Within a second from touching the black cube, Andrew felt nauseous. He went to set his hand on the table to keep his balance, but nearly fell over as his hand went through air. The table was gone. Andrew set the cube down near his feet.

A noise from behind him startled him and he twisted himself around to investigate. Flashes of the last couple minutes blurred his vision and he got into a defensive position to take on whatever threat was about to rush at him.

The visions abruptly stopped and he focused on the figure in front of him.

"Vi?" he ran up to his sister, who was leaning up against the tree, getting sick all over the ground. "You okay?" he made sure that her hair didn't get in the way.

Wait a minute, where's the building? Why are we outside? He thought to himself, looking around at his surroundings.

"I'm fine. That was unpleasant," Violet said as she wiped off her mouth.

"The building is gone," Andrew commented.

Violet looked around too. "Well, it worked. The building we were in must not have been built yet I guess," she shrugged.

Andrew picked up the cube and examined it. "2012?"

"We aren't even technically born yet," Violet said with slightly widened eyes. "Do you think Dad is okay?"

Andrew slowly shook his head. "I'm surprised we even made it out of there. We can fix this though, we can save him," he smiled and pocketed the cube. "We just need to ensure that Stryker never gets his hands on our mother so that she never gets turned into Scarlet."

"We need to make sure Stryker doesn't get his hands on anyone if we can prevent it," Violet crossed her arms.

"We will. Any idea on where to start?"

"Really?" Violet raised an eyebrow. "The island in Brazil sounds like a great start."

"The only problem is that we're still in Miami. That's nearly a day's drive from where we live... we used to live. We need to fly to Colombia. And rent a boat. We have no car, no money, no identification-"

"Okay!" Violet cut him off. "No need to elaborate on how difficult this is going to be," she rubbed her temples.

Andrew sighed and sat in the grass. His sister began to pace around the area and was mumbling to herself, so he figured he'd let her work out the details. When he sat down, he felt something in his pockets.

'"No way," he pulled his cell phone out, surprised that it was still turned on. "Vi, do you still have your phone on you? Mine's at 94%."

Violet stopped walking and checked her pockets. "No..." she said disappointedly. "it must have fallen out when we were running back to Dad and Harry. I still have this with me though!" she held up a pocket-sized photobook just big enough to hold about ten pictures.

"Oh great, those will definitely come in handy." Andrew teased.

"It's the only thing I really brought when we went into hiding," Violet stuffed the photobook back into her pocket. "And you might want to turn your phone off. They won't have battery chargers for that here."

Andrew rolled his eyes and shut off his phone before pocketing it. Violet began walking towards the city, so Andrew picked up the cube as well.

"Where are we going?" Andrew caught up to her.

"To the library. The building that Stryker used on that island used to be a prison. It just hit me that neither of us actually knew how long Stryker had actually been there. I want to know if the prison is still running there; if it is that obviously means he's not going to be there yet, if it's not, we will need to check that place out."

"Good thinking." he grinned.

XXX

"Well, this was pointless," Andrew leaned back in the chair as Violet told him how her phone call went.

"It wasn't pointless, we just saved ourselves a trip to Colombia," Violet pointed out.

Violet had done a quick search online with Gorgona Island, Colombia. It turns out the prison was still being used. She wrote down the number to the prison and then had asked several people if she could use their cell phone, which took a couple tries. She finally got through and spoke with the warden of the prison, who had very bad english. The prison was going to be shut down in about eight months and prisoners were to be transferred to Brazil.

"Okay, but now we're back to square one. We have absolutely no leads on where he would be. Our mother and Harry don't get taken by Stryker until around the time that we're born, which is like two years from now," Andrew said in a rushed whisper.

"We do know of one place that he was specifically attracted to though."

"New York," Andrew nodded his head.

"Exactly," Violet smiled. "We just need to figure out a way to get there."

"With no money or car," Andrew added unhelpfully.

"I might have an idea..." Violet began.

Andrew raised an eyebrow waiting for her to continue.

"How about this. We'll meet back here at the front entrance in two hours. I need to go look for a college in the area. I think I might have a way to get us to New York. Can you try to figure out a way to get us some money for some gas and food?" Violet asked him.

"What do you want me to go do a street performance or something?" Andrew laughed nervously.

"Perfect!" she hugged him. "Meet me back here in two hours."

Andrew waited several minutes before leaving the library. He walked around for several blocks, searching for something in particular. Once he spotted it, he froze on the other side of the street. He hated using the extra powers that Stryker had given him, it almost seemed like a slap in the face to his family.

With a heavy sigh and a bad feeling in his gut, he crossed the street to the man at the ATM machine.

XXX

Violet was biting her nails, searching the huge bulletin board right outside of the first college that she was able to find - FIU. It was Winter Break in a couple of days, so many people would be traveling back home for the holidays.

"Come on... come on..." she kept walking looking at the other bulletin boards. "There had to be one...AHA!" she yelled loudly and then quickly looked around her. Several students had looked in her direction, but shrugged it off as if this type of behavior was usual here.

Violet stared at the piece of paper in her hands that read in big bold letters at the top, 'ATTENTION NEW YORKERS', and had a quick paragraph about car pooling and expenses. The girl's name who posted it was Claudia and at the bottom were several tabs with the person's phone number, but Violet instead took the whole piece of paper with her.

A guy with a huge panther on his shirt and baseball cap passed her, smiling and nodding his head at her.

"Hey!" she called to him as he passed her.

The guy stopped and looked back at her, "Hey."

"Could I please use your phone for a moment? I lost mine earlier today," she frowned.

The guy looked slightly disappointed, but mumbled 'yeah' and handed her his phone from his pocket.

Violet turned away from the guy and dialed the number on the paper that she had taken down from the bulletin board.

"Hello?" a girl's voice answered the phone, presumably Claudia.

"Hi, is this Claudia?" Violet asked.

"Yes, who's this?" the girl was very upbeat.

"My name is Violet. I got your number from the paper you posted and I was interested in car pooling with you to New York if the spots are still available?"

"Oh-uh-wow!" the girl beamed. "Yeah sure! So far it's only me and my friend Mayra going, not many people that go here live in New York."

"Oh, yeah, I know..." Violet said awkwardly.

"So you said 'spots' available. Who else would be coming?" Claudia asked.

"It would be just my brother Andrew and I. We'll have gas money and everything. When would you guys be leaving?"

"Well," Claudia began hesitantly, "I know it's like only Wednesday and most people don't leave until Friday, but I didn't get any calls back so Mayra and I decided that we were um... I know most people would say it's bad to skip classes and everything, but you know..."

Violet could tell the girl was kind of ditsy over the phone, but they needed a way to New York so she was trying to keep her patience. "Yeah no I totally get it, but when were you planning on leaving?"

"Six." the girl replied.

"Six days!?" Violet internally groaned.

"No, at six today!"

"Oh!" Violet perked up. "That's great! Where should we meet you at?"

"The Starbucks across from across the school, be there at six!"

"Okay, great. Thanks, bye." Violet hung up the phone and handed it back to the guy, telling him thanks as well.

Violet ran back to the library, where Andrew was already waiting for her. He was sitting on the steps with a frown on his face. Right when he saw her though, he jumped up from the steps and the side of his mouth pulled up in a half smile.

"What time is it?" Violet asked.

Andrew huffed out a laugh. "Calm down, you're not late. It's almost four though."

"Ok, so I got us a ride! It's a carpool with these two girls, one of them was Claudia I don't remember the other one's names. They go to FIU, which we're going to have to pretend to go to as well. So try to stay clear of that subject whatsoever. I was thinking maybe we could try sleeping most of the time there to avoid anything like that. We will need to help with gas which is obvious, and- crap!"

"What?" Andrew looked startled.

"We don't have any luggage or bags or anything, that's going to look stange to them," she looked worried.

"Let's go to a store quick and get some things. We're going to need snacks and stuff anyways," he suggested.

"Okay, yeah sounds good," Violet nodded. "But, we need to hurry."

"Why do we need to hurry?"

"We need to meet them across the school today at six. That's when we're leaving."

"Damn Vi, we're cutting this pretty close," Andrew replied. "Let's head out then."

They found a Walmart a few blocks away from the library. Andrew picked out two shoulder bags for them while Violet picked out their necessities. They both got some snacks and went to the check out.

"Are you sure we're going to have enough money to pay for this stuff and give those girls gas money?" Violet asked in a hushed voice.

"Yeah, don't worry about it. I made a decent amount with my acrobatic skills," Andrew joked, but Violet could hear some tension in his voice.

"Are you okay?" Violet asked him after they had paid and left the store.

"What do you mean?" he asked defensively.

"Nothing." she shook her head.

They made it to the Starbucks by 5:58pm, and right away they noticed a girl standing next to her car with her arms folded.

"Are you Violet and Andrew?" she called to them as they crossed the parking lot.

"Yeah, hey, it's Violet!" she waved at the girl.

"I told you to be here at six!" she said, sounding slightly annoyed.

Violet quickly glanced at Andrew. "It's not six yet, I thought we were early."

The girl sighed and opened up the back door to her car. "If you're not early, then you're late."

"Oh, uh, sorry...?" Violet set her bag in the car.

"Whatever, it's fine." Claudia turned her attention towards Andrew. "So you must be-oh my God." she had a shocked look on her face.

Violet didn't know exactly what happened, but Andrew gave a slight nod.

"They're contacts." he pointed to his eyes.

"Oh- yeah I knew that." she sniffed. "I knew there was no way eyes could actually be that color. They're pretty hot though." she smiled and winked as she got into the front seat.

Andrew shrugged at Violet and both of them got into the back seats.

"So this is Mayra, she's my best friend." Claudia pointed to the blonde next to her in the front seat. Both of the girls were blonde and looked like they had spray tan on. "And Mayra, this is Violet and Andrew, they're brother and sister."

"Hey." Mayra smiled to them, lingering on Andrew.

"You two packed pretty light." Claudia looked down at their bags.

"We had limited time to pack and we figured we have more clothes back home in New York anyways."Andrew shrugged. Violet noticed he seemed a bit put-off.

It was the same thing with Andrew as it was for Harry. Stryker's experiments had permanent effects on the both of them. Harry had sharpened teeth that he was self conscious of, and Andrew kept his neon blue eyes.

"Oh, okay!" Claudia shrugged and started up the car. "Who's ready to go back to New York!?"