Donald sat back in his lab chair with a glazed look in his eye. The array of tempting inventions that usually kept him captivated for hours held none of his attention now. He stared endlessly at the wall, a very plain, industrial-looking wall, and wondered what on earth his brother was after. Why had he come back? What was he looking for? What did he WANT?

Well of course Donald knew the answer to all those questions. He was after the kids. He had come back to get them. He wanted the money.

The money he could make by selling them. Selling them!

The thought sickened Donald. His brother had never been a really compassionate person that gave much thought to others' lives, but this really crossed the line. Treating kids, young, impressionable, little kids, as though they were test subjects. Merchandise. Mere objects!

And yet he had stood there the night before, in full confidence of himself, and told the kids that he was their father. Father! As if. Had Dougie built them a lab that they could grow up in with a happy childhood? No. Had Dougie spent years creating devices to keep them safe and help them train? No. Had Dougie spent long nights worrying about their bionics, mapping out their lives, making sure they were kept clean, fed, and happy? No!

He thought of them as test subjects! He choose kids from the streets, kidnapped them from their homes and used them as his own, personal lab rats!

His brother had done absolutely nothing for the kids. He had no right to call himself their father.

Donald began to fuss with a nearby invention. He always figured things like that when he got angry, or nervous, or upset.

Why had Douglas been so ready to reveal to the bionics their past lives? Loosely waving around the term 'father'. Was the definition of a father was simply a person who helped create your physical structure? By that note, then even Douglas was not their real father! They all had real fathers somewhere out in the world, and it wasn't either Douglas or Donald. So if they couldn't go by biological fathers, the title of 'father' should then be passed on to the person most resembling a fatherly figure, right? And that was clearly himself!

Donald working himself into such a lather that he accidently yanked out a cord on the invention he had been fiddling with.

"Ahhh!" he cried out as it electrocuted him, knocking him out of his chair and onto the floor.

"Why did you come back?"

"Because I wanted to see my kids."

"You're not our father. Mr. Davenport is; he's the one that's cared for us and taken care of us all this time. You just wanted to use us for your own personal gain."

"That's just what he's been telling you."

"Well is it true?"

Douglas stammered for an answer. The youngest bionic smirked.

"Okay, fine! Yes, yes, it's true! I wanted to use you for my own personal gain. For the clients, for the money, and for the fame. Happy?"

"You're pathetic." Chase turned his back to the spiky-haired scientist.

"But you can't deny that I did help you out!" Douglas stood up from the bench he had been sitting on and came as close to the bionic as the bars of his cell-like room would allow him.

Chase rolled his eyes. "Oh yeah? How's that?"

"You should have been able to figure that out by now."

Chase craned his head to look back at his 'father'. Douglas was smiling n a knowing way.

"Your memories have come back to you, haven't they? What you were? How your life was? I saved you from that. I took you away from a hellhole in life and gave you a chance to prove yourself and your wroth to the world! And this is the thanks I get for it?"

"You just wanted to sell us to the highest bidder! The only reason you picked me was probably because you saw me as an easy target!"

"That's not true! I searched all over the place for you and your siblings! Believe it or not I do have a human side to me, and that side hated seeing kids being mistreated! So I swore to myself that the kids I gave this incredible gift to would be the ones that needed it most!"

"Yeah, right. You're full of it." Chase began to walk away; towards the hidden elevator.

"It's true I swear! Just ask your brother and sister what they've seen! What they know! You're not the only one involved in this!"

The elevator doors closed on the aggravated scientist, shutting off his passionately delivered words.

Chase got off on the main floor and walked into the kitchen, sighing heavily as he plopped down in a chair at the counter.

"Is that villainous brother of Donald's locked up somewhere?" Asked Tasha, pulling her head out of the fridge with a block of cheddar cheese in her hand. Why did it seem like Tasha spent as much time in the kitchen as Mr. Davenport did in the lab? Did this family really eat that much food?

"Yes, I put him down in one of Mr. Davenport's subject vaults on a lower floor. Not the most ideal place, but it's got a barred door that should keep him locked up."

"Well I'm glad to hear that," said Tasha with a sigh. "There's so much tension in this family! I can see why Donald didn't want me to meet his parents before we got married. If I had known about all these family feuds, I might have had to rethink my vows."

Chase suddenly realized something.

"Hey, Mr. Davenport never seems to talk about his family much, have you ever met any of his relations?"

"None other then his brother and since he just tries to annihilate us all, I feel safe saying I don't want to meet any others."

Chase nodded. "Me neither." But his mind was whirling with thoughts. Why didn't Mr. Davenport ever talk about his family? Maybe Douglas had had a pretty nasty childhood…maybe he was telling the truth when he said he'd wanted to give Chase and hid siblings a better chance in the world. A better life. Maybe he had a point…

But just maybe. Because, then again, maybe he was just a sociopath that wanted to make a lot of money by experimenting on kids.

"Hey, speak of the devil!" Exclaimed Adam, as Davenport emerged from the hidden elevator.

Tasha sent her son a scolding look as she hurried to her husbands' side.

"Are you okay sweetie? You don't look all that well, would you like me to make you something?"

"No, thank-you Tasha. I'm fine." Davenport slowly made his way to the kitchen counter. When he got their he clung to the side, using it to support his paler-then-usual looking body.

Tasha looked skeptical.

"Are you sure you're okay?"

"Yes, yes, I'm fine. You worry to much." Donald gave his wife a quick kiss on the forehead before turning back to the kids. His kids.

"Hey, Adam, would you mind turning off the TV for a second? I've got something I need to say."

"Okay, but if this is about you're hair again then I'm t]going back to my program." Chase glared at his brother while he turned off the TV and turned to face Mr. Davenport

"Look," Donald cleared his throat. "I just wanted to apologize again fro not telling you about Douglas sooner. He is your father, and as much as I disagree with his ideas, you had a right to know sooner."

"Hey, don't worry about it. We know why you did it, you were just trying to protect us." Adam sounded surprising philosophical for his nature.

Mr. Davenport nodded, a grateful look spreading over his face with the understanding of his eldest son.

Chase wasn't completely sure what he was supposed to do now. He had kind of been hoping Adam would crack a joke or take another poke at Davenport's hair so that he'd have an excuse not to say something comforting to their stepfather. He still wasn't really sure where he stood on this whole matter. With all these new developments, he felt like he needed a little more time just to process it all.

He was spared saying anything, however, by his stepbrother's both timely and very dramatic entrance.

Leo dashed down the stairs and clung to the counter, gasping for breath.

"Leo, what is it?"! Asked Donald, immediately concerned.

Leo heaved a deep breath and panted out a partial answer. "Bree…left…gone….empty bedroom!" He gasped a little and desperately tried to calm his heart rater, which had spiraled upward due to the worrisome discovery that his sister was missing, the hearty dash downstairs, and the shocking thoughts going through his head about what could be happening to her at this very moment.

"What do mean she left? That she's gone? Where did she go?!" Davenport's voice was rising in a both calm and worried tone.

"I don't know!" Exclaimed Leo, finally able to start talking in more coherent sentences. "She went upstairs to the guest bedroom a while ago to go "sort out her thoughts" or whatever girls do. I just went up to check on her and she's gone!"

"Well how do you know she didn't just leave the room?" asked Tasha in a calm, motherly voice.

Leo shook his head urgently. "I know she didn't because of this." Leo held out a piece of paper for the rest of his family to see.

Dear family;

Don't try to look for me. I don't want to be found.

I love you all.

Good-bye.

Bree.

Bree knew leaving her family was the wrong thing to do. She knew they would be upset with her. She knew this would devastate them. Especially when they needed her so much in this confusing time.

But there just wasn't any way she could find in her will to stay. She couldn't stand being in the same house as the psychopath who had experimented on her like she was a rat and the man who had kept her locked away from the truth for all these years.

Inside her heart she knew that neither one of them was her father, so technically she had no real reason to stay. Tasha was not really her mother. Leo was not really her brother. Adam and Chase, the two people she had always been able to reply on. The only family she had ever had. Who had gotten her through rough training simulations, through scary nights when childhood nightmares had racked her mind, through happy days when all of them would just play together; they weren't even related to her.

She wasn't bound by blood to any of them. They were complete strangers.

She rejected her responsibilities to them as easily as she rejected the basic laws of gravity. She was moving so quickly that such menial things didn't apply to her. She was moving at a speed of over 200 miles per hour over mountains, across flat lands, over oceans, and away from what she had always known as her family.

Away from that lie.

A/N-Hello lovely readers! This has been a while for this story…has it not? I was sort of planning to let this story slip into the dark abyss of unfinished fanfics...but somehow that didn't seem right. So over Spring Break, I powered through and finished it! There are 4 more chapters after this one that I'll be editing and posting over the next few weeks! Sorry for such a delay, and thank-you so much to any readers that are still out there and following this story! I hope I can finish it off in a way that makes it worth the wait! :)