Sorry for how long it's taken me to continued my story, but such is life. I felt I needed to revise this chapter due to continuity to some of the earliest chapters. Thanks for reading and even more for reviewing! As always, I own only the character of Genevieve and my plot. Cheers!

Genevieve crossed the short distance from her front door to the kitchen bar where Dr. Cameron sat. A growing anger soon turned into a fury but Cameron refused to back down from her friend. Undaunted by Cameron's coolness, Gene raged, "Cameron, where the hell is Adam?" Then Gene noticed a TIMing device on the counter. Genevieve's voice went higher in accord with her temper. "What have you done!"

"Don't look so high and mighty, Genevieve Rending. The boy hacked into the TIMEr mainframe within five minutes of getting back here. Once you decided to save Lucas, I couldn't hide that from Adam. He's much too clever for that. Adam could tell something was changing in the timeline. So when you set events in motion, there was nothing I could do. He figured out your plan and saw a flaw in it. What it was, I don't know. But he thinks if he's on the inside when Guy comes out of prison that he can help."

"On the inside? How can he be on the inside when he's just a boy."

Cameron looked away and refused to look Gene in the eye. "It was completely his idea, Gene. I swear to you."

"What, Cameron? What did he do?" The fear slowly replaced the anger Gene's voice.

"He wanted to be in his 30s when the time came. So, I contacted some old friends of mine. They agreed to take him in."

"He can't do that. Adam can't sacrifice his entire future and life for Guy. Where did he go, Cameron?"

Cameron finally stood her ground. "Adam is not a child. He knows what he's doing. And, if you care for him, you'll respect his dedication to you and Guy. Let him carry out his mission, Gene. He loves you both so much. This is his way of protecting you."

Gene held onto the counter, because if she let go, she knew her hands would shake. Her voice was small and tired, "I was supposed to protect him."

"I think the feeling is mutual. Listen, Adam's become a son to the maid of my friend, a man of wealth who has promised that Adam will have the best education and will help him get into the services when he's of age. By the time Guy gets out of prison, Adam will be well positioned to help."

"All this to protect Guy." Gene bowed her head. She was so lost to the ache of Adam's loss on top of everything she was feeling for Lucas and Guy that she didn't even hear Cameron's whispered reply.

"All this to protect us all."

Death was the only constant in the Russian prison. As the guards drug Guy back to his cell after the latest waterboarding ordeal, another set of guards drug a limp form away from a neighboring cell.

Sometimes it was murder – in all its variable horrific forms.

Constantly looking over their shoulders, the men feared each other. Gangs were inevitable as the strong sought to solidify their position and the weak gravitated to the strong for protection. So murder was commonplace – overlooked by apathetic guards who would more than likely join in the beatings rather than to break it up.

Then there were stealthy murders. Men would be found with a throat slit, skull crushed, or simply poisoned. Motives for these murders usually stemmed from agencies on the outside trying to silence their men before they talked or prisoners with a private grudge wanting it to look like a job motivated from the outside.

The paranoia this caused had its affect on the men. For the lucky, their skills of observation were honed to a perfection that was second to none. The unlucky who couldn't rise to the pressure slowly let it crush them till there was no other option but to take their own lives.

In the early years of Guy's capture, he refused to let the prison crush him. He knew that Gene and Lucas were safe, and Gene's small cryptic messages kept him encouraged. But for some reason in the sixth year, the messages stopped coming. Then, Guy started to notice that more men around him were dying at a greater rate than those in other parts of the prison. The uncertainty of Gene's fate compounded with the paranoia that he might be next began to be too much for Gisborne, and he started fashioning a makeshift knife out of long piece of flint he discovered in his cell one day. He would be ready if someone tried to take him out.

One night, just after the lights had been turned out, Guy heard it. Without opening the door to his cell, someone had entered it. Whoever this was must be a TIMEr and was definitely a professional as the only sound made was the light footfall which was barely a whisper. Before his imprisonment, Guy would not have even heard it, but now his senses were honed which allowed him to grasp for his assailant with one hand while still gripping his knife tightly with the other.

But, his attacker was not so easily subdued. Guy's blade was knocked out of his hand with a quick block clattering to the floor. Feeling a sharp sting to his stomach, Guy knew that the unknown man's knife had cut him. The act made him mad. He was not going to endure the separation from Gene – the hell of being apart from her – only to be taken down by some half-pint TIMEr twit.

With a surge of energy, Gisborne wrestled the knife from the figure. Now there was no holding back. Guy overpowered the assailant with the brunt of his pure strength and power. Any other assassin would have gone still at the touch of a blade to the back, but that only angered the body in front of Guy who twisted and turned under the blade. He heard the rip of clothes, the gasp of air as flesh was torn.

"Yield!" Guy's voice was a harsh whisper in the darkness. He had been talking in Russian for so long that he didn't realize that he was not speaking English.

But the figure refused to comply and continued struggling. So Guy held him down and continued to cut. Now that he had control, Guy moved the knife more slowly against the body underneath him. In fact the knife almost took on a life of its own as it tasted blood for the first time. Only when the assailant was motionless did Gisborne dare to discover who was sent to kill him. Turning the figure over was easier than he thought because the body was so light.

"Christ!" Gisborne thought, "He must only be a boy."

What he saw next would haunt him the rest of his life.

Genevieve lay underneath him – unconscious. A younger Genevieve than the one he first met, but it was his Gene all the same. Guy fingered the knife and realized that it was the same knife that Gene always carried with her. He slid the knife away from him and hurriedly took the cleanest cloth he could find – the remnants of Gene's own shirt – and put it to Gene's open wound. When the bleeding finally stopped, Guy kept it on her wound and tied the ends of her shirt under one arm and around her opposite hip to keep it in place.

So he was the one who had scarred her. No wonder she had hated him at first. But, why was this younger Gene here in the first place? To kill him? If that had been the case, Gene could have done that immediately. But he blocked all questions from his mind as he cradled Gene in his arms rocking back and forth, whispering a litany of "Oh, Gene, I'm so sorry," as he kissed her forehead and smoothed her hair back.

Suddenly, Genevieve's eyes flew open and she spun herself out of Guy's arms and onto the cold stone floor reaching for and finding her knife.

"Please, Gene, don't go!" Guy entreated, but she was gone in a flash of light. Guy was left alone with his tears and the knowledge that he'd just hurt the woman he loved more than his own worthless life. He eyed his own blade. Maybe the suicides had the right idea?

Adam tightened the grip on his gun as Tom pulled into a lay-by on a dual carriage way as he drove them back to London. Traffic was heavy and several cars were parked up as a heavy deluge of rain spattered down.

He started out calmly, "Tom, I know you had to act as a traitor the day the TIMErs came for Lucas. I know you'd didn't have a choice. You had to play your part so that you could watch over him."

Tom said nothing, but nodded at Adam's words relieved that there were no accusations in his voice.

"But, what I don't understand is why you orchestrated Lucas's capture by the Russians." Now Adam was angry and on the verge of unleashing all his rage out on his old friend.

"I don't expect you to understand. You were just a boy." Tom's tone of cold superiority grated on Adam's nerves.

"I was more of a man then than you've ever been, Quinn. And, you don't have a choice." Adam nudged the barrel of the gun into Tom's neck. "Start talking."

Tom refused to look at Adam but complied. "I was reluctant from the beginning to go through with Gene's plan about Lucas. But, it was Gene, and I trusted her. She promised that she would come for the boy soon after the abduction and that she had a way for all of us to be free from the TIMErs. I believed her. I was enraged when the TIMErs killed Sally and Will; but if I did anything, I would have risked losing Lucas for good. When they made me beat Gene, every hit hurt my heart. When they made me rape her, every second killed my soul."

Adam remained silent, blue eyes intent on Tom's words.

"When they brought me to the future and gave me a new life, I couldn't stop dreaming of her. I needed Genevieve. I needed to tell her that I was sorry. I needed Gene and the comfort of her touch as I begged for her forgiveness. I needed to know that she didn't hate me. I needed her."

"Very touching." Adam couldn't help the sarcasm seething from his voice.

That tone sent Tom over the edge as he finally looked Adam in the eyes; his voice growing in anger by the moment. "But what did I get? Months followed by years of silence. She never came for Lucas; she never came for me. I had to watch the boy grow up and wonder every day if Gene would choose that day to grace us with her presence. But she never did. I sacrificed my soul to hell for her, and she never came!

"So you decided to put her child in danger? Explain that one to me."

"She loves Lucas and Guy more than anything else. If any one thing could bring her out in the open, it'd be danger to her son or her lover. Do you know what it was like, seeing Lucas growing up, every day becoming more the image of the man I hated above all others. If Gene wasn't so mesmerized by Gisborne, she'd actually see me as worthy of her."

Adam shook his head, "You're a complete fool, Quinn. You've done more damage to yourself than she has."

"What do you mean?"

"Just drive, Tom. And hope I don't decide to kill you for your stupidity."