Chapter 15: Back to Work
October, 1999
Just three days ago Max was standing in the middle of a desert with the sun baking his back with the air sucking every bit of moisture out of his body. Today he was wandering through a swamp with the mud pulling at his boots and it felt like he was drowning with each breath. It should have been horrible.
Max felt himself smiling just a little. It was just like the old days, when he'd never known where he would be from one hour to the next. When he'd crossed time zones so often that he was sure that he was at least a week younger than the calendar said.
"Maybe just a couple of days younger, now," Max said to himself as he pulled his foot out of the mud and felt something twinge in his back again, just because he spent the night dozing in the driver's seat while the Rust Bucket's autopilot drove. The first time around he'd slept in a chair so often it didn't even bother him. Now...
Now he was pulling at his Plumber's jumpsuit as he tried to remember the old trick he'd had to make the alien fabric behave. Not that he was any luckier this time than he had been for the last dozen tries. No matter what he did, it wouldn't sit right. He was sure that there was something wrong with the supposedly smart material.
Which was just about par for the course. If things were going well, he'd still be retired. He glanced down at the computer screen that was built into the forearm of his suit and sighed. If it was, he'd be there for Ben's karate tournament in five minutes and for Gwen's tomorrow. Instead he was two thousand miles away.
For the first time ever, he wouldn't be there to cheer for them.
It was necessary, he told himself again. The Plumbers were looking everywhere for the mystery aliens and the new bunch were good. He'd seen enough of them to know that. There wasn't a single agent he wouldn't trust with his life. His life, but -
But his gut said that the aliens were after Ben. He wasn't sure why, their attack on Fort Telsa was the closest they'd ever got to Bellwood and that was almost two hundred miles away, but that's what his gut said and he'd learned to listen to it a long time ago. If he was wrong, then the aliens still had to be stopped. If he wasn't, then it didn't matter how good the rest of the Plumbers were, there wasn't any way he could just sit on the sidelines. And if that meant he had to miss some of his grandchildren growing up... Well, there would be other events. He could catch up later, after he made sure that they had a later.
The excuse was as familiar as everything else.
It was as familiar as the bugs that were buzzing around his head. He swatted at them when he felt them land on his ears or nose, but there wasn't much of a point. There were always more bugs in a swamp. He could have put on his mask - he had it tucked into a pocket on his hip - but he hated the thing. Even with all built-in gadgets, Max couldn't help but trust his own eyes and ears more.
Not that there was anything to see or hear. The swamp seemed like it got quieter with every step he took, until the only noise he heard was the sound of his heart pounding in his ears. The tension built up until the trees suddenly parted and he saw the only sign that people had ever been out here: a single cabin that stood in the middle of a clearing. It was small, barely big enough for a living room and a bedroom and a small bath, but it would make a cozy fishing hut or hunting lodge. There were no lights on and Max couldn't see anything moving.
Not that he was dumb enough to march , he'd seen plenty of traps just like this and he knew better. He froze and waited for something to happen as he studied the cabin and the trees around it. He didn't have to wait long before he heard a twig snap to his right. He might be old, but he had his pistol in his hand and was spinning around before the sound stopped echoing.
A dozen different plans went through his head as he waited for the flash of the snow-white skin that covered their unknown aliens, or Alien X. The thing was a monster at almost nine feet tall if the films were right, so aiming wasn't an issue. The other ones, the purple and green things that served it would have been harder, but Max knew he'd hit them, or at least the first few. After that, he'd either run for the hills or keep going. It all depended on how many there were.
Except there weren't any. He let out a nervous sigh when he saw the bare outline of a woman standing there, her gray jumpsuit blended in almost perfectly with the bushes around her. Even after decades in them, Max was still amazed by how well the Plumbers' suits blended in with their surroundings. It didn't matter if it was noon or midnight, urban or jungle, the things almost seemed to vanish. Now that he could make her out, her could see her hand on the pistol at her hip as she watched him. Her mask hid her face, but he was sure that she was rolling her eyes at the jumpy old man.
He never used to be so jumpy, but the thing that made him feel really old was that it took him almost a full minute to remember her name. Joan Wheels. She dropped down just a little before she spun around and looked behind her. When she turned back, he heard her voice come through his ear piece as she asked, "Hostile?"
She didn't say anything when he shook his head, but she kept watching him. She'd been staring at him ever since he joined up with her team and for a second he'd been flattered. That was before he heard the awe in her voice now that she finally said something to him. She wasn't rolling her eyes at the jumpy old guy, she was staring at him like he was a museum piece that came to life in front of her.
Wheels jumped just a little as he flashed the hand sign asking for a status report and he felt even older. He was a well made museum piece. He could mime all the moves. She gave him a thumbs up before she crouched down to watch the cabin.
All clear. The place was empty. After all of this, they were too late.
Max nodded even though it didn't feel right. It was too easy. He knew that if Gwen and Ben were here that little move would have led to a five-minute fight between the kids as they argued over what the hand signal meant. He had to keep telling himself that his grandchildren were better off in school than in this swamp no matter what anyone else thought, or how loudly they thought it.
Ben and Gwen included.
They probably wouldn't have fought so hard to come with him if they knew where he was going. Swamps weren't either of their things. They hated the heat and even Ben had enough of mud before their first summer was up. "Those two would be throwing a fit." Max grinned for a second at the thought even as he reached up to wipe his forehead. The sweat itched, but at least the bugs were leaving him al...
The bugs.
Max froze and slapped at his face, but his hand came away clean. He was in the middle of the swamp and nothing was chewing on him. The bugs were gone.
He was in a swamp. The bugs were never gone.
And nothing was moving around him. There wasn't anything trying to scurry away through the mud, or jumping around in the trees. He looked up and hoped to see some birds hiding above him, or squirrels, but the trees were empty. And they looked...
Wrong. The trees still had their leaves, but they were all going brown at the edges. He walked up to the closest and gave the trunk a poke with his finger that went straight through the bark. He looked down at the grass and even that looked dry despite the water that seeped through the mud and pooled in his every footprint.
His hand stayed steady as he lifted his arm and tapped in a quick command. He should have felt better when the screen showed the same healthy green glow that the swamp around him should have had, but he didn't. He ran the scanner three times, and each time the area around him came up clean. There wasn't the slightest bump in the radiation level, or any trace of poison. Everything was dead, but the computer didn't know why.
Max looked around and finally noticed just how bad the back of his neck itched and that feeling was what finally made him wave his hand over his head.
It only took a moment before the rest of his team showed up. Wheels was the first at his side, of course, but a couple of more Plumbers appeared from out of the swamp a moment later. Max couldn't see their faces either, but he knew who they were with just a glance. One was a slight man who was barely taller than Wheels and Max didn't need to see the man's eyes to know he was glaring. Whatever hero-worship he might have had didn't survive the fact that his parents named him Neil Armstrong.
It was a shame. Neil was quiet, but a good man. If nothing else, the two would have bonded over their love of explosions. This Neil had more of a flare with military explosives, but it was hard to watch a Saturn rocket launch and not grin.
The other man was a hair taller than Max, and Max knew just from the way that he moved that this wasn't his first swamp. He stepped too carefully, and his eyes never left the tree line. Max was sure that he'd been in Special Forces before he got the Plumbers attention, and was willing to bet on him being a SEAL.
They were good people; even if they'd only been Plumbers for six months. They should still be training. They would have been if there were more that three dozen active agents in the world. Max shook his head at that. 36 Plumbers. Before he retired there were that many in North America alone. Now the new guys were tossed into the deep end to try and make up for it, but they were adapting. He'd only watched them for a few hours, but it was enough to know that they were a good team.
But they weren't his team. As good as they were, Ben and Gwen were better. Even if they were so much noisier.
"What is it, Tennyson?" Albright asked as soon as he walked up.
Max bit back a sigh. He'd been trying to get them to call him by his first name since they met up that morning, but they wouldn't. At least he got them to stop calling him mister. And sir. "We've got trouble. Check your scanners."
Wheels reached up to her chest and tapped the four-inch round badge that hung there without another word. Albright looked around and scowled before he reached for his. Only Armstrong complained. "They would beep if..."
Wheels elbowed him. "If Max Tennyson says check the scanners, check the scanners."
Max glared at the badges in their hands. They were new, and looked so small that Max thought that they were just decoration when he first saw them. Even after all the alien tech he'd seen he was still surprised when they told him about all the things that were jammed inside. Communicators, holographic projectors, scanners and a GPS. Those little disks did the work of most of the stuff he had stashed in the Rust Bucket, and it didn't seem possible. When they offered him one, he'd turned it down. When they insisted he took it and stashed it in a safe place in his RV. Not because it was new. New never scared him.
No, he turned it down because they made the disk look like the watch face of the Omnitrix. The Plumbers never used a symbol before. They didn't need one, they didn't want anyone to know they were there. Especially not the bad guys. Let them keep guessing, it scared them more. That they were using one now, and that they were using Ben's...
It felt like the Plumbers were taking advantage of all of Ben's hard work. Of all of their hard work.
"Clear," Albright said, but his face went still as he reached over and pulled on a branch of a tree. It broke clean off with just a tug. The whole area was going to come down in the first hard rain. "The aliens must have had a problem with their projector. They didn't notice it when they were making all the little portals during the last week, but when they made the big one something shorted out."
The small dimensional portals were what caught their attention to begin with. They were tiny, and if it only happened a couple of times no one would have noticed, but it kept happening. They were only open for a few minutes at a time, though. Not enough to transfer anything, but it might have been just enough time to phone home. They were trying to triangulate in on them when the big portal opened a few hours ago.
They didn't have any problem following that portal. It showed up like a flare on all of their instruments. There was just one problem.
"This wasn't done by a projector." Max picked at a leaf and watched it crumble in his hand. He'd seen the same side effect almost twenty years ago in the burned ruins of a Sludgepuppy colony. Even after all this time, he still shivered as he remembered the fires that flickered with a purple light and took a week to die out. "And the aliens aren't here."
"How do you know?" Armstrong asked as his head darted back and forth. "Maybe we just can't detect the radiation."
"They'd never fit in that cabin, and I know that this isn't how a projector malfunctions. No, this is something else."
"You've seen one go up?" Wheels asked in surprise.
Max nodded and let the bits of leaf dropped from his hand. "How do you think they carved out the Rushmore base?" That file should have been a part of their training. It was a part of his. They were testing the first Null Void projector they'd gotten their hands on. Its last owner didn't need it anymore and alien tech was always nice, but a piece was missing. No one thought a thing about it. It wasn't like they got most of the alien tech in one piece. They already had a test pit dug into the mountain to test damaged alien tech, and ways to jury rig a fix if they had to. Besides, the granite was thick enough to take anything that a hand gun could do. They thought that right up until a sphere of granite almost a thousand feet wide vanished in a flash of red light. He remembered the second of mind-numbing terror when his projector started shorting out a Niagara. He never would have risked turning it back on if Ben didn't need them. "We'd be standing in a crater if this was a broken projector."
"So if it's not a machine, then -" Wheels began, but she stepped back before she finished the sentence.
"The DNAliens are using magic," Albright finished. His grip tightened around his rifle as he stood a bit straighter. They were a good team, Max had seen their files. They took down a dozen small alien incursions, but this was new and he could see the worry now.
"That's it," Armstrong said, and his eyes went to Max for the first time all day. No, since he'd watched Max step out of the Rust Bucket and realized that he was alone. "It's time you called in the big guns."
"My grandchildren aren't guns," Max said. His voice was a low growl as any bit of humor vanished from his face. He'd heard the same from so many people, all the way up to the top. And he said the same thing now that he did every other time. "They're kids. They're eleven." And Ben should be in the middle of the second set of his tournament. He hoped that Carl was taping it, and that Gwen was cheering as loud as he asked her to.
They weren't even twelve yet. That's what they needed. Not this.
Armstrong didn't back away at all. He didn't even look away. None of them did, but Wheels at least had the decency to sound sorry as she said, "The Omnitrix..."
"We've dealt with this for decades without the Omnitrix," Max said. "We can do it again."
"But your granddaughter," Albright said. Max's jaw clamped together even as the man held up his hand. "If this is magic... I know she's young, Tenny - Max. I know she is. My Alan is only a little younger and I wouldn't want him mixed up in..." He stopped and Max wondered if he knew about what the Plumbers were working on. If he did, Max hoped the man would say no when the time came. "Max. I know she is, and that she isn't that strong with the arts, but she's all we've got and we could use her. We could use both of them."
Max didn't know how news of Gwen's talent had leaked out, but it had. The only good thing was that no one knew just how strong she was. That everyone looked at her and all they saw was the eleven-year-old girl instead of the sorceress who juggled boulders with a whispered spell and who's lightning bolt melted a hole through the wall of the Rushmore base. It was obvious with Ben, but she could still live a normal life if she wanted to.
If. He didn't know what she wanted anymore. Not like he did with Ben.
But that didn't mean that she had to be here. Not yet. "This is just a recon mission. If we find anything I'll call them in, but not until then."
"But -" Armstrong started.
This time Albright was the one who stopped him. "Agreed. Report, people."
"Whatever came out of the cabin left footprints," Wheels said. Albright nodded and she led them around the house. It looked a lot less cozy on the other side. Half of the wall was in the yard now, but the room inside still looked dry, so whatever it was that had gotten out, it wasn't gone for long. If they hurried, they might even catch up to whatever did it. If, but not before they had some idea of what they were chasing. Wheels pointed again at some irregularly spaced gouges in the ground that lead from the cabin to the swamp. She walked up to the nearest and squatted down to look at it better. "Whatever it was, it was heavy. Three or four hundred pounds."
"Was it the big guys?" Max asked even though the answer was obvious. They didn't have much on the alien X's, but they had footprints.
"No," Wheels said with a shake of her head. "The shape's all wrong. I don't know what it was."
"So they aren't the ones moving through dimensions," Max said. It should have been good news. They knew so little that even knowing what the aliens weren't was a help. Not this time, though. The one and only DNAlien they'd caught was human, despite what it looked like. The DNA didn't lie and it was almost all human except for a few extra strands. That discovery was how they got their code name. One of the theories why was that they were humans from another dimension. Even with the one-eyed octopus look they wouldn't have been the weirdest humans they'd run into. It was the best theory in so many ways.
All the other ones were straight out of a horror movie.
"There's still a hole in the world in there for us to plug up," Albright said, "and we have to find out who made it."
Wheels nodded as she stood up and her eyes followed the tracks to the swamp before she turned back and pointed at the house. "It came out there. It wasn't in a hurry. It stopped and looked around for a minute, and then it headed out in a run. It was going in a pretty good pace for something this big by the time it hit the swamp."
"It was trying to get away?" Armstrong asked.
"Or it was chasing something," Max said. He looked over at Wheels. "Do you see any other tracks?"
Wheels shrugged. Then she reached up and pulled off her mask. Her short cut blond hair went with it until she shook it out. "I see some spots that look like shoe prints, but the ground is too dry around the house for me to tell much about them."
"Don't suppose you recognize the tracks?" Albright asked.
Wheels studied the large tracks. "No. Bits of it look familiar, but on the whole... I've never seen anything like it. I think it had a tail. Or two. You can see the marks where its tails hit the ground behind it. And the tracks change as it's moving. There, see?" It only took a moment for Max to see what she meant. The tracks were shrinking as they went. Wheels shook her head and stood up. "No idea what it is."
She didn't know what they were, but something about the marks looked so familiar to Max. It felt like he'd seen them before somewhere. He stared, but the memory wouldn't slip free. "Good work."
"Thank you, sir," Wheels said as her eyes went to the ground and she shifted from one foot to the other.
Then their eyes went to Armstrong, who was looking over the broken bits of the cabin wall. "This wasn't blown up, someone shoved their way through it. Strong sucker." The man looked back. "Super strong shape changer from another dimension. Anyone else thinking we've got a Cthulhu?"
"If we do," Albright said, "you can do the paper work."
"I'll leave it for Manny to finish up," Armstrong said with a shrug.
"Like your son would do it," Wheels said. "He'd just dump it on my Helen, and there's no way I'm going to let her suffer through government forms."
"So you'll do it?" Armstrong asked.
"Please." Wheels gave the man a look that was very familiar. "I'll just tie you to a chair and taser you until you did it right," Wheels said. "Much more fun."
They weren't all that different from his kids after all. "Good work."
Albright nodded. "Wheels, you and Armstrong see how far you can follow the tracks. Do not engage. Tennyson and I will check out the house."
The cabin seemed larger on the inside. Maybe it was the hole in the wall. It should have been cozy, but Max could tell just from a glance that this wasn't a room used for living in. No, this was a work room. There were benches and a heavy table shoved against the walls, but no couches or chairs. There was a small stove and refrigerator in one back corner, and a huge fireplace in the other, but those were the only concession to human needs.
Bookcases lined the wall across from them. Empty ones. He watched Albright go over to check it out anyway while he walked up to the only bit of furniture that was still standing in the middle of the room, a full length antique mirror. A broken one. Bits of glass had exploded out with such force that they were embedded in the wall and ceiling and the silver backing that used to be hidden behind the glass was burned black.
It was the portal. Max knew that without even having to check the scanner. He didn't have to, not when he saw the thousands of Norse Runes carved into the old oak frame. It must have taken months to prepare.
"Whoever lived here must have been pack rats," Albright said. "Thankfully they dust like my son. It looks like they had dozens of books up here, and a couple of hundred jars of all sizes. I can't believe whoever was here cleaned it all out before they left."
"They wouldn't leave anything. The stuff in those jars is hard to come across," Max said from personal experience. He had a heck of a time tracking down some of the stuff Gwen asked for. He bent over and grabbed a piece of glass off of the floor. He took a breath and threw it at the silver. He expected the shard to sail through the back with a ripple, but instead it bounced off and fell to the floor. "Portal's closed."
He heard Albright let out a sigh. Max couldn't blame him. Figuring out how to close it would have taken hours, easily. Unfortunately magic portals were not as clean as the Null Point Projector. That was why Max had always preferred technology. Point and click, no muss, no fuss. Magic portals were trickier and tended to act as a beacon to the things that lived between dimensions.
Hungry things.
Max tried to get up, but he had to put his hand down to push himself back to his feet. To make things worse he groaned while he did it. Like he needed more signs that he was getting old. The wood floor was rough under his hand, and covered with lines that went against the grain. Warm lines. Warm even through the gloves Max was wearing.
The sharp smell of burned wood filled the room. Max noticed it the moment he stepped in, but he was sure that it was from the fireplace or what ever had forced its way out of the cabin. If he didn't need to push himself up he never would have looked down and noticed all the small shapes and symbols that looked branded into the wood floor. His eyes followed the designs as they made a ten-foot wide circle around the mirror. "We've got a problem."
"What?"
"A second ritual."
Albright came over and looked down. And around. "Are you sure it isn't part of the portal?"
"Different language. The portal has Norse runes." Max waved at the mirror, but his eyes his eyes didn't leave the floor. "This is Aztec."
"How do you know?"
"Because I've seen it before," Max said. That had been a very, very bad mission. "In a small town up north. I pulled a girl out of a circle just like this once." The symbols were all just like he remembered. The only thing that was missing was the altar.
Which was just a big table. He pushed himself up and finally really looked at the table in the corner of the room. It was almost five feet long and sturdy. No surprise, it would have to be.
"Then you know what it does?"
"Whoever did this didn't have the power to open the portal. So they took more. A lot more. That's why all the plants are dead out there. They drained the plants of their life energy. Their manna." And it still wasn't enough. Max's eyes went to the table and he stared at the strap that was hanging from the legs.
"Aztec," Albright muttered. "The only thing I know about the Aztecs is what I learned in school. The Spanish beat them and..." His eyes went to the table and he took a deep breath.
Max nodded and wondered which had been on the table. The uncle or the niece.
"But, they sacrificed thousands of people. Not one."
"That's because everyone can do some magic. You should see me in the kitchen," Max said in a very weak joke. "Take enough energy from enough people, and one person can do miracles."
"And take one person who could do miracles and... Damn. Any idea who it could be?"
"There are only four people in the country that I know about who are powerful enough to make a good sacrifice. Two are safe," he'd talked to both last night, and he was sure that it had been too late for this to be either of them. He would be calling again the second he had the chance, though, just to be sure. "The other two were an uncle and niece. Hex and Charmcaster." He took a deep breath. He wasn't sure about the next part, but it felt right. "They lived here."
"We'll put a call out," Albright said. "Can you describe them?"
He did. He talked even as he stared at the table. At the straps that were too long for the sorcerer. They almost looked too long for the girl, too, but it depended on the knots. Unless the man shrank since Max saw him last... For just a moment he remembered the silver haired girl who caused so much trouble last summer and he felt tired. Albright wasn't phased by Charmcaster's description, but he blinked at Hex's. "..the NOPD should have files on them both already."
"I'll call it in and let the locals know to keep an eye out. I'll have them send some people out here, too. If we can find..." He paused and looked at the table. Or altar now. "Well, if we can find the body, we'll know which one we want."
"You won't. Portals go both ways. Did you find anything else?"
"No, they cleaned this place out pretty good."
"They always miss something," Max said. "We just have to find it." It took another ten minutes of looking before they found the burnt pages in the fireplace. They all looked too badly burned to read to Max, but Albright just waved his badge over it and a hologram of the page appeared, complete with writing.
Maybe he had been a little too quick to throw away the new toy.
Albright read the list and shook his head. "A list of retirement homes? These aren't even in state. Any ideas?"
"Just that it better not be for me."
That earned a little chuckle from the man. Albright looked back at the door to the bedroom that they'd both avoided so far. "Should we look at the rest of the house, or are we horrified enough for today?"
"It's why we get paid," Max said, and they went through the small door and stepped into a bedroom that was as luxurious as the main room was utilitarian. King sized bed, silk sheets, and an antique dresser and mirror.
Albright whistled and said, "Someone didn't want to rough it."
Max didn't say a word as he walked around the room. Every piece of furniture in here was valuable and well taken care of. He couldn't imagine it just being abandoned. He went through the dresser to see what was missing, but it was all full. Most of the clothes were for a man, one drawer had clothes for a teenage girl and the last for a little boy. Max stared at the small clothes and wondered who they were for. Unless Hex had a new apprentice, and that's why he..."Whoever got out didn't want to bring anything with them."
Which didn't make any sense. They had to know they couldn't come back, but they had plenty of time to move out. Why abandon everything?
There were two more doors in the room. Two more chances to find answers. Max picked one and it opened to a small but very clean bathroom. It was clean. Much cleaner than his ever was. He turned back and saw Albright standing frozen in front of the other door. Frozen until he reached up and yanked off his mask. Sweat beaded the man's dark skin. "How old did you think Charmcaster was?"
"Fifteen or sixteen," Max said as he came over. He saw the locks on the outside of the door for the first time and his stomach got so tight that it hurt. "Why?"
"Because that's how old this mattress looks."
Max looked around him. The room had been a closet, once. Nothing was in the tiny room except for a twin sized mattress and a couple of sheets. There wasn't even a frame, the mattress was just sitting on the ground. There wasn't any light in the cramped space, not even a lightbulb dangling from the ceiling. Albright knelt and ran his hand over the bottom of the door. Max stared at the scratches as the other man ran his hand over them. Hundreds of them marked the wood, and some of them stained brown. Max swallowed hard as Albright's voice came from somewhere very far away. "These are old, too."
"He was training her as his apprentice," Max said, but the word didn't seem right now. He remembered Hex, and knew that he wasn't a man who would share power with anyone.
"He kept her as a slave." Albright breathed out and stood up. He turned his back on the cell and walked a few steps away. "One or the other, huh? I know which one I'm rooting for."
Max took a step into what should have been a closet and he had to stoop over just to fit. He tried to imagine a little girl growing up in it. Trapped, helpless, powerless. In the dark. He'd watched Charmcaster call up light through pure will, and he suddenly knew that it was the first spell she had ever learned. He prayed that it hadn't taken long, that she had at least that small of a comfort. He thought of granddaughter growing up trapped in room like this and shuddered.
He wanted to go home.
It would have been so easy to turn around and walk away. He could see himself do it. The walk back to the Rust Bucket would be so much easier than the walk out, and the drive home would have been over in a flash. He could be back just in time for Gwen's karate tournament tomorrow. If she could compete with him hugging her, anyway.
He heard the other two walk into the room, but didn't turn around. "We followed the tracks all the way back to the water," Wheels said. "They were almost human by the end."
"Was it following someone else?" Albright asked.
There was a quick argument between Wheels and Armstrong before Armstrong won. "I spotted what looked like footprints every few feet. Whoever it was wasn't heavy enough to leave much of a trail. It's either a woman or a small guy."
"I'm should be retired," Max muttered to himself. He should be home, not out here chasing crazy sorcerers and their monsters through a swamp. Max wanted to walk away, but he couldn't. Not until things were right. Someone should have been here for Charmcaster, someone should have stopped this. They didn't, but they could find Hex for her. That was the only he could give her now. A chance for peace.
That and he could keep Ben and Gwen out of this. He stared at the closet that was a prison and the only good thing was that they weren't here to see it. Even after all the things they'd seen, they still thought that this life was an adventure. There wasn't any way his grandchildren were ready for this.
No one was ready for this.
And they shouldn't ever have to be. He closed the door just so he wouldn't have to look at the scratch marks anymore and thought for the first time that maybe...
Maybe it was time that they retired, too.
While they still could.
Author's note: Thank you to the guest who pointed out my mistake with the dates in a few of the chapters. Its been fixed. And also to Mr. BG for his advice with the last chapter.