I drop the meat at the same time Rick moves. I shout to warn him or the others or just because this is not fair, but Rick is ahead of me. He knocks a plate of food from Alex's hand. He gets him in a headlock and then he has his gun pressed to Alex's temple, because Rick's figured it out, too. Next thing I know, my bow is pointed at the nearest one of them. And Carl, Owen, LC, their guns are up. Dad's crossbow. Michonne's sword. Do they know? Does it matter? Rick does.

"Where the hell'd you get this watch?" I hear him hiss. My back's to him, I'm facing the courtyard, all of the people, all of our enemies. They're on their feet, they've all gotten to their feet, some of them have their hands at their belts, and I know what people keep at their belts. A big black man is directly in front of me, staring me down. He wouldn't hesitate, I can see it. What have we found here? What kind of people are these? This is Woodbury, isn't it? This is Woodbury all over again.

Carl is next to me. His arms align with mine as we aim our weapons in. If that man in front of me pulls his gun, he will die from a bullet and from an arrow, all at the same time.

And then everyone else here will start shooting and we'll die. We're outnumbered. By a lot. I want to look at Dad, but I have to keep my eye on the target, right? Keep your eye on the target. Every hunter knows that.

"Where the hell'd you get this watch?" Rick repeats, louder.

Alex's answer is the uneven blurting kind that people in danger tend to pick up. "You want answers – you want anything else – you get 'em when you put down the gun –"

"I see your man on the roof with the sniper rifle – how good's his aim?"

Sniper rifle – don't look. How good is his aim?

"Where'd you get the watch?" Rick asks again, and again – "Where'd you get the watch?"

What will he do if Alex doesn't answer? Shoot him? What then? This can't end well – this can't –

"Don't do anything!" Alex screams then. At Rick? "I have this!" No . . . at his people. At the sniper? "You just put it down! Put it down!" Then I guess the sniper listens, because Alex is talking to Rick again, still all shaky, stuttering some. "You wanna listen to me. There's a lotta us –"

Rick sounds like a demon now. "Where did you get the watch?"

"I got it off of a dead one! I didn't think he'd need it!"

"What about the riot gear?"

The riot gear? Like from the prison – don't look. The black guy in front of me, he isn't watching me now, he's watching behind me, watching Rick and Alex, and that's his mistake.

"The poncho?" Rick asks. My dad's poncho, these assholes. My dad's poncho, the prison's riot gear, whose watch? I don't know. But it's ours. It's ours, what does that mean? It can't mean –

"Got the riot gear off a dead cop."

Not Rick, not Alex. Gareth? I think so.

"Found the poncho on a clothesline," Gareth says, calm and collected. I'd decided I liked him, damn him to hell. Damn them all, damn them all –

"Gareth, we can wait –"

"Shut up, Alex."

"You. Talk to me," Rick says.

"What's there left to say?" Gareth asks. "You don't trust us anymore."

"Gareth –" begs Alex, why? To get him away from Rick? Gareth tells him to shut up, Alex says please, Gareth's nicer this time, he says It's okay, it's okay. Then he asks Rick what he wants. I hate that he sounds so easy. I want him to be as scared as Alex. I want to give him reason to be. Rick asks where our people are. Maybe they're not here – but don't be stupid, Sydney, of course they are. Or were. Gear, poncho, watch. Don't be stupid. And Gareth says You didn't answer the question and then, and I don't know why, but guns go off and off and off, and I jump, I'm so stupid, I jump, and I shoot but miss, I hit the black man's arm, not his eye, and he falls but gets up but he doesn't shoot back, he runs, they all run, and there are still guns going off and I have an arrow ready but hands grab me and pull me and push me, Dad's hands, and there's shouting from Rick, and then we're all together and we're running, I don't think anyone knows where. All I know is that the clouds of dust coming up around our feet and the gunshots all above us are connected, and one wrong step and it's done.

We turn suddenly, I think Dad decides that. We're running faster, along one of the courtyard walls. Then the bullets hit right by that wall, by us, we fall away from it, slow down, then we're all bundled together and still, we're going to die –

How are they missing us?

There's an open garage door, though, and we're going into it, Rick takes us into it. It's huge in here, and there's an identical open door at the end, freedom, but as we near it it rolls shut, wailing as it does. I have enough time to look at Carl and look at my dad before my dad is saying Here! and going towards a smaller opening in the garage's side, one covered with bars, is it locked? Yes. It's locked. Other way now, all the way across the garage, past the clutter and to one more door, will it, will it – yes. Rick shoves it open and we spill through, out into the outdoors again, and I like the outdoors, but not right now, right now it means bullets and loud noises and not enough arrows to win.

We're in an entirely different part of Terminus now. It's tighter here, we're in an alley, we run past gigantic crates and rotting cars, I follow the wings on my dad's vest. Bullets hit our feet again, they can't be trying to hit us, they can't be. But they can keep us from going this way and that, they're steering us, aren't they? Like cattle – Come on, this way, Dad says, but where? Where's safe, Dad, you tell me that –

But halfway down a different alley the bullets blow up a storm, and I think they hit Dad, he's crouching, no, no, I'll kill them all, I swear to God – Dad's straightened, he's running a different way, he's fine, we're all fine, they aren't trying to hurt us, our friends at Terminus. We run past a big fenced-in place, and I see a mound of pink inside of it but I'm past it before I can decide what it is, and then I'm hearing Help, help, from a woman, from a man, and pounding from – the train cars, over there. Dad says what the hell but Rick says keep going, and we run into a dark room and then Dad slams through a heavy door into another dark room, only – no, not dark. Dim. Candles. Candles everywhere, on the floor in clusters, on tables to the sides. Words on the wall. I slow down, we all do, there are no bullets pouring down, not in here.

"What the hell is this place?" Dad's looking at me but I'm not sure he's asking me, I'm not sure he's asking anybody. I read the words, huge words, evenly spaced along the wall in front of us. NEVER AGAIN. Big space. NEVER TRUST. Big space. WE FIRST, ALWAYS. There are words on the floor, too. Lots, making circles in circles, with the center circle being empty except for the biggest bunch of candles. The words are names. Zane, David, Ashley. And more and more and more.

"These people." Michonne's out of breath, of course, who isn't? I am. "I don't think they're trying to kill us."

"No," Rick says, "They were aiming at our feet."

My side's wet. I reach under my shirt, under my overshirt-bandage, and my hand comes back smeared red. That would explain the pain. Carl sees. I don't think Dad sees, but Carl sees. He looks at me desperately. I don't know what to say to him.

Then Rick says there and we're off again, to another door. Only it slams shut. Dad points us to another door, we go to it, we go through it. Right into more bullets. What's our plan? What do we think we can do?

We're not going to escape this.

A pile of lumber jumps around in front of Dad, he makes a sharp right, we all follow, we follow him into a bare patch of concrete, with two sets of what look like train tracks, they're the same space across, but they're not tracks, really, just lines set in the rock. There's that tall fence, the same one we jumped when we wanted to get into this place, I guess, and it's covered in brush but then the brush moves, things poke out of it, guns, I see the faces behind them. The bullets stop and so do we. But these new guns aim in on us, like a firing squad. There's nowhere to go from here.

They have us right where they want us, I think.

For what feels like a long time, no one says anything, no one shoots anyone. It's damn near peaceful, except for my throbbing head, my searing side, and the sharp breaths next to me. My Carl. I want to take his hand. I don't know if that's allowed, though. We're in their territory. The wonderful world of Terminus. Carl, he's scared. I'm scared.

"Drop your weapons," comes a voice. "Now."

My eyes follow the sound up to the rooftop, to Gareth, standing with his knee propped on something, a pistol hanging lazily by his side. He's followed us all the way here, how nice. There are a few people with guns up on the roof, too. They want our weapons? Fine. There's no question there this time. There's no fighting them. So I turn from Gareth and drop my bow even before waiting to see if anyone else will, I don't care what Rick thinks, I don't care what Dad thinks. But they do it, too. We're all in a circle, or an oval, really. The grownups form a C and the kids form a C, and the C's come together, so we're all kind of facing each other. Listening to Gareth. I pull out my knife, drop it, let my quiver clatter down, a couple of arrows slide out.

"Ringleader!" calls Gareth. Guess that's Rick. "Go to your left! The train car, go."

A red train car is over there, a big A on its side. It's long, it stretches away from us, sitting on the not-really-tracks. Rick studies it but doesn't go.

"You do what we say," Gareth says, "The kids go with you. Anything else, they die, and you end up in there anyway."

I find then that the amount of courage I have in my body is possibly tied to my bow, because I feel myself shaking. For all the times I've wanted to die – and yes, God help me, there have been all too many times – I've never wanted to die like this. With someone else's hand on the trigger and Carl next to me. No. I will not die like this. But it isn't in my control, and that's the worst part. But no, it's okay, because it is in Rick's control and Dad's control and Michonne's control and LC's control, and they won't let me die like this.

I look at them, one by one. Rick's starting to move, to go to the car. Dad's eyes are on the sky, at Gareth, then on me. I look away from him, though, because if I look at him too long in a moment like this I might start to cry and I won't do that here. Michonne is watching Rick go, hand clenched where the hilt of her sword should be, but it lies at her feet, as useless as I feel. Then there's LC, and if there's anyone I thought would be crying, it's her. She cried at Woodbury. Cried and cried and cried.

But LC is looking up at Gareth the way I saw my mother looking at the walker that broke into our backyard, that broke into our backyard while I was watching birds – I saw her, my mother, looking at the walker just like this before she stepped to it and busted its head open with a frying pan.

I look away from her, LC. Or whoever she is, I don't know. There's blood dripping onto my hip.

"Now the archer. The tall one."

Dad goes without waiting. I remember how, when he would drop me off at Mom's after one of his weekends, sometimes I'd turn around and he'd just be gone. Fast, no goodbye. His crossbow doesn't belong on the ground, like it is.

"Now the Samurai."

Michonne goes. All of them, Rick and Dad and Michonne, they all have that same slow walk right now.

"Machete. You next."

I don't look at her this time. She goes, and then Gareth is calling, "Blondie," and I have a rush of fresh fear, because Owen might just decide to be a smart-ass and get shot down, but he moves without a word. His eyes touch mine. Dark eyes, his brother's eyes. His eyes. I realize that I don't want this to be the last time I see Owen, I very much don't want this to be the last time, but then his eyes are gone, his back is to me, the others might as well be a mile away and Carl and I are all there is, and it's his eyes I hold. They're wet. Mine are, too, whether I like it or not. There has to be something to say. Something to make Carl smile, just a little, something to make him feel like things'll be alright. There has to be something. And I don't have it.

But then, maybe my eyes are enough. My eyes to his eyes. Blue on blue. Us.

Gareth yells for the adults to line up outside of the train car's door in the order he called their names. He should be calling for Carl and me now. He has to do that. He has to.

"The kids!" shouts Rick when he doesn't, and there's a dangerous snarl in his throat. Kids. Do you feel like a kid, Carl? Remember the prison, when they told us to be kids? Remember Atlanta, when we were?

One beat, two beats, and oh, I remember.

"Alright, sweetheart," Gareth says. "You go."

The words wrench my stomach. "Him first!"

"I wasn't asking your opinion," Gareth drawls, and my dad yells my name, it's an order, it's a plead. But my feet are planted, they're planted, until Carl's sweet blue eyes tighten up and his mouth says Go, and I'm back, way back to the catwalk, the warm night, where he said I don't just protect him, we protect each other, and I walk. It's a long walk. But when I'm halfway, Gareth says, "Alright, kid. Go." I find out I was holding my breath. I get to the end of the line, behind Owen. I think he twists to see me, but I'm watching Carl. He's nearing, nearing . . .

"Ringleader!" calls Gareth. "Open the door and go in."

"I'll go in with him."

"Don't make us kill him now!"

Now.

Nearer, Carl, nearer. Rick has no choice, he steps up the steps, he pushes the door, it rolls open. Black inside. Rick goes in. Dad goes in. Michonne, LC, Owen, and it's my turn, I take the steps, one, two, three, four, five, craning my head to keep watch on Carl. He's touching on the first step when I go through the door, into cold, but I don't bother to look around, I don't care about it, but then Carl is up the steps and in this box with me and I wrap one of his arms in both of mine and press my head into his shoulder. Then I look, but it's just as Dad slides the door closed, so it's dark now. And we all just stand here, breathing. What else is there to do?

I shift and feel the stickiness under my shirt. I need to try to wrap my side again. Yes, that's –

Too many breaths. Aren't there? I go stiff, and then, from way at the end of the car, there's movement. Slow. Carl squeezes my hand. More movement, different shapes, and, "Rick?"

And somehow it's Glenn.

"You're here," says Rick, and he doesn't sound that surprised. And really, hah, neither am I. Somehow, really, this just fits. "You're here."

Glenn. Next to him . . . Maggie. Maggie, Maggie, Maggie. With the slits in the top and walls of the train car, with my adjusting eyes, I make out the other faces, there's Bob, there's Sasha. Then there are others, four others. Two women, two men. I don't know them.

"They're our friends," Maggie says, as if she heard me. "They helped save us."

"Yeah," my dad says. For all I have Carl, I really kind of want Dad to rub my neck. "Now they're friends of ours."

"For however long that'll be," says one of our new friends, a man with a mustache and a gravelly voice.

"No," Rick replies immediately. He lets that sink in, to himself and to us, and then he steps over to one of the slits, and light slashes his face. His eyes shine. "They're gonna feel pretty stupid when they find out," he says.

"Find out what?" asks Owen. Through a yet-to-be-lit cigarette. Someone pushes my hair to the side. Fingers knead my neck. I curl my arm back and find his and hold it, and with him and with Carl, and with Maggie and Glenn and Sasha and even Bob and with all of us, I feel okay.

And then Rick speaks again.

"They're screwin' with the wrong people."

And I feel ready to kick some ass.

THE END

A.N.: *Sydney: Season Five* is now up.