In and Out of Time 8/10

Title: In and Out of Time (8/10)
Author: wonderbread9
Rating: PG-13 - R
Characters: The current cast of Kyle XY
Pairings: Kyle/Amanda, Kyle/Jessi, Implied Jessi/Josh, other pairings
Warnings: It's going to get a bit strange...AU-ish, takes place directly after Life Support©, and will include some elements of what has happened IN Third Season. So, if you haven’t yet seen Third Season, then be warned: there be spoilers ahead.

Author's Note: Bare with me, y’all. It’s going to get a bit strange. Sorry for the long wait!!!

Summary: Somewhere in this city, there was a life he needed to save.

80808

The sound of Mark’s labored breathing was the only source of distraction that came to Lori’s worried ears as she sat beside her bedroom window and looked out on a night-drenched Seattle that was more strange and more dangerous than she had ever imagined possible. She had always grown up with a specific set of certainties in life: she was going to grow-up, she was going to make lots of money someway somehow and her existence was going to follow along a path, more or less, like everyone else; she was going to disappear into the crowd, a face among faces with nothing weird, strange or freaky happening to disrupt her existence. Until Kyle came, until Jessi came, and brought with them a whole slew of problems that Lori was—in no way, shape or form—prepared for. And, now she sat beside her bedroom window, taking stock of her life and wondering when everything went so horribly wrong.

Mark groaned in his sleep, and Lori looked back and sighed. They’d been able to clean up the worst of his injuries, but Mark still looked like someone had taken a sledgehammer and had a field day with his face. His eyes were swollen shut, his lip was busted in more than one place and bruises were blossoming along every inch of his skin. She cared about him, deeply, and it hurt her to see him look so terrible, so vulnerable, when all she wanted was for him to spring up from his sleep, magically repaired and as snarky and wise-cracking as ever. But another part of her, one that she didn’t even want to entertain, felt a niggling of justification. He’d lied to her, had kept secrets from her and for all she knew, could be using her to spy on Kyle. Mark was Latnok, and Latnok was the enemy, and everything that she had come to know about their relationship and trust about their relationship could be built on a lie.

Lori looked Mark over, saw that he was as fine as he could be under the circumstances and turned back to her window gazing. She saw, from the corner of her eye, Carol Bloom moving about in her home. The window was open, the blinds and curtains pulled back, allowing her to see everything, from Amanda’s piano to the various pieces of expensive artwork that lined the walls. Lori peeked her head further out her own window, watching the older woman pace the expanse of her living room, back and forth, ringing her hands. Even though Carol Bloom could be one hard-ass of a woman, Lori felt sorry for her; Amanda was missing, possibly in danger of her life, and her own mother—the woman that swore to protect her from any harm—could do nothing, but sit and wait for the inevitable; which ever inevitability that would be.

It was times like these—time where indecision and worry was eating at her and frustration was building like a seething, frothing volcano—that Lori wished she could patch into Kyle’s brain, sample some of that Kyle wisdom that made him such a rock to depend on when things got rough. But he was out, trying to find Jessi…on Lori’s orders, and there was no way that she could get to him or contact him. She didn’t even know if he was carrying his cell phone and, even if he were, she didn’t know if it was even on. She blew a gust of air from her lips, balled her hands into tight, white fists and gritted her jaw, blinking back the tears of frustration that threatened to fall.

She just wanted things to be normal. She just wanted Josh to come home and be better and for Kyle and Jessi to be okay without the threat of some huge, shadow organization hovering over their shoulders for the rest of their lives, always having to be careful and never stepping out of line for fear that Latnok would see and try just that hard to stick the proverbial knife deeper. As if he could feel her distress, Mark groaned and Lori whirled, biting her lip, her nostrils flaring. He was listless in his dreams, a line of distress forming between his eye brows, his lips parting, mumbling something incoherent. She rose from her place by the window, went to him and pulled his free, un-bruised hand into her own.

“It’ll be okay, Mark,” she reassured, softly, but she didn’t know who she was lying to more: to the very injured young man on her bed or to herself.

80808

The night covered their fleeting forms so that to the average observer they were shadows disappearing into shadows and nothing more. Kyle’s breathing was ragged, more from the tumult of emotions running through him and not from any form of exertion. His thoughts were a jumble, his mind in a whirl, his heart thundering in his chest as his feet thundered against the concrete below him and his muscles sent him surging forward in a desperate race against time. He would’ve laughed at the irony of it if his humor were gripped by that kind of darkness.

There was no time. If Josh-Joshua-FutureJosh was right then Amanda’s life was in danger, and with it, the fate of the entire world, and even Kyle was still having some trouble processing this. In FutureJosh’s time, he—Kyle Trager—had destroyed the world. Because of Amanda’s death, he destroyed millions of lives, disrupted countless many more and waged a war on those last few, resistant to his rule. It was impossible, it was unfathomable, but Kyle didn’t want to test that theory; he didn’t want to know what a world felt like without Amanda.

He didn’t slow down.

He didn’t stop to catch his breath.

He heard Jessi behind him, moving on soundless feet that almost seemed to glide on empty air when he looked back. Her gaze was focused, her brown eyes unwavering in the darkness; and it was them that he wished he could have her drive, her force of will, but the only thing he could feel was a gnawing ache in the pit of his soul and an overwhelming need to seek out Nicole’s warm embrace. He did not know the name of his biological mother, never saw her face and Adam never revealed her identity, but Nicole was the closest thing he ever had to a maternal figure, and all he wanted was for her to be here and to make all of this go away. It was illogical, it was irrational; Kyle knew that Nicole didn’t have a magical wand to wave and make the whole world return to some semblance of normalcy. But for once in his life, he wished that science wasn’t the end all, and that the impossible could be possible and that someone out there could make everything better than the reality he was living now.

Kyle looked back, and Jessi was there; her eyes sought his in the darkness, locked—blue meeting intense brown—and Kyle felt the bottom drop out from underneath him. He breathed, air coming in and out of his lungs more ragged than ever, strange sensations playing up and down his spine. He turned away quickly, narrowly dodged a bus stop pole, but kept moving.

Somewhere in this city, there was a life he needed to save.

80808

She watched him, her eyes narrowing to calculated slits as she watched the way his body moved, the way his legs pounded the concrete and the way his arms moved back and forth to propel him forward. She watched the way he was breathing, watched the sweat that broke out over his forehead, and when he looked back and she met his sharp blue eyes with her dark, dark brown, she watched the strange emotions that danced like raging fires in those deep, azure depths. It left her breathless. Even with everything that was going on, the desperate race to beat the odds that they were undertaking, she surprised herself at feeling breathless, feeling her stomach do somersaults and jumping jacks in that split second of ocular contact. She tightened the fists that her hands were balled into, grit her jaw and pushed herself forward so that they were level, running nose to nose.

“We’ll make it,” she shouted to him as he narrowly missed a bus stop pole. He floundered for a second, but picked himself up and kept moving.

“We have to get there in time,” he shouted back. There was a desperate edge to his voice. She glanced at him. In her mind, she could see the variables of his body—his weight, his height, his body mass and muscular development, all laid bare before her mind. She could calculate how long it would take his body to give out, how much in elevation his heart beat had rose in the last few seconds and even—if she focused hard enough—see the entropy of dying cells that were burned in the wake of his panic and anxiety. But despite all of this, she could not pierce to the heart of Kyle XY, she could not breach his defenses to reach the core of his being and reassure him: I’m here. I’m not going to leave. Everything is going to be alright.

All she could do was run beside him, and hope that that was enough.

80808

Nicole was not prepared for the two panting teenagers standing on her doorstep, eyes wild with panic and something else—a knowing perhaps? Of things to come and what might be? She shook the strange thoughts off and instead, stared wide-eyed at Kyle, who she’d actually expected to come back, unsuccessful from Lori’s charge, and Jessi, who she thought would take much more than Kyle to bring home. She embraced them both, nevertheless, and ushered them quickly inside.

“Jessi?” She could not help the note of surprise that filled her voice or the tears that welled in her eyes. She’d thought, even for a split second since Jessi’s disappearance, that maybe…Just maybe they would never…But she banished the thought quickly, and embraced the girl again, who gaze registered surprise as well, but excepted the hug greedily as if that’s what she’d waited for someone to give to her her entire life.

“Kyle, I can’t believe you did it,” she said in awe, smiling at her adopted son. He didn’t return it. His eyes were wide as saucers, his breathing still harsh. “What’s wrong?”

“Amanda,” was all he managed, and Nicole could feel the muscles of her face pull back in resignation.

“Kyle…she’s…” Nicole struggled, and Kyle’s eyes grew wider still, fear and another unreadable emotion dawning in their depths. “She’s missing…”

“Missing?” His voice was breathless and formed the word on lips that seemed unwilling to form it at all. Nicole nodded, glanced from Jessi to Kyle and back again. Jessi was watching Kyle like a hawk.

“Mark’s here,” Nicole began, and both teens glanced at her in puzzlement. Nicole hurried to finish, “and he told us—or tried to tell us—that Latnok has kidnapped Amanda—“

She did not miss the look that Jessi and Kyle shot each other, nor the fear that seemed palpable between the two, growing even more so.

“How would he know?” Kyle turned to Jessi, but she shrugged shaking her head. They both turned to Nicole.

“What’s going on?” Nicole asked, and applauded herself that she managed to sound as stern as she did when all she really felt was a growing sense of dread and the first touch of panic trying to wedge itself into her brain. She wanted to stay calm, needed to stay calm. This was no time to get hysterical.

“He’s right,” Jessi replied, slowly. “I don’t know how he knows, but…he’s right. We have to find out where Amanda is. We have to get to her before something terrible happens.”

“Terrible?” Nicole’s eyes widened when Kyle’s face turned grim.

“We have to get to Latnok,” the dark haired boy replied, his voice laced with steel.

80808

His legs felt heavy and his body laden with dread, but Josh knew that what he was feeling now was nothing in comparison to what he would feel if he didn’t keep moving, didn’t keep placing one foot in front of the other, pushing himself forward. Everything in existence depended on him, depended on him making it, depending on him getting there in time and stopping it, stopping it all from happening. He pushed aside bushes and tree branches, keeping to the shadows. The clothes that he wore were much too big, held up precariously by the belt of the security guard that he’d felled in on swift blow, one crack over the bed with a bed pan and the big man had gone down without so much as a grunt. The last sight that Josh had saw was Andy, looking out at his escape from his room window, her hand pressed to the glass and even from that distance, he looked up and saw tears running down her cheeks; it tore his heart to pieces, but he preferred the pieces rather than his heart being torn out completely—pieces could be put back together and mended after all.

He kept moving, his mind seeking out the pathway to his destination through the jumble that his memories were. He blinked and he saw devastation. He blinked again and Seattle’s skyline lay before him as peaceful as it had always been. It was strange. It was crazy. He wondered if he were going insane.

In his mind’s eye, he saw moonlight, an open field and Jessi laid out underneath him, her grin as coy as ever. He saw Andy, her smile as innocence and shy as was ever possible, staring up at him from a cocoon of sheets. Two memories. Two lifetimes, and even those were beginning to merge so that Jessi had Andy’s green eyes, but Andy had Jessi’s dark hair, and way, way up in the high-vaulted atmosphere of his ceiling stars were juxtaposed on his fan and the moon shone lazily on a bed covered in grass and wild flowers. He shook his head, trying to clear away the cobwebs and confusion, breathed and kept going.

He gripped the edges of his pants and belt into a wrinkled bunch in one hand and held them up as he marched on, and in his other, heavy metal gleamed in the amber glow of street lights, his hand gripped around it tightly, knuckles turning deathly white. He had a job to do. He had a world to save.

80808

Underneath his skin, Cassidy could feel it, like a sixth sense, warning him of something to come. Doom, perhaps? He wasn’t sure, but he knew that his latest action against Kyle XY would not go unpunished. A shiver ran up and down his spine, anticipation coiled deep and his stomach, and when he turned on his heel and beheld the very alert and struggling girl that was tied and gagged to a chair behind his desk, his eyes took on a razor edge and his mouth quirked into a very dark smile.

“Doom, indeed,” he whispered to himself as he stepped forward and the girl’s eyes watched him with an odd mixture of defiance and fear in their blue depths. “Fascinating.” His smile became friendly as he drew closer to the girl, but her look never changed, save to become more so frightened and less so defiant. He pulled up a chair and sat down in front of her, lacing his fingers together on the desk top before him.

“I do hope you’ll forgive my impropriety,” Cassidy began conversationally, as if he were talking to a dear old friend and not the frightened, teenage girl that he’d had kidnapped, “but decorum flies right out the window in the face of one such as me and my little dilemma.” He unlaced his fingers and sat back in his chair, relaxed. “You see, Kyle is a very important person to me and my organization, but he doesn’t seem to want to cooperate, and we’ve been more than a little patient with his youthful defiance. However, we can be patient no more. We’re on a time table, you see, and we can’t have him mucking up all of our plans before they come into fruition. He’s more extraordinary than you can ever possibly realize.”

Her eyes burned, watery with tears and frustration and she worked the gag in her mouth like she very much so wanted to say something to him, but Cassidy did nothing to alleviate the obstacle and allow her free speech. He was giving her courtesy enough explaining to her the partial truths that Kyle had perhaps not yet explained, but that didn’t mean Cassidy wanted to hear her opinions on the matters he was discussing; teenagers—he noticed—had a decided lack of manners when confronted with realities they just did not want to hear.

“Which is why we needed you,” Cassidy continued, his tone still relaxed and conversational. “Or rather, why I came up with the idea of using you. You’re important to Kyle, and with your help—as unwilling as it maybe—you’ll give us the leverage we need to sway Kyle to our way of thinking. He’ll join us because he’ll never want harm to come to you.”

The tears were falling freely now, and Cassidy’s face immediately pulled into a mock look of disappointment. He rose, retrieved a tissue from the box of Kleenex that he kept on hand and went to her, attempting to dry her eyes.

“There, there,” he said in a tone meant to convey consolation. She flinched from his ministrations as he dried her eyes and tried to pull away. He grabbed her chin and forcibly turned it to him, meeting her eyes. “No need to cry. As I said, if Kyle does as we ask, no harm will come to you at all.”

He stood, friendly smile back in place.

“Now, let’s go put you somewhere more open, where Kyle will be able to see you.” Cassidy went to the door, opened it and signaled to the guards on duty. They came at his beckoning, as silent as the grave despite their hulking weight and towering height.

“Please,” he said cordially, stepping aside and motioning to Amanda Bloom, whose eyes widened and renewed her struggles as the two guards approached her and hoisted both her and the chair in the air. Cassidy frowned at her.

“Now that’s no way to act,” he chastised as the guards carried her out and she glared at him hatefully. “You’re helping us do a service. You’re helping us complete our plans. You really should be a bit more agreeable.”

He followed the guards out into the recreation room of the University science department, the room bare of the chairs, tables, pool table and other odds and ends that the mentally gifted students considered amusements from their typical routines. The two men set her down in the middle of the room and disappeared, silently, waiting in the shadows for Cassidy’s summons. The older man stood in front of the trembling teenage girl.

“He’ll be here soon,” he said, his voice darkening considerably from its earlier, lighter tones. “Do be a good girl, and put on a good show.”

He smirked, turned on his heel and disappeared himself as well, going back down to his labs. And waited.

80808

Lori stood by anxiously, watched as both Kyle and Jessi hovered around Mark, their hands mere inches from his body, working whatever mojo they had to bring him back from the land of pain and bruises. Her mother stood beside her, arm wrapped tightly around Lori’s shoulders and once again, Lori was reminded of how surreal her life had become. Her eyes drifted from Mark to Kyle before settling on Jessi, the other girl’s face creased in concentration.

Lori had barely had a minute to set eyes on Jessi or express her surprise at seeing the other girl, alive and well save for her haggard appearance before Nicole and Kyle pushed past her to get into her room and see to the condition of Mark. All she could do was flash Jessi a grateful smile, a quick hug that did nothing to assuage the panic that she had felt for the last few days for her adoptive brother or his experiment-counterpart and a mental promise that when all of this was over, she was going to treat the dark-haired girl to a day full of sisterly bonding and all the fixings that came with bonding with the infamous Lori Trager.

Now, she stood with her mother wishing she could understand even a snippet of Kyle and Jessi’s lives, wished she could take part in whatever it was that they were doing to get Mark better, but knew she was only a normal, mortal girl and could not tango with the likes of super humans. Instead, she leaned into her mother, attempted to keep her mouth shut and not ask the barrage of questions that would interrupt Kyle and Jessi’s delicate work. She wanted to know how Kyle had found Jessi, she wanted to know the heroic details and what exactly had stopped Jessi from kicking some royal-butt and getting herself back home. She wanted to know if Jessi’s disappearance had anything to do with Josh, and whether or not it had something to do with Amanda. But most importantly, she wanted to know if Jessi was okay, if whoever had taken her hadn’t hurt her too badly, or hurt her at all.

But she bit her lip in the face of her wants and watched as Mark’s eyes fluttered for a second—her heart stopped and her breathing as well—before opening completely and looking from Kyle to Jessi and back again confusion. His eyes went wide suddenly and he sat up quickly, breathing suddenly harsh and ragged.

“Jesus!” he exclaimed, and when Lori looked closer, she could see that his eyes weren’t nearly as swollen and his busted lips were healing as if someone had jumped his immune system to hyper drive.

“Mark,” she began in a calming tone, going to him and taking his hand in hers. “It’s okay.”

“But, but,” he stuttered, meeting her comforting gaze with one that was fearful. “What’s happening? What’s going on?”

“We were hoping you could enlighten us,” Nicole suggested in a firm voice. Mark’s brow creased in momentary confusion.

“Is this a dream?” He asked, meeting Lori’s eyes again. She shook her head. His brow creased further and looked from Nicole to Kyle to Jessi and then back again. He breathed. “What do you want to know?”

Kyle leaned down until he was level with the older boy. “Everything.”

80808

“He’s gone.”

With everything that he’d been through over the last few years, it was a wonder to Stephen Trager that hearing those two words uttered from Andy’s lips was the one thing that nearly stopped his heart cold. He looked at the girl like she was insane and spun in a 360 circle around the hospital room, not wanting to believe her softly uttered words. Josh…gone?

What the hell—?

But she was right, and his eyes weren’t deceptive in the slightest. Josh was gone and the only tell-tale sign that his son had even been present in this room was the rumpled sheets that adorned the bed and the lazily swinging tubing that hung from the IV bag. His disbelieving gaze swung slowly to Andy’s devastated figure as she sat in a hospital chair across from the bed, staring dejectedly at nothing in particular.

“Where did he go?” Stephen asked, forcing the panicked hysteria from his voice. Andy looked up, but her green eyes were empty.

“I don’t know,” she replied, blankly. Stephen could feel his hand clenching and unclenching at his sides.

“You don’t know?” he repeated, the words tasting strange on his tongue. He dragged in a shaky breath. “Andy…where’s my son?”

“He said he was going to stop it,” she replied, biting her lip. “He said he was going to stop Kyle.”

Stephen’s jaw worked, his mouth opened and closed, but nothing came out. Instead, he turned on his heel and started for the door.

“Mr. Trager,” Andy called and Stephen stopped, glanced back, his gaze cold like glacial ice. Andy shivered underneath it and withered. “I’m so sorry.”

He said nothing and continued out the door.

He had to find his son.

80808

The University was juggernaut of stone buildings, turrets upsweeping in a clear gothic design. Kyle would’ve been awed at what he saw were it daylight and under different circumstances. As it were, his enthusiasm for the University’s architecture was dampened considerably in the wake of Amanda’s kidnapping and possible d—

But he refused to let himself continue down that train of thought.

Jessi came to stand beside him, dressed in a different pair of clothes, her face set and her gaze intense. His senses were heightened, nearly pushed past their breaking point so that nothing in the world escaped his watchful gaze, his honed sense of smell, taste or the minutiae detections of changes to the air pressure against his skin. In this state, he could more than feel Jessi beside him. Heat radiated from her body and his nose picked up the scent of her—a smell that was perpetually Jessi no matter what the circumstance: that faint trace of her favorite lotion still clinging to her skin and something else, something that he had never quite been able to define. His heart rate picked up, and if he told himself it was only because of the situation, because he was anxious and he was on a mission that determined the fate of the planet, it didn’t matter because there was no one else in his head to contradict him.

He dragged his thoughts back to Amanda and back to surveying the quite University grounds for any danger. All was quiet. All was still and Kyle was thankful that at least Mark had been right about this: as he and Jessi moved, no one blocked their path to the science department’s building, no obstacle jumped out at them from the darkness. Whether or not Mark’s willingness to help would endear him to Lori any longer had yet to been seen.

“D’you think it’s a trap?” Jessi asked quietly. Kyle didn’t answer at first, only stepped forward, clinging to the shadows, slowing down only to wait for Jessi to catch up, before moving swiftly through the darkness.

“I don’t know,” he finally replied, and glanced back. Even in the darkness, her eyes glowed an almost preternatural light. His face was grim, his mouth set in a thin, straight line, “But we’d better.”

Jessi nodded. That was all the explanation she needed.

It didn’t take them long to get to the science department building. It was large, massive and clumsy, a big, black box against the face of the starlit night, whose architecture contrasted greatly the other buildings around it. Kyle wondered fleetingly if that were done on purpose, but he quickly banished the thought and slipped under the cover of a low overhang that jutted out awkwardly from the science building’s side and hid in its darkness, a metal door, one of the many entrances into the science building. He looked left then right, checking to see if the coast was clear before stepping back and aiming a well-placed kick at the door. The metal bent in and flew open, but before it could make a cacophonous noise and alert anyone to their presence, Jessi caught it in time, her mind manipulating the air particles around the door, absorbing the energy and force and transferring it elsewhere.

She breathed, and when Kyle glanced over to check on her, she sent him a reassuring nod. He nodded in turn and the two disappeared inside.

80808

However, unbeknownst to the two teenagers, a pair of gleaming brown eyes watched amusedly from a face that was pulled into a wicked smirk. Cassidy unlaced his fingers and laid them flat on the desk before him. He stood, straightening his shirt, undoing one more button; it had suddenly gotten very hot in the room. He cleared his throat and stepped away from his chair, tucking it neatly under his desk before pivoting on his heel and exiting the office.

The smirk was still on his face when he signaled for his guards to come forward, and from the shadows they emerged, like ghosts on quiet feet.

“And now, we begin,” Cassidy said simply, a flush of emotions rushing through him underneath his skin. Tonight was the night, and when he was through Latnok would be pleased.

Oh, they would most certainly be pleased.

In and Out of Time 7/10

Title: In and Out of Time (7/10)
Author: wonderbread9
Rating: PG-13 - R
Characters: The current cast of Kyle XY
Pairings: Kyle/Amanda, Kyle/Jessi, Implied Jessi/Josh, other pairings
Warnings: It's going to get a bit strange...AU-ish, takes place directly after Life Support©, and will include some elements of what has happened IN Third Season. So, if you haven’t yet seen Third Season, then be warned: there be spoilers ahead.

Author's Note: Bare with me, y’all. It’s going to get a bit strange. Jesus H. Christ, this took me a long ass time to write. Whew! See the AFTERWORD for more details.

Summary: “Kyle, let’s just leave,” Jessi urged. Her eyes met his, met the intense deep, swirling blue depths of his eyes with her own, but Kyle’s lips pressed into a thin, firm line and he shook his head slowly, turning back to the injured Joshua on the floor.

“No,” he said firmly, his voice laced with steel. “I want answers.”

8o8o8

She woke to a room drenched in moonlight and empty of any other life save hers. Jessi sat up immediately, her head snapping this way and that in alarm and fear. Where was he? Where was Joshua? She sat up straighter, eyes peeling away every shadow and every inch of darkness in the room, her ears straining to hear even the slightest sound of breathing or a heartbeat, but she could see nothing, detect nothing and the panic that was rising in her gut grew all the more stronger.

He was nowhere to be found in the tiny, dark, cramped space, and she was somewhere lost in the middle of an industrial wasteland. Was she still in Seattle? Was she somewhere else altogether? She had no clue, and if she stepped outside right now, would she be staring at a familiar skyline or would she be seeing something else wholly different?

Jessi stood shakily, using the cot to catch her balance before standing upright and looking around. She felt so vulnerable, so weak, so mortal in that single moment, not being able to call upon her natural abilities to assist her. She couldn’t feel the comforting flow of strength through her limps, couldn’t summon the higher brain functions that would call forth the honing of her senses—her eyes, her ears, her sense of smell and taste and even her ability to hone the entirety of her skin to feel the slightest shift of the air currents around her. All lost to her at that moment so that she was nothing more than a normal, scared girl, and while at first, she had wanted nothing more than to be plain, regular and un-extraordinary, she had grown accustomed to her power, to her agility and her higher intelligence. To have all of that lost to her now was frightening, very, very frightening.

She took a deep breath, trying to quell the panicked trail her thoughts wanted to take—where was she? Would she ever get out? Would she ever get home? Would she ever see the Tragers? Kyle?—and looked around again, trying to orient herself. There had to be a way out…somewhere.

She walked slowly to one of the warehouse’s boarded up windows and tried to pull away the ply wood that blocked her vision of the outside world, but no matter how much she pulled, the wood wouldn’t budge and eventually Jessi gave up on that plan of action. She just didn’t possess the physical strength to pry the wood from its place. She hissed in annoyance, stepped back and kicked the wall. It gave a groan of protest, but nothing more and silence settled over her once more.

“This is so not good,” Jessi mumbled to herself in frustration. It was the understatement of the year, and she muttered a few choice obscenities under her breath as she turned in a wide circle, surveying the entirety of her “prison”. There was no indication that Joshua had even been here. Nothing looked disturbed or out of place, but then again, the place was a dump and any indication of human life having ever been in a place like this had been covered over by years and years’ worth of disuse and grime.

Jessi uttered an annoyed sigh, nibbled her lip and turned on her heel to go back to the cot. It was then that she heard it: a grunt, coming from somewhere to her left, near the windows. She stopped, paused and held her breath, straining once again to hear over the night sounds. And she was rewarded with the grunt sounding again, as if someone were moving something with great effort only a short distance away from her, outside of the room. Her breathing quickened and she crossed the dirty floor of the warehouse office quietly, looking around for something hard and blunt. She picked up a fungus-eaten leg of a broken office chair and held it deftly in her hands, wielding it like an awkward sword. She eased her way over to the windows and found what her initial investigation had not: a door, so grime encrusted that it blended in with the wall around it.

She breathed deep, tried to still the panic of her heart and the trembling of her limps, positioning the chair leg over her shoulder like a batter would and waited. If it was Latnok, she would be ready. If it was Kyle, she’d apologize. If it was Joshua, she’d clobber him and try to get away. Either way, whatever, or whoever, was making their way to the door was getting ready to deal with a half-angry, half-scared teenager. Jessi just hoped she wouldn’t miss.

The grunting grew louder, and heavy footsteps echoed throughout the quiet expanse of the room. Jessi held her breath and gripped her stick. A heavy weight settled on the door and pushed, but it didn’t budge, just protested loudly like splinting wood under an immense pressure. The heavy weight settled on the door again, pushed. This time it gave a little. Jessi gripped her chair leg harder until her knuckles turned a ghostly white. She swallowed.

The heavy weight gave one last push, a more forceful one, and the door came open with a loud groan. All Jessi saw was a head lean through the threshold before she was swinging wildly.

There was a shout. The chair leg met the wall with a jarring force that reverberated through Jessi’s arms. A strong arm circled her waist. The chair leg was wrestled from her grip and she was carried bodily to the cot and dumped unceremoniously on it before she knew what happened. She looked up and met Joshua’s dangerously angry gaze. He was breathing hard and gripping the stick in his hand like he meant to do her harm. Jessi thrust her chin forward, defiance burning in her eyes.

It was a tense few moments; their eyes were locked and Joshua’s jaw clenched causing his neck to bulge and a vein to twitch incessantly at his temple. He breathed; she breathed, and then he looked away, breaking the spell.

“I got you food,” he growled, going back to the fallen bag of groceries that he’d dropped ducking her hastily planned assault. Jessi watched him like a caged animal, eyes still burning anger. He stooped to pick up the fruits that had escaped from the grocery bag and rolled a little ways across the floor. But it was as he was reaching for a stray orange that Jessi looked up and saw the door was still opened wide. Thoughts flew across her mind as she glanced from Joshua’s crouched figure and back to the door.

She breathed.

Her muscles tensed, and time seemed to slow to a standstill.

And then she was up, moving, as lightning quick as she possibly could, bolting towards the door. Joshua yelled and reached for her, but when his hand tried to grasp her wrist and jerk her back, it closed on empty air. Instinct drove her, fear pushed her and adrenaline sent her rushing down the rickety steps of the abandoned, rotting warehouse like the devil himself was on her trail. She ran, feeling her heart beating wildly in her chest, her breath wheezing from her lungs and her muscles screaming. She came to the last few steps of the stairwell and leaped, hearing the thundering, heavy boots of Joshua as he chased after her.

She exploded out of a doorway, slamming open the old, rusting exit and bolting between rows and rows of conveyor belts, some still with old car parts hanging from their chains like rotted corpses of steel and wires. She could see moonlight trickling in faintly from dirt encrusted windows and could see, just up a head, the faint outline of a door.

“Jessi!” came Joshua’s shout from behind. Fear leapt into her throat. Adrenaline pumped through her veins. She could hear him and when she glanced back, saw him barreling like a freight train towards her. She gave a cry of alarm, turned back towards the doors and prayed that they would open.

She had to keep going. She had to get away. She had to—

Her hands met resistance, but the force of her body slamming into the ancient slab of metal thrust it open with a raw, torturous sound that left her wincing. The cool rush of evening air was a shock to her skin and the wave of night sounds that crashed over her senses and nearly overloaded them was a joy to feel. Her mind immediately sprang to action and she could feel the minute pulse of electric pulses run faster and faster and faster from every nerve-ending in her body, straight to her brain. She felt a surge of power in her limps that filled her desperate muscles and nearly made her cry out in triumph. She could feel the shift and sway of air currents around her as she cut through the thin veil of molecules and particles that floated invisible and unseen in the air. She could taste a far off rainstorm only miles out from Seattle with her tongue. If she looked up, she could cut through the pollution in the air with her eyes and see the stars.

But most importantly, she could feel the wave, the pulse and the energy, even from such a great distance, of the one person on the planet that mattered more to her than life itself: Kyle. In her mind’s eye, she could see him; she could feel the air of indecision around him as he stood on a street corner, looking this way and that, face creased in a troubled, puzzled frown.

Had Joshua been right? Had her disappearance truly spurred Kyle away from his family, away from his home, away from…Amanda, all for her? Was he out there looking for her even now, as she escaped and ran full tilt towards him?

She wanted to laugh out loud, scream to the night air that she was free, but she knew that this freedom could be taken away. She knew from past experiences that freedom was an ephemeral thing. Danger was still behind her, Joshua still lurked and she had a—

There was a jerk on her right hand that jarred her forward abruptly before jerking her back and making her breath catch in her throat. She was tugged, spun and as the world reeled around her, she caught from the corner of her eye, the familiar face of a war torn veteran. Joshua’s piercing brown eyes chilled her to the bone. She balled up a fist, swung swiftly and connected with soft flesh. Joshua uttered a muffled cry of pain before Jessi kneed him, hard, in the gut. He went down, but did not release her.

“Let me go,” Jessi growled, angrily, reaching to pry his fingers from her wrist.

“Not on your life,” Joshua growled back in pain. She pulled; he jerked her forward and she landed on all fours in front of him. She had only a split second to gasp as Joshua’s free hand immediately flew to his wrist—

She looked up, could see the cold pinpricks of stars watching in their far, distant places, and formed one single thought in her mind that she hoped and prayed would get sent:

—Joshua pressed a button on the small watch that was strapped securely to his skin—

KYLE

—and he and Jessi disappeared with only the disturbance of once still air and packed earth the only tell-tale of their being there.

8o8o8

The night wind brought whispers of animal sounds and insects’ song to Kyle’s ears as he stood underneath the glaring light of a street lamp, on the corner of some Seattle street, hoping that something, anything, would show him which way to go or what to do. He was lost, but not in the sense of direction—he knew that if he tweaked his vision just so, he could see his own fading heat signature of where he had come from. He was lost because nothing in his highly, advanced brain could tell him, map out logically in his head, where he should begin in finding Jessi. When Amanda had been taken, finding her—while it took some doing, and with Jessi’s help (Kyle felt a pang at that)—had not been as difficult as finding Jessi was now. He had—at that time—been given a clue, a subtle hint of Amanda’s whereabouts.

But here…

Now…

There was no innocuous phone left behind with a sinister image embedded within. When the strange man took Jessi, he’d left nothing but empty air behind and Kyle’s shattered hope that maybe life was going to return to some semblance of normal. But no, it just got stranger and stranger—first Jessi and then Josh—and with Jessi gone there was no one to buffer that strangeness against, no one to be a constant in his life that didn’t change, no matter the swaying of life’s tides. Kyle stood at street’s edge, blue eyes combing the darkness as cars drove past and random passersby avoided his strange, still figure on the sidewalk. The night wore on, but like a cruel mistress, revealed none of its secrets to him, and he knew couldn’t stand on the corner forever like a human statue for the world to see and gawk at. He had to move, he had to do something, but it felt like there was nothing he could do.

He could hear Lori’s words echo at the back of his mind. He could see Amanda’s confused, angry, hurt stare as he rushed away from the hospital. He could see Josh’s still prone form in the hospital bed and not know, for once in his short existence, how to fix the monumentous problem. All these puzzles, the huge, chaotic conundrum that his life had become, swirled in his mind like a dizzying topsy-turvy whirl and there was no one here to help him put it to rights, no one to understand or help him begin to put the pieces back together. He couldn’t talk to Nicole; she was worried about Josh, and Steven and Andy and Lori too.

He couldn’t risk them in this. His only recourse was to turn on his heel and go back, back to the place where all this started. He had to find the quiet spot that Jessi had sought out for solitude. He had to search every blade of grass, every disturbed leaf and wind-tossed shrub. Nothing would go untouched, uninvestigated or overlooked.

And maybe…

Just maybe…

He’d find a clue. He’d have a hint. Something, anything to bring order and sense to a world that suddenly become much stranger and much scarier than he could have ever possibly imagined. He had to—

And then he felt it, an overwhelming sense of danger, fear, panic and hope crash over him like a tidal wave. The feeling was intense and his eyes immediately flew to the sky, to the stars, where his vision shifted and the world went sideways for a split second—

KYLE

—before the world returned to rights again and he could catch his breath. Somewhere, in this city, Jessi was calling his name. Somewhere, her essence was reaching out to his. He could feel it, in that split second, just like a few days ago, when the strange man took her. And, just like before, power surged in his muscles and his legs and feet propelled him forward.

He knew where to go.

He knew where to find her.

8o8o8

The world around her was nearly empty when Amanda stepped outside of the hospital. The only souls that were wandering the hospital grounds were night nurses and residents who were catching a breath of fresh air much like her. Amanda breathed deep and let out a huge gust of air before looking left and right, seeking out the white BMW that was her mother’s automobile, hoping against hope that somehow her mother could magically appear within the span of the few moments that she’d called her. She knew it was a false hope, but that didn’t stop her from being disappointed when she didn’t see the familiar, sleek vehicle pull up to the curb or her mother’s stern, but much welcomed face peeking from the driver’s window. Amanda sighed, shoved her hands deep in her pockets and prepared herself for a long wait.

It would’ve been safer waiting for her mother within the walls of the hospital, but for some reason she had a feeling that she had overstayed her welcome, even if it was a silly feeling to have. After all, the Tragers could use all the support they could get at this time of need, but for some reason, she just felt like an outsider looking in on a family unit that shared so many experiences and secrets that it was just too intrusive for her to stick around. She knew that it all somehow dealt with Kyle and Jessi, but she just didn’t know how and the suspense of ever finding out was killing her. Even so, she knew that blowing up at Kyle like she’d been doing for the last few days was not winning her any brownie points in the ‘Kyle-eventually-confiding-in-her’ department. It was just that any mention of Jessi immediately set her on edge and ever since she’d walked in on Kyle and Jessi kissing, she’d been unwillingly tossed on a swinging, emotional pendulum of ‘should-I-be-with-Kyle-should-I-let-him-go’; it was tiring and exhausting and making her all the more cranky and unpleasant to be with.

She knew that Kyle wasn’t like Charlie and that what he had done probably had a good explanation, but ‘good explanations’ aside, she couldn’t believe that he would betray her like that, no matter what his reasons and it was that betrayal that kept her from just biting the bullet and telling him that she so desperately wanted him back and wanted them to return to what semblance of normalcy they’d had before Jessi had ever come along.

“Penny for your thoughts?” came the inquisitive question from behind. Amanda gave a start and turned, her eyes settling on a scruffy looking young man. He was clearly not a doctor with the growth of five o’clock shadow adorning his chin and the mischievous glint to his brown eyes. He looked a few years older than her, probably a college freshman, but he was smiling and didn’t seem at all threatening. Then again, the world as she had come to know it was not always as it seemed.

“Why would you care?” she asked, cautiously. The young man’s smile never dimmed and he came to stand beside her, hands shoved deeply in his pockets.

“You just looked like you were in deep thought,” the young man replied and shrugged. “I figure…somebody you care about’s here in the hospital and you’re worried.”

Amanda allowed a small smile to split her lips. “Something like that.”

“So.” The young man looked thoughtful. “Who is it?”

“Who’s what?” Amanda asked, frowning. The young man grinned.

“Who’s in the hospital?” he clarified. Amanda’s small smile turned embarrassed.

“Right,” she replied, her cheeks turning pink. “A friend. He got hurt pretty badly and the doctor’s have him recovering up there.”

“Well,” the young began in an apologetic tone, “sorry to hear that. I hope he feels better.”

“Thanks,” Amanda replied, another smile spreading across her lips. “And you? Who are you here for?”

“My dad,” the young man explained matter-of-factly. “He got into a minor scrape. He’s just getting patched up right now.”

“Oh,” Amanda said, at a loss. “I hope he does better next time.”

“I do too,” the young man replied with a twinkle in his eye. “I’m sorry, I never got your name. Mine’s Nathaniel. Nathaniel Harrison, but most people call me ‘Nate’.”

Amanda held out her hand. “Amanda. Amanda Bloom, and it’s nice to meet you, Nate.”

“Pleasure’s all mine,” he replied, flirtatiously, causing another rush of color to darken Amanda’s cheeks. He took her hand, shook it warmly and held it for a few seconds more before releasing it. “I hope to see you around. Well…Not the hospital.”

“I guess so,” Amanda replied, glancing away quickly from the intensity of Nate’s dark, dark brown eyes. She missed the wicked smile that cut across his features, and when she looked up, he was already turning towards the hospital with a purposeful look on his face.

“Well, I gotta go,” he replied, “but I really, really do hope I see you around.” He winked and Amanda grinned before he left, walking back into the hospital and leaving Amanda to her solitude once more.

That was interesting, Amanda thought, feeling the lingering warmth of Nate’s hand along her palm. She looked at her palm for a moment, feeling a grin want to tug at her lips, but she beat the feeling back. She didn’t have time to devote her attention to some random guy that thought she was cute. There was the issue of Kyle to deal with and an ailing Josh in the hospital and the fact that Kyle was out God-only-knew-where in the city with, or trying to find, Jessi. Amanda uttered a sigh of long suffering and looked for her mother, who was still nowhere to be seen.

Amanda pulled her hands from her pockets and crossed her arms over her chest as a night breeze blew by and the sound of crickets reached her ears.

Without warning, her vision immediately went black as a bag was hastily jerked over her head and the world went topsy-turvy as someone grabbed her around her arms and hoisted her in the air. She uttered a terrified scream, kicked and fought as adrenaline pumped through her and fear washed over her.

There was a muffled cry of pain as her flailing heel landed in soft flesh, but nothing more. She felt a sharp pain at the back of her neck and then her world went dark.

8o8o8

It felt like someone had sucker punched her in the gut and Jessi landed with a painful thud on the hard, dirty floor of the warehouse office as she and Joshua materialized out of thin air. She coughed, gagging on stomach bile that didn’t want to erupt, as Joshua swiftly crossed the expanse of the office and roughly slammed the office’s door shut. It groaned, shook then stilled, and he turned back to her with a murderous glint in his eye.

“What the hell did you think you were doing?” Joshua growled. Jessi coughed one last time and struggled to stand.

“Getting away from you,” she gasped as a wash of dizziness overcame her and nearly sent her to the floor again. Joshua crossed the room quickly and tried gathering her in his arms, but she shoved him away. Instead, she leaned on the room’s dilapidated desk for support.

“You could’ve ruined everything,” Joshua hissed angrily. “Don’t you get that? The future is at stake and you want to run off playing “Rambina”. If something had gone wrong, where would I have been then? You’re essential, Jessi.”

“You don’t have a right to keep me,” Jessi hissed back, just as angry. “I’m not your prisoner, and your future doesn’t concern me.”

“It concerns everybody,” Joshua roared suddenly. “Don’t you get it?! Don’t you see?! I’m trying to save everyone!”

“And if my disappearance still makes your future happen?” Jessi snarled. “What then? You said I disappeared after Kyle told Amanda everything. Well, doesn’t this kidnapping still line up with me leaving?”

“No, no, it doesn’t,” Joshua protested. “And I’m not going to argue the point with you anymore. Next time you try a stunt like that, I’m tying you up and keeping you tied up until all of this is over.”

“You can’t—“

The sound of metal suddenly twisting like an animal being ripped apart filled the air and Joshua whirled, a gun almost magically appearing in his hand. He turned and pointed it at the door, his body tense and his senses strained.

“What did you do?” he asked in a tense whisper, but Jessi said nothing, her eyes trained on the door. The twisting sound came again, louder this time, and echoed back and forth around them.

“Someone’s here,” Joshua whispered, stepping away from the door and reaching for Jessi. He grabbed her and jerked her close, his grip nearly bone crushing.

“You’re hurting me,” Jessi hissed in pain, wishing once again that she had her strength back. Any other time, she would’ve dropped a guy Joshua’s size without breaking a sweat, but here and now, she was helpless to do much of anything. She was just a small figured girl to Joshua’s battle hardened prowess.

The older man said nothing, only stood like a statue with the gun pointed at the door. He breathed and Jessi felt her heart beating wildly in her chest. For a few seconds, silence fell over the world around them and Jessi began to think that maybe she’d imagined the twisting sound of metal. Maybe it had just been wishful thinking. Maybe it was just the old bones of this place finally giving way in some distant part of the building and the both of them—Jessi and Joshua—were over reacting. Maybe…

Maybe…

But maybe didn’t explain the door suddenly flying open with a loud bang and Kyle standing there, his blue eyes blazing in the darkness, his chest heaving and his fists clenched at his sides. For a split second, Jessi thought it was a dream. That somehow, Joshua had knocked her unconscious and this was just her mind’s attempt at making her feel better. But then Kyle spoke, and she knew then that this was no dream:

“Jessi, are you alright?”

She nodded slowly, her eyes wide with surprise. Joshua’s gun shook and Jessi could feel the slight tremble rush through the older man’s tall frame. Was it fear? Was it anger? She couldn’t tell, but when looked at him, she saw his jaw clench shut so tightly that it looked like it was going to break and the fire suddenly igniting in his eyes.

And that was when she remembered: dear God, the dampening field!

“Kyle, get out!” she shouted before Joshua pushed her and she landed on the cot with a cry of alarm. She looked up quickly and saw Joshua rushing at Kyle with the force of a freight train, barreling down on the teenage boy with every ounce of anger, hurt and pain that lay coiled in every muscle and cell of his body; it was frightening to see: Kyle attempting to defend himself with the superhuman strength that he’d always trusted his body to have and Joshua tearing down that feeble belief with a swift punch to Kyle’s jaw that sent the boy sprawling to the ground.

“I should kill you right now,” Joshua growled, venomous rage lacing every word he spoke. “I should destroy you before you become a danger to us all. I should stop you before there’s nothing left but smoking ashes and devastation.”

Kyle looked up and met his burning gaze, pain throbbing at his jaw and confusion clouding his thoughts. How had this man blocked his punches? How had this man felled Kyle with one simple punch? It was unfathomable, impossible, but then again, the man had managed to kidnap Jessi. And what, exactly, was this man going on about?

“I don’t understand what’s going on,” Kyle began, getting unsteadily to his feet, “but you are going to let Jessi go.”

The man chuckled darkly. “Not on your life.”

And rushed at Kyle again, fists at the ready, and all Kyle could do was duck and dodge as best he could, not understanding how his strength had failed him. How he had suddenly become—in the span of a few seconds—a mere, mortal teenaged boy. What was going on?

Jessi watched the two of them scuffle, Kyle taking hit after hit from Joshua’s unrelenting assault, but she couldn’t just let Kyle lose. She couldn’t let Joshua take out his anger on a Kyle that had yet to do the things that the older man accused him of. Jessi immediately rose from the cot, shifting out of the way of the two scuffling fighters and looking around for anything that could possibly end this fight once and for all. She looked left and then right, finally spotting the fungus eaten chair leg that she had used early, and immediately went for it, ducking a wildly aimed punched from Joshua and a flailing block from Kyle. She grabbed the chair leg with sure fingers, turned and rushed over to where Joshua was bent over a heaving, bloodied Kyle, his fist pulled back to deliver a final blow.

“Joshua!” Jessi shouted. The man immediately turned to her call and was met with a punishing blow from the chair leg that slammed into his jaw with a sickening, wet crunch that sent him sprawling to the floor. Joshua groaned and struggled to move, but by that time, Jessi had the chair leg pressed painfully into his cheek, holding him against the dirty, warehouse floor.

“You alright, Kyle?” she asked, and Kyle staggered to his feet, gingerly touching his bloodied lip and rapidly swelling eye.

“Fine,” he struggled out, rotating his jaw to get some feeling back into it. He’d never experienced pain quite like this before, and was still trying to fathom why his healing ability wasn’t working. What was going on here? Jessi gave him the once over despite his answer, making sure that he was fine. When she was satisfied, she turned back to a heavily breathing Joshua, who was struggling to get up from the floor. She pressed the chair leg harder into his jaw.

“That’s enough, Jessi,” Kyle said, taking hold of her shoulder and tugging on her slightly. She stared from him to the older man on the floor and back again before nodding reluctantly and stepping back, retreating to a safe distance, after pressing her chair leg into Joshua’s cheek one last time. Joshua rolled over into a seated position, and glared hatefully at Kyle.

“You’ve ruined it, Jessi,” Joshua growled from the floor. “You’ve ruined everything.”

“No, no, that’s not true,” Jessi growled back, gripping the chair leg tighter until her knuckles turned white. “You don’t know anything.”

“Don’t I?” Joshua hissed.

“Jessi, what is he talking about?” Kyle asked, alarm and confusion coloring his tone. She turned to him, her look pleading.

“Kyle, let’s just leave,” Jessi begged urgently. Her eyes met his, met the intense deep, swirling blue depths of his eyes with her own, but Kyle’s lips pressed into a thin, firm line and he shook his head slowly, turning back to the injured Joshua on the floor.

“No,” he said firmly, his voice laced with steel. “I want answers.” He advanced on Joshua and the other’s breathing grew ragged, fire burning in his eyes.

“Why did you take Jessi?” Kyle questioned, but Joshua only laughed a mirthless, pain-filled sound, his eyes still burning hatred for the young man before him that had not yet turned into a monster.

“Answer me!” Kyle cried forcefully, but the only answer he got was Joshua’s growl and a contemptuous shot of spit at his feet.

“I don’t owe you anything,” Joshua hissed.

Kyle could feel anger bubbling inside him like the raging activity of a volcano ready to burst and spew forth lava. His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides and he could feel the muscles of his legs tract and contract as he moved forward, body tense, jaw taut and straining, wanting very much in that moment to—

“He said he did it to save the world,” came Jessi’s voice from behind. Kyle’s chest constricted, tightened and then relaxed at the faltering, uncertain tone of her voice. Joshua’s eyes widened in horror.

“Jessi, no,” the older man protested.

“What?” Kyle asked, ignoring Joshua’s protest, turning to Jessi with a puzzled look. “What are you talking about?”

Her brown eyes were shining and watery in the moonlight as her lips trembled and she struggled to speak.

“Jessi?” Kyle’s breathing grew heavy, his heart beat speeding up quickly in anticipation. What had her kidnapper done? What had he said to her that would put her in such a state? Jessi hesitated for a moment longer, looking from Kyle to Joshua then back again before breaking down and finally saying, “Kyle, I’m so sorry.”

The bottom dropped out from under him and panic swept aside any anger or fury that Kyle had felt a moment ago. He walked slowly to Jessi and held out his arms, his look one of nothing but concern.

“Jessi, what happened?”

“It’s not what has happened,” she replied, quietly, “It’s what’s going to happen. Amanda—“

“Amanda,” Kyle cut in, eyes going suddenly very wide in alarm. “What’s going to happen to Amanda? Jessi, you have to tell me.”

“Don’t do this, Jessi,” Joshua begged, struggling to stand. “Don’t. You’ll ruin everything. Everything.”

Jessi looked from one to the other, trembling, eyes shining with tears, her mouth opening and closing in indecision.

“Jessi, look at me,” Kyle commanded gently, taking her shoulders in his hands and forcing her vision to see him and only him. “Tell me what’s going to happen. Tell me everything.”

“You’re going to destroy the world, Kyle,” she replied, quietly. “You’re going to destroy everything.”

Kyle’s face drained of all color.

“But I would never do that,” he said in disbelief. “I would never—“

“It was Latnok,” Jessi continued as if she hadn’t heard him. “It will be Latnok. They’re going to kill Amanda.”

“What?” Kyle whispered in horror. “Latnok—“

He felt like he’d been sucker punched in the gut, like all the oxygen in the room had suddenly been sucked away and he was left gasping, dying a slow, agonizing death. Amanda? Latnok was going to kill Amanda? How? Why? When?

His grip on Jessi’s shoulders tightened and he voiced his panicked thoughts aloud. Jessi shook her head, hesitant, eyes darting back to Joshua one last time before saying, “A few days maybe. I don’t know, but her life is in danger. He told me that they killed her, will kill her, and that you’ll destroy the world because of it.”

“How could he know that?” Kyle protested. “How could he possibly know that?”

“He says he’s from the future,” Jessi replied with a helpless shrug. “He’s says he came back to stop it all from happening.”

“But time travel is impossible,” Kyle said, more to himself than aloud. He looked up, met Jessi’s unwavering gaze again. “Jessi…You know I would never do that.”

“Never say never,” Joshua retorted bitterly behind them. “You did, you will. You’ll destroy everything.”

Kyle turned to him, fiery determination igniting his eyes. “No, I won’t. I wouldn’t.”

“Sure,” Joshua mocked, bitterly. “Sure, you wouldn’t because you’re Kyle and you can fix everything. You can help everyone. You can do everything. You can make decisions for other people when they can’t make decisions for themselves. Isn’t that right?”

“I don’t know who you are,” Kyle replied vehemently, “but you don’t know me.”

“Sure I do.” Joshua smirked in an angry, vicious sort of way. “Latnok kills Amanda—“

“No!” Kyle protested, but Joshua continued undeterred.

“Cassidy kills Amanda—“

“Joshua, stop it,” Jessi cut in sharply, advancing on the older man, but his smirk only got wider as Kyle protested more violently, “No!”

“And you get pissed off,” Joshua growled, “and you destroy the world.”

“I said stop it!” Jessi hissed, raising the chair leg threateningly. The older man exhaled a painful hiss through clenched teeth.

“Jessi, please,” Kyle called quietly from behind. She turned quickly, lowering the chair leg and saw the devastated look that covered Kyle’s features. She shook her head and went to him, wanting so desperately to touch him, but not sure if her touch could comfort the suddenly distraught young man.

“It’s not true what he said,” Jessi replied, her tone uncompromising. “I don’t believe him and you shouldn’t either. Besides, you know what may happen now, so we have a chance to stop it.”

“Jessi—”

“No, Kyle, we have a chance to stop it,” she interrupted in a firm voice. She turned back to Josh, tossing the chair leg to the ground and glaring at him.

“The future is only what we make of it,” she said. “And we’re going to make it different.”

8o8o8

“Where is she?!” Nicole jumped with a start at the nearly hysterical demand. She turned and saw Carol Bloom coming towards her from down the hospital hallway, her face pinched in anger and fear.

“Where’s my daughter?” Carol screeched when Nicole didn’t answer.

“What are you talking about, Carol?” Stephen stepped in front of his puzzled wife, shielding her from Carol Bloom’s barrage of emotion.

“Don’t you “Carol” me, Trager,” the woman hissed venomously, her body visibly trembling from the strain of holding back the full tumult of her emotions. The flickering light of hysterics glimmered in her blue eyes and she looked from Nicole to Stephen and then around them at Lori and the nurses and doctors that were passing their small group a long the hall.

“Where is Amanda?” Carol cried, her voice a watery struggle. “She was supposed to meet me outside. She was supposed to and now she’s gone. Where is she?”

“She left a while ago,” Nicole replied, puzzled, meeting Stephen’s troubled gaze with her own. “We haven’t seen her.”

“You haven’t seen her?” Carol echoed in disbelief. Her voice rose an octave. “You haven’t seen her?!! My baby is out there somewhere and neither of you had the decency to make sure she was alright—?”

“No, hold on a minute—”

“Excuse me,” came the sharp reprimand from a passing nurse, cutting off Stephen before he could begin his own tirade, “but either you all keep it down or I’m going to have to ask you to leave. There are patients trying to recover on this hall.”

Carol Bloom turned a venomous glare on the nurse. “I don’t care who’s trying to recover on this hall! They’ve got my baby!”

“What?!” Stephen cried in disbelief. “Are you insane, Carol? We don’t have Amanda anywhere.”

“Oh, but I bet that boy does,” she growled, her voice dripping with disdain. “I knew I should’ve never let her consort with you people, especially Kyle. Now, she’s God-only-knows-where!”

“Ma’am, I am going to have to ask you to leave,” the nurse tried again, trying to keep the hysterical Carol Bloom from getting any louder. She signaled to two hospital security guards, who marched over immediately with equal glares of no-nonsense.

Carol glared at the nurse, at the security guards and finally aimed a heated, wrathful glare at the Tragers.

“If my daughter isn’t home by nine o’clock tonight,” Carol hissed. “There is going to be hell to pay.” Then turned on her heel and marched from the waiting area with the two guards on her heels. The nurse smiled at the apologetically before starting after the guards and making sure that Carol Bloom was off hospital grounds.

“What the hell was that all about?” Stephen asked his wife, puzzledly watching the retreating nurse’s back.

“I don’t know,” Nicole started, and turned to Lori who was fixing both of her parents with an equal stare of concern, “but something’s clearly happened to Amanda.” Nicole went over to Lori and looked her daughter square in the eye.

“Do you know anything about this?” She asked and Lori shrugged helplessly.

“I don’t know anything,” she replied, truthfully. She turned to her father who was wearing a skeptical look. “I’m serious. I talked to Kyle. That was it.”

“And where is he now?” Stephen asked in a stern voice. Lori shut her mouth and looked away.

“Lori,” Stephen said warningly.

“I told him to go after Jessi,” Lori mumbled under her breath.

“What?” Nicole asked, hoping that she hadn’t heard what she thought she had.

“I told him to go after Jessi,” Lori said again, louder this time. At both her parents’ long-suffering looks, she quickly added, “Well, no one else would be able to do it. Kyle is Jessi’s only hope.”

“And if this were Latnok’s doing?” Stephen asked severely. “What if Kyle is in just as much danger as Jessi? Now, we don’t know what’s happening either of them! And if Amanda had heard? She’s in danger too. Probably gone after him!”

“I’m sorry,” Lori protested, looking back and forth between them. “I just want Jessi home.”

“Okay, okay,” Nicole said in a calming placating tone. “Okay, Stephen, you stay here and take care of Josh and Andy. I’m going to take Lori—”

“Mom, I said I was sorry,” Lori protested again. Nicole held up her hands in a surrendering gesture.

“I know, Lori,” she replied firmly. “But I’d feel safer if you were home and I could watch you. We don’t know what’s going on yet. So, I’m taking you home. Get your things.”

Lori rolled her eyes and stood, grabbing her coat and purse as Nicole turned to Stephen and said to him, “Please be careful. Watch Josh and Andy, and if anything changes—”

“I’ll call,” Stephen replied, gathering his wife in a tight embrace and kissing her hard on the forehead. “You be careful too.”

“I will,” Nicole said, gathering her own coat and purse and leaving the hospital waiting area with Lori in tow. The ride home was uneventful with a tense silence between mother and daughter. Nicole hadn’t wanted to leave Josh or Stephen alone at the hospital, and she certainly didn’t want to take Lori away from her younger brother, but what with Jessi disappearing, Josh being sick and now Kyle and Amanda, she needed to be in a place where there was hardly any distraction, a place where she could think everything out logically and come up with a plan.

But it was as she was pulling into the drive way of her family’s home that two things happened at once. First Lori turned to her and protested loudly, “I wasn’t trying to get anyone hurt, Mom. I was just trying to help. Kyle’s the only one that can find and save Jessi, and you know it. So, if I’m grounded, fine. Just as long as Jessi comes home.”

It was as Nicole was turning to her, a stern retort rising in her throat, that the second thing happened. A bloodied, battered hand slammed against the driver side window causing both Nicole and Lori to scream in terror and surprise.

“Oh my god, Mom,” Lori screeched, “you hit someone!”

“Just-Just calm down,” Nicole told her daughter, her voice trembling. Her heart was beating wildly and her adrenaline was pumping and she was quite close to hysterics herself. She took a deep breath and slowly opened the car door.

There sprawled in a groaning, bloodied heap was Mark, Lori’s boyfriend.

Lori, looking over her mother’s shoulder, hissed in disbelief. “Oh dear God.”

8o8o8

He hoped he found somewhere safe.

He wanted to be somewhere safe, but he couldn’t pull his mind back from the nightmare of Cassidy’s hands closing around his throat and the painful punches and kicks that were aimed at his unprotected body. And in the back, floating in a tank of glowing pink water, was a figure that looked remarkably like someone he knew. Someone that he had thought—while pretty damn smart for the average bear—was a normal kid like he had been. Boy, was he ever wrong.

Mark woke with a shudder and sigh to the gentle ministrations of a soft hand smoothing back the skin of his scalp and the smell of orange and tangerine shower soap. He would’ve smiled, but even thinking about the action hurt his already throbbing muscles. So, he settled for opening his eyes and being greeted with the smiling face of Lori.

“Lori,” he whispered, and paid for that simple action with a sharp jolt of pain rushing to his brain.

“Shh,” she whispered, kissing his forehead. “It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Mark shut his eyes, feeling himself want to float back a long the soothing rivers of unconsciousness, where darkness promised him the sweet rest of peace: no dreams, no nightmares, just blissful silence. Blissful ignor—

His eyes snapped open and lifted himself up to a sitting position whose movements sent shockwave after shockwave of pain through his system, threatening to undue him. But before he could allow darkness to take him, he choked out, “Cassidy…Latnok…hurt Kyle…Amanda…kidnapped.”

And then he was collapsing in on himself, exhausted. Lori stared at his unconscious form in shock.

“Oh crap,” she muttered to herself as her mother came in bearing a bowl full of water and washcloths.

“What is it?” Nicole asked, seeing the troubled look that covered Lori’s face, and feeling the familiar rise of panic that had been threatening to overtake her all evening.

“I think Mark’s a member of Latnok,” Lori replied.

“What?” Nicole cried in alarm.

“And…they’ve kidnapped Amanda.”

Nicole froze, her eyes going wide.

“Oh crap.”

8o8o8

It was the soft whisper of her name that made Andy turn, meeting Josh’s piercing gaze from where he lay across the room on his hospital bed. She swallowed, feeling a crushing weight settle upon her chest, and rose from the chair that one of the nurses had brought in earlier for her to sit in and keep watch. She approached Josh’s bed slowly, memories surfacing quickly of only a few short hours ago and Josh’s mental freak out. She didn’t know what to make of it, what to make of him at that moment, and so desperately wanted answers.

“You okay?” she asked softly, coming to sit beside him and run her fingers lightly through his hair. He couldn’t move much—the hospital staff placed restraints on him so that he couldn’t escape again—but she could tell by the way he closed his eyes and the way his body stilled for the one second that her touch had an effect on him. She smiled slightly and met his gaze when his eyes opened and he stared at her intensely.

“Help me,” he asked, his voice firm. She frowned.

“Do you need food?” she asked, puzzled. “Water?” She rose to fetch him the glass of water that the nurse had brought him and set on his tray, but froze when he called her name.

“Andy, no!” he protested and struggled to sit up. The restraints tightened and slumped back down on his bed with a low growl of frustration.

“What is it?” she asked, feeling fear rise once again through her body. “What’s wrong, Josh?”

“Everything,” Josh growled, shaking his head furiously. “Everything is wrong, and I have to fix it, but I can’t…I can’t…” He lifted one of his arms and shook it; the restraint gave a dull metal ring. “Please, Andy, help me.”

“Josh, you know that I can’t do that,” she replied, her voice tearful. “You’ll get in trouble. I’ll get in trouble and I won’t be able to see you. They’ll kick me out. Not to mention what my Moms’ll do if they find out.”

“This is much bigger than that!” He hissed loudly, winced at the look of hurt that crossed her features and repeated much softer, “This is much bigger than that. Please, Andy, you don’t understand.”

“You’re right,” she growled, anger and fear forming a deadly mixture in her mind, “I don’t understand. I don’t understand why my boyfriend is having a major freak out and why his family is keeping secrets from me. I don’t understand why you want to me to help you do something so damn illegal without giving me some kind of answer that isn’t vague and all mysterious. Seriously, it was cute in the beginning. The mysteriousness gave you an edge, but now…now…Josh, I don’t think I—”

“You want answers?” Josh interrupted, lifting himself up once more from his bed, straining against the restraints that bound him. “Well, I can’t give them to you right now, Andy. I can’t tell you that everything is going to be alright. But what I can tell you is that if you help me, if you take these things off of me, I can make damn sure that everything turns out okay.”

“How?” Andy asked, pursing her lips. “How?”

“By changing the future,” Josh replied simply. Andy looked away from him and pinched the bridge of her nose with a sigh, and for a moment, Josh thought that she wouldn’t help, that she would turn away and leave, but no… Any sighed one last time, looked up—and with determination burning in her eyes—walked over to bed and started to take apart the restraints.

“I am so going to be dead for this,” she muttered to herself. When he didn’t respond, Andy looked up and met Josh’s serious gaze.

“Not if I can help it,” he replied.

In and Out of Time 6/10

Title: In and Out of Time (6/?)
Author: wonderbread9
Rating: PG-13 - R
Characters: The Cast of Kyle XY, OCs here and there
Pairings: Kyle/Amanda, Kyle/Jessi, implied Jessi/Josh
Warnings: See previous chapters

Disclaimer: If I owned Kyle XY, there would be no discussion: Season 4 would be on the menu.

Author's Note: I’m trying to perfect my ‘show-not-tell’ method of writing. So, um…if any of yous guys would be so kind, can you tell me if I’m doing a good job? Thank ‘ees so much!

Summary: “Mark,” he whispered in genuine disappointment. “Such a pity.”

The younger man drew back in fear and opened his mouth to scream, but the exclamation of terror never resounded. Cassidy pounced on him, like a seasoned predator, subduing Mark’s flailing, panic-stricken attempts to flee.

“Can’t have you ruining the game before it even gets started,” Cassidy whispered with a silken purr, taking hold of the flailing young man’s neck in a choke hold.

8o8o8

VI.

The whir of hospital machines came to Lori’s ears like strange whispers as she sat still, watching the night nurse smooth a white blanket across Josh’s gently rising and falling chest. He was pale, even with the warm glow of hospital lamps surrounding his still figure, his cheeks were gaunt, black circles ringed his eyes and the IV tube that protruded from his pale, thin arm and looked like some kind of opaque alien, slug draining the life out of him. Lori’s gaze never wavered, not once, not even when the night nurse asked her if she wanted water; Lori waved her off, barely acknowledging the older, grandmotherly woman’s presence. The woman went off with a gentle smile and an ‘it’ll-be-alright-soon’ kind of shrug. But Lori knew—she knew deep down in the very depths of her soul—that nothing would ever be alright. Nothing would ever be alright again.

First Jessi, now Josh. She’d always heard that disaster came in threes, and if what she was seeing now was bad, she wondered what the third bomb shell would be. World War Three? She could’ve laughed at her own pathetic try for humor, but she wasn’t Josh; she wasn’t the one that could get away with the oh-so-not-funny quips delivered at the most inopportune times and made everyone feel uncomfortable when the situation called for seriousness. She was just little Lori Trager, and once again she felt useless, useless to help her mother those many weeks ago, and now useless to help both Josh and Jessi.

Her nostrils flared, her jaw hardened and her hands clenched into tight, white fists. She shifted in her hospital seat, first from one position then to the other, feeling the rough fabric of her jeans sliding across her thighs as she moved. She heard the rustle of her clothing and the muted conversation of her mother and father’s low voices just outside of the room. They were probably discussing what had happened; they were probably discussing what to do. Her jaw clenched tighter, her molars pressing into one another, the muscles in her neck straining under the pressure. Finally, she looked away.

This was all so wrong, very, very wrong. Josh shouldn’t be lying in a hospital bed with the doctors, the nurses and even Kyle stumped with what was wrong with him. Josh should’ve been up, making wisecracks and jokes. Josh should’ve been standing right beside her telling her that she should stop being a big baby, that everything was going to be alright in that tone of voice of his that brooked no argument and was unshakable in its belief. But he wasn’t right beside her. He was the one that was hurt and there was no one to lean on, no one to comfort her. No one to tell her to act her age and man up.

She wanted to cry, but she knew that wouldn’t solve anything, and the hysterical outburst that she had let loose earlier when she had been told exactly what had happened to Josh more than adequately made up for any lack of crying now. This had to have had something to do with Jessi’s disappearance, but what it could be and how it tied into Latnok was beyond her. She couldn’t figure out the pieces of this very strange puzzle and she so desperately wanted to. She wanted to get her life back; she wanted to set it back on the weird, crazy, but normal path that it had been. She wanted her family safe; she wanted her friends safe. She was sick to death of mortal powers playing with her life and her family’s lives.

Lori stood, unable to stand the quiet that blanketed Josh’s room. She looked over her brother’s prone form, unchanged since she had checked it only a few short moments ago, sighed and stepped out into the hallway, breathing deep. The hospital smelled clean, like pinesol and decontaminants. It felt cold, like a meat locker. She hugged herself and looked around, trying to find the other members of the Trager clan. Her mother and father were some feet away from Josh’s room, heads bowed in deep conversation. From what Lori could see of her mother’s face, it looked like the older woman had been crying. Andy, a late arrival to this dismal party, was seated in a waiting chair, holding a rapidly warming soda in her hand, staring off into nowhere. Lori sighed again, not wanting to deal with her brother’s girlfriend right at that moment.

Andy didn’t know the secrets that the Trager family kept. She didn’t know about Kyle or Jessi or what had happened, and to add that to her already heavy burden just wasn’t fair. Besides, it was Josh’s secret to tell. Instead, Lori walked over to her, placed a gentle hand on her shoulder and squeezed reassuringly before turning away and continuing down the hall; she didn’t see Andy’s sad smile of gratitude nor heard the other girl get up and walk into Josh’s room to keep the unconscious boy company. She stumbled onto Kyle and Amanda instead, just around the corner, the latter of the pair trying desperately to comfort Kyle. She didn’t hear exactly what Amanda had said, but whatever it was had Kyle shaking his head furiously, his blue eyes blazing and him stalking off down the hall.

She stumbled onto Kyle instead, sans Amanda; he was a solitary figure standing, head bowed amidst the rush of hospital staff and nurses and doctors running to and fro. She paused, her brown eyes roving over his slumped shoulders, his downcast eyes, and the hard press of his lips together. It was the look he got when he was thinking about something that was particularly troubling to him, and no doubt the subject that currently occupied his thoughts—that occupied everyone’s thoughts at the moment—was what exactly happened to Josh at the spot where Jessi disappeared and whether or not it had something to do with Jessi’s disappearance. She wished desperately that it didn’t, that somehow the events were unrelated, but she knew there was no chance in hell that her hope would be fulfilled. She watched him a few minutes longer, not wanting to intrude on his quiet, but soon he was looking up, his blue eyes capturing her in the intensity of their gaze.

She stood frozen, mouth parting, wanting to say something, anything, that would relieve Kyle of this burden he carried, but she just didn’t have the energy. Just as much as she couldn’t spare Andy the energy to dip and dodge the desperate looks that the younger girl shot her way, or the questions that lurked deep within Andy’s green eyes, she didn’t have any energy to spare Kyle or the conflict of emotions that she was sure was stirring deep within his soul. All she wanted was normal, all she craved was waking up from this nightmare and living the same boring, uneventful existence that she had become accustomed to before Kyle arrived or the craziness that he adopted brother brought. She knew the thoughts were uncharitable. She knew that she was being unfair, but Josh was lying on a hospital bed, pale and sickly looking, and Jessi was still missing.

“Lori,” Kyle greeted, his voice a quiet whisper that carried over the bustle of the hospital.

“Kyle.” She attempted to smile, but was sure the action resembled a grimace. Eventually, she just stopped trying and went to lean against the wall next to her adopted brother, sighing deeply. She crossed her arms over her chest, sighing again and they fell silent, Kyle’s eyes immediately dropping to the floor, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. A diminutive nurse walked by, flashing them a brief smile before continuing on her way, arms loaded with patients’ charts. Lori watched her disappear down an opposite hall, wondering if she saw tragedy every single day or whether or not the Trager clan was unique. Like maybe, somehow, tragedy seemed to follow the small family everywhere and this woman was getting a small glimpse into that.

“Kyle,” she began, the silence becoming oppressive. “I—”

“It’s so strange,” Kyle interrupted, the troubled frown still creasing his features. He looked up and met her puzzled gaze before looking away again.

“What?” Lori asked, her own frown creasing her features. Kyle nibbled his lip uncertainly.

“You would think that something like this happening, Jessi disappearing and…and Josh, that the whole world would stop,” he replied, his voice puzzled. “But it just—” he looked around the hospital, his gaze sweeping over everything with that same sort of puzzled uncertainty “—keeps going…like, like nothing’s happened, like nothing’s wrong.”

“Yeah,” Lori admitted with a helpless shrug, “Well…that’s the world for you, Kyle, and it sucks. What’s going on here, and with us, I’d hate to say it, but to other people…it doesn’t matter.”

She wrapped her arms tighter about herself, wishing that it did matter, wishing that people would stop, would see that something terrible had happened and that there was nothing that she could do to make it right, to change it all and set her would back to the same weird, crazy, strange constant that it had been. She looked up, physically feeling the emotional recoil that wracked Kyle’s body at the cold, hard unforgiving reality that she admitted. She looked up as his watery blue eyes met hers and she saw the emotional turmoil that roiled within.

“But it does matter,” Kyle protested. “Jessi…Josh, they matter, everything...right now…It-It all matters. It has to. Everything—”

“Then, then what are you going to do about it?” Lori cut in, sharply. Confusion colored Kyle’s features.

“Lori, I—”

“When Amanda disappeared,” Lori began, her voice firm despite the heartbreak that she felt, “you went after her, you did everything in your power to get her back. Why’s Jessi any different?”

Kyle’s mouth opened and closed, but nothing came out. Finally, he shut his mouth and looked at her then looked away.

“I know this is hard. I know that every time something goes wrong we look to you to help us, but right now—right now—you have to step up, Kyle, even if you don’t want to. Go after her,” Lori begged. “Please…Jessi’s…Jessi’ starting to mean so much to this family…and she’s all alone. Kyle, you have to—”

“I-I can’t,” his interrupted, his voice clearly shaken. Lori’s pinned him with an incredulous look.

“You—what?” Lori replied in disbelief. “You can’t go after her. You can’t—Kyle, what the hell—“

She couldn’t help the sharp reprimand that filled her voice, or the sudden anger that gripped her and made her want to grab her adopted brother by his shoulders and shake him senseless. It might not do anything to such an advanced body like Kyle’s, but it would’ve made her feel better. Jessi was out there, all by herself, with some crazy monster probably doing who knew what. It didn’t matter to Lori that Jessi was just as advanced in body as Kyle or that she had proven in more than enough situations that she could handle herself. All Lori could see in her mind’s eye was Jessi’s watery brown eyes and her quivering lips and that beaten look that she got whenever she was chastised. She just wanted Jessi home, and it surprised her in that moment just how strong that want was.

“I’m just…” he hesitated, breathed deep. “I’m just scared.”

“Oh, Kyle.” Lori sighed and pulled her adopted brother into a tight, but comforting embrace. Sometimes she forgot how naïve Kyle was to the big, bad world and how much of the world he didn’t understand.

She held him close and whispered, “Nothing’s going to happen to Jessi, Kyle, because you’re going to find her. She’s important to us, but she’s more important to you. I know that and because of that, you’re going to go out there and you’re going to bring her home.” She pulled back and met her brother’s eyes squarely. “Okay?”

He swallowed thickly and nodded. “O-Okay.”

“What’s going on?” came the concerned question from behind. Both Kyle and Lori gave a start before Lori turned and saw Amanda standing a few feet away, with two cold sodas in hand. Her blue eyes mirrored the concern that resonated in her voice. Lori pursed her lips at the other girl and glanced back at Kyle. His eyes were trained on the blonde haired teen, following every move that she made like she was a snake-charmer and he was the python that was entranced by her song. Lori wanted to roll her eyes, feeling a wave of annoyance wash over her. She turned, gave Kyle a meaningful look and mouthed, ‘Jessi’ before sending a small smile Amanda’s way and heading back down the hall towards Josh’s room, to comfort her parents. Kyle watched her leave, feeling the weight that had lifted upon seeing Lori and speaking with her, settle all the more heavily back on his shoulders.

“Kyle?” Amanda implored, and his gaze snapped back to hers as she stepped forward, soda cans held precariously in her grip. Her look was a worried one.

“Amanda,” Kyle began, his voice grim, “I have to go.”

The disappointed look that covered her features was enough to break his heart, but he couldn’t spare the focus that he was steadily building to comfort her. He had to find Jessi. He had to get her back. It was like a wave of energy was surging through him, an energy that had been noticeably missing in the last twenty-four hours of Jessi’s disappearance.

“Why?” Amanda asked, coming up to him, invading his personal space. Her baby blues were imploring as they gazed up at him, but he swiftly looked away, putting distance between himself and her warm, beckoning body. “Kyle?”

“Amanda,” he said, his voice firm, his body filling with a resolve that he was struggling to feel, “I have to do this. I have to…I have to go after Jessi. I have to save her.”

“Jessi.” Amanda rolled her eyes heavenward and shook her head. “Why am I not surprised?”

“Amanda—”

“No,” she growled, angrily. “I get it. She needs help…all the time…but Josh is in the hospital, Kyle, and nobody knows what happened, and all you can think about is getting her, getting to Jessi…again. Do you even care?”

“Of course I care,” Kyle growled back, suddenly very angry, “I care more than you could ever possibly know, but Jessi needs me. Jessi needs my help and I can’t ignore her either.” He shook his head, frowning at her. “And I can’t believe you’d expect me to.”

“Fine then go,” Amanda groused. “Just…whatever. Go.”

Kyle met her gaze squarely and found anger, annoyance and hurt radiating from Amanda’s deep blue eyes and all he wanted to do was go to her, wrap her in his arms and tell her everything, everything about him, everything about his past and all the secrets that he had kept from her, but he knew—felt—almost like the minute atmospheric changes he detected just before a coming storm, a divide between them widening, widening even more so than before. It wasn’t just the secrets that was keeping them apart, it wasn’t just Jessi’s presence that was keeping them apart or the kiss that had finally ended their relationship. It was something else, something—a feeling washed over Kyle as Jessi’s face flashed before his mind’s eye and butterflies danced madly in his gut—that he was scared to admit, even to himself. He shuddered, swallowed and stepped even farther away from Amanda, towards the hospital’s exit.

“Kyle,” Amanda called, one last time, her voice much softer, pleading. “Kyle, don’t—”

He turned on his heel and ran, ran from the suddenly, very stifling hospital, from Amanda’s imploring gaze and Josh’s still, prone form on the hospital bed.

He had to find Jessi.

He had to bring her home.

8o8o8

It was a few hours later, with the sun setting over the city of Seattle, spreading a brilliant display of blues, hot pinks and blazing oranges over the skyline, that Josh woke with a shudder and a gasp, breath expelled from strained lungs before his eyes opened a crack then shut just as quickly. The headache that swept over him in those few seconds felt like someone had river-danced across his brain and he groaned, trying to lift his hands to massage his temple and alleviate him from some of the pain.

“Josh?” came the barely breathed inquiry. Josh froze, heart stopping momentarily in the cave of his chest before slamming back to life. His eyes snapped open and his breath caught as bright light washed over his vision, setting his never-endings on fire with the pain. Tears leaked at the edges of his eyes, but he blinked them back, blinked back the painful, blinding light until the world was clear and he was looking into the face of a girl he thought he’d never see again.

“A-Andy?” His throat was raw, his voice came out a croaking groan, but he struggled to sit up nonetheless. His limps and muscles protested every movement that he made, but he continued to pull himself up into a sitting position, his thighs trembling with the effort. She paused, frozen herself, before uttering a relieved sob and rushing to gather him up in a tight embrace.

“God, Josh,” she breathed, “don’t you ever do that to me again.” She met his pain-filled gaze with her own, an unnamed emotion swimming in her eyes’ deep, green depths.

“Jesus, Andy,” he whispered, pulling her close again, ignoring the pain that ripped through his body, taking in the feel of her, the scent of her, the way her hair tickled his nose as it brushed passed it. Her body was warm, trembling, and all he wanted to do was hold her close and never let her go.

Memories rushed passed his shut eyelids, burning cities and dying comrades, and the blue-eyed man that had caused it all, but other pictures were crashing into those strange images, of his childhood, of dumping a whole bowl of yogurt on Lori’s head when he was six and she was eight, a whole world of images that were running together, bleeding into the other. He wasn’t sure which reality was which. He saw Andy die in his mind’s eye, but saw her—those many weeks ago—coming out of the boy’s bathroom with the bright colors of G4 displayed across the screen of her laptop. He saw Jessi’s deep brown eyes, lust-filled, staring up at him from a field of stark, burned grass, but knew that she was still missing. Everything was a jumble, everything was a whirlwind of confusion that left him scrambling to pick up the jagged pieces. His body trembled, a shudder of fear running through him.

“Josh?” Andy’s voice cut through the confusion like a lighthouse through darkness and he looked up at her, eyes watering, lips trembling.

“You’re alive?” he asked, wanting to believe it, knowing it to be true. But then, maybe, it was untrue and he was somewhere dying on a battlefield. Screams rushed through his ears from a different time, from a different place and the whip-crack sound of a gun firing off rounds somewhere to his left filled his ears like a haunting echo. He flinched.

“Of course,” Andy replied, trying for a smile. She cupped his face in her hands, pulled him close, kissed him and it felt like heaven to his crazed mind. “Josh, what’s wrong?”

“I have to go,” he said, urgency filling his voice. “I have to get out of here.”

“Hey,” she replied in a frightened tone, “you big jerk, you’re scaring me. Look, I’m-I’m going to go get your parents, okay?” She started to pull away from him, but Josh’s hand shot out, grabbed her and jerked her back. She uttered a surprised, fearful gasp.

“No,” he protested, his eyes wild. “Something’s going to happen, or has happened, or is happening. Something bad.”

“Josh, you-you need help,” she whispered, trying to pull her arm from his vise-like grip. “Something is wrong with you. You’re sick.”

“I’m not sick,” Josh growled, his eyes darting this way and that. From somewhere in his memories a cannon exploded and he nearly cried out in alarm, but when he looked around, there was no battlefield, only the dim comforting glow of a Seattle hospital. He didn’t understand. He turned to Andy, met her frightened gaze. “I want to go home. Does home still exist?”

“Josh,” she began.

“No,” Josh interrupted. “I need to go home. He’s going to be there, or He is there, or He’s already left. I need to stop Him.”

“Who?” she asked, the terror that she had felt building since she had gotten the phone call from Lori that Josh was in the hospital finally reaching its breaking point.

“Kyle,” Josh replied, his voice colored with confusion. “I have stop Kyle.”

“Why? What did Kyle do?”

“It’s not what he’s done, or maybe he has done it and I’m too late,” Josh answered, finally releasing her and gripping his head in his hands. “Maybe I’m too late and he’s already—”

“Josh, what are you talking about?” Andy’s voice rose an octave in fear.

“Kyle,” Josh replied, finally meeting her gaze with a confused one of his own. “He’s-He’s going to destroy everything…I have to stop him or maybe I have…or maybe it’s too late…or maybe I’m early. Andy, I need to go home.”

“I’m going to go get your parents.” Andy stepped away from him and fled the room, and this time Josh didn’t stop her. He sat on his hospital bed, body trembling, with his mind sorting through the mess that his memories had suddenly become, trying desperately to find a balance, an order to the chaos. Was everything destroyed? Was he too late? He looked up and around him at the quiet room, at the hospital monitors and the other empty beds that surrounded his. There were no dying or injured soldiers around him, there was no medic screaming desperately for supplies that they just didn’t have and certainly the explosion of well-aimed grenades weren’t sending sound waves after sound waves reverberating through the hospital building.

Was this war time? Had they won? Was the Des-Kyl-Destroyer dead? Josh shut his eyes against the confusion and lay back down gingerly in his bed, looking up at the ceiling, feeling panic want to overtake him, but pushing it back. He was a hardened soldier, right? Right? He should be able to handle this. Maybe this was a dream or maybe it was some new device that the Destroyer had come up with. The thought made Josh’s stomach curl.

“Josh?” came Lori’s voice and he sat up again, shot up more like, and turned to the vision of his older sister, his eyes wide.

“Lori?” he asked in disbelief. She smiled at him.

“Are you okay?”

A dream. A nightmare. Lori was dead, but she wasn’t, but she was. His family was killed, but they weren’t, but they were. Time was slamming into him like two opposing tides and all he could do was pull back, scramble from his hospital bed, jerking the IV from his arm, blood immediately pouring down his hand.

“You’re dead,” he shouted, panicked. “You’re all dead!”

“Josh,” Andy cried. “Josh, calm down!”

“Dead,” Josh cried back. “This is something new, isn’t it? Something that the Destroyer cooked up to confuse us. Screw with our memories. This never happened.”

“Josh, please.” Lori opened her arms wide, beckoning him to come into her embrace, but he wouldn’t be tricked. He wouldn’t be fooled. This was a new game that the Destroyer was playing, he was sure of it. Lori turned to Andy, who was frozen, staring at Josh in a fascinated kind of horror.

“Go get a doctor,” Lori ordered. When Andy didn’t react, Lori grabbed the other girl’s shoulders and shook her. “Go!”

Andy nodded, shakily, and rushed out immediately as Lori turned back to her brother and said in a firm tone, “I don’t know what’s going on, little brother, but everything’s going to be okay.”

“It’s not,” Josh protested. “Don’t you see? Don’t you—He’s turned everything upside down. He’s gotten into my head. He’s taken everything. He’s crushed us. He’s crushed the rebellion. Now, no one can stop Him!”

He turned around, faced the hospital wall and punched it with all the force that existed in his pale, thin arm. It hurt, it hurt more than anything, as he felt his knuckles collide with the wall’s hard concrete surface. He pulled his arms back, cradled his hand and stared at it. Stared at it long and hard, his eyes widening.

“Young,” he hissed, painfully flexing his hand. He lifted the other, blood covered knuckle to his face. “Both young.” He touched his chest, smearing his blood across the front of the hospital gown. “No scars. Young body. Doesn’t make any sense. I’m thirty-years-old. I’m thirty.”

He shuddered, sank to the floor, mind even more confused and jumbled than it had been.

“Josh,” came Lori’s soft voice from behind. He turned and looked at her and she approached him cautiously, settling down beside him and placing a hand on his shoulder. “Please, tell what’s happening to you.”

“I don’t know,” Josh replied, lifting his hands to his face and staring at them.

“Let me get that.” Lori pulled his still bleeding hand to her, and covered it with her own, trying to stop the flow of blood. Her palm was warm. It was real. He could feel the rapid pulse that beat underneath the skin.

“You’re alive,” he said, his eyes roving over her face, taking in her features.

“Of course,” she replied.

“But…” Josh’s voice trailed off and he looked away. “Mom and Dad? Alive?”

“All of us.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Josh, what’s happening to you?”

He shrugged. “Where’s Jessi?”

“Still missing,” Lori answered, quietly.

“Missing?” Josh mulled on that, frowned.

“Don’t you remember?” Lori asked in a small, frightened tone.

“No,” Josh admitted faintly.

It was then that the doctor finally arrived and Josh, after some coaxing, was finally put back to bed. Andy cornered Lori in the hall, her eyes watery, but her face determined.

“I know you know something,” she stated, firmly. Lori looked away and nodded.

“When all this is over,” Andy said. “You guys are going to tell me everything.”

8o8o8

The recreation room was silent and dark as Mark stepped inside, brow furrowed and eyes darting this way and that, looking for other wayward young scientists like himself, but there was no one. The science department building was strangely silent for a night like this; usually there was a constant hustle and bustle of faces, old and new, working at their stations on the next great invention or others hanging out near the pool table or bar discussing whatever bright minds like him discussed on their down time. He stepped fully into the quiet room, frown deepening as he walked towards his station, strewn with haphazard stacks of papers, research notes, books and a picture of Lori that he had taken while she wasn’t looking. He smiled faintly when he saw it, picked it up for a moment and admired the subtle beauty of his girlfriend in relaxed repose, her face unmarred by the small, but constant frown that seemed to linger around her features.

He knew that his involvement with a shady organization like Latnok might not appeal to Lori. He knew that if she found out about his involvement with the secret society that she’d probably do more to him than give him a dressing down with that infamous Lori Trager Tongue Lashing that he had to realize she was well-known for. After all, the higher ups had told him to stop seeing her when they’d found out that she was Kyle’s adopted sister and then, quite suddenly, changed their mind within the same span of a week. He knew that would not go over well with the headstrong girl, but he was committed to Latnok, just as much as he was committed to her. They’d paved the way for his future, after all, when his family didn’t have the money to. He owed them, but he knew there would come a time, very soon, that he would have to let his girlfriend know of his ties to the society.

He put the picture down after a moment and turned to his desk, frown back in place, looking around for the small, black USB drive that he had forgotten about earlier today. It contained a plethora of notes that he had been steadily building up all week, gearing up for his own project that involved sound waves and echolocation for the military, but had accidently left behind on a mad dash to get to a DJing gig half-way across town. He’d meant to go straight home after the gig and get started on the first half of the project, but—upon finding that the drive wasn’t with him—had to turn around and make the arduous trip back to the university to retrieve it. All he wanted to do now was find it, get home, call Lori and get started on his work. He shifted a few stacks of papers around, looked underneath other stacks and resettled Lori’s picture elsewhere on the desk, but could not find it.

He made a puzzled sound and bit his lip, looking underneath the work station and crouching low to the ground to search the floor. Maybe he’d dropped it—?

It was then that he heard the familiar, lilting accent of Michael Cassidy, patron saint golden boy of the Latnok superiors. Mark looked up, but did not rise as Cassidy passed close by his workstation, engaged in what appeared to be a heated conversation with someone on his cellphone. Mark could hear the other’s voice—clearly male and accented much like Cassidy’s—but could not hear what the other was saying.

“Yes, yes, I understand that we’re under a time schedule, but I’m doing my best to—“ Cassidy stopped abruptly, right next to Mark’s station and the younger man swallowed, holding his breath.

“You don’t understand the delicacies of this situation,” Cassidy growled, angrily. “If Kyle doesn’t see the façade that I am trying to build then he’ll never join us and everything that Latnok’s been planning will be for naught. Trust me, I know what I’m doing.”

Mark heard what appeared to be a muffled argument issue forth from the phone and Cassidy’s annoyed, but muttered curse.

“I understand your feelings on the matter, Blackston,” Cassidy continued, his tone much lighter and more obliging, “but I don’t think we should be taking any drastic measures just yet.”

Cassidy was moving off towards his office and Mark, curious to the conversation and what it pertained to Kyle, peeked his head above the top of the desk, watching as Cassidy disappeared down the hall. He stood and looked around. His first instinct told him to get out, get away and pretend like he never heard anything at all. After all, whatever happened between Kyle and Cassidy was their business and he, more than anyone, knew not to tango with the higher-ups of Latnok’s elite.

But the thought of Lori gave him pause. What if whatever Latnok were planning for Kyle somehow hurt Lori? He couldn’t stand by while Cassidy plotted and schemed whatever dastardly plan he had for the dark-haired blue-eyed boy and ignore the fact that Lori could somehow get caught up in the crossfire. Lori was his girlfriend, and while sometimes she annoyed the hell out of him with her nick-picking and her sometimes unwanted snarky comments, he cared about her, cared about her deeply and he didn’t want any harm to come to her; especially not if he could have somehow prevented it.

So, ignoring the warning bells and the little voice in his head that was yelling at him in increasingly louder volume to get away, Mark followed Cassidy quietly down the hall. He assumed the man had gone to his office, but as he got closer to it, he heard Cassidy talking to the mysterious “Blackston” from further down the hall. Mark paused, listened, breathed and continued forward, stepping lightly and trying not to make a sound. He had never been this far into the science department. He’d known that the building was pretty expansive, but his scope of it was confined only to the recreation room and the science labs that sat in an adjacent room to the rec. room.

He didn’t know that beyond Cassidy’s door had lay this hallway that was fast departing from its safe atmosphere, hardwood interior and walls covered with pictures of past scholars and scientists to grace the science departments halls. No, the air was beginning to feel colder and sterile, like a hospital or a morgue. Goose pimples rose along the flesh of his arm at the sudden temperature drop and as Mark continued on—following the sound of Cassidy’s voice—he noticed the scenery around him changing from the hardwoods that he was used to to metal piping and concrete walls and dull linoleum floors that had seen better days; it felt like he was entering a military base and not the science department of a city university.

Up ahead the light grew dimmer and Mark had to squint to see. Cassidy had rounded a corner to the left and Mark paused as the little voice in his head, the little voice of reason that had never steered him wrong when it had lead him to accept Latnok’s invitation, when it had to him that there was just something about Lori Trager and all the other million-million times it had warned him like a sixth sense to not do something because of the dire consequences that could be exacted spoke up and told him, ‘Turn back now, Mark. Go home. Pretend like you never saw this place. You never heard Cassidy. Just go him.’

He nibbled his lip and glanced back the way he had come. There was light back there, and freedom, and the lie that he could tell himself if anything bad did happen to Lori: ‘I wasn’t there. I didn’t hear anything. I don’t know anything.’

But he couldn’t just leave knowing that whatever was going on could potentially hurt Lori, directly or indirectly. He’d never he able to look himself in mirror knowing that he’d chickened out at the last minute and that he could’ve helped, even in this small way. So, he turned on his heel and he continued forward, following the fading sounds of Cassidy’s voice and praying to whatever powers existed in the universe that his sudden chivalry wasn’t going to get him killed.

8o8o8

Michael Cassidy was more than a little angry.

He was livid, and the burning emotion only mounted as he listened to the condescending tone that Aaron Blackston spoke to him with that he usually reserved for incompetent subordinates. But Cassidy was no subordinate; he was Blackston’s equal and if the other man were standing right in front of him at that moment, Cassidy would’ve shoved his fist right down the smug bastard’s throat. Instead, he listened to Blackston’s tirade for the umpteenth time, trying to keep his own temper in check. He didn’t need the hassle that Blackston could bring to his operations in Seattle. All he needed to do was keep Blackston dangling on a very loose leash while he continued on his own course of action, and—when he could produce the desired results that the ‘olde guard’ were looking to achieve—he’d be the one smug and smirking whilst Blackston scrambled about like the useless fool that he was.

It was only a matter of time.

“Of course, Aaron,” Cassidy purred in a tone of voice that he hoped sounded agreeable. The other man grunted on the other end.

“I assume you know the importance of having experiment 781227 under our control,” the other man continued, “and we have been waiting for months for satisfactory updates on his progress and his induction in our ranks, and yet there is nothing. Nothing to show for all our efforts in funding your little venture. You have one week, Michael. One week.”

“A week?!” Cassidy exclaimed angrily. “Blackston, be reasonable. I can’t force the boy to join our ranks. I can’t force his hand. He must do it on his own, with no pretenses. I can’t—”

“One week,” the man cut in, his voice as cold as steel, “and then we shall take over.”

Cassidy was flabbergasted. He breathed deep, reining in his emotions and swallowed thickly. As calm as he could, he replied, “Yes, Blackston. As you wish,” and hung up the phone quickly before he said something that could quite possibly end his career, and his life, with the secret, but prestigious Latnok society. Cassidy stepped into the cold, sanitized room that was his destination at the start of his conversation with Aaron Blackston and looked around. There was no one here at the moment, all staff members and workers gone for the evening. It was quiet with the gentle whir of machines and the steady beep-beep-beep of a heart monitor off to the corner of the room.

But none of these machines were the dominant, or most important, feature in the room. No, not at all. Cassidy’s eyes were trained on the large tank that rested in front of him and the body that floated within.

“One week,” he muttered to himself and pulled up a chair from one of the workstations beside him. He didn’t bother to check the monitors of the workstation or what those monitors read; he was not, after all, a scientist and wouldn’t know the first thing about the numbers that flashed across the screen or what they would mean. Instead, he pulled the chair as close to the tank as he dared and sat down, his eyes trained intently on the peaceably sleeping face, the relaxed features and expression on the figure within.

“One week,” he repeated to no one in particular. “Who do they think they are, ordering me about like I’m some kind of whipping boy? This takes finesse. This is a very fine game that I’m playing, and I’m playing it to win. So what if my methods aren’t the ones that they themselves would take. Can’t they see? Nothing that they’ve tried worked.”

Cassidy sat back in his chair, watched as the figure’s face furrowed slightly. A separate monitor beeped. Chemicals were pumped into the tank. The face relaxed and the features stilled. Cassidy smirked.

“I could let you out, you know,” he said loudly, the smirk filling his voice. “I could let you ruin everything that they’ve worked hard for, strived to build. You could level it all. They don’t know what you’re capable of, but I do. I’ve read the files on you. I know what they did. I know why they keep you locked inside of this prison.” Cassidy stood, walked about the tank, arms crossed, smirk still firmly in place. “We’re both prisoners. They want Kyle XY, but you’re true culmination of their research, you’re the echelon that they wish to be.”

He leaned over the glass of the tank, unlaced his arms and pressed his hands firmly against the glass. He breathed. The glass fogged up, but the figure inside was still, tranquil, unmoving.

“We’ll play their game,” Cassidy whispered. “We’ll play their game until they’ve used up all their moves, until they’ve played every ill-fated hand in their arsenal. I’ll bring into our ranks, and I’ll show them how foolish they are for trying to tango with me.”

Cassidy stood, pulling his cellphone from his pocket. There was one way to get Kyle to listen to what Latnok had to say, and even though Cassidy detested breaking the laws of the land, he knew that a few rules needed to broken to get the job done. The first time the olde guard had wanted Amanda Bloom kidnapped had been because they’d wanted to have a small audience with their little science experiment; they wanted to get a taste of what Kyle was capable of. Now, Cassidy would do it to force Kyle’s hand, to make him adhere to what the society heads wanted, and if that plan fell through, well…

“They’re not going to take this away from me,” Cassidy murmured to the tank, “And, if this little gamble fails, you’ll be my contingency, and we’ll see what the olde heads’ll think then.”

He flipped open his cell phone and punched in a number. The phone rang for a few moments before the line was picked up. Cassidy heard someone’s light breathing on the other end of the line.

He said, simply, “I need you.” There was no change to the soft breathing on the other end, but a light voice spoke softly, “Understood.”

The line went dead and Cassidy put the phone back into his pocket, eyes fixed on the face, suspended in the tank before him. It was then that he heard it, a faint gasp behind him. He turned with a start, muscles tense and at the ready.

Light glinted off of a pair of thin, wire glasses. Brown eyes widened behind the frames, and Cassidy’s features hardened to a mask of stone.

“Mark,” he whispered in genuine disappointment. “Such a pity.”

The younger man drew back in fear and opened his mouth to scream, but the exclamation of terror never resounded. Cassidy pounced on him, like a seasoned predator, subduing Mark’s flailing, panic-stricken attempts to flee.

“Can’t have you ruining the game before it even gets started,” Cassidy whispered with a silken purr, taking hold of the flailing young man’s neck in a choke hold. The dark gleam in Cassidy’s eyes was the last thing Mark saw before darkness encroach upon his consciousness, grabbing him and dragging him into its depths.