Finally! I've been working on this chapter all day! XD I actually started writing this a few days ago but didn't finish until now.

Anyways, you'll meet more OC's in this chapter and..Basic meeting. I admit this may be a boring chapter, I know its longer than my other ones. Sorry about that.

Enjoy!

The building the ape colony was allowed to stay in was one of the few buildings within the quarantine area that was still stable. The outside wall paint was chipped and the stairs leading to the entrance was falling apart. Unlike some buildings, this one didn't have any broken windows or gaping holes in the walls. There was some graffiti on the walls, but most of it was faded or buried under waves of green rubble. The inside looked better, the floor had old and fading carpet, the walls had peeling wallpaper and the furniture was dusted but still intact. It must have been a hotel or bed and breakfast at one point but was long forgotten.

"Are you sure it'll be enough for them?" Asked Ellie.

"It's the biggest building we have and it's completely empty." Answered Malcolm.

Dreyfus kept looking around, possibly searching for any prying eyes. "I'm gonna get lots of compliments for this." He muttered to himself.

The apes explored the building. The younger ones, in particular, found the place interesting and exciting. Even Cornelius wiggled in his mother's arms in hopes of joining the other ape children.

Amazingly, there was enough space for the entire colony in the building.

When the apes were all settled in, Maurice approached the humans. "Will it work?" Malcolm asked. The orangutan nodded.

"So now what?" asked Kempt.

"Obviously we're going to work as a team to get them all back. Humans and apes." Said Foster.

"Ape Council." The voice took all of the humans by surprise. It was Rocket that spoke this time, they didn't even know he was there. "Ape Council help Human Council."

An idea began to form itself in Malcolm's mind. He turned to Dreyfus. "Dreyfus, find us a place we could use and someone with FBI experience." He said.

Dreyfus had the same idea. "I know just the guy." He rushed over to one of the buildings. Presumably to find whoever he had in mind.

Malcolm then looked at Maurice and Rocket. "Get the Ape Council and follow us."

Blue Eyes felt conflicted. As an Ape Council member, he had to follow them and the humans and as Caesar's son, he had to help them find him. But he didn't want to leave his mother alone. Cornelia wanted to come too, but was still recovering from her sickness and had to care for little Cornelius, who clung to her neck tightly.

"Don't think anything will happen when we follow humans." Blue Eyes tried to assure her. The way she looked at him, you'd think he was going to a battlefield for war.

She didn't answer. Only looking at him with a sad and worried gaze.

"I will be careful, I promise." He signed to her. Hoping that would work better.

Cornelia just shook her head. "Not careful...Stay safe…Stay Alive." Cornelia's words were small, but they were powerful.

Blue Eyes wished he could look her in the eyes and tell her he, and all the other apes, are perfectly safe. That the buildings and the many walls of the human city will protect them from the flying machine humans. That no one will die and even if they do, it won't be by this new enemy.

But deep in his heart, Blue Eyes wasn't sure if any place was safe. This new enemy seemed to come from all over. Tainting the forest he once called home and making the rest of the world seem like a cruel and unforgiving place. Everywhere felt dangerous.

"Stay alive and safe. I promise." Blue Eyes decided to make that his goal. Not just for himself, but for the Ape Council and the other apes and humans too. Keep all of them safe, and all of them alive.

He wondered if his father would have made such a promise.

Meanwhile, Koba stood with Stone as they waited for Blue Eyes and Grey. Neither of them spoke, it seemed like Stone was too anxious for talking. Koba secretly felt relieved for that, his mind was too focused on other things.

He kept thinking about his mental list from earlier. Dolly's life, Caesar's death and destroying the human race.

He remembered the warehouse where he stole the first gun from. He could go back there and steel another one. Maybe get one for Stone and Grey this time. He wondered though…Could there be more weapons in that warehouse aside from the guns? Possibly something much more deadly and effective? Did such a thing even exist?

Maurice's stupid hooting ruined the bonobo's train of thought and he scowled at the orangutan. However, Maurice didn't seem to notice it as he simply followed Malcolm and the other humans. Rocket, Luca, Grey and Blue Eyes following behind him.

"You're scheming again, right?" Stone signed to him.

To this, Koba gave a surprised chuff at the chimp. It seemed like the toad-face chimp always knew what he was thinking. He wondered if Stone ever knew what Dolly was thinking.

"Tell you later." He signed back.

The person Dreyfus had sought out was a man named Derek Phoenix, who turned out to be a former FBI profiler. He was an older man, possibly in his mid-sixties, with white, thin hair and pale, brown eyes. Almost like the color of a fawns pelt. His white beard seemed to curl around his chin and jawline, almost like fresh stalks at the ponds in the forest. His skin was pale and seemed to match his hair color. He wore a light blue, long-sleeved shirt, long brown pants, and black boots.

The Ape Council felt awkward around him. Why? They couldn't say. He seemed normal enough, and he wasn't threatening at all. In fact, he didn't even have a weapon on him. He didn't even look the least bit frightened or disgusted with the apes as so many other humans have been.

They watched in silence as Dreyfus and Malcolm explained the situation to him. Ellie, Foster, and Kempt stood with the apes, seemingly unsure of what to do themselves.

"Those helicopters that came here and kidnapped those people, came to the forest and took some of the apes too." Even now, he still didn't regard the apes as people.

Derek's eyebrows furrowed. He was silent for a moment before speaking. "How many did they take?"

"The Apes did a head count. They're missing eleven." Malcolm answered. None of the apes minded that Malcolm was answering for them, they really weren't comfortable talking to this new human just yet.

"How old were they?"

"Some were adults and some were teenagers or younger."

"Did they take just males or just females or both?"

Why is he asking so many questions?

"Both."

Derek ran his fingers through his beard as he thought. "So they kidnap the same number of apes as they do humans, with no gender or age preference. That indicates these people are after both races."

"Yeah, we already figured that out," Kempt stated, getting a little annoyed with the older man. "What does it mean?"

Derek didn't even blink at the sudden outburst. "That lies in the details." He said flatly. "To stop these people, we need to understand them. And to understand them, we need to understand who they kidnapped. Not just their physical descriptions, but who they were as people. Both human and ape."

He then turned to look at the Ape Council for the first time. His eyes seemed warmer, now that they could see them better. "What are your names?"

Surprised, the Ape Council looked at each other. Was he actually interested in knowing their names?

Derek gave them a shy but gentle smile. "I can't keep calling you all just apes or Ape Council." They could see the sincerity in his eyes. There was a kindness in his eyes that was like Malcolm's. He genuinely wanted to know who they were.

While the Ape Council introduced themselves to the human, Kempt walked over to Dreyfus and nudged him. "Are you sure about this guy, Drey?"

Dreyfus looked at him. "Kempt, he's been an FBI profiler for forty years and has helped put more than two hundred dangerous criminals away. If anyone can help us, it's him."

"Still though, his last name is Phoenix. What kind of a name is that?"

"It can't be any more strange than having 'Dreyfus' as a last name." commented Foster, who joined them. Earning him a glare from the mayor.

"It doesn't matter what his last name is." This time it was Ellie, who now stood with them. "I honestly don't care if his last name is Phoenix or wiener schnitzel. If he can help us find these people and save Caesar, Alex, and the others, then we need to give him a chance."

Malcolm, Derek, and the apes didn't hear the hushed conversation. Malcolm only watched with a surprised smile as the older man talked to the apes. This was a man who had never seen the apes up close and never spoke to them before but he as he talked to them, he didn't look disturbed or frightened by them. He simply treated them as if they were humans.

Derek was still a total stranger to him but Malcolm had a feeling they could trust this man. Not just him and the humans, but the apes could trust him too.

The room was large and had cement walls, floors and ceiling. The rectangle windows were foggy with dirt, but were still in one piece. The building the room belonged to was practically a ghost building: several different rooms, little to no furniture, any and all noises made in the building echoed through the empty hallways. It wouldn't take much to be convinced the building was haunted.

This particular room may very well be the only one that wasn't empty. A large table stood in the middle with a chair next to it, a map of San Fransisco that was covered with pushpins hung on the wall with a box full of pushpins and another full of yarn next to it, an old whiteboard hung next to the map, desk with an old computer sat in front of the wall, the windows on the left wall actually had blinds, and the right wall was completely covered by a file cabinet and file boxes. Dreyfus recognized some of them from the old police department, but most of them looked like they came from other facilities.

"How did you get all this stuff?" Asked Ellie.

"Some I rescued from facilities that were set on fire by riots, others were given to me by their owners." Derek walked over to the map and stuck two pushpins on it. He then walked over to the whiteboard and wrote out some names on it.

Apes:

Caesar

Dolly

Ash

Lake

Red

Winter

Pope

Andy

Lucky

Pinto

Pepper

Humans:

Alexander

Harper

Bobby

Samson

Rebecca

Laura

Richard

Jimmy

Tobias

Caron

Mike

Derek's hand moved quickly as he wrote each name. The wheels in his head were turning, working his profiling magic. He then moved to the pile of boxes, picked one up and pulled out all its files. He then placed them on the table.

"Ten years ago, during the Simian Flu pandemic, there were a series of odd disappearances." Derek began to explain upon seeing the confused faces of the humans and apes. "At the time, police thought these people fled from San Fransisco to escape the virus, but when the theory was proven to be false, they believed they contracted the virus, even though it was never proven. Though they are now believed to be dead, their bodies were never found."

That didn't seem too strange to Malcolm and the other humans. Lots of people disappeared during those days and almost all of them left in hopes of escaping the virus. Only to ironically get the it and die. It could just be that those people all left and died somewhere else and were never properly identified.

Blue Eyes hardly paid attention. He was too busy looking at one of the files. he couldn't read the papers inside, but there was a picture of a male bonobo paper clipped to them. He never seen this bonobo before, but there was something familiar about him.

"So?" Kempt couldn't help but ask.

"I was assigned to the case when it was discovered that a lot of these people disappeared at or around the same time as one another." Probably a coincidence. But what Derek said next surprised them. "And it turned out, apes were going missing too."

Apes? The only known apes that left captivity were Caesar's colony.

"Escape?" Blue Eyes asked, now listening.

Derek shook his head. "You'd think, but no. They were kidnapped. In fact, they were kidnapped on the same days as the humans that disappeared."

Are humans and apes being kidnapped on the same day? A shocked silence fell on the group. Why would humans kidnap their own kind and apes? And how could they..Why would they...Do it on the same day?

Only Malcolm had the courage to ask the question. "Do you think it's the same people?"

Derek nodded. "It's possible."

Ellie, who was eyeing the map, now realized why the pushpins were there. "That's a map of where the kidnappings happened. Isn't it?" There had to be more than a hundred pushpins on the map in total.

"Yes, and that's just the ones I know about." Answered Derek. "If these are the same people, and they did not stop during the last ten years, then there may be more kidnappings than we think."

As if on cue, the sound of footsteps echoed through the building. The sound was fast and rhythmic and was like a scream in the near hollow room.

The apes and humans looked around. Who's there? A human? Probably. Good or bad? No one could tell.

Then, whoever it was, appeared in the doorway. "Oh, Jacobs it's just you." Said Derek in a relieved voice.

Something happened at that moment. The only thing Koba heard was Jacobs. Everything seemed blurry until he turned his head to see the person in the doorway. Only to see him standing there. Jacobs. Steven Jacobs. The human who tortured and mutilated him and his sister for years at Gen-Sys. The human he hated with every fiber of his being. The human who he last saw falling to his death in the ocean at the bridge.

Without thinking, by a rush of sudden pure hate, he lunged at the human with an enraged roar. Ready to tear him apart limb from limb. To dig his teeth into his flesh and drain all the blood in his body. To destroy and disfigure him as he did to him and Dolly.

But he never even touched the human.

To Koba's surprise, the human was more agile and, before he could comprehend what was happening...

SLAM!

He hit the wall instead of the human. He laid there for a second, letting the pain sink in before getting up. Even though his arm and shoulder ached horribly, Koba was surprised to find out that they weren't broken. Despite having just slammed himself against a cement wall.

"Somebody's had too much coffee." Said a new, sarcastic voice.

Koba looked up. Jacobs was gone…In fact, he was never there at all…

The human who stood there was a female, with tan colored skin and long, wavy pink hair that was pulled into two pony tales which hung loosely at the sides of her head. She wore a whitish grey sweater with the arms ripped off, fading skinny jeans with tears at the knees and old, black and white sneakers. She had to be at least twenty-five.

She wasn't Jacobs…Not the Jacobs Koba knew…But when he looked at her..His hatred boiled in him.

She had the same dark eyes as Jacobs.

The other humans and apes were silent. Possibly due to the shock of what had just happened. The first one to speak was Dreyfus. "Victoria?"

The Human girl smirked at him. "It's Tori, Doofus. But nice to see you again anyway."

Foster and Kempt chuckled at her 'doofus' comment. Dreyfus immediately frowned at her. "How the hell is your hair pink?!"

"Three words: Bleach! Hair! Dye!" She answered, protruding a finger with each word.

Dreyfus angrily turned to Derek. "What is she doing here?!" He demanded.

"Ms. Jacobs had been helping me for the past eight years." Derek's voice was steady and flat, despite Dreyfus's anger. "I ask her to find me something, and she finds it for me."

"Finding things?" Malcolm asked.

"She has a knack for finding lost things." Explained Derek. He looked over at Tori. "I see you met Koba, Victoria."

Tori glanced over at Koba, who was now glaring at her. "You mean, Smiles?"

Koba didn't hear what they were saying. Or maybe he just ignored them. It didn't matter. He didn't know or care who this Tori was, but he could see Jacobs in her. His fur bristled with hate, and he knew…Even though he just met her and she didn't do anything to him, he knew…

..He wanted to kill her..

A's/N: See any familiar faces on that list? X3 Little confession, I originally wasn't going to have Pope, Red or Winter in the story but after reading BeetZel's 'Dawn Of War' story (which I highly recommend!), and looking more into their characters, I decided to include them. Not sure if you guys already figured this out, but my story does NOT follow War or Revelations (I didn't even read that book! DX) so don't be surprised if there are changes to a certain group that may not be named as of right now...If you think you know who they are, PLEASE DON'T SPOIL IT!

And also we meet a few new OC's! Derek Phoenix and Victoria 'Tori' Jacobs! :D So why is Derek's last name Phoenix? There's actually a story behind that. Actually, much of Derek's character (and the story itself) is inspired by my favorite live-action TV show Criminal Minds (and a little of Hannibal, but not totally!). Derek's past will be revealed later in the story. Until then, give him a chance and don't judge him too quickly. If you don't like his last name, just call him Derek.

Can you guess who Tori is? ^^ Like Derek and Dolly, Tori is one of the main OC characters in the story HOWEVER her role is connected to Koba's. 3

And who was that bonobo Blue Eyes was looking at? XD You'll find out in a few chapters, he's kind of a surprise OC!. ;D You may also see some of the other characters that were on that list Derek wrote, (Pinto, Pepper, random humans) but most of them are just random names.

Dolly, Tori, Derek, Pinto, Pepper, Harper and random humans listed on the list (Rebecca, Richard, Laura, Mike, Jimmy, Caron, Tobias, and Samson) are (c) Me

Thanks for reading and please review!