note: Big thanks to Falco Conlon for looking this over, and to everyone who is still reading (and especially reviewing!). You guys are awesome. Three more chapters to go! Ah, jeez.

twenty-five: chase.

It was a tense walk home. The gruff stranger that had escorted Sofia from Iceman's building remained within earshot until we were at Swifty's door. We filed in and it locked behind us. Sofia gave a quiet sigh of relief that I don't think anyone was supposed to hear. She was ahead of me as we made our way into the main room, and I noticed with surprise that she was visibly shaken. It made sense under the circumstances, but… she was normally so composed that I was a little shocked to see her undone like this.

Sofia took a quick look around the main room and stayed standing.

"Swifty, are you sure about this?"

"About what?" he asked, irritated. He had been about to go upstairs.

"Is it safe? Is it, still –"

"Of course it is," he snapped, and stomped off. She stared after him for a moment, then took a seat on the couch and looked into the ashes in the fireplace. I didn't know what to do.

Dutchy was standing by one of the windows, straight as an arrow. I moved closer. He was whiter than usual, his eyes wide open and distant. I recognized this look. I touched his arm gently and he jerked away. Well, as long as he wasn't hurting anyone…

As I was about to turn back to Sofia, something caught the corner of my eye and I froze. It was the man that had shadowed us home. He hadn't left. In fact, he was standing across the street under an awning staring very hard at our door. He didn't look like he was going to leave anytime soon. Had we been tricked?

I was about to mention this to Sofia when Swifty reappeared, looking no different than before.

"Swifty," Sofia said softly, "boys… where is Boots?"

I felt a sudden flare of pain in my chest. Swifty stopped, looked quickly at Sofia, quickly at me, and then at the floorboards. He started to move toward the kitchen door, but I stopped him.

"You knew," I said accusingly, not moving from my spot behind the couch. "You knew and you never told anyone!"

He met my eyes without remorse. Sofia looked between the two of us, confused and anxious. "Race…?" she began, but I was focused solely on Swifty. Thoughts of the man outside the window fled from my mind.

"You knew!" I repeated, disbelief edging into my voice.

"Yeah, and so what?" Swifty snarled. "Doesn't change anything."

"It could have."

"It wouldn't have. You made the fucking promise, not me."

"You could have warned us! Helped him! He didn't deserve that!"

"No one deserves that. Tell me, Race, why are you acting like such a saint all of the sudden?"

"What?!" There was no way he was going to spin this to be about me.

"Like you haven't held a secret. Like you haven't known about something bad. Like you haven't kept information to yourself. Don't fuck with me and don't blame me just because you feel guilty for leading him into a trap. Don't even start."

Now my blood was really boiling, and all the hurt and anger and exhaustion of the past days was coming to a head. "It always comes back to you, doesn't it, Swifty? You think you know my motives for everything because you're so fucking smart, but you're full of bullshit. I might have felt bad for you once, a long time ago, but how can you keep up the victim face when you're bringing home a different girl every night?"

"Oh, so you want to talk about running away-"

"I don't want to talk about anything with an alcoholic piece of shit –"

"I fucking give you shelter and all this and now –"

"Enough." Sofia stood and yelled with enough force to shut us both up and bring Dutchy back from wherever he was. He blinked a few times and gave us a confused frown.

"Enough," she said again, looking at us from one to the other and trembling slightly. I think I was shaking too; I was that angry. "What happened to the boy?" she asked levelly. I looked pointedly at Swifty, not willing to give up yet. He glared back but turned and spoke to Sofia all the same.

"They sold him into slavery."

Behind me, Dutchy drew in a sharp breath. Sofia turned to me, eyes wide.

"We didn't sell anything," I said. "We made a promise to Madame Proulx that we would deliver the boy to his next 'employer' in exchange for the ingredient list. No one knew who the 'employer' was. Except Swifty."

But she didn't turn back to Swifty, not just then. She just shook her head at me, eyes narrowing, and stepped back so she could see all of us at once.

"Listen to you, both of you," she glowered. "Arguing like little boys. You disgust me right now, both of you." She focused on Swifty. "You're cowards, los ambos. You think you will forget her if you get enough women and drink enough rum. But you cannot stand the thought of losing her for good, or else you would have returned to the Other side long ago."

She turned her attention to me and barely took a breath, saying, "You think that no one cares what you do and that what you do has no consequences. You run away, you refuse to apologize, and once enough time has passed, you come back and do it all over again."

Her gaze did not soften when she looked at Dutchy. "Get me the ingredients. I have a promise to keep, but the sooner I am out, the better." She made for the kitchen, but paused at the door and turned back to our dumbfounded faces. "Thank you for rescuing me, boys. I feel so much safer here with you." She slammed the door behind her.

It was the first time I'd ever heard her be sarcastic. While I was shocked enough to remain rooted in place, Swifty wasted no time. He stormed past me and out the front door. Dutchy watched him go, then looked at me questioningly.

"To the bars, I guess," I said. "Go get the ingredients."

He went upstairs and I collapsed into one of the chairs, ready, like Sofia, to be done with the whole thing.

"I don't know if I'm ready to go back," Dutchy said wearily, breaking his mute stretch. He was sitting in the chair across from mine. My feet were up on the table in the center, his hands were massaging his neck. I didn't know what to say, because I was beginning to think that I agreed with him. Fortunately, he wasn't really waiting for me to add to the conversation. "I don't know if I'm ready to… I haven't seen him… it feels like such a long time."

"But you just saw him," I pointed out carefully.

"What?"

"By the window, earlier." He flushed, I guess embarrassed that someone had noticed his little spell.

"Oh… yeah. I did."

I waited a beat, then asked quietly, "How was he?"

Dutch shrugged a little and lowered his eyes. "I dunno," he said. "It's hard to tell. When I see him… I don't think I can explain it. It's not like seeing someone in the street, it's more… it's hard to focus, to put all the pieces together. But… it's getting easier." He frowned. "It's getting easier, which I think is bad. When I first saw him, I didn't recognize him at first. I didn't know. But now it's clearer. More solid. I guess it makes sense, I guess if… well, he's nearing the end of his time on the Other side…" We were both silent, then he suddenly switched subjects. "Swifty grew up, didn't he?"

"What?" I asked, then realized what he meant. Our discussion with Iceman hadn't started out as the most productive conversation. Swifty had always been a smooth talker, it was just part of his character. And on top of that was the persuasion piece. Both elements had been absent earlier that day.

"Yeah," I said finally, feeling a little strange. "Yeah, I guess he did." I couldn't help but wonder how much longer I had.

"It's bad enough to go back and have to deal with everything… everyone… explanations and everything, when we suddenly appear and fix Specs," Dutchy was saying, but I got the impression that he was kind of talking to himself. "But what if it doesn't work? What if we're too late? Then what will I do?"

The empty feeling in my stomach that rose as he spoke was not strong enough to defeat my exhaustion, and as we sat safe in the chairs in a comfortable silence, I felt myself slowly drift away.

"Antonio… Antonio…"

I couldn't have been woken by a sweeter voice. I cracked my eyelids open and peered up at Sofia's rueful smile. A few hours ago she may have been ripping me to shreds, but true to form, that was behind her now.

"Lo siento, tìo. I'm sorry to wake you. But I thought that maybe you would want this." She held an open palm out to me. The glass vial there wasn't any bigger than her small hand. It was filled three quarters with a brown tinted liquid.

"All that work for this?" I asked groggily, thinking maybe she was holding out the wrong hand. "You've got to be kidding me."

She pushed my face down with her free hand and giggled a little. I found myself smiling, too. I literally felt some of the weight on my shoulders fall off… we had it. We had the Cure.

Dutchy stirred, waking up from the sound of our voices. Sofia crept over to him and sat on one of the arms of his chair. "Buenos dìas," she said playfully. She took Dutchy's hand and put the vial in it. "You give this to him, your Specs… give all of it to him. He will sleep. When he wakes, he will say, 'I have had the most strange dream…'"

"And then what do I say?" Dutchy asked, rubbing at his eyes and holding the vial up to what meager light there was from the windows. Sofia just shrugged, grinning again.

But her grin vanished as both windows broke, showering the floor with bits of glass. Something heavy hit the door, or the wall, I couldn't tell. I was up and grabbing my friends and trying to figure out what was happening and where we could go. The main room was too open, but there was definitely something at the door, and I didn't want to be trapped upstairs. A cobblestone sailed through one of the window gaps with enough force to travel all the way to the mantel, where it hit with a loud crash.

"I thought this place was safe!" Dutchy yelled accusingly.

"Don't look at me!" I snapped back, angry, but scared, too. And it figured that Swifty wouldn't be here. People were gathering outside the house, a good number of men in dark clothes and dark hair. I couldn't see anything else from where we were backed into a corner. Suddenly I remembered Sofia's escort. I couldn't see him. "What happened to your guard?" I asked her. "Is this Iceman? Your guard! He didn't leave!"

Another thud at the door, I felt a tremor from this one. The windows were too small to crawl through, and the people outside were just the slightest bit hesitant at getting too close, but they were making their way over.

"This isn't Iceman," she promised. "I don't know… hurry, let's go to-"

The kitchen door burst open and Swifty only gave the main room a quick glance before yelling at us. "What are you doing over there!? Get the fuck outta here!"

We sprinted together across the room and ducked through the door. Swifty didn't bother to try and secure it after us. As we scrambled to get around the mess that Sofia had created in the kitchen, I heard what I guessed was the sound of people jumping through the windows.

"We have about three seconds to escape," Swifty growled as he yanked open the back door. It led to his tiny yard, and vaulting the yard's fence led to a dizzying maze of more yards, alleys, stairs, and tunnels. I could only remember having braved this chaos once before.

At first we ran through the narrow pathways in a line, trying to put some distance between us and the house. But Swifty and I both knew that that wouldn't be good enough. When we reached a wider section of the alley, we had to stop. Five different paths led off from this one. Swifty and I made eye contact and I looked away, grabbing Dutchy's elbow.

"You have it?" I asked. He nodded, breathing hard.

"You ok?" Swifty asked Sofia. She gave him a weak smile.

Shouts, accompanied by heavy boots on cold stone echoed all around us. It was hard to tell if they were getting closer.

So this was it.

We didn't have time for any words, thank yous, or goodbyes. So we let those go, at least for now. Dutchy and I, we had to get to that bridge. I pulled him toward the right and we took off running again. I didn't know where Swifty and Sofia would go, but I knew they would manage.

Dutchy kept looking back over his shoulder as we ran, but I kept my eyes forward. My feet, my eyes, my brain; everything began to work automatically. I couldn't allow myself to think about what was happening or what had happened. There was only one thing to do, and that was to get to the bridge before anyone caught up with us.

We emerged onto Free Street and slowed to a fast walk. My directional skills had paid off once again, because we were only a block away from the shallow, dirty river that Iceman's bridge crossed. The bridge was a simple arch, paved with cobblestones, railings on either side to prevent drunkards from falling into the disease-ridden water. A small staircase to the left of the bridge led under the structure. From what I could remember, all we would have to do was get to the stairs and walk down. I assumed we would end up on some steps in the Other Manhattan. I assumed.

The stairs were guarded by two tall men in dark, wool, fisherman sweaters. They stood when it was clear that we intended to use the stair. They looked us up and down and spoke to one another loudly in a harsh and unfamiliar language. Finally they stepped aside and let us go past. Dutchy led the way and strode down confidently. I followed, eyes glued to his back.

Behind us, I heard shouting and commotion, and the two guards began to argue with each other. I continued down, and darkness began to swim from the edge of my vision.

Nothing good ever came from looking back.