Disclaimer: I own exactly 0.00% of this show and its amazing cast

AN: I can't honestly believe you guys are reading this still. It makes me so happy and giggly, it's ridiculous. And okay, I have to admit, I have lived forty-five minutes from Monterey Bay, CA my entire life, and yet I know next to nothing about it, so in these next few chapters, everything I say about the place I gleamed from twenty minutes on google.

Chapter Eleven: My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean

By ten in the morning on Monday, they had the rented suburban packed up and ready to go.

Myka had run out of excuses to back out of the road trip when she called Dr. Cho on Saturday to ask for the week of spring break off. Abigail had sounded thrilled, that she was planning on closing the shop for the week any way since most of the students would be gone. She encouraged Myka to have fun and not to worry.

Monterey Bay was their first stop.

The two and a half hour drive seemed incredibly short to the students, who spent the time laughing and fighting over the radio. Pete drove with Steve up front, having beat Claudia in saying shotgun. The three girls sat in the second row, Helena in the middle since Myka wanted a window seat, and she wanted an excuse to press her leg against hers. The contact made Myka blush at first, but she didn't pull away, she liked the feeling.

Claudia was trying to explain to HG why her last joke was so funny, but stopped when she realized her roommate wasn't listening. Helena had a small smile on her face, her eyes gleaming as she stared at Myka. The brunette practically had her nose shoved up against the window as the ocean finally came into view, a look of pure wonderment on her face.

"You know, I've never seen the ocean?" Myka said, her voice sounding like a kid on Christmas, opening the best present.

"You don't say?" Helena chuckled.

"Yeah, I've been living here for almost two years, but I never went with Pete or Steve when they go." Myka looked back to HG, blushing slightly, "But I guess that's obvious, right?"

Helena just smiled wider. She thought it rather adorable how excited Myka was getting, she was glad then that she booked the hotel she did. HG couldn't wait to see the look on Myka's face when they arrived.

Now it was Helena bouncing up and down in excitement as she continued to speak to Claudia and Myka rejoined her abandoned conversation with Pete, talking about people they used to know in high school. HG was giving directions without having to think about it much, but it suddenly seemed as if the winding road was lengthening beneath the tires now that their destination was approaching.

"Okay," Pete was saying as he turned down the last road, "We'll check in, Claud will give us the deets on the weirdness while we pig out, because I, for one, am starving-,"

"You just ate four hamburgers!" Myka interjected incredulously, "And most of my fries, might I add…"

"That was like an hour ago Mykes, the Petester needs his fuel." He insisted.

"I don't think it will ever cease to amaze me how much food you consume in a single day," Helena shook her head.

Pete's comeback was stolen from his lips as he pulled into the parking lot of the beautiful hotel.

A Bellhop took their luggage as a vale took the car, leaving Pete, Steve, Claudia and Myka to follow behind HG's sure stride. As she made her way to the check in counter.

"Pete don't touch anything," Myka said without looking to her friend, who had, in fact, been about to touch a vase.

"How does she do that?" Pete mumbled forlornly as he pulled his hand back to his side.

Helena smiled as she rejoined the rest of the group, who had stopped in the middle of the lobby, "Shall we?" she gestured toward the elevator.

"Okay look," Claudia says finally as the elevator doors shut with them inside, "We've been living together for a while now, and I never asked before because, well, I figured that's your business or whatever, but where do you get all this money from?"

Helena smirked but didn't respond as she pushed the button for the top floor.

"Seriously, are you a trust fund kid or something?" the techie pushed on.

Steve elbowed Claudia and gave her a look.

"Heavens no," HG chuckled, but there was no humor in it, and Myka looked at the strange expression on her friends face from the corner of her eye, "While I could have lived comfortable on an allowance from my parents, I have made many decisions that they do not agree with, only one of which was coming to America to study engineering. Even if I wanted to ask my parents for help, it's safe to assume I've been cut off."

"Okay," Claudia shook her head, "But dude, we are in college, we are supposed to be broke, but you always seem to be rolling in it."

HG quirked an eyebrow at the expression, but continued to indulge her roommate, "I may have sold an invention or two in my day to a few big companies. But I have also signed a nondisclosure. It seems they do not want their competitors to know one of their break through products was designed by a bored sixteen year old girl."

The elevator dinged and Helena exited, leaving Claudia to stare dumfounded and immobile until Steve shook her.

HG opened the door to their suite with a flourish.

There were several gasps. Claudia and Pete moved to each of the rooms excitedly, jumping on two of the beds like children. Steve stood in the middle of the front room, looking around and shaking his head with a slow smile, "This is bigger than our apartment."

But HG wasn't interested in them, she was far more focused on the awestruck expression on Myka as she slowly walked, as if in a trance, to the far wall that was almost entirely glass.

The hotel backed right onto the ocean, and it was a sight to behold, Helena had to admit, but nothing compared to the beauty emanating from Myka as she stepped out on to the terrace. She took a deep breath of the salt air and smiled, seeming at peace.

"What do you think?" Helena asked softly after letting Myka gaze out across the expanse of blue for another moment.

"It's amazing." Myka said softly.

"I'll say so." HG agreed, though her eyes never strayed from Myka.

She thought about telling Myka how she felt then. But that was silly, wasn't it? They'd met little over a week ago, they hardly knew one another. And with all the loose ends in HG's life, dangling around waiting for her to hang herself with them, there was little chance of her and Myka being able to have that sort of relationship. What relationship was that exactly, HG didn't know, she just knew that in moments like this, she really just wanted to take Myka's hand in hers, to close the distance between the two of them that seemed insurmountable at times, and kiss her. HG moved to take a step forward.

"Whoa!" Pete's exclamation tore the moment from Helena's hands as he bound up next to them, leaning precariously over the railing, "Hey, do you think I could jump and make it from here?"

Why don't you find out? Helena thought with an eye roll as she briefly entertained the idea of giving him a little nudge. But she let the anger leave her. Now wasn't the right time to profess her feelings to Myka anyhow.

"Pete!" Myka exclaimed as she gripped his belt and yanked back, "Could you act like an adult for five seconds before you get yourself killed?"

Pete pouted for a moment, but allowed himself to be pulled down.

Claudia and Steve beckoned them back into the hotel. Myka spared one last glance towards the pacific, as if she was afraid it would disappear when she wasn't looking at it.

Pete ordered an absurd amount of food from room service while Claudia began telling them about the case.

"Okay, so there are reports of tourists losing their marbles on the Fisherman's Warf. Running around trying to commandeer boats, pretending to be pirates…" she snorted, thinking back to her brief stint in the loony bin, "I've got security camera feeds. Sending them to the tablet- now. And if you give me a minute, I'll hack the police department's main frame and get you more details…"

The other four gathered around the electronic tablet as Claudia got her concentrated look and began typing madly away on her computer.

The grainy feed showed a middle aged woman shouting, wielding a sword, seeming to shake down some of the shops on the pier. It cut to a college kid in much the same position, except he was trying to steal a boat from the docks. The final clip of a soccer dad with a dagger in his mouth trying to climb the mast of a boat thankfully cut out just as the man began to fall.

"What's the story here, Claud?" Myka asked after she recovered, hoping that last guy was okay.

"Wayne. Seymour, that last dude, is in the hospital," Claudia nodded to the tablet, "But he, like the first two, has no memory of what he did. The effects seemed to wear off after a couple of hours. Cops figure they were drugged or hypnotized." She squinted her eyes and leaned forward, trying to read the handwriting on the officer's report, "Looks like the only thing they have in common is they all went on a whale watching tour before the incidents. Different days and times, but the same company, Chris' Whale Watching… let me see, yeah, they were all on the same boat, Check Mate."*

"Ooh!" Myka bounced on her toes slightly, "Whale watching, we should go!"

They all looked up from their respective activities to give Myka funny looks.

She cleared her throat, feeling her face grow hot, "I mean, you know, to see if the object we're looking for is on the boat."

"That's a splendid idea." Helena smiled, imagining Myka getting all excited to see the large mammals.

They came up with a plan as they ate the food Pete ordered up, well mostly Pete ate and talked with his mouthful and Myka translated. They went over it a few times so that by the time they actually arrived at the Warf, they all knew what their part was.

Steve and Claudia were dressed like tourists. It was their job to keep the skipper distracted and keep an eye on the crowd. If anyone started acting funny they were supposed to get the others attention by sending out a text to their phones.

Pete, Helena and Myka were to investigate the cabin and below deck, trying to find anything that could be causing the insanity. That was going to be the tough part, but Myka and HG figured that it had to be something pirate related. They explained to Pete, since they realized the key from the library was from Benjamin Franklin's key experiment and it shot lightning and provided epiphanies, therefor, perhaps the thing making people believe they were pirates should look as if it belonged on a pirate ship.

But like most well-orchestrated plans, it didn't work half as well as they expected it to. Claudia and Steve found themselves mostly distracted by the skipper. A burly navy veteran in his early thirties, Charlie Evans. He was talking about whales until Jinks noticed his US Navy tattoo on his forearm and asked him about it. They became enthralled in the man's tales, as well as the other twenty or so tourists on the boat.

Helena and Pete had slipped below deck, but before Myka could follow, the Captain noticed her and walked over.

Myka stammered for a moment before she stuck out her hand, "Uh, hi, I just wanted to say this is a pretty cool set up you've got. I mean, having this as a job must just be the best."

The older man smiled, "It pays the bills I suppose."

Myka sent Pete a text without looking down at her phone, warning him that she was keeping the captain distracted and they had better hurry. She began asking him questions one after the other, ranging from his job to the company to his personal life, getting desperate when after almost thirty minutes, Pete and Helena hadn't reemerged.

Truth was, Pete and Myka were having a difficult time finding anything when they didn't know what they were looking for. There were several rooms all with suspicious looking items, but none that had any effect on them when touched.

"This is getting ridiculous," Pete said as they began searching the last room, "There's nothing here, maybe we were wrong and these people really were crazy."

"Is it strange of me to hope you're wrong?" HG sighed, feeling a tug on her heart at the thought that they were wrong about these… these curiosities existing.

"No," Pete smiled sadly, "I really want this to be real, ya know? How cool would that be? Things with special abilities… it's like living in a movie or a really cool tv show or comic."

HG agreed with him. The world had felt smaller and smaller to her as time progressed. The discovery of that key was the first sign of growth in her universe that she had seen. It introduced endless possibilities for her.

Pete saw Myka's first text, explaining she got stuck distracting the captain above deck, but he didn't get her second text message, warning him that he was going below deck.

The captain explained to Myka that he wanted to check something on a map in his office, and Myka practically begged to go with him, expressing an interest in cartography. He smiled and allowed it, Myka was never happier that she had been a strange kid and actually studied maps in the fifth grade for fun.

He was about to open the door to the first room in the short hall when the sound of scuffling from the end room caught his attention. Myka cursed internally as he looked that way, confusion and anger taking over his indulgent expression.

"Who goes there?" he demanded as he strode down the hall.

Helena reacted to the unknown voice without thinking it through. She just knew she needed an excuse as to why they would be down there that didn't involve rifling through a desk and book shelf as she and Pete had been doing when the sound of approaching footsteps reached her ears.

She grabbed Pete, fisting the material of his shirt in one of her hands, grasping the back of his neck with the other and walking him in to the desk so he was trapped.

"What are you-?" he was cut off when HG pressed her lips firmly against his.

His body reacted to the kiss before his mind had a chance to catch up and remind him that he had a girlfriend. His hands fell on her hips and shifted her closer as he returned the kiss.

"Hey!" a stern voice had Helena pulling back from Pete's embrace, the proper cocktail of guilt, embarrassment and shock on her face as she turned to face the older gentleman standing at the door way, his fists on his hips, "Just what do you two think you're doing down here?"

"I'm terribly sorry sir, my boyfriend," she almost chocked on the word as she gestured to Pete, but caught herself, "and I were looking for a brief moment for ourselves-," she stopped talking as she realized there was someone standing at his elbow.

Myka had a pained expression on her face, her jaw slack. Helena felt a fissure in her heart, but she knew she had to keep the façade up for the captain.

The man smiled but shook his head, "Come on, you can't be down here. I'm sorry, Ms. Bering, you'll have to go back up on deck as well."

Myka nodded and turned away. HG wanted to call out, to reach for her and stop her from walking away and explain why it appeared she had just been kissing her best friend. But instead, she was forced to interlace her fingers with a still shocked Pete and whisper, "Come on, darling, the captain wishes to have his quarters back."

Myka felt like she was being suffocated. The small hallway closed in on her and her sweater became two sizes too small at the neck. She struggled to pull in a full breath as she climbed the stairs. Her brain was a fog, and she blamed the sudden bought of claustrophobia, but part of her would let her put any stock in that falsity.

Myka's mind was trying to tell her something, but her heart was far too loud to let it be heard. The sight of Pete and Helena kissing, of Pete grabbing her hips almost possessively as HG tugged at his shirt would forever be branded into her memory.

She wondered why this hurt so much, giving herself the few moments it took to rejoin the group that had gone back to discussing whales to dwell on the pain, to try and understand it. But she couldn't. Instead, she sighed and filed it away to be dealt with later, possible two weeks after never.

With the spray of sea water on her face, the brisk air clearing out her lungs, Myka could finally allow her ever observant mind to show her what was trying to grab her attention behind her lip locked friends.

On the wall, slightly hidden behind a chart, there had been a weapon of some sort. Only half of it was viewable, but her flawless memory let her see it in perfect detail. And she thought she had some idea of what they were looking for now.

She situated herself between Steve and Claudia so that when Pete and HG reappeared, holding their hands between them, she didn't have to look at them, or make it obvious she couldn't handle standing next to either one of them.

With her mind satisfied at getting its point across, there was nothing to drown out the sound of her heart breaking. She was glad for the cold air on her cheeks, and for the water that splashed there that served to hide the tear that escaped her eye.

AN: Okay, and Chris' Whale Watching is a real company on the Warf, and Check Mate is really one of their vessels, I actually know nothing about it beyond that, I took a few creative liberties.