I'm back with a new chapter, where things are finally being revealed, only to have more questions raised. Dun dun dun.
Dirtkid123- Ahhhh, we'll have to see! I love your excitement, it makes me excited and puts a smile on my face((:
Casey Storm- Your reviews mean so much, cause I've read your work and you're uber talented! I was inspired by several different things, including BTTF, for Lexi's disappearing act. Thank youuu!
PurpleNicole531- So many questions. I can't let all of them be answered at once, but this chapter has some reveals and raises even more uncertainty. I love your reviews! Thanks!
LeoCorp- I new reviewer, yay! You may not see this yet, until you catch up, but thank you! It'll be worth it to catch up, I'll make sure of that.
Anonlabratslover- And you're a new reviewer too! So exciting, you just have no idea! Thanks for much for your interest!
And I'd like to, once again, welcome all new followers. Plural! More than one! Ahh, so exciting! Sorry, not sorry for freaking out.
The sewers are just as unpleasant as their name and reputation makes them out to be. They are drafty and damp, smelled like the business end of a cow, and are nearly too dark to move around in. This is where Chase woke up, head throbbing and previous back burn making it awkward to lie on the make-shift cot he was unconscious in a minute ago. The teen bionic didn't need to blink back any change of light shade, but he squinted tiredly at his surroundings, nose crinkling in disgust at the immediate smell that all sewers had.
He tried to sit up, only to have his scorched back and dizzy head revolt and disagree with the movement. Chase let out a groan as he fell back onto the springy mattress. His complaint must have alerted the guy commanded to guard him, someone he hadn't even known was present until clumsy foot stomps came towards him. The guy peered over at Chase, before turning on his heels and dashing off in the opposite direction to report to whoever was in charge.
Pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration, the third Lab Rat tried to explain to himself why his bionic chip hadn't picked up on the guard sooner. It wasn't like it would have mattered in his state, but it bothered him to think of losing his attentiveness. His abilities had dulled to a noticeably low level, and without his hyper-senses Chase felt utterly useless and very vulnerable.
The cot creaked under his weight as Chase attempted to shift himself to his side. His back seemed to take to this position, and the kidnapped teen let out a relieved breath. He probably should have taken the pain medication prescribed to him by Mr. Davenport before he left, but Chase hadn't had much time to think about his burn injury today until it was all he could think about lying in the dark. Along with the unneeded reminder of his ill condition, a new twang of pain came from the side of his neck. Chase lifted a weary arm to survey the surface, only to be met by swollen, sore skin. A tiny hole lay in the middle of the swelling, by touch it felt like something had poked into his neck. The teen dropped his hand to the bedside, biting back a cry of pain. Now that he was aware of the swelling, it hurt him more.
Chase only heard footsteps coming back when they were a few feet away, his ears even worse than a regular person's. The large figure outlined in front of him made him shiver and had the back hairs of his head standing on end. Dangerously white teeth peeked out of the guy's mouth when he smiled at the teen in the cot. It wasn't a smile of good-humour or a kindly welcome, rather it seemed to be one that enjoyed witnessing Chase lying in the cot, helpless and in pain.
The leader, Chase wasn't so slow as to not be able to process this one piece of obvious information, stepped next to the lumpy bed and kneeled down to eye-level. His face wasn't what one would expect from a person who was keeping you hostage. He didn't bare a scar or have an ugly nose; rather, to a person that saw him across the street, this guy had handsome features – albeit screwed with his grimace and menacing demeanour. The eyes were what were dead giveaways, however, as they usually tended to be. They were what gave Chase a bad feeling and what frightened the man's followers. They held pure, motivated evil in their pitch blacks depths.
"Good," when he spoke, his voice churned the bionic teen's stomach. "You're awake."
Chase snarled, trying to cool the burning sensation to punch this guy square in the face. He was physically restrained from starting any dumb fights, and logic wasn't completely out the window.
"I'd forgotten how baby-faced and small your were," the boss chuckled, almost to himself. "No matter, I'll still take great pleasure in killing you." The burly figure stretched back up again, reaching for a knife that a henchman handed him. The silver bladed weapon had a luminating glow even in the dark sewers; a gleam one wouldn't get to see if they were killed with the less personal gun. Whatever this guy was bent on, it wasn't just random. Chase somehow knew him, and his only guess was from the future. "But that will have to wait ... it's just no fun to put someone out of their misery right away." He stuffed the sharp blade into his huge jacket pocket, a slight protrusion at the bottom where the tip pierced the material. He noticed Chase's wincing, and when the boy raised his hand to his neck, the boss smiled wryly. "Yes, we injected you with our close combat virus, only capable of entering your chip through a syringe in the neck." Chase growled, circling the red, swollen neck area with his finger. "Hopefully we can repeat the action with your siblings soon enough, for the minor virus will only hold up for so long. Baby steps," the leader glanced behind his back, searching for someone. "Now, M1, please remove our guest, he's rested enough," the leader waved Chase away like he was a mere object. "Place him in the holding cell."
A henchman that Chase assumed was M1 stepped forward, his chiseled features hidden under a hoodie and the dark shading. Roughly hauled to his feet, Chase found his hands being bound by a zip-tie, the hard plastic digging into his wrists. The seething pain of his back combined with the weird bubbling pain of his swollen neck made for a very uncomfortable time. "Let's go," the voice was droned and very robotic, but it was unmistakeable. It caught a lump in the kidnapped teen's throat.
How? Chase tried to take a glance over his shoulder, to see if his bad hearing was deceiving him once more, but M1 pushed at his back, lurching him forward. "Keep straight," M1 growled, the un-robotic emotion of frustration confirming Chase's guess. It was not quite possible, yet it had to be. Chase would be able to detect that voice anywhere, no matter how drained and inhumane it sounded now.
Chase knew his handler.
The team needed to regroup and shake the initial confusion and loss before Davenport allowed them to go looking for Chase, so Bree rushed everyone back to the hydro loop one by one.
The teens were a little fazed out and distraught when Bree and Lexi emerged last from the academy's main and only entrance. Bree slumped into a chair by the cyberdesk, trying to wrap her head around what had happened and what Alexa had subconsciously murmured aloud back at the mission site.
Davenport barely acknowledged the latest arrivals, as his attention was glued to the T.V screen on the wall. The news was on, the topic of discussion being the Lab Rats' mission failure and the 11 critical condition victims from the cave-in. The president had been confirmed stable and on the mend, but had a serious leg injury doctors were unsure he could come back from.
Lexi had found her place in a corner of the room, diverting her eyes from the others and trying not to clench her jaw. It took her a matter of two seconds to go from devasted to fuming. It was not the time for 'I told you so's, but Alexa had the urge to blurt it out anyway. She knew these futuristic bad guys the best, though not great, and she would have known what to look out for – and also that there was something to look out for. But she had been brushed aside, labelled as a glitch, and ignored. The bionic girl grinded her teeth together, just barely keeping herself in check.
"At least not too much damage has been done, yet," Davenport sighed, switching the channel to cartoons and muting the volume.
"100 percent more damage has been done then what was suppose to," Lexi growled, quickly softening her features. Her father had always warned her about her tendencies to grow increasingly angry and become impossible to deal with. She couldn't shut herself off just yet. Though Davenport deserved an ear load in her books, Alexa thought better of it. He'd get a very vocalized letter later, however, telling him exactly how stupid he was.
Bree eyed Alexa suspiciously, opening her mouth to ask the question that had been bothering her ever since the girl's hands had started disappearing. The speedster bionic said nothing, though, until their strange visitor examined her hands again. Lexi's pinkies blinked in and out of visibility, causing the future girl to appear worried in her already tense expression.
"What's going on, Alexa?" Bree finally managed to ask. Her eyes were downcast for a moment, not feeling the urge to look the frustrated girl in the eyes. Their sister's question seemed to spike some interest in Adam and Leo, who both perked up in their office chairs.
Davenport lifted his head up to glance at Lexi first, who was now seen pacing the perimetre of the room, clasping her eight fingers together firmly – it had been a losing battle for the pinkies. She had surprisingly relaxed look on her face, but who knew if that was good her bad.
"Today wasn't just important for your careers as bionic superheroes, sealing your fate in the eyes of the public," Alexa mumbled, her chosen tone of voice not as edgy as one would expect. "It was critical for my future." Davenport could tell the time-traveller was trying very hard not to place blame, but the way she not so subtly avoided eye contact with him and how when she paced by him she slouched her shoulder in the opposite direction, it didn't take a genius to figure out who she would blame; and Davenport was a genious.
"How?" Leo raised the next question, his dark brown eyes intensely invested in the conversation now. "You haven't even been born yet?"
Lexi looked like she was weighing her options for dealing with Leo's annoyingly personal inquiry. In the end, she merely let out an exasperated breath, and resumed her nervous steps. "No, I haven't been," she spoke that so softly, it nearly took Chase's unavailable bionic hearing to pick up the sound waves.
Adam and Bree exchanged a moment of confused glances, something Adam was inwardly pleased about. Usually he was alone in the dark.
"Why are your pinkies gone?" Bree prompted, trying to nail down the exact question that Lexi would be unable to get out of. They all needed a straight answer, but Alexa was a master at avoiding them.
"Hm?" Lexi's face reddened as she bit the insides of her cheeks. Unbeknown to her, she tucked her hands into her armpits, as if she hadn't been painfully obvious about her fear of the disappearance beforehand.
"You could say that they went," Adam started to laugh in between his bad joke. Bree shook her head as a warning, begging him not to continue. The oldest bionic, of course, didn't listen, "wee wee wee, all the way home."
Leo snickered, clapping hands with his step-brother; an unneeded encouragement.
"When you say that today was critical for your future," Davenport said, furrowing his brows as he thought if over in his head. "Do you mean that whatever happened out their today is causing your existence to de-stabilize?"
Adam scrunched his nose in confusion.
"Not just de-stabilize," Lexi mumbled, letting her arms fall back down to her sides. If these people wanted the truth, there was no more point in keeping it from them. "My existence is slowly turning into nonexistence, and unless we can come up with a plan to reverse the effects-" She stretched out her hands as a kind of 'exibit A'. "- I will disappear altogether, and the future will ..." Her beautiful optics shut for a momentary lapse of uncontrolled emotions. "The future will be bleak, lightly put."
Adam wasn't sure he quite understood all this future, stabilization, and reversing talk, but he wasn't as stupid as he seemed. He knew, somehow in that thick head of his, that this girl was slowly being unborn in front of them.
Bree's mouth was gaped. Lexi had sounded like she hadn't held anything back, but the bionic speedster knew she had. Call it intuition if you must. "What else?" Bree stepped over to Alexa and grabbed her shoulder to halt her pacing.
"I don't know what you're-" Lexi tried.
"If you want our help, truly, you can't keep the important stuff from us," Bree said, lowering her arm when she saw how uncomfortable if made Lexi at the moment. "Your life is on the line, and if we have any chance of stopping it, we need what you have. Knowledge."
The future girl released a heavy sigh, licking her cracked lips. "What do you want to know?"
"Not everything," Davenport said, coming closer to the two girls. "Just the stuff that's relevant to our current situation. How did your future become ... iffy?" He already had a pretty solid theory, really, but Lexi had been holding information back since the moment she got here, it'd be nice to hear everything confirmed through her.
"My parents met after the tunnel cave-in," Alexa didn't want to look anybody in the eyes right now, but she had to appear strong, so she chose Bree to hold gaze. She had always been the closest with Bree, aside from her father, of course. "My future upset is that ... that now they haven't."
"Who are your parents?" Bree asked, crossing her arms determinedly. This was good. They could go off of this. Save Chase and simutaneously get Lexi's parents together, just your normal Saturday.
"One is in the hospital after the disaster, condition unknown ..." Alexa was stalling. "The other ... though I call him father, goes by Chase."
A literal pin drop was heard from the training room next to them, Douglas groaning as he picked it up.
"Ah," was all Davenport had to say.
Woah, so that happened! I didn't expect to reveal that one so soon, but given that many of you have been figuring it out and have been dying to know, there it is! I had to add some more suspenseful questions to replace the one I lost ;)
Who is M1 and how does Chase know him? What is this close combat virus Chase was injected with? Will Davenport have any more to say, besides 'Ah'?