Everyone is gathered in the mess hall, eating and chatting about the day's boring and uneventful plans. Sparrow, Sky, and I are sitting at our usual table, joined only by Quenton, who talks happily with Sparrow much to my annoyance. I ignore them both, eating quietly as I wait for our cue.

Doctor Bryce meets my eye and gives a subtle nod, dismissing himself from his table and wandering out of the main hall.

Just a few minutes before we can finally leave.

I nudge Sky with my foot under the table, gesturing with my eyes to Quenton, and Sky nods.

She turns to Quenton, an apologetic smile on her face. "Hey man, we're gonna turn in early tonight. Sparring and the blood tests took a lot out of us today," Sky says.

Quenton nods sympathetically. "I understand. Want me to walk you guys back to your rooms?"

Sparrow perks up, but I kick him in the shin. He winces, rubbing his leg, and Quenton stares at him, confused.

"Nah, that's fine, you enjoy yourself tonight! Don't worry about us," I tell him.

Quenton glances around at us, even more confused than before, but shrugs as we stand and leave the hall. Sparrow slumps after us, obviously sad that we have to leave Quenton, and I almost feel bad for him. I know how much he seems to like the Atlas soldier, but we can't take the chance with him coming with us, especially with his connection to David.

We make it to our rooms and bid each other good-night, and I sit on my bed, brushing my hair and pretending to get ready to sleep.

The lights suddenly go out, and the electric hum that usually surrounds me in the facility disappears. I glance up at the camera pointed at me, smiling when I notice the recording light is off. I rush to the bathroom and grab my bag as chaotic shouts ring out from the hallway. I sprint out of the room and nearly collide with Sparrow and Sky, who are already waiting for me.

"The stairs, hurry!" I exclaim, pushing past guards and scientists who scramble to find their footing in the dimly lit halls. We blend in with the scattering crowd until we reach the stairwell, and sprint up, all the way to the top landing, and Sky kicks the door open. The main building is empty but still dark, and I feel a rush of relief when we see the front doors.

"I have the code, give me a sec," I tell them, rushing ahead and starting to punch in the six-digit number on the panel.

"Hurry up, I hear guards coming up the stairs!" Sky urges.

"Uh, one of them is already here..." Sparrow mutters, holding his hands up in surrender.

I whirl around and come face to face with Quenton leveling an assault rifle at us, a concerned look on his face.

"I figured you were up to something..." Quenton says sadly.

"Quenton, please. Just let us go, that's all we want," I tell him. "You won't have to deal with us ever again."

"If you leave, David will send other guards after you," Quenton counters, slowly lowering his rifle. "And they won't be as nice as I am."

"What are you saying?" Sparrow asks, a hint of hope in his voice.

Quenton hesitates, glancing back at the door he came from. "I..." he shakes his head, lowering his rifle completely. "I want to go with you."

"Hell no!" I exclaim.

"Cassandra, we don't have a lot of time!" Sky warns, and we can hear banging on the stairwell doors as the Atlas guards are shouting to get it open.

I can't kill Quenton. Not only do I not have a weapon, but he hasn't done anything to us to warrant violence against him. Plus, Sparrow would likely hate me for the rest of my life, however short it might be.

"Tell David that we're in the lower levels," I growl at him. "I know you have a walkie. Drop it when you're done, and you come with us."

Quenton stares at me for a moment, but nods. He pulls out his walkie and speaks into it. "Ranger reporting in, they're in the basement, headed for the stairs," he says.

There's a brief moment of chatter behind the doors, then the thunder of boots disappears as they rush off to the basement.

"Delta is guarding the stairwell to the surface," a voice crackles back. "We'll make sure they don't get out."

I grin, finished inputting the code to the shudders as Quenton drops the walkie, kicking it away. The shudder to the front door raises, and we all pile outside into the warm night air. After three months of being locked up, I can finally breathe easy knowing that we're no longer cooped up underground.

"This way, we can use one of their vehicles to get out of the area," Quenton leads us to the parking garage and shoots the lock off the cage blocking off the way to the cars. I hop into the driver's seat of an undistinguished pick-up as Sky jumps in the passenger seat, Quenton, and Sparrow in the back.

"They keys are in the dashboard," Quenton says. Sky grabs the keys and hands them to me.

I quickly start the truck and peel out of the garage as a couple Feral's poke their heads out from their sleeping places. None of them follow us as we speed down the road.

Sky sighs with relief, sagging in her seat as I grin.

"We're finally out of there," Sparrow chuckles.

"We won't be out of the woods until we get out of Atlanta," Sky notes, grabbing a marked map out of the glove box.

"First thing we have to do is warn the Valkyrie about what's going on," I tell them. "They can help us with the lockets, and maybe tell us where the Widow's might have taken Dani and Josh."

"Hold up," Quenton speaks up. "What are you guys doing? What's this about lockets?"

I glare at him in the rearview mirror. "You're the Atlas guard, you tell us," I growl.

"I'm just a guard," Quenton defends. "The only thing I was told was to guard you guys and make sure you don't stir up trouble."

"Good job on that one," I remark, and Quenton sags in his seat.

"I swear, I have no idea what's really going on. I was posted here at the beginning, and the only thing I was told was that the CDC is trying to find a cure to this mess," Quenton says.

"Not just a cure," I say. "The cure. This whole thing was orchestrated by Atlas, from the creation and spread of the infection to the cure. This whole thing is their doing."

Quenton's eyes widen with horror, and he stares down at his lap.

"But..." He mutters. "They said we were making a difference. They said we were helping people. Are you telling me they lied about that?"

I scoff. "Probably not the worst they've done in my opinion. From what I gather, they want to take over the world, and if they get ahold of the cure, stopping them will be impossible."

He looks as surprised as dejected as I was when Bryce told me the day we got here, and I almost feel bad for Quenton.

Almost.

"Listen," I say, and he looks up at me. "If you want to help us stop David from going through with this, help us find the missing lockets. They're the pieces of the cure, or at least they hold pieces of information about the cure. We have eight pieces we need to find before they do, and I have a list of the last known people to have them," I tell him. "David is using the Widow's to help him find the pieces, so we have to beat the Widow's to the punch. If you don't think you can do that, then get out of the truck."

"Cass!" Sparrow exclaims incredulously.

"No, she's right," Quenton says. "I'll help you. Atlas was keeping too many secrets about the infection, and if they're the ones responsible for this much death, then I want to take them down with you. I'm in."

I nod as I turn the corner, the walls of the Valkyrie base coming into view. "Good. I'm holding you to that. We're coming up on the Valkyrie base. Once we're there, we'll explain the situation and hopefully get some answers."

As I pull up towards the gates, several Valkyrie guards appear at the top of the walls, guns pointed right at us.

"Step out of the vehicle, hands up, and unarmed, or we shoot!" One of the Valkyrie orders. Sky and I exchange cautious glances.

"This isn't protocol..." Sky mutters.

"Looks like a few things changed since we've been gone," I note, opening my door with my hands in surrender as the other follow my lead.

"We're here to see Valerie!" Sky tells the Valkyrie guards.

They look shocked to see us, and one of them I recognize as Bree.

"They're back!" She exclaims. "Lower your weapons, my sister, Cassandra, and Sparrow are back!"

The Valkyrie do as she says, lowering their weapons and murmuring with excitement and confusion as Bree disappears from the wall. Moments later, the gate opens up, and Bree rushes out, crushing Sky in a bear-hug that Sky happily returns.

"We heard about the Widow attack the day you left!" Bree says as she parts from her sister. "We thought you were dead!"

Bree hugs Sparrow and I happily as other Valkyrie guards come out to greet us.

"What happened out there?" Bree asks, scanning our faces. When she sees Quenton, she stiffens, looking worried. "Who's this?"

"We'll explain everything inside. We need to talk with Valerie and the others," I tell her. She nods.

"I'll have the guards take the truck inside. Jocelynn and your sister should be with Valerie now, there are a few things we need to tell you, too," Bree says, looking stressed.

She leads us inside as the guards drive the truck into the gates. There seem to be more Valkyrie here than there was last time, and they're much armored up, packing heavy weapons. They all look on edge, and I can see some recent damage done to the buildings.

"What happened here?" Sky asks, looking at her sister with worry.

"The Widow's have been pretty aggressive since you left," Bree says. "Valerie will explain more."

She leads us into the building and eventually Valerie's office, where she, Jocelynn, Nick, and Octavia are sitting around the map of Atlanta. They all look up when we enter, mixed emotions written across their faces.

Jocelynn stands abruptly, a smile plastered on her face when she sees us, and she crushes Sparrow and me in a hug. "Oh my God, you're back!" She exclaims. "When we heard about the attack, we assumed the worst!"

"Awe, you do care!" Sparrow teases, ruffling Jocelynn's hair playfully.

"Uh, duh! What would I do without my favorite prank master?!" Jocelynn huffs, straightening out her hair.

Nick grins, standing to shake Sky's hand.

"It's good to have you back, Sky," Nick says. "We really need our second in command."

"It's good to be back, Nick," Sky replies, straightening up at her rank.

Valerie's face softens just enough for me to know that she's glad to have us back, and she wheels herself around the table, situating herself in front of us.

"Robert was the only one who came back when you left, and he told us what happened. Are you all alright?" She asks.

"For the most part, yeah. We ran into several complications these past few months," I reply, glancing at my sister, who is staring at me with surprise and relief.

When Octavia notices me looking at her, she glares away from me, crossing her arms.

I sigh, shaking my head. "Anyway, you all might want to sit down, we've learned several crucial details while we were away."

Jocelynn and Nick glance at each other, then take their seats as I launch into everything that's happened.

I tell them about how it wasn't our mother we met at the CDC, but instead our father, David. Octavia gasps at the news.

"Wait, so he left us to go play soldier with a bunch of scientists?!" She exclaims.

"Partly," I say. "He's a part of an organization calling themselves Atlas. They're the ones responsible for the infection, including it's spread. Mom was working with them against her will and created the cure, but she saw through what Atlas wanted to do, so she split the information up and gave them to the nine people she trusted most, keeping the last piece to herself," I explain.

"So Mom was a part of this..." Octavia growls.

"She wanted to fix it, Octavia," I tell her, but she snaps back at me.

"Bullshit, Cass. She willingly worked for these assholes for who knows how long! We can't trust her!"

"She wasn't willing to work for them," I correct. "Atlas has information on everyone who worked on this project, including their family. David scouted Mom out for the job out of college. The only reason we're alive is so that he can use us as blackmail for Mom to force her to work and keep it all a secret. That's why we never really knew why Mom was always away or why David left."

Octavia looks like she wants to argue further, but she stops, sighing in defeat. "So, what? We're just collateral?"

I sigh, nodding. "Pretty much, yeah. But we can use that against David."

"How?"

"While we were at the CDC, I met one of the scientists who knew Mom. His name is Doctor Bryce," I explain. "He's the one who told us all of this. David isn't the leader of Atlas, but he's a high ranking officer or something like that."

"And how does that help us?" Octavia demands.

"Because David needs us to find Mom and bring her back to the CDC, along with the lockets. If he kills us or lets the Widow's kill us, then he'll never know where Mom is, or the rest of the lockets. If we die, he loses any progress he had in forwarding this plan, and since he's high ranking in Atlas, he has at least a little bit of sway in their organization."

"Uh, if I remember correctly, David doesn't give two shits about us. If he did, he wouldn't have left us when we were kids," Octavia argues.

"He might not care about us, but he does need us. We're collateral, but we have power with that."

"What exactly is David planning to do once he has the lockets and your mother?" Valerie asks.

"I'm not entirely sure what Atlas's plans are, but they need that cure to finish what they started. My running theory is that they created this entire mess, then made the cure to hold power over whoever is left standing," I tell them. "Think about it; you're a powerful organization only known pubically as a pharmaceutical chain, the perfect position to be in for this. You've gained the trust of thousands, if not millions of people you've helped through medicine, charities, and so on for over thirty years. But it's not enough to just have a big chunk of the population loyal to you, you need more. So you fabricate a global catastrophic event, blame it on the government to create a divide among the people, then swoop in with a cure years later. Everyone left standing will follow you to the ends of the earth for 'saving' you."

They're shocked into silence as the information settles over them, and it clearly hits Valerie the hardest. For the first time since I've met her, she actually looks lost and confused.

"But what do they gain with all of this destruction? Surely the truth would come out sooner or later," Valerie asks.

I shake my head, unsure. "Resources, man-power, world domination. There's no telling. Like I said, it's a working theory. But whatever their reasons, we can't let them win this."

"We should spread the word," Nick offers. "If we make sure that other survivors know the truth, especially other communities, Atlas would lose their potential gain, whatever it may be. They'll lose sway with the public."