PLEASE read the bottom author's note. It's really, really, IMPORTANT!

Shout-outs to: bade, Two-Ways-Down-None-To-Go, and Azkadellio.

P.S. I apologize for not giving anyone a preview of this chapter. Truth be told, I just finished writing this entire thing three minutes ago. :P

CHAPTER 21
Beck's POV

"She wasn't calling Tori a Predicter. She was trying to tell us to protect her."

Dang. My girlfriend was like a detective. Figuring out the mysteries and puzzles that not even André could. I wiped a fake tear from the corner of my eye, very impressed by her intelligence.

"How come I didn't see that before?" André grumbled.

"Well, you were busy with a million other things," I said, patting him on the shoulder. He shook his head, chuckling. We watched as Cat ran into Jade again, her face full of tears and happiness. Suddenly there was a loud zap, like a spark of electricity. Cat froze, her limbs kicking out before they clenched up and froze. She started to fall backwards, her body as rigid as a pole.

Jade was closest to her, throwing out a hand to wrap around the smaller girl's wrist, jerking her upwards before almost immediately letting go again, retracting back with a flash of pain on her face. Cat twisted in the air, remaining as helpless as before and I lunged, catching her waist and pulling her into my chest.

There was a burn when our skin made contact and I became paralyzed too. We collided with the ground and she rolled off of me, her skin white and body seized up.

"What's going on?" Jade yelled, leaned over and clutching her hand. I was unable to move or talk—it felt like a thousand electrical currents were roaming over my body and keeping me pinned to the floor.

"It's the chip!"

André spun on his heel, turning around and returning with a silver syringe in his left hand. I caught sight of him stabbing the needle deep into Cat's arm while pulling the plunger. She went slack, lying there limply like a worn ragdoll.

Jade made her way over to them as André prodded the redhead gently. "What did you do to her?"

"Put her to sleep," André informed her, sliding his arms under the unconscious girl and lifting her up. "The chip would've killed her if she stayed awake. She's obviously not great at controlling her emotions, which is understandable since you're the first person to figure out her little code. That's enough to make anyone extremely excited, but unfortunately that activates the chip. The happier she is, the longer it stays on and the stronger the electricity gets.

"If we want her to live until I can get that transmitter built, this will be our best option at this point."

I was forgotten on the floor, still in my silent struggle to get up. André set Cat down on a clean table and found a blanket to cover up her lower half with.

"So does this possibly mean that Tori's still alive?" Jade asked, lowering her voice.

"Maybe. You'll probably need to go back and check, though."

I made a loud, guttural noise in the back of my throat—that seemed to get their attention. Jade walked over and grasped my hand gingerly, pulling me and my legs failed to hold up my weight so I collapsed on her, mumbling incomprehensively.

"It's okay, Beck," she laughed, helping me with my balance. She started patting my hair and smoothing it down; the shock must've caused it to stand on end, giving me the impression of having a huge, unruly afro.

"So that's it then, we go back to the island?" I asked after a few minutes of re-gaining control of my vocal cords.

"It's our last hope," André nodded. "There's nothing wrong with trying."

Jade, who had her arm around my waist, suddenly tightened her grip. Her head tilted down to stare hard at the floor. I reached over, putting my finger under her chin and forcing her to make eye contact with me as André rambled on about a new plan.

I looked through her beautiful blue eyes like they were a direct entryway to her thoughts, to her mind: I was re-living the past through her. I felt her tight emotions when I innocently suggested we go to the island. Everything became tainted in red and white, blinding stars as she associated the island with the bear attack. I could practically feel the agony and pain she experienced, the hot, numbing ache traveling through my own body. I felt how she did when she died, too; confused, lonely and scared. Fearful. The suffocating, dizzying emotion she had rarely ever acquainted herself with. Jade didn't want to go back to the island. She was terrified that she might go through the same, torturous ordeal as before.

Jade jerked away, blinking. "Seen enough?" she snarled through her teeth.

"Jade," I began.

"I-I-I can't do it," she blurted out, pulling her arm from around my waist. "I'll just get Trina and Robbie. They'll be more of a help than I'll be." She stomped out of the room, us just standing there silently and watching.

"What did you do now?" André mused while rolling up Cat's sleeve to check her pulse.

"I read her mind." André clucked his tongue and I defended myself. "She would never tell anyone the things I just saw. Dude, Jade doesn't want to go to the island because she's scared that the bear is going to come back and finish her off."

"Scared? Well that's worrying." I had a feeling André was just playing around. "Jade's not really afraid of anything, is she? That bear must've really made an impression on her."

"It killed her," I said shortly.

André pursed his lips, tilting his head as he glanced up at me. "Right. Sorry, buddy."

I suddenly felt a stab in my chest. I looked at the door, expecting my legs to carry me towards it and outside, where I find my girlfriend and tell her everything would be okay. But instead, I stood there, looking like an idiot, even with my mouth hanging open.

"It's going to be difficult to find Tori if Jade doesn't go," André said. "She's the last person that saw her."

"If she doesn't want to go then she doesn't have to," I snapped.

"Beck, chill. I didn't mean it like that," André tried to calm me. "I was just making a statement." My hands pulled into fists and I had the sudden urge to hit something. "Anyway, if I recall correctly, Jade told me there was tunnel in the pit Robbie found them in. We can get him to dimension you back there and all you'll have to do is go down and search through it.

"I mean, it doesn't guarantee finding Tori, but it's a pretty good start."

"Yeah," I said simply.

"Beck, I'm not going to force Jade to come if she doesn't want to, you know that, right? Even if she would be a big help to the team," André added quietly.

"You better not."

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Jade's POV

I felt so ashamed and embarrassed of myself as I made my way to Robbie's apartment. Beck had seen why I didn't want to visit the island for a second time. It was little better, I guess, than having to straight up tell him, but still. Jade West wasn't scared of anything. Until now.

I just hoped they would understand why. Getting mauled to death by a six-hundred-plus pound bear was not pleasant in any way, and you didn't even need to go through the experience to have an idea of what it would feel like. I now associated the island with lots of pain and having my guts ripped out of my stomach, as much as I didn't want to. Tori was still there, who knows what was happening or had happened to her, and I couldn't even bring myself to even think about going back to save her.

I was quite a selfish, heartless jerk, wasn't I?

But it wasn't fair. I didn't choose to be like this. Things just happened and forced me to be this way. There was no option for me. I just had to accept it whether I liked it or not.

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Convincing Robbie to visit André's lab was relatively easy. The Dimensioner's eyes were puffy and he had tear tracks staining his pale cheeks. He sniffled a few times while we carried out a civil conversation, but I made no attempt to ask him what had put him in this state. I bet it had something to do with Trina. He agreed almost immediately, wanting to make amends for his previous actions, which I didn't quite understand why he kept blaming himself for. He was as scared as I was, put into a moral dilemma of whom to save, knowing that either option had some sort of consequence.

Trina needed a little more convincing, though. She opened the door and greeted me with a large meat cleaver in her hand, thinking that I was Robbie. We ended up getting into a little scuffle when she refused to put down her weapon and she blamed me for allowing Tori to be taken away. I received a few well-placed bruises from her jabbing elbows but eventually managed to wrestle the knife away from her.

She slammed the door in my face after that, still not wanting anything to do with me. I decided that it was enough being nice Jade. I barged through the door and dragged her outside, screaming obscenities about how Tori would be better off dead and without her lousy, good-for-nothing sister. That riled Trina up enough to grudgingly head down to André's laboratory.

Mission accomplished.

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Beck's POV

Robbie arrived first, naturally, in a large puff of green smoke. Trina came by almost twelve minutes later, her appearance disheveled: her hair was poking up and there was a small cut on her left cheek. Her bright, sequined shirt was missing a few bottom buttons and there was a tear in her pants.

Before I could ask what happened, she tried to physically assault Robbie, her hands wrapping around his skinny neck and choking him violently. It took André and a good ten minutes to have her restrained.

"Jade's not coming, is she?" Robbie asked in a wheezy voice. Him, Trina and I were standing in a line, arms linked. He was on the far right since Trina insisted on being nowhere near "that pig-headed scumbag" and I was in between them. André, like always, would remain here. We really needed to get him into the action sometime.

"Nope," I shook my head, eventually giving them what I believed was the real explanation: her fear of the bear was greater than her will to rescue Tori and she was too scared to go.

"Jade's not afraid of anything, though," Trina said as André bustled around us to make sure everything was in place. We would follow through with his plan of visiting the site where we had rescued Jade and make our way down to the pit and this tunnel Jade was talking about.

"What is this crap you've been spreading around, Beck?"

We all spun around. Jade was standing in the doorway, a regretful smirk on her lips and a determine gleam in her clear blue eyes. She walked up to Robbie's left side, grabbing his wrist hesitantly with two fingers.

"That bear better be ready for some serious revenge," she said.

I smiled at her and Robbie dimensioned us.

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Tori's POV

I was very surprised that I wasn't dead yet. I had lost an unbelievable amount of bloody, which had gruesomely caked my entire left arm. At one point, something had come in and poured water all over it, washing away some of the red film, but that was about it. I could no longer feel my feet and legs. They had gone numb ages ago. Eventually the feeling traveled up my torso, slithering into my right arm and up my neck. I was forced to stare at the compact dirt ceiling with glazed eyes.

My left arm was only experiencing a dull, pounding ache. There was a patch of dried leaves stuck to the infected wound, supposedly protecting it from more harm that was placed there by a large, red-eyed gorilla. Either it was genuinely trying to save me or prolonging my agony.

I had no sense of time anymore. It would get darker in the tunnel during what I assumed was the nighttimes and bright during the day. Sometimes the gray wolf would visit, usually bringing fruit with it. I couldn't even remember how it tasted, except for the cold, sticky juice that dripped down my chin and cheeks as I struggled to swallow as much as possible. I was getting sicker and sicker the more time that passed.

The bear never came back, but I had a feeling it was just lurking in the shadows where I couldn't see. These animals were a lot more intelligent than they appeared to be.

I was beginning to lose the will to live. No one was coming to save me, huh? Jade might be dead and she was the only one who had an idea of where I was. I started having hallucinations, that the devil himself visited me and asked if I wanted to go with him. At first I refused, but now I wanted him to come back so I could say yes. I was hardly able to keep track of any of my surroundings. Everything turned into a jumbled puzzle of confusion and mystery. Why were these animals doing this? Would I ever be saved? Was Jade actually dead?

I didn't want to live anymore.

And at this rate, it wouldn't be long before my body gave out too.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This story is coming up to a close. Like, in less than five chapters. I know I've lost some fans along the way, especially since Victorious ended. But I'm willing to keep going if a few of you would too.

So readers, I leave this question up for you: Would you like to see a sequel to Predicter? I've got the story line written down, and if you would like, I can bring it to life as the third story in the Caliber Series. I would really like to hear some feedback on that idea. Please. You can either leave me a review, PM, or vote on my profile for your answer. Or do all of the above. I encourage everyone who reads this to send in a response.

Thanks everyone! Have a nice summer. ;)