Disclaimer: Tekken = Namco Bandai

Missing

"Pick up Julia!" Verity yelled, her voice layered with frustration. For nearly the tenth time Julia's voice-mail picked up instead, and Verity was beyond annoyed.

"Fine! Be that way!" she uttered as she hung up. "Guess I'm gonna go see you in person if you don't want to talk to me by phone!"

Verity grabbed her bag and hunted for her keys for five minutes before she left her apartment and headed to the parking lot. Opening the door to her Celica, Verity threw her bag in and started the engine. Within fifteen minutes, she reached Julia's small apartment complex to find three police cruisers, lights flashing, outside.

"What the…" Verity muttered as she found an empty parking space. Climbing out, she headed toward the stairwell that led to Julia's third story apartment. On her way over, Verity saw numerous people gathered around in a group as they talked to the police officers who were judiciously writing notes as everyone spoke.

"Atticus! What's going on here? What happened??" Verity questioned as she found him amongst the people who were all whispering frantically.

"Verity! Thank God you're here. Have you seen Julia?" he walked over to her with a worried look on his face.

"Julia? No. She wasn't answering her phone so I decided to come over. Why? What happened?"

"Verity, Julia's missing," Atticus said solemnly.

"What!?," Verity gasped, "Is that why all the cops are here? What happened?"

"Yeah. We heard a racket last night, and by the time we had dragged ourselves over to see if anything was wrong, no one came to the door. The landlady opened the door for us so we could see if there was some sort of emergency and we found the place totally trashed with Julia nowhere to be seen." he recounted sadly, "The cops think she's been kidnapped."

"Kidnapped? By whom?" Verity exclaimed, "Julia doesn't have any enemies."

"We don't know. But the big picture is that someone apparently has something against her," Atticus let his head drop.

"Oh my God," Verity whispered as she looked out at the multitude.

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Julia shifted from her position on the small cot that she was sitting on. She had her legs pulled up to her chest and her arms were wrapped around her knees. The dungeon had gotten colder and it seemed as if there was a chilling breeze flowing through the place. As the minutes passed by, more wet tears ran down Julia's face and trickled down the side of her throat. She sniffled. Looking over at the guard, she saw that once again he had fallen asleep. Haze hadn't even bothered to lock the door again. He had told Julia that she was too smart to try to escape, and even if she did sneak out, there were too many demons that wandered the halls. She had no chance of finding her way out without running into one of them. She was trapped; it was that simple.

Although she was still in shock as to the news she had received from the head demon, Julia's mind had begun to race.

I can't stay here. I have to get out, no matter what I have to do. I'll take out as many fucking demons as I have to, but I'm going to get out of here. There is no way those bastards are going to use me for their plans to open that gate and escape. Opening that gate will only mean that humanity will be hunted again. I'm sure there are demons on the other side who want to get into this world as much as Veldor and his buddies want to get out of it.

I'm not going to let them use my…baby…

I still can't believe it. But it makes sense. The nausea, the dizziness, the mood swings…it all adds up. Jin and I are going to have a baby… Julia was overcome by a sudden feeling of anxiety and even more tears escaped her eyes. She reached up to grasp Jin's memento and whispered, "I have to get out of here…Now."

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A/n: I know this chapter is really short but it would have made both the last one and the next one too long. Anyway…let me know what you think!

Next Chapter: "Escape?"