Pacific Run had been over for a few days now, and Nancy was restless. For one thing, she, Bess, and George were some of the last people here. Bess had kicked Nancy out of the tent so she could pack, since there was hardly any room for one person to be bustling about in there, let alone two. George, however, was allowed to stay, since all she wanted to do in there was sleep. Kiri was long gone—presumably to shoot her next show. Leena had left that morning, and Patrick was supposed to go with her. Nancy had heard them fighting earlier at the waterfall, and Leena had gone and Patrick had stayed. On her way out, though, Leena had passed Nancy. And shook her head and said simply, "Yeah. I'm definitely not trying to sell you on my boyfriend." Nancy wasn't sure what exactly had transpired, but Patrick was still at the waterfall, sitting on the ground, last time she'd checked. Her best guess was that Patrick had not been ready to leave, or that something was telling him to stay for a little while. After all, he did love New Zealand.

So Patrick was here in body, but not in mind.

That left Sonny Joon.

Sonny Joon.

Raising a hand to the back of her head, Nancy chuckled. Before meeting him, she had been sure that anything he told her in person would be more coherent than the doodles he left behind. All and any answers he gave her would suffice because those had to make more sense than the clues he left. In fact, what he left made so little sense that any functional clarifications would appear to be full answers. She wouldn't feel the need to ask follow-up questions, and her insatiable curiosity would be thwarted. Gone, the confusion. Gone, the frustration. Case closed. Sonny Joon would finally be gonefrom her mind, and, after so many years, good riddance.

Perhaps part of that was true. What Sonny said had made sense. As an Annunaki nonbeliever, she could still see why he was doing what he was doing, at least after a little explanation from Sonny and Jamila. And that had been all she'd wanted… explanation.

But some things still seemed off. They were all little details, here and there, which all went back to one major question: why had their paths intersected so closely, so many times? Their life pursuits were very different. Nancy couldn't even begin to understand it.

It was one of the bigger questions, too, one of the ones that would drive her crazy for the next few years. She knew she had to talk to Sonny about it… not because she thought he had an answer, but because he'd at least have a better guess than she did.

Because she had none.

The playing field was empty, free of the traffic it had harbored during the competition. Its sudden tranquility was odd, and Nancy kept moving, kept walking, to distance herself from her sudden apprehension.

"Sonny!" she called.

No answer.

For a split-second she wondered whether Sonny had left already. The mere possibility of it set her on edge, like she always felt when she lost a lead. But Bess would have made a bigger deal over his departure if that were the case. Nancy's fingers drummed against her thigh as her eyes scanned the field, halting briefly on the empty dining area. If he wasn't here, he was packing up. She nodded to herself, satisfied with her verdict that no one was here and that no one was coming here, and headed back to base camp and walked past the tents to the producer area. There she hovered briefly, wondering if he was around.

A tuft of ultraviolet hair and movement in the producer tent tipped her off. Relieved, Nancy continued to his tent. "Sonny?"

Sonny looked up from a pile of luggage on his bunk, most of it zipped closed.

"Hi," she said.

"Still hanging out in the out of bounds area?" Sonny raised an eyebrow. "You wanted to go through my things, I guess. I'm sorry to disappoint you by actually being here."

"Actually, I wanted to talk to you," Nancy admitted, staring at the top of a poorly-wrapped object peeking out from the boxes and bags.

Sonny walked out of the tent. "Yeah? Are you considering that teaching position after all?"

"I have a few questions for you," she continued.

"I have one for you." Sonny tilted his head slightly. "Always wanted to ask you: how was it being locked up with that mummy?"

Nancy paled. It had been years, and she still had nightmares about being crunched into that tiny space, the dim green glowstick painting everything so it looked like a world postmortem. Scrambling around, not knowing what she was looking for and not knowing it was there, forcing herself to stay calm, fearing she would never find the way out as her vision started to black from the lack of air…

Apparently this was enough of an answer for Sonny, whose mouth tightened. "Yeah. Okay. Nevermind. So. what was your question?"

It took a few seconds for Nancy's head to clear. "Everything you still haven't told me," she said, her eyes narrowing on him. "Your life story and everything relating to it. Fill in the blanks. I'm still having trouble."

"That's not a question," Sonny pointed out.

Rolling her eyes, Nancy clarified: "Spill."

"Let's see…" Sonny glanced skyward in contemplation. "Starting from the beginning?"

"Yeah. Sure." Nancy paused. "Actually, no. Knowing you… I'll get a lot of information I don't want or need to hear. So when did you first learn about me? I mean, notice the coincidences? The patterns?"

"When did I become aware of you?" Sonny translated. "You know that memoir Prudence Rutherford wrote a couple of years back?"

Her brow furrowed. "Yeah?"

"Well, I first found out about Prudence Rutherford at Beech Hill when I was hiding some stinky cheese in Joanna's office—"

"Yes. The stinky cheese 'incident.'" Nancy recalled. "Little did I know that it was an inciting incident."

"Aren't those the best?" His eyes sparkled. "Anyway, I was in Joanna's office and she had that magazine lying out. Old issue, talking about her fire sapphire necklace or something."

Nancy snickered. "Fire sapphire necklace?"

Sonny threw her an odd, confused glance. "Yeah…"

"Since when is fire blue?"

"Haven't you ever seen those stoves? Blue fire. Anyway, let me continue the story. There was a fire sapph—"

"Fire ruby," Nancy corrected.

Sonny blinked. "You're interrupting. Where was I?" He snapped his fingers. "Fire ruby necklace, right. It was an early issue because that necklace got stolen while I was there. Turns out Taylor was behind it—though I still maintain that he was operating under the influence of that awful tie. But then Henrik was behind the Beech Hill one. Which was funny, because I took him for the stuffed shirt type, not the sticky fingers type. Apparently, like the rest of us, he likes shiny things."

"Or he just likes making sure significant Mayan artifacts don't fall into the wrong hands. You know, could be either one," Nancy replied archly.

"Oh yeah. Didn't he have a side hobby of keymaking while he was at Beech Hill?"

Nancy frowned. "If you mean by keymaking, that he was trying to open the monolith and share its contents as a chapter of history, and trying to beat someone who wanted to sell the contents, then yes, he was keymaking."

"Yep!" Sonny continued cheerfully. "With that giant green…" He shut his eyes and waved his hand in a circle, "…thing. Too big for a ring, too small for a house."

Now Nancy looked at him oddly.

Sensing it, Sonny raised his eyes. "Hey, I'm image-oriented." He protested.

"Maybe…the size of a jack-in-the-box?" The side of her mouth curled upward.

"Now you're talking!" He beamed at her.

Nancy pulled her lips inward. If it wasn't actual significant praise, then why was she taking it as such? "Okay. So. Prudence's memoirs." She said briskly.

"Ah, yes. The Principles of Prudence. It's a pretty snazzy title. I prefer Visitors from the Skies, but I could be slightly biased. Picked it up when it came out when I was working in Chicago."

"Yes," Nancy affirmed, beginning to get frustrated, "but what does that have to do with me?"

"She was talking about you in that chapter about the Venetian crime ring. Pretty badass, I have to say. In fact, I worked at Carnevale the year before you were there. It was a nice segway job before going into the hard research again at Dread Isle." He looked away, raising his fingers to his chin. "Although I did end up flying back there when I realized I left my Koko Kringle bars—I had left two drawers full of them and I couldn't let those go to waste—and you were there at the time. In fact, I got to see that phantom guy. The one who was stealing everything."

Nancy shook her head. "These are the craziest coincidences I've ever heard of."

"Yes, well. Maybe it's destiny." His expression was unreadable.

She whirled on him. "Maybe it's what?"

"You know, some UFO theologists say that aliens not only built the pyramids and taught us everything chalked up to evolution, but they created humans through some weird genetic engineering thing." He laughed. "Crazy, right?"

Nancy shook her head again. There he was, already on the next thing like he always was, and it was all she could do to keep up. Of course, she could try beating him at his own game—changing the subject without finesse to get a reaction. "What does the word sleuth mean to you?" she asked. Other than being a weird word, she added to herself.

"Means you, I guess." Sonny shrugged. "You're the only one I've ever met. So I went to Dread Isle to see if there was anything to what those theologists were saying. I observed the primates, and their behavior was pretty similar to human behavior. It's easy to see how we developed from that. So I continue to believe in evolution. Complete evolution. Aliens didn't make us. They didn't make the Neanderthals, and they didn't make us, either. They just raised us to the next level of consciousness."

Nancy frowned. "But if you can see evolution happening, if you can see how our pattern of behavior developed, then why try to claim that aliens built the pyramids? You can't possibly believe that." That would have been the better question on which to catch him off guard, since Sonny didn't tell anybody how much of the alien myth he believed. But it seemed that he was immune to his own maneuver in any case, she discovered to her chagrin. A sudden subject change from him could knock her off-guard, but a sudden subject change from her had little to no effect.

"Ever notice how radically different our capabilities are?" Sonny mused.

"Yes. We're leaps and bounds ahead of most other species."

He shook his head. "I didn't say better. I said different. That's where the visible pattern disappears for me. How we developed those capabilities, highly-functioning rationality, is odd. There's a hole somewhere."

"Yeah, there's a hole in your logic. Sonny, do you really believe everything your grandfather told you?"

Sonny smirked.

"That's not an answer," Nancy pointed out.

"Well, it'll have to serve as one," Sonny replied.

Nancy bit back a retort. Losing a battle of wits against a person who argued nonsense didn't sit well with her. This meant that either Sonny was such a good arguer that he could argue anything, or that Sonny got her all confused and incapable of making a coherent point. For fear of finding it was the latter, she stopped thinking about the situation and asked: "Okay, Sonny. So Beech Hill, I get. Aliens abducted the Maya. Okay. What about Minette's House of Design? What on Earth were you doing there?"

"What on Earth and all other possible intergalactic worlds, you probably meant to say. Besides, I could ask the same of you." Sonny said, crossing his arms.

"Right, yeah, um... I go wherever the cases take me." Nancy said.

"No. The cases take you wherever you go." He corrected.

Nancy chuckled. "What?" Great. Now she was starting to sound like Patrick.

"You didn't come here to solve a case," Sonny said. "You didn't go to Beech Hill to solve a case. You went for the same reason I did."

"To slack off?" Nancy asked, lips set in a firm line.

"For the internship," Sonny specified. "And I don't slack, thank you very much. As a matter of fact, I work too hard. They tell me my ideas are irrelevant and ludicrous, which I take to mean I'm too far outside the box."

"You twist things way around."

Sonny stared blankly at her.

"But I can see that," she added reluctantly.

"Anyway, you went to Beech Hill for the internship. Then the problems started happening, and you looked into them. You came here to New Zealand because I orchestrated it. Of course, you didn't know that when you came. So you see you can't possibly have gone to all these locations intending to solve these cases you didn't know about at the time. So tell me, do you ever get a break?"

"I do. Do you?"

"Maybe. Someday." Sonny looked off into the distance. "I went to Minette's because I was out of school and didn't know what to do. I left after failing my dissertation defense, but I wanted to keep going with my ideas. Part of why I took the job at Beech Hill was because I wanted to join an environment that was conducive to further research." He chuckled wryly. "Then Joanna fired me, and I was just really sick of doing research. So I took a couple of odd jobs. After getting fired from those, I did some backpacking in Europe and liked the feeling I got there. I wanted to do something related to graphic design, and that was really the only job open—there were always openings, since people kept getting fired, and Minette scared off most of the applicants anyway."

"Yeah. She threw a potted plant at my head," Nancy muttered.

At this, Sonny laughed at length. His laugh was light, Nancy noted, not at all like she had expected from someone with rather… theatrical inclinations. "That's a memory you'll always treasure, yeah?" he said between chortles. "She threw a can of paint at me. An open can of paint. Although that was a couple days into the job, after I had a chance to work some of my charm."

It all cleared up for her. "Right. And then she got the tattoo."

"That was my doing!" Sonny grinned.

"I'm sure," Nancy replied.

"Yep. I convinced her that if she wanted her designs to stand out from the mold, she would have to stand out from the mold. If she wanted her designs to be cutting edge, she had to do something cutting edge."

"How long did that take?"

"Not long. Minette isn't exactly stable."

"And that was when she fired you?"

Sonny nodded, unabashed.

"What are you, some master negotiator?"

"Well, I couldn't talk her out of firing me," Sonny quipped.

"Are you kidding me? Why even try? Minette was a nightmare!"

"Ah, Nancy, you know me too well." Sonny looked at her.

And continued to look.

Nancy cast her eyes downward.

"So have you read my dissertation, then? Are We Alone In The Universe?"

"No," Nancy's voice hardened. She avoided his eyes, and in truth she wasn't quite sure why she lied about it. Paseo Del Mar High had had a copy of it, and she was sure she'd seen it in other locations. Not to mention the couple of occasions on which she had Googled it. Sonny made her feel cornered, with his long stares that denoted social awkwardness, nothing more, nothing to imply that she was special in some way. But it wasn't that. No; it was because she kept losing these battles of wits against a nut.

"Oh." The smile froze on Sonny's face. Then it slowly started to fade.

Nancy cursed herself. Was this how Jamila had felt after telling Sonny she didn't believe in aliens? "Come… come on," she began. "That was sarcasm. How could I not have seen it? Since I keep running into you?"

"Oh!" As quickly as it had gone, Sonny's smile reappeared. "Yeah."

"I mean, I haven't actually read it, haven't had the time, but it certainly looks interesting. And completely crazy," she amended after a pause.

"Naturally," said Sonny.

Again, that stare. Nancy bit her lip and braced herself. And stared back.

Neither spoke for a few moments.

"Jamila warned me about you," said Sonny.

Nancy scoffed. "What is that supposed to mean?"

Sonny cleared his throat. "It means," he said, "that you snoop through other people's things. You go to any length to find the answer."

Nancy took a step back. Her eyes flashed. "You think so?" She glared at him, voice rising. "You think I will go to any length, go as far as to put people's lives in danger, just to get an answer? No, Sonny. That's your territory."

"Whoa!" he recoiled. "Where did that come from?"

"You put us all in danger. My best friend almost died because of you!"

Sonny's eyes settled once he understood what she was talking about. "No," he said slowly. "Your best friend almost died because of Kiri. Big difference."

"Is that what you tell yourself to justify all this? This deathtrap? Making us all work under your agenda?"

"You could have chosen to leave any time," Sonny said calmly, levelly. As if he were expecting this confrontation.

That only made Nancy angrier. "Either way, I'm sick of playing your game, and I'm glad to be leaving!" she spat. "I'll go to any length to find the answer? Hah! That's funny. That's really funny. I still don't know exactly what happened to my mom, okay?"

Sonny blinked. "Your mom? What—"

"What?" she swung away from him, laugh sounding brass. "You mean that particular detail missed your research on me and all my work?"

At a loss, Sonny shook his head and shrugged helplessly.

Shaking her head and placing her index fingers at her temples, Nancy stopped walking. "It was either that or out a guy in hiding. They would have killed him. They would have milked him for the information, then they would have killed him for evading them for so long. They—they had me playing this game of cat and mouse, where I would do what they say and they would give me information about my mom. But that time, I couldn't. I couldn't!"

Silence.

Nancy lowered her hands from her face, but she didn't dare look up. "And at the time, I knew it was the right thing to do, and I still know it. But I've wanted that other option, and just because the other option was right doesn't mean that that one was wrong, you know? Because in doing what I did, in doing the right thing, I still let down Dad and everybody else who knew her because I just don't know. I tried telling myself that it didn't matter, that I still had the time we had together, but it doesn't feel like enough, even when it should be enough, and I'm guilty of that. Guilty of wanting more. Guilty either way. So no, I don't go to any length. I want to, but I don't, and I can't."

Pause.

She raised her eyes.

Sonny was as he always was, unassuming, expression inscrutable. No traceable pity.

Nancy felt her anger dissipate as she looked into those eyes, his eyes, breathing hard.

"Nothing wrong with wanting more," Sonny said steadily. "Look at what else you've accomplished with that feeling." He paused . "I'm sorry about your mom. I really didn't know."

"Can we talk about something else?" Nancy asked, jaw set.

"Yeah." Sonny said. "The world is small," he began, voice back to upbeat, "and we've got others looking out for us. Everything that's happened to us—crazy coincidences. I think it might be a part of the etude—mine, at least. Making the most of those coincidences. Otherwise, everything that happened here would not have been possible. And contacting them again—maybe—is my etude. As for more of those crazy coincidences…"

"Jamila said you brought me in to the Cairo dig," Nancy said softly.

"Yeah." Sonny murmured, nodding. "Yeah. I knew I had more I had to learn, from the artifacts and the pyramids. So I took a job with the Kingston Dig and talked to Jon about the upcoming dig, found out he needed one more digger. I called Franklin Rose, talked about Jon Boyle and mentioned that Jon was looking for one more person. I didn't even need to mention you. They talked at this fancy archaeological gala event," he frowned as he tried to remember the name, "…event, and the rest is history. After that I got to work, real work that time. The plan was for me to impress Jon and earn so much of his trust that he would invite me to that next dig, and then you and I would finally meet, and I would see if you were the right person. From there, I would have been able to see if you could find the relic if I brought you along on the mission we've just completed." He paused.

"I take it things didn't work out?" Nancy prompted.

"Nope!" Sonny inflected. "I got fired much sooner than I expected. Not before I was able to make myself a copy of the map for the new dig, though. I planned on visiting the dig anyway, figured Jon could always use an extra pair of hands… and if not, I could always hang out near the site. Anyway, around that time, Jamila was causing problems for Abdullah Bakhoum, who would be involved with this new dig. Pretending to believe in the Annunaki and all that, as you know. At some point Abdullah must have become suspicious because he sent me a letter asking if Jamila was involved with S.P.I.E.D., and that, obviously, was the first I'd heard of her."

"Wait, wait, wait," Nancy waved her hands forward. "When you gave Jamila the map, you knew where it led?"

"Yeah." Sonny's eyebrows rose at her inquiry. "Why?"

"Because Jamila told me that you said, quote unquote, 'Call me if this leads somewhere good.' Wouldn't that imply that you didn't know?"

Sonny laughed. "Oh, Jamila didn't know that I knew. She still doesn't. Which is fine; I don't care. I had obviously planned on attending the dig myself, but Jamila…" He trailed off. "Well, she's told you, I'm sure. She had a much better reason to be there than I did. I didn't know the whole story myself until after it wrapped and Nefertari was returned, but there was this hard, determined look in her eye, and even then I knew. Besides, she could still oversee your test."

"But wait." Nancy shut her eyes, trying to keep everything straight. "Jamila wasn't even a member of S.P.I.E.D. at that point."

"She didn't know she was overseeing. She didn't need to know; she just had to continue her act and see how you reacted. I had no way of charting that, but your ability to find Nefertari's tomb was your true test. I knew I only had to talk to her or to Jon to see how it turned out. And you passed. I knew then that you could find the relics. I knew that you were the girl with the answers." Sonny shuffled his feet. "And I know now that you're the girl who wants the answers, even when she knows she can't have them," he amended.

Nancy nodded her thanks.

Now as they settled into a sort of calm, Nancy dove back into her thoughts. The awkwardness was gone between them, now that they understood one another. She couldn't tell whether it was one of those understandings that was temporary, restricted only to an illuminating conversation or a sudden realization or something of the type. So much was contingent on the moment and the sentiment. Those types of understandings were present at the conclusion of most of her cases, surmised in the bittersweetness of departure and having learned something she would not have known otherwise. After all, no two learning environments were exactly the same. There was always some piece of the puzzle that would fall away at the last minute as the bittersweetness faded, some bit of information she would never understand again.

Usually she never fought against that fallen piece. But she had with her last case in Scotland, and now she was doing it again.

For by walking away she risked everything she had come to understand of Sonny Joon unraveling.

And she didn't want to be back at square one. She didn't want to go back to not understanding Sonny, especially after having understood him, or at least having understood him far more than she ever had before.

She didn't want that to stop.

But she had to get back to the present. Sonny. And if she kept staring like that, she would lose her discretion, and Sonny would notice something was off.

Sonny, who had no knack for subtlety.

"Nancy?"

She jolted. "What?"

Sonny rapped lightly on his forehead. "Anybody there?" he asked.

"Um…" She shook her head furiously. "So wait. You've been so busy, when have you had time to publish your dissertation? Are We Alone In The Universe?"

Sonny looked off into the distance, remembering. "Oh yeah, I got it published after leaving Paris pretty much in its unfinished state. It ended on a lot of questions, which I suppose is its charm. Also, I like to think that the questions were really, really good ones. Provocative."

"Should I take a crack at them?" Nancy asked before she could stop herself. "You know, since I'm the girl who finds the answers?"

Silence.

She flinched and looked down. Her answer served by the silence.

"You really can't stand it, can you?" Sonny asked, quietly. "Being in the dark, I mean."

"When did you publish Visitors from the Skies?" she asked even more quietly. She didn't think diversion worked on him, based on prior experience, but it was worth one more shot. Especially when she was so close to… to feeling…to feeling… differently, she added mentally. Nancy braced herself against this and waited for his answer.

Again Sonny looked away, scratching his head. "A few months after becoming involved with S.P.I.E.D. It's mostly comprised of teachings we covered there, which don't really hold any water, as I'm sure Jamila told you. So, uh…" Sonny looked back to her. "Yeah. So. Really no point in reading that one."

"That's another thing." Nancy raised her eyes, meeting his gaze. "Were you not involved with S.P.I.E.D. all along?"

Sonny looked to the side and shook his head. About to reply, he looked back. And froze as his eyes blanked.

Nancy couldn't be sure—and was confused by the fact that she felt that she could—but it looked as if he had lost his train of thought.

They stood in silence.

"What are we talking about?" Nancy muttered.

Sonny laughed delicately.

Nancy didn't remember seeing his glasses so clearly. Despite the growing darkness she could easily distinguish the smudges where he had wiped fingerprints off of the lenses. Her reflection stared back at her, unblinking and unperturbed. It was increasingly difficult to breathe.

"You could come with me, you know," he said, whispering, closer than he'd ever been. "Help me make sense of all this."

"But we… I don't believe in the same things that you do—"

"I wouldn't count on that." A small smile grew upon his face. "I think that you believe that anything is possible. And when you believe that anything is possible, then you believe in anything."

Nancy should not have understood, based merely on the words he said, but something of the force and feeling behind it allowed her to. She felt his finger sneak under her chin. Slowly he leaned in. She watched as he stopped a breath away, eyes closed and brow furrowed. They stayed there, frozen, for a few moments, before she closed her eyes, and he kissed her.

It was soft, yet somehow powerful. It was paradoxical, as if light and knowledge spread over her whole world while she simultaneously forgot everything. Her name, her work, her sentience, all gone immediately and inexplicably. The only times she remembered who she was and where she was were when their noses bumped, bringing her back into reality.

And when he pulled away, and everything in the world returned, and she to it, Nancy found that she wanted few things as badly as for that kiss to continue.

Sonny, too, looked dazed.

Neither spoke for a long time. For those minutes Nancy didn't miss words, but eventually her curiosity began niggling at the back of her mind. When she couldn't stand it anymore, she asked, "Where are you going now?"

Without hesitating, Sonny answered. "Right now Grandpa Jin is in Ingeborgrud, Norway. Now that I'm done here, he could use my help. More of being cut off from general living civilization and chasing after dead ones." He paused. "Do you feel like coming along?"

"You know I can't think right now—"

"Then don't say yes," Sonny said, with that same frozen, waning smile as before. "Just don't say no."

Too confused to speak, and almost too confused to think, Nancy didn't give any indication that she'd heard him.

Sonny nodded to his bunk, eyes darting to something among the bags and suitcases. "You mind handing me that?" he asked.

Nancy's fingers slipped on the cloth around it. When she looked down, she froze.

In her hands was the compass she'd helped rebuild just a few days ago.

After a few seconds she felt it being gently pried from her fingers. Sonny gave her a one-armed embrace and kissed her cheek. "I'm running away now," he murmured. "Please don't tell anyone which way I went."

AN: There you have it. One of the weirdest romances ever written. (Doesn't help that I'm really, really bad at writing romance, haha.) I kind of think Nancy and Sonny are better suited to each other than it may seem at first with Sonny's belief in aliens. When you get past the craziness, he has an inquisitiveness which is pretty similar to Nancy's. So they at least have the potential to understand each other. Besides, Sonny was TOTALLY flirting when Nancy asked him if he was single. Before now I reserved judgment on because I wasn't sure,but now that I've heard from others who have played MED who agree, I KNOW I'M NOT CRAZY! Well, I'm crazy... but for other reasons. Oops... I seem to have lost my train of thought. Please review... a penny for your thoughts! Puzzle metaphor is inspired by TMB conclusion letter: "There's nothing like the end of a mystery when all of the pieces fit together."

Starting with Sonny's life story: I have done my best to reconstruct this from what has been given. It is revealed in MED that Sonny left school-yet he had dissertation notes in SSH. From this I gather that he left in the middle of his PhD, perhaps (and this may be a stretch on my part) because he failed his dissertation defense.

This is obviously speculation, as is everything else. I'm sure that there are discrepancies, but, frankly, there are probably a few discrepancies in HER's court, too, since they're written so much about him. For one: Sonny was said to have worked at the Dread Isle Research Center before it closed in 2004. In 2006 he was apparently in Venice working as Carnevale Apprentice, and he met Helena at some point, who said that he was "on his way to the Caribbean." I'm taking this to mean that he worked there after he worked in Venice, especially since this particular detail seemed to foreshadow Sonny's appearance in a later game, RAN. Besides, I'm not sure how useful these dates/years are when Nancy Drew makes use of a floating timeline… if we first met Sonny in 2002, he would probably be in his mid- to late-thirties now. Which I suppose is possible, but his character in MED didn't look/seem any older than he was depicted in SSH. So I've stopped paying attention to dates. Yeah, I've pored over all of this stuff, mainly because I've been playing Nancy Drew for ten years now. So I've known about Sonny almost since SSH first came out, I've grown up with him (and with everything Nancy Drew), and he is a character who is near and dear to my heart. This author's note is already getting too long, so I'm just going to leave it off here. As always, I've tried to keep everybody in character. Cheers! Hope you enjoyed!

Right now I'm reading The Twelfth Planet, wherein it is alleged that the Annunaki created humans to be their slaves. I've grappled with whether or not such a thing is implied in the Nancy Drew games, even going back to TMB. There, Jamila says, "there we were born, and there we were taught, like infants" (probably not verbatim). This, coupled with Sonny claiming that we are "space mutts," since Earth and its life forms originate from space (the universe), makes it seem that the Annunaki did not create humans through genetic engineering, according to S.P.I.E.D.

I have some additional notes on clashing ideologies which are too long to put in an author's note. If you're interested (and I sincerely doubt you are) PM me.