~oOo~

"Beyond, look beyond," Ellison muttered. "Beyond what?" he suddenly shouted into the darkness, finding it more difficult to control his burgeoning anger. His voice bounced back at him, echoing off the high, smooth stone walls, and the sentinel buried his face in his hands. He was losing control, but it was a situation he needed to get a handle on, because losing control was what put him here in the first place. For the sake of his kids, Jim knew he needed to come to terms with what he was and he needed to regain control of his senses. The consequences if he failed to do so were too enormous to even think about.

Dropping his hands, Ellison took a moment to gather his thoughts, to try and put some rationale behind the challenge facing him. Imprisoned by cliffs that formed a complete and unbroken circle around the circumference of the river, the prospect of finding a fissure of any kind in the rock that would offer an escape route seemed unlikely and, if he believed what Incacha had told him, escaping via the river was out of the question as well. Escape appeared to be finely attuned to his sentinel abilities; if he could just find the key to unlock those, he was certain that key would also unlock the door to his release.

Taking a seat on the pebbled beach by the river's edge, Jim didn't even consider reverting to the bag of tricks he normally used when trying to control his senses. If this was going to work, really work, he needed to realise what he was. The man and the detective who he so stubbornly clung to needed to be put in their place. He was a sentinel, first and foremost and it was time to fulfil his destiny.

~oOo~

The aroma of something sweet, something that tantalised his sense of smell and reminded him of peaches on a warm summer's day, nudged Lucas closer and closer to a waking state. A warm, fresh sensation glided across his neck and face, tingling and arousing his clouded senses even more. "Jim," he whispered.

"It's Dad, son. How you feeling?"

Lucas's safe place shattered within the space of a heartbeat. The fog that had surrounded him and kept him cocooned away from the harsh reality of the outside world parted, and the unforgiving rays of reality burned down and scorched his skin. The soft, warm cloth, that moments before offered the delusion of caring, concern and tenderness, now sent waves of ice-cold shivers down his spine. "Don't," the teenager rasped. "Don't touch me."

Max continued his gentle stokes, running the cloth down the length of his son's throat and onto the smooth planes of his chest. "Lucas, I'm only trying to help," he soothed.

Grabbing weakly at his father's hand, Lucas tried to pry the cloth from his grasp. "If you want to help, then help get me out of here." The pull on his shackled wrist wrenched his arm with pain, but he paid it no heed. Pain reminded him that he was still alive, and pain kept his focus on Blair.

Blair! The fog parted even more and Lucas's heart raced. "Blair, where's Blair?"

With his hand still resting on his son's chest, Max unconsciously began to trace small, inviting circles on Lucas's skin. "He's asleep on the sofa."

Making an unsuccessful attempt to sit up, Lucas knocked his father's hand away and blindly reached out to find anything that would cover his naked body. "And Robert?"

Max shrugged, nonchalantly. "Your uncle said he was going out and that he'd be back in a few hours." Reaching over Lucas to the other side of the bed, he snagged the quilt and draped it over his son. "Is that better?"

"How long ago?" Lucas shook his head in an effort to clear away some of the cobwebs. There was an opportunity, he was sure of that; now he just had to try and stay focused long enough to exploit it.

"I'm not sure, Bug, thirty minutes maybe," Max answered. It seemed like another world away since he'd had opportunity to call his boy by that name, but like a lot of the regrets that surrounded the latter half of his life, this one had long since gone.

The use of his nickname stirred up a powder keg of memories for Lucas. While the majority tended to sit somewhere from unpleasant to horrific, mingled in with the bad recollections were ones that reminded him of the good times. The times when he used to innocently snuggle up to his father like the cuddle bug that he'd been affectionately nicknamed.

Pushing the unpleasant memories to the back of his mind and latching on to the good ones, Lucas knew he needed to take advantage of these if he was going to have any chance of getting his father's help. "Dad, please, you have to help me." Lucas pulled at his wrist again. "You have to help get me out of these."

"Oh, Bug, I can't. I wish I could, but I just can't."

"Why?" Lucas pleaded. God, he hated this. While the thought of begging to the man made him sick to his stomach, the thought of what would happen to Blair if he didn't had the potential to cripple him. "Dad," he continued. "If you're afraid of him, I can help. Together..." Lucas swallowed hard, unable to rid himself of the feeling that with every word he was about to say, no matter how untrue, he was betraying Jim. "Together," he pushed on, "we can beat him and become a family again. You and me, Dad, and you won't ever have to be afraid of him again.

"I'm not afraid of him, Lucas," Max replied with both honesty and surprise. "I know your uncle has a temper, but he loves us, Lucas. He loves you and me and he loved your brother, more than anything in the world."

"My god," Lucas answered with disbelief. "How can you say that? How can you even think that?"

"Because I love him as well, son ... I've always loved him."

"No!" This time Lucas found it nearly impossible to contain his emotions. He knew what his father was like better than anyone, but he wouldn't, he couldn't bring himself to believe that all those years of abuse came about simply because of his father's incestuous love for his own brother. He grabbed at Max's wrist and twisted it around savagely to reveal the track marks that were the reason, the only reason, Max did what he did. "You did it because of this and you continue to do it because of what he's turned you into, not because you love him. Please, Dad," Lucas pleaded. "Think back to when you loved us ... to how you used to love Scotty and me." Lucas's hand began to tingle, his grip becoming awkward. "Think back to when I was just a little kid, when I was nothing more than your cuddle bug. Think back to how it was before Robert changed you."

"He didn't change me, Bug," Max soothed. "I might have denied it while your mother was alive, but this is who and what I've always been and your uncle helped open my eyes to that. It's in our family, Lucas, and no matter how hard you try, you can't change what's in your genes." Max ran his hand over his scarred, pox-marked forearm. "Your uncle helped me see this and," he said, fingering one of the deeper marks, "this helps me forget," he added quietly. Max patted Lucas's hand and placed it back down on the mattress. "I know it seems hard right at this moment, but if you put your trust in your uncle the way I have, it will all work out. He'll look after us, son. He'll look after you, me and that little boy out there. We'll be together again, Lucas, and we'll be a family that shares a love so strong no one will be able break us apart."

"I'm not like you," Lucas slurred. The more he tried to focus on what he wanted to say, the harder he found it to gather a coherent thought. While he put the overall numbing feeling he was experiencing down to a side effect of the heroin, the rest of his symptoms should have been abating by now, not taking a giant leap forward. "If you need to forget, then you know what you're doing is wrong."

In his rapidly deteriorating state, Lucas didn't register the need to move away from his father's touch as Max reached out and smoothed the tension lines from his forehead. But he did resister the words. "Just rest, Lucas. Rest and let the pills do their job."

"Pills?" Lucas muttered. Did I take pills? He couldn't remember swallowing any; all he could vaguely recall was something cool against his lips and sliding down his throat. "Water," he murmured. "You drugged the water?"

"Just a few pills, nothing more, I promise." Max assured. He picked up the washcloth and dipped it in the basin of soapy water by the bed. "It'll help take the edge off until Robert gets back."

Lucas tried to focus on his father's face. "Stay away from Blair," he ground out with the last vestige of his conscious energy. "... do to him what you did to me and I'll kill you." Lucas's world dulled and his vision filtered to grey. "... touch him ... kill you ... promise you that."

Ignoring the reason behind the hatred in his son's words, Max lifted the quilt away and took up where he'd left off. His brother was right about Lucas. His boy did need their love and needed to learn how to give that love back in return. The anger and turmoil that Lucas felt needed to be addressed. Hopefully, when this was done, his son would reach the same level of peace that he'd attained, and he'd no longer feel the need to run from what he was.

Trailing the cloth down the inside of Lucas's arm, Max's dreams of inner peace for his son never once drifted across the consideration that in doing so, he was sentencing his only child to a life dependent on drugs. In the world of Max Wilder, the prick of a needle cured all ills, no matter what the disease.

~oOo~

Jim had no idea how much time had passed when he finally opened his eyes. All he knew was that the world which now existed around him was a very different place from the one he'd left behind. Sounds, sights, smells, they'd all been intensified to a level he'd never experienced before – a level that told him that the sentinel, who had resided within from the day he'd been born, was now out of the box and ready to play.

Glancing up at the moon to try and get some kind of indication on how long he'd been out, Ellison shielded his eyes against the harsh glare bearing down from the night sky. The soft infusion of silver beams that had previously provided minimal light now set the sky aglow with the intensity of the midday sun. Closing his eyes again, Jim concentrated once more to bring his senses down to a more workable level. While he still had no real idea what had triggered the physical change within his body, he had worked out that if he pushed aside his anger and his hate and concentrated solely on the one thing that had kept him going, he was winning the war against the very thing he'd come to regard as an affliction and a curse. If he concentrated on Blair and Lucas and embraced the love he felt for these boys, then he was also embracing what it was truly like to be a sentinel.

Working on bringing everything down to a level that was no longer debilitating, Ellison went one step further and isolated the area around his bicep. The bleeding from the wound was under control, but the pain and heat radiating from the damaged muscle was beginning to become a liability. Pain was the body's way of telling it something was amiss, but he had neither the time nor the concern for his own well-being to let the injury slow him down. If he couldn't feel it, it couldn't hinder him; he'd deal with the consequences of that at a much later date.

Now on his feet, and with his senses working at an optimum level, Ellison perused the prison in which he'd been trapped. Closer inspection of the cliffs confirmed his earlier suspicions; there were no hidden cracks or fissures that provided an out. The river surged in from an underground tunnel along the northern side of the fortress and, after flowing and churning up a whirlpool of water, it veered back underground and disappeared into another tunnel on the southern side.

Incacha was right about the river not offering an escape route, so Ellison turned his attention to the section of the cliff which he did have access to. Laying his palm flat against the cool surface, he traced his hand over the granite, feeling every inch for some kind of key stone, or trigger, or any indication of a line or break that would give hope that there was indeed an Ali Baba's cave lurking beneath. Finding nothing, he didn't give up, but instead altered his tack.

With the use of his elevated eyesight he studied the porous surface closely in the hope of seeing any shards of light that shouldn't be naturally filtering through the rock. Squinting, suspicious, but not certain, the sentinel elevated his sight up another level when an ever so slight, but definite 'twinkle' captured his attention. Adding his sense of touch into the mix, his hand then brushed across something he'd missed the first time round. It wasn't an irregularity he could put an exact finger on, except that this section of the wall felt different; it was marginally warmer than its counterpart and it felt less intense, maybe even had a slight touch of hollowness about it. Tapping it with his knuckle, he repeated the same on the rock a few feet away and there it was – a dull thudding noise that wasn't present in the section to his left. Rapping harder, he could now hear the echo as it bounced off, deeper into a hidden cavern.

Wasting no time, Ellison searched the riverbank for a rock that would aid his task. He lucked out, finding a sharp-edged piece of shale amongst the smooth river pebbles, and began chipping away at the surface. The rock flaked off easier than it should have and, the harder he hacked, the more rock came flying off. It wasn't long before he'd created a reasonably-sized dent. The deeper that got, the thinner the rock became, and the easier it was to remove. After persistently chipping and hacking away, the sentinel finally reaped his reward; he broke through the last layer. The hole created was no bigger than the size of a fist, but it was plenty large enough to get a visual into the void beyond. The pace of Jim's heart quickened when proof of the cave's existence came into view. Abandoning the piece of shale, he used his feet, putting the full force of his body weight behind his kicks. The rock crumbled under the pressure, and it wasn't long before the sentinel had completely broken through.

Elation was short-lived, however, as Ellison scanned the cave. It wasn't, in the true sense of the word, even a cave – more like a thin, vertical well shaft. On the plus side, the moonlight filtering down from above gave a clear indication that there was a way out, but in the negative column, 'up' appeared to be the only way that was going to happen. Unfortunately, like the fortress he'd just left, the walls where sheer and smooth. Going through the now familiar motions, Jim performed the same routine on the shaft's walls as he'd done on the cliff. Sight, touch, intensity, they all came up a blank. Having come this far, refusing point blank to be beaten, he turned his attention to the higher sections of the shaft. He couldn't feel them, but he could see them, and every so often a flash of light would reflect off the walls. Waiting patiently and observing, he suddenly realised that there was a very distinct pattern being laid out in front of his eyes which began about fifteen feet above his head. Bracing his feet and hands against the wall, much like child would when he shimmied up a door frame, Jim started his climb. A flare of pain shot from his wounded arm, but he ignored it, willing his overall sense of touch to drop another level.

Mere inches from the first reflective light, the shaft had opened up to a point where he couldn't go much further using the method he'd employed. Straining to maintain his grip on the slippery walls, Ellison implored his muscles to stretch to their ultimate limits as he reached up in an effort to touch the light. His tenacity was rewarded when his hand brushed across an indentation in the rock. Fingering it with the precision and sensitivity of a blind man, he realised what he'd found. Chipped into the rock was a handhold. A deep, perfectly symmetrical hold that even provided an outer lip to maximise grip. Calling on his rock climbing skills that had been a basic requirement of his military career, Ellison made sure his hold was secure before he pushed off the opposite wall. He'd already calculated the distance to the next handhold and, using his arm much like rope, he let the force behind his fall become a pendulum swing. With perfect precision he latched onto the higher cavity and now had a sure hold with both hands.

Time-consuming as it may have been, but allowing for no mistakes, the sentinel painstakingly crawled up the shaft like a bug on glass pane. Finally his hand touched vegetation, which he used as a purchase to pull himself up and onto solid ground. The moment he exacted his freedom, he immediately took off in jog. Using the river as his map and the moon as his light, he set about reaching the cabin by daybreak. He was grimly aware that, when he arrived, the cop inside would be nowhere to be found.

~oOo~

More to come soon