet you in the hallway in fifteen minutes."

With that, her door clicks shut and she's once again draped in the silence of her room. It's amazing to see how little she owns when it all fits into one bag — there's her father's old headphones, some scattered photos, and the most basic of outfits that all sag a bit in the wrong places.

Is she being too dramatic? One part of Fiona suddenly realizes that she can quickly set everything back and tell Abin she was just being silly. No one else would have any idea and Abin doesn't seem like the one to talk. She has no plan, barely any money, and nothing to return to. Without Left Behind, she has nothing tethering her to a past, no one that knows her completely as they do.

But no, building an army of clones is just too much. She thinks back to the pool of clone corpses when Abin first arrived, all laying with the same dead expression. She can't help but imagine the sea of their blank faces replaced with Abin's . As children, Fiona and Shailene never agreed on much. But now they exist on two different paths, and Fiona wants nothing to do with where Shailene's going. The naïve part of Fiona wants to throw all dignity out of the window and beg Shailene not to do this, to let go of this hard shell of a person she's become. But deep down, she knows that that shell has become imperceptibly molded to Shailene Fischer. The shell's only continued to harden every day that passes after the loss of her entire family.

With one final zip, Fiona's small room at Left Behind is finally bare. She opens the door just in time to see Abin shutting his, one small drawstring bag carrying all of his belongings.

"Ready?" Fiona asks, just as she trips over something in front of her door.

"What is that?" Abin asks softly, trying not to alert anyone else nearby.

Fiona blinks at the small stuffie on the ground. It's a ratty elephant, full of patches of matted fur and odd stains. "It's Biggie, my old elephant."

"What is it doing in front of your door?"

"I don't know," Fiona says, turning away from it. "I haven't seen it in years. Shailene must have found it when they were clearing out my mother's home."

Abin watches as she continues down the hallway. He hesitates. "Aren't you going to take it?"

"No," Fiona says, and he finally starts to walk alongside her. But when they get to the end of the hallway, she turns back to look at it once more. Abin says nothing as she tears down the hallway and picks it up again, tucking it under her elbow. He wordlessly zips it into her backpack and they leave the base.