Elle walks with her…real dad? Her mind was running loops. She knew a little about her real dad, but just a few tidbits of information is all. So far he fit the physical description. She also knew that her mother was Japanese, but not much more than that about her. But she had no clue he was involved in…whatever this is down here.

  He takes her by the hand and from the office they were in, through a side door and down a hallway to another door.

  “We’re you taking me.” Elle says.

  “I’m taking you to my personal dorm. We have so much to catch up on.” His face was happy and his voice sounded just as happy and pleasant. As if nothing was wrong.

  She doesn’t like this at all. She slows down as they reach a door.

  The Director stops. “Come on, pumpkin. I just want to talk.”

  She panics and tries to pull away from him, but his grip is to tight. She raises her power, or tries to. Nothing happens. Dread slowly envelops her. She tries her power again. Nothing. The Director pulls her in the room and locks it.

  She makes quick assessment of her surroundings. Looks like a typical apartment, except for the video cameras up on the wall in various pces, a metal door in the left wall. But no knob. Except for the door they just came through, did all the doors slide open down here?

  “Would you like something to drink, Elle. You must be thirsty.” He walks over and opens up a cabinet fridge. Taking out a bottle with orange juice in it. At least it looked like OJ.

  Elle turns and struggle with the door knob on the door they came through. It wasn’t moving. She turns and stands with her back to the door. Her nerves running overtime. She remembers her school’s presentation on ‘Bad People to Look Out For’ presentation, st year. Her breathing picking up. She was trapped in a tight space, with no powers and a man she didn’t know who cimed to be her real father. This was a ‘bad people’ moment.

  The Director comes over with the gss of orange juice. “Here you go.”

  She slides along the door to the wall. Trying to get away. She felt so powerless. So helpless. She wanted to scream but figured that it would do no good.

  The Director straightens with a smile. “All right.” He turns and walks to his kitchen counter, setting the gss down and moving to the other side. He sits down. “When you’ve calmed down you can have a seat. I just want to talk. I haven’t seen you in so long, I wanna hear everything you’ve done over these past years.”

  Elle just stands in pce. Her nerves making her shake.

  “Here. Maybe this will help.” The Director gets up and goes to the living room area and pushes a few buttons on a keyboard next to the rge television. He then grabs a remote control off the top of the TV.

  The television comes to life and shows a surveilnce view of a small room.

  “Here are your adopted parents.” He points to a screen on the top right.

  Elle walks up a few feet. The TV shows her parents, adopted parents. Whatever. They were lying down in bed, in each others arms, asleep.

  “W-Where are they?”

  “Their safe and sound in the dorms.”

  The Director presses a button on the remote. The screen flickers, now showing a simir room. It was showing Chris’ parents this time. They were sleeping as well, it appeared.

  “Don’t worry, they’re merely sleeping. I gave them a sedative to help them sleep. They had a busy day today.”

  “W-What’s gonna happen to them?” She says.

  “I'll expin everything ter when everyone is together. But I can say that I am through with your adopted parents and the Talvert‘s. So I'll save them for the test run..”

  Test run? Elle doesn’t like the sound of that.

  “But your adopted brothers and the Talvert child will be most useful.”

  “Let me see them.” Elle demands.

  The Director presses a few buttons and the screen switches to a four-way split screen. The top left and right were Jerry and Jackson, the bottom was Chris and Seth. All of them were either pacing around, banging on the door. Except Chris, who was sitting on the bed with his back against the wall. His legs pulled up to his chest. She notices him wipe his eyes, he’s crying. The television shuts off with out warning.

  She hops back a few steps.

  “I promise you. It will not hurt one bit.”

  Oh, god. Elle starts hyperventiting.

  “You’ll never know anything’s been done. And when the procedure is finished, you can go home.”

  Elle frantically tries the door. Trying as best as she can to bring forth any amount of power she can. To know avail.

  “I’m sorry my baby girl.” He says.

  A sharp ringing sound echoes in her ears. Her body soon begins to go limp until she falls to the floor and all goes bck.

  * * * * *

  Chris wakes up with a start. He quickly notices his surroundings, he wasn’t home that was for sure. Then he remembers the Director guy, the armed guards and not being able to use his powers for some reason. Not to mention the feeling of complete uselessness. He passed out, but for how long.

  He sits up and wipes his eyes of the dried tears. He wanted to be home having his mom’s dinner. He wanted to be at school ughing with his friends at lunch. He wanted to feel his Spark fre when he was holding Elle’s hand. He even wanted to apologize to Rex for what he did to him.

  An electronic lock clicks on the door and it slides open. It was like something out of Star Trek. The door slides open and Chris stands up fast, getting ready for…whatever may be coming his way. Powers or not, he was going down fighting. A woman enters with four armed guards. Maybe ‘going down fighting’ with words of protest instead.

  “Hello Chris. My name is Miss Carlton.” She say pleasantly.

  Miss Carlton looked like she was a researcher as well. Or an office worker, Chris couldn’t tell. Like it mattered. She had a professional look about her , though she was smiling pleasantly.

  “Okay Chris, if you’ll come with me, this night will go without a hitch. And everyone will go home early.” She says.

  “Where are you taking me?” Chris asks her.

  “To your parents of course.”

  Chris wants to believe her but he knew better, this is all so weird. They’re so nice to them, despite the armed guards, the Director, the fact that they can’t use their powers. It was mocking.

  “Everyone is together now in the main boratory. So come along.” She says as the guards come into the room and take Chris by the arms and force him to follow Miss Carlton.

  With no other options avaible, he follows the woman. The guards right behind them.

  Miss Carlton leads Chris and the guards down the hall and through a door marked Main Laboratory. Around the perimeter are a bunch of big, people sized, gss tubes set at an angle against the wall. Wires and tubes running from the top. All converging on a central gss tube. Chris lets out a gasp. In the central tube, suspended in a green-blue liquid, with wires and tubes attached was a…child. Probably about seven or eight years old. He couldn’t see the face due to a rge mask covering it.

  “Chris!” Jerry calls out.

  Chris turns and sees Jerry and Jackson being escorted into the room in simir fashion Chris was.

  “Come along.” Miss Carlton tells them.

  The guards nudge them all, rudely, toward the tubes.

  “No!” Jerry yells. “I’m not going in one of those things!” He struggles against the guards who try to force him.

  Some of the other guards turn their attention to Jerry and aim their weapons. What else can they do?

  Chris bull rushes the one next to him and goes for his rifle. Knocking him off bance, Chris manages to get the gun from him and points it at the nurse. The guards quickly take aim at him.

  “Everyone back off or, or I’ll shoot.” Could he actually do it, though?

  The nurse backs up against one of the tubes. “You won’t shoot.” She says smugly.

  Jackson and Jerry have wide grins on their faces.

  Chris tries his best not to shake with adrenaline. “I mean it.”

  “Now, now, now.” A voice interrupts. The Director. “There’s no need for hostilities. We’re all mutual friends here.”

  Chris looks over to the other side of the room. The Director and a few guards walk with their parents, who need help walking, they look drugged. And behind them, Elle. Who’s face was solemn, but quickly changes to surprised happiness upon seeing Chris.

  His moment of distraction though causes him to lose the gun. And his chance.

  “Now if you would be so kind.” The Director motions to the guards.

  Chris and the others are again pushed to their gss tubes. The tubes pop open with a hiss and slide to the right. Everyone is put into the gss tubes and they are shut inside. Chris watches with a sad heart as the Director walks Elle over to her tube and she steps in. She looks over and meets Chris’ eyes. He felt so sad seeing her like that. It appeared like she had given up while she was away.

  Don’t give up, Elle. Chris thinks, wishing he had telepathy at the moment.

  Everyone is pced into their tubes at gun point. Metal restraints are tched around their wrists and ankles while thick pstic straps are pces over their chests. Larry watches in utter defeat as his pod closes.

  “Again, I want to thank you all for coming.” The Director tells them happily.

  Like we had a choice, Larry thinks.

  “First, I’ll expin a little about the procedure. These devise you are now in will extract your elemental powers and infuse them into the subject in front of you.” He motions to the central unit.

  “How the hell…” Larry tries to say, the drugs are still working a little. “This technology doesn’t exist.”

  “Please. For someone who came to this world by a man whose world is over ten thousand years more advanced than ours, you can actually say that?”

  What? Did he just mean…Axus?

  “You seemed surprised? I am talking about your old trans-dimensional travel broker. Axus. You didn’t really believe you and your family were the only ones he’s helped out, do you?” The Director chuckles mildly.

  Larry didn’t really think about it actually. He'd forgotten Axus mentioning others here that he's helped. He looks over to Simon, he looked perplexed. Which Larry doesn‘t bme him.

  “I do believe that you never told your colleague about your past. Well then, by all means, expin. Don’t worry, everyone can hear you.”

  “Larry, if you have something to tell me, please…tell me.” Simon tells him.

  “Okay. Last year my family and I arrived here from a parallel Earth.” The drugs were making it hard to concentrate. Best to get straight to the point. “We came through an Einstein -Rosen bridge. Or whatever equivalent Axus uses.”

  Simon’s eyes go wide. Larry could tell by his facial expression that Simon’s mind is running through his science knowledge.

  “I am a researcher and we are from Aska…just not your Aska.”

  “Whoa.” Jerry excims.

  “So why are you here?” Melissa asks, sounding curious.

  “A man came to me one day and asked if I would like to make a difference in a world that was slowly turning down a destructive path. Of course I had to ugh him off, but then he showed me something that I’d only seen in movies, cybernetics. And not the clunky ones from movies and such.”

  “Whoa!” Jerry yells out this time.

  Larry couldn’t help but smile. “Then he showed me the bridge. It was like nothing I’d seen before. It was as if the air ripped open and a long tunnel emerged. I walked to the side of it and it was thinner than paper. Hell, it had no thickness. Just as one would think. The man said he could arrange for me and my family to come, here, and start a new life. Using my old worlds technologies with some of his to make a world much like mine.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us before?” Simon asks.

  Larry wasn’t sure to be honest. “I guess, the fact that we were doing so well at getting the business up and going I didn’t want to jeopardize it.”

  “Larry, I’m a born and raised scientist and physics nut. Things like the Einstein-Rosen bridge, parallel universes, future gadgets…that stuff excites me. I may have chosen to be a financial and business expert, but deep down, I’m a scientist. To be honest, one of the reasons I agreed to join you with building TalCorp is for a chance to research amazing science with you.” Simon smiles wide.

  Larry felt a huge weight lift off his shoulders. “I’m sorry Simon. I won’t hold back anything else from now on.”

  “So it was this Axus guy that brought you here?” Jackson asks.

  “Yes. He said his name was Axus and he comes from and Earth that is around ten thousand years ahead of us. Technology-wise anyway. He didn’t give any details about how his world was so far ahead, who knows. He didn’t give to many details about anything for that matter.”

  “But what would he gain from this world using his technologies?” Melissa asks.

  Larry shakes his head. “I don’t know But I think the bigger question would be why is he helping someone like this guy?” He looks at the Director.

  “Yes, well, I know about as much as you do Mr. Talvert. Axus is a rather strange individual to say the least. But here we are, on the verge of a technological breakthrough.”

  “What are you going to do with…that?” Ariel asks, looking at the boy in the center tube.

  “He will be a gift for an associate of mine. A Mr. Vdimir Starinski, from Russia. Mr. Starinski is looking for the best of the best when it comes to soldiers. And he pays very well.”

  The Director snaps his fingers and walks to the tube child. A strange noise resounds as the tube Larry is in starts doing…whatever it is they do.

  “Larry?” Ariel cries meeting Larry’s eyes as she looks over.

  “Hang in there, honey.”

  A blue gas starts filling the chamber. Larry instinctively holds his breath. But the gas fills the tube, his skin begins to tingle and his muscles rex. He can’t hold his breath anymore and he lets his breath go. Everything starts getting hazy. But he doesn’t fall unconscious. He watches his friends and loved ones fall unconscious succumbing to the gas.

  Larry just stares intently at the Director.

  “Mr. Talvert. I’m a researcher, just like you.” The Director motions to the child. “I’m merely a biological researcher, to your mechanical.”

  “You’re sick, you mean.”

  The child in the central tube begins to twitch. The liquid around it starts to bubble and churn. A moment ter the child stiffens up straight and Larry hears him scream, even through both his tube and Larry’s. Larry can only imagine what kind of image training the Director is giving him. Poor child.

  “Yes, it’s working.” The Director cheers while looking at the computer screen just below the tube. “His body is accepting all four elements, as well as the Spirit power from Mr. Prowman.”

  Larry watches on as the boy rexes and puts his hands on the gss, trying to get out. The Director pushes a few buttons and the tube drains the weird liquid. The boy struggles with the wires and visor.

  “You see Mr. Talvert, nothing to it. Your friends and family will be returned to the dorms where they can get a good nights rest. They deserve it.” He takes a towel from Miss Carlton.”

  “Then what? Huh? I highly doubt your gonna just let us go.”

  “Yes. I’m afraid I’ll have to test out my young projects capabilities. What better subjects then the ones whose powers he now holds.”

  Larry can only watch as the boys gss tube is opened and the Director wraps the towel around the shivering boy. He tries to see the boys face from his angle, and through the blue mist. But couldn’t get a good view. Who was this boy anyway? A clone? Test tube baby? Kidnap victim?

  The boy turns and looks around. An icy shiver rolls through Larry as the boy’s eyes catch his. His eyes are cold…evil. He wasn’t sure if he was trained to be just a soldier or a cold blooded killer.

  “Time to go Mr. Talvert. Good night. The Director pushes another button and more blue mist pumps into Larry’s tube.

  He quickly falls asleep.