Hey, readers. At the end of the last chapter, I promised Something Big to go on throughout the ending chapters of this story. And, surprisingly, although we're past the 20-chapter mark, the climax has yet to come. (If you haven't noticed yet, the rising actions are far longer than the falling action, which I find more enjoyable.)

While this chapter is less surprise-filled than the last (because, come one, that's gonna be pretty hard to top) this will have some important details that I encourage you to pay attention to.

November 12th 2013

Bree's Pov

After the vision viewing, everyone stayed and discussed what had been seen over a dinner of salad and Papa John's pizza and breadstick combo. Tasha came home not long after they'd disassembled me from the wires and explained to her what was going on.

That's the one thing about Tasha I liked about her most—she was just so mellow about everything. That in itself was really saying something because she treated us like her own kids, and how many mothers can say they don't freak out when given an update on their kids bionic status? I'm telling you, not many.

While Tasha strived for us to experience "normal", our discussing what went on inside my head that could be projected on a screen over pineapple and ham pizza with gooey cheese bread sticks and lovely side salads was an normal as we could accomplish.

But somehow, compared to our daily chaotic drama, that seemed perfectly fine with me.

"Hey, what're you doing up so late?" a sleepy voice asked me. I didn't look up from where I was writing in a notebook I found in one of our many rooms as Chase pulled up a chair beside me and made himself comfortable. "It's nearly midnight."

"Nothing, just thinking," I told him, gesturing to my pajamas I'd already changed into, "I couldn't sleep anyway."

When I'd left my room, it'd only been 10:30. True to my statement I'd gotten sick of tossing and turning in bed for an hour and came down here, wanting to be with my thoughts. Then I wandered a bit, going into some rooms until I came across the notebook and brought it to the lab with me.

Chase was in his pajamas too, looking at me with bleary eyes still cloudy with sleep. It took some major restraint to burst into laughter at the funny sight of his hair sticking up in the air at the back of his head.

"Are you thinking about the vision thing again?" he asked quietly, his voice dropping even though we were alone. At my reluctant nod, he smiled sympathetically, as if he knew what I was through but didn't at the same time. "I think I know what would make it better."

I perked up at hearing this, then smiling widely when he revealed a package of Oreos from behind his back. Immediately, I launched at the pack, grabbing five and splitting the first of the pile in half.

Chase snickered as I licked at the crème. "Sometimes you are such a kid."

I shrugged, continuing on with eating my Oreo. After the first one was gone, I stared at my notebook that I'd placed on the counter. "Look at this," I said to Chase when I handed it to him. It was vaguely bullet-pointed notes and ideas on how my vision sight works.

After replaying the evening over and over in my head, I concluded the most probably idea that my chip took DNA that my mind had come to remember from me having contact or using someone else's property and used the DNA trail to play me a moment in time from either their view or an outsider's view of wherever they were then.

"Wow," Chase said. He looked up at me, mildly impressed. "How long did it take you to come up with this?" Gingerly, he handed the notebook back. I set it on the counter to avoid the pages getting littered with cookie crumbs as I bit into another cookie, this time not even bothering to split it in half.

"Why are you up?" I asked my brother as I swallowed. He shrugged, stealing a cookie from my pile as he did so.

"Whaa?" I whined, gesturing madly to the Oreo tin next to us. "Get your own! They're right there, you know."

"Then you should have no problem getting another one," Chase said simply, smirking as I glared. He was never going to let me win this.

I rolled my eyes, the room dipping into a comfortable silence only broken by our eating. Man, if only someone had gotten some ice cream on the last grocery run.

With my tower already devoured, I pulled my knees up to my chest, swinging in my chair to grab another cookie.

"Are you still pissed at Callan?" I asked quietly, nibbling on the edges.

Chase looked startled at the conversation starter—not that it was much of a subtle one—but nodded. "Yeah—good God, I can't get over he did that, especially to my girlfriend. . ."

I nodded. It must be terrible to hear that happened to someone you loved. I couldn't even stand the thought of it and I was her best friend. If only I knew what Chase was going through.

"But hey," I leaned over and swatted at his knee, "we don't know for sure that went all the way. He could've been respectful and just. . .got some looksies and copped a few feels, right?"

"I think we're all too worn out for anymore big reactions," Chase confessed dryly. "I mean, really, I didn't see this coming—but now, I expect more what I hadn't been thinking to be what I get, you know?"

I nodded, because I did get it. In just October and November alone, so much had gone on and I agreed; everyone had given too many reactions and blow-ups already to be giving big ones any time soon.

Chase sighed, kicking at the floor, before getting up and kissing my head. "Make sure to get some sleep, yeah?"

I nodded again, watching the lab doors open and close in the my little brother's presence. In a way, it looked like the doors swallowed him whole.

November 13th 2013

Christine's Pov

I was up early the next morning, still pissed about the previous day. After the little screening, Chase shared some information on a drug he found in a file holding information on me. Floraxide. It sounded like a type of window cleaner or floor wax. And it at some point traveled through my body.

God, if I ever saw Callan today…

Hurriedly, I tied my hair up and threw out a high-waisted black skirt and white knit sweater. With my brown cowboy boots in hand, I darted downstairs.

"Do you plan on visiting your father today?" Rem asked, bent over a mixing bowl.

I nodded, stuffing a syrup-y waffle in my mouth as I tried to shove on my boots at the same time. "Yeah," I said around a mouthful of food. "Did the doctors call and saw anything?"

Rem shook her head, leaning over with her damp wash cloth to blot at a glob of syrup on my mouth. "No, but I went to visit the other day. He looked so awful—like you did when you had that flu, remember?"

At the memory, I grimaced. Of course I remembered. It was January 2010 and I was turning 13 that year. I started off with having the worst flu ever on New Year 's Day, being bedridden for two weeks. I spent those days puking up chicken noodle soup and stomach bile, army crawling from my bedroom to the bathroom across the hall when I was strong enough, otherwise chucking whatever came up my throat into the always-handy garbage can parked near my bed.

Those two weeks I also spent feeling like shit, with my insides wanting to be on my outsides.

God, was my dad really going through that much pain? And for what, a stressful-induced heart attack over the loss of my mother? (And blah, blah, blah—heart and attack and collapsing from heartbreak I think could qualify as the same thing.)

"How's Bree doing?" Rem asked gently. Sure, it wasn't her smoothest transition, but it would do because I really didn't want to discuss the poor state my father was in at the moment. "You haven't told me in Donald ever found a way to help her. Poor girl, being put through so much like that at 17."

I pursed my lips, nodding stiffly. "She's fine," I assured her. "A little worn out and jumpy, but who can blame her for that?"

I felt bad for not staying around longer to make sure she was really okay. Bree—and the Davenports, especially—had a way of saying they were okay when they were far from it. I personally thought it came with the weight of being bionic. How they kind of grew up around the idea of emotions being inferior to real physical strength.

But I knew Bree. Just a couple days after she woke up from her coma she confessed to me one night that she was afraid.

"Of what?" I'd asked.

Her tone had been so hushed, so quiet. Like she was scared someone would hear her. "I can hardly remember the last days before I fell into that damn coma," she cried softly, "what if I go in again and you can't get out this time?"

Now, Rem continued to furiously whip the batter in the bowl around. "That poor thing," she clucked again. "You tell her she's welcome to come over any time she likes. It must be scary for her to be in a place she knows was inflected with tools of the enemy, you know."

I shuddered. I could hardly contain myself around others while knowing what that low-life scum of a bastard Callan did to me, how was I supposed to handle seeing him at school?

Right, being expelled was exactly what I needed to pile up on my disastrous sophomore year. Not.

"I gotta go," I said through my last bite of food. I hugged Rem a quick good-bye and ran out the door, throwing my bag on to my shoulder.

"Hey, wait up!" I said a bit breathlessly.

They turned. Adam and Leo were in deep conversation with Leo waving a gaming device between them, the eldest obviously confused, while Chase looked annoyed as Bree leaned heavily on him. As I neared, I saw that Bree looked, in short, like she mated with a raccoon.

"What's up with her?" I asked, pointing as Bree struggled to stay upright.

Chase sighed. "She didn't listen when I told her she needed sleep, and only got four hours of sleep."

"And a half," Bree mumbled sleepily.

He shook his head, using both of his hands to push her up right. "God, Bree, I don't need your drool spots on me," he said.

I took her right arm and together we dragged her between us, falling behind as Leo and Adam walked on, stilling arguing about God-knows-what.

"What was she up all night about anyway?" I asked Chase as the school building loomed in front of us.

Chase looked down at his sister. "Researching," he said flatly.

We walked in to the school, Bree dragging herself to the stairs to nap until one of us lugged her to the cafeteria for breakfast.

We huddled around her, waiting for signs for the rest of us, when I saw him. At least before my sight turned red, the same raging red that began to course through my ignited veins.

When I saw Callan standing there, in the middle of cafeteria doorway like that, something in me blew. I was tired of not doing anything, I was tired of containing myself. I didn't have to use my bionics to get my satisfaction.

Using my anger to my benefit, I pushed my way through the desperate girls clinging to his every word, and promptly backhanded him.

Everything stopped.

I swear to God, it was like the Earth had stopping rotating.

Someone behind me, most likely Rachel, tried to stifle their laughs, small giggles seeping through. I pulled my hand away, put it back to my side, but let it curl into a fist.

"What the hell, Christine?" Callan yelled, cheek beginning to turn a boiling red as he stared at me astonished.

I grabbed a fistful of the front of his shirt, yanking him down so we were almost nose to nose. "Remember this," I hissed. I could feel my veins pulsing, my heart drumming madly in my ears as it all sunk into a violent wail in my head. "No one gets away with screwing with me. You, idiot, are no exception."

Disgusted, I pushed him away, wanting him out of my sight. With a final stomp on his foot, I pushed him out of my way and slouched in my usual seat at our group's lunch table.

Chase and Leo sit down just as there's another smack of skin on skin contact and a yelp sounding behind me.

Leo stretched his neck, looking before he began to laugh. Chase, curious, twisted in his seat only to begin snickering himself.

"What is that bastard doing now?" I snapped, not wanting to turn around as they continued to laugh over my head.

"Well," Leo chuckled, "Rachel just slapped him. And now the rest of them are tugging at his hair and, by the looks of it, seeing who can cuss at the other the loudest."

Eyebrows raised, I turned in my seat to see the scene for myself. Sure enough, Rachel was in front, a fistful of Callan's (obviously bleached) hair in her manicured claws while she bent his head backward, Janelle, Sammie, and Ashley surrounding him while Bree inched her way over to us, laughing loudly, more awake than when I had left her.

When she managed to reach us, she quickly sat down in the chair on the other side of me. Her hands were already reaching in to her backpack to grab a notebook.

"Hey, Rachel-zilla has returned," Bree reported casually. I looked at the page she had flipped to - a bunch of bullet-point notes scribbled messily on the notebook lines with tiny arrows pointing to abandoned words and loose diagrams.

"Busy, much?" I said to her, gesturing to her notebook, where she was amazingly still fitting in small notes here and them. I didn't know how she had energy to write now, considering I'd seen her slumped over and practically drooling over the front of herself not even five minutes ago.

Bree shrugged. "I had a busy night."

I shrugged, leaving it alone as the rest of our group finally came, leaving Callan alone. Not that I wanted him to, but any more time spent beating his ass and a teacher was sure to notice. (Not care, of course, but still.)

"So, Rachel began, comfortably sitting on Adam's lap, "We need a new game plan to officially destroy these bitches." She leaned closer, her hair spilling over her shoulders. "And soon. One has already been a coma because of them, and someone has also been raped because of them."

Bree and I glanced at each other and flushed.

Ashley wrapped her nails on the table in substitute for not having a gavel of sorts on her. "I say we just go to the police with this," she suggested, "No mentioning of the specialtiesneeded. Rape and severe harm of a minor - not to mention drugging - are already crimes on their own. It should lock them up for a damn long time, anyway."

Rachel pursed her lips, squinting over my shoulder. "True," she admitted, tapping a pen on the table, "but they have still have major leverage. If we go to the police with what they've done, they have evidence about what you, the amped-up level of this generation, can do."

"And that's the last thing we need," Ashley interjected dryly, "having to borrow a minivan and bust your asses out of a government holding cell."

"It wouldn't be that easy to ram a door down," I thought aloud. "They'd probably be made of something like titanium or something."

Leo perked up at this. "Then we could always borrow my grandma's ride, she busted Big D's titanium gate down."

I looked to Chase. "Is that true?"

He leaned down, kissing my shoulder as he whispered to me, "That woman scares me."

"Government penetrating aside," Rachel interrupted curtly, "We need a game plan. And I, ever the genius, have one."

Sammie made a "go on…" gesture with her hands. "Well? Get on with it then."

"Okay, so here's what we do." Rachel grabbed a notebook of her own, flipping to a clean page and beginning to rapidly sketch out her idea. "We need a way to make sure Callan and Tina are both backstage. Because she's, you know, Tina, she'll no doubt be backstage somewhere. That's where you two come it." She pointed to Janelle and Bree with her pen. "You'll be waiting for your cue to grab them, and keep them that way.

"Callan will go look for her during the intermission, right before the scene after the balcony one. When he doesn't find her, he'll find you—" She pointed to Adam next—" and we will take them to the lab for the phase of interrogation. Sammie and Ashley will stay back and keep an eye on Christine and Chase, just for precautionary measures."

"What about Marcus?" Leo pointed out, which was pretty daring. Everyone by now knew never to interrupt Rachel while she was on a roll.

Rachel turned to him, smiling in a way that made him clearly nervous. "You, my friend, are in charge of babysitting Eyebrows with Eddy."

I was so stunned by this that my eyes nearly popped out of my head. "Rachel, you know I love you, but are you sure pairing up Leo and Eddy is your best idea?"

She nodded her head, setting down her pen. "Absolutely."

Janelle stuck her hand in the center of the table. "Go team?"

Each of us followed her example. "All systems go."