Prolog: Previously on The Tomorrow People...

"I recognize that face." Damon grabbed for the photograph.

"You know my therapist? Well, my ex-therapist who did a runner." Misako asked curiously.

"Jake does. That's the guy who stole his watch. The guy with the red hair."

Jake was worried. "How exactly did he end up as your therapist? And what exactly did you tell him?"

"So what exactly do you know about the Whitehall angle?"

"Whitehall's main focus is into whether potentially crucial evidence was ignored. Like, there's evidence that Stellman wasn't working alone, but the police for some reason deliberately chose not to follow that line of enquiry. Question is why?"

"Deliberately ignoring evidence? Bloody hell, Jake. You didn't mention any of this at the inquest, why?"

"It wasn't relevant to Stellman's death. Look, the official line is that the police investigated the possibility that there was an accomplice, but they found no evidence to corroborate it. They don't want to believe it, what am I supposed to say?"

Jake couldn't completely conceal his bitterness, but sod it, it didn't matter that the police didn't believe him, because he could sense that Laura Shepherd did. His gamble was paying off.

"This accomplice, what do you know about him?"

"He's in his late twenties, red hair. We all saw him, the descriptions match. What's even more creepy is that he's still following us. He's been stalking Misako, she even managed to get a photograph of him." Jake sat back to to watch, and Laura Shepherd's reaction didn't disappoint.

"When I said I'd sell my soul for a good story..."

"I would say your soul is the least of your worries," he cautioned. "This guy is an accessory to the torture and murder of ten kids and right now he's effectively above the law. Keep in mind he might not appreciate you printing a story about him."

"Reassuring little bugger, aren't you You don't think you're being over-melodramatic?"

"We saw the guy standing in the crowd outside the inquest this morning, watching us. What do you think?"

"I think your story is worth checking out," she kept her words upbeat and practical despite her nerves. "You mentioned you had a photograph of the guy, I don't suppose there's a chance I could get a copy of that is there?"

"Thanks for agreeing to see me, Colonel Masters."

Masters remained seated. "You left me very little choice, Miss Shepherd. You're making some extremely serious accusations here. You must be extremely confident if you're willing to risk the consequences of publishing this."

His words made her uncomfortable, it was difficult to interpret them as being anything other than a threat. Life as a rookie reporter on the East Riding Gazette had never really prepared her for a confrontation like this.

"So you're assuming there's a conspiracy. Answer me this, if Stellman was working with someone, who do you think that someone might be?"

"The police claim he doesn't exist. Officially they considered the evidence there was someone else involved and found it lacking. Someone inside the police force was either blackmailed or was paid off. And it has to be someone high up. And you have no evidence as to who that is, or you'd have acted against him already, you wouldn't be sat here talking to me right now..." she left the thought hanging.

"Keep going," Masters prompted.

"So you need another way to flush him out. The general public, of course, are more interested in vengeance than justice," she continued. "They like to see their enemies paraded through the streets and burned at the stake, the need for evidence and the process of law is a inconvenience when it comes to a lynching. And you know, Colonel, with public opinion as skewed against the police as it is right now, if they're told the police failed to investigate the existence of an accomplice, they won't be bothered by the need for evidence, they'll demand a witch hunt."

Masters remained silent.

Laura Shepherd worked it out. "And that's what you want, isn't it? For me to do your dirty work for you. You aren't here to deny any part of my story. You actually want me to publish."

"You might think that," Masters smiled a thin lipped smile. "I, of course, couldn't possibly comment."

Kal thought about it for a moment. ~There's different ways of navigating a jaunt. Line of sight is definitely the fastest.~

Kristen nodded. ~I see, something, things, I don't have the words to explain. I can see, vaguely, faintly. I can sense where there's space, where there isn't space. Nothing more than that, no details, no... I don't know.~

~That's generally all you get. Some people can see more, gifted remote viewers can see all sorts of details. But to jaunt there, all you need to see is whether there's space to jaunt in to. Look where the space is, or rather where the space isn't. Explore a little.~

~I keep losing focus and falling back to the transponder location.~

~Yeah, you will to start. That takes practice. Just, word of advice, don't jaunt if there is any danger of losing focus while you're jaunting. That way lies deep shit.~

~Right. Deep shit. I'll remember that.~

"What about the belts. We could just stick them in the vault, sure, but how about we could actually make some use of those?" Jake asked out loud as he and Damon rejoined the others.

John was measured in response. "The belts aren't going to be much use to you without help, and we have no time left to teach you. There are only two ways of programming them. The easy way is if you have a computer that can interface to them telepathically, which you don't have. The only other way is manually, and that takes years of practice. It's pretty dangerous if you don't know what you're doing."

"Jaunt into solid rock..." Jake started to suggest.

"Which proves my point that you don't know what you're talking about. It isn't possible to jaunt into solid rock using a belt any more than you can walk through a brick wall. You just bounce off, which will generally get you stuck in hyperspace, and I assure you that is something you don't want happening."

"You love making me feel like an idiot, don't you."

Fancy Dress

~Jake?~

~Huh, what?~

It was Saturday morning, an early Saturday morning in mid-December. The kind of early in the morning that sane people reserved for still being in bed. Jake was sane, still in bed, and planning to stay in bed for a good few hours longer. He was anticipating an evening ahead fraught with intense partying, so staying in as long as possible was a necessity rather than just a luxury. Anyway, even if that hadn't been the case, Damon should have known better than to wake him telepathically this early in the morning. Unless it was something serious.

Jake opened his eyes. That was it. Something serious. It was always something sodding serious. Couldn't they just have a quiet weekend where nothing actually happened for once? Maybe if he just ignored Damon then the problem would go away. Yeah, right, some sodding chance of that.

~You still in bed you lazy git?~ Damon called out, confirming Jake's pessimistic evaluation of his chances of ever getting back to sleep.

He made no effort to conceal his antipathy. ~What are you doing up you sad twat? You forget about tonight? Can't you just piss off and go back to sleep? Like I was until you bloody woke me up.~

~Yeah, you can thank me later. Go check the news, you want to see this.~ Okay, he certainly sounded kind of serious, but then Damon was quite capable of sounding serious even when he was taking the piss,

Jake yawned and rolled over, reaching down for the laptop he'd left... actually, he'd left it on the bed, it must have fallen off onto the floor while he was asleep. Bugger. He shook it, but it wasn't making any questionable rattling noises, so he chanced it and turned it on. It still worked, which kind of surprised him. He really needed to be more bloody careful with the thing in future. No more Second Life in bed at night when he was that tired.

He rubbed his eyes, it wasn't easy to get his eyes to focus this early in the morning. Generally the activities he used the laptop for in bed on a Saturday morning only ever involved looking at pictures. Reading text took a set of skills that were even less awake than the rest of him was right now.

Jake navigated clumsily to the news front page and stared blankly at it. He didn't need to read the anything, the picture that accompanied the headline told him all he needed to know.

Scandal. Manhunt. Jake snapped awake.

It was the picture of the guy with red hair, Misako's picture, the picture Jake had given to the reporter from the East Riding Gazette. Except now it was national headline news.

Jake fell back in the bed and laughed. Laughed until there were tears in his eyes. Best Saturday morning wake up call he'd had ever, without exception. This was the news he'd been waiting for, and it couldn't have come at a better time, it totally changed his plans for the party. Keeping a low profile was no longer the overwhelming necessity it had been when they'd had a psychopath openly stalking them. With his picture on every front page it was their psychopath who was going to have to keep the low profile from now on... and that meant Jake could afford to take a different approach to his choice of costume for the fancy dress. He could risk drawing attention to himself. In fact, screw risk, this was the one and only chance he'd probably ever get to make an absolute and total spectacle of himself, he could make a statement. Jake grinned a perversely satisfied grin.

It felt like a good day to be alive.

Damon was sat in the back seat of the car. it was only a few minutes walk to the train station, but he couldn't exactly refuse the offer of a lift, not without arousing too many suspicions anyway.

He didn't exactly need to be going to the train station, he wasn't catching a train. He was actually planning to jaunt over to see Jake, but that wasn't exactly something he could easily explain to his mother. So he'd have to suffer the trip to the station, then find somewhere secluded at the station and jaunt from there.

Actually, it was a bit surprising his mother hadn't already questioned the travel arrangements, like why he was taking the train to go meet up with Jake when Jake lived an hour in the wrong direction. The party they were headed to was in Eastleigh, where Kristen lived, and logically it would have made more sense for Jake to stop off in Oxford to pick Damon up on the way. Teleportation really screwed with logic like that.

But teleportation was still only half useful right now. Sure, they'd learned a lot in an incredibly short space of time. A few weeks earlier they'd been under the delusion that it was only possible to jaunt line of sight, they now knew that limitation was completely bollocks. Kal and John had taught them how to do this thing where they could visualize their own location and the others could jaunt to where they were. That was how Damon could jaunt directly from Oxford to Jake's bedroom sixty miles away. Unfortunately it was a one way only thing, there was no way they knew of getting back. Which was why Jake was still going to have to take the car all the way down to Eastleigh.

Kal and John just hadn't been able to stay around long enough, that was the problem. Damon knew from them that there was a technique for jaunting to completely arbitrary locations. Unfortunately, as John had pointed out, it was both an order of magnitude more tricky to learn and several orders of magnitude more dangerous to mess around with if you didn't know what you were doing. And while John might have been exaggerating a touch about the danger, he hadn't been exaggerating the difficulty. Damon had spent an hour being shown what to do without achieving anything much in the way of success. And ultimately time had run out, the lesson still unlearned.

It was frustrating. Damon hated that there was so much that they didn't know about themselves. And how the hell were they supposed to learn? How could they practice stuff that was dangerous when they had no safety net and they didn't have any real clue what it was they were doing?

Damon shrugged it off. That was a contemplation for another day. He had more other stuff to concern himself with right now. Like how mental the party was going to get, and why Jake had been so reluctant to talk about what costume he was planning to wear. In fact Jake had been abnormally too quiet all morning.

Damon's mother had also been abnormally quiet all morning, which had Damon more than a little worried as well. It was something to do with the story in the newspaper, he'd been able to work out that much. She kept on backing off from asking him something, and that usually wasn't a good sign. Damon was in danger of letting himself get preemptively wound up there. But he was getting a lift to the station, so it wasn't like she objected to him going to the party. She was getting a lot better when it came to stuff like that now.

The idea of asking her what was up, though, had all the appeal of squeezing zits, gross, and of questionable merit. But then sometimes it was a cosmetic necessity.

"Good idea on the costume," he started conversationally, and not entirely untruthfully. "Making it something that hides my face. I don't get recognized that often any more, but with that story in the paper today, people are going to be talking about it again."

"About that story..."

Damon tried to keep a blank face.

"Your friend Jake, I suppose he leaked that to the press?"

So that was her problem.

"Yes," Damon answered cautiously. He wasn't sure if that was such a good thing to be honest in this particular case, but his therapist, Doctor Jim, had said his mother was responding well and should be rewarded a little from time to time if he was going to make any progress with her.

"I find myself quite in two minds about that young man," Damon's mother continued. "I don't question his heart is in the right place, I can't question his courage, but he does seem a touch impulsive at times. I mean, I can't say I blame him entirely for losing his patience with the police, I've been quite close to losing my own patience with them over this particular matter, but leaking the story to the press seems a little, well, has he entirely thought through the consequences?"

Damon tried not to smile, it wasn't often he found himself quite so in tune with his mother's worries. "Jake can be impulsive, I think he's probably thought through some of what he's doing, but he's afraid and I think he'd rather do something than nothing, and I'm not saying I agree with him entirely, but I'm on his side, I have to be, I have every reason to be as afraid as he is."

Damon's mother was silent, Damon could sense she was more than a little stunned by how candid his answer had been.

"Does he listen to you?" she asked after a moment.

"Not always, but mostly."

"He has at least some sense then. Well, I hope it works, I hope they catch this accomplice." She hesitated again, she was feeling on a roll and wanted to ask a lot more questions, but her time was up. Damon was saved from further interrogation as the car pulled into the station.

"Well, call when you know what time you'll be getting back tomorrow, we'll have dinner ready, and remember to let Jake know he's invited to stay and eat," she reminded him, anticipating another opportunity to resume the questioning. "And most of all, enjoy your evening, have fun."

Have fun? At a party? Where there was booze? And no lecture? It was Damon's turn to be stunned. That was beyond weird. And coming off the back of the the most productive half conversation he'd had with his mother ever? The therapy was clearly achieving something, somehow, apparently.

Kristen watched puzzled as her mother walked past in the opposite direction a second time. "Mum, I just shouted twice, your taxi is here."

"What? Already? I don't know that I'm quite..."

Kristen was exasperated. "Mum, you're ready. You've been ready for an hour."

"I wasn't talking about my bags."

"Mum. Look. It'll be fine. Just, enjoy yourself," Kristen advised. There was something very back to front about this conversation.

"I really, I don't know though," Marion Walker objected.

Kristen knew exactly what it was that had her mother all flustered. "Mum, I wasn't going to say this, because I don't want you to think like I'm interfering or anything, but actually, I think he's alright."

"You do?"

"Yes."

Kristen could read the signs. Her mother was actually serious about the guy, had only just realized that, and was starting to panic. Kristen's mother had issues with commitment, which, was understandable, she'd been there, done that, and got burned. Badly burned. As much as Kristen still loved her dad, she wasn't under any illusions that the breakdown in her parents' relationship had been anything but his fault.

"Well..." Marion Walker struggled to get the words out.

Kristen could sense the overpowering uncertainty. "Seriously, I like him," she tried to punctuate the doubt.

Kristen got a suspicious frown. "And you aren't just saying that because I'm letting you have a bunch of your friends stay over tonight while I'm gone?"

Kristen was happy, her mother was sounding more like her mother again. "Mum, we aren't talking Mary Buchanan here. For the first time ever, I actually have friends you approve of, I don't need to pretend I like him."

"I'm still surprised they didn't exclude her from school."

That actually surprised Kristen as well. "She spent a night in the police cells, I think that sobered her up, she hasn't been nearly as..." Kristen tried to work around saying 'careless', "... as disruptive since then."

"You really like him?" Marion Walker switched tracks again.

"Yes," Kristen assured her. "Now go." Kristen held out her mother's bag and pointed to the door.

"Kristen..."

"What?"

"Thanks. I love you. Take care. Please don't trash the house. I'll see you tomorrow."

Damon knocked on the front door, and took time out to admire the Christmas tree in the front window of Jake's house. Real tree, not fake. Damon's mother insisted on having a fake one, easier maintenance and his mother was a neat freak who hated the pine needles getting everywhere. Not that Damon really cared, but it was nice to see a real one, even if the decoration was seriously way over the top.

"Good morning, Damon, Merry Christmas, come on in out of the cold there. Sorry Jacob didn't come down to greet you but I think he's in the middle of trying on his costume and it still takes him several minutes to get down the stairs because he refuses to use those crutches, and I'm not saying I'm unhappy because this is a vast improvement over the wheelchair, and he can go to the toilet on his own which I'm sure makes your life a lot more pleasant, Damon, but I think he's pushing the independence thing a little too far, too quickly. His physiotherapist has told me to watch he doesn't strain himself, and I know Jacob, he'll be up trying to limbo dance regardless of how bad an idea that is, and I'm counting on you to watch out for him at the party and make sure he doesn't do anything quite so stupid. I also need you to give him some sensible advice on his costume, I don't know what he's planning but he had a look in his eye at breakfast that told me he was up to something, and I know him, if he's up to something then I can be sure it's nothing good. Anyway, you should go right up, but first I'll get you a hot drink, what would you like? I have mulled wine, which I wouldn't normally approve of you drinking, but it's Christmas. Come into the kitchen and grab some, you can take it upstairs with you."

Damon always felt somehow out of breath when Jake's mother spoke to him. He enthusiastically accepted the wine, complimented her on the festive decorations, and headed quickly up to Jake's room to escape. The door was locked. For a moment Damon contemplated jaunting through, but then he heard Jake fiddling with the handle.

"Didn't come to the front door, didn't have my leg brace on, takes too long to put it back on," Jake apologized.

"You still not worked out an excuse for that yet? Your mum was going on and on about how you're pushing yourself too hard and you need to scale back your expectations."

Jake got defensive. "Look, faking a believable miraculous recovery is turning out to be harder than I expected, alright. I was practically paralyzed down one side, and she's been listening to that bloody physiotherapist who's giving her all these unhelpful realistic expectations. My leg is fine and faking the limp is getting to be sodding awkward. I'm fed up with realistic expectations. No I haven't bloody come up with an excuse yet."

Jake could sound a lot like his mother when he was ranting, it was spooky. Just for now, however, Damon decided it was tactful to keep that observation to himself.

"Fine, just saying."

"Yeah, well I know, right, drop it." Jake changed the subject. "Anyway, look, I've got most of the makeup I need done, but there's a few places I can't reach quite so easily."

Damon stared questioningly. He spotted the short, silver, high heeled boots and the silver sequined jacket that was so short it looked like it would barely cover Jake's chest. "Where's the rest of the costume?" he asked, more in hope than expectation. "And, alright, I know this is a bad question, but, why makeup there?" he added, noting that there wasn't much of Jake that wasn't already covered by the silver, grey and blue body paint, that and the shiny glitter confetti on one side, and the flash of lightning makeup across the one eye, and the bright orange hair. It was incredible how much effort had clearly been spent on what added up to so insubstantial a costume.

"The rest is in that bag." Jake gestured over at a small paper bag that was sat on the bed. "And I painted the leg brace silver as well, need that part to get the costume past my mother."

Damon peered nervously in the bag. He didn't quite know how to react. "You have to be totally fucking kidding, Jake."

"Seriously, trust me, it won't look as bad as you think once I get the rest of the makeup on."

Damon continued to stare in disbelief. Jake could be deluded at times, but this was stretching it, even for him.

"So, you've seen mine now," Jake stated with an undeniably inappropriate truth, "I want to see yours."

Damon tried to relax for a moment. Talking Jake out of this one was going to take patience and delicacy. For now he was just going to have to play along.

"Spider-man," he revealed, pulling out a costume that was about as opposite a costume to Jake's as was physically possible.

"Are those web shooters?" Jake was more interested by the accessories.

"Compressed air, rubber suction dart, fishing line." Damon explained. "Completely impractical and useless, but it looks cool. In a sad, geeky kind of way."

"Cool costume though," Jake wasn't taking the piss for once. "One question," he asked, inspecting how the costume was stitched together. "How exactly is Spider-man suppose to pee?"

Damon frowned, under the circumstances he was worried that any concession here was a potentially dangerous one. "I don't know, not worked that part out yet."

"And you criticize me for not thinking things through?"

Misako materialized in the kitchen at Kristen's house. It was lunch time. Kristen was eating chocolate mousse.

"When you said you had stuff in to eat, I was thinking of something a little healthier," she challenged.

Kristen gestured at the fridge. "There's tortilla wraps and salad. The chocolate is because I'm worried."

Misako didn't need to know any more, she'd heard the rumors about Jake's costume. "If you're that worried, contact Damon and ask."

"I did, twice already. Both times he said didn't know for sure yet and he didn't want to pre-judge Jake's final decision."

Misako eyed the chocolate. "Okay, that's worrying."

"I mean, Jake described it as provocative," Kristen continued. "That translates from his usual understatement as somewhere between obscene and illegal."

Misako thought for a moment. "Look, Damon at least has some sense, he's obviously not happy with Jake's choice of costume either, and your last, best hope, is that he's the one person that might just be able to talk Jake out of anything too inappropriate."

"And if he can't?"

Misako was pragmatic. "Take your phone. Then you'll have a short window of opportunity between us all getting to the party and Jake being either lynched or arrested to get some interesting photographs."

Misako's cynical reasoning worked, Kristen felt happier.

"So show me," Kristen nodded at the bag Misako had brought.

"Gangster's moll." Misako grinned, pulling out a low cut pinstripe waistcoat, pinstripe miniskirt, fishnet stockings, high heeled PVC boots, white scarf and a hat, fedora with a white band. Oh, and a violin case.

"Violin case?" Kristen was puzzled.

"The costume came with a plastic machine gun," Misako explained. "As my gran pointed out, that's just asking to be mistaken for a terrorist and accidentally shot by the police."

"Point taken," Kristen agreed.

"So what are you thinking about?"

Kristen smirked. "Barbarella."

"Barbarella?"

"Transparent plastic boob tube, the works."

Misako frowned. "And you're worried about Jake getting inappropriate?"

"Yes. This is Jake we're talking about."

Sadly, Misako conceded, Kristen wasn't exaggerating.

"What in God's name do you call that?" Judy Laris's piercing voice echoed through the thin interior walls of the house.

Damon had decided to remain at a strategic distance, he was still in Jake's bedroom. The words he could hear telepathically through Jake, he didn't much need telepathy to pick up the underlying emotion. Jake's mother wasn't happy.

"Ziggy Stardust." Jake answered literally, completely failing to read her constrained fury. Which had to be down to denial, because Damon could read her emotions perfectly well enough and he wasn't even there.

"No, absolutely not. You are not leaving the house looking like that. You'll be arrested."

"It's not obscene," Jake tried to argue.

"On what technicality?"

Damon didn't catch the rest, moments later he heard Jake storming up the stairs, limping into the bedroom, slamming the door and kicking the bed.

"She's exaggerating," he fumed.

Damon wanted to be tactful, but he also had to be honest. "No, Jake, I don't think she is."

Jake stared at him angrily, then took the trouble to look through Damon's eyes and into his thoughts. Damon was finally able to confront the guy with the truth.

The truth, however, seemed to wind Jake up even more.

"Her problem is she's still pissed off because she found a pizza box in my room last week. She hates it when I get grease on the bedclothes, she obsessed about it, totally irrational. If she found condoms she'd be over the moon, but no, illicit eating of pizza in my bedroom, that's just inappropriate and unacceptable."

"You have issues, dude."

"Tell me about it."

"The costume is a bit revealing."

"Alright, maybe it is, but that isn't my problem, society is so fucked up with it's inhibitions, I'm the only bloody sane one."

"I don't entirely disagree, Jake, but there's no point going if you're going to get arrested before we even get to the party."

"I spent two hours on the makeup, Damon, two fucking hours. Fucking wasted."

"There has to be a compromise...."

"Compromise what?"

"I don't know, Jake. Something, anything that leaves a little less to the imagination."

"In less than what, five hours?"

"There has to be something. You must have cycle shorts and a vest or something, you could paint them silver..."

"You can't just paint them silver, Damon, get real."

"Sorry. I'm trying to help here."

"Alright, I know. I. Just. What's already silver that would work. This is fucking impossible, This is..." Jake stopped.

Damon didn't know whether to be worried, or very worried.

"Fucking perfect. It's fucking perfect. I've got it... wait...."

Jake frantically started pulling dirty laundry out from under the bedclothes where he kept it all hidden, finally he pulled out something silver. "Had it here all the time, just wasn't thinking."

Damon smiled, recognizing what Jake was unfolding.

"Environment suit!" Jake fiddled with it for a moment and managed to work out how to detach the jacket and convert the pants to shorts. He quickly pulled off what little costume he was wearing and pulled on the modified environment suit. Then he caught sight of something else that had been in the laundry pile. He grinned. "And to finish off the ensemble, a jaunting belt. How 1970s is that!"

Damon started to relax, buoyed by Jake's enthusiasm.

~Misako, Kristen,~ he called out. ~Just so you know, we reached a compromise. It's not nearly as bad as it could have been.~

"First aid kit?" Kristen seemed surprised. She'd ventured a look inside Misako's violin case.

"You've met my gran."

"Right. I'm taking my phone, that's it."

"No money. The idea of free drink bothers me almost as much as the near miss with Jake's costume did. You think those two have the sense not to get completely paralytic?"

"To be honest, no. But come on, it's just a party. I know you guys have eventful lives, I spent a weekend hiding out with an alien who was on the run from the government not too long ago, and I know there's a psychopathic serial killer still out to get us, but it's Christmas. I hate to say this, but seriously, you need to learn to party once in a while."

"It's not that I can't, because I can, it's just..."

Kristen shook her head. "It's called designated driver complex, I know, because that's my mum's problem as well. You figure one of us always has to stay sober, and none of the rest of us ever stop to think about it, so you always get stuck with it."

"Pretty much," Misako conceded reluctantly,

"We're getting a train back this time." Kristen deliberately confused the metaphor by mixing it with reality. "We don't need a designated driver."

"No? What do you mean no? This is way less revealing, it's..." Jake tried to argue.

Damon was again listening from upstairs. He felt a sinking feeling, this battle was taking all the fun out of the party.

"No means no, Jacob. Try again."

Damon wasn't sure what to say. This time he had to agree with Jake, this time he couldn't see anything wrong with the costume.

"I told you it was more about that bloody pizza," Jake ranted as he stormed back into the room a second time.

"Look, mate, take the costume with you, change when we get to Kristen's," he suggested, trying to pre-empt Jake from doing anything too silly.

"Damon, you're underestimate my mom here. She's suspicious now, she thinks I'm going to try something, which is fair enough because this time I totally am. But whatever I do, it can't be the obvious, because she'll be looking for it. I guarantee she'll check my bag."

Damon tried to think for a minute. "So jaunt out and stash the costume somewhere nearby and we can pick it up on the way."

Jake nodded. "Something like that. Needs to be somewhere safe, and I'm guessing she'll check my bag when I get back tomorrow as well."

"So?"

Jake smiled, picked up his phone and dialed.

"Kath, worked out what you're wearing to Wimbledon yet?' he enquired. "You know you hurt me when you say stuff like that... Well, yes actually I do need a favor, nothing serious, just, need to stash a bag at your house for a few days... No, nothing like that, just a fancy dress costume, not allowed to wear it to a party... Yeah, well, you're someone I would call impartial, I'll bring it over and you can tell me if you think it's indecent."

Damon had ended up being the one to take the costume over to Kath's house, Jake still had a costume to work out. Anyway it was only a few streets away, it hadn't taken long.

He got back to discover Jake had raided his dad's wardrobe. A kipper tie, brown wide lapeled jacket, and flares. It didn't quite work with the Ziggy Stardust makeup, but at least it was in keeping with the right decade. And it passed muster with Jake's mother, which was the main thing.

"Let me see in the bag," she intercepted them as Jake limped down the stairs. He wasn't wearing the leg brace, the limp was entirely fake, he had to be careful not to respond too quickly.

~Told you she wouldn't trust me,~ Jake observed silently.

Judy Laris rifled through the bag's contents.

"Satisfied?" Jake asked, intentionally smugly.

That wound her up, which had pretty much been Jake's intent. "Okay, Damon, your bag too," she intoned. "And no, I don't trust you, Jacob. Seventeen years of experience tells me you're trying to pull a fast one here. And I'm probably not going to stop you, although I can't work out exactly how it is you're pulling it off. But now at least if you do get arrested then I can claim plausible deniability. I did everything humanly possible to try and stop you."

~Is that what you mean by a case of her weird logic?~ Damon asked quizzically as his bag was searched as well.

Jake managed to hold off laughing until they were out the front door and around the side of the house headed for his car. His fake limp lasted about as long.

"Bloody hell, Jake, that costume is incredible. Not indecent at all, I don't get it." Kristen was genuinely impressed.

The two hour drive down to Eastleigh had been uneventful, the afternoon spent Christmas shopping had been fun, now it was early evening and they were getting ready for the party.

Even Misako conceded Jake's costume was pretty impressive, with one reservation. "Environment suit? Jaunting belt? I thought that stuff was meant to go back in the vault?"

Jake quickly sidestepped the implication he was lazy and irresponsible. "It was, it will, I just haven't got round to it yet. Love the Cathy Gale look by the way."

Misako corrected him. "It's a gangster's moll."

Jake shrugged. "I thought it looked more like Cathy Gale."

"Who's Cathy Gale?" Kristen asked.

"Some guys get their first taste of moral corruption when they find their dad's old collection of playboy magazines in the closet. Jake got it bad, what he found hidden in his dad's closet were a bunch of DVDs of this old TV show called 'The Avengers' from the 1960s. Corrupted him something serious," Damon revealed, much to Jake's embarrassment.

"So what's she like this Cathy Gale?"

Jake would have preferred the conversation to end right there. Damon, on the other had, was more than happy to oblige. "Strong, alluring, intelligent. Into a bit of bondage."

Kristen laughed. "Bloody hell, is that Jake drooling, that's the first time I ever saw Jake drool."

Misako smiled, slowly starting to get into the spirit of the party. "The mysteries of the universe unravel, and we finally have the answer to the deepest secret of them all. We finally know what gets Jake hot."

Jake was squirming, it was the first time Damon had ever seen Jake wound up to the point he was squirming before. Squirming, blushing, and...

"Watch out mate, those environment suits leave little to the imagination if you get too excited," Damon had finally figured out why Jake's mother had objected to the costume. It was a little tight and it left nothing to the imagination.

"Will you lot, just, all fuck off," Jake objected.

Damon shook his head. "I'm not taking the piss, I'm happy for you. Gives me genuine hope you might just see some naughty action one day."

Jake shook his head, conceding defeat for once. "So, are we standing around bitching, then, or are we going to this party?"

Short Cuts

The clapping started. Clapping in time to the music. Misako found herself joining in. She had to be pissed. She was enjoying herself. It was Christmas. She wasn't even too bothered by the attention Jake was drawing up there on the makeshift stage. He was dancing something between a limbo and a belly dance, while carrying two candles. Looked dangerous. Looked like he was having the time of his life. Putting on a show, everyone watching, everyone clapping. Clapping in time to the wild abandon of it all.

The place was dark, the place was dingy, the place was dirty. It was a student bar on campus, Misako hadn't expected any different. No one cared, everyone was pissed. They were students, that was the way of things.

Damon arrived back with more drinks, offering one to Misako. She stared at it for a moment. Confronting a psychological boundary in her mind. This would be her fifth drink. One more alcoholic drink than she'd ever had in one evening in her life before. But it was Christmas. She accepted it and took a swig, and that was that taboo broken.

It wasn't that Misako was intentionally boring, she was just careful. She didn't like making mistakes, mistakes had consequences, mistakes could hurt people. Kristen had been right about the designated driver complex thing. Misako hated it when she wasn't in control of herself, she always had to be the serious one. And, yes, that made having fun pretty difficult at times, but it kept her safe. Except that right now she felt more safe than she'd felt in a long time. She'd let herself go and was genuinely having fun, and for the first time ever she wasn't feeling guilty about that. She felt content.

The moment was too good to waste, Misako pulled the drink away from Damon, sat it on the table, and grabbed his hand. "Jake looks lonely up there. Come on."

Damon looked at her in momentary disbelief before giving in and allowing himself to be dragged up onto the dance floor.

Damon spun around on the dance floor. He didn't know how to dance, what the hell was he doing? The world in turn spun it's way around him in slow motion. He'd been to parties before, but not like this one. Not with so many people. Not with so many people he didn't know. Not with so many drunk people he didn't know. The music was loud, loud to the point he couldn't hear himself think. The telepathic noise was deafening as well. All the people spilling thoughts and feelings intensified by the music, by the lights, by the alcohol, by the other drugs half the people there were on. Every emotion imaginable. Lust, desire, frustration, fear, disappointment, coming at him from every direction. It was an experience like no experience he'd ever known.

The strobe lights kicked in, turning the dance floor into a series of flash photographs, timeless images burning themselves into his memories. Jake demonstrating an almost unnatural flexibility in his dancing, Misako watching, falling about in tears of laughter, Kristen making out with some guy over in the corner. Memories of people having wild and crazy fun.

And Damon, Damon feeling more connected with reality than he'd ever felt before. For once he didn't feel like the outsider. He was at a loud and raucous party with the best friends he'd ever had. People who were having just as much fun as he was. He could connect with that fun, live it, feed on it. They all could, they were all telepathic. The fun resonated, echoed and became amplified by the shared experience.

The shared experience made the moment perfect.

Jake had fallen over, was being helped up by one of the judges of the fancy dress contest. He was laughing, shouting, gesturing. All the time Damon had known Jake their world had been so much about pain and fear and uncertainty, and in this one moment all that was gone, replaced by a feeling of unrestrained joy. Jake caught his eye, and just smiled an understanding smile.

Damon was pulled away from the moment, Misako put her arm around his shoulder to try and get his attention, gesturing across in the direction of Kristen who had a bemused desperation showing on her face. Damon nodded, he'd got the message, and headed over to rescue her from a guy who was getting a little more serious than Kristen wanted right now.

Kristen gratefully accepted Damon's invitation to get up and dance. The guy who'd been trying to chat her up had taken the hint and had reluctantly headed off in search of more to drink.

Kristen conceded a little guilt, the guy really had liked her, and maybe she had led him on a little too far. He wasn't exactly experienced, and that was the first time he'd ever succeeded in getting as far as a serious snog at a party, an achievement that partly offset his disappointment that she'd turned down an offer to go back to his room.

Her rejection had hurt the guy, she knew it had. She hated doing that, hated letting people down. She liked people to like her, and knowing how much her actions hurt them could be a burden at times. That was one of the downsides to empathy, she was forced to feel the disappointment she was handing out.

Then again, empathy had its compensations. Knowing how Damon was perfectly happy to head over and rescue her was one, knowing he was motivated only by friendship, that was another. She wasn't left with any feeling she'd been imposing on him to get his help, or that there was any expectation she owed him anything in return.

These were real friends. So different from the people at school she called friends, people like Mary Buchanan who always put a price on a favors, and who would stab her in the back in an instant if Kristen strayed into becoming an inconvenience.

The curious thing about empathy was that it made it impossible to be a shallow and empty person like that. Kal had taught her that. Kal the alien she'd had the hots for. Made her realize just how special finding the right telepathic guy would be. The ability to share feelings directly and completely, she couldn't begin to imagine how intense an experience like that would be. Anything less would be selling herself short. That was why she couldn't have gone back with the poor guy who tried chatting her up, he was cute enough, it wasn't his fault he was human.

Her luck with guys would change one day. Until then, she was happy to enjoy the company of a bunch of friends who meant everything to her. The party was turning out to be the most fun party she'd ever been to. It was so cool that she'd been able to get the tickets, so fantastic that the others had agreed to come along. She got a kick out of being able to do something good for them. Kristen was having the best Christmas ever.

"I can't promise the winner a week of debaucherous sex and free booze, unless of course I get an invitation to go along..." There was whistling as the DJ opened the envelope that didn't actually contain anything and was for dramatic purposes only. "Except, the winner is so hot that I don't think he'll have a problem getting all the sex he wants. The winner of a week in a villa in Ibiza next summer, provided by SST, your friendly campus travel specialist, wherever you want to go, whatever you want to see, check out SST," he awkwardly completed the obligatory advertising. "Right, the winner..." the DJ paused as improbably longly as a game show host. "Can we get a drum roll here?"

"Got no drums," someone shouted apologetically from the side of the stage.

"Fuck the drums then. The winner is Ziggy Stardust."

Jake found himself thrust center stage to wild applause.

He enthusiastically grabbed the microphone from the DJ. "Shit, well, you're all invited to come with me," Jake shouted back at the crowd. "Except anyone with a disease they got from having too much sex." He made a mock gesture of staring carefully at the sea of faces. "Looks like I'm going on my own, I'll have to make my own entertainment," he joked, waving his hand around suggestively. The room fell about laughing. "I'd like to thank the little people who made this possible, only there aren't any because I did this costume all myself." He waited for the laughter to subside. "Ibiza. So what's wrong with Ibiza then that they have to give the bloody holidays away?"

The applause broke out again. He was half way off the stage when he stopped. "Hold on, there is one person I want to thank publicly, the competition judge." He waited while the judge was pushed reluctantly onto the stage as well. Jake handed the microphone back to the DJ and proceeded to give the judge an inappropriately lingering kiss, prompting another round of cheers.

Then, triumphantly waving the tickets in the air, Jake headed back towards Misako, Kristen and Damon.

It was funny, Jake contemplated, he'd never been particularly attracted to being the center of attention before, but after so many months of being forced to keep a low profile, he actually enjoyed the opportunity to rebel and make a complete idiot of himself up there. As of today, the guy with red hair was public enemy number one, the guy wouldn't be able to move freely any more. Jake finally didn't have to keep a low profile any more.

For once it didn't matter that he was being irresponsible. For once even Misako wasn't getting on his case about it. And even if the competition had been fixed, it didn't matter, Jake was having a blast.

More drinks, a lot more dancing, the party actually seemed to be getting even better. Damon had learned that there were ways in which his Spider-man costume was as revealing as Jake's costume, and Kristen was getting snap happy with the camera on her mobile phone. There were a lot of things for her to take pictures of, most of them arrestable offenses.

And then suddenly the lights went on and the music stopped. For a moment no one seemed to know what was going on. People were squinting to see as their eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness of the fluorescents.

Jake, Damon, Misako and Kristen found themselves instinctively edging towards an exit, fearing the worst.

"Sorry, guys," The DJ announced after a moment or two of confusion. "Campus security just said we had to stop. We were only meant to be going until two, and apparently there were complaints about the noise. So, shit way to end the evening, but, take your drinks with you, have a great Christmas, and we'll see you all next term."

People milled around for a moment wondering if it was some kind of joke, until they spotted the campus security guards in the doorway. A few girls who had ended up topless quickly retrieved their errant items of clothing as the crowd began to reluctantly disperse.

Alright, it had got noisy, it had got more than a little out of hand with the exotic dancing competition that Jake had inspired, but it was unfortunate the anticlimax kind of a way it had all ended.

Jake got quickly dressed again, even if he was a little unsteady on his feet. He hadn't quite ended up losing all his clothes, but it had come pretty close.

Then, exhausted, drunk and happy, the four of them had stumbled out into the night.

Someone had had too much to drink.

"Set my alarm, turn on my charm, that's because I'm a good old fashioned lover boy," Jake was singing at the top of his voice as he walked down the road with Damon. They were staggering along, arms around each other, somehow managing to support each other in a way that implied neither quite had the ability to stand up on his own.

Way, way too much to drink. Both of them.

"Hey boy where'd you get it from, hey boy, where did you go?" Damon continued.

They were singing the same song, but not quite at the same time. It was painful to have to listen to. Okay, that wasn't entirely true. Jake was atrocious. Damon, it turned out, wasn't actually all that bad a singer.

They were on a mission. The mood of victory was so infectious that Jake and Damon seemed determined to wake everyone up to join in the celebration. Only because Jake had won first prize, of course.

"I learned my passion in the good old fashioned school of lover boys," they managed to sing at the same time in disharmony.

Kristen and Misako held back a few steps so they could watch, laugh, and be ready to take embarrassing pictures.

They were on their way to the train station. The party getting raided by campus security guards hadn't been such a bad thing in the end, they'd probably never have left in time otherwise. As it was they still needed to get a serious move on, it was a twenty minute walk to the station and the last train back was due imminently. They really couldn't afford to miss it.

"Just take me back to yours, that will be fine,"

"Come on and get it!" Jake sung, synching up with Damon for a moment, then stopped, kind of realizing what he was saying.

Damon didn't take advantage of the slip. "Don't worry, lover boy, your little botty is safe with me."

Jake made a shushing gesture that kind of went wrong, his finger up against Damon's lips instead of his own. "I'm wearing underpants woven from an alien fabric that makes kevlar look like a wet paper bag," he whispered. "My little botty is safe from everyone, Not even Captain Jack could surprise me from behind, and that's whether he's armed with his sonic lipstick or not."

"It's Sarah Jane that has the sonic lipstick..." Damon pointed out pedantically.

"And where the fuck do you think she got it from?" Jake implied suggestively.

The pair of them creased up laughing.

"Oooh, let me feel your heartbeat." Damon was singing. With the arm he already had around Jake's shoulder he reached down to put a hand on Jake's chest, jokingly feeling Jake's heartbeat for real.

Jake titled his head perversely, "Grow faster, faster."

"What the hell is up with your heartbeat Jake?" Damon shouted, managing to sound concerned in spite of how completely rat-arsed he was.

"Fuck the fuck off," Jake sung.

"That isn't in the song. What are you on, Jake?"

"That guy who was judging the competition, he was giving me poppers."

Damon frowned. "Shit, Jake, I though we'd backed off doing that kind of stuff."

"Everything's alright, just hold on tight, that's because I'm a good old fashioned lover boy."

"Jake, focus," Damon tried to prompt him.

"It's poppers, Damon, what danger are poppers going to be when I'm wearing alien technology reinforced underwear?"

"What are you guys whispering about?" Misako shouted.

"Jake's telling me all about the improper attention he was getting from that fancy dress competition judge," Damon shouted back.

"He was trying to pick you up?" Kristen asked, sounding surprised.

"You had two blokes try to pull you, what are you

complaining about?" Jake threw back.

"Shagging a clueless drunk fresher in a pizza strewn, rat infested hall of residence on a bed with sheets washed so infrequently that they're stiffer than he is? I've got more class than that, Jake," Kristen countered.

"Jake had three blokes try to pull him." Damon announced, sensing that Jake would rather not have had that fact made public.

Misako smirked. "Wearing that lack of a costume, I'm not surprised."

"Won me the contest," Jake reminded her,

Kristen wasn't going to let him get away with that. "And, as we've just established, the head judge was one of the blokes hitting on you."

"In fairness to Jake, no one could have known the judge had a questionable fetish for silver lurex." Misako uncharacteristically defended him.

"He did?" Jake asked, smirking innocently.

"That's not why he won though. The fix was more to do with the sponsorship deal, it was the tour operator who put up the prize that bribed the judge." Damon revealed.

"Paid off?" Kirsten asked.

Jake shook his head, serious for a moment. "Not exactly with money. He was stoned, I saw way more in his mind than anyone my age has any business knowing about. But the competition was totally fixed."

"We can't accept the holiday then, can we?" Misako was suspicious.

"I think I already did accept it. Look, turning it down would have created a scene, we're supposed to be keeping a low profile here, remember," Jake confessed, although aware that his argument about the low profile was somewhat flawed.

"But, it's a holiday for university students," Kristen wasn't convinced. "I mean, we're not exactly university students. What happens when the tour operator finds out we're under age."

"It's for next summer, I'll be eighteen by then. So will Misako."

Misako laughed unexpectedly. "That's fine. You children don't have to come."

Kristen wasn't having any of that. "Sun, sea, sand, sex, booze? Just try and stop me."

"Reindeer roasting on an open fire, Santa sharpening his knives..." Damon sung to the tune of a popular Nat King Cole Christmas favorite.

Jake was so amused he had to sit on the ground for a moment or two.

It might only have been a twenty minute walk to the station, but they'd only made it half way before a detour was necessary. The detour had taken them through a locked iron gate and into the quieter recesses of a local graveyard. Jake was wearing so little that it had taken him only a moment to be done.

"And folks dressed up like dollar whores..."

"Come on, get a move on or we'll be late," Jake pushed as he sat there.

Damon ignored him, still singing. "To know if reindeer really taste good fried..."

Jake shook his head, completely bemused.

Damon, for his sins, was fighting Spider-man. His costume was an impractical sod, it was a one piece with an opening at the back that he had to pull over his head and pull practically down to his knees to get the clearance he needed to pee without inviting the danger of splash back. It had been hard enough to manage in the bogs at the student union bar, behind the bushes in the cemetery it was one fucking performance too far. He didn't want to be going through the hassle, not on a bollock freezingly cold December night like this one. On the other hand, it was marginally preferable to pissing his pants. It didn't help that Jake was sat there watching and not even trying to keep a straight face.

"Although it's been said many time, many ways..."

"Look, Damon Jackson, fuck the Christmas Song, it sucks. Get on with taking a piss."

"At least I don't smell so bad." Damon argued. "You stink of sweat, and from throwing up, and something else even worse."

"It's all this make up. And what's your problem? It's not like we're planning on getting cozy or anything."

"Thank fuck."

Damon got done and they headed back to where Misako and Kristen were waiting for them. The four of them departed quickly, time was short and they were already going to have to run.

"Hey, cute arse, Damon." Kristen joked.

"Piss off, Kristen, you didn't fucking take a photograph did you?" Damon noticed the cellphone that a certain Barbarella had once kept clipped to her utility belt being provocatively brandished.

"I'll show that Mary-bitch-Buchanan and I don't care what she got the bloody school football team to do for her, my phone still has more first party guy-porn on it than hers has."

That even stopped Jake in his tracks.

"Girls do this?" Damon asked him incredulously.

"Not at my school. Not that I know," Jake conceded.

"Good," Damon stated with a much restrained feeling of inferiority. "I couldn't deal with your school being that much less sad than mine."

The train was already stopped at the station as they came running towards the bridge. It started to pull away just as they crossed over. Jake kept on running, the futility not quite sinking in so quickly, he arrived on the platform and barely managed to catch up with the last carriage of the train as it accelerated away.

Out of breath he turned and vented his anger on Damon. "That bloody Spider-man costume, I knew it was going to be a problem, I had scissors, I should have made you cut a bloody winky-hole in it. We missed the fucking train, you twat."

"There's another train," Damon put up a nominal defense.

"Yeah, in an hour and a half. No way. No fucking way. We'll get a taxi. You're fucking paying, Damon."

Kristen was already on it. She shook her head as she got off the phone. "This time on a Sunday morning, they're kind of busy, it's going to be over an hour."

"Sod that." Jake wasn't happy. "Alright, we'll walk."

"It'll take an hour to walk," Kristen relayed the bad news.

"Fucking..." Jake was angry, but he could see there was no point finishing the sentence, Damon was kneeling at the edge of the platform throwing up vigorously on the train track. The last burst of running had shaken him up more than his stomach had been able to cope with.

"I'm okay walking," Misako tried to diffuse the tension.

Damon exhausted his need to vomit and continued to stare at the train track.

Jake remained silent, accepting the futility of his anger. There was an uncomfortable stand off.

"Fuck it. We jaunt," Damon finally suggested. It had to be possible and he was sick of being afraid of the risk.

"What? How?" Misako challenged.

Damon was trying to remember what John had explained. "Look," he told them, wiping his mouth and pulling himself to his feet. "Focus on the track, you can follow it, we're going three stops, we can sense the stations, that's all we need for navigation. We can do this."

"If we can stay focused." Kristen reminded him.

Damon felt confident, "I'm not that pissed, I'm not going to lose focus."

"Right. Look, I understand the theory, but none of us have ever tried this before," Misako remained cautious despite the fact that she was drunk.

Jake seemed to be thinking furiously, his anger with Damon forgotten. "How the hell do we learn if we never try?"

"I'm not disagreeing," Misako could see danger, any attempt to caution Jake was as likely to backfire and make his determination to take the risk even more resolute. "I'm just saying there might be easier ways to start out learning."

"If you're the kind of loser who wants to learn to walk before you run, that's fine. I'm with Damon." Jake argued.

"It's just, I have a really bad feeling about this," Misako made a final attempt to convince Jake to reconsider.

Jake was dismissive. "Seriously, what could possibly go wrong?"

Kristen made an attempt to be practical. "It's easier to do this in pairs, the minds reinforce each other, increase the power. That's what Kal told me anyway."

Jake nodded. "Makes sense. So, I'll go with Damon, if we make it, then you two can follow on."

"The state that the two of you are in? No. No way. Damon, try and think rationally for a minute." For once Misako felt she actually managed to get through.

Damon conceded. "We should also consider the fact that Kristen probably has more experience than me at this."

Jake shrugged. "Okay, me and Kristen?"

There was a reluctant consensus.

Jake and Kristen stepped back from the edge of the train platform and glanced around, there was no one watching. Jake held out a hand and pressed his fingertips against Kristen's. Kristen tried not to think about how totally Mary Buchanan would misinterpret this, if only she could have gotten a photograph.

She locked her mind on the train tracks, focussing on remembering what Kal had shown her. She could follow the track, she could see spaces and space between spaces. One, two, three platforms, the image was getting vague, indistinct, but she had some kind of lock on a destination, she could sense where the platform was, and that there was no one around there either. That was it, that was all she needed.

She connected minds with Jake and they started to jaunt.

Jake giggled. ~If you wanted a picture you could have given the phone to Misako. All I'll say, is that Mary Buchanan is a total slut,~ he pointed out, not quite managing to maintain his detachment now that their minds were linked.

The comment distracted Kristen. She tried to connect with the train track again, but it was gone. Everything was gone, there was nothing at all to lock on to any more.

Damon frowned. "Is it meant to take this long?"

"Bloody Jake. He never listens." Misako objected, although she could see her objection was pointless.

"I can sense them still, just, not getting any real response from them. Can't quite see where they are."

"Is it just me, or does Jake seem short of breath to you?"

"He was doing poppers at the party," Damon admitted.

Misako was exasperated. "Irresponsible bloody idiot."

"Something's up, I'm not getting any response from him, or Kristen either."

"We can't jaunt to them if they aren't visualizing."

"I don't know. I think we can. I've got a lock on him, I'm pretty certain we can get there." Damon wasn't sure how that was going to work, but it felt like a possibility. "Not sure I can control exactly where, but it has to be somewhere nearby anyway."

"Are we desperate enough to risk that?"

~Jake, Kristen, for fuck's sake answer,~ Damon called out.

Misako and Damon exchanged glances. Desperation seemed like a rational next step. "What can possibly go wrong?" Misako mimicked cynically.

Damon held his hand out. Misako looked at it hesitantly for a moment before reaching out and touching his fingertips. Something had gone wrong, and getting angry wasn't going to help right now. They would have to save Jake before she could give him the lecture she was planning.

Misako and Damon jaunted.

Time Without Time

"Happy birthday to you."

Misako was in a room, a living room. Sort of tidy, but with signs it had been tidied in something of a hurry. And not all that clean either on closer inspection. There was dust on the surfaces, a carpet that hadn't been vacuumed in weeks. And yet it was an honest neglect. This straggle of people that Misako found herself staring at, they were trying, it was just that life was crushing them so completely that they couldn't keep up with themselves.

"Happy birthday to you."

Misako spotted the cake on the table. Store bought strawberry sponge cake, not really identifiable as a birthday cake at all, other than on account of the sixteen candles in it. There were a few balloons hanging limply, streamers across the walls, it was all very subdued, very uncomfortable.

Four people. One adult, three kids, Misako didn't know any of them. She felt like she was intruding. What the hell was she doing there? How the hell had she got there? Was this Jake and Kristen jaunting randomly somewhere and her jaunting even more randomly somewhere vaguely nearby, intruding on some complete stranger's birthday party. Misako tried to back discretely away before any of them noticed her presence.

~Jake, Damon, Kristen, anyone. I'm in a bad place here, I need an exit fast, emergency type fast, before I'm spotted.~

There was no reply, no assurance the others had heard her, no assurance that they even existed.

"Happy birthday dear Leanne,"

Happy? The girl wasn't happy, she wasn't happy at all. Misako tried not to pry, but this Leanne's emotions were so overpowering that Misako couldn't help herself. An emptiness was tearing the birthday girl apart, the same emptiness was tearing apart every person in that room. But there was some common shared delusion thing going on as well, every one of them was pretending to be happy so as not to spoil the moment for everyone else.

The party Misako had crashed was a tragic, travesty of a birthday party. She felt so sad, so sorry for these people, but there was nothing she could do, she had to get out of there and get out quickly. She was astounded she'd made it this long without anyone noticing her, but then for now they were all rather too focused on the out of tune singing.

"Happy birthday to you."

The girl Leanne tried to smile as the song came to an end.

Misako realized her time was up, when they turned to cut the cake it would be all over. She anxiously looked across at the window, if she could just jaunt outside, that would be enough, then she could worry about trying to work out where she was and how she'd gotten there.

Misako stopped, puzzled. Very puzzled. It was light outside, that made no sense. In Southampton it had been the early hours of the morning, how could it suddenly be light outside in Eastleigh? How bloody far had she jaunted?

She glanced at the clock. Mid afternoon. How the hell had that happened? How could jaunting go against the flow of time? Bloody Jake. Bloody Jake and his irresponsible ideas. Alright, even if it had been Damon's idea, and Kristen doing the jaunting, Misako was sure it was all somehow Jake's fault.

She looked back out the window, it was hopeless, Misako was in a tower block, at the angle she was stuck looking from she couldn't see the ground. There was no way out.

The girl turned to blow out the candles on the cake, everyone clapped, the girl turned to her dad, tears in her eyes, looking straight past Misako, looking straight through Misako.

Misako gave up pretending. "Okay, hi, I'm sorry, I am totally sorry, I just walked into the wrong flat, seriously, that lift, I must have got out on the wrong floor, I totally don't know how that happened. I am so, so sorry. I better go. Sorry," she gushed and made for the door.

No one reacted.

Misako ignored the silence, she didn't want to get into explanations, all that mattered now was getting out of there before it got too awkward. Without waiting for a response she went to pull the door open, then backed off confused. She tried again, but the same thing happened, her hand just seemed to go right through the handle.

She spun round, the situation had seriously crossed the line, it wasn't just awkward, it was worrying. Across the room Leanne was opening a birthday present that her dad had just given her, there was nothing in her behavior to indicate she'd heard one word of Misako's apologetic outburst.

"Sorry to interrupt..." Misako tried again. No one appeared to notice. She stepped forward and waved a hand in front of the face of a boy she assumed was Leanne's younger brother. He didn't flinch, the boy was totally oblivious to her presence.

Alright, she wasn't dead, this wasn't a particularly logical place to want to haunt. It had to be a jaunting mistake then. Like she'd jaunted and not quite arrived properly, that she was close enough to normal space to see it, but not to touch it.

So if it was a jaunting mistake, then jaunting again might just fix it. Misako walked over to the window, no longer worried about being seen. She was only about three floors up, she could see down to a bunch of parking garages below. Easy, she could just jaunt down there. Problem solved.

She fixed the destination in her mind, saw the destination and her current location as one and the same, the same way she always did, then tried to step through between them.

It didn't work. She couldn't jaunt. Something was seriously wrong. She glanced back at the girl who was now crying uncontrollably and being comforted by her dad. Misako felt totally uncomfortable watching, she didn't belong there. The girl's emotions hurt, the first birthday she'd had since her mother had died, her dad was desperately trying to hold it together, and he was failing.

Misako didn't want to see this, her mind flashing back to her sixth birthday, watching her gran break down in tears trying to explain why Misako's parents weren't there, why they'd never be there again. Just a tragic accident that forced a little girl to grow up perhaps a little to quickly. Misako had come to terms with the loss years ago, but sometimes, just sometimes, the memories of the fear and emptiness came back. She had to get out of there.

Okay, so if her hand could go through the door, then maybe the whole of her could. Misako headed back over to the door and tried to walk though. She blinked involuntarily as her eyes warned her she was about to do a faceplant into fiberboard.

But there was no impact. She walked out of not being anywhere into being nowhere. The room was gone. It it's place was emptiness, darkness. A great big nothing stretched out in every direction in front of her, into the infinite distance.

"Sir,"

Jake stifled a laugh, the kid looked so earnest, like he actually meant it. Like he actually thought that was an appropriate way to address Jake.

So it was a hallucination. Had to be a hallucination, nobody called him that, not if they harbored any hope of having him take them seriously. Having worked out that none of what he was seeing was real, Jake took a moment to be impressed by how convincing the illusion was. Even the nuances of the repressed panic in the mind of the kid who was staring up at him were completely believable. Spooky looking kid, looked half like Damon, only, half not like Damon. It wasn't Damon. A good few years younger, fourteen, maybe even only thirteen. It wasn't anybody, and yet it was someone Jake knew really well. It was a confusion of people exactly the way he got confused about people in dreams. So maybe this was a dream, then.

"What's happening?" Jake asked.

"We take out the generators, we take out the psionic damping field," the kid reported.

It would have helped Jake if he'd had a clue what a psionic damping field was. Maybe this was a delusion, or some kind of bizarre tripping thing. Except he wasn't high on drugs, not this time. Well, not hallucinogenics anyway. This was something much weirder. And Jake felt oddly less inebriated and way more rational than he figured he ought to have been feeling on account of how much he'd had to drink at the party.

"Survival time down there after the generators blow?" Jake found himself asking, he wasn't quite sure why.

"A second, maybe two."

"Time taken to jaunt out?" Jake persisted.

"I can get it down to two seconds sometimes."

That was pretty impressive, actually for a fourteen year old kid that was bloody impressive. Jake had no clue how to do jaunt any faster than four seconds. But four seconds or two seconds, it didn't really matter, the sums still didn't add up. The kid was being cute, but not realistic.

"So, what exactly qualifies you for the mission then?" Jake asked sarcastically.

"I'm expendable, sir."

Jake felt cold. This was wrong, this was all wrong. The kid was completely serious, the kid meant it. A fourteen year old volunteering eagerly for a suicide mission. It was a joke, it had to be a joke, but there was no humor in the kid's eyes. There was nothing there more than a stark acceptance of an unyielding reality. Whatever cause it was they were fighting for, this boy was ready and willing to die for it. Jake took a step back, the illusion was getting uncomfortable.

Somehow it felt too real to dismiss as easily as he wanted. Even if the kid wasn't real, Jake felt the need to argue with him, talk the kid out of it, make the little idiot understand, life wasn't something to throw away so casually, whatever the cause.

But how did he argue with someone when he didn't know what motivated them, what drove them? How could he find the words? Except, he knew the exact words, words from memories of events he couldn't remember.

"You like that Sophie, I know you do," Jake challenged. "But you've never even kissed her, never kissed any girl yet. Never got falling down drunk, never got yourself seduced into doing almost unspeakable things by an alien princess... kid there are so many insane pleasures in life you're talking about giving up on. You're not thinking this through. Other people can fight this battle."

"No, I haven't had sex, but sex isn't the be all and end all of existence and I've always been realistic about my chances of surviving long enough to have that kind of life." The kid argued with a heartfelt passion that Jake just couldn't connect with. "Every day that passes is a day lived on borrowed time. I've always known that, so I've done other things, I've done crazy fun things most people could only dream of. I may not be old but I've made the most of the time I've had. I've had to. I've seen pain and suffering on a scale you couldn't comprehend. I've seen death, too much death. I saw the end of the world once, and it wasn't pretty. And it'll happen again if you don't stop the bastard once and for all. I can't stop him, I'm just a kid, but you can, I know you can, and all I can do is try and help give you a fighting chance. By giving up my life, this is how I help."

It was an illusion. It had to be. Nothing more.

So, if it wasn't real, how come the kid had so many memories burning in his eyes? Memories of experiences Jake couldn't even begin to get his head around. One memory in particular, a memory that had forged who this kid was, a memory the kid couldn't ever escape from, a memory that had haunted the kid since he was three years old, a memory of desolation, of fear and emptiness and tears as he stared out across a wasteland. The intensity of the kid's thoughts burned through Jake's mind. A realization, an understanding followed.

Understanding what the hell? Jake was watching himself from a distance, watching himself have the conversation with the kid. He was reading his own thoughts, but he couldn't see what the hell it was that he understood now. His own thoughts seemed more opaque than the kid's did. And why did the other Jake look so old, positively ancient, like he was in his twenties?

"Two seconds?" The other Jake asked.

The kid smiled resolutely. "I can do this. Let me do this."

The other Jake hesitated. "Go. But you will make every effort to survive short of compromising the mission, and that's an order, kid."

"Yes sir," the kid nodded, trying to act all professional. "And in case I don't see you again, it's been a privilege and an honor to have known you." The kid was starting to lose it, starting to cry, the facade was all bullshit, he was just a frightened little boy.

Jake wanted to punch himself. This was stupid, this was ridiculous, nothing warranted sending some poor kid to an almost certain death, even if none of this was real. If it was so important then this other Jake should bloody well go do it himself.

The kid had turned to leave and the other Jake had grabbed the kid's shoulder, for a moment Jake thought he'd had a change of heart and was going to do the right thing, but all he did was wipe the kid's tears away, saying something, only, Jake couldn't decipher what it was that the other him was saying.

Jake felt helpless, confused. It was him giving the orders, and yet not him, it wasn't any aspect of himself that he recognized. At least, no aspect of him that existed except in his deepest, darkest fears.

He glanced around the dark, cold silence that engulfed him. This place was no place, there was nothing there. Nothing but an echo from his subconscious that was bringing his darkest fears to life and acting them out as he watched.

He dismissed the illusion, and the rest was silence.

"Hi, I'm Gabe," Gabe held his hand out.

The guy was smarmy. Not fake in any way, just that he was trying too hard. The guy was desperate to be liked. Which made no sense, he was cute enough that he really didn't need to be trying that hard at all. And Kristen had the weirdest sensation she'd seen the guy somewhere before.

She shook his hand and he grinned at her.

"So you do this, like, all the time? Inviting strange guys to come on holiday with you?" Gabe was hesitant, he stumbled over the words. He was convinced that he really was some kind of strange. He had issues of self confidence that Kristen recognized easily. Same issues she'd had herself once. Of course life had led her on a long and strange journey since then, self confidence wasn't much an problem for her any more.

"You aren't strange," she tried to reassure him. "Look, compared to some of the guys I've met in my time, you don't even come close. No offense."

"You hang out with a lot of guys who are certified schizophrenic?" he joked. "I'm not normal, much as I'd love to be."

"You aren't schizophrenic, that was a misdiagnosis. Don't put yourself down," Kristen argued back.

"Figures. I couldn't even get that right. I got nothing."

"No, stop." Kristen wasn't taking it. "Quit putting yourself down. You're cute, what more do you want?"

"I'm cute?" he asked disbelievingly.

"Seriously, cute. Only person I ever met who was cuter was an alien."

"How do you say that with a straight face?"

"Because I mean it."

"You're taking the piss out of me, just like everyone does, and I'm okay with that, I put up with it, but you, you don't even try to make it sound believable. How stupid do you think I am?"

"Back off, Gabe, you're not stupid. I'm serious, aliens are real, and there was this alien, his name was Kal, and he was cute. I never got to see him naked, I admit. Jake and Damon did, but they won't share those particular memories with me. But cute isn't all about looking good naked," Kristen explained, then realized it hadn't helped much. Talking about nudity wasn't the best way to help a guy who was already convinced he was inadequate.

"You can share memories?" Gabe tried to avoid directly referencing the naked thing.

"It's part of the telepathy, part of who we are."

"I heard voices inside my head, talking to me."

"Just telepathy. You always were different, just not in the way you thought."

"I thought I was mad. They told me I was mad."

"They don't understand us. It sucks sometimes, but that's kind of our job, to find people like you and tell you there's nothing wrong with you."

"You really think I'm cute."

Kristen hesitated, but Gabe was starting to listen, so she risked it. "I'd have to see you completely naked to be sure, but, the initial signs are promising," she smiled.

The guy was slightly uncomfortable still, but he was at least trying to understand.

"Can I share something with you, a memory?" he asked hesitantly.

Kristen wasn't quite sure what to expect. She reached out and took his hand, holding it between hers.

She was inside his memories, violating his memories, only, she wasn't so much violating them, she'd been invited in there. But these didn't seem like memories anyone had any business nosing in on. She was in a room, sitting at the side, watching Gabe's parents talking to the psychiatrist.

"There are various options for medication," the doctor was saying. "Most people with schizophrenia lead functional and fulfilling lives these days. We'll combine that with ongoing cognitive behavioral therapy."

"And the drugs help? Don't they have side effects or something, I heard?" The words came from Gabe's mother.

"All drugs have side effects. In this case the side effects are not debilitating. Atypical antipsychotics like Quetiapine, which is the drug I'm going to recommend here, in particular can have a sedative effect, it can also lead to weight gain and in some cases an increased heart rate. That could aggravate any existing heart conditions, but we've done some extensive scans to try and anticipate any problems there. To head off any obesity problems, you might want to think about gym membership. "

She glanced across at Gabe. Well, that kind of explained why the guy was so totally ripped two years later.

Kristen blinked. She was sat in a room, a bedroom, hotel room, something like that. It was hot, sweating hot, no air conditioning. Gabe was sat across the other side of the room, half dressed, watching her suspiciously, like he didn't trust her. Like something had happened.

How the hell had she wound up here all of a sudden? What had happened to the days inbetween? Why couldn't she remember anything of what had happened in those days? What the hell was going on?

And why was it light out? And why wasn't she on the train platform at Eastleigh in the early hours of a cold December morning? For a moment everything had just seemed normal, now it had all gone apeshit on her again.

Jake had been talking about Mary Buchanan, Kristen was confused, how had that resulted in her winding up here?

And who the hell was this Gabe, and how did she know what he looked like naked?

She stared across at him. He was frightened. At the end of his ability to hold himself together. All the work she'd done to pull him away from his insecurities had been blown apart.

Kristen was in the room staring at herself. This was getting seriously weird shit. The Kristen sat there was frightened. The Kristen that was sat there was on some weird guilt trip, convinced she'd let everybody down, that no one was ever going to like her or trust her again after this.

Kristen closed her eyes, clinging onto the only certainty she had left. She wasn't meant to be in this place, wasn't meant to be seeing what she was seeing. She was meant to be at the station in Eastleigh and something had gone seriously wrong, and she was blaming herself, and this was some kind of dream, vision, thing, triggered by the blame. Which was a great explanation, except for the whole Gabe part. Unless he was maybe some kind of personification of the guy she'd rejected at the party.

It didn't much matter though. What mattered was waking up, if she could. She opened her eyes again. Gabe had gone, the other Kristen had gone. Everything had gone, there was only darkness. That wasn't quite the idea of waking up she'd had in mind.

"Stand up Jackson, stand up Lloyd. The two of you will report to the headmaster's office immediately."

Damon stood up nervously. He knew what this was about. He was in trouble, big trouble, and that was fair enough, because what he'd done was wrong, he'd been caught, it was time to face the music.

He stood up and glanced over at Steve. Steve Lloyd was frightened. Afraid he'd get kicked out of school, afraid of the beating he'd get when his father found out. His father could make that belt hurt, he could make it hurt a lot. Damon didn't have that to worry about, only his mother's wrath. She'd shout, she'd be disappointed, and that was the worst for him, he hated it when she was disappointed in him.

Also, his underpants felt funny. He was wearing Y-fronts. He didn't wear Y-fronts any more, he didn't like them. And there was something else wrong, something missing. The underpants felt funny because he didn't have any hair down there. Which made a twisted kind of sense, because he'd been eleven years old when he'd got in trouble for bugging the teachers' staff room.

This was five years ago. So this was a ghost of Christmas past or something like that. He was reliving an old memory. Only, it felt completely real, like he actually was back there. He reached out and ran his fingers across the surface of his desk, feeling the texture. Dreams and hallucinations generally weren't this perfectly nuanced. Maybe this was real. Maybe he was eleven still, and was only having delusions he was five years older.

Except he knew what was going to happen next. He was about to make the biggest mistake he'd ever made in his life. Or... was that a memory of something that would be, or merely a memory of something that might be? If Damon relived the moment, could he make it right this time?

He blinked, and he was stood in front of the headmaster, making his choice. He could see in the headmaster's eyes, see the same thoughts he'd seen all those years ago. The headmaster was afraid. There'd been an allegation against one of the teachers, there'd been a staff meeting, they'd decided not to refer the matter to the police, a lot of things had been said at that meeting, and then they'd discovered the meeting had been bugged. Damon and Steve hadn't heard a thing, the bug had never actually worked, but the headmaster didn't know that. He was worried they'd heard everything.

Damon had known exactly what to say. He'd lied, and he'd gotten away with it. There was no punishment. Steve had got all the blame.

Steve hadn't made it in to school the next day. Or the next week. Damon had seen him once in town two weeks later. He was limping, fractured leg, bruises across his face. He was taken into care shortly after that, Damon had never seen him again.

"I'm guilty. It was all my fault. I did it, Steve had nothing to do with it," Damon stumbled over the words to get them out, desperate to take advantage of his second chance.

The headmaster paid no attention, kept saying the same words he'd said the last time this had happened.

"Listen to me, I'm telling you, I'm guilty," Damon shouted.

It was no good. He blinked, he was in the market place, seeing Steve limping in the other direction. Steve was smiling. It made no sense, except, Damon remembered, he'd been smiling in the market the last time this had happened as well.

"It's okay, seriously," Steve repeated the same words he'd said five years ago. But then he added something he hadn't said back then. "There's this thing about owls, don't ever make assumptions about them." And then he was gone.

Damon blinked. Where the hell was he now?

He had a gun in his hand. He raised the gun, he couldn't work out whether to point it at Jake's head or his chest. Was that Jake? Couldn't possible be Jake. Kind of half looked like him, but the guy was acting way too responsible, standing there, ready to accept the inevitable. What inevitable?

"Do you want him to die quickly or slowly?" Damon found himself asking out loud.

"I like that," a voice he didn't recognize came from behind him. "Perfect obedience. He doesn't question 'should I or shouldn't I?', no, all he wants to know is what my preference is for how he does it. This is why I like him so much." Then the voice seemed to address Damon directly. "Make it slow. I want to watch him suffer."

"Yes sir," Damon answered.

He had no control. He didn't want to answer like that, he didn't want to be stood there, didn't want to be pointing the gun like that. What was the point, he knew about the prime barrier, he could never kill Jake, his 'yes, sir' to the unseen voice made no sense whatsoever.

He pointed the gun at Jake's left leg and pulled the trigger. He watched Jake fall sideways as his leg shattered.

Damon fought hard, tried to stop himself from pulling the trigger a second time. None of this was possible, none of this could be happening. Something was wrong.

The second bullet ripped through Jake's other leg.

Damon couldn't sense a thing. He couldn't sense what Jake was thinking, couldn't sense the pain, couldn't sense the fear. He looked into Jake's eyes and could see nothing more than a stoic acceptance of the inevitable. A peaceful understanding that just made Damon feel even more frustrated and powerless as he fired a third time. Gut shot, intended to cause extensive internal bleeding, as slow a death as could be certain.

He was betraying his best friend. It was as impossible as the idea he could violate the prime barrier, as impossible as the idea Jake could ever be a responsible grown up. This wasn't real, it couldn't be real.

His mind flashed back to that one time, sat out high on the mountainside looking down across the valley, watching the sunset, the night before the assault on the Citadel of Nod. Laughing and drinking and how could he be stood here hurting the best friend he'd ever had? How could he betray the friend who'd saved his life so many times over so many years that he'd lost count?

Except he'd never been to anywhere with as silly a name as the Citadel of Nod, he'd known Jake less than a year, and none of the memories flashing through his head made any sense.

Damon tried to drop the gun, but he had no command over his hand. He tried to look away, but he had no control over his eyes. And in his mind all he could hear were the words of the betrayer, crying out in anger.

It was a nightmare. It was his worst nightmare.

Well, if it was a nightmare then the answer was simple, all he had to do was to wake up. He was done with suffering this.

Damon blinked, and he was alone in the darkness. Which actually wasn't so great, because that was his second worst nightmare ever. And this one wasn't so easy to dismiss, either, because this darkness was real.

Space That Isn't Space

Kristen was falling, in free fall, only without any sensation of movement, so it was maybe more like she was floating. She felt totally disoriented, although to call herself disoriented kind of implied there was a correct orientation, which wasn't obviously true, there wasn't any particular direction that felt like up or down or any which way.

She was also blind, couldn't see anything at all, not even her hand in front of her face. It was difficult to be sure that her hand really was in front of her face. Except that she could touch her nose, so wherever she was there had to be some element of physical reality to the place.

At least she wasn't seeing things any more.

Kristen tried calling out telepathically to the others, but her thoughts seemed to be soaked up by the darkness. She tried shouting, but she could barely even hear her own words, the chances of anyone else being able to hear her seemed remote.

She reached out nervously into the darkness, trying not to think about what might be out there. Probably nothing, it was probably a complete waste of time, but she had to try doing something, anything. Her hand brushed against something warm, fleshy, sticky, and she instinctively pulled back, trying not to freak out.

She floated there a moment, silently panicking, completely unsure what to do. Kristen tried to rationalize, if it felt like warm, sticky flesh then there was a good chance she'd just touched warm, sticky flesh. Cautiously she reached out again. It was a limb, moderately muscular, a leg maybe. Definitely warm, and there was a gentle throbbing, something like a pulse, so someone alive, but there hadn't been any noticeable reaction to her prodding, so probably someone unconscious. And sticky. Smeary, sticky, it was makeup. It was Jake.

Calming down and regaining some confidence she reached out with her other hand, then pulled away even faster than she had the first time. "Sorry, Jake, honest, I didn't mean to touch you there, but I can't see where I'm reaching," she shouted. Right, like that excuse would convince anyone. There was no response.

An idea occurred to her. She grabbed her phone from her belt, it had a key finding mode that let her use the display on it as a flashlight, there might not be much light, but it had to be better than nothing at all.

The vague glimmer of light reflected back off of Jake's silver makeup, lighting him up like a ghost. A ghost hovering in mid air, glowing eerily in a multicolor mist. And upside down. Or, maybe he was the right way up and Kristen was upside down, she couldn't really tell which.

His eyes were closed, she couldn't really tell if Jake was breathing or not. Anxiously she grabbed for his arm and pulled him slowly towards her, or pulled herself towards him, or probably a combination of both. She also managed to swing herself round so that they were at least the same way up, although having done that it was tough to stop Jake rotating away from her. In the end she pretty much had to lock her legs around him to halt the movement, leaving the two of them somewhat inappropriately entwined. She could feel various parts of him pressing into he, it was probably a good thing he was still unconscious at this point.

He was definitely still breathing, she'd managed to work that out. Actually he was breathing quite quickly, but his breathing was shallow and his body was limp. Kristen had no clue what to do. She tried shaking him, that wasn't effective. She tried slapping him gently, which wasn't easy when he was that close to her. That seemed to have more effect.

"What?" Jake groaned sluggishly. "He's going to blow himself up, he's just a kid, I have to stop him."

"Jake," Kristen shouted. She could barely hear him, but he was alive, he was awake, for now that was all that mattered.

"Kristen? Where do you fit into this dream?" Jake was completely out of it.

"You're not dreaming any more, this is real," Kristen got right in Jake's face. "You've been hallucinating, I think it's caused by the sensory deprivation. I had weird visions as well, seriously weird, but they weren't real, Jake. They weren't real at all. Listen to me, try and focus, you have to wake up."

"I was this all powerful general or something, I could give people orders, order them to do anything I wanted. Their lives were my responsibility, mine alone. I ordered one of them to die, and he marched off to kill himself. He was crying, he didn't want to die, but he would have done anything I said. I worked out it wasn't real, I mean, come on, me, no way, I don't do responsibility." Jake struggled to keep his eyes open.

Kristen tried to keep him talking. "I had this vision of a guy, he was being forced to take medication because they thought he was schizophrenic, but he wasn't, and the medication was killing him..."

"I was given this medication once, migraine suppressant they said. The Doctors thought I was borderline schizophrenic. Fucking twats. Why is everything purple, except when it isn't?"

Jake wasn't looking at her, he was unfocussed, staring off into the distance and borderline incoherent, Kristen started to get worried about him.

"The guy was called Gabe, and he was taking a drug called Quetiapine."

"Right. Seems a bit specific to be a random hallucination." Jake drifted into lucidity for a moment.

"I kind of knew the same thing happened to you, I thought for a minute I might be seeing some memory of yours, but Gabe didn't exactly look anything like you. Different color for a start."

"Purple and green and huh? Did you say something?"

"Jake, try and, shit, you're scaring me, Jake."

"Manifestation of inner fears, that's what mine was. Any sign of Misako and Damon? What is up with this place, I can barely breathe. I'm tired. I just want to go back to sleep."

"No, come on Jake, you have to stay awake," Kristen shook him again. "I don't know what the hell is going on. I don't think we're in any immediate danger, but it just feels to me like going to sleep would not be the best idea right now. So come on, talk to me, talk about anything. Tell me why you don't go to student parties as much these days. From what Damon said you used to scam your way into student parties all the time."

"Not got time. Just, got A-levels coming up next year. Need to get past those."

"Responsibility?"

"Fuck off. Just, taking the exams seriously."

"So you want to define the difference between taking the exams seriously and being responsible?"

"Just, totally, fuck off."

Kristen smiled. She was getting to the point she was more comfortable winding him up, and it seemed like the best way to keep him awake right now.

"So, it's Jake the irresponsibly serious then?"

"I don't want anything to do with responsibility, not if it means people have to die."

Kristen decided it would be diplomatic not to push him on that one. "So what's the story on that guy who fixed it for you to win the competition?"

"What guy?"

"The judge guy. The one who was trying to chat you up."

"I didn't set out to get chatted up by him. It's not like I'm gay or anything." Jake's eyes were closed again.

"No, I know," Kristen shook him. "But you have to admit, you send out mixed signals sometimes."

Jake squinted. "Okay, I flirt. I like it when people smile. That isn't a crime. Anyway, what signals do you send out dressed as Barbarella with an enormous big ray gun?"

"The exact signals that I wanted to send out. Not that it did me any good. That's the other side of being telepathic, I could see what they were thinking. One of the guys was too wet, the other was a creep."

"The judge guy after me was creepier. Sold his soul for a blow job. And it wasn't the judge that fixed the competition, it was the rep for the travel agency offering the prize that wanted it fixed. I didn't meet him, I've got no clue what he was after. Anyway, there's always a catch with these free holidays, I'm not exactly counting on it working out. But hey..."

Kristen nodded her agreement. "Good party though. Not quite sure we really fit in with a bunch of students, though. I mean, I loved the wild abandon of it all, but, I don't know I ever see myself as a student, there's just something missing."

"Problem is we don't fit in with a bunch of humans."

Kristen thought for a moment. "You know, I think that's maybe what I was hallucinating about. What it would be like to meet someone I fancied who wasn't human. Funny, I wouldn't have rated the guy as my type, I mean he was cute, but, I always figured I'd go for someone less smarmy. You think I'm shallow?"

Jake didn't answer.

"Jake?" she shook him again.

"Sorry, falling asleep again. I feel so wasted, something seriously wrong with that."

"Stay with me, Jake. Concentrate. Alright, look, we have to work out where we are and how we get out of here."

"Oh, that." Jake mumbled. "I thought that was bloody obvious. Screw up the navigation, you miss and get stuck in hyperspace. That was what John said. Said that was something I didn't want happening. He could be such a twat, except when he wasn't. Had the hots for that Elizabeth, tried to hide it though."

Jake's thoughts were desperately disconnected, but hyperspace made sense. Kal had told her about that. "That way lies bad shit," Kristen contemplated out loud.

"John wouldn't ever use words like shit, too much of a poker up his arse. Too responsible. He said we were alike, and he was right, but that's bullshit."

Jake wasn't making any sense anymore. Kristen tried one last time to get him to focus. "Did John tell you how to get out of hyperspace if you do get stuck?" she pressed hopefully.

There was silence, Jake's eyes were still open, but there was a vacant expression on his face, his breathing faster and shallower than ever. He was in serious trouble, and it wasn't just the drink. Maybe this place wasn't so safe after all.

~Damon? Kristen? Jake?~ Misako called out.

There was no response.

Misako looked around her but that didn't help much either.

She couldn't see anything at all, it was way too dark, but she could feel the violin case in her hand and that gave her a chance. Alright, getting anything out of it might not be so easy. She was floating, gravity didn't quite seem to be working properly, so just opening the violin case at random was a bad idea because nothing was guaranteed to stay in there, and if anything drifted away there was absolutely no chance she'd be able to grab it back. So with one hand she had to open it and keep it barely open while she slipped her other hand in to feel around for the flashlight.

Sometimes, when she'd been younger, Misako had questioned the way her grandmother had always insisted she be prepared for every eventuality, or at least be prepared for a cross section of the most obvious ones. She knew exactly why her gran did that, her gran was convinced that if Misako's parents had been just a little more prepared then they wouldn't have ended up dead.

Misako refused to apportion guilt or blame like that, but she could understand how her grandmother felt. The weird vision had been a strong reminder of all that.

On this occasion being prepared had paid off. On the whole it wasn't bad advice to live by, even if most people wouldn't ever have to worry about getting stuck in hyperspace like this.

And it had to be hyperspace. That was one thing Misako was sure of. Kristen and Jake had tried to jaunt, for some reason Kristen had lost focus on the destination, they'd entered hyperspace but hadn't managed to navigate an exit. Then Misako and Damon had stupidly compounded the mistake by jaunting after them. Oh well, it was done now.

She grasped the flashlight, pulled it out and pushed the violin case closed, then she was finally able to turn the thing on, all of which would have been a lot easier with three hands, but somehow she managed. She realized there was no guarantee that flashlights even worked in hyperspace, but she was still alive, still breathing, some laws of physics had to work still, so it had to be worth a try.

In the event the flashlight was pretty effective, the beam reflected off of what was very much like a very think fog, only this fog wasn't so much white, it was yellows and purples and thin streaks of red swirling around her. The reflected light gave a pretty good illumination though, and helped reassure her that this was somewhere real and not just another part of the illusion she'd been having earlier.

Her hat floated into view. She tried to reach out and grab for it but it was too far away, and there was nothing to push against to give her any momentum to be able to head after it. She watched helplessly as it was swallowed up by the mist. Explaining that one to the costume rental shop was going to be interesting.

A red gloved spider-hand drifted into view for a moment then vanished.

"Damon?" she shouted.

The hand momentarily reappeared heading in the opposite direction.

"Damon?" she shouted again.

There might have been a reply, but the mist seemed to swallow up the sound, she could barely hear him.

Both hands appeared together, moving more slowly this time, followed by a face. Damon had his spider mask off, it was floating in front of him looking like a strange, backward hood. He was grinning at her. He was close enough that Misako figured she should have been able to read his thoughts quite easily, but distance seemed to work very differently in hyperspace. All she could sense was a vague indication that he had a meaningful plan.

"Now," he shouted as loudly as he could, waiting until his outstretched hands were close to lining up with her.

Misako quickly worked out what he was up to. Damon fired off his web shooter, she made a grab for the rubber dart, and that was enough to allow them to pull themselves towards each other. Of course once they had the momentum going it was kind of difficult to stop, they ended up colliding at a funny angle.

"How about we don't try to explain this one to your gran?" Damon joked.

Misako grinned back at him. "You know, I was just thinking the exact same thing."

Damon took a moment to let his eyes adjust to the light, looking around coldly at the swirling emptiness. "Well it's warmer here than that train station was. No real danger that I can sense. No nothing. And okay, I hate to say it, but I'm more inclined to blame Jake for this mess than Kristen, not sure why."

Misako was pragmatic as always. "It doesn't help to blame anyone, we're here. But we do seem to be safe for now, so let's just take a moment, chill out, and then we can focus on finding Jake and Kristen and getting out of here."

Damon looked at her with more than a hint of admiration. "He's my best friend, but I certainly don't have the patience with him that you do."

"That's not a bad thing, Damon, your impatience helps keep him in line. Mostly. He needs that firm but understated guidance you seem to manage to perfection."

"Funny," Damon admitted, "that's what my therapist says about how I deal with my mother."

Misako shook her head, Damon didn't appreciate complements, he always had to turn them into a joke, but for once she wasn't going to let him get away with it. "Your Doctor Jim is right though, you're good with people like that."

Damon grinned. "I'm not as crazy as I look."

"You never were. So why do you do it, then, keep the therapy going? I could see it when you had the panic attacks waking up, but you got past that. Way past that."

Damon was serious for a moment. "It's still helping my mother deal with a whole bunch of issues, and that makes my life a hell of a lot easier. It's been more than worth it for that."

"You're definitely not crazy," Misako concurred. "I wonder if I should have stuck with it as well." She'd been offered all kind of help after her escape from Stellman as well, but she'd been happy to abandon it as soon as she could. Maybe she'd been too hasty.

"I don't know. You're sane. You don't have the same parental issues. I mean, your gran is a homicidal maniac, but, she's a really sweet old homicidal maniac, I like her. You're not missing anything."

"You still don't get over something like Stellman overnight."

"So why'd you turn down the offer of help then?"

"They assigned me a therapist, he didn't last long."

Damon got the point. "The guy with the red hair."

"I just worry about what might have happened, what I might have told him if you and Jake hadn't turned up and scared him off. Difficult to trust anyone after that. Better to deal with it on my own."

"You're as bad as Jake when it comes to stubborn independence, you know that?"

"I guess I am. And I'm sorry about the whole Masters thing." Misako could see where Damon's thoughts were leading.

"No, don't worry about it. It's worked out. I didn't really want to go begging Masters for help, I'm more than happy we found another way. I got past the panic attacks on my own, that's better."

"It's not that I didn't trust Masters, from what I could see of what he was thinking he genuinely wanted to help us. But you're right, I just don't like the idea of having to rely on anyone. Anyone who isn't us anyway. I just want you to know that, if going to Masters had been the only way to help you, I'd have dealt with it, I'd have done it. And I think Jake would have done as well."

"He would have. He didn't need to."

"You know, I wasn't exactly all that happy with Jake going to the press without talking to the rest of us, but, I don't know... Sometimes being impulsive can work out. I've got issues with his irresponsibility at times, but I'm starting to respect his heart's in the right place. And you'll never meet anyone more loyal to his friends, not ever." Misako sensed Damon was uncomfortable, "What's up?"

"Nothing, I just, had this weird hallucination when I got here. I was confused. I wasn't exactly being loyal to him and I was feeling so guilty about it. Weird as fuck. Sorry. Don't think it means anything."

So Damon's visions really had been as weird as hers. Misako found that reassuring in an odd kind of way.

"I saw, a reminder of when my parents died, of what I was thinking and feeling when it happened, of how that defines so much of who I am that it's like, out of all perspective. I don't know. Just illusions, you're right, I don't think they mean anything."

Misako yawned. It was getting hard to stay alert.

Damon shrugged off his concerns. "Let's face it, we're in a place outside of space and time, a void where the past, present and future of every point in the universe merge into a single infinite point of nothingness. Weird shit's pretty inevitable."

Misako laughed. "So how do we get out of here?"

"First we need to make contact with Jake and Kristen. We followed them here, they have to be somewhere near by."

"I tried calling them, got no response. The problem in this place is they could be three meters away and we wouldn't know."

Damon thought for a moment. "Something about hyperspace definitely soaks up telepathic transmissions. But if we combine minds, it's supposed to make the signal louder, at least that was what Carol told me."

Misako nodded. She reached up to touch Damon's face, the only part of him that wasn't covered by his spider suit.

~Kristen?~ Misako called out.

~Hello, Misako? Where are you?~ Kristen answered almost immediately.

~We're somewhere, not sure exactly,~ Damon answered.

~Jake's in trouble, flushed skin, even under the makeup I can tell, heavy pulse, I'm seeing confusion and lethargy as well. I'm worried about him.~ Kristen called back urgently.

Damon didn't like the sound of the symptoms. ~Can you visualize? We'll jaunt directly to you.~

"Jaunt? Seriously?" Misako challenged him.

"Why not?" Damon shrugged. "We can't exactly make this shit any worse."

In Circles

"Is it just me or is the air is getting stale?" Misako asked.

Damon sniffed around suspiciously. "I think that's mostly Jake you can smell."

"No, Jake is a different smell. The air is definitely getting bad," Kristen sided with Misako.

"So, I'm grateful for it, but, what's air doing in hyperspace in the first place?" Misako puzzled.

"Playing hide and seek?" Damon suggested sarcastically. He didn't mean to sound short, but he had no time to sit around speculating, he was too busy trying to examine Jake. "Jake's the one who does physics, and I don't think they cover transcendental hyper-mechanics and warp ellipse theory at A-level."

"Is that real technobullshit or did you just make it up?" Kristen asked, yawning.

"Made it up. Totally."

Misako got the point. "What about Jake?"

"Slightly accelerated breathing but you might not notice that because of how shallow the breathing is. Symptoms of tiredness, reduced neural activity. Definitely implies hypercapnia. A feeling of euphoria, arousal," Damon observed.

Kristen wasn't sure where she ought to be looking. "Told him he had to watch getting too excited in tight pants like that."

"But he was doing poppers at the party, that should have had the opposite effect."

"So the state he's in isn't anything to do with the drugs?" Misako asked.

"What? Sorry, I'm trying to think." Damon was distracted. "Amyl Nitrite, muscle relaxant. Lowers blood pressure. That would aggravate hypoxia."

Kristen accepted that Damon had a pretty good grasp on his medical knowledge, but a bunch of long words didn't tell her anything. "More technobullshit?" she joked.

"No, it's not." Damon answered impatiently.

Kristen backed off diplomatically.

"Shit. Think, Damon, think," Damon was talking to himself now. "One of the predominant mechanisms for hypercapnia is decreased hypoxic ventilatory drive, that can aggravate the hypoxia. Unchecked it'll cause brain damage and ultimately death."

Kristen glanced across at Misako, looking for help, but Misako didn't understand a word of it either.

"In English, Damon?" Misako pushed him gently.

"We're running out of air. Jake is suffering the effects more than the rest of us because the poppers mean less of the oxygen he's breathing gets into the blood stream. But what's happening to him, the same will happen to us, it's just going to take longer."

Misako looked for clarification. "How much longer?"

"That depends how much air, I don't know, but I'd say minutes rather than hours."

"It already feels like we've been here for hours," Kristen started to understand Damon's sense of urgency.

Misako consulted her watch. "Nine minutes is all, it just feels like longer."

Kristen rubbed her eyes. "Two thirty? Shit. No bloody wonder I'm falling asleep here."

"Well don't," Damon was blunt. "We have to stay awake. Falling asleep is about the worst thing you could do right now. If you fall asleep, you probably won't be waking up again, not ever."

"Pleasant thought," Kristen acknowledged.

"Alright, look, there's air here, it has to have come from somewhere," Misako prompted. Time was running out and they had to start looking for some practical answers.

"I'd say a certain amount of what is around us jaunts with us," Damon suggested. "That's true of a bunch of things, like clothes, figure how awkward it would be to end up naked every time you jaunt. And sometimes you can feel it, a normalization of the air pressure between where you were and where you're going, like a whoosh of air."

"Whoosh being a technical term," Kristen noted.

"Right."

Kristen was thoughtful. "So it that why when you jaunt you can't quite balance at first? Took me a week to get it right without falling over."

"No," Damon corrected. "That's more a gravitational thing. For a moment in the middle of jaunting you're weightless, like we are right now, the balance thing is about having to adjust to the sudden shift in the gravitational fields."

"So without gravity, what keeps the air here with us?" Misako persisted.

Damon failed to conceal his growing impatience. "How the fuck would I know that? All I know is that I'm not kidding about the brain damage thing. We have to get Jake out of here, and we have get him out now."

"Alright, Damon, chill. We got in here, there has to be a way out." Misako tried to keep calm.

"Sure," Damon argued, gesturing around them. "But which way is out?"

"We jaunt through hyperspace all the time," Kristen rationalized. "So jaunting has to be the way out."

"I agree, but how?" Damon was getting agitated. He could see Jake really didn't have that much time left. None of them did.

"What we need is something to lock onto, something in the real world," Misako followed Kristen's line of reasoning.

"Yes, but what?" Damon asked, he didn't want to sound so negative, but the idle discussion didn't seem to be getting them anywhere. "We've always locked onto things by looking at them, how do we lock onto something we can't see? That's how we got stuck here."

"And that's how we get out, we work out how to do it without screwing up." Kristen argued patiently.

"The trick is something to do with following landmarks combined with remote seeing, I know the theory, but you still need an initial something to lock onto. And I already tried, you can reach out with your mind in any and every direction from here and there's nothing out there," Damon responded despondently. "I know it's possible, that's what's got me so wound up," he then added apologetically. Kristen was right, he needed to stay positive.

"There is one other way of getting a navigational lock," Kristen whispered quietly. She was staring at Jake.

Damon slowly followed her gaze, then started to smile. Kristen wasn't actually staring at Jake's crotch this time.

"Fucking... that's it." He shouted, cheering up instantly, that was exactly the answer they were looking for.

"Power of positive thinking?" Kristen joked.

"Bollocks, it's the power of rational thinking, you're a bloody genius. Why didn't I think of that? No, don't answer, just hold him still."

"Where is this going to get us?" Misako asked cautiously.

Damon shrugged. "Don't know, don't care. It'll get us out of here, that's all that matters."

Damon carefully let go of Jake's arm that he'd been holding on to, and reached around to try and unfasten the jaunting belt. "Be ready to grab it if I screw up, we can't afford to have this thing drifting off," he cautioned.

Gently he extricated the belt from around Jake's waist and held it up. "Who wants to give it a go then?"

Misako shook her head. "Don't look at me, I've never used one of those things before."

"You or me?" Damon asked Kristen.

Kristen shrugged.

"Your idea. You're on a roll. Go for it," he reassured her.

Misako was still staring back at Jake. Left to float there, it was difficult to describe, it just looked like part of him wasn't quite there any more. "Why's he fading like that?" she asked nervously.

"Shifting in and out of higher dimensions," Damon suggested, looking round to see. He grabbed for Jake's arm, and that seemed to stabilize him again. "Maybe. I don't know. I don't know any more about hyperspace than you do, honestly."

Kristen pulled the belt on, she was tired of going nowhere and anxious to get out of there. She closed her eyes, allowed the belt to activate, and then reached out with her mind.

"I can see, I don't know... something. Shapes, textures, colors. Bumps, bumpy things. Smooth bumpy things and sharp bumpy things. The sharper and bumpier, the easier it is to see. Alright, I know this isn't very helpful, but I am seeing something," she tried to explain.

"Look around, pick the closest, pick the easiest bumpy thing to lock onto, Damon's right, we take what can get," Misako suggested.

Kristen wasn't convinced. "And what if we jaunt into the middle of a nuclear power station?"

Damon could feel Jake's pulse racing where he had hold of his arm. Trying to pump blood that had no oxygen in it to be of any help. "Quicker than dying around here," he pointed out with a fatalistic detachment.

"Right. Great," Misako complained.

"Whoa..." Kristen exclaimed, sounding distracted, like she wasn't really listening. "There was this big enormous sharp bumpy thing I tried to focus on, and the belt, it kind of started, something. I don't know, I don't have words for it. But it was like the belt recognized the pattern. It has to be one of the stored locations, I think I'm locked to a pre-programmed navigation point."

Misako was encouraged. "If someone's programmed this jaunt before, then it ought to be safe."

"For reference," Damon noted, "the last destination it was programmed for was a secure hanger at an air force base in the Lake District."

"Safer than here," Misako argued.

"Soldiers with guns and a bloody long walk, I'm just saying," Damon pointed out.

Kristen ignored them. "Guys, there's only one way to find out," she interrupted resolutely. "Give me a few seconds, but, in case you don't hear from me..."

"We'll keep on taking increasingly desperate risks until we end up dead as well," Misako replied with more than a touch of gallows humor.

Damon materialized suspended sideways in mid air. Gravity slowly caught up with him and he fell awkwardly onto the wet, muddy grass, he could hear the squelch of someone landing right next to him. Under the circumstances the soft ground was a major help.

Damon picked himself up, wiped off the worst of the mud with his hands, and looked around. The sky was full of snow, enormous flakes floating around them, glinting in the moonlight.

Misako started laughing out loud. "Sleigh-bells, I can hear sleigh-bells, can you hear sleigh-bells?"

Kristen was trying to grab enough snow to make a snowball, but she wasn't having much luck, the ground wasn't hard enough for the snow to be lying much.

Damon spun around, his eyes adjusting to the point he could make out enough of his surroundings for him to work out where he was. "Stonehenge?" he asked incredulously. "Of all the insanely clichéd places to materialize, how the fuck did we end up here?"

"No, it makes sense," Kristen answered, still working on her muddy snowball. "Large identifiable landmarks like this are exactly what you need to plan a long journey. Elizabeth told me, when she programmed the belts for the trip from London to Skelwith, this was the first navigation point she picked."

Kristen was hit in the back of the head by a snowball. "You will pay for that, bitch," she shouted, laughing hard. She ran after Misako, slipping and sliding in the snow. She managed to take Misako down in a flying tackle and rub the snowball in her face. The two of them sat there on the ground, happy to be back.

Kristen watched Damon in the distance. He'd grabbed Jake and was dragging him over to where the ground was harder. Then he rolled him over and sat astride him.

Misako and Kristen exchanged a puzzled smirk. Kristen sneaked out her cellphone.

"You're taking photographs?" Misako sniggered quietly to Kristen as they watched Damon start to get a little inappropriate.

"How the hell often do I get the chance to get pictures of Spiderman astride Ziggy Stardust, french kissing? Mary Buchanan will hate me when she sees this picture." Kristen giggled.

Kristen stopped giggling abruptly and lowered the phone, catching a sense of fear in the distance. Damon wasn't being inappropriate, he was in a state of near panic.

"Damon?" Misako called out.

Damon wasn't really listening, his attention distracted by the lack of any response from Jake. It was impossible to tell if Jake's lips were turning blue under all the makeup, his pulse was still strong, all he needed was the oxygen, but he wasn't getting that because his breathing was way too shallow.

"Something's wrong, he's still not breathing properly." Damon explained as Misako and Kristen came running up. "Shit. It's fresh air, Jake, come on, breathe."

Damon wiped his mouth, resuscitation wasn't much fun on account of how bad Jake smelled, and the taste in his mouth was foul on account of the stale beer and sick, but Damon was out of options and out of time. He tried again, he had no choice.

"Do I need to get an ambulance here?" Misako asked urgently. She entered the number but held off on hitting dial, waiting, watching Damon for a confirmation.

Jake started coughing and Damon rocked back and sat on the grass facing Jake, out of breath himself now. Watching Jake's chest rise and fall. "I think it's okay. He's responding, breathing on his own now." He glanced down. "The costume looks a bit less revealing as well."

Misako relaxed a little. "Are you okay?"

Damon nodded slowly. "I'm okay, just freaked out a bit when I realized he wasn't breathing.

"You sure we don't need to call an ambulance? You said brain damage..."

"There's no brain damage, I'd have sensed that. He doesn't need an ambulance. He needs a shower, he needs to sleep off a serious hangover. And he need a kick up the fucking rear end for being this stupid," Damon stood up angrily, turned away and then sat back down again because he couldn't work out what else to do.

"What would we have said, anyway? Explaining to the emergency services what we were doing trespassing on private property, in fancy dress, covered in mud, and suffering oxygen starvation?" Damon continued to rant.

"We're still going to have to explain it some of it somehow, I mean, we're not exactly walking distance from Eastleigh," Kristen pointed out, not really wanting to wind Damon up any more than he already was, but not wanting to hide from a very real problem either. They still had a long journey back to contend with.

Damon was silent. It had been his idea to jaunt.

"If you think Jake's up to it, I'd say we're better off finding some shelter and sleep what's left of the night, head back in the morning." Misako suggested.

"What time is it?" Damon asked quietly. "Feels like we've been gone half the night."

Misako consulted her watch. "Twenty to three."

Kristen consulted he phone. "Ten past four. How's that?"

"The cellphone picks up the time from the network, I'd say that's what the time really is. The watch, that's how long we've been gone," Damon rationalized, only half sure himself.

It was enough of an explanation, Kristen understood. "You mean that time really does pass differently in hyperspace. We were just never there long enough to notice that before."

"Past, present and future, all at the same time, the place is fucked up." Damon concluded. "No wonder we saw weird shit in there. No wonder it messed with out heads." His idea to jaunt in the first place. His fucking idea to jaunt.

"So we stick to what we know. No more trying to jaunt places we can't see," Misako resolved.

"How do we learn then?' Kristen managed to phrase the question in a tone that was pensive rather than argumentative.

"I don't know. But what's the point of learning if we all end up dead?" Misako responded practically.

Damon sat motionless, feeling guilty, understanding how close he'd come to getting Jake killed. "I thought John was exaggerating, over protective. I should have listened. I made a shit decision, I nearly got us all killed."

"Damon..." Misako tried to argue with him.

He wasn't in much of a mood to listen. He was coming down from the endorphin rush of the escape from hyperspace coming right on the back of the adrenaline rush of the party. Who the hell needed synthetic drugs anyway? But the emptiness and silence of the eerie landscape of Stonehenge in the snow was too much of a cold awakening. Another memory floated through his mind, a kid called Adam Kennywell, frightened and alone, running through the snow, moments before he became Stellman's eighth victim. The kid hadn't done anything wrong, he didn't deserve to die. Steven Lloyd was a good kid, he didn't deserve to have an abusive father. Jake was a bit of a tosser at times, but behind the impetuous bravado of adolescence, he was good at heart. He didn't deserve a shit of a friend like Damon who nearly got him killed. Who had fucked up fantasies about shooting him without remorse. Even if Damon did get pissed off with the guy to the point he really felt like it sometimes.

Damon looked up, interrupting Misako's attempt to get him to see reason. "Why is it bad things happen to good people, Misako, why is that?"

Misako lost her cool. She was pissed off at Jake, but Jake wasn't in any state to listen. And no, it wasn't entirely fair to take those frustrations out on Damon, but then if Damon genuinely thought that any of this mess was his fault, then maybe he did need an attitude correction. Misako could sense what was going through Damon's mind, and she didn't like what she saw. "Who are you to judge that, Damon? Who the hell do you think you are to judge," she fired back passionately. "You think you screwed up, like you screwed up at school that time you were just telling me about. He was being abused, Damon. Being taken into care might just have been the best damn thing that could have happened."

"No way, you don't know, you can't possibly say that..."

"No, I don't know. That's the point. I don't know, and you don't fucking know either. You don't know, Damon, there is no way you can sit there and wallow in guilt because you don't fucking know."

"What if Jake had died, what if he'd ended up with brain damage."

"Well he didn't. You just fucking told me he didn't. Damon, Jake is an idiot. He's an immature, irresponsible, idiot. You said it yourself, what he needs most is a good kick up the rear end. Maybe this is exactly what had to happen, Damon. Maybe he'll finally get it into that thick skull of his that he can't go on taking irresponsible risks. It wasn't you that nearly killed him, it wasn't hyperspace, it was the fucking poppers. I don't object to people weighing the risks and making reasoned choices about how they live their lives, but we don't have that luxury, Damon, because we don't know what the risks are. It's about bloody time Jake learned that, about bloody time he grew up."

Damon made no attempt to answer back.

The silence was interrupted by a coughing fit. While they'd been talking, Jake had managed to roll over and crawl a short way before collapsing face first in the mud. That had managed to shock him into sitting up, spluttering and spitting out dirt. Now he was moaning and throwing up into the fresh snow.

Damon jumped up and headed over to check on him, but Jake seemed okay, other than suffering the obvious inevitable consequences of having been completely pissed out of his head.

Jake squinted up as Damon loomed over him. "Noah?"

"Who?" Damon asked, frowning. Had Jake suffered some neural deterioration after all?

"I was... It was... blowing up. Did he make it? And then Kristen was, something purple and a blow job, and why is there soil in my mouth? And, Damon? What are you doing here? There was, your pants off and, something about the Citadel of Nod. Shit. I'm dead as well, right? What happened to Noah?"

"Jake, what's seventeen minus nine?"

"Eight."

"Spell 'arse' backwards."

"E... S... R... A... Damon, what the fuck is this all about?"

"Just checking, I was worried about you."

Jake hesitated, trying to get his bearings. "Well I'm fine. Well, other than being freezing cold, sat here with a mouth full of shit, and, is that snow?" he moaned.

"Can you stand up?" Damon asked him.

"I don't know. I feel like shit."

"You'll feel worse if you get frostbite, guys we need to get out of this snow." Kristen warned.

Between Damon, Kristen and Misako they managed to help Jake awkwardly to his feet.

Jake stood there for a moment, staring emptily into the growing blizzard.

"Damon?" Jake whispered, barely audible above the sound of the wind. "If I ever lose it, if I ever start giving orders, sending people off to die..."

Damon choked back his emotions. "It's okay. I'll shoot you dead before I let you do that."

Jake smiled a twisted smile. "Thanks."

Misako stared at them quizzically. "You two are completely fucked up in the head, you know that?"

Jake stumbled as they headed slowly off across the field. "And a merry fucking Christmas to you too."