Grace went home and fell into bed, too exhausted to move but wide-awake all the same. The last twenty-four hours were a blur of random details flashing through her mind: the blinding lights of the cameras at the news conference, the smell of Logan's coffee at the diner, Max and Alec arguing, Isabelle undressing in Logan's kitchen, the crazy beeping of the computers, the freckles on Joshua's snout. Joshua's snout, for that matter.

She remembered this feeling from her night on the mountain with Max. The adrenaline rush that kept you going, kept you focused until everything else in the world fell away -- every thought, every feeling, anything in you that might have wondered what you were doing and why you were doing it. Until you were all about action. That was how she had been in at Logan's apartment, and how she was now, here alone in the dark.

It was shock, she knew. It made you numb, which she had been most of the time she was in Logan's apartment. She could hardly remember getting home.

But after a while, the quiet began to calm her. Gradually her breathing slowed, her heart stopped pounding, and the frantic scenes replaying in her head wound down.

Now that she had some control over her thoughts, she tried to reflect. All evening she had kept expecting to have some kind of reaction to what she was seeing -- Isabelle's wings, Joshua's canine features -- but after a momentary wonder, she had accepted the transgenics without much thought. For all their strange appearance, their behavior hadn't been freakish at all. It had been very human.

And the truth was, it was harder, much harder, for her to accept that human nature than it was for her to accept a snouted face or a permanent barcode.

Or a wheelchair, for that matter.

Now the memory she had kept at a distance all evening came into her mind. This time she didn't push it away. She saw, once again, Max and Logan walking down the hallway. Together.

At first just thinking about it hurt like crazy. It felt like it had all happened at once, as if the conversation in the diner had ended with Max and Logan walking away from her, already completely caught up in each other, while Grace sat forgotten. Suddenly her heart was pounding again and she could hardly catch her breath. It wasn't fair! For that few weeks over the summer it had seemed so easy. Do good, and the universe was good to you. Except that ever since then the universe seemed to be taking a lot of pleasure in slapping her around. If some special destiny really had brought Max and Logan back into her life, or her into theirs, destiny certainly didn't feel obligated to make it any fun for her.

In what way did she deserve this? She had done the right thing -- set aside her own feelings, bent over backwards to help Max. So why wouldn't the universe leave her alone? Why was she mixed up in their lives again? Just to have the truth shoved in her face?

But she didn't cry. She was too angry.

Of course she had always known he loved Max. That something terrible weighed on his heart had been plain from the moment he opened his eyes in the hospital bed, even though she hadn't known then what it was. And he had finally told her the story, or at least the part of it that mattered, even before they were together. Oh yes, Max had always been with them. But until today Grace had always believed that they were all in it together, all victims of bizarre circumstance. Never had it crossed her mind that Logan might use her, or deliberately expose her to hurt.

But he had. So why wouldn't her own heart leave her alone?

Because she loved him. She knew that now.

How could she have not seen it, all these months?

Some part of her heart always had known, she thought, remembering again that morning in the hospital. "Where am I? What happened to me?" Those were usually the first two questions a person asked, waking up in a hospital. But not Logan. All he had cared about was the last thing he remembered, holding Max in his arms.

That had been the beginning for her. Even when she had pretended otherwise, her thoughts had hardly ever left him since then. She had been drawn to him from the start. What was it Bling had said? "He's got a way of making you care about him."

She remembered some dreams she'd had over the summer. All of them were about looking for Logan but never quite finding him -- knowing he was nearby but not where she could see him, seeing him across a room but with a crowd between them, hearing other people say he had just left the place where she was. At the time she had dismissed them as symbolic of Logan's closed, private nature. Now with a sudden thrill of recognition she saw the dreams in a different light. They had been about her too, and her reluctance to seek him out.

Some part of her must have understood that revealing his secrets would threaten her.

There it was, the irony. Would she ever have loved him so much if he hadn't loved Max first? Probably not. Because that was what she loved the most about him, the way he had seemed to find, somehow, some way, in spite of a permanently damaged body and a love lost forever, enough courage to go on for another day.

What she had seen tonight, then, was only another aspect of his love.

And what he had told her today ... well, every light had a shadow, and this was the shadow of his strength, that he would do whatever he had to do for Max's sake. Nothing personal, she told herself, in fact you should feel honored. It bothered him to do it, he said. He wouldn't have felt that way about just anyone.

Still, that wasn't much comfort. Because now she understood, as she never had before, that she could love him all she wanted to, but he was never going to love her back. Had she allowed herself to get involved in this whole Isabelle affair expecting that gratitude and circumstance would somehow tie him to her, even if love could not? Well, she'd been quite mistaken about that. And it was long past time for a cold hard look at her situation.

Feeling more lonely and foolish by the second, she thought over the last day. She was an embarassment to Max and Logan, Joshua hated her, Alec was laughing at her and her books, Isabelle thought she was a spy, and worst of all, she was now a conspirator in the disappearance of a thirteen-year-old girl. If Norris ever found out, she would be out of a job just like that.

She wasn't going to be loved. She knew that now. But even as the ache of loss began to settle around her heart, she told herself: that doesn't mean you have to lose everything else. As exhaustion overtook her, she promised herself that come morning, she would begin to set things right.

And then she finally slept.

---------

Kara Bennett woke as the first gray light of dawn filtered in through the empty windows. The moment she realized where she was, gloom descended on her. In her time she'd greeted the day in some pretty down-and-out places, but this was a winner. Good Christ, how could she have gotten herself into this mess? She'd gone through Julie's papers, trapped herself in this dump with no way out and no phone, and now on top of everything else she had this helpless guy on her hands. The thought of having to take care of him until they could be rescued made her skin crawl.

She sat up and looked around. He was asleep, lying next to the wall under the window. The cell phone was beside him. Quietly she reached over and picked it up, hoping for a signal, but it was still dead. She watched him for a moment before replacing it. She had to admit he'd been a pretty good sport last night, hadn't complained at all or asked for any help, but still. How on earth was she going to get him out of here? Better yet, was there any way she could get out of getting him out of here?

As if she had spoken aloud, he opened his eyes, cleared his throat. "Morning," he said, reaching for his glasses. "What do you say we get started figuring out how to get out of here?"

Whatever she had expected, it wasn't that. "Sure," she said, and got up stiffly. Nothing like spending all night on your back on a hard floor. And then having to do all the work come morning.

In daylight they could see that the place had been used by squatters, or worse, fairly recently. Whoever had padlocked it shut hadn't bothered to clean it out first, which was a good thing for them. Somewhere in all that trash had to be their means of escape.

Kara found an old wooden kitchen chair with a splintered seat and part of the back missing, which she dragged over by the window where Logan still sat on the floor. It didn't look very comfortable, but if the guy couldn't feel his own butt, a busted seat couldn't make that much difference. Was she supposed to help him get up? she wondered apprehensively. And if so, exactly how did something like that work? But to her relief she never found out.

"Thanks," he said in a tone that suggested he didn't need any assistance, and Kara headed for the other room as fast as she could. If he was about to struggle pathetically, she didn't want to see it.

Half an hour later, with Logan sitting beside the window and Kara kneeling on the floor, they examined what she had been able to find. The most promising item was an old blanket, stained with something unidentifiable and probably repulsive. Though Kara didn't want to touch it again, she felt she had to say the obvious. "So we're all set. I'll just use this like a rope to climb down. It'll be just like a prison break in the movies."

Logan wasn't as squeamish. He picked up the blanket and tested it. "I wouldn't want to count on this holding your weight. Hard to tell how old it is. But if we could find something to make a hook on the end, we could snag that ladder down there and pull it back up again. See anything that might do the job?"

Kara found an old wire coat hanger buried under garbage in the corner of the other room. They unbent it, worked a hole in one end of the blanket, wrapped the wire through and around the hole, and finally made a hook at the other end of the hanger. They were both hungry and thirsty and time crawled. Logan wasn't much for chit-chat, but he did have a few pointed questions about the previous night.

"So just what were you doing in that alley anyway?" he asked when they paused to rest their hands, which ached from the effort to bore a hole in the blanket.

Kara sighed. "Nothing sinister, if that's what you're thinking. I was just curious." Would that satisfy him? Journalists were so nosy.

It didn't. "Do you make a habit of reading other people's mail?" he asked.

"No. But I'm a friend of Julie's."

"Must be a very good friend."

"You could say that. She's my girlfriend."

"Ah. Then since you have a very personal interest here, you won't mind telling me whether you plan to expose our friends across the alley as soon as you're out of here?"

Now why does he want to know that? she wondered. Does he want to get in on the action? No freaking way I'd share this story with him if I were going to do anything about it.

Aloud, she said, "Unfortunately, no, I don't plan to do that. Not that I wouldn't love to, but that would mess Julie up. So they'll live to raise hell another day."

That did seem to satisfy him. He didn't speak again until they were nearly finished, when he asked, "By the way, what were you looking at over there last night that was so exciting?"

Kara blushed. In broad daylight she was embarrassed to admit the truth. "Ummm, well, they were doing it," she said finally.

"You mean 'doing it' as in 'having sex'?"

"Yup." She bent over the blanket to hide her face. God, she sounded like some kind of creepy voyeur.

"Huh." Logan seemed amused. "That might have been worth seeing."

"Yeah, except they fell off the bed or something, because I only saw them for a minute."

"I see." Still looking amused, he twisted the wire a last time. "That ought to do it," he announced. "Ready to go fishing?"

Kara stood, stretched, and glanced out of the window at a dismaying sight. "Oh, give me a freaking break!"

"What?"

"They're awake." She checked at her watch. Was it really noon already? Damn.

"Looks like they're watching cartoons," Logan said. Sure enough, the Steelheads were sprawled on their couch with boxes of cereal and a carton of milk, bathed in multicolored flickers of light.

"Guess we wait a while," he said philosophically.

Kara hated it, but she had to agree. There was no way she was going to lean out of that window and fish for the ladder with Steelheads watching just a few feet away.

--------------------------------

Grace awoke early, far too early to meet Max. A long shower washed away the sleep but did nothing to ease her sore heart. She wasn't hungry. Finally she decided to stop by the hospital. She wanted to hear the latest.

As she walked down the corridor a woman sitting near her door rose and turned towards her. It was Isabelle's mother, Grace saw. She tried to smile but her eyes were red and she clearly hadn't slept much. "No news," she said, sparing Grace the shame of pretending to be ignorant. Grace brought her into the office and offered to get her some coffee, but she shook her head.

"I really need to get back upstairs in case ... well, you know, in case anything happens, but I just wanted to thank you for being so nice to us this last week. I know a lot of people think I'm a weirdo." She smiled. "Thank you for not making an issue of my religious beliefs. I don't understand how all this happened, I really don't. The doctor told us when we adopted her that she was special, genetically engineered, but that was what we'd always dreamed of, and he assured us that she was fine, just fine ... and now I just want to get her back." She began to cry. "I hope she's taking care of herself ... even when she was little she was such a fighter ..."

Grace took her upstairs to her family.

She had thought she couldn't feel any worse, but apparently she'd been wrong about that too. As she rode downstairs in the elevator she was completely ashamed of herself. Last night she had been a willing participant in hiding this woman's child because of her own needs and feelings. It was time to get Isabelle back to her parents. She left the hospital and went straight to Joshua's house. As soon as Max arrived she would leave with the girl.

With the memory of last night fresh in her mind, she entered the silent house cautiously, expecting to see Isabelle asleep on the couch, or maybe the floor, near the fire that provided the only heat. Joshua was there, snoring, but there was no sign of Isabelle or Alec either. She tiptoed through the other rooms with growing apprehension. Then, with a last look at Joshua curled peacefully in front of the fire, she let herself out.

There was no one else there. Isabelle had vanished. She had to find Max right away.