It took a while to calm Lyra down. She wouldn't tell Kadaj what was wrong or why he had felt like a caged animal all day from her end of the bond, just kept babbling, "they shot at me, I scared them, why do I scare them, they shot at me."

Yeah. Not very helpful stuff.

Yazoo became bored after a few minutes of Lyra doing nothing but crying. Her hot tears soaked Kadaj's T-Shirt and her breath made his skin warm. Eventually, Kadaj got her to calm down. Loz had picked himself off the floor at this point and was silently watching from beside the fridge.

Kadaj got Lyra to sit on the futon instead of the floor. She hiccupped and mumbled something. He leaned closer. "What?"

"I said thank you."

She drew her knees to her chest and hiccupped. He knit his brows and stepped away.

"Where'd she come from?" Yazoo asked as he neared the counters. Kadaj shrugged.

"WRO probably." He looked back at Lyra. She was hugging her badly burned bag now. Great. "We can't stay here. We should leave in the morning."

"Where are we going?" Loz asked. Yazoo talked over him.

"We need supplies. And a way to get to…. wherever we're going."

Kadaj nodded solemnly. "Loz and I will go get the things we need. Can you stay and watch her?"

Yazoo grimaced. "Why can't you stay?"

"Her mood is affecting me way too much."

Yazoo seemed to understand. He and Loz knew of the bond. Unfortunately, the bond seemed to be working against Kadaj at the moment. He was feeling panicked and trapped and the hurt from Lyra was filling his own eyes with tears.

"Alright. Fine," Yazoo said. "But she needs to get rid of her phone. They could track us through it if they wanted."

Lyra stood and fished her phone from her bag. She timidly approached the boys at the counter. "Do you have a piece of paper? I need to write down a number."

"Why?"

Lyra shook her head as she balked away from Yazoo's accusatory tone and rolled her phone in her hands.

Kadaj got her a napkin from a fast food bag and a pen. Lyra scrolled through her phone contacts and wrote down the number she was looking for. She hesitated at first, but she gave her phone to Kadaj who gave it to Yazoo. Yazoo took the battery out and threw the phone on the ground. He stomped on it twice and handed the broken pieces to Kadaj.

"What the hell am I supposed to do with these?"

Yazoo shrugged. "Just throw it away."

"Not here obviously," Lyra mumbled. She folded and refolded the paper and shuffled her feet. She blinked slowly as she stared at the counter. She looked exhausted. Kadaj felt a pang of worry that made his chest hurt. He took her elbow and directed her towards the futon.

"Go take a nap or something, Ly. We'll leave tomorrow morning."

Lyra hugged her knees as she sat on the futon. The small room was silent except for the sounds of the neighbors around them and Yazoo turning pages in his book. Kadaj and Loz hadn't been gone for long, but she was beginning to wish that they never left.

"Do you have anything else to do?" Yazoo asked. He wasn't speaking Common. Lyra blinked at him.

"What language is that?"

Yazoo stared at her over his book. "Cetra-Speak."

"Oh." Lyra went silent again. "When I woke up in the cave I was speaking it."

Yazoo ignored her. Lyra pulled her bag to her and shuffled through it. She took the prototype weapon from her pocket and placed it inside, though she was sure it would likely fall through one of the large holes she had accidentally made. The notion gave her a bit of anxiety, but it fell behind the waves of exhaustion. Apparently, wielding ice and fire at the same time to defend herself for even ten minutes was draining.

"So, you can remember a foreign language but nothing else?" Yazoo was still speaking Cetra-Speak. Lyra rolled her eyes.

"How do you know Cetra-Speak?" This time she answered in the language.

"The labs."

Lyra tilted her head and continued to speak in Cetra-Speak, relishing the familiar feeling of the language on her tongue. "Did we all grow up in the same lab, or did you learn how to speak this in the Lifestream?"

"First option. What's it like being a Cetra?"

"I don't know. I don't remember," Lyra answered. "I had a full-blown conversation with a dead woman once."

Yazoo snorted and turned the page in his book. "Part of being a Cetra."

The apartment was silent again.

"We didn't know each other well, I take it?"

Yazoo didn't answer, just shot her an annoyed look. Lyra raised her hands and pulled her knees to her chest again. She sighed and tried to blink the call of sleep out of her eyes. One moment she sat hugging her knees and the next she was curling up in a tight ball on the futon.

Lyra glanced at an old clock hanging on the wall and blinked. It seemed to flash forward ten minutes. The next blink, fifteen minutes. Lyra decided to just close her eyes and fall asleep completely. If she were feeling more awake, she would be crossing her fingers and hoping for sweet dreams.

"Where'd you think she went?" Cloud kept a mental tally in his head for how many times he had heard that question. So far, he was at fifteen. Actually, he was at sixteen. Shelke had asked it a few minutes ago.

"I don't know."

Barret grumbled. "I knew she was untrustworthy. Cetra or not, that kid was up to no good."

Tifa sighed. "Barret, she-"

"Was probably planning this for a while," Barret finished. Shalua rolled her eyes and continued to go over the camera feeds for the seven-hundredth time. Shelke entered the lab and went straight to her VR machine, typing in commands and readying the headset.

"What are you doing?" Cloud asked. She looked over her shoulder.

"I want to decode some of the Project Starchild files." She went back to work.

Cloud pulled out a chair and sat in it. The WRO was calming down a bit, or at least as much as it could. It had a disaster event nearly every other day, it seemed. No one knew who pulled the fire alarm and Reeve was busy with the security generals forming an investigation. And as for the janitors and repairmen, well, they were cleaning up the mess the soldiers had made shooting at Lyra.

Cloud pinched the bridge of his nose. What a mess.

After Lyra had disappeared, Cloud had found out that the soldiers hadn't been shooting blanks or tranqs. They had been shooting actual lethal bullets. Their excuse was that Lyra's abilities were too unstable and that they were aiming for her feet and nowhere else. Bullshit excuse. He couldn't get the image of the kid full of bloody bullet holes out of his head.

"You okay?" Tifa pulled a chair next to him. Cloud listened to Barret rant about Lyra's escape.

"I guess." He grimaced at how flat and unbelievable that had sounded.

"Barret, we get it. That's enough." Yuffie knit her brows and continued to organize her Materia in her handy organized box.

Barret was on a roll. "She took a bag that we gave her, full of stuff that we gave her, and ran off!" He paced from one end of the lab to the other again. "I'm telling you, she had this planned!"

"For crying out…" Yuffie threw a blue Materia into the box and stood. "None of this would have happened if we had simply filled her in or had given her a reason not to worry! She didn't feel like we were doing enough."

Barret turned to face her. His eye began to twitch. He was about to explode.

"Yuffie, did you know about this?" Tifa asked. Yuffie nodded.

"Yeah. Oh, and I pulled the fire alarm. You're welcome!" Yuffie plopped back down on the floor and continued sorting. The lab was silent; everyone stared at Yuffie.

Shalua was the first to break the silence. "Why in the world would you do that?!"

Yuffie didn't look up. "Yes, why in the world would I help the confused as hell kid who probably has been through hell and back but can't remember it because the asshats that put her through hell and back took her memories away?" She looked up with a sarcastic smirk. "Just saying that maybe we should have thought about this from her perspective, given her a choice for once instead of pushing her around all the time like a doll."

Barret grumbled and then pushed a chair out of his way to the door. "I'll go tell Reeve. There's no need for an investigation now."

The phone connected to Shalua's wall of computers suddenly rang, making Cloud jump. Barret stopped before the door and turned to see who the video call was from. The doors opened and Reeve entered.

"Answer it! Our techs directed it here! Quick," he exclaimed. Shalua hurried to answer the call as they gathered before the screens. The screens joined to show a man. He sat in a metal chair, shrouded in shadows. Cloud couldn't make out anything else but the metal chair and a small console placed on a small metal table next to him. His eyes were…. glowing. They were glowing yellow. Not very bright glowing, just dimly. Cloud had hardly noticed it in fact, but if he looked at the edges of the screens, he could tell the man's eyes were glowing. He spoke, and his voice rang throughout the shocked-silent room, thanks to the volume being turned up.

"Finally, I meet the famous AVALANCHE." He chuckled. "I have a small request for you. I think you'll find it very easy."

"Dr. Jael Azazel," Reeve said in his calm steady voice. "We have no reason to do anything for you."

Cloud rose a brow, glancing over his shoulder at Reeve. He met Tifa's eyes instead. She shook her head in confusion. He turned back to the screens.

"Oh, but you will," Dr. Azazel insisted, his chucking growing louder. His glowing yellow eyes crinkled with amusement. He shifted in his chair, and Cloud glimpsed fluffy and fine peppered brown hair. "My prized subject, 6676? You know her as Lyra. I want her back."

"You can take that request and shove it right up your-"

Jael interrupted Yuffie's outburst. "My, what a firecracker!"

"Get your point across. We don't have the time nor the patience for you or your requests." Vincent countered. Cloud hadn't heard Vincent enter the lab, but he didn't let his surprise show. Yuffie snapped her head towards him and scowled. Vincent ignored her for once. He placed a hand on her arm and gestured to the screens. Jael chortled as he reached for the table beside him. He plucked a strange red Materia hidden by the console. Even through the video Cloud could see the grainy black lines crackling underneath its surface. He rolled it from palm to palm then spun it between his fingers.

"Oh, this Materia?" He asked. "Glad you asked."

No one had asked, but they kept their smartass comments to themselves.

"Interesting, isn't it? Shame you found Subject 6676 instead of this," Jael continued. He drew in a sharp breath and pressed a button on his console as he stood. The frame changed before Cloud could glimpse Dr. Azazel's face. The frame was dark but suddenly filled with dim light.

The first thing Cloud saw was the young girl. She looked to be around fourteen, maybe fifteen. She was covered in scratches and bruises, an obvious bite mark on her shoulder that was barely scabbed over. She was dressed in a dirty white gown, like the one Lyra had been found in. Her light brown hair was greasy and tangled as it fell in her face. She whimpered as the shapeshifter, the Vigo crept closer to her. He yanked on the chains shackling her to the floor and she yelped.

Cloud recognized the lab apparatus around her, but he couldn't tell where the lab could be located. Where on the Planet was she?

"Beautiful sight isn't it?" Jael called from behind the camera. "Completely human, though I tried to change that."

The Vigo yanked the girl's head back by her hair and Cloud could finally see her glowing mako blue eyes. He looked around. His friends were just as shocked as he was. Even Shelke had a look of utter terror on her face.

The girl's eyes widened as a red glow filled the room. The Vigo backed away as silent as a fox and she slumped back. She opened her mouth but only a whimper came.

"Watch closely. This Materia has an… interesting effect."

A red light filled the screen and the most inhuman shriek came from the girl. Cloud took a step away from the computer screens, nearly stepping on Tifa's toes as he did so. She had her hands over her ears and her amber eyes squeezed shut. Cloud turned back to the screens to see a pile of black ash and pieces of charred bone disintegrating in the spot the poor girl had been. Bits of blood and flesh spotted the chains. Cloud's stomach churned. He spotted a piece of scalp, hair and all, in the corner of the screen.

Shalua's lab was silent again, silent and cold. The computer frame snapped back to Jael sitting in his chair. The Materia was slightly glowing now, but it died down to it's plain pale red after a moment. Jael seemed to study their faces, a thought that made Cloud's skin crawl. Finally, Jael spoke and his voice was chilling and frighteningly calm.

"For every day I do not have my favorite subject 6676, I will kill one person. For every day I do not have my favorite subject, I will send out a video, similar to this call to every screen and radio and broadcasting center I can access throughout this damned Planet." He let this sink in. "You have a week before I take worse action."

The call ended. Shalua flipped the monitors' power switch with a shaky hand and fell into her chair. She leaned her head on her good arm.

"I think I'm going to be sick," she said. Cloud turned away.

"We need to find Lyra," he said. Yuffie, who had turned ghostly pale during the call, turned red with anger.

"We are not handing her over!"

Vincent's hand tightened on Yuffie's shoulder and she shook him off.

Cloud shook his head and raised a hand. "I never said we were doing that."

"She's- He just…" Tifa sat heavily in a chair. "We should warn her."

Reeve scoffed. "Well, she won't come back willingly."

Vincent grunted. "Good luck," he said. "Remember when I voted that we shouldn't tell Lyra about her past?"

"Yes," Tifa answered.

"Well, I take it back. We should have told her."

Yuffie rolled her eyes. "Too late for that now." She grabbed her phone from the table it had been sitting on. She flipped it open. "I can try to call her or something. Tell her to stay away, hide somewhere. I mean, Kadaj wouldn't let something this bad happen to her, right?"

Tifa scoffed. "Kadaj? What does Kadaj have to do with any of this?"

Yuffie fell silent as they stared at her. Her eyes darted from person to person. She stuttered. "It's just- It's just he gave her the Materia and Lyra said-"

"Where'd he get the Teleport from?" Cloud asked. Yuffie gave him a small anxious smile.

"Lyra didn't say, but she said that it was linked to another Teleport he had and that she was supposed to use it if she felt like she was in any danger," Yuffie answered.

"Why would he do that?!" Tifa exclaimed. She threw her hands up and seemed to be struggling to fully comprehend this new information, which Cloud could relate to.

Kadaj had kidnapped a bunch of kids, killed and hurt countless people, tried to summon Jenova via her lopped off head, and had almost brought back the nightmare himself. Kadaj suddenly being a normal-ish person for once and caring about someone other than his brothers and Jenova seemed almost… well, impossible.

Yuffie scoffed. "How the hell should I know? Maybe he has a crush on her? Who the hell knows."

Again, the possibility of Kadaj caring about someone other than his brothers and Jenova seemed impossible. Cloud couldn't entertain the possibility of Kadaj having a crush on anyone, let alone the possibility of Kadaj having a crush on Lyra. Cloud screwed up his face to keep from laughing. Yeah, that seemed impossible. Not to mention an awfully awkward thought to have.

Shalua finally straightened in her chair. "Back to reality people."

Cloud turned back to her.

"This is too strange, too chaotic," Shalua began. She stood and typed a few commands on her tablet. A holograph projected from the device, a list of events Shalua had jotted down. "At least more chaotic than usual."

"No offense, Vince," Yuffie quipped with a wink towards Vincent, earning herself an exasperated sigh and an eye roll from him.

"First we get all that activity in the Northern Cave Crater," Shalua began, ignoring Yuffie's shenanigans. "Then a girl with Shinra-science-induced amnesia appears, in a growing flowerbed in the middle of a freezing cave."

Barret interrupted. "I thought the activity was occurring because of Lyra's appearance?"

Shalua shook her head. "I don't think so. At least not anymore. I thought that until Dr. Azazel called and that poor girl-" Her voice broke and she paled. "That brings us to the Materia. I told you about that Materia, right?"

"Max!" Tifa snapped her fingers. "He called it Gravity Materia."

"Jael kinda dematerialized that poor kid," Yuffie whispered. "Matter Materia."

Shalua swallowed. "This new Materia, it's unstable and dangerous. What if there's more?"

"One thing at a time," Tifa said. "First we need to warn Lyra, somehow convince her to come back so we can keep an eye on her."

"I agree," Cloud said. "But we need to find her first."

Shelke jumped from her VR equipment and sprinted for the door. "I'll get to the Tech Department. We can track her through her phone there."

Lyra was asleep when Kadaj came back. Yazoo was still reading, no surprise there, and he had no updates aside from talking about Cetra-Speak in Cetra-Speak.

Kadaj and Loz had gotten the supplies they needed. A few sleeping bags and blankets, a new bag for Lyra to put her things in, and a truck with their food locked in a sketchy as hell parking garage.

"What now?" Loz asked, sounding childish as ever. Kadaj threw him a sleeping bag.

"Get some rest. We should leave really early in the morning."

Yazoo reluctantly closed his book and took a sleeping bag, following Loz to what was supposed to be a bedroom. Kadaj had honestly thought it was a closet. Yazoo and Loz unrolled their sleeping bags in the space that was available. Yazoo griped about Loz having stinky feet but soon they quieted. There obviously wasn't any room for Kadaj to lay his sleeping bag out, and like hell was he going to leave Lyra in the living room by herself. The apartment could be broken into, and though he didn't doubt that she would be able to defend herself, the events at the WRO had obviously exhausted her.

And of course, there was the WRO. They could send someone quiet and sneaky to bring her back! Kadaj and his brothers had very sensitive ears and excellent eyesight, but there could still be blind spots.

He sighed and rolled his sleeping bag a ways away from the futon. He didn't think Lyra would roll off, but he didn't want to be a casualty if she did. Before settling down for the night, he threw the new blanket onto her. And then turned around to set it nicely on her so that it wasn't smothering her face. He tucked it under her chin and hoped that she wouldn't wake up or be cold during the night. The AC was broken in a way that only blasted freezer-cold air, which at first wasn't a problem, but nights were freezing cold in the desert surrounding Edge.

He finally settled in for the night after turning off the lights. He heard Loz snoring louder than a chainsaw in the other room and the city around them and the neighbors. He needed something calmer to focus on.

Lyra's breathing was soft and even and as he lay across the room from her. He couldn't help but remember how warm her breath had felt on his skin.

Author's Note: HEHEHEHHEHEE sooooo that last bit with Kadaj... yeah. And Jael... brutal. Anyways, I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter! I wanna know what you guys think about it so far, especially this chapter! Don't be afraid to leave a review! Thanks so much for reading and favoriting and following and reviewing! It means so much to me and really helps with motivation and the evergoing war against writer's blocks! Thank you so much!