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John and I are both so tired. We're kind of like operative partners in a botched secret mission, turning on each other as we watch things fall apart. We've followed our orders, both of us faithful to the mission, both of us stoic in our acceptance that there will be some collateral damage, both of us dutifully focused on the task at hand, ready to react with plans B, C, D, and E at a moment's notice. But it turns out we weren't given orders for plans F - Z, and we've had to improvise, and in our dark hide-outs, sweat on our brows, eyes darting outside for potential new lurking dangers, the pressure and fatigue and unexpected negotiations are too much for us. In our disagreements we lose our focus - BLAM! Hannah's flunking school again - an intruder skirts past us and we're forced to stop everything we're doing and start the painful and risky process of eliminating it.

We manage to tie the intruder temporarily and get back to our negotations, newly committed to staying focused and not letting petty disagreements sway us from the mission, but the intruder is sneaky and - wwhhhiiissshhh. Hannah is lying again - starts to drag its binded self across the floor to escape; another unignorable distraction, another delay to the mission, survival. We make an executive decision to re-focus the mission temporarily, this intruder being our main target, but during the interrogation and investigation - BLAM! The kids are literally throwing sunglasses and chips all over the convenience store - another intruder, one that seems merely pesky and annoying, but is actually just a decoy, a minion of its much more sinister and threatening leader. Soon we're back to our original problem, the pressure forcing us into instinctual habits of blame and infighting. All we want to do is complete the mission. Every few hours when we wake up from the tiny amounts of sleep we get between watches, we start again, but our mission is failing. There are too many intruders, there are not enough of us. We are exhausted, we have no back up, we start to think we're doomed.