"Stephen's home," Jessi announced loudly. Other than her, Foss, and Josh, everyone was sleeping soundly. Amanda was the most pathetic by having appropriated the tub as her own. Declan was on one side of the tub in a sleeping bag, and Lori had brought her comforters from her bed and looked funny sprawled out, her limbs sticking out of the sheets.

When none of them moved, Josh got up and said, "I'll break the news to him."

Sitting to Jessi's right, nursing a strong black coffee, Foss said, "We'll have to be ready to move the second he restores the connection; he might only do it as a last resort."

She shrugged, "If he does at all. That e-mail may have been written sensibly but for them to suggest Amanda's plan involved any of this," referring to the isolation they'd just been talking about, "it's like saying grass is normally purple or the sun is blue."

Foss's eyes narrowed, "Are you sure you don't need to sleep?" She shrugged him off; she was willing and able to go without sleep for weeks if necessary. They heard Stephen shouting and running down the hall toward them.

He burst in the door, causing Lori and Declan to wake up with a start. Having slept only about six out of the last 72 hours, Amanda slept right through. Although he'd clearly been prepared to yell, he instantly changed to a loud whisper. "Kyle's gone?" His eyes flew from one person to the next, finally resting on Jessi, "You can't tell where he is? Don't feel him?"

Josh came in behind his father, answering for all of them, "She hasn't felt him since 12:05 am, and that was only for sixteen seconds," he said, consulting a small notepad.

Foss interrupted any further questions, "Lori, if you're up to it, we need you to get Hillary over here by whatever means possible."

Her eyes were glassy and really puffy but she stood up. She'd clearly slept in her clothes; Stephen had a look of shock on his face. He recovered, "Can I help?"

Lori looked at her dad and said, "You can drive me. I don't think I'll be awake for hours." She cracked a huge yawn. He followed her without question.

Declan stretched then stood up quickly. "I want to come too; gotta make sure she doesn't try to run." He stumbled out of the room and ran down the hall.

Josh rubbed his stomach, "Anyone hungry? I'll make waffles." When both Foss and Jessi agreed, he left them alone.

Jessi was on the verge of tears, but she stayed strong, for Kyle, and for herself. Foss softened somewhat and put a hand on her arm. "When, not if, when he reconnects with you, he might be in danger. I'll need you to focus on his location and determine if he's moving. It might be the only way to get to him before they do."

"Get your SUV ready for a long trip then, just in case he's going cross country."

"You don't think he'll stay close," asked Foss.

She looked at him sadly, "I can't see why he'd go too far away, but if they get him, he might be going anywhere." He got up and left without a word. She turned back to Kyle's computer, scouring it for clues while also reading local, state, and national news stories. Before the end of the day, if she found anything that might indicate him they'd try to check up on it.

It was good to be able to multitask. She really liked his e-mail tracer program but patched up the hole allowing a remote user of the receiving computer to send a reply. A reply made by a remote user would just disappear, get deleted in transit by the tracer and refuse all attempts to being closed by the remote user. It would hide until either the mouse or the keyboard was touched.

She pored over reports of a growing forest fire to the north of Seattle, of robberies, of murders, of any unexplained activity. A tear escaped and splashed on her hand. There wasn't much at all and the pain in her heart was still intense. When she'd broken the connection, it had been a relief. She found that receiving the break created a backlash effect which left special nerve endings raw and irritated. She could sense the nerve endings and tried again to massage them, only to grate against them, sending jolts of pain running through her. She had to bite her lip to keep herself from gasping out loud.

She'd found those same nerve endings in her family, and in Foss and Amanda, but in all cases they were poorly developed. It meant however that Kyle indeed had made a connection with Amanda, one that would quite possibly loop over itself and intensify whatever she was feeling. It seemed to be a dangerous connection because their nervous systems were so much more enhanced, and because the feelings he'd feel were unfiltered and prone to compounding, anger would be terrible, feelings of love and lust would be… She could feel her heart beginning to race and her skin heating. Yep, she thought as she turned to Amanda's sleeping form. She had another goal in mind, one that would help Kyle when he returned. She intentionally ignored the word if.

By focusing on Amanda and not Declan, she wouldn't have Kyle's problem with lust. She tried and tried to make that same connection, growing frustrated at the lack of progress. She would wait until Amanda woke. Maybe they had to share a bond for it to work.

She could think of one thing they shared. That should be enough.

***

She'd been rudely awakened early that morning by her phone vibrating, with a cryptic message that she had a delivery in her mail box. Not one to ignore such deliveries, she'd stumbled to the front door, looked out the small window for any signs of life, and opened the door to a foggy morning, the sun having barely managed to pass over the horizon. When she discovered what the delivery was – a gift card that she could use anywhere credit cards were accepted – her hands had begun tingling with anticipation of a grand shopping spree.

Hillary had spent over four hours browsing websites since then and was making sure she looked fabulous before heading out when the doorbell rang. She ignored it for only a moment, making sure her lips and hair were perfect, and adding a bracelet and necklace to her ensemble. There, she thought to herself, I am fabulous!

The doorbell rang a second and third time before she got to the door and opened it with a pout. She didn't enjoy feeling rushed. She was surprised when Lori and Declan were at the door. She had to think quickly as they didn't appear particularly amused.

"What's wrong Lori," she asked with an image of concern. Lori was always such a drama queen, this could be nothing after all, she thought.

"We need your expertise. The Kylanda is sinking again, and we fear you're the only one who can keep it afloat." Lori was blinking more often than usual, and looked awfully tired.

"What is it this time? I thought Jessi was with you muffin?" She turned her gaze to him, noticing he was equally tired. Didn't these friends of hers know that sleep was required to look fabulous, aside from numerous other health benefits?

Declan moved forward but Lori put her hand in front of him, stopping him in his tracks. He'd had an intense look about him just then but it cleared as quickly as it had come. Lori said, "It's Amanda, she's gone totally nuts! She started punching Josh out of nowhere and, and," she burst in tears, "we couldn't control her so we tied her up!"

Hillary couldn't believe what she was hearing, but Amanda had behaved very strangely throughout much of the afternoon until Jessi gave her a big hug. Clearly whatever good that had done had only been temporary. Lori literally pleaded with her, "Please Hils, you got to help us!"

"Where's Kyle? Or Jessi for that matter," she asked as she locked her front door. Her shopping spree could wait for her good friends.

Declan said, "Oh, they run in the mornings; they're usually back only by lunch."

Lori added, "We don't want Kyle to see what Amanda's done. She broke into the house in the middle of the night and attacked Josh who was in the kitchen at the time."

Hillary stopped, confused as to the details of the story, when her cell buzzed. She was about to open it when Declan swiped it from her, keeping it closed. He said, "Hillary, we don't have any time! We need to get you over there."

Hillary moved toward Declan who'd started walking quickly to the car, which she saw was being driven by Mr. Trager. She didn't want to draw undue attention to the sophisticated phone but sorely needed it back. It had features that no phone on the market had, or even would have for likely years. She almost jogged with heels on. "Let's go then!" Getting into the back seat with Declan, she said, "Hey Declan, give me my cell, please?"

She saw Lori jump into the front seat and Mr. Trager start driving more aggressively than ever before. It raised her suspicions, especially since Declan playfully said, "You'll have to try harder to get your cell Hillary."

"Hils," Lori said without looking back, "Declan wants you to wrestle him for your phone. He did that with me and Jessi this morning. I don't know what's gotten into him!" She giggled.

Since the Tragers lived so close to her house, Hillary didn't have much time to ponder the strange sequence of events. When Mr. Trager pulled into the driveway, braking hard, she found herself plastered to the back of Lori's seat because she hadn't worn her seatbelt; she'd been trying to get her phone back. At least Declan hadn't opened it. He quickly ran into the house, laughing madly. First Amanda had gone crazy and now Declan seemed to be! She ran after him.

Declan had left the door wide open and she spotted him running down the hall towards Kyle's bedroom, where she'd never been but knew because she'd been friends with Lori since they were six. She started getting frustrated at Declan's odd behavior and started running in earnest in the hallway when suddenly she was tackled by someone. She slammed against the wall and crumpled there, dazed. It took her moments to notice Jessi tying her up with solid rope. Declan returned with her phone open, his eyes eagerly going over every message on her phone.

Lori closed the front door and locked it, fists on her hips. Dread filled Hillary. They knew about her involvement in keeping them away from home for as long as possible yesterday. She looked around, thinking maybe there would have been a robbery of some kind. Maybe she could feign involvement, speak ill about her employers. She felt horrible, knowing that whatever was gone was extremely important to her friends. The worst was that she'd never been advised of the threat by her employers, so now she was alone against them.

***

Jessi finished tying up Hillary, who surprisingly didn't seem to be too banged up after being run into the wall. She looked up to Declan who was scanning messages on Hillary's phone. His smile turned to a frown.

She felt their chance slipping away. She knew the messages were getting deleted faster than he could read them. "Throw me the phone!" she yelled. Without thinking he did so, throwing it like a clunky basketball. She caught it and scanned the message queue as message after message was being deleted.

Her suspicions were confirmed as she read the messages faster than they were being deleted. In less than a minute the phone was inoperable, its circuits fried by a pulse sent surely by Latnok itself.

She handed the phone back to Hillary, gritting her teeth. "Here, your piece of junk."

Lori looked at her with desperation, "Was she?"

Jessi exhaled noisily through her nose and paced. "Involved?" She shot a mirthless laugh. "She was knee deep!" She turned to Hillary and placed her on her shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Hillary whined and pleaded, telling lies the entire time. "Don't listen to her!" Jessi yelled above Hillary's pitiful cries.

She carried Hillary to Kyle's room, and unceremoniously dumped her onto Declan's sleeping bag. The others filed in after her whereas Stephen had left for the Rack in the hopes that Rachel had appeared for her shift. They all knew it was highly unlikely.

At least they had one smelly fish. The fish's heart was beating rapidly and she was crying heavily. She saw Amanda sleeping in Kyle's tub and wailed harder. Amanda didn't even stir. It helped that she'd put in swimmers' ear plugs, but no one but Jessi knew that. "What did you do to her?"

Jessi felt little remorse, and anger was flowing through her like she'd rarely felt before. "I knocked her over the head until she fell into a peaceful coma," she said sweetly. Then a little somberly, "Maybe I went a little too far, she's got a lot of internal bleeding in her brain."

Declan added, "She'll probably die."

Hillary's shock was evident. Her eyes were crazed, moving from one to another. There would be no assistance from anyone in this room, even Amanda. In her shock, it was clear she didn't notice Amanda was clearly breathing.

Lori started, "Why did you do it?"

Hillary strained against the ropes, refusing to speak, until Declan made a clear motion of whacking her head against the tub. "They pay really well, ok," she whined.

Lori's jaw fell, as did the others. Jessi, on the other hand, had expected as much. "Money. How much did you get this morning for yesterday's work?"

Tears appeared in Hillary's eyes, and she straightened, "Five thousand dollars."

Josh whistled while Lori and Declan glanced at each other. If Foss were here he'd be beating her over the head already. She smiled at her, showing all her teeth, not caring how crazy she looked. She could only hope she'd look half as menacing as the crazed undead serial killer she'd seen in last night's first movie. She spoke softly, "Why do you think you were picked, what, a week ago?"

Confusion was clear in her face. Hillary said, "I've been working for them for years. They recruited me for my intelligence."

Jessie might have assumed incorrectly, but she was quick to change her plans. Jessi paused to allow the others' nearly simultaneous scoffs to shake Hillary's defenses. Perhaps it had been a mistake, because Hillary took pride in that she'd fooled them all with her disguise. "You're heavily involved, but you know next to nothing," Jessie accused. She took a step forward, "They don't trust you with knowing!"

Lori regained her composure. She yelled, "If you knew what I do, Hillary, they'd probably kill you themselves faster than you could call the tabloids!"

Hillary's face blanched, as she finally realized who was missing in the room. "This is about Kyle?"

"Bravo!" Lori clapped, dripping venom with a fake smile of her own.

It was absolutely clear she didn't know. If she learned of it all, maybe she'd assist them for a few hours, maybe even days, but maybe Latnok would rub her out too. If they were still keeping tabs on them somehow, listening in, they wouldn't have long, but would it be economical to tell her everything? How likely was it she even knew anything of value?

In the few seconds that passed, she decided Hillary's knowledge wasn't valuable. She said out loud, "We can't tell her anything because she doesn't know anything of value." There were no objections.

Amanda moaned and turned to her side, whispering a single name, a smile on her face.

"She's not injured," Hillary asked incredulously.

"She's sleeping," Josh muttered.

But Declan stepped forward and said, "The people you work for are ruthless. They tried to take Kyle away by force." Jessi was happy he didn't mention ninjas. She didn't want Hillary to think they were pulling her leg, because they definitely weren't.

Jessi said the only answer that could be said if they were being listened to, "He's gone into hiding. He doesn't want to endanger us so he's run away."

"Why?" Hillary seemed utterly lost, as she knew she'd be.

"If we told you, they'd probably kill you," Jessi whispered.

Hillary seemed to reflect on her words because she was quiet for a time. She didn't struggle and neither did she cry. The anger in the room started to dissipate, the fire that had been directed at Hillary quieted. In this game of chess, she was barely even considered a pawn.

***

Now three days later, Jessi reflected on how Hillary had sung. Every single tidbit of news or hearsay or command from on high that she remembered she'd said. Her tongue had been liberated when she noticed we didn't have any recording devices and weren't taking any notes.

Of course, she didn't know about me, although she knew I was different, that I could jump off the roof of the school without getting injured for example, and that Kyle was different too.

She'd said we were aliens. The sad truth was that she believed it, much like Josh apparently had believed when Kyle had first come to live with their family. She'd only come a year later but she considered them her family too.

It was easier for people to believe them aliens from another world than believe they were humans too, only kept in pods for sixteen years, gestating. She could see a lot of abuse happen if more people like them were made. The sad fact was that it was entirely probable there were already others after them who were still in their pods, elsewhere in the world.

Latnok was so vast, one hand, one arm didn't know what one finger did, much less the leg or the head.

***

Tom lay in bed, agonizing over the mistakes he'd done. He had thought their security tight, certainly not fool proof, but tight nonetheless. He'd trained Kyle in purely physical aspects when he should have trained him in psychology and sociology like Jessi. In the eight days following Kyle's disappearance, Jessi was the most composed and determined person in the entire group, much less the family. He kept wondering if similar training would have helped him.

Not surprisingly Hillary was no longer friends with Lori, and had also been removed from Latnok. No more gift cards. It was a very small consolation when he'd learned she now owed them money, because the gift cards had been deemed an advance. He smiled when she'd applied at the Rack and he'd planted a criminal record on her background check.

Going forward all new employees at any family member's place of work was going to be severely scrutinized. He was going to try every dirty trick to sniff out future Latnok plants.

He, Jessi, and Stephen had worked on designing their own solar powered cell phones that wouldn't use the standard cell phone tower network. They used Kyle's room as the workshop. These behaved a lot more like walkie talkies but also modulated their frequencies randomly. They didn't have a working prototype quite yet but they were certainly close. It was hard to get some of the miniature parts required without attracting undue attention.

Speaking of which, Jessi had determined the entire house to be completely bug free. It meant Latnok had used military satellites to track Kyle and used electronic devices to listen in to conversations as he'd suspected. They'd used primarily cell phones and computers to achieve it. Another project over the next several days would be to shield the house from such eavesdropping. It would certainly take a while and would cost a lot of money. He figured he could probably get access to some of Adam Baylin's estate for the renovations.

However, he knew that the Tragers didn't really like the idea of being holed in their house for the next several years and he couldn't blame them. They had lives; they were young.

Every day they'd pored over endless news stories, maps, ideas, and even far flung theories about where Kyle might have gone. Stephen and Nicole had both driven for hours around Seattle and neighboring towns, looking for any sign of him.

As a unit, they no longer held much hope unless he reconnected with Jessi.

There was one star however, one unforeseen bit that made his day. Jessi had told him about it that morning.

***

As Jessi fell asleep, she allowed herself a single tear for Kyle, and shared temporarily the loneliness and love for her pod mate that Amanda felt deep in her heart. It wasn't a particularly strong connection by any means, but this morning they'd finally made the connection and she'd already devised a way to prevent it from looping and magnifying feelings, keeping them constant.

She no longer envied Amanda for having had Kyle's affection, his love. She knew how deep that love went in Amanda and it was not a simple river. She also vividly remembered Kyle's feelings for Amanda. They were such a good match; she was determined to fight for their relationship to continue.

As long as Kyle came home of course. She banished that thought almost immediately.

Once she learned she was dreaming, a broad smile overwhelmed her face. It would probably look funny if someone were to see her sleeping, but there was no fear of that. Because she'd really enjoyed the romantic comedy they'd watched second that fateful night, she revisited the movie in its entirety in her dream, snuggling with Declan as they watched.

She admitted she especially had enjoyed two movies' worth of uninterrupted closeness with her boyfriend. She made sure though to cut the dream at 12:04 am, just before she'd received a certain faked e-mail. She had to get quality rest after all. The happiest dreams were always best for that.