Obviously no-one belongs to me but any typos and mistakes do.

Nikola arrived the day before the anniversary. Helen doubted whether he knew the day held any kind of significance but merely appeared in order to deplete her cellar, annoy her staff and hit on her. Dammit, she really was not in the mood for him and his childish antics at the moment and it had taken all her energy just to be civil to him.

She awoke the morning of the anniversary wanting nothing more than to sink back into the oblivion of sleep for the rest of the day and wake up tomorrow when it had passed. Unfortunately that was not how she operated, she faced her tragedies head on. As she stepped out of the shower alarms started going off all over the sanctuary.

"Bloody hell." She muttered under her breath as she threw on some clothes and hurried to the main lab. As she entered the lab area she saw Henry rapidly tapping away on his tablet trying to isolate the problem and Nikola standing over him pointing out his mistakes.

"Dude! You were the one who set off the self destruct – back off and let me do my job!"

"Nikola! I should have known." She said furiously to the vampire.

"Before you start throwing around accusations, Helen I think you should remember that I have been your friend for over a century."

"Oh dear God. Every time you play the friendship card it either costs me wine, money or you have created some disaster I am going to have to clean up."

"Go with the disaster theory Doc. I don't know how he did it but somehow he has released some airborne pathogen that has set off the auto destruct. Doc we need to evacuate." Henry said urgently

"Do it." Helen commanded authoratively. "And let the others know." Henry began to leave the lab. "HAZMATS, Henry, until we know exactly what we are dealing with."

"On it Doc." Henry yelled over his shoulder.

Nikola was halfway to the other exit when Helen turned back to face him. "Not so fast Nikola." Nikola turned slowly and knew by the look on her face that Helen was royally pissed. "Care to explain why my life's work is about to blow up around me?"

"Oh Helen, always the exaggerator."

"Nikola!"

"Fine." He sighed dramatically. "I may have accidently mixed up a few chemicals, that in hindsight may have been a mistake."

"Every bloody time you turn up here…."

"Helen, as much as I would love to stand here and listen to you berate me, perhaps we should, oh, work out how to turn off the self-destruct?" Nikola said very calmly considering the situation.

Helen reached for a tablet and tapped furiously until the alarm stopped blaring in the background.

"If shutting down the self-destruct is that simple I would have a talk to wolf boy about updating your security." Nikola told her seriously.

Helen glared at him. "All I can do is pause it. I can't turn it off until the computer determines the threat has been eliminated." She continued glaring at him. "You can go down and help with the evacuation of the residents." She commanded.

"Helen, I think my skills could be better utilised..."

"GO!"

"Right, evacuation duty it is."

::::::::

Seven hours later Helen finally sat down behind her desk and breathed a sigh of relief. The self-destruct was finally off and all the residents had returned and were secure and one annoying, Serbian vampire had just left.

"Hey Doc?" Henry asked tentatively as he entered the office.

"Henry. I want to thank you for everything you did today, it could have been a complete disaster without your quick response." Helen complimented the young man, once again glad she had surrounded herself with such a wonderful team.

"Yeah about that Doc, I was running a few diagnostics to find out what happened." Helen raised her eyebrow indicating he should continue. "Well I came across some hidden files. I mean really well hidden files behind a ton of firewalls…..Doc Tesla created them."

Helen groaned sensing that whatever this was would be bad, after all it did concern Nikola.

"Doc, he could have shut down that self-destruct any time during the day. I mean fully shut it off with the touch of a few keys."

Helen sat there absorbing what Henry said for a few moments.

"He let us spend the whole day evacuating residents and doing a full sweep for no reason. A whole day wasted when we could have…."

"Spent the day wallowing in our grief for Ashley?" Helen questioned quietly.

"Well…yeah….wait, you think he did this on purpose?"

Helen smiled enigmatically. "Thank you Henry." The young HAP took that as his cue to leave. Helen stood and walked to the window that looked out over the night skyline of Old City. "And thank you Nikola," she whispered.