8:35 a.m., February 2, 2006, University of Minnesota campus

Warm arms wrapped around Gaia like a blanket, and she pressed herself as far into them as she could humanly get. Ed's breath came lightly at her back; his fingers gently traced a path around her stomach. Gaia sighed with contentment. Some part of her had been worried that her near-rape would ruin these Ed moments for her, but surprisingly, they didn't. Maybe she had her fearlessness to thank for that. One of the few times it seemed to have come in handy.

"I love you." The words floated from Ed's mouth, almost as if they didn't need to be said at all.

Gaia responded by turning to him, pulling her arms and legs around him and kissing him solidly, once, and then twice. A small groan escaped his lips as he kissed her back more strongly and brought her hips even with his.

"You can't do this to me," Ed murmured with a smile.

"Sorry," Gaia said, but her eyes were too busy looking at the lines of his bare chest to pay attention to his face. "Can't help myself." Her hands moved down his chest to his hips, then halted. A scar. A horrible, waxy-looking scar. The size of a pen. How could she not have seen it before? It looked new, maybe a week old, no, probably two. She kissed it softly. "What is this from?" she asked.

Ed jerked slightly, from the kiss, she assumed. "What is what from?"

"This scar, Ed. Don't play dumb."

He sighed. "Ohhhh, that? A couple weeks ago, I went fishing with my friend and his hook caught on my hip. Seriously… It was nothing. Didn't even need stitches."

"You? Fishing?"

"There's a first time for everything." He was staring at her shoulder, as if bored. Ed never looked that way when he talked to Gaia. This was weird.

"Okay," she said, not wanting to talk about it anymore. Ed probably had hurt himself in some embarrassing way, something completely humiliating that he couldn't admit right now. More embarrassing than a fishing hook injury… Now that must really have been bad. And anyway, the last thing either of them needed right now was for Gaia's paranoia to get in the way again. Ed was trustworthy. Ed was the only one she could trust. If he lied, he did it for a good reason.

He closed the distance between their faces with another kiss, and Gaia responded weakly. Even though she was sure Ed was lying to her for a good reason, the fact that he was lying to her in the first place made her uneasy. So drawing on her somewhat lacking acting skills, she smiled at him and reluctantly rolled out of his tiny dorm bed. As she tugged on her clothes, she felt his questioning eyes on her.

"I'm going to go talk to the police," she said.

"About Remy?"

"Yeah, what else?"

"I don't know. Your life tends to get a little crazy."

Gaia grunted in agreement, not exactly the most appealing of noises. But right now she was having a hard time caring. Ed had been the one to break it to her, a day ago, that Remy might not get sent to jail. And she'd been so angry… Somehow between then and now she'd let Ed distract her from the frustrating situation. Maybe she'd just been so happy to see him, to actually still be alive and able to kiss him and talk to him, that she'd let herself forget for a while what had and could happen in the future. But now everything came crashing over her head. How could she not have gone to the police right away? Remy was a dangerous dude. And he was still out to get her, if he wasn't in jail.

"When will you be back?" Ed asked, his brown eyes gently resting on her face as he propped his head up on his hand, his body facing hers, only a sheet over his hips and below.

She shrugged without looking at him. "A couple hours, maybe." A small smile crept onto her face. "Don't wait up for me."

Ed laughed a little, quietly. "I actually think I'll go back to sleep. My first class today is at one."

"Great." Gaia launched her duffel bag over her shoulder. "Bye," she mumbled, giving him a brief kiss.

His arms quickly pulled her to him as she began to move away. "Bye," he whispered before kissing her more strongly.

"Ed, I have to go," she insisted, peeling his arms from her sides.

"I know," Ed sighed, letting his body fall back onto the bed.

Gaia smiled tightly, turned on her heels, and walked out of his dorm room. It was too early in the moment for her unfamiliar presence in the dorm to be noticed by Ed's housemates; his roommate hadn't come home at all the night before. She liked the quiet before everyone was out in the hallway. It was calming, somehow. It helped her feel resolute. She couldn't let this happen. She couldn't let Remy get away with this. At the very least, Remy should be convicted of kidnapping. Gaia didn't know everything about the legal system, but she knew that.

Her feet pounded on the pavement. Outside it was louder, but Gaia stayed focused, focused straight ahead. Or… She tried to, but she found herself becoming distracted… As much as she hated to admit it, she wanted her father to be here at this moment. He would know exactly what to do in a situation like this; he would know how to get Remy in jail. More than that, Tom Moore would know how to comfort Gaia. She needed comfort right now. She also needed to be cured of whatever this fearlessness meant for her. But that would have to wait until after she'd gotten through this. After Remy was safely behind bars.

She was only thirty feet from the station now, and she could see her goal clearly. But a hand shot out from the shadows of an alley and clutched her arm roughly before she had the chance to react. Gaia didn't have to see the white gloves and mask to know it was Remy, Houdini. He threw a punch that would have caught her on the cheek, but she ducked and swept his feet from under him, hardly waiting to knock him on the ground before stomping forward staunchly. But his arm remained, clinging, to her arm, and before she knew what was happening a deep pain shot from the crease of her arm up through her spine. Gaia looked down at the needle stuck into her and, crying out in pain, kicked Houdini in the face.

Whatever was in the needle reacted quickly. Little orange spots appeared at the corners of her vision, and her heart pounded faster and faster. Gaia focused on her heart beat, focused on bringing it back to normal, but found her mind reeling, her whole world spinning. She yanked the needle out unceremoniously, but it was too late. The drug was in her system. Breathing heavily, she stumbled forward a couple steps before sinking to her knees.

"Get the police," she mumbled, blindly grasping in front of her until she had a grip on a person. "Tell them there's a criminal out here. Please. Tell them." She felt vomit rising up in her throat, and collapsed forward, expelling a vile stream of half-digested food.

And then Gaia was on her back, staring up into the bleak Minneapolis sky. Houdini pulled himself on top of her and in what seemed to Gaia to be a flash, his hands were grasping her neck. And he was laughing. The cool, cold, unflinching laughter of a sociopath.

"Did you think it would be that easy?" Houdini asked. His slate-colored eyes stared into hers with a strangely familiar emotion.

"You didn't really want to be fearless, did you?" she wheezed through forced breaths. And she hit him with a right hook with enough force to take out a super-hero.

9:04 a.m., police station

Her eyes were still unfocused and she still had to force vomit down by the time Gaia made it into the police station. The cops looked at her like she was sure they looked at any hopeless drug addict—condescending, disgusted. They didn't know how different her situation was, and they probably didn't care. One drug addict was just like another to them.

"Please… A guy's after me… He gave me a shot…" Gaia knew that she sounded crazy and looked it as well, but she couldn't make herself sound more legit. She couldn't even stop staring at the modern triangle wallpaper, no matter how hard she tried. "I'm not a drug addict, I swear to God…"

"I'm sure, honey," the brisk-looking woman at the desk chided, not meeting Gaia's eyes. "Please wait a minute here."

"I need help now, goddammit!" She was raising her voice again, but at least she was getting attention. "A man… His name is Remy… He is outside and he gave me a shot… I don't know what he wants… I'm Gaia Moore, you guys found me last night kidnapped in his warehouse! I have evidence, do you understand? Evidence! I'm a witness, and now he's after me again…"

"Gaia Moore, did you say?" the woman asked. She typed a few words into her computer, and her face glowed grimly with the dull light. "We don't have any record of this… uh… kidnapping. I'm afraid that means we can't do anything about that accusation."

"What about the man outside who injected me with a drug?"

The woman met Gaia's eyes for the first time. "It appears to me that you've done more than one drug in your life."

"How would you even know? How can you assume to know me? And why aren't you listening to me? I need help, and you're a police officer, and I'm telling you what happened! Shouldn't you at least have people investigate what I'm telling you? At least create some semblance to running a decent police station?" Gaia slammed her hands on the desk, and he woman's eyes dropped behind Gaia's frame. "Look in my eyes. Please. You can see that I'm telling the truth." Her eyes stayed down.

Arms pulled her away from the desk, down the cold hallway and into a new room.