The creaking of the door's lock and a sudden bright light startled them awake.
"Z?" Klaus mumbled through a yawn as he saw the familiar silhouette through the window of the door. He was assigned to keep watch over the night, but was probably not the best choice in the first place given how tired he was. "Rita, is that you?" The logical side in his brain desperately tried to remind him to stay away in case of another timeout. He needed to be able to talk to Harlan again.
She seemed to be in a hurry, looking back behind her as she barely gestured for them to move. They sleepily followed routine and shuffled half-asleep to the other side of the room. Before they even faced the wall, she had already slipped inside and quickly placed herself in front of Five, who glared at her suspiciously but stayed still.
"You're the smartest one here, can you make any sense of this?" She shoved some pieces of paper at his face before stepping back and watching him intently. Rita hurriedly motioned for him to read it when he only looked at her, and glanced back at the door as if something might be chasing her. "Hurry, we don't exactly have a lot of time and I know you won't trust me if you can't verify it yourself. And if you don't trust me, none of them will follow."
"Follow? What is it?" Diego asked, seeing Five sit up as he scanned the paper. Rita remained standing in front of him, tapping her shoe impatiently on the floor.
"This…This is a calculation to get home." Five stuttered out as he kept reading. The other start to gather around him at his words. "Well, there's just few things that need to be adjusted... But it's useless, I can't do this. It's beyond me and, even if I try, the chances of me messing up is running at a probability of 100% based on past experiments with new aspects of my powers." He exaggerated it a bit, but he can't keep giving his siblings hope where there should be none.
Rita rolled her eyes. "I know that," she hissed, obviously still in a rush. "Do you think I'd just show that to you for fun and taunt you with an impossible way to get home? You all know me better than that!" And quite honestly, despite being their captor and usual guard, they did kind of agree. "Listen, I know a way."
"You can't do this." Five rebutted immediately, waving the papers at her.
"Yeah, no shit, Sherlock!" Her voice raised, obviously frustrated by the interruption. "But someone else can, and I know exactly who. The only chance you have is now, because I'm seriously running out of ways to keep dad busy enough so he doesn't have time to deal with you."
Luther reacted first, but they were all reasonably shocked. "You've been what?" It's not all that surprising that she's helping them, but it's a bit of a shock to know she's willingly betraying Reginald Hargreeves, given how loyal she seemed to be to him. To hear that she went out of her way to distract him?
"Make a choice. Now." She demanded, looking each of them in the eye. "Either you trust and follow me to what could potentially be your ride home, or you don't and figure a way out yourselves."
"Let's go," Klaus replied almost immediately. He quickly ran to the door and held it open. "Come on!" He gestured to the door, encouraging his siblings to move from their frozen states. "Is this seriously the worst thing that's ever happened to us? We went through two apocalypses, for fuck's sake!"
"What if it's a trap?" Diego hesitated, refusing to meet Rita's eyes when she glared at him.
Vanya followed Klaus. "I trust her." She exchanged looks with Rita and quickly slipped through the door, waiting for the others outside.
The others looked at Five and waited for his decision.
"They're right." Five shrugged, pocketing the papers determinedly into his pockets after scanning them once more. "We can't waste the opportunity we have here." He moved and walked out, waiting with Vanya and Klaus outside. Luther and Diego soon followed, albeit a bit reluctantly.
Allison was the last to move, but she went anyway. For a moment she paused in front of Rita by the door. "Give us our powers back."
"When it's safer." Rita nodded. And off they went.
The elevator was small, but they made do. "Where are the others?" Five asked, preparing for a fight.
Rita saw this and placed a calming hand on his shoulder. "They don't know about this. I think Daniel and Klaus, maybe Ben, are sort of suspecting something about me, but I had to keep them in the dark. They're recovering in their rooms after a mission with dad. Still, trust me, my siblings are good people. All of them."
Diego snorted, recalling the terrible attitude that most of them had. "You're asking for an awful lot of trust."
"Sorry, just… Okay." Rita sighed. "Abhijat's going to help, so sneaking around is easier. Pogo is aware of certain things, but he's always been on dad's side, so he turns a blind eye to what he can, then runs off to snitch about what he can't ignore. Right now, Mom's making sure he isn't informed about any of this."
"And your siblings?" Five asked again.
"I told you! They know nothing about this. Dad has them much more heavily monitored than me."
"Then how do you know they can be trusted?"
The elevator stopped and the doors opened to a dark hallway. "Because our loyalty has always been with each other. Not dad." And with that, Rita stepped out onto the carpeted floors, signaling for them to keep quiet. The siblings exchanged looks but ultimately followed and minded their step. (The floor creaked a bit sometimes because of Luther, but there wasn't much they can do about that.)
They tiptoed past the living room and moved to the other side of the building. Klaus realized where they could be headed first. The right wing of the fourth floor is off-limits and do not exist. "Are we going to the lab?"
"I'd advise you to keep your voices down."
The new voice caused all of them to jump and Rita had to clamp a hand over Klaus' mouth to stop the scream that almost escaped him. They turned to see Mom. Or at least, it's other-Mom. There isn't really much of a difference that they're aware of other than the fact that their version of Mom is very much dead.
"Hi, Mom." Rita replied softly, recovering fastest. "Where's Pogo?"
"Taken care of." The coldness in her tone was unfamiliar to Diego, and it made him subconsciously take a step back from this unfamiliarity. "He wouldn't be a bother. I've also prepared the supplies. Abhijat will bring them to you."
"Thanks, Mom." Rita grinned and turned back to the direction they were headed. The others followed one by one.
Diego hesitated. "Bye." He mumbled softly, not knowing if she'd hear it or even acknowledge it. To his surprise, she looked at him and smiled the warm, familiar way she used to when he was young.
"Goodbye. Be safe now, dears."
Luther had to gently pull him by the shoulders so he could walk. A moment longer and Diego might have broken down in tears and compromised their mission.
They came to a stop at one of the doors on the fourth floor. It looked completely normal, like the doors of their other training rooms. They think they must have, at some point, passed by it at least once in their old life, but none of them have any memory of entering it. Rita carefully pushed the door open and motioned for them to enter quickly, locking the door when they're all inside.
The room was big. It takes up two floors with a spiral staircase at the side to reach the books lined at the top from wall to wall. There are tables piled with folders and papers, some of them scattered, some of them neat.
"My head hurts." Vanya said as she moved around.
They looked around. "This isn't a lab," Five noted, narrowing his eyes at Rita. It looked more like a very messy library.
She nodded. "It's not. This is the way to it, though." Rita's eyebrows furrowed as she went to approach Five, then took a pack of tissue out and handed it to him. "Here, I knew this would happen."
"Oh, what?" Klaus whined when he realized he has a nosebleed again and tried to tilt his head down the way he did the first time it's happened. The rest of them, save Rita, began to notice that they were bleeding as well.
Five took the pack of tissue, took a piece out, and passed it to the others. "What's happening? How did you know this would happen?"
Rita watched them all wipe their bloody noses and winced apologetically when Vanya mentioned her head hurting. "I didn't do anything, but I did get some sort of confirmation when I brought Klaus out to talk."
"Spit it out." Diego growled, partly because of his headache and the nosebleed, partly because of his own impatience. "What's happening?"
They all stared at her expectantly. She sighed.
"What do you know about how you got your powers?"