Chapter 6

"Well, that solved our mystery, didn't it?" Axel griped as they reentered the Nemo house. "Now what are we supposed to do?"

Lucien went back to the kitchen and returned the various metal implements he'd collected to their proper places. "Question," he said. "Any of you guys got a camera?"

"You mean to hook up in your living room to keep an eye on the wall?" Tim asked. "Um, no, not me. Rocky?"

Rocky shook his head. "No, but I do know where we can get one."

"Excellent," said Lucien. "Where?"

"Fry's, of course," said Rocky. "Ain't you guys got brains?"

Axel snickered. "Well, if we do, they certainly aren't as malfunction-y as yours."

Tim pulled his mouth into a frown with his fingers, largely to avoid bursting into laughter at Axel's (probably unintentional) Buffy speak. "That's all the way on the other side of town," he said. "Any of you got a car?"

"Dad lets me borrow his all the time," said Lucien. "Come on, let's go." They drove down to Fry's and spent a good long time trying to find a halfway decent camera.

"Xion, we don't wanna see Dad go crazy period," grumbled Lucien. "Why do we wanna see it in HD?"

Xion frowned. "If we don't get a good camera we won't be able to see any message on the wall. It'd be too grainy. You wanna be able to see what he writes, don't ya? Just to prove it to these guys?" She gestured to the Nemo boys, who were standing by idly while the two Claymores argued over what camera to buy.

"Enough already," muttered Tim, stepping in and plucking the nearest camera off the shelf. HD, so at least Xion was satisfied. Lucien took the camera from him so he could pay for it, since he had the most money on him out of the five of them.

Back home, Lucien and Xion carefully positioned the camera behind one of the mantelpiece cameras, just out of the way enough that it wouldn't be seen except by those looking for it directly, but still easily able to capture the bottom of the stairs where Saix had written his message from the day before. Then Lucien went upstairs and loaded the software package on his computer so he could access the camera feed from there.

Xion returned to her own room, leaving Lucien alone. He removed his phone from his pocket and took another look at the photo he'd taken the night before. "Light and Dark shall coalesce," the message read. It still made absolutely no sense to him. He closed his eyes, reopened them, and looked around. The room had gone dark, as it was now nighttime, even though, to Lucien's perception, the sun had been shining seconds earlier. He listened intently and soon picked up the sound of the door opening and shutting very quickly. That was the moment he and Xion had left the house the night before.

Lucien slowly slipped out the bedroom door and crossed over to the top of the stairs. A few feet below, his dad was busily biting his own fingertips and writing, in thin spiky letters, the message that Lucien would later photograph. Just as he finished the last letter, though, Saix looked up and spotted his son at the top of the stairs. He charged forward and slashed at his son, leaving three long, thin, ugly cuts across Lucien's arm.

Gasping in pain, Lucien jumped ahead in time eighteen hours, then ran into the bathroom and cleaned his arm up, before wrapping it in a long bandage and putting on a hoodie to cover his injury. Huh, he thought as he did so. Forgot to put on a shirt underneath it. Oh well.