x-x-x-x-x

Jamie had a few questions of her own that she wanted answers to. She sat in Doctor Scofield's office and tapped a finger on her leg, the only indication that she wasn't as calm as she appeared.

Mitch had told her what he'd found out, about the camera placements and surveillance. Jamie was ready to storm off and rip somebody a new one, but Mitch, despite wholeheartedly agreeing with her, suggested they find out more before they started taking scalps.

She agreed but wasn't too happy about it. Now it was the following day and she pinned a smile on her face and waited for Ally to be seated behind her desk before launching her interrogation.

"I'm surprised that anyone is so paranoid they want to watch me take a shit."

As opening salvo's went, it was a doozy. Ally looked like a deer caught in the headlights.

"Er...pardon?"

"The camera in the bathroom with the clear view of the toilet. Why would anyone want to see me or Mitch take a shit? Are you guys measuring our waste? Are you worried we're hiding our shit somewhere you can't find it?"

Ally stared perplexed at her patient. "Um...are you saying there are cameras in your apartment?"

"In the kitchen, in the living room, in the bedroom, the bathroom and the toilet. We also assume there are microphones seeded throughout the rooms as well."

"Oh, er...you say you're being watched?"

Jamie reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out a piece of technology. Leaning forward she carefully placed it in front of the doctor.

"Yes. And just in case you brush it off a pregnancy paranoia, here is the proof."

Ally stared at the camera with an expression bordering on horror.

"I don't know what to say. This was certainly not done on my authority, you have to believe me."

Jamie looked down at her hands. "Mitch is understandably pissed and starting to question exactly what is going on here." She looked up and caught an expression of fear quickly covered by the doctor shuffling some papers.

"You know what we do here. We're creating a cure for sterility, a cure to restart humanity's falling population."

Jamie nodded. "But nature has found a way around that cure – Clementine Lewis, myself."

"True, but two women among billions is not going to be able to repopulate the world."

"But what if that was the point Robert Oz was making. The world was already overpopulated, some countries with huge inequality in the balance of sexes, most often more males than females, producing pollution on a scale that the world couldn't cope with. What if that is exactly why the sterility gas was dropped, why Abigail created the hybrids, to lower the population to more manageable levels?"

Doctor Scofield didn't answer her right away. She was staring down at her hands clenched tightly together on her desktop.

"I have to ask you to stop talking about this."

Jamie looked puzzled. "Why? What threat is there in talking about it? I can't have been the only person to put forward that theory in the past ten years?"

Ally licked her lips nervously, her eyes darting from left to right. "I can't talk about this with you."

Jamie leaned forward in her chair. "Can't or won't?"

"Can't!" Ally spat back. "Now, we have some blood tests to organize, and I'd like to weigh you, the usual things..."

Jamie pursed her lips and sat back in her chair. "Of course, take whatever you need. I'm not in a hurry to be anywhere."

x-x-x-x-x

"And then she clammed up, not another word out of her that didn't involve something to do with the baby or my health and welfare."

Mitch was lying beside her on the bed, both of them fully clothed, catching up on their individual progress that morning in finding out the answers to their questions.

Mitch had thoroughly debugged the rooms with her help, the pair of them finding cameras and hidden mikes in every room, those not used as proof were all disabled and added to Jamie's collection of doohickeys and thingamabobs.

"I guess that means she's a part of it, either that or a victim," Mitch mused. Jamie turned her head to look at him.

"How did you get on?"

Mitch snorted and bared his teeth in a grimace. "Your Doctor Adams is a twisted individual, but you don't have to worry about him wanting to see you again."

"Mitch? What did you do?" she queried.

Mitch turned to face her with a smug grin. "Let's just say, Doctor Cornell Adams will think twice before attempting to make any contact with you, so don't be surprised if, or when, you see him next he runs away from you."

Jamie laughed. "What did you do?"

"I put the fear of Mitch Morgan in him. I gave him a graphic mental image of what I'd do to him if he so much as looked at you, let along tried to speak or touch you."

Jamie giggled, into his shoulder, muffling her laughter.

"Was this before or after you quizzed him about progress on the hybrid problem?"

"After. He's actually pretty smart for a pervert. They seem to be taking the route of developing a poison, something like they were going to use in the Noah objective, but with the idea of only targetting the hybrids, not ordinary animals." Mitch explained.

"But surely that would have the same effect as the first idea, especially as so many animals will now be infected with the spore. You can't simply wipe out every mutated animal, reptile, bird and insect, that's lunacy."

Mitch glanced over at her with a wry smile. "Some people refuse to learn from history or in this case recent events. In some regards, I think the idea is good, but not to kill out the mutations because, as you point out, so many of the animal breeds are now showing that they are already too far along that road to turn back. It would be pointless anyway because the spore will still be there waiting for any clean stock to be reintroduced and infected all over again."

"So what's to be done?"

Mitch reached up with one arm and crooked it behind his head. "I figure there are one or two steps needed before any progress can be made. Find a cure for the effects the spore has on humanity, that has to be the first priority. Once a way can be found for it not to kill people, then you go to the next step. How to clean it out or neutralize it within the planet's biosphere. That's a harder task. We know it is in the water and before long will be coast to coast and possibly in the ocean as well. We would need something like a virus that attacks the spore and renders it inert. Once the spore is taken out of the equation, then you look at those animals already mutated, is there a way to reverse the damage to their DNA? Or do we start from fresh, or better, find a way to switch off the DNA triple helix sequences so that animals revert back to their rootstock, so to speak. And once that is done, then you can start to reintroduce people back into the environment."

"Seems simplistic..."

"It's not. There is a whole range of DNA based mutations – somatic and germ-line for starters.

"The difference being?"

"How do I put this...One effects nonreproductive cells, the other can be passed on to progeny."

"But what about the hybrids who are born hybrids, not mutated by the spore?"

Mitch shrugged. "Bag'em, tag'em and shoot'em?" he drawled.

Jamie rolled onto her side. "So history will be repeated. What you propose is what they did to the wolves, the coyotes, foxes, bears, puma, bobcats. Killed or driven out to make way for people and cattle or sheep."

Mitch peered at her, one eyebrow raised. "Since when did you become a hybrid lover?"

"Isn't that what we've always been? Why we shoot darts, not guns at them? Isn't that why Chloe died? To stop that awful man, what was his name?"

"General Davies."

"Yeah, him. Isn't that why we were flying around the world – to save the animals?"

"But Jamie, wiping out the people to save the animals, is as nuts as wiping out the animals to save the people. Neither way works, but Robert Oz didn't bother to bring that up for discussion, he made the decision for us."

"The Shepherds made a great many decisions without consulting anyone. What if this.." she indicated everything beyond their apartment. "...If this is still part of the grand plan."

"Audacious. But you said you tracked down the Shepherds and had them incarcerated for crimes against humanity, those that lived anyway."

"I thought I had too, but what if those were only the tip of the iceberg? What if, like a Hydra, you cut off a head and another one sprouts somewhere else? What if the conspiracy was not just to control population growth with the sterility gas, but to hold the world to ransom once the cure was found?"

"Maybe they didn't think it would take so long to find the cure," Mitch pondered. "Maybe they thought it would only take a few years, instead it's taken over a decade, and without Clementine, they'd still be fumbling around in the dark." He paused for a moment. "Maybe if we knew who was behind the funding and supply of this base, we would then know who was pulling the strings. They may have poached some of the top scientists and researchers in their fields, but the rest of the world can't be so far behind."

"Do we tell the others?" Jamie asked.

Mitch pulled a face. "What is there to tell? Yes, we were bugged and under surveillance, but that could be explained away with any number of arguments, none of them sinister. We have a theory but no proof to back it up. Any reasonable person would have a hard time believing there's anything other than a benign outcome expected from everyone's hard work over the years. Who's the bad guy here?"

Jamie let out a gust of air. "It's the fucking Reiden Corporation ghost all over again."

Mitch chewed on his bottom lip. "Possibly, but we have no way of proving that."

Neither of them spoke again. Jamie rolled over and threw her arm around Mitch, who did the same and wrapped her in his arms. They lay there for a long time.

"I feel like a rat caught in a maze with no way out," said Jamie.

"There's always a way out, you just have to think outside the maze," Mitch replied.

"Do you think they would come after us if we left here?" she asked.

"Chase after only the second woman in a decade to get pregnant, and to a full-blown mutant no less?" Mitch snarked. "I'm surprised they don't have us both locked up so we couldn't even think about such an idea, let alone act upon it."

Jamie shivered. "Don't say that maybe they will." She clutched at him convulsively. "Do you think any of the others know about this?"

"I'll find out. If anyone does, it will be Kenyatta. He's the closest in terms of working on the cure itself, providing the raw material in Baby Sam, and bringing Clementine on board with the project. If he doesn't know something, I'll be very, very surprised."

"So that's the plan? You find out what you can from Abe, then we decide whether or not to stay?"

Mitch pulled her in tighter then let her go. "Yeah. That's the plan."

"And Plan B?"

"I'll leave that for you to take care of. You were already working on one, so I suggest you get it back underway."

x-x-x-x-x-x

Abe was typing up his notes when someone knocked on his lab door. Saving his files, he closed the laptop and got up to answer the door.

"Mitch!"

"Hey, big guy. Thought it was time I paid you a visit and see whatcha got cooking in the lab."

"Come in, come in." He waved his visitor forward, then leaned on the door jamb to peer out and check the hallway. "Jamie not with you?"

"Nope. Not joined at the hip, last time I checked."

"No, of course, not, I just wondered...anyway, great to see you. How have you been?"

Mitch parked himself on one of the stools and rested an elbow on the bench. "Just fine. Don't seem to have experienced any major problems or side effects from the spore. Doc says I'm pretty much a hybridized human mutant, but other than that, I'm just great."

Abe gave his visitor a hard look, searching for some clue as to his reason for visiting.

"As you probably realize as an endocrinologist, I don't have much contact with the hybrid side of things, I'm more reproductive, not mutation, kind of Doctor."

"No, I don't suppose you do. I'm keen to know how Baby Sam has helped move forward the research. Are you close to human trials yet?"

Abe crossed his arms over his chest. "We are. Has Jamie told you that Dariela and Tessa have both volunteered to become test subjects?"

Mitch nodded. "She did. I'm curious, Abe. What's the end game here?"

Abe shook his head. "What do you mean, 'end game'? I would have thought that was obvious. Find a cure to end sterility and allow women to have children again."

"And does that include all women? Or just those who can afford the cure? Or maybe they go into a lottery? Tell me how it's going to all work."

Abe frowned, his usually jovial face becoming hard. "I don't know what you're getting at, but I know why I am doing this, to allow all women anywhere to once more bear children."

Mitch nodded. "So you're happy for whoever is in charge to take your research, your cure and do with it what they like with no input from you?"

"What the hell are you getting at, Mitch?"

Mitch ignored the question. "What if they choose to hold the world to ransom? They decide to dictate who can, and who can't have the cure. That only those able to afford the price, the luxury of having a child will have the opportunity. Are you still onboard with that? Or are you happy to stand aside and let somebody else decide how it's distributed?"

"Are you crazy? Where is all this coming from? We came here to find a cure, to find a way to reverse the effects of the Shepherds gas, to restart human reproduction – for everyone."

"Very noble," Mitch snarked. "But you really don't have any say in it, do you?"

Abe was getting angrier by the second, his meaty hands curling into fists. "I would have thought you'd be fighting to get on one of the teams to add your bit to the cause. Instead, you seem to be implying something subversive is going on behind the scenes. That's crazy. They've been trying for ten years to find a cure..."

Mitch jumped up. "My point exactly. Why has it taken them so long to produce nothing? Why has it taken Clementine and her baby happening before any real progress is made?"

Abe looked taken aback for a moment. "I don't know why they've not managed to find a cure in all that time. I do know that we are only a few trials away from creating a serum that will reactivate the reproductive cycle in human females, which should result in the ability to become pregnant."

Mitch raised a hand to emphasize his point. "Wouldn't it have been easier to simply reverse engineer the gas, remove the inhibitors, advance invitro fertilization and kick start things off that way?" Mitch pushed.

"You know nothing about this science, Mitch. You were too long away to keep up."

Mitch nodded. "Touche. I was out of the picture, as you say, so instead answer me this? Who is running all this?" He gestured with a sweep of his arm. "Is it a joint government task force? A worldwide consortium? A corporate cabal? Who owns this research?"

Abe looked down at the floor for a moment. When he looked up the anger was gone from his face.

"I don't know."

"Did it ever occur to you to ask?" Mitch queried. "For all we know, this is just another branch of the Shepherds attempting to reverse what went wrong ten years ago. Maybe they never expected the hybrids to escape the barrier and destroy the rest of the US. Maybe they never expected Robert Oz's daughter to form her own organization and become an eco-terrorist? She has to be funded by someone. Is the cure really a cure, or a chance to finally end any chance humanity has of surviving the hybrid takeover?"

Abe pursed his lips and drew himself up. "I can only suppose that Jamie's paranoid view of the world has finally rubbed off on you, Mitch. I have worked with the doctors and researchers here, I've seen their work, their results. They are as dedicated as I am to resolving the sterility crisis. There is no conspiracy here, this is not some sort of Noah objective, as you seem to think. I don't know how you cooked up such a crazy theory, but I can tell you for a fact that I am not part of any cabal or any such organization. I am confident that Dariela and Tessa will prove that the cure works, that humanity can hope for a better future, that my son will not be part of the last generation of humans on this Earth."

Mitch had been listening to Abe, but also probing the man's thoughts, watching the color of his emotions. Abe truly believed what he was saying, was passionate about the outcome and showed no signs of deceit or hidden motives.

"I believe you," Mitch replied simply, giving the big man a crooked smile. "I truly hope that you haven't been misled, I do, and I wish you the best of luck, you and Dariela, in your bid to have another child."

Abe looked a little surprised but took the hand Mitch held out and shook it. Mitch got off his stool and walked to the door.

"Catch you later, big guy."

Abe stared at the door long after Mitch had gone, his brain a whirling mass of questions and confusion, not least that he'd entirely missed something important during his conversation with Mitch.

X-x-x-x-x-x

"So he doesn't know anything?" Jamie queried. Mitch had brought back lunch with him and they were sitting at the table in the apartment together.

Mitch shook his head. "I'll admit I was expecting to find something, but Abe is still the straight up, or at least mostly straight up guy we all know and love. He believes that he is helping to bring the cure for sterility to the people of Earth, not just a small select few."

Jamie sipped her drink before speaking. "The few times I've spoken to Dariela about it, she seems excited at the prospect of adding to their small family."

"Abe was the same. He doesn't want his son to be part of the last generation. His words."

"And he doesn't know who is financing all this?" Jamie asked.

"Nope. So, unless we find a warehouse full of branded beakers announcing who is the supplier..."

They ate in silence for a little while.

"You know, that was one of the things that struck me as odd," said Jamie.

Mitch raised his eyebrows at her.

"Branding. If you look around the food hall, where you'd expect to see every kind of advertisement and branding opportunity, there's none. Even the food container and drink bottles have been stripped of their brands, replaced with simple labels instead."

Mitch looked surprised. "Now you mention it, you're right. Somebody didn't like the competition?"

Jamie shrugged. "Beats me. Everything appears to be purely generic, a clever feat when you consider what life was like ten years ago when everything was branded, including the air you breathed."

"Another sign of Shepherd intervention?"

"Who knows?"

When they were finished, Mitch gathered up the plates and glasses and dumped them in the kitchenette's sink. When he returned to the table he held out his hand to Jamie.

"Come on, we've been cooped up here for long enough. Let's make use of that map Mike gave us and take a tour of this island."

x-x-x-x-x-x

They didn't meet any opposition when they entered the garage to collect the Unimog and take it out for a spin. They were even able to kit it out with some bits and pieces from before, Mike helping them install some of Jamie's electronic gadgets and some basic breakdown supplies, just in case.

Soon enough they were driving out from the underground garage into the sunlight and tooling down the road away from the airport buildings and out towards the distant edges of the island. It was crazy driving along the main runway, the surface cracked and weedy. Within minutes they were on the track that ran around the outer edge of Sea Island, giving expansive views of the Salish Sea beyond, the heights of Vancouver Island in the distance. With flights no longer using the runways, a lack of ongoing maintenance was obvious from the unmown grass grown almost as tall as a man, alongside weeds reaching for the sun. They stopped at the pier than ran out onto the mudflats, carrying the runway approach lights. Here they left the Unimog and walked, enjoying the fresh air and sunshine, hand in hand along the dock, inhaling the strong smell of brine and seaweed. The tide was coming in and slapped against the footings, Mitch pointing out schools of sprats in the shallow water, being pursued by hungry skates and the occasional dogfish.

The breeze off the water was cool so they walked back and drove on, finding the usually locked gates wide open, allowing them easy access to the Iona island causeway. Further along, they encountered the Iona Beach Regional Park, which the road wound around, on the way passing several posts with metal cutouts of herons on top. Here was another long pedestrian-only causeway stretching a long way out into the bay. Jamie wasn't keen, so they put that walk down for a future explore. The same when the road ran out and they pondered on the North Arm Jetty, bordered by the Fraser River to the north, Georgia Trait to the south and west.

"Save that for another time," Mitch suggested.

They retraced their route and explored the northern side, once more outside the airport fence, wetlands to the left of the road. They could see across to the main airport building rising out of an ocean of waving grass. They were coming into some of the developed areas, with a few houses, then the huge Canada Post buildings with their empty delivery trucks rotting away in the carpark. A turn off took them to McDonald park where they stopped and got out. It had probably once been a very popular place for people to picnic and watch the Fraser River glide by. Now it was neglected and overgrown. The river still flowed by the bank, but a huge cell-phone tower had collapsed just shy of the carpark where the potholes in the road were big enough to qualify as duck ponds.

Back on the circular road, they passed the abandoned UPS building, next door to huge tanks, presumably empty, that used to hold the reserves of aviation fuel, as well as petrol and diesel.

The road now took them as close to the Vancouver mainland as it got, the overgrowth of greenery hiding the buildings and marina across the river. This area was patrolled day and night, the road to the very edge of Sea Island barred from casual visitors. They drove on past, the road curving around the east end, near to the last Skytrain station before it crossed over to the mainland.

They were quickly approaching what remained of the first road bridge crossing the Fraser. The entire center span was gone, jagged lengths of metal jutting out from either end but otherwise nothing. They were so close to the other bank they felt they could reach out and touch it, but the river ran deep and fast, likely to sweep anything that tried to get across further west towards the security guards waiting to shoot them. Jagged chunks of blasted concrete littered the area and they had to carefully maneuver around them. It was clear this stretch of the road was not frequented very often.

A little further on and the destruction was repeated with the Skytrain bridge, less substantial than the other, but no less obliterated. A heartbeat after that, the remains of the third bridge, that overlooked the only escape from the island via the swing bridge, ended as abruptly as the previous two. They negotiated the spaghetti junction at the base of the broken bridges and continued to follow the road now the eastern border of the island. They passed the towering Pacific Gateway hotel before driving through the carpark, pausing to admire the impressive aerospace technology campus buildings next door, still beautiful despite several of the windows in the futuristic glass edifice being broken. The glass hanger alongside was equally worth seeing before they carried on, always aware of the tall buildings looming on the far bank, only a spit of water between them and Sea Island. Mitch drove them to the edge of the fourth obliterated bridge, the views quite inspiring if you ignored the ragged drop-off. Passing by an industrial park, they reached the final bridge to be destroyed, the sheer amount of explosive that must have been needed to bring that span of concrete crashing down, boggling the mind.

They were now traveling along the eastern rim of the island, staring across at the towering white apartment blocks on the other side. The remnants of the number two bridge were barely visible, eddies of water around the stumps the only remaining signs of where the supports stood. Now they were passing those former businesses that provided helicopter and seaplane transport, one plane only recognizable by the tail sticking up out of the water at the end of a long jetty. A turn off found them driving through numerous engineering buildings and hangers, ending up at a dead end, in line with the main runway, the airport buildings clearly visible past the wire fence.

"Time to go offroad?" Mitch asked, grinning and waggling his eyebrows.

"If you insist. I'm going to need a bathroom break, so the sooner we're back there, the better."

"Best excuse ever. Hold on."

Mitch found a gate in the fence, backed the truck up and jammed his foot on the accelerator. The chain holding the gate closed might as well have been made of cheese, the truck breaking through the flimsy barrier without a scratch. Right on the other side was the runway being used by the independent airways, so they followed that to the main international runway and returned, as they'd left via a road to the underground garage. Mike the mechanic wasn't there to greet them so they left the Unimog parked in its designated space by the trailer and walked, as before, back to the main building.

X-x-x-x-x-x

They arrived at an empty entrance hall.

"Where is everyone?" Jamie asked.

"Did we miss a memo?" Mitch muttered.

"I have to go..." she darted towards the door leading to the ladies, Mitch following more slowly, standing propped up, outside the door to wait. He reached out with his senses and could easily follow the trail left by a large company of minds to a collective space. Jamie reappeared looking worried.

"Figured out where the people have gone yet?"

"This way." He started off heading towards the other side of the airport, away from the east section where their apartment was, instead going westerly down the concourse. They soon caught up with a few stragglers hurrying towards the crowd at the end of the wide open space.

"So you see, your work here is finally coming to fruition!" The crowd applauded. The speaker waited for the noise to die down. "Your patience and hard work have resulted in the first human trials of the cure starting next week. Soon, in a few months, you can expect to see the results of those trials being carried by the women who have offered themselves to be vessels for the sake of humanities future!" Again the crowd erupted into clapping and catcalls.

"I can't see who's speaking, can you?" Jamie asked, unable to see anything through the press of people.

Mitch stood six foot one in boots, but even he couldn't see much over the heads of the people crowded together in front of him.

"We need to get higher," he told her, grabbing her hand and pulling her back out of the fringe of people around them.

Together they looked for a way to get above the mob, Jaimie spotting the access stairway above the former shops lining the concourse. They climbed the narrow access way to the top where it flattened out to follow the roof line of the shops. Several other people had had the same idea and turned to see who else was joining them. Mitch smiled congenially and they turned back to listen and watch the speaker, all interest in the newcomers dropped.

The couple walked along the gangway a bit further before stopping to stare at what appeared to be the entire workforce, a hundred or more people, gathered in the space below. A long way forward was a scissor lift platform which the speaker stood on to be seen and heard by as many as possible. Around the base of the lifter stood a crowd of white-coated doctors and specialists, all of them looking up at the man raised high above everybody else. He was in a suit.

"I still can't make out who it is?" Jamie complained, leaning forward.

"Maybe you just haven't met them before, this is a pretty big place," Mitch retorted.

The speaker was waving down his enthusiastic audience for quiet.

"I'm am glad your enthusiasm for our efforts is undimmed. Our time in this place will soon be coming to an end, the boats are being readied to transport us all, with our precious cargo to the world beyond. We expect to be leaving here with not only a cure to allow women to conceive once more, but also an initiative to combat the spread of the hybrid scourge infecting our water and corrupting our wildlife. Your faith and continued support are essential if we are to finally bring hope to the world through the labors of our doctors, nurses, scientist and researchers. At the end of the day, not only will we have saved the world, we will be paid handsomely for the privilege. Your sacrifice in leaving your homes, your families and your lives, will be repaid tenfold, you will have the pick of anything in the world as your reward for services rendered. Your future and the future of the world is within our grasp, so continue to do your tasks, fulfill your purpose and look forward to the richly deserved rewards that will surely come our way."

"Well whoever he is, he knows how to rally a crowd," Mitch growled, obviously not happy.

"That's not necessarily a bad thing," said Jamie, confused by his sour mood.

"You didn't see what I've just been seeing in his head. This is definitely not what we signed up for."

"Mitch? What did you see?" Jamie was worried now.

"Let's get back to the apartment. I'll sweep it again for bugs before I'll say another word about this."

"Should we get the others together to hear what you've found out?"

"And tell them I can read their minds? How do you think they'll react to that?"

"Um...not well."

"Quite. So how do you think I'll convince them about what I've seen without giving that nugget of information away?"

"Yeah. That's going to be a problem," Jamie agreed.

"Right. So we keep this to ourselves for now."

x-x-x-x-x-x

Mitch and Jamie hurried away among the departing workers, unaware of being seen by Abe and Dariela off to the side.

"They arrived late," Dariela observed.

"Wonder why they're in such a hurry."

"Who's in a hurry?" Jackson asked, coming up beside them with Tessa at his side.

"Mitch and Jamie. They practically ran out of here." Abe informed them.

"Something wrong?" Tessa asked.

"Not sure. Going by his fierce expression, Mitch was unhappy about something he heard," Abe replied.

Tessa shrugged. "Why not drop by and ask them? That seems an easy way to find out."

"Yeah. He seemed to have a bee in his bonnet this morning, so we could always get him to clarify what he was on about?" Jackson suggested, Abe, having told him about the odd conversation over their lunch meeting.

"You might be correct, Rafiki, then he can tell you what he told me. Maybe it will make more sense to you."

Together, the four friends followed the path of the couple to their apartment.

x-x-x-x-x