A/N Showdown with the energy elemental. The last few pieces of the puzzle fall into place, and the Sanctuary team gear up for the final leg of their manhunt.

FIFTEEN

"How was London?"

Helen saw the rather intrusively curious look on Will's face and pulled a wry smile. "Rainy and dull."

Will folded his arms across his chest, smirking. "You know, you chase around Professor Hidden Agenda half-way across the world without fail. Like that." He snapped his fingers for dramatic effect.

Helen sighed, pausing from rummaging through her desk. "Would you want to try solving this mess without him?"

Will grudgingly admitted, "No."

"You've a smug smile on your face, Will. Out with it."

"Hank's had the idea that our Big Bad had to have had mineral resources from Hollow Earth to make a generator powerful enough to go undetected on main power grids."

Helen's jaw dropped. "Oh tell me Ranna's helped us."

"She sent us a file in secret that Henry's managed to find. He's decrypting it now as we speak."

"Oh well done, Will." Helen couldn't help but laugh at the beaming proud grin on his face. She found a slim book in her desk and placed it to one side, still trying to find her old records of when they had first encountered the elemental. Will picked up the book.

"What's this? Physiology of the Abnormal in the Southern Americas. That's a mouthful."

Helen looked up briefly. "Oh, that's the medical text the Sybarite sent me for my birthday. Famous collaborative work by Doctors Ernesto Arminta and Loyola Vuarez."

Will laughed. "That's a name. Loyola."

"Very common name in that region, Will. Uncommon man though. Very unorthodox ideas of abnormal and normal medical practices, but has done a lot for the Sanctuary." She sat back into her chair, coming up empty-handed. "Bugger it, I must have left it somewhere else. How soon do you think Henry will have those records?"

Will absent-mindedly flipped through the medical text. "Depends on when Tesla lets him get back to it. They're trying to reconstruct his tower thing."

"What the hell does this even mean?" Henry threw down the blueprint page in front of him, utterly flummoxed. Nikola looked over disinterestedly before returning to the wires he was delicately re-circuiting.

"You disappoint me, Heinrich."

"Seriously, man – you've put in mistakes, codes and traps in your designs so no one can copy your work. How the hell do you expect me to do anything without any clues?"

Nikola rolled his eyes. "Well, dude – use three to the power of three for most of the dimensions, and the circuitry grid is a sudoku puzzle."

Henry blinked incredulously and looked at the blueprint again, squinting. "Really?"

Nikola shrugged. "I was bored."

Henry pulled out a pad of paper and started on the necessary calculations. "So what does this thing do?"

"It's an amplifier."

Henry snorted. "That's it?"

Nikola glared at him through a small shower of sparks shooting from the circuitry board. "It's an amplifier that when organically linked to me is easily more powerful than ten large hadron colliders and can override any power board made by man."

Henry gave a small "oh" and Nikola merely pointed at himself and mouthed, "genius".

A small beeping suddenly sounded from Henry's pocket and he fumbled as he dug through his pants for his phone. Nikola moaned, "What have I said about phones while you're working?"

Henry looked at his phone screen and excitedly held it up. "My decryption's done! Computer – quick." He urgently held out his hand and Nikola passed him the portable tablet. Henry flicked through his files and Nikola sidled over so he could read over Henry's shoulder.

"There – reinforced crystal and glass, follow that delivery line."

Henry scrolled through the records of that particular shipment and they both breathed "cirillium" at the same time when they alighted upon it. Henry's eyes widened. "Seventy pounds of it split over eleven installments … that's worth more money than I can make in a year."

Nikola urgently slapped Henry's shoulder. "Which Sanctuary ordered it?"

"Asuncion, Paraguay."

Helen looked at the tablet, astonished. "Paraguay?"

"It's always the quiet ones you have to look out for," Nikola muttered. Helen passed the tablet back to Henry, gnawing on her lower lip.

"You're sure it's them?"

Henry nodded grimly, tucking the tablet under his arm. "The cirillium alone is still pretty clear evidence, but they also have reinforced crystal and glass, large amounts of EM-dampening ore … all the stuff you need for an energy prison."

"But why this Sanctuary?" Kate circled back to the question all foremost and present in their minds. "Of all the places to have a grudge against you…"

"I don't know…" Helen's mouth hardened as she crossed her arms against her chest. "But we know who they are now. It's time to end this once and for all. Nikola, you have the device?"

Nikola nodded gravely. He had modified his bait signal for the energy elemental with a built-in EM shield that would trigger once the elemental was contained. It worked on a dead switch where once activated could never be reset or reprogrammed. The shield would draw power from the elemental itself. The more it resisted, the more powerful the shield would become.

"I helped," Henry added with a cheeky grin.

"You have so little to be proud of I don't have the heart to take this achievement away from you," Nikola drawled.

"Nikola," Helen growled warningly. "All right then, start broadcasting the signal. We'll all have to remain alert over the next twenty-four hours. Everyone make sure you have your stunners on you. And remember, they'll only be useful in deflecting or distracting the elemental momentarily."

Will, Kate and Henry all pulled out their phones that had been programmed with touch-sensitive alarms. Should anyone encounter the elemental they would sound their alarms for immediate reinforcement.

"Let's just hope it doesn't blow up your house a second time," Nikola said.

Helen sighed. "Such faith you have in me."

Aurelian sat by the windowsill in Ylerin's sick room, looking up at the night sky. The moon was but a silver crescent, a mere sliver, an eye only open a crack, and a small amount of its light shone through the glass.

"You've grown too fond of them."

Ylerin laughed softly into her pillow. "So have you."

Aurelian smiled wanly, his only gesture of acknowledgement, and then suddenly stiffened. Ylerin sat up, and motioned for him. Swiftly he glided over to her bedside and silver mist began to bleed from his mouth, sucked greedily into her nostrils. Her eyelids fluttered as she fed for a reserve of energy and whispered, "Something dark is coming."

He looked deeply into her eyes. "This isn't our fight."

She grinned at him, brushing aside her last chance to distance herself from the coming events. "It's the last one I'll get to have."

The signal had been broadcasting for ten hours. Nikola remained rooted in his seat, his hand resting on top of the sphere at the needle of the small tower he and Henry had reconstructed in the lab. His eyes were closed as he felt and nudged his way through different power lines, intuitively dampening or broadening the signal to create as wide an umbrella as possible.

Helen sat nervously beside him. She had taken him aside quietly to ask him once again what safety measures he had taken for himself and he had brushed her aside with a non-committal answer. Henry's eyes were glued to his computer screen as they saw a visualization of the map Nikola's tower was creating. Kate paced around the room, as ever a creature in need of action, and Will flicked absently through the medical text for want of something to do.

Nikola's eyes snapped open and he muttered, "Get ready" just as Aurelian and Ylerin burst into the room.

The metal frame of the tower suddenly crackled with surges of energy and Nikola's hand snapped back as if it were burned. The lights in the laboratory flickered and the computer screens flickered and hissed with snow.

Kate already had her stunner out, pointed towards the tower grimly. Nikola backed away from it unconsciously, he and the Sybarites seemed to be able to sense intuitively where the elemental was while everyone else blindly guessed by the mayhem being created.

"Where the hell is it?" Kate growled in frustration. Helen firmly nudged Nikola and he quickly dug out the signal and cage device. It glowed brighter as he dialed up the strength of the signal and the lights in the lab burst, sprinkling broken glass over their heads.

"Careful everyone!" Helen shouted as she watched different parts of the lab systematically power down or simply overload with power surges.

Nikola's face had gone ashen gray as he held out the signal device, pumping it with more and more power to attract the elemental. Helen had never seen fear so naked on his face.

The tower suddenly began to surge again, whining hideously with metal screeches and crackling. Something began to coil around the sphere, like a swarm of black flies.

"Steady, blood demon," Aurelian called out encouragingly, moving slowly towards Nikola and the elemental.

"Come on…" Nikola muttered through grit teeth, "…here kitty, kitty…"

The black mass suddenly gathered itself together in the blink of an eye, forming a huge cloud and hurtled itself towards Nikola. Helen barely had time to cry out when she noticed.

At the last second, Aurelian threw himself at Nikola, knocking him to the ground, the glass sphere launching into the air as the elemental collided with it.

Ylerin caught the device neatly in her hand before it could fall to the ground and shatter. The device flickered dangerously and spat electric sparks, everyone could sense the raging elemental beating helplessly inside the shield walls, but the device held true.

Nikola lay panting on the floor, staring wide-eyed at the device as if his brain was still catching up to the fact that he was whole and sound. Aurelian helped him to his feet and clapped him heartily on the back.

"I think that's what they say in baseball as a 'nice catch'. Right, William?"

Will just nodded dumbly. Kate similarly was only just able to come to her senses and lower her gun. She breathed, "Whoa … that happened so fast."

"I think I just peed myself," Henry whispered quietly.

Helen similarly was still reeling, but lightly grasped Nikola's arm. "Well, that didn't go as smoothly as I hoped, but it worked. Look, Nikola, you're still brilliant as ever." She delicately took the glass sphere from Ylerin and held it up. They could all see the black swarm writhing inside. "One energy elemental."

Nikola rubbed at his chest, adrenaline still coursing through his body. "Remind me next time that helping you is dangerous for my health."

"Well, we got our bargaining chip," Will said. "I think it's time we made a house call."