Dan’s metal crutch slipped against concrete slick with blood from his injured ankle and he jolted violently. “FUCKING HELL!” he yelled, pain radiating from his ankle to his hip.

“I don’t have time for this!” Eric roared, stalking back to stand before Dan, arms crossed angrily against his chest, as Dan crumbled to the debris in pain.

“So sorry to be an inconvenience,” Dan snarled up at Eric through gritted teeth, “Next time I’ll try to shatter a joint that’s more convenient for you!”

Eric’s chest heaved, his breath coming in angry pants. “I should have just left you in Harlem,” He growled, voice dangerously low.

“Jesus, FUCK!” Dan screamed, throwing his arms wide in frustration, “YES! You should have! You should have just left me behind to find the sister you can’t be bothered to! The sister who dropped everything to save her little brother from himself, if I remember correctly! If she dies, her blood is on your hands!!”

Eric glared down at his sister’s blood soaked boyfriend, “The FUCK it is! This is all your God damn fault! You no good piece of shit! It’s your fault Serena is even in this mess! If you weren’t such a shitty ass fucking boyfriend she wouldn’t have even been anywhere NEAR Harlem to begin with!” Eric swooped to the ground and grabbed a small concrete shard, “What the fuck is wrong with you? Why couldn’t you just SUPPORT her? Why did everything have to be about her FUCKING NAME? Why were you always trying to make her feel like SHIT!?” He vaulted to his feet and began pacing, crushing the concrete painfully in his hand as he did, “Did it make you feel like a big man, Dan? Making my sister feel guilty for your own fucking short comings? Do you even see her anymore, really FUCKING see her? She’s a shell of the beautiful, vibrant girl she was before she met you! Before all this BULLSHIT!” He whirled to face Dan again, rage etched into his handsome features, “It’s all your fucking fault!” He threw the concrete dust in his hand at Dan’s face, “I should have just left you to ROT!!”

Dan stared up at Eric, mouth gaping. “Don’t you even DARE try to lay this at my feet Van der Woodsen! I wasn’t the one behind the scenes pulling the strings! I’m not the one pouring vodka down her throat or shoving coke up her nose!”

Eric stiffened, a wild look in his eyes, “What is that supposed to mean?”

Dan averted his gaze, realizing what he’d just let slip in his rage, “Nothing, forget it.”

Eric launched himself at Dan, grabbing his shirt by the collar and shaking him violently, “What the FUCK are you talking about!?!”

Dan’s slowly brought hatred filled eyes to meet Eric’s untamed gaze, “Ask your fucking precious Chuck Bass.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Awareness came in murky spurts. His throat was dry, his tongue heavy with imaginary sawdust.

His body jostled oddly from side to side, and he realized he was lying down, his head propped on something cushy, but rough. And his head hurt, really hurt. It reminded him entirely too much of how he’d felt the morning after she’d told him to chose, after the pills, and the booze, and …who knew what else.

Was that an engine? His eyelids crept open slowly, the dull ache at the base of his skull intensifying as they did.

“Are you among the conscious again, Sir?” Arthur’s voice drifted from somewhere to Chuck’s right, foggier then he remembered hearing it the last twenty four hours.

Chuck blinked and his blurry vision cleared. It had been an engine; he was lying down in the back seat of station wagon.

Realization crashed into him forcefully.

“Jeffries?” He demanded, propping himself up on unsteady elbows to glimpse Arthur’s profile.

It was an odd angle. Chuck could see the outline of Arthur’s ear and into the darkness over the man’s shoulder but wasn’t able to lift himself high enough to see out his own window or search the front passenger seat for the infected co-pilot.

“Accounted for,” Arthur answered, his gnarled hands crossing over each other on the steering wheel as he took a right turn. The wagon bounced precariously to the right and then left and it dawned on Chuck the man he’d known for nearly ten years, and had been his personal assistant for nearly four, had never driven a vehicle before in his life.

“Arthur,” Chuck began but his dry tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, robbing him of his words.

Arthur glanced over his shoulder quickly and the car veered sharply to the left. “The time is eight p.m.; we are currently passing through Indianapolis, and, remarkably enough, the vehicle came equipped with bottled water and several errand protein bars.” Arthur turned to focus his attention on the road, and the car gradually realigned, “One of each should be located on the floor in front of you, Sir.”

Chuck lowered himself back down on the seat and searched the floor blindly. His fingers came into contact with a plastic wrapper and he brought the protein bar to his chest to fumble for the bottle of water. He found it quickly, twisted off the cap and lifted his head to bring his lips to the rim. He drank swiftly, gulping nearly half the bottle’s contents before his tongue would work and words came out.

“The case?” Chuck demanded, lying once more on his back, staring at the ceiling as the fog in his brain began to clear.

“Safely accounted for,” came Arthur’s reply from the driver’s seat.

“Jeffries?” Chuck repeated, suspicious of the lack of ‘safely’ associated with the scrawny man’s condition.

“Jeffries is safety quarantined in the trunk.” Arthur returned evenly.

Chuck sighed, relieved that Arthur hadn’t left the man on the side of the road somewhere. “How did you manage the wagon?” Chuck questioned, curious .

“Unimportant details,” Arthur dismissed unemotionally, “and though it may be unpleasant for you to discuss, I feel it pertinent to the situation at hand to inquire; have you regained the feeling in your lower extremities?”

His legs! Jesus, how the fuck could he have forgotten about his legs!

He slowly lifted his head to stair down at the limbs in question. Well, he could see them. His heartbeat pounding a heavy tattoo in his chest; he carefully ran a palm from his ribcage over his hip to midway down his thigh. He could still feel them against his hand. But had he felt his hand against his leg? Chuck took a wobbly, deep breath and closed his eyes. He poked just above his right hip. OK. So far so good; he could feel that. He took another, slightly more steady breath and poked a few inches below his hip. Ok, ok, this was good; he could feel that too. Chuck held a breath as he moved his hand down to poke his thigh. Had he felt that? Had he even poked himself? He repeated the movement. Nothing. He opened his eyes and lifted his head, wiggling his toes. The expensive leather of his shoes didn’t even twitch – nothing. Chuck’s heart plummeted to the toes he couldn’t feel.

“No.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

They’d been walking in comfortable silence for the past twenty minutes, but as they neared thirty; Grant sensed Nate’s mood shifting behind him. He peeked over his shoulder at the man who was like family to him; his hair was white with snow, his cheeks red from exertion and the biting winter air; his eyes drowning in worry.

It nearly broke Grant’s heart to see him like this; utterly lost in misery and alone despite Grant’s presence. Still carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders; still trying to make up for sins that weren’t his.

And probably completely preoccupied with his soon-to-be wife and child. Grant had completely forgotten about the phone call Nate had finally answered just before the old girl’s engine blew. It bothered him somewhat that Nate hadn’t brought it up again; normally they would talk about Vanessa and Janine and their respective antics or adorable foibles until there were blue in the face or nauseous from all the ‘woman’ talk.

“She’s got a good head on her shoulders,” Grant’s ventured, diverting his attention back to picking a path of least resistance through the mounting snow. At this rate they would be hip deep in the frozen flakes in less than a few hours.

Nate startled from his dreary thoughts at Grant’s words. “Hmm? Oh. Vanessa. Yea. She does,” he nodded, burying his neck deeper into the collar of his jacket.

“We should hopefully be by a phone in a few hours,” Grants breath puffed out in hot clouds and frosted his auburn beard.

“Yea,” Nate nodded distractedly.

“You can give her a call then,” Grant continued.

“Yea,” Nate repeated absently, bending down to remove cold snow from inside his boot.

“Let her know we’re both just fine and dandy,” Grant hinted pointedly, “poor girl is probably worrying herself sick about you.”

“Huh?” came Nate flabbergasted response.

Grant rolled his eyes heavenward; sometimes the boy was just too lost in his own way of thinking.

Nate jogged as best he could through the sea of snow to Grant’s side.

“Betsy’s number two blew and you lost the call.” Grant explained turning patient eyes to meet Nate’s confused expression, “musta sounded like an explosion to the poor girl. She’s probably worried herself into a mighty fine tizzy by now.”

“Oh, God,” Nate jolted to a stop, stunned, “What the fuck is wrong with me?!” He swiped a hand down his face, “Jesus. She’s going to think…especially after what she was trying to tell me…”

Grant spine stiffened, an uneasy feeling creeping up on him. He turned and stalked back to face Nate, “what was she trying to tell you?”

Nate began to wade through the rising snow, pacing as best he could. “She was nervous when I answered – off, kept actually calling me Nate; I haven’t heard her call me Nate in over ten years. I just thought she was upset about this morning. God, I should have known, should have listened to her. FUCK, I’m an idiot.”

Grant reached out to halt Nate’s fidgety movements as he paced back toward him, “Slow down. What was she trying to tell you? What didn’t you listen to?”

“She was talking about New York being hit by something. I just thought she meant some kind of storm. I didn’t listen, all I could hear was her disappointment in me, I didn’t listen.” Nate babbled, his voice thick with emotion.

“Nathaniel,” Grant said sternly and Nate’s forlorn eyes snapped to his, “What was she trying to tell you?”

Nate gulped. “She said she couldn’t get a hold of friends of ours in Manhattan. I think… Jesus, I think she was trying to tell me there had been some sort of attack.” He closed his eyes against the images flooding him, “Fuck I thought she was just upset and worried about the baby… Oh, God.” His blue eyes flew open again, wide with fear, “She’s got to be panicking – thinking I’ve been blown to smithereens. Stress isn’t good for the baby! What if she loses our baby!?”

Grant blinked, surprised. All day Nate had been referring to the baby as just that, the baby. He’d never once acknowledged the fact that it was a part of them, of both of them; was theirs. And now it all possibly hung in the balance.

Grant felt the beginnings of his own fear rising in his throat. Please God, don’t let Vanessa lose their child. Don’t do that to them. Not now. Not when Nate had finally connected, finally started to think of this baby as a part of him despite all his fears.

“We will get to a phone. You’ll call her and figure out this entire mess.” Grant gripped Nate’s upper arm reassuringly, “They will be fine.”

Nate nodded faintly, averting his watery gaze over Gant’s shoulder. “I can’t lose them, Grant,” his voice cracked as a single tear rolled down his cheek, glistening under the moonlight.

Unable to form the words, Grant merely nodded and brought his hand to Nate’s shoulder, giving it one comforting squeeze before gently tugging him through white snow and black night.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“That’s it?” Blair questioned, her shoulders slumping dejectedly as Jonathan lay the contents of his pockets on the hood beside her.

He pushed his cell phone into her palm and indicated she should hold it up to illuminate her face. “And here I was hoping to get more of a lecture for leaving you all by your lonesome,” he smirked as he carefully dabbed at a gash she’d reopened flying through the limo wind shield.

Blair shrugged her uninjured right shoulder with care, the glow from his cell phone bouncing across her face, “If you’re dead set on rushing to your death the second you finish saving my life and patching me up, then I can’t stop you, Johnny.”

He flinched at his own words thrown back in his face and she grinned. He selected one of the few suture kits he’d been able to retrieve, setting it in her lap to switch his tattered latex gloves for a fresh pair.

“Jesus, your hands!” Blair gasped, his phone falling from her hand as she reached out to grab his torn and bloody flesh. “They’re even worse than before!” She cried, turning his hand over in hers to examine his palm.

“Most of the blood isn’t even mine,” he told her, glancing at her hand pointedly.

She made a face at him, “Well whose fault is that?”

“Ever the appreciative damsel,” he tugged his hand from hers and bent to scoop up his cell phone. She admired the way his once white lab coat stretched across the tight muscles of his shoulders until realization slapped her in the face, “Your gloves!”

He froze, and a millimeter away from snaking between two cement hunks to retrieve the phone she’d dropped. He grinned up at her, the whites of his eyes eerie against the pitch black night, “So the Ice Princess does have a heart after all.” Blair’s spine stiffened and her jaw clenched painfully, fresh waves of nausea washing over her, at the familiar nick name. “Don’t worry; the infection can only be passed from the original contaminant or through bodily fluids.” Jonathan chuckled as he plucked his cell phone from between the two boulders and stood to face her once more. “What?” he asked when he noticed her brow furrowed in suspicious confusion.

“I thought you said it was radiation,” Blair retorted, studying his face as best she could in the dim night. The city really was an eerily dark place without the light from buildings and billboards or passing traffic to illuminate it. It was beginning to creep Blair out. She reached out her still gloved right hand to snatch his cell phone from him and flip it open, the weak blue light sharpening his features.

“I did,” he nodded, plucking the suture kit from her lap to tear it open and repositioning her hand so the light shone on her chin, “This is most likely going to hurt like a bitch. I couldn’t get to the anesthetic.”

Blair pulled away from his touch and glared at him, “So?”

Jonathan heaved a heavy sigh, lowering his hand to his side. “You aren’t going to like this,” he warned gravely, “You’ll wish you just sat up there prissily and kept your mouth shut.”

Blair scoffed, swinging her dangling legs and coming dangerously close to kicking him in the stomach. He raised his eyebrows and flicked a pointed look at her ruined Jimmy Choo’s. She smiled sweetly, batting her eyes exaggeratedly, and rolled her wrist in a ‘continue’ motion.

He shook his head; a stray lock of dust caked hair falling against his forehead, and rolled his eyes heaven ward, “Ok, Joan. If you insist, but don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.” He nudged her hand back up to light her chin and began suturing as he talked, “Shortly after the armored vehicle over turned in Harlem, we were informed we had a possible chemical contagion on our hands. At first they though it could have been a nerve agent like Cyclosarin or something equally destructive, but after one of the newbies over at Columbia Presbyterian nicked himself cleaning up after a transfemoral amputation, we knew we were dealing with a whole ‘nother ball game; newbie was feverish and draining half a litter of blood through his nose in under an hour and a half. They figured out pretty quickly it was viral. It’s a scary bitch; like nothing I’ve ever seen before – and I was with Doctor’s Without Boarders in Africa for two years.” Blair hissed as he swabbed the neat little line of x’s with antiseptic before slapping a band aid over them, “There. Shouldn’t even scar. Thank me with obedience.”

She ignored his quip, fingering the band aid as he prepared another needle for the gash on her left shoulder. “What’s the incubation period?” she demanded a slight tremble to her voice.

Jonathan eyed her, surprised.

“I know a little something about infectious deceases and viruses,” she elaborated vaguely.

He studied her face with eyes that could see more through the darkness than some could in broad daylight, “I’m sorry.”

She lowered her gaze quickly, tears blurring her vision.

“I don’t know what kind of time frame we are dealing with.” He continued when she merely nodded her acknowledgement, eyes still on her shoes, “Newbie nicked himself at noon, was a bloody mess by two and isolated on another floor by four thirty when I left to grab more supplies from my home office. Ran into you just in time to see you blown clear through glass at five and that brings us to now at,” he slipped the cell phone from her loses fingers, “eight.”

Blair cleared her throat and Jonathan politely shifted his attention to his own shoes while she whipped fat droplets from her cheeks. Her voice now steady she asked, “No way we can find out?”

Jonathan’s eyes locked with hers and he shook his head. “Hospital was more than likely destroyed by the blasts you were flat on your back for,” he wiggled his cell phone at eye level, “and only use this has now is as a flashlight. Short of infecting one of us and charting the virus’s progress – we’re flying blind.”

“More like sitting ducks,” Blair huffed, the late November air beginning to make her teeth chatter.

“Adrenaline is wearing off,” Jonathan told her as pressed the ‘flashlight’ back into her palm, “I know it’s cold Princess,” he ripped a tear in her blouse open wider above her left shoulder to suture the gash underneath, “but I need to get you all closed up before you really start to feel it.”

She watched as his nimble hands patch the jagged tear in her skin. For an arrogant and brash asshole, he was surprisingly gentle. “Butterfly needles?” She asked, shinning the light on the medical supplies beside her right hip.

“Light,” he demanded and she lifted the cell back up to hover above her left shoulder, “Yes. Butterflies.”

She ignored the reaction hearing that word in a tone of voice so similar to his – she was back to ignoring his existence and blocking his name from her mind – had on her stomach. “What’s your specialty?” She asked the top of his dusty head.

“Pediatric surgery,” he replied absently, focused intently on closing her wound.

Blair’s hand unconsciously fluttered to the necklace at her neck but her fingers only hit blouse and skin; no metal chain. No! Her necklace! The only thing left she had of left of Charlie! Her breath caught in her throat and she screwed her eyes shut against the fresh wave of pain crashing over her that had nothing to do with separated shoulders, or gashes, or concussions.

“Ok,” Jonathan pulled off his bloody gloves and replaced them with yet another fresh pair, “All sealed back up and water tight. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Blair nodded, forcing the painful memories from her mind as he stepped forward to help her of the roof of the truck.

“Think you can walk, Saint Joan?” Jonathan asked as he hefted her into his arms, bouncing his eyebrows suggestively as he continued, “or would you like to mount your noble steed?”

“You really are heinous,” she grimaced, “and since the only thing you have in common with a noble steed is the barn you were both born in; put me down, Johnny.”

“As you wish Joanie,” he quipped as he complied, setting her carefully on her feet, “just watch where you step, would you? I’m tired of watching you do a Flying Wallenda through the nearest available window only to have to pull you from certain death and slap you back together again.”

She pulled a face and stuck out her tongue like the petulant five year old she was, “Let’s just get the hell out of here, ok?”

He threw his hands up in the air, frustrated, and trailed after her hobbling form.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Benson’s pressed his satellite phone to his ear, listening to the voicemail that had come as he’d been setting the charge to blow that building – and the bitch along with it – sky high.

“Benson.”

Benson’s blood began to boil: Alexei.

“Our friend Carter tells me the virus has made its way across the bridge. Your orders were for Manhattan, and ONLY Manhattan. You leave me with no choice but to deal with your incompetence in person…. Oh, and Benson...”

Benson snickered at the bastard’s love for dramatic pauses. He’d have slit his throat himself years ago if he wasn’t such a key part of disposing of Bitch and the Bass.

“You better not be anywhere near the girl when I get there – she’s mine.”

Benson flipped the phone shut, rage boiling his blood, as he lurked in the shadows watching the good doctor follow the dainty whore down the streets of Manhattan like a love sick puppy

________