Mira had grabbed Michael’s hands as he held the gun in his mouth. He looked at her face; her lovely brown eyes now widened with terror and fear. He had protected her for over five years with this insane organization that had kept him on a leash. This place of torture and control had taken every bit of morality from him.

The voice called out again, "Help me! I can’t bloody well see here!" the voice said, cracking and hoarse.

Michael pulled the gun from his mouth as Mira took it from him without a fight. She placed it behind her back, tucked into her waistband of her pants as she followed Michael’s stumbled, frantic rush to the darkened area beyond them. The voice was Rollie’s!

He leaned into the recess, his hands touching living flesh that suddenly kicked and hit at him. Michael pulled Rollie’s weakened body out, still getting plummeted by Rollie, as Mira stood shocked behind Michael.

"Rollie!" Oh my God!" She exclaimed, as she rushed forward and hugged him. Rollie struggled and started to flail his fists toward her but the scent of her, the feel of her hair against his cheek reminded him of someone, the feel of the woman against him;

"Angie…." He murmured as he slumped in her arms and Michael helped her bring him further into the hallway. Michael was not surprised at the state he was in, just as to why he had been left. All the others had been removed.

"Rollie, it’s Michael. Where did the debriefers go?" He asked, worried about the rapid pullout.

"Michael? You came back! I waited…this is a nice hallucination, God- I love it!" Rollie replied, smiling as Mira stood back and looked at Michael frowning. She could see that Rollie couldn’t see either one of them and was staring at the wall beyond her, not at her. Rollie was hardly standing as he weaved back and forth, with Michael holding on to him for support.

"We have to get you out of here," Mira said, her eyes meeting Michael’s firmly as he nodded and they started toward the granite slab that would elevate them back up to the main tunnel. They worked together as Rollie’s legs were like jelly and half-dragging him took considerable effort.

"Hey, you guys, is Angie here?" Rollie said, as the elevator started to move them upward and Rollie panicked, Michael having to physically hold him down on the ground as he began to wildly fight for what he feared was another session in the light.

"Rollie! Hey, it’s alright! We are going to see Angie, okay? We are getting the hell out of this place, okay? Just cool it, man. Take it easy," Mira told him, as Rollie stopped and lay suddenly emotionless on the ground at their feet.

Once level with the tunnel floor, Michael helped Rollie to his feet and they moved off the granite slab and toward the tunnel that would take them off Pollepel and back to the shore. Mira noted the frayed and worn jumpsuit that Rollie was wearing, his emaciated, hollow-cheeked appearance had startled her so when Michael had pulled him out.

"I can’t seem to get my feet going right," Rollie commented as they continued to drag him between them, each supporting him with a shoulder.

"No problem, Rol. Let’s just keep taking it slow, okay?" Mira told him as he grinned;

"Oh, I bet Angie is going to be mad with me for being gone overnight, eh?"
 

Michael looked at Mira and gave her a warning look. She nodded and then told Rollie softly;

"She’s not mad, Rol. Come on…" Mira replied.

"Oh, forgot. They set the place to blow, mind you, I heard them talking and the whole place is going "boom" at eight," Rollie said, matter-of-factly to the air in front of him.

Michael stopped. Mira looked at her watch. It was a minute to eight and she jerked her head around to see if she could see any charges or a bomb planted. Maybe Rollie was just so completely out of it, that he was hallucinating about voices. It made sense.

"Rollie, you heard the "D’s" talking?" Michael asked, using the nickname that the operatives in debriefing gave their captors.

"Yeah, "D’s" were letting everyone out of their gates. Pony’s out the gate, race underway!" Rollie said, his babbling getting worse and incoherent now as he started to sob, his anxiety returning as he started to fight the supporting people that were helping him.

At that moment, with the sound of a beep- the elevator started to rumble behind them, and Michael scooped Rollie up in a fireman’s carry and shouted;

"Run, Mira- get the hell out of here now!"

She moved ahead of him, getting into the tunnel and began to run. Michael was behind her and they heard the explosion as cracks began to run beside them along the walls of the tunnel. Water began to spew out as Mira could see the light from the pump station ahead. Her lungs were burning as she made it to the station, seeing the water gushing behind Michael as he carried Rollie over his shoulder, panting and straining.

"Oh God, it’s collapsing! Michael!" she yelled and opened the door to the station and started to back out of it, still waiting for him to make it to her side. With a final lunge, he fell into the station only to be hit by a tidal wave force of water that knocked into Mira and blew her out the door and into darkness. Mira was knocked against the retaining chain link fence around the pump station as the force of the water literally molded her against it. The fence went flying over to the ground and the gushing water covered her body.

But the water suddenly receded, sucking backwards into the collapsed tunnel as the explosive power was compressed and volleyed up through the bottom of the tunnels and issued up under the castle, a fireball rising like a rocket launch from the Island. Mira wildly looked around for Rollie and Michael. She could see something tangled up in a section of chain link over to the side of her and she ran over to see Rollie completely snared inside but alive and coughing up water.

"Michael?" she called out but saw nothing in the bits and pieces of what remained of the pump station. The Hudson bubbled near the shore and deep sucking sounds emerged as the tunnel finally ripped completely apart under the water.

Rollie was fighting the chain link surrounding him and Mira helped pull him out of it as he grabbed hold of her for dear life. They were cold, wet, and alone at the shoreline. He was telling her something but she was beyond words as she thought of Michael being swept back into the tunnel when the water had suddenly been sucked back with the compression rise. She sank to her knees as Rollie came down with her, still coughing up water.

"Angie, we have to take the baby now!" shouted Dr. Shelton as Angie moved her head side to side, biting on the tube in her mouth that was assisting her to breathe, "There is not much time, do you understand?"

Angie’s panicked eyes told Dr. Shelton that at least, she understood the urgency and she could feel the horrid contractions that were rolling over her and sending sharp, rippling pain through her pelvis to her back. She could feel the bed rolling and people running beside the bed as the dizzying effect made her black out…

An air ambulance chopper carried Mira and Rollie back to New York City. Mira had called in the police and the FBI from her cellphone in her car as she wrapped a blanket around Rollie who shivered in her car as they waited. He had stopped talking and sat staring blankly ahead of him.

They were headed to the same hospital where Angie had been taken and Mira had radioed from the helicopter to Francis to find out Angie’s condition. She signed off from Francis then, looking down at Rollie who had been put in the lift bed, bundled up with IV’s running. The color in his face was starting to return as they landed and she ran into the emergency room behind his stretcher then, calling Francis again from her phone.

She told the trauma physician what she knew, which was little but they immediately put saline eye patches over Rollie’s eyes and stripped him as Mira was left with a decision to make. Francis had told her that it didn’t look good for Angie or the baby and that they had rolled her to the operating room five minutes before their arrival.

She walked back into the trauma bay, walking right past the team that was assessing Rollie and crouched down near his ear. She didn’t listen to the nurses that were trying to remove her and she didn’t move when the physician barked at her. She touched his face, turning his head toward her and said;

"Angie and the baby are dying, Rollie! You have got to get it together now, you hear me. You have to come out of wherever you are and fight with me right now! Your baby wants to live, Rollie. Your wife is here now. Damn it! It’s been almost five months since you disappeared!"

With a final push, security had grabbed Mira and pulled her back away from Rollie. Detective Francis Gatti however, waved them off as he took Mira’s elbow and guided her over to where he and Sarah were standing.

Rollie’s eyes blinked suddenly and he yelled out, pushing away the helping arms, sitting straight up on the gurney;

"Mira! Where is Angie? Take me to her!" he pleaded, making sense for the first time since she had found him in the tunnel.

Mira came back to him as he reached for her and touched her face, his eyes blankly staring ahead; "You take me to Angie, please – Mira…"

She looked at the trauma physician and had Francis walk over to him to explain the situation. In the meantime, she yelled out for a wheelchair. The trauma team looked on in amazement as the very thin, blind man came off the gurney into the wheelchair using considerable strength. He slumped into the chair then, totally exhausted as Francis pushed the wheelchair with Mira at their side. A slew of people followed from the trauma bay as the crowd took an elevator together. Rollie had Mira’s hand in his as Francis and Sarah talked to him in soothing tones about Angie’s strength and willpower.

Rollie had come back to the living. This was not an hallucination. This was a living hell. When he heard Mira tell him that he had been gone for over five months, when he heard Mira’s voice tell him that Angie and the baby were dying, he shook the shackles of the months of torture and private hell off. His goal was so clear. He needed to be with her, with them. His heart was pounding so hard in his chest as he could feel a multitude of people surrounding him. He could feel the movement of the chair he was in as Francis, his good friend Francis was helping him reach her. And Mira, his salvation; he held on to her for dear life as they moved swiftly, closer to his destiny, to his world apart until now.

He heard doors slam open. He heard a commotion going on with a lot of people talking and yet, he sorted through all of the voices, listening and waiting. He could hear a monitor, the heart slowing, and the rhythm unstable and faint now. He felt his body being lifted from the chair and then assistance as he was led forward. He could hear sounds of suctioning and metal against metal. A hand touched his shoulder and he felt someone help him sit down on a stool. Mira’s hand guided his own and then he felt her. His hand was touching her silken hair, as it draped the edge of the operating table. Someone was tying a mask around his nose and mouth and he didn’t fight it or fear it. He touched her cheek as the man that was sitting beside him gently told him that his wife was asleep, but to talk to her anyway. He could hear the woman doctor calmly telling someone to hand her an instrument, to cauterize and then he heard her ask for the scalpel as he heard the sound of the suction drain fluid suddenly.

"I’m here, sweetie. I am really here. You have done all the work, baby. You have been so brave. I love you so much, Angie. God, you have to fight with me, sweetie," he told her softly, his eyes, sightless, were brimming with tears.

"Got that, lifting the bladder flap now…suction! Okay, give me some retraction there, yeah…got that, lower transverse here and hello…" he heard Dr. Shelton saying as there was a sudden silence in the room. There was the sound of a slick movement of gloved hands against wetness, a gurgling noise as Rollie heard Dr. Shelton ask; "bulb syringe, okay…and up, outta here…" and then, again silence.

"How’s her pressure, Dave?" Rollie heard her ask the man at the top of the table with him.

"She’s coming down, oh yes!" the man remarked, an elated sound to his voice.

"Good! Well done, everyone! Regina, you want to get Mr. Tyler there, I assume that is Mr. Tyler up there?" Dr. Shelton said as Rollie suddenly thought, he had not heard any crying, no baby mentioned.

"Yes, Rollie Tyler here," he said weakly as he felt arms assisting him and then a pair of stronger arms assisting him in walking. He had not traveled far when he felt an incredible heat ahead of him. He could hear people talking lowly and then, a hand touched his arm, pulling it forward.

"Mr. Tyler, we’re only talking four pounds here, but what a fighter!" said a male voice, taking Rollie’s hand and letting him touch something, guiding him to the most incredibly soft skin he had ever felt. He was touching the head of the baby and then the hand guided him downward and he felt a tiny grip encase his index finger. It felt like a charge of electricity as he smiled.

"Quite a grip, huh? Well, shake hands with your son, Mr. Tyler. He is going to be quite a little man!"

Rollie tried to contain his emotions, as his world swirled around him. The man had said "son" and the tight grip of that tiny hand on his finger was all that he needed to bring him completely back to the life that he had lost.

"Angie? How’s Angie," he cried out, his face wet with tears.

A hand touched his back, the sound of the latex gloves snapping off by his ear;

"She is doing well, Mr. Tyler. She was an incredibly strong lady, your wife. She held on with some incredible odds. Your son there is pretty indestructible, himself," Dr. Shelton told him, patting his shoulder.

"Thank you, Doctor. I never met you, but thank you for this…for my family!"

He could hear people in the room, a full room of medical people expressing some very emotional tears as well. It didn’t matter, to Rollie- they were all his family at this moment.

He could hear the song-line in his mind as well, he could feel Mangela’s roar to the Forces of Nature, the sparks of the bonfire flying high into the Australian outback’s pitch black sky.

Along a country road, trudging slowly along the edge, a man walked. He dabbed at a gash on his forehead, and paused as he looked up at the road sign; "Yonkers- 5 miles". Still soaking wet, he started back at his pace. Behind him, the Island of Pollepel was ablaze. The riverside was swarming with police and FBI and he had managed to get past them all. He smiled and picked up his stride.