Chapter 1: What is next.

~When the blazing sun is gone,
When the nothing shines upon,
Then you show your little light,
Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.~

-Flashback-

"What?"

Isaac just shook his head and looked away. "Nothing. It's nothing."

Ellie just shrugged it off and went back to looking toward the controls, focused on getting as far away from the Sprawl as quick as they possibly could.

-End Flashback-

That was the last conversation the 2 shared, that was mere 24 hours or so ago, since they had escaped the Sprawl. With the marker destroyed, Tiedemann dead and Isaac's dementia cured, the 2 could finally relax. Well, aside from the fact the EarthGov was still out to kill Isaac. Isaac had started thinking about why when had woke up an hour ago, but not wanting to disturb the sleeping Ellie, he remained still and silent until he heard a voice.

"Isaac? Are you awake?"

His eyes finally opened up to see Ellie looking at him. "Yes. I was just thinking about things now."

"Things now will be forever changed but we can handle them."

"We? No it would be best if I…"

"No! We are in this together you got that you bastard?"

"…"

"What did you say?!"

"But…fine."

"Good. Now what I was going to say originally was that there is a station up ahead. One on one of the moons of Jupiter. I looked into them and they don't seem to have any kind of EarthGov association."

Isaac got what she wanted to ask. Should she contact them for help and shelter or not? Isaac didn't want to trust them or anyone after the 2 outbreaks, Kendra and Diana, but they needed to "get out of the sky" so to speak.

"Fine but I don't like it or will trust them. But we do need to get out of the sky and get us all healed up," Isaac said while placing his uninjured hand on the shoulder Tiedemann shot him through.

Ellie nodded and typed in a few things into the control panel before a transmission screen came up, trying to connect us to the station.

"This is CEC Heavy Weight Pilot, Class 4, Ellie Langford calling to anyone on the Higan Station. Do you copy?"

Static filled the screen but a voice broke through the static. "Yes. We copy." A man came up on screen, the static gone now. He looked to be a few years older than Isaac was. "What is the nature of your call?"

"I, Ellie Langford, am aboard a small gunship," Ellie glanced toward Isaac, seeing if it was ok to mention him, and when he oh so very slowly nodded his head she continued, "With Isaac Clarke, from the Titan station on one of Saturn's moons. We are the only 2 survivors from all that madness that went down on there. We are requesting to land on your station for shelter and refuge, for we have little supplies and food aboard the gunship, and mostly medical assistance for we both are injured with some serious injuries."

The man's eyes went huge as soon as Ellie had said where they were from.

"Titan? You 2 survived the Titan attack? No way! We all thought that no one survived that! Yes. Yes. Please go ahead and come land here. You are welcomed."

"Thank you." And with that, the transmission ended. Ellie glanced over at Isaac, with a slight smile on her face. "See? We will be ok. But like you I am not going to trust them too much. And well be careful, right?"

"Yes."

Once they were almost at the Higan Station, Ellie brought up the transmission once again to call them.

"Higan this is Ellie Langford."

"Ah yes Ms. Langford. What is it?"

"I just wanted to let you know we are over your station now and ready to land."

"Ok we will open up the flight deck. And according to my visual we have on you, you are right near it."

"I am a pilot; I know what the landing deck looks like. But we may have a rough landing. 2 of the landing gears got destroyed in the blast as we escaped the Titan. So tell your crew to back away. Far away."

"Oh no. Gotcha." And the transmission ended and the roof to the landing deck opened up as they neared it even more.

Isaac placed a hand on Ellie's shoulder, grabbing her attention and making her look at him. "Please tell me you were joking about 2 of our landing gears being gone."

"Isaac, trust me. With me being a pilot, I would never make a joke like that. We are gonna have a minor crash landing. And who can we blame for that? Why you Mr. Bad Ideas of course. If you hadn't of sent me off alone…"

"I know Ellie and I am sorry about that. Ok?"

"Ok. But still, hold on to something you bastard," she said with a smirk that only grew with the engineer's face to the sentence.

As the slowed down the gunship considerably, it started to shake due to the fact that it was still, in its own way, "thinking" it still had the other 2 landing gears. Isaac immediately grabbed onto one of the seats and buckled himself in so it wouldn't hurt so bad or go flying.

"ELLIE!" Isaac yelled to her over all the noise. "YOU NEED, WELL HAVE TO TAKE A SEAT TOO! OR ELSE YOU'LL BE THROWN FROM THE SHIP!"

"I KNOW BUT…"

"BUT WHAT? YOU HAVE ALL THE CONTROLS SET FOR LANDING RIGHT? YOU CAN'T DO ANYMORE SO SIT YOUR ASS DOWN BEFORE YOU DIE! YOU SURVIVED THE SPRAWL ONLY TO DIE LIKE THIS? NOW DO IT!"

Ellie slowly made he way to her seat next to Isaac, sat down and buckled up like Isaac. And then just like that the ship lurched forward, an explosion being heard from the right and/or left engine, they couldn't honestly tell with all the noise from the crash. Bright lights, seeming to explode all around them, evaded their line of sight. The impact launched them forward in their seats, but they didn't go flying out, although Isaac's injured shoulder started to bleed again. And pretty good too, plus the pain was so bad he could hardly speak.

"Ow. Damn that hurt!"

Voices could be heard coming from the crew outside of the ship. Isaac was in so much pain now and fading into unconsciousness that he only heard a few bits and pieces of what they were saying. Things like, "Quick! Check on them!" "Get them out!" "How the fuck…?!" "Are they still alive?!" "Who could've survived that?!" and "Maybe they died!"

"We're in here! We are alive!" Ellie yelled at them, unbuckling and going to the control panel to unlock the doors. But when she finally turned to Isaac she couldn't help but gasp and rush over to him. While she unbuckled him, her hands fumbling from the worry for him, she kept shouting his name over and over to try to keep him awake and hoping he would respond to her.

"Isaac! ISAAC! Come one stay awake! Help! We need a medic in here! Come on Isaac you survived hoards of necromorphs! You need to stay alive! You have too! Please?!"

As Isaac was swarmed by people and medics and he slipped into unconsciousness, he heard Ellie whisper, not yell, 1 last thing to him.

"Please Isaac; you're all that I have now. We need each other. don't die on me now."

And then darkness.

When Isaac opened his eyes again, the 1st thing he was greeted with was a blinding light and thought, 'Where the hell am I? Why is there so much white?'

"Isaac?" A soft voice called out to him as a hand was laid on his injured shoulder, which surprisingly didn't hurt him. He was half expecting to see Nicole standing there and telling him that he had died, even if she was finally gone, no longer haunting him and he had moved on from her. But no. It was in fact Ellie standing there with her hand on his shoulder, worry etched into her face clear as day.

'Since when is Ellie so soft and gentle when talking and not loud and rough…strong?'

"Isaac, can you hear me?"

"Ellie? What the…? Where the hell am I?"

Ellie gave him a half smirk, half smile and said, "Glad to see that your head is still screwed on the right way still."

"Haha. Very funny. But where…"

"You are in the Medical Ward, Mr. Clarke."

Isaac looked over to his right and saw a man in doctor's attire with dark brown hair.

"And you are?" Ellie rolled her eyes at Isaac's rudeness.

"I am Dr. Pershall. I am the doctor that helped you when you were brought here to the Medical Ward."

"I think that was self explanatory."

"Isaac! Stop being so rude to someone who helped you out and probably saved your life! Geez, you bastard." And Ellie rolled her eyes at him again. 'Now wait…Eye? Eyes? Eyes! What?!'

"Wait Ellie, you have 2 eyes?! Since when?"

Ellie gave him a hard stare. "What?"

"I-I mean Stross stabbed you in your right eye with a screwdriver and all and took it out…so…How did…?"

"You're not the only one they helped out."

"Yes Mr. Clarke, While you were out we sewed up the hole in your hand and shoulder and repairing anything else that was affected due to those injuries like bone, muscles, tendons, nerves and such. And after I took a look and examined Ms. Langford's eye, I fitted her with a fully functional prosthetic eye."

"How long have I been out then?"

The hand on his shoulder gave him a slight squeeze, drawing his attention to Ellie as she said, "6 hours roughly."

"Really?" His eyes went huge, "That long?"

"Yes. It took 4 hours for both your hand and shoulder and then close to an hour and a half for Ms. Langford's eye."

"Wow."

Isaac, tired of lying down, tried to sit up but Ellie and Dr. Pershall held him back, forcing him to lie back down against his will.

"Mr. Clarke, you should remain lying down and rest so as to not reopen your wounds and cause further injury to yourself. It will take a day at least before you can sit up without worrying about further injury."

Isaac huffed but agreed. "Fine, but I don't like it one bit."

"Do you ever like resting? You never seem to stop before on Titan."

Isaac gave Ellie a cold stare, but ended up laughing slightly before coming back and saying, "But that was life or death. It doesn't count."

"Yes but you're an engineer, you're constantly doing things am I wrong?"

Isaac grumbled some, but the small smile still remained on his face. And he couldn't figure out why he was so happy now.

"I'm going to go check on how the repairs on the Gunship are going, ok? You rest your ass up or I will personally kick your ass. Got that?"

Isaac just mumbled something incoherent again at Ellie.

"What did you say Mr. Clarke?!"

"What is this? Us in the gunship on our way here again? And I said, 'Why the hell bother with repairing it? It's done.' But fine."

Ellie smirked at him once again, nodded and left, but not before, at the door, she turned around and took one last look at Isaac before she was off.

After about 5 times of asking people on how to get to the Flight Deck from the Medical Ward, she was almost there. They were repairing it on the Flight Deck where they had crash landed there and it was almost wrecked, due to the fact that if they tried to move it, it couldn't be salvaged at all. And it was a good gunship after all. So they were doing their best to repair it, they even told Ellie, while Isaac was out cold, that they had their best person on the job to oversee and do the repairs.

With one final last right turn, Ellie had made it to the Flight Deck. There she finally got a good view on how badly the gunship was damaged and she couldn't believe they were going to savage it.

'Damn…I wish good luck to whoever is trying to put this thing back together.'

She walked closer to get a closer inspection of it when she saw a young girl up on this metal staircase, working on part of the ship's exterior. So Ellie decided to go up and see how things were going. The closer she got the easier it was to hear the girl talking to herself.

"Security code Af401dge…" and then she would trail of and finish it in her head. She was really focused on what she was doing and Ellie felt bad for interrupting her.

"Hey."

The girl, slightly startled, turned and looked at Ellie and then smiled. "Oh hi there. Sorry you kind of caught me focusing to much on this. Good thing you brought me out of my little trance. I tend to do that a lot."

Ellie couldn't help but smile at this girl. She was so nice and honest, something she hadn't seen in a while with all the madness on Titan. "I guess you're welcome then. I was just coming to see how the Gunship was after the crash. It looks pretty bad, you sure you can fix this thing up?"

"Yes we got this under control. And aren't you one of the ones who was on this ship?"

"Yep. I did the perfect crash landing didn't I? I'm Ellie Langford. Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you too. I'm glad you and Isaac was it?"

"Yep Isaac Clarke."

"Ok. But I am glad you and Isaac got out of Titan Station ok and survived. Especially after the whole station being blown up and destroyed like it was."

"Yeah. It was hell there. All the madness and danger, it could have easily killed us, hell it almost got me. The madness made someone stab my eye out and it easily could have been stabbed through my forehead and not my eye."

"Yeah I bet. I would just of hidden and probably died there. Oh and where are my manners! I'm Nicole Layner." And Nicole held out her hand for Ellie to shake and she accepted.

"If I may ask, what do you do Ellie? Like what did you do on the Titan Station?"

"I was, well I still am going to do it as soon as Isaac and I find a nice safe place, but I am a CEC Heavy Weight Pilot, Class 4. What about you? I take it's something with machinery."

"I'm also a CEC Heavy Weight Pilot, but I'm Class 3 not 4 like you. And I am also and CEC Engineer."

Ellie's eyes went wide. No way can she be both and especially at such a young age. She only looked to be 19 or 20. "No way! Your both? How? You're so young."

Nicole laughed but just shrugged. "My dad was both so I guess I took after him. I am really good with my hands and visual things, so the 2 just melded together for me. Plus I'm not that young. I just turned 29 a few days ago."

"You look to be 19 or 20 not no 29 year old."

Nicole was about to say something but another crew member came running up to the ladder and hollered up to Nicole, "Nicole! They're here! They all landed safe and sound! Come on!"

"Really? Ellie I am so sorry but I really need to go…"

"Hey it's all good. Maybe I'll catch you around later."

"Maybe," she started to run down the stairs but not before she hollered back up, "It was nice meeting you Ellie!" And she waved goodbye and ran off.

"Damn…this thing better have more than just her working on it. It will take her forever if it's just her. I'll just head back to Isaac now," as she was walking back to the Medical Ward, she mumbled to herself, "I'm sure he is going crazy from being alone and nothing to do anyway."

(A.N. just wanted to put a few pronunciations out there for you all. Nicole's last name is Layner but its pronounced Lan-er. Like there is no y. and the station they are on, the Higan is pronounced He-gen. that is all plz read and review)

(A.N. this is from the new update and yeah not many changes here except for fixing grammar and spelling. Damn it was bad but next chapter you get to see the new name for Kenneth and the change in his appearance some.)