The rain is falling on me now, cold and damp and ennervating.  I'm holding his hand in mine and realizing that I never before bothered comparing my hand to his.  It's comfortingly larger, his hand that is, but the rain is making it cold and clammy, leaching its warmth away.  I lay his hand on my stomach again but he doesn't stir.  Eventually the warmth of my body will give his the illusion of life.

The rain is falling on me now, icy, wet, and chilling.  People are tugging at my arms and raising me up off the ground.  The sodden earth falls away from me and the air surrounds me like a living thing. They bear my body away.  The rain falls on.

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"Boo!"  She wraps her arms around me and squeezes me so tightly that even my enhanced lungs are on the point of collapse.  "Hey Fool, get us all a pitcher to celebrate the return of my girl."  I finally manage to extricate myself from the hug without hurting her and I back up a pace to smile at her. 

"You do realize that I've only been gone for a week?"  She shakes her head until her hair wobbles at me. 

"Girl you realize I hardly never see you no more. Besides any excuse to make my fool boy pay for a pitcher.  So hit me up, what you been doin with yourself?"  The worn seats cradle my thighs like an old friend and I realize just how long it has been since I've been able to go out for a beer with my friends. 

"Well you know me, Seattle is just so damn rainy this time of year I had to take myself off to California."  She raises a perfectly plucked eyebrow at me. 

"For real? You jerking me around Boo." 

"No seriously first I went to the party from hell.  You would have been proud of me, got all done up in a girly dress, put up my hair, got stabbed for all my trouble.  Then Logan got kidnapped by Brazilian gang members along with some tiny little senator lady and this guy that might be a bad guy but might not be a bad guy and might have been kidnapped too, and then we followed them out to California to an old motel, but there were too many of them and they ambushed us so we only had time to rescue the lady senator but we managed to put a homing patch on them like the one we stole from Lela so Alec is tracking them now and I haven't heard back from him yet and I'm kind of worried.  Oh and the Senator that I've been working for because she's the one making all of these laws in Congress to help us, her daughter was kidnapped and now I'm trying to find her."  She's hugging me again by the end of the tirade and I remember how good it feels to have a best friend to lean on. 

Sketchy presses a cold and only slightly spilt beer mug into my hands and pats me clumsily on the head.  "You checked in at TC yet to see if yo' boy's called command?"  I shake my head lightly.

"I've been calling every couple of hours all day."

"You know how that boy is, I'm sure he's just haven a good ol' time playing super spy and all up in forgettin to be responsible."  Cindy puts forth an excellent point, it would be just like Alec to go all commando and forget that I'm in Seattle worrying about him.  If I weren't the leader I would so be out there parachuting through volcanoes and kicking ak 47's out of the bad guys hands.  Being in charge really sucks. 

The beer is cold in my hands and it feels good in the sweaty heat of the bar.  I lift the glass to my forehead so that the moisture beads up on my temple and cools me off.  The close proximity of the smell of beer suddenly makes my stomach begin to roll again.  Slamming the glass down on the table I push and shove my way to the bathroom and lock myself in one of the less filthy stalls.  About halfway through tossing the contents of my stomach I feel Cindy's hands at the back of my neck lifting my hair out of the way. 

"What's wrong Boo?"  I roll back and chance sitting on the floor. 

"I just don't know, it's been freakin me out the past couple of days though. I'm just, I'm just scared that it's something else that Manticore fucked up with my DNA ya know?  I mean they crossed enough wires as it is, I'm surprised that my head doesn't spin around like in the exorcist.  This once when I found some of my family, my sister Brin had this real bad disease called progeria.  It all has to do with the ends of our chromosomes, they screwed up and made them too short in her and bam she gets some weird aging disease.  I'm worried that its just another problem and I really can't be sick right now, I've got so many freaking people to take care of, and to lead."  She pulls me into a hug and pats my hair soothingly.

"Damn girl, don't you go borrowing trouble yo' got enough of that on your own.  What we gonna do right now is get down to TC and have Kate check you ever good.  Then we do any worrying that we got to."  She's right of course, I'm being really ridiculous worrying about being sick instead of doing something about it.

"You don't have to come with me you know.  I know that they made the protestors leave the city walls and stuff but there's still wack jobs out there that won't let the thing go."  I'm hoping selfishly that she'll be as stubborn as I know she is and decide to come anyway.

"Forget it Boo.  You get your jacket on and we gonna get this bitch over with together."

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Hey guys!  Sorry it's taken me so long to update but I've got a new boyfriend, a huge load of classes, and midterms out the wazoo.  Is anybody still reading this?  I hope a few people are, if I manage to get some work done on this the ending should be a nail biter.  Peace ma amis.

In the next exciting chapters:  Alec lands on the island of the damned, Max finds out what's wrong with her funky self, and Elizabeth Burnhart is reunited with the darling Harker, or is she????  (Hint, hint, this is a rather big clue, I hadn't intended on making Harker into a real character but so many people were wondering about her that the most delicious plot twist came to me one day).