"She said we." Phoenix was busy briefing the others on what had happened earlier. Dante and Kit sat opposite Phoenix on a table outside while Apollo and Fletch were sparring nearby.

"What else did she say?" Dante asked eagerly.

"Does it matter?" Kit interrupted, "She basically said she was a crawler. You all saw her like I did."

Phoenix gave Kit a look that he usually gave when he was in a mood.

"So, what are you saying? You want me to just throw her out?"

Kit frowned at the man he had grown to love like a brother.

"Are you kidding? Phoenix, she saved my life. We could use her here. You and me both know that lately the crawlers have been more restless. Before we found Echo the other day, Apollo and I had to outrun two rabid ones in town."

"They do seem to be evolving, Phoenix." Dante's brow line creased as he said out loud what he had been holding in for weeks, "I think they might have become self-aware."

Apollo stopped mid swing of his leg as he overheard Dante.

"What? Are you sure?" He walked over to the table and Fletch followed him.

"I mean I'm no animal-behaviorist... but from what you've told me about the crawlers on your last few field trips and what I saw today," Dante swallowed hard as everyone stared at him intensely, "they are getting smarter. It's only a matter of time before all of them learn to group together like the pack today had. That's if they haven't already."

There was an eerie silence that seemed to perplex all five men. They had been barely surviving for five years, trying to stay afloat in a world that was designed to kill them. It was hard enough outrunning wild creatures with no brain capacity; crawlers with the brain power to outsmart them like they had, well it was scary.

Apollo was afraid. He took a step back from Dante and his theory, hoping that the distance would scratch it off from his memory. The distance just made the revelation more frightening. That little place inside of him where he tried to stay positive, to cling onto that hope of a world like his old one, grew a fraction smaller as he left his friends and went to his room.

~~~~~~

It had been two days since Echo had left her room. She hadn't talked to anyone since the other day when she relieved too much about her past.

For five years, Echo had been a lab rat for maniacs who wouldn't shut up about the end of the world. She had never seen the 'end of the world' until she managed to escape the facility that she had been caged inside. Safe to say, she could finally understand what her captors were talking about.

This world was awful.

A knock on the door sent Echo shooting up, off of her bed.

"Echo. Hey, it's me." Apollo's soft voice reached her on the other side of the door.

"Come in."

Apollo was wearing a black shirt and grey joggers. When Echo looked up at him, a strange feeling caught her by surprise. She had never felt this emotion before, this new and alien sensation.

"I brought you some food. It's just soup. We couldn't find anything else in town." Apollo was slightly embarrassed. He wasn't sure what to say, how to talk to Echo all of a sudden. 

"Thank you."

Apollo placed the hot tray carefully on her bed. Echo tucked in and slurped the whole thing up in under a minute. Watching silently, Apollo wasn't really surprised that she was able to eat it while it was so hot. He'd seen her do much more shocking things.

Echo wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and then looked up at Apollo who was watching her closely. She could smell the endless fountain of questions that he was being careful not to blurt out.

"You can ask me."

He lingered for a second before joining her on the bed.

Apollo then began, asking all those questions that had been bubbling within him for two days.

"I want to know you, Echo." Apollo stared into Echo's amber eyes, eyes that he hadn't noticed burn so brightly until now. The sun, like her eyes, was beginning to move under the horizon.

"You won't feel the same way after I give you those answers."

He frowned and a small scar between his eyebrows became more noticeable in the changing light. Echo couldn't bare to look Apollo in the eyes, so she stared instead at that mark.

"You're wrong." A little shake of the head had echo's heart thrumming faster than it had been when she was running in the forest. That felt like a lifetime ago as she sat in the warm glow of sunset, next to a man that was a stranger in many ways but familiar in so many others.