When I opened my eyes again, I peeked at Misako and found her frowning.

"Is there anything I can do to help? Anything at all?" She asked.

"Nope," I dismissed, trying to get the conversation to move on. "It's not like you can change the past."

Misako nodded slowly, still frowning. "But is there anything I can do now?"

I thought about that for a second. "I don't think so. I mean, I've got places to be and people to meet, but I have to fly to get to them. And the sooner I can do that, the better."

"Well, I'm not certain you should be flying any time soon," Misako stated. "If you try to fly before you're ready, the injury to your wing could be worsened. I couldn't tell the full extent of the damage just by looking at it, but maybe I can figure it out another way."

"Like some kind of test?" I asked, trying not to tense up when that idea brought back more memories of the School.

"Yes, likely an X-ray," Misako said. "We have X-ray generators and detectors at the vet's office I work at. I should be able to get us access to one for long enough to check out your wing. Would you be okay with that?"

"Sure," I said, doing my best to sound calm and casual, like I wasn't freaked out in the slightest even though I was extremely freaked out. "Let's try it."

The experience of driving to the veterinarian office Misako worked at was an odd one. I hadn't been in a car in literal years, so every part of it surprised me: the seat belt, the jolts caused by turns and stops, the way other cars surrounded Misako's car. By the time we got to the office and got out of the car, I was so jumpy I wanted to get right back in the car and leave. This was going to help me figure out when I could leave for real and get back to my mission, though, so I had to stick to it.

Misako had come up with a cover story and filled me in on it in the car, so I wasn't surprised when she said to the receptionists as soon as we walked in, "Wu's friend here is doing a paper on veterinarians and needs some more information, so I figured I'd show him around."

"Just like you, Misako, finding a way to come in on your day off," one of the receptionists said with a teasing smile.

Misako laughed a little, ushering me forward past the receptionists and through a door into a long hallway.

The door swung closed behind us, and that's when it all hit me.

The smell of cleaning fluids.

The sound of test tubes clinking together.

And the sight of two men looking at a clipboard full of papers, both of them wearing white lab coats.

I almost lost it, then and there. My whole body tensed up, and my mouth went dry. I wanted to scream, to run, to hide, to fight my way out. If Misako hadn't been there, I just might have.

But Misako was there, and she took one look at my wide eyes and clenched jaw and then she pulled me into a side room, saying with a perky tone as she did so, "And this is one of our testing rooms."

She closed the side room's door and turned to me, asking, "Lloyd, what is it? What's wrong?"

It took me a few seconds to gather myself enough to respond, and when I did, it was in a small, shaky voice. I stated, "Everything's wrong. Everything here, it just reminds me of, of bad times. I need to leave. We need to leave right now."

Misako frowned. "We're where we need to be to get an X-ray done. Can you hang in there a few minutes longer? It'll help us figure out how long you'll need before you can fly again."

And that meant it would help me get on my way to save Zane as soon as possible. I took a shaky breath, then another, then another, again and again until I wasn't quite as tense. I said in an almost whisper, "Okay. Yeah. But it's got to be quick."

"As quick as possible," Misako agreed.

She led me to a table and had me lie down. A bulky mechanical thing was in the air above me, making me feel pinned to the cold metal of the table. Misako stepped away behind a wall, a few whirs and clicks filled the air, and then it was done.

Misako brought me back behind the wall then, and as soon as the pictures developed, she pulled them up, dark sheets with white outlines covering them.

"This is your shoulder blade," Misako explained, running her finger over one of the pictures. The bone looks in perfect condition, so the bullet only did damage to the skin and some of the muscles."

"That's good, right?" I asked, thinking through past injuries I'd had.

"If the muscle damage isn't too extensive, which it doesn't look like, then yes, that's pretty good, Misako agreed. "Your wing bones look all right too, like they weren't even grazed. The muscle damage here and here may take quite a while to heal, as it sometimes takes even longer than bone to get back to normal, but it should heal without any problems."

I thought back to times I'd strained or damaged various muscles. The whitecoats and later Jeb Garmadon had always told us that we healed far faster than regular humans, so maybe the "quite a while" that Misako was estimating wouldn't be too long. I had to hope so, at least.

"Hmmm," Misako mused quietly.

"What?" I asked, turning from the pictures to look at her.

She was frowning, her eyebrows pulled low over her eyes. "This. This right here."

I looked at the pictures again. She was pointing at a small white rectangle situated in the middle of what looked to be my arm.

"What's that?" I asked.

"You weren't wearing any jewelry or anything, were you?" Misako asked instead of answering my question.

Now it was my turn to frown. "Uh. No? Do I look like a jewelry kind of guy to you?"

Again, she didn't answer me in favor of humming thoughtfully to herself. "But then…"

"But then what?" I asked.

Misako sighed. "Lloyd, I'm a little uncertain about this, but I think I know what that is. Well, I know what it looks like, at least."

"Then what is it?" I pressed.

"It looks like a microchip," Misako said slowly. "Like the ones we put into pets for their owners in case the pets are lost. If a lost pet with a microchip gets picked up and brought to a vet, the vet can scan the chip and know who the pet belongs to. Yours looks like some of the most expensive ones I know of. Those ones have trackers in them. The owner of a pet equipped with a microchip like that, they can find their pet no matter where the pet goes. They can always find what belongs to them."