Doctor Petrocelli stopped the IV drip and opened the door to the tank. She observed as Nick slowly stopped twitching and began to wake up. When he seemed to be aware of his surroundings she told him to come out of the tank and he obediently moved to the door. She helped him get out.

This had been his fourth tank session and they had stopped strapping him down after the second. Nick was quite docile and she would be able to move him to phase three of her reprogramming plan soon; but she didn't want to rush it.

"Nick, would you like to get dressed? We have some clothes for you. They're not as nice as what you were wearing when you came here, but you'll get a lovely suit to wear once you complete phase three."

Nick nodded, and took the clothes he was handed. He considered the jeans, t-shirt and trainers play clothes, but they were much better than pajamas. Suzy helped him peel out of the wetsuit and he dressed. It didn't matter to him if she saw him nude, she'd already seen him that way before, and she didn't care so why should he?

He was allowed to walk around as long as he stayed in the room. He went to the refrigerator and got a bag of blood, microwaved it and ate. He tossed the empty bag in the medical waste bin, just like he'd been told to. It bothered him a little to be eating just straight animal blood; he needed more than that, didn't he? It was probably okay for a while; he didn't feel bad.

"Suzy? I like the animal blood you have for me, but don't I need some vitamins too?"

She and Scott were going over the readouts from his latest tank session, but she paused and looked at him. "You're fine for now, Nick, and it will only be a few days until you go back to the Sanctuary. You do want to go back don't you?"

The word "sanctuary" seemed familiar but he wasn't sure exactly what Suzy meant by it. "What's the Sanctuary and why should I go there?"

"You have something to do there. That nasty woman Helen is there, isn't she? We'll talk more about that when you're finished with the tank. For now, just trust me."

"Oh. Okay." Was it okay? He didn't know, but trusting Suzy didn't seem like a very good idea. He wasn't sure he remembered Helen; was she the one that had been very mean to him for a long time, or maybe she had been nice to him? He wasn't sure about that either. He went back and sat down in his chair, slouching and bored.

"Why can't we just do phase three now? This room is boring, the tank is boring, and I want some wine" Nick complained. He remembered wine, it had tasted good.

"You have to be patient; you can have wine when we get to phase three. I've told you that before."

"There's nothing to do here, there aren't even any windows to look out of."

Doctor Susan turned away from her computer. Nick had started complaining on his last break from the tank and she was getting tired of his whining. This one was scheduled for six hours, and she didn't think she could put up with it for that long. Still, the fact that he was acting so childish was a good sign; the more broken down his personality, the more she could shape it when she rebuilt it in phase three.

"Scott, why don't you get Nick some books to read? Would you like to read for a while, Nick?"

"No, I haven't seen outside for a million years, I want to look out a window."

"There aren't any windows on this floor Nick." There actually were windows in the apartments across the hall, but Nick didn't need to know that.

"So what? Why do we have to stay on this floor?" Nick asked sullenly.

Scott looked at Doctor Susan and offered "I could take him to the stairwell; he could look out the big window there."

"If I let you look out the window on the stairwell, will you be good afterwards and settle down with a book?"

Nick nodded vigorously. "I'll be good, I promise."

"All right, Scott, but take a guard and only five minutes. I don't want him noticed from the street."

Scott led the way, and had one of the guards outside the door follow them. Nick was pleased he could see the daylight coming in at one end of the dim hallway. He hadn't been at all sure it was daytime.

At the end of the hall he pushed past Scott and began eagerly taking the half flight of stairs two steps at a time down to the landing that had a window nearly as wide as the stairs and about eight feet high. Half way down, he threw himself across the landing into the window, using his arms to protect his head.

It shattered with a loud boom as he went through, cutting him severely as he fell the two and a half stories to a parking lot. In the air he suddenly thought there was something he should have done before he jumped, but it was too late now. There were no cars parked directly beneath him to break his fall, and it hurt a great deal when he landed. His knee gave way in one leg and his fibula snapped in the other as his ankle twisted. Falling that little way shouldn't have hurt like that.

Blood and glass spattered around him and he closed his cuts leaving some glass in his body, but stopping the bleeding. At least he remembered how to heal himself. He heard shouting above him as he quickly healed the damaged knee and broken leg. No time for complete healing, it just had to hold until he was safe. He got up and ran, ignoring the sharp pains in both legs.

Alarms were going off before he got all the way across the parking lot, and there were people coming out the doors after him. He didn't want them to catch him; Suzy would be mad and would do bad things to him, so he ran as fast as he could. But he wasn't so fast now with his injured legs, and he would be on foot and they would probably have cars. He had to get off of the street as soon as he could.

He ran across a street, dodging honking cars, ran between some businesses and across a smaller street. He saw houses to his right, and swerved toward them. He had a better chance of getting out of sight there.

The squeal of tires behind him made him glance back; a black van had turned on to the street a block down and was coming up behind him fast. That must be Suzy's people, coming after him. He ran into a backyard and started climbing over fences and running past startled dogs and people, backyard to backyard.

He checked behind him and to his right and spotted the van so he ran left, across another small street and into the backyards of the next block. A second black van went by going fast; it must be more people chasing him. He was going to be trapped if he kept running, he needed to hide.

But where could he hide? He could go up on a roof, but it would be hard to get there with his injuries, and if they found him he would be trapped. This block was quieter; he hadn't seen anyone in the back yards at all yet so maybe he could find a place in one of the houses or garages. He crossed a drive with a pickup parked in it and saw a stairway down to the basement of a house ending in an open door.

Nick dived down the stairs, through the door and slid to one side so they couldn't see him from outside. He changed himself so he could see in the dimly lit basement.

It was silent except for his panting. There was sheet-covered furniture to one side of the outer door, boxes piled on the other. Ahead was a wooden stairway that led up into the house and past that was the furnace and water heater. The door at the head of the inside stairway opened, and he dived behind a covered couch and under a shrouded table.

He heard a man's voice say "Let me know when you decide what you want to do with all this stuff." A woman with a quivery voice answered back "I will. Thank you so much for helping me; I don't know what I would have done without you."

"No problem" the man answered, and Nick heard him thump down the stairs. He held his breath as the man walked past his hiding place to the outer door and closed it firmly behind him. Nick lay still listening for a long time. He heard the pickup engine start and drive away, and the occasional creak of the floorboards above him. When the TV went on, he relaxed and changed back to the way he had been before, then crawled out from under the table and looked around.

There were only four small windows high up in the walls letting in a little daylight. So it was dim inside and it would be hard for anyone outside to see him unless they put their face right up against the window. Suzy and Scott might do that, but he had a little time before they gave up and got out of the vans to look for him.

He took a couple of seat cushions off of the couch and put them under the table. He opened several lightweight boxes and found a blanket and took that with him as he arranged a nest for himself. Then he crawled in and pulled the sheet on the table a bit so it hung nearly to the floor on the three sides away from the couch. Even if Suzy looked in the windows she wouldn't be able to see him.

Nick stripped off his damaged shirt and wrapped himself up in the blanket. He sat on the cushions, leaning back against the couch. He needed to finish healing his knee and leg, and then get all the shards of glass out of himself. He would have to force the glass out which would reopen a lot of the wounds, but he hoped the blanket would absorb the blood; there was no need to make a mess on the woman's couch cushions. He pulled the tape off of his arm and removed the IV needle. That had been an irritation for a long time and finally healing the tiny wound was a relief.

It was fully dark by the time he finished and put his ragged t-shirt back on. He was tired and wanted to sleep for a while but he needed to wake up while it was still dark so he could get away. He hoped he could make himself wake up when he wanted to; he used to be able to do that, didn't he? Maybe by then Suzy and her friends would give up looking for him, at least for the night. If not, then they would all be tired and he had a better chance of sneaking past them.

He rolled up the bloody glass and needle in the blanket to throw away later; he didn't want anybody to accidently hurt themselves with it. The TV above him was turned off as he lay down. For a while he heard the woman walking around, and then it was quiet. He went to sleep.

When Nick awoke, it was still dark, but he felt much better, although a little hungry. He put the cushions back on the couch, and looked in the boxes some more, hoping to find a different shirt since his was all sliced and stained; but there were only sheets and stuff in the boxes, no clothing. His jeans weren't too bad, there were just a few cuts and stains by the knees; they were thicker and had held up better to the glass than his shirt. Well, if he was lucky no one would see him anyway.

Taking the blanket with him, he unlocked the outer door, reset the lock, and closed it behind him. It was safer for the lady who lived there if the door was locked, then bad people couldn't get in. He went up the stairs slowly, listening and turning his head, a little scared and hoping no one was around. But the backyard was quiet and deserted. There were a couple of plastic trash cans by the garage, and he opened one, shoved the blanket to the bottom past a bag of garbage, and quietly closed the lid.

He decided to go back the other way; Suzy would look for him in the direction he had been going, so he would try to fool her. He might get away if he could get past her building and go far away from it.

He moved to the front of the house and looked up and down the street. There were some cars parked down a ways, but there didn't seem to be anyone in them. He saw no vans at all. He hoped Suzy always used black vans; it would make her and her friends easy to spot.

Nick moved quickly across the street, past the house on the other side, through the backyard into the next yard, and up to the front of that house. He checked that street. There were a lot of cars parked along the curb, of all kinds. He couldn't be sure if there were black vans or not. But two houses down there were bushes that went from the house out to the sidewalk. He went around the backs of the houses to the bushes, crouched low and ran behind the bushes quickly to the sidewalk, across it and between a sedan and an SUV. He stopped there, listening and waiting, but nobody yelled or got out of a van.

He was scared to go out where Suzy might see him, so he tried to go fast as he crossed the street and the front yard of a house and made it to the backyard. He turned right and moved through the backyards, ducking back behind a house as he saw headlights moving on a nearby street. He didn't look to see if it was a van, he just hid until it passed.

Nick moved from block to block, hiding whenever he saw any headlights anywhere near him, until he was well past the place where Suzy lived. Then there weren't any more blocks of houses to hide behind. In front of him was a bunch of little stores, and the sun was just starting to come up. He hoped he was far enough away from where Suzy would be looking for him that he would be safe on the street; he ran out into the open, his heart pounding.

He went down the empty street past the stores at a fast lope, keeping his eyes and ears open. He ran for ten minutes before he heard a car coming and hid in a doorway. A dark blue sedan sped past, the driver paying no attention to him.

He peeked out; the street was still fairly empty, but it was getting light and there would be a lot of people around soon. Nick had no idea what day it was, but he sort of remembered that weekends were different than week days. But either way he would need a new place to hide during the day.

It bothered him a little that he had no idea where he was going. For now, anyplace away from Suzy would do, but sometime he had to find food and a safe place so he wouldn't have to keep running away. Did he have friends or family that could help him? He couldn't remember, exactly. He vaguely remembered the faces of some people that might have been his family, but he had the feeling that most if not all of them were dead. Had Suzy killed them, or that other woman, Helen? He thought not, but he wasn't sure. All he knew for sure was the one thought he had been able to hold on to- get away from Suzy.

He had chanted that to himself whenever he had been awake enough. It had been the most important thing to remember, but now that he had gotten away . . . well he would keep going away from Suzy, but he felt he should be headed toward something, not just running away. But where?

The area he was in still had some stores, but also empty lots and a few houses. He came to a place where the street went over a little creek. He hesitated, but decided that getting off the main street would be safer. The water was down lower than the streets, and he would be harder to spot down there.

Nick jumped a chain link fence easily and went down under the road and moved downstream, away from Suzy. The ground sloped down on both sides to the water, but it wasn't too steep for him to walk on and right next to the creek it was fairly flat, although there were stones and a lot of trash there. He trotted for another hour until he found a small hollow under a middling-sized tree across from an empty lot. It was a good place, out of sight of any road or building. He knelt down and drank from the creek. It might not be very clean, he didn't know, but it was cool and didn't taste bad.

He looked for minnows and frogs for a while, just for fun, but he didn't find any. The trash in that part of the creek wasn't very interesting either, just a part of a chair and some old junk he couldn't identify. He put a couple of leaves from the tree in the water to see which one would float down faster. In a little while he got tired of playing and went over by the tree.

There were tall weeds and grass along the creek. When he sat down under the tree he could just see over them, but nobody would likely see him unless they were close to him. It was going to be a long boring day, but being bored and safe was better than anything else that had happened to him lately.

At least he had time to think now. He lay back, closed his eyes and relaxed. The leaves overhead moved in a mild breeze, making patterns of shadow and light that danced across him. Behind his closed eyes, the flickering light was almost hypnotic.

His memories of the dark silent tank were pretty clear. The tank hadn't seemed very bad, and Suzy had wanted him to be inside in the dark. But every time he came out it seemed he had forgotten more and more. He thought if he had gone back one or two more times, he would just have stopped remembering everything; everything in his head would have been all gone. Whenever he had been awake enough he chanted to himself "get away from Suzy, get away from Suzy". So he remembered that, but not much else. He had gotten away from Suzy, now he had to remember all the things he had forgotten, if he could.

He lay under the tree in the flickering light, sounds of traffic in the distance. He remembered a lot about Suzy, and Scott, but when he tried to think of anything before them his mind just kind of stopped. It was frustrating, but the harder he tried the less he remembered. He had to relax and just let himself drift, and if there was anything else in his head maybe he would find it. After drifting in a near-dream state for a while he saw mental flashes of people, heard parts of sentences, but it was all a jumble and some of it was from a long time ago, too long ago to be real. But if those memories weren't real, why were they in his head?

An image gradually came to him of a huge old gray stone building on a river in an old city- Old City? That meant something, but he wasn't sure what. He let himself drift some more, and gradually grew to think that the place was west and north of where he was, but far away. Well, he didn't have any better idea where to go. Maybe that odd-looking building was just something he had made up, but he didn't think it was. He had to go somewhere, he might as well go and find out if it was real.

It was far away, it would take a long time to walk there. Maybe someone would give him a ride or he could steal a ride on a train . . . no, he didn't want to go on a train. He liked trains, didn't he? Maybe he did, but right now he wanted nothing to do with them. One of those flashes of memory he had seen was of a train coming at him, the bright light in his eyes and pain . . . no more trains, at least not until he knew more.

Maybe he could "borrow" a car. But cars needed gas, and he didn't have any money so it would have to be a lot of cars. He wondered if he got in a car if he would remember how to drive. He couldn't remember driving, but that didn't mean very much. But maybe he didn't know how to drive; he wished he remembered more. It was so frustrating not knowing who he was or what he could and couldn't do.

He should walk for a day or two to get farther away, and then try to get a ride. He doubted anyone would pick him up though, he probably looked pretty awful with his shirt all torn and stained.

Nick napped and drifted mentally the rest of the day, sometimes watching the clouds and the patterns of the leaves above him as the gentle breeze moved them about. He hoped he would remember more, but all he got were snatches of memories that told him nothing useful. Except he did see one woman a lot; at least he thought it was the same woman, but sometimes her hair was blond and sometimes it was dark. Maybe that was the "Helen" woman Suzy kept talking about. Suzy didn't like Helen. Did that make Helen his friend, or just another enemy?

Right now he wasn't himself, he knew that much. He felt lost and alone and a little angry. He didn't even know if any of his feelings and snatches of memory were real, or something Suzy had put inside his head. She had told him he should go to the Sanctuary, a word that now connected in his mind with the building he remembered. He didn't want to do anything Suzy had told him to do, but Helen might be there. He didn't know who Helen was, but she was connected to him somehow and was the only clue he had to his past except for Suzy and Scott, and he wanted nothing to do with them.

When the sun was going down and the light fading, he got up and took another drink of water. It was okay, but he was hungry and water wasn't very satisfying. He tried to think of something he would like to eat, but he couldn't think of anything that would taste good. The bags of animal blood had been okay, but he didn't know where to get more of those now. He continued walking down the creek. He wanted to stop and play in it some more, but he didn't. Suzy might not be right behind him chasing him, but she was probably still looking for him and he had to get away.

Another little creek joined the one he had been following and turned it into a small stream. It was fully dark by the time he realized he had entered a park. There weren't any fences along the stream any more, and there wasn't any trash. The grassy banks were mowed and there were lots of big trees. It was nice.

Nick had changed himself again so he could see better in the dark. He climbed up the bank away from the water and stood listening. Past some bushes he could see and hear a man and woman talking, and she giggled. He moved away from them.

Farther down the stream widened into a pond. There was a bench nearby with an ordinary looking man sitting on it, drinking out of a bottle in a paper bag. Nick approached silently from behind. He was hungry, and there weren't any big animals around, except humans. This one would do; but that thought confused him, do for what?

From behind, Nick jumped completely over the bench and man, turning in mid-air and landing facing the man and directly in front of him. The man's eyes opened wide in surprise and he opened his mouth but didn't have time to yell. Nick was instantly on top of him, one hand over his mouth, pushing his head to one side to expose his neck.

Nick's fangs were on the man's neck; his feeding fangs plunged into the jugular vein. The man resisted only for a moment, then went limp. Nick drank his fill and pulled in his feeders. The blood hadn't tasted as good as it should have, whatever the man had been drinking had tainted it somewhat.

Nick backed off of him. He had just jumped on a man and drunk his blood. He hadn't meant to do that, he shouldn't have done that, why had he? For the first time, he really noticed the claws on his hands, the fangs in his mouth. No one else he'd seen had fangs and claws. He was some sort of monster, and he'd done something bad. Tears stung his eyes and he swallowed. He didn't want to be a monster. When he thought that, the fangs and claws went away; but he couldn't see as well either.

But maybe he wasn't a monster, exactly. Suzy hadn't said he was or minded when he drank the little bags of blood from the refrigerator. But he thought most people didn't drink blood, just him. They ate other things, and he used to too, didn't he? He wasn't sure. So maybe he was just different somehow. But he shouldn't jump on people and drink their blood; that was wrong. He was sorry, but he couldn't tell the man that, the man wasn't awake.

The man was sitting slumped on the bench. Nick looked at him closely and saw that he was breathing. That was good. And his neck didn't look too bad, he just had a couple of little red spots, like mosquito bites. So at least he hadn't hurt the man very much. That made Nick feel better.

He lifted the man's legs and turned him so he was lying on the bench; then he pushed him over so he was face down. Nick pulled the man's wallet out of his back pocket, but there was only three dollars in it and not much else. Nick put it back; he didn't want the man's last three dollars. If there had been a lot of money he could have taken some and bought a new shirt.

But the man was wearing a nice black jacket; Nick pulled that off of him and tried it on. It fit pretty well, and it was good enough to cover up the tattered t-shirt. He felt bad taking the man's jacket, but it wasn't cold and he needed it more than the guy sleeping on the bench.

Nick picked up the bag the man had been drinking from. Inside was a bottle, but it wasn't wine. He unscrewed the cap and sniffed it; it smelled bad, and he put the cap back on, put the bottle back in the bag and the bag on the ground where the man and left it.

Nick turned back to the water. The stream ended at the pond, there was a culvert the water went into at the far end. But he was far enough away now, he felt he would be safe on the street. He left the park and began to jog west.

/

Helen joined Kate and Jerry in the search for the vans and the woman that had taken Nikola. Two fruitless days went by, the two teams covering another twenty-six of the locations Henry had identified. Henry himself was back on the job, feeding them what information he could unearth about each place before they visited.

Henry looked rather ragged when he passed Will information on his computer. Little Angelina Helen had decided she didn't want to sleep more than two or three hours at a time, and had the lung power to ensure her parents didn't either. Erika got up twice as often as Henry, but both were exhausted from not getting a decent night's sleep night after night.

Today both teams would be working in the same area, at least for the morning. There was a cluster of five businesses in and around a business park that had dark colored vans, and they were hoping to move through the area quickly; Henry's information hadn't indicated anything unusual about any of the businesses.

The two teams parked their rental cars next to each other. But when they got out of the cars, Helen's gaze went to one building in particular. There was someone sweeping up glass in a parking lot, and a large window near the top of the building was boarded up.

She stopped Will before he and George split off. "Will, over there. What do you make of that?"

Will shrugged. "Somebody broke a really big window; the glass is on the ground, so it was broken from inside."

"I've been reading the local papers every day, and I haven't seen anything about anyone going out a window. Surely from that height a person falling would have been killed or severely injured."

"It might have just happened today, and it might not have been broken by someone going through it."

"Perhaps, but more likely it happened yesterday or the day before since the window is already boarded up. The glass would be sturdy in a window that large; something fairly heavy would have had to hit it to shatter it like that. Is that one of the businesses on the list?"

Will pulled out his list. "Yeah, it's Continental Medical Research. Henry said it's a private medical research facility, he couldn't find out much about it other than it was established a little over three years ago."

"Medical research would be a perfect cover for Cabal activities. Let's start there, all of us. We'll begin with the parking lot where the glass is, just you and me for now."

Helen and Will walked over to an older man with a broom pushing shards of glass toward a pile of glass and litter. Helen checked the pavement, then subtly indicated to Will a dark red splatter of dried blood. He gave her a small nod back.

Helen turned toward the worker. "Hello, it looks like there was an accident."

The man just shrugged, kept sweeping, and said "I guess so."

"What happened?"

The man shrugged again. "I don't know, lady, they just told me to come out and sweep up the glass, so I'm out here sweeping up the glass."

"Was someone injured? This looks like blood here."

The man stopped sweeping. "What are you, some kind of reporter or something? You want to know, go inside and ask. Maybe they'll tell you, but they ain't telling me nothing, except to sweep up the glass." He went back to sweeping, and Helen and Will gave up and went back to the rest of the group.

When they got back Will asked Helen quietly "Do you think Tesla went out that window?"

"Possibly, or he may have thrown someone else out. If there was a struggle he would be capable of it. Or it may have nothing whatsoever to do with him, but I have a feeling it does."

"So what's the plan?" asked Kate.

"You, George and Jerry take a walk around the building. Check for other exits and dark colored vans, and call in with what you find out."

Kate said "That's not much of a plan."

"We're not sure it's the right place yet. Go."

Kate beckoned and Jerry followed her, while George started around the other side of the building. They found a back door as well as a large roll down door that Kate quickly opened in spite of the fact that it was locked. Inside were three plain black vans. Checking inside they found one of the vans held a stretcher with titanium webbing restraints.

Kate called Helen and told her what they had found. On Helen's direction, Jerry went out to enter through the back door while Kate and George were to proceed cautiously from the parking garage. Helen and Will headed for the front door.

They walked in and the guard at the desk inside tried to stop them.

"Nikola Tesla. Where is he?" Helen demanded.

"Ma'am you can't come in here, this is a private facility."

"Somewhere in here is a woman- I don't know her name- who kidnapped and killed my daughter, and is now holding my friend. I'm going to find her, and I advise you to stay out of my way."

Will gave the surprised guard a "What can you do?" look. The guard started to call someone on a walkie-talkie; Helen suddenly had a gun in her hand and hit the guard in the head with it. He dropped, unconscious, but Will knew they wouldn't have much time before other guards showed up.

He and Helen quickly got out of the lobby and ran down a hall, checking through the rooms on the first floor, surprising a few people going about their jobs but not finding Nikola. In one room they found a steel table with a lot of titanium straps, and lighting and cameras aimed at the table. Helen exchanged a grim look with Will, and they moved back out into the hall.

Another guard called out "Halt!" from behind them. When they spun around with their guns drawn, they saw he hadn't gotten his gun out of his holster yet. He was young, and he wasn't going to get old if he pulled dumb stunts like that.

The guard swallowed nervously, put his hands up, and then dived sideways out of sight. They let him go, they weren't after the employees. They continued down the hall and met up with Kate and George at the far end.

"Anything?" demanded Helen.

"Just a couple of real surprised techs that managed to get out of our way" replied Kate.

"There's nothing down here except offices and exam rooms. Up; you and George take the second floor, Will and I will do the third."

Alarms started to sound as the four of them charged up the stairs. At the second floor, two people started shooting at them from down the hall. Kate yelled "Got it" and she and George returned fire while Will and Helen went on to the third floor.

They moved cautiously down a dim hallway, checking each room. Two guards suddenly fired at them from a recessed doorway. Will flattened against the wall and Helen hit the ground, both shooting back. Another exchange and both guards went down, and Will and Helen moved to the recessed doorway.

Will flung open the door and Helen moved through and to the side so Will could follow her. There was a large tank of some kind in the room, and a young man at a computer. He put his hands up when they came in.

"Where's Nikola Tesla?" Helen growled.

"I . . . you're Helen Magnus?"

"I am, but that's not what I asked; where is he?" Helen was losing patience and making it obvious.

The man at the computer started sweating. "He isn't here. I don't know where he is."

"But he was here. That window, did he do that?"

"Yes, okay, he jumped through it yesterday. But he deserved a lot more than we had time to do to him. He and John Druitt murdered my father."

"And someone here murdered my daughter and five others, and attacked the Sanctuary network and killed dozens of good people first. You're Cabal?"

"No, the Cabal is dead."

"As it should be. Will?"

Will grabbed him and shoved him into a chair that had wrist and ankle restraints, pulling each restraint tight; if he was uncomfortable, too bad.

"Drop your guns" said a female voice from the doorway.

Will crouched and spun the chair in front of him; Helen dived behind the tank, as a middle-aged woman and a guard opened fire. They fired back and the guard fell. The woman grabbed the downed guard's more powerful weapon and dived behind a counter.

She said "Sorry Scott" and used the guard's weapon to try to shoot Will through the chair. She fired wildly, hitting and killing the young man in it, but she almost succeeded. A bullet passed through the chair and whizzed past Will's ear. He ducked and threw himself next to Helen behind the tank.

Helen recognized her voice. "You're the woman who killed my daughter. Who are you?" she called angrily, hoping for information that would lead to any other surviving Cabal members.

"So you recognize my voice? Then you know who I am."

"No," Helen said quietly, "I only know what you are. Will? On three."

Helen went one way around the tank and Will went the other; at three seconds they both burst out firing, catching Doctor Susan Petrocelli in a crossfire that knocked her back into a wall. She slid down, her eyes open, red spreading on her lab coat over her heart. Helen approached cautiously, but Suzy was dead.

The gunfire had ceased from downstairs too. Jerry showed up in the doorway and said "Kate and George are okay, but the two people who were shooting at them disappeared. I tied up the guards downstairs. Is everything okay up here?"

Will replied "Yeah, but we haven't checked the rooms across the hall yet."

Jerry said "Right" and went to take care of that.

Helen just stood looking down at the dead woman at her feet. She would never know who she had been, but Helen had in some small measure avenged Ashley. She didn't find it very satisfying; a great number of Cabal members were dead, but nothing would bring Ashley back, or all the other people they had killed. Still, this woman would never hurt anyone else again.

The rooms across the hall were living quarters, now empty. A search of the facility turned up a lot of data on Nikola, which Helen downloaded from the computer system. She might have to medically undo whatever they had done to him, and the records might prove crucial.

They wiped the hard drives and destroyed the computers and burned any papers relating to Nikola in wastebaskets. Helen wanted nothing left behind that anyone could use against him. The five of them made short work of it, but by the time they left they could hear sirens in the distance. Likely someone from the building had escaped to a neighboring building and called the police. The Sanctuary teams sprinted for their two nondescript gray rental cars, piled in and drove sedately away.

Helen sent Will home; she didn't like to have both of them gone for very long, especially since Declan was on vacation. Kate had other duties too, but she kept George and Jerry for two more days. She rented a third car, and they drove around different segments of the city, trying to spot Nikola. It was a long shot, and it failed.

Helen kept wondering why Nikola didn't call. He was free, so he should have called, even collect if necessary. There was something very wrong. Was he hurt? As a vampire he should have been able to heal any physical injury, but a mental one . . . had that woman completed doing to him what she had done to Ashley? The young man had implied that she hadn't finished with Nikola, but that meant his mental state would be highly unpredictable. All Helen could do was worry and wait. And she hated the thought, but she needed to recharge the gun Nikola had made to kill the Cabal vampires.

A/N: Thank you to Insufferablyteslen, Saphyr88, Lorienleaf, and Tiem625 for your reviews. And a special thanks to Lorienleaf for "Angelina".

Sorry this chapter took so long, I found writing Nikola in a different mental state difficult and had to do a lot of re-writes.