Michael and Kitt were sitting outside Christy's apartment. It was a dilapidated place, and even in the dark, Kitt could tell that it was old and ill cared-for. The sidewalk in front of the building was cracked and losing an epic battle with knee-high weeds. The porch that held the building's one dim source of light was listing dangerously, and the wooden steps appeared to be rotting.

Michael had no issues with breaking into Christy's home, and had thoroughly scoured the apartment, but he hadn't found anything suspicious. They'd been casing the place since, waiting for Christy to return.

"What do you think, pal? Did she make up with her 'cheating boyfriend?'" Michael asked.

"I couldn't say, but I would certainly rather stay at his apartment than this one."

Michael smirked. "I'll second that."

Kitt was about to comment on the less-than-cleanly interior when he received a familiar signal. "Michael, Devon's calling."

"Hey, Devon, what's up?"

"I was about to ask you the same thing. Any progress on the case?"

"I'm afraid not. We attracted some attention when we went to EOE today. But so far all we've got are a few leads on someone who may or may not be involved. Other than that, we don't have much to go on."

"The police haven't made much progress either. The thief knew where the security cameras were hidden and stayed out of their field of view, I'm afraid."

"I assume the police didn't find any prints then either, huh?"

"No. I would assume that an intruder smart enough to avoid security cameras also knew to wear gloves."

Michael sighed. "There's just not a lot to go on right now."

"Are you thinking of leaving the case to the local authorities?"

Michael cocked his head to the side. "Devon, I just have a feeling there's more here than meets the eye. I can't really explain it, but I'd like to talk to the woman who followed us one more time. Maybe you can look into Christy Hetherman? See if you can find any connection to EOE?"

"Of course, Michael. I take it you'll be staying in Santa Maria then?"

"For now."

"If you need anything, don't hesitate to call."

"I won't, Devon. Thanks."

Kitt disconnected the link. "How long do you plan on waiting here for Christy?"

"It's only 9:30. Let's give it a while and see if she comes home."


It was late, but Bonnie was in the middle of trying to solve a problem, and she'd always had a hard time calling it a night when her mind was wrapped around a puzzle. When there was a problem sitting in front of her waiting for an answer, she just couldn't let go of it. Besides, late at night was the best time for tackling things like this. The garage was quiet – there were no other technicians staying late, no interruptions, and Kitt didn't even need tending to tonight. She was free to crunch on her quandary as long as she wanted.

There had to be some way to protect Kitt from a wider variety of lasers. It was a problem they'd tried to tackle before, after the incident with Karr, but there were just so many different frequencies to consider that she couldn't filter them all out. Kitt's sense of sight was vastly different than a human's and he could only be blinded to a few frequencies that weren't very useful to begin with. With a tunable dye laser, the number of frequencies that could do him harm was almost unlimited.

She sighed and looked at the high tensile reflectors again. That was a catch twenty-two. Michael had gotten lucky when he anticipated Karr's shot, but that was all it was -- luck. If she could make a set of HTRs for the scanner, they could deflect a laser shot over a broad spectrum of wavelengths, but it would make his scanner completely blind. If he could see that a laser was about to be fired, he could activate it, a little like a camera shutter, but once he did, he wouldn't have any clue what was happening. So he couldn't preemptively activate it. And once the laser beam had been fired it was too late -- there was no way she could compete with the speed of light.

Frustrated, Bonnie pulled her hair back into a loose ponytail and decided, against her better judgment, that coffee would be helpful. She had a feeling she wouldn't be able to fall asleep anyway.

She got up and headed over to the little kitchen. She was pouring water when she thought she heard something. Bonnie turned off the tap and listened to the distinctive sound of footsteps clacking across the smooth concrete floor. "Hello?" she called out and popped her head around the corner, assuming it was one of the other technicians.

There was a lone person walking towards her. He waved.

"Hi. What are you doing here?" she asked, a little bit surprised.


Curtis had been on the night shift for the Foundation's security detail for two and a half months. It had taken some getting used to, but all in all, he was happier working nights. On the dayshift he'd had to deal with the constant coming and going of Foundation employees, as well as people in to attend this, that, or the other event. Then there were the caterers and the cleaning folks and the deliveries. On days, there was normally a lot of hustle and bustle. At night it was calmer, more peaceful. And occasionally he even got to nap.

Not tonight though. There had been steady traffic in and out of the main gate and they were having trouble with the security cameras. In particular, there were a few of them that went snowy and Brian, his partner, had gone to investigate. Then the camera covering the main gate had gotten an old newspaper blown into it, covering the lens. That happened from time to time -- when the wind blew just right, trash that got out of the dumpsters tended to blow right at the camera. He had gone out and cleared that off. But it was just one of those full-moon kind of nights so he was trying to make sure he was paying attention.

He never would have noticed otherwise.

The garage was large and they probably didn't have enough cameras covering it. The movement was subtle and what caught his eye was the absence of something that should have been there. He knew that Dr. Barstow had been working late and he had just been able to see her shoulder when she was sitting at her computer. But at some point she had disappeared. At first he'd assumed that she had just gotten up for something, but when she didn't come back, he studied the screen more closely. It wasn't the same shot. The camera must have gotten knocked to the right so that it was looking at the back part of the garage instead of its normal view, looking across the middle. Curtis was about to open up the control software in order to turn it back remotely, when the camera began to pan by itself.

Slowly a figure started to come into view. Someone was lying on the floor. And . . .

Curtis swallowed sharply.

There was someone curled into a ball on the floor in the middle of the garage.

Curtis picked up his radio, his throat suddenly too dry to talk. "Brian, this is Curtis. Do you read me?" he managed to croak. "Are you anywhere near the garage?"

"Yeah, I decided to do rounds since the cameras have been so flaky tonight, why?"

"Get over there now." Curtis said, hearing the panic in his own voice. He watched in horror as the figure moved and something caught a reflection from the overhead lights.

"Brian, get over there! Dr. Barstow's -"

Shit. What to say.

"She's hurt!"


A/N: Thank you all so much for the reviews! You're too kind.

Just to let you know, this is the last chapter that will be at a T rating. The next time I update, I'm going to have to change it to an M. This means that this story won't show up on the default page view (the default only shows stories rated K through T), so you'll have to change the filter to include the M rated stories to find it.

Again, thank you very much for reading!

Lava