To all the people who bother to read this story and review it, I thank you.

Okay so chapter 8 is finally here and the story can move forward. Yay!

Special thanks to Melissa, who keeps encouraging me to move forward in the story. Glad you're enjoying the weather over there, cause it's freezing down here.

Dana's POV

Ashley must have been frustrated. You couldn't tell, as the drug that was coursing through her veins prevented her making any independent decisions for her own body. She sat behind me, and I could feel her eyes on the back of my head through the leather backed seat. I permitted myself a small smile. Frustrating, she has no clue I thought before I turned to her.

"Ashley, I hope you understand just how much you mean to the Cabal and this operation."

She blinked, and I had to smile again.

"Your cooperation has allowed us to put into action a plan that will totally and completely bring the Cabal forward in both the research to eradication of abnormals but will also give us the headway we need to succeed in our future as the top organisation for the sake of humanity"

No response, of course. "The Sanctuary, Ashley. The board has agreed that it's time to eliminate the competitors. Unfortunately, your mother and the Sanctuary are at the top of the list." I patted Ashley's knee, I could see something in her eyes, distain. "Remember who holds the upper hand here Ashley. All you can do, is fall into pace with the rest of us."

I moved back to my original position, making myself comfortable for the remainder of the facility change. I closed my eyes for a brief moment, feeling a slight twinge of annoyance at the slowness of the proceedings. Stage two was on track, and there was plenty of time left to deal with the remaining pieces. But my nerves were on edge. Plans seldom go this smoothly, one on such a large scale could easily have difficulties. I pondered briefly on the measures put in place to ensure the smooth running of this stage.

I had agents watching the Sanctuary, we knew of every move that Helen Magnus was currently making. But something still seemed… unbalanced. I sighed and turned to the window, watching the clouds fly past the wings of the jet. I was becoming too paranoid. My most recent conference with the board had been… tenser than usual. They were becoming nervous. The one satisfaction from that meeting had been the absence of a certain Kadi Denvt. Without his many interruptions and questions I was able to quickly resolve the board once again. I leaned back slightly so as to look at Ashley, and smiled.

"You'll see the picture quite clearly soon Ashley. And trust me, you'll love it"

From behind Dana's chair, as the woman herself turned away, Ashley released a small tear.

Henry's POV (several hours earlier)

"WOAH!" I yelled as I felt my back smash against the wall. I let out a small oof as I fell to the ground. Damn that concrete is hard.

I moaned as I struggled to get up from the floor when another shudder went through the building, and I heard a loud cracking noise from above me. "Oh, that's not good" I pushed hard at the floor with my feet and hands, trying to scramble to my feet. I just managed to lunge through a small partition of the wall. Just in time too, as a small section of the ceiling separated from the rest of it and thundered down onto the concrete where I had been only a few seconds ago. Whew, that was a close one.

I poked my head out of the partition, just to make sure that no other chunks of the ceiling, or wall, were going to squish me. Satisfied that my life would not end being squished between two pieces of concrete, I stepped out and surveyed the damage to the lab.

"Oh wow…" Ummm, did I say lab? I meant ancient ruin.

The place was trashed, and that was me being nice. Cracks were running up the walls around me, especially near the doorway through to the elevator. Good thing I knew my way around, cause if I didn't I would assume that someone had tried to build a door, gotten cranky with it and chucked some boulders made out of the ceiling on it. You could still see a bit of the side panel; what was left of it. I blinked a few times to clear my vision and get my brain back into focus. The remaining pieces of door were interesting, but it took me a few seconds to remember that there were abnormals down here too. "Shit!" I whirled around to look at the habitats. Not the most flattering name, I get it, but I refuse to call Sally's home a fish tank. Or an aquarium, I would have asked her about it, but I didn't think it would be polite. You ain't felt in trouble until Sally has given you a glare. I could almost feel the glass vibrating with her hiss. It sounded more like a gurgle, with all the bubbles coming out of… but you get the picture.

I took a massive sigh of relief when I saw Sally's tank… uh, habitat. The glass hadn't shattered, thank mother Mary, as I had no idea what I would've done in that scenario, pack her in ice cubes? Attach a water bottle to her gills? Maybe giver her a sponge or something, but whatever, the glass was mostly intact. Little cracks were running from a decent sized round dent off centre of the tank. Judging from the size of the steel beam in front of the tank, I guessed we were very lucky the ceiling needed such long beams. The end must have hit the floor, while the other end tipped and banged against the glass on its way down.

I gave a thumbs up to Sally, who was looking a little frantic. Her hands were up against the glass, her head moving side to side as she looked at all the damage. As I turned my back on her, I let out a small whistle to fully release the tension in my stomach. The milk I'd had on my down here was going to make a sudden reappearance if I didn't put my mind to fixing the problem instead of just staring at it. The majority of habitats were still intact, again thanks to who ever up in the sky is watching me, as I was so not in the mood to deal with a freaked out carnivorous lizard.

Some of the glass doors had smashed, but there was still chunks from the ceiling and walls raining down and they were blocking those entrances. Hopefully none of them were dead. Some of these guys could get pretty scary when they were nervous, and I wasn't about to climb over and check out if they were in the mood for a free punching bag.

As I sat down on one of the ceiling beams, I suddenly remembered the hacking incident that got me into this mess. I climbed over some of the wall chunks to get to the middle of the room. I stepped on something and managed to slip on it, landing with a nice hard thunk on my back and also successfully banging the back of me head on the wall piece I just climbed over. Lights were dancing in my eyes as I rubbed the back of my head. I now give my current situation in life, a one out of five.

I looked down to see what I'd slipped on and sighed. I was sitting on the scattered pieces of my broken hard drive. Smashed, squished, off this earth, it was an ex-computing system. Still rubbing the back of my head I checked the rest of the software equipment. Three of four screens I could not find, and on a personal note, I didn't want to find them. The new software I'd been working on to deal with the system hacking was pretty intact, only some minor pieces were missing, though it was a little banged up from landing on it's sides.

Brushing it off lightly, blowing on it to get rid of the light dust, I noticed something that (from this angle) looked like a piece of twisted metal. Could have been a piece of melted desk for all I knew. But it just stuck out from such an odd angle in the corner of my vision that I was starting to get a little annoyed with it. It irked me.

Stepping over towards it, I could see much more of the metal than I had standing on the other side. Gently placing my hardware on a lump of rock, I bent down to pull it way from the loose rubble it was sticking out of. "Ah, so this is where you went" I mused out loud. First sign of madness? Tell me about it. What I held in my hand could only be described as a former timing system. The piece of machinery that had been ticking away when I picked it up from beneath the desk, the wireless feed that told the bomb tucked away in some corner of the room, it hadn't been under the desk thank God. I reached this sudden sense of relief, like world had reached zero gravity and was floating around me, I'd been so damn lucky that this timer hadn't been attached to the actual bomb. "Man" I said out loud "I felt like blowing up in Nicola's face, but this is ridiculous"

Will's POV (present time)

I could hear the scuttling noises coming from the rafters in the barn. I squirmed around, trying to move, terrified of what was coming. I couldn't do much; I was so groggy from being hung upside down for such a long period of time. The string was vibrating, something else was moving it. My breath was coming quicker and my head was pounding. Why hadn't I blacked out yet? The world was too fuzzy, my mind felt too heavy to think of a way out. As the world grew fuzzier and fuzzier, the only thing I could hear were the clicking noises that I'd been dreading for so long now…

Hey it's chapter 8! At the end of the last chapter I promised you guys I'd have it up on the weekend and several weeks later… Note to self – can't keep promises, consider politics. This is kind of a filler chapter because nothing much happened with Will. But it will in the next chapter, no matter how long it takes me to write. How's the Henry storyline btw, does anyone feel like I might be missing something or if you have any ideas just review and tell me. Please review, it makes me feel more compelled to write if I hear from my readers.