Sorry for the long wait, I feel like a horrid author, but I'm pretty much stuck in the annual may/June rush (meaning, EVERYTHING is out to get me atm) and I choose my grades, work and future over my writing at the moment, I really do hope you understand and forgive me for that.
You've been very supportive through this and I love updating for you, but I have to mention that I, myself, will always be the one deciding when I write and post something. Reviews inspire and help me along greatly, but please do not to pressure me into stuff, it's really demotivating and I do have a life outside of fanfiction. I'm doing my best to keep everything balanced right now. Thank you in advance.

Now, on with the chapter.

Warning! Mature content and blood coming up.

In which Kevin is shocked, Joe is pricked and Ben is pinned.

Kevin Lucas was a boy of many joys and many, many dreams.
Now, however, it was like everything had suddenly turned into one giant nightmare.
One moment he was jamming with his baby brother and his new supposed 'friend', trusting Joe would eventually fess up on whatever he'd been doing. Kevin had sensed this 'whatever' had something to do with Nick, whom he'd taken an instant liking to for some reason or another, and he'd trusted that Joe would know what he was doing.

He had most obviously not and Kevin couldn't believe he missed it.

He buried his head in his hands, rubbing his temples against the ache that still lingered after his black-out. Elvis, who was lying at his feet, licked an exposed stripe of ankle-skin in doggie-comfort.

It wasn't exactly helpful.

"Okay, okay, rewind," he told the boy-something in the middle of their room, who was turned towards the broken window, only his head turned towards the oldest Lucas in unrestrained observation, "You say…"

"And I promise I speak the complete and unbiased truth," Nick swore, his voice calm and sincere as he turned towards Kevin completely, his arms crossed over his chest and Kevin swore he saw his eyes light up with a strange colour blue. He held back a shudder.

"Right… So you tell me that since my accident, which wasn't really an accident but an abduction," such a comforting thought, "Joe has been hanging out at some kind of Frankenstein-laboratory?"

This explained the where part of all the questions Kevin had been asking himself the last couple of weeks.

"In this company, they experiment with DNA, including my DNA, to make super strong human robots of some kind," he summed up, raising an eyebrow at Nick for confirmation, trying to visualise the workings of that in his head.

Nick nodded once, his curls –which were seriously freaking Kevin out now that he knew— moving sharply around his head, "correct."

"And you are, supposedly, one of those Humanoids which was made of my DNA, put together by a good-scientist who meant for you to help the world."

He got why Joe would be interested in something like that. Heck, Kevin would've given his DNA freely if he'd known.

"But the good-scientist was taken down by the evil CEO of the company she worked for and he had us attacked by those ninja-figures that you took down after Joe's fight with Stella, because he wanted your… activation key," Kevin took a deep breath, trying to get the facts in line in his head, "Joe freaked out when he saw you fighting," Kevin was kind of disappointed he'd missed that part, "ran and got kidnapped."

"In simple words, yes, that is what happened," Nick said softly, going back to staring out of the shattered window of their home.
His dad wouldn't be happy with that when he returned from the convention tomorrow; he'd probably have to tell some kind of story about Elvis's ball being thrown the wrong way. Their father would probably buy it, seeing as their mother slept with ear-plugs.

Just their luck Frankie's friend had a dog-allergy, forcing the youngest Lucas to leave his beloved dog behind.

"Simple words?" Kevin reacted, somewhat taken back; he'd thought his version was quite complicated.

Nick send him an apologetic glance, unfolding his hands and walking over to Kevin. Kevin let him invade his personal bubble, somehow comfortable around the robot, human– Humanoid.
He had been made out of his own DNA, he reminded himself.

Nick put his hand on his shoulder, his face a mask of calmth, but Kevin easily detected turmoil in his eyes, which were so alike to Joe's brown orbs it was almost scary.
And like Joe was an open book to him, so apparently was Nick.

"You must understand that I don't know all the facts, nor do I understand exactly what he is planning. I just know that our loss of the key, Macy and Joe, plus the increasing attacks on special teenagers can't possibly result in something good, if Robert Lincoln Coler is behind it. I fear for what might happen if we don't do something."

Kevin stared up at the youngster in front of him, watching him subconsciously tense and worry creep onto his face. Suddenly, he felt so extremely sorry for this man, no this boy, standing in front of him, that he stood up and wrapped his arms around Nick in a rush of compassion for the humanoid.
He couldn't help that he was made this way; he couldn't help what happened to Joe. He just wanted to make his right.
And somehow, Kevin believed that they could do that. Something about the boy made him trust him.

"I don't know what he wants, or what he is going to do with Joe, but it's not good," Nick muttered against his shoulder, accepting the embrace, though hesitantly.

Poor thing mustn't have had very much hugs in his life, Kevin suddenly thought and pressed Nick even tighter to his chest, before letting him go.

"I believe you," he said, "And we're going to do something, we're going to rescue our brother and your creator."

He'd already caught onto the sentiment that tainted Nick's voice whenever he spoke of his mysterious creator, so he supposed she was like a mother figure to him or something.
He couldn't be older then a month, maybe two, even though he appeared, acted and probably essentially was much older then that.
But he deserved somewhat of a family. A mother and a brother seemed fair enough.

Then he caught on to the sudden emotion on Nick's face as he looked up at him, with something resembling gratefulness, or admiration.
Kevin realised he'd just called the boy his brother, without thinking, but he wasn't about to take it back.

"I don't suppose we can call the police or anything, can we?" he suggested weakly, knowing the answer before Nick broke away from him and shook his head sadly.

"Coler's too powerful and well-informed to even think of that. We'll never find Joe, or his plans if we confide in official authorities,"

Kevin nodded, clenching his fists as the realisation of his brother, his baby-brother, was kidnapped by some evil person that was going to hurt him.
Who knew what was happening to Joe right now? The same things that had happened to Kevin, during his 'abduction', something he still had nightmares of? Or was it much worse then that already?
He didn't know much, even less then Nick supposedly knew, but he knew it hurt to even think about Joe in a position of pain, mental or physical or anything.

Until he felt Nick's fingers on his cheeks, he hadn't realised he was crying.

"It's okay," Nick comforted, weakly, since there was very little that could be considered 'okay' at that moment, "we're going to find him ourselves."

Kevin nodded, stubbornly staring out of the same broken window Nick had been staring through moments before.
Dawn was approaching fast, the sun already peeking above the horizon.

Sun.

Stella.

And then it hit him.

"STELLA!"

~~~-SCENE CHANGE-~~~

Joe didn't know exactly when he'd dozed off into a sleep, but somewhere along the lines his worries and aching body had succumbed to the exhaustion.

His face rested half against the slick wall, half against the white bars of his cell when he woke up, disoriented when he felt the thick metal move.
He quickly figured out what was going on when he was roughly pulled out of his hunched position in the corner and dragged out of the cell, into the small hallway that connected the cell-block to the rest of the building.

"Let go of me!" he yelled, hearing Macy cry out too, pulling at her bars, which he knew wouldn't move, but the hands pulling him up to his face and slapping him in the face – really freaking hard, may he add— weren't about to have mercy on him.

He swore he would've seen stars if she'd hit him any harder and swayed on his feet, stumbling along with his captor towards the light of the door.

She –because he was pretty sure it was Penny– kept on shaking and disorienting him, hitting and punching him, not hard enough to black out, but hard enough to leave him wheezing for a few seconds, tears stinging in his eyes. She kicked him to the walls, which had no mercy on him whatsoever and pushed him along more and more sterile white, hospital-like lit hallways. He struggled, tried to get away, but she seemed to be everywhere.

Joe had no idea where they were going and frankly didn't care very much either, for he was focussed too much on trying to dodge the painful strikes the humanoid-girl let rain down on him.

Eventually, after he had been thoroughly convinced she was trying to cover his entire body in bruises, she pushed him through a door, where two pairs of hands caught him and dragged him away by his arms.

He caught sight of machines that seemed vaguely familiar, due to his time in Macy's lab, but also quite a few that chilled him to his bones, somewhere deep below freezing point.

Once more he fought, not like Nick might've done, but he fought none the less. It was to no avail, but he took pride in the fact that he wouldn't be the only bruised one by the end of the day.

He wasn't sure he would make it that far, but at least he had done everything he could.

They strapped his arching, unwilling body to a cold table, cutting away the rest of his ripped up shirt, exposing him to their eyes. One of them clicked on the lights above him.

Lying on the hard, uncomfortable and cold table, Joe closed his eyes to avoid the harsh lights. His eyes were once again unfocussed by the sharp sting, even with them closed.

The most frightening part was that he couldn't move now, not an inch. His arms and legs strapped to the poor attempt of a bed. He tried to struggle, but his bonds were too tight.

He heard her laugh, but didn't see her, didn't want to see her either. He just wanted to get away, he just wanted to go back home.
He would do anything to leave, to run back to he safety of his mother's arms. What he would give to look into her eyes right now.

He screamed as something sharp and cold, like a bee's sting, penetrated his bare skin. He was almost completely naked now and pain shot through all his exposed body-parts.

When his eyes were finally able to focus beyond the annoying light, he finally saw that the things he previously thought to be bees, were in fact needles, held by masked men.
They were probably the same that dragged him to the table, shadows cast over their faces, but Joe was pretty sure he'd seen them before, in the testing lab. With Nick.

He had always hated needles, but this was beyond horrible. They were wide and long, nothing like the merciful little pricks nice doctors gave him, but painful stabs that drew the blood from his body.

Laughter was heard every time he winced from the stinging, still unable to do anything against the assault on his already exhausted body. The light still stung his eyes, the straps cut into his skin and his head was going dizzy from the way they kept draining blood from his body.

When he looked up, searching for a way out of the bright spotlight, he saw a figure with honey-blonde hair holding a little tube of what seemed to be his own blood, laughing at him with the same wicked smile, her teeth bared in wicked joy.

Then, he was hit by the most powerful feeling of déjà-vu, knowing he'd been here before, in this very position, weeks before, two days after Kevin got kidnapped, the night of the day he had met Macy Misa.

This time however there would be no playful doggy-kisses to wake him up, no realisation that it had all been a dream.
Because this, this pain, this horrible pain, was real.

This time, the brown eyes staring at him from the end of the bed weren't Macy's frightened ones, but Coler's smug ones, holding up the tube of crimson liquid.
He mouthed something and Joe strained his eyes with the last strength and instinct he had left in him. He had to rewind the words in his throbbing head to get them;
"Your blood, dear Joseph, is the key to my unstoppable army."

He was grateful when something up there pitied him and he lost his consciousness, his head rolling to the side with unseeing, bloodshot eyes and tears and blood smeared over his face.

~~~-SCENE CHANGE-~~~

Kevin ran op the Malone-residence, Nick hot at his tail and knocking furiously on the door, not surprised when nobody opened the door.
The elderly Malone's weren't home very often; it was part of the reason why Stella hung out at their place so much.
He tried to look through the windows, but the curtains were closed and he cursed, receiving a disapproving look from a few elderly ladies passing by, but he didn't care, not even if he knew them from feeding the ducks at the park.

He jump-turned around when he heard a loud crash and he nearly did it again, this time in joy, when he saw Nick stand next to a very crushed front-door.

"C'mon," he trusted the boy in sensing his gratefulness and wasted no time in bursting through the door, into the living room, Nick following immediately.
He briefly wondered why the Humanoid let him take the lead, but didn't question it.

The living room was a mess –and not even the usual mess of a family only half-way living here— and smelled like their garden after a late barbeque.
It was a mess resembling a robbery, an attack, murder.

Nick had stopped right beside him, looking over his right shoulder at the scene before them, before he seemed to move at lightning speed towards the figure hunched over Stella's sprawled out body in the middle of the room.

"Stella!" Kevin yelled, his mind immediately jumping to care-bear mode, only seeing his friend's unconscious state and taking up the position the stranger had previously occupied.

His fingers ran over her pale face, mumbling her name over and over again, with little response. Her eyes stirred and her fingers twitched, but other then that she didn't respond.
But at least she wasn't dead.

Kevin focussed his attention on what was happening a few feet away from him; where Nick was currently pressing a very debauched and beat-up looking Ben to the wall.
Kevin noted that the bruises weren't Nick's fault; they were at least a couple of hours old, but he couldn't think of any reason why anyone would beat up Stella's boyfriend, except for maybe Joe.
Like he couldn't exactly fathom why Nick was currently curling his fingers dangerously tight around Ben's neck, his teeth bared and his entire body tense with anger.

"Nick, calm down, it's just Ben, Stella's boyfriend," he managed, lifting said blonde up in his arms to cradle her to his chest, checking for injuries. She still smelled vaguely of the perfume Joe had gave her for her last birthday.

Nick laughed humourlessly, replying with an ice-cold voice; "This, dear Kevin, is not simply Stella's boyfriend, but Benson Edmund Coler, son of Robert Lincoln Coler, the kidnapper of our brother and the general bad-guy of our story."

Kevin gaped at the young man's gasping, angry face, in shock. Stella's boyfriend!
How close had those creeps been able to get to them? How far did their arm reach?

Pretty deep and pretty far, apparently.

He swallowed, "What do you suggest we do with him?"

Nick narrowed his eyes, dropping Ben to the floor for emphasis, standing over him with a dark expression on his face.

"Nothing worse then anything they're doing to Joe."