For disclaimers, please see Chapter 1.

Author's Notes:

I've received a question (from Feral's Revenge) on whether or not I know where I'm going with this story because it seems so random. In actuality, there is a plan. My hope was to provide some apparently random details and events that I would tie back later in the story and make you say "Oh! So that's why…". Because I've been museless, I've been condensing chapters and I think it's making the story line just fall flat and appear totally random.

While I've never seen any episodes of the show Lost, I remember lots of people asking "What the hell is a polar bear doing on the tropical island?" or something to that effect. Not sure if Lost ever answered that question, but I'll try pull as many things back together here as I can.

If there's a nagging detail you want me to wrap up, please leave me feedback and let me know. For example, some people may want to know why Brennan had all those mirrors in his bathroom, or why Jesse went through the series of exercises with the penny…

Feral – I can't answer most of your questions because I don't want to ruin the plot. However, I will answer this question – "And I thought Cynthia was young. Is she old?" I never specifically said she was young or old, but I did mention a couple of times the wrinkles on her face and I tried to write her with a grandmotherly tone, referring to Jesse as a "boy" and using "dear" when she spoke to someone. I didn't want it to be to overt though – otherwise you might have identified her as Jesse's grandmother too soon.

Anyway, onto the story…

The Helix sped towards the mountains with Jesse at the controls.

Jesse looked back over his shoulder at Emma who sat with her eyes closed. "Anything?"

"Not yet," she replied.

Shal reached over from the co-pilot seat and touched Jesse's hand. "She'll tell you as soon as she finds him, Jess, you know that."

"I know, but I can't help it."

"So let's distract you for a few minutes so that Em can concentrate, okay? Tell me about what happened back there."

"Shal, Brennan's the only thought in my head."

"Come on, tell me what happened with Emma. What did you do?" Shal twisted her chair to face him and reach over and hit a couple of buttons, activating the auto pilot.

"No, I need to …"

"Need to what? Fly a straight course to the mountains? The auto-pilot can handle that. Now talk to me."

Sighing, Jesse dropped his hands from the controls and turned his chair to face her. "Honestly, I'm not sure. It was different than before – but lately everything is different than before."

Shalimar smiled. "Yeah, things are pretty fucked up right now. But I don't understand what you did, or how you did it."

Jesse shrugged. "Well, I wanted Emma to be better so she should find Brennan. I figured DNA is just matter, and I could affect it just like making a wall appear or disappear. Well, not disappear, but you know what I mean. I figured that because I just sort of 'want' stuff to happen, it does, that maybe if I wanted Emma's DNA to be stable and for her to be healthy, she would be. But, it was more than that."

"How?" Shal prompted.

"Well, I guess because I wasn't sure of what I wanted to happen, I had to think about it more. When all this first started happening, concentration seemed to block it from happening, I just had to want it. This time, I was just thinking about Emma and trying to get a feel for what I wanted to do when all of a sudden I seemed to understand all the matter around me. I could see it somehow." Jesse paused for a minute thoughtfully. "Okay – you know how when you your eyes go all yellow and your feral abilities are in full swing? It was like that. You can always see and smell better than us, but when you are in feral mode, your senses are 20 times stronger or whatever, right?"

Shalimar nodded.

"It was kind of like that – like opening my eyes for the first time, but it wasn't my eyes – it was some other sense. I could feel all the matter around me and understand it, and I could feel that something was wrong in Emma, actually…" Jesse broke off.

"What is it, Jess?"

"I just remembered something. After I first closed my eyes, I could feel the room and I felt two things 'off'. I could tell one of them was Emma, and that's when I focused on her and went deeper. I found out where her genetic code was off and fixed it. But don't you see, Shal? I felt two things that needed fixing – Emma was one, you must have been the other."

Shalimar sat back in her chair. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

Jesse leaned forward towards her. "I'm saying maybe I can help you, too, Shal. I know you are afraid of what will eventually happen to you – we all are. But I'm positive Emma's stable, Shal. Maybe I can make your DNA stable, too."

Shal smiled hesitantly. "How about we take this one step at a time, okay?"

Jesse's face lit up. "Oh god! I can do the same for Brennan!"

Minutes later, Emma opened her eyes. "Jesse?"

Jesse turned to look at her.

"I found him, but he's really weak. I can barely hold on to him."

Jesse's face rippled with excitement and worry. "Where?"

Emma unlatched her safety straps and stepped forward, looking out the window. She raised her arm and pointed. "He's just over that far ridge in the distance."

Jesse grabbed the controls, switching off auto-pilot, and steered them off to the left, where Emma had pointed. The trees streaked beneath them and Jesse caught glimpses now and then of cop cars and black SUV's driving along the sparse roads, sometimes parked.

Shal noticed them as well. "This could get tricky."

"We're cloaked. And nothing is keeping me from Brennan," Jesse vowed.

Jesse set the Helix down in a meadow only a mile or so from Brennan, at least according to Emma. He couldn't find a closer spot where the terrain would allow a landing. He unbuckled himself and made for the exit when Emma gasped.

Jesse and Shalimar both spun in alarm. "What is it?"

"I lost him. He's gone. Oh god, I'm sorry, Jess."

"He's not gone!" Jesse yelled angrily. "We're going to find him." Jesse pressed the latch to open the Helix's rear door and then stepped out.

Shalimar locked her eyes with Emma, a question and answer exchanged wordlessly. Brennan may be gone, but Jess needed them now, and they'd help him get through this any way they could. Shalimar blinked her tears back and then followed Jesse, Emma only a step behind.

After about 20 minutes of tearing through underbrush and scrambling over large rocks and fallen trees, Jesse demanded of Emma "Where?"

"I don't know, Jess. I can't feel him at all. This is the general area he was in."

"Shal? Can you sense anything?"

Shalimar sniffed at the air and cocked her head, her eyes flashing yellow. Her head tilted to a different direction and she sniffed again. Another tilt, another sniff. She growled faintly in frustration. Jesse would have sworn he saw her nose twitch right before she put her hands to her face and screamed.

Emma and Jesse rushed to her side and pulled her hands from her face to assess what had happened. Both took a step back after doing so.

While still groaning from pain, Shalimar saw them staring at her. "What?" she mumbled.

"Um, your face. Actually, your nose…" Emma started.

"And your ears," Jesse finished.

Shalimar raised her hands to her face again and felt a stubby and slightly damp nose. She moved her hands to her ears and felt long tufts of skin shooting out, gently furred. "Oh god. Not again."

"Shal, I know you're in pain, and I know you are gonna freak as soon as you see yourself in a mirror – but I need to find Brennan. Can you smell him? Or hear him?"

Shal furrowed her brows in effort and tried to sniff, but a wave a pain showered over her. "Can't. Hurts too much."

"What we talked about on the plane, Shal. Can I try?"

Shalimar groaned again. "Emma? You sure you're okay? He didn't mess you up or anything? You don't have a third boob or anything, right?"

Emma smiled. "Coming from 'Miss Peek-A-Boo Nipples' as Jesse says, I'm surprised a third boob would worry you. But no – I'm fine."

Shalimar snarled at the peek-a-boo nipple comment and then said "Do it."

Jesse shut his eyes and reached out for the matter field, tapping into it quickly. He focused on Shal and immediately felt the imbalance. Quickly isolating a single cell, he delved down into her DNA and slid along her chromosome strands. She had a similar breakdown of bonds in her dna pairs, and again, he managed to isolate it back to a single pair of amino acids. Having identified the proper fix, he cascaded the changes throughout her body, and then opened his eyes.

Shal still had a cat nose and cat ears, but she no longer groaned in pain. "Done? Was that it?"

"Yup – now, try to sense Brennan."

Shalimar shrugged and began to tilt her head, when her whole body suddenly shrank and twisted, growing fur.

In mere seconds, a common housecat, a very confused common housecat, made its way out from a pile of clothing and sat in front of them, meowing and twisting its head to look at itself.

Emma looked at Jesse, who had wide eyes. "What did you do?" she asked.

The kitty started expanding and suddenly Shalimar, fully human, and nude, stood in front of them. "What the fuck was that?" she demanded.

"Don't look at me," Jesse deflected. "That's apparently what's been inside you all along."

"A fucking housecat? Why not a fucking panther or something? A lion? A cougar? Why a housecat?"

"Shal!" Jesse yelled. "I need to find Brennan. Can you figure this out later?"

"Fine," she turned to sniff again, her eyes flashing yellow. "Nothing."

"Use your full ability," Emma encouraged. "It'll be okay."

Shalimar sighed, and closed her eyes and mumbled under her breath something about leopards and pumas. She began to shrink again, turning furry, but not as small this time.

Instead of a housecat's meow, this time she greeted them with a mountain lion's snarl. She turned and looked at herself, and then licked along one of her front legs, rubbing it across her face.

Emma laughed, despite the current circumstances. "I think she approves of this version."

"Find him, Shal. Find him," Jesse urged.

The mountain lion's ears swiveled in different directions while she scented the air. With another snarl, Shal charged into the trees.

Jesse ran after her, and Emma did the same, after scooping up Shalimar's clothing.

Moments later, they stood next to a small landslide, where Shalimar pawed at the rocks.

"No!" Jesse yelled.

Emma sensed that Jesse planned on dematerializing rocks and she shouted "No!" into his mind, distracting him.

"Why not?"

"We've got to do this carefully, Jesse. You don't know what will happen when you start moving rocks. If he wasn't crushed, you don't want to crush him now, okay?" Emma turned from him and looked at the top of the pile, still up the hill, and it floated up into the air and then flew off to the side, landing far away from the other rocks. She focused on another, and it joined the first.

Jesse mimicked her, just far more quickly. He dematerialized one rock at a time, but at the speed of thought. Grabbing onto the matter field, he realized that Emma had been right – the pile of rocks resembled a house of cards, and the wrong move could have made things much worse – unless he could have moved the entire pile at once, which now that he had the matter field guiding him, he could do. Especially after what he had just seen in the field.

"Em? Stop."

Emma had nearly finished moving a large rock, so she finished that and looked at Jesse expectantly. Shalimar changed back to human form, taking her clothes from Emma and slipping them on quickly.

Jesse paid no attention to them, keeping his focus on the field, and suddenly all the rocks had vanished, along with all the dirt that had lodged itself between them.

Only Brennan remained.

Jesse cried out and the girls gasped.

Both of his legs were twisted and broken, bone jutting out from one of them. His right arm hung from only a strip of bicep muscle, the sheared from his body. Blood poured freely, not only from his arm, but from other cuts and scrapes as well. What little of his body that had not been abraded by the rocks showed scorch marks, and occasional arcs of electricity trailed across his still body.

Jesse darted to his side, denial on his lips as he chanted "No! No! No!" He placed his hands on Brennan's skin, trying to avoid any scorched flesh, and pleaded with him. "Don't leave me, Brennan! You can't leave me!"

Dogs barked in the distance and Shalimar stiffened. Her eyes flashed as she listened. "Men with dogs are coming. Probably a mile or so away. Coming from the opposite direction we came."

Emma crouched down next to Jesse and put her hand on his shoulder. "Jess?" she encouraged. "We don't have a lot of time."

"I'm not leaving him!"

Emma shook her head. "That's not what I meant. Brennan doesn't have much time."

It took a moment before the words sunk in. "He's alive?"

"He's still bleeding, Jess. He's just so weak that I can barely feel his mind, even standing right next to him. You have to help him."

"What can I do?" Jesse cried. "I'm not a doctor!"

Shalimar caught on to what Emma meant. She knelt on the other side of Brennan. "Jess, don't you see?" She put her hand above Brennan's broken and bleeding arm. "This is just matter. Flesh, bone, skin, blood, everything... we don't need a doctor. A doctor couldn't fix this, but you can."

Jesse's eyes widened and hope shown out from them. He reached over and picked up Brennan's arm and gently moved it back into position, and Emma and Shal watched as bone and muscle, vein and skin, all knitted back together.

"That's it, Jesse. Stop the bleeding first," Shal encouraged.

With mere glances, deep cuts closed and abrasions vanished. Jesse straightened Brennan's legs, and bone disappeared beneath pink skin. Scorch marks brightened from black to grey and then pink. Jesse frowned as another electrical arc burnt freshly healed skin, so he sunk down to the DNA level and stabilized Brennan's DNA – two bad amino acids this time, on different strands.

Jesse healed the last of Brennan's injuries, and then realized that he should add blood to his veins, considering the vast amount he had spilled.

"He's getting stronger, Jess. I can feel his mind kicking back in!" Emma said excitedly.

Brennan coughed - a rough, gravelly cough, and then took in several painful sounding breaths.

Jesse checked out his lungs in the matter field and saw the foreign matter – dust and dirt Brennan had inhaled. The offending objects quickly dissolved, and Brennan's breathing eased.

Jesse whispered to him. "Brennan? Wake up for me. Please, it's Jesse."

Brennan's eyes fluttered open, and his pupils shrank as light hit them. "Jess?"

Tears ran down Jesse's face – tears he had fiercely held back in order to heal Brennan. "Yeah, it's me," he said with a sob.

Brennan stared into his eyes and reached his hand up to Jesse's face, cupping his cheek. "Hey, why are you crying?"

Jesse sniffled and sobbed again.

"Shhh, baby, come here." He pulled Jesse down into his arms and held him close. "It's okay, baby, I'm here. I'm here."

3/12/06