CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Christian looked over his shoulders, scanning the area around him as completely as he could, before ducking into the structure that resided in front of him. He waited until it was carefully and completely sealed behind him before walking down the darkened path.

One he entered the large room at the end of the hall; his eyes immediately looked over the computers and chemistry equipment that was set up around the room. The computers were some of the more high-tech than he had ever used, though he had quickly understood how to use it. He had no choice, otherwise. If there was going to be anything that he had to learn quickly, it was the computers that had been created by the government.

Core looked up as Christian walked into the room and nodded towards him before typing on the keyboard, fingers moving at warp speed. "Any sign of them?"

"Not yet," Christian replied, with a light shake of his head. He dropped into the seat next to Core and booted up his own computer. "Though if my assumption is correct, they should be back at any time." He cleared his throat. "We need to move quickly though, more and more cities of Massachusetts are being taken over by the day. And as far as I've seen from my contacts still in Boston…other states are being invaded as well. If things don't get resolved soon…we're going to have more on our hands than the fact that the kids are now in the Element World."

Core snorted. "It's kind of ironic what's going on now," he remarked. "Considering it was what I wanted not too long ago…"

Christian let out a sigh. He wouldn't agree with that in the slightest. What Core wanted was a chance to learn more about Elementals; how they worked, what made them become real things on Earth, what made some awaken and others not? What was it about certain people that gave them the ability to become an elemental? Something in the DNA? Was there some sort of scientific happening over the years that hadn't ever been released to the public? That was something that he had been looking for when they had first stumbled across Elementals.

And it had stuck with him as the years had gone by. Since their first encounter with Uriel, not knowing it was him at the time, and had grown since his friends' murder. Ever since then his life had been nothing but a vendetta to figure out who or what it was that had killed his friends and how to stop it from happening again. Then it had overtaken his life to the point where it was an obsession and he had created Wingz Corp as a way to receive government funding to continue with the search for what had started it all. He had been o against them that he, in a way, wanted to keep them apart from humans until finding out about the children of his friends and how they were the ones that had awakened to the powers. He had found they were in danger and wanted to find them for himself, to protect them, but had to admit he had gone about it in the worst ways.

"Then again if they had known that I wasn't such a bad person—"

"If I had known, I would've told them to start trusting you a long time ago," Christian interrupted. There was a tone to his voice that proved he was tired of the conversation. He had grown tired of it ages ago, and hoped that by that time Core wouldn't known that nothing had been his fault and that they were all blindsided when that one fateful year in college. "But we can't worry about that now; right now we have to focus on the fact that all over the United States humans and Elementals alike are being held in captivity."

His computer loaded up and he moved through many file folders and programs that were loaded on the computer in a matter of seconds. Until he was sure that he had buried his location under enough running systems, in case someone was to bug his computer, he looked through his e-mail. This email was untraceable and didn't have an open IP address attached to it, anything that would keep his and Core's location from being revealed.

It was in those file folders that he found the images he had been receiving from his contacts in Boston. Pictures of humans being chained together and brought to holding areas, pictures of Elementals being tortured and killed, pictures of Uriel that would put even the greatest rulers to shame. This guy, someone that had come over from the Element world to the human world, was doing so much more than he thought was possible.

Having the power of life and death…it'd be the hardest for any of the kids to defeat, he knew that.

The two worked in silence for a few minutes more until Core let out a low sigh that grasped Christian's attention. At the curious glance from the blue-eyed man, Core turned the computer screen so that Christian could see. His lower jaw dropped open. The picture that rested on the desktop of the computer was that of his friends; Carey and Kurt. He couldn't be sure where they were, not able to get a good grasp on their location as the picture was so blurred, but he could see that they had been hurt.

There were bags under their eyes, hair unkempt, clothes tattered and dirty. Their faces were gaunt; appearing as if they hadn't had eaten in a long time. But it had been a while since Uriel had taken over, who knew how much longer his reign of terror was going to continue until the kids got back. Who knew if it were possible for them to get back at all?

"We have to do something," Core said. "I don't know what, but something. We can't wait for them to comeback."

"We still have some of the initial research we had been started before Reed's passing," Christian pointed out. "The cannon and project A.T.O.M." He slowly nodded, lacing his fingers together. That had been a project started by the three shortly after they had gone their separate ways after college. Despite only being able to meet up a few times a year, they still made progress each time they were together. But after Reed, Renee, and Kristen they had never gone back to it.

It was something that was bound to have the awareness of Elementals increase as well as make it so that they could live out in the open rather than having to constantly hide. Despite the massive battle with Mother Nature that had been caught on camera, that was still being shown around the world and criticized—despite Zack and Cody being nation figures of peace, which he thought was also ironic—the project was bound to do increase the relations between the two.

"Do you think it'll work?" Core asked him. "It was only an idea we had, we don't know if it's going to be something that'll hurt or help."

There was a sudden low rumbling sound and the two scientists looked around as the room started to rock. Images on the computer screen flickered and became distorted as the rumbling continued. The computers rocked on the table tops, the ground shook under their feet, and small streams of dirt and dust trickled down from the ceiling as there was another rumbling sound, this one louder but lasting a shorter amount of time.

"Bombs," Core noted. "They're bombing the city."

Christian suddenly appeared panicked. They already got here to Canada? Then he had a second, more horrifying thought. They're looking for us. Since Core had explained to Reihu that there was to be a war between the human world and the Element world if things didn't get remedied soon, the two had immediately left the United States to go into hiding. His laboratory had been left the way he hoped it would be, especially the secret room in the basement that had been put in place for his Elemental world while his chemistry work was his preferential career.

"Pull up the blueprint for Project A.T.O.M. I never thought we'd have to finish it, but desperate times call for desperate measures."

And nothing was more desperate than knowing that those that protected the city had been gone for weeks and still gave no sign of return.

A/N: Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

Cheers,

-Riles