Holy moly, another story ended. The loose threads are wrapped up, and everyone gets what they deserve.

At this point, I would like to thank my reviewers who've stuck through this story (now about 40,000 some words): WtchCool and Orwell-Is-Watching_xoxo.

Un-beta'ed, so quibble away.

- o – o -

Epilogue: Live Like You Were Dying

A week after Philips was rescued, his doctor brought him out of the medically-induced coma. The surgery to repair the damage done to his wrists and ankles had necessitated keeping him comatose, mostly so they didn't have to resort to restraints to keep him from moving around. The team who'd gone into the basement to collect evidence had informed the doctors that trying to put their colleague in restraints would be a bad idea for everyone involved. The doctors had agreed, after a nice, polite conversation.

The first person Philips saw when he woke up was Kia. He was happy that she didn't slap him in the face for not calling to say he'd be late, two weeks ago. They spent the next four hours just talking. Kia left the hospital room in tears, wearing a brand new sparkly engagement ring. No one saw her for the next two days, although it became apparent why when Philips held a press conference.

From his hospital bed, Philips looked a bit like a corpse. His press conference was a bit of a surprise to everyone who tuned in. They'd expected the man to plead for Samuels to be let go, or something. (Stockholm Syndrome wouldn't have surprised anyone, if they were honest.) Everyone who watched felt their jaw hit the floor.

Philips leaned against his pillows, watching the cameras with an indescribable look on his face. Finally, he began speaking. "A little over a year ago, I helped frame Vince Faraday. At the time, I was working for a man everyone here knows as Chess." The silence in the room was deafening for a few minutes, and then the questions came rolling in like a massive thunderstorm. The security officer waited for the furor to die down before continuing.

"At the time, I was being blackmailed. Chess is good at that—no matter how hard you try to bury the skeletons in your closet, that freak will dig them up." He paused, staring off into space. "When I was fifteen, I was involved in drugs. Big time—I was an addict, I ran drugs for anyone who'd get me a fix, and I was a lookout. My dad pulled me out and got me to clean my act up before I ended up in jail. I thought it was buried until about eight years ago, when Chess began blackmailing me to work for him. I wasn't the only one. But I'm saying now, that I won't work for him anymore. Everyone watching the press conference knows that I used to be an addict. I've already informed my fiancé, so it's no use trying to use her to get to me. And if Chess ever comes near me again, I'm going to take a leaf out of Doctor Whackjob's book and dig his eyes out with a spoon."

On the other side of town, Peter Fleming watched the press conference from his bedroom.

Boy's got balls, Chess said with a note of awe in his voice. And Philips had obviously learned that the best lies had a grain of truth in them. Chess had been blackmailing Philips… But he hadn't even known about the drugs.

"Yes he does," Fleming agreed, sipping his coffee. "Damn."

I concur.

In Trolley Park, Vince sat sandwiched between Raia and Ruvi, watching the press conference with his jaw hanging open. The rest of the carnies' faces mirrored his. It was hard not to be amazed, after all. Philips, an employee of ARK—and thus, an employee of Chess—had just told the criminal mastermind to go fuck himself. Bets were placed on how long Philips would last after this conference was over. Expectations were not very high.

Vince jumped as his phone rang. He answered it, and listened to Dana. After ten minutes, he interrupted her. "Don't worry, Dana, I'll come home. I promise." For the first time in weeks, Vince smiled.

Dana Faraday was also watching the press conference from her apartment. Jack, Rollo (the carnival's strongman), and Trip were with her. Their game of scrabble lay forgotten on the coffee table as they watched Philips casually tear apart Chess' power structure within ARK Corporation. Dana could only hope her idiotic husband would get the message and finally come back to life.

She kind of doubted he'd do it right away, though.

- o – o -

Over the next few weeks, Philips' press conference was circulated and re-circulated until everyone wanted to shoot whoever decided it was the best thing to run. The press conference was thrown by the wayside when Jamie Fleming appeared in public after a six year absence, sporting a boyfriend and a new haircut. She was reportedly heard muttering that she was going to murder someone named Gailord, but the press couldn't turn up anything on the man.

Peter Fleming was readmitted to the hospital due to stress-related health issues. The press speculated that it was meeting his daughter's boyfriend, a man named Rollo. (There was no indication as to whether it was his first name or last name, and no one wanted to question him on that.) Jamie and Rollo were quite happy together in public and, although it took several months, the Fleming patriarch eventually came around and stopped trying to set his daughter up with the sons of his business associates and several of his employees (including, according to one source, Stoykova, who had finally recovered).

Samuels was eventually convicted. Even with over three-quarters of the evidence being deemed inadmissible due to unfairly prejudicial bias, the jury voted unanimously to convict him to life in prison. It was Philips' testimony that had done it. Everyone who'd watched him come into the courtroom in a wheelchair, one arm in a sling, had admitted that they thought he was playing his injuries up just a bit to get the former psychiatrist convicted. They didn't really care, but it was the principle of the matter.

The psychiatrist's cellmate, Dominic "Scales" Raoul, was later acquitted of murdering the man. The guards all swore that Scales had been putting up with extreme verbal abuse from his cellmate for six months before he snapped. Dana Faraday, his public defender, was only too happy to see the charges dropped. All of them, as it turned out. Her big break had come when Jack asked her if she'd found out if he'd been read his Miranda Rights. ARK stock prices took a massive hit when the information came out. Oddly enough, it also came out that only three percent of the company's stock was actually available for trading on the open market.

The press did eventually find out who was behind Chess. It seemed that several of the local criminals—not including Scales, despite what the citizens of Palm City would have liked to believe—had teamed up with Marty Voyt to create the criminal. Chess didn't actually exist, and was a series of low-level thugs paid to portray the criminal. The blackmail folders did exist, and corroborated Philips' information in the press conference nearly seven months beforehand.

Philips was quoted in the press as saying he hadn't known that Chess was more than one person, although it did make sense as to how the mastermind had known about his drug habit. In private, however, Philips would admit that the story was complete bullshit. Years later, when he'd retired from ARK Corporation, his journal was published. No one believed it, of course, because how could Peter Fleming, billionaire industrialist and philanthropist, have been Chess? (The journal was marketed as fiction, and Philips cheerfully told the press that most of the information had been manufactured to get his post-kidnapping psychiatrist to leave him alone. Fleming bought a copy and was reported to have enjoyed the book immensely.)

Vince and Dana eventually renewed their vows a year after he came back from the dead. Jamie and Rollo Fleming, the Carnival of Crime, and a young man with vibrantly blue cornrows attended the ceremony. Trip Faraday took pictures. Jack Kirchner was seen leaving the ceremony with Ellen Raia, one of the performers from the carnival. They were married nine months later, with a child following a year after that. Vince and Dana were quite pleased to accept the role of godparents.

The biggest explosion, of course, came when Trip introduced his parents to his girlfriend, Elizabeth Raoul.

But that's another story.

- o – o -

So, what did you think? Good? Bad? Enjoy the epilogue? Drop a line and let me know! Heck, let me know what your favorite part of the story was!

Author's note: I will be taking a one-week hiatus before posting a new story, tentatively entitled "Worth Possessing".