The clock tower chimed in the morning. The panging sound jolted me awake after a few rounds, and I realized I had fallen asleep over the pile of alchemy books. My cheek had been pressed against a page that held a description on how lead could be changed into gold because of their similar chemical make-ups. Had I really been at the library all night? What about Edward and Alphonse? Were they-

"Maya!" I jumped as I heard Ed's voice through the door, only just hearing his persistent knocking. "Come on, open the door!" he called. I stood up from the table and turned the knob. The lock clicked open, and Ed shoved through the door.

For having been so eager to get into the room, the oldest Elric didn't do anything except make his way in and sit on the lone pulled out chair where I had been seconds before. He pressed his elbows on his knees and rested his head in his hands. His golden eyes were pressed shut by his palms, and he sighed. I knew something was wrong. And having forgotten the bit of anger I had felt the night before, I asked, "What is it, Ed?"

"God must really hate people who go against him," was all he muttered. I was a bit taken aback. I never knew that Edward even believed there was such a thing. Then again, we had never really talked about it. I wasn't even sure if I did. "I was eleven years old then, and he still has me marked. "Every time I'm close to reaching it, he pulls it away, making me fall on my face. Then when I finally have my fist around it, he raises his big, obnoxious foot and kicks me in the teeth."

I watched him thoughtfully, slowly making my way over and pulling another chair out from the table. I sat down so that I faced him. "Edward," I cooed, waiting for him to luck up again. "God didn't make the Philosopher's Stone." I assumed that was what he was talking about. What else could it be? He desired nothing else so much as the thing. "He doesn't exist to torture humanity." Of course I was going to start to ramble about something I barely knew of, but I did have a feeling that it would make sense. "Why create something just to see it crash and burn? I'm pretty sure there's something about the forgiveness of sins in the religion of Ishval." He didn't respond to any of it, so I changed the subject. "What happened?"

"The Philosopher's Stone," he replied after a moment, still not able to raise his eyes to meet mine. "The last ingredient listed; it's live human sacrifices."

For a moment, my breath caught in my throat. The emptiness in my stomach suddenly swelled, and I felt sick. It made me lower my gaze to the floor too. I understood why he had been so upset. But weren't we being a bit naïve? To believe that there was only one specific way to create something would have been ignorant. "You don't think there's another way?" I asked, clenching my fists and trying not to imagine having to kill humans to complete the red water's formation into a real Philosopher's Stone. "Why would Marcoh have told you where to find his research then? Did he really think you and Al would be able to create the stone, based on what he had found out?"

Edward heaved a long sigh and leaned back in the chair. "After so long, after years, I finally thought I had it. I got my hopes up so much when Sheska recreated the book and we decoded it that I even exploded at Al just now. I feel like an idiot."

I smiled a bit. "If Al held it against you every time you yelled at him, you two wouldn't be nearly as close to each other as you are," I reasoned. "I'm sure he understands more than anyone how much you wanted to find the stone. Hell, his humanity depends on it-"

"Which is why I feel like such a bastard!" he cried, covering his face with his palms again. His jacket and gloves were off now, and I could see his muscles become more defined as his body tensed with stress.

I looked away from him. "How about you just calm down for now?" I asked. "At least until tonight when we can all get a good night's sleep." He didn't move or respond to me. I bit my bottom lip with uncertainty. What else could I say to make him feel better? He couldn't just give up, not like that.

"Yeah," was all he said, placing his hands back in his lap.

"Ed, I-"

A knock at the door cut me off. I cursed in my mind, another nerve twitching at Lt. Ross' horrible timing. She opened the door and walked in with breakfast for the both of us. A brown, very broth-filled soup and some bread with glasses of milk. She never asked about how the research was going, and we never thanked her for the meal. As Ed swiveled the brown stew around with his spoon, I picked apart the bread and ate it in small pieces.

If the Lieutenant hadn't entered the room at that moment, what would I have said to him?

"Why don't you keep looking?" I asked. "We can keep searching for it together, and not worry about the end result." He looked up at me suddenly, with something held in he golden gaze that I had not looked deep enough to see before. "Think of it as reading a book with a lot of twists," I continued. "Just because you get angry and stop reading it, doesn't change the way it's going to end. You might as well finish it, just to know for the hell of it. Don't you think?"

After a moment, a smile snuck onto his face. "Maybe," he said. "Just to know the tru-" He cut himself off then, and to my surprise, fished something out of his pocket. "The truth…" he trailed off. I got up and walked behind him, seeing the note that Marcoh had left Edward. The genuine truth behind truths. "There's still something more!" he cried, throwing himself up from the chair and running out of the room into the one next door he had shared with Alphonse the night before. I smiled a little and walked into the room with them. When I did, he had a map unfolded on the table. He and Al were looking over it, scanning the page.

Pointing at a schematic marked '5th Laboratory', Ed noted the prison that was right next-door. According to Lt. Ross and Sgt. Bloch, the building had been shut down years before. "If people is the main ingredient in a Philosopher's Stone," I started. "Then why not use people scheduled to be executed anyway, people no one would miss?"

"Exactly," Ed said, his eyes gleaming down at the red-colored building on the map. It was like a treasure we had just found. "Who was running this laboratory?"

Ross answered, "The Brigadier General, but he was killed by Scar."

Edward fell into thought, and I looked over at Alphonse. "What do you think, Brother?" he asked.

"There's no choice. What do you say we go check it out ourselves?"

My lips twitched. Finally, something adventurous that I had been looking for. What was more dangerous than sneaking into an abandoned building said to be full of experimental prisoners, not to mention where it was illegal to do so?

"Now hold on a minute," snapped the Lieutenant. "This is grown-ups' work now, besides Scar's loose. You can't just go strolling around Central." My excitement fizzled immediately. Grown-ups' work? Two more sentences like that, and I was going to punch the woman in the jaw. Of course, I was not moronic enough to think that Edward Elric would just sit inside a library while military personnel went looking for his Philosopher's Stone, even when he decided that he couldn't argue with the Lieutenant. He didn't have to.

Slinging the rope Edward had created over the windowsill, I made sure it was tightly secured before any of us started scaling down the wall. I went first, tying my hands with pieces of the cloth napkins that had been given with our dinner to avoid my hands getting burned from the rope. Ed and Al made their ways down after me, and they led the way to the lab through the darkened streets of Central. Even though I was with the both of them, I couldn't help but get the chills when we reached the place. The city was so quiet at this time of night that it seemed abandoned, and anything we heard that sounded abnormal made me jump.

"For an abandoned facility, security's pretty tight around here," Ed said as we reached the front gate of Laboratory 5. We had noticed the trip wires on the ground sticking out of the dirt. The gleaming moonlight gave them away. "Let's try around back!"

The back of the place was a bit simpler, but there was still barbed wire at the top of the cement wall. After Al lifted Ed up to move the stuff, he gave me a boost high enough so I could jump onto the wall without having the climb the barbed wire using bare hands. However, I still caught my hip on a piece of the stuff, still remaining in the cropped top Winry had borrowed me. I hissed in a breath as it sliced at my waist, only drawing a little bit of blood. I hopped over before Alphonse climbed up and landed beside me.

Running to the side of the building, we hit a barricade in front of the door and instead had to use a vent to get inside. Ed climbed up onto Al's shoulder and lifted the grate off the shaft, climbing into it. "You wait here, Al, we're not going to get your big, metal body into this vent."

Just as I climbed up onto Al's shoulder, I heard him whimper a bit. "You know it's not my fault I'm big."

I laughed. "Bigger is better, Alphonse."

After a few minutes of crawling, the vents turned out to be smaller than originally planned. "See, it really is a good thing I'm so small- NO IT'S NOT!"

"Ed!" I cried in a whisper. "Stop talking to yourself, and keep crawling!"

He glared back at me. "If you were listening, then I wasn't talking to myself."

I rolled my eyes as we continued through the vent, eventually hitting a grate that Ed could kick in himself. He jumped down into a hallway with no windows and only lit with green lamps that ran low enough on the wall to only see one's foot placements on the floor. I jumped down next to him and looked around.

Edward grabbed my hand and continued forward, but before we had each taken two steps, we were suddenly stepping on all sorts of traps. Steel spikes shot out from the ceiling, nearly pinning us to the ground by our insides. Then, a side of the wall opened up to a large blade we had to dodge, and more spikes shot out from the side wall. Lastly, a trap door opened in the floor, leading to more sharpened spikes ready to pulverize the both of us. "Someone sure likes the messy way out!" I cried, climbing up out of the trap.

However, Ed just laughed. "For them to go to all this trouble, they must have something they really don't want to be seen." I grabbed his arm and pulled him up out of the trap. "I just love being right!"

Just then, his hand pressed down on another tile. I groaned. What next? I quickly glanced around, expecting knives to shoot out from a hidden wall or something. But instead, a low rumbling was coming from a distance, and it was coming from behind us. I was afraid to look, but did so just in time to see a large, cement ball rolling toward us. It's area filled the entire hallway, and it would definitely flatten us both. Ed grabbed my arm and dragged me up, and the two of us ran down the dimly lit hall, trying to find any direction to turn. I could feel beads of sweat starting to form on my forehead. It had been a while since I had been so close to death, and I wasn't yet used to the feeling. The rush of adrenaline was nice to experience again, but it was hard to form a solution in my mind, until I noticed a crucial detail in the construction of the place.

The laboratory hallways were square. We were being chased by a circle, to put it in simple terms. "Ed!" I cried. "Drop onto the floor, and lay in a corner!"

"What!" he screamed. "Are you crazy? Lay on the ground?"

"IN A CORNER!"

With that, I dropped onto the floor as stiff as I could and rolled into the corner of the hallway. I heard Edward grunt as he did the same and shut my eyes tightly, listening to the growl of the giant sphere grow louder and louder until it passed us both. After a moment, it crashed into something that neither of us could see. I heaved a sigh of relief and rolled onto my back on the ground. "Edward Elric…" I began, speaking in between breaths. "I am never going into an abandoned building with you again."

He also rolled onto his back and turned his head to face me with a chuckle. The both of us stood up and dusted ourselves off. "Damn it," he said. "Enough is enough!" Edward brought his hands together and knelt down to the ground again. Within seconds, the entire hallway was lit up. I even had to shield my eyes for a moment in order for them to adjust. At least it allowed the two of us to locate a decent door.

However, walking through it didn't entirely lead us anywhere. I looked around the next room, which was as equally dark as the first hallway had been. When I took a step forward, my foot hit something that rolled on the ground. As I looked down, I noticed that it was a skull. A chill ran up my spine, seeing all the other skeletal parts of bodies laying around the chamber.

"Nice of you to come," a voice startled Edward and me. We both turned to see a man walking toward us and drawing a sword. He wore plenty of armor, even a helmet with a bandana in front to shield his face. I didn't recognize it as any uniform of some sort. Still, it looked official, and the sword he unsheathed shone brightly in a slit of the moonlight that pierced the walls. "Graciously do I welcome you here."

Edward, sensing the sarcasm, responded. "Really, you don't look too welcoming with that sword."

Playful banter, I noticed. A little bit of sarcasm followed by an introduction was ultimately necessary before the actual fighting started. As subtly as he could, Ed got in front of me, for I had no weapon to fight with. I was still practicing basic alchemy. There was no way I could use it to defend myself in an actual battle with an expert, which was what this man seemed to be. "Be careful," I muttered in Ed's ear. He nodded, ever so slightly, just to let me know that he heard.

"Do not think ill of me, Child," the man said, raising his sword.

"And you don't think ill of me for being the child who defeated you," Ed retorted. "How about a little blade on blade?"

Barely without warning, the armored man charged. I dove out of the way just in time to avoid getting sliced by either of their weapons. When I was able to get behind the two of them, I made eye contact with Ed just for a moment before going further into the laboratory. There must have been something worthwhile he was guarding if he was willing to kill both Ed and me over it. Too bad he was busy focusing only on one of two targets.

I had gone on ahead into the next hallway, hoping Ed was all right. Of course, there was not much I could have done to help him. It probably would have been a better idea if I had stayed back at the library. But there were things I wanted to know too, and I was in this with them for the long run. While I was training to do alchemy, I could at least get a weapon of some sort to defend myself in times like this.

When I came to a certain hallway, I noticed at the end of it stood multiple beings. I could hardly see them in the dark, but they walked on all fours. The creatures walked in a circle, and their eyes glowed yellow in the black of the night. I remained around the corner, thinking of a way I could get around them. However, there were no openings in the hallway to get around. "If I could just draw a transmutation circle with something," I thought. "I could make more openings in the wall to get through."

A hand on my shoulder, and I nearly screamed. The white-gloved palm found its way around my mouth before I could make too much noise, however. I narrowed my eyes as Ed turned me around, ready to take my anger out on him before I noticed that he was carrying the helmet of the man that had challenged him. I would have asked why, had it not been for the fact that the beasts from the circle were now charging at the two of us.

Blood spattered from Ed's quick attack on the chimera made it fall to the ground, suddenly lifeless. Both of us were ready to take on more, but a piercing sound made them suddenly halt. I could see them better now. They appeared to be like wolves, but with multicolored fur. Different animals combined together using alchemy was what they were.

My eyes narrowed at them. Why would they have stopped so abruptly? Was it just because of the noise? Maybe it was a whistle of some sort. "The chimera have their master, the one who created them." I started just as the helmet Ed held could still talk. Though it did make sense now that the man was like Alphonse, only a soul attached to metal. It was the only explanation. In truth, I pitied the thing…

Though the loud, echoing sound of slow footsteps distracted me from my thoughts. I had thought humans could only create chimera, only alchemists. But when I caught sight of what was making the sound, I glanced at Ed with confusion. It was a chimera. Of which two animals, I was not sure. But I knew it was. How could a chimera itself create others, unless…?

My breath caught in my chest for a moment. I could have sworn that my heart skipped several beats, as I stood frozen. The chimera turned its head to face us, and my stomach lurched. The blue eyes that had once been kind and always hid behind glasses shifted to look straight at me. A glare of insanity now took that place. Something that I had not felt in over three years hit me at that point. It was a fear that made my blood run cold, made the perspiration become present on my face and my adrenaline spike to its highest point. Shou Tucker, my father, stared me right in the face, with a discreet yet crazy smile etched onto his thin lips. And the voice, the soft voice that had told me stories at night back when my mother was alive was now reduced to a lowly whisper that made the back of my neck prickle.

"My sweet Maya… How you've grown."

|| Edward ||

He looked over at her, the eldest daughter of Tucker. It had been years since Edward had seen that look of terror on her face, and a part of him ached to see her smile replace that look once again. Faster than he imagined he could, Edward dropped the helmet of #48 and caught Maya before she hit the cold stone on the ground, having gone into shock and fainted. His arms wrapped around her even before Tucker could take a step forward. "Don't you go near her!" Ed snapped, grinding his teeth in anger. "How are you even here? The military said you were executed!"

The severed helmet answered for him. "My brother and I were filed as executed when we were still alive. Why does it surprise you that another prisoner is still living here as a chimera?"

Ed shook his head vigorously. "I'm not talking about that!" he shouted. "I'm talking about her, and Nina." A sickening gasp parted his breath. "Your daughter was half-dead because of you, and you killed your own wife! How could they have let you live?" His words shot from his mouth without him even looking up from the girl in his arms.

"I know how you must feel right now, Edward, but please let me explain."

Edward did his best to steady his breathing, unknowingly curling his fingers in Amaya's cocoa hair. Not wanting to leave her, he picked her up in his arms and carried the helmet of #48 in the clenched fist of his right hand. He reluctantly followed Tucker into his part of the lab, where it was still filled with cages and animal parts in jars. However, it looked nothing like the basement of the mansion. There were no bloody transmutation circles on the walls, and the beasts of chimeras were silent, tamed. Edward tightened his grip around Amaya.

"There's something you're not telling me," he said. "You're a chimera, but you're not like those other wild animals. You've kept all your intelligence from when you were human. What kind of alchemist has that power? Dr. Marcoh? Or is it someone else?" The Sewing Life Alchemist gave him no answer at first, only gave Edward a sly smile that just pissed him off even more. "Tell me Tucker; who the hell's running this place!"

A glimmer in the chimera's eyeglasses, and Ed turned around. Curtains were shielding something that stood behind them. He turned back to Tucker, whose smile had faltered. "Please don't look at them Ed. They're shy."

Disobeying his plea, Ed placed Amaya- regrettably- down on the ground. She was propped up against the lab table. God forbid she awoke in this place, he thought. Nonetheless, Ed forced himself to leave her behind and pull back the curtains. Horror and confusion aroused his senses, for he was suddenly staring in the face of- "Amaya?" But he turned. She was sitting right there. She was alive, and so was Nina. Yet there were two copies of their faces, staring straight back at him from enormous canisters of some sort of formula. They were chimeras. How Tucker had managed to form them, Edward had no idea. But in the third vat, there was one with the face of a young woman. She had high cheekbones and dark blue eyes, the same as Amaya's. Her hair was short but attractively curled, reaching about shoulder length. And it was black, so black that it almost appeared blue.

Suddenly, Edward was drawn back to over three years ago, sitting in the library while Amaya read and Nina drew her pictures. He remembered her picking up the black crayon to shade in the hair and even the blue for the eyes. His own golden orbs widened as Edward realized he was staring into the face of their mother. "You still haven't figured out how to do a human transmutation, so you made a chimera that looks like her, that looks like all of them."

"I'm almost there," the chimera said, his voice dripping with desire. "Almost." He stalked over to a double door and pressed his beast-like hands against them and pushed them open. Ed gasped and sprinted into the next room. There were at least five or six tanks of red water in the room. Turning the faucet of one of them, a few drops fell onto the ground and hardened to form a stone.

"This is the same stuff that Marcoh had," he observed with disbelief. "This is the incomplete Philosopher's Stone."

"Yes, it's incomplete, but it's still extremely powerful." The beast's smile returned. "If this amount of unfinished material could be carefully refined, you could make a true Philosopher's Stone. This is what you've been looking for, Edward. Many have tried, but no one has ever succeeded before. It's impossible to ask for some ordinary alchemist."

|| Amaya ||

I could feel the cold floor beneath me, could hear the shuffles of creatures around me. However, I still did not want to open my eyes. I knew exactly where I was. It had taken me a moment to regain composure after realizing my father was alive, but I did. I stood up, bracing myself along the laboratory table, only to look into my own eyes. I saw the vats of liquid, saw the chimeras inside them. I saw my face, my eyes, even my hair. And I saw an exact copy of Nina but with a chimera's body. And then, finally, I stared at the last tank. After a moment of more shock, I bravely brought my fingers up to it, just out of reach of my own mother's face. Her navy eyes were empty, with no soul shining through them. It was the one thing that let me keep myself sane after seeing her face again.

This was a chimera, not my mother. It would never have my mother's soul. It would never smile like her or laugh like she did. If anything, it would die first before it was unlucky enough to live out the life of the pitiful beasts that my father had locked up in our old basement. With shaky breaths, I tore my eyes away, drawing the curtains over her again. If I allowed myself to think anything about her was real, I would go insane.

So I made my way to the next room, where Edward stood with what was left of my father. I did not allow myself to look at him, though I knew he stared at me with what he would consider love. But I had none left for him. I knew I never would. Without even having to speak, I made my way over to Ed, who in turn took my hand and pulled me to him. Momentarily, I was taken back to the night we had been at the Rockbells', talking in the hall the night before I was to leave with them. When he pulled away, I did not want to, and when he faced my father, I stared at the crimson bubbles that formed in the tanks filled with red water.

"But you see Tucker," I heard him mutter with sly confidence. He too stared with me at the tank of the liquid Philosopher's Stone and then at the transmutation circle drawn on the floor of the entire room. "I am no ordinary alchemist."