Jeff was leaning against a tree a short distance from the others, arms crossed, staring at the road they'd driven in on. Ostensibly, he was keeping an eye out for anyone else who might come in after him, but in truth, it was just as much of a chance to just stand away and on his own for at least a little while.

It was quiet enough that after a couple of minutes he was able to hear the sound of the ground crunching under hesitant steps, and he didn't have to turn around to know who it was. But he didn't say anything until Morrison was standing next to him, head down somewhat.

"Hey," he said quietly.

"Hey," Jeff answered.

"Listen, I'm sorry about-,"

"Don't be sorry, Johnny," Jeff said, turning towards him. "It wasn't your fault. I just lost my cool and I took it out on you, and I shouldn't have done that, and I'm sorry."

Morrison reached out to take his hand. "But you had a point. You were only in that situation because of me, and I'm sorry, too. I won't go off chasing after that big bastard again, especially not if there's a chance it'll put you in any danger."

Jeff leaned back against the tree again, watching the road. "I'm not cut out for this stuff. It's one thing to be in the ring, in an environment where there's people around and help's on the way...and you know, about the worst you have to deal with is Randy Orton. It's not like the entire company is out to get you and they all would just as soon see you dead as look at you...you know, I mean, I can handle getting beat up, but...this is something else entirely." He looked at Morrison. "Being a professional wrestler is a far cry from being a soldier."

Morrison nodded a little. "I don't exactly think any of us knew we'd be walking into a war quite like this. But we're here now and we need to do as best as we can."

"Maybe my best is going to be to just stay out of the way..."

"You've done fine, Jeff. You stopped the van when they were trying to steal Cena, for God's sakes. I don't know if I'd have hurled myself off the top of a roof to stop a moving vehicle."

"And you knocked out a guy with a gun with nothing but your foot."

Morrison stepped to his side and put an arm around his waist, just standing with him. "We've got our parts we play. Everyone's got a strength and a weakness. Just like a really overpopulated tag team. We just gotta try to keep playing to our strong parts and keep away from our weak parts. So no more fighting the enormous wannabe rapist for you and I anymore."

Jeff's mouth quirked slightly. "Too bad we couldn't have brought Khali or Big Show with us. They'd be even bigger than that freak."

"Well, next time we're going to race off to rescue our former coworker from a bunch of mad scientists, we'll remember to grab one of those guys on our way out."

Jeff chuckled at that, and Morrison laughed as well, glad Jeff was proving his own resiliency. Getting frightened and going a little mental right after an attack was one thing, but being able to recover and come right back showed that despite what anyone, even Jeff himself, might think, Jeff was just as tough as the rest of them. He could take this as long as any of them could.

( )

Beth was settled on a bench a little bit away from the hearse in the park they・d taken as their temporary refuge, rubbing her head and wishing like hell she had something more than the most basic of painkillers to ease the tremendous ache radiating around her skull. She was doing her best to keep from letting the men know that she was hurting, she didn・t want them feeling like they・d need to baby her. But fuck, that enormous fucker kicking her like that had dimmed her lights for a few seconds and the pain hadn・t yet let up. She knew she wasn・t concussed and that was good, but good didn・t exactly matter to the pain.

"Heya," she heard, and she glanced up quickly, practically snapping her hands down by her side in what she realized a second too late would just make her hurt more obvious. Cena was standing in front of her, holding a paper cup from the water fountain, holding it out. "Want a drink?"

"Don't suppose your superpowers include turning this into a stiff shot of vodka, do they?" she asked, reaching out to take it, sipping at it as Cena walked over and settled onto the bench next to her, drinking from his own cup.

"That's Jesus, not Superman. You want Shawn for that."

"Oh right. Mixing my superheroes." Beth finished off the cup of water and absently crushed it in her hand, grimacing at the sound of a shout of pain from the hearse, not the first and not the last they were going to hear. "How long do you think this is going to take?"

"I don't know. I'm sure they want to hurry and get things done and get out of here, before those suckers can track us back down. But I doubt that Keith guy is going to just slash and grab on Rey's leg, he's probably going to be as careful as he can manage."

"Great. So those guys could still have a chance to catch up to us."

"I don't think they will just yet. We fled pretty far, pretty fast. Surely we have at least enough time to do this and get out of here."

"Hope you're right," Beth said, wincing as she set the cup down on the ground.

Cena nodded, sipping his water, falling silent for a moment. Finally he asked, "How's your head?"

"It's fine," Beth answered automatically. "I've taken worse."

"I know you have. You're an absolute beast. That doesn't mean it doesn't hurt."

Beth glanced at him and shrugged slightly. "It'll be all right. If I were concussed or anything like that, we'd know already."

"Still. We might could find a place to stop and get you some stronger medicine for it..."

"I don't need anything, John, but thanks anyway."

Cena glanced back at her, then nodded some, shrugging. "All right. Just thought I'd ask." He chuckled faintly. "Josh tells me that I owe you a favor anyway, that you were really looking out for me while I was, uh...out."

"Don't read too much into it. You were sick as a dog and I felt like I was the only one enough in my right mind at the time to try and make you feel better. Besides, you've been more or less our leader since this whole mess started, what with Batista and Eddie being distracted taking care of Rey and..." Beth stopped, her voice trailing off slightly, and she rubbed her temple slightly, closing her eyes.

"You sure you're okay?"

"I just can't get over what a weird thing it is to be able to say his name in the present tense." Beth glanced at him. "He died...or we thought he died before I ever even came to the roster, and yet there he is in there, he's...walking and talking and breathing and everything. Now that we've got a chance to just sit, I guess it's really hitting me."

Cena nodded slightly, chewing the inside of his cheek and looking back over at the hearse. "I know what you mean. After so long of it, to the point where it...it was the normal thing, I guess. Yeah, it's pretty damn weird. I imagine it's going to be even weirder once we get him exposed to the rest of the world and all this stuff gets out."

"If it gets out...I mean, we still don't know exactly what we're up against."

"It'll get out. This sort of thing can't stay quiet forever. Hell, it's more or less a miracle that it hasn't gotten out already. I mean, isn't there some saying about conspiracies falling apart under their own weight?"

"Maybe if it's not one that involves subjects who were 'killed off' and the workers are either in on it or insane prisoners who leap at the chance to get paid to commit the same crimes they were incarcerated for." She glanced back at him, reaching up to tuck her hair behind her ears. "You know our lives are pretty much over anyway, right? Our own boss is somehow in on this, and even if we get away with this, if we do blow open the entire government conspiracy and we do save Rey and we get through all of this alive, we're not gonna have jobs even if WWE doesn't get shut down in the scandal. I mean, if Vince can't handle someone smarting off to him and goes crazy if someone jumps ship off him, he's sure as hell not going to stand for us getting involved in whatever his government business is."

Cena nodded, sighing. "Well, that's the price of doing the right thing, I guess."

"And we're the ones who have to pay it. These government guys will probably get off with wrist slaps and warnings and end up doing even more atrocious things further down the road."

"Maybe not. Most likely the people who actually did most of the dirty work will get thrown under the bus and take it on the chin, and the ones at the top who can cover their tracks enough will know not to try anything like this again."

"You heard Chavo. This isn't the first time something like this has happened."

Cena reached over, putting a hand on her arm. "This time is different. We're gonna win this and things are gonna be okay."

Beth glanced at him, looking down at his hand a moment, then back at him, snorting and shaking her head a little. "You are nothing if not an eternal optimist, John."

Cena chuckled and grinned, shrugging slightly, abruptly taking his hand away as though suddenly aware of where he'd had it. "Still. Doesn't do us any good to get down and worry too much. Nothing we can do about what they're going to do, save what we're doing right now...getting that tracking device out of Rey's leg and then running like mad. If they can't follow us through that thing, they won't be able to find us again as long as we're careful not to get seen or do anything that they can use to find us...until we can get to the press and make our statement."

"You know...I was thinking. We need to figure out exactly where we've ended up..." Beth said, raising a hand somewhat, glancing at the hearse.

"Why is that?"

"Well, we might not can trust the folks we work with, we might not can trust our boss. But there's more than one wrestling organization in the world, and between the lot of us, we're bound to have at least one friend in just about every one that we can come across."

"So we go to someone else and ask them to help us," Cena said, awareness dawning along with a wide smile on his face. "Beth, you're a freaking genius, girl! We can find someone, get them to call a press conference for some kind of...something, we can figure it out, keep people from knowing what exactly it is so the government goons can't find us until the newsies have spread everything out already!"

"Well, that would work, but we can't go to just any old wrestling fed and hope for a decent response from the media."

Cena nodded, scratching his head a little. "Yeah...yeah..." He snapped his fingers, glancing back at her. "But we can go to TNA."

"Aren't they in Florida and we're kind of stuck in Canada?"

"You'd think. But there is a place we could go, Scott D'Amore's wrestling school, the Can-Am place. I think it's in Windsor, pretty close to Detroit."

"I thought he left-,"

"He did, but he still has enough ties, and the school is big enough and he's well-known enough that people will pay attention to him. And if we're close enough, we can get there fast and get this over with."

Beth straightened a little, blinking. "So...we have an actual plan now?"

Cena grinned. "We have an actual plan now. All right!"

"All right!" Beth said, holding up her hand, getting a high five from Cena. "Now we're going somewhere!"

"So we just have to worry about getting there. So as soon as they step out, we need to jump in the car and haul as much ass as we can to get going."

Beth nodded, smiling, glancing up at him. "Like I said, so far, you've been our leader."

Cena smiled back, and the two sat for a moment, contemplating each other, before Cena cleared his throat faintly and looked over at the hearse again. "So yeah. We have a plan."

Beth nodded again, looking at the hearse as well, sitting with her hands carefully folded in her lap. "Yup. We have a plan."

Cena bobbed his head somewhat. "Yup. Good thing to have."

Beth continued to nod, and they fell silent, glancing at each other, before the hearse door opened and Keith started to step out. Cena immediately popped to his feet, hesitated, then turned, offering her a hand to help her to her feet, dropping it by his side quickly when he saw she had already stood as well, and awkwardly wiping at the side of his jeans, then turning back to head for the back of the car, Beth silently walking along with him.

( )

Eddie was sitting with Rey, holding onto his hand and with an arm wrapped around him to try and help him hold still and to offer him support during the so-called operation. Batista was on Rey's other side, holding his other hand and also handing Keith any of the supplies he needed...towels, the antiseptic, whatever he asked for. He watched in silence as Keith worked, not sure he'd be able to bear looking at Rey's face. He could hear the small man letting out involuntary grunts and whimpers of pain, and he'd already screamed a couple of times at the initial slices, but Rey was clamping down fiercely on how much noise he was allowing, probably thinking he was fooling Eddie and Batista into thinking he wasn't hurting quite as badly as he was. Batista wanted to tell him he didn't need to bother, that there was no need to disguise his pain in front of them, but he also knew Rey was a proud man who relied heavily on projecting an aura of strength...he'd seen enough of it during the time he spent with Rey in the experiment and the short time they'd known each other in WWE. So he just let it go, allowing Rey to hang onto his hand and crush his fingers once in a while rather than scream.

"Getting there..." Keith murmured softly, taking the scalpel and slightly lengthening the cut in Rey's leg, pouring a bit of the antiseptic onto it as he did and immediately picking up a pair of tweezers that would open wide as well as close, using them to spread the cut open and see inside. Rey finally released a yell at that, and a fast, nearly involuntary glance backwards by Batista let him see that Rey had tears streaming down his face. But as fast as the shout came through, Rey clamped his teeth together and fought it back, squeezing Batista and Eddie's hands again.

"It's okay, Rey-Rey," Eddie cooed softly, hugging him closer and kissing his temple lightly. "Don't worry, wowito, it's going to be okay, it's going to be over sooner than you think, you'll be okay."

"Mm-hmm," Rey whimpered, closing his eyes as Keith kept working.

"Can you see anything?" Batista asked, looking back at the agent.

"Oh yeah..." Keith said, brow furrowing slightly. "I can see it right here. I'm just trying to get the forceps on it so I can take it out. It's just slightly embedded on this bit of muscle here so it's going to be a little tricky. Going to have to do a little bit of damage, I'm afraid."

"How much is a little bit?"

"Nothing permanent. Just enough that he'll probably need to keep from walking on it at least for a few days."

"I can carry him, it's not going to be any problem," Eddie said, not looking up from comforting Rey.

"Just hurry..." Rey whispered, voice quivering. "Just want it out."

"It's coming out, don't worry," Keith said, voice taunt with exertion. "Okay. I'm going to grab it and pull now. This is going to hurt, I'm afraid."

"Okay..."

Keith nodded, checking to be sure Eddie and Batista were prepared as well, then lowered his gaze, using the antiseptic to rinse away some of the blood and wiping at it with a towel quickly, getting a clear view of a small, black, almost glassy square. He adjusted the tweezers, then slowly closed them, feeling that he had his mark. He closed his eyes a moment, then gripped the tweezers, starting to pull upwards."

"Owwwwww!" Rey gasped, tossing his head back some, gritting his teeth again. "Oh God, oh God, oh God!"

"Shhhhh, it's coming, Rey, don't worry, it's gonna come out and you'll be safe then," Eddie said.

"Almost," Keith said, sticking out his tongue with concentration, and Batista watched as the tweezers, for just a moment, didn't move, and then, just when he had the terrifying thought that they couldn't remove the tracker after all, the tweezers abruptly shot upwards as though of their own volition, Rey screamed louder than ever, and Keith grunted, catching them before they bounced into the roof of the hearse, and he brought them down, studying the smooth black transceiver wedged between the two ends. "There we go, we got it now," he said.

Rey was sobbing softly, but Batista moved in, letting go of his hand to pick up the antiseptic and pour it onto the bloody wound again, then quickly picking up a roll of bandages and, with Eddie's help, lifted Rey's leg slightly and started to wrap it tightly, enough to be sure that the wound was pushed closed and the bleeding would quickly stop. There was already enough blood on the floor, not enough to cause any serious trouble but definitely a lot, and they wanted to be sure Rey wasn't going to lose any more than absolutely had been necessary.

"You did great, Rey, you did great," Eddie was soothing him, rubbing his shoulder and hugging him closely. "See, all over with now. They can't find you anymore, you're safe. You're going to be safe now."

"Gonna be safe now..." Rey repeated weakly, but with a faint smile as he leaned into Eddie, allowing Batista to finish taping up the injury. Batista couldn't help but smile himself, seeing that nearly unfamiliar expression on Rey's face. He'd smiled so little in all the time Batista had been with him in the program, almost never, and the rare times had all been when he thought there was nothing more going on than a hospital stay with bad nightly terrors. Seeing a genuine expression of joy on his face was enough to blur Batista's own eyes with tears. He couldn't say that, didn't see what it would gain to say it aloud, would only remind Rey of what he'd been through, make him think it over, so Batista bit his lip, and simply nodded to Keith.

"Better get rid of that thing and we'll get the hell out of here, see what our next move can be."

Keith nodded, moving to push the door open, calling to the others. Batista looked back, glancing at Eddie, who met his eyes silently. His face was oddly unreadable, unusual for him, as Eddie typically wore his emotions right out there on his sleeve. Batista wondered if it was a deliberate hiding, or if Eddie himself simply wasn't sure of his own feelings. At any rate, Batista simply helped him move Rey back and get comfortable as the others ran back at Keith's call, and after a minute, started to climb in.

"We have a plan other than just running away now," Cena announced as he entered. "A very good one, I think."

"Good," Batista said. "It's about time we did more acting than reacting. Where are we headed?"