"Are you sure this is the best idea?" Chavo asked from the front seat. The hearse had a small panel in the window between the front seat and the coffin compartment, and he was turned around to talk to the others in the back while Josh was still driving. "I mean, you said those guys could track us and we don't know how close they might still be..."

"We have to try to do this," Keith said, sitting in the middle of the group, holding that same piece of machinery, leaning over Rey. "I've got this thing zoomed in far enough that I should be able to pinpoint where in Rey's body this chip is, and if it's close enough to the surface, we can take it out and get rid of it. That'll throw them off our trail enough to be able to keep them from finding us."

"How exactly would you 'take it out'?" Eddie asked, hugging Rey close as Keith held the scanner thing over Rey, starting to move it around some.

"Well...unfortunately, if it's too deep inside, we can't...and if it is somewhere we can get at it, it'll have to be with a knife and we'll have to cut it out."

"Do you know how to do that?" Batista asked.

Keith blew out a breath, still running the scanner over Rey. "I saw them put enough of them into people, I've been part of plenty of disgusting procedures in this. Not to mention I've had some training in emergency first aid from my organization. I think I can figure it out."

"What is your organization?" Cena asked from the wall he was pressed against. "And are they going to be able to clean out this shit that's been stuck in mine and Rey's heads?"

"Me? I'm a member of DSA...Defense Security Agency. Agent Morales...Marcia...she was FBI. We had other team members from the CIA, Homeland Security, the CSIS, that's Canada's version of our intelligence agencies...we had a lot of agencies working together. Bettler's snipers wiped out the main force but there's others like me who can testify to what we've seen, there's more files out there." He glanced at Cena. "And hopefully, yes, we'll be able to 'clean your heads'."

"Then why are they still chasing after us?" Eddie asked.

"I don't know, really. Best I can figure is, despite all that, despite paperwork and human testimony, Rey's still the only piece of actual physical evidence there is. Granted, our paperwork and our testimony will be devastating, but they must think they can still work around it simply because the story is so fantastic that people won't believe it. He's their damnation, for lack of a better phrase."

"Do you have people you can call to help us? Somewhere we can go to get away?"

"Not who can help us right now. My contacts are in Washington, too far away now. I can alert them to what's happening, and they can mobilize and start towards us, but without keeping them constantly abreast of our location, we can't count on them finding us."

"Maybe you should do that, man," Cena said. "It wouldn't hurt to at least notify a cavalry that they could be needed."

"I can do that next time we stop..." Keith stopped the scanner, over Rey's legs, then nodded, setting it down. "Rey, do you have any noticeable scars on your legs?"

"Um...um, yeah, I've had a lot of surgeries on them..." Rey said softly.

"Okay...let's get your pants rolled up some and I'll take a look."

Rey looked up at Eddie, but he pulled his knees up slightly and helped pull his pants up enough to expose his knees, showing the scarring on both legs, particularly the left. Keith lifted the scanner again, looking at it, frowning, fiddling with it, moving it back and forth, and finally nodded, reaching down to touch Rey's left knee lightly. "In there."

"In there?" Batista asked.

"Whenever possible, the scientists tried to insert the trackers in places that were already damaged. It's not exactly painless to have a microchip embedded in your body so they needed a way for people not to notice an occasional wiggle of pain."

"Well...my knees hurt a lot so I...I guess I wouldn't have noticed anything unusual about it..." Rey murmured.

Keith probed at his leg lightly, wincing, then nodded, touching a spot in the middle of one of the scars lightly. "There. I can feel it there. Just under the skin. Probably won't be very hard to get."

"I don't like this plan," Eddie said, frowning. "Just cutting into him like that? With nothing for pain or anything? You aren't even a doctor."

"No, I'm not, and I don't like the idea either, but we have to get that thing out so they can't trace it anymore."

"But we'd still need medicine and bandages and things to keep it from being infected...maybe we should just take him to a hospital and let them take care of him."

"We can't just go to a hospital. First of all, you guys would be noticed pretty much immediately. Second, unless he was critically wounded, no one would look at him for hours, and that would be more than enough time for the scientists to track him down. Third, we can't be certain they haven't got plants at any of these hospitals. I know they completely overtook most of the areas their buildings are in, but I'm pretty sure they've at least got eyes in every other major locale to look out for any escapees or people who might be getting too close to the truth."

"This is bullshit!" Beth spat. "What kind of fucking monstrosity branch of psychopaths could have this much power and this much sway?"

"There's been projects like this going on for a long time," Chavo said from the front seat. "There was stuff like this Project MK-ULTRA thing I read about once, they did stuff like expose soldiers to diseases and pump prisoners full of LSD and weirdness like that, trying to figure out brainwashing or...something."

"And wasn't that movie Manchurian candidate based on a true story?" Josh piped up.

"That might have been the MK-ULTRA, too. I don't know, I have seen lots of books about those government conspiracy things, and you know ol' Jesse Ventura has ranted about them..."

"Jesse went crazy about three years ago and no one seems to have noticed," Eddie muttered. "Look, I don't think we should do this. There's all kinds of vital things that run through your legs and if you nick something or...you know...Rey'd be in big trouble of dying..."

"He's in big trouble of dying if we don't do it," Keith replied. "Or even worse than dying if they just take him back and re-insert him into the experiments."

Rey's face paled visibly. "Back with Kane?" He looked up at Eddie, shaking his head furiously. "Don't let me go back with Kane, Eddie, please...I'll do anything we have to do, just don't...I don't wanna go...don't wanna go back with Kane, please, don't wanna go back with Kane..."

Eddie chewed his lip, then hugged Rey a little closer. "You won't go back with Kane, Rey, no one is going to let that happen."

"If there's something in my leg that they can use to find me, I want it out, Eddie, I want it out now, as fast as we can, I don't want them to find me anymore, I don't want to be...I don't want to be tagged, like an animal, I don't want that thing in me anymore...if Keith can take it out, I want him to take it out, I don't want it in there. Please, Eddie? Please, I just...I don't want it in there anymore..."

Eddie sighed softly. "I just...we've lost you once already, Rey...we lost you and now we have you back, I don't want to risk going through losing you again...not when we're so close to saving you..."

"I know...but I want this thing out of me...I don't want to be found, I don't want to know that they can follow me anywhere..."

Eddie nodded somewhat, though with obvious reluctance. "All right...all right." He looked up at Keith. "What do we need?"

"Well, it feels like it's just under the skin. I can just make a small incision, and I'd need some tweezers or a forceps to get a grip on it and take it out. Then I guess some antibiotics for the wound and bandages. Probably won't be severe enough to need stitches, so long as we're careful with him and he doesn't walk or jerk it around too much."

"Where can we get that sort of stuff?"

"Most department stores with a big enough stock will have them. It's not like an actual surgery, more like...a really big, moderately deep splinter."

"So I need to find a store so we can get that stuff?" Josh asked.

"Yeah. Then we need to find a quiet spot somewhere out of the way and...get it done..."

( )

Chavo sat on the picnic table, resting his chin in his hand, staring out at the woods. They'd found a camping area, which was understandably deserted for this time of year in Canada, and Josh had pulled in and parked there. They had found a Wal-Mart and stopped just long enough for Keith to run inside and buy the supplies he needed, then driven another hour before finding this place. Now Keith, Rey, Eddie, and Batista were the only ones in the hearse, door shut, while Keith worked on removing the tracking chip from Rey's leg. The rest of them were sitting around, trying to stay out of the way, and he'd picked the table closest to the car to sit on, just waiting.

"Hey," a voice came from behind him, and Josh hopped up to sit next to him. "How are you feeling?"

"Exhausted," Chavo answered frankly. "Like when this is over I'm going to go to bed and stay there for a day or two."

"Yeah. Mine's more like the kind of exhaustion where I want to sit up all night watching Spongebob and not having to think."

Chavo snorted. "When you have kids around and you get forced into watching that show, it starts to lose what little appeal it ever had."

"Yeah, but it's the best kind of brainless entertainment."

Chavo shook his head a little, wincing when there was a faint cry of pain from the hearse, but it died down quickly. "All they gave him was some fucking Tylenol. They're just cutting him in there."

"It's the only option we had, Chavo. Rey knew it, he understands what's happening now, at least enough to be able to go with this."

"That doesn't mean I have to like it." He ground his teeth slightly, visibly, even with his chin still resting idly in his hand.

Josh studied him a moment, then looked over at the hearse, quiet for a moment. Finally, he spoke. "By the way...I'm sorry I fussed at you last night."

"Last night?" Chavo glanced over at him.

"Yeah. When you and Morrison were fighting about Jeff. I kind of yelled at you a little. I'm sorry. I was just...tired and cranky and lashing out, I guess."

"Well...it was late and all. And it was a bad time I guess."

"For what it's worth, I understood your point. Granted, I don't think there was really anything we could do by that point...sending Jeff away on his own would have been more dangerous. But I could definitely see where you were coming from."

"It's not even that I really think Jeff would be capable of doing something like that," Chavo said, shaking his head. "I really don't. But you know how you get a thought in your head sometimes that you just can't let go, and I just...I really had just wanted to talk to Jeff, make sure his head was in the right places, kinda reassure him if he was having those thoughts, you know? I didn't anticipate Morrison getting into things. Fuck, I didn't even know they were together...like that."

"I'm not sure how together they actually are. Kind of an odd relationship."

"Still. There's one there and it bit me in the ass in the worst way."

"Don't worry about it, Chavo. You're just looking out for Rey. Morrison and Jeff both realize that."

There was another shrill scream and frantic whimpering from the hearse, leaving them both silent for a moment until it passed. Chavo groaned, rubbing his forehead some. "I just feel so damn guilty about all this."

"About what?"

Chavo shook his head some. "Before Rey died...before he was taken...he and Eddie being tag champs. I went out of my way to be a bastard to him. I guess I was jealous...I don't know, I just...I don't know. I was fighting with him and I almost had Eddie worn down and then the hotel...and he was gone, and we thought..." Chavo looked over at Josh, tears visible in his eyes. "I thought I'd ruined everything. I thought I'd fixed it that the last Rey remembered of us was anger..." He wiped his eyes almost angrily, apparently ashamed of tears. "Eddie was...we stuck it out, but I could tell for a long time, there was this...this rage towards me. I don't know if he actively blamed me but he was grieving and angry and..."

Josh nodded some. "I remember. You guys were fighting for a while."

"I really did feel so bad about it...I really did. I was just acting out and then I cost Eddie Rey and then Rey was gone and there was no way to make things up, no one to apologize to..." Chavo looked over at the hearse. "And now there is...and I don't know if Rey even registers what I did to him anymore. After all the horror and..." Chavo put his face in his hands. "He'd have been splitting a room with Eddie otherwise and maybe this wouldn't have happened to him..."

Josh shook his head. "That's not true. If anything, it would've just gotten Eddie...too. From what that doctor Krugman guy said, they were going to take Rey no matter what...no matter who they had to go through to do it."

Chavo put his thumbnail in his mouth, apparently chewing at it. "According to those files, they even went so far as to brainwash him into thinking I went and turned on him after they said...even the fucking science people cast me as a bastard." He looked over at Josh. "I am a bastard."

"You aren't a bastard, Chavo."

"Why not? Everything I do is selfish and evil, people see me as selfish and evil-,"

"You're here, aren't you? You've been fighting in the trenches right along with the rest of us, you charged at Kane like he owed you money...freaking Kane, man. There's nothing selfish about this."

Chavo shook his head slowly. "I can't just snap my fingers and be rid of guilt."

"No, but maybe doing this is a way to help scrub your soul clean."

"You're just not gonna let up, are you?"

Josh smiled. "I'm a pit bull."

"I'll buy you a T-shirt that says so when we get home." Chavo looked over as the door to the hearse swung open, and Keith slid out, holding a handful of bloody bandages and wrappings and carrying them to a nearby trashcan, tossing them in.

"We're finished," he announced, holding up a small black square, shiny and slick with blood. "Rey's all right. It was right under the skin like I thought."

Chavo and Josh, along with the others, who had been scattered around, came closer to look. "That thing's tiny," Morrison said softly.

"We need to get rid of it and get out of here fast," Josh said. He glanced around, then pointed. "Over there, there's a bathroom."

"What about it?" Keith asked.

Josh took the small chip, running over to the small brick building and slipping inside. There was a sound as though a toilet paper roll was being unspooled, a moment of silence, and then the loud flush of the toilet. He came back out, brushing off his hands. "There. Let them chase plumbing for a little while."

"Good idea." Keith looked back at the others. "Now load in. We need to get moving quick so we can hide our trail."

"Where do we go from here, then?" Beth asked, as they all started clambering in, trying to ignore the bit of blood on the floor and the fact that Rey was curled up in Eddie's lap, whimpering and crying softly, his leg encased in bandages, with Batista looking on in obvious discomfort and squeamishness.

"First we need to find someone who can tell us exactly where we are now," Cena said. "Then we can figure out what's next."