Bathed in the mid-morning sun's light, Blessing drew her pale arm across Charlotte's in a supportive manner, coaxing her fingers around their weapon as she tightened the frightened teen's grasp.

"Relax, hold it steady..." As they both held the battered road sign up over their heads, the dead girl stepped away with finality to leave Charlotte in the middle of the road. Shuffling towards them from a dozen metres away, the very sight of the overweight Lost man was proving to be too much for her to handle.

"I... I can't do this! It's murder, killing a whole other person..."

"You can't kill what's already dead, remember that!" Blessing resisted the urge to step forwards and batter the creature herself. "Just let it come to you, read its movements... find your opening and then strike it in the head. That's all there is to it, soldier."

We'd driven down the road for only a couple of miles before Blessing insisted that we stop to teach Charlotte and Tanner how to take out the Lost. Watching her guide Charlotte closely like that, it had my blood boiling under the scorching sun.

Tanner, like myself, had been eyeing their movements carefully since last night. Perhaps we shouldn't have been eavesdropping so much, but in the end I saw something that I couldn't bare to ignore.

The troubled teen folded his arms as he glared at the two girls, stomping to my side so that he didn't have to stand near the frowning ex-mayor of Patch.

"Look at them both... I still can't believe it. How could Charlotte lead me on like this?"

"Just let it go, man. You're clearly not her type, and we have much bigger problems to deal with. Why don't you go hump a cactus or something, get it out of your system?"

I hadn't intended on sounding so bitter, but my mind was clouded with some kind of anger that I had no clue how to shake. Tanner raised his eyebrows at me, and then jerked his head at the blonde not-so-subtly.

"Let it go? I thought you were going to hit that, too! You tellin' me that Charlotte coming in and lezzing everything up with blondie doesn't piss you off?"

"No... No." I repeated, my glare hitting the blonde's fake smile. "I was wrong about her, this whole time. What you saw last night... That wasn't Blessing. I don't think that girl even realises what she's doing, messing with people's heads like this."

"Tan, you're up!" We both tensed as Charlotte approached him, looking spent with a disappointed shake of the head.

"H-Huh? I thought-"

"No, I couldn't do it after all... I'll do better next time, I promise."

Tanner's hand grazed hers as she passed the plucked road sign onto him, and I saw something behind his eyes snap before storming off with unique determination. Striding straight past Blessing, she attempted to talk him through the process once more.

"Okay kid, listen up. The infected are slow by default unless their target makes any sudden movements, so calmly finding somewhere to hide is- wait, Tanner!"

His grip tightened around the road sign, and swung it straight into the Lost's sunburnt head. Knocking it to the ground, the infected held onto whatever existence it had left as Tanner climbed on top and threw his weapon aside.

"Stop! That's dangerous, what the hell are you-" His 'instructor' started to protest, but paused before she could get any closer to the unresponsive teen.

Tanner began bludgeoning the overweight man to death with his fists, coldly hammering its skull against the road as it spurted blood into the heated air. The creature had been dead for at least half a minute before the mayor stepped in from the back, tearing him away from the scene only to infuriate the boy further.

"Get off of me!! Unless you want to be next, you murdering-"

"That's enough, young man! I won't let this madness continue, not in front of my daughter!" Talmadge's eyes panned around to face everyone, a sliver of authority returning to his distraught voice. "Your horrific 'lesson plan' is over for now, Blessing. I won't tolerate another second of it... You're teaching these children how to commit heinous acts, not how to survive!"

The blonde got up into the mayor's face and squeezed her fingers around his wrist, prompting him to let Tanner go as the boy stumbled to the ground. Her cold-grey stare fixed itself with the man's own look of disdain.

"Heinous acts? That's the only survival you'll see on this Route, 'mayor'. I wouldn't expect a coward like you to recognise it."

Letting him go, she brushed past his shoulder harshly as Tanner followed suit. The mayor's hand reached out in desperation to Charlotte, but she shook her head and also disappeared back towards the car.

"Sweetie, wait! I... I was..." Talmadge's eyes lowered, and half-turned to face me as though I didn't hate his guts too. "I was only trying to help. What else can I do, to make her look at me again?"

"Well, you've stopped letting us walk all over you... At least now, you don't look pathetic." I huffed, trying to remind myself of the terrible things that this man did. It seemed as though he genuinely wanted to be forgiven, but no one would listen to what he had to say.

"Pathetic... I am, though. I keep making excuses for the drugs, the lies, silencing that kid's parents... I pretended it was all for everyone's safety, but that's only the half-truth. I wanted control, and I loved every second that I was needed by my citizens. She hates me, for putting their needs before her own."

I was already stepping away from the conversation, losing any interest in clearing this man's conscience. He didn't seem to get it after all, I thought tiredly before turning my head to the side.

"She hates you, because her father turned into a murdering drug lord and child-beater. If I were you, I'd start with letting her bruises heal before trying to patch things up."

Once I'd gotten back to the car, my fingers just barely lifted the driver's side door before a palm reached out from behind me and slammed it shut again. I let out an audible groan as soon as I recognised her pale, institutionalised skin tone.

"...Is there a problem, my Queen?"

"Don't be cute. Get in the back, we've got a long drive ahead."

Moving to face her, we both kept our silence as the mayor scuttled past and into the passenger seat, where he wouldn't bother the two angsty teens. My tongue almost pierced the wall of my mouth with brute force, refusing to speak with Blessing any longer than it had to.

"What, you don't trust me? I'm not one of your god damn 'soldiers', don't order me around. I'm fine to drive, so just get in and shut your rotten Lost trap."

I didn't know where it came from, this toxic black sludge that infested my vocal chords. I wasn't intentionally saying these horrible things to Blessing, to Tanner and the mayor... and I definitely wasn't thinking such thoughts either.

Blessing's eyes seemed to register my confusion as I raised my hand to cover my mouth, and she barely shook it off with another cold glare.

"You're acting out like a child, Daniel. Don't you see what's going on?"

"I... I don't-"

"Just as I thought. You really think that you're immune to everything now, don't you? Certainly not Pollies, by the looks of it."

The word clicked in my mind, and I began to understand. My outburst the previous night, and the poison I was spewing around today... They were symptoms, of a much bigger problem. Somehow, I neglected to think that I would be vulnerable to the drugs as well.

"Pollies? So this must be the opium wearing off? I've been sweating all morning, like dehydration but itchier... I'm going into withdrawal, aren't I?"

Blessing brushed her hand over my burning forehead, and guided me around to the back of the sedan. I couldn't tell whether my sudden hatred for her was down to her actions with Charlotte, or my own chemical imbalance.

"That's right. So as you can see, driving in this state would put everyone at risk. I never thought that a handful of dozes would have a lasting effect, though." She stopped short of opening the back-seat door for me, and bit her lip with concern. 

"We were only in Patch for a few days... Charlotte may have been protected from it, but Tanner's been indoctrinated for months. Be careful around him, he's already starting to lose control of his better judgement."

I got in beside an uncomfortable Charlotte, and soon Blessing was driving us across the Route once again. If I had to guess from the grimy road signs, we were either entering or in the middle of Arizona. We'd spent most of our time recuperating since Patch, but now we were blasting our way across the States.

My theory from weeks ago proved to be correct, sadly; now that we were approaching the Golden Coast, even more of the Lost splattered on the windshield as Blessing plowed straight through them. It was uncommon to see so many on the road, maybe one or two wandering the desert... We would have to be on guard from now on, wherever we ended up.

The tension in the car only rose with the sun's beating rays, penetrating our dust-covered windows. I longed for a sip of cool water, but the mayor had only managed to scavenge so many supplies. We needed to stop and loot somewhere, before the heat could turn us against each other.

A low buzzing sound caught my attention, and I ruffled through my pockets before finding my mobile phone. It was becoming a bad habit of mine, to forget where I'd kept it... I figured we wouldn't need to keep contact in this situation, and that any plea for help would only give ourselves away.

"Shit..." I breathed, with an inflection that Blessing deemed serious enough to pull over to the side of the road.

"What is it? Your phone?"

I handed it towards her, and she inhaled through her teeth as well. It was a simple notification, but it may as well have ripped Beth even farther from my reach. A few simple words, letting me know that my service had been disconnected.

"Bless, the Telos network... It should have global coverage, right? That means-"

"It wasn't the TMD, if that's what you think. They couldn't be onto you." She handed it back, with a hint of scepticism. "They have almost a billion devices connected at any given time, monitoring traffic would be a waste of resources. The only person that would benefit from taking you off the grid, would be-"

Another 'bing' sound interrupted her, and I glanced down to see a curious message. It must have just slipped through, right as my piggyback service ended.

'-dedrp frtmcdwll rd pc dep lmp pst gd lk'

At first glance, it looked as though someone slammed their forehead into their keypad and simultaneously broke the internet with their foul grammar. Raising a curious eyebrow, I shared the text with the rest of the group and watched as they formed their own theories.

Dismissing Tanner's insistence that it was gibberish, Charlotte took my phone into her careful hands and drew her finger across the words.

"'Rd', it could be directions to a road. Whoever wrote this, they wanted to keep it obscure but legible. Anyone else would just look once and think it was a mistake."

Folding his bloodied arms, Tanner cracked his neck obnoxiously as his crush tried to decipher the text.

"Okie doo, Nancy Drew. So 'rd' means road. Now what about the rest of that mess?"

"I'm not sure about 'dedrp'... dedrop?" she paused for a second, and glanced expectantly at Blessing. "Could it be... 'Dead Drop'?"

Upon hearing her suggestion, the blonde snatched the phone back and read over the entire message once again.

"Yes... Yes! Only my brother would think of this, which means he's finally awake! He must have sent this from Elizabeth's base!" Her excitement dwindled after only a second of relief. "But this lazy code... They're watching him, closely. He's been restricted, because of my association with him."

"This was TB?" I scratched my neck, unsure. "He disconnected my phone, remotely? Why? That just makes getting through Nevada even harder!"

"I can only think of one reason... Elizabeth may have asked him to trace your location, in case you came looking for her. For Beth. By destroying your connection, he's sparing us from falling under surveillance. With that final message, he's also guiding us too. I don't know how he found one, but he's trying to reveal a dead drop location."

"A dead drop? What on earth is that?" Mayor Talmadge spoke up, unsure of what everyone was chattering on about.

"It's an old trading trick used by spies, to deliver intel or supplies. They 'drop' their cache at an undisclosed location and send  GPS encryptions to the second party later on, in order to avoid direct contact. The military also used these techniques, when travelling abroad as they passed through evacuated villages on reconnaissance missions."

I shook my head, seeing that her overcooked explanation was already going straight over Tanner's simple head.

"...In other words, there's a ton of resistance shit stocked up at this address."

"Ah, gotcha."

The blonde smirked at the both of us, and narrowed her eyes back down to the badly-transcribed text. For the next couple of minutes, everyone bickered amongst each other over a torn road map that the mayor had the good sense to bring with him.

Taking notes from everyone's suggestions as they decrypted the awful grammar, Blessing scrawled the completed message on the corner of the map with her pen's dried red ink.

'Dead Drop'

'Fort McDowell Road' 

'Police Department'

'Lamp Post'

'Good Luck'

We instantly hit the road with a little more confidence, since Talmadge seemed to know the area pretty well from his time before the outbreak. I was surprised that Blessing trusted him enough to let him drive, considering the sharp looks of contempt still jolting between the two. 

The closer we got to the cache of resistance-sanctioned weapons, the less control I had over my nervously-sweating body. If someone as cold and calculating as TB was hinting for us to gear up, it could only be for one reason... 

We would need to use them, in order to protect ourselves against Elizabeth.

----

Upon our arrival at the abandoned police department, it was clear from the mess of burnt-out tire marks in the parking lot that several waves of looters had come and gone. Thankfully we didn't have eyes for the station itself, instead searching each lamp post along the dusty road.

My fingers tugged at the front grate of a crooked one and it swung open to reveal a hollow interior. I turned my head to alert the others, with a raspy dryness stuck in my throat.

"Guys, this one! It's all here, stuffed inside!" Reaching my hand into the unknown, I thanked my lucky stars as I pulled out a full-litre bottle of water. Fresh too, judging from its consistency. We wouldn't have to boil any of the goods to purification after all.

There turned out to be four bottles in total, which was more than enough to keep each of us hydrated for a day or two. On top of that, we found box upon stacked box of instant noodles, a road map with some directions heavily underlined and a peeled Pringles can stuffed with wads of dollar bills. I supposed that currency would still influence some traders, if the resistance found themselves in a survivalist pinch.

In terms of weapons, we weren't looking at much. I counted one zipped case of hunting knives, two handguns with maybe thirty rounds of ammunition between them and a single police baton. I honestly expected more, but it made sense that these stashers would keep their best gear on-hand.

Blessing insisted that we secure the police department as a camp site before sundown, but it appeared as though it had already been cleared out by previous survivors. With no Lost around in the sealed lobby, I helped her heave our loot inside with the loudest of awkward silences.

After two or three trips with only a single arm to carry the goods, eventually I couldn't keep my mouth shut as usual and dropped the boxed ramen carelessly, stopping outside the glass doors.

"...You do trust me, right?" I asked, as she returned with another handful before stopping in her tracks.

"Of course I do. Meaning?"

"It's just, I know that I'm a little messed up right now. You must be too, but we can still talk. Like we used to do, remember?" I leaned back against the wall, letting myself slump down a little. "The old you, she always seemed so interested in my past, my current life. It's weird, but... I was starting to think that maybe she liked me, hah..."

Raising an eyebrow, Blessing put down her boxes with a little too much control.

"I'm not sure I understand. What do you mean by 'liked'?"

As much as I tried to explain my thought process, the words couldn't find their way to my tongue. She probably had no idea what I meant, anyway.

"I'm just saying that... nah, never mind. I'm talking shit, forget about it."

"No, you aren't. Did I do something to offend you?" She knelt down to face me, which only brought back those feelings of anger and distrust from before. I told myself that it was down to the drugs, because I couldn't bare to end up hating one of my closest friends for real.

"Okay, fine. You straight-up kissed me. Back in Patch, when I thought I was going to die. I was ready to let go, and you brought me back from the brink... You made all of the burning disappear in my head, but now it's like you're pretending that it never even happened. Like it meant nothing."

I don't know which was more painful. The five painstaking seconds of silence, or the look of utter confusion that glazed over her eyes.

"You're making that up, aren't you?"

"Wow, Bless. That's real low."

"No, really." She backed away for a couple of paces, scoffing at the very notion. "I mean, you must have imagined it... I have no memory of my rabid state, but even that doesn't matter. I'm dead."

She could see straight through the hurt in my eyes, and with a lingering sigh, she fell back against the opposite wall and sank to the ground.

"It's just biology, Daniel. Humans tend to kiss, because they are seeking a suitable mate to engage in reproduction with... I was engineered as an infected Puppet solider, therefore I'm unable to produce eggs or give birth. Why would I kiss a human in any state of mind, when my brain chemistry filters out those base instincts?"

I'd caught glimpses of the real Blessing here and there, but to see how deeply she rejected herself, it almost killed me. Her idea of 'human' love was completely flawed, down to its very core.

"Isn't that why you kissed Charlotte? To see if you really were dead inside?"

She froze for a moment, and just before I could consider apologising for the harsh jab, I saw it. The twitch behind her fake smile.

"Oh, you were watching us? She's the one who became infatuated with me, Daniel... I just gave her an outlet, a reason to keep fighting-"

"Save it. Whatever speech you have, just stop... I know you don't mean it, because this isn't you talking." I sighed, smacking my head hard against the wall. "It's me. Elizabeth said it first, but now I finally understand what she meant. I'm the one who did this to you."

Thinking back over our time together, it should have been clearer from the start. The way that Blessing stalked me from across the globe with this unhealthy attachment, always saying that she needed my help against Telos... Even then, she was just echoing our struggle from the infamous Telos submarine video.

"I don't blame you, Bless." I nudged my foot against hers, staring deep into her empty eyes. "You must have felt so lonely in that lab, so hollow that you needed fill yourself with someone else's rage. Someone who hated Telos just as much as you did. Someone, who turned out to be me. Charlotte as well, after what happened to Patch."

She didn't try to fake another grin, she didn't shed any tears. For once, the true Blessing stepped out from behind her defensive walls and squinted her eyes at me with an unregistered emotion.

"...Yes."

"Yes? You knew what you were doing?"

"I have... been using you. TS-19b made it look so easy, joining Elizabeth's army and leaving his past behind. He was able to develop his own identity, but my genetic pull is too strong." She touched upon her cheek, and pulled her hand away instantly. "Everything about me is borrowed from her, the First One. I can never be free of her thoughts, but I can at least borrow new ones from humans like you."

Her legs hunched closer to her chest, and a sliver of the old-familiar Blessing slowly rose back to the surface.

"It's a terrible way to think. Everything I've said or done, I was only reflecting this image of you, of Charlotte that I had in my head. Rather, who I wanted you both to be. I'm a disgusting person, aren't I? Trying to lose myself inside her, leading you on before-"

"Bless, you couldn't have known. We're the ones who let you down, with all of our negativity back there. I'm sure that Charlotte will understand, and don't worry... We 'humans' are a lot more robust than you give us credit for." 

I paused, and wiggled my stump comically. 

"Well, figuratively."

This forced a glimmer of amusement over her lips, and I could tell how much she didn't want to smile by the sheer strain of her cheeks. I made a promise to myself, right there and then. I would fill Blessing with new positive memories, to counteract the bitterness I'd spewed into her blank slate of a heart.

"That's not funny, Daniel."

"It's not? Shoot, I must have lost my funnybone-"

"Stop."

"Okay..."