Part 7 – Vanished
November 2nd, 2011


1 : Dave

2:29pm
T minus 1 hour, 31 minutes

The cloth on his head made breathing difficult, but Dave was managing enough to keep his breathing even. His hands were cuffed, and he was sitting on a metal chair. Although he'd been blindfolded from the minute he had been captured, his perfect memory retained every corner, turn, and street length the car had made. He knew exactly where he was. He just didn't know how he was going to get out. At least, not yet.

"You look pretty good for someone who's supposed to be dead," an icy voice said from in front of him. Dave's throat instantly closed. Goddamn it, not now! he frantically thought as McKay's voice triggered an asthma attack. This was the man who had taken him, trained him, hunted him... And who had, ultimately, caught him.


2 : Michael

2:31pm
T minus 1 hour, 29 minutes

Although guns were no longer a general worry for him, when he was standing this close to a trigger-happy woman before he could disable it, then it was.

"You have thirty seconds to get out of my doorstep, and out of our lives," she said with a calm voice, even if her trembling wrists were betraying her. She had short, dark hair that kept getting in her eyes, so she tried to shake her head to clear the bangs from them. Michael slowly raised his hands, more to focus his energy faster than to surrender.

"I'm on your side," he slowly said, his eyes staring at the gun, his mind recognizing, cataloguing, and disabling it once he knew what the trigger mechanism was. All in all it took him about four long seconds. He hadn't had many opportunities to do this in real life, and he was more than glad that he had learned—and practiced to death—the trick Ray had taught them so long ago.

"No one's on our side," she said, pressing the trigger just a fraction more.

"Well, lady, whoever is Dave's enemy, is my friend," he said, hoping the words would ring a bell. They did.

Her eyes widening, she hesitated for a second debating if she should lower the gun or not. She opted for a third option. "Get in! Get in with your hands where I can see them!" she snarled, moving her gun to show he had to come in. Michael was fine with that, he wanted to have his hands at the ready as well. He closed the door behind him with his foot, the doorknob barely making a click. If there was anybody else in the apartment, he didn't hear it, and she didn't call for any reinforcements either.

"What do you know about Dave?" she said in a hoarse voice, still pointing at Michael, circling him until she got the living room couch between the two of them.

"I have a deal with him." That was the wrong thing to say. Her eyes got suspicious.

"What did you do?" she asked in a clipped tone.

"What do you mean what did I do?" Michael asked, slightly offended.

"Only someone who has no choice makes a deal with Dave. So you must have done some law-breaking, or pissed off someone important and deadly enough that you had to run, and not exactly into the waiting arms of the law."

"Daniel didn't do anything wrong, and he still got tangled with him," he pointed out, sidestepping the reason for his own unfortunate circumstances.

"Daniel was too brilliant. Dave was just a goal. He got to Dave, Dave was impressed, and then he wouldn't let him go." All Michael needed to know was in those short sentences. It was all the confirmation he was hoping for. So it was true. That man had been part of the Network Keepers.

"And now you're on the run," Michael said, looking at the apartment. It actually looked well-loved and lived-in, not exactly what Michael would expect from someone on the move. She shook her head as if reading his mind.

"No... Not exactly," she amended. "Something's happened... something bad. Daniel called me this morning, said I should be on the lookout for weird people showing up on my doorstep. And oh, here you are, so nicely makeing Danny's premonition come true," she sarcastically pointed out.

"I'm here looking for some answers he might have," he said. She looked skeptically at him. "Look, we needed Dave's protection, and we no longer want it. All we need is a bit of information to make him break the deal. As far as I can tell, Daniel's the only one who has ever managed that."

She lowered her gun, and narrowed her eyes. "How do I know you're telling the truth?" she asked, her gun now pointing more at the couch than at Michael, but still not a complete sign of trust. Granted, the gun was disabled, but that didn't mean Michael had to look relieved.

"I've been searching for something... for a long time. Dave's Level Six codes. I know Daniel went through them, and... I also know there are a few files in there that are about me. I want to know what is in those files. I want to know what Dave is planning to do with our deal."

"You're wasting your time. Daniel's not here," she said, tightening her grip on the gun.

"I expected as much. Listen, I don't need to sit down and have cookies with him. All I want is some way to contact him, ask him what he knows, how I can get myself out of this mess." How to fully breach the Level Six codes. Anything, really, he wasn't going to get picky.

"Sure. Well, one word of advice? Don't think it's gonna be easy. My baby brother made a deal with that man for one year, and it took him another five to finally break it. Dave does not surrender his 'investments' easily."

How curious. "Investments" was one of Dave's favorite words to describe their deal. This woman knew far more than Michael would have thought.

"Just one email address. One phone number. I know you talk to him, you just called him this morning." Michael's eyes moved around the room, looking for something to touch, hoping to get a flash on what he wanted to know. If not now, he would come later.

"He called me, not the other way around," she said, exasperated, probably because he was so nonchalant at having a gun pointed at him. "Do you want to know what finally got Danny out of that? He made another deal. His silence for his freedom."

Michael stopped snooping and centered on her eyes. If that was all it would take to get out of Dave's shadow, he was more than happy to pledge a vow of silence.

"Dave bought that?"

"Of course he didn't. Not at first. But what was he gonna do? Shoot my brother? Dave is many things, but he's not a killer, especially not of Network Keepers."

"What?" Michael said, his turn to be surprised.

There were few things Michael had pieced together with solid proof, and one of them was that Dave was no saint. Every single Agent that had been part of the Special Unit in 2000 was now dead, and it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out who had been able to trace and "dispose" of that group of people. Michael hadn't known what to do with that information when he had found it a year ago, but just to see Max's quiet acceptance, a little of that white room shadow disappearing, had been more than worth it. Whatever his reason, Michael couldn't condemn Dave for it.

"You're not the only one who has been trying to discover that man's secrets, you know," Daniel's sister was saying, "I've been hunting him down for six years. Once Danny got out, I burnt it all. No sense having Dave coming to my doorstep." She narrowed her eyes as if suddenly she was wondering who she had standing in the middle of her living room.

Michael didn't care. "You must have something," Michael pleaded, desperation crawling in his voice. "I've been trying to find anything I can about Dave. And everything's been closed off."

"Of course it is. You are working from the inside. You need a wide berth to get to his secrets. And—"

She paused as if she had heard something. Michael stopped to listen, too. A second later, her eyes widened. "Oh shit! NO! No! No!" she cried out, forgetting about the gun and Michael and their conversation, and turning back to run further into her apartment. Michael smelled it then: something was burning.

If the fire alarm went off, then firefighters would be on the scene in minutes. And there would go his chance at finding out way more than he had hoped for. He couldn't let that happen. First he went for the system, touching his hand to the wall, pretty much frying half the house's electrical wires. Then he followed her into the kitchen. White smoke was coming from the blackened cookies on the tray that Daniel's sister was taking out of the oven. Not even his highly honed powers would be able to save those.

"Open the windows, for crying out loud!" she snapped at him, and Michael dutifully complied. After two minutes of trying to get the smoke out and frantically looking at the ceiling for signs of the imminent alarm, she finally sighed in relief. "I'm Christy," she said, extending a hand.

"I'm Michael," he simply said, shaking it.

"Well Michael, I promised Danny silence before he vanished. I never said anything about not listening."


3 : Isabel

2:37pm
T minus 1 hour, 23 minutes

"What's wrong with the phones?" Isabel asked, annoyance in her voice. She was supposed to meet Jesse in twenty minutes, but that didn't seem likely right now. She was going to be late, but her discussion with Max on how to approach the subject of their alien pasts had seemed a little bit more productive than fretting over it. Jesse hadn't called either, but with her phone not being capable of sending a message or a call, she wasn't sure if she was going to receive anything either.

"I don't know," Max said, frowning. "I want to talk to Liz as much as you want to talk to Jesse. She must be at the hotel by now."

"Are you going to see her?" Isabel asked, giving up on her phone. Max thoughtfully calculated his time as he contemplated his watch. "No. I won't have time to go see her, and then go back to the Empire State Building. But if I can meet Dave earlier, I might just get this whole business over with and finally be on vacation with no phone."

"Okay, want me to give her a message?" Isabel offered. Jesse was having lunch with Susseth in the hotel where they were staying. She could as well just say hi to her sister-in-law.

"I'll meet her as soon as I can."

"Right," she said, with a confidence she was far from feeling. They hadn't discussed a specific date, but postponing it all week long seemed hardly fair to Jesse.

Max stood up first, and slightly swayed. "Max?" she asked, standing up to grab him.

"Just… a dizzy spell. I stood up too fast," Max said, looking confused for a second.

"You sure?" she pressed. The one and only time Max had gotten sick, she'd been a thousand miles away with no way to help him. Now she was right next to him, and the idea still scared the hell out of her.

"I'm sure. Don't worry," he said, smiling. "Iz," Max changed his tone to a soft one, and gently hugged her. "It's going to be okay." He was not talking about the dizziness; he was talking about Jesse.

She gave a small smile. She wanted to believe him. She wanted to believe him so much.

"And if it isn't, I'll be happy to break his nose again," he added with a hint of humor in his eyes. She slapped him on the shoulder. After all these years, she still couldn't believe her passively-watching brother would actually hit the man she was going to marry the very next day.

She hugged Max tighter. He hugged her back. It's going to be okay, she fiercely thought, and for the first time in a long while, she actually believed it.


4 : Kyle

2:41pm
T minus 1 hour, 19 minutes

"What do we do?" Maria asked in a worried whisper as they rode in the taxi. It had taken Kyle little effort to convince her to leave their luggage behind, for which he was surprised. Ray had really scared her. Hell, Kyle was scared, too.

"We go tell the others. And then we decide as a group," he calmly said, but God, he was so not sure. Max was the one with the calming effect. Maria was the one with the crazy ideas. He usually just let himself go with the roller coaster. But it was okay, Maria always freaked out before coming up with her best plans.

"What if they're not there?"

"Michael is going to be there," Kyle reasoned. There was no sweetheart with super powers waiting for him, but Maria could be sure Michael would move heaven and earth to find his wife.

"No, Kyle. They don't know we came early. We are two freaking days early!"

"Listen, the only way Michael is not going to come get you is if he's locked up forty feet underground. He'll reach for you the minute he suspects there's something going on. Then he'll know you're here, right?"

"Our connection is not that reliable," Maria murmured, looking out the window as if hoping she would get a glimpse of her husband. "We can feel emotions, we cannot tell direction. We're always too intense for that…"

"Well, Max is supposed to be with him, right?" Kyle pointed out. Maria stopped looking at the street long enough to give him a confused nod. "Well, either Max will know something's going on, or Liz will. She's going to arrive tomorrow at the airport. So, in the worst case scenario, we go meet Liz. If by some freak accident Prince Charming Max is not there, he would still feel Liz's warning once we talk to her."

Maria looked at him for a second as if Kyle had spoken in a foreign language. Slowly agreeing with him, she turned again to look at the hundreds of faces walking by the streets. "I just want to know he's safe," she whispered.

"I know," he whispered back, turning to look outside, hoping against hope he would catch a glimpse of their alien trio as well.


5 : Jake

2:43pm
T minus 1 hour, 17 minutes

"Mr. Holt?" a young woman asked Jake as he kept scanning his surroundings. She hadn't been sitting at the gates. She had just popped up out of the sea of passengers, all innocent and girly-looking.

"Yes," he firmly said. Not quite a statement, but definitely not a question.

"You're about to become my father," she sweetly said as she hugged him. Ray's diversion, Jake's mind quickly concluded as he awkwardly returned the hug back. Her red hair was way more flaming than his, but she would do just fine at looking the part.

"There's a change of clothes in my backpack. Passports as well. We're coming for vacation this weekend from London before heading north to our home in Canada."

Her sweet voice and smile were in deep contrast to the seriousness of what she was saying. She looked no older than 18, but Jake knew better when it came to deceptions.

He went to the bathroom, changed, put on the goofy black and white hat with the mismatched orange jacket, reviewed his new identity, and went out before ten minutes had passed. He was more than eager to leave this place behind.

"Are there any tails?" the girl asked, taking his arm and walking wide eyed like the tourist she pretended to be.

"None that I could spot. The airline was very discreet about removing my luggage once I told them I wasn't boarding."

"Your tails must have already called in reinforcements," she absently mused, tugging at him a little about something in a window display, "but getting through security takes a while, especially if they wanted to be sufficiently armed."

"Are you sufficiently armed, my love?" he asked as they reached the immigration line.

"But of course, daddy, dear."

"That's my girl," Jake said with fatherly pride.


6 : Ray

2:47pm
T minus 1 hour, 13 minutes

Rochelle was already in position with Jake, that was as much as Ray knew. It would take them a few more minutes to go through customs, and once out, Ray would get the all clear. Unfortunately, that would mean only one thing less to worry about.

Dave was missing. He had been since that morning for all Ray had been able to put together. Either Dave had sensed trouble and had gone underground, or Dave had never sensed it and someone else had made him go underground.

The clock was ticking, and Ray had to decide if he should activate the Network Keepers protocols to secure all manner of digital information. All Level Six, Five and Four codes were already locked up. Besides that, all the people who were in the inner circle of Level Six codes needed to be accounted for.

Funny that, since he had sent Kyle and Maria to mingle with the eight million New Yorkers who were roaming the streets, without any escort. Of all the times to be spontaneous and not following their itineraries, did they have to pick today of all days, and pick the same goddamn city where Dave had disappeared?

With Jake secured, Ray had to contact Max, Michael and Isabel. He'd already talked to the hotel, and had left messages. Liz was flying somewhere over the Atlantic, so at least someone was accounted for.

He wouldn't know he was wrong for at least one more hour.

Where are you, Dave?


T minus 1 hour, 7 minutes