I'm sorry about the long wait, but I've been trying to work out how I want future chapters to go so I could figure out how this chapter and chapter five and so on would go.

Once I finished up with Long Live and tie some stuff up on independent books I've been writing, I promise my focus will be more on this story.

In Lab Rat-related news, was I the only that loved the Parallel Universe episode? I thought the idea of parallel universe was epic, as was the idea of putting Billy Unger in a jersey.

Okay, I'm done now.


"The irony is really hilarious, once you think about it." I sit up in my cot, looking over to Leo in the depth of shadows, lying peacefully on his own cot as he talks to the ceiling.

Leo's especially chatty tonight, but I don't want to ruin it by asking too many questions and having him lock up again.

"What kind of irony?" I ask carefully.

He takes his time. "We were a team, you know." This, I really do know. As opposed to the times he's said the same thing about stuff I really don't know—or at least don't think I know. "We did things you—well, this version of you, I guess—wouldn't believe."

I think he would be amazed at how much I believe at this point. Such a short point, but long at the same time. Can things be like that—the opposite of each other at the same time?

"And stopping government clones like They are happened to be one of those things?"

He nods. I can't see it, but hear the rustle. "Precisely."

Then Leo turns over, done talking for now, and faces the wall.

I lay back down. I wonder if he really does want to see, which, I chastise myself, is stupid thought. Of course he would want to see. I think back to one of my first memories with him, where this Janelle girl was mentioned, but only briefly.

A mysterious tug comes to my gut, pulling and snapping it back. If he wants to see anything, it's probably her, I decide. The shadows began slipping, fading away for my own blackness, the darkness of my subconscious.

Right before I fall to sleep, I let my mind wonder if I too have a girl somewhere that, if I am ever blind, I would want to be my only vision, my only sight.

I don't come up with an answer before I'm asleep.

{:::::::::}

The thing is, shortly after I discover something about Leo, I find something out about myself. It's weird, because it would be sudden and hit me like a jolt of lightning would, but while it always seems to throw me off, Leo is never surprised.

"It's because we're all connected," Leo explains to me when I bring this up. "We are team; we were made to be connected in certain ways that would help us on missions, or just keeps us together as a team. We were made for a reason."

He lets his word hang, not finishing or explaining.

Meanwhile, I spend most of my time thinking about this team. He doesn't tell me more than what my fuzzy flashbacks hint at. From what I could gather, there was—or, is, I guess—only five of us: Leo, Bree, Adam, myself, and this famous scientist who started it all.

Leo doesn't give anything about this scientist, and I don't ask in fear of delaying any coming information about him. But I have recovered enough about the basics to read in between the lines—his (along with Adam and Bree's) history ran deeper with this guy than mine did even before They took away my memories.

But They took it away because of him; I know something about that man that the others didn't or They and the Government wouldn't have bothered with clouding me for so long.

"It's odd to watch someone so confused piece together things in such a clever pattern," Leo comments after I admit what I was thinking about.

I raise my eyebrows, my lips twitching. "Watch?" I tease.

He scowls, looking at the ceiling. "Shut up."

We slip silent and disappear inside our heads. I have a gut feeling that things were always like this when we're alone together, before we were just cellmates and loosely gathered allies. Leo doesn't trust me, that's for sure. I wouldn't blame him; I am the only one with my memory picked. They could already be inside my head.

I don't want to think about that. I want to be able to think the way I use to, without the drugs, without the holes in my memories, without the paranoia of fuzzy visions being the only thing I'll have of the past four months.

Instead, I think about this team, or what I haven't met of it: Adam and Bree. From the photos General Whitman showed me, they could pass as siblings but closer observation shows they hardly have any similar facial features except for the hair color and eyes.

Why would They want Adam away from here? He's the eldest of us experiments, so could that make him the most useful? Or is the word I'm looking for dangerous?

Why would They try so hard to keep Bree from regaining consciousness if They could just wipe her memory like They did to mine? Unless—

My heart hammers; I begin to sweat and shake. This is different. I feel alive and pained and hurt but right in all the right ways—the good ways.

But the pain—oh God, the pain. It feels like my bones are shattering and my blood is thickening, about to exploding from underneath my skin. My body temperature rises faster and faster, sweat pouring down my face and arms, soaking my clothes.

I arch, clutching at the thin filthy sheets of my prison cot as I begin to slide sideways, falling to the floor.

"Chase?" Leo asks, hearing the very audible thud my body makes after making impact with the floor. Never in my life have I been so thrilled to feel the cool sting of freezing concrete. It hisses with my body, making me cry in relief and pure agony, the feeling of both emotions overwhelming me.

"What's happening?" Leo asks again, dropping from his own cot and crawling over to my curled up body. He's slow and cautious, sticking his hands out inches in front of him and belly crawling until his skinny fingers brush against my arm. I hiss as he places his sensitive and cold fingers against my burning flesh.

I squint trying to make him out. I go to speak (I've felt this way before; hard to forget—I would never forget) but my lungs are being brutally squeezed by invisible hands and my throat is clogged with something as smothering as cotton, air making me gag.

It doesn't take long for the loud bang and crash of our cell bars to slam open. They file in, lifting and prodding at me. They stick needles into my veins and talk in loud, robotic tones they make my ears whine and hurt.

I can't remember much else about Their panic, but I can remember the stiff feel of the make-shift gurney below my body. I can remember the stinging effect of the harsh ceiling lights above me.

I can remember the raw, metallic taste of blood filling my mouth as my surroundings fade into nothing.

{:::::::::}

Everything's a collage of blurry edges. Stalagmites of piercing black and white edges sharpen and fade around me as I fall. Or do something that feels like falling. But it's hard to tell, because at the moment, I can't remember what doing anything feels like.

My limbs are numb, but tired, like I finished doing something excruciating and am physically worn beyond my limit. What could I have done to make me feel like that? Why am I feeling like this?

"Subject C? Are you receiving audio, Chase?" Something crackles and everything spins falling, my body falling quicker, but never to hit a solid surface.

"Who is that?" I cry, my voice a raspy mess. Something drips into my eyes, stinging it briefly before any signs of pain fades. "Why can I hear you? What have you done to me?"

Blood continues to drip from places on me, spilling from injuries I didn't know I had. Its feel was thick and wet as it fell from a cut sliced into my forehead, or poured from the stab wound in my left thigh.

"Chase, listen to me very carefully, okay?" The voice is low and commanding, knowing its' in control. My mind reacts to it as if switched into autopilot. Suddenly I'm alert, waiting for directions. It sounds like a man; I know this man.

Somehow, he is my guide.

"What you are feeling now, is your past self from the battle they called on us," he continues, coming from all around me, but nowhere. "We are going to fight, and we are going to win. Because you are bionic; you cannot fail."

"I cannot fail," I repeated, the words feeling so familiar on my mouth but I can never remember saying them as many times as my mind believes.

"Listen to me," he says, and I strain to gather his next words. "You are going to wait for the two points to meet. That is our sign. It's our sign to attack."

"Attack what?" I shout, blood specks falling faster and faster down my numb limbs as the sharpened and fading black and white edges begin to smoothen and fold into nothing. "I don't understand."

The inkiness comes rushing up to meet me, to engulf my wounded body. I feel tired and just want to sleep, ridding myself of the horrible aches.

"Observe and conquer."

{:::::::::}

I awaken with a jolt, my heavy pants filling the ice cold room.

Blank gray walls surround me, looking fuzzing as I try to sudden lightness above me and the freezing temperature.

Once again I'm strapped to a stiff surface underneath me. But unlike my first coming to at the faculty, it is a firm, uncomfortably stiff mattress much like my cot, in place of the table.

Where am I? It smells strongly of sterile fluids and an overload of Windex. My nose begins to burn, the smell overriding my senses enough to make my eyes sting.

The hours I spend in tied down to the hospital cot stretch ahead of me, endless as I'm left with only my thoughts and the constant loud thud of beating heart for poor company. They haven't noticed I'm awake yet, not in here to chart it and my movements. No doubt so They can report to the big boss that They have once again fixed a broken experiment.

For now, I stare at the blank ceiling, the bright light above me no longer making my retinas sting. That thing I went through before I awoke. It wasn't a dream, or flashback into the four months out of my reach. But the voice is so familiar but strange to me. The way my instincts reacted to it, so immediate and quickly, like I just knew to follow along with whatever he said, frightens me. Is he the scientist that General Whitman already screams at me about? Is he a part of the bigger picture?

Observe and conquer.

So much like divide and conquer, that I know it's a strategy just as well. To observe was obvious-keep an eye on all your surroundings, take note of everything around you. I was given that advice much before the time I can't recover.

I know because my father taught me much of the same thing.

But did Leo know this? If what I think about the scientist is true, I'm closer than I think to what really happened. But did Leo, my alley, my teammate, a part of the bigger picture as well, know what I was supposed to conquer? Were-are-we suppose to conquer it together, as a team?

My head spins, throbbing from thinking too many things at once.

I sigh, the sound louder than needed, in the large, vast space.

I turn my head, watching the monitor that beeps back at me sharply, in time with my heart. Taking in the mere time between the beeps, I frown.

My father is a doctor. I know these types of things.

A heart beating as fast as mine is supposed to be alarming. To doctors and the patient. But I feel fine. I'm dizzy and a little annoyed at my pounding head, but that is the drugs slowly winding through my body, poisoning my veins. These are not the symptoms of a fast-beating heart.

My heart is supposed to be beating this way. It's supposed to have milliseconds between the beats-like I just finished a marathon that went for many miles. My body was adjusted to it. Almost as if -

Almost as if it went any slower, it would mean I am about to die.

This worries me about many things-about Adam, Bree, Leo, myself. Did the people at the other Faculty know this about Adam, and went unconcerned for his fast beats? Is this the reason They keep Bree in a coma, because They don't like the rate of her heart?

What if they're attempts to calm our hearts kills us? They don't know us; They don't deserve to.

I lay there, perplexed, but not afraid. I am built for this, I realize. To undergo such extreme measures in case someone ever did try to do these things to me.

I am more superior than any human, physically enhanced.

Does my family know of this? Did they approve of it?

Do they even care that I'm gone?

Yeah I know I've kept you waiting forever and then I give you a pretty sucky chapter. I can't guarantee you'll find the next one to be better than this one, but I for one think it is. But coming from me that probably means nothing to you so...yeah...

Chapter 5 is already in the works, about halfway done, I believe. I can't promise that it will be out immediately after this one, but reviews will speed up the updating process.

Please leave a review and tell me what you think the voice means by "Observe and Conquer". Have any you figured Their purpose yet? Or who that helpful little voice was inside Chase's head?