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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
AS A NEW DAY came around, it was yet another day of trying to find Sophia. The fragile little girl had been lost for nearly a week now and the groups hope was slowly wearing thin. Nobody with a moral compass would give up now when they could be so close to finding her, but the truth was, everyone was thinking the same thing. Could Sophia even have survived this long alone?
With everything going on with the search for Sophia, Athena couldn't even think about herself and her own situation. She was pregnant. A life was growing inside of her and she has the responsibility to take care of it. That is if she chose to leave it long enough to develop a life. The decision still remained unclear, would she want her baby to grow up with the fear of being killed just for going outside to play? Would the same thing that happened to Sophia happen to her child if they ran into trouble? Or would having this baby be the light in an other wise dim world.
Athena had not even decided if or how she was going to tell Shane.
The young woman was sat in camp with Andrea and T-Dog, helping out with the chores before Rick and Shane walked by with today's plan for the search. "Morning guys. Let's get going. We've got a lot of ground to cover."
Rick head towards the bonnet of the truck with a map of the terrain and laid it flat with a stick on each corner to give the group a clear visual. Athena rose from her seat and followed shortly after, she needed a distraction from the hard decisions.
"You okay?" Shane said, placing a hand on her back as he walked up from behind.
Athena smiled faintly and nodded, putting on a false facade "Yeah. I'm fine."
"I heard you up all night. Tossing and turning. You seemed restless."
"I'm fine, Shane." She snapped slightly. As soon as she did she immediately regretted it. Athena didn't mean to, she was just irritable and didn't want him asking any questions and fussing over her. It just made it harder to hide it from him. "I just wanna find Sophia."
She then walked off. Leaving Shane stood there for a few seconds as she joined the others where they were being debriefed by Rick. "All right, everyone's getting new search grids today. If she made it as far as the farmhouse Daryl found, she might have gone further east than we've been so far."
"I'd like to help." Jimmy, Beth's boyfriend said as he neared "I know the area pretty well and stuff."
"Hershel's okay with this?" Rick asked and the young boy nodded.
Shane scoffed "Nothing about what Daryl found screams Sophia to me. Anyone could have been holed up in that farmhouse."
