AN: This chapter took me so long to write. I re-wrote it two or three times and fought with myself about whether or not I really needed to make the last part as detailed as I did, but after much thought and scribbling in my little story-planning book I've decided that I needed to cover the issue of Reverie's past sooner than later. It's relevant for pieces later in the story so bear with me please!

I'm so relieved that you all liked the last chapter! Yes, it's not Graham (even though I love Graham to pieces). I was disappointed with how they used Graham in season two, and I was dissatisfied with the lack of suspense surrounding him being masked. It was literally "Graham has a mask now, call him Mr. Bushido." rather than an unmasking and "OMG Graham was the one pulling the strings all along!" which I thoroughly enjoy from Gundam series. He was underwhelming as a masked-man when compared with Char, Zechs, Rau, and even Neo. Boo. So I give you a brown-haired masked man that will be plot relevant from here out.

Thanks to everyone who reviewed! Stormy, I think you picked up on what I'm planning with Gallagher. I knew you would of all people and I'm glad. Thanks to Surrealistic for telling me what they thought, and thanks to Anne Fatalism Dilettante for all of the constructive reviews that she's been giving! I'm glad that you like the mystery pieces that I'm adding in, I was really worried that people were going to hate new character introductions! I'll try to keep the pieces running smoothly, but god knows what I'll come up with next...*fear face*. Lapizlazulijavi, I really wanted to write Anew into this chapter, but she'll be coming in the next one. Or two. Probably one. I'm looking forward to when she shows up because then I can stop laying groundwork for Lyle/Rev and I can start going back to picking on the rest of the CB crew. Literary world problems! Sigh.

On a random note, I don't know why, but I've noticed that I like Lyle's POV more than Rev's. I'm not sure if it's because I like setting up camp in his brain and watching what happens, or if I have a secret dislike of OC stories where you only get the OC's perspective, or if I'm just biased and want to write pretty angst. Who knows.

I listened to "Everybody" by Stabilo, as well as "Circles" from Hollywood Undead.

**last note I promise: 'je pense que tu es comme un piece de merde' is 'I think you're a piece of shit', and '...et je ne suis pas ton 'sweetheart'' is 'and I'm not your sweetheart'. The other French is just swearing.

Interrogation Island

"I feel we are all islands - in a common sea."

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Claudine watched with terrified eyes as the little syringe was slipped into her arm again. How had she gotten caught? How had they found out that she was from Katharon? There was no way. Hadn't they been chasing Celestial Being at the A-Laws banquet? Isn't that why they'd rushed outside to chase the purple-haired woman and the middle-eastern boy? Wasn't that it?

The man in front of her stretched his arms and flicked through a file. She was stuck in the interrogation chair, completely unable to move and completely at the mercy of the two men in the room. Blood already ran down the side of her face and over a swollen lip, and if she could see herself she was sure that she'd be covered in expertly placed purple and black marks. She was also sure that no matter what she said she wasn't getting out.

"Are we going to try this again?" the man in front of her asked almost as though he were teaching her to ride a bike. "It would be a pity to ruin your pretty little face any farther.

"Casse-toi, connard!" she snapped. She'd been pretending not to speak a word of English since they'd picked her up, and she'd managed to make the translator they'd brought in pass out when she spattered her with blood from a well-executed fake sneeze.

The second man clicked his tongue at her, smiling lightly under his deep green mask. He'd arrived barely ten minutes ago if she had to guess. He was leaning against the wall as though he was bored, absent-mindedly spinning a data drive in a leather-gloved hand. The first man was the one who had beaten her to this point, but there was something about this newcomer that made her shiver in fear.

"What do you think, Gallagher?" the first man asked, turning to the new arrival.

"I think she speaks English perfectly well." He said. She glared at him, hurtling every insult she could think of at him. "and she's proficient enough to know some very…colourful words." He looked at her. "What opinion do you have, sweetheart?"

"Je pense que tu es comme un pièce de merde!" she said, aptly letting them know what she was thinking. "…et je ne suis pas ton 'sweetheart!'"

The masked man laughed. "She doesn't speak English but she can answer my questions? Stop wasting your time with translators and get somewhere with her." He said, turning to leave the room.

"You speak French?" the first man asked the second, astonished.

The masked man laughed. "Not a word."

"Then how do you know she speaks English?"

"Because she's thinking in English." He replied.

What? He could tell? How could he tell? She was panicking mentally. Was it something in her speech that tipped her off? Was it that she'd actually answered the question?" But neither of them spoke French so they couldn't know that. She mulled scatteredly over the last ten minutes. How had he figured it out?

The man looked at her and laughed. "Ah this is going to be so much fun. Stahn, you're free to go. I'm taking over from here." He said, turning back from the door and watching the other man scurry out. If the man that had been interrogating her was scared of the masked figure, she knew her fears were completely founded. She couldn't be alone with him. She couldn't let this crazed, masked person near her! She struggled against the chair but her muscles were sluggish and nonresponsive from the injection they'd given her. She looked up in fear as he sat down across from her, chestnut hair falling over the deep green mask that matched his A-Laws uniform impeccably.

"I want to be very clear. You aren't leaving here. You will die here." He said. Her breath caught in her throat. How could he say that so casually? She felt her stomach swim and her eyes blur with tears. She cursed herself for being so readily emotional. His gloved hand caressed her bruised cheek delicately, his voice slipping to a tone that was meant to console. "Oh, I know. It's so sad. Your pretty, young life ending here. It's a tragedy…" he was mocking her, and she was going to die, and she was more scared than she'd ever been in her life. His thumb lightly tapped her swollen lower lip, making her flinch. "…but before you do, you're going to tell me everything I want to know."

"What do you mean, 'you don't know'!?" Tieria's glare was as determined as she'd ever seen it, but she wasn't bending to him at all this time. They'd alternated between yelling at each other and quietly arguing for the better part of four hours and both showed no signs of being the first to roll.

"I mean, I don't know!" Reverie snapped. "He was in my head! I have no idea what he saw!"

"Except the weapons systems of Ptolemy, your identity, mine and Setsuna's identities, and possibly the identity of our tactical forecaster!? That's not nothing!" he said, his hair actually looking slightly out of place. He was frustrated and furious.

"I know that!" she snapped again. She was exasperated. They kept going around the same bush hour after hour, yelling at each other over the same things repeatedly. Tieria was obviously angry about the entire mission and was taking it out on her, but she had no way of answering his questions.

"How could you let this happen!?" he demanded, his face almost twitching.

"Excuse me!?" She yelled. "How could I possibly let my mind be picked through when as far as I knew I was the only telepath in the world!? People can't hide things from me! That's the point! There's no way to hide things in your head forever when I'm listening!"

"Didn't you listen to him!?" Tieria interrogated, his tone calming.

"Of course I did!" but there was nothing useful behind that jade green mask. There wasn't a single thing that she could use from him other than the one thing she wouldn't tell Tieria: that she knew his voice. What would it accomplish to tell the infuriated Meister? He'd undoubtedly grill her about it, then of course he'd drag Lyle in the room for a round of verbal lashing, and at the end of the day nothing would come of it.

"And!?"

"And there was nothing I could use! No information per se, no useful memories per se, nothing useful other than the fact that he could hear me!" Of course, she'd been preoccupied with getting away from him, but she'd swallow poison before she told Tieria that she'd abandoned the purpose of her mission, even if it was for a major security risk.

"Like he wasn't thinking about anything useful, or like he had no memories?" Tieria asked, his voice dropping to a conversational tone with frightening suddenness.

She thought about it for a long, calculated moment before responding. "Like he had fake memories."

"Fake memories?" he asked, his gears clearly turning.

She nodded. "He had the images and words of his memories in his head, but there were no details." She said, trying to sum up what she'd seen. "There were no smells, feelings, no emotions attached to any of the images." It had been strange, and she'd only had the chance to think about it in the pub while she waited for them to send someone. "I didn't get to see many of them, but the few that I did see were like that. As though he'd been told that those were his memories but he had no attachment to them."

Tieria was silent for a moment as he mulled over the new information. "And you said he's piloting for A-Laws?"

She nodded. "Their latest model."

"How skilled is he?"

"Skilled enough to warrant a model made to his specifications, and important enough to be on a first-name basis with Arthur Goodman and Homer Katagiri." She replied. That was something she did know.

Tieria was silent again, then exhaled. "The bigger mystery is how he ended up with your abilities."

Didn't she know it. "I wouldn't put it past the A-Laws to use the data the AEU had on me to make someone else with the same abilities. There must be a file on him somewhere."

Tieria shook his head. "No. We won't find anything on him." He said.

"Have you looked already?" Reverie asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

"Feldt is running a thorough search now, but I think we both know that it would break too many human rights laws for the A-Laws to actually admit that they'd tampered with someone neurologically. Even aside from the thought-hearing itself, the fact that they'd possibly erased memories would result in public upheaval if it were ever discovered."

How had she not considered that? It was true. It was so true it was slapping her in the face. "So who is he, then?"

It was Tieria's turn to say the words. "I don't know."

"What do we know?" she asked, realizing for the first time that her throat was hurting from all the yelling they'd been doing.

"Well, we know that you definitely can't be trained any farther with Ptolemy's systems, and that you can't be around for any mission-specific briefings." He said calmly.

"What!?" that made her angry. "But anyone on this ship could have their thoughts overheard!" she said, feeling like a yelling match was about to ensue again. "You can't expect me to sit around and do nothing until we figure this guy out! That could take weeks or months, or he could die and we'd never know!"

"Anyone's thoughts can be read indeed. Reverie Traum, you have read everyone's thoughts. That is why you can't be around anything or anyone of importance until we figure out what to do."

It was like a bucket of ice water had been dumped on her.

She knew the most about the ship, she suddenly realized. She knew the people, their identities, their stories, their hopes and aspirations. She knew Celestial Being inside out. She knew how much money they needed to run, where their bases were and the names of all their major supporters. She knew enough to destroy them. It wasn't like she'd actively tried to find this information out, but when you could hear the ships' crew you heard a lot more than just their day-to-day gripes.

She stood so quickly that her chair teetered on two feet before hitting the wall, then she was out the door.

"Reverie Traum, where are you-!"

Tieria's words were cut off as the door closed.

How could he expect to keep her away from work? She could hear everyone on board the ship at all times, whether she was working or not. She was a liability just walking through the halls. Of course the idea of her leaving the ship was now completely out of the question, but wasn't the idea of her staying just as bad? Wouldn't she continue to overhear conversations and battle plans and sensitive discussions as long as she was on-board?

It was a perfect example of Catch 22.

She stalked quickly through the halls, completely irritated and frustrated and in thorough need of a distraction. She stopped at Lyle's door, and knocked on it impatiently.

-Does he really expect me to play telephone with Sumeragi? I'm a spy, not a god-damned messenger pigeon.-

"What?" he snapped through the door, clearly as irritated as she was.

"It's me, you free?"

"Yeah, just give me a sec."

She sighed in frustration and leaned against the wall. "Fine."

She listened as he finished the call, stating training as his reason for leaving. She listened as the man kept him on the phone, and then she kicked herself for listening. She wasn't supposed to anymore. How could she deal with that? Her mind was permanently set to 'eaves-drop', so much so that no one was offended by her overhearing their conversations anymore. They just assumed that she couldn't stop, which was true.

The door slid open with frustrated speed and Lyle cursed under his breath as he tossed his contact drive back onto the desk before meeting her in the hall. "Range?" he questioned, clearly not interested in delving into the details of the conversation he'd been having. She could hear him mutter in his head that shooting while frustrated meant lower scores, and she also heard him kick his sensible self mentally and warn 'not with semi-automatics!'.

Good. That was exactly the kind of raw destructive power she could use at the moment.

"Range." She agreed.

They made quick work out of the distance between Lyle's room and the range only to be disappointed. As their unfortunate luck would have it the automated system was being debugged and they were told by a frustrated Ian to go and get a coffee and not hold their breaths.

That was why they found themselves in the pilot's lounge, lazing about and dully tuning out the feed of news that was on constant repeat on the massive screen in the room. Neither of their postures indicated just how frustrated or tense the other was, but each seemed to understand that it was a horrible, drawn-out day. Lyle watched as Reverie examined the imperfections in her coffee mug as she lay stretched out on one of the sofas, her feet sitting comfortably on an armrest.

"Is Tieria still in one piece?" he asked, Reverie having just finished summarizing the infuriating interrogation. From the sounds of it Tieria was coming unravelled.

"Until further notice, although I wouldn't be surprised if he spontaneously combusted. He's working himself up way more than he needs to." She said, sniffing her coffee and wrinkling her nose. The coffee as usual was strong enough to eat through steel, although today that was welcomed rather than scoffed at.

"I'm not so sure he is" Lyle said, absentmindedly swirling his cup. "You know a lot, Rev. Who knows what that guy managed to find in your pretty little head."

She raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, but the majority is personal stuff about the crew. He'd have to really dig to find anything useful."

"What about the weapon systems?" he pointed out.

"They really aren't that different from what's available in the military at the moment…and I don't know exactly what it is that makes them unique. Without that he can't really use what he found." She said. It made sense. Talking about the possible security breach of her abilities wasn't something that either one of them wanted to continue thinking about, he sensed. Her downcast expression was enough to tip him off.

"How much do you know about me?" he asked. He didn't know where the question came from and he was shocked as the words left his mouth. As long as they didn't involve comparing him to his brother, he didn't care about others opinions of himself. That was fundamental to his personality. Reverie didn't know his brother, so why did he care about what she knew of him?

"Do you want the light stuff or the heavy stuff?" she asked.

It was an intriguing question all on its own. He decided he didn't want either. As long as he didn't know what she knew about him, he could leave his mask on. That was fine with him.

"Neither, actually." He replied. She seemed relieved. Maybe she didn't want to pull the mask off him just yet. "I don't feel like hearing about myself." He clarified. He heard enough of himself in his head, after all. What did he know about her?

That was interesting. Did he know anything about her other than what he'd witnessed?

He didn't.

"Oh? No self-absorbed introspective?" she quipped, sending him a grin.

"No. just sudden curiosity." He sipped his coffee, letting the taste distract his thoughts.

She tilted her head. "Why?"

"You know more about me than I probably want to admit to, but I don't know anything about you." He wanted to. It only seemed fair, after-all she had an all-season pass to his mind…couldn't he get away with a few questions?

She nodded. "True. Well, what do you want to know?"

He sighed as he picked through the list of things that he could think of off the top of his head. "How old are you?"

"Twenty-five."

"How long did you live in Germany?"

"Nineteen years. I spent three years in Marseilles for school and three bouncing from base to base all over the AEU." She said, replying to his next question before he could ask it. It felt strangely uncomfortable to be interrogating her like this, but they were both bored and he was interested.

"Why don't you have a German accent?"

"Why don't you have an Irish one?" She quipped, grinning. "I got rid of it when I realized that it was interfering with my pronunciation in my other languages, and when I ran from the military it was much easier to stay hidden when I didn't have the accent outside of Germany." She answered the question anyways, not necessarily expecting an answer from him. He'd let his accent drop when he'd entered business school. Of course like her he could turn it on when he wanted with minimal difficulty, but you climbed the career ladder much faster with a flat American style of speech. It was insulting and annoying, but he had been willing to play. He'd hid it for so long that now it had become normal, his accent a reminder of a time in his life that he'd rather not remember most days.

"Anything else?"

He thought long and hard about his next question. There was one that had been sitting in his head for the last few weeks, ever since the incident at the Katharon base. He weighed his options carefully before slowly asking it.

"Why do you hate your stepfather?"

A flicker of shock flashed across her face and was gone as quickly as it had arrived. "Getting heavy, I see." She muttered. He wasn't sure if she was angry or just surprised.

"I'm just using my questions wisely." He pointed out. "After all, your relationship with your stepfather could interfere with Katharon, couldn't it?" In truth he didn't give a damn about it for Katharon, he was just outright curious.

"Lyle, can you give me enough respect to be honest with me?" she asked, her blue-grey eyes laughing and accusing at once. She knew that he was interested purely out of his own curiosity. Of course she did. It was a dig, and it hurt because she'd called him on his dishonesty.

"Fine. I'm curious." He said, running a hand through his hair. He wasn't sure why he did it, maybe a nervous tick after being reprimanded.

"That's better." She said, shifting to a sitting position. She set her mug down on the table and stared at it as though she was trying to find the words.

Finally she sighed. "Did you ever ask him how he got that scar?"

He shook his head. He'd never bothered to ask the German why his scalp looked like it had gotten in a fight with a cleaver. It definitely made him memorable though, the deep purple, zig-zagging scar stopped the hair from growing on one side of his head after-all. It was impossible to ignore.

She sighed again and was silent for a moment. Was she ignoring the question, or was she still thinking?

"I'm just trying to figure out if I want to tell you about it. It might give you a different impression of me…" she said, passing the handle of her cup from one index finger to the other. She still hadn't looked at him.

"You don't have to tell me, Rev. It's fine." He voiced, as though it was expected.

"No. You're curious, I'll tell you. It's only fair after what I've seen of your past." She was silent again after that and he stayed the same, not wanting to interrupt her thought process or learn which part of his past she was talking about.

"My mother met him after I left for training with the AEU, a year after my father passed. He was working in Frankfurt and stopped in at our coffee shop every week on his way through Dusseldorf…I guess they took a liking to each other. Either way, I was gone for three years and only came back after my…accident."

He noted the way she said accident. It was strange and clipped, like she hadn't quite accepted the idea that it was an accident yet.

"I had run from the AEU facility I'd been in and made my way home. From the minute I met him I didn't like him. His thoughts were dishonest and calculated…like he didn't even know the truth if he wanted to tell it. Everything he'd told my mother about his education, his work, even his previous marriage was a lie."

Her brow was furrowed as she stared her coffee down, her blue-grey eyes filled with a look that he imagined was in his own often; supressed rage.

"I was livid. As the weeks went on I couldn't sleep unless I was downing mouthfuls of pills, something that I kept hidden from my family as much as possible. Deiter was fourteen at the time and I didn't want him to see me taking them, and my mother would have had a breakdown if she'd realized how badly I'd been changed. Regardless, eventually Bruns saw me taking them one night when I thought everyone was asleep. He stayed silent about it and I didn't think anything of it for the next week or so."

She stopped and sighed. She was coming to the hardest part. Lyle couldn't help but feel like he didn't deserve the honesty that she was giving him…like somehow he'd become too dishonest over the years to be gifted with truth from a friend. He'd become estranged from the honest boy that he once was.

"I'd kept my mouth shut about his lies. I couldn't explain how I knew, and I didn't want to ruin my mother's happiness, fake or not. It was a relief to see her happy after my father died. I was content to quietly dislike him until one night. He came home late from the bar. Apparently he was a drinker and my mother had been begging him to stay sober until I got my feet under me again, but he'd stopped on his way home and lost control. When he stepped in the door his thoughts were all rage. He was angry, he was looking for a fight, and my mother was more than willing to give him one…she's always been headstrong."

Lyle bristled at the idea of what she was about to say. There was nothing in the world that he loathed more than abusive men. He wasn't the best pick of the bunch admittedly, with his avoidance of commitment and habit of playing women's feelings just a little too far, but he would never be like the men who were abusive. They were weak and disgusting, and he felt a slow burn of anger start to rise against the scarred Katharon member.

Reverie chuckled, drawing his attention back to the story. "No, he didn't hit her." She said bitterly. "I didn't give him the chance. My mother tore out of the house after he'd called her an assortment of colourful things and he decided he was gonna go after her. I heard the thoughts he was having, about what was waiting for her if he caught up to her. Fists and bottles and almost definitely a hospital trip…" she paused. Her coffee cup sat perfectly still now, as though she'd forgotten to keep fidgeting "…I hadn't been sleeping well, you see. After he saw me take the pills I hadn't taken them again. I'd been up in a daze for six and a half days and…I'm not exactly sane when I'm like that. I wasn't sane when it all happened…"

She had yet to tell him what had happened. There was a dark tone in her voice that he didn't recognize. That was a lie. He recognized it, but he'd never expected to hear it in his friend's voice. It stood in stark, mocking contrast to the carefree tone she'd had in the range the week before.

"…I locked the garage door so he couldn't drive off and I…" she paused, her eyes flicking to him and back down. "…I started tearing into the car with one of my father's crowbars. Smashing lights, smashing windows, smashing anything I could. Eventually I reached him." A slight grin pulled at her lips. She was proud. Lyle couldn't blame her. "I don't remember exactly how it happened. That's the benefit of insomnia…asleep and awake blend together after a certain point and everything starts to become unreal. The one thing I clearly remember from that day though is how absolutely, pathetically scared he was. He was shaking, begging, clawing at me and trying to keep himself in the car, as though I was some kind of monster that he had to shield himself from."

Reverie had that kind of a side to her? Bruns Muller wasn't a small man. He was tall, a bit shorter than Lyle, and made of the kind of muscle that came with being alive for half a century. He was solid, like a rock. Reverie was strong for a woman, but not that strong.

"Oh, I didn't hit him, if that's what you think." She said, responding to his thoughts again. "He tried to make a break for it and I sent the garage door down on him. That's how he got the scar. Of course, the story didn't end there. Once my mother came back and saw what had happened she called the police and they swarmed to the house right away. Luckily I got out of there in time to avoid being dragged back to the AEU facility, but the damage was done. By the time I came back Bruns had shown her the numerous bottles of pills I had and had convinced her that I was a drug addict who couldn't be trusted, and that if I stayed I'd corrupt Deiter and put them all in danger."

"And she believed him?" he asked, the idea seeming completely ridiculous. How could she so readily accept the words of a batterer? Could a mother really turn her back on her daughter so easily?

"I think she wanted to, to be honest. Ever since my father passed she hasn't really looked at me the same way. I think she sees too much of him in me. My eyes, my height, my hair, even my laugh and walk. I'm definitely my father's daughter and she can't handle it. It's easier for her to believe that I'm a drug addict than it is for her to have to see me every day and remember that he's dead."

Her mother couldn't look at her for the same reason that so many in Celestial Being looked at the ground when they saw him. A reminder. They were both reminders of what had once been. Reminders of people who had been integral to happiness, who were the reason that the others around them were content. They were dead men walking…visible ghosts come to haunt those who were left alive. "How did your father die?" he asked, as though he hadn't heard enough of her personal history. Hadn't he had enough?

"It's alright." She said, smiling and raising her mug to her lips again. Her voice lost its dark edge. "He was a firefighter and was caught in a building when it collapsed. He was your typical local hero, the one in the newspaper with a baby in one hand and an axe in the other, covered in smoke and running out of some inferno. I don't think I ever saw Deiter look at him with anything other than stars in his eyes."

"Sounds like one hell of a dad." He said.

She smiled, the same carefree smile he'd seen on the range not so long ago, then her eyes took on a hint of what seemed like sadness. He didn't understand it. Whenever his surviving family remembered his parents and Amy, there was always anger and hatred in their eyes. There was always the undercurrent of injustice and retribution. Whenever Tieria or Setsuna or even Feldt looked at him they gave him the same stare, the one that said they'd destroy the person who'd ripped his brother away from them. It wasn't a happy look. They had no happy memories, just the drive for vengeance. They weren't the carefree memories that Reverie was definitely having at the moment, across the table but a million miles away.

"He was." She nodded. The carefree smile stayed on her face as she finished her coffee and examined the bottom of her mug.

He shifted uncomfortably. He wasn't sure what to do or what to say. Even if he did do something or say something, why would he be doing it? To comfort her? To apologize for invading her privacy? To be a shoulder to lean on? He'd never been one to do any one of those three things. He hadn't needed to do any of those things once he'd left for boarding school all those years ago, secretly promising to never return again. He didn't comfort people, especially women. In fact, he was normally the catalyst behind them needing comfort, cold-hearted, jaded, and non-committal as he was. Privacy? He was a spy. Being a shoulder? She wasn't crying or breaking down or yelling, she was sitting and sadly smiling at a cup of coffee. What was the response for that? A hug? He didn't hug. What did she want him to do? What did she want from him?"

"You know…" she started. His eyes darted between her and the cup, not that she was seeing the uncomfortable gesture. "…I don't want anything from you, Lyle."

What? Such sharp words but said in a tone that assured him she wasn't trying to cut him. "What?" he asked, his head tilting ever so slightly.

"Your friendship is enough. You don't need to comfort me or worry about me falling apart. I'm fine, Lyle. I've gotten over it. Fathers die every day, families fall apart every day, and I'm not naïve enough to believe that it couldn't happen to me. I don't need you to pat me on the back and tell me it'll be alright. I know it will be. It's been alright for years. What happened isn't anything more than the cruel and ruthless natural process of a family, and I'm alright with that."

She was something strange. Something strange and yet completely familiar. She'd just told him the same thing he'd told Neil over a decade ago when he demanded to know how Lyle could let go and move on. When he'd accused him of moving on. "Why not me."

She looked up at him in curiosity then nodded in understanding as he continued to think. People everywhere, all over the world looked at the sky and cried to an invisible man in the sky when their loved ones fell ill and died. 'Why me!?' Neil himself had said it all those years ago. 'Why did it have to happen to us?' Lyle had a different question. Why not them? 'Why shouldn't it have happened to us?' That question had landed him a black eye and a shattered brotherly bond. Did Neil really believe that they were special enough to avoid the fate that hundreds of others had experienced on that day? Regardless of what his brother had believed, Lyle knew the truth.

They weren't.

"Anymore questions?" she asked, finally breaking the silence. Somehow he didn't think he'd need anymore. In that last response he'd learned more about her than he ever thought he would. Those words, arranged in that way, had told him something frightening and intriguing all at once.

She, like him, was an Island too.

An island made of steel and covered with soft curves and a pretty face that hid the titanium underneath.

"Yeah, just one."

"hm?"

"More coffee?"