The first sense she recovered was her hearing. The birds she remembered hearing before everything went dark were no longer singing. Instead her ears picked up the sound of muffled speech somewhere nearby. She couldn't make out what was being said, but she could tell the voice was male. Her thoughts flew to Kevin: was he in trouble, did he find her? She wanted to yell out his name but her mouth refused to work. How could she get his attention? How could she let him know where she was? What if he was in trouble?

With her thoughts swirling around Kevin, she didn't notice the tingling feeling starting in her toes and fingers and slowly branching into her arms and legs. When she did notice the feeling returning to her body she tried to move her fingers and her toes. With luck, they moved. Next she moved her arm; maybe if she stuck her arm in the air Kevin would be able to find her. If that was indeed Kevin she heard speaking.

The sharp smell of bleach assailed her nose and the thought came that maybe she wasn't in the woods anymore. Come to think of it, she wasn't cold and wet anymore either. Her fingers started feeling the area around her, it was soft and there were blankets. She was on a bed. Someone had found her!

The elation of being found was soon overcome with the fear that it was the soldiers at camp. What if they found her and now she was imprisoned as a spy? Would Kevin know she was here, would he be able to get her out?

She moved her leg causing the blanket that was lying across her to fall to the floor; she could feel the chill in the air. Her eyes felt like they had been glued shut, she desperately wanted to rub her eyes, but what if the soldier in the room saw her and restrained her? She needed to sneak out of there but she had to see where she was going.

Going through the motion of blinking forced enough moisture into her eyes that she was able to start to open them. As her eyes began to open, she blinked a few more times to clear them. She was not in a cabin after all; the man in the corner wasn't even wearing a uniform. She sighed in relief, she hadn't been captured after all, she had been rescued.

The figure was standing but his shoulders were hunched, it was apparent he was speaking on a phone. Julie couldn't hear the words he was saying, the voice was too muffled and her eyes were still too blurry for her to tell who was standing in the corner. Her mind floated back to when she awoke in a room similar to this and she started to wonder if she ever really left that room. Maybe it was all a dream brought on by the serum that Howie injected in her. Julie attempted to sit up, the searing pain in her side made it evident none of what had happened had been a dream. She grimaced and groaned alerting the man that she was awake.

“Julie?” the man spoke turning around. She took the opportunity to rub her eyes; she was finally able to see Kevin walking towards her a smile breaking out on his face.

“Kevin,” Julie sighed though the noise sounded more like a croak. “What...” before she could finish her question Kevin's hands cupped her face and his lips crashed into hers with desire. The shock that overtook her was replaced with the sensation that all of her limbs were tingling, though she wasn't sure if it was from the kiss or from waking up.

Julie brought her arm up and placed her hand gently on his back as their kiss deepened. When she moved her left arm in an attempt to wrap both of her arms around him, the pain in her side forced her to cringe. Kevin must have felt her cringe and he pulled away.

He helped her lay back down and picked the blanket up off of the floor, covering her again. When she was tucked in, he proceeded to run his fingers through her hair. “I thought I lost you..” he mumbled

Julie closed her eyes and smiled remembering the feel of his lips on hers. Before she knew what was happening, tears started to well up in her eyes. “I'm sorry I went after him,” She looked into Kevin's eyes and saw no blame. The entire experience made her realize just how unprepared she was for what needed to be done.

“How did you find me?” She asked.

“I talked to a few of the soldiers who had seen Nick and his strange attire. Some were wary of him and I was able to talk to them and find out that AJ wasn't there at all. When I heard that I ran back to the shelter I left you at. When I didn't find you there I started to walk back towards the camp.” He leaned down and kissed her forehead. “A few of the men that had helped me found me and told me that they saw a woman lying in the field. Then I knew what Nick had intended all along.” Julie watched as his eyes flicked to her left side briefly.

“Kevin?” She hated to ruin their moment but she had to know. “Nick told me what happened between you two.”

Kevin stopped comforting her and moved to the side of the room. He grabbed a chair and pulled it closer to her bed. He took her hand in both of his and kissed it. “So now you know why he hates me?”

Julie nodded. “Did you kill Zoe?”

Kevin held her eye contact, “Yes.” He answered seriously. Julie could feel her brow furrow in confusion and she really wanted to pull her hand away but he kept hold. “It was an accident.”

“How did it happen?”

“I told you how we figured out that Nick manipulated his device so that he could spend longer amounts of time in one place and to us it only seemed like a day or two?” Julie nodded and he continue. “Well once we were able to decipher the data we found he was spending a large amount of time back in the Ming Dynasty, China. I went there, asked around and discovered where a camp with many foreigners like myself were. I watched the camp for a few days and when I knew Nick was gone, I made my way into camp. They were all very welcoming and when I asked to speak to the person in charge, I was immediately taken to Zoe.

“It's a shame you will never be able to meet her, she really was an inspiring persona. I can't lie and say I wasn't drawn to her cause after speaking with her for only a matter of minutes, but I knew I had a mission to complete and I know you will find this hard to believe, but I am not one to leave a mission incomplete,” He looked at Julie and smirked. She couldn't help but let out a small laugh at his comment.

“She opened up very quickly about her first jump. I didn't even have any discretion after I found out her first jump. I left right in front of her and went back to her first jump to return her. We thought it would be the end of things without her. She was the one recruiting the masses to her cause. With her never around to inspire those people the group would disband, or so we thought. Nick's had to do some recruiting but many of the originals stuck around.” Kevin propped his arm on the side of Julie's bed and placed his head in his hands.

“Anyway, when I returned her back to twenty twelve I messed up. I was so pompous that I didn't take the time to learn where she lived so I could take her there. The only place I could think of to return her was to the UCLA campus. I returned her too close to the initial blast and somehow instead of being shot through time, she just disappeared.”

“You couldn't save her?”

Kevin shook his head. “I didn't even know she was dead until Nick told me. He confronted me and said he tried to get her back from her first jump and she wasn't there. He tried to get her back from twenty twelve and she wasn't there either. He even tried to go to the day before the explosion to save her but she was gone. None of the other students had ever heard of Zoe Harkin. It's like she'd been erased from history.”

“But the name sounded familiar to me.” Julie spoke up. It seemed too impossible for anyone to be erased from existence completely.

“You have the time traveler gene fused in your DNA. Those with that, they don't forget. We thought with her gone the group would have never existed but volunteers and displaced persons remembered her, only those without the gene were never recruited and those were few. That was when we discovered that anyone with the gene would remember someone or something that happened. We also discovered that some without the gene could recall a shadow memory.”

“Shadow memory?” Julie asked.

“It's like that word that is on the tip of your tongue but you can't remember it. That's what a shadow memory is like.”

Now it was Julie's turn to comfort Kevin, to run her hands through his hair.

“As bad as it sounds, it is probably for the better that she died.”

Julie looked at him, her brow furrowed in confusion.

“Don't look at me like that,” He chastised her. “If she had lived, Nick would have either stopped me from returning her or he would have talked to her in twenty twelve and convinced her to join them. With her he would be able to recruit who knows how many more people.”

“That's awful Kevin.” She removed her hand and laid it across her chest. Maybe he wasn't the man she thought he was.

“Julie, I would give almost anything to be able to bring that girl back for Nick. To see the pain he suffered and know I was the cause of that pain, it's unbearable. And what he's done to you, that's my fault too. If I hadn't fallen...” Julie could see tears starting to form in his eyes, he quickly wiped them away.

Julie moved over on the bed and patted the area next to her. Kevin climbed onto the bed with her and wrapped his arms around her chest. Julie nestled her head into his chest and sighed with content. “It's not your fault he is looking for revenge.”

They laid there next to each other just long enough to Julie to start to fall asleep again. Before her eyes could close the door opened and Howie walked in. Kevin quickly jumped off the bed and sat in the chair next to the bed.

Howie gave Kevin a look that seemed to say 'I know what you were doing, why are you trying to hide it from me,' before he turned his attention to Julie.

“Julie, Nick missed any vital organs. I stitched you up and you should heal nicely. There is no sign on infection so you lucked out, you should fully in a couple of months. I talked to Charles though and he doesn't want you on anymore field missions until you are completely healed. He's decided that you will go back to twenty twelve,” Julie started to protest but Howie held up his finger to stop her. “You will go back and help Brian research in an attempt to find where he has taken AJ and it will give you time to heal.”