Chapter Text
Disgusting.
That word kept bouncing around in her head. Pulling at her focus no matter what she did. No matter where she looked, no matter where she stepped—it always came back like a boomerang.
This wasn’t how she pictured Saint Mary’s Hospital. Not this quiet, not this rotten, not this—literally and figuratively—dead.
The stench of rot and dried blood hit her again, sharp and sour, but she was used to it by now. Even so, her stomach still clenched when she got close to the first body. Slumped against the wall, head twisted at a wrong angle, eyes long gone of any shine. There were more of them—scattered, half-decayed, forgotten.
Her flashlight beam cut across the cracked wall. Pediatrics, the faded letters read.
She quickened her pace. She just wanted to get to the doors. The wall on her right had once been painted with boats and bright blue waves—something cheerful, probably for the kids. Now the colors were pale and miserable, like they were grieving with the building itself.
The flashlight hanging from her backpack strap flickered, weak and annoying, until she smacked it with her palm. Too hard, maybe. But it was the only light she had left. The only light she had, period.
The door creaked under her hand. The handle squealed, the hinges groaned. She pushed inside. The air was stale, heavy. Ransacked lockers leaned drunkenly against the walls. Papers littered the floor. Broken equipment was strewn everywhere.
She bent down to one of the files. Between medical notes she found a couple of brain scans—and a photo. Her own arm, right after it healed. The bite, scarred and ugly. Always reminding.
Her stomach lurched. The papers slid from her hands and landed back on the table.
Next to it was a plastic bin full of meds, clothes, toys.
“Come on… something has to be here,” she muttered, digging through. But nothing. Nothing useful. Nothing that could help.
She inhaled sharply, then moved on.
The next room held two more bodies. Soldiers. One shot in the head, the other maybe in the chest—hard to tell through the decay. She passed them with her lips pressed tight, bracing herself against the doorframe for balance.
At the end of the hallway, the last door loomed. Its paint the color of dried blood.
She pushed through into a washroom, then an operating theater. The smell hit her like a wave—dust, iodine, and something else. Something like disappointment.
She froze. Her eyes swept across the floor, across the stains, across the black, dried pool in the middle of the room. A fight had happened here. But no bodies—no doctors, no nurses. Maybe someone dragged them off. Soldiers, maybe.
Her gaze lifted to the gurney.
That’s where she’d been. Maybe. Probably. She couldn’t be one hundred percent sure, but everything screamed it. Everything screamed that someone had come for her. Fought for her. Killed for her.
Her hand clenched into a fist.
Just beyond the table, a green duffel bag sat on the floor. The Fireflies logo on the side was almost gone. She crouched, tugged the zipper open, dug inside. Her fingers brushed against something solid beneath a sweater.
A recorder. Old, silver. She pressed play.
A woman’s tired voice crackled out:
“Most of them already left.
I don’t know which group I’ll join…
I was one of the people who wanted to go after the smuggler and the girl.
But they said… even if we found her, or by some miracle found another immune person, it wouldn’t matter.
Because the only one who could’ve made a vaccine is dead.”
Ellie sank down to the floor. The silence of the operating room roared in her ears.
She wanted to listen again. And again. Over and over, until the words hollowed her out completely. It could’ve gone on forever. She wouldn’t have stopped herself.
But it wasn’t enough.
It was never enough.
She needed more. She was done stumbling around scraps, done clutching at random pieces left behind by chance. She didn’t want to ask him. Not after that look—the one that ended it all. The one that came with his words: I swear.
She had no idea how long she stayed there, seated on the cold floor, until her legs stiffened and her fingers went numb. Finally, she forced herself up.
It was getting dark outside by the time she returned. The sky was covered in heavy clouds. By the campfire stood Shimmer, her chestnut mare with the white blaze across her forehead. Chewing grass like she’d never left. Ellie stroked her nose, whispered thanks, even though she wasn’t sure the horse heard.
She sat down on a random crate, recorder still clutched in her hand. The voice hadn’t been Marlene’s. She would’ve recognized Marlene instantly.
She wondered if maybe she was—
No.
She shut it down. Couldn’t go there.
She pressed the button. Played the last line again. And again. And again.
Listened with her jaw clenched. Knowing now that her gut had been right all these years. That something never added up. Instead of pride, it left her gutted.
Shimmer’s ears flicked suddenly. She lifted her head, nostrils flaring, listening.
A second later, Ellie heard it too. Hooves. Fast, heavy, determined.
Please, not now. Not now, not fucking now, her mind raced.
She stiffened. Slowly turned.
A silhouette between rusted-out cars. A rider on a dark bay with a star on its forehead. The man in the saddle sat firm, steady, face grave. Grave the way only he could be.
“Ellie!”
Joel.
He swung down from the horse.
She stood frozen, torn down the middle. Everything in her boiling. But still—she took a step toward him. Then another.
"Come here." He didn’t wait. He reached her, pressed a kiss to her hair, wrapped her tight in his arms.
She exhaled sharply through her nose. But she didn’t pull away. Not right away. And not because she forgave him. No—because for one fleeting second, in that embrace, everything quieted.
“What the hell were you thinkin?” he muttered, his chin resting on her head. “Running off in the middle of the night like that. You talk to me. You don't just leave me a goddamn note—”
She went stiff. Then shoved him off. Hard. So hard it shut him up.
Her eyes burned holes through him.
Joel froze.
“Tell me... what happened here,” she said. Her voice shook, but she didn’t. “If you lie to me one more time, I’m gone. You’ll never see me again.”
Joel swallowed. His eyes flicked away, to the wreckage, to nothing. To his own shame.
“But if you tell me the truth,” Ellie added, quieter now, “I'll go back to Jackson. No matter what it is.”
Silence. The fight inside him was plain. Years of justifying, of telling himself he did the right thing. That he’d been protecting her. He couldn’t lean on that anymore.
His eyes closed, brow creasing, lids trembling.
“Joel…” she whispered.
He opened them. Exhaled. Each word dragged out of him like it hurt to breathe.
“Making a vaccine... would have killed you."
He wanted to say more, but she had already turned away. Eyes wet, jaw locked, body stiff as stone.
“So I stopped them,” he finished, voice low.
Ellie staggered back. Her knees buckled. She dropped onto the crate before she could collapse.
“Fuck.” The word tore out of her with her breath. Over and over, her lungs tried to catch up. Her heart hammered against her ribs.
She pressed a hand to her chest, the other bracing against the gravel. Sharp stones cut into her palm. It barely registered. The pain inside was worse.
Both hands covered her face now. Tears slipped out, dripping hot down her cheeks, soaking her jeans. She tugged at her hoodie zipper like it could hold her together. It didn’t.
And then his hand touched her shoulder.
She lashed out, whipping up to her feet.
“Don’t fucking touch me!” she shouted. Stumbled back, step after step, farther than she meant to, but she had to.
Then she made the mistake of looking at him. His face was just as wrecked as hers.
Fuck.
A week ago, everything had been fine. They’d stood in his kitchen, Joel eyeing the lines of her new tattoo with a quiet smile. The kind a dad gives his daughter.
“Ellie…"
“Don’t call me that.” Her breath hitched. She forced it steady. “I’ll come back to Jackson,” she said finally. “But we’re done. You and me—we’re done.”
She brushed past him, quick, almost running. Straight to Shimmer. Climbed into the saddle.
And they really were done.
As she kicked off, as she rode away without looking back, she felt something snap. That invisible string binding them together. Torn in two, like a family photo ripped straight down the middle.
They weren’t father and daughter anymore.
Not ever again.