Jack dragged his feet to the elevator and pressed the button to his mother's penthouse. As the doors closed and the elevator ascended, he retracted his spear so that it fit in his pants pocket. He let himself fall against the mirrored walls of the elevator and took a tired look at his face. His haggard and bruised reflection stared back at him with dead eyes. At some point after he had started destroying Chase's lair, he had had a moment of clarity. Of his emotions leaving way for that delicious numbness that he seemed trapped in, and letting him think rationally.

There was an ugly bruise where Chase had slapped him, and Jack knew that it would get even darker and uglier by morning. He always bruised horribly at the most minimal touch.

Still, the fact that he hadn't punched Jack's lights out was a small miracle on itself. The slap had in face cleared away the numbness in Jack's head.

"You will trap us both here!"

He was going to, yes. He had thought it out clearly in his head, driven by the same cold rage that he had come to rely on, just to get through every day.

But when Chase had slapped him, he had felt scared. Scared of dying along with Chase, and leaving everything behind. His mom, his future at the university, the list that his father had left him…He would be gone, leaving nothing behind but a mother that he had failed as a son. And when he saw his father, beyond death, what could he have told him? Sorry. I couldn't do it. I couldn't go on.

He had planned to grab on to Chase, letting his nanobots hold them together until the lava consumed them.

But he had been afraid, and ran away at the last moment, through the portal that he had woven into his coat. He had designed it for a single use, using the same technology as he had with his time machine, but limiting it to only spatial movement. His arrival had been wrong by a lot, and he had fallen on the concrete a block away from the penthouse he had sent his mother to, but he was sure that she had had a safe landing.

The elevator dinged and the doors opened to the penthouse. Now he had to trust that Chase hadn't found a way out of the lair before the lava consumed everything.

Who was he kidding? Chase most surely had found a way out. The bad guy wasn't dead until you saw the body, and Chase was a 1,500 years old immortal with unimaginable power. No way had he stayed inside and waited to die.

He was probably out and looking for him right now, and Jack had only a few hours to prepare some kind of defense.

He opened the door to the master bedroom, and saw his mother sleeping peacefully on the middle of the bed, just where Jack had set the delivery coordinates. He sat on the bed next to her. On his pants' pocket he still had the letter that his dad had left for his mom. He had carried it with him, telling himself that he would have the strength to read it one day. Well, considering this might as well be his last living day, he would have to read it now, even though he felt weaker than ever.

"If you are reading this Miranda, I am dead. Seems like a silly thing to point out, but how else could I start a letter like this? Either way, I hope you are fine and still have many years ahead of you. I hope Jack is fine too. I worry so much for him. It keeps me awake most nights. I've failed you as a husband too, I know. But by the time you're reading this, I hope we are already divorced.

I loved you Miranda. I love you still, and believe me that I will love you to my last moments. But we're terrible for each other. We have become terrible people, and even worse parents. Now that I am gone, please find a nice man who can take care of you and doesn't turn his eyes away when you drink too much, or stays at the office when Jack is being hard to deal with. Someone better than me, even if they're poor.

I'm leaving you half of everything so you don't have to worry about money, and Jack half of everything so hopefully between the love that you two have for each other, you will take decisions for the good of each other.

I love you Miranda, and my only regrets are that I couldn't be a better husband to you, and a better father for Jack.

Could you tell him I'm sorry? I'm so sorry for everything. But especially all the time with you both that I wasted away.

I was too scared to write it in his letter."