A/N- Howdy ya'll! So sorry I didn't update yesterday. I actually had finished this chapter last night and was about to publish it, but then I realized I might want to wait and read it over in the morning. And I'm really glad I did because I ended up changing a lot and I think it's much better now. Anyway, enjoy! And I will be replying to reviews at the end of this chapter. :)

Disclaimer-I do not own Lab Rats.

~Who I Was~

"CHASE!" shouted Bree.

"What?" asked Chase, jerking himself out of his thoughts.

"You're ignoring me."

"You say that like it's new. Do you really expect me to keep up with your multitudes of boyfriends, and fashion dilemmas, and who said what behind whose back about whose outfit?"

Bree rolled her eyes. "Never mind." She went back to her phone.

"She's right, Chase," said Tasha, bringing another plateful of waffles to the breakfast table and starting to pour herself some orange juice. "You're very quiet this morning. Is something wrong, darling?"

"No, nothing." He mentally smacked myself for answering so quickly. Tasha was immediately suspicious.

"Are you sure, sweetie?" She asked, sitting down and placing her hand on Chase's shoulder. "Donald told me about what happened, do you need to talk to someone?"

"No, I'm fine!" Chase snapped, standing up from the table.

Tasha jumped back a little at his angry reaction.

"I'm going upstairs," he mumbled, picking up his dishes and carrying them to the kitchen counter.

He passed Leo on his way to the stairs, who was currently sitting on the couch watching TV. He called out something about Marcus being a no-good bionic fool from the very beginning, and that if Chase would come sit on the couch next to him, they could talk. But Chase had to come to Leo, of course, because there was no way the cartoon-loving teenager was leaving his show mid-episode.

Chase decided to ignore Leo's comment and continued up the stairwell.

He went into the nearest empty room on the second floor, which just happened to be the guest room, and plopped down on the bed. He stared down past his feet at the furthest wall from the bed, allowing himself to sink deep into his thoughts as well as the soft mattress.

As Chase looked at the wall, it wasn't long before he was subconsciously measuring it's height and width and calculating exactly what size a bookshelf would have to be if he ever wanted to build one to fit in perfectly.

"What am I even doing?" He asked himself, suddenly jolting out of his planning right in the middle of a complicated equation. "I don't care about a stupid bookshelf! Can't I even go for a few seconds without my incredible brain taking over and thinking something?"

Chase cleared his mind-literally, the bionic's mind stores equations and numbers like a slate-and tried to think about something else. Something more important then bookshelves. Something to take his brain's thought process off the newest discoveries he had made. But all Chase could think was; "Why?"

"Why did it all have to happen? Why couldn't it all have just stayed the way it was? It was fine before! Why did it need to change?"

Chase sighed and buried his head in his hands, rubbing his fingers through his hair. He was the smart one; the nerdy one; the one who always had the answers; the one who always wanted the answers, to even the most menial of things. But this, this. This he would have been fine staying in the dark. Chase would have been fine-not knowing.

"Why do I have to know? Why did I have to find out? Why couldn't it just all remain a wonderful mystery? Something I always wondered about but never really dug into what the answer might be?"

Chase moved his hands up to his forehead, pushing his hair back past its hairline. His eyes felt prickly-a slight stabbing feeling, like a diluted form of salt had been thrown into them,-he could feel a multitude of tears forming, and when he blinked a single tear escaped and made its way forward on his cheek.

Chase rubbed his eyes roughly, letting more tears out of their little prison and setting them free to run across his face. He pulled his arms back and retuned to examining the far wall. But he wasn't really looking at the wall.

No, he was looking at its blueprints.

"Ugg!" he shouted, quickly shutting down his automatic scanner. "I just want to lay here for a second and not think is that too much to ask?"

The wall did not answer.

Chase laid perfectly stock-still on the bed for a minute or two, but soon his body started to ache to do something.

"Why are we just sitting here?" it seemed to say. "You could be doing something useful with your time!"

He ignored his desire to get up and forced himself to lay there, thinking over everything he had learned. Everything he had remembered.

Was it all true? Everything that he thought he recalled. Had he really reached back into the far corners of his brain somehow? Or had he just made everything up? All the things he saw; and heard; and felt. Were they fact or fiction?

He closed his eyes and laid back deeper into the pillow. Silently, and painfully, he relived the experiences that had been brought back into his mind last night while the Davenports were trapped in Douglas's lair:

I walked as quickly as I could down the street, just thinking; left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot. I quickened my pace when I heard footsteps behind me. But I was nowhere near fast enough to escape them.

"Hey Chase! Where are you off to in such a hurry?"

"Leave me alone, Josh!" I tried to say, but I couldn't quite remember how to form those words.

"Running off to your little Mommy and Daddy so soon? But you haven't gotten a chance to meet my new friends! Come on out boys!" Josh clapped his hands and some kids came out from behind the bushes carrying baseball bats. I tried to count how many but couldn't seem to register the numbers.

"J-Josh, P-p-please..."

"Oh, would you look at that, boys? The freak talks!" Josh and his friends laughed. Then Josh knocked me roughly to the ground. I hit the concrete hard and for the second my face was in the dark, I didn't know what was going on.

"Get him boys!" The next second I could feel nothing but pain closing in from all sides. I couldn't figure out how to stop it. I just curled up in a ball and hoped that it would all go away soon.

Finally, Josh and his friends ran off laughing, leaving me laying there on the sidewalk.

I just laid there for a few minutes until I figured out I should probably get up and go home. I dragged myself up and examined my arms and legs, which were hurting really bad. I couldn't see anything but a few red marks on them. Josh and his friends must not have really hit me that hard after all.

I slowly meandered home and dragged my feet up the walk, searching around for a moment before I found the handle to open the door. Before I could muster up the strength to push it open, however, the handle was yanked out of my grasp as someone on the inside pulled the door open. I slowly looked up and found myself staring into the eyes of my seething father.

"WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?!" he shouted out, grabbing me tightly by the shoulders and bending down so his furious eyes were glaring right into mine.

"I got lost then I was attacked by Josh and his crew!" I tried to say, but the words wouldn't come out.

"Ugh!" My farther growled and let go of me. He shoved his way past me and marched out to the sidewalk. He made his way down the street to his favorite bar to hang out at, but right before he turned the corner, he turned back and shouted;

"You'll never be normal! You're a freak and you're going to be a freak for the rest of your life! Because that's what you are; a dumb, brainless freak!"

With that, he turned the corner and marched out of sight.

I watched him go, trying to understand what he had said. I couldn't really get my head around all of it, but what I did understand made me want to cry. I dashed back into my house and flew up to my bedroom, collapsing onto my bed and crying my eyes out, all the while asking myself just one simple question;

"Why?"

Chase wrenched himself out of his memory and felt his sixteen-year-old-bionic-hero tears mingling with his six-year-old-unintelligent-outcast-memory. That had been the day before Douglas found, well, took Chase. He had been kidnapped the next day from his backyard, and brought to Douglas's lab. He had no idea what was going on and his brain seemed to be processing information ten times slower then it usually did.

Chase didn't know what had happened to him. All he knew was that after the big guy who had taken him did something to his neck then put him in this big tube-like thing, suddenly everything became clear. He could talk normally, he could understand everything going on, and he felt smart! Really smart! Smarter then he had ever felt before, and smarter, he betted, then any human has ever felt.

And yet, ten years later, along with a billion dollars worth of technology and years of training, Chase was still asking the same questions he had been asking when he was four.

"Why did I have to be so different? Why could no one accept me? What did I ever do to deserve it all? Why did I have to find out about at all?"

He had studied into his memories after returning home from Douglas's lair last night, and Chase's research had brought him some surprising results.

He was fairly certain that he had been diagnosed with Down Syndrome as a young kid. He figured that must have been why he couldn't think very well and was always slow at processing information. He also figured that his bionics must have cured him when his chip was connected to his body's nervous system.

Chase's ever-affective and brilliant mind flashed a definition in front of his eyes;

Down Syndrome;

A congenital disorder arising from a chromosome defect, causing intellectual impairment and physical abnormalities including short stature and a broad facial profile. Common effects are learning disability, speech delay, and difficulty thinking and understanding.

Yep, that pretty much sounded like what he had had.

He just couldn't believe it.

No, he could believe it, Chase just couldn't understand it.

He couldn't understand why some perfectly good people could be born with such a disease. He couldn't understand why He had had to have been born with such a disease. He couldn't understand why people had to be so mean to him as a child. Wasn't he going through enough problems already?

He also couldn't understand why he suddenly sounded so much like Adam.

"Adam!"

Chase pressed the palms of his hands against his skull in an attempt to block out the sudden wave of embarrassment that overcame him.

"Oh no poor Adam!"

"How could I have treated him so badly for so many years? I was always making fun of his lack of intelligence, and never thought twice about it! I never tried to lift him up, or make him feel special! I always, always laugh at what he says! I'm no better then Josh!"

Chase relapsed into another round of tears.

He couldn't believe he had been such a monster!

A/N-Now before I reply to reviews, I'd just like to say that I DID NOT MEAN TO OFFEND ANYONE WHO HAS OR KNOWS SOMEONE WITH DOWN SYNDROME. I have meet people with Down Syndrome, and I had a few friends who had it, but that was a long time ago. Most of the descriptions in this chapter and the flashback came from information I found online. However, if it was inaccurate or you felt that I was being offensive in any way, I apologize profusely. I understand that Down Syndrome is really a problem people have to face and I did not mean to discard it by making people who have it seem really stupid or weak, I meant to describe how awful having a disease like this can be to one's development and how challenging it is for people with Down Syndrome. I did not, however, mean to offend anyone by it, and I hope that I did not, but if I did, I hope you will understand and accept my apology.

Okay! So now for some long replies because I loveeee talking to people!

daughter of athena 2000-Wow, thank-you, really. You're review literally brightened my day by about a hundred mega-watts!

fudgebrownieface-Thanks! I'm glad you liked the prologue and I hoped you liked this chapter. :)

Clarity665-I'm glad you're looking forward to the rest of this story! I hoped this first chapter turned out like what you were expecting.

TheMichiganWriter-Yay! I'm so glad. Yeah, me neither. The lungs are those thingies that digest your food, right? Jk.

Leo Corp-Thanks! You're awesome. :)

Waterlooroadbrat-Wow, you actually tracked me down and reviewed this story asking for a sequel? I'm really quite honored. Okay, I will do a sequel, but it might take me a little longer because I'll have to 'revisit' an idea that I kind of shut down, you know? But I will try to get started on one right away!

To daphrose- *in professional voice* thank-you for your comment, and I will keep out a careful watch for grammatical errors.

To everyone else- OMG! Daphrose reviewed my story! The daphrose! *dances around the room singing*.

Back to daphrose-you didn't see that.

PurpleNicole531-Really? Yippee! I hope it stays deep throughout till the end!

tennisgirl77-I'm glad! Will do!

Well, that's everyone! I really hope you liked the chapter, and hope you're ready for the next one! Anyone want to guess who it will be about?

Now, if you do review, and I really hope you do, I was wondering if;

Did you like the way I switched from third person in the chapter to first person in the flashback, or was it confusing?

And, if it was confusing, which form do you like reading in best?

Finally, what did you think about my take on Chase's childhood?

I think that's all so I guess farewell until next time comrades! Which I'm hoping will be soon, but it might take me a little bit longer with this next chapter since I don't even have it started yet. But hopefully by Friday, and Saturday at the very latest!