"You may not have noticed, but we're kind of on a date" Wyatt growled.
"And you two look adorable" Jessica replied as she walked up from behind Lucy wrapping an arm around Lucy's neck in a mock hug. "But this little game of hide and seek is over." She pressed a gun into Lucy's back just between her ribs. Wyatt made a move for his own before Jessica pressed harder into Lucy's back, "Reach for that gun Wyatt, and your girlfriend dies."
"Okay" said Lucy as Wyatt slowly moved his hand away from his holster, "you found us, so now what?"
"Oh, you'll be coming with me, we have our futures to discuss." She nudged Lucy in the back to direct her off of the dance floor. "Cinderella time, kids. Fairy tale is over."
Wyatt nodded to Lucy and she knew exactly what he wanted her to do. She kicked back with heel hard into Jessica's knee and rammed her in the ribs with her elbows causing her to stumble backwards. Wyatt twisted the gun out of Jessica's hand and made to run off, but Lucy, boiling with anger at the woman who had betrayed them all and hurt Wyatt so badly, slammed her fist into the side of Jessica's face and sent her sailing into the next table.
Wyatt raised his eyebrows at Lucy. "I don't remember teaching you that." He smirked and kissed her hand as they ran out of the ballroom together.
"Jiya might have shown me a few things." Lucy huffed out as she lifted her skirt to run down the stairs.
"Remind me to thank, Jiya." Wyatt said as he shot a glace behind him seeing a much worse for wear Jessica, flanked by two goons each with their guns drawn. He pulled out his own gun and ducked himself and Lucy into a side passage. They made their way quickly through a long corridor desperately in search of an exit, finding only locked doors. "Shit!" Wyatt breathed out. They made their way down the hall until they came to another side hallway. Seeing a door at the end of the new passage, Wyatt started down that way, calling to Lucy over his shoulder, "C'mon."
They were almost to the end door when it opened to reveal Emma Whitmore and another one of her brutes. Emma lifted her gun and smirked "Well, well, well…look what we found."
Lucy turned to see Jessica running towards them from the other end of the corridor. They were trapped. "Wyatt," she sighed. "looks like our date is over."
Wyatt blocked Lucy with his arm, pushing her towards the wall glancing up and down the hallway. Lucy could see he was desperately seeking a way out of this situation, but she knew it was fruitless. Emma had them cornered. Five guns now pointed directly at them.
Lucy lightly touched Wyatt's arm, stepping out from behind him as he lowered it, gaping at her. "What are you doing?" he hissed.
Lucy turned to him, "Wyatt, there's no way out of this and you're not dying to protect me from a losing battle." Lucy turned her attention to Emma, "Okay, you've got me – now what the hell do you want?"
Emma smirked at Lucy. "Smart move, princess. I would've hated to bloody up that pretty face of yours again." Wyatt absolutely flinched. "Easy there, soldier" Emma laced her arm into Lucy's, "You and I are going to have a nice long chat." She began walking Lucy towards the exit door as Lucy kept looking over her shoulder at Wyatt who was still surrounded by Emma's thugs and Jessica.
"No! I'm not leaving without Wyatt." Lucy dug her heels into the floor, causing Emma to pull her along towards the now open door.
"You don't move and I have them shoot him right now."
Lucy hung her head down and chanced a glance up at Wyatt. He was shaking her head at her, willing her to resist, to fight, but she couldn't let him die. She gave him an apologetic tilt of her head and looked sharply up at Emma. "Let him go, you came here for me, right? Now you have me – let him go."
Emma smiled, "Oh princess, don't worry. He's going to prove pretty useful to us." Emma nodded at her goons, two of them left Wyatt's side and joined her, the other two descended on Wyatt, punching and kicking him as Lucy struggled to wrench herself out of Emma's grasp, screaming his name as her brutes pushed her out into the darkened street outside.
Rufus, Jiya and Mason spent the majority of the time in their new home configuring the computer system to the new monitors and setting up a new launch system in the LifeBoat's new docking bay. Jiya and Rufus worked side by side, talking animatedly about what could be happening on Wyatt and Lucy's night on the town. They were just taking wagers about the couple's current state of undress when Conner Mason clicked his tongue at them.
"Really, you two – after everything they've been through these past few months don't you think they deserve a little time to themselves without everybody treating them like some sideshow at a fair?
Jiya tried in vain, to suppress a grin. Rufus was far more successful in looking heartily ashamed of himself. "You're right, Conner." He glanced up at his mentor with wide eyes and raised eyebrows. "So…shall I put you down for making out in their skivvies?"
Checking the connections of the computer systems and the wired components, Mason did not even look at Rufus as he quietly said, "There's a twenty in my coat pocket." Rufus laughed as he wrote down Conner's wager. "I stand by what I said before, though. We shouldn't gawk at them when they get back, we're all adults here, we should try to act like it every once in a while."
"Speaking of which" Rufus checked his watch, "it's about time to pick up those two love birds. How's the charge looking, Mason?"
"We're at 95% - plenty of charge for making one complete trip. When you get back, I want to recalibrate the system and see if we can work out the kinks in that timeline matrix. If we can make that breakthrough…well, the implications are limitless. We would theoretically be able to return to any point in time where we already exist without the potentially fatal side effects Anthony suffered. Of course, we've got to find someone to test it on."
"We could always send Flynn." Rufus muttered.
"I heard that" Garcia Flynn answered, sidling into the hangar bay. "Why don't you volunteer, Rufus? Anthony was your mentor, was he not? I'm surprised you don't want to follow in his footsteps, successfully accomplish what he couldn't"
"Maybe he could've of - if, you know, you hadn't killed him. Anyway, I saw first-hand what that trip did to him – not a fan" Rufus added as he clambered into the LifeBoat hatch. Jiya clambered in behind him. "Where do you think you're going?" he asked her as he held out his arm to block her from getting into the hatch.
"Oh come ON, Rufus!" she replied. "You know I want to be there to see Lucy and Wyatt fresh off their hot date."
Rufus looked over to Mason who shrugged his shoulders, "Who am I to deny her such a treat?"
"Mason, you JUST said you didn't want us gawking at Lucy and Wyatt like they were some sideshow at a fair and now you're suddenly okay with Jiya," he pointed expressively at his girlfriend, "JIYA going along and giving them the third degree? Because you realize that's what she's going to do, right? Grill them? Ask them awkward questions? Make that Lifeboat ride even more uncomfortable than it already is?"
Jiya punched Rufus in the arm as Mason waved his hand dismissively at them, smiling. "You all head straight back. No midnight romps through the city, no double date to a piano bar. You come straight home."
"Thanks, Mason" called Jiya as she clapped her hands excitedly.
Wyatt blinked his eyes opened as he grimaced from the pain shooting down his shoulders and into his arms. He was vaguely aware that he was sitting in a chair and only slightly more aware that he was in a basement. The damp, musty and stale air was slowly awakening his senses to the fact that his arms and feet were tied. As his vision came into focus and he looked down at his ruined suit, the events of the evening came rushing back as he suddenly fought against his restraints.
"Glad to see you're finally awake." Jessica came strolling lazily into view giving him a pitying look, her face sporting a dark bruise under her left eye.
Wyatt couldn't help but grin seeing the result of Lucy's handiwork on her visage. It didn't invoke in him the horror that Lucy's battered face had, on the contrary, he thought in this case, especially, it had been well-deserved. He would never have done it himself, but he was more than happy to be in love with the woman who did.
Jessica gave Wyatt a small smile in return, "Happy to see me?"
If looks could kill, Wyatt would've murdered Jessica right then and there with the glare he sent her way. "Where is she?" he asked.
Jessica leaned her face close to his. "What? No kiss for me? I have to say, Wyatt, it hurts that you moved on so quickly. I can't say I'm surprised by you – but I thought, at least, she would have more class than to jump right into the arms of my husband the second I left the bunker."
"Ex-husband" – Wyatt corrected her. "You think I wasted any time on signing those divorce papers?" Her face reddened as she stepped away from him. "Hell, were we really even married?"
Jessica's face split into a wide, devilish grin. "Now, Wyatt. What do you take me for?"
"A liar."
She threw her head back and laughed, the action made Wyatt's stomach turn with revulsion. "Fair enough." She approached him once more and ruffled his hair. "You had your secrets, I had mine. Kept life interesting."
"Where is Lucy?" Wyatt repeated again with more force.
Jessica huffed. "I really don't know what you see in her." Jessica walked around to Wyatt's back and began massaging his shoulders. "A professor? A bookworm? Bit of a nerd, don't you think?" He shrugged away from her kneading hands. Jessica gave a resigned sigh. "She's not your type at all."
"I'm sorry, but I don't give a damn about you think my type is" he spat. "Now, where the hell is she?"
Jessica stalked over to the other side of the room, obviously upset. "God, Wyatt. She's fine, okay?" Jessica wasn't looking at him, but was instead pulling things out of her handbag and slamming them down on a rickety table. "Lucy is in high-demand these days." She opened the small bottle of pills she found in her bag and popped one into her mouth. "Headache." She explained as Wyatt gave her a questioning glance.
He smirked, happy to see that their conversation was rattling her. He, however, was feeling more at ease. Lucy was in high-demand, which meant that she was relatively safe – even if she was in Rittenhouse hands. "And so you assholes are going to use her as leverage, is that it?"
Jessica pursed her lips together and nodded, "Pretty much."
"I guess that means you're using me as leverage against her" sighed Wyatt.
Jessica looked amused. "Think pretty much of yourself, don't ya?" She winked at him as he glared at her, but she wasn't phased. Jessica leaned close to Wyatt's face again. "It doesn't have to be that way, Wyatt" she whispered, tracing her finger over his jaw as he jerked his head away from her. "Rittenhouse could use someone like you. It'd be a hell of a lot more rewarding than living in a rusty old bunker like a sewer rat, that's for damn sure."
Wyatt scoffed. "I don't know, you seemed to take to it right away."
A smile played across her lips. "Well, I had the extra benefit of sleeping with you." He turned his head away from her, scowling. Her face fell slightly. "Really Wyatt, you and I could be a great team – just like old times."
Wyatt refused to even acknowledge her last comment. As far as he was concerned that was another lifetime ago and one he desperately wanted to forget. He had no plans to walk down memory lane with her. He breathed out a sigh and nodded to the room around them. "So you traded a rusty old bunker, for a dank old basement? I'd say you got the short end of the stick with that one.
"We're not exactly on the best terms with leadership right now, but with Lucy in our back pocket, that's all gonna change. No more bloodline nonsense keeping us down. If Lucy even knew half of the power she has at her fingertips, she would leave your ass and that bunker in a minute."
Wyatt laughed. "Lucy's not like you. She sees this shit for what it is – a crazy ass cult."
Jessica gave him a wry smile, "We'll see about that. We can be pretty persuasive."
Lucy was half carried, half dragged into a small room in what appeared to be a burned out apartment building. The remnants of a fire evident along all the walls as well as the smoky stench of stale air. One of the toughs holding her arms threw her down on a dusty old couch as Emma strolled lazily into the room behind them.
"Easy, Jensen" Emma said. "She is a princess, after all."
"What the hell do you want with me, Emma?" "Why don't you just kill me and get it over with?" Lucy gritted out. She was thinking of Wyatt and praying that he was still alive.
Emma shook her head. "As much as I'd love to do that, you're pretty popular these days, princess. I would signing my own death warrant if I so much as put one hair out of place on your perfect head."
Lucy looked down at her torn dress and motioned to her dishelevled hair. "Looks like you're going to have a lot of explaining to do, then."
Emma stood over Lucy, smirking, "You thought you were being so clever, with all of your running around New York. Smart move, I must say – coming here. We almost didn't find you." She paced the room, kicking up clouds of dust and soot as she did so.
"How did you find us?" asked Lucy softly.
Emma laughed. "Jensen and I finally spied you at the baseball game. Your little group of ragtags stick out like a sore thumb."
So Wyatt had seen Emma. All of their running around and switching cabs, had done no good.
"So why didn't you grab me sooner? If you knew where I was, then why did you wait?"
"And miss the perfect opportunity of ruining your date?" Emma walked over to Lucy and clasped her hand roughly on Lucy's jaw jerking her face towards her. "Jessica, was plenty pissed about that. Looks like you've made yourself another enemy."
Lucy rolled her eyes and yanked her chin out of Emma's grasp. "I didn't realize we were ever friends."
Jessica cocked an eyebrow at her, "You'd do well not to make any more enemies than you need to, princess. You may be valuable, but that bloodline shit doesn't mean much to me – you of all people should know that."
"Then why am I still alive, Emma?" Lucy asked with more than a hint of annoyance in her voice. "You've killed my mother, you killed Keynes. Why not just finish the job?
"Because as much as I hate to admit it, I need your help." Emma spat out. "I may have the Mothership, but Rittenhouse has the money and the connections. There's only so much I can do without their full support." she said bitterly. "They may be short-sighted, aristocratic fools, but they've got friends in all the right places, and I just pissed them all off - so if I even want a chance at taking over the reins, I need to bring you in…as a show of good faith. Without you, I'm as good as dead, but I also have a time machine, and they don't."
"So I'm a bargaining chip?"
"You've got that right, princess. Not only are you the last direct descendant of David Rittenhouse, himself, you're also Carol Preston's handpicked successor for the recently vacated historian position." Emma winked at her.
"You mean, the position my mother held until you killed her." Lucy said contemptuously.
"Your mother went to war with me, dearie. You were the one that was supposed to die. She interfered on your behalf one too many times and thankfully there were some in leadership who agreed with me on that. Killing Keynes, though….well, that was where I crossed the line."
A familiar rage burned inside of Lucy, a rage she had not felt since that night in 1888 when she almost put a bullet in Emma Whitmore's head. Lucy's relationship with her mother might have been more than a little strained, but she was still her mother – and it was Emma who murdered her. Emma, who now stood before her, talking about killing her mother as if she had merely swatted away an annoying fly. There was no remorse, no sadness, no sorrow for what she had done. Her only regret was that now, apparently, she had to keep Lucy alive to make up for murdering both Carol and Keynes.
Emma was watching Lucy's face with mild interest. She could see the anger in her eyes, the redness in her cheeks, the furrow of her brow. She knew Lucy was enraged – and yet she did not care. In fact, she wanted to twist the knife just a little bit more. "Oh come on, Lucy – I did you a favor. You don't give a damn about your Rittenhouse blood, so don't act like it means anything to you now that your family is dead."
Lucy lunged off of the couch towards Emma, ready to kill her with her bare hands if she had to. She was caught around the waist by the tough named Jensen who held her back as she reached for Emma sobbing. "She was my mother!" Lucy gasped as she fought to break free of Jensen's hold, finally relenting as she drooped in his arms, crying.
Emma just stared at Lucy, expressionless. "Yes, and now Rittenhouse is without its chief historian. You know – I could turn you over to them and they could mold you and manipulate you into the perfect little princess that they always dreamed you would be." Emma walked over to Lucy and whispered, "Or, you could throw your support behind me and help me reorganize this boys club. I've got the Mothership, but I'm not well-versed on the nuances of history – that was never my strong suit. You, on the other hand, know historical pressure points like the back of your hand – your mother made sure of that."
'So that's it, huh? You need me to be your historian so I can, what? Help you play God? Change your future?" Lucy snarled as she fought the hold Jensen still had on her waist.
"I want to promote change, push for upward mobility, so that someone who works hard and proves themselves can have as much standing or more than someone who just happened to be born into all of this – ya know, someone like you." Emma said with a deadly calm.
Lucy glared at her. "How very progressive of you. But it may have escaped your notice that I don't care about my standing in Rittenhouse. I never asked for this. I don't want it and even if I did, why the hell would I help you after everything you've done to me?"
A smile slowly spread across Emma's face and Lucy immediately understood why she was smiling. As realization dawned across Lucy's face, she dropped her head and wept bitterly. Emma's voice could not contain its glee. "That's right, princess. You help me or I kill him."
The LifeBoat materialized in the same place it had been just hours before, except there was no Lucy or Wyatt waiting for them.
"Must have been a super hot date." Jiya said with a grin, but Rufus looked worried. For all of his joking back at the hangar, Rufus knew his friends better than that. He had been on enough missions with the two of them to know that no matter what was happening, their duty to the operation and to each other, as a team, came first. Neither of them would fail to show up at the appointed rendezvous time if they could help it.
"No, Wyatt would be here." Rufus jumped out of the Lifeboat and began pacing nervously in front of it. "He was being Mr. Responsible when he was going over the schedule with me. He may be head over heels for Lucy, but the dude is all about her safety. He wouldn't leave her here any longer than necessary. He wouldn't risk missing their ride back"
"I don't know" said Jiya with a smile. "They may have just decided that life in the past, away from all their troubles, is just too good. I mean, could you blame them? Why would you want to come back to a time when you can't even leave a protected base without fearing for your life?" Rufus was nervously biting his thumb. "Rufus – I'm sure they're fine. Maybe there was traffic, or maybe they couldn't get a cab." Jiya suggested.
But after an hour, even Jiya was starting to get nervous. Romantic dreams and visions aside, this was totally unlike both Lucy and Wyatt and as much as Jiya was loathe to admit it, Rufus was right – something had to be wrong.
The night was still and quiet, almost peaceful, as a light wind blew through the trees. But the mounting dread in Rufus's chest would not let him find any calm in their current situation. Panic absolutely washed over him when the still night air was broken by the sound of a buzzing alarm. "Rufus!" Jiya almost screamed at him from the hatch, "the Mothership has jumped!"
Rufus scrambled into the LifeBoat next to Jiya. "Shit! You don't think –"
Jiya looked at Rufus, her eyes wide in alarm.
Shit.
Shit.
Shit.
Shit.
The Mothership was on her way back to the present, with or without their friends…possibly with…most likely with…okay…they were 99% sure that Lucy and Wyatt were definitely nabbed by Emma and her band of time travelling goons.
"Rufus, what are we going to do?" Jiya was almost frantic now. What had started as an exciting night full of hope and possibilities for her dearest friends, had now turned into a desperate mission to try to save their lives.
Surprisingly Rufus was maintaining a sense of measured calm. He had been in this sort of position before, after Flynn had kidnapped Lucy. He just needed to keep his head. "Okay" he breathed "we just need to find Wyatt and Lucy – no big deal. We can do that, right? I mean, we can't track the Mothership's exact location, but we've got it narrowed down to fifty miles…San Francisco isn't that big –and when we find them, we've still got Flynn, he's not Wyatt, but he's pretty bad ass too…" The overwhelming reality and impossibility of their situation started to slowly settle into Rufus' mind as he sank down to his knees.
Jiya pulled Rufus into a hug as a feeling of helplessness threatened to consume both of them. "Agent Christopher will put a team on it, Rufus. We won't be alone. They can do a sweep of the city, check surveillance videos, try to catch a glim-"Jiya stopped short and gasped.
"What? What is it Jiya?"
"I know of a way that we can find them"