A/N: Sorry for the delay. Thank you so much for the love, every review makes me itch to write more for you guys! (Who am I kidding? Idk where this story is going so it's exciting for me, too.) Thank you to zroc and staphylococci for the review sprees. I love to see you guys take the time to review each chapter separately!

Disclaimer: James Patterson owns the characters and any recognizable canon info. Thanks JP, for this chaotic universe you gifted us.

M

To say I experience a new hell inside the house would be an understatement.

It's like receiving devastating news. It's a drastic jolt of reality that takes a moment to fully sink in. So, we take it slow, and move from one room to another only after we've all seen everything we wanted to see. It takes a while.

I think that's the only reason we cover so much in one day, though. Going back through the part of this building we knew. The living spaces. Our rooms, if we wanted to. Angel declines, which was a surprise. I make a mental note to check in with all the kids separately. God knows I would need my own decompression time with Fang.

When we get to Jeb's office, the air seems to be harder to draw into my lungs. I try to take subtle, deep breathes, reaching for stability. Fang's fingers flit against my elbow and then drag up my forearm, lacing finally with mine. I pull another breath.

I don't think any of us are surprised to see the discreet door in the wall, partially blocked by a surreal painting hanging over an ottoman, directly across from Jeb's sturdy teak wood desk.

"We never really came in here," Nudge says softly, peering around nervously. I step into the room behind her, cautious. Nervous.

She's right.

We never really came in here.

Except once. Right after Jeb left. I pulled Iggy and Fang out of bed one night and dragged them down here. It had been three days since we'd seen Jeb and he had never left us that long—especially without any word. The food had been stocked the day we woke up without him, but since then we'd eaten multiple times. We were running out of food.

I had convinced Fang to come into this forbidden room tucked behind the kitchen for the first time, because I was terrified of what was in there. I had worked it up in my mind to be this horrible thing, this awful mystery about our disappeared father. I was absolutely inconsolably those first few days, after being thrown into the leader role—this time not only in sparing practice. I was in charge. All the time.

And I was responsible for feeding the others.

Once we'd been inside, though, my fears melted. I had noticed the room was as if he'd just been there; his bedroom had been the same way. Clothes strewn over the armchair in the corner, a coffee mug on the dresser. Like he would walk back in any second. The office had been in a state of mid-chaos that day. Whole drawers pulled out; cabinets wide open. All empty. The only thing we found in the office besides his knickknacks and spare office supplies was a pile of papers on the desk, with a note on top of it. My name was scrawled in Jeb's hurried, pointed handwriting.

I remember seeing that, and realizing he was never coming back, and wanting to scream. What a waste that trust had been, what a painful waste of energy. Fang had held my arm that day, nearly holding me up as I reached for the letter. I had been crumbling already, on the verge of tears, wondering how Jeb could possibly be gone—and then I read the first line of the letter.

I know you can do this.

Fury had lit up in the pit of my stomach. Any test I failed, any time Jeb watched me try to give up, that's what he'd say. I know you can do this, Max! When are you gonna realize that? I had read that one sentence and hardened immediately, ripping the note in half with an awful grunt.

So then, for a short time after, I had thought it was a test. I'd figured out Jeb's bank account information with Fang's help. We'd sorted through the documents Jeb had left out for us, little notes about how to do certain things. Password to his laptop, or what we assumed was his laptop. But the thing had been wiped clean, with only a file full of notes and instructions from Jeb about random household upkeepings and emergency solutions.

I remember that night so clearly now, the room barren except for what Jeb had wanted us to find. It had all felt so deliberate. For a while it felt like he was saying, Sit tight and wait for further instructions. So I kind of did. For a while. And then the holidays came, and birthdays came, and Jeb never came.

I grew out of waiting for him. But I had always wondered if Jeb deliberately never came back, or if he couldn't. I wondered if it wasn't safe for him to come back, or if he'd been hurt or captured or killed. I kept hope for this man for so much of my life. It's crazy to think I only underestimated him that much.

"If you want to take a look around before we go down, that's fine," Alana responds, looking at Nudge patiently. If anything, I can appreciate the fact that our lead detective is sensitive.

I notice a computer on the desk. I look at it pointedly, and Alana says, "It'll be taken for evidence. There are files on it."

I blink. "I want to see it. All of it."

Alana doesn't even hesitate. "All of you have access to everything. Some things will not leave my office, however. We'll work something out." She pauses, glancing at each of us. "We can discuss working together later. I think we should try to get this over with. It's not going to be easy. Let me show you the stairwell."

Well, the stairwell is massive. I imagined something dark and small, like a second thought was all it took to convince whoever created this place to add an underground laboratory.

But it's not. It's a spacious, double wide stairwell that is well lit and hospital-level sterile.

Because Jeb built this place.

And the lab was not an afterthought.

Even Iggy underestimated the space, and goes Wow under his breath, stepping through the doorway beside me. I reach back and graze my fingers with his.

"This is nuts."

I agree. That's kind of the only way to describe it right now.

"So, we have gained access to all six floors, but some rooms have special locks on them. We haven't figured it out yet. It's weird, because all the doors have security codes that we've been able to crack. But some of them are key locks."

I make a face at Fang, who returns it with a tightly guarded glance. I bump him with my hip, since he's been hovering just at my side since we started the tour, right behind me. Like he's waiting, like he'll need to hold my arm again. Keep me up. He reaches a hand out to me and when I take it, he squeezes tight.

I wonder now for the first time if I'm gonna need to keep him up.

We descend the staircase, our steps echoing obnoxiously. The doorway is already wide open. People are working down here, collecting and taking things away in big boxes. Someone passes through the doorway and up the stairs past us.

"We still don't understand why he needed so much room," Alana says, looking at me.

I'm in shock, and horrible with this shit, so I say, "Right? There's only six of us. I guess he wanted one floor for each to guarantee no contact."

She blinks at me, her eyes growing slightly larger. I guess joking about being locked up isn't the most helpful response right now.

"This first room is a control room of sorts," she says after a long pause. Iggy retorts from the back of the group, "Fantastic!"

Alana flinches a little. She's going to have to get used to our horrifying humor.

"Cameras throughout," she glances up at me, "in the living spaces as well."

None of us gasp. We'd figured as much as soon as she'd said underground laboratory. It's uncomfortable to think about but not the worst we expected to experience on our tour of horrors. We peer into the control room, but so far none of us want to really step into these evil spaces.

Down the hall, another door is propped open on the left. Alana says, "Here are the archives."

Rows and rows of filing cabinets extended all the way back into the long but narrow room. Some of the cabinets were wide open, still some files and tapes in there. My heart starts racing. I realize that standing here, wondering what all happened in these half-hollowed out rooms is not the worst part of this.

No, it would be seeing the evidence, watching it happen again through cabinets and cabinets worth of documents and videos and recordings. We are going to really relive some shit if we are going to be any help to this case.

I look around at the others, who are collectively making the same assumption. We're fucked. And the worst part is, we know there is nothing good in the archives, but we want to see them anyway. Maybe to understand ourselves better, maybe because we can't live without knowing. But as I make eye contact with each Flock member, I know none of us are ready to back out yet. Some of them are glancing around the large room, looking at the cabinets with sincere interest and heavy caution.

"All of this will be gone through, recorded, and sorted. Again, you all have access to whatever we find. In fact, we will need you to corroborate," Alana says evenly. "Whenever possible."

I tighten my grip on Fang's fingers, which are still in mine and still holding me firmly.

We take longer with the archive room, but again we don't go inside. There are detectives inside, quietly working throughout the rows of files. But we need a moment just to realize what this means. How much of our lives were watched and measured and predicted and controlled deliberately. I, personally, am just now realizing how much of my life I spent a prisoner, a test subject. A pawn.

I feel like the ground is shaking.

As we continue on, many rooms we pass look much the same. Empty, pristine labs. Some with large, alien-looking machines and gadgets. Some with long, metal tables and sharp instruments. Every single room seemingly harmless, if not a tad creepy—but each one triggering violent and painful memories. But old ones, ones from the School. Nothing from the first few floors of labs and storage rooms and offices triggers a memory of this secret lab.

No one else had mentioned remembering anything, but that didn't mean anything.

I look up at Fang's carefully guarded expression, calculating the tightness of his jaw and the crease between his eyebrows. I wonder what he's thinking. If he's remembering. Now definitely is not the time to ask, but I try to remember to bring it up when the initial earth shaking has ceased for everyone.

"The fourth floor down is all rooms with the key locks," Alana says. "Not much to see, but I want to show you anyway. It's...different."

Consider us intrigued. We take the last flight of stars downward and through another propped door. The first thing I notice is that we step onto soft plush carpet. There is a shoe rack by the entrance, a coat rack on the opposite side. The hall is long, and instead of the same florescent lights as the last three levels, there is a soft golden light from a long row of hanging lights. The hall is lined with tall metal doors. I notice the doors don't have windows or doorknobs—just a circular indentation where the doorknob should be. I walk cautiously down the hallway, my heart thumping wildly. I reach the first door and feel the Flock crowd in around me.

We inspect the lock in silence. The circular indent is half the size of my palm, and has random raised circles.

Gazzy is the first to speak. "Those look like the fridge magnets."

Nudge gasps quietly. "Oh my God, those do look like the fridge magnets."

I look back at the shape in the door and immediately remember what they are talking about. Six little magnets that had been on the refrigerator. They stuck onto the fridge door with the bumpy side, not the flat side. Gazzy used to sit and play with the magnets while Iggy made creations in the kitchen.

It would be just like Jeb to leave the pieces of the puzzle lying around in plain sight. Everything was supposed to mean something, add something to his twisted bigger picture. I try to swallow the lump in my throat. The anger and the fear are outshined by the absolute betrayal I feel.

"Are there magnets on the fridge upstairs?" Nudge says, pulling me out of my mind. She's bouncing on her feet slightly. "I can't remember if they were there or not, but they have to be! They were there that morning; they were always there!"

Before I can say anything, Gazzy interrupts excitedly. "They aren't on the fridge. I took them down after the Erasers took Angel. We were going to use them to rig a trap—before we had our actual good idea."

I remember their recounting of the traps they'd laid for the Erasers that day. They had even wondered if they had accidentally blown up the house, since their revenge tended to be heavy on explosives. But clearly that wasn't the case.

"Where are they?" I ask, my fingers twitching in Fang's. Fang's thumb taps the back of mine a few times and then smooths over it soothingly.

Gazzy looks at me, levelly now that he's grown to nearly my height. He nods toward the stairs.

"Upstairs in my room."