Haele raced across the bridge, her breath coming in hard gasps. She carried a bundle in her arms and a stitch in her side; from far behind her, but gaining fast, she could hear the sound of pursuit. As her pursuers drew closer, she forced her legs to move even faster than they had been. She could not afford to be caught--not here, not now.

Not with this.

"They're... coming..." she puffed, activating the microphone embedded in her throat. "Get ready... I've got the... package."

Taking a moment to glance over her shoulder, she saw that her pursuers were closer than she had originally thought. Haele swore silently to herself. This threw things back a bit. She would have to act now, rather than later, if all was to go according to the plan.

She only hoped that her contacts were ready, as well. Or else things could wind up looking a lot worse.

She came to a sudden halt and whirled to face the men that were chasing her. Or rather, cyborgs--partial-men, partial-machines. It gave her the heebie-jeebies whenever she thought of somebody surgically putting in THAT many implants and actually REPLACING integral parts of their bodies, all in the name of "betterment," or "advancement." It was bad enough to hear about such things being done. To actually see the end results were a lot worse.

They were almost upon her now. She could swear that she could see the gleam of their eyes; whether they were organic or mechanic, she could not tell. She only knew one thing for sure: they were TOO CLOSE.

"You'd better be ready for me," she muttered. "Because I'm going to have to drop off whether you are or not."

Taking a deep breath, she let out a defiant yell before dashing to the side and hurling herself over the railing of the bridge, falling towards the dark river waters that ran below.

Tora was in the cave at water's edge. Haele and herself had set up a sort of laboratory, if you will. She was getting everything finished set up. All the chemicals were ready. She just needed one more. The illegal one. Where IS Haele? she thought nervously to herself. She started pacing. Fidgeting. The ear piece, even though it was so tiny, roared in her ear. Or, that's what it seemed like. Haele was gasping for air... Is she okay? Tora thinks to herself. I hope she's not hurt. Silence again. She moved some of the glass vials around. Even the tiniest chink of the glass sounded like a huge waterfall. Her ear piece came to life again.

How could she not be ready? She was sitting down here alone for quite some time. She could barely make out any sounds over the sounds of the river water. She hoped Haele would be okay... and the final chemical.

The cyborgs were about ready to dive over the side of the bridge after Haele, when all of the sudden a great roar broke the silence of the night. The cyborgs stopped at the railing and looked down, just in time to see Haele landing, albeit a bit roughly, on the hull of a small hovercraft. A pair of hands reached out of the hatch on the hull and pulled the girl inside.

Then, as the hands and Haele disappeared within the hovercraft, the craft itself--vanished.

The cyborgs at once began to rage, furious at losing their prey. But inside the cloaked hovercraft, Haele sat on the floor and hugged the package to her chest, gasping for the air that her frantic run had deprived her of.

A dark-haired young man, Carlo, was just climbing into the co-pilot seat of the craft. He looked back as he strapped himself into the chair. "Haele, you gonna be all right back there?"

She looked up at him, still breathing harshly, and nodded a confirmation as best she could. Gods, but her lungs burned! And the stitch in her side--it was as if someone had shot her with a laser gun, or--

"BLOODY HELL!" Carlo suddenly let out a shout. Quick as a flash, he was out of his seat and beside Haele. She hadn't even had a chance to blink.

"What is it?"

"Haele, you stupid girl! Don't you even know when you've been shot?"

"I've... what?" She looked down at her abdomen and saw that her grey shirt was dark with her blood. Hastily moving the package away, more concerned for its welfare than her own, she saw that the bottom of its wrappings had been bloodstained. "Carlo, get this away from me. If there's even one chance that it could get contaminated..."

"Shut up right now, Haele, and let me work." He snatched the package out of her arms, but not, she knew, because she had asked him to. "Now sit against the wall--that's it--put up your arms."

Carefully, she did so--it really did hurt like blazes, now. Raising her arms, she let out a yelp and quickly lowered them again as Carlo put his hands to the hem of her shirt and made to lift it up. He swore. "This isn't the time for modesty, little girl. If I don't get you sealed up right now and proper, you could be dead by the time we get back to your little cavern laboratory. I've got some experience patching up wounds, you know. Now are you going to let me look at you or not?"

Haele glared at him before raising her arms once more and allowing him to remove her blood-soaked shirt. He made her lie down and used her shirt to mop up the worst of the bleeding around the wound, ignoring her gasps of pain.

"Well, it isn't too bad," he finally said. "Looks like you were just grazed. You got lucky, girl," he added as he stood and made off to get his small med-kit. "You're not going to be dying tonight."

"We're here," Randolf called from the front, piloting the hovercraft so it moved into the front of the cavern and out of sight. "She doing okay?"

"She's fine," Carlo called back. Applying an instant-sealing bandage to Haele's laser-wound, he ordered her to stay lying down until the hovercraft had been brought to a halt.

Tora looked around and noticed that the hovercraft had come into the cave. That means the chemical she needed was there. Finally. After all this waiting. Anticipation. Would it work? Would we all blow up? According to Tora's calculations, it was all going to work... but what if something DID go wrong? All these what ifs built up inside her. She tried her hardest to suppress them.

Carlo got out of the hovercraft first. Tora looked at him expectantly. She wanted to see Haele. What if she really isn't okay? she thought. "Where is Haele?" Tora inquired of Carlo.

"She is inside the hovercraft. I'm not letting her move for a few minutes," he replied.

"Why not? What's wrong? Tell me, is she hurt?"

"She's fine. Haele just got nipped a bit. I just want her to clot before moving. And with all this excitement, it's probably best for her to sit still."

Tora nodded and then saw the package. It was still in Carlo's hands. "Hand it over," she demanded. He handed the package to her. The bottom was bloodstained. The package was fairly big, but its contents felt the exact opposite. She went over to the table and set it down. She was going to wait for Haele to watch. This was something they needed to do together.

"I can move now, Randolf," Haele was meanwhile insisting to the hovercraft pilot as she tried to get up from where she lay on the floor. "I feel perfectly fine now, honest."

"You don't think that I don't know you enough by now to know that you're lying your bleeding little tail off?" Randolf asked, scowling darkly. "You are going to stay lying down until Carlo comes back and tells us what to do with you. He's the one who knows about wounds and such, not me."

"But... but Randolf, I have to go!" Haele's voice began to rise. "Tora's waiting for me... She's got the chemical, she's ready to work with it now. Please, I've got to go and at least watch her. We promised...." The wounded girl trailed off.

Randolf stuck his head up out the hovercraft hatch and barked, "Hey, Carlo! Blasted girl thinks she can move. What? Yeah, yeah, I'll tell her." The pilot climbed back down and turned to where Haele awaited the verdict from the 'doctor'.

"Says you can come if he carries you and we're all careful. But you gotta PROMISE--" here he put great emphasis on the word. "--that you won't move a hair when we've got you settled. You gotta stay put where he puts you and don't even think about complaining later. You got it?"

Haele nodded her head quickly, then winced. Seeing her twitch, Randolf sighed in a way that clearly meant, "the girl's an idiot" before climbing back up to the open hatch and yelling for Carlo to come get her.

Tora waited while Carlo got Haele. She must be in pretty bad shape if he has to carry her. She thought. She found a folding chair against the cave wall and set it up near the table, but not too close... just in case. Tora wanted to get this whole thing over with. Maybe then, she could go back home and relax. relax? She hadn't done that since this whole situation started... only a few months ago. It seemed so much longer than that. She started letting her mind wander, but it was cut short. Haele was being carried over to the folding chair she had just unfolded for her. Once Carlo was out of the way, Tora saw it. The whole bottom half of her shirt was soaked in blood. She knew Haele was going to be fine, but her recovery wasn't going to be quick and easy.

Haele did her best not to gasp in pain as Carlo carried her up out of the hatch of the hovercraft on his back. It was not an easy task. How could she have thought that the laser-shot wound in her side was only a cramped muscle?! It now hurt far worse than it had in the beginning, and it was a struggle to keep her face composed as Carlo sat her down in the folding chair.

"Hey, Tora," she greeted the girl with the chemicals, congratulating herself on maintaining a fairly steady tone of voice. "By the Clockwork Tower of Tulci, that was a close call. So are you ready to get finally get this show on the road?"

Haele could almost ignore the fiery pain in her side as she gazed at the chemicals that were all laid out, and the particular package that Tora held in her arms. Finally. After all those months, it was finally going to happen... And she and Tora were the ones who were going to initiate it.

"Carlo, what are you standing around like a mother hen for? You know I'm a tough girl," she teased the co-pilot of the hovercraft as he stood a short distance away, his expression a mixture of frustration and worry. "Come on, have a sit." She gestured at the stone floor of the cave, regretting it as a pang of, well, pain shot through her side.

This time she could not repress a loud intake of breath. At once, Carlo was beside her, though not in the way she had meant. He took one look at her face that now felt drained of blood and swore. "We are getting you on meds right now, Haele. You are not up for this right now. No, I know how long it's taken, and I know how badly you want to watch, but trust me! Your body has gone under enough strain already, and this is just the icing on the cake! Let me get my med kit, I'll be right back." With that, he turned on his heel and jogged back to the hovercraft, ignoring Haele's protests.

"NO! Carlo, I'm fine. I don't need anything--" She glanced at Tora. "Come on, Tora, let's do this. The G-agent I swiped won't stay pure for long; it's now or never."

Tora slowly opened the package. Everyone in the cave held his breath. The crinkling of the wrappings seemed so loud in the silence. Finally, it was open. What was inside of it took Tora's breath away.

Inside of the package was a piece of metal. The metal was extremely fragile; and extremely rare.

"Are you ready, Haele?" she asked. Haele nodded.

Tora got out her mortar and pestle. A very substandard tool in this day and age, but very useful. It worked much better than the machine. She broke off a piece of the metal and made it into a fine powder. Tora got out the beaker and measured the right amount of the powder. It wasn't all that much, but this was a very powerful substance once mixed with water. She'd only have seconds to do with it as she pleased before it exploded. Her hands were shaking.

"Haele, I don't know if I can do this," Tora trembled.

"You've got to, Tora," Haele gritted out. Great skies, the pain was intense! "We've... worked too hard for this... There are too many people counting on us."

That was when she started to space out. It was her way of dulling the pain in her side, she supposed. She was by now too lost in the past to care much.

"Draek is counting on us."

Yes... He was the one of the many unfortunate who had become infected with the G-Flu, as people had taken to calling it. It could strike anywhere, anytime, and once it hit it was incurable. No vaccine had been created to prevent it, either; or rather, the government had never sanctioned the funding to create one.

Because the government had in fact sanctioned the G-flu. It was its way of weeding out the weak from the strong. Those who survived the G-flu were deemed worthy to exist in the new world that the government sought to create. Those who did not... Well then, they were no longer anybody's problem.

Draek was no longer anybody's "problem."

"Why do you always have to bring up Draek? You KNOW how much it upsets me," Tora stated. Haele started to protest, but Tora interrupted her. "Stop. We just... need to get this done."

Tora took the powder to the beaker already filled with water. She poured the powder in and watched as it turned from silver to red. From this moment on, she only had about a minute to do with it as she pleased. She walked over to the Chemical Processing Lab, where everything was going to take place. She poured the mixture.

Watching, as it all started to occur.