Helen, Ashley and I stood with Will looking at the fantastic pictures he'd brought in with the case a friend was working on. All the pictures were creatures drawn by a young boy who was witness to a possible suicide or murder. No one knew which it was.

"So these are obviously his demons, nightmares brought to life." Will said.

"I'm reminded of Hieronymus Bosch. His paintings were rife with abnormals." Helen said.

"Was Bosch a friend of yours; high school sweetheart or something?" Will asked her.

"There is such a thing as "before my time."" She reminded him.

"Really?" he asked her with a smile on his face before pinning another picture on the board.

"Cheeky monkey." Helen said with a smile.

"Okay, check this out. Here's one I found particularly interesting." He said backing away from it.

"Oh, it's the sanctuary." Ashley said going up and looking at the picture.

"Yeah." Will said.

"That's beautiful." I said admiring the work.

"His draftsman ship is uncanny; photographic in its fidelity." Helen said.

"Yeah, he must have used computer imaging for this." Ashley said looking back at us.

"Kavanaugh said the boy was home-schooled, and apparently, the father wouldn't allow him access to the computer." Will told her.

"Okay, so he copied a photo, then." She said.

"Well, the mother said he flew over Old City once on the only airplane trip he ever took in his life." Will told us as Ashley joined us again.

"Ten years ago." Helen said.

"Yeah, exactly ten. How did you know?" he asked her after confirming the date in the file he had.

"That's when we did the renovation work on the North Tower." Helen said pointing it out on the photo.

"Okay, but the part about not needing to see the page, how does that work?" Ashley asked.

"Well, if the anecdotal evidence is true, then the boy must bypass the role of ordinary sight." Helen said.

"If he's seeing how abnormals look normally might want to keep him from some of the team." I suggested to her and she nodded her agreement.

"There's not much doubt about his being a savant." Will said.

"He may well be more than that." Helen said looking back at the picture.

"Now, the police are obviously more interested in how the father died than in the boy's potential abnormality." Will told us.

"Naturally." I said under my breath.

"Understandably." Helen said giving me a look.

"I've been given a temporary pipeline to the case file. We can get their forensics in real time." Will said handing the file to Helen.

"What about the family?" Helen asked him beginning to look through the file.

"Kavanaugh's made arrangements for the boy and his mother to visit us here, and I was hoping maybe you two'd have time to be part of that?" he asked us.

"I'll have to take a rain check on meeting the boy. If he ends up staying for a while sure I'll meet him but I don't want to worry his mother if he sees my true form." I said and they seemed to understand.

"I wouldn't miss it." Helen told him.

"Okay, cool." Will said before he and Helen left as Ashley and I stared at the picture from ten years ago.


I was in the training room getting some quality time with a punching bag as what happened in Rome flashed through my head.


"Eliza, kiss me and I'll save your lives." Nikola told me.


I hit the punching bag harder.


"My god, you look sexy with a gun." he said and I rolled my eyes.

"Really? You're going to flirt now?" I asked him.


A third surprised me and grabbed me from behind before knocking me into Helen and pointing his gun at us. Suddenly Nikola shoved him up a wall by the throat.

"Leave her alone." He said in a deep voice.


"I needed to see you." he said looking directly at me.


"You've always been like this, haven't you? Selfish and arrogant, putting your own desires before everyone else's." I said, trying not to think of the past.

"I brought you here for two reasons: Because only you two can help me finish what I'm working on and because I love you." he told me.


"I, I feel so safe when I'm with you." Nik told me quietly.


"My god, Nik, what have you done?" I asked him.


"You and I could usher in a new golden age of thought and culture and peace…" Nikola told us and I could feel my tears behind my eyes.

"You're mad, Nik." I told him.


I jumped and my eyes widened as I saw a chest rip through Nikola's stomach.


I hit the bag so hard it flew from the chain it was on and it lit on fire as it hit the ground, sand running for cover. I fell to my knees and held my hand to my mouth to contain the screams that wanted to force themselves from me. Tears poured from my eyes as I tried to take deep breaths to control them.

"Liz?" I controlled my breathing and wiped my face off.

"Yes, Helen?" I said standing and turning to her. "What can I do for you?"

"Are you alright?" she asked looking behind me. I followed her gaze to see the bag still burning. I waved my hand and the once white bag was now burnt black with smoke rising from it.

"Of course it is." I told her, my face still hard and hiding anything I had actually felt.

"I know Nikola…" she started saying and I stopped her.

"Enough, Helen." I told her. "He betrayed us, again. I should have expected it. You don't need to treat me like I'm going to break at any moment."

"I wasn't trying to treat you as such. I worried, that's all." She told me.

"Don't be." I said. "I'll be fine."

"The last time he did this to you it took years to get over the betrayal." She reminded me.

"This time it took days." I said.

"So that's why your eyes are red." She said and I looked away from her.

"I'll meet the mother with you. My true form isn't hellish looking. It shouldn't scare the kid." I said before leaving the room to get ready for the meeting.


Later that afternoon, I sat with Helen, Will and Mrs. Meyers on the patio.

"Our sympathies for your loss, Mrs. Meyers." Helen said to her.

"Thank you. My son will be along. He found something to draw in the garden. He's not quite ready to talk to strangers. You have to understand Edward, he's... he's a very, um... special boy."

"We've seen his art. We understand how special he is." Helen said with a gentle smile on her fave trying to calm the widow.

"He's done that since he first picked up a crayon. His subjects haven't always been so dark. He drew this of Robbie and me when he was only eight." She said showing us a picture of her and another boy.

"Robbie's your other son?" Helen asked her.

"Yeah. He ran away when he was 14." She told us.

"I'm sorry." Helen said.

"The file said that Robbie got into trouble for starting fires?" Will asked her.

"Oh, no, no, he'd stopped all that, but Glen, he-he... drove him away." She said.

"Was your husband... abusive to all of you?" Will asked after a moment.

"My... husband was a good man. He-he had his problems, but he loved us."

"Feeling love and inflicting pain aren't mutually exclusive." Will said and I flashed back to Rome again.

"He's right." I told her.

"When you're a mother, protecting your children, that's all that matters." Mrs. Myers told us.

"Can you tell us what happened the night that Glen died?" Helen asked her.

"I woke up to the shouting." She told us. "He'd been drinking. I was afraid the gun would go off accidentally, and then... Just like that, he turned the gun on himself. I called 911, but it was too late. I realize now that... Glen would never have hurt Edward, or anyone else. This wasn't the first time that he'd tried to take his life. It was..."

"… just so you know, the evaluation with Edward, it may take a few sessions." Will told her.

"But... I'm at wit's end, honestly. I have to deal with the funeral arrangements, and-and Edward, he's... scared to sleep in the room where it all happened. I..." she listed off.

"You're welcome to leave him in our care."

"Oh. I... I..." she stuttered.

"He'll be safe here." I told her. "This is a sanctuary for everyone."


We walked to the garden to see Edward drawing one of the lawn decorations we had.

"How's it going? My name's Will. I think your artwork is pretty awesome. I've always admired people who could draw. I could never get much past stick figures myself." Will told the boy as the rest of us joined the two.

"Edward? Dr. Magnus and Dr. Zimmerman, um... they're going to take care of you for a couple of days." Mrs. Myers told her son and he made a face of displeasure and pulled at the back of his shirt. "No, no, no. Just give me time to do everything that I have to do. Edward... it's okay. It's okay, it's okay... it's okay. Come here. It's gonna be okay." She said comforting him.


Later that day Helen and I were waking to her office while talking about Edward and his drawing ability when we came across the Big Guy in the elevator.

"Any luck with Henry?" Helen asked him.

"He still won't come out of his room." He told us.

"This has been the rudest of awakenings." She said.

"I worry that he will keep spiraling down." He said.

"We can provide every support, but only Henry can come to terms with what he's becoming." She said.

"Maybe with Edward here, he'll understand more about himself." I suggested.

"What makes you say that?" she asked me.

"Edward can see our true forms. If he sees Henry it'll probably be a bad reaction but maybe he can also see something Henry can't right now." I suggested. "And through that maybe Henry can learn control."


Later we were in Helen's office after she ran a small test on Edward.

"When most people see, their focus shifts from one area of interest to another. When we remember, we interpolate, we fill in the blanks." She told us.

"Which is why eyewitness testimony is so notoriously unreliable." Will said.

"Exactly, now Edward's visual apparatus, on the other hand, acts more like an image scanner; rapidly moving in parallel sweeps, and then archiving." She said showing us the picture she had him draw.

"So he really is a living computer." Ashley said.

"That's one way to live life." I commented.

"This rendering took less than a minute from start to finish." She told us.

"Wow. The detail is extraordinary." Will said.

"With respect, this is what's extraordinary. I asked Edward to concentrate on one portion of the scene, this area here, and then, a zoom on the zoom... in this case, a face, just barely visible in the shadows, becomes this." She said showing us the three zoomed in pictures.

"Okay, so, I'm not sure I get this. Edward's got this "Where's Waldo" thing going on with abnormals?" Ashley asked her mom.

"And that's assuming that there wasn't an abnormal in the doorway." Will told us.

"Perhaps he sees the monster that lurks beneath." Helen suggested.

"How he sees our true forms." I said staring at the pictures.

"So, what are you saying? He detects the abnormals amongst us?" Will asked.

"Or simply the true personas of damaged people." Helen suggested.

"So an abusive father becomes a monster." Ashley provided.

"Exactly." Helen agreed.

"Or his father was an abnormal and so his he." I offered.

"How do we test the two theories?" Will asked.

"That's the question offered to us now." I told him.


I stood next to Henry as he got dressed after Helen and I had run some tests on him at his request.

"We've been able to verify that your body has entered a new metamorphic phase. Everything we know about proteins tells us they continue to evolve over their lifetimes. There may be powers or abilities that you gain that we can't even hope to fathom. Imagine a caterpillar arresting its metamorphosis before it becomes a butterfly." She told him going to the counter and putting her clipboard down.

"You really think it was a butterfly that brought down that snake creature?" he asked her angrily.

"That's not what she said Henry. She was just using it as an example." I told him.

"Look, I can't account for myself when I'm that thing. And what if I hurt one of you? I can't let that happen. So you either chain me up in The SHU or you tell me how I can stop all this. I need to know what my choices are." She told us.

"There is a surgical remedy, but it's not without its risks. It involves excising portions of both the pituitary and pineal glands." Helen started telling him.

"If it'll keep me human, then bring it on." He told her.

"I want you to think about this long and hard, Henry." She said.

"Okay…" he said turning his head from us and thinking. "Done."

"It could well impact who you are, how you think." She started listing off.

"What, is it some kind of lobotomy or something?" he asked her.

"No, certainly not, but could it blunt your intelligence? Alter your personality? We just don't know. Promise me you'll think about it." She told him. He nodded before getting off the table and walking away from us.

"You never should have mentioned that test." I told her. "Giving him a nuclear deterrent…" I started saying.

"But it's not." She told me.

"It might as well be." I told her before leaving the lab.


"The more I look at the evidence, the less I believe both Ruth's and Edward's accounts." Will told us in Helen's office later that day.

"You think they were both covering for Robbie?" Helen asked as Will's phone began to go off.

"Just a sec. Hey." Will said answering the phone. "Look, hold off, okay? I need a little more time. I saw some things in the crime-scene photos I'd like to check out on-site." He told the person on the other line. "Hey, you came to me, remember?" I could only assume the person was Will's friend from the force. "Well, the M.E. didn't release it, right?" Mrs. Myers must have tried to collect the body from the police. "See, this just doesn't feel right. That's why I need to see the apartment. Okay, thanks." He then hung up the phone and turned back to us. "Care to go to the Myers house?" he asked us.

"Wouldn't miss it." I told him as Helen nodded.


Later that day we were at the Myers house and she let us into where her husband was killed and we all looked around. Will moved back the rug on the floor to reveal a secret door in the floor. He opened it to find a small room with handcuffs fit perfectly where someone's arms could be cuffed up next to the persons head.

"Please..." Mrs. Myers said as she began to cry leaning on the doorframe.

"Please! Please! Dad? Dad! Let me out!" I could almost hear Edward scream begging to be released from this small prison.

"Oh, god... oh, God. Oh..." Mrs. Myers cried as we stood up. Will went to the window while Helen and I stayed with the widow.

"Who did he keep down there?" Helen asked her.

"It's not what you think." She told us.

"What about Robbie? He got the brunt of it, didn't he? What did Glen call it? Discipline?" Will asked her.

"In my experience, it's often a cover for cruelty." Helen said before moving to Mrs. Myers and placing a comforting arm on her shoulder as Will joined us.

"He threatened you, didn't he?" Will asked her.

"He... he said he'd take the boys, take Robbie and Edward, if I ever tried to leave him." She told us, but I had to wonder if this was the true story or another lie to cover for what really happened.

"The file said that you didn't report Robbie as missing for almost five days." Will said.

"Glen didn't want to go to the police, in case Robbie showed up." Mrs. Myers told us.

"Then you'll appreciate how important it is I report any new evidence." Will told her and she continued to cry gipping her arm in front of us.

"But you... oh, ple... oh..."


Later that night Helen, Will and I was walking through the lab under the house after having just returned from the Myers house.

"Will, I wasn't entirely comfortable with you making it sound as if The Sanctuary were an arm of law enforcement." Helen told him.

"Well, I had to push her to get at what she was hiding." He explained to her.

"The unravelling of who killed this man and why may well yield a treasure trove of information about this abnormality. But make no mistake, I will not help compound an injustice." Helen told him.

"So, what are you saying? That we withhold evidence from the authorities?" he asked her confused.

"If it's in service of preserving an extraordinary life like Edward's or the mother who tried to protect those sons? You'd better know that I would." She told him.

"Then I guess one of us is going to be uncomfortable. Either way, it's down to us to sort out what really happened, and that means finding Robbie." Will said leaning on one of the tables.

"I've been thinking, Edward has a pixel-perfect record of his father's death." Helen said to us.

"He says he doesn't remember what happened." Will told us.

"What he says and what he actually remembers are two different things." I told him.

And he was able to retrieve one image from that night." Helen reminded us.

"His father pointing the gun." Will said.

"You recall I was talking about the interpolation of data to make our memories complete." She said.

"Yeah." Will said as I nodded.

"If we could get Edward to render key moments surrounding the fatal shot, Henry could program the computer to fill in the missing frames." Helen suggested.

"So we'd have a movie of the crime?" Will asked with a smile.

"Or as near as you can reconstruct from a person's memories." Helen said.

"Huh. There's just one problem. Edward doesn't want to remember." Will told us.

"Let's get him down here; there's no harm in trying." Helen told us.


"You said your father aimed the shotgun at you, and that you pulled it away and shot him. Can you show us that?" Helen asked Edward once we'd gotten him down to where we were and comfortable.

"Mmm..." was all he said before he started drawing. He was done less than a minute, just as Helen said.

"Edward, this is a right hand. Why is it on the left side of the image?" Helen asked him.

"Hmm..." We all took a look at the picture. The right hand had a scar on it, one that neither Edward nor Mrs. Myers had.

"This isn't your hand, is it, Edward? This right hand has a scar on it. Yours doesn't. I'm guessing this was Robbie." Will said pointing to the hand.

"No!" Edward shouted at us.

"It's all right, Edward." I said trying to calm him down.

"Was Robbie the one your father was threatening?" Helen asked him.

"Your mom and dad issued a full description of Robbie when he went missing; this scar was one of the distinguishing marks." Will told the boy.

"If he was the occupant of that little room under the floor, he'd have more than enough reason for payback..." Helen said.

"I told you it was me!" Edward shouted at us.

"Right now, they're this close to charging your mother for tampering with evidence, and that charge could turn to murder like that, unless we can..." Will stopped talking as the graphite Edward was holding snapped and he started shaking violently.

"Edward! Edward..." Helen called out to him.

"It's okay. Robbie?" Will said trying to hold him down. I smelt something burning and looked to see Helen's jacket smocking.

"Helen!" I pushed her out of the way and we screamed as the light behind her burst. His head snapped back and hit Will forcing him back. We quickly moved to him as the shaking stopped and he seemed to be falling out of his chair.

"Edward, Edward..." Helen called out to him.

"You got him?" Will asked her.

"Yeah." She confirmed. We all shared a look before looking at the boy we were surrounding.


Ashley, Will and I waited for Helen in her office as she saw to the boy in his room.

"What's his condition?" Ashley asked as soon as her mother walked into the room.

"Still guarded. He suffered a Grand Mal seizure. There's still a threat of subarachnoid haemorrhaging." She told us.

"I'm sorry. If I hadn't have pushed him so hard, none of this would've happened." Will said.

"No neurologic deficits have surfaced, but clearly now, we have to err on the side of caution." Helen told us.

"What the hell did we see?" Will asked her.

"The dark side to his ability." I said leaning on the arm of one of the couches in the office.

"It's like his eyes were shooting out heat bursts." Will said.

"That would explain the scorch marks on the walls of that chamber." Helen told him.

"What about the marks on Ruth?" Will asked her.

"I can't imagine that Edward would have inflicted those, at least not intentionally." Helen told us.

"The late Mr. Myers probably did that." I told them.

"And if it was the husband?" Ashley asked.

"Maybe they weren't cigarette burns at all. The M.E.'s file said there was evidence that the father suffered seizures as well." Helen told us.

"If the father was an abnormal, he probably passed it on to Edward." Will said.

"The father's abnormality was the burning eyes power." Ashely said.

"Hey, what if he could sense when it was coming on?" Will asked.

"And had himself locked away to protect his loved ones, yes. Glen Meyers may have built that chamber for himself." Helen agreed.


"I think I'm pretty much ready to go here, boss." Henry said later that day as we all gathered around him. Edward had wanted to draw to make sure his mother was safe from the cops. He was ready to tell the whole story.

"Understand that the computer tries to maintain the laws of both physics and psychology when filling in the blanks. It's not without its flaws." Helen reminded us.

"It's better than the lies being given to us." I told her. We watched as a boy climbed through Edward's window: Robbie. We watched as Glen came in and pointed the gun at Robbie the Robbie suddenly grabbed the gun from him. Robbie pointed the gun at his father and they argued some more before his father grabbed the gun also.

"Yeah, we still can't see whose finger's on the trigger. Robbie's body's blocking it." Ashley said.

"Just wait. There. The reflection in the mirror captured it all." Helen said and we watched as Robbie and his father argued over the gun when Robbie let go of it.

"Robbie lets go of the gun, and..." the next picture was of him dead.

"The father didn't have to pull the trigger. He ignited the charge directly with his eyes." Will said.


"Your mother should be here in a couple of hours." Helen told Edward in her office the next day. We'd been spending a large part of time trying to find Robbie now and reunite their family.

"What about Robbie?" he asked us.

"We're making every effort to find him." Helen told him.

"Don't worry, we have our best and brightest on it right now." I told him with a soft smile.

"Why were you so afraid to tell us what, in the end, you showed us?" Will asked him confused.

"Mom always said it would be the end of us all if the world ever knew about him." He told us.

"Well, you don't have to fear that now." Helen told him as her phone began to vibrate.

"What are you?" Edward asked me.

"What do I look like?" I asked him.

"A sad angel." He told me and I gave him a small smile.

"I'm not an angel and no one stays sad forever." I told him simply as Helen hung up the phone.

"Henry found him."


Later we found ourselves inside some tunnels walking to where Henry told us he and Robbie would be waiting.

"Henry said Robbie's been living down here all this time." Helen told us. Robbie and Henry walked out next to each other.

"Robbie!" Edward called to his brother.

"I told you he'd be coming, didn't I?" Henry asked as he and Robbie walked up to us. Once the two brothers met they hugged each other tightly and I smiled at them.

"I've missed you so bad." Robbie told his younger brother.

"It's okay. We can both go home now. Mom's waiting." Edward told him.

"Will..." We looked at Helen before looking up in shock and wonder at the masterpiece on the ceiling.

"This is yours?" Edward asked his brother. Robbie nodded and we continued to admire the work above us.


A few days later Helen and I stood outside of Henry's door to get him for his operation.

"I can't believe we're doing this." I told her as she knocked.

"It's his choice." She reminded me.

"Come in." he called to us. We opened the door and stood there as he turned to us.

"You haven't forgotten about today, have you?" Helen asked him.

"Oh, I didn't forget. I just kind of changed my mind." He told us and I looked at him shocked and smiled.

"You don't want to go through with the operation?" she asked him.

"No. No, I don't." he said.

"May I ask why?" she asked.

"I'm not sure if there is any one reason. I thought about Edward, Robbie, what I might contribute if I gave the powers a chance. I guess I thought about some butterflies. Wow, I can't believe I just said that." He said and we all shared a little laugh.

"Neither can I. Doesn't sound like you." She told him.

"I guess you can say I'm a changed man." He said with a smile.

"For the better." I agreed. Helen and I soon left and walked away in silence.

"He came to terms with his new ability." She said.

"Yes, he did." I told her before sighing. "Give me time. I'll get over him again."

"I never doubted you would. My only question is how long before he comes back into your life and tries to hurt you again. This time he nearly killed us." She said.

"I don't need your help remembering that, Helen." I told her stopping in my tracks. "He's my husband, and I'll probably always love him until I die. Whenever that is. My race…. Sometimes being who we are doesn't help when we fall for someone like him." I said before walking away unaware of the eyes on us through the window.