Everyone was asleep.

Not Sam. She lay in bed staring at the ceiling. From the other bed, Damon snored. Sam turned over with a sigh. There was a choice to make, but she couldn't make it, not yet.

In the room next to her, she heard Ty crying. He'd been crying for the last few nights. Crying didn't come naturally for him, Sam knew firsthand.

He must really miss Jennifer.

She expected him to miss his wife. Although, she didn't expect Ty to miss his wife so much. Sam remembered all the good things about Jennifer, but she also remembered all the bad things. In Sam's view, the bad outweighed the good. Losing Jennifer wasn't a loss.

Then why did Sam feel so guilty about it?

She missed Jennifer like Ty did. And they weren't the only ones.

"Mama!"

Helia was crying for her mother for the fifth night in a row. Then came the sounds of Ty opening his door, his footsteps plodding in the hallway on the way to Helia's bedroom.

"Hi, sweetheart." Sam heard Ty's muffled greeting to his daughter.

"No, Mama! Want Mama!"

"I know." Ty sniffed. "Daddy's here. Come on, honey."

Ty shuffled back to his bedroom, with Helia in his arms if the wails in the hallway were any indication.

After Ty closed his bedroom door, Sam picked up her interface and got up from the bed. The call she had to make would wake up Damon if she stayed in the bedroom.

Sam didn't want him overhearing, because he would try to stop her. And she didn't want anyone to stop her, because her mind had finally been made up.

~*~

Sam met the Agents in the deserted parking lot at Good Time. She got there first, by bike. She shivered in the cold of the pre-dawn. Her shivering increased as she recalled the crime scenes she had ridden past. The first one had been an old scene; yellow crime tape hanging in tatters around the pre-school building. A week before, Sam had seen the school shooting on the news, with all of the violence experts asserting, "Had every teacher and student been armed, the tragedy could have been averted." The next day, stores had sold out of guns and ammunitions.

The second scene was fresh. Two black cars sat in the movie theater parking lot, the agents that belonged to them sipping on their coffees as they surveyed the latest civilian shooting spree. One of them waved at Sam as she passed by. In response, she flicked them off. She felt a pang of fear, like they might jump in their car and pursue her. Instead, the agent laughed, and Sam's breathing returned to normal.

Minutes after her arrival at Good Time, a Prominent car parked near her bike. Agent Crendan and her partner got out. There were no smiles on their faces, nor were there frowns. If Sam had to describe them, she would have called the agents blank.

Both of them sauntered over to Sam, their faces unyielding, not even a softening of the features to greet her.

She didn't mind speaking first. "Is she with you?"

Agent Crendan's blank slate cracked into a grin. "That's not how this is going to work."

Only a minute had lapsed since the agent's arrival, and already, Sam knew she had made a mistake in coming.

"You expect me to go with you, not knowing if you're going to follow through with your end of the deal?"

Agent Crendan allowed her partner to answer. "It was never a deal. You were always going to end up in Agent custody. We're simply adding a bonus to make the transition a smooth one. It's up to you whether you trust us to return the woman or not."

Sam let a moment skip by while she thought about her options. Ha, options. She had twelve years to live. Did she really want to spend them knowing she could have saved someone's life with the act of trading it for her own?

Another point was, did she have it in her to be so selfless?

Sam had several layers of old memories, old thoughts, and all of them centered around a selfish quality. Sam hadn't realized the mode of selfish she had possessed until she'd been allowed to see the world from another lens.

As she wrestled with herself, she glanced  across the street to the church. Two youths were hanging in the windows of a parked car, speaking with the driver. Suddenly, they had pistols in their hands. They fired into the car.

"Oh, shit!" She ducked, as if the shots could reach where she stood.

Sam expected action from the agents, but they hadn't even glanced over at the new crime scene. The two perpetrators climbed into the car, kicking out a limp body. They drove off, leaving their murder victim sprawled out in the parking lot.

Again, Sam thought the agents would halt their deal in pursuit of the youths, but again, they stood there with her. Sam's breath came out in short bursts. She wanted to get on her bike and follow the gunman. Something should've been done, but nothing was. The agents blank faces told her nothing was to be done. She was their main concern. If Sam was such a high priority, and yet they had waited to take her until she was willing, maybe they would do as they had promised.

"Okay." She croaked. "I'll go with you."

Their faces registered little surprise. Agent Zeemo opened the passenger door of the patent black Prominent vehicle, stepping aside for Sam.

When they were all in the car, she had a question.

"Will I get any sort of confirmation?"

Neither of the Agents turned to respond. Agent Crendan started the car, and Sam thougth she might never get an answer.

Finally, Agent Zeemo asked a question of her. "Do you really need one?" He sounded truly curious.

"Yes, I need one, your pair of cunt-rags." The Agent's lack of empathy pissed her off.

"You're not going to get one." Agent Crendan said.

The car drove out of the lot and into the fog.

****

For once, the bed wasn't empty.

Ty reached over and Helia was there, her cherub cheeks rosy in peaceful sleep. She woke at his touch.

"Mama?" Her small voice was fragile and full of sleep.

"No, just Dad." Ty took her hand in his own. "Let's go eat breakfast, sweetheart."

After he got Helia set up in the kitchen, he knocked on Damon's door. A second later, he opened it. Damon was asleep. Sam's bed was empty, covers drawn back.

"Damon."

One eye cracked open. "What?"

"Where's Sam?"

"I don't know." Damon groaned. "Maybe she went to Antoinella's."

"Maybe."

But Ty wasn't convinced. Sam hadn't spoken to Antoinella in a while. Ever since beginning her meetings, she had ostracized everyone. It was unsettling to not know where she was, even if she had gone M.I.A. before.

An hour later, she still hadn't returned, and Ty was due at work. He shook Damon awake.

"I've got to go. Could you take Helia to school for me?"

An arm covered Damon's eyes to keep out the light. "She's not back yet?"

"No, and I've got to go now."

Damon struggled to free himself from the tangle of blankets. "Ugh, okay, okay, I'm up."

It surprised Ty at how reliable his brother was, and always on short notice. The one constant in his life was Damon, and he was grateful to have something to hold on to. He wanted to tell Damon he had his back, anytime, but he was afraid of how it would sound.

He settled on saying, "Thanks, man."

Damon's sideways grin gave Ty hope he knew what all the thanks, man implied.

Ty kissed Helia on his way out the door. "Love you, sweetey petey. Have fun at school."

She diverted her attention away from her building blocks. "Love you, dada!"

Outside, another thing turned up missing to slow up his morning. His bike.

Ty sighed. He hated using the car unless he had to, and Sam knew that. Why the hell had she taken the bike? His morning slid further into shit when he heard his neighbor's greeting.

"Ya takin' the car this mornin'?"

The garage door was open, and Ty strode halfway to the car in question.

"Yup, that's right."

Bob Hutchison squinted against the morning sun. "Sam took your bike?"

Suddenly, Ty was interested in what Bob had to say. "Yes, how'd you know that?"

Bob was glowing from the attention. Usually, Ty avoided him. "Thought I heard someone outside your house this morning, talkin' to someone else. Must've been Sam. Guess she had somewhere to be."

Yes, but where? 

He nodded goodbye to Bob.

****

A/N: Where oh where could Sam be?

Dedicated to one of my favorite sci-fi Wattpadians, DaedalusHowell. His novel, Quantum Deadline, is worth adding!