The Compound is a blackened shell. The fence, with its rows of chain-link laced with barbed wire, still stands. There are three man-sized holes ripped through the chain-link. The inner buildings are husks, charred cement walls and twisted, half-melted metal skeletons are all that remains. The outer buildings faired better, one storage house is completely untouched save for a spray of bullet holes. What happened that night? Who were the Whitecoats fighting?

The infirmary looks toasted. Black crawls up the walls, the right branch is warped and buckling. I recall the flames bursting from the windows and can only hope that the damage inside isn't too extensive.

"You guys should check out the storage buildings, see if there's stuff we can use. I'm going to check out the infirmary."

"Be back here in an hour?" Sky suggests. He's jittering, bouncing from foot to foot nervously. His eyes won't stop moving. With the packs hidden back at the cave, there's nothing to weigh him down or keep him from bolting up a tree at the faintest noise. Delilah is fairing better, or at least she's hiding her fear better.

The three of us split. Sky darts off to the farthest of the outlying buildings, Delilah heads for a nearer one, and I pick my way through the rubble to the infirmary.

The front doors are blocked by debris. The glass is wavy and coated in thick ash. It's not much of a problem, but it would have been nice if the wheel tracks were functional. I throw a cursory glance around me. Something about this place makes me feel watched. Someone else might call it paranoia, but I am less optimistic than that.

"Trick." Elle's head rolls, her eyes flutter. My heart jumps to my throat.

"Elle, hey." I kneel in the ash and prop her on my knee. "Elle, can you hear me? Can you open your eyes?"

Her eyes open slow, she winces at the light. It takes her a full twelve seconds to lose the unfocused glaze, and the whites of her eyes are dark and bloodshot. She mumbles something, like thick word soup leaking out the corner of her mouth.

I look around for a crevice that's not layered in ash and find a place on the ground that has been mostly shielded by a large chunk of displaced concrete. I lay Elle there, helping her lean upright against the stone. She struggles to keep her head from sagging. "Hey, hey, hey. Look at me, mirame, tell me how you feel."

"They let you come today," she whispers, doing her best to smile. "I didn't think they would." Her skin bleeds ashes from her scalp, her arms look like the rubble they're propped on.

"What?"

Instead of answering, she lifts her arm to examine it and frowns at the gritty pattern.

"My head hurts," she says, letting her arm drop.

"I know, stay here. I have to go open the doors, then we can get your medicine." I give her a quick pat on the knee and jump to my feet. She's awake, it should relieve me, but instead I feel antsier. I don't think she knows where we are.

Walking back, I notice that the dust is lighter in areas, as if it's been disturbed, especially around the melted door. Clouds of ashy dust settle into the spots where I've walked, the thick motes falling back into place. I check behind me, tracing the path I made. The pattern there is strikingly similar to the one around the door. My skin itches, I want to shake out of it, like I would if this were a fight. But I need to stay entirely me, I need to be able to recognize the medications once I'm inside and Robo-Trick can't do that. Besides, I pinch the back of my hand and flex my fingers a couple times, I can't be around Elle like that. I don't trust myself.

A few mounds of drywall and brick from the upper level are collected inconveniently against the doors. I prod one pile with my toe, but it refuses to budge. I nudge until the jostling shakes loose a couple bits, but the rest stays put. On closer examination, I discover that the tangled mess of wall is fused to the warped glass. Bubbles of the once-clear window must have oozed over the bundle of wall chunks and solidified. Again, not a problem, but it would be nice if things weren't as difficult as they could possibly be for once.

I smash my heel on the connection where wall meets door window. Glass shatters, ash explodes into the air, and the wall bundle rattles. The ash dries up the back of my throat, and I hold back a cough. I crouch and jam my hand under the debris bundle to lever it the rest of the way free. When my hand jerks up, it meets a corner of jagged glass and the skin tears.

"Que mierda," I swear under my breath, staring at the blood welling in the cut. I wipe it off on my shirt and hold my hand up to examine the wound. It doesn't look too deep, does sting like hell though. I wipe it off again and return to un-sticking the wall bundle. One more shove and it rolls free.

I work free a few more piles of debris that melted into the door and kick them out of the way. The ash and dust are swirling like mad, and it finally looks like there's a chance the door will open now. I wedge my fingers into the seal between the two sliding doors and pry them apart. They squeal and groan as they grate open on the warped wheel track. The right side snaps with a loud pop, and the door jams into the remaining chunk of wheel track. A hard shove and the wheel track crumples as the door rams to the side.

The second set of doors is already open, and stuck that way by the looks of it. Some important-looking wires hang limp from a fried panel above the door. Nothing inside looks like it's on the verge of collapse.

When I return for Elle, dust has settled all over her hair and face, making her look even more washed out than she already is. She staggers to her feet with my help, and with her holding tight to my arm, we creep into the infirm. Past the mangled sliding doors is a lobby that looks remarkably untouched. A fine, silvery powder coats everything, except for random bare patches on the floor. A few have puddles of black ooze, a few are human-shaped.

From the outside, it looked as though the right branch is on the verge of collapse, which is good because as far as I could ever tell things like treatments are kept in the left branch. That was the direction the nurses who got my refills always came from. I pick a hallway on the left and make my way around the patches to the entrance.

The hall is dark, darker than I'm used to it being in here. The glaring fluorescent lights are all dead. The first section of hall is devoid of doors, but the first turn reveals a long stretch of them. I walk along, Elle trailing behind while I kick each door open. The wood doorframes splinter and the doors all bang into the wall. Most of them fall open to operating rooms, there's an x-ray room at the end of one long hall, the sight of that equipment brings to mind the conversation I had with Elle, about the boy with the glowing eyes. I almost ask her if she remembers him, she was lucid when she was talking about him. But the idea that she might not remember now is enough to stop the question before it starts.

At the opposite end of the hall with the x-ray room, a flicker of movement catches the corner of my eye. I stop dead, my eyes dart around the small space, my ears strain for even the faintest sound. One second passes, another, ten, fifteen. Nothing happens.

"Come here," I motion to Elle, who stopped at the last door. She says nothing while I guide her past the melted equipment to the little cubicle the machine operator used to sit in. The thick glass pane between cubicle and machine is soot-stained but not warped, and inside the cubicle looks undisturbed. An array of dead computers, a locked file cabinet, and a lone worn stool stare at us.

"Hide under the counter," I tell Elle, "don't come out unless I come get you even if it gets noisy, okay?"

She blinks at me, eyes glassy.

"What did I just say?"

"Don't come out," she whispers.

A loud crash from the hall startles me, Elle shies deeper under the counter. The scare knocked loose my self, I can feel it slipping away like old skin.

"Stay here," I whisper. "Use your camouflage, I'll be right back."

With Elle as hidden as she can be, I push my glasses onto the bridge of my nose and step out into the hall. To the right, the direction I came from, there is no one, only a crumbly chunk of brick laying on the floor. I edge further into the hall, trying to get a better look at where the brick came from.

The silence that was welcome before is eerie now. The hairs on the back of my neck prickle like the air is charged. I stop a good distance away from the brick. It looks like it belongs to the top of the corner, where there's a gap in the stone reinforcements. I creep down the hall towards an intersection that feels vaguely familiar, the way recurring dreams feel when it's been a while. A hazy, unplaceable sort of déjà vu. I turn slowly, searching for 'coats. The hall is empty, but a metal door sunk into the wall clicks a memory back into place. This must be the wall bordering the dome. I've been brought through that doo a few times. Concussed, broken boned, whatever. Placing it clears my head a little. There's no one here after all, that chunk of brick was just a chunk of brick, probably knocked loose by me banging doors open. I allow myself a sigh of relief, and that's when I hear it.

A low, quiet voice that says, "Hello again, Trick."

Not 'Experiment', not feminine, not British: Not a 'coat, Delilah, or Sky. I spin fast, fists up, ready to deflect a blow. When I see who stands behind me, I freeze.

The person at the other end of the hall, shrouded by dim shadow with a small tablet tucked under his arm, is supposed to be dead.

"Welcome back to the Compound," Dieter says.