Zane sat on the plush couch facing the expensive television mounted on the wall, the remote control in one hand. As he flipped through the channels light flashed across him and the soft carpet on the floor and the smooth, professional paint job on the walls and ceiling of the main room, revealing the kitchen furnishings on white tile behind a bar counter and stools. To the left of Zane two doors at points in the wall marked the location of the bedrooms of both him and his father, while slightly behind and to the right a bigger, solid-looking door guarded passage to the outside.

Zane remembered his old house that he had moved from a couple of days ago. He could walk out the front door and feel somewhat free in the open space of his large front yard of well-tended grass. But here "outside" meant a long hallway of other residences, like a hotel or even a lowly apartment, Zane thought bitterly. Here in urban Italy things weren't as open as in Australia, it would seem. His father had explained how it was actually an expensive business suite reserved exclusively for employees of the corporation and that Zane should feel honored to be here, but Zane didn't care how much it had cost. He missed the large yards, gardens, beaches, and ocean of Australia.

His father had even forbade him to go outside the building into the city! As if Zane couldn't look after himself. What had he done all those years in Australia when his father had been too involved in his business interests to look after his own son? Had he run away with girls or stolen or vandalized as so many other teens his age did?

No! He had made friends and invested time and money in worthy ventures! And what did he get for it? He was effectively grounded for an indefinite period of time! Zane tightened his mouth in anger at the unfairness of it all. After all this time and his father still didn't trust him!

Mr. Bennett claimed it was because of the dangers of urban life. It was nothing like Australia, he had told Zane, there were criminals and stalkers that roamed the streets, not like the streets of their old house where they had known everyone and honesty prevailed over lies. This was the world at its worst, his father had told him, so don't just go running around wherever you feel like until I make some connections and we get familiar with the place a little more.

Unfortunately, no "running around wherever you feel like" meant not going anywhere at all. Not that Mr. Bennett had this restriction. In fact, he was rarely in.

Zane supposed his father was right. He didn't know what kinds of things there were in the big city, much less in a different country. He felt the anger at his father gradually ebb away. No, he wasn't angry at his father, he just wished he could go out! At least he'd have to go out for school, right? Unless his father hired a private tutor to come to the suite. And Zane desperately hoped that this wasn't the case.

He hadn't even seen the place they'd gone too or the city they were in. He had been carrying his luggage and preparing to get in the plane, and the next thing he knew he was here in the main room of the suite, lying on the couch with a splitting headache, with his father over him with a concerned look on his face. It soon faded after being assured that Zane was quite alright, returning his face to its normal businessman expression. Apparently, his father had explained, Zane had gotten on the plane and they had made the flight. They had boarded the Italian equivalent of a taxi upon arrival and had arrived at the building of business suites, but Zane had tripped on the curb and hit his head on a rock, knocking him out cold. His father and a staff member at the building had carried him up along with the luggage, and a few minutes later Zane had revived, remembering nothing after seeing the plane, about to board it. At first he was slightly skeptical, but the bruise and horrible headache proved that he had indeed suffered a short-term memory loss from the blow. Plus, his father had never lied to him. He hadn't always cared about Zane, but Mr. Bennett was an honest man. He and Zane had never outright lied to each other.

Zane's eyes staring at the television screen as he continued to flip through the channels listlessly. He sighed. It was no use going over it again and again. It wasn't going to change, at least not just by thinking about it. Normally he would talk to Nate or Rikki about his frustrations and they would agree about the injustice of the situation or point out how self-centered he was being about the whole thing. And he would feel better just having talked about it, even if it took a few days after getting over the comment about self-centeredness. Even Lewis understood more than these business morons of his fathers would if he had tried to talk to any of them.

Zane laughed bitterly to himself. It was a sad, sad day when he found himself missing Lewis' friendship.

But he did miss his old friends. Mostly Nate and Rikki. If he was back home in Australia he would have been coasting the sea waters with Nate in his little boat or hanging out with him at the Juicenet Cafe. Or maybe he would have been hanging out with Rikki, getting drinks at the Juicenet Cafe or just talking on the beach.

He wondered where Rikki was now...

Rikki lie on the cold floor inside a small cage only a meter or two square and about a meter tall.

"Rikki!!"

Rikki's body shuddered and she moaned loudly.

"Rikki, are you okay?!?" Emma's terrified voice sliced through her peaceful unconsciousness.

Rikki tried to form words but they came out as another groan as the pain hit her. She hurt terribly everywhere from the pain they had inflicted to test her. Her muscles still ached from being pushed beyond their limit.

"Rikki?!?"

"I'm...okay," she barely managed to force out, her voice a whisper, teeth gritted together.

She slowly shut out the pain, feeling a grim appreciation for her tough past that allowed her to do this. She forced herself to gradually sit up as much as she could in the small cage as her realization of the pain slowly ebbed away.

"Rikki!" Lewis gasped as caught sight of her, "They've hurt you!" he cried out in anger, grasping the bars of his own cage so hard his arms shook, his facing pressing against the cold metal, "They'll be sorry they ever messed with my friend! I'll...I'll..." he sputtered as he tried to conceive a punishment horrible enough.

"Lewis," Rikki said, voice gaining strength as her mind began to build mental walls against the pain. Even so, her injuries were obvious to the others and she still felt stiff, along with the vague feeling that used to be unendurable pain, "You're stuck in here as much as we are. Escape first, revenge later, eh?" she attempted a small smile.

He bit his lip, his manliness being suppressed by logic as his scientist side took over. He sighed, "Yeah, okay. Escape first."

Emma hadn't turned her face from Rikki. She was usually the sensible one, but she didn't look very composed right now. Although, Rikki reminded herself, most people didn't have to endure what she was enduring right now. Rikki noticed, however, that her face also was closing up slightly against the obvious anguish she was feeling as some subconscious part of her mind realized that panic wasn't going to help anything.

"I'm okay," Rikki smiled as much as her swollen eye and various cuts and bruises enabled her to. Her clothes were torn from the violent handling as well.

Emma looked visibly relieved at Rikki's display of spirit, even though the marks on her face and body still disturbed her greatly.

Having significantly relieved her friends' stress, Rikki leaned back on the wall of her cage and hugged her legs up to her chest. She rested her head on her knees and closed her eyes, exhausted. It had been worse than she had let on, but she didn't want to speak of it. She didn't even want to remember it. She just wanted to rest...

Rikki awoke with a slight start as the door to the room where they were being held opened. A burst of fear suddenly flared up.

They were back!

She suppressed it stubbornly, forcing herself to be calm. If they were here for her again she would need every bit of her endurance to make it through whatever torture they had prepared for her this time. She tightened her lips grimly. They wouldn't break her.

But the white-clad legs strode past her cage and Rikki felt a guilty wave of relief wash over her as she realized that it was not her to be tested this time. But her relief was quickly stopped in its tracks as she realized with horror that now it was Emma's turn. Lewis sat still in his cage, eyes wide, too stunned by all this to react to the fact that they were taking Emma and he was powerless to stop them. Rikki tried to put up a better front for her. She smiled encouragingly and made a fist to signify being strong as Emma passed her cage, looking unsure and scared. Emma tried to smile back, but it didn't make it to any other part of her face.

It was only once the door shut solidly and Rikki knew that Emma was gone that she lie down on the floor and cried violently for her dear friend.

The Eraser walked to the edge of the unnaturally clear pool of water that rested directly under the volcano's opening and dropped silently into it, just as he had practiced in training. He took a calm, measured breath and felt his body take the oxygen for use, funneling the useless water to various points throughout his body where it would be expelled noiselessly. Not quite so painlessly, but then he was trained to endure immense pain. This was nothing in comparison to the tests they'd run on him in training to get him fit for combat.

He breathed in again and moved his strong arms and legs through the water, pushing him forward into the underwater tunnel that led from the pool into the open ocean. He calmed himself and casually searched the cave walls, then the rock ceiling, then the sandy ocean floor, eventually looking in every direction around him. His specially created eyes missed nothing. He swam out through the opening and into the ocean, eyes flitting this way and that until he was satisfied that nothing was out of place.

Nothing was ever out of place.

Almost without meaning to, he remembered that day several months ago. It seemed like so much longer. He had been in hunting training at the time. He had taken down an adult chimpanzee. He had been proud. This had been his first successful kill. He had looked up to see if he had, for once, left a good impression on the scientist watching.

He had not.

He had never quite understood what he had done wrong, and that had just enraged the scientist further.

So now he was assigned to guard duty. He had been ever since that day. He supposed he should be grateful that they hadn't killed him outright. They had had the right, hadn't they? They still did. They were his creators, after all.

But this job of monotonous guarding was starting to get to him. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth again and again, all day and half the night.

Of course, it wouldn't have been so bad if something had happened every once in a while. But, of course, the scientists at Itex were too smart for that. Nothing worth guarding against would even find out where they had hidden, much less make it anywhere near it.

He sighed, an expression he had picked up from one of the scientists, and turned to swim back through the passageway toward the pool.

He felt a disturbance in the water. Shark, he thought glumly, turning to be sure. He was just inside the tunnel, a small part of him still outside in the sunlit ocean. He didn't see anything. No matter. After all this research he was surprised to find that a great many fish still had better camouflage than he and his fellow Erasers did.

He felt a disturbance of water on his other side, inside the passageway. Strange, the larger ones didn't usually venture inside there. But then again, his senses were developed enough to catch the odd smaller fish's movement under the right circumstances.

Still, it made him uneasy. He pulled a little communicator from a pocket in the cloth the scientists insisted he wore around his groin. He would alert the others of the passing fish. Not that they would care, nor would he, but it was better for everyone to do it by the book.

He felt a violent disturbance behind him again, toward the open ocean. He turned quickly, hoping to catch a glimpse at what large fish was in the vicinity.

What he saw was no fish. It was a human girl.

With wings.

His training took over as he moved one hand to press the alarm button and the other into a right hook.

He never got a chance to do either.

The next thing he knew he was sailing backwards with a surprising amount of force for a human, even one with wings, and a terrible pain in his jaw. He tried to ignore the pain, as he'd been trained, but he found it to be much more difficult in an actual attack. He was surprised to even be under attack! He turned, looking for her, and saw a flick of movement to his left. He turned and saw her in time to be dealt a vicious kick to the kidneys. He gasped, sucking in water, as lights exploded in his eyes. His body ripped the oxygen from the inhaled water before practically throwing it out through the various pores in his body. The pain in his kidneys was tremendous and he kept sucking in lungful after lungful of water.

His systems weren't prepared for this. They weren't made for this. The pain as the water was expelled increased. He could feel his body slow its processes, and he knew that his time was up. He turned to attack this girl who had dared to cause him this pain, but his motions felt strangely slow and sluggish. She appeared in front of him, brown hair flowing around her. She seemed perfectly calm.

The button, he remembered, he had to push the button and alert the others. He looked to his left hand where the device sat. But before he could make his finger respond a foot lashed out and the device floated out of his hand toward the sand-covered floor. He turned back toward the girl in time to see her arm flash out.

Then all went black.