"Alright, now, let's everybody sit down. We'll talk about this like adults. Which means if I hear one derogatory word come out of anyone's mouth, I will personally throw that person headfirst out of the door," said Matt in a cold, dangerous tone, looking directly towards Ethan. He didn't know what was happening to Connor, but if the display of power at the pub was anything to go by, this kid definitely wasn't someone to be messed with. Even now, Connor was sitting down in a chair, and Abby stood next to him, her hands resting on his shoulders, his own grasping her wrists. The dark-haired Hunter scowled but held his tongue. Pulling out a chair across the table, Matt sat down. "Now, Connor. You said there's something you wanted to tell us."

The young man nodded. "When I was sick, I had some…weird dreams," he began.

Matt lifted an eyebrow. "Weird? Did you at any point see a figure in those dreams? One made of darkness or light?" he queried. Nearly everyone had bizarre hallucinatory dreams during infection. When he'd been infected, he'd dreamt of being dead, and a dark figure made of shadow had appeared to cut him into pieces and remake him into something else.

Connor nodded. "Yeah, both of them. One was the dark, the other was the light. I saw them both," he replied. "I can remember it all. They were there. They…took me apart, turned all my pieces into something else, then put me back together. They said that I was something called a scion." He paused and took a deep breath, remembering his eerie dreams, the bone-chilling sensation of being cut apart by the darkness and the light, having all his pieces pulled apart and put back together again like he was some giant human puzzle. He looked back up at Matt. "I dunno how it is. I really don't. But then again, you're the expert. Maybe you can tell me."

Matt leant back in his chair with a heavy sigh, reeling on the inside still. It didn't seem possible. He kept staring at the young man, trying to understand how this boy could still be standing when by all rights he should have died weeks ago. This was mad. He hated feeling uncertain like this. It made him…uncomfortable, as though he was standing upon a trapdoor, and at any moment, it could fall out from under his feet and send him spiraling into darkness. "I have no idea what's happening to you, Connor. I don't. I'll need to talk to our handler – "

"Handler?" Abby echoed.

"Yes. Every Hunter team is managed by a specially trained handler; it's the handler's job to get us any paperwork we need to survive in whatever time period we enter. They find us our tasks and give us our assignments," he replied. "Normally, that's all they do for us, and everything else is left up to us, but…this isn't exactly normal."

"So will this handler be able to tell us what's happening to Connor?" Abby said, grasping the young man by the shoulders.

"Maybe. I'm not sure that anybody's ever seen anything like this before," the Irishman answered, still looking over the young man closely. It was invisible to everyone but an Adonai, but Connor's features had shifted ever-so-slightly, become a little different. The change was new, so it'd take some time before it became truly noticeable, like how Matt's eyes changed to their crystalline colour, but Connor would start showing some outward changes, some way of the Adonai strain finding its way to show itself physically. "We'll talk to him anyways, find out where in the hell to go from here. Now, Connor, you are going to stay in the ARC. Danny and Ethan are going to stay here with you in case…." Matt cut himself off.

"In case I lose it. You can say it, Matt. I know," Connor said quietly; his eyes seemed very old just then, as if he'd lived far too long in his twenty-four years.

"I'm sorry, Connor," he murmured.

Abby tightened her hands on Connor shoulders, her grip protective and possessive at the same time. "I'm staying with you," she said.

"No, Abby. You're not. You're going home to the flat," Connor answered firmly, turning in the chair to look up at her. "If there's something not right with me, then I could hurt you. And if I hurt you, then I'm not going to ever forgive myself. You're going home." He felt ill even considering that he might hurt Abby, if there really was something wrong with him. He knew that he wouldn't be able to handle it if he hurt her, injured her in any way, so much as a stubbed toe. He wouldn't have her anywhere near him until they knew that there was nothing wrong with him.

She looked down at him with sorrowful blue eyes for a moment, but then she nodded acquiescence, leant down, and kissed his cheek gently. "Alright, Conn. I'll see you in the morning," she said softly, then walked out of the room.

Once the door latched, Connor turned his attention back to Matt. "So how long will I need to stay here?" he queried.

The Irishman leant forward in the chair, lacing his hands together on the tabletop, and he let out a deep breath. "I'm not sure. Emily and I will go and talk to our handler, see if we can't figure something out, and we'll find a plan of action then," he answered, then looked back up at the young man across the table from him. His eerily feline, crystalline eyes shone with a surprising amount of sincerity, odd since he hid his emotions so well and so often. "We will do everything that we can to make this better, Connor. You know this, right?"

Connor leant forward as well, elbows on the tabletop as he met Matt's eye directly. He might not know how to use any super-psychic magical Adonai powers yet, but he liked to think that he could read people fairly well. He'd known right off the bat when they first met that Stephen was one of those smooth-talking, confident blokes and that Cutter was bullheaded and brilliant. And he could see that Matt was telling him the truth. The older man was the sort who protected his own, valued life, and wasn't one to just let a person die without putting forth effort to save them. In a lot of ways, Matt was rather like Professor Cutter. "I know," he replied softly. "If there is something wrong with me, and if I end up losing it…"

Matt understood what he was trying to say and answered in a level voice, "I will end it as quickly and as painlessly as I possibly can. But, Connor…you'll be okay."

The dark-haired lad looked back up at him, and again, for a moment, his eyes seemed older than the rest of him, shining with a wisdom that spoke well beyond his years. "We hope."


Langley was, in a word, intimidating. Matt didn't scare very easily—he hardly scared at all, truly—but this man frightened him on a level he couldn't quite manage to explain. He was human, very much so, yet held all the authority and power of any high-ranking Adonai. He was built small but strong, with a coarse shock of dark hair always perfectly styled, not a hair daring to step out of place, with cool, flint-grey eyes that never missed a thing, and wore a suit with creases pressed so sharp they could probably cut cheese. In a lot of ways, Langley reminded him of Lester; perhaps they were distantly related. The man had an uncanny ability to appear out of nowhere whenever he was needed, and now was no exception. As soon as Emily and Matt stepped outside the ARC, a black car with dark-tinted windows pulled up, the door opening for them silently, and they got in without question.

"So…" Langley said quietly, hands folded neatly over the silver-wrought handle of the cane he always carried with him, even though none of them had ever seen a hint of a limp of any sort. "This…boy you told me of…is it true?"

"Yes, sir," Matt replied. "We've run a half-dozen tests already to ensure there was no mistake. Temple has somehow managed to become infected with both strains of the Adonai virus without any of the fatal side-effects. His infection went through without trouble, and he survived the symptoms." He took care not to use Connor's first name, as it could be taken as a sign that he was becoming attached. Reaching into his coat pocket, he took out the results of the various tests they'd run on Connor's blood, all of them showing the same answer—Charbydion and Elysian existing together within his DNA—and handed them to Langley.

"We know it can't be a fluke, either, because he's already shown an outward display of power," added Emily from her seat beside Matt, both of them sitting across from the suited man. "What we don't know is where to go from here."

Langley was silent for several long seconds, which could only mean that he was thinking very hard very quickly; from what little they knew of him, he was supposedly a genius, with an IQ that could hardly be measured. His brain had to be racing, weighing the pros and cons, exploring every strand of possibility within his imagination. "Very well," he said at last. "This boy, Temple, he could be quite the valuable commodity. An enormous step forward in our understanding of the Adonai strain. If this can be made sense of, then perhaps it can be duplicated under our supervision." He lightly tapped his fingertips against the cane handle, grey eyes icy and full of almost-predatory calculation. Matt knew in an instant that Langley didn't care about Connor in the least, that the young man was merely a lab rat to him, a potential advantage. He was a piece of meat with interesting DNA coding. "You and Merchant are to begin his training as you would for any other infection survivor. Anderson will teach him Charbydion, and Merchant will teach him Elysian. Find out his potential, see what he can do. Test him. Regular updates will be made directly to me, and if I believe he's worth the effort, Temple will be removed to the Compound for further training."

This was the point where Matt and Emily both nodded and said 'yes, sir' but neither did. Matt frowned. "Sir, if I may speak freely?" he asked; Langley twitched his fingers by way of permission. "Temple is very attached to the ARC and the people working in it. He views them as his home and his family. He will defend them with his own life, I feel. I don't believe he will simply walk away from it all simply because we ask him to."

Langley's eyes narrowed dangerously, and again, Matt felt that little wriggle of fear in the pit of his stomach, the feeling that he was sitting across from something infinitely more dangerous than any Predator. "And who ever said that we would be asking him?" he asked in a silky voice. "If Temple turns out to be as advantageous as he seems to be, then he will come to the Compound, dragged in by his hair if needs be, bound and gagged. Is that understood?"

"Yes, sir," they both murmured softly.

"Very good. Let Merchant out here. I have words to speak with Anderson in private," Langley said, and the car rolled to a smooth stop at the kerb. The door whispered open, and Emily cast Matt a worried glance before sliding out of the car, shutting the door behind her.

As the car drove away, Emily pushed both hands into her pockets and watched the taillights fade away into the darkness. She didn't know what Langley had planned for Connor, but she had a sickly feeling that it definitely wouldn't be good, not for the boy. Dragged in by his hair if needs be, bound and gagged, Langley had said. She wasn't sure that she would be able to do that; despite all her deeply-ingrained training, Connor had appealed himself to her, had wormed himself through her defences to become the closest thing she had to a new friend in many years. She didn't know what Langley was telling Matt, what was so important that she couldn't even be present for it, but an uncomfortable knot in her stomach spoke to bad things ahead. Something wicked this way comes, she thought to herself.

The first droplets of rain began to fall.