Grace Lange walked briskly down the hall, nodding as she passed other nurses on her floor. One more patient and she was done with rounds; unfortunately she had saved her least favorite for last.

She poked her head in his room and found him awake, staring at the ceiling.

He was, as her friends on the night shift put it, creepy as hell. Bald as an egg, with scars all over his body, yet pale as a corpse.

He had shown up here three days ago, stumbling in the ER with a knife shoved between his ribs. He had said nothing before collapsing on the floor, a puddle of blood pooling underneath him.

He had been rushed to emergency surgery; for all the good it did.

The doctors were still whispering that he was a medical miracle. His lung should have been collapsed; he should have had more internal bleeding.

Instead, once the surgeon pulled out the knife, all that was left was a deep cut—no internal organ damage or anything.

Once he recovered from the anesthesia (at a record rate) he said absolutely nothing, giving only his name and a bank account number for his care.

(The guys in billing just about died when they saw the guy had nearly twenty million stored away off shore).

Grace shook her head and stepped inside the creepy room. It even felt colder than usual in here, despite the sunlight streaming through the windows.

"Mr. Magnus," she said cheerfully, walking to the end of his bed and checking his chart. "Are you feeling alright?"

He didn't answer. He never did.

She looked back down at his chart—the notes from the attending doctor reported his wound was closed and they had taken him off his pain medicine. What the doctor had not written was how incredible that was.

She looked back up from the file folder and froze. For the first time, he had looked down from the ceiling tiles and was looking straight at her, his eyes cold and dead.

She remained motionless, a rabbit in the sight of a viper.

When he spoke, his voice sounded like smoke. "You know, there was a time when a young woman such as yourself would never have felt comfortable being alone with me." He chuckled darkly. "How times have changed."

She gapped at him, then, totally terrified, she turned and fled. She didn't know why she was so afraid; all she knew was it felt like someone had dumped ice water over her head.

She raced back to the nurses station. She picked up the phone, dialing rapidly. "Hi, yeah, I need security and someone from psych here, like now."

She put the phone down and hid behind her desk. Security and the doctor on call over at psych arrived at the same time—seven minutes later.

"Dr. Singh, hi," she called, relieved that help had arrived. "Jim, Dave, great to see you." She was babbling, feeling just a little hysterical.

"Which room?" Dr. Singh asked, his deep voice calm.

"307b," she replied. They turned and walked down the hall; she trailed behind, hesitant.

Dr. Singh disappeared into the room, but reappeared just as quickly.

"Grace, there's no one in here."

"What?" she gasped.

She poked her head inside.

The bed was empty, his neatly folded clothes gone.

M.J. Magnus had vanished into thin air.


Claudia looked around and seeing that the main office was clear, she departed. As soon as she had told Artie of their success he had bustled out, wanting "to see this disaster himself." She looked surreptitiously around and slunk back down the staircase.

She had wanted the others to think she was going to hack into the main office; little did they know where the real magic happened.

Instead of making a left that would lead her to the lab, she made a right. She passed the door to the server room, the game room, the room that contained nothing but an assortment of rubber ducks and the stairwell that led to the goo dispensary, before stopping at a rather plain section of the wall.

She tapped it twice with her pointer finger, then knocked. A door swung open, on silent hinges.

She entered her cozy lair—in her mind she called it the Bat Cave. Stacks of dedicated servers, multiple monitors and a series of powerful processers made the Bat Cave a hacker's paradise. Complete with a workbench and full tool assembly, it was Claudia's home away from home.

Sure it got lonely. But she couldn't do her best work with everyone breathing over her shoulder.

Claudia had rolled her eyes good-naturedly and sat down at her desk. It was probably better no one was here—what she was about to do was so illegal, there probably weren't even any punishments for it, just people who had disappeared into a black hole for trying.

She gulped. But she would do this—for Myka, for HG, for the chance to pick Sherlock Holmes's brain if they could figure out a way for him to get better.

Claudia was so excited she was buzzing. Sure, they weren't perfect. But really, when was the last time her flesh and blood heroes had appeared on her very doorstep?

She bent to the task, slipping into the data the way she had so many times before. She went for a backdoor, executing a force hack program, trying to patch the incoming data together.

The amount of decryption work she had to do was stunning. "Paranoid much?" she muttered.

"'People with secrets usually are." Claudia jumped about a foot in the air. Tesla had silently crept up behind her, peering over her shoulder.

"Oh did I startle you?"

"Yes!" Claudia exclaimed.

"My point exactly." Tesla looked rather smug. "Now what is all this young lady?"

Tesla gazed around the room, hands on his hips.

"Oh you know," Claudia said airily. "Just a few odds and ends."

Tesla didn't say anything else; he just walked over to her workbench and started poking around.

It was awkward at first, but Claudia studiously ignored him, eventually forgetting he was there as she continued to work, decrypting as fast as she could. She couldn't be sure where the files on Doctor Magnus were, if they existed at all. The only thing she could do was grab everything around the appropriate date range and hope for the best.

Tesla startled her once again by tapping on her shoulder.

She turned, schooling her scowl into something more polite. "Can I help you?" she asked.

"I see where you were going with this, and if you cross the relays like that, it will blow up in your face." He held up the prototype for her remote Tesla grenade.

She looked at where he was pointing and saw that he was right. "Thanks," she said sheepishly. "Wouldn't be the first time I've blown this room up though."

"That must get expensive quickly," Tesla tsked.

"Yeah, don't tell Artie to look at the Warehouse credit card statements. It's not pretty."

Tesla chuckled. "I don't mean to hover, but I'm hovering. How's it coming?"

"Slow," Claudia said, sitting back in her extra custom computer chair that she spent weeks tricking out.

Tesla began to pace, as if wearing a hole in the sweet rug she installed last week was really going to make the decryption work any faster.

"So what's your deal anyway?" Claudia asked, curious.

"What do you mean?"

"You and the lady doctor. Is that like a thing?"

Tesla shook his head. "No, Helen has never deigned to grant her favors to me. I'm not the kind of man she usually looks for." He looked a little distant.

"Is it the fangs? For me, it would be the fangs."

"No, you silly girl it's not the fangs." He paused for a moment. "Ah well. It's her loss."

Claudia rolled her eyes. Tesla's ego was impervious, not that she could blame him. He was Nikolai Tesla, for crying out loud.

Tesla turned back to the workbench, picking up a screwdriver and tinkering to pass the time.

She gazed at the back of Tesla's head, looking at him but not really seeing him; instead she saw his inventions, his theories and all his brilliance. The things he had done for the Warehouse alone…

"You know, if you keep looking at me like that, people are going to start talking." Tesla did not even turn his head.

Claudia pinked but did not stop staring. "I just, I can't believe you're alive."

"Best get over it quick junior." Tesla turned and met her eye.

"But, you're Nikolai Tesla! You invented electrical science! And you're standing in my workshop and, and… you make fun of me! You created the basis of everything around us!" She gestured broadly at the computers behind her.

"Yes, yes, and Helen pioneered modern medicine and James is a famous detective and John is a notorious serial killer. Nigel's stolen millions and Helena invented her own literature genre!"

Tesla leaned back against the workbench indolently, gazing at his hand wistfully, as if he were holding a wine glass.

"Here's the thing squirt, and this is just a little too introspective for me, so don't expect this mood to last. " He paused, giving his next words a moment's thought.

"We're all human. Except for me, of course. The point is, yes we all have done these things—but whatever our virtues, we've all had our vices. And as our triumphs are great, our mistakes are correspondingly greater." He emphasized each point with a gesture of his empty hand.

He shrugged. "Don't get me wrong. I love the adoration. But," he pointed at her. "You are more productive to me if you spend less time adoring and more time thinking."

Claudia blinked at him. He didn't mean it harshly; like all things with Tesla it seemed he was coming at it sideways. She swallowed, clearing her throat.

"Okay." She smiled at him. "I'm cool. Frosty like deep space."

He smirked and turned back to his tinkering, apparently finished with the conversation.


Six months had passed. Adam Worth had not rested, only traveled and worked and prepared. He had no other plan than his revenge; which made things simple.

He created a physical suspension unit that would hold him in suspended animation until it was time. The machine was finished—hidden in the most secret of locations, where he would never be discovered. He was looking forward to the nap; he had no desire to relive the horrors of the 20th century.

His long-term interests were looked after. He made arrangements for the trustees of his will to take his assets and invest them—oil , rubber, technology. He left simple instructions to his banker in London—with triplicates in Paris, New York and Rome.

He knew it was a risk to trust that his instructions would be followed. But his plan had laid out some contingencies just in case; mainly in the fifty pounds of gold he had just buried next to his invention.

Now, all he had to do was activate the machine and he would wake up in the 21st century.

He just did not have the patience to wait; not when it would be a full century before the woman he was destined to kill was even born.

He placed his artifact gently into the containment field; its restorative properties would keep him alive.

Then he set the timer for the year 2013.

His last waking thought was the look on Helena's face at Christina's funeral. He fell asleep with a smirk on his face.


A/N: I'd like to thank .ago and etain for reviewing. I'm so very glad you enjoyed the plot twist, I'm rather proud of it.