The shelter was collapsing.
Flames licked up the walls, greedy and loud, eating through concrete like it was paper. The roof groaned overhead—a sound too much like a death rattle. Smoke coiled like vipers, and in the middle of it all, Sam knelt over Lilly's bleeding body.
The weight of her was all wrong—too light, too limp, her skin pale beneath the blood and ash.
Sam pressed a kiss to Lilly's temple. "You're gonna hate me for this," Sam murmured.
Then she lifted Lilly.
Arms under Lilly's knees and back, cradling her like something sacred. Something broken she refused to let go of. Lilly groaned softly, head lolling against her chest.
"Hang on, babe," Sam whispered, already moving.
The fire roared louder behind her. Gunshots echoed in the distance—whoever was left, they were still hunting. And the name? The metal plate with the answer Alyx died for? It was jammed in Sam's pocket, burning a hole through her soul.
She ran.
Through tunnels coughing smoke.
Over broken bodies.
Through collapsed doorways and shifting shadows.
Each step jostled Lilly made her cry out—but Sam never let go.
Sam kicked down a jammed door with one boot and stumbled out into cold, night air.
A burst of wind slapped the heat from her skin.
She staggered toward a waiting bike—Alyx's bike—half-buried in rubble from the explosion. Still functional. Barely.
She laid Lilly down for a second, just long enough to hotwire the engine with trembling fingers slick with blood.
It growled to life.
Sam didn't hesitate.
She slung Lilly across her back, mounted the bike, and tore down the road like a banshee with a death wish.
The world blurred.
Flames behind them. Darkness ahead.
And Lilly breathing—barely—against her.
"Stay with me," Sam murmured over the wind. "Don't you dare check out on me."
The bike screamed down the asphalt, faster, faster—Sam's heart pounding louder than the engine. Every muscle in her body burned from holding Lilly up, from holding herself together.
But she didn't stop.
Not until the safehouse came into view—one of the last on the list, hidden in the belly of an abandoned subway tunnel, deep enough even ghosts forgot it.
She carried Lilly down.
Kicked in the reinforced door.
Laid her on the cot like she was porcelain edged in cracks.
Blood soaked the mattress in seconds.
Sam's breath hitched.
Then she got to work.
Ripping open Lilly's jacket.
Packing the wound.
Sewing flesh that refused to stop bleeding.
And whispering, over and over, "Don't you dare leave me."
Not now.
Not after everything.
Not when Sam finally, finally knew what she was fighting for.
And just as the bleeding slows… just as Sam's hands begin to shake from adrenaline and not survival—
Lilly stirs.
One eye cracked open. Murky. Dazed.
"You stayed," she mumbles.
Sam chokes out a laugh, half a sob.
"Of course I stayed," she whispers. "You're mine to protect."
And the room is too quiet.
Too full of things unsaid.
Until Lilly asks:
"…What's the name?"
And Sam freezes.
Because the metal plate is still in her pocket.
Still burning.
Still dangerous.
And she hasn't read it yet.