Author's Notes: ...whoo, took me three months to finish this chapter. But the school year is complete! My seniors all graduated!

This chapter starts one of the first arcs that I thought up when I initially brainstormed this story. It's a two-chapter arc, and you should have a better idea of how this story will go after you read this. Hopefully, it was worth the wait. After this arc, the very first arc I thought of (my initial bunny that grew into this story, really) starts. I'm excited to get there.

Chapter 5: Fractures

"...a joint venture between Stark Industries and the federal government, the Department of Damage Control will oversee the collection and storage of alien and other exotic materials," the news anchor said.

Schultz grunted. "So now the assholes who made this mess are being paid to clean it up."

"Yeah, it's all rigged," Mason agreed.

Mason tinkered with one of the Chitauri power cells from the battle site, trying to connect it to an Earth-tech motor.

"Experts estimate there are over fifteen hundred tons of exotic material scattered throughout the tri-state area," the news anchor continued in the background.

Mason connected the motor to the power source, and the machine rose up off the table. He watched it rise, his eyes wide.

"Hey, chief," someone called from outside. "We still have another load from yesterday. We're supposed to turn this in, right?"

"I ain't hauling it," Bryce grumbled.

"It's too bad," Mason said as he continued with the Chitauri power source. "We could've made some pretty cool stuff from all that alien junk."

Toomes stared at the truck. "I tell you what - let's keep it," he said. "The world's changing. It's time we changed, too."

The address the little kid gave me ended up being some sort of abandoned warehouse. I was kind of excited - I'd never actually been to an abandoned warehouse before, or even seen one outside of a television show. Why were so many warehouses abandoned? Did we really store less stuff now? Those are burning questions I've never gotten answers to.

Inside, it was set up like something from some sort of futuristic dystopian cyberpunk movie - the irony of which was not lost on me. A bunch of monitors lined a wall, all of which scrolled a bunch of code I couldn't decipher. They had chairs and some couches focused around a large TV mounted on a far wall.

I didn't recognize most of the people present. A couple faces looked vaguely familiar from the underground lab I originally woke up in. One face, unfortunately, I recognized from Stark Tower - the SHIELD Agent who threw me at Loki.

She spotted me, scowled, and stalked over. She stopped uncomfortably close to me, within arm's reach, and glared at me. I didn't try to match her in a staring contest or anything; after dealing with Chris the night before, I had no interest in another stupidly-indignant Traveler. I looked around the room, but only one other person seemed to notice our budding confrontation - the woman who fought the monster Gargoyle with what looked like biotics from the Mass Effect games.

"Anything to say for yourself?" the SHIELD Agent snapped.

I raised my eyebrows and blinked, then brought my hand up to wave it in front of my face. "Whew. Yeah. Breath mints, girl. Come on."

"Oh, a funny boy, huh," she said. "Good one. Stinky breath. You're hilarious."

I decided to play stupid. People who took themselves seriously always hated it when you pretended not to know them or to understand what they were saying. "All right, sorry. That was juvenile." I held out my hand. "I'm Logan. It's nice to meet you."

Her eyes narrowed. "Huh, you're just a fuck-up, aren't you?" she sneered. "It's starting to make sense now. You almost fucked up and let Loki get the cube-"

"Yeah, they should've put you in charge of that," I interrupted. "You could've just sat on it. That way, you could've both sat on your ass and still done more to help than you actually did."

The other woman stepped between us. "Ricochet, Metatron-"

"You named yourself the Voice of God?" I interjected.

"-back up and back off each other," the woman continued.

"Fuck off, Sparrowhawk," Metatron snarled.

The two women glared at each other, like I had been forgotten. They were both tall women, only a couple of inches under six feet. Sparrowhawk was a pale redhead, and actually looked a bit like the later posters of Commander Shepard from Mass Effect 3. Metatron was a little taller, with dark skin and hair, and looked far more physically capable of handling herself in a fight. She had broad shoulders, strong arms, and powerfully built legs.

They stared each other down for a few moments, but I couldn't keep my mouth shut much longer than that. "Yay, Parallels," I drawled. "Our teamwork shall be the end of... whatever it was we're here for."

Sparrowhawk rolled her eyes at me. "The Fracture."

I nodded. "Right. The Fracture. See?" I indicated the two of us with a hand. "Already working together to get this thing solved. Go team."

Sparrowhawk gave me a dry look, but I thought I saw a hint of amusement in her eyes.

"Of course the two of you should gravitate together," Metatron said. She stepped back and crossed her arms. "You're both fuckups, Ricochet with the cube and Sparrowhawk with Gargoyle."

"Yet another time you sat around on your ass and did nothing," I retorted. "Is that your thing? You're useless, but you try to hide it by mocking others?"

Sparrowhawk grinned. "Shh! You're not supposed to say it out loud," she mock scolded me.

"Sorry," I said. "Protocol Five. Just playing my part as a smartass teenager."

Sparrowhawk snickered.

A tall, thin, severe African-American man entered the room. Immediately, everyone's attention shifted to him and the room quieted. He lacked the dangerous aura of a Director Fury, but something about his presence grabbed everyone's attention and extinguished our three-way confrontation. The man raised an arm and waved toward the presentation area. "Please sit," he ordered - and despite his polite words and calm tone, it was clearly an order.

I looked at Sparrowhawk, who gave a barely-perceptible shrug. We followed Metatron over to the presentation area and sat - as far away from her as we could.

The man walked up to the large flat-panel TV and grasped a remote. "Hello. I am Doctor Eric Navarro, Traveler 0132," he introduced himself. "I will get straight to the point: The Fracture has, for the lack of a better term, mutated since Loki was prevented from getting the cube and creating an alternate reality."

The ten of us in seats all around Dr. Navarro shifted. For a shadowy group from the future, they sure seemed entirely unsure of events - from bringing in the Parallels to this, the Travelers didn't have a great grasp on the timeline. Unless the line about the future was just a lie, of course. Black Widow's advice about trust nothing rang through my head.

"How can you know what happens in the future with the Fracture right now?" a tiny woman with short brown hair asked from near the front.

"Archangel," Dr. Navarro nodded in acknowledgement to her. "The Director sends us information back through time and that information is compared to the memories of our Historians who Traveled before changes to the timeline occurred-"

Sparrowhawk interjected, "How can an entity in the future send information back without affecting the timeline? Even if you've adjusted the quantum tunneling for paradox regression to avoid cause/effect feedback loops, the simple act of observation and feedback violates Schrodinger's-"

Dr. Navarro held up a hand. "Ah, Sparrowhawk, I am happy to have a discussion about the technical details at another time, but we have a priority here." Sparrowhawk sighed and settled back into her seat. I could almost feel her pout, and couldn't help but grin. "The Fracture, before, was a shattering of realities and intermixing of the shards. Now, however, we seem to have a smooth merging. While in the long run this holds the same catastrophic power, in the short run it is far less destructive.

"Individuals are taken from their reality and transferred here. We believe the process is so smooth and painless they often do not even realize the Fracture has occurred."

Sparrowhawk raised her hand and interrupted. "Can individuals from this reality be taken to others?" she asked.

Dr. Navarro looked uncomfortable as he admitted, "We currently lack the mechanism to confirm, but I believe it would be foolish to assume otherwise." We all shifted uncomfortably at the thought of being ripped into another reality yet again. Dr. Navarro cleared his throat and continued, "We became aware of the situation when, last night, The Director sent back reports referencing the destruction of practically the entire island of Manhattan in six months time - an event which none of our Historians had any recollection of."

We all sat up straighter.

Navarro pressed a button and a man's face appeared on the screen. He was a handsome man, with dark hair, smooth skin, and a face that spoke of European ancestry. His eyes, however, gave me chills. It was nothing specific I could put my finger on, but something in his eyes frightened me.

"Several hours of research lead us to this man, Gabriel Gray," Navarro explained. "He is no one of note. A watch repairman who lives in Brooklyn, he is quiet, unassuming, simple. Yet he is responsible for the loss of over eight million lives. Somehow."

I studied the picture, but nothing about him looked familiar. I looked around at the others, who all looked as confused and horrified as I did. To my surprise, though, no one looked like they recognized him.

"If he's a Fracture from another reality, how come we don't know who he is?" I asked.

Navarro looked startled and responded defensively, "Well, we just discovered this a few hours ago and-"

"No, not you," I interrupted. I waved my hand around at the other Parallels. "Us."

Navarro blinked, and most of the other Parallels looked confused. Sparrowhawk, though, spun around in her seat excitedly, her eyes wide.

"We were brought here because our reality fictionalized the events of your history," I explained. "Shouldn't that hold true across all the Fractures? This guy is a big enough deal he destroyed an entire city, shouldn't we have a movie about him, too?"

"Umm-," Navarro blinked.

"Infinite realities, infinite possibilities," Sparrowhawk interrupted. She spoke in a fast, clipped, excited voice. "But although the concept of distance as you perceive it isn't truly applicable, the number of events changed between realities does create a coefficient of difficulty for travel and interaction between the realities. Or perhaps it's more exponential than a simple coefficient-"

I blinked and cut off her musing before it devolved into full-on analysis paralysis. "So the more differences, the longer until the Fracture hits them and the less likely we are to see them?"

"Exactly!" she beamed, then frowned. "Well, no. It's not a measure of exact differences - you can't simply tally up different choices made by alternate reality analogues of the same people, that's not really how this works, you're probably far less likely to successfully travel to or interact with something that similar due to the slight difference in resonance-"

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Metatron groaned.

I glared at Metatron, but she had a fair point. Sparrowhawk could probably theorize all day long if we let her. "Our home reality fictionalized the Avengers of this reality," I summarized, "but it's highly unlikely we'll encounter more realities that were fictionalized for us. There almost certainly exists a reality where all of this is fiction, but the likelihood of us interacting with that before it's too late is so small as to be almost zero."

Sparrowhawk nodded. "Right! Exactly. Mostly. I mean, close enough." She held up her hands as if to indicate I shouldn't be insulted, but I was still more wrong than she was comfortable saying. "That reality would likely be in a sort of inverted zone - not inverted in the sense of upside-down, although there probably are upside-down realities, but in the mathematical sense of inverse functional relations - except it's operating on an n-th degree dimension - I mean, people could be watching right now!" She paused, then turned to look at a blank wall off to my left and made a face. Everyone else looked at the wall, but I kept my eyes on Sparrowhawk. After a moment, it hit me: she was looking at an imaginary TV camera and making a Jim Halpert face. Just in case someone was watching.

I couldn't help but laugh.

Sparrowhawk turned to me and looked a little hurt. I shook my head, to try to let her know I was laughing with her, not at her, but she turned back to face Dr. Navarro and ignored me. My laughter faded quickly.

After a moment of silence, Metatron cleared her throat. "Okay. So. That was a thing. Doc, do we have a mission?"

Dr. Navarro looked a little uncomfortable at being called 'Doc,' but he answered, "Our engineers have designed a method to return Fractures to their own reality. We believe this will have the beneficial side-effect of slowing down The Fracture's effects on the multiverse and potentially allow to heal." He paused, and I could feel the catch about to drop. "But you'll have to capture Mr. Gray alive."

One of the others snorted. "Right. The guy only blows up fucking Manhattan. How hard could it be?"

Dr. Navarro looked very disapproving of the comment, but effectively ignored it as he continued. "Since Parallel Teams Alpha and Bravo are down a Warrior, we're putting Parallel Team Charlie on this. Specter, you'll run point, but don't engage without the rest of your team."

Shit, I wondered if I was on that team? I had a pretty good feeling I was a Warrior, so that made the chances fifty-fifty.

A tall, powerfully-built, dark-skinned woman nodded and gave a thumbs up. "We got this, Doc."

Dr. Navarro nodded. "Parallel Team Delta, touch base and be ready to back them up. The rest of you are dismissed. Protocol five until further notice."

The meeting broke up. Sparrowhawk looked like she wanted to come talk to me, but two others beat her over. An extremely petite Vietnamese woman and a Latino man a few inches shorter than me walked over and shook my hand.

"Ricochet, I'm Sylvaneri, Team Delta Leader," the woman said. Her grip was firm and sure. "I'm a speedster. Recon, traps, tactics, that's me."

"Killshot," the man introduced himself. "Sniper, never miss."

I grinned, excited. "Killshot? Lucha Underground, right? A unique opportunity!"

He blinked. "... What?"

"You didn't pick your name after the wrestler?"

"Nah, man. I'm a sniper, like Bullseye. I never miss."

I deflated. I tried really hard not to sound disappointed when I said, "Oh. Cool. Nice to meet you two." By their expressions, I failed. Miserably.

I landed flat on my back and my breath exploded from my lungs. I rolled over and coughed until I could breathe again, then flopped onto my back again and stared at the ceiling.

Natasha stepped into my view and looked down at me. When we first began to train, I couldn't help but admire her in her gym attire. Now - after being punched, kicked, and thrown around the floor of yet another abandoned warehouse - I no longer saw a beautiful woman. There was only a harbinger of my pain.

"You're still overextending your strikes," she lectured. "You have a significant reach advantage against me, there's no need to lunge. Keep your chest above your feet, small steps, stay balanced." She'd drilled me on this for half an hour, but every time we traded initial strikes I lost control and rushed forward. "You're allowing me to set the pace, then when you rush I can slip inside and use your momentum against you."

To flip me onto my head, back, or face. "Ugh," I said. I reached out a hand and she pulled me to my feet. "Let's take five," I suggested.

"Okay." She lead the way over to her gym bag and tossed me a water bottle she pulled out of it. "What's on your mind?"

I raised an eyebrow. "That obvious?"

She grinned. "Subtle, you aren't. Besides, I figure if you resolved your existential dilemma from last week, you would've told me."

I chuckled. "Yeah. I would've. And I've never needed to be subtle before." I ran a hand through my hair, a nervous gesture I'd picked up over the past few days.

I told her about the Fracture, the way Travelers came from the future, and all the rest I'd learned.

Natasha swore. "You need to lead with this stuff next time. These people can just overwrite anyone they want to? That's a major problem."

I shrugged. "I have no idea if they can just do anyone or what. I've only seen it happen once. I imagine that's what happened to the Parkers, though. They got overwritten by two Travelers… and me." That last part hurt to admit.

She paused and tilted her head. "So you've decided you really are an old guy stuck in a teenager's body?"

"Middle-aged," I corrected with an eye-roll, "not old." I shrugged and continued, "And the other day, I was in a room full of people who were all in different bodies than they started out in. I saw someone enter a body. There was no way that kid was acting, I'm familiar with lying teenagers."

"Or so you believe."

"Yeah, well - Occam's Razor, right?"

Natasha's voice did that flat, disbelieving monotone she did so well. "You think this is the simplest explanation?"

"It's actually, that which requires the least number of assumptions is usually correct." I bounced my head around. "Roughly paraphrased."

"That's the least number of assumptions?" Her voice was dryer than a desert.

I popped my claws out. "Weird shirt is kind of a given, not an assumption." My brow furrowed. Why was I able to curse before, but not any more again?

"Fair enough," she said. She waved me back out to our concrete practice area. "Come on. I'll follow up on this ASAP. In the meantime, let's see if you can talk and dance. Maybe a distraction will help you."

I groaned. "I doubt it, but at least I probably won't die."

She smiled a smile that never reached her eyes. "That's the spirit!"

I hit the ground ten seconds later.

"So what have you been doing since that meeting?" she asked as we squared off again.

"Exploring New York a lot," I said. I threw a punch and kick combo; she danced back out of range, but I stayed put and didn't follow. "We came here as a family in '18, when my girls were fourteen and eleven, but that was right after Thanksgiving, not summer. Plus it's a lot different without kids." As an afterthought, I added, "And right after an alien attack."

She snickered, then darted in with an attack without warning. I absorbed two or three rapid hits to my torso, too fast for me to count, and swung a wild left hook counter she easily ducked under. I kept my momentum, spun, and threw a right back kick, which she mostly dodged but caught her a glancing blow on her right hip - the first time I'd touched her that morning. I flicked out a left jab at the end to catch any counter-attack on her part, but she retreated.

"Nice!" she cheered as she skipped back out of range. "Good job closing the door as we disengaged."

"Thanks," I said, wary of another sudden attack.

Natasha circled more and asked, "Do you have to go back to high school?"

"No, there was only another week or two, so they cancelled finals and we'll go back in the fall."

"Fair enough." She darted in, landed a few punches on my raised guard, and darted back as I countered. I charged forward, throwing a few wild punches for theater but fully ready to throw on the brakes as soon as she moved to counter. "Have you met anyone your age yet?" she asked as she slipped to my left. She grabbed my outstretched right arm to throw me over her shoulder and I planted my feet and pushed back immediately - only to encounter no resistance. I stumbled backwards and she snaked a foot behind my ankle. I fell onto my butt and she smashed a knee into my sternum hard enough to blast the air from my lungs and drive me flat onto my back.

"Well? Anyone your age?" she repeated as I gasped for breath.

"No, just you, and you're older and younger than me," I wheezed.

"Older and younger?"

"Yeah, what are you, mid-to-late twenties?" I asked. "I'm old enough to be your dad. Except I'm stuck in a teenager's body."

She smirked. "All right, middle-aged man." She pulled me to my feet. "That was a good idea for a counter, but you don't know enough grappling to be truly effective. Still, a good thought. I think the instincts for fighting are going to be more difficult for you than the intellectual aspects."

I sighed. "You're just going to pound me until the instincts start to form, aren't you," I said. It wasn't a question.

"You won't die."

I groaned. "Ugh. Don't give me that. It's a meme from a movie in a few years. I think. Maybe."

I couldn't sleep anymore. Not for more than four hours at a time, at any rate. Other than the day after the Chitauri invasion, I woke up full of energy in the early morning hours and couldn't get back to sleep. I also learned I had heightened senses - my sense of smell was stronger, and my hearing was significantly better than my old life. I could hear conversations not just in other rooms, but sometimes in other apartments.

Chris and Elle had an apartment in Brooklyn, a three-bedroom that we all lived in together. They shared the master bedroom on one side of the apartment, I had another bedroom, and the third bedroom was an office with all kinds of computer equipment I knew nothing about. I had no idea if the two of them were really a couple or if it was just part of their Protocol Five cover, but more nights than not they turned my enhanced hearing into a major burden. (I tried not to think about the effects on my sense of smell.)

I started sneaking out of the apartment the second night there. I probably could've just walked out the front door - Chris and Elle didn't seem to care where or when I left, so long as I kept my cell phone on me and answered them when they called.

I changed my sleeping hours so that I went to sleep around three or four in the morning and woke up around eight; all I needed was four hours of sleep, and if I tried for much more I would just toss and turn while awake. My nightly sojourns began as simply exploring Brooklyn and greater New York City, but I quickly fell into the trope of the vigilante crime fighter. After the destruction of the battle against the Chuitari, crime in the city rose dramatically. I helped out how and where I could.

I didn't mention that bit to Natasha. I should have; she probably knew anyway.

The explosion happened a little after 2am.

Not the explosion the Travelers talked about, Gabriel Gray blowing up Manhattan. This one occurred on the fourth floor of an older building in Brooklyn. I had just swung over the East River by way of the Williamsburg Bridge, headed east-southeast toward Highland Park, when I heard the explosion. After a second, I saw a growing light and clouds of smoke rose up above the skyline.

The fire was only a minute ahead of me, almost right in line of my path.

I swung there as fast as possible. Four windows in a row were blown out, and smoke poured from each from inside. I could see the fire started in the apartment with the blown out windows, but had spread upward to the next two floors. Residents from the building had already begun to evacuate across the street.

I swung in through the blown-out windows to look for any survivors. I figured I'd start at the epicenter and move outward, probably up first since that's the direction the smoke would spread. Didn't most people in a fire actually die of smoke inhalation? Well, if not, I guess fire probably burned upwards, too. Right?

I started to worry I was out of my depth here.

I wasn't worried about myself - after being shot by alien lasers, I knew the fire wouldn't do any damage I couldn't heal. My special hoodie from Natasha was fireproof, too, so even if I passed out from smoke inhalation I wouldn't have my identity revealed.

I swung in - even out of my comfort zone, I couldn't sit and do nothing.

The smell of smoke inside was overwhelming. I never noticed before how much I depended on my sense of smell in this body - I didn't feel blind without it, not even close, but the lack put me on edge.
The apartment inside looked more like something exploded than a simple fire. All the furniture lay all over the room; even the big, heavy couch was upside-down with the springs and frame of a hide-a-bed visible to me. A boxy TV was embedded into a wall to my right, glass shattered all over the floor below it. Just beside it was the body of a massive man, the top of his head cut open and peeled back to his brain. The blast charred his face, clothes, and skin, leaving him unrecognizable.

The epicenter of the damage looked to be to my left. The skeletal remains of a person were pinned up on the wall by two kitchen knives through the wrists, leaving the person - I couldn't tell if it was a man or woman - up in a crucifix position. All the drywall behind them was gone, leaving only metal stud wall I could look through into a bedroom.

I gagged for a moment, barely able to keep my stomach under control. I was really, really glad for the smoke overwhelming my sense of smell.

"Oh God, is- Is someone here?" a weak voice called out from the kitchen.

"Hello?!" I yelled back, amazed that someone might have survived this. "Where are you?"

"Under the couch."

I ran over and yanked the couch away - way easier than I expected, I still didn't have a great handle on my strength - and revealed a dirty, singed man. He looked pale underneath all the filth, with messy dark hair sticking out all over the place. He groaned as the couch flipped over and crashed onto the floor behind me. I winced. "Sorry about that."

He shook his head. "Not important," he said. I reached down and helped him up. He coughed, then croaked, "Friends here- they-"

"I'm sorry, they're gone," I said. I pulled his head down into my shoulder some. He was fairly tall, about my height, but built thin. "Come on. We need to get you out of here."

The man started toward the exit door, but I steered him over to the window. He coughed the whole way, and put up little fight as I guided him. By the time we got to the open window, he hung against me weakly, the smoke clearly a drain to his strength. "What- how-" he rasped.

"Just hold on tight," I told him. I pulled him close with my left arm, shot a webline with my right, and leaped from the window.

The man let out a startled cry as we swung down across the street. We landed near a small crowd gathered to look at the fire. Over the sounds of the blaze, I heard the wail of approaching sirens; fire and other emergency services were on the way.

"Wow, that was- You're extraordinary," the man gasped when we alighted on the sidewalk across from the building. His eyes look at me wide and bright, with something akin to awe in them.

The praise made me uncomfortable. I stepped away and shrugged. "I'm doing the best I can," I said. "Are you okay?"

The man nodded. "They came in, attacked my friends- Something exploded." He coughed and doubled over, but his eyes shone on me the whole time. "I got tossed back behind the couch, it saved me."

I nodded. "You'll be all right."

I turned back to the building, but the man grabbed my shoulder. He said, "Wait-"

I shrugged him off. "I'm sorry, there could be people trapped in there," I said. "I can hear EMS on the way. They'll be here soon."

I shot a webline up to the building and followed it up. As I swung away, I heard him murmur, "Oh, it's mechanical, not-" The rest was lost in the fire.

I entered the building through the blown-out apartment windows again, then ran through the front door into the hallway. The smoke and fire wasn't as bad outside of the first apartment, where it seemed to have originated. A bomb, perhaps, brought by whoever attacked that man and his friends? I didn't have any forensic training, so I had no idea what to look for. It wasn't important; I was here to look for survivors or anyone who needed help, not to investigate.

After I checked through the apartment and found no other people, alive or dead, I kicked open the door out to the hall. My phone buzzed in my pocket - I kept it on vibrate pretty much all the time, even back in my original life - but I ignored it.

I turned right, walked down the hall, and banged on the next apartment door I came to. "Anyone in there?" I called out. I thought I heard something inside, but I couldn't be sure with the noise from the fire and alarms around me. "If you're in there, step back from the door!" I yelled at the top of my voice. The door opened outward, so I just popped a claw out and ran it down the tiny gap between the door and the jamb. I felt two brief flashes of resistance as I cut through the latch and the deadbolt, and then the door swung slightly open.

I pulled the door all the way open and found people huddled only a few feet inside. Smoke filled the top foot or two down from the ceiling. A middle-aged woman, overweight and in just a bathrobe, crouched around two small girls in night dresses. The girls turned wide, scared eyes at me for a moment - big brown eyes, like my daughters' eyes - before the woman pushed them behind her. "Don't touch them!" she yelled at me, then coughed violently.

"I'm Ricochet, I'm an Avenger!" I countered. This was...very much a stretch of the truth, but considering I was trying to save kids from a fire, I believed the team would forgive.

The woman's eyes bugged out in shock, and one of the kids chirped, "Avengers, yay!"

The woman shushed the kid, then turned back to me. "They was fighting across the hall, loud and hard enough to feel it here, it woke us up."

I nodded. I could see the sequence of events from there. "So you hid. Then the fire started, but you don't want to go in case it isn't safe."

"Yes!"

"Fight's over, I promise." I held out a hand. "Come with me."

The woman pulled the two children up beside her. "Listen, now, we're gonna go with Mister Ricochet here," she lectured the kids between coughs. I looked at the ceiling; the smoke was down another foot, and I had to duck to keep my head from entering the mass. "You listen to what he says and do what he tells you to."

I looked back down the hallway, but the fire had spread from the apartment into the hall and blocked the route to the stairwell. I swore under my breath- hopefully, the kids didn't hear- and stepped into the apartment. "Sorry, I don't think that way is going to work," I said. I gently pushed past the woman and her kids deeper into the apartment, picked up a chair, and warned, "Look away, I don't think any of this can hit you but better safe than sorry."

Then I smashed out the window with the chair.

I shot out a webline to the building across the street. "I'll take the kids out, first, then come back for you!" I told the woman. She bustled over to me and I took both kids up into my arms. "All right, you two ready for a ride?"

The smaller girl wrapped her arms around my neck and buried her face against me; she shook her head no, but held on as tight as her little arms could. The bigger girl looked at me with big, round eyes and whispered, "Don't drop us?"

"Hey, don't worry, I'm not going to let go of you for anything, kiddo," I assured her. I made eye contact with the mother and gave her the most reassuring nod I could, then leaped out of the window. The two girls shrieked, first in fright and then, gradually, in glee.

Web-swinging was fun, after all.

We landed on the ground across the street, near where I dropped off the first man. I saw him in the back of the crowd, looking alertly at me as I touched down with the girls.

The older girl turned to me. "Traveler 0256, answer your phone," she said, her voice flat and devoid of inflection. My gaze snapped over to her.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

I let the girls down and looked back up at the apartment. The mother stood in the window, and smoke poured out around her. I had no idea how much time she had left, or how far out the fire department might be. I turned to the kid and said, "I'm going to get your mom. I'll answer my phone after," then shot a web line. "Stay here, don't move, I'll be right back."

After I dropped the mother off, I swung up to the roof across from the burning building and pulled out my cell phone. I had six missed calls, all from the same number.

I called it back. Elle answered before the first ring completed. "Why didn't you answer earlier?"

I blinked. "I'm at a burning building, I-"

"We know where you are," she interrupted again. "The Director sent you a message. You didn't follow it."

"Yeah, I did," I argued. "I'm talking to you right now."

"You didn't answer."

"It said answer the phone, but it meant we need to talk," I pointed out. "Otherwise, I could've just answered and hung up right away. Besides, I needed to save that woman, first."

Elle sighed. "Protocol Three, Logan," she said softly, the steel in her voice from a moment ago gone. "You don't take a life, you don't save a life."

"I'm not sure where you got the idea I'll follow the second part of that," I said, "but allow me to disabuse you of that notion right here, right now."

She sighed again. "We'll discuss it later. Earlier, Parallel Team Charlie approached Gabriel Gray at that same apartment building in Brooklyn that-"

My stomach dropped and I felt a chill go down my back. The first man I saved. I realized why he looked familiar to me: that was Gabriel Gray, the man who somehow blows up Manhattan in six months. And I just maybe saved his life. Now, it was on me.

"-you're currently..." Elle trailed off and paused for a moment. "Logan? What is it?"

"I saw him," I breathed. "I saved him."

Elle sucked in a startled breath. "Locate him, but do not engage! Just keep eyes on him until support can arrive-"

"What? No! He started this fire, didn't he? He put people in danger! Kids in danger!" I stalked over to the edge of the roof and looked at the crowd; Gray was nowhere to be seen, but I doubted he'd gone far. I ran to the far side of the roof and looked down into an alley - sure enough, there he was, two blocks away and headed father from the crowd, trying to get away.

Not on my watch.

"Got eyes on him," I said. "You can get backup here if you want. I'm gonna get his ass."

"No! He's too dangerous to take on alone!"

I huffed in irritation. "What's he gonna do, kill me?" I hung up the phone, and five seconds later it buzzed again as Elle tried to call back. I put it on silent and stuck it in my pocket.

Gray turned to his right down another alley, out of my line of sight. I took a deep breath and steeled myself for the confrontation, then leaped across the street to give chase.

Gray looked around the cluttered alley. Two big brick buildings rose up on either side, with a massive dumpster and the remains of some old scaffolding rusting along the wall to his left. The fire escapes came down to about twelve feet from the ground and cast shadows about the alley. When he saw no one around, he let out a deep breath and slowed to a more comfortable wall.

Naturally, that was when I dropped down in front of him.

I landed casually on both feet. It looked like I just walked down one step rather than a fifty-foot drop, which I thought looked way more impressive. "Hi there!" I chirped, my voice full of false cheer.

Gray took a quick step back, startled by my appearance, but relaxed a little once I didn't attack. "Uh, hi?" he said uncertainly.

"You're Gabriel Gray," I said. His mouth opened and he looked off-balance and uncertain, but he said nothing. After a few seconds, I continued. "I'm gonna need you to come with me."

He still looked confused as he said, "What, that's not- I don't know who you're talking about, but-"

I shot web from each hand and webbed his feet solidly to the ground. He tried to move his feet, then bent over and yanked at the webbing with his hands. "Look, this is only gonna go one way in the end," I told him. "How about we just get you there with the least amount of pain possible, huh?"

Gray froze, both his hands wrapped around his right ankle and his head down. "No," he said, and a chill went down my spine. Gone was the affable, plain voice he spoke with up until then-now, Gray's voice was a razor's edge full of menace. He looked up, and the malice in his eyes rocked me back onto my heels. This man, I could believe, killed thousands, even millions. "No, I think we'll go with painful."

I leaped back and up to create space between us, but before I could bring my web shooters to bear, Gray waved a hand at me and something slammed into my chest. I was driven down and to my left, and slammed back-first into the brick wall. My head snapped back, struck the wall, and I saw stars for a moment-

Until, at another gesture from Gray, a large metal pipe from the pile of scaffolding flew across the alley and impaled me through the gut.

I screamed. The pain was excruciating, almost as bad as the spire that impaled me during the battle against the Chitauri. The metal was a cross-brace, about two inches thick and six feet long, cylindrical in shape but with a flattened piece on each end with a hole where it connected to the main scaffolding structure. Only about two feet stuck out from my stomach; however Gray threw it at me, he did so with enough force to drive it through me and then nearly four feet into the brick wall.

After a moment, my head cleared. I grabbed the end of the metal with my left hand and sliced through it as close to my body as I could with my right hand. Gray was already farther down the alley, past me, but at the sound of the cut he stopped and turned back around to face me. I stepped forward and pulled myself off the metal with a gasp and a grimace.

"Impressive," Gray said. "I would not have pegged you to have the will necessary to hold on through that."

He was about thirty feet away from me. I snarled at him and flung the metal. It froze in the air just before it would've hit him, then returned back to me. I barely got my claws up to deflect it before it impaled me again.

"I can do this all night," I growled.

Gray smiled. "Are you- You healed, didn't you?" he said. He gestured with a finger, and the hole in my shirt spread wider to show my stomach. "Not even a blemish," he remarked, softly, to himself. "Extraordinary."

"Give it up, Gray," I said.

I moved forward, but before I could take a second step, he gestured and I froze in place again. He moved me back to the wall, then several more pieces of the scaffolding rose up and flew toward me. I closed my eyes and braced myself for the pain of the impact, but they didn't hit me - instead, he bent the metal and drove them into the brick around my wrists, ankles, thighs, and upper arms. I tried to move, but he had me trapped.

I struggled to escape, but even with my great strength I had no leverage. The metal and brick were too strong. I was helpless.

It was utterly terrifying.

I'd thought of myself as invincible since I couldn't be killed - but what I realized then, pinned to the wall and helpless, is that death is hardly the the most frightening thing that could happen. I had no idea what Gray's plan was at that point, but there was nothing I could do to stop him. I'd walked right up to him, given up all advantage of surprise and tactics, and all of this was my fault. I was at his mercy, and it was because I was stupid and arrogant.

Gray walked over and stood in front of me. He tilted his head and looked at me with this look, almost inhuman curiosity, like he didn't understand what he was looking at. My pain, my fear, it was all irrelevant to him.

"Come on, Gray, don't-"

"My name," he hissed, "is Sylar." He raised up a finger to point to my forehead, and I felt a sharp, searing pain. "And I'm going to find out what makes you tick."