Author's Note: Sorry for the delay but school is back in session and man, writing time is hard to come by. Thank you for reading!

Kendall was miserable. No one at this stupid hospital would tell him anything about his friends because they insisted they didn't know anything. Which might be true, but it was unacceptable and my godif he could get back to the Mall of America and search it himself he would right now, pain or no pain, injury or no injury, Moon or no Moon. In fact, if Moon was there...

"Hey," he called out to anybody in the hallway. "I need some help here!"

Silence. Where was his nurse? Where was the stupid guard Gustavo had paid to stand outside his room? Did NO one understand that his friends NEEDED him right now?!

Kendall sat up vehemently, breathing hard and holding the position for almost five seconds before being forced to give up and flop back. It wasn't just the pain. His body had been in something called neurogenic shock and it was taking time for the symptoms to fade. They'd given him some muscle relaxers to help and he could barely sit up at all. When he'd had to move from the gurney to the bed after the MRI, the orderlies had swung him over like a side of beef. It was humiliating and the only good part was that the guys weren't here to make fun of him - because they would.

His eyes teared up and he grimaced, sucking in a few deep breaths. He didn't care if they made fun of him; he'd give anything for the guys to be here, any one of them...

"Kendall!"

Kendall looked up. "Mom! Katie!" They were finally here and then he was being kissed and his Mom was hugging him up off the bed, crying in his ear. "Ouch... I'm okay," he reassured her as she let go quickly.

"I am so sorry, baby. Are you really okay?" She pulled back to look him full in the eyes, taking in his pain and his tears and shaking her head. "You're not..."

"I'm better now that you're here, both of you," he grabbed Katie's hand from where she stood awkwardly on the other side of the bed. and pulled her closer. "I just strained a few muscles, nothing bad."

"I know you're feeling better now and Dr. Moseley said so far the tests haven't shown any serious damage. But he still caused you a lot of pain, that f-ing bastard."

Kendall's eyebrows raised in shock and Katie, who had buried her face in Kendall's chest, looked up at her mom with her mouth dropped open.

"Don't look at me like that! If he were standing here in front of me, I would skewer him with my car keys! He's not only kidnapped you, Katie before, but now he took Kendall and all my boys, too! And he really hurt you!" She held a hand over her mouth to stop the tears.

"Mom, I'm fine. Okay? It's the other guys I'm worried about. We don't even know where they are or what's happening to them!"

"Oh!" Jennifer's eyes went wide. "They found Logan. I'm supposed to tell you that."

"They did?" Kendall half-yelled. "Where is he? Is he- is he okay? Is he- is he hurt?"

"He's fine," she said with the air of a person telling someone something that might upset them. "But he was tied up in an elevator shaft...hung by his wrists."

Kendall's brain tried to imagine it and refused. "In the dark? Alone?" She nodded. "But he hates to be alone in the dark and he hates heights. What- what kind of person does that to someone? Is he hurt?" Kendall found that he was trembling and had to swipe at his eyes and he wanted to go find Logan now.

"Kendall, no!" His mom pushed him back down as he tried to get up. "He's on his way here in an ambulance now. Listen to me: Kelly said that he's fine other than damage to his wrists and an injured ankle. Apparently, he fell down on the top of the elevator when he got loose."

Kendall went still and let Katie climb up on the bed, jostling him as she slid herself under his right arm. "He got free?"

"Somehow the rope was cut but they don't know how. Once Logan fell on the top of the elevator, he beat on it until someone heard him. It was a miracle he wasn't more hurt."

Katie leaned up and kissed Kendall on the cheek. She was awfully quiet. "You okay," he asked her, giving her a kiss on top of her head.

She nodded. "It's just that...we still don't know where James and Carlos are." Her brown eyes were so big and so full of emotion, it made Kendall want to get out of bed and punch something or someone. But he couldn't, so he took a deep breath - and his mom's phone rang.

"Oh!" she said, fumbling with it for a moment before saying a breathless, "Hello?" She listened, eyes darting around the room while she listened. "Oh, thank God. How is he?"

Kendall couldn't stand it. "Did they find James? Carlos? Mom!"

She moved the phone away from her mouth for long enough to say, "Carlos."

"Yessss," Katie said, hugging Kendall harder. He hugged her back, so glad but not completely able to shove off his worry for James.

"Is he hurt," Kendall had to ask. His mom ignored him and he felt like throwing something at her. "Mom?"

"Thanks, Kelly. I'm so glad," she said tearfully. "Yes, one more to go. Kendall is here and so far all the tests have been negative for serious injury."

"Mom?" Kendall and Katie asked together and she held up a stern finger at them. They sighed together and tried to be patient.

"I will. Thank you, Kelly. Tell Carlos we will see him soon! Bye." She hung up smiling at her two kids. "They found Carlos. He'd been tied up inside what Kelly said was 'a crescent moon-shaped aerial thing' when he woke up and apparently, got sick. He vomited all over the people tying him up and they just left him there."

"No way," Kendall said, smiling genuinely for the first time since the purple goo fell. "That's perfect. Once Carlos gets nauseous, all you can do is bring him a bucket."

The image made Katie snicker. "They totally deserved that," she said.

"Carlos said one of them was a clown," Jennifer said with a shudder.

"Ew," Katie said.

"Carlos hates clowns," Kendall said. "Is he okay?"

"He doesn't have any obvious injuries, just rope burn and a very upset stomach. He might be allergic to the drug they used."

Kendall nodded. He thought about the extreme position he'd been tied in, and how Logan was rigged up high and in the dark, almost like he was awaiting a spotlight. Plus Carlos was suspended in an aerial prop by a clown? "It makes sense that Moon hired circus people to do this. They know their rope. Moon is seriously twisted."

"You think he knows Carlos is scared of clowns?" his mother asked, subdued.

"Guarantee you he did," Kendall said grimly. But Carlos had made his own luck as he always did and gotten the hell out of that mess. Kendall was proud of him.

"I hope James is okay," Katie whispered.

Kendall rested his head on hers. "They'll find him any minute. And he'll be pissed off because his hair is going to be messed up and he's probably still spotted purple and now he has rope burn like the rest of us. But he'll be fine."

Perfectly, magically fine.

After ten minutes of moving around through the hallways and dodging guards, Penny found Sec Storage Six. The room was a vast space at least three stories high. It was dark and silent, the only light flooding in from the opened doorway behind her.

"James?" she called up, not caring for the way her voice echoed around the space as if it were completely empty. She shoved that thought far away and let her training take over. Her GPS heat tracker said that someone was a hundred feet up, most likely on a crossbeam. That must be James.

Girders that supported the building ran from the ceiling all the way down to the floor in regular intervals with beams running across. It took her five minutes of careful climbing to get up on the second beam. Then, by the light of her headlamp, she could finally see James one level above her. His head was bowed, but he was standing straight, arms stretched out to the sides, long ropes attaching each wrist to the girders on either side with zero slack. Another rope was strung under his arms and hitched to the beam above him. His legs and ankles and chest were fastened to the girder behind him.

Penny shuddered. James was fine; he wasn't screaming in pain as Kendall had apparently been. But there was something awful in his posture, in the slackness of his body even while it was strung up tightly. It was...horrifying.

Taking a deep breath, she climbed the rungs on the back of the girder to the next beam up. Her palms were sweaty inside her gloves. Slowly, she pulled even with the beam James was fixed to and climbed on top. Once she was up and steady, she fixed her headlamp on the beam and walked slowly to James.

It defied logic. How had they gotten James up this high? The amount of rope used to fasten him in place was mad. And why rig him up to look like he was on a cross? It was evil, insane. Penny shuddered. She peeked up into his face, catching a glimpse of the purple that still stained his skin. At least he looked peaceful somehow.

Turning her light on the ropes, she studied their placement carefully. If she cut the wrong rope or failed to compensate for James' weight, he could fall and be horribly injured. She shoved that thought away and stepped in front of James with her back to him. Then she pulled out her laser cutter.

Aiming toward the rope pulling his right arm tightly to the side, she lasered through it and then caught his arm as it fell forward. She pulled it over her chest and moved the laser to her left hand. Then she shot the rope that held his other arm up and caught it against her chest again. She shot the rope around his ankles, wincing as she might have gotten his foot on that one. James didn't shift or grimace; he was deeply unconscious.

The rope around his thighs she cut (very carefully on the outside) and then grabbed it before it could fall. Carefully, she spooled it up, feeling James' weight begin to lean on her. But he was still held up by two ropes: a cross-chest tie to the girder behind him and one hooked under his arms and around his back that suspended him from the beam above. Penny turned in his arms to cut the cross-chest tie but left the rope in place. James slumped against her a bit more, becoming heavy even though it was still only part of his weight. It was unnerving that he was almost hugging her while deeply unconscious.

Slowly, she wrapped the freed-up rope around his chest below the cross-chest tie and knotted it carefully. Unable to stop herself, she rose up on her toes to give him a kiss on his cheek, surprised to feel it cool and slightly clammy. Normally, James was like a heater. He might have gone into shock. Catgirl was right; he needed a hospital.

Like lightning, she remembered her guard equipment had an emergency button hidden in the wristband. She pushed it, relieved to be getting help. But she still had work to do; James' body was obviously stressed in this position.

Penny hesitated, then slid out from under James and around to the back of the girder. One rope still held him in place securely, strung up to the beam above. There were handholds going up the girder to the ceiling. Penny looped the rope she had just tied to James' chest around one rung, and held it to the side. This would help her hold his weight more easily.

A small movement caught her eye from below. She looked over just in time to dodge to the right, feeling something whip past. A figure was caught in the light from the open door aiming a gun at her. This time she caught the small sound as the dart was released and she dropped to let it go overhead. Low like this, she was a much harder target to hit.

And now she could see more clearly: it was a clown leering up at her.

"I detest clowns!" She yelled down as if it were somehow appropriate or a clever thing to say.

"That's nice," the clown said cheerily. "Clowns hate you, too. See?" He shot three more times, missing every time. "Oops. Hit the wrong bodyyyyy."

With a gasp, Penny turned to see that that clown had, indeed, hit James in the stomach. She jerked out the dart and turned to yell some more, but the clown was gone. For a few seconds, it was quiet and then two guards and a paramedic ran in. The clown must have heard them coming.

"Does someone need help?" the paramedic called, looking up. "Hey - is that James?"

"Yes! I cut him free and am prepared to lower him down. But he's been shot with a tranq dart four times now and I'm afraid - "

"Then let's get him down in a hurry. Lionel will help you," the paramedic said, interrupting. "I need to call this in." He got on his phone and started talking rapid-fire.

Penny realized one guard was already heading up the ladder. "I'm Lionel," he called over. "Hang on a second and I'll help," he called over.

"Please hurry." She moved back into position, holding her rope and aiming her cutter at the last rope holding James. It would be an easy shot even though she had to lean around the girder a bit.

The EMT called up. "Is James responsive at all?" he called up.

"No," Penny answered, pausing to lower the cutter, "and he felt cold."

"Did you check his pulse?"

Penny felt like an idiot. "No...sorry."

The EMT smiled. "That's okay. You were busy. We'll check everything as soon as he gets down - no worries." He turned back to his phone while the guard with him relayed information through his radio.

Lionel reached her, gave her a brief smile and moved over to check the knot she'd tied on James's chest. "Nice job," he commented before moving over to take hold of the rope, one hand above hers, one hand below.

"Ready when you are," he said.

Penny shot the laser at the rope stringing James up to the beam and it snapped instantly. James slumped farther. For a moment, the cross-chest tie held him in place, but it slowly unraveled as she had hoped and James' body leaned forward off the girder.

He didn't fall far. The rope Penny had tied around his chest caught immediately with only a minimal jolt. "Got him," Lionel said. "Good planning. Now let's let him down slow and easy." Penny appreciated his calm assurance, as though James' life wasn't literally in their hands.

After a long minute, James was down, the guard below and the EMT reaching up to ease him down to the floor. The EMT got right to work checking James' vitals while the guard untied the rope around his chest.

"Glad that's done. Everyone has been searching for him like crazy. How did you find him?"

"Got a tip," she said casually. "Thanks for the help." Just as she relaxed, something moved in her peripheral vision. Stun gun out, she whipped around to find that a clown was standing there, smiling at her. Only this time, he wasn't alone.

Catgirl strode into Moon's purple dining room, whip out and eyes narrowed. Moon was delicately eating green soup, but stopped when he saw her. "Ah, Catgirl! I trust you were - "

A whip lashed the spoon from his hand, splattering his face with the hot liquid. "How dare you!" she spat at him, snapping the whip to the side.

He blinked at her owlishly. Then he calmly picked up his lavender napkin and wiped his face. "I see your rendez-vous with the boys went badly. Were they...unkind?"

"No. They were a little too tied up to be anything but in pain and misery!"

"Ah, yes, just as it should be - "

Another snap of the whip caught his tie and jerked him forward. He glared at her. "What is wrong with you? I had the freaks doing most of the work - "

"Yeah. They tortured them!"

Moon gave her an exasperated look. "Not...not literally. I mean, it was only a little bit of rope! Now, can you please calm down and release my tie?"

Catgirl huffed out a large breath and pulled back her whip.

"Thank you. Now, let's review: I put out an ad for an assistant, you answered, saying, 'I am evil. Put me to work.' Or something like that." He pushed out his chair and stood, walking to the end of the table. "I told you I wanted revenge on Big Time Rush. You said, 'whoopie' or something like that, and gave every indication that you would love to punish them as well. Am I wrong?"

Catgirl crossed her arms and glared at him. "I did not, nor have I ever said the word 'whoopie.'"

"Granted. But what could possibly have changed your attitude so quickly? You're a young, bright girl with a lifetime of mayhem and evil shenanigans ahead of you. And they are just a bunch of do-gooding, idiotic boys who...ohhhhh." Moon nodded, raised a finger in the air and walked closer. "I see. Did you, by any chance, happen to rescue one of them?"

"Yes! I had to or Logan might have been dropped to his death or squashed like a bug!" She paced the floor. "Those freaks of yours strung him up in an elevator shaft! They were trying to kill him!"

"Really? And is that why you fell in love with him?"

Catgirl froze. "What? I would never fall in love on the job."

"Logan?" Moon tilted his head to the side. "Now which one is he? Is he the...the smart one with the...the..."

"Dimples and adorable smile," Catgirl supplied.

"No, no - that's the leader - that Kendall boy."

"Yes, he has a great smile and dimples, but no, not that one."

"Hmm. There's also another one with dimples and I've heard some people think he's adorable."

"Yes, I know, but I'm pretty sure I know the one I fell in love with and that's Logan!"

"Aha!" Moon pointed at her with glee. "I knew it!" Then he sighed. "Well. What shall we do? I suppose you can't be trusted to carry out my evil plans against Big Time Rush now, can you? Unless...how do you feel about James?"

Catgirl bit her lip. "I shot him too many times with the dart gun. And I don't know, when I saw him tied up like that - "

"Ohhhh, you mean...like this?" Moon chortled with glee as he walked over to the table again. He scooped up an envelope and began pulling pictures out of it. Then he paused and looked up at her in concern. "But perhaps I shouldn't show these to you in your current...mood."

"Moon? What did you do?" Catgirl asked sternly.

"Do - what? These are merely souvenirs," he reassured her. "I had a copy delivered to the hospital for dear Kendall. I knew he'd want to know exactly what shape his dear little friends were in."

"Kendall Knight?"

"Yeah?"

The volunteer stood at the door with a purple polka-dotted envelope and a bunch of purple balloons on black strings. She gave Kendall a bright smile. "These are for you. I hope it's something really nice; you deserve it."

Katie walked over and took both of them from her, looking at them dubiously. "Weird colors."

"You know what's even weirder? They were delivered by a clown. Well, have a nice day," she said before walking out.

A clown? Kendall's shocked eyes met his Mom's across the room.

Katie was looking at the envelope like it might explode in her hands. "Maybe we should burn this," she said hesitantly.

"No," Kendall said firmly. "We have to know what he wants. Bring it here."

She hesitated but finally walked over and gave him the envelope. "Okay, but I'm popping these!" And she wasted no time in grabbing a pencil while Kendall sat and stared at the envelope in his shaking hands.

"Really, Katie?" their Mom asked, startling at the first POP!

"Sorry, Mom," she said, chagrined. A police guard peeked his head in the door and she had to tell him, "Just popping balloons."

The guard stepped back out, grumbling under his breath. On the bed, Kendall was pulling out the contents with shaking hands. On top was a black and white photo of himself tied up, horribly bent, unconscious and lit by a white light he didn't remember. There were gasps around the room as his mother and sister moved so they could see what he was holding.

Kendall couldn't pull his eyes away. Fogginess had obscured the details in his mind, but now he remembered: how his hands were tied to the beam below him, how his back arched painfully and his legs were tied by so many ropes to things off in the darkness around him. He remembered how it felt, the pain digging deeper with every passing minute.

Kendall felt light-headed and had to lie back.

"Is he okay?" Katie asked from far away.

"It's okay, Kendall," his mom said. "Just breathe."

He took in long, slow breaths and kept his eyes closed until the dizziness faded. Then he sat back up and took the photos in hand. There were four. Could the last one be James?

Logan. The next was of his best friend, his small friend hanging helplessly by his wrists in an elevator shaft. A bright light hit his slack face, showing how he'd been crudely gagged with duct tape. With his eyes closed, his head dangling, he looked lifeless...like he could be...

"He's fine now, Kendall," his mother said from beside him, her voice clogged with tears.

The picture swam before his eyes. It helped to know that Logan had been rescued; he was fine. Now, the next picture: Carlos. His small hyper friend was lying lifeless, suspended in a metal seat shaped like a crescent moon. Like Kelly said, it was some kind of aerial thing made to hold someone, only Carlos was tied in it. Rope bound his thighs inside the bottom curve of the moon, while his calves and feet were curved back and held in place underneath.

Of course, they hadn't been able to tie Carlos in place completely. He had interrupted them, hurling all over them before they could finish, but not before they got a picture. The shot was in motion, the frame blurry as it swung. It made Kendall viciously happy that Carlos had messed up their plans.

Kendall forced himself to move on to the last photo. James. Horror clenched Kendall's stomach. James - head hanging, arms stretched out and held taut, chest, legs, feet tied, completely...lifeless. Kendall couldn't breathe. He looked up at his mom, but words wouldn't come out. She took the picture from his hand and gasped. Katie darted over to see.

"What is it?" She grabbed the picture. "But he's not...he's not..."

"Of course not," Jennifer said with some conviction. "In the pictures, you were all unconscious, and you're f-fine now. He'll be fine, too."

Kendall's face was awash in tears. He kept blinking, kept trying to think. James could be alive. That could be unconsciousness, but there was something about his body...something about the way it was hung...

He laid back on the bed and felt the world swim around him again.

The next time he was aware, his mother was standing by the bed, pale with the phone in her hand, staring at him. "He's gone. They found James, but he's gone again. They lost him."

Author's Note: I tried to get him to the hospital, honest but that damn clown would NOT cooperate. Never put evil clowns in your stories, folks. Lesson learned.