"I don't wanna get up…" Fred moaned softly as Daphne pulled the blanket off him and leaned down to roll his sleeve up and check the cut on his arm. "I wanna go back to sleep…"

"Typical man," Daphne replied swiftly, poking him gently in the stomach and putting her hand on his forehead.

"You're not ill, so get up and we'll go and get our stuff. There's a guy who rents wagons a little way away, I've been listening to him talking. Well, yelling. Does he think the rest of the population is deaf or something?"

"When you've finished your rant," Fred grinned, earning himself a careful whack on the arm.

"Get up, now."

Fred smiled and pushed himself up, meeting Daphne's eyes and being taken by surprise when she kissed him.

"I thought you were narked with me?"

"I was. But your eyes just made it too hard to stay narked."

"Good. Now I know what to do next time we're in a haunted house or something and you get exasperated with me because I want us to split up."

"Don't take advantage," Daphne laughed, pulling him up and walking round him, casting a critical eye over his clothes. Fred brushed himself down self-consciously and gave her a confused look.

"What are you doing?"

"Freddy, people are going to be suspicious if it looks like we've been sleeping rough, and we're already conspicuous."

"OK. You've got a point."

"As always," Daphne teased, putting her arm round his waist and leaning down to roll up the blankets. Fred crouched down to help her, clumsy with only his right arm but enough help to speed things up. Daphne ripped a strip off one of the blankets to make a new bandage to cover his arm.

"Come on. Have you got any money?"

"I've got some of what that guy gave us, to help us. The people who looked me over didn't find it."

"Enough to get us a wagon to the north?"

"Yeah, enough for a wagon."

"Then follow me."

Daphne turned and walked away from the scrapyard, with Fred on her heels and her face set in determination.

From the shadows, a tall, lanky boy watched, his eyes slits, the light not showing their bottle-green colour and making them look empty, dark, unreal, like black holes. His mouth curved a little into a smile as he slid from pile to pile, and his darkened eyes never left the blond teenager, who looked so much like his companion Mitchell back at HQ, and his girlfriend. He called Mitchell his "companion" because Ruxus didn't have real friends; he found they moved too close to you and made you soften, and Ruxus was proud of his titanium core, as hard as a boulder and as cold as his seemingly inhuman eyes.

"Come on, sweetie," Daphne called back as Fred stumbled momentarily, regaining his balance after a second. Fred nodded and followed her, slipping his arm round her shoulders as they began haggling with the wagon lender. Ruxus didn't know the man, had never even seen him before, but due to his position in the Organisation he already hated the man with venom and pure sting in his eyes as he moved towards him, stealthy and carefully out of the view of the two teens.

Now was the time to strike.

Ruxus moved forwards, pinning the unfortunate man's throat with his arm and knocking him against the wall he stood in front of in one surprise attack. The man couldn't even scream for help.

"Tell me where they went," he said softly.

"They can't be more than a few miles away from the town and the building; they had nothing on them, no money, nothing to prove who they were, and on top of it all they are clearly not nearers. It won't take long to find them. They'll stick out like a pair of dogs in an alleyway full of cats."

The analogy, however lame, did the trick for wiping some of the anger off Pound's ruddy, darkened face.

"You're right. They'll head for the north immediately, to find the portals that our inside girl keeps going on about, and it'll be easy enough to find them. Good man. Dismissed."

The henchman nodded and turned on his heel, not quite wanting to show his back to the behemoth of muscle and power and anger behind him.

"We will track them down," Pound murmured to himself, reaching out to grab a random man and order for him to bring him some food. The man rushed off, not wanting to incur Pound's wrath.

"We need to start making inquiries. If we get the entire town looking for them it'll be a cinch. Make out that they're criminals; the crime could be something like assault, something nice and serious but not quite murder or such, just something that'll draw people onto them. We want their pictures around town, their identities and descriptions, and then we'll find them as soon as they set foot into the town. They'll have to go back to the town at some point, for supplies and such, and once they go we'll have them."

"Yes, sir," mumbled the man whom Pound had grabbed, returning with a plate of what looked like something a dog would sick up but which Pound devoured hungrily.

"Thank you… just like Mom used to make it," he growled, grinning through his wiry beard as he wiped the last few morsels of food off his face. The man quickly took the plate and hurried away.

"Honourable?"

"What?" Pound barked, swerving round to see one of his closer right-hand men, a lean, tall specimen of a teenager, Ruxus.

"The two have been spotted in the centre of Ohio, hiring a wagon from the dealer on the northern streets. We believe from what we forced from the dealer that they're heading north to find the portals. If we just stay a safe distance behind them and make sure that the wagons are silenced-"

"I'm sorry, Ruxus," Pound snarled, cutting into the teen's eager planning talk with his axe-like growl of a voice. "I was under the impression that I was planning this one, and you were going to help by tracking the kids. Do I look incapable enough that I would turn to you for help?"

Ruxus looked down to stop Pound seeing the flush of anger and frustration on his face.

"No, Honourable."

"Then shut up, you puny little runt, and let the people who know what they're doing handle this."

Ruxus gave a little bow and scuttled away, swearing under his breath.

"So they're heading to the north right now…" Pound muttered to himself, turning to the wall chart of Ohio and the surrounding areas pinned up on the wall next to him. "I feel the North Ohio Plains calling me… This universe will dominate!"

He slammed his fist onto the wall chart and turned to make his demands heard.

Pound had a long journey ahead of him.

Daphne thrashed out in her sleep, hitting one of the monitors at the edge of her bed and causing it to start caterwauling, summoning three nurses, a doctor and Shaggy, who beckoned for Velma and Scooby from the hallway.

As soon as they were all gathered around the bed, Daphne reached out and her hand found Velma's.

"They're coming… for me… and Freddy… they want… us dead… for their… universe… please… help us… somehow…"

Daphne gave a little sob, a shudder, and was still.

Velma sat down next to her friend, not letting go of her hand, not sure what to make of the announcement she had just made. It sounded like, in her head, she and Fred were in trouble… but then, wasn't it just in her head? Surely it wasn't real? Velma, the sceptic, the rationalist, the scientist, was doubtful on the outside that anything Daphne was currently experiencing was real, but on the inside, something that she couldn't identify, couldn't name, couldn't touch on except for the few seconds when it was talking to her, was telling her that it was somehow, and that this was no normal coma, this was something different, something brought on by an external factor that she didn't know about but would find out about in time.

"Daphne, can you hear me?" Velma asked softly, leaning down and looking into Daphne's expressionless face, watching as Scooby put his paw on Daphne's stomach to try and get a response of some sort. Daphne's eyes stayed closed, but she leaned down and grasped Scooby's paw tightly, as though she was trying to cling on to something to stop herself falling or leaving. Scooby yelped.

"The North Plains… the IDVPs… we have to find them or… we're dead."

She sighed gently and lay still once again.

Shaggy's face turned a little white as he took in his friend, and he turned and looked at Velma for reassurance. Velma smiled at him and reached over to put her arm round his shoulders.

"They'll be OK. I know it. In my heart of hearts. They'll be OK."

Shaggy gave a tired smile and fell asleep on Velma's shoulder, his warm breath tickling her shoulder and his skin warm on hers. She gently put both her arms round him and leaned against him as well, feeling his soft breathing and watching Daphne as she slept on.

The scene swam in front of her eyes, and then disappeared in blackness as she fell asleep as well.

"Daphne? Daphne, sweetie, are you asleep?"

"Not any more," Daphne groaned faintly, sitting up and taking in where she was. It was night time, and the stars beamed extrovertly in the charcoal sky as the wagon rumbled along over rough ground. She had fallen asleep curled in the back of the wagon, and as she looked up she saw Fred clambering over to lie down next to her.

"Sorry, I was just getting in here too."

He yawned widely, too exhausted to even put his hand up and cover his mouth. Daphne did it for him, smiling as he squinted at her in the darkness and pulled a blanket over to cover himself.

"Night."

He closed his eyes and fell asleep almost immediately, his face bathed in the milky light from the stars and reminding Daphne of that fateful night when they had been brought here. Fred had taken the blame for that, saying he should have listened to her, but Daphne had refused to let him berate himself for it, saying he had always been curious, it was only natural. She sighed and reached out to rest her arm over his waist, enjoying the feeling of his breathing against her hand and finding it slightly reassuring.

As she drifted back to sleep, closing her eyes under the dim light from stars billions of miles away, a figure stole a look at her sleeping profile and gave a small grin.

Ruxus moved closer to the wagon, hiding behind a rock a little way away and keeping his eye on the sturdy wooden planks of the wagon. Wagons were one of the few things the people of this world used wood for, for the simple reason that it held together better, since they had yet to discover welding. Ruxus knew and didn't care. All his thoughts and all his energy were focused on the young couple sleeping soundly in the back of the wagon, closer than Ruxus had ever been to anyone, and further away from home than he had ever been as well.

Ruxus didn't mean that particular fact to stay the same.

With his vision of being named Supreme Ruler, of being worshipped by all the filthy creatures of the now-dominant world, of being powerful beyond current knowledge, ringing in his ears and engraved into his cold eyes, he slept, lightly, keeping watch.