Chapter 28.

I stopped believing in God the day I was strapped to that metal table in Young Haven and the Unit was drilled into my spine. But the Church in the Gray is different, the nuns are all armed to the teeth with assault rifles and flash bangs, all of them wiping out any of the Gatekeepers who got a little too close. And all with a smile on their faces.

We're all crammed inside the wooden building; pews pushed to either wall with a circular wooden table in the middle of the room. Soldiers dressed in black with experience practically oozing out of their pours, and the rest of the Rogues still fidgeting and jumpy at every roar of gunfire that rips the air outside.

Jesus watches from his cross at the front of the room.

"Mei. Cool down time for the walls of Jericho?" Hera asks, swiping through footage of the Gatekeepers rushing through the city.

"Fifteen minutes." Her voice coming from every nook and corner of the church.

"Commencing?"

"In five, four, three, two and one."

The shudder of the earth comes to a sudden halt, the screams of the car sized machine guns perched near the bridges on the other side of the Gray silence. The sounds of civilians screaming and guns popping through the city replaces it.

Hera looks up from the screen built into the circular table and says, "Rogues – get all the civilians out of harm's way. Force should not be used."

The hoard of teenagers and adults with guns shout their acceptance and storm out of the Church, leaving Kira, Saia, Runt and I with Hera and her soldiers.

"Alpha and Beta companies," she yells, "Engage all hostiles through the city with extreme force. Urban guerilla warfare formation 7-B9."

Half of the soldier's snap to attention and leave the Church as one group. Their heavy boots shake the wooden floor, the snapping of safety catches flicking off fill the thick atmosphere. They have an air to them, an intensity that you can't fake. An intensity they earned during the war, a seriousness that creates a vacuum wherever they were.

"Caesar and Delta companies," she continuous, "We'll engage the Guard that are coming through underground passageways. It'll be difficult considering the Gatekeepers are the ones who created those passageways, so be prepared for any traps or dead ends faced."

She turns towards Runt. Runt with a hunting knife on her thigh, and with a rifle in her arms. She'd changed a lot on the Gatekeepers Island, the guy in the forest had taught her something Hera couldn't. "You'll be on my nine. I'll teach you how to skin a Gatekeeper." And then to Kira, "You'll be on my three."

Runt nods, a smile creeping across her thin lips. Like I said before, I'm not planning on being there when she snaps.

She then turns towards Saia and I. Saia with her hands full of wires and spheres of metal – her fingers fly over the small parts, her lips moving as she mutters to herself.

"You two will destroy the three bridges."

"Excuse me?" I ask.

Saia's hands stop moving. "I don't have enough bombs for that."

"I guess that's where I come in," I say, finishing Hera's thought. "I'll use the Unit to find weak spots."

Hera nods. "If we cut them off then it should deter the Gatekeepers somewhat."

"Holy shit," Mei says.

"What is it?" Hera barks.

"I…what the hell are…I'll just put it up."

The screen on the table flickers and changes. A sort of bird's eye view of the three bridges fill the table, the Guard a white river flowing into the Gray on the largest bridge. But the two others are full, but not full of Guard. Things. Mangled and gnarled, some of them awkwardly limping, some of them sprinting – all of them with a face stretched over a head it shouldn't have been on.

"What the fuck…," Kira says, saying what we're all thinking.

"Runs in the family," Hera mutters. "I found you."

"Found who?" I ask.

She swipes away the question with a hand through the air. "Daniel, will you be able to –"

"I'll just have to try my best." I shrug and add, "But I'll have to have someone there with me in case I forget, you know, everything."

Kira winces.

"Saia, make sure he doesn't lose his shit. And we don't know what those things are or what they can do. So be careful."

We nod and start out of the room. Kira grabs my arm before I leave behind Saia. She traces the same symbol Hera and my mum did on my palm, and I do the same. I was going to come back, even if it meant I was a blank slate, she'd fill me in on everything.

I hand her my aviators. "Keep these safe for me."

She gingerly takes them, like they'd crumble if she holds onto them for too long. "See you in the morning then."

"I'll make pancakes." I grin and Saia gags. She drags me through the Church, the nuns covered in soot wishing us luck.

We pick a car out at random from the street and break into it. I drive, since Saia is still fixing up her fifty-fifty chances of sending everything this side of the West Coast to hell and back. I force the car forward, weaving through pedestrians but not caring so much to weave out of the way of any Guard we come across.

Holy crap, I'm just like him. That sick bastard is probably laughing at me.

I stop hitting as many Guard as I can.

We scream through hails of gunfire coming from office buildings, bursts of flames bloom throughout the city. Buildings are beginning to catch fire, sirens wail and people are everywhere on the streets. Civilians are caught with stray bullets, some tripping and getting caught in the rush of people flowing down the roads. Chaos, just like the Founder's street massacre.

I come to a screeching halt in front of the first bridge. It's the furthest away from the other two and the oldest in the Gray. We're out of the car and on it in a flash, the tornado of mangled humans with stretched faces is still raging into the city. They climb up buildings and rip apart anything they can find, from lamp posts to people, from concrete to windows, everything is getting ruined.

A few of them notice us and scream. A scream like a roar, and they all charge.

"Go to the bridge. I'll keep these guys busy," I shout at Saia.

I flip the hunting knife into my hands and switch on the Unit.

Duck under a clawed hand and force the blade through its gut, kick out at a frail shin that snaps on impact and slam my arm into a weak jaw. More of them are coming, a mass of bodies and teeth and claws. I block and jab, cutting, kicking and punching my way forward. Teeth sink into my normal arm and I yank it away. I grab the one that bit me and force the hunting knife through its eye socket, its body going limp instantly.

I frantically search for Saia, her flame of green hair pops into my vision near the middle of the bridge. Whatever these things are, they were ignoring her.

"Two more feet to your right," I yell. Duck and slice, snap and slam against the concrete. "And put another one just below that cable."

"Any other ones?" she screams through my earpiece.

"Two more just above the pillar that goes into the river!" A larger beast slams into me. It forces me onto the ground, its large jaw snapping and frothing. I plant my metal fist into its jaw, just at the right angle and just in the right place – its head snaps back and the heart beat the Unit shows me snaps off.

A sharp explosion of light and sound blinds me. I feel a hand wrap around my wrist and drag me out of the pile of bodies I had begun standing on. I'm thrown into the car, a second later and we're flying down the road. The hoard of humans chase after us, screaming and raging, tripping over themselves and debris. Hera's Jericho guns stand stoically in their placements, their large barrels still glowing yellow in the thick darkness of the Gray's night.

I switch off the Unit and it feels like my head's been slammed into a wall.

"Hey? Hey?!" the green haired girl driving shouts at me. "Dan, get your shit together. Just two more bridges."

"Bridges?" I groan and sit up in my seat. Something's been torn away from me, I remember something about bridges, but what exactly about them?

She takes one hand off the steering wheel, the other feels around and eventually reaches my face. She swings it back and slaps me. Hard.

"I'm Saia, alright? And we have to destroy these bridges."

"I don't-"

"And if we don't all your friends are going to die."

I don't get what's happening, but I don't want my friends to die. That would suck, really, really suck.

She slams on the breaks in front of a bridge. There's a second of silence and then a blinding flash of light. A wave of heat and scream of an explosion rips through the air as the bridge we drove away from explodes into a fiery mess. The only things left are two parts of the bridge, awkwardly reaching towards each other with nothing to connect them.

She shoves me out of the car and grips onto my face. "Look, I need you to use the Unit. Can you do that? And then tell me where I should put the bombs."

Worry plagues her brown eyes, her green hair illuminated by the moon's pale glow. I nod. I can do that – to help my friends.

I switch it on and I stagger. I don't remember getting to the next bridge, but Saia is gripping my face and shouting at me. The Unit's display in my eyes has also changed – its sharper, giving me more readings and more stats. But it also feels like I'm two different people now. I don't remember the car ride, but I do remember Saia's flash bang…and then nothing. Memories are getting jumbled and blended, days and weeks melt together and so do faces.

One day I'll get this thing out of me.

I grip onto my knife as Saia sprints onto the bridge. The wave of flesh – I'll call them Skins – crash into the wave coming from the bridge in front of me. They're overwhelming, their smells of death, decay and rot pungent to me. They claw and shred my clothes, they dig into my skin and scream into my ears. I punch and kick as much as I can, letting the Unit take over, letting the knife cut and slice and glide through bodies. I want to vomit, but there's nothing in my stomach to empty.

"Five of them in a row," I shout. "One after the other just above the pillar. That's all this one needs."

I push one of the Skins over the bridge's edge and kick another into an edge of the concrete – the sick snap of its spine breaking carries through the night. Saia's in the driver's seat in a flash, I leap into the passenger seat and we're flying towards the final bridge.

The biggest bridge. The bridge ferrying the Guard into the city.

"Hey, Dan!" Saia yells, swerving around a mass of families rushing into an apartment building. "We're going to destroy the bridge over there, okay? If we don't-"

"I know," I say. "There's something up with the Unit."

"Like?"

"Like….it's changing. When I switched it off back there I forgot everything, but when I switched it back on I remembered everything."

"So just keep it on all the time now."

"If I slip up and it switches off then I might forget everything, Saia."

"But-"

I snap, "Do you know how that feels? Waking up somewhere you don't know? With people you don't know?"

She shakes her head. "Okay. Just…one more bridge. Then we'll get back to Kira, she'll fill you in when you switch it off."

The part I'm scared of the most isn't waking up alone and scared. It's switching the Unit off one day and ending up hating the people I used to care about. Or loving the people I used to hate. And with the way the Unit changed suddenly back there, like there was an update or something, I don't want to test it. If I switch it back on one day and I still don't remember anything then…then I'll be starting from scratch with the only memory that stays with me.

The memory of that cold table. The feeling of the doctors peeling away the skin on my back. The taste of fear and sweat pouring into my mouth. The smell of my own blood. The sound of the drill whining its way into my spine. That's my starting point, not mum, not the house in the East Coast, that room in Young Haven. I'm the Unit and it's me – we both began in that room.

Saia flings the car through the Skins, tsunamis of them crash against the windscreen and splinter it, the glass cracking and spider webbing. She slams a foot onto the breaks and the car hops forward, the Skins behind us slam into the car and force it forward a few more meters.

We rush out of the car, slicing and stabbing my way out of their grasps. I lead Saia towards the bridge – massive and heaving, a slab of concrete its own river in the sky above the river in the earth thousands of feet below us. The Guard open fire and I skid to a halt. Saia hurls three more of her small black bombs and they split the Guard with a thunder beating explosion.

We sprint through the mess of bodies. A man catches my eye, Japanese and around his forties – a picture of a girl about my age stuffed into his breast pocket.

I draw my eyes away from the dead man – I have to remember that these are the people that hung Tick. But they're also people fighting for what they think is right – and now they're never coming back home.

I shake my head. Morals later, explosion now.

I yank a rifle out of a soldier's arms and fire, I'm still not a great shot, nowhere near Kira either, but I don't have to be good to clear a path for Saia.

Another step closer to being like that bastard in the hospital.

"You'll have to climb over the edge," I yell and dive out of the way of gunfire, ripping away at the tarmac I had been standing on. I throw my knife and the woman falls. "Three just above the pillar closest to you."

I pluck my knife out of the woman and slam the butt of it into a man's jaw. He crumbles and I sprint over him and land a kick into another man's shin. The bone doesn't snap but he hollers in pain. I take his arm and flip him, his head smacking the concrete and his body going limp. His pulse is soft, but he'll live. At least, that's what the Unit tells me.

The sun's beginning to rise, the harsh orange ball of fire coming from behind the Gray's sky scrapers. The night is slowly peeling away, but more and more soldiers are getting onto the bridge. And just like Draco had said, we better win this, because when these bombs go off - a ton of people are about to die. And I'm not going back to the Zoo.

Judgment Day in full swing.

"Next?!" Saia screams. She fires off a few rounds from the pistol at her side and charges deeper into the river of white.

"Line as many as you can across the bridge a few meters ahead of you. Right there. Space them out too!"

"I only have ten more!"

"That should be good." The Unit is saying otherwise, but screw the Unit, it's always so negative.

A fist catches my jaw and makes me stumble. A red arm wraps around my throat and forces me against a burnt out shell of a car still on the bridge. Jin's wild eyes fiery in the harsh morning light. His hand squeezes and air cuts off completely from my lungs. I ball my metal fist and slam it into his stomach. The vice around my neck disappears and I tackle him, landing fist after fist into his face.

He brandishes a knife and swings it upwards, the edge of it clipping the top of my ear. Blood explodes from it and fills the rest of my ear, it runs down my cheek and matches his red bionic arm.

"Da-"Saia's voice cuts off as Jin slams a palm into my ear piece.

I wobble off of him and cradle my ear. The Unit compensates and steadies my vision, her green hair is near the car now. She's screaming my name but I can't hear it, I can only see her mouth moving. A sharp ringing rips through my body from the ear Jin had slammed his palm into.

Speaking of the devil – Jin gets up and shoves me towards the edge of the bridge. He forces the knife into my normal shoulder. Pain shoots up my neck and into my head, blood rushes through my ears and I let out a roar. I slam my forehead into his nose and he takes a step back. I yank the blade out of shoulder and lunge. The ten inches of steel dig into his normal shoulder, I twist and he clamps down onto my throat again. I forced the blade deeper into his shoulder until his arm is limp – my own arm isn't doing so great either – blood is soaking my t-shirt, every muscle in my shoulder screams against every movement I make.

He kicks out and catches my legs. I fall to the tarmac as the bridge shudders and groans. Heat washes over us before the sharp bang of the bombs going off tears through me. The Unit is trying to balance my vision and hearing, but too many things are going on. Too much screaming, Jin is shouting at me as he picks me up by the collar, my normal arm can't move anymore, the Guard are screaming and on fire – the bombs are still going off, too. One after the other, like sonic booms that are tearing away at the earth.

Jin slams my face against the metal railing. Over and over until I heard the sharp snap of my nose cracking. Blood from everywhere, pain from everywhere else.

He shoves me over the edge.

I grip onto the ledge.

He slams the butt of a gun on my normal fingers.

I fight the Unit to keep it on.

He cocks the gun.

I lose the battle with the Unit and it switches off completely. The darkness of unconsciousness slams into me, the edges of my vision filling with shadows.

The boy above me shouts, "I've hated you ever since you killed everyone in Young Haven."

I don't know what he's talking about.

He fires the gun.

I lose my grip on the railing.

I'm falling, the air screaming past deaf ears. The feeling of the three bullets ripping into my gut kicks the winds out of me. I choke on blood pooling in my mouth.

Pictures pass my flickering vision. Three people: a big guy with tattoos, a girl with purple hair and a stud in her cheek and a girl with a wide grin and green hair. They look happy, their smiling and caught mid laugh.

An intimidating woman with golden eyes. The weight of pain and loss making them glitter.

A little girl with red hair. Energetic and smiling, teddy bear eyes locking away hate and rage.

Long brown hair and cinnamon skin: a boy with the number two on his cheek. He's calling me, I reach out and take his hand, but it passes straight through his.

And a beautiful blonde girl who smells like everything I love.

I slam into the icy river.