There was definitely fire, she was sure of that much. If the blistering heat beating on her face wasn't enough of a hint, the roaring flames surrounding her definitely was. She never saw her parents that moment. But she already feared the worst. Her mind felt hazy and her body refused to move as the smoke made its way into her lungs. Had a much larger mountain man not grabbed her and took her to safety, she may have died that night with her parents. She didn't see the men who came charging in. She didn't know if they were the good guys or the bad guys.
But she never forgot the man standing by the staircase as she was dragged out. The emotionless face of a man who wanted something so badly, he went to extreme lengths to get it...
...and here he was, on a balcony with hostages, staring down at Ashley, the girl who should have died the same night as her parents. No one else in the room mattered to either of them, just each other.
"You!" Ashley growled, "You're him!"
"So flattered you remember my face after all these years," Kroger said, "You never heeded my warning, did you?"
"After what you did to my parents, did you really think I would?" Ashley asked.
"A little spare time is better than none at all," Kroger replied, "You should have used it more wisely, child. Lived a quiet life instead of chasing us down."
"You know this guy?" Gerald asked her.
"He...he's the one who..." Ashley started to say.
Her fists trembled, unable to even finish her sentence.
"Well, as pleasant as this reunion is," Kroger said, "I do have better things to do. To start with..."
Kroger turned to Spade and his henchmen, who were currently holding Buckley, Beau, and Big Bob down.
"I understand you three gentlemen have been snooping around my business," Kroger said, "I'd be more inclined to entertain your follies if I had the time to do so, but alas I do not, so this charade has to end."
"So it is you," Big Bob said, "You're the one behind all this. The samples, the cover-ups..."
"Merely a few left-over chores my colleagues at Gemini tasked me with," Kroger said, "No, my real business is just beginning."
"You mean...you don't even care about the DNA samples we owed you?" Buckley said.
"You had me go through all that trouble for nothing?" Spade asked him.
"That was simply a price to pay for what I really want," Kroger said.
"And what exactly do..." Buckley started to say.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, not so fast, bucko!" Helga yelled, "You don't get off that easy!"
"Shut up, Helga..." Rhonda whispered to her.
"No, Rhonda, I won't," Helga said, "Our dads are up there with guns to their heads, and I don't think they're just inconveniences to this bozo. I wanna know why they're involved!"
"You...really don't know, do you?" Kroger asked, donning a wide condescending grin, "The deals your families made with us?"
"Oh god," Ashley said, "They didn't..."
"What are they talking about?" Phoebe wondered.
Kroger looked over to the three dads at his mercy, motioning them to their children.
"You're the ones who got yourselves into this mess," Kroger told them, "I think the young ones deserve to know what lengths you'll go through for them, no?"
Big Bob grimaced, looking down at his youngest daughter, before sucking up his pride and answering.
"After the Scheck fiasco," he said, "Big Bob's Beepers was in shambles. We would have gone out of business were it not for Gemini. They gave us a loan, but threatened you, your sister, and your mother if I didn't make good on my word."
"THAT'S why you turned to them?" Ashley roared, "To save some lousy beeper store?"
"That store keeps my girls fed, little lady," Bob replied back.
"Wait a minute," Gerald said, coming to a grim realization, "If that's what they can do...Mr. Lloyd...does this have to do with when your family was broke?"
"Don't be ridiculous, Gerald!" Rhonda replied, "Daddy would never beg anyone for anything!"
Buckley simply hung his head in shame, unprepared to tell his only daughter the truth.
"Rhonda," Buckley said, "I'm afraid he's...he's right. We were desperate."
"You took a loan from these people?" Rhonda asked him.
"N-No," Buckley said, "I...paid a far greater price, and I cannot apologize enough for putting you through it. That surprise examination Dr. Graf gave you...it wasn't for a routine checkup. It was to give your DNA to Gemini."
"And believe me, she is far from the only one who we have samples for," Kroger replied.
"W-What?" asked Rhonda, shocked by this revelation, "Daddy, you..."
"Is that why Graf was with you?" Helga cried, "Is that why you KILLED him?"
Rhonda and Buckley both looked up at Kroger with wide eyes begging for an escape from an even more unpleasant reality.
"Dr. Graf...is dead?" Rhonda asked.
"You...you killed him?" Buckley asked in sadness.
"You can thank Spade for that," Kroger replied.
"Hey! I was just following orders, don't pin this all on me, mate!" Spade exclaimed.
"Funny," Kroger said, "You were singing a very different tune when you failed to deal with the Sawyer woman."
"Goddamn you, Kroger!" Beau screamed.
A cold chill went down Lila's spine. Ashley felt it too. Ashley put it together much faster, but Lila was still in the 'denial' stage.
"W-What?" Lila asked, "Sawyer woman? You mean...my...my mom?"
Kroger looked down on the freckled farm girl, fascinated by the development.
"So it is you," Kroger said, "You're the child Spade told me about. The reason he chickened out."
Spade glared angrily at Kroger, remembering the last time Kroger brought up the subject.
"And this time, I will accompany you, so as to make sure you don't screw up like the last time," Kroger told him.
"My last job was on a rival gang member," Spade replied, "That shit's dead and buried."
"We both know which job I'm talking about."
Spade knew that would come back to bite him in the ass.
"If you must know, little girl," Kroger told Lila, "I originally hired Spade to do the dirty work of bumping off your mother for trying to back out of my pet project. To come clean to the rest of the world and my colleagues about my plans."
"You..." Lila said.
"But the minute he walked in your home to kill her...he saw you, just a little girl, tucked away in her little bed, unaware of what he was there to do," Kroger said, "You may not remember too well, but you woke up and saw him...and he just couldn't man up to what he would do by depriving a child of her mother. So he bailed."
Spade looked down at Lila, now recognizing her as the girl he saw that night years prior.
"And you know what they say," Kroger continued, "If you want something done right...you have to do it yourself. And I've been told I have quite the affinity for fire."
"The barn fire," Lila said with chilling realization, "That was...that was you?"
"I lured her there to talk about my project," Kroger said, "I knew she wanted out, but until we met that night, she never admitted it to me. She threatened to tell the world what I was building, along with how far I went behind Gemini's backs to get it done. Of course, I couldn't let her just talk, so I knocked her out and left her there as I burned that miserable barn to the ground...and her along with it."
"YOU SON OF A BITCH!" Ashley screamed.
Another door opened, the same one Spade and his men had come through.
"Oh great, more of them?" asked Helga.
This time, these faces were much more familiar. Vic and Morrie had made their way to the MacGuffin Warehouse, Vic with the envelope he was given.
"The client got the samples," Vic said, "And she's given you what's yours."
Kroger took the envelope from Vic's hands and sliced the top open. He pulled out what appeared to be thick paper, unfolding it and looking at whatever was on it. He smiled even wider upon receiving it.
"Yes," Kroger said, "This is exactly what I came here for. Now reconstruction efforts can finally begin."
"On what?" Buckley asked.
"That's for me to know and me only," Kroger said, "But not to worry. Once it's complete, everyone in this city will know the meaning of fear. Haggard knew quite well what I wanted, but once I learned he traveled with you..."
Kroger deliberately pointed at Ashley.
"...well, I sent some...specialists to deal with him."
"GODDAMN YOU, KROGER!" Ashley screamed, on the verge of tears.
A vibrating sound came from Kroger's pocket, obviously a phone. Kroger pulled it out and saw a familiar number.
"Ah, that would be them now," Kroger bragged.
Kroger casually answered the phone as if he were alone, willfully ignorant of the grief surrounding him.
"Yes, it's me," Kroger said, "How did it go?...What does that mean?...I JUST told these brats he was dead! How did he escape?"
Ashley's eyes perked up when she heard his end of the conversation.
"What do you mean 'he'? Who's 'he'?" Kroger asked, "But...that's...he's practically a CHILD! How did HE get the jump on you?...Well dammit, where is he now?...You LOST him?"
Kroger's call was cut short when the phone was shot out of his hands. He looked around in shock, calculating where it came from. Another shot went through Spade's shoulder, sending him kneeling on the platform. Kroger angrily shouted at Spade's lackeys.
"Get these interlopers out of here!" Kroger ordered.
They took the three dads and dragged them back out the door they came through as Kroger fled with Spade through the other door while Vic and Morrie fired aimlessly in the general direction. The mystery visitor kept firing back from his cover spot (the balcony outside the window) as the other kids, now knowing this was out of their hands, ran out the back as the shooting broke out. Ashley, however, looked up where Kroger had previously fled.
"Get back here!" Ashley shouted.
"Ashley, wait!" Phoebe exclaimed.
"No!" Ashley replied back, "Kroger's getting away!"
"He got away," Phoebe replied, "He's gone. But the way he talked, I don't think he plans on leaving Hillwood anytime soon. We'll find him, Ashley."
Wasting no more time, Phoebe grabbed Ashley's wrist and ran out with her, following behind the other kids.
"Hey!" Harold shouted, "Wait for us!"
Harold, Stinky, and Sid had made their escape once Kroger and Spade fled. Luckily for them, Kroger saw no use for them, unlike the three dads. It was the fastest those three had ever run in their lives.
Kroger made his way to the big black car waiting behind the warehouse, while Spade's lackeys had already made off with the three dads in a separate vehicle. Spade himself had been falling behind due to his injury, leaving blood drops as he ran inside the car.
"You're staining the leather," Kroger said nonchalantly.
"Are you fucking serious?" Spade cried, "I got a bullet in my shoulder! And I'm bleeding down my whole arm! "
"Suck it up," Kroger said, "We have plenty of resources to fix that back at the lab. It's where we were supposed to go anyway, so stop worrying."
The car's driver tossed a washcloth behind him, allowing Spade to cover his wound with it, holding onto it to stop the bleeding. Kroger pulled the contents of the envelope back out from his coat pocket and browsed over them.
"I never thought I'd see that girl there," Spade said.
"I was already told Ashley was here, so I was less surprised and more entertained," Kroger said.
"What? No, I'm talking about the farm girl!" Spade exclaimed.
"Ah, the Sawyer child," Kroger said, "Small world, eh? But don't waste too much energy thinking about her. She's a pushover compared to Ashley. Especially now that the so-called 'specialists' failed to take Haggard out."
Spade peeked out from the corner of his eye to what he now saw was a blueprint. He didn't know what it was for, only that there were a lot of numbers and equations that went over his head.
"So this is what you've gone through all this trouble for?" Spade asked.
"Yes," Kroger replied, "And once we get to the lab, we immediately begin production. No one in this city will be safe..."
The kids had run off the MacGuffin Warehouse grounds far away from where the shootings had taken place. The firing had stopped shortly after, meaning one or both parties had fled. Or died.
"What...the hell...was that?" Helga asked.
"Why did WE have to guard the outside?" Stinky said.
"You volunteered!" Rhonda exclaimed.
"No we didn't!" Harold, Sid, and Stinky exclaimed.
"I knew this would end badly!" Helga said, "Whatever that was had absolutely NOTHING to do with where Arnold is!"
"You've got bigger problems than finding your missing friend right now, Helga," Ashley said.
"She's right, Helga," Rhonda said, "That creep has our dads!"
"And that's just the tip of the iceberg," Ashley said.
"Sounds to me like you've been keeping a lot of this to yourself!" Helga exclaimed, "Might have been nice to know something like this ahead of time!"
"And you thought I'd tell you something like this?" Ashley asked.
"Oh, you know," Helga replied, "Something nice and informative like 'Hey, there are these criminals and a psycho killer walking around town, they MIGHT try to kill us too, but no worries here!'"
"She's...got a point," Gerald said, "If you knew more about this than you said, it would have been nice to know."
"Look," Ashley said, "It's...complicated, all right?"
"That does NOT fly with me, Pinocchio!" Helga growled.
"Are you calling me a liar?" Ashley asked.
"Ashley," Phoebe interrupted before Helga started throwing her fists around, "It would behoove us to know what's really going on if we're going to be in this together. For example, who that guy was who killed Lila's mom and I assume your parents? Or what it was you were really looking for? You were saying something about "them" being at the warehouse before. Who's them?"
"It's not who, it's what," Ashley said.
"That...doesn't make it any more obvious," Curly said.
"I have a better idea," came a voice from behind.
All the kids turned to see the mystery shooter walking towards them. He was no older than any of them, at least not physically. He only existed for a couple years, truth be told. But the wavy black hair with red highlights and broad figure was unmistakable to Ashley.
"Let's talk about this somewhere safer," he said.
Ashley looked at her former enemy with a look of bewilderment, surprised he had come all this way.
"...Errol?"