run. run. flee. [[open]]

[CHLOË LAFFERTY]

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Chloë didn’t in all honesty know why she even bothered to wear a gun holster anymore; she had it out every time she ventured amongst the ruins of Los Angeles, safety on but her finger ready to flick it off at the first sign on any trouble, and on the odd occasion outside that she needed both her hands free, she just shoved it into the waistband of her jeans, or tucked it down inside her boots – always making sure that it wasn’t cocked. There was enough potential for dismemberment and-or death in this life without shooting your own ass off. Even when she was at the base, which was purely so that she could sleep without being scared of a butcher finding her (she hated it there, and got out at every opportunity, finding that wearing out her boots was a better way to pass her time, even if people told her she was mad for wandering the streets alone – Chloë could take care of herself), Chloë always had her gun by her side—and yet she still wore a holster on her hip. Years of FBI training couldn’t be wiped out just by something like an apocalypse. Chloë was an agent through-and-through, always had been, and okay, so there was no Bureau anymore, but it had stood her in good stead. Without it, Chloë didn’t think she’d have survived this long. She certainly wouldn’t have known how to fire a gun, and as much as it pained her to have to kill butchers – innocent people who had been mind-raped, and had no idea what their bodies were being forced to do – she was glad she knew how to. Otherwise, she’d probably be dead. So would everyone else; for once, the gun-loving culture of America meant that there were still some people who were alive. Not enough people, by Chloë’s book, but some. That was something—and right now, it seemed prudent to take every moment of optimism you could get. They were extremely few and far between.

It was a good thing she always had her gun handy, Chloë decided; she heard screaming in the distance and, mindless of the danger to herself, ran straight for it. She’d always been a little reckless that way; you had to be able to face danger head-on and not be terrified into submission, doing what she did, and even though in many ways, the butchers were worse than any criminal she’d faced during her career, she wasn’t going to stop helping people now. Chloë needed the mission; without that, and without her search for her sister, she thought she’d go mad. She didn’t want to go mad; Chloë liked being clear-headed. She liked being able to make decision calmly and sensibly, and to not get heated up easily. And she liked being alive; madness was tantamount to a death warrant now – it made you stupid, and stupid people died. Luckily for Chloë, she didn’t class herself among the self-absorbed imbeciles that had survived this annihilation of the planet. It always seemed to be the worst ones who lived. Or...not anymore. By the time she reached where the screaming had come from, there were bodies on the ground. Chloë couldn’t say whether they had been stupid or not, but they were most definitely dead; no pulse coming from either of them. She looked around, but the butchers that had killed this pair were nowhere in sight; even so, she cocked her gun, on red alert. She turned the bodies over, lifting up their shirts to see their names – yes, they were both actuals; Timothy Parker and Penny Wheeler – before sighing. Two more people dead. Two less people who were going to find Safe Haven and a cure for this. Two less people who were going to live out their lives.

Still, Chloë knew she couldn’t stay here; there were butchers in this area, and she didn’t want to end up like Timothy and Penny. Leading with her gun, Chloë left the alley-way, heading for the abandoned warehouses. Perhaps she’d be lucky, and Alpha would be hiding out in one of them, hopefully with some of that amazing food that he refused to tell her where he’d got it from, because she was starving. Of course, that was nothing new; Chloë was always starving now. That or she lost her appetite at the prospect of another half-warmed canned meal. She made a face, slipping inside one of the warehouses, gun first, and squinting until her eyes adjusted to the half-dark interior. Great, there was someone else here. She was going to turn out to be a butcher and then Chloë would have to shoot her, and then she really would have no appetite at all, and Chloë didn’t want to have to do any of those things. Chloë sighed, cautiously crossing the room. “Who are you?”

[CHLOË LAFFERTY]

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Learning to be wary of unknown people was a lesson that had been taught very early on; Chloë was distrustful of people anyway, having far too great an insight into the criminal mind – and having been shot at on more than one occasion usually meant that in a potentially hostile situation, leading with your gun was a damn good idea – but now that there were people who weren’t just mad, or jealous, or psychopathic, but who believed that killing every living person on this planet was their sole purpose in life—now she knew that she could never let her guard down, not for a moment. She could be more herself around Alpha, but even then she was still watching, waiting for the moment when she realised that the only person she could trust in this world was herself; she didn’t even have her partner to rely on, or her sister. There was just Chloë, and she was damned if she was going to die just because she wasn’t a butcher. She always fought, stronger than many men she’d come across purely because she was fuelled so deeply by ambition, and she was going to carry on fighting until she found the Dollhouse, until she found Gemma, until she found the way to Safe Haven and a cure for all this mind-raping. Being on alert all the time was draining, not even trusting people who had their names tattooed on their back was lonely, but they were both better than being dead. She had come this far; Chloë was not going to raise her hands and let someone shoot her now. She’d never done it before.

“Who are you?”

The click of the other woman’s gun seemed loud in the otherwise quiet warehouse. Well, if she was another Actual, somebody who had a weapon was only a good thing; everybody needed to be armed. If she was a butcher, then Chloë was pretty sure she could take one lone woman, even if she was a programmed killing machine. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s rude to answer a question with another question?” she asked, using all those techniques she’d learned at Quantico to distract the other woman while she crossed the floor towards her, even her footfalls – as soft as she could make them – echoing slightly. Despite being closer, though, she was still in shadow, and Chloë couldn’t tell who she was; she didn’t recognise the voice, but that didn’t mean anything. Chloë didn’t exactly make a habit of getting to know the other Actuals in the camp particularly well; she was there because it was safe, because it had things that vaguely resembled beds and because they all had the same objective. They were a team, but that didn’t mean she had to make friends with them. She’d not exactly been the best at making friends before the apocalypse. “I asked first. Who are you?”