A day passed, and Dexter didn't show up. His door remained closed. Dee Dee and her parents, however, were not concerned. They were used to Dexter staying in his room for extended periods of a time. Another day passed, and still he didn't show up. A third day passed. Dee Dee began to grow a bit concerned. She decided, however, to wait.

A week passed, and she decided that enough was enough. Mr. and Mrs. Labreck had also begun to notice. Dee Dee went into his bedroom. His books and toys were strewn all over the floor. She ran to the lab entrance and pulled the book that would let her in. It didn't move. It didn't even make a noise. She ran over to his desk and sat in the chair. She reached down and pulled a lever that would let her fall down a chute into the lab. Nothing.

Even more scared now, she ran through the house trying every secret entrance that she could remember. None of them opened. Dee Dee ran back up to Dexter's room.

She ran to where she knew that a hidden panel was. Thankfully, that still worked.

"Computer?" she asked. It was a backup module, but it was still the computer.

"Yes, Dee Dee?"

"What is Protocol Alpha One?"

The computer seemed to freeze. "Protocol Alpha One," it answered slowly, "is permanent shutdown and destruction of the lab."

"Oh, no…" Dee Dee trailed off. She felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. Destruction? Could Dexter really be…? She refused to think it. He was resourceful; he'd gone through his Stargate lookalike. He was alive, somewhere, she hoped.

"Has it been initiated?" the computer backup asked.

"Yes, it has," Dee Dee said absent mindedly.

"Then, in that case, I must permanently shut myself down."

"No, computer! Wait! Don't!" but it was too late. The screen had gone blank. Dee Dee sank to her knees and wept.

A year passed, and with that year came major change for the Labreck family. Mr. and Mrs. Labreck, having lost their only son, became more attentive of Dee Dee. They tried their best to comfort her, but she refused to be comforted. Somehow, she had come to the conclusion that this was somehow her fault, that if she had treated Dexter better, he wouldn't have run off into another universe. She had even tried to convince Mandark to help rescue her brother. He had downright refused. She hit him with a glass tube of red liquid and ran out after he refused. After that, she withdrew into herself, and, even more specifically, into science. She began, almost obsessively, to study Dexter's science books, absorbing everything that there was to know in those books. She read over his notes that she had found in his room before the police looked around in it for any clues.

One day after she had trashed her room in anger and bitter rage at herself, she threw one of her dolls at her wall. The wall made a hollow noise. She went up to it and after using one of Dexter's old lasers to dig out the wall discovered a vast space as big as Dexter's old lab. Over the course of four months, she set up a lab of her own, and soon she had a lab almost as big as Dexter's old one, albeit it was mostly pink with a few of Dexter's old gadgets mixed about here and there.

She had been partially successful in retrieving a few of Dexter's nonencrypted files on some of his more basic inventions.

Over the course of the next year, her appearance changed. She no longer wore her hair in pigtails, but had just put it in a ponytail most of the time. She no longer wore her ballet dress and large ballet shoes either. Instead, she dyed a large lab coat pink and bought some purple lab boots.

When her seventeenth birthday rolled around six months after Dexter's disappearance, she didn't even acknowledge it. Her parents tried to throw her a party, but she was miserable the whole time.

One day during that year she was searching through Dexter's files she was able to find an encrypted file marked "IDT." For the first time in seven months, hope entered her heart and she feverishly began to try and hack the file. It took her about two weeks, but she eventually broke Dexter's old security. While doing so, she felt somewhat guilty for doing this. One part of her mind was saying, he's ever going to come back. Come to terms with it and leave him and his work to rest. She would reply to that voice with, Dexter would never give up on me. He's saved my life more times than I can count. I'm not giving up until I know for sure.

She contacted Global Dynamics and asked for assistance in the building of her IDT. They gave her the specs for the Tachyon Accelerator, but that was all.

It took her the remaining five months to finish the IDT. It was hard to generate the element required to make up the IDT. Dexter never told her what it was called, but she suspected that it was named after something from Stargate. In memory of him, she named it naquadah.

Finally, the tightened the last screw and her IDT was completed. It looked exactly like Dexter's old one except that the chevron locking lights were pink instead of light orange.

"Computer, run a systems diagnostic. I wanna make sure we're ready to test this thing."

"Affirmative," the male voice of the computer replied. She had thought of giving her computer the same voice as Dexter's own, but in the end she decided against it, as it wouldn't help her focus on her work.

"Diagnostic complete. Ready to begin."

Dee Dee turned to the device, her heart going at a million light years a second with hope that she might see her little brother again.

"Initiating the dialing sequence," she announce to her recording devices as she typed in the sequence. The inner ring of the device began to spin.

"Chevron one, encoded," the computer said passively as the first pink light came on. She watched for the minute it took for the seven symbols to lock in place. Finally, the computer told her that the last chevron was locked.

As before, the blue liquid exploded from the front of the IDT, making an explosion sound. Eventually, the room was bathed in the light of the stable wormhole, making the lab look like it was underwater.

"Prepare the probe," Dee Dee ordered. The pink sphere hovered up from where it was sitting on the table next to her. It floated to the fluctuating event horizon of the artificial inter-dimensional wormhole and entered. It made the same sound she remembered from when Dexter had sent his probe through.

"Acquiring signal in five, four, three, two, one."

The static on the screen was replaced with the view she remembered from a year ago.

"Do a three hundred sixty degree–" she froze as the screen went completely blank.

"Probe signal lost," the computer calmly informed her.

"Send another one through!" she ordered.

A second probe rose from the table, but didn't get very far. Alarms began going off as the computer announced that the energy flow to the IDT was increasing.

"Shut down all power!" she instructed. The computer complied and all the lights in the lab blinked off, but the IDT remained active. The wormhole began to become unstable. The wall of water flashed as the naquadah in the IDT began to superheat.

Suddenly, someone fell out of the IDT and fell down the ramp violently. He straightened up and looked around. He looked to be around sixteen years ole. He wore a black overcoat and medieval clothing underneath.

"Quick!" he said, "restore power and fire an EM pulse at the center of the wormhole!" he shouted desperately.

Without thinking, she hit the emergency power restore button. She grabbed an EMG, her electromagnetic gun and fired. The destabilizing wormhole rippled at the center as the EMP penetrated the event horizon, and then the wormhole shut down.

The young man, who looked to be wounded heavily, collapsed where he stood, clutching his chest. Dee Dee could see blood dripping from a wound where he had apparently been stabbed.

"Computer, I need medbots, now!" she said as she rushed over to the strange young man. She wondered how he had managed to come though the IDT. It was only supposed to open one way.

Unless…

As she lay the young man down, she noticed that is long, tangled hair was red. As she looked closer, she noticed that his black overcoat looked like a black lab coat.

Could it be? she thought.

As he began to slip into unconsciousness, two words escaped his blood stained lips.

"…Hi…Dee Dee…"

She nearly fainted in shock. How could this young man know her name unless he was Dexter. The medbots arrived and began tending to his wounds. She just stayed where she was, kneeling beside the person she hoped was Dexter.

She had to be sure, though.

"Computer, run a DNA comparison between this persons DNA and copies of Dexter's."

"At once, Dee Dee." The main screen activated. After a few seconds, the results were up.

A 100 percent match.

She nearly squealed in delight, but then remembered that he could very well be a clone sent by her nemesis Mandark. Over the year she and Mandark had become rivals.

"Did you check for cloning anomalies?" she asked the computer.

"Affirmative. He is not a clone. And I've taken the liberty of confirming everything else you are going to ask. Aside from the injuries, some strange energy readings and being two years older than he was before he disappeared, he is the exact same Dexter."

At last! He had returned. But something didn't fit.

"He's two years older? How is that possible?"

"Unknown."

She wracked her brain for possible solutions. He might have been exposed to some sort of radiation that aged him. That could explain the energy reading the computer detected.

She hopped onto a cart and traversed her immense lab to the sickbay where Dexter was. He had been placed in a nutrient bath. Nanites had been infused into his bloodstream to heal any internal damage, but, according to the screens, something was slowing them down.

"…Dee Dee…"

Dexter's head was the only thing above the light brown liquid. He opened his eyes and stared at her.

"Take…the nanites…out…"

She was taken aback at that request.

"B…but…"

"Take…them…out!" he said a little more forcefully, which caused him to hack up more blood.

Dee Dee complied.

"Now. Let me out…"

"B…but…"

"No more buts, Dee Dee…" he said. "This nutrient bath is making matters worse."

As if to confirm that, a red warning light began to flash. His internal injuries were getting worse. Dexter's eyes rolled back and he began to spasm.

"Release the patient!" she said. Inwardly, she was thinking, I didn't spend this past year working for you to die on me, now.

It's been a year?

She nearly dropped the vials she was moving from the table which doubled as a bed at that voice in her head.

What?

Never mind. I can tell it's been a year. Listen to me, dear sister, I'll explain later. I need to self hear myself. Technology will not heal the wounds inside. Just lay me down on the bed and leave me alone for about a day.

"Okay," she said aloud as the medbots placed Dexter onto the bed. As he was placed onto the bed, an extraordinary thing happened.

Dexter inhaled deeply and his body began to glow blue. It was then that Dee Dee noticed a few things.

First of all, his accent had completely disappeared. It was weird not hearing his traditional mispronunciations of words.

Second, he was wearing a pair of rings and a necklace that apparently the medbots didn't, or couldn't take off.

Thirdly, the jewels on them were glowing a brighter blue that the rest of Dexter.

She wanted to reach out and hug her long lost brother, but when she tried to touch him, the blue glow stopped her.

The medical sensors could no longer penetrate Dexter's skin, so she couldn't see what was going on inside him.

"Please get better, Dexter," she said as she turned off the light and closed the door.

A few seconds after she closed the door, the glow intensified for just a bit, and then returned to normal.

What a crazy turn of events! Enjoy!

morbiusgreen