It is so wonderful to hear from all of you again. Sorry, some technical difficulties had kept this story hidden for a while, but we're all fixed for now. Hang in there and be safe!

He'd been anxiously waiting for the fog to clear, his mind a jumbled mess of confusing sounds and thoughts.

Muffled voices could be heard, some of them soothing, others more direct, but all of them unfamiliar.

At one point, Steve recognized the feel of cold linens against his bare arm, the type that usually accompanied a hospital bed. The smells and sounds confirmed his suspicion.

But his head.

The relentless throbbing was driving him insane, blocking any reasonable thought, forcing him to keep his eyes shut and helplessly submit to all the poking and prodding going on around him.

A little while ago, somebody had touched his legs, the slightest bit of pressure enough to set his nerve endings on fire, causing him to shift in bed.

Right away, more hands appeared, holding him down, trying to soothe his attempts to move away from the attacker by his knee, their voices making the pain in his head grow to new levels.

Not long after, the vomiting began, his stomach emptying what little contents it had held, leaving him gagging when nothing but bile erupted from his tortured system.

The hands had stayed steadily by his side, holding him down and helping him fight the nausea. Some were gently rubbing his shoulder, others were more rigid, especially when he fought them.

In the fleeting moments of lucidity, there was only one thing that came to mind.

"Mike…"

He knew he'd said it over and over again, receiving a few responses in return and yet none made it through the unbearable throbbing in his skull.

What had happened to Mike after the fateful encounter with their murder suspects? Why wasn't he here?

The plethora of unanswered questions threatened to make the world spin again, his stomach following suit, so Steve tried to calm down, take in his surroundings, listen to the voices the best he could to make sense out of what was happening.

In the end, there was only one familiar voice he managed to identify…and sadly, it wasn't Mike's.

Somewhere nearby was Roy Dewitt, his raspy voice unusually gentle, completely missing that ever-present sternness.

Roy was trying to talk to him, ask questions he couldn't answer. In a skewed sort of way, maybe he was just trying to talk sense into him, not that any of that would happen until his head stopped to drive him nuts.

Frustrated at the sluggishness with which is body was responding to his efforts to fully come to, Steve tried to roll off to the side, only to feel the lieutenant's hand dig into his shoulder.

"You gotta stop moving kid, you hear me?"

He could smell the strong odor of cigarettes on Dewitt's breath, a bad omen to an even more confusing situation.

"Mike…", he tried again, unable to shake the hand off his shoulder.

"I know, I know. Try to relax. Mike is…he's in good hands. And he doesn't need you falling off this damn bed and splitting your skull wide open. Please…Stephen."

Raising his left arm, he blindly reached for the other man, feeling him grasp his hand midway up, Roy's fingers trembling slightly.

"I am here, kid, I am here. Just settle down, you're safe. You and Mike…you're both safe. The unis got to you in time."

Ever so gently, Roy forced his arm back down, carefully tucking it under a thin sheet before clearing his throat.

"Just take it easy. I am not going anywhere. And when…when you feel up to it, let's go over what happened. Because the sooner I know, the sooner I can get these sons of a gun caught and put away for good."

There was enough conviction for both of them in those angry words and Steve managed a faint nod, the sheer motion bringing on a slew of new spasms running through his body.

"We sent a 10-20…", his sluggish mind produced, causing Dewitt to squeeze his arm in return.

"Thank God you did…but what happened afterwards? Do you remember any of it?"

Of course he did, he remembered a lot about that encounter. It was everything else after the fact that was getting kind of…fuzzy.

"We…checked a few leads…", Steve managed to say and licked his dry lips, "Leads were no good but Mike…he thought he had a lead…Mike…"

"Of course, he would…", Roy reassured and grasped his shoulders tighter, "But what made you guys go down that alley?"

"Michael…he…Rodney said the kids liked to hang out in that neighborhood."

"Rodney who?"

"Don't know his real name…"

And he didn't.

Mike had told him that Rodney was just his alter ego, that the guy they were talking to spent most of his days heavily involved in betting the races or hustling prostitutes. If the lieutenant cared to find out the other man's real name, it sure didn't show. As a matter of fact, Steve wasn't quite sure how these starkly different characters ever met or what had convinced Rodney to help the police.

"So you two went into that neighborhood…then what? Take your time.", Roy prodded, trying to throttle his thirst for the truth beneath half-hearted courtesy. And Steve couldn't fault him one bit. He wanted to see these guys caught and hung out to dry just as much.

"Checked out some hangouts…basketball courts, parks, diners…not much luck, but one waitress said she'd seen a group of kids head down the street minutes earlier."

"And Mike was right on that…", Roy countered, knowing his old partner too well.

"Yeah…we headed down a few blocks and they…they found us. It was an ambush."

"They probably noticed you guys following and backtracked."

Recollecting the frightful moment they were up against a wall of anger-driven teenagers still made Steve's skin crawl. There'd been little that could compare to the level of cold-bloodedness with which they attacked.

"They cut off our exit and surrounded us…"

"Did you catch any names? Did you see their faces?"

"They wore masks. And never said a word."

That was by far the creepiest thing of all. What a well-oiled machine this group must be for them to attack in such a precise pattern without saying a word- even as some of them were shot to death.

"Anything that could be identifiable? We found a baseball bat and are going to analyze it for prints."

"They wore gloves…", Steve explained, his words causing Roy to sigh in defeat.

"Well, we're going to take pictures of the three fatalities and circulate them, see if someone knows them. And we are going to check the nearby cameras. There's gotta be something somebody saw."

Another long pause ensued when Steve felt his stomach begin to churn again, the acid building up making it difficult to carry on a conversation. As his body threatened to go back to sleep, he reached up to the hand on his shoulder, squeezing it urgently.

"Roy, how is Mike doing? Really?"

"He is…well, there's quite a bit of damage.", the lieutenant replied, keeping his voice cautiously neutral, "The doctor gave me the run down a little while ago."

As Roy began his well-prepared speech listing everything on Mike's body that was either broken, bruised or actively bleeding, Steve felt himself drift back into the comfortable darkness that had enveloped his senses since the attack.

Without ever hearing a direct response to his urgent question, he drew in a deep breath and returned to the abyss of unconsciousness.