I've been staring at the damn campfire for over a day, everyone arguing what the best way is for us to approach the South. All the while, I sit wordlessly, watching them battle over something I'm not sure I even care about.

I know I should care, Zac didn't sacrifice himself for me to just sit here like an idiot. Yet talking myself into doing something and then actually actioning it, is easier said than done.

This morning I got up and walked alongside the wall for a bit, staring up at the ugly monstrosity. Kieran trailed behind me, no doubt worried that I'll run off, get lost, or kill myself.

The wall is exactly the same as the one in the North, even down to the colour that it has turned due to the fucking weathering. Despite the fact that we were always told by the State that every section was the same, now we actually know. The South is as much its own prison as everywhere else.

"Berry?" Heidi offers, perching down beside me and giving me a small smile as she holds out her hand. I go to shake my head before I see Jordan glaring at me from afar. I hesitantly take the perfectly round, red fruit, and shove it into my mouth.

"How do we know these aren't poisonous?" Anna scoffs, staring down at the berries in her hand.

"We don't," Sam admits.

"Fantastic." Anna rolls her eyes.

"It's something we didn't consider when we left the North. What to do about food," Jordan replies with a concerned look on his face. "Sam and I are going to head off this afternoon and attempt to find civilisation. Or at least some food."

"Is that wise?" Heidi asks. "We have no idea what's out there."

"We don't really have another choice." Jordan shrugs. "We need food."

"He's right," Anna mumbles. "We're hardly going to make it to London without fucking supplies." London. Zac's home town.

"That's true."

"Okay, so Sam and I will head out now. Hopefully we'll be back before nightfall," Jordan says.

"Which direction are you going to go?"

"Following the tree line seems like a good idea."

"South West then." Kieran nods, looking down at his compass.

"What towns do we have that way?"

"Close by? It's only really villages. It's about thirty miles south to Bedford."

"How the fuck do we think we're going to get to London?" Anna scoffs. "We must be hundreds of miles away!"

"Around seventy actually." Kieran shrugs. "It'll take a while."

"You don't say." Anna rolls her eyes. "Remind me why I fucking came here."

"To save the people in the North," Heidi says softly as Anna smirks.

"That's not a good reason. I don't even like the people in the North."

"Anna!" Jordan mutters, shaking his head at her.

"What?" she exclaims. "This so-called mission has already gone tits up! And now you want me to walk fucking miles in a desperate attempt to find help? Are you insane?"

"It doesn't matter what's happened so far," Kieran retorts. "We're stuck here now, the gate into the wall won't open from the inside! We don't have a choice."

"We should go." Jordan huffs, picking up one of our rucksacks as he glances at Sam. "Every minute here is a minute we lose of daylight."

"I agree." Sam nods, picking up his own bag from the floor.

"We'll be here," Anna exclaims. "Just waiting around."

"Good," Sam retorts and she shoots him a glare.

"We will need to move away from the wall soon," Kieran pipes up. "We don't know if they monitor it like they do in the North."

"No," I exclaim, raising my head from my knees and shaking my head.

"Mils-"

"He might turn up," I assert, glaring at them. Their suggestion causes a sharp pain to flood through my chest. "If we aren't here when he arrives, he won't know how to find us."

"She does know he isn't coming back, doesn't she?" Anna mutters, clearly not expecting me to hear. I lower my chin back to my knees, eyes back on the campfire. The warm, flickering flames remind me of the warmth in Zac's eyes as he laughed with me, the way he would look at me every single day, the adoration in them as we became one in bed.

"Em-"

"I'm not leaving," I cut Jordan off with a snap, not even glancing up at them.

"Let's go," Jordan replies. "Stay here until we get back. We'll discuss it further then."

I don't hear their goodbyes, I don't listen to them leaving. Heidi tries to talk to me but I ignore her, Zac's face appearing in my mind as I watch the flames, his chiselled jawline, the smirk that covered his features. He was the most impeccable looking man that I'd ever met; the sexiest, the hottest, the fittest... whatever word you can use, he was it. He was everything.

*~*~*

"Emilia, I'm sorry," he says huskily and I swallow, finally tearing my gaze away from his shirtless, muscled and inked torso and up to his face, watching as it turns into a smirk. "Like what you see?"

"No," I retort, making a move to walk around him.

"Hey!" he exclaims, stepping back in front of me. "I'm sorry."

"Apology not accepted."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't like you." I shrug, watching as he parts his lips slightly, clearly amused by my answer. I immediately tear my eyes away from his face, looking down at the ground, inwardly cursing myself for wanting to look back at his bare skin, his chiselled jawline, his tattoos.

"Your instinct to look away from me tells a different story," Zac replies and I immediately look back up, glaring.

"It does not!"

"Oh really?" He takes a step closer, a cheeky grin on his face. "So, you aren't just looking away from me because you like what you see?"

"No," I deny, forcing my eyes to stay focused on his face instead of drifting lower. "I just don't want to look at you."

"That's a shame." Zac shrugs, shoving his hands into his jean pockets as he looks over my body. "I like what I see."

"What?" I blurt out, not expecting those words to ever fall from his mouth.

"Why are you so surprised?"

"Because... because you're you!" I snap slightly, hand out in front of me as I gesture towards him.

"I have eyes don't I?" Zac shrugs, taking another step closer, his eyes hungrily taking me in, "Look at you, Emilia. Fucking sexy."

"Zac..." I breathe out as my back hits the door frame.

"Yeah?"

"We probably shouldn't..." I mutter watching as he places an arm on the wall beside me, his head cocked as he looks down at me.

"Probably not..." Zac replies huskily, his lower body pushing into me. I gasp as I feel his hardness through his jeans, losing all self control and moving, leaning up and crashing my lips to his, one hand remaining at the top of my towel, the other landing on his abs.

With a start, my eyes fly open, immediately filling with tears as I look up at the darkening sky. I'm still sleeping outdoors, the cold chilling my bones, causing me to shiver. 

Sitting up, I see Kieran and Heidi over by the wall, looking up at it as they chat together. Anna is sitting across from me, prodding the fire with a stick.

"Another nightmare?" she asks and I look away, back towards the darkening treeline.

"Are they not back yet?" I ask, my voice hoarse as I ignore her question.

"No," Anna replies and I bite my lip, unsure of how to process her answer. Maybe something happened to them. What do I do if I lose more people? Both Zac's best friend and mine went off together, into the unknown, completely exposed to any danger without back up.

"We should have stopped them," I mutter.

"Oh, now she has an opinion." Anna scoffs and I shoot her a glare. "You could have spoken up earlier."

She has a point, I'm not fucking stupid. I know I should be listening to what they discuss, should actually process the impact of any suggestions they make. Yet I'm not, missing most things as Zac seeps into my brain once more, Claudia and Rayden in the background. 

Life is fucking sacred, and we take it for granted every damn day.

"Can you..." I trail off. "Can you tell me what you were going to say yesterday?"

"Yesterday?"

"Last night," I correct. "About Zac."

"You didn't want to know-"

"Please!" I reply, slight desperation in my voice as I look at Anna. I want to hear about everything in his life, the good bits and the bad, no matter the consequences.

She sighs before taking a deep breath. "I met Zac the day I came to Nottingham. I was shipped here from Sheffield, my home town. I thought Kieran was dead. He wasn't actually found for a couple of years." She pauses. "Zac was with Gia in the County Hall, both of them looking around the room, completely and utterly scared. It was her who called me over, told me I could join them so that I wasn't alone."

"Gia?"

"She ended up being my roommate in the Girls' house."

"I never saw either of you," I reply.

"We were barely ever there." Anna shrugs. "I grew closer to Zac as time went on. He introduced Gia and I to Jordan and we became a little team, sneaking out to the old County Ground every time we had a night off."

"Wow..." I breathe out.

"Zac would always tell us that the State was bad. He warned us of going against the rules, suggesting that we should rise up against them on more than one occasion."

"From the very beginning?" I ask and she nods.

"From the beginning. He wasn't stupid." She smiles at the memory. "But the rest of us were."

"I never liked the State," I admit, thinking back to the Science lessons where I went against Germain's rules, her glare boring a hole in my head as my mini skirt rode up my thighs. "But I never considered them not being in charge as an option."

"Me neither," Anna agrees. "Gia and I would tell him he was being silly, that no-one could ever..." She grimaces. "Turns out Gia was a fucking snake with her own agenda."

"What happened to her? How did she get there?"

"I have no idea." Anna shrugs. "She would sneak out of our room practically every night from the very beginning. I always thought it was to meet Jordan. As far as I knew, he was the only person she properly knew outside of Zac and I." 

"Jordan and her..."

"No!" Anna shakes her head. "I thought they were... because of Zac and I..." She trails off, looking away from me awkwardly. "One night she just didn't come home," Anna breathes out shakily. "I thought she was my best friend. Instead, she played me like she did everyone else."

"She's a psycho," I retort and Anna smirks.

"I agree with you there."

"Still, Zac knew," Anna says. "He didn't know it was his sister, but he knew the State needed to be stopped before any of us."

"He's smart." I smile and she nods.

"He was."

"Are you girls warm enough?" Kieran asks as he wanders back over to the two of us, his arms around his chest. "I'm not sure how much longer I can deal with being outside."

"At least the wall shelters us from the breeze," Anna retorts, shaking her head as he dips down beside her, his hands over the fire.

"Mils?" Heidi smiles. "Did you sleep okay?"

"No," I answer honestly as she perches down beside me and rests her head on my shoulder.

"It'll get better," she murmurs and I bite my lip, not wanting to hear her words. The only way it could get better is if Zac became a fucking superhero and managed to get away from those Enforcers.

"Who the fuck are you?" A sudden exclamation has all of us whirling around, eyes wide as they fall onto a girl and a boy. Their faces are covered with what looks like war paint, accentuating their savage look, each of them pointing a weapon towards us.

"Put your arms up!" the girl orders, all of us complying instantly. Our rucksacks are out of reach, along with our weapons, from the very minute we decided to sit around the fire. We let our guard down.

What a great big fucking mistake by all of us.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

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Oops. This doesn't appear to be a friendly couple of people! Any predictions? You know I love them!!

Poor Emilia, poor Anna... they've all been through so much...