Thank you so much to those who follow/favorite this story! It's been a super long time since I've done much writing and I'm rusty but this has been so fun to write. I hope y'all enjoy this next chapter.

Chapter 4

They were lost.

Adrien shoved his hands deep in his pockets in an attempt to conceal just how upset he was with Felix, walking behind him and Kagami as the two of them held up her phone as a flashlight (which definitely didn't need to be a two-person job).

The tunnels were dark and damp and smelled like rotting fish. A trickle of water ran down a canal just to the side of the ledge they were walking along.

"Aha!" Felix shouted, grinning much too brightly. "I remember this sign on the wall, we're close to the tube connection!"

Even Kagami was starting to look skeptical, as she eyed him sideways in concern. "You've said that three times now, babe, are you sure we're not just lost?"

Felix let out a nervous laugh. "Lost? Of course we're not lost. I was very careful to note all the turns I made on my way here."

"And how many turns was that?" Adrien grumbled.

"It was-I think-I mean-"

Kagami and Adrien both stared daggers at him.

Felix's shoulders slumped. "Okay. It was, maybe, five turns."

"We've made eight." Kagami stated, frowning.

"Fine, we might be a little lost! I thought I kept track of the landmarks, but they look totally different from the other direction and a lot of them look the same!"

"Are you serious!?" Adrien complained. "Can't you just use your powers to, I don't know, create a map or something? Or better yet, a Sentimonster that can see through walls?"

"No!" Felix startled him with the heat in his response. "I won't create an entire living being just to get us out of a mess I created!"

"They're not alive," Adrien argued. "They're just copies of whatever you think up!"

"Oh, because you're an expert on the subject?" Felix rubbed his face with his hand. "No, they're not. Don't you get it? They're not monsters, they're real, they're the same as you and me. In fact, they're exactly the same as you and me."

"What are you even talking about?" Felix was no more an expert on the Miraculous than he was. Of that, Adrien was certain.

"WE are beings created by the peacock Miraculous, Adrien!" Felix nearly shouted, grabbing him by the shoulders.

Adrien flinched away instinctively, but as he backed from Felix's grasp the words started to sink in.

"Our parents used it to make us. The rings aren't magical just by themselves. They're the object containing the amoks. OUR amoks."

The room spun. Adrien's knees went weak and gave out under him. He found himself sitting on the ground, staring up at his cousin in shock.

Felix started to explain more, but Kagami held him back with a touch on his shoulder. "Give him a minute," she advised quietly.

"H-how-" Adrien's mouth was dry and he had to swallow to get the words out, "how do you know all this?!"

Felix sighed heavily. "My mother told me," he replied. "But she didn't want to. I had to pester her about it once I started to suspect some things. I knew my father was using his ring to control me and it got worse as he got sicker. Somehow, I felt my life was tied to it. My mother used to send me away to school and one day I realized it was her way of trying to protect me from my father. At least when I was away from him, he couldn't force me to do whatever he wanted."

"Our-our parents had the peacock Miraculous, before Le Paon? But how?"

"They were good at keeping secrets. They had a lot of them. Look, how about we focus on getting out of here for now? You can ask my mom about it later. She knows the story better than I do."

Felix offered him a hand and Adrien reluctantly took it, getting to his feet. He felt numb, like he was moving through a daze. Plagg shook him out of it by jumping around frantically inside his shirt again. Annoyed, Adrien flicked the top of his head to get him to quit. This was not the time to have to deal with his Kwami's reactions to Adrien's entire world getting flipped on its head.

As time passed, the three of them exchanged ideas about how to find their way out. Adrien decided to put the world-altering flood of information he'd just been hit with aside as best he could-it wouldn't do him any good if they all died down here because they couldn't find their way out. Besides, even attempting to think about it sent his head spinning. He and Ladybug had known Felix was connected to Monarch, for obvious reasons, but this made it sound like the connection ran much deeper than that. He would wait to talk about it until he was with her. They would figure it out together. Ladybug would make more sense of it than he could, since it wasn't her own family wrapped up in the business.

They couldn't seem to locate the door that connected the tube tunnel to the reservoir no matter how many times they retraced their steps, examined every nook and cranny and banged on every door they could find. Felix had scanning technology but it wouldn't work without a satellite signal.

Adrien's frustration and sense of foreboding grew with every step. He couldn't bear the thought of Ladybug facing the biggest akuma attack of all time with no warning and no allies to help her. All because of his own stupidity not making plans before he'd been sent away.

All because he still trusted his father, still thought maybe he could reason with him, even after time and time again his father had done nothing but prove he COULDN'T be trusted or reasoned with, or even disobeyed.

"This is ridiculous," he finally exploded, causing Felix and Kagami to stop in their tracks and look backward at him. "We're never going to find the way Felix got in here. There are all of these manhole covers on the ceiling, at the very least, we know we need to go up to get to the surface instead of down."

"If we go through a few layers of them, we should reach the street level," Kagami surmised, gazing upward at one of the handled manholes he was referencing.

Felix grimaced as he peered upward, not wanting to admit that was their best option at this point. "If you think you can get up there, be my guest," he snorted to his cousin. "I still have a few more spots I want to check."

"Splitting up is NOT a good idea right now," Kagami frowned, folding her arms as she glared at the two of them. "The last thing I need is to lose one of you two in this maze."

Adrien was already halfway up the side of the wall, edging his way toward the manhole cover. There was a brick ledge barely two centimeters wide in the style of how the wall of the reservoir was built, but it was just enough to grip.

The cover itself was positioned above a large basin that used to hold, probably thousands of gallons of water for the city, but was now empty. There was a rickety metal ladder that led up to it but it was designed for someone much taller than Adrien was, and once he reached the top rung, he couldn't quite reach the handle above him.

"Are you sure about this?" Felix's voice cut through the damp darkness, echoing off the bottom of the basin. "I could transform and..."

"What, so you can seal off all our exits and trap us down here for good?" Adrien growled, keeping his eyes above on the handle he was trying to reach. He couldn't quite manage to reach it from the ladder, but if he could just get one foot out on the ledge, a little higher...

"You need to stop treating Felix like he's a criminal," Kagami spoke up, defending her boyfriend. "He's done nothing but try to help you."

"I have no reason not to believe he's telling the truth about the rings," Adrien admitted reluctantly, pausing for breath as he struggled to hold on and sweat dripped down his forehead and down the back of his shirt. "But Felix has gone behind my back-" he grunted and shifted his weight over, one tiny bit at a time, "-one too many times for me to think this is all some selfless act."

He'd caused countless people to suffer and kept the people who could have found a better way in the dark about his problems, trying to solve them himself and making people Adrien loved suffer for it. He just hoped Kagami wasn't next.

He inched his way a little further along the edge.

"Adrien, be careful," Kagami sounded annoyed with him, but also genuinely concerned. "There could be algae on those bricks."

"She's not wrong. That ledge even makes me nervous." Felix folded his arms across his chest. "You're not Chat Noir, cousin."

Adrien's fingers just scraped the edge of the trapdoor wheel. He hugged the edge, shifting the toes of his converse just a centimeter to keep himself from falling, and tried again. Success! He felt a surge of triumph. Now he just had to get it to move.

"We can find another way out," Felix suggested as Adrien strained at the odd angle to force the wheel open. "The akuma probably won't attack in the next few minutes."

"He's impatient to get out," Kagami explained aside to Felix, in a lower tone. "He hates enclosed spaces."

Annoyance swelled inside of him. "You guys, I'm right here," Adrien complained, grunting again as he struggled to get leverage. "You sound like an old married couple and I can hear every word."

He didn't notice both of them blush.

"You know, if you're so convinced that this is the best way out, you could just let me transform and I could help you," Felix added in annoyance.

"I thought you had other exits you wanted to check? The ones you so carefully made note of and definitely didn't forget how to find?" Adrien's shoulders were starting to cramp. He grit his teeth, let out a long, slow breath, and pushed. The wheel turned, just a few centimeters, but it was something.

Kagami gasped. "It's moving!"

Felix just tapped his fingers against his arm, annoyed with his cousin for his persistent refusal to trust him.

Kagami peered up at Adrien. "Your father should have known you'd be in more danger down here than if you'd stayed in Paris."

"My father doesn't know," Adrien shoved at the wheel again, causing it to slip a tiny bit more, "because he never talks to me, that I have actual responsibilities in Par-"

A gasp tore from his throat as the friction between his foot and the wall suddenly vanished.

He grasped for the wheel overhead.

His fingers met nothing but air.

"Adrien!" Kagami and Felix yelled simultaneously, Felix's brooch flashing as he attmepted to transform in time.

Adrien's chest hit the edge of the brick wall halfway to the bottom of the reservoir, forcing the breath out of his lungs with an audible *crack* from one of his ribs. His head snapped backward and he hit the ground three meters below, his ankle giving way under him as pain exploded red-hot up his leg as he landed on his left side. He opened his mouth to scream but nothing came out. Panic sloshed its way through the pain as his chest heaved for air that refused to enter his lungs.

Plagg appeared in front of him, barely a shadow but slapping the sides of his face with tiny paws. "Adrien, breathe!"

"I-I can't-"

Plagg?! Plagg needed to get back, Felix would see-

His concern was interrupted by another wave of panic as his lungs screamed for air.

He managed a choking gasp. A second later, Plagg vanished as quick as he'd appeared as Argos landed beside him, with Kagami in his arms.

Adrien's head started to spin and his vision began to blur. Air. He needed air. A lot more air. He was going to drown. Was he dying!?