I still own nothing connected with NCIS-LA.

This is the final chapter. Thank you so much to everyone who's taken the time to read my offering. It was a lot of fun and I think I've learned a lot from the process. Enjoy the new season!

Chapter 10

The next couple of hours went by extremely slowly for Callen. He was in that uncomfortable state where he knew exactly what he needed to do, but was unable to actually do it. Wild plans gnawed at his mind, as he tried to decide upon a plan of action.

To add to his discomfort, the women and children had been released from their confinement in the next room. The entire building was full of mothers trying to get their children to go to sleep. The children wanted nothing to do with sleep. Not only were they being influenced by the tense atmosphere in the church, but they were hungry and missing their usual routines and places. The youngest children were expressing their displeasure loudly.

They were so loud that it was making Callen nervous. He was afraid that if the kids didn't start behaving, there would be spankings. He hated spankings, even when he was not the one on the receiving end. It took him back to some of the less than stellar foster homes that he had been placed in. As he watched a mother try to coax her small child to eat a cracker, which was all they had, he had an idea.

Looking around he found the Reverend with his group of elders. They were undoubtedly discussing important targeting information. Callen couldn't bring himself to care. They had enough to arrest the whole group as it stood, and could work out the details of any further crimes when they did the follow up investigation and interrogation. But for now, he just needed to get out of this damned church and let his team know what was going on.

Callen stuck on his happiest smile, pretending a feeling of admiration for the Reverend that he didn't really feel. "Reverend," he said, approaching the group of older cranky white men. "I know we're needed to stay in here and protect the women, but the kids are getting hungry. I was thinking that I might take a couple of the teens and make a food run."

"We have food here, brother," the Reverend said sternly.

"Well, we do," Callen agreed, "but the women are talking about fresh fruit and milk for the kids, and apparently we don't have the right type of soap for the diapers." He didn't have to try real hard to produce a terrified shudder. "I sure don't want to be here if we end up with not enough diapers, Reverend. It could get ugly real quick! Plus, it might be good to give the young men some responsibility, helps them to build character and turn out to be the sort of men we want them to be."

The Reverend paused, and Callen could see that his point had been understood. He just wasn't sure which point. Either one of them could mean that he would be able to get out of this church, warn his team, and set in motion the events that would lead to the arrest of the leaders of this church.

"Do it," the Reverend ordered. "Take two or three of the young men, and my truck, so you can fit more in the back. Here are the keys." Callen took the keys and thanked the Reverend. He had hoped to be able to take his own car. The cell phone he had left in the glove compartment would have made it very easy to get the word out. At least this got him out of the church, and he'd work with what he had. Somehow he'd make it work.

Grabbing the nearest teen boy, he told the boy to follow him.

"So, what's your name, kid?" he asked.

"Tim, sir, my name is Tim," the boy answered.

"Well, Tim, you and me and a couple of your friends are going to make a trip to the store to get some food and stuff for the kids. The Reverend said I could take a couple of you guys."

Callen could see the teen boy straightening with pride at the thought that two adult men, one of whom was the Reverend, were trusting him with an important task. Callen decided to give him a bit of the responsibility for the mission. "I need you to pick two of your friends. Go around to all the women, and see what they're going to need. Tell them we'll get what we can, and ask them for suggestions."

"You want me to ask women for suggestions?" the boy said in shock. Callen was glad that he didn't have Kensi in front of him. If she had heard the casual misogyny in the boy's words, she would have given both of them a lesson that neither of them would ever forget.

"Who's going to know better what the kids need than the women who take care of them?" Callen pointed out in a reasonable manner. "If it were a little safer out there, we'd take one of them with us so they could tell us exactly what to pick up."

"I guess that makes sense," Tim said. He quickly found a pad of paper and a pen and started polling the mothers so that he would know what they needed to get.

When Tim had finished making his list he gathered his two friends and all three of the teen boys reported to Callen. "Let's go, sir! We're ready!" Tim said importantly, "I've got the list!" he sounded so proud of himself for getting that silly list that Callen had to smile to himself.

"Let's go!" Callen agreed, grabbing the keys that the Reverend had given him. "Let's get this over with."

It was, incredibly, still raining, but the kids still had a great time heading to the store with Callen. He almost felt like a father, or an older brother, or a scout leader or something. He considered offering them a trip to Starbucks, but then realized that for these kids Starbucks was just a place that supported liberal agendas. Also, there was something wrong with their cups. Were they the wrong color? He couldn't remember.

When they got to the store, Callen took the list and tore it into four pieces. He gave each of the teens a piece, and kept one himself. Grabbing a basket, he said to the group, "Grab everything on your list and meet me back here."

Then he pretended to notice the assistant manager, who had been waving at him. "Oh, I need to check with my staff, it will look suspicious if I don't".

While the teens disappeared into the shelves, looking very serious for what was actually just a glorified shopping trip; Callen turned to his assistant manager, and began a quick conversation about how things had been going at the store. Callen apologized that he had not been frequently absent the last few days. The assistant manager did not seem to be too upset. He was quite capable of running the store himself.

With everything that was going on, it had been a very quiet time at the store. There had been some trouble with teens shoplifting, but after assistant manager had had several people arrested, news had gotten out.

Callen got the groceries that were on the list after he finished talking to the assistant manager. He shopped quickly, but when he got done, only Tim had gotten done with his list.

"Okay Tim," Callen began, "I've got everything I was looking for, and I'm going to go check in my office, gotta see if there are any notes I need to deal with." Tim nodded, looking a bit confused. Callen quickly zipped into his office, standing so that his body was blocking the view into the room, and pulling out the emergency cell phone he had left in a top drawer. There was no time to be fancy, just a quick text to Nell and Eric explaining what was going on. He gave them the fact that the final target was the armed forces recruiting center and confirmed that a student from the university was being held by someone in the church, and was slated to have his body left at the bombing site. He included the fact that the church members were locked down in the church, and that he wouldn't be able to get in contact with them again.

He powered down the emergency cell phone once he was sure the message had been sent, and went out in plenty of time before Tim started getting concerned about this absence. One of the other kids had arrived, so Callen left those two boys with all three carts, and went in search of the third boy, Brian. He found him in the laundry detergent area, hopelessly confused by all the varieties. Even Callen was confused, but they broke the note down word by word, and then got two of each of the last two finalists, just to be careful.

Callen mobilized his impromptu squad of teenagers to the front of the store, waved them through the line, making sure the cashier knew to give him his employee discount, and then led them back to the Reverends' truck. When they made it back to the church, between all the kids of the church everything got carried into the church in one trip. They even put everything away.

Meanwhile at the library Marty was having a typical day. He had finished shelving a small section of books. The library pages, who were crazed ninja shelvers to a person, had finished three times as many books in the same amount of time. He never quite figured out how they did it so fast. One of them once told him jokingly that it went faster if you didn't worry about getting the books back in the right places. It sounded bad, but he had shelf read after that particular person, and all of the books were in the right places. Maybe he'd just memorized where every book in the entire collection was supposed to go. It made as much sense as anything else.

As he made his way back to the reference desk, Marty noticed something that didn't seem quite right. Someone had plugged a tablet of some sort into one of their floor plugs. This was not unusual; it was actually a pretty frequent occurrence. However usually the person who owned the device stayed with it. There was no one within 20 feet of this particular tablet.

With a sigh Marty made his way to the circulation desk to ask for help. Shakira was working, and he used her as a witness that he removed the tablet from the table and secured it in the lost and found. For valuable items he liked to have a witness so that nobody could accuse him of stealing anything. Then when the patron complained he had a fellow staff member backing him up.

Marty didn't think much of it at the time, other than to wonder who left an expensive piece of electronics just lying around the library, not even noticing when it got picked up. About half an hour later, one of the usual computer patrons approached the desk after getting off a computer. He was well known to the staff, mainly because he was usually pretty rude. Marty was working on his adult fiction order list when the man materialized in front of him. Marty actually jumped a little bit, surprised at being pulled out of his concentration on the New York Times best seller list. This guy had almost Hetty-like skills.

He could tell at first glance that the man was upset. He opened on a low note as far as Marty was concerned. He preferred when people said something or made some noise to get his attention, but Darth Vader began the conversation by slamming his hand down on the desk and yelling. "Hey, did you see someone pick up an iPad that was sitting over there?"

Marty recovered his equilibrium rather quickly, and replied in a level tone. "I picked it up; patrons are not allowed to leave valuables unattended in the library."

The patron actually rolled his eyes like a teenage girl, "I had it charging, that's why it was unattended."

Marty replied, maintaining an even tone and a professional manner, "No matter what the reason, patrons are still not allowed to leave valuables unattended."

Marty went to the lost and found, which was located in the work room behind the circulation desk. He retrieved the iPad, and returned to the circulation desk where the man was impatiently waiting.

"Here you go sir," Marty told the patron. "In the future please don't leave your valuable items unattended."

He snatched the iPad out of Marty's hands. "You better not have messed up the update I was doing," he snarled. Then he took his iPad and his bad attitude out of the library.

On the way out of the library, he passed Catherine, who was coming back in from checking the bathrooms for cleanliness and flushing. She glanced after him and shook her head.

When she reached the circulation desk she shook her head and asked, "What happened to piss him off?" Marty explained the incident to her, with Shakira providing back up and corroborating his story. Catherine shook her head.

"That guy and his tablet. When he first got it, he was playing chess with someone online, while he was doing something else on the public computer. He had the sound turned up so loud we got this awful noise any time someone made a move in the game." Marty and Shakira began laughing, and she continued. "It took a while to figure out what was going on. You know how it is when there is a non-regular noise over there in the public computer area. I kept hearing this noise and hearing this noise and when I finally figured it out I was pissed off. And then he got an attitude with me when I asked him to turn the noise off. Packed his stuff up and left. I half expected him to claim he was never coming back, but even he knew better than that."

"I would love to hold him to that," Shakira said. Catherine nodded in agreement.

Callen couldn't believe he had willingly returned to the lock down at the church. At least he had managed to contact his team. Most of the children had finally fallen asleep and even the teens were nodding off. The men had been arranged into groups, and each group was assigned different guard times. Each of the groups was being led either by the Reverend or by one of the elders.

Therefore the majority of the men in the church were asleep, as Callen was supposed to be. He as secretly lying awake, watching the group that was currently on watch pace the walls and check the windows and doors. The Reverend and his inner circle were discussing, in full ear shot of everyone there the plans for the attack on the armed forces recruiting center. Callen groaned and put his head down. He had done what he could; now he just had to hope that his team would come through for him.

At the library Deeks was dealing with a sudden influx of elementary school students, and more importantly with their parents. The first two or three who came in were easy, or at least easier than the later ones were. They were looking for biographies about inventors. Having one or two kids looking for the same information was not a major problem, but by the time the tenth or so student showed up, they were struggling to find books. There were only so many books in the library's collection that were aimed at children and spoke of famous inventors.

Marty found this whole situation rather annoying. "Teachers assigning homework that library does not have resources for." He mused, "Don't they check these things before they tell their students to just come to the public library and get books we don't have?"

"That would make so much sense," Catherine said. "But we can't even get other departments to not tell people that we have a public use fax machine."

"What?" Marty asked.

"Yeah, we suddenly had a lot of people coming in to use our fax machine . . ." Catherine began.

"But we don't have a public-use fax machine," Marty started to say.

"That was the problem." Catherine answered. "We always get some people who think we have a public fax machine. There are a lot of libraries around the country who have them, but the sudden influx was surprising to us. We couldn't figure out how so many people were suddenly showing up with incorrect information. Then we had the bright idea of asking some of these people if someone was telling them that we had a public fax machine. It turns out that someone at city hall was telling people who came in to their office to come here. Unfortunately, they didn't bother to check and see if we actually did. It was a recipe in frustration all the way around."

"Not a good situation from any angle," Marty said.

"The worst were the patrons who wanted us to go ahead and send their fax on our non-public fax machine," Catherine continued. "You know, we even had one guy give out our fax number and have someone fax some stuff to us. He came in later wanting to just pay us for his papers, and got very upset when we told him that unsolicited faxes that we received were thrown away."

Later, the library director came out to let the staff know that she had contacted the school to gently suggest that in the future they might want to check to make sure the library had sufficient resources for all their students before they sent every kid in the school over. She left that phone call in an incandescent rage. Marty could see the anger still reflected on her face as she told the rest of the staff what had transpired.

"She said that maybe we could put the books on reserve, and let the kids look at them in the library. I had to tell her that we certainly could have done that if we had known beforehand what books they needed. But, since they didn't contact us, but the time we knew we would need to do that, all the books were already checked out to kids. She giggled and said, 'Oops, I didn't think of that!' and then hung up on me! Didn't think of that my ass!"

As soon as Nell and Eric got the cryptic message from Callen they leapt into action. Eric contacted Sam, and Nell contacted Kensi and Deeks. They also kept running down the information on where Akem might be being held. Callen had sent them the listing of the church members. He had found, in his first week or so there a listing of all the members of the church and managed to take a picture of the listings and send that to Eric and Nell in ops.

Finally they had narrowed the list of people down enough to be able to find the name of the women who had been speaking in the library when Deeks overheard them. Going by the clues that Deeks had reported, they began to look and see where these women might be living, which would let them know where Sam's student Akem was being held.

Neither of these women owned any property. But what confused Eric and Nell was that neither of their husbands owned any property either. Finally Nell found that the father of the younger woman's husband was a widower who owned a house in the south of the town. Since the man was a widower, he obviously needed some help in taking care of the day to day household tasks. The son of the widower was working as a common laborer and not making a lot of money. Since he and his wife had six children, and had another on the way, they needed a cheap place to live.

The place did in fact have a detached cellar, which was located within easy walking distance from the main house. In fact, a sidewalk ran from the back door into the kitchen to the door to the cellar. This sidewalk was overhung by tall elm trees, and shaded from the street by rose bushes. It appeared to be the perfect place to hold someone against their will.

Once this fact was discovered, Eric and Nell lost no time sending the address to all three of the team members. They sent it at a high urgency, and it completely blew through any attempts by any of these three agents to keep their phones on silent.

When the alarm went off, Kensi was teaching a class, lecturing about the importance of maintaining the chain of custody in criminal investigations. She had just been emphasizing what could happen if there were any irregularities in the handling of evidence. She cited cases of criminals who got off on murder charges because key evidence was declared not admissible in the trial because a police officer or forensics technician had mishandled it in some way.

In the middle of this lecture her phone, which had been sitting on her desk next to the laptop she was using to pull up power point slides, buzzed with the particular tone that meant an emergency message. No matter how many times she got that, her heart still stopped just for a second.

She confirmed with a quick glance that the text message was from Nell, with a note for her to call as soon as possible. Kensi began gathering her possessions, while speaking quickly to her students. "This is an emergency; I'm going to have to go right now. You guys study for the next test, and I'll see you after this problem is taken care of." Leaving her students gaping in confusion, Kensi exited the room and then the building, already dialing Sam on her cell phone.

Sam had been grading papers at his desk at home, since he was not allowed to be on campus at the moment. He received the text from ops with a mingled sense of relief and worry. Relief that they were finally getting somewhere in the investigation and that he finally had an idea where his missing student Akem was. There was also a bit of relief that he could finally stop grading those damn papers. This was one aspect of his latest undercover assignment he was not going to miss in the latest.

Not only was he worried about his student, but now he had to worry about his partner as well. The vague feeling that Akem might be in trouble was replaced with the certain knowledge that he was in considerable danger. While he had known that that was a possibility some part of him had hoped that maybe Akem was off doing something innocent. That comfortable illusion was shattered now, and it was time for action. It was time to save Akem and Callen, both.

When he got the call from Kensi, he told her that he would meet her at the address they were given. He arranged that they would park around the corner, and rendezvous by the cars before they moved in. Fortunately they both had weapons and earwigs in their cars. Kensi let him know that she would pick up Deeks on the way and they would meet him there.

Deeks was on the reference desk when the call came in. He got several scandalized looks from patrons when the alert came through on his phone. He had just reprimanded someone for being too loud on their cell phone. Once he saw that it was an urgent alert from ops he no longer cared what the patrons thought of him. He grabbed his phone, listened to the voicemail from Kensi that had just come in and went back to the work room. He caught Catherine's eye and waved his phone at her. "I'm sorry, but it's an emergency, my wife is on her way to pick me up." Bless Catherine's heart, he knew that his leaving meant that the entire schedule for the rest of the day was going to be thrown off, but she didn't even wince.

"Go," she said, "We'll cover things somehow. I hope it's nothing serious."

Marty left the library and didn't look back as Kensi pulled up in front of the library. He ran through the rain and Kensi barely paused the car long enough for him to leap in. The car was moving again before he could get his seatbelt on. It felt good, he thought, to get back to normal. Smiling, he looked at Kensi and saw an answering smile on her face.

Fifteen minutes later, all of them were moving towards the house where they thought Akem was being held. Sam went in the back door while Kensi and Deeks came in the front. Between all of them they cleared the house, not finding anything.

When the house was clear they approached the storm cellar. There was nothing in the backyard so they concentrated on the door leading into the cellar. It was an old door locked with an obviously brand new lock and hasp. The lock required a combination, and they had no idea what the combination might be. However new it was, it could not stand up to Sam Hanna. Not many things could, as far as Marty was concerned.

After the lock hit the ground, it was only a matter of seconds before Sam had the door open and was heading down the steps, weapon at the ready and on full alert. Kensi was close behind him, also with her weapon out and providing backup. Deeks stayed at the top of the stairs, ready to rush down if it sounded like they might need help, but also keeping an eye out so they wouldn't get surprised by someone sneaking up behind them. They knew that the church members were planning on coming back to get Akem, Marty just hoped they didn't try to do it while his team was there.

In a matter of minutes, Sam and Kensi were helping Akem up the stairs. The young student was shaking with relief from being rescued. Other than a bit of fatigue he seemed to be in good condition. At least they'd fed him, and made sure that he had enough to drink so that he didn't become dehydrated.

They rendezvoused at the house that Kensi and Deeks were sharing. Deeks was able to pull out some clothing that would fit Akem. He had no intention of telling the young man that he was actually wearing some of Kensi's yoga pants. He was a slight young man, and Deeks clothes would have fallen off of him. Akem went to take a shower while the other three gathered around the dining room table to plan their next moves.

"Well," Deeks began, "We can leave Akem here while we go out and try to rescue Callen, we've got the extra bedroom, so he can even try to get some sleep, I'm sure he didn't sleep well while he was being held."

"That's actually a good idea," Sam allowed.

"What do you mean, 'actually'," Deeks said, pretending outrage. "Of course it's a good idea!"

Sam smiled, sharing the smile equally between Deeks and Kensi, "Of course it's a good idea." He agreed. "They shouldn't have connected this place with anyone, unless they somehow saw us together just now. We've kept apart from each other really well; they shouldn't have any clue about who you two are."

Kensi disagreed slightly. "I would still feel more comfortable if we had someone to stand guard over him here. How soon do we need to save Callen and get these people arrested?

"Fairly quickly," was Deek's response. "We don't know when they're planning on blowing up the Armed Forces Recruitment Center, just that that is their target. Of course, when they can't find their human sacrifice, maybe it'll slow them down."

"Maybe they'll think he's gotten away on his own," Kensi suggested, only to quickly correct herself. "No, they'll know something happened because the lock is broken."

"That's true," Sam said, "But we had to get Akem out. Do we know anyone who can come and watch over Akem while we deal with the rest of our mission?"

"Yes," Kensi suddenly said, "Bubba!"

Sam and Deeks shared a cautious look that made it obvious that neither one of them understood what she was talking about. "Bubba?" Deeks said cautiously.

Kensi smiled that smile she got when she knew something that the rest of the team didn't. "Bubba is the nickname of the local police chief," she explained. "I don't think that he'll have time to personally come out here to watch over Akem, but he might know who we could trust. Or maybe, it would be best if we get Akem washed and fed and then leave him at the police station to be watched over."

Sam disagreed, "I think that this town is pretty riled up about Muslims at the moment, and we're going to need some backup when we go into the church. Let's see if Bubba has a trusted man he can send out. Then we'll identify ourselves and get a squad or two of men to have our backs when we go into the church.

Just about that time Akem showed up from the shower, fully dressed in one of Marty's shirts and Kensi's yoga pants, and his own shoes. He looked much relieved. Marty pulled out leftovers from the previous night, and made up plates for all four of them, something else that seemed to amuse Sam. Marty wasn't sure why the sight of him cooking would be amusing, but Sam seemed to find the sight of him cooking comedy gold.

After everyone had eaten, the whole group headed down to the police station. They all took one car, with Kensi driving, and made sure to stock up on weapons. Everyone seemed refreshed and ready to go.

When they arrived at the police station, Marty was glad to see that it was a slow day. There were not that many police officers around, and those that were there were as busy as bees. They got right in to see the police chief, who seemed a bit surprised to see them. Marty guessed that if you didn't know what was going on the group he was part of might be considered a bit weird.

"So," the police chief, whom Marty now knew was sometimes called 'Bubba', said slowly, "Dr. Blye, Dr. Hanna, and Mr. Blye, and who is this?" gesturing towards Akem. Marty was somewhat amused at being called Mr. Blye, but decided not to get into details at this point.

Sam pulled out his badge and began to explain the whole situation to the police chief. It made, he thought, a rather crazy tale. The police chief caught on quickly, and set his mind to discovering someone whom he would trust with watching Akem. After a minute or two his face cleared. "I have the perfect person to watch our young man!" Akem looked like he was trying to decide if he should be relieved or terrified. It was an interesting combination.

"Who?" Sam questioned.

"Clyde," the police chief said.

Kensi smiled, "Perfect!"

For the benefit of the other three men she explained who Clyde was. Sam agreed and Bubba called Clyde and explained the whole situation to him.

"Clyde says he's always up for visitors," Bubba announced after a short phone call. Akem seemed a freaked out, especially once they got to the National Guard armory. He clung close to Sam as they walked into the building. However, once they were inside he could not help but respond to the friendly face that Clyde showed to everybody. By the time they left the armory he was smiling at Clyde and following him to a safe room, where Sam and the other two NCIS members promised to come retrieve him as soon as it was safe. Bubba had a team of his officers and a few Deputies from the Sheriff's department assembled and ready to head out to the church.

From Callen's point of view, the day was remarkably quiet after he and the teens returned from the store and the last of the children finally fell asleep. There was a brief burst of activity when the members of the inner circle returned to the church in a dismal mood. Callen gathered that they had gone to pick up their sacrificial Muslim lamb from wherever he was being held, only to find that he had disappeared from the cellar. They were extremely perturbed, and were inclined to believe the worst. They found it to be a sign of some monstrous conspiracy. Callen preferred to think that sanity was finally prevailing.

He had been through enough ops to be able to sense when things were coming to a head. So he hung tight and waited for his team mates to come and get him. The rest of the church members had no such sixth sense, so it came as a complete surprise when suddenly there was an explosion in front of the church, and armed and masked people entered from every possible entrance. They quickly got all the men of the church under control and began hauling them away to be taken into custody. The women and children were also placed into protective custody so that their physical and mental health could be evaluated.

After one final teleconference with ops everyone packed up and headed back to California. Their covers had been well and truly blown in town, and the team was anxious to get back home. The news that a team of super-secret agents had been living in their town, and taken down a plot involving foreign students, local church boys, and high explosives was the talk of the town for several weeks. Library patrons were amazed that the mild-mannered man they had known as a librarian was actually working in law enforcement. Kensi's colleagues in the Criminal Justice department were not surprised; they knew she had to have gotten her expertise somewhere. Sam's associates were more surprised, he'd never shown any interest in such matters. The employees and customers of the Callenmart were the most amazed. They were amazed that the mild-mannered man they'd known was actually a badass secret agent. One of the older customers remarked that she'd always thought he'd been hiding something, but thought he might have been a serial killer.

"Not that I'm not glad to be proven wrong!" She exclaimed. "But he was a quiet white male who was a loner and in his forties, and isn't that just the classic description of every serial killer you've ever heard of?" If Marty had been there, he would have recognized her as the woman who'd read through every book in the true crime section, and was constantly requesting more.

Epilogue

By the next spring, everything was back to normal. The team was resettled into their non-routine routine. Sam was glad to be back to his family and his house. In a move that surprised absolutely no one, Kensi and Deeks moved in together, while Callen went back to his Spartan existence.

Marty noticed that Patterson had new book out, and commented on it. Kensi wasn't sure what that meant, but Marty was half expecting the snarky comments his library people had made about Patterson's unnatural output. He had heard from Catherine letting him know that the homeschool boys were missing his input on engineering matters.

Kensi got an official certificate from Bubba and the entire police department, thanking her for her assistance. When the physical copy came, Bubba had appended a personal note of thanks, letting her know that one of the officers was being sent to advanced training in forensic techniques.

Callen didn't hear from any of his people, but retained a new appreciation of for the difficulties of supermarket managers. Despite much teasing from Sam, he had no desire to start a 'lucrative second career' in management.

Sam settled happily back into his routine, but was extremely happy to get an invitation to Akem's graduation.