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.